The castle seemed to have risen out of the earth and settled there, squatting like some enormous beast over the land.
“Briallyn has to know we’re here,” Cassian said as he alit, his latest aerial survey completed. “You think she’s waiting for us to make a move?”
“I think the better question is if Eris is still alive,” Azriel murmured, shadows whispering in his ear. “I can’t get a read on it.”
“Waiting is pointless. We should break in. Keep out of sight, so she won’t even know we’re there and be tempted to use the Crown on us.”
“I told you: the place is guarded with as many wards as the House of Wind. If Briallyn is moving Eris, we’ll be better off catching him then.”
“Maybe the merchant was wrong.”
“Maybe. We’ll continue surveillance through tomorrow.” Azriel crossed his arms. “I know you want to help Nesta. Maybe Amren can find some loophole in the laws …”
Cassian swallowed hard. “There’s no loophole. If I interfere, we’re both dead. And even if I did, Nesta would kill me if I jumped in to save her. She’d never forgive me for it.”
He’d had nothing else to do except contemplate it these past days. Nesta’s fate was her own. She was strong enough to forge her own path, even through the horrors of the Blood Rite. He’d taught her the skills to do so himself.
And even if the laws had allowed it, he would never take that away from her: the chance to save herself.
“I didn’t think you’d be stupid enough to fall for the nightgown, but I suppose that’s the difference between a female thinking she’s a warrior and the real thing,” the cold-faced leader said as Nesta and Emerie were hurled at his booted feet. He chuckled, eyes glassy enough that Nesta wondered if someone had smuggled in a case of wine along with the weapons. “Hello Emerie.”
Nesta recognized the male then. Bellius, Emerie’s hateful cousin.
Emerie only spat, “Where the fuck is she?”
Bellius shrugged. “Found the nightgown a few miles ago. Perhaps some other warrior fucked and killed her.” His smile held nothing but evil. “You shouldn’t have come here, cousin.”
Emerie retorted, “I was brought here against my will, cousin. But now I’ll enjoy proving you and your father wrong.
His teeth shone in the dim, snowy light through the forest canopy. “You’ve disgraced your father. Disgraced our family.”
Nesta eyed her weapons at the male’s feet, all ceded upon Emerie’s capture.
“Was it you who sabotaged the Rite with these weapons?” Nesta seethed.
Bellius chuckled again, though his eyes remained hazy. Flakes of snow gathered in his dark hair. “I wouldn’t call it sabotage. And neither did she.”
Nesta froze. She’d seen that glassy-eyed look before—on the faces of Eris’s soldiers.
And that word—she. Had Briallyn somehow ensnared Bellius with the Crown? He’d looked glassy-eyed when she’d seen him in Emerie’s shop months ago. When he’d recently come back from a scouting trip to the continent. Briallyn must have intercepted him then. Perhaps used the Crown to influence the Illyrians to break their sacred rules of the Rite, to plant the weapons here. But why?
Bellius said to Emerie as the female shook with rage, “You know I can’t let you leave here alive. Our family would never recover from the shame.”
“Fuck you,” Emerie snarled. “Fuck your family.”
Bellius just eyed Nesta, smiling faintly. He brushed the snow from the shoulders of his jacket. “I get first crack at the High Fae bitch,” he said to his warriors.
Nesta’s gut churned, acid burning through her. She had to find some way out of this, even outnumbered, unarmed, with no magic—
The pure panic and rage in Emerie’s face told her that her friend, too, was coming up short on any solution.
Bellius stepped toward them.
And then blood splattered across the side of his face as the guts of one of his cronies spilled onto the snow before him.
The thing that crawled over the ridge had been crafted of nightmares. Part cat, part serpent, all black fur and sharp claws and hooked teeth. It halted at the edge of the camp. Didn’t look down at the gutted corpse of the warrior whose abdomen it had sliced open with a single swipe. Blood stained the snow around him in a wide circle.
The warriors, Bellius with them, readied themselves. Bellius drew his sword.
The creature leaped. Warriors screamed, weapons flashing in the bloodied, shrieking fray.
“Run,” Nesta ordered Emerie, surging to her feet. She snatched her weapons, and Emerie lunged to grab a sword as it flew from a warrior’s hand and into the snow.
A female voice rang out from the other side of the ridge. “Here!”
Nesta nearly sobbed at the voice, at the coppery head of hair that popped up, the hand beckoning as Bellius and his males squared off against the thing tearing into them. Nesta and Emerie reached the hilltop’s edge and slid down, snow spraying. Gwyn waited on its other side, bloodied and in a warrior’s clothes, face filthy and torn, but eyes clear.
“Follow me,” Gwyn breathed, and they wasted no effort arguing as they half-fell down the hillside and sprinted through the trees, aiming to the southeast.
They ran until the warriors’ screams, the beast’s roars, were distant. Until they faded away entirely.
They stopped near a trickle of a stream through the snow, panting so hard Nesta had to lean against a tree.
“How?” Emerie gasped out.
“I woke up before the others,” Gwyn said between breaths, a hand on her chest.
“So did I,” Nesta said. “I thought it was because I’m Made, but maybe it’s because you and I aren’t Illyrian.”
Gwyn nodded. “I started running, and found a cache of weapons almost immediately.” She gestured to the blood on her Illyrian leathers. “I changed from the nightgown into someone else’s clothes. From a body, I mean.” She held up her wrist. “Did you know this thing glows? I remembered your wish for us: that we’d always be able to find our way back to each other. No matter what. I figured it would lead me to you. It must be somehow immune to the magic ban in the Rite.”
She smiled crookedly at Nesta. “I kept to the trees the first two nights, watching the beasts, and I spotted that horrible male and his companions this morning. Saw they’d found my nightgown and displayed it, and I knew they were hunting for you. I thought I’d take them out before they could find you.”
“You led the beast right to them.”
“I learned where the beasts sleep during the day,” Gwyn said. “And that they get very angry when awoken.” She pointed to the cuts on her face, her hands. “I barely outran that one as I led it toward the camp. My timing was just good luck, though.”
Emerie shuddered. “The Mother watched over us.”
Nesta could have sworn the charms on their bracelets let out a soft, singing hum at that.
But Gwyn winced. “He’s really your cousin?”
“I hope I can refer to that sad fact in the past tense after this,” Emerie said coolly.
Nesta offered her a savage smile. “We need to keep moving. If Bellius or any of his friends survive, they’ll want to kill us even more now.”