Chapter 18
Amren's footsteps echoed around the square.
There was still trash piled against the sides of wooden houses to await collection. Jars of old milk were set upon porches, though plenty had shattered. She expected the squeaking of rats or the buzzing of blood-flies, but no matter where Amren walked she saw no sign of life and heard only her own footsteps.
Twelve hundred fae called the town home once upon a time. Now twelve hundred bodies lay in their beds surrounded by the corpses of anything that fed on them.
A plague that struck so quickly and so thoroughly, no one appeared to have woken before they died. Men, women, children, and babes, all dead. All rotting.
More than a dozen villages in six weeks had succumbed to disease. No matter how many wards they put up, the plague-bringers always found somewhere that was overlooked. A few hundred here and there wouldn't seem like much to the Graecians, but fae children were precious and rare.
Nearly ten thousand citizens of Night were dead so far. It would take a thousand years to recover the population.
And they were no closer to finding the Graecian camp, Feyre, Azriel, or Persephone.
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"Cera!" Eirene barely grabbed her companion's turquoise collar in time to stop her from walking into a tree.
"What's up?" Oblivious to the obstacle in her path she whirled, loose black hair shimmering in the crisp, clear dawn.
The first hint of winter carried on the breeze and the trees of the forest were heavy with pinecones and acorns. Despite this Cera wore thin pants of black satin without anything to warm her or protect her feet. It was a fight just to get her to wear the thigh-length navy sweater- and as soon as Eirene turned around she'd ripped off the sleeves and cast them aside. Eirene didn't know why she bothered to stay in human form if she wasn't willing to clothe herself properly.
Cera was usually a favorite companion of Eirene's, but lately she grated on the peace-goddess' patience. She was excitable, unpredictable, and easily distracted. Her shimmering black eyes noted everything in the world and yet nothing at all. Cera was more ancient than any god in Hades' retinue, older even than Zahariel and his Host, but she was too much like a child. Everything was too new, too exciting, and Eirene was in no mood to play with her today.
"Pay attention Cera," Eirene struggled to keep from snapping. "You have three heads, use one of them… please ."
At the present, the tall woman only had a single visible face. She cocked her head to the side, confused. Eirene could not see the other two heads while she was in this form, but she knew Cera was only half-listening.
Well, third-listening technically.
Judging by the way she was tapping her finger rapidly against her own leg it was a safe bet that the other two heads were tracking something. Eirene wished she had someone to pray to for patience the way humans did. They seemed to find some sort of release of tension in their little chants.
"Just go," she sighed.
Cera hesitated, eyeing the other's body language. She stepped hesitantly back before turning and dashing into the trees.
"And now I get to pick burs out of her hair," Eirene grumbled as she slumped onto a fallen tree.
Once upon a time the mortal had wet themselves at the thought of confronting the mighty Cerberus, Guardian of the Underworld.
To prevent another war like that in Troy- where the meddling of the gods led to tremendous loss of life- the angelic Host hunted and imprisoned as many Graecians as they could capture, but even they knew it was unwise to leave the Graecian underworld unguarded. Hades was imprisoned, Persephone lost, Melinoe and her half-brother Zagreus had gone into hiding. That left Cerberus alone to keep the denizens in their place.
Once Hades was freed, found his daughter and adopted son, and reclaimed his throne, he rewarded Cerberus for her millennia-long vigil with a human form. Cerberus chose the female form and Hades based her features loosely on those of Persephone. She looked as much a daughter to the goddess as Melinoe.
It was Eirene who dubbed her 'Cera', that she might walk in the mortal world more easily without such a famous name. They'd traveled together for decades searching for Persephone, and Cera's excitable and curious nature endeared her to Eirene.
Now she was just glad to see the back of her for a while.
The Goddess of Peace let out a long breath and rested her head in her hands for a moment. She tried to will the tension from her body, but it was a constant companion now.
Eirene felt like she was losing herself to the stress and strain of it all. Not just maintaining peace in a camp with four separate pantheons of ego-crazed gods, but the very human torment of worrying for a friend.
