A Court of Mist and Fury

Chapter 35

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Amren was standing at the foot of my bed.

I jolted back, slamming into the headboard, blinded by the morning light blazing in, fumbling for a weapon, anything to use—

“No wonder you’re so thin if you vomit up your guts every night.” She sniffed, her lip curling. “You reek of it.”

The bedroom door was shut. Rhys had said no one entered without his permission, but—

She chucked something onto the bed. A little gold amulet of pearl and cloudy blue stone. “This got me out of the Prison. Wear it in, and they can never keep you.”

I didn’t touch the amulet.

“Allow me to make one thing clear,” Amren said, bracing both hands on the carved wooden footboard. “I do not give that amulet lightly. But you may borrow it, while you do what needs to be done, and return it to me when you are finished. If you keep it, I will find you, and the results won’t be pleasant. But it is yours to use in the Prison.”

By the time my fingers brushed the cool metal and stone, she’d walked out the door.

Rhys hadn’t been wrong about the firedrake comparison.

Rhys kept frowning at the amulet as we hiked the slope of the Prison, so steep that at times we had to crawl on our hands and knees. Higher and higher we climbed, and I drank from the countless little streams that gurgled through the bumps and hollows in the moss-and-grass slopes. All around the mist drifted by, whipped by the wind, whose hollow moaning drowned out our crunching footsteps.

When I caught Rhys looking at the necklace for the tenth time, I said, “What?”

“She gave you that.”

Not a question.

“It must be serious, then,” I said. “The risk with—”

“Don’t say anything you don’t want others hearing.” He pointed to the stone beneath us. “The inmates have nothing better to do than to listen through the earth and rock for gossip. They’ll sell any bit of information for food, sex, maybe a breath of air.”

I could do this; I could master this fear.

Amren had gotten out. And stayed out. And the amulet—it’d keep me free, too.

in bed for hours, unable to move

hauling me up to where he perched at its top. It had been so long—too long—since I’d been outdoors, using my body, relying on it. My breathing was ragged, even with my new immortality. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for,” he said. “You’re here now.” But enough

upper face of the mountain became a wall before us, nothing but grassy slopes sweeping behind, far below, to where they flowed to the

so surprised,” he

from the dagger he’d grabbed to slit Amarantha’s

hoarse hearing that. And then make me go into the

“Can he beat you?”

earn it for a change, but he’d win.” No arrogance, no pride. “Cassian is the best warrior I’ve encountered in any court, any land.

“Azriel—his hands. The scars, I mean,” I said. “Where did

it from their mother, the lord’s wife. For the eleven years that Azriel lived in his father’s keep, she saw to it he was kept in a cell with no window, no light. They let him out for an hour every day—let him see his mother for an hour once a week. He wasn’t permitted to train, or fly, or any of the things his Illyrian instincts roared at him to do. When he was eight, his brothers decided it’d be fun to see

three more years living with them. What

wind and sea around us as he said with

in the words that I instead

the armies fail and Cassian and Azriel are

chilled. “So she’s

the dynamics between the Court of Nightmares and the Court of Dreams, and runs both Velaris and the Hewn City. I suppose in

“And Amren?”

political adviser, walking library, and doer of my dirty work. I appointed her upon gaining

and Cassian and Azriel are dead, and even Mor is gone.” Each word was like ice on my

find a way

chat this morning, perhaps

she ever finds a way

at the sheer stone wall.

a hand flat on the stone. Like

its place, so high their tops

Gates of bone.

cavern of black so inky I had never seen its like,

at my throat, the metal warm under my palm. Amren got out. I would

and guided me inside, three

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