A Court of Silver Flames

by Sarah J. Maas

  Her face tightened, and Nesta regretted her question. “It is extremely complex—all the connecting muscles and nerves and senses. Short of the High Lord of Dawn, I’m not certain anyone could handle it.” Thesan, Nesta recalled, was a master of healing—Feyre bore his power in her veins. Had offered to use it to heal Elain from her stupor after being turned High Fae.

  Nesta blocked out the memory of that pale face, the empty brown eyes.

  “Anyway,” the female said quickly, “I can make inquiries to my suppliers about whether the leathers could be made warmer. It might take a few weeks, possibly a month, but I’ll send word as soon as I hear.”

  “That’s fine. Thank you.” A thought clanged through Nesta. “I— How much will it cost?” She had no money.

  “You work for the High Lord, do you not?” The female angled her head again. “I can send the bill to Velaris.”

  “They …” Nesta didn’t want to admit how low she’d fallen—not to this stranger. “I actually don’t need the warmer clothes.”

  “I thought Rhysand paid you all well.”

  “He does, but I am …” Fine. If the female could be blunt, so could she. “I’m cut off.”

  Curiosity flooded the female’s eyes. “Why?”

  Nesta stiffened. “I don’t know you well enough to tell you that.”

  The female shrugged. “All right. I can still make inquiries. Get a price for you. If you’re cold out there, you shouldn’t suffer.” She added pointedly, “No matter what the High Lord may think.”

  “I think he’d rather Cassian threw me off the edge of that cliff over there.”

  The female snorted. But she held out a hand toward Nesta. “I’m Emerie.”

  Nesta took her hand, surprised to find her grip like iron. “Nesta Archeron.”

  “I know,” Emerie said, releasing Nesta’s hand. “You killed the King of Hybern.”

  “Yes.” There was no denying that fact. And she couldn’t bring herself to lie that she wasn’t the least bit smug about it.

  “Good.” Emerie’s smile was a thing of dangerous beauty. She said again, “Good.” There was steel in this female. Not just in her straight spine and chin, but in her eyes.

  Nesta turned toward the door and waiting cold, unsure what to do with the naked approval of what so many others had regarded either with awe or fear or doubt. “Thank you for your help.”

  So strange, to speak polite, normal words. Strange to wish to offer them, and to a stranger no less.

  Males and females, children darting amongst them, gawked at Nesta as she exited onto the street. A few hurried their children along. She met their stares with cool indifference.

  You’re right to hide your children from me, she wanted to say. I am the monster you fear.

  “Same task as yesterday?” Nesta asked Clotho by way of greeting, still half-chilled from the camp she’d departed only ten minutes earlier.

  Cassian had barely spoken upon returning to Rhysand’s mother’s house, his face taut with whatever he’d dealt with at the other Illyrian villages, and Morrigan had been just as sour-faced when she’d appeared to winnow them back to the House of Wind. Cassian had dumped Nesta on the landing veranda without so much as a farewell before he pivoted to where Mor dusted herself off. Within seconds, he was carrying the blond beauty into the brisk wind.

  It shouldn’t have bothered her—seeing him flying away with another female in his arms. Some small part of her knew it wasn’t remotely fair to feel that body-tightening irritation at the sight. She had pushed him away again and again, and he had no reason to believe she’d wish it differently. And she knew he had a history with Morrigan, that they’d been lovers long ago.

  She’d turned from the sight, entering the House through its dining room, where she found a bowl of some sort of pork-and-bean soup waiting. A silent, thoughtful offering.

  She’d just said to the House, “I’m not hungry,” before striding down to the library.

  Now she waited as Clotho wrote out an answer and handed over a piece of paper.

  Nesta read, There are books to be shelved on Level Five.

  Nesta peered over the railing beside Clotho’s desk, silently counting. Five was … very far down. Not within the first ring of true darkness, but hovering in the dimness above it. “Nothing lives down there anymore, right? Bryaxis hasn’t come back?”

