Amren angled her head. “You know, none of these busybodies have ever asked me that.”

Those busybodies were trying not to look too concerned. As was I.

Nesta only waited.

Amren sighed, her dark bob swaying. “They glow because it was the one part of me the containment spell could not quite get right. The one glimpse into what lurks beneath.”

“And what is beneath?”

None of the others spoke. Or even moved. Lucien, still by the window, had turned the color of fresh paper.

Amren traced a finger along the rim of her goblet, her red-tinted nail gleaming as bright as the blood inside. “They never dared ask me that, either.”

“Why.”

“Because it is not polite to ask—and they are afraid.”

Amren held Nesta’s stare, and my sister did not balk. Did not flinch.

“We are the same, you and I,” Amren said.

I wasn’t sure I was breathing. Through the bond, I wasn’t sure Rhys was, either.

“Not in flesh, not in the thing that prowls beneath our skin and bones …” Amren’s remarkable eyes narrowed. “But … I see the kernel, girl.” Amren nodded, more to herself than anyone. “You did not fit—the mold that they shoved you into. The path you were born upon and forced to walk. You tried, and yet you did not, could not, fit. And then the path changed.” A little nod. “I know—what it is to be that way. I remember it, long ago as it was.”

Nesta had mastered the Fae’s preternatural stillness far more quickly than I had. And she sat there for a few heartbeats, simply staring at the strange, delicate female across from her, weighing the words, the power that radiated from Amren … And then Nesta merely said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Amren’s red lips parted in a wide, serpentine smile. “When you erupt, girl, make sure it is felt across worlds.”

A shiver slithered down my skin.

But Rhys drawled, “Amren, it seems, has been taking drama lessons at the theater down the street from her house.”

She shot him a glare. “I mean it, Rhysand—”

“I’m sure you do,” he said, claiming the seat to my right. “But I’d prefer to eat something before you make us lose our appetites.”

His broad hand warmed my knee as he clasped it beneath the table, giving me a reassuring squeeze.

Cassian took the seat on Amren’s left, Azriel beside him, Mor grabbing the seat opposite him, leaving Lucien …

Lucien frowned at the remaining place setting at the head of the table, then at the blank, barren spot across from Nesta. “I—

shouldn’t you sit at the head?”

Rhys raised an eyebrow. “I don’t care where you sit. I only care about eating something right”—he snapped his fingers—“now.”

The food, prepared by cooks I made a point to go meet in the belly of the House, appeared across the table in platters and spreads and bowls. Roast meats, various sauces and gravies, rice and bread, steamed vegetables fresh from the surrounding farms … I nearly sighed at the smells curling around me.

Lucien slid into his seat, looking for all the world like he was perching atop a pincushion.

I leaned past Nesta to explain to Lucien, “You get used to it—

the informality.”

“You say that, Feyre darling, like it’s a bad thing,” Rhys said, helping himself to a platter of pan-fried trout before passing it to

me.

I rolled my eyes, sliding a few crispy pieces onto my plate. “It took me by surprise that first dinner we all had, just so you know.”

“Oh, I know.” Rhys grinned.

Cassian sniggered.

“Honestly,” I said to Lucien, who wordlessly stacked a pile of buttery green beans onto his plate but didn’t touch it, perhaps marveling at the simple fare, so at odds with the overwrought dishes of Spring, “Azriel is the only polite one.” A few cries of outrage from Mor and Cassian, but a ghost of a smile danced on the shadowsinger’s mouth as he dipped his head and hauled a platter of roast beets sprinkled with goat cheese toward himself.

“Don’t even try to pretend that it’s not true.”

“Of course it’s true,” Mor said with a loud sigh, “but you needn’t make us sound like heathens.”

“I would have thought you’d find that term to be a compliment, Mor,” Rhys said mildly.

Nesta was watching the volley of words as if it were a sporting match, eyes darting between us. She didn’t reach for any food, so I took the liberty of dumping spoonfuls of various things onto her plate.

She watched that, too.

And when I paused, moving on to further fill my own plate, Nesta said, “I understand—what you meant about the food.”

It took me a moment to recall—to remember that particular conversation back at our father’s estate, when she and I had been at each other’s throats over the differences between human and Fae food. It was the same in terms of what was served, but it just … tasted better above the wall.

“Is that a compliment?”

Nesta didn’t return my smile as she speared some asparagus with her fork and dug in.

And I figured it was as good a time as any as I said to Cassian,

“What time are we back in the training ring tomorrow?”

To his credit, Cassian didn’t so much as glance at Nesta as he replied with a lazy smile, “I’d say dawn, but since I’m feeling rather grateful that you’re back in one piece, I’ll let you sleep in. Let’s meet at seven.”

“I’d hardly call that sleeping in,” I said.

“For an Illyrian, it is,” Mor muttered.

Cassian’s wings rustled. “Daylight is a precious resource.”

“We live in the Night Court,” Mor countered.

Cassian only grimaced at Rhys and Azriel. “I told you that the moment we started letting females into our group, they’d be nothing but trouble.”

“As far as I can recall, Cassian,” Rhys countered drily, “you actually said you needed a reprieve from staring at our ugly faces, and that some ladies would add some much-needed prettiness for you to look at all day.”

“Pig,” Amren said.

Cassian gave her a vulgar gesture that made Lucien choke on his green beans. “I was a young Illyrian and didn’t know better,” he said, then pointed his fork at Azriel. “Don’t try to blend into the shadows. You said the same thing.”

“He did not,” Mor said, and the shadows that Azriel had indeed been subtly weaving around himself vanished. “Azriel has never once said anything that awful. Only you, Cassian. Only you.”

The general of the High Lord’s armies stuck out his tongue. Mor returned the gesture.

Amren scowled at Rhys. “You’d be wise to leave both of them at home for the meeting with the others, Rhysand. They’ll cause nothing but trouble.”

I dared a peek at Lucien—just to gauge his reaction.

His face was indeed controlled, but—a hint of surprise twinkled there. Wariness, too, but … surprise. I risked another glance at Nesta, but she was watching her plate, dutifully ignoring the others.

Rhys said, “It remains to be seen if they’ll be joining us.” Lucien looked at him then, the curiosity in that one eye unmistakable.

Rhys noted it and shrugged. “You’ll find out soon enough, I suppose. Invitations are going out tomorrow, calling all the High Lords to gather to discuss this war.”

Lucien’s hand tightened on his fork. “All?”

I wasn’t sure if he meant Tamlin or his father, but Rhys nodded nonetheless.

Lucien considered. “Can I offer my unsolicited advice?”

Rhys smirked. “I think that’s the first time anyone at this table has ever asked such a thing.”

Mor and Cassian now stuck out their tongues at him.

But Rhys waved a lazy hand at Lucien. “By all means, advise away.”

Lucien studied my mate, then me. “I assume Feyre is going.”

“I am.”

Amren sipped from her glass of blood—the only sound in the room as Lucien considered again. “Are you planning to hide her powers?”

Silence.

Rhys at last said, “That was something I’d planned to discuss with my mate. Are you leaning one way or another, Lucien?”

There was still something sharp in his tone, something just a little vicious.

Lucien studied me again, and it was an effort not to squirm. “My father would likely join with Hybern if he thought he stood a chance of getting his power back that way—by killing you.”

A snarl from Rhys.

“Your brothers saw me, though,” I said, setting down my fork.

“Perhaps they could mistake the flame as yours, but the ice …”

Lucien jerked his chin to Azriel. “That’s the information you need to gather. What my father knows—if my brothers realized what she was doing. You need to start from there, and build your plan for this meeting accordingly.”

Mor said, “Eris might keep that information to himself and convince the others to as well, if he thinks it’ll be more useful that way.” I wondered if Mor looked at that red hair, the golden-brown skin that was a few shades darker than his brothers’, and still saw Eris.

Lucien said evenly, “Perhaps. But we need to find that out. If Beron or Eris has that information, they’ll use it to their advantage in that meeting—to control it. Or control you. Or they might not show up at all, and instead go right to Hybern.”

Cassian swore softly, and I was inclined to echo the sentiment.

Rhys swirled his wine once, set it down, and said to Lucien,

“You and Azriel should talk. Tomorrow.”

Lucien glanced toward the shadowsinger—who only nodded at him. “I’m at your disposal.”

None of us were dumb enough to ask if he’d be willing to reveal details on the Spring Court. If he thought that Tamlin would arrive.

That was perhaps a conversation best left for another time. With just him and me.

Rhys leaned back in his seat. Contemplating—something. His jaw tightened, then he let out a near-silent huff of air. Steeling himself.

For whatever he was about to reveal, whatever plans he had decided not to reveal until now. And even as my stomach tightened, some sort of thrill went through me at it—at that clever mind at work.

Until Rhys said, “There is another meeting that needs to be had

—and soon.”

CHAPTER

18

“Please don’t say we need to go to the Court of Nightmares,”

Cassian grumbled around a mouthful of food.

Rhys lifted a brow. “Not in the mood to terrorize our friends there?”

Mor’s golden face paled. “You mean to ask my father to fight in this war,” she said to Rhys.

I reined in my sharp intake of breath.

“What is the Court of Nightmares?” Nesta demanded.

Lucien answered for us. “The place where the rest of the world believes the majority of the Night Court to be.” He jerked his chin at Rhys. “The seat of his power. Or it was.”

“Oh, it still is,” Rhys said. “To everyone outside Velaris.” He leveled a steady look at Mor. “And yes. Keir’s Darkbringer legion is considerable enough that a meeting is warranted.”

The last meeting had resulted in Keir’s arm being shattered in so many places it had gone saggy. I doubted the male would be inclined to help us anytime soon—perhaps why Rhys wanted this meeting.

Nesta’s brows narrowed. “Why not just order them? Don’t they answer to you?”

Cassian set down his fork, food forgotten. “Unfortunately, there are protocols in place between our two subcourts regarding this sort of thing. They mostly govern themselves—with Mor’s father their steward.”

Mor’s throat bobbed. Azriel watched her carefully, his mouth a tight line.

“The steward of the Hewn City is legally entitled to refuse to aid my armies,” Rhys explained to Nesta, to me. “It was part of the agreement my ancestor made with the Court of Nightmares all those thousands of years ago. They would remain within that mountain, would not challenge or disturb us beyond its borders …

and would retain the right to decide not to assist in war.”

“And have they—refused?” I asked.

Mor nodded gravely. “Twice. Not my father.” She nearly choked on the word. “But … there were two wars. Long, long ago. They chose not to fight. We won, but … barely. At great cost.”

And with this war upon us … we would need every ally we could muster. Every army.

“We leave in two days,” Rhys said.

“He’ll say no,” Mor countered. “Don’t waste your time.”

“Then I shall have to find a way to convince him otherwise.”

Mor’s eyes flashed. “What?”

Azriel and Cassian shifted in their seats, and Amren clicked her tongue at Rhys. Disapproval.

“He fought in the War,” Rhys said calmly. “Perhaps we’ll be lucky this time, too.”

“I’ll remind you that the Darkbringer legion was nearly as bad as the enemy when it came to their behavior,” Mor said, pushing her plate away.

“There will be new rules.”

“You will not be in a position to make rules, and you know it,”

Mor snapped.

Rhys only swirled his wine again. “We’ll see.”

I glanced to Cassian. The general shook his head subtly. Stay out of this one. For now.

I swallowed, nodding back with equal faintness.

Mor whipped her head toward Azriel. “What do you think?”

The shadowsinger held her stare, his face unreadable.

Considering. I tried not to hold my breath. Defending the female

he loved or siding with his High Lord … “It’s not my call to make.”

“That’s a bullshit answer,” Mor challenged.

I could have sworn hurt flickered in Azriel’s eyes, but he only shrugged, his face again a mask of cold indifference. Mor’s lips pursed.

“You don’t need to come, Mor,” Rhys said with that calm, even voice.

“Of course I’m coming. It’ll make it worse if I’m not there.” She drained her wine in one swift tilt of her head. “I suppose I have two days now to find a dress suitable to horrify my father.”

Amren, at least, chuckled at that, Cassian rumbling a laugh as well.

But Rhys watched Mor for a long minute, some of the stars in his eyes winking out. I debated asking if there was some other way, some path to avoid this awfulness between us, but … Earlier, I had snapped at him. And with Lucien and my sister here … I kept my mouth shut.

Well, about that matter. In the silence that fell, I scrambled for any scrap of normalcy and turned again to Cassian. “Let’s train at eight tomorrow. I’ll meet you in the ring.”

“Seven thirty,” he said with a disarming grin—one that most of his enemies would likely run from. Lucien went back to picking at his food. Mor refilled her wineglass, Azriel monitoring every move she made, his fork clenched in his scarred hand.

“Eight,” I countered with a flat look. I turned to Nesta, silent and watchful through all of this. “Care to join?”

“No.”

The beat of silence was too pointed to be dismissed. But I gave my sister a casual shrug, reaching for the wine jug. Then I said to none of them in particular, “I want to learn how to fly.”

Mor spewed her wine across the table, splattering it right across Azriel’s chest and neck. The shadowsinger was too busy gawking at me to even notice.

Cassian looked torn between howling at Azriel and gaping.

My magic was still too weak to grow those Illyrian wings, but I gestured to the Illyrians and said, “I want you to teach me.”

Mor blurted, “Really?” while Lucien— Lucien—said, “Well, that explains the wings.”

Nesta leaned forward to appraise me. “What wings?”

“I can—shape-shift,” I admitted. “And with the oncoming conflict,” I declared to all of them, “knowing how to fly might be …

useful.” I jerked my chin toward Cassian, who now studied me with unnerving intensity—sizing me up. “I assume the battles against Hybern will include Illyrians.” A shallow nod from the general. “Then I plan to fight with you. In the skies.”

I waited for the objections, for Rhys to shut it down.

There was only the howling wind outside the dining room windows.

Cassian whooshed out a breath. “I don’t know if it’s technically even possible—time-wise. You’d have to learn not only how to fly, but how to bear the weight of your shield and weapons—and how to work within an Illyrian unit. It takes us decades to master that last part alone. We have months at best—weeks at worst.”

My chest sank a bit.

“Then we’ll teach her what we know until then,” Rhys said. But the stars in his eyes turned stone-cold as he added, “I’ll give her any shot at an advantage—at getting away if things go to shit.

Even a day of training might make a difference.”

Azriel tucked in his wings, his beautiful features uncharacteristically soft. Contemplative. “I’ll teach you.”

“Are you … certain?” I asked.

The unreadable mask slipped back over Azriel’s face. “Rhys and Cass were taught how to fly so young that they barely remember it.”

But Azriel, locked in his hateful father’s dungeons like some criminal until he was eleven, denied the ability to fly, to fight, to do anything his Illyrian instincts screamed at him to do …

Darkness rumbled down the bond. Not anger at me, but … as Rhys, too, remembered what had been done to his friend. He’d

never forgotten. None of them had. It was an effort not to look at the brutal scars coating Azriel’s hands. I prayed Nesta wouldn’t inquire about it.

“We’ve taught plenty of younglings the basics,” Cassian countered.

Azriel shook his head, shadows twining around his wrists. “It’s not the same. When you’re older, the fears, the mental blocks …

it’s different.”

None of them, not even Amren, said anything.

Azriel only said to me, “I’ll teach you. Train with Cass for a few hours, and I’ll meet you when you’re through.” He added to Lucien, who did not balk from those writhing shadows, “After lunch, we’ll meet.”

I swallowed, but nodded. “Thank you.” And perhaps Azriel’s kindness snapped some sort of tether in me, but I turned to Nesta.

