In a poignant return to the Spring Court, Feyre and Tam­lin land on the grav­el dri­ve, enveloped by the serene qui­et and the bloom of spring. Despite the beau­ty, bit­ter mem­o­ries haunt Feyre as she recalls her impris­on­ment with­in these very walls—a beau­ti­ful yet sti­fling rose-cov­ered prison. Through her tears, Feyre express­es to Tam­lin how she nev­er thought she’d see the place again, while Tam­lin, sim­i­lar­ly emo­tion­al, had thought the same. The nar­ra­tive gen­tly unfolds the com­plex lay­ers of Feyre’s feel­ings: a mix of love and betray­al, the depth of a bond with Rhysand that the King of Hybern failed to sev­er, and the strate­gic, hid­den com­mu­ni­ca­tions between Feyre and Rhysand, under­scor­ing their endur­ing con­nec­tion and Feyre’s strate­gic play.

The chap­ter skill­ful­ly weaves through Feyre’s inter­nal strug­gle, her act of love as poi­son and balm, and her strate­gic resilience against the forces that sought to manip­u­late her fate. As Lucien ques­tions Feyre’s escape from the King’s con­trol, a tense exchange unfolds, reveal­ing Feyre’s deter­mi­na­tion and Lucien’s skep­ti­cism. Feyre’s inter­ac­tion with Tam­lin is bit­ter­sweet, lay­ered with under­cur­rents of mis­trust and strate­gic deceit. She reas­sures Tam­lin of her safe­ty and sub­tly manip­u­lates the con­ver­sa­tion to ensure her involve­ment in future plans, hint­ing at her hid­den agen­da of seek­ing vengeance against Ianthe and the trai­tors with­in the court.

This chap­ter mas­ter­ful­ly cap­tures Feyre’s tumul­tuous return to the Spring Court, marked by a facade of relief and under­ly­ing schemes of retal­i­a­tion, empha­siz­ing her evo­lu­tion from a cap­tive to a cun­ning strate­gist amidst the del­i­cate pol­i­tics of love, pow­er, and betray­al.

You are being pro­vid­ed with a book chap­ter by chap­ter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chap­ter. After read­ing the chap­ter, 1. short­en the chap­ter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any impor­tant nouns in the chap­ter. 3. Do not trans­late the orig­i­nal lan­guage. 4. Keep the same style as the orig­i­nal chap­ter, keep it con­sis­tent through­out the chap­ter. Your reply must com­ply with all four require­ments, or it’s invalid.
I will pro­vide the chap­ter now.

A S I WALK INTO THE sub­way tun­nel and through the turn­stiles, I
keep won­der­ing if I should turn back.
Should I knock on her door?
Should I call 911?
Should I stop her?
I can walk right back up the sub­way steps. I can put one foot in front
of the oth­er and make my way back to Evelyn’s and say “Don’t do
this.”
I am capa­ble of that.
I just have to decide if I want to do it. If I should do it. If it’s the right
thing to do.
She didn’t pick me just because she felt she owed me. She picked
me because of my right-to-die piece.
She picked me because I showed a unique under­stand­ing of the
need for dig­ni­ty in death.
She picked me because she believes I can see the need for mer­cy,
even when what con­sti­tutes mer­cy is hard to swal­low.
She picked me because she trusts me.
And I get the feel­ing she trusts me now.
My train comes thun­der­ing into the sta­tion. I need to get on it and
meet my moth­er at the air­port.
The doors open. The crowds flow out. The crowds flow in. A
teenage boy with a back­pack shoul­ders me out of the way. I do not set
foot in the sub­way car.
The train dings. The doors close. The sta­tion emp­ties.
And I stand there. Frozen.
If you think some­one is going to take her own life, don’t you try to
stop her?
Don’t you call the cops? Don’t you break down walls to find her?
The sta­tion starts to fill again, slow­ly. A moth­er with her tod­dler. A
man with gro­ceries. Three hip­sters in flan­nel with beards. The crowd
starts gath­er­ing faster than I can clock them now.
I need to get on the next train to see my moth­er and leave Eve­lyn
behind me.
I need to turn around and go save Eve­lyn from her­self.
