A Court of Frost and Starlight (A Court of Thorns and Roses #3.1) by Sarah J. Maas

To paint?

I’d be an excellent nude model.

I smiled, not caring that I was by myself in the street with countless people streaming past me. My hood concealed most of my face, anyway. You’ll forgive me if I don’t feel like sharing the glory that is you with anyone else.

Perhaps I’ll model for you later, then. A sensuous brush down the bond that had my blood heating. It’s been a while since we had paint involved.

That cabin and kitchen table flashed into my mind, and my mouth went a bit dry. Rogue.

A chuckle. If you want to go in, then go in. If you don’t, then don’t. It’s your call.

I frowned down at the canvas tucked under one arm, the box of paints cradled in the other. Frowned toward the studio thirty feet away, the shadows thick between me and that golden spill of light.

I know what I want to do.



No one noticed me winnow inside the boarded-up gallery and studio space down the street.

And with the boards over the windows, no one noticed the balls of faelight that I kindled and set to floating in the air on a gentle wind.

Of course, with the boards over empty windows, and no occupant for months, the main room was freezing. Cold enough that I set down my supplies and bounced on my toes as I surveyed the space.

It had probably been lovely before the attack: a massive window faced southward, letting in endless sunshine, and skylights—also boarded up—dotted the vaulted ceiling. The gallery in the front was perhaps thirty feet wide, fifty feet deep, with a counter against one wall halfway back, and a door to what had to be the studio space or storage in the rear. A quick examination told me I was half right: storage was in the back, but no natural light for painting. Only narrow windows above a row of cracked sinks, a few metal counters still stained with paint, and old cleaning supplies.

And paint. Not paint itself, but the smell of it.

I breathed in deep, feeling it settle into my bones, letting the quiet of the space settle, too.

The gallery up front had been her studio as well. Polina must have painted while she chatted with customers surveying the hung art whose outlines I could barely make out against the white walls.

The floors beneath them were gray stone, kernels of shattered glass still shining between the cracks.

I didn’t want to do this first painting in front of others.

I could barely do it in front of myself. It was enough to drive away any guilt in regard to ignoring Ressina’s offer to join her. I’d made her no promises.

So I summoned my flame to begin warming the space, setting little balls of it burning midair throughout the gallery. Lighting it further. Warming it back to life.

Then I went in search of a stool.





CHAPTER

10

Feyre

I painted and painted and painted.

My heart thundered the entire time, steady as a war-drum.

I painted until my back cramped and my stomach gurgled with demands for hot cocoa and dessert.

I’d known what needed to come out of me the moment I perched on the rickety stool I’d dusted off from the back.

I’d barely been able to hold the paintbrush steady enough to make the first few strokes. From fear, yes. I was honest enough with myself to admit that.

But also from the sheer unleashing of it, as if I were a racehorse freed from my pen, the image in my mind a dashing vision that I sprinted to keep up with.

But it began to emerge. Began to take form.

And in its wake, a sort of quiet followed, as if it were a layer of snow blanketing the earth. Clearing away what was beneath.

More cleansing, more soothing than any of the hours I’d spent rebuilding this city. Equally as fulfilling, yes, but the painting, the unleashing and facing it, was a release. A first stitch to close a wound.

The tower bells of Velaris sang twelve before I stopped.

Before I lowered my brush and stared at what I’d created.

Stared at what gazed back.

Me.

Or how I’d been in the Ouroboros, that beast of scale and claw and darkness; rage and joy and cold. All of me. What lurked beneath my skin.

I had not run from it. And I did not run from it now.

Yes—the first stitch to close a wound. That’s how it felt.

With my brush dangling between my knees, with that beast forever on canvas, my body went a bit limp. Boneless.

I scanned the gallery, the street behind the boarded-up windows. No one had come to inquire about the lights in the hours I’d been here.

I stood at last, groaning as I stretched. I couldn’t take it with me. Not when the painting had to dry, and the damp night air off the river and distant sea would be terrible for it.

I certainly wasn’t going to bring it back to the town house for someone to find. Even Rhys.

But here … No one would know, should someone come in, who had painted it. I hadn’t signed my name. Didn’t want to.

If I left it here to dry overnight, if I came back tomorrow, there would certainly be some closet in the House of Wind where I might hide it afterward.

Tomorrow, then. I’d come back tomorrow to claim it.





CHAPTER

11

Rhysand

It was Spring, and yet it wasn’t.

It was not the land I had once roamed in centuries past, or even visited almost a year ago.

The sun was mild, the day clear, distant dogwoods and lilacs still in eternal bloom.

Distant—because on the estate, nothing bloomed at all.