We were already near running water—so I made my trap close by, building my snare with hands that I refused to let shake.
I placed the cloak—mostly new, rich, lovely—in the center of my snare. And I waited.
An hour. Two.
I was about to start bargaining with the Cauldron, with the Mother, when a creeping, familiar silence fell over the wood.
Rippling toward me, the birds stopped chirping, the wind stopped sighing in the pines.
And when a crack sounded through the forest, followed by a screech that hollowed out my ears, I nocked an arrow into my bow and set off to see the Suriel.
It was as horrific as I remembered:
Tattered robes barely concealing a body made of not skin, but what looked to be solid, worn bone. Its lipless mouth held too-large teeth, and its fingers—long, spindly—clicked against each other while it weighed the fine cloak I’d laid in the center of my snare, as if the cloth had been blown in on a wind.
“Feyre Cursebreaker,” it said, turning toward me, in a voice that was both one and many.
I lowered my bow. “I have need of you.”
Time—I was running out of time. I could feel it, that urgency begging me to hurry through the bond.
“What fascinating changes a year has wrought on you—on the world,” it said.
A year. Yes, it had been over a year now since I’d first crossed the wall.
“I have questions,” I said.
It smiled, each of those stained, too-large brown teeth visible. “You have two questions.”
An answer and an order.
I didn’t waste time; not with Rhys, not when this wood might be full of enemies hunting for us.
“What poison was used on those arrows?”
“Bloodbane,” it said.
I didn’t know that poison—had never heard of it.
“Where do I find the cure?”
The Suriel clicked its bone fingers against each other, as if the answer lay inside the sound. “In the forest.”
I hissed, my brows flattening. “Please—please don’t be cryptic. What is the cure?”
The Suriel cocked its head, the bone gleaming in the light. “Your blood. Give him your blood, Cursebreaker. It is rich with the healing gift of the High Lord of the Dawn. It shall spare him from the bloodbane’s wrath.”
“That’s it?” I pushed. “How much blood?”
“A few mouthfuls will do.” A hollow, dry wind—not at all like the misty, cold veils that usually drifted past—brushed my face. “I helped you before. I have helped you now. And you will free me before I lose my patience, Cursebreaker.”
Some primal, lingering human part of me trembled as I took in the snare around its legs, pinning it to the ground. Perhaps this time, the Suriel had let itself be caught. And knew how to free itself—had learned it the moment I’d spared it from the naga.
A test—of honor. And a favor. For the arrow I’d shot to save it last year.
But I nocked an ash arrow into my bow, cringing at the sheen of poison coating it. “Thank you for your help,” I said, bracing myself for flight should it charge at me.
The Suriel’s stained teeth clacked against each other. “If you wish to speed your mate’s healing, in addition to your blood, a pink-flowered weed sprouts by the river. Make him chew it.”
I fired my arrow at the snare before I finished hearing its words.
The trap sprang free. And the word clicked through me.
Mate.
“What did you say?”
The Suriel rose to its full height, towering over me even from across the clearing. I had not realized that despite the bone, it was muscled— powerful.
“If you wish to … ” The Suriel paused, and grinned, showing nearly all of those brown, thick teeth. “You did not know, then.”
“Say it,” I gritted out.
“The High Lord of the Night Court is your mate.”
I wasn’t entirely sure I was breathing.
