A Court of Silver Flames

by Sarah J. Maas

  Why wouldn’t Elain choose Feyre?

  Elain stiffened, but refused to balk from whatever she beheld in Nesta’s gaze. “You think I’m to blame for his death?” Challenge filled each word. Challenge—from Elain, of all people. “No one but the King of Hybern is to blame for that.” The quaver in her voice belied her firm words.

  Nesta knew she’d hit her mark. She opened her mouth, but couldn’t continue. Enough. She had said enough.

  That fast, the power in her receded, vanishing into smoke on the wind. Leaving only exhaustion weighing her bones, her breath. “It doesn’t matter what I think. Go back to Feyre and your little garden.”

  Even during their squabbles in the cottage, fighting over who got clothes or boots or ribbons, it had never been like this. Those fights had been petty, born of misery and discomfort. This was a different beast entirely, from a place as dark as the gloom at the base of the library.

  Elain headed for the doors, purple dress sweeping behind her. “Cassian said he thought the training was helping,” she murmured, more to herself than to Nesta.

  “Sorry to disappoint you.” Nesta slammed the doors so hard they rattled.

  Silence filled the room.

  She didn’t twist toward the windows to see who might fly past with Elain, who’d be witness to the tears Elain would likely shed.

  Nesta slid into one of the armchairs before the unlit fireplace and stared at nothing.

  She didn’t stop the wolves when they gathered around her again, hateful, razor-sharp truths on their red tongues. She didn’t stop them as they began to rend her apart.

  When Elain burst into the dining room of the House, Cassian and Rhys were shaking off the frigid air that had been howling through Windhaven.

  Her brown eyes were bright with tears, but she kept her chin high.

  “I want to go home,” she said, voice wobbling slightly.

  Cassian looked at Rhys, who’d dropped off the middle Archeron sister before retrieving Cassian from Windhaven. He’d wanted to see for himself how ready the Illyrians were to fight. That Rhys had found nothing lacking both elated Cassian and filled him with dread. If war began once more, how many would die? It was a soldier’s lot in life to fight, to march with Death beside him, and he had led males into battle multiple times. Yet how many promises had he foolishly made to the families of those who’d fallen in the recent war that the peace would last for a while? How many more families would he have to comfort? He didn’t know why it was different this time, why it weighed so heavily. But while Rhys and Devlon had been speaking, Cassian had been staring at the children of Windhaven, wondering how many would lose their fathers.

  Cassian cast the memory aside as Rhys surveyed Elain, his violet-blue eyes missing nothing. “What happened.”

  When Rhys spoke like that, it was more of a command than a question.

  Elain waved a hand in dismissal before flinging open the veranda doors and striding into the open air.

  “Elain,” Rhys said as he and Cassian trailed her into the dying light.

  Elain stood by the rail, the breeze caressing her hair. “She’s not getting any better. She’s not even trying.” She wrapped her arms around herself and stared toward the distant sea.

  Rhys turned to him, his face grave. Feyre warned her.

  Cassian swore softly. Nesta is making progress—I know she is. Something set her off. He added, because Rhys was still looking like cold death personified, It’ll take time. Maybe no more visits from her sisters, for the time being. At least not without her permission. He didn’t want to isolate Nesta. Not at all. If Elain wants to see her again, let me ask Nesta first.

  Rhys’s voice slithered like liquid night. What about Feyre?

  She doesn’t want Feyre here.

  Power rumbled through Rhys, guttering the stars in his eyes.

  Calm the fuck down, Cassian snapped. They have their own shit to sort out. You threatening to obliterate Nesta every time it comes up doesn’t help.

  Rhys held his stare, the inherent dominance in it like the force of a tidal wave. But Cassian weathered it. Let it wash past him. Then Rhys shook his head and said to Elain, “I’ll fly you home.”

  Elain didn’t object when Rhys scooped her up and launched into the red-and-pink-stained sky.

