2_-_court_of_mist_and_fury_a_-_sarah_j._maas

Something in my chest broke at Elain’s voice from the hall behind her.
At the sweetness and youth and kindness, untouched by Prythian, unaware of what I’d
done, become—
I backed away a step. I couldn’t do this. Couldn’t bring this upon them.
Then Elain’s face appeared over Mrs. Laurent’s round shoulder.
Beautiful—she’d always been the most beautiful of us. Soft and lovely, like a summer
dawn.
Elain was exactly as I’d remembered her, the way I’d made myself remember her in
those dungeons, when I told myself that if I failed, if Amarantha crossed the wall, she’d be
next. The way she’d be next if the King of Hybern shattered the wall, if I didn’t get the
Book of Breathings.
Elain’s golden-brown hair was half up, her pale skin creamy and flushed with color, and
her eyes, like molten chocolate, were wide as they took me in.
They filled with tears and silently overran, spilling down those lovely cheeks.
Mrs. Laurent didn’t yield an inch. She’d shut this door in my face the moment I so
much as breathed wrong.
Elain lifted a slender hand to her mouth as her body shook with a sob.
“Elain,” I said hoarsely.
Footsteps on the sweeping stairs behind them, then—
“Mrs. Laurent, draw up some tea and bring it to the drawing room.”
The housekeeper looked to the stairs, then to Elain, then to me.
A phantom in the snow.
The woman merely gave me a look that promised death if I harmed my sisters as she
turned into the house, leaving me before Elain, still quietly crying.
But I took a step over the threshold and looked up the staircase.
To where Nesta stood, a hand braced on the rail, staring as if I were a ghost.
The house was beautiful, but there was something untouched about it. Something new,
compared to the age and worn love of Rhys’s homes in Velaris.
And seated before the carved marble sitting room hearth, my hood on, hands
outstretched toward the roaring fire, I felt … felt like they had let in a wolf.
A wraith.
I had become too big for these rooms, for this fragile mortal life, too stained and wild
and … powerful. And I was about to bring that permanently into their lives as well.
Where Rhys, Cassian, and Azriel were, I didn’t know. Perhaps they stood as shadows in