Nesta again didn’t reply.
It seemed she had stopped speaking to Feyre at all. But at least she was going willingly.
Semi-willingly.
“Shall we?” Mor said, offering up either elbow.
Nesta gazed at the floor, her face pale and gaunt, eyes blazing.
Feyre met his stare. The look alone conveyed everything she was begging of him.
Nesta stepped past her, grabbed Mor’s forearm, and watched a spot on the wall.
Mor cringed at him, but Cassian didn’t dare share the look. Nesta might not be gazing at them, but he knew she saw and heard and assessed everything.
So he merely took Mor’s other arm and winked at Feyre before they all vanished into wind and darkness.
Mor winnowed them into the sky right above the House of Wind.
Before the stomach-dropping plunge could register, Nesta was in Cassian’s arms, his wings spread, as he flew toward the stone veranda. It had been a long while since she’d been held by him, since she’d seen the city so small below.
He could have flown them both up here, Nesta realized as he alighted and Morrigan vanished from her deadly plummet with a wave. The rules of the House were simple: no one could winnow directly inside thanks to its heavy wards, so it was a choice to either walk up the ten thousand steps, winnow and drop a terrifying distance to the veranda—likely breaking bones—or winnow to the edge of the wards with someone who had wings to fly the rest of the way in. But being in Cassian’s arms … She’d rather have risked breaking every bone in her body from the plunge to the veranda. Thankfully, the flight was over in a matter of seconds.
Nesta shoved out of his grip the moment her feet hit the worn stones. Cassian let her, folding his wings and lingering by the rail, all of Velaris glittering below and beyond him.
She’d spent weeks here last year—during that terrible period after being turned Fae, begging Elain to demonstrate any sign of wanting to live. She’d barely slept for fear of Elain walking off this veranda, or leaning too far out of one of the countless windows, or simply throwing herself down those ten thousand stairs.
Her throat closed at the surge of memories and at the sprawling view—the glimmering ribbon of the Sidra far below, the red-stoned palace built into the side of the flat-topped mountain itself.
Nesta dug her hands into her pockets, wishing she’d opted for the warm gloves Feyre had coaxed her to take. She’d refused. Or silently refused, since she had not uttered a word to her sister after they’d left the study.
Partially because she was afraid of what would come out.
For a long moment, Nesta and Cassian watched each other.
The wind ripped at his shoulder-length dark hair, but he might have been standing in a summer field for all the reaction he yielded to the cold—so much sharper up here, high above the city. It was all she could do to keep her teeth from clattering their way out of her skull.
Cassian finally said, “You’ll be staying in your old room.”
As if she had any sort of claim on this place. On anywhere at all.
He went on, “My room’s a level above that.”
“Why would I need to know that?” The words snapped out of her.
He began walking toward the glass doors that led into the mountain’s interior. “In case you have a bad dream and need someone to read you a story,” he drawled, a half smile dancing on his face. “Maybe one of those smutty books you like so much.”
Her nostrils flared. But she walked through the door he held open for her, nearly sighing at the cozy warmth filling the red stone halls. Her new residence. Sleeping site.
It wasn’t a home, this place. Just as her apartment hadn’t been a home.
Neither had her father’s fancy new house, before Hybern had half-destroyed it. And neither had the cottage, or the glorious manor before that. Home was a foreign word.
But she knew this level of the House of Wind well: the dining room to the left, and the stairway to her right that would take her down two levels to her floor, and the kitchens a level below that. The library far, far beneath it.
She wouldn’t have cared where she stayed, except for the convenience of the small, private library also on her level. Which had been the place where she’d discovered those smutty books, as Cassian called them. She’d devoured a few dozen of them during those weeks she’d first been here, desperate for any lifeline to keep her from falling apart, from bellowing at what had been done to her body, her life—to Elain. Elain, who would not eat, or speak, or do anything at all.
Elain, who had somehow become the adjusted one.
In the months leading to and during the war, Nesta had managed. Had stepped into this world, with these people, and started to see it—a future.
Until she’d been hunted by the King of Hybern and the Cauldron. Until she’d realized that everyone she cared for would be used to hurt her, break her, trap her. Until that last battle when she couldn’t stop one thousand Illyrians from dying, and had instead been able to save only one.
Him. She would do it again, if forced to. And knowing that … She couldn’t bear that truth, either.
Cassian aimed for the downward stairs, his every movement brimming with unfaltering arrogance.
“I don’t need an escort to my room.” No matter that his rooms were that way, too. “I know how to get there.”
He threw a smirk over a muscled shoulder and strode down the stairs anyway. “I just want to make sure you arrive in one piece before I settle in.” He nodded to the landing they passed, the open archway that led into the hall with his bedroom. She knew it only because she’d had little more to do during those initial weeks as High Fae than wander this palace like a ghost.
Cassian added, “Az is in the room two doors down from mine.” They reached the level of her bedroom and he swaggered along the hall. “You probably won’t see him, though.”
“He’s here to spy on me?” Her words bounced off the red stone.
Cassian said tightly, “He says he’d rather stay up here than at the river house.”
That made two of them. “Why?”
“I don’t know. He’s Az. He likes his space.” He shrugged, the faelight filtering through the golden sconces gilding the taloned apex of his wings. “He’ll keep to himself, so most of the time it’ll be only you and me.”
She didn’t dare reply. Not to all that statement implied. Alone—with Cassian. Here.
Cassian stopped in front of a familiar, arched wood door. He leaned against the jamb, hazel eyes monitoring her every step.
She knew the House belonged to Rhys. Knew Cassian’s entire existence was paid for by Rhys, just as the High Lord bankrolled all of his Inner Circle. Knew that the fastest and deepest way to annoy Cassian, hurt him right now would be to strike for that, to make him doubt the work he did and whether he deserved to be here. The instinct crept up, a rising wave, each word selected to slice and wound. She’d always had the gift, if it could be called that. Yet it wasn’t a curse, not entirely. It had served her well.
He scanned her face as she stopped in front of the bedroom door. “Let’s hear it, Nes.”
“Don’t call me that.” She dangled the words like bait. Let him think her vulnerable.
But he pushed off the door, wings tucking in. “You need a hot meal.”