I loved you from the first moment I held you in my arms.
Down and down and down.
That ancient Cauldron opening an eye to stare at her. To pin her in place.
The Cauldron dragging her into itself, into the pit of Creation, taking and taking from her, merciless despite her screaming—
Around and down, exactly as she had been pulled in by the Cauldron, crushed beneath its terrible power—
Nausea swelled, her power with it, and her foot slipped.
She had only a heartbeat to grab for the wall, but too late. Her knees banged into the steps, her face hitting a second later, and then she was twisting and careening down, blasting into the wall, ricocheting off and tumbling down step after step after step.
She flung out a hand blindly, nails biting into stone. Sparks exploded as she cried out and held on.
The world stopped moving. Her body halted its plunge.
Sprawled across the steps, hand clutching the stone, she panted, great sawing breaths that cut with each inhale. She shut her eyes, savoring the stillness, the utter lack of motion.
And in the quiet, pain set in. Barking, bleating pain across every part of her body.
The coppery tang of blood filled her mouth. Something wet and warm slid down her neck. A sniff told her it was blood, too.
And her fingernails, the ones gripping the stone steps—
Nesta blinked at her hand. She had seen sparks.
Her fingers were embedded in the stone, the rock glowing as if lit with an inner flame.
Gasping, she snatched back her hand, and the stone went dark.
But the fingerprints remained, four furrows buried in the top of the step, a single hole in the riser where her thumb had pressed.
Icy dread sluiced through her. Sent her to her battered legs, knees groaning as she sprinted upward. Away from that handprint, forever etched in stone.
“So, who won the fight?” Cassian asked the next morning as she sat on her rock and watched him go through his exercises.
He hadn’t asked at breakfast about the black eye and cut chin or how stiffly she’d moved. Neither had Mor upon her arrival. That the bruising and cuts remained at all told Nesta how bad the fall had been, but as High Fae, with her improved healing, they were already on the mend.
As a human, she supposed, the fall might have killed her. Perhaps this Fae body had its advantages. Being human, being weak in this world of monsters, was a death sentence. Her High Fae body was her best chance at survival.
Cassian’s reticence had only lasted an hour into his routine. He stood in the center of the sparring ring, panting, sweat running down his face and neck.
“What fight?” She examined her mangled nails. Even with the … whatever it was she’d flung out to catch herself, her nails had cracked. She didn’t let herself name what had come from within her, didn’t let herself acknowledge it. By dawn, it had been strangled into submission.
“The one between you and the stairs.”
Nesta cut him a glare. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Cassian began moving once more, drawing his sword and running through a series of movements that all seemed designed to hack a person in two. “You know: three in the morning, you leave your room to get shitfaced-drunk in town, and you’re in such a rush to conquer the steps that you fall down a good thirty of them before you can stop yourself.”
Had he seen the step? The handprint?
She demanded, “How do you know that?”
He shrugged.
“Are you watching me?” Before he could answer, she spat, “You were watching and didn’t come to help?”
Cassian shrugged again. “You stopped falling. If you’d kept at it, someone would have eventually come to catch you before you hit the bottom.”
She hissed at him.
He only grinned and beckoned with a hand. “Want to join me?”
“I should push you down those stairs.”
Cassian sheathed his sword down his back in one elegant movement. Five hundred years of training—he must have drawn and sheathed that sword so many times it was muscle memory.
“Well?” he demanded, an edge creeping into his voice. “If you’ve got those glorious bruises, you might as well claim it came from training and not a pathetic tumble.” He added, “How many stairs did you manage this time?”
Sixty-six. But Nesta said, “I’m not training.”
At the edge of the ring, males were watching them again. They’d been watching Cassian first, partially with awe and partially with what she could only assume was envy. No one moved like he did. No one even came close. But now their stares turned amused—mocking him.