A ​Court of Silver Flames (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #4)

by Sarah J. Maas

Not Cassian, broken and bleeding on the floor. The warrior was still trying to rise on trembling arms. To reach her. The King of Hybern—he had done this. To Elain. To Cassian.

In the beginning And in the end There was Darkness And nothing more

In the months leading to and during the war, Nesta had managed. Had stepped into this world, with these people, and started to see it—a future. Until she’d been hunted by the King of Hybern and the Cauldron. Until she’d realized that everyone she cared for would be used to hurt her, break her, trap her. Until that last battle when she couldn’t stop one thousand Illyrians from dying, and had instead been able to save only one.

Him. She would do it again, if forced to. And knowing that … She couldn’t bear that truth, either.

It had cracked an intrinsic piece of him, some final resistance and shred of hope that everything they’d endured during the war might amount to something. That when he spilled his heart to her as he lay dying, that when she’d covered him with her body and chosen to die alongside him, she’d chosen him, too.

Go! he had begged her as he lay dying. I can’t, she’d wept. I can’t. She didn’t know where the person she’d been in that moment had gone. Couldn’t find her way back to her.

I am worthless and I am nothing, Nesta nearly said. She wasn’t sure why the words bubbled up, pressing on her lips to voice them. I hate everything that I am. And I am so, so tired. I am tired of wanting to be anywhere but in my own head.

said, Let her dig her own grave, boy. Then offer her a hand. I thought that’s what this past year has been, he’d countered. Keep reaching out your hand, had been Amren’s only reply.

Azriel was nothing short of beautiful. Even with those scarred hands and the shadows that flowed from him like smoke, she’d always found him to be the prettiest of the three males who called themselves brothers.

She had pushed him away again and again, and he had no reason to believe she’d wish it differently.

He was so beautiful. Not in the way that Azriel and Rhys were beautiful, but in an uncut way. Savage and unrelenting. The first time she’d seen Cassian, she couldn’t take her eyes off him. She felt like she’d spent her life surrounded by boys, and then a man—a male, she supposed—had suddenly appeared. Everything about him had radiated that confident, arrogant masculinity. It had been heady and overwhelming, and all she’d wanted, all she’d wanted for so many months, was to touch him, smell him, taste him. Get close to that strength and throw everything she was against it because she knew he’d never break, never falter, never balk.

She deserved his disappointment. Deserved his resentment and disgust. Even if it carved something vital from her.

his sensuous mouth.

“Good. He hates you, too,” Cassian shot back. “Everyone fucking hates you. Is that what you want? Because congratulations, it’s happened.”

Alone with Azriel, Nesta bared her teeth at him.

An eight-pointed star, whose compass points radiated in sharp lines across and up the groove of his back, twining with the Illyrian markings long inked there. The eastern and western points of the star shot right onto his wings, black blending into black.

“You’re here because we don’t hate you.” He cleared his throat, running a hand through his hair. “I wanted you to know that. That we don’t—that I don’t hate you.”

“And I have never hated you, Cassian.”

When she first came here, she was obsessed with theories regarding the existence of different realms—different worlds. Living on top of each other without even knowing it. Whether there is merely one existence, our existence, or if it might be possible for worlds to overlap, occupying the same space but separated by time and a whole bunch of other things I can’t even begin to explain to you because I barely understand them myself.”

“No, but …” Gwyn’s swallow was audible. “I can feel something. Like a cat. Small and clever and curious. It’s watching.”

Aidas?????

“When I was nearing three hundred years old, one of them appeared again, crawling out of the roots of a mountain. Before he went into the Prison and confinement weakened him, Lanthys could turn into wind and rip the air from your lungs, or turn into rain and drown you on dry land; he could peel your skin from your body with a few movements. He never revealed his true form, but when I faced him, he chose to appear as swirling mist. He fathered a race of faeries that still plague us, who thrived under Amarantha’s reign—the Bogge. But the Bogge are lesser, mere shadows compared to Lanthys. If there is such a thing as evil incarnate, it is him. He has no mercy, no sense of right or wrong. There is him, and there is everyone else, and we are all his prey. His methods of killing are creative and slow. He feasts on fear and pain as much as the flesh itself.”

“The first time I saw that look on your face, you were still human. Still human, and I nearly went to my knees before you.”

“Your power is a song, and one I’ve waited a very, very long time to hear, Nesta.”

“I’m going to think of that look on your face.” He took another step down the hall. “I’m always thinking of that look on your face.”