  When they were a speck of black and purple over the rooftops, Rhys sweeping along the gilded river as if giving Elain a scenic tour, then and only then did Cassian enter the House.

  He stormed across the dining room and into the hallway; he charged down the stairs, his feet eating every inch of distance until he flung open the family library’s doors.

  “What the fuck happened?”

  Nesta was sitting in an armchair before the dark fireplace, fingers digging into the rolled arms of the seat. A queen on a quilted throne.

  “I don’t want to talk to you,” was all she said.

  His heart thundered, his chest heaving as if he’d run a mile. “What did you say to Elain?”

  She leaned forward to peer at him. Then rose to her feet, a pillar of steel and flame, her lips curling back from her teeth. “Of course you’d assume I’m the one at fault.” She prowled closer, her eyes burning with cold fire. “Always defending sweet, innocent Elain.”

  He crossed his arms, letting her get as close to him as she wanted. Like hell would he yield one step to her. “I’ll remind you that you’ve been the chief defender of sweet, innocent Elain until recently.” He’d witnessed her go toe to toe with Fae capable of slaughtering her without giving it a thought, all for her sister.

  Nesta only simmered, near-shaking with rage. Or cold. Cauldron, it was cold in here. Only the heated floors offered any reprieve. “Fire,” he said, and the House obeyed. A great blaze flared to life in the hearth behind him.

  “No fire,” she said, focused upon Cassian, though her words were not to him.

  The House seemed to ignore her.

  “No fire,” she ordered. He could have sworn she blanched slightly.

  For a heartbeat, he was again in Rhys’s mother’s house in Windhaven. She’d been staring and staring into the fire, as if speaking to it, as if unaware that even he was there.

  The fire crackled and popped. Nesta seethed to the open air, “I said—”

  A log cracked, as if the House were merrily ignoring her, adding heat to the flame.

  But Nesta flinched. Barely a blink and half a shudder, but her entire body went rigid. Fear and dread flashed over her features, then vanished.

  Strange.

  Whatever curiosity Nesta noted on his face had her bristling again before launching toward the open doors of the library.

  “Where are you going?” he demanded, unable to keep the temper from his voice.

  “Out.” She hit the hall and aimed for the stairwell.

  Cassian stalked after her, a snarl ripping from his throat. He quickly closed the distance between them.

  “Leave me alone,” she bit out.

  “What’s the plan, Nes?” He trailed her to the lowest level of the House and the stairwell halfway down the corridor. “You tear into the people who love you until they eventually give up and leave you alone? Is that what you want?”

  She yanked on the handle of the ancient door and threw him a withering glare over a shoulder. She opened her mouth, then shut it against whatever had been about to come out.

  As if she’d bank herself for him. Pity him. Spare him. Like he needed shielding from her.

  “Say it,” he hissed. “Just fucking say it.”

  Nesta’s gaze lit with that silver fire. Her nose crinkled with animalistic rage.

  The Siphons atop his hands warmed, readying for an enemy he refused to acknowledge.

  Her eyes slid down to the red stones. And when they again lifted to his face, the unholy fire in her stare was gone. Replaced by something so dead and vacant it was like gazing into the unseeing eyes of a fallen soldier on a battlefield. He’d seen crows pick at eyes that dead.

  Nesta sa
id nothing as she turned back to the stairwell and began her descent.

  CHAPTER

  18

  There was only the red stone of the stairwell, and her jagged breathing, and the knives that had turned inward and sliced and sliced, the walls pushing in, her legs burning with each step downward.

  She didn’t want to be in her head, didn’t want to be in her body. Wanted the beating of drums and the riotous song of a fiddle to fill her with sound, to silence any thought. Wanted to find a bottle of wine and drink deep, let the wine pull her out of herself, set her mind drifting and numb.

  Down and down and down.

  Around and around and around.

