A Court of Silver Flames - Sarah J. Maas Page 0,180

her knees, saying into her palms, “I can’t undo it. I can’t fix it. I can’t fix that he is dead, I can’t fix what I said to Feyre, I can’t fix any of the horrible things I’ve done. I can’t fix me.”

She sobbed so hard she thought her body would break with it. Wanted her body to come apart like a cracked egg, wanted what was left of her soul to drift away on the mountain wind.

She whispered, “I can’t bear it.”

Cassian said quietly, “It isn’t your fault.”

She shook her head, face still in her hands, as if it’d shield her from him, but he said, “Your father’s death is not your fault. I was there, Nesta. I looked for a way out of it, too. And there was nothing that could have been done.”

“I could have used my power, I could have tried—”

“Nesta.” Her name was a sigh—as if he were pained. Then his arms were around her, and she was being pulled into his lap. She didn’t fight it, not as he tucked her against his chest. Into his strength and warmth.

“I could have found a way. I should have found a way.”

His hand began stroking her hair.

Her entire body, right down to her bones, trembled. “My father’s death, it’s—it’s the reason I can’t stand fires.”

His hand stilled, then resumed. “Why?”

“The logs …” She shuddered. “They crack. It sounds like breaking bone.”

“Like your father’s neck.”

“Yes,” she breathed. “That’s what I hear. I don’t know how I’ll ever not hear his neck snapping when I’m near a fire. It’s … it’s torture.”

He continued to stroke her head.

A wave of words pushed themselves out of her. “I should have found a way to save us before then. Save Elain and Feyre when we were poor. But I was so angry, and I wanted him to try, to fight for us, but he didn’t, and I would have let us all starve to prove what a wretch he was. It consumed me so much that … that I let Feyre go into that forest and told myself I didn’t care, that she was half-wild, and it didn’t matter, and yet …” She let out a wrenching cry. “I close my eyes and I see her that day she went out to hunt the first time. I see Elain going into the Cauldron. I see her taken by it during the war. I see my father dead. And now I will see Feyre’s face when I told her that the baby would kill her.” She shook and shook, her tears burning hot down her cheeks.

Cassian kept stroking her hair, her back, as he held her by the lake.

“I hate it,” she said. “Every part of me that … does these things. And yet I can’t stop it. I can’t let down that barrier, because to let it fall, to let everything in …” This was what would happen. This shrieking, weeping mess she’d become. “I can’t bear to be in my head. I can’t bear to hear and see everything, over and over. That is all I hear—the snapping of his neck. His last words to me. That he loved me.” She whispered, “I didn’t deserve that love. I deserve nothing.”

Cassian’s hands tightened on her, her own hands falling away as she buried her face against his jacket and wept into his chest.

He said after a moment, “I can tell you more about my mother, and how her death nearly destroyed me. I can tell you in detail about what I did afterward, and what that cost me. I can tell you about the decade it took me to work through it. I can tell you how many days and nights I suffered during the forty-nine years Amarantha held Rhys captive, the guilt tearing me apart that I wasn’t there to help him, that I couldn’t save him. I can tell you how I still look at him and know I’m not worthy of him, that I failed him when he needed me—that fact drags me from sleep sometimes. I can tell you I’ve killed so many people I’ve lost count, but I remember most of their faces. I can tell you how I hear Eris and Devlon and the others talk and, deep down, I still believe that I am a worthless bastard brute. That it doesn’t matter how many Siphons I have or how many battles I’ve won, because I failed the two people dearest to me when it