Elain stood between Nuala and Cerridwen at the long worktable. All three of them covered in flour. Some sort of doughy mess on the surface before them.
The two handmaiden-spies instantly bowed to Rhys, and
Elain—
There was a slight sparkle in her brown eyes.
As if she’d been enjoying herself with them.
Nuala swallowed hard. “The lady said she was hungry, so we went to make her something. But—she said she wanted to learn how, so …” Hands wreathed in shadows lifted in a helpless gesture, flour drifting off them like veils of snow. “We’re making bread.”
Elain was glancing between all of us, and as her eyes began to shutter, I gave her a broad smile and said, “I hope it’ll be done soon—I’m starved.”
Elain offered a faint smile in return and nodded.
She was hungry. She was … doing something. Learning something.
“We’re going to bathe,” I announced, even as my stomach grumbled. “We’ll leave you to your baking.”
I tugged Rhys into the hall before they’d finished saying good-bye, the kitchen door swinging shut behind us.
I put a hand on my chest, leaning against the wood panels of the stair wall. Rhys’s hand covered my own a heartbeat later.
“That was what I felt,” he said, “when I saw you smile that night we dined along the Sidra.”
I leaned forward, resting my brow against his chest, right over his heart. “She still has a long way to go.”
“We all do.”
He stroked a hand over my back. I leaned into the touch, savoring his warmth and strength.
For long minutes, we stood there. Until I said, “Let’s go find somewhere to eat—outside.”
“Hmmm.” He showed no sign of letting go.
I looked up at last. Found his eyes shining with that familiar, wicked light. “I think I’m hungry for something else,” he purred.
My toes curled in my boots, but I lifted my brows and said coolly, “Oh?”
Rhys nipped at my earlobe, then whispered in my ear as he winnowed us up to our bedroom, where two plates of food now waited on the desk. “I owe you for last night, mate.”
He gave me the courtesy, at least, of letting me pick what he consumed first: me or the food.
I picked wisely.
Nesta was waiting at the breakfast table the next morning.
Not for me, I realized as her gaze slipped over me as if I were no more than a servant. But for someone else.
I kept my mouth shut, not bothering to tell her Cassian was still up at the war-camps. If she wouldn’t ask … I wasn’t getting in the middle of it.
Not when Amren claimed that my sister was close—so close—to grasping whatever skill was involved in potentially patching up the wall. If she would only unleash herself, Amren said. I didn’t dare suggest that perhaps the world wasn’t quite ready for that.
I ate my breakfast in silence, my fork scraping across the plate. Amren said she was close to finding what we needed in the Book, too—whatever spell my sister would wield. How Amren knew, I had no idea. It didn’t seem wise to ask.
Nesta only spoke when I rose to my feet. “You’re going to that meeting in two days.”
“Yes.”
I braced myself for whatever she intended to say.
Nesta glanced toward the front windows, as if still waiting, still watching.
“You went off into battle. Without a second thought. Why?”
“Because I had to. Because people needed help.”
Her blue-gray eyes were near-silver in the trickle of morning light. But Nesta said nothing else, and after waiting for another moment, I left, winnowing up to the House for my flying lesson with Azriel.
CHAPTER
41
The next two days were so busy that the lesson with Azriel was the only time I trained with him. The spymaster had returned from dispatching the messages Mor had written about the meeting moving up. They had agreed on the date, at least. But Mor’s declaration of the spot, despite her unyielding language, had been universally rejected. Thus continued the endless back-and-forth between courts.
Under the Mountain had once been their neutral meeting place.
Even if it hadn’t been sealed, no one was inclined to meet there now.
So the debate raged about who would host the gathering of all the High Lords.
Well, six of them. Beron, at last, had deigned to join. But no word had come from the Spring Court, though we knew the messages had been received.
All of us would go—save Amren and Nesta, who the former insisted needed to practice more. Especially when Amren had found a passage in the Book last night that might be what we needed to fix the wall.
With only hours to spare the evening before, it was finally agreed that the meeting would take place in the Dawn Court. It was close enough to the middle of the land, and since Kallias, High Lord of Winter, would not allow anyone into his territory after the horrors Amarantha had wrought upon its people, it was the only other area flanking that neutral middle land.
Rhys and Thesan, High Lord of the Dawn Court, were on decent terms. Dawn was mostly neutral in any conflict, but as one of the three Solar Courts, their allegiance always leaned toward each other. Not as strong an ally as Helion Spell-Cleaver in the Day Court, but strong enough.
