Ianthe brought the stone up. The first impact was a muffled, wet thud.
The second was an actual crack.
The third drew blood.
Her arm rose and fell, her body shuddering with the agony.
And I said to her very clearly, “You will never touch another person against their will. You will never convince yourself that they truly want your advances; that they’re playing games. You will never know another’s touch unless they initiate, unless it’s desired by both sides.”
Thwack; crack; thud.
“You will not remember what happened here. You will tell the others that you fell.”
Her ring finger had shifted in the wrong direction.
“You are allowed to see a healer to set the bones. But not to erase the scarring. And every time you look at that hand, you are going to remember that touching people against their will has consequences, and if you do it again, everything you are will cease to exist. You will live with that terror every day, and never know where it originates. Only the fear of something chasing you, hunting you, waiting for you the instant you let your guard down.”
Silent tears of pain flowed down her face.
“You can stop now.”
The bloodied rock tumbled onto the grass. Her hand was little more than cracked bones wrapped in shredded skin.
“Kneel here until someone finds you.”
Ianthe fell to her knees, her ruined hand leaking blood onto her pale robes.
“I debated slitting your throat this morning,” I told her. “I debated it all last night while you slept beside me. I’ve debated it every single day since I learned you sold out my sisters to Hybern.” I smiled a bit. “But I think this is a better punishment. And I hope you live a long, long life, Ianthe, and never know a moment’s peace.”
I stared down at her for a moment longer, tying off the tapestry of words and commands I’d woven into her mind, and turned to Lucien. He’d fixed his pants, his shirt.
His wide eyes slid from her to me, then to the bloodied stone.
“The word you’re looking for, Lucien,” crooned a deceptively light female voice, “is daemati.”
We whirled toward Brannagh and Dagdan as they stepped into the clearing, grinning like wolves.
Brannagh ran her fingers through Ianthe’s golden hair, clicking her tongue at the bloodied pulp cradled in her lap. “Going somewhere, Feyre?”
I let my mask drop.
“I have places to be,” I told the Hybern royals, noting the flanking positions they were too casually establishing around me.
“What could be more important than assisting us? You are, after all, sworn to assist our king.”
Time—biding their time until Tamlin returned from hunting with Jurian.
Lucien shoved off the tree, but didn’t come to my side.
Something like agony flickered across his face as he finally noted the stolen bandolier, the pack on my shoulders.
“I have no allegiance to you,” I told Brannagh, even as Dagdan began to edge past my line of sight. “I am a free person, allowed to go where and when I will it.”
“Are you?” Brannagh mused, sliding a hand to her sword at her hip. I pivoted slightly to keep Dagdan from slipping into my blind spot. “Such careful plotting these weeks, such skilled maneuvering. You didn’t seem to worry that we’d be doing the same.”
They weren’t letting Lucien leave this clearing alive. Or at least with his mind intact.
He seemed to realize it at the same moment I did, understanding that there was no way they’d reveal this without knowing they’d get away with it.
“Take the Spring Court,” I said, and meant it. “It’s going to fall one way or another.”
Lucien snarled. I ignored him.
“Oh, we intend to,” Brannagh said, sword inching free of its dark sheath. “But then there’s the matter of you.”
I thumbed free two of the Illyrian fighting knives.
“Haven’t you wondered at the headaches? How things seem a little muffled on certain mental bonds?”
My powers had tired so swiftly, had become weaker and weaker these weeks—
Dagdan snorted and finally observed to his sister, “I’d give her about ten minutes before the apple sets in.”
Brannagh chuckled, toeing the blue stone shackle. “We gave the priestess the powder at first. Crushed faebane stone, ground so fine you couldn’t see or scent or taste it in your food. She’d add a little at a time, nothing suspicious—not too much, lest it stifle all your powers at once.”
Unease began to clench my gut.
“We’ve been daemati for a thousand years, girl,” Dagdan sneered. “But we didn’t even need to slip into her mind to get her to do our bidding. But you … what a valiant effort you put up, trying to shield them all from us.”
Dagdan’s mind speared for Lucien’s, a dark arrow shot between them. I slammed up a shield between them. And my head—my very bones ached—
“What apple,” I bit out.
“The one you shoved down your throat an hour ago,” Brannagh said. “Grown and tended in the king’s personal garden, fed a steady diet of water laced with faebane. Enough to knock out your powers for a few days straight, no shackles required. And here you are, thinking no one had noticed you planned to vanish today.” She clicked her tongue again. “Our uncle would be most displeased if we allowed that to happen.”
I was running out of borrowed time. I could winnow, but then I’d abandon Lucien to them if he somehow couldn’t manage to himself with the faebane in his system from the food at the camp — Leave him. I should and could leave him.
But to a fate perhaps worse than death—
His russet eye gleamed. “Go.”
I made my choice.
I exploded into night and smoke and shadow.
And even a thousand years wasn’t enough for Dagdan to adequately prepare as I winnowed in front of him and struck.
I sliced through the front of his leather armor, not deep enough to kill, and as steel snagged on its plates, he twisted expertly, forcing me to either expose my right side or lose the knife— I winnowed again. This time, Dagdan went with me.
I was not fighting Hybern cronies unaware in the woods. I was not fighting the Attor and its ilk in the streets of Velaris. Dagdan was a Hybern prince—a commander.
He fought like one.
Winnow. Strike. Winnow. Strike.
We were a black whirlwind of steel and shadow through the clearing, and months of Cassian’s brutal training clicked into place as I kept my feet under me.
I had the vague sense of Lucien gaping, even Brannagh taken aback by my show of skill against her brother.
But Dagdan’s blows weren’t hard—no, they were precise and swift, but he didn’t throw himself into it wholly.
Buying time. Wearing me down until my body fully absorbed that apple and its power rendered me nearly mortal.
So I hit him where he was weakest.
Brannagh screamed as a wall of flame slammed into her.
Dagdan lost his focus for all of a heartbeat. His roar as I sliced deep into his abdomen shook the birds from the trees.
“You little bitch,” he spat, dancing back from my next blow as the fire cleared and Brannagh was revealed on her knees. Her physical shield had been sloppy—she’d expected me to attack her mind.
She was shuddering, gasping with agony. The reek of charred skin now drifted to us, directly from her right arm, her ribs, her thigh.
Dagdan lunged for me again, and I brought up both of my knives to meet his blade.
He didn’t pull the blow this time.
I felt its reverberation in every inch of my body.
Felt the rising, stifling silence, too. I’d felt it once before—that day in Hybern.
Brannagh surged to her feet with a sharp cry.
But Lucien was there.
Her focus wholly on me, on taking from me the beauty I’d burned from her, Brannagh did not see him winnow until it was too late.
Until Lucien’s sword refracted the light of the sun leaking through the canopy. And then met flesh and bone.
A tremor shuddered through the clearing—like some thread between the twins had been snipped as Brannagh’s dark head thudded onto the grass.
Dagdan screamed, launching himself at Lucien, winnowing across the fifteen feet between us.
Lucien had barely heaved his blade out of Brannagh’s severed neck when Dagdan was before him, sword shoving forward to ram through his throat.
Lucien only had enough time to stumble back from Dagdan’s killing blow.
I had enough time to stop it.
I parried Dagdan’s blade aside with one knife, the male’s eyes going wide as I winnowed between them—and punched the other into his eye. Right into the skull behind it.
Bone and blood and soft tissue scraped and slid along the blade, Dagdan’s mouth still open with surprise as I yanked out the knife.
I let him fall atop his sister, the thud of flesh on flesh the only sound.
I merely looked at Ianthe, my power guttering, a hideous ache building in my gut, and made my last command, amending my earlier ones. “You tell them I killed them. In self-defense. After they hurt me so badly while you and Tamlin did nothing. Even when they torture you for the truth, you say that I fled after I killed them —to save this court from their horrors.”
Blank, vacant eyes were my only answer.
“Feyre.”
Lucien’s voice was a hoarse rasp.
I merely wiped my two knives on Dagdan’s back before going to reclaim my fallen pack.
“You’re going back. To the Night Court.”
I shouldered my heavy pack and finally looked at him. “Yes.”
His tan face had paled. But he surveyed Ianthe, the two dead royals. “I’m going with you.”
“No,” was all I said, heading for the trees.
A cramp formed deep in my belly. I had to get away—had to use the last of my power to winnow to the hills.
“You won’t make it without magic,” he warned me.
I just gritted my teeth against the sharp pain in my abdomen as I rallied my strength to winnow to those distant foothills. But Lucien gripped my arm, halting me.
“I’m going with you,” he said again, face splattered with blood as bright as his hair. “I’m getting my mate back.”
There was no time for this argument. For the truth and debate and the answers I saw he desperately wanted.
Tamlin and the others would have heard the shouting by now.
“Don’t make me regret this,” I told him.
Blood coated the inside of my mouth by the time we reached the foothills hours later.
I was panting, my head throbbing, my stomach a twisting knot of aching.
Lucien was barely better off, his winnowing as shaky as my own before we halted amongst the rolling green and he doubled over, hands braced on his knees. “It’s—gone,” he said, gasping for breath. “My magic—not an ember. They must have dosed all of us today.”
And given me a poisoned apple just to make sure it kept me down.
My power pulled away from me like a wave reeling back from the shore. Only there was no return. It just went farther and farther out into a sea of nothing.
I peered at the sun, now a hand’s width above the horizon, shadows already thick and heavy between the hills. I took my bearings, sorting through the knowledge I’d compiled these weeks.
I stepped northward, swaying. Lucien gripped my arm. “You’re taking a door?”
I slid aching eyes toward him. “Yes.” The caves—doors, they called them—in those hollows led to other pockets of Prythian. I’d taken one straight Under the Mountain. I would now take one to get me home. Or as close to it as I could get. No door to the Night Court existed, here or anywhere.
And I would not risk my friends by bringing them here to retrieve me. No matter that the bond between Rhys and me … I couldn’t so much as feel it.
A numbness had spread through me. I needed to get out—now.
“The Autumn Court portal is that way.” Warning and reproach.
“I can’t go into Summer. They’ll kill me on sight.”
Silence. He released my arm. I swallowed, my throat so dry I could barely do so. “The only other door here leads Under the Mountain. We sealed off all the other entrances. If we go there, we could wind up trapped—or have to return.”
“Then we go to Autumn. And from there …” I trailed off before I finished. Home. But Lucien gleaned it anyway. And seemed to realize then—that’s what the Night Court was. Home.
I could almost see the word in his russet eye as he shook his head. Later.
I gave him a silent nod. Yes—later, we’d have it all out. “The Autumn Court will be as dangerous as Summer,” he warned.
“I just need somewhere to hide—to lie low until … until we can winnow again.”
A faint buzzing and ringing filled my ears. And I felt my magic vanish entirely.
“I know a place,” Lucien said, walking toward the cave that would take us to his home.
To the lands of the family who’d betrayed him as badly as this court had betrayed mine.
We hurried through the hills, swift and silent as shadows.
The cave to the Autumn Court had been left unguarded. Lucien looked at me over his shoulder as if to ask if I, too, had been responsible for the lack of guards who were always stationed here.
I gave him another nod. I’d slid into their minds before we’d left, making sure this door would be left open. Cassian had taught me to always have a second escape route. Always.
Lucien paused before the swirling gloom of the cave mouth, the blackness like a wyrm poised to devour us both. A muscle feathered in his jaw.
I said, “Stay, if you want. What’s done is done.”
For Hybern was coming—already here. I had debated it for weeks: whether it was better to claim the Spring Court for ourselves, or to let it fall to our enemies.
But it could not remain neutral—a barrier between our forces in the North and the humans in the South. It would have been easy to call in Rhys and Cassian, to have the latter bring in an Illyrian legion to claim the territory when it was weakest after my own maneuverings. Depending on how much mobility Cassian had retained—if he was still healing.
Yet then we’d hold one territory—with five other courts between us. Sympathy might have swayed for the Spring Court; others might have joined Hybern against us, considering our conquest here proof of our wickedness. But if Spring fell to Hybern … We could rally the other courts to us. Charge as one from the North, drawing Hybern in close.
“You were right,” Lucien declared at last. “That girl I knew did die Under the Mountain.”
I wasn’t sure if it was an insult. But I nodded all the same. “At least we can agree on that.” I stepped into the awaiting cold and dark.
Lucien fell into step beside me as we strode beneath the archway of carved, crude stone, our blades out as we left behind the warmth and green of eternal spring.
And in the distance, so faint I thought I might have imagined it, a beast’s roar cleaved the land.
The cold was what hit me first.
Brisk, crisp cold, laced with loam and rotting things.
In the twilight, the world beyond the narrow cave mouth was a latticework of red and gold and brown and green, the trees thick and old, the mossy ground strewn with rocks and boulders that cast long shadows.
We emerged, blades out, barely breathing beyond a trickle of air.
But there were no Autumn Court sentries guarding the entrance to Beron’s realm—none that we could see or scent.
Without my magic, I was blind again, unable to sweep a net of awareness through the ancient, vibrant trees to catch any traces of nearby Fae minds.
Utterly helpless. That’s how I’d been before. How I’d survived so long without it … I didn’t want to consider.
We crept on cat-soft feet into the moss and stone and wood, our breath curling in front of us.
Keep moving, keep striding north. Rhys would have realized by now that our bond had gone dark—was likely trying to glean whether I had planned for that. Whether it was worth the risk of revealing our scheming to find me.
But until he did … until he could hear me, find me … I had to keep moving.
So I let Lucien lead the way, wishing I’d at least been able to shift my eyes to something that could pierce the darkening wood.
But my magic was still and frozen. A crutch I’d become too reliant upon.
We picked our way through the forest, the chill deepening with each vanishing shaft of sunlight.
We hadn’t spoken since we’d entered that cave between courts. From the stiffness of his shoulders, the hard angle of his jaw as he moved on silent, steady feet, I knew only our need for stealth kept his simmering questions at bay.
Night was fully overhead, the moon not yet risen, when he led us into another cave.
I balked at the entrance.
Lucien merely said, voice flat and as icy as the air, “It doesn’t lead anywhere. It curves away in the back—it’ll keep us out of sight.”
I let him go inside first nonetheless.
Every limb and movement turned sluggish, aching. But I trailed him into the cave, and around the bend he’d indicated.
Flint struck, and I found myself gazing at a makeshift camp of sorts.
The candle Lucien had ignited sat on a natural stone ledge, and on the floor nearby lay three bedrolls and old blankets, crusted with leaves and cobwebs. A little fire pit lay in the sloped center of the space, the ceiling above it charred.
No one had been here in months. Years.
“I used to stay here while hunting. Before—I left,” he said, examining a dusty, leather-bound book left on the stone ledge beside the candle. He set the tome down with a thump. “It’s just for the night. We’ll find something to eat in the morning.”
I only lifted the closest bedroll and smacked it a few times, leaves and clouds of dust flying off before I laid it upon the ground.
“You truly planned this,” he said at last.
I sat on the bedroll and began sorting through my pack, hauling out the warmer clothes, food, and supplies Alis herself had placed within. “Yes.”
“That’s all you have to say?”
I sniffed at the food, wondering what was laced with faebane. It could be in everything. “It’s too risky to eat,” I admitted, evading his question.
Lucien was having none of it. “I knew. I knew you were lying the moment you unleashed that light in Hybern. My friend at the Dawn Court has the same power—her light is identical. And it does not do whatever horseshit you lied about it doing.”
I shoved my pack off my bedroll. “Then why not tell him? You were his faithful dog in every other sense.”
His eye seemed to simmer. As if being in his own lands set that molten ore inside him rising to the surface, even with the damper on his power. “Glad to see the mask is off, at least.”
Indeed, I let him see it all—didn’t alter or shape my face into anything but coldness.
Lucien snorted. “I didn’t tell him for two reasons. One, it felt like kicking a male already down. I couldn’t take that hope away from him.” I rolled my eyes. “Two,” he snapped, “I knew if I was correct and called you on it, you’d find a way to make sure I never saw her.”
My nails dug into my palms hard enough to hurt, but I remained seated on the bedroll as I bared my teeth at him. “And that’s why you’re here. Not because it’s right and he’s always been wrong, but just so you can get what you think you’re owed.”
