Feyre
Hands - there were hands on my shoulders, shaking em, squeezing me, I thrashed against them screaming, screaming -
"FEYRE."
The voice was at once the night and the dawn and the stars and the earth, and every inch of my body calmed at the primal dominance in it.
"Open your eyes," the voice ordered.
I did.
My throat was raw, my mouth full of ash, my face soaked and sticky, and Rhysand - Rhysand was hovering above me, eyes wide.
"It was a dream," he said, his breathing as hard as mine.
The moonlight trickling through the windows illuminated the dark lines of swirling tattoos down his arm, his shoulders, across his sculpted chest. Like the identical ones we bore on our arms from Under the Mountain. He scanned my face. "A dream," he said again.
Velaris. I was in Velaris, at his house. And I had a nightmare.
The sheets, the blankets were ripped. Shredded. But not with a knife. And that ashy, smoky taste coating my mouth...
My hand was unnervingly steady as I lifted it to find my fingers ending in simmering embers. Living claws of black flame that had sliced through my bed linens like they were causterixing woulds -
I shoved him off with a hard shoulder, falling out of bed and slamming into a small chest before I hurtled into the bathing room, fell to my knees before the toilet, and was sick to my stomach. Again. Again. My fingertips hissed against the cool porcelain.
Large, warm hands pulled my hair back a moment later.
"Breathe," Rhys said. "Imagine them winking out like candles, one by one."
I heaved into the toilet again, the swell of the tainted magic roaring within me. With a focus brought about almost entirely by desperation I focused on stoking each flame, one by one. Sure enough, the sickeningly sweet heat ceased across my hand until it was mine again.
And when I dared look at my hands, still braced on the bowl, the embers had been extinguished. Even that dark power that laced my veins, along with my bones, slumbered once more.
"I have this dream," Rhys said as I turned to look at him, wiping my sleeve across my lips. "Where it's not me stuck under her, but Cassian or Azriel. And she's pinned their wings to the bed with spiked, and there's nothing I can do to stop it. She'd commanded me to watch, and I have no choice but to see how I failed them."
I clung to the toilet, considering another round of retching. "You never failed them," I rasped.
"I did... horrible things to ensure that." Those violet eyes near-glowed in the dim light.
"Why hadn't you told them anything about the mountain until tonight?" I dared ask, hoping it wasn't crossing any boundaries in our strange, sometimes backwards relationship.
He dropped his eyes and released my hair in slowly waves to cascade down my back once more. "At first I didn't want to burden them with it," he started, reaching his tattooed hand for mine. I watched as he tentatively swirled a finger through the patterns he'd made in my skin. "The more time passed and you didn't wake up... I think I was scared."
My brow furrowed with concern. "You know they would never have judged you for anything you'd done, whether it was for them or not," I pressed.
But he shook his head. "It's not that I was afraid of their judgement. I'm aware of their love for me. My Inner Circle is a Court of Dreams," he said with a soft smile. "I didn't want to feed them my nightmares, potentially give them their own. I have seen what it's like to care deeply for someone and to hear of the pain they've suffered only to be unable to act against that force. They'd want vengeance and I wasn't sure I was willing to give them that temptation on the brink of war."
I sucked in a breath. "But," I started, suddenly regretting my words.
"But?" he asked, bringing his eyes back to mine.
"But you shouldn't have to ever be alone. Not again. You have them to support you. They want to carry your burdens with you. That's what lifelong friends are for."
His violet gaze searched my own. I thought back to sitting at the table with all of his friends, while he gave me this same look. An obvious look, one with all his feelings laid bare on his face. A look he'd given to me in front of all his friends, perfectly okay with them seeing it.
"I realized that at some point," he said slowly. "I think I realized it when you were laughing with them. You giggled talking to Mor and I could have fallen out of my chair," he laughed and I let a small smile slip across my lips. "You jumped right in with them and they caught you - accepted you. And at some point sitting at that table I realized I was with my family and I just... I looked at you and I felt like I could open up that part of myself I'd locked away while I was Under the Mountain again."
It was my turn, I decided, to reach for his face. I slid my fingers across his jaw then around his neck. His eyes closed at my touch and I was suddenly thinking about that night Under the Mountain - the night I had dressed in strips of fabric and danced for him. I'd sat on his lap and felt his lips against my neck, teasing me, filling me with boundless, insatiable warmth.
