syd @minecrafttsquid - Tumblr Blog

Jul 6, 2022

The Grand Tour - Chapter 3 (AO3)

(Cassian and Nesta visit the Dawn Court, where Nesta is enchanted by fae ingenuity, and Cassian discovers that Nesta is *not* a morning person)

None of it mattered, because Nesta’s world had narrowed down to this: to the space between Cassian’s arms, and the beating of his heart.

In the twilight moments before dawn, Cassian tapped gently on the door connecting his room to Nesta’s. There was nothing but silence from the inn beyond their connecting rooms, and nothing except the steady rise and fall of Nesta’s breathing from the room beyond that oak door. He listened to it, to the cadence of her breathing, like it was a melody he hadn’t known he had needed all these years. His own breaths evened out to match hers, gratitude and relief rushing through him at the knowledge that she was sleeping soundly, peacefully, for the first time in months. In Velaris she had been plagued by night terrors, but Nesta hadn’t woken screaming once since they’d been away. He still slept lightly anyway, keeping half of himself alert just in case she needed him but— not once had she woken in a cold sweat, shaking, terrified.

He was hesitant to disturb her now. Yesterday had been busy— they had arrived in Dawn and spent the day wandering the narrow streets of the small town near the mountains, finding themselves lost on more than one occasion. The terracotta-and-brick lined streets all looked the same, and all wound, labyrinthine, around the river that cut the town in half. With just one wrong turn, they had found themselves so utterly lost it had taken them hours to get back to the square they started in. Cassian could have found their way out easily enough by flying above the town and working out the way back, but he found he didn’t mind being lost when it was with Nesta. He didn’t mind being lost at all.

They could have asked for directions, or found a map, but neither of them seemed particularly eager to find their way back to the comfortable inn they had checked in to. It was late by the time they’d arrived back, at last finding the stone courtyard before the inn, one brimming with roses and tulips, offering a clear view of the mountains that cradled the town. Nesta had almost sighed when she saw the view from her bedroom. It was connected to his by that one door - the one Cassian’s hand hovered over now, ready to knock again - and a shared balcony that spanned both bedrooms, with a pretty little iron railing and more flowers in terracotta pots. The mountains beyond had been wreathed by golden clouds when Nesta stepped onto that balcony last night, the sky a pale, blushing pink at sunset. It was beautiful, but Cassian had promised her that whilst sunset in Dawn was beautiful, it was, well, it was the dawn that made Dawn so special. It had taken him twenty solid minutes of persuasion and more than a little bit of begging, but he’d finally gotten Nesta to agree to waking up before dawn and watching the sunrise.

Part of him wanted to leave her sleeping. It had been so long since she’d slept properly that it felt wrong to wake her… but she wanted to see the world, and he’d promised to show her all the wonders Prythian had to offer. That included seeing the sunrise in Dawn, so he inhaled deeply and knocked louder on that wooden door. His only response was a small murmur, something that sounded an awful lot like go away. The siphons atop his hands glowed in anticipation as Cassian braced himself, and twisted the silver door handle.

It was unlocked. The woman who had four locks on her door in Velaris… hadn’t locked the door connecting his room to hers.

He refused to think too much about it, about how much trust it spoke to. If he did, he thought he might collapse to his knees and never get up again.

Still, though. No matter how much Nesta trusted him now, waking her was not unlike waking a sleeping dragon. In the darkness of her bedroom, only her brow and nose was visible. She had burrowed so deeply into the duvet that the rest of her was engulfed by it, and he smirked at how peaceful and comfortable she looked, before remembering that now, he had to wake her and break that peace. She might very well tear him limb from limb, and the thought alone made some sadistic part of him excited. He couldn’t deny it, he loved it when she went toe-to-toe against him. She was the only one who could, really. Even with Rhys and Azriel, Cassian knew that when they got into the ring, the odds were always in his favour. He might have to work a little bit harder, but nine times out of ten, he’d be the victor. When it came to Nesta, he never was sure who won their verbal sparring matches. Never quite knew who’d been the one to have the last word, the parting shot.

She didn’t move as he crossed the room and fell to his knees on the floor beside her head. He placed a hand on the duvet where he assumed her shoulder was, and as she shifted beneath his palm, his siphons glowed in recognition, as if even they knew that this was where he belonged. By her side in the darkness, right next to her as the light pushed in. Nesta shifted beneath his palm, burying her face deeper into the pillow. He must have had a death wish, because he poked her in the cheek, the only patch of her skin that wasn’t covered by the mountain of blankets and pillows.

