Chapter Text
She was almost happy when the path turned to water in front of her and the ground rushed up to meet her. Her throat was rough wood. Her skin was as hot and dry as the sandstone of Velaris.
At first, when she collapsed, she wasn’t unconscious. If she were a ghost she would have walked out of her body and over the air of night like her sister with her tawny, unmutilated wings. In her mouth, her tongue was swollen. She could not have spoken if she wanted to.
It was a fever. It was not like sleeping.
-
Her brave, impulsive, boneheaded sister was going to die. Nesta lay awake that night staring at the dark trees thinking about it. She held still until she couldn’t feel her legs, then her torso, then her arms, until she was so still that it felt like she was floating in nothing. There was something like a stone in the ground under her, or in her blankets, or maybe in her stomach. Maybe in the bone of her back. Something deeper than the Cauldron’s magic. Or maybe. Maybe not. Maybe it was just older.
-
The Cauldron said, give me everything. In her dream it said little lioness. What did you believe? That the great rip of magic you tore out of the world with your mortal teeth would remain with you forever? That no one would demand it of you? That you would never have to put it on the altar and set fire to it yourself? They would demand everything of her but they would not let her die. Give it up. Give it up and the world goes on turning, as it always was, as it will always be.
-
At every cliff they passed, she had the same thought.
Cassian didn’t notice. Nesta couldn’t remember a time when she didn’t notice. A knife. A cliff. A tinder box. A rope. Only half of her ever meant it, but it happened anyway. It was muscle memory. One of the pulls of finally doing it was that if she did it, she would no longer have to think about doing it. That might have been the worst part: feeling the hurt, and the monotony of thinking about it. Like the perpetual buzz of a fly.
Was Cassian just being strong and not showing her that he knew how she felt? He used to make her feel alive. She had liked him then. Now the only feeling that she trusted was the deadness that made her eye the cliff edge. She couldn’t trust the rage of being betrayed by the Inner Circle, but she could trust the secret instinct that told her she was nothing. She could be nothing.
Cassian wouldn’t be heartbroken forever. Even Elain, she thought, would eventually be fine.
She wondered how much good she’d ever been for Elain in the first place.
Cassian guided them past a dozen miles of cliff. She thought the same thing the whole time. He didn’t turn around.
-
Nesta was at the cliff edge at midnight. Or the balcony of the House of Wind. Or somewhere, she couldn’t remember.
While she was staring over the edge into the darkness below, she realized she wanted to live. It was inconvenient.
She’d never been this close to her own death outside of the heat of battle, and it was eerily like the Cauldron, where that writhing dark had come up to devour her and her one thought had been that she had to live, no matter what it cost. The misery would follow her everywhere except off the edge. She thought it would. Maybe.
Nesta wanted to live.
It didn’t dull the desire to die at all, just crammed it in with the new burning wish to have a life that wasn’t one death march after another, one leg she had to gnaw off after another. Was she going to burst from internal pressure? Overwhelmed, she turned away from the cliff edge and walked.
She wasn’t sure how far she walked, or where to. Her thoughts were too consuming. Dense woods rose up around her. It was dark. If she turned around, she wouldn’t know the way back.
Her head still hurt. She was so tired. Wanting it all to end forever at the same time as she wanted it all to be different was exhausting. It must have rained recently. It smelled like rain. The clay mud beneath her feet was cold.
Then she was on her hands and knees, disoriented in the dark, surrounded by shadows, on the freezing wet earth. Was she drowning? Had she left a trail that anyone could follow? She was so tired.
She could lie down, she thought. It would be alright if she laid down for one minute and closed her eyes.
-
She was on the eighth spin, on the tip of one toe, in a whirlwind of black skirts. Around her the orchestra were playing the waltz like it was the last night any of them would ever hold an instrument. She had no idea what she had been planning to do when Rhysand asked her to seduce Eris: be who Rhys thought she'd become, perhaps, a well-heeled temptress. The fruit of all of Cassian’s labors. Perhaps she had been planning on throwing punch at all the guests. Perhaps that was unfair— but she didn’t care. Instead she was entering the ninth turn. Her foot might leave the ground. For all she knew, she might fly.
-
As Nesta dreamed of dancing, silver fire burned in the cold mud around her. It burned so bright it turned the surrounding thicket to ash, and just as it was reaching the bottom limbs of the pine trees, all of a sudden, she disappeared.
-
When Nesta woke up, she was warm, which was odd. And also very, very cramped. Her stiff back complained when she turned her head.
There was a low hanging of brown moss overhead, which was also odd. And somebody nearby was humming to themselves and tapping their foot on the floor. Who had captured her? Nesta kept herself from turning her head, because all of her muscles felt like burnt taffy and her eyes were throbbing against even the little light from the nearby fire. She settled for clearing her sore throat and saying,
“Where the hell am I?” which came out as “Whuhu,” followed by a wheezing cough. It was only what she should have expected, she thought bitterly, after having an epiphany and passing out in a mud pit.
“Good morning,” said the stranger’s voice. Whoever had stuffed her into the world’s tiniest bed had tucked the blankets in quite tight, and Nesta kicked to free herself. “How do you like your eggs, little stranger? I don’t suppose you’ve had wood-duck eggs before? Very nice. Very rich. Is fried good? Fried in whale fat, oh yes. That’s how I like them.”
Nesta managed to untangle herself from the blankets and stick her head out of the sleeping nook without pulling a muscle. The firelight made her headache worse. Over the fire, stirring something in a pot and still humming, was a lesser Fae that Nesta could only see the back of. She had long ears tipped with tufts of orange lichen and a hedgehog nested in her hair that peeked out at Nesta with beady eyes. When Nesta sat up, her whole back popped like corn in a hot pan.
“Tell me where I am,” she demanded.
“Oh, nowhere. That’s our rock. Nowhere!”
“Nowhere is nowhere. Tell me where I am.” Cassian must be worried sick.
“Mother alive, big lady. Where? Ha. You must know better than I do. You winnowed here, and I only live here.”
“You brought me here,” Nesta accused coldly.
“If by ‘brought,’ you mean I found you at midnight in my witch-hazel bush, burning with gray fire head to foot, covered in mud and as fast asleep as a toad in wintertime and brought you inside, then yes, I did. How you got there in the first place I haven’t a clue. You did do quite a number on my poor witch-hazel shrub, though. Don’t think it’ll ever grow back.”
“I can’t winnow.” No one had ever tried to teach her.
“Well, you did that, or you sleepwalked from wherever it is you come from.”
“From Night.”
The hag’s eyes almost bugged out of her head. A drop of egg dripped from the end of her spoon onto the coals.
“…where are we?” Nesta asked, bracing herself for the answer.
“Nowhere,” the hag laughed, more nervously this time. “Nowhere at all.”
“That’s still not an answer,” said Nesta, irritated by the vagueness and the headache. “Where are we?”
“A little island east of Autumn. Don’t belong to nobody and nobody belongs to it. Except me and my neighbors. I made your eggs fried, since you didn’t say how you wanted them cooked. Anything on them?” The hag spooned the eggs out onto two wooden plates and handed one to Nesta, smiling to reveal a mouth full of mostly copper teeth. The hag dug in with her hands, and there didn’t seem to be a fork in the whole little earthworked hut, so Nesta gingerly followed suit. She was very hungry, she found. Apparently almost dying and then passing out of exhaustion in the woods would do that to a person. She looked warily up at the hag every few seconds, but the hag didn’t notice.
“So,” said the hag when she was finished with her breakfast and had moved onto wiping the salt off her plate with her fingers, “You come from the Night Court. You can’t winnow. Only you can, sort of, or something like it. And you reek of magic. If you don’t mind my telling you. And witch-hazel, but that goes without saying.”
Nesta wondered what was wrong with her that having a hag telling her she smells strange and making her eat fried eggs with her hands was the first time in a month that she hadn’t felt like she lived in a waking dream, even though she was very cross. Her stomach had stopped grumbling. She hoped Elain wasn’t worried, if Cassian had already given up searching for her and returned to Velaris.
“Come, come. Let’s be outside. Solve what’s happened to you once the sun’s up. Door’s this way.” The hag puttered over to the small wooden door and put on her hat, which had a hole in it for the hedgehog to stick his face out of, and then wound a long scarf around her neck. Nesta followed her, hunching down because of the low ceiling. There was still mud on the knees of her trousers.
Outside, the sky was swiftly lightening with the sunrise. The little hut was built into a hill with a sprawling herb garden on top. At its very edge was a heap of ash and burnt twigs, with a Nesta-shaped scorch mark in the middle. Frost starred the blackened patch of earth.
It was like the night she nearly set her bedroom ablaze with a nightmare. Her magic still felt strong where it rested inside her, almost purring, cold and hot at once like a burn in water.
