A Court of Wings and Ruin

  Cassian glowered at me, then Azriel. We both ignored him as I strode to the shadowsinger, unwrapping my hands as I went.

  Thank you, I said down the bond.

  You can make it up to me tonight.

  I tried not to blush at the image Rhys sent into my head detailing precisely how I’d repay him, and slammed down my mental shields. On the other side of them, I could have sworn talon-tipped fingers trailed down the black adamant in a sensual, silent promise. I swallowed hard.

  Azriel’s wings spread, dark reds and golds shining through in the bright sun, and he opened his arms to me. “The pine forest will be good—the one by the lake.”

  “Why?”

  “Because water is better to fall into than hard rock,” Cassian replied, crossing his arms.

  My stomach clenched. But I let Azriel scoop me up, his scent of night-chilled mist and cedar wrapping around me as he flapped his wings once, stirring the dirt of the courtyard.

  I caught Cassian’s narrowed gaze and grinned widely. “Good luck,” I said, and Azriel, Cauldron bless him, shot into the cloudless sky.

  Neither of us missed Cassian’s barked, filthy curse, though we didn’t deign to comment.

  Cassian was a general—the general of the Night Court.

  Surely Nesta wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle.

  “I dropped Amren off at the House on my way in,” Azriel told me as we landed at the shore of a turquoise mountain lake flanked by pines and granite. “I told her to get to the training ring immediately.” A half smile. “After a few minutes, that is.”

  I snorted and stretched my arms. “Poor Cassian.”

  Azriel gave a huff of amusement. “Indeed.”

  I shifted on my feet, small gray rocks along the shore skittering beneath my boots. “So …”

  Azriel’s black hair seemed to gobble up the blinding sunlight. “In order to fly,” he said drily, “you’ll need wings.”

  Right.

  My face heated. I rolled and cracked my wrists. “It’s been a while since I summoned them.”

  His piercing stare didn’t stray from my face, my posture. As immovable and steady as the granite this lake had been carved into. I might as well have been a flitting butterfly by comparison. “Do you need me to turn around?” He lifted a dark brow in emphasis.

  I cringed. “No. But … it might take me a few tries.”

  “We started our lesson early—we’ve got plenty of time.”

  “I appreciate you making the effort to pretend that it wasn’t because I was desperate to avoid Cassian and Nesta’s early-morning bickering.”

  “I’d never let my High Lady suffer through that.” He said it completely stone-faced.

  I chuckled, rubbing at a sore spot on my shoulder. “Are you … ready to meet with Lucien this afternoon?”

  Azriel angled his head. “Should I be preparing for it?”

  “No. I just …” I shrugged. “When do you leave to gather information on the High Lords?”

  “After I talk to him.” His eyes were shining—lit with amusement. As if he knew I was buying time.

  I blew out a breath. “Right. Here we go.”

  Touching that part of me, the part Tamlin had given me … Some vital piece of my heart recoiled. Even as something sharp and vicious in my gut preened at what I’d taken. All that I’d taken.

  I shoved out the thoughts, focusing on those Illyrian wings. I’d summoned them that day in the Steppes from pure memory and fear. Creating them now … I let my mind slip into my recollections of Rhys’s wings, how they felt and moved and weighed …

  “The frame needs to be a bit thicker,” Azriel offered as a weight began to drag at my back. “Strengthen the muscles leading to it.”

  I obeyed, my magic listening in turn. He provided more feedback, where to add and where to ease up, where to smooth and where to toughen.

  I was rasping for breath, sweat sliding down my spine, by the time he said, “Good.” He cleared his throat. “I know you’re not Illyrian, but … amongst their kind, it is considered … inappropriate to touch someone’s wings without permission. Especially females.”

  Their kind. Not his.

  It took me a moment to realize what he was asking. “Oh—oh. Go ahead.”

  “I need to ascertain if they feel right.”

