The bastard had never intended for her to find it. An envelope, battered and weather-stained, had come bearing a strange seal and her name over a fortnight ago. She’d come across the first of them months ago; correspondence meant for her that he’d secreted away, but not before tearing them open to read first. Nesta had learned early on in their marriage that Lysander was a snake, but it hadn’t been until the previous year that she’d uncovered just how much of her life his venom had corrupted.
It was why she’d finally agreed to spy for Demetra after years of the queen cajoling.
“Nesta, you are the only honest person in this court.”
“Nesta, you see through the bullshit and lies more clearly than anyone I know.”
“Nesta, I’m begging you to help me carve the rot from this palace. Please.”
Lysander, for all his cunning, never suspected that his elder sister knew of his duplicitous behavior. Because of this misstep, this small-minded belief that the women in his life could never amount to more than a pretty face or an obedient wife, Nesta began to listen, to watch, and to report her findings to her Queen.
If only she were the perfect wife he thought she was, completely uninterested in politics and only engrossed in the latest fashion or court scandal. If only she hadn’t found the letters—her letters—and knew then and there that she needed to seize back control of her life.
But no, Nesta Archeron had been raised to be more than a passive woman whose only purpose in life was to bear children and defer to her husband’s exceedingly poor judgment.
Among other important skills, her mother, as cold and exacting as she was, had taught her how to be an incredibly persuasive actress. Things as simple as crying convincingly on command or feigning what men thought to be a genuine infatuation. Such things had proven increasingly valuable over the years since she had been betrothed, and then married, to a prince of the continent. Her favorite, though, was what she came to refer to as “The Feint.”
She would collapse at the drop of a hat, as if suddenly overcome with whichever emotion she was feeling at that moment, and would be carried to her rooms to recover for hours at a time. Lysander, who had no patience for such hysterics, would leave her to the care of a nursemaid and rejoin whatever court function or debauchery he’d been forced to leave.
It was the exact stunt she’d pulled a mere hour ago, giving her the opportunity to search her husband’s study. This latest letter hadn’t even been hidden well, only tucked between the pages of a bulging ledger, filled with odd sums and a series of cramped notes she didn’t understand, or care to decipher at that moment.
The envelope felt heavy in her hands, as if weighed down by the secrets of its contents, and Nesta’s hands shook slightly as she slipped out the letter inside and unfolded it. By some miracle, the ink, though smeared in some places, was still legible. She held her breath and began to read.
It feels foolish, writing again when you have never replied to our previous letters over the years, but I’m sending this in the hopes that this one will be enough.
I don’t know how much you know about what has transpired between Prythian and Hybern, especially when your Queen was murdered by Hybern’s forces. Part of me wants to believe you have no knowledge of the full extent of it, because it would lessen the sting of your silence.
To put it simply, Nesta, I need you. We need you. Feyre and I have been turned Fae. Feyre’s mate, the High Lord of the Night Court, is as good as dead. Mother and Father are dead. There is unrest beyond what you can imagine, and it’s the belief here that we may be on the brink of yet another war.
If you ever loved us, you would come back home. I have never asked anything of you, Nesta, but I am asking now.
Watch for the Shadow on the night of the next full moon. You’ll know the one.
Cold fury, unlike anything she’d ever felt before, ripped through her nerve endings, nearly sending her crashing to her knees. Of all the letters she’d found so far, only one had been from family—her mother—and it had been written several years ago at that.
Elain and Feyre turned Fae? Her mother and father both dead? A fucking war on Prythian? While she’d known of Demetra’s death, both from the lying tongue of her husband and from an unearthed missive from the captain of her guard, she hadn’t known it had been by the hands of a Hybern soldier.
What else had slipped by her notice? What else had happened, unbeknownst to her, during the years she’d been across the ocean from her family, blinded by her life at Court, once glimmering and new until the reality had set in?
A steely resolve settled slowly over her, slowing her raging pulse and served to clear the fog that had overtaken her. She had two weeks to plan. Lysander would have certainly also read the letter and would undoubtedly be making his own plans.
Nesta’s would need to be better. If her husband thought he still had full control of her, of the knowledge she held of what was going on outside of the borders of Etrea, and her unwavering loyalty as a wife, he would soon find out just how sorely mistaken he was.
She had not been beholden to him for some time. The wool he’d so carefully slipped over her eyes from the very beginning had been torn away. She was no lamb, and he wasn’t the cunning wolf he thought himself to be.
Nesta would find this so-called Shadow and go to her sisters. To contribute anything she could.
This would be her reckoning.
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