He bowed to my sisters. “Thank you for your hospitality—and generosity,” he said with a warm smile. But there was something strained in it.
Elain tried to return the smile but failed.
And Nesta just looked at the three of them, then at me, and said, “The cook left dinner on the table. We should eat before it goes cold.” She didn’t wait for my agreement before striding off—right to the head of the polished cherry table.
Elain rasped, “Nice to meet you,” before hustling after her, the silk skirts of her cobalt dress whispering over the parquet floor.
Cassian was grimacing as we trailed them, Rhys’s brows were raised, and Azriel looked more inclined to blend into the nearest shadow and avoid this conversation all together.
Nesta was waiting at the head of the table, a queen ready to hold court. Elain trembled in the upholstered, carved wood chair to her left.
I did them all a favor and took the one to Nesta’s right. Cassian claimed the spot beside Elain, who clenched her fork as if she might wield it against him, and Rhys slid into the seat beside me, Azriel on his other side. A faint smile bloomed upon Azriel’s mouth as he noticed Elain’s fingers white-knuckled on that fork, but he kept silent, focusing instead, as Cassian was subtly trying to do, on adjusting his wings around a human chair. Cauldron damn me. I should have remembered. Though I doubted either would appreciate it if I now brought in two stools.
I sighed through my nose and yanked the lids off the various dishes and casseroles. Poached salmon with dill and lemon from the hothouse, whipped potatoes, roast chicken with beets and turnips from the root cellar, and some casserole of egg, game meat, and leeks. Seasonal food—whatever they had left at the end of the winter.
I scooped food onto my plate, the sounds of my sisters and companions doing the same filling the silence. I took a bite and fought my cringe.
Once, this food would have been rich and flavorful.
Now it was ash in my mouth.
Rhys was digging into his chicken without hesitation. Cassian and Azriel ate as if they hadn’t had a meal in months. Perhaps being warriors, fighting in wars, had given them the ability to see food as strength—and put taste aside.
I found Nesta watching me. “Is there something wrong with our food?” she said flatly.
I made myself take another bite, each movement of my jaw an effort. “No.” I swallowed and gulped down a healthy drink of water.
“So you can’t eat normal food anymore—or are you too good for it?” A question and a challenge.
Rhys’s fork clanked on his plate. Elain made a small, distressed noise.
And though Nesta had let me use this house, though she’d tried to cross the wall for me and we’d worked out a tentative truce, the tone, the disgust and disapproval …
I laid my hand flat on the table. “I can eat, drink, fuck, and fight just as well as I did before. Better, even.”
Cassian choked on his water. Azriel shifted on his seat, angling to spring between us if need be.
Nesta let out a low laugh.
But I could taste fire in my mouth, hear it roaring in my veins, and—
A blind, solid tug on the bond, cooling darkness sweeping into me, my temper, my senses, calming that fire—
I scrambled to throw my mental shields up. But they were intact.
Rhys didn’t so much as blink at me before he said evenly to Nesta, “If you ever come to Prythian, you will discover why your food tastes so different.”
Nesta looked down her nose at him. “I have little interest in ever setting foot in your land, so I’ll have to take your word on it.”
“Nesta, please,” Elain murmured.
Cassian was sizing up Nesta, a gleam in his eyes that I could only interpret as a warrior finding himself faced with a new, interesting opponent.
Then, Mother above, Nesta shifted her attention to Cassian, noticing that gleam—what it meant. She snarled softly, “What are you looking at?”
Cassian’s brows rose—little amusement to be found now. “Someone who let her youngest sister risk her life every day in the woods while she did nothing. Someone who let a fourteen-year-old child go out into that forest, so close to the wall.” My face began heating, and I opened my mouth. To say what, I didn’t know. “Your sister died—died to save my people. She is willing to do so again to protect you from war. So don’t expect me to sit here with my mouth shut while you sneer at her for a choice she did not get to make—and insult my people in the process.”
Nesta didn’t bat an eyelash as she studied the handsome features, the muscled torso. Then turned to me. Dismissing him entirely.
Cassian’s face went almost feral. A wolf who had been circling a doe … only to find a mountain cat wearing its hide instead.
Elain’s voice wobbled as she noted the same thing and quickly said to him, “It … it is very hard, you understand, to … accept it.” I realized the dark metal of her ring … it was iron. Even though I had told them about iron being useless, there it was. The gift from her Fae-hating soon-to-be-husband’s family. Elain cast pleading eyes on Rhys, then Azriel, such mortal fear coating her features, her scent. “We are raised this way. We hear stories of your kind crossing the wall to hurt us. Our own neighbor, Clare Beddor, was taken, her family murdered …”
A naked body spiked to a wall. Broken. Dead. Nailed there for months.
Rhys was staring at his plate. Unmoving. Unblinking.
He had given Amarantha Clare’s name—given it, despite knowing I’d lied to him about it.
Elain said, “It’s all very disorienting.”