“I’d hardly call disobeying orders ‘without a tantrum.’ ”
“Some camps issued decrees that if a female was caught training, she was to be deemed unmarriageable. I can’t fight against things like that, not without slaughtering the leaders of each camp and personally raising each and every one of their offspring.”
“And yet your mother loved them—and you three wear their tattoos.”
“I got the tattoos in part for my mother, in part to honor my brothers, who fought every day of their lives for the right to wear them.”
“Why do you let Devlon speak to Cassian like that?”
“Because I know when to pick my fights with Devlon, and I know Cassian would be pissed if I stepped in to crush Devlon’s mind like a grape when he could handle it himself.”
A whisper of cold went through me. “Have you thought about doing it?”
“I did just now. But most camp-lords never would have given the three of us a shot at the Blood Rite. Devlon let a half-breed and two bastards take it—and did not deny us our victory.”
Pines dusted with fresh snow blurred beneath us.
“What’s the Blood Rite?”
“So many questions today.” I squeezed his shoulder hard enough to hurt, and he chuckled. “You go unarmed into the mountains, magic banned, no Siphons, wings bound, with no supplies or clothes beyond what you have on you. You, and every other Illyrian male who wants to move from novice to true warrior. A few hundred head into the mountains at the start of the week—not all come out at the end.”
The frost-kissed landscape rolled on forever, unyielding as the warriors who ruled over it. “Do you—kill each other?”
“Most try to. For food and clothes, for vengeance, for glory between feuding clans. Devlon allowed us to take the Rite—but also made sure Cassian, Azriel, and I were dumped in different locations.”
“What happened?”
“We found each other. Killed our way across the mountains to get to each other. Turns out, a good number of Illyrian males wanted to prove they were stronger, smarter than us. Turns out they were wrong.”
I dared a look at his face. For a heartbeat, I could see it: blood-splattered, savage, fighting and slaughtering to get to his friends, to protect and save them.
Rhys set us down in a clearing, the pine trees towering so high they seemed to caress the underside of the heavy, gray clouds passing on the swift wind.
“So, you’re not using magic—but I am?” I said, taking a few steps from him.
“Our enemy is keyed in on my powers. You, however, remain invisible.” He waved his hand. “Let’s see what all your practicing has amounted to.”
I didn’t feel like it. I just said, “When—when did you meet Tamlin?”
I knew what Rhysand’s father had done. I hadn’t let myself think too much about it.
About how he’d killed Tamlin’s father and brothers. And mother.
But now, after last night, after the Court of Nightmares … I had to know.
Rhys’s face was a mask of patience. “Show me something impressive, and I’ll tell you. Magic—for answers.”
“I know what sort of game you’re playing—” I cut myself off at the hint of a smirk. “Very well.”
I held out my hand before me, palm cupped, and willed silence into my veins, my mind.
Silence and calm and weight, like being underwater.
In my hand, a butterfly of water flapped and danced.
Rhys smiled a bit, but the amusement died as he said, “Tamlin was younger than me—born when the War started. But after the War, when he’d matured, we got to know each other at various court functions. He … ” Rhys clenched his jaw. “He seemed decent for a High Lord’s son. Better than Beron’s brood at the Autumn Court. Tamlin’s brothers were equally as bad, though. Worse. And they knew Tamlin would take the title one day. And to a half-breed Illyrian who’d had to prove himself, defend his power, I saw what Tamlin went through … I befriended him. Sought him out whenever I was able to get away from the war-camps or court. Maybe it was pity, but … I taught him some Illyrian techniques.”
“Did anyone know?”
He raised his brows—giving a pointed look to my hand.
I scowled at him and summoned songbirds of water, letting them flap around the clearing as they’d flown around my bathing room at the Summer Court.
“Cassian and Azriel knew,” Rhys went on. “My family knew. And disapproved.” His eyes were chips of ice. “But Tamlin’s father was threatened by it. By me. And because he was weaker than both me and Tamlin, he wanted to prove to the world that he wasn’t. My mother and sister were to travel to the Illyrian war-camp to see me. I was supposed to meet them halfway, but I was busy training a new unit and decided to stay.”
My stomach turned over and over and over, and I wished I had something to lean against as Rhys said, “Tamlin’s father, brothers, and Tamlin himself set out into the Illyrian wilderness, having heard from Tamlin—from me—where my mother and sister would be, that I had plans to see them. I was supposed to be there. I wasn’t. And they slaughtered my mother and sister anyway.”
I began shaking my head, eyes burning. I didn’t know what I was trying to deny, or erase, or condemn.
“It should have been me,” he said, and I understood—understood what he’d said that day I’d wept before Cassian in the training pit. “They put their heads in boxes and sent them down the river—to the nearest camp. Tamlin’s father kept their wings as trophies. I’m surprised you didn’t see them pinned in the study.”