A Court of Frost and Starlight (A Court of Thorns and Roses #3.1) by Sarah J. Maas

Settled again in the sitting room, Nesta got to her feet half an hour later. She quietly bid Elain good night, dropping a kiss to the top of her hair, and drifted for the front door.

Cassian, nestled with Mor, Rhys, and Azriel on the couch, didn’t so much as move.

But I did, rising from my own chair to follow Nesta to where she was donning her layers at the front door. I waited until she’d entered the antechamber before extending my hand.

“Here.”

Nesta half turned toward me, focus darting to what was in my hand. The small slip of paper.

The banker’s note for her rent. And then some.

“As promised,” I said.

For a moment, I prayed she wouldn’t take it. That she would tell me to tear it up.

But Nesta’s lips only tightened, her fingers unwavering as she took the money.

As she turned her back on me and walked out the front door, into the freezing darkness beyond.

I remained in the chilly antechamber, hand still outstretched, the phantom dryness of that check lingering on my fingers.

The floorboards thudded behind me, and then I was being gently but forcibly moved to the side. It happened so fast I barely had time to realize that Cassian had gone storming past—right out the front door.

To my sister.





CHAPTER

21

Cassian

He’d had enough.

Enough of the coldness, the sharpness. Enough of the sword-straight spine and razor-sharp stare that had only honed itself these months.

Cassian could barely hear over the roaring in his head as he charged into the snowy night. Could barely register moving aside his High Lady to get to the front door. To get to Nesta.

She’d already made it to the gate, walking with that unfaltering grace despite the icy ground. Her collection of books tucked under an arm.

It was only when Cassian reached her that he realized he had nothing to say. Nothing to say that wouldn’t make her laugh in his face.

“I’ll walk you home,” was all that came out instead.

Nesta paused just past the low iron gate, her face cold and pale as moonlight.

Beautiful. Even with the weight loss, she was as beautiful standing in the snow as she’d been the first time he’d laid eyes on her in her father’s house.

And infinitely more deadly. In so many ways.

She looked him over. “I’m fine.”

“It’s a long walk, and it’s late.”

And you didn’t say one gods-damned word to me the entire night.

Not that he’d said a word to her.

She’d made it clear enough in those initial days after that last battle that she wanted nothing to do with him. With any of them.

He understood. He really did. It had taken him months—years—after his first battles to readjust. To cope. Hell, he was still reeling from what had happened in that final battle with Hybern, too.

Nesta held her ground, proud as any Illyrian. More vicious, too. “Go back into the house.”

Cassian gave her a crooked grin, one he knew sent that temper of hers boiling. “I think I need some fresh air, anyway.”

She rolled her eyes and launched into a walk. He wasn’t stupid enough to offer to carry her books.

Instead, he easily kept pace, an eye out for any treacherous patches of ice on the cobblestones. They’d barely survived Hybern. He didn’t need her snapping her neck on the street.

Nesta lasted all of a block, the green-roofed houses merry and still full of song and laughter, before she halted. Whirled on him.

“Go back to the house.”

“I will,” he said, flashing a grin again. “After I drop you off at your front door.”

At that piece-of-shit apartment she insisted on living in. Across the city.

Nesta’s eyes—the same as Feyre’s and yet wholly different, sharp and cold as steel—went to his hands. What was in them. “What is that.”

Another grin as he lifted the small, wrapped parcel. “Your Solstice present.”

“I don’t want one.”

Cassian continued past her, tossing the present in his hands. “You’ll want this one.”

He prayed she would. It had taken him months to find it.

He hadn’t wanted to give it to her in front of the others. Hadn’t even known she’d be there tonight. He’d been well aware of Elain’s and Feyre’s cajoling. Just as he’d been well aware of the money he’d seen Feyre give to Nesta moments before she left.

As promised, his High Lady had said.

He wished she hadn’t. Wished for a lot of things.

Nesta fell into step beside him, huffing as she kept up with his long strides. “I don’t want anything from you.”

He made himself arch an eyebrow. “You sure about that, sweetheart?”

I have no regrets in my life, but this. That we did not have time.

Cassian shut out the words. Shut out the image that chased him from his dreams, night after night: not Nesta holding up the King of Hybern’s head like a trophy; not the way her father’s neck had twisted in Hybern’s hands. But the image of her leaning over him, covering Cassian’s body with her own, ready to take the full brunt of the king’s power for him. To die for him—with him. That slender, beautiful body, arching over him, shaking in terror, willing to face that end.

He hadn’t seen a glimpse of that person in months. Had not seen her smile or laugh.