“So you have called us to do what, exactly?” Helion challenged, bracing his forearms on his muscled, gleaming thighs. “Raise a unified army?”
“Among other things,” Rhys said mildly. “We—”
It was almost the same—the entrance.
Almost the same as that night in my family’s old cottage, when the door had shattered and a beast had charged in with the freezing cold and roared at us.
He did not bother with the landing balcony, or the escorts. He did not have an entourage.
Like a crack of lightning, vicious as a spring storm, he winnowed into the chamber itself.
And my blood went colder than Kallias’s ice as Tamlin appeared, and smiled like a wolf.
CHAPTER
44
Absolute silence. Absolute stillness.
I felt the tremor of magic slide through the room as shield after shield locked into place around each High Lord and his retinue. The one Rhysand had already snapped around us, now reinforcing … Rage laced its essence. Wrath and rage. Even if my mate’s face was bored—lazy.
I tried to school mine into the cold caution with which Nesta regarded him, or the vague distaste on Mor’s. I tried—and failed utterly.
I knew his moods, his temper.
Here was the High Lord who had shredded those naga into bloody ribbons; here was the High Lord who had impaled Amarantha on Lucien’s sword and ripped out her throat with his teeth.
All of it, gleaming in those green eyes as they fixed on me, on Rhys. Tamlin’s teeth were white as crow-picked bones as he smiled broadly.
Thesan rose, his captain remaining seated beside him—albeit with a hand on his sword. “We were not expecting you, Tamlin.” Thesan gestured with a slender hand toward his cringing attendants. “Fetch the High Lord a chair.”
Tamlin did not tear his gaze from me. From us.
His smile turned subdued—yet somehow more unnerving. More vicious.
He wore his usual green tunic—no crown, no adornments. No sign of another bandolier to replace the one I’d stolen.
Beron drawled, “I will admit, Tamlin, that I am surprised to see you here.” Tamlin didn’t alter his focus from me. From every breath I took. “Rumor claims your allegiance now lies elsewhere.”
Tamlin’s gaze shifted—but down. To the ring on my finger. To the tattoo adorning my right hand, flowing beneath the glittering, pale blue sleeve of my gown. Then it rose—right to that crown I’d picked for myself.
I didn’t know what to say. What to do with my body, my breathing.
No more masks, no more lies and deceptions. The truth, now sprawled bare and open before him. What I’d done in my rage, the lies I’d fed him. The people and land I’d laid vulnerable to Hybern. And now that I’d returned to my family, my mate …
My molten wrath had cooled into something sharp-edged and brittle.
The attendants hauled over a chair—setting it between one of Beron’s sons and Helion’s entourage. Neither looked thrilled about it, though they weren’t stupid enough to physically recoil as Tamlin sat.
He said nothing. Not a word.
Helion waved a scar-flecked hand. “Let’s get on with it, then.”
Thesan cleared his throat. No one looked toward him.
Not as Tamlin surveyed the hand Rhys had resting on my sparkling knee.
The loathing in Tamlin’s eyes practically simmered.
No one, not even Amarantha, had ever looked at me with such hatred.
No, Amarantha hadn’t really known me—her loathing had been superficial, driven from a personal history that poisoned everything. Tamlin … Tamlin knew me. And now hated every inch of what I was.
He opened his mouth, and I braced myself.
“It would seem congratulations are in order.”
The words were flat—flat and yet sharp as his claws, currently hidden beneath his golden skin.
I said nothing.
Rhys only held Tamlin’s stare. Held it with a face like ice, and yet utter rage roiled beneath it. Cataclysmic rage, surging and writhing down the bond between us.
But my mate addressed Thesan, who had reclaimed his seat, yet seemed far from any sort of ease, “We can discuss the matter at hand later.”
Tamlin said calmly, “Don’t stop on my account.”
The light in Rhysand’s eyes guttered, as if a hand of darkness wiped away those stars. But he reclined in his chair, withdrawing his hand from my knee to trace idle circles on his seat’s wooden arm. “I’m not in the business of discussing our plans with enemies.”
