A Court of Silver Flames - Sarah J. Maas Page 0,116

to think. Where is the Mask of the Dread Trove?

Her palm slickened with sweat, the stones and bones shifting in her fist. If the Mask was aware like the Cauldron had been … She couldn’t let it see her. Find what she loved most.

Couldn’t let it see her, find her, hurt her.

The Mask, she willed the stones and bones. Find the Mask.

Nothing answered. No tug, no whisper of power. She exhaled through her nostrils. The Mask, she willed them.

There was nothing.

Her heart thundered, but she tried again. A different route. Thought of their common origin—the one she and the Trove shared. The Cauldron.

Yawning emptiness answered.

Nesta furrowed her brow, clenching the items harder. Pictured the Cauldron: the vast bowl of darkest iron, so large multiple people could have used it as a bathtub. It had a physical shape, yet when that icy water had swallowed her, there had been no bottom. Just a chasm of freezing water that had soon become utter darkness. The thing that had existed before light; the cradle from which all life had come.

Sweat beaded on her brow, as if her very body rebelled against the memory, but she made herself recall how it had sat in the King of Hybern’s war-tent, squatting atop the reeds and rugs, a primordial beast that had been half-asleep when she’d entered.

And then it had opened an eye. Not one she could see, but one that she could feel fixed on her. It had widened as it realized who stood there: the female who had taken so much, too much. It had narrowed all of its depthless power, its rage, upon her, a cat trapping a mouse with its paw.

Her hand shook.

“Nesta?”

She couldn’t breathe.

“Nesta.”

She couldn’t endure it, the memory of that ancient horror and fury—

She opened her eyes. “I can’t,” she rasped. “I can’t. The power—I don’t think I have it anymore.”

“It’s there. I’ve seen it in your eyes, felt it in my bones. Try again.”

She couldn’t summon it. Couldn’t face it. “I can’t.” She dropped the stones and bones into their dish.

She couldn’t endure the disappointment in Cassian’s voice, either, as he said, “All right.”

She didn’t eat dinner with him. Didn’t do anything except crawl into her bed and stare up at the darkness, and free-fall into it.

It was searching for her.

Winding through the hallways of the House, wending like a dark snake, it searched and sniffed and hunted for her.

She couldn’t move from her bed. Couldn’t open her eyes to sound the alarm, to flee.

She felt it come closer, crawling up the stairs. Down her hallway.

She couldn’t move her body. Couldn’t open her eyes.

Darkness slid through the crack between her door and the stone floor.

No—it couldn’t have found her. It would catch her this time, hold her down on this bed and rip from her everything she had taken from it.

The darkness slithered to her bed, and she forced her eyes open to see it gather over her, a cloud with no shape, no form, but such wicked presence that she knew its name before it leaped.

She screamed as the Cauldron’s darkness pinned her to the bed, and then there was nothing but the horrible weight of it filling her body, tearing her apart from the inside out—

And then nothing.

Cassian jolted awake and reached for the knife on his nightstand.

He didn’t know why. He’d had no nightmare, heard no sound.

Yet terror and dread sluiced through him, ratcheting up his heartbeat. The lone Siphon on his hand glowed like fresh blood, as if also seeking an enemy to strike.

Nothing.

But the air had gone cold as ice. So cold his breath clouded, and then the lamps flared to life. Flared and flickered, flashing, as if desperately signaling to him.

As if the House were begging him to run.

He vaulted from the bed, and the door opened before he could careen into it. Launching into the hall, knife in hand, he didn’t care that he was in his undershorts, or that he only had one Siphon. Az’s door flung open a heartbeat later, and his brother’s steps closed in behind him as Cassian hit the stairs and raced down them.

He’d reached the landing of Nesta’s level when she screamed.

Not a scream of rage, but of pure terror.

His body distilled at that scream, as if it were no more than the knife in his hand, a weapon to be used to eliminate and destroy any threats to her, to kill and kill and not stop until every last enemy was dead or bleeding.

Her door