Viviane gave them both a vulgar gesture that made me instantly like her.
Rhys looked to Kallias with what I assumed was some sort of long-suffering male expression. But the High Lord did not return it.
He only stared at Rhys, amusement again gone—that coldness settling in across his face.
There had been … tension with the Winter Court, Mor had explained when they’d rescued Lucien and me on the ice. A lingering anger over something that had occurred Under the Mountain—
But the third High Lord had at last approached from across the pool.
My father had once bought and traded a gold and lapis lazuli pendant that hailed from the ruins of an arid southeastern kingdom, where the Fae had ruled as gods amid swaying date palms and sand-swept palaces. I’d been mesmerized by the colors, the artistry, but more interested in the shipment of myrrh and figs that had come with it—a few of the latter my father had snuck to me while I loitered in his office. Even now, I could still taste their sweetness on my tongue, still smell that earthy scent, and I couldn’t quite explain why, but … I remembered that ancient necklace and those exquisite delicacies as he prowled toward us.
His clothes had been formed from a single bolt of white fabric—not a robe, not a dress, but rather something in between, pleated and draped over his muscular body. A golden cuff of an upright serpent encircled one powerful bicep, offsetting his near-glowing dark skin, and a radiant crown of golden spikes—the rays of the sun, I realized—glistened atop his onyx hair.
The sun personified. Powerful, lazy with grace, capable of kindness and wrath. Nearly as beautiful as Rhysand. And somehow—somehow colder than Kallias.
His High Fae entourage was almost as large as ours, clad in similar robes of varying rich dyes—cobalt and crimson and amethyst—some with expertly kohl-lined eyes, all of them fit and gleaming with health.
But perhaps the physical power of them—of him was the sleight of hand.
For Helion’s other title was Spell-Cleaver, and his one thousand libraries were rumored to contain the knowledge of the world. Perhaps all that knowledge had made him too aware, too cold behind those bright eyes.
Or perhaps that had come after Amarantha had looted some of those libraries for herself. I wondered if he’d reclaimed what she’d taken—or if he mourned what she’d burned.
Even Mor and Viviane halted their reunion as Helion stopped a wise distance away.
It was his power that had gotten my friends out of Hybern. His power that made me glow whenever Rhys and I were tangled in each other and every heartbeat ached with mirth.
Helion jerked his square chin to Rhys, the only one of them, it seemed, not surprised by my mate’s wings. But his eyes—a striking amber—fell on me.
“Does Tamlin know what she is?”
His voice was indeed colder than Kallias’s. And the question—so carefully worded.
Rhys drawled, “If you mean beautiful and clever, then yes—I think he does.”
Helion leveled a flat look at him. “Does he know she is your mate—and High Lady?”
“High Lady?” Viviane squeaked, but Mor shushed her, drawing her away to whisper.
Thesan and Kallias took me in. Slowly.
Cassian and Azriel casually slid closer, no more than a night breeze.
“If he arrives,” Rhys said smoothly, “I suppose we’ll find out.”
Helion let out a dark laugh. Dangerous—he was utterly lethal, this High Lord kissed by the sun. “I always liked you, Rhysand.”
Thesan stepped forward, ever the good host. For that laugh indeed promised violence. His lover and the other Peregryns seemed to shift into defensive positions—either to guard their High Lord or simply to remind us that we were guests in their home.
But Helion’s attention snagged on Nesta.
Lingered.
She only stared right back at him. Unruffled, unimpressed.
“Who is your guest?” the High Lord of Day asked a bit too quietly for my liking.
Cassian revealed nothing—not even a glimmer that he knew Nesta. But he didn’t move an inch from his casual defensive position. Neither did Azriel.
“She is my sister, and our emissary to the human lands,” I said at last to him, stepping to her side. “And she will tell her story when the others are here.”
“She is Fae.”
“No shit,” Viviane muttered under her breath, and Mor’s snort was cut off as Kallias raised his brows at them. Helion ignored them.
“Who Made her?” Thesan asked politely, angling his head.
Nesta surveyed Thesan. Then Helion. Then Kallias.
“Hybern did,” she said simply. Not a flicker of fear in her eyes, in her upraised chin.
Stunned silence.
But I’d had enough of my sister being ogled. I linked elbows with her, heading toward the low-backed chairs that I assumed were for us. “They threw her in the Cauldron,” I said. “Along with my other sister, Elain.” I sat, placing Nesta beside me, and gazed at the three assembled High Lords without an inch of manners or niceness or flattery. “After the High Priestess Ianthe and Tamlin sold out Prythian and my family to them.”
Nesta nodded her silent confirmation.
Helion’s eyes blazed like a forge. “That is a heavy accusation to make—especially of your former lover.”
“It is no accusation,” I said, folding my hands in my lap. “We were all there. And now we’re going to do something about it.”
Pride flickered down the bond.
And then Viviane muttered to Kallias, jabbing him in the ribs, “Why can’t I be High Lady as well?”
The others arrived late.
We took our seats around the reflection pool, Thesan’s impeccably mannered attendants bringing us plates of food and goblets of exotic juices from the tables against the wall. Conversation halted and flowed, Mor and Viviane sitting next to each other to catch up on what seemed like fifty years’ worth of gossip.
Viviane had not been Under the Mountain. As her childhood friend, Kallias had been protective of her to a fault over the years—had placed the sharp-minded female on border duty for decades to avoid the scheming of his court. He didn’t let her near Amarantha, either. Didn’t let anyone get a whiff of what he felt for his white-haired friend, who had no clue—not one—that he had loved her his entire life. And in those last moments, when his power had been ripped from him by that spell … Kallias had flung out the remnants to warn her. To tell Viviane he loved her. And then he begged her to protect their people.
So she had.
As Mor and my friends had protected Velaris, Viviane had veiled and guarded the small city under her watch, offering safe harbor to those who made it.
Never forgetting the High Lord and friend trapped Under the Mountain, never ceasing her hunt for finding a way to free him. Especially while Amarantha unleashed her horrors upon his court to break them, punish them. Yet Viviane held them together. And through that reign of terror—during all those years—she realized what Kallias was to her, what she felt for him in return.