His stomach tightened. “I don’t like it.”
“You don’t have to like it,” Amren said. “You just have to shut up and do as you’re told.”
“Amren,” Rhys said, the word laced with reprimand and warning.
Amren didn’t so much as blink in remorse, but Varian frowned at her. “What?” she snapped.
The Prince of Adriata gave her an exasperated smile. “Haven’t we talked about this? About … being nice?”
Amren rolled her eyes. But her face softened—ever so slightly—as she met Cassian’s stare again. “A week. Nesta gets a week.”
Three days passed. Emerie came to each lesson, and while Gwyn had mostly caught up to Nesta’s progress, Emerie would need more work. So Nesta and Gwyn partnered with each other, going through the sets of exercises that Cassian showed them before he worked one-on-one with Emerie on her balance and mobility.
None of them minded, not when Emerie had been right about the Sellyn Drake books. Nesta had stayed up two nights in a row reading the author’s first novel, which was as toe-curlingly erotic as she could have wished. And, as promised, Emerie had brought a copy of one of Drake’s tamer novels for Gwyn, who had arrived blushing the next morning and told Emerie that if the book was considered tame, then she could only imagine the content of the others.
After that first day, Emerie stayed for the entire length of their lessons, which had now officially stretched into a full three hours, deciding that her morning business traffic was slow enough to risk it. So they trained, and between their exercises they talked about books, and Nesta woke on the fourth morning and found herself … excited to see them again.
She was shelving a tome in the library that afternoon when Gwyn found her. Thanks to Gwyn’s lesson each morning, she’d been busier in the afternoons, which meant that Nesta rarely saw her in the library save for when Gwyn was running through the stacks, hunting for some book or another for Merrill. Occasionally, Nesta heard a lovely, soaring snippet of song from some distant corner of the library—the sole indicator that Gwyn was near.
But that afternoon, it was Gwyn’s panting that announced her presence seconds before she appeared, her eyes wide enough that Nesta went on alert, scanning the dimness behind the priestess. “What?” Had the darkness below chased her?
Gwyn mastered herself enough to say, “I don’t know how, but Merrill learned you swapped the book out.” She gasped for air as she pointed up to a level high above. “You should go.”
Nesta frowned. “Who cares? I’m not going to let her scare me off like some errant child.”
Gwyn blanched. “When she’s in a fury, it is—”
“It is what, Gwyneth Berdara?” crooned a female voice from the stacks. “When I’m in a fury, it is what?”
Gwyn winced, turning slowly as the white-haired beauty appeared from the gloom. Her pale robes flowed behind her as if on a phantom wind, and the blue stone atop her hood flickered with light. Gwyn bowed her head, face paling. “I meant nothing by it, Merrill.”
Nesta ground her teeth at the bow, the fear on Gwyn’s face, in her soft words.
Priestesses halted along the railings above them.
Merrill turned her remarkable eyes to Nesta. “I do not appreciate thieves and liars.”
“Neither do I,” Nesta said coolly, lifting her chin.
Merrill hissed. “You tried to play me for a fool in my very own office.” She didn’t so much as look at Gwyn, who cringed away.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh? You mean when I went to see the book that my inane assistant had incorrectly given me—oh, yes, I knew about that from the start—and found the proper volume instead, with your scent upon it, it wasn’t you who did it?” Merrill looked between Gwyn and Nesta. “It is inexcusable to ask others to make up for your own stupidity and carelessness.”
Gwyn’s fear grated against her senses. Nesta said, voice dropping, “Gwyn did no such thing. And who cares? Are you so bored down here that you have to invent these dramas to entertain yourself?” She waved a hand to the open walkway behind Merrill. “We’re both busy. Clear off and let us work in peace.”
Someone gasped on a level above.
Merrill laughed, that phantom wind around her whispering. “Do you not know who I am, girl?”
“I know that you are keeping us from our work,” Nesta said with that flat calm she knew made people irate. “And I know that this is a library, but you hoard books like it is your own personal collection.”
Merrill bared her teeth. “You think I do not know you? The human girl who was shoved into the Cauldron and came out High Fae. The female who slew the King of Hybern and held up his head like a trophy as his blood rained upon her.”
Surprise lit Gwyn’s face at the graphic description.
Nesta didn’t allow herself to so much as swallow.
“The wind whispers to me even here, under so much stone,” Merrill said. “It finds its way in through the cracks and murmurs the goings-on of the world in my ear.” Merrill snorted. “Do you think you are entitled to do as you please now?”
Nesta’s power rumbled in her veins. She stomped on it, shoved it down and strangled it. “I think you like to hear yourself talk too much.”
“I am descended from Rabath, Lord of the Western Wind,” Merrill seethed. “Unlike Gwyneth Berdara, I am no lackey to be dismissed.”
To hell with this witch. To hell with restraint and hiding.
Nesta let enough of her power simmer to the surface that she knew her own eyes glowed. Let it crackle, even as she ignored its wild, unholy bellowing.
Gwyn had backed away a step. Even Merrill blinked as Nesta said, “With a fancy title like that, surely such a petty grudge should be beneath you.”
Nesta smiled, savage and cruel. Merrill only glanced between her and Gwyn before saying, “Get back to your work, nymph.”
Wind snapping at her heels, Merrill stalked into the gloom.
Nesta dropped the thread of her power, quelling its music and roaring with an iron hand.
But it wasn’t until Merrill’s brisk wind faded that Gwyn leaned against a stack, rubbing her hands over her face. The priestesses who’d been watching launched into movement again, their whispering filling the library.
Nesta asked into the rustling quiet, “Nymph?”
Gwyn lowered her hands, noted the lack of glowing power in Nesta’s eyes, and sighed in relief. But her voice remained casual. “My grandmother was a river-nymph who seduced a High Fae male from the Autumn Court. So I’m a quarter nymph, but it’s enough for this.” Gwyn gestured to her large eyes—blue so clear it could have been the shallow sea—and her lithe body. “My bones are slightly more pliant than ordinary High Fae’s, but who cares about that?”
Perhaps that was why Gwyn was so good at the balancing and movement.
Gwyn went on, “My mother was unwanted by either of their people. She could not dwell in the rivers of the Spring Court, but was too untamed to endure the confinement of the forest house of Autumn. So she was given in her childhood to the temple at Sangravah, where she was raised. She partook in the Great Rite when she was of age, and I, we—my sister and I, I mean—were the result of that sacred union with a male stranger. She never found out who he was, for the magic chose him that night, and no one ever showed up to ask about twin girls. We were raised in the temple as well. I never left its grounds until … until I came here.”