Gwyn shook her head, as if dispelling the memory. She spread her fingers. “My twin had the webbed fingers of the nymphs—I don’t.”
Had.
Again, Gwyn sighed. “Merrill will make your life a living hell, you know.”
“She can try,” Nesta said mildly. “It’d be difficult to make it any worse.”
“Well, now we have a common enemy. Merrill will never forget this.” She nodded toward the railings where the priestesses had been. “Though I suppose they won’t, either. It’s not every day someone stands up to her. Only Clotho can really make her fall in line, but Clotho lets her have her way, mostly because Merrill throws those windy tantrums that can send everyone’s manuscripts scattering.”
“Anytime you need someone to knock Merrill down a few pegs, let me know.”
Gwyn smiled slightly. “Next time, perhaps I’ll have the courage to do it myself.”
It seemed the priestesses didn’t forget what Nesta had done.
Nesta, Gwyn, and Emerie were going through their opening stretches, Cassian stone-faced and eagle-eyed to catch any mistake, when footsteps scuffed in the archway beyond the pit.
They all paused at the three hooded figures who emerged, hands clasped so tightly that their knuckles were white.
But the priestesses stepped into the sunlight, the open air. Blinked up at it, as if remembering what such things were.
Gwyn nimbly rolled to her feet, grinning so broadly that Nesta was momentarily taken aback by it. The priestess had been pretty in the library, but with that joy, that confidence as she aimed for the three priestesses, she had emerged into a beauty to rival Merrill or Mor.
Or maybe nothing had changed at all beyond that confidence, the way Gwyn’s shoulders were pushed back, her head high, her smile free as she said, “Roslin. Deirdre. Ananke. I was hoping you’d come.”
Nesta hadn’t checked the sign-up sheet that morning. Had stopped believing anyone except Gwyn would ever come to training.
But the three of them huddled together as Cassian offered a casual smile that was nearly a replica of Rhys’s. Designed to put people at ease and lessen the threat of his power, his body. “Ladies,” he said, gesturing to the ring. “Welcome.”
Roslin and Ananke said nothing, but the one in the middle, Deirdre, tugged back her hood.
Nesta clamped down on every instinct that would have had her gasping. Emerie, on the mat beside her, seemed to be trying to do the same.
A long, vicious scar cut across Deirdre’s face, narrowly missing her left eye. It was raised, stark white against her brown skin, and flowed from her tightly curling black hair to her slender, lovely jaw. Her round dark eyes, framed by a thick sweep of lashes that made them seem even rounder, were wide but determined as she said, “We hope we are not too late.”
All of them looked to Nesta. But she wasn’t the leader here.
She threw Cassian a glance, and he gave her a shrug as if to say, I’m just the instructor.
Another scar flowed down Deirdre’s neck, disappearing beneath her robe. For such scars to exist on a High Fae at all suggested an event of such violence, such horror, that Nesta’s stomach clenched. But she stepped toward the priestess. “We were just starting.”
“Give me those stones and bones, please,” Nesta said quietly to the House as she sat in the private library, a map of all seven courts before her, Cassian a step behind her.
A small earthenware bowl appeared beside the map, filled with them.
Nesta swallowed against the dryness in her mouth.
Cassian whistled. “It really does listen to you.”
She peered over a shoulder. She’d invited him here after she’d returned from working in the library out of pure caution, she told herself. If she lost control, if she wasn’t able to witness where her finger landed on the map, someone had to be here. That person just so happened to be him.
Never mind that he’d once stood beside her, his hand upon her back as it was now, and let her lean into his warmth and strength.
Cassian glanced between the bowl of scrying instruments and the map. “Why did you change your mind?”
Nesta didn’t give herself time to hesitate before she slid her fingers into the bowl and scooped up the handful of stones and bones. They clinked against each other, hollow and ancient.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about those priestesses who came to practice today. Roslin said she hadn’t set foot outside in sixty years. And Deirdre, with those scars …” She took a long breath. “I am asking them to be brave, to work hard, to face their fears. Yet I’m not doing the same.”