  “Right.” I put my back to him, my muscles groaning as they worked to spread the wings. Everything—from my neck to my shoulders to my ribs to my spine to my ass—seemed to now control them, and was barking in protest at the weight and movement.

  I’d only had them for a few seconds with Lucien in the Steppes—I hadn’t realized how heavy they were, how complex the muscles.

  Azriel’s hands, for all their scarring, were featherlight as he grasped and touched certain areas, patting and tapping others. I gritted my teeth, the sensation like … like having the arch of my foot tickled and poked. But he made quick work of it, and I rolled my shoulders again as he stepped around me to murmur, “It’s—amazing. They’re the same as mine.”

  “I think the magic did most of the work.”

  A shake of the head. “You’re an artist—it was your attention to detail.”

  I blushed a bit at the compliment, and braced my hands on my hips. “Well? Do we jump into the skies?”

  “First lesson: don’t let them drag on the ground.”

  I blinked. My wings were indeed resting on the rocks. “Why?”

  “Illyrians think it’s lazy—a sign of weakness. And from a practical standpoint, the ground is full of things that could hurt your wings. Splinters, shards of rock … They can not only get stuck and lead to infection, but also impact the way the wing catches the wind. So keep them off the ground.”

  Knife-sharp pain rippled down my back as I tried to lift them. I managed getting the left upright. The right just drooped like a loose sail.

  “You need to strengthen your back muscles—and your thighs. And your arms. And core.”

  “So everything, then.”

  Again, that dry, quiet smile. “Why do you think Illyrians are so fit?”

  “Why did no one warn me about this cocky side of yours?”

  Azriel’s mouth twitched upward. “Both wings up.”

  A quiet but unyielding demand.

  I winced, contorting my body this way and that as I fought to get the right one to rise. No luck.

  “Try spreading them, then tucking in, if you can’t lift it up like that.”

  I obeyed, and hissed at the sharp pain along every muscle in my back as I flared the wings. Even the slightest breeze off the lake tickled and tugged, and I braced my feet apart on the rocky shore, seeking some semblance of balance—

  “Now fold inward.”

  I did, snapping them shut—the movement so fast that I toppled forward.

  Azriel caught me before I could eat stone, gripping me tightly under the shoulder and hauling me up. “Building your core muscles will also help with the balance.”

  “So, back to Cassian, then.”

  A nod. “Tomorrow. Today, focus on lifting and folding, spreading and lifting.” Azriel’s wings gleamed with red and gold as the sun gilded them. “Like this.” He demonstrated, flaring his wings wide, tucking them in, flaring, angling, tucking them in. Over and over.

  Sighing, I followed his movements, my back throbbing and aching. Perhaps flying lessons were a waste of time.

  CHAPTER

  20

  “I’ve never been to a library before,” I admitted to Rhys after lunch, as we strode down level after level beneath the House of Wind, my words echoing off the carved red stone. I winced with every step, rubbing at my back.

  Azriel had given me a tonic that would help with the soreness, but I knew that by tonight, I’d be whimpering. If hours of researching any way to patch up those holes in the wall didn’t make me start first.

  “I mean,” I clarified, “not counting the private libraries here and at the Spring Court, and my family had one as well, but not ?
?? Not a real one.”

  Rhys glanced sidelong at me. “I’ve heard that the humans have free libraries on the continent—open to anyone.”

  I wasn’t sure if it was a question or not, but I nodded. “In one of the territories, they allow anyone in, regardless of their station or bloodline.” I considered his words. “Did … were there libraries before the War?”

  Of course there had been, but what I meant—

  “Yes. Great libraries, full of cranky scholars who could find you tomes dating back thousands of years. But humans were not allowed inside—unless you were someone’s slave on an errand, and even then you were closely watched.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the books were full of magic, and things they wanted to keep humans from knowing.” Rhys slid his hands into his pockets, leading me down a corridor lit only by bowls of faelight upraised in the hands of beautiful female statues, their forms High Fae and faerie alike. “The scholars and librarians refused to keep slaves of their own—some for personal reasons, but mainly because they didn’t want them accessing the books and archives.”

