A Court of Silver Flames - Sarah J. Maas Page 0,262

face so the shock on it was etched in stark relief.

“I give it back,” Nesta said, one more time, and Mask and Crown tumbled from her head. The light exploded, blinding and warm, a wind sweeping past them, as if gathering every shard of itself out of the room.

And as it faded, dark ink splashed upon Nesta’s back, visible through her half-shredded shirt, as if it were a wave crashing upon the shore.

A bargain. With the Cauldron itself.

Yet Cassian could have sworn a luminescent, gentle hand prevented the light from leaving her body altogether.

Cassian didn’t fight Rhys this time as he raced to the bed. To where Feyre lay, flush with color. No more blood spilling between her legs. Feyre opened her eyes.

She blinked at Rhys, and then turned to Nesta.

“I love you, too,” Feyre whispered to her sister, and smiled. Nesta didn’t stop her sob as she launched herself onto Feyre and embraced her.

But the gesture was short-lived, hardly the length of a blink before a healthy wail went up from the other side of the room, and—

Mor stammered, weeping, and the babe she brought to the bed was not the small, still thing she’d been holding, but a full-term winged boy. His thick cap of dark hair lay plastered to his head as he mewled for his mother.

Feyre began sobbing then, too, taking her son from Mor, hardly noticing Madja suddenly leaning between her legs, inspecting what was there—the healing. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’d developed an Illyrian’s anatomy,” the healer muttered, but no one was listening.

Not as Rhys put his arm around Feyre and together they peered at the boy—their son. Together, they wept, and laughed, and when Madja said, “Let him feed,” Feyre obeyed, wonder in her eyes as she brought him to her breast, now swollen with milk.

But Rhys watched in awe for all of a moment before he whirled to Nesta, who had slid off the bed and now stood beside the Mask. Behind her, the Crown and the Harp lay strewn on the floor. Cassian held his breath as the two of them surveyed each other.

Then Rhys fell to his knees and took Nesta’s hands in his, pressing his mouth to her fingers. “Thank you,” he wept, head bowed. Cassian knew it wasn’t in gratitude for Rhys’s own life that he knelt upon the sacred tattoos inked upon his knees.

Nesta dropped to the carpet. Lifted Rhys’s face in her hands, studied what lay in it. Then she threw her arms around the High Lord of the Night Court and held him tightly.

CHAPTER

78

Gwyn and Emerie were waiting in one of the parlors overlooking the river, healed but still in their torn, bloody clothes. Steam curled off the cups set on the low table before them.

Emerie said thickly as Nesta stopped before their couch, “Two wraiths brought us some tea—”

But Gwyn cut her off, face blazing as she hissed at Nesta, “I should never forgive you.”

Nesta just leaped onto the couch, hugging Gwyn tightly. She reached out an arm for Emerie, who joined their embrace. “We can talk forgiveness another day,” Nesta said through her tears, settling between them. “You won the entire damn thing.”

“Thanks to you,” Emerie said.

“I got a crown of my own, don’t worry,” Nesta said, even as she knew Mor was now winnowing all three objects of the Trove back to the place Nesta had taken them from. She’d summoned them, working around Helion’s spells. No spell could ever keep them from her—Briallyn had spoken true about that.

“Who healed you?” Nesta pulled back to survey them. “How are you even here?”

“The stone,” Emerie explained, features soft with wonder. “It healed every wound on us the moment it brought us out of the Rite. We arrived here, of all places.”

“I think it knew where we were needed most,” Gwyn said quietly, and Nesta smiled.

Her smile faded, however, as she asked Emerie, “Will your family punish you for what happened to Bellius?” If they so much as thought about doing so, Nesta would pay them a little visit. With the Mask, the Harp, and the Crown.

Which was why the Trove should be kept far away from her.

Emerie shrugged a shoulder. “Deaths happen in the Rite. He fell in combat when one of his fellow warriors turned on him during the hike up Ramiel’s slopes. That’s as much as they need to know.” Her eyes twinkled.

Nesta had a feeling that the truth of what had occurred on that mountain would remain