Cassian raised his fist to the green-painted door in the dim hallway—and hesitated.
He’d cut down more enemies than he could count or remember, had stood knee-deep in gore on a killing field and kept swinging, had made choices that cost him the lives of good warriors, had been a general and a grunt and an assassin, and yet here he was, lowering his fist. Balking.
The building on the north side of the Sidra was in need of new paint. And new floors, if the creaking boards beneath his boots had been any indication as he’d climbed the two flights. But at least it was clean. It was still grim by Velaris standards, but when the city itself had no slums, that wasn’t saying much. He’d seen and stayed in far worse.
But it didn’t quite explain why she was staying here. Had insisted she live here, when the town house was sitting empty thanks to the river estate’s completion. He could understand why she wouldn’t bother taking up rooms in the House of Wind—it was too far from the city, and she couldn’t fly or winnow in. But Feyre and Rhys gave her a salary. The same, generous one they gave him, and every member of their circle. So Cassian knew she could afford far, far better.
He frowned at the peeling paint on the green door before him. No sounds trickled through the sizable gap between the door and floor; no fresh scents lingered in the hallway. Maybe he’d get lucky and she’d be out. Maybe she was still sleeping under the bar of whatever pleasure hall she’d frequented last night. Though maybe that’d be worse, since he’d have to track her down there, too. And a public scene …
He lifted his fist again, the red of his Siphon flickering in the ancient balls of faelight tucked into the ceiling.
Coward. Grow some damned balls and do your job.
Cassian knocked.
Once. Twice.
Silence.
Cassian almost sighed. Thank the Mother—
Clipped, precise footsteps thudded toward the other side of the door. Each more pissed off than the last.
He tucked his wings in tight, squaring his shoulders as he braced his feet slightly farther apart.
She had four locks on her door, and the snap as she unlatched each of them might as well have been the beating of a war-drum. He ran through the list of things he was to say, how Feyre had suggested he say them, but—
The door yanked open, the knob twisting so hard Cassian wondered if she was imagining it was his neck.
Nesta Archeron was already frowning.
But there she was. And she looked like hell.
“What do you want?” She didn’t open the door wider than a hand’s length.
When the hell had he last seen her? The end-of-summer party on that barge in the Sidra last month? She hadn’t looked this bad. Though a night trying to drown oneself in alcohol never left anyone looking particularly good the next morning. Especially when it was—
“It’s seven in the morning,” she hissed, looking him over with that gray-blue stare that was usually kindling to his temper. “Come back later.”
Indeed, she was in a male’s shirt. That definitely didn’t belong to her.
He braced a hand on the threshold and gave her a lazy grin he knew brought out the best in her. “Rough night?”
Rough year, he almost said. Because that beautiful face was indeed still pale, thinner than it’d been before the war, her lips bloodless, and those eyes … Cold and sharp, like a winter morning. No joy, no laughter, in any plane of her exquisite face.
“Come back in the afternoon,” she said, making to slam the door on his hand.
Cassian shoved out a foot before she could break his fingers. Her nostrils flared slightly.
“Feyre wants you at the house.”
“Which one,” Nesta said flatly, frowning at the foot he’d wedged there. “She has three, after all.”
He bit back the retort and the questions. This wasn’t the selected battlefield, and he wasn’t her opponent. No, his job was just to get her to the assigned spot. And then pray that the lovely riverfront home Feyre and Rhys had just moved into wouldn’t be reduced to rubble.
“She’s at the new one.”
“Why didn’t she come get me herself?” He knew that suspicious gleam in her eyes, the slight stiffening in her back. It had his own instincts surging to meet them, to push and push and see what might happen.
“Because she is High Lady of the Night Court, and she’s busy running the territory.”
Fine. Maybe they’d have a skirmish right here, right now.
A nice prelude to the battle ahead.
Nesta angled her head, golden-brown hair sliding over her too-thin shoulder. On anyone else, the movement would have been contemplative. On her, it was a predator sizing up prey.
“And my sister,” she said in that flat voice that refused to yield any sign of emotion, “deemed that meeting her right now was necessary?”
“She knew you’d likely need to clean yourself up, and wanted you to get a head start. You’re expected at eleven.”
He waited for the explosion as she took in the words, did the math.
Her pupils flared. “Do I look like I need four hours to become presentable?”
He took the invitation to survey her: long, bare legs, an elegant sweep of hips, tapered waist—again, too damn thin—and full, inviting breasts that were so at odds with the sharp angles of her bones. On any other female, he might have called the combination mouthwatering. Might have begun courting her from the moment he’d met her.