“You promised me you’d get up at dawn, remember?” he said with another poke.

One blue-grey eye cracked open, her brow furrowing as she slowly rose to consciousness. “Are you insane.”

It wasn’t a question, and Cassian couldn’t help the grin that spread across his face at the sound of her voice, how sleepy and thick it sounded, like syrup. He was up with the dawn most days, but Nesta… Nesta was not a morning person.

“Sunrise is in fifteen minutes. Get up.”

“Wake me up in ten, then.”

Cassian rolled his eyes and adopted his firmest voice, the one reserved for his men when they stepped out of line. “Get up.”

Nesta merely snorted. “Don’t think you can use your big-bad-general voice on me and think it will work.” She turned back to her pillow. “Five minutes.”

Cassian smirked. He didn’t think it would work, using that voice of pure command, pure control. He’d never had either when it came to the woman wrapped up in that duvet.

“Nope,” he said, popping his lips around the P. She lifted her head and glared at him, her eyes so full of ice and ire that a lesser man might have cowered. Cassian’s grin widened.

“Why are you so fucking cheery?” she hissed, as if his smile was a personal affront to her. He only hummed in bemusement.

“You’re grumpy in the morning.”

“It’s not even morning yet, you ridiculous beast. It’s still nighttime.”

“Only for another fifteen minutes,” he countered evenly. He pulled the duvet back, exposing her shoulders. “Come. I’ll make you tea. You can sit on the balcony wrapped in this duvet and as soon as the sun is up, you can go back to bed.”

She grumbled something that sounded like you’d better make me tea, and shoved him away from the mattress. She sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed, and Cassian refused to look at how her nightgown had risen above her knees. He unfolded to his feet and headed back to his own room. There was a small kettle, that - somehow - heated water without needing to be placed over a stove. Dawn Court, he thought to himself. Where everything is clever. The inn had left teabags and milk, too, and Cassian had made sure he asked which tea was her favourite last night before she’d gone to bed. He had remembered it all exactly: how she liked the tea to stew for three minutes exactly, with two sugar cubes, and only a splash of milk.

She muttered a string of curses under her breath as the cold air touched her skin, and Cassian smirked.

“Balcony,” he said over his shoulder. “Five minutes.”

***

Cassian had seen a thousand sunsets, but none so breathtaking as the one he saw reflected in Nesta’s eyes. Her hair was still mussed with sleep, and it unwound something in him, the sight of her in the morning. Every time she blinked it was as though her eyelids were heavy, even as those grey eyes widened in awe at the sight of the stars above the mountain range, at the sun kissing the edges of the horizon. It sent warmth running through him, an affection so powerful he wanted to wrap her in his arms and crush her to his chest. She was, dare he say it, adorable in the morning. He could never tell her. She’d pin his balls to the wall if ever he expressed the fact that he found anything about her cute.

She sat on the bench of their shared balcony, cocooned in the duvet she’d brought out with her, cradling the tea Cassian had made between her palms. The sky faded from inky black to a dusky purple as Cassian settled next to her, letting his wings flare out a little behind her. When the clouds were limned with gold, the sky a blushing pink, Cassian took his eyes off the rising sun and looked, instead, at her. At how the pink sky made the silver in her eyes gleam, at how her breath caught in her throat as she saw the beauty of it.

“Told you sunrises were something special in the solar courts,” he murmured. Nesta hummed and said nothing else, far too tired for words. She sipped from her tea again, steam rising contentedly from the mug. She never took her eyes from the sky as the pink grew deeper. The darkness at the edge of the horizon faded, until the stars were pinpricks of light in an amethyst sky. Nesta watched the sky, and Cassian watched Nesta, watched as she saw the beauty of this world, saw the darkness ceding to the light.

Personally, he had always preferred sunset. Being from the Night Court, he supposed that was only natural. There was something about watching the stars come to life in the sky above, at watching the sky fade to black. Even so, he couldn’t deny that the sunrise was beautiful. Almost as beautiful as the woman beside him. She had rested her head against his shoulder, and he had moved so that he could tuck her under his arm. She was wrapped so thickly in the duvet that it was like sitting beside a marshmallow, but she was comfortable, and warm, and, if the look on her face was anything to go by, entranced by the sky above.

He wanted to kiss her. Wanted to pour himself into a kiss that left him gasping, and left her knowing, unquestionably, how deeply he loved her, how much he wanted her. The last time they had kissed had been on that battlefield, and even as he was bleeding out and dying, Cassian had committed the taste of her lips to his memory. It was enough to make even death fade into insignificance, and Cassian was longing to taste it again. He brushed his hand over the duvet where her shoulder was, running it down her arm and pulling her even closer into his side. The sky had lightened to a soft, pale blue, and when he looked down at her, he saw her eyes had closed again.

