Chapter Fifty-Four #2
She would not fail this time. The mist pressed in, and she could have sworn she felt a hand reach for her.
It was enough to set her moving.
Drawing her sword in the same movement with which she shot to her feet, Nesta slashed a perfect combination.
Lanthys screamed, and it was nothing like what she’d heard before—this was an earsplitting sound of pure shock and fury.
Nesta hefted Ataraxia, settling her weight between her feet, making sure her stance was even. Unshakable. The blade began to glow.
The mist contorted, shrinking and writhing as if it fought an invisible enemy, and then it became solid, blooming with color.
A naked, golden-haired male stood before her. He was of average height, his golden skin sculpted with muscle, his sharp-boned face simmering with hate. Not a repulsive, awful creature, but one of beauty.
His black eyes narrowed upon the blade as he hissed, “That is not Narben.” The name meant nothing to her.
Nesta lunged, thrusting Ataraxia into eighth position. Lanthys leaped back.
Cassian groaned, stirring to consciousness as she held the ground in front of her.
“Which death-god are you?” Lanthys demanded, glancing between the blade and her. The silver fire sizzling in her eyes.
Nesta swung Ataraxia again, and Lanthys cringed away. Afraid of the blade.
That which could not be killed was afraid of her blade. Not her, but Ataraxia. Her Made weapon.
“Get in your cell.” Nesta advanced a step, Ataraxia pointed before her. Lanthys backed slowly toward his cell.
“What is that blade?” His golden hair swayed down to his waist as he backed away again.
“Its name is Ataraxia,” Nesta spat. “And it shall be the last thing you see.”
Lanthys burst out laughing, the sound like a crow’s cawing. Hideous, compared to his beautiful form. “You named a death-sword Ataraxia?” He howled, and the very mountain shook.
“It shall slay you whether you like its name or not.”
“Oh, I do not think so,” Lanthys seethed. “I rode in the Wild Hunt before you were even a scrap of existence, witch from Oorid. I summoned the hounds and the world cowered at their baying. I galloped at the head of the Hunt, and Fae and beast bowed before us.”
Nesta flipped Ataraxia in her hand, a movement she’d taken to doing with the Illyrian blades in idle moments during training. She’d seen Cassian do it often, and found that it dispelled any extra energy.
She hadn’t realized it was such an effective intimidation technique. Lanthys shrank back.
She prayed the Autumn Court soldiers coming down the path any moment would hesitate before the blade, too. Knew they wouldn’t. Not with Briallyn and the Crown controlling them.
“Which death-god are you?” Lanthys asked again. “Who are you beneath that flesh?”
“I am nobody,” she snapped.
“Whose fire burns silver in your gaze?”
“You know whose fire,” she stalled.
But it struck true, somehow. Lanthys’s skin drained of color.
“It is not possible.” He looked to the Harp beside a stirring Cassian, and his eyes widened again.
“We heard about you down here. You are the one the sea and the wind and the earth whispered of.” He shuddered.
“Nesta.” He grinned, showing teeth slightly too long. “You took from the Cauldron itself.”
Lanthys halted his retreat. And extended a broad, graceful hand.
“You do not even know what you could do. Come. I shall show you.” He smiled again with those too-long teeth, turning his face from beauty to horror with a quirk of his lips.
“Come with me, Queen of Queens, and we shall return what was once lost.” The words were a lullaby, a honeyed promise.
“We shall rebuild to what we were before the golden legions of the Fae cast off their chains and overthrew us. We shall resurrect the Wild Hunt and ride rampant through the night. We shall build palaces of ice and flame, palaces of darkness and starlight. Magic shall flow untethered again.”
Nesta could see the portrait Lanthys wove into the air around them.
She saw herself on a black throne, a matching crown in her unbound hair.
Enormous onyx beasts—scaled, like those she’d seen on the Hewn City’s pillars—lay at the foot of the dais.
Ataraxia leaned against her throne, and on her other side …
Lanthys sat there, his hand laced through hers.
Their kingdom was endless; their palace built of pure magic that lived and thrived around them.
The Harp sat behind them on an altar, the Mask, too, but the golden Crown wasn’t there.
It rested atop Lanthys’s head.
