Wait­ing ai

Wait­ing ai

Chap­ter 16 opens with the pro­tag­o­nist, after enjoy­ing a long bath, sit­ting by the fire­place in her room, enjoy­ing the com­fort of Alis brush­ing her damp hair. Alis serves her molten choco­late, which she finds exquis­ite­ly delight­ful. The peace­ful moment leads to a dis­cus­sion about the increas­ing faerie attacks and the loom­ing threat of war, reveal­ing the pro­tag­o­nist’s con­cerns for her fam­i­ly and the human world. Alis warns her not to dwell on such thoughts and shares a per­son­al sto­ry of loss, empha­siz­ing her ded­i­ca­tion to her nephews, hint­ing at the com­plex­i­ties of faerie life and how pre­cious their young are.

As the pro­tag­o­nist con­tem­plates warn­ing her fam­i­ly about the poten­tial dan­gers, she ques­tions the faeries’ aging process and learns from Alis about the rar­i­ty and pre­cious­ness of faerie chil­dren. Alis advis­es the pro­tag­o­nist to trust Lord Tam­lin with the mat­ter, high­light­ing his sole capa­bil­i­ty of address­ing the issue. The con­ver­sa­tion shifts to the pro­tag­o­nist’s futile attempt to gath­er infor­ma­tion about faerie pol­i­tics and the impli­ca­tion of her actions as per Alis’s rep­ri­mands, stress­ing the pro­tag­o­nist’s naivety and reck­less­ness in try­ing to nav­i­gate faerie affairs.

Lat­er, at din­ner, inter­ac­tions with Lucien and Tam­lin reveal that faeries can indeed lie, con­tra­dict­ing pre­vi­ous beliefs held by the pro­tag­o­nist. This rev­e­la­tion forces her to ques­tion the authen­tic­i­ty of every­thing she’s been told since her arrival. Amidst these rev­e­la­tions, Tam­lin con­firms that her fam­i­ly is safe, with their mem­o­ries altered to pro­tect them from the truth, illus­trat­ing his pro­tec­tive mea­sures despite the manip­u­la­tive nature of faerie mag­ic.

The chap­ter con­cludes with a deep­er con­nec­tion form­ing between Tam­lin and the pro­tag­o­nist, as they dis­cuss fam­i­ly, sac­ri­fices, and the blurred lines of friend­ship and alliance between faeries and humans. The pro­tag­o­nist requests paint­ing sup­plies from Tam­lin, wish­ing to pur­sue her inter­est in art, mark­ing a shift to find­ing per­son­al solace and expres­sion despite the over­ar­ch­ing ten­sion of faerie pol­i­tics and loom­ing threats. This request sym­bol­izes a moment of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and a step towards embrac­ing her new life among the faeries, indica­tive of her grad­ual adap­ta­tion and the poten­tial for growth amidst uncer­tain­ty.

Chap­ter 16 reveals the intri­cate lay­ers of a fam­i­ly nav­i­gat­ing through cri­sis and long-stand­ing emo­tion­al com­plex­i­ties. When Maeve, a cen­tral fig­ure, suf­fers a heart attack, the event becomes a piv­otal moment for the pro­tag­o­nist, Dan­ny, test­ing his resolve to remain calm and effec­tive amidst tumul­tuous cir­cum­stances. This prin­ci­ple, instilled by Joce­lyn, proves vital as he con­fronts not only Maeve’s health scare but also the unex­pect­ed return of their estranged moth­er at the hos­pi­tal. The chap­ter beau­ti­ful­ly jux­ta­pos­es moments of per­son­al strength against the back­drop of famil­ial estrange­ments and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion.

The nar­ra­tive is rich with details about past griev­ances, notably the absence of their moth­er dur­ing crit­i­cal life events, con­trast­ing with her sud­den appear­ance dur­ing Maeve’s hos­pi­tal­iza­tion. The reunion, rather than being a con­ven­tion­al joy­ous event, illu­mi­nates the pro­found frac­tures and the ten­ta­tive steps toward under­stand­ing with­in the fam­i­ly. The com­plex­i­ty of emo­tions is cap­tured through the pro­tag­o­nist’s inter­ac­tions with his moth­er, sig­nal­ing a pos­si­ble yet cau­tious move towards for­give­ness or clo­sure.

Fur­ther­more, an under­ly­ing nar­ra­tive explores the con­cept of mor­tal­i­ty, brought to the fore­front by Maeve’s med­ical emer­gency and fur­ther pon­dered by Dan­ny’s reflec­tions on his med­ical edu­ca­tion. The sto­ry ven­tures deep into the realms of human vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, fear of death, and the even­tu­al accep­tance or con­fronta­tion of such truths.

The chap­ter deft­ly han­dles the themes of fam­i­ly, oblig­a­tion, and the search for mean­ing amidst uncer­tain­ties. Through the protagonist’s eyes, read­ers are invit­ed to nav­i­gate the chal­lenges of bal­anc­ing per­son­al ambi­tions with famil­ial duties, the process of heal­ing old wounds, and the relent­less quest for peace with­in one­self and with ones loved ones. The inter­ac­tions among char­ac­ters are steeped in real­ism, por­tray­ing a fam­i­ly’s jour­ney through rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, the reeval­u­a­tion of past choic­es, and the unchart­ed path towards heal­ing and under­stand­ing.

Chap­ter 16 unfolds with a vivid depic­tion of the unre­lent­ing March rain trans­form­ing Bai­leyville, affect­ing both the land and the lives inter­twined with it. An end­less sheet of grey rain blurs the lines between sea­sons, inun­dat­ing roads into mud­slides, test­ing the resilience of both the inhab­i­tants and the crea­tures seek­ing refuge from the onslaught. With­in this back­drop of nature’s fury, the town’s librar­i­ans – Margery, Beth, Alice, and their encounter with Fred – form a bas­tion of calm amid the chaos, shar­ing tales and fears, mir­ror­ing the com­mu­ni­ty’s col­lec­tive appre­hen­sion about the ris­ing waters.

Margery, after return­ing drenched from her duties, finds her­self amidst a con­ver­sa­tion about past floods, ignit­ing a pal­pa­ble fear as they rem­i­nisce over the destruc­tive pow­er of water. This dread mate­ri­al­izes when the mail­man brings news of the dan­ger­ous­ly ris­ing riv­er, prompt­ing a swift action to warn those liv­ing by the creek beds, unveil­ing the town’s sol­i­dar­i­ty and Margery’s lead­er­ship.

Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, the nar­ra­tive weaves Izzy’s strug­gle with her con­fin­ing domes­tic life, her squab­bles with sewing, and long­ing for her past life at the library, show­ing her dis­com­fort and desire for free­dom and com­pan­ion­ship. This yearn­ing is briefly assuaged when Izzy impul­sive­ly joins the effort to warn oth­ers, embark­ing on a mis­sion that revives her spir­it.

Margery and Beth’s urgent rides through Bai­leyville, warn­ing res­i­dents, embody the com­mu­ni­ty’s mutu­al aid and deter­mi­na­tion in face of dis­as­ter. The res­cue of Mrs. Cor­nish’s mule from the mud cap­tures a moment of col­lec­tive effort against nature’s mer­ci­less march, sig­ni­fy­ing the deep bonds with­in the com­mu­ni­ty.

Par­al­lel to the out­door endeav­ors, Kath­leen and Alice’s strug­gle to safe­guard the library’s books with Fred’s assis­tance show­cas­es anoth­er facet of the fight against the flood. Their efforts under­score the impor­tance of pre­serv­ing knowl­edge and cul­ture, even as their phys­i­cal well­be­ing is threat­ened.

Izzy’s unex­pect­ed appear­ance at Fred and Alice’s side injects a twist of per­son­al con­nec­tions and unspo­ken emo­tions into the nar­ra­tive. Her resolve to help, despite per­son­al lim­i­ta­tions, illus­trates her growth and indomitable spir­it, knit­ting her back into the com­mu­ni­ty fab­ric.

The chap­ter crescen­dos with Margery’s res­cue oper­a­tions at Sophia and William’s, deft­ly high­light­ing the pre­car­i­ous­ness of their exis­tence at the mer­cy of the ele­ments. Margery’s relent­less efforts to save Sophia, the mule, and William from the swollen creek, amidst the per­son­al fear for her unborn child, cap­tures a poignant pic­ture of human resilience. Her actions, sup­port­ed by the brav­ery of those around her, embody the chap­ter’s theme of com­mu­ni­ty strength faced with nature’s wrath, set­ting a tone of urgency, uni­ty, and an undy­ing hope for sal­va­tion amidst despair.

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.