“She is my mate and in my enemy’s hands—”
“I’ve made no secret from the start that Elain is safe and cared for.”
“And I’m supposed to believe you.”
“Yes,” I hissed. “You are. Because if I believed for one moment that my sisters were in danger, no High Lord or king would have kept me from going to save them.”
He just shook his head, the candlelight dancing over his hair.
“You have the gall to question my priorities regarding Elain—yet what was your motive where I was concerned? Did you plan to spare me from your path of destruction because of any genuine friendship, or simply for fear of what it might do to her?”
I didn’t answer.
“Well? What was your grand plan for me before Ianthe interfered?”
I pulled at a stray thread in the bedroll. “You would have been fine,” was all I said.
“And what about Tamlin? Did you plan to disembowel him before you left and simply not get the chance?”
I ripped the loose thread right out of the bedroll. “I debated it.”
“But?”
“But I think letting his court collapse around him is a better punishment. Certainly longer than an easy death.” I slung off Tamlin’s bandolier of knives, leather scraping against the rough stone floor. “You’re his emissary—surely you realize that slitting his throat, however satisfying, wouldn’t win us many allies in this war.” No, it’d give Hybern too many openings to undermine us.
He crossed his arms. Digging in for a good, long fight. Before he could do just that, I cut in, “I’m tired. And our voices echo. Let’s have it out when it’s not likely to get us caught and killed.”
His gaze was a brand.
But I ignored it as I nestled down on the bedroll, the material reeking of dust and rot. I pulled my cloak over me, but didn’t close my eyes.
I didn’t dare sleep—not when he might very well change his mind. Yet just lying down, not moving, not thinking … Some of the tightness in my body eased.
Lucien blew out the candle and I listened to the sounds of him settling down as well.
“My father will hunt you for taking his power if he finds out,” he said into the frigid dark. “And kill you for learning how to wield it.”
“He can get in line,” was all I said.
My exhaustion was a blanket over my senses as gray light stained the cave walls.
I’d spent most of the night shivering, jolting at every snap and sound in the forest outside, keenly aware of Lucien’s movements on his bedroll.
From his own haggard face as he sat up, I knew he hadn’t slept, either, perhaps wondering if I’d abandon him. Or if his family would find us first. Or mine.
We took each other’s measure.
“What now,” he rasped, scrubbing a broad hand over his face.
Rhys had not come—I had not heard a whisper of him down the bond.
I felt for my magic, but only ashes greeted me. “We head north,” I said. “Until the faebane is out of our systems and we can winnow.” Or I could contact Rhys and the others.
“My father’s court lies due northward. We’ll have to go to the east or west to avoid it.”
“No. East takes us too close to the Summer Court border. And I won’t lose time by going too far west. We go straight north.”
“My father’s sentries will easily spot us.”
“Then we’ll have to remain unseen,” I said, rising.
I dumped the last of the contaminated food from my pack. Let the scavengers have it.
Walking through the woods of the Autumn Court felt like striding inside a jewel box.
Even with all that potentially hunted us now, the colors were so vivid it was an effort not to gawk and gape.
By midmorning, the rime had melted away under the buttery sun to reveal what was suitable for eating. My stomach growled with every step, and Lucien’s red hair gleamed like the leaves above us as he scanned the woods for anything to fill our bellies.
His woods, by blood and law. He was a son of this forest, and here … He looked crafted from it. For it. Even that gold eye.
Lucien eventually stopped at a jade stream wending through a granite-flanked gully, a spot he claimed had once been rich with trout.
I was in the process of constructing a rudimentary fishing pole when he waded into the stream, boots off and pants rolled to his knees, and caught one with his bare hands. He’d tied his hair up, a few strands of it falling into his face as he swooped down again and threw a second trout onto the sandy bank where I’d been trying to find a substitute for fishing twine.
We remained silent as the fish eventually stopped flapping, their sides catching and gleaming with all the colors so bright above us.
Lucien picked them up by their tails, as if he’d done it a thousand times. He might very well have, right here in this stream.
“I’ll clean them while you start the fire.” In the daylight, the glow of the flames wouldn’t be noticed. Though the smoke … a necessary risk.
We worked and ate in silence, the crackling fire offering the only conversation.
We hiked north for five days, hardly exchanging a word.
Beron’s seat was so vast it took us three days to enter, pass through, and clear it. Lucien led us through the outskirts, tense at every call and rustle.
The Forest House was a sprawling complex, Lucien informed me during the few times we risked or bothered to speak to each other. It had been built in and around the trees and rocks, and only its uppermost levels were visible above the ground. Below, it tunneled a few levels into the stone. But its sprawl generated its size. You might walk from one end of the House to the other and it would take you half the morning. There were layers and circles of sentries ringing it: in the trees, on the ground, atop the moss-coated shingles and stones of the House itself.
No enemies approached Beron’s home without his knowledge.
None left without his permission.
I knew we’d passed beyond Lucien’s known map of their patrol routes and stations when his shoulders sagged.
Mine were slumped already.
I had barely slept, only letting myself do so when Lucien’s breathing slid into a different, deeper rhythm. I knew I couldn’t keep it up for long, but without the ability to shield, to sense any danger …
I wondered if Rhys was looking for me. If he’d felt the silence.
I should have gotten a message out. Told him I was going and how to find me.
The faebane—that was why the bond had sounded so muffled.
Perhaps I should have killed Ianthe outright.
But what was done was done.
I was rubbing at my aching eyes, taking a moment’s rest beneath our new bounty: an apple tree, laden with fat, succulent fruit.
I’d filled my bag with what I could fit inside. Two cores already lay discarded beside me, the sweet rotting scent as lulling as the droning of the bees gorging themselves on fallen apples. A third apple was already primed and poised for eating atop my outstretched legs.
After what the Hybern royals had done, I should have sworn off apples forever, but hunger had always blurred lines for me.
Lucien, sitting a few feet away, chucked his fourth apple into the bushes as I bit into mine. “The farmlands and fields are near,”
he announced. “We’ll have to stay out of sight. My father doesn’t pay well for his crops, and the land-workers will earn any extra coin they can.”
“Even selling out the location of one of the High Lord’s sons?”
“Especially that way.”
“They didn’t like you?”
His jaw tightened. “As the youngest of seven sons, I wasn’t particularly needed or wanted. Perhaps it was a good thing. I was able to study for longer than my father allowed my brothers before shoving them out the door to rule over some territory within our lands, and I could train for as long as I liked, since no one believed I’d be dumb enough to kill my way up the long list of heirs. And when I grew bored with studying and fighting … I learned what I could of the land from its people. Learned about the people, too.”
He eased to his feet with a groan, his unbound hair glimmering as the midday sun overhead set the blood and wine hues aglow.
“I’d say that sounds more High-Lord-like than the life of an idle, unwanted son.”
A long, steely look. “Did you think it was mere hatred that prompted my brothers to do their best to break and kill me?”
Despite myself, a shudder rippled down my spine. I finished off the apple and uncoiled to my feet, plucking another off a low-hanging branch. “Would you want it—your father’s crown?”
“No one’s ever asked me that,” Lucien mused as we moved on, dodging fallen, rotting apples. The air was sticky-sweet. “The bloodshed that would be required to earn that crown wouldn’t be worth it. Neither would its festering court. I’d gain a crown—only to rule over a crafty, two-faced people.”
“Lord of Foxes,” I said, snorting as I remembered that mask he’d once worn. “But you never answered my question—about why the people here would sell you out.”
The air ahead lightened, and a golden field of barley undulated toward a distant tree line.
“After Jesminda, they would.”
Jesminda. He’d never spoken her name.
Lucien slid between the swaying, bobbing stalks. “She was one of them.” The words were barely audible over the sighing barley.
“And when I didn’t protect her … It was a betrayal of their trust, too. I ran to some of their houses while fleeing my brothers. They turned me out for what I let happen to her.”
Waves of gold and ivory rolled around us, the sky a crisp, unmarred blue.
“I can’t blame them for it,” he said.
We cleared the fertile valley by the late afternoon. When Lucien offered to stop for the night, I insisted we keep going—right into the steep foothills that leaped into gray, snowcapped mountains that marked the start of the shared range with the Winter Court. If we could get over the border in a day or two, perhaps my powers would have returned enough to contact Rhys—or winnow the rest of the way home.
The hike wasn’t an easy one.
Great, craggy boulders made up the ascent, flecked with moss and long, white grasses that hissed like adders. The wind ripped at our hair, the temperature dropping the higher we climbed.
Tonight … We might have to risk a fire tonight. Just to stay alive.
Lucien was panting as we scaled a hulking boulder, the valley sprawling away behind, the wood a tangled river of color beyond it. There had to be a pass into the range at some point—out of sight.
“How are you not winded,” he panted, hauling himself onto the flat top.
I shoved back the hair that had torn free of my braid to whip my face. “I trained.”
“I gathered that much after you took on Dagdan and walked away from it.”
“I had the element of surprise on my side.”
“No,” Lucien said quietly as I reached for a foothold in the next boulder. “That was all you.” My nails barked as I dug my fingers into the rock and heaved myself up. Lucien added, “You had my back—with them, with Ianthe. Thank you.”
The words hit something low in my gut, and I was glad for the wind that kept roaring around us, if only to hide the burning in my eyes.
I slept—finally.
With the crackling fire in our latest cave, the heat and the relative remoteness were enough to finally drag me under.
And in my dreams, I think I swam through Lucien’s mind, as if some small ember of my power was at last returning.
I dreamed of our cozy fire, and the craggy walls, the entire space barely big enough to fit us and the fire. I dreamed of the howling, dark night beyond, of all the sounds that Lucien so carefully sorted through while he kept watch.
His attention slid to me at one point and lingered.
I had never known how young, how human I looked when I slept. My braid was a rope over my shoulder, my mouth slightly parted, my face haggard with days of little rest and food.
I dreamed that he removed his cloak and added it over my blanket.
Then I ebbed away, flowing out of his head as my dreams shifted and sailed elsewhere. I let a sea of stars rock me into sleep.
A hand gripped my face so hard the groaning of my bones jolted me awake.
“Look who we found,” a cold male voice drawled.
I knew that face—the red hair, the pale skin, the smirk. Knew the faces of the other two males in the cave, a snarling Lucien pinned beneath them.
His brothers.
“Father,” the one now holding a knife to my throat said to Lucien,
“is rather put out that you didn’t stop by to say hello.”
“We’re on an errand and can’t be delayed,” Lucien answered smoothly, mastering himself.
That knife pressed a fraction harder into my skin as he let out a humorless laugh. “Right. Rumor has it you two have run off together, cuckolding Tamlin.” His grin widened. “I didn’t think you had it in you, little brother.”
“He had it in her, it seems,” one of the others sniggered.
I slid my gaze to the male above me. “You will release us.”
“Our esteemed father wishes to see you,” he said with a snake’s smile. The knife didn’t waver. “So you will come with us to his home.”
“Eris,” Lucien warned.
The name clanged through me. Above me, mere inches away
… Mor’s former betrothed. The male who had abandoned her when he found her brutalized body on the border. The High Lord’s heir.
I could have sworn phantom talons bit into my palms.
A day or two more, and I might have been able to slash them across his throat.
But I didn’t have that time. I only had now. I had to make it count.
Eris merely said to me, cold and bored, “Get up.”
I felt it then—stirring awake as if some stick had poked it. As if being here, in this territory, amongst its blooded royals, had somehow sparked it to life, boiling past that poison. Turning that poison to steam.
With his knife still angled against my neck, I let Eris haul me to my feet, the other two dragging Lucien before he could stand on his own.
Make it count. Use my surroundings.
I caught Lucien’s eye.
And he saw the sweat beading on my temple, my upper lip, as my blood heated.
A slight bob of his chin was his only sign of understanding.
Eris would bring us to Beron, and the High Lord would either kill us for sport, sell us to the highest bidder, or hold us indefinitely.
And after what they had done to Lucien’s lover, what they’d done to Mor …
“After you,” Eris said smoothly, lowering that knife at last. He shoved me a step.
I’d been waiting. Balance, Cassian had taught me, was crucial to winning a fight.
And as Eris’s shove caused him to get on uneven footing, I turned my propelled step on him.
Twisting, so fast he didn’t see me get into his open guard, I drove my elbow into his nose.
Eris stumbled back.
Flame slammed into the other two, and Lucien hurtled out of the way as they shouted and fell deeper into the cave.
I unleashed every drop of the flame in me, a wall of it between us and them. Sealing his brothers inside the cave.
“Run,” I gasped out, but Lucien was already at my side, a steadying hand under my arm as I burned that flame hotter and hotter. It wouldn’t keep them contained for long, and I could indeed feel someone’s power rising to challenge mine.
But there was another force to wield.
Lucien understood the same moment I did.
Sweat simmered on Lucien’s brow as a pulse of flame-licked power slammed into the stones just above us. Dust and debris rained down.
I threw any trickle of magic into Lucien’s next blow.
His next.
As Eris’s livid face emerged from my net of flame, glowing like a new-forged god of wrath, Lucien and I brought down the cave ceiling.
Fire burst through the small cracks like a thousand flaming serpents’ tongues—but the cave-in did not so much as tremble.
“Hurry,” Lucien panted, and I didn’t waste breath agreeing as we staggered into the night.
Our packs, our weapons, our food … all inside that cave.
I had two daggers on me, Lucien one. I’d been wearing my cloak, but … he’d indeed given me his. He shivered against the cold as we dragged and clawed our way up the mountain slope, and did not dare stop.
Had I still remained human, I would have been dead.
The cold was bone-deep, the screaming wind lashing us like burning whips. My teeth clacked against each other, my fingers so stiff I could scarcely grapple onto the icy granite with each mile we staggered through the mountains. Perhaps both of us were spared from an icy death by the kernel of flame that had just barely kindled inside our veins.
We didn’t pause once, an unspoken fear that if we did, the cold would leech any lingering warmth and we’d never again move. Or Lucien’s brothers would gain ground.
I tried, over and over, to shout down the bond to Rhys. To winnow. To grow wings and attempt to fly us out of the mountain pass we trudged through, the snow waist-deep and so densely packed in places we had to crawl over it, our skin scraped raw from the ice.
But the faebane’s stifling grip still held the majority of my power in check.
We had to be close to the Winter Court border, I told myself as we squinted against a blast of icy wind through the other end of the narrow mountain pass. Close—and once we were over it, Eris and the others wouldn’t dare set foot into another court’s territory.
My muscles screamed with every step, my boots soaked through with snow, my feet perilously numb. I’d spent enough human winters in the forest to know the dangers of exposure—the threat of cold and wet.
Lucien, a step behind me, panted hard as the walls of rock and snow parted to reveal a bitter, star-flecked night—and more mountains beyond. I almost whimpered.
“We’ve got to keep going,” he said, snow crusting the stray strands of his hair, and I wondered if the sound had indeed left me.
Ice tickled my frozen nostrils. “We can’t last long—we need to get warm and rest.”
“My brothers—”
“We will die if we continue.” Or lose fingers and toes at the best. I pointed to the mountain slope ahead, a hazardous plunge down. “We can’t risk that at night. We need to find a cave and try to make a fire.”
“With what?” he snapped. “Do you see any wood?”
I only continued on. Arguing just wasted energy—and time.
And I didn’t have an answer, anyway.
I wondered if we’d make it through the night.
We found a cave. Deep and shielded from wind or sight. Lucien and I carefully covered our tracks, making sure the wind blew in our favor, veiling our scents.
That was where our luck ran out. No wood to be found; no fire in either of our veins.
So we used our only option: body heat. Huddled in the farthest reaches of the cave, we sat thigh to thigh and arm to arm beneath my cloak, shuddering with cold and dripping wet.
I could scarcely hear the hollow scream of the wind over my chattering teeth. And his.
Find me, find me, find me, I tried shouting down that bond. But my mate’s wry voice didn’t answer.
There was only the roaring void.
“Tell me about her—about Elain,” Lucien said quietly. As if the death that squatted in the dark beside us had drawn his thoughts to his own mate as well.
