“Mates, Rhysand? Really?”

I hadn’t even closed the door to her treasure trove before Amren was side-eying me from her desk. Amren’s home was more about function than entertaining, her sitting room doubling as a work study that greeted you upon entry. There wasn’t even a space to accommodate a dining table or kitchen.

“And when do you plan on telling her?” she said above the dull scratching of pen on paper. I refused to sit.

“If Mor had her way, she’d already know,” I said.

“That is not what I asked, boy.”

I was quiet for a moment, watching her write before staring at her book shelves. “She hates me, Amren.” All scratching stopped.

“Clearly not,” Amren said. She threw her pen against the desk and leaned back in her seat inclining her head toward the seat opposite her. When I didn’t budge, she glared.

I sat.

“One does not agree to work for someone they hate unless they have ulterior motives, and from what I smelled on that girl at dinner last night - believe me, her human heart does not hate you.”

“Well she doesn’t like me, either, and that’s not enough to burden her with a mate bond.“

Amren snorted. “With you , you mean.”

My voice was harsher than I wanted it to sound. “Amren-”

“And what about you? What about your burden, Rhysand? Who takes care of you?”

“I thought that was your job as my Second,” I said to mask the increasing anxiety in my tightening lungs. I didn’t deserve a caretaker.

“My job is to kill people, among other things, and you are people whom I might kill if you don’t explain what you’re doing here. It’s the middle of the night. The stars are out and the sky is black. Shouldn’t you be flying around and making darkness appear or some nonsense.”

“You’re certainly chipper this evening-”

One sharply crafted eyebrow lifted hotly, cutting me off. I sighed and lifted my hands in defeat, and then relayed what had happened that morning with Feyre.

“She’s still asleep. I waited all day for her to get up, to eat, to bathe - do something. But she hasn’t moved once. Nuala and Cerridwen suggested I find another way to occupy myself.”

Amren glowered. “You mean that shadow bastard you work with told them to tell you to get out and stop fussing.”

Fucking Azriel. I hadn’t even -

“ Yes ,” I ground out. “That may be a possibility.”

Amren rolled her eyes and stood up to fetch a glass decanter from the side table that swam with a dark, crimson liquid. She poured herself a glass. “I shall take care of Feyre.”

After she’d taken a sip, she stared casually out the window without another word. “What - that’s it? You’ll just take care of it?”

“Did I stutter, Rhysand? No, I did not. Now get out so I can go to sleep.” I stood, but my feet hardly moved, hands in my pockets as I gave the woman a curious look over.

Centuries. I’d known her for centuries and it still felt sometimes like I all I’d learnt in that time was her name and favorite jewel.

(Every jewel was her favorite.)

When she caught me staring, her eyes narrowed into slits. “I said get out. ”

“Goodnight to you too,” I mumbled, my foul mood growing worse, and shuffled for the door. When I turned the handle, Amren hissed one last time. “Rhysand,” she said, catching my eye. “For the record, your cousin is right.”

A gust of wind or magic caught the door and hit me on my way out.

---

Feyre knocked on the door to my study early the next morning - dressed head to toe in her fighting leathers. I tried to hide my smile at the bandoliers and straps of knives she’d hooked incorrectly into the fastenings.

And around her neck was - a soft blue stone surrounded by pearls and a gold setting. A necklace I recognized, had not last seen since -

Since I’d given it to Amren years ago.

Feyre’s head dipped as she watched me looking her over, probably assuming my thoughts had taken a nefarious turn. “And to what do I owe this pleasure?” I asked simply, folding my arms and leaning against the door frame.

Feyre took a deep breath. “I’d like to go back to the Bone Carver,” she said, her voice wary, but steady.

I smiled proudly.

“Lovely.”

---

The mist was thick upon the Prison hillside as we climbed. It creeped along at a sluggish pace, globs of it rolling past us in an ooze that did little to settle the tension our visit brought.

