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

Shortcoming. It was a shortcoming.

Yet it was one thing to bandage his hand, to talk to him as if he wasn’t a predator built to kill and destroy, but to reveal how little I truly knew, to let him see that part of me that was still a child, unfinished and raw … His face was unreadable. Though there had been no pity in his voice, I straightened. “I’m fine.”

“You think I’ve got nothing better to do with my time than come up with elaborate ways to humiliate you?”

I thought of that smear of nothing that the painter had used to render the human lands, and didn’t have an answer—at least, not one that was polite. I’d given enough already to them—to him.

Tamlin shook his head. “So you’ll let Lucien take you on hunts and—”

“Lucien,” I interrupted quietly but not softly, “doesn’t pretend to be anything but what he is.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he growled, but his claws stayed retracted, even as he clenched his hands into fists at his sides.

I was definitely walking a dangerous line, but I didn’t care. Even if he’d offered me sanctuary, I didn’t have to fall at his feet. “It means,” I said with that same cold quiet, “that I don’t know you. I don’t know who you are, or what you really are, or what you want.”

“It means you don’t trust me.”

“How can I trust a faerie? Don’t you delight in killing and tricking us?”

His snarl set the flames of the candles guttering. “You aren’t what I had in mind for a human—believe me.”

I could almost feel the wound deep in my chest as it ripped open and all those awful, silent words came pouring out. Illiterate, ignorant, unremarkable, proud, cold—all spoken from Nesta’s mouth, all echoing in my head with her sneering voice.

I pinched my lips together.

He winced and lifted a hand slightly, as if about to reach for me. “Feyre,” he began—softly enough that I just shook my head and left the room. He didn’t stop me.

But that afternoon, when I went to retrieve my crumpled list from the wastebasket, it was gone. And my pile of books had been disturbed—the titles out of order. It had probably been a servant, I assured myself, calming the tightness in my chest. Just Alis or some other bird-masked faerie cleaning up. I hadn’t written anything incriminating—there was no way he knew I’d been trying to warn my family. I doubted he would punish me for it, but … our conversation earlier had been bad enough.

Still, my hands were unsteady as I took my seat at the little desk and found my place in the book I’d used that morning. I knew it was shameful to mark the books with ink, but if Tamlin could afford gold plates, he could replace a book or two.

I stared at the book without seeing the jumble of letters.

Maybe I was a fool for not accepting his help, for not swallowing my pride and having him write the letter in a few moments. Not even a letter of warning, but just—just to let them know I was safe. If he had better things to do with his time than come up with ways to embarrass me, then surely he had better things to do than help me write letters to my family. And yet he’d offered.

A nearby clock chimed the hour.

Shortcoming—another one of my shortcomings. I rubbed my brows with my thumb and forefinger. I’d been equally foolish for feeling a shred of pity for him—for the lone, brooding faerie, for someone I had so stupidly thought would really care if he met someone who perhaps felt the same, perhaps understood—in my ignorant, insignificant human way—what it was like to bear the weight of caring for others. I should have let his hand bleed that night, should have known better than to think that maybe—maybe there would be someone, human or faerie or whatever, who could understand what my life—what I—had become these past few years.

A minute passed, then another.

Faeries might not be able to lie, but they could certainly withhold information; Tamlin, Lucien, and Alis had done their best not to answer my specific questions. Knowing more about the blight that threatened them—knowing anything about it, where it had come from, what else it could do, and especially what it could do to a human—was worth my time to learn.

And if there was a chance that they might also possess some knowledge about a forgotten loophole of that damned Treaty, if they knew some way to pay the debt I owed and return me to my family so I might warn them about the blight myself … I had to risk it.

Twenty minutes later I had tracked down Lucien in his bedroom. I’d marked on my little map where it was—in a separate wing on the second level, far from mine—and after searching in his usual haunts, it was the last place to look. I knocked on the white-painted double doors.

“Come in, human.” He could probably detect me by my breathing patterns alone. Or maybe that eye of his could see through the door.

I eased open the door. The room was similar to mine in shape, but was bedecked in hues of orange and red and gold, with faint traces of green and brown. Like being in an autumn wood. But while my room was all softness and grace, his was marked with ruggedness. In lieu of a pretty breakfast table by the window, a worn worktable dominated the space, covered in various weapons. It was there he sat, wearing only a white shirt and trousers, his red hair unbound and gleaming like liquid fire. Tamlin’s court-trained emissary, but a warrior in his own right.