A Court of Silver Flames (A Court of Thorns and Roses) Read online

  Then she’d learned precisely how mercilessly it might be ripped away. What the cost of hope and joy and love truly was. She never wanted to face it again. Never wanted to endure what she’d felt in that forest clearing, with the King of Hybern chuckling, blood everywhere. Her power hadn’t been enough to save them that day. She supposed she’d been punishing it for failing her ever since, keeping it locked up tight inside her.

  Feyre said, “Because you’re my sister.”

  “Yes, and you’re always sacrificing for us, your sad little human family—”

  “You spent five hundred gold marks last night!” Feyre exploded, shooting to her feet to pace in front of the hearth. “Do you know how much money that is? Do you know how embarrassed I was when we got the bill this morning and my friends—my family—had to hear all about it?”

  Nesta hated that word. The term Feyre used to describe her court. As if things had been so miserable with the Archeron family that Feyre had needed to find another one. Had chosen her own. Nesta’s nails bit into her palms, the pain overriding that of her tightening chest.

  Feyre went on, “And to hear not just the amount of the bill, but what you spent it on—”

  “Oh, so it’s about you saving face—”

  “It is about how it reflects upon me, upon Rhys, and upon my court when my damned sister spends our money on wine and gambling and does nothing to contribute to this city! If my sister cannot be controlled, then why should we have the right to rule over anyone else?”

  “I am not a thing to be controlled by you,” Nesta said icily. Everything in her life, from the moment she was born, had been controlled by other people. Things happened to her; anytime she tried to exert control, she’d been thwarted at every turn—and she hated that even more than the King of Hybern.

  “That’s why you’re going to train at Windhaven. You will learn to control yourself.”

  “I won’t go.”

  “You’re going, even if you have to be tied up and hauled there. You will follow Cassian’s lessons, and you will do whatever work Clotho requires in the library.” Nesta blocked out the memory—of the dark depths of that library, the ancient monster that had dwelled there. It had saved them from Hybern’s cronies, yes, but … She refused to think of it. “You will respect her, and the other priestesses in the library,” Feyre said, “and you will never give them a moment’s trouble. Any free time is yours to spend as you wish. In the House.”

  Hot rage pumped through her, so loud Nesta could barely hear the real fire before which her sister paced. Was glad of the roaring in her head when the sound of wood cracking as it burned was so much like her father’s breaking neck that she couldn’t stand to light a fire in her own home.

  “You had no right to close up my apartment, to take my things—”

  “What things? A few clothes and some rotten food.” Nesta didn’t have the chance to wonder how Feyre knew that. Not as her sister said, “I’m having that entire building condemned.”

  “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “It’s done. Rhys already visited the landlord. It will be torn down and rebuilt as a shelter for families still displaced by the war.”

  Nesta tried to master her uneven breathing. One of the few choices she’d made for herself, stripped away. Feyre didn’t seem to care. Feyre had always been her own master. Always got whatever she wished. And now, it seemed, Feyre would be granted this wish, too. Nesta seethed, “I never want to speak to you again.”

  “That’s fine. You can talk to Cassian and the priestesses instead.”

  There was no insulting her way out of it. “I won’t be your prisoner—”

  “No. You can go wherever you wish. As Amren said, you are free to leave the House. If you can manage those ten thousand steps.” Feyre’s eyes blazed. “But I’m done paying for you to destroy yourself.”

  Destroy herself. The silence hummed in Nesta’s ears, rippled across her flames, suffocating them, stilling the unbearable wrath. Utter, frozen silence.

  She’d learned to live with the silence that had started the moment her father had died, the silence that had begun crushing her when she’d gone to his study at their half-wrecked manor days later and found one of his pathetic little wood carvings. She’d wanted to scream and scream, but there had been so many people around. She’d held herself together until the meeting with all those war heroes had ended. Then she’d let herself fall. Straight into this silent pit.

  “The others are waiting,” Feyre said. “Elain should be done by now.”

  “I want to talk to her.”

  “She’ll come visit when she’s ready.”

