2_-_court_of_mist_and_fury_a_-_sarah_j._maas

I was on to water-butterflies flitting through the room when I realized I’d been in the
tub long enough that the bath had gone cold.
Like the night before, Nuala walked through the walls from wherever she was staying in
the palace, and dressed me, somehow attuned to when I’d be ready. Cerridwen, she told
me, had drawn the short stick and was seeing to Amren. I didn’t have the nerve to ask
about Rhys, either.
Nuala selected seafoam green accented with rose gold, curling and then braiding back
my hair in a thick, loose plait glimmering with bits of pearl. Whether Nuala knew why I
was there, what I’d be doing, she didn’t say. But she took extra care of my face,
brightening my lips with raspberry pink, dusting my cheeks with the faintest blush. I
might have looked innocent, charming—were it not for my gray-blue eyes. More hollow
than they’d been last night, when I’d admired myself in the mirror.
I’d seen enough of the palace to navigate to where Tarquin had said to meet before we
bid good night. The main hall was situated on a level about halfway up—the perfect
meeting place for those who dwelled in the spires above and those who worked unseen
and unheard below.
This level held all the various council rooms, ballrooms, dining rooms, and whatever
other rooms might be needed for visitors, events, gatherings. Access to the residential
levels from which I’d come was guarded by four soldiers at each stairwell—all of whom
watched me carefully as I waited against a seashell pillar for their High Lord. I wondered
if he could sense that I’d been playing with his power in the bathtub, that the piece of him
he’d yielded was now here and answering to me.
Tarquin emerged from one of the adjacent rooms as the clock struck two—followed by
my own companions.
Rhysand’s gaze swept over me, noting the clothes that were obviously in honor of my
host and his people. Noting the way I did not meet his eyes, or Cresseida’s, as I looked
solely at Tarquin and Amren beside him—Varian now striding off to the soldiers at the
stairs—and gave them both a bland, close-lipped smile.
“You’re looking well today,” Tarquin said, inclining his head.
Nuala, it seemed, was a spectacularly good spy. Tarquin’s pewter tunic was accented
with the same shade of seafoam green as my clothes. We might as well have been a
matching set. I supposed with my brown-gold hair and pale skin, I was his mirror
opposite.
I could feel Rhys still assessing me.
I shut him out. Maybe I’d send a water-dog barking after him later—let it bite him in
the ass.
“I hope I’m not interrupting,” I said to Amren.
Amren shrugged her slim shoulders, clad in flagstone gray today. “We were finishing up
a rather lively debate about armadas and who might be in charge of a unified front. Did