A Court of Thorns and Roses

by Sarah J. Maas

  I lifted my brows in silent question.

  “Feyre, for Cauldron’s sake. I drug you, but you don’t wonder why I never touch you beyond your waist or arms?”

  Until tonight—until that damned kiss. I gritted my teeth, but even as my anger rose, a picture cleared.

  “It’s the only claim I have to innocence,” he said, “the only thing that will make Tamlin think twice before entering into a battle with me that would cause a catastrophic loss of innocent life. It’s the only way I can convince him I was on your side. Believe me, I would have liked nothing more than to enjoy you—but there are bigger things at stake than taking a human woman to my bed.”

  I knew, but I still asked, “Like what?”

  “Like my territory,” he said, and his eyes held a far-off look that I hadn’t yet seen. “Like my remaining people, enslaved to a tyrant queen who can end their lives with a single word. Surely Tamlin expressed similar sentiments to you.” He hadn’t—not entirely. He hadn’t been able to, thanks to the curse.

  “Why did Amarantha target you?” I dared ask. “Why make you her whore?”

  “Beyond the obvious?” He gestured to his perfect face. When I didn’t smile, he loosed a breath. “My father killed Tamlin’s father—and his brothers.”

  I started. Tamlin had never said—never told me the Night Court was responsible for that.

  “It’s a long story, and I don’t feel like getting into it, but let’s just say that when she stole our lands out from under us, Amarantha decided that she especially wanted to punish the son of her friend’s murderer—decided that she hated me enough for my father’s deeds that I was to suffer.”

  I might have reached a hand toward him, might have offered my apologies—but every thought had dried up in my head. What Amarantha had done to him …

  “So,” he said wearily, “here we are, with the fate of our immortal world in the hands of an illiterate human.” His laugh was unpleasant as he hung his head, cupping his forehead in a hand, and closed his eyes. “What a mess.”

  Part of me searched for the words to wound him in his vulnerability, but the other half recalled all that he had said, all that he had done, how his head had snapped to the door before he’d kissed me. He’d known Amarantha was coming. Maybe he’d done it to make her jealous, but maybe …

  If he hadn’t been kissing me, if he hadn’t shown up and interrupted us, I would have gone out into that throne room covered in smudged paint. And everyone—especially Amarantha—would have known what I’d been up to. It wouldn’t have taken much to figure out whom I’d been with, especially not once they saw the paint on Tamlin. I didn’t want to consider what the punishment might have been.

  Regardless of his motives or his methods, Rhysand was keeping me alive. And had done so even before I set foot Under the Mountain.

  “I’ve told you too much,” he said as he got to his feet. “Perhaps I should have drugged you first. If you were clever, you’d find a way to use this against me. And if you had any stomach for cruelty, you’d go to Amarantha and tell her the truth about her whore. Perhaps she’d give you Tamlin for it.” He slid his hands into the pockets of his black pants, but even as he faded into shadow, there was something in the curve of his shoulders that made me speak.

  “When you healed my arm … You didn’t need to bargain with me. You could have demanded every single week of the year.” My brows knit together as he turned, already half-consumed by the dark. “Every single week, and I would have said yes.” It wasn’t entirely a question, but I needed the answer.

  A half smile appeared on his sensuous lips. “I know,” he said, and vanished.

  Chapter 43

  For my final task, I was given my old tunic and pants—stained and torn and reeking—but despite my stench, I kept my chin high as I was escorted to the throne room.

  The doors were flung open, and the silence of the room assaulted me. I waited for the jeers and shouts, waited to see gold flash as the onlookers placed their bets, but this time the faeries just stared at me, the masked ones especially intently.

  Their world rested on my shoulders, Rhys had said. But I didn’t think it was worry alone that was spread across their features. I had to swallow hard as a few of them touched their fingers to their lips, then extended their hands to me—a gesture for the fallen, a farewell to the honored dead. There was nothing malicious about it. Most of these faeries belonged to the courts of the High Lords—had belonged to those courts long before Amarantha seized their lands, their lives. And if Tamlin and Rhysand were playing games to keep us alive …

  I strode up the path they’d cleared—straight for Amarantha. The queen smiled when I stopped in front of her throne. Tamlin was in his usual place beside her, but I wouldn’t look at him—not yet.

