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Elain wouldn’t stop crying.

Azriel and Lucien were both gone from the house now, and Feyre had returned to the room a moment ago, having ensured that Nyx remained safe and unbothered. Nesta knew it had been an instinctual precaution when two males trained for bloodshed were about to come to blows so close to her baby, especially after yesterday’s encounter with Bryaxis.

Elain, weeping on Nesta’s lap, hadn’t moved from her spot on the edge of the bed. The bed that still smelled like Azriel, and sex—or rather, arousal. Nesta met Feyre’s stare over Elain’s head.

Worry shone in her youngest sister’s face—along with a sharp edge that hadn’t been there earlier. And then Feyre said, mind to mind, What do we do?

Nesta subtly shook her head. It had been unspoken between Nesta and Feyre—that they had marked how Azriel and Elain gazed at each other, how they behaved around each other. But this . . .

Nesta rubbed a comforting circle on Elain’s slender back. “It will be all right.”

“No, it won’t,” came Elain’s muffled reply. “Nothing is right and nothing will ever be right. That’s what that thing today showed me. The truth.”

Feyre laid a hand on Elain’s golden-brown hair. “Do you love Az?”

Elain cried harder. “I can’t be here,” she wept. “I can’t be here.”

“All right,” Nesta tried, swapping an alarmed look with Feyre. “Tell us where you want to go and we’ll take you there.”

“There’s nowhere to go.” Pure misery laced every word.

Nesta rubbed her sister’s back again. “We can talk in the morning. Try to get some sleep.”

Where had Azriel gone? Was he all right? Was anyone checking on Azriel, as they were checking on Elain?

Feyre said into Nesta’s mind, I’d bring Elain to the mountain cabin, but I don’t think isolation would be good for her right now.

I could take her up to the House of Wind, Nesta offered.

Bryaxis is now lying beneath it, so no. Besides, it’s too isolated as well.

Nesta raised her brows. Didn’t stop you from banishing me up there last year.

Feyre’s lips quirked upward, despite the situation. You’re made of steel—you’re different than Elain.

It was a compliment, and yet . . . Nesta’s chest ached to witness her other sister, despondent and reeling. And though she wanted nothing more than to return to her own mate and nestle into his warmth and strength, to pick apart this entire disaster with him, she said to Elain, “Get under the covers. I’ll stay with you tonight.”

“We both will,” Feyre said.

Elain said nothing, continuing to cry, but she did as she was told. Nesta and Feyre lay down with her, as they had once done in that war-tent the day of Elain’s rescue from Hybern’s grasp, as they had done all those years in the cottage.

A heavy sorrow settled upon them, as tangible as the down comforter they nestled under. After a time, the sounds of Elain’s crying evened into the deep breathing of sleep.

Nesta remained awake. Knew Feyre was awake, too, likely musing mind to mind with her mate about how to salvage the diplomatic mission they’d been hoping Lucien would helm.

Had Cassian gone to find Az? Was Mor still with him?

And though Nesta knew her obligation was to the sister slumbering at her side, part of her wondered if Azriel needed someone at his side, too. He was her brother now, in a way. And she was willing to bet he was alone.

Azriel

Az landed on the veranda at the House of Wind carelessly, hard enough that his knees protested, but he walked off the spearing pain before it could register.

He’d come to retrieve some of his clothes and weapons—all he really had to his name that he cared to bring anywhere—and then he’d return to the town house. He had no interest in staying here, not when it was now so clearly Cassian and Nesta’s home. Not when Bryaxis was dwelling at the roots of this mountain once more.

Not when he couldn’t tell if it was his own mind or some tendril of Bryaxis’s power wending its way up to him as he wondered if Cassian would throw him out in utter disgust, as Rhys had done.

Az aimed for the glass doors into the dining room, the fastest way to his bedroom a level below. He didn’t know if he could survive both of his brothers loathing him. If he could survive Mor’s disgust and disappointment.