A Court of Silver Flames

by Sarah J. Maas

  “You mean the piece of shit who forced himself on her and then went back to his wife and family?” Cassian let out a cold laugh that she rarely heard. “There were no consequences for him.”

  “There never are,” Nesta said coolly. She blocked out the image of Tomas’s face.

  “There are here,” Cassian growled, as if he sensed the direction of her thoughts. Cassian gestured to the city below, hidden by the mountain and the House blocking the view. “Rhys changed the laws. Here in the Night Court, and in Illyria.” His face hardened further. “But it still requires the survivor to come forward. And in places like Illyria, they make life a living hell for any female who does. They deem it a betrayal.”

  “That’s outrageous.”

  “We’re all Fae. Forget the High Fae or lesser Fae bullshit. We’re all immortal or close to it. Change comes slowly for us. What humans accomplish in decades takes us centuries. Longer, if you live in Illyria.”

  “Then why do you bother with the Illyrians?”

  “Because I fought like hell to prove my worth to them.” His eyes glittered. “To prove that my mother brought some good into this world.”

  “Where is she now?” He’d never spoken of her.

  His eyes shuttered in a way she had not witnessed before. “I was taken away from her when I was three. Thrown out into the snow. And in her so-called disgraced state, she became prey to other monsters.” Nesta’s stomach twisted with each word. “She did their backbreaking labor until she died, alone and …” His throat worked. “I was at Windhaven by then. I wasn’t strong enough to return to help her. To bring her somewhere safe. Rhys wasn’t yet High Lord, and none of us could do anything.”

  Nesta wasn’t entirely certain how they’d wound up speaking of this.

  Apparently, Cassian realized it as well. “It’s a story for another time. But what I meant to try to explain is that through it all, through every awful thing, the training centered me. Guided me. When I had a shit day, when I was spat on or pummeled or shunned, when I led armies and lost good warriors, when Rhys was taken by Amarantha—through all of that, the training remained. You said the other day the breathing helped you. It helps me, too. It helped Feyre.” She watched the wall rise in his eyes, word after word. As if he waited for her to rip it down. Rip him down. “Make of that what you will, but it’s true.”

  Oily shame slithered through her. She’d done that—brought this level of defensiveness to him.

  Heaviness weighed on her. Started gnawing on her insides.

  So Nesta said, “Show me another set of movements.”

  Cassian scanned her face for a heartbeat, his gaze still shuttered, and began his next demonstration.

  The House had a taste for romance novels. Nesta stayed up later than she should have to finish the one it had left the day before, and when she returned to her room that evening, another was waiting.

  “Don’t tell me you somehow read these.” She leafed through the volume on her nightstand.

  In answer, two more books thumped on the surface. Each one utterly filthy.

  Nesta let out a small chuckle. “It must get awfully dull up here.”

  A third book plopped atop the others.

  Nesta laughed again, a rusty, hoarse sound. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed. A true, belly-deep laugh.

  Maybe before her mother had died. She’d certainly had nothing to laugh about once they’d fallen into poverty.

  Nesta nodded toward the desk. “No dinner tonight?”

  Her bedroom door only swung open to reveal the dimly lit hallway.

  “I’ve had enough of him for one day.” She’d barely been able to speak to Cassian for the rest of their lesson, unable to stop thinking of how he’d put up a wall without her so much as saying a word, anticipating that she would go after him, assuming that she was so awful she couldn’t have a normal conversation. That she’d mock him about his mother and their pain.

  “I’d rather stay here.”

  The door opened wider.

  Nesta sighed. Her stomach ached with hunger. “You’re as much a busybody as the rest of them,” she muttered, and aimed for the dining room.

  Cassian sat alone at the table, the setting sun gilding his black hair in golds and reds, shining through his beautiful wings. For a heartbeat, she understood Feyre’s urge to paint things—to capture sights like this, preserve them forever.

  “How was the library?” he asked as she claimed the seat across from him.

  “Nothing tried to eat me today, so it was fine.”

