#nessianfic

[wildlyglittering]

Illyrian Comfort Pie

I shared a post with some Christmas OTP prompts and asked if anyone wanted any for Nessian and @dustjacketmusings chose:

"Every country has different traditions for Christmas when it comes to food: trying something new when they have always eaten the same dishes for the holidays feels wrong at first. But when it’s cooked with love by their favourite person, it can sure taste like new traditions."

I don't know if this entirely fills the prompt and it's a lot rougher than I'd like but please enjoy!

Illyrian Comfort Pie

“Fuck you, Morrigan.” Nesta wiped her bare arm across her brow, spices and herbs transferring straight from her forehead onto her forearm, the little green and orange specks dusting her skin. “And fuck you Rhys come to that.”

The alarm on her phone screamed and Nesta whirled around in her small kitchen space. She’d put the device down earlier, stabbing at the timer with a flour covered fingertip whilst trying to shove her pie into the oven.

Where the hell had she put the damn thing?

On the counter stood an open cookbook entitled ‘Recipes from the Heartland of Illyria,’ a bottle of wine which doubled as a rolling pin and cooking motivation, and Nesta’s pathetic pastry attempts one, two, and three – each one slightly less gloopy than the last - until she finally made semi-successful attempt number four.

No phone.  

Nesta let out a noise halfway between a screech and a yell, her hands reaching either side of her head, ignoring whatever food stuff would end up in her hair.

“Shit!” At least she managed to remember what the phone alarm was for, swivelling behind her and yanking down the oven door, reaching for the mitts as she ducked a plume of smoke.

This one didn’t smell too bad. Nesta grabbed the pie and shoved it onto the trivet on the counter. The crust was a little singed on one side but, if she was careful, she’d be able to scrape that off.

Her movements jostled a reem of paper towels and as they fell to their side, they revealed the object of Nesta’s irritation. One phone.

“Thank you,” she muttered, her eyes drifting upwards to the ceiling as she turned off the alarm. Her thanks was to whatever cookery god was willing to listen and half to the smoke alarm not going off.

Three notifications waited for her. She took a breath in and hit open on the first one.

Hahaha. You agreed to what?! Even *I* run from making that dish. Pretty sure my *grandmother* ran from making that dish and she used to be a baker. Anyway, are you coming Thursday?

Emerie. Not providing the answers Nesta was so desperately hoping for, instead reminding Nesta she had yet to confirm drinks with her and Gwyn. Nesta typed out a quick response.

Yes to Thursday. Any chance your grandmother would attempt making this again if I paid her?

Sent. Nesta moved onto notification number two - Feyre.

Did you want me to see if the Illyrian restaurant down Sidra Street will do a delivery? If you put it in the oven for a bit and burn the edges no one will know.

Nesta raised an eyebrow. The audacity of her sister to assume Nesta would need assistance and that she’d burn the pie. She had burnt the pie but still, the audacity.

She chose not to respond to that one and instead moved to the final notification. Cassian. Nesta took a deep breath and hit open.

Are you having as much fun as I am? Thinking I could do this as a side hustle.

There was a photo attached. Cassian had taken a selfie of himself standing in front of his obnoxiously large quartz kitchen counter. His dark hair was tied in a messy bun and he winked into the camera. He wore an apron Nesta had never seen before, deep red with candy cane striped ties and in Christmas style writing was embroidered ‘Kiss the Chef’ underneath a sprig of mistletoe.

Nesta squinted at the image, zooming past Cassian himself to the dishes behind him slightly out of frame. Was that a bowl of perfectly glazed parsnips? A tray of immaculate shortbreads?

She let out another noise and flung the phone back onto the counter so she could press her palms into her eyes. At this point she was covered in flour, meat juice, and soggy pastry pieces. Sweat gathered under her breasts and trickled down her back from the constant heat of the oven.

Nesta had been baking for over six hours now and though there was a small part of her which wanted to cry, she refused. Although she’d cursed Morrigan and Rhys the biggest ‘fuck you’ should have been delivered to Nesta herself.

She’d agreed to this when she should have declined, and now her pride would cause her to take a fall.

There had been five of them for drinks at Rita’s. Should have been two – only Nesta and Cassian for their quiet post theatre drinks, but Morrigan had been there with other friends who she swiftly abandoned as soon as she saw Cassian arrive.

Within minutes Morrigan had called Feyre and then before Nesta knew it, she was being squished into a booth, Cassian to her left and Feyre to her right, while she sipped her chilled white wine and counted the minutes until it was socially acceptable to say her goodbyes.

“Oh my god,” Morrigan had been saying. “That was the best dish I think I’d ever eaten. Do you remember it Rhys? The caramelised onions and gravy? What was it called again Cass?”

Cassian groaned and lolled his head back. “Illyrian Comfort Pie. My favourite.” He took a sip of his beer. “The Illyrian army did a version with off-cuts, almost ruined a perfect dish.”

“What’s this pie?” Feyre asked.

“Only the best pie in the world,” Cassian replied, his eyes misting over. “Imagine thick tender beef soaked in its own juices for hours, drowned in rich gravy and embedded with caramelised onions all under a cover of hot crust pastry.”

“You need a room, Cass?” Rhys laughed.

Cassian raised his middle finger to Rhys but joined him in the laughter.

“Cassian’s ex made the best version,” Morrigan said, her eyes sliding to Nesta. “Honestly no one would be able to top it. Bri wasn’t even Illyrian but it was spot on.” She took a long sip from her own glass of red wine. “I guess it doesn’t need to be your own tradition if you care enough to put in the effort.”

There was a heavy silence which would have lingered if not for the clearing of Feyre’s throat. “Who’s got who for Secret Santa?”

“Oh, I’m sure if Nesta put in the effort it would be just as good. Right?” Nesta looked up and met Rhys’ eyes as he ignored Feyre’s question. He smirked as he finished speaking, cocking his own beer bottle to his mouth.

Three more pairs of eyes looked her way. Nesta felt the slight, almost imperceptible tensing from Cassian but it was Feyre’s eyes which widened the most. There was a kick against Nesta’s shin under the table.

“I’m sure it would,” Nesta said, “if I had the time.”

“Cassian was telling us at the bar you’re now on vacation. All your gifts already wrapped and under the tree. Sounds like you have time.”

“Rhys...” Feyre began but Morrigan jumped in.

“I think that would be a lovely Christmas present for Cass. You can start your own tradition now you’re official. Illyrian food is so hearty.”

There was a part of Nesta which was too stubborn for her own good. Rhys’ smirk and Morrigan’s too-wide grin opposite her, the meeting of the cousin’s eyes like this was some in-joke they had just started. Feyre kept kicking her under the table, the jostling movement irritating Nesta further.

The flash of irritation was the problem. That, and the second glass of wine she’d drunk on a half empty stomach fuelling it. Her temperature rose and her skin prickled and instead of counting to twenty like she’d been practicing in her apartment Nesta opened her mouth.

“Fine,” she said, “this whole thing sounds great. One Illyrian Comfort Pie it is. When do you want it? Day after next?” Nesta quickly grabbed her glass to take a swig of her drink before she agreed to anything else.

Cassian’s eyebrows shot up but she didn’t want to meet his eyes, he was probably thinking how Nesta wasn’t implementing those ‘take a moment’ techniques. But his hand reached down to clasp her free one under the table, giving it a squeeze.

“You know what?” he said, looking at the group. “I want in on this. New traditions sound great. You’re making mine so how about yours. What’s the Archeron family dish of choice?” He asked this looking at Nesta but she still had the wine glass clamped to her lips. No longer drinking, just holding it there to feel the cold.

“Ooh,” Feyre said, clapping her hands and jiggling a little on her seat. “Roasted venison, but that’s quite tricky. We haven’t eaten that since Elain went vegetarian. We also had roast potatoes and honey glazed parsnips. Green beans. There was a cheesy mash and – oh, oh, the shortbread biscuits with a chocolate drizzle and the Prythian Pavlova. That’s Nesta’s favourite.”

Cassian laughed. “You want to take a breath there, Feyre?”

In response, Feyre’s stomach grumbled. “No, but I think I need some dinner.”

Aside from Nesta, the table laughed. Her wine glass was now empty and back on the table, her fingers toying with the stem, her mind too preoccupied with the thought of this pie and how the hell she’d even find the recipe.

As the chatter resumed, now about where Rhys and Feyre were going for dinner, Cassian’s weight shifted against her, his arm casually slinging around her shoulders.

“You ok?”

She glanced up at him, plastering a smile on her face. “Absolutely fine.”

“Hmm. Is that genuine fine or Nesta fine?”

Cassian was staring at her intently, concern swimming in his dark eyes. She knew if she immediately conceded he’d let it go, their friendship group knew Nesta wasn’t known for her domestic pursuits and Cassian could whip up a mean dish filled with flavour.

If she really wanted to, Nesta could cheat her way out of this. Getting Elain to bake the pie for her would have once been a consideration until Elain and Lucien’s diet change. No meat, no dairy, no sugar.

No flavour, Lucien had added, ignoring Elain’s frown.

Still, there was something else shining in Cassian’s eyes. Excitement. He was pleased she’d agreed, he relished competition in all its forms and he seemed eager to do this with her.

Nesta’s smile melted in a more genuine one and she squeezed his hand back. “Honestly, it’s good. Dare I say I may even find it fun?”

That was two days ago. Two long days.

“Ha!” She now shouted to her cramped kitchen. “Two drink Nesta has no concept of what the fuck fun is.”

Everything was a mess, even the edges of the cookbook were singed and Nesta cringed at the sight. Gwyn had managed to track down the edition on her behalf and Nesta hated to see a book suffer.

She looked at the clock. Two hours to go – plenty of time to shower, dress up and cart the pie to Cassian’s where they would have a grand unveiling in front of their friends. Her phone pinged and Nesta glanced down to see a reply from Emerie.

She says no chance.

“That’s not a problem,” Nesta said, wiping her hands on her thighs and staining her jeans further. “Because I now have a half decent pie.” She picked up the sharp knife. “Just scrape some of the black bits off and we are good to go.”

The knife slid through the crust and Nesta lifted some of the burnt pastry off using the blade. Odd. What was a deep and crispy brown on the surface seemed pale and soft underneath. Almost as though the pastry hadn’t fully cooked all the way through.

“It’s just this bit,” Nesta told herself. “I’m sure the rest is just fine.” But as she gently lifted the pie-top she could see the same pale colour underneath. Worse was the distinct lack of steam rising from the filling. “No, no, no, no. You’ve been in the oven for almost two hours.”

Grabbing a fork, she stuck it into the dish and scooped out a lump of meat. Juice, which looked far too oily for her liking, dripped off the prongs. Nesta placed the meat on the counter and cut through it with a knife.

She was met with resistance. The beef was still cold. A noise left her throat unbidden, something akin to a half sob. Nesta had researched the best meat cuts for the pie, she’d made sure to go to the best butcher and spent no less than forty-five minutes asking the rather exasperated man behind the counter questions from her list.

Her eyes flew up to the clock. Less than two hours to go. The time she’d budgeted to get ready and go to Cassian’s now shrivelled up. Just like my hopes for this pie.

She peered into the dish, the caramelized onions bobbing in the gravy like some apple bobbing contest gone wrong. “You’re mocking me,” she said and then groaned. They wouldn’t be the only ones.  

Nesta sank down onto her floor, ignoring the drip of gravy she sat on and put her head on her knees. She could imagine it all now; Feyre, Rhys, and Morrigan all dressed up, swanning around Cassian’s apartment waiting to be served their multiple courses.

Feyre’s eyes would go wide at Nesta’s attempt but she’d try and make Nesta feel better and yet somehow by trying, she’d only make Nesta feel worse. Cassian would likely tuck the monstrosity – if she even bothered bringing it – behind some extravaganza he’d made and perform an elaborate distraction.

Rhys and Morrigan would probably just snigger behind their drinks and tell her that ‘at least she tried.’ Patronising fuckers.

A tear dripped from the corner of her eye down her chin.

Nesta had tried. Had really tried. She’d memorised the recipe from back to front before she even started, she’d gone out into Velaris Market with a clipboard, she’d called Elain early for pastry tips ignoring Lucien joining the call to ask Nesta if she could describe what real food tasted like because the memory of butter was fading fast.

She wiped her eyes with her fingers, knowing she must look even more of a state than before. But wait – there was an option open to her. Hope flared yet.

Nesta grabbed her phone from the counter. What had Feyre said? The Illyrian restaurant down Sidra Street might be able to deliver. If anyone served an Illyrian Comfort Pie, it would be them. She scrolled through her favourites for the number. Her and Cassian had eaten there so often, she practically had them on speed dial.

The phone answered after the second ring.

“Hello? Hi. I know it’s late notice but I’m in a bit of a bind and hoping you could help.”

She explained the situation, confirming that yes, her pie request was for that Cassian, the one with the tattoos and arms.

“I mean, I don’t know,” Nesta said, eyeing up the clock and tapping her foot against the cupboard. “I’ll ask him. Some kind of protein shake, I think. Yeah, it’s really glossy hair. I’ll ask him that too. Anyway – the pie?”

They were regretful. Truly. Nesta could almost feel their sorrow down the phone. They didn’t have any pies pre-baked and they wouldn’t have one ready for the time she needed it by. They offered Nesta and Cassian a discount on their next visit and Nesta thanked them before hanging up.

“Well. Shit.”

Her eyes itched and she wanted to cry again but this wasn’t the Archeron way. She shook her shoulders and cleared her throat. There would be no pie but Nesta would be damned if she turned up without bringing anything and looking like a chaotic mess.

The kitchen horror show was a problem for future her, but in less than an hour, she had showered, dressed herself in her most confidence boosting little black dress and practiced her affirmations in front of the hallway mirror.

“You are a calm, confident, capable woman. You did not achieve the pie. Others have probably not achieved the pie. You have achieved other things. Like your best friends, two degrees, and this awesome looking pavlova.”

Nesta held the covered bowl to the mirror as though to show her reflection the cream and meringue evidence. Her lipstick red smile shook a little but the taxi driver was calling to say he was downstairs so there was no time for doubt to creep in.

On a usual night it took too long to get to Cassian’s. The drive was less than fifteen minutes from one end of the small city where Nesta lived to Cassian’s address and every second stretched out painfully slow.

Tonight, it was as though all roads had cleared especially for her just to say ‘look, you can get to your ritual humiliation even earlier.’

“It’s not like I’ve ever seen Rhys or Morrigan cook,” she mumbled to herself as she exited the cab and entered Cassian’s building. The porter nodded and buzzed her in and then Nesta was counting the too-quick numbers on the elevator.

Cassian’s apartment was one of two at the top of the building and though the sound-proofing was excellent, which they could attest to personally, Nesta was surprised at the distinct lack of any festivities sounding from behind his door when she approached.

He answered after one knock, hair freshly washed and dried. His white dress shirt sleeves were rolled up to his elbows and the top buttons were undone, swathes of black swirling tattoos on display.

Cassian let out a low whistle and grinned like a wolf when he saw her. “Well, if it isn’t my favourite lady, in my favourite dress of hers, with my favourite dish.”

He leant in to kiss her and Nesta winced at the mention of food. Cassian’s lips met hers in a chaste kiss but he must have noticed her response as he was frowning when he pulled away.

“Come in,” he said with a light tone. “Let me take that.” He held his hands out for the bowl she was carrying but she clutched it tighter to her body.

“That’s ok, let me find a space to put it.”

“Sure.”

Nesta stepped further into the apartment. Everything was chrome, quartz, or wood but Cassian couldn’t help himself when it came to Christmas. What was once an interior designers dream for a ‘bachelor living’ magazine spread was now a grotto fit for the dreams of any eight-year-old girl.

A smile lifted the corner of her lips. She’d never begrudge him this. Foster care and ten endless churn of care homes hadn’t left Cassian with any sense of home and the orphanage tried their best but lacked the funds.

Cassian had told her that his best Christmas eventually came in the Illyrian military and all that involved was eating dry turkey from paper plates and reading stupid jokes from cheap crackers. But he was with people that felt like family and that’s what mattered the most.

Now, garlands hung from the oversized windows, a tree larger than Cassian himself stood by the fireplace decked with shining ornaments. A range of presents piled up under the tree to the point where they spilled across his floor.

Stockings on the mantel, rugs everywhere, gingerbread houses which increased in number each time Nesta was over. Candles on every surface.

“Wine?” Cassian asked as Nesta slid the bowl onto his counter. She nodded while taking a breath in. Ham and apricot, honey, a distinct scent of rich chocolate. All the food laid out but under coverings to keep them fresh.

Her stomach stank. She’d failed him so miserably.

Her face must have painted a picture because Cassian moved beside her. “Hey, what’s up.” His fingers tucked under her chin, tilting her face to his. Those deep eyes of his, again swimming in concern.

She hoped the best Christmas present she could get him was honesty.

“I fucked it.”

He blinked. “Sorry?”

“The pie, I completely fucked it up.”

His confused blank expression immediately melted and he laughed, his head thrown back and the column of his throat on display. His face in laughter was a delight, he was young and happy and in love with life. “Well, that makes a lot more sense.”

“There is no pie. I botched it.”

He looked down at her, his expression softening, his smile gentle. “I’d be surprised if you didn’t. That pie is an art only the devil knows how to get right. Did you know Emerie’s grandmother won’t even make one and she won Illyrian baker of the year for fifteen years?”

Nesta coughed and reached for the wine poured out for her. “No, I didn’t know that.”

Cassian moved round the counter to Nesta’s dish. “So, what did you bring?”

“The only thing that didn’t involve my oven. The meringue isn’t even home-made. I’m such a sellout.”

He peeked under the covering and exhaled. “Oh, thank the Mother.” He stepped back, his hand over his heart. “I fucked it.”

Now, Nesta blinked at him. “Sorry?”

“The meringue for the Prythian Pavlova. It was the one thing I wanted to get perfect but do you know how hard meringue is to make? I couldn’t even make it to the store.”

He shook his head, grabbing his own glass of wine. “I even rang Elain to ask her for tips but Lucien answered and begged me to tell him in great detail how the filo wrapped parcels were smelling. He said, and I quote ‘go low and take your time’. I’m not sure how comfortable I am having them over for New Year.”

Nesta laughed, shaking her own head, glancing around the apartment. It had taken her long enough but something finally dawned on her. “Am I early? When are the others arriving?”

Cassian paused, swirling his glass. “Yeah, about that... I thought ‘fuck ‘em.’”

Nesta’s eyes bulged. “I think I’m missing something.”

Cassian put his glass down and leant back against the far counter.

“You know Bri’s pie wasn’t all that great. Mor was being...” he trailed off, scratching his eyebrow the way he did when he was uncomfortable. “Mor was being difficult and it was unfair. Rhys too. But I liked the idea of you and I doing our own holiday tradition so I guess I thought I’d see where we ended up.”

He gestured to his apartment and the dishes before them. “So, we ended up here. Just you and I, a bottle of wine, lots of delicious food and a very comfy rug we’re fucking on after dinner.”

“Is that right?” Nesta said, putting her glass down. She walked over to him. “Have you seen what you’ve made? We are not fucking after dinner.” She placed her hand on his chest, his heart beating a rhythm against her palm as she ignored his disappointed face. “We’re fucking before dinner.”

That wolf grin was back on his face and he leant forward to kiss her but Nesta stopped him. “I feel bad, everything here is an Archeron dish. You didn’t get your pie.”

“Oh, I’ll get to eat my pie.”

“Cassian!”

He laughed again, his broad arms wrapping around her body. “The fact that you tried means everything. I promise. This is a great start to our forever tradition.”

Nesta looked up at him; the hours of failed baking, the constant smoke alarms, the mess she had to clear up tomorrow. Worth it. All of it. “Forever you say?”

“Forever.”

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[duskandstarlight]

The Girl (Part One)

Notes: All I can do is write modern AU lately, so here is the first part of The Girl (see here for the prologue). Forgive me of any typos - I've glanced over it but I just wanted to get this out. Enjoy!

Part One: Nesta

It can’t be happening. That’s Nesta’s first thought as she sits at the large mahogany dining table at her sister’s birthday dinner and watches a man that’s horribly familiar duck beneath the doorframe. Yet… it’s undeniable. Same broad frame, same leather jacket, same rugged features. Same tattoos peeking over his collar and licking up his neck. Same shoulder-length black hair scraped back into a haphazard knot. 

Nesta manages to stop the shock that seizes her, catching it before it ever makes its way onto her expression. But the man isn’t as successful. It’s only a heartbeat, but it’s there as he sits down at the table, looks up as he’s mid-way between tucking in his chair and see’s… her. The girl he fucked on his sofa only two days prior. 

Then the shock and recognition is gone as swiftly as it arrived and that questionable beat where Nesta thinks she’s well and truly foiled vanishes.

It seems it’s not only her that wears masks.

They go through the necessary motions. The cordial civility Nesta despises. They pretend they have never met and Nesta tries not to flinch in surprise when he suddenly extends his hand to her over the table.

It’s an offering. It’s a ruse that Nesta is adamant on keeping.

So, she reaches across the table and clasps the same calloused hand that had cupped her ass a few nights before - as if they’re in some Cauldron-damn business meeting.

She tries not to remember that night the moment they touch. The molten heat that had burned between them. The way it had licked up her spine, all consuming.

“Nesta.” The man repeats after her slowly, as if he’s trying her name out on his tongue. Savouring it. His voice is so deep that it’s a delicious scrape across her skin and his eyes are a pool of hazel as he meets her gaze full on, unflinching - an amalgamation of brown, grey, green and gold. “I’ve not heard that name before.”

Nesta resists the urge to snap her hand back into her lap. Instead, she moves with careful deliberation. Tells him with an empty politeness that she hopes conveys that she's not a conversationalist and never will be, “It means fire.”

That, she knows, he believes. 

It’s only when Nesta pulls on her coat in the hallway of the house that Feyre shares with her fiancé Rhysand, that Nesta senses that their game of pretence is over.

His footsteps are barely detectable against the hardwood floor but there’s something that tells her that he’s near. A presence that’s carved out its own space in the small hallway, seeping into the woodwork, her pores. A caress at the back of her neck. Against her skin.

And somehow she knows that he’s leaning against the doorframe, waiting, watching. Even so, she makes a point of doing up the buttons of her coat as if she’s none the wiser. Pulls her hair out from under the material and winds a scarf around her neck.

Because never again does she want to be prey.

“We’ve never met,” she announces crisply when she’s finished, cleaving back the control she desperately needs before he tries to wrangle it from her. 

She doesn’t turn. Doesn’t give any indication that he’s worth her time. When Nesta started sleeping around she learnt quickly that unapologetic directness was the best approach. 

After all, Nesta doesn’t pick her men out at bars with repeat sessions in mind. And, in this case, it’s vital that Nesta sets the scene and lays the foundations.

The man - Cassian - is leaning against the doorframe, larger than life and observing her in a way that is also unapologetic. It’s not leering. It’s not overtly sexual (although Nesta knows that the attraction is there as surely as she knows her heart is beating). But it’s the sort of stare that burrows into you, deeper and deeper, as if it’s trying to get to the core of you and figure you out.

And when Cassian’s eyes glint, Nesta thinks he actually might have done it. Unlocked every iron-barred gate inside of her and found out every horrible truth.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’ll keep our dirty little secret.”

