A Court of Innocents

4: Unraveling

I was in the woods. Running for my life. My heart in my throat. But what I was running from, I wasn't exactly sure.

This place was strange and unfamiliar. I didn't have time to think about how I'd gotten here as I pushed past gnarled branches and over twisting roots. Behind me, darkness swirled. But not the darkness of my home that I had grown to love; this was cold, and foreign, and vengeful. It threatened to swallow me whole. So I ran. Branches clawed at my clothes, desperate to slow me down. The forest was not on my side here. It wanted nothing more than to sacrifice me to the shadows, and it would, it would throw anyone against that darkness as a shield from its large, knowing eyes.

A thunderous roar ripped through the land and I swear even the trees stood on end. But I didn't dare let myself stop or slow for a second.

The ground swung up to meet me. The air was kicked from my lungs as I collided with something warm, hard, solid. Pain lanced across my body, a thousand cuts ripping through skin. I glanced back at the darkness, now just inches from me.

My vision blurred. I couldn't get enough oxygen, couldn't fill my lungs fast enough.

That monstrous roar again. Closer this time. Right beside me.

At the sound, the darkness slowed, hesitating. Then it receded, unbelievably, pulling back as quickly as it had come. Only when I could no longer see it with my fae eyes did I face the new threat.

It was large as a horse, easily towering over me. A lupine-shaped head with mighty antlers laid proof to the fact that this was not a simple lion. Power and magic radiated off the beast's body like it had enough of both to spare. Sharp canines flashed inches from my face. The creature growled, moving with a feline grace, but the eyes—

I knew those green eyes.

"Tamlin," I breathed.

But he just growled again. The animal was in control now. Tamlin was tucked far below the surface, and I knew that I should have let the darkness swallow me whole. The way he now stared at me--curious to rip me apart and eat my alive--was worse than anything the darkness promised.

I closed my eyes and met my end.

And then I was pulled from my dream and into someone else's.

It took me a second to figure out whose dream this belonged to, but as soon as I remembered the room I was in, I knew I had somehow found my way into Azriel's head. I stood in his bedroom in the apartment he had brought me to last night—the place only he and I knew about. He stood in the doorway, horrorstruck as he gazed at the bed. I turned—

To find my naked body sprawled out on the sheets, eyes closed in pleasure as I moaned wantonly. And the person who hovered above me, whose teeth and tongue slid down my body, making my back arch in pleasure—

It was Tamlin.

Azriel was watching Tamlin seduce me in his room, in his house, in the only safe, private place he had.

I wanted to go to Azriel and scream at him. I'd do anything to tear his attention away from the horror he witnessed, because that was undoubtedly horror in his eyes, layered with pain, as another man—a man he loathed—took what he wanted. But I couldn't do anything; I couldn't interfere. That was not how this worked.

A quick explanation: what felt like one hundred years ago, Cassian found me posing as a man in one of his Illyrian army camps. He questioned me, and when I told him the truth, he doubted me. Enough to call in Azriel, the Night Court's greatest torturer. He used his shadows to rip apart my body, my mind, clawing at the truth they thought I was harboring. Why the hell would a woman want anything to do with Illyrian soldiers? Was I a spy from another court? My Autumn Court lineage didn't help their distrust of me. But I insisted that I'd already told them the truth, and when they saw that Azriel's shadows could do nothing to pry out another version of the story, they called in Rhysand. He took one step inside of my mind and saw every thought I'd ever had.