SIXTEEN
It’s safe to say I hate every sin­gle woman at this PTA meet­ing.
There are four of them total, includ­ing Nina. I’ve mem­o­rized their
names. Jil­lianne (Jil­ly-anne), Patrice, and Suzanne (not to be con­fused with
Jil­lianne). The rea­son I have mem­o­rized their names is because Nina will
not let me leave the back­yard. She’s been mak­ing me stand in the cor­ner,
con­stant­ly at atten­tion in case they need some­thing.
At least the hors d’oeuvres are a suc­cess. And Nina has no idea Andrew
picked them up for me.
“I’m just not hap­py with the field day menu.” Suzanne taps her pen
against her chin. I’ve heard Nina refer to Suzanne before as her “best
friend,” but as far as I can tell, Nina isn’t close with any of her so-called
friends. “I feel like there needs to be more than one gluten-free option.”
“I agree,” Jil­lianne says. “And even though there is a veg­an option, it’s
not veg­an and gluten-free. So what are peo­ple who are both veg­an and
gluten-free sup­posed to eat?”
I don’t know? Grass? I’ve hon­est­ly nev­er seen women more obsessed
with gluten. Every time I brought out an hors d’oeuvre, each of them
ques­tioned me about the amount of gluten in it. As if I have any idea. I
don’t even know what gluten is.
It’s a swel­ter­ing hot day today, and I would give any­thing to be back in
the house, under the air con­di­tion­er. Hell, I would give any­thing to have a
drink of the pink sparkling lemon­ade the women are shar­ing. I keep wip­ing
sweat from my fore­head every time they’re not look­ing at me. I’m afraid I
may have pit stains.
“This blue­ber­ry goat’s cheese flat­bread should have been heat­ed up,”
Patrice com­ments as she chews on the morsel in her mouth. “They’re bare­ly
luke­warm.”
“I know,” Nina says regret­ful­ly. “I asked my maid to take care of it, but
you know how it is. It is so hard to find good help.”
My mouth falls open. She nev­er asked me any such thing. Also, does
she real­ize I’m stand­ing right here?
“Oh, it tru­ly is.” Jil­lianne nods sym­pa­thet­i­cal­ly. “You just can’t hire
any­one good any­more. The work eth­ic in this coun­try is so hor­ri­ble. You
won­der why peo­ple like that can’t find bet­ter jobs, right? It’s lazi­ness, pure
and sim­ple.”
“Or else you get some­one for­eign,” Suzanne adds. “And they bare­ly
speak the lan­guage. Like Enzo.”
“At least he’s nice to look at!” Patrice laughs.
The rest of them hoot and gig­gle, although Nina is odd­ly silent. I
sup­pose she doesn’t have to ogle the hot land­scap­er when she’s mar­ried to
Andrew—I can’t blame her on that one. She also seems to have some sort
of strange grudge against Enzo.
I’m itch­ing to say some­thing after the way they’ve been bad mouthing
me behind my… Well, not behind my back because I’m stand­ing right here,
as I men­tioned. But I’ve got to show them that I’m not a lazy Amer­i­can. I
have worked my butt off in this job and nev­er com­plained once.
“Nina.” I clear my throat. “Do you want me to heat up the hors
d’oeuvres?”
Nina turns to look at me, her eyes flash­ing in a way that makes me take
a step back. “Mil­lie,” she says calm­ly, “we’re hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion here.
Please don’t inter­rupt. It’s so rude.”
“Oh, I—”
“Also,” she adds, “I’d thank you not to refer to me as Nina—I’m not
your drink­ing bud­dy.” She snick­ers at the oth­er women. “It’s Mrs.
Win­ches­ter. Don’t make me remind you again.”
I stare at her, flab­ber­gast­ed. On the very first day I met her, she
instruct­ed me to call her Nina. I’ve been call­ing her that the entire time I’ve
been work­ing here, and she’s nev­er said a word about it. Now she’s act­ing
like I’m tak­ing lib­er­ties.
The worst part is the oth­er women are act­ing like Nina is a hero for
telling me off. Patrice launch­es into some sto­ry about how her clean­ing
woman had the gall to tell her about how her dog died. “I don’t want to be
mean,” Patrice says, “but what do I care if Juanita’s dog died? She was
going on and on about it. Hon­est­ly.”
“We def­i­nite­ly do need the help though.” Nina pops one of the
unac­cept­able hors d’oeuvres into her mouth. I’ve been watch­ing her and
she’s eat­en about half of them while the oth­er women are eat­ing like birds.
“Espe­cial­ly when Andrew and I have anoth­er baby.”
The oth­er women let out gasps of excite­ment. “Nina, are you preg­nant?”
Suzanne cries.
“I knew you were eat­ing like five times as much as the rest of us for a
rea­son!” Jil­lianne says tri­umphant­ly.
Nina shoots her a look—I have to sti­fle a laugh. “I’m not preg­nant yet.
But Andy and I are see­ing this fer­til­i­ty spe­cial­ist who is sup­posed to be
amaz­ing. Trust me, I’ll have a baby by the end of the year.”
“That is so great.” Patrice puts a hand on Nina’s shoul­der. “I know you
guys have been want­i­ng a baby for a long time. And Andrew is such a great
dad.”
Nina nods, and for a moment, her eyes look a bit moist. She clears her
throat. “Excuse me for a moment, ladies. I’ll be right back.”
Nina dash­es into the house, and I’m not sure if I’m sup­posed to fol­low
her. She’s prob­a­bly going to the bath­room or some­thing. Of course, maybe
now that’s one of my responsibilities—following Nina into the bath­room so
that I can pat her hands dry for her or flush the toi­let or God only knows
what.
As soon as Nina is gone, the oth­er women burst into qui­et laugh­ter. “Oh
my God!” Jil­lianne snick­ers. “That was so awk­ward! I can’t believe I said
that to her. I real­ly thought she was preg­nant! I mean, doesn’t she look
preg­nant?”
“She is get­ting like a house,” Patrice agrees. “She seri­ous­ly needs to
hire a nutri­tion­ist and a per­son­al train­er. And did any­one else notice her
roots show­ing?”
The oth­er women nod in agree­ment. Even though I’m not par­tic­i­pat­ing
in this con­ver­sa­tion, I also noticed Nina’s roots. On the day I inter­viewed
with her, her hair looked so immac­u­late. Now she’s got a good cen­time­ter
of dark­er roots show­ing. I’m sur­prised she let it get that bad.
“Like, I would be embar­rassed to walk around like that,” Patrice says.
“How does she expect to keep that hot­tie hus­band of hers?”

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.

