The Blood Rite would end the next day. Cassian had heard nothing of Nesta, felt nothing. But he’d barely slept. Had hardly been able to keep his focus on the party ahead as they entered a lowlying forest beyond the hills, ancient and knotted and full of hanging moss.
“I’ve never been here before,” Azriel murmured over the wind. “It feels like an old place. It reminds me of the Middle.”
Cassian kept his silence. Didn’t speak as they trailed their quarry deeper into the wood to a small lake in its center. Only when the party halted at its dark shores did Azriel and Cassian land nearby. Begin their silent tracking on foot.
The group must not have been concerned about being overheard, because Cassian could make out their words from well beyond their campsite along the shore. Twenty of them had gathered, a mixture of what looked like human nobility and soldiers. Eris’s white stallion had been hitched to a branch. But the male—
“Over here, Cassian,” Eris crooned.
Cassian whirled, and found the High Lord’s son holding a knife at his ribs.
By midday, Nesta could barely breathe. Gwyn was dragging, Emerie was panting, and they’d begun to ration their water. No matter how high they climbed, how many boulders they cleared along the narrow path, the peak grew no closer.
They saw no one else. Heard no one else.
A small mercy.
Nesta’s breath singed her lungs. Her legs wobbled. There was only the pain in her body and the relentless circling of her thoughts, as if they were vultures gathering to feast.
She just wanted to turn off her mind—
Was it possible that the Breaking wasn’t merely physical, but mental as well? That this mountain somehow dredged up every bit of her fear and sucked her mind deep into it?
They halted for lunch, if water could be called lunch. Gwyn’s leg was bleeding again, her face ghostly white. None of them spoke.
But Nesta noted their haunted eyes—knew they heard their own horrors.
They rested for as long as they dared, then moved again.
Keep going upward. That was the only way. Step to step to step.
“It looks like we’re two-thirds of the way up,” Emerie rasped from ahead.
Night had fallen, the moon bright enough to keep the Breaking’s path illuminated. To show those three stars above Ramiel’s peak. Beckoning. Waiting.
If they reached it by dawn, it’d be a miracle.
“I need to rest,” Gwyn said faintly. “Just—just another minute.” Her face was gray, her hair limp. The leathers along her leg soaked red.
Emerie had taken a spill on a loose rock two hours earlier and twisted her ankle—she was limping now as well.
They were moving too slowly.
“The Pass of Enalius isn’t too far ahead,” Emerie insisted. “If we can make it through the archway, then it’s a clear shot to the top.”
Gwyn breathed, “I’m not sure if I can.”
“Let her rest, Emerie,” Nesta said, sitting on a small boulder beside Gwyn. Dawn had to be four hours off. And then it would be over. Would it matter if they’d reached the peak by then? If they’d won? They’d gotten this far. They’d—
“How did they get here?” Gwyn asked, swearing.
Nesta went still. From her vantage point, she could see straight down. To where a beam of moonlight illuminated a familiar-looking male and six others climbing the mountain behind them. A good ways back, but closing in.
“Bellius,” Emerie whispered.
“We need to go,” Nesta said, lurching to her feet. Gwyn followed, wincing.
Nesta sized up the males. Emerie and Gwyn were too injured to fight, too exhausted, and—
“Put your arms around my neck,” Nesta said, offering her back to Gwyn.
“What?”
Nesta did it for her. She had climbed the ten thousand stairs of the House of Wind, up and down, over and over and over again. Perhaps for this. This very moment.
“We’re winning this fucking thing,” Nesta said, bending to grab Gwyn’s legs. Teeth gritted, Nesta hoisted Gwyn onto her back.
The muscles in her thighs strained, but held. Her knees did not buckle.
Her gaze lay on the terrain ahead. She would not look behind.
So Nesta began to climb, Emerie limping beside her.
With the wind as their song, Nesta and Emerie found their rhythm. They climbed, squeezing and slithering and hauling their weight. And the males fell behind, like the mountain was silently whispering, Go, go, go.
“I knew you were a lying bastard,” Cassian said through his teeth. Azriel, a step away, could do nothing. Not with Eris angling that knife—Nesta’s dagger—into Cassian’s ribs. He could have sworn flame seared into him where the knife met his leather. “But this is low, even for you.”