He went still, brows bunching. And then his eyes widened. “Whatever you’re—”
“I want you to leave. Go up to the House of Wind for the night. Do not speak to me until I come talk to you, or until a week has passed. Whichever comes first. I don’t care.”
Until she’d mastered herself enough to not hurt him, to stop feeling the old urge to strike and maim before she could be wounded.
Cassian lurched toward her, but winced, back arching. Like the bargain tattoo on his back had burned him.
“Go away,” she ordered.
His throat worked, eyes bulging. Fighting the power of the bargain with his every breath.
But then he whirled, wingbeats booming as he leaped into the skies above the river.
Nesta remained on the quay as her spine tingled, and she knew her tattoo had vanished.
Emerie was at her kitchen table when Nesta appeared at the back door. Mor had winnowed her here without a question, without so much as a glance of disapproval. Nesta had been beyond caring about it, though. Was only grateful the female had appeared—likely sent by Cassian. She didn’t care about that, either.
Nesta made it two steps into Emerie’s shop before she collapsed and cried.
She barely noticed what happened. How Emerie helped her into a chair, how the words tumbled out, explaining what she and Cassian had said, what she’d done to him.
A knock sounded on the door an hour later, and Nesta stopped crying when she saw who stood there.
Gwyn threw her arms around Nesta. “I heard you might need us.” Nesta was so stunned to see the priestess that she returned the hug.
Mor, a step behind, gave her a concerned nod, and then winnowed away.
Emerie was the one to say to Gwyn, “I can’t believe you left the library.”
Gwyn stroked Nesta’s head. “Some things are more important than fear.” She cleared her throat. “But please don’t remind me too much. I’m so nervous I really might vomit.”
Even Nesta smiled at that.
Her two friends fussed over her, sitting at the kitchen table and drinking hot cocoa—a belated Solstice gift to Emerie from Nesta, pilfered from the House’s larder. They ate dinner, and then dessert, and discussed their latest reads. They spoke about everything and nothing long into the night.
Only when Nesta’s eyes burned with exhaustion, her body a limp weight, did they go upstairs. There were three bedrooms above the shop, all pristine and simple, and Nesta changed into the nightgown Emerie offered without a second thought.
She’d talk to him tomorrow. Sleep now, safe with her friends around her, and talk to him tomorrow.
She’d explain everything—why she’d balked, why it frightened her, this next step into the unknown. The life beyond it. She’d apologize for using their bargain to send him away, and not stop apologizing until he smiled again.
Perhaps the future did not need to be so planned—she could just take it one day at a time. As long as she had Cassian at her side, her friends with her, she could do it. Face it. They wouldn’t let her fall back into that pit. Cassian would never let her fall again.
But if she did fall … he’d be waiting for her at the top again. Hand outstretched. She didn’t deserve it, but she’d endeavor to be worthy of him.
Nesta fell asleep with that thought ringing, a weight lifted from her chest.
Tomorrow, she’d tell Cassian everything. Tomorrow, her life would begin.
A male scent filled her room. It wasn’t Cassian. And it wasn’t Rhys or Azriel.
It was full of hate, and Nesta lurched upward just as a rough laugh sounded. Down the hall, Gwyn screamed—then fell silent.
In the dark, she could make out nothing, and she fumbled for the power within her, for the knife next to the bed—
Something cold and wet pressed into her face.
It burned her nostrils, flaying open her mind.
Darkness swept in, and she was gone.
CHAPTER
63
Nesta’s bargain had required that he go to the House of Wind for the night.
And that he could speak to her only once she spoke to him, or after a week had passed.
Easy enough rules to maneuver around. He made a mental note to teach her to word her bargains a little more cleverly.
Cassian waited until the required night had passed and then found Rhys at dawn, asking his brother to winnow him into Windhaven. Mor had reluctantly informed him she’d brought Nesta there the day before. He’d finish this fight with Nesta, one way or another. It had never frightened him. The mating bond, or that Nesta was his. He’d guessed it well before the Cauldron had turned her.
The only thing that frightened him was that she might reject it. Hate him for it. Chafe against it. He’d beheld the truth in her eyes on Solstice, when the mating bond had been like so much gold thread between their souls, but she’d still hesitated. And yesterday his temper had gotten the better of him, and … he’d start off round two by getting her to say just one word to him, so he’d be free to speak the rest.
The apology, the declaration he still needed to make—all of it.
He scented both Nesta and Gwyn at Emerie’s back door when he knocked. It moved him beyond words, that Gwyn had braved the world beyond the library to comfort Nesta. Even as it shamed him that he’d been the cause of it.
But at his side, Rhys’s face was suddenly pale. “They’re not here.”
Cassian didn’t wait before he shoved into the shop, breaking the lock on Emerie’s door. If someone had hurt them, taken them—
No one was in the cozy room in the back. But—suddenly there were male scents in this room, as if they’d winnowed right in.
Illyrians had no magic like that.
Except on one night, when Illyrians possessed an ancient, wild power.
“No.” He charged up the stairs, the steps rank with those male scents, and that of the females’ fear. He found Nesta’s room first.
She’d fought. The bed was shoved across the room, the nightstand turned over, and blood—male blood, from the scent of it—lay in a puddle on the floor. But the acrid scent of the sleeping ointment, enough to knock out a horse, lingered.
His head went quiet. Emerie’s and Gwyn’s rooms were the same. Signs of a struggle, but not of the females themselves.
Fear bloomed, so vast and broad he could barely breathe. It was a message—to the females for thinking themselves warriors, and to him for teaching them, for defying the Illyrians’ archaic hierarchies and rules.
Rhys came up beside him, his face white with that same dread. “Devlon just confirmed everything. The Blood Rite began at midnight.”
And Gwyn, Emerie, and Nesta had been snatched from their beds. To participate in it.
PART FOUR
ATARAXIA
CHAPTER
64
Someone had poured sand into her mouth. And taken a hammer to her head.
Was still pounding on it, apparently.
Nesta pried her tongue from her teeth, swallowing a few times to work some moisture back into her mouth. Her aching head—
Scents hit her. Male, varied, and so many—
Hard, cold ground lay beneath her bare legs, pine needles poking through the thin material of her nightgown. Chill, blood-icing wind carried all those male scents above a tide of snow and pine and dirt—