Nesta said nothing.
Cassian dragged a hand through his hair. Cauldron spare them. Rhys expected him to play politics when he couldn’t even navigate this?
Mor smirked, as if reading the thought on his face. “Congratulations on your promotion.” She shook her head. “Cassian the courtier. I never thought I’d see the day.”
Feyre snickered. But Nesta’s eyes slid to him, surprised and wary. He said to her, if only to beat her to it, “Still a bastard-born nobody, don’t worry.”
Nesta’s lips thinned.
Feyre said carefully to Nesta, “We’ll talk soon.”
Nesta again didn’t reply.
It seemed she had stopped speaking to Feyre at all. But at least she was going willingly.
Semi-willingly.
“Shall we?” Mor said, offering up either elbow.
Nesta gazed at the floor, her face pale and gaunt, eyes blazing.
Feyre met his stare. The look alone conveyed everything she was begging of him.
Nesta stepped past her, grabbed Mor’s forearm, and watched a spot on the wall.
Mor cringed at him, but Cassian didn’t dare share the look. Nesta might not be gazing at them, but he knew she saw and heard and assessed everything.
So he merely took Mor’s other arm and winked at Feyre before they all vanished into wind and darkness.
Mor winnowed them into the sky right above the House of Wind.
Before the stomach-dropping plunge could register, Nesta was in Cassian’s arms, his wings spread, as he flew toward the stone veranda. It had been a long while since she’d been held by him, since she’d seen the city so small below.
He could have flown them both up here, Nesta realized as he alighted and Morrigan vanished from her deadly plummet with a wave. The rules of the House were simple: no one could winnow directly inside thanks to its heavy wards, so it was a choice to either walk up the ten thousand steps, winnow and drop a terrifying distance to the veranda—likely breaking bones—or winnow to the edge of the wards with someone who had wings to fly the rest of the way in. But being in Cassian’s arms … She’d rather have risked breaking every bone in her body from the plunge to the veranda. Thankfully, the flight was over in a matter of seconds.
Nesta shoved out of his grip the moment her feet hit the worn stones. Cassian let her, folding his wings and lingering by the rail, all of Velaris glittering below and beyond him.
She’d spent weeks here last year—during that terrible period after being turned Fae, begging Elain to demonstrate any sign of wanting to live. She’d barely slept for fear of Elain walking off this veranda, or leaning too far out of one of the countless windows, or simply throwing herself down those ten thousand stairs.
Her throat closed at the surge of memories and at the sprawling view—the glimmering ribbon of the Sidra far below, the red-stoned palace built into the side of the flat-topped mountain itself.
Nesta dug her hands into her pockets, wishing she’d opted for the warm gloves Feyre had coaxed her to take. She’d refused. Or silently refused, since she had not uttered a word to her sister after they’d left the study.
Partially because she was afraid of what would come out.
For a long moment, Nesta and Cassian watched each other.
The wind ripped at his shoulder-length dark hair, but he might have been standing in a summer field for all the reaction he yielded to the cold—so much sharper up here, high above the city. It was all she could do to keep her teeth from clattering their way out of her skull.
Cassian finally said, “You’ll be staying in your old room.”
As if she had any sort of claim on this place. On anywhere at all.
He went on, “My room’s a level above that.”
“Why would I need to know that?” The words snapped out of her.
He began walking toward the glass doors that led into the mountain’s interior. “In case you have a bad dream and need someone to read you a story,” he drawled, a half smile dancing on his face. “Maybe one of those smutty books you like so much.”
Her nostrils flared. But she walked through the door he held open for her, nearly sighing at the cozy warmth filling the red stone halls. Her new residence. Sleeping site.
It wasn’t a home, this place. Just as her apartment hadn’t been a home.
Neither had her father’s fancy new house, before Hybern had half-destroyed it. And neither had the cottage, or the glorious manor before that. Home was a foreign word.
