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duskandstarlight · 1 year

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Embers & Light (Chapter 54)

A very long wait for this next chapter, but it's here! And it's long! Big love to @noirshadow who listened to me moan about depression ruining my ability to write, how I might have to stop writing this fic, how I can't write Nessian anymore. BUT here we are and @noirshadow not only didn't kill me for my whining, but she also beta'd this fic for me so I could bring you a chapter before the new year :)

If anyone is still reading this fic, thank you for your patience! And drop in and say hello below so I know I'm not posting to tumbleweed, haha.

And for anybody who celebrates this time of year, I hope it's been a merry one <3

PS If, like me, you haven't read this fic recently, I'd recommend rereading chapter 53 as a refresher - I had to do it, too *face palm*

Chapter 54 Cassian

“And the Seer of the Sage was certain of Kallon’s intention?”

Beside him, Nesta didn’t bristle at Rhys’ line of questioning, she merely raised her chin, commanding the space. If Cassian wasn’t so tense he would have been brimming with pride, but instead he remained seated on the U-shaped couch back in Windhaven and tucked in his wings a little tighter.

From where she stood behind him, Nesta’s hand came to rest lightly on his shoulder. The gesture was like a language in itself, albeit a voiceless one.

Cassian tried to relax, to loosen his shoulders and let out a slow, measured breath.

It didn’t help.

It had been like this since he and Nesta had planned their next steps in the forest. With the threat of the Blood Rite looming over them, there was no dispute that it was imperative that they move quickly. The information Nesta had learnt beneath the Lake needed to be shared. Their family and friends needed to know about Kallon and Cassian—about Cassian’s mother—so they could stop the death of more females and the bonding of a Enalius’ sword to someone truly terrible.

And whilst common sense and years of formulating strategy told Cassian that the truth needed out, his whole chest ached at the thought of parting with information that felt sacred to him.

When Nesta had unfolded Cassian’s history before him, an uncomfortable mixture or emotions had coursed through Cassian: adrenaline and wonder - and an intense sadness that had both brought him to tears and made him angry at his mother’s fate. He longed for the time to truly process it all, for it all to truly sink in. And whilst Cassian was no fool—whilst the general inside of him couldn’t help but barrage him with the hard facts—it felt as if the choice was being ripped from him

Despite Cassian’s best efforts, the Rebellion was strengthening day-by-day amongst the savager clans. And just last week, Azriel’s spies had reported that Kallon’s Killing Power in the sparring ring continued to grow.

That in itself was of great concern. If the Prince managed to bond the sword to him at the top of Ramiel, there was no telling what power Kallon could wield against the Night Court. With the supposed support of Enalius behind him combined with the swelling anger of his Illyrian supporters, Kallon might finally be able to take that mighty, arrogant step forward and invoke a civil war.

So, even though there was so much swilling around inside of Cassian’s head and inside of his gut, Cassian had done what any general would do. He’d opened his mind, reached out into the ether for his brother and called for an informal council back in Windhaven. And then, despite the elusive and ever-moving tangle of emotions, Cassian winnowed himself, Nesta and Sala back to the camp he’d grown up in.

They’d landed clumsily, stumbling and righting themselves atop the main dirt path that ran through the camp.

Illyrians whisked past them, giving them a wide birth when they realised exactly who they intended to mow over. It took Cassian a few seconds for his instincts to reestablish themselves, and then he was tugging Nesta off of the road and out of harm’s way.

Windhaven looked as it always did, both beautiful and harsh. The usual clash of steel rang around them, partnered with the clang of cast iron pots over campfires and the beating of wings. On both sides, past the war tents and the scarce wooden houses, were the walls of the craggy mountains. They staggered upwards, past the needles of the pine trees until they met the sky.

To their right, against the rare clear blue, the tombstone rock that marked the old widows camp was a harsh foreboding of grey.

Cassian wondered how the weather dared to be so cheerful when he felt like the world had been ripped out from beneath his feet.

“I’m not used to winnowing,” Cassian apologised, his words hoarse against the dryness in his throat. His head felt light-headed, as if he’d left some of the weight of it behind.

Nesta didn’t lift her eyes to him. Instead, she straightened, the column of her spine climbing, her shoulder rounding back until she was set in her usual formidable posture. Then, she tracked her gaze around the camp, cataloguing every movement despite the bright sunshine threatening to blind her vision.

“We’re here,” Nesta replied simply. Her voice also sounded diaphanous, but whilst Cassian felt as if a part of him was still in the forest, he knew that Nesta was caught somewhere in the future.

It had been that way since she’d arrived back from the Lake. There was a determination that had set inside of her, a clear direction in which she was resolutely headed.

But whilst Cassian could sense the drive inside of her, outwardly Nesta merely lifted a hand to create a makeshift canopy across her brow, blocking out the sunlight. “Go on ahead, Sala,” she commanded. “Let Mas know we’re coming.”

The manticore didn’t need telling twice. Sala vaulted into movement, the fire from her tail blazing silver, a disappearing beacon that Nesta and Cassian didn’t hesitate to track.

They set a punishing pace. Clouds of steam billowed in front of them. The morning frost had long since thawed from the hardened earth and mud slicked and squelched at their boots. But finally the bungalow took shape against the mud and the rocks.

Home. They were home. And it looked so perfectly picturesque that Cassian’s throat burned. Because everything that was happening threatened to destroy it. His life, finally right, stacked as precariously as a house of cards. One breath of wind, one wrong turn, and it could all collapse in on itself.

That, Cassian supposed, was the problem with happiness. Ever fragile and transient. Slivers of time, fragments of moments, rather than something permanent and steady.

Cassian hadn’t realised he’d come to a standstill until Nesta said his name. “Look,” she said, but there was something imploring about the way she ordered him, as if she knew the direction of his thoughts and wanted to divert him from the truth of it.

And, because Cassian needed to be distracted, he looked.

Mas stood on the stone step at the front door. Her wings were held proudly behind her back, her thick, dark hair ruffled by the wind. Her grin was toothy and wide, her expression pleased. And at her feet, clinging to her legs, was Roksana.

“Sinta,” Mas said in greeting as they climbed the few steps that staggered to the door. She clapped Cassian’s face between with her palms and peered into his face in a way that made his chest tighten, as if someone was fisting his heart. Hazel eyes skated over him and what Mas read in his expression had her recoiling slightly. Cassian could have sworn a light winked out in the depths of her irises.

He knew he must look a state. Whilst his body had healed from his fall from the sky, he was still covered in mud and pine needles and only the Old Gods knew what else.

For a few heartbeats, Mas just studied him. The concern on her face was indisputable, but in the end, all she said was the blatant truth. “You are tired.”

For a second—just a second—Cassian allowed his eyes to close. He leant into Mas’ touch. She had been his mother in so many ways, had loved him irrevocably, filling the empty space in his heart that longed to have someone care for him in the way mothers did. “Just a little,” he admitted, even if it was a lie. Now he’d had a moment to stop, his exhaustion was so weighted his limbs felt like lead.

Understanding deepened in Mas’ expression. She stepped back slightly, giving him space. Her head tilted slightly to the side. She glanced sideways at Nesta and then back to him. “You have had bad news?”

“Some,” Cassian admitted, because he couldn’t begin to explain, not even to her. Not even to his brothers.

But Mas didn’t push him to explain. She only patted his forearm before she rested a hand on Nesta’s arm. “Come inside and sit by the fire, both of you. Roksana and I will bring you chai.”

Now, Cassian sat with a drained mug cupped in his hands that Roksana had masterfully skimmed over the floor to hand it to him - the obvious skill a credit to Lorrian’s regular flying lessons — and waited for Nesta to reply to his brother.

“My trip beneath the Lake was enlightening,” Nesta told Rhys in that way that was so Nesta—so artfully worded. “From what I’ve learnt, it’s clear that Kallon has been planning this long before he called to vote the suspension of the Rite. Ramiel has always been his back up plan, when all else failed.”

Nesta paused, her fingers closing around Cassian’s shoulder, asking his permission. So far, Nesta had purposely evaded Rhys’s assumption that she had met with the Seer of the Sage below the Lake of Souls. But now there was no avoiding it, the truth had to come out, and Nesta knew that Cassian couldn’t look his family in the eyes and tell them about his mother.

Cassian did not turn his head. He didn’t nod or say anything. But something unravelled slightly in his chest, the barest of movements, like gears slipping before they locked back into place.

Nesta took a measured breath.

“There’s more,” she announced to the room.

Cassian felt the peak in interest, the weight of everyone’s attention but he fixated his gaze on the threads of the carpet, on the individual fibres and didn’t look up. He couldn’t.

And then Nesta told them.

She explained how she’d not met the Seer of the Sage, but the real Maya—the twin and mother who had fled to Spearhead pregnant in the face of a Prophecy. The twin who had raised her youngling away from prying eyes, hoping that he could be better than other Illyrian males.

When Nesta’s voice fell away, a stung silence followed.

“So, Maya is not Maya,” Feyre said, eventually. Cassian imagined her eyes darting to him, but he remained hunched over on the couch, his elbows propped up on his knees.

The words fell into the quiet, sinking like a stone plummeting through water.

It took Cassian too long to understand that they were respectfully waiting to see if he might speak.

Cassian clasped his hands together, watching the way the tendons at his knuckles strained, the blood squeezed out until they were bone white. His siphons caught the light from the movement, the log burner blazing in the gems’ reflection, creating the illusion of a wet well of blood.

His lips flattened, the muscle in his cheek ticked before it disappeared completely. Cassian knew he was taking too long to answer, but he felt as if he were mute. “No,” he said eventually, his tongue thick, his speech slow even though he’d only spoken one word.

And that was all he said. His throat clogged up again, his ability to speak locked away, the key tucked into some secret pocket inside of himself that even Cassian wasn’t aware of.

He hadn’t known he’d be like this—so silent. His body had decided for him, his slowly processing mind shutting everything down. Perhaps it was trauma of some kind, a delayed reaction that had everything in him grinding to a halt. His past had been cracked open and laid bare for everyone to pick at and Cassian wanted to hoard the truth of his mother, of his lineage, as fiercely as Amren guarded her jewellery.

Cassian had still not reconciled that the female living in his countryside cottage on the outskirts of Velaris was not just someone they had rescued from Ironcrest. She was his aunt, his mother’s twin, and her real name was not Maya, but Lyanne.

As if sensing the knot of his thoughts, Roksana crawled across the carpet from where she’d been sitting close to Lorrian and Frawley and came to sit at his feet.

“Lyanne was protecting her sister,” Nesta announced in wake of Cassian’s silence. “She can’t be blamed for keeping the oath to her twin.”

“Of course not,” Rhys cut in smoothly and Cassian felt his brothers violet eyes searing into his skin, felt the lightest touch of a claw raking down his mental shields. “I would do the same for my brothers—for anyone I consider to be family.”

Cassian knew that was true. He, himself, would do the same for Azriel and Rhys. For Mor and Amren. For Feyre—for any members of his family—without a second thought.

And Lyanne had sacrificed so much to ensure that everyone believed her twin to be dead. She had faked her own death and taken on the identity of her sister so convincingly that nobody suspected that she was not Maya. She had watched the male she had loved grieve for her even though she’d been right in front of him all along. And it was Marsh’s grief which had been the greatest distraction of all. It had stopped him looking too closely, had stopped him from realising that the wife he’d loved had not been unfaithful and burnt to death but had been living alongside him masked as someone else.

It was that mask which had acted as a constant reminder to Marsh of the wife he had lost. To Marsh, Maya had become an object of hate. She was the wrong twin: his brother’s widow had lived and she was the spitting image of the wife Marsh believed he had lost.

But he’d bedded her anyway. And in all that time, he’d never grasped that the wool had been pulled over his eyes.

It made Cassian question how deeply Marsh’s love had really run.

If Nesta had an identical twin, Cassian could never mistake the two. He knew Nesta, down to his bones. Down to the cavern within himself where even now, her name still whispered like a secret that only he and Nesta understood. Nesta, Nesta, Nesta—

As if his innermost thoughts called to her, Nesta’s fingers fastened even tighter on Cassian’s shoulder.

“It makes sense.” Azriel’s voice cut through the sigh of Nesta’s name. As always, the Shadowsinger’s voice was chilling—not awful but the soft caress of midnight clouds passing over stars, the coolness of shadows seeping into your skin, dew on the grass sinking through your boots. “We’ve been wondering why Kallon hasn’t been acting, why no more females have been sacrificed in his attempt to bond the blade. Illyrian magic is amplified over the Rite.”

Cassian knew Azriel had directed the conversation purposefully, shifting the focus away from Cassian’s family history. His mother.

He and Rhys knew better than anyone that Cassian had mourned his mother. Since the moment he’d been torn from her and thrown into the Windhaven camp, Cassian had grieved for a female that memory had finally eaten away at, until she was nothing but the barest of fragments.

“It’s a sacred time,” Rhys admitted slowly—carefully. Cassian could still feel Rhys’ gaze on him, but he didn’t look up. Instead, he rested a scarred hand on the tangle of Roksana’s wind-tossed hair. The youngling didn’t shrug him off, she only nestled closer until she was tucked in the valley between his legs, her wings resting against the sofa.

“And Ramiel can only be accessed tomorrow?” Feyre interjected. “If Kallon wanted to attempt to bond the blade by dark magic, then he’d have the best luck there?”

“It was Maya’s belief that the immense power found on Ramiel could be used to amplify the magic Kallon would need to bond the sword to him,” Nesta confirmed. “And Cassian and I have discussed it at length. Everything adds up. We believe that Kallon visited the Seer of the Sage to try and confirm his belief that he could bond the blade at Ramiel. And whilst we don’t know what the Seer of the Sage told him, we know for a fact that the Blood Rite isn’t just a time for Illyrians to gain status, it’s the anniversary of the thirty-third day of the battle against Vanth. Oya and Enalius defeated Vanth atop Ramiel’s summit and if the sword originally belonged to Enalius, where better to sacrifice the females than—”

“—atop Gods-blessed ground,” Rhys finished, the cadence of his words slow and stretched out as the realisation hit him. “And Kallon has sole access to it.”

There was a breath of silence, short and fleeting, and then Rhys was interrupting it with an abruptness that mimicked the change in his entire countenance. No longer was he their brother, he was the High Lord of the Night Court ready to defend his territory and brimming with power.

It made Cassian look up.

“How successful will Kallon be if he attempts to use dark magic, complete the sacrifice and bond himself to the sword?”

Rhys’s gaze had pinned itself on the pale witch sitting in the corner of the couch, a blanket draped over her knees.

As petite as she was, Frawley’s very existence had a way of commanding a room. It was like a tug at the periphery of your senses, like prey sensing something other.

Frawley didn’t so much as move but Cassian felt her authoritative presence expand into the room, until she was larger than life, even whilst she sat small in frame in the corner of the couch.

It was a while until the witch spoke up, her voice scratchy and beat up in a way that told Cassian that she hadn’t yet recovered from her trip to the Lake with Nesta. It gave Frawley’s voice an eerie, prophetic quality.

“Dark magic exists to attempt the unnatural, Rhysand, you know that.” Frawley laid out her palms, as if there was a story unfolding in the centre of them. The rest of her body was so still it was almost as if she had been frozen in place. Only her lips moved and whilst her eyes remained directed at Rhys, they blazed with focus, one burning hot, the other cold.

“In the past,” Frawley began, “dark magic has been used to bend original intention and force the intended direction of power against its will. And sometimes it has worked, whilst other times it has caused great devastation in its failure. Dark magic is rarely ever permanent.” Now Frawley’s frosty blue eye snapped in Cassian’s direction, to the female standing guard at his shoulder. “As I’ve taught Nesta, magic feeds off sacrifice and eventually, it will get hungry.”

The static quality to Frawley disintegrated as she leant forward, her focus back on Rhys. “So, Kallon might be successful in bonding the blade to him but it will only be for a time. And when the blade begins to fade again, when its magic starts to flicker like a dying star, what will he sacrifice then? How will he maintain his facade?”

Nesta’s voice cut in without hesitation. “A sacrifice will become a ritual.”

“Yes,” Frawley agreed, her voice dropping out of its rasp to something hushed and undulating. A teacher praising their student, not in a condescending way, but in the way of two people being on the same wavelength. The witch and the Made.

For a short time, Nesta and Frawley looked at one another, but then Frawley’s hazel eye slid to Cassian. It felt like a touch, like something burning, and Cassian knew that Frawley would dare to tread where noone else would. “Yet whilst that is a problem in itself, we also need to consider that Kallon might want to keep the sword bonded to him not only for the sake of status and the support of the Rebellion, but due to his increased strength.” Frawley’s brown eye swivelled to Azriel, whilst the blue remained on Cassian. “You noted at Ironcrest that the Princeling’s power had grown to earn him a fourth siphon in the training ring—weeks after he’d acquired the sword—did you not, Shadowsinger?”

