Cassian got the summons to the river house just after dawn.
He hadn’t slept in Nesta’s room—no, after that second time, when his entire body had been turned to sated, content jelly, he’d rolled off her and returned to his own suite. She hadn’t said anything. The understanding had been there, though: just sex, but they needn’t wait so long again.
Sleep had been elusive as he’d thought of what they’d done, what he’d done to her. The second time had been even rougher than the first, and she’d taken everything he’d thrown at her, met his demanding pace and depth, and had held that headboard until her body had collapsed with pleasure. Gods, sex with Nesta was like …
He didn’t let himself dwell on comparisons as he sat in Rhys’s office next to Amren and Azriel, facing their High Lord across his desk. Those thoughts had not done him any favors last night. Or this morning, when he woke hard and aching, and realized that the scent of her was all over him.
He knew his friends smelled it. Neither Rhys nor Az had commented, but Amren’s eyes had narrowed. Yet she said nothing, and he wondered if Rhys had given her a silent command. Cassian filed away his curiosity about why Rhys might have felt the need to do such a thing.
“All right, Rhysand,” Amren said, tucking one foot under her thigh. “Tell me why I’m here before breakfast while Varian is still sleeping soundly in my bed.”
Rhys pulled back a canvas tarp that had been over part of his desk. “We’re here because I got a visit at dawn from a blacksmith out by the western edge of the city.”
Cassian went still as he saw what lay there: a sword, a dagger, and a longer great sword, all sheathed in black leather. “What blacksmith?”
Rhys leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms. “The one you and Nesta visited several days ago.”
Cassian’s brow furrowed. “Why did he bring you these weapons? As a gift?”
Azriel leaned forward, a scarred hand reaching for the closest sword.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Rhys warned, and Az halted.
Rhys said to Cassian, “The blacksmith dumped them here in an absolute panic. He said the blades were cursed.”
Cassian’s blood chilled.
Amren asked, “Cursed in what way?”
“He just said cursed,” Rhys replied, motioning to the weapons. “Said he wanted nothing to do with them and they were our problem now.”
Amren slid her eyes to Cassian. “What happened in the shop?”
“Nothing,” he said. “He let her hammer at the metal for a bit, so she could get a sense of the hard work that went into making weapons. But there was no cursing.”
Rhys straightened. “Nesta hammered the blades?”
“All three,” Cassian said. “First the sword, then the dagger, and then the great sword.”
Rhys and Amren exchanged a look.
Cassian demanded, “What?”
Rhys asked Amren, “Is it possible?”
Amren gazed at the blades. “It has been … It has been such a long time, but … yes.”
“Someone please explain,” Azriel said, peering at the three blades from a safe distance.
Cassian forced himself to sit perfectly still as Rhys dragged a hand through his black hair. “Once, the High Fae were more elemental, more given to reading the stars and crafting masterpieces of art and jewelry and weaponry. Their gifts were rawer, more connected to nature, and they could imbue objects with that power.”
Cassian instantly knew where this was headed. “Nesta put her power in those swords?”
“No one has been able to create a magic sword in more than ten thousand years,” Amren said. “The last one Made, the great blade Gwydion, vanished around the time the last of the Trove went missing.”
“This sword isn’t Gwydion,” Cassian said, well aware of the myths regarding the sword. It had belonged to a true Fae High King in Prythian, as there had been in Hybern. He had united the lands, its people—and for a while, with that sword, peace had reigned. Until he had been betrayed by his own queen and his fiercest general, and lost the sword to them, and the lands fell into darkness once more. Never again to see another High King—only High Lords, who ruled the territories that had once answered to the king.
“Gwydion is gone,” Amren said, a shade sadly, “or has been gladly missing for millennia.” She nodded toward the great sword. “This is something new.”
Azriel said, “Nesta created a new magic sword.”
“Yes,” Amren said. “Only the Great Powers could do that—Gwydion was given its powers when the High Priestess Oleanna dipped it into the Cauldron during its crafting.”
