The others joined Gwyn for the second verse, and the harp’s harmonies rose above their song, archways of wordless notes.
With her eyes closed, only the music mattered—the song, the voices, the harp. It wrapped around her, as if she’d been dropped into a bottomless pool of sound. Gwyn’s voice rose again, holding such a high note it was like a ray of pure light, piercing and summoning. Two other voices rolled in to join, pulsing around that repeated high note, the harp still strumming, voices whispering and flowing, lulling Nesta down, down, down into a pure, ancient place where no outside world existed, no time, nothing but the music in her bones, the stones at her feet, her side, overhead.
The music took form behind Nesta’s eyes as the priestesses sang lyrics in languages so old, no one voiced them anymore. She saw what the song spoke of: mossy earth and golden sun, clear rivers and the deep shadows of an ancient forest. The harp strummed, and mountains rolled ahead, as if a veil had been cleared with the stroke of those strings, and she was flying toward it—toward a massive, mist-veiled mountain, the land barren save for moss and stones and a gray, stormy sea around it. The mountain itself held two peaks at its very top, and the stones jutting from its sides were carved in strange, ancient symbols, as old as the song itself.
Nesta’s body melted away, her bones and the stones of the cavern a distant memory as she flowed into the mountain, beheld towering, carved gates, and passed through them into a darkness so complete it was primordial; darkness that was full of living things, terrible things.
A path led into the dark, and she followed it, past doors with no handles, sealed forever. She felt horrors lurk behind those doors, one horror greater than the others—a being of mist and hatred—but the song led her past them all, invisible and unmarked.
This place was utterly lethal. A place of suffering and rage and death. Her very soul quaked to wander its halls. And even though she had passed by the door keeping her safe from that one being more horrible than all the rest … she knew it watched her. She refused to look back, to acknowledge it.
So Nesta drifted down and down, the harp and the voices pulsing and guiding, until she stopped before a rock. She laid a hand on it to find it was only an illusion, and she passed through it, down another long hall, beneath the mountain itself, and then she stood in a cavern, almost the twin to the one the priestesses sang in, as if they were linked in song and dreaming.
But rather than red stone, it was carved of black rock. Symbols had been etched into the smooth floor, into the curving walls, rising toward a ceiling so high it faded into gloom. Spells and wards pulsed around the room, but there, in the center of the space, set upon the floor as if it had been laid there by someone who’d merely walked away and forgotten it …
There, in the center of the chamber, sat a small, golden harp.
Cold leached through Nesta, clarifying her thoughts enough to realize where she stood. That the music of the priestesses had lulled her into a trance, that her own bones and the stone of the mountain surrounding her had been her scrying tools, and she had drifted to this place …
The Harp gleamed in the darkness, as if it possessed its own sun within the metal and strings. Play me, it seemed to whisper. Let me sing again. Join your voice with mine.
Her hand reached toward the strings. Yes.
The Harp sighed, a low purr rolling off it as Nesta’s hand neared. We shall open doors and pathways; we shall move through space and eons together. Our music will free us of earthly rules and borders.
Yes. She’d play the Harp, and there would be nothing but music until the stars died out.
Play. I have so long wished to play, it said, and she could have sworn she heard a smile within the sound. What might my song unlock in here? A cold, humorless laugh skittered along Nesta’s bones. It sang again, Play, play—
The song halted, and the vision shattered.
Nesta’s knees gave out as the room swept in, and she collapsed onto the pew, earning an alarmed look from Gwyn through the crowd. Her heart thundered, her mouth was dry as sand, and she forced herself to rise to her feet again. To listen to the end of the service as she pieced it all together, realized what she had discovered in her unwitting scrying.
“You’re sure of this?”
Cassian leaned a hip against Rhys’s desk. “Nesta said the Harp is beneath the Prison.”
“She’s never been to the Prison,” Rhys said, frowning.
Cassian had honestly thought Nesta might be drunk when she’d burst into the dining room an hour earlier, breathless, and told him her wild story. He’d hardly been able to follow what she’d said, except for the fact that she believed the Harp was at the Prison.
Worse, that she’d woken up the Harp in the Prison. What havoc might it wreak unchecked? The thought chilled Cassian to the core.
So he’d flown down here and found Rhys in his study. Again poring over old healers’ volumes, trying to find some way to save his mate.
Rhys leaned back against his seat. Considered.
Az had winnowed to a meeting point on the eastern coast to get a report from Mor about the Vallahan situation, and Feyre was out to dinner with Amren, so it was just the two of them tonight. Cassian had suggested that Nesta come tell Rhys herself, but she’d refused. She’d been shaken—had needed some time to pull herself back together. He’d check in on her later. Make sure she hadn’t withdrawn too far into her head.
Rhys drummed his fingers on his biceps. Stared at his desk for a long moment. “When we heard about Beron’s treachery, I had Helion show me how to apply a shield like the one I had around Feyre to the Prison itself.”
“You guessed this would happen?”
“No.” A muscle ticked in Rhys’s jaw. “Feyre and I were concerned that Beron would try to free the inmates to use in a conflict—just as we used the Bone Carver in the war. Give me tonight, and I’ll get the shield untangled and open for you tomorrow.”
“It takes that long to undo a shield?”
Rhys dragged a hand through his hair. Worries etched deep lines into his brow. “It’s a combination of magic and spell work, so yes. And I’ll admit I’m distracted enough these days that I might need some extra time to make sure it’s done correctly.”
Cassian’s stomach bottomed out at the bleakness in Rhys’s face. But he only said, “All right.”
A blade appeared on the desk, summoned from wherever Rhys kept it. The great sword Nesta had Made.
“Take it with you,” his High Lord said quietly. “I want to see what happens if Nesta uses it.”
“A visit to the Prison isn’t the time for one of your experiments,” Cassian countered.
The stars in Rhys’s eyes winked out. “Then let’s hope she doesn’t need to draw it.”
CHAPTER
53
“Rhysand really gave this sword to me of his own free will?” Nesta asked Cassian the next morning as they hiked the mossy, rock-strewn side of the towering mountain known as the Prison. It was exactly as she’d pictured it in her trance—and even more horrible in person. The very land seemed abandoned. Like something great had once existed here and then vanished. Like the land still waited for it to return.
“Rhys said if we’re going into the Prison, we should be well armed,” Cassian said, his dark hair tossed by the cold, wet wind off the thrashing gray sea beyond the plain to their right. “And this is the best place he can think of for us to try out the sword you Made.”