And that was the snarled thread that pulled her out—the naked gleam of his greed. He’d seen the Harp, known she was after the Trove, and revealed what he’d do with it. The Crown he’d claim for himself. It would have no influence over her, but their rule would be one of coercion. Enslavement.
A fourth object lay on the altar, veiled in shadow. But she couldn’t make out more than a gleam of age-worn bone—
The vision shifted, and they writhed on a great black bed, the golden skin of Lanthys’s back shining as he moved inside her.
Such pleasure—she had never known such pleasure with anyone.
Only he could fuck her like this, driving so deep, her body warm and supple and wet for him, and soon, soon his seed would take root in her womb and the child she would bear him would rule entire universes—
Another snarled thread that led outward. Past the illusion.
Her body was not his to touch, to fill with life. And she had known pleasure richer than what he’d shown her.
Nesta blinked, and it was gone.
Lanthys growled. He now stood only as far away as her reach. Ataraxia’s reach. “I can take care of that problem,” he snarled toward Cassian. “And you will forget those ties soon enough.”
She hefted Ataraxia higher. “Go back into your cell and shut the door.”
“I shall just escape again.” Lanthys chuckled. “And when I do, I will find you, Nesta Archeron, and you shall be my queen.”
“No. I don’t think I will.” Nesta let her power ripple down the blade. Ataraxia sang, blazing like the moon.
Lanthys paled. “What are you doing?”
“Finishing the job.”
And his eyes were so fixed upon the glowing blade that he didn’t spare a sideways glance to Cassian. Did not see the dagger drawn. The one Cassian threw with impeccable aim.
It embedded to the hilt in Lanthys’s chest.
Lanthys screamed, arching, and Nesta leaped. She sliced a two-three combination, slashing straight across, letting the power of her breath, her legs, and her core carry the blade through.
Ataraxia sang the heartsong of the wind as it whipped through the air.
Lanthys’s head and corpse fell in different directions, thumping upon the stones.
Strange black blood spurted from his form, and then Cassian was there, groaning as he wrapped a hand around hers again. “The Harp,” he panted, his face the portrait of pain. Blood leaked down his temple. “Pick it up and let’s go. We have to get out of here.”
“Can you even stand?”
He swayed on his feet. He wouldn’t make it three steps.
“Yes,” he grunted. To get her out of here, she knew he’d try.
Just as she knew that Lanthys was dead. Had it been the sword, or her power?
Since she’d Made the sword, she supposed it technically counted as her power, but …
What could not be killed had been slain.
Somehow. A small part of her delighted in it, even as the rest of her trembled.
Now the scrape and thud of footsteps rushed toward them. “Autumn Court soldiers,” she breathed, pointing to the dark path upward. “More of them. Briallyn sent them to get the Harp.”
“More—”
Screaming began throughout the mountain. Petrified, pleading screaming, fists pounding. Not on the rock or the doors that held them, but on the opposite walls of their cells. As if they were begging the Prison to spare them from her and that sword.
Lanthys had fallen. And the occupants of the Prison had felt it.
Even the footsteps of the Autumn Court soldiers seemed to slow at the sound.
Nesta smiled darkly, and picked up the Harp.
“We’re not running out of here. And we leave the Autumn Court soldiers untouched.
” If only to prove Eris wrong. But Cassian’s wounds …
Yes, they needed to leave. Quickly. “Hold on to me,” she commanded, and whispered, “The front lawn of Feyre’s house along the Sidra River in Velaris. ”
Cassian barked a warning, but she plucked three strings this time.
Only pulling one had carried her down here, so she supposed that two would take them perhaps a bit farther than that, and Velaris …
Well, it seemed like it’d take three strings.
She didn’t want to know where all twenty-six strings might take her if strummed. Or if someone made a melody.
The world vanished; again she had the sensation of falling while standing still, and then—
Sun and grass and a crisp autumn breeze.
A massive, lovely estate behind them, the river before them, and not a trace of the Prison or Lanthys.
Nesta let go of Cassian as Rhysand burst out of the house’s glass doors.
He gaped at his friend, and when Nesta beheld Cassian in the daylight …
Blood trickled from his hair down his cheek.
His lip was split; his arm hung at an odd angle—
That was all Nesta saw before Cassian collapsed to the grass.