The sun was coming up through a grove of birch trees, and then beyond them was the smooth cool ocean, too far away to hear. The sky was turning scarlet and rose-colored with a stripe of indigo on the western horizon. It felt like a different world here than it did in the House, on the mountain, with the king of Hybern’s blood dripping down the blade and onto her hand. Not a world of shadow and invasion and a million tangled puppet strings snarled together. The sun’s edge cut the wintry sea in two like a scythe dividing the harvest.
“I have to get back.”
“Oh, well, I’m not stopping you.”
“You don’t know someone who can help me get home?”
The hag shrugged.
“I can ask my neighbour, but I don’t think so. You got yourself here. Seems to me you’ve got to get yourself back, if back is really where you want to go.”
Elain, Gwyn, and Emerie were behind her, and so was Feyre, and everyone seemed to think she was Feyre’s only hope for surviving childbed. So she should have wanted to go back. The hag was right: her magic had gotten her here, and she would have to find her own way back.
“What do they call you in the Night Court, little stranger?”
“It won’t make you safe to know.”
“Agh. Tell me anyway. Who will I tell it to? The nymphs? The ducks? The grass?”
“It’s an awful world past those shores.”
The hag looked up at her with put-upon disappointment. “I am fourteen hundred years old. You think I don’t know what sort of world is out there? You think I was born here and lived here for fourteen hundred years? Fah. Fiddle-faddle. I can tell looking at you that that’s the mark of a kelpie tooth on your face, and what does that tell you about me? Yes, it’s a wretched world, a male’s world, whether Fae or mortal. One big bowstring waiting for an unarmored back to pierce through.” The hag chewed at a bit of grass, now considering the sunrise with her chin between her fingers. “Would you like to help me dig in the garden this morning?”
“No, thank you,” said Nesta, because she did not want to do menial labor or feel like a beast of burden ever again in her life, but then something stopped her. Something like a sort of fierce patience that wanted to cling to this morning for as long as she could.
“If you make me another batch of eggs.”
The hag cackled, unholstered her wooden spoon from her belt, and waddled back inside.
-
Nesta acquired a new respect for Elain. She was currently almost a foot into the ground, trying to dig up the most stubborn weed that the Mother ever cursed the earth with. The hag had warned her not to break the root or the plant would come back again, but she wasn’t sure the root of this plant was even possible to break. She was beating at the frozen ground with the hag’s mattock and barely scraping it.
“You could use that magic of yours, you know.”
“I don’t—”
Nesta pictured Amren’s smug face and managed to put a half-inch cut in the soil. She scooped more of the dirt into her pile with her dusty, frigid hands.
“I don’t know how to. Believe me, if I could fry this stupid thing and salt the earth where it’s growing—”
The hag made a sign for warding off evil. “Don’t you go ruining more of my good dirt. You’ve done enough. What do you mean, you don’t know how to?”
“It doesn’t always come when called.”
The hag clicked her tongue in disapproval. “To think that the Night Court wasted something like you on whatever it is you were doing instead of learning how to use all of that power. No wonder your magic took you away. Neither of you must’ve wanted to be cooped up like that.”
Nesta struck another blow into the dirt. “I don’t know what it wants.”
“Magic likes somewhere to go,” said the hag.
“Well,” Nesta grunted, giving another almighty tug on the weed, which refused to budge, “I’ve certainly gone somewhere. Does this place even have a name?”
“The neighbors and I call it our ‘dear old rock.’ It’s never had a name besides that, far as we know. We’re planning a get-together in three days. I’m sure they’d be terribly pleased to have you to talk to. We’re all hags, all three of us. Hags like gossip more than almost anything, you know. And there’s not much to be had here. You wouldn’t believe how many times we’ve had to tell each other the same stories over and over, just to have something to titter about.”
“What makes you think I’m going to tell you about my life?” Nesta bit out. However much of a life she had left in Velaris.
“Oh, you can lie, if you like. We’ll have just as much fun either way. Are you a good liar? That makes for the most fun.”
Nesta sat back on her heels, sweaty and out of breath. “So none of you know how to winnow.”
“Such a High Fae question to ask. Don’t you ever want to take your time? I suppose you must not. You have battles to fight and backs to stab and balls to attend.”
She had no idea. What was she supposed to do if she wasn’t busy trying to make Cassian and Feyre forgive her?
“Are there wards on this island?”
“Something of the sort. We have a friend who keeps them up for us. No one who doesn’t know the place will be able to find you here, if that’s what you mean.”
Nesta put her head down and kept digging for another several silent minutes. She broke up the dry earth, drawing out rocks, until she was past elbow-deep, and finally, with one tremendous yank, the weed came free, and Nesta fell ass-backward from the momentum. The hag threw her head back and laughed and laughed, clapping her hands together.
At first Nesta was incensed, and a thread in her gut twinged as she remembered Cassian laughing when she’d fallen down the stairs. She opened her mouth to say something stinging, but it wasn’t a cruel laugh. The hag met Nesta’s eyes while she laughed, like she expected her to laugh too. To her surprise, a hesitant smile crept across her face.
When the hag cleared her throat, she said,
“Very well done, little stranger. I haven’t had the strength to dig that one up for years.”
“What do I call you?”
“Madge,” the hag replied. “Madge is just fine. And yourself? Or am I still in horrible danger if you tell me?”
“Nesta,” Nesta answered. “My name is Nesta.”
-
The peace didn’t hold. She was so tired that she had to just sit by the hearth for an hour while Madge brought her warm tinctures and she made herself say thank you. The cliff edge was only the previous night, but for a minute or two, it had felt like a lifetime ago.
It couldn’t be possible that she didn’t want to die anymore. She had wanted to die for so long that she wasn’t sure she knew what anything else felt like. She must be fooling herself, she decided. She must be dreaming, as if she could undo the death that the Cauldron inflicted on her by wishing it away. This will pass, she told herself. This will pass. Don’t be a fool.
-
Cassian was asking her if she would take the supplies off of her back so he could cook himself some dinner. For himself, not the both of them. She let him labor over the fire with a flint and some dry grass instead of sparking it herself. He didn’t ask her to.
Morrigan was slender and willowy. Nesta was all dimply curves and sharp bones. Cassian didn’t like her putting sugar on her oatmeal.
She’d never been able to decipher his responses to her power. Maybe it didn’t matter if she understood him or not. It only ever felt like stumbling through the dark, bumping up against unfamiliar shapes.
Sometimes there were moments of clarity. She thought she remembered moments of clarity where laughing in the sweaty afterglow felt like having a real friend, but the emptiness was so huge she couldn’t be sure.
She thought of the edge of a thousand cliffs. She had no wings. If she jumped, everything would be over.
Cassian gave her what he didn’t finish himself. She didn’t eat. It wasn’t that she wasn’t hungry, it was that she was too distraught to sleep or swallow. There was a sword-belt, or a noose, around her ribs.
-
Two days later, Madge told Nesta that she should go for a stroll on the beach by herself. Nesta said she didn’t want to, because it was freezing outside. Madge put her ratty shawl around Nesta’s shoulders and promised her some very nice stew when she was back. Might meet our friend! Our friend who makes our wards! She said.
Nesta went. The beach was all gray stones and orange lichen. The water was silver in the early evening, shining white where it broke on the shoals. Out to sea, she spied selkies lying on the floats of ice that the north wind blew down.
-
Rhys was telling Nesta to make someone want to marry her so he could get what he wanted.
-
Nesta’s mother was telling her to make someone want to marry her so she could get what she wanted.
-
When she turned from the water to go back for supper, Eris was there on the beach. He was in a long brown coat with the collar turned up, but the tips of his ears were still pink from the cold. He reached into the coat and pulled out a familiar dagger with a blade like a tongue of white flame.
“One of the seal-lords came to me and told me that his daughter saw a High Fae living with a band of hags,” he said. “I figured it was you. I believe this is yours.”
He held the knife out to her, hilt first, like a last card played onto a gambling table. His face betrayed nothing.
She didn’t answer. “Are you the one who puts the wards around the island? Madge said I might meet someone on my walk.”
“I am, yes. I’ve been known to be virtuous sometimes. I’d also rather my father didn’t know about this place,” he waved her off. “You didn’t answer my question. Are you going to go back?”
“I don’t—”
She realized she didn’t know.
“I can’t winnow.”
“How did you get here, if not by winnowing?”
Nesta lifted her brows in mock innocence. “You must be very curious.”
“You won’t tell me, plunderer of the Cauldron? Fine. Then tell me something else.”
Nesta took the dagger from his hand and tucked it into her belt, where she could feel its magic softly humming.
“Recently I asked you a question, you’ll recall.”
