Her legs were so pale—so delicate. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen them bare.
The queens pushed forward. Alive, she had to be alive, had to have wanted to live—
Elain sucked in a breath, her fine-boned back rising, her wet nightgown nearly sheer.
And as she rose from the ground onto her elbows, the gag in place, as she twisted to look at me—
Nesta began roaring again.
Pale skin started to glow. Her face had somehow become more beautiful—infinitely beautiful, and her ears … Elain’s ears were now pointed beneath her sodden hair.
The queens gasped. And for a moment, all I could think of was my father. What he would do, what he would say, when his most beloved daughter looked at him with a Fae face.
“So we can survive,” the dark-haired youngest breathed, eyes bright.
I fell to my knees, the guards not bothering to grab me as I sobbed. What he’d done, what he’d done—
“The hellcat now, if you’ll be so kind,” the King of Hybern said.
I whipped my head to Nesta as she went silent. The Cauldron righted itself.
Cassian again stirred, slumping on the floor—but his hand twitched. Toward Nesta.
Elain was still shivering on the wet stones, her nightgown shoved up to her thighs, her small breasts fully visible beneath the soaked fabric. Guards snickered.
Lucien snarled at the king over the bite of the magic at his throat, “Don’t just leave her on the damned floor—”
There was a flare of light, and a scrape, and then Lucien was stalking toward Elain, freed of his restraints. Tamlin remained leashed on the ground, a gag of white, iridescent magic in his mouth now. But his eyes were on Lucien as—
As Lucien took off his jacket, kneeling before Elain. She cringed away from the coat, from him—
The guards hauled Nesta toward the Cauldron.
There were different kinds of torture, I realized.
There was the torture that I had endured, that Rhys had endured.
And then there was this.
The torture that Rhys had worked so hard those fifty years to avoid; the nightmares that haunted him. To be unable to move, to fight … while our loved ones were broken. My eyes met with those of my mate. Agony rippled in that violet stare—rage and guilt and utter agony. The mirror to my own.
Nesta fought every step of the way.
She did not make it easy for them. She clawed and kicked and bucked.
And it was not enough.
And we were not enough to save her.
I watched as she was hoisted up. Elain remained shuddering on the ground, Lucien’s coat draped around her. She did not look at the Cauldron behind her, not as Nesta’s thrashing feet slammed into the water.
Cassian stirred again, his shredded wings twitching and spraying blood, his muscles quivering. At Nesta’s shouts, her raging, his eyes fluttered open, glazed and unseeing, an answer to some call in his blood, a promise he’d made her. But pain knocked him under again.
Nesta was shoved into the water up to her shoulders. She bucked even as the water sprayed. She clawed and screamed her rage, her defiance.
“Put her under,” the king hissed.
The guards, straining, shoved her slender shoulders. Her brown-gold head.
And as they pushed her head down, she thrashed one last time, freeing her long, pale arm.
Teeth bared, Nesta pointed one finger at the King of Hybern.
One finger, a curse and a damning.
A promise.
And as Nesta’s head was forced under the water, as that hand was violently shoved down, the King of Hybern had the good sense to look somewhat unnerved.
Dark water lapped for a moment. The surface went flat.
I vomited on the floor.
The guards at last let Rhysand kneel beside me in the growing pool of Cassian’s blood—let him tuck me into him as the Cauldron again tilted.
Water poured forth, Lucien hoisting Elain in his arms and out of the way. The bonds on Tamlin vanished, along with the gag. He was instantly on his feet, snarling at the king. Even the fist on my mind lightened to a mere caress. As if he knew he’d won.
I didn’t care. Not as Nesta was sprawled upon the stones.