“The King of Hybern is trying to bring down the wall by using the Cauldron to expand the holes already in it.” Her blue-gray eyes revealed nothing—only simmering rage at the king’s name. “I might be able to patch up those holes, but you … being made of the Cauldron itself … if the Cauldron can widen those holes, perhaps you can close them, too. With training—in whatever time we have.”

“I can show you,” Amren clarified to my sister. “Or, in theory I can. If we start soon—tomorrow morning.” She considered, then declared to Rhys, “When you go to the Court of Nightmares, we will go with you.”

I whipped my head to Amren. “What?” The thought of Nesta in that place—

“The Hewn City is a trove of objects of power,” Amren explained. “There may be opportunities to practice. Let the girl get a feel for what something like the wall or the Cauldron might be like.” She added when Azriel seem poised to object, “Covertly.”

Nesta said nothing.

I waited for her outright refusal, the cold shutdown of all hope.

But Nesta only asked, “Why not just kill the King of Hybern before he can act?”

Utter silence.

Amren said a bit softly, “If you want his killing blow, girl, it’s yours.”

Nesta’s gaze drifted toward the open interior doors of the dining room. As if she could see all the way to Elain. “What happened to the human queens?”

I blinked. “What do you mean?”

“Were they made immortal?” This question went to Azriel.

Azriel’s Siphons smoldered. “Reports have been murky and inconsistent. Some say yes, others say no.”

Nesta examined her wineglass.

Cassian braced his forearms on the table. “Why?”

Nesta’s eyes shot right to his face. She spoke quietly to me, to all of us, even as she held Cassian’s gaze as if he were the only one in the room. “By the end of this war, I want them dead. The king, the queens—all of them. Promise me you’ll kill them all, and I’ll help you patch up the wall. I’ll train with her”—a jerk of her chin to Amren—“I’ll go to the Hewn City or whatever it is … I’ll do it. But only if you promise me that.”

“Fine,” I said. “And we might need your assistance during the meeting with the High Lords—to provide testimony to other courts and allies of what Hybern is capable of. What was done to you.”

“No.”

“You don’t mind fixing the wall or going to the Court of Nightmares, but speaking to people is where you draw your line?”

Nesta’s mouth tightened. “No.”

High Lady or sister; sister or High Lady … “People’s lives might depend on your account of it. The success of this meeting with the High Lords might depend upon it.”

She gripped the arms of her chair, as if restraining herself.

“Don’t talk down to me. My answer is no.”

I angled my head. “I understand that what happened to you was horrible—”

Image 36

“You have no idea what it was or was not. None. And I am not going to grovel like one of those Children of the Blessed, begging High Fae who would have gladly killed me as a mortal to help us.

I’m not going to tell them that story— my story.”

“The High Lords might not believe our account, which makes you a valuable witness—”

Nesta shoved her chair back, chucking her napkin on her plate, gravy soaking through the fine linen. “Then it is not my problem if you’re unreliable. I’ll help you with the wall, but I am not going to whore my story around to everyone on your behalf.” She shot to her feet, color rising to her ordinarily pale face, and hissed, “And if you even dare suggest to Elain that she do such a thing, I will rip out your throat.”

Her eyes lifted from mine to sweep over everyone—extending the threat.

None of us spoke as she left the dining room and slammed the door shut behind her.

I slumped in my chair, resting my head against the back.

Something thumped in front of me. A bottle of wine. “It’s fine if you drink directly from it,” was all Mor said.

“I’d say Nesta rivals Amren for sheer bloodthirstiness,” Rhys mused hours later as he and I walked alone through the streets of Velaris. “The only difference is that Amren actually drinks it.”

I snorted, shaking my head as we turned onto the broad street beside the Sidra and meandered along the star-flecked river.

So many scars still marred the lovely buildings of Velaris, streets gouged from fallen debris and claws. Most of it had been repaired, but some storefronts had been left boarded up, some homes along the river no more than mounds of rubble. We’d flown down from the House as soon as we’d finished dinner—well, the wine, I supposed. Mor had taken another bottle with her when she’d disappeared into the House, Azriel frowning after her.

Rhys and I hadn’t invited anyone else with us. He’d only asked me through the bond, Walk with me? And I’d merely given him a subtle nod.

And here we were. We’d walked for over an hour now, mostly quiet, mostly … thinking. Of the words and information and threats shared today. Neither of us slowed our steps until we reached that little restaurant where we had all dined under the stars one night.

Something tight in my chest eased as I beheld the untouched building, the potted citrus plants sighing in the river breeze. And on that breeze … those delectable, rich spices, garlicky meat, simmering tomatoes … I leaned my back against the rail along the river walkway, watching the restaurant workers serve the packed tables.

“Who knows,” I murmured, answering him at last. “Perhaps Nesta will take up the blood-drinking habit, too. I certainly believe her threat to rip out my throat. Maybe she’ll enjoy the taste.”

Rhys chuckled, the sound rumbling into my bones as he took up a spot beside me, his elbows braced on the rail, wings tucked in tight. I breathed in deeply, taking the citrus-and-sea scent of him into my lungs, my blood. His mouth grazed my neck. “Will you hate me if I say that Nesta is … difficult?”

I laughed softly. “I’d say this went fairly well, all things considered. She agreed to one thing, at least.” I chewed on my lower lip. “I shouldn’t have asked her in public. I made a mistake.”

He remained silent, listening.

“With the others,” I asked, “how do you find that balance—

between High Lord and family?”

Rhys considered. “It isn’t easy. I’ve made plenty of bad calls over the centuries. So I hate to tell you that tonight might only be the start of it.”

I loosed a long sigh. “I should have considered that telling strangers what happened to her in Hybern might … might not be something she was comfortable with. My sister has been a private person her entire life, even amongst us.”

Rhys leaned in to kiss my neck again. “Earlier today—at the loft,” he said, pulling back to meet my eyes. Unflinching. Open. “I didn’t mean to insult her.”

“I’m sorry I snapped at you.”

He lifted a dark brow. “Why in hell would you be? I insulted your sister; you defended her. You had every right to kick my ass for it.”

“I didn’t mean to … undermine you.”

Shadows flickered in his eyes. “Ah.” He twisted toward the Sidra, and I followed suit. The water meandered past, its dark surface rippling with golden faelights from the streetlamps and the bright jewels of the Rainbow. “That was why it was … strange between us this afternoon.” He cringed and faced me fully.

“Mother above, Feyre.”

My cheeks heated and I interrupted before he could continue. “I get why, though. A solid, unified front is important.” I scratched at the smooth wood of the rail with a finger. “Especially for us.”

“Not amongst our family.”

Warmth spread through me at the words— our family.

He took my hand, interlacing our fingers. “We can make whatever rules we want. You have every right to question me, push me—both in private and in public.” A snort. “Of course, if you decide to truly kick my ass, I might request that it’s done behind closed doors so I don’t have to suffer centuries of teasing, but—”

“I won’t undermine you in public. And you won’t undermine me.”

He remained quiet, letting me think, speak.

“We can question each other through the bond if we’re around people other than our friends,” I said. “But for now, for these initial years, I’d like to show the world a unified front … That is, if we survive.”

“We’ll survive.” Uncompromising will in those words, that face.

“But I want you to feel comfortable pushing me, calling me out—”

“When have I ever not done that?” He smiled. But I added, “I want you to do the same—for me.”

“Deal. But amongst our family … call me on my bullshit all you want. I insist, actually.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s fun.”

I nudged him with an elbow.

“Because you’re my equal,” he said. “And as much as that means having each other’s backs in public, it also means that we grant each other the gift of honesty. Of truth.”

I surveyed the bustling city around us. “Can I give you a bit of truth, then?”

He stilled, but said, “Always.”

I blew out a breath. “I think you should be careful—working with Keir. Not for how despicable he is, but because … I think you could truly wound Mor if you don’t play it right.”

Rhys dragged a hand through his hair. “I know. I know.”

“Is it worth it—whatever troops he can offer? If it means hurting her?”

“We’ve been working with Keir for centuries. She should be used to it by now. And yes—his troops are worth it. The Darkbringers are well trained, powerful, and have been idle too long.”

I considered. “The last time we went to the Court of Nightmares, I played your whore.”

He winced at the word.

“But I am now your High Lady,” I went on, stroking a finger over the back of his hand. He tracked the movement. My voice dropped lower. “To get Keir to agree to aid us … Any tips on what mask I should wear to the Hewn City?”

“It’s for you to decide,” he said, still watching my finger trace idle circles on his skin. “You’ve seen how I am there—how we are.

It is for you to decide how to play into that.”

“I suppose I’d better decide soon—not just for this, but the meeting with the other High Lords in two weeks.”

Rhys slid a sidelong glance to me. “Every court is invited.”

“I doubt he’ll come, given that he is Hybern’s ally and knows we’d kill him.”

The river breeze stirred his blue-black hair. “The meeting will occur with a binding spell that forces us all into cease-fire. If someone breaks it while the meeting occurs, the magic will demand a steep cost. Probably their life. Tamlin wouldn’t be stupid enough to attack—nor us him.”

“Why invite him at all?”

“Excluding him will only give him more ammunition against us.

Believe me, I have little desire to see him. Or Beron. Who perhaps is higher on my kill list than Tamlin right now.”

“Tarquin will be there. And we are pretty high on his kill list.”

“Even with the blood rubies, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to attack during the meeting.” Rhys sighed through his nose.

“How many allies can we count on? Beyond Keir and the Hewn City, I mean.” I glanced down the river walkway. The diners and revelers were too busy enjoying themselves to even note our presence, even with Rhys’s recognizable wings. Still—perhaps not the best place for this conversation.

“I’m not sure,” Rhys admitted. “Helion and his Day Court, probably. Kallias … maybe. Things have been strained with the Winter Court since Under the Mountain.”

“I assume Azriel is going to be finding out more.”

“He’s already on the hunt.”

I nodded. “Amren claimed she and Nesta needed help researching ways to repair the wall.” I gestured to the city. “Point me toward the best library to find that sort of thing.”

Rhys’s brows lifted. “Right now? Your work ethic puts mine to shame.”

I hissed, “Tomorrow, smartass.”

He chuckled, wings flaring and tucking in tight. Wings … wings he’d allowed Lucien to see.

“You trust Lucien.”

Rhys angled his head at the not-quite question. “I trust in the fact that we currently have possession of the one thing he wants above all else. And as long as that remains, he’ll try to stay on our good side. But if that changes … His talent was wasted in the Spring Court. There was a reason he had that fox mask, you know.” His mouth tugged to the side. “If he got Elain away, back to Spring or wherever … do you believe, deep down, that he wouldn’t sell what he knows? Either for gain, or to ensure she stays safe?”

“You let him hear everything tonight, though.”

“None of it is information that would let Hybern wreck us. The king likely already knows that we’ll go for Keir’s alliance—that we’ll try to find a way to stop him from bringing down the wall. He wasn’t subtle with Dagdan and Brannagh’s searching. And he’ll expect us to try to band the High Lords together. Which is why the meeting location will not be decided until later. Will I tell Lucien then? Bring him along?”

I considered his question: Did I trust Lucien? “I don’t know, either,” I admitted, and sighed. “I don’t like that Elain is a pawn in this.”

“I know. It’s never easy.”

He’d dealt with such things for centuries. “I want to wait—see what Lucien does over the next two weeks. How he acts, with us and Elain. What Azriel thinks of him.” I frowned. “He’s not a bad person—he’s not evil.”

“He certainly isn’t.”

“I just …” I met his calm, steady stare. “There is risk in trusting him without question.”

“Did he discuss what he feels regarding Tamlin?”

“No. I didn’t want to push on that. He was … remorseful about what happened with me, and Hybern, and Elain. Would he have felt that way without Elain in the mix? I don’t know—maybe. I don’t think he would have left, though.”

Rhys brushed the hair from my face. “It’s all part of the game, Feyre darling. Who to trust, when to trust them—what information to barter.”

“Do you enjoy it?”

“Sometimes. Right now, I don’t. Not when the risks are this high.” His fingers grazed my brow. “When I have so much to lose.”

I laid my palm on his chest, right over those Illyrian tattoos beneath his clothes, right over his heart. Felt the sturdy beat echoing into my skin and bones.

I forgot the city around us as he met my eyes, lips hovering over my skin, and murmured, “We will keep planning for the future, war or no war. I will keep planning for our future.”

My throat burned, and I nodded.

“We deserve to be happy,” he said, his eyes sparkling enough to tell me that he recalled the words I’d given him on the town house roof after the attack. “And I will fight with everything I have to ensure it.”

We will fight,” I said hoarsely. “Not just you—not anymore.”

Too much. He had given too much already, and still seemed to think it was not enough.

But Rhys only peered over his broad shoulder, to the cheerful restaurant behind us. “That first night we all came here,” he said, and I followed his gaze, watching the workers set the tables with loving precision. “When you told Sevenda that you felt awake while eating her food …” He shook his head. “It was the first time you had looked … peaceful. Like you were indeed awake, alive again. I was so relieved I thought I’d puke right onto the table.”

I recalled the long, strange look he’d given me when I’d finally spoken. Then the long walk we’d taken home, when we’d heard that music he’d sent to my cell Under the Mountain.

I pushed off the rail and tugged him toward the bridge that spanned the Sidra—the bridge to take us home. Let the debate over who’d give the most in this war rest for now. “Walk with me— through the Rainbow.” The glittering, colorful jewel of the city, the beating heart that housed the artists’ quarter. Vibrant and thrumming at this hour of the night.

I linked arms with him before saying, “You and this city helped wake me up—helped bring me back to life.” His eyes flickered as I smiled up at him. “I will fight with everything I have, too, Rhys.

Everything.”

He only kissed the top of my head, tugging me closer as we crossed the Sidra under the starry sky.

CHAPTER

19

It was a good thing I’d insisted on meeting Cassian at eight, because even though I awoke at dawn, one look at Rhysand’s sleeping face had me deciding to spend the morning slowly, sweetly waking him up.

I was still flushed by the time Rhys dropped me at the sparring ring atop the House of Wind, the space surrounded by a wall of red rock, the top open to the elements. He promised to meet me after lunch to show me the library for my researching, then gave me a roguish wink and kiss on the cheek before he shot back into the sky with a powerful flap of his wings.

Leaning against the wall beside the weapons rack, Cassian only said, “I hope you didn’t exert yourself too much already, because this is really going to hurt.”

I rolled my eyes, even as I tried to shut out the image of Rhysand laying me on my stomach, then kissing his way down my spine. Lower. Tried to shut out the feeling of his strong hands gripping my hips and lifting them up, up, until he lay beneath them and feasted on me, until I was quietly begging him and he rose behind me and I had to bite my pillow to keep from waking the whole house with my moaning.

Rhysand in the morning was … I didn’t have words for what it was when he was unhurried and lazy and wicked, when his hair was still mussed with sleep and his eyes got that glazed, purely male gleam in them. They’d still had that lazy, satisfied glint a moment ago, and his mockingly chaste kiss on my cheek had sent a red-hot line through me.

Later. I’d torture him later.

For now … I strode to where Cassian stood, rotating my shoulders. “Two Illyrian males making me sweat in one morning.

What’s a female to do?”

Cassian barked a laugh. “At least you showed up with some spirit.”

I grinned, bracing my hands on my hips as I surveyed the weapons rack. “Which one?”

“None.” He jerked his chin toward the ring etched in white chalk behind us. “It’s been a while since we trained. We’re spending today going over the basics.”

The words were laced with enough tightness that I said, “It hasn’t been that long.”

“It’s been a month and a half.”

I studied him, the wings tucked in tight, the shoulder-length dark hair. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” He stalked past me to the ring.

“Is it Nesta?”

“Not everything in my life is about your sister, you know.”

I kept my mouth shut on that front. “Is it something with the Court of Nightmares visit tomorrow?”

