“All of this belongs to me, I’ll remind you,” Rhys said wryly.
“It’s that mentality that allows me to find Hybern’s stifled people to be … kindred spirits.”
“You want the palace upstairs, Keir, then it’s yours.” Rhys crossed his legs. “I didn’t know you were lusting after it for so long.”
Keir’s answering smile was near-serpentine. “You must need my army rather desperately, Rhysand.” Again, that hateful glance
at Azriel. “Are the overgrown bats not up to snuff anymore?”
“Come train with them,” Azriel said softly, “and you’ll learn for yourself.”
In his centuries of miserable existence, Keir had certainly mastered the art of sneering.
And the way he sneered at Azriel … Mor’s teeth flashed in the dim light. It was an effort to keep myself from doing the same.
“I have no doubt,” Rhys said, the portrait of glorious boredom,
“that you’ve already decided upon your asking price.”
Keir peered down the table—to me. Looked his fill as I held his stare. “I did.”
My stomach turned at that gaze, the words.
Dark power rumbled through the chamber, setting the onyx chandelier tinkling. “Tread carefully, Keir.”
Keir only smiled at me, then at Rhys. Mor had gone utterly still.
“What would you give me for a shot at this war, Rhysand? You whored yourself to Amarantha—but what about your mate?”
He had not forgotten how we’d treated him. How we’d humiliated him months ago.
And Rhys … there was only eternal, unforgiving death in his face, in the darkness gathering behind his chair. “The bargain our ancestors struck grants you the right to choose how and when your army assists my own. But it does not grant you the right to keep your life, Keir, when I grow tired of your existence.”
As if in answer, invisible claws gouged deep marks in the table, the glass shrieking. I flinched. Keir blanched at the lines now inches from him.
“But I thought you might be … hesitant to assist me,” Rhys went on. I’d never seen him so calm. Not calm—but filled with icy rage.
The sort I sometimes glimpsed in Azriel’s eyes.
Rhys snapped his fingers and said to no one in particular,
“Bring him in.”
The doors opened on a phantom wind.
I didn’t know where to look as a servant escorted in the tall male figure.
At Mor, whose face went white with dread. At Azriel, who reached for his dagger—Truth-Teller—his every breath alert, focused, but unsurprised. Not a hint of shock.
Or at Eris, heir to the Autumn Court, as he strolled into the room.
That’s who the final, empty seat was for.
And Rhys …
He remained sprawled in his chair, sipping from his wine.
“Welcome back, Eris,” he drawled. “It’s been what—five centuries since you last set foot in here?”
Mor slid her eyes toward Rhys. Betrayal and—hurt. That was hurt flashing there.
For not warning us. For this … surprise.
I wondered if I schooled my features with any more success than my friend as Eris claimed the vacant seat at the table, not bothering to so much as nod to a wary-eyed Keir. “It has indeed been a while.”
He’d healed since that day on the ice—not a sign of the gut-wound Cassian had given him. His red hair was unbound, a silken drape over his well-tailored cobalt jacket.
What is he doing here, I speared down the bond, not bothering to hide any of what coursed through me.
Making sure Keir agrees to help, was all Rhys said, the words tight and clipped. Restrained.
As if he were still holding the full might of his rage in check.
Shadows curled around Azriel’s shoulders, whispering in his ear as he stared down Eris.
“You once wanted to build ties to Autumn, Keir,” said Rhys, setting down his goblet of wine. “Well, here’s your chance. Eris is
willing to offer you a formal alliance—in exchange for your services in this war.”
How the hell did you get him to agree to that?
Rhys didn’t answer.
Rhysand.
Keir leaned back in his chair. “It is not enough.”
Eris snorted, pouring himself a goblet of wine from the decanter in the center of the table. “I’d forgotten why I was so relieved when our bargain fell apart the last time.”
Rhys shot him a warning look. Eris just drank deeply.
“What is it that you want, then, Keir?” Rhys purred.
I had the feeling if Keir suggested me again, he’d wind up splattered on the wall.
But Keir must have known, too. And said simply to Rhysand, “I want out. I want space. I want my people to be free of this mountain.”
“You have every comfort,” I finally said. “And yet it is not enough?”
Keir ignored me as well. As I’m sure he ignored most women in his life.
“You have been keeping secrets, High Lord,” Keir said with a hateful smile, interlacing his hands and resting them on the mauled table. Right atop the nearest deep gouge. “I always wondered—where all of you went when you weren’t here. Hybern answered the question at last—thanks to that attack on … what is its name? Velaris. Yes. On Velaris. The City of Starlight.”
Mor went utterly still.
“I want access to the city,” Keir said. “For me, and my court.”
“No,” Mor said. The word echoed off the pillars, the glass, the rock.
I was inclined to agree. The thought of these people, of Keir, in Velaris … Tainting it with their presence, their hatred and small-mindedness, their disdain and cruelty …
Rhys did not refuse. Did not shoot down the suggestion.
You can’t be serious.
Rhys only watched Keir as he answered down the bond, I anticipated this—and I took precautions.
I contemplated it. The meeting with the Palace governors …
That was tied to this?
Yes.
Rhysand said to Keir, “There would be conditions.”
Mor opened her mouth, but Azriel laid a scarred hand atop hers.
She snatched her hand back as if she’d been burned—burned as he had been.
Azriel’s mask of cold didn’t so much as waver at the rejection.
Though Eris chuckled softly. Enough to make Azriel’s hazel eyes glaze with rage as he settled them upon the High Lord’s son. Eris only inclined his head to the shadowsinger.
“I want unrestricted access,” Keir said to Rhys.
“You will not get it,” Rhys said. “There will be limited stays, limited numbers allowed in. To be decided later.”
Mor turned pleading eyes to Rhys. Her city—the place that she loved so much—
I could almost hear it. The crack I knew was about to sound amongst our own circle.
Keir looked to Mor at last—noted the despair and anger. And smiled.
He had no real desire to get out of here.
Only a desire to take something he’d undoubtedly gleaned that his daughter cherished.
I could have gladly shredded through his throat as Keir said,
“Done.”
Rhys didn’t so much as smile. Mor was only staring and staring at him, that beseeching expression crumpling her face.
“There is one more thing,” I added, squaring my shoulders.
“One more request.”
Keir deigned to acknowledge me. “Oh?”
“I have need of the Ouroboros mirror,” I said, willing ice into my veins. “Immediately.”
Interest and surprise flared in Keir’s brown eyes. Mor’s eyes.
“Who told you that I have it?” he asked quietly.
“Does it matter? I want it.”
“Do you even know what the Ouroboros is?”
“Consider your tone, Keir,” Rhys warned.
Keir leaned forward, bracing his forearms on the table. “The mirror …” He laughed under his breath. “Consider it my mating present.” He added with sweet venom, “If you can take it.”
Not a threat to face him, but— “What do you mean?”
Keir rose to his feet, smirking like a cat with a canary in its mouth. “To take the Ouroboros, to claim it, you must first look into it.” He headed for the doors, not waiting to be dismissed. “And everyone who has attempted to do so has either gone mad or been broken beyond repair. Even a High Lord or two, if legend is true.” A shrug. “So it is yours, if you dare to face it.” Keir paused at the threshold as the doors opened on a phantom wind. He said to Rhys, perhaps the closest he’d come to asking for permission to leave, “Lord Thanatos is having … difficulties with his daughter again. He requires my assistance.” Rhys only waved a hand, as if he hadn’t just yielded our city to the male. Keir jerked his chin at Eris. “I will wish to speak with you—soon.”
Once he was done gloating over his victory tonight. What we’d given.
And lost.
If the Ouroboros could not be retrieved, at least without such terrible risk … I shut out the thought, sealing it away for later, as Keir left. Leaving us alone with Eris.
The heir of Autumn just sipped his wine.
And I had the terrible sense that Mor had gone somewhere far, far away as Eris set down his goblet and said, “You look well, Mor.”
“You don’t speak to her,” Azriel said softly.
Eris gave a bitter smile. “I see you’re still holding a grudge.”
“This arrangement, Eris,” Rhys said, “relies solely upon you keeping your mouth shut.”
Eris huffed a laugh. “And haven’t I done an excellent job? Not even my father suspected when I left tonight.”
I glanced between my mate and Eris. “How did this come about?”
Eris looked me over. The crown and dress. “You didn’t think that I knew your shadowsinger would come sniffing around to see if I’d told my father about your … powers? Especially after my brothers so mysteriously forgot about them, too. I knew it was a matter of time before one of you arrived to take care of my memory as well.” Eris tapped the side of his head with a long finger. “Too bad for you, I learned a thing or two about daemati.
Too bad for my brothers that I never bothered to teach them.”
My chest tightened. Rhys.
To keep me safe from Beron’s wrath, to keep this potential alliance with the High Lords from falling apart before it began …
Rhys.
It was an effort to keep my eyes from burning.
A gentle caress down the bond was his only answer.
“Of course I didn’t tell my father,” Eris went on, drinking from his wine again. “Why waste that sort of information on the bastard?
His answer would be to hunt you down and kill you—not realizing how much shit we’re in with Hybern and that you might be the key to stopping it.”
“So he plans to join us, then,” Rhys said.
“Not if he learns about your little secret.” Eris smirked.
Mor blinked—as if realizing that Rhys’s contact with Eris, his invitation here … The glance she gave me, clear and settled, told me enough. Hurt and anger still swirled, but understanding, too.
“So what’s the asking price, Eris?” Mor demanded, leaning her bare arms on the dark glass. “Another little bride for you to torture?”
Something flickered in Eris’s eyes. “I don’t know who fed you those lies to begin with, Morrigan,” he said with vicious calm.
“Likely the bastards you surround yourself with.” A sneer at Azriel.
Mor snarled, rattling the glasses. “You never gave any evidence to the contrary. Certainly not when you left me in those woods.”
“There were forces at work that you have never considered,”
Eris said coldly. “And I am not going to waste my breath explaining them to you. Believe what you want about me.”
“You hunted me down like an animal,” I cut in. “I think we’ll choose to believe the worst.”
Eris’s pale face flushed. “I was given an order. And sent to do it with two of my … brothers.”
“And what of the brother you hunted down alongside me? The one whose lover you helped to execute before his eyes?”
Eris laid a hand flat on the table. “You know nothing about what happened that day. Nothing.”
Silence.
“Indulge me,” was all I said.
Eris stared me down. I stared right back.
“How do you think he made it to the Spring border,” he said quietly. “I wasn’t there—when they did it. Ask him. I refused. It was the first and only time I have denied my father anything. He punished me. And by the time I got free … They were going to kill him, too. I made sure they didn’t. Made sure Tamlin got word— anonymously—to get the hell over to his own border.”
Where two of Eris’s brothers had been killed. By Lucien and Tamlin.
Eris picked at a stray thread on his jacket. “Not all of us were so lucky in our friends and family as you, Rhysand.”
Rhys’s face was a mask of boredom. “It would seem so.”
And none of this entirely erased what he’d done, but … “What is the asking price,” I repeated.
“The same thing I told Azriel when I found him snooping through my father’s woods yesterday.”
Hurt flared in Mor’s eyes as she whipped her head toward the shadowsinger. But Azriel didn’t so much as acknowledge her as he announced, “When the time comes … we are to support Eris’s bid to take the throne.”
Even as Azriel spoke, that frozen rage dulled his face. And Eris was wise enough to finally pale at the sight. Perhaps that was why Eris had kept knowledge of my powers to himself. Not just for this sort of bargaining, but to avoid the wrath of the shadowsinger. The blade at his side.
“The request still stands, Rhysand,” Eris said, mastering himself, “to just kill my father and be done with it. I can pledge troops right now.”
Mother above. He didn’t even try to hide it—to look at all remorseful. It was an effort to keep my jaw from dropping to the table at his intent, the casualness with which he spoke it.
“Tempting, but too messy,” Rhys replied. “Beron sided with us in the War. Hopefully he’ll sway that way again.” A pointed stare at Eris.
“He will,” Eris promised, running a finger over one of the claw marks gouged into the table. “And will remain blissfully unaware of Feyre’s … gifts.”
A throne—in exchange for his silence. And sway.
“Promise Keir nothing you care about,” Rhys said, waving a hand in dismissal.
Eris just rose to his feet. “We’ll see.” A frown at Mor as he drained his wine and set down the goblet. “I’m surprised you still can’t control yourself around him. You had every emotion written right on that pretty face of yours.”
“Watch it,” Azriel warned.
Eris looked between them, smiling faintly. Secretly. As if he knew something that Azriel didn’t. “I wouldn’t have touched you,”
he said to Mor, who blanched again. “But when you fucked that other bastard—” A snarl ripped from Rhys’s throat at that. And my own. “I knew why you did it.” Again that secret smile that had Mor shrinking. Shrinking. “So I gave you your freedom, ending the betrothal in no uncertain terms.”
“And what happened next,” Azriel growled.
A shadow crossed Eris’s face. “There are few things I regret.
That is one of them. But … perhaps one day, now that we are
allies, I shall tell you why. What it cost me.”
“I don’t give a shit,” Mor said quietly. She pointed to the door.
“Get out.”
Eris gave a mocking bow to her. To all of us. “See you at the meeting in twelve days.”
We found Nesta and Amren waiting outside the throne room, both of them looking pissy and tired.
Well, that made six of us.
I didn’t doubt Keir’s claim about the mirror—and risking gazing into it … None of us could afford it. To be broken. Driven mad.
None of us—not right now. Perhaps the Bone Carver had known that. Had sent me on a fool’s errand to amuse himself.
We did not bother with good-byes to the whispering court as we winnowed to the town house. To Velaris—the peace and beauty that now felt infinitely more fragile.
Cassian had come off the roof at some point to join Lucien in the sitting room, the books from the wall spread on the low-lying table between them. Both got to their feet at the expressions on our faces.
Cassian was halfway to Mor when she whirled on Rhys and said, “Why? ”
Her voice broke.
And something in my chest cracked, too, at the tears that began running down her face.
Rhys just stood there, staring down at her. His face unreadable.
Watching as she slammed her hands into his chest and shouted, “Why? ”
He yielded a step. “Eris found Azriel—our hands were tied. I made the best of it.” His throat bobbed. “I’m sorry.”
Cassian was sizing them up, frozen halfway across the room.
And I assumed Rhys was telling him mind to mind, assumed he was telling Amren and perhaps even Lucien and Nesta, from their surprised blinks.
Mor whirled on Azriel. “Why didn’t you say anything? ”
Azriel held her gaze unflinchingly. Didn’t so much as rustle his wings. “Because you would have tried to stop it. And we can’t afford to lose Keir’s alliance—and face the threat of Eris.”