CHAPTER
16
Rhys saun­tered toward the two males stand­ing by the din­ing room doors,
giv­ing me the option to stay or join.
One word, he’d promised, and we could go.
Both of them were tall, their wings tucked in tight to pow­er­ful, mus­cled
bod­ies cov­ered in plat­ed, dark leather that remind­ed me of the worn scales
of some ser­pen­tine beast. Iden­ti­cal long swords were each strapped down
the col­umn of their spines—the blades beau­ti­ful in their sim­plic­i­ty. Per­haps
I needn’t have both­ered with the fine clothes after all.
The slight­ly larg­er of the two, his face masked in shad­ow, chuck­led and
said, “Come on, Feyre. We don’t bite. Unless you ask us to.”
Sur­prise sparked through me, set­ting my feet mov­ing.
Rhys slid his hands into his pock­ets. “The last I heard, Cass­ian, no one
has ever tak­en you up on that offer.”
The sec­ond one snort­ed, the faces of both males at last illu­mi­nat­ed as
they turned toward the gold­en light of the din­ing room, and I hon­est­ly
won­dered why no one hadn’t: if Rhysand’s moth­er had also been Illyr­i­an,
then its peo­ple were blessed with unnat­ur­al good looks.
Like their High Lord, the males—warriors—were dark-haired, tan-
skinned. But unlike Rhys, their eyes were hazel and fixed on me as I at last
stepped close—to the wait­ing House of Wind behind them.
That was where any sim­i­lar­i­ties between the three of them halt­ed.
Cass­ian sur­veyed Rhys from head to foot, his shoul­der-length black hair
shift­ing with the move­ment. “So fan­cy tonight, broth­er. And you made poor
Feyre dress up, too.” He winked at me. There was some­thing rough-hewn
about his features—like he’d been made of wind and earth and flame and
all these civ­i­lized trap­pings were lit­tle more than an incon­ve­nience.
But the sec­ond male, the more clas­si­cal­ly beau­ti­ful of the two … Even
the light shied from the ele­gant planes of his face. With good rea­son.
Beau­ti­ful, but near-unread­able. He’d be the one to look out for—the knife
in the dark. Indeed, an obsid­i­an-hilt­ed hunt­ing knife was sheathed at his
thigh, its dark scab­bard embossed with a line of sil­ver runes I’d nev­er seen
before.
Rhys said, “This is Azriel—my spy­mas­ter.” Not sur­pris­ing. Some buried
instinct had me check­ing that my men­tal shields were intact. Just in case.
“Wel­come,” was all Azriel said, his voice low, almost flat, as he extend­ed
a bru­tal­ly scarred hand to me. The shape of it was normal—but the skin …
It looked like it had been swirled and smudged and rip­pled. Burns. They
must have been hor­rif­ic if even their immor­tal blood had not been able to
heal them.
The leather plates of his light armor flowed over most of it, held by a
loop around his mid­dle fin­ger. Not to con­ceal, I real­ized as his hand
breached the chill night air between us. No, it was to hold in place the large,
depth­less cobalt stone that graced the back of the gaunt­let. A match­ing one
lay atop his left hand; and twin red stones adorned Cassian’s gauntlets, their
col­or like the slum­ber­ing heart of a flame.
I took Azriel’s hand, and his rough fin­gers squeezed mine. His skin was
as cold as his face.
But the word Cass­ian had used a moment ago snagged my atten­tion as I
released his hand and tried not to look too eager to step back to Rhys’s side.
“You’re broth­ers?” The Illyr­i­ans looked sim­i­lar, but only in the way that
peo­ple who had come from the same place did.
Rhysand clar­i­fied, “Broth­ers in the sense that all bas­tards are broth­ers of
a sort.”
I’d nev­er thought of it that way. “And—you?” I asked Cass­ian.
Cass­ian shrugged, wings tuck­ing in tighter. “I com­mand Rhys’s armies.”
As if such a posi­tion were some­thing that one shrugged off. And—
armies. Rhys had armies. I shift­ed on my feet. Cassian’s hazel eyes tracked
the move­ment, his mouth twitch­ing to the side, and I hon­est­ly thought he
was about to give me his pro­fes­sion­al opin­ion on how doing so would make
me unsteady against an oppo­nent when Azriel clar­i­fied, “Cass­ian also
excels at piss­ing every­one off. Espe­cial­ly amongst our friends. So, as a
friend of Rhysand … good luck.”
A friend of Rhysand—not sav­ior of their land, not mur­der­er, not human-
faerie-thing. Maybe they didn’t know—
But Cass­ian nudged his bas­tard-broth­er-what­ev­er out of the way, Azriel’s
mighty wings flar­ing slight­ly as he bal­anced him­self. “How the hell did you
make that bone lad­der in the Mid­den­gard Wyrm’s lair when you look like
your own bones can snap at any moment?”
Well, that set­tled that. And the ques­tion of whether he’d been Under the
Moun­tain. But where he’d been instead … Anoth­er mys­tery. Per­haps here
—with these peo­ple. Safe and cod­dled.
I met Cassian’s gaze, if only because hav­ing Rhysand defend me might
very well make me crum­ble a bit more. And maybe it made me as mean as
an adder, maybe I rel­ished being one, but I said, “How the hell did you
man­age to sur­vive this long with­out any­one killing you?”
Cass­ian tipped back his head and laughed, a full, rich sound that bounced
off the rud­dy stones of the House. Azriel’s brows flicked up with approval
as the shad­ows seemed to wrap tighter around him. As if he were the dark
hive from which they flew and returned.
I tried not to shud­der and faced Rhys, hop­ing for an expla­na­tion about his
spymaster’s dark gifts.
Rhys’s face was blank, but his eyes were wary. Assess­ing. I almost
demand­ed what the hell he was look­ing at, until Mor breezed onto the
bal­cony with, “If Cassian’s howl­ing, I hope it means Feyre told him to shut
his fat mouth.”
Both Illyr­i­ans turned toward her, Cass­ian brac­ing his feet slight­ly far­ther
apart on the floor in a fight­ing stance I knew all too well.
It was almost enough to dis­tract me from notic­ing Azriel as those
shad­ows light­ened, and his gaze slid over Mor’s body: a red, flow­ing gown
of chif­fon accent­ed with gold cuffs, and combs fash­ioned like gild­ed leaves
swept back the waves of her unbound hair.
A wisp of shad­ow curled around Azriel’s ear, and his eyes snapped to
mine. I schooled my face into bland inno­cence.
“I don’t know why I ever for­get you two are relat­ed,” Cass­ian told Mor,
jerk­ing his chin at Rhys, who rolled his eyes. “You two and your clothes.”
Mor sketched a bow to Cass­ian. Indeed, I tried not to slump with relief at
the sight of the fine clothes. At least I wouldn’t look over­dressed now. “I
want­ed to impress Feyre. You could have at least both­ered to comb your
hair.”
“Unlike some peo­ple,” Cass­ian said, prov­ing my sus­pi­cions cor­rect about
that fight­ing stance, “I have bet­ter things to do with my time than sit in
front of the mir­ror for hours.”
“Yes,” Mor said, toss­ing her long hair over a shoul­der, “since swag­ger­ing
around Velaris—”
“We have com­pa­ny,” was Azriel’s soft warn­ing, wings again spread­ing a
bit as he herd­ed them through the open bal­cony doors to the din­ing room. I
could have sworn ten­drils of dark­ness swirled in their wake.
Mor pat­ted Azriel on the shoul­der as she dodged his out­stretched wing.
“Relax, Az—no fight­ing tonight. We promised Rhys.”
The lurk­ing shad­ows van­ished entire­ly as Azriel’s head dipped a bit—his
night-dark hair slid­ing over his hand­some face as if to shield him from that
mer­ci­less­ly beau­ti­ful grin.
Mor gave no indi­ca­tion that she noticed and curved her fin­gers toward
me. “Come sit with me while they drink.” I had enough dig­ni­ty remain­ing
not to look to Rhys for con­fir­ma­tion it was safe. So I obeyed, falling into
step beside her as the two Illyr­i­ans drift­ed back to walk the few steps with
their High Lord. “Unless you’d rather drink,” Mor offered as we entered the
warmth and red stone of the din­ing room. “But I want you to myself before
Amren hogs you—”
The inte­ri­or din­ing room doors opened on a whis­per­ing wind, reveal­ing
the shad­owed, crim­son halls of the moun­tain beyond.
And maybe part of me remained mor­tal, because even though the short,
del­i­cate woman looked like High Fae … as Rhys had warned me, every
instinct was roar­ing to run. To hide.
She was sev­er­al inch­es short­er than me, her chin-length black hair glossy
and straight, her skin tan and smooth, and her face—pretty, bor­der­ing on
plain—was bored, if not mild­ly irri­tat­ed. But Amren’s eyes …
Her sil­ver eyes were unlike any­thing I’d ever seen; a glimpse into the
crea­ture that I knew in my bones wasn’t High Fae. Or hadn’t been born that
way.
The sil­ver in Amren’s eyes seemed to swirl like smoke under glass.
She wore pants and a top like those I’d worn at the oth­er moun­tain-
palace, both in shades of pewter and storm cloud, and pearls—white and
gray and black—adorned her ears, fin­gers, and wrists. Even the High Lord
at my side felt like a wisp of shad­ow com­pared to the pow­er thrum­ming
from her.
Mor groaned, slump­ing into a chair near the end of the table, and poured
her­self a glass of wine. Cass­ian took a seat across from her, wig­gling his
fin­gers for the wine bot­tle. But Rhysand and Azriel just stood there,
watching—maybe monitoring—as the female approached me, then halt­ed
three feet away.
“Your taste remains excel­lent, High Lord. Thank you.” Her voice was
soft—but honed sharp­er than any blade I’d encoun­tered. Her slim, small
fin­gers grazed a del­i­cate sil­ver-and-pearl brooch pinned above her right
breast.
So that’s who he’d bought the jew­el­ry for. The jew­el­ry I was to nev­er,
under any cir­cum­stances, try to steal.
I stud­ied Rhys and Amren, as if I might be able to read what fur­ther bond
lay between them, but Rhysand waved a hand and bowed his head. “It suits
you, Amren.”
“Every­thing suits me,” she said, and those hor­ri­ble, enchant­i­ng eyes
again met my own. Like leashed light­ning.
She took a step clos­er, sniff­ing del­i­cate­ly, and though I stood half a foot
taller, I’d nev­er felt meek­er. But I held my chin up. I didn’t know why, but I
did.
Amren said, “So there are two of us now.”
My brows nudged toward each oth­er.
Amren’s lips were a slash of red. “We who were born some­thing else—
and found our­selves trapped in new, strange bod­ies.”
I decid­ed I real­ly didn’t want to know what she’d been before.
Amren jerked her chin at me to sit in the emp­ty chair beside Mor, her hair
shift­ing like molten night. She claimed the seat across from me, Azriel on
her oth­er side as Rhys took the one across from him—on my right.
No one at the head of the table.
“Though there is a third,” Amren said, now look­ing at Rhysand. “I don’t
think you’ve heard from Miryam in … cen­turies. Inter­est­ing.”
Cass­ian rolled his eyes. “Please just get to the point, Amren. I’m
hun­gry.”
Mor choked on her wine. Amren slid her atten­tion to the war­rior to her
right. Azriel, on her oth­er side, mon­i­tored the two of them very, very
care­ful­ly. “No one warm­ing your bed right now, Cass­ian? It must be so hard
to be an Illyr­i­an and have no thoughts in your head save for those about
your favorite part.”
“You know I’m always hap­py to tan­gle in the sheets with you, Amren,”
Cass­ian said, utter­ly unfazed by the sil­ver eyes, the pow­er radi­at­ing from
her every pore. “I know how much you enjoy Illyr­i­an—”
“Miryam,” Rhysand said, as Amren’s smile became ser­pen­tine, “and
Drakon are doing well, as far as I’ve heard. And what, exact­ly, is
inter­est­ing?”
Amren’s head tilt­ed to the side as she stud­ied me. I tried not to shrink
from it. “Only once before was a human Made into an immor­tal. Inter­est­ing
that it should hap­pen again right as all the ancient play­ers have returned.
But Miryam was gift­ed long life—not a new body. And you, girl …” She
sniffed again, and I’d nev­er felt so laid bare. Sur­prise lit Amren’s eyes.
Rhys just nod­ded. What­ev­er that meant. I was tired already. Tired of being
assessed and eval­u­at­ed. “Your very blood, your veins, your bones were
Made. A mor­tal soul in an immor­tal body.”
“I’m hun­gry,” Mor said nudg­ing me with a thigh. She snapped a fin­ger,
and plates piled high with roast chick­en, greens, and bread appeared.
Sim­ple, but … ele­gant. Not for­mal at all. Per­haps the sweater and pants
wouldn’t have been out of place for such a meal. “Amren and Rhys can talk
all night and bore us to tears, so don’t both­er wait­ing for them to dig in.”
She picked up her fork, click­ing her tongue. “I asked Rhys if I could take
you to din­ner, just the two of us, and he said you wouldn’t want to. But
honestly—would you rather spend time with those two ancient bores, or
me?”
“For some­one who is the same age as me,” Rhys drawled, “you seem to
for­get—”
“Every­one wants to talk-talk-talk,” Mor said, giv­ing a warn­ing glare at
Cass­ian, who had indeed opened his mouth. “Can’t we eat-eat-eat, and then
talk?”
An inter­est­ing bal­ance between Rhys’s ter­ri­fy­ing Sec­ond and his
dis­arm­ing­ly chip­per Third. If Mor’s rank was high­er than that of the two
war­riors at this table, then there had to be some oth­er rea­son beyond that
irrev­er­ent charm. Some pow­er to allow her to get into the fight with Amren
that Rhys had mentioned—and walk away from it.
Azriel chuck­led soft­ly at Mor, but picked up his fork. I fol­lowed suit,
wait­ing until he’d tak­en a bite before doing so. Just in case—
Good. So good. And the wine—
I hadn’t even real­ized Mor had poured me a glass until I fin­ished my first
sip, and she clinked her own against mine. “Don’t let these old busy­bod­ies
boss you around.”
Cass­ian said, “Pot. Ket­tle. Black.” Then he frowned at Amren, who had
hard­ly touched her plate. “I always for­get how bizarre that is.” He
uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly took her plate, dump­ing half the con­tents on his own
before pass­ing the rest to Azriel.
Azriel said to Amren as he slid the food onto his plate, “I keep telling
him to ask before he does that.”
Amren flicked her fin­gers and the emp­ty plate van­ished from Azriel’s
scarred hands. “If you haven’t been able to train him after all these
cen­turies, boy, I don’t think you’ll make any progress now.” She
straight­ened the sil­ver­ware on the vacant place set­ting before her.
“You don’t—eat?” I said to her. The first words I’d spo­ken since sit­ting.
Amren’s teeth were unnerv­ing­ly white. “Not this sort of food.”
“Caul­dron boil me,” Mor said, gulp­ing from her wine. “Can we not?”
I decid­ed I didn’t want to know what Amren ate, either.
Rhys chuck­led from my oth­er side. “Remind me to have fam­i­ly din­ners
more often.”
Fam­i­ly dinners—not offi­cial court gath­er­ings. And tonight … either they
didn’t know that I was here to decide if I tru­ly wished to work with Rhys, or
they didn’t feel like pre­tend­ing to be any­thing but what they were. They’d
no doubt worn what­ev­er they felt like—I had the ris­ing feel­ing that I could
have shown up in my night­gown and they wouldn’t have cared. A unique
group indeed. And against Hybern … who would they be, what could they
do, as allies or oppo­nents?
Across from me, a cocoon of silence seemed to pulse around Azriel, even
as the oth­ers dug into their food. I again peered at that oval of blue stone on
his gaunt­let as he sipped from his glass of wine. Azriel not­ed the look, swift