Cassian shucked off his shirt, revealing rippling muscles covered in beautiful, intricate tattoos. Illyrian markings for luck and glory. “It’s nothing. Get into position.”

I obeyed, even as I eyed him carefully. “You’re … angry.”

He refused to speak until I started my circuit of warm-ups: various lunges, kicks, and stretches designed to loosen my muscles. And only when we’d begun sparring, his hands wrapped against my onslaught of punching, did he say, “You and Rhys hid the truth from us. And we went into Hybern blind about it.”

“About what?”

“That you’re High Lady.”

I jabbed at his raised hands in a one-two combination, breathing hard. “What difference would it have made?”

“It would have changed everything. None of it would have gone down like that.”

“Perhaps that’s why Rhys decided to keep it a secret.”

“Hybern was a disaster.”

I halted my punching. “You knew I was his mate when we went.

I don’t see how being High Lady alters anything.”

“It does.”

I put my hands on my hips, ignoring his motion to continue.

“Why?”

Cassian dragged a hand through his hair. “Because … because as his mate, you were still … his to protect. Oh, don’t get that look.

He’s yours to protect, too. I would have laid my life down for you as his mate—and as your friend. But you were still … his.”

“And as High Lady?”

Cassian loosed a rough breath. “As High Lady, you are mine.

And Azriel’s, and Mor’s and Amren’s. You belong to all of us, and we belong to you. We would not have … put you in so much danger.”

“Maybe that’s why Rhys wanted to keep it a secret. It would have changed your focus.”

“This is between you and me. And trust me, Rhys and I had …

words about this.”

I lifted a brow. “You’re mad at me?”

He shook his head, eyes shuttering.

“Cassian.”

He just held up his hands in a silent order to continue.

I sighed and began again. It was only after I’d gotten through fifteen repetitions and was panting heavily that Cassian said, “You didn’t think you were essential. You saved our asses, yes, but …

you didn’t think you were essential here.”

One-two, one-two, one-two. “I’m not.” He opened his mouth, but I charged ahead, speaking around my gasps for breath. “You all have a … duty—you’re all vital. Yes, I have my own abilities, but … You and Azriel were hurt, my sisters were … you know what happened to them. I did what I could to get us out. I’d rather it was me than any of you. I couldn’t have lived with the alternative.”

His upraised hands were unfaltering as I pummeled them.

“Anything could have happened to you at the Spring Court.”

I stopped again. “If Rhys isn’t grilling me with the overprotective bullshit, then I don’t see why you—”

“Don’t for one moment think that Rhys wasn’t beside himself with worry. Oh, he seems collected enough, Feyre, but I know him. And every moment you were gone, he was in a panic. Yes, he knew—we knew—you could handle yourself. But it doesn’t stop us from worrying.”

I shook out my sore hands, then rubbed my already-aching arms. “You were mad at him, too.”

“If I hadn’t been healing, I would have kicked his ass from one end of Velaris to the other.”

I didn’t reply.

“We were all terrified for you.”

“I managed just fine.”

“Of course you did. We knew you would. But …” Cassian crossed his arms. “Rhys pulled the same shit fifty years ago.

When he went to that damned party Amarantha threw.”

Oh. Oh.

“I’ll never forget it, you know,” he said, blowing out a breath.

“The moment when he spoke to us all, mind to mind. When I realized what was happening, and that … he’d saved us. Trapped us here and tied our hands, but …” He scratched at his temple. “It went quiet—in my head. In a way it hadn’t been before. Not since …” Cassian squinted at the cloudless sky. “Even with utter hell unleashing here, across our territory, I just went … quiet.” He tapped the side of his head with a finger, and frowned. “After Hybern, the healer kept me asleep while she worked on my wings.

So when I woke up two weeks later … that’s when I heard. And when Mor told me what happened to you … It went quiet again.”

I swallowed against the constriction of my throat. “You found me when I needed you most, Cassian.”

“Pleased to be of service.” He gave me a grim smile. “You can rely on us, you know. Both of you. He’s inclined to do everything himself—to give everything of himself. He can’t stand to let anyone else offer up anything.” That smile faded. “Neither can you.”

“And you can?”

“It’s not easy, but yes. I’m general of his armies. Part of that includes knowing how to delegate. I’ve been with Rhys for over five hundred years and he still tries to do everything himself. Still thinks it’s not enough.”

I knew that—too well. And the thought of Rhys, in this war, trying to take on all that faced us … Nausea churned in my gut.

“He gives orders all the time.”

“Yes. And he’s good at knowing what we excel at. But when it comes down to it …” Cassian adjusted the wrappings on his hands. “If the High Lords and Keir don’t step up, he’ll still face Hybern. And will take the brunt of it so we don’t have to.”

An unshakable, queasy sort of tightness pushed in on me.

Rhys would survive—he wouldn’t dare sacrifice everything to make sure we—

Rhys would. He had with Amarantha, and he’d do it again without hesitation.

I shut it out. Shoved it down. Focused on my breathing.

Something drew Cassian’s attention behind me. And even as his body remained casual, a predatory gleam flickered in his eyes.

I didn’t need to turn to know who was standing there.

“Care to join?” Cassian purred.

Nesta said, “It doesn’t look like you’re exercising anything other than your mouths.”

I looked over my shoulder. My sister was in a dress of pale blue that turned her skin golden, her hair swept up, her back a stiff column. I scrambled to say something, to apologize, but … not in front of him. She wouldn’t want this conversation in front of Cassian.

Cassian extended a wrapped hand, his fingers curling in a come-hither motion. “Scared?”

I wisely kept my mouth shut as Nesta stepped from the open doorway into the blinding light of the courtyard. “Why should I be scared of an oversized bat who likes to throw temper tantrums?”

I choked, and Cassian shot me a warning glare, daring me to laugh. But I felt for that bond in my mind, lowering my mental shields enough to say to Rhysand, wherever he was in the city, Please come spare me from Cassian and Nesta’s bickering.

A heartbeat later, Rhys crooned, Regretting becoming High Lady?

I savored that voice—that humor. But I shoved that simmering panic down again as I countered, Is this part of my duties?

A sensual, dark laugh. Why do you think I was so desperate for a partner? I’ve had almost five centuries to deal with this alone.

It’s only fair you have to endure it now.

Cassian was saying to Nesta, “Seems like you’re a little on edge, Nesta. And you left so abruptly last night … Any way I can help ease that tension?”

Please, I begged Rhys.

What will you give me?

I wasn’t sure if I could hiss down the bond between us, but from the chuckle that echoed into my mind a heartbeat later, I knew the feeling had been conveyed. I’m in a meeting with the governors of the Palaces. They might be a little pissy if I vanish. I tried not to sigh.

Nesta picked at her nails. “Amren is coming to instruct me in a few—”

Shadow rippled across the courtyard, cutting her off. And it wasn’t Rhysand who landed between us, but—

I sent another pretty face for you to admire, Rhys said. Not as beautiful as mine, of course, but a close second.

Image 37

As the shadows wreathing him cleared, Azriel sized up Nesta and Cassian, then threw a vaguely sympathetic look in my direction. “I need to start our lesson early.”

A piss-poor lie, but I said, “Right. No problem at all.”

Cassian glowered at me, then Azriel. We both ignored him as I strode to the shadowsinger, unwrapping my hands as I went.

Thank you, I said down the bond.

You can make it up to me tonight.

I tried not to blush at the image Rhys sent into my head detailing precisely how I’d repay him, and slammed down my mental shields. On the other side of them, I could have sworn talon-tipped fingers trailed down the black adamant in a sensual, silent promise. I swallowed hard.

Azriel’s wings spread, dark reds and golds shining through in the bright sun, and he opened his arms to me. “The pine forest will be good—the one by the lake.”

“Why?”

“Because water is better to fall into than hard rock,” Cassian replied, crossing his arms.

My stomach clenched. But I let Azriel scoop me up, his scent of night-chilled mist and cedar wrapping around me as he flapped his wings once, stirring the dirt of the courtyard.

I caught Cassian’s narrowed gaze and grinned widely. “Good luck,” I said, and Azriel, Cauldron bless him, shot into the cloudless sky.

Neither of us missed Cassian’s barked, filthy curse, though we didn’t deign to comment.

Cassian was a general— the general of the Night Court.

Surely Nesta wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle.

“I dropped Amren off at the House on my way in,” Azriel told me as we landed at the shore of a turquoise mountain lake flanked by

pines and granite. “I told her to get to the training ring immediately.” A half smile. “After a few minutes, that is.”

I snorted and stretched my arms. “Poor Cassian.”

Azriel gave a huff of amusement. “Indeed.”

I shifted on my feet, small gray rocks along the shore skittering beneath my boots. “So …”

Azriel’s black hair seemed to gobble up the blinding sunlight.

“In order to fly,” he said drily, “you’ll need wings.”

Right.

My face heated. I rolled and cracked my wrists. “It’s been a while since I summoned them.”

His piercing stare didn’t stray from my face, my posture. As immovable and steady as the granite this lake had been carved into. I might as well have been a flitting butterfly by comparison.

“Do you need me to turn around?” He lifted a dark brow in emphasis.

I cringed. “No. But … it might take me a few tries.”

“We started our lesson early—we’ve got plenty of time.”

“I appreciate you making the effort to pretend that it wasn’t because I was desperate to avoid Cassian and Nesta’s early-morning bickering.”

“I’d never let my High Lady suffer through that.” He said it completely stone-faced.

I chuckled, rubbing at a sore spot on my shoulder. “Are you …

ready to meet with Lucien this afternoon?”

Azriel angled his head. “Should I be preparing for it?”

“No. I just …” I shrugged. “When do you leave to gather information on the High Lords?”

“After I talk to him.” His eyes were shining—lit with amusement.

As if he knew I was buying time.

I blew out a breath. “Right. Here we go.”

Touching that part of me, the part Tamlin had given me …

Some vital piece of my heart recoiled. Even as something sharp and vicious in my gut preened at what I’d taken. All that I’d taken.

I shoved out the thoughts, focusing on those Illyrian wings. I’d summoned them that day in the Steppes from pure memory and fear. Creating them now … I let my mind slip into my recollections of Rhys’s wings, how they felt and moved and weighed …

“The frame needs to be a bit thicker,” Azriel offered as a weight began to drag at my back. “Strengthen the muscles leading to it.”

I obeyed, my magic listening in turn. He provided more feedback, where to add and where to ease up, where to smooth and where to toughen.

I was rasping for breath, sweat sliding down my spine, by the time he said, “Good.” He cleared his throat. “I know you’re not Illyrian, but … amongst their kind, it is considered … inappropriate to touch someone’s wings without permission. Especially females.”

Their kind. Not his.

It took me a moment to realize what he was asking. “Oh—oh.

Go ahead.”

“I need to ascertain if they feel right.”

“Right.” I put my back to him, my muscles groaning as they worked to spread the wings. Everything—from my neck to my shoulders to my ribs to my spine to my ass—seemed to now control them, and was barking in protest at the weight and movement.

I’d only had them for a few seconds with Lucien in the Steppes

—I hadn’t realized how heavy they were, how complex the muscles.

Azriel’s hands, for all their scarring, were featherlight as he grasped and touched certain areas, patting and tapping others. I gritted my teeth, the sensation like … like having the arch of my foot tickled and poked. But he made quick work of it, and I rolled my shoulders again as he stepped around me to murmur, “It’s— amazing. They’re the same as mine.”

“I think the magic did most of the work.”

A shake of the head. “You’re an artist—it was your attention to detail.”

I blushed a bit at the compliment, and braced my hands on my hips. “Well? Do we jump into the skies?”

“First lesson: don’t let them drag on the ground.”

I blinked. My wings were indeed resting on the rocks. “Why?”

“Illyrians think it’s lazy—a sign of weakness. And from a practical standpoint, the ground is full of things that could hurt your wings. Splinters, shards of rock … They can not only get stuck and lead to infection, but also impact the way the wing catches the wind. So keep them off the ground.”

Knife-sharp pain rippled down my back as I tried to lift them. I managed getting the left upright. The right just drooped like a loose sail.

“You need to strengthen your back muscles—and your thighs.

And your arms. And core.”

“So everything, then.”

Again, that dry, quiet smile. “Why do you think Illyrians are so fit?”

“Why did no one warn me about this cocky side of yours?”

Azriel’s mouth twitched upward. “Both wings up.”

A quiet but unyielding demand.

I winced, contorting my body this way and that as I fought to get the right one to rise. No luck.

“Try spreading them, then tucking in, if you can’t lift it up like that.”

I obeyed, and hissed at the sharp pain along every muscle in my back as I flared the wings. Even the slightest breeze off the lake tickled and tugged, and I braced my feet apart on the rocky shore, seeking some semblance of balance— “Now fold inward.”

I did, snapping them shut—the movement so fast that I toppled forward.

Azriel caught me before I could eat stone, gripping me tightly under the shoulder and hauling me up. “Building your core muscles will also help with the balance.”

“So, back to Cassian, then.”

A nod. “Tomorrow. Today, focus on lifting and folding, spreading and lifting.” Azriel’s wings gleamed with red and gold as the sun gilded them. “Like this.” He demonstrated, flaring his wings wide, tucking them in, flaring, angling, tucking them in. Over and over.

Sighing, I followed his movements, my back throbbing and aching. Perhaps flying lessons were a waste of time.

CHAPTER

20

“I’ve never been to a library before,” I admitted to Rhys after lunch, as we strode down level after level beneath the House of Wind, my words echoing off the carved red stone. I winced with every step, rubbing at my back.

Azriel had given me a tonic that would help with the soreness, but I knew that by tonight, I’d be whimpering. If hours of researching any way to patch up those holes in the wall didn’t make me start first.

“I mean,” I clarified, “not counting the private libraries here and at the Spring Court, and my family had one as well, but not … Not a real one.”

Rhys glanced sidelong at me. “I’ve heard that the humans have free libraries on the continent—open to anyone.”

I wasn’t sure if it was a question or not, but I nodded. “In one of the territories, they allow anyone in, regardless of their station or bloodline.” I considered his words. “Did … were there libraries before the War?”

Of course there had been, but what I meant—

“Yes. Great libraries, full of cranky scholars who could find you tomes dating back thousands of years. But humans were not allowed inside—unless you were someone’s slave on an errand, and even then you were closely watched.”

“Why?”

“Because the books were full of magic, and things they wanted to keep humans from knowing.” Rhys slid his hands into his pockets, leading me down a corridor lit only by bowls of faelight upraised in the hands of beautiful female statues, their forms High Fae and faerie alike. “The scholars and librarians refused to keep slaves of their own—some for personal reasons, but mainly because they didn’t want them accessing the books and archives.”

Rhys gestured down another curving stairwell. We must have been far beneath the mountain, the air dry and cool—and heavy.

As if it had been trapped inside for ages. “What happened to the libraries once the wall was built?”

Rhys tucked in his wings as the stairs became tighter, the ceiling dropping. “Most scholars had enough time to evacuate—

and were able to winnow the books out. But if they didn’t have the time or the brute power …” A muscle ticked in his jaw. “They burned the libraries. Rather than let the humans access their precious information.”

A chill snaked down my spine. “They’d rather have lost that information forever?”

He nodded, the dim light gilding his blue-black hair. “Prejudices aside, the fear was that the humans would find dangerous spells

—and use them on us.”

“But we—I mean, they don’t have magic. Humans don’t have magic.”

“Some do. Usually the ones who can claim distant Fae ancestry. But some of those spells don’t require magic from the wielder—only the right words, or use of ingredients.”

His words snagged on something in my mind. “Could—I mean, obviously they did, but … Humans and Fae once interbred. What happened to the offspring? If you were half Fae, half human, where did you go once the wall went up?”

