Chapter 21 — Nesta / Azriel / Gwyn - A Court of Splintered Harmony

Elain wouldn’t stop crying.

Azriel and Lucien were both gone from the house now, and Feyre had returned to the room a moment ago, having ensured that Nyx remained safe and unbothered. Nesta knew it had been an instinctual precaution when two males trained for bloodshed were about to come to blows so close to her baby, especially after yesterday’s encounter with Bryaxis.

Elain, weeping on Nesta’s lap, hadn’t moved from her spot on the edge of the bed. The bed that still smelled like Azriel, and sex—or rather, arousal. Nesta met Feyre’s stare over Elain’s head.

Worry shone in her youngest sister’s face—along with a sharp edge that hadn’t been there earlier. And then Feyre said, mind to mind, What do we do?

Nesta subtly shook her head. It had been unspoken between Nesta and Feyre—that they had marked how Azriel and Elain gazed at each other, how they behaved around each other. But this . . .

Nesta rubbed a comforting circle on Elain’s slender back. “It will be all right.”

“No, it won’t,” came Elain’s muffled reply. “Nothing is right and nothing will ever be right. That’s what that thing today showed me. The truth.”

Feyre laid a hand on Elain’s golden-brown hair. “Do you love Az?”

Elain cried harder. “I can’t be here,” she wept. “I can’t be here.”

“All right,” Nesta tried, swapping an alarmed look with Feyre. “Tell us where you want to go and we’ll take you there.”

“There’s nowhere to go.” Pure misery laced every word.

Nesta rubbed her sister’s back again. “We can talk in the morning. Try to get some sleep.”

Where had Azriel gone? Was he all right? Was anyone checking on Azriel, as they were checking on Elain?

Feyre said into Nesta’s mind, I’d bring Elain to the mountain cabin, but I don’t think isolation would be good for her right now.

I could take her up to the House of Wind, Nesta offered.

Bryaxis is now lying beneath it, so no. Besides, it’s too isolated as well.

Nesta raised her brows. Didn’t stop you from banishing me up there last year.

Feyre’s lips quirked upward, despite the situation. You’re made of steel—you’re different than Elain.

It was a compliment, and yet . . . Nesta’s chest ached to witness her other sister, despondent and reeling. And though she wanted nothing more than to return to her own mate and nestle into his warmth and strength, to pick apart this entire disaster with him, she said to Elain, “Get under the covers. I’ll stay with you tonight.”

“We both will,” Feyre said.

Elain said nothing, continuing to cry, but she did as she was told. Nesta and Feyre lay down with her, as they had once done in that war-tent the day of Elain’s rescue from Hybern’s grasp, as they had done all those years in the cottage.

A heavy sorrow settled upon them, as tangible as the down comforter they nestled under. After a time, the sounds of Elain’s crying evened into the deep breathing of sleep.

Nesta remained awake. Knew Feyre was awake, too, likely musing mind to mind with her mate about how to salvage the diplomatic mission they’d been hoping Lucien would helm.

Had Cassian gone to find Az? Was Mor still with him?

And though Nesta knew her obligation was to the sister slumbering at her side, part of her wondered if Azriel needed someone at his side, too. He was her brother now, in a way. And she was willing to bet he was alone.

Az landed on the veranda at the House of Wind carelessly, hard enough that his knees protested, but he walked off the spearing pain before it could register.

He’d come to retrieve some of his clothes and weapons—all he really had to his name that he cared to bring anywhere—and then he’d return to the town house. He had no interest in staying here, not when it was now so clearly Cassian and Nesta’s home. Not when Bryaxis was dwelling at the roots of this mountain once more.

Not when he couldn’t tell if it was his own mind or some tendril of Bryaxis’s power wending its way up to him as he wondered if Cassian would throw him out in utter disgust, as Rhys had done.

Az aimed for the glass doors into the dining room, the fastest way to his bedroom a level below. He didn’t know if he could survive both of his brothers loathing him. If he could survive Mor’s disgust and disappointment.

You can’t, his shadows whispered.

The House opened its glass doors before he could reach a scarred hand for them, warm air beckoning him in from the autumn chill—gods, he was still shirtless. It was freezing.

He embraced the cold, welcomed it into his bones.

He had little doubt that Elain remained with her sisters, who, unlike his brothers, did not seem inclined to kick her out of the house. Maybe he should have grabbed Elain and flown them off to—where?

And if Lucien learned Azriel had taken her, he had every right to crawl to his father, reveal all their plans, and marshal an army to bring her back.

Fuck, Lucien had every right to do that already.