as it had been—as I had a feel­ing he’d been notic­ing and cat­a­loging all of
my move­ments, words, and breaths. He held up his hands, the backs to me
so both jew­els were on full dis­play. “They’re called Siphons. They
con­cen­trate and focus our pow­er in bat­tle.”
Only he and Cass­ian wore them.
Rhys set down his fork, and clar­i­fied for me, “The pow­er of stronger
Illyr­i­ans tends toward ‘incin­er­ate now, ask ques­tions lat­er.’ They have lit­tle
mag­i­cal gifts beyond that—the killing pow­er.”
“The gift of a vio­lent, war­mon­ger­ing peo­ple,” Amren added. Azriel
nod­ded, shad­ows wreath­ing his neck, his wrists. Cass­ian gave him a sharp
look, face tight­en­ing, but Azriel ignored him.
Rhys went on, though I knew he was aware of every glance between the
spy­mas­ter and army com­man­der, “The Illyr­i­ans bred the pow­er to give
them advan­tage in bat­tle, yes. The Siphons fil­ter that raw pow­er and allow
Cass­ian and Azriel to trans­form it into some­thing more sub­tle and var­ied—
into shields and weapons, arrows and spears. Imag­ine the dif­fer­ence
between hurl­ing a buck­et of paint against the wall and using a brush. The
Siphons allow for the mag­ic to be nim­ble, pre­cise on the battlefield—when
its nat­ur­al state lends itself toward some­thing far messier and unre­fined, and
poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous when you’re fight­ing in tight quar­ters.”
I won­dered how much of that any of them had need­ed to do. If those
scars on Azriel’s hands had come from it.
Cass­ian flexed his fin­gers, admir­ing the clear red stones adorn­ing the
backs of his own broad hands. “Doesn’t hurt that they also look damn
good.”
Amren mut­tered, “Illyr­i­ans.”
Cass­ian bared his teeth in fer­al amuse­ment, and took a drink of his wine.
Get to know them, try to envi­sion how I might work with them, rely on
them, if this con­flict with Hybern explod­ed … I scram­bled for some­thing to
ask and said to Azriel, those shad­ows gone again, “How did you—I mean,
how do you and Lord Cass­ian—”
Cass­ian spewed his wine across the table, caus­ing Mor to leap up,
swear­ing at him as she used a nap­kin to mop her dress.
But Cass­ian was howl­ing, and Azriel had a faint, wary smile on his face
as Mor waved a hand at her dress and the spots of wine appeared on
Cassian’s fighting—or per­haps fly­ing, I realized—leathers. My cheeks
heat­ed. Some court pro­to­col that I’d unknow­ing­ly bro­ken and—
“Cass­ian,” Rhys drawled, “is not a lord. Though I’m sure he appre­ci­ates
you think­ing he is.” He sur­veyed his Inner Cir­cle. “While we’re on the
sub­ject, nei­ther is Azriel. Nor Amren. Mor, believe it or not, is the only
pure-blood­ed, titled per­son in this room.” Not him? Rhys must have seen
the ques­tion on my face because he said, “I’m half-Illyr­i­an. As good as a
bas­tard where the thor­ough­bred High Fae are con­cerned.”
“So you—you three aren’t High Fae?” I said to him and the two males.
Cass­ian fin­ished his laugh­ing. “Illyr­i­ans are cer­tain­ly not High Fae. And
glad of it.” He hooked his black hair behind an ear—rounded; as mine had
once been. “And we’re not less­er faeries, though some try to call us that.
We’re just—Illyrians. Con­sid­ered expendible aer­i­al cav­al­ry for the Night
Court at the best of times, mind­less sol­dier grunts at the worst.”
“Which is most of the time,” Azriel clar­i­fied. I didn’t dare ask if those
shad­ows were a part of being Illyr­i­an, too.
“I didn’t see you Under the Moun­tain,” I said instead. I had to know
with­out a doubt—if they were there, if they’d seen me, if it’d impact how I
inter­act­ed while work­ing with—
Silence fell. None of them, even Amren, looked at Rhysand.
It was Mor who said, “Because none of us were.”
Rhys’s face was a mask of cold. “Ama­ran­tha didn’t know they exist­ed.
And when some­one tried to tell her, they usu­al­ly found them­selves with­out
the mind to do so.”
A shud­der went down my spine. Not at the cold killer, but—but … “You
tru­ly kept this city, and all these peo­ple, hid­den from her for fifty years?”
Cass­ian was star­ing hard at his plate, as if he might burst out of his skin.
Amren said, “We will con­tin­ue to keep this city and these peo­ple hid­den
from our ene­mies for a great many more.”
Not an answer.
Rhys hadn’t expect­ed to see them again when he’d been dragged Under
the Moun­tain. Yet he had kept them safe, some­how.
And it killed them—the four peo­ple at this table. It killed them all that
he’d done it, how­ev­er he’d done it. Even Amren.
Per­haps not only for the fact that Rhys had endured Ama­ran­tha while
they had been here. Per­haps it was also for those left out­side of the city, too.
Per­haps pick­ing one city, one place, to shield was bet­ter than noth­ing.
Per­haps … per­haps it was a com­fort­ing thing, to have a spot in Pry­thi­an that
remained untouched. Unsul­lied.
Mor’s voice was a bit raw as she explained to me, her gold­en combs
glint­ing in the light, “There is not one per­son in this city who is unaware of
what went on out­side these bor­ders. Or of the cost.”
I didn’t want to ask what price had been demand­ed. The pain that laced
the heavy silence told me enough.
Yet if they might all live through their pain, might still laugh … I cleared
my throat, straight­en­ing, and said to Azriel, who, shad­ows or no, seemed
the safest and there­fore was prob­a­bly the least so, “How did you meet?” A
harm­less ques­tion to feel them out, learn who they were. Wasn’t it?
Azriel mere­ly turned to Cass­ian, who was star­ing at Rhys with guilt and
love on his face, so deep and ago­nized that some now-splin­tered instinct
had me almost reach­ing across the table to grip his hand.
But Cass­ian seemed to process what I’d asked and his friend’s silent
request that he tell the sto­ry instead, and a grin ghost­ed across his face. “We
all hat­ed each oth­er at first.”
Beside me, the light had winked out of Rhys’s eyes. What I’d asked
about Ama­ran­tha, what hor­rors I’d made him remem­ber …
A con­fes­sion for a confession—I thought he’d done it for my sake.
Maybe he had things he need­ed to voice, couldn’t voice to these peo­ple, not
with­out caus­ing them more pain and guilt.
Cass­ian went on, draw­ing my atten­tion from the silent High Lord at my
right, “We are bas­tards, you know. Az and I. The Illyr­i­ans … We love our
peo­ple, and our tra­di­tions, but they dwell in clans and camps deep in the
moun­tains of the North, and do not like out­siders. Espe­cial­ly High Fae who
try to tell them what to do. But they’re just as obsessed with lin­eage, and
have their own princes and lords among them. Az,” he said, point­ing a
thumb in his direc­tion, his red Siphon catch­ing the light, “was the bas­tard of
one of the local lords. And if you think the bas­tard son of a lord is hat­ed,
then you can’t imag­ine how hat­ed the bas­tard is of a war-camp laun­dress
and a war­rior she couldn’t or wouldn’t remem­ber.” His casu­al shrug didn’t
match the vicious glint in his hazel eyes. “Az’s father sent him to our camp
for train­ing once he and his charm­ing wife real­ized he was a shad­owsinger.”
Shad­owsinger. Yes—the title, what­ev­er it meant, seemed to fit.
“Like the dae­mati,” Rhys said to me, “shad­owsingers are rare—coveted
by courts and ter­ri­to­ries across the world for their stealth and pre­dis­po­si­tion
to hear and feel things oth­ers can’t.”
Per­haps those shad­ows were indeed whis­per­ing to him, then. Azriel’s
cold face yield­ed noth­ing.
Cass­ian said, “The camp lord prac­ti­cal­ly shit him­self with excite­ment the
day Az was dumped in our camp. But me … once my moth­er weaned me
and I was able to walk, they flew me to a dis­tant camp, and chucked me
into the mud to see if I would live or die.”
“They would have been smarter throw­ing you off a cliff,” Mor said,
snort­ing.
“Oh, def­i­nite­ly,” Cass­ian said, that grin going razor-sharp. “Espe­cial­ly
because when I was old and strong enough to go back to the camp I’d been
born in, I learned those pricks worked my moth­er until she died.”
Again that silence fell—different this time. The ten­sion and sim­mer­ing
anger of a unit who had endured so much, sur­vived so much … and felt
each other’s pain keen­ly.
“The Illyr­i­ans,” Rhys smooth­ly cut in, that light final­ly return­ing to his
gaze, “are unpar­al­leled war­riors, and are rich with sto­ries and tra­di­tions.
But they are also bru­tal and back­ward, par­tic­u­lar­ly in regard to how they
treat their females.”
Azriel’s eyes had gone near-vacant as he stared at the wall of win­dows
behind me.
“They’re bar­bar­ians,” Amren said, and nei­ther Illyr­i­an male object­ed.
Mor nod­ded emphat­i­cal­ly, even as she not­ed Azriel’s pos­ture and bit her lip.
“They crip­ple their females so they can keep them for breed­ing more
flaw­less war­riors.”
Rhys cringed. “My moth­er was low-born,” he told me, “and worked as a
seam­stress in one of their many moun­tain war-camps. When females come
of age in the camps—when they have their first bleeding—their wings are
… clipped. Just an inci­sion in the right place, left to improp­er­ly heal, can
crip­ple you for­ev­er. And my mother—she was gen­tle and wild and loved to
fly. So she did every­thing in her pow­er to keep her­self from matur­ing. She
starved her­self, gath­ered ille­gal herbs—anything to halt the nat­ur­al course
of her body. She turned eigh­teen and hadn’t yet bled, to the mor­ti­fi­ca­tion of
her par­ents. But her bleed­ing final­ly arrived, and all it took was for her to be
in the wrong place, at the wrong time, before a male scent­ed it on her and
told the camp’s lord. She tried to flee—took right to the skies. But she was
young, and the war­riors were faster, and they dragged her back. They were
about to tie her to the posts in the cen­ter of camp when my father win­nowed
in for a meet­ing with the camp’s lord about ready­ing for the War. He saw
my moth­er thrash­ing and fight­ing like a wild­cat, and …” He swal­lowed.
“The mat­ing bond between them clicked into place. One look at her, and he
knew what she was. He mist­ed the guards hold­ing her.”
My brows nar­rowed. “Mist­ed?”
Cass­ian let out a wicked chuck­le as Rhys float­ed a lemon wedge that had
been gar­nish­ing his chick­en into the air above the table. With a flick of his
fin­ger, it turned to cit­rus-scent­ed mist.
“Through the blood-rain,” Rhys went on as I shut out the image of what
it’d do to a body, what he could do, “my moth­er looked at him. And the
bond fell into place for her. My father took her back to the Night Court that
evening and made her his bride. She loved her peo­ple, and missed them, but
nev­er for­got what they had tried to do to her—what they did to the females
among them. She tried for decades to get my father to ban it, but the War
was com­ing, and he wouldn’t risk iso­lat­ing the Illyr­i­ans when he need­ed
them to lead his armies. And to die for him.”
“A real prize, your father,” Mor grum­bled.
“At least he liked you,” Rhys coun­tered, then clar­i­fied for me, “my father
and moth­er, despite being mates, were wrong for each oth­er. My father was
cold and cal­cu­lat­ing, and could be vicious, as he had been trained to be
since birth. My moth­er was soft and fiery and beloved by every­one she met.
She hat­ed him after a time—but nev­er stopped being grate­ful that he had
saved her wings, that he allowed her to fly when­ev­er and wher­ev­er she
wished. And when I was born, and could sum­mon the Illyr­i­an wings as I
pleased … She want­ed me to know her people’s cul­ture.”
“She want­ed to keep you out of your father’s claws,” Mor said, swirling
her wine, her shoul­ders loos­en­ing as Azriel at last blinked, and seemed to
shake off what­ev­er mem­o­ry had frozen him.
“That, too,” Rhys added dri­ly. “When I turned eight, my moth­er brought
me to one of the Illyr­i­an war-camps. To be trained, as all Illyr­i­an males
were trained. And like all Illyr­i­an moth­ers, she shoved me toward the
spar­ring ring on the first day, and walked away with­out look­ing back.”
“She aban­doned you?” I found myself say­ing.
“No—never,” Rhys said with a feroc­i­ty I’d heard only a few times, one
of them being this after­noon. “She was stay­ing at the camp as well. But it is
con­sid­ered an embar­rass­ment for a moth­er to cod­dle her son when he goes
to train.”
My brows lift­ed and Cass­ian laughed. “Back­ward, like he said,” the
war­rior told me.
“I was scared out of my mind,” Rhys admit­ted, not a shade of shame to
be found. “I’d been learn­ing to wield my pow­ers, but Illyr­i­an mag­ic was a
mere frac­tion of it. And it’s rare amongst them—usually pos­sessed only by
the most pow­er­ful, pure-bred war­riors.” Again, I looked at the slum­ber­ing
Siphons atop the war­riors’ hands. “I tried to use a Siphon dur­ing those
years,” Rhys said. “And shat­tered about a dozen before I real­ized it wasn’t
compatible—the stones couldn’t hold it. My pow­er flows and is honed in
oth­er ways.”
“So dif­fi­cult, being such a pow­er­ful High Lord,” Mor teased.
Rhys rolled his eyes. “The camp-lord banned me from using my mag­ic.
For all our sakes. But I had no idea how to fight when I set foot into that
train­ing ring that day. The oth­er boys in my age group knew it, too.
Espe­cial­ly one in par­tic­u­lar, who took a look at me, and beat me into a
bloody mess.”
“You were so clean,” Cass­ian said, shak­ing his head. “The pret­ty half-
breed son of the High Lord—how fan­cy you were in your new train­ing
clothes.”
“Cass­ian,” Azriel told me with that voice like dark­ness giv­en sound,
“resort­ed to get­ting new clothes over the years by chal­leng­ing oth­er boys to
fights, with the prize being the clothes off their backs.” There was no pride
in the words—not for his people’s bru­tal­i­ty. I didn’t blame the
shad­owsinger, though. To treat any­one that way …
Cass­ian, how­ev­er, chuck­led. But I was now tak­ing in the broad, strong
shoul­ders, the light in his eyes.
I’d nev­er met any­one else in Pry­thi­an who had ever been hun­gry,
desperate—not like I’d been.
Cass­ian blinked, and the way he looked at me shifted—more assess­ing,
more … sin­cere. I could have sworn I saw the words in his eyes: You know
what it is like. You know the mark it leaves.
“I’d beat­en every boy in our age group twice over already,” Cass­ian went
on. “But then Rhys arrived, in his clean clothes, and he smelled …
dif­fer­ent. Like a true oppo­nent. So I attacked. We both got three lash­ings
apiece for the fight.”
I flinched. Hit­ting chil­dren—
“They do worse, girl,” Amren cut in, “in those camps. Three lash­ings is
prac­ti­cal­ly an encour­age­ment to fight again. When they do some­thing tru­ly
bad, bones are bro­ken. Repeat­ed­ly. Over weeks.”
I said to Rhys, “Your moth­er will­ing­ly sent you into that?” Soft fire
indeed.
“My moth­er didn’t want me to rely on my pow­er,” Rhysand said. “She
knew from the moment she con­ceived me that I’d be hunt­ed my entire life.
Where one strength failed, she want­ed oth­ers to save me.
“My edu­ca­tion was anoth­er weapon—which was why she went with me:
to tutor me after lessons were done for the day. And when she took me
home that first night to our new house at the edge of the camp, she made me
read by the win­dow. It was there that I saw Cass­ian trudg­ing through the
