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

by Sarah J. Maas

“Is that sort of thing even possible?” Cassian murmured when the door to her room had shut. “For someone to take from the Cauldron’s essence?” “It would seem so,” Rhys mused, then said to Lucien, “The flame in her eyes was not of your usual sort, I take it.” Lucien shook his head. “No. It spoke to nothing in my own arsenal. That was … Ice so cold it burned. Ice and yet … fluid like flame. Or flame made of ice.” “I think it’s death,” I said quietly. I held Rhys’s gaze, as if it were again the tether that had kept me in this world. “I think the power is death—death made flesh. Or whatever power the Cauldron holds over such things. That’s why the Carver heard it—heard about her.”

“Lord Thanatos

Mor snarled, rattling the glasses. “You never gave any evidence to the contrary. Certainly not when you left me in those woods.” “There were forces at work that you have never considered,” Eris said coldly. “And I am not going to waste my breath explaining them to you. Believe what you want about me.” “You hunted me down like an animal,” I cut in. “I think we’ll choose to believe the worst.” Eris’s pale face flushed. “I was given an order. And sent to do it with two of my … brothers.” “And what of the brother you hunted down alongside me? The one whose lover you helped to execute before his eyes?” Eris laid a hand flat on the table. “You know nothing about what happened that day. Nothing.”

“Because the stone beneath this house has ears, the wind has ears—all of it listening,” Amren said. “And if it reports back … They will remember, Rhysand, that they have not caught me. And I will not let them put me in that black pit again.”

“You said someone else bound you,” Rhys questioned carefully. “I lied—to cover what I’d done. So none could know. To escape the Prison, I made myself mortal. Immortal as you are, but … mortal compared to—to what I was. And what I was … I did not feel, the way you do. The way I do now. Some things—loyalty and wrath and curiosity—but not the full spectrum.” Again, that faraway look. “I was perfect, according to some. I did not regret, did not mourn—and pain … I did not experience it. And yet … yet I wound up here, because I was not quite like the others. Even as—as what I was, I was different. Too curious. Too questioning. The day the rip appeared in the sky … it was curiosity that drove me. My brothers and sisters fled. Upon the orders of our ruler, we had just laid waste to twin cities, smote them wholly into rubble on the plain, and yet they fled from that rip in the world. But I wanted to look. I wanted. I was not built or bred to feel such selfish things as want. I’d seen what happened to those of my kind who strayed, who learned to place their needs first. Who developed … feeling. But I went through the tear in the sky. And here I am.” “And you gave all that up to get out of the Prison?” Mor asked softly. “I yielded my grace—my perfect immortality. I knew that once I did … I would feel pain. And regret. I would want, and I would burn with it. I would … fall. But I was—the time locked away down there … I didn’t care. I had not felt the wind on my face, had not smelled t...

A burning grace … That still smoldered far within her, visible only through the smoke in her gray eyes.

“What were you,” Nesta breathed, coming around Cassian to stand at his side. Amren toyed with one of her black pearl earrings. “A messenger—and soldier-assassin. For a wrathful god who ruled a young world.”

“I saw young hands wither with age. I saw a box of black stone. I saw a feather of fire land on snow and melt it.”

“It was angry,” Elain said quietly. “It was so, so angry that something was taken. So it took something from them as punishment.”

“Twin ravens are coming, one white and one black.”

I could not find an account of anyone who had mastered it. Faced what lurked within and walked away with the mirror in their possession. Save for the Weaver in the Wood—who certainly seemed insane enough, perhaps thanks to the mirror she’d so dearly loved. Or perhaps whatever evil lurked in her had tainted the mirror, too. Some of the philosophers had suggested as much, though they hadn’t known her name—only that a dark queen had once possessed it, cherished it. Spied on the world with it—and used it to hunt down beautiful young maidens to keep her eternally young.

Miryam freed her people from the queen of the Black Land, she led all of them—nearly fifty thousand of them—across the desert, all the way to the shores of the Erythrian Sea,

Destroyed by the queen herself, who sent her lingering armies to drag her former slaves back.

“Drakon’s people—the Seraphim—are winged. Like us, but their wings are feathered.

starlight faded

Elain peered up at Cassian, blinking twice. “He snapped your wings, broke your bones.” I tried to shut out the sound of Cassian’s scream—the memory of the spraying blood. Nesta stared at her plate. Elain, at least, was out of her room, but … “It’ll take more than that to kill me,” Cassian said with a smirk that didn’t meet his eyes. Elain only said to Cassian, “No, it will not.”