But from the moment he’d met Nesta, the cold fire in her blue-gray eyes had been a temptation of a different sort. And now that she was High Fae, that inherent dominance, the aggression—and that piss-poor attitude … There was a reason he avoided her as much as possible. Even after the war, things were still too volatile, both within the Night Court’s borders and in the world beyond. And the female before him had always made him feel like he was standing in quicksand.
Cassian said at last, “You look like you could use a few big meals, a bath, and some real clothes.”
She rolled her eyes, but fingered the shirt she wore.
Cassian added, “Eleven o’clock. Kick the sorry prick out of here, get washed, and I’ll bring you breakfast myself.”
Her brows rose slightly.
He gave her a half-smile. “You think I can’t hear that male in your bedroom, trying to quietly put on his clothes and sneak out the window?”
As if in answer, a muffled thud came from the bedroom. Nesta hissed.
Cassian said, “I’ll be back in an hour to see how things are proceeding.” He put enough bite behind the words that his soldiers would know not to push him, that he wore seven Siphons for a damned good reason. But Nesta did not fly in his legions, did not train under his command, and certainly did not seem to bother to remember that he was five hundred years old and—
“Don’t bother. I’ll be there on time.”
He pushed off the door, wings flaring slightly as he retreated a few steps and grinned in that way he knew made her see red. “That’s not what I was asked to do. I’m to see you from door to door.”
Her face indeed tightened. “Go perch on a chimney.”
He sketched a bow, not daring to take his eyes off her. She’d emerged from that Cauldron with gifts. Considerable, dark gifts. And though she had not used them, or explained to even Feyre and Amren what they were, or even shown a hint of them in the year since the war … he knew better than to make himself vulnerable to another predator. “Do you want your tea with milk or lemon?”
She slammed the door in his face.
Then locked each of those four locks. Slowly. Loudly.
Whistling to himself, wondering if that poor bastard inside the apartment would indeed flee out the window—mostly to escape her—Cassian strode down the dim hallway, and went to find some food.
He’d need it today, too—especially once Nesta learned precisely why her sister had summoned her.
Nesta Archeron didn’t know the male’s name.
She ransacked her wine-soaked memory as she strode for the bedroom, dodging columns of books and piles of clothing, recalling heated glances at the tavern, the initial wet, hot meeting of their mouths, the sweat coating her as she rode him until pleasure and drink sent her into oblivion, but … not the name.
The male was already at the window, Cassian no doubt lurking on the street below to witness this spectacularly pathetic exit, when Nesta reached the dim, cramped bedroom. The sheets on the brass poster bed were rumpled, half-spilled on the creaky wood floor, and the cracked window was already open as the male turned to her.
Handsome, in the way most Fae males were handsome. A bit thinner than she liked them—practically a boy compared to the towering mass of muscle that had just lurked outside her door. He winced as she padded in, and gave a pointed look to her shirt. “I … That’s …”
Nesta reached over her head and tugged off his shirt, leaving nothing but bare skin in its wake. His eyes widened, but the scent of his fear remained—not at her, but at who he’d heard at the front door. As he remembered who she was, both in the court, and to Cassian. She chucked his white shirt to him. “You can use the front door now.”
He swallowed, slinging the shirt over his head. “I—is he still—” His gaze kept snagging on her breasts, peaked against the chill morning, her bare skin. The apex of her thighs.
“Good-bye,” was all Nesta said, striding for the rusty and leaky bathroom attached to her bedroom. At least the place had hot running water.
Sometimes.
Feyre and the others had tried to convince her to move more times than she could count. Each time, she’d ignored it.
Elain was happily ensconced in the new riverfront estate, and had spent the spring and summer planning and nurturing its spectacular gardens—all while avoiding her mate—but Nesta … She was immortal, she was beautiful, and she had no intention of beginning an eternity of working for these people anytime soon. Before she’d gotten to enjoy all that the Fae had to offer.
She had no doubt Feyre planned a scolding at their little meeting today.
After all, Nesta had signed the outrageous tab at the pleasure hall last night to her sister’s account. But neither Feyre nor her mate would do anything about it beyond idle threats.
Nesta snorted, twisting the ancient faucet in the bath. It groaned, the metal icy to the touch, and water sputtered—then sprayed into the cracked, stained tub.
This was her place. No servants, no eyes monitoring and judging every move, no company unless … Unless busybody, puffed-up warriors made it their business to stop by.