  A plate of roast pork and green beans appeared with a glass of water before her.

  He’d gone still, though. “Something tried to eat you on another day?”

  “Well, it didn’t get close enough to try, but that was the general impression I received.”

  He blinked, his Siphons glowing. “Tell me.”

  Nesta wondered if she’d said something wrong, but she related the incident with the darkness and finished with Gwyn’s assistance. She hadn’t seen the priestess after that, but at the end of the day there had been a note on her cart that said, Just a friendly reminder to stay away from the lowest levels!

  Nesta had snorted, balling up the note, but she’d kept it in her pocket.

  Across from her, Cassian’s face was pale.

  “You saw Bryaxis once,” Nesta said into the silence.

  “A few times,” he breathed. His skin had turned greenish. “I know we should keep hunting for Bryaxis. It’s not a good thing that it’s out in the world. But I don’t think I could endure encountering it again.”

  “What was it like?”

  His eyes met hers. “My worst nightmares. And I’m not talking about petty phobias. I mean my deepest, most primal fears. I’ve put some of the worst, most vile monsters into the Prison, but these were monsters in every sense of the word. It’s … I don’t think anyone can understand unless they’ve seen it.”

  He glanced at her again, and she could tell he was bracing for her venom.

  Monster—she was a monster. The knowledge cut and sliced deep. But she said, hoping to let him see she wouldn’t pry into his business just to hurt him, “What manner of creatures did you put in the Prison?”

  Cassian took a bite of food. A good sign that this, at least, was acceptable territory. “When you lived in the human world, you had legends of the dread beasts and faeries who would slaughter you if they ever breached the wall, didn’t you? Things that slithered through open windows to drink the blood of children? Things that were so wicked, so cruel there was no hope against their evil?”

  The hair on her neck rose. “Yes.” Those stories had always unnerved and petrified her.

  “They were based on truth. Based on ancient, near-primordial beings who existed here before the High Fae split into courts, before the High Lords. Some call them the First Gods. They were beings with almost no physical form, but a keen, vicious intelligence. Humans and Fae alike were their prey. Most were hunted and driven into hiding or imprisonment ages ago. But some remained, lurking in forgotten corners of the land.” He swallowed another mouthful.

  “When I was nearing three hundred years old, one of them appeared again, crawling out of the roots of a mountain. Before he went into the Prison and confinement weakened him, Lanthys could turn into wind and rip the air from your lungs, or turn into rain and drown you on dry land; he could peel your skin from your body with a few movements. He never revealed his true form, but when I faced him, he chose to appear as swirling mist. He fathered a race of faeries that still plague us, who thrived under Amarantha’s reign—the Bogge. But the Bogge are lesser, mere shadows compared to Lanthys. If there is such a thing as evil incarnate, it is him. He has no mercy, no sense of right or wrong. There is him, and there is everyone else, and we are all his prey. His methods of killing are creative and slow. He feasts on fear and pain as much as the flesh itself.”

  Her blood chilled. “How did you trap such a thing?”

&
nbsp; Cassian tapped a spot on his neck where a scar slashed beneath his ear. “I quickly learned I could never beat him in combat or magic. Still have the scar here to prove it.” Cassian smiled faintly. “So I used his arrogance against him. Flattered and taunted him into trapping himself in a mirror bound with ash wood. I bet him the mirror would contain him—and Lanthys bet wrong. He got out of the mirror, of course, but by that time, I’d dumped his miserable self into the Prison.”

  Nesta lifted a brow. He cut her a sharp smile that didn’t meet his eyes and said, “Not just a brute after all.”

  No, he wasn’t, even though she’d said as much to him, but she’d never once believed it—

  Cassian went on, “Of all the occupants of the Prison, Lanthys is the one I dread finding a way out.”

  “Would such a thing ever happen?”

  “I don’t think so, thank the Cauldron. That Prison is inescapable. Unless you’re Amren.”

  Nesta didn’t want to talk about Amren. Or think about her. “You said you put others in.” Half of her didn’t want to know.

