A Court of Wings and Ruin Read online

  The thought of them so close to the human lands … But my sisters were not there. No, my sisters were somewhere in the vast territory of my own court, protected by my friends. Even if my father would return home from his business dealings on the continent in a matter of a month or two. I still had not figured out how I’d tell him.

  “Lucien and I can escort you,” I offered.

  Tamlin whipped his head to me. I waited for the refusal, the shutdown.

  But it seemed the High Lord had indeed learned his lesson, was indeed willing to try, as he merely gestured to Lucien. “My emissary knows the wall as well as any sentry.”

  You are letting them do this; you are rationally allowing them to bring down that wall and prey upon the humans on the other side. The words tangled and hissed in my mouth.

  But I made myself give Tamlin a slow, if not slightly displeased, nod. He knew I’d never be happy about it—the girl he believed had been returned to him would always seek to protect her mortal homeland. Yet he thought I’d stomach it for him, for us. That Hybern wouldn’t feast on the humans once that wall came down. That we’d merely absorb them into our territory.

  “We’ll leave after breakfast,” I told the princess. And I added to Tamlin, “With a few sentries as well.”

  His shoulders loosened at that. I wondered if he’d heard how I’d defended Velaris. That I had protected the Rainbow against a legion of beasts like the Attor. That I had slaughtered the Attor, brutally, cruelly, for what it had done to me and mine.

  Jurian surveyed Lucien with a warrior’s frankness. “I always wondered who made that eye after she carved it out.”

  We did not speak of Amarantha here. We had never allowed her presence into this house. And it had stifled me for those months I’d lived here after Under the Mountain, killed me day by day to shove those fears and pain down deep.

  For a heartbeat, I weighed who I had been with who I was now supposed to be. Slowly healing—emerging back into the girl Tamlin had fed and sheltered and loved before Amarantha had snapped my neck after three months of torture.

  So I shifted in my seat. Studied the table.

  Lucien merely leveled a hard look at Jurian as the two Hybern royals watched with impassive faces. “I have an old friend at the Dawn Court. She’s skilled at tinkering—blending magic and machinery. Tamlin got her to craft it for me at great risk.”

  A hateful smile from Jurian. “Does your little mate have a rival?”

  “My mate is none of your concern.”

  Jurian shrugged. “She shouldn’t be any of yours, either, considering she’s probably been fucked by half the Illyrian army by now.”

  I was fairly certain that only centuries of training kept Lucien from leaping over the table to rip out Jurian’s throat.

  But it was Tamlin’s snarl that rattled the glasses. “You will behave as a proper guest, Jurian, or you will sleep in the stables like the other beasts.”

  Jurian merely sipped from his wine. “Why should I be punished for stating the truth? Neither of you were in the War, when my forces allied with the Illyrian brutes.” A sidelong glance at the two Hybern royals. “I suppose you two had the delight of fighting against them.”

  “We kept the wings of their generals and lords as trophies,” Dagdan said with a small smile.

  It took every bit of concentration not to glance at Tamlin. Not to demand the whereabouts of the two sets of wings his father had kept as trophies after he’d butchered Rhysand’s mother and sister.

  Pinned in the study, Rhys had said.

  But I hadn’t spotted any trace when I’d gone hunting for them upon returning here, feigning exploration out of sheer boredom on a rainy day. The cellars had yielded nothing, either. No trunks or crates or locked rooms containing those wings.

  The two bites of roasted lamb I’d forced down now rebelled against me. But at least any hint of disgust was a fair reaction to what the Hybern prince had claimed.

  Jurian indeed smiled at me as he sliced his lamb into little pieces. “You know that we fought together, don’t you? Me and your High Lord. Held the lines against the Loyalists, battled side by side until gore was up to our shins.”

  “He is not her High Lord,” Tamlin said with unnerving softness.

  Jurian only purred at me, “He must have told you where he hid Miryam and Drakon.”

  “They’re dead,” I said flatly.

  “The Cauldron says otherwise.”

