A Court of Silver Flames

by Sarah J. Maas

  She let the truth, voiced at last, wash over her.

  “You promised me forever on Solstice,” he said, voice breaking. “Why is one word somehow throwing you off that?”

  “Because with that one word, the last scrap of my humanity goes away!” She didn’t care who saw them, who heard. “With that one stupid word, I am no longer human in any way. I’m one of you!”

  He blinked. “I thought you wanted to be one of us.”

  “I don’t know what I want. I didn’t have a choice.”

  “Well, I didn’t have a choice in being shackled to you, either.”

  The declaration slammed into her. Shackled.

  He sucked in a breath. “That was an incredibly poor choice of words.”

  “But the truth, right?”

  “No. I was angry—it’s not true.”

  “Why? Your friends saw me for what I was. What I am. The mating bond made you stupidly blind to it. How many times did they warn you away from me, Cassian?” She barked a cold laugh.

  Shackled.

  Words beckoned, sharp as knives, begging for her to grab one and plunge it into his chest. Make him hurt as much as that one word hurt her. Make him bleed.

  But if she did that, if she ripped into him … She couldn’t. Wouldn’t let herself do it.

  He pleaded, “I didn’t mean it like—”

  “I’m calling in my favor,” she said.

  He went still, brows bunching. And then his eyes widened. “Whatever you’re—”

  “I want you to leave. Go up to the House of Wind for the night. Do not speak to me until I come talk to you, or until a week has passed. Whichever comes first. I don’t care.”

  Until she’d mastered herself enough to not hurt him, to stop feeling the old urge to strike and maim before she could be wounded.

  Cassian lurched toward her, but winced, back arching. Like the bargain tattoo on his back had burned him.

  “Go away,” she ordered.

  His throat worked, eyes bulging. Fighting the power of the bargain with his every breath.

  But then he whirled, wingbeats booming as he leaped into the skies above the river.

  Nesta remained on the quay as her spine tingled, and she knew her tattoo had vanished.

  Emerie was at her kitchen table when Nesta appeared at the back door. Mor had winnowed her here without a question, without so much as a glance of disapproval. Nesta had been beyond caring about it, though. Was only grateful the female had appeared—likely sent by Cassian. She didn’t care about that, either.

  Nesta made it two steps into Emerie’s shop before she collapsed and cried.

  She barely noticed what happened. How Emerie helped her into a chair, how the words tumbled out, explaining what she and Cassian had said, what she’d done to him.

  A knock sounded on the door an hour later, and Nesta stopped crying when she saw who stood there.

  Gwyn threw her arms around Nesta. “I heard you might need us.” Nesta was so stunned to see the priestess that she returned the hug.

  Mor, a step behind, gave her a concerned nod, and then winnowed away.

  Emerie was the one to say to Gwyn, “I can’t believe you left the library.”

  Gwyn stroked Nesta’s head. “Some things are more important than fear.” She cleared her throat. “But please don’t remind me too much. I’m so nervous I really might vomit.”

  Even Nesta smiled at that.

  Her two friends fussed over her, sitting at the kitchen table and drinking hot cocoa—a belated Solstice gift to Emerie from Nesta, pilfered from the House’s larder. They ate dinner, and then dessert, and discussed their latest reads. They spoke about everything and nothing long into the night.

  Only when Nesta’s eyes burned with exhaustion, her body a limp weight, did they go upstairs. There were three bedrooms above the shop, all pristine and simple, and Nesta changed into the nightgown Emerie offered without a second thought.

  She’d talk to him tomorrow. Sleep now, safe with her friends around her, and talk to him tomorrow.

  She’d explain everything—why she’d balked, why it frightened her, this next step into the unknown. The life beyond it. She’d apologize for using their bargain to send him away, and not stop apologizing until he smiled again.

  Perhaps the future did not need to be so planned—she could just take it one day at a time. As long as she had Cassian at her side, her friends with her, she could do it. Face it. They wouldn’t let her fall back into that pit. Cassian would never let her fall again.

  But if she did fall … he’d be waiting for her at the top again. Hand outstretched. She didn’t deserve it, but she’d endeavor to be worthy of him.