And I wanted to feel that warmth again.
Rhys opened his eyes only to widen them at the sight of me. A slow, feral smile pulled across his face. "Something you want, Feyre, darling?"
I rolled my eyes. "Oh, please."
"Now, you can't go giving me a sex face and then brush me off," he purred and I stuck my tongue out at him.
"Is that what you want?" he taunted me. "Would you rather give or receive? I can be ready whenever you are."
My laugh spewed from my lips. "You're awful!"
"And yet you're still looking at me with those eyes," he said, and despite myself, I tightened my grip on his neck.
"Whatever," I whispered and leaned in, crashing my lips into his. He received me gently, balancing my tenacity with sweet comfort. The taste of him was a mesmerizing as I'd expected it to be. I rocked into him, rising up a little on my knees next to where he sat at my side. His hands found my sides, pulling me toward him until I was piled onto his lap.
Then I remembered.
"Oh no!" I gasped.
"Wh- what?" he stuttered, immediately looking around for danger.
"I haven't cleaned my teeth. I was just puking, Rhysand!"
It started as a quick burst of air through his nose, but it built into a heavy laugh from deep in his belly. "Do you really think I care about that right now, Feyre?"
Then he was picking me up, giving me kisses as I rolled my eyes between my own short laughs. I held my arms around his neck as he led us back to our bed adorned with all new sheets and blankets, where we shared quick, tender kisses until I fell back asleep in a wave of exhaustion.
I stared up that the sharp grassy slope of the small mountain, shivering at the veils of mist that wafted past. Behind us, the land swept away to brutal cliffs and a violent pewter sea. Ahead, nothing but a wide, flat-topped mountain of gray stone and moss.
Rhys stood at my side, a double-edged sword sheathed down his spine, knives strapped to his legs, clothed in those same Illyrian fighting leathers he, Cassian, and Azriel wore. The dark pants were tight, the scale-like plates of leather worn and scarred and sculpted to legs I hadn't noticed were quite that muscled. His close fitting jacket had been built around the wings that were now fully out, bits of dark, scratched armor added at the shoulders and forearms.
If his attire hadn't told me enough about what we might be facing today - if my own, similar attire hadn't told me enough - all I needed was to take one look at the rock before us and know it wouldn't be pleasant. I'd been so distracted in the study an hour ago by what Rhys had been writing as he drafted a careful request to visit the Summer Court that I hadn't thought to ask what to expect here. When I asked Rhys about why he wanted to visit the Summer Court he'd merely smirked and said "improving diplomatic relations."
"Where are we?" I said, our first words since winnowing in a moment ago. Velaris had been brisk, sunny. This place, wherever it was, was freezing, deserted, barren. Only rock and grass and mist and sea.
"On an island in the heart of the Western Isles," Rhysand said, staring up at the mammoth mountain. "And that," he said, pointing to it, "is the prison."
There was nothing - no one around.
"I don't see anything."
"The rock is the Prison. And inside it are the foulest, most dangerous creatures and criminals you can imagine."
I caught myself watching his lips, remembering the feel of them on mine last night.
I gave myself a slow blink to snap out of it. That was the last thing I should be thinking about right now.
"This place," he continued and I wondered if he knew my thoughts, "was made before High Lords existed. Before Prythian. Some of the inmates remember those days. Remember a time when it was Mor's family, not mine, that ruled the North."
"Why won't Amren go in here?" I asked.
"Because she was once a prisoner."
"Not in that body, I take it."
A cruel smile. "No. Not at all."
I shivered.
"The hike will get your blood warming," Rhys said. "Since we can't winnow inside or fly to the entrance - the wards demand that visitors walk in. The long way."
We hiked the slope of the Prison in silence. At times it was so steep we had to crawl on our hands and knees. Higher and higher we climbed, and I drank from the countless little streams that gurgled through the bumps and hollows in the moss-and-grass slopes. All around the mist drifted by, whipped by the wind, whose hollow moaning drowned out our crunching footsteps.
I caught Rhys looking at me with a slight frown for the tenth time throughout our climb.
"What?" I asked.
He looked ahead. "I have to remind myself that we got out."
Of the mountain. One similar to the one we were now walking into willingly.
"Rhys..."