mud—toward the few ram­shackle tents out­side of the camp. I asked her
where he was going, and she told me that bas­tards are giv­en noth­ing: they
find their own shel­ter, own food. If they sur­vive and get picked to be in a
war-band, they’ll be bot­tom-rank­ing for­ev­er, but receive their own tents and
sup­plies. But until then, he’d stay in the cold.”
“Those moun­tains,” Azriel added, his face hard as ice, “offer some of the
harsh­est con­di­tions you can imag­ine.”
I’d spent enough time in frozen woods to get it.
“After my lessons,” Rhys went on, “my moth­er cleaned my lash­ings, and
as she did, I real­ized for the first time what it was to be warm, and safe, and
cared for. And it didn’t sit well.”
“Appar­ent­ly not,” Cass­ian said. “Because in the dead of night, that lit­tle
prick woke me up in my piss-poor tent and told me to keep my mouth shut
and come with him. And maybe the cold made me stu­pid, but I did. His
moth­er was livid. But I’ll nev­er for­get the look on her beau­ti­ful face when
she saw me and said, ‘There is a bath­tub with hot run­ning water. Get in it or
you can go back into the cold.’ Being a smart lad, I obeyed. When I got out,
she had clean night­clothes and ordered me into bed. I’d spent my life
sleep­ing on the ground—and when I balked, she said she under­stood
because she had felt the same once, and that it would feel as if I was being
swal­lowed up, but the bed was mine for as long as I want­ed it.”
“And you were friends after that?”
“No—Cauldron no,” Rhysand said. “We hat­ed each oth­er, and only
behaved because if one of us got into trou­ble or pro­voked the oth­er, then
nei­ther of us ate that night. My moth­er start­ed tutor­ing Cass­ian, but it
wasn’t until Azriel arrived a year lat­er that we decid­ed to be allies.”
Cassian’s grin grew as he reached around Amren to clap his friend on the
shoul­der. Azriel sighed—the sound of the long-suf­fer­ing. The warmest
expres­sion I’d seen him make. “A new bas­tard in the camp—and an
untrained shad­owsinger to boot. Not to men­tion he couldn’t even fly thanks
to—”
Mor cut in lazi­ly, “Stay on track, Cass­ian.”
Indeed, any warmth had van­ished from Azriel’s face. But I qui­et­ed my
own curios­i­ty as Cass­ian again shrugged, not even both­er­ing to take note of
the silence that seemed to leak from the shad­owsinger. Mor saw, though—
even if Azriel didn’t both­er to acknowl­edge her con­cerned stare, the hand
that she kept look­ing at as if she’d touch, but thought bet­ter of it.
Cass­ian went on, “Rhys and I made his life a liv­ing hell, shad­owsinger or
no. But Rhys’s moth­er had known Az’s moth­er, and took him in. As we
grew old­er, and the oth­er males around us did, too, we real­ized every­one
else hat­ed us enough that we had bet­ter odds of sur­vival stick­ing togeth­er.”
“Do you have any gifts?” I asked him. “Like—them?” I jerked my chin
to Azriel and Rhys.
“A volatile tem­per doesn’t count,” Mor said as Cass­ian opened his
mouth.
He gave her that grin I real­ized like­ly meant trou­ble was com­ing, but said
to me, “No. I don’t—not beyond a heap­ing pile of the killing pow­er.
Bas­tard-born nobody, through and through.” Rhys sat for­ward like he’d
object, but Cass­ian forged ahead, “Even so, the oth­er males knew that we
were dif­fer­ent. And not because we were two bas­tards and a half-breed. We
were stronger, faster—like the Caul­dron knew we’d been set apart and
want­ed us to find each oth­er. Rhys’s moth­er saw it, too. Espe­cial­ly as we
reached the age of matu­ri­ty, and all we want­ed to do was fuck and fight.”
“Males are hor­ri­ble crea­tures, aren’t they?” Amren said.
“Repul­sive,” Mor said, click­ing her tongue.
Some sur­viv­ing, small part of my heart want­ed to … laugh at that.
Cass­ian shrugged. “Rhys’s pow­er grew every day—and every­one, even
the camp-lords, knew he could mist every­one if he felt like it. And the two
of us … we weren’t far behind.” He tapped his crim­son Siphon with a
fin­ger. “A bas­tard Illyr­i­an had nev­er received one of these. Ever. For Az
and me to both be appoint­ed them, albeit begrudg­ing­ly, had every war­rior in
every camp across those moun­tains siz­ing us up. Only pure-blood pricks get
Siphons—born and bred for the killing pow­er. It still keeps them up at
night, puz­zling over where the hell we got it from.”
“Then the War came,” Azriel took over. Just the way he said the words
made me sit up. Lis­ten. “And Rhys’s father vis­it­ed our camp to see how his
son had fared after twen­ty years.”
“My father,” Rhys said, swirling his wine once—twice, “saw that his son
had not only start­ed to rival him for pow­er, but had allied him­self with
per­haps the two dead­liest Illyr­i­ans in his­to­ry. He got it into his head that if
we were giv­en a legion in the War, we might very well turn it against him
when we returned.”
Cass­ian snick­ered. “So the prick sep­a­rat­ed us. He gave Rhys com­mand of
a legion of Illyr­i­ans who hat­ed him for being a half-breed, and threw me
into a dif­fer­ent legion to be a com­mon foot sol­dier, even when my pow­er
out­ranked any of the war-lead­ers. Az, he kept for him­self as his per­son­al
shadowsinger—mostly for spy­ing and his dirty work. We only saw each
oth­er on bat­tle­fields for the sev­en years the War raged. They’d send around
casu­al­ty lists amongst the Illyr­i­ans, and I read each one, won­der­ing if I’d
see their names on it. But then Rhys was cap­tured—”
“That is a sto­ry for anoth­er time,” Rhys said, sharply enough that Cass­ian
lift­ed his brows, but nod­ded. Rhys’s vio­let eyes met mine, and I won­dered
if it was true starlight that flick­ered so intense­ly in them as he spoke. “Once
I became High Lord, I appoint­ed these four to my Inner Cir­cle, and told the
rest of my father’s old court that if they had a prob­lem with my friends, they
could leave. They all did. Turns out, hav­ing a half-breed High Lord was
made worse by his appoint­ment of two females and two Illyr­i­an bas­tards.”
As bad as humans, in some ways. “What—what hap­pened to them,
then?”
Rhys shrugged, those great wings shift­ing with the move­ment. “The
nobil­i­ty of the Night Court fall into one of three cat­e­gories: those who hat­ed
me enough that when Ama­ran­tha took over, they joined her court and lat­er
found them­selves dead; those who hat­ed me enough to try to over­throw me
and faced the con­se­quences; and those who hat­ed me, but not enough to be
stu­pid and have since tol­er­at­ed a half-breed’s rule, espe­cial­ly when it so
rarely inter­feres with their mis­er­able lives.”
“Are they—are they the ones who live beneath the moun­tain?”
A nod. “In the Hewn City, yes. I gave it to them, for not being fools.
They’re hap­py to stay there, rarely leav­ing, rul­ing them­selves and being as
wicked as they please, for all eter­ni­ty.”
That was the court he must have shown Ama­ran­tha when she first arrived
—and its wicked­ness must have pleased her enough that she mod­eled her
own after it.
“The Court of Night­mares,” Mor said, suck­ing on a tooth.
“And what is this court?” I asked, ges­tur­ing to them. The most impor­tant
ques­tion.
It was Cass­ian, eyes clear and bright as his Siphon, who said, “The Court
of Dreams.”
The Court of Dreams—the dreams of a half-breed High Lord, two
bas­tard war­riors, and … the two females. “And you?” I said to Mor and
Amren.
Amren mere­ly said, “Rhys offered to make me his Sec­ond. No one had
ever asked me before, so I said yes, to see what it might be like. I found I
enjoyed it.”
Mor leaned back in her seat, Azriel now watch­ing every move­ment she
made with sub­tle, relent­less focus.
“I was a dream­er born into the Court of Night­mares,” Mor said. She
twirled a curl around a fin­ger, and I won­dered if her sto­ry might be the
worst of all of them as she said sim­ply, “So I got out.”
“What’s your sto­ry, then?” Cass­ian said to me with a jerk of his chin.
I’d assumed Rhysand had told them every­thing. Rhys mere­ly shrugged at
me.
So I straight­ened. “I was born to a wealthy mer­chant fam­i­ly, with two
old­er sis­ters and par­ents who only cared about their mon­ey and social
stand­ing. My moth­er died when I was eight; my father lost his for­tune three
years lat­er. He sold every­thing to pay off his debts, moved us into a hov­el,
and didn’t both­er to find work while he let us slow­ly starve for years. I was
four­teen when the last of the mon­ey ran out, along with the food. He
wouldn’t work—couldn’t, because the debtors came and shat­tered his leg in
front of us. So I went into the for­est and taught myself to hunt. And I kept
us all alive, if not near star­va­tion at times, for five years. Until …
every­thing hap­pened.”
They fell qui­et again, Azriel’s gaze now con­sid­er­ing. He hadn’t told his
sto­ry. Did it ever come up? Or did they nev­er dis­cuss those burns on his
hands? And what did the shad­ows whis­per to him—did they speak in a
lan­guage at all?
But Cass­ian said, “You taught your­self to hunt. What about to fight?” I
shook my head. Cass­ian braced his arms on the table. “Lucky for you,
you’ve just found your­self a teacher.”
I opened my mouth, protest­ing, but— Rhysand’s moth­er had giv­en him
an arse­nal of weapons to use if the oth­er failed. What did I have in my own
beyond a good shot with a bow and brute stub­born­ness? And if I had this
new power—these oth­er pow­ers …
I would not be weak again. I would not be depen­dent on any­one else. I
would nev­er have to endure the touch of the Attor as it dragged me because
I was too help­less to know where and how to hit. Nev­er again.
But what Ianthe and Tam­lin had said … “You don’t think it sends a bad
mes­sage if peo­ple see me learn­ing to fight—using weapons?”
The moment the words were out, I real­ized the stu­pid­i­ty of them. The
stu­pid­i­ty of—of what had been shoved down my throat these past few
months.
Silence. Then Mor said with a soft ven­om that made me under­stand the
High Lord’s Third had received train­ing of her own in that Court of
Night­mares, “Let me tell you two things. As some­one who has per­haps
been in your shoes before.” Again, that shared bond of anger, of pain
throbbed between them all, save for Amren, who was giv­ing me a look
drip­ping with dis­taste. “One,” Mor said, “you have left the Spring Court.” I
tried not to let the full weight of those words sink in. “If that does not send
a mes­sage, for good or bad, then your train­ing will not, either. Two,” she
con­tin­ued, lay­ing her palm flat on the table, “I once lived in a place where
the opin­ion of oth­ers mat­tered. It suf­fo­cat­ed me, near­ly broke me. So you’ll
under­stand me, Feyre, when I say that I know what you feel, and I know
what they tried to do to you, and that with enough courage, you can say to
hell with a rep­u­ta­tion.” Her voice gen­tled, and the ten­sion between them all
fad­ed with it. “You do what you love, what you need.”
Mor would not tell me what to wear or not wear. She would not allow me
to step aside while she spoke for me. She would not … would not do any of
the things that I had so will­ing­ly, des­per­ate­ly, allowed Ianthe to do.
I had nev­er had a female friend before. Ianthe … she had not been one.
Not in the way that mat­tered, I real­ized. And Nes­ta and Elain, in those few
weeks I’d been at home before Ama­ran­tha, had start­ed to fill that role, but
… but look­ing at Mor, I couldn’t explain it, couldn’t under­stand it, but … I
felt it. Like I could indeed go to din­ner with her. Talk to her.
Not that I had much of any­thing to offer her in return.
But what she’d said … what they’d all said … Yes, Rhys had been wise
to bring me here. To let me decide if I could han­dle them—the teas­ing and
inten­si­ty and pow­er. If I want­ed to be a part of a group who would like­ly
push me, and over­whelm me, and maybe fright­en me, but … If they were
will­ing to stand against Hybern, after already fight­ing them five hun­dred
years ago …
I met Cassian’s gaze. And though his eyes danced, there was noth­ing
amused in them. “I’ll think about it.”
Through the bond in my hand, I could have sworn I felt a glim­mer of
pleased sur­prise. I checked my men­tal shields—but they were intact. And
Rhysand’s calm face revealed no hint of its ori­gin.
So I said clear­ly, steadi­ly to him, “I accept your offer—to work with you.
To earn my keep. And help with Hybern in what­ev­er way I can.”
“Good,” Rhys mere­ly replied. Even as the oth­ers raised their brows. Yes,
they’d obvi­ous­ly not been told this was an inter­view of sorts. “Because we
start tomor­row.”
“Where? And what?” I sput­tered.
Rhys inter­laced his fin­gers and rest­ed them on the table, and I real­ized
there was anoth­er point to this din­ner beyond my deci­sion as he announced
to all of us, “Because the King of Hybern is indeed about to launch a war,
and he wants to res­ur­rect Juri­an to do it.”
Jurian—the ancient war­rior whose soul Ama­ran­tha had impris­oned
with­in that hideous ring as pun­ish­ment for killing her sis­ter. The ring that
con­tained his eye …
“Bull­shit,” Cass­ian spat. “There’s no way to do that.”
Amren had gone still, and it was she whom Azriel was observ­ing,
mark­ing.
Ama­ran­tha was just the begin­ning, Rhys had once told me. Had he
known this even then? Had those months Under the Moun­tain mere­ly been
a pre­lude to what­ev­er hell was about to be unleashed? Res­ur­rect­ing the
dead. What sort of unholy pow­er—
Mor groaned, “Why would the king want to res­ur­rect Juri­an? He was so
odi­ous. All he liked to do was talk about him­self.”
The age of these peo­ple hit me like a brick, despite all they’d told me
min­utes ear­li­er. The War—they had all … they had all fought in the War
five hun­dred years ago.
“That’s what I want to find out,” Rhysand said. “And how the king plans
to do it.”
Amren at last said, “Word will have reached him about Feyre’s Mak­ing.
He knows it’s pos­si­ble for the dead to be remade.”
I shift­ed in my seat. I’d expect­ed brute armies, pure blood­shed. But this
—
“All sev­en High Lords would have to agree to that,” Mor coun­tered.
“There’s not a chance it hap­pens. He’ll take anoth­er route.” Her eyes
nar­rowed to slits as she faced Rhys. “All the slaughtering—the mas­sacres at
tem­ples. You think it’s tied to this?”
“I know it’s tied to this. I didn’t want to tell you until I knew for cer­tain.
But Azriel con­firmed that they’d raid­ed the memo­r­i­al in San­gravah three
days ago. They’re look­ing for something—or found it.” Azriel nod­ded in
con­fir­ma­tion, even as Mor cast a sur­prised look in his direc­tion. Azriel gave
her an apolo­getic shrug back.
I breathed, “That—that’s why the ring and the fin­ger bone van­ished after
Ama­ran­tha died. For this. But who …” My mouth went dry. “They nev­er
caught the Attor, did they?”
Rhys said too qui­et­ly, “No. No, they didn’t.” The food in my stom­ach
turned lead­en. He said to Amren, “How does one take an eye and a fin­ger
bone and make it into a man again? And how do we stop it?”
Amren frowned at her untouched wine. “You already know how to find
the answer. Go to the Prison. Talk to the Bone Carv­er.”
“Shit,” Mor and Cass­ian both said.
Rhys said calm­ly, “Per­haps you would be more effec­tive, Amren.”

