A Court of Wings and Ruin (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #3)

by Sarah J. Maas

I let my glow spread, until it, too, rippled from Lucien’s bowed form. A knight before his queen.

The stars winked into existence, dim and small above the blazing fires. I watched them through the long hours of celebrating, and could have sworn that they kept me company, my silent and stalwart friends.

A nightmare, I’d told Tamlin. I was the nightmare.

Lying beside Ianthe without slitting her throat was an exercise in patience and control.

I wasn’t sure I’d been born with the ability to forgive. Not for terrors inflicted on those I loved. For myself, I didn’t care—not nearly as much. But there was some fundamental pillar of steel in me that could not bend or break in this. Could not stomach the idea of letting these people get away with what they’d done.

I ran through every lesson Rhys had taught me about the Winter Court and its High Lord, Kallias. Towering, exquisite palaces, full of roaring hearths and bedecked in evergreens. Carved sleighs were the court’s preferred method of transportation, hauled by velvet-antlered reindeer whose splayed hooves were ideal for the ice and snow. Their forces were well trained, but they often relied on the great, white bears that stalked the realm for any unwanted visitors.

“I am High Lady of the Night Court,” I said quietly to them all. Even Eris stopped sneering. His amber eyes widened, something like fear now creeping into them. “There’s no such thing as a High Lady,” one of Lucien’s brothers spat. A faint smile played on my mouth. “There is now.” And it was time for the world to know it.

Elain had always been gentle and sweet—and I had considered it a different sort of strength. A better strength. To look at the hardness of the world and choose, over and over, to love, to be kind. She had been always so full of light.

“We’re all broken,” Mor said. “In our own ways—in places no one might see.”

“Only you can decide what breaks you, Cursebreaker. Only you.”

“If I end my life defending those who need it most, then I will consider it a death well spent.”

A world divided was not a world that could thrive.