  Nesta held her sister’s stare.

  Feyre’s eyes gleamed. “You think I don’t know why you’ve pushed even Elain away?”

  Nesta didn’t want to talk about it. About the fact that it had always been her and Elain. And, somehow, now it had become Feyre and Elain instead. Elain had chosen Feyre and these people, and left her behind. Amren had done the same. She’d made it clear on the barge.

  Nesta didn’t care that during the war with Hybern, her own tentative bond had formed with Feyre, forged over common goals: protect Elain, save the human lands. They were excuses, Nesta had realized, to paper over what now boiled and raged in her heart.

  Nesta didn’t bother replying, and Feyre didn’t speak again as she departed.

  There was nothing to bind them together anymore.

  CHAPTER

  3

  Cassian watched Rhysand carefully stir his tea.

  He’d seen Rhys slice up their enemies with the same cold precision that he was now using with that spoon.

  They sat in the High Lord’s study, illuminated by the light of green glass lamps and a heavy iron chandelier. The two-level atrium occupied the northern end of the business wing, as Feyre called it.

  There was the main floor of the study—bedecked in the hand-knotted blue carpets that Feyre had gone to Cesere to select from its artisans—with its two sitting areas, Rhys’s desk, and twin long tables near the bookshelves. At the far end of the room, a little dais led into a broad raised alcove flanked by more books—and in its center, a massive, working model of their world, the stars and planets around it, and some other fancy things that had been explained to Cassian once before he deemed them boring and proceeded to ignore them completely.

  Az, of course, had been fascinated. Rhys had built the model himself centuries ago. It could not only track the sun, but also tell time, and it somehow allowed Rhys to ponder the existence of life beyond their own world and other things Cassian had, again, instantly forgotten.

  On the mezzanine, accessible by an ornate wrought-iron spiral staircase just to the left when one walked in, were more books—thousands in this space alone—a few glass cabinets full of delicate objects that Cassian stayed away from (for fear of breaking them with his “bear paws,” as Mor described his hands), and several of Feyre’s paintings.

  There were plenty of those on the bottom level, too, some in shadow and meant to stay that way, some revealed by the streaming light reflecting off the river at the foot of the sloping lawn. Cassian’s High Lady had a way of capturing the world that always made him pause. Her paintings sometimes unsettled him. The truths she portrayed weren’t always pleasant ones.

  He’d gone to her studio a few times to watch her paint. Surprisingly, she had let him.

  The first time he’d visited, he’d found Feyre tense at her easel. She was painting what he realized was an emaciated rib cage, so thin he could count most of the bones.

  When he spotted a familiar birthmark on the too-thin left arm beside it, he eyed the same mark amid the tattoo on her own extended arm, brush in hand. He merely nodded to her, an acknowledgment that he understood.

  He had never been as thin as Feyre during his own years of poverty, but he understood the hunger in each brushstroke. The desperation. The hollow, empty feeling that felt like those grays and blues and pale, sickly white. The despair of the black p
it behind that torso and arm. Death, hovering close like a crow awaiting carrion.

  He’d thought about that painting a great deal in the days afterward—how it had made him feel, how close they’d all come to losing their High Lady before they’d ever met her.

  Rhys finished stirring his tea and set down his spoon with terrible gentleness.

  Cassian raised his eyes to the portrait behind his High Lord’s mammoth desk. The golden faelight orbs in the room were positioned to make it seem alive, glowing.

  Feyre’s face—a self-portrait—seemed to laugh at him. At the mate whose back was to her. So she could watch over him, Rhys said.

  Cassian prayed that the gods were watching over him as Rhys sipped from his tea and said, “You’re ready?”

  He leaned back in his seat. “I’ve gotten young warriors in line before.”

  Rhys’s violet eyes glowed. “Nesta’s not some young buck pushing the boundaries.”

  “I can handle her.”

  Rhys stared at his tea.

  Cassian recognized that face. That serious, unnervingly calm face.

  “You did good work getting the Illyrians back in order this spring, you know.”