But she knew this level of the House of Wind well: the dining room to the left, and the stairway to her right that would take her down two levels to her floor, and the kitchens a level below that. The library far, far beneath it.
She wouldn’t have cared where she stayed, except for the convenience of the small, private library also on her level. Which had been the place where she’d discovered those smutty books, as Cassian called them. She’d devoured a few dozen of them during those weeks she’d first been here, desperate for any lifeline to keep her from falling apart, from bellowing at what had been done to her body, her life—to Elain. Elain, who would not eat, or speak, or do anything at all.
Elain, who had somehow become the adjusted one.
In the months leading to and during the war, Nesta had managed. Had stepped into this world, with these people, and started to see it—a future.
Until she’d been hunted by the King of Hybern and the Cauldron. Until she’d realized that everyone she cared for would be used to hurt her, break her, trap her. Until that last battle when she couldn’t stop one thousand Illyrians from dying, and had instead been able to save only one.
Him. She would do it again, if forced to. And knowing that … She couldn’t bear that truth, either.
Cassian aimed for the downward stairs, his every movement brimming with unfaltering arrogance.
“I don’t need an escort to my room.” No matter that his rooms were that way, too. “I know how to get there.”
He threw a smirk over a muscled shoulder and strode down the stairs anyway. “I just want to make sure you arrive in one piece before I settle in.” He nodded to the landing they passed, the open archway that led into the hall with his bedroom. She knew it only because she’d had little more to do during those initial weeks as High Fae than wander this palace like a ghost.
Cassian added, “Az is in the room two doors down from mine.” They reached the level of her bedroom and he swaggered along the hall. “You probably won’t see him, though.”
“He’s here to spy on me?” Her words bounced off the red stone.
Cassian said tightly, “He says he’d rather stay up here than at the river house.”
That made two of them. “Why?”
“I don’t know. He’s Az. He likes his space.” He shrugged, the faelight filtering through the golden sconces gilding the taloned apex of his wings. “He’ll keep to himself, so most of the time it’ll be only you and me.”
She didn’t dare reply. Not to all that statement implied. Alone—with Cassian. Here.
Cassian stopped in front of a familiar, arched wood door. He leaned against the jamb, hazel eyes monitoring her every step.
She knew the House belonged to Rhys. Knew Cassian’s entire existence was paid for by Rhys, just as the High Lord bankrolled all of his Inner Circle. Knew that the fastest and deepest way to annoy Cassian, hurt him right now would be to strike for that, to make him doubt the work he did and whether he deserved to be here. The instinct crept up, a rising wave, each word selected to slice and wound. She’d always had the gift, if it could be called that. Yet it wasn’t a curse, not entirely. It had served her well.
He scanned her face as she stopped in front of the bedroom door. “Let’s hear it, Nes.”
“Don’t call me that.” She dangled the words like bait. Let him think her vulnerable.
But he pushed off the door, wings tucking in. “You need a hot meal.”
“I don’t want one.”
“Why?�
��
“Because I’m not hungry.”
It was true. Her appetite had been the first thing to go after that battle. Only instinct and the occasional social requirement to appear like she gave a shit about anything kept her eating.
“You won’t last through an hour of training tomorrow without food in your belly.”
“I’m not training at that horrible place.” She’d hated Windhaven from the first time she’d seen it, cold and bleak and full of humorless, harsh-faced people.
The Siphon strapped atop Cassian’s left hand gleamed, a red band of light twining from the stone to wrap around the door handle. It yanked the iron downward, the door swinging open with a creak, then vanished like smoke. “You were given an order, as well as the alternative to following it. You want to go back to the human lands, be my guest.”
Then go somewhere else.
He’d likely have that preening Morrigan dump her over the border like so much baggage.
And Nesta would have called the bluff, except … she knew what she’d face down south. The war had done little to warm human sentiments toward the Fae.