Az’s steps slowed to a stop before he crossed the threshold into the House. He closed his eyes, inhaling mouthfuls of stunningly icy night air. It pierced his lungs like shards of glass. He welcomed that pain, too.

Fuck. Fuck.

He scrubbed his face, wings drooping to the ground. He’d done stupid things before, but all those times, it had been his own useless life he risked ruining. This time . . .

One of his shadows crept up, laying a tentative tendril on his shoulder. He flicked it off. Some fucking help they’d been.

He could have sworn another of his shadows let out a lovely, high-pitched snippet of song. A soothing, calming melody. He ignored it, too, and stepped toward the lit interior of the House, the movement infinitely heavier than the last had been.

His shadows sang again, more of them this time. A wordless note.

Az paused. Slowly turned. His shadows swirled and eddied at his heels—and the melody began again.

Not from them, though. They didn’t make a sound. It came from somewhere nearby.

A female voice. Clear and yet rich, full-bodied.

Then the song began properly, and he moved instantly, a hand drifting to his side for the knife that wasn’t there. Someone was in the House. And here he was, unarmed like a fool.

The voice flowed from the other side of the House—from a balcony hidden from view by the side of the mountain.

Az cut through the dining room, aiming for the hallway, as silently as the shadows that trailed him. The House opened the windows along the way, letting in the sound, guiding him.

It was otherworldly. Strange and yet familiar. A mere thought had his Siphon forming a knife of blue light in his hand. Not as good as Truth-Teller, but he could do some damage if he concentrated.

His shadows suddenly surged past his feet, a black tide racing ahead. They hit the approaching corner and eddied before cascading into the next hall.

Tell me what you see, he bade them.

But they didn’t send a single image as they flowed up a narrow spiral staircase that led to the small balcony.

Starlight spilled down the steps, almost in answer to the song. He swiftly rounded the last corner, hand curling around his knife formed of magic and will—

A rock hit him in the head with a swift, resounding crack.

“Oh!”

The song broke off.

Gwyn stood there in her pale robe, hood down, hair shining in the starlight. His shadows had gathered around her feet, veritable dogs wagging their tails as if to say, We found her. Do we get a treat now?

“I—I’m so sorry,” Gwyn stammered, wincing.

Az blinked, the knife of blue light vanishing.

Not a threat; not an enemy. Just Gwyn.

Rubbing the top of his head, he stooped to grab the offending rock. Heavier than he anticipated, the blue stone glittered with turquoise fire in the moonlight, casting the scars on his fingers in stark relief.

The Invoking Stone of a priestess.

He’d never touched one before. Never realized how much presence it seemed to have, like his Siphons, but wholly different, somehow. “Did you throw this at me?”

She choked on a breath. “No! I was just . . . fidgeting with it while I sang. Tossing it, mostly. May I have it back?”

Gwyn extended her pale, slender hand. She wiggled her fingers in silent emphasis.

Calming his racing heart and the instincts that had been howling to draw blood, Az tossed her the stone. She caught it gracefully before slipping it smoothly into her pocket.

His shadows lingered at her feet, peering up at her, evidently impressed by the easy movement as well.

This person was so far from the priestess he’d found at Sangravah. For a moment, even with everything crumbling apart around him, he could only marvel at the changes between the priestess she’d once been and the one before him now—the Valkyrie. There was no sign of her white ribbon, or even the necklace he’d left for her last Solstice, but he supposed neither mattered. She was a Valkyrie, with or without the ribbon. And as for that necklace he’d been so keen to get rid of, had so recklessly given away at the first opportunity after Elain had rejected it—

He forced himself to focus on the conversation at hand.

At a snap of his fingers, his shadows rushed to his side, clustering at his shoulders, apparently keen to obey him now. “What are you doing up here?” His voice was dull, even to his ears.

Gwyn’s large teal eyes sparked with something like annoyance. “It’s nice to see you, too, Azriel.” She nodded toward his bare torso, nose crinkling. “A little cold out for that, isn’t it?”

He tapped both Siphons on the backs of his hands and his scales of armor spread up his tattooed arms, over his body. The metal and leather lay bitingly cool against his already-icy skin, but he ignored the discomfort as he asked again, his head throbbing where she’d nailed him, “What are you doing up here?”

This was the last thing he wanted to deal with right now.

She crossed her arms. “Nesta said I could come whenever I pleased. I didn’t think anyone else was here.” She stood with that Valkyrie’s stillness, even as her eyes danced, lit with starlight. “Did my singing wake you?”

