Court of thrones and roses

Chapter 7 (part 1)

The golden-haired High Fae and Lucien were lounging at the table when Alis returned me to the dining room. They no longer had plates before them, but still sipped from golden goblets. Real gold— not paint or foil. Our mismatched cutlery flashed through my mind as I paused in the middle of the room. Such wealth—such staggering wealth, when we had nothing.

A half-wild beast, Nesta had called me. But compared to him, compared to this place, compared to the elegant, easy way they held their goblets, the way the golden-haired one had called me human ... we were all half-wild beasts to the High Fae. Even if they were the ones who could don fur and claws.

Food still remained on the table, the array of spices lingering in the air, beckoning. I was starving, my head unnervingly light.

The golden-haired High Fae’s mask gleamed with the last rays of the afternoon sunshine. “Before you ask again: the food is safe for you to eat.” He pointed to the chair at the other end of the table. No sign of his claws. When I didn’t move, he sighed sharply. “What do you want, then?”

I said nothing. To eat, flee, save my family ...

Lucien drawled from his seat along the length of the table, “I told you so, Tamlin.” He flicked a glance toward his friend. “Your skills with females have definitely become rusty in recent decades.”

Tamlin. He glowered at Lucien, shifting in his seat. I tried not to stiffen at the other bit of information Lucien had given away. Decades.

Tamlin didn’t look much older than me, but his kind was immortal. He could be hundreds of years old. Thousands. My mouth dried up as I carefully studied their strange, masked faces—unearthly, primal, and imperious. Like immovable gods or feral courtiers.

“Well,” Lucien said, his remaining russet eye fixed on me, “you don’t look half as bad now. A relief, I suppose, since you’re to live with us. Though the tunic isn’t as pretty as a dress.”

Wolves ready to pounce—that’s what they were, just like their friend. I was all too aware of my diction, of the very breath I took as I said, “I’d prefer not to wear that dress.”

“And why not?” Lucien crooned.

It was Tamlin who answered for me. “Because killing us is easier in pants.”

I kept my face blank, willed my heart to calm as I said, “Now that I’m here, what ... what do you

plan to do with me?”

Lucien snorted, but Tamlin said with a snarl of annoyance, “Just sit down.”

An empty seat had been pulled out at the end of the table. So many foods, piping hot and wafting

those enticing spices. The servants had probably brought out new food while I’d washed. So much wasted. I clenched my hands into fists.

“We’re not going to bite.” Lucien’s white teeth gleamed in a way that suggested otherwise. I avoided his gaze, avoided that strange, animated metal eye that focused on me as I inched to my seat and sat down.

Tamlin rose, stalking around the table—closer and closer, each movement smooth and lethal, a predator blooded with power. It was an effort to keep still—especially as he picked up a dish, brought it over to me, and piled some meat and sauce on my plate.

I said quietly, “I can serve myself.” Anything, anything to keep him well away from me.

Tamlin paused, so close that one swipe of those claws lurking under his skin could rip my throat out. That was why the leather baldric bore no weapons: why use them when you were a weapon yourself? “It’s an honor for a human to be served by a High Fae,” he said roughly.

I swallowed hard. He continued piling various foods on my plate, stopping only when it was heaping with meat and sauce and bread, and then filled my glass with pale sparkling wine. I loosed a breath as he prowled back to his seat, though he could probably hear it.

I wanted nothing more than to bury my face in the plate and then eat my way down the table, but I pinned my hands beneath my thighs and stared at the two faeries.

They watched me, too closely to be casual. Tamlin straightened a bit and said, “You look ... better than before.”

Was that a compliment? I could have sworn Lucien gave Tamlin an encouraging nod.

“And your hair is ... clean.”

Perhaps it was my raging hunger making me hallucinate the piss-poor attempt at flattery. Still, I

leaned back and kept my words calm and quiet, the way I might speak to any other predator. “You’re High Fae—faerie nobility?”

Lucien coughed and looked to Tamlin. “You can take that question.”

“Yes,” Tamlin said, frowning—as if searching for anything to say to me. He settled on merely: “We are.”

Fine. A man—faerie—of few words. I had killed his friend, was an unwanted guest. I wouldn’t want to talk to me, either.

“What do you plan to do with me now that I’m here?”

Tamlin’s eyes didn’t leave my face. “Nothing. Do whatever you want.”

“So I’m not to be your slave?” I dared ask.

Lucien choked on his wine. But Tamlin didn’t smile. “I don’t keep slaves.”

