Something I wish more heated rivalry fans were aware of is pre season games. More importantly, that Ottawa and Montreal play each other for the pre season. Which means the first Ottawa vs Montreal game after Shane signs with the centaurs is a game that will have zero consequences and will not affect their playoff chances in the long run at all. Ilya Rozanov is spending that entire fucking game in the sin bin
Chapter thirty-six: Elain finally speaks in something other than riddles, and Nesta prepares for the House of Wind to play host to an Inner Circle family dinner.
Long time no see, huh? I swear I didn't mean for this to be so neglected for over a year but in honour of the final day of another wonderful @cassianappreciationweek, i'm resurrecting this fic at last.
(Prologue // previous chapter // next chapter)
*********
Elain was awake.
In the silence of her bedroom - broken only by the sound of the wind howling outside - Elain was awake. Or, at least she seemed to be, Nesta thought as she settled into the wooden chair set in an alcove before the wide windows, twin to the one her sister had taken up residence in. In the thin, watery light that broke from behind the clouds, Elain watched the horizon with a face that was blank and pale and entirely expressionless, her attention fixed on some innocuous point beyond the mountains, like she was trying to see all the way to the wall— half the world and a thousand miles away.
But her eyes - their mother’s eyes, Nesta thought wryly - were dark and listless. Unblinking.
It was a good sign— wasn’t it?
That her sister had risen from her bed? Had been conscious enough to take five shaking strides across that room to reach that chair by the window?
“Elain?” Nesta spoke into the silence, feeling it deepen even as she fought to break it. “Are you… well?”
Well.
She might have snorted had her eyes not been trained on her sister’s vacant face, searching for some kind of sign; a glimmer of movement.
There was nothing. A soft woollen blanket lay draped over Elain’s knees, dragging along the floor, and though only a soft dressing gown hung from her shoulders to tie loosely around her too-thin waist, she was so entirely still that not even her chest rose and fell as she breathed.
No, the only sign she still breathed at all was the way it hitched in her chest every now and then, like something in the silence bothered her.
Nesta certainly knew what that was like.
So she cleared her throat, watching the dust motes dance as they turned silver in the weak light, tilting her head and leaning back against her chair, running a hand along her skirts as she said, simply,
“Feyre’s back.”
She didn’t know what kind of reaction she was expecting. Didn’t know whether Elain would startle or cry or stand, but in the end the revelation was almost swallowed by the still, silent hush that hung thick in the air and Elain…
Said nothing. Did nothing.
Barely even blinked at the news, like even though her eyes were open, she wasn’t really awake at all.
And some small, fractured piece of Nesta wished that she wasn’t either, as she sat and watched her sister sitting motionless in that chair, searching for any kind of indication that Elain was still in there, somewhere, and not lost to them forever.
It hurt— in a way she hadn’t expected it to. The Cauldron had been brutal and merciless, a crucible of suffering, but at least it been swift.
This was slow decay; a war of attrition.
Nesta wished she hadn’t bothered leaving her fucking bed.
Or, rather, Cassian’s bed.
She had left him sleeping, his breathing a steady and even beat as she had slid out from underneath his arm. For a moment his fingers had searched blindly for her, but then he’d turned his face into the pillow, inhaled, and the hand he’d had fisted in the sheets had loosened again. The furrow in his brow had been smoothed away by sleep, his hair mussed, and he looked so different from the General that had returned to her after fetching Feyre that her chest had ached just watching him, committing to memory the way his lips parted as he breathed, and how the late-morning sun drifted lazily across the planes of his face.
He had looked peaceful.
And it wasn’t lost on Nesta that the last time she’d seen him sleeping in that bed, he’d been half dead, his wings stretched out either side of him and held in place with splints and bandages. Now, he spent his morning nap with one lay draped over his shoulder - over her, before she’d risen - like it offered extra protection, on top of the arm he’d slung over her waist as he curled his body into hers, her back flat against his chest and his palm resting lightly on her abdomen.
Nesta shook her head now, clearing it.
She hadn’t wanted to leave. She had woken and for the first time since Hybern, felt the urge to burrow back under the covers and go back to sleep. No nightmares had haunted her, like just being near him had chased them away. Like being with him - around him - was the only thing that didn’t hurt, smoothing over some edge in her that otherwise remained sharp enough to wound. And maybe she just wanted to hear him say her name again, whispered against her hair. Maybe she just wanted to hear him say he loved her again.
But Elain.
