2_-_court_of_mist_and_fury_a_-_sarah_j._maas

In, out—don’t make a sound. Find whatever object it was and snatch it from beneath a
blind person’s nose.
And then run like hell.
Mossy earth paved the way to the front door, already cracked slightly. A bit of cheese.
And I was the foolish mouse about to fall for it.
Eyes twinkling, Rhys mouthed, Good luck.
I gave him a vulgar gesture and slowly, silently made my way toward the front door.
The woods seemed to monitor each of my steps. When I glanced behind, Rhys was
gone.
He hadn’t said if he’d interfere if I were in mortal peril. I probably should have asked.
I avoided any leaves and stones, falling into a pattern of movement that some part of my
body—some part that was not born of the High Lords—remembered.
Like waking up. That’s what it felt like.
I passed the well. Not a speck of dirt, not a stone out of place. A perfect, pretty trap, that
mortal part of me warned. A trap designed from a time when humans were prey; now laid
for a smarter, immortal sort of game.
I was not prey any longer, I decided as I eased up to that door.
And I was not a mouse.
I was a wolf.
I listened on the threshold, the rock worn as if many, many boots had passed through—
and perhaps never passed back over again. The words of her song became clear now, her
voice sweet and beautiful, like sunlight on a stream:
“There were two sisters, they went playing,
To see their father’s ships come sailing …
And when they came unto the sea-brim
The elder did push the younger in.”
A honeyed voice, for an ancient, horrible song. I’d heard it before—slightly different,
but sung by humans who had no idea that it had come from faerie throats.
I listened for another moment, trying to hear anyone else. But there was only a clatter
and thrum of some sort of device, and the Weaver’s song.
“Sometimes she sank, and sometimes she swam,
’Til her corpse came to the miller’s dam.”
My breath was tight in my chest, but I kept it even—directing it through my mouth in
silent breaths. I eased open the front door, just an inch.