  He braced himself. He’d been anticipating this talk since he’d spent four months with the Illyrians, soothing the jagged edges amongst the war-bands, making sure the families who’d lost fathers and sons and brothers and husbands were taken care of, that they knew he was there to help and to listen, and generally making it very fucking clear that if they rose up against Rhys, there would be hell to pay.

  The Blood Rite last spring had taken care of the worst of them, including the troublemaker Kallon, whose arrogance hadn’t been enough to compensate for his shoddy training when he’d been slain just miles from the slopes of Ramiel. That Cassian had heaved a sigh of relief at the news of the young male’s demise had lingered with him, but the Illyrians had stopped their grumbling soon after. And Cassian had spent the time since then rebuilding their ranks, overseeing the training of promising new warriors and making sure the seasoned ones were still in good enough shape to fight again. Replenishing their depleted numbers had at least given the Illyrians something to focus on—and Cassian knew there was little he could add anymore beyond the occasional inspection and council meeting.

  So the Illyrians were at peace—or as peaceful as a warrior society could be, with their constant training. Which was what Rhys wanted. Not just because a rebellion would be a disaster, but because of this. What he knew Rhys was about to say.

  “I think it’s time for you to take on bigger responsibilities.”

  Cassian grimaced. There it was.

  Rhys chuckled. “You can’t honestly mean to tell me you didn’t know the Illyrian situation was a test?”

  “I’d hoped not,” he grumbled, tucking in his wings.

  Rhys smirked, though he quickly sobered. “Nesta is not a test, though. She’s … different.”

  “I know.” Even before she’d been Made, he’d seen it. And after that terrible day in Hybern … He’d never forgotten the Bone Carver’s whispered words in the Prison.

  What if I tell you what the rock and darkness and sea beyond whispered to me, Lord of Bloodshed? How they shuddered in fear, on that island across the sea. How they trembled when she emerged. She took something—something precious. She ripped it out with her teeth.

  What did you wake that day in Hybern, Prince of Bastards?

  That final question had chased him from slumber more nights than he cared to admit.

  Cassian made himself say, “We haven’t seen a hint of her power since the war. For all we know, it vanished with the Cauldron’s breaking.”

  “Or maybe it’s dormant, as the Cauldron is now asleep and safely hidden in Cretea with Drakon and Miryam. Her power could rise at any moment.”

  A chill skittered down Cassian’s spine. He trusted the Seraphim prince and the half-human woman to keep the Cauldron concealed, but there would be nothing they or anyone could do to control its power if awoken.

  Rhys said, “Be on your guard.”

  “You sound like you’re afraid of her.”

  “I am.”

  Cassian blinked.

  Rhys lifted a brow. “Why do you think I sent you to get her this morning?”

  Cassian shook his head, unable to help his laugh. Rhys smiled, lacing his fingers behind his head and leaning back in his seat.

  “You need to get out in the practice ring more, brother,” Cassian told him, surveying his friend’s powerful body. “Don’t want that mate of yours to find any soft bits.”

  “She never finds any soft bits when I’m around her,” Rhys said, and Cassian laughed again.

  “Is Feyre going to kick your ass for what you said earlier?”

  “I already told the servants to clear out for the rest of the day as soon as you take Nesta up to the House.”

  “I think the servants hear you fighting plenty.” Indeed, Feyre had no hesitation when it came to telling Rhys that he’d stepped out of line.

  Rhys threw him a wicked smile. “It’s not the fighting I don’t want them hearing.”

  Cassian grinned right back, even as something like jealousy tugged on his gut. He didn’t begrudge them their happiness—not at all. There were plenty of times when he’d see the joy on Rhys’s face and have to walk away to keep from weeping, because his brother had waited for that love, earned it. Rhys had gone to the mat again and again to fight for that future with Feyre. For this.

  But sometimes, Cassian saw that mating ring, and the portrait behind the desk, and this house, and just … wanted.

  The clock chimed ten thirty, and Cassian rose. “Enjoy your not-fighting.”

  “Cassian.”

  The tone stopped him.

