Battle Scars

Scrying

Cassian and Azriel were gone to the townhouse. Eve had requested him to get her a few flowers for her room. He went right away, taking Cassian in tow, thanks to her sheer luck.

"Give me those stones and bones, please," Nesta said quietly to the House as they sat in the private library, a map of all seven courts before them. A small earthenware bowl appeared beside the map, filled with them. She was not kidding when she had said that the House listened to practically all her requests.

"You sure you don't want to do this with Rhys and Amren around?" Eve asked her. Nesta squeezed the bones and stones in her fist. "I don't need them. Unless you have-" Eve shook her head, "then neither do I. Lets do this, Nesta, and if all goes perfectly well, you may even have my forgiveness."

A small smile ghosted her lips, but, "things seldom go right with us." Eve gave her a grim look, taking a handful of stones and bones in her hand too. "Maybe its time the tide changed to our favour."

They fell silent, concentrating.

It had taken a few moments before her mind went empty. She focused upon her breathing, upon the rhythm of Nesta' breathing beside her. It was fine, they would be fine, Eve chanted in her mind. No Hybern or King or Cauldron would whisk her away this time. No war. It was fine. Fine. Fine.

She could do this. She just had to focus on the things that mattered at this moment. Like the Dread Trove. She had to find the Dread Trove. The Mask, the Harp, the Crown. The Mask, she strained to think. Where is the Mask of the Dread Trove?

Eve' palm slickened with sweat, the stones and bones shifting in her fist. Nothing answered. No tug, no whisper of power.

"It's not working," came the strained voice of Nesta's, and Eve could feel her hand trembling, their joined hands sweaty.

"It has to. Try to focus on the Cauldron. Maybe it could become our bridge."

Eve pictured the Cauldron: the vast bowl of darkest iron, so large multiple people could have used it as a bathtub. It had a physical shape, yet when that icy water had swallowed her, there had been no bottom. Just a chasm of freezing water that had soon become utter darkness. The ice that had threatened to take her, Mike' scarred and bloody face, her humanity. All taken.

Cauldron- the thing that had existed before light; the cradle from which all life had come.

Sweat beaded on her brow, as if her very body rebelled against the memory, but she made herself recall how it had sat in the King of Hybern's war-tent, squatting atop the reeds and rugs, a primordial beast that had been half-asleep when she'd entered.

"Nesta?" Eve couldn't breathe. Maybe she was too broken for this too. Such a simple task. "Nesta."

"I can't," came the rasped reply. "I can't. The power—I don't think I have it anymore."

"It's there. I've seen it in your eyes, felt it in my bones. Try again. For them." They both knew who were the 'them' in this case. For Eve it was Azriel, Rhys and Feyre and their unborn child, Cassian, and Bri. For Nesta it was her sisters and Cassian.

Eve' frustrated voice came. "Come on," she whispered to no one. And there it was- the same energy she had felt in the Cauldron but ten times intense and darker and cruel. Eve gasped, and felt her hand tighten in Nesta' hold.

"Eve," she warned. "Close," she replied, willing herself to walk forward, hell to the consequences it would bring to her. "Eve," Nesta said again, "let go. Its too dark, too evil, we cannot, you were right. We need someone with us." Eve groaned in frustration, "but its right there. So close, so-"