His helmet clunked on the ground at our feet. I silently handed him a pitcher of water, and made to grab a glass when Rhys just lifted the pewter container and drank right from it. It sloshed over the sides, water pinging against the black metal coating his thighs, and when he at last set it down, he looked … tired. In his eyes, Rhys seemed weary.
But Nesta had jolted to her feet, staring at Cassian, at the helmet he had tucked into the crook of his arm, the weapons still poking above his shoulder, in need of cleaning. His dark hair hung limp with sweat, his face was mud-splattered where even the helmet had not kept it out.
But she surveyed his seven Siphons, the dim red stones. And then she said, “You’re hurt.”
Rhys snapped to attention at that.
Cassian’s face was grim—his eyes glassy. “It’s fine.” Even the words were laced with exhaustion.
But she reached for his arm—his shield arm.
Cassian seemed to hesitate, but offered it to her, tapping the Siphon atop his palm. The armor slid back a fraction over his forearm, revealing—
“You know better than to walk around with an injury,” Rhys said a bit tensely.
“I was busy,” Cassian said, not taking his focus off Nesta as she studied the swollen wrist. How she’d detected it through the armor … She must have read it in his eyes, his stance.
I hadn’t realized she’d been observing the Illyrian general enough to notice his tells.
“And it’ll be fixed by morning,” Cassian added, daring Rhys to say otherwise.
But Nesta’s pale fingers gently probed his golden-brown skin, and he hissed through his teeth.
“How do I fix it?” she asked. Her hair had been tied in a loose knot atop her head earlier in the day, and in the hours that we’d worked to ready and distribute supplies to the healers, through the heat and humidity, stray tendrils had come free to curl about her temple, her nape. Faint color had stained her cheeks from the sun, and her forearms, bare beneath the sleeves she’d rolled up, were flecked with mud.
Cassian slowly sat on the log where she’d been perched a moment before, groaning softly—as if even that movement taxed him. “Icing it usually helps, but wrapping it will just lock it in place long enough for the sprain to repair itself—”
She reached for the basket of bandages she’d been preparing, then for the pitcher at her feet.
I was too tired to do anything other than watch as she washed his wrist, his hand, her own fingers gentle. Too tired to ask if she possessed the magic to heal it herself. Cassian seemed too weary to speak as well while she wrapped bandages around his wrist, only grunting to confirm if it was too tight or too loose, if it helped at all. But he watched her—didn’t take his eyes off her face, the brows bunched and lips pursed in concentration.
And when she’d tied it neatly, his wrist wrapped in white, when Nesta made to pull back, Cassian gripped her fingers in his good hand. She lifted her gaze to his. “Thank you,” he said hoarsely.
Nesta did not yank her hand away.
Did not open her mouth for some barbed retort.
She only stared and stared at him, at the breadth of his shoulders, even more powerful in that beautiful black armor, at the strong column of his tan neck above it, his wings. And then at his hazel eyes, still riveted to her face.
Cassian brushed a thumb down the back of her hand.
Nesta opened her mouth at last, and I braced myself—
“You’re hurt?”
At the sound of Mor’s voice, Cassian snatched his hand back and pivoted toward Mor with a lazy smile. “Nothing for you to cry over, don’t worry.”
Nesta dragged her stare from his face—down to her now-empty hand, her fingers still curled as if his palm lay there. Cassian didn’t look at Nesta as she rose, snatching up the pitcher, and muttered something about getting more water from inside the tent.
Cassian and Mor fell into their banter, laughing and taunting each other about the battle and the ones ahead.
Nesta didn’t come back out again for some time.
I helped with the wounded long into the night, Mor and Nesta working alongside me.
A long day for all of us, yes, but the others … They had fought for hours. From the tight angle of Mor’s jaw as she tended to injured Darkbringers and Illyrians alike, I knew the various recountings of the battle wore on her—not for the tales of glory and gore, but for the sole fact that she had not been there to fight beside them.
But between the Darkbringer forces and the Illyrians … I wondered where she’d fight. Whom she’d command or answer to. Definitely not Keir, but … I was still chewing it over when I at last slipped between the warm sheets of my bed and curled my body into Rhys’s.
His arm instantly slid over my waist, tugging me in closer. “You smell like blood,” he murmured into the dimness.
“Sorry,” I said. I’d washed my hands and forearms before sliding into bed, but a full bath … I had barely managed the walk through the camp moments ago.
He stroked a hand over my waist, down to my hip. “You must be exhausted.”
“And you should be sleeping,” I chided, shifting closer, letting his warmth and scent wrap around me.
“Can’t,” he admitted, his lips brushing over my temple.
“Why?”
His hand drifted to my back, and I arched into the long, trailing strokes along my spine. “It takes a while—to settle myself after battle.” It had been hours and hours since the fighting had ceased. Rhys’s lips began a journey from my temple down my jaw.
And even with the weight of exhaustion pressing on me, as his mouth grazed over my chin, as he nipped at my bottom lip … I knew what he was asking.
Rhys sucked in a breath as I traced the contours of his muscled stomach, as I marveled at the softness of his skin, the strength of the body beneath it.