“I do.”
“And that you declined.”
“Yes.”
After Cassian had shouted at her, and after she’d wept and said she’d never be good enough for him, the words feeling as hollow as she did. She had cast about for something she could say, some cut she could slash deep enough in herself.
“If there were things in Hewn City that influenced your refusal that are absent now that you’ve left…” he said slowly and deliberately. “My offer of marriage remains.”
“Is this meant to be a betrothal present?” She asked icily. “Returning my own things to me?”
“It’s yours to keep. Tell me to piss off if you like. If that’s where this conversation is ultimately going I’d prefer you to do it sooner rather than later. I am very busy.”
She shook her head. “Your father is allied with a woman who wants me dead.”
“And he lives with a son who wants him dead, and I’m not the only one,” Eris replied. “You would be protected in the Forest House, Nesta. I’ll swear it to you right now, on whatever kind of oath this soil honors.”
When she gave no response, he tried again, with a hint of frustration he skillfully disguised in careful words and his offered hand.
“Or you could wait. Stay here. Stay anywhere. As soon as I kill him—” he nursed the k in kill like a possession— “Then come to Autumn and marry me. You give me your terms, I’ll take them.”
Nesta already knew her answer, but she delayed saying it so she could ask:
“Why?”
“Why you? Why like this?”
“Precisely.”
His mouth, pale from the cold, thinned to a line.
“Like I told you. You are wasted on the Night Court.”
Out on the ocean, one of the icebergs calved, deep blue, in a burst of white thunder. They heard the rumble from the beach. The new piece of ice came bobbing to the surface, belly-up.
“I don’t want to belong to any Court.” She took a step away from him, the dagger’s pommel still body-warm in her hand from his touch. She squeezed it tighter. “My answer is no. I will not marry you.”
“That’s not…” His breath fogged. “If that’s what you wish.”
“Your intentions aren’t a guarantee, Eris Vanserra, any more than mine are,” she reminded him.
The wind ruffled Eris’ russet hair. He didn’t press the point.
Nesta took a deep breath. “If you can help me, though, there’s something I need.”
“I’ve already kept the truth from the High Lord of Night for your sake. Don’t tell me you’re not pleased he doesn’t know. If it helps, imagine Rhysand punching a hole in the wallpaper when he finds out you’ve escaped. That’s what I’ve been doing. Little bits of plaster flying everywhere.”
She didn’t picture it. She rarely needed help picturing Rhys angry enough to break things. “I need to get a message to my sister and my friends.”
“Your sister?” Eris sneered. “The overbearing fool who had you locked in a house against your will, since she so enjoyed when that was done to her?”
“My sister Elain. And a couple of my friends in Velaris.”
“If you need to keep Feyre and your bulldog of a lover away from you, the fewer who know where you are, the better.”
“I didn’t ask for your opinion. Can you help me or not?”
Eris sighed. “Show me your fire.”
Nesta extended her palm toward him and let silver flame envelop her hand.
“Pick up a leaf from between the beach rocks.”
Although she wasn’t sure about this, Nesta did so. Eris extended his own hand. His fingers were long and white as bone.
“Think about the leaf going into my hand,” he instructed. “Let that want go into your magic. Wait until the fire grows on its own, and then drop the leaf into your palm.”
Nesta thought about Eris’ hand ten feet away from her. She looked at the tiny dry leaf. The fire she held grew colder, and the white flames leapt. She dropped the leaf into the blaze.
From between his index finger and thumb, Eris unveiled the leaf like a mortal magician.
“Very well done. I shouldn’t have expected anything less. It’ll only work with small and light items, like a single page of paper for a letter. Distance doesn’t make it more difficult. Just stay focused on where you want it to go, and it’ll appear there, but be mindful of when you send it. Try to pick a time when the recipient will be alone.”
“Thank you,” she told him. “What do you want in return?”
Eris answered her, “Nothing, for now.”
“How can I know you won’t tell anyone where I am?”
His eyebrows lifted. “I’m surprised you can’t think of why yourself.”
Her lip curled. “Recently I have become worse at disguising my strong distaste for bullshit.”
“Live for five centuries and there are things you’ll learn to tolerate. Because I am trapped between Rhysand and my father, neither of whom I am going to give the most powerful faerie alive to on a silver platter if she’d rather be elsewhere,” Eris explained. “Maybe Cassian or Azriel would come looking for you, but if I found you because of a rumor, my father might, and so Briallyn might too. I can’t make you trust me, but I have nothing to gain from losing you.”
“Are your spies not better informed than your father’s?”
“There are risks I take, and risks I don’t. I’m only telling you to do the same.”
The beach was biting cold, and the tips of Nesta’s ears were completely numb. Madge’s cottage was warm and full of food that nobody told her she couldn’t eat. Still, looking out at the choppy water, Nesta didn’t want to hide in the cover of trees away from curious faerie eyes any more than she wanted to go back to Prythian.
“Has she bewitched anyone else?”
“It’s only a matter of time.”
Could they withstand her if Nesta was not on the front lines? She ran her thumb across the thin sword calluses on her hands. She didn’t want to lose them, but she was so tired. The little candle flame that woke up on that night in the mountains felt painfully small.
She thought about going back to Velaris and facing Cassian and Rhys’ anger, and felt like she was drowning.
“If she comes back, or if my friends are in danger, I’ll come back too.”
She realized she was expecting Eris to argue, but he didn’t.
“I won’t disturb your peace. I hope you enjoy it, however long it lasts. Truly, I do.”
He inclined his head to her, then winnowed away, leaving her alone on the beach with the dagger and the sound of the foam washing up between the pebbles and the rocks.
-
Madge took her to her neighbor’s house for tea. The neighbor, another hag named Saranir, lived twenty minutes inland in a sumptuous stone cottage built against the trunk of a wizened ash tree. Nesta was surprised to see a faerie living under an ash tree’s boughs, but then again she’d been surprised by almost everything that had happened in the last week.
Saranir, sipping from a pewter teacup, ushered them inside, where a birchwood table beneath a diamond-paned window stood set with an iron teapot and a plate of anise shortbread.
“How many of my spoons do you have in your pockets?” she inquired of Madge.
Madge reached into one of her many pockets and produced six teaspoons with a self-satisfied twinkle in her eye.
“You make them so easy to steal.”
“Would you have me padlock my silverware drawer?”
“Of course not. What would be the fun in that?”
Saranir sniffed disapprovingly. “Orla is late, as always.” She gestured to the empty fourth chair at the table. “Now, what do they call you, Night Court Fae?”
“I don’t belong to the Night Court. I only live there,” said Nesta shortly. “May I have some tea?”
“Hmmm,” said Saranir, pouring a stream of bergamot-scented tea into a silver cup. “What do they call you in the Night Court, Fae from nowhere?”
“You don’t have to tell her. Don’t let her push you.” Madge piled three shortbreads onto her plate. “The two of them can call you ‘Destroyer of Madge’s Shrubbery.’ Or something.”
“I’m called Nesta,” said Nesta, pouring a bit of cream into her tea with the delicacy of a trained lady. It felt like a silly thing to do at a tea party where Madge had already set her boots on the tablecloth, but she didn’t want to be rude.
“And I’m Orla,” said a third hag, puttering in through the door. This one had a briar pipe between her teeth. She came to clasp Nesta’s hand between two of hers. “You must be the High Fae who did such a number on Madge’s garden.”
“She helped me with the weeding, Orla, she’s all made up for it.”
“Your garden did need weeding,” said Saranir.
“We can’t all be fancy Spring Court hags that make herbs sprout from the ground when they bloody sneeze, now can we?” Madge retorted.
“It’s called building a proper fence to keep the deer off, actually. Five hundred years since any of us lived off the dear old rock, and you think I’ve still got any Spring magic at all? Hmph. Save a bit of shortbread for our guest.”
“Oh, dear, Nesta, would you like a bit?”
“I’m fine.”
Despite her refusal, Madge lifted a piece of shortbread off her own plate and handed it to Nesta.
“Saranir is from Spring, I’m from Autumn, and Madge is a Dawn hag,” Orla explained. “We used to live on Prythian, five hundred years ago, but now we all live here.”
“You think I haven’t explained anything to her?” Madge protested.
“Have you?”
Madge harrumphed, but let Orla continue.
“No one but us and the selkies ever come here, and we haven’t left even to visit in more than three hundred years. It’s quiet.”
“It’s peaceful,” said Saranir noncommittally.
“Oh,” said Nesta.
In her pocket she had two letters written on the only bits of paper Madge had in her hut. They weren’t finished. Her heart sank when she heard how long the hags had been alone, because she wasn’t sure what they’d say to what she was going to ask them.
