I tried not to look at my left arm as I scrubbed at the floors of the hallway. The ink—which, in the
light, was actually a blue so dark it appeared black—was a cloud upon my thoughts, and those were
bleak enough even without knowing I’d sold myself to Rhysand. I couldn’t look at the eye on my palm.
I had an absurd, creeping feeling that it watched me.
I dunked the large brush into the bucket the red-skinned guards had thrown into my arms. I could
barely comprehend them through their mouths full of long yellow teeth, but when they gave me the
brush and bucket and shoved me into a long hallway of white marble, I understood.
“If it’s not washed and shining by supper,” one of them had said, its teeth clicking as it grinned,
“we’re to tie you to the spit and give you a few good turns over the fire.”
With that, they left. I had no idea when supper was, and so I frantically began washing. My back
already ached like fire, and I hadn’t been scrubbing the marble hall for more than thirty minutes. But
the water they’d given me was filthy, and the more I scrubbed the floor, the dirtier it became. When I
went to the door to ask for a bucket of clean water, I found it locked. There would be no help.
An impossible task—a task to torment me. The spit—perhaps that was the source of the constant
screaming in the dungeons. Would a few turns on the spit melt all the flesh from me, or just burn me
badly enough to force me into another bargain with Rhysand? I cursed as I scrubbed harder, the
coarse bristles of the brush crinkling and whispering against the tiles. A rainbow of brown was left in
their wake, and I growled as I dunked the brush again. Filthy water came out with it, dripping all over
the floor.
A trail of brown muck grew with each sweep. Breathing quickly, I hurled the brush to the ground
and covered my face with my wet hands. I lowered my left hand when I realized the eye was pressed
against my cheek.
I gulped down steadying gasps of air. There had to be a rational way to do this; there had to be
some old wives’ trick. The spit—tied to a spit like a roast pig.
I grabbed the brush from where it had bounced away and scrubbed at the floor until my hands
throbbed. It looked like someone had spilled mud all over the place. The dirt was actually turning
into mud the harder I scrubbed it. I’d probably wail and beg for mercy when they rotated me on that
spit. There had been red lines covering Clare’s naked body—what instrument of torture had they
come from? My hands trembled, and I set down the brush. I could take down a giant worm, but
washing a floor—that was the impossible task.
A door clicked open somewhere down the hall, and I shot to my feet. An auburn head peered at
me. I sagged with relief. Lucien—
Not Lucien. The face that turned toward me was female—and unmasked.
She looked perhaps a bit older than Amarantha, but her porcelain skin was exquisitely colored,
graced with the faintest blush of rose along her cheeks. Had the red hair not been indication enough,
when her russet eyes met mine, I knew who she was.
I bowed my head to the Lady of the Autumn Court, and she inclined her chin slightly. I supposed
that was honor enough. “For giving her your name in place of my son’s life,” she said, her voice as
sweet as sun-warmed apples. She must have been in the crowd that day. She pointed at the bucket
with a long, slender hand. “My debt is paid.” She disappeared through the door she’d opened, and I
could have sworn I smelled roasting chestnuts and crackling fires in her wake.
It was only after the door shut that I realized I should have thanked her, and only after I looked in
my bucket that I realized I’d been hiding my left arm behind my back.
I knelt beside the bucket and dipped my fingers into the water. They came out clean.
I shuddered, allowing myself a moment to slump over my knees before I dumped some of the water
onto the floor and watched it wash away the muck.
To the chagrin of the guards, I had completed their impossible task. But the next day, they smiled at
me as they shoved me into a massive, dark bedroom, lit only by a few candles, and pointed to the
looming fireplace. “Servant spilled lentils in the ash,” one of the guards grunted, tossing me a wooden
bucket. “Clean it up before the occupant returns, or he’ll peel off your skin in strips.”
A slammed door, the click of a lock, and I was alone.
Sorting lentils from ash and embers—ridiculous, wasteful, and—
I approached the darkened fireplace and cringed.
Impossible.
I cast a glance about the bedroom. No windows, no exits save the one I’d just been chucked
through. The bed was enormous and neatly made, its black sheets of—of silk. There was nothing else
in the room beyond basic furniture; not even discarded clothes or books or weapons. As if its
occupant never slept here. I knelt before the fireplace and calmed my breathing.
I had keen eyes, I reminded myself. I could spot rabbits hiding in the underbrush and track most
things that wanted to remain unseen. Spotting the lentils couldn’t be that hard. Sighing, I crawled
farther into the fireplace and began.
I was wrong.
Two hours later, my eyes were burning and aching, and even though I combed through every inch
of that fireplace, there were always more lentils, more and more that I’d somehow not spotted. The
guards had never said when the owner of this room would return, and so every tick of the clock on the
mantel became a death knell, every footstep outside the door causing me to reach for the iron poker
leaning against the hearth wall. Amarantha had never said anything about not fighting back—never
specified that I wasn’t allowed to defend myself. At least I’d go down swinging.
I picked through the ashes again and again. My hands were now black and stained, my clothes
covered in soot. Surely there couldn’t be any more; surely—
The lock clicked, and I lunged for the poker as I shot to my feet, my back to the hearth and the iron
rod hidden behind me.
Darkness entered the room, guttering the candles with a snow-kissed breeze. I gripped the poker
harder, pressing against the stone of the fireplace, even as that darkness settled on the bed and took a
familiar form.
“As wonderful as it is to see you, Feyre, darling,” Rhysand said, sprawled on the bed, his head
propped up by a hand, “do I want to know why you’re digging through my fireplace?”
I bent my knees slightly, preparing to run, to duck, to do anything to get to the door that felt far, far
away. “They said I had to clean out lentils from the ashes, or you’d rip off my skin.”
“Did they now.” A feline smile.
