CHAPTER
50
Once the wrenching, gasping sounds came out of her, Nesta knew she could not stop.
She knelt on the shore of that mountain lake and let go entirely.
She allowed every horrible thought to hit her, wash through her. Let herself see Feyre’s pale, devastated face as Nesta had revealed the truth, as she’d let her own anger and pain ride her.
She could never outlive it, her guilt. There was no point in trying. She sobbed into the darkness of her hands.
And then the stones clicked, and a warm, steady presence appeared beside her. He didn’t touch her, but his voice was nearby as he said, “I’m here.”
She sobbed harder at that. She couldn’t stop. As if a dam had burst and only letting the water run its course, raging through her, would suffice.
“Nesta.” His fingers grazed her shoulder.
She couldn’t bear that touch. The kindness in it.
“Please,” she said.
Her first word in five days.
He stilled. “Please what?”
She leaned from him. “Don’t touch me. Don’t—don’t be kind to me.” The words were a sobbing, rippling jumble.
“Why?”
The list of reasons surged, fighting to get out, to voice themselves, and she let them decide. Let them flow through her, as she whispered, “I let him die.”
He went quiet.
Through her hands on her face, she continued to whisper. “He came to save me, and fought for me, and I let him die with hate in my heart. Hate for him. He died because I didn’t stop it.” Her voice broke, and she wept harder. “And I was so horrid to him, until the very end. I was so, so horrid to him all my life—and still he somehow loved me. I didn’t deserve it, but he did. And I let him die.”
She bowed over her knees, saying into her palms, “I can’t undo it. I can’t fix it. I can’t fix that he is dead, I can’t fix what I said to Feyre, I can’t fix any of the horrible things I’ve done. I can’t fix me.”
She sobbed so hard she thought her body would break with it. Wanted her body to come apart like a cracked egg, wanted what was left of her soul to drift away on the mountain wind.
She whispered, “I can’t bear it.”
Cassian said quietly, “It isn’t your fault.”
She shook her head, face still in her hands, as if it’d shield her from him, but he said, “Your father’s death is not your fault. I was there, Nesta. I looked for a way out of it, too. And there was nothing that could have been done.”
“I could have used my power, I could have tried—”
“Nesta.” Her name was a sigh—as if he were pained. Then his arms were around her, and she was being pulled into his lap. She didn’t fight it, not as he tucked her against his chest. Into his strength and warmth.
“I could have found a way. I should have found a way.”
His hand began stroking her hair.
Her entire body, right down to her bones, trembled. “My father’s death, it’s—it’s the reason I can’t stand fires.”
His hand stilled, then resumed. “Why?”
“The logs …” She shuddered. “They crack. It sounds like breaking bone.”
“Like your father’s neck.”
“Yes,” she breathed. “That’s what I hear. I don’t know how I’ll ever not hear his neck snapping when I’m near a fire. It’s … it’s torture.”
He continued to stroke her head.
A wave of words pushed themselves out of her. “I should have found a way to save us before then. Save Elain and Feyre when we were poor. But I was so angry, and I wanted him to try, to fight for us, but he didn’t, and I would have let us all starve to prove what a wretch he was. It consumed me so much that … that I let Feyre go into that forest and told myself I didn’t care, that she was half-wild, and it didn’t matter, and yet …” She let out a wrenching cry. “I close my eyes and I see her that day she went out to hunt the first time. I see Elain going into the Cauldron. I see her taken by it during the war. I see my father dead. And now I will see Feyre’s face when I told her that the baby would kill her.” She shook and shook, her tears burning hot down her cheeks.
Cassian kept stroking her hair, her back, as he held her by the lake.
“I hate it,” she said. “Every part of me that … does these things. And yet I can’t stop it. I can’t let down that barrier, because to let it fall, to let everything in …” This was what would happen. This shrieking, weeping mess she’d become. “I can’t bear to be in my head. I can’t bear to hear and see everything, over and over. That is all I hear—the snapping of his neck. His last words to me. That he loved me.” She whispered, “I didn’t deserve that love. I deserve nothing.”
Cassian’s hands tightened on her, her own hands falling away as she buried her face against his jacket and wept into his chest.