Feyre knelt below the boulder where I stood, drinking from one of the many trickling streams we’d met. She’d had to stop a few times and there were moments I could have sworn I’d heard the faint groans and cracks her body made as her muscles and bones worked to make each step... but she was here. And she was trying. And in her quiet focus, she hadn’t once asked to go back.

She pulled her hair over her neck to keep the wind from catching it as she drank, giving me a full view of Amren’s necklace around her neck. In the dim morning sun shrouded by all of that mist, the blue stone looked more like an eye ready to examine me.

Feyre pulled up from where she crouched and caught me staring. “What?” she asked, standing and wiping at her mouth.

“She gave you that,” I said. Amren had never given any of us anything .

She walked closer to the start of the rock and peered up at me. “It must be serious, then. The risk with-”

“Don’t say anything you don’t want others hearing,” I said, and pointed below us to that smooth expanse of stone and the prison below it. The prison that ran for miles. “The inmates have nothing better to do than to listen through the earth and rock for gossip. They’ll sell any bit of information for food, sex, maybe a breath of air.”

Feyre glanced nervously down at where I pointed, her lips parted slightly, but she nodded all the same. “I’m sorry,” she said after a beat and looked back up at me. “About yesterday.”

I extended my hand and... she took it. And allowed me to help her up the stone without flinching. She’d done so all day. I savored the feel of the touch as she came level with me and wondered when next I’d feel it - if ever again.

Strong .

Feyre was strong and resilient and determined for being here at all.

“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for,” I said. “You’re here now.” Feyre’s chest sank. “I won’t dock your pay,” I added with a wink when I saw how her chest had deflated, as though agreeing to come with me was still a loss.

Feyre didn’t react, but pushed forward and so, we continued to climb.

High, high, higher still until the mist had begun to fade away and you could actually see the full stretch of that glorious grey sea surrounding the island glimmering in the ever rising sun. Our hillside had become perilously steep forming a wall of grass and stone before us over which we could go no further.

Facing that wall, I stepped towards it, drawing my sword as I did. Feyre’s brow peaked as she eyed the blade and my hand gripping it. “Don’t look so surprised,” I said.

She sounded a bit dumbfounded when she replied. “I’ve - never seen you with a weapon.”

I brought the sword whipping around from where I held it aloft and stood back. “Cassian would laugh himself hoarse hearing that.” If you don’t marry her, you stupid prick, I will. “And then make me go into the sparring ring with him.”

And then he would win the hand of my mate beating me into a bloody mess and I’d be fucked.

“Can he beat you?”

“Hand-to-hand combat? Yes. He’d have to earn it for a change, but he’d win.” And I’d still be a bloody mess at the end of it. The only chance I might stand winning against Cassian, no magic involved whatsoever, would be if Feyre and I mated and he challenged me.

But that was never going to happen.

“Cassian is the best warrior I’ve encountered in any court, any land. He leads my armies because of it.”

Feyre’s sense of awe was short lived, though, her expression darkening. “Azriel - his hands. The scars, I mean.” We each looked away for a moment. “Where did they come from?”

Azriel.

Cauldron damn us all - Azriel .

He would never tell Feyre this story, but he’d want her to know all the same. And neither Mor nor Cassian liked talking about it for lack of having someone to throttle afterward. So...

Azriel ...

“His father had two legitimate sons,” I said, and the softness of my voice had nothing to do with not wishing to be overheard by the sneaking creatures chained below us, “both older than Azriel. Both cruel and spoiled. They learned it from their mother, the lord’s wife. For the eleven years that Azriel lived in his father’s keep, she saw to it he was kept in a cell with no window, no light. They let him out for an hour every day - let him see his mother for an hour once a week. He wasn’t permitted to train, or fly, or any of the things his Illyrian instincts roared at him to do. When he was eight, his brothers decided it’d be fun to see what happened when you mixed an Illyrian’s quick healing gifts with oil - and fire.” Feyre’s face went ghostly pale. “The warriors heard Azriel’s screaming. But not quick enough to save his hands.”

His hands.

I still remember the first day he’d come to camp and got beaten up into a bloody, broken mess same as I had on my first day. The blood was so thick over his body, none of us noticed his hands until later that night after he’d cleaned up.

