And as if he’d summoned him, Azriel stepped out of a pocket of shadow by the stairs and scanned us from head to toe. His eyes lingered on the blood crusting Rhys’s hands.
I took up a spot at the opposite doorway post while Cassian and Azriel remained between us.
Rhys was quiet for a moment before he said, “The priestesses will keep silent about what happened today. And the people of this city won’t learn why Amren is now preparing to hunt. We can’t afford to let the other High Lords know. It would unnerve them—and destabilize the image we have worked so hard to create.”
“The attack on Velaris,” Mor countered from her place on the couch, “already showed we’re vulnerable.”
“That was a surprise attack, which we handled quickly,” Cassian said, Siphons flickering. “Az made sure the information came out portraying us as victors—able to defeat any challenge Hybern throws our way.”
“We did that today,” I said.
“It’s different,” Rhys said. “The first time, we had the element of their surprise to excuse us. This second time … it makes us look unprepared. Vulnerable. We can’t risk that getting out before the meeting in ten days. So for all appearances, we will remain unruffled as we prepare for war.”
Mor sagged against the couch cushions. “A war where we have no allies beyond Keir, either in Prythian or beyond it.”
Rhys gave her a sharp look. But Elain said quietly, “The queen might come.”
Silence.
Elain was staring at the unlit fireplace, eyes lost to that vague murkiness.
“What queen,” Nesta said, more tightly than she usually spoke to our sister.
“The one who was cursed.”
“Cursed by the Cauldron,” I clarified to Nesta, pushing off the archway. “When it threw its tantrum after you … left.”
“No.” Elain studied me, then her. “Not that one. The other.”
Nesta took a steadying breath, opening her mouth to either whisk Elain upstairs or move on.
But Azriel asked softly, taking a single step over the threshold and into the sitting room, “What other?”
Elain’s brows twitched toward each other. “The queen—with the feathers of flame.”
The shadowsinger angled his head.
Lucien murmured to me, eye still fixed on Elain, “Should we—does she need …?”
“She doesn’t need anything,” Azriel answered without so much as looking at Lucien.
Elain was staring at the spymaster now—unblinkingly.
“We’re the ones who need …” Azriel trailed off. “A seer,” he said, more to himself than us. “The Cauldron made you a seer.”
CHAPTER
33
Seer.
The word clanged through me.
She’d known. She’d warned Nesta about the Ravens. And in the chaos of the attack, that little realization had slipped from me. Slipped from me as reality and dream slipped and entwined for Elain. Seer.
Elain turned to Mor, who was now gaping at my sister from her spot beside her on the couch. “Is that what this is?”
And the words, the tone … they were so normal-sounding that my chest tightened.
Mor’s gaze darted across my sister’s face, as if weighing the words, the question, the truth or lie within.
Mor at last blinked, mouth parting. Like that magic of hers had at last solved some puzzle. Slowly, clearly, she nodded. Lucien silently slid into one of the chairs, before the window, that metal eye whirring as it roved over my sister.
It made sense, I supposed, that Azriel alone had listened to her. The male who heard things others could not … Perhaps he, too, had suffered as Elain had before he understood what gift he possessed. He asked Elain, “There is another queen?”
Elain squinted, as if the question required some inner clarification, some … path into looking the right way at whatever had addled and plagued her. “Yes.”
“The sixth queen,” Mor breathed. “The queen who the golden one said wasn’t ill …”
“She said not to trust the other queens because of it,” I added.
And as soon as the words left my mouth … It was like stepping back from a painting to see the entire picture. Up close, the words had been muddled and messy. But from a distance …
“You stole from the Cauldron,” I said to Nesta, who seemed ready to jump between all of us and Elain. “But what if the Cauldron gave something to Elain?”
Nesta’s face drained of color. “What?”
Equally ashen, Lucien seemed inclined to echo Nesta’s hoarse question.
But Azriel nodded. “You knew,” he said to Elain. “About the young queen turning into a crone.”
Elain blinked and blinked, eyes clearing again. As if the understanding, our understanding … it freed her from whatever murky realm she’d been in.
“The sixth queen is alive?” Azriel asked, calm and steady, the voice of the High Lord’s spymaster, who had broken enemies and charmed allies.
Elain cocked her head, as if listening to some inner voice. “Yes.”
Lucien just stared and stared at my sister, as if he’d never seen her before.
I whipped my face to Rhys. A potential ally?
I don’t know, he answered. If the others cursed her …
“What sort of curse?” my mate asked before he’d even finished speaking to me.
Elain shifted her face toward him. Another blink. “They sold her—to … to some darkness, to some … sorcerer-lord …” She shook her head. “I can never see him. What he is. There is an onyx box that he possesses, more vital than anything … save for them. The girls. He keeps other girls—others so like her—but she … By day, she is one form, by night, human again.”
“A bird of burning feathers,” I said.
“Firebird by day,” Rhys mused, “woman by night … So she’s held captive by this sorcerer-lord?”
Elain shook her head. “I don’t know. I hear her—her screaming. With rage. Utter rage …” She shuddered.
Mor leaned forward. “Do you know why the other queens cursed her—sold her to him?”
Elain studied the table. “No. No—that is all mist and shadow.”
Rhys blew out a breath. “Can you sense where she is?”
“There is … a lake. Deep in—in the continent, I think. Hidden amongst mountains and ancient forests.” Elain’s throat bobbed. “He keeps them all at the lake.”
“Other women like her?”
“Yes—and no. Their feathers are white as snow. They glide across the water—while she rages through the skies above it.”
Mor said to Rhys, “What information do we have on this sixth queen?”
“Little,” Azriel answered for him. “We know little. Young—somewhere in her mid-twenties. Scythia lies along the wall, to the east. It’s smallest amongst the human queens’ realms, but rich in trade and arms. She goes by Vassa, but I never got a report with her full name.”
Rhys considered. “She must have posed a considerable threat to the queens if they turned on her. And considering their agenda …”
“If we can find Vassa,” I cut in, “she could be vital in convincing the human forces to fight. And giving us an ally on the continent.”