But in between the intricate decorations, I’d painted them. Bits and pieces of Mor, and Cassian, and Azriel, and Amren … and Rhys.
Mor went up to the large hearth, where I’d painted the mantel in black shimmering with veins of gold and red. Up close, it was a solid, pretty bit of paint. But from the couch … “Illyrian wings,” she said. “Ugh, they’ll never stop gloating about it.”
But she went to the window, which I’d framed in tumbling strands of gold and brass and bronze. Mor fingered her hair, cocking her head. “Nice,” she said, surveying the room again.
Her eyes fell on the open threshold to the bedroom hallway, and she grimaced. “Why,” she said, “are Amren’s eyes there?”
Indeed, right above the door, in the center of the archway, I’d painted a pair of glowing silver eyes. “Because she’s always watching.”
Mor snorted. “That simply won’t do. Paint my eyes next to hers. So the males of this family will know we’re both watching them the next time they come up here to get drunk for a week straight.”
“They do that?”
“They used to.” Before Amarantha. “Every autumn, the three of them would lock themselves in this house for five days and drink and drink and hunt and hunt, and they’d come back to Velaris looking halfway to death but grinning like fools. It warms my heart to know that from now on, they’ll have to do it with me and Amren staring at them.”
A smile tugged on my lips. “Who does this paint belong to?”
“Amren,” Mor said, rolling her eyes. “We were all here one summer, and she wanted to teach herself to paint. She did it for about two days before she got bored and decided to start hunting poor creatures instead.”
A quiet chuckle rasped out of me. I strode to the table, which I’d used as my main surface for blending and organizing paints. And maybe I was a coward, but I kept my back to her as I said, “Any news from my sisters?”
Mor started rifling through the cabinets, either to look for food or assess what I needed. She said over a shoulder, “No. Not yet.”
“Is he … hurt?” I’d left him in the freezing mud, injured and working the poison out of his system. I’d tried not to dwell on it while I’d painted.
“Still recovering, but fine. Pissed at me, of course, but he can shove it.”
I combined Mor’s yellow gold with the red I’d used for the Illyrian wings, and blended until vibrant orange emerged. “Thank you—for not telling him I was here.”
A shrug. Food began popping onto the counter: fresh bread, fruit, containers of something that I could smell from across the kitchen and made me nearly groan with hunger. “You should talk to him, though. Make him stew over it, of course, but … hear him out.” She didn’t look at me as she spoke. “Rhys always has his reasons, and he might be arrogant as all hell, but he’s usually right about his instincts. He makes mistakes, but … You should hear him out.”
I’d already decided that I would, but I said, “How was your visit to the Court of Nightmares?”
She paused, her face going uncharacteristically pale. “Fine. It’s always a delight to see my parents. As you might guess.”
“Is your father healing?” I added the cobalt of Azriel’s Siphons to the orange and mixed until a rich brown appeared.
A small, grim smile. “Slowly. I might have snapped some more bones when I visited. My mother has since banished me from their private quarters. Such a shame.”
Some feral part of me beamed in savage delight at that. “A pity indeed,” I said. I added a bit of frost white to lighten the brown, checked it against the gaze she slid to me, and grabbed a stool to stand on as I began painting the threshold. “Rhys really makes you do this often? Endure visiting them?”
Mor leaned against the counter. “Rhys gave me permission the day he became High Lord to kill them all whenever I pleased. I attend these meetings, go to the Court of Nightmares, to … remind them of that sometimes. And to keep communication between our two courts flowing, however strained it might be. If I were to march in there tomorrow and slaughter my parents, he wouldn’t blink. Perhaps be inconvenienced by it, but … he would be pleased.”
I focused on the speck of caramel brown I painted beside Amren’s eyes. “I’m sorry—for all that you endured.”
“Thank you,” she said, coming over to watch me. “Visiting them always leaves me raw.”
“Cassian seemed concerned.” Another prying question.
She shrugged. “Cassian, I think, would also savor the opportunity to shred that entire court to pieces. Starting with my parents. Maybe I’ll let him do it one year as a present. Him and Azriel both. It’d make a perfect solstice gift.”
I asked perhaps a bit too casually. “You told me about the time with Cassian, but did you and Azriel ever … ?”
A sharp laugh. “No. Azriel? After that time with Cassian, I swore off any of Rhys’s friends. Azriel’s got no shortage of lovers, though, don’t worry. He’s better at keeping them secret than we are, but … he has them.”
“So if he were ever interested would you … ?”
“The issue, actually, wouldn’t be me. It’d be him. I could peel off my clothes right in front of him and he wouldn’t move an inch. He might have defied and proved those Illyrian pricks wrong at every turn, but it won’t matter if Rhys makes him Prince of Velaris—he’ll see himself as a bastard-born nobody, and not good enough for anyone. Especially me.”
“But … are you interested?”
“Why are you asking such things?” Her voice became tight, sharp. More wary than I’d ever heard.
“I’m still trying to figure out how you all work together.”
A snort, that wariness gone. I tried not to look too relieved. “We have five centuries of tangled history for you to sort through. Good luck.”
