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whyisaravenlike-awritingdesk · 1 year

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Begged & Borrowed Time (iii, ao3)

(Chapter three: The Attor attacks Feyre in the woods, and with Cassian left behind to protect the Archeron house, he and Nesta are left alone together for the first time. Certain truths are revealed, forcing both of them to re-evaluate their first impressions of one another.) (prologue // previous chapter // next chapter)

Nesta watched the water simmer.

Gently, at first. Little more than a ripple breaking softly across a mirrored surface as the flame coaxed the pan of water slowly, slowly, towards warmth. As the morning stretched and settled, she kept her hands busy with tea leaves and strainers, a painted porcelain teapot edged with gold. Her eyes remained, though, on the curls of steam that rose wistfully towards the high windows, like phantom fingers brushing the glass. The china was cold in her hands, chilled, as the steam pushed, pressed at the latched window, as if looking for an escape.

She was looking for one too, she supposed.

As she lowered the leaves into the pot, she watched as the water’s surface broke in the pan. Ruptured, it boiled, bubbled with fervency, almost violently. She watched until it was spitting as if incandescent, hissing as if furious.

She felt that, too.

Elain dragged her attention away from the raging waters on the stove with a bright hum. “Just like old times,” she said, plucking up a handful of eggs from the wooden counter. She inspected the shells with a soft smile playing on her lips, gentle and unassuming, and when she looked up - meeting Nesta’s eyes through the gathering steam - her gaze was warm and unfettered.

Nesta couldn’t smile. Not as she remembered the cottage in the woods, the mornings and nights spent like this. Elain cooking and Nesta doing the preparation, the cleaning afterwards. Yes, just like old times— except it had been far more austere, back then. Nesta didn’t point out the obvious, that they’d only rarely had eggs in that cottage. That they hadn’t had an oven this big or a kitchen this well-stocked. She only nodded, and Elain smiled still, rolling up the sleeves of her plain dress and gently lowering the eggs into the boiling water.

She turned, leaning against the counter and brushing her hand down the apron covering her skirts. “Won’t Tomas worry?” she asked as Nesta’s silence continued. “That you didn’t come home last night?”

Nesta felt her fingers suddenly slack, heard the clatter as she dropped a porcelain spoon onto the tea tray a little too hard. It rung, echoed off the tiled floor.

Worry.

She doubted he’d worry even if she were lying dead in a ditch somewhere. His greatest concern would only be the prospect of any more chests of gold dying with her, his greatest loss the severing of ties with her father and his wealth. Elain cast a fleeting glance to the dress Nesta had loaned— plain, just like hers. A kitchen was no place for finery, after all, and so instead of borrowing one of Elain’s finer gowns, Nesta had taken this one, found tucked into the back of the wardrobe in the room she had spent the night in. She had arrived with nothing, had left the Mandray house with no intention of spending the night under her father’s roof— but no, Tomas would not worry.

Nesta looked at her sister, so lovely in the early morning light. The smile on her face so clear, so breathtakingly honest… she didn’t have it in her to shatter it. Nesta only shrugged, instead, and said, “I passed the staff on the road. I asked the stable boy to send him a message, tell him I’d be staying the night.”

Elain nodded, hummed. Murmured something about that having been a good idea, but Nesta had already turned her attention back to the tea tray, filling it with cups and saucers.

It wasn’t a lie— but it felt like one. It felt as though her every breath these days was one of dishonesty, her every step false and perjured.

The pan threatened to boil over, the eggs inside rattling, clamouring against the smooth walls of the metal pan. Without a word, Nesta handed Elain a bowl, a large spoon. A knife for the butter. A practiced routine, one they had fallen back into without thinking. Old familiarity settled in her bones, and for a moment Nesta might have believed that they had slipped right back to that cottage. To their old lives, where nothing much had changed at all.

Elain nudged her with a hip, a smile blossoming on her face as, despite herself, Nesta felt a tentative smile of her own. For just one tenuous, trembling moment, she could pretend that all was as it was before— that she was who she had been before.

“Told you,” Elain said cheerfully. “Just like old times.”

