2_-_court_of_mist_and_fury_a_-_sarah_j._maas

Not just ordinary arrows, I realized as Rhys veered, snatching one out of the air. Others
bounced harmlessly off a shield he blasted up.
He studied the wood in his palm and dropped it with a hiss. Ash arrows. To kill faeries.
And now that I was one …
Faster than the wind, faster than death, Rhys shot for the ground. Flew, not winnowed,
because he wanted to know where our enemies were, didn’t want to lose them. The wind
bit my face, screeched in my ears, ripped at my hair with brutal claws.
Azriel and Cassian were already hurtling for us. Shields of translucent blue and red
encircled them—sending those arrows bouncing off. Their Siphons at work.
The arrows shot from the pine forest coating the mountains, then vanished.
Rhys slammed into the ground, snow flying in his wake, and fury like I hadn’t seen
since that day in Amarantha’s court twisted his features. I could feel it thrumming against
me, roiling through the clearing we now stood in.
Azriel and Cassian were there in an instant, their colored shields shrinking back into
their Siphons. The three of them forces of nature in the pine forest, Rhysand didn’t even
look at me as he ordered Cassian, “Take her to the palace, and stay there until I’m back.
Az, you’re with me.”
Cassian reached for me, but I stepped away. “No.”
“What?” Rhys snarled, the word near-guttural.
“Take me with you,” I said. I didn’t want to go to that moonstone palace to pace and
wait and wring my fingers.
Cassian and Azriel, wisely, kept their mouths shut. And Rhys, Mother bless him, only
tucked in his wings and crossed his arms—waiting to hear my reasons.
“I’ve seen ash arrows,” I said a bit breathlessly. “I might recognize where they were
made. And if they came from the hand of another High Lord … I can detect that, too.” If
they’d come from Tarquin … “And I can track just as well on the ground as any of you.”
Except for Azriel, maybe. “So you and Cassian take the skies,” I said, still waiting for the
rejection, the order to lock me up. “And I’ll hunt on the ground with Azriel.”
The wrath radiating through the snowy clearing ebbed into frozen, too-calm rage. But
Rhys said, “Cassian—I want aerial patrols on the sea borders, stationed in two-mile rings,
all the way out toward Hybern. I want foot soldiers in the mountain passes along the
southern border; make sure those warning fires are ready on every peak. We’re not going
to rely on magic.” He turned to Azriel. “When you’re done, warn your spies that they
might be compromised, and prepare to get them out. And put fresh ones in. We keep this
contained. We don’t tell anyone inside that court what happened. If anyone mentions it,
say it was a training exercise.”
Because we couldn’t afford to let that weakness show, even amongst his subjects.
His eyes at last found mine. “We’ve got an hour until we’re expected at court. Make it