“No one accused you of that.”
“I don’t need anyone to say it. I know it. And I might fear this scrying, but I fear being a cowardly hypocrite even more.”
The priestesses had been novices in every sense of the word: Ananke had such terrible balance she’d fallen over trying to plant her toes in the dirt. Roslin had been only a fraction better. Neither had removed their hoods, not as Deirdre had done, but Nesta had caught glimpses of wine-red hair on Roslin and golden hair on Ananke, their skin pale as cream.
Cassian said, “You sure you don’t want to do this with Rhys and Amren around?”
Nesta squeezed the bones and stones in her fist. “I don’t need them.”
He fell silent, letting her concentrate.
It had taken a few moments the first and only time she’d done it. To let her mind go empty, to wait for that tug through her body that had hauled her toward an unseen force. She’d been whipped across the earth, and when she’d opened her eyes, she’d been standing in a war-tent, the King of Hybern before her, the Cauldron a squatting, dark mass beyond.
Nesta closed her eyes, willing her mind to quiet as she lifted her tight fist over the map. She focused upon her breathing, upon the rhythm of Cassian’s breathing.
Her swallow was loud to her ears.
She’d failed at everything. But she could do this.
She’d failed her father, failed Feyre for years before that. Failed her mother, she supposed. And with Elain, she’d failed as well: first in letting her get taken by Hybern that night they’d been stolen from their beds; then by letting her go into that Cauldron. Then when the Cauldron had taken her into the heart of Hybern’s camp.
She’d failed and failed and failed, and there was no end to it, no end—
“Anything?”
“Don’t talk.”
Cassian grunted, but sidled closer, his warmth now solidly at her side.
Nesta willed her mind to empty. But it couldn’t. It was like being in that damned stairwell—she just circled around and around and around, down and down.
The Dread Trove. She had to find the Dread Trove.
The Mask, the Harp, the Crown.
But the other thoughts pressed in. Too many.
The Mask, she strained to think. Where is the Mask of the Dread Trove?
Her palm slickened with sweat, the stones and bones shifting in her fist. If the Mask was aware like the Cauldron had been … She couldn’t let it see her. Find what she loved most.
Couldn’t let it see her, find her, hurt her.
The Mask, she willed the stones and bones. Find the Mask.
Nothing answered. No tug, no whisper of power. She exhaled through her nostrils. The Mask, she willed them.
There was nothing.
Her heart thundered, but she tried again. A different route. Thought of their common origin—the one she and the Trove shared. The Cauldron.
Yawning emptiness answered.
Nesta furrowed her brow, clenching the items harder. Pictured the Cauldron: the vast bowl of darkest iron, so large multiple people could have used it as a bathtub. It had a physical shape, yet when that icy water had swallowed her, there had been no bottom. Just a chasm of freezing water that had soon become utter darkness. The thing that had existed before light; the cradle from which all life had come.
Sweat beaded on her brow, as if her very body rebelled a
gainst the memory, but she made herself recall how it had sat in the King of Hybern’s war-tent, squatting atop the reeds and rugs, a primordial beast that had been half-asleep when she’d entered.
And then it had opened an eye. Not one she could see, but one that she could feel fixed on her. It had widened as it realized who stood there: the female who had taken so much, too much. It had narrowed all of its depthless power, its rage, upon her, a cat trapping a mouse with its paw.
Her hand shook.
“Nesta?”
She couldn’t breathe.
“Nesta.”
She couldn’t endure it, the memory of that ancient horror and fury—
She opened her eyes. “I can’t,” she rasped. “I can’t. The power—I don’t think I have it anymore.”
“It’s there. I’ve seen it in your eyes, felt it in my bones. Try again.”
She couldn’t summon it. Couldn’t face it. “I can’t.” She dropped the stones and bones into their dish.
She couldn’t endure the disappointment in Cassian’s voice, either, as he said, “All right.”
