But Nesta noted their haunted eyes—knew they heard their own horrors.
They rested for as long as they dared, then moved again.
Keep going upward. That was the only way. Step to step to step.
“It looks like we’re two-thirds of the way up,” Emerie rasped from ahead.
Night had fallen, the moon bright enough to keep the Breaking’s path illuminated. To show those three stars above Ramiel’s peak. Beckoning. Waiting.
If they reached it by dawn, it’d be a miracle.
“I need to rest,” Gwyn said faintly. “Just—just another minute.” Her face was gray, her hair limp. The leathers along her leg soaked red.
Emerie had taken a spill on a loose rock two hours earlier and twisted her ankle—she was limping now as well.
They were moving too slowly.
“The Pass of Enalius isn’t too far ahead,” Emerie insisted. “If we can make it through the archway, then it’s a clear shot to the top.”
Gwyn breathed, “I’m not sure if I can.”
“Let her rest, Emerie,” Nesta said, sitting on a small boulder beside Gwyn. Dawn had to be four hours off. And then it would be over. Would it matter if they’d reached the peak by then? If they’d won? They’d gotten this far. They’d—
“How did they get here?” Gwyn asked, swearing.
Nesta went still. From her vantage point, she could see straight down. To where a beam of moonlight illuminated a familiar-looking male and six others climbing the mountain behind them. A good ways back, but closing in.
“Bellius,” Emerie whispered.
“We need to go,” Nesta said, lurching to her feet. Gwyn followed, wincing.
Nesta sized up the males. Emerie and Gwyn were too injured to fight, too exhausted, and—
“Put your arms around my neck,” Nesta said, offering her back to Gwyn.
“What?”
Nesta did it for her. She had climbed the ten thousand stairs of the House of Wind, up and down, over and over and over again. Perhaps for this. This very moment.
“We’re winning this fucking thing,” Nesta said, bending to grab Gwyn’s legs. Teeth gritted, Nesta hoisted Gwyn onto her back.
The muscles in her thighs strained, but held. Her knees did not buckle.
Her gaze lay on the terrain ahead. She would not look behind.
So Nesta began to climb, Emerie limping beside her.
With the wind as their song, Nesta and Emerie found their rhythm. They climbed, squeezing and slithering and hauling their weight. And the males fell behind, like the mountain was silently whispering, Go, go, go.
“I knew you were a lying bastard,” Cassian said through his teeth. Azriel, a step away, could do nothing. Not with Eris angling that knife—Nesta’s dagger—into Cassian’s ribs. He could have sworn flame seared into him where the knife met his leather. “But this is low, even for you.”
“Honestly, I’m disappointed in Rhysand,” Eris said, digging the tip of the knife through Cassian’s leathers enough for him to feel its bite, and that ripple of searing flame. Whether it was Eris’s power through the blade or whatever Nesta had Made it into, he didn’t care. He just needed to find some way to avoid it piercing his skin. “He’s become so bland these days. He didn’t even try to look into my mind.”
“You can’t win this,” Azriel warned with quiet menace. “You’re a dead male walking, Eris. Have been for a long time.”
“Yes, yes, all that old business with the Morrigan. How boring of you to cling to it so.”
Cassian blinked. The Morrigan.
Eris never referred to her like that.
“Let him go, Briallyn,” Cassian growled. “Come play with us instead.”
The Made dagger slid away from his ribs, and a withered, reedy voice said from nearby, “I’m already playing with you, Lord of Bastards.”
Nesta’s legs shook. Her arms trembled. Gwyn was a half-dead weight at her back. The blood loss had made her so weak it seemed she could barely hold on.
The Breaking flowed through an archway of black stone where the path became broader and easier. The Pass of Enalius. Emerie had paused only long enough to run a bleeding hand over the stone, her dirty face full of wonder and pride. “I am standing where none of my ancestors have been before,” she whispered, voice choked.
Nesta wished she could pause alongside her friend. Could marvel with her. But to stop, even for a breath … Nesta knew that once she halted, she wouldn’t be able to move again.
