A Court of Silver Flames

by Sarah J. Maas

  The music was pure, ancient, by turns whispering and bold, one moment like a tendril of mist, the next like a gilded ray of light. It finished, and Merrill spoke about the Mother and the Cauldron and the land and sun and water. She spoke of blessings and dreams and hope. Of mercy and love and growth.

  Nesta half-heard it, waiting for the sound, the perfect, beautiful sound, to begin again. Gwyn seemed to be shimmering with pride and contentedness.

  Merrill finished the prayer, and the group began another song.

  It was like a braid, the song—a plait of seven voices, weaving in and out, individual strands that together formed a pattern. Halfway through it, a drum appeared in the hand of the singer on the far left. A harp began strumming in the hands of one on the far right. A lute sounded from the center.

  She’d never heard such music. Like a spell, a dream given form. The entire room sang, each voice resonating through the stone.

  But Gwyn’s voice rose above them all, clear and powerful and yet husky on some notes. A mezzo-soprano. The word floated from the depths of Nesta’s memory, voiced by a watery-eyed music tutor who’d quickly declared Nesta hopeless at singing or playing, but in possession of an unusually fine ear.

  The song ended, and more prayers and words flowed from Merrill, Clotho silent beside her. Then another song started—this one merrier, faster than the other. As if the songs were a progression. This one was a lilting chant, the words tumbling over each other like water dancing down a mountainside, and Nesta’s foot tapped on the ground in time to the beat. Nesta could have sworn that beneath the hem of Gwyn’s robe, the priestess’s foot was doing the same. The words and the countermelodies danced around and around, until the walls hummed with the music, until the stone seemed to be singing it back.

  They finished, and started another song—led into it by a rolling drumbeat, then a single voice. Then the harp joined, a second voice with it. Then the lute, along with a third. The three sang around and into each other, another braid of voices and melodies. They reached the second verse, and the other four joined in, the room with them.

  Gwyn’s voice soared like a bird through the cavern as she started the third song with a solo, and Nesta closed her eyes, leaning into the music, shutting out one sense in order to luxuriate in the sound of her friend. Something beckoned in Gwyn’s song, in a way the others’ hadn’t. Like Gwyn was calling only to her, her voice full of sunshine and joy and unshakable determination. Nesta had never heard a voice like Gwyn’s—by turns trained and wild, as if there was so much sound fighting to break free of Gwyn that she couldn’t quite contain it all. As if the sound needed to be loose in the world.

  The others joined Gwyn for the second verse, and the harp’s harmonies rose above their song, archways of wordless notes.

  With her eyes closed, only the music mattered—the song, the voices, the harp. It wrapped around her, as if she’d been dropped into a bottomless pool of sound. Gwyn’s voice rose again, holding such a high note it was like a ray of pure light, piercing and summoning. Two other voices rolled in to join, pulsing around that repeated high note, the harp still strumming, voices whispering and flowing, lulling Nesta down, down, down into a pure, ancient place where no outside world existed, no time, nothing but the music in her bones, the stones at her feet, her side, overhead.

  The music took form behind Nesta’s eyes as the priestesses sang lyrics in languages so old, no one voiced them anymore. She saw what the song spoke of: mossy earth and golden sun, clear rivers and the deep shadows of an ancient forest. The harp strummed, and mountains rolled ahead, as if a veil had been cleared with the stroke of those strings, and she was flying toward it—toward a massive, mist-veiled mountain, the land barren save for moss and stones and a gray, stormy sea around it. The mountain itself held two peaks at its very top, and the stones jutting from its sides were carved in strange, ancient symbols, as old as the song itself.

  Nesta’s body melted away, her bones and the stones of the cavern a distant memory as she flowed into the mountain, beheld towering, carved gates, and passed through them into a darkness so complete it was primordial; darkness that was full of living things, terrible things.

  A path led into the dark, and she followed it, past doors with no handles, sealed forever. She felt horrors lurk behind those doors, one horror greater than the others—a being of mist and hatred—but the song led her past them all, invisible and unmarked.

