Without the wall’s magic blocking access to the human lands, Mor winnowed Cassian after sundown directly to the manor that had become home and headquarters to Jurian, Vassa, and—apparently—Lucien. Even more than a year later, the ravages of war lay evident around the estate: trees felled, barren patches of earth where greenery had not yet returned, and a general bleak openness that made the gray-stoned house seem like an accidental survivor. In the moonlight, that starkness was even emptier, the remnants of trees silvered, the shadows in the pockmarked earth deeper.
Cassian didn’t know to whom the home had once belonged, and apparently neither did its new occupants. Feyre had told him that they called themselves the Band of Exiles. Cassian snorted to himself at the thought. Mor didn’t linger upon dropping him at the house’s arched wooden door, smirking in a way that told him even if he begged her to help, she wouldn’t. No, she wanted to see him play courtier, precisely as Rhys had asked.
He hadn’t planned on starting this mission today, but after that disastrous attempt at a lesson with Nesta, he’d needed to do something. Anything.
Nesta had known exactly what bullshit she was pulling by refusing to get off that rock. How it would appear to Devlon and the other preening assholes. She’d known, and done it anyway.
So as soon as he’d dumped Nesta at the House, he’d headed to a deserted cliff by the sea where the roar of the surf drowned the raging heat in his bones.
He’d stopped by the river house to admit to his failure, but Feyre had only simmered with annoyance at Nesta’s behavior, and Rhys had given him a wary, amused look.
It was Amren who had said, Let her dig her own grave, boy. Then offer her a hand.
I thought that’s what this past year has been, he’d countered.
Keep reaching out your hand, had been Amren’s only reply.
He’d found Mor soon after that, explained that he needed to be transported, and here he was. He raised his fist to the door, but the wooden slab pulled away before he could touch it.
Lucien’s scarred, handsome face appeared, his golden eye whirring. “I thought I sensed someone else arriving.”
Cassian stepped into the house, floorboards creaking beneath his boots. “You just got here?”
“No,” Lucien said, and Cassian marked the tightness of his shoulders beneath the dark gray jacket he wore, the taut silence emanating from every stone of the house. He marked its layout, in case he needed to fight his way to an exit. Which, given the displeasure that Lucien radiated as he strode for an archway to their left, seemed a distinct possibility.
Without turning, Lucien said, “Eris is here.”
Cassian didn’t falter. Didn’t reach for the knife strapped to his thigh, though it was an effort to block the memory of Mor’s battered face. The note nailed to her abdomen, her naked body dumped like garbage at the border of the Autumn Court. The fucking bastard had found her there and left her. She had been on death’s threshold and—
Cassian’s plans for what he’d one day do to him went far beyond the pain inflicted by a knife. Eris’s suffering would last weeks. Months. Years.
Cassian didn’t care that Eris had convinced Keir to delay his visit to Velaris, had apparently done so out of whatever shred of kindness remained in him. Didn’t care that Rhys had noted something in Eris that had earned his trust. None of that mattered to Cassian one fucking bit. His attention focused on the red-haired male seated near the roaring fire in the surprisingly fancy parlor. He knew enough to keep tabs on an enemy.
Eris lounged in a golden chair, legs crossed, his pale face the portrait of courtly arrogance.
Cassian’s fingers curled. Every time he’d seen the prick these past five centuries, he’d struggled with it. This blinding rage at the mere sight of him.
Eris smiled, well aware of it. “Cassian.”
Lucien’s gold eye clicked, reading Cassian’s rage while warning flashed in his remaining russet eye.
The male had grown up alongside Eris. Had dealt with Eris’s and Beron’s cruelty. Had his lover slaughtered by his own father. But Lucien had learned to keep his cool.
Right. Rhys had asked Cassian to do this. He should think like Rhys, like Mor. Push aside the rage.
Cassian gave himself a second to do so, vaguely aware of Vassa saying something. He had noted and half-dismissed the two humans in the room: the brown-haired warrior—Jurian—and the red-haired young queen.
If Rhys and Mor were here … They wouldn’t say a word about anything in front of Eris. Would pretend this was a friendly visit, to check on how the human lands were holding together. Even if Eris was most likely their ally.
No, Eris was their ally. Rhys had bargained with him, worked with him. Eris had held up his end at every turn. Rhys trusted him. Mor, despite all that had happened, trusted him. Sort of. So Cassian supposed he should do so as well.