He said after a moment, “I can tell you more about my mother, and how her death nearly destroyed me. I can tell you in detail about what I did afterward, and what that cost me. I can tell you about the decade it took me to work through it. I can tell you how many days and nights I suffered during the forty-nine years Amarantha held Rhys captive, the guilt tearing me apart that I wasn’t there to help him, that I couldn’t save him. I can tell you how I still look at him and know I’m not worthy of him, that I failed him when he needed me—that fact drags me from sleep sometimes. I can tell you I’ve killed so many people I’ve lost count, but I remember most of their faces. I can tell you how I hear Eris and Devlon and the others talk and, deep down, I still believe that I am a worthless bastard brute. That it doesn’t matter how many Siphons I have or how many battles I’ve won, because I failed the two people dearest to me when it mattered the most.”
She couldn’t find the words to tell him that he was wrong. That he was good, and brave, and—
“But I’m not going to tell you all of that,” he said, pressing a kiss to the top of her head.
The wind seemed to pause, the sunlight on the lake brightening.
He said, “I am going to tell you that you will get through it. That you will face all of this, and you will get through it. That these tears are good, Nesta. These tears mean you care. I am going to tell you that it is not too late, not for any of it. And I can’t tell you when, or how, but it will get better. What you feel, this guilt and pain and self-loathing—you will get through it. But only if you are willing to fight. Only if you are willing to face it, and embrace it, and walk through it, to emerge on the other side of it. And maybe you will still feel that tinge of pain, but there is another side. A better side.”
She pulled back from his chest then. Found his gaze lined with silver. “I don’t know how to get there. I don’t think I’m capable of it.”
His eyes glimmered with pain for her. “You are. I’ve seen it—I’ve seen what you can do when you are willing to fight for the people you love. Why not apply that same bravery and loyalty to yourself? Don’t say you don’t deserve it.” He gripped her chin. “Everyone deserves happiness. The road there isn’t easy. It is long, and hard, and often traveled utterly blind. But you keep going.” He nodded to the mountains, the lake. “Because you know the destination will be worthwhile.”
She stared up at him, this male who had walked with her for five days in near-silence, waiting, she knew, for this moment.
She blurted, “All the things I’ve done before—”
“Leave them in the past. Apologize to who you feel the need to, but leave those things behind.”
“Forgiveness is not that easy.”
“Forgiveness is something we also grant ourselves. And I can talk to you until these mountains crumble around us, but if you don’t wish to be forgiven, if you don’t want to stop feeling this way … it won’t happen.” He cupped her cheek, calluses scraping across her overheated skin. “You don’t need to become some impossible ideal. You don’t need to become sweet and simpering. You can give everyone that I Will Slay My Enemies look—which is my favorite look, by the way. You can keep that sharpness I like so much, that boldness and fearlessness. I don’t want you to ever lose those things, to cage yourself.”
“But I still don’t know how to fix myself.”
“There’s nothing broken to be fixed,” he said fiercely. “You are helping yourself. Healing the parts of you that hurt too much—and perhaps hurt others, too.”
Nesta knew he wouldn’t have ever said it, but she saw it in his gaze—that she had hurt him. Many times. She’d known she had, but to see it again in his face … She lifted her hand to his cheek and laid it there, too drained to care about the gentleness of the touch.
Cassian nuzzled into her hand, closing his eyes. “I’ll be with you every step of the way,” he whispered into her palm. “Just don’t lock me out. You want to walk in silence for a week, I’m fine with that. So long as you talk to me at the end of it.”
She stroked a thumb over his cheekbone, marveling at him—the words and his beauty. Some essential piece of herself clicked into place. Some piece that whispered, Try.
Cassian opened his eyes, and they were so lovely they nearly stole the breath from her. Nesta leaned forward until their brows touched. And despite all that brimmed in her heart, all that flowed through her body, sure and true, she merely whispered, “Thank you.”
The storm had broken, and it was not what Cassian had expected. He had expected rage capable of bringing down mountains. Not tears enough to fill this lake.
Every sob had broken his heart.
Every shake of her body as the words worked themselves out of her had torn him to shreds. Until he hadn’t been able to keep from wrapping himself around her, comforting her.
She hadn’t heard wood cracking in a fire, but breaking bone. He should have known.
