A Court of Silver Flames - Sarah J. Maas Page 0,26

away long ago. Had it been two hours already? Mor said mildly, “He is pretty, isn’t he?”

Nesta’s spine stiffened at the warmth in her tone. “Just ask him.”

No amusement lit Morrigan’s face as she shifted her attention down to Nesta. “Why aren’t you out there?”

“I’m taking a break.”

Morrigan’s gaze swept over Nesta’s face, noting the lack of sweat or flushed skin, the hair barely out of place. The female said quietly, “My vote would have been to dump you right back in the human lands, you know.”

“Oh, I know.” Nesta refused to stand, to meet the challenge. “Good thing being Feyre’s sister has its advantages.”

Morrigan’s lip curled. Beyond her, Cassian had halted his smooth movements.

Dark fire simmered in Morrigan’s eyes. “I knew plenty of people like you once.” Her hand drifted to her abdomen. “You never deserve the benefit of the doubt that good people like him give you.”

Nesta was well aware of that. And knew what manner of people Morrigan referred to—those who dwelled in the Court of Nightmares in the Hewn City. Feyre had never told her the full story, but Nesta knew the bare details: the monsters who had tormented and brutalized Morrigan until she was thrown to the wolves.

Nesta leaned back on her hands, the cold rock biting through her gloves. She opened her mouth, but Cassian had reached them, breathless and gleaming with sweat. “You’re early.”

“I wanted to see how things were coming along.” Morrigan pulled her burning gaze from Nesta. “Seems like today was a slow start.”

Cassian raked his fingers through his hair. “You could say that.”

Nesta clenched her jaw hard enough to hurt.

Morrigan extended a hand to him, and then threw one toward Nesta without so much as a glance. “Shall we?”

Morrigan was a self-righteous busybody.

The thought raged through Nesta as she stood in the subterranean library beneath the House of Wind. A vain, self-righteous busybody.

Cassian hadn’t spoken to her upon their return. She hadn’t waited to see if he’d offer lunch, either, before going to her room and taking a bath to warm her bones.

When she’d emerged, she found that a note had been slipped beneath her door. In tight, bold lettering, it told her to be in the library at one. No threats, no promises to ship her off to the human lands. As if he didn’t care whether she obeyed.

Well, at least breaking him had been accomplished faster than she’d anticipated.

She’d ventured to the library not because of any desire to obey his or Rhysand’s commands, but because the alternative was equally unbearable: sitting in her silent bedroom, nothing but the roaring in her head to fill the quiet.

It had been more than a year since she’d last been down here. Since those terrifying moments when Hybern’s assassins had snuck in, chasing her and Feyre into the dark heart of the library. She peered over the edge of the landing’s stone railing, straight into the black pit far below. No ancient creature slumbered in that darkness anymore, but the dimness remained. And at its bottom lay the ground where Cassian had landed, reaching for her. There had been such rage on his face at the sight of her terror—

She sliced off the thought. Pushed back the tremor that went through her, and focused on the female sitting at the desk, nearly hidden by columns of books stacked there.

The female’s hands were wrecked. There was no polite way of describing them beyond that. Bones bent and knobbed, fingers at the wrong angles … Feyre had once mentioned that the priestesses in this library had difficult pasts. To say the least.

Nesta didn’t want to know what had been done to Clotho, the library’s high priestess, to render her thus. To have her tongue cut out and then deliberately healed that way so the damage might never be undone. Males had hurt her, and—

Hands shoving her down, down, down into freezing water, voices laughing and sneering.

A brutish male face grinning as he anticipated the trophy that would be pulled forth—

She couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t save Elain, sobbing on the floor. Couldn’t save herself. No one was coming to rescue her, and these males would do what they wanted, and her body was not her own, not human—not for much longer—

Nesta wrenched her thoughts back to the present, blasting back the memory.

Her face veiled in the shadows beneath her pale hood, Clotho sat in silence, as if she’d seen the thoughts blare through Nesta, as if she knew how often the memory of that