2_-_court_of_mist_and_fury_a_-_sarah_j._maas

A week later, the Tithe arrived.
CHAPTER
8
I’d had all of one day with Tamlin—one day spent wandering the grounds, making love
in the high grasses of a sunny field, and a quiet, private dinner—before he was called to
the border. He didn’t tell me why or where. Only that I was to keep to the grounds, and
that I’d have sentries guarding me at all times.
So I spent the week alone, waking in the middle of the night to hurl up my guts, to sob
through the nightmares. Ianthe, if she’d learned of her sisters’ massacre in the north, said
nothing about it the few times I saw her. And given how little I liked to be pushed into
talking about the things that plagued me, I opted not to bring it up during the hours she
spent visiting, helping select my clothes, my hair, my jewelry, for the Tithe.
When I’d asked her to explain what to anticipate, she merely said that Tamlin would
take care of everything. I should watch from his side, and observe.
Easy enough—and perhaps a relief, to not be expected to speak or act.
But it had been an effort not to look at the eye tattooed into my palm—to remember
what Rhys had snarled at me.
Tamlin had only returned the night before to oversee today’s Tithe. I tried not to take it
personally, not when he had so much on his shoulders. Even if he wouldn’t tell me much
about it beyond what Ianthe had mentioned.
Seated beside Tamlin atop a dais in the manor’s great hall of marble and gold, I endured
the endless stream of eyes, of tears, of gratitude and blessings for what I’d done.
In her usual pale blue hooded robe, Ianthe was stationed near the doors, offering
benedictions to those that departed, comforting words to those who fell apart entirely in
my presence, promises that the world was better now, that good had won out over evil.
After twenty minutes, I was near fidgeting. After four hours, I stopped hearing entirely.
They kept coming, the emissaries representing every town and people in the Spring
Court, bearing their payments in the form of gold or jewels or chickens or crops or
clothes. It didn’t matter what it was, so long as it equated to what they owed. Lucien stood
at the foot of the dais, tallying every amount, armed to the teeth like the ten other sentries
stationed through the hall. The receiving room, Lucien had called it, but it felt a hell of a
lot like a throne room to me. I wondered if he’d called it that because the other words …
I’d spent too much time in another throne room. So had Tamlin.
And I hadn’t been seated on a dais like him, but kneeling before it. Approaching it like
the slender, gray-skinned faerie slinking from the front of the endless line full of lesser and