She pointed a warning finger at him without so much as looking up. “Is there a reason, Rhysand, why you dragged your yapping pack into my home?”

Her home was little more than a giant, converted attic, but none of us dared argue as Mor, Cassian, and Azriel finally came closer, forming a small circle around Amren’s sprawl in the center of the room.

Rhys said to me, “The information you got from Dagdan and Brannagh confirms what we’ve been gathering ourselves while you were gone. Especially Hybern’s potential allies in other territories—on the continent.”

“Vultures,” Mor muttered, and Cassian looked inclined to agree.

But Rhys—Rhys had indeed been spying, while Azriel had been—

Rhys snorted. “I can stay hidden, mate.”

I glared at him, but Azriel cut in. “Having Hybern’s movements confirmed by you, Feyre, is what we needed.”

“Why?”

Cassian crossed his arms. “We barely stand a chance of surviving Hybern’s armies on our own. If armies from Vallahan, Montesere, and Rask join them …” He drew a line across his tan throat.

Mor elbowed him in the ribs. Cassian nudged her right back as Azriel shook his head at both of them, shadows coiling around the tips of his wings.

“Are those three territories … that powerful?” Perhaps it was a foolish question, showing how little I knew of the faerie lands on the continent—

“Yes,” Azriel said, no judgment in his hazel eyes. “Vallahan has the numbers, Montesere has the money, and Rask … it is large enough to have both.”

“And we have no potential allies amongst the other overseas territories?”

Rhys pulled at a stray thread on the cuff of his black jacket. “Not ones that would sail here to help.”

My stomach turned. “What of Miryam and Drakon?” He’d once refused to consider, but— “You fought for Miryam and Drakon centuries ago,” I said to Rhys. He’d done a great deal more than that, if Jurian was to be believed. “Perhaps it’s time to call in that debt.”

But Rhys shook his head. “We tried. Azriel went to Cretea.” The island where Miryam, Drakon, and their unified human and Fae peoples had secretly lived for the past five centuries.

“It was abandoned,” Azriel said. “In ruin. With no trace of what happened or where they went.”

“You think Hybern—”

“There was no sign of Hybern, or of any harm,” Mor cut in, her face taut. They had been her friends, too—during the War. Miryam, and Drakon, and the human queens who had gotten the Treaty signed. And it was worry—true, deep worry—that guttered in her brown eyes. In all their eyes.

“Then do you think they heard about Hybern and ran?” I asked. Drakon had a winged legion, Rhys had once told me. If there was any chance of finding them—

“The Drakon and Miryam I knew wouldn’t have run—not from this,” Rhys said.

Mor leaned forward, her golden hair spilling over her shoulders. “But with Jurian now a player in this conflict … Miryam and Drakon, whether they like it or not, have always been tied to him. I don’t blame them for running, if he truly hunts them.”

Rhys’s face slackened for a heartbeat. “That is what the King of Hybern has on Jurian,” he murmured. “Why Jurian works for him.”

My brow furrowed.

“Miryam died—a spear through her chest during that last battle at the sea,” Rhys explained. “She bled out while she was carried to safety. But Drakon knew of a sacred, hidden island where an object of great and terrible power had been concealed. An object made by the Cauldron itself, legend claimed. He brought her there, to Cretea—used the item to resurrect her, make her immortal. As you were Made, Feyre.”

Amren had said it—months ago. That Miryam had been Made as I was.

Amren seemed to remember it, too, as she said, “The King of Hybern must have promised Jurian to use the Cauldron to track the item. To where Miryam and Drakon now live. Perhaps they figured that out—and left as fast as they could.”

And for revenge, for that insane rage that hounded Jurian … he’d do whatever the King of Hybern asked. So he could kill Miryam himself.

“But where did they go?” I looked to Azriel, the shadowsinger still standing with preternatural stillness against the wall. “You found no trace at all of where they might have vanished to?”

“None,” Rhys answered for him. “We’ve sent messengers back since—to no avail.”

I rubbed at my face, sealing off that path of hope. “Then if they are not a possible ally … How do we keep those other territories on the continent from joining with Hybern—from sending their armies here?” I winced. “That’s our plan—isn’t it?”

Rhys smiled grimly. “It is. One we’ve been working on while you were away.” I waited, trying not to pace as Amren’s silver eyes seemed to glow with amusement. “I looked at Hybern first. At its people. As best I could.”

He’d gone to Hybern—

Rhys smirked at the concern flaring across my face. “I’d hoped that Hybern might have some internal conflict to exploit—to get them to collapse from within. That its people might not want this war, might see it as costly and dangerous and unnecessary. But five hundred years on that island, with little trade, little opportunity … Hybern’s people are hungry for change. Or rather … a change back to the old days, when they had human slaves to do their work, when there were no barriers keeping them from what they now perceive as their right.”

Amren slammed shut the book she’d been perusing. “Fools.” She shook her head, inky hair swaying, as she scowled up at me. “Hybern’s wealth has been dwindling for centuries. Most of their trade routes before the War dealt with the South—with the Black Land. But once it went to the humans … We don’t know if Hybern’s king deliberately failed to establish new trade routes and opportunities for his people in order to one day fuel this war, or if he was just that shortsighted and let everything fall apart. But for centuries now, Hybern’s people have been festering. Hybern let their resentment of their growing stagnation and poverty fester.”

“There are many High Fae,” Mor said carefully, “who believed before the War, and still believe now, that humans … that they are property. There were many High Fae who knew nothing but privilege thanks to those slaves. And when that privilege was ripped away from them, when they were forced to leave their homelands or forced to make room for other High Fae and re-form territories—create new ones—above that wall … They have not forgotten that anger, even centuries later. Especially not in places like Hybern, where their territory and population remained mostly untouched by change. They were one of the few who did not have to yield any land to the wall—and did not yield any land to the Fae territories now looking for a new home. Isolated, growing poorer, with no slaves to do their labor … Hybern has long viewed the days before the War as a golden era. And these centuries since as a dark age.”

I rubbed at my chest. “They’re all insane, to think that.”

Rhys nodded. “Yes—they certainly are. But don’t forget that their king has encouraged these limited world views. He did not expand their trade routes, did not allow other territories to take any of his land and bring their cultures. He considered where things went wrong for the Loyalists in the War. How they ultimately yielded not from being overwhelmed but because they began arguing amongst themselves. Hybern has had a long, long while to think on those mistakes. And how to avoid them at any cost. So he made sure his people are completely for this war, completely for the idea of the wall coming down, because they think it will somehow restore this … gilded vision of the past. Hybern’s people see their king and their armies not as conquerors, but as liberators of High Fae and those who stand with them.”