Vassa’s cerulean eyes darkened. “We were just getting to that, actually.” She gestured to Cassian. “You’ve heard the same rumors we have: they’re stirring again across the sea, and are poised to start trouble.”
“Are they stupid enough to do it is the real question,” Jurian said.
“They’re anything but stupid,” Lucien said, shaking his head. “But leaving a human scent at the site is so obvious a clue that it seems unlikely it was one of them.”
“Any move they make is heavily weighed,” Vassa said, glancing to the wall of windows overlooking the destroyed lands beyond. “Though I cannot think why any of them would capture your soldiers,” she said to Eris, who seemed to be monitoring each word out of their mouths. “There are other Fae on the continent itself, so why bother to cross the sea to take yours? And why not the Spring Court’s? Tamlin wouldn’t notice anyone missing at this point.”
Lucien cringed, and Cassian, while inclined to smirk at the thought of the asshole suffering, found himself frowning. If war was coming, they needed Tamlin and his forces in fighting shape. Needed Tamlin ready. Rhys had been visiting him regularly, making sure he’d be both on their side and capable of leading.
How Rhys had managed not to kill the High Lord of Spring was something Cassian still couldn’t understand.
But that was why Rhys was High Lord, and Cassian his blade.
He knew if he ever got the name of the human bastard who’d put his hands on Nesta, nothing would stop him from finding the man. A conversation he’d had with Nesta years ago, when she’d still been human, forever lurked in the back of his mind. How she’d stiffened at his touch, and he’d known—scented and seen the fear in her eyes and known—that a man had hurt her. Or tried to. She’d never told him the details, but she’d confirmed it enough by refusing to share the man’s name. He’d often contemplated how he’d kill the man, if Nesta gave him the go-ahead. Peeling his skin from his bones would be a good start.
His friends would understand the wound it pressed. How far the pain of that ancient wound would push him to go. A razed Illyrian camp was all that remained of the first and last time he’d let himself sink to that level of rage.
And Rhys had appointed him to play courtier. To put aside the blade and use his words. It was a joke.
Eris uncrossed his legs. “I suppose this could be to sow tensions amongst us. To make us eye each other with suspicion. Weaken our bonds.”
“Hybern would have done that,” Jurian agreed. “He might have taught them a thing or two.” Before Nesta had beheaded him.
But Vassa said, “The queens require no teaching. They were well versed in treachery before they ever contacted Hybern. And have dealt with greater monsters than him.”
Cassian could have sworn flames rippled across her blue eyes.
Both Jurian and Lucien stared at her, the former’s face utterly unreadable, and the latter’s pained. Cassian suppressed his jolt. He should have asked someone before coming here how much time remained before Vassa would be forced to return to the continent—to the sorcerer-lord at a remote lake who held her leash, and had allowed her to leave only temporarily, as part of a bargain Feyre’s father had struck.
Feyre’s father … and Nesta’s father. Cassian blocked out the memory of the man’s neck being snapped. Of Nesta’s face as it had happened. And deciding to damn caution to hell, he asked, “Which of the queens would do something this bold?”
Vassa’s golden face tightened. “Briallyn.”
The once-young, once-human queen who had been turned High Fae by the Cauldron. But in its rage at whatever Nesta had taken from it, the Cauldron had punished Briallyn. She was Made immortal Fae, yes—but she was withered into a crone. Doomed to be old for millennia.
She’d made no secret of her hatred for Nesta. Her desire for revenge.
If Briallyn made a move against Nesta, he’d kill the queen himself.
Cassian tried to think over the bellowing beast in his head that tightened every muscle of his body until only bloody violence would appease it.
“Easy,” Lucien said.
Cassian snarled.
“Easy,” Lucien repeated, and flame sizzled in his russet eye.
The flame, the surprising dominance within it, hit Cassian like a stone to the head, knocking him from his need to kill and kill and kill whatever might threaten—
They were all staring. Cassian rolled his tensed shoulders, stretching out his wings. He’d revealed too much. Like a stupid brute, he’d let them all see too much, learn too much.