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

“I think something very bad might be happening in Prythian,” I said softly. I’d never learned what warning signs Tamlin had instilled in their glamours to prod my family to run, but I wasn’t going to risk relying solely on them. Not when Clare had been taken, her family murdered … because of me. Bile burned my throat.

“Prythian!” my father and Elain blurted. But Nesta held up a hand to silence them.

I went on, “If you won’t leave, then hire guards—hire scouts to watch the wall, the forest. The village, too.” I rose from my seat. “The first sign of danger, the first rumor you hear of the wall being breached or even something being strange, you get on a ship and go. You sail far away, as far south as you can get, to someplace the faeries would never desire.”

My father and Elain began blinking, as if clearing some fog from their minds—as if emerging from a deep sleep. But Nesta followed me into the hall, up the stairs.

“The Beddors,” she said. “That was meant to be us. But you gave them a fake name—those wicked faeries who threatened your High Lord.” I nodded. I could see the plans calculating in her eyes. “Is there going to be an invasion?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what’s happening. I was told that there was a kind of sickness that had made their powers weaken or go wild, a blight on the land that had damaged the safety of their borders and could kill people if it struck badly enough. They—they said it was surging again … on the move. The last I heard, it wasn’t near enough to harm our lands. But if the Spring Court is about to fall, then the blight has to be getting close, and Tamlin … Tamlin was one of the last bastions keeping the other courts in check—the deadly courts. And I think he’s in danger.”

I entered my room and began peeling off my gown. My sister helped me, then opened the wardrobe to pull out a heavy tunic and pants and boots. I slipped into them and was braiding back my hair when she said, “We don’t need you here, Feyre. Do not look back.”

I tugged on my boots and went for the hunting knives I’d discreetly acquired while here.

“Father once told you to never come back,” Nesta said, “and I’m telling you now. We can take care of ourselves.”

Once I might have thought it was an insult, but now I understood—understood what a gift she was offering me. I sheathed the knives at my side and slung a quiver of arrows across my back—none of them ash—before scooping up my bow. “They can lie,” I said, giving her information I hoped she would never need. “Faeries can lie, and iron doesn’t bother them one bit. But ash wood—that seems to work. Take my money and buy a damned grove of it for Elain to tend.”

Nesta shook her head, clutching her wrist, the bracelet of iron still there. “What do you think you can even do to help? He’s a High Lord—you’re just a human.” That wasn’t an insult, either. A question from a coolly calculating mind.

“I don’t care,” I admitted, at the door now, which I flung open. “But I’ve got to try.”

Nesta remained in my room. She would not say good-bye—she hated farewells as much as I did.

But I turned to my sister and said, “There is a better world, Nesta. There is a better world out there, waiting for you to find it. And if I ever get the chance, if things are ever better, safer … I will find you again.”

It was all I could offer her.

But Nesta squared her shoulders. “Don’t bother. I don’t think I’d be particularly fond of faeries.” I raised a brow. She went on with a slight shrug. “Try to send word once it’s safe. And if it ever is … Father and Elain can have this place. I think I’d like to see what else is out there, what a woman might do with a fortune and a good name.”

No limits, I thought. There were no limits to what Nesta might do, what she might make of herself once she found a place to call her own. I prayed I would be lucky enough to someday see it.



Elain, to my surprise, had a horse, a satchel of food, and supplies ready when I hurried down the stairs. My father was nowhere in sight. But Elain threw her arms around me, and, holding tightly, said, “I remember—I remember all of it now.”

I wrapped my arms around her. “Be on your guard. All of you.”

She nodded, tears in her eyes. “I would have liked to see the continent with you, Feyre.”

I smiled at my sister, memorizing her lovely face, and wiped her tears away. “Maybe someday,” I said. Another promise that I’d be lucky to keep.

Elain was still crying as I spurred my horse and galloped down the drive. I didn’t have it in me to say good-bye to my father once more.

I rode all day and stopped only when it was too dark for me to see. Due north—that’s where I would start and go until I hit the wall. I had to get back—had to see what had happened, had to tell Tamlin everything that was in my heart before it was too late.

I rode all of the second day, slept fitfully, and was off before first light.

On and on, through the summer forest, lush and dense and humming.

Until an absolute silence fell. I slowed my horse to a careful walk and scanned the brush and trees ahead for any sign, any ripple. There was nothing. Nothing, and then—

My horse bucked and shook her head, and it was all I could do to stay in the saddle as she refused to go forward. But still, there was nothing—no marker. Yet when I dismounted, hardly breathing as I put a hand out, I found that I could not pass.