Feyre’s father … and Nesta’s father. Cassian blocked out the memory of the man’s neck being snapped. Of Nesta’s face as it had happened. And deciding to damn caution to hell, he asked, “Which of the queens would do something this bold?”
Vassa’s golden face tightened. “Briallyn.”
The once-young, once-human queen who had been turned High Fae by the Cauldron. But in its rage at whatever Nesta had taken from it, the Cauldron had punished Briallyn. She was Made immortal Fae, yes—but she was withered into a crone. Doomed to be old for millennia.
She’d made no secret of her hatred for Nesta. Her desire for revenge.
If Briallyn made a move against Nesta, he’d kill the queen himself.
Cassian tried to think over the bellowing beast in his head that tightened every muscle of his body until only bloody violence would appease it.
“Easy,” Lucien said.
Cassian snarled.
“Easy,” Lucien repeated, and flame sizzled in his russet eye.
The flame, the surprising dominance within it, hit Cassian like a stone to the head, knocking him from his need to kill and kill and kill whatever might threaten—
They were all staring. Cassian rolled his tensed shoulders, stretching out his wings. He’d revealed too much. Like a stupid brute, he’d let them all see too much, learn too much.
“Send that shadowsinger of yours to track Briallyn,” Jurian ordered, his face grave. “If she’s somehow capable of capturing a unit of Fae soldiers, we need to know how. Swiftly.” Spoken like the general Jurian had once been.
Cassian said to Vassa, “You really think Briallyn would do something like this? Be that blatant? Someone has to be trying to fool us into going after her.”
Lucien asked, “How would she even get here and vanish that quickly? Crossing the sea takes weeks. She’d need to winnow to pull it off.”
“The queens can winnow,” Jurian corrected. “They did so during the war, remember?”
But Vassa said, “Only when several of us are together. And it is not winnowing as the Fae do, but a different power. It’s akin to the way all seven High Lords can combine their powers to perform miracles.”
Well, fuck.
Eris said, “I have it on good authority that the other three queens have scattered to the winds.” Cassian tucked away the information and the questions it raised. How did Eris know that? “Briallyn has been residing alone in their palace for weeks now. Long before my soldiers vanished.”
“So she can’t winnow, then,” Cassian concluded. “And again—would she really be foolish enough to do something like this if the other queens have left?”
Vassa’s eyes darkened. “Yes. The others’ departure would serve to remove obstacles to her ambitions. But she’d only do this if she had someone of immense power behind her. Perhaps pulling her strings.”
Even the fire seemed to quiet.
Lucien’s eye clicked. “Who?”
“You wonder who is capable of making a unit of Fae soldiers across the sea vanish? Who could give Briallyn the power to winnow—or do it for her? Who could aid Briallyn so she’d be bold enough to do such a thing? Look to Koschei.”
Cassian froze as memories clicked into place, as surely as one of Amren’s jigsaw puzzles. “The sorcerer who imprisoned you is named Koschei? Is he … is he the Bone Carver’s brother?” Everyone gaped at him. Cassian clarified, “The Bone Carver mentioned a brother to me once, a fellow true immortal and a death-lord. That was his name.”
“Yes,” Vassa breathed. “Koschei is—was—the Bone Carver’s older brother.”
Lucien and Jurian looked at her in surprise. But Vassa’s gaze lay upon him. Fear and hatred filled it, as if speaking the male’s name were abhorrent.
Her voice hoarsened. “Koschei is no mere sorcerer. He’s confined to the lake only due to an ancient spell. Because he was outsmarted once. Everything he does is to free himself.”
“Why was he imprisoned?” Cassian asked.
“The story is too long to tell,” she hedged. “But know that Briallyn and the others sold me to him not through their devices, but his. By words he planted in their courts, whispered on the winds.”
“He’s still at the lake,” Lucien said carefully. Lucien had been there, Cassian recalled. Had gone with Nesta’s father to the lake where Vassa was held captive.
“Yes,” Vassa said, relief in her eyes. “But Koschei is as old as the sea—older.”
“Some say he is Death itself,” Eris murmured.
“I do not know if that is true,” Vassa said, “but they call him Koschei the Deathless, for he has no death awaiting him. He is truly immortal. And would know of anything that might give Briallyn an edge against us.”
“And you think Koschei would do all of this,” Cassian pressed, “not out of sympathy for the human queens, but with the goal of freeing himself?”
“Certainly.” Vassa peered at her hands, fingers flexing. “I fear what may happen if he ever gets free of the lake. If he sees this world on the cusp of disaster and knows he could strike, and strike hard, and make himself its master. As he once tried to do, long ago.”
“Those are legends that predate our courts,” Eris said.
Vassa nodded. “It is all I have gleaned from my time enslaved to him.”
Lucien stared out the window—as if he could see the lake across a sea and a continent. As if he were setting his target.
But Cassian had heard enough. He didn’t wait for their good-byes before heading for the archway, and the front hall behind it.
He’d made it two steps beyond the front door, breathing in the crisp night air, when Eris said behind him, “You make a terrible courtier.” Cassian turned to find Eris shutting the front door and leaning against it. His face was pale and stony in the moonlight. “What do you know?”
“As little as you,” Cassian said, offering a truth that he hoped Eris would deem a deception.
Eris sniffed the night breeze. Then smiled. “She couldn’t be bothered to come inside to say hello?”
How he’d detected Mor’s lingering scent, Cassian didn’t know. Perhaps Eris and his smokehounds had more in common than he realized. “She didn’t know you were here.”
A lie. Mor had probably sensed it. He’d spare her the pain of coming back here, and have Rhys retrieve him. He’d fly north for a few hours—until he was in range of Rhys’s power—and then shoot a thought toward him.
Eris’s long red hair ruffled in the wind. “Whatever it is you’re doing, whatever it is you’re looking into, I want in.”
“Why? And no.”
“Because I need the edge Briallyn has, what Koschei has told her or shown her.”
“To overthrow your father.”
“Because my father has already pledged his forces to Briallyn and the war she wishes to incite.”
Cassian started. “What?”
Eris’s face filled with cool amusement. “I wanted to feel out Vassa and Jurian.” He didn’t mention his brother, oddly enough. “But they clearly know little about this.”
“Explain what the fuck you mean by Beron pledging his forces to Briallyn.”