Extraits

“I have known many High Lords,” Amren continued, studying her paper. “Cruel ones, cunning ones, weak ones, powerful ones. But never one that dreamed. Not as he does.”

“Dreams of what?” I breathed.

“Of peace. Of freedom. Of a world united, a world thriving. Of something better—for all of us.”

“He thinks he’ll be remembered as the villain in the story.”

She snorted.

“But I forgot to tell him,” I said quietly, opening the door, “that the villain is usually the person who locks up the maiden and throws away the key.”

“Oh?”

I shrugged. “He was the one who let me out.”

“Many atrocities,” Rhys purred, “have been done in the name of the greater good.”

he will never have to worry about someone walking away because the threat against their life, their children’s lives, will always be there. So, yes, I was jealous of him—because it will always be easy for him. And he will never know what it is to look up at the night sky and wish.”

The Court of Dreams.

The people who knew that there was a price, and one worth paying, for that dream. The bastard-born warriors, the Illyrian half-breed, the monster trapped in a beautiful body, the dreamer born into a court of nightmares … And the huntress with an artist’s soul.

And perhaps because it was the most vulnerable thing he’d said to me, perhaps it was the burning in my eyes, but I walked to where he stood over the little bar. I didn’t look at him as I took the decanter of amber liquid and poured myself a knuckle’s length, then refilled his.

But I met his stare as I clinked my glass against his, the crystal ringing clear and bright over the crashing sea far below, and said, “To the people who look at the stars and wish, Rhys.”

He picked up his glass, his gaze so piercing that I wondered why I had bothered blushing at all for Tarquin.

Rhys clinked his glass against mine. “To the stars who listen—and the dreams that are answered.”

“Do not threaten me in my own home, Rhysand,” Tarquin said. “My gratitude goes only so far.”

“It’s not a threat,” Rhys countered, the crab claws on his plate cracking open beneath invisible hands. “It’s a promise.”

They all looked at me, waiting for any response.

So I lifted my glass of wine, looked them each in the eye, holding Tarquin’s gaze the longest, and said, “No wonder immortality never gets dull.”

If you want, I’d be more than happy to prove you wrong. I’ve been told I’m very, very good at licking.

I clenched my knees together and wrote back, Good night.

A heartbeat later, his note said, Try not to moan too loudly when you dream about me. I need my beauty rest.

Life is better when you’re around. And look at how lovely your handwriting is.

Elain flushed a bit. “The—the bedrooms that have two beds aren’t next to each other,” she murmured.

I sighed. “We’ll move things around. It’s fine. This one,” I added with a glare in Rhys’s direction, “is only cranky because he’s old and it’s past his bedtime.”

“So I’m your huntress and thief?”

His hands slid down to cup the backs of my knees as he said with a roguish grin, “You are my salvation, Feyre.”

“You’re brothers?” The Illyrians looked similar, but only in the way that people who had come from the same place did.

Rhysand clarified, “Brothers in the sense that all bastards are brothers of a sort.”

“Where are we going?”

Rhys’s smile widened into a grin. “To Velaris—the City of Starlight.”