  Nesta fell asleep with that thought ringing, a weight lifted from her chest.

  Tomorrow, she’d tell Cassian everything. Tomorrow, her life would begin.

  A male scent filled her room. It wasn’t Cassian. And it wasn’t Rhys or Azriel.

  It was full of hate, and Nesta lurched upward just as a rough laugh sounded. Down the hall, Gwyn screamed—then fell silent.

  In the dark, she could make out nothing, and she fumbled for the power within her, for the knife next to the bed—

  Something cold and wet pressed into her face.

  It burned her nostrils, flaying open her mind.

  Darkness swept in, and she was gone.

  CHAPTER

  63

  Nesta’s bargain had required that he go to the House of Wind for the night.

  And that he could speak to her only once she spoke to him, or after a week had passed.

  Easy enough rules to maneuver around. He made a mental note to teach her to word her bargains a little more cleverly.

  Cassian waited until the required night had passed and then found Rhys at dawn, asking his brother to winnow him into Windhaven. Mor had reluctantly informed him she’d brought Nesta there the day before. He’d finish this fight with Nesta, one way or another. It had never frightened him. The mating bond, or that Nesta was his. He’d guessed it well before the Cauldron had turned her.

  The only thing that frightened him was that she might reject it. Hate him for it. Chafe against it. He’d beheld the truth in her eyes on Solstice, when the mating bond had been like so much gold thread between their souls, but she’d still hesitated. And yesterday his temper had gotten the better of him, and … he’d start off round two by getting her to say just one word to him, so he’d be free to speak the rest.

  The apology, the declaration he still needed to make—all of it.

  He scented both Nesta and Gwyn at Emerie’s back door when he knocked. It moved him beyond words, that Gwyn had braved the world beyond the library to comfort Nesta. Even as it shamed him that he’d been the cause of it.

  But at his side, Rhys’s face was suddenly pale. “They’re not here.”

  Cassian didn’t wait before he shoved into the shop, breaking the lock on Emerie’s door. If someone had hurt them, taken them—

  No one was in the cozy room in the back. But—suddenly there were male scents in this room, as if they’d winnowed right in.

  Illyrians had no magic like that.

  Except on one night, when Illyrians possessed an ancient, wild power.

  “No.” He charged up the stairs, the steps rank with those male scents, and that of the females’ fear. He found Nesta’s room first.

  She’d fought. The bed was shoved across the room, the nightstand turned over, and blood—male blood, from the scent of it—lay in a puddle on the floor. But the acrid scent of the sleeping ointment, enough to knock out a horse, lingered.

  His head went quiet. Emerie’s and Gwyn’s rooms were the same. Signs of a struggle, but not of the females themselves.

  Fear bloomed, so vast and broad he could barely breathe. It was a message—to the females for thinking themselves warriors, and to him for teaching them, for defying the Illyrians’ archaic hierarchies and rules.

  Rhys came up beside him, his face white with that same drea
d. “Devlon just confirmed everything. The Blood Rite began at midnight.”

  And Gwyn, Emerie, and Nesta had been snatched from their beds. To participate in it.

  PART FOUR

  ATARAXIA

  CHAPTER

  64

  Someone had poured sand into her mouth. And taken a hammer to her head.

  Was still pounding on it, apparently.

  Nesta pried her tongue from her teeth, swallowing a few times to work some moisture back into her mouth. Her aching head—

  Scents hit her. Male, varied, and so many—

  Hard, cold ground lay beneath her bare legs, pine needles poking through the thin material of her nightgown. Chill, blood-icing wind carried all those male scents above a tide of snow and pine and dirt—

  Nesta’s eyes flew open. A broad male back filled her vision, most of it obscured by a pair of wings. Bound wings.

  Images of last night pelted her: the males who’d grabbed her, how she’d fought until they’d pushed something against her face that had her blacking out, hearing Gwyn and Emerie screaming—

  Nesta jolted upright.

  The view was worse than she’d expected. Far, far worse.