She didn’t eat dinner with him. Didn’t do anything except crawl into her bed and stare up at the darkness, and free-fall into it.
It was searching for her.
Winding through the hallways of the House, wending like a dark snake, it searched and sniffed and hunted for her.
She couldn’t move from her bed. Couldn’t open her eyes to sound the alarm, to flee.
She felt it come closer, crawling up the stairs. Down her hallway.
She couldn’t move her body. Couldn’t open her eyes.
Darkness slid through the crack between her door and the stone floor.
No—it couldn’t have found her. It would catch her this time, hold her down on this bed and rip from her everything she had taken from it.
The darkness slithered to her bed, and she forced her eyes open to see it gather over her, a cloud with no shape, no form, but such wicked presence that she knew its name before it leaped.
She screamed as the Cauldron’s darkness pinned her to the bed, and then there was nothing but the horrible weight of it filling her body, tearing her apart from the inside out—
And then nothing.
Cassian jolted awake and reached for the knife on his nightstand.
He didn’t know why. He’d had no nightmare, heard no sound.
Yet terror and dread sluiced through him, ratcheting up his heartbeat. The lone Siphon on his hand glowed like fresh blood, as if also seeking an enemy to strike.
Nothing.
But the air had gone cold as ice. So cold his breath clouded, and then the lamps flared to life. Flared and flickered, flashing, as if desperately signaling to him.
As if the House were begging him to run.
He vaulted from the bed, and the door opened before he could careen into it. Launching into the hall, knife in hand, he didn’t care that he was in his undershorts, or that he only had one Siphon. Az’s door flung open a heartbeat later, and his brother’s steps closed in behind him as Cassian hit the stairs and raced down them.
He’d reached the landing of Nesta’s level when she screamed.
Not a scream of rage, but of pure terror.
His body distilled at that scream, as if it were no more than the knife in his hand, a weapon to be used to eliminate and destroy any threats to her, to kill and kill and not stop until every last enemy was dead or bleeding.
Her door was open, and light blazed from within. Silvery, cold light.
“Cassian,” Az warned, but Cassian pushed himself faster, running as swiftly as he ever had in his life. He slammed into the archway of her door, rebounding off it and into the room, and came up short at what he beheld.
Nesta lay in her bed, body arched. Bathed in silver fire.
She was screaming, hands ripping at the sheets, and that fire burned and burned without destroying the blankets, the room. Burned and writhed, as if devouring her.
“Holy gods,” Azriel breathed.
The fire radiated cold. Cassian had never heard of such a power amongst the High Fae. Fire, yes—but fire with warmth. Not this icy, terrible twin.
Nesta arched again, sobbing through her teeth.
Cassian lunged for her, but Azriel grabbed him around the middle. He snarled, debating whether he could rip out of Azriel’s arms, but the hold Az had on him was too clever.
Nesta screamed again, and a word appeared in it. No.
She began shouting it, pleading, No, no, no.
Nesta arched once more, and that fire sucked in, as if a great inhale had been made, and was about to be exhaled, rupturing through the world—
The windows of the room blew out.
Night burst in, full of shadows and wind and stars.
And as Nesta erupted, silver fire blasting outward, Rhys pounced.
He smothered her fire with his darkness, as if he’d dropped a blanket on it. Nesta screamed, and this time it was a sound of pain.
The night cleared enough that Cassian could see Rhys at the bed, roaring something that the wind and fire and stars drowned out. But from his lips, Cassian knew it was her name. “Nesta!” Rhys shouted. The wind cleared enough for Cassian to hear this time. “Nesta! This is a dream! ”
Nesta’s fire reared again, and Rhys shoved a wave of blackness upon her. The entire House shook.
Cassian thrashed against Azriel, bellowing at Rhys to stop it, stop hurting her—
Rhys’s darkness pushed down, and Nesta’s flame battled upward, as if their two powers were swords clashing in battle, fighting for the advantage.
Dominance thundered in Rhys’s words this time. “Wake up. It’s a dream. Wake up.”
