A Court of Frost and Starlight (A Court of Thorns and Roses #3.1)(3)

In the wake of the war, the people of Velaris had risen to the challenge of rebuilding and helping their own. Before I’d even come up with an idea of how to help them, multiple societies had been created to assist the city. So I’d volunteered with a handful of them for tasks ranging from finding homes for those displaced by the destruction to visiting families affected during the war to helping those without shelter or belongings ready for winter with new coats and supplies.

All of it was vital; all of it was good, satisfying work. And yet … there was more. There was more that I could do to help. Personally. I just hadn’t figured it out yet.

It seemed I wasn’t the only one eager to assist those who’d lost so much. With the holiday, a surge of fresh volunteers had arrived, cramming the public hall near the Palace of Thread and Jewels, where so many of the societies were headquartered. Your help has been crucial, Lady, one charity matron had said to me yesterday. You have been here nearly every day—you have worked yourself to the bone. Take the week off. You’ve earned it. Celebrate with your mate.

I’d tried to object, insisting that there were still more coats to hand out, more firewood to be distributed, but the faerie had just motioned to the crowded public hall around us, filled to the brim with volunteers. We have more help than we know what to do with.

When I’d tried objecting again, she’d shooed me out the front door. And shut it behind me.

Point taken. The story had been the same at every other organization I’d stopped by yesterday afternoon. Go home and enjoy the holiday.

So I had. At least, the first part. The enjoying bit, however …

Rhys’s answer to my earlier inquiry about his whereabouts finally flickered down the bond, carried on a rumble of dark, glittering power. I’m at Devlon’s camp.

It took you this long to respond? It was a long distance to the Illyrian Mountains, yes, but it shouldn’t have taken minutes to hear back.

A sensual huff of laughter. Cassian was ranting. He didn’t take a breath.

My poor Illyrian baby. We certainly do torment you, don’t we?

Rhys’s amusement rippled toward me, caressing my innermost self with night-veiled hands. But it halted, vanishing as quickly as it had come. Cassian’s getting into it with Devlon. I’ll check in later. With a loving brush against my senses, he was gone.

I’d get a full report about it soon, but for now …

I smiled at the snow waltzing outside the windows.





CHAPTER

2

Rhysand


It was barely nine in the morning, and Cassian was already pissed.

The watery winter sun tried and failed to bleed through the clouds looming over the Illyrian Mountains, the wind a boom across the gray peaks. Snow already lay inches deep over the bustling camp, a vision of what would soon befall Velaris.

It had been snowing when I departed at dawn—perhaps there would be a good coating already on the ground by the time I returned. I hadn’t had a chance to ask Feyre about it during our brief conversation down the bond minutes ago, but perhaps she would go for a walk with me through it. Let me show her how the City of Starlight glistened under fresh snow.

Indeed, my mate and city seemed a world away from the hive of activity in the Windhaven camp, nestled in a wide, high mountain pass. Even the bracing wind that swept between the peaks, belying the camp’s very name by whipping up dervishes of snow, didn’t deter the Illyrians from going about their daily chores.

For the warriors: training in the various rings that opened onto a sheer drop to the small valley floor below, those not present out on patrol. For the males who hadn’t made the cut: tending to various trades, whether merchants or blacksmiths or cobblers. And for the females: drudgery.

They didn’t see it as such. None of them did. But their required tasks, whether old or young, remained the same: cooking, cleaning, child-rearing, clothes-making, laundry … There was honor in such tasks—pride and good work to be found in them. But not when every single one of the females here was expected to do it. And if they shirked those duties, either one of the half-dozen camp-mothers or whatever males controlled their lives would punish them.

So it had been, as long as I’d known this place, for my mother’s people. The world had been reborn during the war months before, the wall blasted to nothingness, and yet some things did not alter. Especially here, where change was slower than the melting glaciers scattered amongst these mountains. Traditions going back thousands of years, left mostly unchallenged.

Until us. Until now.

Drawing my attention away from the bustling camp beyond the edge of the chalk-lined training rings where we stood, I schooled my face into neutrality as Cassian squared off against Devlon.

“The girls are busy with preparations for the Solstice,” the camp-lord was saying, his arms crossed over his barrel chest. “The wives need all the help they can get, if all’s to be ready in time. They can practice next week.”

I’d lost count of how many variations of this conversation we’d had during the decades Cassian had been pushing Devlon on this.

The wind whipped Cassian’s dark hair, but his face remained hard as granite as he said to the warrior who had begrudgingly trained us, “The girls can help their mothers after training is done for the day. We’ll cut practice down to two hours. The rest of the day will be enough to assist in the preparations.”