How many fires had Nesta flinched from, hearing not the wood but her father’s snapping neck? At last year’s Winter Solstice party, she’d been pale and withdrawn—far worse than usual. And they’d had a massive, crackling fire in that room with them. Had kept it burning hot and loud all night.
Every snap would have reminded her of her father. Each one would have been brutal. Unbearable. And when she’d suddenly rushed from the town house at the end of the party … Had it been to get away from them, or to get free of the sound? Possibly both, but … He wished she’d said something. He wished he’d at least known.
And fuck, how many fires had he built these last few days? That first night, she’d curled as far from the flame as she could get. Had slept with an arm over her head. Blocking her ears, Mother damn him. And at the blacksmith, when she’d requested to move to a cooler, quieter room—one without the crackle of the forge … It had taken more courage than he’d understood for her to ask to return to the workshop, to the flames, to hammer at those blades.
She’d been suffering, and he’d had no idea how much it consumed every facet of her life. He’d seen her self-loathing and anger—but hadn’t realized how much she had been aware of it. How much it had eaten her up. He couldn’t stomach it. To know she’d hurt this much, for so long.
Cassian held her on the shores of the lake until the sun set, until the moon rose, and they remained there, listening to each other breathe, as if the world had been flooded by her tears, as if they were both waiting to see what emerged once the floodwaters receded.
The lake gleamed like a silver mirror in the moonlight, so bright it could have been dusk.
His stomach grumbled with hunger, but as the moon drifted higher, he pressed a kiss to her head. “Get up.”
She stirred against him, but obeyed. He groaned, legs stiff from sitting for so long, and rose with her. Her arms wrapped around herself. As if she’d retreat behind that steel wall within her mind, her heart.
Cassian drew the Illyrian blade from down his back.
It gleamed with moonlight as he extended it to her hilt-first. “Take it.”
Blinking, eyes still puffy with tears, she did. The blade dipped as she wrapped her hands around it, as if she didn’t expect its weight after so long with the wooden practice swords.
Cassian stepped back. Then said, “Show me the eight-pointed star.”
She studied the blade, then swallowed. Her features were open, fearful but so trusting that he nearly went to his knees. He nodded toward the blade. “Show me, Nesta.”
Whatever she sought in his face, she found it. She widened her stance, bracing her feet on the stones. Cassian held his breath as she took up the first position.
Nesta lifted the sword and executed a perfect arcing slash. Her weight shifted to her legs just as she flipped the blade, leading with the hilt, and brought up her arm against an invisible blow. Another shift and the sword swept down, a brutal slash that would have sliced an opponent in half.
Each slice was perfect. Like that eight-pointed star was stamped on her very heart.
The sword was an extension of her arm, a part of her as much as her hair or breath. Every movement bloomed with purpose and precision. In the moonlight, before the silvered lake, she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
Nesta finished the eighth maneuver, and returned the sword to center.
The light in her eyes shone brighter than the moon overhead.
Such light, and clarity, that he could only whisper, “Again.”
With a soft smile that Cassian had never seen before, standing on the moon-washed shores of the lake, Nesta began.
PART THREE
VALKYRIE
CHAPTER
51
“So you mean to tell me,” Emerie muttered from the side of her mouth as they stood in the training ring two days later, “that you got into a fight with your family, disappeared for a week with Cassian, and came back able to use an actual sword, but I’m supposed to believe you when you say nothing happened?”
Gwyn snickered, her attention fixed on tying a length of white silk ribbon to a wood beam jutting from the side of the pit. Neither the ribbon nor the beam had been there a week ago, and Nesta had no idea how they’d even anchored the wood into the stone, but there it was.
The crisp morning wind ruffled Nesta’s hair. “That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”
“Tell me you at least had a week’s worth of sex,” Emerie muttered.
Nesta choked on a laugh as Cassian stiffened across the ring—but he didn’t turn. “There might have been some.” After that night beside the lake, she and Cassian had lingered there for two entire days, either training with his sword or fucking like animals on the shore, in the water, bent over a boulder as she moaned his name so loudly it echoed off the peaks around them. He’d taken her over and over, and she’d clawed at him and torn his skin every time, as if she could climb into him and fuse their souls.
