Cassian’s face grew solemn. “She doesn’t talk about how she did it, Feyre. I’d be careful how you push her.” Since we still had not told Amren where we were today. What we were doing.
I thought about saying more, but ahead, far up the slope, the massive bone gates opened.
I’d forgotten it—the weight of the air inside the Prison. Like wading through the unstirred air of a tomb. Like stealing a breath from the open mouth of a skull.
We both bore an Illyrian blade in one hand, the faelight bobbing ahead to show the way, occasionally dancing and sliding along the shining metal. Our other hands … Cassian clenched my fingers as tightly as I clutched his while we descended into the eternal blackness of the Prison, our steps crunching on the dry ground. There were no doors—none that we could see.
But behind that solid, black rock, I could still feel them. Could have sworn a faint scratching sound filled the passage. From the other side of that rock.
As if someone were running their nails down it. Something huge—and old. And quiet as the wind through a field of wheat.
Cassian kept utterly silent, tracking something—counting something.
“This could be … a very bad idea,” I admitted, my grip tightening on his hand.
“Oh, it most certainly is,” Cassian said with a faint smile as we continued down and down into the heavy black and thrumming silence. “But this is war. We don’t have the luxury of good ideas—only picking between the bad ones.”
The Bone Carver’s cell door swung open the moment I laid my palm to it.
“Worth the misery of being Rhys’s mate,” Cassian quipped as the white bone swung away into darkness.
A light chuckle within.
The amusement faded from Cassian’s face at the sound—as we walked into the cell, still hand in hand.
The orb of faelight bobbed ahead, illuminating the stone-hewn cell.
Cassian growled at what it revealed. Who it revealed.
Wholly different, no doubt, from the same young boy who now smiled at me.
Dark-haired, with eyes of crushing blue.
I started at the child’s face—what I had not noticed that first time. What I had not understood.
It was Rhysand’s face. The coloring, the eyes … it was my mate’s face.
But the Carver’s full, wide mouth, curled into that hideous smile … That was my mouth. My father’s mouth.
The hair on my arms rose. The Carver inclined his head in greeting—in greeting and in confirmation, as if he knew precisely what I realized. Who I had seen and was still seeing.
The High Lord’s son. My son. Our son. Should we survive long enough to bear him.
Should I not fail in my task to recruit the Carver. Should we not fail to unify the High Lords and the Court of Nightmares. And keep that wall intact.
It was an effort to keep my knees from buckling. Cassian’s face was pale enough that I knew whatever he was seeing … it wasn’t a beautiful young boy.
“I was wondering when you’d return,” the Carver said, that boy’s voice sweet and yet dreadful—from the ancient creature that lurked beneath it. “High Lady,” he added to me. “Please accept my congratulations on your union.” A glance at Cassian. “I can smell the wind on you.” Another little smile. “Have you brought me a gift?”
I reached into the pocket of my jacket and chucked a small shard of bone, no bigger than my hand, at the Carver’s feet.
“This is all that’s left of the Attor after I splattered him on the streets of Velaris.”
Those blue eyes flared with unholy delight. I hadn’t even known we’d kept this fragment. It had been stored until now—precisely for this sort of thing.
“So bloodthirsty, my new High Lady,” the Carver purred, picking up the cracked bone and turning it over in those small, delicate hands. And then the Carver said, “I smell my sister on you, Cursebreaker.”
My mouth went dry. His sister—
“Did you steal from her? Did she weave a thread of your life into her loom?”
The Weaver of the Wood. My heart thundered. No breathing could steady it. Cassian’s hand tightened around mine.
The Carver purred to Cassian, “If I tell you a secret, warrior-heart, what will you give me?”
Neither of us spoke. Carefully—we’d have to phrase and do this so carefully.
The Carver stroked the shard of bone in his palm, attention fixed upon a stone-faced Cassian. “What if I tell you what the rock and darkness and sea beyond whispered to me, Lord of Bloodshed? How they shuddered in fear, on that island across the sea. How they trembled when she emerged. She took something—something precious. She ripped it out with her teeth.”
Cassian’s golden-brown face had drained of color, his wings tucking in tight.
“What did you wake that day in Hybern, Prince of Bastards?”
My blood went cold.