  Clotho’s enchanted pen moved. The second note read, Bryaxis never harmed any of us.

  “Why?”

  The pen scratched along the paper. I think Bryaxis took pity on us. We saw our nightmares come true before we came here.

  It was an effort not to look at Clotho’s gnarled hands or try to pierce the shadows beneath her hood.

  The priestess added to the note, I can reassign you to a higher level.

  “No,” Nesta said hoarsely. “I’ll manage.”

  And that was that. An hour later, her leathers covered in dust, Nesta slumped at an empty wooden table, in need of a pause.

  That same bowl of pork-and-bean soup appeared on the table.

  She peered at the distant ceiling. “I said I’m not hungry.”

  A spoon appeared alongside the bowl. And a napkin.

  “This is absolutely none of your business.”

  A glass of water thudded down next to the soup.

  Nesta crossed her arms, leaning back in the chair.

  “Who are you talking to?”

  The light female voice had Nesta twisting around, stiffening as she found a priestess in the robes of an acolyte standing between the two nearest shelves. Her hood was thrown back, and faelight danced in the rich coppery chestnut of her pin-straight hair. Her large teal eyes were as clear and depthless as the stone usually atop a priestess’s hood, and a scattering of freckles lay across her nose and cheeks, as if someone had tossed them with a careless hand. She was young—almost coltish, with her slender, elegant limbs. High Fae, and yet … Nesta couldn’t explain the way she sensed that there was something else mixed into her. Some secret beneath the pretty face.

  Nesta gestured to the soup and water, but they were gone. She scowled at the ceiling, at the House that had the nerve to pester her and then make her look like a lunatic. But she said to the priestess, “I wasn’t talking to anyone.”

  The priestess hefted the five tomes in her arms. “Are you finished for today?”

  Nesta glanced at the cart of books she’d left unsorted. “No. I was taking a break.”

  “You’ve only been working for an hour.”

  “I didn’t realize anyone was timing me.” Nesta allowed every bit of unpleasantness to show in her face. She’d already conversed with one stranger today, fulfilling her quota of basic decency. Being kind to a second one was beyond her.

  The acolyte remained unimpressed. “It’s not every day we have someone new in our library.” She dumped the books onto Nesta’s cart. “These can be shelved.”

  “I don’t answer to acolytes.”

  The priestess drew up to her full height, which was slightly taller than average for Fae females. A crackling sort of energy buzzed around her, and Nesta’s power grumbled in answer. “You’re here to work,” the acolyte said, her voice unruffled. “And not only for Clotho.”

  “You speak rather informally of your high priestess.”

  “Clotho does not enforce rank. She encourages us to use her name.”

  “And what is your name?” She would certainly be complaining to Clotho about this impertinent acolyte’s attitude.

  The priestess’s eyes glittered with amusement, as if aware of Nesta’s plan. “Gwyneth Berdara.” Unusual, for these Fae to use family names. Even Rhys didn’t use one, as far as Nesta knew. “But most call me Gwyn.”

  A level above, two priestesses walked by the railing in silence, hooded heads bowed and books in their arms. Nesta could have sworn one of them watched, though.

  Gwyn tracked the focus of her attention. “That’s Roslin and Deirdre.”

  “How can you tell?”
With their hoods on, they appeared nearly identical save for their hands.

  “Their scents,” Gwyn said simply, and turned to the books she’d left on the cart. “Do you plan to shelve these, or do I need to take them elsewhere?”

  Nesta leveled a flat look at her. Living down here, there was a good chance the priestesses didn’t know who she was. What she’d done. What power she bore. “I’ll do it,” Nesta said through clenched teeth.

  Gwyn hooked her hair behind her arched ears. Freckles dotted her hands, too, like splattered bits of rust. If marks of trauma lingered, any evidence was hidden by her robe.

  But Nesta knew well how invisible wounds could be. How they could scar as deeply and badly as any physical breaking.

  And it was for that reminder alone that Nesta said more gently, “I’ll do it right now.” Perhaps she had a little bit of her decency quota left.

