“Guard shift.” They’d planned this around it. “There’s a small sea door at the bottom. Mor will be waiting for us there—it’s the closest entrance to the lower levels.”
“I’m assuming she can’t winnow us in.”
“Too many wards to risk the time it’d cost for her to break through them. Rhys might be able to. But we’ll meet him at the door on the way out.”
My mouth went a bit dry. Over my heart, the Book said, Home—take me home.
And indeed I could feel it. With every foot we flew in, faster and faster, dipping down so the spray from the ocean chilled me to my bones, I could feel it.
Ancient—cruel. Without allegiance to anyone but itself.
The Cauldron. They needn’t have bothered learning where it was held inside this castle. I had no doubt I’d be drawn right to it. I shuddered.
“Easy,” Cassian said again. We swept in toward the base of the cliffs to the sea door before a platform. Mor was waiting, sword out, the door open.
Cassian loosed a breath, but Azriel reached her first, landing swiftly and silently, and immediately prowled into the castle to scout the hall ahead.
Mor waited for us—her eyes on Cassian as we landed. They didn’t speak, but their glance was too long to be anything but casual. I wondered what their training, their honed senses, detected.
The passage ahead was dark, silent. Azriel appeared a heartbeat later. “Guards are down.” There was blood on his knife—an ash knife. Az’s cold eyes met mine. “Hurry.”
I didn’t need to focus to track the Cauldron to its hiding place. It tugged on my every breath, hauling me to its dark embrace.
Any time we reached a crossroads, Cassian and Azriel would branch out, usually returning with bloodied blades, faces grim, silently warning me to hurry.
They’d been working these weeks, through whatever sources Azriel had, to get this encounter down to an exact schedule. If I needed more time than they’d allotted, if the Cauldron couldn’t be moved … it might all be for nothing. But not these deaths. No, those I did not mind at all.
These people—these people had hurt Rhys. They’d brought tools with them to incapacitate him. They had sent that legion to wreck and butcher my city.
I descended through an ancient dungeon, the stones dark and stained. Mor kept at my side, constantly monitoring. The last line of defense.
If Cassian and Azriel were hurt, I realized, she was to make sure I got out by whatever means. Then return.
But there was no one in the dungeon—not that I encountered, once the Illyrians were done with them. They had executed this masterfully. We found another stairwell, leading down, down, down—
I pointed, nausea roiling. “There. It’s down there.”
Cassian took the stairs, Illyrian blade stained with dark blood.
Neither Mor nor Azriel seemed to breathe until Cassian’s low whistle bounced off the stairwell stones from below.
Mor put a hand on my back, and we descended into the dark.
Home, the Book of Breathings sighed. Home.
Cassian was standing in a round chamber beneath the castle—a ball of faelight floating above his shoulder.
And in the center of the room, atop a small dais, sat the Cauldron.
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The Cauldron was absence and presence. Darkness and … whatever the darkness had come from.
But not life. Not joy or light or hope.
It was perhaps the size of a bathtub, forged of dark iron, its three legs—those three legs the king had ransacked those temples to find—crafted like creeping branches covered in thorns.
I had never seen something so hideous—and alluring.
Mor’s face had drained of color. “Hurry,” she said to me. “We’ve got a few minutes.”
Azriel scanned the room, the stairs we’d strode down, the Cauldron, its legs. I made to approach the dais, but he extended an arm into my path. “Listen.”
So we did.
Not words. But a throbbing.
Like blood pulsed through the room. Like the Cauldron had a heartbeat.
Like calls to like. I moved toward it. Mor was at my back, but didn’t stop me as I stepped up onto the dais.
Inside the Cauldron was nothing but inky, swirling black.
Perhaps the entire universe had come from it.
Azriel and Cassian tensed as I laid a hand on the lip. Pain—pain and ecstasy and power and weakness flowed into me. Everything that was and wasn’t, fire and ice, light and dark, deluge and drought.
