Again, again, again. One-two; one-two; one-two—
And when Amarantha had broken me, when she had snapped my bones and made my blood boil in its veins, he’d just knelt and begged her. He hadn’t tried to kill her, hadn’t crawled for me. Yes, he’d fought for me—but I’d fought harder for him.
Again, again, again, each pound of my fists on the sparring pads a question and an answer.
And he had the nerve once his powers were back to shove me into a cage. The nerve to say I was no longer useful; I was to be cloistered for his peace of mind. He’d given me everything I needed to become myself, to feel safe, and when he got what he wanted—when he got his power back, his lands back … he stopped trying. He was still good, still Tamlin, but he was just … wrong.
And then I was sobbing through my clenched teeth, the tears washing away that infected wound, and I didn’t care that Cassian was there, or Rhys or Azriel.
The clashing steel stopped.
And then my fists connected with bare skin, and I realized I’d punched through the sparring pads—no, burned through them, and—
And I stopped, too.
The wrappings around my hands were now mere smudges of soot. Cassian’s upraised palms remained before me—ready to take the blow, if I needed to make it. “I’m all right,” he said quietly. Gently.
And maybe I was exhausted and broken, but I breathed, “I killed them.”
I hadn’t said the words aloud since it had happened.
Cassian’s lips tightened. “I know.” Not condemnation, not praise. But grim understanding.
My hands slackened as another shuddering sob worked its way through me. “It should have been me.”
And there it was.
Standing there under the cloudless sky, the winter sun beating on my head, nothing around me save for rock, no shadows in which to hide, nothing to cling to … There it was.
Then darkness swept in, soothing, gentle darkness—no, shade—and a sweat-slick male body halted before me. Gentle fingers lifted my chin until I looked up … at Rhysand’s face.
His wings had wrapped around us, cocooned us, the sunlight casting the membrane in gold and red. Beyond us, outside, in another world, maybe, the sounds of steel on steel—Cassian and Azriel sparring—began.
“You will feel that way every day for the rest of your life,” Rhysand said. This close, I could smell the sweat on him, the sea-and-citrus scent beneath it. His eyes were soft. I tried to look away, but he held my chin firm. “And I know this because I have felt that way every day since my mother and sister were slaughtered and I had to bury them myself, and even retribution didn’t fix it.” He wiped away the tears on one cheek, then another. “You can either let it wreck you, let it get you killed like it nearly did with the Weaver, or you can learn to live with it.”
For a long moment, I just stared at the open, calm face—maybe his true face, the one beneath all the masks he wore to keep his people safe. “I’m sorry—about your family,” I rasped.
“I’m sorry I didn’t find a way to spare you from what happened Under the Mountain,” Rhys said with equal quiet. “From dying. From wanting to die.” I began to shake my head, but he said, “I have two kinds of nightmares: the ones where I’m again Amarantha’s whore or my friends are … And the ones where I hear your neck snap and see the light leave your eyes.”
I had no answer to that—to the tenor in his rich, deep voice. So I examined the tattoos on his chest and arms, the glow of his tan skin, so golden now that he was no longer caged inside that mountain.
I stopped my perusal when I got to the vee of muscles that flowed beneath the waist of his leather pants. Instead, I flexed my hand in front of me, my skin warm from the heat that had burned through those pads.
“Ah,” he said, wings sweeping back as he folded them gracefully behind him. “That.”
I squinted at the flood of sunlight. “Autumn Court, right?”
He took my hand, examining it, the skin already bruised from sparring. “Right. A gift from its High Lord, Beron.”
Lucien’s father. Lucien—I wondered what he made of all this. If he missed me. If Ianthe continued to … prey on him.
Still sparring, Cassian and Azriel were trying their best not to look like they were eavesdropping.
“I’m not well versed in the complexities of the other High Lords’ elemental gifts,” Rhys said, “but we can figure it out—day by day, if need be.”
“If you’re the most powerful High Lord in history … does that mean the drop I got from you holds more sway over the others?” Why I’d been able to break into his head that one time?
“Give it a try.” He jerked his chin toward me. “See if you can summon darkness. I won’t ask you to try to winnow,” he added with a grin.
“I don’t know how I did it to begin with.”
“Will it into being.”
I gave him a flat stare.
He shrugged. “Try thinking of me—how good-looking I am. How talented—”
“How arrogant.”
“That, too.” He crossed his arms over his bare chest, the movement making the muscles in his stomach flicker.
“Put a shirt on while you’re at it,” I quipped.
A feline smile. “Does it make you uncomfortable?”
“I’m surprised there aren’t more mirrors in this house, since you seem to love looking at yourself so much.”
Azriel launched into a coughing fit. Cassian just turned away, a hand clamped over his mouth.