Helion, across the reflection pool, grinned like a lion.
“No,” Tamlin said with equal ease, “you’re just in the business of fucking them.”
Every thought and sound eddied out of my head.
Cassian, Azriel, and Mor were still as death—their fury rippling off them in silent waves. But whether Tamlin noticed or cared that three of the deadliest people in this room were currently contemplating his demise, he didn’t let on.
Rhys shrugged, smiling faintly. “Seems a far less destructive alternative to war.”
“And yet here you are, having started it in the first place.”
Rhysand’s blink was the only sign of his confusion.
A claw slid out of Tamlin’s knuckle.
Kallias tensed, a hand drifting to the arm of Viviane’s chair—as if he’d throw himself in front of it. But Tamlin only dragged that claw lightly down the carved arm of his own chair—as he’d once dragged them down my skin. He smiled as if he knew precisely what memory it triggered, but said to my mate, “If you hadn’t stolen my bride away in the night, Rhysand, I would not have been forced to take such drastic measures to get her back.”
I said quietly, “The sun was shining when I left you.”
Those green eyes slid to me, glazed and foreign. He let out a low snort, then looked away again.
Dismissal.
Kallias asked, “Why are you here, Tamlin?”
Tamlin’s claw dug into the wood, puncturing deep even as his voice remained mild. I had no doubt that gesture was meant for me, too. “I bartered access to my lands to get back the woman I love from a sadist who plays with minds as if they are toys. I meant to fight Hybern—to find a way around the bargain I made with the king once she was back. Only Rhysand and his cabal had turned her into one of them. And she delighted in ripping open my territory for Hybern to invade. All for a petty grudge—either her own or her … master’s.”
“You don’t get to rewrite the narrative,” I breathed. “You don’t get to spin this to your advantage.”
Tamlin only angled his head at Rhys. “When you fuck her, have you ever noticed that little noise she makes right before she climaxes?”
Heat stained my cheeks. This wasn’t outright battle, but a steady, careful shredding of my dignity, my credibility. Beron beamed, delighted—while Eris carefully monitored.
Rhys turned his head, looking me over from head to toe. Then back to Tamlin. A storm about to be unleashed.
But it was Azriel who said, his voice like cold death, “Be careful how you speak about my High Lady.”
Surprise flashed in Tamlin’s eyes—then vanished. Vanished, swallowed by pure fury as he realized what that tattoo coating my hand was for. “It was not enough to sit at my side, was it?” A hateful smile curled his lips. “You once asked me if you’d be my High Lady, and when I said no …” A low laugh. “Perhaps I underestimated you. Why serve in my court, when you could rule in his?”
Tamlin at last faced the other gathered High Lords and their retinues. “They peddle tales of defending our land and peace. And yet she came to my lands and laid them bare for Hybern. She took my High Priestess and warped her mind—after she shattered her bones for spite. And if you are asking yourself what happened to that human girl who went Under the Mountain to save us … Look to the male sitting beside her. Ask what he stands to gain—what they stand to gain from this war, or lack of it. Would we fight Hybern, only
to find ourselves with a Queen and King of Prythian? She’s proved her ambition—and you saw how he was more than happy to serve Amarantha to remain unscathed.”
It was an effort not to snarl, not to grip the arms of my chair and roar at him.
Rhys let out a dark laugh. “Well played, Tamlin. You’re learning.”
Ire contorted Tamlin’s face at the condescension. But he faced Kallias. “You asked why I’m here? I might ask the same of you.” He jerked his chin at the High Lord of Winter, at Viviane—the few other members of their retinue who had remained silent. “You mean to tell me that after Under the Mountain, you can stomach working with him?” A finger flung in Rhysand’s direction.
I wanted to rip that finger right off Tamlin’s hand. And feed it to the Middengard Wyrm.
The silvery glow about Kallias dulled.
Even Viviane seemed to dim. “We came here to decide that for ourselves.”