2_-_court_of_mist_and_fury_a_-_sarah_j._maas

wide for you—and then shut you inside, turn you into their willing slave.”
A chill went down my spine at the thought. But what he’d shown me …
“Rule two,” he said, his face hard as stone, “when—”
“When was that,” I blurted. I knew him well enough not to doubt its truth. “When did
that happen between you?”
The ice remained in his eyes. “A hundred years ago. At the Court of Nightmares. I
allowed her to visit after she’d begged for years, insisting she wanted to build ties between
the Night Court and the priestesses. I’d heard rumors about her nature, but she was young
and untried, and I hoped that perhaps a new High Priestess might indeed be the change her
order needed. It turned out that she was already well trained by some of her lessbenevolent
sisters.”
I swallowed hard, my heart thundering. “She—she didn’t act that way at …”
Lucien.
Lucien had hated her. Had made vague, vicious allusions to not liking her, to being
approached by her—
I was going to throw up. Had she … had she pursued him like that? Had he … had he
been forced to say yes because of her position?
And if I went back to the Spring Court one day … How would I ever convince Tamlin
to dismiss her? What if, now that I was gone, she was—
“Rule two,” Rhys finally went on, “be prepared to see things you might not like.”
Only fifty years later, Amarantha had come. And done exactly to Rhys what he’d
wanted to kill Ianthe for. He’d let it happen to him. To keep them safe. To keep Azriel and
Cassian from the nightmares that would haunt him forever, from enduring any more pain
than what they’d suffered as children …
I lifted my head to ask him more. But Rhys had vanished.
Alone, I peeled off my clothes, struggling with the buckles and straps he’d put on me—
when had it been? An hour or two ago?
It felt as if a lifetime had passed. And I was now a certified Book-tracker, it seemed.
Better than a party-planning wife for breeding little High Lords. What Ianthe had
wanted to make me—to serve whatever agenda she had.
The bath was indeed hot, as he’d promised. And I mulled over what he’d shown me,
seeing that hand again and again reach between his legs, the ownership and arrogance in
that gesture—
I shut out the memory, the bath water suddenly cold.