Azriel’s cold hazel eyes barely moved yet somehow they met Frawley’s. “I have it from multiple sources.”

And, as Frawley knew it would, it was the new direction of conversation which instinctively loosened the noose around Cassian’s throat, the one trapping his speech. Because just like Rhys had slipped from brother to High Lord, when it came to a question of power - of strength on the battlefield - Cassian couldn’t help but fall into his role of general of the Night Court’s armies.

Cassian’s voice was terse. “Kallon comes from a lord’s bloodline. His Killing Power is still reaching maturity. The growth in his power could be entirely unconnected to the sword, especially given that the blade disappears when he tries to wield it.”

“But what if it’s a byproduct of both?” Feyre asked quietly, tentatively treading down the path they all knew they needed to head down.

Unsurprisingly, Rhys agreed. “That’s a good question, Feyre darling.”

Rhys leant casually against the mantlepiece but Cassian was not fooled by the illusion of calm. Cassian knew that despite his best efforts, Rhys had read Cassian’s body language down to a tee. And whilst Rhys knew how close Cassian was to snapping, he still asked, “Remind me, brother. How many training siphons were you using at the age of twenty-four?”

A growl coalesced in Cassian’s throat. Six. He’d had six siphons at the age of twenty-four and Rhys damn well knew that. “Don’t ask questions you know the answer to,” he replied shortly.

Seemingly unfazed, Rhys merely shrugged. “If Maya is your mother, then you and Kallon share the same blood. If, like you, his genetics have provided him with a large amount of Killing Power and Enalius’s sword grants him even more, he could potentially harness magic that makes him the most powerful full-blooded Illyrian in history.”

“If you combine a Prince’s status with an impressive amount of Killing Power and a fully-bonded sword, you’ll have a hard time convincing the Illyrians that Kallon isn’t God-given flesh,” Azriel added. And if Cassian hadn’t been bristling at how blasé everyone was being with his heritage, he would have been surprised to detect something dark in his brother’s voice, as pitch as the shadows curling around his ears.

“And that there is both the key and the danger,” Frawley announced, lifting a finger before Cassian could even open his mouth to interject. The witch settled back into the cushions, as if their understanding meant that she could now rest. “Cassian and Kallon share the same blood. They are cousins. It is possible that the reason that the sword showed itself to Kallon is because the sword recognised the bloodline.”

“But,” Frawley continued with an abrupt finger, ignoring the way Cassian had finally straightened up, his expression black, “I’d wager that Kallon’s blood isn’t quite right. It’s not the blood the prophecy foresaw, so the blade disappears when he tries to use it.”

Feyre straightened up from where she was sitting across from Cassian, her palms pressed together between her knees. “If the blood isn’t quite right, how will Kallon successfully bond it to him?”

Frawley observed Feyre unflinchingly. “Dark magic twists and turns the intention of normal magic. That shared blood connection could be the very thing that allows Kallon to bend the sword to his will.”

Then, her eye swivelled to Nesta before she even spoke. “Maya thought that the sword might be using Kallon as an avenue.”

Cassian stopped feeling affronted about the way everyone was talking about him with a suddenness that was jarring. His heart had given an awful, adrenaline-fuelled thump.

“Smart female,” Frawley remarked with a dip of her chin.

“So you think she’s right?”

“Do you?”

Cassian didn’t need to look at Nesta to know that she was raising her chin. “I think that Kallon was never the intended end recipient of the sword.”

Rhys nodded. “I think we all hope that to be the case.”

Quiet hung around them for a pause, suspended like stars in a night sky. And Cassian couldn’t bear the pregnancy of it. He knew where the conversation was leading, what everyone around him had likely come to the conclusion of given his heritage.

Even he and Nesta hadn’t touched upon it. But just as he opened his mouth to say something, anything to break the awful suspense-filled silence, Nesta was speaking again. “Even so, Maya warned me that prophecy is not guaranteed truth, but an alignment in the stars that can rearrange themselves into a new orbit at any time. Allegiances can change.”

Feyre was following along, her chin bobbing, her eyes knowing and… old, somehow. It was something Cassian hadn’t seen in Feyre for a long while, but when he did, it was usually at times like this — when they all came together to discuss politics and enemies.“If that’s true, then we have to consider the possibility that the sacrifice might result in the sword acknowledging Kallon as its master?”

For a few breaths, Feyre’s question hung above them like a canopy of stars.

Slowly, all eyes turned to Frawley.

“It’s possible,” Frawley contemplated slowly. She lay out her palms again but the gesture was not unsure. Instead, it was as if the lines and creases on her palms were a map of constellations. A foretelling of what was to come.

When Frawley looked up, both irises were glowing. And Cassian knew from the moment that her eyes hooked on his what the witch was going to say and that he wasn’t going to like it. “Kallon is not the only one who has the bloodline.”

The heat of everyone else’s attention was scorching, but Cassian didn’t back down from Frawley’s challenge. Even if under the surface he was thrashing like an animal caught in a trap.

Star-born. They thought he was star-born.

The statement was so direct and so blunt that it would have pierced like an arrow if Cassian hadn’t mustered every ounce of warrior training into deflecting it.

Cassian imagined Frawley’s words skittering off of him, the metal of the arrow head crumpling rather than piercing as Frawley leant forward and asked, “When you were in Ironcrest, did you touch the blade?”

Internally, deep down inside the impenetrable fort Cassian had built for himself, he bristled. But outwardly he didn’t allow himself to so much as blink. Even his wings remained motionless and expressionless, tucked in tight.

Nesta’s hands tightened on his shoulder, just a fraction, and the movement felt as if she’d taken the brunt of the attack for him.

Cassian fought the instinct to clench his jaw. “You know I didn’t.”

“But you felt its aura, didn’t you?” Frawley probed.

“It would have been hard not to,” Cassian replied curtly, because it was true.

“Your siphons winked,” Lorrian remarked. He’d remained quiet until now, his mouth set in a grim line, but now he spoke up, voicing what Cassian had already admitted to himself but had not spoken aloud. “And the gem at your chest. It lit up like a beating heart. I didn’t think think much of it at the time, I assumed it was because you have more siphons than the lot of us, but perhaps the sword was calling to you.”

Cassian thought of that moment. Everyone had felt the power of the sword in that room. They’d all known, undoubtedly, that it had been Enalius’. Nobody had disputed it, even before Frawley had confirmed what they all knew.

He forced his voice to come out calm and steady. He knew where this conversation was leading and he wished they’d all just say it, speak their conclusion out loud so they could put a damn plan in place. “The sword called to all of us. Power thrummed off of it in waves. It was indisputable."

That, at least, was true. At the time, Cassian’s blood had howled, battering against his skin as it tried to beat its way out of him.

But had Cassian truly felt the sword’s power more keenly than the others? He’d not thought anything of it at the time. Lorrian had described the sensation as odd, but to Cassian it had felt like a rush of adrenaline, a calling. It had felt, Cassian realised, the exact same way as when he’d first met Nesta. As if something had turned over inside of him, flipping to the other side of a coin.

His skin had itched for hours afterwards. His magic had moved inside of him like a restless tide, his power desperate to surge, on edge and ready to expel itself in a way that Cassian knew would have been relentless.

Cassian had attributed that to his proximity to Nesta, to the stress of their situation as they walked the precarious tightrope during their time in Ironcrest. They’d shared a room that night. They’d exchanged heated and angry words. They’d argued about Mor, about the war. About the bond between them, even though they hadn’t addressed it directly.

And all of that seemed so long ago. So much had passed since then. A bond had been accepted.

And it had been broken.

“My mother,” Cassian announced slowly, “told Nesta what we already know. The prophecy is a prediction, not a clear glimpse at destiny. We can’t fly headfirst into a plan that relies on me being—“

“—Starborn?” Frawley finished.

The word made Cassian’s stomach knot. And it almost bordered on humorous that Cassian had spent his entire life searching for answers about his mother, about where he came from, only to discover that he was linked to an ancestry that he despised.

For years, Cassian had searched Illyria. He’d destroyed Spearhead camp and the males who were complicit in his mother’s death looking for answers. But now he was confronted with the truth of his past, he found that it was not how he’d imagined.

All Cassian had ever wanted growing up were people that he could call his own and who would accept him for him. People who would recognise his worth not for the siphons on his hands, chest, knees and arms, but for who he was inside.

It turned out that Cassian had living cousins, an aunt, maybe even a father. He’d spent the first half of his life abandoned and so lonely it had ached inside of him, weaving into his blood until it became a part of his identity as a bastard. He’d never been able to shake off that feeling.

It was only Nesta who had eased that ache, like a palm smoothing over a brow. When her arms were banded around his neck, her nose in his hair, nothing else seemed to matter.

A sword would do nothing for Cassian. He had long learned that his race’s begrudging acceptance of him was due to the Killing Power in his veins and his ability on the battlefield. And it had never made it easier to bear the sneers and the derisive comments. Because at the crux of it, Cassian would always be one thing to them: a bastard.

Yet, Cassian knew that his mother had taken a great risk when she had fled from Ironcrest. But she had done it because if the prophecy had turned out to be true then the child growing inside of her was destined to be star-born. And Cassian’s mother had wanted her child to grow up fighting for what was right. If her child was destined for the sword, she wanted it to be wielded by someone good.

But Cassian couldn’t help but wish that there didn’t need to be a sword at all.

“We are going to stop Kallon,” Cassian announced, grim resolution in his voice as he redirected the conversation where it needed to be—to the issue at hand. “Before he even gets to the top of Ramiel, we’re going to stop him. We are going to confiscate the damn sword and then we’re going to decide what to do with it. Wield impenetrable wards around it, just like we’ve done for the Cauldron.”

“And what if you have to intercept it?” Frawley pushed.

“I am a warrior,” Cassian replied tersely. His jaw felt tight, his wings were tucked in so tightly his muscles ached with the effort of restraint. “I will always do my duty.”

“Do you know how it works?” Nesta asked from behind him. “If someone worthy was to touch the sword, would it immediately bond to them?”

Frawley’s head tilted to the side, her hair moving with the gesture. “If legend is to be believed, then yes. For the true intended recipient, there will be no need for dark magic. But we must also consider that the sword may be broken.”

“Broken?”

“The gem is missing on the guard,” Frawley reminded them. “Enalius might have wielded the blade to defeat Vanth, but it was Oya who forged the sword from her own blood and bone. Without that gem, we must consider that the reason that sword might not be bonding to Kallon isn’t because he’s not worthy, but because the sword is damaged.”

“And from her chest she drew a blade / Bloodied steel and amplified rage / Bone of a prison,

the scarlet of sacrifice / A sword to banish immoral greed,” Nesta whispered. “Heroicis.”

“Yes,” Frawley confirmed sinisterly. “Roksana, can you fetch us the book?”

Thrilled to be useful, Roksana scooted over to the shelves and then made in Frawley’s direction, the brown leather-bound book too big her small hands. But Frawley shook her head. “Give it to Cassian, please Roksana. It’s his, after all.”

The leather was soft and supple as it always was—worn from hours and hours of perusal.

His mother had touched this book, Cassian thought, as he stared at the cover. He’d known that all along, but to have a piece of her now, after Nesta had so recently met with her, had a lump forming in his throat.

He opened the front cover, his eyes trying not to fall upon her writing inscribed on the inside of it, even though he knew the words by heart—warrior heart, never forget that you are loved—and turned to the drawing that he’d stared at countless times. He knew it like the back of his hand. When he couldn’t read, this is what he’d stared at. This line drawing with the arced blade and the curved pommel which he knew to be bone, not just because of the Heroicis’ stanza, but because he’d seen it in real life.

“The gem was definitely missing from the sword in Ironcrest,” Cassian confirmed. He held the book up and tapped at the drawing so everyone could see it. “The handle was cracked, too.”

“Expected from centuries of existence,” Frawley replied matter-of-factly.

“But does Kallon know the jewel is missing?” Nesta asked. “And is the sword not bonding to him because the jewel is missing or because he’s not the intended wielder?”

“If we don’t stop the sacrifice we’ll find out,” Frawley said gravely.

Cassian’s jaw tensed as his brain worked overtime and came to the conclusion that he was sure Frawley had already drawn. “Blood. You think the females’ blood might restore the jewel, just as Oya used her blood and bone to create the sword.”

“What I think,” Frawley replied sternly, “is that dark magic might have the capability of manipulating the girls’ blood so the blade accepts it as a substitute of Oya’s.”

“We can’t let that happen,” Nesta said shortly. She looked to Azriel. “What do your shadows whisper to you? Have your spies tracked Kallon’s movements?”

“We believe that he remains at Ironcrest.”

Cassian knew what that meant. “What you mean is that nobody has seen him leave,” he said grimly.

Because Kallon could winnow - any Illyrian could the day before the Rite.

Azriel remained still as always, his expression unreadable. But his shadows coiled around his ears. “Yes.”

Lorrian’s eyes darkened. “How many people have you got watching him at his residence?”

“Enough,” Azriel replied. “But he could winnow from within his rooms. My spies are excellent, but they can’t follow him there.”

Cassian heard the urgent bite in Nesta’s tone. “He could winnow himself to the base of Ramiel and your spies could be none the wiser for hours.”

Longer than that, Cassian thought. But he didn’t see the point in highlighting the obvious.

“So, what do we do?” Feyre said.

“We need warriors patrolling the skies and on the ground around Ramiel,” Cassian said brusquely.“Kallon can’t winnow directly to the summit until tomorrow. If we can pin down his location now then we can catch him before he has the opportunity to act.”

“I can look to deploy some Windhaven warriors that I believe we can trust,” Cassian continued, falling back into the role of general. Already his mind was sifting through the male faces that he ordered about during training, remembering which males stood out from the crowd. Loyal males that he knew didn’t follow the Rebellion and would have his back in battle.

“How many?” Lorrian asked. “Mallory, Andreas and Protheus stand out from the aerial unit,” Lorrian said. “They’re quiet flyers, excellent at keeping out of sight, but I don’t know where their loyalties lie.”

“We can’t take risks,” Rhys said. “If any of those males are loyal to Kallon then we risk everything—”

“The widows will fight.”

Everyone turned.

Mas stood in the left-hand archway that led to the kitchen, a dishtowel in her hands. She was only looking at Cassian, as if to her, there was noone else. “We are not much, but we are loyal. And we will fight for you.”

***

The soapy water in the sink was so hot it was scalding, but the scream of Cassian’s nerve endings felt like a balm somehow - a silent expression of something that he could not express outwardly but wanted his body to scream all the same.

“That is not your job.”

A voice came from behind him. A familiar one. A motherly one. It held the sort of understanding that came from someone who knew him very well. From someone who saw it as their duty to analyse someone in the way that only family could. When they knew his every tick, the thoughts running through his head, without even glimpsing his face.

Mas drew up beside him, a tea towel in hand. “And by the looks of it, it’s not one that you’re good at either."

She ushered him aside to the draining board, until he had switched places with her and her hands were submerged in the suds. Silently, she handed him the cloth and he took it, because whilst he might lead the Night Court’s armies, he’d handed over the duties of the bungalow to her.

“You are angry with me,” Mas observed after a silence that stretched out taut and thin. She handed him one of the mugs the colour of Nesta’s eyes and Cassian took it, stuffing it with the cloth and twisting the fabric to dry the inside.

He did not look at her. “I’m concerned for your safety.”

The clink of porcelain promptly stopped and Cassian knew that if he cut his gaze to the housekeeper he’d not find Mas glaring at him, just simply watching him.

It took him too many heartbeats to summon the courage, but when he did turn his head to meet her eyes, she was waiting for him. Her expression was one of steady earnest, burnished with silent understanding.

But she did not back down. Instead, she gripped the top of his hand. Her skin was chapped and rough, forever weathered from her years as a laundress, but her grip was strong. Insistent. Her voice soft. “This is what the training has been for, has it not? We are learning to protect ourselves, to stand up when a threat rises against us. We might not be much, but we will fight for you.”

With slow deliberation, Cassian set down the mug onto the draining board. Then he closed his palm over the top of hers and let the barricades he’d constructed fall away so she could see his true expression.

All the worry. For her. For Nesta. For all of the Illyrians who would be harmed as a result of Kallon—his cousin.

When Cassian spoke, he heard the crack in his voice, the roughness around the edges before he exposed the soft and vulnerable middle. “You are much,” Cassian told her with quiet vehemence, “but nothing prepares you for using the sword. For battle. You saw Nesta. She’s the strongest fae I’ve ever met and Hybern haunts her even now.”