I debated not saying anything, shaking too hard to dredge up speech, but … “She loves her garden. Always loved growing things. Even when we were destitute, she managed to tend a little garden in the warmer months. And when—when our fortune returned, she took to tending and planting the most beautiful gardens you’ve ever seen. Even in Prythian. It drove the servants mad, because they were supposed to do the work and ladies were only meant to clip a rose here and there, but Elain would put on a hat and gloves and kneel in the dirt, weeding. She acted like a purebred lady in every regard but that.”
Lucien was silent for a long moment. “Acted,” he murmured.
“You talk about her as if she’s dead.”
“I don’t know what changes the Cauldron wrought on her. I don’t think going home is an option. No matter how she might yearn to.”
“Surely Prythian is a better alternative, war or no.”
I steeled myself before saying, “She is engaged, Lucien.”
I felt every inch of him go stiff beside me. “To whom.”
Flat, cold words. With the threat of violence simmering beneath.
“To a human lord’s son. The lord hates faeries—has dedicated his life and wealth to hunting them. Us. I was told that though it’s a love match, her betrothed’s father was keen to have access to her considerable dowry to continue his crusade against faerie-kind.”
“Elain loves this lord’s son.” Not quite a question.
“She says she does. Nesta—Nesta thought the father and his obsession with killing faeries was bad enough to raise some alarms. She never voiced the concern to Elain. Neither did I.”
“My mate is engaged to a human male.” He spoke more to himself than to me.
“I’m sorry if—”
“I want to see her. Just once. Just—to know.”
“To know what?”
He hitched my damp cloak higher around us. “If she is worth fighting for.”
I couldn’t bring myself to say she was, to give him that sort of hope when Elain might very well do everything in her power to hold to her engagement. Even if immortality had already rendered it impossible.
Lucien leaned his head back against the rock wall behind us.
“And then I’ll ask your mate how he survived it—knowing you were engaged to someone else. Sharing another male’s bed.”
I tucked my freezing hands under my arms, gazing toward the gloom ahead.
“Tell me when you knew,” he demanded, his knee pressing into mine. “That Rhysand was your mate. Tell me when you stopped loving Tamlin and started loving him instead.”
I chose not to answer.
“Was it going on before you even left?”
I whipped my head to him, even if I could barely make out his features in the dark. “I never touched Rhysand like that until months later.”
“You kissed Under the Mountain.”
“I had as little choice in that as I did in the dancing.”
“And yet this is the male you now love.”
He didn’t know—he had no inkling of the personal history, the secrets, that had opened my heart to the High Lord of the Night Court. They were not my stories to tell.
“One would think, Lucien, that you’d be glad I fell in love with my mate, given that you’re in the same situation Rhys was in six
months ago.”
“You left us.”
Us. Not Tamlin. Us. The words echoed into the dark, toward the howling wind and lashing snow beyond the bend.
“I told you that day in the woods: you abandoned me long before I ever physically left.” I shivered again, hating every point of contact, that I so desperately needed his warmth. “You fit into the Spring Court as little as I did, Lucien. You enjoyed its pleasures and diversions. But don’t pretend you weren’t made for something more than that.”
His metal eye whirred. “And where, exactly, do you believe I will fit in? The Night Court?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t have one, honestly. As High Lady, I could likely offer him a position, if we survived long enough to make it home. I’d do it mostly to keep Elain from ever going to the Spring Court, but I had little doubt Lucien would be able to hold his own against my friends. And some small, horrible part of me enjoyed the thought of taking one more thing away from Tamlin, something vital, something essential.
“We should leave at dawn,” was my only reply.
We lasted the night.
Every part of me was stiff and aching when we began our careful trek down the mountain. Not a whisper or trace of Lucien’s brothers—or any sort of life.
I didn’t care, not when we at last passed over the border and into Winter Court lands.
Beyond the mountain, a great ice-plain sparkled into the distance. It would take days to cross, but it didn’t matter: I’d awoken with enough power in my veins to warm us with a small fire. Slowly—so slowly, the effects of the faebane ebbed.
I was willing to wager that we’d be halfway across the ice by the time we could winnow out of here. If our luck held and no one
I ran through every lesson Rhys had taught me about the Winter Court and its High Lord, Kallias.
Towering, exquisite palaces, full of roaring hearths and bedecked in evergreens. Carved sleighs were the court’s preferred method of transportation, hauled by velvet-antlered reindeer whose splayed hooves were ideal for the ice and snow.
Their forces were well trained, but they often relied on the great, white bears that stalked the realm for any unwanted visitors.
I prayed none of them waited on the ice, their coats perfectly blended into the terrain.
The Night Court’s relationship with Winter was fine enough, still tenuous, as all our bonds were, after Amarantha. After she’d butchered so many of them—including, I remembered with no small surge of nausea, dozens of Winter Court children.
I couldn’t imagine it—the loss, the rage and grief. I’d never had the nerve to ask Rhys, in those months of training, who the children had belonged to. What the consequences had been. If it was considered the worst of Amarantha’s crimes, or just one of countless others.
But despite any tentative bonds, Winter was one of the Seasonal Courts. It might side with Tamlin, with Tarquin. Our best allies remained the Solar Courts: Dawn and Day. But they lay far to the north—above the demarcation line between the Solar and Seasonal Courts. That slice of sacred, unclaimed land that held Under the Mountain. And the Weaver’s cottage.
We’d be gone before we ever had to set foot in that lethal, ancient forest.
It was another day and night before we cleared the mountains entirely and set foot on the thick ice. Nothing grew, and I could only tell when we were on solid land by the dense snow packed beneath. Otherwise, too frequently, the ice was clear as glass— revealing dark, depthless lakes beneath.
At least we didn’t encounter any of the white bears. But the real threat, we both quickly realized, was the utter lack of shelter: out
on the ice, there was none to be found against the wind and cold.
And if we lit a fire with our feeble magic, anyone nearby would spot it. No matter the practicality of lighting a fire atop a frozen lake.
The sun was just slipping above the horizon, staining the plain with gold, the shadows still a bruised blue, when Lucien said,
“Tonight, we’ll melt some of the ice pack enough to soften it—and build a shelter.”
I considered. We were barely a hundred feet onto what seemed to be an endless lake. It was impossible to tell where it ended.
“You think we’ll be out on the ice for that long?”
Lucien frowned toward the dawn-stained horizon. “Likely, but who knows how far it extends?” Indeed, the snowdrifts hid much of the ice beneath.
“Perhaps there’s some other way around …,” I mused, glancing back toward our abandoned little camp.
We looked at the same time. And both beheld the three figures now standing at the lake edge. Smiling.
Eris lifted a hand wreathed in flame.
Flame—to melt the ice on which we stood.
“Run,” Lucien breathed.
I didn’t dare take my eyes off his brothers. Not as Eris lowered that hand to the frozen edge of the lake. “Run where, exactly?”
Flesh met ice and steam rippled. The ice went opaque, thawing in a line that shot for us—
We ran. The slick ice made for a treacherous sprint, my ankles roaring with the effort of keeping me upright.
Ahead, the lake stretched on forever. And with the sun barely awake, the dangers would be even harder to spot—
“Faster,” Lucien ordered. “Don’t look!” he barked as I began to turn my head to see if they’d followed. He lashed out a hand to grip my elbow, steadying me before I could even register that I’d stumbled.
Where would we go where would we go where would we go Water splashed beneath my boots—thawed ice. Eris had to either be expending all his power to get through millennia of ice, or was just doing it slowly to torture us— “Zag,” Lucien panted. “We need to—”
He shoved me aside, and I staggered, arms wheeling.
Just as an arrow ricocheted off the ice where I’d been standing.
“Faster,” Lucien snapped, and I didn’t hesitate.
I hurtled into a flat-out sprint, Lucien and I weaving in and out of each other’s paths as those arrows continued firing. Ice sprayed
where they landed, and no matter how fast we ran, the ground beneath us melted and melted—
Ice. I had ice in my veins, and now that we were over the border of the Winter Court—
I didn’t care if they saw it—my power. Kallias’s power. Not when the alternatives were far worse.
I threw out a hand before us as a melting splotch began to spread, ice groaning.
A spray of ice shot from my palm, freezing the lake once more.
With each pump of my arms as I ran, I fired that ice from my palms, solidifying what Eris sought to melt ahead of us. Maybe—
just maybe we could clear the lake, and if they were stupid enough to be atop it when we did … If I could form ice, I could certainly un-form it.
I crossed paths with Lucien again, meeting his wide eyes as we did, and opened my mouth to tell him my plan, when Eris appeared.
Not behind. Ahead.
But it was the other brother at his side, arrow aimed and already flying for me, who drew the shout from my throat.
I lunged to the side, rolling.
Not fast enough.
The arrow’s edge sliced the shell of my ear, my cheek, leaving a stinging wake. Lucien shouted, but another arrow was flying.
It went clean through my right forearm this time.
Ice sliced into my face, my hands, as I went down, knees barking, arm shrieking in agony at the impact—
Behind, steps thudded on ice as the third brother closed in.
I bit my lip hard enough to draw blood as I ripped away the cloth of my jacket and shirt from my forearm, snapped the arrow in two, and tore the pieces from my flesh. My roar shattered and bounced across the ice.
Eris had taken one step toward me, smiling like a wolf, when I was up again, my last two Illyrian knives in my palms, my right arm screaming at the movement—
Around me, the ice began to melt.
“This can end with you going under, begging me to get you out once that ice instantly refreezes,” Eris drawled. Behind him, cut off by his brothers, Lucien had drawn his own knife and now sized up the other two. “Or this can end with you agreeing to take my hand.
But either way, you will be coming with me.”
Already, the flesh in my arm was knitting together. Healing—
from Dawn’s powers reawakening in my veins—
And if that was working—
I didn’t give Eris time to read my move.
I sucked in a sharp breath.
White, blinding light erupted from me. Eris swore, and I ran.
Not toward him, not when I was still too injured to wield my knives. But away—toward that distant shore. Half-blinded myself, I stumbled and staggered until I was clear of the treacherous, melting splotches, then sprinted.
I made it all of twenty feet before Eris winnowed in front of me and struck.
A backhanded blow to the face, so hard my teeth went through my lip.
He struck again before I could even fall, a punch to my gut that ripped the air from my lungs. Beyond me, Lucien had unleashed himself upon his two brothers. Metal and fire blasted and collided, ice spraying.
I’d no sooner hit the ice than Eris grabbed me by the hair, right at the roots, the grip so brutal tears stung my eyes. But he dragged me back toward that shore, back across the ice— I fought against the blow to my gut, fought to get a wisp of air down my throat, into my lungs. My boots scraped against the ice as I feebly kicked, yet Eris held firm—
I think Lucien shouted my name.
I opened my mouth, but a gag of fire shoved its way between my lips. It didn’t burn, but was hot enough to tell me it would if Eris willed it. Equal bands of flame wrapped around my wrists, my ankles. My throat.
I couldn’t remember—couldn’t remember what to do, how to move, how to stop this—
Closer and closer to the shore, to the awaiting party of sentries that winnowed in out of nowhere. No, no, no—
A shadow slammed into the earth before us, cracking the ice toward every horizon.
Not a shadow.
An Illyrian warrior.
Seven red Siphons glinted over his scaled black armor as Cassian tucked in his wings and snarled at Eris with five centuries’
worth of rage.
Not dead. Not hurt. Whole.
His wings repaired and strong.
I loosed a shuddering sob over the burning gag. Cassian’s Siphons flickered in response, as if the sight of me, at Eris’s hand
—
Another impact struck the ice behind us. Shadows skittered in its wake.
Azriel.
I began crying in earnest, some leash I’d kept on myself snapping free as my friends landed. As I saw that Azriel, too, was alive, was healed. As Cassian drew twin Illyrian blades, the sight of them like home, and said to Eris with lethal calm, “I suggest you drop my lady.”
Eris’s grip on my hair only tightened, wringing a whimper from me.
The wrath that twisted Cassian’s face was world-ending.
But his hazel eyes slid to mine. A silent command.
He had spent months training me. Not just to attack, but to defend. Had taught me, over and over, how to get free of a captor’s grasp. How to manage not only my body, but my mind.
As if he’d known that it was a very real possibility that this scenario would one day happen.
Eris had bound my limbs, but—I could still move them. Still use parts of my magic.
And getting him off balance long enough to let go, to let Cassian jump between us and take on the High Lord’s son …
Towering over me, Eris didn’t so much as glance down as I twisted, spinning on the ice, and slammed my bound legs up between his.
He lurched, bending over with a grunt.
Right into the fisted, bound hands I drove into his nose. Bone crunched, and his hand sprang free of my hair.
I rolled, scrambling away. Cassian was already there.
Eris hardly had time to draw his sword as Cassian brought his own down upon him.
Steel against steel rang out across the ice. Sentries on the shore unleashed arrows of wood and magic—only to bounce against a shield of blue.
Azriel. Across the ice, he and Lucien were engaging the other two brothers. That any of Lucien’s siblings held out against the Illyrians was a testament to their own training, but—
I focused the ice in my veins on the gag in my mouth, the binds around my wrists and ankles. Ice to smother fire, to sing it to sleep
…
Cassian and Eris clashed, danced back, clashed again.
Ropes of fire snapped free, dissolving with a hiss of steam.
I was on my feet again, reaching for a weapon I did not have.
My daggers had been lost forty feet away.
Cassian got past Eris’s guard with brutal efficiency. And Eris screamed as the Illyrian blade punched through his gut.
Blood, red as rubies, stained the ice and snow.
For a heartbeat, I saw how it would play out: three of Beron’s sons dead at our hands. A temporary satisfaction for me, five centuries of satisfaction for Cassian, Azriel, and Mor, but if Beron still debated what side to support in this war …
I had other weapons to use.
“Stop,” I said.
The word was a soft, cold command.
And Azriel and Cassian obeyed.
Lucien’s other two brothers were back-to-back, bloody and gaping. Lucien himself was panting, sword still raised, as Azriel flicked the blood off his own blade and stalked toward me.
I met the hazel eyes of the shadowsinger. The cool face that hid such pain—and kindness. He had come. Cassian had come.
The Illyrians fell into place beside me. Eris, a hand pressed to his gut, was breathing wetly, glaring at us.
Glaring—then considering. Watching the three of us as I said to Eris, to his other two brothers, to the sentries on the shore, “You all deserve to die for this. And for much, much more. But I am going to spare your miserable lives.”
Even with a wound through his gut, Eris’s lip curled.
Cassian snarled his warning.
I only removed the glamour I’d kept on myself these weeks.
With the sleeve of my jacket and shirt gone, there was nothing but smooth skin where that wound had been. Smooth skin that now became adorned with swirls and whorls of ink. The markings of my new title—and my mating bond.
Lucien’s face drained of color as he strode for us, stopping a healthy distance from Azriel’s side.
“I am High Lady of the Night Court,” I said quietly to them all.
Even Eris stopped sneering. His amber eyes widened, something like fear now creeping into them.
“There’s no such thing as a High Lady,” one of Lucien’s brothers spat.
A faint smile played on my mouth. “There is now.”
And it was time for the world to know it.
I caught Cassian’s gaze, finding pride glimmering there—and relief.
“Take me home,” I ordered him, my chin high and unwavering.
Then to Azriel, “Take us both home.” I said to the Autumn Court’s scions, “We’ll see you on the battlefield.”
Let them decide whether it was better to be fighting beside us or against us.
I turned to Cassian, who opened his arms and tucked me in tight before launching us skyward in a blast of wings and power.
Beside us, Azriel and Lucien did the same.
When Eris and the others were nothing but specks of black on white below, when we were sailing high and fast, Cassian observed, “I don’t know who looks more uncomfortable: Az or Lucien Vanserra.”
I chuckled, glancing over my shoulder to where the shadowsinger carried my friend, both of them making a point not to speak, look, or talk. “Vanserra?”
“You never knew his family name?”
I met those laughing, fierce hazel eyes.
Cassian’s smile softened. “Hello, Feyre.”
My throat tightened to the point of pain, and I threw my arms around his neck, embracing him tightly.
