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

“What’s the matter with you?” Cassian scratched his scalp. This fucking place.

Rhys blinked, as if he’d forgotten Cassian stood beside him. “Nothing.” He flicked a petal off the gauntlet of his leathers. “Nothing.”

“Liar.” Cassian tucked in his wings.

But Rhys wasn’t listening again. He didn’t say a word before he winnowed them home.



Nesta stared into the reddish gloom of the staircase.

She’d been just as sore as yesterday while working in the library, but thankfully Merrill hadn’t come to rip into her about the swapped book. She spoke to no one but Clotho, who had given her only perfunctory greetings. So Nesta had shelved in the dimness, surrounded by whispers of rustling paper, only pausing to wipe the dust from her hands. Priestesses drifted by like ghosts, but Nesta had no glimpse of coppery-brown hair and large teal eyes.

She honestly didn’t know why she wished to see Gwyn. What Cassian had told her about the attack on the temple wasn’t the sort of thing she had any right to bring up.

But Gwyn didn’t seek her out, and Nesta didn’t dare go up to the second level to knock on Merrill’s door to see if Gwyn was there.

So it was silence and soreness, and the roaring in her head. Maybe it was the roaring that had brought her to the stairwell, instead of to her bedroom to wash up. The gloom beckoned, challenging her like the open maw of some great beast. A wyrm, poised to devour her whole.

Her legs moved of their own accord, and her foot landed upon the first step.

Down and down, around and around. Nesta ignored the step with the five holes embedded in it. Made a point not to look down as she carefully stepped over it.

Silence and roaring and nothing nothing nothing—

Nesta made it to step one hundred fifty before her legs nearly gave out again. Sparing herself another tumble, she panted on the steps, leaning her head against the stone.

In that roaring silence, she waited for the stairs to stop twisting around her. And when the world was again still, she made the long, horrible climb back up.

The House had dinner waiting on her desk, along with a book. Apparently, it had noted her request for a book the other day and deemed The Great War too dull. The title of this one was suitably smutty. “I didn’t know you had dirty taste,” Nesta said wryly.

The House only responded by running a bath.

“Dinner, bath, and a book,” Nesta said aloud, shaking her head in something close to awe. “It’s perfect. Thank you.”

The House said nothing, but when she stepped into her bathroom, she found that it wasn’t an ordinary bath. The House had added an assortment of oils that smelled of rosemary and lavender. She breathed in the heady, beautiful scent, and sighed.

“I think you might be my only friend,” Nesta said, then groaned her way into the tub’s welcoming warmth.

The House was apparently so pleased by her words that as soon as she lay back, a tray appeared across the width of the tub. Laden with a massive piece of chocolate cake.





CHAPTER

15

The seventh level of the library was unnerving.

Standing at the stone railing on Level Six, clutching a book to be shelved, Nesta stared into the darkness mere feet from her, so thick that it hovered like a layer of fog, veiling the levels below.

Books dwelled down there. She knew that, but she’d never been sent down to those dark levels. Had never seen one of the priestesses venture past the spot where she now stood, peering over the railing. Ahead of her, the darkness beckoned down the ramp. Like it was an entry into some dark pit of hell.

Hybern’s twin Ravens were dead. Did their blood still stain the ground far below? Or had Rhysand and Bryaxis wiped even that trace of them away?

The darkness seemed to rise and fall. Like it was breathing.

The hair on her arms rose.

Bryaxis was gone. Set loose into the world. Even Feyre and Rhysand’s hunting hadn’t retrieved the thing that was Fear itself.

And yet the darkness remained. It pulsed, tendrils of shadow drifting upward.

She’d stared too long into its depths. It might gaze back.

But she didn’t move from the rail. Couldn’t remember how she’d come down this far, or which book she still held in her hands.

There was night, and there was the darkness of extinguishing a candle, and then there was this. Not only the true absence of light, but … a womb. The womb from which all life had come and would return, neither good nor evil, only dark, dark, dark.

Nesta.

Her name drifted to her as if rising from the depths of some black ocean.

Nesta.

It slid along her bones, her blood. She had to pull back. Pull away.

The darkness pulsed, beckoning.

“Nesta.”

She whirled, nearly dropping the book over the edge.

Gwyn was standing there, eyeing her. “What are you doing?”

Heart thundering, Nesta twisted toward the darkness, but—it was only that. Murky darkness, through which she could now barely make out the sublevels beneath. As if the thick, impenetrable black had vanished. “It … I …”

Gwyn, arms laden with books, strode to her side and surveyed the dark. Nesta waited for the chiding, the ridicule and disbelief, but Gwyn only asked gravely, “What did you see?”

“Why?” Nesta asked. “Do you see things in that darkness?” Her voice was thin.