“Over here, Cassian,” Eris crooned.
Cassian whirled, and found the High Lord’s son holding a knife at his ribs.
By midday, Nesta could barely breathe. Gwyn was dragging, Emerie was panting, and they’d begun to ration their water. No matter how high they climbed, how many boulders they cleared along the narrow path, the peak grew no closer.
They saw no one else. Heard no one else.
A small mercy.
Nesta’s breath singed her lungs. Her legs wobbled. There was only the pain in her body and the relentless circling of her thoughts, as if they were vultures gathering to feast.
She just wanted to turn off her mind—
Was it possible that the Breaking wasn’t merely physical, but mental as well? That this mountain somehow dredged up every bit of her fear and sucked her mind deep into it?
They halted for lunch, if water could be called lunch. Gwyn’s leg was bleeding again, her face ghostly white. None of them spoke.
But Nesta noted their haunted eyes—knew they heard their own horrors.
They rested for as long as they dared, then moved again.
Keep going upward. That was the only way. Step to step to step.
“It looks like we’re two-thirds of the way up,” Emerie rasped from ahead.
Night had fallen, the moon bright enough to keep the Breaking’s path illuminated. To show those three stars above Ramiel’s peak. Beckoning. Waiting.
If they reached it by dawn, it’d be a miracle.
“I need to rest,” Gwyn said faintly. “Just—just another minute.” Her face was gray, her hair limp. The leathers along her leg soaked red.
Emerie had taken a spill on a loose rock two hours earlier and twisted her ankle—she was limping now as well.
They were moving too slowly.
“The Pass of Enalius isn’t too far ahead,” Emerie insisted. “If we can make it through the archway, then it’s a clear shot to the top.”
Gwyn breathed, “I’m not sure if I can.”
“Let her rest, Emerie,” Nesta said, sitting on a small boulder beside Gwyn. Dawn had to be four hours off. And then it would be over. Would it matter if they’d reached the peak by then? If they’d won? They’d gotten this far. They’d—
“How did they get here?” Gwyn asked, swearing.
Nesta went still. From her vantage point, she could see straight down. To where a beam of moonlight illuminated a familiar-looking male and six others climbing the mountain behind them. A good ways back, but closing in.
“Bellius,” Emerie whispered.
“We need to go,” Nesta said, lurching to her feet. Gwyn followed, wincing.
Nesta sized up the males. Emerie and Gwyn were too injured to fight, too exhausted, and—
“Put your arms around my neck,” Nesta said, offering her back to Gwyn.
“What?”
Nesta did it for her. She had climbed the ten thousand stairs of the House of Wind, up and down, over and over and over again. Perhaps for this. This very moment.
“We’re winning this fucking thing,” Nesta said, bending to grab Gwyn’s legs. Teeth gritted, Nesta hoisted Gwyn onto her back.
The muscles in her thighs strained, but held. Her knees did not buckle.
Her gaze lay on the terrain ahead. She would not look behind.
So Nesta began to climb, Emerie limping beside her.
With the wind as their song, Nesta and Emerie found their rhythm. They climbed, squeezing and slithering and hauling their weight. And the males fell behind, like the mountain was silently whispering, Go, go, go.
“I knew you were a lying bastard,” Cassian said through his teeth. Azriel, a step away, could do nothing. Not with Eris angling that knife—Nesta’s dagger—into Cassian’s ribs. He could have sworn flame seared into him where the knife met his leather. “But this is low, even for you.”
“Honestly, I’m disappointed in Rhysand,” Eris said, digging the tip of the knife through Cassian’s leathers enough for him to feel its bite, and that ripple of searing flame. Whether it was Eris’s power through the blade or whatever Nesta had Made it into, he didn’t care. He just needed to find some way to avoid it piercing his skin. “He’s become so bland these days. He didn’t even try to look into my mind.”
“You can’t win this,” Azriel warned with quiet menace. “You’re a dead male walking, Eris. Have been for a long time.”
“Yes, yes, all that old business with the Morrigan. How boring of you to cling to it so.”
Cassian blinked. The Morrigan.
Eris never referred to her like that.
“Let him go, Briallyn,” Cassian growled. “Come play with us instead.”
The Made dagger slid away from his ribs, and a withered, reedy voice said from nearby, “I’m already playing with you, Lord of Bastards.”
Nesta’s legs shook. Her arms trembled. Gwyn was a half-dead weight at her back. The blood loss had made her so weak it seemed she could barely hold on.
The Breaking flowed through an archway of black stone where the path became broader and easier. The Pass of Enalius. Emerie had paused only long enough to run a bleeding hand over the stone, her dirty face full of wonder and pride. “I am standing where none of my ancestors have been before,” she whispered, voice choked.
Nesta wished she could pause alongside her friend. Could marvel with her. But to stop, even for a breath … Nesta knew that once she halted, she wouldn’t be able to move again.
The flattening of the path around the archway was only a temporary relief. They soon reached a cluster of stones—the last of the impossible climbing before it seemed to become a direct path to the top. Dawn remained a good two hours off. The full moon’s light was beginning to fade as it sank toward the west.
The group of males would catch them before the summit.
Nesta’s fingers spasmed as she reached for Emerie’s outstretched hand where her friend knelt atop one of the sharp boulders. If they could get past this section—
Her knees buckled, and Nesta went down, face smacking into a rock so hard stars burst across her vision, but all she could do was hold on to Gwyn as they tumbled and slammed into rocks and gravel and rolled and rolled downward, Emerie’s screams ringing in her ears, and then—
Nesta collided with someone hard.
No—not someone, though she could have sworn she felt warmth and breath. She’d hit the archway of stone. They’d fallen all the way back down to the Pass of Enalius, dangerously close to the males who pursued them.
“Gwyn—”
“Alive,” her friend groaned.
Emerie slid to her knees on the path. “Are you hurt?”
Nesta couldn’t move as Gwyn untangled herself. The two of them were covered in dirt, debris, and blood. “I can’t …” Nesta panted. “I can’t carry you anymore.”
Silence fell.
“So we rest,” Gwyn managed to say, “then we continue.”
“We’ll never make it in time,” Nesta said. “Or at least before the males catch up.”
Emerie swallowed. “We try anyway.” Gwyn nodded. “Rest a minute first. Maybe the dawn will reach us before they do.”
“No.” Nesta peered down the path. “They’re climbing too fast.”