It took five minutes for the water to actually heat enough to fill the tub. That she would even get into it was the biggest accomplishment she’d made in the past year. It had begun with willing herself, forcing herself to put in her feet. Then, each time, going a little further. Until she’d been able to stomach sitting fully submerged in the tub without her heart thundering. It had taken her months to get that far.
Today, at least, she slid into the hot water with little hesitation. By the time she’d finished washing away the sweat and other remnants of last night, a glance in the bedroom revealed the male had indeed taken the window out.
The sex hadn’t been bad. She’d had better, but also had much worse. Immortality still wasn’t enough to teach some males the art of the bedroom.
So she’d taught herself. Starting with the first male she’d taken here, who had no idea that her maidenhead was intact until he’d spied the speckled blood on the sheets. His face had gone white with terror—pure, ghastly white.
Not for fear of Feyre and Rhysand’s wrath.
But the wrath of that insufferable Illyrian brute.
Everyone somehow knew what had happened during the war; that final battle with Hybern.
That Cassian had nearly bled out defending her against the King of Hybern, that she’d chosen to shield him with her body in those last moments.
They had never spoken of it.
She still barely spoke to anyone about anything, let alone the war.
Yet as far as anyone was now concerned, the events of that last battle had bound them. Her and Cassian. No matter that she could scarcely stand to be around him. No matter that she had once, long ago, in a mortal body and in a house that no longer existed, let him kiss her throat. Being near him made her want to shatter things.
As her power sometimes did, unbidden. Secretly.
Nesta surveyed the ramshackle, dark apartment, the sagging and filthy furniture that had come with it, the clothes and dishes she left untended.
Rhysand had offered her jobs. Positions.
She didn’t want them.
They were pity offerings, some attempt to get her to be a part of their life, to be gainfully occupied. Done not because Rhysand particularly liked her, but because he loved Feyre that much. No, the High Lord had never liked her—and their conversations were coldly civil at best.
So any offering, she knew, was made to appease his mate. Not because Nesta was truly needed for it. Truly … wanted.
Better to spend her time the way she wished to. They kept paying for it, after all.
The knock on the door rattled the entire apartment.
She glared toward the front room, debating pretending she’d left, but … he could hear her, smell her.
And if Cassian broke down the door, which he was likely to do, she’d just have the headache of explaining it to her stingy landlord.
So she freed all four locks.
Locking them each night was part of the ritual. Even when the nameless male had been here, even with the wine, she’d remembered to lock them all. Some muscle memory buried deep. She’d installed them that first day she’d arrived months and months ago, and had locked them every night since.
Nesta yanked open the door enough to spy Cassian’s cocky grin and left it ajar as she stormed back inside for her shoes.
He took the unspoken invitation and walked in, a mug of tea in his hand—the cup no doubt borrowed from the shop at the corner. Or outright given to him, considering how people tended to worship the ground his muddy boots walked on.
He surveyed the squalor and let out a low whistle. “You do know that you could hire a maid, don’t you?”
She scanned the small living area for her shoes—a sagging couch, a soot-stained hearth, a moth-eaten armchair—then the cracked and ancient kitchenette, then traced her steps into her bedroom. Where had she kicked them last night?
“Some fresh air would be a good start,” he added from the other room, the window groaning as he no doubt cracked it open to let in the early-autumn breeze.
She found her shoes in opposite corners of the bedroom. One reeked of spilled wine and ale.
Nesta perched on the edge of her bed, sliding on her shoes, tugging at the laces. She didn’t bother to look up as Cassian’s steady steps approached, then halted at the threshold.
He sniffed once. Loudly.
It said enough.
“I’d hoped you at least changed the sheets between visitors, but … apparently that doesn’t bother you, either.”
She tied the lace on the first shoe and looked up at him beneath lowered brows. “Again, what business is it of yours?”
He shrugged, though the tightness on his face didn’t reflect it. “If I can smell a few different males in here, then surely your … companions can, too.”
“Hasn’t stopped them yet.” She tied the other shoe, Cassian’s hazel eyes tracking the movement.
“Your tea is getting cold,” he said through his teeth.
She ignored him and rose to her feet, searching the bedroom again. Her coat …
“Your coat is on the floor by the front door,” he said sharply. “And it’s going to be brisk out, so bring a scarf.”
She ignored that, too, but strode past him, careful to avoid touching him, and found her dark blue overcoat exactly where he’d said it was. Only a few days ago had summer begun to yield to fall, drastically enough that she’d needed to pull out her warmer attire.