Every Graecian in camp knew what had been done to Persephone. The healers who worked on her day after day seemed to always learn of some fresh new horror. Something the Queen of the Underworld herself could not remember. Eirene was her best friend and she'd openly wept when they were first reunited…
But she couldn't get that song out of her head. The one the blonde fae hummed to herself in the marketplace. Orpheus' song for Eurydice, that Persephone sang to herself whenever she was happy, or wanted to see someone else happy.
Tamlin didn't want to share more of his past. It was ugly and embarrassing, but he'd finally told Eirene the whole story. The truth of the Court of Dreams that he'd glimpsed as a youth, the horrors that turned him and Rhys against one another, and the tragedy that played out between him and Feyre Archeron. Two broken souls who could not understand how to reach one another in their hours of need.
Feyre was a prisoner of the Graecians- kept under heavy guard in the stronghold of the camp. Since she could not speak for herself, Tamlin did his best to offer a version of the story that was more balanced than he would have preferred.
As for the other, the son Persephone could not know she had, ' Azriel is a cold-blooded bastard who will cross any line for those assholes in Night… but he'll also cross them to do what he thinks is right. I wouldn't mind seeing him cut down, but if he were a citizen of Spring I would trust him with my life. '
It was the closest the High Lord of Spring came to saying he was a good person.
Perspehone named him after Azrael- now Amren. Even his enemies understood the love he had for his people. In spite of some glaring sins, Feyre Archeron sounded like a good and kind person.
Eirene wanted to hate their enemies, but Tamlin's story- and the blonde fae's song- painted the picture in shades of gray.
Before Eirene even had time to figure out where she stood Tamlin had asked her an impossible question: Would she be willing to slip a spy into her own camp. If the Graecians were in the wrong slaughtering Night it needed to stop, but could she betray her own kind? Or was she betraying the Graecians by allowing what was about to happen?
No one ever said peace was easy. And ironically it had been a long time since the Goddess of Peace felt… peaceful.
Especially in this places Hades had the Graecian camp moved to. The mountains of what was apparently the Night Court were quiet and peaceful. But this place was made for gods. By gods. There was a difference in the magics of their two worlds, Hades had said as much. LIke oil and water. In Spring she felt that sense of Other often enough. Had accepted it as a quirk.
But in this place the air was thick with it. Suffocating. Under the Mountain- that was what the fae called the large, lonely peak a few hours trek from the edge of camp. A few fae had been taken in as servants already and they looked towards that mountain with disgust and reverence. After hearing Tamlin and Feyre's story, she knew why.
Hades thought he could somehow harness the power in the air to either find a way to counter the magics of Prythian or reach the gods on high in these lands. While he made his futile study, she choked on the bitterness in the air. The sense of incomplete and wrong that she increasingly noticed throughout this entire world.
Like it was an unfinished paradise cast aside and left to fend for itself. A world teetering on the bring of the Void itself. That horrible, unending cold that all gods were born in.
A scream echoed through the forest and Eirene took a deep breath. Three days she'd come to the woods on patrol with Cera, and they'd finally found her.
She waited for the crashing footsteps through the forest. Tried to muster some surprise. Not that Cera was so good with facial cues. Happy, angry, and sad were really the only ones she'd figured out in her long existence.
Finally the underbrush crunched and Cera jumped into the clearing, a female in her grip.
Brassy hair, blue-gray eyes, and a too-thin frame bundled beneath an ill-fitting, stained shift. Tamlin had only given her the barest description of the spy Eirene was to smuggle into camp. No name, no history. Eirene was having a hard enough time holding to their bargain. She didn't need any more information on her.
"Who are you and what do you want?" The other layer of security- a pre-arranged phrase that would tell Eirene the female before her was the one she was looking for. Yes, the fae smelled like shit and looked as if she hadn't bathed in a month, but was it her?