***

Elain’s words echoed, repeated over and over as Nesta carried the silver tea tray to the morning room. As she crossed the warm, comfortable space furnished with rich fabrics, passing window after window overlooking the lawn, she took in the velvet sofas. The bookcases filled with books untouched, the pianoforte never played. Such perfect, sumptuous wealth. The thin curtains were pulled back to let in the light, and at the far end of the room, the sun drifted gently over the round mahogany table, it’s surface polished and gleaming.

Just like old times— only Nesta wasn’t using the broken crockery from the cottage as she laid the table. She set down a lace table cloth, thick cotton napkins. Porcelain plates with cursive A’s embossed in gold. Not the same service used at dinner the night before— no, this was the casual set. Comparatively plain and yet still frighteningly expensive. As she straightened the heavy silver knives, she understood why her father had lost all of their money all those years ago. This was what he deemed casual. Embellished plates and solid silver forks.

Elain was quick to follow, light steps crossing the length of the morning room as she held a tray of her own, carrying pastries and toast, jam and butter. A bowl of scrambled eggs, a few sausages and rashers of bacon, too. Nesta felt her mouth practically water at the smell of it all, at the sight of the bowls and plates Elain set down on the fine tablecloth.

Breakfast at the Mandray house was generally a thin, silent, affair. Tomas’ father presiding over nothing but porridge and bread. Her husband and his brother, all but draining the teapot. There were eggs if they were lucky, bacon if they were even luckier. If Tomas’ father had sold his chopped wood particularly well at market that week, they ate well, if a little simply. Sometimes his mother would sprinkle some of the pepper they used so sparingly over the eggs, and when she sat down in her seat, she would give Nesta a small smile as they ate, savouring the extra taste - the extra expense - like it was a guilty pleasure.

Nesta had already lifted a small handful of peppercorns from the kitchen. Wrapped them in cloth and tucked the parcel into her pocket— not for her husband, but for the woman who smiled softly at her over poached eggs sprinkled with black pepper.

Her hand was drifting to her pocket to feel the pepper still there when the sound of the front door opening made her head snap up. Elain paused too, looking to the windows and the grounds outside still covered with snow.

Together they watched as Feyre walked right across the lawn, over the grass towards the line of trees bordering the estate. The elegant one - Rhysand - was right beside her, hands in his pockets, raven hair glinting in the bright sunlight. They were stark against the brightness of the snow, both of them wearing leathers so similar to the ones that the other two winged fae had worn last night. They were speaking, heads bent close together, Feyre’s face tilted up, the sunlight glancing off her jaw. Her fae lord smirked at something she had said, and even trudging through fallen snow, their steps were in time, elegant and smooth.

“He seems nice,” Elain shrugged, pulling out a chair and sitting, her back to the window. She held out the plate of toast as Nesta set out the toast rack.

“Nice?” Nesta echoed, incredulous as she slid each piece of cooling toast between the silver triangles. She wondered if they were talking of the same creature— if they’d sat around the same table last night and listened to the same story.

Elain hummed as she poured herself some tea. A golden ribbon of it spilled from the spout, sweet and warm, and Nesta realised as it landed in the china teacup that she’d forgotten to fetch the sugar. She cursed as Elain reached for the milk, her fingers closing about the curled bone-china handle of the jug.

“As nice as fae can be, I suppose,” her sister shrugged, pouring the milk.

Nesta frowned. First at Elain, then at Feyre outside, now nothing more than a shadow disappearing between the trees.

“I forgot the sugar,” she announced flatly, tearing her eyes away from the forest in the distance, from Feyre and her lord. Heading to the kitchen, Nesta tried to forget how her sister had looked. How the sunlight had bathed her in golden, fresh, light, how she had smiled at the dark-haired fae lord and how he had smiled at her, too. She didn’t let herself dwell on how it seemed for all the world like, when Feyre had been brought back as fae, she hadn’t been robbed of a home.

She’d been granted one.

***

The tiny porcelain bowl was light in hand once retrieved, the tiny silver tongs delicate in her grip. Too light, too delicate, because Nesta almost shattered both when she returned to the morning room. Finding the other two fae seated at the round table, her fingers clenched the porcelain until it hurt.

She had been raised on stories of knights and round tables, beautiful tales woven thick with chivalry and bravery. Elain, sitting before the window with the sunlight setting her plaited hair aglow, might well have been one of the maidens from those tales, but there was nothing chivalrous about the warriors sitting on the other side of the mahogany. Nothing romantic about the daggers each of them had buckled at the hip, because who came armed to breakfast?