  “Two trials lie behind you,” Amarantha said, picking at a fleck of dust on her blood-red gown. Her black hair shone, a gleaming darkness that threatened to swallow up her golden crown. “And only one more awaits. I wonder if it will be worse to fail now—when you are so close.” She gave me a pout, and we both awaited the laughter of the faeries.

  But only a few laughs hissed from the red-skinned guards. Everyone else remained silent. Even Lucien’s miserable brothers. Even Rhysand, wherever he was in the crowd.

  I blinked to clear my burning eyes. Perhaps, like Rhysand’s, their oaths of allegiance and betting on my life and nastiness had been a show. And perhaps now—now that the end was imminent—they, too, would face my potential death with whatever dignity they had left.

  Amarantha glared at them, but when her gaze fell upon me, she smiled broadly, sweetly. “Any words to say before you die?”

  I came up with a plethora of curses, but I instead looked at Tamlin. He didn’t react—his features were like stone. I wished that I could glimpse his face—if only for a moment. But all I needed to see were those green eyes.

  “I love you,” I said. “No matter what she says about it, no matter if it’s only with my insignificant human heart. Even when they burn my body, I’ll love you.” My lips trembled, and my vision clouded before several warm tears slipped down my chilled face. I didn’t wipe them away.

  He didn’t react—he didn’t even grip the arms of his throne. I supposed that was his way of enduring it, even if it made my chest cave in. Even if his silence killed me.

  Amarantha said sweetly, “You’ll be lucky, my darling, if we even have enough left of you to burn.”

  I stared at her long and hard. But her words were not met with jeers or smiles or applause from the crowd. Only silence.

  It was a gift that gave me courage, that made me bunch my fists, that made me embrace the tattoo on my arm. I had beaten her until now, fairly or not, and I would not feel alone when I died. I would not die alone. It was all I could ask for.

  Amarantha propped her chin on a hand. “You never figured out my riddle, did you?” I didn’t respond, and she smiled. “Pity. The answer is so lovely.”

  “Get it over with,” I growled.

  Amarantha looked at Tamlin. “No final words to her?” she said, quirking an eyebrow. When he didn’t respond, she grinned at me. “Very well, then.” She clapped her hands twice.

  A door swung open, and three figures—two male and one female—with brown sacks tied over their heads were dragged in by the guards. Their concealed faces turned this way and that as they tried to discern the whispers that rippled across the throne room. My knees bent slightly as they approached.

  With sharp jabs and blunt shoves, the red-skinned guards forced the three faeries to their knees at the foot of the dais, but facing me. Their bodies and clothes revealed nothing of who they were.

  Amarantha clapped her hands again, and three servants clad in black appeared at the side of each of the kneeling faeries. In their long, pale hands, they each carried a dark velvet pillow. And on each pillow lay a single polished wooden dagger. Not metal for a blade, but ash. Ash, because—

  “Your final task, Feyre,” Amarantha dra
wled, gesturing to the kneeling faeries. “Stab each of these unfortunate souls in the heart.”

  I stared at her, my mouth opening and closing.

  “They’re innocent—not that it should matter to you,” she went on, “since it wasn’t a concern the day you killed Tamlin’s poor sentinel. And it wasn’t a concern for dear Jurian when he butchered my sister. But if it’s a problem … well, you can always refuse. Of course, I’ll take your life in exchange, but a bargain’s a bargain, is it not? If you ask me, though, given your history with murdering our kind, I do believe I’m offering you a gift.”

  Refuse and die. Kill three innocents and live. Three innocents, for my own future. For my own happiness. For Tamlin and his court and the freedom of an entire land.

  The wood of the razor-sharp daggers had been polished so expertly that it gleamed beneath the colored glass chandeliers.

  “Well?” she asked. She lifted her hand, letting Jurian’s eye get a good look at me, at the ash daggers, and purred to it, “I wouldn’t want you to miss this, old friend.”

