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I had to try again—we had until tonight, and perhaps if I got Tarquin alone, out of Cresseida’s earshot, he might listen to reason, might act with courage and mercy—

“Milady Feyre,” Tarquin said, and I knew he’d guessed my intentions. His tone gentled, again laced with that terrible pity. “If this was a cause we could win, a cause where we had all the information at hand, yes—I would fight to the death alongside you. But we have only assumptions and hopes to rely on. I cannot march my people into certain death on rumor. Can you, my friends?”

That phrase again. And for a moment, admiring Tarquin’s open, beautiful face . . . I wasn’t sure if I really could live with it. With any of what I’d come here to ask him to do. To lead his people to a distant land to face a death-lord whose threat we had not yet fully confirmed, to fight a war we’d surely lose—though at least we’d lose with moral righteousness on our side. Could I face my son when he was older, if I even lived through this war, and explain that we’d marched our friends to a sure death just to feel good about ourselves? Was it any worse than explaining why we hadn’t gone at all?

Tarquin’s eyes softened, and he offered his arm to escort me into the dining room. Like he knew this part of the discussion was over and done with.

I took his arm out of politeness, the muscle beneath his sleeve as unyielding as the sea all around us. “There is too much that we don’t know, Feyre, to risk jumping into a war that all my generals tell me we cannot hope to win,” Tarquin said with that pitying gentleness. A numbness settled over me, heavy and unending. I barely heard him as he concluded, “And as much as I admire your principles, I’m not sure we will ever agree on this matter.”

CHAPTER

12

Nesta

The sunset stained the sea to Nesta’s left into blood-splattered gold. Panting, nose already bleeding, she knelt on the edge of the cliff, the northern horizon an impossibly distant line. Beyond it lay the Prison.

Between the Prison and here lay death.

She sucked in a breath, trying to rise, winded and sore from the winnowing that had taken her north from Velaris. Her knees, her thighs, did not cooperate.

Go, her blood whispered. Make the jump.

Why? she whispered back. Why?

But there was no reply. Even her blood seemed to go silent, leaving her shivering in a cold sweat on that cliff edge.

Alone.

She looked to her right, to the purpling eastern sky. To the first star of evening. To the darkness, the night growing beyond it.

Wedged between night to one side and the remnants of day to the other, Nesta found herself unable to move in any direction at all.

It was fitting, Nesta thought bitterly. She’d been stuck for weeks now, trying to figure out how to reach that place she’d been before, where she’d felt like she had a home and a mate and a family that she loved. It was all she wanted—those things, those people. To love them, be loved by them, to keep them safe and happy.

That golden horizon to her left shimmered with the last rays of the sun.

It was the only thing she was certain about, that love. She knew it, because these weeks without Cassian, with him treating her as little more than a stranger, had been the hardest of her life. This time without Gwyn and Emerie and training with the Valkyries had eaten away at her, until she was nothing but weary, aching bones.

The old Nesta might have balked at such feelings, might have sneered and said she was weak, pathetic, needy. But those bonds had helped her survive Ramiel. Helped her survive Briallyn and the Crown. Those bonds had saved Feyre and Nyx. She would never not be proud of that. And she was grateful, so grateful, to have people who loved her. People worth protecting, worth dying for.

On trembling legs, head spinning, Nesta managed to get to her feet. Maybe whatever called for her over the northern horizon was a siren song, luring her away from what mattered, who mattered. Come, it beckoned, but to where? To what end? More shadows and loneliness and secrets?

It would consume her, if she let it.

So Nesta ignored that northern horizon, stained with a dazzling blend of encroaching night and lingering day. She turned from that horizon line, back toward the people she loved.

The green, shimmering hills of the Night Court lowlands spread ahead to the south. And beyond that . . . Velaris. Home.

She glanced over a shoulder, just once, right as the final rays of the sun slipped under the sea. Could have sworn a shimmer of green flashed as they did so, like some sort of final farewell.

Then she let herself look eastward one last time—to that evening star now emerging. Glinting, as if in welcome or goodbye. She was almost tempted to lift a hand in greeting or parting in response.

But she resisted, and with blood in her nose, its tang in her mouth, Nesta winnowed home. Gwyn might not be ready to speak to her, but Cassian . . . Cassian was her mate. He had to be coming back tonight, if Nyx’s celebration was tomorrow. And since they were all due to go to the temple together in the morning, it was likely he’d at least have to stop by the House of Wind to pick up his clothes.

She couldn’t stand it another moment, being separated from him, their anger keeping them apart.

The House of Wind was quiet; their bedroom even quieter as she donned her nightclothes. She slipped between the sheets, keenly aware of the crisp comforter and fluffed pillow on the other side of the bed. For long moments, she lay there, the silence pressing on her skin, hollowing out her head.