"M-my name is C-Clare Beddor," the woman said. "And I-I don't know. I don't know where I am." her voice was small, her eyes wide with fear.
A good actress. At least Tamlin was making this part easy.
"You have two options. Follow me back to the camp of my people- where you will either die or earn blessings beyond your imagination- or turn back around and follow another path. For what it's worth, I recommend the latter."
The girl put on a show of considering, but Eirene knew what her answer would be.
"I can't go back. P-please. I-I'll follow you."
Cera looked to Eirene with bright, shining eyes. Waiting for Eirene to give a command. If she were in beast form her tail would be wagging.
"Take her on ahead, I'll catch up." Eirene said to Cera. She hooked her arm through the female's and dragged her off through the trees.
Only when they were gone did Eirene close her eyes and loose the breath she had been holding.
"Now I understand why the humans like to say 'please kill me' so often."
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Nesta felt sick as she followed Eirene through the sprawling camp. Surrounded. She was surrounded by gods who would rip her to shreds if they so much as suspected what she was. Who she was to their enemy.
A horrible thought stuck her. If she were to die at the hands of a god- a death god at that- what would happen to her soul? Would she cross the veil to see her mother- or if she were unlucky her father- again? Would she enter some separate fae afterlife? Would the Cauldron seize her, taking her along with that stolen piece of might to drown in agony for all time?
Or perhaps these gods would keep her soul. Drag her back to their world. To spend a thousand lifetimes in a place where she didn't belong. Feeling lost and angry and bitter without ever knowing why or being able to make it stop.
An eternity feeling as wretched as she did every time she looked in a mirror.
Nesta tripped as a wave of icy dread washed over her, pooling in her stomach.
Stupid. This plan was stupid , and she was stupid for going along with it. Why did she trust Tamlin of all people? The male who had betrayed Feyre's love and then betrayed their entire family to boot?
"You look like you're going to vomit." Eirene said, watching from the corner of her eye. "Are you sure you wouldn't rather be Cera's playmate? If this is too intimidating-?"
Phrased to trick prying ears. WIth so many gods about, Nesta was warned to always assume there was an unfriendly ear listening. Still, Eirene's offer was genuine. As Cera's playmate Nesta would have the same access to the camp without worrying about much interaction with gods.
"No," Nesta said after a moment, her voice barely a squeak. She cleared her throat and tried again, "No, I-I'm alright. Thank you. I-" she wasn't sure what to say, "I'm not good with- children?"
She hadn't meant to say it, but as she was crafting her lie two small figures darted across her path. Their forms were mercurial, and Nesta forgot to walk as she gaped, mouth ajar.
Sometimes they were two naked little toddlers. Fat, rosey cheeked, and with curling golden hair that shone as if in a summer sun. Other times they were dashing youths, a mischievous light in their shimmering blue eyes. In that form they wore tunics- one blue and one green- that hung from one shoulder, leaving their right breast for all to see.
An ugly craftsman loosed a bellowing laugh nearby and Neta jumped. "Boys, settle before you make her sick," the craftsman called to the youths.
Obediently their forms locked into the small, naked toddlers and they waddled off, giggling.
"They like to do that to mortals," he called to Nesta and Eirene, "They've been too cocky since the humans gave them a constellation."
"Huh?" Nesta almost asked which one before she realized their stars would not be in a Prythian sky.
Eirene nudged her forward to get her moving again. They were at an intersection in the tent maze. The goddess turned right and on to what appeared to be the main avenue of the Grecian camp. Gods, demi-gods, animals, and even one or two fae bustled about. Eirene and Tamlin both mentioned that some gods were taking faerie servants, now that they had to find a way to remove Persephone's collar before they could all leave.
Nesta knew that even if a fae from Night itself were to be let into camp- which they absolutely would not- there was no risk of being recognized. The story she and Tamlin had crafted together was too perfect, Nesta herself too different from the female who had stood at Feyre's side in the war with Hyburn.
Still, she inched closer to Eirene.