Nothing gallant, either, about those wings, somehow even more shocking in the light of day. The membrane shone umber in the glow, a myriad of colours where last night she had seen only black. She could almost trace the bones and tendons running through those wings, like the branches of mighty trees, and the porcelain threatened to crack again.

The beautiful one - Azriel - looked up as she entered, and beside him, the big one did too. Feyre hadn’t ever had a chance to name him last night, but Nesta found herself perfectly content to refer to him simply as the big one. She didn’t want his name— it spoke to a familiarity she didn’t want, an acquaintance she hadn’t asked for.

They looked absurdly large at the smaller table, and she might have laughed were she not so concerned the chairs were about to break under the weight of muscle and wing. The silver fork looked far too dainty for his grip as the big one speared a rasher of bacon and set it on his plate. Nesta watched, half expecting the metal to bend in his hand, as she set the bowl of sugar cubes down with a dull thud. Rounding the table, she retreated to a seat next to Elain as the big one looked up at her from beneath thick eyelashes.

“Morning, Nesta.”

His voice was rough at the edges, like sandpaper to her senses. The way he said her name - dark and taunting and dripping with ire - had her hackles rising already. She didn’t answer, only straightened her spine and brushed the skirts over her lap as she sat. Azriel blinked at his companion, sharing some kind of look, before he nodded at Nesta in greeting, a polite gesture as he reached for the sugar.

His hands were a mass of scars. Etiquette told her not to look, gentility not to stare, but she couldn’t help but notice the ridges of scar tissue half concealed by the deep-blue stones in leather half-gauntlets. He used the silver tongs - so ridiculously small in his hand - and dropped a single cube of sugar into his tea, stirring as he nodded to an ivory square sitting beside the toast rack.

“The letter,” Azriel said smoothly. “It’s finished.”

The paper was thick and creamy, heavy in her hands as she plucked it up. Sealed with black wax and stamped with a mountain crowned by three stars, Nesta turned it over between her fingers. She traced the seal with her fingertip, feeling the ridges of the mountain, the points of each star.

It made her frown as she brushed the mountain again, briefly wondering at the significance of it. She wondered if those stars had names, if such constellations were visible on this side of the wall.

But it wasn’t the stars or the mountain that bothered her. No— it was the sealing of the letter itself, like they had closed a door and shut her out. They expected her to deliver this letter, but hadn’t even granted her the courtesy of knowing what it said.

For all she knew, it could mention the Archeron name. Could mention Elain, could threaten her impending marriage, and Nesta wasn’t about to walk blindly into another mistake, another disastrous choice. With swift fingers, she made to break the seal and find out exactly what was in the pages she would be carrying. But before she could so much as brush her fingertip against the night-dark wax for a second time, warm fingers closed about hers, the grip tight.

“I wouldn’t,” the big one said with a tsk. “It’s not addressed to you.”

“I’m the one making sure it’s delivered,” Nesta retorted dryly, looking at where his hand was closed about her wrist. He smirked, but his eyes were cold, and his grip didn’t relent. She hadn’t even seen him move. Hadn’t heard him as he’d leaned over and shot out a hand before she could slide a nail beneath that seal. “Since that’s something you’re apparently incapable of.”

“Doesn’t give you the right to read it,” he shrugged. His hazel eyes dropped to where his fingers fitted about her, where his skin met hers. Then up, back to her eyes, and she was almost breathless with rage, stunned that he’d dare to be so bold, so brazen, as to think he could lay a hand on her. His eyes darkened, and Nesta pulled away sharply, her expression murderous.

“Don’t touch me.”

His fingers fell away as he leaned back in his chair, holding his hands up in surrender. “Sorry, sweetheart,” he said, in a voice that was taunting and arrogant. Cocksure and confident, the kind that made her grit her teeth. “But it’s still not your letter.”

He didn’t touch her again, but he didn’t shift his gaze until she relented, until she tucked the letter into the pocket of her skirts. His lips kicked up at the corners, as though he were testing to see how far he could push her. A challenge shone in his eyes, searing, the kind that should have chilled her to the bone. It only made her angry, incited her further, because what was her life but a game to this creature? Like a cat with a mouse, he was playing with her, taunting her, as if she were insignificant, inconsequential.

