Chapter Thirty-One #2
Clenching them tight, Nesta closed her eyes and held her arm over the map spread across the table. No one spoke, though the weight of their gazes pressed on her.
Cassian’s warmth seeped into her side, his wings rustling near her back.
She let that warmth, the rustle anchor her.
He had come to save her from her nightmare, had stayed with her while she slept. Had guarded and fought for her. He would let no harm come to her now.
No harm
No harm
No harm
What had been an endless spiral of thoughts vanished. A gaping hole yawned open in her mind.
No harm
No harm
No harm
Nesta eased into that darkness, as if slowly submerging herself in a pool.
Cassian’s arm brushed hers, and she let that anchor her, too. A lifeline out. She took his hand with her free one and interlaced their fingers. Let the touch ground her as she allowed the last of her mind to slip beneath the black surface.
And then nothing.
Falling slowly. Drifting, like a small stone fluttering to the bottom of a pond.
The Mask, she whispered, casting her mind into the eternity. Where is the Mask of the Dread Trove?
Still she drifted in liquid night.
In the beginning, and in the end, there was Darkness and nothing more. She had first heard that truth, understood it, during her battle with the Cauldron. And understood it again now as she floated into that same strange place, both full and empty, forever cold.
Where is the Mask? she asked the void.
Distantly, like a candle in a window, she felt Cassian’s hand tighten on hers. That was the way back. Nothing could trap her, hold her, if she had that way home.
Where is the Mask?
For long minutes, only the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner filled the study.
Nesta stood beside Cassian, her fingers now loose in his hand, her other hand extended over the map, bones and stones bulging within.
Cassian swapped glances with Feyre. He’d barely been able to look at her when he’d entered, to see the slight swelling in her lower belly. But he’d made himself grin, the portrait of casual, arrogant ease.
Now a chilled, phantom breeze drifted past him. The hair on the back of his neck stood.
Amren let out a soft hiss. “Where is she wandering to?”
Nesta’s hand remained over the map. But her fingers in his had gone cold as ice.
Cassian squeezed her hand, willing warmth into it.
Across the table, Azriel’s breath clouded. Rhys stepped closer to Feyre, positioning himself to intercept any unexpected threats.
“This didn’t happen that time during the war with Hybern,” Azriel murmured.
Before any of them could answer, Nesta’s eyelids shifted—like she was seeing something. Her brows bunched, just a quiver toward each other. Her fingers tightened on the stones and bones, knuckles going white. Still the air grew colder.
“If you see the Mask, girl, then now would be the time to let go,” Amren ordered, her voice wary.
Nesta’s hand remained shut. But her eyes still moved rapidly behind their lids, searching, seeking.
“Nesta,” Feyre commanded. “Open your hand.” Feyre had gone into Nesta’s mind the last time—had pulled her out, thanks to the daemati power she’d inherited from Rhys. Feyre swore softly. “She never lowered her shields. Her shields are …”
“A fortress of solid iron,” Rhys murmured, eyes on Nesta.
“I can’t get in,” Feyre breathed. “Can you?”
“Her mind is guarded with something that no faerie magic can break,” Amren said. The essence of the Cauldron itself.
But Nesta showed no sign of fear, no scent of it.
“Give her time,” Cassian murmured. Gods, it was cold. Nesta’s eyelids fluttered again.
“I don’t like this,” Feyre said. “Wherever she is, it feels deadly.”
The cold kept dropping. Nesta’s hand tightened in his—a hard squeeze.
A warning.
“Get her out, Rhys,” Cassian demanded. “Get her out now.”
“I can’t,” he said softly, his power a cloak of stars and night around him. “I— The doors to her mind were open the other night. They’re shut now.”
“She doesn’t want it seeing her. Or us,” Feyre said, her face tight. “She’s locked it out, but also locked herself in.”
Cassian’s stomach twisted. “Nesta,” he said into her ear. “Nesta, open your hand and come back.”
Her breathing sharpened. The cold deepened.
“Nesta,” he snarled—
And the cold halted. It didn’t vanish, but rather … stopped. Nesta’s eyes flicked open.
Silver fire burned within. Nothing Fae looked out through them.
Rhys shoved Feyre behind him. She shoved her way back to his side. But Nesta’s hand continued to squeeze Cassian’s. He squeezed back, let his Siphons send a bite of power into her skin.
She turned her head so slowly it was like watching a puppet move. Her eyes met his.
Death watched him.
But Death had walked beside him every day of his life. So Cassian stroked his thumb along her palm and said, “Hello, Nes.”
Nesta blinked, and he let his Siphons bite her with his power again. The fire flickered.
