Chapter Three #2
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 you 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.”
Nesta said nothing.
Cassian dragged a hand through his hair. Cauldron spare them. Rhys expected him to play politics when he couldn’t even navigate this?
Mor smirked, as if reading the thought on his face. “Congratulations on your promotion.” She shook her head. “Cassian the courtier. I never thought I’d see the day.”
Feyre snickered. But Nesta’s eyes slid to him, surprised and wary. He said to her, if only to beat her to it, “Still a bastard-born nobody, don’t worry.”
Nesta’s lips thinned.
Feyre said carefully to Nesta, “We’ll talk soon.”
Nesta again didn’t reply.
It seemed she had stopped speaking to Feyre at all. But at least she was going willingly.
Semi-willingly.
“Shall we?” Mor said, offering up either elbow.
Nesta gazed at the floor, her face pale and gaunt, eyes blazing.
Feyre met his stare. The look alone conveyed everything she was begging of him.
Nesta stepped past her, grabbed Mor’s forearm, and watched a spot on the wall.
Mor cringed at him, but Cassian didn’t dare share the look. Nesta might not be gazing at them, but he knew she saw and heard and assessed everything.
So he merely took Mor’s other arm and winked at Feyre before they all vanished into wind and darkness.
Mor winnowed them into the sky right above the House of Wind.
Before the stomach-dropping plunge could register, Nesta was in Cassian’s arms, his wings spread, as he flew toward the stone veranda. It had been a long while since she’d been held by him, since she’d seen the city so small below.
He could have flown them both up here, Nesta realized as he alighted and Morrigan vanished from her deadly plummet with a wave.
The rules of the House were simple: no one could winnow directly inside thanks to its heavy wards, so it was a choice to either walk up the ten thousand steps, winnow and drop a terrifying distance to the veranda—likely breaking bones—or winnow to the edge of the wards with someone who had wings to fly the rest of the way in.
But being in Cassian’s arms … She’d rather have risked breaking every bone in her body from the plunge to the veranda.
Thankfully, the flight was over in a matter of seconds.
Nesta shoved out of his grip the moment her feet hit the worn stones. Cassian let her, folding his wings and lingering by the rail, all of Velaris glittering below and beyond him.
She’d spent weeks here last year—during that terrible period after being turned Fae, begging Elain to demonstrate any sign of wanting to live.
She’d barely slept for fear of Elain walking off this veranda, or leaning too far out of one of the countless windows, or simply throwing herself down those ten thousand stairs.
Her throat closed at the surge of memories and at the sprawling view—the glimmering ribbon of the Sidra far below, the red-stoned palace built into the side of the flat-topped mountain itself.
Nesta dug her hands into her pockets, wishing she’d opted for the warm gloves Feyre had coaxed her to take. She’d refused. Or silently refused, since she had not uttered a word to her sister after they’d left the study.
Partially because she was afraid of what would come out.
For a long moment, Nesta and Cassian watched each other.
The wind ripped at his shoulder-length dark hair, but he might have been standing in a summer field for all the reaction he yielded to the cold—so much sharper up here, high above the city. It was all she could do to keep her teeth from clattering their way out of her skull.
Cassian finally said, “You’ll be staying in your old room.”
As if she had any sort of claim on this place. On anywhere at all.
He went on, “My room’s a level above that.”
“Why would I need to know that?” The words snapped out of her.
He began walking toward the glass doors that led into the mountain’s interior. “In case you have a bad dream and need someone to read you a story,” he drawled, a half smile dancing on his face. “Maybe one of those smutty books you like so much.”
Her nostrils flared. But she walked through the door he held open for her, nearly sighing at the cozy warmth filling the red stone halls. Her new residence. Sleeping site.
It wasn’t a home, this place. Just as her apartment hadn’t been a home.
Neither had her father’s fancy new house, before Hybern had half-destroyed it. And neither had the cottage, or the glorious manor before that. Home was a foreign word.
But she knew this level of the House of Wind well: the dining room to the left, and the stairway to her right that would take her down two levels to her floor, and the kitchens a level below that. The library far, far beneath it.
She wouldn’t have cared where she stayed, except for the convenience of the small, private library also on her level.
Which had been the place where she’d discovered those smutty books, as Cassian called them.
She’d devoured a few dozen of them during those weeks she’d first been here, desperate for any lifeline to keep her from falling apart, from bellowing at what had been done to her body, her life—to Elain.
Elain, who would not eat, or speak, or do anything at all.
Elain, who had somehow become the adjusted one.
In the months leading to and during the war, Nesta had managed. Had stepped into this world, with these people, and started to see it—a future.
Until she’d been hunted by the King of Hybern and the Cauldron. Until she’d realized that everyone she cared for would be used to hurt her, break her, trap her. Until that last battle when she couldn’t stop one thousand Illyrians from dying, and had instead been able to save only one.
Him. She would do it again, if forced to. And knowing that … She couldn’t bear that truth, either.
Cassian aimed for the downward stairs, his every movement brimming with unfaltering arrogance.
“I don’t need an escort to my room.” No matter that his rooms were that way, too. “I know how to get there.”
He threw a smirk over a muscled shoulder and strode down the stairs anyway.
“I just want to make sure you arrive in one piece before I settle in.” He nodded to the landing they passed, the open archway that led into the hall with his bedroom.
She knew it only because she’d had little more to do during those initial weeks as High Fae than wander this palace like a ghost.
Cassian added, “Az is in the room two doors down from mine.” They reached the level of her bedroom and he swaggered along the hall. “You probably won’t see him, though.”
“He’s here to spy on me?” Her words bounced off the red stone.
Cassian said tightly, “He says he’d rather stay up here than at the river house.”
That made two of them. “Why?”
“I don’t know. He’s Az. He likes his space.” He shrugged, the faelight filtering through the golden sconces gilding the taloned apex of his wings. “He’ll keep to himself, so most of the time it’ll be only you and me.”
She didn’t dare reply. Not to all that statement implied. Alone—with Cassian. Here.
Cassian stopped in front of a familiar, arched wood door. He leaned against the jamb, hazel eyes monitoring her every step.