“You’re working with that prick,” Cassian cut in, whatever catching-up now over, apparently. He moved to Mor’s side, a hand on her back. He shook his head at Azriel and Rhys, disgust curling his lip. “You should have spiked Eris’s fucking head to the front gates.”
Azriel only watched them with that icy indifference. But Lucien crossed his arms, leaning against the back of the couch. “I have to agree with Cassian. Eris is a snake.”
Perhaps Rhys had not filled him in on everything, then. On what Eris had claimed about saving his youngest brother in whatever way he could. Of his defiance.
“Your whole family is despicable,” Amren said to Lucien from where she and Nesta lingered in the archway. “But Eris may prove a better alternative. If he can find a way to kill Beron off and make sure the power shifts to himself.”
“I’m sure he will,” Lucien said.
But Mor was still staring at Rhys, those silent tears streaming down her flushed cheeks. “It’s not about Eris,” she said, voice wobbling. “It’s about here.” She waved a hand to the town house, the city. “This is my home, and you are going to let Keir destroy it.”
“I took precautions,” Rhys said—an edge to his voice I had not heard in some time. “Many of them. Starting with meeting with the governors of the Palaces and getting them to agree never to serve, shelter, or entertain Keir or anyone from the Court of Nightmares.”
Mor blinked. Cassian’s hand moved to her shoulder and squeezed.
“They have been sending out the word to every business owner in the city,” Rhys went on, “every restaurant and shop and venue.
So Keir and his ilk may come here … But they will not find it a welcoming place. Or one where they can even procure lodgings.”
Mor shook her head as she whispered, “He’ll still destroy it.”
Cassian slid his arm around her shoulders, his face harder than I’d ever seen it as he studied Rhys. Then Azriel. “You should have warned us.”
“I should have,” Rhys said—though he didn’t sound sorry for it.
Azriel just remained a foot away, wings tucked in tight and Siphons glimmering.
I stepped in at last. “We’ll set limitations—on when and how often they come.”
Mor shook her head, still not looking anywhere but at Rhys. “If Amarantha were alive …” The word slithered through the room, darkening the corners. “If she were alive and I offered to work with her—even if it was to save us all—how would you feel?”
Never—they had never come this close to discussing what had happened to him.
I approached Rhys’s side, brushing my fingers against his. His own curled around mine.
“If Amarantha offered us a slim shot at survival,” Rhys said, his gaze unflinching, “then I would not give a shit that she made me fuck her for all those years.”
Cassian flinched. The entire room flinched.
“If Amarantha showed up at that door right now,” Rhys snarled, pointing toward the foyer entry, “and said she could buy us a chance at defeating Hybern, at keeping all of you alive, I would thank the fucking Cauldron.”
Mor shook her head, tears slipping free again. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do.”
Rhys.
But the bond, the bridge between us … it was a howling void. A raging, dark tempest.
Too far—this was pushing them both too far. I tried to catch Cassian’s gaze, but he was monitoring them closely, his golden-brown skin unnaturally pale. Azriel’s shadows gathered close, half veiling him from view. And Amren— Amren stepped between Rhys and Mor. They both towered over her.
“I kept this unit from breaking for forty-nine years,” Amren said, eyes flaring bright as lightning. “I am not going to let you rip it to shreds now.” She faced Mor. “Working with Keir and Eris is not forgiving them. And when this war is over, I will hunt them down and butcher them with you, if that is what you wish.” Mor said nothing—though she at last looked away from Rhys.
“My father will poison this city.”
“I will not allow him to,” Amren said.
I believed her.
And I think Mor did, too, for the tears that continued sliding free
… they seemed to shift, somehow.
Amren turned to Rhys, whose face had now edged toward—
devastation.
I slid my hand through his. I see you, I said, giving him the words I’d once whispered all those months ago. And it does not frighten me.
Amren said to him, “You’re a sneaky bastard. You always have been, and likely always will be. But it doesn’t excuse you, boy, from not warning us. Warning her, not where those two monsters are involved. Yes, you made the right call—played it well. But you also played it badly.”
Something like shame dimmed his eyes. “I’m sorry.”
The words—to Mor, to Amren.
Amren’s dark hair swayed as she assessed them. Mor just shook her head at last—more acceptance than denial.
I swallowed, my voice rough as I said, “This is war. Our allies are few and already don’t trust us.” I met each of them in the eye
—my sister, Lucien, Mor, and Azriel and Cassian. Then Amren.
Then my mate. I squeezed his hand at the guilt now sinking its
claws deep into him. “You all have been to war and back—when I’ve never even set foot on a battlefield. But … I have to imagine that we will not last long if … we cleave apart. From within.”
Stumbling, near-incoherent words, but Azriel said at last, “She’s right.”
Mor didn’t so much as look in his direction. I could have sworn guilt clouded Azriel’s eyes, there and gone in a blink.
Amren stepped back to Nesta’s side as Cassian asked me,
“What happened with the mirror?”
I shook my head. “Keir says it’s mine, if I dare to take it.
Apparently, what you see inside will break you—or drive you insane. No one’s ever walked away from it.”
Cassian swore.
“Exactly,” I said. It was a risk perhaps none of us were entirely prepared to face. Not when we were all needed—each one of us.
Mor added a bit hoarsely, straightening the ebony pleats and panels of her gossamer gown, “My father spoke true about that. I was raised with legends of the mirror. None were pleasant. Or successful.”
Cassian frowned at me, at Rhys. “So what—”
“You are talking about the Ouroboros,” Amren said.
I blinked. Shit. Shit—
“Why do you want that mirror?” Her voice had slipped to a low timbre.
Rhys slid his free hand into his pocket. “If honesty is the theme of the night … Because the Bone Carver requested it.”
Amren’s nostrils flared. “You went to the Prison.”
“Your old friends say hello,” Cassian drawled, leaning a shoulder against the sitting room archway.
Amren’s face tightened, Nesta glancing between them—
carefully. Reading us. Especially as Amren’s quicksilver eyes swirled. “Why did you go.”
I opened my mouth, but the gold of Lucien’s eye caught my attention. Snared it.
My hesitation must have been indication enough of my wariness.
Jaw tight with a hint of frustration, Lucien excused himself to his room. Frustration—and perhaps disappointment. I blocked it out—
what it did to my stomach.
“We had some questions for the Carver.” Cassian gave Amren a slash of a smile when Lucien was gone. “And we have some for you.”
Amren’s smoke-filled eyes flared. “You are going to unleash the Carver.”
I said simply, “Yes.” A one-monster army.
“That is impossible.”
“I’ll remind you that you, sweet Amren, escaped,” Rhys countered smoothly. “And have stayed free. So it can be done.
Perhaps you could tell us how you did it.”
Cassian had stationed himself by the doorway, I realized, to be closer to Nesta. To grab her if Amren decided she didn’t particularly care for where this conversation was headed. Or for any of the furniture in this room.
Precisely why Rhys now placed himself on Amren’s other side
—to draw her attention away from me, and Mor behind us, every muscle in her lithe body on alert.
Cassian was staring at Nesta—hard enough that my sister at last twisted toward him. Met his gaze. His head tilted—slightly. A silent order.
Nesta, to my shock, obeyed. Drifted over to Cassian’s side as Amren replied to Rhys, “No.”
“It wasn’t a request,” Rhys said.
He’d once admitted that merely questioning Amren had been something she’d allowed him to do only in recent years. But giving her an order, pushing her like this …
“Feyre and Cassian spoke to the Bone Carver. He wants the Ouroboros in exchange for serving us—fighting Hybern for us. But we need you to explain how to get him out.” The bargain Rhys or I would strike with him would suffice to hold him to our will.
“Anything else?” Her voice was too calm, too sweet.
“When we’re done with all of this,” Rhys said, “then my promise from months ago still holds: use the Book to send yourself home, if you want.”
Amren stared up at him. It was so quiet that the clock on the sitting room mantel could be heard. And beyond that—the fountain in the garden—
“Call off your dog,” Amren said with that lethal tone.
Because the shadow in the corner behind Amren … that was Azriel. The obsidian hilt of Truth-Teller in his scarred hand. He’d moved without my realizing it—though I had no doubt the others had likely been aware.
Amren bared her teeth at him. Azriel’s beautiful face didn’t so much as shift.
Rhys remained where he was as he asked Amren, “Why won’t you tell us?”
Cassian casually slid Nesta behind him, his fingers snagging in the skirts of her black gown. As if to reassure himself that she wasn’t in Amren’s direct path. Nesta only rose onto her toes to peer over his shoulder.
“Because the stone beneath this house has ears, the wind has ears—all of it listening,” Amren said. “And if it reports back …
They will remember, Rhysand, that they have not caught me. And I will not let them put me in that black pit again.”
My ears hollowed out as a shield clicked into place. “No one will hear beyond this room.”
Amren surveyed the books lying forgotten on the low table in the sitting room.
Her brows narrowed. “I had to give something up. I had to give me up. To walk out, I had to become something else entirely, something the Prison would not recognize. So I—I bound myself into this body.”
I’d never heard her stumble over a word before.
“You said someone else bound you,” Rhys questioned carefully.
“I lied—to cover what I’d done. So none could know. To escape the Prison, I made myself mortal. Immortal as you are, but …
mortal compared to—to what I was. And what I was … I did not feel, the way you do. The way I do now. Some things—loyalty and wrath and curiosity—but not the full spectrum.” Again, that faraway look. “I was perfect, according to some. I did not regret, did not mourn—and pain … I did not experience it. And yet … yet I wound up here, because I was not quite like the others. Even as— as what I was, I was different. Too curious. Too questioning. The day the rip appeared in the sky … it was curiosity that drove me.
My brothers and sisters fled. Upon the orders of our ruler, we had just laid waste to twin cities, smote them wholly into rubble on the plain, and yet they fled from that rip in the world. But I wanted to look. I wanted. I was not built or bred to feel such selfish things as want. I’d seen what happened to those of my kind who strayed, who learned to place their needs first. Who developed … feeling.
But I went through the tear in the sky. And here I am.”
“And you gave all that up to get out of the Prison?” Mor asked softly.
“I yielded my grace—my perfect immortality. I knew that once I did … I would feel pain. And regret. I would want, and I would burn with it. I would … fall. But I was—the time locked away down there … I didn’t care. I had not felt the wind on my face, had not smelled the rain … I did not even remember what they felt like. I did not remember sunlight.”
It was to Azriel that her attention drifted—the shadowsinger’s darkness pulling away to reveal eyes full of understanding.
Locked away.
“So I bound myself into this body. I shoved my burning grace deep into me. I gave up everything I was. The cell door just …
unlocked. And so I walked out.”
A burning grace … That still smoldered far within her, visible only through the smoke in her gray eyes.
“That will be the cost of freeing the Carver,” Amren said. “You will have to bind him into a body. Make him … Fae. And I doubt he
will agree to it. Especially without the Ouroboros.”
We were silent.
“You should have asked me before you went,” she said, that sharpness returning to her tone. “I would have spared you the visit.”
Rhysand swallowed. “Can you be—unbound?”
“Not by me.”
“What would happen if you were?”
Amren stared at him for a long while. Then me. Cassian. Azriel.
Mor. Nesta. Finally back to my mate. “I would not remember you. I would not care for any of you. I would either smite you or abandon you. What I feel now … it would be foreign to me—it would hold no sway. Everything I am, this body … it would cease to be.”
“What were you,” Nesta breathed, coming around Cassian to stand at his side.
Amren toyed with one of her black pearl earrings. “A messenger—and soldier-assassin. For a wrathful god who ruled a young world.”
I could feel the questions of the others brewing. Rhys’s eyes were near-glowing with them.
“Was Amren your name?” Nesta asked.
“No.” The smoke swirled in her eyes. “I do not remember the name I was given. I used Amren because—it’s a long story.”
I almost begged her to tell it, but soft footsteps thudded, and then—
“Oh.”
Elain started—enough so that I realized she couldn’t hear us.
Had no idea we were here, thanks to the shield that kept sound from escaping.
It instantly dropped. But my sister remained near the stairs.
She’d covered her nightgown with a silk shawl of palest blue, her fingers grappling into the fabric as she held herself.
I went to her immediately. “Do you need anything?”
“No. I … I was sleeping, but I heard …” She shook her head.
Blinked at our formal attire, the dark crown atop my head—and
Rhysand’s. “I didn’t hear you.”
Azriel stepped forward. “But you heard something else.”
Elain seemed about to nod, but only backed away. “I think I was dreaming,” she murmured. “I think I’m always dreaming these days.”
“Let me get you some hot milk,” I said, putting a hand on her elbow to guide her into the sitting room.
But Elain shook me off, heading back to the stairs. She said as she climbed the first steps, “I can hear her—crying.”
I gripped the bottom post of the banister. “Who?”
“Everyone thinks she’s dead.” Elain kept walking. “But she’s not. Only—different. Changed. As I was.”
“Who,” I pushed.
But Elain continued up the stairs, that shawl drooping down her back. Nesta stalked from Cassian’s side to approach my own. We both sucked in a breath, to say what, I didn’t know but—
“What did you see,” Azriel said, and I tried not to flinch as I found him at my other side, not having seen him move. Again.
Elain paused halfway up the stairs. Slowly, she turned to look back at him. “I saw young hands wither with age. I saw a box of black stone. I saw a feather of fire land on snow and melt it.”
My stomach dropped to the floor. One glance at Nesta confirmed that she felt it, too. Saw it.
Mad. Elain might very well have gone mad—
“It was angry,” Elain said quietly. “It was so, so angry that something was taken. So it took something from them as punishment.”
We said nothing. I didn’t know what to say—what to even ask or demand. If the Cauldron had done something to her as well …
I faced Azriel, exposing my palms to him. “What does that mean?”
Azriel’s hazel eyes churned as he studied my sister, her too-thin body. And without a word, he winnowed away. Mor watched the space where he’d been standing long after he was gone.
I waited until the others had left—Cassian and Rhys slipping away to ponder the possibilities or lack thereof of our would-be allies, Amren storming off to be rid of us entirely, and Mor striding out to enjoy what she deemed as her last few days of peace in this city, a brittleness still in her voice—before I cornered Nesta in the sitting room.
“What happened at the Hewn City—with you and Amren? You didn’t mention it.”
“It was fine.”
I clenched my jaw. “What happened?”
“She brought me to a room full of treasure. Strange objects.
And it …” She tugged at the tight sleeve of her gown. “Some of it wanted to hurt us. As if it were alive—aware. Like … like in all those stories and lies we were fed over the wall.”