Nesta yanked open the front door, pointing for him to go.
Cassian held her gaze as he strode for her, then reached out an arm—
And plucked the cerulean-and-cream scarf Elain had given her for her birthday this spring off the brass hook on the wall. He gripped it in his fist as he stalked out, the scarf dangling like a strangled snake.
Something was eating at him. Usually, Cassian held out a bit longer before yielding to his temper. Perhaps it had to do with whatever Feyre wanted to tell her up at the house.
Her gut twisted a bit as she strode into the hall and set each lock, including the magical one Feyre had insisted Rhys install, linked to her blood and will.
She wasn’t stupid—she knew there had been unrest, both in Prythian and on the continent, since the war had ended. Knew some Fae territories were pushing their new limits on what they could get away with in terms of territory claims and how they treated humans.
But if some new threat had arisen …
Nesta shoved out the thought. She’d think about it when the time came. If the time came. No use wasting her energy on a phantom fear.
The four locks seemed to laugh at her before she silently followed Cassian out of the building, and into the bustling city beyond.
The riverfront house was more of an estate, and so new and clean and beautiful that Nesta realized that she was wearing two-day-old clothes, hadn’t washed her hair, and her shoes were indeed covered in stale wine precisely as she strode through the towering marble archway and into the shining white-and-sand-colored front hall.
A sweeping staircase bisected the enormous space, either side of it shaped like a pair of spread wings, and a chandelier of hand-blown Velaris glass fashioned after a cluster of shooting stars drooped from the carved ceiling to meet it. The faelights in each golden orb cast shimmering reflections on the polished white marble floors, interrupted only by potted plants, wood furniture also made in Velaris, and art-art-art. Plush blue rugs broke up the perfect floors, a long runner leading down the cavernous hallway on either side of the entry, and one flowing straight beneath the stairs—to the sloping lawn and gleaming river beyond.
Trailing Cassian, Nesta headed to the left—toward the formal rooms for business, Feyre had told her, during that first and only tour two months ago.
She’d been half-drunk at the time, and had hated every second of it, every perfect, happy room.
Most males bought their wives and mates jewelry for an outrageous Solstice present.
Rhys had bought Feyre a palace.
No—he’d purchased the war-decimated property, and then given his mate free rein to design the residence of both their dreams.
And somehow, Nesta thought as she silently followed an unnaturally quiet Cassian down the hall toward one of the studies whose doors were already open, Feyre and Rhys had managed to make this place seem cozy, welcoming. A behemoth of a building, but a home, somehow.
Even the formal furniture, while beautiful, seemed designed for comfort and lounging, for long conversations over good food. Every piece of art had been picked by Feyre herself, or painted by her, so many of them portraits and depictions of them—her friends, her new family.
There was not one of her, naturally.
Even their gods-damned father had a picture in here, with him and Elain, smiling and happy, as they’d been before the world went to shit.
But during that tour, Nesta had noted the lack of herself here. Said nothing, of course, but it was a pointed absence.
It was enough to set her teeth on edge as Cassian slipped inside the study and said to whoever was inside, “She’s here.”
Nesta braced herself for whatever waited within, but Feyre merely chuckled and said, “You’re five minutes early. I’m impressed.”
“Seems like a good omen for gambling. We should head to Rita’s,” Cassian drawled just as Nesta stepped into the wood-paneled room.
The study opened into a garden courtyard, the space warm and merry and rich, and Nesta might have admitted that she liked the floor-to-ceiling oak bookshelves, the plush green-velvet furniture before the pale marble hearth, had she not seen who was sitting inside.
Feyre perched on the couch, clad in a heavy cream sweater and dark leggings.
Rhys, clad in his usual black, leaned against the marble mantel, arms crossed.
And Amren, in her usual gray—cross-legged in the Illyrian armchair by the roaring hearth, those uptilted silver eyes sweeping over Nesta with distaste. So much had changed between her and the small lady, perhaps more than any other relationship.
Nesta didn’t let herself think about that argument at the end-of-summer party on the river barge. Or the silence between her and Amren since then.
Feyre, at least, smiled. “I heard you had quite the night.”
Nesta merely glanced between where Cassian took a seat in the armchair across from Amren, the empty spot on the couch beside Feyre, and where Rhys stood by the hearth.
In far more formal clothes than he usually wore.
The High Lord’s clothes.
Even if the High Lady of the Night Court was in attire fit for lounging on the sunny autumn day around them.
