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

“Give me those stones and bones, please,” Nesta said quietly to the House as she sat in the private library, a map of all seven courts before her, Cassian a step behind her.

A small earthenware bowl appeared beside the map, filled with them.

Nesta swallowed against the dryness in her mouth.

Cassian whistled. “It really does listen to you.”

She peered over a shoulder. She’d invited him here after she’d returned from working in the library out of pure caution, she told herself. If she lost control, if she wasn’t able to witness where her finger landed on the map, someone had to be here. That person just so happened to be him.

Never mind that he’d once stood beside her, his hand upon her back as it was now, and let her lean into his warmth and strength.

Cassian glanced between the bowl of scrying instruments and the map. “Why did you change your mind?”

Nesta didn’t give herself time to hesitate before she slid her fingers into the bowl and scooped up the handful of stones and bones. They clinked against each other, hollow and ancient.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about those priestesses who came to practice today. Roslin said she hadn’t set foot outside in sixty years. And Deirdre, with those scars …” She took a long breath. “I am asking them to be brave, to work hard, to face their fears. Yet I’m not doing the same.”

“No one accused you of that.”

“I don’t need anyone to say it. I know it. And I might fear this scrying, but I fear being a cowardly hypocrite even more.”

The priestesses had been novices in every sense of the word: Ananke had such terrible balance she’d fallen over trying to plant her toes in the dirt. Roslin had been only a fraction better. Neither had removed their hoods, not as Deirdre had done, but Nesta had caught glimpses of wine-red hair on Roslin and golden hair on Ananke, their skin pale as cream.

Cassian said, “You sure you don’t want to do this with Rhys and Amren around?”

Nesta squeezed the bones and stones in her fist. “I don’t need them.”

He fell silent, letting her concentrate.

It had taken a few moments the first and only time she’d done it. To let her mind go empty, to wait for that tug through her body that had hauled her toward an unseen force. She’d been whipped across the earth, and when she’d opened her eyes, she’d been standing in a war-tent, the King of Hybern before her, the Cauldron a squatting, dark mass beyond.

Nesta closed her eyes, willing her mind to quiet as she lifted her tight fist over the map. She focused upon her breathing, upon the rhythm of Cassian’s breathing.

Her swallow was loud to her ears.

She’d failed at everything. But she could do this.

She’d failed her father, failed Feyre for years before that. Failed her mother, she supposed. And with Elain, she’d failed as well: first in letting her get taken by Hybern that night they’d been stolen from their beds; then by letting her go into that Cauldron. Then when the Cauldron had taken her into the heart of Hybern’s camp.

She’d failed and failed and failed, and there was no end to it, no end—

“Anything?”

“Don’t talk.”

Cassian grunted, but sidled closer, his warmth now solidly at her side.

Nesta willed her mind to empty. But it couldn’t. It was like being in that damned stairwell—she just circled around and around and around, down and down.

The Dread Trove. She had to find the Dread Trove.

The Mask, the Harp, the Crown.

But the other thoughts pressed in. Too many.

The Mask, she strained to think. Where is the Mask of the Dread Trove?

Her palm slickened with sweat, the stones and bones shifting in her fist. If the Mask was aware like the Cauldron had been … She couldn’t let it see her. Find what she loved most.

Couldn’t let it see her, find her, hurt her.

The Mask, she willed the stones and bones. Find the Mask.

Nothing answered. No tug, no whisper of power. She exhaled through her nostrils. The Mask, she willed them.

There was nothing.

Her heart thundered, but she tried again. A different route. Thought of their common origin—the one she and the Trove shared. The Cauldron.

Yawning emptiness answered.

Nesta furrowed her brow, clenching the items harder. Pictured the Cauldron: the vast bowl of darkest iron, so large multiple people could have used it as a bathtub. It had a physical shape, yet when that icy water had swallowed her, there had been no bottom. Just a chasm of freezing water that had soon become utter darkness. The thing that had existed before light; the cradle from which all life had come.

Sweat beaded on her brow, as if her very body rebelled against the memory, but she made herself recall how it had sat in the King of Hybern’s war-tent, squatting atop the reeds and rugs, a primordial beast that had been half-asleep when she’d entered.

And then it had opened an eye. Not one she could see, but one that she could feel fixed on her. It had widened as it realized who stood there: the female who had taken so much, too much. It had narrowed all of its depthless power, its rage, upon her, a cat trapping a mouse with its paw.

Her hand shook.

“Nesta?”

She couldn’t breathe.

“Nesta.”

She couldn’t endure it, the memory of that ancient horror and fury—