“Are you all right?” I couldn’t find any signs of harm on either of them, and neither had said anything to suggest—
“It was a training exercise. With a form of magic designed to repel intruders.” The words were recited. “As the wall will likely be.
She wanted me to breach the defenses—find weaknesses.”
“And repair them?”
“Just find the weaknesses. Repairing is another thing,” Nesta said, her eyes going distant as she frowned at the still-open books on the low table before the fireplace.
I sighed. “So … that went right, at least.”
Those eyes went razor-sharp again. “I failed. Every time. So, no. It did not go right.”
I didn’t know what to say. Sympathy would likely earn me a tongue-lashing. So I opted for another route. “We need to do something about Elain.”
Nesta stiffened. “And what solution do you propose, exactly?
Letting your mate into her mind to scramble things around?”
“I’d never do that. I don’t think Rhys can even … fix things like that.”
Nesta paced in front of the darkened fireplace. “Everything has a cost. Maybe the cost of her youth and immortality was losing part of her sanity.”
My knees wobbled enough that I took a seat on the deep-cushioned couch. “What was your cost?”
Nesta stopped moving. “Perhaps it was to see Elain suffer—
while I got away unscathed.”
I shot to my feet. “Nesta—”
“Don’t bother.” But I trailed her as she strode for the stairs. To where Lucien was now descending the steps—and winced at the sight of her approach.
He gave her a wide berth as she stormed past him. One look at his taut face had me bracing myself—and returning to the sitting room.
I slumped into the nearest armchair, surprised to find myself still in my black dress as the fabric scraped against my bare skin. How long had I been back from the Hewn City? Thirty minutes? Less?
And had the Prison only been that morning?
It felt like days ago. I rested my head against the embroidered back of the chair and watched Lucien take a seat on the rolled arm of the nearest couch. “Long day?”
I grunted my response.
That metal eye tightened. “I thought the Prison was another myth.”
“Well, it’s not.”
He weighed my tone, and crossed his arms. “Let me do something. About Elain. I heard—from my room. Everything that happened just now. It wouldn’t hurt to have a healer look her over.
Externally and internally.”
I was tired enough that I could barely summon the breath to ask, “Do you think the Cauldron made her insane?”
“I think she went through something terrible,” Lucien countered carefully. “And it wouldn’t hurt to have your best healer do a thorough examination.”
I rubbed my hand over my face. “All right.” My breath snagged on the words. “Tomorrow morning.” I managed a shallow nod, rallying my strength to rise from the chair. Heavy—there was an old heaviness in me. Like I could sleep for a hundred years and it wouldn’t be enough.
“Please tell me,” Lucien said when I crossed the threshold into the foyer. “What the healer says. And if—if you need me for anything.”
I gave him one final nod, speech suddenly beyond me.
I knew Nesta still wasn’t asleep as I walked past her room.
Knew she’d heard every word of our conversation thanks to that Fae hearing. And I knew she heard as I listened at Elain’s door, knocked once, and poked my head in to find her asleep— breathing.
I sent a request to Madja, Rhysand’s preferred healer, to come the next day at eleven. I did not explain why or who or what. Then went into my bedroom, crawled onto the mattress, and cried.
I didn’t really know why.
Strong, broad hands rubbed down my spine, and I opened my eyes to find the room wholly black, Rhysand perched on the mattress beside me. “Do you want anything to eat?” His voice was soft—tentative.
I didn’t raise my head from the pillow. “I feel … heavy again,” I breathed, voice breaking.
Rhys said nothing as he gathered me up into his arms. He was still in his jacket, as if he’d just come in from wherever he’d been talking with Cassian.
In the dark, I breathed in his scent, savored his warmth. “Are you all right?”
Rhys was quiet for a long minute. “No.”
I slid my arms around him, holding him tightly.
“I should have found another way,” he said.
I stroked my fingers through his silken hair.
Rhys murmured, “If she …” His swallow was audible. “If she showed up at this house …” I knew who he meant. “I would kill her. Without even letting her speak. I would kill her.”
“I know.” I would, too.
“You asked me at the library,” he whispered. “Why I … Why I’d rather take all of this upon myself. Tonight is why. Seeing Mor cry is why. I made a bad call. Tried to find some other way around this shithole we’re in.” And had lost something— Mor had lost something—in the process.
We held each other in silence for minutes. Hours. Two souls, twining in the dark. I lowered my shields, let him in fully. His mind curled around mine.
“Would you risk looking into it—the Ouroboros?” I asked.
“Not yet,” was all Rhys said, holding me tighter. “Not yet.”
I dragged myself out of bed by sheer will the next morning.
Amren had said the Carver wouldn’t bind himself into a Fae body—had claimed that.
But it wouldn’t hurt to try. If it gave us the slightest chance of holding out, of keeping Rhys from giving everything …
He was already gone by the time I awoke. I gritted my teeth as I dressed in my leathers and winnowed to the House of Wind.
I had my wings ready as I hit the wards protecting it, and managed a decent-enough glide into the open-air training ring on its flat top.
Cassian was already waiting, hands on his hips. Watching as I eased down, down …
Too fast. My feet skipped over the dirt, bouncing me up, up—
“Backflap—”
His warning was too late.
I slammed into a wall of crimson before I could get a face full of the ruddy rock, but—I swore, pride skinned as much as my palms as I staggered back, my wings unwieldy behind me. Cassian’s shoulders shook as he reined in a laugh, and I gave him a vulgar gesture in return.
“If you go in for a landing that way, make sure you have room.”
I scowled. “Lesson learned.”
“Or space to bank and circle until you slow—”
“I get it.”
Cassian held up his hands, but the amusement faded as he watched me dismiss the wings and stalk toward him. “You want to go hard today, or take it easy?”
I didn’t think the others gave him enough credit—for noticing the shift in someone’s emotional current. To command legions, I supposed, he needed to be able to read that sort of thing, judge when his soldiers or enemies were strong or breaking or broken.
I peered inside, to that place where I now felt like quicksand, and said, “Hard. I want to limp out of here.” I peeled off the leather jacket and rolled up the sleeves of my white shirt.
Cassian swept an assessing stare over me. He murmured, “It helps me, too—the physical activity, the training.” He rolled his shoulders as I began to stretch. “It’s always helped me focus and center myself. And after last night …” He tied back his dark hair. “I definitely need it—this.”
I held my leg folded behind me, my muscles protesting at the stretch. “I suppose there are worse methods of coping.”
A lopsided grin. “Indeed there are.”
Azriel’s lesson afterward consisted of standing in a breeze and trying to memorize his instructions on currents and downdrafts, on how heat and cold could shape wind and speed. Throughout it, he was quiet—removed. Even by his standards.
I made the mistake of asking if he’d spoken to Mor since he’d left last night.
No, he had not. And that was that.
Even if he kept flexing his scarred hand at his side. As if recalling the sensation of the hand she’d whipped free of his touch during that meeting. Over and over. I didn’t dare tell him that he’d made the right call—that perhaps he should talk to Mor, rather than let the guilt eat at him. The two of them had enough between them without me shoving myself into it.
I was indeed limping by the time I returned to the town house hours later, finding Mor at the dining table, munching on a giant pastry she’d grabbed from a bakery on her way in.
“You look like a team of horses trampled you,” she said around her food.
“Good,” I said, taking the pastry out of her hand and finishing it off. She squawked in outrage, but snapped her fingers, and a plate of carved melon from the kitchen down the hall appeared on the polished table before her.
Right atop the pile of what looked to be letters on various pieces of stationery. “What’s that?” I said, wiping the crumbs from my mouth.
“The first of the High Lords’ responses,” she said sweetly, plucking up a slice of the green fruit and biting off a chunk. No hint of last night’s rage and fear.
“That pleasant, hmm?”
“Helion’s came first this morning. Between all the innuendo, I think he said he’d be willing to … join us.”
I lifted my brows. “That’s good—isn’t it?”
A shrug. “Helion, we weren’t worried about. The other two …”
She finished off the melon, chewing wetly. “Thesan says he’ll come, but won’t do it unless it’s in a truly neutral and safe location.
Kallias … he doesn’t trust any of us after … Under the Mountain.
He wants to bring armed guards.”
Day, Dawn, and Winter. Our closest allies. “No word from anyone else?” My gut tightened.
“No. Spring, Autumn, and Summer haven’t sent a reply.”
“We don’t have much time until the meeting. What if they refuse to reply at all?” I didn’t have the nerve to wonder aloud if Eris would be good to his word and make sure his father attended— and joined our cause. Not with the light back in her face.
Mor picked up another slice of melon. “Then we’ll have to decide if Rhys and I will go drag them by their necks to this meeting, or if we’ll have it without them.”
“I’d suggest the second option.” Mor furrowed her brows. “The first,” I clarified, “doesn’t sound conducive to actually forming an alliance.”
Though I was surprised that Tarquin hadn’t responded. Even with his blood feud with us … The male I’d met, whom I still admired so much … Surely he’d want to ally against Hybern.
Unless he now wanted to ally with them to ensure Rhys and I were wiped off the map forever.
“We’ll see,” was all Mor said.
I blew out a breath through my nose. “About last night—”
“It’s fine. It’s nothing.” The swiftness with which she spoke suggested anything but.
“It’s not nothing. You’re allowed to feel that way.”
Mor fluffed her hair. “Well, it won’t help us win this war.”
“No. But … I’m not sure what to say.”
Mor stared toward the window for a long moment. “I understand why Rhys did it. The position we were in. Eris is … You know what he is like. And if he was indeed threatening to sell information about your gifts to his father … Mother above, I would have made the same bargain with Eris to keep Beron from hunting you.”
Something in my chest eased at that. “It’s just … My father knew
—the second he heard of this place, he probably knew what it meant to me. There would have been no other asking price for my father’s help in this war. None. Rhys knew that as well. Tried to bring Eris into it to sweeten the deal for my father—to possibly avoid this outcome with Velaris altogether.”
I raised my brows in silent question.
“We talked—Rhys and I. This morning. While Cassian was kicking your ass.”
I snorted. “What about Azriel?” So much for my decision to stay out of it.
Mor resumed picking at the melon. “Az … He had a tough call to make, when Eris found him. He …” She chewed on her lip. “I don’t know why I expected him to side with me, why it caught me so off guard.” I refrained from suggesting she tell him that. Mor
shrugged. “It just … it all took me by surprise. And I will never be happy about any of these terms, but … My father wins, Eris wins, all the males like them win if I let it get to me. If I let it impact my joy, my life. My relationships with all of you.” She sighed at the ceiling. “I hate war.”
“Likewise.”
“Not just for the death and awfulness,” Mor went on. “But because of what it does to us. These decisions.”
I nodded, even if I was only starting to understand. The choices and the costs.
I opened my mouth, but a knock on the front door sounded. I glanced to the clock in the sitting room across the foyer. Right.
The healer.
I’d mentioned to Elain this morning that Madja was coming to see her at eleven, and I’d gotten a noncommittal response. Better than outright refusal, I supposed.
“Are you going to answer the door, or should I?”
I made a vulgar gesture at the sheer sass in Mor’s question, but my friend gripped my hand as I rose from my chair.
“If you need anything … I’ll be right here.”
I gave Mor a small, grateful smile. “As will I.”
She was still smiling at me as I took a deep breath before heading for the entry.
The healer found nothing.
I believed her—if only because Madja was one of the few High Fae I’d seen whose dark skin was etched with wrinkles, her hair spindrift fine with age. Her brown eyes were still clear and kindled with an inner warmth, and her knobby hands remained steady as she passed them over Elain’s body while my sister lay patiently, silently, on the bed.
Magic, sweet and cooling, had thrummed from the female, filling Elain’s bedroom. And when she had gently laid her hands
on either side of Elain’s head and I’d started, Madja had only smiled wryly over her thin shoulder and told me to relax.
Nesta, sharp-eyed in the corner, had kept quiet.
After a long minute, Madja asked us to join her in fetching Elain a cup of tea—with a pointed glance to the door. We both took the invitation and left our sister in her sunlit room.
“What do you mean, nothing is wrong with her?” Nesta hissed under her breath as the ancient female braced a hand on the stair railing to help herself down. I kept beside the healer, a hand in easy reach of her elbow, should she need it.
Madja, I reminded myself, had healed Cassian and Azriel—and countless injuries beyond that. She’d healed Rhys’s wings during the War. She looked ancient, but I had no doubt of her stamina—
or sheer will to help her patients.
Madja didn’t deign to answer Nesta until we were at the bottom of the steps. Lucien was already waiting in the sitting room, Mor still lingering in the dining room. Both of them rose to their feet, but remained in their respective rooms, flanking the foyer.
“What I mean,” Madja said at last, sizing up Nesta, then me, “is that I can find nothing wrong with her. Her body is fine—too thin and in need of more food and fresh air, but nothing amiss. And as for her mind … I cannot enter it.”
I blinked. “She has a shield?”
“She is Cauldron-Made,” the healer said, again looking over Nesta. “You are not like the rest of us. I cannot pierce the places it left its mark most deeply.” The mind. The soul. She shot me a warning glance. “And I would not try if I were you, Lady.”
“But do you think there’s something wrong, even if there are no signs?” Nesta pushed.
“I have seen the victims of trauma before. Her symptoms match well with many of those invisible wounds. But … she was also Made by something I do not understand. Is there something wrong with her?” Madja chewed over the words. “I do not like that word— wrong. Different, perhaps. Changed.”
“Does she need further help?” Nesta said through her teeth.
The ancient healer jerked her chin toward Lucien. “See what he can do. If anyone can sense if something is amiss, it’s a mate.”
“How.” The word was barely more than a barked command.
I braced myself to warn Nesta to be polite, but Madja said to my sister, as if she were a small child, “The mating bond. It is a bridge between souls.”
The healer’s tone made my sister stiffen, but Madja was already hobbling for the front door. She pointed at Lucien as she saw herself out. “Try sitting down with her. Just talking—sensing.
See what you pick up. But don’t push.” Then she was gone.
I whirled on Nesta. “A little respect, Nesta—”
“Call another healer.”
“Not if you’re going to bark them out of the house.”
“Call another healer.”
Mor strode for us with deceptive calm, and Nesta gave her a withering glare.
I caught Lucien’s eye. “Would you try it?”
Nesta snarled, “Don’t you even attempt—”
“Be quiet,” I snapped.
Nesta blinked.
I bared my teeth at her. “He will try. And if he doesn’t find anything amiss, we’ll consider bringing another healer.”
“You’re just going to drag her down here?”
“I’m going to invite her.”
Nesta faced Mor, still watching from the archway. “And what will you be doing?”
Mor gave my sister a half smile. “I’ll be sitting with Feyre.
Keeping an eye on things.”
