Lucien.
Lucien had hated her. Had made vague, vicious allusions to not liking her, to being approached by her— I was going to throw up. Had she … had she pursued him like that? Had he … had he been forced to say yes because of her position?
And if I went back to the Spring Court one day … How would I ever convince Tamlin to dismiss her? What if, now that I was gone, she was— “Rule two,” Rhys finally went on, “be prepared to see things you might not like.”
Only fifty years later, Amarantha had come. And done exactly to Rhys what he’d wanted to kill Ianthe for. He’d let it happen to him. To keep them safe. To keep Azriel and Cassian from the nightmares that would haunt him forever, from enduring any more pain than what they’d suffered as children …
I lifted my head to ask him more. But Rhys had vanished.
Alone, I peeled off my clothes, struggling with the buckles and straps he’d put on me—when had it been? An hour or two ago?
It felt as if a lifetime had passed. And I was now a certified Book-tracker, it seemed.
Better than a party-planning wife for breeding little High Lords. What Ianthe had wanted to make me—to serve whatever agenda she had.
The bath was indeed hot, as he’d promised. And I mulled over what he’d shown me, seeing that hand again and again reach between his legs, the ownership and arrogance in that gesture— I shut out the memory, the bath water suddenly cold.
CHAPTER
22
Word still hadn’t come from the Summer Court the following morning, so Rhysand made good on his decision to bring us to the mortal realm.
“What does one wear, exactly, in the human lands?” Mor said from where she sprawled across the foot of my bed. For someone who claimed to have been out drinking and dancing until the Mother knew when, she appeared unfairly perky. Cassian and Azriel, grumbling and wincing over breakfast, had looked like they’d been run over by wagons. Repeatedly. Some small part of me wondered what it would be like to go out with them—to see what Velaris might offer at night.
I rifled through the clothes in my armoire. “Layers,” I said. “They … cover everything up. The décolletage might be a little daring depending on the event, but … everything else gets hidden beneath skirts and petticoats and nonsense.”
“Sounds like the women are used to not having to run—or fight. I don’t remember it being that way five hundred years ago.”
I paused on an ensemble of turquoise with accents of gold—rich, bright, regal. “Even with the wall, the threat of faeries remained, so … surely practical clothes would have been necessary to run, to fight any that crept through. I wonder what changed.” I pulled out the top and pants for her approval.
Mor merely nodded—no commentary like Ianthe might have provided, no beatific intervention.
I shoved away the thought, and the memory of what she’d tried to do to Rhys, and went on, “Nowadays, most women wed, bear children, and then plan their children’s marriages. Some of the poor might work in the fields, and a rare few are mercenaries or hired soldiers, but … the wealthier they are, the more restricted their freedoms and roles become. You’d think that money would buy you the ability to do whatever you pleased.”
“Some of the High Fae,” Mor said, pulling at an embroidered thread in my blanket, “are the same.”
I slipped behind the dressing screen to untie the robe I’d donned moments before she’d entered to keep me company while I prepared for our journey today.
“In the Court of Nightmares,” she went on, that voice falling soft and a bit cold once more, “females are … prized. Our virginity is guarded, then sold off to the highest bidder—whatever male will be of the most advantage to our families.”
I kept dressing, if only to give myself something to do while the horror of what I began to suspect slithered through my bones and blood.
“I was born stronger than anyone in my family. Even the males. And I couldn’t hide it, because they could smell it—the same way you can smell a High Lord’s Heir before he comes to power. The power leaves a mark, an … echo. When I was twelve, before I bled, I prayed it meant no male would take me as a wife, that I would escape what my elder cousins had endured: loveless, sometimes brutal, marriages.”
I tugged my blouse over my head, and buttoned the velvet cuffs at my wrists before adjusting the sheer, turquoise sleeves into place.