"Don't worry," Eirene said. "Cera is going to bring Lady Psyche to meet you. She is kind and gentle. You have nothing to fear. You'll even enjoy a bit of celebrity. No one in the houses of the High Olympians has taken a mortal servant yet."
"H-high Olympians?" Nesta asked as he followed Eirene down the path towards a large black tent.
"Every Grecian belongs to one of the thirteen houses, if they admit it or not. We are lesser gods and they are our chosen rulers. Twelve of the High Olympians have temples in our holy city on Mount Olympus, and the most ornate palaces- though Hades and Poseidon choose to live elsewhere. Those of us who are not actually gods are lumped together under another house. Lady Psyche is the wife of Lady Aphrodite's favorite son. Eros is never far from his mother's side, so he resides among the High Olympians here."
At first Nesta nodded, as if anything EIrene was saying made sense. Then she blinked, "Wait- you're not a god?"
"I am something older," Eirene said. "Long ago the humans chose to worship me, personify me. So I found myself able to take a human form. But no, I'm no god. My kind fall within the House of Titans."
"What's a titan?"
Eirene sighed, "Some are so powerful they could remake reality on a whim. Others, like me, are more in line with the demi-gods. Humans certainly have changed how we are counted… But the general rule is that gods hold dominion over something. Some were born mortal- as Lady Psyche was. A god is powerful without a doubt, but they are given their duties. They are born, they have parents. Hades and his siblings drew lots to divide up control of the earth, and over time they developed power to suit their new homes."
"Titans," Eirene continued, "are not powerful, they are power. The embodiment of time or memory or the oceans themselves. Aphrodite and Eros- even we aren't sure if they should count as god or titan. As for me, I am a Horae. The personification of the concept of springtime. Since wars in our world are waged over summers and spring is often the last chance to avoid conflict, I also became the goddess of peace."
The personification of the concept of spring. No wonder Tamlin was so moon-eyed whenever he mentioned her.
"If Titans are power, why aren't they the rulers of-"
Eirene clapped a hand over Nesta's mouth and nodded a friendly smile to a passing female who glowered at the fae female.
"We don't like to talk about that," Eirene said, then released her mouth.
Nesta waited to see if that angry, cruel place in her heart bristled at the goddesses touch. Perhaps it was because this was a goddess of peace, but there was silence. That petty and angry thing in her heart didn't stir. Didn't wake.
Or maybe it was just that she was surrounded by so much raw power even her hateful soul knew when to shut up and play nice.
The black tent at the end of the avenue was drawing closer, but Nesta's head still swam with questions. "You said that some of the gods used to be human? How did they become gods then?"
Eirene shrugged, "Every way under the sun. Some were so kind and virtuous that they attracted the eye of a god and were brought into the heavens. Some were mortal heroes who earned their places through feats of bravery and valor… and a few were deified by humans directly." Eirene snorted, "And many- far too many- are the products of dalliances gods had with mortals."
So regardless of power or might, by their standards these gods likely considered Feyre and Azriel no more than petty mortals.
Nesta never cared for titles or power, she'd learned firsthand what that was worth. Lord Archeron still became master of a rundown cabin. And year after year they still endured on the brink of starvation.
But… these were gods .
She would never be ready to reach the end of the avenue and the mighty black tent there, but Nesta still prayed for a bit more time. To walk just a step slower, just so she could wrap her whirling mind around it all.
' Praying? You don't need to pray here, you idiot. Just open your mouth and speak, the gods are all listening. '
Her feet nearly stopped again and dizziness overtook her. Gods. The things that walked between life and death at will. Who could create and destroy as they felt the urge. She was in the middle of a camp of gods. Fortunes rose and fall and titles with them, but gods were eternal. They couldn't rise or fall. They simply were .
The thought made her nauseous.
"You're turning green," Eirene sighed. She put a hand on Nesta's back and rubbed between her shoulder blades. "Most mortals soil themselves by now, you're doing well."
