The one in the center said, “Our sister’s debt is paid.”
And then they were gone.
Amren was already swimming for the distant mainland shore.
Praying they didn’t come back and make a meal of us, I hurried after her, trying to keep my movements small to avoid detection.
We both reached a quiet, sandy cove and collapsed.
A shadow blocked out the sun, and a boot toed my calf. “What,” said Rhysand, still in battle-black, “are you two doing?”
I opened my eyes to find Amren hoisting herself up on her elbows. “Where the hell were you?” she demanded.
“You two set off every damned trigger in the place. I was hunting down each guard who went to sound the alarm.” My throat was ravaged—and sand tickled my cheeks, my bare hands. “I thought you had it covered,” he said to her.
Amren hissed, “That place, or that damned book, nearly nullified my powers. We almost drowned.”
His gaze shot to me. “I didn’t feel it through the bond—”
“It probably nullified that, too, you stupid bastard,” Amren snapped.
His eyes flickered. “Did you get it?” Not at all concerned that we were half-drowned and had very nearly been dead.
I touched my jacket—the heavy metal lump within.
“Good,” Rhys said, and I looked behind him at the sudden urgency in his tone.
Sure enough, in the castle across the bay, people were darting about.
“I missed some guards,” he gritted out, grabbed both our arms, and we vanished.
The dark wind was cold and roaring, and I had barely enough strength to cling to him.
It gave out entirely, along with Amren’s, as we landed in the town house foyer—and we both collapsed to the wood floor, spraying sand and water on the carpet.
Cassian shouted from the dining room behind us, “What the hell?”
I glared up at Rhysand, who merely stepped toward the breakfast table. “I’m waiting for an explanation, too,” he merely said to wide-eyed Cassian, Azriel, and Mor.
But I turned to Amren, who was still hissing on the floor. Her red-rimmed eyes narrowed. “How?”
“During the Tithe, the water-wraith emissary said they had no gold, no food to pay. They were starving.” Every word ached, and I thought I might vomit again. He’d deserve it, if I puked all over the carpet. Though he’d probably take it from my wages. “So I gave her some of my jewelry to pay her dues. She swore that she and her sisters would never forget the kindness.”
“Can someone explain, please?” Mor called from the room beyond.
We remained on the floor as Amren began quietly laughing, her small body shaking.
“What?” I demanded.
“Only an immortal with a mortal heart would have given one of those horrible beasts the money. It’s so … ” Amren laughed again, her dark hair plastered with sand and seaweed. For a moment, she even looked human. “Whatever luck you live by, girl … thank the Cauldron for it.”
The others were all watching, but I felt a chuckle whisper out of me.
Followed by a laugh, as rasping and raw as my lungs. But a real laugh, perhaps edged by hysteria—and profound relief.
We looked at each other, and laughed again.
“Ladies,” Rhysand purred—a silent order.
I groaned as I got to my feet, sand falling everywhere, and offered a hand to Amren to rise. Her grip was firm, but her quicksilver eyes were surprisingly tender as she squeezed it before snapping her fingers.
We were both instantly clean and warm, our clothes dry. Save for a wet patch around my breast—where that box waited.
My companions were solemn-faced as I approached and reached inside that pocket. The metal bit into my fingers, so cold it burned.
I dropped it onto the table.
It thudded, and they all recoiled, swearing.
Rhys crooked a finger at me. “One last task, Feyre. Unlock it, please.”
My knees were buckling—my head spinning and mouth bone-dry and full of salt and grit, but … I wanted to be rid of it.
So I slid into a chair, tugging that hateful box to me, and placed a hand on top.
Hello, liar, it purred.
“Hello,” I said softly.
Will you read me?
“No.”
The others didn’t say a word—though I felt their confusion shimmering in the room. Only Rhys and Amren watched me closely.
Open, I said silently.
Say please.
“Please,” I said.
The box—the Book—was silent. Then it said, Like calls to like.