Lucien muttered something about not needing to be monitored, and we all looked at him with raised brows.
He just lifted his hands, claimed he wanted to freshen up, and headed down the hall.
It was the most uncomfortable thirty minutes I could recall.
Mor and I sipped chilled mint tea by the bay window, the replies of the three High Lords piled on the little table between our twin chairs, pretending to be watching the summer-kissed street beyond us, the children, High Fae and faerie, darting about with kites and streamers and all manner of toys.
Pretending, while Lucien and Elain sat in stilted silence by the dim fireplace, an untouched tea service between them. I didn’t dare ask if he was trying to get into her head, or if he was feeling a bond similar to that black adamant bridge between Rhys’s mind and my own. If a normal mating bond felt wholly different.
A teacup rattled and rasped against a saucer, and Mor and I glanced over.
Elain had picked up the teacup, and now sipped from it without so much as looking toward him.
In the dining room across the hall, I knew Nesta was craning her neck to look.
Knew, because Amren snapped at my sister to pay attention.
They were building walls—in their minds, Amren had told me as she ordered Nesta to sit at the dining room table, directly across from her.
Walls that Amren was teaching her to sense—to find the holes she’d laid throughout. And repair them. If the fell objects at the Court of Nightmares had not allowed my sister to grasp what must be done, then this was their next attempt—a different, invisible route. Not all magic was flash and glittering, Amren had declared, and then shooed me out.
But any sign of that power within my sister … I did not hear it or see it or feel it. And neither offered any explanation for what it was, exactly, that they were trying to coax from within her.
Outside the house, movement again caught our eye, and we found Rhys and Cassian strolling in through the low front gate, returning from their first meeting with Keir’s Darkbringer army commanders—already rallying and preparing. At least that much had gone right yesterday.
Both of them spotted us in the window within a heartbeat.
Stopped cold.
Don’t come in, I warned him through the bond. Lucien is trying to sense what’s wrong with Elain. Through the bond.
Rhys murmured what I’d said to Cassian, who now angled his head, much in the way I had no doubt Nesta had done, to peer beyond us.
Rhys said wryly, Does Elain know this?
She was invited down for tea. So we’re having it.
Rhys muttered again to Cassian, who choked on a laugh and turned right around, heading into the street. Rhys lingered, sliding his hands into his pockets. He’s getting a drink. I’m inclined to join him. When can I return without fearing for my life?
I gave him a vulgar gesture through the window. Such a big, strong Illyrian warrior.
Illyrian warriors know when to pick their battles. And with Nesta watching everything like a hawk and you two circling like vultures
… I know who will walk away from that fight.
I made the gesture again, and Mor figured out enough of what was being said that she echoed the movement. Rhys laughed quietly and sketched a bow.
The High Lords sent replies, I said as he strolled away. Day, Dawn, and Winter will come.
I know, he said. And I just received word from Cresseida that Tarquin is contemplating it.
Better than nothing. I said as much.
Rhys smiled at me over his shoulder. Enjoy your tea, you overbearing chaperone.
I could have used a chaperone around you, you realize.
You had four of them in this house.
I smiled as he finally reached the low front gate where Cassian waited, apparently using the momentary delay to stretch out his wings, to the delight of the half-dozen children now gawking at them.
Amren hissed from the other room, “Focus.” The dining table rattled.
The sound seemed to startle Elain, who swiftly set down her teacup. She rose to her feet, and Lucien shot to his.
“I’m sorry,” he blurted.
“What—what was that?”
Mor put a hand on my knee to keep me from rising, too.
“It—it was a tug. On the bond.”
Amren snapped, “Don’t you— wicked girl.”
Then Nesta was standing in the threshold. “What did you do.”
The words were as sharp as a blade.
Lucien looked to her, then over to me. A muscle feathered in his jaw. “Nothing,” he said, and again faced his mate. “I’m sorry—if that unsettled you.”
Elain sidled toward Nesta, who seemed to be at a near-simmer.
“It felt … strange,” Elain breathed. “Like you pulled on a thread tied to a rib.”
Lucien exposed his palms to her. “I’m sorry.”
Elain only stared at him for a long moment. And any lucidity faded away as she shook her head, blinking twice, and said to Nesta, “Twin ravens are coming, one white and one black.”
Nesta hid the devastation well. The frustration. “What can I get you, Elain?”
Only with Elain did she use that voice.
But Elain shook her head once more. “Sunshine.”
Nesta cut me a furious stare before guiding our sister down the hall—to the sunny garden in the back.
Lucien waited until the glass door had opened and closed before he loosed a long breath.
“There’s a bond—it’s a real thread,” he said, more to himself than us.
“And?” Mor asked.
Lucien ran both hands through his long red hair. His skin was darker—a deep golden-brown, compared to the paleness of Eris’s coloring. “And I got to Elain’s end of it when she ran off.”
“Did you sense anything?”
“No—I didn’t have time. I felt her, but …” A blush stained his cheek. Whatever he’d felt, it wasn’t what we were looking for.
Even if we had no idea what, precisely, that was.
“We can try again—another day,” I offered.
Lucien nodded, but looked unconvinced.
Amren snapped from the dining room, “Someone go retrieve your sister. Her lesson isn’t over.”
I sighed. “Yes, Amren.”
Lucien’s attention slid behind me, to the various letters on different styles and makes of paper. That golden eye narrowed. As Tamlin’s emissary, he no doubt recognized them. “Let me guess: they said yes, but picking the location is now going to be the headache.”
Mor frowned. “Any suggestions?”
Lucien tied back his hair with a strap of brown leather. “Do you have a map?”
I supposed that left me to retrieve Nesta.
“That pine tree wasn’t there a moment ago.”
Azriel let out a quiet laugh from where he sat atop a boulder two days later, watching me pluck pine needles out of my hair and
jacket. “Judging by its size, I’d say it’s been there for … two hundred years at least.”
I scowled, brushing off the shards of bark and my bruised pride.
That coldness, that aloofness that had been there in the wake of Mor’s anger and rejection … It’d warmed. Either from Mor choosing to sit next to him at dinner last night—a silent offer of forgiveness—or simply needing time to recover from it. Even if I could have sworn some kernel of guilt had flickered every time Azriel had looked at Mor. What Cassian had thought of it, of his own anger toward Azriel … he’d been all smiles and lewd comments. Glad all was back to normal—for now at least.
My cheeks burned as I scaled the boulder he perched on, the drop at least fifteen feet to the forest floor below, the lake a sparkling sprawl peeking through the pine trees. Including the tree I’d collided with face-first on my latest attempt to leap off the boulder and simply sail to the lake.
I braced my hands on my hips, examining the drop, the trees, the lake beyond. “What did I do wrong?”
Azriel, who had been sharpening Truth-Teller in his lap, flicked his hazel eyes up to me. “Aside from the tree?”
The shadowsinger had a sense of humor. Dry and quiet, but …
alone together, it came out far more often than it did amongst our group.
I’d spent these past two days either poring over ancient volumes for any hint on repairing the wall to hand over to Amren and Nesta, who continued to silently, invisibly build and mend walls within their minds, or debating with Rhys and the others about how to reply to the volley of letters now being exchanged with the other High Lords regarding where the meeting would take place. Lucien had indeed given us an initial location, and several more when those were struck down. But that was to be expected, Lucien had said, as if he’d arranged such things countless times.
Rhys had only nodded in agreement—and approval.
And when I wasn’t doing that … I was combing through more books, any and all Clotho could find me, all regarding the
The mirror was notorious. Every known philosopher had ruminated on it. Some had dared face it—and gone mad. Some had approached—and run away in terror.
I could not find an account of anyone who had mastered it.
Faced what lurked within and walked away with the mirror in their possession.
Save for the Weaver in the Wood—who certainly seemed insane enough, perhaps thanks to the mirror she’d so dearly loved. Or perhaps whatever evil lurked in her had tainted the mirror, too. Some of the philosophers had suggested as much, though they hadn’t known her name—only that a dark queen had once possessed it, cherished it. Spied on the world with it—and used it to hunt down beautiful young maidens to keep her eternally young.
I supposed Keir’s family owning the Ouroboros for millennia suggested the success rate of walking away was low. It was not heartening. Not when all the texts agreed on one thing: there was no way around it. No loophole. Facing the terror within … that was the only route to claim it.
Which meant I perhaps had to consider alternatives—other ways to entice the Bone Carver to join us. When I found a moment.
Azriel sheathed his legendary fighting knife and examined the wings I’d spread wide. “You’re trying to steer with your arms. The muscles are in the wings themselves—and in your back. Your arms are unnecessary—they’re more for balancing than anything.
And even that’s mostly a mental comfort.”
It was more words than I’d ever heard from him.
He lifted a brow at my gaping, and I shut my mouth. I frowned at the drop ahead. “Again?” I grumbled.
A soft laugh. “We can find a lower ledge to jump from, if you want.”
I cringed. “You said this was low.”
Azriel leaned back on his hands and waited. Patient, cool.
But I felt the bark tear into my palms, the thud of my knees into its rough side—
“You are immortal,” he said quietly. “You are very hard to break.” A pause. “That’s what I told myself.”
“Hard to break,” I said glumly, “but it still hurts.”
“Tell that to the tree.”
I huffed a laugh. “I know the drop isn’t far, and I know it won’t kill me. Can’t you just … push me?”
For it was that initial leap of utter faith, that initial lurch into motion that had my limbs locking up.
“No.” A simple answer.
I still hesitated.
Useless—this fear. I had faced down the Attor, falling through the sky for a thousand feet.
And the rage at its memory, at what it had done with its miserable life, what more like it might do again, had me gritting my teeth and sprinting off the boulder.
I snapped my wings out wide, my back protesting as they caught the wind, but my lower half began to drop, my legs a dead weight as my core yielded—
The infernal tree rose up before me, and I swerved hard to the right.
Right into another tree.
Wings first.
The sound of bone and sinew on wood, then earth, hit me before the pain did. So did Azriel’s soft curse.
A small noise came out of me. The stinging of my palms registered first—then in my knees.
Then my back—
“Shit,” was all I could say as Azriel knelt before me.
“You’re all right. Just stunned.”
The world was still reordering itself.
“You banked well,” he offered.
“Into another tree.”
“Being aware of your surroundings is half of flying.”
“You said that already,” I snapped. He had. A dozen times just this morning.
Azriel only sat on his heels and offered me a hand up. My flesh burned as I gripped his fingers, a mortifying number of pine needles and splinters tumbling off me. My back throbbed enough that I lowered my wings, not caring if they dragged in the dirt as Azriel led me toward the lake edge.
In the blinding sun off the turquoise water, his shadows were gone, his face stark and clear. More … human than I had ever seen him.
“There’s no chance that I’ll be able to fly in the legions, is there?” I asked, kneeling beside him as he tended to my skinned palms with expert care and gentleness. The sun was brutal against his scars, hiding not one twisted, rippling splotch.
“Likely not,” he said. My chest hollowed out at that. “But it doesn’t hurt to practice until the last possible moment. You never know when any measure of training may be useful.”
I winced as he fished out a large splinter from my palm, then washed it clean.
“It was very hard for me to learn how to fly,” he said. I didn’t dare respond. “Most Illyrians learn as toddlers. But … I assume Rhysand told you the particulars of my early childhood.”
I nodded. He finished the one hand and started on the other.
“Because I was so old, I had a fear of flying—and did not trust my instincts. It was an … embarrassment to be taught so late. Not just to me, but to all in the war-camp once I arrived. But I learned, often going off by myself. Cassian, of course, found me first.
Mocked me, beat me to hell, then offered to train me. Rhys was there the next day. They taught me to fly.”
He finished my other hand, and sat on the shore, the stones murmuring as they shifted beneath him. I sat beside him, bracing my sore palms faceup on my knees, letting my wings sag behind me.
“Because it was such an effort … A few years after the War, Rhys brought me back a story. It was a gift—the story. For me. He
—he went to see Miryam and Drakon in their new home, the visit so secret even we hadn’t known it was happening until he returned. We knew their people hadn’t drowned in the sea, as everyone believed, as they wanted people to believe. You see, when Miryam freed her people from the queen of the Black Land, she led all of them—nearly fifty thousand of them—across the desert, all the way to the shores of the Erythrian Sea, Drakon’s aerial legion providing cover. But they got to the sea and found the ships they’d arranged to transport them over the narrow channel to the next kingdom had been destroyed. Destroyed by the queen herself, who sent her lingering armies to drag her former slaves back.
“Drakon’s people—the Seraphim—are winged. Like us, but their wings are feathered. And unlike us, their army and society allow women to lead, to fight, to rule. All of them are gifted with mighty magic of wind and air. And when they beheld that army charging after them, they knew their own force was too small to face them. So they cleaved the sea itself—made a path through the water, all the way through the channel, and ordered the humans to run.
“They did, but Miryam insisted on remaining behind until every last one of her people had crossed. Not one human would she leave behind. Not one. They were about halfway through the crossing when the army reached them. The Seraphim were spent —their magic could barely hold the sea passage. And Drakon knew that if they held it any longer … that army would make it across and butcher the humans on the other side. The Seraphim fought off the vanguard on the floor of the sea, and it was bloody and brutal and chaotic … And during the melee, they didn’t see Miryam skewered by the queen herself. Drakon didn’t see. He thought she made it out, carried by one of his soldiers. He ordered the parted sea to come down to drown the enemy force.
“But a young Seraphim cartographer named Nephelle saw Miryam go down. Nephelle’s lover was one of Drakon’s generals, and it was she who realized Miryam and Nephelle were missing.
Drakon was frantic, but their magic was spent and no force in the world could hold back the sea as it barreled down, and no one could reach his mate in time. But Nephelle did.
“Nephelle, you see, was a cartographer because she’d been rejected from the legion’s fighting ranks. Her wings were too small, the right one somewhat malformed. And she was slight—short enough that she’d be a dangerous gap in the front lines when they fought shield to shield. Drakon had let her try out for the legion as a courtesy to her lover, but Nephelle failed. She could barely carry the Seraphim shield, and her smaller wings hadn’t been strong enough to keep up with the others. So she had made herself invaluable as a cartographer during the War, helping Drakon and her lover find the geographical advantages in their battles. And she became Miryam’s dearest friend during those long months as well.
“And that day on the seafloor, Nephelle remembered that her friend had been in the back of the line. She returned for her, even as all others fled for the distant shore. She found Miryam skewered on the queen’s spear, bleeding out. The sea wall started to come down—on the opposite shore. Killing the approaching army first—racing toward them.
“Miryam told Nephelle to save herself. But Nephelle would not abandon her friend. She picked her up and flew.”
Azriel’s voice was soft with awe.
