A Court of Tears and Starlight

The Letter

The thick rich parchment shook in my hands as I unfurled the pages and began to read...

Feyre,

You never cease to amaze me in what that stubborn unrelenting will of yours can achieve. Learning to read in less than three weeks? What a feat! Just think, all that time you spent being illiterate when all you needed was the promise of a naughty love note to motivate you to learn. You bad bad girl. Now, now - don't be mad sweeting you know I'm right. I only wish I was there to see that lovely scowl of yours as you read this letter. I made a little wager with myself that, if pushed, you would find a way to read this letter before your next week with me. Actually I was counting on it. But then I don't often lose a wager, as we both know well.

I didn't lie to you when I told you that this letter was for your eyes only. The reason is because it is imbued with my memories. Places, events, feelings that I can't explain but need for you to see. It is a particularly cunning piece of magic. Your touch and key words within the letter will trigger the intended memories in the series that I wish them to unfold.

That's right my love. You have the rare privilege of having a sneak peek into one of the greatest minds this world has ever known.

I could hear Rhys' soft mocking laughter and then the world  around me spun and faded and when it came back into focus I was no longer in my bedroom. I was back beneath the mountain, standing before Amarantha's throne and then I became Rhysand.

I stared up at her, my face carefully arranged into a complex blend of amusement and servitude. Too much obedience and she would be bored and dismiss me, too little and she would flay the skin off my people. Beneath the surface I was a seething torrent of hatred and rage. She had debased me again this morning. It took all of my will not to shudder in disgust at the memory of her using my body that way. Her touch was abhorrent to me. I spent every second of it imaging the moment when I could finally rip out her throat with my teeth.

I could tell from her over simpering manner that she had uncovered another traitor, she always behaved as such before the real torture began. It was a little game we played. She would push me a little farther each time, testing my limits, waiting patiently for the moment I would finally break. In the forty nine years since my enslavement I had become a cold detached killer. A creature of nightmares. A mindless, obedient whore. Or so she thought. She was insane. Her mind had been driven mad by ambition and grief and hatred. Her complete inability to understand empathy, loyalty and love were her biggest weakness. She had presumed I had sold myself and my court for the chance to gain position and power. What she could never understand was that I had done it for my people. I may be a whore, but I was their whore. Sold to save the remnant of those she hadn't hunted down and slew for sport, preying on my people like game in the hunt for revenge against my father.

She was staring at me waiting.

I forced myself into a deadly calm and fidgeted slightly, indicating a bored reluctance to play games. She grinned and clicked her fingers. Right on cue, those Autumn Court bastards came forward, dragging between them a blue Summer Court Faerie.

Cyrian.

My heart caught in my chest as I swallowed down my panic. I had thought she had killed the last of my friends. They had been the first to go in the early days if her reign. I had been careful to remain detached and to not endanger anyone else. Everything I loved seemed to be taken from me. I had not thought about Cyrian. We had been friends as boys. Drawn together by the love of flying. It was Cyrian and I who had first discovered that we could fly at dark of moon and fly through the phantom light of the dying stars.