A shadow passed over Mas’s irises, but she straightened, an invisible hand of courage supporting her. And Cassian supposed he’d nurtured that hand. Since the moment he’d met her, he’d wanted to teach Mas to defend herself so she could walk with confidence. And now here she was, small yet tall before him.

“You forget I have seen battle fatigue, sinta,” Mas told him. “I have seen battlegrounds—I’ve been a part of them.”

The skin around Cassian’s mouth tightened, bracketing his mouth like a grim smile. Because Mas was wrong on that count. He would never forget the day of the kerit attacks. He would never forget Mas’s body on the ground, her blood. He would never forget Nesta kneeling beside her, wreathed in the purest of light as she knitted the torn flesh back together. As she healed long brutalised wings.

“Nesta saved me,” Mas continued, her voice resolutely soft in its purpose but determined all the same. “She brought me back for another life and I intend to fight for that life. For you. For Nesta. For everyone who has ever suffered under our own people. For a better life.”

Her words fell away and into more silence. Mas retracted her hands and reached back into the suds, her fingers slipping against cutlery which clattered against the sink. Eventually, she drew out a teaspoon and began to methodically clean it before she extended it out to him without glancing away from her task.

Cassian found that he was relieved. To look at Mas now would mean to memorise every inch of her face, terrified that he’d not have the chance to study it again. He’d already begun to do it with Nesta without meaning to, his mind whispering its own cruel prophecy.

“You saved me, too,” Mas continued into the grim yet resigned silence Cassian had woven himself into. “When we met, I was beaten down. I was so small and insubstantial, the wind could have just tossed me away. Do you remember?”

Now, Cassian forced himself to look at her. He felt his brow collapse in on itself, his eyes felt as if they might melt with the emotion—with the memory. “Of course I do,” he rasped through the chokehold in his throat.

Because of course he did.

It had been a particularly icy day in November that Cassian had flown to Empyr’s monthly market. He’d braved the trip in frozen temperatures to order some specialised steel with a travelling Illyrian blacksmith and afterwards, he’d stopped at one of the many stalls to buy some food before he hit the skies back to Windhaven.

Cassian had been leaning against his chosen food stall polishing off a pastry when he’d noticed a small female in the long queue. Her clothes were clean but, like most Illyrians, they’d seen better days. Yet, it had been the black eye that had snagged Cassian’s attention. Hunched over and hobbling, Cassian guessed that the female was suffering from cracked ribs that had yet to heal properly.

And from the look of her cracked and bleeding hands? Laundress. Definitely a laundress.

As it always did when Cassian forced himself to truly look at the Illyrian females around him, Cassian’s heart panged, as if someone had plucked a sad and melancholy string inside of him. The female had looked so small—not just in height, but in presence. She was a ghost, wraithlike, folding herself up, allowing the males to go ahead of her, head bent, timid and forgettable.

By most Illyrian standards, she was the perfect female.

It had taken her a while to make some headway in the line. And the entire time, Cassian had watched her, unsure why he was so transfixed by her progress—until it happened.

Throughout Cassian’s life, he had learnt that good things happened because you brought them about yourself. Through blood, sweat and tears. Through fighting tooth and nail to survive and then to thrive. But sometimes, on a rare occasion, Cassian believed in destiny. He believed people could step right out in front of you, people who would change your life because the Gods had destined it so, if only you’d seize the reigns.

Cassian had sensed it when Rhys had found him in his draughty and battered tent in the middle of the night. He’d felt it the moment he’d lain eyes on Azriel, even if he and Rhys had made it as hard as possible for the Shadowsinger at first. Later, he would believe it of himself and Nesta. From the very moment he’d set eyes on her in the human realm, he’d felt that flutter in his gut, some magnetism pulling them together.

And Cassian had felt it then in Empyr as he watched a female that he’d later learn went by the name of Masak give her meagre coin away just so a little girl could eat.

The little girl had snatched up the pastry as if she couldn’t believe what was happening to her. And then, fearful that it was too good to be true, had taken off, half-flying half-running across the frozen ground, across the bridges, until she disappeared into the woodland and was gone.

Mas had watched the girl disappear with a look that was both heartbroken and rueful. But before she could turn away from the line, Cassian had found himself moving.

A heavy, deliberate clunk had sounded as Cassian placed two small coins on the wooden counter. “Four more pastries, please.”

The Illyrian male behind the counter froze. Cassian had watched him sneer down at the youngling, ready to snap at her to scarper. And when he’d not been able to emit his anger, Cassian had known it was coming for the Illyrian female next in line.

But Cassian’s face was known all over Illyria. Even if he hadn’t been sporting his siphons that adorned the backs of his hands, his knees, his shoulders, his chest… the Illyrian community knew the face of the General of the Night Court’s armies.

“And some chai,” Cassian added firmly, as he remembered how the female had eyed the cauldron bubbling gently away behind the counter. “Two cups.”

The male’s lips drew back for a second, as if he couldn’t stamp out the instinct to show his disgust at the female before him, before his expression was wrangled under control. “Anything else, General?”

“Not from you,” Cassian rebuffed coldly, the instruction in his voice the sort he used on the battlefield rather than with friends. Then, he’d turned to Mas.

When his eyes had met hers, she had taken a small step back. Then another.

When he held up the pastries and the cup of chai, she actually flinched. Stepped even farther away from him, jostling accidentally into some a male who sneered in disgust—as if she was dirty.

And in that moment, Cassian chose to do what he did best. He read his opponent.

The female before him knew who he was. Knew the control he had in Illyria. She was a low-born female who had been brought into the world to serve the male species. She would not dare disobey him and he… wanted to speak to her. Needed to.

The tug in his gut instructed him to.

So, he kept his voice deep and commanding. “Come with me.”

For a moment, he thought he’d read Mas wrong. That she might bolt. Her eyes darted around her but when she remained on the spot, when she fleetingly dared to meet his eyes, Cassian knew that her hunger was great enough that it won over her fear of him. And he could scent the latter on her, the tang of it so sharp, it could cut. It didn’t matter that he wouldn’t use the weapon on him—none of the males who came to Empyr would use their weapons out of respect for the sacred site—every Illyrian female was raised to fear the fist just as much as the edge of a blade.

Cassian had walked over bridges with water running steadfast beneath him. The air at Empyr was always heavy with the tantalising scent of food, the finest sort of mist, and the slap and roar of cascading water against rock.

When he reached a wide clearing in the woodland that closed around the lip of the valley, Cassian stopped.

There, he set down the food and drinks on a rock and took a few steps back. His senses told him that Mas had kept to the trees that hugged the open space, but he gestured to the pastries anyway.

“Please,” he said. “Eat. Drink.”

Mas remained silent. She didn’t move, but her eyes darted to the food before they snapped back to him. The bruise around her eye socket was still black and purple—fresh, rather than old. A fae body should have healed her by now. And if she wasn’t healing? She hadn’t eaten for a long while.

So, Cassian told her straight. “Those injuries won’t heal if you don’t eat.” Pine needles crunched under his weight as he sat down on the cool earth and began to eat one of the pastries he’d kept in hand.

Slowly, he ate. Slowly, he drank his chai.

Patiently, he waited.

Eventually, Mas crept over to the food. Snatched at a pastry before she backed away to the trees again, far away from him. As if the pines would grant her safety.

Finally, she ate. Small bites at first. Then huge ones, as if she hadn’t had a meal in days. In moments, the pastry was gone.

Slowly, so as not to startle her, Cassian stood. Entreatingly, he held out a cup of chai to her. He did not dare her to look her in the eye. It was an olive branch—a sign of respect, a choice not to dominate and Cassian was certain Mas had never been granted that courtesy in her entire life.

In fact, Cassian looked purposefully at his leather boots as he placed the cup on the ground between them, before he backed away.

The winter wind ribboned around the clearing and Cassian scented roasted chestnuts and wood shavings beneath the dirt and grime of a fae body, heard the crunch of pine needles break as Mas chose to take the cup.

He felt her eyes on him the entire time she drank.

When she finished, Cassian gestured to the remaining pastries as he took another bite of his own. “Don’t let them waste.”

She didn’t.

When Mas was done, Cassian had formulated a plan. He knew what he was going to do and how he was going to go about it.

Gaze still averted, Cassian took a drag from his cup. The chai was too sweet and already lukewarm thanks to the punishing Illyrian weather, but he swallowed before he asked, “Where are you from?”

Mas stiffened, her fear spiking sharp. Yet, when she didn’t turn on her heel Cassian lifted his eyes.

It struck him that she was a small female by Illyrian standards, her dark hair thick yet cropped short, the ends hastily and unevenly cut in a way that made Cassian suspect it had, until very recently, been long. But it was her hazel eyes that haunted Cassian. They were dark in the only way someone’s irises could be when they’d witnessed too much.

When their eyes connected, Cassian found that there was something steadfast in Mas’ expression. It was not hope, more of bleak resolution. A female who had no choice but to run away from everything she’d known.

Mas’s voice was scratchy, as if she hadn’t used it for days. Broken, as she spoke the dire truth Cassian had suspected, “I can’t go back.”

“I don’t imagine you should,” Cassian commented with a forced lightness that didn’t quite hit home. There was a grave quality frosting his voice that Cassian hadn’t managed to thaw out. And to be honest, he hadn’t wanted to. The way females were treated in Illyria? It was a crime. “I certainly won’t be taking you,” he added.

Mas’s lips parted. The bottom one was still red and swollen, but she managed to jam her mouth shut without a hitch of breath. It told Cassian that she was not unfamiliar with pain.

A few beats passed before she spoke again.

“Spearhead,” she admitted in a whisper. And Cassian knew that the fault in his voice had convinced her that he would not take her back there, because she affirmed more loudly, “That’s where I’ve come from.”

Just the mention of the camp had Cassian’s expression tightening. Yet, he made a show of brushing his hands together, ridding himself of the wayward flakes of pastry as he nodded slowly, processing the information.

Then, he looked up at her. The bruises and scrapes were starting to heal, her body no doubt able to begin repairing itself now it had the energy to do so, but her wings—her clipped and brutalised wings—remained mangled. “And how did you get here?”

Clearly having noticed Cassian’s gaze, Mas tucked her wings in tight, away from view. “I paid someone to fly me.”

Cassian nodded again. The gesture seemed stupid and meaningless, but it gave him something to do. He knew better than anyone that paying someone to bite their tongue didn’t mean anything in Illyria. And the males at Spearhead? They gave Ironcrest a good run for their money when it came to cruelty. “And now? Where do you plan to travel to next?”

Mas didn’t say anything, but he could see behind her eyes that her thoughts had began to stampede. Cassian might have extended a kindness to her so far, but if she betrayed her next location—if she even had the money to move on—he could track her. He could report to whoever was looking for her where she planned to fly to.

But, even so, Cassian could tell Mas had more pressing issues. If she had decided to leave her camp, she was running from something—or Cassian would guess, someone. And Illyrian males did not take the possession of their females lightly. They would hunt for eternity for something they believed to be theirs.

So, to go on the run? Mas either had no choice or she was formidably brave.

And Cassian respected bravery, both on the battlefield and off of it.

“I’d hazard a guess that you’re out of funds,” Cassian commented, nodding to the empty wrappers and cups. “I’m in need of a housekeeper back in Windhaven. I travel often for work and I need someone to take care of the day-to-day running of the home: overseeing laundry, cooking, cleaning, tending to the fires. I can offer free accommodation and a good wage, but more importantly, I can offer you safety.”

For a long while, Mas remained in shocked silence. Her hazel eyes—which over time would shape into something soft and motherly when she looked at him—had been wary and confused.

“Why are you helping me?”

“Because you had barely any coin to your name but you gave your last pennies to a little girl who could not afford to eat,” Cassian told her. “Because this,” he gestured to her black eye and took a step closer to her, “is everything that is wrong with Illyria and you do not deserve it. Because you look like someone who has been beaten down and needs a new start. I can give that to you.”

“I might have deserved it.”

The words were so unexpected that Cassian wanted to blink. But he just stared her down, telling her with every second that passed that he didn’t believe her. Even if Mas had hurt someone, it was most likely in defence. If she’d made someone bleed, if she’d lashed out, Cassian was sure whoever who had received it had deserved it.

He raised an eyebrow. “That’s not true though, is it?”

“No,” Mas admitted after a moment. She had grown brave enough to study him a little and he knew she was attempting to read him, to catalogue his face. It seemed to be something instinctual that she’d been tamping down—a warrior instinct suppressed from birth but clawing to get out. “Don’t you want to know what I’m running from?”

Cassian lifted a shoulder. “Not if you don’t want to tell me.” He didn’t really need her to. He could hazard a pretty accurate guess: her husband. Not mate—a mate would never harm the one they were bonded with.

“You’ll be safe in my residence,” Cassian told her. “If you work for me, I can promise you protection. And I can absolutely promise that I’ll never lay a finger on you. What do you say—”

A hand fell on Cassian’s shoulder. The sensation jolted him back to his place in the kitchen and away from the past.

Beside him, Mas was shooting him a knowing look. Her face was so different from when they’d first met. It was clean and free of bruises. Her eyes rippled as if she’d too just come out of the memory of that winter day.

“I’d lost all hope when we met,” Mas reminded him, even though it wasn’t needed. Cassian had just relived it, after all. “I had no faith in anyone around me. But you saw me, bruised and dirty, and you bought me food anyway. You offered me an honest job, the chance to live a different life. And I took a leap of faith and decided to trust you—”

“Because you were out of options,” Cassian interrupted in reminder.

He handed her the towel he’d been using and offered it to her so she could dry her hands.

But Mas ignored it, focussed instead on their conversation. She tapped a wet finger over his heart and leant towards him. “Not because I was out of options. Because you were different from the other males. And in time, as I came to trust you, I learnt that you were simply kind and good.” Mas punctuated her next words with a pointed tap against his chest. “You. Saved. Me. And I will never forget that. I don’t want to.”

A thick hand seemed to clutch at Cassian’s throat. Suddenly, it was hard to speak, but somehow he managed. “It was my pleasure.”

Mas dried her hands on the towel before she patted his cheek to show she understood. But she wasn’t done. “You freed me from my husband, a life of abuse, sinta. And now I owe you. Let me do this. Let me fight for you.”

The words unravelled something bound tight within Cassian, unfurling faster and faster until his emotions were unbound and swimming.

“What I did is not something you are meant to repay,” he started, but he had to stop to swallow. To gather himself, to speak the truth that needed to get out. Because he knew that Mas had heard them talking earlier—about his past and his ancestry. Knew she finally understood. And he needed her to know. Wanted her to, despite the fact that his voice dropped into something both hushed and cracked—exposed. “But if that’s what you’re worried about. You already have. You’re the mother I never had.”

Mas smiled sadly. Her eyes had grown soft and shining. In that moment, they looked like butter melting in sunlight. It was a vast contrast to her eyes when they’d first met. Lost and scared. Now, there was nothing but truth reflected in her irises. Something simple and uncomplicated and true. “And you are my son, stella,” Mas said simply, as if it was obvious. “And Nesta, my daughter. I like to think that we have given each other family.”

Cassian had to blink to stop the burning in his eyes. When he looked to Mas again, he saw that a tear of her own was rolling down her face. He caught it. As always, the skin of Mas’ face was soft and thin with age, but so lovely. “Does this mean you’ll finally move into this outhouse when it’s all over?”

Mas’s expression shifting into something earnest. “I like to stay with the other widows, the orphans. But when this is all over, when we’ve beaten Kallon, we will build houses in the camps together. We’ll give other females a home—anyone who wants a roof over their heads. How about that?”

One corner of Cassian’s mouth ticked. His heart was so warm and so painful. Like it was bleeding.

But he just said, “That sounds like a deal.”

Mas straightened. “So you’ll let us come? Whoever wants to?”

“We’ll need to be selective,” Cassian told her. “Only the most competent and only if they want to come. I trust your judgement, but know that we’ll brief them in an hour and that they can’t breathe a word about it to anyone.”

Mas dipped her chin to let him know that she understood. “They won’t, not when it comes to you,” she told him. Then, she gave him a toothy grin. Ruffled her wings with mock-pride. “And not when it comes to me.”

Cassian couldn’t help it. He conceded a laugh.

***

Nesta found Cassian in their bedroom. He’d left on the pretense of readying himself for battle, but really his intention had been to stand by the window and watch Mas leave. The housekeeper’s wings were held high and proud behind her and she held Roksana’s small hand in hers as they walked in the direction of the widows’ camp.

The youngling fluttered alongside, fluctuating between walking, hopping and skating over the mud.

If Cassian could paint, this would be the image that he’d choose to brush against canvas. An endearing portrait of two seemingly happy figures retreating into the distance—a distance which meant that they were out of reach and safe. Unharmed.

