“Guard shift.” They’d planned this around it. “There’s a small sea door at the bottom. Mor will be waiting for us there—it’s the closest entrance to the lower levels.”
“I’m assuming she can’t winnow us in.”
“Too many wards to risk the time it’d cost for her to break through them. Rhys might be able to. But we’ll meet him at the door on the way out.”
My mouth went a bit dry. Over my heart, the Book said, Home—take me home.
And indeed I could feel it. With every foot we flew in, faster and faster, dipping down so the spray from the ocean chilled me to my bones, I could feel it.
Ancient—cruel. Without allegiance to anyone but itself.
The Cauldron. They needn’t have bothered learning where it was held inside this castle. I had no doubt I’d be drawn right to it. I shuddered.
“Easy,” Cassian said again. We swept in toward the base of the cliffs to the sea door before a platform. Mor was waiting, sword out, the door open.
Cassian loosed a breath, but Azriel reached her first, landing swiftly and silently, and immediately prowled into the castle to scout the hall ahead.
Mor waited for us—her eyes on Cassian as we landed. They didn’t speak, but their glance was too long to be anything but casual. I wondered what their training, their honed senses, detected.
The passage ahead was dark, silent. Azriel appeared a heartbeat later. “Guards are down.” There was blood on his knife—an ash knife. Az’s cold eyes met mine. “Hurry.”
I didn’t need to focus to track the Cauldron to its hiding place. It tugged on my every breath, hauling me to its dark embrace.
Any time we reached a crossroads, Cassian and Azriel would branch out, usually returning with bloodied blades, faces grim, silently warning me to hurry.
They’d been working these weeks, through whatever sources Azriel had, to get this encounter down to an exact schedule. If I needed more time than they’d allotted, if the Cauldron couldn’t be moved … it might all be for nothing. But not these deaths. No, those I did not mind at all.
These people—these people had hurt Rhys. They’d brought tools with them to incapacitate him. They had sent that legion to wreck and butcher my city.
I descended through an ancient dungeon, the stones dark and stained. Mor kept at my side, constantly monitoring. The last line of defense.
If Cassian and Azriel were hurt, I realized, she was to make sure I got out by whatever means. Then return.
But there was no one in the dungeon—not that I encountered, once the Illyrians were done with them. They had executed this masterfully. We found another stairwell, leading down, down, down—
I pointed, nausea roiling. “There. It’s down there.”
Cassian took the stairs, Illyrian blade stained with dark blood.
Neither Mor nor Azriel seemed to breathe until Cassian’s low whistle bounced off the stairwell stones from below.
Mor put a hand on my back, and we descended into the dark.
Home, the Book of Breathings sighed. Home.
Cassian was standing in a round chamber beneath the castle—a ball of faelight floating above his shoulder.
And in the center of the room, atop a small dais, sat the Cauldron.
CHAPTER
62
The Cauldron was absence and presence. Darkness and … whatever the darkness had come from.
But not life. Not joy or light or hope.
It was perhaps the size of a bathtub, forged of dark iron, its three legs—those three legs the king had ransacked those temples to find—crafted like creeping branches covered in thorns.
I had never seen something so hideous—and alluring.
Mor’s face had drained of color. “Hurry,” she said to me. “We’ve got a few minutes.”
Azriel scanned the room, the stairs we’d strode down, the Cauldron, its legs. I made to approach the dais, but he extended an arm into my path. “Listen.”
So we did.
Not words. But a throbbing.
Like blood pulsed through the room. Like the Cauldron had a heartbeat.
Like calls to like. I moved toward it. Mor was at my back, but didn’t stop me as I stepped up onto the dais.
Inside the Cauldron was nothing but inky, swirling black.
Perhaps the entire universe had come from it.
Azriel and Cassian tensed as I laid a hand on the lip. Pain—pain and ecstasy and power and weakness flowed into me. Everything that was and wasn’t, fire and ice, light and dark, deluge and drought.
The map for creation.
Reeling back into myself, I readied to read that spell.
The paper trembled as I pulled it from my pocket. As my fingers brushed the half of the Book inside.
Sweet-tongued liar, lady of many faces—
One hand on half of the Book of Breathings, the other on the Cauldron, I took a step outside myself, a jolt passing through my blood as if I were no more than a lightning rod.
Yes, you see now, princess of carrion—you see what you must do …
“Feyre,” Mor murmured in warning.
But my mouth was foreign, my lips might as well have been as far away as Velaris while the Cauldron and the Book flowed through me, communing.
The other one, the Book hissed. Bring the other one … let us be joined, let us be free.
I slid the Book from my pocket, tucking it into the crook of my arm as I tugged the second half free. Lovely girl, beautiful bird—so sweet, so generous …
Together together together
“Feyre.” Mor’s voice cut through the song of both halves.
Amren had been wrong. Separate, their power was cleaved—not enough to take on the abyss of the Cauldron’s might. But together … Yes, together, the spell would work when I spoke it.
Whole, I would become not a conduit between them, but rather their master. There was no moving the Cauldron—it had to be now.
Realizing what I was about to do, Mor lunged for me with a curse.
Too slow.
I laid the second half of the Book atop the other.
A silent ripple of power hollowed out my ears, buckled my bones.
Then nothing.
From far away, Mor said, “We can’t risk—”
“Give her a minute,” Cassian cut her off.
I was the Book and the Cauldron and sound and silence.
I was a living river through which one flowed into the other, eddying and ebbing, over and over, a tide with no end or beginning.
The spell—the words—
I looked to the paper in my hand, but my eyes did not see, my lips did not move.
I was not a tool, not a pawn. I would not be a conduit, not be the lackey of these things—
I’d memorized the spell. I would say it, breathe it, think it—
From the pit of my memory the first word formed. I slogged toward it, reaching for that one word, that one word that would be a tether back into myself, into who I was—
Strong hands tugged me back, wrenching me away.
Murky light and moldy stone poured into me, the room spinning as I gasped down breath, finding Azriel shaking me, eyes so wide I could see the white around them. What had happened, what—
Steps sounded above. Azriel instantly shoved me behind him, bloodied blade lifting.
The movement cleared my head enough to feel something wet and warm trickle down my lip and chin. Blood—my nose had been bleeding.
But those steps grew louder, and my friends had their weapons angled as a handsome brown-haired male swaggered down the steps. Human—his ears were round. But his eyes …
I knew the color of those eyes. I’d stared at one, encased in crystal, for three months.
“Stupid fool,” he said to me.
“Jurian,” I breathed.
CHAPTER
63
I gauged the distance between my friends and Jurian, weighed my sword against the twin ones crossed over his back. Cassian took a
step toward the descending warrior and snarled, “You.”
Jurian snickered. “Worked your way up the ranks, did you? Congratulations.”
I felt him sweep toward us. Like a ripple of night and wrath, Rhys appeared at my side. The Book was instantly gone, his movement so slick as he took it from me and tucked it into his own jacket that I barely registered it had happened.