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

by Sarah J. Maas

“In the heart of Prythian, there is a large, empty territory that divides the North and South. At the center of it is our sacred mountain.” My heart stumbled, and I focused on my steps through the ferns and moss and roots. “This forest,” Rhys went on, “is on the eastern edge of that neutral territory. Here, there is no High Lord. Here, the law is made by who is strongest, meanest, most cunning. And the Weaver of the Wood is at the top of their food chain.”

A ring of twisted strands of gold and silver, flecked with pearl, and set with a stone of deepest, solid blue. Sapphire—but different. I’d never seen a sapphire like that, even at my father’s offices. This one … I could have sworn that in the pale light, the lines of a six-pointed star radiated across the round, opaque surface.

The bond went taut, that thing under my skin pulsing,

A blind, solid tug on the bond, cooling darkness sweeping into me, my temper, my senses, calming that fire—

“Give a shout down the bond if you get anything accomplished before breakfast.”

Lights began twinkling—little stars, blooming irises of blue and purple and white. I reached out a hand toward one, and starlight danced on my fingertips. Far away, in another world perhaps, Azriel and Cassian sparred in the dark, no doubt using it as a training exercise. I shifted the star between my fingers like a coin on the hand of a magician. Here in the soothing, sparkling dark, a steady breath filled my lungs.

his eyes like stars,

Like a strange rain, the water rose from the floor as I willed it to become like those stars Rhys had summoned in his blanket of darkness. I willed the droplets to separate until they hung around us, catching the light and sparkling like crystals on a chandelier.

“I didn’t feel it through the bond—”

Unmade and Made; Made and Unmade—that is the cycle. Like calls to like.

darkness swept past me on a phantom wind, full of stars and flapping wings and—pain.

pulling on that bond between us,

I sent my own veils of night brushing up against it, running star-flecked hands down it.

And through our bond, on the other side of my mental shields, I could have sworn I heard his laugh.

“He thinks he’ll be remembered as the villain in the story.” She snorted. “But I forgot to tell him,” I said quietly, opening the door, “that the villain is usually the person who locks up the maiden and throws away the key.” “Oh?” I shrugged. “He was the one who let me out.”

And I thought, as I stood alone in my bedroom, that I might have looked like a fallen star.

A star vaulted across the sky, brighter and closer than any I’d seen before.

were silent again, and I studied the stars. “They’re not—they’re not stars at all.” “No.” Rhys came up beside me at the rail. “Our ancestors thought they were, but … They’re just spirits, on a yearly migration to somewhere. Why they pick this day to appear here, no one knows.”

I wiped at my face, and when I pulled my hands down, I gaped. Pale green light—like drops of paint—glowed in flecks on my hand. Splattered star-spirit. I didn’t know if I should be horrified or amused. Or disgusted.

Bits of stardust glowed on his lips as he pulled away, as I stared up at him, breathless, while he smiled. The smile the world would likely never see, the smile he’d given up for the sake of his people, his lands.

sometimes shout down the bond.

“You cruel, wicked thing,” he purred, his nose grazing the exposed bit of neck I’d arched beneath him. “Didn’t anyone ever teach you manners?” “I never knew Illyrians were such sensitive babies,” I said, sliding another finger down the inside of his wing.

felt blinding pain through the bond that ripped through my own mental shields,

And the bond between us … silent.

But I folded myself into smoke and starlight,

that urgency begging me to hurry through the bond.

A bond so deep, so permanent that it was honored over all others. Rare, cherished. Not Tamlin’s mate. Rhysand’s.

I felt it then, the bond between us, like an unbreakable chain, like an undimmable ray of light. With

His eyes were radiant like the stars I’d painted once, long ago.

To find my skin glowing. Faintly, as if some inner light shone beneath my skin, leaking out into the world. Warm and white light, like the sun—like a star.

Shining—I was shining bright and pure as a star.

I think the light pouring out of me might have been starlight,

Pure as day, pure as starlight.

A shadow slammed into the earth before us, cracking the ice toward every horizon. Not a shadow. An Illyrian warrior.

leaving my skin glowing like a newborn star in its wake.

