2_-_court_of_mist_and_fury_a_-_sarah_j._maas

“I’ll do it,” Elain said, taking a deep breath and squaring her shoulders. She didn’t wait
for either of us before she strode out, graceful as a doe.
Alone with Nesta, I said, “Is he good—the lord’s son she’s to marry?”
“She thinks he is. She loves him like he is.”
“And what do you think?”
Nesta’s eyes—my eyes, our mother’s eyes—met mine. “His father built a wall of stone
around their estate so high even the trees can’t reach over it. I think it looks like a prison.”
“Have you said anything to her?”
“No. The son, Graysen, is kind enough. As smitten with Elain as she is with him. It’s
the father I don’t like. He sees the money she has to offer their estate—and his crusade
against the Fae. But the man is old. He’ll die soon enough.”
“Hopefully.”
A shrug. Then Nesta asked, “Your High Lord … You went through all that”—she
waved a hand at me, my ears, my body—“and it still did not end well?”
I was heavy in my veins again. “That lord built a wall to keep the Fae out. My High
Lord wanted to keep me caged in.”
“Why? He let you come back here all those months ago.”
“To save me—protect me. And I think … I think what happened to him, to us, Under
the Mountain broke him.” Perhaps more than it had broken me. “The drive to protect at all
costs, even my own well-being … I think he wanted to stifle it, but he couldn’t. He
couldn’t let go of it.” There was … there was much I still had to do, I realized. To settle
things. Settle myself.
“And now you are at a new court.”
Not quite a question, but I said, “Would you like to meet them?”