“What now?” Elain mused, at last answering my question from moments ago as her attention drifted to the windows facing the sunny street. That smile grew, bright enough that it lit up even Azriel’s shadows across the room. “I would like to build a garden,” she declared. “After all of this … I think the world needs more gardens.”
My throat was too tight to immediately reply, so I just kissed my sister’s cheek before I said, “Yes—I think it does.”
CHAPTER
81
Rhysand
Even from the kitchen, I could hear all of them. The lapping of what was surely the oldest bottle of liquor I owned, then the clink of those equally ancient crystal glasses against each other.
Then the laughter. The deep rumble—that was Azriel. Laughing at whatever Mor had said that prompted her into a fit of it as well, the sound cackling and merry.
And then another laugh—silvery and bright. More beautiful than any music played at one of Velaris’s countless halls and theaters.
I stood at the kitchen window, staring at the garden in full summer splendor, not quite seeing the blooms Elain Archeron had tended these weeks. Just staring—and listening to that beautiful laugh. My mate’s laugh.
I rubbed a hand over my chest at that sound—the joy in it.
Their conversation flitted past, falling back into old rhythms and yet … Close. We had all come so close to not seeing it again. This place. Each other. And I knew that the laughter … it was in part because of that, too. In defiance and gratitude.
“You coming to drink, or are you just going to stare at the flowers all day?” Cassian’s voice cut through the melody of sounds.
I turned, finding him and Azriel in the kitchen doorway, each with a drink in hand. A second lay in Azriel’s other scarred hand—he floated it over to me on a blue-tinged breeze.
I clasped the cool, heavy crystal tumbler. “Sneaking up on your High Lord is ill-advised,” I told them, drinking deeply. The liquor burned its way down my throat, warming my stomach.
“It’s good to keep you on edge in your old age,” Cassian said, drinking himself. He leaned against the doorway. “Why are you hiding in here?”
Azriel shot him a look, but I snorted, taking another sip. “You really did open the fancy bottles.”
They waited. But Feyre’s laugh sounded again, followed by Elain’s and Mor’s. And when I dragged my gaze back to my brothers, I saw the understanding on their faces.
“It’s real,” Azriel said softly.
Neither laughed or commented on the burning in my eyes. I took another drink to wash away the tightness in my throat, and approached them. “Let’s not do this again for another five hundred years,” I said a bit hoarsely, and clinked my glass against theirs.
Azriel cracked a smile as Cassian lifted a brow. “And what are we going to do until then?”
Beyond brokering peace, beyond those queens who were sure to be a problem, beyond healing our fractured world …
Mor called for us, demanding we bring them a spread of food. An impressive one, she added. With extra bread.
I smiled. Smiled wider as Feyre’s laugh sounded again—as I felt it down the bond, sparkling brighter than the entirety of Starfall.
“Until then,” I said to my brothers, slinging my arms around their shoulders and leading them back to the sitting room. I looked ahead, toward that laugh, that light—and that vision of the future Feyre had shown me, more beautiful than anything I could have ever wished for—anything I had wished for, on those long-ago, solitary nights with only the stars for company. A dream still unanswered—but not forever. “Until then, we enjoy every heartbeat of it.”
CHAPTER
82
Feyre
Rhysand was on the roof, the stars bright and low, the tiles beneath my bare feet still warm from the day’s sun.
He sat in one of those small iron chairs, no light, no bottle of liquor—just him, and the stars, and the city.
I slid into his lap and let him wrap his arms around me.
We sat in silence for a long time. We’d barely had a moment alone in the aftermath of the battle, and had been too tired to do anything but sleep. But tonight … His hand ran down my thigh, bared with the way my nightgown had hitched.
He startled when he actually looked at me, then huffed a laugh against my shoulder.
“I should have known.”
“The shop ladies gave it to me for free. As thanks for saving them from Hybern. Maybe I should do it more often, if it gets me free lingerie.”
For I indeed wore that pair of red, lacy underthings—beneath a matching red nightgown that was so scandalously sheer it showed them off.
“Hasn’t anyone told you? You’re disgustingly rich.”
“Just because I have money doesn’t mean I need to spend it.”
He squeezed my knee. “Good. We need someone with a head for money around here. I’ve been bleeding out gold left and right thanks to our Court of Dreams taking advantage of my ridiculous generosity.”
A laugh rumbled deep in my throat as I leaned my head back against his shoulder. “Is Amren still your Second?”
“Our Second.”
“Semantics.”
Rhys traced idle circles on my bare skin, along my knee and lower thigh. “If she wants it, it’s hers.”
“Even if she doesn’t have her powers anymore?”
“She’s now High Fae. I’m sure she’ll discover some hidden talent to terrorize us with.”
I laughed again, savoring the feel of his hand on my skin, the warmth of his body around me.
“I heard you,” he said softly. “When I was—gone.”
I began to tense at the lingering terror that had driven me from sleep these past few nights—the terror I doubted I’d soon recover from. “Those minutes,” I said once he began making long, soothing strokes down my thigh. “Rhys … I never want to feel that again.”
“Now you know how I felt Under the Mountain.”
I craned my neck to look up at him. “Never lie to me again. Not about that.”
“But about other things?”
I pinched his arm hard enough that he laughed and batted away my hand. “I couldn’t let all you ladies take the credit for saving us. Some male had to claim a bit of glory so you don’t trample us until the end of time with your bragging.”
I punched his arm this time.
But he wrapped his arm around my waist and squeezed, breathing me in. “I heard you, even in death. It made me look back. Made me stay—a little longer.”
Before going to that place I had once tried to describe to the Carver.
“When it’s time to go there,” I said quietly, “we go together.”
“It’s a bargain,” he said, and kissed me gently.
I murmured back onto his lips, “Yes, it is.”
The skin on my left arm tingled. A lick of warmth snaked down it.
I looked down to find another tattoo there—the twin to the one that had once graced it, save for that black band of the bargain I’d made with Bryaxis. He’d modified this one to fit around it, to be seamlessly integrated amid the whorls and swirls.
“I missed the old one,” he said innocently.
On his own left arm, the same tattoo flowed. Not to his fingers the way mine did, but rather from his wrist to his elbow.
“Copycat,” I said tartly. “It looks better on me.”
“Hmmm.” He traced a line down my spine, then poked two spots along it. “Sweet Bryaxis has vanished. Do you know what that means?”
“That I have to go hunt it down and put it back in the library?”
“Oh, you most certainly do.”
I twisted in his lap, looping my arms around his neck as I said, “And will you come with me? On this adventure—and all the rest?”