A Court of Ice and Fire

Chapter 48

Ameren's plan was risky, and it relied heavily on us being able to get to the Cauldron—to be able to touch it. All of us.

When Feyre had touched it alone, it had almost killed her. But if we shared the burden amongst ourselves...we could bind it to our will, could force Hybern's armies and himself to their knees. Amren knew the spell to get it done, had claimed that it had been encoded in the Book. Instead of silencing the Cauldron, we could simply silence the one yielding its power, and his armies.

But to do so, we had to get to the Cauldron, and with Hybern now moving south towards the human realms...We would have to wait until that final battle. We would wait until the king was distracted and tired, when he wouldn't realize what we were doing until it was too late.

We would be forced to meet him exactly where he wanted us—tired and weak after the battles we had already fought, and after winnowing every human we could to Adriata. Which we had done.

Every person who was capable of winnowing had spent the whole night going from house to house in the human realms, some taking them kicking and screaming into the forest where Cresseida would be to look after and soothe.

Every High Lord, captain and solider who could spare the energy had done it. Titus and Idris both stayed with me as I winnowed back and forth, moving through the villages and towns one at a time as I went from place to place, until the forest was filled with humans.

Some wept when they saw us, some begged to stay, to not be taken. We didn't give them that choice. Cresseida had a small host there to help the ones we brought, and she was gentle and kind as she explained what was going on to those that would listen. Some tried to flee deeper into the woods, but we had placed a ward around them to keep them safe.

It seemed cruel, to not give them a choice to run, but it was the only way to prevent their deaths. The only way to keep them alive.

I stopped in my village last.

It had already been cleared out earlier that night, and it was eerily silent as I walked through the empty streets, the moon the only source of light as I walked. I had ordered Titus and Idris to go back and rest, telling them that I needed to be alone. Idris wanted to argue, but Titus simply took her hand, and pulled her with him as he winnowed her back.

I looked at our old manor, the one that had been bought with Tamlin's gold. Our father wasn't at the home, and no one knew where he had run off to. He would have returned from his trip by now, would have realized we were gone. Maybe he had concocted his own story to make sense of our absence, but I feared that he had gone searching for us, looking for his children that had been taken in the night.

I walked by our old hovel next, wondering if it had always been that small—so confined. No one had moved in after we had left, and while our father wanted to tear it down and something new, he had never done it.

Memories of a different life flit through my head, and I wonder where I would be right now if I had never killed that wolf that day. Tamlin would have never taken Feyre, but Amarantha would also have never been defeated either.

Maybe Hybern would have invaded by now, and we would all either be dead or enslaved to some fae lord. It was strange to think that by killing a wolf, we had swept everything into motion, that it had led to this.

My old home lay untouched and unbothered. No one had entered it since I moved back into the manor, and everything was as I left it. Dusty books lay on the small coffee table, and a layer of dust covered every inch of the small house.

I walked through it slowly, letting the memories the place brought wash through me in a gentle wave. I could still remember the first night I had spent here—the tears and the pain that had once felt neverending.