  Slowly, silently, she twisted in place. Unconscious Illyrian warriors were strewn around her. At her back, at her head. At her bare feet. More surrounded her, at least two hundred, stretching between the towering pines.

  The Blood Rite.

  She must have awoken before the others because she was Made. Different.

  Nesta reached inward, toward that place where the ancient, awful power rested, and found nothing. As if the well had been drained, as if the sea had receded.

  The Blood Rite’s spells bound magic. Her powers had been rendered useless.

  She knew her shaking wasn’t entirely from the cold. Whatever time she had wouldn’t last long. The others would soon stir.

  And find her standing among them, in nothing but a nightgown. Without weapons.

  She had to move. Had to find Emerie and Gwyn in this endless sprawl of bodies. Unless they had been dumped elsewhere.

  Cassian, Rhysand, and Azriel had all been left in different places, she remembered. They’d spent days killing their way to each other amid the bloodthirsty warriors and beasts who roamed these lands. But they had somehow found each other and scaled Ramiel, the sacred mountain, and won the Rite.

  She’d be lucky to clear this general area.

  Her breath catching, Nesta eased to her feet. Away from the shield of the warriors’ bodies, the cold slammed into her, nearly robbing her of breath. Her shaking deepened.

  She needed something warmer. Needed shoes. Needed to make a weapon.

  Nesta peered at the watery sun, as if it’d tell her what direction to go to find her friends. But the light seared her eyes, worsening the pounding in her head. Trees—she could find the mossy side of the trees, Cassian had said. North would lie that way.

  The nearest tree rose about twenty feet and ten bodies away. From what she could see, no moss grew anywhere on it.

  So she’d find higher ground and survey the land. See where Ramiel loomed and if she could spot the other dumping grounds.

  But she needed clothes and weapons and food and to find Gwyn and Emerie, and oh, gods—

  Nesta pressed a hand over her mouth to keep her trembling exhale to near-silence. Move. She had to move.

  But someone already had.

  The rustle of his wings gave him away. Nesta whirled.

  A hundred feet off, separated from her by the sea of sleeping bodies, stood a beast of a male.

  She didn’t know him, but she recognized that gleam in his eye. The predatory intent and cruel amusement. Knew what it meant when his stare dipped to her nightgown, her breasts peaked against the frigid cold, her bare legs.

  Fear burned like acid through her entire body.

  None of the others stirred. At least she had that. But this male …

  He glanced to his left—just for a blink. Nesta followed his stare, and her breath caught. Embedded in the trunk of a tree, gleaming faintly, was a knife.

  Impossible. Having weapons in the Blood Rite went against its rules. Had the male known it would be there, or had he just spied it before she had?

  It didn’t matter. It only mattered that the knife existed. And it was the sole weapon in sight.

  She could run. Let him lunge at the knife and flee in the opposite direction and pray he didn’t follow.

  Or she could go for the blade. Beat him to it and then … she didn’t know what she’d do then. But she stood in a field of sleeping warriors who would all soon awaken, and if they found her weaponless, defenseless—

  Nesta ran.

  Cassian couldn’t breathe.

  Hadn’t been able to breathe or speak for long minutes now. His family had arrived, and they all surrounded him in the wrecked bedroom of Emerie’s house. They were speaking, Azriel with some urgency, but Cassian didn’t hear him, heard nothing but the roaring in his head before he said to no one in particular, “I’m going after them.”

  Silence fell, and he turned to find them all staring at him, pale and wide-eyed.

  Cassian tapped the Siphons on the backs of his hands, and his remaining Siphons appeared at his shoulders, knees, and chest. He nodded to Rhys. “Winnow me to her. Az, you find Emerie and Gwyn.”

  Rhys didn’t move an inch. “You know the laws, Cass.”

  “Fuck the laws.”

  “What laws?” Feyre demanded.

  “Tell her,” Rhys ordered him, night swirling around his wings. Cassian bristled. “Tell her, Cassian.”

  The asshole had used that inherent dominance on him. Cassian gritted out, “Anyone who pulls a warrior from the Blood Rite will be hunted down and executed. Along with the warrior who is dishonorably removed from the Rite.”