“When Rhys spoke to Drakon about it years later, he still didn’t have words to describe what happened. It defied all logic, all training. Nephelle, who had never been strong enough to hold a Seraphim shield, carried Miryam—triple the weight. And more than that … She flew. The sea was crashing down upon them, but Nephelle flew like the best of Seraphim warriors. The seafloor was a labyrinth of jagged rocks, too narrow for the Seraphim to fly through. They’d tried during their escape and crashed into them.
But Nephelle, with her smaller wings … Had they been one inch wider, she would not have fit. And more than that … Nephelle soared through them, Miryam dying in her arms, as fast and
skilled as the greatest of Seraphim. Nephelle, who had been passed over, who had been forgotten … She outraced death itself.
There was not a foot of room between her and the water on either side of her when she shot up from the seafloor; not half of that rising up at her feet. And yet her too-small wingspan, that deformed wing … they did not fail her. Not once. Not for one wing beat.”
My eyes burned.
“She made it. Suffice to say her lover made Nephelle her wife that night, and Miryam … well, she is alive today because of Nephelle.” Azriel picked up a flat, white stone and turned it over in his hands. “Rhys told me the story when he returned. And since then we have privately adapted the Nephelle Philosophy with our own armies.”
I raised a brow. Azriel shrugged. “We—Rhys, Cass, and I—will occasionally remind each other that what we think to be our greatest weakness can sometimes be our biggest strength. And that the most unlikely person can alter the course of history.”
“The Nephelle Philosophy.”
He nodded. “Apparently, every year in their kingdom, they have the Nephelle Run to honor her flight. On dry land, but … She and her wife crown a new victor every year in commemoration of what happened that day.” He chucked the stone back amongst its brethren on the shore, the sound clattering over the water. “So we’ll train, Feyre, until the last possible day. Because we never know if just one extra hour will make the difference.”
I weighed his words, Nephelle’s story. I rose to my feet and spread my wings. “Then let’s try again.”
I groaned as I limped into our bedroom that night to find Rhys sitting at the desk, poring over more books.
“I warned you that Azriel’s a hard bastard,” he said without looking at me. He lifted a hand, and water gurgled in the adjacent
I grumbled a thank-you and trudged toward it, gritting my teeth against the agony in my back, my thighs, my bones. Every part hurt, and since the muscles needed to re-form around the wings, I had to carry them, too. Their scraping along the wood and carpet, then wood again, was the only sound beyond my weary feet. I beheld the steaming bath that would require some balancing to get into and whimpered.
Even removing my clothes would entail using muscles that had nearly given out.
A chair scraped in the bedroom, followed by cat-soft feet, then
—
“I’m sure you already know this, but you need to actually climb into a bath to get clean—not stare at it.”
I didn’t have the strength to even glare at him, and I managed all of one stumbling, stiff step toward the water when he caught me.
My clothes vanished, presumably to the laundry downstairs, and Rhys swept me into his arms, lowering my naked body into the water. With the wings, the fit was tight, and—
I groaned from deep in my throat at the glorious heat and didn’t bother to do anything other than lean my head against the back of the tub.
“I’ll be right back,” he said, and left the bathroom, then the bedroom itself.
By the time he returned, I only knew I’d fallen asleep thanks to the hand he put on my shoulder. “Out,” he said, but lifted me himself, toweled me off, and led me to the bed.
He lay me down belly-first, and I noted the oils and balms he’d set there, the faint odor of rosemary and—something I was too tired to notice but smelled lovely floating to me. His hands gleamed as he applied generous amounts to his palms, and then his hands were on me.
My groan was about as undignified as they came as he kneaded the aching muscles of my back. The sorer areas drew
out rather pathetic-sounding whimpers, but he rubbed them gently, until the tension was a dull ache rather than sharp, blinding pain.
And then he started on my wings.
Relief and ecstasy, as muscles eased and those sensitive areas were lovingly, tauntingly grazed over.
My toes curled, and just as he reached the sensitive spot that had my stomach clenching, his hands slid to my calves. He began a slow progression, higher and higher, up my thighs, teasing strokes between them that left me panting through my nose.
Rising up until he got to my backside, where his massaging was equally professional and sinful. And then up—up my lower back, to my wings.
His touch turned different. Exploring. Broad strokes and featherlight ones, arches and swirls and direct, searing lines.
My core heated, turning molten, and I bit down on my lip as he lightly scraped a fingernail so, so close to that inner, sensitive spot. “Too bad you’re so sore from training,” Rhys mused, making idle, lazy circles.
I could only manage a garbled strand of words that were both plea and insult.
He leaned in, his breath warming the space of skin between my wings. “Did I ever tell you that you have the dirtiest mouth I’ve ever heard?”
I muttered words that only offered more proof of that claim.
He chuckled and skimmed the edge of that sensitive spot, right as his other hand slid between my legs.
Brazenly, I lifted my hips in silent demand. But he just circled with a finger, as lazy as the strokes along my wing. He kissed my spine. “How shall I make love to you tonight, Feyre darling?”
I writhed, rubbing against the folds of the blankets beneath me, desperate for any sort of friction as he dangled me over that edge.
“So impatient,” he purred, and that finger glided into me. I moaned, the sensation too much, too consuming, with his hand
between my legs and the other stroking closer and closer to that spot on my wing, a predator circling prey.
“Will it ever stop?” he mused, more to himself than me as another finger joined the one sliding in and out of me with taunting, indolent strokes. “Wanting you—every hour, every breath. I don’t think I can stand a thousand years of this.” My hips moved with him, driving him deeper. “Think of how my productivity will plummet.”
I growled something at him that was likely not very romantic, and he chuckled, slipping out both fingers. I made a little whining noise of protest.
Until his mouth replaced where his fingers had been, his hands gripping my hips to raise me up, to lend him better access as he feasted on me. I groaned, the sound muffled by the pillow, and he only delved deeper, taunting and teasing with every stroke.
A low moan broke from me, my hips rolling. Rhys’s grip on them tightened, holding me still for his ministrations. “I never got to take you in the library,” he said, dragging his tongue right up my center. “We’ll have to remedy that.”
“Rhys.” His name was a plea on my lips.
“Hmmm,” was all he said, a rumble of the sound against me …
I panted, hands fisting in the sheets.
His hands drifted from my hips at last, and I again breathed his name, in thanks and relief and anticipation of him at last giving me what I wanted—
But his mouth closed around the bundle of nerves at the apex of my thighs while his hand … He went right to that damned spot at the inner edge of my left wing and stroked lightly.
My climax tore through me with a hoarse cry, sending me soaring out of my body. And when the shuddering ripples and starlight faded …
A bone-weary exhaustion settled over me, permanent and unending as the mating bond between us. Rhys curled into bed behind me, tucking my wings in so he could fold me against him.
“That was a fun experiment,” he murmured into my ear.
I could feel him against my backside, hard and ready, but when I made to reach for him, Rhys’s arms only tightened around me.
“Sleep, Feyre,” he told me.
So I laid a hand on his forearm, savoring the corded strength beneath, and nestled my head back against his chest. “I wish I had days to spend with you—like this,” I managed to say as my eyelids drooped. “Just me and you.”
“We will.” He kissed my hair. “We will.”
I was still sore enough the next day that I had to send word to Cassian I wasn’t training with him. Or Azriel.
A mistake, perhaps, given that both of them showed up at the door to the town house within minutes, the former demanding what the hell was wrong with me, the latter bearing a tin of salve to help with the aches in my back.
I thanked Azriel for the salve and told Cassian to mind his own business.
And then asked him to fly Nesta up to the House of Wind for me, since I certainly couldn’t fly her in—even for a few feet after winnowing.
My sister, it seemed, had found nothing in her books about repairing the wall—and since no one had yet shown her the library
… I’d volunteered. Especially since Lucien had left before breakfast for a library across the city to look up anything in regard to fixing the wall, a task I’d been more than willing to hand over. I might have felt guilty for never giving him a proper tour of Velaris, but … he seemed eager. More than eager—he seemed to be itching to head into the city on his own.
The two Illyrians paused their inspection of me long enough to note my sisters finishing up breakfast, Nesta in a pale gray gown that brought out the steel in her eyes, Elain in dusty pink.
Both males went a bit still. But Azriel sketched a bow—while Cassian stalked for the dining table, reached right over Nesta’s
shoulder, and grabbed a muffin from its little basket. “Morning, Nesta,” he said around a mouth of blueberry-lemon. “Elain.”
Nesta’s nostrils flared, but Elain peered up at Cassian, blinking twice. “He snapped your wings, broke your bones.”
I tried to shut out the sound of Cassian’s scream—the memory of the spraying blood.
Nesta stared at her plate. Elain, at least, was out of her room, but …
“It’ll take more than that to kill me,” Cassian said with a smirk that didn’t meet his eyes.
Elain only said to Cassian, “No, it will not.”
Cassian’s dark brows narrowed. I dragged a hand over my face before going to Elain and touching her too-bony shoulder. “Can I set you up in the garden? The herbs you planted are coming in nicely.”
“I can help her,” said Azriel, stepping to the table as Elain silently rose. No shadows at his ear, no darkness ringing his fingers as he extended a hand.
Nesta monitored him like a hawk, but kept silent as Elain took his hand, and out they went.
Cassian finished the muffin, licking his fingers. I could have sworn Nesta watched the entire thing with a sidelong glance. He grinned at her as if he knew it, too. “Ready for some flying, Nes?”
“Don’t call me that.”
The wrong thing to say, from the way Cassian’s eyes lit up.
I chose that moment to winnow to the skies above the House, chuckling as wind carried me through the world. Some sisterly payback, I supposed. For Nesta’s general attitude.
Mercifully, no one saw my slightly better crash landing on the veranda, and by the time Cassian’s dark figure appeared in the sky, Nesta’s hair bright as bronze in the morning sun, I’d brushed off the dirt and dust from my leathers.
My sister’s face was wind-flushed as Cassian gently set her down. Then she strode for the glass doors without a single look back.
“You’re welcome,” Cassian called after her, more than a bite to his voice. His hands clenched and slackened at his sides—as if he were trying to loosen the feel of her from his palms.
“Thank you,” I said to him, but Cassian didn’t bother saying farewell as he launched skyward and vanished into the clouds.
The library beneath the House was shadowed, quiet. The doors opened for us, the same way they’d opened when Rhys and I had first visited.
Nesta said nothing, only surveying every stack and alcove and dangling chandelier as I led her down to the level where Clotho had found those books. I showed her the small reading area where I’d been stationed, and gestured to the desk. “I know Cassian gets under your skin, but I’m curious, too. How do you know what to look for in regard to the wall?”
Nesta ran a finger over the ancient wood desk. “Because I just do.”
“How.”
“I don’t know how. Amren told me to just … see if the information clicks.” And perhaps that frightened her. Intrigued her, but frightened her. And she hadn’t told Cassian not out of spite, but because she didn’t wish to reveal that vulnerability. That lack of control.
I didn’t push. Even as I stared at her for a long moment. I didn’t know how—how to broach that subject, how to ask if she was all right, if I could help her. I had never been affectionate with her— I’d never held her. Kissed her cheek. I didn’t know where to begin.
So I just said, “Rhys gave me a layout of the stacks. I think there might be more on the Cauldron and wall a few levels down.
You can wait here, or—”
“I’ll help you look.”
We followed the sloping path in silence, the rustle of paper and occasional whisper of a priestess’s robes along the stone floors the only sounds. I quietly explained to her who the priestesses were—why they were here. I explained that Rhys and I planned to offer sanctuary to any humans who could make it to Velaris.
She said nothing, quieter and quieter as we descended, that black pit on my right seeming to grow thicker the deeper we went.
But we reached a path of stacks that veered into the mountain in a long hall, faelights flickering into life within glass globes along the wall as we passed. Nesta scanned the shelves while we walked, and I read the titles—a bit more slowly, still needing a little time to process what was instinct for my sister.
“I didn’t know you couldn’t really read,” Nesta said as she paused before a nondescript section, noticing the way I silently sounded out the words of a title. “I didn’t know where you were in your lessons—when it all happened. I assumed you could read as easily as us.”
“Well, I couldn’t.”
“Why didn’t you ask us to teach you?”
I trailed a finger over the neat row of spines. “Because I doubted you would agree to help.”
Nesta stiffened like I’d hit her, coldness blooming in those eyes.
She tugged a book from a shelf. “Amren said Rhysand taught you to read.”
My cheeks heated. “He did.” And there, deep beneath the world, with only darkness for company, I asked, “Why do you push everyone away but Elain?” Why have you always pushed me away?
Some emotion guttered in her eyes. Her throat bobbed. Nesta shut her eyes for a moment, breathing in sharply. “Because—”
The words stopped.
I felt it at the same moment she did.
The ripple and tremor. Like … like some piece of the world shifted, like some off-kilter chord had been plucked.
We turned toward the illuminated path that we’d just taken through the stacks, then to the dark far, far beyond.
The faelights along the ceiling began to sputter and die. One by one.
Closer and closer to us.
I only had an Illyrian knife at my side.
“What is that,” Nesta breathed.
“Run,” was all I said.
I didn’t give her the chance to object as I grabbed her by the elbow and sprinted into the stacks ahead. Faelights flickered to life as we passed—only to be devoured by the dark surging for us.
Slow—my sister was so damned slow with her dress, her general lack of exercising—
Rhys.
Nothing.
If the wards around the Prison were thick enough to keep out communication … Perhaps the same applied here.
A wall approached—with a hall before it. A second slope: left rising, right plunging down—
Darkness slithered down from above. But the inky gloom leading deeper … fresh and open.
I went right. “Faster,” I said to her. If we could lead whoever it was deep, perhaps we could cut back, right to the pit. I could winnow—
Winnow. I could winnow now—
I grabbed for Nesta’s arm.
Right as the darkness behind us paused, and two High Fae stepped out of it. Both male.
One dark-haired, one light. Both in gray jackets embroidered with bone-white thread.
I knew their coat of arms on the upper right shoulder. Knew their dead eyes.
Hybern. Hybern was here—
I didn’t move fast enough as one of them blew out a breath toward us.
As that blue faebane dust sprayed into my eyes, my mouth, and my magic died out.
Nesta’s gasp told me she felt something similar.
But it was on my sister that the two focused as I staggered back, tears streaming the dust from my eyes, spitting out the faebane. I gripped her arm, trying to winnow. Nothing.
Behind them, a hooded priestess slumped to the ground.
“So easy to get into their minds once our master let us through the wards,” said one of them—the dark-haired male. “To make them think we were scholars. We’d planned to come for you …
But it seems you found us first.”
