A Court of Thorns and Roses (A Court of Thorns and Roses #1) by Sarah J. Maas

Its tip had been nicked, turned inward on itself.

Tamlin clutched his chest as he panted, the wound already healing. Rhysand, at the foot of the dais, grinned from ear to ear. Amarantha climbed to her feet.

The faeries murmured to one another. I dropped the blade, sending it clattering across the red marble.

Kill her now, I wanted to bark at Tamlin, but he didn’t move as he pushed his hand against his wound, blood dribbling out. Too slowly—he was healing too slowly. The mask didn’t fall off. Kill her now.

“She won,” someone in the crowd said. “Free them,” another echoed.

But Amarantha’s face blanched, her features contorting until she looked truly serpentine. “I’ll free them whenever I see fit. Feyre didn’t specify when I had to free them—just that I had to. At some point. Perhaps when you’re dead,” she finished with a hateful smile. “You assumed that when I said instantaneous freedom regarding the riddle, it applied to the trials, too, didn’t you? Foolish, stupid human.”

I stepped back as she descended the steps of the dais. Her fingers curled into claws—Jurian’s eye was going wild within the ring, his pupil dilating and shrinking. “And you,” she hissed at me. “You.” Her teeth gleamed—turning sharp. “I’m going to kill you.”

Someone cried out, but I couldn’t move, couldn’t even try to get out of the way as something far more violent than lightning struck me, and I crashed to the floor.

“I’m going to make you pay for your insolence,” Amarantha snarled, and a scream ravaged my throat as pain like nothing I had known erupted through me.

My very bones were shattering as my body rose and then slammed onto the hard floor, and I was crushed beneath another wave of torturous agony.

“Admit you don’t really love him, and I’ll spare you,” Amarantha breathed, and through my fractured vision, I saw her prowl toward me. “Admit what a cowardly, lying, inconstant bit of human garbage you are.”

I wouldn’t—I wouldn’t say that even if she splattered me across the ground.

But I was being ripped apart from the inside out, and I thrashed, unable to out-scream the pain.

“Feyre!” someone roared. No, not someone—Rhysand.

But Amarantha still neared. “You think you’re worthy of him? A High Lord? You think you deserve anything at all, human?” My back arched, and my ribs cracked, one by one.

Rhysand yelled my name again—yelled it as though he cared. I blacked out, but she brought me back, ensuring that I felt everything, ensuring that I screamed every time a bone broke.

“What are you but mud and bones and worm meat?” Amarantha raged. “What are you, compared to our kind, that you think you’re worthy of us?”

Faeries began calling foul play, demanding Tamlin be released from the curse, calling her a cheating liar. Through the haze, I saw Rhysand crouching by Tamlin. Not to help him, but to grab the—

“You are all pigs—all scheming, filthy pigs.”

I sobbed between screams as her foot connected with my broken ribs. Again. And again. “Your mortal heart is nothing to us.”

Then Rhysand was on his feet, my bloody knife in his hands. He launched himself at Amarantha, swift as a shadow, the ash dagger aimed at her throat.

She lifted a hand—not even bothering to look—and he was blasted back by a wall of white light.

But the pain paused for a second, long enough for me to see him hit the ground and rise again and lunge for her—with hands that now ended in talons. He slammed into the invisible wall Amarantha had raised around herself, and my pain flickered as she turned to him.

“You traitorous piece of filth,” she seethed at Rhysand. “You’re just as bad as these human beasts.” One by one, as if a hand were shoving them in, his talons pushed back into his skin, leaving blood in their wake. He swore, low and vicious. “You were planning this all along.”

Her magic sent him sprawling, and it then hurled into Rhysand again—so hard that his head cracked against the stones and the knife dropped from his splayed fingers. No one made a move to help him, and she struck him once more with her power. The red marble splintered where he hit it, spiderwebbing toward me. With wave after wave she hit him. Rhys groaned.

“Stop,” I breathed, blood filling my mouth as I strained a hand to reach her feet. “Please.”

Rhys’s arms buckled as he fought to rise, and blood dripped from his nose, splattering on the marble. His eyes met mine.

The bond between us went taut. I flashed between my body and his, seeing myself through his eyes, bleeding and broken and sobbing.

I snapped back into my own mind as Amarantha turned to me again. “Stop? Stop? Don’t pretend you care, human,” she crooned, and curled her finger. I arched my back, my spine straining to the point of cracking, and Rhysand bellowed my name as I lost my grip on the room.

Then the memories began—a compilation of the worst moments of my life, a storybook of despair and darkness. The final page came, and I wept, not entirely feeling the agony of my body as I saw that young rabbit, bleeding out in that forest clearing, my knife through her throat. My first kill—the first life I’d taken.

I’d been starving, desperate. Yet afterward, once my family had devoured it, I had crept back into the woods and wept for hours, knowing a line had been crossed, my soul stained.