Elain at last slid into the chair near Mor’s, her dawn-pink dress—finer than the ones she usually wore—crinkling beneath her. “Will—will many of these soldiers die?”
I cringed, but Nesta said, “Yes.” I could almost see the unspoken words Nesta reined in. Your mate might die sooner than them, though.
Mor said, “Whenever you’re ready, Elain, I’ll glamour you.”
“Will it hurt?” Elain asked.
“It didn’t when Tamlin glamoured your memories,” Nesta said, leaning against the desk.
Mor still said, “No. It might … tingle. Just act as you would as a human.”
“It’s the same as how I act now.” Elain began wringing her slender fingers.
“Yes,” I said, “but … try to keep the vision-talk … to yourself. While we’re there.” I added quickly, “Unless it’s something that you can’t—”
“I can,” Elain said, squaring her slim shoulders. “I will.”
Mor smiled tightly. “Deep breath.”
Elain obeyed. I blinked, and it was done.
Gone was the faint glow of immortal health; the face that had become a bit sharper. Gone were the pointed ears, the grace. Muted. Drab—or in the way that someone as beautiful as Elain could be drab. Even her hair seemed to have lost its luster, the gold now brassy, the brown mousy.
Elain studied her hands, turning them over. “I hadn’t realized … how ordinary it looked.”
“You’re still lovely,” Mor said a bit gently.
Elain offered a half smile. “I suppose that war makes wanting things like that unimportant.”
Mor was quiet for a heartbeat. “Perhaps. But you should not let war steal it from you regardless.”
Elain’s palm was clammy in mine as Rhys winnowed us into the human lands, Mor taking Azriel and Nesta. And though her face was calm when we found ourselves blinking at the heat and sunshine of a full mortal summer, her grip on my hand was as strong as the iron ring around her finger.
The heat lay heavy over the estate we now faced—the stone guardhouse the only opening I could see in either direction.
The only opening in the towering stone wall rising up before us, solid as some mammoth beast, so high I had to crane my neck back to spy the spikes jutting from its top.
The guards at the thick iron gates …
Rhys slid his hands into his pockets, a shield already around us. Mor and Azriel took up defensive positions at our sides.
Twelve guards at this gate. All armed, faces hidden beneath thick helmets, despite the heat. Their bodies were equally covered in plated armor, right down to their boots.
Any of us could end their lives without lifting a hand. And the wall they guarded, the gates they held … I did not think they would last long, either.
But … if we could place wards here, perhaps set up a bastion of Fae warriors … Through those open gates, I glimpsed sprawling lands—fields and pastures and groves and a lake … And beyond it … a solid, bulky fortress of dark brown stone.
Nesta had been right. It was like a prison, this place. Its lord had prepared to weather the storm from inside, a king over these resources. But there was room. Plenty of room for people.
And the would-be mistress of this prison … Head high, Elain said to the guards, to the dozen arrows now pointed at her slender throat, “Tell Graysen that his betrothed has come for him. Tell him … tell him that Elain Archeron begs for sanctuary.”
CHAPTER
52
We waited outside the gates while a guard mounted a horse and galloped down the long, dusty road to the fortress itself. A second curtain wall lay around the bulky building. With our Fae sight, we could see as those gates opened, then another pair.
“How did you even meet him,” I murmured to Elain as we lingered beneath the shade of the looming oaks outside the gate, “if he’s locked up in here?”
Elain stared and stared at the distant fortress. “At a ball—his father’s ball.”
“I’ve been to funerals that were merrier,” Nesta muttered.
Elain cut her a look. “This house has needed a woman’s touch for years.”
Neither of us said that it didn’t seem likely she would be the one.
Azriel kept a few steps away, little more than the shade of one of the oaks behind us. But Mor and Rhys … they monitored everything. The guards whose fear … the salty, sweaty tang of it grated on every nerve.
But they held firm. Held those ash-tipped arrows at us.
Long minutes passed. Then finally a yellow flag was raised at the distant fortress gates. We braced ourselves.
But one of the guards before us grunted, “He’ll come out to see you.”
We were not to be allowed within the keep. To see their defenses, their resources.
The guardhouse was as far as they’d allow us.
They led us inside, and though we tried to keep our otherness to a minimum … The hounds leashed to the walls within snarled. Viciously enough that the guards led them out.
The main room of the guardhouse was stuffy and cramped, more so with all of us in there, and though I offered Elain a seat by the sealed window, she remained standing—at the front of our company. Staring at the shut iron door.
I knew Rhys was listening to every word the guards uttered outside, his tendrils of power waiting to sense any turn in their intentions. I doubted the stone and iron of the building could hold any of us, certainly not together, but … Letting them shut us in here to wait … It rubbed against some nerve. Made my body restless, a cold sweat breaking out. Too small, not enough air—
It’s all right, Rhys soothed. This place cannot hold you.
I nodded, though he hadn’t spoken, trying to swallow the feeling of the walls and ceiling pushing on me.
Nesta was watching me carefully. I admitted to her, “Sometimes … I have problems with small spaces.”
Nesta studied me for a long moment. And then she said with equal quiet, though we could all hear, “I can’t get into a bathtub anymore. I have to use buckets.”
I hadn’t known—hadn’t even thought that bathing, submerging in water …
I knew better than to touch her hand. But I said, “When we get home, we’ll install something else for you.”
I could have sworn there was gratitude in her eyes—that she might have said something else when horses approached.
“Two dozen guards,” Azriel murmured to Rhys. A glance at Elain. “And Lord Graysen and his father, Lord Nolan.”
Elain went still as a doe as footsteps crunched outside. I caught Nesta’s eye, read the understanding there, and nodded.
Any attempt to hurt Elain … I did not care what I had promised my sister. I’d leave Nesta to shred him. Indeed, my eldest sister’s fingers had curled—as if invisible talons crowned them.
But the door banged open, and—
The panting young man was so … human-looking.
Handsome, brown-haired, blue-eyed, but … human. Solidly built beneath his light armor, tall—perhaps a mortal ideal of a knight who would swoop a beautiful maiden onto his horse and ride off into the sunset.
So at odds from the savage strength of the Illyrians, the cultivated lethalness of Mor and Amren. From my own clawing and shredding—and Nesta’s.
But a small sound came out of Elain as she beheld Graysen. As he gasped for breath, scanning her from head to toe. He staggered toward her a step—
A broad, scar-flecked hand gripped the back of Graysen’s armor, hauling him to a stop.
The man who held the young lord fully entered the cramped room.