No she wasn't. She'd fled one military camp because she couldn't stand the pressures and expectations around her. Back then Nesta's only mission was to train and find her ground. Now she was attempting to deceive gods . To spy and plot and maybe even help Feyre and Azriel escape- though Tamlin and Mor had both warned her against that. She was trying to do something even the most powerful fae in all of Prythian wouldn't dare.
"Either grow gills or breathe," Eirene whispered in her ear as she steered her towards the black tent. Two twisted creatures made of leaves and bark stood outside, looking as if they'd grown straight out of the soil. Nesta forced air into her lungs as those things moved, drawing aside the flaps of the tent.
The inside was large and spacious. It looked to be a comfortable fit for at least fifty gods, though only a couple dozen stood around the main area. A huge table filled the center, upon which was a three dimensional map of Prythian- or at least the start of one. The general outline was in place, but mountain ranges, cities, forests, rivers- they were still filling in. Still incomplete.
Night especially was bare, with only a few mountains, the Hewn City, a trade road, and some coastal city filled in. Nesta didn't study the map too much, just enough to know Velaris was unmarked. They hadn't found it yet.
The only completed zone on the map was Under the Mountain. That great scar through the heart of Prythian itself.
"We're having a discussion, Eirene," a male voice came from ahead. Flat, emotionless, and yet it sent shivers through Nesta. Low and soft, it conjured up memories Nesta thought she had buried. The last strained breath of her mother. The final sigh as her father perished.
"I found this one while on patrol," Eirene nudged Nesta forward a step. "I want to offer her to Psyche's service."
A curtain pulled aside and a ghost-pale male with black hair, somber eyes, and a jagged black crown stepped out. Behind him a few gods remained in place, sipping their tea and examining a stack of documents piled on a low table.
Nesta was too afraid to glance around again, but she could feel others stirring within the tent. Gods who had been waiting to speak with Hades who had been presented with unexpected entertainment.
A female with gold-kissed obsidian skin, her long raven hair coiled into dozens of long plaits that fell down to her hips. Nesta spared her a glance and was met with stunning pale green eyes. She looked… kind. At first Nesta thought there was a large opalescent hair ornament on the side of her head, but then it moved. Shifted.
A butterfly. A translucent, shimmering butterfly.
Cera appeared behind her, but as soon as she saw Hades she skipped over to stand beside him. His hard, weary gaze never left Nesta as he reached out and patted the back of her head. An endearing gesture, until she remembered that Cera's true form was that of a three headed dog.
Hades turned his back on Nesta and Eirene and stepped up to a small dias. Atop it were two shining black thrones, reminiscent of the style favored in the Hewn City. Hades sat down and motioned for Eirene to bring Nesta forward.
Another god stepped towards her.
"He will ensure you only speak the truth," Eirene said. Her hand left Nesta's shoulder and the other god came forward.
Nesta's skin crawled when he touched her, but she forced herself to endure. The place where his hand rested on her soiled scraps of clothing burned. It had little to do with the touch of the god, but rather the fact that she did not like to be touched in the first place.
"What is your name?" Hades asked.
"Clare Beddor," the name came out easily, and Nesta's eyes widened. She and Tamlin had prepared a web of half-truths and misleading statements to get around many of the god's tricks, but what this god of truth had drawn forward from her lips wasn't the truth at all.
Even if she were telling the truth, Nesta decided it was appropriate for her to shoot an incredulous glance to the man whose hand rested on her shoulder.
He was stone-faced and cold. An ivory tunic lined in pearls opened near the top to expose part of a broad, burnt-gold chest. His face was hard and flat. Handsome, if not overly severe. There were Illyrians like him in the camps. They were used to masking their emotions and obeying without question. His hair was jet black, but his eyes were pure molten gold without pupil or iris. On his back, large feathered wings were tucked in tight. Not Peregrin or Seraphim- something else. Something from the same font of creation that had birthed Amren.
"Eyes on me," Hades said, and Nesta turned her attention back. "We haven't found a single human- or fae-in this forest before. So where did you come from and why?"
