Author's Note: I do not own SJMaas' work.

Guys, this chapter...*shrieks* *squeals* *weeps* *faints*

So. Much. Fun.

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I'd just finished picking at the hot dinner that had appeared moments before when the door creaked and a golden fox-face appeared - along with a narrowed metal eye. "Shit," said Lucien. "It's freezing in here."

It was, but the handkerchief of a dress had started to grow on me. Why were people so keen to hide their body? There was a power in that presence as much as in the wealthiest of gowns. Not to mention, there was a steady heat enveloping my body from the Amulet of Storms still around my neck. No one had said anything about it last night despite the many who had eventually gathered around the High Lord of the Night Court to watch him torment the drunken mortal girl. I hadn't been drunk, and had heard all their calls and whispers, but I had definitely felt like I was. Even the best experience in the barn with the boy from my old village was nothing compared to the tingling heat that built over the hours of sitting and dancing for Rhysand, his every touch more intoxicating that the last.

I shivered then, and my breasts peaked through the thin fabric.

Lucien unclasped his cloak and set it around my shoulder. Its heavy warmth unwanted weight atop the amulet's presence. "Look at all this," he said, staring at the paint on me, most of it smeared beyond recognizing its original pattern. I wondered if I could paint myself, or maybe Rhysand.

A blush rose on my cheeks.

"Bastard," he spat, and I remembered the endgame.

"What happened?" I got out, wondering if I was supposed to be feeling a hangover despite the lack of one from when I'd actually ingested faerie wine.

Lucien drew back. "I don't think you want to know." I studied the remnants of handprints on my waist and thighs. Were we really that revolting? I could have giggled at the scene we must have caused for them all - Tamlin especially. But I steeled myself, remembering the value of this all. I had to protect Rhysand just as he protected those he loved.

"Who did this to me?" I asked quietly - my eyes tracing the spoiled paint.

"Who do you think?"

My heart clenched at the insinuation of my mate and I squeezed the bond. "Did - did Tamlin see it?" I sputtered.

Lucien nodded. "Rhys was only doing it to get a rise out of him."

The dark fear that it was true - that the only reason he'd strung me this far along was to mess with Tamlin and find his own way out of the mountain - slithered through my spine and I shook again.

Then Rhysand wrapped himself around the bond, sending warmth for me. I would not be swayed by fear.

"Did it work?" I avoided looking at Lucien in the face, letting shame drip through my features.

"No," Lucien said.

Fury rippled in my bones. This male dared claim to love me then completely abandon me when I laid my life down for him. I cringed at the thought of what could have happened to me Under the Mountain had Rhysand not have found me. If I'd actually come seeking to save this man who gave no thought to saving me…

At once the bond and the stone at my chest burned a quick sear, startling me before settling.

I schooled my features. "What - what was I doing the whole time?"

Lucien let out a sharp breath, running a hand through his red hair. "He had you dance for him most of the night. And when you weren't dancing, you were sitting in his lap."

Sensual heat pooled in me, and I hoped Lucien would see my deep gulp in a different light.

"And this wasn't the kind of dancing you were doing with Tamlin on Solstice," Lucien said, his face taking on a rosy tint. He sighed and grabbed my left arm, examining the tattoo. "What were you thinking? Didn't you know I'd come as soon as I could?"

If I'd waited for him, he'd have seen my arm was already fully healed with no explanation and Amarantha would have blamed him and killed him. But I couldn't tell him that. Instead, I pulled my arm away from him. "I was dying," I whispered. "I had a fever - I was barely able to keep conscious… How was I supposed to know you'd come? That you even understood how quickly humans can die of that sort of thing?"

He gave me a stern look. "I made an oath to Tamlin -"

"I had no other choice," I declared. He could take it or leave it.

"Don't you understand what Rhys is?"

I withheld my growl, but it was getting harder and harder to abstain from defending my mate amidst everyone, especially Lucien - someone I might deem my friend. I diverted my eyes from the fox-masked male, only to see the steam before I felt the slow burn of the stone hanging from my neck.

Lucien gasped. "What is that?"

Startled, I rose to my feet and the thin fog vanished. My chest went cold. Fear flew through me like a shock to my nerves. I hadn't been aware - I hadn't been in control. And Lucien… Lucien had seen.

He walked to the door, and I noticed how stiffly he moved. "I hope you know what you're doing, Feyre," he said, his throat bobbing, and he slipped out the door.

