Once, I would have cringed and winced. Now I received their thanks and prayers beatifically, thanking them, smiling at them.
Some of it was genuine. I had no quarrel with the people of these lands, who had suffered alongside the rest. None. But the courtiers and sentries who sought me out … I put on a better show for them. Cauldron-blessed, they called me. An honor, I merely replied.
On and on I repeated those words, through breakfast and lunch, until I returned to the house to freshen up and take a moment for myself.
In the privacy of my room, I set my crown of flowers on the dressing table and smiled slightly at the eye tattooed into my right palm.
The longest day of the year, I said into the bond, sending along flickers of all that had occurred atop that hill. I wish I could spend it with you.
He would have enjoyed my performance—would have laughed himself hoarse afterward at the expression on Ianthe’s face.
I finished washing up and was about to head out into the hills again when Rhysand’s voice filled my mind.
It’d be an honor, he said, laughter in every word, to spend even a moment in the company of Feyre Cauldron-blessed.
I chuckled. The words were distant, strained. Keep it quick—I had to keep it quick, or risk exposure. And more than anything, I needed to ask, to know—
Is everyone all right?
I waited, counting the minutes. Yes. As well as we can be. When do you come home to me?
Each word was quieter than the last.
Soon, I promised him. Hybern is here. I’ll be done soon.
He didn’t reply—and I waited another few minutes before I again donned my flower crown and strode down the stairs.
As I emerged into the bedecked garden, though, Rhysand’s faint voice filled my head once more. I wish I could spend today with you, too.
The words wrapped a fist around my heart, and I forced them from my mind as I returned to the party in the hills, my steps heavier than they’d been when I floated into the house.
But lunch had been cleared away, and dancing had begun.
I saw him waiting on the outskirts of one of the circles, observing every move I took.
I glanced between the grass and the crowd and the cluster of musicians coaxing such lively music from drums and fiddles and pipes as I approached, no more than a shy, hesitant doe.
Once, those same sounds had shaken me awake, had made me dance and dance. I supposed they were now little more than weapons in my arsenal as I stopped before Tamlin, lowered my lashes, and asked softly, “Will you dance with me?”
Relief, happiness, and a slight edge of concern. “Yes,” he breathed. “Yes, of course.”
So I let him lead me into the swift dance, spinning and tilting me, people gathering to cheer and clap. Dance after dance after dance, until sweat was running down my back as I worked to keep up, keep that smile on my face, to remember to laugh when my hands were within strangling distance of his throat.
The music eventually shifted into something slower, and Tamlin eased us into the melody. When others had found their own partners more interesting to watch, he murmured, “This morning … Are you all right?”
My head snapped up. “Yes. I—I don’t know what that was, but yes. Is Ianthe … mad?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t see it coming—I don’t think she handles surprises very well.”
“I should apologize.”
His eyes flashed. “What for? Perhaps it was a blessing. Magic still surprises me. If she’s angry, it’s her problem.”
I made a show of considering, then nodded. Pressed closer, loathing every place where our bodies touched. I didn’t know how Rhys had endured it—endured Amarantha. For five decades.
“You look beautiful today,” Tamlin said.
“Thank you.” I made myself peer up into his face. “Lucien—Lucien told me that you didn’t complete the Rite at Calanmai. That you refused.”
And you let Ianthe take him into that cave instead.
His throat bobbed. “I couldn’t stomach it.”
And yet you could stomach making a deal with Hybern, as if I were a stolen item to be returned. “Maybe this morning was not just a blessing for me,” I offered.
A stroke of his hand down my back was his only reply.
That was all we said for the next three dances, until hunger dragged me toward the tables where dinner had now been laid out. I let him fill a plate for me, let him serve me himself as we found a spot under a twisted old oak and watched the dancing and the music.
I nearly asked if it was worth it—if giving up this sort of peace was worth it, in order to have me back. For Hybern would come here, use these lands. And there would be no more singing and dancing. Not once they arrived.
But I kept quiet as the sunlight faded and night finally fell.
The stars winked into existence, dim and small above the blazing fires.
I watched them through the long hours of celebrating, and could have sworn that they kept me company, my silent and stalwart friends.
CHAPTER
5
I crawled back to the manor two hours after midnight, too exhausted to last until dawn.
Especially when I noted the way Tamlin looked at me, remembering that dawn last year when he’d led me away and kissed me as the sun rose.
I asked Lucien to escort me, and he’d been more than happy to do so, given that his own status as a mated male made him uninterested in any sort of female company these days. And given that Ianthe had been trying to corner him all day to ask about what had happened at the ceremony.
I changed into my nightgown, a small, lacy thing I’d once worn for Tamlin’s enjoyment and now was glad to don thanks to the day’s sweat still clinging to my skin, and flopped into bed.
For nearly half an hour, I kicked at the sheets, tossing and turning, thrashing.
The Attor. The Weaver. My sisters being thrown into the Cauldron. All of them twined and eddied around me. I let them.
Most of the others were still celebrating when I yelped, a sharp, short cry that had me bouncing from the bed.
My heart thundered along my veins, my bones, as I cracked open the door, sweating and haggard, and padded across the hall.
Lucien answered on the second knock.
“I heard you—what’s wrong.” He scanned me, russet eye wide as he noted my disheveled hair, my sweaty nightgown.
I swallowed, a silent question on my face, and he nodded, retreating into the room to let me inside. Bare from the waist up, he’d managed to haul on a pair of pants before opening the door, and hastily buttoned them as I strode past.
His room had been bedecked in Autumn Court colors—the only tribute to his home he’d ever let show—and I surveyed the night-dark space, the rumpled bedsheets. He perched on the rolled arm of a large chair before the blackened fire, watching me wring my hands in the center of the crimson carpet.