She needed to see Elain. Especially…
Especially in the wake of everything Cassian had told her, as he sat in a bath filled with warm water and scented bubbles; as she had cleaned the blood from his hands and turned the water the colour of rust.
Nesta reined in the shudder that threatened to wrack through her, leashing it before her entire body locked up, tension in each of her limbs.
Do you want to see her?
Cassian’s question came back to her in the silence of Elain’s borrowed bedroom, the wind outside the only thing breaking the hush that had settled inside those damned four walls. They seemed to be laughing at her now, Nesta thought, as she scowled at the cream-painted walls and the sconces and the faelights— so lively in her own room, yet suspiciously dormant in Elain’s. Because not once - not once - had Elain ventured beyond that bedroom, not even on days like today, when she was more lucid. Awake, even if only in the strictest possible sense.
So Nesta didn’t bother to extend the same question to Elain. Instead she remained sitting by her sister’s side, listening to the wind and holding a conversation with the silence, wondering what the hell she’d done in a previous life to warrant all of… this.
Softly, she sighed. Took a breath, trying to swallow around the lump in her throat that made it harder to breathe.
“Cassian and Azriel went to get her,” she said, her voice cracking as her hands curled, nails digging into her palms. “She’d made it to the Winter Court after leaving Spring - leaving Tamlin again, I suppose - and she was in trouble, by the sounds of it. But she’s… home, now.”
She wondered if Elain noticed the way Nesta stumbled on the word home. If it gave her pause, too.
But it was sepulchral, the silence that answered her. Lifeless and unending, as unyielding as the stone the House was carved from. Still, Nesta carried on - just as she had for weeks now, day after day after day - chipping away like she just needed to find the right words, the right combination of sentences to unlock something in her sister altogether.
“They’re coming up here for dinner tonight,” Nesta added, running a hand across the blanket that covered Elain’s knees, straightening it and banishing the single crease that proved there was life in her sister yet— that she had moved, just a little, since the last time Nesta had smoothed a palm over it. “All of them.”
He’d asked her, of course. Mumbled the invitation into her hair in the moments - seconds, really - before he’d fallen asleep. And there, softened by the weight of his arms around her and the warmth of him chasing away all the cold that still lingered deep inside her… Nesta had nodded. Had felt brave enough to stand in that dining room surrounding by Feyre’s new family, even though it would mean seeing Rhysand again. Seeing Morrigan again.
Her stomach twisted, now. Anxiety was a slick, persistent churning in her gut and that too-familiar burning in her palms pricked beneath the surface of her skin. But there had been so much bald hope in Cassian’s voice…
How could she have denied him?
“The invitation extends to you too, of course.”
Stupid, really.
Elain hadn’t left the room - hadn’t been dressed - in the weeks since they’d arrived, but… it was an olive branch, Nesta supposed. A life raft.
Still, there was nothing. Only a yawning silent, gaping like a void poised to swallow them both until—
“The flowers were being delivered today.”
Elain’s voice cracked the silence, hoarse and scraping and so entirely hollowed out by disuse that it sounded painful, a rasp that knifed its way up her throat as she turned to face her sister at last. Those eyes were still vacant, veiled by grief and despair, and for a moment Nesta only blinked in surprise, her jaw growing slack as she realised exactly what Elain had meant.
Flowers— for the wedding.
The wedding that should have been just days away, now.
Something deep, deep inside her splintered.
“I know,” Nesta whispered.
Elain’s fingers twitched, the one still bearing that iron band looking so much more horrendously out of place now, even more than it had done below the wall.
“Do you think he…” Elain’s voice was weak, trembling, like speaking in full sentences was still too costly. Too painful. Silently Nesta reached out and laid her hand across her sister’s knuckles. “What must he think happened to us?”
It was a quiet question; an aching question. One Nesta couldn’t answer.
And suddenly she wondered if this was the cost— of the youth and immortality they had been given. It was something others might have killed for, but as Nesta felt the hollow ache of grief in her own chest and saw it mirrored in every terse line of her sister’s face, she couldn’t help but wonder if the price they had paid in blood and terror, amongst shattered glass in a broken home, was worth it.
Could it ever be worth it?
As Elain twisted that iron ring around her finger - the most movement she’d had in days - Nesta wasn’t sure she knew the answer.
So she turned back to those damned dust motes, swirling and dancing as the sunlight drifted through the windows at an angle, the clouds beyond the windows casting half the room in shadow. It was all so much clearer now, she thought, as she watched with a different set of eyes. An entirely non-mortal set of eyes. Sharply, she huffed, the sound bending with the howling wind outside as it skimmed against the rock the House was carved from.
