Rhys chuckled. He said to his Steward, “When you wake up, you’re not to see a healer. If I hear that you do … ” Another crack—Keir’s pinkie finger went saggy. The male shrieked. The heat that had boiled my blood turned to ice. “If I hear that you do, I’ll carve you into pieces and bury them where no one can stand a chance of putting you together again.”

Keir’s eyes widened in true terror now. Then, as if an invisible hand had struck the consciousness from him, he collapsed to the floor.

Rhys said to no one in particular, “Dump him in his room.”

Two males who looked like they could be Mor’s cousins or brothers rushed forward, gathering up the Steward. Mor watched them, sneering faintly—though her skin was pale.

He’d wake up. That’s what Rhys had said.

I made myself keep walking as Rhys summoned another courtier to give him reports on whatever trivial matters.

But my attention remained on the throne behind me, even as I slipped beside Cassian, daring the court to approach, to play with me. None did.

And for the long hour afterward, my focus half remained on the High Lord whose hands and mouth and body had suddenly made me feel awake—burning. It didn’t make me forget, didn’t make me obliterate hurts or grievances, it just made me … alive. Made me feel as if I’d been asleep for a year, slumbering inside a glass coffin, and he had just shattered through it and shaken me to consciousness.

The High Lord whose power had not scared me. Whose wrath did not wreck me.

And now—now I didn’t know where that put me.

Knee-deep in trouble seemed like a good place to start.

CHAPTER

43

The wind roared around Rhys and me as he winnowed from the skies above his court. But Velaris didn’t greet us.

Rather, we were standing by a moonlit mountain lake ringed in pine trees, high above the world. We’d left the court as we’d come in—with swagger and menace. Where Cassian, Azriel, and Mor had gone with the orb, I had no idea.

Alone at the edge of the lake, Rhys said hoarsely, “I’m sorry.”

I blinked. “What do you possibly have to be sorry for?”

His hands were shaking—as if in the aftermath of that fury at what Keir had called me, what he’d threatened. Perhaps he’d brought us here before heading home in order to have some privacy before his friends could interrupt. “I shouldn’t have let you go. Let you see that part of us. Of me.” I’d never seen him so raw, so … stumbling.

“I’m fine.” I didn’t know what to make of what had been done. Both between us and to Keir. But it had been my choice. To play that role, to wear these clothes. To let him touch me. But … I said slowly, “We knew what tonight would require of us. Please—please don’t start … protecting me. Not like that.” He knew what I meant. He’d protected me Under the Mountain, but that primal, male rage he’d just shown Keir … A shattered study splattered in paint flashed through my memory.

Rhys rasped, “I will never—never lock you up, force you to stay behind. But when he threatened you tonight, when he called you … ” Whore. That’s what they’d called him. For fifty years, they’d hissed it. I’d listened to Lucien spit the words in his face. Rhys released a jagged breath. “It’s hard to shut down my instincts.”

Instincts. Just like … like someone else had instincts to protect, to hide me away. “Then you should have prepared yourself better,” I snapped. “You seemed to be going along just fine with it, until Keir said—”

“I will kill anyone who harms you,” Rhys snarled. “I will kill them, and take a damn long time doing it.” He panted. “Go ahead. Hate me—despise me for it.”

“You are my friend,” I said, and my voice broke on the word. I hated the tears that slipped down my face. I didn’t even know why I was crying. Perhaps for the fact that it had felt real on that throne with him, even for a moment, and … and it likely hadn’t been. Not for him. “You’re my friend—and I understand that you’re High Lord. I understand that you will defend your true court, and punish threats against it. But I can’t … I don’t want you to stop telling me things, inviting me to do things, because of the threats against me.”

Darkness rippled, and wings tore from his back. “I am not him,” Rhys breathed. “I will never be him, act like him. He locked you up and let you wither, and die.”

“He tried—”

“Stop comparing. Stop comparing me to him.”

The words cut me short. I blinked.