Cassian’s blood chilled, waves rippling over his skin. “One touch from Nesta’s magic while the blade was still hot …”
“And the blade was infused with it.”
“Nesta didn’t know what she was doing,” Cassian said. “She was letting off some steam.”
“Which might be worse,” Amren said. “Who knows what emotions she poured into the blades with her power? It might have shaped them into instruments of such feelings—or it might have been the catalyst to release her power. There is no way of knowing.”
“So we use the sword,” Cassian said, “and figure it out.”
“No,” Amren countered sharply. “I wouldn’t dare draw these blades. Especially not the great sword. I can feel power clustering there. Did she work on that one longest?”
“Yes.”
“Then it is to be treated as an object of the Dread Trove. A new Trove.”
“You can’t be serious.”
Amren’s brows flattened. “The Dread Trove was forged by the Cauldron. Nesta possesses the Cauldron’s powers. So anything she crafts and imbues with her power becomes a new Trove. At this point, I wouldn’t so much as eat a piece of bread if she’d toasted it.”
They all stared at the three blades atop the desk.
Azriel said, “People will kill for this power. Either kill her to stop it, or kill us to capture her.”
“Nesta forged a new Trove,” Cassian said, reining in his rage at the truth of Azriel’s words. “She could create anything.” He nodded to Rhys. “She could fill our arsenals with weapons that would win us any war.” Briallyn, Koschei, and Beron wouldn’t stand a chance.
“Which is why Nesta must not learn about it,” Amren said.
Cassian demanded, “What?”
Amren’s gray eyes held steady. “She cannot know.”
Rhys said, “That seems like a risk. What if, unaware, she creates more?”
“What if, in one of her moods,” Amren challenged, “Nesta creates what she pleases just to spite us?”
“She’d never do that,” Cassian said hotly. He pointed at her. “You fucking know it, too.”
“Nesta would create not a Dread Trove,” Amren said, unfazed by his snarling, “but a Trove of Nightmares.”
“I can’t lie to her,” Cassian said, looking to Rhys. “I can’t.”
“You don’t need to lie,” Amren answered. “Simply don’t volunteer the information.”
He appealed to Rhys, “You’re all right with this? Because I’m sure as hell not.”
“Amren’s order holds,” Rhys said, and for a heartbeat, Cassian hated him. Hated the mistrust and wariness he beheld on Rhys’s face.
“I’d be careful when you’re fucking her,” Amren added, lips curling in a sneer. “Who knows what she might transform you into when her emotions are high?”
“That’s enough,” Azriel said, and Cassian turned grateful eyes to his brother. Az continued, “I’m with Cassian on this. It’s not right to keep the knowledge from Nesta.”
Rhys considered, then gazed long and hard at Cassian. Cassian weathered the look, kept his back straight and face grave. Rhys said at last, “When Feyre returns from her studio, I’ll ask her. She’ll be the deciding vote.”
It was a compromise, and even Amren could agree with that. Cassian nodded, uneasy but willing to let the decision lie in Feyre’s hands.
Amren nestled back into her chair. “That sword shall be known by history.” Her eyes darkened as she looked at the great sword, her words echoing. “It remains to be seen whether it shall be known for good or evil.”
Cassian shook off the shiver that slithered down his spine, as if fate itself heard her words and shuddered. He threw her a grin. “You do love to be dramatic, don’t you?”
Amren scowled, then rose. “I’m going back to bed.” She pointed at Rhysand. “Put those weapons somewhere no one will find them. And Mother damn you if you dare unsheathe one.”
Rhys waved her off, bored and tired. “Of course.”
“I mean it, boy,” Amren said. “Do not unsheathe those blades.” She surveyed all three of them before she left. “Any of you.”
For a moment, only the ticking grandfather clock made a sound.
Rhys looked toward it. Then he said, eyes distant, “I can’t find anything to help Feyre with the baby—with the labor.”
