2_-_court_of_mist_and_fury_a_-_sarah_j._maas

scarred hand to me. The shape of it was normal—but the skin … It looked like it had been
swirled and smudged and rippled. Burns. They must have been horrific if even their
immortal blood had not been able to heal them.
The leather plates of his light armor flowed over most of it, held by a loop around his
middle finger. Not to conceal, I realized as his hand breached the chill night air between
us. No, it was to hold in place the large, depthless cobalt stone that graced the back of the
gauntlet. A matching one lay atop his left hand; and twin red stones adorned Cassian’s
gauntlets, their color like the slumbering heart of a flame.
I took Azriel’s hand, and his rough fingers squeezed mine. His skin was as cold as his
face.
But the word Cassian had used a moment ago snagged my attention as I released his
hand and tried not to look too eager to step back to Rhys’s side. “You’re brothers?” The
Illyrians looked similar, but only in the way that people who had come from the same
place did.
Rhysand clarified, “Brothers in the sense that all bastards are brothers of a sort.”
I’d never thought of it that way. “And—you?” I asked Cassian.
Cassian shrugged, wings tucking in tighter. “I command Rhys’s armies.”
As if such a position were something that one shrugged off. And—armies. Rhys had
armies. I shifted on my feet. Cassian’s hazel eyes tracked the movement, his mouth
twitching to the side, and I honestly thought he was about to give me his professional
opinion on how doing so would make me unsteady against an opponent when Azriel
clarified, “Cassian also excels at pissing everyone off. Especially amongst our friends. So,
as a friend of Rhysand … good luck.”
A friend of Rhysand—not savior of their land, not murderer, not human-faerie-thing.
Maybe they didn’t know—
But Cassian nudged his bastard-brother-whatever out of the way, Azriel’s mighty wings
flaring slightly as he balanced himself. “How the hell did you make that bone ladder in the
Middengard Wyrm’s lair when you look like your own bones can snap at any moment?”
Well, that settled that. And the question of whether he’d been Under the Mountain. But
where he’d been instead … Another mystery. Perhaps here—with these people. Safe and
coddled.
I met Cassian’s gaze, if only because having Rhysand defend me might very well make
me crumble a bit more. And maybe it made me as mean as an adder, maybe I relished
being one, but I said, “How the hell did you manage to survive this long without anyone
killing you?”
Cassian tipped back his head and laughed, a full, rich sound that bounced off the ruddy
stones of the House. Azriel’s brows flicked up with approval as the shadows seemed to
wrap tighter around him. As if he were the dark hive from which they flew and returned.
I tried not to shudder and faced Rhys, hoping for an explanation about his spymaster’s