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

Nesta could hear Emerie’s thundering heart, its frantic beat echoing her own.

Gwyn swallowed. “I told him the children had taken the mountain road to get help. He didn’t believe me. So he grabbed Catrin, because our scents were nearly identical, you see, and told me that if I didn’t reveal where the children were, he’d kill her. And when I didn’t give the children up …” Her mouth shook. “He beheaded Catrin right there, along with two other priestesses. And then he told his soldiers to go to work on us. He claimed me. I spat in his face.” Tears slid down her cheeks. “And then he … went to work.”

Nesta’s heart cracked.

“I hadn’t yet participated in the Great Rite, and we were so remote up there that I never had the chance to lie with a male, and he took that from me, too. And then he called over three of his soldiers and told them to keep going until I revealed where the children had gone.”

Nausea roiled Nesta’s gut. She couldn’t have moved if she’d wanted to.

“The first had just unbuckled his belt when Azriel arrived.” Silent, unending tears streamed down Gwyn’s face.

“Azriel slaughtered all of them within moments. He didn’t hesitate. But I could barely move, and when I tried to get up … He gave me his cloak and wrapped me in it. Morrigan arrived a few minutes later, and then Rhysand appeared, and it became clear some of the soldiers had gotten away with the piece of the Cauldron, so Azriel headed after them. Mor healed me as best she could, then brought me to the library. I couldn’t … I couldn’t bear to be at the temple, with the others. To see Catrin’s grave and know I failed her, to see that kitchen every day for the rest of my life.

“The first five months I was at the library, I barely spoke. I didn’t sing. I went to the priestess who counsels all of us, and sometimes I just sat there and cried, or screamed, or said nothing. And then I began working with Merrill, upon Clotho’s request, and the work focused me. Motivated me to get out of bed each morning. I started singing during the evening service. And then you came along, Nesta.”

Gwyn’s eyes slid to hers, brimming with tears and pain and—hope. Precious, beautiful hope. “And I could tell something bad had happened to you, too. You were fighting it, though. Not letting it master you. I knew Catrin would have been the first to sign up for training, so … I did, too. But even training these months hasn’t erased the fact that I let my sister die. You asked me once why I don’t wear the hood or the Invoking Stone. That stone is a sign of holiness. How can someone like me wear it?”

Gwyn stopped at last, as if waiting for them to damn her.

But tears were running down Emerie’s face. They didn’t halt as Emerie took Gwyn’s hand and said, “You are not alone, Gwyn. Do you hear me? You are not alone.”

Nesta took Emerie’s other hand as her friend went on, “We have suffered differently, but … My father once beat me so badly he broke my back. He kept me in bed for weeks while I healed, telling people I was ill, but I wasn’t. It was … It was one of the lesser of his evils.” She paused. “He beat my mother before that. And she … I think she shielded me from him, because he never laid a hand on me until she was gone. Until he beat her so badly she couldn’t recover. He made me dig her grave on a night with a new moon, and told people she’d miscarried a babe and died from blood loss.”

She angrily wiped a tear away. “Everyone believed him. They always believed him—he was so charming to them, so smart. Whenever people told me how lucky I was to have such a good father, I wondered if I’d imagined all the bad parts. Only my scars, my wings reminded me of the truth. And when he died, I was so happy, yet they expected me to mourn him. I should have told them all what a monster he was, but I didn’t. They had turned a blind eye to my wing-clipping while he was alive; why should they bother to believe the truth now that he was among the honored dead?”

Emerie’s nose crinkled. “I still feel his fists on me. Still feel the impact of him slamming my head into a wall, or crunching my fingers in a door, or just railing on me until I blacked out.” She was shaking, and Nesta squeezed her hand tighter. “He never gave me any money or allowed me to earn my own, never let me eat more than he deemed appropriate, and wormed his way so far into my mind that I still hear him when I look in the mirror or make a mistake.”

She swallowed. “I came to training because I knew he’d have forbidden it. I came to training to get his voice out of my head. And to know how to stop a male if one ever puts another hand on me again. But none of it will ever bring my mother back, or the fact that I hid while my father took out his rage upon her. Nothing will ever make that right. But this mountain …” Emerie pointed to the small dirt path at the base of the peak. “I’ll climb it for my mother. For her, I’ll face the Breaking and go as far as I can.”

The two of them looked to Nesta. But her gaze remained upon the mountain. Its peak. That path leading up to it. The hardest of all the routes.

Finally Nesta said, “I was sent to the House of Wind because I had become such a wretch, drinking and fucking everything in sight. My … family couldn’t stand it. For more than a year, I abused their kindness and generosity, and I did it because …” She exhaled a shuddering breath. “My father died during the war. Before my eyes, but I did nothing to stop it.” And then it all came out. She told the two of them every horrible thing she had done and thought and savored. Told them of the Cauldron and its terror and pain and power. Told them the worst of her, so that if they decided to risk climbing that mountain with her, they’d go into it with their eyes open. So that they could choose to pull back now.