A Court of Wings and Ruin

Rhys didn’t let a flicker of emotion show, sliding on that cool, amused mask over the roaring rage that surrounded me at the thought, the threat. That settled before me like a beast ready to lunge, to defend. “She defeated Amarantha and the Attor,” Rhys countered. “I doubt you’ll be much of an effort, either.”

“We’ll see. Perhaps I’ll give her to Tamlin when I’m done.”

Fury heated Rhys’s blood. And my own.

Strike or flee, Rhys, I begged again. But do it now.

Rhys rallied his power, and I felt it rise within him, felt him grappling to sustain his grip on it.

“The spell will wear off,” the king said, waving a hand. “Another little trick I picked up while rotting away in Hybern.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rhys said mildly.

They only smiled at each other.

And then Rhys asked, “Why?”

The king knew what he meant.

“There was room at the table for everyone, you and your ilk claimed.” The king snorted. “For humans, lesser faeries, for half-breeds. In this new world of yours, there was room at the table for everyone—so long as they thought like you. But the Loyalists … How you delighted in shutting us out. Looking down your noses at us.” He gestured to the soldiers monitoring them, the battle in the bay. “You want to know why? Because we suffered—when you stifled us, when you shut us out.” Some of his soldiers grunted their agreement. “I have no interest in spending another five centuries seeing my people bow before human pigs—seeing them claw out a living while you shield and coddle those mortals, granting them our resources and wealth in exchange for nothing.” He inclined his head. “So we shall reclaim what is ours. What was always ours, and will always be ours.”

Rhys offered him a sly grin. “You can certainly try.”

My mate didn’t bother saying more as he hurled a slender javelin of power at him, the shot as precise as an arrow.

And when it reached the king—

It went right through him.

He rippled—then steadied.

An illusion. A shade.

The king rumbled a laugh. “Did you think I’d appear at this battle myself?” He waved a hand toward the soldiers still watching. “A taste—this battle is only a taste for you. To whet your appetite.”

Then he was gone.

The magic leaking from the boat, the oily sheen it’d laid over Rhys’s power … it vanished, too.

Rhys allowed the Hybern soldiers aboard the ship, aboard the ones around him, the honor of at least lifting their blades.

Then he turned them all into nothing but red mist and splinters floating on the waves.

CHAPTER

38

Mor was shaking me. I only knew it because Rhys threw me out of his mind the moment he unleashed himself upon those soldiers.

You were here too long, was all he said, caressing a dark talon down my face. Then I was out, stumbling down the bond, his shield slamming shut behind me.

“Feyre,” Mor was saying, fingers digging into my shoulders through my leathers. “Feyre.”

I blinked, the sun and blood and narrow street coming into focus.

Blinked—and then vomited all over the cobblestones between us.

People, shaken and petrified, only stared.

“This way,” Mor said, and looped her arm around my waist as she led me into a dusty, empty alley. Far from watching eyes. I barely took in the city and bay and sea beyond—barely noticed that a mighty maelstrom of darkness and water and wind was now shoving Hybern’s fleet back over the horizon. As if Tarquin’s and Rhys’s powers had been unleashed by the king’s vanishing.

I made it to a pile of fallen stones from the half-wrecked building beside us when I vomited again. And again.

Mor put a hand on my back, rubbing soothing circles as I retched. “I did the same after my first battle. We all did.”

It wasn’t even a battle—not in the way I’d pictured: army against army on some unremarkable battlefield, chaotic and muddy. Even the real battle today had been out on the sea—where the Illyrians were now sailing inland.

I couldn’t bear to start counting how many made the return trip.

I didn’t know how Mor or Rhys or Cassian or Azriel could bear it.

And what I’d just seen … “The king was here,” I breathed.

Mor’s hand stilled on my back. “What?”

I leaned my brow against the sun-warmed brick of the building before me and told her—what I’d seen in Rhys’s mind.

The king—he had been here and yet not here. Another trick—another spell. No wonder Rhys hadn’t been able to attack his mind: the king hadn’t been present to do so.

I closed my eyes as I finished, pressing my brow harder into the brick.

Blood and sweat still coated me. I tried to remember the usual fit of my soul in my body, the priority of things, my way of looking at the world. What to do with my limbs in the stillness. How did I usually position my hands without a blade between them? How did I stop moving?

Mor squeezed my shoulder, as if she understood the racing thoughts, the foreignness of my body. The War had raged for seven years. Years. How long would this one last?

“We should find the others,” she said, and helped me straighten before winnowing us back to the palace towering high above.

I couldn’t bring myself to send another thought down the bond. See where Rhys was. I didn’t want him to see me—feel me—in such a state. Even if I knew he wouldn’t judge.

He, too, had spilled blood on the battlefield today. And many others before it. All of my friends had.

And I could understand—just for a heartbeat, as the wind tore around us—why some rulers, human and Fae, had bowed before Hybern. Bowed, rather than face this.

It wasn’t only the cost of life that ripped and devastated and sundered. It was the altering of a soul with it—the realization that I could perhaps go back home to Velaris, perhaps see peace achieved and cities rebuilt … but this battle, this war … I would be the thing forever changed.

War would linger with me long after it had ended, some invisible scar that would perhaps fade, but never wholly vanish.

But for my home, for Prythian and the human territory and so many others …

I would clean my blades, and wash the blood from my skin.