2_-_court_of_mist_and_fury_a_-_sarah_j._maas

Azriel came forward on feet as silent as a cat’s. “If humans are aware of the threat,
rallying against it, then that might give us an advantage when contacting the queens.”
Rhys was still watching me, as if he could see the weight that had pressed into me since
arriving here. The last time I’d been in this house, I’d been a woman in love—such frantic,
desperate love that I went back into Prythian, I went Under the Mountain, as a mere
human. As fragile as my sisters now seemed to me.
“Come,” Rhys said, offering me a subtle, understanding nod before motioning to lead
the way. “Let’s make this introduction.”
My sisters were standing by the window, the light of the chandeliers coaxing the gold in
their hair to glisten. So beautiful, and young, and alive—but when would that change?
How would it be to speak to them when I remained this way while their skin had grown
paper-thin and wrinkled, their backs curved with the weight of years, their white hands
speckled?
I would be barely into my immortal existence when theirs was wiped out like a candle
before a cold breath.
But I could give them a few good years—safe years—until then.
I crossed the room, the three males a step behind, the wooden floors as shining and
polished as a mirror beneath us. I had removed my cloak now that the servants were gone,
and it was to me—not the Illyrians—that my sisters first looked. At the Fae clothes, the
crown, the jewelry.
A stranger—this part of me was now a stranger to them.
Then they took in the winged males—or two of them. Rhys’s wings had vanished, his
leathers replaced with his fine black jacket and pants.
My sisters both stiffened at Cassian and Azriel, at those mighty wings tucked in tight to
powerful bodies, at the weapons, and then at the devastatingly beautiful faces of all three
males.
Elain, to her credit, did not faint.
And Nesta, to hers, did not hiss at them. She just took a not-so-subtle step in front of
Elain, and ducked her fisted hand behind her simple, elegant amethyst gown. The
movement did not go unnoticed by my companions.
I halted a good four feet away, giving my sisters breathing space in a room that had
suddenly been deprived of all air. I said to the males, “My sisters, Nesta and Elain
Archeron.”
I had not thought of my family name, had not used it, for years and years. Because even
when I had sacrificed and hunted for them, I had not wanted my father’s name—not when
he sat before that little fire and let us starve. Let me walk into the woods alone. I’d
stopped using it the day I’d killed that rabbit, and felt its blood stain my hands, the same
way the blood of those faeries had marred it years later like an invisible tattoo.