  Rhys’s face was carefully calm. “You didn’t ask what bigger responsibilities I have in mind for you.”

  “I assumed Nesta was big enough,” he hedged.

  Rhys gave him a knowing look. “You could be more.”

  “I’m your general. Isn’t that enough?”

  “Is it enough for you?”

  Yes, he almost said. But found himself hesitating.

  “Oh, you’re certainly hesitating,” Rhys said. Cassian tried to snap up his mental shields, but found they were intact. Rhys was smiling like a cat. “You still reveal everything on that face of yours, brother,” Rhys crooned. But his amusement swiftly faded. “Az and I have good reason to believe that the human queens are scheming again. I need you to look into it. Deal with it.”

  “What, we’re doing some role reversal? Az gets to lead the Illyrians now?”

  “Don’t play stupid,” Rhys said coolly.

  Cassian rolled his eyes. But they both knew Azriel would sooner disband and destroy Illyria than help it. Convincing their brother that the Illyrians were a people worth saving was still a battle amongst the three of them.

  Rhys went on, “Azriel is juggling more than he’ll admit right now. I’m not dumping another responsibility on him. This task of yours will help him.” Rhys flashed a challenging smile. “And let us all see what you’re really made of.”

  “You want me to play spy?”

  “There are other ways to glean information, Cass, besides peeking through keyholes. Az isn’t a courtier. He works from the shadows. But I need someone—I need you—standing in the open. Mor can fill you in on the details. She’ll be back from Vallahan at some point today.”

  “I’m no courtier, either. You know that.” The thought made his stomach churn.

  “Scared?”

  Cassian let the Siphons atop the backs of his hands shimmer with inner fire. “So I’m to deal with these queens as well as train Nesta?”

  Rhys leaned back, his silence confirmation.

  Cassian strode toward the shut double doors, reining in a string of curses. “We’re in for a long few months, then.”

  He was almost to the door when Rhys said quietly, “You certainly are.”

  “Did y
ou keep those fighting leathers from the war?” Cassian said to Nesta by way of greeting as he stalked into the entry hall. “You’ll need them tomorrow.”

  “I made sure Elain packed them for her,” Feyre replied from her perch on the stairs, not looking at her stiff-backed sister standing at their base. He wondered if his High Lady had noticed the disappearing servants yet.

  The secret smile in Feyre’s eyes told him she knew plenty about it. And what was coming for her in a few minutes.

  Thank the gods he was getting out of here. He’d probably have to fly to the sea itself not to hear Rhys. Or feel his power when he … Cassian stopped himself before he could finish the thought. He and his brothers had put a good deal of distance between the stupid youths they’d been—fucking any female who showed interest, often in the same room as each other—and the males they were now. He wanted to keep it that way.

  Nesta just crossed her arms.

  “Are you winnowing us up to the House?” he asked Feyre.

  As if in answer, Mor said from behind him, “I am.” She winked at Feyre. “She’s got a special meeting with Rhysie.”

  Cassian grinned as Mor strode in from the residential wing. “I thought you wouldn’t be back until later today.” He threw open his arms, folding her against his chest and squeezing tight. Mor’s waist-length golden hair smelled of cold seas.

  She squeezed him back. “I didn’t feel like waiting until the afternoon. Vallahan is already knee-deep in snow. I needed some sunshine.”

  Cassian pulled away to scan her beautiful face, as familiar to him as his own. Her brown eyes were shadowed despite her words. “What’s wrong?”

  Feyre rose from her seat, noting the strain as well. “Nothing,” Mor said, flipping her hair over a shoulder.

  “Liar.”

  “I’ll tell you all later,” Mor conceded, and looked toward Nesta. “You should wear the leathers tomorrow. When you train up at Windhaven, you’ll want them against the cold.”

  Nesta leveled a bored, icy look at Mor.

  Mor just beamed at her in return.

  Feyre took that as a good moment to casually step between them, Rhys’s shield still hard as steel around her. Never mind that they’d all be real damn close in about a minute. “Today we’ll let you get settled at the House—you can unpack your things. Get some rest, if you want.”