They’d returned last night, and she’d been too tired to venture to his room. She assumed he’d been called to the river house, because he hadn’t been at dinner, nor had he sought her out.
She wasn’t ready to see Feyre, though. For all she’d confessed to Cassian, that step … She’d face it soon.
“Done,” Gwyn declared, the white ribbon fluttering in the wind where it hung from the beam. Behind them, a few of the priestesses working with Azriel had turned to see what the ribbon business was about. The shadowsinger crossed his arms, angling his head, but remained in his half of the ring.
Cassian, however, approached Gwyn’s handiwork and ran the white silk between two fingers. Nesta couldn’t stop her blush.
He’d done that by the lake: after he’d fucked her with his fingers, he’d held her gaze while he rubbed them together, testing the slide of her wetness against his skin the same way he was touching that ribbon. From the way his hazel eyes darkened, she knew he was recalling the same.
But Cassian cleared his throat. “Explain,” he ordered Gwyn.
Gwyn squared her shoulders. “This is the Valkyrie test for whether your training is complete and you’re ready for battle: cut the ribbon in half.”
Emerie snorted. “What?”
But Cassian made a contemplative noise, gesturing to the other half of the ring. “Az told me you also started preliminary work with the steel blades while we were gone.” He nodded to Gwyn and Emerie, the former glancing toward Azriel, who watched in silence. “So show me what you learned. Cut the ribbon in two.”
“We slice the ribbon in two,” Emerie asked Gwyn warily, “and our training is complete?”
Gwyn again glanced to Azriel, who drifted closer. She said, “I’m not entirely sure.”
Cassian released the ribbon. “A warrior’s training is never complete, but if you’re able to slice this ribbon in two—with one cut—then I’d say you can hold your own against most enemies. Even if you’ve only been training for a little while.” At their silence, he looked between them. “Who’s first?”
Again, the three of them swapped glances. Nesta frowned. Whoever went first would get the brunt of the humiliation. Gwyn shook her head. No way in hell.
Emerie’s mouth popped open. “Why me?” she demanded.
“What?” Cassian asked, and Nesta realized they hadn’t been speaking.
“You’re oldest,” Gwyn said, nudging Emerie toward the ribbon.
Emerie groused, but stepped up to the dangling ribbon, grudgingly taking the sword Cassian extended. Azriel murmured over a shoulder to the priestesses under his charge as they watched. They instantly began moving again. But Azriel’s attention remained on the ribbon.
“Should we bet?” Gwyn asked Nesta.
“Shut up,” Emerie hissed, though amusement lit her eyes.
Nesta smirked. “Go ahead, Emerie.”
Cursing under her breath, wings tucking in tight, Emerie lifted the blade in near-perfect form and sliced at the ribbon.
The white silk fluttered and bent around the blade. And absolutely did not slice in two.
“Let’s all admit we knew that would happen,” Emerie said, teeth bared as she slashed the sword again. The ribbon danced harmlessly away.
Cassian clapped her shoulder. “Looks like I’ll see you at training tomorrow.”
“Asshole,” Nesta muttered.
Cassian laughed and took the sword from Emerie, and—in the same breath—spun, swiping low and even.
The bottom half of the ribbon fluttered to the ground. A perfect slice.
He grinned. “At least I can cut the ribbon.”
Nesta didn’t forget that parting shot. Not as they finished training for the day, and certainly not when she dragged Cassian down the stairs, straight to his bedroom, need bellowing in her veins.
Cassian apparently felt the same, as he’d scarcely spoken these last few minutes, his eyes blazing bright. They only made it as far as his desk against the wall before she’d grabbed him—right as he’d pushed her down onto the wooden surface and stripped off her pants.
Bent over the desk, her bottom half entirely exposed, Nesta ground her aching nipples into the wood surface, savoring the brutal crush. Her jacket, her shirt, her boots—all stayed on. In fact, her pants were only pushed down to her ankles, restricting her movement further. Leaving her utterly at his mercy.
And as his cock at last sank deep into her, the two of them groaned. He stood behind her, one hand braced on the desk, the other clenching her hip as he pulled out nearly to the tip, then pushed back in slowly. Nesta writhed.
