I cleaned off his bloody, dirty hand, bracing for the first flash of those claws. But his claws remained retracted, and he kept silent as I bound and wrapped his hand—surprisingly enough, there were no more than a few vicious cuts, none of them requiring stitching.
I secured the bandage in place and stepped away, bringing the bowl of bloody water to the deep sink in the back of the room. His eyes were a brand upon me as I finished cleaning, and the room became too small, too hot. He’d killed the Bogge and walked away relatively unscathed. If Tamlin was that powerful, then the High Lords of Prythian must be near-gods. Every mortal instinct in my body bleated in panic at the thought.
I was almost at the open door, stifling the urge to bolt back to my room, when he said, “You can’t write, yet you learned to hunt, to survive. How?”
I paused with my foot on the threshold. “That’s what happens when you’re responsible for lives other than your own, isn’t it? You do what you have to do.”
He was still sitting on the table, still straddling that inner line between the here and now and wherever he’d had to go in his mind to endure the fight with the Bogge. I met his feral and glowing stare.
“You aren’t what I expected—for a human,” he said.
I didn’t reply. And he didn’t say good-bye as I walked out.
The next morning, as I made my way down the grand staircase, I tried not to think too much about the clean-washed marble tiles on the floor below—no sign of the blood Tamlin had lost. I tried not to think too much at all about our encounter, actually.
When I found the front hall empty, I almost smiled—felt a ripple in that hollow emptiness that had been hounding me. Perhaps now, perhaps in this moment of quiet, I could at last look through the art on the walls, take time to observe it, learn it, admire it.
Heart racing at the thought, I was about to head toward a hall I had noted was nearly covered in painting after painting when low male voices floated out from the dining room.
I paused. The voices were tense enough that I made my steps silent as I slid into the shadows behind the open door. A cowardly, wretched thing to do—but what they were saying had me shoving aside any guilt.
“I just want to know what you think you’re doing.” It was Lucien—that familiar lazy viciousness coating each word.
“What are you doing?” Tamlin snapped. Through the space between the hinge and the door I could glimpse the two of them standing almost face-to-face. On Tamlin’s nonbandaged hand, his claws shone in the morning light.
“Me?” Lucien put a hand on his chest. “By the Cauldron, Tam—there isn’t much time, and you’re just sulking and glowering. You’re not even trying to fake it anymore.”
My brows rose. Tamlin turned away but whirled back a moment later, his teeth bared. “It was a mistake from the start. I can’t stomach it, not after what my father did to their kind, to their lands. I won’t follow in his footsteps—won’t be that sort of person. So back off.”
“Back off? Back off while you seal our fates and ruin everything? I stayed with you out of hope, not to watch you stumble. For someone with a heart of stone, yours is certainly soft these days. The Bogge was on our lands—the Bogge, Tamlin! The barriers between courts have vanished, and even our woods are teeming with filth like the puca. Are you just going to start living out there, slaughtering every bit of vermin that slinks in?”
“Watch your mouth,” Tamlin said.
Lucien stepped toward him, exposing his teeth as well. A pulsing kind of air hit me in the stomach, and a metallic stench filled my nose. But I couldn’t see any magic—only feel it. I couldn’t tell if that made it worse.
“Don’t push me, Lucien.” Tamlin’s tone became dangerously quiet, and the hair on the back of my neck stood as he emitted a growl that was pure animal. “You think I don’t know what’s happening on my own lands? What I’ve got to lose? What’s lost already?”
The blight. Perhaps it was contained, but it seemed it was still wreaking havoc—still a threat, and perhaps one they truly didn’t want me knowing about, either from lack of trust or because … because I was no one and nothing to them. I leaned forward, but as I did, my finger slipped and softly thudded against the door. A human might not have heard, but both High Fae whirled. My heart stumbled.