"Don't say anything you don't want others hearing." He pointed to the stone beneath us. "The inmates have nothing better to do than to listen through the earth and rock for gossip. They'll sell any bit of information for food, sex, maybe a breath of fresh air."
He held out a hand to help me climb a particularly steep rock, easily hauling me up to where he perched at its top. It had been so long - too long - since I'd been outside, using my body, relying on it. My breathing was ragged, even with the power of the stone beginning its thrumming in my chest the nearer we got to our destination. My thoughts drifted to his hand he'd let linger tangled with mine and I was again lost, remembering the feel of his fingers on the skin of my back as we laid in bed last night.
I had to get a grip.
I decided to blame it on the mating bond. It was instinctual, calling me to him.
Not my own weakness in his presence.
When I cut him a glance, he was watching me. My face fell. He had been listening to all my thoughts. I scoffed, offering him a not so subtle gesture and he winked at me in return.
I was too winded to scowl. We climbed until the upper face of the mountain became a wall before us, nothing but grassy slopes sweeping behind, far below, to where they flowed to the restless fray sea. Rhys drew the sword from his back in a swift movement.
"Don't look so surprised," he said.
"I've... never seen you with a weapon."
"Cassian would laugh himself hoarse hearing that. And then make me go into the sparring ring with him."
"Can he beat you?"
"Hand-to-hand combat? Yes. He'd have to earn it for a change, but he'd win." No arrogance, no pride. "Cassian is the best warrior I've encountered in any court, any land. He leads my armies because of it."
I didn't doubt his claim. I asked next of Azriel, curious what the story was on his scarred hands I'd seen first at the table yesterday morning then all throughout our day together as a group. That and the way he defended Mor were my main observations of the shadow singer.
The story of Azriel's childhood left me nauseous.
"And Mor," I asked, "what does she do for you?"
"Mor is who I'll call when the armies fail and Cassian and Azriel are both dead."
My blood chilled. "So she's supposed to wait until then?"
"No. As my Third, Mor is my... court overseer. She looks after the dynamics between the Court of Nightmares and the Court of Dreams, and runs both Velaris and the Hewn City. I suppose in the mortal realm, she might be considered a queen."
"And Amren?"
"Her duties as my Second make her my political adviser, walking library, and doer of my dirty work. I appointed her upon gaining my throne. But she was my ally, maybe my friend, long before that."
"I mean - in that war where your armies fail and Cassian and Azriel are dead, and even Mor is gone." Each word was like ice on my tongue.
Rhys paused his reach for the bald rock face before us. "If that day comes, I'll find a way to break the spell on Amren and unleash her on the world. And ask her to end me first."
By the Mother. "What is she?"
"Something else," he said and I thought of myself. I was now something else as well. I remembered the quiet sadness on Amren's face when I'd awoken to her, my body breaking through its rough recovery. Maybe she'd seen that in me and found the potential for an ally of others. I would be okay with that.
We were staring up at the sheer stone wall. "I can't climb bare rock like that."
"You don't need to," Rhys said, laying a hand flat on the stone. Like a mirage, it vanished in a ripple of light.
Pale, carved gates stood in its place, so high their tops were lost to the mist.
Gates of bone.
They swung open silently, revealing a cavern of black so inky I had never seen its like, even in my time Under the Mountain.
The Amulet of Storms heated in my chest, its low buzzing thrum keeping me on my toes, awaiting whatever it was preparing me for with its hums.
Rhys put a warm hand on my back and guided me inside, three balls of moonlight bobbing before us.
"Where are the guards?" I asked, trying to count my breaths to keep them slow - to keep my stone heart from acting up.
"They dwell within the rock of the mountain," he murmured, his hand finding mine and wrapping around it as he tugged me into the immortal gloom. "They only emerge at feeding time, or to deal with the restless prisoners. They are nothing but shadows of thought and an ancient spell."
With the small lights floating ahead, I tried not to look too long at the gray walls. Especially when they were so rough-hewn that the jagged bits could have been a nose, or a craggy brow, or a set of sneering lips.
The dry ground was clear of anything but pebbles. And there was silence. Utter silence as we rounded a bend, and the last of the light from the misty world faded into inky black.
I focused on my breathing. The amulet seemed to always act up when I was emotional, angry or frightened. I needed a sound mind. I clung to the feeling of Rhysand's hand around mine, holding me to this world, to everything real and external.
