Filed to story: A Court of Mist and Fury Book by Sarah J Maas
Red-the red paint inside the glass vial was so bright, the blue as stunning as the eyes of that faerie woman I’d slaughtered-
“I thought you might want it to take around the grounds with you. Rather than lug all those bags like you always do.”
The brushes were fresh, gleaming-the bristles soft and clean.
Looking at that box, at what was inside, felt like examining a crow-picked corpse.
I tried to smile. Tried to will some brightness to my eyes.
He said, “You don’t like it.”
“No,” I managed to say. “No-it’s wonderful.” And it was. It really was.
“I thought if you started painting again … ” I waited for him to finish.
He didn’t.
My face heated.
“And what about you?” I asked quietly. “Will the paperwork help with anything at all?”
I dared meet his eyes. Temper flared in them. But he said, “We’re not talking about me. We’re talking-about you.”
I studied the box and its contents again. “Will I even be allowed to roam where I wish to paint? Or will there be an escort, too?”
Silence.
A no-and a yes, then.
I began shaking, but for me, for us, I made myself say, “Tamlin-Tamlin, I can’t … I can’t live my life with guards around me day and night. I can’t live with that … suffocation. Just let me help you-let me work with you.”
“You’ve given enough, Feyre.”
“I know. But … ” I faced him. Met his stare-the full power of the High Lord of the Spring Court. “I’m harder to kill now. I’m faster, stronger-“
“My family was faster and stronger than you. And they were murdered quite easily.”
“Then marry someone who can put up with this.”
He blinked. Slowly. Then he said with terrible softness, “Do you not want to marry me, then?”
I tried not to look at the ring on my finger, at that emerald. “Of course I do.
Of course I do.” My voice broke. “But you … Tamlin … ” The walls pushed in on me. The quiet, the guards, the stares. What I’d seen at the Tithe today. “I’m drowning,” I managed to say. “I am drowning. And the more you do this, the more guards … You might as well be shoving my head under the water.”
Nothing in those eyes, that face.
But then-
I cried out, instinct taking over as his power blasted through the room.
The windows shattered.
The furniture splintered.
And that box of paints and brushes and paper …
It exploded into dust and glass and wood.
One breath, the study was intact.
The next, it was shards of nothing, a shell of a room.
None of it had touched me from where I had dropped to the floor, my hands over my head.
Tamlin was panting, the ragged breaths almost like sobs.
I was shaking-shaking so hard I thought my bones would splinter as the furniture had-but I made myself lower my arms and look at him.
There was devastation on that face. And pain. And fear. And grief.
Around me, no debris had fallen-as if he had shielded me.
Tamlin took a step toward me, over that invisible demarcation.
He recoiled as if he’d hit something solid.
“Feyre,” he rasped.
He stepped again-and that line held.
“Feyre, please,” he breathed.
And I realized that the line, that bubble of protection …
It was from me.
A shield. Not just a mental one-but a physical one, too.
I didn’t know what High Lord it had come from, who controlled air or wind or any of that. Perhaps one of the Solar Courts. I didn’t care.
“Feyre,” Tamlin groaned a third time, pushing a hand against what indeed looked like an invisible, curved wall of hardened air. “Please. Please.”
Those words cracked something in me. Cracked me open.