“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.
CHAPTER
34
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.”
CHAPTER
35
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?”
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