She had nowhere to go. Elain, mourn as she might for the life she would have had with Graysen, had found a place, a role here. Tending to the gardens of Feyre’s veritable palace on the river, helping other residents of Velaris restore their own destroyed gardens—she had purpose, and joy, and friends: those two half-wraiths who worked in Rhysand’s household. But those things had always come easily to her sister. Had always made Elain special.
Had made Nesta fight like hell to keep Elain safe at all costs.
The Cauldron had learned that. The King of Hybern had learned it, too.
An old, heavy weight tugged her down, oblivion beckoning. “I’m tired.” Her words came out mercifully flat.
“Take the day to rest, then,” Cassian said, his voice a shade quiet. “Mor or Rhys will winnow us up to Windhaven after breakfast tomorrow.”
She said nothing. He went on, “We’ll start easy: two hours of training, then lunch, then you’ll be brought back here to meet with Clotho.”
She didn’t have the energy to ask further about the training, or the work in the library with its high priestess. She didn’t really care. Let Rhysand and Feyre and Amren and Cassian make her do this bullshit. Let them think it could somehow make a lick of difference.
Nesta didn’t bother to reply before she strode through the archway and into her bedroom. But she felt his stare on her, assessing every step over the threshold, the way her hand gripped the side of the door, the way she flexed her fingers before she slammed it shut.
Nesta waited mere feet inside the bedroom, blinking at the glaring light through the wall of windows at its other end. A scuff of boots on stone informed her that he’d left.
It wasn’t until the sound faded completely that she took in the room before her, unchanged since she’d last been in it, the connecting door to Elain’s old suite now sealed shut.
The wide space easily accommodated a mammoth four-poster bed against the wall to her left, as well as a small sitting area to her right, complete with a sofa and two chairs. A carved marble fireplace occupied the wall before the sitting area, mercifully dark, and multiple rugs lay scattered throughout, offering reprieve from the chilly stone floors.
But that wasn’t what she’d liked about this room. No, it was what she now faced: the wall of windows that overlooked the city, the river, the flatlands and distant sparkle of sea beyond. All that land, all those people, so far away. As if this palace floated in the clouds. There had been some days up here when the mist had been thick enough to block the view below, swirling so close to the window that she’d been able to trail her fingers through it.
No tendrils of mist drifted by now, though. The windows revealed nothing but a clear early-autumn day, the sunlight near-blinding.
Seconds ticked by. Minutes.
A familiar roaring built in her ears. That heavy hollowness tugged her down, as surely as some faerie creature wrapping its bony hands around her ankle and yanking her beneath a dark surface. As surely as she had been shoved under that eternal, icy water in the Cauldron.
Nesta’s body became distant, foreign, as she shut the heavy gray velvet curtains against the light. Shrouding the room in darkness bit by bit. She ignored the three bags and two trunks set beside the dresser as she approached the bed.
She barely managed to toe off her shoes before she slid beneath the layers of white down blankets and quilts, closed her eyes, and breathed.
And breathed.
And breathed.
CHAPTER
4
Mor had already commandeered a table at the riverfront café, an arm slung across the back of a wrought-iron chair, the other elegantly draped over her crossed knees. Cassian halted a few feet from the maze of tables along the walkway, smiling to himself at the sight of her: head tipped toward the sun, unbound hair gleaming and rippling around her like liquid gold, her full lips curled upward, basking in the light.
She never stopped appreciating the sunshine. Even five hundred years after leaving that veritable prison she’d called home and the monsters who claimed her as kin, his friend—his sister, honestly—still savored every moment in the sun. As if the first seventeen years of her life, spent in the darkness of the Hewn City, still lurked around her like Az’s shadows.
Cassian cleared his throat as he approached the table, offering pleasant smiles to the other patrons and people along the walkway who either gawked or waved at him, and by the time he sat, Mor was already smirking, her brown eyes lit with amusement.
“Don’t start,” he warned, settling his wings around the chair’s back and motioning to the owner of the café, who knew him well enough to understand that meant he wanted water—no tea or sweets, both of which Mor had before her.