The next night I was bathed, painted, and dressed for Rhysand once more, this time in sheer black.

The Amulet of Storms thrummed above my bare breasts. I'd considered taking it off, but I didn't trust leaving it behind in my cell. Even if Rhysand could hide it, the possibility of Amarantha catching him - punishing him… I'd have to keep it on my person, the only way I would trust its security, even if its power had begun to overflow. Black mist had filled my cell twice that night. The magic, it seemed, was begging for release.

We must have been running late, because I didn't see Rhysand until the two girls made of shadow had led me back into a hall toward the throne room when my mate joined into our group seamlessly. The girls disappeared seconds later. Our bond was loose and heavy in my gut. I gave the intangible cord a tug, but Rhysand did not return my gesture. I didn't dare speak to him after that and he was content with the silence.

Something was wrong.

We reached the throne room, and I braced myself for the gawking eyes of the hordes of fae. But it was Rhysand the crowd looked at - Rhysand whom Lucien's brothers monitored. Amarantha's clear voice rang out over the music, summoning him.

He paused, glancing at Lucien's brothers stalking toward us, their attention pinned on me. Eager, hungry - wicked. I opened my mouth, not too proud to ask Rhysand not to leave me alone with them while he dealt with Amarantha, but he put a hand on my back and nudged me along.

"Stay close and keep quiet," he murmured in my ear as he led me by the arm. The crowd parted as if we were on fire, revealing all too soon what was before us.

Not us, I amended, but Rhysand.

A brown-skinned High Fae male was sobbing on the floor before the dias. Amarantha was smiling at him like a snake - so intently that she didn't even spare me a glance. Beside her, Tamlin remained utterly impassive. A beast without claws.

Rhysand flicked his eyes to me - a silent command to stay at the edge of the crowd. I obeyed, and when I lifted my attention to Tamlin, just to see if he might actually look at me - the girl fighting for his love and freedom - he did no such thing.

Typical.

Amarantha caressed her ring, watching every movement that Rhysand made as he approached. "The summer lordling," she said of the male cowering at her feet, "tried to escape through the exit to the Spring Court lands. I want to know why."

There was a tall, handsome High Fae male standing at the crowd's edge - his hair near-white, eyes of crushing, crystal blue, his skin of richest mahogany. But his mouth was drawn as his attention darted between Amarantha and Rhysand. I'd seen him before, during that first task and at last night's party - the High Lord of the Summer Court. Before, he'd been shining - almost leaking golden light; now he was muted, drab. As if Amarantha had leached every last drop of power from him while she interrogated his subject.

Rhysand slid his hands into his pockets and sauntered closer to the male on the ground.

The Summer faerie cringed, his face shining with tears. My heart ached with fear and shame as he wet himself at the sight of Rhysand. "P-p-please," he gasped out.

The crowd was breathless, too silent.

His back to me, Rhysand's shoulders were loose, not a stitch of clothing out of place. But in the bond, a sickening crawl pressed against me. Loathing tainted our cord. I gripped my inner self, keeping my emotions calm and away from Rhysand's perception. I wouldn't attempt to send anything to him. Better he pretend I wasn't here to witness. I knew his talons had latched onto the faerie's mind the moment the male stopped shaking on the ground.

The High Lord of Summer had gone still, too - and it was pain, real pain, and fear that shone in those stunning blue eyes. Summer was one of the courts that had rebelled, I remembered. So this was a new, untested High Lord, who had not yet had to make choices that cost him lives.

After a moment of silence, Rhysand looked at Amarantha. "He wanted to escape. To get to the Spring Court, across the wall, and flee south into human territory. He had no accomplices, no motive beyond his own pathetic cowardice." He jerked his chin toward the puddle of piss beneath the male. But out of the corner of my eye I saw the Summer High Lord sag a bit - enough to make me wonder… wonder what sort of choice Rhys had made in that moment he'd taken to search the male's mind.

But Amarantha rolled her eyes and slouched in her throne. "Shatter him, Rhysand." She flicked a hand at the High Lord of the Summer Court. "You may do what you want with the body afterward."

The High Lord of the Summer Court bowed - as if he'd been given a gift - and looked to his subject, who had gone still and calm on the floor, hugging his knees. The male faerie was ready - relieved.

Rhys slipped a hand out of his pocket, and it dangled at his side. I could have sworn phantom talons flickered there as his fingers uncurled slightly.

I'm sorry, wafted through my mind so softly, so gently, I wasn't sure I'd heard it at all.

