A Court of Silver Flames (A Court of Thorns and Roses 4)

No one spoke to her, and she spoke to no one as she began to work, with only the roaring silence in her head for company.

Amren had been wrong. Keep reaching out your hand was utter bullshit when the person it was extended to could bite hard enough to rip off fingers.

Cassian sat on the flat top of the mountain in which the House of Wind had been built, peering down into the open-air training ring beneath him. The stars glinted overhead, and a brisk autumn breeze that whispered of changing leaves and crisp nights flowed past him. Below, Velaris was a golden sparkle, accented along the Sidra with a rainbow of color.

He had never failed at anything. Not like this.

And he’d been so stupidly desperate, so stupidly hopeful, that he hadn’t believed she’d truly refuse. Until today, when he’d seen her on that rock and known she’d wanted to get up, but watched her shut down the instinct. Watched her clamp that steel will over herself.

“You’re not the brooding type.”

Cassian started, whipping his head to find Feyre sitting beside him. She dangled her feet into the emptiness, her golden-brown hair ruffled by the wind as she peered into the training pit. “Did you fly in?”

“Winnowed. Rhys said you were ‘thinking loudly.’ ” Feyre’s mouth quirked to the side. “I figured I’d see what was happening.”

A fine skin of power remained wrapped around his High Lady, invisible to the naked eye but glittering with strength. Cassian nodded toward her. “Why’s Rhysie still got that ironclad shield on you?” It was mighty enough to guard all of Velaris.

“Because he’s a pain in the ass,” Feyre said, but smiled softly. “He’s still learning how it works, and I still haven’t figured out how to break free of it. But with the queens a renewed threat, and Beron in the mix, especially if Koschei is their puppet master, Rhys is perfectly happy to leave it on.”

“Everything with those queens is a fucking headache,” Cassian grumbled. “Hopefully, Az will figure out what they’re really up to. Or at least what Briallyn and Koschei are up to.”

Rhys was still contemplating what to do about Eris’s demands. Cassian supposed he’d get his orders on that front soon. And would then have to deal with the asshole. General to general.

“Part of me dreads what Azriel will find,” Feyre said, leaning back on her hands. “Mor’s heading off to Vallahan again tomorrow. I worry about that, too. That she’ll come back with worse news about their intentions.”

“We’ll deal with it.”

“Spoken like a true general.”

Cassian knocked Feyre’s shoulder with his wing, a casual, affectionate gesture. One he never dared make with the females of any Illyrian community. Illyrians were psychotic on a good day about who touched their wings and how, and wing-touching outside of the bedroom, training, or mortal combat was an enormous taboo. But Rhys never cared, and Cassian had needed the contact. Always needed physical contact, he’d learned. Probably thanks to a childhood spent with precious little of it.

Feyre seemed to understand his need for a reassuring touch, because she said, “How bad is it?”

“Bad.” It was all he could bring himself to admit.

“But she’s going to the library?”

“She went back to the library tonight. She’s still down there for all I know.”

Feyre gave a hmm of contemplation, gazing at the city. His High Lady looked so young—he always forgot how young she truly was, considering what she’d already faced and achieved in her life. At twenty-one, he’d still been drinking and brawling and fucking, unconcerned with anything and anybody except his ambition to be the most skilled of Illyrian warriors since Enalius himself. At twenty-one, Feyre had saved their world, mated, and found true happiness.

Feyre asked, “Did Nesta say why she won’t train?”

“Because she hates me.”

Feyre snorted. “Cassian, Nesta does not hate you. Believe me.”

“She sure as shit acts like it.”

Feyre shook her head. “No, she doesn’t.” Her words were pained enough that he frowned.

“She doesn’t hate you, either,” he said quietly.

Feyre shrugged. The gesture made his chest ache. “For a while, I thought she didn’t. But now I don’t know.”

“I don’t understand why you two can’t just …” He struggled for the right word.

“Get along? Be civil? Smile at each other?” Feyre’s laugh was hollow. “It’s always been that way.”

“Why?”

“I have no idea. I mean, it was always that way with us, and our mother. She only had an interest in Nesta. She ignored me, and saw Elain as barely more than a doll to dress up, but Nesta was hers. Our mother made sure we knew it. Or she just cared so little what we thought or did that she didn’t bother to hide it from us.” Resentment and long-held pain laced every word. That a mother would do such a thing to her children … “But when we fell into poverty, when I started hunting, it got worse. Our mother was gone, and our father wasn’t exactly present. He wasn’t fully there. So it was me and Nesta, always at each other’s throats.” Feyre rubbed her face. “I’m too exhausted to go over every detail. It’s all just a tangled mess.”

Cassian refrained from observing that both sisters seemed to need each other—that Nesta perhaps needed Feyre more than she realized. And from mentioning that this mess between the two females hurt him more than he could express.

Feyre sighed. “That’s my long way of saying that if Nesta hated you … I know what it looks like, and she doesn’t hate you.”

“She might after what I said to her tonight.”

“Azriel filled me in.” Feyre rubbed her face again. “I don’t know what to do. How to help her.”

“Three days in and I’m already at my wits’ end,” he said.

They sat in silence, the wind drifting past them. Mist gathered on the Sidra far below, and white plumes of smoke from countless chimneys rose to meet it.

Feyre asked, “So what do we do?”

He didn’t know. “Maybe the library work will be enough to pull her out of this.” But even as he spoke the words, they rang false.

Feyre apparently agreed. “No, in the library she can hide in the silence and amongst the shelves. The library was meant to balance what the training does.”

He rolled his shoulders. “Well, she said she’s not training in that miserable village, so we’re at an impasse.”

Feyre sighed again. “Seems like it.”

But Cassian paused. Blinked once, and peered down at the training ring before him.

“What?”

He snorted, shaking his head. “I should have known.”

A tentative smile bloomed on Feyre’s mouth, and Cassian leaned in to kiss her cheek. He only got within an inch of her face before his lips met night-kissed steel.

Right—the shield. “That level of protection is insane.”

She smoothed her thick cream sweater. “So is Rhys.”

Cassian sniffed, trying and failing to detect her scent. “He’s got your scent shielded, too?”

Feyre grinned. “It’s all part of the same shield. Helion wasn’t joking about it being impenetrable.”