2_-_court_of_mist_and_fury_a_-_sarah_j._maas

“I have this dream,” Rhys said as I retched again, holding my hair. “Where it’s not me
stuck under her, but Cassian or Azriel. And she’s pinned their wings to the bed with
spikes, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. She’s commanded me to watch, and I have
no choice but to see how I failed them.”
I clung to the toilet, spitting once, and reached up to flush. I watched the water swirl
away entirely before I twisted my head to look at him.
His fingers were gentle, but firm where he’d fisted them in my hair. “You never failed
them,” I rasped.
“I did … horrible things to ensure that.” Those violet eyes near-glowed in the dim light.
“So did I.” My sweat clung like blood—the blood of those two faeries—
I pivoted, barely turning in time. His other hand stroked long, soothing lines down the
curve of my back, as over and over I yielded my dinner. When the latest wave had ebbed, I
breathed, “The flames?”
“Autumn Court.”
I couldn’t muster a response. At some point, I leaned against the coolness of the nearby
bathtub and closed my eyes.
When I awoke, sun streamed through the windows, and I was in my bed—tucked in
tightly to the fresh, clean sheets.
I stared up at the sharp grassy slope of the small mountain, shivering at the veils of mist
that wafted past. Behind us, the land swept away to brutal cliffs and a violent pewter sea.
Ahead, nothing but a wide, flat-topped mountain of gray stone and moss.
Rhys stood at my side, a double-edged sword sheathed down his spine, knives strapped
to his legs, clothed in what I could only assume were Illyrian fighting leathers, based on
what Cassian and Azriel had worn the night before. The dark pants were tight, the scalelike
plates of leather worn and scarred, and sculpted to legs I hadn’t noticed were quite
that muscled. His close-fitting jacket had been built around the wings that were now fully
out, bits of dark, scratched armor added at the shoulders and forearms.
If his attire hadn’t told me enough about what we might be facing today—if my own,
similar attire hadn’t told me enough—all I needed was to take one look at the rock before
us and know it wouldn’t be pleasant. I’d been so distracted in the study an hour ago by
what Rhys had been writing as he drafted a careful request to visit the Summer Court that
I hadn’t thought to ask what to expect here. Not that Rhys had really bothered explaining
why he wanted to visit the Summer Court beyond “improving diplomatic relations.”
“Where are we?” I said, our first words since winnowing in a moment ago. Velaris had
been brisk, sunny. This place, wherever it was, was freezing, deserted, barren. Only rock
and grass and mist and sea.
“On an island in the heart of the Western Isles,” Rhysand said, staring up at the
mammoth mountain. “And that,” he said, pointing to it, “is the Prison.”