He pressed a featherlight kiss to my lips. “If you’re too tired,” he began, even as he went wholly still while my fingers continued their journey, past the sculpted muscles of his abdomen.
I answered him with a kiss of my own. Another. Until his tongue slid over the seam of my lips and I opened for him.
Our joining was fast, and hard, and I was clawing at his back before the end shattered through both of us, dragging my hands over his wings.
For long minutes afterward, we remained there, my legs thrown over his shoulders, the rise and fall of his chest pushing into mine in a lingering echo of our bodies’ movements.
Then he withdrew, gently lowering my legs from his shoulders. He kissed the inside of each of my knees as he did so, setting them on either side of him as he rose up to kneel before me.
The tattoos on his knees were nearly obscured by the rumpled sheets, the design stretched with the position. But I traced my fingers over the tops of those mountains, the three stars inked atop them, as he remained kneeling between my legs, gazing down at me.
“I thought about you every moment I was on that battlefield,” he said softly. “It focused me, centered me—let me get through it.”
I stroked those tattoos on his knees again. “I’m glad. I think … I think some part of me was down there on that battlefield with you, too.” I glanced to his suit of armor, cleaned and displayed on a dummy near the small dressing area. His winged helmet shone like a dark star in the dimness. “Seeing that battle today … It felt different from the one in Adriata.” Rhys only listened, those star-flecked eyes patient. “In Adriata, I didn’t …” I struggled for the words. “The chaos of the battle in Adriata was easier, somehow. Not easy, I mean—”
“I know what you meant.”
I sighed, sitting up so that we were knee-to-knee and face-to-face. “What I’m trying and failing miserably to explain is that attacks like the one in Adriata, in Velaris … I can fight in those. There are people to defend, and the disorder of it … I can—I’ll gladly fight in those battles. But what I saw today, that sort of warfare …” I swallowed. “Will you be ashamed of me if I admit that I’m not sure if I’m ready for that sort of battling?” Line against line, swinging and stabbing until I didn’t know up from down, until mud and gore blurred the line between enemy and foe, relying as much upon the warriors beside me as my own skill set. And the closeness of it, the sounds and sheer scale of the bloodbath …
He took my face in his hands, kissing me once. “Never. I can never be ashamed of you. Certainly not over this.” He kept his mouth close to mine, sharing breath. “Today’s battle was different from Adriata, and Velaris. If we had more time to train you with a unit, you could easily fight amongst the lines and hold your own. But only if you wanted to. And for now, these initial battles … Being down in that slaughterhouse is not something I’d wish upon you.” He kissed me again. “We are a pair,” he said against my lips. “If you ever wish to fight by my side, it will be my honor.”
I pulled my head back, frowning at him. “I feel like a coward now.”
He stroked a thumb over my cheek. “No one would ever think that of you—not with all you have done, Feyre.” A pause. “War is ugly, and messy, and unforgiving. The soldiers doing the fighting are only a fraction of it. Don’t underestimate how far it goes for them to see you here—to see you tending to the wounded and participating in these meetings and councils.”
I considered, letting my fingers drift across the Illyrian tattoos over his chest and shoulders.
And perhaps it was the afterglow of our joining, perhaps it was the battle today, but … I believed him.
Tarquin’s army didn’t blend into ours as Keir’s did, but rather camped beside it. Azriel led team after team of scouts to find the rest of Hybern’s host, discover their next movement … But nothing.
I wondered if Tamlin was with them—if he’d whispered to Hybern everything that had been discussed in that meeting. The weaknesses between courts. I didn’t dare ask anyone.
But I did dare to question Nesta about whether she felt the Cauldron’s power stirring. Mercifully, she reported feeling nothing amiss. Even so … I knew Rhys was frequently checking with Amren in Velaris—asking if she had made any discoveries with the Book.
And even if she found some alternative way to stop that Cauldron … We needed to know where the king was hiding the rest of his army first. And not so we could face it—not alone. No, so we could bring others to finish the job.
But only once we knew where the rest of Hybern’s army was—where I was to unleash Bryaxis. It would do no good to have Hybern learn of Bryaxis’s existence and adjust its plans. No, only when that full army was upon us … Only then would I set it upon them.
The first three days after the battle, the armies healed their wounded and rested. By the fourth, Cassian ordered them to do menial tasks to stave off any restlessness and chances for dangerous grumbling. His first order: dig a trench around the entire camp.
But the fifth day, the trench halfway finished … Azriel appeared, panting, in the middle of our war-tent.
Hybern had somehow skirted us entirely, and sent a force marching up the seam between the Autumn and Summer Courts. Heading for the Winter Court border.
We couldn’t glean a reason why. Azriel hadn’t discovered one, either. They were half a day’s flight from us. He’d already sent warnings to Kallias and Viviane.
Rhys, Tarquin, and the others debated for hours, weighing the possibilities. Abandon this spot by the border, and we could be playing into Hybern’s plans. But leave that northward army unattended and it could keep going north as far as it pleased. We could not afford to split our own army in two—there weren’t enough soldiers to spare.
Until Varian came up with an idea.