A Court of Mist and Fury

No one really knew what existed in the northernmost part of Prythian. Mountains and darkness and stars and death.

Be glad of your human heart, Feyre. Pity those who don’t feel anything at all.

For him, I had done this—for him, I’d gladly wrecked myself and my immortal soul. And now I had eternity to live with it.

It was easier to not have to explain, anyway. To not have to tell him that though I’d freed him, saved his people and all of Prythian from Amarantha … I’d broken myself apart. And I didn’t think even eternity would be long enough to fix me.

“I want to go.”
“No.”

“Congratulations on tomorrow,” Bron said, grinning. “A fitting end, eh?” A fitting end would have been me in a grave, burning in hell.

Thunder cracked behind me, as if two boulders had been hurled against each other.

“Hello, Feyre darling,” he purred.

Rhys cocked his head, his mouth tightening. “You truly think I’m a monster, even after everything.”

Rhysand is the most handsome High Lord. Rhysand is the most delightful High Lord. Rhysand is the most cunning High Lord.

I toiled over the sentences— Rhysand is interesting; Rhysand is gorgeous; Rhysand is flawless—and raised and lowered my mental shield until my mind was limping, I thought of what I’d heard, what they’d said.

“You really should have your wards inspected. Cauldron knows what other sort of riffraff might stroll in here as easily as I did.”

Come on. Play with me.

“Rhysand is a spectacular person. Rhysand is the center of my world. Rhysand is the best lover a female can ever dream of.”

But it had filled my time—given me quiet, steadfast company with those characters, who did not exist and never would, but somehow made me feel less … alone.

“Let me help you,” Rhys said. “We went through enough Under the Mountain—” I flinched. “She wins,” Rhys breathed. “That bitch wins if you let yourself fall apart.”

“Any time you need someone to play with,” Rhys said, pushing the plate toward me on a star-flecked wind, “whether it’s during our marvelous week together or otherwise, you let me know.”

… My chest was a gaping, open wound. I wondered if I’d bleed out from it—if a spirit could bleed out and die. Maybe that had already happened.

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

passing couple, who bowed their heads in merry greeting. “She might be older than this city, but she’s vain, and likes to hoard her baubles and belongings like a firedrake in a cave. So … be on your guard. You both have tempers when provoked, and I don’t want you to have any surprises tonight.”

“She might be older than this city, but she’s vain, and likes to hoard her baubles and belongings like a firedrake in a cave. So … be on your guard. You both have tempers when provoked, and I don’t want you to have any surprises tonight.”

“We’re called daemati—those of us who can walk into another person’s mind as if we were going from one room to another. We’re rare, and the trait appears as the Mother wills it, but there are enough of us scattered throughout the world that many—mostly those in positions of influence—extensively train against our skill set.

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.”

“There was no other world,” the Bone Carver pushed. “If there was or is, I did not see it.”
“No light, no portal?”

“Tell me a secret no one knows, Lord of Night, and I’ll tell you mine.” I braced myself for whatever horrible truth was about to come my way. But Rhysand said, “My right knee gets a twinge of pain when it rains. I wrecked it during the War, and it’s hurt ever since.”

The Bone Carver bit out a harsh laugh, even as I gaped at Rhys. “You always were my favorite,”

“I knew,” I went on, “that I could drift away into the dark. And I chose to fight—to hold on for a bit longer. Yet I knew if I wanted, I could have faded. And maybe it would be a new world, a realm of rest and peace. But I wasn’t ready for it—not to go there alone. I knew there was something else waiting beyond that dark. Something good.”

“I knew there was no coming back from what I’d done,” I said, wondering if the blue flame in the carver’s eyes might burn my ruined soul to ash. “And once I broke their curse, once I knew I’d saved them, I just wanted enough time to turn that dagger on myself. I only decided I wanted to live when she killed me, and I knew I had not finished whatever … whatever it was I’d been born to do.”

“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.

“The Bone Carver,” Rhys said, “is a busybody gossip who likes to pry into other people’s business far too much.”

“Who is the Weaver?” I pushed. “An ancient, wicked creature,”

“Who should remain unbothered,”

“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.”

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.”

“If you survive this test.” I paused atop a little lichen-crusted rock. “You seem pleased by the idea that I won’t.”
“Quite the opposite, Feyre.”

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?”

A dangerous line—one Rhys was forcing me to walk to keep me from thinking about what I was about to face, about what a wreck I was inside. Anger, this … flirtation, annoyance … He knew those were my crutches.

Eyes twinkling, Rhys mouthed, Good luck.

My face was scratched and bloody, and I was covered in dirt and grease— boiled fat—and mortar dust, the hair stuck to me, and I smelled— “You smell like barbecue,” Amren said, cringing a bit.

“Well? Have I proved myself?” But he merely picked up the ring and gave me a nod of thanks. “It was my mother’s ring.” As if that were all the explanation and answers owed.

“And what about training your other … gifts?” Through the rising steam from the tub, I said, “I think you and I would shred each other to bits.”
“Oh, we most definitely will.”

And I was now a certified Book-tracker, it seemed. Better than a party-planning wife for breeding little High Lords.

“There are good days and hard days for me—even now. Don’t let the hard days win.”

“I can eat, drink, fuck, and fight just as well as I did before. Better, even.”

“Nesta is a delight, by the way.”
“She’s … her own creature,” I said. It was perhaps the kindest thing I could say about her. “It’s been a few centuries since someone got under Cassian’s skin that easily. Too bad they’re both inclined to kill the other.” Part of me shuddered at the havoc the two would wreak if they decided to stop fighting.

“Give a shout down the bond if you get anything accomplished before breakfast.” I frowned at the eye in my palm. “What—literally shout at the tattoo?”
“You could try rubbing it on certain body parts and I might come faster.”

He appeared behind me, so close that his breath tickled my ear as he said, “You have no idea how not easy it is.”

“Isn’t that what High Lords do?” My breath clouded in front of me in the brisk night. “Whatever they please?” He studied my face. “There are a great many things that I wish to do, and don’t get to.”

Cassian jerked his chin toward his brothers. “Rhys is out of shape and won’t admit it, but Azriel is too polite to beat him into the dirt.” Rhys looked anything but out of shape. Cauldron boil me, what the hell did they eat to look like that?

“There are different kinds of darkness,” Rhys said. I kept my eyes shut. “There is the darkness that frightens, the darkness that soothes, the darkness that is restful.” I pictured each. “There is the darkness of lovers, and the darkness of assassins. It becomes what the bearer wishes it to be, needs it to be. It is not wholly bad or good.”