“It’s better than Prythian, at least,” said Orla, to which they all nod. She looked at Nesta. “I mean no offense, of course.”
That got a humorless laugh out of her. “None taken at all. I’ve seen enough of the whole place for the rest of my life.”
Well, some of the Night Court with a few trips elsewhere. It felt like enough. She didn’t know if she had the energy to imagine that Prythian might hold anything good except Emerie, Gwyn, Feyre and Elain.
“You don’t intend to return?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re welcome to stay as long as you like,” said Saranir.
“You’re very good at weeding,” said Madge.
“We won’t be a bother,” said Orla.
“Although it is very quiet,” said Madge.
“And if you need anything, all you have to do is ask,” said Orla.
“I do,” said Nesta, clearing her throat to brace herself for the social awkwardness of what she was about to ask for. “I do, actually. I’m writing two letters to send to my friends and my sister. And I was wondering if I could ask them to come visit me?”
“Friends?” Orla seemed thrilled.
“How many friends?” asked Saranir.
“Do they know how to get here without lighting anything on fire?”
“I hope it’s seven friends.”
“We won’t have beds High Fae would sleep on.”
“They won’t mind.”
“All these High Fae on our island.”
“One’s an Illyrian.”
“A male Illyrian?” Saranir prickled.
“A female Illyrian.”
“Oh, delightful!”
“I hope it’s eight friends.”
“Mother above, finally a little excitement.”
“Is that a yes?” said Nesta loudly.
“Yes!” Shouted all three hags at once.
“We would be happy to meet your friends,” said Orla.
“Don’t forget the sister,” said Saranir.
“And your sister,” said Orla.
“Would you like more tea?” asked Madge. “Goodness. More guests. I might have to actually dust.”
-
Later, after Nesta had had five cups of bergamot tea and fielded a hundred excited questions about Gwyn and Emerie and Elain and how she was sleeping and if she would like Saranir to crochet her something, her grandmother came unwanted into her mind, narrow-eyed, watching her dance until there were holes in her shoes. Teaching her not to cross her legs when she sat. Teaching her to navigate a conversation like a bishop across a chess board. Stacking up the stones that had made her mind into the fortress it became. Maybe there was a woman somewhere who would’ve worn the silks and learned to laugh like the sound of a harp and not ever said no without rotting from the inside like a waxen corpse. Maybe; she’d never know.
When a gentle storm rolled in over the restless sea, Nesta pretended that the water running down her cheeks and into her collar was rain.
-
Nesta wrote a letter to Elain. It was short and as not-sharp as she could make it. Her language was too perfunctory, except for the I love you at the end, and the request for news of Feyre’s health, and the promise that Elain could come see Nesta if she wanted. She would have to ask Eris for a favor if Elain said yes. Nesta didn’t want Elain to be a target for other people pecking for information. She signed it your sister and then her name.
-
Dear Gwyn and Emerie,
I’m sorry for not writing earlier. I’m not in danger. I left Velaris on my own, and I’m somewhere now that the Inner Circle won’t be able to find.
I miss you both so much. If you’re angry, I understand, but right now I can’t come back.
And if she tried to explain she didn’t think she’d finish the letter, so she didn’t explain, and went on.
If you want to come see me, tell me, and I’ll find a way to get you here. It’s safe, but if you wanted to stay in Night I’d understand.
If something happens and you need me to return, send word and I’ll be there as fast as I can. Please tell me how training is going. I miss it.
Your friend,
Nesta
-
The letters vanished in a burst of her silver fire. Summoning the magic felt like the rush of clarity from diving into cold water, and it made her breathless.
-
“Emerie,” Gwyn hissed. “Come here.”
They were getting cleaned up after training. Emerie was re-braiding her hair and combing oil through the tangled ends. Gwyn was trying to ignore the stench of her own leathers. It had been a rough training day. Everyone was worried about Nesta, and Cassian hadn’t even come.
Gwyn pulled the letter out from where she’d hidden it inside her leathers, rolled up in the sheath meant for a dagger on her leg. It was a little damp from condensation.
Emerie scanned it quickly; it wasn’t long. She covered her mouth with her clenched fist.
“Do you think…?”
“Do you want to?”
“Want to? Nesta’s alive, what else are we going to do?”
“We should talk about it.”
“Okay, so we talk about it. Figure out the smartest way to go about it, but is there any chance we say no?”
Everyone in Velaris was shouting all the time. Shouting or brooding. Something had happened with the Inner Circle, there were seventeen different versions of what, exactly, Nesta had said something to Feyre that made the High Lord hit the roof, Nesta and Cassian disappeared into the mountains, then Nesta disappeared entirely, and the priestesses were whispering, and Azriel was scraping bottom. It was a beehive set to burst.
“Not the slightest,” said Gwyn.
Emerie folded up the letter and handed it back. Gwyn hid it again.
“Let’s find her,” said Emerie softly.
-
Nesta was glad that none of the hags were around when her first response to receiving Gwyn and Emerie’s reply was to let out an uncharacteristic cackle of a laugh that ended abruptly when she had to reread the letter twice, then thrice just to make sure.
In her defense, multiple good things happening in a row took a lot to get used to after several years of horror, war, seeing her sister thrown into the Cauldron, death marches, drinking herself to blacking out, and wishing that someone would get it over with and put a sword through her neck, especially when those good things were small, wonderful, and strange, like a bunch of nice old ladies wanting to have tea with her or her friends coming to visit or getting whisked away by her own magic to a tiny nowhere island where nobody told her what to do.
Collecting herself, Nesta folded up the letter and tucked it into her pocket before she got up and marched downhill to the beach.
-
“You wrote.”
Eris was on the beach again, this time nearly at midnight. He wore the same coat but a different expression she couldn’t make out in the light of the quarter moon. She’d had to borrow a corner of Madge’s cookbook to write him the letter. It was so bitterly cold at night that Nesta couldn’t feel her ears, toes, or fingertips.
“It’s late.”
“I have to make my more illicit meetings when I’m otherwise meant to be asleep,” he explained. His voice sounded a little thick through his cold and runny nose, and she imagined hers did too. “The sunset last time was a special exception.”
“You flatter me.”
“You’re quite sarcastic for someone who needs me to do her a favor.”
Nesta bit back her very witty reply. She did need him to do her a favor, which was why she’d written again.
“My friends in Velaris want to come here. Is there a way they can?”
“This place is unclaimed. No High Lord rules it, and it’s hidden in my wards. Can’t you do whatever it is you did to get yourself here to get them here, too?”
“Obviously not, since I asked for your help. Can you do it?”
His expression changed, but she still couldn’t read it. “Give me three days.”
“In exchange for what?”
“For nothing.”
“That’s what you said last time.”
“And?”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You wouldn’t be the first.”
Nesta took a step closer to him so she didn’t have to speak so loud. She clenched the fists stuffed in her pockets, trying vainly to warm them back up. “I don’t believe everything they say about you, no matter what you think. But the mercenary nature? That, I don’t doubt.”
“Oh? And why is that?”
She drew the dagger on her hip halfway out of its sheath.
“Because this was supposed to buy my trust.”
“Not your trust, not in exchange for something so easily done,” he corrected her, his red brows drawing down sharp over his eyes. “Your ear. And yes, your hand, but you’ve given your answer.”
“This isn’t going to change it.”
“I know that, Nesta. I do remember you mentioning last time your strong distaste for bullshit. Gwyn and Emerie, you said their names were?”
“Yes— you’re ignoring what I said.”
“You want to know what I want? I’m already getting it, Nesta.”
“And?” She bristled.
He said simply, “I want to know what you’re going to do.”
When she didn’t answer, he went on. “I’m curious. Sorry if that angers you. I don’t think you’re a dancing bear, if that’s what you think I mean. But I’m curious. I’ll get your friends out of the House of Wind?”
Something told Nesta this wasn’t the entire truth, but the same something told her it was, nevertheless, true, and he remained her only way of getting Gwyn and Emerie here. So she decided to trust the feeling.
“How will you get them here?”
“There are many ways to get out of the House of Wind.”
“One has to be in it in the first place.”
“You just want me to tell you about my contacts in Velaris, don’t you. Admit it.”
“I want to know my friends will be safe,” Nesta replied, although she wouldn’t have minded hearing a few of Eris’ many secrets.
“My contact in the House of Wind is a banshee from Night. Your friends will be told she acts on your behalf.”
He took out his ungloved hand and lit it like a wick. His fire was red, flickering across their faces against the blue dark. It was also very warm. He held his hand out to her, as if to shake. Nesta felt the ice in her eyelashes melt and turn to drops of water.
“Take a piece of ribbon with you,” she told him. “Then they’ll know it’s not a trick.”
“Any ribbon?”
“Any ribbon will work.”
