2_-_court_of_mist_and_fury_a_-_sarah_j._maas

Then darkness swept in, soothing, gentle darkness—no, shade—and a sweat-slick male
body halted before me. Gentle fingers lifted my chin until I looked up … at Rhysand’s
face.
His wings had wrapped around us, cocooned us, the sunlight casting the membrane in
gold and red. Beyond us, outside, in another world, maybe, the sounds of steel on steel—
Cassian and Azriel sparring—began.
“You will feel that way every day for the rest of your life,” Rhysand said. This close, I
could smell the sweat on him, the sea-and-citrus scent beneath it. His eyes were soft. I
tried to look away, but he held my chin firm. “And I know this because I have felt that
way every day since my mother and sister were slaughtered and I had to bury them
myself, and even retribution didn’t fix it.” He wiped away the tears on one cheek, then
another. “You can either let it wreck you, let it get you killed like it nearly did with the
Weaver, or you can learn to live with it.”
For a long moment, I just stared at the open, calm face—maybe his true face, the one
beneath all the masks he wore to keep his people safe. “I’m sorry—about your family,” I
rasped.
“I’m sorry I didn’t find a way to spare you from what happened Under the Mountain,”
Rhys said with equal quiet. “From dying. From wanting to die.” I began to shake my head,
but he said, “I have two kinds of nightmares: the ones where I’m again Amarantha’s
whore or my friends are … And the ones where I hear your neck snap and see the light
leave your eyes.”
I had no answer to that—to the tenor in his rich, deep voice. So I examined the tattoos
on his chest and arms, the glow of his tan skin, so golden now that he was no longer caged
inside that mountain.
I stopped my perusal when I got to the vee of muscles that flowed beneath the waist of
his leather pants. Instead, I flexed my hand in front of me, my skin warm from the heat
that had burned through those pads.
“Ah,” he said, wings sweeping back as he folded them gracefully behind him. “That.”
I squinted at the flood of sunlight. “Autumn Court, right?”
He took my hand, examining it, the skin already bruised from sparring. “Right. A gift
from its High Lord, Beron.”
Lucien’s father. Lucien—I wondered what he made of all this. If he missed me. If
Ianthe continued to … prey on him.
Still sparring, Cassian and Azriel were trying their best not to look like they were
eavesdropping.
“I’m not well versed in the complexities of the other High Lords’ elemental gifts,” Rhys
said, “but we can figure it out—day by day, if need be.”
“If you’re the most powerful High Lord in history … does that mean the drop I got from
you holds more sway over the others?” Why I’d been able to break into his head that one