His head hurt. So many things to calculate. He’d done it on battlefields, but these mind games and webs of lies … Why had Rhys asked him to do this? He’d been direct in dealing with the Illyrians: he’d laid out the hell that would be brought down upon them if they rebelled, and shown up to help with whatever they needed. That was in no way comparable to this.
Cassian blinked, and registered what Vassa had said: General Cassian. A pleasure.
He gave the queen a swift, perfunctory bow. “Your Majesty.”
Jurian coughed, and Cassian glanced to the human warrior. Once human? Partially human? He didn’t know. Jurian had been sliced apart by Amarantha, his consciousness somehow trapped within his eye, which she’d mounted on a ring and worn for five hundred years. Until his lingering bones had been used by Hybern to resurrect his body and return that essence into this form, the same one that had led armies on those long-ago battlefields during the War. Who was Jurian now? What was he?
From his spot on a ridiculous pink sofa by the far wall, Jurian said, “It only goes to her head when you call her that.”
Vassa straightened, her cobalt jacket a sharp contrast to the red-gold of her hair. Of the three redheaded people in this room, Cassian liked her coloring the best: the golden hue of her skin, the large, uptilted blue eyes framed by dark lashes and brows, and the silken red hair, which she’d cut to her shoulders since he’d last seen her.
Vassa said to Jurian, “I am a queen, you know.”
A queen by night, and firebird by day, sold by her fellow human queens to a sorcerer-lord who had enchanted her. Damned her into transforming each dawn into a bird of fire and ash. Cassian had waited until sundown to visit, so as to find her in her human form. He needed her to be able to speak.
Jurian crossed an ankle over a knee, his muddy boots dull in the firelight. “Last I heard, your kingdom was no longer yours. Are you still a queen?”
Vassa rolled her eyes, then looked to Lucien, who sank onto the sofa beside Jurian. Like the Fae male had settled similar arguments between them before. But Lucien’s attention was upon Cassian. “Did you come with news or orders?”
Keenly aware of Eris’s presence near the fire, Cassian kept his gaze upon Lucien. “We give you orders as our emissary.” He nodded to Jurian and Vassa. “But when you are with your friends, we only give suggestions.”
Eris snorted. Cassian ignored him, and asked Lucien, “How’s the Spring Court?”
He had to give Lucien credit: the male was somehow able to move between his three roles—an emissary for the Night Court, ally to Jurian and Vassa, and liaison to Tamlin—and still dress immaculately.
Lucien’s face revealed nothing of how Tamlin and his court fared. “It’s fine.”
Cassian didn’t know why he’d expected an update regarding the High Lord of Spring. Lucien only gave those in private to Rhys.
Eris snorted again at Cassian’s fumbling, and, unable to help himself, Cassian at last turned toward him. “What are you doing here?”
Eris didn’t so much as shift in his seat. “Several dozen of my soldiers were out on patrol in my lands several days ago and have not reported back. We found no sign of battle. Even my hounds couldn’t track them beyond their last known location.”
Cassian’s brows lowered. He knew he shouldn’t let anything show, but … Those hounds were the best in Prythian. Canines blessed with magic of their own. Gray and sleek like smoke, they could race fast as the wind, sniff out any prey. They were so highly prized that the Autumn Court forbade them from being given or sold beyond its borders, and so expensive that only its nobility owned them. And they were bred rarely enough that even one was extremely difficult to come by. Eris, Cassian knew, had twelve.
“None of them could winnow?” Cassian asked.
“No. While the unit is one of my most skilled in combat, none of its soldiers are remarkable in magic or breeding.”
Breeding was tossed at Cassian with a smirk. Asshole.
Vassa said, “Eris came to see if I could think of any reason why his soldiers might have gotten into trouble with humans. His hounds detected strange scents at the site of the abduction. Ones that seemed human, but were … odd, somehow.”
Cassian lifted a brow at Eris. “You believe a group of humans could kill your soldiers? They can’t be that skilled, then.”
“Depends on the human,” Jurian said, the male’s face dark. Vassa’s was a mirror.
Cassian grimaced. “Sorry. I— Sorry.”
Some courtier.
But Eris shrugged a shoulder. “I think plenty of parties are interested in triggering another war, and this would be the start of it. Though perhaps your court did it. I wouldn’t put it past Rhysand to winnow my soldiers away and plant some mysterious scents to throw us off.”