The path plunged deep into the belly of the mountain, and I clutched Rhys's fingers to keep from losing my footing. He still had his sword gripped in his other hand.
"Do all High Lords have access?" My words were so soft they were devoured by the dark.
"No. The Prison is law unto itself; the island may be even an eighth court. But it falls under my jurisdiction, and my blood is keyed to the gates."
"Could you free the inmates?"
"No. Once the sentence is given and a prisoner passes those gates... They belong to the Prison. It will never let them out. I take sentencing people here very, very seriously."
"Have you ever..."
"Yes. And now is not the time to speak of it." He squeezed my hand in emphasis.
We wound down through the gloom.
There were no doors. No lights.
No sounds. Not even a trickle of water.
But I could feel them.
I could feel them sleeping, pacing, running hands and claws over the other side of the walls.
They were ancient, and cruel in a way I had never known, not even with Amarantha. They were infinite, and patient, and had learned the language of darkness, of stone.
Rhysand's hand tightened again on my own. "Just a bit farther."
"We must be near the bottom by now."
"Past it. The Bone Carver is caged beneath the roots of the mountain."
"Who is he? What is he?" I'd only been briefed in what I was to say - nothing of what to expect. No doubt to keep me from panicking too thoroughly.
"No one knows. He'll appear as he wants to appear."
"Shape-shifter?"
"Yes and no. He'll appear to you as one thing, and I might be standing right beside you and see another."
I tried not to start bleating like cattle. "And the bone carving?"
"You'll see." Rhys stopped before a smooth slab of stone. The hall continued down - down in the ageless dark. The air here was tight, compact. Even my puffs of breath on the chill air seemed short-lived.
Rhysand at last released my hand, only to lay his once more on the bare stone. It rippled beneath his palm, forming - a door.
Like the gates above, it was of ivory - bone. And it its surface were etched countless images: flora and fauna, seas and clouds, stars and moons, infants and skeletons, creatures fair and foul...
It swung away. The cell was pitch-black, hardly distinguishable from the hall -
"I have carved the doors for every prisoner in this place," said a small voice within, "but my own remains my favorite."
"I'd have to agree," Rhysand said. He stepped inside, the light bobbing ahead to illuminate a dark-haired boy sitting against the far wall, eyes of crushing blue taking in Rhysand, then sliding to where I lurked in the doorway.
Rhys reached into a bag I hadn't realised he'd been carrying - no, one he'd summoned from whatever pocket between realms he used for storage. He chucked an object toward the boy, who looked no more than eight. White gleamed as it clacked on the rough stone floor. Another cone, long and sturdy - and jagged on one end.
"The calf-bone that made me the final kill when Feyre slew the Middengard Wyrm," Rhys said.
My very blood stilled. There had been many bones that I'd laid in my trap - I hadn't noticed which had ended the Wyrm. Or thought anyone would.
"Come inside," was all the Bone Carver said, and there was no innocence, no kindness in that child's voice.
I took one step in and no more.
"It has been an age," the boy said, gobbling down the sight of me, "since something new came into this world."
"Hello," I breathed.
The boy's smile was a mockery of innocence. "Are you frightened?"
A flare of the amulet's blackness flew through my chest. "Yes," I said. Never lie - that had been Rhys's first command.
The boy stood, but kept to the other side of the cell. "Feyre," he murmured, cocking his head. The orb of faelight glazed the inky hair in the silber. "Fay-ruh," he said again, drawing out the syllables as if he could taste them. At last, he straightened his head. "Where did you go when you died?"
"A question for a question," I replied, as I'd been instructed over breakfast.
The Bone Carver inclined his head to Rhysand. "You were always smarter than your forefathers." But those eyes alighted on me. "Tell me where you went, what you saw - and I will answer your question."
Rhys gave me a subtle nod, but his eyes were wary. Because what the boy had asked...
I had to calm my breathing, to think, and to keep the stone in my chest at bay. Could the Bone Carver feel it? Could he feel the evil magic pumping my blood for my cold, dead heart?
"I heard the crack," I said. Rhys's head whipped toward me. "I heard the crack when she broke my neck. It was in my ears, but also inside my skull. I felt no pain."
The Bone Carver's violet eyes seemed to glow brighter.