“I missed you, too,” Cassian murmured, squeezing me.
We flew until we reached the border of the sacred, eighth territory.
And when Cassian set us down in a snowy field before the ancient wood, I took one look at the blond female in Illyrian leathers pacing between the gnarled trees and launched into a sprint.
Mor held me as tightly as I gripped her.
“Where is he?” I asked, refusing to let go, to lift my head from her shoulder.
“He—it’s a long story. Far away, but racing home. Right now.”
Mor pulled back enough to scan my face. Her mouth tightened at the lingering injuries, and she gently scraped away flecks of dried blood caked on my ear. “He picked up on you—the bond— minutes ago. The three of us were closest. I winnowed in Cassian, but with Eris and the others there …” Guilt dimmed her eyes.
“Relations with the Winter Court are strained—we thought if I was out here on the border, it might keep Kallias’s forces from looking
south. At least long enough to get you.” And to avoid an interaction with Eris that Mor was perhaps not ready for.
I shook my head at the shame still shadowing her usually bright features. “I understand.” I embraced her again. “I understand.”
Mor’s answering squeeze was rib-crushing.
Azriel and Lucien landed, plumes of snow spraying in the former’s wake. Mor and I released each other at last, my friend’s face going grave as she sized up Lucien. Snow and blood and dirt coated him—coated us both.
Cassian explained to Mor, “He fought against Eris and the other two.”
Mor’s throat bobbed, noting the blood staining Cassian’s hands
—realizing it wasn’t his own. Scenting it, no doubt, as she blurted,
“Eris. Did you—”
“He remains alive,” Azriel answered, shadows curling around the clawed tips of his wings, so stark against the snow beneath our boots. “So do the others.”
Lucien was glancing between all of them, wary and quiet. What he knew of Mor’s history with his eldest brother … I’d never asked. Never wanted to.
Mor tossed her mass of golden waves over a shoulder. “Then let’s go home.”
“Which one?” I asked carefully.
Mor swept her attention over Lucien once more. I almost pitied Lucien for the weight in her gaze, the utter judgment. The stare of the Morrigan—whose gift was pure truth.
Whatever she beheld in Lucien was enough for her to say, “The town house. You have someone waiting there for you.”
I had not let myself imagine it: the moment I’d again stand in the wood-paneled foyer of the town house. When I’d hear the song of the gulls soaring high above Velaris, smell the brine of the Sidra River that wended through the heart of the city, feel the warmth of the sunshine streaming through the windows upon my back.
Mor had winnowed us all, and now stood behind me, panting softly, as we watched Lucien survey our surroundings.
His metal eye whirred, while the other warily scanned the rooms flanking the foyer: the dining room and sitting room overlooking the little front yard and street; then the stairs to the second level; then the hallway beside it that led to the kitchen and courtyard garden.
Then finally to the shut front door. To the city waiting beyond.
Cassian took up a place against the banister, crossing his arms with an arrogance I knew meant trouble. Azriel remained beside me, shadows wreathing his knuckles. As if battling High Lords’
sons was how they usually spent their days.
I wondered if Lucien knew that his first words here would either damn or save him. I wondered what my role in it would be.
No—it was my call.
High Lady. I—outranked them, my friends. It was my call to make whether Lucien was allowed to keep his freedom.
But their watchful silence was indication enough: let him decide his own fate.
At last, Lucien looked at me. At us.
He said, “There are children laughing in the streets.”
I blinked. He said it with such … quiet surprise. As if he hadn’t heard the sound in a long, long time.
I opened my mouth to reply, but someone else spoke for me.
“That they do so at all after Hybern’s attack is testament to how hard the people of Velaris have worked to rebuild.”
I whirled, finding Amren emerging from wherever she’d been sitting in the other room, the plush furniture hiding her small body.
She appeared exactly as she had the last time I’d seen her: standing in this very foyer, warning us to be careful in Hybern. Her chin-length, jet-black hair gleamed in the sunlight, her silver, unearthly eyes unusually bright as they met mine.
The delicate female bowed her head. As much of a gesture of obedience as a fifteen-thousand-year-old creature would make to a newly minted High Lady. And friend. “I see you brought home a new pet,” she said, nose crinkling with distaste.
Something like fear had entered Lucien’s eye, as if he, too, beheld the monster that lurked beneath that beautiful face.
Indeed, it seemed he had heard of her already. Before I could introduce him, Lucien bowed at the waist. Deeply. Cassian let out an amused grunt, and I shot him a warning glare.
Amren smiled slightly. “Already trained, I see.”
Lucien slowly straightened, as if he were standing before the open maw of some great plains-cat he did not wish to startle with sudden movements.
“Amren, this is Lucien … Vanserra.”
Lucien stiffened. “I don’t use my family’s name.” He clarified to Amren with another incline of his head, “Lucien will do.”
I suspected he’d ceased using that name the moment his lover’s heart had stopped beating.
Amren was studying that metal eye. “Clever work,” she said, then surveyed me. “Looks like someone clawed you up, girl.”
The wound in my arm, at least, had healed, though a nasty red mark remained. I assumed my face wasn’t much better. Before I
could answer her, Lucien asked, “What is this place?”
We all looked at him. “Home,” I said. “This is—my home.”
I could see the details now sinking in. The lack of darkness.
The lack of screaming. The scent of the sea and citrus, not blood and decay. The laughter of children that indeed continued.
The greatest secret in Prythian’s history.
“This is Velaris,” I explained. “The City of Starlight.”
His throat bobbed. “And you are High Lady of the Night Court.”
“Indeed she is.”
My blood stopped at the voice that drawled from behind me.
At the scent that hit me, awoke me. My friends began smiling.
I turned.
Rhysand leaned against the archway into the sitting room, arms crossed, wings nowhere to be seen, dressed in his usual immaculate black jacket and pants.
And as those violet eyes met mine, as that familiar half smile faded …
My face crumpled. A small, broken noise cracked from me.
Rhys was instantly moving, but my legs had already given out.
The foyer carpet cushioned the impact as I sank to my knees.
I covered my face with my hands while the past month crashed into me.
Rhys knelt before me, knee to knee.
Gently, he pulled my hands away from my face. Gently, he took my cheeks in his hands and brushed away my tears.
I didn’t care that we had an audience as I lifted my head and beheld the joy and concern and love shining in those remarkable eyes.
Neither did Rhys as he murmured, “My love,” and kissed me.
I’d no sooner slid my hands into his hair than he scooped me into his arms and stood in one smooth movement. I pulled my mouth from his, glancing toward a pallid Lucien, but Rhysand said to our companions without so much as looking at them, “Go find somewhere else to be for a while.”
He didn’t wait to see if they obeyed.
Rhys winnowed us up the stairs and launched into a steady, swift walk down the hallway. I peered down at the foyer in time to spy Mor grabbing Lucien’s arm and nodding to the others before they all vanished.
“Do you want to go over what happened at the Spring Court?” I asked, voice raw, as I studied my mate’s face.
No amusement, nothing but that predatory intensity, focused on my every breath. “There are other things I’d rather do first.”
He carried me into our bedroom—once his room, now full of our belongings. It was exactly as I’d last seen it: the enormous bed that he now strode for, the two armoires, the desk by the window that overlooked the courtyard garden now bursting with purple and pink and blue amid the lush greens.
I braced myself to be sprawled on the bed, but Rhys paused halfway across the room, the door snicking shut on a star-kissed wind.
Slowly, he set me on the plush carpet, blatantly sliding me down his body as he did so. As if he was as powerless to resist touching me, as reluctant to let go as I was with him.
And every place where our bodies met, all of him so warm and solid and real … I savored it, my throat tight as I placed a hand on his sculpted chest, the thunderous heartbeat beneath his black jacket echoing into my palm. The only sign of whatever torrent coursed through him as he skimmed his hands up my arms in a lingering caress and gripped my shoulders.
His thumbs stroked a gentle rhythm over my filthy clothes as he scanned my face.
Beautiful. He was even more beautiful than I had remembered, dreamed of during those weeks at the Spring Court.
For a long moment, we only breathed in each other’s air. For a long moment, all I could do was take the scent of him deep into my lungs, letting it settle inside me. My fingers tightened on his jacket.
Mate. My mate.
As if he’d heard it down the bond, Rhys finally murmured,
“When the bond went dark, I thought …” Fear—genuine terror shadowed his eyes, even as his thumbs continued stroking my shoulders, gentle and steady. “By the time I got to the Spring Court, you’d vanished. Tamlin was raging through that forest, hunting for you. But you hid your scent. And even I couldn’t— couldn’t find you—”
The snag in his words was a knife to my gut. “We went to the Autumn Court through one of the doors,” I said, setting my other hand on his arm. The corded muscles beneath shifted at my touch. “You couldn’t find me because two Hybern commanders drugged my food and drink with faebane—enough to extinguish my powers. I—I still don’t have full use.”
Cold rage now flickered across that beautiful face as his thumbs halted on my shoulders. “You killed them.”
Not entirely a question, but I nodded.
“Good.”
I swallowed. “Has Hybern sacked the Spring Court?”
“Not yet. Whatever you did … it worked. Tamlin’s sentries abandoned him. Over half his people refused to appear for the Tithe two days ago. Some are leaving for other courts. Some are murmuring of rebellion. It seems you made yourself quite beloved.
Holy, even.” Amusement at last warmed his features. “They were rather upset when they believed he’d allowed Hybern to terrorize you into fleeing.”
I traced the faint silver whorl of embroidery on the breast of his jacket, and I could have sworn he shuddered beneath the touch. “I suppose they’ll learn soon enough I’m well cared for.” Rhys’s hands tightened on my shoulders in agreement, as if he were about to show me just how well cared for I was, but I angled my head. “What about Ianthe—and Jurian?”
Rhysand’s powerful chest heaved beneath my hand as he blew out a breath. “Reports are murky on both. Jurian, it seems, has returned to the hand that feeds him. Ianthe …” Rhys lifted his brows. “I assume her hand is courtesy of you, and not the commanders.”
“She fell,” I said sweetly.
“Must have been some fall,” he mused, a dark smile dancing on those lips as he drifted even closer, the heat of his body seeping into me while his hands migrated from my shoulders to brush lazy lines down my back. I bit my lip, focusing on his words and not the urge to arch into the touch, to bury my face in his chest and do some exploring of my own. “She’s currently convalescing after her ordeal, apparently. Won’t leave her temple.”
It was my turn to murmur, “Good.” Perhaps one of those pretty acolytes of hers would get sick of her sanctimonious bullshit and smother Ianthe in her sleep.
I braced my hands on his hips, fully ready to slide beneath his jacket, needing to touch bare skin, but Rhys straightened, pulling back. Still close enough that one of his hands remained on my waist, but the other— He reached for my arm, gently examining the angry welt where my skin had been torn by an arrow. Darkness rumbled in the corner of the room. “Cassian let me into his mind just now—to show me what happened on the ice.” He stroked a thumb over the hurt, the touch featherlight. “Eris was always a male of limited days. Now Lucien might find himself closer to inheriting his father’s throne than he ever expected to be.”
My spine locked. “Eris is precisely as horrible as you painted him to be.”
Rhys’s thumb glided over my forearm again, leaving gooseflesh in its wake. A promise—not of the retribution he was contemplating, but of what awaited us in this room. The bed a few feet away. Until he murmured, “You declared yourself High Lady.”
“Was I not supposed to?”
He released my arm to brush his knuckles across my cheek.
“I’ve wanted to roar it from the rooftops of Velaris from the moment the priestess anointed you. How typical of you to upend my grand plans.”
A smile tugged on my lips. “It happened less than an hour ago.
I’m sure you could go crow from the chimney right now and everyone would give you credit for breaking the news.”
His fingers threaded through my hair, tilting my face up. That wicked smile grew, and my toes curled in their boots. “There’s my darling Feyre.”
His head dipped, his gaze fixated on my mouth, hunger lighting those violet eyes—
“Where are my sisters?” The thought clanged through me, jarring as a pealing bell.
Rhys paused, hand slipping from my hair as his smile faded.
“At the House of Wind.” He straightened, swallowing—as if it somehow checked him. “I can—take you to them.” Every word seemed to be an effort.
But he would, I realized. He’d shove down his need for me and take me to them, if that was what I wanted. My choice. It had always been my choice with him.
I shook my head. I wouldn’t see them—not yet. Not until I was steady enough to face them. “They’re well, though?”
His hesitation told me enough. “They’re safe.”
Not really an answer, but I wasn’t going to fool myself into thinking my sisters would be thriving. I leaned my brow against his chest. “Cassian and Azriel are healed,” I murmured against his jacket, breathing in the scent of him over and over as a tremor shuddered through me. “You told me that—and yet I didn’t … it didn’t sink in. Until now.”
Rhys ran a hand down my back, the other sliding to grip my hip.
“Azriel healed within a few days. Cassian’s wings … it was complex. But he’s been training every day to regain his strength.
The healer had to rebuild most of his wings—but he’ll be fine.”
I swallowed down the tightness in my throat and wrapped my arms around his waist, pressing my face wholly against his chest.
His hand tightened on my hip in answer, the other resting at my nape, holding me to him as I breathed, “Mor said you were far away—that was why you weren’t there.”
“No,” I said, lifting my head to scan his eyes, the guilt dampening them. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just …” I savored the feel of him beneath my palms. “Where were you?”
Rhys stilled, and I braced myself as he said casually, “I couldn’t very well let you do all the work to undermine our enemies, could I?”
I didn’t smile. “Where. Were. You.”
“With Az only recently back on his feet, I took it upon myself to do some of his work.”
I clenched my jaw. “Such as?”
He leaned down, nuzzling my throat. “Don’t you want to comfort your mate, who has missed you terribly these weeks?”
I planted a hand on his face and pushed him back, scowling. “I want my mate to tell me where the hell he was. Then he can get his comfort.”
Rhys nipped at my fingers, teeth snapping playfully. “Cruel, beautiful female.”
I watched him beneath lowered brows.
Rhys rolled his eyes, sighing. “I was on the continent. At the human queens’ palace.”
I choked. “You were where?”
“Technically, I was flying above it, but—”
“You went alone?”
He gaped at me. “Despite what our mistakes in Hybern might have suggested, I am capable of—”
“You went to the human world, to our enemies’ compound, alone?”
“I’d rather it be me than any of the others.”
That had been his problem from the start. Always him, always sacrificing—
“Why,” I demanded. “Why risk it? Is something happening?”
Rhys peered toward the window, as if he could see all the way to the mortal lands. His mouth tightened. “It’s the quiet on their side of the sea that bothers me. No whisper of armies gathered, no other human allies summoned. Since Hybern, we’ve heard nothing. So I thought to see for myself why that is.” He flicked my nose, tugging me closer again. “I’d just neared the edge of their territory when I felt the bond awaken again. I knew the others were closer, so I sent them.”
“You don’t need to explain.”
Rhys rested his chin atop my head. “I wanted to be there—to get you. Find you. Bring you home.”
“You do certainly enjoy a dramatic entrance.”
He chuckled, his breath warming my hair as I listened to the sound rumble through his body.
Of course he would have been working against Hybern while I was away. Had I expected them all to be sitting on their asses for over a month? And Rhys, constantly plotting, always a step ahead
… He would have used this time to his advantage. I debated asking about it, but right now, breathing him in, feeling his warmth
… Let it wait.
Rhys pressed a kiss to my hair. “You’re home.”
A shuddering, small sound came out of me as I nodded, squeezing him tighter. Home. Not just Velaris, but wherever he was, our family was.
Ebony claws stroked along the barrier in my mind—in affection and request.
I lowered my shields for him, just as his own dropped. His mind curled around mine, as surely as his body now held me.
“I missed you every moment,” Rhys said, leaning down to kiss the corner of my mouth. “Your smile.” His lips grazed over the shell of my ear and my back arched slightly. “Your laugh.” He pressed a kiss to my neck, right beneath my ear, and I tilted my head to give him access, biting down the urge to beg him to take more, to take faster as he murmured, “Your scent.”