“I could fuck you for days,” he said against her sweaty neck. She moaned into a pile of papers. “I’m fucking soaked with you,” he growled, and the hand at her hip slid around to tease the apex of her thighs.
At the first taunting stroke, she breathed, “Cassian.”
He pounded into her at a steady, deep pace. The liquid slide of his cock into her sounded obscenely through his otherwise silent bedroom. His balls brushed against her, tickling her with each powerful thrust. “Harder.” She wanted him imprinted on her very bones. “Harder.”
“Fuck,” he exploded on a breath, and pulled back from where he’d braced himself. “Hold on to the desk,” he ordered, and Nesta stretched to grip the edges just as his hands landed on her hips. His thighs pushed into her own, spreading her further—as wide as she could go—and he gave no warning before his hands tightened and he unleashed himself.
Exquisite, punishing thrusts slammed so deep he hit her innermost wall, and her eyes rolled back into her head at the sheer bliss of it. He became savage, unrelenting. She might have been sobbing at the pleasure, the sheer size of him, so large there would never be any getting used to it. Every unrelenting push had her inching against the desk, the wood and papers teasing her breasts, and she nearly wept at that, too.
Cassian’s fingers dug into her hips so hard Nesta knew she’d bruise, loved that she’d bruise. He shifted his stance, and his cock plunged even deeper, rubbing against that spot, and the sounds that came from her weren’t human or Fae, but something far more primal.
“Fuck, yes,” he snarled at her abandon. “That’s it, Nesta.” He accentuated each word with a savage thrust. “Do I feel good to you?”
She whimpered her confirmation, then managed to say, “I like it when you ride me hard. Every time I move and my body is sore …” She had to fight for words. For control. “I think of you. Of your cock.”
“Good. I want my cock to be the only thing you think about.” His pace faltered as he licked up the column of her neck. She could hear the taunting smile in his words as he whispered, “Because your pretty little cunt is the only thing I think about.”
At the words, his foul language, her toes curled. But she wouldn’t let him win this one, not when this had somehow become a competition for who could make the other come first, so she whispered, “I love being so covered in your seed that it leaks out of me for ages afterward. I love feeling it slide down my thighs and knowing you left your mark in me.”
“Fuck,” he blew out, his pounding wild now, so unchecked only her hold on the desk kept her feet on the ground. “Fuck!”
Cassian came with a roar, and at the first pulse of his cock spurting deep into her, she climaxed, screaming loud enough that he clamped a hand over her mouth. She bit down on his fingers, and he kept moving in her, spilling himself over and over. Until his seed was again running down her thighs, until he slid his fingers through a stream of it and brought it up to that spot at the apex of her sex. “You have no idea what you just started,” he whispered in her ear, smearing his wetness there, rubbing into her sensitive flesh with idle circles.
Nesta didn’t reply as his fingers flicked against her, and she came again.
Nesta did not venture down to the city to see Feyre. Or Amren.
But she kept going to the stairs. She hadn’t been able to reach the bottom again. Part of her knew that if she wanted to, she might accomplish it—just as she might open her mouth and ask Cassian to take her to the river house. But she didn’t.
So she kept trying the stairs for another week straight, always getting about halfway down before turning back, her legs absolute jelly by the time she returned to the hallway.
It was fitting, given that her arms were jelly, too. Yes, she wielded the sword with her entire body, but her arms hurt most of all. And it didn’t help that they’d started on shields now.
No one had managed to slice Gwyn’s ribbon in two.
They all tried at the start and end of every lesson, and all failed. Nesta had begun to resent the sight of a ribbon anywhere—tying back Roslin’s red hair, folded in the accessory drawer of her dressing table, even bound for place-keeping into the latest romance Emerie had loaned her. They all laughed at her. Taunted her.
So Nesta ran the steps, and practiced, and failed. She took Cassian to her bed every night and sometimes during the day, though they never slept in each other’s rooms. Not once. They fucked, they savaged each other, and then they parted.
No matter that there were some nights when she wanted him to stay. Wanted to roll off him and snuggle into his warmth and fall asleep to the sound of his breathing. But he always left before she mustered the courage to ask.
Nesta was leafing through a tome of military history in the library—that had one paragraph on Valkyrie ambush strategies—when Gwyn appeared. “Tell me you found their secret to cutting the ribbon.”
