A Court of Wings and Ruin (A Court of Thorns and Roses 3)

Cassian swore.

“Exactly,” I said. It was a risk perhaps none of us were entirely prepared to face. Not when we were all needed—each one of us.

Mor added a bit hoarsely, straightening the ebony pleats and panels of her gossamer gown, “My father spoke true about that. I was raised with legends of the mirror. None were pleasant. Or successful.”

Cassian frowned at me, at Rhys. “So what—”

“You are talking about the Ouroboros,” Amren said.

I blinked. Shit. Shit—

“Why do you want that mirror?” Her voice had slipped to a low timbre.

Rhys slid his free hand into his pocket. “If honesty is the theme of the night … Because the Bone Carver requested it.”

Amren’s nostrils flared. “You went to the Prison.”

“Your old friends say hello,” Cassian drawled, leaning a shoulder against the sitting room archway.

Amren’s face tightened, Nesta glancing between them—carefully. Reading us. Especially as Amren’s quicksilver eyes swirled. “Why did you go.”

I opened my mouth, but the gold of Lucien’s eye caught my attention. Snared it.

My hesitation must have been indication enough of my wariness.

Jaw tight with a hint of frustration, Lucien excused himself to his room. Frustration—and perhaps disappointment. I blocked it out—what it did to my stomach.

“We had some questions for the Carver.” Cassian gave Amren a slash of a smile when Lucien was gone. “And we have some for you.”

Amren’s smoke-filled eyes flared. “You are going to unleash the Carver.”

I said simply, “Yes.” A one-monster army.

“That is impossible.”

“I’ll remind you that you, sweet Amren, escaped,” Rhys countered smoothly. “And have stayed free. So it can be done. Perhaps you could tell us how you did it.”

Cassian had stationed himself by the doorway, I realized, to be closer to Nesta. To grab her if Amren decided she didn’t particularly care for where this conversation was headed. Or for any of the furniture in this room.

Precisely why Rhys now placed himself on Amren’s other side—to draw her attention away from me, and Mor behind us, every muscle in her lithe body on alert.

Cassian was staring at Nesta—hard enough that my sister at last twisted toward him. Met his gaze. His head tilted—slightly. A silent order.

Nesta, to my shock, obeyed. Drifted over to Cassian’s side as Amren replied to Rhys, “No.”

“It wasn’t a request,” Rhys said.

He’d once admitted that merely questioning Amren had been something she’d allowed him to do only in recent years. But giving her an order, pushing her like this …

“Feyre and Cassian spoke to the Bone Carver. He wants the Ouroboros in exchange for serving us—fighting Hybern for us. But we need you to explain how to get him out.” The bargain Rhys or I would strike with him would suffice to hold him to our will.

“Anything else?” Her voice was too calm, too sweet.

“When we’re done with all of this,” Rhys said, “then my promise from months ago still holds: use the Book to send yourself home, if you want.”

Amren stared up at him. It was so quiet that the clock on the sitting room mantel could be heard. And beyond that—the fountain in the garden—

“Call off your dog,” Amren said with that lethal tone.

Because the shadow in the corner behind Amren … that was Azriel. The obsidian hilt of Truth-Teller in his scarred hand. He’d moved without my realizing it—though I had no doubt the others had likely been aware.

Amren bared her teeth at him. Azriel’s beautiful face didn’t so much as shift.

Rhys remained where he was as he asked Amren, “Why won’t you tell us?”

Cassian casually slid Nesta behind him, his fingers snagging in the skirts of her black gown. As if to reassure himself that she wasn’t in Amren’s direct path. Nesta only rose onto her toes to peer over his shoulder.

“Because the stone beneath this house has ears, the wind has ears—all of it listening,” Amren said. “And if it reports back … They will remember, Rhysand, that they have not caught me. And I will not let them put me in that black pit again.”

My ears hollowed out as a shield clicked into place. “No one will hear beyond this room.”

Amren surveyed the books lying forgotten on the low table in the sitting room.

Her brows narrowed. “I had to give something up. I had to give me up. To walk out, I had to become something else entirely, something the Prison would not recognize. So I—I bound myself into this body.”

I’d never heard her stumble over a word before.

“You said someone else bound you,” Rhys questioned carefully.