Cassian’s chest tightened. “Drakon and Miryam?”
Rhys shook his head. “The Seraphim’s wings are as flexible and rounded as the Illyrians’ are bony. That’s what will kill Feyre. Miryam’s children were able to pass through her birth canal because their wings bent easily—and nearly every one of her human people who’s mixed with Drakon’s has had similar success.” Rhys’s throat bobbed. His next words cracked Cassian’s heart. “I didn’t realize how much hope I’d been holding on to until I saw the pity and fear in their faces. Until Drakon had to embrace me to keep me from falling apart.”
Cassian crossed to his brother in a few steps. He clasped Rhys’s shoulder, leaning against the edge of the desk. “We’ll keep looking. What about Thesan?”
Rhys loosened the uppermost buttons on his black jacket, revealing a hint of the tattooed chest beneath. “The Dawn Court had nothing of use. The Peregryns are similar to the Seraphim—they’re related, though distantly. Their healers know how to get a breech baby with wings to turn, how to get it out of the mother, but again: their wings are flexible.”
Azriel appeared on Rhys’s other side, a hand on his shoulder as well.
The clock ticked on, a brutal reminder of every second racing toward sure doom. What they needed, Cassian realized with each tick of that clock, was a miracle.
Azriel asked, “And Feyre still doesn’t know?”
“No. She knows the labor will be difficult, but I haven’t told her yet that it might very well claim her life.” Rhys spoke into their minds, as if he couldn’t say it aloud, I haven’t told her that the nightmares that now send me lurching from sleep aren’t ones of the past, but of the future.
Cassian squeezed Rhys’s shoulder. “Why won’t you tell her?”
Rhys’s throat worked. “Because I can’t bring myself to give her that fear. To take away one bit of the joy in her eyes every time she puts a hand on her belly.” His voice shook. “It is fucking eating me alive, this terror. I keep myself busy, but … there is no one to bargain with for her life, no amount of wealth to buy it, nothing that I can do to save her.”
“Helion?” Azriel asked, eyes pained.
“I told him before he left yesterday. Pulled him aside when Feyre had winnowed home, and begged him on my knees to find something in his thousand libraries to save her. He said every head librarian and researcher who can be spared will be put on it. Somewhere in history, someone must have studied this. Found a way to deliver a baby with wings to a mother whose body was not equipped for it.”
“We’ll hold on to our hope, then,” Cassian said. Rhys shuddered, hanging his head, his silken black hair obscuring his eyes.
Cassian lifted his stare to Azriel, whose face conveyed everything: hope wouldn’t keep Feyre alive.
Cassian swallowed hard, and shifted his gaze to the three blades on the desk.
Their hilts were ordinary—as might be expected from a blacksmith in a small village. He made fine weapons, yes, but not artistic masterpieces. The great sword’s hilt was a simple cross guard, the pommel a rounded bit of metal.
Gwydion, the last of the magic swords, had been dark as night and as beautiful.
How many games had Cassian played as a child with Rhys and Azriel, where a long stick had been a stand-in for Gwydion? How many adventures had they imagined, sharing that mythical sword between them as they slew wyrms and rescued damsels?
Never mind that Rhys’s particular damsel had slain a wyrm herself and rescued him instead.
But if Amren was right … Cassian couldn’t think of another place in the world that held three magic blades, let alone one.
These might very well be the only ones in existence.
Cassian drummed his fingers on the desk, curiosity biting deep. “Let’s have a look.”
“Amren said not to,” Azriel warned.
“Amren’s not here,” Cassian said, smirking. “And we don’t need to touch them.” He clapped Rhys on the shoulder. “Use that fancy magic to unsheathe them.”
Rhys lifted his head. “This is a bad idea.”
Cassian winked. “That should be written on the Night Court crest.”
A few stars blinked into existence in Rhys’s eyes. Azriel muttered a prayer.
