A Court of Silver Flames - Sarah J. Maas Page 0,189

to the Prison isn’t the time for one of your experiments,” Cassian countered.

The stars in Rhys’s eyes winked out. “Then let’s hope she doesn’t need to draw it.”

CHAPTER

53

“Rhysand really gave this sword to me of his own free will?” Nesta asked Cassian the next morning as they hiked the mossy, rock-strewn side of the towering mountain known as the Prison. It was exactly as she’d pictured it in her trance—and even more horrible in person. The very land seemed abandoned. Like something great had once existed here and then vanished. Like the land still waited for it to return.

“Rhys said if we’re going into the Prison, we should be well armed,” Cassian said, his dark hair tossed by the cold, wet wind off the thrashing gray sea beyond the plain to their right. “And this is the best place he can think of for us to try out the sword you Made.”

“So if it goes badly, at least it will kill me, not anyone else?” Nesta couldn’t keep the sharpness from her tone. Rhys had winnowed them here, depositing them at the base of the mountain, as no magic could pierce its heavy wards. Nesta hadn’t been able to look him in the eye.

“You’re not going to be killed. Either by that blade or anything in there.” His jaw tightened as he surveyed the towering gates far above. He’d put many of the current inmates inside, and Nesta had heard Feyre’s harrowing tales of visiting the Prison on several occasions. Little frightened her sister—that Feyre found it to be petrifying didn’t help the twisting sensation in Nesta’s gut.

“You remember the rules?” Cassian asked as they neared the gates of bone, intricately carved with every manner of creature.

“Yes.” Hold Cassian’s hand the entire time, don’t speak of Amren, don’t speak of anything regarding the Trove or the court or Feyre’s pregnancy, don’t speak of the creatures he put in here, don’t do anything except walk and stay on high alert. And get that Harp out before it could unleash chaos.

The bone gates groaned open. Cassian tensed, but kept climbing upward. “Looks like we’re expected.”

Down into the darkness, into hell itself, they walked.

Nesta clutched Cassian’s hand, her rope to life in this lightless place. One of Cassian’s Siphons flared with red light, bloodying the black walls, the doors they sometimes passed.

Cassian moved with the fluidity of a trained warrior, but she noted his gaze darting around the path they walked, which plunged into the earth. The entrance to the hidden hall she’d seen in her scrying had been far, far below—between an iron door with a single rune upon it and a little alcove in the stone.

Soft noises whispered through the rock. She could have sworn nails scraped behind one door. When she glanced at Cassian, his face paled. He noticed her stare and patted his left pectoral—right above the thick scar there. Indication of who was imprisoned behind that door. Who ran their nails over it.

Her blood chilled. Blue Annis.

Cobalt skin and iron claws, he’d said. Annis savored eating her prey.

Nesta swallowed, squeezing Cassian’s hand, and they continued downward.

Minutes or hours passed, she didn’t know. In the gloom, the heavy, whispering air, time had ceased to matter.

Nausea roiled through her. Amren had been in this place for thousands of years, thrown in by fools who had feared her in her true form, that being of flame and light who had laid waste to Hybern’s army.

Nesta couldn’t imagine spending a day in this place. A year.

She didn’t know how Amren hadn’t gone mad. How she’d found the strength to survive.

She’d treated Amren badly. The small thought wedged into her mind. She had used her, exactly as Amren said, as a shield against everyone. And Amren, who had survived millennia in this awful place, alongside the worst monsters in the land … Amren found her abhorrent.

Misery burned like acid.

Something pounded through the rock to their left, and Nesta flinched. Cassian squeezed her hand. “Ignore it,” he murmured.

Down and down, into a place worse than hell. And then she spied an alcove burned into her memory, behind her eyelids. And—yes, beside it was that iron door with the sole rune on its surface.

“Here.” Nesta jerked her chin toward the bald stone. “Through the rock.”

When Cassian didn’t reply, she twisted to him.

His focus lay fixed on the iron door. His golden-brown skin had gone ashen.

His lips mouthed the name of the being behind it.

Lanthys.

“You’re sure …” Cassian swallowed. “You’re sure this is the place?”

“Yes.” Nesta