Nesta swallowed again. Cassian squeezed her hand tighter and said casually, “You true immortals are all the same: arrogant windbags who love to hear yourselves talk.”
“And you faeries are all blind to your own selves.” Lanthys crooned, circling again, and Cassian readied his blade. “Based upon scent alone, I would say that you two are—”
Cassian released Nesta’s hand and lunged forward, spearing his blade into the mist before Lanthys could say one more damning word.
Lanthys screamed in rage as Cassian’s Siphons flared, and Cassian roared, “RUN!” before he struck again. Lanthys retreated, and Cassian used the breath to free the Siphon from his left hand before chucking it to her, willing it to light. “Go!” he commanded as he tossed the stone to her. Red splashed across her fear-tight face as she caught his Siphon, but Cassian was already pivoting to Lanthys.
The crunching, fading steps told him Nesta obeyed.
Good.
Lanthys gathered in the darkness, a cobra readying to strike.
Cassian just prayed Nesta made it out of the gates before he died.
Nesta ran from the voice that was hate and cruelty and hunger entwined. The voice that robbed her of joy, of warmth, of anything but primal, basic fear.
Her thighs protested at the path’s steepness, but she sprinted up toward the gates, obeying Cassian’s command, the roaring from the warrior and the monster echoing off the stones. Red light flashed behind her. The doors of the Prison’s cells rattled. Beasts screamed behind them, as if realizing one of them had gotten out. Wanting out themselves.
She clenched the Harp in one hand, Cassian’s Siphon blazing in the other. She had to reach the gates. Then make it down the mountain. And then holler for Rhysand, and pray he had some sort of spell to sense his name on the wind. Then he’d have to race back up the mountain, down the path, and …
Cassian might be dead by the time she reached the gates so high above. He might be dying now.
A cold bolt shot through her heart.
She had run from him. Left him.
The Harp warmed in her hand, humming. The gold gleamed as if molten.
We shall open doors and pathways; we shall move through space and eons together, it had sung during her unintentional scrying. Our music will free us of earthly rules and borders.
Open doors … She had opened a door with it—to Lanthys’s cell. Opened a door through its own power pressing on her. But to move through space …
The small strings are for games—light movement and leaping—but the longer, the final ones … Such deep wonders and horrors we could strum into being.
Nesta counted the strings. Twenty-six. She’d touched the first, the smallest, to free herself from the Harp’s power, but what did the others do?
Twenty-six, twenty-six, twenty-six …
Gwyn’s voice floated from far away, recounting Merrill’s earlier research on dimensions. The possibility of twenty-six dimensions.
We shall move through space and eons together … The small strings are for games—light movement and leaping … Could the Harp … Nesta’s breath caught in her throat. Could the Harp transplant her from one place to another? Not only open a door, but create one she might walk through?
Free us of earthly rules and borders …
She had to try it. For Cassian.
Motion stirred in the gloom above, rushing steps headed her way. Someone had entered the Prison through the gates. Nesta angled Cassian’s Siphon toward the sound, bracing for whatever monster might come barreling down—
Fae males in worn, dirty armor charged toward her. At least ten Autumn Court soldiers.
She knew who’d sent them, winnowing them on Koschei’s power. Who controlled them, even from across the sea.
I know where you are, Nesta Archeron.
And since Rhys had lowered the shields around the Prison … they’d walked right in.
Nesta didn’t think. She seized that silver fire within her. Let it wreathe her hands.
“Take me to Cassian,” she whispered, and plucked the first silver string of the Harp.
The world and oncoming soldiers vanished, and she had the sense of being thrown, even as she stood still, and she prayed and prayed—
Metal flashed, and red light flared, and there was Cassian, bleeding on the ground, Siphons blazing, fighting the mist in front of him.
There was nowhere to strike a fatal blow. The mist scattered at every thrust of Cassian’s sword, and Lanthys shrieked at each one, but Lanthys could not be killed. Only contained, Cassian had said.
And the Harp could open doorways—but not slay people. She ran for Cassian, finger readying on the Harp’s string to haul them out of there.
But Cassian’s eyes flared, and he yelled, “GET—”
The mist wrapped around his throat and hurled him.
Her scream shattered through the tunnel as he hit the rock wall, wings crunching, and fell to the floor. He didn’t move.
A laugh like a knife scraping over stone filled the tunnel and then Nesta was thrown, too, slamming into the wall so hard her teeth clacked and her head spun, breath whooshing from her as her fingers splayed on the Harp before she hit the floor.
But she’d landed near Cassian, and she hurried to turn him over, praying his neck hadn’t snapped, that she hadn’t doomed him by coming here—
Cassian’s chest rose and fell, and the mighty, primal thing inside her body breathed a sigh of relief. Short-lived, as Lanthys laughed again.
“You shall wish the blow killed him before I’m through with you both,” the creature said. “You shall wish you kept running.” But Nesta refused to hear another word, not as she knelt over Cassian, the only thing between him and Lanthys.
She had been here before.
Had been in this exact position, his head on her lap, Death laughing at them.
Then, she had curled over him and waited to die. Then, she had stopped fighting.
She would not fail this time. The mist pressed in, and she could have sworn she felt a hand reach for her.
It was enough to set her moving.
Drawing her sword in the same movement with which she shot to her feet, Nesta slashed a perfect combination.
Lanthys screamed, and it was nothing like what she’d heard before—this was an earsplitting sound of pure shock and fury.
Nesta hefted Ataraxia, settling her weight between her feet, making sure her stance was even. Unshakable. The blade began to glow.
The mist contorted, shrinking and writhing as if it fought an invisible enemy, and then it became solid, blooming with color.
A naked, golden-haired male stood before her. He was of average height, his golden skin sculpted with muscle, his sharp-boned face simmering with hate. Not a repulsive, awful creature, but one of beauty.
His black eyes narrowed upon the blade as he hissed, “That is not Narben.” The name meant nothing to her.
Nesta lunged, thrusting Ataraxia into eighth position. Lanthys leaped back.
Cassian groaned, stirring to consciousness as she held the ground in front of her.
“Which death-god are you?” Lanthys demanded, glancing between the blade and her. The silver fire sizzling in her eyes.
Nesta swung Ataraxia again, and Lanthys cringed away. Afraid of the blade.
That which could not be killed was afraid of her blade. Not her, but Ataraxia. Her Made weapon.
“Get in your cell.” Nesta advanced a step, Ataraxia pointed before her. Lanthys backed slowly toward his cell.