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

“Only a desperate fool would don that Mask,” Amren said, keeping well away from the table. Whether it was to put distance between herself and Nesta or to avoid the Mask, he had no idea. “You’re lucky to have been able to pry it from your face. Most of those who have worn it could never remove it. In order to sever it, they had to be beheaded. It’s the cost of the power: you can raise an army of the dead to conquer the world, but you can never be free of the Mask.”

“I wished it to let go, and it did,” Nesta said, surveying Amren with cool disdain.

“Like calls to like,” Rhys said. “Others could not free themselves because the Mask did not recognize their power. The Mask rode them, not the other way around. Only one Made from the same dark source can wear the Mask and not be ruled by it.”

“So Queen Briallyn could use it,” Azriel said. “Perhaps that’s why the Autumn Court soldiers were in Oorid: she can’t yet risk setting foot here, but she found a unit to go in for her.”

The words rippled through the room.

Nesta again stared at the Mask. “It should be destroyed.”

“That’s not possible,” Amren said. “Perhaps if the Cauldron had been truly destroyed, the Mask might have been weakened enough for the High Lords and Feyre to join their power and do it.”

“If the Cauldron had been destroyed,” Feyre said with a shiver, “then life would have ceased to exist.”

“So the Mask remains,” Amren said wryly. “It can only be dealt with. Not eliminated.”

“We should dump it in the sea, then,” Nesta said.

“No taste for the living dead, girl?” Amren asked.

Nesta slid her eyes toward Amren in a way that had Cassian bracing for the worst. “No good can come of its power.”

“If we dump it in the sea,” Azriel said, “some wicked creature might find it. It’s safer to keep it locked up with us.”

“Even if it can open doors and undo spells?” Rhys asked.

“Like calls to like,” Feyre said into the puzzled quiet. “Perhaps Nesta could ward it and lock the room. Contain it.”

“I don’t know how to do those spells,” Nesta said. “I failed at the most basic of them while training with Amren, remember?”

Feyre’s head tilted to one side. “Is that what you think, Nesta? That you failed?”

Nesta straightened, and Cassian’s chest tightened at the wall that rose in her eyes, brick by brick. At the truth Nesta had let slip with that one word. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, her old self rearing its head as her chin lifted. “Tell me how to do the spells, and I’ll try.” She directed the last part to Amren, to Rhys.

“When Helion comes,” Rhys said gently, as if he, too, understood what Nesta had revealed, “I’ll have him show you. He knows spells for warding that even I don’t.”

The silence became tense enough that Cassian made himself grin. “Considering that Nesta brushed off Helion’s smoldering advances during the war, he might not be so inclined to help her.”

“He’ll help,” Rhys said, stars shimmering in his gaze. “If only for another shot at her.”

Nesta rolled her eyes, and the gesture was so normal that Cassian’s smile became more genuine, edged now with relief.

You wear your heart for all to see, brother, Rhys said without turning Cassian’s way.

Cassian only shrugged. He was past caring.

Feyre said to Nesta, “We should get Madja to tend to your wounds.”

“They’re already healing,” Nesta said, and Cassian wondered if she had any idea how awful she looked.

Indeed, Amren said, “You look like a cat tried to eat your face off.” She sniffed. “And you smell like a swamp.”

“Being dragged through a bog will do that to you,” Cassian said to Amren, earning a surprised look from Nesta. He asked her, “How did the kelpie snare you?”

Nesta’s scratched-up throat bobbed. “I grew … nervous when you—both of you—didn’t come back.” The silence in the room was palpable. “I went to find you.”

Cassian didn’t dare say that he’d only been gone thirty minutes. Thirty minutes, and she’d been in a panic like that? “We wouldn’t have left you,” he said carefully.

“I wasn’t afraid of being left. I was afraid both of you were dead.”

That she kept emphasizing both of you tightened his chest. He knew what she was carefully avoiding saying. She’d been worried enough that she’d ventured into Oorid’s perils for him.

Nesta turned from his stare. “I was about to go into the water when the kelpie appeared. It crawled onto the bank, spoke to me, and then dragged me in.”

“It spoke to you?” Rhys asked.

“Not in a language I knew.”

Rhys’s mouth quirked to the side. “Can you show me?”

Nesta frowned, as if unwilling to relive the memory, but nodded. Both of their gazes went vacant, and then Rhys pulled back.

“That thing …” He surveyed Nesta with blatant shock that she had survived. Rhys turned to Amren. “Have a listen.”

Their eyes became glazed, and none of them spoke as Rhys showed Amren.

Even Amren’s face paled at whatever Rhys showed her, and then she was shaking her head, her black bob of hair swaying. “That is a dialect of our tongue that has not been spoken in fifteen thousand years.”