The sensation of Nesta’s fingers sliding through Cassian’s snagged at the periphery of his attention. As always, his body sung at the proximity of her and he let that feeling vibrate through him until their fingers were interlocked.

“You agreed?”

Nesta’s voice was muffled by the scales of his leathers. She’d pressed her chin into his bicep as she looked up at him. Affection was something that Cassian had been yearning for without realising it, but now Nesta was leaning into him, the warmth of her soaking into him, Cassian sensed the desire for it etched deep into his bones. It was like an unbearable ache, a building pressure that layered upon itself. And Nesta pressing against him, holding him to her? It made that pressure deflate a little.

If Nesta’s hair wasn’t woven back tightly for battle, Cassian would have threaded his free hand through her hair in thanks. Instead, he pushed back the sigh that coalesced in his throat. “They’re not as battle ready as the males.”

“They won’t be for a long time,” Nesta supplied simply. “Someone once told me it takes years to become a warrior. That it’s constantly a work in progress.”

“And you listened?”

Nesta’s snort was a wave of air, but she didn’t admonish him. She just clutched at his arm a little tighter, the silent gesture his admonishment. “I did.”

Usually, Cassian would have smirked—anything to rile her. But now, in their shared bedroom, Cassian couldn’t summon it. Not when he knew what they were about to walk into. “It’s going to be dangerous.”

Nesta straightened at his words and the scent of her, the jasmine and vanilla, finally tugged his focus away from Mas’ retreating back to the female beside him.

Nesta had changed out of her everyday leathers and into the ones Rhys had gifted her. The smoky silver scales rippled in an exact replica of the flames at her fingertips, but Cassian couldn’t marvel at the magic of it, not when the female in question was pinning him down with her formidable eyes. “Isn’t battle always dangerous?”

“It is,” Cassian agreed lowly. “But I’m already worried about your wellbeing. And now Mas? The other females?” He swallowed, and his words caught in the clog at his throat. “There’s so much at stake—”

“You are not responsible for our lives, Cassian.”

Cassian’s voice became sharp without his command. “I am always responsible for those that step onto a battlefield for the Night Court, whatever shape that might take.”

“You are forgetting,” Nesta told him calmly, unperturbed by his whipped reply, “that those who step onto the battlefield do so out of their free will. Tonight, when we make our way to Ramiel, none of us will be coerced. But we are all driven by the same motive: to stop Kallon gaining power and starting a Civil War. The females are taking a stand because they have been oppressed for too long. They are finally standing up for themselves, showing their allegiance despite the fact that they could suffer the consequences. And I am doing the same. You can only respect that. You can’t take responsibility, Cassian, it’s not your right.”

There was no response to that, so Cassian just stood still, fighting the temptation to rub his tired eyes.

Together, they had a rough plan in place but they didn’t know how it would all go. And if Cassian had learnt anything in his long years as a warrior, it was that no battle was a sure thing. There was no guarantee that everyone entering the battle would emerge breathing and whole. The battlefield was swathed in the promise of glory, but when you were in the thick of it, when you were knee deep in guts and shit and blood, it was nothing but horrifying.

And whilst they might not be entering a true battlefield, none of them expected to emerge from their conflict with Kallon unharmed.

None of them were that deluded. It wasn’t a pessimism, just a hard truth. A possibility.

Cassian turned his body fully to face Nesta, his hand slipping from hers only for both of them to find purchase on her arms.

“Don’t say it,” Nesta interrupted him, reading the grim look in his eyes.

It took everything in Cassian to arch an eyebrow. To play. “Some might accuse you of being superstitious, sweetheart.”

Nesta let out a huffed breath. “Why tempt fate?”

“You are my fate,” Cassian told her quietly. He tracked her face, cataloguing it all—his Nesta. Again, that thought hit him: he wanted Nesta to be his wife. He wanted them to be joined in that way. She’d given him everything when she’d accepted the mating bond, and now he wanted to give her something human, something that she had always thought had been in her future.

If she wanted it, that was.

Nesta’s hand tightened on his just as her mouth flattened. The movement was so brief Cassian would have missed it if he hadn’t been watching her so closely.

“And you’re mine,” she assured him slowly, and even though her face was near unreadable, Cassian felt the spark of embers in his chest as they glowed. Knew that she was telling him the truth.

For a brief instance, Nesta observed him. And Cassian let her, unstacking every guard he held around himself, as tight as a burning ring of flames until there was nothing left behind but ash and the heart of him.

What Nesta saw pulled a faint smile onto her face, but it was too brief and it was not wielded out of happiness. It was too sad. And when Nesta confirmed it by drawing his knuckles to her mouth and pressing her lips there, he knew that every worry he had for how tomorrow would play out… it festered inside of Nesta, too.

They both had a feeling. An ominous sense of something dark and lurking.

Cassian watched Nesta drop his hand and turned towards the door.

But when she reached the entryway, she paused. Her slim fingers wrapped around the frame and held on tight.

Seconds passed as Nesta hesitated. Then, without turning to face him, she told him, “Ask me when we’re on the other side.”

The ensuing pause ate up her words, until nothing but a ringing silence hovered between them.

If they were in different circumstances, Cassian would have closed the distance between them and wrapped her hair around his palm. He would have looked down at her, revelling in the way her chin would tilt stubbornly up to meet him, that regal air wreathed around her like its very own crown.

But instead, Cassian just stared steadily at Nesta, waiting for her to turn. But she didn’t.

Cassian fought the temptation to curl his hands shut in a bid to distract the quickening tempo of his heartbeat. His siphons pulsed in anticipation. A whisper of something wound through him. A sighed name. “And what will I be asking, Nesta?”

He couldn’t see her but he knew Nesta had raised an eyebrow, the execution as perfect as the arch of it.

Her fingers tightened around the door frame, but still she did not turn. “Ask me when it’s over. And I’ll say yes.”

And it was in that pause, as her words stretched out between them, that the screaming started.

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#nessian #nessianfic #acotar fanfic #nesta archeron #cassian #embersandlightfic #duskandstarlightwrites #nesta

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duskandstarlight · 1 year

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Embers and Light: Chapter 54 (teaser)

Notes: The longest delay in getting you this chapter but I’m so nearly there! Here’s a snippet to keep you guys warm until I post… 12k. 12! I promised myself I’d never go there again but here we are 🤷🏻‍♀️

“You forget I have seen battle fatigue, sinta,” Mas told Cassian. “I have seen battlegrounds—I’ve been a part of them.”

Because of course he did.

#nessian #acotar #acosf #cassian #nesta archeron #nesta x cassian #embersandlightfic #duskandstarlightwrites #nessianfic #acotar fanfic #nessian fic #acomaf #acowar #nessian fanfic #a court of silver flames #nesta #sarah j maas #sjm

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duskandstarlight · 1 year

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Hello. I’m alive.

What teaser do you want to see first?

LIKE for Embers & Light teaser

REBLOG for A Golden Opportunity teaser

Love to you all xx

#nessian #embersandlightfic #ACOTAR fanfic #ACOTAR #nesta archeron #ago #a golden opportunity #duskandstarlightwrites

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duskandstarlight · 4 months

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i am unable to find the Embers and Light fanfic! The link I had bookmarked isn’t working and I’m not sure what to do, I was over halfway through and I’m dying to finish it!

Hi! I think it was a website glitch as I’m having no problems accessing it. I hope it works for you and happy reading 🌟

#embersandlightfic

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duskandstarlight · 2 years

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Embers & Light (Chapter 51, Cassian POV)

Notes: Thanks for bearing with me for this! Chapter 52 is just in last rounds of edits and then it's ready for you to read it, but I wanted to post this Cassian POV for chapter 51 before then. Big cheers to all of you who gave your input on what came first, but Cassian POV was somewhat overwhelming!

Chapter 51 Cassian POV

Cassian had been flying. Circling. Looping the same skies, the same clouds set into the azure, spring blue. Anything to distract himself from the fact that Nesta had gone searching for something where he could not follow.

Where the risk felt so great that Cassian was sure something bad was going to happen.

It had the started soon after Elain’s retelling of her vision. It had begun as a feeling. A nagging bite in his gut warning him that he wasn’t connecting the shards and fragments of their plan thoroughly enough. But Nesta had been beside him, so vulnerable and scared, yet also fierce—determined. And he hadn’t been able to think beyond the new mating bond and her fear, beyond that fist in his mind that pounded to be heard without saying anything at all.

So, that looming feeling had settled inside of Cassian like lead. A weight pressing down, down, down until all Cassian could think about was scooping Nesta up in his arms and flying her far away. Where they didn’t have to think about the greater good. Where they could be safe, just them, hiding away from the world.

But he didn’t, because Nesta would always have independence from him as he did from her. And because this plan… it was all they had. And for Elain to have a vision of Nesta descending Below the Lake… It was a sign from the Old Gods—a message. And Cassian wouldn’t ignore it, not when his people continued to suffer from outdated ideals. The Rebellion might claim to give Illyrians a voice, but in reality it only favoured a small minority.

So, Cassian had said goodbye to Nesta, his mate.

And as Cassian watched Nesta and Frawley descend into the thick of the forest with the manticores at their heels, he’d got that awful feeling again—a sensation of loss, something deep and intrinsic—that went farther than their too-short goodbye.

Only then had Cassian finally understood.

***

The pain was immediate.

One minute Cassian was scouting high above the empty Lake, flying mostly for something to distract him from the building ache expanding in his bones, the next something had severed inside of him.

It wasn't a clean, swift cut, rather a slow, excruciating tear. A torturous pain that eddied and built, spiralling until it was blinding. Undiluted terror and agony clawed up his sternum and into his throat, and his hands flew to his ribcage, his fingers scrabbling against leather and the star ruby at his chest.

The siphon was scalding to touch, the scarlet of his power screaming, screaming, screaming…

For a few minute seconds, everything seemed to slow down. Time stood thick around them, the wind suddenly syrupy. Cassian saw the last few threads of their braided tie fraying. Saw them as they finally gave way, every fibre slowly failing until—

The mating bond severed completely.

And then Cassian was falling again, a deadweight in the skies, his body frozen, his spine seized in agony. The wind whistled and struck at his ears as steadfast as the crack of a whip, but Cassian was too stricken to use his wings. So, the wind continued to rush up to meet him and he plummeted right through it—towards the ground, towards the empty Lake of Death—

But then the world was shifting and there was no longer water below him but the tops of trees. As if the Lake’s power had transported him to another section of the forest. As if his body, his blood, no longer sang the same tune.

Before, he’d been magnetised to Nesta in a way that he knew had overridden the power of a normal mating bond. Before, he’d been able to find her like Illyrians could travel the night sky like a compass.

But now there was no bond connecting them.

So, Cassian fell.

His body ricocheted off branches, tore through leaves and twigs and something else which pummelled into him with such force bones creaked and cracked.

Then… he hit something soft, malleable. Not only did it cushion his body but the ground seemed to turn elastic, bending with the force of his fall before it threw him back up again and the earth beneath him turned compact again.

Cassian barely resisted the impact of the fall on his body. He didn’t tentatively lift his wings to assess the potential damage. Didn’t twitch his limbs to identify what was dislocated or broken. Because he’d been cast inwards, pulled towards that severed connection inside of his chest. Towards the cause of that pain, that agony, that told him something was so inherently wrong he couldn’t breathe.

Then, everything was silent.

In the hollows of Cassian’s ribcage, everything was too dark. There was no twining of silver, no length of braided tie to follow from his ribcage to his heart. There was only his tattered end of the bond. It gave a feeble spark of ruby, the light calling to its lover, begging it to return.

And in the inky black Cassian spied it—Nesta’s end of the bond—floating away from him, its frayed ends like the sinew and skin found at the end of a torn off limb.

The moment his eyes pinned on it, there was a feeble lick of metallic fire. And Cassian knew that it was a last goodbye, felt it in his bones as Nesta’s deathly magic gave way to sparks—the last faint glow of embers before they faded into the dark.

But Cassian wasn’t prepared to let it go, couldn’t. He lunged for Nesta’s end of the bond, his fist quick and precise—and roared in pain. It was like pressing down onto a wound to staunch the blood flow. His spine shrieked at the violent arch of his back, but it was nothing on the agony of clutching the torn, braided rope that had been blessed upon him.

The pain tore him back to the forest as abruptly as if he’d winnowed. Nausea, violent and surging, wrangled Cassian into rolling onto his side. And then he vomited all over what seemed to be an impossibly soft blanket of moss— again, again—until there was nothing left but the seizing of his bruised, empty stomach.

When it stopped, all was quiet. Not quiet in the sense that the world had fallen into silence. No, the forest still sang and whispered. It was callously full of life, as if it didn’t care that something had just died inside of him.

And all Cassian could do was lay there, listening to the blood pounding in his ears, scenting the moss beneath him, green and earthen with a hint of jasmine. He’d winded himself on the way down and now his lungs had finally shocked themselves back into working, his breath wheezed out of him.

When he dared to turn his head, he didn’t even groan. Didn’t make a sound besides his rattled breathing. Battered and bruised, he opened his sticky eyes, the world blurring back into view but all he could see was moss, as if he was submerged in it.

And it was silver.

Behind Cassian, the moss shifted and then swift, practical hands began to work over his body. They checked his pulse, ran over his limbs besides his wings, checking for injuries.

Lorrian.

The colonel’s voice was rough. It broke through the ringing in Cassian’s ears. “It looks like you’ve snapped a few bones in your left wing. The cracked ribs are my fault, but it would have been worse if I hadn’t barrelled into you and sent you into this moss.”

Lorrian came into view, jaw tense, his expression granite save for his hazel eyes which glittered, dark and knowing and swimming with conflicted emotions.

The colonel ran a hand through the close crop of his curly hair as if he didn’t know what to do or say. In the end, he only extended his hand and shifted his weight across the whole of his feet, ready to counter Cassian’s wait.

Cassian grunted in pain as Lorrian helped him upright.

Now he was sitting, he could see above the metallic moss. It stretched as far as the eye could see, a carpet running in two directions into the thicket of trees on either side of the clearing. There was something supernatural about it, something undoubtedly Nesta—an insignia that Cassian recognised, as familiar as a heartbeat.

A flare of emerald light tore Cassian’s gaze away from the moss. Cassian shrugged off the touch of his friend’s magic with a shake of his head. There was no point in it anyway. Illyrian magic could only patch up injuries, not heal them—only time could do that. “Leave it.”

There was a soft sigh, the first break in Lorrian’s hardened expression. “Cass.”

But Cassian didn’t want to talk about why he’d fallen. Lorrian already knew. There was only one reason why Cassian would have fallen like a deadweight in the sky. He’d barely missed striking a haphazard cluster of stones crusted with lichen. If it wasn’t for Lorrian barrelling into him and throwing him off course, he’d have more than a few broken bones.

And Nesta? What had happened to her. Had she been ripped into the realm of death without him? Was she even living? Did her heart beat, did the pulse at her throat thrum steadily, did her blood run warm?

“Nesta was here.”

It hurt to croak out her name. That’s how palpable his pain was, his worry. It was as fresh as the needling hurt of his injuries.

Lorrian nodded tightly to indicate he’d made the same conclusion. When he ran his hands through the moss, it glinted like the blade of a knife. “Her power will protect her.”

Cassian wiped the blood from his split lip with the back of his hand, but didn’t speak. Because what could he say? That the bond had been broken and he’d never felt so empty, so alone in his entire life? That it broke him to think of her alone and scared beneath a Lake. That the love he had for Nesta was stronger than ever. That he was terrified that she wasn’t alive, that she wouldn’t come back.

The worry of it all had the nausea surging inside of him. It was an all-consuming sickness and Cassian couldn’t think beyond it, couldn’t concentrate on anything but the sickness and the terror that Nesta was no longer breathing.

The bond might have broken, but if he had to choose between a bond and Nesta’s safety, he’d choose her safety every time.

Panic clogged his throat. When he managed to force the words out, they were choked. “How do you know?”

“You’d know if it hadn’t, Cass.”

Lorrian tapped at the overlapping scales of Cassian’s armour, right over his heart.

“It’s broken,” Cassian said, the words finally cracking out of him. And it didn’t help to say them out loud. It only made the reality of it worse. “It’s just… it’s done. What if—”

A hand came to rest on Cassian’s shoulder, cutting Cassian off. Lorrian’s hazel eyes had tunnelled deep but coalesced into something steady. “Nesta will get the information. You’ll see. Nesta won’t let something like death beat her. She wields it.”

Unlike Frawley whose magic would be a victim to the deathly magic in the forest if she remained too long. Cassian had only been on the forest floor for what he guessed was a few minutes, and he could already feel the effect it was having on his siphons. It felt like the gems were perforated, leaking magic into an atmosphere that gobbled it up.

