I pushed around the fruit on my plate. “I’m not going to be a part of this war you think is coming. You say I should be a weapon, not a pawn—they seem like the same to me. The only difference is who’s wielding it.”
“I want your help, not to manipulate you,” he snapped.
His flare of temper made me at last lift my head. “You want my help because it’ll piss off Tamlin.”
Shadows danced around his shoulders—as if the wings were trying to take form.
“Fine,” he breathed. “I dug that grave myself, with all I did Under the Mountain. But I need your help.”
Again, I could feel the other unspoken words: Ask me why; push me about it.
And again, I didn’t want to. Didn’t have the energy to.
Rhys said quietly, “I was a prisoner in her court for nearly fifty years. I was tortured and beaten and fucked until only telling myself who I was, what I had to protect, kept me from trying to find a way to end it. Please—help me keep that from happening again. To Prythian.”
Some distant part of my heart ached and bled at the words, at what he’d laid bare.
But Tamlin had made exceptions—he’d lightened the guards’ presence, allowed me to roam a bit more freely. He was trying. We were trying. I wouldn’t jeopardize that.
So I went back to eating.
Rhys didn’t say another word.
I didn’t join him for dinner.
I didn’t rise in time for breakfast, either.
But when I emerged at noon, he was waiting upstairs, that faint, amused smile on his face. He nudged me toward the table he’d arranged with books and paper and ink.
“Copy these sentences,” he drawled from across the table, handing me a piece of paper.
I looked at them and read perfectly:
“Rhysand is a spectacular person. Rhysand is the center of my world. Rhysand is the best lover a female can ever dream of.” I set down the paper, wrote out the three sentences, and handed it to him.
The claws slammed into my mind a moment later.
And bounced harmlessly off a black, glimmering shield of adamant.
He blinked. “You practiced.”
I rose from the table and walked away. “I had nothing better to do.”
That night, he left a pile of books by my door with a note.
I have business elsewhere. The house is yours. Send word if you need me.
Days passed—and I didn’t.
Rhys returned at the end of the week. I’d taken to situating myself in one of the little lounges overlooking the mountains, and had almost read an entire book in the deep-cushioned armchair, going slowly as I learned new words. But it had filled my time—given me quiet, steadfast company with those characters, who did not exist and never would, but somehow made me feel less … alone.
The woman who’d hurled a bone-spear at Amarantha … I didn’t know where she was anymore. Perhaps she’d vanished that day her neck had snapped and faerie immortality had filled her veins.
I was just finishing up a particularly good chapter—the second-to-last in the book—a shaft of buttery afternoon sunlight warming my feet, when Rhysand slid between two of the oversized armchairs, twin plates of food in his hands, and set them on the low-lying table before me. “Since you seem hell-bent on a sedentary lifestyle,” he said, “I thought I’d go one step further and bring your food to you.”
My stomach was already twisting with hunger, and I lowered the book into my lap. “Thank you.”
A short laugh. “Thank you? Not ‘High lord and servant?’ Or: ‘Whatever it is you want, you can go shove it up your ass, Rhysand.’?” He clicked his tongue. “How disappointing.”
I set down the book and extended a hand for the plate. He could listen to himself talk all day if he wished, but I wanted to eat. Now.
My fingers had almost grazed the rim of the plate when it just slid away.
I reached again. Once more, a tendril of his power yanked the plate further back.
“Tell me what to do,” he said. “Tell me what to do to help you.”
Rhys kept the plate beyond reach. He spoke again, and as if the words tumbling out loosened his grip on his power, talons of smoke curled over his fingers and great wings of shadow spread from his back. “Months and months, and you’re still a ghost. Does no one there ask what the hell is happening? Does your High Lord simply not care?”
He did care. Tamlin did care. Perhaps too much. “He’s giving me space to sort it out,” I said, with enough of a bite that I barely recognized my voice.
“Let me help you,” Rhys said. “We went through enough Under the Mountain—”