Cassian flashed him a savage grin. “We’re allies, remember?”
Eris gave him an identical smile. “Always.”
Cassian couldn’t stop himself. “Maybe you made your own soldiers vanish—if they even vanished at all—and are just making this up for the same bullshit reason you just spewed out.”
Eris chuckled, but Jurian cut in, “There have been tensions amongst the humans regarding your kind. But as far as we know, as far as we’ve heard from Lord Graysen’s forces, the humans here have kept to the old demarcation lines, and have no interest in starting trouble.”
Yet was left unsaid.
Would asking about the human queens on the continent reveal Rhys’s hand? The conversation had shifted toward it, so he could bring it up as idle talk, rather than as the reason he’d come here … Fuck, his head hurt. “What about your—your sisters?” He nodded to Vassa. “Would they have anything to do with this?”
Eris’s gaze shot to him, and Cassian reined in his curse. Perhaps he’d said too much. He wished Mor were here. Even if putting her and Eris in a room together … No, he’d save her that misery.
Vassa’s cerulean eyes darkened. “We were just getting to that, actually.” She gestured to Cassian. “You’ve heard the same rumors we have: they’re stirring again across the sea, and are poised to start trouble.”
“Are they stupid enough to do it is the real question,” Jurian said.
“They’re anything but stupid,” Lucien said, shaking his head. “But leaving a human scent at the site is so obvious a clue that it seems unlikely it was one of them.”
“Any move they make is heavily weighed,” Vassa said, glancing to the wall of windows overlooking the destroyed lands beyond. “Though I cannot think why any of them would capture your soldiers,” she said to Eris, who seemed to be monitoring each word out of their mouths. “There are other Fae on the continent itself, so why bother to cross the sea to take yours? And why not the Spring Court’s? Tamlin wouldn’t notice anyone missing at this point.”
Lucien cringed, and Cassian, while inclined to smirk at the thought of the asshole suffering, found himself frowning. If war was coming, they needed Tamlin and his forces in fighting shape. Needed Tamlin ready. Rhys had been visiting him regularly, making sure he’d be both on their side and capable of leading.
How Rhys had managed not to kill the High Lord of Spring was something Cassian still couldn’t understand.
But that was why Rhys was High Lord, and Cassian his blade.
He knew if he ever got the name of the human bastard who’d put his hands on Nesta, nothing would stop him from finding the man. A conversation he’d had with Nesta years ago, when she’d still been human, forever lurked in the back of his mind. How she’d stiffened at his touch, and he’d known—scented and seen the fear in her eyes and known—that a man had hurt her. Or tried to. She’d never told him the details, but she’d confirmed it enough by refusing to share the man’s name. He’d often contemplated how he’d kill the man, if Nesta gave him the go-ahead. Peeling his skin from his bones would be a good start.
His friends would understand the wound it pressed. How far the pain of that ancient wound would push him to go. A razed Illyrian camp was all that remained of the first and last time he’d let himself sink to that level of rage.
And Rhys had appointed him to play courtier. To put aside the blade and use his words. It was a joke.
Eris uncrossed his legs. “I suppose this could be to sow tensions amongst us. To make us eye each other with suspicion. Weaken our bonds.”
“Hybern would have done that,” Jurian agreed. “He might have taught them a thing or two.” Before Nesta had beheaded him.
But Vassa said, “The queens require no teaching. They were well versed in treachery before they ever contacted Hybern. And have dealt with greater monsters than him.”
Cassian could have sworn flames rippled across her blue eyes.
Both Jurian and Lucien stared at her, the former’s face utterly unreadable, and the latter’s pained. Cassian suppressed his jolt. He should have asked someone before coming here how much time remained before Vassa would be forced to return to the continent—to the sorcerer-lord at a remote lake who held her leash, and had allowed her to leave only temporarily, as part of a bargain Feyre’s father had struck.
Feyre’s father … and Nesta’s father. Cassian blocked out the memory of the man’s neck being snapped. Of Nesta’s face as it had happened. And deciding to damn caution to hell, he asked, “Which of the queens would do something this bold?”
Vassa’s golden face tightened. “Briallyn.”
The once-young, once-human queen who had been turned High Fae by the Cauldron. But in its rage at whatever Nesta had taken from it, the Cauldron had punished Briallyn. She was Made immortal Fae, yes—but she was withered into a crone. Doomed to be old for millennia.