She’d fallen back to sleep, empty mug still cradled in her hands. All thoughts of kissing her senseless faded, replaced by something softer, something gentler. That primal part of him that longed to protect her swelled, until he was wrapping the duvet more firmly around her shoulders to stop her getting cold, until he was moving her into his arms smoothly to ensure she didn’t wake. He rose to his feet with her cradled to his chest, feeling her breathing steady against his own. Mine, something deep, deep inside him whispered. Mine.

He crossed smoothly to the door of her bedroom and deposited her gently on the bed. He unwound the duvet and placed it over her, daring to stroke the hair back from her face as he did so.

“I suppose you can sleep a little longer,” he said, though he knew she was too far gone to hear him. He pressed a gentle, chaste, kiss to her temple and headed for his own room, but he didn’t close that connecting door fully. He left it open just an inch, just enough so that she would know, when she woke, that he hadn’t left her alone.

***

Nesta dreamed of the sky overhead. She dreamed of the stars, nestled in hues of purple and pink, shards of light glinting against the gemstone-coloured sky. She couldn’t say she’d seen many sunrises in her life, but she’d seen enough sunsets. She hadn’t thought they could be that different— it was the same process, after all, only reversed. Nesta didn’t like being proven wrong, but there was something in the way the darkness slowly gave way to the light. In the way the stars glimmered overhead and the moon lingered even after the darkness had faded. For the first time, she wished she had Feyre’s skill with a paintbrush, to memorialise the sight of the Dawn court sky coming into its own.

When she woke, the gossamer curtains were blowing gently in the wind coming through the open balcony door. She wondered when she’d fallen asleep, and how she’d gotten back into bed, since the last she remembered the sun was cresting the sky and she was leaning her head on Cassian’s shoulder. She remembered being in awe of the dawn, and she remembered being warm, and comfortable. She remembered wanting to treasure the moment forever, to never forget how something as ordinary as a sunrise could make her feel such an acute sense of wonder.

Cassian had evidently carried her back to bed and all but tucked her in. Nesta swallowed as she sat up. She didn’t know why, but the fact that he’d deposited her back in her own bed… bothered her. Not that she would have expected him to take her to his but… well, why hadn’t he? The last night in Day, they’d shared a bed, and though when they checked into this inn, Nesta hadn’t questioned it when the innkeeper showed them to two connected rooms… she couldn’t deny that this morning, she wouldn’t have minded waking up on the other side of that connecting door.

She shook the thought away, and as she swung her legs over the edge of the mattress, she heard a hum from the doorway.

“Look who’s awake,” Cassian drawled, irritatingly cheerfully. “I was starting to worry you’d slipped into a coma.”

“It’s your fault,” Nesta scowled, wrapping a silk robe around her shoulders and tying it at the waist. His eyes followed her every move, and Nesta ignored how it made her blood heat. “No reasonable person gets up at dawn.”

“If I’m so unreasonable,” he commented with a smirk, “then you won’t be wanting the breakfast I ordered.”

“No,” Nesta answered stubbornly. “It’s probably one of your characteristically boring and practical breakfasts, full of ‘nutrients’ and ‘protein’.”

She grimaced at the memory of the last time Cassian had made her breakfast. He’d turned up at her apartment early one morning bearing oats and fruits, and when she’d asked for so much as a spoonful of honey to sweeten the porridge, he’d forbidden it. Nesta had a sweet tooth, and contented herself most mornings with pastries for breakfast. Cassian was a miser when it came to sugar, and she didn’t expect that to change just because they were in a different court.

“Actually, I ordered a Dawn Court specialty. Pastries and chocolate-covered strawberries, but since you’re so adamant you don’t want it, I’ll just send it back to the kitchens.”

Nesta didn’t miss a beat, and was barging past him into his room before he could blink. Sure enough, a tray sat on the small, round table. The tabletop was made of white and blue tiles that could be slid around to make a pattern. They were currently set out like a chessboard, but yesterday Cassian had explained that it was used for a number of games and puzzles. He’d showed her one where all of the white tiles needed to be at the top and all the blue ones at the bottom. It had seemed simple, but it took Nesta over two hours to complete it. Atop those sliding tiles, there was currently a steaming teapot, a bowl of strawberries that were indeed dipped in chocolate, an array of pastries, and another bowl filled with pomegranate seeds. There were several varieties of jams and marmalades, too. All of it sweet, light, and utterly delicious. Nesta hummed as she sat down in one of the wooden chairs. Cassian crossed into the room and took the seat across from her, offering her a knife to cut a pastry with.

