2_-_court_of_mist_and_fury_a_-_sarah_j._maas

Then I was back in my body, seething at him. “Was that a trick?”
His voice was hoarse as he lowered his hand from my face. “No.” He angled his head to
the side. “How did you get through it? My shield.”
I didn’t know what he was talking about. I hadn’t done anything. Just … slipped. And I
didn’t want to talk about it, not here, not with him. I stormed into a walk, my legs—so
damn thin, so useless—burning with every step up the steep hill.
He gripped my elbow, again with that considerate gentleness, but strong enough to
make me pause. “How many other minds have you accidentally slipped into?”
Lucien—
“Lucien?” A short laugh. “What a miserable place to be.”
A low snarl rippled from me. “Do not go into my head.”
“Your shield is down.” I hauled it back up. “You might as well have been shouting his
name at me.” Again, that contemplative angling of his head. “Perhaps you having my
power … ” He chewed on his bottom lip, then snorted. “It’d make sense, of course, if the
power came from me—if my own shield sometimes mistook you for me and let you slip
past. Fascinating.”
I debated spitting on his boots. “Take your power back. I don’t want it.”
A sly smile. “It doesn’t work that way. The power is bound to your life. The only way to
get it back would be to kill you. And since I like your company, I’ll pass on the offer.” We
walked a few steps before he said, “You need to be vigilant about keeping your mental
wards up. Especially now that you’ve seen Velaris. If you ever go somewhere else, beyond
these lands, and someone slipped into your mind and saw this place …” A muscle
quivered in his jaw. “We’re called daemati—those of us who can walk into another
person’s mind as if we were going from one room to another. We’re rare, and the trait
appears as the Mother wills it, but there are enough of us scattered throughout the world
that many—mostly those in positions of influence—extensively train against our skill set.
If you were to ever encounter a daemati without those shields up, Feyre, they’d take
whatever they wanted. A more powerful one could make you their unwitting slave, make
you do whatever they wanted and you’d never know it. My lands remain mystery enough
to outsiders that some would find you, among other things, a highly valuable source of
information.”
Daemati—was I now one if I, too, could do such things? Yet another damned title for
people to whisper as I passed. “I take it that in a potential war with Hybern, the king’s
armies wouldn’t even know to strike here?” I waved a hand to the city around us. “So,
what—your pampered people … those who can’t shield their minds—they get your
protection and don’t have to fight while the rest of us will bleed?”
I didn’t let him answer, and just increased my pace. A cheap shot, and childish, but …
Inside, inside I had become like that distant sea, relentlessly churning, tossed about by
squalls that tore away any sense of where the surface might be.