“What’s—” I started, but Tamlin growled again, the sound echoing through the room. I snatched one of the knives off the table and let Lucien lead me to the window, where he pushed me against the velvet drapes. I wanted to ask why he didn’t bother hiding me behind them, but the fox-masked faerie just pressed his back into me, pinning me between him and the wall.
The tang of magic shoved itself up my nostrils. Though his sword was pointed at the floor, Lucien’s grip tightened on it until his knuckles turned white. Magic—a glamour. To conceal me, to make me a part of Lucien—invisible, hidden by the faerie’s magic and scent. I peered over his shoulder at Tamlin, who took a long breath and sheathed his claws and fangs, his baldric of knives appearing from thin air across his chest. But he didn’t draw any of the knives as he righted his chair and slouched in it, picking at his nails. As if nothing were happening.
But someone was coming, someone awful enough to frighten them—someone who would want to hurt me if they knew I was here.
The hissing voice of the Attor slithered through my memory. There were worse creatures than it, Tamlin had told me. Worse than the naga, and the Suriel, and the Bogge, too.
Footsteps sounded from the hall. Even, strolling, casual.
Tamlin continued cleaning his nails, and in front of me, Lucien assumed a position of appearing to be looking out the window. The footsteps grew louder—the scuff of boots on marble tiles.
And then he appeared.
No mask. He, like the Attor, belonged to something else. Someone else.
And worse … I’d met him before. He’d saved me from those three faeries on Fire Night.
With steps that were too graceful, too feline, he approached the dining table and stopped a few yards from the High Lord. He was exactly as I remembered him, with his fine, rich clothing cloaked in tendrils of night: an ebony tunic brocaded with gold and silver, dark pants, and black boots that went to his knees. I’d never dared to paint him—and now knew I would never have the nerve to.
“High Lord,” the stranger crooned, inclining his head slightly. Not a bow.
Tamlin remained seated. With his back to me, I couldn’t see his face, but Tamlin’s voice was laced with the promise of violence as he said, “What do you want, Rhysand?”
Rhysand smiled—heartbreaking in its beauty—and put a hand on his chest. “Rhysand? Come now, Tamlin. I don’t see you for forty-nine years, and you start calling me Rhysand? Only my prisoners and my enemies call me that.” His grin widened as he finished, and something in his countenance turned feral and deadly, more so than I’d ever seen Tamlin look. Rhysand turned, and I held my breath as he ran an eye over Lucien. “A fox mask. Appropriate for you, Lucien.”
“Go to Hell, Rhys,” Lucien snapped.
“Always a pleasure dealing with the rabble,” Rhysand said, and faced Tamlin again. I still didn’t breathe. “I hope I wasn’t interrupting.”
“We were in the middle of lunch,” Tamlin said—his voice void of the warmth to which I’d become accustomed. The voice of the High Lord. It turned my insides cold.
“Stimulating,” Rhysand purred.
“What are you doing here, Rhys?” Tamlin demanded, still in his seat.
“I wanted to check up on you. I wanted to see how you were faring. If you got my little present.”
“Your present was unnecessary.”
“But a nice reminder of the fun days, wasn’t it?” Rhysand clicked his tongue and surveyed the room. “Almost half a century holed up in a country estate. I don’t know how you managed it. But,” he said, facing Tamlin again, “you’re such a stubborn bastard that this must have seemed like a paradise compared to Under the Mountain. I suppose it is. I’m surprised, though: forty-nine years, and no attempts to save yourself or your lands. Even now that things are getting interesting again.”
“There’s nothing to be done,” conceded Tamlin, his voice low.
Rhysand approached Tamlin, each movement smooth as silk. His voice dropped into a whisper—an erotic caress of sound that brought heat to my cheeks. “What a pity that you must endure the brunt of it, Tamlin—and an even greater pity that you’re so resigned to your fate. You might be stubborn, but this is pathetic. How different the High Lord is from the brutal war-band leader of centuries ago.”
Lucien interrupted, “What do you know about anything? You’re just Amarantha’s whore.”
“Her whore I might be, but not without my reasons.” I flinched as his voice whetted itself into an edge. “At least I haven’t bided my time among the hedges and flowers while the world has gone to Hell.”
Lucien’s sword rose slightly. “If you think that’s all I’ve been doing, you’ll soon learn otherwise.”
“Little Lucien. You certainly gave them something to talk about when you switched to Spring. Such a sad thing, to see your lovely mother in perpetual mourning over losing you.”
Lucien pointed his sword at Rhysand. “Watch your filthy mouth.”
Rhysand laughed—a lover’s laugh, low and soft and intimate. “Is that any way to speak to a High Lord of Prythian?”