At the sweetness and youth and kindness, untouched by Prythian, unaware of what I’d done, become— I backed away a step. I couldn’t do this. Couldn’t bring this upon them.
Then Elain’s face appeared over Mrs. Laurent’s round shoulder.
Beautiful—she’d always been the most beautiful of us. Soft and lovely, like a summer dawn.
Elain was exactly as I’d remembered her, the way I’d made myself remember her in those dungeons, when I told myself that if I failed, if Amarantha crossed the wall, she’d be next. The way she’d be next if the King of Hybern shattered the wall, if I didn’t get the Book of Breathings.
Elain’s golden-brown hair was half up, her pale skin creamy and flushed with color, and her eyes, like molten chocolate, were wide as they took me in.
They filled with tears and silently overran, spilling down those lovely cheeks.
Mrs. Laurent didn’t yield an inch. She’d shut this door in my face the moment I so much as breathed wrong.
Elain lifted a slender hand to her mouth as her body shook with a sob.
“Elain,” I said hoarsely.
Footsteps on the sweeping stairs behind them, then—
“Mrs. Laurent, draw up some tea and bring it to the drawing room.”
The housekeeper looked to the stairs, then to Elain, then to me.
A phantom in the snow.
The woman merely gave me a look that promised death if I harmed my sisters as she turned into the house, leaving me before Elain, still quietly crying.
But I took a step over the threshold and looked up the staircase.
To where Nesta stood, a hand braced on the rail, staring as if I were a ghost.
The house was beautiful, but there was something untouched about it. Something new, compared to the age and worn love of Rhys’s homes in Velaris.
And seated before the carved marble sitting room hearth, my hood on, hands outstretched toward the roaring fire, I felt … felt like they had let in a wolf.
A wraith.
I had become too big for these rooms, for this fragile mortal life, too stained and wild and … powerful. And I was about to bring that permanently into their lives as well.
Where Rhys, Cassian, and Azriel were, I didn’t know. Perhaps they stood as shadows in the corner, watching. Perhaps they’d remained outside in the snow. I wouldn’t put it past Cassian and Azriel to be now flying the grounds, inspecting the layout, making wider circles until they reached the village, my ramshackle old cottage, or maybe even the forest itself.
Nesta looked the same. But older. Not in her face, which was as grave and stunning as before, but … in her eyes, in the way she carried herself.
Seated across from me on a small sofa, my sisters stared—and waited.
I said, “Where is Father?” It felt like the only safe thing to say.
“In Neva,” Nesta said, naming one of the largest cities on the continent. “Trading with some merchants from the other half of the world. And attending a summit about the threat above the wall. A threat I wonder if you’ve come back to warn us about.”
No words of relief, of love—never from her.
Elain lifted her teacup. “Whatever the reason, Feyre, we are happy to see you. Alive. We thought you were—”
I pulled my hood back before she could go on.
Elain’s teacup rattled in its saucer as she noticed my ears. My longer, slender hands—the face that was undeniably Fae.
“I was dead,” I said roughly. “I was dead, and then I was reborn—remade.”
Elain set her shivering teacup onto the lowlying table between us. Amber liquid splashed over the side, pooling in the saucer.
And as she moved, Nesta angled herself—ever so slightly. Between me and Elain.
It was Nesta’s gaze I held as I said, “I need you to listen.”
They were both wide-eyed.
But they did.
I told them my story. In as much detail as I could endure, I told them of Under the Mountain. Of my trials. And Amarantha. I told them about death. And rebirth.
Explaining the last few months, however, was harder.
So I kept it brief.
But I explained what needed to happen here—the threat Hybern posed. I explained what this house needed to be, what we needed to be, and what I needed from them.
And when I finished, they remained wide-eyed. Silent.
It was Elain who at last said, “You—you want other High Fae to come … here. And … and the Queens of the Realm.”
I nodded slowly.
“Find somewhere else,” Nesta said.
I turned to her, already pleading, bracing for a fight.
“Find somewhere else,” Nesta said again, straight-backed. “I don’t want them in my house. Or near Elain.”
“Nesta, please,” I breathed. “There is nowhere else; nowhere I can go without someone hunting me, crucifying me—”
“And what of us? When the people around here learn we’re Fae sympathizers? Are we any better than the Children of the Blessed, then? Any standing, any influence we have—gone. And Elain’s wedding—”
“Wedding,” I blurted.
I hadn’t noticed the pearl-and-diamond ring on her finger, the dark metal band glinting in the firelight.
Elain’s face was pale, though, as she looked at it.
“In five months,” Nesta said. “She’s marrying a lord’s son. And his father has devoted his life to hunting down your kind when they cross the wall.”