“Eight will feed it.”
The words remained in the dark long after the voice stopped speaking. Nesta stared through the opening. Nothing moved beyond it. No footsteps. No breathing. No conveniently visible ancient monster waiting to explain itself.
Only darkness.
Beside her, Cassian had gone perfectly still. Emerie was the first to speak.
“Well…”
Nesta didn’t look away from the doorway.
“Well?”
“I was hoping one of you had something useful.”
Cassian’s hand tightened around the hilt of his sword. “Stay here.”
Nesta turned her head. “No.”
His eyes remained fixed on the darkness. “I wasn’t asking.”
“That was your first mistake.”
“Nesta.”
There it was. That particular tone. General Cassian. Commander of armies. Lord of Bloodshed. Male accustomed to issuing an order and having several thousand armed Illyrians consider following it.
Nesta had never found it especially compelling. She stepped toward the opening.
Cassian’s arm shot across her body. “No.”
This time she looked at him. He wasn’t looking at her. He was staring into the darkness beyond the doorway. At whatever had just spoken.
Nesta studied his face. “You know that voice.”
Cassian said nothing.
Emerie shifted behind them.
“Cassian.”
“I said stay here.”
Nesta’s temper flickered. “You can say it in every language you know. It isn’t going to improve the answer.”
His jaw tightened. “Something in there knows I’m here.”
“Yes.”
“It just said I’m going to feed it.”
“I heard that part.”
“And your response is to walk toward it?”
“My response is that you aren’t.”
That finally made him look at her. Nesta stepped beneath his arm. “If the mountain wants you, it can go through me first.”
His face changed. Only slightly. Enough. “Nesta.”
She turned toward the doorway. Cassian caught her hand. Not her wrist. Her hand. His fingers locked through hers. “Don’t.” The word was quiet. No command in it now. That was considerably harder to ignore. Nesta looked down at their joined hands. Then back at him.
“Do you remember the voice?”
A pause.
“No.”
A lie. Not quite. Cassian’s lies were usually better.
“You recognize it.”
His eyes shifted toward the doorway.
“I recognize something about it.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
“From the oath?”
His silence answered. Nesta squeezed his hand once. Then released it. “All the more reason you aren’t going first.”
“Nesta—”
“Seven oaths have already led us here. Whatever is inside knows you’re the eighth. And you want to walk directly into it because it called your name?”
His mouth flattened. “When you say it like that—”
“You sound stupid?”
“I was going to say reckless.”
“That too.”
Emerie came closer, the ledger still tucked against her side. “For what it’s worth, I vote Nesta.”
Cassian looked at her. “No one asked you.”
“I know. It’s freeing.”
Nesta almost smiled. Cassian did not. He looked between them. “I hate both of you.”
“Noted.”
Nesta stepped across the threshold.
And the mountain woke.
The first thing she felt was heat.
Not fire. Not even warmth. Heat so sudden and complete that her lungs locked. Nesta stumbled.
“Nesta.”
Cassian moved behind her.
She threw out a hand. “Don’t.”
He stopped at the threshold. Good. At least one of them occasionally learned. Nesta straightened. The darkness was changing. A faint silver glow spread across the floor beneath her boots, tracing lines carved so deeply into the stone that she had mistaken them for cracks. One line. Then another. Then dozens. They ran beneath her feet and outward into the chamber. A web. No. Nesta narrowed her eyes. Not a web. Threads. The same pattern Emerie had traced through the ledgers. Power passing from one oath to another. Debt to land. Land to marriage. Marriage to blood.
Seven broken promises whose consequences had somehow travelled here.
“Nesta?”
“I’m fine.”
“You made a noise.”
“I breathed.”
“You don’t usually breathe like you’re being stabbed.”
“Perhaps you’ve been doing it wrong.”
Behind him, Emerie muttered, “This is reassuring.”
Nesta crouched. She held her hand above the nearest silver line. Magic brushed her palm. Cold. Searching. Then recoiled. Nesta frowned. Interesting. She lowered her hand again. The same thing happened. The magic reached for her. Touched her. Rejected her.
