2_-_court_of_mist_and_fury_a_-_sarah_j._maas

CHAPTER
34
Mercifully, there was no sound from his closed bedroom. And no sounds came out of it
during that night, when I jolted awake from a nightmare of being turned over a spit, and
couldn’t remember where I was.
Moonlight danced on the sea beyond my open windows, and there was silence—such
silence.
A weapon. I was a weapon to find that book, to stop the king from breaking the wall, to
stop whatever he had planned for Jurian and the war that might destroy my world. That
might destroy this place—and a High Lord who might very well overturn the order of
things.
For a heartbeat, I missed Velaris, missed the lights and the music and the Rainbow. I
missed the cozy warmth of the town house to welcome me in from the crisp winter,
missed … what it had been like to be a part of their little unit.
Maybe wrapping his wings around me, writing me notes, had been Rhys’s way of
ensuring his weapon didn’t break beyond repair.
That was fine—fair enough. We owed each other nothing beyond our promises to work
and fight together.
He could still be my friend. Companion—whatever this thing was between us. His
taking someone to his bed didn’t change those things.
It’d just been a relief to think that for a moment, he might have been as lonely as me.
I didn’t have the nerve to come out of my room for breakfast, to see if Rhys had returned.
To see whom he came to breakfast with.
I had nothing else to do, I told myself as I lay in bed, until my lunchtime visit with
Tarquin. So I stayed there until the servants came in, apologized for disturbing me, and
started to leave. I stopped them, saying I’d bathe while they cleaned the room. They were
polite—if nervous—and merely nodded as I did as I’d claimed.
I took my time in the bath. And behind the locked door, I let that kernel of Tarquin’s
power come out, first making the water rise from the tub, then shaping little animals and
creatures out of it.
It was about as close to transformation as I’d let myself go. Contemplating how I might
give myself animalistic features only made me shaky, sick. I could ignore it, ignore that
occasional scrape of claws in my blood for a while yet.