  Rhys gestured down another curving stairwell. We must have been far beneath the mountain, the air dry and cool—and heavy. As if it had been trapped inside for ages. “What happened to the libraries once the wall was built?”

  Rhys tucked in his wings as the stairs became tighter, the ceiling dropping. “Most scholars had enough time to evacuate—and were able to winnow the books out. But if they didn’t have the time or the brute power …” A muscle ticked in his jaw. “They burned the libraries. Rather than let the humans access their precious information.”

  A chill snaked down my spine. “They’d rather have lost that information forever?”

  He nodded, the dim light gilding his blue-black hair. “Prejudices aside, the fear was that the humans would find dangerous spells—and use them on us.”

  “But we—I mean, they don’t have magic. Humans don’t have magic.”

  “Some do. Usually the ones who can claim distant Fae ancestry. But some of those spells don’t require magic from the wielder—only the right words, or use of ingredients.”

  His words snagged on something in my mind. “Could—I mean, obviously they did, but … Humans and Fae once interbred. What happened to the offspring? If you were half Fae, half human, where did you go once the wall went up?”

  Rhys stepped into a hall at the foot of the stairs, revealing a wide passageway of carved red stone and a sealed set of obsidian doors, veins of silver running throughout. Beautiful—terrifying. Like some great beast was kept behind them.

  “It did not go well for the half-breeds,” he said after a moment. “Many were offspring of unwanted unions. Most usually chose to stay with their human mothers—their human families. But once the wall went up, amongst humans, they were a … reminder of what had been done, of the enemies lurking above the wall. At best, they were outcasts and pariahs, their children—if they bore the physical traits—as well. At worst … Humans were angry in those initial years, and that first generation afterward. They wanted someone to pay for the slavery, for the crimes against them. Even if the half-breed had done nothing wrong … It did not end well.”

  He approached the doors, which opened on a phantom wind, as if the mountain itself lived to serve him.

  “And the ones above the wall?”

  “They were deemed even lower than lesser faeries. Either they were unwanted everywhere they went, or … many found work on the streets. Selling themselves.”

  “Here in Velaris?” My words were a bare brush of air.

  “My father was still High Lord then,” Rhys said, his back stiffening. “We had not allowed any humans, slave or free, into our territory in centuries. He did not allow them in—either to whore or to find sanctuary.”

  “And once you were High Lord?”

  Rhys halted before the gloom that spread beyond us. “By then, it was too late for most of them. It is hard to … offer refuge to someone without being able to explain where we were offering them a safe place. To get the word out about it while maintaining our illusion of ruthless cruelty.” The starlight guttered in his eyes. “Over the years, we encountered a few. Some were able to make it here. Some were … beyond our help.”

  Something moved in the darkness beyond the doors, but I kept my focus on his face, on his tensed shoulders. “If the wall comes down, will …?” I couldn’t finish the words.

  Rhys slid his fingers through mine, interlacing our hands. “Yes. If there are those, human or faerie, who need a safe place … this city will be open to them. Velaris has been closed off for so long—too long, perhaps. Adding new people, from different places, different histories and cultures … I do not see how that could be a bad thing. The transition might be more complex than we anticipate, but … yes. The gates to this city will be open for those who need its protection. To any who can make it here.”

  I squeezed his hand, savoring the hard-earned calluses on it. No, I would not let him bear the burden of this war, its cost, alone.

  Rhys glanced to the open doors—to the hooded and cloaked figure patiently waiting in the shadows beyond them. Every aching sinew and bone locked up as I took in the pale robes, the hood crowned with a limpid blue stone, the panel that could be lowered over the eyes—

  Priestess.

  “This is Clotho,” Rhys said calmly, releasing my hand to guide me toward the awaiting female. The weight of his hand on my lower back told me enough about how much he realized the sight of her would jar me. “She’s one of the dozens of priestesses who work here.”