"My body left me, but I didn't leave it. I watched my..." I mentally cursed the slip of my tongue. "I watched Rhysand fighting her. I watched the terror of what was happening spread through the room. I felt helpless, but I didn't know I was dead until he," I pointed to Rhysand, "looked at me. I didn't know I was dead until I saw it in his eyes. Then I saw the blood that poured from my ears, my mouth, my nose..."
"But was there anyone there - were you seeing anything beyond?"
"There was only Rhysand - Rhysand and my blood and helplessness."
Rhysand's face had gone pale, his mouth a tight line. "And when I saw what she was doing to him, when I saw his blood drip from his face for the first time... I - I stood. I was dead inside my own body. I fixed myself, and yet, I sometimes still feel dead."
"Were you afraid?"
"There wasn't room for fear - only numbness, helplessness... And the need to return to those who needed me. The worst had happened, but in that darkness was only calm and quiet."
"There was no other world," the Bone Carver pushed.
"If there was, or is, I did not see it."
"No light, no portal?"
Where is it that you want to go? The question almost leaped off my tongue. "Only silence and helplessness."
"Did you have a body?"
"No."
"Did..."
"That's enough from you," Rhysand purred - the sound like velvet over the sharpest steel. "You said a question for a question. Now you've asked..." He did a tally on his fingers. "Six."
The Bone Carver leaned back against the wall and slid to a sitting position. "It is a rare day when I meet someone who comes back from true death. Forgive me for wanting to peer behind the curtain." He waved a delicate hand in my direction. "Ask it, girl."
"If there was no body - nothing but perhaps a bit of bone," I said as solidly as I could, "Would there be a way to resurrect that person? To grow them a new body, put their soul into it?"
Those eyes flashed. "Was the soul somehow preserved? Contained?"
I tried not to think about the eye ring Amarantha had worn, the soul she'd trapped inside to witness her every horror and depravity. "Yes."
"There is no way."
I almost sighed in relief.
"Unless..." The boy bounced each finger off his thumb, his hand like some pale, twitchy insect. "Long ago, before the High Fae, before man, there was a Cauldron... They say all the magic was contained inside it, that the world was born in it. But it fell into the wrong hands. And great and horrible things were done with it. Things were forged with it. Such wicked things that Cauldron was eventually stolen back at great cost," he said, those eyes peering deep into my face, slowly sliding south to my chest. "It could not be destroyed, for it had Made all things, and if it were broken, then life itself would cease to be. So it was hidden. And forgotten. Only with that Cauldron could something that is dead be reforged."
Rhysand's face was a mask of calm while the Bone Carver continued to stare at me. "Where did they hide it?"
"Tell me a secret no one knows, Lord of Night, and I'll tell you mine."
I braced myself for whatever horrible truth was about to come my way. But Rhysand said, "My right knee gets a twinge of pain when it rains. I wrecked it during the War, and its hurt ever since."
The Bone Carver bit out a harsh laugh, even as I gaped at Rhys. "You always were my favorite," he said, giving a smile I would never for a moment think was childlike. "It was once hidden away in a lake, but has since vanished. I don't know where it went to or where it is now. Its feet had once been separated from it to reel in its power, but those have been taken recently, so I suspect it is active once more - and that the wielder wants it at full power and not a wisp of it missing." His eyes reconnected with mine, a sinister smile gripping his thin lips.
Rhys merely said, "I don't suppose you know who now has the Cauldron?"
The Bone Carver pointed a small finger at me. "Promise that you'll give me her bones when she dies and I'll think about it." I stiffened, but the boy laughed. "No - I dont think even you would promise that, Rhysand."
I might have called the look on Rhysand's face a warning, but if our roles were reversed and he'd just asked me for my mate's bones... It was much more than a warning.
"Thank you for your help," Rhys said, placing a hand on my back to guide me out.
But if he knew... I turned again to the boy-creature. "I had no choice - in my death," I said.
Those eyes guttered with cobalt fire.
Rhys's hand contracted on my back, but remained. Warm, steady. And I wondered if the touch was more to reassure him that I was there, still breathing.
"I knew," I went on, "that I was dead. I also knew only helpless emptiness. I knew I was supposed to be dead, but that something dark had kept me in my body, watching my death affect those around me. I knew that if I waited for a bright light - for the darkness to take me away, that it would not come. I knew I was trapped in my life - even in death. I may have died, but my life, my consciousness, never left me. I was a captured witness to my own death and resurrection."