The flattening of the path around the archway was only a temporary relief. They soon reached a cluster of stones—the last of the impossible climbing before it seemed to become a direct path to the top. Dawn remained a good two hours off. The full moon’s light was beginning to fade as it sank toward the west.
The group of males would catch them before the summit.
Nesta’s fingers spasmed as she reached for Emerie’s outstretched hand where her friend knelt atop one of the sharp boulders. If they could get past this section—
Her knees buckled, and Nesta went down, face smacking into a rock so hard stars burst across her vision, but all she could do was hold on to Gwyn as they tumbled and slammed into rocks and gravel and rolled and rolled downward, Emerie’s screams ringing in her ears, and then—
Nesta collided with someone hard.
No—not someone, though she could have sworn she felt warmth and breath. She’d hit the archway of stone. They’d fallen all the way back down to the Pass of Enalius, dangerously close to the males who pursued them.
“Gwyn—”
“Alive,” her friend groaned.
Emerie slid to her knees on the path. “Are you hurt?”
Nesta couldn’t move as Gwyn untangled herself. The two of them were covered in dirt, debris, and blood. “I can’t …” Nesta panted. “I can’t carry you anymore.”
Silence fell.
“So we rest,” Gwyn managed to say, “then we continue.”
“We’ll never make it in time,” Nesta said. “Or at least before the males catch up.”
Emerie swallowed. “We try anyway.” Gwyn nodded. “Rest a minute first. Maybe the dawn will reach us before they do.”
“No.” Nesta peered down the path. “They’re climbing too fast.”
Again, silence.
“What are you saying?” Emerie asked carefully.
Nesta marveled at the hope and bravery in their faces. “I can hold them off.”
“No,” Gwyn said, voice sharpening.
Nesta schooled her features into utter coldness. “You are both injured. You will not survive the fight. But you can manage the climb. Emerie can help—”
“No.”
“I can use the bottleneck of the path right there,” Nesta plowed ahead, pointing to the space beyond the archway, “to keep them off long enough for you two to reach the top. Or dawn to come. Whichever happens first.”
Gwyn bared her teeth. “I refuse to leave you here.”
Emerie’s pained face told Nesta enough: she understood. Saw the logic.
Nesta said to Gwyn, “It is the only way.”
Gwyn screamed, “IT IS NOT THE ONLY WAY!” And then she was sobbing. “I will not abandon you to them. They will kill you.”
“You need to go,” Nesta said, even as her hands began shaking. “Now.”
“No,” Gwyn wept. “No, I won’t. I’ll face it with you.”
Something deep in Nesta’s chest cracked. Cracked open completely, and what lay within bloomed, full and bright and pure.
She wrapped her arms around Gwyn. Let her friend sob into her chest. “I’ll face it with you,” Gwyn whispered, over and over again. “Promise me we’ll face it together.”
Nesta couldn’t stop her tears then. The chill wind froze them on her cheeks. “I promise,” she breathed, stroking Gwyn’s matted hair. “I promise.”
Gwyn sobbed, and Nesta let herself sob with her, squeezing her tightly. Letting her stroking hand come to rest on Gwyn’s neck.
A pinch in the right spot, exactly on that pressure point Cassian had shown her, and it was done.
Gwyn went down. Unconscious.
Nesta grunted, carefully lowering Gwyn to the ground as she peered up at Emerie. Her friend’s face was grave, but unsurprised.
Nesta only said, “Can you carry her the rest of the way?” It would be a feat in itself. “Or at least keep going until dawn?”
“I will.” Nesta knew Emerie would find that strength. She had a soul of steel. Emerie laid her sword before Nesta. Her dagger. The shield.
“Keep the canteens,” Nesta said, patting her own. “I’ve got enough.” Another lie.
“She’ll never forgive you for this,” Emerie said.
“I know.” The males had risen higher. She didn’t wait for Emerie to speak before she helped ease Gwyn onto Emerie’s back, the latter hissing at the weight upon her wings, splaying them at awkward angles. Nesta tied the bloodied rope around them, binding them together. Emerie grimaced, but managed to move a few steps.
