It was Time.
The twenty-sixth string on the Harp was Time itself, and Nesta stopped it as Feyre took her last breath.
Lanthys had said as much. That even Death bowed to the final string.
That time was of no consequence to the Harp.
The string made no sound as Nesta plucked it. Only robbed the world of
it.
And the death that Nesta felt around her sister, around Rhysand, around
the babe in Mor’s arms—she bade the Mask to halt that, too. Hold it at bay.
In the beginning And in the end
There was Darkness And nothing more
A soft, familiar voice whispered the words. As they had been whispered to her long ago. As it had warned her in Oorid’s darkness. A lovely, kind female voice, sage and warm, which had been waiting for her all this time.
The room was a tableau of frozen movement, of shocked and horrified faces twisted toward her, toward Feyre and all that blood. Nesta walked through it. Past Rhys’s screaming, straining body, his face the portrait of despair and terror and pain; past grave-faced Azriel; past Cassian, gritting
his teeth as he held Rhys back. Past Amren, whose gray eyes were fixed on where Nesta had been, pure dread and something like awe in her face.
Past Mor and that too-small bundle in her arms, Elain at her side, frozen in her crying.
Nesta walked through it all, through Time. To her sister.
Do you see how it might be? that soft female voice whispered, staring out through her eyes. What you might do?
I feel nothing, Nesta said silently. Only the sight of Feyre on Death’s threshold kept her from forgetting why she was here, what she needed to do.
Is that not what you wanted? To feel nothing?
I thought that was what I wanted. Nesta surveyed the people around her. Her sisters. Cassian, who had been willing to plunge a dagger into his heart rather than harm her. But no longer. When the female voice didn’t press her, Nesta went on, I want to feel everything. I want to embrace it with my whole heart.
Even the things that hurt and hunt you? Only curiosity laced the question.
Nesta allowed herself a breath to ponder it, stilling her mind once more. We need those things in order to appreciate the good. Some days might be more difficult than others, but … I want to experience all of it, live through all of it. With them.
That wise, soft voice whispered, So live, Nesta Archeron.
Nesta needed nothing more as she took her sister’s limp hand and knelt upon the floor. Set down the Harp beside her, its silent note still reverberating, holding Time firm in its grasp.
She didn’t know what she could offer, beyond this.
Stroking Feyre’s cold hand, Nesta spoke into the timeless, frozen room, “You loved me when no one else would. You never stopped. Even when I didn’t deserve it, you loved me, and fought for me, and …” Nesta looked at Feyre’s face, Death a breath away from claiming it. She didn’t stop the tears that ran down her cheeks as she squeezed Feyre’s slender hand tighter. “I love you, Feyre.”
She had never said the words aloud. To anyone.
“I love you,” Nesta whispered again. “I love you.”
And when the Harp’s final string wavered, like a whisper of thunder on the air, Nesta covered Feyre’s body with her own. Time would resume soon. She did not have much longer.
She reached inward, toward the power that had made deathless monsters tremble and wicked kings fall to their knees, but … she didn’t know how to use it. Death flowed through her veins, yet she did not have the knowledge to master it.
One wrong move, one mistake, and Feyre would be lost.
So Nesta held her sister tightly, with Time halted around them, and she whispered, “If you show me how to save her, you can have it back.”
The world paused. Worlds beyond their own paused.
Nesta buried her face in the cold sweat of Feyre’s neck. She opened that place within herself, and said to the Mother, to the Cauldron, “I’ll give back what I took from you. Just show me how to save them—her and Rhysand and the baby.” Rhysand—her brother. That’s what he was, wasn’t he? Her brother, who had offered her kindness even when she knew he wanted to throttle her. And she him. And the baby … her nephew. Blood of her blood. She would save him, save them, even if it took everything. “Show me,” she pleaded.
No one answered. The Harp stopped its echoing.
As Time resumed, noise and movement roaring into the room, Nesta whispered to the Cauldron, her promise rising above the din, “I’ll give it all back.”
And a soft, invisible hand brushed her cheek in answer.
 |
Cassian blinked, and Nesta had gone from one side of the room to the bed. Had plucked the Harp, and now lay half-atop Feyre, whispering. No silver fire burned in her eyes. Not a cold ember. No sign of the being who’d peered out through her stare, either.
Rhys lunged against his hold, but Amren stepped to their side and hissed, “Listen.”
Nesta whispered, “I give it all back.” Her shoulders heaved as she wept.
Rhys began shaking his head, his power a palpable, rising wave that could destroy them all, destroy the world if it meant Feyre was no longer in it, even if he only had seconds to live beyond her, but Amren grabbed the nape of his neck. Her red nails dug into his golden skin. “Look at the light.”
Iridescent light began flowing from Nesta’s body. Into Feyre.
Nesta kept holding her sister. “I give it back. I give it back. I give it back.”
Even Rhys stopped fighting. No one moved.
The light glimmered down Feyre’s arms. Her legs. It suffused her ashen face. Began to fill the room.
Cassian’s Siphons guttered, as if sensing a power far beyond his own, beyond any of theirs.
Tendrils of light drifted between the sisters. And one, delicate and loving, floated toward Mor. To the bundle in her arms, setting the silent babe within glowing bright as the sun.
And Nesta kept whispering, “I give it back. I give it all back.”
The iridescence filled her, filled Feyre, filled the bundle in Mor’s arms, lighting his friend’s face so the shock on it was etched in stark relief.
“I give it back,” Nesta said, one more time, and Mask and Crown tumbled from her head. The light exploded, blinding and warm, a wind sweeping past them, as if gathering every shard of itself out of the room.
And as it faded, dark ink splashed upon Nesta’s back, visible through her half-shredded shirt, as if it were a wave crashing upon the shore.
A bargain. With the Cauldron itself.
Yet Cassian could have sworn a luminescent, gentle hand prevented the light from leaving her body altogether.
Cassian didn’t fight Rhys this time as he raced to the bed. To where Feyre lay, flush with color. No more blood spilling between her legs. Feyre opened her eyes.
She blinked at Rhys, and then turned to Nesta.
“I love you, too,” Feyre whispered to her sister, and smiled. Nesta didn’t stop her sob as she launched herself onto Feyre and embraced her.
But the gesture was short-lived, hardly the length of a blink before a healthy wail went up from the other side of the room, and—
Mor stammered, weeping, and the babe she brought to the bed was not the small, still thing she’d been holding, but a full-term winged boy. His thick cap of dark hair lay plastered to his head as he mewled for his mother. Feyre began sobbing then, too, taking her son from Mor, hardly noticing Madja suddenly leaning between her legs, inspecting what was there—the healing. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’d developed an
Illyrian’s anatomy,” the healer muttered, but no one was listening.
Not as Rhys put his arm around Feyre and together they peered at the boy—their son. Together, they wept, and laughed, and when Madja said, “Let him feed,” Feyre obeyed, wonder in her eyes as she brought him to her breast, now swollen with milk.
But Rhys watched in awe for all of a moment before he whirled to Nesta, who had slid off the bed and now stood beside the Mask. Behind her, the Crown and the Harp lay strewn on the floor. Cassian held his breath as the two of them surveyed each other.
Then Rhys fell to his knees and took Nesta’s hands in his, pressing his mouth to her fingers. “Thank you,” he wept, head bowed. Cassian knew it wasn’t in gratitude for Rhys’s own life that he knelt upon the sacred tattoos inked upon his knees.
Nesta dropped to the carpet. Lifted Rhys’s face in her hands, studied what lay in it. Then she threw her arms around the High Lord of the Night Court and held him tightly.