Nesta kept her spine straight, her chin high, hating that they all stared at her as she sat on the couch beside her sister. Hating that Rhys and Amren undoubtedly noted the filthy shoes, scented her old clothes, and probably still smelled that male on her.
“You look horrible,” Amren said.
Nesta wasn’t stupid enough to glare.
So she simply ignored her.
“Though it’s hard to look good,” Amren went on, “when you’re out until the darkest hours of the night, drinking yourself stupid and fucking anything that comes your way.”
Feyre whipped her head to the High Lord’s Second. But Rhysand looked inclined to agree with Amren.
Cassian, at least, kept his mouth shut, and before Feyre could say anything to confirm or deny it, Nesta beat them to it and said, “I wasn’t aware that my physical looks were under your jurisdiction.”
Cassian loosed a breath that sounded like a warning.
Amren’s silver eyes glowed, a small remnant of the terrible power she’d once wielded. “They are when you spend that many of our gold marks on wine and garbage.”
Perhaps she had pushed them too far with last night’s tab. Interesting.
Nesta looked to Feyre, who was wincing on the other end of the couch. “So you made me come to you for a scolding?”
Feyre’s eyes—the eyes they both shared—seemed to soften slightly. “No. It’s not a scolding.” She cut a sharp glance at Rhys, still icily silent against the mantel, and then to Amren, seething in her chair. “Think of this as a … discussion.”
“I don’t see how my life is any of your concern, or up for any sort of discussion,” Nesta bit out, and shot to her feet.
“Sit down,” Rhys snarled.
And the raw command in that voice, the utter dominance and power …
Nesta froze, fighting it, hating that Fae part of her that bowed to such things. Cassian leaned forward in his chair, as if he’d leap between them.
But Nesta held Rhysand’s lethal gaze. Threw every ounce of defiance she could into it, even as his order held her still. Made her knees want to bend, to sit.
Rhys said too quietly, “You are going to sit. You are going to listen.”
She let out a low laugh. “You’re not my High Lord. You don’t give me orders.”
But she knew how powerful he was. Had seen it, felt it. Still trembled to be near him. The most powerful High Lord in history.
Rhys scented that fear. She knew it from the second one side of his mouth curled up in a cruel smile.
“That’s enough,” Feyre said, more to Rhys than her. Then indeed snapped at her mate, “I told you to keep out of it.”
He dragged those star-flecked eyes to Feyre, and it was all Nesta could do to keep from collapsing onto the couch as her knees gave out.
Feyre angled her head at her mate, nostrils flaring. “You can either leave,” she hissed at him, “or you can stay and keep your mouth shut.”
Rhys just crossed his arms. But said nothing.
“You too,” Feyre spat in Amren’s direction.
The little female harrumphed and nestled back in her chair.
Nesta didn’t bother to look pleasant as Feyre twisted to face her. Her sister swallowed. “We need to make some changes, Nesta,” Feyre said hoarsely. “You do—and we do.”
They were kicking her out. Throwing her into the wild, perhaps to go back to the human lands—
“I’ll take the blame,” Feyre went on, “for things getting this far, and getting this bad. After the war, with everything else that was going on, it … you … I should have been there to help you, but I wasn’t, and I am ready to admit that this is partially my fault.”
“That what is your fault,” Nesta demanded.
“You,” Cassian said from the armchair to her left. “This bullshit behavior.”
Her spine locked up, fire boiled in her veins at the insult, the arrogance—
“I understand how you’re feeling,” Feyre cut in.
“You know nothing about how I’m feeling,” Nesta snapped.
“It’s time for some changes.” Feyre plowed ahead. “Starting now.”
“Keep your self-righteous do-gooder nonsense out of my life.”
“You don’t have a life,” Feyre retorted. “You have quite the opposite. And I’m not going to sit by and watch you destroy yourself for another moment.”
“Oh?”
Rhys tensed at the sneer, but said nothing, as he’d promised.
“I want you out of Velaris,” Feyre breathed, her voice shaking.
Nesta tried—tried and failed—not to feel the blow, the sting of the words. Though she didn’t know why she was surprised by it.
There were no paintings of her in this house, they did not invite her to parties or dinners anymore, they certainly didn’t visit—
“And where,” Nesta asked, her voice mercifully icy, “am I supposed to go?”
Feyre only looked to Cassian.
And for once, the Illyrian warrior wasn’t grinning as he said, “You’re coming with me to the Illyrian Mountains.”