Rhys stepped into a hall at the foot of the stairs, revealing a wide passageway of carved red stone and a sealed set of

obsidian doors, veins of silver running throughout. Beautiful—

terrifying. Like some great beast was kept behind them.

“It did not go well for the half-breeds,” he said after a moment.

“Many were offspring of unwanted unions. Most usually chose to stay with their human mothers—their human families. But once the wall went up, amongst humans, they were a … reminder of what had been done, of the enemies lurking above the wall. At best, they were outcasts and pariahs, their children—if they bore the physical traits—as well. At worst … Humans were angry in those initial years, and that first generation afterward. They wanted someone to pay for the slavery, for the crimes against them. Even if the half-breed had done nothing wrong … It did not end well.”

He approached the doors, which opened on a phantom wind, as if the mountain itself lived to serve him.

“And the ones above the wall?”

“They were deemed even lower than lesser faeries. Either they were unwanted everywhere they went, or … many found work on the streets. Selling themselves.”

“Here in Velaris?” My words were a bare brush of air.

“My father was still High Lord then,” Rhys said, his back stiffening. “We had not allowed any humans, slave or free, into our territory in centuries. He did not allow them in—either to whore or to find sanctuary.”

“And once you were High Lord?”

Rhys halted before the gloom that spread beyond us. “By then, it was too late for most of them. It is hard to … offer refuge to someone without being able to explain where we were offering them a safe place. To get the word out about it while maintaining our illusion of ruthless cruelty.” The starlight guttered in his eyes.

“Over the years, we encountered a few. Some were able to make it here. Some were … beyond our help.”

Something moved in the darkness beyond the doors, but I kept my focus on his face, on his tensed shoulders. “If the wall comes down, will …?” I couldn’t finish the words.

Rhys slid his fingers through mine, interlacing our hands. “Yes.

If there are those, human or faerie, who need a safe place … this city will be open to them. Velaris has been closed off for so long—

too long, perhaps. Adding new people, from different places, different histories and cultures … I do not see how that could be a bad thing. The transition might be more complex than we anticipate, but … yes. The gates to this city will be open for those who need its protection. To any who can make it here.”

I squeezed his hand, savoring the hard-earned calluses on it.

No, I would not let him bear the burden of this war, its cost, alone.

Rhys glanced to the open doors—to the hooded and cloaked figure patiently waiting in the shadows beyond them. Every aching sinew and bone locked up as I took in the pale robes, the hood crowned with a limpid blue stone, the panel that could be lowered over the eyes— Priestess.

“This is Clotho,” Rhys said calmly, releasing my hand to guide me toward the awaiting female. The weight of his hand on my lower back told me enough about how much he realized the sight of her would jar me. “She’s one of the dozens of priestesses who work here.”

Clotho lowered her head in a bow, but said nothing.

“I—I didn’t know that the priestesses left their temples.”

“A library is a temple of sorts,” Rhys said with a wry smile. “But the priestesses here …” As we entered the library proper, golden lights flickered to life. As if Clotho had been in utter darkness until we’d entered. “They are special. Unique.”

She angled her head in what might have been amusement. Her face remained in shadow, her slim body concealed in those pale, heavy robes. Silence—and yet life danced around her.

Rhys smiled warmly at the priestess. “Did you find the texts?”

And it was only when she bobbed her head in a sort of “so-so”

motion that I realized either she could not or would not speak.

Clotho gestured to her left—into the library itself.

And I dragged my eyes away from the mute priestess long enough to take in the library.

Not a cavernous room in a manor. Not even close.

This was …

It was as if the base of the mountain had been hollowed out by some massive digging beast, leaving a pit descending into the dark heart of the world. Around that gaping hole, carved into the mountain itself, spiraled level after level of shelves and books and reading areas, leading into the inky black. From what I could see of the various levels as I drifted toward the carved stone railing overlooking the drop, the stacks shot far into the mountain itself, like the spokes of a mighty wheel.

And through it all, fluttering like moth’s wings, the rustle of paper and parchment.

Silent, and yet alive. Awake and humming and restless, some many-limbed beast at constant work. I peered upward, finding more levels rising toward the House above. And lurking far below … Darkness.

“What’s at the bottom of the pit?” I asked as Rhys came up beside me, his shoulder brushing mine.

“I once dared Cassian to fly down and see.” Rhys braced his hands on the railing, gazing down into the gloom.

“And?”

“And he came back up, faster than I’ve ever seen him fly, white as death. He never told me what he saw. The first few weeks, I thought it was a joke—just to pique my curiosity. But when I finally decided to see for myself a month later, he threatened to tie me to a chair. He said some things were better left unseen and undisturbed. It’s been two hundred years, and he still won’t tell me what he saw. If you even mention it, he goes pale and shaky and won’t talk for a few hours.”

My blood chilled. “Is it … some sort of monster?”

“I have no idea.” Rhys jerked his chin toward Clotho, the priestess patiently waiting a few steps behind us, her face still in shadow. “They don’t speak or write of it, so if they know … They certainly won’t tell me. So if it doesn’t bother us, then I won’t bother it. That is, if it’s even an it. Cassian never said if he saw anything living down there. Perhaps it’s something else entirely.”

Considering the things I’d already witnessed … I didn’t want to think about what lay at the bottom of the library. Or what could make Cassian, who had seen more dreadful and deadly parts of the world than I could ever imagine, so terrified.

Robes rustling, Clotho aimed for the sloping walkway into the library, and we fell into step behind her. The floors were red stone, like the rest of the place, but smooth and polished. I wondered if any of the priestesses had ever gone sledding down the spiraling path.

Not that I know of, Rhys said into my mind. But Mor and I once tried when we were children. My mother caught us on our third level down, and we were sent to bed without supper.

I clamped down on my smile. Was it such a crime?

It was when we’d oiled up the floor, and the scholars were falling on their faces.

I coughed to cover my laugh, lowering my head, even with Clotho a few steps ahead.

We passed stacks of books and parchment, the shelves either built into the stone itself or made of dark, solid wood. Hallways lined with both vanished into the mountain itself, and every few minutes, a little reading area popped up, full of tidy tables, low-burning glass lamps, and deep-cushioned chairs and couches.

Ancient woven rugs adorned the floors beneath them, usually set before fireplaces that had been carved into the rock and kept well away from any shelves, their grates fine-meshed enough to retain any wandering embers.

Cozy, despite the size of the space; warm, despite the unknown terror lurking below.

If the others piss me off too much, I like to come down here for some peace and quiet.

I smiled slightly at Rhys, who kept looking ahead as we spoke mind to mind.

Don’t they know by now that they can find you down here?

Of course. But I never go to the same spot twice in a row, so it usually takes them so long to find me that they don’t bother. Plus, they know that if I’m here, it’s because I want to be alone.

Poor baby High Lord, I crooned. Having to run away to find solitude perfect for brooding.

Rhys pinched my behind, and I clamped down on my lip to keep from yelping.

I could have sworn Clotho’s shoulders shook with laughter.

But before I could bite off Rhys’s head for the rippling pain my aching back muscles felt in the wake of the sudden movement, Clotho led us into a reading area about three levels down, the massive worktable laden with fat, ancient books bound in various dark leathers.

A neat stack of paper was set to one side, along with an assortment of pens, and the reading lamps were at full glow, merry and sparkling in the gloom. A silver tea service gleamed on a low-lying table between the two leather couches before the grumbling fireplace, steam curling from the arched spout of the kettle. Biscuits and little sandwiches filled the platter beside it, along with a fat pile of napkins that subtly hinted we use them before touching the books.

“Thank you,” Rhys told the priestess, who only pulled a book off the pile she’d undoubtedly gathered and opened it to a marked page. The ancient velvet ribbon was the color of old blood—but it was her hand that struck me as it met the golden light of the lamps.

Her fingers were crooked. Bent and twisted at such angles I would have thought her born with them were it not for the scarring.

For a heartbeat, I was in a spring wood. For a heartbeat, I heard the crunch of stone on flesh and bone as I made another priestess smash her hand. Over and over.

Rhys put a hand on my lower back. The effort it must have taken Clotho to move everything into place with those gnarled hands …

But she looked toward another book—or at least her head turned that way—and it slid over to her.

Magic. Right.

She gestured with a finger that was bent in two different directions to the page she’d selected, then to the book.

“I’ll look,” Rhys said, then inclined his head. “We’ll give a shout if we need anything.”

Clotho bowed her head again and began striding away, careful and silent.

“Thank you,” I said to her.

The priestess paused, looking back, and bowed her head, hood swaying.

Within seconds, she was gone.

I stared after her, even as Rhys slid into one of the two chairs before the piles of books.

“A long time ago, Clotho was hurt very badly by a group of males,” Rhys said quietly.

I didn’t need details to know what that had entailed. The edge in Rhys’s voice implied enough.

“They cut out her tongue so she couldn’t tell anyone who had hurt her. And smashed her hands so she couldn’t write it.” Every word was more clipped than the last, and darkness snarled through the small space.

My stomach turned. “Why not kill her?”

“Because it was more entertaining for them that way. That is, until Mor found her. And brought her to me.”

When he’d undoubtedly looked into her mind and seen their faces.

“I let Mor hunt them.” His wings tucked in tightly. “And when she finished, she stayed down here for a month. Helping Clotho heal as best as could be expected, but also … wiping away the stain of them.” Mor’s trauma had been different, but … I understood why she’d done it, wanted to be here. I wondered if it had granted her any measure of closure.

“Cassian and Azriel were healed completely after Hybern.

Nothing could be done for Clotho?”

“The males were … healing her as they hurt her. Making the injuries permanent. When Mor found her, the damage had been set. They hadn’t finished her hands, so we were able to salvage them, give her some use, but … To heal her, the wounds would have needed to be ripped open again. I offered to take the pain away while it was done, but … She could not endure it—what having the wounds open again would trigger in her mind. Her heart. She has lived down here since then—with others like her.

Her magic helps with her mobility.”

I knew we should begin working, but I asked, “Are … all the priestesses in this library like her?”

“Yes.”

The word held centuries of rage and pain.

“I made this library into a refuge for them. Some come to heal, work as acolytes, and then leave; some take the oaths to the Cauldron and Mother to become priestesses and remain here forever. But it belongs to them whether they stay a week or a lifetime. Outsiders are allowed to use the library for research, but only if the priestesses approve. And only if they take binding oaths to do no harm while they visit. This library belongs to them.”

“Who was here before them?”

“A few cranky old scholars, who cursed me soundly when I relocated them to other libraries in the city. They still get access, but when and where is always approved by the priestesses.”

Choice. It had always been about my choice with him. And for others as well. Long before he’d ever learned the hard way about it. The question must have been in my eyes because Rhys added,

“I came here a great deal in those weeks after Under the Mountain.”

My throat tightened as I leaned in to brush a kiss to his cheek.

“Thank you for sharing this place with me.”

“It belongs to you, too, now.” And I knew he meant not just in terms of us being mates, but … in the ways it belonged to the

other females here. Who had endured and survived.

I gave him a half smile. “I suppose it’s a miracle that I can even stand to be underground.”

But his features remained solemn, contemplative. “It is.” He added softly, “I’m very proud of you.”

My eyes burned, and I blinked as I faced the books. “And I suppose,” I said with an effort at lightness, “that it’s a miracle I can actually read these things.”

Rhys’s answering smile was lovely—and just a bit wicked. “I believe my little lessons helped.”

“Yes, ‘ Rhys is the greatest lover a female can hope for’ is undoubtedly how I learned to read.”

“I was only trying to tell you what you now know.”

My blood heated a bit. “Hmmm,” was all I said, pulling a book toward me.

“I’ll take that hmmm as a challenge.” His hand slid down my thigh, then cupped my knee, his thumb brushing along its side.

Even through my leathers, the heat of him seeped to my very bones. “Maybe I’ll haul you between the stacks and see how quiet you can be.”

“Hmmm.” I flipped through the pages, not seeing any of the text.

His hand began a lethal, taunting exploration up my thigh, his fingers grazing along the sensitive inside. Higher, higher. He leaned in to drag a book toward himself, but whispered in my ear, “Or maybe I’ll spread you out on this desk and lick you until you scream loud enough to wake whatever is at the bottom of the library.”

I whipped my head toward him. His eyes were glazed—almost sleepy.

“I was fully committed to that plan,” I said, even as his hand stopped very, very close to the apex of my thighs, “until you brought in that thing down below.”

A feline smile. He held my stare as his tongue brushed his bottom lip.

My breasts tightened beneath my shirt, and his gaze dropped—

watching. “I would have thought,” he mused, “that our bout this morning would be enough to tide you over until tonight.” His hand slid between my legs, brazenly cupping me, his thumb pushing down on an aching spot. A low groan slipped from me, and my cheeks heated in its wake. “Apparently, I didn’t do a good enough job sating you, if you’re so easily riled after a few hours.”

“Prick,” I breathed, but the word was ragged. His thumb pressed down harder, circling roughly.

Rhys leaned in again, kissing my neck—that place right under my ear—and said against my skin, “Let’s see what names you call me when my head is between your legs, Feyre darling.”

And then he was gone.

He’d winnowed away, half the books with him. I started, my body foreign and cold, dizzy and disoriented.

Where the hell are you? I scanned around me, and found nothing but shadow and merry flame and books.

Two levels below.

And why are you two levels below? I shoved out of my chair, back aching in protest as I stormed for the walkway and rail beyond, then peered down into the gloom.

Sure enough, in a reading area two levels below, I could spy his dark hair and wings—could spy him leaning back in his chair before an identical desk, an ankle crossed over a knee. Smirking up at me. Because I can’t work with you distracting me.

I scowled at him. I’m distracting you ?

If you’re sitting next to me, the last thing on my mind is reading dusty old books. Especially when you’re in all that tight leather.

Pig.

His chuckle echoed up through the library amid the fluttering papers and scratching pens of the priestesses working throughout.

How can you winnow inside the House? I thought there were wards against it.

The library makes its own rules, apparently.

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I snorted.

Two hours of work, he promised me, turning back to the table and flaring his wings—a veritable screen to block my view of him.

And his view of me. Then we can play.

I gave him a vulgar gesture.

I saw that.

I did it again, and his laugh floated to me as I faced the books stacked before me and began to read.

We found a myriad of information about the wall and its forming.

When we compared our notes two hours later, many of the texts were conflicting, all of them claiming absolute authority on the subject. But there were a few similar details that Rhys had not known.

He had been healing at the cabin in the mountains when they’d formed the wall, when they’d signed that Treaty. The details that emerged had been murky at best, but the various texts Clotho had dug up on the wall’s formation and rules agreed on one thing: it had never been made to last.

No, initially, the wall had been a temporary solution—to cleave human and faerie until peace settled long enough for them to later reconvene. And decide how they were to live together—as one people.

But the wall had remained. Humans had grown old and died, and their children had forgotten the promises of their parents, their grandparents, their ancestors. And the High Fae who survived …

it was a new world, without slaves. Lesser faeries stepped in to replace the missing free labor; territory boundaries had been redrawn to accommodate those displaced. Such a great shift in the world in those initial centuries, so many working to move past war, to heal, that the wall … the wall became permanent. The wall became legend.

“Even if all seven courts ally,” I said as we plucked grapes from a silver bowl in a quiet sitting room in the House of Wind, having left the dim library for some much-needed sunshine, “even if Keir and the Court of Nightmares join, too … Will we stand a chance in this war?”

Rhys leaned back in the embroidered chair before the floor-to-ceiling window. Velaris was a glittering sprawl below and beyond

—serene and lovely, even with the scars of battle now peppering it. “Army against army, the possibility of victory is slim.” Blunt, honest words.

