She kissed him, and he opened for her, letting those silent words pass between them, holding her so tight their heartbeats echoed into each other.

When she pulled away, breathless from the kiss and all that filled her heart, Cassian only smiled. “The party already started,” he said, kissing her brow and stepping away. “But it’s still nearing its peak.” Indeed, music and laughter trickled down from levels above.

Cassian extended a hand, and Nesta wordlessly took it, letting him lead her down the hall. When she looked at the steps upward and her legs buckled, he scooped her into his arms and carried her. She leaned her head against his chest, closing her eyes, savoring the sound of his heart thumping. All the world was a song, and this heartbeat its core melody.

Open air and music flowed around her, glasses clinking and clothing rustling, and she opened her eyes again as Cassian set her down.

Stars flowed overhead. Thousands and thousands of stars. She barely remembered last year’s Starfall. Had been too drunk to care.

But this, so high up …

Nesta didn’t care that she was covered in sweat, wearing her leathers amongst a bejeweled crowd. Not as she staggered onto the veranda at the top of the House and gaped at the stars raining across the bowl of the sky. They zoomed by, so close some sparked against the stones, leaving glowing dust in their wake.

She had a vague sense of Cassian and Mor and Azriel nearby, of Feyre and Rhys and Lucien, of Elain and Varian and Helion. Of Kallias and Viviane, also swollen with child and glowing with joy and strength. Nesta smiled in greeting and left them blinking, but she forgot them within a moment because the stars, the stars, the stars …

She hadn’t realized that such beauty existed in the world. That she might feel so full from wonder it could hurt, like her body couldn’t contain all of it. And she didn’t know why she cried then, but the tears began rolling down her face.

The world was beautiful, and she was so grateful to be in it. To be alive, to be here, to see this. She stuck out a hand over the railing, grazing a star as it shot past, and her fingers came away glowing with blue and green dust. She laughed, a sound of pure joy, and she cried more, because that joy was a miracle.

“That’s a sound I never thought to hear from you, girl,” Amren said beside her.

The delicate female was regal in a gown of light gray, diamonds at her throat and wrists, her usual black bob silvered with the starlight.

Nesta wiped away her tears, smearing the stardust upon her cheeks and not caring. For a long moment, her throat worked, trying to sort through all that sought to rise from her chest. Amren just held her stare, waiting.

Nesta fell to one knee and bowed her head. “I am sorry.”

Amren made a sound of surprise, and Nesta knew others were watching, but she didn’t care. She kept her head lowered and let the words flow from her heart. “You gave me kindness, and respect, and your time, and I treated them like garbage. You told me the truth, and I did not want to hear it. I was jealous, and scared, and too proud to admit it. But losing your friendship is a loss I can’t endure.”

Amren said nothing, and Nesta lifted her head to find the female smiling, something like wonder on her face. Amren’s eyes became lined with silver, a hint of how they had once been. “I went poking about the House when we arrived an hour ago. I saw what you did to this place.”

Nesta’s brow furrowed. She hadn’t changed anything.

Amren grabbed Nesta under the shoulder, hauling her up. “The House sings. I can hear it in the stone. And when I spoke to it, it answered. Granted, it gave me a pile of romance novels by the end of it, but … you caused this House to come alive, girl.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“You Made the House,” Amren said, smiling again, a slash of red and white in the glowing dark. “When you arrived here, what did you wish for most?”

Nesta considered, watching a few stars whiz past. “A friend. Deep down, I wanted a friend.”

“So you Made one. Your power brought the House to life with a silent wish born from loneliness and desperate need.”

“But my power only creates terrible things. The House is good,” Nesta breathed.

“Is it?”

Nesta considered. “The darkness in the pit of the library—it’s the heart of the House.”

Amren nodded. “And where is it now?”

“It hasn’t made an appearance in weeks. But it’s still there. I think it’s just … being managed. Maybe the House’s knowledge that I’m aware of it, and didn’t judge it, makes it easier to keep in check.”

Amren put a hand above Nesta’s heart. “That’s the key, isn’t it? To know the darkness will always remain, but how you choose to face it, handle it … that’s the important part. To not let it consume. To focus upon the good, the things that fill you with wonder.” She gestured to the stars zooming past. “The struggle with that darkness is worth it, just to see such things.”

But Nesta’s gaze had slid from the stars—finding a familiar face in the crowd, dancing with Mor. Laughing, his head thrown back. So beautiful she had no words for it.

Amren chuckled gently. “And worth it for that, too.”

Nesta looked back at her friend. Amren smiled, and her face became as lovely as Cassian’s, as the stars arching past. “Welcome back to the Night Court, Nesta Archeron.”

CHAPTER

62

Spring dawned on Velaris. Nesta welcomed the sun into her bones, her heart, letting it warm her.

They had made it through the winter with no movement from Briallyn or Beron, no armies unleashing. But Cassian warned that many armies did not attack in the winter, and Briallyn might have been amassing them in secret. Azriel was forbidden from getting within a few miles of her, thanks to the threat of the Crown, and any reports had to be verified by multiple sources. In short: they knew nothing, and could only wait.

The mood hadn’t been helped by a rare red star blasting across the sky one day—an ill omen, Nesta had heard the priestesses muttering. Cassian reported that even Rhys had been rattled by it, seeming unusually contemplative afterward. But Nesta suspected that the omen wasn’t the only thing contributing to Rhys’s solemnity. Feyre was only two months from giving birth, and they still knew nothing about how to save her.

She channeled that growing worry into her training with the priestesses. Azriel and Cassian devised more training simulations, and they moved through them as a unit, thought and battled as a unit.

Nesta sometimes wondered if they would ever see battle. If these priestesses would ever be willing to leave here to fight, to face violence that might summon the devouring demons of their pasts. Did she wish to move beyond simulations to actual combat? What would it do to her, to see her friends killing or being killed?

It was a final test, she supposed. One they might not ever be taking.

Perhaps the Blood Rite, which Cassian had told her was only a few days away, had started as just that: a way to introduce young Illyrian warriors to killing in a contained environment, a stepping-stone to the full mercilessness of battle.

But Nesta’s first foray into merciless battle came in the form of a letter. An impatient, demanding letter that requested her presence immediately. And Cassian’s.