A Court of Rage and Fire

Chapter 11

Nesta,

Enjoy the next few days without me, because you will beg for a reprieve from my attentions when I return. Feel no obligation to entertain any horrid guests as they trickle in, but Soup and Oatmeal would certainly not mind your company. Misty will never be far if you need her.

Yours,

Eris

Nesta admired the flourished calligraphy of the note, which she had found shoved under her door this morning, one last time. She curled her fingers around the paper and opened the void in her chest where everything she had ever buried or shoved down lived. All her resentment, her self-loathing, her rage, misplaced and righteous alike. Her old loneliness, which had waned these last days but returned to hit her like a brick wall when she first read the note. They all blended together to crack her chest in two as a ragged breath escaped her lips and her fingers slowly opened to reveal the silver flames in her palm.

The flames burned ice-cold and grew ever so slightly as her fingers spread. The paper did not brown and curl as it would if she had tossed it into the silently-burning fireplace, which she now gratefully lit at night for warmth. Rather, the ink faded and the paper grew worn and yellowed before her eyes, crumbling to dust where the mounds of her palm touched the edges.

She closed her hand into a fist once again, savoring the crunch of the paper as her fingers pulverized it into powder, which grew finer and finer until it all but disappeared.

But the silver flames did not disappear with the paper. She could feel them, writhing in her eyes and feeding on the emotions in her heart, the emotions that, in order for her to wield the flames, needed to recklessly ride the razor-thin line between a simmering boil and a cataclysmic eruption.

She had opened the floodgates of her heart frivolously, and now the faces of all she had left behind danced in her mind's eye. The Valkyries at training, with Mor whom she had promised to include when she returned from Vallahan; the priestesses in the Library; Amren, who she had always harbored small hope would want to be her friend again someday; Elain, eyes full of tears as she ran from Feyre's dressing room.

Feyre, pale and drawn with worry despite the glow of the new life inside her.

Cassian, who hadn't even kissed her goodbye before he voted to hide more life-altering decisions from her.

Cassian, whose sense of humor drove her every bit as mad as the scent of his arousal over the dinner table.

Cassian, whom she had one year to decide whether or not she could forgive.

The crack in her chest tore her into two, and the silver flames erupted.

✦✦✦

The Lady of the Autumn Court laid a gentle hand on Nesta's shoulder as they surveyed the damage.

"Well, it could have been much worse," Ada said.

She wasn't wrong, but Nesta was at a loss for words. At least she'd had the presence of mind to direct most of the flames toward the fireplace, where they had mingled with the Autumn fire and shot up the chimney.

The chimney, of course, was now dust, as were the stones around the fireplace. Much of the furniture and the wooden wall around the fireplace was crumbling, and the packed dirt behind the underground wall was petrified into a flaky sheet of shale. A few of her books that she had been reading by the fire at night were powder, but thankfully the rest of the room and her library had been spared.

Regardless, it was unlivable.

"I didn't mean—I'll..." Nesta trailed off, knowing full well she had no means of her own to pay for the repair.