That’s all Nesta needs to hear. She ignores the way his voice has taken an even deeper turn than earlier. That the mere sound of it has stirred something inside of her, something that has long been sleeping. 

Instead, she yanks open the front door and steps outside. The cold is like a slap to the face but she’s done here. She needs to go home. Needs a drink. 

When Cassian dares to follow her out, Nesta pins him with a glare that should be like a dagger to the chest. But Cassian simply watches her, completely unbothered by the demeanour that usually has others scarpering with their tails between their legs.

She makes a point of raking her eyes from top to toe, scrutinising every wild inch of him, before she snares his gaze. “In case you hadn’t realised, we’re done here.”

Still, he watches her. Studying her, his gaze so astute that Nesta feels vulnerable.

And she hates it, detests it—

“I need to talk to you.”

Nesta actually snorts. The huff of breath comes out like steam, like she’s a dragon breathing a fire the colour of ice. “We fucked once. A five minute fumble does not requires us to talk.”

She starts walking. Her feet crunch on the gravel drive and for a moment all she feels is how cold she is. But then fingers are closing around her wrist and she’s not yanked backwards, exactly, but she’s forced to stop.

And that’s when her instincts kick in. There is no mask, no control of her expression or her body language as she jolts away from him like a mare that refuses to be reigned in. 

When she’s free, she whirls on him. And despite the freezing wind biting into her limbs, Nesta is burning so fiercely she could kill. “Do not touch me,” she hisses.

It amazes her how quickly he backs off, the surprise clear on his face. And then, in his eyes, something knowing. As if he understands.  

It makes Nesta want to run so badly but it’s too late. It’s happening: the constricted breath, the lump in her throat that’s clamped over her airways. The thing that has been happening so frequently recently that Nesta often finds it hard to leave the house.

He must see the sudden panic in her eyes, because he takes another deliberate step away from her, granting her space - air - so she can breathe. 

It takes too long for her lungs to kick back into action. For her heart to start thudding again. Her breath shudders in, in, in, until her chest has so much oxygen her skin wants to crack. 

Nesta isn’t sure how long they stand there, her desperately trying to control her breath in a way that appears inconspicuous whilst he stands by, knowing. 

If Nesta was alone, she would sink to the floor and bury her head between her legs, curling in on herself, turning inwards until all she is is breath. But Nesta is not alone. So, she just tries to focus on the oxygen coming into her lungs, tries to make it measured and slow, all the while she wants to scream at him to disappear.  It takes everything she’s got to try and insert venom into her voice, but it just comes out weak - like a betrayal. “You’re still here.”

“On the couch,” he says quietly, slowly, as if she’s an animal in the underbrush about to scarper from a predator. “We didn’t use anything.”

Nesta knows she needs to claw back some control. She needs to say something cutting, but she still can’t think of anything besides getting air in her lungs in a way that doesn’t make it obvious that she’s struggling to breathe. “I take birth control.”

“Ok.”

She meets his eyes. “There won’t be a repeat.”

Cassian’s scar-slashed eyebrow cocks upwards and Nesta has the distinct impression he would be amused if it isn’t for the way that he’s studying her, concern tight across his brow. “There won’t?”

“There won’t,” she confirms.

The breathing gets easier, slowly, painfully. It’s no longer desperate to shudder in and out. Nesta is so busy focussing on her breath that she almost forgets where she is, until Cassian asks, “And does that extend beyond the couch to other locations, too?”

Nesta feels her eyes ignite into silver blue flames and suddenly she’s not thinking about breathing at all. “It does.”

“That’s a pity.”

Nesta actually snorts again. “For you, it is,” she says, as if the sex hadn’t been good for her.

Lies, all lies. 

Nesta turns, walks away. 

Does not turn back, even when Cassian calls after her, his voice somehow both rough and soft - and a little bit broken. “See you around, Nesta.”

***

They see each other around more than Nesta would have liked. 

Yet, for the first time in years, Nesta continues to try with her sisters. She tries, even as on the inside she drowns in oily waters she can’t share with anyone. Because how do you admit to your former estranged sisters that they were right all along when you can’t even admit it out loud to yourself? But Nesta knows. She knows that she’s so broken she doesn’t know how to move forward any more. Sometimes, Nesta sits in her apartment on her beat up sofa and stares at a wall for hours with nothing going through her brain. Just this dead emptiness, this numbness that she can’t control. 

More often than not, Nesta does not write. She ignores her agents calls. She ignores her deadlines. Because there’s nothing there. Nothing in her head apart from a depthless void that she doesn’t want to get rid of. Because when it disappears, unbidden and without warning, the cyclone of her thoughts, the intense, aching sadness she wakes up with every morning is all too much all too quickly. 

Drinking helps keep the void.

And that’s how Nesta finds herself at the same bar that she’d first met Cassian. Rita’s, it turns out, is the brothers local. And on Friday evenings there’s an open invitation.

The air is sticky with sweat when Nesta arrives and the scent of sugar, tequila, wood and hops turns her stomach. She’s already a bottle of wine down but she has no plans to stop. The last week has been particularly rough. Tonight’s shower was the equivalent of climbing a mountain, getting dressed even more so, but she’s here and she’s got that pleasant tingling numb that fills her with a spiky personality that usually takes far too much effort to conjure.

She’s only there a total of five minutes when Cassian approaches her at the bar. Nesta knows it’s him immediately. Not just because of the hands that rest against the sticky wooden counter, but because she can smell him: pine and fresh air and musk. A pleasant distraction from the general odour of the place.

For the most part, Nesta ignores Cassian when they see one another. 

But sometimes, she can’t.

“Hello, Nes.” The sound of his voice has something sitting up inside of her. Something that scarcely makes an appearance these days - an interest, a feeling that doesn’t feel terrifying but exciting. 

Mastering her voice, Nesta feigns indifference. “Hello brute.”

It’s pure instinct that tells Nesta that Cassian is studying her in that surprisingly quiet way he’s prone to. Nesta ignored it. Pretends to study the wine in the fridge behind the bar. 

“You’re looking as devastating as ever.”

Slowly, Nesta turns her head. 

Cassian is propped up against the bar on one elbow, but he still towers above her: all dark and dangerous with the cocky grin that’s only for her. Today, his hair is tousled half up and it makes her want to do things to him. She’s never felt this attraction to someone before, this delicious and devastating pull. 

She tucks away the sensation, pushing it down, down, down, and pretends that she didn’t choose this particular outfit with the pure intention of flooring him. “Didn’t find it in yourself to brush your hair?”

Cassian’s slow-spreading grin is wolfish and delighted. It didn’t take Nesta long to realise that whilst others found her thorny and disagreeable, Cassian relishes what she throws into the ring. 

He understands that it’s more play than spite. 

Cassian doesn't lean forward, doesn't move into her space at all, yet when he speaks it's as if he’s imparting with a secret. “Admit you like it this way, Nesta.”

She does like it this way, but Nesta only wrinkles her nose. “I like my men well-groomed.”

“No,” Cassian says, tapping the table to the beat of the music with one tan finger as if he’s distracted, “you don’t.”

Boldened by the alcohol buzzing through her veins, Nesta asks, “Are you here to buy me a drink?”

But he throws her question back at her. “Are you buying me one?”

“That depends,” Nesta replies, cocking her head so her long hair falls over her shoulder, “on whether you plan on leaving me alone afterwards.”

Cassian does leave her alone afterwards, and the relief that floods her is mixed with regret. 

Nesta spends the majority of her evening on the dance floor with Elain whilst Feyre hangs out with the dark-haired men in the corner. She drinks too much, until she doesn’t feel anything anymore and everything is numb - just the way she likes it. 

When she’s like this, men don’t scare her. 

When she’s like this, she feels powerful. 

Unstoppable.

When Nesta’s will finally breaks and she allows herself to glance Cassian’s way, she finds him leaning against the metal bar that partitions off the dance floor, talking to a long-legged girl with long braids that swing in time with her hips. 

Nesta makes a point of leaving with someone else. As she exits the club, a well-groomed man trotting after her like some lovesick puppy, she feels Cassian’s dark eyes razor sharp on her back.

This time, she doesn’t bother taking the man home. She makes him take her against the wall in a dirty alleyway, her stomach turning at the soft fingers, the smooth shaven face, the overpowering scent of aftershave. He moans and praises but he doesn’t know how to please her and Nesta can’t find it in herself to take what she needs. 

So, she lets the pebbledash of the wall bite and scratch at her back until she’s sure she’s bleeding with it. 

Holds onto that pain as she turns her head away from him, closes her eyes and waits for it to be over. 

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 @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 @nessiantrashh​ @miamorganvel18 @kawaiteacup @nestaa-stan @castielspelvis

#nessian #nessian fanfic #nessian fic #nesta archeron #cassian #nesta x cassian #acotar #acotar fic #thegirl #duskandstarlightwrites #nessianfic #acotar fanfic

[champanheandluxxury]

Hi! Quick question, what was the angsty one shot you mentioned in this post ? I love angst and I would love to read it. Thanks!

Okay, so the fic is in Portuguese but I spoke to the author she told me you can translate it using the browser and she also told me that if more people were interested in the fic she would translate it for english officialy

Tw: depression, suicide

Its a modern AU based on the beginning of acosf were the intervention doesn't work, the author uses a more realistic than optimistic writing and it left me sobbing until the first hours of the day

It's beautifully and painfully written and I don't know if the browser translation will make it justice, either waylet me know if you liked it or if you had any trouble with it!!!

#nesta archeron #nesta #nessian #cassian #nesta x cassian #cassian x nesta #nessian fanfiction #nessianfic

[duskandstarlight]

Dinner conversation (Nessian, one-shot)

Notes: This fic is for my dear @bookstantrash as a very belated Secret Santa gift. I hope you enjoy this future Nessian one-shot. Sorry about the angst, but I hope there's enough Nessian goodness to make you happy <3 (sorry for any typos!)

Dinner conversation

“Your hair looks nice.” 

The compliment was squeezed out around a mouthful of dinner and Nesta caught an eyeful of chicken and potatoes and something green, which if Nesta had to hazard a guess, might be the peas garnished with the fresh mint from Elain’s garden.

Setting her glass neatly down at the top of her plate, Nesta watched Amren wrinkle her nose in disgust.

It was, if Nesta was being honest, right on cue. 

It didn’t matter how much time passed. Nesta knew these gatherings like the back of her hand - better than the most predictable storyline of her romance novels. The wine would be free-flowing, Mor would predictably showcase bad dining room manners, Amren would get haughty and pick at her food, Cassian would usually say something uncouth just to fan the flames and Elain would try to diffuse the situation—

“It does looks lovely,” Elain piped up unsurprisingly from beside Nesta - just as Cassian opened his mouth. 

“It does,” Feyre agreed readily from across the table. Blue-grey eyes that were identical to Nesta’s twinkled at the affronted look on Cassian’s face. “The looser style suits you.”

It was for the first time in a while that they had all come together at Feyre and Rhys’s river estate. The past few months had been busy: December might have been closing in, the festive lights strung and twinkling around the city of Velaris, but their duties remained—and they were more pressing than ever. 

But Mor had finally arrived back from overseas, Azriel was in Velaris rather than spying on territories, and Nesta and Cassian were back from Illyria after a month long stretch that had consisted of whipping winds, snow-capped mountains and frost-kissed pine trees.

So, here they all were, around the large wooden dining table, platters of simple food laid out courtesy of Nuala, Cerridwen and Elain: saffron roast chicken, herb potatoes, minted peas, green beans with a garlic bread crumb and other simple fare that was either grown in Elain’s generous vegetable patch or sourced locally elsewhere. 

And, as always, everything was running exactly to schedule.

Picking up her cutlery, Nesta cut into her chicken with slow, well-practiced deliberation. “Thank you,” she said simply.

This time, Mor had the audacity to swallow before she spoke - but as ever, she never knew when to cease talking. “It’s the looser style,” she explained animatedly, gesturing with her fork around her own head despite her loose blonde tresses. “Much more…”

Mor trailed off with an abruptness at the sight of Nesta’s arched eyebrow.

“Relaxed,” Mor finished with a sheepish smile and the sight of it had a smile of Nesta’s own threatening to tick at the corner of her lips. “You look more relaxed. Less ready for battle.”

It was not a lie. Rather than her usual tight coronet, Nesta’s hair was swept back in a simple braid which weaved from her hairline all the way over her shoulder. It was not a hairstyle that Nesta adorned in the sparring ring - or in everyday life - but she had found that she was rather taken with it. And given that Nesta could no longer find it in herself to tackle the stairs that climbed to the training grounds atop the House of Wind - nor attempt to squeeze into her tight-fitting leathers - Nesta supposed it really didn’t matter that she wasn’t ready to clash swords with Gwyn or Emerie or a certain General of the Night Court’s armies. 

The thought of Nesta’s mate was surely some sort of summoning, because a plate of potatoes materialised in front of her, balanced by a familiar scar-flecked hand encased in leather.

Black hair wild from the wind tearing around the mountain peaks during their fly down to the river estate and hazel eyes that glinted with a shard of a shared secret, Cassian blessed Nesta with a grin that was so wide his canines flashed.

And it was a rare thing to see a true smile from him these days, that Nesta found herself playing along.

“Stop,” she ordered him shortly, because she knew how much it delighted him when she bit at him. She snatched the plate of potatoes from him without further comment and ignored the way Cassian smirked at her, at the way his eyes had begun to glow at the presence of her fire.

Slowly, she piled some potatoes onto her plate. Patiently, she waited. Because just like Nesta knew how these gatherings played out, she also knew her mate.

“I did it.” 

The words spilled out of Cassian as if he couldn’t stop them—and Nesta largely suspected that he couldn’t.

She rolled her eyes, but the gesture was fond, a front of long suffering rather than the truth of one. A smile finally escaped her grasp and Nesta let it lie across her face, let it linger so everyone could see it rather than tucking it away. She had long said goodbye to her reputation as a heartless ice queen. Nesta was still fierce, still fire made flesh with power at her fingertips and a sword strapped down her spine, but she could be something other than that, too. In the years that had passed since Nyx had dramatically arrived into the world, Nesta had slowly unpicked the habits of a lifetime, until she could show happiness without fearing the repercussions for revealing the chink in her armour. Here, she was not being judged. Here, she had learned to simply be. 

Nesta watched Mor’s jaw drop. Her disbelieving chocolate brown eyes flitted from her friend to Nesta and back again. “You did not.”

Cassian leant back into his chair and crossed his arms smugly across his chest: the picture of self-congratulated arrogance. “I certainly did.”

At Mor’s long look, Cassian’s bravado slipped slightly and his eyes cut to Nesta’s for validation in tandem with everyone else. “Tell them, sweetheart.”

Nesta took her time helping herself to an extra portion of lemon and thyme roast chicken, but in the end, she couldn’t deny the truth. “He did,” she admitted, but Nesta was too intent in tucking into her food to actually observe the expectant faces. Her bump might be big, their unborn babe pressing into her stomach and limiting the amount she could eat, but she was determined to damn well try.

“It’s good practice,” Cassian continued, and Nesta did look up then because she could sense in the careful way he spoke—with such pride and reserved excitement—that his smile would be a blessing—a ray of sunshine piercing through storm clouds. It made Nesta’s heart clench into a fist when she saw it, squeezing, squeezing—

“For?” Mor asked obliviously, but Feyre was already looking at Nesta, her eyes wide and shining. Elain grappled for Nesta’s hand under the table, her slim fingers vice in their grip as they fastened around her own.

“For when I need to plait our little girl’s hair.”

A high pitched squeak sounded. Wine sloshed out of Mor’s wine glass as she brought it down onto the table with a delighted clatter. Azriel’s shadows completely cleared from his body and he was so light Nesta thought his skin looked porcelain.

Rhys clapped a hand hard on his son’s shoulder, but he was grinning and so was Nyx. Nesta’s nephew’s violet eyes were bright, his dark hair ruffled as he asked softly, “A girl?” 

“I’m going to have two Valkyries,” Cassian confirmed. He was still beaming as he leant back even further into his chair. The wing that was always curled protectively around Nesta’s back brushed her shoulder as he leant over to press a kiss to her cheek. And he was so happy in that moment—and Nesta was so happy, too—that she returned it in full.

“It’s a girl,” Nesta confirmed, before she gestured in the direction of her head. “And this buffoon is resolute on learning to plait hair before she comes out of the womb.”

Cassian’s laugh was dark, like the delicious scrape of stubble against bare skin. “That and you’re too tired to braid your hair in the mirror.”

“It might also be that,” Nesta admitted. 

Recently, she’d barely had the energy to do anything. During their time in Windhaven, Nesta had spent her time curled up with Emerie and Gwyn in their cosy bungalow: a book in hand, a fire crackling in the hearth and a cup of herbal tea. 

Amren leant forwards, her smoky irises alive with what Nesta knew to be genuine and wicked delight. “Congratulations girl. We could do with more females in our cohort.” She looked pointedly at Cassian and back again. “Perhaps it might even out the egos of these dogs.”

Rhys let out a cough that Nesta was certain disguised a laugh but Cassian just tossed Amren a grin that bared all of his teeth. 

“So, you decided to find out the sex,” Elain asked softly, expertly refocussing the conversation.

“Yes,” Nesta replied simply.

“And you’re both healthy?” Feyre pressed.

Beside Nesta, Cassian tensed. Nesta felt it not just in her mate’s body, but in the air around them. In the way that the bond between them pulled taut before it froze.

She sent a heat-kissed wave of her fire magic in an attempt to thaw it. Internally, nothing happened. The only response was Cassian’s wing. It curved tighter around her shoulder, instinctively drawing her into his body.

Nesta couldn’t find it in herself to snap at him. Instead, she ignored the iron stature of her mate - and the way she was all but crushed uncomfortably into his side - and commanded her body to weave the illusion of calm.

“Madja says she’s growing nicely,” Nesta replied as she subtly shifted in her chair until Cassian loosened his hold. She set herself back to the task of primly spearing some green beans onto her fork. 

“I’m so pleased,” Feyre told Nesta earnestly and Nesta dipped her chin in acknowledgement, because she knew it to be true. Nobody was going to forget Feyre’s birth in a hurry. Even now, just the thought of it transported Nesta there, to that moment she watched her sister die, the sharp metallic tang of blood all around them. 

“Me too,” Nesta agreed. And then, because she wanted nothing more than to rope Cassian back into the conversation, she added, “Madja says her wings are bigger than average.”

There was an expectant pause in which everyone looked to Cassian - waiting for him to boast about his daughter’s wingspan - but nothing came. He just smiled so tightly it became a grimace and clasped a rough-skinned palm around the nape of Nesta’s neck. It seemed that the subject of the healer - and the reminder of his daughter’s wings - had muted Cassian’s momentary joy.

Whilst Nesta had experienced first-hand the anamatical change in her body that allowed her to accommodate Illyrian wings, Cassian had not. And Nesta knew that it was a worry that didn’t just plague him but terrorise him. In the first six months of her pregnancy, Nesta would turn over in the middle of the night, her hips aching, her back stiff, to find Cassian lying awake, watching her. 

It had taken months for Cassian to admit what he was terrified of.

So, Nesta had taken to visiting Madja with Cassian more frequently than her pregnancy required. The old wispy haired healer was always thorough, happy to answer any of their questions. She never seemed to mind that Cassian needed reassuring every visit that everything was looking good. That the wings wouldn’t cause any complications. 

Today, Cassian’s anxieties had been particularly bad. Nesta had known it the moment they’d woken. Could tell by the bruised shadows beneath his eyes, the way he’d insisted that the House let him make Nesta a cup of peppermint tea, rather than the other way around. 

Madja had sensed it, too, and had instructed Cassian on how to use one of her instruments until they could hear their youngling’s heartbeat in their ears.

It had been slow and steady—reassuring and so beautifully full of life. But Nesta knew that no amount of reassuring would stop Cassian worrying that something might happen to her. And Nesta couldn’t blame her mate for that, because if things were the other way around, she’d be the exact same.

“I felt the change in my body after you Made me,” Feyre said quietly in lieu of the silence that had fallen around the dining table. “I felt… so new and certain. Like my body had been widened and reformed—just slightly. I could feel the imprint of the magic—this silver kiss. A gift from you and the Mother.”

Her sister’s eyes were discerning. She had been looking at Cassian rather than Nesta, but now Feyre’s eyes slid to Nesta’s. As they always were when they spoke of her birth, they were brimming with gratitude. 

Nesta knew if Nyx had still been little, Feyre would have pulled him into her lap and held him tight. Would have kissed the crown of his dark haired head. But her son was a hundred and fifty years old and was well past the age of being coddled.

But Nyx seemed to know what his mother needed. He reached for his mother’s hand and squeezed.

The touch of Elain’s palm resting lightly against Nesta’s stomach snagged her focus away from Feyre’s watery smile. At the beginning of Nesta’s pregnancy, Nesta would have wanted nothing more than to bat her sister away. But now she recognised the gesture as love and affection for their unborn, so she only leant back to give Elain better access. 

“What are you going to call her?” Elain asked, her voice slightly hushed by the veil of honey brown hair that had fallen across her face. "Do you have any ideas?”

“Yes,” Nesta said - at the same time that Cassian answered, “Maybe.”

Mor straightened hopefully and the gesture was a little too much, a little too staged as she asked brightly, “Is it Morrigan?”

It worked. Cassian screwed up his face over a mouthful of wine. “A dreadful name.”

Mor simply stuck her red-stained tongue out at him.

“We haven’t decided yet,” Cassian supplied after a too long pause.

It was a lie. In the heart of Windhaven, with the wind battering at the windows of their bungalow bedroom, they had both been in agreement - unanimous agreement. 

“Well, I’m sure whatever you choose will suit the babe wonderfully,” Elain reassured them. 

“I’m curious,” Azriel intoned, pitching in for the first time that night and Nesta knew that it was because the Shadowsinger’s shadows were whispering in his ear about the posture of his brother - the tension. “How many names are there for the word terror?”

Amren’s cackle sounded like the continual crack of a whip. “The two of you look so indignant, but with Nesta’s fire and this dog’s mischievous arrogance that youngling is going to be the equivalent of satan.”

“Ohh,” Mor cooed delightedly as she clapped her hands together. “Is that the name? I love it.”

“Ha ha,” Cassian drawled, but Nesta noticed his wings were no longer drawn in tight. The tautness in his shoulder had unspooled. “We intended for the lot of you to be guardians but now you can think twice.”

“I didn’t say the babe would be satan,” Nyx informed Nesta with his usual calm sobriety as everyone else broke out in argument. He drummed a long finger on the the leather-bound book that lay beside his empty plate. “Do I still get to be a guardian?”

“Of course,” Nesta told her nephew brusquely. She nudged her plate towards him. She was suddenly obscenely full, the babe clearly having shifted to press against her stomach, and Nyx took after his uncle in the way that he ate every meal as if it was his last. “You were my first choice anyway.”

One corner of Nyx’s mouth inched upwards. Beneath the stubble, Nesta could still find the trace of the impish dimple that Nesta had so loved when he was a youngling. Feyre and Rhys’ son might technically be an adult now, but to Nesta, he would always be the nephew that had curled up in her lap, a blanket in hand, a thumb in mouth, as Nesta read him a bedtime story.