I shifted in my own identical chair on the other side of the lowlying table between us. “Could you … If you and the King of Hybern went head to head …”

“Would I win?” Rhys lifted a brow, and studied the city. “I don’t know. He’s been smart about keeping the extent of his power hidden. But he had to resort to trickery and threats to beat us that day in Hybern. He has thousands of years of knowledge and training. If he and I fought … I doubt he will let it come to that. He stands a better chance at sure victory by overwhelming us with numbers, in stretching us thin. If we fought one-on-one, if he’d even accept an open challenge from me … the damage would be catastrophic. And that’s without him wielding the Cauldron.”

My heart stumbled. Rhys went on, “I’m willing to take the brunt of it, if it means the others will at least stand with us against him.”

I clenched the tufted arms of the chair.

“You shouldn’t have to.”

“It might be the only choice.”

“I don’t accept that as an option.”

He blinked at me. “Prythian might need me as an option.”

Because with that power of his … He’d take on the king and his entire army. Burn himself out until he was—

I need you. As an option. In my future.”

Silence. And even with the sun warming my feet, a terrible cold spread through me.

His throat bobbed. “If it means giving you a future, then I’m willing to do—”

“You will do no such thing.” I panted through my bared teeth, leaning forward in my chair.

Rhys only watched me, eyes shadowed. “How can you ask me not to give everything I have to ensure that you, that my family and people, survive?”

“You’ve given enough.”

“Not enough. Not yet.”

It was hard to breathe, to see past the burning in my eyes.

“Why? Where does this come from, Rhys?”

For once, he didn’t answer.

And there was something brittle enough in his expression, some long unhealed wound that glimmered there, that I sighed, rubbed my face, and then said, “Just—work with me. With all of us. Together. This isn’t your burden alone.”

He plucked another grape from its stem, chewed. His lips tilted in a faint smile. “So what do you propose, then?”

I could still see that vulnerability in his eyes, still feel it in that bond between us, but I angled my head. I sorted through all I knew, all that had happened. Considered the books I’d read in the library below. A library that housed— “Amren warned us to never put the two halves of the Book together,” I mused. “But we— I did. She said that older things might be … awoken by it. Might come sniffing.”

Rhys crossed an ankle over a knee.

“Hybern might have the numbers,” I said, “but what if we had the monsters? You said Hybern will see an alliance with all the courts coming—but perhaps not one with things wholly unconnected.” I leaned forward. “And I’m not talking about the monsters roaming across the world. I am talking about one in particular—who has nothing to lose and everything to gain.”

One that I would do everything in my power to use, rather than let Rhys face the brunt of this alone.

His brows rose. “Oh?”

“The Bone Carver,” I clarified. “He and Amren have both been looking for a way back to their own worlds.” The Carver had been insistent, relentless, in asking me that day in the Prison about where I had gone during death. I could have sworn Rhys’s golden-brown skin paled, but I added, “I wonder if it’s time to ask him what he’d give to go back home.”

CHAPTER

21

The aching muscles along my back, core, and thighs had gone into complete revolt by the time Rhys and I parted ways, my mate heading off to track down Cassian—who would be my escort tomorrow morning to the Prison. If both of us had gone, it would perhaps look too … desperate, too vital. But if the High Lady and her general went to visit the Carver to pose some hypothetical questions …

It would still show our hand, but perhaps not quite how badly we needed any extra bit of assistance. And Cassian, unsurprisingly, knew more about the Carver than anyone thanks to some morbid fascination with all of the Prison’s inmates.

Especially since he was responsible for jailing some of them.

But while Rhys sought out Cassian, I had a task of my own.

I was wincing and hissing as I strode through the murky red halls of the House to find my sister and Amren. To see which of them was still standing after their first lesson. Among other things.

I found them in a quiet, forgotten workroom, coldly watching the other.

Books lay scattered on the table between them. A ticking clock by the dusty cabinets was the only sound.

“Sorry to interrupt your staring contest,” I said, lingering in the doorway. I rubbed at a spot low in my back. “I wanted to see how the first lesson was going.”

“Fine.” Amren didn’t take her eyes off my sister, a faint smile playing about her red mouth.

I studied Nesta, who gazed at Amren, utterly stone-faced.

“What are you doing?”

“Waiting,” Amren said.

“For what?”

“For busybodies to leave us alone.”

I straightened, clearing my throat. “Is this part of her training?”

Amren turned her head to me with exaggerated slowness, her chin-length, razor-straight hair shifting with the movement. “Rhys has his own method of training you. I have mine.” Her white teeth flashed with every word. “We visit the Court of Nightmares tomorrow night—she needs some basic training before we do.”

“Like what?”

Amren sighed at the ceiling. “Shielding herself. From prying minds and powers.”

I blinked. I should have thought of that. That if Nesta were to join us, be at the Hewn City … she would need some defenses beyond what we could offer her.

Nesta at last looked to me, her face as cold as ever.

“Are you all right?” I asked her.

Amren clicked her tongue. “She’s fine. Stubborn as an ass, but as you’re related, I’m not surprised.”

I scowled. “How am I supposed to know what your methods are? For all I know, you picked up some terrible techniques in that Prison.”

Careful. So, so careful.

Amren hissed, “That place taught me plenty of things, but certainly not this.”

I angled my head, the portrait of curiosity. “Did you ever interact with the others?”

The fewer people who knew about my trip tomorrow to see the Carver, the safer it was—the less chance of Hybern catching wind of it. Not for any fear of betrayal, but … there was always risk.

Azriel, now off hunting for information on the Autumn Court, would be told when he returned tonight. Mor … I’d tell her eventually. But Amren … Rhys and I had decided to wait to tell Amren. The last time we’d gone to the Prison, she’d been … testy.

Telling her we planned to unleash one of her fellow inmates?

Perhaps not the best thing to mention while we waited for her to find a way to heal that wall—and train my sister.

Impatience rippled across Amren’s face, those silver eyes flaring. “I only spoke to them in whispers and echoes through rock, girl. And I was glad of it.”

“What’s the Prison?” Nesta asked at last.

“A hell entombed in stone,” Amren said. “Full of creatures you should thank the Mother no longer walk the earth freely.”

Nesta frowned deeply, but shut her mouth.

“Like who?” I asked. Any extra information she might have—

Amren bared her teeth. “I am giving a magic lesson, not a history one.” She waved a dismissive hand. “If you want someone to gossip with, go find one of the dogs. I’m sure Cassian’s still sniffing around upstairs.”

Nesta’s lips twitched upward.

Amren pointed at her with a slender finger ending in a sharp, manicured nail. “Concentrate. Vital organs must be shielded at all times.”

I tapped a hand against the open doorway. “I’ll keep looking for more information for you in the library, Amren.” No response.

“Good luck,” I added.

“She doesn’t need luck,” Amren said. Nesta huffed a laugh.

I took that as the only farewell I’d get. Perhaps letting Amren and Nesta train together was … a bad choice. Even if the prospect of unleashing them upon the Court of Nightmares … I smiled a bit at the thought.

By the time Mor, Rhys, Cassian, and I gathered for dinner at the town house—Azriel still off spying—my muscles were so sore I could barely walk up the front stairs. Sore enough that any plans I had to visit Lucien up at the House after the meal vanished. Mor Image 39

was testy and quiet throughout, no doubt in anticipation of the visit tomorrow night.

She’d had to work with Keir plenty throughout the centuries, and yet tomorrow … She’d only warned Rhys once while we ate that he should thoroughly consider any offer Keir might give him in exchange for his army. Rhys had shrugged, saying he’d think about it when the time came. A non-answer—and one that made Mor grit her teeth.

I didn’t blame her. Long before the War, her family had brutalized her in ways I didn’t let myself consider. Not a day before I was to meet with them again—ask them for help. Work with them.

Rhys, Mother bless him, had a bath waiting for me after the meal.

I’d need all my strength for tomorrow. For the monsters I was to face beneath two very different mountains.

I had not visited this place for months. But the carved stone walls were just as I’d last seen them, the darkness still interrupted by bracketed torches.

Not the Prison. Under the Mountain.

But instead of Clare’s mutilated body spiked high to the wall above me …

Her blue-gray eyes were still wide with terror. Gone was the haughty iciness, the queenly jut to her chin.

Nesta. They’d done precisely to her, wound for wound, what they’d done to Clare.

And behind me, screaming and pleading—

I turned, finding Elain, naked and weeping, tied to that enormous spit. What I had once been threatened to endure.

Gnarled, masked faeries rotated the iron handles, turning her over

I tried to move. Tried to lunge.

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But I was frozen—utterly bound by invisible chains to the floor.

Feminine laughter flitted from the other end of that throne room.

From the dais. Now empty.

Empty, because that was Amarantha, strutting into the gloom, down some hall that hadn’t been there before but now stretched away into nothing.

Rhysand followed a step behind her. Going with her. To that bedroom.

He looked over his shoulder at me, only once.

Over his wings. His wings, which were out, which she’d see and destroy, right after she—

I was screaming for him to stop. Thrashing at those bonds.

Elain’s pleading rose, higher and higher. Rhys kept walking with Amarantha. Let her take his hand and tug him along.

I couldn’t move, couldn’t stop it, any of it—

I was hauled out of the dream like a thrashing fish from a net cast deep into the sea.

And when I surfaced … I remained half there. Half in my body, half Under the Mountain, watching as—

“Breathe.”

The word was an order. Laced with that primal command he so rarely wielded.

But my eyes focused. My chest expanded. I slipped a bit further back into my body.

“Again.”

I did so. His face came into view, faelights murmuring to life inside their lamps and bowls in our bedroom. His wings were tucked in tight, framing his disheveled hair, his drawn face.

Rhys.

“Again,” he only said. I obeyed.

My bones had turned brittle, my stomach a roiling mess. I closed my eyes, fighting the nausea. Rippling terror kept its talons

buried deep. I could still see it: the way she’d led him down that hall. To—

I surged, rolling to the edge of the mattress and clamping down hard as my body tried to heave up its contents onto the carpet.

His hand was instantly on my back, rubbing soothing circles.

Utterly willing to let me vomit right over the side of the bed. But I focused on my breathing.

On closing down those memories, one by one. Memories repainted.

I lay half sprawled over the edge for uncounted minutes. He rubbed my back throughout.

When I could finally move, when the nausea had subsided … I twisted back over. And the sight of that face … I slid my arms around his waist, gripping tightly as he pressed a silent kiss to my hair, reminding myself over and over that we were out. We had survived. Never again—never again would I let someone hurt him like that. Hurt my sisters like that.

Never again.

CHAPTER

22

I felt Rhys’s attention on me while we dressed the next morning, and throughout our hearty breakfast. Yet he didn’t push, didn’t demand to know what had dragged me into that screaming hell.

It had been a long while since those nightmares had hauled either of us from sleep. Blurred the lines.

It was only when we stood in the foyer, waiting for Cassian before we winnowed to the Prison, that Rhys asked from where he leaned against the stair banister, “Do you need to talk about it?”

My Illyrian leathers groaned as I turned toward him.

Rhys clarified, “With me—or anyone.”

I answered him truthfully, tugging at the end of my braid. “With everything bearing down on us, everything at stake …” I let my braid drop. “I don’t know. I think it’s torn open some … part of me that was slowly repairing.” Repairing thanks to both of us.

He nodded, no fear or reproach in his eyes.

So I told him. All of it. Stumbling over the parts that still made me ill. He only listened.

And when I was done, that shakiness remained, but …

Speaking it, voicing it aloud to him …

The savage grip of those terrors lightened. Cleared away like dew in the sun. I freed a long breath, as if blowing those fears from me, letting my body loosen in its wake.

Rhys silently pushed off the banister and kissed me. Once.

Twice.

Cassian stalked through the front door a heartbeat later and groaned that it was too early to stomach the sight of us kissing.

My mate only snarled at him before he took us both by the hand and winnowed us to the Prison.

Rhys gripped my fingers tighter than usual as the wind ripped around us, Cassian now wisely keeping silent. And as we emerged from that black, tumbling wind, Rhys leaned over to kiss me a third time, sweet and soft, before the gray light and roaring wind greeted us.

Apparently, the Prison was cold and misty no matter the time of year.

Standing at the base of the mossy, rocky mountain under which the Prison was built, Cassian and I frowned up the slope.

Despite the Illyrian leathers, the chill seeped into my bones. I rubbed at my arms, lifting my brows at Rhys, who had remained in his usual attire, so out of place in this damp, windy speck of green in the middle of a gray sea.

The wind ruffled his black hair as he surveyed us, Cassian already sizing up the mountain like some opponent. Twin Illyrian blades were crossed over the general’s muscled back. “When you’re in there,” Rhys said, the words barely audible over the wind and silver streams running down the mountainside, “you won’t be able to reach me.”

“Why?” I rubbed my already-freezing hands together before puffing a hot breath into the cradle of my palms.

“Wards and spells far older than Prythian,” was all Rhys said.

He jerked his chin to Cassian. “Don’t let each other out of your sight.”

It was the dead seriousness with which Rhys spoke that kept me from retorting.

Indeed, my mate’s eyes were hard—unflinching. While we were here, he and Azriel were to discuss what he’d found out about Autumn’s leanings in this war. And then adjust their strategy for the meeting with the High Lords. But I could sense it, the urge to request he join us. Watch over us.

“Shout down the bond when you’re out again,” Rhys said with a mildness that didn’t reach his gaze.

Cassian looked back over a shoulder. “Get back to Velaris, you mother hen. We’ll be fine.”

Rhys leveled another uncharacteristically hard stare at him.

“Remember who you put in here, Cassian.”

Cassian just tucked in his wings, as if every muscle shifted toward battle. Steady and solid as the mountain we were about to climb.

With a wink at me, Rhys vanished.

Cassian checked the buckles on his swords and motioned me to start the long trek up the hill. My gut tightened at the climb ahead. The shrieking hollowness of this place.

“Who did you put in here?” The mossy earth cushioned my steps.

Cassian put a scar-flecked finger to his lips. “Best left for another time.”

Right. I fell into step beside him, my thighs burning with the steep hike. Mist chilled my face. Conserving his strength—

Cassian wasn’t wasting a drop of energy on shielding us from the elements.

“You really think unleashing the Carver will do the trick against Hybern?”

“You’re the general,” I panted, “you tell me.”

He considered, the wind tossing his dark hair over his tan face.

“Even if you promise to find a way to send him back to his own world with the Book, or give him whatever unholy thing he wants,”

Cassian mused, “I think you’d better find a way to control him in this world, or else we’ll be fighting enemies on all fronts. And I know which one will hand our asses to us.”

“The Carver’s that bad.”

“You’re asking this right before we’re to meet with him?”

I hissed, “I assumed Rhys would have put his foot down if it was that risky.”

“Rhys has been known to hatch plans that make my heart stop dead,” Cassian grumbled. “So, I wouldn’t count on him to be the voice of reason.”

I scowled at Cassian, earning a wolfish grin in return.

But Cassian scanned the heavy gray sky, as if hunting for spying eyes. Then the moss and grass and rocks beneath our boots for listening ears below. “There was life here,” he said, answering my question at last, “before the High Lords took Prythian. Old gods, we call them. They ruled the forests and the rivers and the mountains—some were those things. Then the magic shifted to the High Fae, who brought the Cauldron and Mother along with them, and though the old gods were still worshipped by a select few, most people forgot them.”

I grappled onto a large gray rock as I climbed over it. “The Bone Carver was an old god?”

He dragged a hand through his hair, the Siphon gleaming in the watery light. “That’s what legend says. Along with whispers of being able to fell hundreds of soldiers with one breath.”

A chill rippled down my skin that had nothing to do with the brisk wind. “Useful on a battlefield.”