  This place was utterly lethal. A place of suffering and rage and death. Her very soul quaked to wander its halls. And even though she had passed by the door keeping her safe from that one being more horrible than all the rest … she knew it watched her. She refused to look back, to acknowledge it.

  So Nesta drifted down and down, the harp and the voices pulsing and guiding, until she stopped before a rock. She laid a hand on it to find it was only an illusion, and she passed through it, down another long hall, beneath the mountain itself, and then she stood in a cavern, almost the twin to the one the priestesses sang in, as if they were linked in song and dreaming.

  But rather than red stone, it was carved of black rock. Symbols had been etched into the smooth floor, into the curving walls, rising toward a ceiling so high it faded into gloom. Spells and wards pulsed around the room, but there, in the center of the space, set upon the floor as if it had been laid there by someone who’d merely walked away and forgotten it …

  There, in the center of the chamber, sat a small, golden harp.

  Cold leached through Nesta, clarifying her thoughts enough to realize where she stood. That the music of the priestesses had lulled her into a trance, that her own bones and the stone of the mountain surrounding her had been her scrying tools, and she had drifted to this place …

  The Harp gleamed in the darkness, as if it possessed its own sun within the metal and strings. Play me, it seemed to whisper. Let me sing again. Join your voice with mine.

  Her hand reached toward the strings. Yes.

  The Harp sighed, a low purr rolling off it as Nesta’s hand neared. We shall open doors and pathways; we shall move through space and eons together. Our music will free us of earthly rules and borders.

  Yes. She’d play the Harp, and there would be nothing but music until the stars died out.

  Play. I have so long wished to play, it said, and she could have sworn she heard a smile within the sound. What might my song unlock in here? A cold, humorless laugh skittered along Nesta’s bones. It sang again, Play, play—

  The song halted, and the vision shattered.

  Nesta’s knees gave out as the room swept in, and she collapsed onto the pew, earning an alarmed look from Gwyn through the crowd. Her heart thundered, her mouth was dry as sand, and she forced herself to rise to her feet again. To listen to the end of the service as she pieced it all together, realized what she had discovered in her unwitting scrying.

  “You’re sure of this?”

  Cassian leaned a hip against Rhys’s desk. “Nesta said the Harp is beneath the Prison.”

  “She’s never been to the Prison,” Rhys said, frowning.

  Cassian had honestly thought Nesta might be drunk when she’d burst into the dining room an hour earlier, breathless, and told him her wild story. He’d hardly been able to follow what she’d said, except for the fact that she believed the Harp was at the Prison.

  Worse, that she’d woken up the Harp in the Prison. What havoc might it wreak unchecked? The thought chilled Cassian to the core.

  So he’d flown down here and found Rhys in his study. Again poring over old healers’ volumes, trying to find some way to save his mate.

  Rhys leaned back against his seat. Considered.

  Az had winnowed to a meeting point on the eastern coast to get a report from Mor about the Vallahan situation, and Feyre was out to dinner with Amren, so it was just the two of them tonight. Cassian had suggested that Nesta come tell Rhys herself, but she’d refused. She’d been shaken—had needed some time to pull herself back together. He’d check i
n on her later. Make sure she hadn’t withdrawn too far into her head.

  Rhys drummed his fingers on his biceps. Stared at his desk for a long moment. “When we heard about Beron’s treachery, I had Helion show me how to apply a shield like the one I had around Feyre to the Prison itself.”

  “You guessed this would happen?”

  “No.” A muscle ticked in Rhys’s jaw. “Feyre and I were concerned that Beron would try to free the inmates to use in a conflict—just as we used the Bone Carver in the war. Give me tonight, and I’ll get the shield untangled and open for you tomorrow.”

  “It takes that long to undo a shield?”

  Rhys dragged a hand through his hair. Worries etched deep lines into his brow. “It’s a combination of magic and spell work, so yes. And I’ll admit I’m distracted enough these days that I might need some extra time to make sure it’s done correctly.”