My mother had insisted he stay with us and I had wondered at the time if it was because of those hands, whatever story went with them. If maybe there were some lines that even in Illyrian culture you didn’t cross and that was why she commanded he was to stay with Cass and I. Even after we allied, it had been five, six years at least before Az told us where the scars had come from...

“Were-” Feyre tried, little color returning to her cheeks, “were his brothers punished.”

A startling crack split my ears in two as bone fractured - followed by another.

And another...

And another...

“Eventually,” I admitted, though it hadn’t been enough. I gripped the hilt of my sword tighter, wishing I could winnow then and there to finish the job, our task at hand be damned.

“And Mor,” Feyre said suddenly, “what does she do for you?”

What doesn’t Mor do for me ?

“Mor is who I’ll call in when the armies fail and Cassian and Azriel are both dead.”

Mother above, save us and keep us from such a day.

“So she’s supposed to wait until then?”

“No. As my Third, Mor is my...”

Counselor.

Best friend.

Nagging pain in my ass...

“Court overseer. She looks after the dynamics between the Court of Nightmares and the Court of Dreams, and runs both Velaris and the Hewn City. I suppose in the mortal realm, she might be considered a queen.”

“And Amren?”

“Her duties as my Second make her my political advisor, walking library, and doer of my dirty work. I appointed her upon gaining my throne. But she was my ally, maybe my friend, long before that.”

And another nagging pain in my ass, I thought, looking at that amulet around Feyre’s neck and the exchange we’d held last night.

“I mean - in that war where your armies fail and Cassian and Azriel are dead, and even Mor is gone,” Feyre clarified, but it fell heavily on my ears. With the prison at our backs and bloodshed undoubtedly in our future... I’d never had to fight in a war before with my entire Inner Circle on the line.

We had each fought in the War separately, but never in waves, never one life going down before another. Always with the fear that we might lose each other, but never with the actual belief that we would.

But now, we just might. And Amren -

I blew out hot air upon the wind.

Amren.

I stared at the hard rock that led to the gates of the Prison, the chamber that had once housed the wicked beast herself. “If that day comes, I’ll find a way to break the spell on Amren and unleash her on the world. And ask her to end me first.”

“What is she?” Feyre asked and there was no curiosity behind it as usual. Only stone cold dread.

“Something else,” I said, not wanting to think of what she was before I met her. Not wanting to stomach it before I breached the Prison walls and scented her in the stone and earth we’d walk on. “Something worse than us. And if she ever finds a way to shed her prison of flesh and bone... Cauldron save us all.”

Feyre didn’t seem to want to push the subject further, for which I was glad, because she walked up to the stone before us and stared pointedly up at its height. “I can’t climb bare rock like that,” she said candidly.

My grip tightened once more on my sword as I prepared for what came next. I placed my free hand flat on the stone and both saw and felt it move, the magic in my blood singing to its keepers.

“You don’t have to,” I said before the light had finished flaring from the rock.

Feyre took a step back and stared at the gates of the Prison carved from rock and earth and bone .

---

Darkness loomed ahead of us. Grey and black and silent .

Three white orbs floated to the forefront of the channel as soon as the gates had parted, but Feyre was a pillar of stone beside me staring into that abyss. Her hand clutched at Amren’s amulet and I wondered what the beast had told her concerning it to make her think it would help her now.

Tentatively, I put a hand on her lower back with a faint pressure asking her for a step - just one. And at length, she took it, but not without holding tighter to that stone at her chest.

And together - we walked inside.

The chill hit me like a bloodmist - invasive and permanent and every bit the recollection of Amarantha’s madness. Feyre felt it too and shuddered at the touch of it, her body leaning back against my hand at her back until I stopped and damned my better judgment, letting my instincts take over to just be with her.

“Breathe,” I whispered, leaning down to her ear and savoring the scent of her, letting her be near my own and not question for one second that I was there. “One breath.”

I prayed it against her skin, her soul.