“You think I don’t know how stories get written—how this story will be written?” Rhys put his hands on his chest, his face more open, more anguished than I’d seen it. “I am the dark lord, who stole away the bride of spring. I am a demon, and a nightmare, and I will meet a bad end. He is the golden prince—the hero who will get to keep you as his reward for not dying of stupidity and arrogance.”

The things I love have a tendency to be taken from me. He’d admitted that to me Under the Mountain.

But his words were kindling to my temper, to whatever pit of fear was yawning open inside of me. “And what about my story?” I hissed. “What about my reward? What about what I want?”

“What is it that you want, Feyre?”

I had no answer. I didn’t know. Not anymore.

“What is it that you want, Feyre?”

I stayed silent.

His laugh was bitter, soft. “I thought so. Perhaps you should take some time to figure that out one of these days.”

“Perhaps I don’t know what I want, but at least I don’t hide what I am behind a mask,” I seethed. “At least I let them see who I am, broken bits and all. Yes—it’s to save your people. But what about the other masks, Rhys? What about letting your friends see your real face? But maybe it’s easier not to. Because what if you did let someone in? And what if they saw everything, and still walked away? Who could blame them—who would want to bother with that sort of mess?”

He flinched.

The most powerful High Lord in history flinched. And I knew I’d hit hard—and deep.

Too hard. Too deep.

“Rhys,” I said.

“Let’s go home.”

The word hung between us, and I wondered if he’d take it back—even as I waited for my own mouth to bark that it wasn’t home. But the thought of the clear, crisp blue skies of Velaris at sunset, the sparkle of the city lights …

Before I could say yes, he grabbed my hand, not meeting my stare, and winnowed us away.

The wind was hollow as it roared around us, the darkness cold and foreign.

Cassian, Azriel, and Mor were indeed waiting at the town house. I bid them good night while they ambushed Rhysand for answers about what Keir had said to provoke him.

I was still in my dress—which felt vulgar in the light of Velaris—but found myself heading into the garden, as if the moonlight and chill might cleanse my mind.

Though, if I was being honest … I was waiting for him. What I’d said …

I had been awful. He’d told me those secrets, those vulnerabilities in confidence. And I’d thrown them in his face.

Because I knew it’d hurt him. And I knew I hadn’t been talking about him, not really.

Minutes passed, the night still cool enough to remind me that spring had not fully dawned, and I shivered, rubbing my arms as the moon drifted. I listened to the fountain, and the city music … he didn’t come. I wasn’t sure what I’d even tell him.

I knew he and Tamlin were different. Knew that Rhysand’s protective anger tonight had been justified, that I would have had a similar reaction. I’d been bloodthirsty at the barest details of Mor’s suffering, had wanted to punish them for it.

I had known the risks. I had known I’d be sitting in his lap, touching him, using him. I’d been using him for a while now. And maybe I should tell him I didn’t … I didn’t want or expect anything from him.

Maybe Rhysand needed to flirt with me, taunt me, as much for a distraction and sense of normalcy as I did.

r /> And maybe I’d said what I had to him because … because I’d realized that I might very well be the person who wouldn’t let anyone in. And tonight, when he’d recoiled after he’d seen how he affected me … It had crumpled something in my chest.

I had been jealous—of Cresseida. I had been so profoundly unhappy on that barge because I’d wanted to be the one he smiled at like that.

And I knew it was wrong, but … I did not think Rhys would call me a whore if I wanted it—wanted … him. No matter how soon it was after Tamlin.

Neither would his friends. Not when they had been called the same and worse.

And learned to live—and love—beyond it. Despite it.

So maybe it was time to tell Rhys that. To explain that I didn’t want to pretend. I didn’t want to write it off as a joke, or a plan, or a distraction.

And it’d be hard, and I was scared and might be difficult to deal with, but … I was willing to try—with him. To try to … be something. Together. Whether it was purely sex, or more, or something between or beyond them, I didn’t know. We’d find out.

I was healed—or healing—enough to want to try.

If he was willing to try, too.

If he didn’t walk away when I voiced what I wanted: him.

Not the High Lord, not the most powerful male in Prythian’s history.