It had to be now.
One eye on the priestess, Nesta moved.
She coughed to cover the whisper of books moving. And by the time Merrill whipped her head around again, Nesta made sure she wasn’t so much as looking toward the shelf. Where volume seven of The Great War stood in place of volume eight, which now sat atop the other books in Nesta’s arms.
Nesta’s heart pounded in her entire body.
Merrill hissed, “What are you lingering for? Get out.”
“Apologies,” Nesta repeated, bowing at the waist, and left. Shut the door behind her.
And only when she stood in the silent hall did she allow herself to smile.
She found Gwyn the same way she’d found Merrill: by asking a priestess, this one more quiet and withdrawn than the other. So trembling and nervous that even Nesta had used her most gentle voice. And been unable to shake the heaviness in her heart as she’d walked to the first-level reading area. Across the hushed, cavernous space, it was easy to hear Gwyn’s soft singing as she flitted from table to table, looking at the piles of discarded books. Trying desperately to find the missing tome.
The words of Gwyn’s merry song were in a language Nesta didn’t know, but for a heartbeat, Nesta allowed herself to listen—to savor the pure, sweet voice that rose and fell with sinuous ease.
Gwyn’s hair seemed to glow brighter with her song, skin radiating a beckoning light. Drawing any listener in.
But Merrill’s warning clanged through the beauty of Gwyn’s voice, and Nesta cleared her throat. Gwyn whirled toward her, glow fading even as her freckled face lit with surprise. “Hello again,” she said.
Nesta only extended volume eight of The Great War. Gwyn gasped.
Nesta threw her a wicked smile. “This was shelved improperly. I swapped it with the right book.”
Gwyn didn’t seem to need more than that, thankfully, and clutched the book to her chest like a treasure. “Thank you. You’ve just saved me from a terrible tongue-lashing.”
Nesta arched a brow at the book. “What’s Merrill researching, anyway?”
Gwyn frowned. “Lots of things. Merrill’s brilliant. Horrible, but brilliant. When she first came here, she was obsessed with theories regarding the existence of different realms—different worlds. Living on top of each other without even knowing it. Whether there is merely one existence, our existence, or if it might be possible for worlds to overlap, occupying the same space but separated by time and a whole bunch of other things I can’t even begin to explain to you because I barely understand them myself.”
Nesta’s brows rose. “Really?”
“Some philosophers believe there are eleven worlds like that. And some believe there are as many as twenty-six, the last one being Time itself, which …” Gwyn’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Honestly, I looked at some of her early research and my eyes bled just reading her theorizing and formulas.”
Nesta chuckled. “I can imagine. But she’s researching something else now?”
“Yes, thank the Cauldron. She’s writing a comprehensive history of the Valkyries.”
“The who?”
“A clan of female warriors from another territory. They were better fighters than the Illyrians, even. The Valkyrie name was just a title, though—they weren’t a race like the Illyrians. They hailed from every type of Fae, usually recruited from birth or early childhood. They had three stages of training: Novice, Blade, and finally Valkyrie. To become one was the highest honor in their land. Their territory is gone now, subsumed into others.”
“And the Valkyries are gone, too?”
“Yes.” Gwyn sighed. “Valkyries existed for millennia. But the War—the one five hundred years ago—wiped out most of them, and the few survivors were elderly enough to quickly fade into old age and die afterward. From the shame, legend claims. They let themselves die, rather than face the shame of their lost battle and surviving when their sisters had not.”
“I’ve never heard of them.” She knew little about any of the Fae history, both by choice and because of the human world’s utter lack of education on it.
“The Valkyrie history and training were mostly oral, so any accounts we have are through whatever passing historians or philosophers or tradespeople wrote down. It’s just bits and pieces, scattered in various books. No primary sources beyond a few precious scrolls. Merrill got it into her head years ago to begin compiling all of it into one volume. Their history, their training techniques.”
