A Court of Innocents

34: Eros

"Last year, when the High Lords gathered to discuss plans against Hybern, I showed up late. I'd been debating whether to even go. Most of the High Lords had already decided I was traitorous scum, and I figured they'd hold less back from each other if I didn't show my face. But after the lies I'd spun in deceiving Hybern, I felt twisted. My deception had worked so well that even I had trouble remembering that I was a High Lord who loved my home the way it was, and that I would fight until my last breath to defend the people who lived in it. I wanted to contribute something, anything. So I went. The only free space at the table was across from Feyre and Rhysand.

"I looked at her, and for the first time in a year, I actually bothered to see her. To note that ring on her finger and that tattoo on her hand and force myself to understand the implications. She was not just a member of the Night Court, not just High Lady. She was a married woman, bound to her mate in every way I had ever craved, and—it consumed me. The rage. The jealousy. The questioning.

"Why had she been deemed worthy of a happy ending when I hadn't gotten mine? A truly selfish thought, but one I couldn't stop from running through my mind. It followed me for days—weeks. I couldn't escape it when I returned to Spring, or when I journeyed to Hybern, or when I stepped onto the battlefield. It broke my mind and ripped at what was left of my heart.

"That question of why her and not me drove me mad. But it was the first time that I realized my jealousy was not for Rhysand, for having claim to the woman I'd forced myself to love. It was for Feyre—perhaps for both of them, for finding their mate in a world that pinned the odds against them, and choosing each other no matter what. It was the first time that I realized all of the bitterness... it only led me back to you, because of course it did. Every road leads back to you, Yara. It always has."

I waited for him to say more, even as I struggled to breathe against the lump in my throat.

"There's nothing I can say that she hasn't already told you." I opened my mouth, but he continued before I could get a word out. "I know she told you, all of you. You heard her version of events in those months after Amarantha, and I'm willing to bet that most of the stories—if not all of them—were hard to believe, especially for you, who had been my friend for so long." He swallowed, and the pale light made the tears in his eyes gleam. "But her scars spoke louder than her words, didn't they? I'm willing to bet that that's why you—more than anyone else—chose to take her at her word. Why you spent two years thinking of me with disdain and looking at me with contempt. There's nothing I can tell you that you don't already know, Yara, and those aren't stories you want to hear a second time."

Perhaps it was the distant thrum of wine in my veins, or the look on his face, but I admitted, "I cut my ties with the Night Court. With Rhysand and... and with Az—Azriel. If I leave this palace, it's only to return with you to the Spring Court. To continue repairing your home. I've risked a lot for you, Tamlin."

He scanned my face. "Are you asking me to prove to you why that wasn't a mistake?"

"I'm asking you to show me that you're still the boy I befriended as a little girl. That you are more than the High Lord who has become loathed by the Inner Circle of the Night Court."

"You saw what happened to Feyre, how close to death she had been. There is nothing I could ever say to excuse that."

My eyes pricked with hot tears that I refused to let fall. "I know you, Tamlin. I know your heart, even when you hide it from the rest of the world, even when you don't want me to know it. So I have to believe that... even when it got bad between you two, even when you woke up one day and your love for her had eroded away into something cold and empty—even then, you were trying your best."