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

by Sarah J. Maas

So I said clearly, steadily to him, “I accept your offer—to work with you. To earn my keep. And help with Hybern in whatever way I can.” “Good,” Rhys merely replied.

“I love my people, and my family. Do not think I wouldn’t become a monster to keep them protected.”

I’ll have to do it again soon enough.” “What was the cost?” I dared ask. “Of keeping this place secret and free?”

I made to step away, but he gripped my chin. “You know the cost already.” Amarantha’s whore.

And because my powers were focused on shielding them all, Feyre, I had very little to use against Amarantha. So I decided that to keep her from asking questions about the people who mattered, I would be her whore.”

Hands—there were hands on my shoulders, shaking me, squeezing me. I thrashed against them, screaming, screaming— “FEYRE.”

The voice was at once the night and the dawn and the stars and the earth, and every inch of my body calmed at the primal dominance in it.

Yummy

The moonlight trickling through the windows illuminated the dark lines of swirling tattoos down his arm, his shoulders, across his sculpted chest. Like the ones I bore on my arm. He scanned my face. “A dream,” he said again.

Double yummy

My hand was unnervingly steady as I lifted it to find my fingers ending in simmering embers.

fell to my knees before the toilet, and was sick to my stomach. Again. Again. My fingertips hissed against the cool porcelain. Large, warm hands pulled my hair back a moment later.

His other hand stroked long, soothing lines down the curve of my back, as over and over

The dark pants were tight, the scale-like plates of leather worn and scarred, and sculpted to legs I hadn’t noticed were quite that muscled.

I tried to take a step again; I tried for Elain and Nesta and the human world that might be wrecked, but … I couldn’t. “Please,” I whispered. I

Rhysand, as promised, didn’t ask any questions as he gripped my hand and brought us back to the winter sun and rich colors of Velaris.

He added with a wink, “I won’t dock your pay.”

“What is she?” After our chat this morning, perhaps it was stupid to ask. “Something else. Something worse than us. And if she ever finds a way to shed her prison of flesh and bone … Cauldron save us all.”

“The calf-bone that made the final kill when Feyre slew the Middengard Wyrm,” Rhys said. My very blood stilled. There had been many bones that I’d laid in my trap—I hadn’t noticed which had ended the Wyrm. Or thought anyone would.

“I heard the crack,” I said. Rhys’s head whipped toward me. “I heard the crack when she broke my neck. It was in my ears, but also inside my skull. I was gone before I felt anything more than the first lash of pain.”

“There was only that bond in the darkness.”

so are they not mates.. Is it just the bargain? Ugh

Rhysand’s face had gone pale, his mouth a tight line. “And when I was Made anew,” I said, “I followed that bond back—to me. I knew that home was on the other end of it. There was light then. Like swimming up through sparkling wine—”

“My right knee gets a twinge of pain when it rains. I wrecked it during the War, and it’s hurt ever since.”

Lmaoooo

“When Amarantha made me kill those two faeries, if the third hadn’t been Tamlin, I would have put the dagger in my own heart at the end.” Rhys went still.

I dared a glance at Rhys, and there was something like devastation on his beautiful face. It was gone in a blink.

Rhys picked an invisible piece of dirt off his fighting leathers.

This guy is always picking on invisible shit.

“Once Feyre darling returns from the Weaver, we’ll bring Hybern to its knees.”

Rhys yanked open the drawers and pulled out my undergarments. He dangled the bits of midnight lace and chuckled. “I’m surprised you didn’t demand Nuala and Cerridwen buy you something else.”

Bow, he’d once ordered Tamlin. And now here he was, on his knees before me. His eyes glinted as if he remembered it, too.

Aahaahaahaahah

“And if she notices me?” His hands tightened slightly. “Then we’ll learn precisely how skilled you are.” Cruel, conniving bastard. I glared at him.

“Would you rather I locked you in the House of Wind and stuffed you with food and made you wear fine clothes and plan my parties?” “Go to hell.

Hes so fucking funny

“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.”

Ugh my heart

“Who knows? With Cassian, he’s probably more interested in fucking you than protecting you.” “You’re a pig.” “You could, you know,” Rhys said, holding up the branch of a scrawny beech for me to slip under. “If you needed to move on in a physical sense, I’m sure Cassian would be more than happy to oblige.”

Huh???

I made to jump off the stone, but he gripped my chin, the movement too fast to detect. His words were a lethal caress as he said, “Did you enjoy the sight of me kneeling before you?”

Rhys inclined his head toward the cottage, bowing with dramatic grace.

Eyes twinkling, Rhys mouthed, Good luck.

Rhys and I were one in the same—beyond the power that he’d given me. It’d be fitting if Tamlin hated me, too, once he realized I’d truly left.

A ring.

A ring of twisted strands of gold and silver, flecked with pearl, and set with a stone of deepest, solid blue. Sapphire—but different.

“What little mouse is climbing about in my chimney?”

My heart is pounding

tumbling onto the thatched roof. Which was not thatched with hay at all. But hair.

And then, lounging on a branch in a tree before me, one arm draped over the edge, Rhysand drawled, “What the hell did you do?”

“You kill her?” Cassian said. “No,” Rhys answered for me, loosely folding his wings. “But given how much the Weaver was screaming, I’m dying to know what Feyre darling did.”

“That’s what this was also about,” I spat. “Not just this stupid ring,” I reached into my pocket, slamming the ring down on the table, “or my abilities, but if I can master my panic.”

“Brutal, but effective.”

“How’d you lose it?” I demanded. “I didn’t. My mother gave it to me as a keepsake, then took it back when I reached maturity—and gave it to the Weaver for safekeeping.” “Why?” “So I wouldn’t waste it.”

“I’ll fly with Azriel.” Rhys and Cassian looked as if I’d declared I wanted to parade through Velaris in nothing but my skin, but the shadowsinger merely bowed his head and said, “Of course.” And that, thankfully, was that.

Azrielllll

Alive. We thought you were—” I pulled my hood back before she could go on.

“I was dead,” I said roughly. “I was dead, and then I was reborn—remade.”

He’d been good—there was a part of Tamlin that was good—

He’d stopped. Had tried, but not really. He’d let himself remain blind to what I needed after Amarantha.

Rhys was still watching me, as if he could see the weight that had pressed into me since arriving here.