Nesta opened her mouth to ask more, but a clock chimed somewhere behind them. Gwyn stiffened. “I’ve been gone too long. She’ll be furious.” Merrill would indeed. Gwyn twisted toward the ramp beyond the reading area. But she paused, looking over her shoulder. “But not as mad as she would have been with the wrong book.” She flashed Nesta a grin. “Thank you. I am in your debt.”
Nesta shifted on her feet. “It was nothing.”
Gwyn’s eyes sparkled, and before Nesta could avoid the emotion shining there, the priestess sprinted toward Merrill’s chambers, robes flying behind her.
Nesta made it to her room without collapsing from sheer exhaustion or Merrill realizing she’d been duped and coming to kill her, both of which she considered to be great accomplishments.
She found a hot meal waiting on the desk of her bedroom, and she’d barely sat down before she tore into the meat and bread and medley of roasted vegetables. Standing again was an effort, but she made it to her bathroom, where a hot bath was already steaming away.
Getting into the tub required all her concentration, hefting one leg at a time, and she moaned with relief as the delicious heat soaked through her. She lay there until her body had loosened enough to move, and fell into the warmed sheets without bothering to put on a nightgown.
There would be no trying the stairs tonight. No dreams chased her awake, either.
Nesta slept and slept and slept, though she could have sworn that her door opened at one point. Could have sworn a familiar, beckoning scent filled her room. She reached toward it with a sleep-heavy hand, but it was already gone.
CHAPTER
14
Cassian stood in the training ring, trying not to stare at the empty doorway.
Nesta hadn’t come to breakfast. He’d let it slide because she hadn’t come to dinner, either, but that had been because she’d been passed out cold in her bed. Naked. Or close to it.
He hadn’t seen anything when he’d poked his head into her room—at least, nothing that might have scrambled his mind to the point of uselessness—but her bare shoulder had suggested enough. He’d debated waking her and insisting that she eat, but the House had stepped in.
A tray had appeared beside her doorway, full of empty plates.
As if the House was showing him precisely how much she’d eaten. As if the House was proud of what it had gotten her to eat.
“Good work,” he’d muttered into the air, and the tray vanished. He made a mental note to ask Rhys about it later—whether the House was sentient. He’d never heard his High Lord mention it in five centuries.
Considering the filthy things he’d done in his bedroom, his bathroom—fuck, in so many of the rooms here—the idea of the House watching him … Cauldron boil him alive.
So Cassian had let Nesta sleep through breakfast, hoping the House had at least brought the meal to her room. But it meant he had no idea if she’d show up. She’d made a bargain with him yesterday, and he’d come here today to see if she’d at least meet him. Prove yesterday hadn’t been a fluke.
Minutes dripped by.
Maybe he’d been a fool to hope. To think one lesson might be enough—
Muffled cursing filled the stairwell beyond the archway. Each scrape of boots seemed to move slowly.
He didn’t dare to breathe, not as her cursing grew nearer. Inch by inch. As if it was taking her a long, long time to climb the stairs.
And then she was there, hand braced on the wall, a grimace of such misery on her face that Cassian laughed.
Nesta scowled, but he only said, relief wobbling his knees, “I should have realized.”
“Realized what?” She stopped five feet from him.
“That you’d be late because you’re so sore you can’t climb the stairs.”
She pointed to the archway. “I got up here, didn’t I?”
“True.” He winked. “I’ll let that count as part of your warm-up. To get the muscles in your legs loose.”
“I need to sit down.”
“And risk not being able to get back up?” He grinned. “Not a chance.” He nodded to the space beside him. “Stretches.”
She grumbled. But she got into position.
And when Cassian began to instruct her through the movements, she listened.
Two hours later, sweat poured down Nesta’s body, but the aching had at least ceased. You need to get the lactic acid out of your muscles—that’s what’s hurting you, Cassian had said when she’d complained nonstop for the first thirty minutes. Whatever the hell that meant.
She lay on the black mat, panting again, taking in the cloudy sky. It was a good deal crisper than yesterday, with tendrils of mist wandering past the ring every now and then.
