2_-_court_of_mist_and_fury_a_-_sarah_j._maas

peer behind the curtain.” He waved a delicate hand in my direction. “Ask it, girl.”
“If there was no body—nothing but perhaps a bit of bone,” I said as solidly as I could,
“would there be a way to resurrect that person? To grow them a new body, put their soul
into it.”
Those eyes flashed. “Was the soul somehow preserved? Contained?”
I tried not to think about the eye ring Amarantha had worn, the soul she’d trapped inside
to witness her every horror and depravity. “Yes.”
“There is no way.”
I almost sighed in relief.
“Unless … ” The boy bounced each finger off his thumb, his hand like some pale,
twitchy insect. “Long ago, before the High Fae, before man, there was a Cauldron … They
say all the magic was contained inside it, that the world was born in it. But it fell into the
wrong hands. And great and horrible things were done with it. Things were forged with it.
Such wicked things that the Cauldron was eventually stolen back at great cost. It could not
be destroyed, for it had Made all things, and if it were broken, then life would cease to be.
So it was hidden. And forgotten. Only with that Cauldron could something that is dead be
reforged like that.”
Rhysand’s face was again a mask of calm. “Where did they hide it?”
“Tell me a secret no one knows, Lord of Night, and I’ll tell you mine.”
I braced myself for whatever horrible truth was about to come my way. But Rhysand
said, “My right knee gets a twinge of pain when it rains. I wrecked it during the War, and
it’s hurt ever since.”
The Bone Carver bit out a harsh laugh, even as I gaped at Rhys. “You always were my
favorite,” he said, giving a smile I would never for a moment think was childlike. “Very
well. The Cauldron was hidden at the bottom of a frozen lake in Lapplund—” Rhys began
to turn for me, as if he’d head there right now, but the Bone Carver added, “And vanished
a long, long time ago.” Rhys halted. “I don’t know where it went to—or where it is now.
Millennia before you were born, the three feet on which it stands were successfully
cleaved from its base in an attempt to fracture some of its power. It worked—barely.
Removing the feet was like cutting off the first knuckle of a finger. Irksome, but you could
still use the rest with some difficulty. The feet were hidden at three different temples—
Cesere, Sangravah, and Itica. If they have gone missing, it is likely the Cauldron is active
once more—and that the wielder wants it at full power and not a wisp of it missing.”
That was why the temples had been ransacked. To get the feet on which the Cauldron
stood and restore it to its full power. Rhys merely said, “I don’t suppose you know who
now has the Cauldron.”
The Bone Carver pointed a small finger at me. “Promise that you’ll give me her bones
when she dies and I’ll think about it.” I stiffened, but the boy laughed. “No—I don’t think
even you would promise that, Rhysand.”