She’d made no secret of her hatred for Nesta. Her desire for revenge.
If Briallyn made a move against Nesta, he’d kill the queen himself.
Cassian tried to think over the bellowing beast in his head that tightened every muscle of his body until only bloody violence would appease it.
“Easy,” Lucien said.
Cassian snarled.
“Easy,” Lucien repeated, and flame sizzled in his russet eye.
The flame, the surprising dominance within it, hit Cassian like a stone to the head, knocking him from his need to kill and kill and kill whatever might threaten—
They were all staring. Cassian rolled his tensed shoulders, stretching out his wings. He’d revealed too much. Like a stupid brute, he’d let them all see too much, learn too much.
“Send that shadowsinger of yours to track Briallyn,” Jurian ordered, his face grave. “If she’s somehow capable of capturing a unit of Fae soldiers, we need to know how. Swiftly.” Spoken like the general Jurian had once been.
Cassian said to Vassa, “You really think Briallyn would do something like this? Be that blatant? Someone has to be trying to fool us into going after her.”
Lucien asked, “How would she even get here and vanish that quickly? Crossing the sea takes weeks. She’d need to winnow to pull it off.”
“The queens can winnow,” Jurian corrected. “They did so during the war, remember?”
But Vassa said, “Only when several of us are together. And it is not winnowing as the Fae do, but a different power. It’s akin to the way all seven High Lords can combine their powers to perform miracles.”
Well, fuck.
Eris said, “I have it on good authority that the other three queens have scattered to the winds.” Cassian tucked away the information and the questions it raised. How did Eris know that? “Briallyn has been residing alone in their palace for weeks now. Long before my soldiers vanished.”
“So she can’t winnow, then,” Cassian concluded. “And again—would she really be foolish enough to do something like this if the other queens have left?”
Vassa’s eyes darkened. “Yes. The others’ departure would serve to remove obstacles to her ambitions. But she’d only do this if she had someone of immense power behind her. Perhaps pulling her strings.”
Even the fire seemed to quiet.
Lucien’s eye clicked. “Who?”
“You wonder who is capable of making a unit of Fae soldiers across the sea vanish? Who could give Briallyn the power to winnow—or do it for her? Who could aid Briallyn so she’d be bold enough to do such a thing? Look to Koschei.”
Cassian froze as memories clicked into place, as surely as one of Amren’s jigsaw puzzles. “The sorcerer who imprisoned you is named Koschei? Is he … is he the Bone Carver’s brother?” Everyone gaped at him. Cassian clarified, “The Bone Carver mentioned a brother to me once, a fellow true immortal and a death-lord. That was his name.”
“Yes,” Vassa breathed. “Koschei is—was—the Bone Carver’s older brother.”
Lucien and Jurian looked at her in surprise. But Vassa’s gaze lay upon him. Fear and hatred filled it, as if speaking the male’s name were abhorrent.
Her voice hoarsened. “Koschei is no mere sorcerer. He’s confined to the lake only due to an ancient spell. Because he was outsmarted once. Everything he does is to free himself.”
“Why was he imprisoned?” Cassian asked.
“The story is too long to tell,” she hedged. “But know that Briallyn and the others sold me to him not through their devices, but his. By words he planted in their courts, whispered on the winds.”
“He’s still at the lake,” Lucien said carefully. Lucien had been there, Cassian recalled. Had gone with Nesta’s father to the lake where Vassa was held captive.
“Yes,” Vassa said, relief in her eyes. “But Koschei is as old as the sea—older.”
“Some say he is Death itself,” Eris murmured.
“I do not know if that is true,” Vassa said, “but they call him Koschei the Deathless, for he has no death awaiting him. He is truly immortal. And would know of anything that might give Briallyn an edge against us.”
“And you think Koschei would do all of this,” Cassian pressed, “not out of sympathy for the human queens, but with the goal of freeing himself?”
“Certainly.” Vassa peered at her hands, fingers flexing. “I fear what may happen if he ever gets free of the lake. If he sees this world on the cusp of disaster and knows he could strike, and strike hard, and make himself its master. As he once tried to do, long ago.”
“Those are legends that predate our courts,” Eris said.
Vassa nodded. “It is all I have gleaned from my time enslaved to him.”
Lucien stared out the window—as if he could see the lake across a sea and a continent. As if he were setting his target.
But Cassian had heard enough. He didn’t wait for their good-byes before heading for the archway, and the front hall behind it.