But Rhys took two steadying breaths and unspooled his power toward the massive sword, letting it lift the blade in star-flecked hands.
“It’s heavy,” Rhys observed, brows bunched in concentration. “In a way it should not be. Like it’s fighting against my magic.” He kept the sword floating above his desk, perpendicular to it, as if it were held in a stand.
Cassian braced himself as Rhys angled his head, his magic probing the hilt, the scabbard. Rhys mused, “The blacksmith never said anything about what had seemed cursed, and he must have touched it several times—to feel the power and to bring it here, at least. So it can’t be a death-sword to slay any careless hand.”
Azriel grunted. “I’d still be careful.”
With a wicked smile toward Az, Rhys used his power to draw away the black scabbard.
It did not go easily, as if the sword did not wish to be revealed—or not by Rhysand.
But inch by inch, the scabbard slid from the blade. And inch by inch, fresh steel glowed—truly glowed, like moonlight lay within the metal.
Even Az didn’t school his features into anything but gaping awe as the scabbard fell away at last.
Cassian stumbled back, gawking.
Iridescent sparks danced along the blade. Pure, crackling magic. The light danced and spurted as if an invisible hammer still struck it.
The hair on Cassian’s body rose.
Rhys inhaled, rallying his magic, then floated and unsheathed the other sword and the dagger.
They did not spark with raw power, but Cassian could feel them. The dagger radiated cold, its blade gleaming so bright it looked like an icicle in the sun. The second sword seemed hot—angry and willful.
But the great sword between the two others … The sparks faded, as if sucked into the blade itself.
None of them dared touch it. Something deep and primal within Cassian warned him not to. That to be impaled or sliced by that blade would be no ordinary wound.
A soft, female laugh rippled from the door, and Cassian didn’t need to turn to know Amren stood there. “I knew you idiots wouldn’t be able to resist.”
Rhys murmured, “I have never seen anything like this.” His magic set the three blades to rotating, allowing them to observe every facet. Az’s face was still slack with awe.
“Amarantha destroyed one,” Amren said.
Cassian started. “I never heard that.”
Amren amended, “Rumor claimed she dumped one into the sea. It would not come to Amarantha’s hand, nor the hands of any of her commanders, and rather than let the King of Hybern attain it, she disposed of it.”
Azriel asked, “Which sword?”
“Narben.” Amren’s red lips quirked downward. “At least that’s what rumor said. You were Under the Mountain then, Rhys. She would have kept it secret. I only heard from a fleeing water-nymph that it had been done.”
“Narben was even older than Gwydion,” Rhys said. “Where the hell was it?”
“I don’t know, but she found it, and when it would not bend to her, she destroyed it. As she did all good things.” It was as much as Amren would say about that terrible time. “It was perhaps in our favor. Had the King of Hybern possessed Narben, I fear we would have lost the war.”
Narben’s powers had not been the holy, savior’s light of Gwydion, but ones far darker. “I can’t believe that witch threw it into the sea,” Cassian said.
“Again, it was a rumor, heard from someone who heard it from someone. Who knows if she actually found Narben? Even if it would not obey her, she’d have been a fool to throw it away.”
“Amarantha could be shortsighted,” Rhys said. Cassian hated the sound of her name on his brother’s tongue. From the flare of rage on Azriel’s face, so did the shadowsinger.
“But you, Rhysand, are not.” Amren nodded to the still-rotating weapons. “With these three blades, you could make yourself High King.”
The words clanged through the room. Cassian slowly blinked.
Rhys said tightly, “I don’t wish to be High King. I only wish to be here, with my mate and my people.”
Amren countered, “All seven courts united under one ruler would give us far better odds of survival in any upcoming conflict. No bickering and politicking required to dispatch our armies. Malcontents like Beron would have no ability to threaten our plans by allying with our enemies.”
“We would have to fight an internal war first. I would be branded a traitor by my friends in other courts—I’d be forced to make them kneel.”
