Her mouth had dried again. “But who put it here?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. Someone who existed before the High Lords ruled. Rhys told me once that this island might have even been an eighth court.”
“You don’t recognize these markings on the ground?”
“Not at all.”
She loosed a long breath. “I don’t think any traps were triggered.”
He nodded. “Be quick.”
Their gazes held, and Nesta turned from the raw worry in his eyes as she pulled her hand from his and entered the chamber.
The wards lay heavy against Nesta’s skin with each step across the stone floor to the shining Harp.
“It looks newly polished,” she observed to Cassian, who watched from the archway. “How is that possible?”
“It exists outside the bindings of time, just as the Cauldron does.”
Nesta studied the carvings in the floor. They all seemed to spiral toward one point. “I think these are stars,” she breathed. “Constellations.” And like a golden sun, the Harp lay at the center of the system.
“This is the Night Court,” Cassian said drily.
But it felt … different from Night Court magic somehow. Nesta paused before the Harp, the wards pressing into her skin as she surveyed its golden frame and silver strings. The Harp sat atop a large rendering of an eight-pointed star. Its cardinal points stretched longer than the other four, with the Harp situated directly in the heart of the star.
The hair on the back of her neck stood. She could have sworn the blood in her body reversed course.
She had the creeping feeling she’d been brought here.
Not by the Cauldron or the Mother or the Harp. By something vaster. Something that stretched into the stars carved all around them.
Its cool, light hands guided her wrists as she picked up the Harp.
Her fingers brushed the icy metal. The Harp hummed against her skin, as if it still held its final note, from the last time it had been used—
Fae screamed, pounding on stone that hadn’t been there a moment before, pleading for their children’s sakes, begging to be let out let out let out—
Nesta had the sensation of falling, tumbling through air and stars and time—
It was a trap, and our people were too blind to see it—
Eons and stars and darkness plunged around her—
The Fae clawed at stone, tearing their nails on rock where there had once been a door. But the way back was now forever sealed, and they begged as they tried to pass their children through the solid wall, if only their children could be spared—
Light flashed, blinding. When it cleared, she stood in a white-stoned palace.
A great hall, where five thrones graced a dais. The sixth throne, in the center, was occupied by a pointy-eared crone. A golden, spiked crown rested on her head, blazing like the hate in her black eyes.
The Fae crone stiffened, blue velvet robes shifting with the movement. Her eyes, clear despite her wrinkled face, sharpened. Right on Nesta.
“You have the Harp,” the queen said, voice like crinkling paper. And Nesta knew who she stood frozen before, what crown lay on her thin, white hair. Briallyn’s gnarled fingers curled on the arms of her throne, and her gaze narrowed. The queen smiled, revealing a mouth of half-rotted teeth.
Nesta backed up a step—or tried to. She couldn’t move.
Briallyn’s horrible smile deepened and she said conversationally, “My spies have told me who your friends are. The half-breed and the broken Illyrian. Such lovely girls.”
Nesta’s blood churned, and she knew her eyes were blazing with her power as she snarled, “You come near them and I’ll rip out your throat. I will hunt you down and gut you.”
Briallyn tutted. “Such bonds are foolish. As foolish as you still holding on to the Harp, which sings answers to all my questions. I know where you are, Nesta Archeron—”
Darkness erupted.
Unmoving, solid darkness, slamming into Nesta as hard as a wall.
Screams still echoed.
No—no, that was a male bellowing her name.
And she had not slammed into the darkness. She’d collided with the stone, and now lay upon the floor, the Harp in her hands.
“NESTA!” Red light flared, washing like a bloody tide upon the stones, her face, the ceiling. But Cassian’s Siphons could not break through the wards. He could not reach her.
Nesta clutched the Harp to her chest, the last of its reverberations echoing through her. She had to let go. Somehow, in touching the Harp while Briallyn was wearing the Crown, she had opened a pathway between their minds, their eyes. She could see Briallyn, and Briallyn could see her, could sense where she was. She had to let go—
She couldn’t do more than twitch her fingertips as invisible, oppressive weight bore into her, like it’d flatten her into dust upon the ground. Let go, she silently bade it, gritting her teeth, fingers brushing over the nearest string. Free me, you blasted thing.
A beautiful, haughty voice answered, full of music so lovely it broke her heart to hear it. I do not appreciate your tone.
With that the Harp pushed into her harder, and Nesta roared silently.
Her nail scraped over the string again. Let me go!
Shall I open a door for you, then? Release that which is caught?
Yes! Damn you, yes!
It has been a long while, sister, since I played. I shall need time to remember the right combinations …
Don’t play games. Nesta chilled at the word it had used. Sister. Like she and this thing were one and the same.
The small strings are for games—light movement and leaping—but the longer, the final ones … Such deep wonders and horrors we could strum into being. Such great and monstrous magic I wrought with my last minstrel. Shall I show you?
No. Just open up these wards.
As you wish. Pluck the first string, then.
Nesta didn’t hesitate as her fingertip curled over the first string, grasping and then releasing it. A musical laugh filled her mind, but the weight lifted. Vanished.
Nesta heaved a breath, shoving upward, and found herself free to move as she wished. The Harp lay still in her hands, dormant. The very air seemed lighter. Looser. Like opening another doorway had shut the one to Briallyn.
“NESTA!” Cassian thundered from across the chamber.
“I’m fine,” she called out, shaking off her lingering tremors. “But I think someone very wicked used this last.” She stared into the darkness above. “I think they used it to … to trap their enemies and their enemies’ children into the stone itself.” Was that what had been happening to her just now? The Harp had been pushing her into the rock, fusing her soul with it? She shivered.
Cassian demanded, “Are you hurt? What happened?”
She groaned, rising slowly. “No. I … I touched it and it held a memory. A bad one.” One she’d never forget. “And we need to leave. It showed me Briallyn, wearing the Crown. She saw me here.” The words tumbled out as Nesta waded back through the ward-heavy cavern, feeling that center spot, the star at its heart, like a physical presence at her back. Those vast, light hands seemed to pull at her, trying to make her return, but she ignored them, explaining to Cassian what she’d heard from the Harp, and what she’d seen in the vision with Briallyn.