I see the two soft lights on the track that sig­nal the train
approach­ing. I hear the roar.
My mom can get to my place on her own.
Eve­lyn has nev­er need­ed sav­ing from any­one.
The train rolls into the sta­tion. The doors open. The crowds flow
out. And it is only once the doors close that I real­ize I have stepped
inside the train.
Eve­lyn trusts me with her sto­ry.
Eve­lyn trusts me with her death.
And in my heart, I believe it would be a betray­al to stop her.
No mat­ter how I may feel about Eve­lyn, I know she is in her right
mind. I know she is OK. I know she has the right to die as she lived,
entire­ly on her own terms, leav­ing noth­ing to fate or to chance but
instead hold­ing the pow­er of it all in her own hands.
I grab the cold met­al pole in front of me. I sway with the speed of
the car. I change trains. I get onto the Air­Train. It is only once I am
stand­ing at the arrivals gate and see my moth­er wav­ing at me that I
real­ize I have been near­ly cata­ton­ic for an hour.
There is sim­ply too much.
My father, David, the book, Eve­lyn.
And the moment my moth­er is close enough to touch, I put my
arms around her and sink into her shoul­ders. I cry.
The tears that come out of me feel as if they were decades in the
mak­ing. It feels as if some old ver­sion of me is leak­ing out, let­ting go,
say­ing good-bye in the effort of mak­ing room for a new me. One that is
stronger and some­how both more cyn­i­cal about peo­ple and also more
opti­mistic about my place in the world.
“Oh, hon­ey,” my mom says, drop­ping her bag off her shoul­der,
let­ting it fall wher­ev­er it falls, pay­ing no atten­tion to the peo­ple who
need to get around us. She holds me tight­ly, with both arms rub­bing
my back.
I feel no pres­sure to stop cry­ing. I feel no need to explain myself.
You don’t have to make your­self OK for a good moth­er; a good moth­er
makes her­self OK for you. And my moth­er has always been a good
moth­er, a great moth­er.
When I am done, I pull away. I wipe my eyes. There are peo­ple
pass­ing us on the left and the right, busi­ness­women with brief­cas­es,
fam­i­lies with back­packs. Some of them stare. But I’m used to peo­ple
star­ing at my moth­er and me. Even in the melt­ing pot that is New York
City, there are still many peo­ple who don’t expect a moth­er and
daugh­ter to look as we look.
“What is it, hon­ey?” my mom asks.
“I don’t even know where to start,” I say.
She grabs my hand. “How about I for­go try­ing to prove to you that I
under­stand the sub­way sys­tem and we hail a cab?”
I laugh and nod, dry­ing the edges of my eyes.
By the time we are in the back­seat of a stale taxi, clips of the
morn­ing news cycle repeat­ing over and over on the con­sole, I have
gath­ered myself enough to breathe eas­i­ly.
“So tell me,” she says. “What’s on your mind?”
Do I tell her what I know?
Do I tell her that the heart­break­ing thing we’ve always believed—
that my father died dri­ving drunk—isn’t true? Am I going to exchange
that trans­gres­sion for anoth­er? That he was hav­ing an affair with a
man when his life end­ed?
“David and I are offi­cial­ly get­ting divorced,” I say.
“I’m so sor­ry, sweet­heart,” she says. “I know that had to be hard.”
I can’t bur­den her with what I sus­pect about Eve­lyn. I just can’t.
“And I miss Dad,” I say. “Do you miss Dad?”
“Oh, God,” she says. “Every day.”
“Was he a good hus­band?”
She seems caught off guard. “He was a great hus­band, yes,” she
says. “Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know. I guess I just real­ized I don’t know very much about
your rela­tion­ship. What was he like? With you?”
She starts smil­ing, as if she’s try­ing to stop her­self but sim­ply can’t.
“Oh, he was very roman­tic. He used to buy me choco­lates every sin­gle
year on the third of May.”
“I thought your anniver­sary was in Sep­tem­ber.”
“It was,” she says, laugh­ing. “He just always spoiled me on the third
of May for some rea­son. He said there weren’t enough offi­cial hol­i­days
to cel­e­brate me. He said he need­ed to make one up just for me.”