Mor grinned, so beautiful it took his breath away. “Can’t I enjoy the sight of my friend being fawned over by the public?”
He rolled his eyes, and murmured his thanks to the owner as a pitcher of water and a glass appeared before him.
Mor said when the owner had gone to tend to other tables, “I seem to remember a time when you enjoyed that sort of thing, too.”
“I was a young, arrogant idiot.” He cringed to recall how he’d strutted around after successful battles or missions, believing he deserved the praise of strangers. For too damn long, he’d indulged in that bullshit. It had taken walking these same streets after Rhys had been imprisoned by Amarantha—after Rhys sacrificed so much to shield this city, and seeing the disappointment and fear in so many faces—to make Cassian realize what a fool he’d been.
Mor cleared her throat, as if sensing the direction of his thoughts. She didn’t possess Rhys’s skill set, but having survived in the Court of Nightmares, she’d learned to read the subtlest of expressions. A mere blink, she’d once told him, might mean the difference between life and death in that miserable court. “She’s settled, then?”
Cassian knew who she meant. “Taking a nap.”
Mor snorted.
“Don’t.” His attention drifting to the glittering Sidra mere feet away. “Please don’t.”
Mor sipped her tea, the portrait of elegant innocence. “We’d be better off throwing Nesta into the Court of Nightmares. She’d thrive there.”
Cassian clenched his jaw, both at the insult and the truth. “That’s exactly the sort of existence we’re trying to steer her away from.”
Mor assessed him with a bob of her thick lashes. “It pains you seeing her like this.”
“All of it pains me.” He and Mor had always had this kind of relationship: truth at all costs, however harsh. Ever since that first and only time they’d slept together, when he’d learned too late that she’d hidden from him the terrible repercussions. When he’d seen her broken body and known that even if she’d lied to him, he’d still played a part.
Cassian blew out a breath, shaking away the blood-soaked memory still staining his mind five
centuries later. “It pains me that Nesta has become … this. It pains me that she and Feyre are always at each other’s throats. It pains me that Feyre hurts over it, and I know Nesta does, too. It pains me that …” He drummed his fingers on the table, then sipped from his water. “I really don’t want to talk about it.”
“All right.” The breeze ruffled the gauzy fabric of Mor’s twilight-blue dress.
He again let himself admire her perfect face. Beyond the disastrous consequences for Mor after their night together, the fallout with Rhys afterward had been awful, and Azriel had been so furious in his own quiet way that Cassian had quelled any further desire for Mor. Had let lust turn into affection, and all romantic feelings turn into familial bonds. But he could still admire her sheer beauty—as he’d admire any work of art. Even though he knew well that what lay inside Mor was far more lovely and perfect than her exterior.
He wondered if she knew that.
Drinking again, he said, “Tell me what happened in Vallahan.” The ancient, mountainous Fae territory across the northern sea had been stirring since before the war with Hybern, and had been both enemy and ally to Prythian in different historical eras. What role Vallahan’s hot-tempered king and proud people would play in this new world of theirs was yet to be decided, though much of its fate seemed to depend upon Mor’s now-frequent presence at their court as Rhys’s emissary.
Indeed, Mor’s eyes shuttered. “They don’t want to sign the new treaty.”
“Fuck.” Rhys, Feyre, and Amren had spent months working on that treaty, with input from their allies in other courts and territories. Helion, High Lord of the Day Court and Rhys’s closest ally, had been the most involved. Helion Spell-Cleaver was unrivaled in sheer, swaggering arrogance—he’d probably made up the moniker himself. But the male had one thousand libraries at his disposal, and had put them all to good use for the treaty.
“I’ve spent weeks in that blasted court,” Mor said, poking at the flaky pastry beside her teacup, “freezing my ass off, trying to kiss their cold asses, and their king and queen refused the treaty. I came home on the earlier side today because I knew any more last-minute pushing from me would be unwelcome. My time there was supposed to be a friendly visit, after all.”
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