In the distance, children shrieked with laughter.
I staggered to the front gate, unlatching it with fumbling fingers that hardly registered the ice-cold metal, and took all of three steps into the street before I halted at the sight at the other end.
The street sloped down, revealing more pretty town houses and puffing chimneys, more well-fed, unconcerned people. And at the very bottom of the hill curved a broad, winding river, sparkling like deepest sapphire, snaking toward a vast expanse of water beyond.
The sea.
The city had been built like a crust atop the rolling, steep hills that flanked the river, the buildings crafted from white marble or warm sandstone. Ships with sails of varying shapes loitered in the river, the white wings of birds shining brightly above them in the midday sun.
No monsters. No darkness. Not a hint of fear, of despair.
Untouched.
The city has not been breached in five thousand years.
Even during the height of her dominance over Prythian, whatever Rhys had done, whatever he’d sold or bartered … Amarantha truly had not touched this place.
The rest of Prythian had been shredded, then left to bleed out over the course of fifty years, yet Velaris … My fingers curled into fists.
I sensed something looming and gazed down the other end of the street.
There, like eternal guardians of the city, towered a wall of flat-topped mountains of red stone—the same stone that had been used to build some of the structures. They curved around the northern edge of Velaris, to where the river bent toward them and flowed into their shadow. To the north, different mountains surrounded the city across the river—a range of sharp peaks like fish’s teeth cleaved the city’s merry hills from the sea beyond. But these mountains behind me … They were sleeping giants. Somehow alive, awake.
As if in answer, that undulating, slithering power slid along my bones, like a cat brushing against my legs for attention. I ignored it.
“The middle peak,” Rhys said from behind me, and I whirled, remembering he was there. He just pointed toward the largest of the plateaus. Holes and—windows seemed to have been built into the uppermost part of it. And flying toward it, borne on large, dark wings, were two figures. “That’s my other home in this city. The House of Wind.”
Sure enough, the flying figures swerved on what looked to be a wicked, fast current.
“We’ll be dining there tonight,” he added, and I couldn’t tell if he sounded irritated or resigned about it.
And I didn’t quite care. I turned toward the city again and said, “How?”
He understood what I meant. “Luck.”
“Luck? Yes, how lucky for you,” I said quietly, but not weakly, “that the rest of Prythian was ravaged while your people, your city, remained safe.”
The wind ruffled Rhys’s dark hair, his face unreadable.
“Did you even think for one moment,” I said, my voice like gravel, “to extend that luck to anywhere else? Anyone else?”
“Other cities,” he said calmly, “are known to the world. Velaris has remained secret beyond the borders of these lands for millennia. Amarantha did not touch it, because she did not know it existed. None of her beasts did. No one in the other courts knows of its existence, either.”
“How?”
“Spells and wards and my ruthless, ruthless ancestors, who were willing to do anything to preserve a piece of goodness in our wretched world.”
“And when Amarantha came,” I said, nearly spitting her name, “you didn’t think to open this place as a refuge?”
“When Amarantha came,” he said, his temper slipping the leash a bit as his eyes flashed, “I had to make some very hard choices, very quickly.”
I rolled my eyes, twisting away to scan the rolling, steep hills, the sea far beyond. “I’m assuming you won’t tell me about it.” But I had to know—how he’d managed to save this slice of peace and beauty.
“Now’s not the time for that conversation.”
Fine. I’d heard that sort of thing a thousand times before at the Spring Court, anyway. It wasn’t worth dredging up the effort to push about it.
But I wouldn’t sit in my room, couldn’t allow myself to mourn and mope and weep and sleep. So I would venture out, even if it was an agony, even if the size of this place … Cauldron, it was enormous. I jerked my chin toward the city sloping down toward the river. “So what is there that was worth saving at the cost of everyone else?”
When I faced him, his blue eyes were as ruthless as the churning winter sea in the distance. “Everything,” he said.
Rhysand wasn’t exaggerating.
There was everything to see in Velaris: tea shops with delicate tables and chairs scattered outside their cheery fronts, surely heated by some warming spell, all full of chattering, laughing High Fae—and a few strange, beautiful faeries. There were four main market squares; Palaces, they were called: two on this side—the southern side—of the Sidra River, two on the northern.
In the hours that we wandered, I only made it to two of them: great, white-stoned squares flanked by the pillars supporting the carved and painted buildings that watched over them and provided a covered walkway beneath for the shops built into the street level.
The first market we entered, the Palace of Thread and Jewels, sold clothes, shoes, supplies for making both, and jewelry—endless, sparkling jeweler’s shops. Yet nothing inside me stirred at the glimmer of sunlight on the undoubtedly rare fabrics swaying in the chill river breeze, at the clothes displayed in the broad glass windows, or the luster of gold and ruby and emerald and pearl nestled on velvet beds. I didn’t dare glance at the now-empty finger on my left hand.
Rhys entered a few of the jewelry shops, looking for a present for a friend, he said. I chose to wait outside each time, hiding in the shadows beneath the Palace buildings. Walking around today was enough. Introducing myself, enduring the gawking and tears and judgment … If I had to deal with that, I might very well climb into bed and never get out.
But no one on the streets looked twice at me, even at Rhysand’s side. Perhaps they had no idea who I was—perhaps city-dwellers didn’t care who was in their midst.
The second market, the Palace of Bone and Salt, was one of the Twin Squares: one on this side of the river, the other one—the Palace of Hoof and Leaf—across it, both crammed with vendors selling meat, produce, prepared foods, livestock, confections, spices … So many spices, scents familiar and forgotten from those precious years when I had known the comfort of an invincible father and bottomless wealth.
Rhysand kept a few steps away, hands in his pockets as he offered bits of information every now and then. Yes, he told me, many stores and homes used magic to warm them, especially popular outdoor spaces. I didn’t inquire further about it.