“That’s real­ly cute,” I say.
Our dri­ver pulls out onto the high­way.
“And he used to write the most beau­ti­ful love let­ters,” she says.
“Real­ly love­ly. With poems in them about how pret­ty he thought I was,
which was sil­ly, because I was nev­er pret­ty.”
“Of course you were,” I say.
“No,” she says, her voice mat­ter-of-fact. “I wasn’t real­ly. But boy, did
he make me feel like I was Miss Amer­i­ca.”
I laugh. “It sounds like a pret­ty pas­sion­ate mar­riage,” I say.
My mom is qui­et. Then she says, “No,” pat­ting my hand. “I don’t
know if I would say pas­sion­ate. We just real­ly liked each oth­er. It was
almost as if when I met him, I met this oth­er side of myself. Some­one
who under­stood me and made me feel safe. It wasn’t pas­sion­ate, real­ly.
It was nev­er about rip­ping each other’s clothes off. We just knew we
could be hap­py togeth­er. We knew we could raise a child. We also
knew it wouldn’t be easy and that our par­ents wouldn’t like it. But in a
lot of ways, that just brought us clos­er. Us against the world, sort of.
“I know it’s not pop­u­lar to say. I know everybody’s look­ing for some
sexy mar­riage nowa­days. But I was real­ly hap­py with your father. I
real­ly loved hav­ing some­one look out for me, hav­ing some­one to look
out for. Hav­ing some­one to share my days with. I always found him so
fas­ci­nat­ing. All of his opin­ions, his tal­ent. We could have a
con­ver­sa­tion about almost any­thing. For hours on end. We used to stay
up late, even when you were a tod­dler, just talk­ing. He was my best
friend.”
“Is that why you nev­er remar­ried?”
My mom con­sid­ers the ques­tion. “You know, it’s fun­ny. Talk­ing
about pas­sion. Since we lost your dad, I’ve found pas­sion with men,
from time to time. But I’d give it all back for just a few more days with
him. For just one more late-night talk. Pas­sion nev­er mat­tered very
much to me. But that type of inti­ma­cy that we had? That was what I
cher­ished.”
Maybe one day I will tell her what I know.
Maybe I nev­er will.
Maybe I’ll put it in Evelyn’s biog­ra­phy, or per­haps I’ll tell Evelyn’s
side of it with­out ever reveal­ing who was sit­ting in the passenger’s seat
of that car.
Maybe I’ll leave that part out com­plete­ly. I think I’d be will­ing to lie
about Evelyn’s life to pro­tect my moth­er. I think I’d be will­ing to omit
the truth from pub­lic knowl­edge in the inter­est of the hap­pi­ness and
san­i­ty of a per­son I love dear­ly.
I don’t know what I’m going to do. I just know that I will be guid­ed
by what I believe to be best for my moth­er. And if it comes at the
expense of hon­esty, if it takes a small chunk out of my integri­ty, I’m
OK with that. Per­fect­ly, stun­ning­ly OK.
“I think I was just very for­tu­nate to find a com­pan­ion like your
father,” my mom says. “To find that kind of soul mate.”
When you dig just the tini­est bit beneath the sur­face, everyone’s
love life is orig­i­nal and inter­est­ing and nuanced and defies any easy
def­i­n­i­tion.
And maybe one day I’ll find some­one I love the way Eve­lyn loved
Celia. Or maybe I might just find some­one I love the way my par­ents
loved each oth­er. Know­ing to look for it, know­ing there are all
dif­fer­ent types of great loves out there, is enough for me for now.
There’s still much I don’t know about my father. Maybe he was gay.
Maybe he saw him­self as straight but in love with one man. Maybe he
was bisex­u­al. Or a host of oth­er words. But it real­ly doesn’t mat­ter,
that’s the thing.
He loved me.
And he loved my mom.
And noth­ing I could learn about him now changes that. Any of it.
The dri­ver drops us off in front of my stoop, and I grab my mother’s
bag. The two of us head inside.
My mom offers to make me her famous corn chow­der for din­ner
but, see­ing that I have almost noth­ing in the refrig­er­a­tor, agrees that