Right as the darkness behind us paused, and two High Fae stepped out of it. Both male. One dark-haired, one light. Both in gray jackets embroidered with bone-white thread.

“You took something from that Cauldron, girl. The king wants it back.” That was why the Cauldron couldn’t shatter the wall. Not because its power was spent. But because Nesta had stolen too much of it.

“Oh, it gave her immortality. It made her Fae. But since something had been taken from it … the Cauldron took what she valued most. Her youth.” They sniggered again. “A young woman went in … but a withered crone came out.” And from the catacombs of my memory, Elain’s voice sounded: I saw young hands wither with age.

Twin ravens are coming. Elain had known. Sensed it. Had tried to warn us.

he seems to need a trove of magical objects to do his work for him.”

Light sputtered before me, and I blinked at the blinding ball of faelight.

His eyes glowed, like lightning had struck an ocean.

“The queen—with the feathers of flame.”

cursed her … “What sort of curse?” my mate asked before he’d even finished speaking to me. Elain shifted her face toward him. Another blink. “They sold her—to … to some darkness, to some … sorcerer-lord …” She shook her head. “I can never see him. What he is. There is an onyx box that he possesses, more vital than anything … save for them. The girls. He keeps other girls—others so like her—but she … By day, she is one form, by night, human again.” “A bird of burning feathers,” I said. “Firebird by day,” Rhys mused, “woman by night

“Scythia,” Mor said, shaking her head. “I remember them. They’re horse people.

lighter, some of their tips slightly curved. Like lightning given flesh. Seraphim blades, she told me. Gifted to her by Prince Drakon himself during the War.

Mor’s quicksilver blade rise and fall in lightning-bright flashes.

Starlight now danced in his eyes.

Night Triumphant—and the Stars Eternal.

Like a crack of lightning, vicious as a spring storm, he winnowed into the chamber itself. And my blood went colder than Kallias’s ice as Tamlin appeared, and smiled like a wolf.

“You don’t get to rewrite the narrative,” I breathed. “You don’t get to spin this to your advantage.” Tamlin only angled his head at Rhys. “When you fuck her, have you ever noticed that little noise she makes right before she climaxes?” Heat stained my cheeks. This wasn’t outright battle, but a steady, careful shredding of my dignity, my credibility. Beron beamed, delighted—while Eris carefully monitored. Rhys turned his head, looking me over from head to toe. Then back to Tamlin. A storm about to be unleashed. But it was Azriel who said, his voice like cold death, “Be careful how you speak about my High Lady.”

While we spoke, I said down the bond, Helion is Lucien’s father. Rhys was silent. Then— Holy burning hell. His shock was a shooting star between us.

then we felt it. A shuddering through the earth. Through air and stone and green, growing things. As if some great god blew a breath across the land. Then the impact came.

Helion’s flame was a pure, blinding white.

“You do not fear,” Rhys breathed. “You do not falter. You do not yield. You go in, you get her, and you come out again.” I nodded again, holding his stare. “Remember that you are a wolf. And you cannot be caged.”

Azriel’s scarred hand,

scanned the mirror for any signs of … something to push or touch with my magic. But there was only the devouring head of the serpent, its maw open wide, frost sparkling on its fangs.

obsidian-hilted blade in Azriel’s scarred hand. The runes on the dark scabbard.

“Some people say it is magic and will always strike true.”

Right as a male figure appeared beside that swirling ebony smoke.

Bone Carver and the living nest of shadows that was Bryaxis,

Bryaxis remained within the darkness roiling around it, the living tapestry it would use to reveal the nightmares of its victims.

Bryaxis … All I could make of it was a blur of ever-changing claws and fangs and wings and muscle, shifting and whirling within that dark cloud that struck and smothered.

rallied every scrap of night and starlight

Helion, glowing with white light,

Nesta gritted her teeth, trying to haul Cassian up once more. A broken sound of pain ripped from him. “Go! ” he barked at her. “I can’t,” she breathed, voice breaking. “I can’t.” The same words Rhys had given him. Cassian grunted in pain, but lifted his bloodied hands—to cup her face. “I have no regrets in my life, but this.” His voice shook with every word. “That we did not have time. That I did not have time with you, Nesta.” She didn’t stop him as he leaned up and kissed her—lightly. As much as he could manage. Cassian said softly, brushing away the tear that streaked down her face, “I will find you again in the next world—the next life. And we will have that time. I promise.”

black blade broke through the king’s throat,

“I watched them for so many eons. Humans—in my world, there were humans, too.

She exploded from that mortal shell, light blinding us. Light and fire.