CHAPTER
66
The Illyrian warrior was smaller than the one Nesta had killed, but this male had gotten his hands on a bow and arrow.
“Give me your weapons,” he ordered, eyes darting over her, noting the blood coating her face, crusting her chin and neck.
Nesta didn’t move. Didn’t so much as lower her chin.
“Give me your fucking weapons,” the male warned, voice sharpening.
“Where did you come from?” she demanded, as if he didn’t have an arrow pointed at her face. And then, before he had time to answer, “Was another female there?”
The male blinked—and it was the only confirmation Nesta needed before she handed over the arrow. Slowly, slowly reached for the knife. “Did you kill her, too?” Her voice had dropped to pure ice.
“The crippled bitch? I left her to the others.” He grinned. “You’re better prey anyway.”
Emerie. She couldn’t be far off, if this male had already seen her. Nesta pulled the knife free.
The male kept the arrow pointed. “Drop it and back up ten paces.”
Emerie was alive. And nearby. And in danger.
And this motherfucker wouldn’t stop Nesta from saving her.
Nesta bowed her head, shoulders slumping in what she hoped the male believed was a show of resignation. Indeed, he smiled.
He didn’t stand a chance.
Nesta lowered the knife. And flicked her wrist, fingers splaying as she let it soar toward the male.
Right into his groin.
He screamed, and she charged as his hand loosed on the bow. She slammed into him and the weapon, the string slapping her face hard enough to draw tears, but they crashed down, and he was shrieking—
No one would stand between her and her friends.
Her mind slid to a place of cold and calm. She grabbed the bow, flung it away. As the male writhed on the ground, trying to wrench out the knife piercing his balls, she leaped upon it, shoving it in harder. His scream sent birds scattering from the pines.
Nesta twisted the blade free, leaving him lying there. She grabbed the two arrows but didn’t bother freeing the quiver pinned beneath his back. She retrieved the Illyrian bow, snatched her knife, and ran in the direction from which he’d come.
His howls followed her for miles.
A river announced its presence well before Nesta reached it. So did the warriors on its near bank, tentatively speaking with each other—feeling each other out, she guessed—as they filled what seemed to be canteens. Like someone had left those, too.
No sign of Emerie.
She kept behind a tree, downwind, and listened.
Not a whisper about Emerie or another female. Just tense rule-making about the alliances they were forming, how to reach Ramiel, who had left the weapons and canteens for them …
She was about to hunt for an easy spot to cross the river, away from the males, when she heard, “Pity that bitch escaped. She’d have made for good entertainment on the cold nights.”
Everything in Nesta’s body went still. Emerie had made it to this river. Alive.
Another said, drinking from the rushing water, “She’s probably washed halfway down the mountain. If she isn’t dead from the rapids, the beasts will get her before dawn.”
Emerie must have jumped into the river to get away from these males.
Nesta ran her fingers across the bow slung over her shoulder. The arrows in her belt hung like weights. She should kill them for this. Fire these two arrows into two of them and kill them for hurting her friend—
But if Emerie had survived …
She pushed off the tree. Slipped to the next. And the next. Followed the river, her steps barely more than the whisper of water over stone.
Through the pines, down the hills. The rapids increased, the rocks rising like black spears. A waterfall roared ahead. If Emerie had gone over it …
The rapids hurtled over the edge, to the bottom a hundred feet below. No surviving that.
Nesta’s throat dried out.
And dried out further as she beheld what lay across the river, caught on a fallen tree jutting from the rocky bank directly before the plunge to the falls.
Emerie.
Nesta rushed to the edge of the water, but snatched her foot back from its icy fingers. Emerie appeared unconscious, but Nesta didn’t dare risk shouting her name. A glance at the sky revealed the sun at its midafternoon point, but it offered no heat, no salvation.
How long had Emerie been in the frigid water?
“Think,” Nesta murmured. “Think, think.”
Each minute in the water risked killing Emerie. She lay too far away to discern any injuries, but she didn’t stir against the branch. Only her twitching wings showed any sign of life.
Nesta peeled off her clothes. Wished she’d taken the nightgown to tie her knife and two arrows around her leg, rather than leave them on the shore, but she had no choice. She took the Illyrian bow, though, strapping it across her chest, the string digging into her bare skin.
Naked, she eyed the distance between the falls, the rapids, the rocks, and Emerie.
“Rock to rock,” she told herself. Braced for the cold.
And leaped into the water.
Nesta gasped and sputtered at the icy shock, hands shaking so hard she feared she’d lose her grip on the slick rocks and be hurtled over the falls. But she kept going. Aiming for Emerie. Closer and closer, until finally she swam frantically between the last rock and the riverbank—and Emerie draped over the half-submerged tree beyond it.
Shaking, teeth chattering, Nesta dragged Emerie free of the branches and farther up the bank, then crouched over her.
Emerie’s face was battered, her arm bleeding from a gash in her biceps. But she breathed.
Nesta reined in her sob of relief and gently shook her friend. “Emerie, wake up.”
