Chapter Text
Excerpts from A Court of Thorns and Roses, Ch. 3, page 33 (ebook) —
Later, after another dinner of venison, when we were all gathered around the fire for the quiet hour before bed, I watched my sisters whispering and laughing together. They’d spent every copper I’d given them—on what, I didn’t know, though Elain had brought back a new chisel for our father’s wood carving. The cloak and boots they’d whined about the night before had been too expensive. But I hadn’t scolded them for it, not when Nesta went out a second time to chop more wood without my asking. Mercifully, they’d avoided another confrontation with the Children of the Blessed.
My father was dozing in his chair, his cane laid across his gnarled knee. As good a time as any to broach the subject of Tomas Mandray with Nesta. I turned to her, opening my mouth.
But there was a roar that half deafened me, and my sisters screamed as
snow burst into the room and an enormous, growling shape appeared in the
doorway.
But the fire suddenly guttered out, engulfed by the night, and the dark rolled in through the doorway with a thunderclap that half deafened me. My sisters screamed as the lights went out and a dark, lean-muscled figure appeared beyond the threshold, in clothes that looked immaculate even in the dark.
I didn't know how the wooden hilt of my hunting knife had gotten into my hand. The first few moments were a blur of the shrieking of my sisters, the blistering cold cascading into the room, my father's terror-stricken face, and the powerful silence of the man silhouetted in the cold night.
"Cold," he said, his voice deep and sensual and the darkness suddenly dissolved, the fire blazing too bright, turning his features stark and well-defined. My breath caught in my throat, my heart fluttering.
Standing at the door was the most beautiful man I'd ever seen.
Everything about the stranger radiated sensual grace and ease. His short black hair gleamed like a raven's feathers, offsetting his pale skin and blue eyes so deep they were violet, even in the firelight. They twinkled with amusement as he beheld me and the knife in my hands.
"Faerie," came a small voice from behind me, and I snapped out of the thrall of his beauty and power.
Now that I was out of it, I looked at his slender, pointed ears, and the way he stood with absolute stillness, the night seeming to press in closer around him, made me want to run in the other direction. But I didn't have room for terror, wouldn't give it an inch of space, despite my heart's wild pounding in my ears. Somehow, I wound up in front of my sisters, my father crouching in front of them, failing to find it in himself to come to my side. The man looked at him, at my sisters, then at me, studying us with a curiosity that made me falter. He turned his gaze to the wards at the threshold and I wondered if it really would be able to stop him because he grimaced and looked around as if for another way to enter.
Stupidly, I took a step toward the faerie, making sure the table was between us, fighting the shaking in my hand. My bow and quiver were across the room. I could get to them but that would leave my sisters and my father in the direct line of his sight. But I had to take that risk, trusting the wards to hold—
"Who painted those?" asked the stranger, smooth and polished, his eyes tracking the chipped and fading paint of vines and flowers on the threshold, the too yellow daffodils. I inched a little closer to the edge, my cheeks flaming. Maybe he found them abysmal— although why his opinion would matter in any way, I didn't understand. I took a small step again— and froze when his gaze fell on me, something shifting in his eyes. My heart went wilder, knife poised to attack when he crossed the threshold. Elain screamed, the sound suddenly muffled, probably because Nesta must have slapped her hand on her mouth. So much for the wards holding him out.
"A sweet, little murderer," said the stranger with a twinkle in his eyes. My heart stopped. "You could have painted better on the threshold," he said. I narrowed my brows, unwittingly looking at the threshold— to the ugly-looking wards. He meant— oh.
"What are they supposed to be anyway?" he asked curiously. "Stick-men? Stick-dogs? Half-stars?"
"Those are wards to keep you out," I said flatly, surprised at my bravado.
"Wards to keep me out?" His lips twisted in amusement and I felt a little foolish but I angled my knife at him.
"Get out of my house," I said, surprised at my own bravado.
The stranger lifted a brow, a corner of his mouth tilting up. "Interesting."
"Get out," I snapped, brandishing the knife before me. No iron in sight that I could use as a weapon— unless I chucked my sisters' bracelets at him. "Get out, and begone." A nail— I'd take a damned iron nail, if it were available.
