Chapter Fifteen
CHAPTER
The seventh level of the library was unnerving.
Standing at the stone railing on Level Six, clutching a book to be shelved, Nesta stared into the darkness mere feet from her, so thick that it hovered like a layer of fog, veiling the levels below.
Books dwelled down there. She knew that, but she’d never been sent down to those dark levels.
Had never seen one of the priestesses venture past the spot where she now stood, peering over the railing.
Ahead of her, the darkness beckoned down the ramp.
Like it was an entry into some dark pit of hell.
Hybern’s twin Ravens were dead. Did their blood still stain the ground far below? Or had Rhysand and Bryaxis wiped even that trace of them away?
The darkness seemed to rise and fall. Like it was breathing.
The hair on her arms rose.
Bryaxis was gone. Set loose into the world. Even Feyre and Rhysand’s hunting hadn’t retrieved the thing that was Fear itself.
And yet the darkness remained. It pulsed, tendrils of shadow drifting upward.
She’d stared too long into its depths. It might gaze back.
But she didn’t move from the rail. Couldn’t remember how she’d come down this far, or which book she still held in her hands.
There was night, and there was the darkness of extinguishing a candle, and then there was this. Not only the true absence of light, but … a womb. The womb from which all life had come and would return, neither good nor evil, only dark, dark, dark.
Nesta.
Her name drifted to her as if rising from the depths of some black ocean.
Nesta.
It slid along her bones, her blood. She had to pull back. Pull away.
The darkness pulsed, beckoning.
“Nesta.”
She whirled, nearly dropping the book over the edge.
Gwyn was standing there, eyeing her. “What are you doing?”
Heart thundering, Nesta twisted toward the darkness, but—it was only that. Murky darkness, through which she could now barely make out the sublevels beneath. As if the thick, impenetrable black had vanished. “It … I …”
Gwyn, arms laden with books, strode to her side and surveyed the dark. Nesta waited for the chiding, the ridicule and disbelief, but Gwyn only asked gravely, “What did you see?”
“Why?” Nesta asked. “Do you see things in that darkness?” Her voice was thin.
“No, but some of the others do. They say the dark has trailed them. Right to their doors.” Gwyn shivered.
“I saw darkness,” Nesta managed to say. Her heart would not calm. “Pure darkness.”
The likes of which she had not seen since she’d been inside the Cauldron.
Gwyn glanced between Nesta and the chasm below. “We should go higher.”
Nesta lifted the book still in her shaking arms. “I need to shelve this.”
“Leave it,” Gwyn said, enough authority lacing her words that Nesta dropped the book onto a dark wood table. The priestess put a hand to Nesta’s back, escorting her up the sloping ramp. “Don’t look behind,” Gwyn muttered out of the corner of her mouth. “What level is your cart on?”
“Four.” She began to twist her head to gaze over her shoulder, but Gwyn pinched her.
“Don’t look behind,” Gwyn murmured again.
“Is it following?”
“No, but …” Gwyn’s swallow was audible. “I can feel something. Like a cat. Small and clever and curious. It’s watching.”
“If you’re joking—”
Gwyn reached into the pocket of her pale robe and pulled out the blue stone of the priestesses.
It fluttered with light, like the sun on a shallow sea.
“Hurry now,” she whispered, and they increased their pace, reaching the fifth level.
No other priestesses approached, and there was no one to witness Gwyn urging, “Keep going.”
The stone in her hand glimmered.
They made another loop upward, and just as they reached the fourth level, that presence—that sensation of something at their backs—eased.
They waited until they’d reached Nesta’s cart before Gwyn dumped her books on the ground and flung herself into the nearest tufted armchair. Her hands trembled, but the blue stone had gone dormant again.
Nesta had to swallow twice before she could say, “What is that?”
“It’s an Invoking Stone.” Gwyn unfurled her fingers, revealing the gem within her hand. “Similar to the Siphons of the Illyrians, except that the power of the Mother flows through it. We cannot use it for harm, only healing and protection. It was shielding us.”
“No—I mean, that darkness.”
Gwyn’s eyes matched her stone almost perfectly, right down to the shadows that now veiled her expression. “They say the being that dwelled down there is gone. But I believe some piece of it might have lingered. Or at the very least altered the darkness itself.”
“It didn’t feel like that. It felt … older.”
Gwyn’s brows rose. “Are you an adept in such things?” There was no condescension in the words, only curiosity.
“I …” Nesta blinked. “Do you not know who I am?”
“I know you are the High Lady’s sister. That you slew the King of Hybern.” Gwyn’s face grew solemn, haunted. “That you, like Lady Feyre, were once mortal. Human.”
