2_-_court_of_mist_and_fury_a_-_sarah_j._maas

out of this house.”
“Have Bron take you and Ianthe on a ride—”
“I don’t want to go for a ride!” I splayed my arms. “I don’t want to go for a ride, or a
picnic, or pick wildflowers. I want to do something. So take me with you.”
That girl who had needed to be protected, who had craved stability and comfort … she
had died Under the Mountain. I had died, and there had been no one to protect me from
those horrors before my neck snapped. So I had done it myself. And I would not, could
not, yield that part of me that had awoken and transformed Under the Mountain. Tamlin
had gotten his powers back, had become whole again—become that protector and provider
he wished to be.
I was not the human girl who needed coddling and pampering, who wanted luxury and
easiness. I didn’t know how to go back to craving those things. To being docile.
Tamlin’s claws punched out. “Even if I risked it, your untrained abilities render your
presence more of a liability than anything.”
It was like being hit with stones—so hard I could feel myself cracking. But I lifted my
chin and said, “I’m coming along whether you want me to or not.”
“No, you aren’t.” He strode right through the door, his claws slashing the air at his
sides, and was halfway down the steps before I reached the threshold.
Where I slammed into an invisible wall.
I staggered back, trying to reorder my mind around the impossibility of it. It was
identical to the one I’d built that day in the study, and I searched inside the shards of my
soul, my heart, for a tether to that shield, wondering if I’d blocked myself, but—there was
no power emanating from me.
I reached a hand to the open air of the doorway. And met solid resistance.
“Tamlin,” I rasped.
But he was already down the front drive, walking toward the looming iron gates. Lucien
remained at the foot of the stairs, his face so, so pale.
“Tamlin,” I said again, pushing against the wall.
He didn’t turn.
I slammed my hand into the invisible barrier. No movement—nothing but hardened air.
And I had not learned about my own powers enough to try to push through, to shatter it …
I had let him convince me not to learn those things for his sake—
“Don’t bother trying,” Lucien said softly, as Tamlin cleared the gates and vanished—
winnowed. “He shielded the entire house around you. Others can go in and out, but you
can’t. Not until he lifts the shield.”
He’d locked me in here.
I hit the shield again. Again.