As Elain spoke about the weather and her father’s business - with Azriel listening politely - those hazel eyes bored into her soul, took in every single part of her, every movement and every breath. Last night the battlefield had been the dinner table— now it was the breakfast table, eyes meeting and clashing over tea instead of wine. Just as she’d done the night before, she was about to ask him what he thought he was looking at, when the front door opened for the second time that morning. Footsteps sounded on the marble and Rhysand appeared a moment later, carrying with him the cold and the scent of pine. Snow clung to his shoulders and boots, melting quickly as he strode across the morning room floor. He reached the rounded table and smiled gratefully as he spied the waiting teapot.

“Feyre’s finally told you to get lost, has she?” the big one said, leaning back in his chair as though he were entirely at home. His wings shifted as he did, sitting at an angle over the wooden arm rests that Nesta didn’t think could be comfortable. Beside him, Azriel huffed a laugh, a smirk on his face as the wisps of shadow seemed to titter and swarm at his elbows.

Nesta hoped Feyre had. Hoped she’d told all three of them to get lost, to leave and never darken their doorstep again. A fool’s hope, considering the way her sister had looked at the Lord of Night, but Nesta clung to it nonetheless, hoping she could just show them out and wash her hands of all of this.

“Oh, fuck off,” Rhysand retorted. He sat in a chair at the curve of the table, as far away from Nesta as he could get. “I left her to practice,” he said, eyes flicking to the woods outside. Nesta’s eyes followed, but saw nothing. Rhysand cleared his throat and pulled the teapot forwards. “Apologies for the language,” he added, almost conspiratorially, to Elain. As he poured his tea, Nesta couldn’t help but wonder if he would have apologised to her for cursing. If he’d have thought her ears too delicate for such language.

Elain only hummed lightly, a slight blush tinting her cheeks. “What is she practicing?”

“Magic,” he answered simply. “Your sister has power. A lot of it— I want her to be able to use it. To protect herself should she need to.”

Elain paled, and Nesta stopped stirring her tea, her fingers growing numb. She felt hollow, a coldness sweeping through her, and all she could think of was the Children of the Blessed. Chanting and ringing bells through the town, swearing that the fae would give them powers, bless them with magic and long life. She fought a shudder, and felt the big one’s eyes on her, all but daring her to sneer again.

Don’t expect me to sit here and say nothing as you sneer at her for a choice she didn’t get to make.

She heard his words from the night before clear in her mind, so clear he might as well have spoken them again. Glancing at him over the rim of her china cup, she watched his lips press together, saw his eyes flash, and would have sworn he heard his words echo too, felt them on his tongue.

She forced her distaste down until she felt like she was choking on it, drowning in it.

Silence fell, where none of them quite knew what to say. The scent of the bacon turned her stomach, and Nesta didn’t want to eat, didn’t want to sit and look at the woods where her sister was practicing with some unknown power. It made her feel sick, like everything she had ever known was unravelling, and it was getting harder and harder to keep her hand steady as she lowered her china cup to its saucer.

Silence— uncomfortable, terse silence, until the big one cleared his throat.

“Thank you Elain,” he said, polishing off a pastry. “For the breakfast.”

A soft smile, a deferential nod— all of the things they gave to Elain freely. They had drawn their blades as Nesta approached last night, but Elain… Elain got smiles and thanks.

“Oh,” she said, waving a hand. Another blush spread across her cheeks, somehow making her even lovelier. “Nesta did just as much as me.”

He blinked, his maddeningly soft lips smirking as he tilted his head. Propped it on a fist, elbow on the table. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d have known how,” he shrugged, eyes sliding from Elain to Nesta. “Being such a pampered princess and all.”

She didn’t flinch. Didn’t so much as blink as his words hit her, hit a nerve she didn’t want to admit was so exposed. It will be a prince for you, Mama had always said. Elain will marry for love, but you, Nesta, you will be a princess. A queen.

But it was Feyre wearing the crown now. Elain marrying a lord. Nesta wasn’t a princess, she was barely more than a beggar. She had deviated so far from the path her mother had laid for her— so far that it was invisible now, with no way, no hope, of finding it again. Slowly, she exhaled, gritted her teeth.

