A Court of Mist and Fury Read Free Online

  For Josh and Annie—

my own Court of Dreams

CONTENTS

Role 1 THE HOUSE OF BEASTS

Affiliate ane

Affiliate 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Affiliate seven

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter ten

Chapter eleven

Chapter 12

Affiliate xiii

PART TWO THE HOUSE OF WIND

Chapter 14

Chapter xv

Chapter sixteen

Chapter 17

Affiliate 18

Affiliate 19

Affiliate 20

Chapter 21

Affiliate 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Affiliate 26

Affiliate 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Affiliate 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Affiliate 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Function THREE THE HOUSE OF MIST

Affiliate 52

Chapter 53

Affiliate 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Affiliate 57

Affiliate 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Affiliate 61

Affiliate 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Affiliate 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Acknowledgments

Also by Sarah J. Maas

Maybe I'd always been broken and nighttime inside.

Maybe someone who'd been born whole and good would have put down the ash dagger and embraced death rather than what lay before me.

There was blood everywhere.

It was an effort to keep a grip on the dagger as my blood-soaked hand trembled. As I fractured bit by bit while the sprawled corpse of the High Fae youth cooled on the marble flooring.

I couldn't let go of the bract, couldn't move from my identify before him.

"Good," Amarantha purred from her throne. "Again."

There was another ash dagger waiting, and another Fae kneeling. Female.

I knew the words she'd say. The prayer she'd recite.

I knew I'd slaughter her, as I'd slaughtered the youth before me.

To complimentary them all, to free Tamlin, I would do it.

I was the butcher of innocents, and the savior of a land.

"Whenever you're prepare, lovely Feyre," Amarantha drawled, her deep red pilus as bright every bit the blood on my hands. On the marble.

Murderer. Butcher. Monster. Liar. Deceiver.

I didn't know who I meant. The lines between me and the queen had long since blurred.

My fingers loosened on the dagger, and information technology clattered to the basis, splattering the spreading puddle of claret. Flecks splashed onto my worn boots—remnants of a mortal life and so far behind me it might as well have been ane of my fever-dreams these few final months.

I faced the female waiting for death, that hood sagging over her head, her lithe body steady. Braced for the terminate I was to give her, the sacrifice she was to become.

I reached for the second ash dagger atop a black velvet pillow, its hilt icy in my warm, damp hand. The guards yanked off her hood.

I knew the face that stared up at me.

Knew the bluish-gray eyes, the chocolate-brown-gold hair, the total oral cavity and sharp cheekbones. Knew the ears that had now go delicately arched, the limbs that had been streamlined, limned with power, any man imperfections smoothed into a subtle immortal glow.

Knew the hollowness, the despair, the corruption that leaked from that face.

My hands didn't tremble equally I angled the dagger.

As I gripped the fine-boned shoulder, and gazed into that hated face—my confront.

And plunged the ash dagger into my awaiting heart.

Office ONE

THE HOUSE OF BEASTS

CHAPTER

i

I vomited into the toilet, hugging the cool sides, trying to comprise the sounds of my retching.

Moonlight leaked into the massive marble bathing room, providing the only illumination as I was quietly, thoroughly sick.

Tamlin hadn't stirred as I'd jolted awake. And when I hadn't been able to tell the darkness of my chamber from the endless dark of Amarantha's dungeons, when the cold sweat coating me felt like the claret of those faeries, I'd hurtled for the bathing room.

I'd been here for fifteen minutes at present, waiting for the retching to subside, for the lingering tremors to spread autonomously and fade, like ripples in a puddle.

Panting, I braced myself over the bowl, counting each breath.

Only a nightmare. One of many, comatose and waking, that haunted me these days.

It had been iii months since Under the Mount. Three months of adjusting to my immortal body, to a earth struggling to slice itself together after Amarantha had fractured it apart.

I focused on my breathing—in through my nose, out through my mouth. Over and over.

When it seemed similar I was done heaving, I eased from the toilet—but didn't go far. Just to the adjacent wall, well-nigh the croaky window, where I could see the night sky, where the breeze could cuddle my glutinous confront. I leaned my head against the wall, flattening my hands against the chill marble floor. Real.

This was real. I had survived; I'd made information technology out.

Unless it was a dream—merely a fever-dream in Amarantha's dungeons, and I'd awaken back in that jail cell, and—

I curled my knees to my chest. Existent. Real.

I mouthed the words.

I kept mouthing them until I could loosen my grip on my legs and lift my head. Pain splintered through my hands—

I'd somehow curled them into fists and then tight my nails were shut to puncturing my pare.

Immortal force—more a curse than a gift. I'd dented and folded every piece of silverware I'd touched for iii days upon returning here, had tripped over my longer, faster legs so ofttimes that Alis had removed any irreplaceable valuables from my rooms (she'd been particularly grumpy about me knocking over a table with an 8-hundred-year-quondam vase), and had shattered non one, not 2, merely 5 drinking glass doors only by accidentally closing them too difficult.

Sighing through my nose, I unfolded my fingers.

My right hand was apparently, smooth. Perfectly Fae.

