A Court of Fire and Shadow

Chapter 26

A/N: Picture above - Nala's outfit for the day.

"Do you think you can decode it once we get the other half?" Feyre asked as she, Nala, and Amren stood in the silver-eyed female apartment. Feyre lingering by the front door, she kept shuffling her feet, not knowing where to look. 

She owned the top floor of a three-story building, the sloped ceiling ending on either side in a massive window. One looked out on the Sidra; the other on a tree-lined city square. The entire apartment consisted of one giant room: the faded oak floors were covered in equally worn carpets, and furniture was scattered about as if she constantly moved it for whatever purpose.

Only her bed, a large, four-poster monstrosity canopied in gossamer, seemed set in a permanent place against the wall. There was no kitchen— only a long table and a hearth burning hot enough to make the room near stifling. The dusting of snow from the night before had vanished in the dry winter sun by midmorning, the temperature crisp but mild enough that the walk here had been invigorating. Nala seemed to be right at home in the terrifying female's home. As soon as the sisters had shown up at the door she had marched right in, poured herself a glass of red wine, and sat herself on the couch behind Amren, almost like she had been here many times before and felt like this were her own home. 

Seated on the floor before a low-lying table scattered with papers, Amren looked up from the gleaming metal of the book. Her face was paler than usual, her lips wan. 

"It's been a long while since I used this language—I want to master it again before tackling the Book. Hopefully, by then, those haughty queens will have given us their share."

"And how long will relearning the language take?"

"Didn't His Darkness fill you in?" She went back to the Book.

Feyre strode for the long wooden table and set down the package that she had brought on the scratched surface. Nala had convinced her that the female wouldn't turn them, mostly Feyre, away if she came bearing gifts. "No," she said, taking the pints of hot blood on the table. "He didn't." Feyre screwed the lid of one of the bottles and Amren turned from her spot, her eyes zooming in on the bottle in Feyre's hands. 

"You - oh, I like you." She spoke and Nala laughed as she winked at her sister. Told you so. Her eyes seemed to say. 

Feyre rolled her eyes at her sister before focusing on Amren, "It's lamb if that makes a difference. Do you want me to heat it?" 

Amren got up from her spot on the floor and crossed the room to rip the bottle from Feyre's hand and gulped it down like water. Feyre turned her eyes to her sister in disbelief but Nala had her own amber eyes firmly focused on her mate drinking blood. Nala licked her lips as she leaned forward slightly with her arms on her knees as she watched the other female rather intensely. And Feyre felt like she was interrupting something very intimate and personal. But Amren didn't seem to see the look the younger Archeron was giving her. She drank half the bottle in one go. A single trickle of blood ran down her chip and a small feminine shadow jumped from Nala to wipe the wayward droplet away, all the while Nala licked her lips, wanting her sister to leave this minute to do unspeakable things to the blood-drinking female. "Thank you," Amren smiled at Feyre, still not making any note of the winged female on her couch. 

"Do you have a favorite?" Feyre asked, trying to ignore the way her little sister was looking at Amren. 

She jerked her bloody chin, then wiped it with a napkin as she realized she'd made a mess. "Lamb has always been my favorite. Horrible as it is."

"Not—human?" Feyre couldn't help but ask, blushing a bit when Nala laughed quietly from her spot.