  I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t like hunting; it wasn’t for survival or defense. It was cold-blooded murder—the murder of them, of my very soul. But for Prythian—for Tamlin, for all of them here, for Alis and her boys … I wished I knew the name of one of our forgotten gods so that I might beg them to intercede, wished I knew any prayers at all to plead for guidance, for absolution.

  But I did not know those prayers, or the names of our forgotten gods—only the names of those who would remain enslaved if I did not act. I silently recited those names, even as the horror of what knelt before me began to swallow me whole. For Prythian, for Tamlin, for their world and my own … These deaths would not be wasted—even if it would damn me forever.

  I stepped up to the first kneeling figure—the longest and most brutal step I’d ever taken. Three lives in exchange for Prythian’s liberation—three lives that would not be spent in vain. I could do this. I could do this, even with Tamlin watching. I could make this sacrifice—sacrifice them … I could do this.

  My fingers trembled, but the first dagger wound up in my hand, its hilt cool and smooth, the wood of the blade heavier than I’d expected. There were three daggers, because she wanted me to feel the agony of reaching for that knife again and again. Wanted me to mean it.

  “Not so fast.” Amarantha chuckled, and the guards who held the first kneeling figure snatched the hood off its face.

  It was a handsome High Fae youth. I didn’t know him, I’d never seen him, but his blue eyes were pleading. “That’s better,” Amarantha said, waving her hand again. “Proceed, Feyre, dear. Enjoy it.”

  His eyes were the color of a sky I’d never see again if I refused to kill him, a color I’d never get out of my mind, never forget no matter how many times I painted it. He shook his head, those eyes growing so large that white showed all around. He would never see that sky, either. And neither would these people, if I failed.

  “Please,” he whispered, his focus darting between the ash dagger and my face. “Please.”

  The dagger shook between my fingers, and I clenched it tighter. Three faeries—that’s all that stood between me and freedom, before Tamlin would be unleashed upon Amarantha. If he could destroy her … Not in vain, I told myself. Not in vain.

  “Don’t,” the faerie youth begged when I lifted the dagger. “Don’t!”

  I took a gasping breath, my lips shaking as I quailed. Saying “I’m sorry” wasn’t enough. I’d never been able to say it to Andras—and now … now …

  “Please!” he said, and his eyes lined with silver.

  Someone in the crowd began weeping. I was taking him away from someone who possibly loved him as much as I loved Tamlin.

  I couldn’t think about it, couldn’t think about who he was, or the color of his eyes, or any of it. Amarantha was grinning with wild, triumphant glee. Kill a faerie, fall in love with a faerie, then be forced to kill a faerie to keep that love. It was brilliant and cruel, and she knew it.

  Darkness rippled near the throne, and then Rhysand was there, arms crossed—as if he’d moved to better see. His face was a mask of disinterest, but my hand tingled. Do it, the tingling said.

  “Don’t,” the young faerie moaned. I began shaking my head. I couldn’t listen to him. I had to do it now, before he convinced me otherwise. “Please!” His voice rose to a shriek.

  The sound jarred me so much that I lunged.

  With a ragged sob, I plunged the dagger into his heart.

  He screamed, thrashing in the guards’ grip as the blade cleaved through flesh and bone, smooth as if it were real metal and not ash, and blood—hot and slick—showered my hand. I wept, yanking out the dagger, the reverberations of his bones against the blade stinging my hand.

  His eyes, full of shock and hate, remained on me as he sagged, damning me, and that person in the crowd let out a keening wail.

  My bloody dagger clacked on the marble floor as I stumbled back several steps.

  “Very good,” Amarantha said.

  I wanted to get out of my body; I had to escape the stain of what I’d done; I had to get out—I couldn’t endure the blood on my hands, the sticky warmth between my fingers.

  “Now the next. Oh, don’t look so miserable, Feyre. Aren’t you having fun?”

  I faced the second figure, still hooded. A female this time. The faerie in black extended the pillow with the clean dagger, and the guards holding her tore off her hood.