“I was Made by the Cauldron. At the King of Hybern’s order.”
Gwyn traced her fingers over the smooth dome of the Invoking Stone. It rippled with light at the touch. “I didn’t know such a thing was possible.”
“My other sister, Elain—we were forced into the Cauldron and turned High Fae.” Nesta swallowed again. “It … imparted some of itself to me.”
Gwyn considered the railing, the open drop into the darkness beyond it. “Like calls to like.”
“Yes.”
Gwyn shook her head, hair swaying. “Well, perhaps don’t go down to Level Six again.”
“It’s my job to shelve the books.”
“Make it known to Clotho and she’ll ensure those books are given to others.”
“It seems cowardly.”
“I don’t wish to learn what might come crawling out of that darkness if you, Cauldron-Made, fear it. Especially if it’s … drawn to you.”
Nesta sank into the chair beside Gwyn’s. “I’m not a warrior.”
“You slew the King of Hybern,” Gwyn repeated. “With the shadowsinger’s knife.”
“Luck and rage,” Nesta admitted. “And I had made a promise to kill him for what he did to me and my sister.”
A priestess walked by, beheld them lounging there, and scurried off. Her fear left a tang in the air like burned food.
Gwyn sighed after her. “That’s Riven. She’s still uncomfortable with any manner of contact with strangers.”
“When did she arrive?”
“Eighty years ago.”
Nesta started. But sorrow filled Gwyn’s eyes as she explained, “We do not gossip about each other here. Our stories remain our own to tell or to keep. Only Riven, Clotho, and the High Lord know what happened to her. She will not speak of it.”
“And there has been no help for her?”
“I am not privy to that information. I know of the resources available to us, but it is not my business whether Riven has utilized them.” From the worry that now etched Gwyn’s face, Nesta knew she had used those services. Or had at least tried.
Gwyn tucked her hair behind her arched ears. “I meant to find you yesterday to thank you again for switching out that book, but I got tied up with Merrill’s work.” She inclined her head. “I’m in your debt.”
Nesta rubbed at a persistent cramp in her thigh. “It was nothing.”
Gwyn noted the movement. “What’s wrong with your leg?”
Nesta gritted her teeth. “Nothing. I’m training every morning with Cassian.” She had no idea if Gwyn knew of him, so she clarified, “The High Lord’s general—”
“I know who he is. Everyone knows who he is.” It was impossible to read Gwyn’s face. “Why do you train with him?”
Nesta brushed a clump of dust off her knee. “Let’s just say that I was presented with several options, all designed to … curb my behavior. Training with Cassian in the morning and working here in the afternoon was the most palatable.”
“Why do you need to curb your behavior?”
Gwyn truly didn’t know—about what a horrible, wretched waste she’d become. “It’s a long story.”
Gwyn seemed to read her reluctance. “What manner of training is it? Combat?”
“Right now, it’s a whole lot of balancing and stretching.”
She nodded toward Nesta’s leg. “Such things are painful?”
“They are when you’re as out of shape as I am.” A pathetic weakling.
Two more priestesses passed by, and apparently the presence of one of them was enough to send Gwyn launching to her feet. “Well, I should be getting back to Merrill,” she declared, any trace of solemnity gone. She nodded to the drop into the pit. “Don’t go looking for trouble.”
Gwyn turned on her heel, blue flashing in her hand.
The sight of that blue made Nesta blurt, “Why don’t you wear that stone on your head like the others?”
Gwyn pocketed the gem. “Because I don’t deserve to.”
“Is this really all we’ll be doing?” Nesta demanded the next morning in the training ring as she rose from what Cassian had called a curtsy-squat. “Balance and stretching?”
Cassian crossed his arms. “So long as you keep having shit balance, yes.”
“I don’t fall that often.” Only every few minutes.
He motioned for her to do another squat.
“You still keep your weight on your right leg when you stand. It opens up your hip, and your right foot rolls slightly to the side. Your entire center is off. Until we correct that, you’re not starting anything more intense, no matter how nimble you are on your feet. You’d only injure yourself.”
Nesta puffed out a breath as she did another squat, her right leg sweeping out behind her left as she ducked low. Fire quivered along her left thigh and knee. How many curtsies had she practiced under her mother’s sharp eye? She’d forgotten they were this demanding. “Like you stand so perfectly.”
“I do.” Unflinching arrogance laced every word. “I’ve been training since I was a child. I was never given the chance to learn how to stand incorrectly. You have twenty-five years of bad habits to break.”
She rose from the squat, legs shaking. She had half a mind to call in their bargain and order him to never make her do another squat again. “And you truly enjoy this endless exercising and training?”
“Two more, and then I’ll tell you.”