jerked his chin to the fires and drums.
“To do what?” I asked, glancing at the bow in his hand. My heart echoed the drums outside, building into a wilder beat.
His green eyes were shadowed beneath the gilded mask. “As a High Lord, I have to partake in the Great Rite.”
“What’s the Great—”
“Go to your chamber,” he snarled, and glanced toward the fires. “Lock your doors, set up a snare, whatever you do.”
“Why?” I demanded. The Attor’s voice snaked through my memory. Tamlin had said something about a very faerie ritual—what the hell was it? From the weapons, it had to be brutal and violent—especially if Tamlin’s beast form wasn’t weapon enough.
“Just do it.” His canines began to lengthen. My heart leaped into a gallop. “Don’t come out until morning.”
Stronger, faster, the drums beat, and the muscles in Tamlin’s neck quivered, as if standing still were somehow painful to him.
“Are you going into battle?” I whispered, and he let out a breathy laugh.
He lifted a hand as if to touch my arm. But he lowered it before his fingers could graze the fabric of my tunic. “Stay in your chamber, Feyre.”
“But I—”
“Please.” Before I could ask him to reconsider bringing me along, he took off running. The muscles in his back shifted as he leaped down the short flight of stairs and bounded into the garden, as spry and swift as a stag. Within seconds he was gone.
I did as he commanded, though I soon realized that I’d locked myself in my room without having eaten dinner. And with the incessant drumming and dozens of bonfires that popped up along the far hills, I couldn’t stop pacing up and down my room, gazing out toward the fires burning in the distance.
Stay in your chamber.
But a wild, wicked voice weaving in between the drumbeats whispered otherwise. Go, that voice said, tugging at me. Go see.
By ten o’clock, I could no longer stand it. I followed the drums.
The stables were empty, but Tamlin had taught me how to ride bareback these past few weeks, and my white mare was soon trotting along. I didn’t need to guide her—she, too, followed the lure of the drums, and ascended the first of the foothills.
Smoke and magic hung thick in the air. Concealed in my hooded cloak, I gaped as I approached the first giant bonfire atop the hill. There were hundreds of High Fae milling about, but I couldn’t discern any of their features beyond the various masks they wore. Where had they come from—where did they live, if they belonged to the Spring Court but did not dwell in the manor? When I tried to focus on a specific feature of their faces, it became a blur of color. They were more solid when I viewed them from the side of my vision, but if I turned to face them, I was met with shadows and swirling colors.
It was magic—some kind of glamour put on me, meant to prevent my viewing them properly, just as my family had been glamoured. I would have been furious, would have considered going back to the manor had the drums not echoed through my bones and that wild voice not beckoned to me.
I dismounted my mare but kept close to her as I made my way through the crowd, my telltale human features hidden in the shadows of my hood. I prayed that the smoke and countless scents of various High Fae and faeries were enough to cover my human smell, but I checked to ensure that my two knives were still at my sides anyway as I moved deeper into the celebration.
Though a cluster of drummers played on one side of the fire, the faeries flocked to a trench between two nearby hills. I left my horse tied to a solitary sycamore crowning a knoll and followed them, savoring the pulsing beat of the drums as it resonated through the earth and into the soles of my feet. No one looked twice in my direction.
I almost slid down the steep bank as I entered the hollow. At one end, a cave mouth opened into a soft hillside. Its exterior had been adorned with flowers and branches and leaves, and I could make out the beginnings of a pelt-covered floor just past the cave mouth. What lay inside was hidden from view as the chamber veered away from the entrance, but firelight danced upon the walls.
Whatever was occurring inside the cave—or whatever was about to happen—was the focus