2_-_court_of_mist_and_fury_a_-_sarah_j._maas

“Illyrian wings,” she said. “Ugh, they’ll never stop gloating about it.”
But she went to the window, which I’d framed in tumbling strands of gold and brass and
bronze. Mor fingered her hair, cocking her head. “Nice,” she said, surveying the room
again.
Her eyes fell on the open threshold to the bedroom hallway, and she grimaced. “Why,”
she said, “are Amren’s eyes there?”
Indeed, right above the door, in the center of the archway, I’d painted a pair of glowing
silver eyes. “Because she’s always watching.”
Mor snorted. “That simply won’t do. Paint my eyes next to hers. So the males of this
family will know we’re both watching them the next time they come up here to get drunk
for a week straight.”
“They do that?”
“They used to.” Before Amarantha. “Every autumn, the three of them would lock
themselves in this house for five days and drink and drink and hunt and hunt, and they’d
come back to Velaris looking halfway to death but grinning like fools. It warms my heart
to know that from now on, they’ll have to do it with me and Amren staring at them.”
A smile tugged on my lips. “Who does this paint belong to?”
“Amren,” Mor said, rolling her eyes. “We were all here one summer, and she wanted to
teach herself to paint. She did it for about two days before she got bored and decided to
start hunting poor creatures instead.”
A quiet chuckle rasped out of me. I strode to the table, which I’d used as my main
surface for blending and organizing paints. And maybe I was a coward, but I kept my back
to her as I said, “Any news from my sisters?”
Mor started rifling through the cabinets, either to look for food or assess what I needed.
She said over a shoulder, “No. Not yet.”
“Is he … hurt?” I’d left him in the freezing mud, injured and working the poison out of
his system. I’d tried not to dwell on it while I’d painted.
“Still recovering, but fine. Pissed at me, of course, but he can shove it.”
I combined Mor’s yellow gold with the red I’d used for the Illyrian wings, and blended
until vibrant orange emerged. “Thank you—for not telling him I was here.”
A shrug. Food began popping onto the counter: fresh bread, fruit, containers of
something that I could smell from across the kitchen and made me nearly groan with
hunger. “You should talk to him, though. Make him stew over it, of course, but … hear
him out.” She didn’t look at me as she spoke. “Rhys always has his reasons, and he might
be arrogant as all hell, but he’s usually right about his instincts. He makes mistakes, but …
You should hear him out.”
I’d already decided that I would, but I said, “How was your visit to the Court of
Nightmares?”