Cassian noticed. “What is it?”
“It doesn’t want me.”
“Wonderful. Come back.”
“No.”
“Nesta.”
“It wants you.”
“That is precisely why you should come back.”
She stood. “Or precisely why I shouldn’t.”
She moved farther inside. The silver lines brightened. One after another. But never beneath her. They lit around her boots. Avoiding her. As though the mountain couldn’t decide what she was. Nesta understood the feeling.
The chamber slowly emerged from the darkness.
It was larger than she had expected. Much larger. The ceiling disappeared somewhere above her, swallowed by blackness. The walls curved inward, carved with Illyrian markings worn smooth by centuries.
Nesta glanced back. The entrance was little more than a pale slit in the distance now. Cassian stood within it, Emerie just behind him. Too far away for Nesta to make out either of their expressions, but she could see Cassian’s silhouette clearly enough. He hadn’t moved.
Good.
“Nesta!” His voice travelled strangely through the cavern, bouncing from wall to wall until her name seemed to come from everywhere.
“Still alive,” she called back.
A pause. “That wasn’t the question.”
“It was the relevant answer.”
Even at this distance, she could practically feel his irritation. Nesta turned away before he could invent another reason she should come back.
And stopped.
There was another door.
Not the one she had entered through. This one stood at the far end of the cavern, built directly into the mountain. No handle. No hinges. Only stone.
Nesta approached slowly.
Eight narrow grooves had been carved into its surface. Seven glowed silver. The eighth was dark.
Her stomach tightened. She crouched. The silver lines she had been following across the cavern floor converged here, each disappearing into one of the seven illuminated grooves.
Seven severed oaths.
Seven releases of power.
Seven paths leading to one door.
“Emerie!”
Her voice echoed violently.
“What?”
“The lines end here.”
“Where?”
“At another door.”
Silence.
Then Cassian:
“What door?”
Nesta nearly rolled her eyes. “The large ominous one carved into the mountain. We’ve apparently been given several.”
“Nesta.”
She leaned closer. Seven grooves. Seven silver lines. And beside them… one empty place.
“The ledger was right,” she called. “Seven opened it.”
Far behind her, Emerie shouted something Nesta couldn’t make out.
Then the eighth groove began to glow. Red.
At the same instant, Cassian screamed.
Nesta spun. “Cassian!” She could barely see him.
But she saw him fall. His silhouette disappeared from the opening.
Emerie dropped beside him.
Nesta ran.
The silver lines blurred beneath her boots. “Cassian!”
She was perhaps halfway across the cavern when something moved beneath her feet.
The eighth line. It wasn’t coming from the door. It was racing past her. Toward the entrance. Toward Cassian. Red light tore across the cavern floor.
“Nesta, stay back!” Emerie’s voice echoed.
As if that had ever worked… Nesta ran harder. By the time she reached them, Cassian was on one knee, one hand braced against the stone and the other pressed against his chest.
Red light burned beneath his leathers.
“What happened?”
Emerie had one hand around his arm. “I don’t know. You shouted about the door and then his mark—”
Cassian gasped. His entire body jerked forward. Toward the cavern. Toward the distant door Nesta had just found. Nesta caught him. The pull came again. Harder. His boots scraped across stone.
And this time Nesta understood. The eighth line wasn’t waiting at the door….. It had found him.
“Nesta.” Cassian’s voice was strangled.
She wrapped both arms around him. “I’m here.”
The red line beneath them pulsed. Far across the cavern, the eighth groove answered. Nesta couldn’t see it from here.
She didn’t need to.
She could feel it. Once. Twice. Like a heartbeat.
And from somewhere deep inside the mountain came the command.
‘Come.’
“Don’t go in.”
He laughed once through clenched teeth. “You really think that’s going to work?”
“Yes.”
His knees buckled.
Nesta moved before she thought. “Cassian!” She grabbed Cassian’s face. “Look at me.”
His eyes found hers. Pain had blown his pupils wide. “Do not cross that line.”