I ignored the release of tightness in my chest at that. “But what am I to do with my life here?” I

pressed. “Do you—do you wish me to earn my keep? To work?” A stupid question, if he hadn’t considered it, but ... but I had to know.

Tamlin stiffened. “What you do with your life isn’t my problem.”

Lucien pointedly cleared his throat, and Tamlin flashed him a glare. After an exchanged look I couldn’t read, Tamlin sighed and said, “Don’t you have any ... interests?”

“No.” Not entirely true, but I wasn’t about to explain the painting to him. Not when he was apparently having a great deal of trouble just talking to me civilly.

Lucien muttered, “So typically human.”

Tamlin’s mouth quirked to the side. “Do whatever you want with your time. Just stay out of trouble.”

“So you truly mean for me to stay here forever.” What I meant was: So I’m to stay in this luxury while my family starves to death?

“I didn’t make the rules,” Tamlin said tersely.

“My family is starving,” I said. I didn’t mind begging—not for this. I’d given my word, and held to that word for so long that I was nothing and no one without it. “Please let me go. There must be— must be some other loophole out of the Treaty’s rules—some other way to atone.”

“Atone?” Lucien said. “Have you even apologized yet?”

Apparently, all attempts to flatter me were dead and gone. So I looked Lucien right in his remaining russet eye and said, “I’m sorry.”

Lucien leaned back in his chair. “How did you kill him? Was it a b****y fight, or just cold- blooded murder?”

My spine stiffened. “I shot him with an ash arrow. And then an ordinary arrow through the eye. He didn’t put up a fight. After the first shot, he just stared at me.”

“Yet you killed him anyway—though he made no move to attack you. And then you skinned him,” Lucien hissed.

“Enough, Lucien,” Tamlin said to his courtier with a snarl. “I don’t want to hear details.” He turned to me, ancient and brutal and unyielding.

I spoke before he could say anything. “My family won’t last a month without me.” Lucien chuckled, and I gritted my teeth. “Do you know what it’s like to be hungry?” I demanded, anger rising to devour any common sense. “Do you know what it’s like to not know when your next meal will be?”

Tamlin’s jaw tightened. “Your family is alive and well-cared for. You think so low of faeries that you believe I’d take their only source of income and nourishment and not replace it?”

I straightened. “You swear it?” Even if faeries couldn’t lie, I had to hear it.

A low, incredulous laugh. “On everything that I am and possess.”

“Why not tell me that when we left the cottage?”

“Would you have believed me? Do you even believe me now?” Tamlin’s claws embedded in the

arms of his chair.

“Why should I trust a word you say? You’re all masters of spinning your truths to your own

advantage.”

“Some would say it’s unwise to insult a Fae in his home,” Tamlin ground out. “Some would say

you should be grateful for me finding you before another one of my kind came to claim the debt, for sparing your life and then offering you the chance to live in comfort.”

I shot to my feet, wisdom be damned, and was about to kick back my chair when invisible hands clapped on my arms and shoved me back into the seat.

“Do not do whatever it was you were contemplating,” Tamlin said.

I went still as the tang of magic seared my nose. I tried to twist in the chair, testing the invisible bonds. But my arms were secured, and my back was pressed into the wood so hard that it ached. I glanced at the knife beside my plate. I should have gone for it first—futile effort or no.

“I’m going to warn you once,” Tamlin said too softly. “Only once, and then it’s on you, human. I don’t care if you go live somewhere else in Prythian. But if you cross the wall, if you flee, your family will no longer be cared for.”

His words were like a stone to the head. If I escaped, if I even tried to run, I might very well doom my family. And even if I dared risk it ... even if I succeeded in reaching them, where would I take them? I couldn’t stow my sisters away on a ship—and once we arrived somewhere else, somewhere safe, we’d have nowhere to live. But for him to hold my family’s well-being against me, to throw away their survival if I stepped out of line ...

I opened my mouth, but his snarl rattled the glasses. “Is that not a fair bargain? And if you flee, then you might not be so lucky with whoever comes to retrieve you next.” His claws slipped back under his knuckles. “The food is not enchanted, or drugged, and it will be your own damn fault if you faint. So you’re going to sit at this table and eat, Feyre. And Lucien will do his best to be polite.” He

threw a pointed look in his direction. Lucien shrugged.

The invisible bonds loosened, and I winced as I whacked my hands on the underside of the table.

