A Court of Mist and Fury

After the incident with Lucien, Rhys and Feyre find a small village with an inn. They change into dry clothes and eat dinner while Rhys explains that he must use bits of magic constantly to prevent it from building up inside him and driving him “insane.” They confess their mutual attraction and caress and tease each other passionately. 

Feyre tests all of her powers in the Illyrian forest. While flying back to the war camp, Rhys is struck by ash arrows. They plummet toward the forest, but Rhys cannot winnow them away because the ash arrows inhibit his magic. Rhys flings Feyre away on a dark wind to protect her; she falls through the trees and lands on a cushion of air. She frantically calls to Rhys through her mental bond but receives no response. Darkness falls. Desperate, Feyre finds the power to winnow again and locates the spot where Rhys fell, following his scent. She tracks him to a narrow cave, winnowing inside to escape detection. She finds Rhys inside, chained and whipped, the arrows still piercing his wings. She kills his captors quickly.

Rhys is too weak to winnow them out, so Feyre transports them to another hidden cave in the forest. She removes the arrows from his wings and tells him about her childhood to distract him from the pain. Rhys tells her his attackers were Hybern soldiers, then passes out.

The next morning, Rhys is feverish, the arrows’ poison still in his body. By midday, Rhys is still unconscious, so Feyre leaves him to find help. Following a stream, she lays a trap using her cloak as bait. She snares a Suriel, a malevolent faerie who cannot lie when captured. The Suriel tells Feyre how to cure Rhys with her own blood and refers to Rhys as Feyre’s mate, a sacred relationship between faeries: “Not lover, not husband, but more than that. A bond so deep, so permanent that it was honored over all the others” (492). Rhys already knows Feyre is his mate, and Feyre releases the Suriel and heads back to the cave, angry at Rhys for not telling her. She cuts her forearm and forces blood into his mouth. As he begins to heal, she asks him why he lied. She was to marry Tamlin, he responds, and then he feared she only wanted him as a sexual distraction. Still upset, Feyre demands to be taken back to the war camp.

Rhys manages to winnow them back to the Illyrian camp, where Feyre storms into the lodging, leaving Rhys in the snow. Feyre asks Mor to take her away, to give her space from Rhys, so Mor winnows them to a remote cabin in the mountains, warded with spells for privacy. Mor offers to come back in three days, leaving Feyre alone with her thoughts.

Secluded in the cabin, Feyre ponders what would have happened if had Rhys told her the truth. Feyre finds a closet of art supplies and spends the rest of the day painting the interior of the cabin with intricate images of nature and members of the Night Court. The next morning, Feyre’s painting is interrupted by Mor knocking at the door. Mor asks Feyre to hear Rhys’s reasons for keeping their mate bond a secret. Feyre agrees, deciding that being part of Rhys’s family is better than having no family at all.

Mor departs, leaving Feyre to her dreams of future happiness with Rhys and his friends, and her art. For five days, Feyre paints and rests and dreams. At the end of the fifth day, Rhys arrives.

Rhys and Feyre reconcile. Feyre offers him food, and Rhys explains that a female offering food to her mate for the first time is an occasion sometimes marked by a celebration. In exchange for the food, Rhys recounts being shot with ash arrows and captured by Amarantha 500 years ago during the war between faeries and mortals. While Amarantha was distracted by torturing Jurian for killing her sister, Rhys was freed by his father. Centuries later, when Amarantha returned, Rhys vowed to kill her but her mental shields were too strong for him to penetrate. For 50 years, Rhys was Amarantha’s slave and consort, all the while plotting to kill her. He had strange dreams which he now knows were images of Feyre’s life. While on a mission for Amarantha to the Spring Court, he saw Feyre and suspected she was his mate but let her go, fearing what Amarantha would do to her.

Rhys regrets the many lives lost while he was in service to Amarantha. During Feyre’s ordeal Under the Mountain, Rhys played the part of the hated Night Lord, thinking it was the only way to save her and his people. After Feyre’s resurrection and her betrothal to Tamlin, Rhys thought the Spring Lord might make her happy. When she panicked at her wedding, Rhys knew this was wrong. Rhys admits that he hated Tamlin for keeping her prisoner, but he needed Feyre to love him of her own free will, and that he knew she was his mate the moment Amarantha died. Feyre serves Rhys his meal.