The male's hand squeezed Nesta's shoulder and another lie bubbled up from her lips, "I-I was brought here. I-I don't know how long. Y-years, maybe. I didn't want to-" tears expertly slipped down her cheeks. She muttered something soft and shrunk in on herself.
"Tell your story from the beginning," the voice of the golden male was rich and deep as he prompted her.
Now for Tamlin's grand creation.
"My family lived below the Wall-"
"The what?" Hades asked.
This story did not involve Clare Beddor knowing about the war with Hyburn, so Nesta said, "The Wall, s-separating human and fae lands?"
Hades looked to the male holding Nesta, "Zahariel?"
He frowned, "There is power in the fae lands that does not exist in the low-mortal realms. And a fairly strict demarcation line between them. But we have not detected physical or magical barriers between the two sides. The line doesn't even manifest in the forests it passes through, not beyond the quality of the plants."
Clare Beddor's knowledge of the world ended the day she was taken Under the Mountain. She wouldn't have known the Wall had fallen, so Nesta swallowed hard, "It f-fell? We knew it was getting weaker but-" her eyes widened. "My village?" Clare wouldn't have known her village became the battlefield, the villagers homeless refugees in Summer for months as the fae helped rebuild.
Hades raised an eyebrow on his throne, "If this wall separated human and fae lands, why do you care what is on the other side? Or if it survived?"
"I was human…" Nesta slowly lifted her hand, staring at the long fae fingers the way Elain had. Like her own hand had been amputated and this other one fixed on as some kind of cruel joke.
Her voice was a whisper as she spoke, and Nesta hauled up the memories she had been haunted by for two long years. "They came in the middle of the night. We were all asleep and then- and then there were these claws wrapped around my ankle and I was being dragged across the floor." Tears slipped down her cheeks at the thought of the servants on the Archeron estate. So many tried to save her and Elain. So many met the same fate, "They were ripped apart like they were nothing. My- my parents. My brothers…"
"Why not you?" Hades asked. His gaze was cold, but the hard edge of his voice seemed to have softened.
Nesta shook her head. This part of the story came to her from Tamlin. Of the things he'd witnessed before Feyre arrived Under the Mountain.
"They brought me to that place- to the mountain," she shuddered as if she could sense it looming behind her, far from the edges of the Grecian camp but still well within sight. "T-they did t-things to me… They cut and broke and ripped," more tears slipped down her cheeks. Nesta was never close with Clare Beddor- she was always more Elain's friend- but no one deserved her fate.
"They killed me," she whispered, her voice breaking. Eirene stepped forward and touched her shoulder to offer strength.
"If they killed you, then you should be able to guess what my next question is," Hades said.
Nesta's mind went back to the memory she tried never to touch. The one she buried with rage and sex and alcohol, until the whole world became something she was not part of. Not responsible for.
A distance filled her eyes as Nesta cast part of herself back into the Cauldron.
"I was dead," she didn't whisper. Her voice was flat, hollow. "My eyes rotted. My ears turned deaf. I couldn't breathe. Couldn't speak. Couldn't move… and couldn't die. My body- it died. But I was still there. Still connected to this decaying thing. The fae Queen who ruled in that place, she had a bone around her neck and a ring on her finger with an eyeball. She talked to it, and one of her creatures said it was an enemy she wanted to torture for all eternity. She'd kept him alive- that bone and that eye as his prison."
"That Queen, she kept insisting that I was the Spring Lord's lover. I'd never seen him in my life. I swear , just like I swore back then. I'd never seen him before. I'd never touched any man." More tears slipped down Nesta's cheeks. "I never… but she was so angry. So sure. I thought she believed me, before she finally let them kill me. But… I think she did to me what she did to that other person. Trapped me, somehow."
The male Hades had called Zahariel offered a comforting squeeze to her shoulder. "You died human. How did you come to be fae?"