“Open,” I gritted out.
Unmade and Made; Made and Unmade—that is the cycle. Like calls to like.
I pushed my hand harder, so tired I didn’t care about the thoughts tumbling out, the bits and pieces that were a part of and not part of me: heat and water and ice and light and shadow.
Cursebreaker, it called to me, and the box clicked open.
I sagged back in my chair, grateful for the roaring fire in the nearby fireplace.
Cassian’s hazel eyes were dark. “I never want to hear that voice again.”
“Well, you will,” Rhysand said blandly, lifting the lid. “Because you’re coming with us to see those mortal queens as soon as they deign to visit.”
I was too tired to think about that—about what we had left to do. I peered into the box.
It was not a book—not with paper and leather.
It had been formed of dark metal plates bound on three rings of gold, silver, and bronze, each word carved with painstaking precision, in an alphabet I could not recognize. Yes, it indeed turned out my reading lessons were unnecessary.
Rhys left it inside the box as we all peered in—then recoiled.
Only Amren remained staring at it. The blood drained from her face entirely.
“What language is that?” Mor asked.
I thought Amren’s hands might have been shaking, but she shoved them into her pockets. “It is no language of this world.”
Only Rhys was unfazed by the shock on her face. As if he’d suspected what the language might be. Why he had picked her to be a part of this hunt.
“What is it, then?” Azriel asked.
She stared and stared at the Book—as if it were a ghost, as if it were a miracle—and said, “It is the Leshon Hakodesh. The Holy Tongue.” Those quicksilver eyes shifted to Rhysand, and I realized she’d understood, too, why she’d gone.
Rhysand said, “I heard a legend that it was written in a tongue of mighty beings who feared the Cauldron’s power and made the Book to combat it. Mighty beings who were here … and then vanished. You are the only one who can uncode it.”
It was Mor who warned, “Don’t play those sorts of games, Rhysand.”
But he shook his head. “Not a game. It was a gamble that Amren would be able to read it—and a lucky one.”
Amren’s nostrils flared delicately, and for a moment, I wondered if she might throttle him for not telling her his suspicions, that the Book might indeed be more than the key to our own salvation.
Rhys smiled at her in a way that said he’d be willing to let her try.
Even Cassian slid a hand toward his fighting knife.
But then Rhysand said, “I thought, too, that the Book might also contain the spell to free you—and send you home. If they were the ones who wrote it in the first place.”
Amren’s throat bobbed—slightly.
Cassian said, “Shit.”
Rhys went on, “I did not tell you my suspicions, because I did not want to get your hopes up. But if the legends about the language were indeed right … Perhaps you might find what you’ve been looking for, Amren.”
“I need the other piece before I can begin decoding it.” Her voice was raw.
“Hopefully our request to the mortal queens will be answered soon,” he said, frowning at the sand and water staining the foyer. “And hopefully the next encounter will g
o better than this one.”
Her mouth tightened, yet her eyes were blazing bright. “Thank you.”
Ten thousand years in exile—alone.
Mor sighed—a loud, dramatic sound no doubt meant to break the heavy silence—and complained about wanting the full story of what happened.
But Azriel said, “Even if the book can nullify the Cauldron … there’s Jurian to contend with.”
We all looked at him. “That’s the piece that doesn’t fit,” Azriel clarified, tapping a scarred finger on the table. “Why resurrect him in the first place? And how does the king keep him bound? What does the king have over Jurian to keep him loyal?”
“I’d considered that,” Rhys said, taking a seat across from me at the table, right between his two brothers. Of course he had considered it. Rhys shrugged. “Jurian was … obsessive in his pursuits of things. He died with many of those goals left unfinished.”
Mor’s face paled a bit. “If he suspects Miryam is alive—”
“Odds are, Jurian believes Miryam is gone,” Rhys said. “And who better to raise his former lover than a king with a Cauldron able to resurrect the dead?”