“Come with us,” Emerie offered, eyes lined with silver.
Nesta shook her head. “Consider it the repayment of a debt.”
A tear slipped down Emerie’s cheek. “For what?”
“For being my friends. Even when I didn’t deserve it.”
Emerie’s face crumpled. “There is no debt, Nesta.”
But Nesta smiled softly. “There is. Let me pay it.”
Swallowing back her tears, Emerie nodded. Hefted Gwyn higher and winced, but managed to hobble through the arch. Toward the rocks and the last stretch of the Breaking, all the way up to the peak.
Nesta did not say good-bye. She just inhaled through her nose, held the breath, then exhaled. Repeated her Mind-Stilling again and again, until her breath became the steady crash of waves and her heart became solid stone, and every inch of her body was hers to control.
She was the rock against which the surf broke. These males would break against her, too.
They had no choice. With Eris in Briallyn’s grip, Cassian and Azriel could only follow the hunched, cloaked figure to the lake. Cassian didn’t dare consider whether the Crown was being used on him. If it’d be used on Azriel.
The party in which Eris and Briallyn had traveled had dispersed, nowhere to be seen along the lake. Had they even been real? Or just an illusion?
A glance at Az revealed his brother stone-faced, cold fury in his eyes.
The hunched, cloaked figure stopped before the stones of the lake. Eris halted beside her.
“Out with it, then,” Cassian said.
Briallyn drew back the hood of her cloak.
There was nothing there. The material fell and pooled on the stones. Eris’s face remained blank. Empty.
“Just an animated kernel of magic,” a slithering voice drawled from the lake.
Thirty feet from shore, standing atop the surface, floated a shadow. It shifted and warped, its edges fluttering, but it had the vague shape of a tall male.
“Who are you?” Azriel demanded.
But Cassian knew. “Koschei,” he whispered.
Nesta stood under the Pass of Enalius for a long minute.
She took out her canteen. Drank the last of the water. Chucked it to the side.
She tucked the dagger into her belt. Picked up the sword. And drew a line in the dirt in front of the archway.
Her final stand. Her last line of defense.
Nesta gathered the shield. Peered over her shoulder to where Emerie had cleared the last cluster of boulders and now struggled up the long, straight path to the peak.
A small, quiet smile passed over Nesta’s face.
Then she hefted her shield. Angled her sword.
And stepped beyond the line she’d drawn to meet her enemy.
CHAPTER
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Bellius sent his warriors through the bottleneck first. A wise move, designed to wear Nesta down.
She had no choice but to meet them.
There were no hateful voices in her head. Only the knowledge that her friends lay behind her, beyond the line she’d drawn in the earth, and she would not cede that line to these males.
She would not fail her friends. She had no room for fear in her heart.
Only calm. Determination.
And love.
Nesta’s lips curved in a smile as the first of the warriors ran at her, sword raised. She was still smiling when she lifted her shield to take the full impact of the blow.
Nesta slammed her shield into the first male, sliced the shins of the second, and dispatched the third with a parry that sent him careening into the fourth and both of them tumbling to the ground. One for each breath, a movement for each inhale and exhale. She stilled her mind again, let it root her.
For a heartbeat, she wondered what she might have done with Ataraxia in her hand. What she might do with this body, these skills trained into her bones. If she was worthy of the sword at last.
She’d opted for a name in the Old Language, a tongue no one had spoken in fifteen thousand years. A name Lanthys had laughed to hear.
Nesta engaged four of the Illyrians at once, then five, then six, and the males started to go down, one after another. Nesta held the line in a storm of unflinching focus and death, guarding the friends at her back.
Ataraxia, she had named that magic sword.
Inner Peace.
CHAPTER
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The being that stood atop the lake was a shadow. It must be a reflection, Cassian thought. Smoke and mirrors.
“Where is Briallyn?” Azriel demanded, Siphons flaring like cobalt flame.
“I spend so many months preparing for you,” Koschei crooned, “and you don’t even wish to speak to me?”
