2_-_court_of_mist_and_fury_a_-_sarah_j._maas

garnishing his chicken into the air above the table. With a flick of his finger, it turned to
citrus-scented mist.
“Through the blood-rain,” Rhys went on as I shut out the image of what it’d do to a
body, what he could do, “my mother looked at him. And the bond fell into place for her.
My father took her back to the Night Court that evening and made her his bride. She loved
her people, and missed them, but never forgot what they had tried to do to her—what they
did to the females among them. She tried for decades to get my father to ban it, but the
War was coming, and he wouldn’t risk isolating the Illyrians when he needed them to lead
his armies. And to die for him.”
“A real prize, your father,” Mor grumbled.
“At least he liked you,” Rhys countered, then clarified for me, “my father and mother,
despite being mates, were wrong for each other. My father was cold and calculating, and
could be vicious, as he had been trained to be since birth. My mother was soft and fiery
and beloved by everyone she met. She hated him after a time—but never stopped being
grateful that he had saved her wings, that he allowed her to fly whenever and wherever she
wished. And when I was born, and could summon the Illyrian wings as I pleased … She
wanted me to know her people’s culture.”
“She wanted to keep you out of your father’s claws,” Mor said, swirling her wine, her
shoulders loosening as Azriel at last blinked, and seemed to shake off whatever memory
had frozen him.
“That, too,” Rhys added drily. “When I turned eight, my mother brought me to one of
the Illyrian war-camps. To be trained, as all Illyrian males were trained. And like all
Illyrian mothers, she shoved me toward the sparring ring on the first day, and walked away
without looking back.”
“She abandoned you?” I found myself saying.
“No—never,” Rhys said with a ferocity I’d heard only a few times, one of them being
this afternoon. “She was staying at the camp as well. But it is considered an
embarrassment for a mother to coddle her son when he goes to train.”
My brows lifted and Cassian laughed. “Backward, like he said,” the warrior told me.
“I was scared out of my mind,” Rhys admitted, not a shade of shame to be found. “I’d
been learning to wield my powers, but Illyrian magic was a mere fraction of it. And it’s
rare amongst them—usually possessed only by the most powerful, pure-bred warriors.”
Again, I looked at the slumbering Siphons atop the warriors’ hands. “I tried to use a
Siphon during those years,” Rhys said. “And shattered about a dozen before I realized it
wasn’t compatible—the stones couldn’t hold it. My power flows and is honed in other
ways.”
“So difficult, being such a powerful High Lord,” Mor teased.
Rhys rolled his eyes. “The camp-lord banned me from using my magic. For all our
sakes. But I had no idea how to fight when I set foot into that training ring that day. The
other boys in my age group knew it, too. Especially one in particular, who took a look at