Cassian’s golden-brown skin paled while his eyes churned with the thought. “Not without the proper precautions. Not without him being bound to obey us within an inch of his life.” Which I’d have to figure out as well, I supposed.

“How did he wind up here—in the Prison?”

“I don’t know. No one does.” Cassian helped me over a boulder, his hand gripping mine tightly. “But how do you plan on freeing him from the Prison?”

I winced. “I suppose our friend would know, since she got out.”

Careful—we had to be careful when mentioning Amren’s name here.

Cassian’s face grew solemn. “She doesn’t talk about how she did it, Feyre. I’d be careful how you push her.” Since we still had

Image 41

Image 42

not told Amren where we were today. What we were doing.

I thought about saying more, but ahead, far up the slope, the massive bone gates opened.

I’d forgotten it—the weight of the air inside the Prison. Like wading through the unstirred air of a tomb. Like stealing a breath from the open mouth of a skull.

We both bore an Illyrian blade in one hand, the faelight bobbing ahead to show the way, occasionally dancing and sliding along the shining metal. Our other hands … Cassian clenched my fingers as tightly as I clutched his while we descended into the eternal blackness of the Prison, our steps crunching on the dry ground. There were no doors—none that we could see.

But behind that solid, black rock, I could still feel them. Could have sworn a faint scratching sound filled the passage. From the other side of that rock.

As if someone were running their nails down it. Something huge—and old. And quiet as the wind through a field of wheat.

Cassian kept utterly silent, tracking something—counting something.

“This could be … a very bad idea,” I admitted, my grip tightening on his hand.

“Oh, it most certainly is,” Cassian said with a faint smile as we continued down and down into the heavy black and thrumming silence. “But this is war. We don’t have the luxury of good ideas— only picking between the bad ones.”

The Bone Carver’s cell door swung open the moment I laid my palm to it.

“Worth the misery of being Rhys’s mate,” Cassian quipped as the white bone swung away into darkness.

A light chuckle within.

The amusement faded from Cassian’s face at the sound—as we walked into the cell, still hand in hand.

The orb of faelight bobbed ahead, illuminating the stone-hewn cell.

Cassian growled at what it revealed. Who it revealed.

Wholly different, no doubt, from the same young boy who now smiled at me.

Dark-haired, with eyes of crushing blue.

I started at the child’s face—what I had not noticed that first time. What I had not understood.

It was Rhysand’s face. The coloring, the eyes … it was my mate’s face.

But the Carver’s full, wide mouth, curled into that hideous smile

… That was my mouth. My father’s mouth.

The hair on my arms rose. The Carver inclined his head in greeting—in greeting and in confirmation, as if he knew precisely what I realized. Who I had seen and was still seeing.

The High Lord’s son. My son. Our son. Should we survive long enough to bear him.

Should I not fail in my task to recruit the Carver. Should we not fail to unify the High Lords and the Court of Nightmares. And keep that wall intact.

It was an effort to keep my knees from buckling. Cassian’s face was pale enough that I knew whatever he was seeing … it wasn’t a beautiful young boy.

“I was wondering when you’d return,” the Carver said, that boy’s voice sweet and yet dreadful—from the ancient creature that lurked beneath it. “High Lady,” he added to me. “Please accept my congratulations on your union.” A glance at Cassian. “I can smell the wind on you.” Another little smile. “Have you brought me a gift?”

I reached into the pocket of my jacket and chucked a small shard of bone, no bigger than my hand, at the Carver’s feet.

“This is all that’s left of the Attor after I splattered him on the streets of Velaris.”

Those blue eyes flared with unholy delight. I hadn’t even known we’d kept this fragment. It had been stored until now—precisely for this sort of thing.

“So bloodthirsty, my new High Lady,” the Carver purred, picking up the cracked bone and turning it over in those small, delicate hands. And then the Carver said, “I smell my sister on you, Cursebreaker.”

My mouth went dry. His sister—

“Did you steal from her? Did she weave a thread of your life into her loom?”

The Weaver of the Wood. My heart thundered. No breathing could steady it. Cassian’s hand tightened around mine.

The Carver purred to Cassian, “If I tell you a secret, warrior-heart, what will you give me?”

Neither of us spoke. Carefully—we’d have to phrase and do this so carefully.

The Carver stroked the shard of bone in his palm, attention fixed upon a stone-faced Cassian. “What if I tell you what the rock and darkness and sea beyond whispered to me, Lord of Bloodshed? How they shuddered in fear, on that island across the sea. How they trembled when she emerged. She took something —something precious. She ripped it out with her teeth.”

Cassian’s golden-brown face had drained of color, his wings tucking in tight.

“What did you wake that day in Hybern, Prince of Bastards?”

My blood went cold.

“What came out was not what went in.” A rasping laugh as the Carver laid the shard of bone on the ground beside him. “How lovely she is—new as a fawn and yet ancient as the sea. How she calls to you. A queen, as my sister once was. Terrible and proud; beautiful as a winter sunrise.”

Rhys had warned me of the inmates’ capacity to lie, to sell anything, to get free.

“Nesta,” the Bone Carver murmured. “Nes-ta.”

I squeezed Cassian’s hand. Enough. It was enough of this teasing and taunting. But he didn’t look at me.

“How the wind moans her name. Can you hear it, too? Nesta.

Nesta. Nesta.

I wasn’t sure Cassian was breathing.

“What did she do, drowning in the ageless dark? What did she take?”

It was the bite in the last word that snapped my tether of restraint. “If you wish to find out, perhaps you should stop talking long enough for us to explain.”

My voice seemed to shake Cassian free of whatever trance he’d been in. His breathing surged, tight and fast, and he scanned my face—apology in his eyes.

The Carver chuckled. “I so rarely get company. Forgive me for wanting to make idle talk.” He crossed an ankle over a foot. “And why have you sought my services?”

“We attained the Book of Breathings,” I said casually. “There are … interesting spells inside. Codes within codes within codes.

Someone we know cracked most of them. She is still looking for others. Spells that could … send someone like her home. Others like her, too.”

The Carver’s violet eyes flared bright as flame. “I’m listening.”

CHAPTER

23

“War is upon us,” I said to the Carver. “Rumor suggests you have

… gifts that may be useful upon the battlefield.”

A smile at Cassian, as if understanding why he’d joined me. “In exchange for a price,” the Carver mused.

“Within reason,” Cassian countered.

The Carver surveyed his cell. “And you think that I wish to go …

back.”

“Don’t you?”

The Carver folded his legs beneath his small frame. “Where we came from … I do not believe it is now anything more than dust drifting across a plain. There is no home to return to. Not one that I desire.”

For if he’d been here before even Amren had arrived … Tens of thousands of years—longer, perhaps. I shoved against the sinking sensation in my gut. “Then perhaps improving your … living conditions might entice you, if this world is where you wish to be.”

“This cell, Cursebreaker, is where I wish to be.” The Carver patted the dirt beside him. “Do you think I let them trap me without good reason?”

Cassian’s entire body seemed to shift—seemed to go aware and focused. Ready to haul us out of there.

The Carver traced three overlapping, interlocked circles in the dirt. “You have met my sister—my twin. The Weaver, as you now call her. I knew her as Stryga. She, and our older brother, Koschei. How they delighted in this world when we fell into it. How those ancient Fae feared and worshipped them. Had I been braver, I might have bided my time—waited for their power to fade, for that long-ago Fae warrior to trick Stryga into diminishing her power and becoming confined to the Middle. Koschei, too— confined and bound by his little lake on the continent. All before Prythian, before the land was carved up and any High Lord was crowned.”

Cassian and I waited, not daring to interrupt.

“Clever, that Fae warrior. Her bloodline is long gone now—

though a trace still runs through some human line.” He smiled, perhaps a bit sadly. “No one remembers her name. But I do. She would have been my salvation, had I not made my choice long before she walked this earth.”

I waited and waited and waited, picking apart the story he laid out like crumbs of bread.

“She could not kill them in the end—they were too strong. They could only be contained.” The Carver wiped a hand through the circles he’d drawn, erasing them wholly. “I knew that long before she ever trapped them—took it upon myself to find my way here.”

“To spare the world from yourself?” Cassian asked, brows narrowing.

The Carver’s eyes burned like the hottest flame. “To hide from my siblings.”

I blinked. “Why?”

“They are death-gods, girl,” the Carver hissed. “You are immortal—or long-lived enough to seem that way. But my siblings and I … We are different. And the two of them … Stronger. So much stronger than I ever was. My sister … she found a way to eat life itself. To stay young and beautiful forever thanks to the lives she steals.”

The weaving—the threads inside that house, the roof made of hair … I made a note to throw Rhys in the Sidra for sending me into that cottage.

But the Carver himself … “If they are death-gods,” I said, “then what are you?”

Death. He had asked me, over and over, about death. About what waited beyond it, what it felt like. Where I had gone. I’d thought it mere curiosity, but …

That boy’s face crinkled with amusement. My son’s face. The vision of the future that had once been shown to me all those months ago, as some sort of taunt or embodiment of what I hadn’t dared yet admit to myself. What I was most uncertain of. And now … now that young boy … A different sort of taunt, for the future I now stood to lose.

“I am forgotten, that’s what I am. And that’s how I prefer to be.”

The Carver rested his head against the wall of rock behind him.

“So you will find that I do not wish to leave. That I have no desire to remind my sister and brother that I am alive and in the world.

Contained and diminished as they are, their influence remains …

considerable.”

“If Hybern wins this war,” Cassian said roughly, “you might find the gates of this place blown wide open. And your sister and brother unleashed from their own territories—and interested in paying a visit.”

“Even Hybern is not that foolish.” A satisfied huff of air. “I’m sure there are other inmates here who will find your offer … tempting.”

My blood roared. “You will not even consider assisting us.” I waved a hand to the cell. “This is what you would prefer—for eternity?”

“If you knew my brother and sister, Cursebreaker, you would find this a much wiser and more comfortable alternative.”

I opened my mouth, but Cassian squeezed my hand in warning. Enough. We’d said enough, revealed enough. Looking so desperate … It would help nothing.

“We should go,” Cassian said to me, the very picture of unruffled calm. “The delights of the Hewn City await.”

We’d indeed be late if we didn’t leave now. I threw a glare at the Carver by way of farewell, letting Cassian lead me toward the

Image 43

open cell door.

“You are going to the Hewn City,” the Carver said—not entirely a question.

“I don’t see how that is any business of yours,” I said over my shoulder.

The Carver’s beat of silence echoed around us. Made us pause on the threshold.

“One last attempt,” the Carver mused, eyes skating over us, “to rally the entirety of the Night Court, I suppose.”

“Again, it is none of your concern,” I said coolly.

The Carver smiled. “You will be bargaining with him.” A glance at the tattoo on my right hand. “I wonder what Keir’s asking price will be.” A low laugh. “Interesting.”

Cassian let out a long-suffering sigh. “Out with it.”

The Bone Carver again fell silent, toying with the shard of the Attor’s bone in the dirt beside him. “The eddies of the Cauldron swirl in strange ways,” he murmured, more to himself than us.

“We’re going,” I said, making to turn again, hauling Cassian with me.

“My sister had a collection of mirrors in her black castle,” the Carver said.

We halted once more.

“She admired herself day and night in those mirrors, gloating over her youth and beauty. There was one mirror—the Ouroboros, she called it. It was old even when we were young. A window to the world. All could be seen, all could be told through its dark surface. Keir possesses it—an heirloom of his household. Bring it to me. That is my price. The Ouroboros, and I am yours to wield. If you can find a way to free me.” A hateful smile.

I exchanged a glance with Cassian, and we both shrugged at the Carver. “We’ll see,” was all I said before we walked out.

Cassian and I sat on a boulder overlooking a silver stream, breathing in the chill mists. The Prison loomed at our backs, a dreadful weight blocking out the horizon.

“You said that you knew the Carver was an old god,” I mused softly. “Did you know he was a death-god?”

Cassian’s face was taut. “I guessed.” When I lifted a brow, he clarified, “He carves deaths into bones. Sees them. Enjoys them.

It wasn’t hard to figure out.”

I considered. “Was it you or Rhys who suggested you come here with me?”

“I wanted to come. But Rhys … he guessed it, too.”

Because what we’d seen in Nesta’s eyes that day …

“Like calls to like,” I murmured.

Cassian nodded tightly. “I don’t think even the Carver knows what Nesta is. But I wanted to see—just in case.”

“Why?”

“I want to help.”

It was answer enough.

We fell into silence, the stream gurgling as it rushed by.

“Would you be frightened of her, if Nesta was—Death? Or if her power came from it?”

Cassian was quiet for a long moment.

He said at last, “I’m a warrior. I’ve walked beside Death my entire life. I would be more afraid for her, to have that power. But not afraid of her.” He considered, and added after a heartbeat, “Nothing about Nesta could frighten me.”

I swallowed, and squeezed his hand. “Thank you.”

I wasn’t sure why I even said it, but he nodded all the same.

I felt him before he appeared, a spark of star-kissed joy flaring through me right as Rhys stepped out of the air itself. “Well?”

Cassian hopped off the boulder, extending a hand to help me down. “You’re not going to like his asking price.”

Rhys held out both hands to winnow us back to Velaris. “If he wants the fancy dinner plates, he can have them.”

Neither Cassian nor I could muster a laugh as we both reached for Rhys’s outstretched hands. “You better bring your bargaining skills tonight,” was all Cassian muttered to my mate before we vanished into shadow.

CHAPTER

24

When we returned to the town house in the height of summer afternoon heat, Cassian and Azriel drew sticks for who would remain in Velaris that night.

Both wanted to join us at the Hewn City, but someone had to guard the city—part of their long-held protocol. And someone had to guard Elain, though I certainly wasn’t about to tell Lucien that.

Cassian, swearing and pissy, got the short stick, and Azriel only clapped him on the shoulder before heading up to the House to prepare.

I followed after him a few minutes later, leaving Cassian to tell Rhys the rest of what the Carver had said. What he wanted.

There were two people I needed to see up at the House before we left. I should have checked in on Elain earlier, should have remembered that her would-have-been wedding was in a few days, but … I cursed myself for forgetting it. And as for Lucien …

It wouldn’t hurt, I told myself, to keep tabs on where he was. How that conversation with Azriel had gone yesterday. Make sure he remembered the rules we’d set.

But fifteen minutes later, I was trying not to wince as I walked down the halls of the House of Wind, grateful Azriel had gone ahead. I’d winnowed into the sky above the highest balcony—and since I figured now was as good a time as any to practice flying, I’d summoned wings.

And fallen twenty feet onto hard stone.

A rallied wind kept the fall from cracking any bones, but both my knees and my pride were significantly bruised by my graceless tumble through the air.

At least no one had witnessed it.

My stiff, limping steps, at least, had eased into a smoother gait by the time I found Elain in the family library.

Still staring at the window, but she was out of her room.

Nesta was reading in her usual chair, one eye on Elain, the other on the book spread in her lap. Only Nesta glanced my way as I slipped through the carved wooden doors.

I murmured, “Hello,” and shut the doors behind me.

Elain didn’t turn. She was wearing a pale pink gown that did little to complement her sallow skin, her brown-gold hair hanging in loose, heavy ringlets down her thin back.

“It’s a fine day,” I said to them.

Nesta arched an elegant eyebrow. “Where’s your menagerie of friends?”

I leveled a steely look back at her. “Those friends have offered you shelter and comfort.” And training—or whatever Amren was doing. “Are you ready for tonight?”

“Yes.” Nesta merely resumed reading the book in her lap. Pure dismissal.

I let out a little snort that I knew would make her see red, and strode for Elain. Nesta monitored my every step, a panther readying to strike at the merest hint of danger.