  Her face was simple, and her hair was gold-brown, like mine. Tears were already rolling down her round cheeks, and her bronze eyes tracked my bloody hand as I reached for the second knife. The cleanness of the wooden blade mocked the blood on my fingers.

  I wanted to fall to my knees to beg her forgiveness, to tell her that her death wouldn’t be for naught. Wanted to, but there was such a rift running through me now that I could hardly feel my hands, my shredded heart. What I’d done—

  “Cauldron save me,” she began whispering, her voice lovely and even—like music. “Mother hold me,” she went on, reciting a prayer similar to one I’d heard once before, when Tamlin eased the passing of that lesser faerie who’d died in the foyer. Another of Amarantha’s victims. “Guide me to you.” I was unable to raise my dagger, unable to take the step that would close the distance between us. “Let me pass through the gates; let me smell that immortal land of milk and honey.”

  Silent tears slid down my face and neck, where they dampened the filthy collar of my tunic. As she spoke, I knew I would be forever barred from that immortal land. I knew that whatever Mother she meant would never embrace me. In saving Tamlin, I was to damn myself.

  I couldn’t do this—couldn’t lift that dagger again.

  “Let me fear no evil,” she breathed, staring at me—into me, into the soul that was cleaving itself apart. “Let me feel no pain.”

  A sob broke from my lips. “I’m sorry,” I moaned.

  “Let me enter eternity,” she breathed.

  I wept as I understood. Kill me now, she was saying. Do it fast. Don’t make it hurt. Kill me now. Her bronze eyes were steady, if not sorrowful. Infinitely, infinitely worse than the pleading of the dead faerie beside her.

  I couldn’t do it.

  But she held my gaze—held my gaze and nodded.

  As I lifted the ash dagger, something inside me fractured so completely that there would be no hope of ever repairing it. No matter how many years passed, no matter how many times I might try to paint her face.

  More faeries wailed now—her kinsmen and friends. The dagger was a weight in my hand—my hand, shining and coated with the blood of that first faerie.

  It would be more honorable to refuse—to die, rather than murder innocents. But … but …

  “Let me enter eternity,” she repeated, lifting her chin. “Fear no evil,” she whispered—just for me. “Feel no pain.”

  I gripped her delicate, bony shoulder and drove the dagger into her heart.

>   She gasped, and blood spilled onto the ground like a splattering of rain. Her eyes were closed when I looked at her face again. She slumped to the floor and didn’t move.

  I went somewhere far, far away from myself.

  The faeries were stirring now—shifting, many whispering and weeping. I dropped the dagger, and the knock of ash on marble roared in my ears. Why was Amarantha still smiling, with only one person left between myself and freedom? I glanced at Rhysand, but his attention was fixed upon Amarantha.

  One faerie—and then we were free. Just one more swing of my arm.

  And maybe one more after that—maybe one more swing, up and inward and into my own heart.

  It would be a relief—a relief to end it by my own hand, a relief to die rather than face this, what I’d done.

  The faerie servant offered the last dagger, and I was about to reach for it when the guard removed the hood from the male kneeling before me.

  My hands slackened at my sides. Amber-flecked green eyes stared up at me.

  Everything came crashing down, layer upon layer, shattering and breaking and crumbling, as I gazed at Tamlin.

  I whipped my head to the throne beside Amarantha’s, still occupied by my High Lord, and she laughed as she snapped her fingers. The Tamlin beside her transformed into the Attor, smiling wickedly at me.

  Tricked—deceived by my own senses again. Slowly, my soul ripping further from me, I turned back to Tamlin. There was only guilt and sorrow in his eyes, and I stumbled away, almost falling as I tripped over my feet.

  “Something wrong?” Amarantha asked, cocking her head.

  “Not … Not fair,” I got out.

  Rhysand’s face had gone pale—so, so pale.

  “Fair?” Amarantha mused, playing with Jurian’s bone on her necklace. “I wasn’t aware you humans knew of the concept. You kill Tamlin, and he’s free.” Her smile was the most hideous thing I’d ever seen. “And then you can have him all to yourself.”