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

Rhys waved her off, bored and tired. “Of course.”

“I mean it, boy,” Amren said. “Do not unsheathe those blades.” She surveyed all three of them before she left. “Any of you.”

For a moment, only the ticking grandfather clock made a sound.

Rhys looked toward it. Then he said, eyes distant, “I can’t find anything to help Feyre with the baby—with the labor.”

Cassian’s chest tightened. “Drakon and Miryam?”

Rhys shook his head. “The Seraphim’s wings are as flexible and rounded as the Illyrians’ are bony. That’s what will kill Feyre. Miryam’s children were able to pass through her birth canal because their wings bent easily—and nearly every one of her human people who’s mixed with Drakon’s has had similar success.” Rhys’s throat bobbed. His next words cracked Cassian’s heart. “I didn’t realize how much hope I’d been holding on to until I saw the pity and fear in their faces. Until Drakon had to embrace me to keep me from falling apart.”

Cassian crossed to his brother in a few steps. He clasped Rhys’s shoulder, leaning against the edge of the desk. “We’ll keep looking. What about Thesan?”

Rhys loosened the uppermost buttons on his black jacket, revealing a hint of the tattooed chest beneath. “The Dawn Court had nothing of use. The Peregryns are similar to the Seraphim—they’re related, though distantly. Their healers know how to get a breech baby with wings to turn, how to get it out of the mother, but again: their wings are flexible.”

Azriel appeared on Rhys’s other side, a hand on his shoulder as well.

The clock ticked on, a brutal reminder of every second racing toward sure doom. What they needed, Cassian realized with each tick of that clock, was a miracle.

Azriel asked, “And Feyre still doesn’t know?”

“No. She knows the labor will be difficult, but I haven’t told her yet that it might very well claim her life.” Rhys spoke into their minds, as if he couldn’t say it aloud, I haven’t told her that the nightmares that now send me lurching from sleep aren’t ones of the past, but of the future.

Cassian squeezed Rhys’s shoulder. “Why won’t you tell her?”

Rhys’s throat worked. “Because I can’t bring myself to give her that fear. To take away one bit of the joy in her eyes every time she puts a hand on her belly.” His voice shook. “It is fucking eating me alive, this terror. I keep myself busy, but … there is no one to bargain with for her life, no amount of wealth to buy it, nothing that I can do to save her.”

“Helion?” Azriel asked, eyes pained.

“I told him before he left yesterday. Pulled him aside when Feyre had winnowed home, and begged him on my knees to find something in his thousand libraries to save her. He said every head librarian and researcher who can be spared will be put on it. Somewhere in history, someone must have studied this. Found a way to deliver a baby with wings to a mother whose body was not equipped for it.”

“We’ll hold on to our hope, then,” Cassian said. Rhys shuddered, hanging his head, his silken black hair obscuring his eyes.

Cassian lifted his stare to Azriel, whose face conveyed everything: hope wouldn’t keep Feyre alive.

Cassian swallowed hard, and shifted his gaze to the three blades on the desk.

Their hilts were ordinary—as might be expected from a blacksmith in a small village. He made fine weapons, yes, but not artistic masterpieces. The great sword’s hilt was a simple cross guard, the pommel a rounded bit of metal.

Gwydion, the last of the magic swords, had been dark as night and as beautiful.

How many games had Cassian played as a child with Rhys and Azriel, where a long stick had been a stand-in for Gwydion? How many adventures had they imagined, sharing that mythical sword between them as they slew wyrms and rescued damsels?

Never mind that Rhys’s particular damsel had slain a wyrm herself and rescued him instead.

But if Amren was right … Cassian couldn’t think of another place in the world that held three magic blades, let alone one.

These might very well be the only ones in existence.

Cassian drummed his fingers on the desk, curiosity biting deep. “Let’s have a look.”

“Amren said not to,” Azriel warned.

“Amren’s not here,” Cassian said, smirking. “And we don’t need to touch them.” He clapped Rhys on the shoulder. “Use that fancy magic to unsheathe them.”

Rhys lifted his head. “This is a bad idea.”

Cassian winked. “That should be written on the Night Court crest.”

A few stars blinked into existence in Rhys’s eyes. Azriel muttered a prayer.

But Rhys took two steadying breaths and unspooled his power toward the massive sword, letting it lift the blade in star-flecked hands.

“It’s heavy,” Rhys observed, brows bunched in concentration. “In a way it should not be. Like it’s fighting against my magic.” He kept the sword floating above his desk, perpendicular to it, as if it were held in a stand.

Cassian braced himself as Rhys angled his head, his magic probing the hilt, the scabbard. Rhys mused, “The blacksmith never said anything about what had seemed cursed, and he must have touched it several times—to feel the power and to bring it here, at least. So it can’t be a death-sword to slay any careless hand.”