Safe.
Sunlight streamed through the filthy window, illuminating the reds and golds in the wall of wing before me—where it had been all night, shielding me from the cold.
Rhysand’s arms were banded around me, his breathing deep and even. And I knew it was just as rare for him to sleep that soundly, peacefully.
What we’d done last night …
Carefully, I twisted to face him, his arms tightening slightly, as if to keep me from vanishing with the morning mist.
His eyes were open when I nestled my head against his arm. Within the shelter of his wing, we watched each other.
And I realized I might very well be content to do exactly that forever.
I said quietly, “Why did you make that bargain with me? Why demand a week from me every month?”
His violet eyes shuttered.
And I didn’t dare admit what I expected, but it was not, “Because I wanted to make a statement to Amarantha; because I wanted to piss off Tamlin, and I needed to keep you alive in a way that wouldn’t be seen as merciful.”
“Oh.”
His mouth tightened. “You know—you know there is nothing I wouldn’t do for my people, for my family.”
And I’d been a pawn in that game.
His wing folded back, and I blinked at the watery light. “Bath or no bath?” he said.
I cringed at the memory of the grimy, reeking bathing room a level below. Using it to see to my needs would be bad enough. “I’d rather bathe in a stream,” I said, pushing past the sinking in my gut.
Rhys let out a low laugh and rolled out of bed. “Then let’s get out of here.”
For a heartbeat, I wondered if I’d dreamed up everything that had happened the night before. From the slight, pleasant soreness between my legs, I knew I hadn’t, but …
Maybe it’d be easier to pretend that nothing had happened.
The alternative might be more than I could endure.
We flew for most of the day, far and wide, close to where the forested steppes rose up to meet the Illyrian Mountains. We didn’t speak of the night before—we barely spoke at all.
Another clearing. Another day of playing with my power. Summoning wings, winnowing, fire and ice and water and—now wind. The wind and breezes that rippled across the sweeping valleys and wheat fields of the Day Court, then whipped up the snow capping their highest peaks.
I could feel the words rising in him as the hours passed. I’d catch him watching me whenever I paused for a break—catch him opening up his mouth … and then shutting it.
It rained at one point, and then turned colder and colder with the cloud cover. We had yet to stay in the woods past dark, and I wondered what sort of creatures might prowl through them.
The sun was indeed sinking by the time Rhys gathered me in his arms and took to the skies.
There was only the wind, and his warmth, and the boom of his powerful wings.
I ventured, “What is it?”
His attention remained on the dark pines sweeping past. “There is one more story I need to tell you.”
I waited. He didn’t continue.
I put my hand against his cheek, the first intimate touch we’d had all day. His skin was chilled, his eyes bleak as they slid to me. “I don’t walk away—not from you,” I swore quietly.
His gaze softened. “Feyre—”
Rhys roared in pain, arching against me.
I felt the impact—felt blinding pain through the bond that ripped through my own mental shields, felt the shudder of the dozen places the arrows struck him as they shot from bows hidden beneath the forest canopy.
And then we were falling.
Rhys gripped me, and his magic twisted around us in a dark wind, readying to winnow us out—and failed.
Failed, because those were ash arrows through him. Through his wings. They’d tracked us—yesterday, the little magic he’d used with Lucien, they’d somehow tracked it and found us even so far away—
More arrows—
Rhys flung out his power. Too late.
Arrows shredded his wings. Struck his legs.
And I think I was screaming. Not for fear as we plummeted, but for him—for the blood and the greenish sheen on those arrows. Not just ash, but poison—
A dark wind—his power—slammed into me, and then I was being thrown far and wide as he sent me tumbling beyond the arrows’ range, tumbling through the air—
Rhys’s roar of wrath shook the forest, the mountains beyond. Birds rose up in waves, taking to the skies, fleeing that bellow.
I slammed into the dense canopy, my body barking in agony as I shattered through wood and pine and leaf. Down and down—
Focus focus focus
I flung out a wave of that hard air that had once shielded me from Tamlin’s temper. Threw it out beneath me like a net.
I collided with an invisible wall so solid I thought my right arm might snap.
But—I stopped falling through the branches.
Thirty feet below, the ground was nearly impossible to see in the growing darkness.
I did not trust that shield to hold my weight for long.
I scrambled across it, trying not to look down, and leaped the last few feet onto a wide pine bough. Hurtling over the wood, I reached the trunk and clung to it, panting, reordering my mind around the pain, the steadiness of being on ground.
I listened—for Rhys, for his wings, for his next roar. Nothing.
No sign of the archers who he’d been falling to meet. Who he’d thrown me far, far away from.Trembling, I dug my nails into the bark as I listened for him.
Ash arrows. Poisoned ash arrows.
The forest grew ever darker, the trees seeming to wither into skeletal husks. Even the birds hushed themselves.