“What, exactly, do you think you know about me?” she asked, keeping her voice quiet, lethally soft. “What makes you think you can pass comment?”

His eyes turned dark. “I’ve met plenty like you.”

Even Azriel looked at him sharply, but Nesta only plucked up a spoon and stirred her tea again, even though the sugar had long since dissolved. Vitriolic disdain coloured her face as she regarded him, so out of place among her father’s furniture. And yet those ruby stones were the brightest thing in the room, catching her eye whenever the sun drifted over the smooth, faceted surface.

From the curve of the table, Rhysand sighed. Shook his head and looked warily at the fae who still had his eyes trained definitively on Nesta. The lord’s hand dipped into an inside pocket and pulled out a small piece of paper. A pen followed, and Nesta watched as he wrote a hasty note in an elegant, cursive hand. She was about to ask why he was writing correspondence at the breakfast table - was etiquette and courtesy entirely lost on these creatures? - when it disappeared into thin air, there and gone in a blink.

Elain gasped, the sound echoing on the china. There was a clatter as she put her teacup down a little too hastily, her saucer rattling as Rhysand winked.

A faint smell of burning hung in the air, like sparks, as the paper returned. Rhysand smirked but deigned to keep the contents of the note private before penning another and sending it into the ether. The burning seemed to choke her, seemed to consume her, and though faintly she heard Elain asking how it worked, how he could do such a thing, Nesta couldn’t focus, couldn’t do anything but sip her tea and pray it took away the taste that lingered in her mouth.

She didn’t care how it worked. She only wished they weren’t subjected to such magic tricks at breakfast, only wished she could think of anything else besides that burning smell, besides what Feyre was doing in the woods, wondering whether the power in her veins burned too. She wondered what else they had done to her sister, what else they had changed, and, too, of that disappearing note— how it folded into nothing, how Feyre might be able to do such a thing now, with just a flick of her wrist—

“Nesta?”

She blinked. Looked up to find Elain standing beside her chair, a hand on Nesta’s shoulder.

“I said I’m going to get changed,” Elain said, nodding at her dress. It was an old thing she’d thrown on to cook in, her hair pulled back into a simple plait. It was almost as plain as it would have been in the cottage, and as Elain smiled, told her she was going to get ready for the day properly, Nesta nodded, felt her sister’s fingers squeeze her shoulder.

She wouldn’t ask her to stay. Wouldn’t admit that the thought of being alone with these creatures made her skin crawl. No, she watched as Elain disappeared almost as quickly as Rhysand’s note, grateful that one sister, at least, was free of them.

She longed for her own excuse to leave as they descended into quiet chatter and inside jokes. The big one poured himself another cup of tea, the china so fragile in his hand. He didn’t take sugar, Nesta noted. Nor milk— just strong, black tea. As if she needed any more indication he was from another world, she thought wryly, as she dropped another two cubes into her own cup.

Azriel was speaking quietly when Rhysand looked sharply at the window. He rose so quickly she was surprised the chair didn’t tip over, dark hair tumbling over his forehead as his fingers sought his blade. Grimly, he looked to his companions, uttering just one word before vanishing in a swathe of darkness: “Trouble.”

***

The china cup was left forgotten, discarded on the table.

“Go,” the big one said, rising from his chair and looking to the windows. The world outside was calm and silent, but the red stones on his arms and chest were pulsing, and as Azriel stood too, Nesta noticed his stones were shining too. Not brightly, not exactly, but glowing nonetheless, as if alive somehow. “I’ll stay here.”

Azriel’s blade hissed as it was drawn, a thing so wickedly sharp and gleaming that it made her shiver. Strange symbols were stamped on the sheath, and it seemed to sing as he held it in his hand— a promise, a dark promise of violence and retribution in that blade. The big one pulled a dagger too, one of shining silver with a leather wrapped hilt. Much plainer, but no less sharp. Azriel nodded briskly before he, too, vanished into the thin air the way Rhysand had done.

“What is it?” Nesta asked, turning to the window as she stood.