  Nesta passed the step with her burning handprint. Passed step two hundred fifty. Three hundred. Five hundred. Eight hundred.

  It was on step eight hundred and three that her legs began to wobble.

  The roaring in her head dulled as she focused upon keeping upright.

  By step one thousand, she had stopped entirely.

  There was only the spinning silence.

  Nesta closed her eyes and leaned her brow into the cool stone to her right, bringing up an arm to rest against it, as if she were clinging tight to a lover. She could have sworn a heartbeat thumped within the stone, as surely as if it beat within a chest beneath her ear.

  It was her own pounding blood, she told herself. Even as she clung to the wall, that heartbeat.

  She let her breathing saw in and out of her. Let the trembling of her body ease.

  The heartbeat in the stone faded. The wall turned icy beneath her flushed cheek. Rough against her fingertips.

  She began the walk upward. One step after another after another. Thighs straining, knees groaning, chest on fire.

  Her head had emptied by the time she half-crawled up the last twenty steps. She’d had to stop five times to rest. Five times, only for as long as it took to catch her breath and steady herself—just until the roaring threatened to press in again.

  She was wrung out, utterly empty, by the time she arrived back at the landing. Cassian leaned against the opposite wall, his face grave.

  “I don’t feel like sparring with you,” she said flatly, too drained to be angry. She knew she could call in their bargain to order him to fly her down to the city, but she didn’t possess the energy to even bother. “Good night.”

  He moved into her path, wings blocking her. “What step did you reach this time?”

  As if it mattered. “One thousand.” Her legs throbbed and throbbed.

  “Impressive.”

  Nesta lifted her stare to his face, and found him earnest. She didn’t bother to hide the weariness weighing on every part of her.

  She made to walk past him, but he didn’t lower his wings. Short of punching her way through, she wasn’t getting by. “What?”

  “What set you off today?”

  “Everything.” She didn’t want to say more.

  “What did Elain say to you?”

  She couldn’t revisit that conversation, couldn’t talk about her father or his death or any of it. So she shut her heavy eyes. “Why don’t they sign up for training?”

  He knew who she meant. “Maybe they’re not ready.”

  “I thought they’d sign up.”

  “Is that what you’re upset about?” His question was so gentle, so sad.

  Nesta opened her eyes. “Some of them have been here for hundreds of years and still haven’t been able to come back from what they endured. So what hope do I have?”

  He rubbed at his shoulder, as if it were sore. “We’ve been working for barely two weeks, Nesta. Physically, you might be seeing changes, but what’s happening in your mind, your heart, will take far longer than that. Fuck, it took Feyre months—”

  “I don’t want to hear about Feyre and her special journey. I don’t want to hear about Rhys’s journey, or Morrigan’s, or anyone’s.”

  “Why?”

  The words, the rage, built again. She refused to speak, instead focusing on tamping down that power inside her until it didn’t so much as murmur.

  “Why?” he pushed.

  “Because I don’t,” she snapped. “Put those bat wings away.”

  Cassian obeyed, but stepped closer, towering over her. “Then I’ll tell you about my special journey, Nes.” His tone was icy in a way she’d never heard.

  “No.”

  “I slaughtered every person who hurt my mother.”

  She blinked up at him, the weight in her vanishing at the vicious words.

  Cassian’s face held only ancient rage. “When I was old and strong enough, I went back to the village where I was born, where I’d been ripped from her arms, and I learned that she was dead. And there was no one I could fight to change that. They refused to tell me where they’d buried her. One of the females hinted that they’d dumped her off the cliff.”

  Horror and something like pain went through her.

  His eyes flared with cold light. “So I destroyed them. Anyone who wasn’t responsible—children and some females and the elderly—I let them leave. But anyone who had played a role in her suffering … I made them suffer in return. Rhys and Azriel helped me. Found the piece of shit who’d sired me. I let my brothers tear him apart before I finished him.”

  The words hung between them.

