Amren surveyed the books lying forgotten on the low table in the sitting room.
Her brows narrowed. “I had to give something up. I had to give me up. To walk out, I had to become something else entirely, something the Prison would not recognize. So I—I bound myself into this body.”
I’d never heard her stumble over a word before.
“You said someone else bound you,” Rhys questioned carefully.
“I lied—to cover what I’d done. So none could know. To escape the Prison, I made myself mortal. Immortal as you are, but … mortal compared to—to what I was. And what I was … I did not feel, the way you do. The way I do now. Some things—loyalty and wrath and curiosity—but not the full spectrum.” Again, that faraway look. “I was perfect, according to some. I did not regret, did not mourn—and pain … I did not experience it. And yet … yet I wound up here, because I was not quite like the others. Even as—as what I was, I was different. Too curious. Too questioning. The day the rip appeared in the sky … it was curiosity that drove me. My brothers and sisters fled. Upon the orders of our ruler, we had just laid waste to twin cities, smote them wholly into rubble on the plain, and yet they fled from that rip in the world. But I wanted to look. I wanted. I was not built or bred to feel such selfish things as want. I’d seen what happened to those of my kind who strayed, who learned to place their needs first. Who developed … feeling. But I went through the tear in the sky. And here I am.”
“And you gave all that up to get out of the Prison?” Mor asked softly.
“I yielded my grace—my perfect immortality. I knew that once I did … I would feel pain. And regret. I would want, and I would burn with it. I would … fall. But I was—the time locked away down there … I didn’t care. I had not felt the wind on my face, had not smelled the rain … I did not even remember what they felt like. I did not remember sunlight.”
It was to Azriel that her attention drifted—the shadowsinger’s darkness pulling away to reveal eyes full of understanding. Locked away.
“So I bound myself into this body. I shoved my burning grace deep into me. I gave up everything I was. The cell door just … unlocked. And so I walked out.”
A burning grace … That still smoldered far within her, visible only through the smoke in her gray eyes.
“That will be the cost of freeing the Carver,” Amren said. “You will have to bind him into a body. Make him … Fae. And I doubt he will agree to it. Especially without the Ouroboros.”
We were silent.
“You should have asked me before you went,” she said, that sharpness returning to her tone. “I would have spared you the visit.”
Rhysand swallowed. “Can you be—unbound?”
“Not by me.”
“What would happen if you were?”
Amren stared at him for a long while. Then me. Cassian. Azriel. Mor. Nesta. Finally back to my mate. “I would not remember you. I would not care for any of you. I would either smite you or abandon you. What I feel now … it would be foreign to me—it would hold no sway. Everything I am, this body … it would cease to be.”
“What were you,” Nesta breathed, coming around Cassian to stand at his side.
Amren toyed with one of her black pearl earrings. “A messenger—and soldier-assassin. For a wrathful god who ruled a young world.”
I could feel the questions of the others brewing. Rhys’s eyes were near-glowing with them.
“Was Amren your name?” Nesta asked.
“No.” The smoke swirled in her eyes. “I do not remember the name I was given. I used Amren because—it’s a long story.”
I almost begged her to tell it, but soft footsteps thudded, and then—
“Oh.”
Elain started—enough so that I realized she couldn’t hear us. Had no idea we were here, thanks to the shield that kept sound from escaping.
It instantly dropped. But my sister remained near the stairs. She’d covered her nightgown with a silk shawl of palest blue, her fingers grappling into the fabric as she held herself.
I went to her immediately. “Do you need anything?”
“No. I … I was sleeping, but I heard …” She shook her head. Blinked at our formal attire, the dark crown atop my head—and Rhysand’s. “I didn’t hear you.”
Azriel stepped forward. “But you heard something else.”
Elain seemed about to nod, but only backed away. “I think I was dreaming,” she murmured. “I think I’m always dreaming these days.”
“Let me get you some hot milk,” I said, putting a hand on her elbow to guide her into the sitting room.
But Elain shook me off, heading back to the stairs. She said as she climbed the first steps, “I can hear her—crying.”
I gripped the bottom post of the banister. “Who?”
“Everyone thinks she’s dead.” Elain kept walking. “But she’s not. Only—different. Changed. As I was.”
“Who,” I pushed.
But Elain continued up the stairs, that shawl drooping down her back. Nesta stalked from Cassian’s side to approach my own. We both sucked in a breath, to say what, I didn’t know but—
“What did you see,” Azriel said, and I tried not to flinch as I found him at my other side, not having seen him move. Again.
Elain paused halfway up the stairs. Slowly, she turned to look back at him. “I saw young hands wither with age. I saw a box of black stone. I saw a feather of fire land on snow and melt it.”
My stomach dropped to the floor. One glance at Nesta confirmed that she felt it, too. Saw it.
Mad. Elain might very well have gone mad—
“It was angry,” Elain said quietly. “It was so, so angry that something was taken. So it took something from them as punishment.”
We said nothing. I didn’t know what to say—what to even ask or demand. If the Cauldron had done something to her as well …
I faced Azriel, exposing my palms to him. “What does that mean?”
Azriel’s hazel eyes churned as he studied my sister, her too-thin body. And without a word, he winnowed away. Mor watched the space where he’d been standing long after he was gone.
I waited until the others had left—Cassian and Rhys slipping away to ponder the possibilities or lack thereof of our would-be allies, Amren storming off to be rid of us entirely, and Mor striding out to enjoy what she deemed as her last few days of peace in this city, a brittleness still in her voice—before I cornered Nesta in the sitting room.
“What happened at the Hewn City—with you and Amren? You didn’t mention it.”
“It was fine.”
I clenched my jaw. “What happened?”
“She brought me to a room full of treasure. Strange objects. And it …” She tugged at the tight sleeve of her gown. “Some of it wanted to hurt us. As if it were alive—aware. Like … like in all those stories and lies we were fed over the wall.”
“Are you all right?” I couldn’t find any signs of harm on either of them, and neither had said anything to suggest—
“It was a training exercise. With a form of magic designed to repel intruders.” The words were recited. “As the wall will likely be. She wanted me to breach the defenses—find weaknesses.”
“And repair them?”
“Just find the weaknesses. Repairing is another thing,” Nesta said, her eyes going distant as she frowned at the still-open books on the low table before the fireplace.
I sighed. “So … that went right, at least.”
Those eyes went razor-sharp again. “I failed. Every time. So, no. It did not go right.”
I didn’t know what to say. Sympathy would likely earn me a tongue-lashing. So I opted for another route. “We need to do something about Elain.”