2_-_court_of_mist_and_fury_a_-_sarah_j._maas

glance was too long to be anything but casual. I wondered what their training, their honed
senses, detected.
The passage ahead was dark, silent. Azriel appeared a heartbeat later. “Guards are
down.” There was blood on his knife—an ash knife. Az’s cold eyes met mine. “Hurry.”
I didn’t need to focus to track the Cauldron to its hiding place. It tugged on my every
breath, hauling me to its dark embrace.
Any time we reached a crossroads, Cassian and Azriel would branch out, usually
returning with bloodied blades, faces grim, silently warning me to hurry.
They’d been working these weeks, through whatever sources Azriel had, to get this
encounter down to an exact schedule. If I needed more time than they’d allotted, if the
Cauldron couldn’t be moved … it might all be for nothing. But not these deaths. No, those
I did not mind at all.
These people—these people had hurt Rhys. They’d brought tools with them to
incapacitate him. They had sent that legion to wreck and butcher my city.
I descended through an ancient dungeon, the stones dark and stained. Mor kept at my
side, constantly monitoring. The last line of defense.
If Cassian and Azriel were hurt, I realized, she was to make sure I got out by whatever
means. Then return.
But there was no one in the dungeon—not that I encountered, once the Illyrians were
done with them. They had executed this masterfully. We found another stairwell, leading
down, down, down—
I pointed, nausea roiling. “There. It’s down there.”
Cassian took the stairs, Illyrian blade stained with dark blood.
Neither Mor nor Azriel seemed to breathe until Cassian’s low whistle bounced off the
stairwell stones from below.
Mor put a hand on my back, and we descended into the dark.
Home, the Book of Breathings sighed. Home.
Cassian was standing in a round chamber beneath the castle—a ball of faelight floating
above his shoulder.
And in the center of the room, atop a small dais, sat the Cauldron.