The big one didn’t answer. With confident, sure steps he walked to each window. Nesta shadowed him— unconsciously following as he strode from the window by the table right to the other end of the room, past the sofas and the empty hearth, and back again. She didn’t know what was wrong, but her heart pounded, and as she looked up to the ceiling, all her thoughts turned to Elain. Getting to Elain, making sure she was safe, too.

“She’s fine.” He spoke before Nesta could make for the door, and she didn’t know how he had sensed that her mind was on her sister upstairs, but as his eyes flicked to the door, it made her pause.

“If something is wrong—”

“It’s fine,” he insisted. “Nothing is getting near this house. Leave Elain to continue dressing. Unless,” he shrugged, flicking the pad of his thumb over the flat of his dagger. “You’d rather her stand here in her corset?”

His eyes flicked to the moulded plaster ceiling, as if he could hear her upstairs, and Nesta glared, furious at him for even daring to picture her sister in a corset, for daring to let it cross his mind. He smirked at that, as if he could tell exactly what she’d been thinking, and dragged his eyes over her as if he’d like to see her in her corset. A searching gaze that roamed her plain, borrowed dress— suddenly she felt the bones of her own corset pitching her ribs, suddenly too tight to breathe. She was about to huff in indignation, but before she could draw breath, he huffed a laugh and was serious again.

“It’s fine,” he repeated, as though he were trying to drill it into her. “Let Az and Rhys find out what’s going on. Leave Elain to get ready and stay where you are.” His voice softened a fraction. Not much, but just barely. “I can protect the house and I can protect Elain, but I need you to listen to me.”

The air was cold in her lungs as she breathed. Listen to him— trust him, like it was easy. Like it didn’t go against everything she had ever been taught. As he turned his attention to the window, Nesta swallowed, and when he looked at her over his shoulder, tilted his head as if to say, well?… Stiffly, she nodded.

Blade in hand, he nodded too. The gleam in his eyes said, good.

It was impossible, though, to forget that he was a predator born and bred as he prowled before that window. For the first time that morning, his prying, alert gaze wasn’t on her. The powerful spread of him, the blade in his hand, was focused on the landscape outside. The smirk from earlier, the tilt of lips as he’d called her sweetheart was gone. Vanished and replaced by something far more focused, entirely more deadly.

His wings quivered as he flexed his shoulders, the red stone on his hand gleaming.

“Do all warriors wear jewels to battle?” Nesta asked, nodding curly to the rubies on his hands. She took in the ones at his shoulders and knees too, the one in the centre of his chest. Magnificent things, really. Just one would feed the entire Mandray house for six months.

“Jewels?” he asked, sneaking a glance at her from the corner of his eye. She nodded again at the rubies as his brow furrowed. “They’re not jewels.”

The hand around his blade flexed, fingers lifting from the hilt one by one, curling methodically back around it. Sure and practised, as though the blade were a part of him, fitting easily into his palm.

“They look like jewels to me.”

“Because you’re not an Illyrian.”

Nesta glowered at his back, at the wings that marked him as one of them. As if he could sense her watching - and perhaps he could - he sighed so heavily she thought he might have burst a lung.

“They’re siphons. To control and refine our power.”

“Do all fae have them?”

“No,” he answered curtly. A moment passed, a beat of silence, and then perhaps he regretted his short answer, the finality of it, because after a breath, he continued. “I’m not high fae. Not like Rhys or your sister. Az and I are different. Lesser fae, some call us.” Nesta didn’t see much of a distinction. Higher or lesser— all were monstrous to her, no matter the blood in their veins or the shape of their ears. “Illyrians are born for battle. Killing power, they call it. But it’s brutal and haphazard and dangerous in close quarters, so most of us need a siphon, sometimes two, to make it easier to wield.”

“You have seven,” she pointed out dryly.

Cruelly, he smirked. “So you can count, then?”

The insult smarted, stung even though it shouldn’t. “Of course I can count.”

“Forgive me,” he said, in a voice that said he didn’t want her forgiveness at all. “Since your sister couldn’t read, I assumed your education must have been just as lacking.”

Fury boiled, threatened to bubble over just like the pan she’d watched so intently that morning. Lacking— lacking? Her education had left her with scars. Left her aching and bruised after a day in the schoolroom. Dancing and singing and music, history and languages and geography. Literature and poetry, horse riding and yes— mathematics. Everything to prepare her for a life of nobility— a life as a duchess at least. All of it wasted, and as he folded his arms, Nesta sneered, cruel and cold and vicious.