My eyes fluttered closed, and his hands coasted around my hips to cup my rear, squeezing as he bent to kiss the center of my throat. “The sounds you make when I’m inside you.”
His tongue flicked over the spot where he’d kissed, and one of those sounds indeed escaped me. Rhys kissed the hollow of my collarbone, and my core went utterly molten. “My brave, bold, brilliant mate.”
He lifted his head, and it was an effort to open my eyes. To meet his stare as his hands roved in lazy lines down my back, over my rear, then up again. “I love you,” he said. And if I hadn’t already believed him, felt it in my very bones, the light in his face as he said the words …
Tears burned my eyes again, slipping free before I could control myself.
Rhys leaned in to lick them away. One after another. As he’d once done Under the Mountain.
“You have a choice,” he murmured against my cheekbone.
“Either I lick every inch of you clean …” His hand grazed the tip of my breast, circling lazily. As if we had days and days to do this.
“Or you can get into the bath that should be ready by now.”
I pulled away, lifting a brow. “Are you suggesting that I smell?”
Rhys smirked, and I could have sworn my core pounded in answer. “Never. But …” His eyes darkened, the desire and amusement fading as he took in my clothes. “There is blood on you. Yours, and others’. I thought I’d be a good mate and offer you a bath before I ravish you wholly.”
I huffed a laugh and brushed back his hair, savoring the silken, sable strands between my fingers. “So considerate. Though I can’t believe you kicked everyone out of the house so you could take me to bed.”
“One of the many benefits to being High Lord.”
“What a terrible abuse of power.”
That half smile danced on his mouth. “Well?”
“As much as I’d like to see you attempt to lick off a week’s worth of dirt, sweat, and blood …” His eyes gleamed with the challenge, and I laughed again. “Normal bath, please.”
He had the nerve to look vaguely disappointed. I poked him in the chest as I pushed away, aiming for the large bathing room
attached to the bedroom. The massive porcelain tub was already filled with steaming water, and—
“Bubbles?”
“Do you have a moral objection to them?”
I grinned, unbuttoning my jacket. My fingers were near-black with dirt and caked blood. I cringed. “I might need more than one bath to get clean.”
He snapped his fingers, and my skin was instantly pristine again. I blinked. “If you can do that, then what’s the point of the bath?” He’d done it Under the Mountain for me a few times—that magical cleaning. I’d somehow never asked.
He leaned against the doorway, watching me peel off my torn and stained jacket. As if it were the most important task he’d ever been given. “The essence of the dirt remains.” His voice roughened as he tracked each movement of my fingers while I unlaced my boots. “Like a layer of oil.”
Indeed, my skin, while it looked clean, felt … unwashed. I kicked off the boots, letting them land on my filthy jacket. “So it’s more for aesthetic purposes.”
“You’re taking too long,” he said, jerking his chin toward the bath.
My breasts tightened at the slight growl lacing his words. He watched that, too.
And I smiled to myself, arching my back a bit more than necessary as I removed my shirt and tossed it to the marble floor.
Sunlight streamed in through the steam rising from the tub, casting the space between us in gold and white. Rhys made a low noise that sounded vaguely like a whimper as he took in my bare torso. As he took in my breasts, now heavy and aching, badly enough that I had to swallow my plea to forget this bath entirely.
But I pretended not to notice as I unbuttoned my pants and let them fall to the floor. Along with my undergarments.
Rhys’s eyes simmered.
I smirked, daring a look at his own pants. At the evidence of what, exactly, this was doing to him, pressing against the black
material with impressive demand. I simply crooned, “Too bad there isn’t room in the tub for two.”
“A design flaw, and one I shall remedy tomorrow.” His voice was rough, quiet—and it slid invisible hands down my breasts, between my legs.
Mother save me. I somehow managed to walk, to climb into the tub. Somehow managed to remember how to bathe myself.
Rhys remained leaning against the doorway the entire time, silently watching with that unrelenting focus.
I might have taken longer washing certain areas. And might have made sure he saw it.
He only gripped the threshold hard enough that the wood groaned beneath his hand.
But Rhys made no move to pounce, even when I toweled off and brushed out my tangled hair. As if the restraint … it was part of the game, too.
My bare toes curled on the marble floor as I set down my brush on the sink vanity, every inch of my body aware of where he stood in the doorway, aware of his eyes upon me in the mirror’s reflection.
“All clean,” I declared, my voice hoarse as I met his stare in the mirror. I could have sworn only darkness and stars swirled beyond his shoulders. A blink, and they were gone. But the predatory hunger on his face …
I turned, my fingers trembling slightly as I clutched my towel around me.
Rhys only extended a hand, his own fingers shaking. Even the towel was abrasive against my too-sensitive skin as I laid my hand on his, his calluses scraping as they closed over my fingers. I wanted them scraping all over me.
But he simply led me into the bedroom, step after step, the muscles of his broad back shifting beneath his jacket. And lower, the sleek, powerful cut of thighs, his ass—
I was going to devour him. From head to toe. I was going to devour him—
But Rhys paused before the bed, releasing my hand and facing me from the safety of a step away. And it was the expression on his face as he traced a still-tender spot on my cheekbone that checked the heat threatening to raze my senses.
I swallowed, my hair dripping on the carpet. “Is the bruise bad?”
“It’s nearly gone.” Darkness flickered in the room once more.
I scanned that perfect face. Every line and angle. The fear and rage and love—the wisdom and cunning and strength.
I let my towel drop to the carpet.
Let him look me over as I put a hand on his chest, his heart raging beneath my palm.
“Ready for ravishing.” My words didn’t come out with the swagger I’d intended.
Not when Rhys’s answering smile was a dark, cruel thing. “I hardly know where to begin. So many possibilities.”
He lifted a finger, and my breath came hard and fast as he idly circled one of my breasts, then the other. In ever-tightening rings.
“I could start here,” he murmured.
I clenched my thighs together. He noted the movement, that dark smile growing. And just before his finger reached the tip of my breast, just before he gave me what I was about to beg for, his finger slid upward—to my chest, my neck, my chin. Right to my mouth.
He traced the shape of my lips, a whisper of touch. “Or I could start here,” he breathed, slipping the tip of his finger into my mouth.
I couldn’t help myself from closing my lips around him, from flicking my tongue against the pad of his finger.
But Rhys withdrew his finger with a soft groan, making a downward path. Along my neck. Chest. Straight over a nipple. He paused there, flicking it once, then smoothed his thumb over the small hurt.
I was shaking now, barely able to keep standing as his finger continued past my breast.
He drew patterns on my stomach, scanning my face as he purred, “Or …”
I couldn’t think beyond that single finger, that one point of contact as it drifted lower and lower, to where I wanted him. “Or?”
I managed to breathe.
His head dipped, hair sliding over his brow as he watched—we both watched—his broad finger venture down. “Or I could start here,” he said, the words guttural and raw.
I didn’t care—not as he dragged that finger down the center of me. Not as he circled that spot, light and taunting. “Here would be nice,” he observed, his breathing uneven. “Or maybe even here,”
he finished, and plunged that finger inside me.
I groaned, gripping his arm, nails digging into the muscles beneath—muscles that shifted as he pumped his finger once, twice. Then slid it out and drawled, brows rising. “Well? Where shall I begin, Feyre darling?”
I could barely form words, thoughts. But—I’d had enough of playing.
So I took that infernal hand of his, guiding it to my heart, and placed it there, half over the curve of my breast. I met his hooded gaze as I spoke the words that I knew would be his undoing in this little game, the words that were rising up in me with every breath.
“You’re mine.”
It snapped the tether he’d kept on himself.
His clothes vanished—all of them—and his mouth angled over my own.
It wasn’t a gentle kiss. Wasn’t soft or searching.
It was a claiming, wild and unchecked—it was an unleashing.
And the taste of him … the heat of him, the demanding stroke of his tongue against my own … Home. I was home.
My hands shot into his hair, pulling him closer as I answered each of his searing kisses with my own, unable to get enough, unable to touch and feel enough of him.
Skin to skin, Rhys nudged me toward the bed, his hands kneading my rear as I ran my own over the velvet softness of him,
over every hard plane and ripple. His beautiful, mighty wings tore from his back, splaying wide before neatly tucking in.
My thighs hit the bed behind us, and Rhys paused, trembling.
Giving me time to reconsider, even now. My heart strained, but I pulled my mouth from his. Held his gaze as I lowered myself onto the white sheets and inched back.
Further and further onto the bed, until I was bare before him.
Until I took in the considerable, proud length of him and my core tightened in answer. “Rhys,” I breathed, his name a plea on my tongue.
His wings flared, chest heaving as stars sparked in his eyes.
And it was the longing there—beneath the desire, beneath the need—it was the longing in those beautiful eyes that made me glance to the mountains tattooed on his knees.
The insignia of this court—our court. The promise that he would kneel for no one and nothing but his crown.
And me.
Mine—he was mine. I sent the thought down the bond.
No playing, no delaying—I wanted him on me, in me. I needed to feel him, hold him, share breath with him. He heard the edge of desperation, felt it through the mating bond flowing between us.
His eyes did not leave mine as he prowled over me, every movement graceful as a stalking plains-cat. Interlacing our fingers, his breathing uneven, Rhys used a knee to nudge my legs apart and settle between them.
Carefully, lovingly, he laid our joined hands beside my head as he guided himself into me and whispered in my ear, “You’re mine, too.”
At the first nudge of him, I surged forward to claim his mouth.
I dragged my tongue over his teeth, swallowing his groan of pleasure as his hips rolled in gentle thrusts and he pushed in, and in, and in.
Home. This was home.
And when Rhys was seated to the hilt, when he paused to let me adjust to the fullness of him, I thought I might explode into
moonlight and flame, thought I might die from the sheer force of what swept through me.
My pants were edged with sobs as I dug my fingers into his back, and Rhys withdrew slightly to study my face. To read what was there. “Never again,” he promised as he pulled out, then thrust back in with excruciating slowness. He kissed my brow, my temple. “My darling Feyre.”
Beyond words, I moved my hips, urging him deeper, harder.
Rhys obliged me.
With every movement, every shared breath, every whispered endearment and moan, that mating bond I’d hidden so far inside myself grew brighter. Clearer.
And when it again shone as brilliantly as adamant, my release cascaded through me, leaving my skin glowing like a newborn star in its wake.
At the sight of it, right as I dragged a finger down the sensitive inside of his wing, Rhys shouted my name and found his pleasure.
I held him through every heaving breath, held him as he at last stilled, lingering inside me, and relished the feel of his skin on mine.
For long minutes, we remained there, tangled together, listening to our breathing even out, the sound of it finer than any music.
After a while, Rhys lifted his chest enough to take my right hand. To examine the tattoos inked there. He kissed one of the whorls of near-black blue ink.
His throat bobbed. “I missed you. Every second, every breath.
Not just this,” he said, shifting his hips for emphasis and dragging a groan from deep in my throat, “but … talking to you. Laughing with you. I missed having you in my bed, but missed having you as my friend even more.”
My eyes burned. “I know,” I managed to say, stroking a hand down his wings, his back. “I know.” I kissed his bare shoulder, right over a whorl of Illyrian tattoo. “Never again,” I promised him, and whispered it over and over as the sunlight drifted across the floor.
My sisters had been living in the House of Wind since they’d arrived in Velaris.
They did not leave the palace built into the upper parts of a flat-topped mountain overlooking the city. They did not ask for anything, or anyone.
So I would go to them.
Lucien was waiting in the sitting room when Rhys and I came downstairs at last, my mate having given the silent order for them to return.
Unsurprisingly, Cassian and Azriel were casually seated in the dining room across the hall, eating lunch and marking every single breath Lucien emitted. Cassian smirked at me, brows flicking up.
I shot him a warning glare that dared him to comment. Azriel, thankfully, just kicked Cassian under the table.
Cassian gawked at Azriel as if to declare I wasn’t going to say anything while I approached the open archway into the sitting room, Lucien rising to his feet.
I fought my cringe as I halted in the threshold. Lucien was still in his travel-worn, filthy clothes. His face and hands, at least, were clean, but … I should have gotten him something else.
Remembered to offer him—
The thought rippled away into nothing as Rhys appeared at my side.
Lucien did not bother to hide the slight curling of his lip.
As if he could see the mating bond glowing between Rhys and me.
His eyes—both russet and golden—slid down my body. To my hand.
To the ring now on my finger, at the star sapphire sky-bright against the silver. A simple silver band sat on Rhysand’s matching finger.
We’d slid them onto each other’s hands before coming downstairs—more intimate and searing than any publicly made vows.
I’d told Rhys before we did so that I had half a mind to deposit his ring at the Weaver’s cottage and make him retrieve it.
He’d laughed and said that if I truly felt it was necessary to settle the score between us, perhaps I could find some other creature for him to battle—one that wouldn’t delight in removing my favorite part from his body. I’d only kissed him, murmuring about someone thinking rather highly of themselves, and had placed the ring he’d selected for himself, bought here in Velaris while I’d been away, onto his finger.
Any joy, any lingering laughter from that moment, those silent vows … It curled up like leaves in a fire as Lucien sneered at our rings. How close we stood. I swallowed.
Rhys noted it, too. It was impossible to miss.
My mate leaned against the carved archway and drawled to Lucien, “I assume Cassian or Azriel has explained that if you threaten anyone in this house, this territory, we’ll show you ways to die you’ve never even imagined.”
Indeed, the Illyrians smirked from where they lingered in the dining room threshold. Azriel was by far the more terrifying of the pair.
Something twisted in my gut at the threat—the smooth, sleek aggression.
Lucien was—had been—my friend. He wasn’t my enemy, not entirely—
“But,” Rhys continued, sliding his hands into his pockets, “I can understand how difficult this past month has been for you. I know Feyre explained we aren’t exactly as rumor suggests …” I’d let him into my mind before we’d come down—shown him all that had occurred at the Spring Court. “But hearing it and seeing it are two different things.” He shrugged with one shoulder. “Elain has been cared for. Her participation in life here has been entirely her choice. No one but us and a few trusted servants have entered the House of Wind.”
Lucien remained silent.
“I was in love with Feyre,” Rhys said quietly, “long before she ever returned the feeling.”
Lucien crossed his arms. “How fortunate that you got what you wanted in the end.”
I closed my eyes for a heartbeat.
Cassian and Azriel stilled, waiting for the order.
“I will only say this once,” warned the High Lord of the Night Court. Even Lucien flinched. “I suspected Feyre was my mate before I ever knew she was involved with Tamlin. And when I learned of it … If it made her happy, I was willing to step back.”
“You came to our house and stole her away on her wedding day.”
“I was going to call the wedding off,” I cut in, taking a step toward Lucien. “You knew it.”
Rhysand went on before Lucien could snap a reply, “I was willing to lose my mate to another male. I was willing to let them marry, if it brought her joy. But what I was not willing to do was let her suffer. To let her fade away into a shadow. And the moment that piece of shit blew apart his study, the moment he locked her in that house …” His wings ripped from him, and Lucien started.
Rhys bared his teeth. My limbs turned light, trembling at the dark power curling in the corners of the room. Not fear—never fear of him. But at the shattered control as Rhys snarled at Lucien, “My mate may one day find it in herself to forgive him. Forgive you. But I will never forget how it felt to sense her terror in those
moments.” My cheeks heated, especially as Cassian and Azriel stalked closer, those hazel eyes now filled with a mix of sympathy and wrath.
I had never talked about it to them—what had gone on that day Tamlin had destroyed his study, or the day he’d sealed me inside the manor. I’d never asked Rhys if he’d informed them. From the fury rippling from Cassian, the cold rage seeping from Azriel … I didn’t think so.
Lucien, to his credit, didn’t back away a step. From Rhys, or me, or the Illyrians.
The Clever Fox Stares Down Winged Death. The painting flashed into my mind.
“So, again, I will say this only once,” Rhys went on, his expression smoothing into lethal calm, dragging me from the colors and light and shadows gathering in my mind. “Feyre did not dishonor or betray Tamlin. I revealed the mating bond months later—and she gave me hell for it, don’t worry. But now that you’ve found your mate in a similar situation, perhaps you will try to understand how it felt. And if you can’t be bothered, then I hope you’re wise enough to keep your mouth shut, because the next time you look at my mate with that disdain and disgust, I won’t bother to explain it again, and I will rip out your fucking throat.”