And then there was the other matter. The other piece of news Cassian had imparted before falling asleep.
Nesta’s brow lowered, her gaze darkening as she straightened in her chair, pushing back her shoulders.
“There’s something else you should know,” she said slowly. “He’s coming here, too.”
She didn’t need to specify who she meant. Elain stiffened— only slightly, barely even noticeable at all, but somehow that iron ring became even more stark against Elain’s pale skin as the words lingered between them, unacknowledged. Elain kept her eyes forward, a vacant haze across her features, but Nesta watched as the corner of her mouth titled downwards, so minute a change that a stranger wouldn’t have noticed.
Nesta noticed.
“I’ve told them to make sure he knows to stay away from you,” she added, turning her eyes to the window, following Elain’s gaze.
Was it cruel, she wondered, to let her watch the world outside? To let her glimpse the sun, when she would never again tend her garden below the wall?
“You— don’t have to see him. No matter who he is.”
Or what he is.
And perhaps she was being unfair, given that the auburn-haired fae had been as shocked as any of them that night in Hybern, as the water spilled from the Cauldron and swept across the cold floor, mingling with the blood already puddled on the stone. He had looked… horrified. And to his credit, he hadn’t attempted to seize Elain in those moments where the revelation had hung between them, as heavy and impenetrable as stone. He had gone right back to the Spring Court after Rhysand and Morrigan had spirited them away, with nothing but a final, longing glance as Feyre shattered the wards.
Still.
The thought of him being so close— just a staircase and a handful of walls away…
What guarantee did they have, she wondered - as she watched Elain’s fingers again travel to that ring on her finger, twisting it idly - that Lucien Vanserra would not try to take what he believed was his the moment Feyre’s back was turned?
He expects her to give himself over to him, just like that? Just because some magic cooking pot deems it so?
Hadn’t she said the same to Cassian, all those months ago?
And as rare and as blessed as the General thought it was, Nesta hadn’t managed to shake the disquiet that filled her whenever she thought of how, when it came down to it, there was so little choice. After all, what was a mating bond but a tether, a chain - a shackle - masquerading as a love story?
Cold pricked the tips of her fingers, her eyes beginning to burn as tears gathered behind her eyes. Nesta pulled back, turning her face away from the windows, from the light and the life of the city down below.
No, she didn’t think anything would change her mind when it came to the blessed Cauldron and the rare and wondrous magic of mating bonds. Cruel— it was cruel, on so many myriad levels that it was difficult to see it as anything but a kind of cosmic joke, a game played by gods that treated their lives as toys to be played with.
With white knuckles she gripped the armrests of her chair, listening to the wood creak beneath her fingers.
Would she scorch it, she wondered?
Leave it singed, like so many of her bedsheets lately, after she woke from a nightmare only to find herself burning from the inside out?
Nesta looked back at her sister, but a vacant expression had slid back over Elain’s eyes, like a shutter closed tight against the daylight. She was silent again, like the spike in that strange fire housed in Nesta’s bones had caused that strange emptiness, that weariness, in Elain to rear its head too.
And gods, Nesta missed her sister.
Even though Elain was sitting right there… She missed her.
Missed the girl that had once offered to poison her husband for her, without so much as blinking.
What are sisters for? she’d asked.
And Nesta wanted to mourn, because with every moment she spent at Elain’s side, something inside her seemed to crumble. Some other piece of her slowly being chipped away as she watched grief make a home in the hollows of Elain’s wan cheeks.
And with every piece of her that eroded, every inch of her it took, Nesta wondered how much of herself she had left to give.
How much of her would burn before the end.
****
Hours later, Nesta scowled at her reflection in the mirror, plucking at the neckline of her dress.
She had contemplated asking Emerie to join them - begging her to, really - but it would have raised questions with her father that would have been uncomfortable for Emerie to answer, so Nesta had squared her shoulders and donned the dress that had been left out on her bed, ignoring the dread that had begun to pool in her belly.
And Nesta hadn’t ever really had friends to count on before, but as she smoothed down the front of that dress and heard heavy footsteps approaching down the hall - Cassian’s footsteps - she wished more than anything that, the last time she visited, Emerie could have stayed.
When the knock sounded at her door, Nesta straightened, resting her palms flat against the surface of her vanity. A moment later, Cassian poked his head around the doorframe, hazel eyes searching until he found her, catching her gaze in the mirror. Nesta watched him take her in— the pointed ears, the pale skin. The eyes, ringed with silver. She swallowed.
