A Court of Thorns and Roses

That was all I could do, all I’d been able to do for years: focus on surviving the week, the day, the hour ahead.

Only a few hours of daylight remained. If I didn’t leave soon, I’d have to navigate my way home in the dark, and the warnings of the town hunters still rang fresh in my mind: giant wolves were on the prowl, and in numbers. Not to mention whispers of strange folk spotted in the area, tall and eerie and deadly.

Still, I would have rather spent another night with a hungry belly than found myself satisfying the appetite of a wolf. Or a faerie.

Not that there was much of me to feast on.

once I’d dreamed and breathed and thought in color and light and shape.

buy some paint, and enough time to put those colors and shapes down on paper or canvas or the cottage walls.

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

An arrow carved from mountain ash, armed with an iron head.

little vines and flowers along the windows and thresholds and edges of things, tiny curls of flame on the stones bordering the hearth.

Some days, I couldn’t tell which of us was the most wretched and bitter.

I slung off my outer clothes onto the sagging dresser—frowning at the violets and roses I’d painted around the knobs of Elain’s drawer, the crackling flames I’d painted around Nesta’s, and the night sky—whorls of yellow stars standing in for white—around mine.

Stay together, and look after them.

“What do you know?” Nesta breathed. “You’re just a half-wild beast with the nerve to bark orders at all hours of the day and night. Keep it up, and someday—someday, Feyre, you’ll have no one left to remember you, or to care that you ever existed.”

“We need hope as much as we need bread and meat,” he interrupted, his eyes clear for a rare moment. “We need hope, or else we cannot endure. So let her keep this hope, Feyre. Let her imagine a better life. A better world.”

As they neared the acolytes, their faces twisted with identical expressions of disgust. “Faerie-loving whore,” one of them hurled at the young woman. I couldn’t disagree.

The first few moments were a blur of the snarling of a gigantic beast with golden fur, the shrieking of my sisters, the blistering cold cascading into the room, and my father’s terror-stricken face.

The beast had to be as large as a horse, and while his body was somewhat feline, his head was distinctly wolfish. I didn’t know what to make of the curled, elk-like horns that protruded from his head. But lion or hound or elk, there was no doubting the damage his black, daggerlike claws and yellow fangs could inflict.

The beast whirled on me. “Who killed the wolf?” I stared into those jade eyes. “I did.” He blinked and glanced at my sisters, then back at me, at my thinness—no doubt seeing only frailness instead. “Surely you lie to save them.”
“We didn’t kill anything!” Elain wept. “Please … please, spare us!”

“Surely you lie to save them.”
“We didn’t kill anything!” Elain wept. “Please … please, spare us!”

The firelight shone upon his exposed fangs, and I wondered how they’d feel on my throat,

Every step toward the line of trees was too swift, too light, too soon carrying me to whatever torment and misery awaited. I didn’t dare look back at the cottage.

Prythian. The word was a death knell that echoed through me again and again.

“Do you have a name?” Or anything to curse him by.

How long had it kept me unconscious? How long had he kept me unconscious, rather than have to speak to me?

My prison or my salvation—I couldn’t decide which.

He filled a glass of wine from an exquisitely cut crystal decanter and drank deeply. As if he needed it.

“Leave, if you want,” he added with a flash of teeth. “I’m not your jailer. The gates are open—you can live anywhere in Prythian.”

Bastard—an absolute bastard.

Lucien growled, “That’s the hand the Cauldron thought to deal us?

I said nothing. To eat, flee, save my family … Lucien drawled from his seat along the length of the table, “I told you so, Tamlin.” He flicked a glance toward his friend. “Your skills with females have definitely become rusty in recent decades.”

Lucien drawled from his seat along the length of the table, “I told you so, Tamlin.” He flicked a glance toward his friend. “Your skills with females have definitely become rusty in recent decades.”

Tamlin straightened a bit and said, “You look … better than before.” Was that a compliment? I could have sworn Lucien gave Tamlin an encouraging nod. “And your hair is … clean.”

“What in the bottomless depths of the Cauldron is—”

When I was done eating and bathing, I refused Alis’s offer and dressed myself in another exquisite tunic—this one of purple so deep it could have been black. I wished I knew the name for the color, but cataloged it anyway.

My father. My father had come to take me—to save me.

“What do you want, Feyre?”
“I want to go home!”
“Home to what, exactly?

“I made a promise,” I said, my breathing ragged. “To my mother, when she died. That I’d look after my family. That I’d take care of them. All I have done, every single day, every hour, has been for that vow. And just because I was hunting to save my family, to put food in their bellies, I’m now forced to break it.”

“I spent most of my life in my father’s war-band on the borders, training as a warrior to one day serve him—or others. Running these lands … was not supposed to fall to me.”

“Tamlin gets into … moods.”

Behind me, a shadow lurked—no, watched. I didn’t dare turn to look at it, to see who might be within that shadow, observing, not as the wolf stared at me across the clearing.

For someone with a heart of stone, yours is certainly soft these days.

“Watch your mouth,” Tamlin said. Lucien stepped toward him, exposing his teeth as well. A pulsing kind of air hit me in the stomach, and a metallic stench filled my nose. But I couldn’t see any magic—only feel it. I couldn’t tell if that made it worse.

“Has anyone ever taken care of you?” he asked quietly. “No.” I’d long since stopped feeling sorry for myself about it.

“I’m an immortal. I have nothing but time, Feyre.”

The story of … of Prythian.

family—winter brought us dangerously close to death every year—but if I were immortal, I might want a little variation to pass the time. I’d probably want to do more than lurk about a manor house, too.

if I were immortal, I might want a little variation to pass the time. I’d probably want to do more than lurk about a manor house, too.

“I am a member of no Court. I am older than the High Lords, older than Prythian, older than the bones of this world.”

I stared at our linked hands, both coated in blood that wasn’t our own.

realize I’d come so far.” He dropped my hand. “On the days that I’m called away to deal with … trouble, stay close to the house.”