“You know this for certain?” Rhys said. He was still bleak-eyed from the attack, from healing and helping his people all day.

Amren hissed. “I’m trying not to be insulted, Rhysand.”

Mor elbowed her way between them, staring at the two assembled pieces of the Book of Breathings. “What happens if we put both halves together?”

“Don’t put them together,” Amren simply said.

With either piece laid out, their voices blended and sang and hissed—evil and good and madness; dark and light and chaos.

“You put the pieces together,” she clarified when Rhys gave her a questioning look, “and the blast of power will be felt in every corner and hole in the earth. You won’t just attract the King of Hybern. You’ll draw enemies far older and more wretched. Things that have long been asleep—and should remain so.”

I cringed a bit. Rhys put a hand on my back.

“Then we move in now,” Cassian said. His face had healed, but he limped a bit from an injury I couldn’t see beneath his fighting leathers. He jerked his chin to Rhys. “Since you can’t winnow without being tracked, Mor and Az will winnow us all in, Feyre breaks the Cauldron, and we get out. We’ll be there and gone before anyone notices and the King of Hybern will have a new piece of cookware.”

I swallowed. “It could be anywhere in his castle.”

“We know where it is,” Cassian countered.

I blinked. Azriel said to me, “We’ve been able to narrow it down to the lower levels.” Through his spying, their planning for this trip all these months. “Every inch of the castle and surrounding lands is heavily guarded, but not impossible to get through. We’ve worked out the timing of it—for a small group of us to get in and out, quick and silent, and be gone before they know what’s happening.”

Mor said to him, “But the King of Hybern could notice Rhys’s presence the moment he arrives. And if Feyre needs time to nullify the Cauldron, and we don’t know how much time, that’s a risky variable.”

Cassian said, “We’ve considered that. So you and Rhys will winnow us in off the coast; we fly in while he stays.” They’d have to winnow me, I realized, since I still had not yet mastered doing it over long distances. At least, not with many stops in between. “As for the spell,” Cassian continued, “it’s a risk we’ll have to take.”

Silence fell as they waited for Rhys’s answer. My mate scanned my face, eyes wide.

Azriel pushed, “It’s a solid plan. The king doesn’t know our scents. We wreck the Cauldron and vanish before he notices … It’ll be a graver insult than the bloodier, direct route we’d been considering, Rhys. We beat them yesterday, so when we go into that castle … ” Vengeance indeed danced in that normally placid face. “We’ll leave a few reminders that we won the last damn war for a reason.”

Cassian nodded grimly. Even Mor smiled a bit.

“Are you asking me,” Rhys finally said, far too calmly, “to stay outside while my mate goes into his stronghold?”

“Yes,” Azriel said with equal calm, Cassian shifting himself slightly between them. “If Feyre can’t nullify the Cauldron easily or quickly, we steal it—send the pieces back to the bastard when we’re done breaking it apart. Either way, Feyre calls you through the bond when we’re done—you and Mor winnow us out. They won’t be able to track you fast enough if you only come to retrieve us.”

Rhysand dropped onto the couch beside me at last, loosing a breath. His eyes slid to me. “If you want to go, then you go, Feyre.”

If I hadn’t been already in love with him, I might have loved him for that—for not insisting I stay, even if it drove his instincts mad, for not locking me away in the aftermath of what had happened yesterday.

And I realized—I realized how badly I’d been treated before, if my standards had become so low. If the freedom I’d been granted felt like a privilege and not an inherent right.

Rhys’s eyes darkened, and I knew he read what I thought, felt. “You might be my mate,” he said, “but you remain your own person. You decide your fate—your choices. Not me. You chose yesterday. You choose every day. Forever.”

And maybe he only understood because he, too, had been helpless and without choices, had been forced to do such horrible things, and locked up. I threaded my fingers through his and squeezed. Together—together we’d find our peace, our future. Together we’d fight for it.

“Let’s go to Hybern,” I said.

I was halfway up the stairs an hour later when I realized that I still had no idea what room to go to. I’d gone to my bedroom since we’d returned from the cabin, but … what of his?

With Tamlin, he’d kept his own rooms and slept in mine. And I supposed—I supposed it’d be the same.

I was almost to my bedroom door when Rhysand drawled from behind me, “We can use your room if you like, but … ” He was leaning against his open bedroom door. “Either your room or mine—but we’re sharing one from now on. Just tell me whether I should move my clothes or yours. If that’s all right with you.”

“Don’t you—you don’t want your own space?”

“No,” he said baldly. “Unless you do. I need you protecting me from our enemies with your water-wolves.”

I snorted. He’d made me tell him that part of my tale over and over. I jerked my chin toward his bedroom. “Your bed is bigger.”

And that was that.

I walked in to find my clothes already there, a second armoire now beside his. I stared at the massive bed, then at all the open space around us.

Rhys shut the door and went to a small box on the desk—then silently handed it to me.

My heart thundered as I opened the lid. The star sapphire gleamed in the candlelight, as if it were one of the Starfall spirits trapped in stone. “Your mother’s ring?”

“My mother gave me that ring to remind me she was always with me, even during the worst of my training. And when I reached my majority, she took it away. It was an heirloom of her family—had been handed down from female to female over many, many years. My sister wasn’t yet born, so she wouldn’t have known to give it to her, but … My mother gave it to the Weaver. And then she told me that if I were to marry or mate, then the female would either have to be smart or strong enough to get it back. And if the female wasn’t either of those things, then she wouldn’t survive the marriage. I promised my mother that any potential bride or mate would have the test … And so it sat there for centuries.”

My face heated. “You said this was something of value—”

“It is. To me, and my family.”

“So my trip to the Weaver—”

“It was vital that we learn if you could detect those objects. But … I picked the object out of pure selfishness.”

“So I won my wedding ring without even being asked if I wanted to marry you.”

“Perhaps.”

I cocked my head. “Do—do you want me to wear it?”

“Only if you want to.”

“When we go to Hybern … Let’s say things go badly. Will anyone be able to tell that we’re mated? Could they use that against you?”