His mouth twisted. “You’re giving me orders now?”
“I’ve always given you orders. You’re only noticing because you’re in pain.”
“Nesta.”
“Stay.”
Something pulled him. Nesta felt it. Not metaphorically. Cassian’s entire body jerked forward again. Emerie swore. They dragged him back. The mountain pulled again. Harder.
Cassian roared. His boots scraped over stone. “Nesta!”
She wrapped both arms around him. The mating bond exploded open between them. Pain. Not his. Something else. Something old.
A command wrapped so tightly around his bones that Nesta couldn’t tell where magic ended and memory began.
‘I said, Come.’
Cassian’s body moved. Nesta held him.
‘Come.’
“No.” The word tore from her.
The mountain answered. ‘Come.’
This time she heard so loud that her ear drums almost exploded. Emerie went pale. Cassian stopped fighting them. Not because the pull had stopped. Because he was listening. Nesta saw it happen.
Recognition.
His face emptied.
“Cassian?”
He whispered something. She couldn’t hear.
“What?”
His eyes remained on the darkness. “I remember.”
The voice came again. Not from the chamber.
From behind the stone door. ‘Cassian.’
He flinched. Nesta tightened her grip. “What do you remember?”
His breathing changed. “Seventeen.” The word barely existed.
Emerie stared at him. “The oath?”
Cassian didn’t answer. His gaze had gone somewhere else entirely. Somewhere five centuries behind them.
Nesta touched his cheek. “Stay here.”
His eyes flicked to hers. “I’m here.”
“No. You’re not.”
She moved closer. “Come back.”
His hand closed around her wrist. Hard. Then loosened immediately. “I know that voice.”
Nesta waited. “Who is it?”
Cassian stared at the sealed door. “Ilyra’s father.”
Silence.
Even the mountain seemed to stop.
Emerie’s expression hardened. “Arran.”
Cassian nodded. Nesta looked at the door.
Arran.
The male whose court had benefited from coerced promises. The male whose influence appeared again and again through land, marriages and debts. The male tied to the oath Cassian had carried for five hundred years. The male who should have been dead….
“That’s impossible,” Emerie said.
Cassian laughed without humour. “Yes.”
The voice spoke again. ‘You came back.’
Cassian’s face went white.
Nesta stepped between him and the doorway. “No.”
The mountain rumbled. She didn’t care. “You don’t get him.”
Cassian’s hand caught her shoulder. “Nesta.”
She shrugged him off. “I don’t care what you are. I don’t care how long you’ve been waiting. You do not get to call him here like a dog.”
“Nesta.”
She ignored him. Apparently threatening mountains was where her life had arrived.
Fine.
She’d had worse hobbies.
The silver lines beneath her feet began to tremble. The voice laughed. ‘You brought her.’
Nesta went still. Cassian did too.
The voice continued. ‘The Made female.’
Cold slid down Nesta’s spine.
Emerie whispered, “How does he know that?”
Nesta stared at the sealed door. “Good question.”
Cassian moved in front of her so quickly his wing struck her shoulder. “Do not speak to her.”
The voice laughed again.
Nesta had never seen murder arrive so completely on Cassian’s face.
‘You still mistake obedience for choice,’ Arran said.
Cassian froze.
Nesta’s eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?”
“Nothing.” Cassian answered too quickly.
The red groove brightened. His mark answered.
Arran’s voice softened. ‘You always did.’
Nesta looked at Cassian. He wouldn’t meet her eyes. Something inside her went cold. “Cassian.”
“Not now.”
“Then when?”
“Not. Now.”
The mountain shook. Stone groaned overhead.
Emerie opened the ledger. “Perhaps we could postpone the mating dispute until we’re somewhere less likely to bury us alive.”
‘Maybe you were not part of the bargain.’
Cold slid down Nesta’s spine. Emerie whispered, “How does he know who you are?”
Nesta stared at the sealed door. “Good question.”
A pause. Then: ‘But you may be exactly what is needed.’
