A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas
It was contained a level above the library in the House of Wind, and warded with so many spells that it had taken him a few moments to work through them. Only he and I—and any future offspring, he added with a soft smile—were able to enter. Unless we brought guests.
The chamber was a cool, chill black—as if we’d stepped inside the mind of some sleeping beast. And within its round space gleamed glittering islands of light. Of jewels.
Ten thousand years’ worth of treasure.
It was neatly organized, in podiums and open drawers and busts and racks.
“The family jewels,” Rhys said with a devious grin. “Some of the pieces we don’t like are kept at the Court of Nightmares, just so they don’t get pissy and because we sometimes loan them to Mor’s family, but these … these are for the family.”
He led me past displays that sparkled like small constellations, the worth of each … Even as a merchant’s daughter, I could not calculate the worth of any of it.
And toward the back of the chamber, shrouded in a heavier darkness …
I’d heard of catacombs on the continent, where skulls of beloved or infamous people were kept in little alcoves—dozens or hundreds of them to a wall.
The concept here was the same: carved into the rock was an entire wall of crowns. They each had their own resting place, lined with black velvet, each illuminated by—
“Glowworms,” Rhys told me as the tiny, bluish globs crusted in the arches of each nook seemed to glitter like the entire night sky. In fact … What I’d taken for small faelights in the ceiling high above … It was all glowworms. Pale blue and turquoise, their light as silken as moonlight, illumining the jewels with their ancient, silent fire.
“Pick one,” Rhys whispered in my ear.
“A glowworm?”
He nipped at my earlobe. “Smartass.” He steered me back toward the wall of crowns, each wholly different—as individual as skulls. “Pick whichever crown you like.”
“I can’t just—take one.”
“You most certainly can. They belong to you.”
I lifted a brow. “They don’t—not really.”
“By law and tradition, this is all yours. Sell it, melt it, wear them—do whatever you want.”
“You don’t care about it?” I gestured to the trove worth more than most kingdoms.
“Oh, I have favorite pieces that I might convince you to spare, but … This is yours. Every last piece of it.”
Our eyes met, and I knew he, too, recalled the words that I’d whispered to him months ago. That every piece of my still-healing heart belonged to him. I smiled, and brushed a hand down his arm before approaching the wall of crowns.
I had been terrified once, in Tamlin’s court, of being given a crown. Had dreaded it. And I supposed that I indeed had never fretted over it when it came to Rhys. As if some small part of me had always known that this was where I was meant to be: at his side, as his equal. His queen.
Rhys inclined his head as if to say yes—he saw and understood and had always known.
Now striding down the town house stairs, Rhys’s attention went right to that crown atop my head. And the emotion that rippled across his face was enough to make even Mor and Cassian look away.
I’d let the crown call to me. I hadn’t picked it for style or comfort, but for the draw I felt to it, as if it were that ring in the Weaver’s cottage.
My crown was crafted of silver and diamond, all fashioned into swirls of stars and various phases of the moon. Its arching apex held aloft a crescent moon of solid diamond, flanked by two exploding stars. And with the glittering dress from Starfall …
Rhys stepped off the stairs and took my hand.
Night Triumphant—and the Stars Eternal.
If he was the sweet, terrifying darkness, I was the glittering light that only his shadows could make clear.
“I thought you were leaving,” Nesta’s voice cut in from atop the stairs.
I braced myself, dragging my attention away from Rhys.
Nesta was in a gown of darkest blue, no jewelry to be seen, her hair swept up and unadorned as well. I supposed that with her stunning beauty, she needed no ornamentation. It would have been like putting jewelry on a lion. But for her to be dressed like that …
She strode down the stairs, and when the others were silent, I realized …
I tried not to look too obvious as I glanced at Cassian.
They had not seen each other since Adriata.
But the warrior only gave her a cursory once-over and turned toward Azriel to say something. Mor was watching both carefully—the warning she’d given my sister ringing silently between them. And Nesta, Mother damn it all, seemed to remember. Seemed to rein in whatever words she’d been about to spit and just approached me.