“Would Jurian ally with Hybern just because he thinks Miryam is dead and wants her back?” Cassian said, bracing his arms on the table.
“He’d do it to get revenge on Drakon for winning her heart,” Rhys said. He shook his head. “We’ll discuss this later.” And I made a note to ask him who these people were, what their history was—to ask Rhys why he’d never hinted Under the Mountain that he knew the man behind the eye on Amarantha’s ring. After I’d had a bath. And water. And a nap.
But they all looked to me and Amren again—still waiting for the story. Brushing a few grains of sand off, I let Amren launch into the tale, each word more unbelievable than the last.
Across the table, I lifted my gaze from my clothes and found Rhys’s eyes already on me.
I inclined my head slightly, and lowered my shield only long enough to say down the bond: To the dreams that are answered.
A heartbeat later, a sensual caress trailed along my mental shields—a polite request. I let it drop, let him in, and his voice filled my head. To the huntresses who remember to reach back for those less fortunate—and water-wraiths who swim very, very fast.
CHAPTER
38
Amren took the Book to wherever it was she lived in Velaris, leaving the five of us to eat. While Rhys told them of our visit to the Summer Court, I managed to scarf down breakfast before the exhaustion of staying up all night, unlocking those doors, and very nearly dying hit me. When I awoke, the house was empty, the afternoon sunlight warm and golden, and the day so unusually warm and lovely that I brought a book down to the small garden in the back.
The sun eventually shifted, shading the garden to the point of frigidness again. Not quite willing to give up the sun yet, I trudged the three levels to the rooftop patio to watch it set.
Of course—of course—Rhysand was already lounging in one of the white-painted iron chairs, an arm slung over the back while his other hand idly gripped a glass of some sort of liquor, a crystal decanter full of it set on the table before him.
His wings were draped behind him on the tile floor, and I wondered if he was also taking advantage of the unusually mild day to sun them as I cleared my throat.
“I know you’re there,” he said without turning from the view of the Sidra and the red-gold sea beyond.
I scowled. “If you want to be alone, I can go.”
He jerked his chin toward the empty seat at the iron table. Not a glowing invitation, but … I sat down.
There was a wood box beside the decanter—and I might have thought it was something for whatever he was drinking had I not noticed the dagger fashioned of mother-of-pearl in the lid.
Had I not sworn I could smell the sea and heat and soil that was Tarquin. “What is that?”
Rhys drained his glass, held up a hand—the decanter floating to him on a phantom wind—and poured himself another knuckle’s length before he spoke.
“I debated it for a good while, you know,” he said, staring out at his city. “Whether I should just ask Tarquin for the Book. But I thought that he might very well say no, then sell the information to the highest bidder. I thought he might say yes, and it’d still wind up with too many people knowing our plans and the potential for that information to get out. And at the end of the day, I needed the why of our mission to remain secret for as long as possible.” He drank again, and dragged a hand through his blue-black hair. “I didn’t like stealing from him. I didn’t like hurting his guards. I didn’t like vanishing without a word, when, ambition or no, he did truly want an alliance. Maybe even friendship. No other High Lords have ever bothered—or dared. But I think Tarquin wanted to be my friend.”
I glanced between him and the box and repeated, “What is that?”
“Open it.”
I gingerly flipped back the lid.
Inside, nestled on a bed of white velvet, three rubies glimmered, each the size of a chicken egg. Each so pure and richly colored that they seemed crafted of—
“Blood rubies,” he said.
I pulled back the fingers that had been inching toward the stones.
“In the Summer Court, when a grave insult has been committed, they send a blood ruby to the offender. An official declaration that there is a price on their head—that they are now hunted, and will soon be dead. The box arrived at the Court of Nightmares an hour ago.”
Mother above. “I take it one of these has my name on it. And yours. And Amren’s.”