“You look…”
He trailed off, his eyes sliding down her neck and lingering as he stepped fully into her bedroom. The dress was pale blue, made of a material so soft it slipped through her fingers like water. It felt luxurious, the kind of thing she might have had if her father hadn’t lost all of their money, and with its long, fitted sleeves and the neckline dipping only an inch below her collarbone… It was elegant and refined, a colour suited perfectly to her eyes.
She hadn’t dared ask where it had come from.
Cassian moved to stand behind her, his eyes pinned to hers as she watched him through the mirror’s reflection. Every line of him was smooth, defined, from the forearms exposed by the rolled-up sleeves of his dark shirt, to the collarbone exposed by the notch in the fabric that dipped below the hollow of his throat, revealing the tattoos that snaked across his skin. Nesta blinked; kept her eyes trained on him as he walked with purpose across the floor of her bedroom.
She didn’t look at her own reflection. Didn’t want to see those eyes, lined with so much silver it made her want to recoil.
He did.
He looked, and saw it all, and did not pull away.
It was unflinching, the way he looked at her, and as the scent of him hit her - all leather and cinnamon and heat - she remembered all too well exactly how it felt to drown in that scent, and remembered with all the sudden intensity of a wildfire what it was to be the sole focus of his attention. She forced herself to forget, to push down the blush that crept slowly across her cheeks.
Her voice suddenly felt weak.
“I can’t get the top button,” she said, barely above a whisper.
Cassian was silent, his eyes still attached to hers in the mirror, and as he swallowed, she tracked the movement of his bare throat; watched the way his pulse hammered just below his jaw. Standing behind her, his fingers alighted for the briefest of moments on her shoulders before his touch just barely skimmed the fabric of her dress. Slowly - so slowly, like he was afraid of moving too much too fast - he dragged his fingers along the back of her neck until he found the final button at the top of her spine. Easily, he slipped it through the loop.
“Perfect,” he whispered, bending to drop a soft kiss to the curve of her neck.
She felt his breath dance across her skin, felt the warmth of his lips, and was forced to press her palms harder into the surface of the vanity, like it was taking every ounce of self control she had not to turn and drag him towards her.
And oh, it had been so long, hadn’t it, since things had been this way between them? Since he had entered a room and she had wanted nothing more than to get his hands on her skin and thread her fingers through his hair?
A slow, meandering smile curved the corners of Cassian’s lips, his eyes sliding along the rest of her frame as his hands came up to rest on her shoulders. His thumb, slowly moving back and forth over the curve where her neck met her shoulder.
“Ready?” he asked.
Nesta took a breath. Closed her eyes.
No.
“Elain spoke to me today,” she murmured instead, feeling his hands still at the top of her neck. Audibly, he swallowed. Nesta turned, just enough to look at him over her shoulder. “Not— not anything really substantial. She asked about Greysen. About what he thinks happened.”
At that, Cassian drew back, just enough to scan her face in the mirror before them.
Did he see, she wondered, the way the hours she’d spent by Elain’s side had left her feeling hollow and empty? Did he see the way she leaned into him, like a creature seeking comfort from the only place it had ever been guaranteed?
“Better than the odd words here and there she’s been coming out with until now,” he pointed out. “Maybe it’s a sign that she’s…”
Getting better.
Nesta heard the words he didn’t say. Frowned. He frowned too, like he recognised there was no getting better— not yet. Not for either of the sisters. He shook his head as he straightened a little, brushing his thumb across the top of her spine as he turned his attention back to her face in the mirror.
“Take it as a good sign, Nes. That’s all we can do.”
He made to draw back, but Nesta stopped him, lifting her hand and covering his, caging his fingers against her shoulder. Not yet— she didn’t think she could do without him just yet. With cold hands she pressed his touch against her— relished the way his own hands were warm, even through the fabric of her dress. Rendered wordless, she met his eyes again in the mirror. Wider than before, the gold was almost entirely swallowed as they turned dark, piercing her clean through as easily as any sword or dagger.
Hunger burned there.
The kind he hadn’t dared look at her with since before Hybern, since before the Cauldron. His throat bobbed as he swallowed, his fingers tightening around her shoulders as heat rushed through Nesta’s entire body, and not the kind that the Cauldron had left her with.
No, a different fire altogether consumed her as she took in the planes of his face, the curls scraped back and gathered at the nape of his neck. Her eyes skimmed along his jaw, lingering on his lips, his mouth. And oh, she wanted that mouth. Wanted to feel it pressed against her skin like she had before. Before all of… this.
