Lucien threw him a withering look. “I’m not your enemy, you know. You can drop the aggressive brute act.”
Cassian gave him a grin that didn’t meet his eyes. “Who says it’s an act?”
Lucien let out a long sigh. “Very well, then.”
Nesta threw another series of punches, and Cassian knew she was leading up to the knockout blow. Two left jabs and a right hook that slammed into the wood so hard it splintered.
And then she stopped, her fist pressed against the wood.
Her panting breath swirled from her mouth in the frigid rain.
Slowly, she straightened, fist lowering, steam rippling through her teeth as she turned. He caught a flicker of silver fire in her eyes, then it vanished. Lucien had gone still.
Nesta stalked toward the two males. She met Lucien’s stare as she approached the archway, and said nothing before continuing into the House. As if words were beyond her.
Only when her footsteps vanished did Lucien say, “Mother spare you all.”
Cassian was already walking to the wooden beam.
A small disc of impact lay in its center, through the padding, all the way to the wood itself. It glowed. Cassian raised shaking fingers to it.
To the burn mark, still sparking like an ember.
The entire wood block was smoldering from within. He touched his palm to it. The wood was cold as ice.
The block dissolved into a pile of cinders.
Cassian stared in stunned silence, the smoking wood hissing in the rain.
Lucien came up beside him. He only said again, voice solemn, “Mother spare you all.”
CHAPTER
41
Helion, High Lord of the Day Court, arrived at the Hewn City the next afternoon on a flying horse.
He’d wanted to enter the dark city in a golden chariot led by four snow-white horses with manes of golden fire, Rhys had told Cassian, but Rhys had forbidden the chariot and horses, and let Helion know that he could winnow in or not come at all.
Hence the pegasus. Helion’s idea of a compromise.
Cassian had heard the rumors of Helion’s rare pegasuses. Myth claimed his prized stallion had flown so high the sun had scorched him black, but beholding the beast now … Well, Cassian might have been envious, if he didn’t have wings himself.
The winged horses were rare—so rare that it was said Helion’s seven breeding pairs of flying horses were the only ones left. Lore held that there had once been far more of them before recorded history, and that most had just vanished, as if they’d been devoured by the sky itself. Their population had dwindled further in the last thousand years, for reasons no one could explain.
This hadn’t been helped by Amarantha, who had butchered three dozen of Helion’s pegasuses in addition to burning so many of his libraries. The seven pegasus pairs that remained had survived thanks to being set free before Amarantha’s cronies could reach their pens in the highest tower of Helion’s palace.
Helion’s most beloved pair—this black stallion, Meallan, and his mate—hadn’t produced offspring in three hundred years, and that last foal hadn’t made it out of weaning before he’d succumbed to an illness no healer could remedy.
According to legend, the pegasuses had come from the island the Prison sat upon—had once fed in fair meadows that had long given way to moss and mist. Perhaps that was part of the decline: their homeland had vanished, and whatever had sustained them there was no longer.
Cassian let himself admire the sight of Meallan alighting on the black stones of the courtyard before the towering gates into the mountain, the stallion’s mane blowing in the wind off his jet-black wings. Few things remained in the faerie realms that could summon any sort of wonder from Cassian, but that magnificent stallion, proud and haughty and only half-tamed, snatched the breath from his chest.
“Incredible,” Rhys murmured, similar admiration shining in his face.
Feyre beamed with delight, and Cassian knew from that look that she’d be painting this beast—and possibly its stunning master as well. Azriel, too, blinked in awe as the stallion pawed at the ground, huffing, and Helion patted the pegasus’s thick, muscular neck before dismounting.
“Well met,” Rhys said, striding forward.
“It’s not the parade I wished,” Helion said, clasping Rhys’s hand, “but Meallan knows how to make an entrance.” He let out a whistle, and the pegasus pivoted gracefully despite his size, flapped those mighty wings, and leaped back into the skies to wait elsewhere for his master.
Helion grinned at Feyre, who’d watched the stallion soar into the clouds with wide eyes. He said, “I’ll take you on a ride if you wish.”