Nesta still fought, and Rhys gritted his teeth, power gathering again.
“Let me go,” Cassian said to Azriel. “Az, let me go right now.” Azriel, to his surprise, did.
Cassian knew the odds were against him. He had a knife and one Siphon. To get caught in the magic between Nesta and Rhys would be akin to entering a lion’s den unarmed.
But he walked to where silver fire and darkest night battled.
And he said with steady calm, “Nesta.”
The silver fire flickered.
“Nesta.”
He could have sworn her consciousness, that power, shifted toward him. Just long enough.
The wave of Rhys’s power that hit her wasn’t the brute attack of earlier, but a soft wave that washed over that flame. Banked it.
Rhys went still in a way that told Cassian his brother was no longer fully present, but rather in the mind of the female who had gone unmoving upon the bed. He’d rarely thought twice about Rhys’s gifts as a daemati—Feyre’s gift, too—but he’d never been more grateful for it.
Cassian barely dared to breathe. Azriel hovered behind him as Rhys stood before the bed.
Slowly, that flame receded. Vanished like smoke.
Slowly, Nesta’s body relaxed.
And then her breathing evened out, her body going limp. Blissfully unconscious.
Cassian swallowed, his heart pounding so hard he knew Azriel could hear it as his brother came up beside him.
Then Rhys inhaled sharply, his body full of movement again. Azriel asked, his own shadows gathering at his shoulders, “What happened?”
But Rhys just walked to the little sitting area and slumped into a chair. The High Lord’s hands were shaking—trembling so wildly that Cassian had no idea what to do. From the worry etched on Azriel’s face, neither did his brother.
Cassian asked, “Should we send for Feyre?”
“No.” The word was a snarl. Rhys’s eyes flared like violet stars. “She doesn’t come near here.”
“Was that …” Azriel glanced to the bed and the unconscious female atop it. “That was Nesta’s true power? That silver fire?”
“Only the surface of it,” Rhys whispered, hands still shaking as he ran them down his face. “Fuck.”
Cassian braced his feet, as
if he could physically intercept whatever Rhys was about to say.
“I went into her nightmare.” Rhys peered up at Cassian. “Why didn’t you tell me you attempted a scrying today?”
“It didn’t work.” And Nesta’s fear and guilt had been so heavy in the room that his chest had ached. He’d left her alone afterward, knowing she’d want privacy.
Rhys blew out a shuddering breath. “The scrying was a trip wire. For the memories. I caught that as I went in.” His throat worked, as if he’d heave, but he held it down. “She was dreaming of the Cauldron. Of … of when she went in.” Cassian had never seen Rhys at such a loss for words.
“I saw it,” Rhys whispered. “Felt it. Everything that happened within the Cauldron. Saw her take its power with her teeth and claws and rage. And I saw … felt … what it took from her.”
Rhys rubbed his face, and slowly straightened. He met Cassian’s stare unflinchingly, his eyes full of remorse and agony. “Her trauma is …” Rhys’s throat bobbed.
“I know,” Cassian whispered.
“I guessed,” Rhys breathed, “but it was different to feel it.”
“What is her power?” Azriel asked.
“Death,” Rhys whispered, hands trembling again as he got to his feet and aimed toward the window, which was now repairing itself shard by shard, as if a careful, patient hand worked upon it. He gazed at the female sleeping in the bed, and fear clouded the face of the High Lord of the Night Court. “Pure death.”
CHAPTER
30
The dream had been real and not real, and there had been no end to it, no escape.
Until a familiar male voice had said her name.
And the terror had stopped, as if the axis of the world had shifted toward that voice. That voice, which became a doorway, full of light and strength.
Nesta had reached a hand toward it.
And then there had been another male voice in her mind, and this one had been familiar as well, and full of power. But it had been kind, in a way she had never heard the voice be to her, and it had eased her from the black pit of the dream, leading her with a star-flecked hand back to a land of drifting clouds and rolling hills under a bright moon.
A Court of Silver Flames Page 30