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 wartent, 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 wartent, 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—
She opened her eyes. “I can’t,” she rasped. “I can’t. The power—I don’t think I have it anymore.”
“It’s there. I’ve seen it in your eyes, felt it in my bones. Try again.”
She couldn’t summon it. Couldn’t face it. “I can’t.” She dropped the stones and bones into their dish.
She couldn’t endure the disappointment in Cassian’s voice, either, as he said, “All right.”
She didn’t eat dinner with him. Didn’t do anything except crawl into her bed and stare up at the darkness, and free-fall into it.
It was searching for her.
Winding through the hallways of the House, wending like a dark snake, it searched and sniffed and hunted for her.
She couldn’t move from her bed. Couldn’t open her eyes to sound the alarm, to flee.