The bonds on my legs and middle remained intact. One glance at Tamlin’s smoldering green eyes told me what I wanted to know: his guest or not, I wasn’t going to get up from this table until I’d eaten something. I’d think about the sudden change in my plans to escape later. Now ... for now I eyed the silver fork and carefully picked it up.

They still watched me—watched my every move, the flare of my nostrils as I sniffed the food on my plate. No metallic stench of magic. And faeries couldn’t lie. So he had to be right about the food, then. Stabbing a piece of chicken, I took a bite.

It was an effort to keep from grunting. I hadn’t had food this good in years. Even the meals we’d had before our downfall were little more than ashes compared to this. I ate my entire plate in silence, too aware of the High Fae observing every bite, but as I reached for a second helping of chocolate torte, the food vanished. Just—vanished, as if it had never existed, not a crumb left behind.

Swallowing hard, I set my fork down so they wouldn’t see my hand start to shake.

“One more bite and you’ll hurl your guts up,” Tamlin said, drinking deeply from his goblet.

The bonds holding me loosened. Silent permission to leave.

“Thank you for the meal,” I said. It was all I could think of.

“Won’t you stay for wine?” Lucien said with sweet venom from where he lounged in his seat.

I braced my hands on my chair to rise. “I’m tired. I’d like to sleep.”

“It’s been a few decades since I last saw one of you,” Lucien drawled, “but you humans never

change, so I don’t think I’m wrong in asking why you find our company to be so unpleasant, when surely the men back home aren’t much to look at.”

At the other end of the table, Tamlin gave his emissary a long, warning look. Lucien ignored it.

“You’re High Fae,” I said tightly. “I’d ask why you’d even bother inviting me here at all—or dining with me.” Fool—I really should have been killed ten times over already.

Lucien said, “True. But indulge me: you’re a human woman, and yet you’d rather eat hot coals than sit here longer than necessary. Ignoring this”—he waved a hand at the metal eye and brutal scar on his face—“surely we’re not so miserable to look at.” Typical faerie vanity and arrogance. That, at least, the legends had been right about. I tucked the knowledge away. “Unless you have someone back home. Unless there’s a line of suitors out the door of your hovel that makes us seem like worms in comparison.”

There was enough dismissal there that I took a little bit of satisfaction in saying, “I was close with a man back in my village.” Before that Treaty ripped me away—before it became clear that you are allowed to do as you please to us, but we can hardly strike back against you.

Tamlin and Lucien exchanged glances, but it was Tamlin who said, “Are you in love with this man?”

“No,” I said as casually as I could. It wasn’t a lie—but even if I’d felt anything like that for Isaac, my answer would have been the same. It was bad enough that High Fae now knew my family existed. I didn’t need to add Isaac to that list.

Again, that shared look between the two males. “And do you ... love anyone else?” Tamlin said through clenched teeth.

A laugh burst out of me, tinged with hysteria. “No.” I looked between them. Nonsense. These lethal, immortal beings really had nothing better to do than this? “Is this really what you care to know

about me? If I find you more handsome than human men, and if I have a man back home? Why bother to ask at all, when I’ll be stuck here for the rest of my life?” A hot line of anger sliced through my senses.

“We wanted to learn more about you, since you’ll be here for a good while,” Tamlin said, his lips a thin line. “But Lucien’s pride tends to get in the way of his manners.” He sighed, as if ready to be done with me, and said, “Go rest. We’re both busy most days, so if you need anything, ask the staff. They’ll help you.”

“Why?” I asked. “Why be so generous?” Lucien gave me a look that suggested he had no idea, either, given that I’d murdered their companion, but Tamlin stared at me for a long moment.

“I kill too often as it is,” Tamlin said finally, shrugging his broad shoulders. “And you’re insignificant enough to not ruffle this estate. Unless you decide to start killing us.”

A faint warmth bloomed in my cheeks, my neck. Insignificant—yes, I was insignificant to their lives, their power. As insignificant as the fading, chipped designs I’d painted around the cottage. “Well ...,” I said, not quite feeling grateful at all, “thank you.”

He gave a distant nod and motioned for me to leave. Dismissed. Like the lowly human I was. Lucien propped his chin on a fist and gave me a lazy half smile.

Enough. I got to my feet and backed toward the door. Putting my back to them would have been like walking away from a wolf, sparing my life or no. They said nothing when I slipped out the door.

A moment later, Lucien’s barking laugh echoed into the halls, followed by a sharp, vicious growl that shut him up.

I slept fitfully that night, and the lock on my bedroom door felt more like a joke than anything.