“Maybe when she comes back Above…” Lorrian began, but he trailed off at Cassian’s shake of the head. The way the threads had been torn apart, the intricate threads of it severed? Cassian couldn’t see any way that they could be knitted back together.

And the fact that Lorrian was still standing? It indicated that wherever Frawley was, she was alive. Because what would have happened if Frawley had descended Below into death? Would their chroi bond have resulted in Lorrian dropping lifeless at Cassian’s feet?

“Better me than you,” Cassian managed to rasp flatly, because it was true.

Another crack fissured through Lorrian’s granite expression, exposing the conflicting emotions clashing beneath it. Not just for Frawley, but for Cassian and Nesta. For the torn mating bond inside of Cassian, both ends tied to his ribcage in a desperate attempt to keep something that could never be fixed.

When Cassian turned inwards, hoping got a glint of something, he only touched upon an endless sense of emptiness. There was no wisp of silver caressing his heart, no ghost of pearlescent light healing the wounds of his emotions.

No Nesta.

Lorrian’s hand tightened on Cassian’s shoulder. It ached but Cassian welcomed the pain. Used it to ground himself. “We’ll just have to wait.”

So, they did.

Together, they sat in the knee-high moss, their wings straggled behind them, and waited. They remained that way as their magic continued to dull in their veins, their senses diminishing with it, the forest taking something from them with every breath. They stayed like that, even as their rampant thoughts consumed their every breath. As Cassian’s wing bleated in pain, his body unable to heal itself.

Then, a high-pitched whine came from behind.

Sala.

Cassian turned.

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duskandstarlight · 2 years

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Embers & Light (Chapter 53)

Notes: Thank you to everyone being so patient in waiting for this chapter. Life has thrown some difficulties my way recently and the work life balance is very much out of whack which means my writing time is just non-existent. Big love to all of you sending lovely anons reassuring me that you'll still be reading even if my chapter updates are infrequent.

Anyway, I hope you love this one! Nesta and Cassian finally chat about what happened beneath the Lake...

Chapter 53 Cassian

The journey to the Eastern Steppes was a rough one. Cassian only had the abilities to winnow once a year, his technique rusty and untried enough that the wind whipped and howled at them, as if protesting at his lack of skill, the wrongness of the movement.

But soon enough the folded fabric of time righted itself. Colour bled back into the world. Birds sang. The soil smelt damp and dewy. The trees sighed in the wind.

Above them, the spring sky remained blue and hopeful.

Inside, Cassian still felt as ravaged and violated as he had the moment he’d sat up reeling in the moss and realised that Death had torn apart the braided rope of he and Nesta’s mating bond. No ruby magic had kissed silver. Their avenue of connection replaced only by a vast emptiness, the two severed ends tied like a makeshift tourniquet around Cassian’s ribcage.

As if remembering the agony of it, the magic inside of Cassian chose that moment to awaken. It gave a deep, shuddering breath, like lungs starved of air. Now they were outside of the Lake’s influence, Cassian’s magic felt as if it had been released from a chokehold. His siphons flickered then pulsed gently in greeting. It felt like the renewed beating of his heart.

Tossing her head, Sala indignantly Sala threw off the lingering ebony of darkness that clung to her fur and their clothing, like shifting shadows. Cassian carried himself instinctively with the movement, shifting his weight atop her as the beast’s wings snapped in and out, as if she was making sure that her body was in one piece after winnowing.

Nesta’s body did the same, the motion fluid, her body more one with the manticore than Cassian would ever be. If Nesta had been disconcerted by his rusty winnowing skills, she didn’t let on. As always, she remained composed and regal, her back straight, her chin lifted despite the weariness Cassian could sense radiating off of her.

She’d mentioned that she’d used every last drop of her healing magic at the Lake. Who knew what else she’d dealt with Below, what she’d learnt. What she’d suffered on top of the bond being wrenched from them.

Cassian suspected that the only reason that Nesta was actually standing was because her fire magic was supercharged. Because whilst the proximity of the Lake and the surrounding forest had been enough to leech Frawley, Lorrian and Cassian’s magic from their veins, Nesta’s main facet of power was death…

Nesta’s healing magic might have suffered just like theirs, but her fire magic was death.

The thought had Cassian banding his arm tighter around Nesta. Underneath the scent of lake and moss, her hair smelt like she always did—jasmine and vanilla—and it brought an overwhelming sense of relief to know that some things remained constant. That she was back with him despite what she’d been through. Especially in the calm before the storm, before everything kicked into action, before whatever terrible fate awaited them had to play out.

Because Cassian knew that there was something waiting for them. There always was.

A soft rumble from Caer drew Cassian’s attention behind him and away from the panic that was trying its best to build to a crescendo.

Lorrian had already dismounted the male manticore and was at the back door with a limp Frawley in his arms. Before Cassian could move to help his friend with the door, Caer had risen on his back legs, his paws pressing against the pine. There was a fizzle of magic, gold sparks outlining Caer’s paw and then there was a click and the wooden door swung open.

Cassian watched Lorrian step into the kitchen with Caer at his heels, but then Nesta shifted in front of him and his attention was pulled back to her, just as it always was.

She was watching Lorrian, too. With her head turned towards him, Cassian could see the profile of her face: her pale cheeks, the natural arch of her brow, the lips jammed tightly together. Wisps of hair were carried by the wind and fluttered beneath her eye and across her nose, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“Is it working?”

For a moment, Cassian didn’t understand what she meant. He was too distracted at the sudden realness of her which kept hitting him like the turn of a wheel as it ran full circle. Every time he processed that she was alive and breathing brought on a new sense of crushing relief, like a tidal wave breaking across the shore.

When the bond had broken, Cassian had suspected the worst. For all he’d known, Nesta had descended Below only to never return.

Then, everything had seemed impossibly dark.

Now, around them, the scenery was soft and light—the cottage, the forest… Even the air, which let his magic breathe and replenish. The contrast felt like a mockery given the journey that they’d been on, as if it was trying to insist that it had never happened at all.

And if Cassian didn’t so vividly remember how he’d fallen like lead in the sky, he might have forgiven the forest for carrying on like usual.

“Your injuries?” Nesta elaborated when Cassian didn’t respond. Her head turned a little farther in his direction, as far as she could manage. “Are they healing?”

In all truth, Cassian hadn’t thought of his injuries beyond registering that they’d hurt during the flight.

“Cassian?”

Nesta’s voice broke through his thoughts and the way her head remained turned towards him, the way she pressed him, told Cassian that she needed answers. Because if his magic was healing his body, it was logical that Frawley’s power was already replenishing itself.

Gingerly, Cassian lifted his injured wing—testing it—making sure before he reassured her. It still hurt, but the pain was less than before. And as he slowly tapped his attention back into his body, he could feel that his cracked ribs were tingling, itching, as his body slowly started to knit itself back together and his wing felt the same.

“It’s working,” Cassian assured her, trying his best to make his voice even. He dismounted Sala to prove that he was telling the truth, his wings working as they always did to balance him, even as his left wing and ribs yelped in protest. “Not as quickly as usual, probably because my magic is replenishing itself after being drained.”

He held out a hand to Nesta. She was observing him with that razor-sharp focus of hers, those blue-grey eyes scouring over his wings, his ribs, his expression for any sign of discomfort.

He made himself wiggle his fingers entreatingly, hoping she might let out a huff or lift her eyes to the sky—any sense of normalcy to ease the underlying sense of panic that was building inside of him. But Nesta only took his hand without hesitation, her expression serious as she neatly dismounted from Sala, her fingers icy cold from both the flight and the drop in temperature as they’d winnowed.

It was never that cold when Rhys or Mor did it. Cassian would have to ask them how—not that he had the power to winnow more than one day of the year. Nobody knew why Illyrians powers were magnified the day before the Rite. Most Illyrians believed it was a fleeting gift from the Old Gods before one of the most sacred of Illyrian traditions. The Rite was what gave Illyrian males their name—when the stars Arktos, Carynth and Oristes aligned at Ramiel’s peak they could fight for the social standing that would define them for the rest of their lives.

It was their chance to prove themselves under the watchful eyes of the Old Gods and Illyrians believed that they had been blessed with magic to ensure that the Rite was put in place.

But not this year. This year, they had magic but no Rite.

Kallon had insisted that it was to save Illyrian lives, to rebuild war units after losing so many against Hybern. It had won him some solid support for the Rebellion cause, including the favour of Lords and Lordlings across the war camps, all the while the Princeling killed innocent females in a bid to bond him to Enalius’ sword.

A gust of wind dove through the clearing and Nesta did her best to suppress a shiver. But Cassian caught it and his attention pivoted back towards her, like a compass needle swinging towards true north.

Nesta’s leathers were still damp, her hair still wet. Now he could see her entire face, he noticed that the outline of her lips were blue.

Cassian swallowed. “Can you dry yourself with your fire magic, sweetheart?”

The words didn’t have the effect Cassian had intended. Nesta tensed up, her muscles packing up so tightly it was almost as if someone had cast a spell on her and froze her in place. Even her face drained of colour, her skin taking on a ghostly pallor.

Confusion seized control of Cassian’s features, his brows dipping into a frown before he evened them back out again. It hurt that he’d triggered her somehow. Cassian had always prided himself on being able to read Nesta like a book, to know what she needed and how she needed it. But he didn’t know now.

So many questions began to coil on the tip of his tongue, ready to unravel as he spoke them. And Cassian knew he should be pressing Nesta about what had happened, about what she’d learnt Below. He knew they needed to address the bond that had been wrenched from them—the breath-snatching pain of it—but he was a coward and he chose to worry over her wellbeing rather than cutting to the chase. “You’re catching a chill, Nes.”

Cassian brushed a thumb over Nesta’s lips to punctuate his point. She didn’t move away from him. For a moment, it seemed as if she wasn’t so much as breathing. And Cassian was just about to open his mouth to encourage her to speak when he felt her magic—that fire—rush through her body as she called it forth. Felt it ignite, the heat of it relentless, as it licked over her skin.

Cassian didn’t recoil. Didn’t need to. Nesta’s fire magic had never burnt him before and he knew that now would be no exception.

Flames danced in Nesta’s irises, turning them a ferocious metallic. The power of it was so palpable it was like an additional, other-worldly heartbeat. But then Nesta’s magic was snatched back within herself and her eyes fell back into their usual grey-blue—yet guarded in a way that instantly set Cassian on edge.

Together, they hesitated, lingering by the back door, neither of them moving. And Cassian felt something coalesce in the air, all of the unspoken words and truths, until there was a shadow hanging ominously between them, a pregnant thundercloud waiting to split its seam.

Not sure what to do, Cassian raked his fingers gently through Nesta’s hair. Trying to communicate that he was here, that she could speak now if she needed to.

But Nesta didn’t say anything and anticipation had Cassian’s blood quickening, his pulse pushing insistently against his skin.

Eventually, when it felt as if Cassian’s heartbeat was thrashing about on his tongue, Nesta said, “We should go and help tend to Frawley.”

It felt as if a ball of yarn had knotted itself in Cassian’s throat. It made it hard to swallow down his heartbeat. And like the coward he was, Cassian dropped his hands from her hair. “We should,” he agreed thickly.

But before he could turn to follow Sala’s slinking haunches through the kitchen, Nesta had snatched out to grab his hand.

“Cassian?”

Steadily, Cassian made himself meet Nesta’s eyes. And for the first time Cassian saw the true panic, the urgency, in his partner that she’d been doing her best to conceal, as if she’d lifted a veil to showcase the inner turmoil beneath it.

But Cassian did not balk. Long ago, he’d vowed that he would never shy from anything Nesta threw at him and he wasn’t going to start now.

So, Cassian waited for Nesta to speak, even as that unaddressed shadow passed between them again.

That knowledge of a bond broken, a connection severed.

Nesta’s hand tightened imperatively around his, her gaze deepened. The magnetism in her irises reeled him in, deeper and deeper and Cassian let himself fall willingly.

“After we’ve checked on Frawley,” she said, her voice a grave hush, a terrifying secret that Cassian had known was coming. “I need to speak with you.”

***

Lorrian had taken Frawley up to their bedroom.

It was the master room in the cottage. The walls were white, the wooden beams structuring the room old and uneven—left as nature had formed them rather than cut to precise rectangular lines.

Frawley lay unconscious atop the huge bed. Her eyes were shut, her skin waxen, her lips chapped and parted. Cassian saw the blue and purple veins stark against the witch’s eyelids, like intricate, terrifying spiderwebs. Yet, even out of consciousness and looking as fragile as she did, Frawley still looked other. Like something you wouldn’t dare to wake.

Lorrian wasn’t of the same sentiment. He didn’t speak or tread quietly. He turned to Nesta the moment they walked in.

“Can you dry her? It will be quicker than putting her in new clothes.” Then, he looked to Cassian. “There’s tonic in the Cauldron on the stove downstairs. Can you heat some up?”

By the time Cassian returned with two mugs of steaming tonic in hand, Frawley was tucked beneath the covers. Her white hair was dry but tangled, her face still pale but no longer deathly.

Atop the coverlets, her hands lay half unfurled. And in the heart of her palms… no light. No magic at all. Not even a whisper.

Despite that, some colour had bled back into her face, as if the air of her forest was breathing life back into her magic and herself.

When Cassian handed the mug to Lorrian, Frawley’s eyes began to move beneath her eyelids. As if the wafting steam of the liquid’s magic called to her, trying to reel her back from the realm she’d fallen into.

Yet, it was a while until the witch’s eyelids finally cracked open. And the sight of his wife awake clearly affected Lorrian, whose knuckles tightened so starkly that Cassian thought the bones might pop out of their sockets.

But all Lorrian said in low greeting was, “Witch.”

Both of Frawley’s eyes slid to her chroi and Cassian watched her pupils constrict, spooling inwards. It made the colours in her irises stand out and for the first time, Cassian realised that the hazel eye of Frawley’s mirrored Lorrian’s, down to the exact blend of brown, green and gold.

The witch’s words were a tired and exhausted breath. “Illyrian mongrel.”

Some of the knots in Lorrian’s back loosened, his wings sagging and spreading slightly in relief. His fingers unfurled slightly, the colour seeping back into his knuckles. “Time to drink the potions so you can go back to commanding me around, Xiomara.”

Nesta threw a quizzical look at Cassian at the unfamiliar name, but Cassian just watched as Lorrian lifted Frawley’s head and coaxed her to drink a few sips. As he tenderly swept the witch’s matted hair back from her forehead.

And Cassian knew Frawley was in a bad way because she was too exhausted to even try and assist him. But the more she drank, the stronger she became. Until Lorrian was no longer holding her entire weight, but supporting it.

Eventually, when she’d slowly managed to wrestle down two tonics, the witch’s different coloured eyes slithered over to Nesta. And when they did, the barest flicker of a wry smile twitched at Frawley’s lips. It was the sort of exhausted smile that only came from a shared experience. And there was no anger or resentment on the witch’s face, only relief.

“We made it then,” the witch rasped wryly.

Nesta leant forward from where she was sitting on a wicker chair in the corner of the room, her back ramrod straight as always. Her hands were clasped around the mug of tonic Cassian had insistently handed to her and the remaining steam coalesced into the air, dancing upwards in front of her face. “We made it,” Nesta agreed.

Frawley raised a hand from where it lay on the mattress. It took a few failed tries, but then it was there: a circle of light. Small and unassuming, but full of promise—steady.

One corner of Nesta’s mouth inched upwards and then she held out her own hand in reply where her own bead of healing light sung softly. And the melody was so mournfully beautiful, that Cassian felt his own magic stir, his siphons pulsing gently.

Cassian knew if his seven gems could speak, his magic would be whining the same tune as the Illyrian wind outside the windows. Her name, always. Nesta, Nesta, Nesta.

Frawley’s smile turned into a pained grimace.

“Thank Oya,” she announced weakly.

And then, as if that was all she’d been able to muster, her arm fell back onto the mattress and the healing power at her palm went out.

Within moments, Frawley was out cold.

***

Andraste arrived on a moth-carried wind not long after Frawley had fallen back asleep.

The witch of the Northern Steppes appeared at the doorway to the bedroom, silent and creeping, ready to examine her sister.

If Nesta’s head hadn’t whipped to the door, if the manticores hadn’t launched onto all fours, Cassian wouldn’t have heard the witch at all.

Andraste listened to Nesta relay how the deathly magic in the forest had slowly leeched Frawley of her power. And all the while, Andraste’s moths had fluttered around her sister’s body like eery, unstable companions.