“The book,” Nesta said, a bit breathlessly, “is about …” Her nostrils flared and her eyes went a bit unfocused. “A book.”

“Abdominals,” he clarified, and pink washed across his face. He cleared his throat. “Filthy mind.” He flicked her cheek. “Too much smut.”

“No one can look like this but me, Nes.”

“Rhysand and Azriel do,” she said sweetly. “I’ve got one or two muscles on them.” “I don’t see it.” He winked. “Maybe they’re in other places.”

And this was a different sort of torture. To watch him go through the same exercises, only harder, heavier, faster. To watch the muscles of his stomach ripple, muscles everywhere ripple.

A fine warrior would be known as Cassian reborn.

“When an Illyrian warrior comes into his full power, usually in his twenties, he has to go through the Blood Rite before he can qualify as a full warrior and adult.

“Our sacred mountain.” He drew a familiar symbol in the dirt: an upward-pointing triangle with three dots above it. A mountain, she realized. And three stars. “It’s the symbol of the Night Court. The Blood Rite always takes place when Arktos, Carynth, and Oristes, our three holy stars, shine above it for one week a year. On the final day of the Rite, they’re directly above its peak.”

“Once you’re in, you can’t leave. At least until the Rite is over, or you reach the peak of Ramiel. If anyone breaks into the Rite to extract or save you, the law declares that both of you will be hunted down and killed for the transgression. Even Rhys isn’t exempt from those laws.”

“You said this training would help me with my … problems. Perhaps it could help them. At the very least give them a reason to get outside for a bit.”

“Not Feyre.” Nesta hated the words. The way his back stiffened. She couldn’t look at him as she said, “I just …” How could she explain the tangle between her and her sister? The self-loathing that threatened to consume her every time she looked at her sister’s face?

“Keep reaching out your hand.”

“I think I’ve caught you looking at yourself in that mirror at least a dozen times each lesson.” Nesta nodded to the slender mirror across the ring. He chuckled. “Liar. You use that mirror to watch me when you think I’m not paying attention.”

Elain stood at the wall of windows, clad in a lilac gown whose close-fitting bodice showed how well her sister had filled out since those initial days in the Night Court. Gone were the sharp angles, replaced by softness and elegant curves. Nesta knew she herself had looked like that at one point, even if Elain’s breasts had always been smaller.

Elain stiffened, but refused to balk from whatever she beheld in Nesta’s gaze. “You think I’m to blame for his death?” Challenge filled each word. Challenge—from Elain, of all people. “No one but the King of Hybern is to blame for that.” The quaver in her voice belied her firm words.

Cassian swore softly. Nesta is making progress—I know she is. Something set her off. He added, because Rhys was still looking like cold death personified, It’ll take time. Maybe no more visits from her sisters, for the time being. At least not without her permission. He didn’t want to isolate Nesta. Not at all. If Elain wants to see her again, let me ask Nesta first. Rhys’s voice slithered like liquid night. What about Feyre? She doesn’t want Feyre here.

Calm the fuck down, Cassian snapped. They have their own shit to sort out. You threatening to obliterate Nesta every time it comes up doesn’t help.

“I’ll remind you that you’ve been the chief defender of sweet, innocent Elain until recently.” He’d witnessed her go toe to toe with Fae capable of slaughtering her without giving it a thought, all for her sister.

“Then I’ll tell you about my special journey, Nes.” His tone was icy in a way she’d never heard. “No.” “I slaughtered every person who hurt my mother.”

“So if you want to take ten years to face whatever is eating you alive from the inside out, go ahead. You want to take twenty years, go ahead.”

“You don’t understand,” she said, voice rasping. “I am not like you and the others.”

Nesta told herself it was to knock that smirk off his face that she curled her fingers in the leather and hauled her mouth to his.

She met him stroke for stroke, and all sense of self went flying from her. She plunged her fingers into his hair, and it was as soft as she’d imagined, the strands like silk against her skin.

A dark smile graced his mouth. “So responsive,” he purred in a voice she’d never heard but knew she’d crawl to hear again. He drove his hips between hers, a lazy, thorough push of the hardness of him into the throbbing ache of her. She scrambled to regain any sense of control, of sanity—found herself wanting to hand it all over to him, to let him touch and touch and touch her, lick and suckle and fill her—

So Nesta curled her lips in a cold, cruel smile and said as she left, “Someone’s quick off the mark.”

He’d turned into something just short of an animal, licking and biting at her neck, unable to think clearly beyond the base instinct to claim.