Cassian crossed his arms. “Let Eris go, and then we’ll talk.” He prayed Koschei didn’t know of the Made dagger that Eris had again sheathed at his side, that the Crown’s aura of power had blinded even Briallyn to its presence. But if the death-lord got his hands on it … Fuck. Cassian didn’t let himself so much as glance toward the blade.
“You fell for it rather easily,” Koschei went on, “though you took your time making contact. I thought you’d rush in for the kill, brute that you are.” They could make out nothing of him beyond the shadows of his form. Even Azriel’s own shadows kept tucked behind his wings. Koschei laughed, and Azriel stiffened. Like his shadows had murmured a warning.
His Siphons flared again. “Run,” Az breathed, and the pure terror on his brother’s face had Cassian spreading his wings, readying to launch—
But his wings halted. His entire body halted.
Azriel grabbed Eris and shot into the skies, the Made dagger with them. They had to get it far from Koschei. Yet Cassian could not move.
Cassian’s Siphons glowed like fresh blood, then sputtered out. Azriel shouted his name from high above. Koschei drifted closer to the shore. “You can take him now, Briallyn. You have plenty of time before dawn.”
A small, hunched figure emerged from behind the trees. A crone. A golden crown sat upon her head, right above her arched ears. Hate burned in her eyes.
Koschei said, “Tell my Vassa I’m waiting.” His shadows swirled.
Azriel soared back toward the ground, his Siphons creating a blue orb of power encircling him, but Briallyn had already reached Cassian.
“I have need of you, Lord of Bastards,” the ancient-looking queen seethed. Cassian could say nothing. Couldn’t move. The Crown glowed like molten iron. Briallyn ordered Koschei, “Winnow us.”
The death-lord pointed a long-fingered hand at Briallyn and Cassian. Flicked his fingers once.
And the world vanished, spinning into blackness and wind.
Nesta’s shield had become a millstone. Her sword, slick with blood, hung from her hand, a leaden, slippery weight.
Every inch of her body burned. With exhaustion, with her wounds, with the knowledge that behind that line she’d drawn in the dirt, through the archway at her back, Gw
yn and Emerie were still breathing, still climbing that final piece of the Breaking to the summit.
So she’d killed the Illyrian males who squeezed through those jagged rocks. Who believed they’d find an untrained, helpless female and found death waiting for them before the archway.
Only one remained.
Some inner part of her quaked at the unseeing, battered faces. The blood running from the corpses.
Valkyrie, she whispered to herself. You are a Valkyrie, and once again, you are holding the pass. If you fall, it will be to save the friends who saved you, even when they didn’t know they were doing so.
A glance over her shoulder showed Emerie still scaling the last of the summit, so slow, but so close. Dawn neared, but … they could make it. Win this thing.
Nesta again faced the archway. Knew who she’d find.
Bellius leaned against a boulder, sword in hand, shield dangling from the other. “Impressive work for a High Fae whore.”
The male pushed off the rock of the archway, not sparing a glance at the warriors he’d let die for him. “You know, our god—the first of the Illyrians—held the ground against enemy hordes right where you’re standing.”
There wasn’t a scratch on him. No sign of exhaustion despite the climb.
Bellius smirked. “He drew a line in the dirt as well.” He nodded toward it. “Nice little touch.”
Nesta hadn’t known that tidbit of their history. But she revealed nothing. She became blood and dirt and pure determination.
“It didn’t end well for Enalius,” Bellius went on. “He died after defending this spot for three days. Climbed with his guts hanging out to the sacred stone at the top and died there. It’s why we do this stupid thing. To honor him.”
She still didn’t speak. But Bellius’s eyes drifted to the peak above. Displeasure narrowed them. “My crippled cunt of a cousin and that half-breed disgrace this sacred place.”
A flutter of light from the summit washed over Bellius’s features.
Nesta’s lips curled. Widened into a smile at Bellius’s growl.
Gwyn and Emerie had touched the sacred stone and been winnowed away by its magic.
“Seems like you didn’t win,” Nesta said to Bellius at last.
A Court of Silver Flames (A Court of Thorns and Roses) Page 64