Rhys said it so mildly that the threat took a second to register.
To settle in me like a stone plunked into a pool.
Lucien only shifted on his feet. Wary. Considering. I counted the heartbeats, debating how much I’d interfere if he said something truly stupid, when he at last murmured, “There is a longer story to be told, it seems.”
Smart answer. The rage ebbed from Rhys’s face—and Cassian’s and Azriel’s shoulders relaxed ever so slightly.
Just once, Lucien had said to me, during those days on the run.
That was all he wanted—to see Elain only once.
And then … I’d have to figure out what to do with him. Unless my mate already had some plan in motion.
One look at Rhys, who lifted his brows as if to say He’s all yours, told me it was my call. But until then … I cleared my throat.
“I’m going to see my sisters up at the House,” I said to Lucien, whose eyes snapped to mine, the metal one tightening and whirring. I forced a grim smile to my face. “Would you like to come?”
Lucien weighed my offer—and the three males monitoring his every blink and breath.
He only nodded. Another wise decision.
We were gone within minutes, the quick walk up to the roof of the town house serving as Lucien’s tour of my home. I didn’t bother to point out the bedrooms. Lucien certainly didn’t ask.
Azriel left us as we took to the skies, murmuring that he had some pressing business to attend to. From the glare Cassian gave him, I wondered if the shadowsinger had invented it to avoid carrying Lucien to the House of Wind, but Rhys’s subtle nod to Azriel told me enough.
There were indeed matters afoot. Plans in motion, as they always were. And once I finished visiting my sisters … I’d get answers of my own.
So Cassian bore a stone-faced Lucien into the skies, and Rhys swept me into his arms, shooting us gracefully into the cloudless blue.
With every wing beat, with every deep inhale of the citrus-and-salt breeze … some tightness in my body uncoiled.
Even if every wing beat brought us closer to the House looming above Velaris. To my sisters.
The House of Wind had been carved into the red, sun-warmed stone of the flat-topped mountains that lurked over one edge of the city, with countless balconies and patios jutting to overhang the thousand-foot drop to the valley floor. Velaris’s winding streets flowed right to the sheer wall of the mountain itself, and snaking through it wove the Sidra, a glittering, bright band in the midday sun.
As we landed on the veranda that edged our usual dining room, Cassian and Lucien alighting behind us, I let it sink in: the city and the river and the distant sea, the jagged mountains on the other side of Velaris and the blazing blue of the sky above. And the House of Wind, my other home. The grand, formal sister to the town house—our public home, I supposed. Where we would hold meetings and receive guests who weren’t family.
A far more pleasant alternative to my other residence. The Court of Nightmares. At least there, I could stay in the moonstone palace high atop the mountain under which the Hewn City had been built. Though the people I’d rule over … I shut them from my thoughts as I adjusted my braid, tucking in strands that had been whipped free by the gentle wind Rhys had allowed through his shield while flying.
Lucien just walked to the balcony rail and stared out. I didn’t quite blame him.
I glanced over a shoulder to where Rhys and Cassian now stood. Rhys lifted a brow.
Wait inside.
Rhys’s smile was sharp. So you won’t have any witnesses when you push him over the railing?
I gave him an incredulous look and strode for Lucien, Rhys’s murmur to Cassian about getting a drink in the dining room the only indication of their departure. That, and the near-silent opening and closing of the glass doors that led into the dining room beyond. The same room where I’d first met most of them— my new family.
I came up beside Lucien, the wind ripping strands of his red hair free from where he’d tied it at his nape.
“This isn’t what I expected,” he said, taking in the sprawl of Velaris.
“The city is still rebuilding after the Hybern attack.”
His eyes dropped to the carved balcony rail. “Even though we had no part in that … I’m sorry. But—that’s not what I meant.” He glanced behind us, to where Rhys and Cassian waited inside the dining room, drinks now in hand, leaning all too casually against the giant oak table in its center.
They became immensely interested in some spot or stain on the surface between them.
I scowled at them, but swallowed. And even though my sisters waited inside, even though the urge to see them was so tangible I wouldn’t have been surprised to find a rope tugging me into the House, I said to Lucien, “Rhys saved my life on Calanmai.”
So I told him. All of it—the story that perhaps would help him understand. And realize how truly safe Elain was— he now was. I eventually summoned Rhys to explain his own history—and he gave Lucien the barest details. None of the vulnerable, sorrowful bits that had reduced me to tears in that mountain cabin. But it painted a clear enough picture.
Lucien said nothing while Rhys spoke. Or when I continued with my tale, Cassian often chiming in with his own account of how it’d been to live with two mated-yet-un-mated people, to pretend Rhys wasn’t courting me, to welcome me into their little circle.
I didn’t know how long had passed when we finished, though Rhys and Cassian used the time to unabashedly sun their wings by the open balcony ledge. I left off our story at Hybern—at the day I’d gone back to the Spring Court.
Silence fell, and Rhys and Cassian again walked away, understanding the emotion swimming in Lucien’s eye—the meaning of the long breath he blew out.
When we were alone, Lucien rubbed his eyes. “I’ve seen Rhysand do such … horrible things, seen him play the dark prince over and over. And yet you tell me it was all a lie. A mask. All to protect this place, these people. And I would have laughed at you for believing it, and yet … this city exists. Untouched—or until recently, I suppose. Even the Dawn Court’s cities are nothing so lovely as this.”
“Lucien—”
“And you love him. And he—he truly does love you.” Lucien dragged a hand through his red hair. “And all these people I have spent my centuries hating, even fearing … They are your family.”
“I think Amren would probably deny that she feels any affection for us—”
“Amren is a bedtime story they told us as younglings to make us behave. Amren was who would drink my blood and carry me to hell if I acted out of line. And yet there she was, acting more like a cranky old aunt than anything.”
“We don’t—we don’t enforce protocol and rank here.”
“Obviously. Rhys lives in a town house, by the Cauldron.” He waved an arm to encompass the city.
I didn’t know what to say, so I kept silent.
“I hadn’t realized I was a villain in your narrative,” Lucien breathed.
“You weren’t.” Not entirely.
The sun danced on the distant sea, turning the horizon into a glittering sprawl of light.
“She doesn’t know anything about you. Only the basics that Rhys gave her: you are a High Lord’s son, serving in the Spring Court. And you helped me Under the Mountain. Nothing else.”
I didn’t add that Rhys had told me my sister hadn’t asked about him at all.
I straightened. “I would like to see them first. I know you’re anxious—”
“Just do it,” Lucien said, bracing his forearms on the stone rail of the veranda. “Come get me when she’s ready.”
I almost patted his shoulder—almost said something reassuring.
But words failed me again as I headed for the dim interior of the House.
Rhys had given Nesta and Elain a suite of connecting rooms, all with views overlooking the city and river and distant mountains beyond.
But it was in the family library that Rhys tracked down Nesta.
There was a coiled, razor-sharp tension in Cassian as the three of us strode down the stairways of the House, the red stone halls dim and echoing with the rustle of Cassian’s wings and the faint howl of wind rattling at every window. A tension that grew more taut with every step toward the double doors of the library. I hadn’t asked if they had seen each other, or spoken, since that day in Hybern.
Cassian volunteered no information.
And I might have asked Rhys down the bond had he not opened one of the doors.
Had I not immediately spied Nesta curled in an armchair, a book on her knees, looking—for once—very un-Nesta-like.
Casual. Perhaps relaxed.
Perfectly content to be alone.
The moment my shoes scuffed against the stone floor, she shot straight up, back going stiff, closing her book with a muffled thud.
Yet her gray-blue eyes didn’t so much as widen as they beheld me.
As I took her in.
Nesta had been beautiful as a human woman.
As High Fae, she was devastating.
From the utter stillness with which Cassian stood beside me, I wondered if he thought the same thing.
She was in a pewter-colored gown, its make simple, yet the material fine. Her hair was braided over the crown of her head, accentuating her long, pale neck—a neck Cassian’s eyes darted to, then quickly away from, as she sized us up and said to me, “You’re back.”
With her hair styled like that, it hid the pointed ears. But there was nothing to hide the ethereal grace as she took one step. As her focus again returned to Cassian and she added, “What do you want?”
I felt the blow like a punch to my gut. “At least immortality hasn’t changed some things about you.”
Nesta’s look was nothing short of icy. “Is there a purpose to this visit, or may I return to my book?”
Rhys’s hand brushed mine in silent comfort. But his face …
hard as stone. And even less amused.
But Cassian sauntered over to Nesta, a half smile spreading across his face. She stood stiffly while he picked up the book, read the title, and chuckled. “I wouldn’t have pegged you for a romance reader.”
She gave him a withering glare.
Cassian leafed through the pages and drawled to me, “You haven’t missed much while you were off destroying our enemies, Feyre. It’s mostly been this.”
Nesta whirled to me. “You—accomplished it?”
I clenched my jaw. “We’ll see how it plays out. I made sure Ianthe suffered.” At the hint of rage and fear that crept into Nesta’s eyes, I amended, “Not enough, though.”
I glanced at her hand—the one she’d pointed with at the King of Hybern. Rhys had mentioned no signs of special powers from either of my sisters. Yet that day in Hybern, when Nesta had opened her eyes … I had seen it. Seen something great and terrible within them.
“And, again, why are you here?” She snatched her book from Cassian, who allowed her to do so, but remained standing beside her. Watching every breath, every blink.
“I wanted to see you,” I said quietly. “See how you were doing.”
“See if I’ve accepted my lot and found myself grateful for becoming one of them?”
I steeled my spine. “You’re my sister. I watched them hurt you. I wanted to see if you were all right.”
A low, bitter laugh. But she turned to Cassian, looked him over as if she were a queen on a throne, and then declared to all of us,
“What do I care? I get to be young and beautiful forever, and I never have to go back to those sycophantic fools over the wall. I get to do as I wish, since apparently no one here has any regard for rules or manners or our traditions. Perhaps I should thank you for dragging me into this.”
Rhys put a hand on the small of my back before the words even struck their target.
Nesta snorted. “But it’s not me you should be checking on. I had as little at stake on the other side of the wall as I do here.”
Hate rippled over her features—enough hate that I felt sick. Nesta hissed. “She will not leave her room. She will not stop crying. She will not eat, or sleep, or drink.”
Rhys’s jaw clenched. “I have asked you over and over if you needed—”
“Why should I allow any of you”—the last word was shot at Cassian with as much venom as a pit viper—“to get near her? It is no one’s business but our own.”
“Elain’s mate is here,” I said.
And it was the wrong thing to utter in Nesta’s presence.
She went white with rage.
“He is no such thing to her,” she snarled, advancing on me enough that Rhys slid a shield into place between us.
As if he, too, had glimpsed that mighty power in her eyes that day in Hybern. And did not know how it would manifest.
“If you bring that male anywhere near her, I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” Cassian crooned, trailing her at a casual pace as she stopped perhaps five feet from me. He lifted a brow as she whirled on him. “You won’t join me for practice, so you sure as hell aren’t going to hold your own in a fight. You won’t talk about your powers, so you certainly aren’t going to be able to wield them. And you—”
“Shut your mouth,” she snapped, every inch the conquering empress. “I told you to stay the hell away from me, and if you—”
“You come between a male and his mate, Nesta Archeron, and you’re going to learn about the consequences the hard way.”
Nesta’s nostrils flared. Cassian only gave her a crooked grin.
I cut in, “If Elain is not up for it, then she won’t see him. I won’t force the meeting on her. But he does wish to see her, Nesta. I’ll ask on his behalf, but the decision will be hers.”
“The male who sold us out to Hybern.”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
“Well, it will certainly be more complicated when Father returns and finds us gone. What do you plan to tell him about all this?”
“Seeing as he hasn’t sent word from the continent in months, I’ll worry about that later,” I sniped back. And thank the Cauldron for it
—that he was off trading in some lucrative territory.
Nesta only shook her head, turning toward the chair and her book. “I don’t care. Do what you want.”
A stinging dismissal, if not admission that she still trusted me enough to consider Elain’s needs first. Rhys jerked his chin at Cassian in a silent order to leave, and as I followed them, I said softly, “I’m sorry, Nesta.”
She didn’t answer as she sat stiffly in her chair, picked up her book, and dutifully ignored us. A blow to the face would have been better.
When I looked ahead, I found Cassian staring back at Nesta as well.
I wondered why no one had yet mentioned what now shone in Cassian’s eyes as he gazed at my sister.
The sorrow. And the longing.
The suite was filled with sunlight.
Every curtain shoved back as far as it could go, to let in as much sun as possible.
As if any bit of darkness was abhorrent. As if to chase it away.
And seated in a small chair before the sunniest of the windows, her back to us, was Elain.
Where Nesta had been in contented silence before we found her, Elain’s silence was … hollow.
Empty.
Her hair was down—not even braided. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen it unbound. She wore a moon-white silk dressing robe.
She did not look, or speak, or even flinch as we entered.
Her too-thin arms rested on her chair. That iron engagement ring still encircled her finger.
Her skin was so pale it looked like fresh snow in the harsh light.
I realized then that the color of death, of sorrow, was white.
The lack of color. Of vibrancy.
I left Cassian and Rhys by the door.
Nesta’s rage was better than this … shell.
This void.
My breath caught as I edged around her chair. Beheld the city view she stared so blankly at.
Then beheld the hollowed-out cheeks, the bloodless lips, the brown eyes that had once been rich and warm, and now seemed utterly dull. Like grave dirt.
She didn’t so much as look at me as I said softly, “Elain?”
I didn’t dare reach for her hand.
I didn’t dare get too close.
I had done this. I had brought this upon them—
“I’m back,” I added a bit limply. Uselessly.
All she said was, “I want to go home.”
I closed my eyes, my chest unbearably tight. “I know.”
“He’ll be looking for me,” she whispered.
“I know,” I said again. Not Lucien—she wasn’t talking about him at all.
“We were supposed to be married next week.”
I put a hand on my chest, as if it’d stop the cracking in there.
“I’m sorry.”
Nothing. Not even a flicker of emotion. “Everyone keeps saying that.” Her thumb brushed the ring on her finger. “But it doesn’t fix anything, does it?”
I couldn’t get enough air in. I couldn’t—I couldn’t breathe, looking at this broken, carved-out thing my sister had become.
What I’d robbed her of, what I’d taken from her—
Rhys was there, an arm sliding around my waist. “Can we get you anything, Elain?” He spoke with such gentleness I could barely stand it.
“I want to go home,” she repeated.
I couldn’t ask her—about Lucien. Not now. Not yet.
I turned away, fully prepared to bolt and completely fall apart in another room, another section of the House. But Lucien was standing in the doorway.
And from the devastation on his face, I knew he’d heard every word. Seen and heard and felt the hollowness and despair radiating from her.
Elain had always been gentle and sweet—and I had considered it a different sort of strength. A better strength. To look at the hardness of the world and choose, over and over, to love, to be kind. She had been always so full of light.
Perhaps that was why she now kept all the curtains open. To fill the void that existed where all of that light had once been.
And now nothing remained.
Rhysand silently led Lucien to the suite he’d be occupying at the opposite end of the House of Wind. Cassian and I trailed behind, none of us speaking until my mate opened a set of onyx doors to reveal a sunny sitting room carved from more red stone. Beyond the wall of windows, the city flowed far below, the view stretching to the distant jagged mountains and glittering sea.
Rhys paused in the center of a midnight-blue handwoven rug and gestured to the sealed doors on his left. “Bedroom.” He waved a lazy hand toward the single door on the opposite wall.
“Bathing room.”
Lucien surveyed it all with cool indifference. What he felt about Elain, what he planned to do … I didn’t want to ask.
“I assume you’ll need clothes,” Rhys went on, nodding toward Lucien’s filthy jacket and pants—which he’d worn for the past week while we scrambled through territories. Indeed, that was …
blood splattered in several spots. “Any preferences for attire?”
That drew Lucien’s attention, the male shifting enough to take in Rhys—to note Cassian and me lurking in the doorway. “Is there a cost?”
