“You didn’t ask. So how am I to blame?” He walked to the door but lingered, even as pure night wafted off his shoulders. “Unless this lack of gratitude and appreciation is because you fear a certain High Lord’s reaction.”
Tamlin. I could already see his face going pale, his lips becoming thin as the claws came out. I could almost hear the growl he’d emit when he asked me what I had been thinking.
“I think I’ll wait to tell him until the moment’s right, though,” Rhysand said. The gleam in his eyes told me enough. Rhysand hadn’t done any of this to save me, but rather to hurt Tamlin. And I’d fallen into his trap—fallen into it worse than the worm had fallen into mine.
“Rest up, Feyre,” Rhysand said. He turned into nothing more than living shadow and vanished through a crack in the door.
Chapter 38
I tried not to look at my left arm as I scrubbed at the floors of the hallway. The ink—which, in the light, was actually a blue so dark it appeared black—was a cloud upon my thoughts, and those were bleak enough even without knowing I’d sold myself to Rhysand. I couldn’t look at the eye on my palm. I had an absurd, creeping feeling that it watched me.
I dunked the large brush into the bucket the red-skinned guards had thrown into my arms. I could barely comprehend them through their mouths full of long yellow teeth, but when they gave me the brush and bucket and shoved me into a long hallway of white marble, I understood.
“If it’s not washed and shining by supper,” one of them had said, its teeth clicking as it grinned, “we’re to tie you to the spit and give you a few good turns over the fire.”
With that, they left. I had no idea when supper was, and so I frantically began washing. My back already ached like fire, and I hadn’t been scrubbing the marble hall for more than thirty minutes. But the water they’d given me was filthy, and the more I scrubbed the floor, the dirtier it became. When I went to the door to ask for a bucket of clean water, I found it locked. There would be no help.
An impossible task—a task to torment me. The spit—perhaps that was the source of the constant screaming in the dungeons. Would a few turns on the spit melt all the flesh from me, or just burn me badly enough to force me into another bargain with Rhysand? I cursed as I scrubbed harder, the coarse bristles of the brush crinkling and whispering against the tiles. A rainbow of brown was left in their wake, and I growled as I dunked the brush again. Filthy water came out with it, dripping all over the floor.
A trail of brown muck grew with each sweep. Breathing quickly, I hurled the brush to the ground and covered my face with my wet hands. I lowered my left hand when I realized the eye was pressed against my cheek.
I gulped down steadying gasps of air. There had to be a rational way to do this; there had to be some old wives’ trick. The spit—tied to a spit like a roast pig.
I grabbed the brush from where it had bounced away and scrubbed at the floor until my hands throbbed. It looked like someone had spilled mud all over the place. The dirt was actually turning into mud the harder I scrubbed it. I’d probably wail and beg for mercy when they rotated me on that spit. There had been red lines covering Clare’s naked body—what instrument of torture had they come from? My hands trembled, and I set down the brush. I could take down a giant worm, but washing a floor—that was the impossible task.
A door clicked open somewhere down the hall, and I shot to my feet. An auburn head peered at me. I sagged with relief. Lucien—
Not Lucien. The face that turned toward me was female—and unmasked.
She looked perhaps a bit older than Amarantha, but her porcelain skin was exquisitely colored, graced with the faintest blush of rose along her cheeks. Had the red hair not been indication enough, when her russet eyes met mine, I knew who she was.
I bowed my head to the Lady of the Autumn Court, and she inclined her chin slightly. I supposed that was honor enough. “For giving her your name in place of my son’s life,” she said, her voice as sweet as sun-warmed apples. She must have been in the crowd that day. She pointed at the bucket with a long, slender hand. “My debt is paid.” She disappeared through the door she’d opened, and I could have sworn I smelled roasting chestnuts and crackling fires in her wake.
It was only after the door shut that I realized I should have thanked her, and only after I looked in my bucket that I realized I’d been hiding my left arm behind my back.
I knelt beside the bucket and dipped my fingers into the water. They came out clean.
I shuddered, allowing myself a moment to slump over my knees before I dumped some of the water onto the floor and watched it wash away the muck.
To the chagrin of the guards, I had completed their impossible task. But the next day, they smiled at me as they shoved me into a massive, dark bedroom, lit only by a few candles, and pointed to the looming fireplace. “Servant spilled lentils in the ash,” one of the guards grunted, tossing me a wooden bucket. “Clean it up before the occupant returns, or he’ll peel off your skin in strips.”
A slammed door, the click of a lock, and I was alone.
Sorting lentils from ash and embers—ridiculous, wasteful, and—
I approached the darkened fireplace and cringed.
Impossible.
I cast a glance about the bedroom. No windows, no exits save the one I’d just been chucked through. The bed was enormous and neatly made, its black sheets of—of silk. There was nothing else in the room beyond basic furniture; not even discarded clothes or books or weapons. As if its occupant never slept here. I knelt before the fireplace and calmed my breathing.
I had keen eyes, I reminded myself. I could spot rabbits hiding in the underbrush and track most things that wanted to remain unseen. Spotting the lentils couldn’t be that hard. Sighing, I crawled farther into the fireplace and began.
I was wrong.
Two hours later, my eyes were burning and aching, and even though I combed through every inch of that fireplace, there were always more lentils, more and more that I’d somehow not spotted. The guards had never said when the owner of this room would return, and so every tick of the clock on the mantel became a death knell, every footstep outside the door causing me to reach for the iron poker leaning against the hearth wall. Amarantha had never said anything about not fighting back—never specified that I wasn’t allowed to defend myself. At least I’d go down swinging.
I picked through the ashes again and again. My hands were now black and stained, my clothes covered in soot. Surely there couldn’t be any more; surely—
The lock clicked, and I lunged for the poker as I shot to my feet, my back to the hearth and the iron rod hidden behind me.
Darkness entered the room, guttering the candles with a snow-kissed breeze. I gripped the poker harder, pressing against the stone of the fireplace, even as that darkness settled on the bed and took a familiar form.
“As wonderful as it is to see you, Feyre, darling,” Rhysand said, sprawled on the bed, his head propped up by a hand, “do I want to know why you’re digging through my fireplace?”
I bent my knees slightly, preparing to run, to duck, to do anything to get to the door that felt far, far away. “They said I had to clean out lentils from the ashes, or you’d rip off my skin.”
“Did they now.” A feline smile.
“Do I have you to thank for this idea?” I hissed. He wasn’t allowed to kill me, not with my bargain with Amarantha, but … there were other ways to hurt me.
“Oh, no,” he drawled. “No one’s learned of our little bargain yet—and you’ve managed to keep it quiet. Shame riding you a bit hard?”
I clenched my jaw and pointed to the fireplace with one hand, still keeping the poker tucked behind me. “Is this clean enough for you?”