  Cold fear settled into my gut. He’d tried it already—to resurrect Miryam for himself. And had found that she was not amongst the deceased.

  “I was told they were dead,” I said again, trying to sound bored, impatient. I took a bite of my lamb, so bland compared to the wealth of spices in Velaris. “I’d think you’d have better things to do, Jurian, than obsess over the lover who jilted you.”

  His eyes gleamed, bright with five centuries of madness, as he skewered a morsel of meat with his fork. “They say you were fucking Rhysand before you ever jilted your own lover.”

  “That is enough,” Tamlin growled.

  But I felt it then. The tap against my mind. Saw their plan, clear and simple: rile us, distract us, while the two quiet royals slid into our minds.

  Mine was shielded. But Lucien’s—Tamlin’s—

  I reached out with my night-kissed power, casting it like a net. And found two oily tendrils spearing for Lucien’s and Tamlin’s minds, as if they were indeed javelins thrown across the table.

  I struck. Dagdan and Brannagh jolted back in their seats as if I’d landed a physical blow, while their powers slammed into a barrier of black adamant around Lucien’s and Tamlin’s minds.

  They shot their dark eyes toward me. I held each of their gazes.

  “What’s wrong?” Tamlin asked, and I realized how quiet it had become.

  I made a good show of furrowing my brow in confusion. “Nothing.” I offered a sweet smile to the two royals. “Their Highnesses must be tired after such a long journey.”

  And for good measure, I lunged for their own minds, finding a wall of white bone.

  They flinched as I dragged black talons down their mental shields, gouging deep.

  The warning blow cost me, a low, pulsing headache forming around my temples. But I merely dug back into my food, ignoring Jurian’s wink.

  No one spoke for the rest of the meal.

  CHAPTER

  3

  The spring woods fell silent as we rode between the budding trees, birds and small furred beasts having darted for cover long before we passed.

  Not from me, or Lucien, or the three sentries trailing a respectful distance behind. But from Jurian and the two Hybern commanders who rode in the center of our party. As if they were as awful as the Bogge, as the naga.

  We reached the wall without incident or Jurian trying to bait us into distraction. I’d been awake most of the night, casting my awareness through the manor, hunting for any sign that Dagdan and Brannagh were working their daemati influence on anyone else. Mercifully, the curse-breaking ability I’d inherited from Helion Spell-Cleaver, High Lord of the Day Court, had detected no tangles, no spells, save for the wards around the house itself, preventing anyone from winnowing in or out.

  Tamlin had been tense at breakfast, but had not asked me to remain behind. I’d even gone so far as to test him by asking what was wrong—to which he’d only replied that he had a headache. Lucien had just patted him on the shoulder and promised to look after me. I’d nearly laughed at the words.

  But laughter was now far from my lips as the wall pulsed and throbbed, a heavy, hideous presence that loomed from half a mile away. Up close, though … Even our horses were skittish, tossing their heads and stomping their hooves on the mossy earth as we tied them to the low-hanging branches of blooming dogwoods.

  “The gap in the wall is right up here,” Lucien was saying, sounding about as thrilled as me to be in such company. Stomping over the fallen pink blossoms, Dagdan and Brannagh slid into step beside him, Jurian
slithering off to survey the terrain, the sentries remaining with our mounts.

  I followed Lucien and the royals, keeping a casual distance behind. I knew my elegant, fine clothes weren’t fooling the prince and princess into forgetting that a fellow daemati now walked at their backs. But I’d still carefully selected the embroidered sapphire jacket and brown pants—adorned only with the jeweled knife and belt that Lucien had once gifted me. A lifetime ago.

  “Who cleaved the wall here?” Brannagh asked, surveying the hole that we could not see—no, the wall itself was utterly invisible—but rather felt, as if the air had been sucked from one spot.

  “We don’t know,” Lucien replied, the dappled sunlight glinting along the gold thread adorning his fawn-brown jacket as he crossed his arms. “Some of the holes just appeared over the centuries. This one is barely wide enough for one person to get through.”