I tilted my left manus over, the whorls of dark ink coating my fingers, my wrist, my forearm all the way to the elbow, soaking upwards the darkness of the room. The eye etched into the center of my palm seemed to watch me, at-home and cunning as a true cat, its slitted pupil wider than it'd been earlier that solar day. As if it adjusted to the light, equally any ordinary centre would.

I scowled at it.

At whoever might be watching through that tattoo.

I hadn't heard from Rhys in the three months I'd been here. Not a whisper. I hadn't dared enquire Tamlin, or Lucien, or anyone—lest it'd somehow summon the High Lord of the Night Court, somehow remind him of the fool's bargain I'd struck Nether the Mountain: one week with him every month in exchange for his saving me from the brink of expiry.

>   Merely fifty-fifty if Rhys had miraculously forgotten, I never could. Nor could Tamlin, Lucien, or anyone else. Non with the tattoo.

Fifty-fifty if Rhys, at the end … fifty-fifty if he hadn't been exactly an enemy.

To Tamlin, yes. To every other court out there, yeah. So few went over the borders of the Nighttime Court and lived to tell. No one actually knew what existed in the northernmost part of Prythian.

Mountains and darkness and stars and death.

Only I hadn't felt similar Rhysand'south enemy the last fourth dimension I'd spoken to him, in the hours after Amarantha'southward defeat. I'd told no one about that meeting, what he'd said to me, what I'd confessed to him.

Be glad of your human heart, Feyre. Pity those who don't feel annihilation at all.

I squeezed my fingers into a fist, blocking out that eye, the tattoo. I uncoiled to my feet, and flushed the toilet before padding to the sink to rinse out my mouth, then launder my face up.

I wished I felt null.

I wished my homo center had been changed with the residual of me, made into immortal marble. Instead of the shredded bit of blackness that it now was, leaking its ichor into me.

Tamlin remained asleep as I crept back into my darkened sleeping room, his naked body sprawled across the mattress. For a moment, I just admired the powerful muscles of his back, and then lovingly traced past the moonlight, his golden hair, mussed with sleep and the fingers I'd run through it while we fabricated love earlier.

For him, I had done this—for him, I'd gladly wrecked myself and my immortal soul.

And now I had eternity to live with it.

I continued to the bed, each step heavier, harder. The sheets were now absurd and dry out, and I slipped in, crimper my back to him, wrapping my arms around myself. His breathing was deep—even. But with my Fae ears … sometimes I wondered if I heard his breath catch, just for a heartbeat. I never had the nerve to ask if he was awake.

He never woke when the nightmares dragged me from slumber; never woke when I vomited my guts up nighttime afterwards night. If he knew or heard, he said aught near information technology.

I knew similar dreams chased him from his slumber equally often every bit I fled from mine. The first time information technology had happened, I'd awoken—tried to speak to him. Just he'd shaken off my touch, his peel clammy, and had shifted into that beast of fur and claws and horns and fangs. He'd spent the rest of the nighttime sprawled across the pes of the bed, monitoring the door, the wall of windows.

He'd since spent many nights like that.

Curled in the bed, I pulled the blanket higher, craving its warmth against the chill night. It had go our unspoken agreement—non to allow Amarantha win by acknowledging that she still tormented us in our dreams and waking hours.

Information technology was easier to non have to explain, anyway. To non have to tell him that though I'd freed him, saved his people and all of Prythian from Amarantha … I'd broken myself apart.

And I didn't think fifty-fifty eternity would exist long enough to set up me.

CHAPTER

2

"I want to go."

"No."

I crossed my artillery, tucking my tattooed hand under my correct bicep, and spread my feet slightly farther apart on the dirt floor of the stables. "It's been 3 months. Nil'southward happened, and the village isn't fifty-fifty 5 miles—"

"No." The midmorning sun streaming through the stable doors burnished Tamlin'due south golden hair as he finished buckling the bandolier of daggers across his chest. His face—ruggedly handsome, exactly as I'd dreamed it during those long months he'd worn a mask—was set, his lips a sparse line.

Backside him, already atop his dapple-grayness horse, along with three other Fae lord-sentries, Lucien silently shook his head in alarm, his metal eye narrowing. Don't push him, he seemed to say.

But equally Tamlin strode toward where his blackness stallion had already been saddled, I gritted my teeth and stormed afterward him. "The hamlet needs all the help it can get."

"And nosotros're notwithstanding hunting down Amarantha'due south beasts," he said, mounting his equus caballus in i fluid motion. Sometimes, I wondered if the horses were just to maintain an advent of civility—of normalcy. To pretend that he couldn't run faster than them, didn't live with ane foot in the forest. His green eyes were like chips of water ice as the stallion started into a walk. "I don't accept the sentries to spare to escort y'all."

I lunged for the determent. "I don't need an escort." My grip tightened on the leather as I tugged the horse to a end, and the golden ring on my finger—along with the square-cutting emerald glittering atop it—flashed in the dominicus.