He nodded to the map. “Let go of the stones and bones.” He didn’t let her scent his fear. Here was the being the Bone Carver had whispered about, exalted and feared.
Her eyes flamed. No one dared breathe.
“Let go of the stones and bones, and then you and I can play,” Cassian said, letting her sense his heat and need, forcing himself to remember that taunting kiss at dinner and her promise to let him fuck her wherever he wished in the House; what it had done to him, how much he’d ached.
He let it all blaze in his eyes, let the scent of his arousal wrap around her.
Everyone tensed as he leaned in, head dipping, and kissed her.
Nesta’s lips were chips of ice.
But he let their coldness sting his own, and brushed his mouth against hers. Nipped at her bottom lip until he felt it drop a fraction. He slid his tongue into that opening, and found the inside of her mouth, usually so soft and warm, crusted with hoarfrost.
Nesta didn’t kiss him back, but didn’t shove him away. So Cassian sent his heat into it, fusing their mouths together, his free hand bracing her hip as his Siphons nipped at her hand once more.
Her mouth opened wider, and he slid his tongue over every inch—over her frozen teeth, over the roof of her mouth. Warming, softening, freeing.
Her tongue lifted to meet his in a single stroke that cracked the ice in her mouth.
He slanted his mouth over hers, tugging her against his chest, and tasted her as he’d wanted to taste her the other night, deep and thorough and claiming. Her tongue again brushed against his, and then her body was warming, and Cassian pulled back enough to say against her lips, “Let go, Nesta.”
He drove his mouth into hers again, daring her to unleash that cold fire upon him.
Something thunked and clinked beside them.
And when Nesta’s other hand gripped his shoulder, fingers now free of stones and bones, when she arched her neck, granting him better, deeper access, he nearly shuddered with relief.
She broke the kiss first, as if sliding into her body and remembering who kissed her, where they were, who watched.
Cassian opened his eyes to find her so close that they shared breath. Normal, unclouded breath. Her eyes had returned to the blue-gray he knew so well. Stunned surprise and a little fear lit her face. As if she’d never seen him before.
“Interesting,” Amren observed, and he found the female studying the map.
Feyre gaped, though, Rhys’s hand gripped tight in her own. Caution blazed on Rhys’s face. On Azriel’s, too.
What the hell did you do to pull her out of that? Rhys asked.
Cassian didn’t really know. The only thing I could think of.
You warmed the entire room.
I didn’t mean to.
Nesta pulled away—not harshly, but with enough intent that Cassian peered at where she and Amren focused on the map.
“The Bog of Oorid?” Feyre frowned at the spot in the Middle. “The Mask is in a bog?”
“Oorid was once a sacred place,” Amren said.
“Warriors were laid to rest in its night-black waters. But Oorid changed to a place of darkness—don’t give me that look, Rhysand, you know what I mean—a long time ago.
Filled with such evil that no one will venture there, and only the worst of the faeries are drawn to it.
They say the water there flows to Under the Mountain, and the creatures who live in the bog have long used its underground waterways to travel through the Middle, even into the mountains of the surrounding courts. ”
Feyre frowned. “It can’t be more specific, though?” She asked Rhys, “Do we have a detailed map of the Middle?”
Rhys shook his head. “It’s forbidden to map the Middle beyond vague landmarks.
” He pointed to the sacred mountain in its center, where he’d been held for nearly fifty years.
“The Mountain, the woods, the bog … All can be seen from land and air. But its secrets, those discovered on foot—those are forbidden.”
Feyre’s frown didn’t lighten. “By whom?”
“An ancient council of the High Lords. The Middle is a place where wild magic still dwells and thrives and feeds. We respect it as its own entity, and do not wish to provoke its wrath by revealing its mysteries.”
Feyre faced Nesta, who was staring blankly at where the stones and bones had fallen in a neat little pile atop the bog. “The Middle is where the Weaver of the Wood dwelled,” Feyre said, voice tight. “If you go to the bog, you’ll need to be armed.”
“We’ll both be armed,” Cassian declared. “To the teeth.”
When Nesta didn’t respond, they all looked at her. None of them dared ask about that power, the being that had looked out at him. The one he’d melted away with his kiss. He could still taste that ice on his tongue, smell the scent similar to hers yet wholly different.
Nesta said, “We go tomorrow.”
Feyre started, “You need time to prepare—”
“We go tomorrow,” Nesta repeated. Cassian gleaned everything she wouldn’t say. She wanted to go tomorrow so she didn’t have the chance to think better of it. To learn more about the peril she’d be facing.
His fingers brushed against the small of her back, savoring her warmth after all that cold. “We’ll leave after breakfast.”