A Court of Silver Flames - Sarah J. Maas Page 0,39

don’t know you well enough to tell you that.”

The female shrugged. “All right. I can still make inquiries. Get a price for you. If you’re cold out there, you shouldn’t suffer.” She added pointedly, “No matter what the High Lord may think.”

“I think he’d rather Cassian threw me off the edge of that cliff over there.”

The female snorted. But she held out a hand toward Nesta. “I’m Emerie.”

Nesta took her hand, surprised to find her grip like iron. “Nesta Archeron.”

“I know,” Emerie said, releasing Nesta’s hand. “You killed the King of Hybern.”

“Yes.” There was no denying that fact. And she couldn’t bring herself to lie that she wasn’t the least bit smug about it.

“Good.” Emerie’s smile was a thing of dangerous beauty. She said again, “Good.” There was steel in this female. Not just in her straight spine and chin, but in her eyes.

Nesta turned toward the door and waiting cold, unsure what to do with the naked approval of what so many others had regarded either with awe or fear or doubt. “Thank you for your help.”

So strange, to speak polite, normal words. Strange to wish to offer them, and to a stranger no less.

Males and females, children darting amongst them, gawked at Nesta as she exited onto the street. A few hurried their children along. She met their stares with cool indifference.

You’re right to hide your children from me, she wanted to say. I am the monster you fear.

“Same task as yesterday?” Nesta asked Clotho by way of greeting, still half-chilled from the camp she’d departed only ten minutes earlier.

Cassian had barely spoken upon returning to Rhysand’s mother’s house, his face taut with whatever he’d dealt with at the other Illyrian villages, and Morrigan had been just as sour-faced when she’d appeared to winnow them back to the House of Wind. Cassian had dumped Nesta on the landing veranda without so much as a farewell before he pivoted to where Mor dusted herself off. Within seconds, he was carrying the blond beauty into the brisk wind.

It shouldn’t have bothered her—seeing him flying away with another female in his arms. Some small part of her knew it wasn’t remotely fair to feel that body-tightening irritation at the sight. She had pushed him away again and again, and he had no reason to believe she’d wish it differently. And she knew he had a history with Morrigan, that they’d been lovers long ago.

She’d turned from the sight, entering the House through its dining room, where she found a bowl of some sort of pork-and-bean soup waiting. A silent, thoughtful offering.

She’d just said to the House, “I’m not hungry,” before striding down to the library.

Now she waited as Clotho wrote out an answer and handed over a piece of paper.

Nesta read, There are books to be shelved on Level Five.

Nesta peered over the railing beside Clotho’s desk, silently counting. Five was … very far down. Not within the first ring of true darkness, but hovering in the dimness above it. “Nothing lives down there anymore, right? Bryaxis hasn’t come back?”

Clotho’s enchanted pen moved. The second note read, Bryaxis never harmed any of us.

“Why?”

The pen scratched along the paper. I think Bryaxis took pity on us. We saw our nightmares come true before we came here.

It was an effort not to look at Clotho’s gnarled hands or try to pierce the shadows beneath her hood.

The priestess added to the note, I can reassign you to a higher level.

“No,” Nesta said hoarsely. “I’ll manage.”

And that was that. An hour later, her leathers covered in dust, Nesta slumped at an empty wooden table, in need of a pause.

That same bowl of pork-and-bean soup appeared on the table.

She peered at the distant ceiling. “I said I’m not hungry.”

A spoon appeared alongside the bowl. And a napkin.

“This is absolutely none of your business.”

A glass of water thudded down next to the soup.

Nesta crossed her arms, leaning back in the chair.

“Who are you talking to?”

The light female voice had Nesta twisting around, stiffening as she found a priestess in the robes of an acolyte standing between the two nearest shelves. Her hood was thrown back, and faelight danced in the rich coppery chestnut of her pin-straight hair. Her large teal eyes were as clear and depthless as the stone usually atop a priestess’s hood, and a scattering of freckles lay across her nose and cheeks, as if someone had tossed them with a careless hand. She was young—almost coltish, with her slender, elegant limbs. High Fae, and