A Court of Thorns and Roses
Page 24

“Living in luxury, stuffing myself with food? How is that not—”
“They are cared for—they are fed and comfortable.”
Fed and comfortable. If he couldn’t lie, if it was true, then … then it was beyond anything I’d ever dared hope for.
Then … my vow to my mother was fulfilled.
It stunned me enough that I didn’t say anything for a moment as we walked.
My life was now owned by the Treaty, but … perhaps I’d been freed in another sort of way.
We neared the sweeping stairs that led into the manor, and I finally asked, “Lucien goes on border patrol, and you’ve mentioned other sentries—yet I’ve never seen one here. Where are they all?”
“At the border,” he said, as if that were a suitable answer. Then he added, “We don’t need sentries if I’m here.”
Because he was deadly enough. I tried not to think about it, but still I asked, “Were you trained as a warrior, then?”
“Yes.” When I didn’t reply, he added, “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.” The flatness with which he said it told me enough about how he felt about his current title, about why the presence of his silver-tongued friend was necessary.
But it was too personal, too demanding, to ask what had occurred to change his circumstances so greatly. So I cleared my throat and said, “What manner of faeries prowl the woods beyond this gate, if the Bogge isn’t the worst of them? What was that thing?”
What I’d meant to ask was, What would have tormented and then eaten me? Who are you to be so powerful that they pose no threat to you?
He paused on the bottom step, waiting for me to catch up. “A puca. They use your own desires to lure you to some remote place. Then they eat you. Slowly. It probably smelled your human scent in the woods and followed it to the house.” I shivered and didn’t bother tohide it. Tamlin went on. “These lands used to be well guarded. The deadlier faeries were contained within the borders of their native territories, monitored by the local Fae lords, or driven into hiding. Creatures like the puca never would have dared set foot here. But now, the sickness that infected Prythian has weakened the wards that kept them out.” A long pause, like the words were choked out of him. “Things are different now. It’s not safe to travel alone at night—especially if you’re human.”
Because humans were defenseless as babes compared to natural-born predators like Lucien—and Tamlin, who didn’t need weapons to hunt. I glanced at his hands but found no trace of the claws. Only tanned, callused skin.
“What else is different now?” I asked, trailing him up the marble front steps.
He didn’t stop this time, didn’t even look over his shoulder to see me as he said, “Everything.”
So I truly was to live there forever. As much as I longed to ensure that Tamlin’s word about caring for my family was true, as much as his claim that I was taking better care of my family by staying away—even if I was truly fulfilling that vow to my mother by staying in Prythian … Without the weight of that promise, I was left hollow and empty.
Over the next three days, I found myself joining Lucien on Andras’s old patrol while Tamlin hunted the grounds for the Bogge, unseen by us. Despite being an occasional bastard, Lucien didn’t seem to mind my company, and he did most of the talking, which was fine; it left me to brood over the consequences of firing a single arrow.
An arrow. I never fired a single one during those three days we rode along the border. That very morning I’d spied a red doe in a glen and aimed out of instinct, my arrow poised to fly right into her eye as Lucien sneered that she was not a faerie, at least. But I’d stared at her—fat and healthy and content—and then slackened the bow, replaced the arrow in my quiver, and let the doe wander on.
I never saw Tamlin around the manor—off hunting the Bogge day and night, Lucien informed me. Even at dinner, he spoke little before leaving early—off to continue his hunt, night after night. I didn’t mind his absence. It was a relief, if anything.
On the third night after my encounter with the puca, I’d scarcely sat down before Tamlin got up, giving an excuse about not wanting to waste hunting time.
Lucien and I stared after him for a moment.
What I could see of Lucien’s face was pale and tight. “You worry about him,” I said.
Lucien slumped in his seat, wholly undignified for a Fae lord. “Tamlin gets into … moods.”
“He doesn’t want your help hunting the Bogge?”
“He prefers being alone. And having the Bogge on our lands … I don’t suppose you’d understand. The puca are minor enough not to bother him, but even after he’s shredded the Bogge, he’ll brood over it.”
“And there’s no one who can help him at all?”
“He would probably shred them for disobeying his order to stay away.”
A brush of ice slithered across my nape. “He would be that brutal?”
Lucien studied the wine in his goblet. “You don’t hold on to power by being everyone’s friend. And among the faeries, lesser and High Fae alike, a firm hand is needed. We’re too powerful, and too bored with immortality, to be checked by anything else.”
It seemed like a cold, lonely position to have, especially when you didn’t particularly want it. I wasn’t sure why it bothered me so much.
The snow was falling, thick and merciless, already up to my knees as I pulled the bowstring back—farther and farther, until my arm trembled. 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.
Just staring. As if waiting, as if daring me to fire the ash arrow.
No—no, I didn’t want to do it, not this time, not again, not—
But I had no control over my fingers, absolutely none, and he was still staring as I fired.
One shot—one shot straight through that golden eye.
A plume of blood splattering the snow, a thud of a heavy body, a sigh of wind. No.
It wasn’t a wolf that hit the snow—no, it was a man, tall and well formed.
No—not a man. A High Fae, with those pointed ears.
I blinked, and then—then my hands were warm and sticky with blood, then his body was red and skinless, steaming in the cold, and it was his skin—his skin—that I held in my hands, and—
I threw myself awake, sweat slipping down my back, and forced myself to breathe, to open my eyes and note each detail of the night-dark bedroom. Real—this was real.
But I could still see that High Fae male facedown in the snow, my arrow through his eye, red and bloody all over from where I’d cut and peeled off his skin.
Bile stung my throat.
Not real. Just a dream. Even if what I’d done to Andras, even as a wolf, was … was …
I scrubbed at my face. Perhaps it was the quiet, the hollowness, of the past few days—perhaps it was only that I no longer had to think hour to hour about how to keep my family alive, but … It was regret, and maybe shame, that coated my tongue, my bones.