“If you’re trying to say that you have no money, don’t worry—
the clothes are complimentary.” Rhys gave him a half smile. “If you’re trying to ask if this is some sort of bribe …” A shrug. “You are a High Lord’s son. It would be bad manners not to house and clothe you in your time of need.”
Stop baiting him, I shot down the bond.
But it’s so fun, came the purred reply.
Something had rattled him. Rattled Rhys enough that taunting Lucien was an easy way to take the edge off. I stepped closer, Cassian remaining behind me as I told Lucien, “We’ll be back for dinner in a few hours. Rest a while—bathe. If you need anything, pull that rope by the door.”
Lucien stiffened—not at what I’d said, I realized, but at the tone.
A hostess. But he asked, “What of—Elain?”
Your call, Rhys offered.
“I need to think about it,” I answered plainly. “Until I figure out what to do with her, with Nesta, stay out of their way.” I added perhaps too tightly, “This house is warded against winnowing, both from outside and within. There’s one way out—the stairs to the city. It, too, is warded—and guarded. Please don’t do anything stupid.”
“So am I a prisoner?”
I could feel the response simmering in Rhys, but I shook my head. “No. But understand while you may be her mate, Elain is my sister. I’ll do what I must to protect her from further harm.”
“I would never hurt her.”
A bleak sort of honesty in his words.
I simply nodded, loosening a breath, and met Rhysand’s stare in silent urging.
My mate gave no indication of my wordless plea as he said,
“You are free to wander where you wish, into the city itself if you feel like braving the stairs, but there are two conditions: you are not to take either sister, and you are not to enter their floor. If you require a book from the library, you will ask the servants. If you wish to speak to Elain or Nesta, you will also ask the servants, who will ask us. If you disregard those rules, I’ll lock you in a room with Amren.”
Then Rhys turned away, hands sliding into his pockets as he offered his hooked elbow to me. I looped my arm through his, but
said to Lucien, “We’ll see you in a few hours.”
We were almost to the door, Cassian already in the hall, when Lucien said to me, “Thank you.”
I didn’t dare ask him for what.
We flew right to Amren’s loft, more than a few people waving as we soared over the rooftops of Velaris. My smile wasn’t faked when I waved back to them—my people. Rhys only held me a bit tighter while I did so, his own smile as bright as the sun on the Sidra.
Mor and Azriel were already waiting inside Amren’s apartment, seated like scolded children on the threadbare divan against the wall while the dark-haired female flipped through the pages of books sprawled around her on the floor.
Mor gave me a grateful, relieved look as we entered, Azriel’s own face revealing nothing while he stood, keeping a careful, too-casual distance from her side. But it was Amren who said from the floor, “You should kill Beron and his sons and set up the handsome one as High Lord of Autumn, self-imposed exile or no.
It will make life easier.”
“I’ll take that into consideration,” Rhys said, striding toward her while I remained with the others. If they were hanging back …
Amren had to be in some mood.
I blew out a breath. “Who else thinks it’s a terrible idea to leave the three of them up at the House of Wind?”
Cassian raised his hand as Rhys and Mor chuckled. The High Lord’s general said, “I give him an hour before he tries to see her.”
“Thirty minutes,” Mor countered, sitting back down on the divan and crossing her legs.
I cringed. “I guarantee Nesta is now guarding Elain. I think she might honestly kill him if he so much as tries to touch her.”
“Not without training she won’t,” Cassian grumbled, tucking in his wings as he claimed the seat beside Mor that Azriel had
vacated. The shadowsinger didn’t so much as look at it. No, Azriel just walked to the wall beside Cassian and leaned against the wood paneling.
But Rhys and the others remained quiet enough that I knew to proceed carefully as I asked Cassian, “Nesta spoke as if you’ve been up at the House … often. You’ve offered to train her?”
Cassian’s hazel eyes shuttered as he crossed a booted ankle over another, stretching his muscled legs before him. “I go up there every other day. It’s good exercise for my wings.” Those wings shifted in emphasis. Not a scratch marred them.
“And?”
“And what you saw in the library is a pleasanter version of the conversation we always have.”
Mor’s lips pressed into a thin line, as if she was trying her best not to say anything. Azriel was trying his best to shoot a warning stare at Mor to remind her to indeed keep her mouth shut. As if they’d already discussed this. Many times.
“I don’t blame her,” Cassian said, shrugging despite his words.
“She was—violated. Her body stopped belonging wholly to her.”
His jaw clenched. Even Amren didn’t dare say anything. “And I am going to peel the King of Hybern’s skin off his bones the next time I see him.”
His Siphons flickered in answer.
Rhys said casually, “I’m sure the king will thoroughly enjoy the experience.”
Cassian glowered. “I mean it.”
“Oh, I have no doubt that you do.” Rhys’s violet eyes were dazzling in the dimness of the loft. “But before you lose yourself in plans for revenge, do remember that we have a war to plan first.”
“Asshole.”
A corner of my mate’s mouth tugged upward. And—Rhys was goading him, working Cassian into a temper to keep that brittle edge of guilt from consuming him. The others letting him take on the task, likely having done it several times themselves these weeks. “I am most definitely that,” Rhys said, “but the fact still remains that revenge is secondary to winning this war.”
Cassian opened his mouth as if he’d keep arguing, but Rhys peered at the books scattered on the lush carpet. “Nothing?” he asked Amren.
“I don’t know why you sent those two buffoons”—a narrowed glance toward Mor and Azriel—“to monitor me.” So this was where Azriel had gone—right to the loft. To no doubt spare Mor from enduring Amren Duty alone. But Amren’s tone … cranky, yes, but perhaps a bit of a front, too. To banish that too-fragile gleam in Cassian’s eyes.
“We’re not monitoring you,” Mor said, tapping her foot on the carpet. “We’re monitoring the Book.”
And as she said it … I felt it. Heard it.
Amren had placed the Book of Breathings on her nightstand.
A glass of old blood atop it.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cringe. The latter won out as the Book murmured, Hello, sweet-faced liar. Hello, princess with—
“Oh, be quiet,” Amren hissed toward the Book, who—shut up.
“Odious thing,” she muttered, and went back to the tome before her.
Rhys gave me a wry smile. “Since the two halves of the Book were joined back together, it has been … known to speak every now and then.”
“What does it say?”
“Utter nonsense,” Amren spat, scowling at the Book. “It just likes to hear itself talk. Like most of the people cramping up my apartment.”
Cassian smirked. “Did someone forget to feed Amren again?”
She pointed a warning finger at him without so much as looking up. “Is there a reason, Rhysand, why you dragged your yapping pack into my home?”
Her home was little more than a giant, converted attic, but none of us dared argue as Mor, Cassian, and Azriel finally came closer,
forming a small circle around Amren’s sprawl in the center of the room.
Rhys said to me, “The information you got from Dagdan and Brannagh confirms what we’ve been gathering ourselves while you were gone. Especially Hybern’s potential allies in other territories—on the continent.”
“Vultures,” Mor muttered, and Cassian looked inclined to agree.
But Rhys—Rhys had indeed been spying, while Azriel had been—
Rhys snorted. “I can stay hidden, mate.”
I glared at him, but Azriel cut in. “Having Hybern’s movements confirmed by you, Feyre, is what we needed.”
“Why?”
Cassian crossed his arms. “We barely stand a chance of surviving Hybern’s armies on our own. If armies from Vallahan, Montesere, and Rask join them …” He drew a line across his tan throat.
Mor elbowed him in the ribs. Cassian nudged her right back as Azriel shook his head at both of them, shadows coiling around the tips of his wings.
“Are those three territories … that powerful?” Perhaps it was a foolish question, showing how little I knew of the faerie lands on the continent—
“Yes,” Azriel said, no judgment in his hazel eyes. “Vallahan has the numbers, Montesere has the money, and Rask … it is large enough to have both.”
“And we have no potential allies amongst the other overseas territories?”
Rhys pulled at a stray thread on the cuff of his black jacket.
“Not ones that would sail here to help.”
My stomach turned. “What of Miryam and Drakon?” He’d once refused to consider, but— “You fought for Miryam and Drakon centuries ago,” I said to Rhys. He’d done a great deal more than that, if Jurian was to be believed. “Perhaps it’s time to call in that debt.”
But Rhys shook his head. “We tried. Azriel went to Cretea.” The island where Miryam, Drakon, and their unified human and Fae peoples had secretly lived for the past five centuries.
“It was abandoned,” Azriel said. “In ruin. With no trace of what happened or where they went.”
“You think Hybern—”
“There was no sign of Hybern, or of any harm,” Mor cut in, her face taut. They had been her friends, too—during the War.
Miryam, and Drakon, and the human queens who had gotten the Treaty signed. And it was worry—true, deep worry—that guttered in her brown eyes. In all their eyes.
“Then do you think they heard about Hybern and ran?” I asked.
Drakon had a winged legion, Rhys had once told me. If there was any chance of finding them—
“The Drakon and Miryam I knew wouldn’t have run—not from this,” Rhys said.
Mor leaned forward, her golden hair spilling over her shoulders.
“But with Jurian now a player in this conflict … Miryam and Drakon, whether they like it or not, have always been tied to him. I don’t blame them for running, if he truly hunts them.”
Rhys’s face slackened for a heartbeat. “That is what the King of Hybern has on Jurian,” he murmured. “Why Jurian works for him.”
My brow furrowed.
“Miryam died—a spear through her chest during that last battle at the sea,” Rhys explained. “She bled out while she was carried to safety. But Drakon knew of a sacred, hidden island where an object of great and terrible power had been concealed. An object made by the Cauldron itself, legend claimed. He brought her there, to Cretea—used the item to resurrect her, make her immortal. As you were Made, Feyre.”
Amren had said it—months ago. That Miryam had been Made as I was.
Amren seemed to remember it, too, as she said, “The King of Hybern must have promised Jurian to use the Cauldron to track
the item. To where Miryam and Drakon now live. Perhaps they figured that out—and left as fast as they could.”
And for revenge, for that insane rage that hounded Jurian …
he’d do whatever the King of Hybern asked. So he could kill Miryam himself.
“But where did they go?” I looked to Azriel, the shadowsinger still standing with preternatural stillness against the wall. “You found no trace at all of where they might have vanished to?”
“None,” Rhys answered for him. “We’ve sent messengers back since—to no avail.”
I rubbed at my face, sealing off that path of hope. “Then if they are not a possible ally … How do we keep those other territories on the continent from joining with Hybern—from sending their armies here?” I winced. “That’s our plan—isn’t it?”
Rhys smiled grimly. “It is. One we’ve been working on while you were away.” I waited, trying not to pace as Amren’s silver eyes seemed to glow with amusement. “I looked at Hybern first. At its people. As best I could.”
He’d gone to Hybern—
Rhys smirked at the concern flaring across my face. “I’d hoped that Hybern might have some internal conflict to exploit—to get them to collapse from within. That its people might not want this war, might see it as costly and dangerous and unnecessary. But five hundred years on that island, with little trade, little opportunity … Hybern’s people are hungry for change. Or rather … a change back to the old days, when they had human slaves to do their work, when there were no barriers keeping them from what they now perceive as their right.”
Amren slammed shut the book she’d been perusing. “Fools.”
She shook her head, inky hair swaying, as she scowled up at me.
“Hybern’s wealth has been dwindling for centuries. Most of their trade routes before the War dealt with the South—with the Black Land. But once it went to the humans … We don’t know if Hybern’s king deliberately failed to establish new trade routes and opportunities for his people in order to one day fuel this war, or if he was just that shortsighted and let everything fall apart. But for centuries now, Hybern’s people have been festering. Hybern let their resentment of their growing stagnation and poverty fester.”
“There are many High Fae,” Mor said carefully, “who believed before the War, and still believe now, that humans … that they are property. There were many High Fae who knew nothing but privilege thanks to those slaves. And when that privilege was ripped away from them, when they were forced to leave their homelands or forced to make room for other High Fae and re-form territories—create new ones—above that wall … They have not forgotten that anger, even centuries later. Especially not in places like Hybern, where their territory and population remained mostly untouched by change. They were one of the few who did not have to yield any land to the wall—and did not yield any land to the Fae territories now looking for a new home. Isolated, growing poorer, with no slaves to do their labor … Hybern has long viewed the days before the War as a golden era. And these centuries since as a dark age.”
I rubbed at my chest. “They’re all insane, to think that.”
Rhys nodded. “Yes—they certainly are. But don’t forget that their king has encouraged these limited world views. He did not expand their trade routes, did not allow other territories to take any of his land and bring their cultures. He considered where things went wrong for the Loyalists in the War. How they ultimately yielded not from being overwhelmed but because they began arguing amongst themselves. Hybern has had a long, long while to think on those mistakes. And how to avoid them at any cost. So he made sure his people are completely for this war, completely for the idea of the wall coming down, because they think it will somehow restore this … gilded vision of the past. Hybern’s people see their king and their armies not as conquerors, but as liberators of High Fae and those who stand with them.”
Nausea churned in my gut. “How can anyone believe that?”
Azriel ran a scarred hand through his hair. “That’s what we’ve been learning. Listening in Hybern. And in territories like Rask and
“We’re to be made an example of, girl,” Amren explained.
“Prythian. We were among the fiercest defenders and negotiators of the Treaty. Hybern wants to claim Prythian not only to clear the path to the continent, but to make an example of what happens to High Fae territories that defend the Treaty.”
“But surely other territories would protect it,” I said, scanning their faces.
“Not as many as we’d hoped,” Rhys admitted, wincing. “There are many—too many—who have also felt squashed and suffocated during these centuries. They want their old lands back beneath the wall, and the power and prosperity that came with it.
Their vision of the past has been colored by five hundred years of struggling to adjust and thrive.”
“Perhaps we did them a disservice,” Mor mused, “in not sharing enough of our wealth, our territory. Perhaps we are to blame for allowing some of this to rot and fester.”
“That remains to be discussed,” Amren said, waving a delicate hand. “The point is that we are not facing an army hell-bent on destruction. They are hell-bent on what they believe is liberation.
Of High Fae stifled by the wall, and what they believe still belongs to them.”
I swallowed. “So how do the other territories play into it—the three Hybern claims will ally with them?” I looked between Rhys and Azriel. “You said you were … over there?”
Rhys shrugged. “Over there, in Hybern, in the other territories
…” He winked at my gaping mouth. “I had to keep myself busy to avoid missing you.”
Mor rolled her eyes. But it was Cassian who said, “We can’t afford to let those three territories join with Hybern. If they send armies to Prythian, we’re done.”
“So what do we do?”
Rhys leaned against the carved post of Amren’s bed. “We’ve been keeping them busy.” He jerked his chin to Azriel. “We planted information—truth and lies and a blend of both—for them to find. And also scattered some of it among our old allies, who are now balking at supporting us.” Azriel’s smile was a slash of white. Lies and truth—the shadowsinger and his spies had sowed them in foreign courts.
My brow narrowed. “You’ve been playing the territories on the continent off each other?”
“We’ve been making sure that they’re kept busy with each other,” Cassian said, a hint of wicked humor glinting in his hazel eyes. “Making sure that longtime enemies and rival-nations of Rask, Vallahan, and Montesere have suddenly received information that has them worried about being attacked. And raising their own defenses. Which in turn has made Rask, Vallahan, and Montesere start looking toward their own borders and not our own.”
“If our allies from the War are too scared to come here to fight,”
Mor said, folding her arms over her chest, “then as long as they’re keeping the others occupied—keeping them from sailing here—
we don’t care.”
I blinked at them. At Rhys.
Brilliant. Utterly brilliant, to keep them so focused and fearful of each other that they stayed away. “So … they won’t be coming?”
“We can only pray,” Amren said. “And pray we deal with this fast enough that they don’t figure out we’ve played them all.”
“What of the human queens, though?” I chewed on the tip of my thumb. “They have to be aware that no bargain with Hybern would ultimately work to their advantage.”
Mor braced her forearms on her thighs. “Who knows what Hybern promised them—lied about? He already granted them immortality through the Cauldron in exchange for their cooperation. If they were foolish enough to agree to it, then I don’t doubt they’ve already thrown open the gates to him.”