And nearly made my heart stop dead with shock as she said, “You look beautiful.”
I blinked at her.
Mor said, “That, Cassian, was what you were attempting to say.”
He grumbled something we chose not to hear. I said to Nesta, “Thank you. You do as well.”
Nesta only shrugged.
I pushed, “Why are you dressed so nicely? Shouldn’t you be practicing with Amren?”
I felt Cassian’s attention slide to us, felt them all look as Nesta said, “I’m going with you.”
CHAPTER
42
No one said anything.
Nesta only lifted her chin. “I …” I’d never seen her stumble for words. “I do not want to be remembered as a coward.”
“No one would say that,” I offered quietly.
“I would.” Nesta surveyed us all, her gaze jumping past Cassian. Not to slight him, but … avoid answering the look he was giving her. Approval—more. “It was some distant thing,” she said. “War. Battle. It … it’s not anymore. I will help, if I can. If it means … telling them what happened.”
“You’ve given enough,” I said, my dress rustling as I braved a solitary step toward her. “Amren claimed you were close to mastering whatever skill you need. You should stay—focus on that.”
“No.” The word was steady, clear. “A day or two delay with my training won’t make any difference. Perhaps by the time we return, Amren will have decoded that spell in the Book.” She shrugged with a shoulder. “You went off to battle for a court you barely know—who barely see you as friends. Amren showed me the blood ruby. And when I asked you why … you said because it was the right thing. People needed help.” Her throat bobbed. “No one is going to fight to save the humans beneath the wall. No one cares. But I do.” She toyed with a fold in her dress. “I do.”
Rhys stepped up to my side. “As High Lady, Feyre is no longer my emissary to the human world.” He gave Nesta a tentative smile. “Want the job?”
Nesta’s face yielded nothing, but I could have sworn some spark flared. “Consider this meeting a trial basis. And I’ll make you pay through the teeth for my services.”
Rhys sketched a bow. “I would expect nothing less of an Archeron sister.” I poked him in the ribs, and he huffed a laugh. “Welcome to the court,” he said to her. “You’re about to have one hell of a first day.”
And to my eternal shock, a smile tugged at Nesta’s mouth.
“No going back now,” Cassian said to Rhys, gesturing to his wings.
Rhys slid his hands into his pockets. “I figure it’s time for the world to know who really has the largest wingspan.”
Cassian laughed, and even Azriel smiled. Mor gave me a look that had me biting my lip to keep from howling.
“Twenty gold marks says there’s a fight in the first hour,” Cassian said, still not really looking at Nesta.
“Thirty, and I say within forty-five minutes,” Mor said, crossing her arms.
“You do remember there are vows and wards of neutrality,” Rhys said mildly.
“You lot don’t need fists or magic to fight,” Mor chirped.
Azriel said from the door, “Fifty, and I say within thirty
Rhys rolled his eyes. “Try not to look like you’re all gambling on them. And no cheating by provoking fights.” Their answering grins were anything but reassuring. Rhys sighed. “A hundred marks on a fight within fifteen minutes.”
Nesta let out a soft snort. But they all looked to me, waiting.
I shrugged. “Rhys and I are a team. He can gamble away our money on this bullshit.”
They all looked deeply offended.
Rhys looped his elbow through mine. “A queen in appearance—”
“Don’t even finish that,” I said.
He laughed. “Shall we?”
He’d winnow me in, Mor would now take Cassian and Nesta, and Azriel would carry himself. Rhys glanced toward the sitting room clock and gave the shadowsinger a nod.
Azriel instantly vanished. First to arrive—first to see if any trap awaited.
In silence, we waited. One minute. Two.
Then Rhys blew out a breath and said, “Clear.” He threaded his fingers through mine, gripping tightly.
Mor sagged a bit, jewelry glinting with the movement, and went to take Cassian’s arm.