All spoken to my sister. Nesta’s face was near-white, though her eyes showed no fear. “Who are you.”
The white-haired one smiled broadly as they approached.
“We’re the king’s Ravens. His far-flying eyes and talons. And we’ve come to take you back.”
The king—their master. He’d … Mother above.
Was the king here—in Velaris?
Rhys. I slammed a mental hand into the bond. Over and over.
Rhys.
Nothing.
Nesta’s breath began to come quickly. Swords hung at their sides—two apiece. Their shoulders were broad, arms wide enough to indicate muscle filled those fine clothes.
“You’re not taking her anywhere,” I said, palming my knife. How had the king done it—arrived here unnoted, and fractured our wards? And if he was in Velaris … I shoved down my terror at the thought. At what he might be doing beyond this library, unseen and hidden— “You’re an unexpected prize, too,” the black-haired one said to me. “But your sister …” A smile that showed all of his too-white teeth. “You took something from that Cauldron, girl. The king wants it back.”
That was why the Cauldron couldn’t shatter the wall. Not because its power was spent.
But because Nesta had stolen too much of it.
I laid my options before me.
I doubted the king’s Ravens were stupid enough to be kept talking long enough for my powers to return. And if the king was indeed here … I had to warn everyone. Immediately.
It left me with three choices.
Take them on in hand-to-hand combat with only a knife, when they were each armed with twin blades and were muscled enough to know how to use them.
Make a run for it, and try to get out of the library—and risk the lives and further trauma of the priestesses in the levels above.
Or …
Nesta was saying to them, “If he wants what I took, he can come get it himself.”
“He’s too busy to bother,” the white-haired male purred, advancing another step.
“Apparently you’re not.”
I gripped Nesta’s fingers in my free hand. She glanced at me.
I need you to trust me, I tried to convey to her.
Nesta read the emotion in my eyes—and gave the barest dip of her chin.
I said to them, “You made a grave mistake coming here. To my house.”
They sniggered.
I gave them a returning smirk as I said, “And I hope it rips you into bloody ribbons.”
Then I ran, hauling Nesta with me. Not toward the upper levels.
But down.
Down into the eternal blackness of the pit at the heart of the library.
And into the arms of whatever lurked inside it.
Around and down, around and down—
Shelves and paper and furniture and darkness, the smell turning musty and damp, the air thickening, the darkness like dew on my skin—
Nesta’s breath was ragged, her skirts rustling with each sprinting step we took.
Time—only a matter of time before one of those priestesses contacted Rhys.
But even a minute might be too late.
There was no choice. None.
Faelights stopped appearing ahead.
Low, hideous laughter trickled behind us. “Not so easy, is it—to find your way in the dark.”
“Don’t stop,” I panted to Nesta, flinging us farther into the dark.
A high-pitched scratching sounded. Like talons on stone. One of the Ravens crooned, “Do you know what happened to them—
the queens?”
“Keep going,” I breathed, gripping a hand against the wall to remain rooted.
Soon—we’d reach the bottom soon, and then … And then face some horror awful enough that Cassian wouldn’t speak of it.
The lesser of two evils—or the worse of them.
“The youngest one—that pinched-faced bitch—went into the Cauldron first. Practically trampled the others to get in after it saw what it did to you and your sister.”
“Don’t stop,” I repeated as Nesta stumbled. “If I go down, you run.”
That was a choice that I did not need to debate. That did not frighten me. Not for a heartbeat.
Stone screamed beneath twin sets of talons. “But the Cauldron
… Oh, it knew that something had been taken from it. Not sentient, but … it knew. It was furious. And when that young queen went in …”
The Ravens laughed. Laughed as the slope leveled out and we found ourselves at the bottom of the library.
“Oh, it gave her immortality. It made her Fae. But since something had been taken from it … the Cauldron took what she valued most. Her youth.” They sniggered again. “A young woman went in … but a withered crone came out.”
And from the catacombs of my memory, Elain’s voice sounded: I saw young hands wither with age.
“The other queens won’t go into the Cauldron for terror of the same happening now. And the youngest one … Oh, you should hear how she talks, Nesta Archeron. The things she wants to do to you when Hybern is done …”
Twin ravens are coming.
Elain had known. Sensed it. Had tried to warn us.
There were ancient stacks down here. Or, at least I felt them as we bumped into countless hard edges in our blind sprint. Where was it, where was it—
Deeper into the dark, we ran.
“We’re growing bored of this pursuit,” one of them said. “Our master is waiting for us to retrieve you.”
I snorted loudly enough for them to hear. “I’m shocked he could even muster the strength to break the wards—he seems to need a trove of magical objects to do his work for him.”
The other one hissed, talons scratching louder, “Whose spell book do you think Amarantha stole many decades ago? Who suggested the amusement of sticking the masks to Spring’s faces as punishment? Another little spell, the one he burned through today—to crack through your wards here. Only once could it be wielded—such a pity.”
I studied the faint trickle of light I could make out—far away and high up. “Run toward the light,” I breathed to Nesta. “I’ll hold them off.”
“No.”
“Don’t try to be noble, if that’s what you’re whispering about,”
one of the Ravens cawed from behind. “We’ll catch you both anyway.”
We didn’t have time—for whatever was down here to find us.
We didn’t have time—
“Run,” I breathed. “Please.”
She hesitated.
“Please,” I begged her, my voice breaking.
Nesta squeezed my hand once.
And between one breath and the next, she bolted to the side—
toward the center of the pit. The light high above.
“What—” one of them snapped, but I struck.
Every bone in my body barked in pain as I slammed into one of the stacks. Then again. Again.
Until it teetered and fell, collapsing onto the one beside it. And the next. And the next.
Blocking the way Nesta had gone.
And any chance of my exit, too. Wood groaned and snapped, books thudded on stone.
But ahead …
I clawed and patted the wall as I plunged farther into the pit floor. My magic was a husk in my veins.
“We’ll still catch her, don’t worry,” one of them crooned.
“Wouldn’t want dear sisters to be separated.”
Where are you where are you where are you
I didn’t see the wall in front of me.
My teeth sang as I collided face-first. I patted blindly, feeling for a break, a corner—
The wall continued on. Dead end. If it was a dead end—
“Nowhere to go down here, Lady,” one of them said.
I kept moving, gritting my teeth, gauging the power still frozen inside me. Not even an ember to summon to light the way, to show where I was—
To show any holes ahead—
The terror of it had my bones locking up. No. No, keep moving, keep going—
I reached out, desperate for a bookshelf to grab. Surely they wouldn’t put a shelf near a gaping hole in the earth—
Empty blackness met my fingers, slipped between them. Again and again.
I stumbled a step.
Leather met my fingers—solid leather. I fumbled, the hard spines of books meeting my palms, and bit down my sob of relief.
A lifeline in a violent sea; I felt my way down the stack, running now. It ended too soon. I took another blind step forward, touched my way around a corner of another stack. Just as the Ravens hissed with displeasure.
The sound said enough.
They’d lost me—for a moment.
I inched along, keeping my back to a shelf, calming my heaving lungs until my breaths became near-silent.
“Please,” I breathed into the dark, barely more than a whisper.
“Please, help me.”
In the distance, a boom shuddered through the ancient floor.
“High Lady of the Night Court,” one of the Ravens sang. “What sort of cage shall our king build for you?”
Fear would get me killed, fear would—
A soft voice whispered in my ear, You are the High Lady?
The voice was both young and old, hideous and beautiful. “Y-yes,” I whispered.
I could sense no body heat, detect no physical presence, but …
I felt it behind me. Even with my back to the shelf, I felt the mass of it lurking behind me. Around me. Like a shroud.
“We can smell you,” the other Raven said. “How your mate shall rage when he’s found we’ve taken you.”
“Please,” I breathed to the thing crouched behind me, over me.
What shall you give me?
Such a dangerous question. Never make a bargain, Alis had once warned me before Under the Mountain. Even if the bargains I’d made … they’d saved us. And brought me to Rhys.
“What do you want?”
One of the Ravens snapped, “Who is she talking to?”
The stone and wind hear all, speak all. They whispered to me of your desire to wield the Carver. To trade.
My breath came hard and fast. “What of it?”
I knew him once—long ago. Before so many things crawled the earth.
The Ravens were close—far too close when one of them hissed, “What is she mumbling?”
“Does she know a spell, as the master did?”
I whispered to the lurking dark behind me, “What is your price?”
The Ravens’ footsteps sounded so nearby they couldn’t have been more than twenty feet away. “Who are you talking to?” one of them demanded.
Company. Send me company.
I opened my mouth, but then said, “To—eat?”
A laugh that made my skin crawl. To tell me of life .
The air ahead shifted—as the Hybern Ravens closed in. “There you are,” one seethed.
“It’s a bargain,” I breathed. The skin along my left forearm tingled. The thing behind me … I could have sworn I felt it smile.
Shall I kill them?
“P-please do.”
Light sputtered before me, and I blinked at the blinding ball of faelight.
I saw the twin Ravens first, that faelight at their shoulder—to illuminate me for their taking.
Their attention went to me. Then rose over my shoulder. My head.
Absolute, unfiltered terror filled their faces. At what stood behind me.
Close your eyes, the thing purred in my ear.
I obeyed, trembling.
Then all I heard was screaming.
High-pitched shrieking and pleading. Bones snapping, blood splattering like rain, cloth ripping, and screaming, screaming, screaming—
I squeezed my eyes shut so hard it hurt. Squeezed them shut so hard I was shaking.
Then there were warm, rough hands on me, dragging me away, and Cassian’s voice at my ear, saying, “Don’t look. Don’t look.”
I didn’t. I let him lead me away. Just as I felt Rhys arrive. Felt him land on the floor of the pit so hard the entire mountain shuddered.
I opened my eyes then. Found him storming toward us, night rippling off him, such fury on his face—
“Get them out.”
The order was given to Cassian.
The screaming was still erupting behind us.
I lurched toward Rhys, but he was already gone, a plume of darkness spreading from him.
To shield the view of what he walked into.
Knowing I would look.
The screaming stopped.
In the terrible silence, Cassian hauled me out—toward the dim center of the pit. Nesta was standing there, arms around herself, eyes wide.
Cassian only stretched out an arm for her. As if in a trance, she walked right to his side. His arms tightened around both of us, Siphons flaring, gilding the darkness with bloodred light.
Then we launched skyward.
Just as the screaming began anew.
Cassian gave us both a glass of brandy. A tall glass.
Seated in an armchair in the family library high above, Nesta drank hers in one gulp.
I claimed the chair across from her, took a sip, shuddered at the taste, and made to set it down on the low-lying table between us.
“Keep drinking,” Cassian ordered. The wrath wasn’t toward me.
No—it was toward whatever was below. What had happened.
“Are you hurt?” Cassian asked me. Each word was clipped—
brutal.
I shook my head.
That he didn’t ask Nesta … he must have found her first.
Ascertained for himself.
I started, “Is the king—the city—”
“No sign of him.” A muscle twitched in his jaw.
We sat in silence. Until Rhys appeared between the open doors, shadows trailing in his wake.
Blood coated his hands—but nothing else.
So much blood, ruby-bright in the midmorning sun.
Like he’d clawed through them with his bare hands.
His eyes were wholly frozen with rage.
But they dipped to my left arm, the sleeve filthy but still rolled up—
Like a slim band of black iron around my forearm, a tattoo now lay there.
It’s custom in my court for bargains to be permanently marked upon flesh, Rhys had told me Under the Mountain.
“What did you give it.” I hadn’t heard that voice since that visit to the Court of Nightmares.
“It—it said it wanted company. Someone to tell it about life. I said yes.”
“Did you volunteer yourself.”
“No.” I drained the rest of the brandy at the tone, his frozen face. “It just said someone. And it didn’t specify when.” I grimaced at the solid black band, no thicker than the width of my finger, interrupted only by two slender gaps near the side of my forearm.
I tried to stand, to go to him, to take those bloody hands. But my knees still wobbled enough that I couldn’t move. “Are the king’s Ravens dead?”
“They nearly were when I arrived. It left enough of their minds functioning for me to have a look. And finish them when I was done.”
Cassian was stone-faced, glancing between Rhys’s bloody hands and his ice-cold eyes.
But it was to my sister that my mate turned. “Hybern hunts you because of what you took from the Cauldron. The queens want you dead for vengeance—for robbing them of immortality.”
“I know.” Nesta’s voice was hoarse.
“What did you take.”
“I don’t know.” The words were barely more than a whisper.
“Even Amren can’t figure it out.”
Rhys stared her down. But Nesta looked to me—and I could have sworn fear shone there, and guilt and … some other feeling.
“You told me to run.”
“You’re my sister,” was all I said. She’d once tried to cross the wall to save me.
But she started. “Elain—”
“Elain is fine,” Rhys said. “Azriel was at the town house. Lucien is headed back, and Mor is nearly there. They know of the threat.”
Nesta leaned her head back against the armchair’s cushion, going a bit boneless.
I said to Rhys, “Hybern infiltrated our city. Again.”
“The prick held on to that fleeting spell until he really needed it.”
“Fleeting spell?”
“A spell of mighty power, able to be wielded only once—to great effect. One capable of cleaving wards … He must have been biding his time.”
“Are the wards here—”
“Amren is currently adapting them against such things. And will then begin combing through this city to find if the king also deposited any other cronies before he vanished.”
Beneath the cold rage, there was a sharpness—honed enough that I said, What’s wrong?
“What’s wrong?” he replied—verbally, as if he could no longer distinguish between the two. “What’s wrong is that those pieces of shit got into my house and attacked my mate. What’s wrong is that my own damn wards worked against me, and you had to make a bargain with that thing to keep yourself from being taken.
What’s wrong—”
“Calm down,” I said quietly, but not weakly.
His eyes glowed, like lightning had struck an ocean. But he inhaled deeply, blowing out the breath through his nose, and his shoulders loosened—barely.
“Did you see what it was—that thing down there?”
“I guessed enough about it to close my eyes,” he said. “I only opened them when it had stepped away from their bodies.”
Cassian’s skin had turned ashen. He’d seen it. He’d seen it again. But he said nothing.
“Yes, the king got past our defenses,” I said to Rhys. “Yes, things went badly. But we weren’t hurt. And the Ravens revealed some key pieces of information.”
Sloppy, I realized. Rhys had been sloppy in killing them.
Normally, he would have kept them alive for Azriel to question. But
he’d taken what he needed, quickly and brutally, and ended it.
He’d shown more restraint about the Attor—
“We know why the Cauldron doesn’t work at its full strength now,” I went on. “We know that Nesta is more of a priority for the king than I am.”
