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Score one for the Valkyrie.
Nesta had seen and inferred enough to guess how Azriel felt about Lucien Vanserra. Why he might feel that way. She’d never said a word to anyone about it—not him, not Elain. With Feyre, she’d exchanged a few knowing glances, but nothing more.
Azriel’s eyes sharpened, the blue Siphon atop his hand flaring in emphasis. But his tone remained flat as he asked, “What are you doing today?”
Nesta made a point to eat a few bites of her eggs and salad before answering. At least someone else in this court was in as foul a mood as she was—small comfort, but she’d take it. She said at last, “Well, today I’m running errands in Velaris—half for me, half for Amren. But tomorrow Clotho needs me to pick up a present for Nyx, so I’m going to the library. And while I’m there, I’ll track down Gwyn. I need her to do something for me.”
No matter that she hadn’t seen or spoken to her friend in weeks. Az didn’t need to know that. It wasn’t his business, and considering the cold shoulder he’d given her since Bryce Quinlan’s departure, she didn’t care to tell him.
Azriel eyed her, his shadows likely feeding him whatever supplemental information they gleaned. Did they tell him how she’d barely talked to Gwyn since the Blood Rite? That she missed her friend so much it physically hurt—even though she knew it was imperative to give her space? Gwyn had been relieved to see Nesta when she emerged from the Blood Rite, of course, but that didn’t temper her fury that Nesta had decided the path for her, against the priestess’s wishes.
Did those shadows whisper that every day without her friend had eaten away at her? She had Feyre and Elain and sometimes Amren, but they didn’t hold a candle to the friendships she’d forged with Emerie and Gwyn—especially Gwyn. The sisterhood.
“What do you need Gwyn to do?” he asked at last, a shade warily. As if his shadows had told him that she might have some sort of nefarious scheme in mind.
Nesta said sweetly, even as red-hot fire kindled in her belly at the implied accusation, “I want her to record everything that happened with Bryce Quinlan in the caves.”
His surprised inhale was every bit as satisfying as she’d hoped. So was the sight of his shadows scattering from his shoulders to cluster on the floor around the table. “Are you authorized to do that?” He was deadly serious.
“Yes,” she lied. His wings twitched, his shadows leaping to his shoulders again. But he didn’t call her on it. She added drily, “Want to join?”
“No.” He twisted his teacup around once, twice. The Siphon atop his hand flickered.
Still not entirely done poking the dragon, if only to release some of her own misery, she asked with a saccharine smile, “Weren’t you supposed to be the one going to the human lands?”
He twisted the teacup again but didn’t take the bait—or even seem to realize they were still playing the game. “I’ve been pulled off that duty.”
She stilled—both at the words and the fact that he’d even told her. She dropped all obnoxiousness as she asked, “Why?”
Az didn’t answer. His shadows seethed around him like an angry swarm of wasps. Something to do with Rhys, no doubt.
She’d been on the receiving end of Rhys’s anger and contempt enough that she softened a bit and said, “Then today you should help me remember everything that happened with Bryce, so that I can relay it to Gwyn accurately when I see her tomorrow.”
His eyes lifted to hers, shadows settling, as if his curiosity had soothed them. “Why are you even bothering to record it?”
“Because I want to lay out all the pieces.” She sipped from her tea. “And I think . . .” She took another sip, sorting through how to explain it. “I think there should be a record of what happened. For history, and for us to reference. It’s knowledge that was once lost, and should not be lost again.”
That eight-pointed star was tattooed on you for a reason.
She blocked out the memory and went on, jerking her chin at him, “You were the one who found Bryce on the lawn. The narrative should probably start there.”
Az tapped a scarred finger on the table as he thought. She’d seen him playing chess with the same intensity. At last, he asked, perhaps a little reluctantly, “Not sixteen thousand years ago?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted, grateful for this relatively normal conversation, despite its unnerving subject. “Is it better to start with us and how we learned the truth of what happened, or start in chronological order, with what we now know about Theia and Fionn and the Daglan and all that?”
All that. As if two words could ever encompass what had happened at the dawn of this world.
She’d already explained to Rhys and Feyre the true history that she, Azriel, and Bryce Quinlan had learned in the tunnels beneath the Prison, but she couldn’t stop turning over the details again and again like one of Amren’s puzzle pieces.
She should have had Cassian at her side to help her. Should have had her mate there to parse every bit of information. She’d even gone so far as to pretend like a fool to talk to Cassian about it, to figure out how she’d explain it all, that she could practically recite it by heart.
Sixteen thousand years ago, this world had been ruled by cruel, petty masters: the Daglan. Near-impossible to defeat, they’d reigned over Fae and humans alike for untold millennia before that. Until a coalition of Fae led by Fionn, a legendary warrior still worshipped by the likes of Cassian and Rhys, had at last destroyed them, with the Trove and a host of other magical weapons.
The Mother knew how badly she wanted to pick Cassian’s brain about what those weapons might be—how a force of Fae, outnumbered and outpowered, might take on near-gods and win. She suspected the bastard had been talking to Rhys about it. Likely to Az, too.
It was history even Amren didn’t know, as she had been in the Prison already by that point. Some vague information had survived, but not at the level of detail they now knew. In the wake of overthrowing the Daglan, the Fae had risen as the dominant power in this world, enslaving the humans as the Fae themselves had once been enslaved.
It left a bad taste in Nesta’s mouth, no matter how many times she ran through this history in her head. Another thing on her list of issues to discuss with Cassian: How could she reconcile being newly Fae, being a part of this people, knowing what they’d once done to her ancestors? What many of them still wished to do. How did he feel about it? How did it sit with him to know that his beloved ancient heroes took their freedom and then used it to enslave others? Fionn, great warrior and savior of the Fae: enslaver of humankind.
