Rhys snapped out a wing, blocking my path.

Smooth membrane—flecked with a hint of iridescence. I peeled back. “Nuala spent an hour on my hair.”

An exaggeration, but she had fussed while I’d sat there in hollow silence, letting her tease the ends into soft curls and pin a section along the top of my head with pretty gold barrettes. But maybe staying inside tonight, alone and quiet … maybe it’d be better than facing these people. Than interacting.

Rhys’s wing curved around me, herding me closer to where I could nearly feel the heat of his powerful body. “I promise I won’t let the wind destroy your hair.” He lifted a hand as if he might tug on one of those loose curls, then lowered it.

“If I’m to decide whether I want to work against Hybern with you—with your Inner Circle, can’t we just … meet here?”

“They’re all up there already. And besides, the House of Wind has enough space that I won’t feel like chucking them all off the mountain.”

I swallowed. Sure enough, curving along the top of the center mountain behind us, floors of lights glinted, as if the mountain had been crowned in gold. And between me and that crown of light was a long, long stretch of open air. “You mean,” I said, because it might have been the only weapon in my arsenal, “that this town house is too small, and their personalities are too big, and you’re worried I might lose it again.”

His wing pushed me closer, a whisper of warmth on my shoulder. “So what if I am?”

“I’m not some broken doll.” Even if this afternoon, that conversation we’d had, what I’d glimpsed through his eyes, said otherwise. But I yielded another step.

“I know you’re not. But that doesn’t mean I’ll throw you to the wolves. If you meant what you said about wanting to work with me to keep Hybern from these lands, keep the wall intact, I want you to meet my friends first. Decide on your own if it’s something you can handle. And I want this meeting to be on my terms, not whenever they decide to ambush this house again.”

“I didn’t know you even had friends.” Yes—anger, sharpness … It felt good. Better than feeling nothing.

A cold smile. “You didn’t ask.”

Rhysand was close enough now that he slid a hand around my waist, both of his wings encircling me. My spine locked up. A cage—

The wings swept back.

But he tightened his arm. Bracing me for takeoff. Mother save me. “You say the word tonight, and we come back here, no questions asked. And if you can’t stomach working with me, with them, then no questions asked on that, either. We can find some other way for you to live here, be fulfilled, regardless of what I need. It’s your choice, Feyre.”

I debated pushing him on it—on insisting I stay. But stay for what? To sleep? To avoid a meeting I should most certainly have before deciding what I wanted to do with myself? And to fly …

I studied the wings, the arm around my waist. “Please don’t drop me. And please don’t—”

We shot into the sky, fast as a shooting star.

Before my yelp finished echoing, the city had yawned wide beneath us. Rhys’s hand slid under my knees while the other wrapped around my back and ribs, and we flapped up, up, up into the star-freckled night, into the liquid dark and singing wind.

The city lights dropped away until Velaris was a rippling velvet blanket littered with jewels, until the music no longer reached even our pointed ears. The air was chill, but no wind other than a gentle breeze brushed my face—even as we soared with magnificent precision for the House of Wind.

Rhys’s body was hard and warm against mine, a solid force of nature crafted and honed for this. Even the smell of him reminded me of the wind—rain and salt and something citrus-y I couldn’t name.

We swerved into an updraft, rising so fast it was instinct to clutch his black tunic as my stomach clenched. I scowled at the soft laugh that tickled my ear. “I expected more screaming from you. I must not be trying hard enough.”

“Do not,” I hissed, focusing on the approaching tiara of lights in the eternal wall of the mountain.

With the sky wheeling overhead and the lights shooting past below, up and down became mirrors—until we were sailing through a sea of stars. Something tight in my chest eased a fraction of its grip.

“When I was a boy,” Rhys said in my ear, “I’d sneak out of the House of Wind by leaping out my window—and I’d fly and fly all night, just making loops around the city, the river, the sea. Sometimes I still do.”

“Your parents must have been thrilled.”

“My father never knew—and my mother …” A pause. “She was Illyrian. Some nights, when she caught me right as I leaped out the window, she’d scold me … and then jump out herself to fly with me until dawn.”

“She sounds lovely,” I admitted.

“She was,” he said. And those two words told me enough about his past that I didn’t pry.

A maneuver had us rising higher, until we were in direct line with a broad balcony, gilded by the light of golden lanterns. At the far end, built into the red mountain itself, two glass doors were already open, revealing a large, but surprisingly casual dining room carved from the stone, and accented with rich wood. Each chair fashioned, I noted, to accomodate wings.

Rhys’s landing was as smooth as his takeoff, though he kept an arm beneath my shoulders as my knees buckled at the adjustment. I shook off his touch, and faced the city behind us.

I’d spent so much time squatting in trees that heights had lost their primal terror long ago. But the sprawl of the city … worse, the vast expanse of dark beyond—the sea … Maybe I remained a human fool to feel that way, but I had not realized the size of the world. The size of Prythian, if a city this large could remain hidden from Amarantha, from the other courts.

Rhysand was silent beside me. Yet after a moment, he said, “Out with it.”

I lifted a brow.

“You say what’s on your mind—one thing. And I’ll say one, too.”

I shook my head and turned back to the city.

But Rhys said, “I’m thinking that I spent fifty years locked Under the Mountain, and I’d sometimes let myself dream of this place, but I never expected to see it again. I’m thinking that I wish I had been the one who slaughtered her. I’m thinking that if war comes, it might be a long while yet before I get to have a night like this.”

He slid his eyes to me, expectant.

I didn’t bother asking again how he’d kept this place from her, not when he was likely to refuse to answer. So I said, “Do you think war will be here that soon?”

“This was a no-questions-asked invitation. I told you … three things. Tell me one.”

I stared toward the open world, the city and the restless sea and the dry winter night.

Maybe it was some shred of courage, or recklessness, or I was so high above everything that no one save Rhys and the wind could hear, but I said, “I’m thinking that I must have been a fool in love to allow myself to be shown so little of the Spring Court. I’m thinking there’s a great deal of that territory I was never allowed to see or hear about and maybe I would have lived in ignorance forever like some pet. I’m thinking … ” The words became choked. I shook my head as if I could clear the remaining ones away. But I still spoke them. “I’m thinking that I was a lonely, hopeless person, and I might have fallen in love with the first thing that showed me a hint of kindness and safety. And I’m thinking maybe he knew that—maybe not actively, but maybe he wanted to be that person for someone. And maybe that worked for who I was before. Maybe it doesn’t work for who—what I am now.”