And for a moment with light behind us and darkness in front, it was just the two of us - just my mate and I standing in the black of our past.

“Where are the guards?” she said, her voice almost nonexistent. Her body still trembled. I wondered if she had noticed.

This was worse than the Middengard Wyrm, I decided. Worse than that riddle, and almost as horrible as watching her kill those three fae. What pain she’d been living with all these months that just looking at the mountain tore my mate -

Not your anything .

Tore my anything to shreds.

I grabbed her hand and Feyre threaded her fingers through mine with earnest, squeezing tightly. And then... her feet moved.

One breath.

One step.

Only her .

“They dwell within the rock of the mountain,” I said, referring to the guards. “They only emerge at feeding time, or to deal with restless prisoners. They are nothing but shadows of thought and an ancient spell.”

And those guards would help us if we needed it, but I kept my sword held firm at my side all the same.

Especially as we rounded that corner and the light from outside died . And the darkness before us suddenly felt... terrifying, constricting at my throat and lungs. The way Amarantha’s hands had looked when she would -

Feyre. I would get through this for Feyre.

Feyre who was gripping my hand so hard it hurt and throwing questions at me to keep herself distracted, not knowing it was helping me too.

“Do all the High Lords have access?” she asked as the darkness swallowed us whole.

“No. The Prison is law unto itself; the island may be even an eighth court. But it falls under my jurisdiction, and my blood is keyed to the gates.”

“Could you free the inmates?”

“No. Once the sentence is given and a prisoner passes those gates... They belong to the Prison. It will never let them out. I take sentencing people here very, very seriously.”

“Have you ever-”

“Yes.” Cauldron - yes, and hated every minute of it. And now, those prisoners sat too closely by, listening. “And now is not the time to speak of it.”

Feyre’s questions died off for a considerable time after that as we plunged on, and so too did sound... and sight... and all sense save a cold, tingling feeling emanating from the walls that pressed in close.

And it was awful.

A stillness and a language I didn’t want to speak or understand.

And it was wholly inescapable. Where you did not see it, you felt it in your bones. And where you could not feel it, you breathed it. Into every muscle that pushed forward and every vein that strained against the lungs and hearts racing to survive.

It was not the terror I’d known when Feyre died, nor even that miserable depression we’d buried ourselves in after. It was that simple anxiety that only waiting could bring as the monsters prowled about unseen just before they attacked, and you did not know if you would make it out alive or not.

“How long,” Feyre said, her words no more than air slipping between us. “How long was she in here?”

I didn’t have to ask who she meant.

“Azriel looked once,” I said. “Into archives in our oldest temples and libraries. All he found was a vague mention that she went in before Prythian was split into courts - and emerged once they had been established. Her imprisonment predates our written word. I don’t know how long she was in here - a few millennia seems like a fair guess.”

“You never asked?”

“Why bother? She’ll tell me when it’s necessary.”

When I’m so far gone, my very existence depends upon that knowledge...

“Where did she come from?”

“I don’t know. Though there are legends that claim when the world was born, there were... rips in the fabric of the realms. That in the chaos of Forming, creatures from other worlds could walk through one of those rips and enter another world. But the rips closed at will, and the creatures could become trapped, with no way home.”

Feyre’s feet dragged slightly on the stone at that. “You think she was one of them?”

“I think that she is the only one of her kind,” I said, not daring to name her, “and there is no record of others ever having existed. Even the Suriel have numbers, however small. But she - and some of those in the Prison... I think they came from somewhere else. And they have been looking for a way home for a long, long time.”

Feyre went silent once more after that, her body still shaky as we walked, exhausted and worn out from both the trek and the escapades her mind was playing with her. We stopped frequently for her to take water, but she never once allowed me to let go of her hand.

Not that I wanted to. Not for one heartbeat .

It was soon enough that the path took an ever steeper angle downward, bringing us into a steep, steep descent towards hell. Towards him .

Feyre scented him at the same time I did, though I wasn’t sure she recognized who precisely she was discovering. Or if she was stiffening because of some other fear that only her nightmares and my cruel need to protect my court could bring her.