  Clotho lowered her head in a bow, but said nothing.

  “I—I didn’t know that the priestesses left their temples.”

  “A library is a temple of sorts,” Rhys said with a wry smile. “But the priestesses here …” As we entered the library proper, golden lights flickered to life. As if Clotho had been in utter darkness until we’d entered. “They are special. Unique.”

  She angled her head in what might have been amusement. Her face remained in shadow, her slim body concealed in those pale, heavy robes. Silence—and yet life danced around her.

  Rhys smiled warmly at the priestess. “Did you find the texts?”

  And it was only when she bobbed her head in a sort of “so-so” motion that I realized either she could not or would not speak. Clotho gestured to her left—into the library itself.

  And I dragged my eyes away from the mute priestess long enough to take in the library.

  Not a cavernous room in a manor. Not even close.

  This was …

  It was as if the base of the mountain had been hollowed out by some massive digging beast, leaving a pit descending into the dark heart of the world. Around that gaping hole, carved into the mountain itself, spiraled level after level of shelves and books and reading areas, leading into the inky black. From what I could see of the various levels as I drifted toward the carved stone railing overlooking the drop, the stacks shot far into the mountain itself, like the spokes of a mighty wheel.

  And through it all, fluttering like moth’s wings, the rustle of paper and parchment.

  Silent, and yet alive. Awake and humming and restless, some many-limbed beast at constant work. I peered upward, finding more levels rising toward the House above. And lurking far below … Darkness.

  “What’s at the bottom of the pit?” I asked as Rhys came up beside me, his shoulder brushing mine.

  “I once dared Cassian to fly down and see.” Rhys braced his hands on the railing, gazing down into the gloom.

  “And?”

  “And he came back up, faster than I’ve ever seen him fly, white as death. He never told me what he saw. The first few weeks, I thought it was a joke—just to pique my curiosity. But when I finally decided to see for myself a month later, he threatened to tie me to a chair. He said some things were better left unseen and undisturbed. It’s been two hundred years, and he still won’t tell me what he saw. If you even m
ention it, he goes pale and shaky and won’t talk for a few hours.”

  My blood chilled. “Is it … some sort of monster?”

  “I have no idea.” Rhys jerked his chin toward Clotho, the priestess patiently waiting a few steps behind us, her face still in shadow. “They don’t speak or write of it, so if they know … They certainly won’t tell me. So if it doesn’t bother us, then I won’t bother it. That is, if it’s even an it. Cassian never said if he saw anything living down there. Perhaps it’s something else entirely.”

  Considering the things I’d already witnessed … I didn’t want to think about what lay at the bottom of the library. Or what could make Cassian, who had seen more dreadful and deadly parts of the world than I could ever imagine, so terrified.

  Robes rustling, Clotho aimed for the sloping walkway into the library, and we fell into step behind her. The floors were red stone, like the rest of the place, but smooth and polished. I wondered if any of the priestesses had ever gone sledding down the spiraling path.

  Not that I know of, Rhys said into my mind. But Mor and I once tried when we were children. My mother caught us on our third level down, and we were sent to bed without supper.

  I clamped down on my smile. Was it such a crime?

  It was when we’d oiled up the floor, and the scholars were falling on their faces.

  I coughed to cover my laugh, lowering my head, even with Clotho a few steps ahead.

  We passed stacks of books and parchment, the shelves either built into the stone itself or made of dark, solid wood. Hallways lined with both vanished into the mountain itself, and every few minutes, a little reading area popped up, full of tidy tables, low-burning glass lamps, and deep-cushioned chairs and couches. Ancient woven rugs adorned the floors beneath them, usually set before fireplaces that had been carved into the rock and kept well away from any shelves, their grates fine-meshed enough to retain any wandering embers.

  Cozy, despite the size of the space; warm, despite the unknown terror lurking below.

  If the others piss me off too much, I like to come down here for some peace and quiet.

  I smiled slightly at Rhys, who kept looking ahead as we spoke mind to mind.