2_-_court_of_mist_and_fury_a_-_sarah_j._maas

went through … I befriended him. Sought him out whenever I was able to get away from
the war-camps or court. Maybe it was pity, but … I taught him some Illyrian techniques.”
“Did anyone know?”
He raised his brows—giving a pointed look to my hand.
I scowled at him and summoned songbirds of water, letting them flap around the
clearing as they’d flown around my bathing room at the Summer Court.
“Cassian and Azriel knew,” Rhys went on. “My family knew. And disapproved.” His
eyes were chips of ice. “But Tamlin’s father was threatened by it. By me. And because he
was weaker than both me and Tamlin, he wanted to prove to the world that he wasn’t. My
mother and sister were to travel to the Illyrian war-camp to see me. I was supposed to
meet them halfway, but I was busy training a new unit and decided to stay.”
My stomach turned over and over and over, and I wished I had something to lean
against as Rhys said, “Tamlin’s father, brothers, and Tamlin himself set out into the
Illyrian wilderness, having heard from Tamlin—from me—where my mother and sister
would be, that I had plans to see them. I was supposed to be there. I wasn’t. And they
slaughtered my mother and sister anyway.”
I began shaking my head, eyes burning. I didn’t know what I was trying to deny, or
erase, or condemn.
“It should have been me,” he said, and I understood—understood what he’d said that
day I’d wept before Cassian in the training pit. “They put their heads in boxes and sent
them down the river—to the nearest camp. Tamlin’s father kept their wings as trophies.
I’m surprised you didn’t see them pinned in the study.”
I was going to vomit; I was going to fall to my knees and weep.
But Rhys looked at the menagerie of water-animals I’d crafted and said, “What else?”
Perhaps it was the cold, perhaps it was his story, but hoarfrost cracked in my veins, and
the wild song of a winter wind howled in my heart. I felt it then—how easy it would be to
jump between them, join them together, my powers.
Each one of my animals halted mid-air … and froze into perfectly carved bits of ice.
One by one, they dropped to the earth. And shattered.
They were one. They had come from the same, dark origin, the same eternal well of
power. Once, long ago—before language was invented and the world was new.
Rhys merely continued, “When I heard, when my father heard … I wasn’t wholly
truthful to you when I told you Under the Mountain that my father killed Tamlin’s father
and brothers. I went with him. Helped him. We winnowed to the edge of the Spring Court
that night, then went the rest of the way on foot—to the manor. I slew Tamlin’s brothers
on sight. I held their minds, and rendered them helpless while I cut them into pieces, then
melted their brains inside their skulls. And when I got to the High Lord’s bedroom—he
was dead. And my father … my father had killed Tamlin’s mother as well.”