  Gwyn marked the change. “I don’t need your pity.” The words were sharp, as clear as her teal eyes.

  “It wasn’t pity.”

  “I’ve been here for nearly two years, but I haven’t become so disconnected from others that I can’t tell when someone remembers why I am here and alters their behavior.” Gwyn’s mouth flattened to a line. “I don’t need to be coddled. Only spoken to like a person.”

  “I doubt you’ll enjoy the way I speak to most people,” Nesta said.

  Gwyn snorted. “Try me.”

  Nesta looked at her from under lowered brows again. “Get out of my sight.”

  Gwyn grinned, a broad, bright thing that showed most of her teeth and made her eyes sparkle in a way Nesta knew her own never had. “Oh, you’re good.” Gwyn turned back to the stacks. “Really good.” She vanished into the gloom.

  Nesta stared after her for a long moment, wondering if she’d imagined the whole thing. Two friendly conversations in one day. She had no idea when such a thing had last occurred.

  Another hooded priestess drifted by, and offered Nesta a bob of the chin in greeting.

  Quiet settled around her, as if Gwyn had been a summer storm that blew in and evaporated within a moment. Sighing, Nesta gathered the books Gwyn had left on the cart.

  Hours later, dusty and exhausted and finally hungry, Nesta stood before Clotho’s desk and said, “Same story tomorrow?”

  Clotho wrote, Are you not pleased by your work?

  “I would be if your acolytes didn’t boss me around like a servant.”

  Gwyneth mentioned she had run into you earlier. She works for Merrill, my right hand, who is a fiercely demanding scholar. If Gwyneth’s requests were abrupt, it was due to the pressing nature of the work she does.

  “She wanted me to shelve her books, not find more.”

  Other scholars need them. But I am not in the business of explaining my acolytes’ behavior. If you did not like Gwyneth’s request, you should have said so. To her.

  Nesta bristled. “I did. She’s a piece of work.”

  Some might say the same of you.

  Nesta crossed her arms. “Some might.”

  She’d have bet that Clotho was smiling beneath her hood, but the priestess wrote, Gwyneth, like you, has her own history of bravery and survival. I would ask that you give her the benefit of the doubt.

  Acid that felt an awful lot like regret burned in Nesta’s veins. She shoved it aside. “Noted. And the work is fine.”

  Clotho only wrote, Good night, Nesta.

  Nesta trudged up the steps, and entered the House proper. The wind seemed to moan through the halls, answered only by her grumbling stomach.

  The private library was mercifully empty when she strode through the double doors, instantly relaxing at the sight of all those books crammed close, the sunset on the city below, the Sidra a living band of gold. Sitting at the desk before the wall of windows, she said to the House, “I’m sure you won’t do it now, but I would like that soup.”

  Nothing. She sighed up at the ceiling. Fantastic.

  Her stomach twisted, as if it’d devour her organs if she didn’t eat soon. She added tightly, “Please.”

  The soup appeared, a glass of water beside it. A napkin and silverware followed. A fire roared to life in the hearth, but she said quickly, “No fire. No need.”

  It banked to nothing, but the faelights in the room flared brighter.

  Nesta was reaching for her spoon when a plate of fresh, crusty bread appeared. As if the House were a fussing mother hen.

  “Thank you,” she said into the quiet, and dug in.

  The faelights flickered once, as if to say, You’re welcome.

  CHAPTER

  10

  Nesta ate until she couldn’t fit another morsel into her body, helping herself to thirds of the soup. The House seemed more than happy to oblige her, and had even offered her a slice of double-chocolate cake to finish.

  “Is this Cassian-approved?” She picked up the fork and smiled at the moist, gleaming cake.

  “It certainly isn’t,” he said from the doorway, and Nesta whirled, scowling. He nodded toward the cake. “But eat up.”

  She put down the fork. “What do you want?”

  Cassian surveyed the family library. “Why are you eating in here?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  His grin was a slash of white. “The only thing that’s obvious is that you’re talking to yourself.”

