A Court of Silver Flames

by Sarah J. Maas

  His friends would understand the wound it pressed. How far the pain of that ancient wound would push him to go. A razed Illyrian camp was all that remained of the first and last time he’d let himself sink to that level of rage.

  And Rhys had appointed him to play courtier. To put aside the blade and use his words. It was a joke.

  Eris uncrossed his legs. “I suppose this could be to sow tensions amongst us. To make us eye each other with suspicion. Weaken our bonds.”

  “Hybern would have done that,” Jurian agreed. “He might have taught them a thing or two.” Before Nesta had beheaded him.

  But Vassa said, “The queens require no teaching. They were well versed in treachery before they ever contacted Hybern. And have dealt with greater monsters than him.”

  Cassian could have sworn flames rippled across her blue eyes.

  Both Jurian and Lucien stared at her, the former’s face utterly unreadable, and the latter’s pained. Cassian suppressed his jolt. He should have asked someone before coming here how much time remained before Vassa would be forced to return to the continent—to the sorcerer-lord at a remote lake who held her leash, and had allowed her to leave only temporarily, as part of a bargain Feyre’s father had struck.

  Feyre’s father … and Nesta’s father. Cassian blocked out the memory of the man’s neck being snapped. Of Nesta’s face as it had happened. And deciding to damn caution to hell, he asked, “Which of the queens would do something this bold?”

  Vassa’s golden face tightened. “Briallyn.”

  The once-young, once-human queen who had been turned High Fae by the Cauldron. But in its rage at whatever Nesta had taken from it, the Cauldron had punished Briallyn. She was Made immortal Fae, yes—but she was withered into a crone. Doomed to be old for millennia.

  She’d made no secret of her hatred for Nesta. Her desire for revenge.

  If Briallyn made a move against Nesta, he’d kill the queen himself.

  Cassian tried to think over the bellowing beast in his head that tightened every muscle of his body until only bloody violence would appease it.

  “Easy,” Lucien said.

  Cassian snarled.

  “Easy,” Lucien repeated, and flame sizzled in his russet eye.

  The flame, the surprising dominance within it, hit Cassian like a stone to the head, knocking him from his need to kill and kill and kill whatever might threaten—

  They were all staring. Cassian rolled his tensed shoulders, stretching out his wings. He’d revealed too much. Like a stupid brute, he’d let them all see too much, learn too much.

  “Send that shadowsinger of yours to track Briallyn,” Jurian ordered, his face grave. “If she’s somehow capable of capturing a unit of Fae soldiers, we need to know how. Swiftly.” Spoken like the general Jurian had once been.

  Cassian said to Vassa, “You really think Briallyn would do something like this? Be that blatant? Someone has to be trying to fool us into going after her.”

  Lucien asked, “How would she even get here and vanish that quickly? Crossing the sea takes weeks. She’d need to winnow to pull it off.”

  “The queens can winnow,” Jurian corrected. “They did so during the war, remember?”

  But Vassa said, “Only when several of us are together. And it is not winnowing as the Fae do, but a different power. It’s akin to the way all seven High Lords can combine their powers to perform miracles.”

  Well, fuck.

  Eris said, “I have it on good authority that the other three queens have scattered to the winds.” Cassian tucked away the information and the questions it raised. How did Eris know that? “Briallyn has been residing alone in their palace for weeks now. Long before my soldiers vanished.”

  “So she can’t winnow, then,” Cassian concluded. “And again—would she really be foolish enough to do something like this if the other queens have left?”

  Vassa’s eyes darkened. “Yes. The others’ departure would serve to remove obstacles to her ambitions. But she’d only do this if she had someone of immense power behind her. Perhaps pulling her strings.”

  Even the fire seemed to quiet.

  Lucien’s eye clicked. “Who?”

  “You wonder who is capable of making a unit of Fae soldiers across the sea vanish? Who could give Briallyn the power to winnow—or do it for her? Who could aid Briallyn so she’d be bold enough to do such a thing? Look to Koschei.”