I squeezed her hand - a reassurance. “Just a bit farther.”

“We must be near the bottom now,” she said.

My heart sped up, anticipating. This was it. This was - our chance.

Her chance.

“Past it. The Bone Carver is caged beneath the roots of the mountain.”

“Who is he? What is he?”

“No one knows. He’ll appear as he wants to appear.”

“Shape-shifter?”

I swallowed.

“Yes and no. He’ll appear to you as one thing, and I might be standing right beside you and see another.”

It was a question that had haunted me all day as we trekked up the mountain side - the Bone Carver’s form.

Feyre was already petrified to be here. I was enormously pleased and proud to find her mental shields well in tact when we winnowed to our starting point, but how easily would they crack? What would the Bone Carver transfigure himself into that might break her?

The worst part of it all was that I wouldn’t even know. The Carver would likely show me something entirely different from Feyre and if her shields held, I wouldn’t see it. I only prayed to the Cauldron that whatever the Carver chose to show her, it wouldn’t be Amarantha.

Anything but that.

“And the bone carving?”

“You’ll see.”

We arrived at a slick stone cover hiding the Bone Carver’s den. I released my grip on Feyre’s hand, which had grown sweaty in my palm with how tight her grasp had been, and touched the smooth surface willing it to release. In the blink of an eye, the stone melted into a cascade of bones, hundreds of them, each one intricately carved to detail every scene imaginable with magnificent, gruesome splendor. Beside me, Feyre inhaled sharply.

And then, the Bone Carver spoke.

“I have carved the doors for every prisoner in this place, but my own remains my favorite.”

“I’d have to agree,” I said, stepping into the Carver’s den where I was shocked by the sight of the him.

He sat low and crouched on the dirty floor of his cell drinking in the sight of Feyre, his eyes roaming the length of her body hungry for new information. I might as well have not been there for all he cared.

Feyre did not balk, and I knew the Carver could not have taken on Amarantha’s form for her, thank the Mother. But what I saw, the person I watched slide his eyes to me as I magicked a bag into my hands, was the very last person I had expected and I felt foolish to not have seen it coming.

Of course, the Carver knew .

I felt more than saw Feyre tense beside me as I pulled the bone out of my bag and tossed it at the Carver, an offering to begin our game. “The calf-bone that made the final kill when Feyre slew the Middengard Wyrm,” I said. The Carver beamed up with delight and it disgusted me to see that smirk on the new face he wore especially for me.

“Come inside,” he said. Feyre chanced but a single step. “It has been an age since something new came into this world.”

“Hello,” Feyre said, her voice far too light, the Carver far too happy. It made my stomach feel sick knowing how he would dance with her.

I missed the feel of her hand in mine.

“Are you frightened?”

“Yes.”

Never lie. Not ever. Not about anything no matter how simple or inconsequential you think it may be.

The Carver stood, but did not approach, a subtle indication he would play. “Feyre,” he said, testing the syllables out on his tongue. “Fay-ruh. Where did you go when you died?”

“A question for a question,” Feyre offered and though he did not take his eyes from her, he nodded smartly at me.

Set the rules from the start...

“You were always smarter than your forefathers,” the Carver said in my direction before proceeding with Feyre. “Tell me where you went, what you saw - and I will answer your question.”

Feyre looked at me and I nodded, urging her to go on with the hope that she didn’t see that agonizing worry flowing through my veins that this would tax her too much. And it would be all my fault if it did.

Or worse, that she would think I didn’t believe enough in her to do it, which could not have been further from the truth. The seconds dragged on and I didn’t need to breach her shields to know what thoughts flitted through her head of pain and agony and death.

Just when the Carver began to look particularly intrigued, perhaps enough to begin taunting Feyre with her weaknesses, Feyre’s hands bundled into fists at her sides and she spoke, and with each word, words so honest and haunting that I had not expected them, I started to cleave inside.

Just one step. One breath. One day.

We’ll figure it out - day by day if we have to.

