But the burning, molten gaze became mortal. Or as mortal as one of us could be.
Until Lucien breathed, “What are you?”
Cassian didn’t seem to dare take his focus off Nesta. But my sister slowly looked at Lucien.
“I made it give something back,” she said with terrifying quiet. The Cauldron. The hairs along my arms rose. Nesta’s gaze flicked to the carpet, then to a spot on the wall. “I wish to go to my room.”
It took a moment to realize she’d spoken to me. I cleared my throat. “Up the stairs, on your right. Second door. Or the third—whichever suits you. The other is for Elain. We need to leave in …” I squinted at the clock in the sitting room. “Two hours.”
A shallow nod was her only acknowledgment and thanks.
We watched as she headed up the steps, her lavender gown trailing after her, one slender hand braced on the rail.
“I’m sorry,” Rhys called up after her.
Her hand tightened on the rail, the whites of her knuckles poking through her pale skin, but she didn’t say anything as she continued on.
“Is that sort of thing even possible?” Cassian murmured when the door to her room had shut. “For someone to take from the Cauldron’s essence?”
“It would seem so,” Rhys mused, then said to Lucien, “The flame in her eyes was not of your usual sort, I take it.”
Lucien shook his head. “No. It spoke to nothing in my own arsenal. That was … Ice so cold it burned. Ice and yet … fluid like flame. Or flame made of ice.”
“I think it’s death,” I said quietly.
I held Rhys’s gaze, as if it were again the tether that had kept me in this world. “I think the power is death—death made flesh. Or whatever power the Cauldron holds over such things. That’s why the Carver heard it—heard about her.”
“Mother above,” Lucien said, dragging a hand through his hair.
Cassian gave him a solemn nod.
But Rhys rubbed his jaw, weighing, thinking. Then he said simply, “Only Nesta would not just conquer Death—but pillage it.”
No wonder she didn’t wish to speak to anyone about it—didn’t wish to bear witness on our behalf. It had been mere seconds for us while she’d gone under.
I had never asked either of my sisters how long it had been for them inside that Cauldron.
“Azriel knows you’re watching,” Rhys drawled from where he stood before the mirror in our bedroom, adjusting the lapels of his black jacket.
The town house was a quiet flurry of activity as we prepared to leave. Mor and Amren had arrived half an hour ago, the former heading for the sitting room, the latter bearing a dress for my sister. I didn’t dare ask Amren to see what she’d selected for Nesta.
Training, Amren had said days ago. There were magical objects in the Court of Nightmares that my sister could study tonight, while we were occupied with Keir. I wondered if the Ouroboros was one of them—and made a note to ask Amren what she knew of the mirror the Carver so badly desired. Which I’d somehow have to convince Keir to part with tonight.
Lucien had offered to make himself useful while we were gone by reading through some of the texts now piled on the tables throughout the sitting room. Amren had only grunted at the offer, which I told Lucien amounted to a yes.
Cassian was already on the roof, casually sharpening his blades. I’d asked him if nine swords were really necessary, and he merely told me that it didn’t hurt to be prepared, and that if I had enough time to question him, then I should have enough time to do another workout. I’d quickly left, throwing a vulgar gesture his way.
My hair still damp from the bath I’d just taken, I slid my heavy earrings through my lobes and peered out our bedroom window, monitoring the garden below.
Elain sat silently at one of the wrought-iron tables, a cup of tea before her. Azriel was sprawled on the chaise longue across the gray stones, sunning his wings and reading what looked to be a stack of reports—likely information on the Autumn Court that he planned to present to Rhys once he’d sorted through it all. Already dressed for the Hewn City—the brutal, beautiful armor so at odds with the lovely garden. And my sister sitting within it.
“Why not make them mates?” I mused. “Why Lucien?”
“I’d keep that question from Lucien.”
“I’m serious.” I turned toward him and crossed my arms. “What decides it? Who decides it?”
Rhys straightened his lapels before plucking an invisible piece of lint from them. “Fate, the Mother, the Cauldron’s swirling eddies …”
“Rhys.”