The lid flipped shut on a dark wind. “I made a mistake,” he said. I opened my mouth, but he went on, “I should have wiped the minds of the guards and let them continue on. Instead, I knocked them out. It’s been a while since I had to do any sort of physical … defending like that, and I was so focused on my Illyrian training that I forgot the other arsenal at my disposal. They probably awoke and went right to him.”
“He would have noticed the Book was missing soon enough.”
“We could have denied that we stole it and chalked it up to coincidence.” He drained his glass. “I made a mistake.”
“It’s not the end of the world if you do that every now and then.”
“You’ve been told you are now public enemy number one of the Summer Court and you’re fine with it?”
“No. But I don’t blame you.”
He loosed a breath, staring out at his city as the warmth of the day succumbed to winter’s bite once more. It didn’t matter to him.
“Perhaps you could return the Book once we’ve neutralized the Cauldron—apologize.”
Rhys snorted. “No. Amren will get that book for as long as she needs it.”
“Then make it up to him in some way. Clearly, you wanted to be his friend as much as he wanted to be yours. You wouldn’t be so upset otherwise.”
“I’m not upset. I’m pissed off.”
“Semantics.”
He gave me a half smile. “Feuds like the one we just started can last centuries—millennia. If that’s the cost of stopping this war, helping Amren … I’ll pay it.”
He’d pay with everything he had, I realized. Any hopes for himself, his own happiness.
“Do the others know—about the blood rubies?”
“Azriel was the one who brought them to me. I’m debating how I’ll tell Amren.”
“Why?”
Darkness filled those remarkable eyes. “Because her answer would be to go to Adriata and wipe the city off the map.”
I shuddered.
“Exactly,” he said.
I stared out at Velaris with him, listening to the sounds of the day wrapping up—and the night unfolding. Adriata felt rudimentary by comparison.
“I understand,” I said, rubbing some warmth into my now-chilled hands, “why you did what you had to in order to protect this city.” Imagining the destruction that had been wreaked upon Adriata here in Velaris made m
y blood run cold. His eyes slid to me, wary and dull. I swallowed. “And I understand why you will do anything to keep it safe during the times ahead.”
“And your point is?”
A bad day—this was a bad day, I realized, for him. I didn’t scowl at the bite in his words. “Get through this war, Rhysand, and then worry about Tarquin and the blood rubies. Nullify the Cauldron, stop the king from shattering the wall and enslaving the human realm again, and then we’ll figure out the rest after.”
“You sound as if you plan to stay here for a while.” A bland, but edged question.
“I can find my own lodging, if that’s what you’re referring to. Maybe I’ll use that generous paycheck to get myself something lavish.”
Come on. Wink at me. Play with me. Just—stop looking like that.
He only said, “Spare your paycheck. Your name has already been added to the list of those approved to use my household credit. Buy whatever you wish. Buy yourself a whole damn house if you want.”
I ground my teeth, and maybe it was panic or desperation, but I said sweetly, “I saw a pretty shop across the Sidra the other day. It sold what looked to be lots of lacy little things. Am I allowed to buy that on your credit, too, or does that come out of my personal funds?”
Those violet eyes again drifted to me. “I’m not in the mood.”
There was no humor, no mischief. I could go warm myself by a fire inside, but …
He had stayed. And fought for me.
Week after week, he’d fought for me, even when I had no reaction, even when I had barely been able to speak or bring myself to care if I lived or died or ate or starved. I couldn’t leave him to his own dark thoughts, his own guilt. He’d shouldered them alone long enough.
So I held his gaze. “I never knew Illyrians were such morose drunks.”
“I’m not drunk—I’m drinking,” he said, his teeth flashing a bit.
“Again, semantics.” I leaned back in my seat, wishing I’d brought my coat. “Maybe you should have slept with Cresseida after all—so you could both be sad and lonely together.”
“So you’re entitled to have as many bad days as you want, but I can’t get a few hours?”
“Oh, take however long you want to mope. I was going to invite you to come shopping with me for said lacy little unmentionables, but … sit up here forever, if you have to.”