  Cassian froze as memories clicked into place, as surely as one of Amren’s jigsaw puzzles. “The sorcerer who imprisoned you is named Koschei? Is he … is he the Bone Carver’s brother?” Everyone gaped at him. Cassian clarified, “The Bone Carver mentioned a brother to me once, a fellow true immortal and a death-lord. That was his name.”

  “Yes,” Vassa breathed. “Koschei is—was—the Bone Carver’s older brother.”

  Lucien and Jurian looked at her in surprise. But Vassa’s gaze lay upon him. Fear and hatred filled it, as if speaking the male’s name were abhorrent.

  Her voice hoarsened. “Koschei is no mere sorcerer. He’s confined to the lake only due to an ancient spell. Because he was outsmarted once. Everything he does is to free himself.”

  “Why was he imprisoned?” Cassian asked.

  “The story is too long to tell,” she hedged. “But know that Briallyn and the others sold me to him not through their devices, but his. By words he planted in their courts, whispered on the winds.”

  “He’s still at the lake,” Lucien said carefully. Lucien had been there, Cassian recalled. Had gone with Nesta’s father to the lake where Vassa was held captive.

  “Yes,” Vassa said, relief in her eyes. “But Koschei is as old as the sea—older.”

  “Some say he is Death itself,” Eris murmured.

  “I do not know if that is true,” Vassa said, “but they call him Koschei the Deathless, for he has no death awaiting him. He is truly immortal. And would know of anything that might give Briallyn an edge against us.”

  “And you think Koschei would do all of this,” Cassian pressed, “not out of sympathy for the human queens, but with the goal of freeing himself?”

  “Certainly.” Vassa peered at her hands, fingers flexing. “I fear what may happen if he ever gets free of the lake. If he sees this world on the cusp of disaster and knows he could strike, and strike hard, and make himself its master. As he once tried to do, long ago.”

  “Those are legends that predate our courts,” Eris said.

  Vassa nodded. “It is all I have gleaned from my time enslaved to him.”

  Lucien stared out the window—as if he could see the lake across a sea and a continent. As if he were setting his target.

  But Cassian had heard enough. He didn’t wait for their good-byes before heading for the archway, and the front hall behind it.

  He’d made it two steps beyond the front door, breathing in the crisp night air, when Eris said behind him, “You make a terrible courtier.” Cassian turned to find Eris shutting the front door and leaning against it. His face was pale and stony in the moonlight. “What do you know?”

  “As little as you,” Cassian said, offering a truth that he hoped Eris would deem a deception.

  Eris sniffed the night breeze. Then smiled. “She couldn’t be bothered to come inside to say hello?”

  How he’d detected Mor’s lingering scent, Cassian didn’t know. Perhaps Eris and his smokehounds had more in common than he realized. “She didn’t know you were here.”

  A lie. Mor had probably sensed it. He’d spare her the pain of coming back here, and have Rhys retrieve him. He’d fly north for a few hours—until he was in range of Rhys’s power—and then shoot a thought toward him.

  Eris’s long red hair ruffled in the wind. “Whatever it is you’re doing, whatever it is you’re looking into, I want in.”

  “Why? And no.”

  “Because I need the edge Briallyn has, what Koschei has told her or shown her.”

  “To overthrow your father.”

  “Bec
ause my father has already pledged his forces to Briallyn and the war she wishes to incite.”

  Cassian started. “What?”

  Eris’s face filled with cool amusement. “I wanted to feel out Vassa and Jurian.” He didn’t mention his brother, oddly enough. “But they clearly know little about this.”

  “Explain what the fuck you mean by Beron pledging his forces to Briallyn.”

  “It’s exactly what it sounds like. He caught wind of her ambitions, and went to her palace a month ago to meet with her. I stayed here, but I sent my best soldiers with him.” Cassian refrained from sniping about Eris opting out, especially as the last words settled.