“You and that ribbon,” Nesta muttered, shutting the tome. Of all of them, Gwyn had become the most relentless about succeeding.
Gwyn crossed her arms, pale robes rustling. She winced and rubbed her shoulder. “Did you know shields weighed so much? I certainly didn’t. No wonder the Valkyries learned to use them as weapons as deadly as their swords.” She sighed. “They’d have been quite a sight in battle: cracking open enemy skulls with blows from their shields, throwing them to knock an opponent onto their backs before skewering them …” She rubbed her shoulder again. “Their arm muscles must have been as hard as steel.”
Nesta snorted. “Indeed.” She cocked her head. “Now that you’re here, I want to ask a favor.”
Gwyn arched a brow. “About the Trove?”
“No.” Nesta knew she had to scry—soon—for the Harp. She’d lost a good week in the mountains, and if Queen Briallyn already had the Crown … Time was not on their side. But she said, “You mentioned a while ago that you have evening services—with music, right?”
Gwyn smiled. “Oh, yes. You want to join us? I promise, it’s not all religious stuff. I mean, it is, but it’s beautiful. And the cave we have the service in is beautiful, too. It was carved by the underground river that flows beneath the mountain, so the walls are smooth as glass. And it’s acoustically perfect—the shape and size of the space amplifies and clarifies each voice within.”
“It sounds heavenly,” Nesta admitted.
“It is.” Gwyn smiled again, eyes lighting with pride. “Some of the songs you’ll hear are so ancient they predate the written word. Some of them are so old we didn’t even have them in Sangravah. Clotho found them in books shelved below Level Seven. Hana—she’ll be the one who plays the lute—figured out how to read the music.”
“I’ll be there.” Nesta shifted on her feet. “I think I need something like that.” At Gwyn’s quizzical look, Nesta said, “I …” She fumbled for the smoothest way to say it. “I …”
Gwyn slid her hands into the robe’s pockets, her face open—waiting.
Nesta finally said, letting herself voice the words, “After the war, I was in a bad place. I still am, I suppose, but for more than a year after the war …” She couldn’t look Gwyn in the eye. “I did a lot of things I regret. Hurt people I regret harming. And I hurt myself. I drank day and night and I …” She didn’t want to say the word to Gwyn—fucked—so she said, “I took strangers to my bed. To punish myself, to drown myself.” She shrugged a shoulder. “It’s a long story, and not one worth telling, but through it all, I picked taverns and pleasure halls to frequent because of the music. I’ve always loved music.” She braced herself for the damning judgment. But only sorrow filled Gwyn’s face.
“You’ve probably guessed that my residency in the House, my training, my work in the library is my sister’s attempt to help me.” Her sister whom she had still not apologized to, whom she still didn’t have the courage to face. “And I … I think I might be glad Feyre did this for me. The drinking, the males—I don’t miss any of it. But the music … that I miss.” Nesta waved a hand, as if she could banish the vulnerability she’d offered up. But she went on, “And since I’m not particularly welcome in the city, I was hoping you meant it when you said I could come to one of your services. Just so I can hear some music again.”
Gwyn’s eyes shone, like the sunlight on a warm sea. Nesta’s heart thundered, waiting for her reply. But Gwyn said, “Your story is worth telling, you know.”
Nesta began to object, but Gwyn insisted, “It is. But yes—if you want music, then come to the services. We will be glad to have you. I will be glad to have you.”
Until Gwyn learned how horrible she’d been.
“No,” Gwyn said, apparently reading the thought on her face. She grabbed Nesta’s hand. “You … I understand.” Nesta heard Gwyn’s own heart begin thundering. “I understand,” Gwyn repeated, “what it is to … fail the people who mean the most. To live in fear of people finding out. I dread you and Emerie learning my history. I know that once you do, you’ll never look at me the same again.” Gwyn squeezed Nesta’s hand.
Her story would come later. Nesta let her see it in her face, that when Gwyn was ready, nothing she could reveal would make her walk away.
“Come to the service this evening,” Gwyn said. “Listen to the music.” She squeezed her hand again. “You’ll always be welcome to join me, Nesta.”
Nesta hadn’t realized how badly she’d needed to hear it. She squeezed Gwyn’s hand back.