“Well,” Rhys announced, “satan or not, I think a toast is in order.” 

When the High Lord of the Night Court raised his glass, the red wine in it deeper than the rubies on the backs of Cassian’s hands, everyone did the same.

“To Cassian’s braiding skills,” he announced and a mixture of laughter and protestation followed.

***

“You still like the name?” 

The deep rumble of Cassian’s voice tickled Nesta’s ear. They had retired back to the House swiftly after dinner - most likely, Nesta suspected, because Cassian had detected the warm lap of exhaustion that had travelled down her end of the bond.

So, they’d left their friends and family around the living room fire and braved the short flight in the chilling wind. Below them, the Sidra had been a winding ribbon and above them, the brightest star in the sky had guided them back to the House.

Now, in their bedroom, Nesta lifted her eyes to study her mate’s reflection in the vanity mirror. 

In the soft faelight, his features were darker then ever; his hair pitch black, his eyes not only drawing in the shadows around him, but anything he looked at - as if he were a magnet and the world gravitated towards him, Nesta included.

Slowly, Nesta set down the hairbrush she’d been waiting to use. “I suggested it, didn’t I?”

The fingers that were gently combing through her hair didn’t cease. Instead, they continued to blindly untangle her braid as his eyes fastened on hers. “You did.”

For a few heartbeats, neither of them spoke. They simply stared at one another and Nesta let her entire being tunnel towards the depths of his stare - where Nesta knew a name existed, as precious as a pearl.

“I love the name,” Nesta assured Cassian, her voice dropping into a hushed whisper that was only for them. “Would you rather we chose something different?”

Cassian swallowed and Nesta tracked the movement. Catalogued the way his throat bobbed. “No. It’s precious to me.”

“I know,” she replied simply and stood so she could cup Cassian’s face in her hands. His stubble scratched against her calloused palms and her belly pressed too tightly against his muscled one, but Nesta revelled in the warmth of him - the sensation of being home. “It’s precious to me, too.”

In truth, picking a name for their unborn youngling had been one of the easiest choices Nesta had ever made. And in a life whose early years had been dictated by a complete lack of control, it had felt like soaring to feel both so free and so aligned with her mate’s thoughts.

When Nesta had suggested it, Cassian’s eyes had rippled and shone so fiercely Nesta’s eyes had burned. Beloved - that was what the name meant. But it was also the Illyrian name for the brightest star in the sky.

“Carina,” Cassian said aloud, speaking the name that he rarely allowed the world to hear, but one Nesta knew he thought of every day.

To him, Nesta knew that the name evoked memories of his childhood. Of meagre campfires and a lilting voice. Of dark hair brushing over his shoulder as his mother pressed her chapped lips against his cheek. 

They were bittersweet and incomplete memories. Cassian had once told Nesta that trying to remember his mother was like trying to close a fist around fog: when you tried to clench it, it only scattered like dust, disembodied. 

And it seemed right to Nesta - when they had never found Cassian’s mother’s body to give her a proper burial - that they could remember her this way. In a way that was both physical and so full of life.

When Nesta ran a thumb over her mate’s cheek, Nesta felt the comfort of her gesture down the bond. Cassian’s large palm came to rest over her hand, holding her to him as he leant into her touch. 

His breath was hot but steady, whispering over her skin, and as Nesta smiled up at him she watched his features slowly relax - until his expression was hopeful, calm, happy.

“It’s decided then,” she announced, reaching up on tiptoes as she spoke. 

Cassian’s quiet laugh whispered between them at her feeble attempt to raise herself to his height.

Large hands settled on her hips, anchoring her to him. 

“Carina,” Nesta said - rolling the weight of the name around her tongue, the promise of it - before she threaded her fingers through the tangles of her mate’s hair and sealed the name with a kiss.  

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 @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 @nessiantrashh​ @miamorganvel18 @kawaiteacup @nestaa-stan @castielspelvis @haigrr @dont-take-life-to-seriously

#duskandstarlightwrites #acotar fanfic #acotar #nessian #nessianfic #nessianfanfic #nesta archeron #cassian #acosf #acosf fanfic #nesta and cassian #feysand #nyx #azriel acotar

[wildlyglittering]

Silver In Her Eyes - Chapter Three

Happy New Year's Eve everyone! Whatever your plans, I hope it's a good one!

Chapter 3 is up! Please show it some love here or on Ao3.

Silver In Her Eyes - Chapter 3 - writinginthedust - A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas [Archive of Our Own]

Silver In Her Eyes

Rhys’ eyes shone when he scrutinised what Nesta had forged. The blades were mainly daggers but there was the occasional broad sword varying in size and width. He looked upon them all the way Nesta imagined the dragons from her childhood fairy stories would look upon a hoard of gold.

Covetous.

“This one’s most spectacular,” he said, palming the flat side of a sword. Both the blade and Nesta squirmed, Nesta feeling the unwanted touch as though Rhys had traced his fingers down her spine. “This would suit Cassian, don’t you think?”

The sword was the tallest and widest Nesta had forged so far, the hilt of it reaching the underside of her breast. The handle twisted into wings spread as though in flight and the blade shimmered with barely visible words, all in a language she instinctively understood to be Old Illyrian.

This was a rare occasion she agreed with Rhys. In truth, as she hit the hammer down onto the metal, she only had Cassian in mind. Images of him in battle played before her, torrents of rain slamming into his frame as he wove through soldiers, his body twisting and turning as if in dance.

Whether she was remembering the time she watched him fight or whether she was seeing flashes of him from his past, Nesta didn’t know. Maybe these were events yet to come, the ground wet with blood.

There had been a moment, when she struck the final blow to complete the sword, when she envisioned him running someone through with a blade, so similar to the one in Nesta’s hands it couldn’t have been any other.

Elain had the curse of prophecy not her so Nesta didn’t know if what she saw was true. Who Cassian was slaying Nesta couldn’t see, but the sword screamed its victory. Death to the High Lord.

“Well? Is this for Cassian?”

Rhys was staring at her while she was elsewhere inside her head, those purple eyes flashing mauve. The whispers of the blades in the room started soft and grew in intensity until they were roaring. What is he doing? What has he done to you, Mother? To your sisters?

The noises overlapped but a quiet blade in the corner, its handle twisted into a snake drew her eyes. It had called to her before, quieter than the rest but more insistent. It gave Nesta an image, of her picking it up and slicing open Rhys’ cheek.

“Yes,” she said, forcing the noise into silence. “It’s Cassian’s.”

Rhys’ smile was all teeth. “I wonder what he will name it.”

He wasn’t talking to Nesta but himself. Her involvement was done, as though she’d birthed a child and handed it over to be fodder. What was once hers, was no more.

Her fingers buried themselves in her skirts. The enjoyment of this room, of the act of creation, was dissipating. A thrum of power tinged under her skin and spilled forth from her palms as she forged, the clash of hammer upon metal was a song which sent delight coursing through her.

Before he took the sword away, Nesta reached out to touch it. Betrayer, she called it. She didn’t know why.

***

While Rhys was inspecting Nesta's work, Mor and Cassian stood at the top of the House of Wind staring outwards at the rooftops of the city and the winding path of the Sidra.

The light breeze drifted through their clothes and hair and Mor threaded her fingers through Cassian’s free hand which curled around hers. His other hand scrubbed over his face as though he could wipe away the fatigue which showed.

“We can't turn Kallon, he’s Keir’s through and through. The others? Breaking that news to Rhys is worse.”

Mor gave Cassian’s hand a squeeze. “That they won’t declare either way?”

Cassian cleared his throat. “They’ll declare but not for Rhys.” He paused, struggling with the words. “They’ll declare for me.”

Mor gasped and looked up at her oldest friend, her dearest friend. He stared straight ahead at the open sky, refusing to look at her.

Mor’s lips twitched upwards. Despite herself she found this development had a seed of... something. She didn’t know what. It would have been a failure had the War-Lords of Illyria declared for Keir but something squirmed in her chest which spoke of another disaster if had they declared for Rhys.

“Don’t tell him,” she said. Cassian looked at her with raised eyebrows. “Rhys isn’t in his right mind. I don’t know how he’ll react.”

Cassian shifted; Mor knew she was another person asking the most honest of their group to lie. This was too close to Cassian taking power away from Rhys; the armies now with an Illyrian ruler instead of a fae one.

“Please,” she said, this time stepping in front of him, sliding her other hand into his, tilting her face upwards towards his. Mor had been opposite her cousin in his study only hours before and had seen that Rhys wasn't himself.

A darkness was creeping in and while they battled to save Feyre and Nyx, to save the lives of all the Night Court, there was part of her which believed there was no saving Rhys.

They may as well try and save themselves.

Cassian smiled a half sad smile and shrugged. “I can never say no to that face.”

Mor let go of his hands to grip him in a hug, her arms barely able to wrap his entire body as he enfolded his around her. Mor leant into his strength, her face pressing against his chest as she listened to his heartbeat.

When she first saw him, she was shocked at how pale he had become, how his wings drooped. Rhys had Cassian flying across the entirety of Illyria, meeting with every War-Lord regardless of how small the camp.

Mor pulled back to look at him. “Rhys is going to the Mortal Lands to speak with Lucien. He’s hoping he will convince Tamlin to side with us. We now have Eris.”

“I’m surprised Eris agreed so easily.”

So, Cassian was unaware of Eris’ request. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him but instead she blurted out another thought. “I think Feyre should know the truth.”

Cassian paused but nodded. His hands squeezing the tops of Mor’s shoulders. “I want Nesta to know too. She’s no fool. She’s watching us all to see our missteps.” His voice then turned sharp. “Rhys has her working every day in the blacksmiths he built her. I hate this, I hate lying too her, I hate Rh-”

He cut himself off, swallowing down the words he couldn’t take back if he said them out loud.

Mor was amazed that Nesta had been forging without question but perhaps Mor was wrong. It was possible Nesta was, as Cassian said, monitoring them all with querying eyes. Of course, there was a shift in Cassian, one of such significance that even if Mor wasn’t so close to him, she would have been able to scent it a million miles away.

Instead of thick earth and smoky air, Cassian now smelt of rich, floral scents, reminding Mor of times when she walked the gardens of Winter, their snow-white roses in full bloom or of the hot nights on the Sidra when the jasmines were in blossom.

Mor placed her open palm over his heart wondering what would happen if she dug her nails in, if she curved her fist into a claw to pluck out the thread woven tight around him binding him to another.

It was as though that very thought had summoned a demon. As if Mor’s mental will to cut the thread for Cassian had thrummed it, bringing the heart on the other end to come calling.

A delicate cough announced her presence and Mor and Cassian pulled apart, their conversation dead.

Nesta stood at the entrance of the rooftop, golden-brown hair bound about her head like a crown, those eyes almost silver in the light. The expression on her face spoke of boredom. Bored of being in the House, bored of forging, bored of seeing Mor draped around Cassian like he was wearing a fine silk scarf.

“Azriel’s here,” Nesta said, her voice ringing clear across the roof. “From wherever it is Rhys has him flapping about.”

Nesta glided towards them like her footsteps were oil and the stone stabs were water. Nesta paid Mor no attention, those sharp eyes on Cassian. “You wanted me to tell you the second he returned. You’ve missed Rhys though.”

As Nesta moved closer, Mor scented the perfume of Nesta’s skin. She smelt like the freedom of the sky and the cold mountain top of Ramiel.

Cassian seemed to stiffen and relax in Nesta’s presence. A curious juxtaposition of calm reassurance that the female he loved was before him and the terse excitement of a battle about to begin.

His spar partner had arrived, his new best friend, his love. Their eyes fixed only on each other and Mor stood, surplus to requirement.

It wasn’t true. Nesta’s heart may have been a withered old thing with only love enough for one, but Cassian’s was an unlimited space and he could keep loving everyone for an eternity.

Mor could share him; she’d learnt she had to but as she thought it an image passed through her mind. Prophecy or wish fulfilment she didn’t know, but it was of Nesta writhing in a gilded golden bed of Autumn, satin sheets sliding over soft skin.

If truth was Mor’s gift, then she was terrible at giving. Cassian didn’t need to know about the conversation Mor and Rhys had only hours before. Rhys wouldn’t allow any union between Eris and Nesta, if only for Cassian’s sake, for the love he had for a brother.

Mor wouldn’t allow it either. Whatever thread bound Nesta and Cassian had been woven at the will of the Cauldron and she wouldn’t have Cassian fractured. She’d already shared him enough and if a piece broke there would be little left still for Mor.

***

“Do you want children?”

Cassian tensed, the beat of his heart under her fingertips quickening as she traced patterns on the skin over his ribcage.

He’d been lying on his back with his wings spread over them both like a canopy of black. Nesta lay on her side, as naked as he was, tucked into him. Since she spoke his muscles were tautened and ready to spring.

Why shouldn’t she ask? When what they did in this bed had a possible outcome. She had the right to know his truth.

“Are you drinking your contraceptive tea?” His voice was low, serious.

“Yes.”

“Good, don’t stop.”

A shard of hurt burst through Nesta like she’d been pierced with glass but she sat up and fixed her face with a glare, moving away so no more parts of them touched. “A simple ‘no’ would have sufficed.”

Cassian’s eyes flicked over to her quickly and then back to the ceiling, his jaw clenched. It wasn’t true, she realised. His response would never be a denial of wanting children, she felt his want as though it were hers.

A house of them. That’s what Cassian dreamed. Small, winged Illyrian babies that would light up his days, who would bundle him to the floor and squeal with delight at their father’s return.

“Where is this coming from?”

“You’re fucking me,” Nesta said, “sometimes said fucking has consequences and I want to know where I stand if a consequence arose.”

His eyes widened as he now stared at her, the whites showing and his pupils shrivelling into dots. Nesta was reminded of a panicked horse bolting in a field because it stumbled upon a snake.

“You’re not already-”

“Cauldron, Cassian I’m not. Didn’t I just tell you I was taking the tea?”

Nesta rolled her eyes, moving from the bed as quick as she could in case he tried to stop her but she needn’t have worried because he didn’t try.

Her robe was draped over the back of a chair in front of the window, the dark starlit sky the backdrop to the table which still housed their dinner plates. She bound the garment tight around her body, her back to him.

“Nesta-”

“I’m going back to my room. I’ll see you when you next return from one of your ridiculously frequent Illyria visits.”

“Nesta.”

His voice sang of desperation and she turned. Cassian was sat up, the sheets falling around his waist. He scrubbed a hand over his face, a tell that he was tired.

“It’s not that I don’t want children. It’s just-”

He glanced away and for a moment Nesta felt a pang of sorrow. His handsome face was etched in worry lines that grew deeper these past months. His skin held a pallid hue, the same hue she noted on Morrigan earlier. She who was golden had lost her shine.

Agony stretched over Cassian’s face and as he tried to force words out and force them back at the same time. She hadn’t the patience.

“What,” she spat, “just what.”

“I can’t have them with you.”

A heat flooded through her and as she clenched her robe there was a hiss and scent of burning. When she looked down, scorch marks charred the material where her fingertips had been.

She stormed from the room, ignoring Cassian’s calls behind her, hoping that her bare feet smacking against the stone tiles wouldn’t leave their own mark. Nesta slammed the door of her bedroom, telling the House not to let him in even if he begged.

But Cassian didn’t beg. There was no plea outside her door.

Nesta closed her eyes, holding her hand over her chest, pressing firmly over her heart. Connected to the other end she sensed he wasn’t pleased she had marched away but there was a sweet taste of relief laced with the bitter flavour of guilt. It was the latter which caused him to lash out.

Panic had risen in him like a tide at her questions so Nesta let him believe she had taken offense, that she had interpreted his words as wouldn’t have children with her. The actual words were as loud and clear as a church bell. Can’t have them with you.

Can’t.

Her head hurt. Although the blacksmith room was a distance away in the House, the blades were calling for her. They wanted her time, her attention, her love. Another voice, something both large and small, spoke to Nesta in warm tones.

It is good you asked.

Nesta pressed her palms to her eyes. She sipped her apple blossom tea that morning as she did every day, the sweetness of the contraceptive medicine tingling her tongue, when that same voice slid into her mind. Ask Cassian if he wants children. So, she asked.

Nesta unfurled her wrap, ignoring the newly formed holes and picked up her silk nightgown from where it lay. She smoothed the material over her hips and turned to the mirror to tame the strands of her hair.

Voices were everywhere; from the smithery to this unknown other. Everyone was dancing to different tunes now, a waltz that appeared to revolve around some avoiding Rhys and others clamouring for him. Now there was Cassian’s faux pas.

Can’t not won’t.

Although she was one step further along the path to the truth than before, Nesta didn’t smile. “No,” she said to her reflection, “I don’t think the truth is something to smile about.”

#nessian #fanfiction #fanfic #nesta archeron #cassian #nesta x cassian #nesta #acotar #acomaf #acowar #acofas #acosf #i wrote something #nessian fanfiction #nessian fic #nessian fan fiction #nessianfic #nesta archeron x cassian #nessian fan fic #neris #nesta archeron x eris #anti rhysand #silver in her eyes

[duskandstarlight]

The Girl (Part Three)

Summary: Nesta and Cassian start meeting at the coffee shop, but on a Friday night at Rita's, Nesta is someone else. After all, old habits die hard.

Notes: Hi! I loveddddd writing this chapter and I hope you guys enjoy it too. I know you've all been keen for more Nesta and Cassian interaction and you absolutely get it in this one… The pain is still there, though, sorry not sorry (but also it's me, what do you really expect?) Let me know what you guys think! I really hope you enjoy it :)

Part Three: Cassian

Cassian doesn’t forget his phone charger next time. 

He materialises in front of her early one afternoon, all broad shoulders and windswept hair, half of which brushes his shoulders, the other half tangled into a top knot. He waves a hand in front of her face in a way that’s only mildly irritating.

Nesta yanks off her headphones, stifling a frown as the noise of the coffee shop slams back into her. “What?” 

It comes across with a little too much bite and Nesta wishes she could turn back time, force the hands of the clock back a few seconds and try again. But like always, Cassian just sends her that characteristic crooked smile.“What are you drinking?”

Nesta frowns down at her empty cup, the grains of tea leaf at the bottom. “Earl grey and oat.”

Cassian simply nods. Nesta tracks him as he head to the counter. Watches him pay with his phone.

When he comes back over, he simply pushes her tea and a mass of sugar packets across the table. She nods, headphones still on, and he doesn’t bother her. Merely settles down opposite, takes out his own laptop, his own headphones, and starts tapping away.

Together, they work in silence. And when the hours have passed and Nesta closes her laptop screen with a sigh that she wishes hadn’t been so audible, Cassian follows her lead.

This time it’s not raining. The sky has darkened to an indigo clotted with sooty clouds that Nesta thinks is kind of beautiful, kind of moody. It’s the sort of sky she’d write about. The sort of sky that, if she was alone, she’d snap a photo of so she can describe it in vivid detail in the next appropriate book scene. 

But she’s with Cassian, so she doesn’t do any of that. 

“Do you want me to walk you back?”

She does, desperately. Not for his company, but for the safety he brings.

“If you like.”

“I haven’t seen you here in a while.”

Nesta shrugs her laptop bag higher up onto her shoulder and then loops it over her head so it crosses over her chest. The scabs on her back from her midnight tryst have long since healed. “I don’t come here every day.”

Shoving his hands in his pockets, Cassian hunches over at the cold. Even so, he still seems larger than life when he glances sideways at her. “You write at home?”

Nesta shrugs noncommittally, not wanting to explain that she doesn’t truly write anymore, and Cassian clearly has enough sense not to pursue the conversation.

“I finished Epiphany last week.”

Because Nesta doesn’t know what to say, what to do when anyone confesses they’ve read one of her books - not least Cassian - she just dips her chin. Stares straight ahead at the lamplight pooling on the street.

“It’s my favourite.”

Now, Nesta does turn her head. Examines him, head cocked. Epiphany is notoriously known as her ‘second book’. The book that’s not as good as the first, not as sharp. “Why?”

Again, it comes across too blunt, but Cassian just lifts a shoulder as if he’s searching for the words.“I don’t know. Elodie’s tussle with identity resonated with me, I guess. I’ve spent so much of my life just existing without knowing who I am and I only realised it a few years ago.”

Nesta’s staring at him now, unabashed, unflinching. She can’t stop, even as Cassian keeps his gaze locked on his feet as they track their way across the pavement. “I can’t remember the exact quote. But Purdi says something like…” Cassian searches for a minute, a frown pinching at his brow, but he plunders on anyway, ‘Isn’t it weird that we’re born strangers to our own mind—“

“— People get to know us, understand us, before we even know who we are. Before we even think about it.”

Cassian looks up as she finishes the quote. And as their eyes lock, it strikes Nesta that here - this moment - is the most connected Nesta has felt to someone in a very long time, her late night rendezvous included. 

“Right,” Cassian says, the knot in his throat bobbing. And Nesta knows that he’s giving away a piece of himself, something secret that he won’t get back again, a self-revelation that’s been undisclosed until now. “I don’t think it was until I got into my thirties that I realised I had no idea who I truly was, deep down, without any walls. I was just this… alien to myself.And I think you put it so poignantly. It felt like something just clicked inside of me and I was like oh shit, that’s me.”

There’s so much Nesta wants to say - so much she can’t say anything at all for a while. Until finally, “Do you know yourself now?”

“Does anyone?”

Nesta lets out a huff of a breath that says it’s a fair question. Then, “That thought came to me on a walk.”

Now, Cassian glances at her. In the fading light, his eyes are so dark yet so open. Bottomless and vast. “Oh yeh?”

Nesta nods, swallowing down the instinct to stop talking, to push down the imminent confession that wants to pour out of her. But Cassian has been so open with her and for once Nesta doesn’t want to keep things locked up, not in this moment, not during this rare moment of shared understanding. Not when Nesta feels seen for the first time in a long time. 

“I’d run away to the mountains one week,” she confesses. “It rained the entire time. It was completely miserable but I didn’t care. It matched my mood - felt good even. One day I dragged myself out of the house and went for a hike. I went ambitious, too ambitious really, but I refused to admit defeat and made it up Ramiel limping and covered in blisters.”

When Nesta looks up from the pavement, Cassian is wholly focussed on her, his eyebrows raised in appreciation. “That’s quite the feat.”

Nesta snort is a dismissal. “I’m stubborn.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” Cassian comments and it’s with such deadpan that a laugh escapes Nesta without her trying to quash it down. 

Cassian grin is brief and brilliant, before it falls back into something serious. “Why’d you run away, Nesta?”

“Why do you think?”

“Right.”

For a few beats, they walk in silence. But it’s not scary. It’s not tense or something that would mean to speak would be to break it. It just is; existing, quiet. So, Nesta carries on in her own time. “At the top of this mountain, I was looking out at this view and it just… it stretched out for miles and miles. And I realised how small I was, how insignificant. That I was just here in this world for a minute amount of time and I had no idea who I was - but this view made sense to me. It was so crystal clear. So profound.”

“What did you do next?”

“I had this certainty that I’d never had before and I’ve never had since. I just knew what the road ahead needed to be and I made it happen. I went back to the cabin, began the first draft of Epiphany. And then I travelled home, packed all my belongings and moved my life back to Velaris two years ago. I’m a writer, I’m not tied anywhere.”