The female didn’t so much as moan in pain. Nesta searched through Emerie’s dark hair, and her fingers came away bloody.
She had to get her across the river. Find shelter. Make a fire and get them warm. The bow she’d carried wasn’t enough to protect them. Not nearly.
“All right, Emerie.” Nesta’s teeth chattered so hard her face ached. “Sorry about this.”
She gripped her friend’s nightgown and ripped it down the middle, baring Emerie’s thin, toned body to the elements. Nesta peeled off the nightgown and twisted it into a long rope, then unshouldered the bow.
“You’re not going to enjoy this part,” Nesta said through her clacking teeth, hauling Emerie back to the water. “Neither am I,” she muttered, the icy water biting into her numbed feet.
Cold as the Cauldron. Cold as—
Nesta let the thought pass, willing it to drift by like a cloud. Focused.
She managed to get Emerie into the water up to their waists, holding her as tightly as her shaking fingers would allow. Then she hoisted her friend onto her back and hooked the Illyrian bow around them both, letting the near-unbreakable string dig into her own chest so the wood rested against Emerie’s spine, tethering them together.
“Better than nothing.” She looped Emerie’s limp arms around her shoulders, then took Emerie’s nightgown and wrapped it around her wrists, tying them in place. “Hold on,” she warned, even though Emerie remained an unmoving weight across her back.
Rock to rock. Just as she’d done before. Rock to rock and then back to the shore.
Rock to rock. Step to step.
She’d done ten thousand steps in the House of Wind. Had done more than that over these months. She could do this.
Nesta moved deeper into the water, biting back her cry at its cold.
Emerie swayed and banged into her, and the Illyrian bow’s string dug into Nesta’s chest hard enough to slice the skin. But it held.
Step to step to step.
By the time Nesta returned to the far bank, shaking, near sobbing, the bowstring had drawn blood. But they were on solid land, and her clothes and weapons were there, and—and now to find warmth and shelter.
Nesta laid Emerie on the pine needles, covering her friend with the dry clothes she’d left behind, and gathered what wood she could carry. Naked, shaking, she could barely hold on to the sticks in her arms as she piled them near Emerie. Her trembling fingers struggled to twist the sticks long enough to ignite a spark, to coax the kindling to a flame, but—there. Fire. She raided the area for fallen logs, praying they weren’t too wet from the mists off the rapids to catch flame.
When the fire was crackling steadily, Nesta slithered under her pile of clothes beside Emerie and wrapped her arms around her friend, their skin pressing close. They were both freezing, but the fire was warm, and beneath the male’s large clothes the chill from the water began to fade.
But they were utterly exposed to the world. If someone came by, they’d be dead.
Nesta held Emerie, feeling her body warm by increments. Watching her breathing ease. Feeling her own chattering teeth calm.
Soon it would be night. And what would emerge in the dark …
Nesta remembered Cassian’s tales of the monsters that prowled these woods. She swallowed, wrapping her arms more tightly around Emerie. She glanced at her arm, the charm still glowing faintly, only pointing southward now. A sole glimmer of hope, of direction. What had happened to Gwyn? Was she enduring her worst nightmares again? Was she—
Nesta focused on her breathing. Stilled her mind.
She’d survive the night. Help Emerie. Then find Gwyn.
Around a river, she’d learned on her hike with Cassian, cave systems were often carved out by the water. But to find one, she’d have to leave Emerie …
Nesta glanced at the vanishing sun, then slipped out from under the pile of clothes. She covered Emerie with leaves and twigs, added another log to the fire, and risked taking the male’s jacket to wrap around herself.
Nesta wore the boots, even though her blistered feet objected, and made a careful circle around the campsite, listening for anything. Anyone. Scanning every rock and cleft boulder.
Nothing.
The sky darkened. There had to be caves around here somewhere. Where the fuck were they? Where—
“The entrance is here.”
Nesta whirled, dagger out, to find an Illyrian male standing ten feet away. How he’d crept up, how he’d survived given the gash running down the side of his face—
He noted her own wounds, her nakedness beneath the coat, the bare legs and the boots. The knife.
Yet no lust or hatred clouded his brown eyes.
The male carefully pointed to what she’d mistaken for a leaf-covered boulder. “That’s a cave. Big enough to fit inside.”
Nesta drew herself up to her full height. Let him see the cold violence in her eyes.
“You won’t survive an hour on the ground once night falls,” the male said, his boyishly charming face neutral. “And if you’re not already scaling a tree, then I’m going to guess you’ve got someone hurt with you.”
She revealed nothing.
He lifted his hands. No weapons, no blood on him save the gash leaking down his face. “I came from the landing site to the west.” Where she’d come from. “I saw the body in the gulch—you did that to Novius, didn’t you? He was naked. You’re in a male’s clothes. And that must be the knife that pierced his throat. Do you know who the hell dumped weapons here?”
Nesta kept her silence. Night deepened around them.
The male shrugged when she didn’t reply. “I decided to head northward, hoping to reach Ramiel by a less traveled path, avoiding conflict with the others entirely, if I can. I have no quarrel with you. But I am going into that cave now, and if you’re smart, you’ll bring whoever is with you and come inside, too.”