Cassian swallowed again, but those eyes were on fire as he leaned closer, keeping his eyes fixed on hers as, with painstaking, languid slowness, he brought his face alongside hers until their cheeks were pressed together, the hint of his stubble rough against her skin. Nesta blinked, but couldn’t look away. He had snared her, so completely trapped her that as he lifted his other hand and rested it on her other shoulder, fingers splaying across her collarbone, she didn’t think she could have moved even if she wanted to. The siphon on the back of his hand cast crimson light across her skin, bathing her in it, and when his fingers flexed, the light flared, stuttered, like it couldn’t contain the power rushing through his body now that he had his hands on her, at her throat, with enough tension living in the space between them that it was like shards of lightning electrifying the air they shared.
She could feel the callouses on his hands, put there by all the swords he’d handled, all the years he’d spent learning the art of battle.
This was a different battle, a different war. Attrition, in the way all her senses slowly gave way under the weight of that hand on her shoulder
Heat - real heat - speared through her.
Once, when she was small, a comet had passed overhead; a long, burning tail leaving a line of fire through the sky. That was the kind of heat that coursed through her now. The kind of intensity that burned hotter, more ferociously, than it had when she was mortal.
She was still learning what desire felt like in this new body. The way her skin tightened, how she felt it in the marrow of her bones. It was all foreign to her, and this—
This was her first real lesson.
Her toes curled, her every nerve screaming at her - begging her - to turn and let him take her, let him claim her—
“Get through this dinner,” he whispered, “and I swear to you, I’ll make it worth your while.”
As if he knew— knew that this was going to be an ordeal, that she was second-guessing. Knew, too, that the heat coursing through her was a different beast, one she had no hope at all of mastering. Not as he tilted his head and dragged the tip of his nose along her cheekbone. Yet even as she recognised it for what it was, Nesta felt her skin growing tight, felt the sudden urge to clamp her thighs together as breathing became an effort. She felt her eyes close, pure and wanton need surging within her with an intensity she hadn’t ever known before.
She had thought that she had wanted him before.
Thought that, even as a human, he had driven her out of her mind with wanting.
That was nothing— nothing compared to how this new body reacted to the way his hands lingered beside her neck, or the friction of his thumb dragging slowly along the back of her shoulder.
“Bold of you,” she said, wrestling her voice into something smooth and calm and entirely unaffected, even though her bones suddenly felt like they were made of paper. He only grinned against her, daring to drag his teeth along her jaw as he shifted his attention southwards from her cheek. “And arrogant, really. To think a few kisses would be adequate compensation for the ordeal this dinner is likely to be.”
He chuckled against her, even as his hands tightened on her shoulders, and she knew— oh gods, she knew that it wouldn’t just be a few kisses, not anymore. They were past that— so far past that night in the stable where he’d set her on fire with just his hand on her thigh and his mouth against hers.
“A few kisses?” he echoed, his voice turned rough by the echo of the desire Nesta felt pounding through her own chest, scorching her own blood. “Is that all you think I’m capable of?”
“You’ve never shown me otherwise,” she shrugged, watching as his eyes flared, turning impossibly dark as his pupils expanded, swallowing each and every fleck of gold in the hazel.
“You never allowed me to.”
Nesta lifted one shoulder— a blithe dismissal.
It was a game.
They both knew it.
He liked it when she pretended nonchalance, Nesta suspected, because it gave him the pleasure of unravelling her slow, proving her wrong each and every time he gave the lie to her disinterest. And, gods, didn’t Nesta love him doing it, too. The way he smiled when she scowled, like he saw beneath the mask as easily as through a pane of glass. The way he teased her, riled her…
It stoked whatever flame was between them until it was hot enough to burn them both.
Nesta cleared her throat as he pulled back and met her eye in the mirror again. Without breaking eye contact he dipped his head, pressing a solitary kiss to the side of her neck, right beneath her jaw. His lips lingered, as Nesta almost arched back into it, almost begged him right then and there for more— to keep his lips pressed against her until the sun went down.
But the lights in the sconces flared, like the House was calling time on whatever game they had been playing, and slowly Cassian chuckled again, breathing in deeply like he just needed one more drag of her scent.
“We’ll be late,” he said, his voice a shade gentler as he slid his hands down from where they had rested on her shoulders, skating over the backs of her arms.
Nesta blinked, and turned as he backed away, a grin on his face that made him look more rakish than anything else.
