2_-_court_of_mist_and_fury_a_-_sarah_j._maas

Not an answer.
Rhys hadn’t expected to see them again when he’d been dragged Under the Mountain.
Yet he had kept them safe, somehow.
And it killed them—the four people at this table. It killed them all that he’d done it,
however he’d done it. Even Amren.
Perhaps not only for the fact that Rhys had endured Amarantha while they had been
here. Perhaps it was also for those left outside of the city, too. Perhaps picking one city,
one place, to shield was better than nothing. Perhaps … perhaps it was a comforting thing,
to have a spot in Prythian that remained untouched. Unsullied.
Mor’s voice was a bit raw as she explained to me, her golden combs glinting in the
light, “There is not one person in this city who is unaware of what went on outside these
borders. Or of the cost.”
I didn’t want to ask what price had been demanded. The pain that laced the heavy
silence told me enough.
Yet if they might all live through their pain, might still laugh … I cleared my throat,
straightening, and said to Azriel, who, shadows or no, seemed the safest and therefore was
probably the least so, “How did you meet?” A harmless question to feel them out, learn
who they were. Wasn’t it?
Azriel merely turned to Cassian, who was staring at Rhys with guilt and love on his
face, so deep and agonized that some now-splintered instinct had me almost reaching
across the table to grip his hand.
But Cassian seemed to process what I’d asked and his friend’s silent request that he tell
the story instead, and a grin ghosted across his face. “We all hated each other at first.”
Beside me, the light had winked out of Rhys’s eyes. What I’d asked about Amarantha,
what horrors I’d made him remember …
A confession for a confession—I thought he’d done it for my sake. Maybe he had things
he needed to voice, couldn’t voice to these people, not without causing them more pain
and guilt.
Cassian went on, drawing my attention from the silent High Lord at my right, “We are
bastards, you know. Az and I. The Illyrians … We love our people, and our traditions, but
they dwell in clans and camps deep in the mountains of the North, and do not like
outsiders. Especially High Fae who try to tell them what to do. But they’re just as
obsessed with lineage, and have their own princes and lords among them. Az,” he said,
pointing a thumb in his direction, his red Siphon catching the light, “was the bastard of
one of the local lords. And if you think the bastard son of a lord is hated, then you can’t
imagine how hated the bastard is of a war-camp laundress and a warrior she couldn’t or
wouldn’t remember.” His casual shrug didn’t match the vicious glint in his hazel eyes.
“Az’s father sent him to our camp for training once he and his charming wife realized he
was a shadowsinger.”