Cassian had never been sure if the moths were real and simply bound by the witch’s magic, or whether they were purely created by Andraste’s magic and imagination. He’d never had it in him to ask. There was a fundamental element to Andraste that had always been put on edge, like the kiss of a well-honed blade, deadly as its lethal edge caught the light.

Eventually, the moths disappeared and the dark-haired witch straightened, rising impossibly tall, as willowy and elegant as the slim trunk of a pine. The wooden beads at the ends of her thick cornrow braids had clinked together at the movement, but when Andraste's dark eyes pinned on Lorrian, they abruptly stopped.

Frawley would sleep for hours, the witch told them in that distant, cold voice of hers, as if she were somewhere else entirely. Moths fluttered briefly around her ears in the same way that Azriel’s shadows did when they were reporting secrets. Rest would help to replenish Frawley’s magic stores, along with more tonic and a few good meals.

When Andraste’s dark eyes jumped to Nesta, Cassian tried to swallow down his instinctive fright. It had always been indisputable that Frawley was not fae, but Andraste was something else entirely. A witch made for the night, but lured out of the shadows against her will, the flutter of her moths wings whispering in her ears. “You were wise to get her out of the forest when you did.”

To Nesta’s credit, she did not balk. Her spine remained straight but her countenance was relaxed, confident in herself and her abilities as she dipped her chin. Cassian got the impression other things were on her mind, her own whisperings pulling at her mind, distracting her from what was going on in the present.

So, he wasn’t surprised that the moment that Andraste disappeared on a moth-carried wind, Nesta was back by his side. She touched his hand with her cold, slim fingers. Encircled them around his wrist, awakening him until his eyes were no longer on the stream of moths flittering out of the window, but her.

“Let’s take a walk,” she murmured and something awakened inside of Cassian. It was that same feeling of foreboding that had overcome him outside.

Lorrian let them go. Silently, he replaced Nesta on the wicker chair. But not before he’d dragged it closer to the bed so he could hold Frawley’s hand whilst she slept.

Nesta led Cassian purposefully out of the cottage and past the paddock, until they were walking amongst the pine trees and the woodruff, the smell of earth and green and the crisp spring air all around them.

With every step they took, the pain in Cassian’s wing and ribs continued to ease. Now they were out of the vicinity of the Lake of Souls, his Fae blood and magic were slowly cranking up to working at full speed again. Cassian was no stranger to pain, but his mending limbs would have felt like a relief if the suspense of what Nesta had to say wasn’t gnawing at his insides.

The silence between them grew tauter and tauter the further they walked. Together, they threaded through tree trunks and stepped over fallen branches. Nesta still led the way, her step purposeful and sure-headed, guided by whatever information she’d learnt from the Seer of the Sage. And Cassian trusted that Nesta would lead them to where they needed to be, so he tucked his wings in tight and navigated through the narrow spots without complaint.

And all the while that silence continued to build between them, like a storm coalescing above them, its sooty clouds flattening the peaks of mountains and the tops of trees.

By the time they reached a break in the canopy overhead, the pain of Cassian’s injuries was only tender—the kind of hurt that came from pressing down insistently on a bruise rather than something sharp—but his heart had begun to beat faster, his blood pulsing through his veins in anticipation, an unyielding, distracting thrum.

Because whilst Nesta seemed in control, there was something highly strung about her. There was an urgency to her movements, as if her body was not only being powered by a higher purpose, but nerves, too. After all, Cassian had learnt to read her long ago. And Nesta’s heart? He could hear the nervous beat of it in his own ears, the tempo entangled with his own.

Before them, a stream trickled unassumingly through the forest, cutting an uneven path through the foliage. A plateau of flat rocks picked their way across the water as if they’d been placed by a higher hand—or perhaps a magical one—but weathered from feet over the decades, enough so that they weren’t obscured by the moss which had tried to carpet everything else.

Cassian hung back by a loose pine tree, watching Nesta as she beelined towards the water. As her stride grew slower and less resolute—identical to the way one might trail off mid-sentence. As if now she had arrived at the place she wished to speak with him, Nesta wasn’t sure where to go next.

When she reached the water’s edge, she turned to look over her shoulder at him. The tangled strands of her hair lifted from the breath of the wind. Somehow it highlighted her pale face, the weight that lay across her brow.

Nesta’s lips parted. Closed.

By her side, she curled her fingers into fists before loosening them.

As she straightened them, they shook slightly. When she balled her fingers into fists again, she clenched so hard Cassian knew that there would be half-moon prints embedded into her palms.

Still, Cassian waited. But when she didn’t say anything, he moved. Unable to bear it. To see her like this, to find himself succumbing to that taunting in his head that hissed the worst.

Cassian wasn’t stupid. He’d lived long enough to know that something was coming, something that would no doubt put them back danger again—just when they were beginning to piece themselves back together after the war with Hybern.

Because life was cruel like that. It didn’t care about your history, about the trials and tribulations that had shaped you into a darker version of yourself. It chipped away innocence and naivety, carving you into something more severe, more world-weary.

“Nesta.” A few long strides had Cassian’s legs eating up the distance between them. And Nesta didn’t step away, didn’t try to deflect him as he cupped her face.

As always, her head angled up to meet his. And in her eyes, was a pool of emotion that had him wanting to take a step back. It was aching and sad and… apprehensive.

Cassian had no idea what had happened in the forest where death sang its own eerie tune. He didn’t know what had occurred when she’d descended into the Lake Below. And even that was an assumption. Even though he couldn’t think of any other reason why their mating bond had been torn from them than her having travelled beyond the living. Couldn’t think why he’d have fallen from the sky, a frozen, dead weight of agony as his body had crashed through the tops of trees.

And for once Cassian didn’t know how to make it better. So, he just searched her eyes and said, “Just tell me, sweetheart.”

Still Nesta said nothing. She just continued to stare up at him whilst her thoughts stampeded through her mind.

In the end, she simply shook her head. “You’re here.”

Her hands came to rest at his chest. Cassian had the distinct impression that if his armour would have allowed it, she’d be fisting her hands into the scales of his leathers. Her gaze deepened on his, her eyes searching for an answer she couldn’t seem to find. “I’m so happy you’re here.”

Not knowing what to say, Cassian gently rested his forehead against hers. He breathed slowly, a deep inhale, as if breathing her in would convince him that she was actually here before him. And then spoke his truth. “I was worried you wouldn’t be able to come back.”

When Nesta looked back up at him, her grey-blue eyes were lined with tears, her words thick. “From the Lake?”

Cassian nodded. “I didn’t know if you’d just descended Below or if you’d…”

He couldn’t say the last word. Couldn’t voice it in case it ever came true.

A world without Nesta wasn’t one Cassian wanted to be in.

As if Nesta sensed the root of his thought, she lay her hand gently over his ribcage. Her fingers barely spanned the breadth of his heart but it felt as if she was cradling him whole. “Did you know?”

Did you know what would happen to us if I descended into the Lake?

“Not for sure.” Cassian raked a thumb over Nesta’s cheek. Caught a wayward tear. Water and salt soaked into his skin. “I knew there were some dots I hadn’t connected. But the moment you disappeared into the forest, I knew.” He clasped the hand on his heart, drew it down to his stomach. Pressed it into his abdomen. “I felt it in my gut, right here. Like a premonition.”

For a few heartbeats, Nesta just studied him as if she was trying to delve deeper, understand. “You didn’t tell me you had a bad feeling.”

Cassian’s breath wanted to catch but he didn’t let it. She had every right to be mad at him for withholding his fears, but he hadn’t truly known the consequences until it was too late. “I didn’t want to stop you doing something you were destined to do,” he said truthfully.

“I broke it.” Nesta’s words were broken too, raw and exposed—devastated. And only then did Cassian realise that she blamed herself for it.

He kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her nose, instilling all of the love and comfort he could muster.

“I believe in you,” he told her, “and I believed in Elain’s vision. It had to be done, Nesta, for the greater good. And this thing between us, the love I have for you… I knew the lack of a mating bond wouldn’t change that.”

Despite his speech, Cassian could tell from the anguished knit of Nesta’s brow that she couldn’t see past her self-blame. So, he rested his palms on her shoulders until she met his eyes. “Death broke the bond. Our purpose broke it. Don’t think for one second that what happened falls on your shoulders.” His hand came up to wind around her neck, cupping it. “You’re safe and here. It’s all I care about. It’s all I ever care about.”

Nesta leant forward, until her forehead was resting against his chest. She released a slow breath. Then said, her voice small and muffled by his leathers. “You fell.”

“So did you,” he replied softly. He touched her chin with a scarred finger, coaxing her to meet his gaze, to come back to the issue at hand. “Tell me about the Lake, sweetheart.”

Something flickered behind Nesta’s eyes, a shuttering, as if a door had closed and a new one had opened.

“It’s just us,” Cassian prompted. His fingers grazed the underline of Nesta’s jaw, the callouses a tender scrape. “You can tell me.”

To his surprise, Nesta nodded. Her chest rose as she took in a slow, quiet breath and lifted a palm to Cassian’s cheek.

Cassian’s wings had been held high behind him, but her touch stirred them awake. They shifted the air around them, stirring the pine needles underfoot, creating their own wind as they wrapped around her, pressing her closer.

Cassian leant into Nesta’s palm but didn’t break the lock of their gaze. He just waited, patient and beseeching.

“I wanted to tell you first,” Nesta started, but then paused. Searched his eyes again. Took another deep breath. “I didn’t meet the Seer of the Sage, Cassian.”

Cassian straightened. Blinked. “You didn’t?”

This time it was Nesta’s fingers tracing his jaw, stroking across his brow. And Cassian knew his eyes were unspooling, the guard behind them lifting to show his confusion, his apprehension. But he didn’t stop it, because it was Nesta, and he wouldn’t hide from her.

“No,” Nesta said softly. “I met your mother, Cassian.”

***

Stunned, Cassian couldn’t do anything but stare ahead of him.

“I know it seems unbelievable,” Nesta said in wake of his silence. The sounds of the forest were a distant noise in Cassian’s ears, a buzzing, because his mind was reeling from what Nesta had just told him.

His mother.

The female who had birthed and nurtured him. The female who had raised him in poverty but who had sung to him in front of a meagre fire every night, her soft voice gentle and lilting. The stars overhead. Her dry, cracked hands cradling him tight against her chest.

Cassian had barely remembered her, had been unable to recall what she looked like, but he knew she’d been warm. That she’d loved him.

“My mother,” he croaked finally, when he realised he had to say something. “You met my mother.”

Nesta touched his face again. Her fingers were cold yet somehow they felt like a balm.

“I did,” she confirmed softly. “I thought of her before I descended beneath the Lake. It was a fleeting thought, but I think my magic called to her. And when I got Below, she was there, waiting for me.”

Caught off guard didn’t even begin to describe how Cassian felt. A rising hope surged in him at the same time disbelief crested. The two emotions warred, clashed, fought.

In the end, Cassian could only repeat himself, “You met my mother.”

“I did,” Nesta said again, her voice tentative and unsure but also tempered down to soothe. Her hands coaxed his face to meet hers and the love shining on her expression was like a beacon, a calling. His blood howled. “She’s the most wonderful, brave female I’ve ever met. And she loved you so much, more than anything. Can I tell you about her?”

It all crashed into him then, the gravity of what Nesta was telling him. The emotion hit him like a punch in the gut and a breath sucked out of him, his eyes burned. “Please,” he begged.

So, Nesta told him and Cassian let her.

He sat with his back against one of the slim pine trunks, surrounded by the scent of earth and resin. The cold from the forest floor seeped through his leathers, but he didn’t care.

Neither did Nesta, she sunk to the floor at his side, her legs folded beneath her. But as she began to speak, she rose onto her knees, her hands falling to his shoulders. Her eyes were the most open he’d ever seen them. They glittered as she spoke, the light in her eyes both animated and mournful.

When Nesta finished, the only sounds were the birds in the trees, the stirring rustle of the needles in the wind. The only sensation grounding him were the palms now resting lovingly against his cheeks.

In years to come, Cassian would distinctly remember the way Nesta studied his expression. The way she looked, so hopeful yet full of apprehension. The exact way the strands of her honey brown hair fell over pale face.

“Cassian.” Nesta’s voice floated into his head and stayed there, echoing around the empty cavern inside of his head. His thoughts had been all over the place, but now it was if his body had slammed down a guillotine and cut them off, protecting him from the inevitable overload.

But like it always did, Nesta’s voice reached him, stirring his attention. Pulling him towards her.

“I know it’s a lot to process,” Nesta said. “I know—“

“What was she like?” he said. He swallowed and his throat felt thick and syrupy. “The true Maya.”

Cassian hadn’t meant to cut Nesta off, but the words punctured out of him of their own accord. There was so much he should say, so many things they needed to address, but in the end it was the most basic of questions that he yearned the answer to.

Nesta’s hands moved from the nape of his neck to tangle in the knotty strands of his hair. She leant towards him as if she was imparting a secret.

“Fierce and loyal and brave,” Nesta whispered, her smile soft and trembling. “But her heart was so full, Cassian. She wanted the best for her race. That’s why she left, why she risked everything and hid you away. And she wanted you to know that she doesn’t regret a moment of it. That you were the best thing to ever happen to her and that she would do it all over again if she had the chance. Because she loved you and your father and she wanted a better world.”

Cassian didn’t know what to say to that, didn’t know how to address the star-born prophecy. Suddenly, he had the overwhelming urge to cry, enough so that he was forced to remain quiet. Instead, he reached blindly for Nesta’s hand and squeezed.

She understood just as she always did. Wrapped her arms around his head and pulled him into her chest.

And it felt so good to be comforted, so good to be back with Nesta, encircled in her scent, his home, that he wrapped his fully healed wings around her body.

They stayed like that for a long while, the rise and fall of their chests their only rhythm. And it felt so good to ignore everything else that he’d learnt for a moment and just simply exist, safe with Nesta, just the two of them in their very own world.

And with every joint breath, the yawning emptiness in his mind receded and thoughts poured in, like shadows falling over sunlight.

“Lyanne and Maya are near identical,” Nesta said into his hair before she leant away from him. She searched his eyes, grazed the left corner of his mouth with her thumb as a smile of her own tugged at her lips. “I could see you in her,” she confessed softly. “She has your smile.”

It took everything in Cassian to make his mouth kick upwards.

Nesta caught it with her thumb, as if she hoped by touching it that she might freeze it in place. “This one,” she told him. “Your sad, half smile. And her eyes express themselves in exactly the same way as you. They even have the exact shards of gold.”

“I’m glad I have pieces of her,” Cassian confessed, because that’s what he’d always been terrified of. That he only carried traces of an unknown father who Cassian had wrongly suspected had abused his mother.

But it turned out that wasn’t true at all. His father, wherever he was, had been his mother’s mate and Cassian had been born out of love.

“I’m so sorry you couldn’t meet her,” Nesta murmured. “She was looking for you. She thought you might be with me, Above, at the shoreline of the Lake. She kept scanning the ceiling and it took me too long to understand why.”

The thought of his mother casting her eyes Above had that knot tightening in Cassian’s throat. She had looked for him. Had wanted to see him and he’d been somewhere else entirely.

After the mating bond breaking, Cassian hadn’t thought his heart could fracture any further, but it did. Another crack, another reminder of something painful.

Nesta had met his mother, had held her hands and cried with her. And she had learnt the story Cassian had always wanted to know. His history was all laid out before him and the truths that came with that? It made his mind spin.

“If it was going to be anyone else but me,” he said, meant every word that rasped out of his mouth, “I would have always chosen you.”

Nesta blew out a breath as if she was relieved. And it was only then that Cassian realised that she had been nervous, anxious of his reaction.

“In the forest, my fire magic was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before,” Nesta confessed. “Death was in the ground and it made me so strong. At first I was scared of it. It kept trying to get out like before—when I was untrained and denying who I was. But when I said goodbye to your mother, I realised that I could use it for something good.”

“I burned your mother’s soul,” Nesta continued when Cassian only continued to look at her, not quite understanding what she was trying to say. “She wanted to be complete and I wanted to give that to her—to you.”

Cassian’s lungs sucked in a breath he didn’t ask for and it shook, like the ground rumbling beneath their feet in an earthquake. He was almost too scared to ask what he did next, but in the end he had to know. “Did it work?”

“Yes,” Nesta breathed. “At least I think so. I think my magic finally did something wholly good. Not just protecting someone from harm but granting someone the opportunity for peace.” Nesta found Cassian’s hand and held on tight. “I told Maya that we’d meet her at Kharon. That you’d be there and that you’d set her soul down the River Styx.”

It was too much. A sob wrenched out of him. And Cassian couldn’t stop it, couldn’t stop the wracking sound splitting open his ribs. Because his heart was no longer fissured but entirely cracked in two by the love he had for the female before him.