But he’d at last approached Nesta. And as the world began to turn to shadows and wind, I saw Cassian tower over my sister, saw her chin lift defiantly, and heard him growl, “Hello, Nesta.”
Rhys seemed to halt his winnowing as my sister said, “So you’re alive.”
Cassian bared his teeth in a feral grin, wings flaring slightly. “Were you hoping otherwise?”
Mor was watching—watching so closely, every muscle tense. She again reached for his arm, but Cassian angled out of reach, not tearing his eyes from Nesta’s blazing gaze.
Nesta blurted, “You didn’t come to—” She stopped herself.
The world seemed to go utterly still at that interrupted sentence, nothing and no one more so than Cassian. He scanned her face as if furiously reading some battle report.
Mor just watched as Cassian took Nesta’s slim hand in his own, interlacing their fingers. As he folded in his wings and blindly reached his other hand back toward Mor in a silent order to transport them.
Cassian’s eyes did not leave Nesta’s; nor did hers leave his. There was no warmth, no tenderness on either of their faces. Only that raging intensity, that blend of contempt and understanding and fire.
Rhys began to winnow us again, and just as the dark wind swept in, I heard Cassian say to Nesta, his voice low and rough, “The next time, Emissary, I’ll come say hello.”
I’d learned enough from Rhys about what to expect of the Dawn Court, but even the vistas he’d painted for me didn’t do the sight justice.
It was the clouds I saw first.
Enormous clouds drifting in the cobalt sky, soft and magnanimous, still tinged by the rose remnants of sunrise, their round edges gilded with the golden light. The dewy freshness of morning lingered in the balmy air as we peered up at the mountain-palace spiraling into the heavens above.
If the palace above the Court of Nightmares had been crafted of moonstone, this was made from … sunstone. I didn’t have a word for the near-opalescent golden stone that seemed to hold the gleaming of a thousand sunrises within it.
Steps and balconies and archways and verandas and bridges linked the towers and gilded domes of the palace, periwinkle morning glories climbing the pillars and neatly cut blocks of stone to drink in the gilded mists wafting by.
Wafting by, because the mountain on which the palace stood … There was a reason I beheld the clouds first.
The veranda that we’d appeared on was empty, save for Azriel and a slim-hipped attendant in the gold-and-ruby livery of Dawn. Light, loose robes—layered and yet flattering.
The male bowed, his brown skin smooth with youth and beauty. “This way, High Lord.”
Even his voice was as lovely as the first glimmer of gold on the horizon. Rhys returned his bow with a shallow nod, and offered his arm to me.
Mor muttered behind us, falling into rank with Nesta at her side, “If you ever feel like building a new house, Rhys, let’s use this one for inspiration.”
Rhys threw her an incredulous look over a shoulder. Cassian and Azriel snorted softly.
I glanced to Nesta as the attendant led us not to the archway beyond the veranda, but the spiral stairs climbing upward—along the bare face of a tower.
Nesta seemed as out of place as all of us—save Mor—but …
That was awe on my sister’s face.
Utter awe at the castle in the clouds, at the verdant countryside rippling away far below, speckled with red-roofed little villages and broad, sparkling rivers. A lush, eternal countryside, rich with the weight of summer upon it.
And I wondered if my face had appeared like that—the day I’d first seen Velaris. The mix of awe and anger and the realization that the world was large, and beautiful, and sometimes so overwhelming in its wonder that it was impossible to drink it down all at once.
There were other palaces within Dawn’s territory—set in small cities that specialized in tinkering and clockwork and clever things. Here … beyond those little villages nestled in the country hills, there was no industry. Nothing beyond the palace and the sky and the clouds.
We ascended the spiral stairs, the drop off the too-near edge falling away into warm-colored rock peppered with clusters of pale roses and fluffy, magenta peonies. A beautiful, colorful death.
Every step had me bracing myself as we wound up and up the tower, Rhys’s grip on my hand unwavering.
The wings remained out. He did not falter a single step.