“What are you looking at?” I asked Elain, keeping my voice soft.

Casual.

Her face was wan, her lips bloodless. But they moved—barely

—as she said, “I can see so very far now. All the way to the sea.”

Indeed, the sea beyond the Sidra was a distant sparkle. “It takes some getting used to.”

“I can hear your heartbeat—if I listen carefully. I can hear her heartbeat, too.”

“You can learn to drown out the sounds that bother you.” I had

—entirely on my own. I wondered if Nesta had as well, or if they

both suffered, hearing each other’s heartbeats day and night. I didn’t look to my other sister to confirm it.

Elain’s eyes at last slid to mine. The first time she’d done so.

Even wasted away by grief and despair, Elain’s beauty was remarkable. Hers was a face that could bring kings to their knees.

And yet there was no joy in it. No light. No life.

She said, “I can hear the sea. Even at night. Even in my dreams. The crashing sea—and the screams of a bird made of fire.”

It was an effort not to glance to Nesta. Even the town house was too far to hear anything from the nearby coast. And as for some fire-bird …

“There is a garden—at my other house,” I said. “I’d like for you to come tend it, if you’re willing.”

Elain only turned toward the sunny windows again, the light dancing in her hair. “Will I hear the earthworms writhing through the soil? Or the stretching of roots? Will the bird of fire come to sit in the trees and watch me?”

I wasn’t sure if I should answer. It was an effort to keep from shaking.

But I caught Nesta’s eye, noting the glimmer of pain on my eldest sister’s face before it was hidden beneath that cool mask.

“There’s a book I need you to help me find, Nesta,” I said, giving a pointed stare to the stacks to my left.

Far enough away for privacy, but close enough to remain nearby should Elain need anything. Do anything.

Something in my chest cracked as Nesta’s eyes also went to the windows before Elain.

To check, as I did, for whether they could be easily opened.

Mercifully, they were permanently sealed, likely to protect against some careless fool forgetting to close them and ruining the books. Likely Cassian.

Nesta wordlessly set down her book and followed me into the small labyrinth of stacks, both of us keeping an ear on the main sitting area.

When we were far enough away, I threw up a shield of hard wind around us. Keeping any sound inside. “How did you get her to leave her room?”

“I didn’t,” Nesta said, leaning against a shelf and crossing her slim arms. “I found her in here. She wasn’t in bed when I awoke.”

Nesta must have panicked upon finding her room empty—“Did she eat anything?”

“No. I managed to get her to drink some broth last night. She refused anything else. She’s been talking in those half riddles all day.”

I dragged a hand through my hair, freeing strands from my braid. “Did anything happen to trigger—”

“I don’t know. I check on her every few hours.” Nesta clenched her jaw. “I was gone for longer yesterday, though.” While she trained with Amren. Rhys had informed me that by the end of it, Nesta’s rudimentary shields were solid enough that Amren deemed my sister ready for tonight.

But there, beneath that cool demeanor—guilt. Panic.

“I doubt anything happened,” I said quickly. “Maybe it’s just …

part of the recovery process. Her adjustment to being Fae.”

Nesta didn’t look convinced. “Does she have powers? Like mine.”

And what, exactly, are those powers, Nesta? “I—don’t know. I don’t think so. Unless this is the first sign of something manifesting.” It was an effort not to add, If you’d talk about what went on in the Cauldron, perhaps we’d have a better understanding of it. “Let’s give her a day or two—see what happens. If she improves.”

“Why not see now?”

“Because we’re going to the Hewn City in a few hours. And you don’t seem inclined to want us shoving into your business,” I told her as evenly as I could. “I doubt Elain does, too.”

Nesta stared me down, not a flicker of emotion on her face, and gave a curt nod. “Well, at least she left the room.”

“And the chair.”

We exchanged a rare, calm glance.

But then I said, “Why won’t you train with Cassian?”

Nesta’s spine locked up. “Why is it only Cassian that I may train with? Why not the other one?”

“Azriel?”

“Him, or the blond one who won’t shut up.”

“If you’re referring to Mor—”

“And why must I train at all? I am no warrior, nor do I desire to be.”

“It could make you strong—”

“There are many types of strength beyond the ability to wield a blade and end lives. Amren told me that yesterday.”

“You said you wanted our enemies dead. Why not kill them yourself?”

She inspected her nails. “Why bother when someone else can do it for me?”

I avoided the urge to rub my temples. “We’re—”

But the doors to the library opened, and I snapped my barrier of hard air down entirely at the thud of stalking footsteps, then their sudden halting.

I gripped Nesta’s arm to keep her still just as Lucien’s voice blurted, “You—you left your room.”

Nesta bristled, teeth flashing. I gripped her harder, and threw a new wall of air around us—holding her there.

Weeks of cloistering Elain had done nothing to improve her state. Perhaps the half riddles were proof of that. And even if Lucien was currently breaking the rules we had set— More steps—no doubt closer to where Elain stood at the window.

“Is … is there anything I can get for you?”

I’d never heard my friend’s voice so soft. So tentative and concerned.

Perhaps it made me the lowest sort of wretch, but I cast my mind toward them. Toward him.

And then I was in his body, his head.

Too thin.

She must not be eating at all.

How can she even stand?

The thoughts flowed through his head, one after another. His heart was a raging, thunderous beat, and he didn’t dare move from his position a mere five feet away. She hadn’t yet turned toward him, but the ravages of her fasting were evident enough.

Touch her, smell her, taste her—

The instincts were a running river. He fisted his hands at his sides.

He hadn’t expected her to be here. The other sister—the viper

—was a possibility, but one he was willing to risk. Aside from talking to the shadowsinger yesterday—which had been just about as unnerving as he’d expected, though Azriel seemed like a decent enough male—he’d been cooped up in this wind-blasted House for two days. The thought of another one had been enough to make him risk Rhysand’s wrath.

He just wanted a walk—and a few books. It had been an age since he’d even had free time to read, let alone do so for pleasure.

But there she was.

His mate.

She was nothing like Jesminda.

Jesminda had been all laughter and mischief, too wild and free to be contained by the country life that she’d been born into. She had teased him, taunted him—seduced him so thoroughly that he hadn’t wanted anything but her. She’d seen him not as a High Lord’s seventh son, but as a male. Had loved him without question, without hesitation. She had chosen him.

Elain had been … thrown at him.

He glanced toward the tea service spread on a low-lying table nearby. “I’m going to assume that one of those cups belongs to your sister.” Indeed, there was a discarded book in the viper’s usual chair. Cauldron help the male who wound up shackled to her.

“Do you mind if I help myself to the other?”

He tried to sound casual—comfortable. Even as his heart raced and raced, so swift he thought he might vomit on the very expensive, very old carpet. From Sangravah, if the patterns and rich dyes were any indication.

Rhysand was many things, but he certainly had good taste.

This entire place had been decorated with thought and elegance, with a penchant for comfort over stuffiness.

He didn’t want to admit he liked it. Didn’t want to admit that he found the city beautiful.

That the circle of people who now claimed to be Feyre’s new family … It was what, long ago, he’d once thought life at Tamlin’s court would be.

An ache like a blow to the chest went through him, but he crossed the rug. Forced his hands to be steady while he poured himself a cup of tea and sat in the chair opposite Nesta’s vacated one.

“There’s a plate of biscuits. Would you like one?”

He didn’t expect her to answer, and he gave himself all of one more minute before he’d rise from this chair and leave, hopefully avoiding Nesta’s return.

But sunlight on gold caught his eye—and Elain slowly turned from her vigil at the window.

He had not seen her entire face since that day in Hybern.

Then, it had been drawn and terrified, then utterly blank and numb, her hair plastered to her head, her lips blue with cold and shock.

Looking at her now …

She was pale, yes. The vacancy still glazing her features.

But he couldn’t breathe as she faced him fully.

She was the most beautiful female he’d ever seen.

Betrayal, queasy and oily, slid through his veins. He’d said the same to Jesminda once.

But even as shame washed through him, the words, the sense chanted, Mine. You are mine, and I am yours. Mate.

Her eyes were the brown of a fawn’s coat. And he could have sworn something sparked in them as she met his gaze.

“Who are you?”

He knew without demanding clarification that she was aware of what he was to her.

“I am Lucien. Seventh son of the High Lord of the Autumn Court.”

And a whole lot of nothing. He’d told the shadowsinger all he knew—of his surviving brothers, of his father. His mother … he’d kept some details, irrelevant and utterly personal, to himself.

Everything else—his father’s closest allies, the most conniving courtiers and lords … He’d handed it over. Granted, it was dated by a few centuries, but in his time as emissary, from the information he’d gathered, not much had changed. They’d all acted the same Under the Mountain, anyway. And after what had happened with his brothers a few days ago … There was no tinge of guilt when he told Azriel what he knew. None of what he felt when he looked toward the south—toward both of the courts he’d called home.

For a long moment, Elain’s face did not shift, but those eyes seemed to focus a bit more. “Lucien,” she said at last, and he clenched his teacup to keep from shuddering at the sound of his name on her mouth. “From my sister’s stories. Her friend.”

“Yes.”

But Elain blinked slowly. “You were in Hybern.”

“Yes.” It was all he could say.

“You betrayed us.”

He wished she’d shoved him out the window behind her. “It—it was a mistake.”

Her eyes went frank and cold. “I was to be married in a few days.”

He fought against the bristling rage, the irrational urge to find the male who’d claimed her and shred him apart. The words were a rasp as he instead said, “I know. I’m sorry.”

She did not love him, want him, need him. Another male’s bride.

A mortal man’s wife. Or she would have been.

She looked away—toward the windows. “I can hear your heart,”

she said quietly.

He wasn’t sure how to respond, so he said nothing, and drained his tea, even as it burned his mouth.

“When I sleep,” she murmured, “I can hear your heart beating through the stone.” She angled her head, as if the city view held some answer. “Can you hear mine?”

He wasn’t sure if she truly meant to address him, but he said,

“No, lady. I cannot.”

Her too-thin shoulders seemed to curve inward. “No one ever does. No one ever looked—not really.” A bramble of words. Her voice strained to a whisper. “He did. He saw me. He will not now.”

Her thumb brushed the iron ring on her finger.

Another male’s ring, another marker that she was claimed—

It was enough. I had listened enough, learned enough. I pulled out of Lucien’s mind.

Nesta was gaping at me, even as her face had leeched of color at every word uttered between them. “Have you ever gone into my

—”

“No,” I rasped.

How she knew what I had done, I didn’t want to ask. Not as I dropped the shield around us and headed for the sitting area.

Lucien, no doubt having heard our steps, was flushed as he glanced between me and Nesta. No inkling whatsoever that I’d slid into his mind. Rifled through it like a bandit in the night. I shoved down the mild nausea.

My eldest sister merely said to him, “Get out.”

I flashed Nesta a glare, but Lucien rose. “I came for a book.”

“Well, find one and leave.”

Elain only stared out the window, unaware—or uncaring.

Lucien didn’t head for the stacks. He just went to the open doors. He paused right between them and said to me, to Nesta,

Image 44

“She needs fresh air.”

“We’ll judge what she needs.”

I could have sworn his ruby hair gleamed like molten metal as his temper rose. But it faded, his russet eye fixing on me. “Take her to the sea. Take her to some garden. But get her out of this house for an hour or two.”

Then he walked away.

I looked at my two sisters. Cloistered up here, high above the world.

“You’re moving into the town house right now,” I said to them.

To Lucien, who paused in the dim hallway outside.

Nesta, to my shock, did not object.

Neither did Rhys when I sent my order down the bond, asking him, Cassian, and Azriel to help move them. No, my mate just promised to assign two bedrooms to my sisters down the hall, on the other side of the stairs. And a third for Lucien—on our side of the hall. Well away from Elain’s.

Thirty minutes later, Azriel carried Elain down, my sister silent and unresponsive in his arms.

Nesta had looked ready to walk off the balcony rather than let Cassian, already dressed and armed for guarding the town house tonight, hold her, so I nudged her toward Rhys, pushed Lucien toward Cassian, and flew myself back.

Or tried to—again. I soared for about half a minute, savoring the cleansing scream of the wind, before my wings wobbled, my back strained, and the fall became unbearably deadly. I winnowed the rest of the way to the town house, and adjusted vases and figurines in the sitting room while waiting for them.

Azriel arrived first, no shadows to be seen, my sister a pale, golden mass in his arms. He, too, wore his Illyrian armor, Elain’s golden-brown hair snagging in some of the black scales across his chest and shoulders.

He set her down gently on the foyer carpet, having carried her in through the front door.

Elain peered up at his patient, solemn face.

Azriel smiled faintly. “Would you like me to show you the garden?”

She seemed so small before him, so fragile compared to the scales of his fighting leathers, the breadth of his shoulders. The wings peeking over them.

But Elain did not balk from him, did not shy away as she nodded—just once.

Azriel, graceful as any courtier, offered her an arm. I couldn’t tell if she was looking at his blue Siphon or at his scarred skin beneath as she breathed, “Beautiful.”

Color bloomed high on Azriel’s golden-brown cheeks, but he inclined his head in thanks and led my sister toward the back doors into the garden, sunlight bathing them.

A moment later, Nesta was stomping through the front door, her face a remarkable shade of green. “I need—a toilet.”

I met Rhys’s stare as he prowled in behind her, hands in his pockets. What did you do?

His brows shot up. But I wordlessly pointed Nesta toward the powder room beneath the stairs, and she vanished, slamming the door behind her.

Me? Rhys leaned against the bottom post of the banister. She complained that I was flying deliberately slow. So I went fast.

Cassian and Lucien appeared, neither looking at the other. But Lucien’s attention went right to the hallway toward the back, his nostrils flaring as he scented Elain’s direction. And who she’d gone with.

A low snarl slipped out of him—

“Relax,” Rhys said. “Azriel isn’t the ravishing type.”

Lucien cut him a glare.

Mercifully, or perhaps not, Nesta’s retching filled the silence.

Cassian gaped at Rhys. “What did you do?”

“I asked him the same thing,” I said, crossing my arms. “He said he ‘ went fast.’ ”

Nesta vomited again—then silence.

Cassian sighed at the ceiling. “She’ll never fly again.”

The doorknob twisted, and we tried—or at least Cassian and I did—not to seem like we’d been listening to her. Nesta’s face was still greenish-pale, but … Her eyes burned.

There was no way of describing that burning—and even painting it might have failed.

Her eyes remained the same blue-gray as my own. And yet …

Molten ore was all I could think of. Quicksilver set aflame.

She advanced a step toward us. All her attention fixed on Rhys.

Cassian casually stepped in her path, wings folded in tight.

Feet braced apart on the carpet. A fighting stance—casual, but …

his Siphons glimmered.

“Do you know,” Cassian drawled to her, “that the last time I got into a brawl in this house, I was kicked out for a month?”

Nesta’s burning gaze slid to him, still outraged—but hinted with incredulity.

He just went on, “It was Amren’s fault, of course, but no one believed me. And no one dared banish her.”

She blinked slowly.

But the burning, molten gaze became mortal. Or as mortal as one of us could be.

Until Lucien breathed, “What are you?”

Cassian didn’t seem to dare take his focus off Nesta. But my sister slowly looked at Lucien.

“I made it give something back,” she said with terrifying quiet.

The Cauldron. The hairs along my arms rose. Nesta’s gaze flicked to the carpet, then to a spot on the wall. “I wish to go to my room.”

It took a moment to realize she’d spoken to me. I cleared my throat. “Up the stairs, on your right. Second door. Or the third—

whichever suits you. The other is for Elain. We need to leave in

…” I squinted at the clock in the sitting room. “Two hours.”

A shallow nod was her only acknowledgment and thanks.