“When do I stop being sore?” she asked Cassian breathlessly.
“Never.”
She turned her head toward him, about as much movement as she could manage. “Never?”
“Well, it gets better,” he amended, and moved down to her feet. “May I?”
She had no idea what he was asking, but she nodded.
Cassian lightly wrapped his hands around her ankle, his skin warm against her foot, and lifted her leg upward. She hissed as a muscle along the back of her thigh shrieked in protest, drawing so tight she gritted her teeth. “Breathe into it when I push the leg toward you,” he ordered.
He waited until she exhaled before he lifted her leg higher. The tightness in her thigh was considerable enough that she stopped thinking about his callused, warm hands against her bare ankle, about how he knelt between her legs, so close she turned her head away to stare at the red rock of the wall.
“Again,” he told her, and she exhaled, winning another inch. “Again. Cauldron, your hamstrings are tight enough to snap.”
Nesta obeyed, and he kept stretching her leg upward, gaining inch after inch.
“The soreness does get easier,” Cassian said after a moment, as if he weren’t holding her leg flush to his chest. “Though I have plenty of days when I can barely walk at the end. And after a battle? I need a week to recover from that alone.”
“I know.” His eyes found hers, and she clarified, “I mean—I saw you. In the war.”
Saw him hauled in unconscious, his guts hanging out. Saw him in the sky, death racing at him until she screamed for him, saved him. Saw him on the ground, broken and bleeding, the King of Hybern about to kill them both—
Cassian’s face gentled. As if he knew what memories pelted her. “I’m a soldier, Nesta. It’s part of my duties. Part of who I am.”
She looked back toward the wall, and he lowered her leg before starting on the other. The tightness in that hamstring was unbearable.
“The more stretching you do,” he explained when she squeezed her eyes shut against the pain, “the more mobility you’ll gain.” He nodded toward the rope ladder laid out on the floor of the training ring, where he’d had her run it up and down, knees to chest, keeping within each of the boxes, for five minutes straight. “You’re nimble on your feet.”
“I took dancing lessons as a girl.”
“Really?”
“We weren’t always poor. Until I was fourteen, my father was as rich as a king. They called him the Prince of Merchants.”
He gave her a tentative smile. “And you were his princess?”
Ice cracked through her. “No. Elain was his princess. Even Feyre was more his princess than I ever was.”
“And what were you?”
“I was my mother’s creature.” She said it with such cold it nearly froze her tongue.
Cassian said carefully, “What was she like?”
“A worse version of me.”
His brows twitched together. “I …”
She didn’t want to have this conversation. Even the sunlight failed to warm her. She pulled her leg from his hands and sat up, needing the distance between them.
And because it looked like he’d speak again, Nesta said the only thing she could think of. “What happened to the priestesses in Sangravah two years ago?”
He went wholly still.
It was terrifying. The stillness of a male ready to kill, to defend, to bloody himself. But his voice was terribly calm as he asked, “Why?”
“What happened?”
His mouth tightened, and he swallowed once before he said, “Hybern was looking for the Cauldron back then—for the pieces of its feet. One was hidden at the temple in Sangravah, its power used to fuel its priestesses’ gifts for millennia. Hybern found out, and sent a unit of their deadliest and cruelest warriors to retrieve it.” Cold rage filled his face. “They slaughtered most of the priestesses for sport. And raped any they found to their liking.”
Horror, icy and deep, sluiced through her. Gwyn had—
“You met one of them,” he asked, “in the library?”
She nodded, unable to find the words.
He closed his eyes, as if reeling his rage back into himself. “I heard that Mor had brought one in. Azriel was the one who made it out there first, and he killed any of the Hybern soldiers left, but by that point …” He shuddered. “I don’t know what became of the other survivors. But I’m glad one wound up here. Safe, I mean. With people who understand, and wish to help.”
“So am I,” Nesta said quietly.
