A Court of Thorns and Roses
Page 53

“Well, I mean it this time,” Lucien said, and I shifted my goblet out of his reach. “Tam would gut me if he caught you drinking that.”
“Always looking after your best interests,” I said, and pointedly chugged the contents of the glass.
It was like a million fireworks exploding inside me, filling my veins with starlight. I laughed aloud, and Lucien groaned.
“Human fool,” he hissed. But his glamour had been ripped away. His auburn hair burned like hot metal, and his russet eye smoldered like a bottomless forge. That was what I would capture next.
“I’m going to paint you,” I said, and giggled—actually giggled—as the words popped out.
“Cauldron boil and fry me,” he muttered, and I laughed again. Before he could stop me, I’d downed another glass of faerie wine. It was the most glorious thing I’d ever tasted. It liberated me from bonds I hadn’t known existed.
The music became a siren song. The melody was my lodestone, and I was powerless against its lure. With each step, I savored the dampness of the grass beneath my bare feet. I didn’t remember when I’d lost my shoes.
The sky was an eddy of molten amethyst, sapphire, and ruby, all bleeding into a final pool of onyx. I wanted to swim in it, wanted to bathe in its colors and feel the stars twinkling between my fingers.
I stumbled, blinking, and found myself standing at the edge of the ring of dancing. A cluster of musicians played their faerie instruments, and I swayed on my feet as I watched the faeries dancing, circling the bonfire. Not formal dancing. It was like they were as loose as I was. Free. I loved them for it.
“Damn it, Feyre,” Lucien said, gripping my elbow. “Do you want me to kill myself trying to keep you from impaling your mortal hide on another rock?”
“What?” I said, turning to him. The whole world spun with me, delightful and entrancing.
“Idiot,” he said when he looked at my face. “Drunken idiot.”
The tempo increased. I wanted to be in the music, wanted to ride its speed and weave between its notes. I could feel the music around me, like a living, breathing thing of wonder and joy and beauty.
“Feyre, stop,” Lucien said, and grabbed me again. I’d been dancing away, and my body was still swaying toward the pull of the sound.
“You stop. Stop being so serious,” I said, shaking him off. I wanted to hear the music, wanted to hear it hot off the instruments. Lucien swore as I burst into movement.
I skipped between the dancers, twirling my skirts. The seated, masked musicians didn’t look up at me as I leaped before them, dancing in place. No chains, no boundaries—just me and the music, dancing and dancing. I wasn’t faerie, but I was a part of this earth, and the earth was a part of me, and I would be content to dance upon it for the rest of my life.
One of the musicians looked up from his fiddling, and I halted.
Sweat gleamed on the strong column of his neck as he rested his chin upon the dark wood of the fiddle. He’d rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, revealing the cords of muscle along his forearms. He had once mentioned that he would have liked to be a traveling minstrel if not a warrior or a High Lord—now, hearing him play, I knew he could have made a fortune from it.
“I’m sorry, Tam,” Lucien panted, appearing from nowhere. “I left her alone for a little at one of the food tables, and when I caught up to her, she was drinking the wine, and—”
Tamlin didn’t pause in his playing. His golden hair damp with sweat, he looked marvelously handsome—even though I couldn’t see most of his face. He gave me a feral smile as I began to dance in place before him. “I’ll look after her,” Tamlin murmured above the music, and I glowed, my dancing becoming faster. “Go enjoy yourself.” Lucien fled.
I shouted over the music, “I don’t need a keeper!” I wanted to spin and spin and spin.
“No, you don’t,” Tamlin said, never once stumbling over his playing. How his bow did dance upon the strings, his fingers sturdy and strong, no signs of those claws that I had come to stop fearing … “Dance, Feyre,” he whispered.
So I did.
I was loosened, a top whirling around and around, and I didn’t know who I danced with or what they looked like, only that I had become the music and the fire and the night, and there was nothing that could slow me down.
Through it all, Tamlin and his musicians played such joyous music that I didn’t think the world could contain it all. I sashayed over to him, my faerie lord, my protector and warrior, my friend, and danced before him. He grinned at me, and I didn’t break my dancing as he rose from his seat and knelt before me in the grass, offering up a solo on his fiddle to me.
Music just for me—a gift. He played on, his fingers fast and hard upon the strings of his fiddle. My body slithering like a snake, I tipped my head back to the heavens and let Tamlin’s music fill all of me.
There was a pressure at my waist, and I was swept away in someone’s arms as they whisked me back into the ring of dancing. I laughed so hard I thought I’d combust, and when I opened my eyes, I found Tamlin there, spinning me round and round.
Everything became a blur of color and sound, and he was the only object in it, tethering me to sanity, to my body, which glowed and burned in every place he touched.
I was filled with sunshine. It was like I’d never experienced summer before, like I’d never known who was waiting to emerge from that forest of ice and snow. I didn’t want it to end—I never wanted to leave this hilltop.
The music came to a close, and, gasping for breath, I glanced at the moon—it was near setting. Sweat slid down every part of my body.
Tamlin, panting as well, took my hand. “Time goes faster when you’re drunk on faerie wine.”
“I’m not drunk,” I said, snorting. He only chuckled and led me from the dancing. I dug my heels into the ground as we neared the edge of the firelight. “They’re starting again,” I said, pointing to the dancers gathering before the refreshed musicians.
He leaned close, his breath caressing the shell of my ear as he whispered, “I want to show you something better.”
I stopped objecting.
He led me off the hill, navigating his way by moonlight. Whatever path he chose, he did so out of consideration for my bare feet, for only soft grass cushioned my steps. Soon, even the music faded away, replaced by the sighing of trees in the night breeze.
“Here,” Tamlin said, pausing at the edge of a vast meadow. His hand lingered on my shoulder as we looked out.
The high grasses moved like water as the last of the moonlight danced upon them.
“What is it?” I breathed, but he put a finger to his lips and beckoned me to look.
For a few minutes, there was nothing. Then, from the opposite side of the meadow, dozens of shimmering shapes floated out across the grass, little more than mirages of moonlight. That was when the singing began.
It was a collective voice, but in it existed both male and female—two sides of the same coin, singing to each other in a call and response. I raised a hand to my throat as their music rose and they danced. Ghostly and ethereal, they waltzed across the field, no more than slender slants of moonlight.
“What are they?”
“Will-o’-the-wisps—spirits of air and light,” he said softly. “Come to celebrate the solstice.”