  He shrugged, as if it were of no consequence that he had done such remarkable things. “Seven-headed Lubia, who made the mistake of surfacing from the caves of the deep ocean to prey on girls along the western coast. Blue Annis, who was a terror to behold—cobalt skin and iron claws and, like Lubia, a taste for female flesh. Lubia, at least, swallowed her prey swiftly. Annis … she took longer. Annis was like Lanthys in that regard.” His throat bobbed, and he tugged back the collar of his shirt to reveal another scar: the horrific, thick one above his left pectoral. She’d spied it the other day in the training ring. “That’s all that remains of it now, but Annis had shredded through my chest with those iron claws and was nearly at my heart when Azriel intervened. So I suppose her capture is shared between the two of us.” He drummed his fingers on the table. “And then there was—”

  “I’ve heard enough.” Her words were breathless. “I’ll never sleep tonight.” She shook her head, taking another bite of food. “I don’t know how you can, having faced all that.”

  He leaned back in his seat. “You learn to live with it. How to block the horrors from your present thoughts.” He added a touch quietly, “But they still lurk there. In the back of your mind.”

  She wished she knew how to do such things: to push all the thoughts that devoured her behind some wall, or into a hole within her, so she could bury them deep.

  Cassian asked her, voice still quiet, “The darkness in the library—do you think it reacted to you specifically?” When she said nothing, he pressed, “Because of your powers?”

  “I don’t have any powers,” she lied. Training with Amren hadn’t done a lick to help her understand them, anyway.

  “Then who left that handprint on the stairs?”

  She didn’t bother to look pleasant. “Maybe Lucien. He’s got fire in his veins.”

  “He said your fire was different from his. That it burned cold, somehow.”

  “Perhaps you should lock me up in that Prison, then.”

  He set down his fork. “I’m just asking you a question.”

  “Does it matter if I have powers?”

  Cassian shook his head in what seemed to be a mixture of admiration and disgust. “You might have been born human, but you’re pure faerie. Answering questions with questions, evading an honest answer.”

  “I can’t tell if that’s a compliment or not.”

  “It’s not.” His teeth flashed. “The kind of powers you have aren’t the sort that should sit idly by. They need an outlet, and training—”

  “Balancing and stretching?”

  His jaw clenched. “What happened with you and Amren?”

  “Why so many questions tonight?”

  “Because we’re talking like normal people, and I want to know. About all of it.”

  Nesta rose from the table, aiming for the door. “What does it matter to you?”

  “Let’s not retread old territory, Nes.”

  She threw over a shoulder, “I hadn’t realized we’d moved beyond it.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Here’s the part where you remind me everyone hates me, and I leave.”

  Cassian shot from his seat, blocking her path to the door in three strides. She’d forgotten how fast he was, how graceful despite his size. He glowered down at her. “It never mattered to me whether you took half the Cauldron’s power or a drop. It still doesn’t matter.”

  “Why?” Nesta couldn’t stop herself from asking. “Why do you even bother?”

  His features turned stark. “Why did you stay at my side when we went up against the King of Hybern during that last battle?”

  As if that were an answer. She couldn’t bear it, this talk, the expression on his face. “Because I was a stupid fool.” She shoved past him.

  “What is it you’re afraid of?” he asked, following her into the hall.

  She drew up short. “I’m not afraid of anything.”

  “Liar.”

  Nesta turned slowly. Let him see every bit of anger rippling through her.

  Cassian’s eyes gleamed in savage satisfaction.

  His Siphons flared, casting red light upon the stones, like watery blood had been spilled. His mouth twisted to the side in a crooked, mocking grin. “Do you know how your eyes glow when your power rises to the surface? Like molten steel. Like silver fire.”

  He’d done it on purpose—riled her like this. To get her to show her hand.

  Nesta’s fingers curled into claws at her sides. She took a step toward him. Cassian held his ground. So she took another step. Another.