Amren’s red lips parted in a wide, serpentine smile. “When you erupt, girl, make sure it is felt across worlds.”

beside the Sidra and meandered along the star-flecked river.

the moss and grass and rocks beneath our boots for listening ears below. “There was life here,” he said, answering my question at last, “before the High Lords took Prythian. Old gods, we call them. They ruled the forests and the rivers and the mountains—some were those things. Then the magic shifted to the High Fae, who brought the Cauldron and Mother along with them, and though the old gods were still worshipped by a select few, most people forgot them.”

“What if I tell you what the rock and darkness and sea beyond whispered to me, Lord of Bloodshed? How they shuddered in fear, on that island across the sea. How they trembled when she emerged. She took something—something precious. She ripped it out with her teeth.”

tight. “What did you wake that day in Hybern, Prince of Bastards?” My blood went cold. “What came out was not what went in.” A rasping laugh as the Carver laid the shard of bone on the ground beside him. “How lovely she is—new as a fawn and yet ancient as the sea. How she calls to you. A queen, as my sister once was. Terrible and proud; beautiful as a winter sunrise.” Rhys had warned me of the inmates’ capacity to lie, to sell anything, to get free. “Nesta,” the Bone Carver murmured. “Nes-ta.” I squeezed Cassian’s hand. Enough. It was enough of this teasing and taunting. But he didn’t look at me. “How the wind moans her name. Can you hear it, too? Nesta. Nesta. Nesta.” I wasn’t sure Cassian was breathing. “What did she do, drowning in the ageless dark? What did she take?”

The Carver traced three overlapping, interlocked circles in the dirt. “You have met my sister—my twin. The Weaver, as you now call her. I knew her as Stryga. She, and our older brother, Koschei. How they delighted in this world when we fell into it. How those ancient Fae feared and worshipped them. Had I been braver, I might have bided my time—waited for their power to fade, for that long-ago Fae warrior to trick Stryga into diminishing her power and becoming confined to the Middle. Koschei, too—confined and bound by his little lake on the continent. All before Prythian, before the land was carved up and any High Lord was crowned.” Cassian and I waited, not daring to interrupt. “Clever, that Fae warrior. Her bloodline is long gone now—though a trace still runs through some human line.” He smiled, perhaps a bit sadly. “No one remembers her name. But I do. She would have been my salvation, had I not made my choice long before she walked this earth.” I waited and waited and waited, picking apart the story he laid out like crumbs of bread. “She could not kill them in the end—they were too strong. They could only be contained.” The Carver wiped a hand through the circles he’d drawn, erasing them wholly. “I knew that long before she ever trapped them—took it upon myself to find my way here.” “To spare the world from yourself?” Cassian asked, brows narrowing. The Carver’s eyes burned like the hottest flame. “To hide from my siblings.” I blinked. “Why?” “They are death-gods, girl,...

“If they are death-gods,” I said, “then what are you?” Death. He had asked me, over and over, about death. About what waited beyond it, what it felt like. Where I had gone.

“I am forgotten, that’s what I am. And that’s how I prefer to be.”

“My sister had a collection of mirrors in her black castle,” the Carver said. We halted once more. “She admired herself day and night in those mirrors, gloating over her youth and beauty. There was one mirror—the Ouroboros, she called it. It was old even when we were young. A window to the world. All could be seen, all could be told through its dark surface.

“You said that you knew the Carver was an old god,” I mused softly. “Did you know he was a death-god?” Cassian’s face was taut. “I guessed.” When I lifted a brow, he clarified, “He carves deaths into bones. Sees them. Enjoys them. It wasn’t hard to figure out.”

Because what we’d seen in Nesta’s eyes that day … “Like calls to like,”

if Nesta was—Death? Or if her power came from it?”

“I can hear the sea. Even at night. Even in my dreams. The crashing sea—and the screams of a bird made of fire.”

“Will I hear the earthworms writhing through the soil? Or the stretching of roots? Will the bird of fire come to sit in the trees and watch me?”

Her eyes burned. There was no way of describing that burning—and even painting it might have failed. Her eyes remained the same blue-gray as my own. And yet … Molten ore was all I could think of. Quicksilver set aflame.