In that moment, never had Cassian been so sure he wanted to ask her to be his wife—the bond might have been broken, but their lives could still be entangled in every way possible.

“I’m sorry,” Nesta chanted over and over, as if she thought he was upset with her—because she’d got this opportunity over him. And the tears were flowing so freely, the air trapped in his chest winding him with every sob that he couldn’t speak. So, he just pulled Nesta into his lap and buried his face in her hair.

“Oh Cassian,” Nesta breathed when he eventually quieted. His tears had ran into her hair but she didn’t seem to mind. “I’m sorry that you weren’t able to meet her.”

Cassian pushed his palms into his damp eyes. The pressure alleviated the flow of tears.

“It’s not that,” Cassian managed to say thickly. He rested his chin atop the crown of Nesta’s head, gathered her closer to her chest as he tried to convey how he felt. “It’s just…” He reached out a hand into the darkness in his mind, trying to grasp the right words. “What you did for my mother? Putting her to rest? I can never thank you enough for that. I can never make it up to you.”

Nesta tilted her head up to look at him and Cassian let her, unfolding his body from hers, leaning back so their eyes could connect. She’d been crying too, Cassian realised. This wonderful, fiery female had shed tears for him, his mother, his history.

Her cheeks were streaked with salt tracks, her irises shone with a challenge that was set in its determination. “Why should you?”

Cassian opened his mouth to speak, to explain that putting his mother to rest would close that door he’d never been able to jam shut. He’d always wondered about his mother—how she’d died, what she’d suffered. He’d always blamed himself for her death. If he’d not been born, if he’d not been this burden this byproduct of what he’d been certain was rape, his mother could have escaped the poverty and travelled somewhere else, away from the cruelty.

And to know now that he’d been a choice? That his mother had died fighting for a better world, a world that Cassian himself had also been fighting for since he was tossed into the mud at Windhaven? He’d been bonded to her all this time without knowing it, this shared ideal, this critical mission tying them together and now her soul could stop wandering. Next year at Kharon, Cassian could put her soul to rest and she could finally sleep knowing that he was continuing her legacy.

But Nesta cut him off. “You saved my life,” she admitted softly. “I would have died if it wasn’t for you. I would have drunk myself to death. And I hated you for helping me, for thinking that I was worthy, but even when I told you otherwise, you were always my light in the dark. You never gave up on me, never stopped having faith that I would grow into my full potential.

“I will never stop being thankful that you fought for me. That you gave me the means to fight for this life and make something of it. If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have been able to control my power the way I did beneath the Lake. I wouldn’t have been able to burn your mother’s soul, to give her a proper burial.”

We did this together, Nesta’s eyes said as she stared up at him.

Gently, Cassian leaned down to press his lips to hers. She tasted like tears but also hope, despite everything looming on the horizon.

“I just wanted you to be happy,” Cassian murmured against her mouth, his breath whispering between them.

“And I am,” Nesta told him, and Cassian heard the truth of it in her voice, the conviction. “Of course I am, Cassian. I have you.”

***

There was so much to discuss, so much to say, but Cassian and Nesta remained in the forest a while longer, wrapped in silence, Nesta curled in his lap, his arms holding her close.

They didn’t discuss the fact that Cassian’s heritage traced back to Ironcrest. Or the fact that his mother had been the twin to fulfil the prophecy predicted by the Seer of the Sage, which had stated that the first twin to fall pregnant would bear a star-born child.

But eventually, the silence had to end.

It was Nesta who broke it but Cassian couldn’t begrudge her of it. In the quiet, Cassian had been trying to process the information she’d given him—the blessings and the hard truths.

But they couldn’t ignore the reason she’d gone below the Lake in the first place.

“Cassian,” Nesta pressed eventually. Her voice was soft and tentative, but there was an urgency to it, a seriousness that Cassian knew they could no longer ignore. “I asked your mother if she knew whether Kallon’s sacrificial ritual would work in bonding the blade to him. She said he didn’t know, but that if Kallon was attempting to use such dark magic, it would be best to use it when his magic was strongest…”

She trailed off but Cassian had already connected the dots.

Had already stiffened, his mind sharpening. He’d partitioned off his emotions with a mental movement akin to the slashing of a sword and stepped into the role of General.

“The Rite,” Cassian said grimly, kicking himself that he hadn’t seen this coming. He was the General of the Night Court Armies, he had years of experience when it came to strategy and war, but he hadn’t been able to predict Kallon’s next move. His next step in battle.

But now it was as clear as the water in the River Styx. Kallon hadn’t just wanted to garner support by cancelling the Blood Rite, he’d wanted an empty arena.

Nesta turned in his lap so she was facing him. “I think Kallon is going to use the increased strength of his magic to try and bend the sword to his will. He’s going to sacrifice the final three females believing that will solidify his star-born status—”

“He’ll do it on Ramiel,” Cassian cut off grimly. “He’ll try to complete the ritual there on sacred ground. The mountain is only accessible on the day of the Rite, magic prevents Illyrians from even stepping in the vicinity of it at any other time in the year.”

“Yes,” Nesta breathed. “I thought the same. It makes sense that he would try to do it in a place where there’s a strong connection to Enalius.”

Because Oya and Enalius had defeated Vanth at the top of Ramiel on the thirty-third day of battle, ultimately uniting the Illyrian clans over a common cause. Every year, the Blood Rite marked the anniversary of that day. When Oya had sacrificed a bone of her ribcage to create the sword that Enalius had ultimately used to slay Vanth.

“Kallon has a limited window.” Cassian stood, trying to ignore the voice inside his head that reminded him that the male they were talking about shared blood with him. Kallon was his cousin. His cousin. And Ailie and Samra were, too. “We need to get back to Windhaven—“

“We do,” Nesta agreed, but she was looking carefully at him. He knew what she was thinking, what she wanted to discuss.

The star-born prophecy. The potential that it had never been Kallon destined for the sword, but him.

Even now, Cassian could remember how the sword had called to him when he’d seen it in Ironcrest. His magic had turned over inside of him and it had leapt, pushing against his skin, trying to escape. His siphons had thrummed, lighting up like a beacon, the star ruby beating like its own heart.

As if it had awakened.

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#nessian #nessianfic #nessianfanfic #duskandstarlightwrites #acotarfanfic #acotar #acosf #cassian #nesta archeron #embersandlightfic #nesta x cassian #acotar fanfic

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duskandstarlight · 2 years

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Embers and Light (Chapter 53, teaser)

Sorry for not posting this yesterday! I can never really tell who’s reading this fic now and who wants a small teaser, but I got a few anons asking for one so here you go! I’ll post the whole chapter on Sunday…

“I wanted to tell you first,” Nesta started, but then paused. Searched his eyes again. Took another deep breath. “I didn’t meet the Seer of the Sage, Cassian.”

Cassian straightened. Blinked. “You didn’t?”

“No,” Nesta said softly. “Cassian, I met your mother.”

Tags (let me know if you want to be added/removed): @arinbelle @superspiritfestival @sayosdreams @perseusannabeth @mylittlebigplanet @biggestwingspan-az @bellsqueen @ekaterinakostrova @bookstantrash @prophecyerised @rainbowcheetah512 @awesomelena555 @wannawriteyouabook @starksravings @lovelynesta @melphss @laylaameer01 @a-trifling-matter @fanboy7794 @thalia-2-rose @champanheandluxxury @swankii-art-teacher @lavendergoomsltd @princessofmerchants-reads @jeakat @imwritingthesewords @nestable @inejbrekkxr @silvernesta @amelie775 @helen-the-weirdo @pizzaneverdisappoints @wishfulimaginings @trash-for-nessian @my-fan-side @sophilightwood @valkyriesupremacy @vidalinav @onceupona-chaos @inardour @thesunremembersyourface @teagoddess99 @misswonderflower

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duskandstarlight · 2 years

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Embers & Light, Chapter 52 (Nessian fic)

Notes: Hi everyone, thanks for being so patient inbetween updates! Massive lol to when it was lockdown and I was churning out chapters every week because I had nothing else on. Anyway, here's the latest chapter! Can't wait to hear your guys thoughts :) Big thanks, as always, to @noirshadow for being my beta!

Chapter 52 Nesta

Nesta was lifted through the water, her healing power singing around her, its tune a faint, melancholy crescendo.

The melody was almost swallowed by the winding, white magic that spiralled around her. It created its own wind, Nesta’s own personal hurricane, carving out a hollow in the water as her body rose.

And contained within her own healing magic, Nesta rose from the Below and ascended into the Above.

For a moment, Nesta’s magic suspended her above the water. It was a split second of triumph, but then her magic was spooling back into itself, faster and faster, until it disappeared entirely, spent and exhausted.

The moment it vanished, the magnetic pull of gravity yanked her back down into the water. Nesta plunged back into the Lake, its icy fingers threading through every part of her.

Panic sliced through her, snatching her breath away. Never would she conquer her fear of drowning. Of being forced into the Cauldron and torn apart by its claws as she tore out a chunk of her own in retaliation.

But then Nesta's feet were raking against the bed of the lake and she realised that her healing magic had used the last dregs of its power to lake her as close to the shore as it could manage.

And her healing magic really was spent--every last ounce of it had been used to bring her back to the living. Even Nesta's deathly magic felt exhausted from having used it to burn Maya's soul--although that silver inside of Nesta was already flickering, the deathly magic in the forest stirring the embers until they were coaxed back into the smallest of flames.

Coughing the water from her lungs, Nesta staggered towards the shore, her body and magic so spent it felt as if she was wading without actually moving at all. It didn't help that her leathers had practically absorbed half of the Lake. The clothing weighed her down, making her limbs feel impossibly heavy as she wrestled against the drag of the water.

But a sense of urgency pulled Nesta forward. She might not have met with the Seer of the Sage, but what she'd learned--who she'd met--had given her the information they needed. If Nesta was right, the reason Kallon had been biding his time was because he'd been waiting for the date of the cancelled Rite. He'd been waiting for when his magic was strongest, because he thought that strength in his magic would finally enable himself to bond himself to the blade atop Ramiel, where Enalius and Oya famously defeated Vanth.

Without the Rite actually taking place, Ramiel would be quiet--his to conquer and use to his own twisted advantage.

And what females would die in his sacrifice? How many would suffer? If the Inner Circle were correct in their predictions, there were only three more females to be sacrificed in order to reach the number thirty-three. But it wouldn't just be those females who suffered. If Kallon was successful, the Rebellion would only grow in influence. Illyrians would flock to Kallon's power, would believe without doubt that he was intended to lead the Illyrians rather than Rhys.

It would mean civil war. It would mean that the Night Court would lose their army and leave them vulnerable to attack. It would mean that all of the minorities in Illyrian culture would be treated even more abhorrently under Kallon's rule.

And the female who Nesta had met? Nesta needed to find Cassian. To tell him of how she's met his mother. Of how the real Maya had given everything for him. Had loved him more than anything, believing that he would not only be great, but would fight for what was right.

A band closed around Nesta’s chest at the thought of telling Cassian, making it hard to breathe. Her ribcage still hurt, her heart forever bruised from the impact of the bond tearing inside of her. And when Nesta reached within herself, brushing metaphorical fingertips against the silent darkness, it only served to remind Nesta of what she had sacrificed.

As if summoned by her thoughts, a ghosted twine of ruby and silver glowed like embers inside of her chest before they faded into the aching silence. It gave Nesta a renewed sense of purpose—of hope. Because whilst she might have sacrificed her and Cassian’s mating bond, she’d also been granted with the greatest gift.

“Nesta.”

Hands sunk into Nesta’s leathers, closing around her arms and hauling her ashore both figuratively and mentally.

There was a scraping sound as Nesta's feet hit the shingle and then she was sinking into the stones,

her kneecaps cracking at the impact as she and Frawley collapsed at the shoreline. Water lapped at Nesta’s calves but she only cared about pushing back the hair that had plastered itself across her face.

When the world—first blurry, then whole—came back into Nesta’s vision, Frawley was there, her face as grey as the mist wreathing the lake. For once, the witch’s different coloured eyes weren’t sharp but as dull and weary as the blunt edge of a blade.

Frawley’s fingers tightened on Nesta’s arms and beneath the stark exhaustion on her friend’s face, Nesta saw both relief and a similar sense of urgency. “Did you get the message or did you figure it out on your own?”

The question was more direct than usual, as if Frawley didn’t have the energy to touch upon anything else. In her mind’s eye, Nesta saw herself as if she was Below again, looking up above to find Frawley’s palms held out over the water, a faint pearl of healing magic at their centre.

“I got the message,” Nesta rasped. She coughed to rid her voice of the Lake water that still clung to the back of her throat. “I don’t know if I’d have figured it out by myself.”

Frawley’s nod was barely a dip. “Good.” Pale fingers clutched at Nesta's, revealing bones and tendons at the knuckles as if it took all of the witch’s energy to hold on tight. “Did you get the information we needed?”

Despite the urgency tugging at her, screaming at her to move, to act on what she’d learned, Nesta’s mouth jammed shut—a tight, closed line. Because if Nesta had the option, she wanted to speak with Cassian first.

And Frawley was only going to get weaker if they stayed any longer in the forest. Whilst Nesta’s healing magic was thoroughly depleted, the fire in her veins was stirring again, stoked by the deathly magic that ran deep in the soil.

Nesta’s merely nodded. She wasn't ready to explain, not when Cassian wasn't here. “We need to get out of this forest.”

But Frawley wasn’t having any of it. She gripped Nesta’s hand tighter, to the point of pain, crisp and bone crushing, before her hold slipped away entirely, as if her strength had all but been drained. “How bad is it?”

Nesta felt her skin tighten, her jaw tick. “Bad.” Then, “I need to talk to Cassian first.”

Something flickered behind Frawley’s different coloured irises, as if a tangle of possibilities were knotting in her mind, before the witch sunk fully to the shingled shore. Water lapped at the witch’s leathers, the cold sinking its claws into her skin, but she didn’t move.

And the action was so unlike Frawley, that Nesta gripped her friend’s shoulders, until Frawley’s eyes focussed on hers. “You’re sick.”

“It’s my magic,” Frawley admitted. And now Nesta was listening properly, she noticed that the witch's words were a little breathless, as if the confession had snatching them from her. Concern spiked in Nesta as Frawley’s head lolled back. Nesta snapped her hands out to cup the witch’s head, steadying her. “I thought using my healing power would strengthen me, but the death is too strong here.”

Nesta immediately understood what Frawley meant. Whilst the silver of Nesta’s fire magic was slowly recharging itself and, in turn, her energy reserves, her healing magic felt suppressed, a drop pushed to the bottom of the depths of an ocean by a stronger, competing force—a winking star cast out by the smoke of thunder clouds.

With trembling legs, Nesta stood. But once she'd taken a few, deep breaths, rallying herself, tunnelling deep, she found that she already felt stronger—strong enough to get them out of here.

So, Nesta held out her hands, hauling the witch to her feet. Then, she wound an arm around Frawley’s waist, supporting her friend, making sure she didn’t fall.

“Let’s go.”

***

Getting through the crack in the mountain to the waterfall had Nesta truly comprehending just how badly Frawley was faring. With every minute that passed, Frawley grew weaker—to the point that she could barely stand upright on her own.

In the end, Nesta coaxed Frawley through the crack in the wall first. Using the wall at her back, the witch shuffled sideways, her steps so painfully small that Nesta wanted to scream. That sense of urgency pulled inside of her, tugging insistently, telling her she needed to move. Needed to act on what she’d learned. But all Nesta could do was dig deep and find the patience she didn’t know existed inside of her.

After endless encouragement, Frawley managed to stumble through to the other side where she promptly sunk to her knees in the spray, oblivious to the slap and thunder of the waterfall against the stone.

It took Nesta too long to pull Frawley to her feet again. Together, they half walked, half dragged themselves to the left of the waterfall, until the stagger of slippery stones that led the way to the riverbank taunted them with their impossibility.

But before Nesta could even to fight down the lurch inside her stomach—the panic that she was not going to be able to get them out of the forest by herself—the manticores launched to their feet.

Sala was the first to make it to the bottom of the stones. And she was furious. Wings spread wide, fangs bared, tail tufted and angry, the manticore rose onto her hind legs and slammed her front paws back onto the mossy path beneath her.

The ground shook, but it was nothing on the sound of Sala’s indignant roar.

Too consumed with rage, Sala half-paced, half-stalked from below. But Caer, whose golden eyes had snapped right to Frawley, scrabbled up the moss-eaten rocks with his large paws. When he got to the top, he nudged at Frawley’s waist with a whine, before he promptly lowered himself onto his flank so Nesta could heave Frawley onto his back.

