A Court of Silver Flames (A Court of Thorns and Roses #4) by Sarah J. Maas

As if the bog swallowed their messages the same way it swallowed sound.

Cassian waded up to his chest, hands blindly grappling for any sort of clue, a body—

He bellowed at the thought, and even Oorid couldn’t muffle the sound.

He hurled himself forward, and only Azriel’s hand at the collar of his armor halted him. Az snarled, “Look.”

Cassian gazed where Azriel pointed at the deeper water. The surface was rippling. Golden light shone beneath. Cassian splashed toward it, but Az halted him again, his Siphons flaring blue.

Then the spears broke the surface.

Like a forest rising from the water, spear after spear after spear appeared. Then the helmets, dripping water, some rusted, some shining as if freshly forged. And beneath those helmets: skulls.

“Mother save us,” Azriel whispered, and it was undiluted terror, not awe, hushing his voice as the dead rose from Oorid’s depths.

A line of them; a legion. Some mere collections of upright bones, jaws hanging and eyes unseeing. Some half-preserved, decaying flesh flapping over exposed ribs. Judging by their fine armor, they were warriors and kings and princes and lords.

They rose from the water, standing in the shallows near the thorny island. And as that golden light broke the surface before them, the dead knelt.

Every word emptied from Cassian’s head as Nesta, too, emerged from the water, as if lifted on a pillar from beneath. A golden mask sat upon her face, primitive but embossed with whorls and patterns so ancient they’d lost all meaning.

Water sluiced down her clothes, her hair had been ripped from its braid, and in her hand, clenched there …

A kelpie’s head dangled by its sheet of black hair, torn-up face frozen in a scream. Exactly as the King of Hybern’s head had hung from her hand.

Only silver fire burned behind the eyes of the Mask.

“Holy gods,” Azriel breathed.The dead stood motionless, a legion poised to strike. Her will was their will; her command their only reason for being. They had no self left—only her, only Nesta, flowing through them.

“Nesta,” Cassian whispered.

Nesta released the kelpie’s head. The black water at her feet swallowed it whole.

Cold power rippled toward them, and as it hit, Cassian let it surge past him, around him, yielded himself to it. Because to stand against it would be to provoke the Mask’s wrath. To stand against it would be to stand against Death itself.

Death herself.

Azriel shook, weathering that primal power.

But they were both Illyrian, whether Az liked it or not. And so they did what their people had always done before Death’s beautiful face. They bowed.

Chest-deep in the water, they couldn’t bow far, but they lowered their heads until their faces nearly touched the surface. Cassian lifted his eyes as he held the position, and watched the gold of the Mask’s reflection dance upon the water. Then that gold shifted.

He raised his head in time to see Nesta peel away the Mask.

The dead collapsed. Fell under the black surface in splashes and ripples and vanished entirely. Not one spear remained.

Nesta sank as if dropped, too. Cassian lunged for her, icy water biting at his face. He grabbed her just as she went under.

She was nearly boneless as he hauled her back to Az, who had his sword out against anything that might come crawling from that water. When they reached the shore and the grass and the tree, Cassian surveyed her pale face, ripped and scratched around her mouth and jaw—

Nesta blinked, and her eyes were again blue-gray, and then she was clutching the Mask to her chest like a child with a doll and shaking, shaking, shaking.

It was all Cassian could do to put his arms around her and hold her close, until the trembling stopped and unconsciousness offered her the mercy of oblivion.





CHAPTER

37

There was a place in the Court of Nightmares where even Keir and his elite squadron of Darkbringers did not dare tread.

Once the Night Court’s enemies entered that place, they did not come out. Not alive, anyway.

Most of what remained of their bodies didn’t leave, either. Those went through the hatch in the center of the circular room—and into the pit of writhing beasts below. To their scales and claws and merciless hunger. The beasts did not feed often; they could receive a body every ten years and make it last, going into hibernation between meals.

The trickling blood of the two Autumn Court males through the black stone floor’s grate woke them.

Their snarls and hisses, their snapping tails and scraping claws should have incentivized the males chained to the chairs to talk.

Azriel leaned against the wall by the lone door, Truth-Teller bloody in his hand. Cassian, a step beside him, and Feyre, on Az’s other side, watched as Rhys and Amren approached the two males.

“Are you feeling more inclined to explain yourselves?” Rhys said, hands sliding into his pockets.

Only the knowledge that Nesta slept safely in a bedroom in Rhys’s palace above this mountain, warded by his High Lord’s power, allowed Cassian to remain in this room. The Mask, covered with a black velvet cloth, lay on a table in another room of the palace, equally warded and bespelled. Azriel had winnowed them away from the bog moments after Nesta had passed out, and had brought them to Rhys’s residence atop the Hewn City. Cassian knew, when Rhys had vanished a heartbeat later, that he’d gone to the bog for the Autumn Court soldiers, and would bring them here.