2_-_court_of_mist_and_fury_a_-_sarah_j._maas

Shadowsinger. Yes—the title, whatever it meant, seemed to fit.
“Like the daemati,” Rhys said to me, “shadowsingers are rare—coveted by courts and
territories across the world for their stealth and predisposition to hear and feel things
others can’t.”
Perhaps those shadows were indeed whispering to him, then. Azriel’s cold face yielded
nothing.
Cassian said, “The camp lord practically shit himself with excitement the day Az was
dumped in our camp. But me … once my mother weaned me and I was able to walk, they
flew me to a distant camp, and chucked me into the mud to see if I would live or die.”
“They would have been smarter throwing you off a cliff,” Mor said, snorting.
“Oh, definitely,” Cassian said, that grin going razor-sharp. “Especially because when I
was old and strong enough to go back to the camp I’d been born in, I learned those pricks
worked my mother until she died.”
Again that silence fell—different this time. The tension and simmering anger of a unit
who had endured so much, survived so much … and felt each other’s pain keenly.
“The Illyrians,” Rhys smoothly cut in, that light finally returning to his gaze, “are
unparalleled warriors, and are rich with stories and traditions. But they are also brutal and
backward, particularly in regard to how they treat their females.”
Azriel’s eyes had gone near-vacant as he stared at the wall of windows behind me.
“They’re barbarians,” Amren said, and neither Illyrian male objected. Mor nodded
emphatically, even as she noted Azriel’s posture and bit her lip. “They cripple their
females so they can keep them for breeding more flawless warriors.”
Rhys cringed. “My mother was low-born,” he told me, “and worked as a seamstress in
one of their many mountain war-camps. When females come of age in the camps—when
they have their first bleeding—their wings are … clipped. Just an incision in the right
place, left to improperly heal, can cripple you forever. And my mother—she was gentle
and wild and loved to fly. So she did everything in her power to keep herself from
maturing. She starved herself, gathered illegal herbs—anything to halt the natural course
of her body. She turned eighteen and hadn’t yet bled, to the mortification of her parents.
But her bleeding finally arrived, and all it took was for her to be in the wrong place, at the
wrong time, before a male scented it on her and told the camp’s lord. She tried to flee—
took right to the skies. But she was young, and the warriors were faster, and they dragged
her back. They were about to tie her to the posts in the center of camp when my father
winnowed in for a meeting with the camp’s lord about readying for the War. He saw my
mother thrashing and fighting like a wildcat, and …” He swallowed. “The mating bond
between them clicked into place. One look at her, and he knew what she was. He misted
the guards holding her.”
My brows narrowed. “Misted?”
Cassian let out a wicked chuckle as Rhys floated a lemon wedge that had been