The moonlight trickling through the windows illuminated the dark lines of swirling tattoos down his arm, his shoulders, across his sculpted chest. Like the ones I bore on my arm. He scanned my face. “A dream,” he said again.
Velaris. I was in Velaris, at his house. And I had—my dream—
The sheets, the blankets were ripped. Shredded. But not with a knife. And that ashy, smoky taste coating my mouth …
My hand was unnervingly steady as I lifted it to find my fingers ending in simmering embers. Living claws of flame that had sliced through my bed linens like they were cauterizing wounds—
I shoved him off with a hard shoulder, falling out of bed and slamming into a small chest before I hurtled into the bathing room, fell to my knees before the toilet, and was sick to my stomach. Again. Again. My fingertips hissed against the cool porcelain.
Large, warm hands pulled my hair back a moment later.
“Breathe,” Rhys said. “Imagine them winking out like candles, one by one.”
I heaved into the toilet again, shuddering as light and heat crested and rushed out of me, and savored the empty, cool dark that pooled in their wake.
“Well, that’s one way to do it,” he said.
When I dared to look at my hands, braced on the bowl, the embers had been extinguished. Even that power in my veins, along my bones, slumbered once more.
“I have this dream,” Rhys said as I retched again, holding my hair. “Where it’s not me stuck under her, but Cassian or Azriel. And she’s pinned their wings to the bed with spikes, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. She’s commanded me to watch, and I have no choice but to see how I failed them.”
I clung to the toilet, spitting once, and reached up to flush. I watched the water swirl away entirely before I twisted my head to look at him.
His fingers were gentle, but firm where he’d fisted them in my hair. “You never failed them,” I rasped.
“I did … horrible things to ensure that.” Those violet eyes near-glowed in the dim light.
“So did I.” My sweat clung like blood—the blood of those two faeries—
I pivoted, barely turning in time. His other hand stroked long, soothing lines down the curve of my back, as over and over I yielded my dinner. When the latest wave had ebbed, I breathed, “The flames?”
“Autumn Court.”
I couldn’t muster a response. At some point, I leaned against the coolness of the nearby bathtub and closed my eyes.
When I awoke, sun streamed through the windows, and I was in my bed—tucked in tightly to the fresh, clean sheets.
I stared up at the sharp grassy slope of the small mountain, shivering at the veils of mist that wafted past. Behind us, the land swept away to brutal cliffs and a violent pewter sea. Ahead, nothing but a wide, flat-topped mountain of gray stone and moss.
Rhys stood at my side, a double-edged sword sheathed down his spine, knives strapped to his legs, clothed in what I could only assume were Illyrian fighting leathers, based on what Cassian and Azriel had worn the night before. The dark pants were tight, the scale-like plates of leather worn and scarred, and sculpted to legs I hadn’t noticed were quite that muscled. His close-fitting jacket had been built around the wings that were now fully out, bits of dark, scratched armor added at the shoulders and forearms.
If his attire hadn’t told me enough about what we might be facing today—if my own, similar attire hadn’t told me enough—all I needed was to take one look at the rock before us and know it wouldn’t be pleasant. I’d been so distracted in the study an hour ago by what Rhys had been writing as he drafted a careful request to visit the Summer Court that I hadn’t thought to ask what to expect here. Not that Rhys had really bothered explaining why he wanted to visit the Summer Court beyond “improving diplomatic relations.”
“Where are we?” I said, our first words since winnowing in a moment ago. Velaris had been brisk, sunny. This place, wherever it was, was freezing, deserted, barren. Only rock and grass and mist and sea.
“On an island in the heart of the Western Isles,” Rhysand said, staring up at the mammoth mountain. “And that,” he said, pointing to it, “is the Prison.”
There was nothing—no one around.
“I don’t see anything.”
“The rock is the Prison. And inside it are the foulest, most dangerous creatures and criminals you can imagine.”
Go inside—inside the stone, under another mountain—
“This place,” he said, “was made before High Lords existed. Before Prythian was Prythian. Some of the inmates remember those days. Remember a time when it was Mor’s family, not mine, that ruled the North.”
“Why won’t Amren go in here?”
“Because she was once a prisoner.”
“Not in that body, I take it.”
A cruel smile. “No. Not at all.”
I shivered.
“The hike will get your blood warming,” Rhys said. “Since we can’t winnow inside or fly to the entrance—the wards demand that visitors walk in. The long way.”
I didn’t move. “I—” The word lodged in my throat. Go under another mountain—
“It helps the panic,” he said quietly, “to remind myself that I got out. That we all got out.”
“Barely.” I tried to breathe. I couldn’t, I couldn’t—
“We got out. And it might happen again if we don’t go inside.”
The chill mist bit at my face. And I tried—I did—to take a step toward it.
My body refused to obey.
I tried to take a step again; I tried for Elain and Nesta and the human world that might be wrecked, but … I couldn’t.
“Please,” I whispered. I didn’t care if it meant that I’d failed my first day of work.
Rhysand, as promised, didn’t ask any questions as he gripped my hand and brought us back to the winter sun and rich colors of Velaris.
I didn’t get out of bed for the rest of the day.