“I lied—to cover what I’d done. So none could know. To escape the Prison, I made myself mortal. Immortal as you are, but … mortal compared to—to what I was. And what I was … I did not feel, the way you do. The way I do now. Some things—loyalty and wrath and curiosity—but not the full spectrum.” Again, that faraway look. “I was perfect, according to some. I did not regret, did not mourn—and pain … I did not experience it. And yet … yet I wound up here, because I was not quite like the others. Even as—as what I was, I was different. Too curious. Too questioning. The day the rip appeared in the sky … it was curiosity that drove me. My brothers and sisters fled. Upon the orders of our ruler, we had just laid waste to twin cities, smote them wholly into rubble on the plain, and yet they fled from that rip in the world. But I wanted to look. I wanted. I was not built or bred to feel such selfish things as want. I’d seen what happened to those of my kind who strayed, who learned to place their needs first. Who developed … feeling. But I went through the tear in the sky. And here I am.”

“And you gave all that up to get out of the Prison?” Mor asked softly.

“I yielded my grace—my perfect immortality. I knew that once I did … I would feel pain. And regret. I would want, and I would burn with it. I would … fall. But I was—the time locked away down there … I didn’t care. I had not felt the wind on my face, had not smelled the rain … I did not even remember what they felt like. I did not remember sunlight.”

It was to Azriel that her attention drifted—the shadowsinger’s darkness pulling away to reveal eyes full of understanding. Locked away.

“So I bound myself into this body. I shoved my burning grace deep into me. I gave up everything I was. The cell door just … unlocked. And so I walked out.”

A burning grace … That still smoldered far within her, visible only through the smoke in her gray eyes.

“That will be the cost of freeing the Carver,” Amren said. “You will have to bind him into a body. Make him … Fae. And I doubt he will agree to it. Especially without the Ouroboros.”

We were silent.

“You should have asked me before you went,” she said, that sharpness returning to her tone. “I would have spared you the visit.”

Rhysand swallowed. “Can you be—unbound?”

“Not by me.”

“What would happen if you were?”

Amren stared at him for a long while. Then me. Cassian. Azriel. Mor. Nesta. Finally back to my mate. “I would not remember you. I would not care for any of you. I would either smite you or abandon you. What I feel now … it would be foreign to me—it would hold no sway. Everything I am, this body … it would cease to be.”

“What were you,” Nesta breathed, coming around Cassian to stand at his side.

Amren toyed with one of her black pearl earrings. “A messenger—and soldier-assassin. For a wrathful god who ruled a young world.”

I could feel the questions of the others brewing. Rhys’s eyes were near-glowing with them.

“Was Amren your name?” Nesta asked.

“No.” The smoke swirled in her eyes. “I do not remember the name I was given. I used Amren because—it’s a long story.”

I almost begged her t

o tell it, but soft footsteps thudded, and then—

“Oh.”

Elain started—enough so that I realized she couldn’t hear us. Had no idea we were here, thanks to the shield that kept sound from escaping.

It instantly dropped. But my sister remained near the stairs. She’d covered her nightgown with a silk shawl of palest blue, her fingers grappling into the fabric as she held herself.

I went to her immediately. “Do you need anything?”

“No. I … I was sleeping, but I heard …” She shook her head. Blinked at our formal attire, the dark crown atop my head—and Rhysand’s. “I didn’t hear you.”

Azriel stepped forward. “But you heard something else.”

Elain seemed about to nod, but only backed away. “I think I was dreaming,” she murmured. “I think I’m always dreaming these days.”

“Let me get you some hot milk,” I said, putting a hand on her elbow to guide her into the sitting room.

But Elain shook me off, heading back to the stairs. She said as she climbed the first steps, “I can hear her—crying.”

I gripped the bottom post of the banister. “Who?”

“Everyone thinks she’s dead.” Elain kept walking. “But she’s not. Only—different. Changed. As I was.”

“Who,” I pushed.

But Elain continued up the stairs, that shawl drooping down her back. Nesta stalked from Cassian’s side to approach my own. We both sucked in a breath, to say what, I didn’t know but—

“What did you see,” Azriel said, and I tried not to flinch as I found him at my other side, not having seen him move. Again.

Elain paused halfway up the stairs. Slowly, she turned to look back at him. “I saw young hands wither with age. I saw a box of black stone. I saw a feather of fire land on snow and melt it.”