“It’s past one in the morning,” he hedged. His shadows poked their proverbial heads over his shoulders curiously. “You should be in bed.”

Gwyn studied him, unimpressed and annoyed. “You’re in a grand spirit.”

She didn’t know the half of it. “With Bryaxis back, how can I not be?”

“Well, she’s not living in your house, is she?”

He gave her a flat look. “Is that why you’re up here? Hiding from her?”

“No.” She tossed her sheet of coppery hair over a shoulder. It had grown longer since he’d last seen her, falling nearly halfway down her chest now. “I’m not hiding at all.” Something sharpened in the way she said hiding. “Clotho said Bryaxis won’t disturb us, and I believe her.”

A half-truth, his shadows revealed.

But Gwyn went on, “Are you afraid she’ll unleash herself upon the city again?”

“It seems a distinct possibility, Clotho’s word or no.”

“Hence your arrival here looking ready to fillet an enemy?”

He didn’t feel like smiling. “Yes.”

Her bright gaze slid toward his hip. “Where’s Truth-Teller?”

Cauldron spare him, this female missed nothing.

He didn’t have the energy to invent a lie, so he said, “It decided it didn’t want me as its bearer anymore.”

Az turned back toward the stairwell before she could respond, exhaustion weighing every bone in his body.

Maybe he’d sleep here tonight, then fly his things to the town house at dawn. Then figure out what the fuck to do with himself after that.

“Good night,” he said without looking back.

“Sorry for hitting you with the stone,” she called.

“I deserved it,” he muttered, setting a foot on the first stair.

“You see,” Gwyn began again, closer now, and gods, she was following him. How did he politely but firmly extract himself from this? “I was up here tossing that thing around because Merrill wants me to rewrite an entire chapter with a different thesis—”

He kept his steps brisk, wings folded close to avoid the walls of the narrow stairwell.

“I think changing that chapter’s thesis will actually contradict her overall thesis in this book, but she doesn’t agree. She never agrees, even when it’s to her own advantage.”

How long was this stairwell? He didn’t normally mind talking to her, but he wanted to be alone, Mother damn him, and—

“I needed to not be in the library for a while, so I came up here to see if the starlight would clear my head—help me figure out what to do. Not only about Merrill and her book, but about what I’m even doing down there. And I was tossing the stone while I thought, and maybe yes, I was avoiding wandering the hallways tonight while Bryaxis is getting settled, but . . . then you appeared. At precisely the wrong moment. Sorry.”

Finally. The entrance to the hall with his bedroom. He paused at the archway. If Gwyn continued down the stairs, it’d take her back to the library. “Good luck with your work,” he said blandly. “Stay away from the bottom of that pit.”

The priestess didn’t say anything as he started into the hall, and mercifully she didn’t follow.

But right when he was about to turn into his room, he heard her say drily, “Good night to you, too. Thanks for the advice.”

He shut out her words. Shut out any other words in his mind as he opened his bedroom door, his shadows slinking in with him. He should have offered to escort her back to the library—the Mother knew Bryaxis would have plenty to prey on with Gwyn—but he could barely manage to close his bedroom door. Barely manage to send his armor retreating into the Siphons on his hands. Or think of anything at all before he collapsed face-first onto the bed and passed out completely.

The shadowsinger had been in fine form.

Azriel was a male of few words, but that had been pathetic, even for him. Granted, she hadn’t expected him to be chatty, but some form of pleasantry would have been appreciated.

Gwyn clicked her tongue as she fitted the golden key into the small door set within the pair towering above her. The library doors were closed. For the first time since she’d been here, the colossal doors were closed.

Clotho had given them each a key to this tiny entry, with the request that they lock it after themselves each time they came and went.

No one had the nerve to ask whether the locked doors were to keep Bryaxis in or keep others out.

Gwyn slid through the narrow door, locked it, and then leaned against the ancient wood. At this hour, the library was dim and quiet, most of the priestesses asleep. Even Merrill had abandoned her research by this point in the night to crawl onto the pallet beside her desk.

Gwyn fished the Invoking Stone from her pocket, along with a coil of white ribbon. Her white ribbon, sliced in the training ring levels above. She carried it with her everywhere, tucked into her pocket with the stone. “Some help you were,” she murmured to the stone. “You nearly cracked his skull open.”

Her Invoking Stone seemed to flicker in amusement as she slid it back into her pocket, nestling it amongst the folds of white ribbon once more, Azriel’s cedar and night-chilled mist scent still lingering in her nose.

