A Court of Mist and Fury (54 page)

I reached down the bond between us, caressing that wall of ebony adamant. A small sliver cracked—just for me. And I said into it,
You are good, Rhys. You are kind. This mask does not scare me. I see you beneath it.

His hands tightened on me, and his eyes held mine as he leaned forward to brush his mouth against my cheek. It was answer enough—and … an unleashing.

I leaned a bit more against him, my legs widening ever so slightly.
Why’d you stop?
I said into his mind, into him.

A near-silent growl reverberated against me. He stroked my ribs again, in time to the beat of the music, his thumb rising nearly high enough to graze the underside of my breasts.

I let my head drop back against his shoulder.

I let go of the part of me that heard their words—
whore, whore, whore
—

Let go of the part that said those words alongside them—
traitor, liar, whore
—

And I just
became
.

I became the music, and the drums, and the wild, dark thing in the High Lord’s arms.

His eyes were wholly glazed—and not with power or rage. Something red-hot and edged with glittering darkness exploded in my mind.

I dragged a hand down his thigh, feeling the hidden warrior’s strength there. Dragged it back up again in a long, idle stroke, needing to touch him, feel him.

I was going to catch fire and burn. I was going to start burning right here—

Easy,
he said with wicked amusement through the open sliver in my shield.
If you become a living candle, poor Keir will throw a hissy fit. And then you’d ruin the party for everyone.

Because the fire would let them all know I wasn’t normal—and no doubt Keir would inform his almost-allies in the Autumn Court. Or one of these other monsters would.

Rhys shifted his hips, rubbing against me with enough pressure that for a second, I didn’t care about Keir, or the Autumn Court, or what Azriel might be doing right now to steal the orb.

I had been so cold, so lonely, for so long, and my body cried out at the contact, at the joy of being touched and held and
alive
.

The hand that had been on my waist slid across my abdomen, hooking into the low-slung belt there. I rested my head between his
shoulder and neck, staring at the crowd as they stared at me, savoring every place where Rhys and I connected and wanting
more more more
.

At last, when my blood had begun to boil, when Rhys skimmed the underside of my breast with his knuckle, I looked to where I knew Keir was standing, watching us, my wine forgotten in his hand.

We both did.

The Steward was staring unabashedly as he leaned against the wall. Unsure whether to interrupt. Half terrified to.
We
were his distraction.
We
were the sleight of hand while Az stole the orb.

I knew Rhys was still holding Keir’s gaze as the tip of his tongue slid up my neck.

I arched my back, eyes heavy-lidded, breathing uneven. I’d burn and burn and burn—

I think he’s so disgusted that he might have given me the orb just to get out of here
, Rhys said in my mind, that other hand drifting dangerously south. But there was such a growing ache there, and I wore nothing beneath that would conceal the damning evidence if he slid his hand a fraction higher.

You and I put on a good show
, I said back. The person who said that, husky and sultry—I’d never heard that voice come out of me before. Even in my mind.

His hand slid to my upper thigh, fingers curving in.

I ground against him, trying to shift those hands away from what he’d learn—

To find him hard against my backside.

Every thought eddied from my head. Only a thrill of power remained as I writhed along that impressive length. Rhys let out a low, rough laugh.

Keir just watched and watched and watched. Rigid. Horrified. Stuck here, until Rhys released him—and not thinking twice about why. Or where the spymaster had gone.

So I turned around again, meeting Rhysand’s now-blazing eyes, and
then licked up the column of his throat. Wind and sea and citrus and sweat. It almost undid me.

I faced forward, and Rhys dragged his mouth along the back of my neck, right over my spine, just as I shifted against the hardness pushing into me, insistent and dominating. Precisely as his hand slid a bit too high on my inner thigh.

I felt the predatory focus go right to the slickness he’d felt there. Proof of my traitorous body. His arms tightened around me, and my face burned—perhaps a bit from shame, but—

Rhys sensed my focus, my fire slip.
It’s fine,
he said, but that mental voice sounded breathless.
It means nothing. It’s just your body reacting—

Because you’re so irresistible?
My attempt to deflect sounded strained, even in my mind.