Rhys mulled it over. “Hybern showed part of his hand, in bringing them here. He has to have a sliver of doubt of his conquest if he’d risk it.”
Nesta looked like she was going to be sick. Cassian wordlessly refilled her glass. But I asked, “How—how did you know that we were in trouble?”
“Clotho,” Rhys said. “There’s a spelled bell inside the library.
She rang it, and it went out to all of us. Cassian got there first.”
I wondered what had happened in those initial moments, when he’d found my sister.
As if he’d read my thoughts, Rhys sent the image to me, no doubt courtesy of Cassian.
Panic—and rage. That was all he knew as he shot down into the heart of the pit, spearing for that ancient darkness that had once shaken him to his very marrow.
Nesta was there—and Feyre.
It was the former he saw first, stumbling out of the dark, wide-eyed, her fear a tang that whetted his rage into something so sharp he could barely think, barely breathe—
She let out a small, animal sound—like some wounded stag—
as she saw him. As he landed so hard his knees popped.
He said nothing as Nesta launched herself toward him, her dress filthy and disheveled, her arms stretching for him. He opened his own for her, unable to stop his approach, his reaching — She gripped his leathers instead. “ Feyre ,” she rasped, pointing behind her with a free hand, shaking him solidly with the other.
Strength—such untapped strength in that slim, beautiful body.
“Hybern.”
That was all he needed to hear. He drew his sword—then Rhys was arrowing for them, his power like a gods-damned volcanic eruption. Cassian charged ahead into the gloom, following the screaming— I pulled away, not wanting to see any further. See what Cassian had witnessed down there.
Rhys strode to me, and lifted a hand to brush my hair—but stopped upon seeing the blood crusting his fingers. He instead studied the tattoo now marring my left arm. “As long as we don’t have to invite it to solstice dinner, I can live with it.”
“You can live with it?” I lifted my brows.
A ghost of a smile, even with all that had happened, that now lay before us. “At least now if one of you misbehaves, I know the perfect punishment. Going down there to talk to that thing for an hour.”
Nesta scowled with distaste, but Cassian let out a dark laugh.
“I’ll take scrubbing toilets, thank you.”
“Your second encounter seemed less harrowing than the first.”
“It wasn’t trying to eat me this time.” But shadows still darkened his eyes.
Rhys saw them, too. Saw them and said quietly, again with that High Lord’s voice, “Warn whoever needs to know to stay indoors tonight. Children off the streets at sundown, none of the Palaces will remain open past moonrise. Anyone on the streets faces the consequences.”
“Of what?” I asked, the liquor in my stomach now burning.
Rhys’s jaw tightened, and he surveyed the sparkling city beyond the windows. “Of Amren on the hunt.”
Elain was nestled beside a too-casual Mor on the sitting room couch when we arrived at the town house. Nesta strode past me, right to Elain, and took up a seat on her other side, before turning her attention to where we remained in the foyer. Waiting— somehow sensing the meeting that was about to unfold.
Lucien, stationed by the front window, turned from watching the street. Monitoring it. A sword and dagger hung from his belt. No humor, no warmth graced his face—only fierce, grim determination.
“Azriel’s coming down from the roof,” Rhys said to none of us in particular, leaning against the archway into the sitting room and crossing his arms.
And as if he’d summoned him, Azriel stepped out of a pocket of shadow by the stairs and scanned us from head to toe. His eyes lingered on the blood crusting Rhys’s hands.
I took up a spot at the opposite doorway post while Cassian and Azriel remained between us.
Rhys was quiet for a moment before he said, “The priestesses will keep silent about what happened today. And the people of this city won’t learn why Amren is now preparing to hunt. We can’t afford to let the other High Lords know. It would unnerve them— and destabilize the image we have worked so hard to create.”
“The attack on Velaris,” Mor countered from her place on the couch, “already showed we’re vulnerable.”
“That was a surprise attack, which we handled quickly,”
Cassian said, Siphons flickering. “Az made sure the information came out portraying us as victors—able to defeat any challenge Hybern throws our way.”
“We did that today,” I said.
“It’s different,” Rhys said. “The first time, we had the element of their surprise to excuse us. This second time … it makes us look unprepared. Vulnerable. We can’t risk that getting out before the meeting in ten days. So for all appearances, we will remain unruffled as we prepare for war.”
Mor sagged against the couch cushions. “A war where we have no allies beyond Keir, either in Prythian or beyond it.”
Rhys gave her a sharp look. But Elain said quietly, “The queen might come.”
Elain was staring at the unlit fireplace, eyes lost to that vague murkiness.
“What queen,” Nesta said, more tightly than she usually spoke to our sister.
“The one who was cursed.”
“Cursed by the Cauldron,” I clarified to Nesta, pushing off the archway. “When it threw its tantrum after you … left.”
“No.” Elain studied me, then her. “Not that one. The other.”
Nesta took a steadying breath, opening her mouth to either whisk Elain upstairs or move on.
But Azriel asked softly, taking a single step over the threshold and into the sitting room, “What other?”
Elain’s brows twitched toward each other. “The queen—with the feathers of flame.”
The shadowsinger angled his head.
Lucien murmured to me, eye still fixed on Elain, “Should we—
does she need …?”
“She doesn’t need anything,” Azriel answered without so much as looking at Lucien.
Elain was staring at the spymaster now—unblinkingly.
“We’re the ones who need …” Azriel trailed off. “A seer,” he said, more to himself than us. “The Cauldron made you a seer.”
Seer.
The word clanged through me.
She’d known. She’d warned Nesta about the Ravens. And in the chaos of the attack, that little realization had slipped from me.
Slipped from me as reality and dream slipped and entwined for Elain. Seer.
Elain turned to Mor, who was now gaping at my sister from her spot beside her on the couch. “Is that what this is?”
And the words, the tone … they were so normal-sounding that my chest tightened.
Mor’s gaze darted across my sister’s face, as if weighing the words, the question, the truth or lie within.
Mor at last blinked, mouth parting. Like that magic of hers had at last solved some puzzle. Slowly, clearly, she nodded. Lucien silently slid into one of the chairs, before the window, that metal eye whirring as it roved over my sister.
It made sense, I supposed, that Azriel alone had listened to her.
The male who heard things others could not … Perhaps he, too, had suffered as Elain had before he understood what gift he possessed. He asked Elain, “There is another queen?”
Elain squinted, as if the question required some inner clarification, some … path into looking the right way at whatever had addled and plagued her. “Yes.”
“The sixth queen,” Mor breathed. “The queen who the golden one said wasn’t ill …”
“She said not to trust the other queens because of it,” I added.
And as soon as the words left my mouth … It was like stepping back from a painting to see the entire picture. Up close, the words had been muddled and messy. But from a distance …
“You stole from the Cauldron,” I said to Nesta, who seemed ready to jump between all of us and Elain. “But what if the Cauldron gave something to Elain?”
Nesta’s face drained of color. “What?”
Equally ashen, Lucien seemed inclined to echo Nesta’s hoarse question.
But Azriel nodded. “You knew,” he said to Elain. “About the young queen turning into a crone.”
Elain blinked and blinked, eyes clearing again. As if the understanding, our understanding … it freed her from whatever murky realm she’d been in.
“The sixth queen is alive?” Azriel asked, calm and steady, the voice of the High Lord’s spymaster, who had broken enemies and charmed allies.
Elain cocked her head, as if listening to some inner voice.
“Yes.”
Lucien just stared and stared at my sister, as if he’d never seen her before.
I whipped my face to Rhys. A potential ally?
I don’t know, he answered. If the others cursed her …
“What sort of curse?” my mate asked before he’d even finished speaking to me.
Elain shifted her face toward him. Another blink. “They sold her
—to … to some darkness, to some … sorcerer-lord …” She shook her head. “I can never see him. What he is. There is an onyx box that he possesses, more vital than anything … save for them. The girls. He keeps other girls—others so like her—but she … By day, she is one form, by night, human again.”
“A bird of burning feathers,” I said.
“Firebird by day,” Rhys mused, “woman by night … So she’s held captive by this sorcerer-lord?”
Elain shook her head. “I don’t know. I hear her—her screaming.
With rage. Utter rage …” She shuddered.
Mor leaned forward. “Do you know why the other queens cursed her—sold her to him?”
Elain studied the table. “No. No—that is all mist and shadow.”
Rhys blew out a breath. “Can you sense where she is?”
“There is … a lake. Deep in—in the continent, I think. Hidden amongst mountains and ancient forests.” Elain’s throat bobbed.
“He keeps them all at the lake.”
“Other women like her?”
“Yes—and no. Their feathers are white as snow. They glide across the water—while she rages through the skies above it.”
Mor said to Rhys, “What information do we have on this sixth queen?”
“Little,” Azriel answered for him. “We know little. Young—
somewhere in her mid-twenties. Scythia lies along the wall, to the east. It’s smallest amongst the human queens’ realms, but rich in trade and arms. She goes by Vassa, but I never got a report with her full name.”
Rhys considered. “She must have posed a considerable threat to the queens if they turned on her. And considering their agenda
…”
“If we can find Vassa,” I cut in, “she could be vital in convincing the human forces to fight. And giving us an ally on the continent.”
“If we can find her,” Cassian countered, stepping up to Azriel’s side, his wings flaring slightly. “It could take months. Not to mention, facing the male who holds her captive could be harder than expected. We can’t afford all those potential risks. Or the time it’d take. We should focus on this meeting with the other High Lords first.”
“But we could stand to gain much,” Mor said. “Perhaps she has an army—”
“Perhaps she does,” Cassian cut her off. “But if she’s cursed, who will lead it? And if her kingdom is so far away … they have to travel the mortal way, too. You remember how slowly they moved, how quickly they died—”
“It’s worth a try,” Mor sniped.
“You’re needed here,” Cassian said. Azriel looked inclined to agree, even as he kept quiet. “I need you on a battlefield—not traipsing through the continent. The human half of it. If those queens have rallied armies to offer Hybern, they’re no doubt standing between you and Queen Vassa.”
“You don’t give me orders—”
“No, but I do,” Rhys said. “Don’t give me that look. He’s right—
we need you here, Mor.”
“Scythia,” Mor said, shaking her head. “I remember them.
They’re horse people. A mounted cavalry could travel far faster—”
“No.” Sheer will blazed in Rhys’s eyes. The order was final.
But Mor tried again. “There is a reason why Elain is seeing these things. She was right about the other queen turning old, about the Ravens’ attack— why is she being sent this image? Why is she hearing this queen? It must be vital. If we ignore it, perhaps we’ll deserve to fail.”
Silence. I surveyed them all. Vital. Each of them was vital here.
But me …
I sucked in a breath.
“I’ll go.”
Lucien was staring at Elain as he spoke.
We all looked at him.
Lucien shifted his focus to Rhys, to me. “I’ll go,” he repeated, rising to his feet. “To find this sixth queen.”
Mor opened and shut her mouth.
“What makes you think you could find her?” Rhys asked. Not rudely, but—from a commander’s perspective. Sizing up the skills Lucien offered against the risks, the potential benefits.
“This eye …” Lucien gestured to the metal contraption. “It can see things that others … can’t. Spells, glamours … Perhaps it can
help me find her. And break her curse.” He glanced at Elain, who was again studying her lap. “I’m not needed here. I’ll fight if you need me to, but …” He offered me a grim smile. “I do not belong in the Autumn Court. And I’m willing to bet I’m no longer welcome at h—the Spring Court.” Home, he had almost said. “But I cannot sit here and do nothing. Those queens with their armies—there is a threat in that regard, too. So use me. Send me. I will find Vassa, see if she can … bring help.”
“You will be going into the human territory,” Rhys warned. “I can’t spare a force to guard you—”
“I don’t need one. I travel faster on my own.” His chin lifted. “I will find her. And if there’s an army to bring back, or at least some way for her own story to sway the human forces … I’ll find a way to do that, too.”
My friends glanced to each other. Mor said, “It will be—very dangerous.”
A half smile curved Lucien’s mouth. “Good. It’d be boring otherwise.”
Only Cassian returned the grin. “I’ll load you up with some Illyrian steel.”
Elain now watched Lucien warily. Blinking every now and then.
She revealed no hint of whatever she might be seeing—sensing.
None.
Rhys pushed off the archway. “I’ll winnow you as close as we can get—to wherever you need to be to begin your hunt.” Lucien had indeed been studying all those maps lately. Perhaps at the quiet behest of whatever force had guided us all. My mate added, “Thank you.”
Lucien shrugged. And it was that gesture alone that made me say at last, “Are you sure?”
He only glanced at Elain, whose face was again a calm void while she traced a finger over the embroidery on the couch cushions. “Yes. Let me help in whatever way I can.”
Even Nesta seemed relatively concerned. Not for him, no doubt, but the fact that if he were hurt, or killed … What would it
do to Elain? The severing of the mating bond … I shut out the thought of what it’d do to me.
I asked Lucien, “When do you want to leave?”
“Tomorrow.” I hadn’t heard him sound so assertive in … a long time. “I’ll prepare for the rest of today, and leave after breakfast tomorrow morning.” He added to Rhys, “If that works for you.”
My mate waved an idle hand. “For what you’re about to do, Lucien, we’ll make it work.”
Silence fell once more. If he could find that missing queen and perhaps bring back some sort of human army, or at least sway the mortal forces from Hybern’s thrall … If I could find a way to get the Carver to fight for us that did not involve using that terrible mirror … Would it be enough?
The meeting with the High Lords, it seemed, would decide that.
Rhys jerked his chin at Azriel, who took it as an order to vanish
—to no doubt check in on Amren.
“Find out if Keir and his Darkbringers had any attacks,” my mate ordered Mor and Cassian, who nodded and left as well.
Alone with my sisters and Lucien, Rhys and I caught Nesta’s eye.
And for once, my sister rose to her feet and came toward us, the three of us not so subtly heading upstairs. Leaving Lucien and Elain alone.
It was an effort not to linger atop the landing, to listen to what was said.
If anything was said at all.
But I made myself take Rhys’s hand, flinching at the blood still caked on his skin, and led him to our bathing room. Nesta’s bedroom door clicked shut down the hall.
Rhys wordlessly watched me as I turned on the bathtub faucet and grabbed a washcloth from the chest against the wall. I took up a seat at the edge of the tub, testing the water temperature against my wrist, and patted the porcelain rim beside me. “Sit.”
He obeyed, his head drooping as he sat.
I took one of his hands, guided it to the gurgling stream of water, and held it beneath.
Red flowed off his skin, eddying in the water beneath. I plucked up the cloth and scrubbed gently, more blood flaking off, water splashing onto the still-immaculate sleeves of his jacket. “Why not shield your hands?”