It’s not entirely true. Nesta had been tied to Tomas. To a house, but Nesta doesn’t want to mention any of that. 

“Back to your roots?”

“Back to the only roots I have - my sisters.”

Cassian’s head tilts slightly and Nesta knows what’s he’s going to say next, what he’s trying to puzzle out. “I’ve only known you for a year.”

They’ve reached Nesta’s apartment building. Nesta presses her fob against the gate pad. “It turns out finding myself wasn’t as easy as realising I had no idea who I was.”

“A couple of steps through the darkness is better than staying put.”

Nesta turns, stares at Cassian. He’s quoted directly from her book again. But all she says is, “Thanks for walking me home.”

“Nesta,” Cassian calls when the gate closes with a clang. “You’ll be at Feyre’s on Saturday?”

Again, the iron bars separate them and Nesta feels safe enough to forego the iciness, the hard-to-get brutal attitude. Instead, she’s just honest. “I don’t know.”

Again, that lopsided smile, as if Cassian knows what she’s just granted him. “I’ll bring my book for you to sign then.”

***

Together, they fall into a haphazard method of meeting one another at the coffee shop. It’s never planned. Nesta doesn’t even have Cassian’s number. But sometimes, on the days she makes herself pretend she is still a writer, when her agent is on her back again for the first draft of a manuscript she absolutely has not written, Cassian slides into the seat opposite her. Removes the bag she’s definitely not placed on the seat to save it for him just in case and places a pot of tea on the table alongside his espresso.

Together, they stare at their own screens. Tap away. Frown. Sigh. Sometimes, Cassian has meetings about complexities Nesta had no idea existed when it comes to running a gym, but it doesn’t bother her. She finds the deep timbre of his voice compliments the scores she listens to. And whilst they rarely converse, they do get up intermittently to replenish each other’s drinks. 

At the end - which is only when Nesta closes her laptop with an internal sigh heavy enough to make her stomach lurch with dread - Cassian walks her home and leaves her at the gate, watching her through the bars as she makes her way safely to her apartment. 

When they are at the coffee shop, they quietly exist like the silence from the other night. It’s unassuming and unrestrictive. Freeing.

But when they’re at Rita’s, they’re something else.

Nesta’s something else.

After all, old habits die hard. 

When it’s Friday night and Nesta heads to the bar, she slips into a different version of herself. Someone who is starting to feel askew but so familiar and habitual after months of practice that she can’t seem to shrug them off. Nesta polishes off a bottle of wine before she gets there and doesn’t stop. Sometimes, things are so hazy the next morning, there are punctured holes in Nesta’s memory. The night before becomes flashes of bright lights and dancing bodies before they fade into writhing shadows only to do it all over again. There’s booming music that makes the floor shake, the smell of tequila that makes her stomach roil. Heavy hands on her shaking hips. A hungry mouth but no face. Panting, hot and sticky on her neck and face. Rolling hips.

Nesta always chooses a man out of the crowd and leaves with him out of principle.

After all, she doesn’t sleep with the same man twice. 

Most of the time, she doesn’t remember the face of whoever she goes home with. Too often, she has no idea what she’s done until she wakes in the morning in her own bed - always in her own bed - sore and tender. Often covered in bruises the shape of fingerprints.

Rarely on those nights does she speak to Cassian beyond the necessary hello. She makes a point of not looking his way. Because at Rita’s, when Nesta is this different version of herself, she can’t deny that being around him is dangerous. At Rita’s, everything has the capability of becoming electrically charged, back to the roots of their first meeting, the ghost of their encounter. Nesta never has to search for the memory of that night. Too acutely, Nesta remembers the scratch of Cassian’s stubble against her face and neck, the coaxing demand of his mouth, his calloused palm running up the column of her throat before it twists to slide up the back of her neck and into her hair. She remembers how he tastes and the exact scent of him.

So, Nesta ignores him as best she can. 

It’s the easiest thing to do. She doesn’t know how to consolidate the version of the Cassian she slept with on that Friday night to the softer version of him in the coffee shop. She knows he’s both, but she doesn’t want to unite the two. Can’t trust her gut, because when she finally let someone in before, he tore her down, brick by brick until she was nothing but rubble.

So, the drinking becomes worse. The men she sleeps with become worse. The quality of her decisions suffer in the face of temptation and Nesta knows it’s a downward spiral but also doesn’t know how to stop.

Until, finally, one night it goes too far. 

Already her memory is patchy. Already, the night is like the flashing lights in the club. One moment it’s dark, the next it’s twisting bodies in blue and yellow and green. One moment she’s sitting on a jean-clad lap, a claiming sweaty palm on her inner thigh. Even in her drunk state, she recognises the gleam in the man’s blue eyes that would have anyone running the other way. Yet she leads him out the club anyway, ignoring the warning signs, too drunk to act on that niggling thought on the fuzzy edges of her mind. 

But Cassian isn’t. 

Nesta is so far gone that she can barely remember her own name, but the sound of his voice is enough. It has her turning and then he’s there. For the most part, he’s a blur in front of her yet there are fragments of time when he’s so sharp he’s all she can see.

“Nesta.”

Cassian doesn’t touch her but his voice in her ear is startling enough that it shocks through the alcohol in her veins, that fuzzy buzz. 

The room spins, straightens. And there he is, leaning down. Cassian’s hand slips into hers so slowly, so cautiously, that Nesta doesn’t want to yank away from him. Instead, she lets herself become tethered and looks up at him to find his hazel eyes simmering.

“Let me take you home.”

It takes too long for her brain to register his words. She wants to yank her hand out of his, but she’s suddenly too unsteady on her feet. If she lets go of him, she’ll fall.

Instead, she digs her fingers deep into his jacket. Leans her head into the coolness of the dark leather. “I’m leaving.”

“You’re too drunk.”

Nesta steps back from him, wanting that distance from his accusation. But she stumbles and then Cassian’s catching her, his hands closing tightly around her as if he’s scared she might slip away.

“This isn’t part of the deal.”

It comes out slurred, pushed together, some letters out of line. 

Cassian’s brow furrows. “Deal?”

“We’re not in the coffee shop. Leave me alone.”

She remembers staggering away. Remembers leaving with the guy she’s chosen for the night, whose just observing them darkly as he stubs out a cigarette with his boot. 

It’s only when she’s in the alleyway pressed too hard against the wall that Nesta realises what she’s doing. That she doesn’t want this. 

She tries to push the man away, but he just grunts, thinking that she’s egging him on. He smells grimy, like old sweat and grease and all Nesta can think about is that he has two fingers inside of her and his nails must be crusted with dirt. 

It’s then that she starts to panic. One moment she was sure she wanted it and now she doesn’t so fiercely that terror sets in. It fills her so quickly, so fast, that she doesn’t realise she’s screaming until she’s screaming. Her lungs ragged, her voice hoarse at the same time that her chest feels like she can’t breathe. Like she can’t get enough oxygen into her lungs, as if they can’t expand properly. As if they’re not working. 

Nesta doesn’t know what happens next. She thinks she pushes the man away from her with a strength she didn’t know she possessed, because she ends up falling hard. A sharp pain steals the breath from her, cutting through the alcohol and the panic, robbing her vision.

When she finally opens her eyes, the man is gone and Cassian is in front of her in a waft of leather and musk.

“Nesta,” he says. But Nesta’s vision is swimming again and whilst his mouth is moving to indicate that he’s speaking, her name comes out muffled, as if Nesta’s head is submerged under water. He’s gripping her shoulders hard, his fingers biting into her skin, his expression full of thunderous concern. And that should ground her, his worry should, but Nesta can’t think of anything but the pain and her desperation to breathe. 

It’s only when Cassian’s hands move to cup her face and his thumb strokes at her cheek does Nesta realises that her vision isn’t blurry because she’s intoxicated, but because she’s crying. 

“My ankle,” she manages to slur through her heaving chest. She tries to indicate where it hurts with her hands, but that only makes her realise that her panties are what caused her to fall. They’re still around her ankles from where they’d been yanked down from underneath her skin-tight dress, before she all wanted it to stop.

And that makes the breathing even harder. The reality of her circumstances even more humiliating. The understanding that she is a mess, an utter wreck, askew on the floor of a dirty alleyway, garbage on the stained concrete around her, questionable puddles and cigarette butts stuck to her soiled heels. 

“It’s ok,” Cassian tells her, his voice suddenly stark and clear, but the frown on his face says otherwise. He’s still cupping her face and Nesta wants to lean into his touch because she’s so tired and he’s being so kind even though she can tell he’s furious beyond measure. “Deep breaths, Nesta. It’s going to be ok.”

“I want to go home.”

“We need someone to look at your ankle, sweetheart.”

That is absolutely not what Nesta wants. She pushes away from him with a strength that catches him off guard. But when she tries to stand, when she tries to put weight on her ankle, the sound that draws out of her comes from somewhere deep, halfway between a gasp and a cry.

The way Cassian grabs for her as she falls is not gentle. His fingers clasp her so hard she feels her skin bruise. But she’s reeling from the pain and then it’s all too much - the excessive alcohol, the agony, the panic.

With her panties still around her ankles, Nesta throws up all over Cassian’s shoes.

After that, her memory comes back in snatches. She remembers Cassian bribing a cab and him carrying her in. She remembers the only thing she keeps repeating is that she needs her laptop which she’d checked into Rita’s cloakroom when she’d arrived and Cassian trying to calm her down. She remembers the sound of a key in a lock. She remembers how cold the bathroom tiles are as she retches into an unfamiliar toilet.

She remembers large hands holding her hair back. 

She remembers lying down in a bed, the pillows soft beneath her head, the duvet crisp. 

She remembers Cassian talking to her, but she’s too drunk to comprehend what he’s saying. 

When she wakes, it’s because light has sliced through the gap in the curtains and her mouth and throat is so dry it’s as if someone has stuffed them with cotton wall.

Head pounding and ankle throbbing, Nesta cracks an eye open to the blurry outline of the bedroom Cassian put her in the night before. It takes a while for her eyesight to correct itself but when it does, what she see’s is not what she’s expecting. 

In truth, Nesta expects a bachelor’s pad. Not that she has any evidence of the sort besides the assumption of the “night-version” of Cassian she has in her head - still single in his mid-thirties and taking women home from Rita’s rather than a serial dater. 

When Nesta had come home with Cassian that fateful night, Nesta had been too preoccupied to glance around. She’d remembered his apartment in Illyria, the borough of Velaris that sits on the northern outskirts closest to the mountains, because it had cost her an arm and a leg to get back to her place. But beyond that, Nesta had only remembered the burn of the fabric couch against her bare knees as she’d straddled his waist, the scrape of his teeth against her neck and his hands sliding from her exposed waist to cup her ass. 

Now, what she see’s has her propping herself up onto an elbow. There’s exposed brickwork and old wooden beams that run in lines across the ceiling. There are rustic wooden shelves stacked with what appear to be mainly business books and old diaries. Leafy tall plants that stand in rattan pots and others that sit on the bookshelves, their leaves trailing down in different shades of purple. 

And to her right, a deep oak desk that runs across the entire length of the floor-to-ceiling arched window. The sun is still slicing through the slight partition in the oatmeal curtains and Nesta finds herself sitting up properly now, even though the mere movement of her ankle against the sheets has her stomach turning, the nausea rising as the pain hits her, deep and wrong. 

But Nesta’s fuelled by curiosity and nothing is going to stop her. That gap in the curtains is calling to her, the dust motes dancing in the stream of light that spans from the window to the bed now an irresistible path. Nesta doesn’t know how she makes it to the desk, but when she draws the string curtains back swaying precariously on one foot, her breath is snatched in an entirely different way.

Forest green. Rolling pine forests immersed in a mist that makes them even more breathtaking. And above those, the Illyrian mountains, their snowy peaks barely visible through the wispy low-lying clouds. 

It’s one of those rare moments, the stillness the view brings. The all-encompassing clarity. The window is cracked open and Nesta smells the air, fresh and clean. She feels and with it she can push the embarrassment of last night even farther back, burying it deep, that humiliation she can’t bring herself to face for fear of the self loathing that will kick in. 

Here, she thinks, focussing on the here and now rather than the wreck she was yesterday - the wreck she still is now. The mountains. The forest. This is it, finally.

She sits down at the desk. Her laptop bag is lying atop it and she takes it out, fires it up. And with the view before her, stretching out for miles and miles - magnificent in its splendour, its natural beauty - Nesta begins to write. 

***

Nesta doesn’t notice the knock on the door an hour later, but she hears the door handle, the creak of the hinges. 

A tray is held between the same hands that held back her hair last night, strapped up her throbbing ankle. Nesta spies a cup of tea with notes of bergamot and oat milk, toast and what she presumes is a bag of ice wrapped in a charcoal tea towel.

Her chest hurts at the sight of it, as if her ribs are creaking under some sort of invisible, mounting pressure. The horror of last night threatens to consume her, but Nesta battles it back, struggles with all her might.

Instead, she focusses on how Cassian stops in his tracks in surprise. One swift evaluation of his expression tells Nesta that he expected to find her gone, the bed made and empty. No trace of her left. Certainly, he hadn’t expected to find her sitting at the arched window, headphones jammed firmly over her ears, her fingers hovering over the keyboard of the laptop he’d saved the night before.

He’d prepared a tray, anyway.

“Morning.” His eyes fly to her laptop and then respectfully flit away just as quickly, settling back onto her face. Suddenly, with their eyes connected, Nesta wants to die of a shame so visceral she wishes she could turn invisible. But Cassian doesn’t mention last night, doesn’t berate her for the excessive drinking and her bad life decisions. The relief hits her so swiftly, so fast, that she’s almost bowled over by it. “How’s the ankle?”

Nesta cuts off the score she’s been listening to and lowers her headphones. “Swollen.”

She thinks it might be worse than that and she’s certain Cassian thinks the same. There’s worry etched between his eyebrows as he tries to catch a glimpse of her ankle hidden beneath the deep desk. 

Eventually, he just nods to the tray in his hands. “I brought you some ice. You should really be elevating it.”

Nesta knows by the tone in which he speaks that he’s not quite sure how she’s managed to get herself to the desk, that she should under no circumstances be walking on it. But Nesta doesn’t know how to explain how the inspiration has hit her, that hum in her blood urging her fingers to write. That she needed to sit at this desk, look at this view, shut out the world and write the words that have dogged her for the past eight months. 

Nesta’s not felt like this since Epiphany. And although she’s experiencing a hangover from hell, it’s fuelling her, somehow. The pounding in her head an insistent, driving beat, the nausea compelling her. And the shame trying to push its way to the forefront drives her to keep typing, because if she keeps going she might just out-write it. Might never have to face what she’s done.

Cassian sets the tray down on the desk beside her with a soft thunk and Nesta wonders how he can be so gentle when he’s so large. “Ok to take a break?”

Nesta wants to tell him that; No, it’s not ok. I can finally write, it’s back, the inspiration is finally here and I can’t let it go. I have to sit here and chase it and hope I never run out of steam if I ever want to be paid again. But then the night before is flashing in front of Nesta’s eyes, and suddenly, Nesta’s reliving it all: the mortification of her panties twisted around her ankles, the humiliation of her throwing up over his shoes, the relief of Cassian’s rough hands as they cupped her face, his thumbs catching the tears as they slipped down her cheeks. 

“We probably shouldn’t move you,” Cassian remarks through her silence. “You’re fine to sit here? Or I can carry you into the living room—”

“No.” Nesta’s voice is sharp, cutting him off mid-sentence. It’s so rude, so awfully abrupt and Nesta wishes she could take it back, both the panic in her voice and her desperate interruption. She takes a deep, steadying breath. “The desk is fine.”

“Alright.”

Cassian brings over a footstool that accompanies an armchair by the bookshelves and pushes it beneath the desk. Together they help to manoeuvre Nesta’s ankle up onto it and Nesta does her best not to make a sound, panting through her nose, grinding her teeth so hard that tears burn her eyelids. 

“Ok?” Cassian asks, as he carefully rolls up the leg of the black sweatpants she woke up in this morning. Nesta’s not wearing her vomit-covered panties, only these sweatpants that are so large they barely hold up at the waist and a large t-shirt that comes down to her knees.

“Mmhm,” Nesta hums, breathing desperately through her nose and trying not to think about the fact that he must have dressed her.

But, again, Cassian doesn’t bring it up. Instead, he jerks his head towards his laptop screen as he continues to examine her foot. “Productive morning?”

For a moment, Nesta just stares at the man before her and is struck with how kind he is, how well he seems to know her despite the fact that they barely know one another at all. In the stark light that floods in from the window, Nesta sees Cassian plainly for the first time. The two versions of him melded together - not the version of him at Rita’s or the version of him at the coffee shop, but both of them, just Cassian  - and realises that she was right: together they make him so attractive it’s dangerous.

Yet, she keeps staring at him, even when he presses his calloused fingertips to the swollen skin and she hisses. She clocks the scar that cuts through his right eyebrow. Follows the dark curl of a tattoo that finishes just behind his ear. Watches the way his wild ebony hair glints in the morning sunlight.

He smells of sleep, musk and ground coffee. 

When Cassian glances up at her, Nesta realises that she hasn’t replied. That amidst his hazel eyes, there are shards of gold. “The view is good here,” is all she finds she’s able to say, but recognition flares in Cassian’s eyes as he sits back on his heels.

“It makes sense to you.”

“It does,” Nesta agrees. 

“It’s why I bought the place,” Cassian confesses after a moment. Gently, he presses ice to her foot, holding her firm as she jerks and hisses on instinct. “I like being by the mountains.”

They’re still skirting over last night but it hangs in the air above them like a raincloud. All of those unspoken words, the anger she’d seen clear in his expression when he’d found her in the alleyway, the man with his fingers inside of her, his breath sticky on her neck.

Nesta presumes the man ran off when she’d started to scream. 

And all of that suspends above them. Nesta knows its only a matter of time before the cloud spills open and everything rains down on them. 

But to Nesta’s surprise, Cassian abruptly stands.  

“You can keep writing, if you like,” he tells her. “I’ve got a call to make."

***

Cassian is gone for over an hour and in that time Nesta writes better than she’s written in eight months. It’s not all fully formed. In fact, it’s a bit all over the place. Snippets upon snippets of inspiration driven by the emotions and seeds of thought roiling about in her chest. Here, with the pine trees, the snow-capped mountains and the different blues of the silhouettes of the mountains behind them, Nesta can finally unwind. 

Her hangover is still raging with a vengeance, the nausea a roiling sea inside of her stomach, the back of her throat, but she uses it as a driver rather than an excuse. If last night happened, it has to mean something.

But then she knocks her foot.

It happens within seconds. Nesta only has time to grab for the waste paper basket before she’s emptying her stomach. In the back of her mind, she hears the door open and Cassian come back in, but she’s retching and for once she doesn’t hate throwing up because all she can focus on is the pain that is so sharp it steals her breath.

When she’s done, she spits into the bin. Drags one hand through the hair that became an unfortunate victim of her sick and pushes it back. 

“Perfect timing.”

Nesta gives Cassian a half-hearted hiss and tries to breathe, tries to gather herself again but the pain radiating from her swollen ankle too much. She bends over again, empties her stomach into the bin.

There’s a brief pause as Nesta coughs and gags. Then, “Hold on, sweetheart,” and Cassian is carrying her into the bathroom, his grip firm yet gentle.

Nesta manages to hold on until he’s deposited her in front of the toilet. Then she’s throwing up again until she can’t throw up anymore.

“Tea and toast didn’t settle the stomach then.”

Nesta is too busy gasping to snap at him - or to care. Cautious of her ankle, she twists herself around until she can slump against the bathroom wall, her leg stretched out in front of her. She’s covered in sweat, Cassian’s t-shirt damp and sticking to her chest and there’s vomit burning the back of her throat and nose. But whilst her skin feels like it’s on fire, her ankle feels like lava. She swipes at her mouth with the back of her hand. “I knocked my foot.”

Cassian flushes the toilet, closes the lid, sits on top of it.

And Nesta knows from the intentioned way in which he moves that he’s about to bring up last night. Panic should be a wild, living thing in Nesta’s chest but she’s too poorly to feel it. Instead, she tilts her head back onto the cool tiles and announces hoarsely to the ceiling, “I have a proposition.”

Her words have Cassian taking stock. For a few seconds, all he does is study her. Nesta knows, because his eyes are burning into her, marking her like a tattoo needle inking her skin.

In the periphery of her vision, Nesta see’s Cassian lean forward until his elbows are resting on his knees.

Nesta rolls her head until she’s looking directly at him, right into those hazel eyes. “It’s not sex.”

“Disappointing,” Cassian drawls. A light glints in his eyes but quickly dies and Nesta knows that he’s still concerned. Knows that he’s just acting the part with her, unsure of his next move in the game they’re always playing.

“I want to pay for your spare bedroom.”

This time, Cassian can’t hide how thoroughly taken aback he is. But he doesn’t straighten although Nesta can tell that he wants to. “You want to pay for my spare bedroom?”

Nesta claws her hands through her knotted hair and tries to concentrate on taking deep breaths. “That’s what I said. I want it.”

Cassian continues to watch her as he tries to read her, tries to understand. His words are slow as if he can’t quite comprehend them. Knows they can’t be right. “You want to live here?”

A soft snort. “Absolutely not. I want to write here. With that view, specifically.”

Nesta lowers the hand she’s waved in the direction of the bedroom. Even that movement is too exhausting for her. She feels spent. Bled dry.

Cassian stares at her a fraction too long in the subsequent silence.

“And I’ve made him speechless.” Nesta rolls her eyes. “Am I computing?”

Rolling his eyes to mirror her, Cassian snickers. “Very good, sweetheart.”

Nesta looks back at the ceiling. The nausea is rising again and she focusses on breathing for a moment. Says finally, “You don’t have a roommate. I need somewhere to write my book. It’s a good fit.”

“The coffee shop not working out for you?”

Nesta cuts her gaze back to his, serious now. “Would I be asking you if it was?”

For a few heartbeats, two ticks of a clock, they stare at one another. Then, Cassian says, “How about this. You don’t have to pay for the room at all, but on two conditions.”

Nesta cocks her head at him, pushing down the fresh wave of nausea that rolls through her. “Out with it.”

“We go to the hospital and have someone look at your ankle.”

It’s the last thing that Nesta wants to do, but she can no longer deny that it’s just a small sprain. Even with it stretched out in front of her, without her moving an inch, the pain is unparalleled.

“Fine. What’s the second?”

That muscle flecks in Cassian’s jaw again. Then, even though he’s looking directly at her, something shifts in his eyes, hardens, and Nesta almost wants to shrink away at the scrutiny of it. If Nesta wants to, she could read that expression, could admit what it means.

“Stop taking men home who I want to punch in the face.”

Her insides immediately scald with a mixture of shame and fury. But then Nesta thinks of the man’s damp breath on her neck, of his sour-smelling body pinning her to the wall. Nesta thinks of the bedroom she woke up in this morning. Of the laptop full of words that aren’t off kilter but right.

It takes her a moment to collect herself. To be able to scoff and go bold. To pretend his request hasn’t touched her at all. “Isn’t that everyone?”