“Do I have you to thank for this idea?” I hissed. He wasn’t allowed to kill me, not with my bargain
with Amarantha, but … there were other ways to hurt me.
“Oh, no,” he drawled. “No one’s learned of our little bargain yet—and you’ve managed to keep it
quiet. Shame riding you a bit hard?”
I clenched my jaw and pointed to the fireplace with one hand, still keeping the poker tucked behind
me. “Is this clean enough for you?”
“Why were there lentils in my fireplace to begin with?”
I gave him a flat look. “One of your mistress’s household chores, I suppose.”
“Hm,” he said, examining his nails. “Apparently she or her cronies think I’ll find some sport with
you.”
My mouth dried up. “Or it’s a test for you,” I managed to get out. “You said you bet on me during
my first task. She didn’t seem pleased about it.”
“And what could Amarantha possibly have to test me about?”
I didn’t balk from that violet stare. Amarantha’s whore, Lucien had once called him. “You lied to
her. About Clare. You knew very well what I looked like.”
Rhysand sat up in a fluid movement and braced his forearms on his thighs. Such grace contained in
such a powerful form. I was slaughtering on the battlefield before you were even born, he’d once
said to Lucien. I didn’t doubt it. “Amarantha plays her games,” he said simply, “and I play mine. It
gets rather boring down here, day after day.”
“She let you out for Fire Night. And you somehow got out to put that head in the garden.”
“She asked me to put that head in the garden. And as for Fire Night …” He looked me up and
down. “I had my reasons to be out then. Do not think, Feyre, that it did not cost me.” He smiled again,
and it didn’t meet his eyes. “Are you going to put down that poker, or can I expect you to start
swinging soon?”
I swallowed my curse and brought it out—but didn’t put it down.
“A valiant effort, but useless,” he said. True—so true, when he didn’t even need to take his hands
out of his pockets to grip Lucien’s mind.
“How is it that you have such power still and the others don’t? I thought she robbed all of you of
your abilities.”
He lifted a groomed, dark brow. “Oh, she took my powers. This …” A caress of talons against my
mind. I jerked back a step, slamming into the fireplace. The pressure on my mind vanished. “This is
just the remnant. The scraps I get to play with. Your Tamlin has brute strength and shape-shifting; my
arsenal is a far deadlier assortment.”
I knew he wasn’t bluffing—not when I’d felt those talons in my mind. “So you can’t shape-shift?
It’s not some High Lord specialty?”
“Oh, all the High Lords can. Each of us has a beast roaming beneath our skin, roaring to get out.
While your Tamlin prefers fur, I find wings and talons to be more entertaining.”
A lick of cold kissed down my spine. “Can you shift now, or did she take that, too?”
“So many questions from a little human.”
But the darkness that hovered around him began to writhe and twist and flare as he rose to his feet.
I blinked, and it was done.
I lifted the iron poker, just a little bit.
“Not a full shift, you see,” Rhysand said, clicking the black razor-sharp talons that had replaced
his fingers. Below the knee, darkness stained his skin—but talons also gleamed in lieu of toes. “I
don’t particularly like yielding wholly to my baser side.”
Indeed, it was still Rhysand’s face, his powerful male body, but flaring out behind him were
massive black membranous wings—like a bat’s, like the Attor’s. He tucked them in neatly behind
him, but the single claw at the apex of each peeked over his broad shoulders. Horrific, stunning—the
face of a thousand nightmares and dreams. That again-useless part of me stirred at the sight, the way
the candlelight shone through the wings, illuminating the veins, the way it bounced off his talons.
Rhysand rolled his neck, and it all vanished in a flash—the wings, the talons, the feet, leaving only
the male behind, well-dressed and unruffled. “No attempts at flattery?”
I had made a very, very big mistake in offering my life to him.
But I said, “You have a high-enough opinion of yourself already. I doubt the flattery of a little
human matters much to you.”
He let out a low laugh that slid along my bones, warming my blood. “I can’t decide whether I
should consider you admirable or very stupid for being so bold with a High Lord.”
Only around him did I have trouble keeping my mouth shut, it seemed. So I dared to ask, “Do you
know the answer to the riddle?”
He crossed his arms. “Cheating, are you?”
“She never said I couldn’t ask for help.”
“Ah, but after she had you beaten to hell, she ordered us not to help you.” I waited. But he shook
his head. “Even if I felt like helping you, I couldn’t. She gives the order, and we all bow to it.” He
picked a fleck of dust off his black jacket. “It’s a good thing she likes me, isn’t it?”
I opened my mouth to press him—to beg him. If it meant instantaneous freedom—
“Don’t waste your breath,” he said. “I can’t tell you—no one here can. If she ordered us all to stop
breathing, we would have to obey that, too.” He frowned at me and snapped his fingers. The soot, the
dirt, the ash vanished off my skin, leaving me as clean as if I’d bathed. “There. A gift—for having the
balls to even ask.”
I gave him a flat stare, but he motioned to the hearth.
It was spotless—and my bucket was filled with lentils. The door swung open of its own accord,
revealing the guards who’d dragged me here. Rhysand waved a lazy hand at them. “She accomplished
her task. Take her back.”
They grabbed for me, but he bared his teeth in a smile that was anything but friendly—and they
halted. “No more household chores, no more tasks,” he said, his voice an erotic caress. Their yellow
eyes went glazed and dull, their sharp teeth gleaming as their mouths slackened. “Tell the others, too.
Stay out of her cell, and don’t touch her. If you do, you’re to take your own daggers and gut
yourselves. Understood?”
Dazed, numb nods, then they blinked and straightened. I hid my trembling. Glamour, mind control
—whatever it was he had done, it worked. They beckoned—but didn’t dare touch me.
Rhysand smiled at me. “You’re welcome,” he purred as I walked out.