Image 45

We watched as she headed up the steps, her lavender gown trailing after her, one slender hand braced on the rail.

“I’m sorry,” Rhys called up after her.

Her hand tightened on the rail, the whites of her knuckles poking through her pale skin, but she didn’t say anything as she continued on.

“Is that sort of thing even possible?” Cassian murmured when the door to her room had shut. “For someone to take from the Cauldron’s essence?”

“It would seem so,” Rhys mused, then said to Lucien, “The flame in her eyes was not of your usual sort, I take it.”

Lucien shook his head. “No. It spoke to nothing in my own arsenal. That was … Ice so cold it burned. Ice and yet … fluid like flame. Or flame made of ice.”

“I think it’s death,” I said quietly.

I held Rhys’s gaze, as if it were again the tether that had kept me in this world. “I think the power is death—death made flesh. Or whatever power the Cauldron holds over such things. That’s why the Carver heard it—heard about her.”

“Mother above,” Lucien said, dragging a hand through his hair.

Cassian gave him a solemn nod.

But Rhys rubbed his jaw, weighing, thinking. Then he said simply, “Only Nesta would not just conquer Death—but pillage it.”

No wonder she didn’t wish to speak to anyone about it—didn’t wish to bear witness on our behalf. It had been mere seconds for us while she’d gone under.

I had never asked either of my sisters how long it had been for them inside that Cauldron.

“Azriel knows you’re watching,” Rhys drawled from where he stood before the mirror in our bedroom, adjusting the lapels of his black jacket.

The town house was a quiet flurry of activity as we prepared to leave. Mor and Amren had arrived half an hour ago, the former heading for the sitting room, the latter bearing a dress for my sister. I didn’t dare ask Amren to see what she’d selected for Nesta.

Training, Amren had said days ago. There were magical objects in the Court of Nightmares that my sister could study tonight, while we were occupied with Keir. I wondered if the Ouroboros was one of them—and made a note to ask Amren what she knew of the mirror the Carver so badly desired. Which I’d somehow have to convince Keir to part with tonight.

Lucien had offered to make himself useful while we were gone by reading through some of the texts now piled on the tables throughout the sitting room. Amren had only grunted at the offer, which I told Lucien amounted to a yes.

Cassian was already on the roof, casually sharpening his blades. I’d asked him if nine swords were really necessary, and he merely told me that it didn’t hurt to be prepared, and that if I had enough time to question him, then I should have enough time to do another workout. I’d quickly left, throwing a vulgar gesture his way.

My hair still damp from the bath I’d just taken, I slid my heavy earrings through my lobes and peered out our bedroom window, monitoring the garden below.

Elain sat silently at one of the wrought-iron tables, a cup of tea before her. Azriel was sprawled on the chaise longue across the gray stones, sunning his wings and reading what looked to be a stack of reports—likely information on the Autumn Court that he planned to present to Rhys once he’d sorted through it all. Already dressed for the Hewn City—the brutal, beautiful armor so at odds with the lovely garden. And my sister sitting within it.

“Why not make them mates?” I mused. “Why Lucien?”

“I’d keep that question from Lucien.”

“I’m serious.” I turned toward him and crossed my arms. “What decides it? Who decides it?”

Rhys straightened his lapels before plucking an invisible piece of lint from them. “Fate, the Mother, the Cauldron’s swirling eddies

…”

Rhys.”

He watched me in the reflection of the mirror as I strode for my armoire, flinging open the doors to yank out the dress I’d selected.

Scraps of shimmering black—a slightly more modest version of what I’d worn to the Court of Nightmares months ago. “You said your mother and father were wrong for each other; Tamlin said his own parents were wrong for each other.” I peeled off my dressing robe. “So it can’t be a perfect system of matching. What if”—I jerked my chin toward the window, to my sister and the shadowsinger in the garden—“that is what she needs? Is there no free will? What if Lucien wishes the union but she doesn’t?”

“A mating bond can be rejected,” Rhys said mildly, eyes flickering in the mirror as he drank in every inch of bare skin I had on display. “There is choice. And sometimes, yes—the bond picks poorly. Sometimes, the bond is nothing more than some …

preordained guesswork at who will provide the strongest offspring.

At its basest level, it’s perhaps only that. Some natural function, not an indication of true, paired souls.” A smile at me—at the rareness, perhaps, of what we had. “Even so,” Rhys went on, “there will always be a … tug. For the females, it is usually easier to ignore, but the males … It can drive them mad. It is their burden to fight through, but some believe they are entitled to the female.

Even after the bond is rejected, they see her as belonging to them. Sometimes they return to challenge the male she chooses for herself. Sometimes it ends in death. It is savage, and it is ugly, and it mercifully does not happen often, but … Many mated pairs will try to make it work, believing the Cauldron selected them for a reason. Only years later will they realize that perhaps the pairing was not ideal in spirit.”

I scrounged up the jeweled, dark belt from an armoire drawer and slung it low over my hips. “So you’re saying she could walk

away—and Lucien would have free rein to kill whoever she wishes to be with.”

Rhys turned from the mirror at last, his dark clothes pristine—

cut perfectly to his body. No wings tonight. “Not free rein—not in my lands. It has been illegal in our territory for a long, long time for males to do that. Even before I was born. Other courts, no. On the continent, there are territories that believe the females literally belong to their mate. But not here. Elain would have our full protection if she rejects the bond. But it will still be a bond, however weakened, that will trail her for the rest of her existence.”

“Do you think she and Lucien match well?” I pulled out a pair of sandals that laced up my bare thighs and jammed my feet into them before beginning work on the bindings.

“You know them better than I do. But I will say that Lucien is loyal—fiercely so.”

“So is Azriel.”

“Azriel,” Rhys said, “has been preoccupied with the same female for the past five hundred years.”

“Wouldn’t the mating bond have snapped into place for them if it exists?”

Rhys’s eyes shuttered. “I think that is a question Azriel has been asking himself every day since he met Mor.” He sighed as I finished one foot and started on the other. “Am I allowed to request that you not play matchmaker? Let them sort it out.”

I rose, bracing my hands on my hips. “I would never meddle in someone else’s affairs!”

He only raised a brow in silent challenge. And I knew precisely what he referred to.

My gut tightened as I took a seat at the vanity and began braiding my hair into a coronet atop my head. Perhaps I was a coward, for not being able to ask it aloud, but I said down the bond, Was it a violation—going into Lucien’s mind like that?

I can’t answer that for you. Rhys came over and handed me a hairpin.

I slid it into a section of braid. I needed to be sure—that he wasn’t about to try to grab her, to sell us out.

He handed me another. And did you get an answer to that?

We worked in unison, pinning my hair into place. I think so. It wasn’t just about what he thought—it was the … feeling. I sensed no ill will, no conniving. Only concern for her. And … sorrow.

Longing. I shook my head. Do I tell him? What I did?

Rhys pinned a hard-to-reach section of my hair. You have to deem whether the cost is worth assuaging your guilt.

The cost being Lucien’s tentative trust in me, this place. I crossed a line.

But you did it to ensure the safety of people you love.

I didn’t realize … I trailed off, shaking my head again.

He squeezed my shoulder. Didn’t realize what?

I shrugged, slouching on the cushioned stool. That it’d be so complicated. My face warmed. I know that sounds terribly naïve

It’s always complicated, and it never gets easier, no matter how many centuries I’ve been doing it.

I pushed around the extra hairpins on the vanity. It’s the second time I’ve gone into his mind.

Then say it’s the last, and be done with it.

I blinked, lifting my head. I’d painted my lips in a shade of red so dark it was nearly black, and they now pressed into a thin line.

He clarified, What’s done is done. Agonizing over it won’t change anything. You realized it was a line you didn’t like crossing, and so you won’t make that mistake again.

I shifted in my seat. Would you have done it?

Rhys considered. Yes. And I would have felt just as guilty afterward.

Hearing that settled something, deep down. I nodded once—

twice.

If you want to make yourself feel a little better, he added, Lucien did technically violate the rules we set. So you were entitled to look into his mind, if only to ensure the safety of your sister. He crossed the line first.

That thing deep in me eased a bit more. You’re right.

And it was done.

I watched Rhys in the mirror as a dark crown appeared in his hands. The one of ravens’ feathers that I’d seen him wear—or its feminine twin. A tiara—which he gently, reverently, set before the braid we’d pinned into place atop my head. The original crown …

it appeared atop Rhys’s head a moment later.

Together, we stared at our reflection. Lord and Lady Night.

“Ready to be wicked?” he purred in my ear.

My toes curled at the caress in that voice—at the memory of the last time we’d gone to the Court of Nightmares. How I’d sat in his lap—where his fingers had drifted.

I rose from the bench, facing him fully. His hands skimmed the bare skin along my ribs. Between my breasts. Down the outside of my thighs. Oh, he remembered, too.

“This time,” I breathed, kissing the tendril of tattoo that peeked just above the collar of Rhys’s black jacket, “I get to make Keir beg.”

CHAPTER

25

Amren hadn’t dressed Nesta in cobwebs and stardust, as Mor and I were clothed. And she hadn’t dressed Nesta in her own style of loose pants and a cropped blouse.

She had kept it simple. Brutal.

A dress of impenetrable black flowed to the dark marble floors of the throne room of the Hewn City, tight through the bodice and sleeves, its neckline skimming the base of her pale throat. Nesta’s hair had been swept into a simple style to reveal the panes of her face, the savage clarity of her eyes as she took in the assembled crowd, the towering carved pillars and the scaled beasts twined around them, the mighty dais and the throne atop it … and did not balk.

Indeed, Nesta’s chin only lifted with each step we took toward that dais.

One throne, I realized—that mighty throne of those twined, scaly beasts.

Rhys realized it, too. Planned for it.

My sister and the others peeled away at the foot of the dais, taking flanking positions at its base. No fear, no joy, no light in their faces. Azriel, at Mor’s side, looked murderously calm as he surveyed those gathered. As he beheld Keir, waiting beside a golden-haired woman who had to be Mor’s mother, sneering at us.

Promise them nothing, Mor had warned me.

Rhys held out a hand for me to ascend the dais steps. I kept my head high, back straight, as I gripped his fingers and strode up the few stairs. Toward that solitary throne.

Rhys only winked as he gracefully escorted me right into that throne, the movement as easy and smooth as a dance.

The crowd murmured as I sat, the black stone bitingly cold against my bare thighs.

They outright gasped as Rhys simply perched on the arm of the throne, smirked at me, and said to the Court of Nightmares,

“Bow.”

For they had not. And with me seated on that throne …

Their faces were still a mixture of shock and disdain as they all dropped to their knees.

I avoided looking at Nesta while she had no choice but to follow suit.

But I made myself look at Keir, at the female beside him, at anyone who dared meet my gaze. Made myself remember what they had done to Mor, now bowing with a grin on her face, when she was barely more than a child. Some of the court averted their eyes.

“I will interpret the lack of two thrones to be due to the fact that this visit came upon you quickly,” Rhys said with lethal calm. “And I will let you all escape without having your skin flayed from your bones as my mating gift to you. Our loyal subjects,” he added, smiling faintly.

I traced a finger over the scaly coil of one of the beasts that made up the arms of the throne. Our court. Part of it.

And we needed them to fight with us. To agree to it—tonight.

The mouth I’d painted that dark, dark red parted into a lazy smile. Tendrils of power snaked toward the dais, but didn’t dare venture past the first step. Testing me—what power I might have.

But not getting close enough to offend Rhysand.

I let them creep closer, sniffing around, as I said to Rhys, to the throne room, “Surely, my love, they would like to stand now.”

Rhys smiled down at me, then at the crowd. “Rise.”

They did. And some of those tendrils of power dared climb up the first step.

I pounced.

Three gasps choked through the murmuring room as I slammed talon-sharp magic down upon those too-curious powers.

Dug in deep and hard. A cat with a bird under its paw. Several of them.

“Do you wish to have this back?” I asked quietly to no one in particular.

Near the foot of the dais, Keir was scowling over a shoulder, his silver circlet glinting atop his golden hair. Someone whimpered in the back of the room.

“Don’t you know,” Rhys purred to the crowd, “that it’s not polite to touch a lady without her permission?”

In answer, I sank those dark talons in further, the magic of whoever had dared try to test me thrashing and buckling. “Play nice,” I crooned to the crowd.

And let go.

Three separate flurries of motion warred for my attention.

Someone had winnowed outright, fleeing. Another had fainted.

And a third was clinging to whoever stood beside them, trembling.

I marked all their faces.

Amren and Nesta approached the foot of the dais. My sister was staring as if she’d never seen me before. I didn’t dare break my mask of bemused coolness. Didn’t dare ask if Nesta’s shields were holding up—if someone had just tried to test her as well.

Nesta’s own imperious face yielded nothing.

Amren bowed her head to Rhys, to me. “By your leave, High Lord.”

Rhys waved an idle hand. “Go. Enjoy yourselves.” He jerked his chin to the watching crowd. “Food and music. Now.”

He was obeyed. Instantly.

My sister and Amren vanished before the crowd could begin milling about, striding right through those towering doors and into the gloom. To go play with some of the magical trove kept here— Image 46

to give Nesta some practice for whenever Amren figured out how to fix the wall.

A few heads turned in their direction—then quickly looked away as Amren noticed them.

Let some of the monster inside show.

We still had not told her of the Bone Carver—of the Prison visit.

Something a bit like guilt coiled in my stomach. Though I supposed I had to get used to it as Rhys curled a finger toward Keir and said, “The council room. Ten minutes.”

Keir’s eyes narrowed at the order, the female beside him keeping her head down—the portrait of subservience. What Mor was supposed to have been.

My friend was indeed watching her parents, cold indifference on her face. Azriel kept a step away, monitoring everything.

I didn’t let myself look too interested—too worried—as Rhys offered me a hand and we rose from the throne. And went to talk of war.

The council chamber of the Hewn City was nearly as large as the throne room. It was carved from the same dark rock, its pillars fashioned after those entangled beasts.

Far below the high, domed ceiling, a mammoth table of black glass split the room in two like a lightning strike, its corners left long and jagged. Sharp as a razor.

Rhys claimed a seat at the head of the table. I took the one at the opposite end. Azriel and Mor found seats on one side, and Keir settled into the seat on the other.

A chair beside him sat empty.

Rhys leaned back in his dark chair, swirling the wine that had been poured by a stone-faced servant a moment before. It had been an effort not to thank the male who’d filled my goblet.

But here, I did not thank anyone.

Here, I took what was mine, and offered no gratitude or apologies for it.

“I know why you’re here,” Keir said without any sort of preamble.

“Oh?” Rhys’s eyebrow arched beautifully.

Keir surveyed us, distaste lingering on his handsome face.

“Hybern is swarming. Your legions”—a sneer at Azriel, at the Illyrians he represented—“are gathering.” Keir interlaced his long fingers and set them upon the dark glass. “You mean to ask for my Darkbringers to join your army.”

Rhys sipped from his wine. “Well, at least you’ve spared me the effort of dancing around the subject.”

Keir held his gaze without blinking. “I will confess that I find myself … sympathetic to Hybern’s cause.”

Mor shifted slightly in her seat. Azriel just pinned that icy, all-seeing stare on Keir.

“You would not be the only one,” Rhys countered coolly.

Keir frowned up at the obsidian chandelier, fashioned after a wreath of night-blooming flowers—the center of each a twinkling silver faelight. “There are many similarities between Hybern’s people and my own. Both of us trapped—stagnant.”

“Last I checked,” Mor cut in, “you have been free to do as you wish for centuries. Longer.”

Keir didn’t so much as look at her, earning a flicker of rage from Azriel at the dismissal. “Ah, but are we free here? Not even the entirety of this mountain belongs to us—not with your palace atop it.”