Tamlin’s green eyes flickered as they continued to stare into mine. He softly said, “I love you.” Without another glance at Rhysand, he left.
I was temporarily blinded by the brightness that poured in when he opened the door and slipped out. He did not look back at me before the door snicked shut and darkness returned to the dim hall.
Rhysand chuckled. “If you’re that desperate for release, you should have asked me.”
“Pig,” I snapped, covering my breasts with the folds of my gown.
With a few easy steps, he crossed the distance between us and pinned my arms to the wall. My bones groaned. I could have sworn shadow-talons dug into the stones beside my head. “Do you actually intend to put yourself at my mercy, or are you truly that stupid?” His voice was composed of sensuous, bone-breaking ire.
“I’m not your slave.”
“You’re a fool, Feyre. Do you have any idea what could have happened had Amarantha found you two in here? Tamlin might refuse to be her lover, but she keeps him at her side out of the hope that she’ll break him—dominate him, as she loves to do with our kind.” I kept silent. “You’re both fools,” he murmured, his breathing uneven. “How did you not think that someone would notice you were gone? You should thank the Cauldron Lucien’s delightful brothers weren’t watching you.”
“What do you care?” I barked, and his grip tightened enough on my wrists that I knew my bones would snap with a little more pressure.
“What do I care?” he breathed, wrath twisting his features. Wings—those membranous, glorious wings—flared from his back, crafted from the shadows behind him. “What do I care?”
But before he could go on, his head snapped to the door, then back to my face. The wings vanished as quickly as they had appeared, and then his lips were crushing into mine. His tongue pried my mouth open, forcing himself into me, into the space where I could still taste Tamlin. I pushed and thrashed, but he held firm, his tongue sweeping over the roof of my mouth, against my teeth, claiming my mouth, claiming me—
The door was flung wide, and Amarantha’s curved figure filled its space. Tamlin—Tamlin was beside her, his eyes slightly wide, shoulders tight as Rhys’s lips still crushed mine.
Amarantha laughed, and a mask of stone slammed down on Tamlin’s face, void of feeling, void of anything vaguely like the Tamlin I’d been tangled up with moments before.
Rhys casually released me with a flick of his tongue over my bottom lip as a crowd of High Fae appeared behind Amarantha and chimed in with her laughter. Rhysand gave them a lazy, self-indulgent grin and bowed. But something sparked in the queen’s eyes as she looked at Rhysand. Amarantha’s whore, they’d called him.
“I knew it was a matter of time,” she said, putting a hand on Tamlin’s arm. The other she lifted—lifted so Jurian’s eye might see as she said, “You humans are all the same, aren’t you.”
I kept my mouth shut, even as I could have died for shame, even as I ached to explain. Tamlin had to realize the truth.
But I wasn’t given the luxury of learning whether Tamlin understood as Amarantha clicked her tongue and turned away, taking her entourage with her. “Typical human trash with their inconstant, dull hearts,” she said to herself—nothing more than a satisfied cat.
Following them, Rhys grabbed my arm to drag me back into the throne room. It was only when the light hit me that I saw the smudges and smears on my paint—smudges along my breasts and stomach, and the paint that had mysteriously appeared on Rhysand’s hands.
“I’m tired of you for tonight,” Rhys said, giving me a light shove toward the main exit. “Go back to your cell.” Behind him, Amarantha and her court smiled with glee, their grins widening when they beheld the marred paint. I looked for Tamlin, but he was stalking for his usual throne on the dais, keeping his back to me. As if he couldn’t stand to look.
I don’t know what time it was, but hours later, footsteps sounded inside my cell. I jolted into a sitting position, and Rhys stepped out of a shadow.
I could still feel the heat of his lips against mine, the smooth glide of his tongue inside my mouth, even though I’d washed my mouth out three times with the bucket of water in my cell.
His tunic was unbuttoned at the top, and he ran a hand through his blue-black hair before he wordlessly slumped against the wall across from me and slid to the floor.
“What do you want?” I demanded.
“A moment of peace and quiet,” he snapped, rubbing his temples.
I paused. “From what?”
He massaged his pale skin, making the corners of his eyes go up and down, out and in. He sighed. “From this mess.”
I sat up farther on my pallet of hay. I’d never seen him so candid.
“That damned bitch is running me ragged,” he went on, and dropped his hands from his temples to lean his head against the wall. “You hate me. Imagine how you’d feel if I made you serve in my bedroom. I’m High Lord of the Night Court—not her harlot.”
So the slurs were true. And I could imagine very easily how much I would hate him—what it would do to me—to be enslaved to someone like that. “Why are you telling me this?”
The swagger and nastiness were gone. “Because I’m tired and lonely, and you’re the only person I can talk to without putting myself at risk.” He let out a low laugh. “How absurd: a High Lord of Prythian and a—”
“You can leave if you’re just going to insult me.”
“But I’m so good at it.” He flashed one of his grins. I glared at him, but he sighed. “One wrong move tomorrow, Feyre, and we’re all doomed.”
The thought struck a chord of such horror that I could hardly breathe.
“And if you fail,” he went on, more to himself than to me, “then Amarantha will rule forever.”
“If she captured Tamlin’s power once, who’s to say she can’t do it again?” It was the question I hadn’t yet dared voice.
“He won’t be tricked again so easily,” he said, staring up at the ceiling. “Her biggest weapon is that she keeps our powers contained. But she can’t access them, not wholly—though she can control us through them. It’s why I’ve never been able to shatter her mind—why she’s not dead already. The moment you break Amarantha’s curse, Tamlin’s wrath will be so great that no force in the world will keep him from splattering her on the walls.”
A chill went through me.
“Why do you think I’m doing this?” He waved a hand to me.
“Because you’re a monster.”
He laughed. “True, but I’m also a pragmatist. Working Tamlin into a senseless fury is the best weapon we have against her. Seeing you enter into a fool’s bargain with Amarantha was one thing, but when Tamlin saw my tattoo on your arm … Oh, you should have been born with my abilities, if only to have felt the rage that seeped from him.”
