A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #2)

by Sarah J. Maas

“I was a prisoner in her court for nearly fifty years. I was tortured and beaten and fucked until only telling myself who I was, what I had to protect, kept me from trying to find a way to end it. Please—help me keep that from happening again. To Prythian.”

“Tell me what to do,” he said. “Tell me what to do to help you.”

“Months and months, and you’re still a ghost. Does no one there ask what the hell is happening? Does your High Lord simply not care?”

Bow, he’d once ordered Tamlin. And now here he was, on his knees before me.

“So I’m your huntress and thief?” His hands slid down to cup the backs of my knees as he said with a roguish grin, “You are my salvation, Feyre.”

“Did you enjoy the sight of me kneeling before you?”

“Isn’t that all you males are good for, anyway?”

“To the people who look at the stars and wish, Rhys.” He picked up his glass, his gaze so piercing that I wondered why I had bothered blushing at all for Tarquin. Rhys clinked his glass against mine. “To the stars who listen—and the dreams that are answered.”

“Why does anything cling to something? Maybe they love wherever they’re going so much that it’s worth it. Maybe they’ll keep coming back, until there’s only one star left. Maybe that one star will make the trip forever, out of the hope that someday—if it keeps coming back often enough—another star will find it again.”

I did not mind stepping out of the shadows, did not mind even being in the shadows to begin with, so long as he was with me. My friend through so many dangers—who had fought for me when no one else would, even myself. “Of course I’ll dance with you,” Rhys said, his voice still raw. “All night, if you wish.” “Even if I step on your toes?” “Even then.”

“When you spend so long trapped in darkness, Lucien, you find that the darkness begins to stare back.” A pulse of surprise, of wicked delight against my mental shields, at the dark, membranous wings I knew were now poking over my shoulders. Every icy kiss of rain sent jolts of cold through me. Sensitive—so sensitive, these Illyrian wings.

I sipped from my wine. “And if he had grabbed me?” There was nothing but uncompromising will in his eyes. “Then I would have torn apart the world to get you back.”

“I’m thinking,” he said, following the flick of my tongue over my bottom lip, “that I look at you and feel like I’m dying. Like I can’t breathe. I’m thinking that I want you so badly I can’t concentrate half the time I’m around you, and this room is too small for me to properly bed you. Especially with the wings.” My heart stumbled a beat. I didn’t know what to do with my arms, my legs, my face. I gulped down the rest of my wine and discarded the glass beside the bed, steeling my spine as I said, “I’m thinking that I can’t stop thinking about you. And that it’s been that way for a long while. Even before I left the Spring Court. And maybe that makes me a traitorous, lying piece of trash, but—” “It doesn’t,” he said, his face solemn.

I wonder if, even in my despair and hopelessness, I was never truly alone. I wonder if I was looking for this place—looking for you all.”

“I was looking for you, too,”

“The High Lord of the Night Court is your mate.”

WE ALL SAW THIS COMING BUT WHAT

“She is my mate. And my spy,” I said too quietly. “And she is the High Lady of the Night Court.”

And so Tamlin unwittingly led the High Lady of the Night Court into the heart of his territory.