In a dra­mat­ic chap­ter set in Hol­ly­wood’s gold­en era, the pro­tag­o­nist finds him­self embroiled in a scan­dal trig­gered by a neg­a­tive mag­a­zine arti­cle. The scene unfolds in Har­ry’s office, where the pro­tag­o­nist, along with Har­ry and Celia, dis­cuss­es the impli­ca­tions of the dam­ag­ing piece pub­lished by Sub Rosa, a mag­a­zine that has veered away from the truth in favor of sen­sa­tion­al­ism. The con­ver­sa­tion reveals the mag­a­zine’s pref­er­ence for lucra­tive scan­dal over accu­ra­cy, neg­a­tive­ly impact­ing Sun­set Stu­dios’ rep­u­ta­tion and finances.

Celia and the pro­tag­o­nist had recent­ly cel­e­brat­ed fin­ish­ing the shoot­ing of “Lit­tle Women” and were opti­mistic about receiv­ing award nom­i­na­tions, under­lin­ing the stark con­trast between their pro­fes­sion­al highs and the per­son­al lows caused by the pub­lic scan­dal. The nar­ra­tive dives into the dual­i­ties of Hollywood—a place oscil­lat­ing between the old stu­dio sys­tem and the emerg­ing New Hol­ly­wood, char­ac­ter­ized by Method actors and anti­heroes.

