Azriel stopped.
Eris gasped for air as those scarred hands loosened. As Azriel turned his face toward me—
The frozen rage there rooted me to the spot.
But beneath it, I could almost see the images that haunted him: the hand Mor had yanked away, her weeping, distraught face as she had screamed at Rhys.
And now, behind us, Mor was shaking in her chair. Pale and shaking.
I only offered my hand to Azriel. “Come sit beside me.”
Nesta had already moved her seat, and an extra chair appeared beside mine.
I didn’t let my hand tremble as I kept it extended. And waited.
Azriel’s eyes slid to Eris, the High Lord’s son panting beneath him. And the shadowsinger leaned down to whisper something in his ear that made Eris blanch further.
But the shield dropped. The shadows lightened into sunshine.
Beron struck—only for his fire to bounce off a hard barrier of my own. I lifted my gaze to the High Lord of Autumn. “That’s twice now we’ve handed you your asses. I’d think you’d be sick of the humiliation.”
Helion laughed. But my attention returned to Azriel, who took my still-offered hand and rose. The scars were rough against my fingers, but his skin was like ice. Pure ice.
Mor opened her mouth to say something to Azriel, but Cassian put a hand on her bare knee and shook his head. I led the shadowsinger to the empty chair beside mine—then walked to the table myself to pour him a glass of wine.
No one spoke until I offered it to him and sat down.
“They are my family,” I said at the raised brows I received for my waiting on him. Tamlin just shook his head in disgust and finally slid that claw back into his hand. But I met Eris’s fuming gaze, my voice as cold as Azriel’s face as I said, “I don’t care if we are allies in this war. If you insult my friend again, I won’t stop him the next time.”
Only Eris knew how far that alliance went—information that could damn this meeting if either side revealed it. Information that could get him wiped off the earth by his father.
Mor was staring and staring at Azriel, who refused to look at her, who refused to do anything but give Eris that death-gaze.
Eris, wisely, averted his eyes. And said, “Apologies, Morrigan.”
His father actually gawked at the words. But something like approval shone on the Lady of Autumn’s face as her eldest son settled himself once more.
Thesan rubbed his temples. “This does not bode well.”
But Helion smirked at his retinue, crossing an ankle over a knee and flashing those powerful, sleek thighs. “Looks like you owe me ten gold marks.”
It seemed like we weren’t the only ones who’d placed bets. Even if not one of Helion’s entourage answered his mocking smile with one of their own.
Helion waved a hand, and the stacks of papers Tamlin had compiled drifted over to him on a phantom wind. With a snap of his fingers—scar-flecked from swordplay—other stacks appeared before every chair in the room. Including my own. “Replicas,” he said without looking up as he leafed through the documents.
A handy trick—for a male whose trove was not in gold, but in knowledge.
No one made any move to touch the papers before us.
Helion clicked his tongue. “If all of this is true,” he announced, Tamlin snarling at the haughty tone, “then I’d suggest two things: first, destroying Hybern’s caches of faebane. We won’t last long if they’ve made them into so many versatile weapons. It’s worth the risk to destroy them.”
Kallias arched a brow. “How would you suggest we do that?”
“We’ll handle it,” Tarquin offered. Varian nodded. “We owe them for Adriata.”
Thesan said, “There is no need.”
We all blinked at him. Even Tamlin. The High Lord of Dawn just folded his hands in his lap. “A master tinkerer of mine has been waiting for the past several hours. I would like for her to now join us.”
Before anyone could reply, a High Fae female appeared at the edge of the circle. She bowed so quickly that I barely glimpsed more than her light brown skin and long, silken black hair. She wore clothes similar to Thesan’s, and yet—her sleeves had been rolled up to the forearms, the tunic unbuttoned to her chest. And her hand—
I guessed who she was before she rose. Her right hand was solid gold—mechanical. The way Lucien’s was. It clicked and whirred quietly, drawing the eye of every immortal in the room as she faced her High Lord. Thesan smiled in warm welcome.
But her face … I wondered if Amren had modeled her own features after a similar bloodline when she’d bound herself into her Fae body: the sharp chin, round cheeks, and stunning uptilted eyes. But where Amren’s were that unholy silver, this female’s were dark as onyx. And aware—utterly aware of us gawking at her hand, her arrival—as she said to Thesan, “My Lord.”
Thesan gestured to the female standing tall before the assembled group. “Nuan is one of my most skilled craftspeople.”
Rhys leaned back in his seat, brows rising with recognition at the name, and jerked his chin to Beron, to Eris. “You might know her as the person responsible for granting your … errant son, as you called him, the ability to use his left eye after Amarantha removed it.”
Nuan nodded once in confirmation, her lips pressing into a thin line as she took in Lucien’s family. She didn’t so much as turn in Tamlin’s direction—and he certainly didn’t bother to acknowledge her, regardless of the past binding them, their mutual friend.
“And what has this to do with the faebane?” Helion demanded. Thesan’s lover seethed at the High Lord of Day’s tone, but one glance from Thesan had the male relaxing.
Nuan turned, her dark hair slipping over a shoulder as she studied Helion. And did not seem impressed. “Because I found a solution for it.”
Thesan waved a hand. “We heard rumors of faebane being used in this war—used in the attack on your city, Rhysand. We thought to look into the issue before it became a deadly weakness for all of us.” He nodded to Nuan. “Beyond her unparalleled tinkering, she is a skilled alchemist.”
Nuan crossed her arms, the sun glinting off her metal hand. “Thanks to samples attained after the attack in Velaris, I was able to create an … antidote, of sorts.”
“How did you get those samples?” Cassian demanded.