  Until they were close enough that a heaving breath would have had her chest brushing his. Until she was baring her teeth at his still-smirking face.

  Cassian surveyed her. Gazed into her eyes and breathed, “Beautiful.”

  He didn’t halt the hand she laid on his muscled chest. Or when she pushed against that chest, backing him into the wall, his wings splaying on impact. He just stared and stared at her, marveling—hungry.

  Nesta didn’t, couldn’t, move as Cassian leaned to whisper in her ear, “The first time I saw that look on your face, you were still human. Still human, and I nearly went to my knees before you.” His breath caressed the shell of her ear and she couldn’t stop her eyes from fluttering shut. His smile brushed against her temple. “Your power is a song, and one I’ve waited a very, very long time to hear, Nesta.” Her back arched slightly at the way he said her name, the way he bit out the second syllable. Like he was imagining clamping his teeth down on other parts of her. But only her hand bridged their bodies. Only her hand, now bunching up his shirt, his thundering heartbeat pulsing beneath it.

  Until Cassian lowered his face an inch, and grazed the tip of his nose along her neck. Beneath her hand, his chest heaved upward as he inhaled a great, greedy breath of her scent.

  Too far. She shouldn’t have let herself go this far with him, let him this close.

  Yet she couldn’t withdraw. Couldn’t do anything but let him brush his nose over her neck again. The urge to press her body into his, to feel his warmth and hardness grinding into her, nearly overrode every rational thought.

  Cassian’s hands remained at his sides, though. As if waiting for her to give permission.

  Nesta pulled her head back, away—just enough to see his features.

  Her knees nearly wobbled at the desire blazing in them. Liquid, unrelenting desire, all fixed upon her.

  She couldn’t get a breath down as she drowned in that stare. As low, sensitive parts of her tightened and began throbbing, her breasts becoming heavy and aching. His nostrils flared, scenting that, too.

  She couldn’t. She couldn’t do this to him. To herself.

  Couldn’t, couldn’t, couldn’t—

  Nesta began to withdraw her hand from his chest, but he slid his own atop it. Rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand, and just that graze of callused flesh had her grinding her teeth, unable to think,
to breathe—

  Cassian whispered in her ear, “Do you know what I’m going to think of tonight?”

  A small sound must have come out of her, because he grinned as he stepped to the side. Let go of her hand.

  The absence of his warmth, his scent, was like a bucket of ice water.

  He smiled, nothing but wickedness and challenge. “I’m going to think of that look on your face.” He took another step down the hall. “I’m always thinking of that look on your face.”

  She couldn’t sleep. The sheets chafed, strangled her, smothered her with their heat until sweat ran down her body.

  I’m always thinking of that look on your face.

  Nesta lay in the darkness, her breathing uneven, her body flushed and aching.

  She’d barely been able to focus on reading when she’d returned to her room. And she’d been tossing and turning in bed for what had felt like hours now.

  I’m always thinking of that look on your face.

  She could see it: Cassian in his own bed, sprawled out like a dark king, gripping himself, pumping hard—

  She managed to whisper into the room, “Come back at dawn.”

  She didn’t know if the House obeyed. Didn’t find out if it understood why she wanted privacy as she traced her hand up her nightgown, the slide of silk against her skin nearly unbearable.

  She moaned into her pillow as her fingers slid between her legs, instantly slippery with the wetness pooled there, which hadn’t gone away since she’d been left standing in that hallway. Her hips arched into the touch, and she gritted her teeth, letting out a long hiss as she dragged her fingers down her aching, throbbing center.

  I’m always thinking of that look on your face.

  She slid her fingers in deep, writhing at the intrusion, unable to stop seeing Cassian’s face, that half smile, that light in his eyes. The powerful body and beautiful wings. She withdrew her fingers nearly to their tips, and as she plunged them back in, it was Cassian’s hand she pictured there, felt there. Cassian’s other hand that rose to clasp her breast, squeezing hard, just the way she liked it, a sharp, slight edge of pain to heighten the pleasure.