Indeed. I finished her eyes—honey brown to Amren’s quicksilver. But almost in answer, Mor declared, “Paint Azriel’s. Next to mine. And Cassian’s next to Amren’s.”
I lifted my brows.
Mor gave me an innocent smile. “So we can all watch over you.”
I just shook my head and hopped off the stool to start figuring out how to paint hazel eyes.
Mor said quietly, “Is it so bad—to be his mate? To be a part of our court, our family, tangled history and all?”
I blended the paint in the small dish, the colors swirling together like so many entwined lives. “No,” I breathed. “No, it’s not.”
And I had my answer.
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Mor stayed overnight, even going so far as to paint some rudimentary stick figures on the wall beside the storeroom door. Three females with absurdly long, flowing hair that all resembled hers; and three winged males, who she somehow managed to make look puffed up on their own sense of importance. I laughed every time I saw it.
She left after breakfast, having to walk out to where the no-winnowing shield ended, and I waved to her distant, shivering figure before she vanished into nothing.
I stared across the glittering white expanse, thawed enough that bald patches peppered it—revealing bits of winter-white grass reaching toward the blue sky and mountains. I knew summer had to eventually reach even this melting dreamland, for I’d found fishing poles and sporting equipment that suggested warm-weather usage, but it was hard to imagine snow and ice becoming soft grass and wildflowers.
Brief as a glimmering spindrift, I saw myself there: running through the meadow that slumbered beneath the thin crust of snow, splashing through the little streams already littering the floor, feasting on fat summer berries as the sun set over the mountains …
And then I would go home to Velaris, where I would finally walk through the artists’ quarter, and enter those shops and galleries and learn what they knew, and maybe—maybe one day—I would open my own shop. Not to sell my work, but to teach others.
Maybe teach the others who were like me: broken in places and trying to fight it—trying to learn who they were around th
e dark and pain. And I would go home at the end of every day exhausted but content—fulfilled.
Happy.
I’d go home every day to the town house, to my friends, chock full of stories of their own days, and we’d sit around that table and eat together.
And Rhysand …
Rhysand …
He would be there. He’d give me the money to open my own shop; and because I wouldn’t charge anyone, I’d sell my paintings to pay him back. Because I would pay him back, mate or no.
And he’d be here during the summer, flying over the meadow, chasing me across the little streams and up the sloped, grassy mountainside. He would sit with me under the stars, feeding me fat summer berries. And he would be at that table in the town house, roaring with laughter—never again cold and cruel and solemn. Never again anyone’s slave or whore.
And at night … At night we’d go upstairs together, and he would whisper stories of his adventures, and I’d whisper about my day, and …
And there it was.
A future.
The future I saw for myself, bright as the sunrise over the Sidra.
A direction, and a goal, and an invitation to see what else immortality might offer me. It did not seem so listless, so empty, anymore.
And I would fight until my last breath to attain it—to defend it.
So I knew what I had to do.
Five days passed, and I painted every room in the cottage. Mor had winnowed in extra paint before she’d left, along with more food than I could possibly eat.
But after five days, I was sick of my own thoughts for company—sick of waiting, sick of the thawing, dripping snow.
Thankfully, Mor returned that night, banging on the door, thunderous and impatient.
I’d taken a bath an hour before, scrubbing off paint in places I hadn’t even known it was possible to smear it, and my hair was still drying as I flung open the door to the blast of cool air.
But Mor wasn’t leaning against the threshold.
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I stared at Rhys.
He stared at me.
His cheeks were tinged pink with cold, his dark hair ruffled, and he honestly looked freezing as he stood there, wings tucked in tight.
And I knew that one word from me, and he’d go flying off into the crisp night. That if I shut the door, he’d go and not push it.
His nostrils flared, scenting the paint behind me, but he didn’t break his stare. Waiting.
Mate.
My—mate.
This beautiful, strong, selfless male … Who had sacrificed and wrecked himself for his family, his people, and didn’t feel it was enough, that he wasn’t enough for anyone … Azriel thought he didn’t deserve someone like Mor. And I wondered if Rhys … if he somehow felt the same about me. I stepped aside, holding the door open for him.
I could have sworn I felt a pulse of knee-wobbling relief through the bond.
But Rhys took in the painting I’d done, gobbling down the bright colors that now made the cottage come alive, and said, “You painted us.”
“I hope you don’t mind.”
He studied the threshold to the bedroom hallway. “Azriel, Mor, Amren, and Cassian,” he said, marking the eyes I’d painted. “You do know that one of them is going to paint a moustache under the eyes of whoever pisses them off that day.”
I clamped my lips to keep the smile in. “Oh, Mor already promised to do that.”
“And what about my eyes?”
I swallowed. All right, then. No dancing around it.
My heart was pounding so wildly I knew he could hear it. “I was afraid to paint them.”
Rhys faced me fully. “Why?”
No more games, no more banter. “At first, because I was so mad at you for not telling me. Then because I was worried I’d like them too much and find that you … didn’t feel the same. Then because I was scared that if I painted them, I’d start wishing you were here so much that I’d just stare at them all day. And it seemed like a pathetic way to spend my time.”
