A Court of Thorns and Roses
Page 72

I didn’t allow myself to imagine what she had in mind for me. It was enough to know that she expected me to die—that there wouldn’t be enough left of me for her to torture.
I gripped my legs harder to keep my hands from shaking. Somewhere—not too far off—screaming began. A high-pitched, pleading bleat, accentuated with crescendos of shrieking that made bile sting in my throat. I might sound like that when faced with Amarantha’s first task.
A whip cracked, and the screaming built, hardly pausing for a breath. Clare had probably cried similarly. I had as good as tortured her myself. What had she made of all this—all these faeries lusting after her blood and misery? I deserved this—deserved whatever pain and suffering was in store—if only for what she had endured. But … but I would make it right. Somehow.
I must have drifted off at some point, because I awoke to the scrape of my cell door against stone. Forgetting the cascading pain in my face, I scrambled to duck into the shadows of the nearest corner. Someone slipped into my cell and swiftly shut the door—leaving it just a bit ajar.
“Feyre?”
I tried to stand, but my legs shook so badly that I couldn’t move. “Lucien?” I breathed, and the hay crunched as he dropped to the ground before me.
“By the Cauldron, are you all right?”
“My face—”
A small light flared by his head, and as his eyes swam into view, the metal one narrowed. He hissed. “Have you lost your mind? What are you doing here?”
I fought the tears—they were pointless, anyway. “I went back to the manor … Alis told me … told me about the curse, and I couldn’t let Amarantha—”
“You shouldn’t have come, Feyre,” he said sharply. “You weren’t meant to be here. Don’t you understand what he sacrificed in getting you out? How could you be so foolish?”
“Well, I’m here now!” I said, louder than was wise. “I’m here, and there’s nothing that can be done about it, so don’t bother telling me about my weak human flesh and my stupidity! I know all that, and I …” I wanted to cover my face in my hands, but it hurt too much. “I just … I had to tell him that I love him. To see if it wasn’t too late.”
Lucien sat back on his heels. “So you know everything, then.” I managed to nod without blacking out from the pain. My agony must have shown, because he winced. “Well, at least we don’t have to lie to you anymore. Let’s clean you up a bit.”
“I think my nose is broken. But nothing else.” As I said it, I looked around him for any signs of water or bandages—and found none. It would be magic, then.
Lucien glanced over his shoulder, checking the door. “The guards are drunk, but their replacements will be here soon,” he said, and then studied my nose. I braced myself as I allowed him to gently touch it. Even the graze of his fingertips sent flashes of burning pain through me. “I’m going to have to set it before I can heal it.”
I clamped down on my blind panic. “Do it. Right now.” Before I could wallow in my cowardice and tell him to forget about it. He hesitated. “Now,” I panted.
Too swift for me to follow, his fingers latched onto my nose. Pain lanced through me, and a crack burst through my ears, my head, before I fainted.
When I came to, I could open both eyes fully, and my nose—my nose was clear, and didn’t throb or send agony splintering through my face. Lucien was crouched over me, frowning. “I couldn’t heal you completely—they would know someone helped you. The bruises are there, along with a hideous black eye, but … all the swelling’s gone.”
“And my nose?” I said, feeling it before he answered.
“Fixed—as pert and pretty as before.” He smirked at me. The familiar gesture made my chest tighten to the point of pain.
“I thought she’d taken most of your power,” I managed to say. I’d barely seen him handle magic at all while at the estate.
He nodded to the little light bobbing over his shoulder. “She gave me back a fraction—to entice Tamlin to accept her offer. But he still refuses her.” He jerked his chin to my healed face. “I knew some good would come of being down here.”
“So you’re trapped Under the Mountain, too?”
A grim nod. “She’s summoned all the High Lords to her now—and even those who swore obedience are now forbidden to leave until … until your trials are over.”
Until I was dead was probably what he truly meant. “That ring,” I said. “Is it—is it actually Jurian’s eye?”
Lucien cringed. “Indeed. So you really know everything, then?”
“Alis didn’t say what happened after Jurian and Amarantha faced each other.”
“They wrecked an entire battlefield, using their soldiers as shields, until their forces were nearly all dead. Jurian had been gifted some protection against her, but once they entered into single combat … It didn’t take her long to render him prone. Then she dragged him back to her camp and took weeks—weeks—to torture and kill him. She refused orders to march to the King of Hybern’s aid—cost him armies and the War; she refused to do anything until she’d finished Jurian’s demise. All that she kept was his finger bone and his eye. Clythia promised him that he would never die—and so long as Amarantha keeps that eye of his preserved through her magic, keeps his soul and consciousness bound to it, he’ll remain trapped, watching through it. A fitting punishment for what he did, but”—Lucien tapped his own missing eye—“I’m glad she didn’t do the same to me. She seems to have an obsession with that sort of thing.”
I shuddered. A huntress—she was little more than an immortal, cruel huntress, collecting trophies from her kills and conquests to gloat over through the ages. The rage and despair and horror Jurian must endure every day, for eternity … Deserved, perhaps, but worse than anything I could imagine. I shook the thought from me. “Is Tamlin—”
“He’s—” But Lucien shot to his feet at a sound my human ears couldn’t hear. “The guards are about to change rotations and are headed this way. Try not to die, will you? I already have a long list of faeries to kill—I don’t need to add more to it, if only for Tamlin’s sake.”
Which was no doubt why he’d even come down here.
Lucien vanished—just vanished into the dim light. A moment later, a yellowish eye tinged with red appeared at the peephole in the door, glared at me, and continued onward.
I dozed on and off for what could have been hours or days. They gave me three miserable meals of stale bread and water at no regular interval that I could detect. All I knew when the door to my cell swung open was that my relentless hunger no longer mattered, and it would be wise not to struggle when the two squat, red-skinned faeries half dragged me to the throne room. I marked the path, picking out details in the hall—interesting cracks in the walls, features in the tapestries, an odd bend—anything to remind me of the way out of the dungeons.
I observed more of Amarantha’s throne room this time, too, noting the exits. No windows, as we were underground. And the mountain I’d seen depicted on that map at the manor was in the heart of the land—far from the Spring Court, even farther from the wall. If I were to escape with Tamlin, my best chance would be to run for that cave in the belly of the mountain.