Cassian’s concrete expression doesn’t so much as crack. “When you drink you make bad choices. Or do you drink to make bad choices? Whatever it is had you in quite the predicament yesterday.”

They’re going there, then. There’s no outrunning it now. And Nesta wants to open her mouth, to vocalise how if he hadn’t been there she’s not sure what would have happened to her. That she thinks he might have saved her from something she couldn’t go back from. But she can’t get the words out.

Cassian reaches towards her as if he’s going to touch her, but he stops himself at the last minute. He’s no doubt thinking of the times she’s recoiled from him and he’s no way of knowing that Nesta wouldn’t have leant away from him this time. That she would have welcomed his hands on her face again. 

“Did he hurt you, Nesta?”

His voice is quiet, soft but there’s no denying the intensity he’s trapping beneath it.

“No,” Nesta replies honestly, but she can’t look at him when she says it so she fixes her eyes on the wall opposite. On the sharp corner of a photo frame that’s hung on the wall — a lethal, arrowed point — so fiercely that it hurts. She thinks of the way her throat had closed up in that alleyway, how she couldn’t breathe. How the panic that Nesta tries so desperately to run from every day had consumed her once again but when she’d been drinking this time. That had never happened before. Normally, when Nesta was out at Rita’s she purposefully drank so she felt nothing at all, so she could finally breathe without fear.

“I just…” she continues when Cassian keeps watching her, searching for the words to try and explain whilst not really explaining at all, “didn’t want it anymore.”

Her words fall into silence. Cassian’s jaw clenches, the muscles straining and Nesta can’t bear to see that look on him, so she adds, “I couldn’t breathe.”

There’s a rustle of fabric as Cassian sits back. “Ah.” 

“It doesn’t usually happen at Rita’s.”

Time passes as Cassian studies her. And Nesta can almost hear him putting the pieces of her life together, the shameful way in which she tries to control the uncontrollable. “That’s why you drink so much.”

“No.” She snaps the lie and grows furious when Cassian merely raises an eyebrow at her. He doesn’t believe her and she hates that he can see through her, can dissect her so easily when no-one else has managed before.

He leans forward again, his elbows resting back on his knees. And Nesta has the uncanny feeling that the balance has shifted in his favour, that’s he’s calling the shots. “Do we have a deal, Nesta?”

No, Nesta thinks bitterly, out of instinct. Fury is still heating her insides at the audacity that Cassian not only thinks he can control this situation but understand her motivations. But… Nesta can’t afford to say no. If Nesta fails to hand in her first draft, she doesn’t get paid. She might lose her publisher. She’ll have to move out of her apartment and get a job that she hates.

And… there’s something at the back of Nesta’s head, a voice that tells her that this could be the out she’s after. The hand reaching out, guiding her back to something better.

But she doesn’t want to think about that now, not really, when she’s covered in vomit and her ankle is bleating agony. 

So, Nesta stretches out her clammy hand between them despite the anger hot and roiling in her stomach. Watches Cassian’s eyes widen ever so slightly, the only hint of his surprise.

Callouses scratch at her palms, but Cassian’s grip is strong, his skin warm. 

And with that one clasp of their hands, the deal is struck.

Tags (let me know if you want to be added/removed): @arinbelle @superspiritfestival @sayosdreams @perseusannabeth @mylittlebigplanet @biggestwingspan-az @bellsqueen @ekaterinakostrova @bookstantrash @prophecyerised @rainbowcheetah512 @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 @nessiantrashh​ @miamorganvel18 @kawaiteacup @nestaa-stan

#nessian #acotar #cassian #acosf #nesta archeron #nesta x cassian #duskandstarlightwrites #nessianfic #acotar fanfic #nessian fic #nessian modern au

[duskandstarlight]

A Golden Opportunity: Part Three

Notes: Wow, this took longer than I'd like to upload but here we are and I'm finally happy with Nesta and Cassian's journey since their tumble on the couch in part two. Enjoy :)

Part Three

Everything had, in truth, turned to shit, Cassian thought from where he lay spread eagle on the couch.

In one hand, was an ice pack which he pressed to his throbbing knee. In the other was his arch nemesis - his phone - which, because he was a male with absolutely no control, he unlocked for the hundredth time that morning.

On autopilot, he thumbed open his messages and tapped on Nesta’s name.

There their conversation remained, cold and untouched.

Cassian let out a sigh of frustration that evolved into a growl.

Eight days had passed since Cassian had last heard from Nesta. It had been eight days since he’d kissed her the way he’d been wanting to for a very long time. He could still remember the way her warm body slitted against his on the couch. Remembered the surprised moan that had broken out of her. The way her expression had cracked open, so trusting that his chest had felt tight.

When he’d left her apartment that afternoon, Cassian had thought they were good. 

He’d still thought they were good when they’d exchanged messages later that evening. 

And again, as he had stared and stared at his phone, waiting for the bubble with three dots to indicate that she was typing.

But there had been nothing and Cassian’s question still hung in the ether, unanswered: When can I see you again?

In the subsequent radio silence, Cassian had played their interactions over and over in his mind. Had Cassian been mistaken in thinking that Nesta had been into something she wasn’t actually into? Had he pushed her too far? Had she only really agreed to go on these dates to essentially draw a line under everything? To say they had tried but it wasn’t working, that they weren’t destined to be together in the way that Cassian had been so certain of since the very moment he’d lain eyes on Nesta at that party all those years ago?

But Nesta hadn’t drawn a line. Instead, she’d ghosted him. Left him hanging out to dry whilst she got on with her life.

And despite the millions of questions that barraged him, battering around in his head on repeat, Cassian did what he’d always promised himself when it came to Nesta. He respected her silence.

He did not text her. He did not ring her. He did not turn up at her apartment or at the coffee shops he knew she frequented to write.

Instead, he grew more and more frustrated, until he was nothing but an angry, bitter version of himself. He threw himself into work, he drove his clients harder than he ever had at the gym. And when he couldn’t sleep, he dragged himself out of bed, laced up his running shoes and ran along the dusky river, until all he could hear was the pounding of his feet on the pavement, his breath as it sawed out of him and his knee barking in protest from overuse.

And even then it did nothing to erase his hideous mood.

Blowing out a frustrated sigh, Cassian tossed his phone onto the couch beside him and tugged out the tie he’d used to scrap back his hair. The last thing he wanted to do was drag his sweaty ass into the shower and get himself to Rhys and Feyre’s weekly brunch.

But Nesta would be there. Today was Elain’s birthday and whilst Nesta might skip an ordinary brunch, there was no chance that she’d dare to miss this one. 

And given that Cassian had resisted the very compelling urge to turn up at Nesta’s door uninvited, the only truly neutral turf he hoped wouldn’t send her running for the hills was her pregnant baby sister’s weekly brunch event. 

And how Cassian hoped. 

***

“You’ve been a stranger.” 

The accusation hit Cassian the moment he stepped into the kitchen.

Ignoring Feyre’s narrowed eyes, Cassian strode over to the floating island that separated the main kitchen from the large oak dining table. When he’d relieved himself of the grocery bags he was cradling in his arms, he turned his head to pin Feyre with a look.

“And thank you,” Feyre amended quickly at the sight of his raised eyebrow, “for picking up the last minute supplies.”

Eyebrow still lifted, Cassian pulled a packet out of one of the brown paper bags and held it up to her. Feyre actually flushed, but her chin rose in a way that was so obstinately Nesta that Cassian would have normally chuckled. 

She folded her arms firmly over her chest. “Shoot the pregnancy cravings, not the pregnant woman, Cass.”

If it had been any other day, Cassian would have made a wise crack. In their tight-knit group, he had always been the joker, the one who brought in the sun when it was a little too cloudy. But now his mind was only on Nesta - was she here? was she here? was she here? - so he just leant over to drop a consoling and affectionate kiss to the crown of Feyre’s golden brown head. “I’ll make sure to have a word with the cravings later.”

“That’s it?” Feyre asked, looking frankly baffled at the lack-lustre response. She snatched the aforementioned bag from him - a pickled onion flavoured corn snack - and waggled it in front of his face. “Nesta blank right refused to sit with me when I ate these with her and Elain last week.”

Without knowing it, Feyre had said the magic word.

It was ridiculous, Cassian thought, that his mouth suddenly felt dry and his heart had begun pattering a faster beat at the mere sound of Nesta’s name. 

Turning his attention to the grocery bags so Feyre wouldn’t catch his expression, Cassian began to pull out items at random. If Feyre even had an inkling of what was going on between he and Nesta, he’d be in the firing line and that was the last place he wanted to be - especially considering that he didn’t know what the fuck was actually going on between them. 

So, he feigned casual. Too casual. Stupidly, idiotically casual. “Nesta?”

Immediately, Feyre’s head cocked in suspicion. Cassian didn’t even look at his friend’s wife to witness the movement, he just knew. Heard it in the deadpan of Feyre’s voice. 

“My eldest sister. The writer. The one with the semi-permanent coronet. The sister I know you can’t have forgotten about because you’ve been pining after her since I introduced you three years ago.” Feyre’s words fell into a confiding hush. “Speaking of which, if you’re planning on asking Nesta out today, I wouldn’t bother. She’s in an awful mood and—”

“Who’s in an awful mood?”

Feyre jumped, whirling in a clumsy blur, the food packet clutched to her chest as if it might prevent her heart from battling its way out of her chest.

For in the kitchen doorway stood Nesta, dressed surprisingly casually for a brunch, even with her hair twisted into a braided crown around her head: stretchy black jodhpur leggings and a loose cream knitted jumper that fell to mid-thigh. As always, she looked breathtakingly stunning. But whereas Nesta usually wore an aloof, queenly air like someone wore their favourite jumper, today there was something off. Not only did Nesta give off the aura of someone who was sharp and unyielding, but she also gave the impression that she was slightly out of sync with the rest of the world. Someone who, under no circumstances, would deign to dally with her little sister’s friend.

Just one sweeping assessment of Nesta set the tone for Cassian. And despite the bell clanging at the periphery of his mind, warning him that there was something he hadn’t quite put together, his pride had him automatically weaving the illusion of nonchalance. 

He leant back against the kitchen island and crossed his ankles, the picture of casual rather than someone who’d been losing their mind over the female in front of them for the past eight days. 

And Cassian was thankful that he had mastered the facade. For when those ice blue eyes slid to him, there was no warmth in them. No indication that they were anything but two people who hung out because of her sister.

And in that moment, Cassian fell prey to the same mistake he’d been kicking himself for since Nesta had ghosted him: he lost sight of the years he’d spent patiently waiting until Nesta finally conceded to date him. All he could think about was that she hadn’t contacted him all week and if she was going to look at him like that—not only like he was nothing but with such emptiness—then he was going to spark that fire in her, make her feel something, not just because she needed it but because he was hurt.

The wolfish grin that crept across Cassian’s face was a touch too cold. And he knew he shouldn’t say it, but he couldn’t help but tread where he wouldn’t usually dare. “Your sister was just warning me not to ask you out.”

Nesta walked straight past him towards the kettle in an air of jasmine and vanilla. With her back to him, she flipped open the lid and peered in to check the water level. “And have you decided whether you’re going to heed my dear sister’s advice?”

Drumming his fingers on the marble counter, Cassian pretended to consider. “Not yet, no.”

A resigned sigh escaped Feyre. But she was either rooted to the spot or harbouring a death wish, because she only propped her hip against the kitchen island and rested her hands on her bump rather than taking a quick exit.

Nesta picked up the kettle and carried it stiffly over to the sink to fill it up. Still, she did not look at him. “Maybe you should.”

Cassian was warmed up now. He was playing the game that they had always fallen into so easily. The thorny, needling comments. The baiting. All wrapped up in something both casual and dangerous. It was a game. A hunt. A tussle between predator and prey. 

Cassian made a show of putting a pint of milk in the fridge before he turned back to her. “Is that what you want?”

For a split second, Nesta paused and Cassian thought he’d cracked her to expose her underbelly. But then she simply shut off the water, placed the kettle on its base and flipped the switch.

There was a moment where all they could hear was the crackle and hiss of the kettle. And Cassian wanted to snap it off, to stop the noise and demand answers from her. He wanted her to stop avoiding him and look properly at him.

And if Feyre hadn’t been in the kitchen with them, Cassian might have. But instead he watched Nesta lift the wooden lid off of the tea jar and… frown. 

The strangled sound mingling with the noise from the kettle was the first real sound Cassian had heard from Nesta since she’d stepped into the kitchen. Cassian watched her blank mask fall to the wayside for the real Nesta to flood in, but it gave him no satisfaction. Nesta looked tired and irritable, as if being at the house had taken every ounce of her strength. 

“What I want,” Nesta muttered tightly into her hand, her fingers pinching tight across her brow as if the pressure might detract her from the pain elsewhere, “is a cup of tea.”

“We ran out.” 

Slowly, Nesta turned to face her sister. And as she moved, her expression transitioned into something that was suddenly too much: bereft and fierce. So much so that Cassian could have sworn the air in the room changed, like that pause just before a lightning strike, when your breath catches and your heart thunders in your ears. 

And it was in that exact moment, with Nesta’s guard down and her emotions plain across her face, that a piece of the puzzle slotted back into place for Cassian. 

After all, he'd spent the last three years studying Nesta in a way that nobody else dared.

“I asked Cassian to get some more tea for you.” Feyre was practically tripping over her words now. “English breakfast - your favourite.”

Sensing Feyre’s desire to be saved, Cassian took it upon himself to fish out the last two items in the grocery bag.

He held them out towards Nesta, his palms facing upwards, his eyes glued to her face, watching, waiting…

For a moment, Nesta stood rooted to the spot, her eyes trained on his hands; at the box of Yorkshire tea in one and the specialised tin of chai in the other.

Given Nesta’s reception to him so far, Cassian hadn’t expected theatrical gratitude. If the stars had been aligned in his favour—if this was he and Nesta eight days ago—Cassian would have hoped for some banter or a smile. At the very least, scant acknowledgement that he’d tried to do something nice.

But when Nesta met his eyes, he saw the exact same expression he’d been gifted when he’d presented her with his homemade bottle of chai: lips parted, eyes stunned and slightly wary with disbelief. It was that exact same heart-wrenching look that came from someone who never expected to be thought of.

All of the anger Cassian had held towards Nesta began to flake away. And when she stepped towards him and raised a hand to take the tin of chai from him, it disappeared entirely.

Ice cold fingers brushed against his palm, paused. And in that frozen heartbeat, Cassian had the distinct impression that Nesta wanted to command her body to stop looking at him - to stop touching him - but she couldn’t. Just like he couldn’t.

Memories sprinted through Cassian’s mind, slotting into place like a storyboard, rolling faster and faster until it was just them on the couch, their bodies fitting together like married puzzle pieces as Nesta moaned into his mouth—

Nesta snatched her hand away so quickly Cassian thought she might have whiplash. Elain’s voice rang from somewhere else in the house, the middle Archeron’s voice sweet and lilting as she called for her eldest sister. But it was too late. Cassian had seen it: the colour staining Nesta’s cheeks in what was an undeniable blush.

As she was always prone to do, Nesta fell into her usual dynamic when it came to Elain - she put her sister first.

The tin made a clattered sound as it struck home on the marble counter.

“I’ll go and see what Elain wants.”

For a few seconds, Cassian and Feyre just watched the doorway Nesta had disappeared through.

Then Feyre turned to Cassian. Her eyes, which had been wide with astonishment, narrowed to suspicious slits. “Did something happen between the two of you that I don’t know about?” 

“No.” 

The lie came as naturally as if it was truth. But inside, there was now a flicker of hope within Cassian, a heat as the embers stirred and glowed. The gears were turning in his mind as he ran over everything he’d witnessed since Nesta had entered the kitchen. The stiff gait, her off kilter presence that was out of step with her usual detachment from everything and everyone. Her blush. 

Could Cassian dare to hope that Nesta’s blush was a sign that she hadn’t cut him off completely? Because Cassian knew Nesta better than anyone. She was usually a master of control and if she was done with someone? That was it. She cut them off as swiftly as the screeching slice of a guillotine. But that blush was evidence that something had seeped through the cracks of that icy fortress of hers, like ink blotting and fissuring on paper. 

It meant that Nesta might not have closed the door on them and thrown away the key. It meant that Cassian might have a fighting chance. That not all was lost. He just had to gather all of the pieces and stitch them back together so he could nudge the door ajar. And he’d already grasped one of them, knew what to do next, his in-road. His plan of action.

It might not be over. It might not be over.

Ignoring Feyre’s narrowed eyes, Cassian grabbed the tin of chai and sauntered over to the steaming kettle. 

And, suddenly brimming with the sort of hopeful elation that wanted to spill over and flood the room, Cassian began to put his plan into place: he started to make tea.

***

When Cassian entered the snug holding a tea tray ten minutes later, he found Nesta curled up on the sofa opposite Elain. The snug - a small, cosy room located to the west of the house - barely had room for furniture besides a sofa, an armchair and a low lying coffee table. Today, logs crackled and glowed in the good-sized hearth that ran along one wall, chasing away the winter freeze that frosted the window panes and hung in the air.

Cassian knew the snug was Nesta’s favourite room in her sister’s house and it wasn’t just because it was warm. Floor-to-ceiling shelves were built into every available wall. Painted a deep midnight blue, they harboured different coloured spines on every inch of them. This was a room designed purely for the intention of curling up by the fire with a cup of tea and a favourite book. It was, essentially, Nesta’s spirit place. 

The female in question didn’t turn when Cassian entered, nor did she give any indication that she knew he was there, which was impossible given that he all but had to squeeze into the room. But Cassian just thought of that blush in the kitchen, of Nesta’s taken aback expression when he’d held up that box of chai, as he placed the tray down onto the lying coffee table with the show of a waiter serving a restaurant’s most valued customers. 

“Tea for you madame,” he announced to Elain with pomp as he set a mug of tea down on the table. “And for you, witch,” he said, finally turning to Nesta. “Chai and a glass of water.”

Nothing. No flare behind those eyes as Cassian pressed the warm mug of chai into Nesta’s hands, just an expression swept clean. That control was back, iron-clad and determined after that blush. But Cassian was undeterred. He’d broken through once and he could do it again. He knew he could.

So, he did what no other male would dare to do and dropped her a wink. 

There. An almost imperceptible flare of Nesta’s nostrils. Cinders that he’d impossibly fanned back into the smallest of flames.

Cassian’s grin was all teeth.

“Thank you, Cassian.”

Elain’s voice pulled at Cassian’s attention from where she sat in the armchair nearest the fireplace, weak but there all the same. It was nothing to the magnetism of Nesta’s stare, but he made himself tear his gaze from hers. Continued to carry out his plan as he plopped himself down unceremoniously onto the cushions beside Nesta. “You’re welcome sunshine. Consider it your birthday present.”

A smile bloomed over Elain’s face, like the soft glow of morning sunshine. Her eyes twinkled. “How thoughtful, thank you.”

“There’s also a plant in the driveway with your name on it,” Cassian informed her as he stretched an arm across the back of the couch. Nesta stiffened. His fingers were a breath away from the nape of her neck. “Can’t remember the name of it, but the owner at Flourish assured me that it needs partial shade and will flower twice a year if you look after it properly.”

That full smile somehow widened into a beam. “That is so thoughtful of you, Cassian. Isn’t it thoughtful, Nesta?”

It was common for Elain to do this: to try in vain to ease the tension between them. Cassian had always wanted to tell the middle Archeron sister that it was futile. Things would always be taut between he and Nesta. He had tried so many times to make sense of their dynamic, and the only metaphor he could come up with was that they both had the end of a shared rope entangled around their ribcage, connecting them in a way that would always snap taut every time they denied what was between them. Which, Cassian supposed, was more often than he’d like.

Elain was looking pointedly at Nesta now. Cassian got the impression that if they were sat at the dining table, she’d have kicked at her sister’s shins. 

“Very thoughtful,” Nesta replied eventually. She made no effort to mask that she was saying it out of obligation and another silent war was had between the sisters. Unfazed, Cassian took the opportunity to stretch out his legs - a particular feat given the cramped nature of the room - until he was the picture of relaxation. And all the while he thought upon that blush and what he hoped it meant.

“So, what are we talking about, ladies?”

“Period cramps,” Nesta announced shortly, finally turning that dead gaze back to his. “How have your ovaries been treating you lately?” 

Elain bit her lip, whether it was to hold back a smile or a grimace Cassian couldn’t tell because now he had Nesta’s attention he wasn’t for one second going to let it drop.

“Oh, you know me, sweetheart,” Cassian countered easily with a shit-eating grin that even he wanted to slap off his face, “no cycle for me.” Overcome with a sudden foolishness, he leant over to tuck a stray strand of hair behind Nesta’s ear. He waited for her to smack his hand away but instead she simply stared at him. An alarm bell started to sound in his head, warning him to stop, to not continue with his train of thought, but it was too late. The words were rolling out of him, carried away like a gust of wind tunnelling through a canyon. “Just a sizeable—”

“Cassian.” A smooth, chilled voice came to his rescue. As always, Azriel’s entrance was as discreet as ever, as if he’d simply stepped out of shadow and had been there all along. His interruption was certainly too well timed to be a coincidence. “Rhys wants you to carve the joint.”

“I’ll be back,” Cassian vowed, but as he stood he reached into his jacket pocket and tossed a pack of paracetamol onto the cushions beside Nesta. It was the second step in his plan, the cup of chai being the first. “Thought you might need these for the cramps, sweetheart.”

Nesta’s startled expression followed Cassian all the way to the kitchen, until Azriel turned on him and stopped him with a dark look. “What are you doing?”

Rhys, who was taking a joint of beef out of the oven, asked over his shoulder, “What is he doing?”

“I’m doing nothing,” Cassian replied shortly as he strode over to the kitchen island where Rhys was setting down the meat. “You should let that rest before I carve it up. And where’s the rosemary?”

“The rosemary rub didn’t happen because someone turned up late,” Rhys replied pointedly. “And I didn’t ask for you yet.”

Definitely a well-timed interruption, Cassian thought as Azriel crossed his arms over his chest and levelled Cassian with his signature flat look. “Is riling Nesta the best idea?”

Rhys started scraping juices out the bottom of the pan so he could ladle them back over the joint. “Riling who?”

“Nesta,” Azriel informed Rhys at the same time that Cassian let out a snort at Rhys’s ignorance.

The sound had Rhys shooting Cassian multiple exasperated glances as he tried to keep his focus on basting the joint. “I don’t know why I asked.”

For the first time since they’d entered the kitchen, Azriel’s attention turned to Rhys. Cassian could have sworn the shadows from the kitchen cupboards jumped towards him, drawn to the darkness and mystery that always seemed to surround his brother. Or, Cassian realised, it was because his brother and business partner was about to part with a secret that categorically did. not. belong. to. him. “They went on a date. Multiple dates, actually.”

From the cessation of the spoon scraping the pan, Cassian suspected that Rhys had now fully abandoned his task. Cassian was too busy staring daggers at Azriel to notice. “And they didn’t go well?”

Cassian continued to glare at Azriel. 

Azriel simply stared back like the Cauldron-fucking traitor he was.

