A Court of Chaos and Confusion - An ACOTAR Rewrite

Chapter 22

It wasn't the dawn that awoke me, but rather a buzzing noise. I groaned as I sat up in bed and squinted at the squat woman with skin made from tree bark who fussed with my breakfast dishes.

"Where's Alis?" I asked, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. Tamlin must have carried me up here – must have carried me the whole way home.

"What?" She turned toward me. Her bird mask was familiar, but I would have remembered a faerie with skin like that.

"Is Alis unwell?" I said, sliding from the bed. This was my room, wasn't it? A quick glance around told me yes.

"Are you out of your right mind?" the faerie said. I bit my lip. "I am Alis," she chuckled, and with a shake of her head, strode into the bathing room to start my bath.

It was impossible – the Alis I knew was fair, plump, and looked like a High Fae. I rubbed my eyes with my thumb and forefinger. A glamour – that's what Tamlin had said he wore. His faerie sight had stripped away the glamours I'd been seeing, but why bother to glamour everything?

Because I'd been a cowering human, that's why. Because Tamlin believed I would have locked myself in this room and never come out if I'd seen them all for their true selves.

Things only got more interesting as I made my way downstairs to find the High Lord and his emissary. The hallways were bustling with masked faeries I'd never seen before. Some were tall and humanoid – High Fae like Tamlin and Lucien – others were faeries. I tried to avoid looking at them, as they seemed the most surprised to notice my attention. I worried my stares would make them uncomfortable.

I was almost shaking by the time I reached the dining room, weak and suddenly very hungry. Lucien, mercifully, appeared like Lucien. I didn't ask whether that was because Tamlin had informed him to put up a better glamour or because he didn't bother trying to be something he wasn't.

Tamlin lounged in his usual chair but straightened as I lingered in the doorway. "What's wrong?"

"There are... a lot of people – faeries – around. Where they always here?"

I'd almost yelped when I looked out my bedroom window and spotted all the faeries in the garden. Many of them – all with insect masks – pruned the hedges and tended the flowers. Those faeries had been the strangest of all, with their iridescent, buzzing wings sprouting from their backs. And, of course, there was the green-and-brown skin and unnaturally long limbs, and–

Tamlin bit his lip as if to keep from smiling. "Yes,"

"But... but I didn't hear anything."

"Of course you didn't," Lucien drawled as he twirled one of his daggers between his tanned, clearly skilled hands. "We made sure you couldn't see or hear anyone but those who were necessary."

I adjusted my tunic. "So, you mean that... that when I'd go exploring at night –"

"You had an audience," Lucien finished for me. 

I thought I'd had some semblance of privacy. Meanwhile, I'd been tiptoeing past faeries who had probably laughed their heads off at the blind human as she walked right past them.

Fighting against my rising mortification, I turned to Tamlin. His lips twitched and he clamped them tightly together, but the amusement still danced in his eyes as he nodded.

"But I could see the naga, the puca, and the Suriel. And – and that faerie whose wings were... ripped off," I said, wincing inwardly. "Why didn't your glamour apply to them?"

His eyes darkened. "They're not members of my court," Tamlin said, "so my glamour didn't keep a hold on them. The puca belongs to the wind and weather and everything that changes. And the naga... they belong to someone else."