He watched me in the reflection of the mirror as I strode for my armoire, flinging open the doors to yank out the dress I’d selected. Scraps of shimmering black—a slightly more modest version of what I’d worn to the Court of Nightmares months ago. “You said your mother and father were wrong for each other; Tamlin said his own parents were wrong for each other.” I peeled off my dressing robe. “So it can’t be a perfect system of matching. What if”—I jerked my chin toward the window, to my sister and the shadowsinger in the garden—“that is what she needs? Is there no free will? What if Lucien wishes the union but she doesn’t?”
“A mating bond can be rejected,” Rhys said mildly, eyes flickering in the mirror as he drank in every inch of bare skin I had on display. “There is choice. And sometimes, yes—the bond picks poorly. Sometimes, the bond is nothing more than some … preordained guesswork at who will provide the strongest offspring. At its basest level, it’s perhaps only that. Some natural function, not an indication of true, paired souls.” A smile at me—at the rareness, perhaps, of what we had. “Even so,” Rhys went on, “there will always be a … tug. For the females, it is usually easier to ignore, but the males … It can drive them mad. It is their burden to fight through, but some believe they are entitled to the female. Even after the bond is rejected, they see her as belonging to them. Sometimes they return to challenge the male she chooses for herself. Sometimes it ends in death. It is savage, and it is ugly, and it mercifully does not happen often, but … Many mated pairs will try to make it work, believing the Cauldron selected them for a reason. Only years later will they realize that perhaps the pairing was not ideal in spirit.”
I scrounged up the jeweled, dark belt from an armoire drawer and slung it low over my hips. “So you’re saying she could walk away—and Lucien would have free rein to kill whoever she wishes to be with.”
Rhys turned from the mirror at last, his dark clothes pristine—cut perfectly to his body. No wings tonight. “Not free rein—not in my lands. It has been illegal in our territory for a long, long time for males to do that. Even before I was born. Other courts, no. On the continent, there are territories that believe the females literally belong to their mate. But not here. Elain would have our full protection if she rejects the bond. But it will still be a bond, however weakened, that will trail her for the rest of her existence.”
“Do you think she and Lucien match well?” I pulled out a pair of sandals that laced up my bare thighs and jammed my feet into them before beginning work on the bindings.
“You know them better than I do. But I will say that Lucien is loyal—fiercely so.”
“So is Azriel.”
“Azriel,” Rhys said, “has been preoccupied with the same female for the past five hundred years.”
“Wouldn’t the mating bond have snapped into place for them if it exists?”
Rhys’s eyes shuttered. “I think that is a question Azriel has been asking himself every day since he met Mor.” He sighed as I finished one foot and started on the other. “Am I allowed to request that you not play matchmaker? Let them sort it out.”
I rose, bracing my hands on my hips. “I would never meddle in someone else’s affairs!”
He only raised a brow in silent challenge. And I knew precisely what he referred to.
My gut tightened as I took a seat at the vanity and began braiding my hair into a coronet atop my head. Perhaps I was a coward, for not being able to ask it aloud, but I said down the bond, Was it a violation—going into Lucien’s mind like that?
I can’t answer that for you. Rhys came over and handed me a hairpin.
I slid it into a section of braid. I needed to be sure—that he wasn’t about to try to grab her, to sell us out.
He handed me another. And did you get an answer to that?
We worked in unison, pinning my hair into place. I think so. It wasn’t just about what he thought—it was the … feeling. I sensed no ill will, no conniving. Only concern for her. And … sorrow. Longing. I shook my head. Do I tell him? What I did?
Rhys pinned a hard-to-reach section of my hair. You have to deem whether the cost is worth assuaging your guilt.
The cost being Lucien’s tentative trust in me, this place. I crossed a line.
But you did it to ensure the safety of people you love.
I didn’t realize … I trailed off, shaking my head again.
He squeezed my shoulder. Didn’t realize what?
I shrugged, slouching on the cushioned stool. That it’d be so complicated. My face warmed. I know that sounds terribly naïve—
It’s always complicated, and it never gets easier, no matter how many centuries I’ve been doing it.
I pushed around the extra hairpins on the vanity. It’s the second time I’ve gone into his mind.
Then say it’s the last, and be done with it.