Information technology had been ii months since Tamlin had proposed—two months of indelible presentations about flowers and apparel and seating arrangements and food. I'd had a small-scale reprieve a week ago, thank you to the Wintertime Solstice, though I'd traded contemplating lace and silk for selecting evergreen wreaths and garlands. Simply at least it had been a interruption.

Three days of feasting and drinking and exchanging minor presents, culminating in a long, rather odious anniversary atop the foothills on the longest night to escort us from ane yr to another as the sun died and was born anew. Or something similar that. Celebrating a winter holiday in a place that was permanently entrenched in spring hadn't done much to improve my general lack of festive cheer.

I hadn't particularly listened to the explanations of its origins—and the Fae themselves debated whether it had emerged from the Winter Court or Day Court. Both at present claimed it as their holiest holiday. All I really knew was that I'd had to suffer ii ceremonies: one at sunset to begin that endless night of presents and dancing and drinking in honor of the old sun's death; and 1 at the following dawn, bleary-eyed and feet aching, to welcome the dominicus'south rebirth.

It was bad enough that I'd been required to stand before the gathered courtiers and lesser faeries while Tamlin made his many toasts and salutes. Mentioning that my birthday had besides fallen on that longest night of the yr was a fact I'd conveniently forgotten to tell anyone. I'd received plenty presents, anyway—and would no doubt receive many, many more on my wedding day. I had petty use for so many things.

At present, merely two weeks stood between me and the ceremony. If I didn't get out of the manor, if I didn't have a day to exercise something other than spend Tamlin's money and be groveled to—

"Please. The recovery efforts are and so slow. I could hunt for the villagers, get them nutrient—"

"Information technology'due south not safe," Tamlin said, over again nudging his stallion into a walk. The horse'southward coat shone like a dark mirror, even in the shade of the stables. "Especially not for you."

He'd said that every fourth dimension we had this argument; every time I begged him to let me go to the nearby village of High Fae to help rebuild what Amarantha had burned years ago.

I followed him into the bright, cloudless day beyond the stables, the grasses blanket the nearby foothills undulating in the soft cakewalk. "People want to come up dorsum, they want a place to live—"

"Those same people see you every bit a blessing—a marking of stability. If something happened to yous … " He cut himself off as he halted his horse at the edge of the dirt path that would take him toward the eastern woods, Lucien now waiting a few yards downwardly it. "In that location's no point in rebuilding annihilation if Amarantha's creatures tear through the lands and destroy it again."

"The wards are upward—"

"Some slipped in before the wards were repaired. Lucien hunted downwards five naga yesterday."

I whipped my caput toward Lucien, who winced. He hadn't told me that at dinner terminal night. He'd lied when I'd asked him why he was limping. My breadbasket turned over—not just at the prevarication, but … naga. Sometimes I dreamed of their blood showering me as I killed them, of their leering serpentine faces while they tried to fillet me in the woods.

Tamlin said softly, "I can't do what I need to if I'm worrying about whether you're safe."

"Of course I'll be safety." As a Loftier Fae, with my force and speed, I'd stand a skilful adventure of getting away if something happened.

"Please—please but do thi

s for me," Tamlin said, stroking his stallion'south thick neck every bit the animal nickered with impatience. The others had already moved their horses into piece of cake canters, the beginning of them well-nigh within the shade of the woods. Tamlin jerked his chin toward the alabaster estate looming backside me. "I'chiliad sure there are things to assistance with around the house. Or you could paint. Try out that new set I gave for you for Winter Solstice."

There was zippo but nuptials planning waiting for me in the house, since Alis refused to let me lift a finger to exercise anything. Not because of who I was to Tamlin, what I was most to become to Tamlin, but … because of what I'd done for her, for her boys, for Prythian. All the servants were the aforementioned; some even so cried with gratitude when they passed me in the halls. And as for painting …

"Fine," I breathed. I fabricated myself wait him in the eye, fabricated myself smile. "Be careful," I said, and meant it. The idea of him going out in that location, hunting the monsters that had one time served Amarantha …

"I dear you," Tamlin said quietly.

I nodded, murmuring it back as he trotted to where Lucien still waited, the emissary now frowning slightly. I didn't watch them go.

I took my time retreating through the hedges of the gardens, the spring birds chirping merrily, gravel crunching under my flimsy shoes.

I hated the brilliant dresses that had go my daily compatible, merely didn't accept the heart to tell Tamlin—non when he'd bought so many, not when he looked then happy to come across me wear them. Not when his words weren't far from the truth. The day I put on my pants and tunics, the day I strapped weapons to myself like fine jewelry, information technology would send a message far and clear across the lands. So I wore the gowns, and permit Alis arrange my hair—if only so information technology would buy these people a measure of peace and comfort.

At least Tamlin didn't object to the dagger I kept at my side, hanging from a jeweled belt. Lucien had gifted both to me—the dagger during the months before Amarantha, the belt in the weeks after her downfall, when I'd carried the dagger, along with many others, everywhere I went. You lot might too look good if you're going to arm yourself to the teeth, he'd said.

Simply fifty-fifty if stability reigned for a hundred years, I doubted I'd ever awaken ane morning and not put on the knife.

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