The wings swept back.
But he tightened his arm. Bracing me for takeoff. Mother save me. “You say the word tonight, and we come back here, no questions asked. And if you can’t stomach working with me, with them, then no questions asked on that, either. We can find some other way for you to live here, be fulfilled, regardless of what I need. It’s your choice, Feyre.”
I debated pushing him on it—on insisting I stay. But stay for what? To sleep? To avoid a meeting I should most certainly have before deciding what I wanted to do with myself? And to fly …
I studied the wings, the arm around my waist. “Please don’t drop me. And please don’t—”
We shot into the sky, fast as a shooting star.
Before my yelp finished echoing, the city had yawned wide beneath us. Rhys’s hand slid under my knees while the other wrapped around my back and ribs, and we flapped up, up, up into the star-freckled night, into the liquid dark and singing wind.
The city lights dropped away until Velaris was a rippling velvet blanket littered with jewels, until the music no longer reached even our pointed ears. The air was chill, but no wind other than a gentle breeze brushed my face—even as we soared with magnificent precision for the House of Wind.
Rhys’s body was hard and warm against mine, a solid force of nature crafted and honed for this. Even the smell of him reminded me of the wind—rain and salt and something citrus-y I couldn’t name.
We swerved into an updraft, rising so fast it was instinct to clutch his black tunic as my stomach clenched. I scowled at the soft laugh that tickled my ear. “I expected more screaming from you. I must not be trying hard enough.”
“Do not,” I hissed, focusing on the approaching tiara of lights in the eternal wall of the mountain.
With the sky wheeling overhead and the lights shooting past below, up and down became mirrors—until we were sailing through a sea of stars. Something tight in my chest eased a fraction of its grip.
“When I was a boy,” Rhys said in my ear, “I’d sneak out of the House of Wind by leaping out my window—and I’d fly and fly all night, just making loops around the city, the river, the sea. Sometimes I still do.”
“Your parents must have been thrilled.”
“My father never knew—and my mother …” A pause. “She was Illyrian. Some nights, when she caught me right as I leaped out the window, she’d scold me … and then jump out herself to fly with me until dawn.”
“She sounds lovely,” I admitted.
“She was,” he said. And those two words told me enough about his past that I didn’t pry.
A maneuver had us rising higher, until we were in direct line with a broad balcony, gilded by the light of golden lanterns. At the far end, built into the red mountain itself, two glass doors were already open, revealing a large, but surprisingly casual dining room carved from the stone, and accented with rich wood. Each chair fashioned, I noted, to accomodate wings.
Rhys’s landing was as smooth as his takeoff, though he kept an arm beneath my shoulders as my knees buckled at the adjustment. I shook off his touch, and faced the city behind us.
I’d spent so much time squatting in trees that heights had lost their primal terror long ago. But the sprawl of the city … worse, the vast expanse of dark beyond—the sea … Maybe I remained a human fool to feel that way, but I had not realized the size of the world. The size of Prythian, if a city this large could remain hidden from Amarantha, from the other courts.
Rhysand was silent beside me. Yet after a moment, he said, “Out with it.”
I lifted a brow.
“You say what’s on your mind—one thing. And I’ll say one, too.”
I shook my head and turned back to the city.
But Rhys said, “I’m thinking that I spent fifty years locked Under the Mountain, and I’d sometimes let myself dream of this place, but I never expected to see it again. I’m thinking that I wish I had been the one who slaughtered her. I’m thinking that if war comes, it might be a long while yet before I get to have a night like this.”
He slid his eyes to me, expectant.
I didn’t bother asking again how he’d kept this place from her, not when he was likely to refuse to answer. So I said, “Do you think war will be here that soon?”
“This was a no-questions-asked invitation. I told you … three things. Tell me one.”
I stared toward the open world, the city and the restless sea and the dry winter night.
Maybe it was some shred of courage, or recklessness, or I was so high above everything that no one save Rhys and the wind could hear, but I said, “I’m thinking that I must have been a fool in love to allow myself to be shown so little of the Spring Court. I’m thinking there’s a great deal of that territory I was never allowed to see or hear about and maybe I would have lived in ignorance forever like some pet. I’m thinking … ” The words became choked. I shook my head as if I could clear the remaining ones away. But I still spoke them. “I’m thinking that I was a lonely, hopeless person, and I might have fallen in love with the first thing that showed me a hint of kindness and safety. And I’m thinking maybe he knew that—maybe not actively, but maybe he wanted to be that person for someone. And maybe that worked for who I was before. Maybe it doesn’t work for who—what I am now.”
There.
The words, hateful and selfish and ungrateful. For all Tamlin had done—
The thought of his name clanged through me. Only yesterday afternoon, I had been there. No—no, I wouldn’t think about it. Not yet.
Rhysand said, “That was five. Looks like I owe you two thoughts.” He glanced behind us. “Later.”
Because the two winged males from earlier were standing in the doorway.
Grinning.
CHAPTER
16
Rhys sauntered toward the two males standing by the dining room doors, giving me the option to stay or join.
One word, he’d promised, and we could go.
Both of them were tall, their wings tucked in tight to powerful, muscled bodies covered in plated, dark leather that reminded me of the worn scales of some serpentine beast. Identical long swords were each strapped down the column of their spines—the blades beautiful in their simplicity. Perhaps I needn’t have bothered with the fine clothes after all.
The slightly larger of the two, his face masked in shadow, chuckled and said, “Come on, Feyre. We don’t bite. Unless you ask us to.”
Surprise sparked through me, setting my feet moving.
Rhys slid his hands into his pockets. “The last I heard, Cassian, no one has ever taken you up on that offer.”
The second one snorted, the faces of both males at last illuminated as they turned toward the golden light of the dining room, and I honestly wondered why no one hadn’t: if Rhysand’s mother had also been Illyrian, then its people were blessed with unnatural good looks.
Like their High Lord, the males—warriors—were dark-haired, tan-skinned. But unlike Rhys, their eyes were hazel and fixed on me as I at last stepped close—to the waiting House of Wind behind them.
That was where any similarities between the three of them halted.
Cassian surveyed Rhys from head to foot, his shoulder-length black hair shifting with the movement. “So fancy tonight, brother. And you made poor Feyre dress up, too.” He winked at me. There was something rough-hewn about his features—like he’d been made of wind and earth and flame and all these civilized trappings were little more than an inconvenience.
But the second male, the more classically beautiful of the two … Even the light shied from the elegant planes of his face. With good reason. Beautiful, but near-unreadable. He’d be the one to look out for—the knife in the dark. Indeed, an obsidian-hilted hunting knife was sheathed at his thigh, its dark scabbard embossed with a line of silver runes I’d never seen before.
Rhys said, “This is Azriel—my spymaster.” Not surprising. Some buried instinct had me checking that my mental shields were intact. J
ust in case.
“Welcome,” was all Azriel said, his voice low, almost flat, as he extended a brutally scarred hand to me. The shape of it was normal—but the skin … It looked like it had been swirled and smudged and rippled. Burns. They must have been horrific if even their immortal blood had not been able to heal them.
The leather plates of his light armor flowed over most of it, held by a loop around his middle finger. Not to conceal, I realized as his hand breached the chill night air between us. No, it was to hold in place the large, depthless cobalt stone that graced the back of the gauntlet. A matching one lay atop his left hand; and twin red stones adorned Cassian’s gauntlets, their color like the slumbering heart of a flame.
I took Azriel’s hand, and his rough fingers squeezed mine. His skin was as cold as his face.