I stepped toward the threshold, clearing my throat as I came up with a dozen excuses to shield myself. I looked at Lucien and forced myself to smile. His eyes widened, and I had to wonder if it was because of that smile, or because I looked truly guilty. “Are you going out for a ride?” I said, feeling a bit sick as I gestured behind me with a thumb. I hadn’t planned on riding with him today, but it sounded like a decent excuse.
Lucien’s russet eye was bright, though the smile he gave me didn’t meet it. The face of Tamlin’s emissary—more court-trained and calculating than I’d seen him yet. “I’m unavailable today,” he said. He jerked his chin to Tamlin. “He’ll go with you.”
Tamlin shot his friend a look of disdain that he took few pains to hide. His usual baldric was armed with more knives than I’d seen before, and their ornate metal handles glinted as he turned to me, his shoulders tight. “Whenever you want to go, just say so.” The claws of his free hand slipped back under his skin.
No. I almost said it aloud as I turned pleading eyes to Lucien. Lucien merely patted my shoulder as he passed by. “Perhaps tomorrow, human.”
Alone with Tamlin, I swallowed hard.
He stood there, waiting.
“I don’t want to go for a hunt,” I finally said quietly. True. “I hate hunting.”
He cocked his head. “Then what do you want to do?”
Tamlin led me down the halls. A soft breeze laced with the scent of roses slipped in through the open windows to caress my face.
“You’ve been going for hunts,” Tamlin said at last, “but you really don’t have any interest in hunting.” He cast me a sidelong glance. “No wonder you two never catch anything.”
No trace of the hollow, cold warrior of the night before, or of the angry Fae noble of minutes before. Just Tamlin right now, it seemed.
I’d be a fool to let my guard down around Tamlin, to think that his acting naturally meant anything, especially when something was so clearly amiss at his estate. He’d taken down the Bogge—and that made him the most dangerous creature I’d ever encountered. I didn’t quite know what to make of him, and said somewhat stiltedly, “How’s your hand?”
He flexed his bandaged hand, studying the white bindings, stark and clean against his sun-kissed skin. “I didn’t thank you.”
“You don’t need to.”
But he shook his head, and his golden hair caught and held the morning light as if it were spun from the sun itself. “The Bogge’s bite was crafted to slow the healing of High Fae long enough to kill us. You have my gratitude.” When I shrugged it off, he added, “How did you learn to bind wounds like this? I can still use the hand, even with the wrappings.”
“Trial and error. I had to be able to pull a bowstring the next day.”
He was quiet as we turned down another sun-drenched marble hallway, and I dared to look at him. I found him carefully studying me, his lips in a thin line. “Has anyone ever taken care of you?” he asked quietly.
“No.” I’d long since stopped feeling sorry for myself about it.
“Did you learn to hunt in a similar manner—trial and error?”
“I spied on hunters when I could get away with it, and then practiced until I hit something. When I missed, we didn’t eat. So learning how to aim was the first thing I figured out.”
“I’m curious,” he said casually. The amber in his green eyes was glowing. Perhaps not all traces of that beast-warrior were gone. “Are you ever going to use that knife you stole from my table?”
I stiffened. “How did you know?”
Beneath the mask, I could have sworn his brows were raised. “I was trained to notice those things. But I could smell the fear on you, more than anything.
”
I grumbled, “I thought no one noticed.”
He gave me a crooked smile, more genuine than all the faked smiles and flattery he’d given me before. “Regardless of the Treaty, if you want to stand a chance at escaping my kind, you’ll need to think more creatively than stealing dinner knives. But with your affinity for eavesdropping, maybe you’ll someday learn something valuable.”
My ears flared with heat. “I—I wasn’t … Sorry,” I mumbled. But I ran through what I’d overheard. There was no point in pretending I hadn’t eavesdropped. “Lucien said you didn’t have much time. What did he mean? Are more creatures like the Bogge going to come here thanks to the blight?”
Tamlin went rigid, scanning the hall around us, taking in every sight and sound and scent. Then he shrugged, too stiff to be genuine. “I’m an immortal. I have nothing but time, Feyre.”
