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

Nesta bristled. “I’m not allowing anyone but us to get their hands on the Harp.”

With that, she stepped to the demarcation line between the hall and the chamber. Bracing herself, she pushed a foot forward.

It was like stepping through mud.

But the wards allowed her through. Nesta took another step, arm extended behind her to hold Cassian’s hand. The pressure of the spells pushed against her calves, her hips, her body, squeezing her lungs. “These are like no wards I’ve felt before,” she whispered, standing still as she waited for any hint of a triggered trap. “They feel old. Incredibly old.”

“They probably predate this place being used as a prison.”

“What was it before?”

“No one knows. It’s always been here. But this chamber …” He surveyed the space beyond her. “I didn’t know places like this existed here. Maybe …” He frowned. “Part of me wonders if the Prison was either built or stocked with its inmates to hide the Harp’s presence. There are so many terrible powers here, and the wards on the mountain itself … I wonder if someone hid the Harp knowing that it’d never be noticed with so much awful magic around it.”

Her mouth had dried again. “But who put it here?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. Someone who existed before the High Lords ruled. Rhys told me once that this island might have even been an eighth court.”

“You don’t recognize these markings on the ground?”

“Not at all.”

She loosed a long breath. “I don’t think any traps were triggered.”

He nodded. “Be quick.”

Their gazes held, and Nesta turned from the raw worry in his eyes as she pulled her hand from his and entered the chamber.



The wards lay heavy against Nesta’s skin with each step across the stone floor to the shining Harp.

“It looks newly polished,” she observed to Cassian, who watched from the archway. “How is that possible?”

“It exists outside the bindings of time, just as the Cauldron does.”

Nesta studied the carvings in the floor. They all seemed to spiral toward one point. “I think these are stars,” she breathed. “Constellations.” And like a golden sun, the Harp lay at the center of the system.

“This is the Night Court,” Cassian said drily.

But it felt … different from Night Court magic somehow. Nesta paused before the Harp, the wards pressing into her skin as she surveyed its golden frame and silver strings. The Harp sat atop a large rendering of an eight-pointed star. Its cardinal points stretched longer than the other four, with the Harp situated directly in the heart of the star.

The hair on the back of her neck stood. She could have sworn the blood in her body reversed course.

She had the creeping feeling she’d been brought here.

Not by the Cauldron or the Mother or the Harp. By something vaster. Something that stretched into the stars carved all around them.

Its cool, light hands guided her wrists as she picked up the Harp.

Her fingers brushed the icy metal. The Harp hummed against her skin, as if it still held its final note, from the last time it had been used—

Fae screamed, pounding on stone that hadn’t been there a moment before, pleading for their children’s sakes, begging to be let out let out let out—

Nesta had the sensation of falling, tumbling through air and stars and time—

It was a trap, and our people were too blind to see it—

Eons and stars and darkness plunged around her—

The Fae clawed at stone, tearing their nails on rock where there had once been a door. But the way back was now forever sealed, and they begged as they tried to pass their children through the solid wall, if only their children could be spared—

Light flashed, blinding. When it cleared, she stood in a white-stoned palace.

A great hall, where five thrones graced a dais. The sixth throne, in the center, was occupied by a pointy-eared crone. A golden, spiked crown rested on her head, blazing like the hate in her black eyes.

The Fae crone stiffened, blue velvet robes shifting with the movement. Her eyes, clear despite her wrinkled face, sharpened. Right on Nesta.

“You have the Harp,” the queen said, voice like crinkling paper. And Nesta knew who she stood frozen before, what crown lay on her thin, white hair. Briallyn’s gnarled fingers curled on the arms of her throne, and her gaze narrowed. The queen smiled, revealing a mouth of half-rotted teeth.

Nesta backed up a step—or tried to. She couldn’t move.

Briallyn’s horrible smile deepened and she said conversationally, “My spies have told me who your friends are. The half-breed and the broken Illyrian. Such lovely girls.”

Nesta’s blood churned, and she knew her eyes were blazing with her power as she snarled, “You come near them and I’ll rip out your throat. I will hunt you down and gut you.”

Briallyn tutted. “Such bonds are foolish. As foolish as you still holding on to the Harp, which sings answers to all my questions. I know where you are, Nesta Archeron—”

Darkness erupted.

Unmoving, solid darkness, slamming into Nesta as hard as a wall.

Screams still echoed.

No—no, that was a male bellowing her name.

And she had not slammed into the darkness. She’d collided with the stone, and now lay upon the floor, the Harp in her hands.