As they strate­gize to mit­i­gate the arti­cle’s dam­age, the pro­tag­o­nist fix­ates on the betray­al by their maid, assumed to be the source of the mag­a­zine’s infor­ma­tion. Decid­ing to fire the maid, the pro­tag­o­nist also con­cocts a plan to feign a mis­car­riage to gain pub­lic sym­pa­thy and pro­tect both their and their hus­band Don’s rep­u­ta­tions. Despite the moral and eth­i­cal impli­ca­tions, the plan is set into motion, high­light­ing the lengths to which indi­vid­u­als in Hol­ly­wood go to pre­serve their pub­lic image and careers.

This chap­ter per­fect­ly encap­su­lates the chal­lenges of life in the spot­light, where pub­lic per­cep­tion can make or break careers. It delves into the com­plex­i­ties of per­son­al rela­tion­ships with­in the indus­try and the con­stant bat­tle between truth and fic­tion. Through the inter­ac­tions among the char­ac­ters, the nar­ra­tive skill­ful­ly por­trays the dichoto­my of Hol­ly­wood’s glam­our and the often-ugly real­i­ty behind the scenes, empha­siz­ing the indus­try’s chang­ing dynam­ics and the sac­ri­fices made in the name of suc­cess.

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.

16
Justin end­ed up sleep­ing with six or sev­en girls in the weeks after we o�cially
broke up—or so I heard. Hey, I get it, he was Justin Tim­ber­lake. This was his
�rst time to go solo. He was a girl’s dream. I was in love with him. I under­stood
the infat­u­a­tion peo­ple had with him.
I decid­ed if Justin was going to date, I should try to get out there, too. I
hadn’t dat­ed in a while, since I’d been heart­bro­ken and on tour. That win­ter I
saw a guy who I thought was hand­some, and a club pro­mot­er friend said I had
good taste.
“That guy is so cool!” my friend said. “His name is Col­in Far­rell, and he’s
shoot­ing a movie right now.”
Well, talk about balls—I got in my car and I drove up to the set of his action
movie, S.W.A.T. Who did I think I was?
There was no secu­ri­ty or any­thing, so I went straight onto the sound­stage,
where they were doing a set piece in a house. When the direc­tor saw me, he said,
“Come sit in my chair!”
“Okay,” I said. So I sat in the chair and watched them shoot. Col­in came over
and said, “Do you have any point­ers for what I should do here?” He was invit­ing
me to direct him.
We wound up hav­ing a two-week brawl. Brawl is the only word for it—we
were all over each oth­er, grap­pling so pas­sion­ate­ly it was like we were in a street
�ght.
In the course of our fun time togeth­er, he took me to the pre­miere of a spy
thriller he was in called The Recruit, with Al Paci­no. I was so �attered he asked
me to go. I wore a paja­ma top. I thought it was a real shirt because it had
minia­ture studs on it, but I see the pho­tos and I think: Yeah, I def­i­nite­ly wore a
full-blown paja­ma top to Col­in Farrell’s pre­miere.
I was so excit­ed to be at the pre­miere. Colin’s whole fam­i­ly was there, and
they were so warm to me.
As I had before when I’d felt too attached to a man, I tried to con­vince myself
in every way that it was not a big deal, that we were just hav­ing fun, that in this
case I was vul­ner­a­ble because I wasn’t over Justin yet. But for a brief moment in
time I did think there could be some­thing there.
The dis­ap­point­ments in my roman­tic life were just one part of how iso­lat­ed I
became. I felt so awk­ward all the time.
I did try to be social. Natal­ie Portman—who I’d known since we were lit­tle
girls in the New York the­ater circuit—and I even host­ed a New Year’s Eve par­ty
togeth­er.
But it took a huge amount of e�ort. Most days, I couldn’t even bring myself
to call a friend on the phone. The thought of going out and being brave onstage
or at clubs, even at par­ties or din­ners, �lled me with fear. Joy around groups of
oth­er peo­ple was rare. Most of the time, I had seri­ous social anx­i­ety.
The way social anx­i­ety works is that what feels like a total­ly nor­mal
con­ver­sa­tion to most peo­ple, to you feels mor­ti­fy­ing. Being around peo­ple at all,
espe­cial­ly at a par­ty or some oth­er sit­u­a­tion with expec­ta­tions of pre­sent­ing well,
for no appar­ent rea­son caus­es surges of embar­rass­ment. I was afraid of being
judged or of say­ing some­thing stu­pid. When that feel­ing hits, I want to be alone.
I get scared and just want to excuse myself to the bath­room and then sneak out.
I veered between being very social and being incred­i­bly iso­lat­ed. I kept
hear­ing that I seemed so con�dent. It was hard for any­one to imag­ine that
some­one who could per­form for thou­sands at a time could, back­stage with just
one or two peo­ple, be gripped by pan­ic.
Anx­i­ety is strange that way. And mine grew as it became clear to me that
what­ev­er I did—and even plen­ty I didn’t do—became front-page news. These
sto­ries were often illus­trat­ed by un�attering pho­tos of me tak­en when I least
expect­ed it. I was already designed to care what oth­ers thought about me; the
nation­al spot­light turned my nat­ur­al ten­den­cy to wor­ry into some­thing
unbear­able.
While the news about me was often not all that friend­ly, the enter­tain­ment
press was full of pos­i­tive sto­ries about Justin and Christi­na Aguil­era. Justin was
on the cov­er of Rolling Stone half-naked. Christi­na was on the cov­er of Blender,
dressed like a madam from the Old West. They were togeth­er on the cov­er of
Rolling Stone, him in a black tank top, look­ing at her with sexy eyes, her look­ing
out at the cam­era, wear­ing a lace-up black shirt. In that sto­ry, she said she
thought Justin and I should get back togeth­er, which was just con­fus­ing, giv­en
how neg­a­tive she’d been else­where.
See­ing peo­ple I’d known so inti­mate­ly talk about me that way in the press
stung. Even if they weren’t try­ing to be cru­el, it felt like they were just pour­ing
salt in the wound. Why was it so easy for every­one to for­get that I was a human
being—vulnerable enough that these head­lines could leave a bruise?
Want­i­ng to dis­ap­pear, I found myself liv­ing in New York City alone for
months, in a four-sto­ry NoHo apart­ment that Cher used to live in. It had tall
ceil­ings, a ter­race with a view of the Empire State Build­ing, and a work­ing
�replace much fanci­er than the one that had been in the liv­ing room of our
house in Kent­wood. It would have been a dream apart­ment to use as a home
base to explore the city, but I hard­ly ever left the place. One of the only times I
did, a man behind me on an ele­va­tor said some­thing that made me laugh; I
turned around and it was Robin Williams.
At one point, I real­ized I had some­how lost the key to the apart­ment. I was
arguably the biggest star on earth, and I didn’t even have a key to my own
apart­ment. What a fuck­ing idiot. I was stuck, both emo­tion­al­ly and phys­i­cal­ly;
with­out a key, I couldn’t go any­where. I also wasn’t will­ing to com­mu­ni­cate
with any­one. I had noth­ing to say. (But trust that I always have the key to my
house these days.)
I didn’t go to the gym. I didn’t go out to eat. I only talked with my secu­ri­ty
guard and Feli­cia, who—now that I no longer need­ed a chaperone—had become
my assis­tant and was still my friend. I fell o� the face of the earth. I ate take­out
for every meal. And this will prob­a­bly sound strange, but I was con­tent stay­ing
home. I liked it there. I felt safe.
On rare occa­sions, I went out. One night I put on a $129 Bebe dress and high
heels, and my cousin took me to a sexy under­ground club with low ceil­ings and
red walls. I took a cou­ple hits from a joint, my �rst time smok­ing pot. Lat­er, I
walked all the way home so I could take in the city, break­ing one of my heels
along the way. When I got to my apart­ment, I went to my ter­race and just looked
up at the stars for hours. At that moment, I felt one with New York.
One of my few vis­i­tors dur­ing that strange, sur­re­al time was Madon­na. She
walked into the place and imme­di­ate­ly, of course, she owned the room. I
remem­ber think­ing, It’s Madonna’s room now. Stun­ning­ly beau­ti­ful, she exud­ed
pow­er and con�dence. She walked straight to the win­dow, looked out, and said,
“Nice view.”
“Yeah, it’s a nice view, I guess,” I said.
Madonna’s supreme con�dence helped me see a lot about my sit­u­a­tion with
fresh eyes. I think she prob­a­bly had some intu­itive sense of what I was going
through. I need­ed a lit­tle guid­ance at that time. I was con­fused about my life.
She tried to men­tor me.
At one point, she did a red-string cer­e­mo­ny with me to ini­ti­ate me into
Kab­bal­ah, and she gave me a trunk full of Zohar books to pray with. At the base
of my neck, I tat­tooed a word in Hebrew that means one of the sev­en­ty-two
names of God. Some Kab­bal­ists think of it as mean­ing heal­ing, which was the
thing I was still try­ing to do.
In many ways, Madon­na did have a good e�ect on me. She told me I should
be sure to take time out for my soul, and I tried to do that. She mod­eled a type of
strength that I need­ed to see. There were so many di�erent ways to be a woman
in the indus­try: you could get a rep­u­ta­tion for being a diva, you could be
pro­fes­sion­al, or you could be “nice.” I had always tried so hard to please—to
please my par­ents, to please audi­ences, to please every­one.
I must have learned that help­less­ness from my mom. I saw the way my sis­ter
and my dad treat­ed her and how she just took it. Ear­ly in my career, I fol­lowed
that mod­el and became pas­sive. I wish I’d had more of a men­tor then to be a
badass bitch for me so I could’ve learned how to do that soon­er. If I could go
back now, I would try to become my own par­ent, my own part­ner, my own
advocate—the way I knew Madon­na did. She had endured so much sex­ism and
bul­ly­ing from the pub­lic and the indus­try, and had been shamed for her
sex­u­al­i­ty so many times, but she always over­came it.
When Madon­na accept­ed her Bill­board Woman of the Year award a few years
ago, she said she’d been sub­ject­ed to “bla­tant misog­y­ny, sex­ism, con­stant
bul­ly­ing, and relent­less abuse… If you’re a girl, you have to play the game. What
is that game? You’re allowed to be pret­ty, and cute, and sexy. But don’t act too
smart. Don’t have an opin­ion.”
She’s right that the music industry—really the whole world—is set up more
for men. Espe­cial­ly if you’re “nice,” like me, you can be com­plete­ly destroyed. By
that point, I’d become almost too nice. Every­where I went, Feli­cia would write
thank-you notes to the chef, the bar­tender, the sec­re­tary. To this day, as a
South­ern girl, I believe in a hand­writ­ten thank-you note.
Madon­na saw how much I want­ed to please and how I want­ed to do what
oth­ers did instead of lock­ing some­thing down and say­ing, “Okay, every­one!
Lis­ten up! This is what’s going to hap­pen.”
We decid­ed to per­form togeth­er at the VMAs.
Every time we rehearsed it, we did an air kiss. About two min­utes before the
per­for­mance, I was sit­ting on the side of the stage and think­ing about my biggest
per­for­mance to date at the VMAs, when I’d pulled o� a suit to reveal a spark­ly
out�t. I thought to myself: I want a moment like that again this year. With the
kiss, should I just go for it?
A lot was made of that kiss. Oprah asked Madon­na about it. The kiss was
treat­ed as a huge cul­tur­al moment—“Britney kiss­ing Madonna!”—and it got us
both a lot of atten­tion.
While we were rehears­ing for the VMAs, I’d also had an idea for a col­lab­o­ra­tion.
In the Cul­ver City stu­dio, my team and I were sit­ting on sil­ver met­al fold­ing
chairs, talk­ing about how the record com­pa­ny was luke­warm on my new song
“Me Against the Music”—a song I loved. I’d just done “I’m a Slave 4 U” on my
last record, and Bar­ry Weiss, who ran my label, want­ed more songs like that. But
I was push­ing for “Me Against the Music”—hard.

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.