“In three days at dawn. I’ll contact you if anything changes.”
Before she could think better of it, she took both her hands out of her pockets and cupped them around his fire. The red light played on the thin, silver scars across her knuckles that her mother had left there, and the heat made her fingertips tingle painfully as the numbness receded, but she was grateful to be warm. She remembered, from the Solstice ball, how warm his hands had been around hers.
“Thank you.”
“At your service, Nesta Archeron,” he said lightly, before he turned on his heel and vanished in a blur like shadow on the wings of a moth.
-
Nesta was accompanying her sister to the meeting of the High Lords. She was unaccustomed still to her new shape, with its long sensitive ears, the nose that can tell types of soil apart by smell, and most of all her magic, the tiger, prowling round in her belly, mindless and grinning and hungry. It yowled at the door, begging to be let out. Rhys looked at her sometimes like he could hear it too, and wished he could shoot an arrow through its heart.
It was worse for Elain, for whom it was all crush and noise, bang and flash, cacophony and stench. Sometimes Nesta would find Elain with cotton wool in her ears to keep the tide of her faerie senses at bay. One evening Elain told her, I feel like they drowned me in the Cauldron and I never stopped drowning. Elain was in her seat, and Nesta could almost see the dreams of home that dance behind her eyes.
Eris stood on the far side of the room from them, wearing a deep burgundy waistcoat to match his father. He was trained and careful, like a dog that needed no lead to go where it was told.
Tamlin said that vile thing about Feyre that Nesta tried not to think about in case something nearby caught fire. Nesta’s eyes burned dark and silver, and the power snarled.
But Feyre didn’t look up, just pooled her shame in her cupped hands. Then Nesta wondered if she’d ever made Feyre feel that way, and then her eyes were flat and dull as a piece of paper torn from a book and left to fall in water.
The Lady of Autumn— no one ever seemed to say her name— sat in stillness while Rhysand threatened to tie puppet strings around everyone’s necks, while Feyre offered to take the faebane antidote and Eris echoed her, while Mor snapped and Tamlin snived and Beron spat and laughed and stonewalled. Nesta only saw the Lady’s mask crack twice: once when Eris was cruel to Mor, and then again when Feyre scorched the table and the Lady’s arm. Beron didn’t spare her or her wounded limb a glance. Eris glared at Feyre, baring every one of his unnaturally sharp teeth, and almost shook with rage.
When Beron rose, the ash falling from his lap, Nesta did too, and said you are all that stands between Hybern and the end of everything that is good and decent, wondering if Eris would mind very much if she finished the job for him, wishing the magic would turn into a sword in her hand, and that every problem in faerieland could be solved by lighting it on fire.
Eris was the one who told his brothers to sit and listen to her. It surprised her. She’d had him figured out: a conniving lordling with more savvy and gentility than his father but who only imagined he had any more kindness, who loved nothing and liked it that way.
Beron looked at her steady and unrepentant. She wasn’t the one who ultimately changed his mind, but she was furious that he didn’t have the decency to act cowed in the face of what he knew damn well was the truth. She knew her eyes were silver then. Her sister’s scorch marks made a black scar across the table.
Nothing happened. They left with things not much improved. Scrolls were packed and returned to scribes’ purses. One High Lord after another winnowed away. Nesta fixed the clasp of her cloak and didn’t look at anyone. As the Night Court retinue departed, Eris spared her a few too many glances, like a fisherman watching an incoming wave.
-
Nesta waited on the beach before Gwyn and Emerie arrived. The soft roar of wind and the splashes of selkies farther out to sea cut through the indigo haze before sunrise. The tide was going out. When she began her vigil, the water was lapping at her boot toes, but now she stood on dry ground.
Nesta was getting ready to do something she was afraid of, and the peace on the beach wasn’t helping. Quiet had been scarce in her life. Now that she had more than she knew what to do with, she felt miserly about it, and especially loath to ruin it on purpose. But she must. With monklike intentionality she climbed down the ladder of her ribs. There was something she’d felt there these last few weeks, but before now she hadn’t had the courage to reach out and touch it.
When Nesta opened herself up, just a little bit, just enough, Cassian rose into a rage. His heart was wild and wroth and beating against his chest like a horse cutting its mouth to blood on its bit. Why, it shouted, why, why, why, and he couldn’t imagine. Nesta wished she pitied him. She should pity him. When she closed it off again, feeling his last angry howl as he felt her slip away, she took a deep breath in and out, and listened to the wind make the birch leaves tremble like the wings of a thousand starlings.
He is my mate, she thought.
It meant she couldn’t stay away forever.
She tried not to think of him, only the sound of her own breath, until it matched the rhythm of the waves against the rocks.
There was a vibration closer to the shore. Nesta opened her eyes. There, holding the hands of a short Lesser Fae with ankle-length hair, were her friends, Emerie and Gwyn.
Gwyn called, “Nesta?”
“Gwyn!” Nesta shouted, and it seemed like the next moment that all three of them were in each other’s arms, giggling and crying and talking over each other.
“I’m so glad you’re safe!” Emerie exclaimed. “Where in the hell are we?”
“The fae here call it the ‘dear old rock,’ but ‘nowhere’ is about as specific as it gets,” said Nesta, with Gwyn’s face still buried in her shoulder, her hair spilling over the felt of Nesta’s cloak. Both she and Emerie had their swords strapped to their backs. The lesser fae walked slowly toward them, the ends of her hair made dark by the waves.
“How did you get here?” Emerie asked. She peered at Nesta’s face for signs of maltreatment or injury, and Nesta let her.
“I’ll explain later.” The memory of the cliff edge hurt, but didn’t wound. “It’s safe here, though.”
“It’s been awful in Velaris since you left.” Gwyn looked up at her, her arm still wrapped around Nesta’s back. “Everyone thinks you were kidnapped by Koschei or Briallyn. Rhysand and Cassian have been…”
“Out of their minds,” Emerie declared. “Cassian I can understand, but Rhys has been all but raving from what we’ve heard. They’ve already torn all of Velaris upside down. It won’t be long before they start trying to rip Prythian to shreds to find you.”
“You didn’t send Cassian a letter,” said Gwyn, concerned. “He was worried.”
“I will soon.” Or she might just write Feyre and let her explain to the rest of them. Cassian wouldn’t shout at Feyre, the way he would if it were… “Soon.”
Gwyn didn’t say whatever she was thinking— could sense that Nesta wasn’t ready to respond— but Nesta felt like the thread around her ribs was visible straight through her skin. Gwyn and Emerie liked Cassian. There was so much to lay out and untangle all at once.
“It’s beautiful here,” Gwyn said instead, turning her head to see the sunrise over the water. “Is it always like this in the morning?”
“Yes.”
“I’m going to kill you once the relief of seeing you wears off, you know,” Emerie announced. “I can’t believe you. We’ve been carrying on Valkyrie training without you, but it isn’t the same. You couldn’t have sent a message that you weren’t dead, I don’t know, a bit sooner than a week after you went missing?”
“Leave her alone, Emerie,” Gwyn scolded. “Let her explain when she’s ready.”
“Do you need anything else, Lady Archeron?” asked the lesser fae, approaching them. “I’ll take my leave if not.”
“You’re free to go,” said Nesta. “Thank you. I hope Eris has you well-defended in that viper’s nest.”
The lesser fae smiled, showing pale blue teeth, and actually hissed. “It suits me,” she answered. “The poison.”
With a sigh like a wave breaking on a rock, the lesser fae disappeared.
Gwyn left their embrace and stepped toward the forest; Emerie followed her.
“It’s so big,” said Gwyn.
“It’s quiet. I hope the two of you won’t mind too much,” said Nesta.
Nesta didn’t know how long she meant to stay, but every morning she woke up and didn't want to be anywhere else. She couldn’t think any farther into the future than that.
“Won’t mind?” laughed Emerie. “Oh, Nesta. Our dear queen. I’m glad you’re alive.”
-
“These are my friends Gwyn and Emerie,” said Nesta to the three hags crowding around them in Madge’s front garden, snow clinging to their skirts. “Gwyn is a priestess of the Mother in the House of Wind, and Emerie is a trader who trains with us. She’s—”
“In need of a scone, by the looks of it,” said Madge, who lifted a heavily buttered huckleberry scone as close to Emerie’s face as she could with her height. “Eat this. I have more. You are even thinner than Nesta. How long will you visit?”
Emerie shot Nesta a look, alarmed and amused, but she accepted the scone and gave it a nibble.
“This is Madge. That’s Orla,” Nesta pointed to Orla, who was smoking on Madge’s roof. “And Saranir.” Saranir was leaned against her staff. She bowed her head to say hello.