  “Those wouldn’t happen to be the same soldiers who went missing, would they?”

  Eris nodded gravely. “They returned with my father, but they were … off. Aloof and strange. They vanished soon after—and my hounds confirmed that the scents at the scene are the same as those on gifts Briallyn sent to curry my father’s favor.”

  “You knew it was her this entire time?” Cassian motioned to the house and the three people inside it.

  “You didn’t think I’d just spill all that information, did you? I needed Vassa to confirm that Briallyn could do something like that.”

  “Why would Briallyn ally with your father only to abduct your soldiers?”

  “That’s what I’d like to find out.”

  “What does Beron say?”

  “He is unaware of it. You know where I stand with my father. And this unholy alliance he’s struck with Briallyn will only hurt us. All of us. It will turn into a Fae war for control. So I want to find answers on my own—rather than what my father tries to feed me.”

  Cassian surveyed the male, his grim face. “So we take out your father.”

  Eris snorted, and Cassian bristled. “I am the only person my father has told of his new allegiance. If the Night Court moves, it will expose me.”

  “So your worry about Briallyn’s alliance with Beron is about what it means for you, rather than the rest of us.”

  “I only wish to defend the Autumn Court against its worst enemies.”

  “Why would I work with you on this?”

  “Because we are indeed allies.” Eris’s smile became lupine. “And because I do not believe your High Lord would wish me to go to other territories and ask them to help with Briallyn and Koschei. To help them remember that all it might take to secure Briallyn’s alliance would be to hand over a certain Archeron sister. Don’t be stupid enough to believe my father hasn’t thought of that, too.”

  Cassian’s rage flashed red before his eyes. He’d revealed that weakness earlier. Let Eris see how much Nesta meant, what he’d do to defend her.

  Fool, he cursed himself. Stupid, useless fool.

  “I could kill you now and not worry about this at all,” Cassian mused. He’d enjoyed beating the shit out of the male that night on the ice with Feyre and Lucien. And he’d waited centuries to kill him, anyway.

  “Then you would certainly have a war on your hands. My father would go straight to Briallyn—and Koschei, I suppose—and then go to the other discontent territories, and you would be wiped off the proverbial map. Perhaps literally, since the Night Court would be divvied up between the other territories if Rhysand and Feyre die without an heir.”

  Cassian clenched his jaw. “So you’re to be my ally whether I wish it or not?”

  “The brute understands at last.” Cassian ignored the barb. “Yes. What you know, I want to know. I will notify you of any movement on my father’s part regarding Briallyn. So send out your shadowsinger. And when he returns, find me.”

  Cassian stared at him from under lowered brows. Eris’s mouth curled upward, and before he winnowed into the night like a ghost, he said, “Stick to fighting battles, General. Leave the ruling to those capable of playing the game.”

  CHAPTER

  8

  Nesta didn’t bother to go to the wine cellar. Or to the kitchen. They’d be locked.

  But she knew where the stairs lay. Knew that particular door, at least, would not be locked.

  Still snarling, Nesta yanked open the heavy oak door and peered down the steep, narrow stairwell. Spiral stairs. Each a foot high.

  Ten thousand steps, around and around and around. Only the occasional slitted window to offer a breath of air and a glimpse of progress.

  Ten thousand steps between her and the city—and then a half-mile walk at least from the bottom of the mountain to the nearest tavern. And awaiting, blessed oblivion.

  Ten thousand steps.

  She was no longer human. This High Fae body could do it.

  She could do it.

  She couldn’t do it.

  The dizziness hit her first. Winding around, over and over, eyes trained downward to avoid a slip that would kill her, caused her head to spin.

  Her empty stomach churned.

  But she focused, counting each step. Seventy. Seventy-one. Seventy-two.

  The city below barely drew any closer through the occasional slitted windows she passed.

  Her legs started to shake; her knees groaned with the effort of keeping her upright, balancing on the steep drop of each step.

