And every night, Nesta ran the stairs of the House. Farther and farther and farther. She hadn’t been able to reach the bottom again since that fight with Amren, but she kept trying.
No longer did memories and words send her rushing down it. Now she was driven by pure, unrelenting purpose.
Nesta, Gwyn, and Emerie defeated the obstacle course two months to the day after it had been brought in. Of course, it was on a day when all the priestesses had been summoned away by Clotho for some special ceremony, so there was no one to witness it other than Cassian and Azriel. Only Gwyn had been exempted from the ceremony, apparently.
And when Gwyn reached the finish line, bloody and panting and grinning so wildly her teal eyes glowed like a sunlit sea, she only extended her battered hand to Azriel. “Well?”
“You already have your prize,” Azriel said simply. “You just passed the Blood Rite Qualifier. Congratulations.”
Gwyn gaped. Nesta and Emerie halted. But Gwyn said to him, “That was why you invited them?”
Nesta had no idea what the priestess was talking about, but followed her gaze upward, to the lip of the pit, where a stone-faced Lord Devlon and another male peered in, scowling.
No doubt this was the reason the other priestesses had been occupied today.
Cassian murmured to Nesta, “I had a feeling today might be the day.”
Devlon seemed ready to erupt, his face purple with rage, but he looked to Cassian and nodded tersely.
“You told the priestesses not to come?” Nesta asked Cassian and Azriel.
“We informed Clotho that we might have some observers today,” Azriel answered, eyes full of ice and death as he stared down Devlon. The male looked away from the shadowsinger before grunting to his crony and flying eastward toward Illyria. Azriel went on, watching them vanish, “Clotho explained it to the others—and they chose to find other ways to fulfill their day.”
Nesta asked Gwyn, “But it seemed like you didn’t know what we were doing.”
“Cassian and Azriel warned me that we’d be watched by males today, but didn’t specify why. I had no idea it was the Blood Rite Qualifier.” Her eyes shone bright above the dirt smudged on her face.
Emerie had blanched, though. She asked Cassian, “We’re not entering the Blood Rite, are we?”
“Only if you want to,” Cassian assured her. She alone of all the females here would understand the true horrors of the Blood Rite, Nesta knew. “But we wanted Devlon—and whoever he tells—to understand that you’re as talented as any Illyrian unit. This was the only way they’d get it. Being a Valkyrie means nothing to them, and you certainly don’t need their approval, but …” He glanced to Emerie again. “I wanted them to know. What you’ve accomplished. That even though Valkyries don’t have something akin to the Blood Rite, you’re as trained as any warrior in Illyria.”
“The courses?” Gwyn asked.
“Different routes,” Azriel said, “from various Qualifiers over the centuries.”
Cassian grinned. “Short of partaking in the Blood Rite, you’re now as close to being Illyrian warriors as you can be.”
Silence fell. Then Nesta said, wiping the blood from the corner of her bruised mouth, “I’d rather be a Valkyrie.” The females murmured their agreement.
Cassian laughed. “Gods help us.”
CHAPTER
61
One test remained.
Not any Cassian had given her, or any decreed by Illyrians or Valkyries, but one she’d set for herself.
Nesta figured today was as good as any to push herself on those last few hundred steps.
Down and down and down she went.
Around and around and around.
They had sliced the Valkyrie ribbon, and had passed the Blood Rite Qualifier. But they would keep training. So much remained to be learned, so much remained that she looked forward to learning with all of them. With her friends.
With Cassian.
They alternated bedrooms, sleeping wherever was closest to their lovemaking. Or fucking. There was a difference, she’d realized. Lovemaking usually happened late at night or first thing in the morning, when he was lazy and thorough and smiling. Fucking usually happened at lunch or random times, against a wall or bent over a desk or straddling his lap, impaling herself on him again and again. Sometimes it started off as fucking and became the tender, intense thing she called lovemaking. Sometimes the lovemaking dissolved into frantic fucking. She could never tell what would happen, which was part of why she could never get enough.
She passed one hundred steps. Two hundred. A thousand.
Her head was clear. It burned with purpose, with direction and focus. She woke up each morning glad to be there, to throw herself against the world and see what it did. She had music each night at the evening services, where she had learned most of the songs and sang with the priestesses, letting her voice ring out alongside Gwyn’s. She had music from Cassian’s Symphonia, which she played whenever she could.
And she had music in her heart. A song made up of Cassian’s voice, of Gwyn’s and Emerie’s laughter, of her own breathing as she went down and down and down the stairs.
Two thousand. Three thousand.
Nesta’s feet flew, her steps unfaltering, even as her muscles burned.
She fought through it. Gritted her teeth in a feral grin.
She gave herself to the burning, the exhaustion and the pain. She did not let them consume her, but allowed them to wash over her. Through her. Did not permit them to bend or deter her.
She was the rock against which such things crashed. With each step, each breath, she yielded to the Mind-Stilling. It was the next phase in the Valkyrie mind-training: to go from seated calm to active soothing. To be able to steady the mind, focus it, while in the midst of chaos.
Four thousand. Five thousand. Six thousand. The Mind-Stilling became as easy as breathing.
She would not be mastered by anything again. She was the master of herself.
Seven thousand. Eight thousand. Nine thousand.
And this person she was becoming, emerging into day by day …
She might even like her.
The stairs vanished. And then there was only a door before her.
Nesta swayed, body still seeming to think it had to keep going around and around, but she took hold of the knob. Opened the door to the dusk and city beyond.
The lights had all been dimmed, but merry voices filled the streets. No one would prevent her from venturing into the city, to a tavern, and drinking herself silly. No one would come to haul her back. She’d made it down the stairs. Life lay before her.
Only, she found herself looking up. Toward the House where a Starfall party would be held in an hour. The male who would be there, who’d encouraged her to come.
She faced the city—the lovely, vibrant city. None of it seemed as vibrant as what waited above. The climb would be brutal, and almost without end, but at the top … Cassian would be waiting. As he had waited for her for years now.
Nesta smiled. And began the climb.
Cassian, clad in his courtly finery, was standing at the door to the stairs when she returned.
He was so exquisite that if Nesta hadn’t already been panting from the climb, she’d have found herself unable to breathe.
Five steps had Nesta across the hall. Her arms around his neck. Her mouth on his.