“I wanted to feel it—their lives ending beneath my fingers.”
Cold, flat words.
I scrubbed at his nails, the blood wedged into the cracks where it met his skin. The arcs beneath. “Why is it different this time?”
Different from the Attor’s ambush, Hybern’s attack in the woods, the attack on Velaris … all of it. I’d seen him in a rage before, but never … never so detached. As if morality and kindness were things that lurked on a surface far, far above the frozen depths he’d plunged into.
I turned his palm into the spray, getting at the space between his fingers.
“What is the point of it,” he said, “of all this power … if I can’t protect those who are most vulnerable in my city? If it can’t detect an incoming attack?”
“Even Azriel didn’t learn of it—”
“The king used an archaic spell and walked in the front door. If I can’t …” Rhys shook his head, and I lowered his now-clean hand and reached for the other. More blood stained the water. “If I can’t protect them here … How can …” His throat bobbed. I lifted his chin with a hand. Icy rage had slipped into something a bit shattered and aching. “Those priestesses have endured enough. I failed them today. That library … it will no longer feel safe for them. The one place they’ve had to themselves, where they knew they were protected … Hybern took that away today.”
And from him. He had gone to that library for his own need for healing—for safety.
He said, “Perhaps it’s punishment for taking away Velaris from Mor—in granting Keir access here.”
“You can’t think like that—it won’t end well.” I finished washing his other hand, rinsed the cloth, then began swiping it along his
neck, his temples … Soothing, warm presses, not to clean but to relax.
“I’m not angry about the bargain,” he said, closing his eyes as I swiped the cloth over his brow. “In case you were … worried.”
“I wasn’t.”
Rhys opened his eyes, as if he could hear the smile in my voice, and studied me while I chucked the cloth into the tub with a wet slap and turned off the faucet.
He was still studying me when I took his face in my damp hands. “What happened today was not your fault,” I said, the words filling the sun-drenched bathing room. “None of it. It all lies on Hybern—and when we face the king again, we will remember these attacks, these injuries to our people. We forgot Amarantha’s spell book—to our own loss. But we have a Book of our own— hopefully with the spell we need. And for now … for now, we will prepare, and we will face the consequences. For now, we move ahead.”
He turned his head to kiss my palm. “Remind me to give you a salary raise.”
I choked on a cough. “For what?”
“For the sage counsel—and the other vital services you provide me.” He winked.
I laughed in earnest, and squeezed his face as I pressed a swift kiss to his mouth. “Shameless flirt.”
The warmth returned to his eyes at last.
So I reached for an ivory towel and bundled his hands, now clean and warm, into the folds of soft fabric.
Amren found no other Hybern assassins or spies during her long night of hunting through Velaris. How she sought them, how she distinguished friend from foe … Some people, Mor told me the next morning—after we all had a sleepless night—painted their thresholds in lamb’s blood. A sort of offering to her. And payment to stay away. Some left cups of it on their doorsteps.
As if everyone in the city knew that the High Lord’s Second, that small-boned female … she was the monster that defended them from the other horrors of the world.
Rhys had spent much of the previous day and night reassuring the priestesses of their safety, walking them through the new wards. The priestess who had let them in … for whatever reason, Hybern had left her alive. She allowed Rhys into her mind to see what had happened: once the king had sundered the wards with that fleeting spell, his Ravens had appeared as two old scholars to get the priestess to open the door, then forced their way into her mind so that she’d welcome them in without being vetted. The violation of that alone … Rhys had spent hours with those priestesses yesterday. Mor, too.
Talking, listening to the ones who could speak, holding the hands of the ones who couldn’t.
And when they at last left … There was a peace between my mate and his cousin. Some lingering jagged edge that had somehow been soothed.
We didn’t have long. I knew that. Felt it with every breath.
Hybern wasn’t coming; Hybern was here.
Our meeting with the High Lords was now over a week away—
and still Nesta refused to join us.
But it was fine. We’d manage. I’d manage.
We didn’t have another choice.
Which was why I found myself standing in the foyer the next morning, watching Lucien shoulder his heavy pack. He wore Illyrian leathers under a heavier jacket, along with layers of clothes beneath to help him survive in varying climates. He’d braided back his red hair, the length of it snaking across his back —right in front of the Illyrian sword strapped down his spine.
Cassian had given him free rein yesterday afternoon to loot his personal cache of weapons, though my friend had been economical about which ones he’d selected. The blade, plus a short sword, plus an assortment of daggers. A quiver of arrows and an unstrung bow were tied to his pack.
“You know precisely where you want Rhys to take you?” I asked at last.
Lucien nodded, glancing to where my mate now waited by the front door. He’d bring Lucien to the edge of the human continent—
to wherever Lucien had decided would be the best landing spot.
No farther, Azriel had insisted. His reports indicated it was too watched, too dangerous. Even for one of our own. Even for the most powerful High Lord in history.
I stepped forward, and didn’t give Lucien time to step back as I hugged him tightly. “Thank you,” I said, trying not to think about all the steel on him—if he’d need to use it.
“It was time,” Lucien said quietly, giving me a squeeze. “For me to do something.”
I pulled away, surveying his scarred face. “Thank you,” I said again. It was all I could think of to say.
Rhys extended a hand to Lucien.
Lucien studied it—then my mate’s face. I could nearly see all the hateful words they’d spoken. Dangling between them,
between that outstretched hand and Lucien’s own.
But Lucien took Rhys’s hand. That silent offer of not only transportation.
Before that dark wind swept in, Lucien looked back.
Not to me, I realized—to someone behind me.
Pale and thin, Elain stood atop the stairs.
Their gazes locked and held.
But Elain said nothing. Did not so much as take one step downward.
Lucien inclined his head in a bow, the movement hiding the gleam in his eye—the longing and sadness.
And when Lucien turned to signal to Rhys to go … He did not glance back at Elain.
Did not see the half step she took toward the stairs—as if she’d speak to him. Stop him.
Then Rhys was gone, and Lucien with him.
When I turned to offer Elain breakfast, she’d already walked away.
I waited in the foyer for Rhys to return.
In the dining room to my left, Nesta silently practiced building those invisible walls in her mind—no sign of Amren since her hunt last night. When I asked if she was making any progress, my sister had only said, “Amren thinks I’m getting close enough to begin trying on something tangible.”
And that was that. I left her to it, not bothering to ask if Amren had also come close to figuring out some sort of spell in the Book to repair that wall.
In silence, I counted the minutes, one by one.
Then a familiar dark wind swirled through the foyer, and I loosed a too-tight breath as Rhys appeared in the middle of the hall carpet. No indication of any sort of trouble, no sign of hurt or harm, but I slid my arms around his waist, needing to feel him, smell him. “Did everything go well?”
Rhys brushed a kiss to the top of my head. “As well as can be expected. He’s now on the continent, heading eastward.”
He marked Nesta studying at the dining table. “How’s our new seer holding up?”
I pulled back to explain that I’d left Elain to her own thoughts, but Nesta said, “Don’t call her that.”
Rhys gave me an incredulous look, but Nesta just went back to flipping through a book, her face going vacant—while she practiced with whatever wall-building exercises Amren had ordered. I poked him in the ribs. Don’t provoke her.
A corner of his mouth lifted—the expression full of wicked delight. Can I provoke you instead?
I clamped my lips to keep from smiling—
The front door blew open and Amren stormed in.
Rhys was instantly facing her. “What.”
Gone was the slick amusement, the relaxed posture.
Amren’s pale face remained calm, but her eyes … They swirled with rage.
“Hybern has attacked the Summer Court. They lay siege to Adriata as we speak.”
Hybern had made its grand move at last. And we had not anticipated it.
I knew Azriel would take the blame upon himself. One look at the shadowsinger as he prowled through the front door of the town house minutes later, Cassian on his heels, told me that he already did.
We stood in the foyer, Nesta lingering at the dining table behind me.
“Has Tarquin called for aid?” Cassian asked Amren.
None of us dared question how she knew.
Amren’s jaw tightened. “I don’t know. I got the message, and—
nothing else.”
Cassian nodded once and turned to Rhys. “Did the Summer Court have a mobile fighting force readied when you were there?”
“No,” Rhys said. “His armada was scattered along the coast.” A glance at Azriel.
“Half is in Adriata—the other dispersed,” the shadowsinger supplied. “His terrestrial army was moved to the Spring Court border … after Feyre. The closest legion is perhaps three days’
march away. Very few can winnow.”
“How many ships?” Rhys asked.
“Twenty in Adriata, fully armed.”
A calculating look at Amren. “Numbers on Hybern?”
“I don’t know. Many. It—I think they are overwhelmed.”
“What was the exact message?” Pure, unrelenting command laced every word.
Amren’s eyes glittered like fresh silver. “It was a warning. From Varian. To prepare our own defenses.”
Utter silence.
“Prince Varian sent you a warning?” Cassian asked a bit quietly.
Amren glared at him. “It is a thing that friends do.”
More silence.
I met Rhys’s stare, sensed the weight and dread and anger simmering behind the cool features. “We cannot leave Tarquin to face them alone,” I said. Perhaps Hybern had sent the Ravens yesterday to distract us from looking beyond our own borders. To have our focus on Hybern, not our own shores.
Rhys’s attention cut to Cassian. “Keir and his Darkbringer army are nowhere near ready to march. How soon can the Illyrian legions fly?”
Rhys immediately winnowed Cassian into the war-camps to give the orders himself. Azriel had vanished with them, going ahead to scout Adriata, taking his most trusted spies with him.
Nausea had churned in my gut as Cassian and Azriel tapped the Siphons atop their hands and that scaled armor unfurled across their body. As seven Siphons appeared on each. As the shadowsinger’s scarred hands checked the buckles on his knife belts and his quiver, while Rhys summoned extra Illyrian blades for Cassian—two at his back, one at each side.
Then they were gone—stone-faced and steady. Ready for bloodshed.
Mor arrived moments later, heavily armed, her hair braided back and every inch of her thrumming with impatience.
But Mor and I waited—for the order to go. To join them.
Cassian had positioned the Illyrian legions closer to the southern
border the weeks I’d been away, but even so, they wouldn’t be able to fly without a few hours of preparation. And it would require Rhys to winnow them in. All of them. To Adriata.
“Will you fight?”
Nesta was now standing a few steps up the staircase of the town house, watching as Mor and I readied. Soon—Azriel or Rhys would contact us soon with the all-clear to winnow to Adriata.
“We’ll fight if it’s required,” I said, checking once more that the belt of knives was secure at my hips.
Mor wore Illyrian leathers as well, but the blades on her were different. Slimmer, lighter, some of their tips slightly curved. Like lightning given flesh. Seraphim blades, she told me. Gifted to her by Prince Drakon himself during the War.
“What do you know of battle?”
I couldn’t tell if my sister’s tone was insulting or merely inquisitive.
“We know plenty,” Mor said tightly, arranging her long braid between the blades crossed over her back. Elain and Nesta would remain here, with Amren watching over them. And watching over Velaris, along with a small legion of Illyrians Cassian had ordered to camp in the mountains above the city. Mor had passed Amren on her way in, the small female apparently heading to the butcher to fill up on provisions before she’d return to stay here—for however long we’d be in Adriata. If we returned at all.
I met Nesta’s gaze again. Only wary distance greeted me.
“We’ll send word when we can.”
A rumble of midnight thunder brushed against the walls of my mind. A silent signal, speared over land and mountains. As if Rhys’s concentration was now wholly focused elsewhere—and he did not dare break it.
My heart stumbled a beat. I gripped Mor’s arm, the leather scales cutting into my palm. “They’ve arrived. Let’s go.”
Mor turned to my sister, and I had never seen her seem so …
warriorlike. I’d known it lurked beneath the surface, but here was
the Morrigan. The female who had fought in the War. Who knew how to end lives with blade and magic.
“It’s nothing we can’t handle,” Mor said to Nesta with a cocky smile, and then we were gone.
Black wind roared and tore at me, and I clung to Mor as she winnowed us through the courts, her breath a ragged beat in my ear—
Then blinding light and suffocating heat and screams and thunderous booming and metal on metal—
I swayed, bracing my feet apart as I blinked. As I took in my surroundings.
Rhys and the Illyrians had already joined the fray.
Mor had winnowed us to the barren top of one of the hills flanking the half-moon bay of Adriata, offering perfect views of the island-city in its center and the city on the mainland below.
The waters of the bay were red.
Smoke rose in gnarled black columns from buildings and foundering ships.
People screamed, soldiers shouted—
So many.
I had not anticipated the scope of how many soldiers there would be. On either side.
I’d thought it would be neat lines. Not chaos everywhere. Not Illyrians in the skies above the city and the harbor, blasting their power and arrows into the Hybern army that rained hell upon the city. Ship after ship squatted toward the horizon, hemming either entrance to the bay. And in the bay …
“Those are Tarquin’s ships,” Mor said, her face taut as she pointed to the white sails colliding with terrible force against the gray sails of Hybern’s fleet. Utterly outnumbered, and yet plumes of magic—water and wind and whips of vines—kept attacking any boat that neared. And those that broke through the magic faced soldiers armed with spears and bows and swords.
And ahead of them, pushing against the fleet … the Illyrian lines.
So many. Rhys had winnowed them in—all of them. The drain on his power …
Mor’s throat bobbed. “No one else has come,” she murmured.
“No other courts.”
No sign of Tamlin and the Spring Court on Hybern’s side, either.
A thunderous boom of dark power blasted into Hybern’s fleet, scattering ships—but not many. As if … “Rhys’s power is either already nearly spent or … they’ve got something working against it,” I said. “More of that faebane?”
“Hybern would be stupid not to use it.” Her fingers curled and uncurled at her sides. Sweat beaded on her temple.
“Mor?”
“I knew it was coming,” she murmured. “Another war, at some point. I knew battles would come for this war. But … I forgot how terrible it is. The sounds. The smells.”
Indeed, even from the rocky outcropping so high above, it was
… overwhelming. The tang of blood, the pleading and screaming
… Getting into the midst of it …
Alis. Alis had left the Spring Court, fearing the hell I’d unleash there—only to come here. To this. I prayed she was not in the city proper, prayed she and her nephews were keeping safe.
“We’re to go to the palace,” Mor said, squaring her shoulders. I hadn’t dared break Rhysand’s concentration by opening up a channel in the bond, but it seemed he was still capable of giving orders. “Soldiers have reached its northern side, and their defenses are surrounded.”
I nodded once, and Mor drew her slender, curving blade. It gleamed as brightly as Amren’s eyes, that Seraphim steel.
I unsheathed my Illyrian blade from across my back, the metal dark and ancient by comparison to the living silver flame in her hand.