He said my name with such … intimacy. As if he weren’t a creature capable of killing monsters made from nightmares. I opened my mouth to demand more of an answer, but he cut me off. “The force plaguing our lands and powers—that, too, will pass someday, if we’re Cauldron-blessed. But yes—now that the Bogge entered these lands, I’d say it’s fair to assume others might follow it, especially if the puca was already so bold.”
If the borders between the courts were gone, though, as I’d heard Lucien say—if everything in Prythian was different, as Tamlin had claimed, thanks to this blight … Well, I didn’t want to be caught up in some brutal war or revolution. I doubted I’d survive very long.
Tamlin strode ahead and opened a set of double doors at the end of the hall. The powerful muscles of his back shifted beneath his clothes. I’d never forget what he was—what he was capable of. What he’d been trained to do, apparently.
“As requested,” he said, “the study.”
I saw what lay beyond him and my stomach twisted.
Chapter 13
Tamlin waved his hand, and a hundred candles sprang to life. Whatever Lucien had said about magic being drained and off-kilter thanks to the blight clearly hadn’t affected Tamlin as dramatically, or perhaps he’d been far more powerful to start with, if he could transform his sentries into wolves whenever he pleased. The tang of magic stung my senses, but I kept my chin high. That is, until I peered inside.
My palms began sweating as I took in the enormous, opulent study. Tomes lined each wall like the soldiers of a silent army, and couches, desks, and rich rugs were scattered throughout the room. But … it had been over a week since I left my family. Though my father had said never to return, though my vow to my mother was fulfilled, I could at least let them know I was safe—relatively safe. And warn them about the sickness sweeping across Prythian that might someday soon cross the wall.
There was only one method to convey it.
“Do you need anything else?” Tamlin asked, and I jerked. He still stood behind me.
“No,” I said, striding into the study. I couldn’t think about the casual power he’d just shown—the graceful carelessness with which he’d brought so many flames to life. I had to focus on the task at hand.
It wasn’t entirely my fault that I was scarcely able to read. Before our downfall, my mother had sorely neglected our education, not bothering to hire a governess. And after poverty struck and my elder sisters, who could read and write, deemed the village school beneath us, they didn’t bother to teach me. I could read enough to function—enough to form my letters, but so poorly that even signing my name was mortifying.
It was bad enough that Tamlin knew. I would think about how to get the letter to them once it was finished; perhaps I could beg a favor of him, or Lucien.
Asking them to write it would be too humiliating. I could hear their words: typical ignorant human. And since Lucien seemed convinced that I would turn spy the moment I could, he would no doubt burn the letter, and any I tried to write after. So I’d have to learn myself.
“I’ll leave you to it, then,” Tamlin said as our silence became too prolonged, too tense.
I didn’t move until he’d closed the doors, shutting me inside. My heartbeat pulsed throughout my body as I approached a shelf.
I had to take a break for dinner and to sleep, but I was back in the study before the dawn had fully risen. I’d found a small writing desk in a corner and gathered papers and ink. My finger traced a line of text, and I whispered the words.
“ ‘She grab-bed … grabbed her shoe, sta … nd … standing from her pos … po … ’ ” I sat back in my chair and pressed the heels of my palms into my eyes. When I felt less near to ripping out my hair, I took the quill and underlined the word: position.
With a shaking hand, I did my best to copy letter after letter onto the ever-growing list I kept beside the book. There were at least forty words on it, their letters malformed and barely legible. I would look up their pronunciations later.
I rose from the chair, needing to stretch my legs, my spine—or just to get away from that lengthy list of words I didn’t know how to pronounce and the permanent heat that now warmed my face and neck.
I suppose the study was more of a library, as I couldn’t see any of the walls thanks to the small labyrinths of stacks flanking the main area and a mezzanine dangling above, covered wall to wall in books. But study sounded less intimidating. I meandered through some of the stacks, following a trickle of sunlight to a bank of windows on the far side. I found myself overlooking a rose garden, filled with dozens of hues of crimson and pink and white and yellow.
