A Court of Thorns and Roses eBook Bundle (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #1-4)

by Sarah J. Maas

our long-forgotten gods

We mortals no longer kept gods to worship, but if I had known their lost names, I would have prayed to them. All of them.

It told a story with the way colors and shapes and light flowed, the way the tone shifted across the mural. The story of … of Prythian. It began with a cauldron. A mighty black cauldron held by glowing, slender female hands in a starry, endless night. Those hands tipped it over, golden sparkling liquid pouring out over the lip. No—not sparkling, but … effervescent with small symbols, perhaps of some ancient faerie language. Whatever was written there, whatever it was, the contents of the cauldron were dumped into the void below, pooling on the earth to form our world …

There were things in the shadows between those mountains—little eyes, gleaming teeth. A land of lethal beauty. The hair on my arms rose.

In the center of the land, as if it were the core around which everything else had spread, or perhaps the place where the cauldron’s liquid had first touched, was a small, snowy mountain range. From it arose a mammoth, solitary peak. Bald of snow, bald of life—as if the elements refused to touch it. There were no more clues about what it might be; nothing to indicate its importance, and I supposed that the viewers were already supposed to know. This was not a mural for human eyes.

A white-hot flame went through me.

“That looks like starlight,” I breathed. He huffed a laugh, filling and emptying his hand again. I gaped at the glittering water. “It is starlight.”

filling my veins with starlight.

Only those star-flecked violet eyes were bright, full of color and light.

Sometimes, if I stared at the ceiling long enough, it became the vast expanse of the starry night sky,

“Feyre!” someone roared. No, not someone—Rhysand.

The bond between us went taut. I flashed between my body and his, seeing myself through his eyes, bleeding and broken and sobbing.

I was far away but still seeing—seeing through eyes that weren’t mine, eyes attached to a person who slowly rose from his position on a cracked, bloodied floor.

Amarantha backed away—away from my corpse. She only whispered “Please” before golden light exploded.

Chins raised, shoulders back, they, too, dropped those glittering kernels upon me,

He glowed brightest of them all, and from his gold-and-ruby raiment, I knew him to be High Lord of the Dawn Court.

High Lord of the Day Court, clad in white and gold, his dark skin gleaming with an inner light,

Rhysand stepped forward, bringing my shred of soul with him,

let the seed of light fall on me.

Tamlin tenderly brushed aside my matted hair. His hand glowed bright as the rising sun, and in the center of his palm, that strange, shining bud formed.

I was pulled from sleep by something tugging at my middle, a thread deep inside.

Shadows not of his own making still haunted those violet eyes. I wondered if they would ever fade.

“Well, good-bye for now,” he said, rolling his neck as if we hadn’t been talking about anything important at all. He bowed at the waist, those wings vanishing entirely, and had begun to fade into the nearest shadow when he went rigid. His eyes locked on mine, wide and wild, and his nostrils flared. Shock—pure shock flashed across his features at whatever he saw on my face, and he stumbled back a step. Actually stumbled. “What is—” I began. He disappeared—simply disappeared, not a shadow in sight—into the crisp air.

Lightning lashed through my veins,

A sea of stars flickering beyond glowing pillars of moonstone that framed the sweeping view of endless snowcapped mountains. “Welcome to the Night Court,” was all Rhys said.

You send everything right down that bond, and I don’t appreciate having a front-row seat when I’m trying to sleep.”

I wouldn’t ask about what he meant—about the bond between us. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of looking curious.

a faint, endlessly amused tug cleaved through my headache. I knew that tug—had been called by it once before, in those hours after Amarantha’s downfall.

the tug yanked again in my mind, my gut—a summoning.

I knew he’d sensed my arrival from the moment I cleared the stairwell at the other side of the hall. Maybe since I’d awoken, if that tug was any indication.

I can’t help it if you send things down the bond.”

my entire body, my heart, my lungs, my blood yielded to his grip, utterly at his command

“Where are we going?” Rhys’s smile widened into a grin. “To Velaris—the City of Starlight.”

That bond between us went taut, and my lingering mental shields collapsed.

There was something rough-hewn about his features—like he’d been made of wind and earth and flame

Indeed, an obsidian-hilted hunting knife was sheathed at his thigh, its dark scabbard embossed with a line of silver runes I’d never seen before.

Amren’s eyes … Her silver eyes were unlike anything I’d ever seen;

those horrible, enchanting eyes again met my own. Like leashed lightning.

Rhys’s violet eyes met mine, and I wondered if it was true starlight that flickered so intensely in them as he spoke.

“Tonight—I felt you again. Through the bond. Did I get past your shields?” “No,” he said, scanning the cobblestone streets below. “This bond is … a living thing. An open channel between us, shaped by my powers, shaped … by what you needed when we made the bargain.”

“On an island in the heart of the Western Isles,” Rhysand said, staring up at the mammoth mountain. “And that,” he said, pointing to it, “is the Prison.” There was nothing—no one around. “I don’t see anything.” “The rock is the Prison. And inside it are the foulest, most dangerous creatures and criminals you can imagine.” Go inside—inside the stone, under another mountain— “This place,” he said, “was made before High Lords existed. Before Prythian was Prythian. Some of the inmates remember those days. Remember a time when it was Mor’s family, not mine, that ruled the North.”

Pale, carved gates stood in its place, so high their tops were lost to the mist. Gates of bone.

“Where did she come from?” The brooch he’d given her—such a small gift, for a monster who had once dwelled here. “I don’t know. Though there are legends that claim when the world was born, there were … rips in the fabric of the realms. That in the chaos of Forming, creatures from other worlds could walk through one of those rips and enter another world. But the rips closed at will, and the creatures could become trapped, with no way home.”

“You think she was one of them?” “I think that she is the only one of her kind, and there is no record of others ever having existed. Even the Suriel have numbers, however small. But she—and some of those in the Prison … I think they came from somewhere else. And they have been looking for a way home for a long, long time.”

there was a … thread,” I said. “A tether. And I yanked on it—and suddenly I could see. Not through my eyes, but—but his,” I said, inclining my head toward Rhys. I uncurled the fingers of my tattooed hand. “And I knew I was dead, and this tiny scrap of spirit was all that was left of me, clinging to the thread of our bargain.” “But was there anyone there—were you seeing anything beyond?” “There was only that bond in the darkness.”

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—”

I wanted to go home. So I followed the bond home.”

“When the Cauldron was made,” the Carver interrupted, “its dark maker used the last of the molten ore to forge a book. The Book of Breathings. In it, written between the carved words, are the spells to negate the Cauldron’s power—or control it wholly.

“A boy—around eight; dark-haired and blue-eyed.” Rhys shuddered—the most human gesture I’d seen him make.

“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.”