She’d fainted. His relief was a primal thing in him, settling, but—
He hadn’t looked back at her in hours. Filmy white crusted her lips; her skin was flushed and sweaty. He grabbed for the canteen at his belt, unscrewing the cap, and pulled her head into his lap. “Drink,” he ordered, opening her mouth for her, his blood roaring in his ears.
Nesta stirred, but didn’t fight him when he poured a little water down her throat. It was enough to have her opening her eyes. They were glazed.
Cassian demanded, “When was the last time you had water?”
Her eyes sharpened. The first time she’d really looked at him in three solid days. But she only took the canteen and drank deep, draining it.
When she’d finished, she groaned, pushing herself from his lap, but only onto her side.
He snapped, “You should have been drinking water throughout the day.”
She stared at the rocks around them.
He couldn’t stand that look—the vacancy, the indifference, as if she no longer really cared whether she lived or died here in the wild.
His stomach twisted. Instinct bellowed at him to wrap himself around her, to comfort and soothe, but another voice, an ancient and wise voice, whispered to keep going. One more mountain, that voice said. Just one more mountain.
He trusted that voice. “We’ll camp here tonight.”
Nesta didn’t try to rise, and Cassian scanned for a flatter expanse of ground. There—twenty feet up the riverbed and to the left. Flat enough. “Come on,” he coaxed. “A few more feet and you can sleep.”
She didn’t move. As if she couldn’t.
He told himself it was because she’d fainted and might not be sturdy, but he walked back to her. Crouched and picked her up in his arms, pack and all.
She said nothing. Absolutely nothing.
But he knew it was coming—that storm. Knew that Nesta would speak again, and when she did, he’d better be ready to weather it.
Nesta found another plate waiting when she awoke to darkness. The full moon had shown her face, so bright the mountains, the rivers, the valley were illuminated enough that even the leaves on the trees far below were visible. She’d never seen such a view. It seemed like a secret, slumbering land that time had forgotten.
She was nothing before that view, these mountains. As insignificant to any of it as one of the stones that still rattled in her boot. It was a blessed relief, to be nothing and no one.
She didn’t remember falling asleep, but dawn broke, and they were again moving. Heading north, he said—showing her, in a rare moment of civility, that the mossy sides of trees always faced that way, helping him stay on course.
There was a lake, he told her during lunch. They’d reach it tonight, and stay there a day or two.
She barely heard. One foot after another, mile after mile, up and down. The mountains watched her, the river sang to her, as if guiding her onward to that lake.
No amount of driving her body into the earth would make her good. She knew it. Wondered if he did, too. Wondered if he thought he was trekking out here with her on a fool’s errand.
Or maybe it was like one of the ancient stories she’d heard as a child: he a wicked queen’s huntsman, leading her into the deep wild before carving out her heart.
She wished he would. Wished someone would cut the damned thing from her chest. Wished someone would smother the voice that whispered of every horrible thing she had ever done, every awful thought she’d had, every person she’d failed.
She had been born wrong. Had been born with claws and fangs and had never been able to keep from using them, never been able to quell the part of her that roared at betrayal, that could hate and love more violently than anyone ever understood. Elain had been the only one who perhaps grasped it, but now her sister loathed her.
She didn’t know how to fix it. How to make any of it right. How to stop being this way.
She didn’t remember a time when she hadn’t been angry. Maybe before her mother had died, but even then her mother herself had been bitter, disdainful of their father, and her mother’s disdain had become her own.
She couldn’t quell that relentless, churning anger. Couldn’t stop herself from lashing out before she could be wounded.
She was no better than a rabid dog. She had been a rabid dog with Amren and Feyre. A beast, exactly like Tamlin. She hadn’t even cared that she’d made it down the House stairs at last—did it count, when it was driven by fury?
Did she count—was she worth being counted?
It was the question that sent everything crumpling inside her.