I might have allowed myself a moment to take in the colors, gleaming with dew under the morning sun, had I not glimpsed the painting that stretched along the wall beside the windows.
Not a painting, I thought, blinking as I stepped back to view its massive expanse. No, it was … I searched for the word in that half-forgotten part of my mind. Mural. That’s what it was.
At first I could do nothing but stare at its size, at the ambition of it, at the fact that this masterpiece was tucked back here for no one to ever see, as if it was nothing—absolutely nothing—to create something like this.
It told a story with the way colors and shapes and light flowed, the way the tone shifted across the mural. The story of … of Prythian.
It began with a cauldron.
A mighty black cauldron held by glowing, slender female hands in a starry, endless night. Those hands tipped it over, golden sparkling liquid pouring out over the lip. No—not sparkling, but … effervescent with small symbols, perhaps of some ancient faerie language. Whatever was written there, whatever it was, the contents of the cauldron were dumped into the void below, pooling on the earth to form our world …
The map spanned the entirety of our world—not just the land on which we stood, but also the seas and the larger continents beyond. Each territory was marked and colored, some with intricate, ornate depictions of the beings who had once ruled over lands that now belonged to humans. All of it, I remembered with a shudder, all of the world had once been theirs—at least as far as they believed, crafted for them by the bearer of the cauldron. There was no mention of humans—no sign of us here. I supposed we’d been as low as pigs to them.
It was hard to look at the next panel. It was so simple, yet so detailed that, for a moment, I stood there on that battlefield, feeling the texture of the bloodied mud beneath me, shoulder to shoulder with the thousands of other human soldiers lined up, facing the faerie hordes who charged at us. A moment of pause before the slaughter.
The humans’ arrows and swords seemed so pointless against the High Fae in their glimmering armor, or the faeries bristling with claws and fangs. I knew—knew without another panel to explicitly show me—the humans hadn’t survived that particular battle. The smear of black on the panel beside it, tinged with glimmers of red, said enough.
Then another map, of a much-reduced faerie realm. Northern territories had been cut up and divided to make room for the High Fae, who had lost their lands to the south of the wall. Everything north of the
wall went to them; everything south was left as a blur of nothing. A decimated, forgotten world—as if the painter couldn’t be bothered to render it.
I scanned the various lands and territories now given to the High Fae. Still so much territory—such monstrous power spread across the entire northern part of our world. I knew they were ruled by kings or queens or councils or empresses, but I’d never seen a representation of it, of how much they’d been forced to concede to the South, and how crammed their lands now were in comparison.
Our massive island had fared well for Prythian by comparison, with only the bottom tip given over to us miserable humans. The bulk of the sacrifice was borne by the southernmost of the seven territories: a territory painted with crocuses and lambs and roses. Spring lands.
I took a step closer, until I could see the dark, ugly smear that acted as the wall—another spiteful touch by the painter. No markers in the human realm, nothing to indicate any of the larger towns or centers, but … I found the rough area where our village was, and the woods that separated it from the wall. Those two days’ journey seemed so small—too small—compared to the power lurking above us. I traced a line, my finger hovering over the paint, up over the wall, into these lands—the lands of the Spring Court. Again, no markers, but it was filled with touches of spring: trees in bloom, fickle storms, young animals … At least I was to live out my days in one of the more moderate courts, weather-wise. A small consolation.
I looked northward and stepped back again. The six other courts of Prythian occupied a patchwork of territories. Autumn, Summer, and Winter were easy enough to pick out. Then above them, two glowing courts: the southernmost one a softer, redder palate, the Dawn Court; above, in bright gold and yellow and blue, the Day Court. And above that, perched in a frozen mountainous spread of darkness and stars, the sprawling, massive territory of the Night Court.
A Court of Thorns and Roses Page 11