16
I’m engaged.
Moth­er­fuck­ing engaged.
I can’t stop look­ing at the ring, the way it sparkles in the sun­light, the heavy, cool weight of it on
my fin­ger.
But weird­ly, it’s more than just the ring, gor­geous as it is.
It’s know­ing that Eddie bought it before I even knew I want­ed him to pro­pose.
He want­ed this. He chose me.
No one has ever cho­sen me before. I’ve spent my life being passed around and looked over, and
now this.
I’ve passed it dozens of times before, the vil­lage bridal shop that’s a world away from the big
dress empo­ri­ums in strip malls and shop­ping cen­ters. I’ve looked in its plate glass win­dow at the
del­i­cate bits of lace and silk on dis­play, and even though I’ve nev­er been a girly-girl, I’d always felt a
lit­tle … wist­ful, maybe.
And even now, as I open the door, the lit­tle bell over­head jin­gling, some­thing flut­ters in my chest.
There’s no over­head light­ing, only strate­gi­cal­ly placed lamps, huge win­dows, and a sky­light. And
the dress­es aren’t just hang­ing up on crowd­ed racks, row after row of heavy skirts and bead­ed
bodices, all so jum­bled up you can bare­ly tell what’s what.
Instead, some dress­es are dis­played on old-fash­ioned wire dress dum­mies, and oth­ers are draped
over bits of antique fur­ni­ture, like the bride just slipped out of her dress and tossed it casu­al­ly over
the near­est armoire.
It’s the kind of place where they’re not scared of any­one get­ting some­thing on the dress­es or
mess­ing them up somehow—no one who shops here would be that gauche. So there’s no need for the
miles of plas­tic that pro­tect dress­es from all the grub­by hands at those cheap­er bridal places.
The woman who approach­es me has soft blond hair arranged in an ele­gant chignon, and she’s
wear­ing an out­fit that reminds me of the things I’ve seen Bea wear in pic­tures. It’s ele­gant but
fem­i­nine at the same time, a sleek black sheath dress and pearls paired with hound­stooth pumps that
have a tiny hot pink bow on the back.
Her name is Hunt­ley, because of course it is.
I see the way she clocks my ring, and while I’m sure Hunt­ley here would nev­er be so crass as to
actu­al­ly start adding up num­bers in her head, her smile def­i­nite­ly warms a lit­tle.
I know plen­ty of girls dream about their wed­ding day, but I nev­er had, not real­ly. Maybe it had
just seemed like some­thing so far out of the realm of pos­si­bil­i­ty for me, or maybe I just had big­ger
things to wor­ry about.
Turns out, I fuck­ing love this shit.
We move around the store, talk­ing about shades of white and ivory, the dif­fer­ence between
eggshell and cream, whether I’d like my hair up or down, what kind of veil options that might entail.
When Hunt­ley brings out a book full of fab­ric sam­ples for me to look at, I almost swoon.
By the time I leave the shop, my head is swim­ming, but I’m pleas­ant­ly high, and not just on the
two glass­es of cham­pagne I sipped while Hunt­ley and I talked.
I’m mar­ry­ing Eddie Rochester.
I’m going to be his wife, and live in that gor­geous house, and after­noons like this, after­noons not
spent walk­ing dogs or wait­ing tables or dri­ving for Uber or mak­ing some­one else cof­fee, aren’t just a
tem­po­rary reprieve—they’re my future.
“Jane?”
Emi­ly is stand­ing there, paper cup of cof­fee in hand, her face hid­den behind those huge
sun­glass­es.
She glances up toward the striped awning of Irene’s, and her mouth drops open. “Girl. Tell me
you were in there for a rea­son.”
My smile is not even a lit­tle bit faked. “Turns out he did put a ring on it.”
She squeals at that, rush­ing for­ward to throw her arms around me, pulling me into a hug that
smells like San­tal 33.
I smell like it, too, since I stole a bot­tle from her bath­room just two months ago.
“Let me see, let me see,” she says when we pull apart, flap­ping her hands toward mine.
Anoth­er rush of what feels sus­pi­cious­ly like joy, but is prob­a­bly just the adren­a­line rush of
win­ning.
I haven’t per­fect­ed this move yet, the ring dis­play, and I fight the urge to mim­ic girls I’ve seen on
TV, all arched wrist like I’m wait­ing for her not just to ogle the ring, but to kiss it.
As a result, I feel like I just sort of hold my hand out for inspec­tion, awk­ward and sud­den­ly very
aware of how ridicu­lous that spark­ly emer­ald looks on my stumpy fin­gers with their raggedy
man­i­cure.
But Emi­ly just sighs. “It’s gor­geous. And so you!”
I raise my hand again, study­ing the ring myself. “I still can’t get used to it,” I say. “I mean, all of it
has been kind of a whirl­wind, but the ring makes it feel real, you know?”
I give her a smile.
“I remem­ber feel­ing like that,” she offers. “The ring def­i­nite­ly cements it.”
Rais­ing her eye­brows, she asks, “Did you pick that one out?”
I shake my head, look­ing back at the emer­ald sur­round­ed by its halo of dia­monds. “No, Eddie did.
It’s big­ger than any­thing I would’ve cho­sen, but I love emer­alds, so I can’t com­plain.”
She nods. “He has the best taste in jew­el­ry. I always thought—”
Her words break off, and she press­es her lips togeth­er, and I know there’s a com­ment about Bea
there, caught in her throat. I don’t want Bea’s mem­o­ry to ruin this moment, so I rush in.
“I was just in there peek­ing around, we’re not sure when the wed­ding is going to be yet,” I say
light­ly, and her shoul­ders loosen a lit­tle.
“Are y’all doing some­thing big?” she asks. “Lots of fam­i­ly?”
Until that moment, it hadn’t real­ly hit me what a wed­ding with Eddie would look like. I’d been so
caught up in the idea of mar­ry­ing him, of being Mrs. Rochester, that I’d basi­cal­ly skipped the wed­ding
part of things.
But now it’s all I can see, a giant church, Eddie’s side of the church full, his fam­i­ly from Maine all
turn­ing up, mine com­plete­ly emp­ty except for John Rivers sit­ting there, eat­ing a bowl of cere­al.
The image is so grotesque and awful that I lit­er­al­ly shake my head to will it away, which
appar­ent­ly looks like an answer to Emi­ly.
“Small, then!” she says, smil­ing. “I love it. Classy, ele­gant. Appro­pri­ate.”
Eyes on my hand again, and this time, I do rearrange my bags so that they’re cov­er­ing the ring, and
I give her my best bland smile, the one I actu­al­ly learned from her and Camp­bell and Car­o­line
McLaren. “Exact­ly,” I say, all sug­ar, then I ges­ture back up the road. “Any­way, I have more errands to
run, so—”
“Oh, sure,” Emi­ly says, wav­ing a hand. Her own engage­ment ring is a princess-cut dia­mond, at
least three carats, and it sparkles in the sun­light. “And my lips are sealed!”
“They don’t have to be,” I reply with a lit­tle shrug. “It’s not a secret.”
The truth is, I want her to spread this news like wild­fire, I want every­one in Thorn­field Estates to
be talk­ing about it by din­ner.
We make vague plans to get cof­fee one of these days, and then go our sep­a­rate ways, Emi­ly
already tex­ting on her phone. By the next Neigh­bor­hood Beau­ti­fi­ca­tion Com­mit­tee meet­ing, every­one
will know, and I’ll be the cen­ter of atten­tion.
On the way home, I decide to stop at the Whole Foods and pick up some gro­ceries. I haven’t
cooked a sin­gle meal for Eddie since we’ve met, and that might be nice. It’s a pret­ty late spring day,
and we could go full sub­ur­ban basics and grill out.
The idea makes me smile as I turn into the park­ing lot.
The store is sooth­ing, all wide aisles and calm­ing Muzak, a world away from the Pig­gly Wig­gly
where I used to shop.
I push the cart down the aisle, won­der­ing if Eddie would notice if I picked up some junk food. I
love the fan­cy shit as much as the next girl, but truth be told, I’m get­ting a lit­tle sick of it. The oth­er
day, I found myself long­ing for mac­a­roni and cheese—not the Annie’s Organ­ics kind, not even the
frozen kind that’s halfway decent, but the blue card­board box kind that costs a dol­lar.
Snort­ing, I turn down anoth­er aisle. Who am I kid­ding? This is a nice gro­cery store, not the Pig.
So instead, I stare at the fifty vari­eties of hum­mus and olive tape­nades, won­der­ing if I should also
make a gas sta­tion run on my way home. Maybe they’d have mac­a­roni and cheese there?
“Fan­cy meet­ing you here.”
I rec­og­nize the voice with­out turn­ing around.
Tripp Ingra­ham stands behind me in a polo shirt and kha­ki shorts, a bas­ket slung over his fore­arm.
A quick peek inside reveals cans of craft beer and a bunch of frozen but osten­si­bly healthy meals.
Tripp looks a lit­tle bet­ter than he did the last time I saw him. He’s still bloat­ed, the pink polo
stretch­ing over a dis­turbing­ly round and smooth bel­ly, but his face isn’t as puffy, and his eyes aren’t
red. He’s even brushed his hair.
Maybe he’s man­aged to make it all the way to noon with­out a drink.
Smil­ing tight­ly, I give a lit­tle wave. “Hi, Mr. Ing—Tripp.”
One cor­ner of his mouth lifts, half attempt­ed smile, half smirk. “That’s right, you don’t work for
me any­more,” he says, then adds, “and I hear con­grat­u­la­tions are in order.”
Jesus, Emi­ly worked even faster than I thought.
“Thank you,” I say. “We’re very hap­py. Any­way, it was nice to see you—”
I move to scoot past him, but he’s still stand­ing there in the mid­dle of the aisle, and even though it
would be deeply sat­is­fy­ing to clip Tripp Ingra­ham with my cart, I stop, rais­ing my eye­brows at him.
“So, when exact­ly did all this hap­pen?” he asks, wav­ing his free hand. “You and Eddie? Because
I got­ta say, I nev­er saw that one com­ing.”
“Nei­ther did we,” I say, still smil­ing, remem­ber­ing that I need to be the girl Tripp thinks I am, the
inno­cent bare­ly-out-of-col­lege dog-walk­er who made good. I won­der when I’ll feel like I can drop
that act, when it will feel nor­mal to just … be me.
“You know, I nev­er got the whole Eddie ‘thing.’”
He actu­al­ly rais­es his hands to make air quotes, the bas­ket dan­gling heav­i­ly from the crook of his
elbow.
I don’t both­er ask­ing him what he means because for one, he clear­ly wants me to ask him that, and
for anoth­er, I just want to leave, but a lit­tle thing like lack of inter­est has clear­ly nev­er stopped Tripp
Ingra­ham where a woman is con­cerned.
“I mean, he’s good-look­ing, I guess, and he’s charm­ing in that used-car-sales­man way, but Jesus,
from the way the women in this neigh­bor­hood act­ed, you would’ve thought the dude had a twelve-inch
cock.”
Okay, maybe I mis­judged how not-drunk Tripp actu­al­ly is.
But this is good—now he’s giv­en me every rea­son to push my cart past him, head held high, like
I’m mor­tal­ly offend­ed and embar­rassed instead of just kind of irri­tat­ed.
He steps aside right before my cart actu­al­ly hits him, and as I reach the end of the aisle, he calls
after me, “Just hope you don’t like boats.”
When I glance back at him, his expres­sion is cur­dled and nasty. “Women have bad luck around
Eddie Rochester and boats,” he adds, before turn­ing and trudg­ing away.
I get all the way back to the pro­duce before I aban­don my semi-full cart and head for the doors.
The dri­ve home isn’t long enough for me to shake the unease, the sud­den fear that Tripp Ingra­ham
—fuck­ing Tripp Ingra­ham, of all people—has instilled in me, and again, I see Bea pale and green­ish
under the water. My stom­ach lurch­es as I pull into the dri­ve­way.
“Stop it, stop it, stop it,” I mut­ter, my hands over my face. Eddie’s wife drowned in an acci­dent
with her best friend. Eddie wasn’t even there, and the women were drunk and pos­si­bly had some
unre­solved dra­ma. Shit hap­pens.
I try to think about the bridal store again, the way Hunt­ley smiled at me and treat­ed me like I had
just joined an exclu­sive club, how good that had felt. Emily’s hug and bright smile as she’d looked at
the ring.
That’s what mat­ters now.
When I walk in the house, Eddie is already home, changed into shorts and anoth­er one of his
but­ton-down shirts. Now that I’ve seen inside his clos­et, I know he has dozens of them in a vari­ety of
col­ors. Men can do that—find one thing that looks good, then wear it for the rest of their lives, pret­ty
much.
“There’s my girl,” he says bright­ly as I walk in. I smile as I greet him, but it’s clear I’m upset
because he imme­di­ate­ly frowns.
“Every­thing okay?”

Chap­ter 16 of “The Beasts of Tarzan” plunges into a thrilling encounter where Tarzan bat­tles for sur­vival against a for­mi­da­ble croc­o­dile. Trapped in the crea­ture’s jaws, he does not sur­ren­der but fights with all his might, demon­strat­ing his indomitable spir­it and strength. Despite his dire sit­u­a­tion beneath the water, Tarzan’s per­sis­tence pays off when his knife finds a weak spot in the croc­o­dile’s armor, killing the beast. Freed, but trapped in the dark con­fines of the croc­o­dile’s den beneath the river­bank, Tarzan’s thoughts quick­ly turn to escape.

He inge­nious­ly nav­i­gates a sub­merged tun­nel, despite being wound­ed, dri­ven by the hope of rejoin­ing the search for his fam­i­ly. The nar­ra­tive shifts, detail­ing Tarzan’s ardu­ous jour­ney towards the coast, hin­dered by his injury and the dense jun­gle. His thoughts are con­sumed by vengeance against Rokoff for the abduc­tion and pre­sumed harm to his fam­i­ly. Tarzan’s resilience is high­light­ed as he nav­i­gates both phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al tur­moil, spurred by mis­in­for­ma­tion about his fam­i­ly’s fate.

The chap­ter also sheds light on the par­al­lel plight of Jane Clay­ton, Tarzan’s wife, and her cun­ning efforts to evade Rokof­f’s clutch­es aboard the Kin­caid. Jane’s brav­ery and quick think­ing are show­cased as she man­ages to set the ship adrift, aim­ing to escape her pur­suer by merg­ing with the sea’s expanse. How­ev­er, the Kin­caid runs aground, tem­porar­i­ly halt­ing her plans for free­dom.

As both Tarzan and Jane bat­tle their respec­tive adver­saries, the nar­ra­tive crescen­dos with the con­ver­gence of their strug­gles. Tarzan, drawn by a scream and the sound of gun­fire, leaps into action despite his injuries, embody­ing the pri­mal and pro­tec­tive aspects of his char­ac­ter. Jane, on her end, faces betray­al from the sailors she had coerced into obe­di­ence, under­scor­ing the theme of treach­ery that runs through their ordeals.

This chap­ter mas­ter­ful­ly inter­twines the fierce will to sur­vive and pro­tect loved ones with the betray­al and deceit encoun­tered along the way. Tarzan’s pri­mal con­nec­tion to the jun­gle and its crea­tures, jux­ta­posed with his human emo­tions and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, enrich­es the nar­ra­tive com­plex­i­ty. Mean­while, Jane’s resource­ful­ness and courage high­light her own deter­mi­na­tion to over­come the obsta­cles posed by Rokoff and the treach­er­ous ele­ments of her envi­ron­ment.