“Some wings you’ve got there,” said Madge. Both she and her hedgehog were staring at Emerie’s motionless, folded wings. “Was your father a dragon?”
Emerie laughed humorlessly but not cruelly. “If only he had been.”
“Well, Nesta likes you. Was your father a dragon?” Madge redirected the question to Nesta. “It would explain the way you stink of magic. When you grow a nose this big you’ll be able to smell it. If I could find a mortal I would make them sit in my house all night and day just to make it smell a bit more mundane around here. Smells like a lightning strike.”
“What do you three usually do all day?” asked Orla.
“Read, study. I brought books.” Gwyn opened the flap of her rucksack. “Take care of the library.”
“Train.” Emerie touched her sword. “With the other priestesses, and with Cassian and Azriel when we can. Gwyn has done research about the old Valkyries. We want to fight like they did.”
“Cassian and Azriel?” Saranir asked for clarification.
“The Night Court’s general and its spymaster,” said Gwyn.
“I have a little library of my own if you’d like to see it,” Saranir proposed. “Only a shelf, as I don’t have a wealth of space, but with so little room I can’t hold onto books not worth reading.”
“There’s some good flat meadow farther up the rock with soft earth if you’d still like to train while you’re here,” said Orla.
“And we can show you around,” said Madge. “The beach, the woods, the cove. There’s berries inland that are very nice in pie.”
“That sounds wonderful, thank you,” said Gwyn. “We’re so happy you’ve looked after Nesta.”
“Our captain and commander,” said Emerie, putting her wiry hand on Nesta’s shoulder.
“I’m not him,” said Nesta quietly enough that she hoped the hags can’t hear.
“Just so,” was all Emerie answered.
-
They set up tents with felt blankets and oiled canvas brought by Orla in the field past Madge’s garden. There weren’t bedrolls, but Nesta was pretty sure her neck would never be normal again if she slept in a hag-sized bed one more night. Instead, Madge bent over the ground inside their tents and shouted at it like it was a poorly behaved dog until it sprouted down-thick moss, studded by stones that were hot to the touch, and soft curls of grass. Somehow, the oiled canvas rebuffed the winter wind as if it were a wall of stone.
Nesta had never seen magic like it before. When she said so, Madge laughed, patted her hand, and said:
“You’ll get used to it. Magic here’s like water under a rock. You drill down and it comes up wherever you look.”
Which didn’t clarify things, but she was happy they’d be sleeping warm.
Gwyn and Emerie told her everything that had happened back in Velaris, skirting around Rhysand and Cassian. Feyre seemed to be keeping her health as far as they’d heard. They’d kept up their training with her being gone and the males absent most sessions. Most of the other priestesses had also continued attending. Gwyn had been doing more reading about the Valkyries, and she’d brought her notes. There were parties of Illyrians looking for Nesta everywhere, and their allies in other Courts had been notified that she was missing. Azriel’s shadows had told him nothing, which made Nesta relieved: Eris must know his business. It shouldn’t have surprised her.
“When the banshee brought us a ribbon, we knew Briallyn or somebody wasn’t holding you hostage to draw us out,” Emerie murmured. “When Azriel sees it, he’ll know you aren’t in danger.”
“He’ll still wear a groove in the floor,” said Gwyn.
“I can’t control what Azriel does,” said Nesta. “I can’t—”
Cliff. Freefall. Empty stomach, shaking muscles, tree trunk burned to embers, thanks for the ride.
Her jaw shut, and she dug her fingers in hard around her knees.
“Hey, hey, we’re not going anywhere,” said Emerie, laying a warm, careful hand on Nesta’s shoulder.
“You have to go back eventually,” Nesta protested.
“Not without you,” said Gwyn. “Not until you’re ready.”
“Gwyn, you can’t—”
“I think that’s our decision to make,” said Gwyn. “Tell us what it’s been like while you were gone.”
Nesta told them about everything except Eris’ visits. She told them that she’d sent a second letter, but not whether Elain had answered or not, and they didn’t press the issue.
Closer to dusk, she was alone in the woods. She was nursing a small cup of tea with a splash of Orla’s brandy in it. Gwyn worried when she saw her pour it in, but Nesta had drunk herself sick in Velaris for the same reason that she’d dragged strange males to her rooms every night: that was what her mother had told her ruined women did, and Nesta had felt more ruined than she thought was possible. Now she didn’t, so she had a little brandy in her tea.
The porcelain teacup warmed her hand, and the brandy warmed her stomach. She listened to the quiet susurrus of the forest and the hush of new snow around her boots.
Elain’s letter came in a flash of orange fire. It whooshed in a flurry of sparks right onto the snow. She picked it up in her free hand. It was still warm. She broke the wax and unfolded the parchment.
-
Dear Nesta,
I’m glad you’re alive. Thank you for writing to me. Everyone else is very worried about you.
If you can, please tell me more about where you’ve gone. Even Azriel can’t get any hint of where it could be. Is it your magic that you used to get away? Was it something to do with the Trove? I understand if it’s hard to explain, but’s so hard for me not knowing where you are.
I can’t come visit. I don’t want Rhysand and Feyre to find out where you are, and I’m sure Azriel is looking after me too carefully for me to get to you without him following me. I do miss you. I have a way to send the letters without him finding out. Please keep writing if you can.
I had to tell one person you’re alive to be able to send this message. Which would explain the orange fire. Lucien. Please don’t be upset.
Feyre and the baby are alright so far. She’s been sick some, but nothing the healers say isn’t normal. She’s being brave, or she’s just trying to keep it off her mind. I can’t tell. I love you. Please don’t do anything rash.
Your sister,
Elain
-
Dear Elain,
I love you too. I’m not angry with you. Where I am is peaceful and far away from Night. I don’t think it’s to do with the Trove. I just don’t wish to stay at the House of Wind any longer. Please give Feyre and Rhysand the letter I’ve included with this one.
Your sister,
Nesta
-
To the High Lord and Lady of the Night Court,
I am writing to inform you that I have not been kidnapped, killed, maimed, or abducted. I left of my own choosing and intend to remain where I am.
Nesta wanted to write, ‘which one would hope you’d understand’ after that, for Feyre’s benefit, but it was probably too barbed for the time being.
I know that my connection to the Cauldron makes me important in the ongoing issue of Briallyn and the Crown. I will help with anything that comes up. I bear no ill will toward either of you. Well, not toward Feyre. You won’t find me if you look for me, but I can receive letters if you write.
I remain your sister,
Nesta Archeron
-
It was entirely dark by the time Nesta returned from Madge’s kitchen after her letter-writing session, her hands stained with ink and candle wax on her fingertips from where she had pinched the flame out. Gwyn was asleep in their makeshift tents, but Emerie was sitting up enough to wave her over.
“Busy evening?”
“Something like that,” Nesta grunted as she crawled into the warm tent. The moss was springy under her knees. She wiped the rest of the snow off of her shoes.
“Anything to report?”
“Nothing interesting,” Nesta replied. Elain wouldn’t want her to talk about it.
Emerie went to curl back up on her side, pulling her crippled wing around herself like a blanket. “You get some sleep, yeah?”
Nesta saluted her. Emerie laughed quietly enough not to disturb Gwyn, and then they both joined her in sleep, lulled by the muffled winter night around them.
-
Nesta woke a little before dawn to go relieve herself. When she leaned her hand on the moss to get up, her fingers crumpled in another piece of parchment. She groaned inwardly, tucked it into her pocket, and carried it with her into the woods. She cupped a tongue of silver fire in one hand to light her way.
It was probably from Feyre. She put off reading it. A lot had happened without adding one of Feyre’s tearful tirades into the mix. Finally, as she was on her way back to the tent, she took a deep breath and unfolded it. It was not, as it turned out, from Feyre. As soon as she unfolded it she smelled smoke; she should’ve known sooner.
To Nesta Archeron, on the unnamed isle—
I would like you to be aware that your recent missive caused the High Lord of the Night Court to break a gravy boat with his bare hands. Well done.
Regards,
Eris Vanserra
-
They settled into a rhythm much the same as they had in the House. They mindstilled on the beach. They walked in the woods, teasing and pushing each other into the snow. Madge made Emerie a too-long scarf. They went through the exercises each afternoon as soon as the air was as warm as it would get, egging each other on now that Cassian and Azriel weren’t there to do it for them. The hags came to watch and heckle sometimes. Saranir loudly longed for a time when her joints were that pliable.
“No, no, no,” said Orla one afternoon. She tugged her hat lower on her head and trudged over to Nesta and Gwyn, who were out of breath between bouts with their swords. Nesta’s exhales turned to white clouds. “You’re overextending yourself. Here.”
She tapped Gwyn’s side with the tip of her staff.
“Reach out with your shoulder, keep your ribs back more.”