With Frawley safely atop Caer’s back thanks to their binding magic, Caer half-jumped, half-slipped down the rocks. The distance was too short for him to use his wings, the stones too small or pointed for even his weathered paws. But he managed it and Nesta followed, relieved that they’d made it to the riverbed—that they could get moving, get out, and figure out how they needed to act. Kallon’s cruel yellow eyes kept flashing through Nesta’s mind. The sight of the girls in those cages, their blood in the pit. Enalius’ sword on atop a velvet-crushed cushion, the jewel missing at its heart just as it had been depicted in Cassian’s copy of Heroicis.

And now, with the manticores—with Frawley atop Caer’s back—they could travel faster.

Sala must have detected Nesta’s desperation to move, because she didn’t tell Nesta off again for leaving. Nor did she give another bone-rattling roar for breaking the bond with Cassian. Nesta long understood that Sala had been able to sense the tie between she and Cassian. Could scent it, feel it, scope it out, as if she was too bound to it in some way, able to travel between them, detecting that magnetic pull that was uniquely theirs.

But would she be able to sense it now?

Sala let out a soft whine. Nesta buried her fingers in the manticores ruff and pressed her forehead against the beast’s. For some reason, it made breathing a little easier.

“It was for the greater good. You know that,” Nesta whispered to Sala. “We need to get out of here. Can you take me to him?”

The canopy was too dense to fly straight into the sky, so they traversed the path of Dawsonian moss, Sala’s tail of flame lighting the way like a beacon. They picked their way over rocks and tree roots, the gushing river at their side, until the moss turned away from the water and into the forest.

Time trickled by thickly, a direct contrast to the vibrancy of life everywhere around them. With every step, Nesta felt the silver magic in her veins grow stronger, all the while Frawley was leeched of life. The witch hadn’t spoken since they’d arrived at the other side of the waterfall, as if speaking was beyond her, and there was little Nesta could do besides hold Frawley’s hand, feel for the witch’s pulse and command her to hold on.

The moment the canopy cleared, Sala rounded Nesta onto her back and they launched into the air. Together, they climbed the skies, until the treetops became the underbrush and the clouds the forest. Burying her fingers into Sala’s fur, Nesta scoured around them, searching for any sign of two flecks in the distance—for two sets of bat wings.

When Sala let out a chirrup and abruptly descended back into the forest, Nesta’s stomach dropped.

“What are they doing here?” Nesta shouted to Sala over the wind, her fingers digging into the manticores ruff like claws, her knees clamping down on the beasts flank on instinct.

Going back into the forest hadn’t been a part of the plan she’d constructed in her head. She’d hoped that Lorrian and Cassian were high above, scouring the perimeter, rather than in the midst of it. Above, in the cloudless sky, they’d be easier to spot. But they weren’t and the knowledge had that worry that had been fisting inside of her clench and twist. Because it had taken Nesta too long to realise that they needed to find Lorrian. Frawley and Lorrian were chroi. If Frawley died in this forest, so would Lorrian.

Nesta cast a quick look to her side, where Caer and Frawley followed beside them. The witch’s chin was dipped onto her chest, her braid flapping behind her, the white of her hair its own streaked cloud.

Concern deepened Nesta’s frown, until it felt as if her face was entirely contorted with it. Instinctively, she searched for that bead of her healing light, hoping it might have replenished even a little to aid her friend, but she found nothing.

When they were finally on the ground again, Nesta reached for Frawley’s hand. It was cold and clammy.

Nesta squeezed hard enough that Frawley’s eyes fluttered enough for Nesta to meet the witch’s gaze.

“Don’t you dare faint on me,” she ordered the witch. “I won’t allow the melodramatics.”

A huff of air was the only snort Frawley could manage, but the corners of the witch’s mouth flickered into a smile as ghostly as her face. It was a performance, but one they needed—this familiar exchange of dry repartee.

When she spoke, it took great effort. “I’m not the one who acts like a queen, Archeron.”

Nesta wrinkled her nose in mock disapproval, but her grip on Frawley’s hand tightened. “Someone has to.”

Together with the manticores they moved on. Nesta’s feet picked through the underbrush on instinct, anticipating stones and the vines of plants that covered the ground.

She didn’t let go of Frawley’s hand.

As they travelled, the forest scenery grew rockier. Trees were pushed out in the favour of enormous stone structures that were tufted with patchy curls of moss.

It was only when the clearing before them widened that Nesta realised where they were.

In the absence of the trees, the silver moss path spilled out into the entirety of the wide space. It was no longer a path to guide the way for death. It was now simply the clearing she and Frawley had stumbled upon before, where Nesta’s deathly powers had burnt the moss to cinders.

It was the same place that Nesta had fought to find her healing power to breathe the moss back to life. The same place that Nesta had been terrified by Durkhanai’s ghost.

But now there was no sign of the orphan. There were only two leather-clad Illyrians in the bed of moss, their backs broad and hunched over.

A tangle of emotions knotted tight around Nesta’s windpipe at the sight. The relief on seeing Cassian was a palpable punch, but there was also love and heartache. Not only because of what she’d learnt from his mother, but because of the bond that had been torn apart fibre by agonising fibre as she’d descended Below.

From the way Cassian’s wings were trailing behind him like an afterthought, Nesta was certain that Cassian had endured the pain of it, too. Parts of his hair had been wrenched free from his tight flying top knot and the straggly strays trailed, skimming down to his shoulders, caught with bits of leaf and twigs. His head was bowed and trapped between his knees, his arms folded over the back of his neck.

Nesta didn’t need to see his expression to know that he was trapped between defeat and tension—the understanding that something devastating had happened but ultimately being helpless in offering aid.

It was strange given their years of warrior training that neither of the males heard them coming. There was no sixth sense, no something other that warned them that someone was approaching.

That was enough to tell Nesta how undone Cassian had become since she’d left him. Because he’d always known when she was near. Was always half-turning towards her, the two of them on the same compass, the same magnetic pull.

Only when the manticores began to make a noise that was halfway between a whine and a growl did they turn.

Cassian’s head whipped around so fast Nesta heard the crack. He was on his feet a heartbeat later. When his glowing, hazel eyes connected with Nesta’s her breath caught, the consolation that he was alive and well so intense that the knot around her throat loosened enough that a sob threatened to catch in her throat.

Her eyes burned so hot that she had to blink.

When she spoke, her voice came out as a rasp that crumbled halfway through his name, the emotion rising in it both devastated and high-pitched in its relief. Because now she’d seen him sitting so helplessly, now she’d seen him, the gravity of what had happened to her—to them—suddenly seemed visceral. “Cassian.”

He tripped over his feet to get to her, and then she was moving too, until he was there, his rough scar-flecked hands cradling her cheeks and her hands clutching at the backs of his. The relief stricken across his expression was so stark, so unguarded, that Nesta wanted to bury her face in his chest and never let go—

“What happened?”

Lorrian’s words were practically a bark, his expression alarmed. He’d all but flown over to Frawley, his hands immediately coming to support her body. His fingers flew instinctively to her neck, where her pulse still fluttered.

Nesta knew because she’d checked multiple times already.

Turning away from Cassian hurt. Nesta knew Cassian felt the same way because his hands fell to her shoulders, holding her there. His scent washed over her, musk and the scent of Illyria—the green of pine and wind-tossed mountain air.

Blindly, Nesta reached up until her fingers were threaded through his. “The forest is draining her healing magic.”

Lorrian’s eyes were sharp—hawk-like and serious—in their intensity. “You tried to heal her?”

Nesta opened her palm and tried to bring about that bead of healing power, but nothing came. “I can’t summon it.”

Cassian shifted on his feet beside her. Although he didn’t tug her closer, he inched close enough that his warmth seeped through her soaked leathers and into her bones. As soon as it happened, it struck Nesta that she could have used her fire magic to dry both her and Frawley’s clothes.

Can you dry your clothes with your magic, sweetheart?

Sadness clenched Nesta’s throat in a chokehold, crushing her windpipe and that urgency to move, to act pushed at her once more, as if an external, vehement force was urging her to go, go, go—

“Can I help?”

Cassian’s voice was a deep rumble in her ear, Nesta’s own personal thunder to her lightning. And she wanted so desperately to lean farther back into the solid warmth of him, to seek comfort from his body, but she didn’t know how to act or behave or where to start. Not now—not when it was clear that the most important thing for them to do was to get Frawley out of the forest.

Nesta knew that she desperately needed to talk to Cassian, but now wasn’t the time. Not yet. He deserved more than a quick retelling of something so personal in front of an audience.

So, Nesta took a rattling breath and licked at her chapped lips. “No—” she started. She paused to swallow, to loosen the fist around her throat, and as she did it, she turned to look directly at Cassian.

The second their eyes locked Nesta felt something pass between them. It was a haunted, mutual understanding of what had happened between them when she had descended into the Lake.

Cassian’s eyes were gleaming, burning as fiercely as the fire in Nesta’s veins, like a supernova in the sky. It was both devastating and beautiful, destructively captivatingly. It wrecked Nesta at the same time as love surged inside of her. Because they were here, reunited and scarred, but ultimately whole and together, and that was all that mattered.

That was all that had ever mattered.

Clutching tighter to Cassian's hand, Nesta hoped the gesture conveyed everything she wanted to say but couldn’t. Before, Nesta had used Cassian’s strength to help her summon her magic, to heal the girls broken wings, but it wouldn’t work this time.

“Nobody can help. I had to expend my healing magic to get back Above.”

It wasn’t exactly true that Nesta’s healing magic was gone. There was still a speck inside of her, that core, original pearl that Nesta had been gifted when she’d been wrestled into the Cauldron and Made against her will. But when Nesta had tried to use it, nothing had happened. It remained tucked away inside of her, embedded in her very being, attached to her soul. It was a part of her now and it was not something that could be given away.

Instead, it waited, ready to recharge itself the moment they got out of the forest and the clutches of the deathly magic that had crept into every crevice and burrowed down deep into the tree roots.

At Nesta’s words, Cassian’s expression tightened. His jaw was so tense that Nesta wouldn't have been surprised enough if she'd heard the crack of bone. Something shuttered behind his eyes, extinguishing the exploding golden stars in his irises, and Nesta knew that he felt useless and desperately needed to do something, to help. He’d most likely felt redundant this whole time she and Frawley had been gone, left with the endless cyclone of his thoughts.

Had he, too, felt the emptiness inside of him after the bond had broken—cavernous and dark and endless?

Nesta wanted to burrow into Cassian's chest and hear his heartbeat loud and steady against her ear. But Lorrian voiced what they all knew. “Whatever you’ve found out needs to wait. We need to get out of this forest.”

His words were curt, an order from a Colonel rather than their friend.

His hands were still cupping Frawley’s face and the way he peered desperately into her face had something fracturing inside of Nesta. The witch was still sitting on Caerleon, her top half swaying, unanchored despite the magic rooting her to her seat atop the manticore and Lorrian’s firm hold on her. Her skin was paler than Nesta had ever seen it, her wide-set eyes almost vacant whenever her eyelids fluttered open.

Frawley hadn’t spoken since they’d descended back into the forest, but at her hands, the witch’s healing magic flickered and then died. Flickered and then died.

Caer’s whine was pitiful. He thrust his head insistently into Lorrian’s midriff. When Lorrian snapped at Caer to wait, the manticore swished his tail in agitation. The thistles at the tuft had turned brown and brittle, leeched of life.

“It’s going to kill her if we stay here,” Lorrian announced.

His eyes were hard and closed off in a way Nesta had never seen before. It was like he was already grieving for what could be. And Nesta knew that the Illyrian hadn’t given one thought to the fact that if Frawley died, then so would he. All he cared about was his wife, that she got better, that he took her far away from here and never came back.

Cassian’s voice came from behind Nesta. A hand came to rest in the small of her back, the span of it as encompassing as always. The touch was light but it felt like a blessed relief in contrast to the tense expression she’d last seen on his face.

And Nesta wanted to sob but she only leant back into his hand, hoping that it said what she wanted to but couldn’t. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

“This place eats magic,” Cassian announced. “It’s been affecting us since we got down here. If we get out of its chokehold, Frawley’s magic—all of our magic—should be able to replenish itself.”

That would explain why both he and Lorrian's siphons were so dark. Usually the two Illyrians siphons pulsed and flared in tandem with their emotions if they loosened the reins, but Nesta supposed they were stockpiling their magic as much as they could.

I’m sorry, Nesta wanted to say again, but didn’t. It had always been instinct for Nesta to naturally blame herself for everything that went wrong in a world she ultimately could not control. But Nesta was aware of that now. And they’d all chosen to be here knowing the risks.

And what Nesta had learnt as a result of it... for once they weren't waiting in the shadows, clueless and waiting for Kallon to act, because Nesta knew.

“Let’s go,” she told Lorrian, that urgency needling between her shoulder blades. But the Colonel's siphons were already pulsing a weak emerald. The gem colour spread to his right shoulder and down, growing a limb that no longer existed.

It felt startling to see Lorrian with an additional limb. He rarely magicked it back into existence these days, as if he’d moved a step closer to accepting the changes to his body, the alterations that didn’t make him weaker, only different.

But now, Nesta understood that he needed to hold his wife. Needed her close.

Reaching for Sala, Nesta prepared herself to sling her leg over the manticore and settle onto her back. But Sala was leaning heavily against Cassian’s legs, pressing her body into him, as if the world might fall apart if she stepped away. She stared up at Nesta with wide, beseeching eyes and let out a long, high whine.

It was that which made Nesta take stock. Made her truly observe Cassian—his stance.

His left wing was still dragging behind him, his torso stiff, his breath shallow, and somehow, in the heightened emotion of it all, Nesta had failed to clock it.

Failure made Nesta's voice sharp. “Why are you down here?”

Lorrian turned away, his gaze sliding away and back to his wife. He cradled her face in his hands but Frawley's eyes remained closed. She didn’t even lean into her chroi’s touch.

For a few painful heartbeats, Cassian only stared at Nesta, as if he was weighing his words. And then, because they’d never lied to one another, he said, “I fell.”

Nesta bit down on the emotion swelling inside of her, threatening to overspill. Now wasn’t the time. Not when Frawley was fading away. Even so, her voice was too high, too thin, “You’re hurt.”

When Cassian lifted the wing that was still straggled behind him, a grimace cut his mouth into a thin line. “Just a few cuts and sprains. The magic in the forest is stopping me from healing.”

It looked like more than that. It looked like one of the bones was broken on his left wing, and from his shallow breathing, a few cracked ribs, but now wasn’t the time to challenge him.

“Sala can take you both, she’s strong enough,” Lorrian said. He had already mounted Caer behind Frawley, his arm banded around his wife, his wings tucked in tight. Frawley’s head lolled back onto his chest and he pressed his lips to the top of her head.

All the things Nesta had learnt would have to wait. The most important thing right now was to get out of the fist of the Lake’s magic, to fly far enough away that the healing magic within Frawley could not only breathe again but replenish.

If only Frawley’s magic was strong to transport them where they needed to go.

It was only then that Nesta was reminded of the Rite and the magic that was granted to Illyrians the day before it.

She spun to Cassian, eyes wide. Then, she looked between him and Lorrian. “Can either of you winnow?”

***

It turned out that despite the Rite neither Lorrian or Cassian could winnow in the vicinity of the forest. Together, they flew above the trees until they were in the midst of the mountain air.

With each flap of Sala’s wings, Nesta felt the silver fire in her veins quieten, the insistent, powerful surge of it settling as they left the forest, like a beast bedding down for the night.

The moment that last whisper of something other vanished inside of Nesta, Lorrian grabbed tighter onto Caer’s ruff. Frawley was still banded safely against his back with one arm, her chin dropped onto her chest. There was a second where they remained where they were, and then the air shifted and folded, and they simply disappeared.

“Ready?” Cassian murmured from behind her. Like Lorrian, Cassian was sitting at the rear. But unlike his friend, his arms were only loosely banded around her waist to protect his injured chest.

Cassian’s words were slightly muffled. Whilst she wasn’t pulled against his chest, his nose was buried in her hair, as if he was breathing her in, committing the feel of her against him to memory.

Neither of them had spoken about what had happened at the Lake. Cassian had only grunted in pain when he’d been forced to tuck in his injured wing tight against his back, the arms looped around her waist tightening enough that Nesta’s rib cage had creaked.

She hadn’t complained. The pain had grounded her, rooted her in that moment with him. It told her it was real, that they were together. That the injuries both internal and external would heal as long as they had each other.

Nesta let down her empath barriers and let Cassian fill her up. Let his relief and worry and unwavering love for her seep into her pores—the love that transcended all.

“I’m so glad you’re ok, sweetheart,” Cassian murmured, and then they folded through place and time.

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