The faerie stared at me for a moment, then laughed. Laughed. He tipped his head back to the stars, laughing as he clutched his stomach. I vaguely wondered which part of my threat sounded funny as the laugh travelled along my bones, raising the hair on my arms. I looked at the exposed column of his neck, and then at my knife. I'd killed animals at a farther distance than this. Without another thought, I hurled my hunting knife.
Fast— so fast I could barely see it— he caught it, blood dripping from his grip on the blade. He bled red, which was a surprise of its own. But then he tsked and I felt the breath whoosh out of me as he angled his head, feline grace in his movement.
Dangerous. So very, very dangerous.
He dropped the knife and I leaped back, almost stumbling over my cowering father as the faerie's eyes locked me in place. I suddenly felt completely exposed and at his mercy though he hadn't taken another step forward. It suddenly occurred to me that he might be able to kill me without raising a finger. He could have— yet he hadn't.
"So," he said, "who killed him?" He looked at me knowingly, as if waiting for a confession.
I looked at him squarely. "Killed who?"
He pursed his lips as if to stifle a grin. "The wolf," he said, and my heart stumbled a beat. Elain's wail reached a high-pitched shriek.
I kept my chin up. Somehow, after the initial horror of a faerie in their house had passed away, I didn't feel too afraid. "A wolf?" I asked, my voice even.
"A large wolf with a grey coat," he said, his hands smoothly sliding into the pockets of his pants.
Would he know if I lied? We had no chance of escaping this through fighting, and confession might get them killed, but there might be other ways.
"If," I said carefully, "if it was mistakenly killed, what payment could we offer in exchange?"
The faerie casually walked around the table to get to them and my sisters' whimpers grew louder. My back went ramrod straight as I blocked off his way to my family. Not that he was going to go there. He seemed content to stand face to face with me. His nostrils flared ever so slightly, a hint of shadows forming behind him which might have been wings.
"The payment you must offer," he said, his voice a sweet, lethal caress, "is the one demanded by the Treaty between our realms."
"For a wolf?" I retorted, and my father murmured my name in warning. I had vague memories of being read the Treaty during my childhood lessons but could recall nothing about wolves.
The faerie stepped closer, his shadows vanishing. A faint, citrusy scent reached her. "Who killed the wolf?" he asked calmly.
I stared into those dangerous eyes. "I did."
His lips twisted— in amusement, surprise, anger, sorrow, I didn't know. He looked at my sisters, at my father, then back at me, surveying me from head to toe, then looking back at my face. "Interesting," he said, stepping back.
Elain wept. “Please … please, spare us!” Nesta hushed her sharply through her own sobbing but pushed Elain farther behind her. My chest caved in at the sight of it.
My father climbed to his feet, grunting at the pain in his leg as he bobbled, but before he could limp toward me, I repeated: “I killed it.”
"So you've mentioned." He leaned against the table, his arms folded across his chest, so completely at ease and with such sophistication that I wondered if he wasn't just a faerie. If he was one of the High Fae.
But then he looked at my sisters and his lip curled. It was so sudden that I blurted, "I killed him." I squared my shoulders. “I sold its hide at the market today. If I had known it was a faerie, I wouldn’t have touched it.”
The faerie raised a brow. "Liar," he said with a cocky grin. "You knew. Even if you didn't, I bet you would have been more tempted to slaughter it had you known it was one of my kind."
True, true, true.
"Can you blame me?" I shot, my arms crossed over my chest.
He hummed, drumming his fingers over his arm, eyes moving from one object to another, scanning the cottage and its little things. "And you said it attacked you?"
I opened my mouth to say yes, but— I swallowed the yes. "Did you hear me say something like that?"
"Feyre," Nesta snarled through her tears when the faerie's eyes widened slightly, but all caution seemed to have left my body along with my common sense.
"Considering all that your kind has done to us, considering what your kind still likes to do to us, even if I had known beyond a doubt, it was deserved," I said flatly. Better to die with my chin held high than grovelling like a cowering worm.
The wind howling outside was deafening in the sudden silence.