“But we don’t know that for certain,” Amren countered. “And none of it explains why they’ve been so quiet—locked up in that palace.”
Rhys and Azriel shook their heads in silent confirmation.
I surveyed them, their fading amusement. “It drives you mad, doesn’t it, that no one has been able to get inside that palace.”
A low growl from both of them before Azriel muttered, “You have no idea.”
Amren just clicked her tongue, her upswept eyes settling on me. “Those Hybern commanders were fools to reveal their plans in regard to breaking the wall. Or perhaps they knew the information would return to us, and their master wants us to stew.”
I angled my head. “You mean shattering the wall through the holes already in it?”
A bob of her sharp chin as she gestured to the books around her. “It’s complex spell work—a loophole through the magic that binds the wall.”
“And it implies,” Mor said, frowning deeply, “that something might be amiss with the Cauldron.”
I raised my brows, considering. “Because the Cauldron should be able to bring that wall down on its own, right?”
“Right,” Rhysand said, striding to the Book on the nightstand.
He didn’t dare touch it. “Why bother seeking out those holes to help the Cauldron when he could unleash its power and be done with it?”
“Maybe he used too much of its power transforming my sisters and those queens.”
“It’s likely,” Rhys said, stalking back to my side. “But if he’s going to exploit those tears in the wall, we need to find a way to fix them before he can act.”
I asked Amren, “Are there spells to patch it up?”
“I’m looking,” she said through her teeth. “It’d help if someone dragged their ass to a library to do more research.”
“We are at your disposal,” Cassian offered with a mock bow.
“I wasn’t aware you could read,” Amren said sweetly.
“It could be a fool’s errand,” Azriel cut in before Cassian could voice the retort dancing in his eyes. “To get us to focus on the wall as a decoy—while he strikes from another direction.”
I grimaced at the Book. “Why not just try to nullify the Cauldron again?”
“Because it nearly killed you the last time,” Rhys said in a sort of calm, steady voice that told me enough: there was no way in hell he’d risk me attempting it again.
I straightened. “I wasn’t prepared in Hybern. None of us were. If I tried again—”
Mor cut in. “If you tried again, it might very well kill you. Not to mention, we’d have to actually get to the Cauldron, which isn’t an option.”
“The king,” Azriel clarified at my furrowed brow, “won’t allow the Cauldron out of his sight. And he’s rigged it with more spells and traps than the last time.” I opened my mouth to object, but the shadowsinger added, “We looked into it. It’s not a viable path.”
I believed him—the stark honesty in those hazel eyes was confirmation enough that they’d weighed it thoroughly. “Well, if it’s too risky to nullify the Cauldron,” I mused, “then can I somehow fix the wall? If the wall was made by faeries coming together, and my very magic is a blend of so many …”
Amren considered in the silence that fell. “Perhaps. The relationship would be tenuous, but … yes, perhaps you could patch it up. Though your sisters, directly forged by the Cauldron itself, might bear the sort of magic we—”
“My sisters play no part in this.”
Another beat of silence, interrupted only by the rustle of Azriel’s wings.
“I asked them to help once—and look what happened. I won’t risk them again.”
Amren snorted. “You sound exactly like Tamlin.”
I felt the words like a blow.
Rhys slid a hand against my back, having appeared so fast I didn’t see him move. But before he could reply, Mor said quietly,
“Don’t you ever say that sort of bullshit again, Amren.”
There was nothing on Mor’s face beyond cold calm—fury.
I’d never seen her look so … terrifying. She had been furious with the mortal queens, but this … This was the face of the High Lord’s third in command.
“If you’re cranky because you’re hungry, then tell us,” Mor went on with that frozen quiet. “But if you say anything like that again, I will throw you in the gods-damned Sidra.”
“I’d like to see you try.”
A little smile was Mor’s only answer.
Amren slid her attention to me. “We need your sisters—if not for this, then to convince others to join us, of the risk. Since any would-be ally might have some … difficulty believing us after so many years of lies.”
“Apologize,” said Mor.
“Mor,” I murmured.
“Apologize,” she hissed at Amren.
Amren said nothing.
Mor took a step toward her, and I said, “She’s right.”
They both looked to me, brows raised.
I swallowed. “Amren is right.” I walked out of Rhys’s touch—
realizing he’d kept silent to let me sort it out. Let me figure out how to deal with both of them, as family, but mostly as their High Lady.
Mor’s face tightened, but I shook my head. “I can—ask my sisters. See if they have any sort of power. See if they’d be willing to … talk to others about what they endured. But I won’t force them to help, if they do not wish to participate. The choice will be theirs.” I glanced at my mate—the male who had always presented me with a choice not as a gift, but as my own gods-given right. Rhys’s violet eyes flickered in acknowledgment. “But I’ll make our … desperation clear.”
Amren huffed, hardly more than a bird of prey puffing its feathers.
“Compromise, Amren,” Rhys purred. “It’s called compromise.”
She ignored him. “If you want to start convincing your sisters, get them out of the House. Being cooped up never helped anyone.”
Rhys said smoothly, “I’m not entirely sure Velaris is prepared for Nesta Archeron.”
“My sister’s not some feral animal,” I snapped.
Rhys recoiled a bit, the others suddenly finding the carpet, the divan, the books incredibly fascinating. “I didn’t mean that.”
I didn’t answer.
Mor frowned in disapproval at Rhys, who I felt watching me carefully, but asked me, “What of Elain?”
I shifted slightly, pushing past the words still hanging between me and Rhys. “I can ask, but … she might not be ready to be around so many people.” I clarified, “She was supposed to be married next week.”
“So she keeps saying, over and over,” Amren grumbled.
I shot her a glare. “Careful.” Amren blinked up at me in surprise.
But I went on, “So, we need to find a way to patch up the wall before Hybern uses the Cauldron to break it. And fight this war before any other territories join Hybern’s assault. And eventually get the Cauldron itself. Anything else?”
Rhys said behind me, his own voice carefully casual, “That covers it. As soon as a force can be assembled, we take on Hybern.”
“The Illyrian legions are nearly ready,” Cassian said.
“No,” Rhys said. “I mean a bigger force. A force not just from the Night Court, but from all of Prythian. Our only decent shot at finding allies in this war.”
None of us spoke, none of us moved as Rhys said simply,
“Tomorrow, invitations go out to every High Lord in Prythian. For a meeting in two weeks. It’s time we see who stands with us. And make sure they understand the consequences if they don’t.”
I let Cassian carry me to the House two hours later, just because he admitted he was still working to strengthen his wings and needed to push himself.
Heat rippled off the tiled roofs and red stone as we soared high over them, the sea breeze a cool kiss against my face.
We’d barely finished debating thirty minutes ago, only stopping when Mor’s stomach had grumbled as loudly as a breaking thunderhead. We’d spent our time weighing the merits of where to meet, who to bring along to the meeting with the High Lords.
Invitations would go out tomorrow—but not specify the meeting place. There was no point in selecting one, Rhys said, when the High Lords would no doubt refuse our initial selection and counter with their own choice of where to gather. All we had chosen was the day and the time—the two weeks a cushion against the bickering that was sure to ensue. The rest … We’d just have to prepare for every possibility.
We’d quickly returned to the town house to change before heading back up to the House—and I’d found Nuala and Cerridwen waiting in my room, smiles on their shadowy faces.
I’d embraced them both, even if Rhys’s hello had been less …
enthusiastic. Not for dislike of the half-wraiths, but …
I’d snapped at him. In Amren’s apartment. He hadn’t seemed angry, and yet … I’d felt him carefully watching me these past few hours. It’d made it … strange to look at him. Strange enough that the appetite I’d been steadily building had gone a bit queasy. I’d challenged him before, but … not as High Lady. Not with the …
tone.
So I didn’t get to ask him about it as Nuala and Cerridwen helped me dress and he headed into the bathing room to wash up.
Not that there was much finery to bother with. I’d opted for my Illyrian leather pants and a loose, white shirt—and a pair of embroidered slippers that Cassian kept snorting at as we flew.
When he did so for the third time in two minutes, I pinched his arm and said, “It’s hot. Those boots are stuffy.”
His brows rose, the portrait of innocence. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You grunted. Again.”
“I’ve been living with Mor for five hundred years. I’ve learned the hard way not to question shoe choices.” He smirked.
“However stupid they may be.”
“It’s dinner. Unless there’s some battle planned afterward?”
“Your sister will be there—I’d say that’s battle aplenty.”
I casually studied his face, noting how hard he worked to keep his features neutral, to keep his gaze fixed anywhere but on my own. Rhys flew nearby, far enough to remain out of earshot as I said, “Would you use her to see if she can somehow fix the wall?”
Hazel eyes shot to me, fierce and clear. “Yes. Not only for our sakes, but … she needs to get out of the House. She needs to …”
Cassian’s wings kept up a steady booming beat, the new sections only detectable by their lack of scarring. “She’ll destroy herself if she stays cooped up in there.”
My chest tightened. “Do …” I thought through my words. “The day she was changed, she … I felt something different with her.” I fought against the tensing in my muscles as I recalled those moments. The screaming and the blood and the nausea as I watched my sisters taken against their will, as I could do nothing, as we— I swallowed down the fear, the guilt. “It was like … everything she was, that steel and fire … It became magnified. Cataclysmic.
Like … looking at a house cat and suddenly finding a panther standing there instead.” I shook my head, as if it would clear away the memory of the predator, the rage simmering in those blue-gray eyes.
“I will never forget those moments,” Cassian said quietly, scenting or sensing the memories wreaking havoc on me. “As long as I live.”
“Have you seen any glimpse of it since?”
“Nothing.” The House loomed, golden lights at the walls of windows and doorways beckoning us closer. “But I can feel it—
sometimes.” He added a bit ruefully, “Usually when she’s pissed at me. Which is … most of the time.”
“Why?” They’d always been at each other’s throats, but this …
yes, the dynamic between them had been different earlier.
Sharper.
Cassian shook his dark hair out of his eyes, slightly longer than the last time I’d seen it. “I don’t think Nesta will ever forgive me for what happened in Hybern. To her—but mostly to Elain.”
“Your wings were shredded. You were barely alive.” For that was guilt—ravaging and poisonous—in each of Cassian’s words.
What the others had been fighting against in the loft. “You were in no position to save anyone.”
“I made her a promise.” The wind ruffled Cassian’s hair as he squinted at the sky. “And when it mattered, I didn’t keep it.”
I still dreamed of him trying to crawl toward her, reaching for her even in the semi-unconscious state the pain and blood loss had thrown him into. As Rhysand had once done for me during those last moments with Amarantha.
Perhaps only a few wing beats separated us from the broad landing veranda, but I asked, “Why do you bother, Cassian?”
His hazel eyes shuttered as we smoothly landed. And I thought he wouldn’t answer, especially not as we heard the others already
in the dining room beyond the veranda, especially not when Rhys gracefully landed beside us and strode in ahead with a wink.
But Cassian said quietly as we headed for the dining room,
“Because I can’t stay away.”
Elain, not surprisingly, didn’t leave her room.
Nesta, surprisingly, did.
It wasn’t a formal dinner by any means—though Lucien, standing near the windows and watching the sun set over Velaris, was wearing a fine green jacket embroidered with gold, his cream-colored pants showing off muscled thighs, and his knee-high black boots polished enough that the chandeliers of faelight reflected off them.
He’d always had a casual grace about him, but here, tonight, with his hair tied back and jacket buttoned to his neck, he truly looked the part of a High Lord’s son. Handsome, powerful, a bit rakish—but well-mannered and elegant.
I aimed for him as the others helped themselves to the wine breathing in decanters on the ancient wood table, keenly aware that while my friends chatted, they kept one eye on us. Lucien ran his one eye over me—my casual attire, then the Illyrians in their leathers, and Amren in her usual gray, and Mor in her flowing red gown, and said, “What is the dress code?”
I shrugged, passing him the glass of wine I’d brought over. “It’s
… whatever we feel like.”
That gold eye clicked and narrowed, then returned to the city ahead.
“What did you do with yourself this afternoon?”
“Slept,” he said. “Washed. Sat on my ass.”
“I could give you a tour of the city tomorrow morning,” I offered.
“If you like.”
Never mind that we had a meeting to plan for. A wall to heal. A war to fight. I could set aside half a day. Show him why this place
had become my home, why I had fallen in love with its ruler.
As if sensing my thoughts, Lucien said, “You don’t need to waste your time convincing me. I get it. I get … I get that we were not what you wanted. Or needed. How small and isolated our home must have been for you, once you saw this.” He jerked his chin toward the city, where lights were now sparking into view amid the falling twilight. “Who could compare?”
I almost said Don’t you mean what could compare? but held my tongue.
His focus shifted behind me before he replied—and Lucien shut his mouth. His metal eye whirred softly.
I followed his glance, and tried not to tense as Nesta stepped into the room.
Yes, devastating was a good word for how lovely she’d become as High Fae. And in a long-sleeved, dark blue gown that clung to her curves before falling gracefully to the ground in a spill of fabric …
Cassian looked like someone had punched him in the gut.
But Nesta stared right at me, the faelight shimmering along the silver combs in her upswept hair. The others, she dutifully ignored, chin lifting as she strode for us. I prayed that Mor and Amren, their brows high, wouldn’t say any— “Where did that dress come from?” Mor said, red gown flowing behind her as she breezed toward Nesta. My sister drew up short, shoulders tensing, readying to—
But Mor was already there, fingering the heavy blue fabric, surveying every stitch. “I want one,” she pouted. Her attempt, no doubt, to segue into an invitation to shop for a larger wardrobe with me. As High Lady, I’d need clothes—fancier ones. Especially for this meeting. My sisters, too.
Mor’s brown eyes flicked to mine, and I had to fight the crushing gratitude that threatened to make my own burn as I approached them. “I assume my mate dug it up somewhere,” I said, throwing a glance over my shoulder at Rhys, who was perched on the edge of the dining table, flanked by Az and Cassian, all three Illyrians pretending that they weren’t listening to every word as they poured the wine amongst themselves.
Busybodies. I sent the thought down the bond, and Rhys’s dark laughter echoed in return.
“He gets all the credit for clothes,” Mor said, examining the fabric of Nesta’s skirt while my sister monitored like a hawk, “and he never tells me where he finds them. He still won’t tell me where he found Feyre’s dress for Starfall.” She threw a glare over her shoulder. “Bastard.”
Rhys chuckled. Cassian, however, didn’t smile, every pore of him seemingly fixed on Nesta and Mor.
On what my sister would do.
Mor only examined the silver combs in Nesta’s hair. “It’s a good thing we’re not the same size—or else I might be tempted to steal that dress.”
“Likely right off her,” Cassian muttered.
Mor’s answering smirk wasn’t reassuring.
But Nesta’s face remained blank. Cold. She looked Mor up and down—noting the dress that exposed much of her midriff, back, and chest, then the flowing skirts with sheer panels that revealed glimpses of her legs. Scandalous, by human fashions.
“Fortunately for you,” Nesta said flatly, “I don’t return the sentiment.”
Azriel coughed into his wine.
But Nesta only walked to the table and claimed a seat.
Mor blinked, but confided to me with a wince, “I think we’re going to need a lot more wine.”
Nesta’s spine stiffened. But she said nothing.
“I’ll raid the collection,” Cassian offered, disappearing through the inner hall doors too quickly to be casual.
Nesta stiffened a bit more.
Teasing my sister, poking fun at her … I snatched a seat at Nesta’s side and murmured, “They mean well.”
Nesta just ran a finger over her ivory-and-obsidian place setting, examining the silverware with vines of night-blooming
jasmine engraved around the hilts. “I don’t care.”
Amren slid into the seat across from me, right as Cassian returned, a bottle in each hand, and cringed. Amren said to my sister, “You’re a real piece of work.”
Nesta’s eyes flicked up. Amren idly swirled a goblet of blood, watching her like a cat with a new, interesting toy.
Nesta only said, “Why do your eyes glow?”
Little curiosity—just a blunt need for explanation.
And no fear. None.