“And have you take my weapons and kill me in my sleep?”
The male’s brown eyes flickered. “I know who you are. I’m not stupid enough to go after you.”
“It’s the Blood Rite. You’d be forgiven.”
“Feyre Cursebreaker would not forgive me for killing her sister.”
“So you do this to gain her favor?”
“Does it matter? I swear an oath on Enalius himself not to kill you or whoever is with you. Take it or leave it.”
“Not to kill us or harm us in any way. Or have anyone you know do so, either.”
A slight smile. “You adapted to the rules of the Fae quickly. But yes. I swear that, too.”
Nesta’s throat bobbed as she weighed the male’s expression. Glanced to the hidden cave entrance behind him.
“I need help carrying her.”
They didn’t risk a fire in the cave, but the male, whose name was Balthazar, offered his thick wool cloak to cover Emerie. Nesta slid Emerie into the dead male’s clothing, leaving herself wearing only the leather jacket, and though it went against every instinct, she allowed Balthazar to sit on her other side, his warmth leaking into her chilled body.
“When dawn comes, be gone,” Nesta said into the dark of the musty, leaf-filled cave as night fell.
“If we survive the night, I’ll be glad to go,” Balthazar said. “The beasts of the woods might smell your friend’s blood and track us right to this cave.”
Nesta slid her gaze to the young warrior. “Why aren’t you out there killing everyone?”
“Because I want to reach the mountain and become Oristian. But if I meet someone I’d like to kill, I won’t hesitate.”
Silence fell, and remained.
Within moments, branches snapped.
Balthazar’s body tightened, his breath becoming impossibly quiet. In the pitch-black of the cave, the only sounds were the rustle of their clothes and the leaves beneath them.
A howl rent the night, and Nesta flinched, clutching Emerie closer to her side.
But the snapping branches and howling moved off, and Balthazar’s body relaxed. “It’s just the first,” he whispered into the blackness. “They’ll prowl until dawn.” She didn’t want to know what was out there. Not as screaming began in the distance. “Some can climb trees,” Balthazar murmured. “The dumb warriors forget that.”
Nesta stayed silent.
“I’ll take first watch,” the warrior said. “Rest.”
“Fine.” But she did not dare close her eyes.
Nesta remained awake the entire night. If Balthazar knew she hadn’t been sleeping during his watch, he didn’t say. She’d used the time to do her Mind-Stilling exercises, which kept the edge off, but not entirely.
The crackle of brush under the paws and talons of stalking beasts and the screaming of the Illyrians continued for hours.
When Balthazar nudged her with a knee and she feigned waking, he only murmured that he was going to sleep and tucked himself against her. Nesta let herself soak up his warmth against the frigid cave air. Whether his deep breaths were true sleep or faked, as hers had been, she didn’t care.
Nesta kept her eyes open, even when they became unbearably sore and heavy. Even when the warmth from her two companions threatened to lull her to sleep.
She would not sleep. Wouldn’t lower her guard for one moment.
Dawn eventually leaked through the lattice of branches, and the screams and howling faded, then vanished. A quick inspection in the dim light revealed that though her friend remained unconscious, the wound on Emerie’s head had stopped bleeding. But—
“You’ll find plenty of clothes today,” Balthazar said, seeming to read her mind. He stepped into the daylight and peered around, then cursed under his breath. “Plenty of clothes.”
The words sent Nesta scrambling out of the cave.
Winged bodies lay everywhere, many half-eaten.
A brisk wind ruffled Balthazar’s dark hair as he walked away. “Good luck, Archeron.”
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.”
Four more days. They had to last four more days.
Gwyn said hoarsely as they moved into the wilderness, the snow mercifully lightening, “You two came looking for me.”
“Of course we did,” Emerie said, interlacing her hand with Gwyn’s, then Nesta’s, and squeezing tightly. “It’s what sisters do.”
CHAPTER
68
Nesta far preferred caves to trees. But as night fell and no caves revealed themselves, she found herself with no other option but to scale one behind Emerie and Gwyn, the latter revealing how she’d managed to rest while up one: a long stretch of rope. It must have been one of the items Queen Briallyn had the Illyrians leave, presumably for trussing captives or stringing them up or strangling them, and Gwyn had used it to bind herself to the trunk of a tree each night. It was long enough that the three of them, sitting side by side on a massive branch, were able to tie themselves together and to the tree itself.
“How’d you avoid the creatures climbing up to eat you?” Emerie asked Gwyn, who was wedged between her and Nesta. “They were pulling Illyrians off the branches like apples.”
“Maybe because I don’t smell like an Illyrian,” Gwyn said, frowning at her clothes. “Despite these.” She nodded to Nesta. “You don’t, either. If we’re lucky, our scents will mask Emerie’s.”
“Perhaps,” Nesta said, voice quieting as the night deepened. The snow had finally stopped hours ago, and even the whipping wind had eased. A small miracle.
Gwyn peered forward to look at Emerie. “How much do you know about the Rite?”