2_-_court_of_mist_and_fury_a_-_sarah_j._maas

CHAPTER
22
Word still hadn’t come from the Summer Court the following morning, so Rhysand made
good on his decision to bring us to the mortal realm.
“What does one wear, exactly, in the human lands?” Mor said from where she sprawled
across the foot of my bed. For someone who claimed to have been out drinking and
dancing until the Mother knew when, she appeared unfairly perky. Cassian and Azriel,
grumbling and wincing over breakfast, had looked like they’d been run over by wagons.
Repeatedly. Some small part of me wondered what it would be like to go out with them—
to see what Velaris might offer at night.
I rifled through the clothes in my armoire. “Layers,” I said. “They … cover everything
up. The décolletage might be a little daring depending on the event, but … everything else
gets hidden beneath skirts and petticoats and nonsense.”
“Sounds like the women are used to not having to run—or fight. I don’t remember it
being that way five hundred years ago.”
I paused on an ensemble of turquoise with accents of gold—rich, bright, regal. “Even
with the wall, the threat of faeries remained, so … surely practical clothes would have
been necessary to run, to fight any that crept through. I wonder what changed.” I pulled
out the top and pants for her approval.
Mor merely nodded—no commentary like Ianthe might have provided, no beatific
intervention.
I shoved away the thought, and the memory of what she’d tried to do to Rhys, and went
on, “Nowadays, most women wed, bear children, and then plan their children’s marriages.
Some of the poor might work in the fields, and a rare few are mercenaries or hired
soldiers, but … the wealthier they are, the more restricted their freedoms and roles
become. You’d think that money would buy you the ability to do whatever you pleased.”
“Some of the High Fae,” Mor said, pulling at an embroidered thread in my blanket, “are
the same.”
I slipped behind the dressing screen to untie the robe I’d donned moments before she’d
entered to keep me company while I prepared for our journey today.
“In the Court of Nightmares,” she went on, that voice falling soft and a bit cold once
more, “females are … prized. Our virginity is guarded, then sold off to the highest bidder
—whatever male will be of the most advantage to our families.”
I kept dressing, if only to give myself something to do while the horror of what I began
to suspect slithered through my bones and blood.