2_-_court_of_mist_and_fury_a_-_sarah_j._maas

“I thought if you started painting again … ” I waited for him to finish.
He didn’t.
My face heated.
“And what about you?” I asked quietly. “Will the paperwork help with anything at all?”
I dared meet his eyes. Temper flared in them. But he said, “We’re not talking about me.
We’re talking—about you.”
I studied the box and its contents again. “Will I even be allowed to roam where I wish
to paint? Or will there be an escort, too?”
Silence.
A no—and a yes, then.
I began shaking, but for me, for us, I made myself say, “Tamlin—Tamlin, I can’t … I
can’t live my life with guards around me day and night. I can’t live with that …
suffocation. Just let me help you—let me work with you.”
“You’ve given enough, Feyre.”
“I know. But … ” I faced him. Met his stare—the full power of the High Lord of the
Spring Court. “I’m harder to kill now. I’m faster, stronger—”
“My family was faster and stronger than you. And they were murdered quite easily.”
“Then marry someone who can put up with this.”
He blinked. Slowly. Then he said with terrible softness, “Do you not want to marry me,
then?”
I tried not to look at the ring on my finger, at that emerald. “Of course I do. Of course I
do.” My voice broke. “But you … Tamlin … ” The walls pushed in on me. The quiet, the
guards, the stares. What I’d seen at the Tithe today. “I’m drowning,” I managed to say. “I
am drowning. And the more you do this, the more guards … You might as well be shoving
my head under the water.”
Nothing in those eyes, that face.
But then—
I cried out, instinct taking over as his power blasted through the room.
The windows shattered.
The furniture splintered.
And that box of paints and brushes and paper …
It exploded into dust and glass and wood.