In the end, when Cassian conceded that Azriel was not going to rise to Cassian’s open aggression, he clenched his jaw. He tried to look at Rhys, but in the end, he focussed on a spot beyond Rhys’ shoulder—to a smudge of dirt on the kitchen cabinets. “They were perfect.” 

Rhys frowned. “I’m not seeing the problem.” 

“She hasn’t text me since the last one.”

Not since their dirty texts. Not once. 

Rhys let out a huff of air and went back to the joint. “So you thought you’d fire Nesta up and get her to spar verbally with you because you’re feeling dejected?”

Yes. 

Maybe. 

No. 

Cassian didn’t know how to explain the fucked up workings of he and Nesta. Didn’t know how to put into words that he was stoking her fire because he was certain, even though she had ignored him all week, that she still felt something for him, even if she was conflicted about the two of them. So, instead he drummed his fingers against the marble counter in an anxious tempo. “What I’m doing is neither of your concern.”

Rhys let out a dark laugh. “It is if my house is caught in the firing line.”

“I know what I’m doing.”

Azriel tilted his head ever so slightly. “What he’s been doing is moping.”

This time, Cassian didn’t stop his hands curling into fists. “What I’ve been doing,” he countered through gritted teeth, “is respecting her silence.”

“And now?”

Cassian levelled his brother with a look. Azriel’s hazel eyes were muddy but unwaveringly steady - just as they had been all week in the face of Cassian’s terrible mood. “It’s been eight days.”

Rhys hummed as he picked up the tray and headed to the oven.

“Would you like to partake further in the discussion brother?” Cassian drawled, leaning an elbow against the marble because he had to do something with his body. “You’ve made a noise that indicate you might.”

Rhys turned his head to look over his shoulder so he could lift an eyebrow. “Nesta’s here. Isn’t that answer enough?”

“Because it was Elain’s birthday this week,” Cassian corrected. “Nesta hates disappointing Elain.”

But Rhys was undeterred. 

“The sisters already met for lunch this week, so you’re wrong on that count. And Nesta regularly misses these brunches throughout the year, but over the past few months she’s been here every Sunday without fail. Feyre commented on it just yesterday. We’ve seen her more in the last three months than we did in the better half of last year when she was on her book deadline.” 

The tray was slid back into the oven. The oven door was shut in the wake of billows of steam as the heat escaped into the kitchen. 

“So,” Rhys continued as he removed the oven gloves, “what you need to ask yourself is; if Nesta truly wanted to avoid you, would she be here now?”

***

Frigid air nipped at Cassian’s skin as he shucked on his leather jacket and stepped out the front door. 

The long sweeping drive was still kissed with frost, the paving stones covered in tiny snowflakes, the flowerbeds dusted with ice. If it was any other day, Cassian might have marvelled at the beauty of it. 

But now, the only thing preoccupying his mind was the female turning down the street, the words Rhys had said to him in the kitchen and the third part of Cassian’s plan: to simply talk to Nesta alone. 

Unsurprisingly, Nesta had slipped out of the brunch without a universal goodbye. But it hadn’t gone unnoticed by Cassian. He had got up so abruptly, the legs of his chair screeching on the hardwood floor, that Cassian knew that he had done exactly the opposite of what Nesta had wanted: he’d drawn attention.

It didn’t stop him. Her name came out in a clouded breath that echoed in the quiet residential street. In fact, Cassian was certain that they would have heard it inside the house. But he didn’t have the foresight to care when Nesta surprised him by halting in her tracks rather than picking up the pace. 

His long legs ate up the distance as he strode towards her, his feet crunching on loose stones and ice. And then he was there, in front of her. Just them - and potentially his family at the window watching the entire fucking spectacle. 

Slowly, Nesta turned to face him, the irritation clear on her face for anyone to see. 

“Didn’t care to say goodbye?”

Against the frosted scenery, Nesta looked like a snow queen. Her skin so pale it appeared bloodless.

Silently, she watched him in a way that bore into him, her hands hanging stiffly at her sides. And there was something in the way that she stared at him that suddenly snatched the speech from Cassian’s vocal chords. 

In the end, it was her that spoke. “I want to go home.”

Simple. Cutting. Truthful.

Nesta’s arms came up to curl around her body and Cassian realised that he was an idiot. That she was in pain. That the least of her worries were him, begging her to talk to him, to tell him what was going on. She’d always had a vicious cycle.

As always, it was that instinct to protect that had him saying, “Let me drive you.”

Nesta’s grip tightened around herself to ward off the weather. When her eyes rested on him, Cassian felt cold. “I can’t give you what you want.”

Something curdled inside of Cassian. His breath was snatched from his lungs and he recovered his composure a fraction too slow. 

It felt like his world had stopped, but he found himself doing what he always did, playing along, pressing those buttons until he could read her. “Care to embellish, sweetheart?”

A frown of irritation flickered between Nesta’s brow. “Was the mention of period cramps not enough?”

At that… Cassian blinked, confused. His brain scrambled to process her train of thought. But he’d been up since four am and he was tired. 

Right now, if they were in the sparring ring, Nesta would have a blade to his throat.

In the end, he asked the only thing one did when they didn’t understand. “What?”

“I’m out of service,” Nesta clipped irritably. “I don’t know how else to explain it to you.”

By now Cassian’s brain had started to work again, the rusty gears grinding and deducing. When he understood, he actually blinked, so thoroughly surprised that he took a step back. “Is that what you think this is?”

A faint colour bled into Nesta’s cheeks, but her chin tilted upwards, as if it was propping her up, giving her courage. When she replied, her eyes flashed as white as a lightning strike against a grey sky. “Isn’t it?”

“No.” The response came immediately and it took everything in Cassian not to pinch his nose in despair. At the last moment, he caught himself. Instead, he imagined thrusting his fist into Tomas’ face. Imagined bone crunching. Imagined the scream.

Unable to stop himself, he stepped closer towards her and Nesta didn’t back away. Didn’t so much as flinch as Cassian stared the love of his life dead in the eye, unflinching, seeing all of her and letting her see all of him—her trauma, the spiral of her thoughts, his sadness and understanding—and said, “Please let me drive you home, Nesta.”

***

The car was freezing. Puffs of air clouded in front of Cassian as he released the brake and put the car in gear. 

He’d left Nesta in the car with the heating on full blast whilst he scraped the ice off the car. She hadn’t protested. Hadn’t said anything and, Cassian realised, as he pulled out onto the residential street, that it didn’t seem like that was going to change anytime soon.

So, they drove in a silence that felt viscerally cold, even as the car warmed and Cassian’s body thawed. And everything Cassian wanted to say, the words that wanted to burst out of him, built up inside of him, the pressure unbearable.

By the time he pulled up outside her apartment, Cassian’s hope felt as if it had been thoroughly suffocated. Snuffed out like a flame. 

Cassian watched Nesta slowly remove her seatbelt before he couldn’t take it any more.

“I’m not here to fuck around and leave.”

Nesta seemed to freeze. Slowly, she released the seatbelt from her hands and turned her head.

Her eyes were vacant, her irises more grey than blue, and for a long moment, Cassian thought she wasn’t going to say anything at all. 

But he just stared back at her, challenging her, and in the end it was that which seemed to probe her into speaking up. 

“I—” Nesta started but then she clamped her lips shut. Cassian didn’t know if it was because she couldn’t bring herself to say what she wanted to say or because she couldn’t. 

And it was then that Cassian knew what he had to do. He knew the next step in the plan, even though it could land them at a dead end. Even though he didn’t like it. 

When he murmured her name, Nesta’s shoulders tightened as if the sound was painful. Her gaze cut away, to stare blankly out of the windshield.

“If I haven’t made it clear over the past three years, here it is straight up,” Cassian said through the lump in his throat. “I like you. A lot. I’ve always liked you, right from the start. I want to spend time with you. I want to see where this goes. We can go as slowly as you like. However you want, Nesta. You tell me and that’s how we’ll do it. But if you want to stop, then that’s where it ends. I promise. I’ll respect your decision.”

His words fell off into silence. Nesta didn’t stop staring ahead. Her fingers worried at a stray thread on her scarf. 

“Do you not want to do this anymore?”

It was the question that had terrified Cassian for over a week, now spoken out loud between them. But Cassian realised that there was no moving forward - if there even was a way forward - if they didn’t address this. If he didn’t give her an out, an opportunity to draw the line.

A choice. 

Nesta’s only response was her teeth digging into her lip. But Cassian knew her thoughts were racing a mile per minute. He just knew - in that uncanny way of his when it came to her - and it’s that which told him what to do next, even though it was painful.

Cassian clenched the steering wheel so tightly he thought it might crumple beneath his grip. Said softly, “Let me know what you decide, Nes.”

It was a dismissal. And Nesta didn’t turn to him and say, I know what I want and it’s you. Or what Cassian desperately hoped to be the truth - because he did still foolishly hope: I like you but I don’t want to get hurt again.

And whilst it was painful, Cassian knew he couldn’t expect more. Knew that things had been going too well for someone who had been hurt so deeply before. 

Nesta got out the car. And Cassian watched the ramrod straight line of her back as she walked up to her apartment. 

The front door opened and closed.

And then Nesta disappeared and Cassian was alone. 

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. @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. @nessiantrashh. @miamorganvel18. @kawaiteacup. @nestaa-stan. @castielspelvis. @haigrr. @dont-take-life-to-seriously. @dontgetsalmonella. @thewayshedreamed. @fangirlishwandering. @moodymelanist

#nessian #acotar #cassian #nesta archeron #nesta x cassian #duskandstarlightwrites #nessianfic #acotar fanfic #nessian fic #acosf #agoldenopportunity

[wildlyglittering]

Silver In Her Eyes - Chapter One

Chapter One is up!

Please show it some love either on Ao3 here or on Tumblr itself.

Part one may feel very 'Nesta light' but believe me - this is her story.

Silver In Her Eyes

Feyre’s stomach swelled to the point where her pregnancy could no longer be disguised; not that she wished it to be. She was ready to stand on top of the House of Wind itself and shout the news from joyous lungs.

Her present state was less lofty, seated on a soft velveteen chaise lounge in the River House, a hand resting on her belly while she whispered stories to her baby.

How did Nesta’s old tales begin? Once upon a time...

Feyre spoke them with her voice low and soft as she gazed at the sky beyond the window, her head empty of daydreams because what did she want for now? What could she imagine she needed when she had all she wanted?

Her son, as confirmed by Madja, fluttered and spun inside her and Feyre wondered what he dreamt, if he somehow sensed the stars.

She paused in the telling of a story, stumbling over a word. She had told herself a lie. She needed to understand what was worrying Rhys. Something shifted in him since they last saw the healer, his face slipping into a frown when he thought Feyre wasn’t looking, his hands twisted into fists.

When asked he would say, ‘nothing my darling’ and kiss her forehead, coaxing her back to her contented state with sugared creams and cashmere blankets draped over her shoulders.

Those frowns were infectious. First Rhys, then Amren. Mor, Cassian, and Azriel soon followed.

Only the Archeron sisters were unbothered by the burden of the Inner Circle. Elain drifted through the halls of the River House as she always had done since she lived with them, muttering to the rose stems she crushed between her fingers or wailing into the night sky.

Feyre found that she missed her eldest sister but wasn't too sure why. Perhaps she had been too spoilt by Rhys to cope with Elain's distress, or possibly there was part of herself which wanted Nesta to use her sharp words and quiet ferocity to amend what Feyre couldn't.

When Nesta made the rare appearance, she was always at the side of Cassian. Nesta was re-shaping herself into something new whilst retaining the steel beneath. Unbending, unbroken, and to Rhys’ irritation, un-bowing.

Nesta’s scent was no longer her own. Winter rose and jasmine still adorned her but underneath was the patchouli aroma of Cassian. When Feyre inhaled next to him, she was unsurprised to smell florals, almost like he had bathed in Nesta, rubbing her skin against his like it was perfume.

Maybe he had, flesh to flesh. That was what Feyre had hoped for after all. Even if they stood apart in public, Feyre wasn’t fooled. Not when they were both so deliciously fragranced, she could eat them up, just like she was doing now with the sweets from her gold-plated bowl.

***

“You fool,” Amren hissed at him, “you stupid, senseless fool.”

Rhys clenched his jaw, the back of his teeth grinding together as a muscle in his cheek twitched. His eyes glanced towards the study door, as though Feyre or Elain, somewhere in the depths of the house would hear Amren and throw it open, demanding to understand what they’d just heard.

Rhys quelled his fear. Feyre would never intrude and Elain was too feeble, too addled by the noise in her mind. He’d expect insolence and intrusion from the other one but she was caged up in the House of Wind learning to be a citizen of the Night Court.

Rhys stared at Amren, her hands clenched on the arms of the chair as she sat opposite, her grey eyes boring into his. Her words meant nothing. Not when Madja’s from days before had sunk into his skin and through muscle, carving themselves onto his bones.

Feyre will die, she had said. The infant has Illyrian wings. She will birth the baby but it will come at a great cost – her life for her son’s but I cannot even guarantee that he will live. I am sorry.

The joy in Rhys’ heart, so elevated it was as though it soared above the mountains, was ripped from the sky. His mate would die, his son may follow. So would Rhys himself, the vow they made to each other would hold. If Rhys couldn’t promise Feyre her immortal life, then he would join her in eternal death.

Amren thought different.

“If we leave the Night Court without a leader or heir, do you have any understanding what abyss would open? Of who would try and fill it? All your people would be at the mercy of the likes of Keir. Velaris would become the Hewn Court. Do you acknowledge this? Do you?”

Of course, he did. However much Amren hissed at him, he wasn’t a fool and he would agree it again. He and Feyre were bound by the thread of fate, stronger than any tie he had to his people.

“I’ll consult all sources,” Amren said, “even the old magic, the forbidden tomes.” Her voice had quavered, the old magic would be wanting to extract its unknown price and now she was no longer immortal the payment would be costly. “There must be a way to break this promise so if Feyre dies you won’t go with her.

“I want to go with her,” Rhys said. “I would follow Feyre into oblivion if I had to.”

Amren’s eyes flashed. “Your people,” she hissed again, “think about your people.”

“I’m thinking about my mate,” he snapped back. “If you sever this vow and she dies and I live, then the Night Court can rot under Keir’s rulership for all I care.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I do.”

Her eyes narrowed. “What will you do then, while Feyre sits in ignorance and the rest of us live in fear?”

Rhys sat back in his chair, his fingers lacing over his knee. “I’ll find a way to save Feyre and then, oh ancient one, your efforts will have been for nothing and both you and I will be glad for it.

“And you think you’ll find a way?”

“I’m sure of it.”

Amren leant forward over his desk, trying to close the space he had increased. “By the Mother I want you to be right.” Her fingers clenched and unclenched onto the wooden arm of the chair, her nails leaving crescent marks. “How can you be confident you’ll save Feyre?”

Rhys smiled. Joy was no longer in his heart but certainty was. “Because Amren, you are not me.”

***

Rhys refused to name an heir other than the son in his wife’s belly.

Two months after he’d received the unfortunate news, he publicly announced Feyre’s pregnancy and decreed his unborn son, Nyx as sole heir to the Night Court.

Time had passed fast.

While his mate slept, Rhys woke in the night and flew to the library in the House of Wind to pour over books or to consult with whichever mage had been dragged from the depths of their slumber.

No solution had been forthcoming but Rhys wanted to weave it into the stars that Nyx would take up the throne centuries from now, either upon Rhys’ death or departure at a time of his choosing.

The news echoed from the House of Wind into Velaris and travelled from the Night Court into the vast landscape of Prythian.

Lesser fae went about their business while High Lords raised their goblets in salutations or beat their fists against the hardened bark of Spring trees.

Rhys had been challenged. Amren alone and then Cassian and Azriel together.

“You shouldn’t announce the news,” Cassian had said, pacing the floor of the study as Azriel stood by the wall. “Mor has gone to the continent; Az and I are flying into the furthest reaches of Illyria and Cauldron knows where Amren is.” He stopped before Rhys. “We haven’t found anything.”

“Yet.”

Cassian nodded. “Yes, yet but announcing Feyre’s pregnancy while we haven’t a solution or plan-”

“A plan for what?”

Cassian’s face twisted in pain. “In case the worst should occur and we lose you all. Personal grief aside, what would become to the Court with no High Lord or Lady?”

“That won’t be an issue,” Rhys said, waving his hand. “I’ll find a way to save Feyre.”

“If you don’t?” Az asked from the corner. “What then?”

Rhys paused, his blood bubbling in his veins as though suddenly on fire. Audacity. There would never would be a ‘what then’ and the question from the lips of a male he called his brother was a poison being dripped into the room.

He curled back his lips, baring his teeth as the black mist swirled from him skin, brushing against the Illyrians, kissing their wings which twitched away. “I will. Bring this topic up again and I will make life uncomfortable for the females in your lives. Do you understand?”

They froze at his words. Azriel’s eyes darting to the ceiling, likely envisioning Elain in her room several floors above. Cassian’s jaw tensed, his clenched fists straining the tendons while the syphons on his armour shone as bright as fresh blood.

The scent of earth and flowers drifted from him to where Rhys sat.

A scarred hand landed on Cassian’s shoulder as Azriel stepped forward, his eyes meeting Rhys’. “Yes, my High Lord,��� he said before turning to Cassian. “Come,” he said with a softer voice. “We’re not wanted.”

So, they had left and Rhys made his announcement, no one else visiting him until Amren returned from overseas.

“Name another,” she’d pleaded. “You don’t have to renounce what you have declared, just an additional fae to a Court of trusted High Lords. If Nyx lives than appoint a regent for him until he’s of age.”

Rhys' laugh was brittle. “Do you want that someone to be you? Exactly how hard are you trying to break the vow?”

His words were as though he’d slapped her, Amren’s head lurching backwards as her hands dropped to her sides. It was a mere trick of the light but for a moment Rhys saw unshed tears in her eyes.

“I want you on the throne,” she said, “and when the time is right – your son. But if we can’t have you and Nyx is too young, what will we get?”

“I will save Feyre,” Rhys said, his skin heating. His patience with their impatience was quickening his blood once more. “There will be no more discussion on this matter.”

“It’s been months...”

“We are done.”

Amren’s mouth closed into a tight line and she nodded but when she reached the door of his study she paused, turning to him. “I understand you’re refusing to see Azriel since his last visit but despite your fury, he’s still your spymaster and you need to listen to what he has to say. You should turn toward the Hewn City.”

After she left, Rhys stood from behind his desk and walked to the map of Prythian constructed to the side. The mountains peaked and the valleys dipped, the castles of all the Courts carved before him.

His eyes drifted to the seat of the Hewn City, perfect in its miniature copy. He’d been unfair with his words towards Amren. Silver streaks now appeared in her jet-black hair and stress lines burrowed their way onto her face. She’d travelled to wherever she could travel, consulted with whomever held ancient knowledge and the price was already being paid.

It hadn’t escaped his attention that she’d lost a finger. Who or what wanted that he didn’t ask.

Rhys had long decided that the doubt which tried to grow in him about his actions wouldn’t take root. He pulled it out like a weed each time it made an appearance. There was no time for second guessing, not when he’d scoured every avenue and was coming up short.

Rhys had visited Madja once more.

“My Lord,”she had greeted him with a bow.

“Tell me again what you told me those months ago.”

Madja twisted her gnarled fingers into the cloth of her dress. “If the High Lady shifts into Illyrian form and gives birth in that shape, then all might be well.”

“Might.” Rhys paced the length of Madja’s quarters. “Will the shift harm the baby? Will it harm my son.”

“Possibly.” She’d adverted her eyes. “I can't guarantee her body won't expel him under the trauma.”

Rhys now closed his eyes to the map of Prythian, instead imagining his son, small and perfect with tiny fingers and toes, lying on the ground, grey and lifeless. Rhys envisioned those perfectly formed wings, the source of all the trouble wrapped around his fragile form, trying to protect himself from the elements of a world thrust upon him too soon.

There would be no breath and no heartbeat. Only the agonised screams of Feyre as she sobbed over the body of her baby. This would not be a grief Rhys could soothe. Feyre would spend centuries of her eternal life in anguish as a piece of her floated away with Nyx’s soul. Son and mate both dead in their own differing ways.

No. Feyre was in the nursery of the River House, painting murals and singing lullabies. He wouldn’t burden her with this, he would find a way and Feyre would be none the wiser of any of it.

Rhys wouldn’t name any other as heir, temporarily or as Regent. He refused to bait the Cauldron and by naming another he was placing an option into the world, one that may be seen and accepted in lieu. This was not his wager to lose.

***

How strange it was to Keir that the High Lord of Night’s joyous public declaration of an impending son didn’t meet his eyes. How Mor, his traitor of a daughter, stood behind her cousin with a smile on her face which screamed of fakery.

He knew them well, as both would not want to admit - but refusing to believe something was true didn’t make it false. The other members of Rhys’ precious Inner Circle were distracted or absent and Keir felt it was time to unearth a few secrets.

Whispers found a way through cracks. Especially if you set to create those cracks

What crawled out from under the rock was that the life of the sweet, naïve Feyre Cursebreaker was in danger as was that of the baby inside her. The infant had a glimmer of hope, the mother did not.

The shimmering jewel in the crown was that Feyre’s life was tied to Rhys’ and Rhys had arrogantly named no other successor than said son and no Regent in his stead.

The branch of that tree was withering away. Keir on his dais in the Hewn City could have wept tears of glory. A chasm was opening, one which could be filled by someone strong enough to claim it. It was natural for Keir to reach out his hand and take what should now be his.

If the boy survived, well then, he would need guidance towards the right path. Who would fight Keir in this respect? The bastard Illyrian? The quiet one? His own traitorous daughter?

Blood and lineage would out. A misfortune of birth order was the only reason Keir wasn’t already ensconced in the House of Wind and he had plenty of loyalists to the Hewn City who would don armour for his name.

Still, whispers which drifted their way through cracks and into the ears of those who listened also drifted away. Of course, Rhys would have spies in the Hewn City, perhaps some of the lengthening shadows were not simple shadows at all

News of Keir’s plans reached Velaris and now he and Rhys placed a game. Both pretending that they didn’t have knowledge on the other but both moving their pieces. Keir sent his advisors outward as Rhys did the same with his band of idiot friends. But for every ally Keir gained, it seemed Rhys added onto his own.

Rumours were that Rhys was sending the bastard to Illyria to rally troops and so that was the first location Keir turned. Unlike Rhys who deemed Illyria a place beneath his High Lord boots, Keir made his visits personal.

To Keir, the Illyrians could die like the dogs they were for all he cared but they were an invaluable asset he couldn’t afford to lose.

Hounds they may be, his advisors told him, but make them your hounds. There are those who want Rhysand gone as you do. Allow them their freedoms to do what they want in their own country and they will back you.

Keir selected his camps carefully. Even if some didn’t declare for Rhys, it didn’t mean they would declare for him. The name of Rhys’ dog Cassian, was uttered across the land with a degree of reverence more than Keir would have liked.

At least Kallon, one of the camp Lords was ripe with rage. They sat opposite each other in Kallon’s tent, the heat trapped within the canvas causing sweat to drip down Keir’s back as he made his promises.

“Others are declaring for that bastard,” Kallon said, his knife carving a deeper groove into the wood of his desk. “Enalius re-born they say, like any Illyrian birthed from a laundry whore would be destined for a path of greatness.”

