2_-_court_of_mist_and_fury_a_-_sarah_j._maas

CHAPTER
53
Mor stayed overnight, even going so far as to paint some rudimentary stick figures on the
wall beside the storeroom door. Three females with absurdly long, flowing hair that all
resembled hers; and three winged males, who she somehow managed to make look puffed
up on their own sense of importance. I laughed every time I saw it.
She left after breakfast, having to walk out to where the no-winnowing shield ended,
and I waved to her distant, shivering figure before she vanished into nothing.
I stared across the glittering white expanse, thawed enough that bald patches peppered it
—revealing bits of winter-white grass reaching toward the blue sky and mountains. I knew
summer had to eventually reach even this melting dreamland, for I’d found fishing poles
and sporting equipment that suggested warm-weather usage, but it was hard to imagine
snow and ice becoming soft grass and wildflowers.
Brief as a glimmering spindrift, I saw myself there: running through the meadow that
slumbered beneath the thin crust of snow, splashing through the little streams already
littering the floor, feasting on fat summer berries as the sun set over the mountains …
And then I would go home to Velaris, where I would finally walk through the artists’
quarter, and enter those shops and galleries and learn what they knew, and maybe—maybe
one day—I would open my own shop. Not to sell my work, but to teach others.
Maybe teach the others who were like me: broken in places and trying to fight it—
trying to learn who they were around the dark and pain. And I would go home at the end
of every day exhausted but content—fulfilled.
Happy.
I’d go home every day to the town house, to my friends, chock full of stories of their
own days, and we’d sit around that table and eat together.
And Rhysand …
Rhysand …
He would be there. He’d give me the money to open my own shop; and because I
wouldn’t charge anyone, I’d sell my paintings to pay him back. Because I would pay him
back, mate or no.
And he’d be here during the summer, flying over the meadow, chasing me across the
little streams and up the sloped, grassy mountainside. He would sit with me under the
stars, feeding me fat summer berries. And he would be at that table in the town house,
roaring with laughter—never again cold and cruel and solemn. Never again anyone’s slave
or whore.