It didn’t stop Rhys, Mor, and Azriel from gathering around the dining table at the town house the night before to go over every kernel of information they’d ever learned about Thesan’s palace—about possible pitfalls and traps. And escape routes.
It was an effort not to pace, not to ask if perhaps the risks outweighed the benefits. So much had gone wrong in Hybern. So much was going wrong throughout the world. Every time Azriel spoke, I heard his roar of pain as that bolt went through his chest. Every time Mor countered an argument, I saw her pale-faced and backing away from the king. Every time Rhys asked for my opinion, I saw him kneeling in his friends’ blood, begging the king not to sever our bond.
Nesta and Amren paused their practicing in the sitting room every so often so that the latter could chime in with some bit of advice or warning regarding the meeting. Or so that Amren could snap at Nesta to concentrate, to push harder. While she herself combed through the Book.
A few more days, Amren declared when Nesta at last went upstairs, complaining of a headache. A few more days, and my sister, through whatever mysterious power, might be able to do something. That is, Amren added, if she could crack that promising section of the Book in time. And with that, the dark-haired female bid us good night—to go read until her eyes were bleeding, she claimed.
Considering how awful the Book was, I wasn’t entirely sure if she was joking.
The others weren’t, either.
I barely touched my dinner. And I barely slept that night, twisting in the sheets until Rhys woke and patiently listened to me murmur my fears until they were nothing but shadows.
Dawn broke, and as I dressed, the morning unfurled into a sunny, dry day.
Though we would be going to the meeting as we truly were, our usual attire remained the same: Rhys in his preferred black jacket and pants, Azriel and Cassian in their Illyrian armor, all seven Siphons polished and gleaming. Mor had forgone her usual red gown for one of midnight blue. It was cut with the same revealing panels and flowing, gauzy skirts, but there was something … restrained in it. Regal. A princess of the realm.
The usual attire—except my own.
I had not found a new gown. For there was no other gown that could top the one I now wore as I stood in the foyer while the clock on the sitting room mantel struck eleven.
Rhys hadn’t yet come downstairs, and there was no sign of Amren or Nesta to see us off. We’d gathered a few minutes earlier, but … I looked down at myself again. Even in the warm faelight of the foyer, the gown glittered and gleamed like a fresh-cut jewel.
We had taken my gown from Starfall and refashioned it, adding sheer silk panels to the back shoulders, the glittering material like woven starlight as it flowed behind me in lieu of a veil or cape. If Rhysand was Night Triumphant, I was the star that only glowed thanks to his darkness, the light only visible because of him.
I scowled up t
he stairs. That is, if he bothered to show up on time.
My hair, Nuala had swept into an ornate, elegant arc across my head, and in front of it …
I caught Cassian glancing at me for the third time in less than a minute and demanded, “What?”
His lips twitched at the corners. “You just look so …”
“Here we go,” Mor muttered from where she picked at her red-tinted nails against the stair banister. Rings glinted at every knuckle, on every finger; stacks of bracelets tinkled against each other on either wrist.
“Official,” Cassian said with an incredulous look in her direction. He waved a Siphon-topped hand to me. “Fancy.”
“Over five hundred years old,” Mor said, shaking her head sadly, “a skilled warrior and general, famous throughout territories, and complimenting ladies is still something he finds next to impossible. Remind me why we bring you on diplomatic meetings?”
Azriel, wreathed in shadows by the front door, chuckled quietly. Cassian shot him a glare. “I don’t see you spouting poetry, brother.”
Azriel crossed his arms, still smiling faintly. “I don’t need to resort to it.”
Mor let out a crow of laughter, and I snorted, earning a jab in the ribs from Cassian. I batted his hand away, but refrained from the shove I wanted to give him, only because it was the first I’d seen of him since Adriata and shadows still dimmed his eyes—and because of the precarious-feeling thing atop my head.
The crown.
Rhys had crowned me at each and every meeting and function we’d had, long before I was his mate, long before I was his High Lady. Even Under the Mountain.
I’d never questioned the tiaras and diadems and crowns that Nuala or Cerridwen wove into my hair. Never objected to them—even before things between us had been this way. But this one … I peered up the stairs as Rhys’s strolling, unhurried footsteps thudded on the carpet.
This crown was heavier. Not unwelcome, but … strange. And as Rhys appeared at the top of the stairs, resplendent in that black jacket, his wings out and gleaming as if he’d polished them, I was again in that room he’d brought me to late last night, after I’d awoken him with my thrashing and twisting in bed.