A Court of Wings and Ruin

by Sarah J. Maas

  Once he was done. It was not the common foot soldiers he’d sought out.

  Because where power should have been thrumming from him, obliterating them … It was a muffled rumble. Stifled.

  He’d tracked it here—that strange damper on his power, on the Siphons’ power. As if some sort of spell had turned his power oily in his grip. Harder to wield.

  It was why the battle had gone on so long. The clean, precise blow he’d intended to land upon arriving—the single shot that would have saved so many lives … It had slipped from his grasp.

  So he’d hunted it down, that damper. Battled his way across Adriata to get to this ship. And now, exhaustion starting to rip at him … The armed soldiers around Rhysand parted—and he appeared.

  Trapped within Rhysand’s mind, his powers stifled and body weary, there was nothing I could do but watch as the King of Hybern stepped from belowdecks and smiled at my mate.

  CHAPTER

  37

  Blood slid from the tips of Rhys’s twin blades onto the deck. One drop—two. Three.

  Mother above. The king—

  The King of Hybern wore his own colors: slate gray, embroidered with bone-colored thread. Not a weapon on him. Not a speckle of blood.

  Within Rhys’s mind, there was no jagged breath for me to take, no heartbeat to thunder in my chest. There was nothing I could do but watch—watch and keep quiet, so I didn’t distract him, didn’t risk taking his focus away for one blink …

  Rhys met the king’s dark eyes, bright beneath heavy brows, and smiled. “Glad to see you’re still not fighting your own battles.”

  The king’s answering smile was a brutal slash of white. “I was waiting for more interesting quarry to find me.” His voice was colder than the highest peak of the Illyrian mountains.

  Rhys didn’t dare look away from him. Not as his magic unfurled, sniffing out every angle to kill the king. A trap—it had been a trap to discover which High Lord hunted down the source of that damper first.

  Rhys had known one of them—the king, his cronies—would be waiting here.

  He’d known, and come. Known and not asked us to help him—

  If I was smart, Rhys said to me, his voice calm and steady, I’d find some way to take him alive, make Azriel break him—get him to yield the Cauldron. And make an example of him to the other bastards thinking of bringing down that wall.

  Don’t, I begged him. Just kill him—kill him and be done with it, Rhys. End this war before it can truly begin.

  A pause of consideration. But a death here, quick and brutal … His followers would turn it against me, no doubt.

  If he could manage it. The king had not been fighting. Had not depleted his reserves of power. But Rhys …

  I felt Rhys size up the odds alongside me. Let one of us come to you. Don’t face him alone—

  Because trying to take the king alive without full access to his power …

  Information rippled into me, brimming with all Rhys had seen and learned. Taking the king alive depended on whether Azriel was in good enough shape to help. He and Cassian had taken a few blows themselves, but—nothing they couldn’t handle. Nothing to spook the Illyrians still fighting under their command. Yet.

  “Seems like the tide is turning,” Rhys observed as the armada around them indeed pushed Hybern’s forces out to sea. He had not seen Tarquin. Or Varian and Cresseida. But the Summer Court still fought. Still pushed Hybern back, back, back from the harbor.

  Time. Rhys needed time—

  Rhys lunged toward the king’s mind—and met nothing. Not a trace, not a whisper. As if he were nothing but wicked thought and ancient malice—

  The king clicked his tongue. “I’d heard that you were a charmer, Rhysand. Yet here you are, groping and pawing at me like a green youth.”

  A corner of Rhys’s mouth twitched up. “Always a delight to disappoint Hybern.”

  “Oh, on the contrary,” the king said, crossing his arms—muscle shifting beneath. “You’ve always been such a source of entertainment. Especially for my darling Amarantha.”

  I felt it—the thought that escaped Rhys.

  He wanted to wipe that name from living memory. Perhaps one day he would. One day he’d erase it from every mind in this world, one by one, until she was no one and nothing.

  But the king knew that. From that smile, he knew.

