“Not enough,” Nesta said, setting the bear back onto the stone mantel. She was going to vomit.

No. She could master this. Master herself. And face what lay before her.

She inhaled through her nose. Exhaled through her mouth. Counted the breaths.

Cassian stood beside her through all of it. Not speaking, not touching. Just there, should she need him. Her friend—whom she’d asked to come here with her not because he was sharing her bed, but because she wanted him here. His steadiness and kindness and understanding.

She plucked another figurine from the mantel: a rose carved from a dark sort of wood. She held it in her palm, its solid weight surprising, and traced a finger over one of the petals. “He made this one for Elain. Since it was winter and she missed the flowers.”

“Did he ever make any for you?”

“He knew better than to do that.” She inhaled a shuddering breath, held it, released it. Let her mind calm. “I think he would have, if I’d given him the smallest bit of encouragement, but … I never did. I was too angry.”

“You’d had your life overturned. You were allowed to be angry.”

“That’s not what you told me the first time we met.” She pivoted to find him arching a brow. “You told me I was a piece of shit for letting my younger sister go into the woods to hunt while I did nothing.”

“I didn’t say it like that.”

“The message was the same.” She squared her shoulders, turning to the small, broken cot in the shadows beyond the fireplace. “And you were right.” He didn’t reply as she strode to the cot. “My father slept here for years, letting us have the bedroom. That bed in there … I was born in that bed. My mother died in that bed. I hate that bed.” She ran a hand over the cracking wood of the cot’s frame. Splinters snagged at her fingertips. “But I hate this cot even more. He’d drag it in front of the fire every night and curl up there, huddling under the blankets. I always thought he looked so … so weak. Like a cowering animal. It enraged me.”

“Does it enrage you now?” A casual, but careful question.

“It …” Her throat worked. “I thought him sleeping here was a fitting punishment while we got the bed. It never occurred to me that he wanted us to have the bed, to keep warm and be as comfortable as we could. That we’d only been able to take a few items of furniture from our former home and he’d chosen that bed as one of them. For our comfort. So we didn’t have to sleep on cots, or on the floor.” She rubbed at her chest. “I wouldn’t even let him sleep in the bed when the debtors shattered his leg. I was so lost in my grief and rage and … and sorrow, that I wanted him to feel a fraction of what I did.” Her stomach churned.

He squeezed her shoulder, but said nothing.

“He had to have known that,” she said hoarsely. “He had to have known how awful I was, and yet … he never yelled. That enraged me, too. And then he named a ship after me. Sailed it into battle. I just … I don’t understand why.”

“You were his daughter.”

“And that’s an explanation?” She scanned his face, the sadness etched there. Sadness—for her. For the ache in her chest and the stinging in her eyes.

“Love is complicated.”

She dropped his stare at that. She was a coward for avoiding his gaze. But she lifted her chin. “I never once considered what it was like for him. To go from this man who had made his own fortune, become known as the Prince of Merchants, and then lose everything. I don’t think losing my mother broke him the same way as losing his fleet. He’d been so sure the venture would gain him even more wealth—an obscene amount of wealth. People told him he was mad, but he refused to listen. When they were proved right … I think that humiliation broke him as much as the financial loss.”

She studied the calluses already building across her fingers and palms. “The debtors seemed gleeful when they came here—like they’d resented him all this time and were more than happy to take it out on his leg. I spent the entire time more terrified for what they’d do to me and Elain. Feyre … She tried to get them to stop. Stayed here with him while we hid in the bedroom.” She made herself meet Cassian’s gaze again. “I didn’t just fail Feyre by letting her go into the woods. There were plenty of other times.”

“Have you ever told her this?”

Nesta snorted. “No. I don’t know how.”

He studied her, and she resisted the urge to squirm under the scrutiny. “You’ll learn how. When you’re ready.”

“How very wise of you.”

Cassian sketched a bow.

Despite this house, the history all around her, Nesta smiled. She pocketed the carved rose. “I’ve seen enough.”

He arched a brow. “Really?”

She clenched the wooden rose in her pocket. “I think I just needed to see this place. One last time. To know we got out. That there’s nothing left here except dust and bad memories.”

He slid an arm around her waist as they walked for the door, again surveying all the little paintings Feyre had squeezed into the cottage. “Az won’t be back for a little while. Let’s go flying.”

“What about the humans?” They’d run screaming in terror.

Cassian gave her a wicked smile, opening that half-broken door for her. Leading her into the sunlight and clean air. “It’ll add a little spice to their days.”

CHAPTER

56

A month passed, and winter crept upon Velaris like hoarfrost over a windowpane.

Morning training became a chilled affair, their breath clouding the frosted air as they worked with swords and knives, the metal so cold it bit into their palms. Even their shields sometimes became crusted with frost. Valkyries learned to fight in all kinds of weather, Gwyn told them. Especially the cold. So when snow fell occasionally, Nesta and the others trained, too.

Nesta had to switch into another size of leathers, and when she looked in the mirror each morning to braid her hair, the face that stared back had lost its gauntness, the shadows beneath the eyes. Even with Cassian fucking her on every surface of the House, sometimes until the early hours of the morning, the exhaustion, the purple bruises under her eyes, had vanished.

She told herself it didn’t matter that he never stayed in her bed afterward to hold her. She wondered when he’d grow tired of it—of her. Surely he’d get bored and move on. Even if he feasted on her each night as if he were starving. Gripped her thighs in his powerful hands and licked and suckled at her until she writhed. Sometimes she straddled his face, hands clenching the headboard, and rode his tongue until she came on it. Sometimes it was her tongue on him, around him, and she swallowed down every drop he spilled into her mouth. Sometimes he spilled on her chest, her stomach, her back, and she came at the first splash of him on her skin.

She couldn’t imagine tiring of him. Having him over and over only made her need grow.

She’d been practicing dances with Morrigan in the House study twice a week, the two of them barely swapping more than a few words as Nesta learned waltz after waltz, some particular to the Hewn City, others to the Autumn Court, others to the Fae in general.