  He said with soft fury, “It took me ten years before I was able to face it. What I’d done to those people, and what I’d lost. Ten years.” He was trembling, but not with fear. “So if you want to take ten years to face whatever is eating you alive from the inside out, go ahead. You want to take twenty years, go ahead.”

  Silence fell, interrupted only by their uneven panting.

  Nesta breathed, “Do you regret what you did?”

  “No.” Such unflinching honesty. The same honesty that now assessed her, marking every roaring, sharp piece of her.

  Nesta dipped her head, as if it’d stop him from seeing everything.

  Warm, strong fingers cupped her chin, calluses scraping against her skin.

  She let him lift her head. She hadn’t realized he’d come closer. That only inches separated them. Unless she’d been the one to drift toward him, drawn by each brutal word.

  Cassian kept his light grip on her chin. “Whatever you need to throw at me, I can take it. I won’t break.” No challenge laced the words. Only a plea.

  “You don’t understand,” she said, voice rasping. “I am not like you and the others.”

  “That’s never bothered me one bit.” He lowered his hand from her chin.

  She straightened. “It should.”

  “You say that like you want it to bother me.”

  “It bothers everyone. Even oh-so-special Rhysand.”

  His teeth flashed, any semblance of softness gone. “I told you once, and I’ll say it again: don’t take that snide fucking tone when you speak about him.”

  “He’s not my High Lord. I may speak of him as I wish.” She made to step away, but he gripped her wrist, holding her in place. “Let go.”

  “Make me. Use that training and make me.”

  Hot temper poured in. “You’re an arrogant bastard.”

  “And you’re a haughty witch. We’re evenly matched.”

  She snarled. “Let go.”

  Cassian snorted, but obeyed, turning his face as he backed a step away. And it was the light of victory in his eyes, the clear sense that he believed he’d somehow unnerved her and won this fight that had her grabbing the front of his leather jacket.

  Nesta told herself it was to knock that smirk off his face that she curled her fingers in the leather and hauled her mouth to his.

  CHAPTER

  19

  For a heartbeat, there was only the warmth of Cassian’s mouth, the press of his body, the stiffness in his every trembling muscle as Nesta slanted her lips over his, rising onto her toes.

  She’d kissed him with her eyes open, so she could see precisely how his own widened.

  Nesta pulled away a
moment later and found his eyes still wide, his breathing harsh.

  She laughed softly, making to unhook her fingers from his jacket and strut down the hall.

  She only got as far as lowering her right hand before he surged forward to kiss her back.

  The force of that kiss knocked them toward the wall, the stone slamming into her shoulders as all of him lined up against all of her, a hand sliding into her hair while the other gripped her hip.

  The moment Nesta hit that wall, the moment Cassian enveloped her, it destroyed any illusion of restraint. She opened her mouth, and his tongue swept in, the kiss punishing and savage.

  And the taste of him, like snow-kissed wind and crackling embers—

  She moaned, unable to help herself.

  It seemed that sound was his undoing, for the fingers in her hair dug into her scalp, angling her head so he could better taste her, claim her.

  Her hands roved over his muscled chest, desperate for any skin, anything to touch as their tongues met and parted, as he licked the roof of her mouth, as he slid his tongue over her teeth.

  She met him stroke for stroke, and all sense of self went flying from her. She plunged her fingers into his hair, and it was as soft as she’d imagined, the strands like silk against her skin.

  Every hateful thought eddied from her mind. She gave herself to the distraction, welcomed it with open arms, let the kiss burn through all of it. There was only his mouth and his tongue and his teeth, licking and tasting and biting; there was only the strength of his body, pressing against hers, but not nearly close enough—

  He slid his hands around her, grasping her ass, and lifted her into the air. She wrapped her legs around his middle, and moaned again as he pressed himself between her thighs.

  She needed this temporary reprieve from her mind, that thing burning deep inside her, the memories that hounded her. She needed this. Needed him.