“I heard the crack,” Feyre said, my eyes abandoning the Carver to watch her instead. “I heard the crack when she broke my neck. It was in my ears, but also inside my skull. I was gone before I felt anything more than the first lash of pain. And then it was dark. A different sort of dark than this place. But there was a... thread.”

My heart sped up. She couldn’t possibly have meant... when I’d thought she never -

“A tether. And I yanked on it - and suddenly I could see. Not through my eyes, but - but his...” Her hands uncurled from her fists as if a mighty weight had removed itself in admitting such a truth.

The bond.

She was talking about the mating bond, did she even realize? No, she couldn’t have. But...

She’d felt it that day. The same as I had. I had thought myself alone in feeling it between us, that Feyre could never have felt the bond between us from how intensely she hated me, much less accepted it. I had thought myself alone in reaching for the bond and for her, but after everything, she had groped for it in the darkness too.

It was all we had in death - the bond between us. We had pulled on it together.

My body went sort of weightless at the confession.

“And I knew I was dead,” Feyre continued, each word placing a grip on my heart that was equal parts ice and fire. “And this tiny scrap of spirit was all that was left of me, clinging to the thread of our bargain.”

“But was there anyone there - were you seeing anything beyond?” the Carver asked.

“There was only that bond in the darkness. And when I was Made anew, I followed that bond back - to me. I knew that home was on the other end of it. There was light then. Like swimming up through sparkling wine.”

Feyre finally looked at me then and I think my soul exploded, desperate to collide with hers and restitch itself back together in fury and passion.

Not my any-

My mate.

My mate. My mate. My mate.

Soul divine, I wanted her. Wanted more than just a hand to hold in the dark, more than just a touch to push forward through the crowded passageways of death and decay. Wanted to knit our beings together until we were one and she never cried again for lack of light or love or sun.

I can be your Light , I thought. Though I am the Night, let me be your Moon. I can reflect the Sun. Let me find the light for you, Feyre.

“Were you afraid?” the Carver next asked. Question Two.

“All I wanted was to return to - to the people around me. I wanted it badly enough I didn’t have room for fear. The worst had happened, and the darkness was calm and quiet. It did not seem like a bad thing to fade into. But I wanted to go home. So I followed the bond home.”

Home.

There was only that bond in the darkness...

The thought beat a steady rhythm in my head as everything from unbounding joy to nervousness to sorrow tore at me.

To be Feyre’s home.

“There was no other world?” the Carver asked. Question Three.

“If there was or is, I did not see it.”

“No light, no portal?”

“It was only peace and darkness.”

“Did you have a body?”

“No.”

“Did-”

“That’s enough from you,” I purred, quickly resuming my persona reserved for the outside world. Feyre didn’t need to relive every detail, she had offered him enough to make him talk. And my own thoughts were selfishly running away with themselves... If I didn’t pull back now, Feyre’s story had a chance to so thoroughly wreck me to the point of never coming back. “You said a question for a question. Now you’ve asked... six.”

Mercifully, the Carver relaxed and so too, I think, did Feyre at having the power shifted back to her.

“It is a rare day when I meet someone who comes back from true death,” the Carver said. “Forgive me for wanting to peer behind the curtain. Ask it, girl.”

With renewed confidence I was glad to hear in her voice, Feyre spoke, “If there was no body - nothing but perhaps a bit of bone, would there be a way to resurrect that person? To grow them a new body, put their soul into it.”

"Was the soul somehow preserved? Contained?”

“Yes.”

“There is no way.” Knowing, I waited. “Unless...”

There.

“Long ago, before the High Fae, before man, there was a Cauldron... They say all the magic was contained inside it, that the world was born in it. But it fell into the wrong hands. And great and horrible things were done with it. Things were forged with it. Such wicked things that the Cauldron was eventually stolen back at great cost. It could not be destroyed, for it had Made all things, and if it were broken, then life would cease to be. So it was hidden. And forgotten. Only with that Cauldron could something that is dead be reforged like that.”

The Cauldron. My first suspicion confirmed. Along with my first nightmare.

