A Court of Thorns and Roses
Page 96

Tamlin held my face in his hands, leaning close, but then released me and grasped my left arm—my tattooed arm. His brows narrowed as he studied the markings. “Feyre—”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I mumbled. The bargain I had with Rhysand—another small concern compared to the stain on my soul, the pit inside it. But I didn’t doubt I’d see Rhys again soon.
Tamlin’s fingers traced the marks of my tattoo. “We’ll find a way out of this,” he murmured, and his hand traveled up my arm to rest on my shoulder. He opened his mouth, and I knew what he would say—the subject he would try to broach.
I couldn’t talk about it, about them—not yet. So I breathed “Later” and hooked my feet around his legs, drawing him closer. I placed my hands on his chest, feeling the heart beating beneath. This—I needed this right now. It wouldn’t wash away what I’d done, but … I needed him near, needed to smell and taste him, remind myself that he was real—this was real.
“Later,” he echoed, and leaned down to kiss me.
It was soft, tentative—nothing like the wild, hard kisses we’d shared in the hall of throne room. He brushed his lips against mine again. I didn’t want apologies, didn’t want sympathy or coddling. I gripped the front of his tunic, tugging him closer as I opened my mouth to him.
He let out a low growl, and the sound of it sent a wildfire blazing through me, pooling and burning in my core. I let it burn through that hole in my chest, my soul. Let it raze through the wave of black that was starting to press around me, let it consume the phantom blood I could still feel on my hands. I gave myself to that fire, to him, as his hands roved across me, unbuttoning as he went.
I pulled back, breaking the kiss to look into his face. His eyes were bright—hungry—but his hands had stopped their exploring and rested firmly on my hips. With a predator’s stillness, he waited and watched as I traced the contours of his face, as I kissed every place I touched.
His ragged breathing was the only sound—and his hands soon began roaming across my back and sides, caressing and teasing and baring me to him. When my traveling fingers reached his mouth, he bit down on one, sucking it into his mouth. It didn’t hurt, but the bite was hard enough for me to meet his eyes again. To realize that he was done waiting—and so was I.
He eased me onto the bed, murmuring my name against my neck, the shell of my ear, the tips of my fingers. I urged him—faster, harder. His mouth explored the curve of my breast, the inside of my thigh.
A kiss for each day we’d spent apart, a kiss for every wound and terror, a kiss for the ink etched into my flesh, and for all the days we would be together after this. Days, perhaps, that I no longer deserved. But I gave myself again to that fire, threw myself into it, into him, and let myself burn.
I was pulled from sleep by something tugging at my middle, a thread deep inside.
I left Tamlin sleeping in the bed, his body heavy with exhaustion. In a few hours, we would be leaving Under the Mountain and returning home, and I didn’t want to wake him sooner than I had to. I prayed I would ever get to sleep that peacefully again.
I knew who summoned me long before I opened the door to the hall and padded down it, stumbling and teetering every now and then as I adjusted to my new body, its new balance and rhythms. I carefully, slowly took a narrow set of stairs upward, up and up, until, to my shock, a trickle of sunlight poured into the stairwell and I found myself on a small balcony jutting out of the side of the mountain.
I hissed against the brightness, shielding my eyes. I’d thought it was the middle of the night—I’d completely lost all sense of time in the darkness of the mountain.
Rhysand chuckled softly from where I could vaguely make him out standing along the stone rail. “I forgot that it’s been a while for you.”
My eyes stung from the light, and I remained silent until I could look at the view without a shooting pain going through my head. A land of violet snowcapped mountains greeted me, but the rock of this mountain was brown and bare—not even a blade of grass or a crystal of ice gleamed on it.
I looked at him finally. His membranous wings were out—tucked behind him—but his hands and feet were normal, no talons in sight. “What do you want?” It didn’t come out with the snap I’d intended. Not as I remembered how he’d fought, again and again, to attack Amarantha, to save me.
“Just to say good-bye.” A warm breeze ruffled his hair, brushing tendrils of darkness off his shoulders. “Before your beloved whisks you away forever.”
“Not forever,” I said, wiggling my tattooed fingers for him to see. “Don’t you get a week every month?” Those words, thankfully, came out frosty.
Rhys smiled slightly, his wings rustling and then settling. “How could I forget?”
I stared at the nose I’d seen bleeding only hours before, the violet eyes that had been so filled with pain. “Why?” I asked.
He knew what I meant, and shrugged. “Because when the legends get written, I didn’t want to be remembered for standing on the sidelines. I want my future offspring to know that I was there, and that I fought against her at the end, even if I couldn’t do anything useful.”
I blinked, this time not at the brightness of the sun.
“Because,” he went on, his eyes locked with mine, “I didn’t want you to fight alone. Or die alone.”
And for a moment, I remembered that faerie who had died in our foyer, and how I’d told Tamlin the same thing. “Thank you,” I said, my throat tight.
Rhys flashed a grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I doubt you’ll be saying that when I take you to the Night Court.”
I didn’t bother to reply as I turned toward the view. The mountains went on and on, gleaming and shadowed and vast under the open, clear sky.
But nothing in me stirred—nothing cataloged the light and colors.
“Are you going to fly home?” I said.
A soft laugh. “Unfortunately, it would take longer than I can afford. Another day, I’ll taste the skies again.”
I glanced at the wings tucked into his powerful body, and my voice was hoarse as I spoke. “You never told me you loved the wings—or the flying.” No, he’d made his shape-shifting seem … base, useless, boring.
He shrugged. “Everything I love has always had a tendency to be taken from me. I tell very few about the wings. Or the flying.”
Some color had already come into that moon-white face—and I wondered whether he might once have been tan before Amarantha had kept him belowground for so long. A High Lord who loved to fly—trapped under a mountain. Shadows not of his own making still haunted those violet eyes. I wondered if they would ever fade.
“How does it feel to be a High Fae?” he asked—a quiet, curious question.
I looked out toward the mountains again, considering. And maybe it was because there was no one else to hear, maybe it was because the shadows in his eyes would also forever be in mine, but I said, “I’m an immortal—who has been mortal. This body …” I looked down at my hand, so clean and shining—a mockery of what I’d done. “This body is different, but this”—I put my hand on my chest, my heart—“this is still human. Maybe it always will be. But it would have been easier to live with it …” My throat welled. “Easier to live with what I did if my heart had changed, too. Maybe I wouldn’t care so much; maybe I could convince myself their deaths weren’t in vain. Maybe immortality will take that away. I can’t tell whether I want it to.”