  Cassian’s stomach bottomed out at the bleakness in Rhys’s face. But he only said, “All right.”

  A blade appeared on the desk, summoned from wherever Rhys kept it. The great sword Nesta had Made.

  “Take it with you,” his High Lord said quietly. “I want to see what happens if Nesta uses it.”

  “A visit to the Prison isn’t the time for one of your experiments,” Cassian countered.

  The stars in Rhys’s eyes winked out. “Then let’s hope she doesn’t need to draw it.”

  CHAPTER

  53

  “Rhysand really gave this sword to me of his own free will?” Nesta asked Cassian the next morning as they hiked the mossy, rock-strewn side of the towering mountain known as the Prison. It was exactly as she’d pictured it in her trance—and even more horrible in person. The very land seemed abandoned. Like something great had once existed here and then vanished. Like the land still waited for it to return.

  “Rhys said if we’re going into the Prison, we should be well armed,” Cassian said, his dark hair tossed by the cold, wet wind off the thrashing gray sea beyond the plain to their right. “And this is the best place he can think of for us to try out the sword you Made.”

  “So if it goes badly, at least it will kill me, not anyone else?” Nesta couldn’t keep the sharpness from her tone. Rhys had winnowed them here, depositing them at the base of the mountain, as no magic could pierce its heavy wards. Nesta hadn’t been able to look him in the eye.

  “You’re not going to be killed. Either by that blade or anything in there.” His jaw tightened as he surveyed the towering gates far above. He’d put many of the current inmates inside, and Nesta had heard Feyre’s harrowing tales of visiting the Prison on several occasions. Little frightened her sister—that Feyre found it to be petrifying didn’t help the twisting sensation in Nesta’s gut.

  “You remember the rules?” Cassian asked as they neared the gates of bone, intricately carved with every manner of creature.

  “Yes.” Hold Cassian’s hand the entire time, don’t speak of Amren, don’t speak of anything regarding the Trove or the court or Feyre’s pregnancy, don’t speak of the creatures he put in here, don’t do anything except walk and stay on high alert. And get that Harp out before it could unleash chaos.

  The bone gates groaned open. Cassian tensed, but kept climbing upward. “Looks like we’re expected.”

  Down into the darkness, into hell itself, they walked.

  Nesta clutched Cassian’s hand, her rope to life in this lightless place. One of Cassian’s Siphons flared with red light, bloodying the black walls, the doors they sometimes passed.

  Cassian moved with the fluidity of a trained warrior, but she noted his gaze darting around the path they walked, which plunged into the earth. The entrance to the hidden hall she’d seen in her scrying had been far, far below—between an iron door with a single rune upon it and a little alcove in the stone.

  Soft noises whispered through the rock. She could have sworn nails scraped behind one door. When she glanced at Cassian, his face paled. He noticed her stare and patted his left pectoral—right above the thick scar there. Indication of who was imprisoned behind that door. Who ran their nails over it.

  Her blood chilled. Blue Annis.

  Cobalt skin and iron claws, he’d said. Annis savored eating her prey.

  Nesta swallowed, squeezing Cassian’s hand, and they continued downward.

  Minutes or hours passed, she didn’t know. In the gloom, the heavy, whispering air, time had ceased to matter.

  Nausea roiled through her. Amren had been in this place for thousands of years, thrown in by fools who had feared her in her true form, that being of flame and light who had laid waste to Hybern’s army.

  Nesta couldn’t imagine spending a day in this place. A year.

  She didn’t know how Amren hadn’t gone mad. How she’d found the strength to survive.

  She’d treated Amren badly. The small thought wedged into her mind. She had used her, exactly as Amren said, as a shield against everyone. And Amren, who had survived millennia in this awful place, alongside the worst monsters in the land … Amren found her abhorrent.

  Misery burned like acid.

  Something pounded through the rock to their left, and Nesta flinched. Cassian squeezed her hand. “Ignore it,” he murmured.

