Nesta’s eyes flew open. A broad male back filled her vision, most of it obscured by a pair of wings. Bound wings.
Images of last night pelted her: the males who’d grabbed her, how she’d fought until they’d pushed something against her face that had her blacking out, hearing Gwyn and Emerie screaming—
Nesta jolted upright.
The view was worse than she’d expected. Far, far worse.
Slowly, silently, she twisted in place. Unconscious Illyrian warriors were strewn around her. At her back, at her head. At her bare feet. More surrounded her, at least two hundred, stretching between the towering pines.
The Blood Rite.
She must have awoken before the others because she was Made. Different.
Nesta reached inward, toward that place where the ancient, awful power rested, and found nothing. As if the well had been drained, as if the sea had receded.
The Blood Rite’s spells bound magic. Her powers had been rendered useless.
She knew her shaking wasn’t entirely from the cold. Whatever time she had wouldn’t last long. The others would soon stir.
And find her standing among them, in nothing but a nightgown. Without weapons.
She had to move. Had to find Emerie and Gwyn in this endless sprawl of bodies. Unless they had been dumped elsewhere.
Cassian, Rhysand, and Azriel had all been left in different places, she remembered. They’d spent days killing their way to each other amid the bloodthirsty warriors and beasts who roamed these lands. But they had somehow found each other and scaled Ramiel, the sacred mountain, and won the Rite.
She’d be lucky to clear this general area.
Her breath catching, Nesta eased to her feet. Away from the shield of the warriors’ bodies, the cold slammed into her, nearly robbing her of breath. Her shaking deepened.
She needed something warmer. Needed shoes. Needed to make a weapon.
Nesta peered at the watery sun, as if it’d tell her what direction to go to find her friends. But the light seared her eyes, worsening the pounding in her head. Trees—she could find the mossy side of the trees, Cassian had said. North would lie that way.
The nearest tree rose about twenty feet and ten bodies away. From what she could see, no moss grew anywhere on it.
So she’d find higher ground and survey the land. See where Ramiel loomed and if she could spot the other dumping grounds.
But she needed clothes and weapons and food and to find Gwyn and Emerie, and oh, gods—
Nesta pressed a hand over her mouth to keep her trembling exhale to near-silence. Move. She had to move.
But someone already had.
The rustle of his wings gave him away. Nesta whirled.
A hundred feet off, separated from her by the sea of sleeping bodies, stood a beast of a male.
She didn’t know him, but she recognized that gleam in his eye. The predatory intent and cruel amusement. Knew what it meant when his stare dipped to her nightgown, her breasts peaked against the frigid cold, her bare legs.
Fear burned like acid through her entire body.
None of the others stirred. At least she had that. But this male …
He glanced to his left—just for a blink. Nesta followed his stare, and her breath caught. Embedded in the trunk of a tree, gleaming faintly, was a knife.
Impossible. Having weapons in the Blood Rite went against its rules. Had the male known it would be there, or had he just spied it before she had?
It didn’t matter. It only mattered that the knife existed. And it was the sole weapon in sight.
She could run. Let him lunge at the knife and flee in the opposite direction and pray he didn’t follow.
Or she could go for the blade. Beat him to it and then … she didn’t know what she’d do then. But she stood in a field of sleeping warriors who would all soon awaken, and if they found her weaponless, defenseless—
Nesta ran.
Cassian couldn’t breathe.
Hadn’t been able to breathe or speak for long minutes now. His family had arrived, and they all surrounded him in the wrecked bedroom of Emerie’s house. They were speaking, Azriel with some urgency, but Cassian didn’t hear him, heard nothing but the roaring in his head before he said to no one in particular, “I’m going after them.”
Silence fell, and he turned to find them all staring at him, pale and wide-eyed.
Cassian tapped the Siphons on the backs of his hands, and his remaining Siphons appeared at his shoulders, knees, and chest. He nodded to Rhys. “Winnow me to her. Az, you find Emerie and Gwyn.”
Rhys didn’t move an inch. “You know the laws, Cass.”
“Fuck the laws.”
“What laws?” Feyre demanded.
“Tell her,” Rhys ordered him, night swirling around his wings. Cassian bristled. “Tell her, Cassian.”
The asshole had used that inherent dominance on him. Cassian gritted out, “Anyone who pulls a warrior from the Blood Rite will be hunted down and executed. Along with the warrior who is dishonorably removed from the Rite.”
Feyre rubbed at her face. “So Nesta, Emerie, and Gwyn have to stay in the Rite.”
“Even I can’t break those rules,” Rhys said, a shade softer. “No matter how much I might want to,” he added, clasping Cassian’s shoulder.
Cassian’s stomach turned over. Nesta and her friends—his friends—were in the Rite. And he could do nothing to interfere, not without damning them all. His hands shook. “So, what—we just sit on our asses for a week and wait?” The idea was abhorrent.
Feyre gripped his trembling fingers, squeezing tight. “Did you— Cassian, weren’t you listening at all when we got here?”
No. He’d barely heard anything.
Azriel said tightly, “My spies got word that Eris has been captured by Briallyn. She sent his remaining soldiers after him while he was out hunting with his hounds. They grabbed him and somehow, they were all winnowed back to her palace. I’m guessing using Koschei’s power.”
“I don’t care.” Cassian aimed for the doorway. Even if … Fuck. Hadn’t he been the one to tell Rhys not to go after those soldiers? To leave them be? He was a fool. He’d left an armed enemy in his blind spot and forgotten about it. But Eris could rot for all he cared.
Az said, “We have to get him out.”
Cassian drew up short. “We?”
Rhys stepped up next to Azriel, Feyre beside him. A formidable wall. “We can’t go,” Feyre said, nodding to Rhys. It needed no explanation: with the babe less than two months away, Feyre wasn’t risking anything. But Rhys …
Cassian challenged his High Lord, “You can be in and out in an hour.”
“I can’t go.” Midnight storms swirled in Rhys’s eyes.
“Yes, you fucking can,” Cassian said, rage rising like a tidal wave that would sweep away all in its path. “You—”
“I can’t.”
It was agony—pure, undiluted agony that filled Rhys’s face. And fear. Feyre slipped her tattooed fingers through Rhys’s.
Amren asked sharply, “Why?”
Rhys stared at the tattoo on Feyre’s fingers, interlaced with his. His throat bobbed. Feyre answered for him. “We made a bargain. After the war. To … only leave this world together.”
Amren began massaging her temples, muttering a prayer for sanity.