  An exchanged glance between the twins. I came up behind them, studying the gap, the wall around it that made every instinct recoil at its … wrongness. “This is where I came through—that first time.”

  Lucien nodded, and the other two lifted their brows. But I took a step closer to Lucien, my arm nearly brushing his, letting him be a barrier between us. They’d been more careful at breakfast this morning about pushing against my mental shields. Yet now, letting them think I was physically cowed by them … Brannagh studied how closely I stood to Lucien; how he shifted slightly to shield me, too.

  A little, cold smile curled her lips. “How many holes are in the wall?”

  “We’ve counted three along our entire border,” Lucien said tightly. “Plus one off the coast—about a mile away.”

  I didn’t let my cool mask falter as he offered up the information.

  But Brannagh shook her head, dark hair devouring the sunlight. “The sea entrances are of no use. We need to break it on the land.”

  “The continent surely has spots, too.”

  “Their queens have an even weaker grasp on their people than you do,” Dagdan said. I plucked up that gem of information, studied it.

  “We’ll leave you to explore it, then,” I said, waving toward the hole. “When you’re done, we’ll ride to the next.”

  “It’s two days from here,” Lucien countered.

  “Then we’ll plan a trip for that excursion,” I said simply. Before Lucien could object, I asked, “And the third hole?”

  Lucien tapped a foot against the mossy ground, but said, “Two days past that.”

  I turned to the royals, arching a brow. “Can both of you winnow?”

  Brannagh flushed, straightening. But it was Dagdan who admitted, “I can.” He must have carried both Brannagh and Jurian when they arrived. He added, “Only a few miles if I bear others.”

  I merely nodded and headed toward a tangle of stooping dogwoods, Lucien following close behind. When there was nothing but ruffling pink blossoms and trickling sunlight through the thatch of branches, when the royals had busied themselves with the wall, out of sight and sound, I took up a perch on a smooth, bald rock.

  Lucien sat against a nearby tree, folding one booted ankle over another. “Whatever you’re planning, it’ll land us knee-deep in shit.”

  “I’m not planning anything.” I plucked up a fallen pink blossom and twirled it between my thumb and forefinger.

  That golden eye narrowed, clicking softly.

  “What do you even see with that thing?”

  He didn’t answer.

  I chucked the blossom onto the soft moss between us. “Don’t trust me? After all we’ve been through?”

  He frowned at the discarded blossom, but still said nothing.

  I busied myself by sorting through my pack until I found the canteen of water. “If you’d been alive for the War,” I asked him, taking a swig, “would you have fought on their side? Or fought for the humans?”

  “I would have been a part of the human-Fae alliance.”

  “Even if your father wasn’t?”

  “Especially if my father wasn’t.”

  But Beron had been part of that alliance, if I correctly recalled my lessons with Rhys all those months ago.

  “And yet here you are, ready to march with Hybern.”

  “I did it for you, too, you know.” Cold, hard words. “I went with him to get you back.”

  “I never realized what a powerful motivator guilt can be.”

  “That day you—went away,” he said, struggling to avoid that other word—left. “I beat Tamlin back to the manor—received the message when we were out on the border and raced here. But the only trace of you was that ring, melted between the stones of the parlor. I got rid of it a moment before Tam arrived home to see it.”

  A probing, careful statement. Of the facts that pointed not toward abduction.

  “They melted it off my finger,” I lied.

  His throat bobbed, but he just shook his head, the sunlight leaking through the forest canopy setting the ember-red of his hair flickering.

  We sat in silence for minutes. From the rustling and murmuring, the royals were finishing up, and I braced myself, calculating the words I’d need to wield without seeming suspicious.

  I said quietly, “Thank you. For coming to Hybern to get me.”

  He pulled at the moss beside him, jaw tight. “It was a trap. What I thought we were to do there … it did not turn out that way.”

  It was an effort not to bare my teeth. But I walked to him, taking up a place at his side against the wide trunk of the tree. “This situation is terrible,” I said, and it was the truth.

  A low snort.

