A Court of Innocents

43: Bloodstained Faebane

CHAPTER WARNING: Depictions of violence and blood

***

Beron Vanserra spoke to the High Lords, but I couldn't hear him. I couldn't hear anything, actually—not with the bubble of power Eris had apparently wrapped around us. I hadn't been aware of it until now, when I realized why the courtyard had been silent all this time. At the right angle, I could see the edges of that fiery power shine beneath the moonlight.

A flicker of movement. The Chimeras stepped towards the other High Lords, weapons raised.

Helion's eyes darted between the three warriors closest to him, and I knew that brilliant mind was racing, trying to find a way out of this predicament.

Beside him, Thesan's bronze skin was notably pale. The High Lord of Dawn didn't pay the Chimeras any mind. Rather, his attention was locked on the distance, seeing past—

No, he wasn't staring off into the distance. The thing he couldn't tear his gaze from was a body. Long and lean, crushed under rubble just behind Beron. Unmoving. Unbreathing. Thesan stared at the body of his Captain of the Guard—at his lover. That grief... I knew it too well. Knew the kind of wrath that followed in its wake. Thesan was a few seconds away from unleashing his power on the world, even if it killed him in the chaos.

Closest to Eris and me, Rhysand was the picture of ease, but I saw how those eyes were a little too wide. It was a mask. Like Helion and Thesan, his hands were bound behind his back. If the ropes were made of ordinary magic, he would have been able to break through those bonds. Fire was no match for his darkness. And yet he still struggled against those restraints.

My heart fell to my knees.

Those bonds of fire were not of this world. I thought it had been the moonlight that casted them in a pale, eerie glow, but now I saw the truth. It was hellfire in its purest form. The fact that it hadn't outright singed the skin off their skin was proof of their own power, and I wondered how much of it was currently being used to keep those flames at bay.

I braved a half-step towards Rhysand, just enough to make him notice movement out of the corner of his eye. But if he picked up on the movement, he didn't show it.

I called out his name, sending the thought spiraling inside of his mind.

On the surface, Rhysand only seemed to be thinking of his bound hands and the High Lord in front of him. But he sent a flicker of power into my mind. Power and mist and shadow. The message was clear: he was here; he was listening.

You're bound with hellfire, I told him. I didn't know how my uncle had access to such holy magic, but now wasn't the time to wonder about such things. The more magic you use to fight it, the more it will take from you. Don't struggle against it.

He didn't seem surprised by this. And I realized he already knew. Realized that was why he, unlike Helion and Thesan, didn't fight against his bonds.

Hellfire—like the Dread Trove, like the Chimeras—had been made irrelevant through time. Now, it was nothing more than a fable passed around in Autumn. Children of our court knew hellfire as the power that had flooded the veins of the first High Lord of Autumn, and slowly, over the span of generations, that holy flame had died out. I had told Rhysand, Azriel, and Cassian about it once, long ago, the first time we'd bonded over drinks and war stories. That was the only way Rhysand knew about it now. Word of hellfire did not cross the Autumn border, not when it was so obsolete.

But now that drunken war story might be the thing to save Rhysand's life.

It wasn't enough to make me breathe easy, but it was something. I forced my thoughts to calm, and as soon as my concern for Rhysand eased, a new one took its place.