The map for creation.
Reeling back into myself, I readied to read that spell.
The paper trembled as I pulled it from my pocket. As my fingers brushed the half of the Book inside.
Sweet-tongued liar, lady of many faces—
One hand on half of the Book of Breathings, the other on the Cauldron, I took a step outside myself, a jolt passing through my blood as if I were no more than a lightning rod.
Yes, you see now, princess of carrion—you see what you must do …
“Feyre,” Mor murmured in warning.
But my mouth was foreign, my lips might as well have been as far away as Velaris while the Cauldron and the Book flowed through me, communing.
The other one, the Book hissed. Bring the other one … let us be joined, let us be free.
I slid the Book from my pocket, tucking it into the crook of my arm as I tugged the second half free. Lovely girl, beautiful bird—so sweet, so generous …
Together together together
“Feyre.” Mor’s voice cut through the song of both halves.
Amren had been wrong. Separate, their power was cleaved—not enough to take on the abyss of the Cauldron’s might. But together … Yes, together, the spell would work when I spoke it.
Whole, I would become not a conduit between them, but rather their master. There was no moving the Cauldron—it had to be now.
Realizing what I was about to do, Mor lunged for me with a curse.
Too slow.
I laid the second half of the Book atop the other.
A silent ripple of power hollowed out my ears, buckled my bones.
Then nothing.
From far away, Mor said, “We can’t risk—”
“Give her a minute,” Cassian cut her off.
I was the Book and the Cauldron and sound and silence.
I was a living river through which one flowed into the other, eddying and ebbing, over and over, a tide with no end or beginning.
The spell—the words—
I looked to the paper in my hand, but my eyes did not see, my lips did not move.
I was not a tool, not a pawn. I would not be a conduit, not be the lackey of these things—
I’d memorized the spell. I would say it, breathe it, think it—
From the pit of my memory the first word formed. I slogged toward it, reaching for that one word, that one word that would be a tether back into myself, into who I was—
Strong hands tugged me back, wrenching me away.
Murky light and moldy stone poured into me, the room spinning as I gasped down breath, finding Azriel shaking me, eyes so wide I could see the white around them. What had happened, what—
Steps sounded above. Azriel instantly shoved me behind him, bloodied blade lifting.
The movement cleared my head enough to feel something wet and warm trickle down my lip and chin. Blood—my nose had been bleeding.
But those steps grew louder, and my friends had their weapons angled as a handsome brown-haired male swaggered down the steps. Human—his ears were round. But his eyes …
I knew the color of those eyes. I’d stared at one, encased in crystal, for three months.
“Stupid fool,” he said to me.
“Jurian,” I breathed.
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I gauged the distance between my friends and Jurian, weighed my sword against the twin ones crossed over his back. Cassian took a
step toward the descending warrior and snarled, “You.”
Jurian snickered. “Worked your way up the ranks, did you? Congratulations.”
I felt him sweep toward us. Like a ripple of night and wrath, Rhys appeared at my side. The Book was instantly gone, his movement so slick as he took it from me and tucked it into his own jacket that I barely registered it had happened.
But the moment that metal left my hands … Mother above, what had happened? I’d failed, failed so completely, been so pathetically overwhelmed by it—
“You look good, Jurian,” Rhys said, strolling to Cassian’s side—casually positioning himself between me and the ancient warrior. “For a corpse.”
“Last time I saw you,” Jurian sneered, “you were warming Amarantha’s sheets.”
“So you remember,” Rhysand mused, even as my rage flared. “Interesting.”
Jurian’s eyes sliced to Mor. “Where is Miryam?”
“She’s dead,” Mor said flatly. The lie that had been told for five hundred years. “She and Drakon drowned in the Erythrian Sea.” The impassive face of the princess of nightmares.
“Liar,” Jurian crooned. “You were always such a liar, Morrigan.”