  And everything he had done … All of it …

  Kill him, Rhys. Kill him and be done with it.

  It’s not that easy, was his even reply. Not without searching this ship, searching him for that source of the spell on our power, and breaking it.

  But if he lingered much longer … I had no doubt the king had some nasty surprise waiting. Designed to spring shut at any moment. I knew Rhys was aware of it, too.

  Knew, because he rallied his magic, assessing and weighing, an asp readying to strike.

  “The last report I received from Amarantha,” the king went on, sliding his hands into his pockets, “she was still enjoying you.” The soldiers laughed.

  My mate was used to it—that laughter. Even if it made me want to roar at them, rend them to pieces. But Rhys didn’t so much as grit his teeth, though the king gave him a smile that told me he was well aware of what sort of scars lingered. What my mate had done to keep Amarantha distracted. Why he’d done it.

  Rhys smirked. “Too bad it didn’t end so pleasantly for her.” His magic slithered through the ship, hunting down that tether for the power holding back our forces …

  Kill him—kill him now. The word was a chant in my blood, my mind.

  In his, too. I could hear it, clear as my own thoughts.

  “Such a remarkable girl—your mate,” the king mused. No emotion, not so much as a bit of anger beyond that cold amusement. “First Amarantha, then my pet, the Attor … And then she broke past all the wards around my palace to aid your escape. Not to mention …” A low laugh. “My niece and nephew.” Rage—that was rage starting to blacken in his eyes. “She savaged Dagdan and Brannagh—and for what reason?”

  “Perhaps you should ask Tamlin.” Rhys raised a brow. “Where is he, by the way?”

  “Tamlin.” Hybern savored the name, the sound of it. “He has plans for you, after what you and your mate did to him. His court. What a mess for him to clean up—though she certainly made it easier for me to plant more of my troops in his lands.”

  Mother above—Mother above, I’d done that—

  “She’ll be happy to hear that.”

  Too long. Rhys had lingered too long, and facing him now … Fight or run. Run or fight.

  “Where did her gifts come from, I wonder? Or who?”

  The king knew. What I was. What I possessed.

  “I’m a lucky male to have her as my mate.”

  The king smiled again. “For the little time you have remaining.”

  I could have sworn Rhys blocked out the words.

  The king went on casually, “It will take everything, you know. To try to stop me. Everything you have. And it still won’t be enough. And when you have given everything and you are dead, Rhysand, when your mate is mourning over your corpse, I am going to take her.”

  Rhys didn’t let a flicker of emotion show, sliding on that cool, amused mask over the roaring rage that surrounded me at the thought, the threat. That settled before me like a beast ready to lunge, to defend. “She defeated Amarantha and the Attor,” Rhys countered. “I doubt you’ll be much of an effort, either.”

  “We’ll see. Perhaps I’ll give her to Tamlin when I’m done.”

  Fury heated Rhys’s blood. And my own.

  Strike or flee, Rhys, I begged again. But do it now.

  Rhys rallied his power, and I felt it rise within him, felt him grappling to sustain his grip on it.

  “The spell will wear off,” the king said, waving a hand. “Another little trick I picked up while rotting away in Hybern.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rhys said mildly.

&nbs
p; They only smiled at each other.

  And then Rhys asked, “Why?”

  The king knew what he meant.

  “There was room at the table for everyone, you and your ilk claimed.” The king snorted. “For humans, lesser faeries, for half-breeds. In this new world of yours, there was room at the table for everyone—so long as they thought like you. But the Loyalists … How you delighted in shutting us out. Looking down your noses at us.” He gestured to the soldiers monitoring them, the battle in the bay. “You want to know why? Because we suffered—when you stifled us, when you shut us out.” Some of his soldiers grunted their agreement. “I have no interest in spending another five centuries seeing my people bow before human pigs—seeing them claw out a living while you shield and coddle those mortals, granting them our resources and wealth in exchange for nothing.” He inclined his head. “So we shall reclaim what is ours. What was always ours, and will always be ours.”

