A Court of Wings and Ruin

But behind that solid, black rock, I could still feel them. Could have sworn a faint scratching sound filled the passage. From the other side of that rock.

As if someone were running their nails down it. Something huge—and old. And quiet as the wind through a field of wheat.

Cassian kept utterly silent, tracking something—counting something.

“This could be … a very bad idea,” I admitted, my grip tightening on his hand.

“Oh, it most certainly is,” Cassian said with a faint smile as we continued down and down into the heavy black and thrumming silence. “But this is war. We don’t have the luxury of good ideas—only picking between the bad ones.”

The Bone Carver’s cell door swung open the moment I laid my palm to it.

“Worth the misery of being Rhys’s mate,” Cassian quipped as the white bone swung away into darkness.

A light chuckle within.

The amusement faded from Cassian’s face at the sound—as we walked into the cell, still hand in hand.

The orb of faelight bobbed ahead, illuminating the stone-hewn cell.

Cassian growled at what it revealed. Who it revealed.

Wholly different, no doubt, from the same young boy who now smiled at me.

Dark-haired, with eyes of crushing blue.

I started at the child’s face—what I had not noticed that first time. What I had not understood.

It was Rhysand’s face. The coloring, the eyes … it was my mate’s face.

But the Carver’s full, wide mouth, curled into that hideous smile … That was my mouth. My father’s mouth.

The hair on my arms rose. The Carver inclined his head in greeting—in greeting and in confirmation, as if he knew precisely what I realized. Who I had seen and was still seeing.

The High Lord’s son. My son. Our son. Should we survive long enough to bear him.

Should I not fail in my task to recruit the Carver. Should we not fail to unify the High Lords and the Court of Nightmares. And keep that wall intact.

It was an effort to keep my knees from buckling. Cassian’s face was pale enough that I knew whatever he was seeing … it wasn’t a beautiful young boy.

“I was wondering when you’d return,” the Carver said, that boy’s voice sweet and yet dreadful—from the ancient creature that lurked beneath it. “High Lady,” he added to me. “Please accept my congratulations on your union.” A glance at Cassian. “I can smell the wind on you.” Another little smile. “Have you brought me a gift?”

I reached into the pocket of my jacket and chucked a small shard of bone, no bigger than my hand, at the Carver’s feet.

“This is all that’s left of the Attor after I splattered him on the streets of Velaris.”

Those blue eyes flared with unholy delight. I hadn’t even known we’d kept this fragment. It had been stored until now—precisely for this sort of thing.

“So bloodthirsty, my new High Lady,” the Carver purred, picking up the cracked bone and turning it over in those small, delicate hands. And then the Carver said, “I smell my sister on you, Cursebreaker.”

My mouth went dry. His sister—

“Did you steal from her? Did she weave a thread of your life into her loom?”

The Weaver of the Wood. My heart thundered. No breathing could steady it. Cassian’s hand tightened around mine.

The Carver purred to Cassian, “If I tell you a secret, warrior-heart, what will you give me?”

Neither of us spoke. Carefully—we’d have to phrase and do this so carefully.

The Carver stroked the shard of bone in his palm, attention fixed upon a stone-faced Cassian. “What if I tell you what the rock and darkness and sea beyond whispered to me, Lord of Bloodshed? How they shuddered in fear, on that island across the sea. How they trembled when she emerged. She took something—something precious. She ripped it out with her teeth.”

Cassian’s golden-brown face had drained of color, his wings tucking in tight.

“What did you wake that day in Hybern, Prince of Bastards?”

My blood went cold.

“What came out was not what went in.” A rasping laugh as the Carver laid the shard of bone on the ground beside him. “How lovely she is—new as a fawn and yet ancient as the sea. How she calls to you. A queen, as my sister once was. Terrible and proud; beautiful as a winter sunrise.”

Rhys had warned me of the inmates’ capacity to lie, to sell anything, to get free.

“Nesta,” the Bone Carver murmured. “Nes-ta.”

I squeezed Cassian’s hand. Enough. It was enough of this teasing and taunting. But he didn’t look at me.

“How the wind moans her name. Can you hear it, too? Nesta. Nesta. Nesta.”

I wasn’t sure Cassian was breathing.

“What did she do, drowning in the ageless dark? What did she take?”

It was the bite in the last word that snapped my tether of restraint. “If you wish to find out, perhaps you should stop talking long enough for us to explain.”

My voice seemed to shake Cassian free of whatever trance he’d been in. His breathing surged, tight and fast, and he scanned my face—apology in his eyes.

The Carver chuckled. “I so rarely get company. Forgive me for wanting to make idle talk.” He crossed an ankle over a foot. “And why have you sought my services?”

“We attained the Book of Breathings,” I said casually. “There are … interesting spells inside. Codes within codes within codes. Someone we know cracked most of them. She is still looking for others. Spells that could … send someone like her home. Others like her, too.”

The Carver’s violet eyes flared bright as flame. “I’m listening.”

CHAPTER

23

“War is upon us,” I said to the Carver. “Rumor suggests you have … gifts that may be useful upon the battlefield.”

A smile at Cassian, as if understanding why he’d joined me. “In exchange for a price,” the Carver mused.

“Within reason,” Cassian countered.

The Carver surveyed his cell. “And you think that I wish to go … back.”

“Don’t you?”

The Carver folded his legs beneath his small frame. “Where we came from … I do not believe it is now anything more than dust drifting across a plain. There is no home to return to. Not one that I desire.”