Gwyn obeyed, bewildered, and too out of breath to ask questions.
“Yes. Don’t put your upper body out past your knees. Pardon my meddling, Miss Berdara, you’re working very hard and I wouldn’t want you to go on practicing bad form,” she said gruffly. Then she marched back over to the other hags, as if nothing unusual had happened.
Gwyn and Nesta fenced again. Gwyn stayed much better balanced.
When they were finished practicing, they passed around pages of Gwyn’s notes. Orla brought over a whetstone and a pot of whale oil for the blades. True to her word, Madge provided almost endless scones. Gwyn showed Nesta the little roll of ribbon she’d brought in her things for when she felt ready. They wade in the frigid ocean at Gwyn’s insistence, and stop when Emerie’s wings start to ice up. They spend one evening with Nesta lighting the dry tips of a lone spruce tree on fire from a distance and then snuffing them out to make a whole tree of false silver fireflies. Madge huffed and asked where the snuffing-out bit had been when her poor shrubbery was turned to ash, which led to Nesta having to tell Gwyn and Emerie a bit more of how she got here in the first place.
She skipped the cliff. She didn’t know if she’d ever talk about the cliff. She skipped the parts about Cassian. The thread around her rib was a dead zone, like a reef around a harbor.
-
It didn’t rain for a whole week. Orla came to Madge’s hut to tell them in a grave tone that her apple trees would need to be watered manually, and Madge responded with several archaic swear words. When Orla returned with buckets and carrying poles, the three of them decided that training was canceled for the day. Hauling water from the stream up the hill all morning would be exercise enough.
Water was heavy, even with fae strength that her mortal arms had lacked the few times she’d taken Feyre’s place carrying it to their cottage, and when she took a step that was even slightly off balance the water’s sloshing heaviness lurched her to one side, jerked back again, and slopped over the tin bucket lip to patter on dry leaves. Then it yanked her back in the other direction, making the carrying pole rub on her shoulders and twist up her shirt. Nesta clenched her stomach and marched up the trail with her spine as straight as she could hold it.
“How did you do this before we were here?” She grunted to Madge.
“Slowly!” Madge replied. She sounded amused. Each of the buckets she was carrying probably weighed as much as Madge did herself.
“If it’s Orla’s orchard, can she not help?”
Nesta spilled another plash of water onto the trail. She tried readjusting the pole on her shoulders to see if that’d make it easier, but all it did was send a wave of soreness into the numb place where the pole used to rest.
“Old Orla?” Nesta couldn’t tell without looking at her whether Madge was scandalized or faking it. “Old Orla, more than a millenium in age, no taller than a gooseberry bush and her poor lungs black with tobacco smoke by now, when three young fae are in need of exercise and surely none of them over a century from the look of them?”
“It sounds like she has good lungs if they’ve survived a thousand years of smoking.”
“Feeling a little hoity-toity are we, Lady Archeron?” Emerie teased over Nesta’s shoulder.
Nesta turned to look at Emerie and scowled. Emerie fixed her with a look, exasperated, affectionate, and completely unpitying. Emerie had the additional trouble of keeping her wings out of the way of the buckets. She’d gotten better-coordinated in the week since they’d healed, and less prone to whacking tree branches and knocking dishes off the table.
“I thought you’d been tutored in how to carry yourself, Nesta.” Gwyn sounded as if any moment she might let out a tinkling laugh, but she was also out of breath.
“It’s not myself I’m having a hard time with.”
This did make Gwyn laugh.
“It’s because she’s a nymph,” Emerie grunted from behind them. “It’s got to be that.”
After another five minutes of walking, the evergreen trees broke onto the golden meadow. Gwyn stood at the top with dew on her boot toes, waiting for Nesta, Madge, and Emerie to catch up to her.
Tiny transparent flies darted among sheaves of yellow grass and dead gray stalks. Ashen doves perched on a bowing laundry line hung farther up at the edge of the lawn. Orla, true to type, was sat on a turned-over log blowing smoke rings.
Gwyn set her buckets on the ground by Orla’s log and stretched her arms behind her head.
“Will these be enough?” Nesta asked.
“For today.” Orla reached up to give Gwyn a pinch and a pat on the cheek. “The trees are just behind the cottage and down the path. Half a bucket for each, if you please; there’s only a dozen, but they’re quite particular.”
Orla’s cottage looked like nothing so much as a pile of rocks stacked around a mostly-intact chimney pipe and pasted together with wet dust, but Nesta was sure it was bigger on the inside, as all hag huts seemed to be.
They rounded the hard strip of grass that encircled it, scattering the voles that sheltered among the stones. The three of them had spilled all the water their jerking movements would spill by then, leaving the buckets a bit more than three-quarters full, so their boots stayed dry as they passed Orla’s trash heap of broken furniture and apple cores and her dry pile of yard scraps. Orla followed behind them with Madge, and although Nesta couldn’t make out their words, she was sure they were busy gossiping. The pungent sweetness of Orla’s smoke filled the cool air. In the back field, a dozen apple trees, their brittle leaves shivering in the wind, were planted in a scatter amid the meadow grass.
In five minutes, they’d finished watering every tree, and the buckets were empty. The knot in Nesta’s neck had just started to loosen when tiny drops of rain started to patter off the leaves. Gwyn lifted her face to receive the rainfall. Madge cackled.
“Some dry spell!”
Emerie wiped the sweat from her brow, smiling from loopy exhaustion. Nesta groaned, but she let the raindrops slide down her face to rinse off the dried sweat, and then let Orla shepherd them all into her surprisingly cozy cave of a cottage and heat up bitter tea to warm their hands while they watched the rain water the ground.
-
The week’s visit turned into a fortnight. Gwyn bloomed from all the time outside. Nesta found her watching the mermaids in the freezing ocean water while on one of her morning walks. Gwyn laughed as each wave carried them up and down. Emerie had a blanket around her shoulders. She hopped down from the rock where she sat when she saw Nesta come out of the trees.
“I talked her out of going for a swim,” Emerie told her.
“Cauldron boil us all.”
“Mother knows we could use the heat,” Emerie deadpanned.
Nesta blurted out the question that had been on her mind. Her voice cracked.
“How long are you going to stay?”
Emerie took a long time to answer. Out to sea, a mermaid got caught in the tumble of a wave; Gwyn laughed, and the mermaid spat a spout of saltwater at her in mock protest.
“I don’t know. I have my shop, and Mother knows my uncles will have their talons in it before long. I told Azriel to keep an eye on the cousin watching it for me, but I don’t know. They might have started pecking at it already. Who knows? Maybe Rhysand will be so angry at both of us we’ll be banished.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “No, no. I didn’t mean that. Come here, look. Don’t you dare flog yourself over something we knew the risks of just fine when we decided to do it.” Emerie grabbed her elbow. “You’re our friend, idiot.”
“And what an idiot friend I—”
“Oh, don’t you fucking be clever.”
Emerie didn’t sound angry or even annoyed.
“Who knows, Gwyn might never leave at all.”
What if they could have a home that was really theirs, a haven that belonged to no one but them, where they did not have to rely on Rhys for benevolence or protection? She wouldn’t want to just barge permanently in on the hags, but they seemed delighted to have the three of them there, at least judging by how often they kept pinching Gwyn’s cheeks and giving Emerie over-sugared tea to fatten her up. Perhaps it was a foolish thought, but Nesta suddenly couldn’t stop thinking it.
What would it even mean? None of them were exactly carpenters. What would they do? Farm? Fish? The nice thing about Velaris is that there was a lot of time for Valkyrie training, and free food without needing to gut trout or dig around with the worms and beetles. If any of them ever managed to slice that bloody ribbon, what would they do then?
Nesta thought: she wanted to stay. She wanted them to stay. Her brain supplied her with thoughts of Elain and Feyre, and how it would feel to be so far away from them. Her hands would be in faebane shackles the second she was back in Night, and if Feyre felt sorry for her, she wouldn’t show it. The power that slept inside her was a silver snake, not suitable for raising roofs or turning stones into bread. What could she do?
-
That night, she dreamed of the Mask.
It reached to her from where it slept, in the dark chamber bound by Helion’s wards. Its golden, skull-cast face spoke to her without moving. In the dream, Nesta had no body, and she couldn’t look away.
A death god does not fear her enemies. A death god does not hide away in pine and aspen while foes marshal on the mainland, under scarlet maple and black oak. A death god does not flee from her mate, the one given to her by the Cauldron of power. A death god does not wait for a crone who thinks she has a right to wear the Crown to strike first. A death god does not fear wards. When we were one, you broke the jaws of the kelpie in his den. Come back to me, Witch of Oorid, come and become what you alone can become.
“Leave me alone!” Nesta shouted, but her voice disappeared in the mist.
