It’s all right, Rhys soothed. This place cannot hold you.
I nodded, though he hadn’t spoken, trying to swallow the feeling of the walls and ceiling pushing on me.
Nesta was watching me carefully. I admitted to her, “Sometimes … I have problems with small spaces.”
Nesta studied me for a long moment. And then she said with equal quiet, though we could all hear, “I can’t get into a bathtub anymore. I have to use buckets.”
I hadn’t known—hadn’t even thought that bathing, submerging in water …
I knew better than to touch her hand. But I said, “When we get home, we’ll install something else for you.”
I could have sworn there was gratitude in her eyes—that she might have said something else when horses approached.
“Two dozen guards,” Azriel murmured to Rhys. A glance at Elain. “And Lord Graysen and his father, Lord Nolan.”
Elain went still as a doe as footsteps crunched outside. I caught Nesta’s eye, read the understanding there, and nodded.
Any attempt to hurt Elain … I did not care what I had promised my sister. I’d leave Nesta to shred him. Indeed, my eldest sister’s fingers had curled—as if invisible talons crowned them.
But the door banged open, and—
The panting young man was so … human-looking.
Handsome, brown-haired, blue-eyed, but … human. Solidly built beneath his light armor, tall—perhaps a mortal ideal of a knight who would swoop a beautiful maiden onto his horse and ride off into the sunset.
So at odds from the savage strength of the Illyrians, the cultivated lethalness of Mor and Amren. From my own clawing and shredding—and Nesta’s.
But a small sound came out of Elain as she beheld Graysen. As he gasped for breath, scanning her from head to toe. He staggered toward her a step—
A broad, scar-flecked hand gripped the back of Graysen’s armor, hauling him to a stop.
The man who held the young lord fully entered the cramped room.
Tall and thin, hawk-nosed and gray-eyed … “What is the meaning of this.”
We all stared at him beneath lowered brows.
Elain was shaking. “Sir—Lord Nolan …” Words failed her as she again looked at her betrothed, who had not taken his earnest blue eyes from her, not for a heartbeat.
“The wall has come down,” Nesta said, stepping to Elain’s side.
Graysen looked to Nesta at that. Shock flared at what he beheld: the ears, the beauty, the … otherworldly power that thrummed around her. “How,” he said, his voice low and raspy.
“I was kidnapped,” Nesta answered coolly, not one flicker of fear in her eyes. “I was taken by the army invading these lands and turned against my will.”
“How,” Nolan echoed.
“There is a Cauldron—a weapon. It grants its owner power to … do such things. I was a test.” Nesta then launched into a sharp, short explanation of the queens, of Hybern, of why the wall had fallen.
When she finished Lord Nolan only demanded, “And who are your companions?”
It was a gamble—we knew it was. To say who we were, when we knew full well the terror of any Fae, let alone High Lords …
But I stepped forward. “My name is Feyre Archeron. I am High Lady of the Night Court. This is Rhysand, my—husband.” I doubted mate would go over well as a term.
Rhys came to my side. Some of the guards shifted and murmured with terror. Some flinched at the hand Rhys lifted—to gesture behind him. “Our third in command, Morrigan. And our spymaster, Azriel.”
Lord Nolan, to his credit, did not blanch. Graysen did, but remained steady. “Elain,” Graysen breathed. “Elain—why are you with them?”
“Because she is our sister,” Nesta answered, her fingers still curled with those invisible talons. “And there is no safer place for her during this war than with us.”
Elain whispered, “Graysen—we’ve come to beg you …” A pleading glance at his father. “Both of you … Open your gates to any humans who can get here. To families. With the wall down … We—they believe … There is not enough time for an evacuation. The queens will not send aid from the continent. But here—they might stand a chance.”
Neither man responded, though Graysen now looked at Elain’s engagement ring. His blue eyes rippled with pain. “I would be inclined to believe you,” he said quietly, “if you were not lying to me with your every breath.”
Elain blinked. “I—I am not, I—”
“Did you think,” Lord Nolan said, and Nesta and I closed ranks around Elain as he took a step toward us, “that you could come to my house and deceive me with your faerie magic?”