  I knocked my knee against his. “Don’t let Jurian bait you. He’s doing it to feel out any weaknesses between us.”

  “I know.”

  I turned my face to him, resting my knee against his in silent demand. “Why?” I asked. “Why does Hybern want to do this beyond some horrible desire for conquest? What drives him—his people? Hatred? Arrogance?”

  Lucien finally looked at me, the intricate pieces and carvings on the metal eye much more dazzling up close. “Do you—”

  Brannagh and Dagdan shoved through the bushes, frowning to find us sitting there.

  But it was Jurian—right on their heels, as if he’d been divulging the details of his surveying—who smiled at the sight of us, knee to knee and nearly nose to nose.

  “Careful, Lucien,” the warrior sneered. “You see what happens to males who touch the High Lord’s belongings.”

  Lucien snarled, but I shot him a warning glare.

  Point proven, I said silently.

  And despite Jurian, despite the sneering royals, a corner of Lucien’s mouth tugged upward.

  Ianthe was waiting at the stables when we returned.

  She’d made her grand arrival at the end of breakfast hours before, breezing into the dining room when the sun was shining in shafts of pure gold through the windows.

  I had no doubt she’d planned the timing, just as she had planned the stop in the middle of one of those sunbeams, angled so her hair glowed and the jewel atop her head burned with blue fire. I would have titled the painting Model Piety.

  After she’d been briefly introduced by Tamlin, she’d mostly cooed over Jurian—who had only scowled at her like some insect buzzing in his ear.

  Dagdan and Brannagh had listened to her fawning with enough boredom that I was starting to wonder if the two of them perhaps preferred no one’s company but each other’s. In whatever unholy capacity. Not a blink of interest toward the beauty who often made males and females stop to gape. Perhaps any sort of physical passion had long ago been drained away, alongside their souls.

  So the Hybern royals and Jurian had tolerated Ianthe for about a minute before they’d found their food more interesting. A slight that no doubt explained why she had decided to meet us here, awaiting our return as we rode in.

  It was my first time on a horse in months, and I was stiff enough that I could barely move as the party dismounted. I gave Lucien a subtle, p
leading look, and he barely hid his smirk as he sauntered over to me.

  Our dispersing party watched as he braced my waist in his broad hands and easily hefted me off the horse, none more closely than Ianthe.

  I only patted Lucien on the shoulder in thanks. Ever the courtier, he bowed back.

  It was hard, sometimes, to remember to hate him. To remember the game I was already playing.

  Ianthe trilled, “A successful journey, I hope?”

  I jerked my chin toward the royals. “They seemed pleased.”

  Indeed, whatever they’d been looking for, they’d found agreeable. I hadn’t dared ask too many prying questions. Not yet.

  Ianthe bowed her head. “Thank the Cauldron for that.”

  “What do you want,” Lucien said a shade too flatly.

  She frowned but lifted her chin, folding her hands before her as she said, “We’re to have a party in honor of our guests—and to coincide with the Summer Solstice in a few days. I wished to speak to Feyre about it.” A two-faced smile. “Unless you have an objection to that.”

  “He doesn’t,” I answered before Lucien could say something he’d regret. “Give me an hour to eat and change, and I’ll meet you in the study.”

  Perhaps a tinge more assertive than I’d once been, but she nodded all the same. I linked my elbow with Lucien’s and steered him away. “See you soon,” I told her, and felt her gaze on us as we walked from the dim stables and into the bright midday light.

  His body was taut, near-trembling.

  “What happened between you?” I hissed when we were lost among the hedges and gravel paths of the garden.

  “It’s not worth repeating.”

  “When I—was taken,” I ventured, almost stumbling on the word, almost saying left. “Did she and Tamlin …”

  I was not faking the twisting low in my gut.

  “No,” he said hoarsely. “No. When Calanmai came along, he refused. He flat-out refused to participate. I replaced him in the Rite, but …”

  I’d forgotten. Forgotten about Calanmai and the Rite. I did a mental tally of the days.