  Nothing but her own breathing and the sound of her scuffing steps filled the narrow space. All she could see was the endlessly curving, perfect arc of the wall ahead. It never altered, save for those tiny, too-rare windows.

  Around and around and around and around and around—

  Eighty-six, eighty-seven—

  Down and down and down and down—

  One hundred.

  She halted, no window in sight, and the walls pushed, the floor kept moving—

  Nesta leaned into the red stone wall, let its coolness sink into her brow. Breathed.

  Nine thousand nine hundred steps to go.

  Bracing a hand on the wall, she renewed her descent.

  Her head spun again. Her legs wobbled.

  She got in eleven more steps before her knees buckled so suddenly she nearly slid. Only her hand grappling at the uneven wall kept her from wiping out.

  The stairwell spun and spun and spun, and she shut her eyes against it.

  Her jagged panting bounced off the stones. And in the stillness, she had no defenses against what her mind whispered. She couldn’t shut out her father’s final words to her.

  I loved you from the first moment I held you in my arms.

  Please, she’d begged the King of Hybern. Please.

  He’d snapped her father’s neck anyway.

  Nesta gritted her teeth, blowing out breath after breath. She opened her eyes and stretched out her leg to take another step.

  It trembled so badly that she didn’t dare.

  She didn’t let herself dwell on it, rage about it, as she turned around. Didn’t even let herself feel the defeat. Her legs protested, but she forced them upward. Away.

  Around and around again.

  Up and up, one hundred and eleven steps.

  She was nearly crawling by the last thirty, unable to get a breath down, sweat pooling in the bodice of her dress, her hair sticking to her damp neck. What the hell were the benefits of becoming High Fae if she couldn’t endure this? The pointed ears, she’d learned to like. The infrequent cycle, which Feyre had warned would be painful, had actually been a boon, something Nesta was happy to worry about only twice a year. But what was the point of it—of any of it—if she couldn’t conquer these stairs?

  She kept her eyes on each step, rather than the twisting wall and the dizzying sensation it brought.

  This hateful House. This horrible place.

  She grunted as the oak door at the top of the stairwell became visible at last.

  Fingers digging into the steps hard enough for the tips to bark in pain, she dragged herself up the last few, slithering on her belly onto the hallway floor.

  And arrived face-first in front of Cassian, smirking as he leaned against the adjacent wall.

  Cassian had needed some time be
fore seeing her again.

  He’d updated Rhys and the others immediately upon returning; they’d received his information with dour, somber faces. By the end of it, Azriel was preparing for some reconnaissance on Briallyn as Amren pondered what powers or resources the queen and Koschei might possess, if they had indeed captured Eris’s soldiers so easily.

  And then Cassian had been slapped with a new order: keep an eye on Eris. Beyond the fact that he approached you, Rhys had said, you are my general. Eris commands Beron’s forces. Be in communication with him. Cassian had started to object, but Rhys had directed a pointed look at Azriel, and Cassian had caved. Az had too much on his plate already. Cassian could deal with that piece of shit Eris on his own.

  Eris wants to avoid a war that would expose him, Feyre had guessed. If Beron sides with Briallyn, Eris would be forced to choose between his father and Prythian. The careful balance he’s struck by playing both sides would crumble. He wants to act when it’s convenient for his plans. This threatens that.

  But no one had been able to decide which was the bigger threat for them: Briallyn and Koschei, or Beron’s willingness to ally with them. While the Night Court had been trying to make the peace permanent, the bastard had been doing his best to start another war.

  After an unusually quiet dinner, Cassian had flown back up to the House. And found the oak door to the stairs open, Nesta’s scent lingering.

  So he’d waited. Counted the minutes.

  It had been worth it.

  Seeing her claw her way onto the landing, panting, hair curling with the sweat sliding down her face—completely worth his generally shit day.

  Nesta was still sprawled on the hall floor when she hissed, “Whoever designed those stairs was a monster.”

  “Would you believe that Rhys, Az, and I had to climb up and down them as punishment when we were boys?”