"There was a Cauldron," Nesta whispered. "It created our world. Every mountain and creature and blade of grass- everything that ever existed or ever would. I- I guess the fae Queen died. All I know is that I was trapped for so long and then… and then…"
A piece of herself she knew she would have to offer.
Something only Elain could ever understand.
"I was sinking. Drowning. But there was no surface to break through, no base, nothing I could sense. I had become used to the numbness and decay in my body but then- it was like being doused in oil and set on fire, or buried alive beneath ice and snow. I felt everything all at once, and there was only pain. Every bone breaking and snapping and melting into something else. Every vein forming and shaping and burning as that fire filled them. I couldn't scream, couldn't flee, couldn't do anything to make it stop. It hurt more than anything that Queen and her creatures did to me. I-"
Nesta stopped herself. She'd found a way to rip into that nothingness around her even as she burned. Precious power- power she still couldn't understand. She'd ripped the Cauldron apart from the inside out until it was a husk of its former self. A mighty husk, but forever missing that critical piece now residing within.
The Graecians couldn't know about that. Clare Beddor wouldn't have known about that.
Nesta was aware of the silence around her. She took a deep breath and tried to push back the clammy fear from her heart, "I don't know how long my body was in the Cauldron. But they turned it out across the floor and… I was this," she held out her hands for Hades to see. "There was a male there, he called himself a King. He didn't care about me. He only needed something to prove it worked. He had the bone and the eye that the fae Queen had worn. Said it was brought back from her body before the other fae burned it. Said… it had been months since she died."
"He let you go?" Hades asked. An open question.
She shook her head, "He didn't care what happened to me. Not once he knew the Cauldron would do what he wanted. Resurrect the person in the bone and eye. He dropped them into the Cauldron and it started to boil and shake and- they were all staring so intently I just… ran. I ran so fast and for so long and I don't even know if they were chasing me. I got lost. Couldn't find my way out for-" Nesta took a deep breath.
"I found a kitchen with some food still left. Preserved somehow- it lasted a long time. I didn't know where the fae went or if they were coming back. There was this room filled with bodies-" Nesta had soiled herself when she'd stumbled across it Under the Mountain. Tamlin was still with her then, he'd cursed and pulled her out. But once he was gone she went back in. Stole a tunic off one of the less frightening corpses. It was going too far, but Nesta would rather go too far than not far enough in crafting this lie.
She touched the hem of her tunic, "I washed it until the smell faded. I slept in a store cupboard near the body room. Stole some blankets from one of the fae bedrooms when I felt brave. Then… the food ran out. That was-" she scrunched up her face as she tried to remember, "A month ago, I think. I found a door to a balcony. Tore the blankets into strips. It took all of them to reach the ground."
Hades jerked his chin to someone standing off to the side and the female vanished. No doubt going to scour the mountain for a chain of month-old braided bedsheets. She'd find it too, it took Nesta three damned days to make the thing.
"I want to know more about this Cauldron," Hades said. His tone made it clear he didn't expect Nesta to speak though. There was a flicker of empathy in the god's eyes, but it vanished quickly. "If we can verify your story, you will be allowed to enter this camp and assigned a god to serve. You will belong to them and only them, for the duration of our time in this world. If you attempt to leave for any reason you will be executed on-sight. We're gods, child. You cannot outwit us or outsmart us. Don't waste our time trying."
"If," Hades went on as he stood and straightened the wrinkles out of his tunic, "you attempt to betray us, or if we find you have lied about a single detail of your story- if you even used a shirt instead of a blanket somewhere in that ladder you made-" he pointed to something over Nesta's right shoulder, just out of sight. "Apophis gets to make a display out of you."
Nesta turned, bracing herself for whatever poor fae she might see. Whatever spy a High Lord might have sent to infiltrate the camp.
Even Zahariel let go as Nesta's legs gave out and she vomited yellow bile from her empty stomach across the tent floor.
Gasping, shaking- she couldn't stop the tears that spilled down her cheeks as Nesta looked up at the lifeless body of Feyre Archeron.