Helion drew his gaze from Mor long enough to ask Rhys, “You and pretty Tarquin had a moment today. Do you truly think he’ll join us?”

“If you mean in bed, definitely not,” Rhys said with a wry smile as he again sprawled on his spread of cushions. “But if you mean in this war … Yes. I believe he means to fight. Beron, on the other hand …”

“Hybern is focusing on the South,” Helion said. “And regardless of what you think Tamlin’s up to, the Spring Court is now mostly occupied. Beron has to realize his court will be a battleground if he doesn’t join us to push southward—especially if Summer has joined us.”

Meaning the Spring Court and human lands would see the brunt of the battles.

“Will Beron choose to listen to reason, though?” Mor mused.

Helion tapped a finger against the carved arm of his couch. “He played games in the War and it cost him—dearly. His people still remember those choices—those losses. His own damn wife remembers.”

Helion had looked at the Lady of Autumn repeatedly during the meeting. I asked, carefully and casually, “What do you mean?”

Mor shook her head—not at what I’d said, but at whatever had occurred.

Helion fixed his full attention upon me. It was an effort not to flinch at the weight of that focus, the simmering intensity. The muscled body was only a mask—to hide that cunning mind beneath. I wondered if Rhys had picked that up from him.

Helion folded an ankle over a knee. “The Lady of the Autumn Court’s two older sisters were indeed …” He searched for a word. “Butchered. Tormented, and then butchered, during the War.”

I shut out Nesta’s screaming, shut out Elain’s sobbing as she was hauled toward that Cauldron.

Lucien’s aunts. Dead before he’d ever existed. Had his mother ever told him this story?

Rhys explained to me, “Hybern’s forces had swarmed our lands by that point.”

Helion’s jaw clenched. “The Lady of the Autumn Court was sent to stay with her sisters, her younger children packed off to other relatives. To spread out the bloodline.” He dragged a hand through his sable hair. “Hybern attacked their estate. Her sisters bought her time to run. Not because she was married to Beron, but because they loved each other. Fiercely. She tried to stay, but they convinced her to go. So she did—she ran and ran, but Hybern’s beasts were still faster. Stronger. They cornered her at a ravine, where she became trapped atop a ledge, the beasts snapping at her feet.”

He didn’t speak for a long moment.

Too many details. He knew so many details.

I said quietly, “You saved her. You found her, didn’t you?”

A coronet of light seemed to flicker over that thick black hair. “I did.”

There was enough weight, anger, and something else in those two words that I studied the High Lord of Day.

“What happened?”

Helion didn’t break my stare. “I tore the beasts apart with my bare hands.”

A chill slid down my spine. “Why?”

He could have ended it a thousand other ways. Easier ways. Cleaner ways.

Rhys’s bloody hands after the Ravens’ attack flashed through my mind.

Helion didn’t so much as shift in his chair. “She was still young—though she’d been married to that delightful male for nearly two decades. Married too young, the marriage arranged when she was twenty.”

The words were clipped. And twenty—so young. Nearly as young as Mor had been when her own family tried to marry her to Eris.

“So?” A dangerous, taunting question.

And how his eyes burned at that, flaring bright as suns.

But it was Mor who said coolly, “I heard a rumor once, Helion, that she waited before agreeing to that marriage. For a certain someone who had met her by chance at an equinox ball the year before.”

I tried not to blink, not to let any of my rising interest surface.

The fire banked to embers and Helion threw a half smile in Mor’s direction. “Interesting. I heard her family wanted internal ties to power, and that they didn’t give her a choice before they sold her to Beron.”

Sold her. Mor’s nostrils flared. Cassian ran a hand down the back of her hair. Azriel didn’t so much as turn from his vigil at the window, though I could have sworn his wings tucked in a bit tighter.

“Too bad they’re just rumors,” Rhys cut in smoothly, “and can’t be confirmed by anyone.”

Helion merely toyed with the gold cuff on his sculpted arm, twisting the serpent to the center of his bicep. But I furrowed my brows. “Does Beron know you saved his wife in the War?” He hadn’t mentioned anything during the meeting.

Helion let out a dark laugh. “Cauldron, no.” There was enough wry, knowing humor that I straightened.

“You had—an affair after you rescued her?”

The amusement only grew, and Helion pushed a finger against his lips in mock warning. “Careful, High Lady. Even the birds report to Thesan here.”

I frowned at the birds in cages throughout the room, still silent in Azriel’s shadowy presence.

I threw shields around them, Rhys said down the bond.

“How long did the affair last?” I asked. That withdrawn female … I couldn’t imagine it.

Helion snorted. “Is that a polite question for a High Lady to be asking?”

But the way he spoke, that smile …

I only waited, using silence to push him instead.

Helion shrugged. “On and off for decades. Until Beron found out. They say the lady was all brightness and smiles before that. And after Beron was through with her … You saw what she is.”

“What did he do to her?”

“The same things he does now.” Helion waved a hand. “Belittle her, leave bruises where no one but him will see them.”

I clenched my teeth. “If you were her lover, why didn’t you stop it?”

The wrong thing to say. Utterly wrong, by the dark fury that rippled across Helion’s face. “Beron is a High Lord, and she is his wife, mother of his brood. She chose to stay. Chose. And with the protocols and rules, Lady, you will find that most situations like the one you were in do not end well for those who interfere.”

I didn’t back down, didn’t apologize. “You barely even looked at her today.”

“We have more important matters at hand.”

“Beron never called you out for it?”

“To publicly do so would be to admit that his possession made a fool of him. So we continue our little dance, these centuries later.” I somehow doubted that beneath that roguish charm and irreverence, Helion felt it was a dance at all.

But if it had ended centuries ago, and she’d never seen him again, had let Beron treat her so abominably …

Whatever you’ve just figured out, Rhys said, you’d better stop looking so shocked by it.

I forced a smile to my face. “You High Lords really do love your melodrama, don’t you?”

Helion’s own smile didn’t reach his eyes. But Rhys asked, “In your libraries, have you ever encountered a mention of how the wall might be repaired?”

Helion began asking why we wanted to know, what Hybern was doing with the Cauldron … and Rhys fed him answers, easily and smoothly.