The firelight flashed in his eyes and stars— literal stars gleamed in those violet depths. Well, this was it. I was going to die. My sisters, my father, we were all going to die. But I knew— with a sudden, uncoiling clarity— that Nesta would buy Elain time to run. Not my father, whom she resented with her entire steely heart. Not me, because Nesta had always known and hated that she and I were two sides of the same coin, and that I could fight my own battles. But Elain, the flower-grower, the gentle heart... Nesta would go down swinging for her.
It was that flash of understanding that made me stand straighter, better angled to go down swinging myself. "What is the payment the Treaty requires?"
His eyes didn't leave my face as he said, "A life for a life. Any unprovoked attacks on faerie-kind by humans are to be paid only by a human life in exchange."
My sisters quieted their weeping. The mercenary in town had killed a faerie— but it had attacked her first. "I didn't know," I said. "Didn't know about that part of the Treaty."
Faeries couldn't lie— and he spoke plainly enough, no word-twisting. "Most of you mortals have chosen to forget that part of the Treaty." He smirked. "Makes punishing you far more enjoyable."
But a small, tiny part of me believed he wouldn't torture me to death. Where that part came from, I didn't know. But if he was going to kill me... "Do it outside," I said quietly. No whisper, no tremble in my voice. "Not... here." Not where my family would have to wash away my blood and gore.
If he even let them live.
The faerie gave a vicious grin. “Willing to accept your fate so easily?” When I just stared at him, he said, “For having the nerve to request where I slaughter you, I’ll let you in on a secret, human: Prythian must claim your life in some way, for the life you took from it. So as a representative of the immortal realm, I can either free you from your pathetic existence, or... you can cross the wall and live out the remainder of your days in Prythian.”
That tiny part in me gave a whoop as if it had won some test. I blinked. "What?"
"You," he said slowly as if I were stupid, "can either die tonight, or, offer your life to Prythian by living in it forever, forsaking the human realm."
Live as a slave was what he didn't say aloud.
But my father said, "Do it, Feyre. Go."
I felt my heart picking up speed again. "Live where? Every inch of Prythian is lethal to us."
"I have... lands," he said straightening, a muscle clicking in his jaw. Gone was the smug, easy look. He slipped his hands back into his pockets. "I will grant you permission to live there."
“Why bother?” Perhaps a fool’s question, but—
“You murdered a good— male,” he said tightly, his eyes flashing. “Murdered him, skinned his corpse, sold it at the market, and then said he deserved it, and yet, you still have the nerve to question my generosity? Makes me wonder, human, if my kind is more human than yours.”
“You had no reason to mention the loophole." I stepped so close the faerie’s breath heated my face. Faeries couldn’t lie, but they could omit information.
His cold exterior faltered, his lips twitching. “Foolish of me to forget that humans have such low opinions of us. Do you humans no longer understand mercy?” he said, his lips mere inches from mine. “Let me make this clear for you," he said, his voice like a lover's touch. "You can either come live in Prythian— offer your life for the wolf’s in that way— or," his breath touched my ear and goosebumps rose all over my skin— "you can walk outside right now and I will kill you in the manner that entertains me most. Your choice.”
My father’s hobbling steps sounded before he gripped my shoulder. “Please, good sir— Feyre is my youngest. I beseech you to spare her. She is all... she is all...” Whatever he meant to say died in his throat as the faerie straightened again. But hearing those few words he’d managed to get out, the effort he’d made... it was like a blade to my belly. My father cringed as he said, “Please—”
“Silence,” the faerie said softly, like a lethal poison, and rage boiled up in me so blistering it was an effort to keep from lunging to stabbing something in his eye.
“I can get gold—” my father said, and my rage guttered. The only way he would get money was by begging. Even then, he’d be lucky to get a few coppers. I’d seen how pitiless the well-off were in our village. The monsters in our mortal realm were just as bad as those across the wall.
The faerie sneered. “How much is your daughter’s life worth to you? Do you think it equates to a sum?" He took a step forward. "Do you think you can get that when you refused to move a single step all this time?”
My gaze snapped up to his violet eyes churning with an unknown emotion. How did he— could he read minds?
