I retorted, “Neither can you.”
But he just plowed ahead, “You can barely handle being around other people—”
“You promised.” My voice cracked. And I didn’t care that I was begging. “I need to get out of this house.”
“Have Bron take you and Ianthe on a ride—”
“I don’t want to go for a ride!” I splayed my arms. “I don’t want to go for a ride, or a picnic, or pick wildflowers. I want to do something. So take me with you.”
That girl who had needed to be protected, who had craved stability and comfort … she had died Under the Mountain. I had died, and there had been no one to protect me from those horrors before my neck snapped. So I had done it myself. And I would not, could not, yield that part of me that had awoken and transformed Under the Mountain. Tamlin had gotten his powers back, had become whole again—become that protector and provider he wished to be.
I was not the human girl who needed coddling and pampering, who wanted luxury and easiness. I didn’t know how to go back to craving those things. To being docile.
Tamlin’s claws punched out. “Even if I risked it, your untrained abilities render your presence more of a liability than anything.”
It was like being hit with stones—so hard I could feel myself cracking. But I lifted my chin and said, “I’m coming along whether you want me to or not.”
“No, you aren’t.” He strode right through the door, his claws slashing the air at his sides, and was halfway down the steps before I reached the threshold.
Where I slammed into an invisible wall.
I staggered back, trying to reorder my mind around the impossibility of it. It was identical to the one I’d built that day in the study, and I searched inside the shards of my soul, my heart, for a tether to that shield, wondering if I’d blocked myself, but—there was no power emanating from me.
I reached a hand to the open air of the doorway. And met solid resistance.
“Tamlin,” I rasped.
But he was already down the front drive, walking toward the looming iron gates. Lucien remained at the foot of the stairs, his face so, so pale.
“Tamlin,” I said again, pushing against the wall.
He didn’t turn.
I slammed my hand into the invisible barrier. No movement—nothing but hardened air. And I had not learned about my own powers enough to try to push through, to shatter it … I had let him convince me not to learn those things for his sake—
“Don’t bother trying,” Lucien said softly, as Tamlin cleared the gates and vanished—winnowed. “He shielded the entire house around you. Others can go in and out, but you can’t. Not until he lifts the shield.”
He’d locked me in here.
I hit the shield again. Again.
Nothing.
“Just—be patient, Feyre,” Lucien tried, wincing as he followed after Tamlin. “Please. I’ll see what I can do. I’ll try again.”
I barely heard him over the roar in my ears. Didn’t wait to see him pass the gates and winnow, too.
He’d locked me in. He’d sealed me inside this house.
I hurtled for the nearest window in the foyer and shoved it open. A cool spring breeze rushed in—and I shoved my hand through it—only for my fingers to bounce off an invisible wall. Smooth, hard air pushed against my skin.
Breathing became difficult.
I was trapped.
I was trapped inside this house. I might as well have been Under the Mountain; I might as well have been inside that cell again—
I backed away, my steps too light, too fast, and slammed into the oak table in the center of the foyer. None of the nearby sentries came to investigate.
He’d trapped me in here; he’d locked me up.
I stopped seeing the marble floor, or the paintings on the walls, or the sweeping staircase looming behind me. I stopped hearing the chirping of the spring birds, or the sighing of the breeze through the curtains.
And then crushing black pounded down and rose up from beneath, devouring and roaring and shredding.
It was all I could do to keep from screaming, to keep from shattering into ten thousand pieces as I sank onto the marble floor, bowing over my knees, and wrapped my arms around myself.
He’d trapped me; he’d trapped me; he’d trapped me—
I had to get out, because I’d barely escaped from another prison once before, and this time, this time—
Winnowing. I could vanish into nothing but air and appear somewhere else, somewhere open and free. I fumbled for my power, for anything, something that might show me the way to do it, the way out. Nothing. There was nothing and I had become nothing, and I couldn’t ever get out—
Someone was shouting my name from far away.
Alis—Alis.
But I was ensconced in a cocoon of darkness and fire and ice and wind, a cocoon that melted the ring off my finger until the golden ore dripped away into the void, the emerald tumbling after it. I wrapped that raging force around myself as if it could keep the walls from crushing me entirely, and maybe, maybe buy me the tiniest sip of air—
I couldn’t get out; I couldn’t get out; I couldn’t get out—