I picked through the ashes again and again. My hands were now black and stained, my clothes covered in soot. Surely there couldn’t be any more; surely—

The lock clicked, and I lunged for the poker as I shot to my feet, my back to the hearth and the iron rod hidden behind me.

Darkness entered the room, guttering the candles with a snow-kissed breeze. I gripped the poker harder, pressing against the stone of the fireplace, even as that darkness settled on the bed and took a familiar form.

“As wonderful as it is to see you, Feyre, darling,” Rhysand said, sprawled on the bed, his head propped up by a hand, “do I want to know why you’re digging through my fireplace?”

I bent my knees slightly, preparing to run, to duck, to do anything to get to the door that felt far, far away. “They said I had to clean out lentils from the ashes, or you’d rip off my skin.”

“Did they now.” A feline smile.

“Do I have you to thank for this idea?” I hissed. He wasn’t allowed to kill me, not with my bargain with Amarantha, but … there were other ways to hurt me.

“Oh, no,” he drawled. “No one’s learned of our little bargain yet—and you’ve managed to keep it quiet. Shame riding you a bit hard?”

I clenched my jaw and pointed to the fireplace with one hand, still keeping the poker tucked behind me. “Is this clean enough for you?”

“Why were there lentils in my fireplace to begin with?”

I gave him a flat look. “One of your mistress’s household chores, I suppose.”

“Hm,” he said, examining his nails. “Apparently she or her cronies think I’ll find some sport with you.”

My mouth dried up. “Or it’s a test for you,” I managed to get out. “You said you bet on me during my first task. She didn’t seem pleased about it.”

“And what could Amarantha possibly have to test me about?”

I didn’t balk from that violet stare. Amarantha’s whore, Lucien had once called him. “You lied to her. About Clare. You knew very well what I looked like.”

Rhysand sat up in a fluid movement and braced his forearms on his thighs. Such grace contained in such a powerful form. I was slaughtering on the battlefield before you were even born, he’d once said to Lucien. I didn’t doubt it. “Amarantha plays her games,” he said simply, “and I play mine. It gets rather boring down here, day after day.”

“She let you out for Fire Night. And you somehow got out to put that head in the garden.”

“She asked me to put that head in the garden. And as for Fire Night …” He looked me up and down. “I had my reasons to be out then. Do not think, Feyre, that it did not cost me.” He smiled again, and it didn’t meet his eyes. “Are you going to put down that poker, or can I expect you to start swinging soon?”

I swallowed my curse and brought it out—but didn’t put it down.

“A valiant effort, but useless,” he said. True—so true, when he didn’t even need to take his hands out of his pockets to grip Lucien’s mind.

“How is it that you have such power still and the others don’t? I thought she robbed all of you of your abilities.”

He lifted a groomed, dark brow. “Oh, she took my powers. This …” A caress of talons against my mind. I jerked back a step, slamming into the fireplace. The pressure on my mind vanished. “This is just the remnant. The scraps I get to play with. Your Tamlin has brute strength and shape-shifting; my arsenal is a far deadlier assortment.”

I knew he wasn’t bluffing—not when I’d felt those talons in my mind. “So you can’t shape-shift? It’s not some High Lord specialty?”

“Oh, all the High Lords can. Each of us has a beast roaming beneath our skin, roaring to get out. While your Tamlin prefers fur, I find wings and talons to be more entertaining.”

A lick of cold kissed down my spine. “Can you shift now, or did she take that, too?”

“So many questions from a little human.”

But the darkness that hovered around him began to writhe and twist and flare as he rose to his feet. I blinked, and it was done.

I lifted the iron poker, just a little bit.

“Not a full shift, you see,” Rhysand said, clicking the black razor-sharp talons that had replaced his fingers. Below the knee, darkness stained his skin—but talons also gleamed in lieu of toes. “I don’t particularly like yielding wholly to my baser side.”

Indeed, it was still Rhysand’s face, his powerful male body, but flaring out behind him were massive black membranous wings—like a bat’s, like the Attor’s. He tucked them in neatly behind him, but the single claw at the apex of each peeked over his broad shoulders. Horrific, stunning—the face of a thousand nightmares and dreams. That again-useless part of me stirred at the sight, the way the candlelight shone through the wings, illuminating the veins, the way it bounced off his talons.

Rhysand rolled his neck, and it all vanished in a flash—the wings, the talons, the feet, leaving only the male behind, well-dressed and unruffled. “No attempts at flattery?”

I had made a very, very big mistake in offering my life to him.

But I said, “You have a high-enough opinion of yourself already. I doubt the flattery of a little human matters much to you.”

He let out a low laugh that slid along my bones, warming my blood. “I can’t decide whether I should consider you admirable or very stupid for being so bold with a High Lord.”

Only around him did I have trouble keeping my mouth shut, it seemed. So I dared to ask, “Do you know the answer to the riddle?”

He crossed his arms. “Cheating, are you?”

“She never said I couldn’t ask for help.”

“Ah, but after she had you beaten to hell, she ordered us not to help you.” I waited. But he shook his head. “Even if I felt like helping you, I couldn’t. She gives the order, and we all bow to it.” He picked a fleck of dust off his black jacket. “It’s a good thing she likes me, isn’t it?”

I opened my mouth to press him—to beg him. If it meant instantaneous freedom—

“Don’t waste your breath,” he said. “I can’t tell you—no one here can. If she ordered us all to stop breathing, we would have to obey that, too.” He frowned at me and snapped his fingers. The soot, the dirt, the ash vanished off my skin, leaving me as clean as if I’d bathed. “There. A gift—for having the balls to even ask.”

I gave him a flat stare, but he motioned to the hearth.

It was spotless—and my bucket was filled with lentils. The door swung open of its own accord, revealing the guards who’d dragged me here. Rhysand waved a lazy hand at them. “She accomplished her task. Take her back.”

They grabbed for me, but he bared his teeth in a smile that was anything but friendly—and they halted. “No more household chores, no more tasks,” he said, his voice an erotic caress. Their yellow eyes went glazed and dull, their sharp teeth gleaming as their mouths slackened. “Tell the others, too. Stay out of her cell, and don’t touch her. If you do, you’re to take your own daggers and gut yourselves. Understood?”