Such pain filled Gwyn’s eyes then. Such terrible pain that Nesta knew not to ask about her mother, or the twin sister.
Gwyn shook her head, as if dispelling the memory. She spread her fingers. “My twin had the webbed fingers of the nymphs—I don’t.”
Had.
Again, Gwyn sighed. “Merrill will make your life a living hell, you know.”
“She can try,” Nesta said mildly. “It’d be difficult to make it any worse.”
“Well, now we have a common enemy. Merrill will never forget this.” She nodded toward the railings where the priestesses had been. “Though I suppose they won’t, either. It’s not every day someone stands up to her. Only Clotho can really make her fall in line, but Clotho lets her have her way, mostly because Merrill throws those windy tantrums that can send everyone’s manuscripts scattering.”
“Anytime you need someone to knock Merrill down a few pegs, let me know.”
Gwyn smiled slightly. “Next time, perhaps I’ll have the courage to do it myself.”
It seemed the priestesses didn’t forget what Nesta had done.
Nesta, Gwyn, and Emerie were going through their opening stretches, Cassian stone-faced and eagle-eyed to catch any mistake, when footsteps scuffed in the archway beyond the pit.
They all paused at the three hooded figures who emerged, hands clasped so tightly that their knuckles were white.
But the priestesses stepped into the sunlight, the open air. Blinked up at it, as if remembering what such things were.
Gwyn nimbly rolled to her feet, grinning so broadly that Nesta was momentarily taken aback by it. The priestess had been pretty in the library, but with that joy, that confidence as she aimed for the three priestesses, she had emerged into a beauty to rival Merrill or Mor.
Or maybe nothing had changed at all beyond that confidence, the way Gwyn’s shoulders were pushed back, her head high, her smile free as she said, “Roslin. Deirdre. Ananke. I was hoping you’d come.”
Nesta hadn’t checked the sign-up sheet that morning. Had stopped believing anyone except Gwyn would ever come to training.
But the three of them huddled together as Cassian offered a casual smile that was nearly a replica of Rhys’s. Designed to put people at ease and lessen the threat of his power, his body. “Ladies,” he said, gesturing to the ring. “Welcome.”
Roslin and Ananke said nothing, but the one in the middle, Deirdre, tugged back her hood.
Nesta clamped down on every instinct that would have had her gasping. Emerie, on the mat beside her, seemed to be trying to do the same.
A long, vicious scar cut across Deirdre’s face, narrowly missing her left eye. It was raised, stark white against her brown skin, and flowed from her tightly curling black hair to her slender, lovely jaw. Her round dark eyes, framed by a thick sweep of lashes that made them seem even rounder, were wide but determined as she said, “We hope we are not too late.”
All of them looked to Nesta. But she wasn’t the leader here.
She threw Cassian a glance, and he gave her a shrug as if to say, I’m just the instructor.
Another scar flowed down Deirdre’s neck, disappearing beneath her robe. For such scars to exist on a High Fae at all suggested an event of such violence, such horror, that Nesta’s stomach clenched. But she stepped toward the priestess. “We were just starting.”
“Give me those stones and bones, please,” Nesta said quietly to the House as she sat in the private library, a map of all seven courts before her, Cassian a step behind her.
A small earthenware bowl appeared beside the map, filled with them.
Nesta swallowed against the dryness in her mouth.
Cassian whistled. “It really does listen to you.”
She peered over a shoulder. She’d invited him here after she’d returned from working in the library out of pure caution, she told herself. If she lost control, if she wasn’t able to witness where her finger landed on the map, someone had to be here. That person just so happened to be him.
Never mind that he’d once stood beside her, his hand upon her back as it was now, and let her lean into his warmth and strength.
Cassian glanced between the bowl of scrying instruments and the map. “Why did you change your mind?”
Nesta didn’t give herself time to hesitate before she slid her fingers into the bowl and scooped up the handful of stones and bones. They clinked against each other, hollow and ancient.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about those priestesses who came to practice today. Roslin said she hadn’t set foot outside in sixty years. And Deirdre, with those scars …” She took a long breath. “I am asking them to be brave, to work hard, to face their fears. Yet I’m not doing the same.”
“No one accused you of that.”
“I don’t need anyone to say it. I know it. And I might fear this scrying, but I fear being a cowardly hypocrite even more.”
The priestesses had been novices in every sense of the word: Ananke had such terrible balance she’d fallen over trying to plant her toes in the dirt. Roslin had been only a fraction better. Neither had removed their hoods, not as Deirdre had done, but Nesta had caught glimpses of wine-red hair on Roslin and golden hair on Ananke, their skin pale as cream.
Cassian said, “You sure you don’t want to do this with Rhys and Amren around?”
Nesta squeezed the bones and stones in her fist. “I don’t need them.”
He fell silent, letting her concentrate.
It had taken a few moments the first and only time she’d done it. To let her mind go empty, to wait for that tug through her body that had hauled her toward an unseen force. She’d been whipped across the earth, and when she’d opened her eyes, she’d been standing in a war-tent, the King of Hybern before her, the Cauldron a squatting, dark mass beyond.
Nesta closed her eyes, willing her mind to quiet as she lifted her tight fist over the map. She focused upon her breathing, upon the rhythm of Cassian’s breathing.
Her swallow was loud to her ears.
She’d failed at everything. But she could do this.
She’d failed her father, failed Feyre for years before that. Failed her mother, she supposed. And with Elain, she’d failed as well: first in letting her get taken by Hybern that night they’d been stolen from their beds; then by letting her go into that Cauldron. Then when the Cauldron had taken her into the heart of Hybern’s camp.
She’d failed and failed and failed, and there was no end to it, no end—
“Anything?”
“Don’t talk.”
Cassian grunted, but sidled closer, his warmth now solidly at her side.
Nesta willed her mind to empty. But it couldn’t. It was like being in that damned stairwell—she just circled around and around and around, down and down.
The Dread Trove. She had to find the Dread Trove.
The Mask, the Harp, the Crown.
But the other thoughts pressed in. Too many.
The Mask, she strained to think. Where is the Mask of the Dread Trove?
Her palm slickened with sweat, the stones and bones shifting in her fist. If the Mask was aware like the Cauldron had been … She couldn’t let it see her. Find what she loved most.
Couldn’t let it see her, find her, hurt her.