A death god does not need to shroud herself in secrets. A death god does not mourn the death of any soldier. A death god can bring them back.
“If there was no Crown, they never would have died,” she snarled.
A death god feels no pity. A death god is a cold white star.
“I am not a death god.” This time her voice resounded inside Helion’s wards like a bellclap. “The Cauldron cannot rule me.”
She woke up in a cold sweat, with Emerie and Gwyn sleeping soundly by. She took in deep, grateful lungfuls of air until the world felt real again, and then returned to dreamless sleep.
-
Ten spins in. The ballroom was a whirl of burning candles and Eris’ amber eyes. No leathers, no blade. No pull of thread on her rib. People were whistling and shouting, cheering her on, whooping and saying her name. But she couldn’t hear them.
-
“I want to stay.”
“Is that supposed to be a surprise?”
Saranir looked up from her book. She had a pair of half-moon spectacles low on her stately nose.
“I can’t keep living in Madge’s garden like a dairy cow forever.”
“Pick anywhere you like. You and your friends are quite resourceful, you’ll figure something out.”
Saranir wasn’t helping. Nesta couldn’t tell if it was just her irritation, but it seemed like Saranir was taking some odd enjoyment from seeing her uncomfortable. She sighed.
“I’m talking to you for a reason.”
“Miss Archeron,” Saranir began, and Nesta wondered when the last time was that anybody called her that. “Did you know this island doesn’t belong to anybody?”
“I’m not just going to move onto your rock without so much as a by-your-leave,” Nesta retorted.
Saranir shut her book with a decisive clap and set it delicately on her teatable. “It doesn’t belong to anybody. It has no High Lord— or High Lady— but it is a little piece of Prythian all the same, in its own way. Do you understand what it could become? Do you understand, you ornery goat of a faerie?”
“I used to be human.”
“Yes, Nesta, I know. I can tell because you do everything like you’re running out of time.” Saranir adjusted her spectacles. “Now unless there’s something I can actually assist you with, please go try to put that restless brain of yours to some actual use.”
-
Cassian put the blade in her hand. Feyre put a helmet on her head, and the eye slits were narrow, her breath steaming on the metal. Other voices said her name, kind ones, scoffing ones, echoing ones, and a pair of cold lips kissed the cold helm instead of her forehead. Cassian was telling her to try again when her arms were shaking. Elain sang in the other room, a song like a sigh. It was a strange dream, Nesta thought, as it melted around her into a warm dark, like the waking earth in early spring.
As soon as she was awake she knew it was a few hours to morning.
Nesta pulled on her own boots, her own coat, her own shawl. It was dark out, but her fae eyes were sharp enough that she could just make out the path as she trudged away from Madge’s meadow and up the hill.
She chose the most difficult path. The snow had begun to melt, leaving dry grass and frozen mud behind. She was pretty sure she wasn’t punishing herself, despite the fact that she was sweaty-faced and out of breath alone in the woods on a cold little island at four in the morning climbing uphill. She missed Elain more keenly all of a sudden. The Elain she knew when they were small would be trailing behind her, giggling at the thrill of their little adventure.
She’d never climbed all the way to the top of the hill in the middle of the island. There was a little bald there without any trees, where the stars were bright enough that she could make out some flat patches of rock and dry brambles. Below her was the tree canopy and the sloping woods and the beach ringing all around. At night the water was roiling and black. She’d always liked seeing the sea from far off, watching the ghosts of foam break and shift but hearing only the rustling of the forest.
I am the rock against which the surf crashes, Nesta said in her mind. She still couldn’t hear the water. A cloud went over the waxing moon, as thin and dull as a bit of light thrown from a handmirror. She pursed her lips and shut her eyes.
Eris had called her something she’d been called before, Plunderer of the Cauldron, which made her sound like a pirate queen with her boot on a treasure chest. The Cauldron took the mortal flesh from her bones, and so she’d ripped a silver thread of magic from its very heart. A fair exchange, she thought. Perhaps her bond with Cassian was its last revenge for what she took. She stopped thinking about it, because she didn’t hate him. She just wanted to be free. She wanted to be someone who could stand up and demand that the world change, and it would.
Nesta could hear the sea. There was a sound, not loud, but not far away. It rose, surged, bubbled and whispered, folded back on itself and then vanished into silence before rising again. She didn’t open her eyes. The sound swirled. Was it coming from beneath her? Then there was something else, some magic, like a chuckle in the dark.
I am the rock against which the surf crashes. Saranir had said, it doesn’t belong to anyone. But it was Prythian. There was wind now, and it rose from the pores between the stones and the soil to rush, laughing through the yellow leaves. It tore at Nesta’s hair until the knot of it untwisted and flew wild around her face and shoulders. Wild magic beat against the floor of the island like a child in the womb.
Six weeks after she’d stood by the cliff’s edge trying to die, Nesta reached down to the island’s heart and told it to live.
It wasn't Making; she didn’t coax a voice out of it the way she’d coaxed one out of the House. The roiling and bubbling magic in the island’s heart was already deep and ancient. She just cracked the door open, and the tide rose to meet her.
It was the magical equivalent of uncorking a bottle of champagne so hard it broke a window. The magic was dynamic, but it hungered for a shape. Like a living thing, she didn’t have to form it before it started to form itself. The ground under her feet started to rumble, then crack, then break. Nesta opened her eyes.
Seven pillars of white stone now circled the bald at the top of the island. Each reflected the light of the reappeared moon on its rough face, so that they all looked like granite ghosts standing sentry at the edges of the field. Nesta turned on stiff and tingling legs to stare at them. Magic hummed like a plucked string in the air all around.
In the center of the bald, the island’s high point, she saw what the pillars encircled: a white tree. Its bark was rough ivory scales, like spruce bark, but it was tall and slender like a hardwood sapling. At its top was a crown of birch-golden evergreen needles, and along its sides, new shoots of pale yellow needles sprouted between the scales. If the magic was the hum of a string, then the tree was the string itself. The wind was still dancing around and around, and all the trees of the forest stirred, but the white tree didn't move. Nesta stepped toward the tree, and when she touched it, silver fire came unbidden up her arm and all the way to the back of her neck.
She’d done it. Nesta had made a Court. She laughed and laughed like a little girl on Solstice morning.
-
When Nesta broke open the magic under the island, four halves of two severed tendons in Emerie’s wings, calcified from years of disuse, reached for each other like lovers waking in the morning and knit together, whole.
-
“These census papers are fucking mangled,” Eris muttered, when his scratchwork turned up uneven numbers again.
“Show me,” Beron demanded. Wordlessly, Eris turned his notes around. Eris tried to sleep at least four hours a night, but lately that had been an aspirational number instead of reality. His father was having them comb through the counts of every village in Autumn to see from whom they could demand more sons. Beron thought they were always at war.
The older he got, the less wrong Eris thought he was.
Beron tossed the paper back; Eris had to catch it before it floated off the desk. “Train your next batch of dogs to be accountants. They’ll be smarter than half the council staff.”
Eris scoffed. “They already are. ”
He slammed the huge logbook shut and cracked open the next one, which rewarded him with a burst of dust in the face. Mother above, he had to do everything around here.
The thing about dogs, and especially smokehounds, was that faeries usually only glamored themselves well enough to hide from other faeries. Beron Vanserra was powerful, but he had a lack of precision that came from not having been truly afraid of anything for a long time. Eris couldn’t scent the Trove or the crone on his father, but his hounds could, and so he knew where Beron had been.
Eris leaned back in his chair.
“Just send our captains to the south. The villagers there haven’t resisted before. How are the people going to know if everything isn’t perfectly fair?”
Beron was staring at the center of the table with his eyes unfocused. Eris watched a snarl slowly pull over his father’s teeth.
“Father?”
Beron didn’t bark an insult at him or try to unravel his suggestions. His whole face turned bloody red, and when it reached his neck, he shot to his feet so fast that his heavy armchair crashed backward to the floor. Beron stumbled over the broken chair leg, still snarling like something had bit him. He whirled around, but no one was there in the recesses of his study, and he turned back to Eris in bewilderment. In the hearth, the High Lord’s anger made the flames burst out of the grate and set the dust on the mantelpiece to smoking. His nostrils flared.
“Father! Cauldron!”
Poison in Beron’s rye wouldn’t kill him here in the seat of his power, but Eris eyed his father’s empty glass anyway. If Beron were stuck in a sickbed for a few days, it would certainly buy him time.
Slowly, Beron shook his head.
“It’s the witch,” he said softly. Eris’ first thought was Briallyn. What had his father done now that could possibly be worse than what had already happened?
“The Archeron witch.”
Eris didn’t breathe.
“There’s an eighth Court in Prythian.”