She hadn’t told him the rest of why she’d dared to venture upstairs. That while she’d known Nesta likely wasn’t in residence, as the events of the Naming Day would have kept her at the river house, Gwyn had gone looking for her friend anyway. She’d felt a tingle on the charm bracelet earlier in the day, there and gone, and then Merrill had been so awful tonight that . . . She’d just needed her friend. Needed to tell Nesta that of course she’d help her write down everything she needed to and organize the information for future generations to clearly understand.

Gwyn had encountered only empty halls and rooms. They had pressed on her, vast and yet too small at the same time, and she’d needed air, needed starlight, so she’d found the first available balcony and gulped down enormous breaths.

When she’d finally calmed herself, she’d needed to think. And, as usual when she needed to think, she’d needed to sing. She’d picked a song at random, drawing from the well of ancient melodies Hana had uncovered through years of research, and she’d loosed it into the starry night.

A starry night that now seemed miles away from this mountain, this particular silence and gloom. The darkness stretched ahead into the library, interrupted only by golden bowls of faelight shaped like cupped hands.

The dormitory lay five levels down. Five levels, and the only way to reach it was by walking the ramp around and around the giant pit in the heart of the library.

Where Bryaxis lurked.

Clotho hadn’t provided many details beyond, Bryaxis has come home. She will not harm any of you, so long as you do not venture down into her lair.

Gwyn eyed the river of darkness between her and the dormitory, swallowing hard. How certain was Clotho about that? She trusted the priestess almost blindly, but this . . .

Gwyn pushed off the door and began the walk toward the spiral ramp, her steps too loud, too rustling.

Did Bryaxis even sleep? Was the creature squatting there now, gazing upward and listening to Gwyn’s approach? Did the creature know the exact taste and shape of her fear? Gwyn’s mouth dried out as she reached the railing at the top of the ramp.

Had the lights lining the descent always been this far apart?

“Stop it,” she whispered to herself. And yet she peered down, down, down. Into a black darker than anything she’d ever beheld.

That wasn’t true. She’d seen that darkness before, the night Hybern had torn apart her very existence. The very first night she’d met Azriel—or rather, had been found by him. Saved. Yes, the darkness had been there that night, too.

She knew the feel, the weight, the taste of that darkness. She knew its sounds—the terrified screams of children, the defiant roar of a sister ordering her not to tell that commander anything, the wet thump of a head falling to the kitchen floor, then the cruel laugh of a male—

Something warmed at her thigh, turquoise light glimmering in the corner of her vision.

Gwyn staggered back from the railing, from the darkness, fingers fumbling for the Invoking Stone in her pocket. It was glowing, and warm to the touch in a way that had nothing to do with its proximity to her flesh.

You are here, the stone seemed to affirm, you are safe. The past cannot harm you.

Gwyn shook her head. She was inclined to disagree.

The Blood Rite had shown her one thing only, she’d decided: that the world was full of hate, and perhaps she did not want anything to do with it. Not only the Illyrian males who had hunted and tormented her and Emerie and Nesta—but what she had found in herself when they did. The ease with which she’d killed the one male. Hurt the others. How much she’d enjoyed it.

She’d been a fool to think her Valkyrie training was merely for educational purposes. She’d been learning how to kill all those months, Mother damn her. In her mind, she’d dismissed it as theories and practice. She’d read about the Valkyries’ efficient killing methods, but none of it had been real. None of it had really sunk in until the initial slash of her blade into that male’s flesh. Until she’d felt the warmth of his blood, felt his bones reverberating against the knife, felt herself marveling at how easily skin and muscle could split apart.

And as if that wasn’t enough, she’d taken his clothes when she was done. Discarded her blood-splattered, torn nightgown, peeled the leathers from his cooling body, and slid into them like some sort of parasite. She’d burned those leathers the moment she’d returned after the Rite.

It was better—safer—for her to be here. Even with Bryaxis lurking below the library.

Gwyn shoved the stone back into her pocket. It continued to glow, spilling muffled blue light down the ramp, but she ignored it. The thing had already caused her enough trouble tonight. Then she closed her eyes for a moment, breathing in deep, holding the breath, and then slowly releasing it. Mind-Stilling on the go.

She took another breath, focusing on the expansion of her ribs, the tautness in her torso.

I am the rock against which the surf crashes. Nothing can break me.

The words settled something deep in her, and before she’d finished exhaling, she was walking again, this time making a point not to look to her right, to the darkness at the very heart of the library.

But even as Gwyn descended, even as she mercifully reached the dormitory and curled up in her narrow bed, she was convinced she heard that darkness laughing. Like it knew the truth.

Like it knew it wasn’t the only monster down here.