Nesta still had Elain held behind her, Elain’s face so pale it matched the snow drifting in from the open door. But Nesta monitored every move the faerie made, her brows lowered. She didn’t bother to look at my father— as if she knew his answer already. When my father didn’t reply, I dared another step toward the faerie, drawing his attention to me. I had to get him out— get him away from my family. From the way he’d caught my knife, any hope of escaping had lain in somehow sneaking up on him, but if he could read minds too... Even if I tried to attack him or fled before then, he would destroy my family for the sheer enjoyment of it. Then he would find me again. I had no choice but to go. And then, later, I might find an opportunity to slit his throat. Or at least disable him long enough to flee. As long as the faeries couldn’t find me again, they couldn’t hold me to the Treaty. Even if it made me a cursed oath-breaker. But in going with him, I would be breaking the most important promise I’d ever made. Surely it trumped an ancient treaty that I hadn’t even signed.
I stared into those violet eyes for a long, silent while before I said, “When do we go?”
Those feline features remained nonchalant. Any lingering hope I had of fighting died as he moved to the door—no, to the quiver I’d left behind it. He simply looked at the ash arrow— and it disintegrated into nothing, flying off into the night. Warning bells rang in my head when he said, “Now.”
Now.
Even Elain lifted her head to gape at me in mute horror. But I couldn’t look at her, couldn’t look at Nesta—not when they were still crouched there, still silent. I turned to my father. His eyes glistened, so I glanced to the few cabinets we had, faded too-yellow daffodils curving over the handles.
Now.
The faerie watched me curiously. I didn’t want to contemplate where I was going or what he would do with me. Running would be foolish until it was the right time.
“The venison should hold you for two weeks,” I said to my father as I gathered my clothes to bulk up against the cold. “Start on the fresh meat, then work your way through to the jerky— you know how to make it.”
“Feyre—” my father breathed, but I continued as I fastened my cloak. “I left the money from the pelts on the dresser,” I said. “It will last you for a time, if you’re careful.” I finally looked at my father again and allowed myself to memorize the lines of his face. My eyes stung, but I blinked the tears away as I stuffed my hands into my worn gloves. “When spring comes, hunt in the grove just south of the big bend in Silverspring Creek—the rabbits make their warrens there. Ask... ask Isaac Hale to show you how to make snares. I taught him last year.”
My father nodded, covering his mouth with a hand. The faerie turned on his heel and strolled out into the night. I made to follow him but paused to look at my sisters, still crouched by the fire, as if they wouldn’t dare to move until I was gone. Elain mouthed my name but kept cowering, kept her head down. So I turned to Nesta, whose face was so similar to my mother’s, so cold and unrelenting.
“Whatever you do,” I said quietly, “don’t marry Tomas Mandray. His father beats his wife, and none of his sons do anything to stop it.” Nesta’s eyes widened, but I added, “Bruises are harder to conceal than poverty.”
Nesta stiffened but said nothing— both of my sisters said absolutely nothing— as I turned toward the open door. But a hand wrapped around my arm, tugging me to a stop. Turning me around to face him, my father opened and closed his mouth.
Outside, the faerie, sensing I’d been detained, stopped walking. "You're going to be just past the wall, you know?" he said.
I suddenly felt an inexplicable urge to hurl my shoe at his head.
“Feyre,” my father said. His fingers trembled as he grasped my gloved hands, but his eyes became clearer and bolder than I’d seen them in years. “You were always too good for here, Feyre. Too good for us, too good for everyone.” He squeezed my hands. “If you ever escape, ever convince them that you’ve paid the debt, don’t return.”
I hadn’t expected a heart-wrenching good-bye, but I hadn’t imagined this, either.
“Don’t ever come back,” my father said, releasing my hands to shake me by the shoulders. “Feyre.” He stumbled over my name, his throat bobbing. “You go somewhere new— and you make a name for yourself.”
Beyond, the faerie was just a shadow. Night leaked off of him as if he were making it exist. A life for a life—but what if the life offered as payment also meant losing three others? The thought alone was enough to steel me, anchor me. I’d never told my father of the promise I’d made my mother, and there was no use explaining it now. So I shrugged off his grip and left. I let the sounds of the snow crunching underfoot drive out my father’s words as I followed the faerie into the night-shrouded woods.