ACOTAR 01: Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

Author:Sarah J. Maas [Maas, Sarah J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Published: 2015-05-04T14:00:00+00:00

Chapter 24

It wasn’t the dawn that awoke me, but rather a buzzing noise. I groaned as I sat up in bed and squinted at the squat woman with skin made from tree bark who fussed with my breakfast dishes.

“Where’s Alis?” I asked, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. Tamlin must have carried me up here—must have carried me the whole way home.

“What?” She turned toward me. Her bird mask was familiar. But I would have remembered a faerie with skin like that. Would have painted it already.

“Is Alis unwell?” I said, sliding from the bed. This was my room, wasn’t it? A quick glance told me yes.

“Are you out of your right mind?” the faerie said. I bit my lip. “I am Alis,” she clucked, and with a shake of her head, she strode into the bathing room to start my bath.

It was impossible. The Alis I knew was fair and plump and looked like a High Fae.

I rubbed my eyes with my thumb and forefinger. A glamour—that’s what Tamlin had said he wore. His faerie sight had stripped away the glamours I’d been seeing. But why bother to glamour everything?

Because I’d been a cowering human, that’s why. Because Tamlin knew I would have locked myself in this room and never come out if I’d seen them all for their true selves.

Things only got worse when I made my way downstairs to find the High Lord. The hallways were bustling with masked faeries I’d never seen before. Some were tall and humanoid—High Fae like Tamlin—others were … not. Faeries. I tried to avoid looking at those ones, as they seemed the most surprised to notice my attention.

I was almost shaking by the time I reached the dining room. Lucien, mercifully, appeared like Lucien. I didn’t ask whether that was because Tamlin had informed him to put up a better glamour or because he didn’t bother trying to be something he wasn’t.

Tamlin lounged in his usual chair but straightened as I lingered in the doorway. “What’s wrong?”

“There are … a lot of people—faeries—around. When did they arrive?”

I’d almost yelped when I looked out my bedroom window and spotted all the faeries in the garden. Many of them—all with insect masks—pruned the hedges and tended the flowers. Those faeries had been the strangest of all, with their iridescent, buzzing wings sprouting from their backs. And, of course, then there was the green-and-brown skin, and their unnaturally long limbs, and—

Tamlin bit his lip as if to keep from smiling. “They’ve been here all along.”

“But … but I didn’t hear anything.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Lucien drawled, and twirled one of his daggers between his hands. “We made sure you couldn’t see or hear anyone but those who were necessary.”

I adjusted the lapels of my tunic. “So you mean that … that when I ran after the puca that night—”

“You had an audience,” Lucien finished for me. I thought I’d been so stealthy. Meanwhile, I’d been tiptoeing past faeries who had probably laughed their heads off at the blind human following an illusion.

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