He’d made it two steps beyond the front door, breathing in the crisp night air, when Eris said behind him, “You make a terrible courtier.” Cassian turned to find Eris shutting the front door and leaning against it. His face was pale and stony in the moonlight. “What do you know?”
“As little as you,” Cassian said, offering a truth that he hoped Eris would deem a deception.
Eris sniffed the night breeze. Then smiled. “She couldn’t be bothered to come inside to say hello?”
How he’d detected Mor’s lingering scent, Cassian didn’t know. Perhaps Eris and his smokehounds had more in common than he realized. “She didn’t know you were here.”
A lie. Mor had probably sensed it. He’d spare her the pain of coming back here, and have Rhys retrieve him. He’d fly north for a few hours—until he was in range of Rhys’s power—and then shoot a thought toward him.
Eris’s long red hair ruffled in the wind. “Whatever it is you’re doing, whatever it is you’re looking into, I want in.”
“Why? And no.”
“Because I need the edge Briallyn has, what Koschei has told her or shown her.”
“To overthrow your father.”
“Because my father has already pledged his forces to Briallyn and the war she wishes to incite.”
Cassian started. “What?”
Eris’s face filled with cool amusement. “I wanted to feel out Vassa and Jurian.” He didn’t mention his brother, oddly enough. “But they clearly know little about this.”
“Explain what the fuck you mean by Beron pledging his forces to Briallyn.”
“It’s exactly what it sounds like. He caught wind of her ambitions, and went to her palace a month ago to meet with her. I stayed here, but I sent my best soldiers with him.” Cassian refrained from sniping about Eris opting out, especially as the last words settled.
“Those wouldn’t happen to be the same soldiers who went missing, would they?”
Eris nodded gravely. “They returned with my father, but they were … off. Aloof and strange. They vanished soon after—and my hounds confirmed that the scents at the scene are the same as those on gifts Briallyn sent to curry my father’s favor.”
“You knew it was her this entire time?” Cassian motioned to the house and the three people inside it.
“You didn’t think I’d just spill all that information, did you? I needed Vassa to confirm that Briallyn could do something like that.”
“Why would Briallyn ally with your father only to abduct your soldiers?”
“That’s what I’d like to find out.”
“What does Beron say?”
“He is unaware of it. You know where I stand with my father. And this unholy alliance he’s struck with Briallyn will only hurt us. All of us. It will turn into a Fae war for control. So I want to find answers on my own—rather than what my father tries to feed me.”
Cassian surveyed the male, his grim face. “So we take out your father.”
Eris snorted, and Cassian bristled. “I am the only person my father has told of his new allegiance. If the Night Court moves, it will expose me.”
“So your worry about Briallyn’s alliance with Beron is about what it means for you, rather than the rest of us.”
“I only wish to defend the Autumn Court against its worst enemies.”
“Why would I work with you on this?”
“Because we are indeed allies.” Eris’s smile became lupine. “And because I do not believe your High Lord would wish me to go to other territories and ask them to help with Briallyn and Koschei. To help them remember that all it might take to secure Briallyn’s alliance would be to hand over a certain Archeron sister. Don’t be stupid enough to believe my father hasn’t thought of that, too.”
Cassian’s rage flashed red before his eyes. He’d revealed that weakness earlier. Let Eris see how much Nesta meant, what he’d do to defend her.
Fool, he cursed himself. Stupid, useless fool.
“I could kill you now and not worry about this at all,” Cassian mused. He’d enjoyed beating the shit out of the male that night on the ice with Feyre and Lucien. And he’d waited centuries to kill him, anyway.
“Then you would certainly have a war on your hands. My father would go straight to Briallyn—and Koschei, I suppose—and then go to the other discontent territories, and you would be wiped off the proverbial map. Perhaps literally, since the Night Court would be divvied up between the other territories if Rhysand and Feyre die without an heir.”
Cassian clenched his jaw. “So you’re to be my ally whether I wish it or not?”
“The brute understands at last.” Cassian ignored the barb. “Yes. What you know, I want to know. I will notify you of any movement on my father’s part regarding Briallyn. So send out your shadowsinger. And when he returns, find me.”
Cassian stared at him from under lowered brows. Eris’s mouth curled upward, and before he winnowed into the night like a ghost, he said, “Stick to fighting battles, General. Leave the ruling to those capable of playing the game.”