She rose on surprisingly loose legs and blinked down at them. “They don’t hurt as much.”
“Stretching,” Cassian said, as if that were answer enough. “Never forget the stretching.”
The Spring Court made Cassian itch. It had little to do with the bastard who ruled it, he’d realized, but rather the fact that the lands lay in perpetual spring. Which meant plumes of pollen drifting by, setting his nose to running and skin to itching, until he was certain that at least a dozen insects were slithering all over him.
“Stop scratching,” Rhys said without looking at him as they strode through a blooming apple orchard. No wings to be seen today.
Cassian lowered his hand from his chest. “I can’t help it if this place makes my skin crawl.”
Rhys snorted, gesturing to one of the blossoming trees above them, petals falling thick as snow. “The feared general, felled by seasonal allergies.”
Cassian gave an unnecessarily loud sniffle, earning a full chuckle from Rhys. Good. When he’d met his brother half an hour ago, Rhys’s eyes had been distant, his face solemn.
Rhys halted in the middle of the orchard, located to the north of Tamlin’s once-lovely estate.
The afternoon sun warmed Cassian’s head, and if his entire body weren’t itching so damned much, he might have lain on the velvety grass and sunned his wings. “I’d peel my skin off right now, if it’d stop the itching.”
“There’s a sight I’d like to see,” a voice said behind them, and Cassian didn’t bother to look pleasant as they found Eris standing at the base of a tree five feet away. Amid the pink and white blossoms, the cold-faced Autumn Court heir looked truly faerie—as if he’d stepped out of the tree, and his one and only master was the earth itself.
“Eris,” Rhys purred, sliding his hands into his pockets. “A pleasure.”
Eris nodded at Rhys, red hair dappled in the sunlight leaking through the blossom-heavy branches. “I only have a few minutes.”
“You asked for this meeting,” Cassian said, crossing his arms. “So out with it.”
Eris shot him a look laced with distaste. “I’m sure you’ve reported my offer to Rhysand.”
“He did,” Rhys said, dark hair ruffled by a soft, sighing breeze. As if
even the wind itself loved to touch him. “I didn’t appreciate the threats.”
Eris shrugged. “I merely wanted to make myself clear.”
“Spit it out, Eris,” Cassian said. One more minute here, and the itching would drive him mad.
He wished anyone else could have come in his stead. But he’d been appointed by Rhys to deal with the bastard. General to general. Eris had asked for the meeting this morning, naming this location as neutral ground. Thankfully, its lord had no interest in patrolling who entered these lands.
Eris kept his eyes on Rhys. “I assume your shadowsinger is off doing what he does best.”
Rhys said nothing, revealed nothing. Cassian followed his lead.
Eris went on with a shrug, “We are wasting our time, gathering information rather than acting.” His amber eyes gleamed in the shade of the apple tree. “Regardless of the death-lord pulling their strings, if the human queens intend to be a thorn in our sides, we could simply deal with them now. All of them. My father would be forced to abandon his plans. And I’m sure you could invent some reason that has nothing to do with me or what I’ve told you to excuse their … removal.”
Cassian blurted, “You want us to take out the queens?”
It was Eris’s turn to say nothing.
Rhys, too, remained silent.
Cassian threw them an incredulous look. “We kill those queens and we’ll be in a greater mess than ever. Wars have been started for less. Killing even one queen, let alone four, would be a catastrophe. Everyone would know who’d done it, regardless of the reasons we’d invent to justify it.”
Rhys angled his head. “Only if we’re sloppy.”
“You’re kidding,” Cassian said to his brother.
“Half-kidding,” Rhys said, throwing him a dry smile. It didn’t quite meet his eyes, though. A grave distance lurked there. But Rhys turned to Eris. “Tempting as it may be to take the easy way out, I agree with my brother. It’s a simple solution to our current problems, and to thwarting your father, but it would create a conflict far greater than any we’re anticipating.” Rhys surveyed Eris. “You know that already.”
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