Kallon’s laugh was brittle, his lips curled into a sneer over bared teeth. Feral, Keir thought. They are all feral pups. Still, an opportunity was an opportunity.

“When I rule the Night Court, you will be destined for your own path of greatness. I won’t demand anything for it other than your fealty. Clip whoever you want, raid whatever you want. By the Cauldron, you can have Velaris if you want.”

Kallon looked at him, his dark eyes glinting. “I can have the city?”

Yes, thought Keir. Greed is good. Greed meant a price existed and a price meant someone could be bought.

“Have it,” Keir had said. “Do to it and its inhabitants what you will.”

They shook hands and signed parchments before Keir moved south to the Autumn Court.

Autumn was bronze and copper and gold and Keir had barely seen any of it before he was swept into the labyrinthian halls and deeper under the soil than he wanted. The inhabitants could leave you in their palace and not even servants born there centuries before would find you.

Unease prickled his skin but he pushed it down as he walked corridors with thick tree roots lining the walls.

Beron had Keir bought to a secret office, one which he entered through two unwinding branches, and he forced himself to not look back upon them as they wound back together. The High Lord of Autumn sat behind a mahogany desk, brown hair falling forward as he scribbled away.

“My Lord,” Keir began, eyes adjusting to the gloom. “How is your dear lady wife?”

The scratch of the quill on parchment paused but Beron didn’t look up. “Past breeding age but she lives, which is more than she deserves most days.”

Keir nodded though Beron couldn’t see. He’d made a calculated decision when choosing the High Lords to visit. Beron was a comfortable selection. “And your eldest son, Eris?”

Beron stopped scribbling and looked up, his mouth in a sneer. “Why?” he spat, “were you wanting him instead? Are you here to stick the knife in my back while he twists? He gets to be High Lord when I’m dead and I plan to disappoint him by living forever.”

The underground cavernous study, tucked away and guarded by trees loyal to the appointed High Lord of Autumn made sense.

“And your other sons?”

Beron’s laugh was as rough as tree bark. “Lucien is no seed of mine. The rest? Rotting in their tombs. At least they had the decency to die before me.”

Keir moved forward with renewed certainty, settling himself uninvited into a chair. “My Lord,” he began, “speaking of dead sons....”

#nessian #fanfiction #fanfic #nesta archeron #cassian #nesta x cassian #nesta #acotar #acomaf #acowar #acofas #acosf #i wrote something #nessian fanfiction #nessian fic #nessian fan fiction #nessianfic #nesta archeron x cassian #nessian fan fic #neris #nesta archeron x eris #anti rhysand #silver in her eyes

[wildlyglittering]

Silver In Her Eyes - Chapter Two

Chapter Two is up! Please show it some love here or on Ao3

Silver In Her Eyes - Chapter 2 - writinginthedust - A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas [Archive of Our Own]

Silver In Her Eyes

Something was wrong.

The dinner was one Feyre had wanted, an intimate celebration at the River House, for the Inner Circle and Feyre’s sisters. Because that’s what Nesta was classified as – Feyre’s sister. No identity of her own.

Weeks had passed since Rhys announced to Prythian that he and Feyre were expecting a son and, in that time, Nesta felt a shift in the air among the members of Feyre’s friends. Not only of mood but of location. Nesta didn't care about the others but she saw Cassian less, his furtive trips to Illyria becoming more frequent.

There was a wound someplace and it festered.

At dinner, Feyre had sat at the head of the table, skin fresh and glowing, brimming with happiness. Elain, still not speaking to Nesta since their last argument, had doted on Feyre. It was a rare occasion the Archeron sisters were in the same place.

The baby is having a baby, Nesta thought. What type of mother would Feyre make? A good one, a loving one.

A second question formed in Nesta’s mind, one where she asked herself what kind of mother she would make. A fierce one, a devoted one. Maybe not a good one, although she’d want to be. Nesta would need to learn to baby proof everything in her life; no sharp edges, and that would include Nesta herself.

Nesta broke from her reverie, there was no baby for her to be concerned over although a voice whispered, none yet, as though one were inevitable.

Instead of living in her head, she focused on her companions and on what was off; Rhys’ forced grin, Morrigan’s shimmering eyes, Amren's absence. Azriel was as inscrutable as ever but Cassian was loud. His laughter too fake with his gaze lingering upon Feyre too long.

His smiles to Nesta were more a crack through stone and when their eyes met over the table, his held an indescribable sense of loss directed towards her. I’m still here, she wanted to say. You’re looking at me like I’m gone.

Nesta knew something wasto be known.

She’d slipped away after the food into Rhys’ study, carried not by her feet but her mind.

There they were. Three beautiful blades as shimmering as the Sidra and as bright as the sun. They called to her, Ataraxia the loudest. The words my first born came unbidden into Nesta’s thoughts and yet they were received with an answer.

Mother.

Rhys started when he discovered her standing in front of the wall where the swords were mounted, Nesta touching the cool metal with gentle caresses. She almost tasted his irritation at her presence but she turned towards him, schooling into a polite courtesy.

“Apologies at the intrusion. Something compelled me. I couldn’t stay away.” She glanced over her shoulder, their squabbles echoing in her mind. She had given Ataraxia the most attention and the others were displeased. Like children. “Sometimes I wish I hadn’t stopped at three.”

She turned back to Rhys.

Once, when Nesta was a starving human, she’d pressed her fingers against the cold pane of a bakery window. The golden pastries were on display in rows, fresh and warm from the ovens, steam still rising. She gulped down the scent pretending she could survive on air alone.

Rhys now wore that same face of hunger.

“Do you want to make more?” he’d asked, a tremble to his tone.

“I thought I was banned.”

“Not at all, I didn’t want you to exhaust yourself.”

“How kind,” she said, “and generous of you to consider my wellbeing.”

He didn’t bite at the words but Nesta saw the twitch of his eye.

She’d agreed. While Feyre grew a child in her belly, Nesta wanted to forge hers with her hands. When she woke at the House of Wind the next morning, a blacksmith room had already been constructed with all the tools and metals she would need and a note from Rhys that he would check on her progress.

There was a fairy tale in the human lands of a young woman who promised a king she could weave gold from straw but was told her if she failed, her life was forfeit. Was this her own fate? Nesta spending her eternal years hammering away at metal? Would she run a blade through Rhys to escape?

Yes. Then step over the puddle of blood to freedom without ever looking back.

***

The sand poured from one end of the hourglass to the other as time raced by. Rhys was once again in his study with a visitor bearing news.

Almost a month had passed since Rhys last saw Mor at the dinner Feyre hosted, and haggard was not a word he ever would have thought to describe her but now it was the first.

Her sheen was replaced with sallow, the dark circles beneath her eyes stretched downwards and her golden hair was scraped back and hidden under a cloak. Mor dressed in drab browns, a far cry from her vibrant crimson.

Rhys sat behind his desk, expecting her report before she’d had a chance to remove her cape. Time for pleasantries had long passed, not when they hadn’t found what they were looking for.

Rhys was aware of Keir’s movements; the Courts he visited and the conversations held, that he’d tried to break into the prison but the wards were too strong. He learnt of the Illyrians which declared for him and which didn’t. All of this marked on the carved map of Prythian in Rhys’s study.

Now Rhys had additional tasks. If he and Feyre were to die and Nyx were to live, his son needed allies.

“Well?” he asked, bored of waiting.

“Thesan will declare for us but he’d rather he didn’t have to interfere with the lines of succession if Keir is chosen by the laws of magic. Tarquin is ours.”

Mor paused and her voice was more cautious when she next spoke. “As is Helion, but he’s concerned. He doesn’t understand why Keir is making a grab for power now and thinks that something's happening which isn’t being said. He’s not wrong.”

“He can put up with it.”

“It’s understandable he’s anxious. They all are. No one relishes the idea of partaking in another Court’s civil war and getting their fae killed.”

Rhys ignored her. “Do we have the Peregryn’s under Thesan’s command?”

Mor let out a sigh and rubbed her eyes. Her fingers were pale and strange without her jewels adorning them. “Yes,” she said, “we have the legion.”

“Good. Kallias?”

Mor hesitated. “He doesn’t want to declare for anyone. He’s concerned a Night Court civil war will turn into one between the High Lords.”

Rhys glanced at the map beside him, the mountains smoothing into the flat of Winter, covered in spruce and pine. “Then Kallias has declared for Keir,” he spat.

“No, he hasn’t.”

“By not declaring for me than he’s declaring for Keir.”

Mor let out a garbled sigh. “Viviane is pregnant. He’s thinking of his wife and baby. A daughter.”

A child for Winter. A female. Thoughts whorled in Rhys’ brain. More of a reason to secure Winter. If Rhys were to dangle a proposed union before Kallias, between a son of Night and daughter of Winter, two Courts joined as one would that be enough?

He thought of Nyx, fully adult, owning a legacy which stretched far beyond the boundaries of Night.

Rhys teased the idea while Mor continued speaking, her words drifting through his mind until she said a name.

“What about Feyre?” he snapped, turning his head from the map.

“I asked what she thinks of Keir making a grab for power and was wondering why she isn’t questioning it.”

“She isn’t questioning it because she doesn’t know.”

“Rhys-”

“She doesn’t need to know. If she knows than she’ll ask why and I don’t want her asking why. I want Feyre in a cocoon of bliss with her only concern being what lullabies she will sing our son. This will be fixed before his birth is upon us.”

Mor’s hands clenched her cloak, her knuckles turning white. “What does Feyre want? It’s been months. She would want-”

Heat rushed through him and Rhys stood so fast he hit his desk, a heavy glass paperweight rolling from the top to smash onto the floor. He ignored it, striding forward as Mor flinched and tripped backwards.

The dark mists swirled from underneath Rhys’ skin, encompassing them both. Violent murder could happen in this room and no one would hear it.

“Let me make myself clear,” he said through gritted teeth, “the knowledge of this is too great to burden her with. I want Feyre happy and how will she be if she learns of her fate? Hmm? Something has your tongue, cousin.”

The darkness dissipated along with his outburst and he stepped back as Mor shook her head and stared at the ground. A tear slid down one cheek but he hadn’t the time to coddle her, not after her provocation.

“What of Eris?” he asked, turning to the map, his eyes sliding to Autumn.

Mor’s breath was shaky. “I hate that you made me speak with him.”

“Did you?” He turned to look at her, knowing he would be able to catch her in a lie.

Mor’s eyes were as hard as the stones that formed the House of Wind when she glared back at him. For a moment Rhys thought if Mor didn’t despise her father as much as she did, she would have been tempted to throw her lot in with them. It didn’t matter to Rhys if she hated him for the rest of her life - as long as she hated Keir more.

“I did as I was bid my Lord.”

“And?”

“He’ll declare for us – with conditions.”

Rhys rolled his eyes. “Obviously.”

“We turn a blind eye when he overthrows his father and is crowned High Lord of Autumn.”

Rhys shrugged and nodded. A condition he’d anticipated. Beron had declared for Keir so this was a win for Rhys. “We’ll deny any knowledge of Eris’ plans of course. Anything else?”

Mor exhaled, her fingers digging harder into her cloak. “He also requests a wife, a Lady of Autumn by his side.”

“I’m sure he has adequate females in the Autumn Court.”

“No, he wants someone from Night.”

Rhys inspected his nails, the conversation of Eris’ bed-mate boring him. “Fine, we have plenty of fae of beauty. We’ll arrange something.”

“Rhys,” and something in Mor’s voice sounded desperate. “He’s being particular. He wants someone of high social standing – someone of rank. Someone in our ranks.”

Rhys looked up at Mor, eyebrows raised. “You?”

Her reaction was visceral, as though part of her withered in horror and bloomed again in relief. “No, thank you Mother.” Her shuddering laugh held no humour and she pushed past her hesitation. “He's requested an Archeron sister – he wants... Nesta.”

All Rhys muscles went rigid. He stared at the wall ahead, at the blades glinting with Nesta’s magic.

This request was more problematic.

Spiteful, brittle Nesta wasn’t someone Rhys wanted in his Court any more than he’d want a nest of snakes but she was being put to use, a use he needed to hold onto with both hands. Giving her to Eris would mean she would become someone else’s problem but she’d also become someone else’s weapon.

Perhaps he could tempt Eris with a more docile substitute, the sobbing, doe-eyed Elain who spent her nights wandering the River House.

No.

Rhys’ mind viewed the tapestry. Lucien was a thread woven around Spring, Autumn, Day and the human lands. Handing sweet, simple Elain to Lucien’s brother may cost Rhys allies he couldn’t afford to lose.

Not just that, but if played right Lucien could win him allies. Tamlin was undecided, a wild card open for Rhys or Keir. The likelihood was that he would declare for Keir just to spite Rhys but if Lucien could sway him and if Elain could be used to sway Lucien...

“Rhys?” Mor’s voice punctured his thoughts.

He shook his head. “I’ll have to discourage this requirement of Eris’.”

Mor’s shoulders relaxed and she breathed out a wistful sigh. A smile, a hopeful thing, emerged on her face as some of her shine poured in. “I’m so pleased. If you didn’t, it would break Cassian’s heart.”

“Yes, of course,” Rhys said, turning away. “I was thinking of hearts.”

#nessian #fanfiction #fanfic #nesta archeron #cassian #nesta x cassian #nesta #acotar #acomaf #acowar #acofas #acosf #i wrote something #nessian fanfiction #nessian fic #nessian fan fiction #nessianfic #nesta archeron x cassian #nessian fan fic #neris #nesta archeron x eris #anti rhysand #silver in her eyes

[duskandstarlight]

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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[duskandstarlight]

A Golden Opportunity: Part Three (teaser)

Notes: I’ve not been in the mood for E&L lately but I’ve been on a modern Nessian writing spree. Here’s a snippet of the next chapter (just edits to come thanks to @noirshadow being on it, as always). I hope you like 🥰

Given Nesta’s reception so far, Cassian hadn’t expected theatrical gratitude. If the stars had been aligned in his favour—if this was him and Nesta eight days ago—Cassian would have wished for some banter or a smile. At the very least, scant acknowledgement that he’d tried to do something nice.

::readmore::

But when Nesta met his eyes for the second time that day, his breath caught. Her stormy grey eyes were… startled and Cassian watched her mentally stumble, watched as her lips parted in the exact same way that they had last week when he’d presented her with a bottle of his homemade chai. It was that somewhat heart-wrenching look that only ever came from someone who never expected to be thought of.

The anger in Cassian began to flake away and then it disappeared entirely as Nesta conceded a quiet thank you. As she, with one arm curled protectively around her abdomen, raised a hand to take the tin of chai from him and paused…

For a heartbeat, their fingers remained against one another, her ice cold ones, his warm ones. And Cassian had the distinct impression that Nesta wanted to command her body to stop looking at him - wanted to stop touching him - but couldn’t. Just like he couldn’t.

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[duskandstarlight]

Dessert

Omg omg this was a bloody treat to write—NO PUN INTENDED I AM NOT THAT FUNNY.

“You did not,” Nesta said in disbelief, every word a punctuated bullet.

Cassian couldn’t stop the satisfied smirk that toyed with his mouth. It often felt like it was his life mission to spark Nesta out of control, to unsteady her—mostly because when she was fired up like this, her irises rolling storms of blue, he never found her more attractive. “Oh, I did.”

Around them, the whole inner circle sat straight and poised, ready to jump between them. Apart from Elain, who just blinked. “Did you just lick whipped cream off of Nesta’s mouth?”

“Looked like a kiss to me,” Mor chirped, weighing in without warrant.

“It was not a kiss,” Nesta snapped, the fire in her expression blazing enough that Azriel’s shadows retreated back to hug his ears.

They whispered, whispered, whispered.

“Our first kiss,” Cassian crooned at Nesta. And because he knew he was a dead male anyway, he swiped his finger around her bowl, gathering cream and custard and traces of jelly. Popped it into his mouth and sucked.

When he leant closer to Nesta, there was an audible intake of breath around the table. Cassian felt Rhys’s magic rumbling at his fingertips, poised and ready.

But Nesta didn’t blast him with her power. She only grabbed for his hand and closed her lips around the tip of the scar-flecked finger that had just been in his own mouth.

Cassian’s heart gave a leap and then stopped entirely. His blood momentarily froze in his veins and then it rushed like a torrent to his groin. Even his wings snapped in tight as he watched, his jaw hanging open as Nesta’s cheeks hollowed, as her tongue swirled.

Then her mouth was gone and her body with it. A shriek sounded as her chair was pushed back and Nesta stood.

“Close your mouth, sweetheart,” Nesta snapped before she swept out of the room.

#Nessian prompt #Nessian #Nessian drabble #nessian #acotar #acosf #cassian #nesta archeron #nesta x cassian #duskandstarlightwrites #nessianfic #acotar fanfic

[duskandstarlight]

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.”

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.

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 @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 @nessiantrashh @miamorganvel18

#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

[wildlyglittering]

A Love for all Seasons Part 2 (Spring)

So I am totally slack at continuing this series 😂

If anyone is remotely still interested here is Part 2 of ‘A Love for all Seasons’ which has now moved onto Spring. 

I’ll be honest... since reading ACOSF my love for Nessian has dimmed somewhat which means so has my enthusiasm for writing this. It’s likely I won’t continue the series beyond this chapter. 

I do have one final Nessian/ Neris piece that I am aiming to get out this year as a way to give myself some Nessian closure and say a final goodbye. For now - enjoy this one! 😉

***

The change from winter to spring brought new happenings to Velaris; pink blossoms on trees, turquoise waters on the Sidra, and the arrival of mating season which meant... well, it meant horny everything.

Nesta wasn’t immune to the hormones and pheromones and whatever else was being secreted into the air. Living in the city all her life meant she was prepared for what spring would bring, but she had been unprepared for spring when a hot-blooded Illyrian was involved.

That morning she woke to a dusky pink sunrise and with a bleary half-open eye, groaned at the number on her nightstand clock. She stretched and rolled, misjudging her distance from the other occupant in her bed.

“Ow.”

“Sorry,” she murmured, her voice still husky from sleep and snuggled closer, patting Cassian’s forehead as her face inched near his. “Still, elbow in the face is twenty points.”

“Hmm. Not sure I like this game and your bed is far too small.”

“Try hanging upside down from the beams like I suggested.”

Cassian’s eyes, centimetres from hers, flew open, bright and alert. Nesta swore he thought sleep was for the weak. “You are a wicked woman,” he said, glancing towards Nesta’s bare shoulder, “but there are other ways we can save on space.”

He rolled on top of her, ignoring her laugh and dragged the sheets with him, wings splayed above them both blocking out all hint of early sunlight.

Honestly, if he kept this up Nesta was going to need the hose.

After Cassian watched Nesta perform The Nutcracker at Solmas, there had been a few false starts. In part due to Nesta’s hectic winter dance schedule and in part due to what Nesta felt was a humiliation strong enough to die from.

Finally, after bouquets were delivered to her dressing room in such volume she would have been able to open her own floristry, she agreed to have coffee with him. Only the once, she’d said.

Coffee turned into lunch and then into dinner. Then, when he walked her home, she’d asked him inside. The next morning they ate their breakfast naked, tearing through toast and jam like starving animals before returning to bed.

Nesta remembered opening her curtains when they were done, the chill sinking through the glass as the frost displayed across the pane with a message. Naughty Girl.

She refused to be judged by frozen water and when Cassian came out of her bathroom, he’d raised an eyebrow on discovering Nesta pressing her middle fingers against her window.

That had been five months ago. Five months.

Snow and ice melted into puddles and now falling petals collected on the ledge outside her bedroom window spelling their own words. Today’s being; Niiiiice.

Yes, spring was hornier.

Oh, but it was nice. The time her and Cassian spent together somehow gave Nesta both peace and excitement, even if it was just them sitting on her sofa with her legs slung over his. Even now, after they’d relinquished themselves to spring’s influence once more, she lay on his sweaty chest, content to listen to the beat of his heart.

“You can’t be comfortable,” she said noting Cassian’s wings angled in unnatural directions to stop them squashing against the wall, but he only shrugged and said he’d manage.

Nesta’s small apartment was fine when it was only herself – small became cosy. When an Illyrian was present - small become cramped. When other, more unwelcome thoughts intruded – small became claustrophobic.

She’d tried reasoning with the apartment, tried flexing a little of her magic muscles to encourage it to increase space but it refused to budge, likely remembering when Nesta made good on her threat to hammer nails into walls.

Nesta had suggested that her and Cassian go elsewhere but last time Cassian booked them a hotel in the city centre. The room was lovely and most importantly, spacious, but that hadn’t been what Nesta meant.

Five months of sleeping together and she’d yet to visit his apartment.

The options she’d considered was that Cassian was either a serial killer hoarding his trophies, that he had a secret family no one was aware about, or that he was ashamed of whatever it was he was doing with Nesta and didn’t want her presence in his home.

She hoped he was a serial killer.

Cassian’s fingers stroked through her hair, tracing down her neck to her collarbone and Nesta knew they’d have to get up soon otherwise they’d never leave the bed. Even the graphically illustrated pamphlet she’d picked up from the Fae and Human Relations Clinic entitled, ‘Illyrian Sex and You,’ hadn’t provided the full picture.

“Oh honey,” a high fae woman next to her had said with a chuckle at Nesta’s blush, “you’ve got no idea.”

Cassian’s voice broke her out of her trip down memory lane. “What are you going to do with a full Saturday off?”

She shifted, trying to escape the fingertips drifting to the tops of her breasts and focused on the unsexy tasks before her. “Visiting Elain,” she replied, “if I don’t turn up to praise her garden in prime spring than she refuses to talk to me for months.”

One of the unwelcome changes of winter to spring was the shift in management at the Velaris City Ballet Company. Although Eris, the last fae director was an absolute, unmitigated prick, he was a prick Nesta was used to dealing with. Though he didn’t hold humans in high regard, at least he respected Nesta’s talent as a dancer.

The new director, Tamlin, had donned a sneer when he read Nesta’s name from the call sheet before making Gwyn cry, resulting in an argument between Nesta and him. After, he invited Nesta to his office and informed her that she didn’t have many more nails in the coffin of her departure to be hammered down.

Now, Nesta barely had any performance time. She wasn’t even ensemble; she was second ensemble. The once prima ballerina was about to become the prima cleaner.

The lies she spun to Cassian about her days didn’t include that. Instead, she deflected. “What will you do?”

“The usual.”

‘The usual’ for Cassian was free flying off the mountain Ramiel with Azriel and Rhys, followed by brunch with Mor and then training which seemed like a combination of throwing punches and getting hit by swords. Or avoiding getting hit by swords. Sometimes when she met him afterwards, Nesta couldn’t tell what the actual aim of the training had been.

Nesta stretched again, her back arching and cracking and the sheets fell from her chest. “Oh no,” she said to Cassian, noting the gleam in his eyes at her bared breasts. She shimmied under the covers to get to the end and crawled out, standing at the foot. “I have things to do.”

“So do I,” he said, eyes skimming from breasts to thighs and back again.

She grinned, shaking her head and scooping up his shirt to cover herself. In truth she couldn’t blame the spring air, he’d been like this all through winter.