Azriel growled, the sound unlike any I’d heard from him before.
Jurian ignored him, chest starting to heave. “Where did you take Miryam?”
“Away from you,” Mor breathed. “I took her to Prince Drakon. They were mated and married that night you slaughtered Clythia. And she never thought of you again.”
Wrath twisted his tan face. Jurian—hero of the human legions … who along the way had turned himself into a monster as awful as those he’d fought.
Rhys reached back to grab my hand. We’d seen enough. I gripped the rim of the Cauldron again, willing it to obey, to come with us. I braced for the wind and darkness.
Only they didn’t come.
Mor gripped Cassian and Azriel’s hands—and stayed still.
Jurian smiled.
Rhysand drawled, hand tightening in mine, “New trick?”
Jurian shrugged. “I was sent to distract you—while he worked his spell.” His smile turned lupine. “You won’t leave this castle unless he allows you to. Or in pieces.”
My blood ran cold. Cassian and Azriel crouched into fighting stances, but Rhys cocked his head. I felt his dark power rise and rise, as if he’d splatter Jurian then and there.
But nothing happened. Not even a brush of night-flecked wind.
“Then there’s that,” Jurian said. “Didn’t you remember? Perhaps you forgot. It was a good thing I was there, awake for every moment, Rhysand. She stole his book of spells—to take your powers.”
Inside me, like a key clicking in a lock, that molten core of power just … halted. Whatever tether to it between my mind and soul was snipped—no, squeezed so tight by some invisible hand that nothing could flow.
I reached for Rhys’s mind, for the bond—
I slammed into a hard wall. Not of adamant, but of foreign, unfeeling stone.
“He made sure,” Jurian went on as I banged against that internal wall, tried to summon my own gifts to no avail, “that particular book was returned to him. She didn’t know how to use half of the nastier spells. Do you know what it is like to be unable to sleep, to drink or eat or breathe or feel for five hundred years? Do you understand what it is like to be constantly awake, forced to watch everything she did?”
It had made him insane—tortured his soul until he went insane. That’s what the sharp gleam was in his eyes.
“It couldn’t have been so bad,” Rhys said, even as I knew he was unleashing every ounce of will on that spell that contained us, bound us, “if you’re now working for her master.”
A flash of too-white teeth. “Your suffering will be long, and thorough.”
“Sounds delightful,” Rhys said, now turning us from the room. A silent shout to run.
But someone appeared atop the stairs.
I knew him—in my bones. The shoulder-length black hair, the ruddy skin, the clothes that edged more toward practicality than finery. He was of surprisingly average height, but muscled like a young man.
But his face—which looked perhaps like a human man in his forties … Blandly handsome. To hide the depthless, hateful black eyes that burned there.
The King of Hybern said, “The trap was so easy, I’m honestly a bit disappointed you didn’t see it coming.”
Faster than any of us could see, Jurian fired a hidden ash bolt through Azriel’s chest.
Mor screamed.
We had no choice but to go with the king.
The ash bolt was coated in bloodbane that the King of Hybern claimed flowed where he willed it. If we fought, if we did not come with him upstairs, the poison would shoot to his heart. And with our magic locked down, without the ability to winnow …
If I could somehow get to Azriel, give him a mouthful of my blood … But it’d take too long, require too many moving parts.
Cassian and Rhys hauled Azriel between them, his blood splattering on the floor behind us as we went up the twisting stairways of the king’s castle.
I tried not to step in it as Mor and I followed behind, Jurian at our backs. Mor was shaking—trying hard not to, but shaking as she stared at the protruding end of that arrow, visible between the gap in Azriel’s wings.
None of us dared strike the King of Hybern where he stalked ahead, leading the way. He’d taken the Cauldron with him, vanishing it with a snap of his fingers and a wry look at me.
We knew the king wasn’t bluffing. It’d take one move on their part for Azriel to die.