  Down and down, into a place worse than hell. And then she spied an alcove burned into her memory, behind her eyelids. And—yes, beside it was that iron door with the sole rune on its surface.

  “Here.” Nesta jerked her chin toward the bald stone. “Through the rock.”

  When Cassian didn’t reply, she twisted to him.

  His focus lay fixed on the iron door. His golden-brown skin had gone ashen.

  His lips mouthed the name of the being behind it.

  Lanthys.

  “You’re sure …” Cassian swallowed. “You’re sure this is the place?”

  “Yes.” Nesta didn’t grant them time to reconsider as she outstretched her free hand and stepped up to the stone.

  Her fingers passed through the rock. As if it didn’t exist.

  Cassian yanked her back, but she pushed forward, and her hand, then her wrist, then her arm vanished. And then they were through.

  “I had no idea there was anything else in the Prison,” Cassian breathed as they continued down another hallway. No doors lined it, just smooth stone. “I thought there were only cells.”

  “I told you,” she answered. “I saw a chamber here.”

  The light of the Siphon atop Cassian’s hand revealed an archway and openness—and there it was. Raised symbols carved into the floor cast shadows against the crimson light. The entire round chamber was full of them. And in its center—the golden Harp, covered in intricate embossing, set with silver strings.

  It didn’t sing, didn’t speak. It might as well have been an ordinary instrument.

  Which was exactly why Nesta tugged Cassian into a halt beneath the archway, not daring to step onto the carved floor. “We need to be careful.” Nesta peered into the vast, empty chamber. “There are wards and spells here.”

  Cassian rubbed his jaw with his free hand. “My magic doesn’t skew toward spells. I can blast apart magical shields and wards, but if it’s a trap like Feyre and Amren faced at the Summer Court, I can’t sense it.”

  Nesta tapped her foot in a swift beat. “Rhysand’s wards on the Mask couldn’t keep me out. The Mask wished for me to come, so it allowed me through. Maybe the Harp will do the same. Like calls to like, as you all enjoy saying.”

  “I’m not letting you go into that room alone. Not if that thing wants to play.”

  “I don’t think we have a choice.”

  He squeezed her hand, calluses rubbing against her own. “You lead, I’ll follow.”

  “What if my presence would go unnoticed, but yours sets off a trap? We can’t risk that.”

  His throat bobbed. “I can’t risk you.”

  The words slammed into her heart. “I … You can. You have to.” Before he could further object, she said, “You are training me
to be a warrior. Yet you’d keep me from danger? How is that any better than a caged animal?”

  The words must have struck something in him. “All right.” Cassian unbuckled the great sword he’d carried for her. He looped it around her middle, its weight considerable. She adjusted her balance. “We try it your way. And at the first sign of something wrong, we leave.”

  “Fine.” She swallowed the dryness in her mouth.

  His eyes glittered, noting her hesitation. “Not too late to change your mind.”

  Nesta bristled. “I’m not allowing anyone but us to get their hands on the Harp.”

  With that, she stepped to the demarcation line between the hall and the chamber. Bracing herself, she pushed a foot forward.

  It was like stepping through mud.

  But the wards allowed her through. Nesta took another step, arm extended behind her to hold Cassian’s hand. The pressure of the spells pushed against her calves, her hips, her body, squeezing her lungs. “These are like no wards I’ve felt before,” she whispered, standing still as she waited for any hint of a triggered trap. “They feel old. Incredibly old.”

  “They probably predate this place being used as a prison.”

  “What was it before?”

  “No one knows. It’s always been here. But this chamber …” He surveyed the space beyond her. “I didn’t know places like this existed here. Maybe …” He frowned. “Part of me wonders if the Prison was either built or stocked with its inmates to hide the Harp’s presence. There are so many terrible powers here, and the wards on the mountain itself … I wonder if someone hid the Harp knowing that it’d never be noticed with so much awful magic around it.”

  Her mouth had dried again. “But who put it here?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. Someone who existed before the High Lords ruled. Rhys told me once that this island might have even been an eighth court.”

  “You don’t recognize these markings on the ground?”