Tarquin pointed at a few of them, and they were hauled away by his soldiers. To be questioned. And I doubted it would be pleasant.
But the others …
Tarquin stretched out his hand toward them.
It took me a heartbeat to realize why the Hybern soldiers were thrashing and clawing at themselves, some trying to crawl away. But then one of them collapsed, and sunlight caught on his face. And even with the distance, I could tell—could tell it was water now bubbling out of his lips.
Out the lips of all the Hybern soldiers as Tarquin drowned them on dry land.
I didn’t see Rhys or the others for hours—not when he gave the order that the Illyrian war-camp was to be moved from the border of the Winter Court and rebuilt at the edge of the battlefield. So Mor and I winnowed to and from the camps as the exodus began. We brought my sisters last, waiting until many of the bodies had been turned to black dust by Rhysand. The blood and mud remained, but the camp maintained too good a position to yield—or waste time finding another one.
Elain didn’t seem to care. Didn’t seem to even notice that we winnowed her. She just went from her tent to Mor’s arms, then into the same tent rebuilt in the new camp.
Nesta, however … I told her upon arriving that everyone was fine. But when we winnowed to the battlefield … She stared at that bloody, muddy plain. At the weapons soldiers of both courts were plundering from the fallen enemy.
Nesta listened to the low-level Illyrian soldiers whispering about how Cassian had thrown that spear, how he’d cut down soldiers like stalks of wheat, how he’d fought like Enalius—their most ancient warrior-god and the first of the Illyrians.
It had been a while, it seemed, since they had seen Cassian in open battle. Since they’d realized that he’d been young in the War, and now … the looks they gave Cassian as he passed … they were the same as those the High Lords had given Rhys upon seeing his power. Like them, and yet Other.
Nesta watched, and listened to it all, while the camp was built around us.
She did not ask where the bodies had gone before her arrival. She wholly ignored the camp Keir and his Darkbringers built beside ours—the ebony-armored soldiers who sneered at her, at me, at the Illyrians. No, Nesta only made sure that Elain was dozing in her tent, and then offered to help cut up linen for bandages.
We were doing just that around the early-evening fire when Rhys and Cassian approached, still in their armor, Azriel nowhere to be found.
Rhys took a seat on the log I was perched atop of, armor thudding, and silently pressed a kiss to my temple. He reeked of metal and blood and sweat.
His helmet clunked on the ground at our feet. I silently handed him a pitcher of water, and made to grab a glass when Rhys just lifted the pewter container and drank right from it. It sloshed over the sides, water pinging against the black metal coating his thighs, and when he at last set it down, he looked … tired. In his eyes, Rhys seemed weary.
But Nesta had jolted to her feet, staring at Cassian, at the helmet he had tucked into the crook of his arm, the weapons still poking above his shoulder, in need of cleaning. His dark hair hung limp with sweat, his face was mud-splattered where even the helmet had not kept it out.
But she surveyed his seven Siphons, the dim red stones. And then she said, “You’re hurt.”
Rhys snapped to attention at that.
Cassian’s face was grim—his eyes glassy. “It’s fine.” Even the words were laced with exhaustion.
But she reached for his arm—his shield arm.
Cassian seemed to hesitate, but offered it to her, tapping the Siphon atop his palm. The armor slid back a fraction over his forearm, revealing—
“You know better than to walk around with an injury,” Rhys said a bit tensely.
“I was busy,” Cassian said, not taking his focus off Nesta as she studied the swollen wrist. How she’d detected it through the armor … She must have read it in his eyes, his stance.
I hadn’t realized she’d been observing the Illyrian general enough to notice his tells.
“And it’ll be fixed by morning,” Cassian added, daring Rhys to say otherwise.
But Nesta’s pale fingers gently probed his golden-brown skin, and he hissed through his teeth.
“How do I fix it?” she asked. Her hair had been tied in a loose knot atop her head earlier in the day, and in the hours that we’d worked to ready and distribute supplies to the healers, through the heat and humidity, stray tendrils had come free to curl about her temple, her nape. Faint color had stained her cheeks from the sun, and her forearms, bare beneath the sleeves she’d rolled up, were flecked with mud.
Cassian slowly sat on the log where she’d been perched a moment before, groaning softly—as if even that movement taxed him. “Icing it usually helps, but wrapping it will just lock it in place long enough for the sprain to repair itself—”
She reached for the basket of bandages she’d been preparing, then for the pitcher at her feet.
I was too tired to do anything other than watch as she washed his wrist, his hand, her own fingers gentle. Too tired to ask if she possessed the magic to heal it herself. Cassian seemed too weary to speak as well while she wrapped bandages around his wrist, only grunting to confirm if it was too tight or too loose, if it helped at all. But he watched her—didn’t take his eyes off her face, the brows bunched and lips pursed in concentration.
And when she’d tied it neatly, his wrist wrapped in white, when Nesta made to pull back, Cassian gripped her fingers in his good hand. She lifted her gaze to his. “Thank you,” he said hoarsely.
Nesta did not yank her hand away.
Did not open her mouth for some barbed retort.
She only stared and stared at him, at the breadth of his shoulders, even more powerful in that beautiful black armor, at the strong column of his tan neck above it, his wings. And then at his hazel eyes, still riveted to her face.
Cassian brushed a thumb down the back of her hand.
Nesta opened her mouth at last, and I braced myself—
“You’re hurt?”
At the sound of Mor’s voice, Cassian snatched his hand back and pivoted toward Mor with a lazy smile. “Nothing for you to cry over, don’t worry.”
Nesta dragged her stare from his face—down to her now-empty hand, her fingers still curled as if his palm lay there. Cassian didn’t look at Nesta as she rose, snatching up the pitcher, and muttered something about getting more water from inside the tent.
Cassian and Mor fell into their banter, laughing and taunting each other about the battle and the ones ahead.
Nesta didn’t come back out again for some time.
I helped with the wounded long into the night, Mor and Nesta working alongside me.
A long day for all of us, yes, but the others … They had fought for hours. From the tight angle of Mor’s jaw as she tended to injured Darkbringers and Illyrians alike, I knew the various recountings of the battle wore on her—not for the tales of glory and gore, but for the sole fact that she had not been there to fight beside them.
But between the Darkbringer forces and the Illyrians … I wondered where she’d fight. Whom she’d command or answer to. Definitely not Keir, but … I was still chewing it over when I at last slipped between the warm sheets of my bed and curled my body into Rhys’s.
His arm instantly slid over my waist, tugging me in closer. “You smell like blood,” he murmured into the dimness.
“Sorry,” I said. I’d washed my hands and forearms before sliding into bed, but a full bath … I had barely managed the walk through the camp moments ago.
He stroked a hand over my waist, down to my hip. “You must be exhausted.”
“And you should be sleeping,” I chided, shifting closer, letting his warmth and scent wrap around me.