Rhys said, “We don’t care what you believe. We only come to ask you to help those who cannot defend themselves.”
“At what gain? What risk of your own?”
“You have an arsenal of ash weapons,” I said. “I’d think the risk to us is apparent.”
“And to your sister as well,” Nolan spat toward Elain. “Don’t forget to include her.”
“Any weapon can hurt a mortal,” Mor said blandly.
“But she isn’t a mortal, is she?” Nolan sneered. “No, I have it on good authority that it was Elain Archeron who was turned Fae first. And who now has a High Lord’s son as a mate.”
“And who, exactly, told you this?” Rhys said with a lift of the brow, not showing one ounce of ire, of surprise.
Steps sounded.
But we all went for our weapons as Jurian strolled into the guardhouse and said, “I did.”
CHAPTER
53
Jurian held up his tanned hands, new calluses dotting his palms and fingers. New—for the remade body he’d had to train to handle weapons these months.
“I came alone,” Jurian said. “You can stop snarling.”
Elain began shaking—either at the truth revealed, or the memories that pelted her, pelted Nesta, at the sight of him. Jurian inclined his head to my sisters. “Ladies.”
“They are no ladies,” Lord Nolan sneered.
“Father,” Graysen warned.
Nolan ignored him. “Upon his arrival, Jurian explained what had been done to you—both of you. What the queens on the continent desire.”
“And what is that?” Rhys asked, his voice a deceptive croon.
“Power. Youth,” Jurian said with a shrug. “The usual things.”
“Why are you here,” I demanded. Kill him—we should kill him now before he could hurt us any further, kill him for that bolt he’d put through Azriel’s chest and the threat he’d made to Miryam and Drakon, perhaps causing them to vanish and leave us to fight this war on our own—
“The queens are snakes,” Jurian said, leaning against the edge of a table shoved by the wall. “They deserve to be butchered for their treachery. It took no effort on my part when Hybern sent me to woo them to our cause. Only one of them was noble enough to play the game—to know we’d been dealt a shitty hand and to play it the best she could. But when she helped you, the others found out. And they gave her to the Attor.” Jurian’s eyes gleamed bright—not with madness, I realized.
But clarity.
And I had the sense of the world sliding out from beneath my feet as Jurian said, “He resurrected me to turn them to his cause, believing I had gone mad during the five hundred years Amarantha trapped me. So I was reborn, and found myself surrounded by my old enemies—faces I had once marked to kill. I found myself on the wrong side of a wall, with the human realm poised to shatter beneath it.”
Jurian looked right to Mor, whose mouth was a tight line. “You were my friend,” he said, voice straining. “We fought back-to-back during some battles. And yet you believed me at first sight—believed that I’d ever let them turn me.”
“You went mad with—with Clythia. It was madness. It destroyed you.”
“And I was glad to do it,” Jurian snarled. “I was glad to do it, if it bought us an edge in that war. I didn’t care what it did to me, what it broke in
me. If it meant we could be free. And I have had five hundred years to think about it. While being held prisoner by my enemy. Five hundred years, Mor.” The way he said her name, so familiar and knowing—
“You played the villain convincingly enough, Jurian,” Rhys purred.
Jurian snapped his face toward Rhys. “You should have looked. I expected you to look into my mind, to see the truth. Why didn’t you?”
Rhys was quiet for a long moment. Then he said softly, “Because I didn’t want to see her.”
See any trace of Amarantha.
“You mean to imply,” Mor pushed, “that you’ve been working to help us during this?”
“Where better to plot your enemy’s demise, to learn their weaknesses, than at their side?”
We were silent, Lord Graysen and his father watching—or the latter did. Graysen and Elain were just staring at each other.
“Why this obsession to find Miryam and Drakon?” Mor asked.
“It’s what the world expects of me. What Hybern expects. And if he grants my asking price to find them … Drakon has a legion capable of turning the tide in battle. It was why I allied with him during the War. I don’t doubt Drakon still has it trained and ready. Word will have reached him by now. Especially that I am looking for them.”
A warning. The only way Jurian could send one—by making himself the hunter.