A Court of Rage and Fire

Chapter 20

Eris winnowed directly into the bay of Adriata, where he promptly burned away his clothes, all the smoke and filth and scent of singed flesh that clung to him. The flames ate at the fabric, boiling the ocean water around him. He sank beneath the waves while he calmly regarded the way the bubbles rose from his skin, now bare save for freckles and a gold-and-emerald drop earring.

He was close enough to shore that he could sink to the bottom, where he grabbed fistfuls of fine sand to rub into his skin, just for good measure. He would not return to Nesta with a single particle of the Court of Nightmares still clinging to him.

When he stopped boiling and looked up, the surface of the water glittered white and gold and red—partly from the reflection of the setting sun, but partly from the long strands of auburn hair that wreathed his head, floating on the gentle current. And though his hair had always been one of his many vanities, he wanted nothing more than to rip it out by the fistful. His vanity won out, mostly. Eris refilled his lungs at the surface, then returned to the sea bed and grabbed a broken scallop shell from the sand. He sawed at his long, flowing hair, leaving just enough to frame his amber eyes or brush back in a careless wave. It probably looked like uneven shit right now, but he'd worn his hair like this when he was younger, to better fit under helmets while training or fighting in war, and he knew it would be flattering once he got to a mirror and a pair of real scissors.

For now, it just needed to go. Even in the water, he felt so heavy, and this was the only weight on his shoulders that he could control. And it was grounding, to hold his breath and focus on something so banal and comforting as his appearance.

It wasn't until he was nearly done that he remembered the mark of his bargain with Keir. Though it was on the back of his neck, he knew the mark well from the times he had used dual mirrors to regard it in despair. The only real flaw on his skin, as his freckles enhanced his beauty, and his father had always been careful to never leave scars. The tattoo consisted of a dark circle surrounded by thin and uneven rays, which were broken by the negative space of a pale star on the circle's perimeter. Like a sun, but not—more like the glint of the sun when fully eclipsed by the moon. Broad daylight turned to night.

He'd completed two days of his bargain—the past day, plus another last year just before Winter Solstice, which Rhysand, Feyre, and Mor had interrupted in an attempt to intimidate both him and Keir. Feyre and Mor seemed to assume that Beron and Keir were plotting together through Eris—or, at least, that's what Rhysand had let Feyre and Mor believe. Rhysand knew everything about the bargain, and he had toyed with Eris anyway.

Two days served, which meant he still had eight more days of doing Keir's bidding, chosen at Keir's leisure any time over the next century. It would be easy enough to hide the tattoo on the nape of his neck from those who could not know about it—namely, his father and brothers—as he favored wearing cravats and high-necked jackets anyway, but Nesta would surely see it. Though it didn't matter. She knew about the bargain now, anyway, and it would come as no surprise to see it inked on his skin, not when she had one of her own.

Though, when he found his wife enjoying the golden hour on the beach in front of their cottage, he finally noticed her bargain-tattoo was gone. She must have called in her bargain since the handfasting ceremony, and he realized, with the pang of an emotion he could not name, that it must have had something to do with the Illyrian general's visit the night of their wedding. He quickly buried the thought. What happened between his wife for a year and her mate for a lifetime was none of his business.

Nesta looked somewhat less surprised to see him walking stark naked out of the bay than he had expected—but then again, there was not much that could openly faze Nesta Archeron. She just closed her book, one finger slipped inside to hold her place, and turned onto her side to better face him as he sank onto the blanket next to her. There was a part of him that would have preferred to spend a day or two alone, letting the guilt fester until he was ready to lock it away as fuel for his flames, before he had to face anyone who looked at him the way Nesta did in that moment. Like he was just returning from a swim and about to discuss what to eat for dinner. Like he wasn't a monster at the beck and call of several even worse monsters.