2_-_court_of_mist_and_fury_a_-_sarah_j._maas

Part of me had wondered if Cassian and Varian might need to compare notes.
Most afternoons … if Rhys was around, I’d train with him. Mind to mind, power to
power. We slowly worked through the gifts I’d been given—flame and water, ice and
darkness. There were others, we knew, that had gone undiscovered, undelved. Winnowing
still remained impossible. I hadn’t been able to do it since that snowy morning with the
Attor.
It’d take time, Rhys told me each day, when I’d inevitably snap at him—time, to learn
and master each one.
He infused each lesson with information about the High Lords whose power I’d stolen:
about Beron, the cruel and vain High Lord of the Autumn Court; about Kallias, the quiet
and cunning High Lord of Winter; about Helion Spell-Cleaver, the High Lord of Day,
whose one thousand libraries had been personally looted by Amarantha, and whose clever
people excelled at spell work and archived the knowledge of Prythian.
Knowing who my power had come from, Rhys said, was as important as learning the
nature of the power itself. We never spoke of shape-shifting—of the talons I could
sometimes summon. The threads that went along with us looking at that gift were too
tangled, the unspoken history too violent and bloody.
So I learned the other courts’ politics and histories, and learned their masters’ powers,
until my waking and sleeping hours were spent with flame singeing my mouth and
hoarfrost cracking between my fingers. And each night, exhausted from a day of training
my body and powers, I tumbled into a heavy sleep, laced with jasmine-scented darkness.
Even my nightmares were too tired to hound me.
On the days when Rhys was called elsewhere, to deal with the inner workings of his
own court, to remind them who ruled them or mete out judgment, to prepare for our
inevitable visit to Hybern, I would read, or sit with Amren while she worked on the Book,
or stroll through Velaris with Mor. The latter was perhaps my favorite, and the female
certainly excelled at finding ways to spend money. I’d peeked only once at the account
Rhys had set up for me—just once, and realized he was grossly, grossly overpaying me.
I tried not to be disappointed on those afternoons that he was gone, tried not to admit
that I’d begun looking forward to it—mastering my powers, and … bantering with him.
But even when he was gone, he would talk to me, in the notes that had become our own
strange secret.
One day, he’d written to me from Cesere, a small city in the northeast where he was
meeting with the few surviving priestesses to discuss rebuilding after their temple had
been wrecked by Hybern’s forces. None of the priestesses were like Ianthe, he’d promised.
Tell me about the painting.
I’d written back from my seat in the garden, the fountain finally revived with the return
of milder weather, There’s not much to say.
Tell me about it anyway.