“I’m sorry.” Nesta shifted on her feet.
The female waved a slim hand. “It’s of no consequence now. This shop keeps me busy enough that some days I forget I could ever fly in the first place.”
“No healer can repair them?”
Her face tightened, and Nesta regretted her question. “It is extremely complex—all the connecting muscles and nerves and senses. Short of the High Lord of Dawn, I’m not certain anyone could handle it.” Thesan, Nesta recalled, was a master of healing—Feyre bore his power in her veins. Had offered to use it to heal Elain from her stupor after being turned High Fae.
Nesta blocked out the memory of that pale face, the empty brown eyes.
“Anyway,” the female said quickly, “I can make inquiries to my suppliers about whether the leathers could be made warmer. It might take a few weeks, possibly a month, but I’ll send word as soon as I hear.”
“That’s fine. Thank you.” A thought clanged through Nesta. “I— How much will it cost?” She had no money.
“You work for the High Lord, do you not?” The female angled her head again. “I can send the bill to Velaris.”
“They …” Nesta didn’t want to admit how low she’d fallen—not to this stranger. “I actually don’t need the warmer clothes.”
“I thought Rhysand paid you all well.”
“He does, but I am …” Fine. If the female could be blunt, so could she. “I’m cut off.”
Curiosity flooded the female’s eyes. “Why?”
Nesta stiffened. “I don’t know you well enough to tell you that.”
The female shrugged. “All right. I can still make inquiries. Get a price for you. If you’re cold out there, you shouldn’t suffer.” She added pointedly, “No matter what the High Lord may think.”
“I think he’d rather Cassian threw me off the edge of that cliff over there.”
The female snorted. But she held out a hand toward Nesta. “I’m Emerie.”
Nesta took her hand, surprised to find her grip like iron. “Nesta Archeron.”
“I know,” Emerie said, releasing Nesta’s hand. “You killed the King of Hybern.”
“Yes.” There was no denying that fact. And she couldn’t bring herself to lie that she wasn’t the least bit smug about it.
“Good.” Emerie’s smile was a thing of dangerous beauty. She said again, “Good.” There was steel in this female. Not just in her straight spine and chin, but in her eyes.
Nesta turned toward the door and waiting cold, unsure what to do with the naked approval of what so many others had regarded either with awe or fear or doubt. “Thank you for your help.”
So strange, to speak polite, normal words. Strange to wish to offer them, and to a stranger no less.
Males and females, children darting amongst them, gawked at Nesta as she exited onto the street. A few hurried their children along. She met their stares with cool indifference.
You’re right to hide your children from me, she wanted to say. I am the monster you fear.
“Same task as yesterday?” Nesta asked Clotho by way of greeting, still half-chilled from the camp she’d departed only ten minutes earlier.
Cassian had barely spoken upon returning to Rhysand’s mother’s house, his face taut with whatever he’d dealt with at the other Illyrian villages, and Morrigan had been just as sour-faced when she’d appeared to winnow them back to the House of Wind. Cassian had dumped Nesta on the landing veranda without so much as a farewell before he pivoted to where Mor dusted herself off. Within seconds, he was carrying the blond beauty into the brisk wind.
It shouldn’t have bothered her—seeing him flying away with another female in his arms. Some small part of her knew it wasn’t remotely fair to feel that body-tightening irritation at the sight. She had pushed him away again and again, and he had no reason to believe she’d wish it differently. And she knew he had a history with Morrigan, that they’d been lovers long ago.
She’d turned from the sight, entering the House through its dining room, where she found a bowl of some sort of pork-and-bean soup waiting. A silent, thoughtful offering.
She’d just said to the House, “I’m not hungry,” before striding down to the library.
Now she waited as Clotho wrote out an answer and handed over a piece of paper.
Nesta read, There are books to be shelved on Level Five.
Nesta peered over the railing beside Clotho’s desk, silently counting. Five was … very far down. Not within the first ring of true darkness, but hovering in the dimness above it. “Nothing lives down there anymore, right? Bryaxis hasn’t come back?”