Cassian went utterly still. Nesta felt the change in him before she saw it. Not shame. Fear. Raw enough that he didn’t manage to hide it before turning toward her.
“Cassian?”
“Get out.”
Nesta blinked.
“What?”
“Both of you. Go back.”
Emerie lowered the ledger. “That’s going to need considerably more explanation.”
“Now.”
Nesta stepped toward him. “No.”
His attention snapped to her. “Arran knows you’re Made.”
“So does half of Prythian.”
“He shouldn’t.” Something in his voice silenced her. Cassian looked toward the door again. “He knew what you were the moment you entered. He knew I brought you.”
“You didn’t bring me anywhere.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Then what do you mean?”
Cassian dragged both hands over his face.
For the first time since they had entered the mountain, he looked genuinely lost. “I don’t remember.”
Nesta frowned. “The oath?”
“All of it.” The words came slowly now, as though admitting them made the possibility real.
“I remember Arran. I remember Ilyra. I remember what he wanted from me. I remember the blood. I remember swearing.”
His brow furrowed. “But after that…”
He stopped.
Nesta waited.
Cassian stared at nothing. “There should be more.”
The mountain seemed to tighten around them.
Emerie spoke carefully. “Why?”
“Because an oath like that doesn’t end with the promise.”
Cassian’s breathing had quickened. “There are terms. Conditions. What breaks it. What fulfils it. What happens if one of us dies.”
Nesta’s stomach turned. “And you don’t remember them.”
“No.”
“Have you ever?”
Cassian opened his mouth. Stopped. That frightened her more than anything else had. “I thought I did.”
Arran laughed softly beyond the stone. Cassian spun toward the sound. “What did you do?”
No answer.
“WHAT DID YOU DO?”
The eighth groove flared. Cassian staggered. Nesta caught his arm. This time he didn’t pull away. His eyes found hers. “What if the oath wasn’t only about Ilyra?”
Nesta went still. “What else could it have been about?”
“I don’t know.”
His gaze dropped to her hand on his arm. Then lifted slowly back to her face. “But he is happy you came.”
That landed.
Nesta looked toward the door. Arran had not sounded surprised by her. He had sounded interested. Almost satisfied. And suddenly ‘Maybe you were not part of the bargain’ didn’t sound like a dismissal.
It sounded like an opportunity. Nesta tightened her grip on Ataraxia. “Then perhaps we should find out why.”
Cassian stared at her as though she’d suggested licking the Cauldron. “Did you hear anything I just said?”
“Every word.”
“Nesta, there may be terms in that oath I cannot remember.”
“Yes.”
“Terms involving something Made. He was expecting you. He was only surprised I managed to bring you.”
“Possibly.”
“Which you are. You ARE Made.”
“I had noticed.”
His wings flared. “This isn’t funny.”
“No.” Nesta stepped closer. “It isn’t.”
Her voice softened. “And neither is letting him frighten you into sending me away before we understand what he wants.”
Cassian’s jaw tightened. “What if sending you away is the one intelligent thing I’ve done since we entered this mountain?”
“Then we’re both doomed.”
“Nesta.”
She took his hand. “Whatever you don’t remember, we’ll find it.”
His fingers closed around hers. “And if bringing you here was part of it?”
Nesta looked toward the sealed door. “Then he has made a very unfortunate miscalculation.”
Cassian’s mouth twitched despite himself. “Which is?”
“He thinks you brought me.”
She drew Ataraxia.
“I came on my own.”
Something struck Cassian.
His hand tore from hers. He staggered backwards with a sharp gasp, one wing slamming into the stone.
“Cassian.” Nesta reached for him.
“Don’t.” Not a warning. A plea. His eyes were open, but he wasn’t looking at her. The mark beneath his leathers burned red. And suddenly—
Rain.
Cassian could hear rain.
Not the mountain. Not Nesta calling his name.
Rain against glass. A fire burning low somewhere behind him. And a woman laughing.
Ilyra.
She was sitting on the floor with her back against his legs, dark hair loose down her spine while he attempted to untangle something caught in it.
A twig.
No.