"I'm growing bored, Rhysand," Amarantha said with a sigh, again fiddling with that bone. She hadn't looked at me once, too focused on her current prey.

Rhysand's fingers curled into a fist.

The faerie male's eyes went wide - then glazed as he slumped to the side in the puddle of his own waste. Blood leaked from his nose, from his ears, pooling to the floor.

That fast - that easily, that irrevocably… he was dead.

That was Rhysand at a fraction of his power. That was Rhysand, the most powerful High Lord of them all, enslaved. And I was supposed to do what he could not.

This time I felt the mist before it appeared, noticing a nearly imperceptible shift in my body, my spirit - my being. I focused on my breathing, knowing if I panicked the magic would only grow. No one was paying me any mind right now. No one had seen. If I could just rein it in, all would be fine.

"I said shatter his mind, not his brain," Amarantha snapped.

The crowd murmured around me, stirring. I wanted nothing more than to fade back into it - to crawl back into my cell, into safety, invisibility. Sweet obsidian steam materialized from the stone around my neck.

Rhysand shrugged, his hand sliding back into his pocket. "Apologies, my queen." He turned away without being dismissed, and didn't look at me as he strode for the back of the throne room. I fell into step beside him, doing my best to hide my trembling. The mist had lessened, but I could still feel its sticky magic cold on my skin.

The crowd stayed far, far back as we walked through it. "Whore," some of them softly hissed at him, out of her earshot; "Amarantha's whore." Many of them offered tentative, appreciative smiled and words - "Good that you killed him; good that you killed the traitor."

Rhysand didn't deign to acknowledge any of them, his shoulders still loose, his footsteps unhurried. I couldn't say the same for me. My shorter, rushed gait behind him slammed my bare feet into the mountain ground. For forty-nine years my mate had been exposed to this abuse, to these killings, this torture; for nearly half a century that beast of a female had forced him into her bed. She'd done this to him. For decades he'd endured this. Decades. I found myself drawn to turn away from Rhysand - drawn to Amarantha. Black fog curled around me, spilling from my pores in a glorious multifaceted mist, as I watched Rhysand strolling further and further ahead of me. My steps slowed and slowed until I was watching Rhysand reach the food at the back of the room. He grabbed for two goblets and turned to hand me one - only to see me much too far away.

I felt his panic through the bond just as I felt the eyes of the crowd on me - on my magic.

It's sickening sweet stench was nectar to my fury as I took in Rhysand's wide violet eyes before pivoting to march back to the dias. Again, the crowd parted for me. Whispers overtook the great hall like the cascading roar of an ocean's wave. If I moved any faster, I would be running. The amulet's pulse was bleating in my ears, a hollow song of timbering drums. The moment his throne appeared through the crowd my attention was drawn directly to Tamlin, because, for the first time, he was actually looking at me. I returned his stare, unflinching.

When I turned my gaze to Amarantha, the mist was rippling from me faster - like breaking waves - and spread along the ground. The crowd backed away, wary of the encroaching fog.

"I was wondering when you'd decide to use that heirloom," Amarantha mused cocking her head to the side. She was smiling - smiling - at me. She'd known of the Amulet of Storms and let me keep it, just waiting for me to try and challenge her.

The fabric of my sheer black dress billowed in the ethereal night winds of the fog at my feet. I was seething, my vision clouding.

"Before you embarrass yourself, mortal girl," she hummed, twiddling her bone necklace. "I'll offer you a final task - no third necessary, and our terms will remain the same."

As wild as it felt, I bared my teeth at her, ready to audibly snarl. "Are you that eager to free me and my friends? Are you that scared?"

Her smile melted into a hardy grimace, her nostrils flaring, and I could see her eyes peeling the bones from my flesh in her mind.

The crowd to my right parted and three sentries appeared, each hauling a prisoner - their faces hidden by silken bags over each of their heads. They were led before me - just on the edge of the black fog - and shoved to their knees in a line. The sentries left the prisoners with me and melded back into the crowd. I struggled to imagine Amarantha's plan beyond the tunneled lens of gauzy magic filling my sight, still growing inside me. But then three servants appeared, coming to stand next to each of the three kneeling faeries. In their long, pale hands, they each carried a dark velvet pillow. And on each pillow lay a single polished wooden dagger. Not for a blade, but ash. Ash, because…

"Your final task, Feyre," Amarantha bit out, gesturing to the kneeling faeries. "Stab each of these unfortunate souls in the heart."