For a moment, those blue eyes flared brighter. Then the boy said, "You know who has the Cauldron, Rhysand. Who has been pillaging the temples. You only came here to confirm what you have long guessed."
"The King of Hybern."
Dread sluiced through my veins and pooled in my stomach. I shouldn't have been surprised, should have known but...
The carver said nothing more, waiting for another truth.
So I offered up another piece of me. "If I'd have died then, challenging Amarantha that day for what she'd done, I'd still do it all over again. And even if this stone that seeps evil into my blood is a worse fate than death, I would fight her all over again."
I dared a glance at Rhys, and there was something like devastation on his beautiful face.
But the Bone Carver grinned. "Interesting that you'd rather ask questions about the Cauldron than the gem within your ribs. It feeds off your bones. I can almost taste its presence."
Rhysand nearly growled.
"Very well. With the Cauldron, you could do other things than raise the dead. You could shatter the wall."
The only thing keeping the human lands - my family - safe from not just Hybern, but any other faeries.
"It is likely that Hybern used Amarantha as a distraction while he found the Cauldron and learned its secrets. And your resurrection of a specific individual might very well have been his first test once the feet were reunited - and now he finds that the Cauldron is pure energy, pure power," he accentuated slowly, drinking in the sight of me, staring boldly at the amulet as if he could surely see it beneath my clothing. "And like any magic, it can be depleted. So he will let it rest, let it gather strength - learn its secrets to feed it more energy, more power."
"Is there a way to stop it," I breathed.
Silence. Expectant, waiting silence.
Rhys's voice was hoarse as he said, "Don't offer him one more -"
"There is a book - The Book of Breathings. In it, written between the carved words, are the spells to negate the Cauldron's power - or control ot wholly. It's been split into two pieces, one for the mortals and one for the fae. No creature born of the earth may wield it. The Book was made to be harmless, because like calls to like - and only that which was Made can speak those spells and summon its power." He went on, about where each half was and how it would negate the Cauldron's power and how each piece was tied magically to its keeper. I was lost. Lost in the swirling vortex of power in my chest fully awakened now in the presence of the Bone Carver - at his words of only that which is Made being able to control the Caudron. Only me.
"You, however, may not even need the Book to control the Cauldron."
I froze, still as death.
The boy's nostrils flared above his cat-like smile. "Like calls to like."
But it was Rhysand who replied, "What do you mean?"
"Can you feel the stone inside your chest?"
"Yes," I breathed.
"Does it whisper to you?"
"No."
"Eno-" Rhysand tried.
"It calls to me, though. It pulls me, just as it pulled me up to my feet. It pulled me to snap my head back into place."
"How does it take form?"
I took a soft gulp. "Mist and flame, mostly."
"Mist," he asked, "or steam?"
I nearly stepped back, but Rhysand held me steady, his palm still at my back. "Steam."
The Bone Carver loosed an easy smile.
"Your turn, Feyre," he said.
I didn't dare look at Rhysand before I asked, "Is it evil? Will it... will it make me evil?"
"It is neither good nor evil. It is simply power."
"How - how long will it keep me alive?"
Those eyes burned into my own, before looking to Rhysand beside me. "You will live forever, Feyre, even when everyone and everything you love has died, you will live on. There is nothing that can kill you now."
Rhys's grip tightened almost painfully at my back before he turned me away. Neither of us bothered to say thank you. And as we headed back through the winding mountain his hand slid from my back and gripped my hand once more, a feeling I knew I could get used to.
This touch was light - gentle.
The carver picked up the bone Rhysand had brought him and weighed it in those child's hands. "I shall carve your death in here, Feyre."
Up and up into the darkness we walked, through the sleeping stone and monsters who dwelled within it. At last I said to Rhys, "What did you see?"
"You first."
"A boy - around eight; dark haired and blue-eyed."
Rhys shuddered - the most human gesture I'd ever seen him make.
"What did you see?" I pushed.
"Jurian," Rhys said. "He appeared exactly as Jurian looked the last time I saw him: facing Amarantha when they fought to the death."
I didn't want to know how to Bone Carver knew who we'd come to ask about.