Several twigs. “You could simply stop flying into trees,” he heard himself say.
“I could.”
She tipped her head back until she could look at him upside down. “But then what would you complain about?”
Young.
She looked so fucking young.
So did his hands.
No scars across two of the knuckles.
No siphons.
One of Ilyra’s hands came up and caught his. She kissed the centre of his palm. Casually. As though she’d done it a hundred times. As though there would be a hundred more.
The memory broke.
Another took its place.
A bed. Morning light. Ilyra asleep beside him. His wing curved over both of them. Her clothes on the floor. His knife on the table. Two cups beside it.
Two.
Cassian couldn’t breathe.
Another—
Ilyra furious with him.
“You cannot keep doing this.”
“Doing what?”
“Deciding you’ll die first and calling it protection.”
Another—
Her hand in his. Running. Blood. Someone shouting behind them.
Another—
Ilyra crying.
Not delicately. Not beautifully. Her forehead pressed against his chest while his arms held her so tightly he could feel every breath she took.
“I don’t want to lose you.”
“You won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Ilyra—”
“Promise me.”
The memory twisted.
Cassian tried to hold onto it. “What did I promise?” His own voice echoed strangely through the fragment.
Ilyra lifted her face. But before she could answer…. Pain. A blade. Blood. Her blood. Too much of it. “No.”
The cavern crashed back around him. Cassian hit his knees. “Nesta—”
She was already there. Her hands caught his shoulders. “What happened?”
He couldn’t answer. He could still smell rain. Could still feel Ilyra’s hair between his fingers. Could still feel her sleeping beneath his wing. Things he had not remembered five minutes ago. Things he had not remembered for centuries.
Nesta crouched in front of him. “Cassian. Look at me.”
He did. And whatever she saw in his face made her expression change. “What did you see?”
“I lived with her.”
The words sounded absurd. Emerie went very still. Nesta didn’t move.
“What?”
“I lived with her.”
He looked toward the sealed door.
“I don’t know for how long.”
His breathing turned ragged.
“There was a house. Or rooms. I don’t know. We slept together. Ate together. We fought.”
A broken laugh escaped him. “She flew into fucking trees.”
Nesta said nothing.
Cassian pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead as if he could force the rest out. “I knew the way she slept.” That was the part that frightened him. Not the blood. Not the oath. Not Arran.
That.
He knew the way Ilyra slept.
And until thirty seconds ago, he hadn’t remembered ever waking beside her.
Nesta’s voice was very quiet. “You loved her.”
Cassian looked at her. “I don’t know.” The answer came too quickly. He shut his eyes. “I don’t remember.”
Another pulse tore through the mark.
Cassian doubled over. And this time there was no image. Only feeling.
Loss.
So violent it emptied his lungs. Grief without a memory attached to it. Love without a face.
Five hundred years collapsed into one impossible certainty: Ilyra.
He had to get to Ilyra.
Cassian surged to his feet.
Nesta caught his arm. “Cassian.”
“She died.”
The words came from somewhere else. Somewhere newly opened.
Nesta stared at him. “What?”
“Ilyra died. MY Ilyra died.” He knew that. He remembered that. Not how. Not when. But he remembered holding something warm that became cold. He remembered screaming until his throat bled. He remembered—The oath.
Cassian stopped. His face changed.
Emerie saw it. “What?”
Cassian looked down at the mark over his heart. “If she died…”
Nesta followed his gaze.
He spoke slowly. “The oath should have ended.”
Silence.
The mountain pulsed beneath their feet.
Emerie looked between them. “And the oath didn’t.”
“No.”
Cassian stared at the sealed door. The pull inside his chest had changed. It wasn’t simply magic dragging him forward anymore. There was something beneath it now. Something horribly familiar. Something that felt like coming home.
His voice dropped. “There was more.”
Nesta’s grip tightened on Ataraxia. “To the oath?”
Cassian nodded. “I don’t remember it.”
From beyond the stone came Arran’s voice. Soft. Satisfied. ‘You’re beginning to.’