Azriel stepped forward, shadows trailing from his shoulders. “Kallias, Tarquin, and Helion might be willing to kneel. Thesan will kneel if the others do.”
Cassian nodded. Rhys as High King: he could think of no other male he’d trust more. No other male who would be a fairer ruler than Rhys. And with Feyre as High Queen … Prythian would be blessed to have such leaders. So Cassian said, “Tamlin would probably fight, and lose. Beron would be the only one standing in your way.”
Rhys’s teeth flashed. “Beron is already standing in my way, and doing a damn good job of it. I have no interest in justifying his behavior.” He gave Cassian a withering look. “Don’t we have to leave soon to winnow you and Nesta down to the Spring Court to meet with Eris?”
“Don’t change the subject,” Cassian drawled.
Rhys’s power rumbled in the room. “I do not want to be High King. There is no need to discuss it.”
“Yours is a terrible and beautiful power, Rhysand,” Amren said, sighing. “You have three magic blades before you, each a kingmaker in its own right, and yet you would rather share that power. Keep to your borders. Why?”
Rhys demanded, “Why do you want me to turn conqueror?”
Amren shot back, “Why do you shy from the power that is your birthright?”
“I did nothing to earn that power,” Rhys said. “I was born with it. It is a tool to defend my people, not to attack others.” He surveyed them. “Where is this talk coming from?”
Azriel said quietly, “We are weakened—all seven courts. Even more at odds with each other and with the rest of the world since the war. If Montesere and Vallahan march on us, if Rask joins with them, we will not withstand it. Not with Beron already turned against us and allied with Briallyn. Not if Tamlin cannot master his guilt and grief and become what he once was.”
Cassian picked up the thread, tucking in his wings. “But a land united under one king and queen, armed with such power and objects … Our enemies would hesitate.”
Rhys snarled, “If you think for one moment that Feyre would be remotely interested in being High Queen, you’re delusional.”
Amren said, “Feyre would see it as a necessary evil. To protect your child from being born into war, she would do what is necessary.”
“And I won’t?” Rhys demanded, standing. “I will not be High King. I will not consider it, not today and not in a century.”
Amren looked to the great sword, still slowly rotating above them. “Then explain to me why, after thousands of years, objects that once crowned and aided the old Fae have returned. The last time a High King ruled Prythian, it was with a magic sword in his hand. Look at that great sword before you, Rhysand, and tell me that it is not a sign from the Cauldron itself.”
Cassian’s breath caught in his throat. “It was a fluke, Amren. Nesta didn’t make it on purpose.”
Amren shook her head, hair swaying. “Nothing is a fluke. The Cauldron’s power flows through Nesta, and could use her as a puppet without her knowledge. It wanted those weapons Made, and thus they were Made. It wanted Rhysand to have them and thus the blacksmith brought them to you. To you, Rhysand, not to Nesta. And do not forget that Nesta herself—and Elain, with whatever powers she has—is here. Feyre is here. All three sisters blessed by fate and gifted with powers to match your own. Feyre alone doubles your strength. Nesta makes you unstoppable. Especially if she were to march into battle wearing the Mask. No enemy could stand against her. She’d slay Beron’s soldiers, then raise them from the dead and turn them on him.”
Cassian’s blood chilled. Yes, Nesta would be unstoppable. But at what cost to her soul?
Rhys leveled a cool stare at Amren. “I will not entertain this ridiculous notion for another moment.”
Cassian knew they’d been dismissed. He nodded to Az, who followed him toward the doors. They paused, however, right before the threshold. Looked back at their brother, their High Lord, now seated alone at his desk. The weight of so many choices pressing heavy on his broad shoulders, drooping his wings.
“Very well then, Rhysand.” Amren also turned from the desk and the blades Rhys’s magic now sheathed and set upon the surface. “But know that the Cauldron’s benevolence will be extended to you only for so long before it is offered to another.”