“I know three languages. I can sing you the history of this land and the mortal lands on the continent like the trilling of a bird. I can run an estate and manage lands better than any man— I don’t lack for anything.”

He turned to face her fully, looked at her with apathy in his eyes. “Then why are you married to a pauper?”

Silence. Vast and echoing silence, almost deafening. Her ears rang with it, her blood hammered, and her chest rose and fell too rapidly as he took a step forwards, the window and the forest beyond entirely forgotten for the moment. Closer, he took each step maddeningly closer, prowling nearer until she could smell him, could feel the heat and warmth of him.

“Because that’s what he is, isn’t he, Nesta?”

She hated it— hated the way he said her name, softly and filled with dangerous, predatory meaning. His eyes were so completely dark, no hint of the taunting gleam from earlier, replaced by something animalistic. Something almost terrifying as he looked at her, spoke her name with a low voice, words slow and purposeful.

A low hum, a vibration deep in his chest. “Your sisters haven’t guessed the scale of it, have they? But let me guess— they know he’s poorer than your father, but do they know how poor?” His eyes fell to the sleeves of the dress she’d borrowed. Somehow, she knew he was picturing the threadbare thing she’d arrived in yesterday, the worn sleeves and the stitches she’d made to salvage it. “Feyre said your father gave you a chest filled with Tamlin’s treasure.” He tilted his head, took another slow step forwards until she could feel his breath dancing over her face, until his powerful chest was almost pressed against hers. “Do your sisters still think there’s any of that coin left?” A cold, cruel blink. “I’d wager it’s gone now, isn’t it? Or running low, at least.”

She drew away, stepped back until the distance between them was large enough for her to breathe again. “You know nothing,” she bit out, her words sharp and cutting.

A mirthless, humourless smile pulled at his lips. “I know what poverty looks like.”

Silence was all she could manage as he turned back to the window, a smug glint in his eyes. Triumph, as if this were a battle he’d just won, and Nesta marched forward until she stood beside him, staring at the glass and the snow-covered lawn outside.

He never had answered her first question.

“Tell me what’s happening,” she demanded. “Where is my sister?”

He snorted. “Now you care whether she lives or dies?”

She clenched her fists, so hard her nails marked her skin, leaving tiny crescents in her palms. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You let her go hunting in that forest with little care for her safety,” he answered coldly. The same thing he’d thrown at her last night, the same accusation, and oh, Nesta was tired of holding her tongue. Tired of bearing the blame and the burden alone.

Enough— she’d had enough of papering over the cracks. Of pretending this was what she had wanted. She was breaking, bending, snapping under the weight of all the lies she’d told, ones crafted to makes others more comfortable. She upheld this ridiculous fiction to stop Elain from ever feeling guilty, to stop her father - who had done nothing to save them in that cottage - from feeling discomfited. And for what? Where had it gotten her except here— being hounded by a creature from above the wall who dared to think he knew her. Dared to think he knew what she had and had not given.

She had nothing left, nothing at all, and Nesta… broke. Shattered.

“I married a brute of a man to give Feyre one less mouth to feed,” she hissed, brutal and ruthless. Easy— it was surprising how easy it was to set those words free. So easy to let them spill from her tongue, burning as they left her, because it was a stranger who listened. One she might never see again— hoped never to see again. It loosened her tongue, and she found herself speaking the truths she had buried because… it was easier. Easier to bare herself to a stranger who looked at her with contempt than face the heartbreak on Elain’s face, hear Feyre’s I-told-you-so. “I sold myself into poverty because it was the only thing I could do, the only thing I had to give,” she added coldly, jabbing her finger into his chest and hoping to hurt, but it was solid and unyielding. “If you think I wanted this, then you’re wrong. You know nothing.”

Hatred punctuated her words as she hit his chest first with her finger, then with the heel of her palm— and he let her. Her breath came in ragged gasps as her hand fell away, as his eyes widened.