Cassian lunged toward the door. Nesta barely caught him. “Cassian!”
“Open the fucking door!”
The mountain answered. The eighth groove blazed red. Cassian screamed. His mark burned through his leathers. The smell of scorched fabric filled the chamber.
Nesta grabbed him. “Stop!”
“OPEN IT!”
He struck the stone. Blood burst across his knuckles. The door drank it. Every glowing line in the chamber went black. For one heartbeat there was nothing. Then the eighth groove turned silver.
Emerie whispered: “Cassian.”
Too late. The door opened.
Cold air spilled through. Nesta held Ataraxia in front of them.
Cassian stepped forward. She caught him. “No.”
His breathing was ragged. “Nesta.”
“You are not going first.”
“She could be alive.”
“And that’s exactly why you’re not going first.”
His eyes burned. “Move.”
“No.”
“Nesta.”
“If Ilyra is alive after five hundred years, then something kept her alive.”
His face twisted. “I know.”
“If Arran is alive after five hundred years, something kept him alive.”
“I know.”
“And something has spent seven broken oaths opening this door so it could get to you.”
“I know!”
His shout cracked through the chamber. Nesta didn’t move. Cassian dragged a hand through his hair. For one second, the general disappeared. The warrior disappeared. The five-hundred-year-old male disappeared.
There was only the seventeen-year-old boy who had made a promise and apparently never forgiven himself for surviving it.
His voice broke. “She could be alive.”
Nesta’s anger vanished. She took his face between her hands. “I know.”
His eyes closed. “If she is—”
“We find her.”
“And if she’s—”
“We find her.”
He opened his eyes. Nesta held them. “But we do it together.”
Something in his face softened. Barely. “I still think I should go first.”
Nesta kissed him.
Hard.
Brief.
Mostly to shut him up. When she pulled away, Emerie was studying the ceiling with heroic dedication. Nesta turned toward the open doorway.
“No.” She raised Ataraxia. “If the mountain wants you…”
Cassian sighed behind her. “We’ve established this.”
“…it goes through me.”
And Nesta stepped into the dark.
The passage beyond the door descended. Not toward Ramiel. Into it. Nesta could feel the difference immediately. The mountain above them had always felt ancient. This felt inhabited. Not by a person. By memory. Their footsteps echoed.
Cassian stayed close enough that his wing occasionally brushed her shoulder. Emerie followed with the ledger open. No one spoke. Then Nesta saw the first chain. It hung from the wall. Broken. The second lay across the floor. Broken. The third. The fourth. Seven.
Each snapped cleanly through the centre. Emerie stopped. “The oaths.”
Nesta nodded.
Seven chains. Seven broken promises. Then they reached the eighth. It wasn’t broken. It disappeared through the wall. Cassian touched his chest.
The chain moved.
Nesta drew her sword higher. “Don’t touch it.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“You plan poorly.”
“So I’ve been told.”
A sound came from ahead. Not Arran. Something softer.
A scrape.
Then breathing. Human breathing.
Cassian stopped. Nesta looked back. He had gone utterly still.
Again came the sound. A chain dragging over stone. Then… “Cassian?”
A woman’s voice.
Weak. Disbelieving.
Cassian’s sword fell from his hand. It struck the stone. Nesta turned toward the darkness.
A figure stepped into the faint silver light.
A woman.
Thin.
Barefoot.
Dark hair hanging almost to her waist.
An iron collar circled her throat. And carved directly into the metal was the same mark Cassian carried over his heart. Cassian made a sound Nesta had never heard from him before. Not a word. Not quite.
The woman stared at him. Tears filled her eyes. “You came.”
Cassian couldn’t move.
Nesta could. She stepped in front of him. Ataraxia raised.
The woman’s gaze shifted to her. Then to the sword. Then back to Nesta’s face. And she smiled. Not kindly. Not cruelly. Knowingly. “You must be Nesta.”
Nesta’s blood went cold.
Behind her, Cassian whispered: “Ilyra.”
And somewhere deeper beneath Ramiel, Arran began to laugh.
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