Visions of the ruined temples I’d visited with my brothers flashed through my eyes fueling my energy to persist. This wasn’t just for Feyre, I had to remind myself. My court was on the line as well and equally important.

“Where did they hide it?” I asked the Carver casually.

“Tell me a secret no one knows, Lord of Night, and I’ll tell you mine.”

I shrugged, almost enjoying toying with him. “My right knee gets a twinge of pain when it rains. I wrecked it during the War, and it’s hurt ever since.”

The Bone Carver’s laugh barked through the air. Feyre was gaping open mouthed at me, not entirely unamused herself. Had we been under different circumstances, I might have smiled at her - real and genuine.

“You always were my favorite,” the Carver said deliciously. “Very well. The Cauldron was hidden at the bottom of a frozen lake in Lapplund and vanished a long, long time ago. I don’t know where it went to - or where it is now. Millennia before you were born, the three feet on which it stands were successfully cleaved from its base in an attempt to fracture some of its power. It worked - barely.

“Removing the feet was like cutting off the first knuckle of a finger. Irksome, but you could still use the rest with some difficulty. The feet were hidden at three different temples - Cesere, Sangravah, and Itica. If they have gone missing, it is likely the Cauldron is active once more - and that the wielder wants it at full power and not a wisp of it missing.”

Hybern .

My blood growled the name. I knew what I would find in coming to the Carver, but some part of me had foolishly hoped I would be wrong regardless.

“I don’t suppose you know who now has the Cauldron,” I asked, more casually still. I felt anger wash over me as I watched the Carver point a long, bony finger at Feyre.

“Promise that you’ll give me her bones when she dies and I’ll think about it.” My veins went cold freezing hell over and I stilled, the Carver chuckling at me like a cat toying with a mouse. “No - I don’t think even you would promise that, Rhysand.”

“Thank you for your help,” I said, my voice made of steel. I moved to guide Feyre out of the room. We were done with his games. Much as his affirmation of my suspicions would have been nice, I didn’t need it to really know who was responsible. He’d told me enough to begin the real work now anyway. And the subtle threat at Feyre was enough to make me wish her and I far, far away from this prison camp.

But Feyre did not follow with me. Her body froze beneath my hand pressing in on her lower back as she turned her gaze back to the Carver, sensing how to unravel him. Little did she know she would unravel me in the process.

“There was a choice - in Death,” she said. One simple phrase and I could sense without looking at him, could feel it in the scent of him, that he was rapt with attention.

“I knew that I could drift away into the dark. And I chose to fight - to hold on for a bit longer. Yet I knew if I wanted, I could have faded. And maybe it would be a new world, a realm of rest and peace. But I wasn’t ready for it - not to go there alone. I knew there was something else waiting beyond that dark. Something good.”

The Carver looked ravenous for more when he spoke. “You know who has the Cauldron, Rhysand. Who has been pillaging the temples. You only came here to confirm what you have long guessed.”

My gut twisted. “The King of Hybern.”

Silence sifted through us as we waited, but the Carver kept quiet. I felt Feyre shifting beside me, weighing her options. There was more to give, but the bastard still wanted more in return first and Feyre - my sweet, bold Feyre - was too willing to oblige him with her pain.

“When Amarantha made me kill those two faeries,” she said, “if the third hadn’t been Tamlin, I would have put the dagger in my own heart at the end. I knew there was no coming back from what I’d done. And once I broke their curse, once I knew I’d saved them, I just wanted enough time to turn that dagger on myself. I only decided I wanted to live when she killed me, and I knew I had not finished whatever...” she paused and sounded utterly exhausted, “whatever it was I’d been born to do.”

Nothing and no one could have ever prepared me for those words. I had to quickly mask the devastation written all over my face as Feyre turned that beautiful face of hers on me and caught the heartbreak in my eyes.

Don’t you ever think that. Not for one damned moment .

That’s what I’d told her that day by the Sidra when she’d - when she’d thought of what it would be like to just... stop.