The guards were out now. And courtiers. High Fae and creatures—I didn’t know where they fit in—who smiled like we were their next meal. Their eyes were all dead. Empty.
No furniture, no art. As if this castle were the skeleton of some mighty creature.
The throne room doors were open, and I balked. A throne room—the throne room that had honed Amarantha’s penchant for public displays of cruelty. Faelights slithered along the bone-white walls, the windows looking out to the crashing sea far below.
The king mounted a dais carved of a single block of dark emerald—his throne assembled from the bones of … I felt the blood drain from my face. Human bones. Brown and smooth with age.
We stopped before it, Jurian leering at our backs. The throne room doors shut.
The king said to no one in particular, “Now that I’ve upheld my end of the bargain, I expect you to uphold yours.” From the shadows near a side door, two figures emerged.
I began shaking my head as if I could unsee it as Lucien and Tamlin stepped into the light.
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Rhysand went still as death. Cassian snarled. Hanging between them, Azriel tried and failed to lift his head.
But I was staring at Tamlin—at that face I had loved and hated so deeply—as he halted a good twenty feet away from us.
He wore his bandolier of knives—Illyrian hunting-blades, I realized.
His golden hair was cut shorter, his face more gaunt than I’d last seen it. And his green eyes … Wide as they scanned me from head to toe. Wide as they took in my fighting leathers, the Illyrian sword and knives, the way I stood within my group of friends—my family.
He’d been working with the King of Hybern. “No,” I breathed.
But Tamlin dared one more step closer, staring at me as if I were a ghost. Lucien, metal eye whirring, stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.
“No,” I said again, this time louder.
“What was the cost,” Rhysand said softly from my side. I clawed and tore at the wall separating our minds; heaved and pulled against that fist stifling my magic.
Tamlin ignored him, looking at the king at last. “You have my word.”
The king smiled.
I took a step toward Tamlin. “What have you done?”
The King of Hybern said from his throne, “We made a bargain. I give you over, an
d he agrees to let my forces enter Prythian through his territory. And then use it as a base as we remove that ridiculous wall.”
I shook my head. Lucien refused to meet the pleading stare I threw his way.
“You’re insane,” Cassian hissed.
Tamlin held out a hand. “Feyre.” An order—like I was no better than a summoned dog.
I made no movement. I had to get free; had to get that damn power free—
“You,” the king said, pointing a thick finger at me, “are a very difficult female to get ahold of. Of course, we’ve also agreed that you’ll work for me once you’ve been returned home to your husband, but … Is it husband-to-be, or husband? I can’t remember.”
Lucien glanced between us all, face paling. “Tamlin,” he murmured.
But Tamlin didn’t lower the hand stretched toward me. “I’m taking you home.”
I backed up a step—toward where Rhysand still held Azriel with Cassian.
“There’s that other bit, too. The other thing I wanted,” the king went on. “Well, Jurian wanted. Two birds with one stone, really. The High Lord of Night dead—and to learn who his friends were. It drove Jurian quite mad, honestly, that you never revealed it during those fifty years. So now you know, Jurian. And now you can do what you please with them.”
Around me, my friends were tense—taut. Even Azriel was subtly moving a bloody, scarred hand closer to his blades. His blood pooled at the edge of my boots.
I said steadily, clearly, to Tamlin, “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“You’ll say differently, my dear,” the king countered, “when I complete the final part of my bargain.”
Horror coiled in my gut.
The king jerked his chin at my left arm. “Break that bond between you two.”
“Please,” I whispered.
“How else is Tamlin to have his bride? He can’t very well have a wife who runs off to another male once a month.”
Rhys remained silent, though his grip tightened on Azriel. Observing—weighing, sorting through the lock on his power. The thought of that silence between our souls being permanent …
My voice cracked as I said to Tamlin, still at the opposite end of the crude half circle we’d formed before the dais, “Don’t. Don’t let him. I told you—I told you that I was fine. That I left—”