2_-_court_of_mist_and_fury_a_-_sarah_j._maas

knowing your name. And you were looking at me like I was a monster, so I told myself it
didn’t matter, anyway. But you lied when I asked. I knew you did. I had your mind in my
hands, and you had the defiance and foresight to lie to my face. So I walked away from
you again. I vomited my guts up as soon as I left.”
My lips wobbled, and I pressed them together.
“I checked back once. To ensure you were gone. I went with them the day they sacked
the manor—to make my performance complete. I told Amarantha the name of that girl,
thinking you’d invented it. I had no idea … I had no idea she’d send her cronies to retrieve
Clare. But if I admitted my lie … ” He swallowed hard. “I broke into Clare’s head when
they brought her Under the Mountain. I took away her pain, and told her to scream when
expected to. So they … they did those things to her, and I tried to make it right, but …
After a week, I couldn’t let them do it. Hurt her like that anymore. So while they tortured
her, I slipped into her mind again and ended it. She didn’t feel any pain. She felt none of
what they did to her, even at the end. But … But I still see her. And my men. And the
others that I killed for Amarantha.”
Two tears slid down his cheeks, swift and cold.
He didn’t wipe them away as he said, “I thought it was done after that. With Clare’s
death, Amarantha believed you were dead. So you were safe, and far away, and my people
were safe, and Tamlin had lost, so … it was done. We were done. But then … I was in the
back of the throne room that day the Attor brought you in. And I have never known such
horror, Feyre, as I did when I watched you make that bargain. Irrational, stupid terror—I
didn’t know you. I didn’t even know your name. But I thought of those painter’s hands,
the flowers I’d seen you create. And how she’d delight in breaking your fingers apart. I
had to stand and watch as the Attor and its cronies beat you. I had to watch the disgust and
hatred on your face as you looked at me, watched me threaten to shatter Lucien’s mind.
And then—then I learned your name. Hearing you say it … it was like an answer to a
question I’d been asking for five hundred years.
“I decided, then and there, that I was going to fight. And I would fight dirty, and kill
and torture and manipulate, but I was going to fight. If there was a shot of freeing us from
Amarantha, you were it. I thought … I thought the Cauldron had been sending me these
dreams to tell me that you would be the one to save us. Save my people.
“So I watched your first trial. Pretending—always pretending to be that person you
hated. When you were hurt so badly against the Wyrm … I found my way in with you. A
way to defy Amarantha, to spread the seeds of hope to those who knew how to read the
message, and a way to keep you alive without seeming too suspicious. And a way to get
back at Tamlin … To use him against Amarantha, yes, but … To get back at him for my
mother and sister, and for … having you. When we made that bargain, you were so hateful
that I knew I’d done my job well.
“So we endured it. I made you dress like that so Amarantha wouldn’t suspect, and made
you drink the wine so you would not remember the nightly horrors in that mountain. And
that last night, when I found you two in the hall … I was jealous. I was jealous of him, and