His eyes slid to mine, amused and questioning. He said down the bond, And do you think I need to redecorate our home?
We passed open-air chambers full of fat, silk pillows and plush carpets, passed windows whose panes were arranged in colorful medleys, passed urns overflowing with lavender and fountains gurgling clearest water under the mild rays of the sun.
It’s not a competition, I trilled to him.
His hand tightened on mine. Well, even if Thesan has a prettier palace, I’m the only one blessed with a High Lady at my side.
I couldn’t help my blush.
Especially as Rhys added, Tonight, I want you to wear that crown to bed. Only the crown.
Scoundrel.
Always.
I smiled, and he leaned in smoothly to brush a kiss to my cheek.
Mor muttered a plea for mercy from mates.
Muted voices reached us from the open-air chamber atop the sunstone tower—some deep, some sharp, some lilting—before we finished the last rotation around it, the arched, glassless windows offering no barrier to the conversation within.
Three others are here already, Rhys warned me, and I had the feeling that was what Azriel was now murmuring to Mor and Cassian. Helion, Kallias, and Thesan.
The High Lords of Day, Winter, and our host, Dawn.
Meaning Autumn and Summer—Beron and Tarquin—had not arrived yet. Or Spring.
I still doubted Tamlin would come at all, but Beron and Tarquin … Perhaps the battle had changed Tarquin’s mind. And Beron was awful enough to perhaps have sided with Hybern already, regardless of Eris’s manipulating.
I caught the bob of Rhys’s throat as we cleared the final steps to the open doorway. A long bridge connected the other half of the tower to the palace interior, its rails drooping with dawn-pale wisteria. I wondered if the others had been led up these stairs, or if it was somehow meant to be an insult.
Shields up? Rhys asked, but I knew he was aware mine had been raised since Velaris.
Just as I was aware that he’d put a shield, mental and physical, around all of us, terms of peace or no.
And though his face was calm, his shoulders thrown back, I said, I see all of you, Rhys. And there is not one part that I do not love with everything that I am.
His hand squeezed mine in answer before he laid my fingers on his arm, raising it enough that we must have painted a rather courtly port
You bow to no one, was all he replied.
CHAPTER
43
The chamber was and was not what I expected. Deep-cushioned oak chairs had been arranged in a massive circle in the heart of the room—enough for all the High Lords and their delegates. Some, I realized, had been shaped to accommodate wings.
It seemed it was not unusual. For clustered around a beautiful, slender male who I immediately remembered from Under the Mountain were winged Fae. If the Illyrians had batlike wings, these … they were like birds.
The Peregryns are distantly related to Drakon’s Seraphim people and provide Thesan with a small aerial legion, Rhys said to me of the muscular, golden-armored males and females gathered. The male on his left is his captain and lover. Indeed, the handsome male stood just a tad closer to his High Lord, one hand on the fine sword at his side. No mating bond yet, Rhys went on, but I think Thesan didn’t dare acknowledge it while Amarantha reigned. She delighted in ripping out their feathers—one by one. She made a dress out of them once.
I tried not to wince as we stepped onto the polished marble floor, the stone warmed with the sun streaming through the open archways. The others had looked toward us, some murmuring at the sight of Rhys’s wings, but my attention went to the true gem of the chamber: the reflection pool.
Rather than a table occupying the space between that circle of chairs, a shallow, circular reflection pool was carved into the floor itself. Its dark water was laden with pink and gold water lilies, the pads broad and flat as a male’s hand, and beneath them pumpkin-and-ivory fish lazily swam about.
This, I admitted to Rhys, I might need to have.
A wry pulse of humor down the bond. I’ll make a note of it for your birthday.
More wisteria twined about the pillars flanking the space, and along the tables set against the few walls, bunches of wine-colored peonies unfurled their silken layers. Between the vases, platters and baskets of food had been laid—small pastries, cured meats, and garlands of fruit beckoned before sweating pewter ewers of some refreshment.
Then there were the three High Lords themselves.