A twitch of his lips. “Indeed.”
I glanced at the shut door. “You flew here.”
He nodded. “Mor wouldn’t tell me where you’d gone, and there are only so many places that are as secure as this one. Since I didn’t want our Hybern friends tracking me to you, I had to do it the old-fashioned way. It took … a while.”
“You’re—better?”
“Healed completely. Quickly, considering the bloodbane. Thanks to you.”
I avoided his stare, turning for the kitchen. “You must be hungry. I’ll heat something up.”
Rhys straightened. “You’d—make me food?”
“Heat,” I said. “I can’t cook.”
It didn’t seem to make a difference. But whatever it was, the act of offering him food … I dumped some cold soup into a pan and lit the burner. “I don’t know the rules,” I said, my back to him. “So you need to explain them to me.”
He lingered in the center of the cabin, watching my every move. He said hoarsely, “It’s an … important moment when a female offers her mate food. It goes back to whatever beasts we were a long, long time ago. But it still matters. The first time matters. Some mated pairs will make an occasion of it—throwing a party just so the female can formally offer her mate food … That’s usually done amongst the wealthy. But it means that the female … accepts the bond.”
I stared into the soup. “Tell me the story—tell me everything.”
He understood my offer: tell me while I cooked, and I’d decide at the end whether or not to offer him that food.
A chair scraped against the wood floor as he sat at the table. For a moment, there was only silence, interrupted by the clack of my spoon against the pot.
Then Rhys said, “I was captured during the War. By Amarantha’s army.”
I paused my stirring, my gut twisting.
“Cassian and Azriel were in different legions, so they had no idea that my forces and I had been taken prisoner. And that Amarantha’s captains held us for weeks, torturing and slaughtering my warriors. They put ash bolts through my wings, and they had those same chains from the other night to keep me down. Those chains are one of Hybern’s greatest assets—stone delved from deep in their land, capable of nullifying a High Fae’s powers. Even mine. So they chained me up between two trees, beating me when they felt like it, trying to get me to tell them where the Night Court forces were, using my warriors—their deaths and pain—to break me.
“Only I didn’t break,” he said roughly, “and they were too dumb to know that I was an Illyrian, and all they had to do to get me to yield would have been to try to cut off my wings. And maybe it was luck, but they never did. And Amarantha … She didn’t care that I was there. I was yet another High Lord’s son, and Jurian had just slaughtered her sister. All she cared about was getting to him—killing him. She had no idea that every second, every breath, I plotted her death. I was willing to make it my last stand: to kill her at any cost, even if it meant shredding my wings to break free. I’d watched the guards and learned her schedule, so I knew where she’d be. I set a day, and a time. And I was ready—I was so damned ready to make an end of it, and wait for Cassian and Azriel and Mor on the other side. There was nothing but my rage, and my relief that my friends weren’t there. But the day before I was to kill Amarantha, to make my final stand and meet my end, she and Jurian faced each other on the battlefield.”
He paused, swallowing.
“I was chained in the mud, forced to watch as they battled. To watch as Jurian took my killing blow. Only—she slaughtered him. I watched her rip out his eye, then rip off his finger, and when he was prone, I watched her drag him back to the camp. Then I listened to her slowly, over days and days, tear him apart. His screaming was endless. She was so focused on torturing him that she didn’t detect my father’s arrival. In the panic, she killed Jurian rather than see him liberated, and fled. So my father rescued me—and told his men, told
Azriel, to leave the ash spikes in my wings as punishment for getting caught. I was so injured that the healers informed me if I tried to fight before my wings healed, I’d never fly again. So I was forced to return home to recover—while the final battles were waged.
“They made the Treaty, and the wall was built. We’d long ago freed our slaves in the Night Court. We didn’t trust the humans to keep our secrets, not when they bred so quickly and frequently that my forefathers couldn’t hold all their minds at once. But our world was changed nonetheless. We were all changed by the War. Cassian and Azriel came back different; I came back different. We came here—to this cabin. I was still so injured that they carried me here between them. We were here when the messages arrived about the final terms of the Treaty.
“They stayed with me when I roared at the stars that Amarantha, for all she had done, for every crime committed, would go unpunished. That the King of Hybern would go unpunished. Too much killing had occurred on either side for everyone to be brought to justice, they said. Even my father gave me an order to let it go—to build toward a future of co-existence. But I never forgave what Amarantha had done to my warriors. And I never forgot it, either. Tamlin’s father—he was her friend. And when my father slaughtered him, I was so damn smug that perhaps she’d feel an inkling of what I’d felt when she murdered my soldiers.”
My hands were shaking as I stirred the soup. I’d never known … never thought …
“When Amarantha returned to these shores centuries later, I still wanted to kill her. The worst part was, she didn’t even know who I was. Didn’t even remember that I was the High Lord’s son that she’d held captive. To her, I was merely the son of the man who had killed her friend—I was just the High Lord of the Night Court. The other High Lords were convinced she wanted peace and trade. Only Tamlin mistrusted her. I hated him, but he’d known Amarantha personally—and if he didn’t trust her … I knew she hadn’t changed.
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