She watched as her words had some affect on him, some alchemy she didn’t understand, shifting the ground beneath their feet. His easy, confident gait was suddenly uncertain. Unsure, and for a moment he was speechless. That sharp tongue, razor-like wit, was silenced, and though Nesta had long been used to rendering the men around her tongue-tied… It was never like this. Never with her truths, never with something as simple, as tragic, as the unravelling of her lies.

He swallowed. Had the grace to look guilty as he lowered his hazel eyes. Chastened, humbled. Slowly, he blinked. Looked at her wedding ring as if seeing it - seeing her - in an entirely new light. Something changed. In him, in her— as if her words had broken some spell, or maybe cast one, she wasn’t sure. All she knew was that the air between them was suddenly less cold. No less charged, but whatever passed between them with each glance was less fraught, somehow.

Gone was all trace of victory, of taunting. The stillness that came over him was preternatural, and he straightened as he looked at her, his eyes lingering on the sleeves of her dress - remembering the frayed hems, no doubt - before roving up, spanning her waist that was too thin. She assessed him too, as if this were some kind of truce, some fragile peace.

One that wouldn’t last. As she noted the hair escaping from the bun at the back of his neck, the wings that were pulled back, she knew the taunting and the riling and the arrogance would be back soon enough. She knew— because she looked at him without contempt for the first time, and knew that couldn’t last. This was only the numbness that follows an explosion, the ringing silence that lingers before sound comes flooding back. For that moment, and that moment alone, they were just two people standing in one room, but it was a moment forever bound to break. A bubble waiting to burst.

He made her blood slow in her veins as she noticed the small scar near his eyebrow - what injury was bad enough to scar a fae? - the golden skin and the dark eyes. He smelled of cinnamon and leather and sea salt, and the small ruby studded in his ear glinted as he moved. For a brief, fleeting moment, she saw his walls lower completely, defences all but gone.

Half a minute later, those dark eyes turned glassy, fogged, as though he were no longer fully present. It took a handful of seconds for them to clear, but when the sheen vanished, he took a step back and gave her brisk nod.

“Your sister’s safe,” he said quietly, warrior’s stance relaxing. He looking to the ceiling. “And Elain is still dressing,” he added. “Safe and sound.”

Safe and sound. Nesta felt her heart pound because wasn’t that all she had ever wanted? All she’d sold herself for? Her happiness and her future— gone, to ensure Elain was safe and sound?

“Thank you,” she said, her voice like a whisper. Sincere, for the first time since meeting him.

It surprised her— and him too, because as he made for the door, strides long and powerful, he turned back. Looked over his shoulder as his finger alighted on the handle, eyes shadowed with something like regret.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “Feyre never said.”

She didn’t need him to elaborate. She shrugged, because it was all she could do. “She thought it was what I wanted,” she said idly. After all, she had insisted she was in love with Tomas. Had prayed her sisters would believe it. She couldn’t fault either of them now, for doing exactly as she’d wished. His eyes shuttered, and Nesta hissed for the hundredth time that morning. “I don’t want your pity.”

“It’s not pity,” he said incredulously, almost pained, agonised as his eyes widened. He huffed, shook his head, dark hair coming loose and falling over his forehead. Quietly, his voice soft despite his size, he added, “You remind me of my mother.”

Something flickered in his eyes then, something Nesta thought might have been sadness. Might have been a well of grief so deep there was no bottom. Beneath it, some burgeoning kind of respect flickered too, a begrudging admission that he’d been wrong last night, as he spat at her across the dinner table. He still stood with his wings spread wide, but his hand dropped from the door handle, sheathing his dagger at last.

“Is that supposed to be a compliment?” she asked archly, folding her arms over her chest. Just what every girl wants to hear— you remind me of my mother. She huffed, reminding herself that she didn’t want to hear anything from him. Compliment or not.

“The highest I can give,” he said simply.

He ran a hand through his messy hair and turned the door handle at last. Nesta didn’t know why - couldn’t possibly explain it - but she stepped forward. He paused as she did, as if knowing, somehow, that this wasn’t done, they weren’t finished.

At last, she said, “You never told me your name.”

He turned, a half smile on his face.

“Cassian.”

Tagging: @hiimheresworld @highladyofillyria

#nessian #nessian fic #i am literally about to leave for the airport but wanted to get this posted #i have a feeling its going to be buried because its posted so early so im scheduling a self reblog for later #begged & borrowed time

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