A Court of Mist and Fury

Chapter 31

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y instead, and a grin ghosted across his face. “We all hated each other at first.”

Beside me, the light had winked out of Rhys’s eyes. What I’d asked about Amarantha, what horrors I’d made him remember …

A confession for a confession—I thought he’d done it for my sake. Maybe he had things he needed to voice, couldn’t voice to these people, not without causing them more pain and guilt.

Cassian went on, drawing my attention from the silent High Lord at my right, “We are bastards, you know. Az and I. The Illyrians … We love our people, and our traditions, but they dwell in clans and camps deep in the mountains of the North, and do not like outsiders. Especially High Fae who try to tell them what to do. But they’re just as obsessed with lineage, and have their own princes and lords among them. Az,” he said, pointing a thumb in his direction, his red Siphon catching the light, “was the bastard of one of the local lords. And if you think the bastard son of a lord is hated, then you can’t imagine how hated the bastard is of a war-camp laundress and a warrior she couldn’t or wouldn’t remember.” His casual shrug didn’t match the vicious glint in his hazel eyes. “Az’s father sent him to our camp for training once he and his charming wife realized he was a shadowsinger.”

Shadowsinger. Yes—the title, whatever it meant, seemed to fit.

“Like the daemati,” Rhys said to me, “shadowsingers are rare—coveted by courts and territories across the world for their stealth and predisposition to hear and feel things others can’t.”

Perhaps those shadows were indeed whispering to him, then. Azriel’s cold face yielded nothing.

Cassian said, “The camp lord practically shit himself with excitement the day Az was dumped in our camp. But me … once my mother weaned me and I was able to walk, they flew me to a distant camp, and chucked me into the mud to see if I would live or die.”

“They would have been smarter throwing you off a cliff,” Mor said, snorting.

“Oh, definitely,” Cassian said, that grin going razor-sharp. “Especially because when I was old and strong enough to go back to the camp I’d been born in, I learned those pricks worked my mother until she died.”

Again that silence fell—different this time. The tension and simmering anger of a unit who had endured so much, survived so much … and felt each other’s pain keenly.

“The Illyrians,” Rhys smoothly cut in, that light finally returning to his gaze, “are unparalleled warriors, and are rich with stories and traditions. But they are also brutal and backward, particularly in regard to how they treat their females.”

as he stared at the wall of windows

even as she noted Azriel’s posture and bit her lip. “They

of her parents. But her bleeding finally arrived, and all it took was for her to be in the wrong place, at the wrong time, before a male scented it on her and told the camp’s lord. She tried to flee—took right to the skies. But she was young, and the warriors were faster, and they dragged her back. They were about to tie her to the posts in the center of camp when my father winnowed in for a meeting with the camp’s lord about readying for

My brows narrowed. “Misted?”

garnishing his chicken into the air above the table. With a flick of his finger,

Court that evening and made her his bride. She loved her people, and missed them, but never forgot what they had tried to do to her—what they did to the females among them. She tried for decades to get my father to ban it, but the War was coming, and he wouldn’t risk isolating the Illyrians

your father,” Mor

mother, despite being mates, were wrong for each other. My father was cold and calculating, and could be vicious, as he had been trained to be since birth. My mother was soft and fiery and beloved by everyone she met. She hated him after a time—but never stopped being grateful that he had saved her wings, that he allowed her to fly whenever and wherever she wished. And when I was born, and could summon the Illyrian wings as I pleased … She wanted me to know

keep you out of your father’s claws,” Mor said, swirling her wine, her shoulders loosening as Azriel at last blinked, and seemed to shake off

added drily. “When I turned eight, my mother brought me to one of the Illyrian war-camps. To be trained, as all Illyrian males were trained. And like all Illyrian mothers, she

abandoned you?” I found

with a ferocity I’d heard only a few times, one of them being this afternoon. “She was staying at the camp as

Cassian laughed. “Backward,

magic was a mere fraction of it. And it’s rare amongst them—usually possessed only by the most powerful, pure-bred warriors.” Again, I looked at the slumbering Siphons atop the warriors’ hands. “I tried to use a Siphon during those years,” Rhys said. “And shattered about

such a

that training ring that day. The other boys in my age group knew it, too. Especially one in particular, who took a

shaking his head. “The pretty half-breed son of the High Lord—how fancy you were in

the years by challenging other boys to fights, with the prize being the clothes off their backs.” There was no pride in the words—not for his people’s brutality. I didn’t blame the shadowsinger, though. To treat anyone that way

was now taking in the broad, strong shoulders, the light

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