The fucking fae were always fucking. Or tried to be.

Nesta pulled her hair into a braid as Cassian sat up to rest against the wall, wings now stretched as wide as possible in the gap, the talons brushing the plaster. “Hey,” he said, his voice breezy. “I have an idea. Before you visit Elain, why don’t you come with me for some of them?”

“Some of what?”

“My Saturday activities. Might be fun.”

“I’m not launching myself from anything thank you and I don’t feel like getting whacked with a sword.”

“You could come with me to brunch with Mor.”

Nesta paused, her fingers tangling in her hair, the braid pattern now destroyed.

Cassian had said it in a way like it wasn’t a massive deal to say to one of his long-standing friends, ‘oh by the way, you know Rhys is seeing Feyre who we all love. Well, I’m sleeping with her sister. No, not that one. The one no one likes.’

She looked over at Cassian, his skin holding a hint of crimson, his eyes staring down at his sheet covered knees. There was a lurch in her stomach. If he couldn’t make eye contact with Nesta during an invitation to brunch, how would he be throughout the actual event? Nesta imagined sitting opposite the blonde, glamourous Morrigan, a plate of maple-soaked pancakes between them, while Cassian pretended death glares weren’t being shot Nesta’s way.

Though her first inclination was to tell Cassian she would rather spend her time bathing in the Kelpie pool this was his first attempt at something different, something more public.

“I could look at the timings,” Nesta said, re-braiding her hair. “Are you sure Mor wouldn’t mind? Won’t it be weird if I just turned up with you?”

Cassian’s eyebrows lifted. “You’ll come? Ah she’ll be cool with it. She’s used to me rocking up with....”

Nesta arched an eyebrow of her own. “One-night stands? Girlfriends?”

“I was going to say, ‘lovely ladies of which I’ve spent lots of pleasant time with.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I can say we bumped into each other by the door.”

Nesta blinked but kept her face impassive. Cassian had shrugged at his statement, a hand casually gesturing into the air. Casual, casual. All so casual.

Almost half a year. Dinner dates, brunch dates, lunch dates – every meal date possible they’d done it and invented some of their own. He’d attended her performances while she still had dances to perform and he was over at her apartment so much that the front door of the building now opened to let him in.

She hadn’t been to his home and they hadn’t told anyone that they were – what? Dating? Seeing each other? Sleeping together? Nesta had used the word girlfriend in relation to women who had rocked up to his brunch with Mor but that’s not what she was. Even if she was, would any of his friends, her sister’s friends, be impressed?

The only one would be pleased would be Emerie but Nesta wasn’t ready to give her the satisfaction of knowing her stunt with The Nutcracker choreography had worked.

Nesta cleared her throat. “Thinking about it, I can’t.” She kept her voice as light as she could. “I’m taking the slow route to Elain’s and if I’m late to view the peonies open, she’ll kill me.”

There was no change to Cassian’s expression, he simply nodded and relaxed his shoulders. “Sure,” he replied, and Nesta wondered if he wanted that to be the answer all along.

“I’m going to grab a shower,” she said, turning away. Usually, she would extend the invite to him but not even the pollen in the air could fight its way through the heaviness of her chest. “Feel free to stay, have some coffee.”

“No, it’s best I go. I’ll be getting the third degree from Az and Rhys about being late.”

The bed creaked behind her as he rose, his heavy tread padding its way across the floorboards. A warm kiss landed on her shoulder, “I’ll see myself out, you go grab your shower.”

Nesta turned to face him, nodding with such enthusiasm she must have resembled a bobbing goblin. She kissed him goodbye, nothing more than a brief touch of her lips on his, before dashing into her bathroom.

The shower she took was long and hot, the steam curling into condensation everywhere in the small space. “Am I unlovable?” she asked the apartment walls.

When she stepped out from under the spray of water, there was a reply in the mist on the mirror.

No, it said, you’re not.

***

Elain lived an hour from the heart of Velaris and wasn’t too difficult to get to if you knew the best method of travel. Winnow Express didn’t operate outside the city parameters and if Illyrian Air had been operational, it still wouldn't be an option Nesta would have gone with.

Peregryn Air was renowned for speed and customer service but the prices highlighted on the app were out of Nesta’s shrinking budget. In the end, she settled on Pegasus’ non-flying option which meant she travelled by horse and carriage – much to Elain’s delight when Nesta arrived.

“Look at you!” Elain had squealed. “Very classic!”

The sisters sat under the shade of an oak tree, serenaded by the hum of bees while long stemmed flowers bobbed their heads in the breeze.

“How is Velaris?” Elain asked, adjusting her wide brimmed straw hat.

“Oh, you know this time of year – perilous.”

“Have you seen a lot of Feyre?”

Nesta shook her head and took a sip of her drink. Pink and fruity and delicious with a strange but not unpleasant tingle that Nesta couldn’t put her finger on.

“I saw her in March for lunch but then the snow melted and now she’s shacked up with her boyfriend.”

“Ah yes, spring madness.”

“I just hope they’re cleaning down the counters.”

They both shuddered.

“How about you?” Elain poked an ice cube in her glass with her straw. “Are you seeing anyone?”

Before Nesta could stop herself, the words fell from her mouth. “I’m sleeping with Cassian.”

There was a shriek from Elain and the hat flew off as she leant forward over the small garden table, the ribbons of her floral dress close to sinking into the pitcher. “Noooo! When did that start?”

“Soon after Solmas.”

“Five months! Are you just sleeping with each other or is other stuff going on?”

“We've been on dates. And he stays over so much it's like he's living with me.” Nesta frowned. Where was all this coming from? Although Elain wasn’t in contact with Feyre’s inner circle, it didn’t mean that Nesta planned on spilling her guts.

“Oh my goodness,” Elain said with a giggle. “I’m not surprised, you two always had a thing for each other.”

“We did?”

“How’s the sex?”

“Best sex of my life, in fact this morning he-”

Nesta jerked back in her chair, forcing her lips to press together. Elain was leaning so far over the table now it seemed she was seconds away from clamouring over it and onto Nesta’s lap. Nesta looked at the glass in her hand, the delightful blush pink liquid almost gone showing a golden residue collecting at the bottle. She stuck her nose in for a sniff.

Yes, there it was along with the cherry and hibiscus.

“Elain – did you put Amorveritas berries in this?”

Her sister had the decency to go a little red. “Maybe.”

“Elain! That’s a gross betrayal of trust!”

Elain’s freckled nose crinkled as she sat back in her chair, adjusting her hat which had seemed to grow an extra inch to hide more of her face. “Oh, you’ll forgive me. How else am I supposed to know what’s going on in your life?”

“You could ask.”

“I always ask,” Elain said with a huff. “You say ‘its fine’ and move on. But the last time you said it was fine – and I believed you – I got that phone call from Feyre to say you’d been arrested.”

“That was sorted out. And Feyre didn’t need to get involved either.”

“Hmm.”

They sat, the heavy shade of the tree covering them greater than before. Nesta glanced up, it wasn’t her imagination that the oak was leaning over them both, trying to listen into every word. “Do you mind?” Nesta snapped.

Elain winced and waved a hand at a low hanging branch. “Sorry, it has a will of its own. Loves gossip and my life doesn't give it enough.”

Nesta placed her drink down on the table. “I thought you weren’t going to get involved in magic? I thought that was the whole point of moving away from Velaris?”

Elain sighed and looked away into her garden, fingers twisting themselves in her dress. “I wasn’t. The problem is that little seedling we have. It’s hard for it not to take root. I wasn’t bothered in the city but now I’m here and I feel like I’m in my right place and I guess it grew.”

She looked to Nesta and Nesta nodded for Elain to continue.

“I have a non-magic herb and flower garden and a magic one. But Nesta, the prices I can charge for the magic produce is ridiculous! People will pay anything! You see all these acres of land? I own them. I’m about to put a down payment for my own Pegasus delivery service.”

Nesta smiled at her sister. “That’s wonderful. I’m really pleased for you.” But something wriggled inside her. Not a writhing serpent of jealousy, more a wriggling worm of discontent. Feyre was living her best life, her art indulged at Rhys’ expense, and so was Elain with her cottage and booming business. Nesta was happy they were happy, she just wished she wasn’t so unhappy.

“I’m looking for another job,” Nesta blurted out as Elain’s eyes went wide. The confession nothing to do with the berries and more the weight Nesta felt when she woke each morning.

“Why? You adore the ballet.”

“If you thought Eris was bad, he has nothing on the new director. Give me another week and I’ll be begging to clean the stage just to stay relevant.”

“Oh, Nesta.”

“It’s fine,” Nesta said, waving her hand as though she wave away the tightening of her throat. “I’m thinking about tutoring children in dance. If I can’t be the prima ballerina any more than maybe I can teach the next one.”

“That’s a beautiful way of looking at it.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

They both went quiet and when Nesta looked over, she saw Elain’s doe brown eyes grow watery.

“No please don’t cry,” Nesta said, “I’ll bounce back, I always do.”

“Does Cassian support this?”

There was a beat of silence as Nesta reached for her glass, just needing something to hold. Nesta had no plans to finish her drink and start telling Elain everything. Before she knew it, she’d be confessing about the time she and Feyre gave Elain’s ‘Garden Witch Barbie’ a haircut and makeover.

Some things, like that Barbie, had to remain buried.

“Cassian doesn’t know.”

“Why not?”

“Because we’re sleeping together. We’re not in a committed relationship. Besides, I don’t think he’d be interested.”

Elain leant forward to rest her elbows on the table and place her head in her hands, peering at Nesta. “Are either of you seeing anyone else?”

Nesta paused. Well, she wasn’t and she didn’t think Cassian was. No, she knew he wasn’t. He’d taken a call from Rhys while she’d been cooking dinner one evening and overheard him rebuffing Rhys’ attempts at a set-up.

“I’m not. I don’t think he is.”

“And this is Cassian we’re talking about. Pretty sure a queue as long as the Rainbow Bridge exists lining up for him, and it’s not to hold his hand.”

“I’m going to ignore you now.”

Elain tilted her head, eyes not leaving Nesta. She was unnervingly like Feyre when she had something in her sights. The Archeron family gift being a sliver of magic and a shit-ton of stubborn wilfulness. “Why don’t you think he’d be interested?”

Nesta shrugged her shoulder and looked around the garden for something, anything, that would remove her out of this conversation. Aside from placid rows of flowers and a nervous looking cherry tree nothing was coming to hand.

“He’s not seeing anyone else but it’s not like he wants anyone knowing he’s seeing me either. We only go out to places no one we know goes to, I haven’t even seen his apartment let alone spent a night there and this morning he suggested we pretend to bump into each other so I could join him and Mor for brunch.”

Elain straightened in her chair. “He invited you to brunch with Mor?”

“Not really.”

“Yes, he did! And we’re talking blonde bombshell Mor? Ex-girlfriend Mor? Best friend forever Mor?”

Nesta narrowed her eyes. “Is there any other?”

Fae were notorious for many things; parent issues, extensive criminal records, long lifespans and ridiculously high sex drives. Sooner or later, most fae found their way into each other’s beds, or bathrooms, or balconies, or underwater sex centres if Nesta believed Gwyn’s stories.

Cassian and Mor had both lived a long life, so long that Cassian didn't remember birthdays. But he did remember meeting Mor and finding her, in his words, ‘painfully attractive.’ Mor thought the same of him and they indulged in their mutual attraction until the spark burnt out before it became a fire.

Aside from Azriel, Mor was a rare factor in Cassian’s life that would remain until the end of eternity. Not even Rhys held that honour. Nesta had only met Mor a handful of times through their connection via Rhys and Feyre. Those occasions hadn’t been unpleasant, had even verged on cordial, but Nesta wasn’t known for natural warmth and Mor hadn’t extended conversation beyond polite pleasantries.

“I think you should talk to Cassian,” Elain said, “because I think you’re wrong. I think he would be interested to know what’s going on in your life and I think you want to tell him. You’re pissy over this whole Mor brunch thing which means you like him.”

“Well of course I like him.”

“No, you like him, like him. As in ‘you want him to be your boyfriend’ levels of like.”

Nesta snorted, a noise she hadn’t made in years. Feyre brought out the bratty teenager in her and Elain brought out the bratty child. “We’re grown women talking about liking boys. Soon we’re going to be doodling initials over hearts.”

“There have been studies on the success of doodle magic.”

Nesta sighed and rubbed her forehead, their talk kickstarting a headache. Soon she’d be begging to talk about anything else, even if it was Elain’s pruning routine.

“Nesta,” Elain said, quieter this time. “Please talk to Cassian. Five months is a long time – no don’t interrupt – I know five months is nothing for fae or Illyrians but I remember Feyre saying once that Cassian doesn’t do relationships.”

“Exactly.”

“No, I mean he doesn’t do anything that lasts over a month. In Cassian time, you’re married.”

“Elain-”

“Just promise me you’ll talk to him.”

***

Nesta had to begrudgingly accept that she’d softened over the years.

A promise had been extracted from her by Elain and a basket had been thrust into her hands. According to Elain the sex apples were all the seasonal rage. Nesta eyed up the shining red fruit and was beginning to understand how Elain was now able to afford the construction of her own set of Pegasus stables.

She trudged up the stairs of her building, ignoring the breathy moans from behind her neighbours’ doors on each floor. The sooner spring was over, the better.

Nesta heard Cassian before she saw him, a loud baritone passing as singing vibrating through the walls. Her apartment was now letting him waltz right in and that irritated her. This was her home; he had his own. Probably.

The door opened for her and she murmured a half-hearted thanks to the building which caused it to slam behind her. Cassian was in her small kitchenette, wings tucked in, hair tied up, wearing an armless undershirt revealing his swirling Illyrian tattoos.

He looked up, a broad grin on his face. “Hey, how was your day?”

“Fine,” she said, placing the basket onto the sideboard and looked around. Cassian’s jacket and shirt were thrown over her bed, his overnight bag back in the same corner he’d left it.

“Tea?”

“No thanks.”

“I thought we'd go out for dinner tonight, Autumn Court has just opened a new restaurant, The Forest House. I could fly there in less than an hour. The website says to expect lots of smoked meats and craft ales.”

Cassian boiled his water, a mug with a teabag waiting on the side from his unique blend of tea which now lived in her cupboard. The kettle whistled and a surge of irritation bubbled beneath her skin. The water never boiled that quick for her.

“Why are you here?”

Cassian’s smile slid from his face. “What do you mean? I always stay over on Saturday nights, it’s our thing.”

“Is it? Or is it just convenient for you so you don’t have to leave after fucking? Because that’s what we do, that’s ‘our thing’ – we eat and fuck.”

Cassian’s mouth dropped open but only for a second. “What did you just say?” His voice was soft but disarmingly so. The kind of soft the mermaids used before they sank their sharpened nails into your calf.

“You heard.” Nesta shifted where she stood, wondering where this was coming from, wondering if Elain had snuck something else into her glass.

For the briefest of moment’s Cassian’s face changed into something unrecognisable. Suddenly he was wearing a different face, one Nesta had never seen directed at her but was likely a familiar sight to those he hunted down as a bounty hunter. Black consumed all of his eyes, his wings flexing, talons scrapping against the brickwork. A muscle twitched in his jaw as he clenched his teeth, while a shadow passed over his features.

His eyes scanned her face, his nostrils flaring. This version of Cassian, albeit restrained, was still dark and dangerous and Nesta’s pulse hammered in her throat with a reason far from anything considered arousal.

Then, the moment drifted away. Cassian let the moment drift away as though it were a cloud in the spring breeze.

“How’s Elain?” he asked, injecting a lightness to his tone.

“She’s fine,” Nesta said with a frown.

“And what happened to put you in this mood? What did she say?”

An indignant snarl left Nesta’s mouth. Best Cassian know all of her she decided. He’d heard Feyre’s stories of how difficult Nesta could be. “She didn’t say anything. And how dare you! I’m not in any mood, this is my home, I want to sit on my couch, watch ‘Suriel on Saturday’ and do fuck all.”

“Then we’ll do that.”

A shriek left Nesta’s mouth and she pushed the base of her palms against her eyes until she saw lights. She took a deep breath in, trying to remember the exercises she’d been taught from her court ordered ‘Temper Your Temper’ class.

When her breathing calmed, she pulled her hands away. Cassian still standing in the same place, eyes fixed on her.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you think I’m losing it, like I’m something to be pitied.”

“I’m not-” he began and paused, scrubbing one large hand over his face. “I don’t understand where this is coming from.”

Any energy Nesta had vanished, and she turned to the section of her apartment which acted as her living area and walked over to the couch, sinking into the oversized cushions and pulling her knees underneath her. She stared at a blank spot on the wall ahead.

“I’m going to quit the ballet.”

A soft ‘what’ came from the kitchen followed by the heaviness of Cassian’s tread before the couch dipped under his weight. Nesta swayed towards the middle, their knees brushing.

“Why?”

Nesta cleared her throat. “I’m not being utilised and won’t be for as long as Tamlin is in residence and he’s not going anywhere fast. The longer I stay, the more I doubt my ability so I need to get out while I still believe I’m good. I am you know – good.”

There was a chuckle next to her and she turned to look at Cassian, a broad grin stretched across his face, any hint of his earlier anger gone. “You are,” he said, “I have your Nutcracker performance etched in my memory. Might get a tattoo of it. Before we started dating, I masturbated to it more than was healthy.”

Nesta coughed on air and chose to ignore his latter comment. “We’re dating?”

Cassian frowned, turning towards her. “What else are we doing?”

“Sleeping together.”

“Yeah, but the other stuff – the hanging out, the going out – that’s not dating to you?”

Nesta pinched the skin between her eyebrows in her fingers, a tension headache beginning to rise.

In the basket of fruits Elain had gifted her, there was a nectarine designed to soothe any ailments but her mouth was dry and her throat was tight. If she tried to swallow a bite, she was concerned she’d choke and turn into some tragic modern fairy tale.

The last thing Nesta needed right now was a series of dwarves rocking up to cart her off in a glass coffin to be gawked at by perverts. They had a habit of turning up every time there was a fruit related choking incident.

She sighed, releasing the skin between her fingertips. “Yes, but also – no. When I’ve dated other people, I’ve felt like I’m in their life. I don’t always end up meeting their friends but at the least I’ve been to their homes you know? I haven’t been invited back to yours once.”

“Ah,” Cassian said, “so there’s a reason I haven’t invited you back to me place.” A deep crimson bloomed on his cheeks. “I don’t actually have a place to invite you back to.”

Nesta blinked at him, the words taking longer to meet her brain than she would have thought.

“I’m not homeless,” Cassian said. “I have a house, a very nice house, lots of bookshelves – you’d love it. It’s in Illyria. I didn’t want to put roots down in Velaris so I fly the distance to the city each time I come or I stay with Rhys and Feyre. I figured if I invited you back to theirs, it would be weird.”

Nesta opened her mouth to speak only to close it again. Words were taking longer to exit her brain too.

“I am looking to rent a place,” Cassian continued. “It’s been on my mind more and more but I didn’t want to get ahead of myself and do that if there wasn’t a reason to. We hadn’t discussed where this was going and you seemed to be quite casual so...”

Cassian trailed off, gazing at the same empty spot on the wall opposite that had enraptured Nesta earlier.

“You fly from Illyria to Velaris. Daily?”

“Now, I do. Yeah.”

“And you think I’m casual about this? About us?”

Cassian inhaled and turned to face her again. “Yeah, you’ve never mentioned wanting to do anything more – announce to friends or see my place so I figured you either didn’t care or didn’t mind me being here all the time. You never told Emerie that we got together after Solmas so I thought you didn’t want people to know. I thought you were embarrassed.”

“Huh.”

Nesta processed his words. She hadn’t told Emerie, even when pressed, that her stunt with the Illyrian choreography had worked. It was nothing to do embarrassment over Cassian but more that Nesta’s pride couldn’t handle how Emerie had read the situation from a distance.

“I’ve told Elain. She seems to think you’re into me.”

“She’s right. I am into you. In a massive way.”

“I’m kind of into you too. In a massive way.”

Cassian’s following laugh was more nervous air being released from his lungs than mirth.

Nesta reached out to grab the material of his undershirt. “If you’re so into me, why did you invite me to brunch with you and Mor and suggest we go through an insulting charade?”

Cassian winced, reaching out to clasp her hand with his own, his large fingers entwining through her thin ones. His wings flexed and unflexed behind him.

“I’ve spoken about you so much to Mor. If she hasn’t worked out that we’re seeing each other, she’s worked out I’m into you. I thought if we could have brunch she’d see how awesome you were but I didn’t want to pressure you so thought I’d suggest something more.... casual.”

“I was agreeing until you started bringing up ex-girlfriends and making stupid suggestions!”

Cassian began to say something and then stopped before replying. “Well, I panicked.”

They sat back on the couch, Nesta’s hand now removed from Cassian’s top but her hand still cradled in his. The floorboards above them creaked in a rhythm as spring claimed the upstairs neighbours.

“What’s it like staying at Rhys?” Nesta asked.

Cassian shuddered. “Awful. One time I had to hose them.”

Nesta laughed and Cassian looked at her, eyes twinkling. Then, the twinkle dimmed a little. “I’m sorry about the ballet,” he said, his voice gentle, “I know you loved it.”

Nesta shrugged, feigning nonchalance but she knew Cassian could tell she was faking from the way he squeezed her hand. “Some things are meant to come to an end.”

“Not all things I hope,” he said, flexing his thumb to caress her skin.

Nesta squeezed back. “No, not all things.”

What would be her plan now? Options whirred through her mind. Find a new job, quit her current one, call Emerie for a drink where Nesta could confess that Emerie’s plan had worked and listen to her gloat on her genius for a couple of hours. Have brunch with Mor. Tell Feyre.

“What are you thinking?” Cassian asked her.

“I’m thinking we need to step up our game. I need to find a new role and you need to get an apartment that doesn’t cause you to hit your head on beams.”

“It’s fine – the beams move for me.”

“Of course, they do,” Nesta said with a glance upwards at her ceiling. If brick and mortar could shrug, it would have. “Then I was thinking we could have dinner with our collection of weirdos, tell them we’re in a committed relationship and sit back as they argue over it while we eat dessert.”

The broadest grin she’d ever seen appeared on Cassian’s face, “Yeah?”

“Only if you’re up for it?”

“Oh,” he said, a growl to his voice as he leant forward, “I’m always up for it.”

Nesta rolled her eyes - honestly, spring.

“Wait,” she said, placing her hand on Cassian’s bare chest – how in the Mother had he removed his top so fast? She looked over his shoulder to the basket of fruit on the sideboard, the juicy red sex apples shining. “First, I’m going to bake us a very nice fruit.”

#nessian #fanfiction #nesta archeron #cassian #nesta x cassian #nesta #acotar #acomaf #acowar #acofas #acosf #i wrote something #nessian fanfiction #nessian fic #nessian fan fiction #nessianfic #nesta archeron x cassian #nessian fan fic #a love for all seasons #a love for all seasons part 2 #a love for all seasons winter

[duskandstarlight]

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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#embersandlightfic #acotar fanfic #duskandstarlightwrites #nessian #nesta archeron #cassian #pro nesta #nesta stan #nesta x cassian #acotar #acosf #nessianfic

[duskandstarlight]

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.

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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