  Feyre rubbed at her face. “So Nesta, Emerie, and Gwyn have to stay in the Rite.”

  “Even I can’t break those rules,” Rhys said, a shade softer. “No matter how much I might want to,” he added, clasping Cassian’s shoulder.

  Cassian’s stomach turned over. Nesta and her friends—his friends—were in the Rite. And he could do nothing to interfere, not without damning them all. His hands shook. “So, what—we just sit on our asses for a week and wait?” The idea was abhorrent.

  Feyre gripped his trembling fingers, squeezing tight. “Did you— Cassian, weren’t you listening at all when we got here?”

  No. He’d barely heard anything.

  Azriel said tightly, “My spies got word that Eris has been captured by Briallyn. She sent his remaining soldiers after him while he was out hunting with his hounds. They grabbed him and somehow, they were all winnowed back to her palace. I’m guessing using Koschei’s power.”

  “I don’t care.” Cassian aimed for the doorway. Even if … Fuck. Hadn’t he been the one to tell Rhys not to go after those soldiers? To leave them be? He was a fool. He’d left an armed enemy in his blind spot and forgotten about it. But Eris could rot for all he cared.

  Az said, “We have to get him out.”

  Cassian drew up short. “We?”

  Rhys stepped up next to Azriel, Feyre beside him. A formidable wall. “We can’t go,” Feyre said, nodding to Rhys. It needed no explanation: with the babe less than two months away, Feyre wasn’t risking anything. But Rhys …

  Cassian challenged his High Lord, “You can be in and out in an hour.”

  “I can’t go.” Midnight storms swirled in Rhys’s eyes.

  “Yes, you fucking can,” Cassian said, rage rising like a tidal wave that would sweep away all in its path. “You—”

  “I can’t.”

  It was agony—pure, undiluted agony that filled Rhys’s face. And fear. Feyre slipped her tattooed fingers through Rhys’s.

  Amren asked sharply, “Why?”

  Rhys stared at the tattoo on Feyre’s fingers, interlaced with his. His throat bobbed. Feyre answered for him. “We made a bargain. After the war. To … only
leave this world together.”

  Amren began massaging her temples, muttering a prayer for sanity.

  Azriel asked, “You made a bargain to die together?”

  “Fools,” Amren hissed. “Romantic, idealistic fools.” Rhys turned bleak eyes to her.

  Cassian couldn’t get a breath down. Az stood still as a statue.

  “If Rhys dies,” Feyre said thickly, fear bright in her own eyes, “I die.” Her fingers grazed her swollen belly. The babe would die, too.

  “And if you die, Feyre,” Azriel said softly, “then Rhys dies.”

  The words rang hollow and cold like a death knell. If Feyre didn’t survive the labor …

  Cassian’s knees threatened to buckle. Rhy’s face was tight with pleading and pain. “I never thought it’d turn out like this,” Rhys said quietly.

  Amren massaged her temples again. “We can discuss the idiocy of this bargain later.” Feyre glared at her, and Amren glared right back before saying to Cassian, “You and Azriel need to retrieve Eris.”

  “Why not you?”

  Feyre pinched the bridge of her nose. “Because Amren is …”

  “Powerless,” Amren snarled. “You can say it, girl.”

  Feyre winced. “Mor left for Vallahan this morning and is out of our daemati magic’s range. Az can’t go in alone. We need you, Cassian.”

  Cassian stilled. They just waited.

  For Nesta to participate in the Blood Rite, to risk every horror and misery while he went off to save fucking Eris … “Let him die.”

  “As tempting as that is,” Feyre said, “he poses a great danger to us in Briallyn’s hands. If he’s under the Crown’s influence, he’ll reveal everything he knows.” She asked Cassian, “What does he know about us, exactly?”

  “Too much.” Cassian cleared his throat. Through their own bickering, through his need to goad Eris, he’d revealed too much. “He was worried about what we’d do with Nesta as a Night Court power, and with all three objects of the Dread Trove at our disposal. He thought the Night Court might turn around and attempt some sort of power grab.”