2_-_court_of_mist_and_fury_a_-_sarah_j._maas

A golden-haired, beautiful man stepped into our path toward that ebony throne, and Mor
smoothly halted. I knew he was her father without him saying a word.
He was clothed in black, a silver circlet atop his head. His brown eyes were like old soil
as he said to her, “Where is he?”
No greeting, no formality. He ignored me wholly.
Mor shrugged. “He arrives when he wishes to.” She continued on.
Her father looked at me then. And I willed my face into a mask like hers. Disinterested.
Aloof.
Her father surveyed my face, my body—and where I thought he’d sneer and ogle …
there was nothing. No emotion. Just heartless cold.
I followed Mor before disgust wrecked my own icy mask.
Banquet tables against the black walls were covered with fat, succulent fruits and
wreaths of golden bread, interrupted with roast meats, kegs of cider and ale, and pies and
tarts and little cakes of every size and variety.
It might have made my mouth water … Were it not for the High Fae in their finery.
Were it not for the fact that no one touched the food—the power and wealth lying in
letting it go to waste.
Mor went right up to the obsidian dais, and I halted at the foot of the steps as she took
up a place beside the throne and said to the crowd in a voice that was clear and cruel and
cunning, “Your High Lord approaches. He is in a foul mood, so I suggest being on your
best behavior—unless you wish to be the evening entertainment.”
And before the crowd could begin murmuring, I felt it. Felt—him.
The very rock beneath my feet seemed to tremble—a pulsing, steady beat.
His footsteps. As if the mountain shuddered at each touch.
Everyone in that room went still as death. As if petrified that their very breathing would
draw the attention of the predator now strolling toward us.
Mor’s shoulders were back, her chin high—feral, wanton pride at her master’s arrival.
Remembering my role, I kept my own chin lowered, watching beneath my brows.
First Cassian and Azriel appeared in the doorway. The High Lord’s general and
shadowsinger—and the most powerful Illyrians in history.
They were not the males I had come to know.
Clad in battle-black that hugged their muscled forms, their armor was intricate, scaled
—their shoulders impossibly broader, their faces a portrait of unfeeling brutality. They
reminded me, somehow, of the ebony beasts carved into the pillars they passed.
More Siphons, I realized, glimmered in addition to the ones atop each of their hands. A
Siphon in the center of their chest. One on either shoulder. One on either knee.