  Rhys offered him a sly grin. “You can certainly try.”

  My mate didn’t bother saying more as he hurled a slender javelin of power at him, the shot as precise as an arrow.

  And when it reached the king—

  It went right through him.

  He rippled—then steadied.

  An illusion. A shade.

  The king rumbled a laugh. “Did you think I’d appear at this battle myself?” He waved a hand toward the soldiers still watching. “A taste—this battle is only a taste for you. To whet your appetite.”

  Then he was gone.

  The magic leaking from the boat, the oily sheen it’d laid over Rhys’s power … it vanished, too.

  Rhys allowed the Hybern soldiers aboard the ship, aboard the ones around him, the honor of at least lifting their blades.

  Then he turned them all into nothing but red mist and splinters floating on the waves.

  CHAPTER

  38

  Mor was shaking me. I only knew it because Rhys threw me out of his mind the moment he unleashed himself upon those soldiers.

  You were here too long, was all he said, caressing a dark talon down my face. Then I was out, stumbling down the bond, his shield slamming shut behind me.

  “Feyre,” Mor was saying, fingers digging into my shoulders through my leathers. “Feyre.”

  I blinked, the sun and blood and narrow street coming into focus.

  Blinked—and then vomited all over the cobblestones between us.

  People, shaken and petrified, only stared.

  “This way,” Mor said, and looped her arm around my waist as she led me into a dusty, empty alley. Far from watching eyes. I barely took in the city and bay and sea beyond—barely noticed that a mighty maelstrom of darkness and water and wind was now shoving Hybern’s fleet back over the horizon. As if Tarquin’s and Rhys’s powers had been unleashed by the king’s vanishing.

  I made it to a pile of fallen stones from the half-wrecked building beside us when I vomited again. And again.

  Mor put a hand on my back, rubbing soothing circles as I retched. “I did the same after my first battle. We all did.”

  It wasn’t even a battle—not in the way I’d pictured: army against army on some unremarkable battlefield, chaotic and muddy. Even the real battle today had been out on the sea—where the Illyrians were now sailing inland.

  I couldn’t bear to start counting how many made the return trip.

  I didn’t know how Mor or Rhys or Cassian or Azriel could bear it.

  And what I’d just seen … “The king was here,” I breathed.

  Mor’s hand stilled on my back. “What?”

  I leaned my brow against the sun-warmed brick of the building before me and told her—what I’d seen in Rhys’s mind.

  The king—he had been here and yet not here. Another trick—another spell. No wonder Rhys hadn’t been able to attack his mind: the king hadn’t been present to do so.

  I closed my eyes as I finished, pressing my brow harder into the brick.

  Blood and sweat still coated me. I tried to remember the usual fit of my soul in my body, the priority of things, my way of looking at the world. What to do with my limbs in the stillness. How did I usually position my hands without a blade between them? How did I stop moving?

  Mor squeezed my shoulder, as if she understood the racing thoughts, the foreignness of my body. The War had raged for seven years. Years. How long would this one last?

  “We should find the others,” she said, and helped me straighten before winnowing us back to the palace towering high above.

  I couldn’t bring myself to send another thought down the bond. See where Rhys was. I didn’t want him to see me—feel me—in such a state. Even if I knew he wouldn’t judge.

  He, too, had spilled blood on the battlefield today. And many others before it. All of my friends had.

  And I could understand—just for a heartbeat, as the wind tore around us—why some rulers, human and Fae, had bowed before Hybern. Bowed, rather than face this.

  It wasn’t only the cost of life that ripped and devastated and sundered. It was the altering of a soul with it—the realization that I could perhaps go back home to Velaris, perhaps see peace achieved and cities rebuilt … but this battle, this war … I would be the thing forever changed.

  War would linger with me long after it had ended, some invisible scar that would perhaps fade, but never wholly vanish.

  But for my home, for Prythian and the human territory and so many others …

  I would clean my blades, and wash the blood from my skin.