But he laughed, probably for my benefit.

We’d danced around and teased and taunted each other for months. And maybe it was my body’s reaction, maybe it was
his
body’s reaction, but the taste of him threatened to destroy me, consume me, and—

Another male. I’d had another male’s hands all over me, when Tamlin and I were barely—

Fighting my nausea, I pasted a sleepy, lust-fogged smile on my face. Right as Azriel returned and gave Rhys a subtle nod. He’d gotten the orb.

Mor slid up to the spymaster, running a proprietary hand over his shoulders, his chest, as she circled to look into his face. Az’s scar-mottled hand wrapped around her bare waist—squeezing once. The confirmation she also needed.

She offered him a little grin that would no doubt spread rumors, and sauntered into the crowd again. Dazzling, distracting, leaving them thinking Az had been here the whole time, leaving them pondering if she’d extend Azriel an invitation to her bed.

Azriel just stared after Mor, distant and bored. I wondered if he was as much of a mess inside as I was.

Rhys crooked a finger to Keir, who, scowling a bit in his daughter’s
direction, stumbled forward with my wine. He’d barely reached the dais before Rhys’s power took it from him, floating the goblet to us.

Rhys set it on the ground beside the throne, a stupid task he’d thought up for the Steward to remind him of his powerlessness, that this throne was not his.

“Should I test it for poison?” Rhys drawled even as he said into my mind,
Cassian’s waiting
.
Go.

Rhys had the same, sex-addled expression on his perfect face—but his eyes … I couldn’t read the shadows in his eyes.

Maybe—maybe for all our teasing, after Amarantha, he didn’t
want
to be touched by a woman like that. Didn’t even enjoy being wanted like that.

I had been tortured and tormented, but his horrors had gone to another level.

“No, milord,” Keir groveled. “I would never dare harm you.” Another distraction, this conversation. I took that as my cue to stride to Cassian, who was snarling by a pillar at anyone who came too close.

I felt the eyes of the court slide to me, felt them all sniff delicately at what was so clearly written over my body. But as I passed Keir, even with the High Lord at my back, he hissed almost too quietly to hear, “You’ll get what’s coming to you, whore.”

Night exploded into the room.

People cried out. And when the darkness cleared, Keir was on his knees.

Rhys still lounged on the throne. His face a mask of frozen rage.

The music stopped. Mor appeared at the edge of the crowd—her own features set in smug satisfaction. Even as Azriel approached her side, standing too close to be casual.

“Apologize,” Rhys said. My heart thundered at the pure command, the utter wrath.

Keir’s neck muscles strained, and sweat broke out on his lip.

“I said,” Rhys intoned with such horrible calm, “apologize.”

The Steward groaned. And when another heartbeat passed—

Bone cracked. Keir screamed.

And I watched—I watched as his arm fractured into not two, not three, but
four
different pieces, the skin going taut and loose in all the wrong spots—

Another crack. His elbow disintegrated. My stomach churned.

Keir began sobbing, the tears half from rage, judging by the hatred in his eyes as he looked at me, then Rhys. But his lips formed the words,
I’m sorry
.

The bones of his other arm splintered, and it was an effort not to cringe.

Rhys smiled as Keir screamed again and said to the room, “Should I kill him for it?”

No one answered.

Rhys chuckled. He said to his Steward, “When you wake up, you’re not to see a healer. If I hear that you do … ” Another crack—Keir’s pinkie finger went saggy. The male shrieked. The heat that had boiled my blood turned to ice. “If I hear that you do, I’ll carve you into pieces and bury them where no one can stand a chance of putting you together again.”

Keir’s eyes widened in true terror now. Then, as if an invisible hand had struck the consciousness from him, he collapsed to the floor.

Rhys said to no one in particular, “Dump him in his room.”

Two males who looked like they could be Mor’s cousins or brothers rushed forward, gathering up the Steward. Mor watched them, sneering faintly—though her skin was pale.

