The black water nipping at her thrashing heels was freezing.
Not the bite of winter chill, or even the burn of solid ice, but something colder. Deeper.
The cold of the gaps between stars, the cold of a world before light.
The cold of hell—true hell, she realized as she bucked against the strong hands trying to shove her into that Cauldron.
True hell, because that was Elain lying on the stone floor with the red-haired, one-eyed Fae male hovering over her. Because those were pointed ears poking through her sister’s sodden gold-brown hair, and an immortal glow radiating from Elain’s fair skin.
True hell—worse than the inky depths mere inches from her toes.
Put her under, the hard-faced Fae king ordered.
And the sound of that voice, the voice of the male who had done this to Elain …
She knew she was going into the Cauldron. Knew she would lose this fight.
Knew no one was coming to save her: not sobbing Feyre, not Feyre’s gagged former lover, not her devastated new mate.
Not Cassian, broken and bleeding on the floor. The warrior was still trying to rise on trembling arms. To reach her.
The King of Hybern—he had done this. To Elain. To Cassian.
And to her.
The icy water bit into the soles of her feet.
It was a kiss of venom, a death so permanent that every inch of her roared in defiance.
She was going in—but she would not go gently.
The water gripped her ankles with phantom talons, tugging her down. She twisted, wrenching her arm free from the guard who held it.
And Nesta Archeron pointed. One finger—at the King of Hybern.
A death-promise. A target marked.
Hands shoved her into the water’s waiting claws.
Nesta laughed at the fear that crept into the king’s eyes just before the water devoured her whole.
In the beginning
And in the end
There was Darkness
And nothing more
She did not feel the cold as she sank into a sea that had no bottom, no horizon, no surface. But she felt the burning.
Immortality was not a serene youth.
It was fire.
It was molten ore poured into her veins, boiling her human blood until it was nothing but steam, forging her brittle bones until they were fresh steel.
And when she opened her mouth to scream, when the pain ripped her very self in two, there was no sound. There was nothing in this place but darkness and agony and power—
They would pay. All of them.
Starting with this Cauldron.
Starting now.
She tore into the darkness with talons and teeth. Rent and cleaved and shredded.
And the dark eternity around her shuddered. Bucked. Thrashed.
She laughed as it recoiled. Laughed around the mouthful of raw power she ripped out and swallowed whole; laughed at the fistfuls of eternity she shoved into her heart, her veins.
The Cauldron struggled like a bird under a cat’s paw. She refused to relent.
Everything it had stolen from her, from Elain, she would take from it.
Wrapped in black eternity, Nesta and the Cauldron twined, burning through the darkness like a newborn star.