I searched my mind, my memories of that day her neck snapped. My attention had been so wholly connected with her thoughts trying to will her the last morsels of my strength just so she could keep a level head and defeat Amarantha. How had I not seen her break so entirely? To the point that she wanted to - no, I could not even think the words.

But then a vision came sweeping into my mind of Tamlin and what had really been the Attor sitting on the dais next to Amarantha as they watched Feyre slaughter the first two faeries. Realizing what was about to happen was the sole moment I’d lost my hold on Feyre’s thoughts, the exact moment the veil over the real Tamlin kneeling before her was lifted, when she’d felt...

My chest sank. The guilt of how I’d failed her in that one small moment when she felt the most alone, when I had silently promised never to leave her, wrecked me from the inside out. If it weren’t for the fact that it would mean reliving the horrors of that day, I’d go back right that very second and never leave her side ever again.

How she’d suffered. How she’d lived .

How had we all.

“With the Cauldron,” the Carver said with surprising softness, “you could do other things than raise the dead. You could shatter the wall. It is likely that Hybern has been quiet for so many years because he was hunting the Cauldron, learning its secrets. Resurrection of a specific individual might very well have been his first test once the feet were reunited - and now he finds that the Cauldron is pure energy, pure power. And like any magic, it can be depleted. So he will let it rest, let it gather strength - learn its secrets to feed it more energy, more power.”

“Is there a way to stop it?” Feyre asked.

“Don’t offer him one more-” I started to say at the Carver’s silence, but he cut me off.

“When the Cauldron was made, its dark maker used the last of the molten ore to forge a book. The Book of Breathings. In it, written between the carved words, are the spells to negate the Cauldron’s power - or control it wholly. But after the War, it was split into two pieces. One went to the Fae, one to the six human queens. It was part of the Treaty, purely symbolic, as the Cauldron had been lost for millennia and considered mere myth. The Book was believed harmless, because like calls to like - and only that which was Made can speak those spells and summon its power. No creature born of the earth may wield it, so the High Lords and humans dismissed it as little more than a historical heirloom, but if the Book were in the hands of something reforged... You would have to test such a theory, of course - but... it might be possible.”

Feyre nearly gasped beside me as she realized the implications.

The temples.

The Cauldron.

The Book.

Feyre.

“So now the High Lord of Summer possesses our piece, and the reigning mortal queens have the other entombed in their shining palace by the sea. Prythian’s half is guarded, protected with blood-spells keyed to Summer himself. The one belonging to the mortal queens.... They were crafty, when they received their gift. They used our own kind to spell the Book, to bind it - so that if it were ever stolen, if, let’s say, a High Lord were to winnow into their castle to steal it... the Book would melt into ore and be lost. It must be freely given by a mortal queen, with no trickery, no magic involved.” The Carver chuckled, amused. “Such clever, lovely creatures, humans.

“Reunite both halves of the Book of Breathings and you will be able to nullify the powers of the Cauldron. Hopefully before it returns to full strength and shatters that wall.”

Without a fight, Feyre moved with me to leave the chamber as I grabbed her hand gingerly in my own. Though she did not have the mental strength to grip my hand in return, her mere touch on my skin warmed and soothed my spirit after all the Carver had to say.

“I shall carve your death in here, Feyre,” were the Carver’s parting words and then we were gone.

We did not speak for a very long while afterwards, not until we were far away from his hideous existence. I left one awful thought or memory behind with each step, to be considered and tortured by another time. I’d had enough for one day.

“What did you see?” Feyre asked almost as soon as we’d stepped back into the sun - into the light.

“You first,” I replied, wondering if her vision would in any way match my own. But what she said surprised me.

“A boy - around eight; dark-haired and blue-eyed.”

I shuddered. It was not nearly as bad as Amarantha, but to use a child to manipulate an already abused and broken individual seemed particularly cruel.

“What did you see?” she pressed and with a deep breath, I replied.

“Jurian,” I said. “He appeared exactly as Jurian looked the last time I saw him: facing Amarantha when they fought to the death.”

Covered in blood, cackling like a madman, and vicious as hell.

It was Feyre’s turn to shudder this time.