  And I would do it again and again and again.

  The middle level of the palace was a flurry of motion: blood-drenched Summer Court soldiers limped around healers and servants rushing to the injured being laid on the floor.

  The stream through the center of the hall ran red.

  More and more winnowed in, borne by wide-eyed High Fae.

  A few Illyrians—just as bloody but eyes clear—hauled in their own wounded through the open windows and balcony doors.

  Mor and I scanned the space, the throngs of people, the reek of death and screams of the injured.

  I tried to swallow, but my mouth was too dry. “Where are—”

  I recognized the warrior the same moment he spied me.

  Varian, kneeling over an injured soldier with his thigh in ribbons, went utterly still as our eyes met. His brown skin was splattered in blood as bright as the rubies they’d sent to us, his white hair plastered to his head, as if he’d just chucked off his helmet.

  He whistled through his teeth, and a soldier appeared at his side, taking up his position of tying a tourniquet around the hurt male’s thigh. The Prince of Adriata rose to his feet.

  I did not have any magic left in me to shield. After seeing Rhys with the king, there was only an empty pit where my fear had been a wild sea within me. But I felt Mor’s power slide into place between us.

  There was a death-promise on my head. From them.

  Varian approached—slowly. Stiffly. As if his entire body ached. Though his handsome face revealed nothing. Only bone-weary exhaustion.

  His mouth opened—then shut. I didn’t have words, either.

  So Varian rasped, his voice hoarse enough that I knew he’d been screaming for a long, long time, “He’s in the oak dining room.”

  The one where I had first dined with them.

  I just nodded at the prince and began easing my way through the crowd, Mor keeping close to my side.

  I’d thought Varian meant Rhysand.

  But it was Tarquin who stood in gore-flecked silver armor at the dining table, maps and charts before him, Summer Court Fae either blood-soaked or pristine filling the sunny chamber.

  The High Lord of the Summer Court looked up from the table as we paused on the threshold. Took in me, then Mor.

  The kindness, the consideration that I had last seen on the High Lord’s face was gone. Replaced by a grim, cold thing that made my stomach turn.

  Blood had clotted from a thick
slice down his neck, the caked bits crumbling away as Tarquin glanced to the people in the room and said, “Leave us.”

  No one even dared glance twice at him as they filed out.

  I had done a horrible thing the last time we were here. I had lied, and stolen. I had torn into his mind and tricked him into believing me innocent. Harmless. I did not blame him for the blood ruby he had sent. But if he sought to exact his vengeance now …

  “I heard you two cleared the palace. And helped clear the island.”

  His words were low—lifeless.

  Mor inclined her head. “Your soldiers fought bravely beside us.”

  Tarquin ignored her, his crushing turquoise eyes upon me. Taking in the blood, the wounds, the leathers. Then the mating band on my finger, the star sapphire dull, blood crusted between the delicate folds and arcs of metal.

  “I thought you came to finish the job,” Tarquin said to me.

  I didn’t dare move.

  “I heard Tamlin took you. Then I heard the Spring Court fell. Collapsed from within. Its people in revolt. And you had vanished. And when I saw the Illyrian legion sweeping in … I thought you had come for me, too. To help Hybern finish us off.”

  Varian had not told him—of the message he’d snuck to Amren. Not a call for aid, but a frantic warning for Amren to save herself. Tarquin hadn’t known that we’d be coming.

  “We would never ally with Hybern,” Mor said.

  “I am talking to Feyre Archeron.”

  I’d never heard Tarquin use that tone. Mor bristled, but said nothing.

  “Why?” Tarquin demanded, sunlight glinting on his armor—whose delicate, overlapping scales were fashioned after a fish’s.

  I didn’t know what he meant. Why had we deceived and stolen from him? Why had we come to help? Why to both?

  “Our dreams are the same,” was all I could think to say.

  A united realm, in which lesser faeries were no longer shoved down. A better world.

  The opposite of what Hybern fought for. What his allies fought for.