It was nearly impossible to focus on her words. The buzzing of power had become my essence, my body. I felt both nothing and everything. I was so far from who I'd thought I was, but more fully myself than I'd ever felt before. Lines blurred in my mind as the magic filled me, fueled me, focused me, became me.

I could feel Amarantha's blood pumping in my chest when our eyes met. I could smell it, taste it; the carnal need to strip her of it devoured me. Pulling on the magic welled inside me, I rose the deathly mist from the ground, covering the petrified faeries at my back. In the distance I heard small, high-pitched cracks followed by muffled shrieks. It was a melee of frozen lightning, sending pricks of ice through those it touched during its rise within my fog until it encompassed the entire room. I was surrounded then, by a wall of hellish midnight mist, cutting out the entire crowd, leaving me alone face to face with Amarantha.

She had reformed her earlier disgust, instead looking at me with a bored noncommittal stare. "So dramatic," she waved a flippant hand at me. The only recognition of my display was the quaking pillows in the three servants' hands. Amarantha's spine was straight, her shoulders back and steady. "Now, did you really think I wouldn't notice?" she purred, tapping her fingers on the arm of her chair. But her eyes weren't meeting my own.

I gave a quick look over my shoulder to see Rhysand standing ahead of the crowd, swallowed by my translucent darkness, his own presence of the night only discernable in the stars that kissed each of the tendrils swelling around him. His power glittered with life and hope, whereas my fog was an emptiness that stole and devoured. An instinctual, animal growl barreled through me at the sight of him. He was too close to Amarantha - to the threat - too close to ever having her hands on my mate again. "Leave him out of this."

"Oh, dear, human girl," Amarantha purred. "It seems you have fallen for my precious Rhysand." The stone at my chest sang against my skin, the black steam pouring from its face to weave a trail around my body. "I can hardly blame you, he is quite a charmer, isn't he?" A feline smile adorned her face. "I can only hope I haven't been exhausting the High Lord too much before you've had your turn." For the first time, Tamlin's claws flew from his hands. Amarantha cackled. "Oh, how fun! You didn't notice, Tamlin, dear? What wasn't obvious enough for you to see it? Him betting on her victories? Their healing bargain? Their matching tattoos? The way she danced for him all night long wearing nothing but a veil for a dress? Or was it not enough that she used his lap for her dinner seat? I'm surprised we weren't an audience for my sweet Rhysand giving Feyre here a ride in front of everyone."

The Amulet of Storms was branding into my chest. I smelled the burning flesh beneath my nose, felt the searing pain, but it was nothing in comparison to the bottomless pit of magic burrowing inside me. Mist was growing in density around us, transforming into opaque smoke, biting cold to the touch. It swirled restlessly through the great hall. The predecessor of the tempest to come - of the storm brewing in my chest.

Rhysand felt it, too. The bond was wide open and I felt him waiting on his end, wary of the onslaught building inside me. Still, I felt his edge, the wild, relentless waves of his own powerful night rolling against my back in the fog. He was prepared, he was telling me, to fight by my side.

Tamlin's claws shook with anger as he stared between me and my mate. I still had yet to decide if I wanted to bury him in my storm with the Faerie Queen. They deserved each other in hell.

"You may try to kill me, girl," Amarantha teased, clutching her bone necklace between pale fingers, her knuckles growing white. "But then I won't be able to undo my curse." She leaned forward, an ugly smile marring her face.

"Oh well," I said, my voice clipped. Loose golden brown hair whipped around my face as the wind of my smoke built a whirling wall of magic around myself and the dias. I felt the tickle of the magic in the air caress my cheek, as if begging me to release it, begging me to show her that this was only a drop.

Amarantha curled her lip, rising to her feet, something I had yet to have seen her do since I'd been in her presence. "You have two choices, mortal bitch," she sneered, closing the distance between us, approaching the three faeries on the ground before me. "Kill them or I kill you." I heard the beastly growl from behind me along with the unsheathing metallic sound of claws. I felt the rage of my mate in my chest.

With a flick of her wrist, Amarantha removed all three satin bags, flying off the heads of the imprisoned fae with magic.

I felt the realization like a sword through my chest, piercing the bond before I saw what she had done. The faerie closest to me was barely familiar. I hadn't ever seen him before, but he reminded me of someone else with his tanned skin and dark hair. I laid my eyes on the other two faeries and had my answer.

Between me and Amarantha were Mor, Azriel, and Cassian, down on their knees.