This, I admitted to Rhys, I might need to have.
A wry pulse of humor down the bond. I’ll make a note of it for your birthday.
More wisteria twined about the pillars flanking the space, and along the tables set against the few walls, bunches of wine-colored peonies unfurled their silken layers. Between the vases, platters and baskets of food had been laid—small pastries, cured meats, and garlands of fruit beckoned before sweating pewter ewers of some refreshment.
Then there were the three High Lords themselves.
We were not the only ones to have dressed well.
Rhys and I halted halfway through the space.
I knew them all—remembered them from those months Under the Mountain. Rhys had taught me their histories while we’d trained. I wondered if they sensed their power within me as their attention slid between us.
Thesan glided forward, his embroidered, exquisite shoes silent on the floor. His tunic was tight-fitting through his slender chest, but flowing pants—much like those Amren favored—whispered with movement as he approached. His brown skin and hair were kissed with gold, as if the sunrise had permanently gilded them, but his upswept eyes, the rich brown of freshly tilled fields, were his loveliest feature. He paused a few feet away, taking in Rhys and me, our entourage. The wings that Rhys kept folded behind him.
“Welcome,” Thesan said, his voice as deep and rich as those eyes. His lover monitored our every breath from a few feet behind, no doubt realizing our own companions were doing the same behind us. “Or,” Thesan mused, “since you’ve called this meeting, perhaps you should be doing the welcoming?”
A faint smile ghosted Rhys’s perfect face, shadows twining between the strands of his hair. He’d loosened the damper on his power—just a bit. They all had. “I may have requested the meeting, Thesan, but you were the one gracious enough to offer up your beautiful residence.”
Thesan gave a nod of thanks, perhaps deeming it impolite to inquire about Rhysand’s newly revealed wings, then turned to me.
We stared at each other while my companions bowed behind me. As a High Lord’s wife should have done with them.
Yet I simply stood. And stared.
Rhys did not interfere—not at this first test.
Dawn—the gift of healing. It was his gift that had allowed me to save Rhysand’s life. That had sent me to the Suriel, that day I had learned the truth that would alter my eternity.
I offered Thesan a restrained smile. “Your home is lovely.”
But Thesan’s attention had gone to the tattoo. I knew he realized it the moment he noticed the ink covered the wrong hand. Then the crown atop my head. His brows flicked up.
Rhys only shrugged.
The other two High Lords had approached now.
“Kallias,” Rhys said to the white-haired one, whose skin was so pale it looked frozen. Even his crushing blue eyes seemed like chips hewn from a glacier as he studied Rhys’s wings and seemed to instantly dismiss them. He wore a jacket of royal blue embroidered with silver thread, its collar and sleeves dusted with white rabbit fur. I would have thought it too warm for the mild day, especially the fur-lined, knee-high brown boots, but given the utter iciness of his expression, perhaps his blood ran frozen. A trio of similarly colored High Fae remained in their seats, one of them a stunning young female who looked right at Mor—and grinned.
Mor returned the beam, hopping from one foot to another as Kallias opened his mouth—
And then my friend squealed.
Squealed.
Both females hurtled for each other, and Mor’s squeal had turned to a quiet sob as she flung her arms around the slender stranger and hugged her tight. The female’s own arms were shaking as she gripped Mor.
Then they were laughing and crying and dancing around each other, pausing to study each other’s faces, to wipe away tears, and then embracing again.
“You look the same,” the stranger was saying, beaming from ear to ear. “I think that’s the same dress I saw you in—”
“You look the same! Wearing fur in the middle of summer—how utterly typical—”
“You brought the usual suspects, it seems—”
“Thankfully, the company has been improved by some new arrivals—” Mor waved me over. It had been ages since I’d seen her shining so brightly. “Viviane, meet Feyre. Feyre, meet Viviane—Kallias’s wife.”
I glanced at Thesan and Kallias, the latter of whom watched his wife and Mor with raised brows. “I tried to suggest she stay at home,” Kallias said drily, “but she threatened to freeze my balls off.”
Rhys let out a dark chuckle. “Sounds familiar.”
I threw him a glare over a sparkling shoulder—just in time to see the smirk fade from Kallias’s face as he truly took in Rhys. Not just the wings this time. My mate’s own amusement dimmed, some thread of tension going taut between him and Kallias—
But I’d reached Mor and Viviane, and wiped the curiosity from my face as I shook the female’s hand, surprised to find it warm.
Her silver hair glittered in the sun like fresh snow. “Wife,” Viviane said, clicking her tongue. “You know, it still sounds strange to me. Every time someone says it, I keep looking over my shoulder as if it’ll be someone else.”
Kallias said to none of us in particular, from where he remained facing Rhys, stiff-backed, “I have yet to decide if I find it insulting. Since she says it every day.”
Viviane stuck out her tongue at him.
But Mor gripped her shoulder and squeezed. “It’s about time.”
A blush stained Viviane’s pale face. “Yes, well—everything was different after Under the Mountain.” Her sapphire eyes slid to mine and she bowed her head. “Thank you—for returning my mate to me.”
“Mates?” Mor fizzed, glancing between them. “Married and mates?”
“You two do realize that this is a serious meeting,” Rhys said.
“And that the fish in the pool are very sensitive to high-pitched sounds,” Kallias added.
Viviane gave them both a vulgar gesture that made me instantly like her.
Rhys looked to Kallias with what I assumed was some sort of long-suffering male expression. But the High Lord did not return it.
He only stared at Rhys, amusement again gone—that coldness settling in across his face.
There had been … tension with the Winter Court, Mor had explained when they’d rescued Lucien and me on the ice. A lingering anger over something that had occurred Under the Mountain—
But the third High Lord had at last approached from across the pool.
My father had once bought and traded a gold and lapis lazuli pendant that hailed from the ruins of an arid southeastern kingdom, where the Fae had ruled as gods amid swaying date palms and sand-swept palaces. I’d been mesmerized by the colors, the artistry, but more interested in the shipment of myrrh and figs that had come with it—a few of the latter my father had snuck to me while I loitered in his office. Even now, I could still taste their sweetness on my tongue, still smell that earthy scent, and I couldn’t quite explain why, but … I remembered that ancient necklace and those exquisite delicacies as he prowled toward us.
His clothes had been formed from a single bolt of white fabric—not a robe, not a dress, but rather something in between, pleated and draped over his muscular body. A golden cuff of an upright serpent encircled one powerful bicep, offsetting his near-glowing dark skin, and a radiant crown of golden spikes—the rays of the sun, I realized—glistened atop his onyx hair.
The sun personified. Powerful, lazy with grace, capable of kindness and wrath. Nearly as beautiful as Rhysand. And somehow—somehow colder than Kallias.