“Besides, there will be wine,” he said, as he leaned against her door and slid his hands into his pockets, watching as she rose from that little stool before her vanity, adjusting the fall of her dress as it dropped around her ankles in an elegant swathe of fabric. He nodded as he took her in, and though she noticed the way his forearms clenched - like he was curling his hands into fists in his pockets to keep from reaching out and grabbing her, finishing what he’d started - she said nothing.
And Cassian only took a deep breath and asked, again,
“Ready?”
This time, Nesta gave him her best scowl.
“No,” she said simply, toying with the bracelet around her wrist— the one he’d bought her, so long ago. His eyes darted to it, his face softening as his hands encircled hers, his grip large and warm, encompassing hers as he stilled her anxious fingers. His thumb stroked idly over her pulse in a long, slow swipe.
“I told you,” he said brightly, leaning in to press a kiss to her temple that had Nesta grasping his forearm for stability. “There will be wine.”
“I expect a bottle, General,” she muttered darkly.
Cassian let out another soft laugh, linking his arm through hers as he led her towards the door.
“I’ll bring you an entire crate, sweetheart, and carry you back to bed when it all goes to your head.”
She snorted, marvelling at how he managed it— how he had the anxiety in her easing with just a handful of words and an arm looped through hers, pulling her into him as one wing extended across her shoulder blades.
“As long as you don’t expect an invite into that bed at the end of it.”
He threw her a wink.
“Oh I don’t expect an invite, princess,” he said smoothly, eyes trained on the hallway ahead as they left her bedroom and the House quietly shut the door behind them with a gentle snick. “I’m fairly confident you’ll be begging me instead before the week is out.”
Nesta felt the breath leave her lungs in a rush as she exhaled, a breathless laugh in her throat.
“In that case,” she said pointedly, “I look forward to proving you wrong.”
Cassian grinned at her sidelong, a look exchanged between them like one shared between…
Friends, Nesta realised.
Her chest tightened to the point of pain as she looked at his smile, at where her arm was still tucked against his. His smile softened, his eyes bright like he knew how much she needed him to be that stabilising influence - that gentle reassurance that everything tonight was going to go smoothly.
And as they reached the doors of the dining room, Nesta felt her stomach churn once more and hoped to the gods that it was enough.
okay but for sure baby shane on his first hockey team got to play on the ice during an intermission at a centaurs game in the 90s. he scored a goal and did a cute little celebration jump (and immediately lost his balance and fell on his butt). harris pulls the clip from somewhere deep in the centaurs archive. he makes an insta post after shane's first game with the cens and includes the video with a caption about tonight being shane hollander's second ever centaurs goal.
ilya just barely manages to keep himself from sobbing in delight at the video.
A/N: Happy @cassianappreciationweek, lovelies! I, of course, had to keep with my tradition of turning him into a monster/beast/etc for his week. And for 2026, we're getting demon Cassian! As a warning, this is completely unedited, as I ran out of time. Like wow. Really cutting it down to the wire here. Anywho! Hope everyone enjoys demon Cassian loving his wife down bad and very very gratuitous smut.
Nesta places the final candle down atop the ruin drawn in chalk across the wooden planks. She takes a step back, tilting her head as she admires and critiques her own work. She snatches up her book where she set it down on the small table along the wall, double checking that everything matches the drawing on the page, that she followed all the notes scribbled and scrawled in the margins.
With a satisfied nod, Nesta places the book back down again and steps back over to her ritual space. She walks slowly, carefully, around her set up, eying the salt circle she drew at the center. She needs to make sure it's secure, that there's not a single gap in the line. The last thing she needs is another demon free and strutting around their village.
One is already enough.
Rhysand.
Just thinking about the way he chases after her youngest sister like some lost puppy has Nesta's lip curling. The moment he'd stepped foot in their village, she'd seen right through his saccharine words and fine linens that he seemed to constantly be picking at the sleeve of. Seen right through the glamour that clung to his frame like specks of stardust. She knew a demon when she saw one, could practically feel his own dark magic scratch like talons against her own, and watching his attention near instantly latch onto Feyre left her hackles raising.
Dealing with Elain's infatuation with Graysen was enough. At least the little lordling, though cold and egocentric, is human. At least he's susceptible to Nesta's magic. But a demon is another problem all together, one that Nesta needs assistance with. So she'd turned to her books, scoured the pages and pointedly ignored the glinting eyes, the smirk, that seemed to watch her from the shadows just over Feyre's shoulder.
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