  “I’m talking to the House. Which is a considerable step up from talking to you.”

  “It doesn’t talk back.”

  “Exactly.”

  He snorted. “I walked into that one.” He stalked across the room, eyeing the cake she still didn’t touch. “Are you really … talking to the House?”

  “Don’t you talk to it?”

  “No.”

  “It listens to me,” she insisted.

  “Of course it does. It’s enchanted.”

  “It even brought food down to the library unasked.”

  His brows rose. “Why?”

  “I don’t know how your faerie magic works.”

  “Did you … do anything to make it act that way?”

  “If you’re taking a page from Devlon’s book and asking if I did any witchcraft, the answer is no.”

  Cassian chuckled. “That’s not what I meant, but fine. The House likes you. Congratulations.” She growled, and he leaned over her to pick up the fork. She went stiff at his closeness, but he said nothing as he took a bite of the cake. He let out a hum of pleasure that traveled along her bones. And then took another bite.

  “That’s supposed to be mine,” she groused, peering up at him as he continued to eat.

  “Then take it from me,” he said. “A simple disarming maneuver would do, considering my center of gravity is off balance and I’m distracted by this delicious cake.”

  She glowered at him.

  He took a third bite. “These are the things, Nes, that you’d learn in lessons with me. Your threats would be a hell of a lot more impressive if you could back them up.”

  She drummed her fingers on the desk. Eyed the fork in his hands and pictured stabbing him in the thigh with it.

  “You could do that, too,” he said, reading the direction of her stare. “I could teach you how to turn anything into a weapon. Even a fork.”

  She bared her teeth, but Cassian only set down the fork with grating precision and walked out, leaving her the half-eaten cake.

  Nesta read the deliciously erotic romance she’d found on a shelf of the private library until her eyelids grew so heavy only iron will could hold them open. It was then that she trudged down the hall to her bedroom and collapsed into bed, not bothering to change out of her clothes before she sprawled on the mattress.

  She woke freezing in the dark of night, roused herself enough to strip off the leathers, and climbed under the sheets, teeth clattering.

  A moment later, a fire blazed in the hearth.

  “No fire,” she ordered, and it vanished again.

  She could have sworn a tentative curiosity curled arou
nd her. Shivering, she waited for the sheets to warm to her body temperature.

  Long minutes passed, and then the bed heated. Not from her own naked body, but some manner of spell. The very air warmed, too, as if someone had blown a great breath into the space.

  Her shaking stopped, and she nestled into the warmth. “Thank you,” she murmured.

  The House’s only answer was to slide the still-open drapes shut. By the time they’d finished swaying, she was again asleep.

  Elain had been stolen. By Hybern. By the Cauldron, which had seen Nesta watching it and watched her in turn. Had noted her scrying with bones and stones and made her regret it.

  She had done this. Brought this upon them. Touching her power, wielding it, had done this, and she would never forgive herself, never—

  Elain would surely be tormented, ripped apart body and soul.

  A crack cleaved the world.

  Her father stood before her, neck twisted. Her father, with his soft brown eyes, the love for her still shining in them as their light faded—

  Nesta jolted awake, nausea rippling through her as she grasped at the sheets.

  Deep in her gut, her soul, something writhed and twined around itself, seeking a way out, seeking a way into the world—

  Nesta shoved it down. Stomped on her power. Slammed every mental door she could on it.

  Dream, she told it. Dream and memory. Go away.

  Her power grumbled in her veins, but obeyed.

  The bed had become hot enough that Nesta kicked off the sheets before rubbing her hands over her sweat-soaked face.

  She needed a drink. Needed anything to wash this away.

  She dressed swiftly, not quite feeling her body. Not quite caring what time it was or where she was, thinking only of the obstacle between her and that pleasure hall.

  The door to the ten thousand steps was already open, the faelights in the hall dimmed to near darkness. Her boots scuffed on the stones as she approached, glancing behind her to make sure no one followed.

  Hands shaking, she began the descent.

  Around and around and around.

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

  Down and down and down.