He’d wake up. That’s what Rhys had said.

I made myself keep walking as Rhys summoned another courtier to give him reports on whatever trivial matters.

But my attention remained on the throne behind me, even as I slipped beside Cassian, daring the court to approach, to play with me. None did.

And for the long hour afterward, my focus half remained on the High Lord whose hands and mouth and body had suddenly made me
feel awake—burning. It didn’t make me forget, didn’t make me obliterate hurts or grievances, it just made me … alive. Made me feel as if I’d been asleep for a year, slumbering inside a glass coffin, and he had just shattered through it and shaken me to consciousness.

The High Lord whose power had not scared me. Whose wrath did not wreck me.

And now—now I didn’t know where that put me.

Knee-deep in trouble seemed like a good place to start.

C
HAPTE
R

43

The wind roared around Rhys and me as he winnowed from the skies above his court. But Velaris didn’t greet us.

Rather, we were standing by a moonlit mountain lake ringed in pine trees, high above the world. We’d left the court as we’d come in—with swagger and menace. Where Cassian, Azriel, and Mor had gone with the orb, I had no idea.

Alone at the edge of the lake, Rhys said hoarsely, “I’m sorry.”

I blinked. “What do you possibly have to be sorry for?”

His hands were shaking—as if in the aftermath of that fury at what Keir had called me, what he’d threatened. Perhaps he’d brought us here before heading home in order to have some privacy before his friends could interrupt. “I shouldn’t have let you go. Let you see that part of us. Of me.” I’d never seen him so raw, so … stumbling.

“I’m fine.” I didn’t know what to make of what had been done. Both between us and to Keir. But it had been my choice. To play that role, to wear these clothes. To let him touch me. But … I said slowly, “We knew what tonight would require of us. Please—please don’t start … protecting me. Not like that.” He knew what I meant. He’d protected me
Under the Mountain, but that primal, male rage he’d just shown Keir … A shattered study splattered in paint flashed through my memory.

Rhys rasped, “I will never—
never
lock you up, force you to stay behind. But when he threatened you tonight, when he called you … ” Whore. That’s what they’d called
him
. For fifty years, they’d hissed it. I’d listened to Lucien spit the words in his face. Rhys released a jagged breath. “It’s hard to shut down my instincts.”

Instincts. Just like … like someone
else
had instincts to protect, to hide me away. “Then you should have prepared yourself better,” I snapped. “You seemed to be going along
just fine
with it, until Keir said—”

“I will
kill
anyone who harms you,” Rhys snarled. “I will
kill
them, and take a damn long time doing it.” He panted. “Go ahead. Hate me—despise me for it.”

“You are my
friend
,” I said, and my voice broke on the word. I hated the tears that slipped down my face. I didn’t even know why I was crying. Perhaps for the fact that it had felt real on that throne with him, even for a moment, and … and it likely hadn’t been. Not for him. “You’re my friend—and I understand that you’re High Lord. I understand that you will defend your true court, and punish threats against it. But I can’t … I don’t want you to stop telling me things, inviting me to do things, because of the threats against me.”

Darkness rippled, and wings tore from his back. “I am not him,” Rhys breathed. “I will
never
be him, act like him. He locked you up and let you wither, and die.”

“He tried—”

“Stop comparing.
Stop
comparing me to him.”

The words cut me short. I blinked.

“You think I don’t know how stories get written—how
this
story will be written?” Rhys put his hands on his chest, his face more open, more anguished than I’d seen it. “I am the dark lord, who stole away the bride of spring. I am a demon, and a nightmare, and I will meet a bad
end. He is the golden prince—the hero who will get to keep you as his reward for not dying of stupidity and arrogance.”

The things I love have a tendency to be taken from me
. He’d admitted that to me Under the Mountain.

But his words were kindling to my temper, to whatever pit of fear was yawning open inside of me. “And what about my story?” I hissed. “What about
my
reward? What about what
I
want?”

“What is it that you want, Feyre?”

I had no answer. I didn’t know. Not anymore.

“What is it that you
want
, Feyre?”