“The Dawn Court makes better breakfasts than you” she said after her first bite of a ridiculously light and flaky pastry, dusted with sugar that melted on her tongue.

Cassian shrugged, spreading a fine layer of raspberry jam over a pastry of his own. “They like things sweet and simple.”

Nesta nodded in agreement and took a generous portion of pomegranate seeds. “Wise.”

“Not everything is like it is in Velaris, you know,” he said carefully. Nesta lowered the hand that had been halfway to her mouth and cleared her throat.

“I know,” she answered. She was starting to see it now, the tiny intricacies that made the Courts the way they were. The way the weather affected what the people ate and drank. The way they lived and the way they viewed the world, all a product of the Court they lived in. It was a complex web, one far richer than Nesta had ever anticipated. It didn’t mean that she liked living above the wall. Didn’t mean that, suddenly, she was alright with being fae. But she didn’t… mind so much, living amongst these people. She certainly didn’t see them as her people, and Velaris would never - could never - be home to her, but it didn’t seem so foreign anymore. Didn’t seem as despicable.

Cassian looked like he was about to say something else, but Nesta shook her head. “What are we doing today?”

He wiped the sugar from his fingertips with a napkin, and tilted his head. “We didn’t go to the clockmakers quarter yesterday. We could start there.”

Nesta nodded in agreement. “And the puzzles— is there a quarter for that, too?”

“Not exactly,” Cassian shrugged, glancing down to the sliding tiles beneath his plate. “The entire court is like a quarter for puzzles. They’re everywhere.”

Even the key to their rooms, Nesta had found out last night, was a puzzle. It looked like a standard iron key, but it was made of two halves, and they only fit together if you twisted them in just the right way. There was even a wooden box filled with riddles onto of the mantlepiece, and try as Nesta might, she hadn’t been able to figure out any of them. Neither had Cassian, and so they’d given up on the riddles and turned to the sliding tabletop puzzle instead.

“I want to see more puzzles,” Nesta said with a nod. “And the clocks. I—“ she trailed off, and looked uncertainly down at her hands. Cassian raised an eyebrow.

“What?”

“I like their ingenuity,” she admitted. She didn’t know why, but it felt like a confession. A betrayal, somehow. An acknowledgement that not everything in this land was terrible, and there were, to her surprise and her chagrin, things she… liked about it. It felt like she was betraying everything she’d believed beneath the wall, like turning her back on the person she’d been back then.

“And it surprises you?”

“Yes,” she said flatly. “I have hated this land my entire life. Yes, it surprises me that there are things about it I find fascinating now.”

Cassian looked for half a moment like he was about to say something philosophical. Something deep and meaningful, and she wasn’t sure that was what she wanted. She didn’t think that would make her feel any better about her conflicting emotions, and perhaps he knew that, because he only shrugged and said, “I should have known it would be the puzzles that would interest you, what with that brain of yours.”

Nesta flicked her eyes to the ceiling, and then glanced at him imperiously, witheringly. “Since yours is barely bigger than the size of this pomegranate seed, I’m not surprised.”

He smirked, resting his chin on his fist. “It’s not all about size, princess. Or hasn’t anybody ever told you that?” he raised an eyebrow suggestively, eyes darkening, and Nesta fought the blush rising to her cheeks. She willed herself to remain cool, disinterested.

“Answer me one of those riddles then,” she said, nodding to the box on the mantle.

“You couldn’t answer any of those either.”

Nesta said nothing at that, scowling at the fact that she had no comeback. Cassian knew it too, because he laughed, the sound easy and light and carefree. It was beautiful, that sound. Cassian shook his head and rose to his feet.

“Come on then genius,” he said, offering her his hand. “Let’s go find these clocks and puzzles.”

***

They hadn’t passed through this square when they had wandered yesterday, but it was bustling. It was close to the river, bringing with it a soft breeze and the smell of brine. The square was lined with shops, oak-fronted ones with swinging hand-painted signs hanging from eaves painted white and green and pink. They looked like the buildings in… well, Nesta thought to herself, the buildings in fairytales. The ones with cottages made of sugar and chocolate, ones where windows were made of boiled sweets and chimneys from liquorice. She wondered whether a mortal had ever crossed the wall and made it here, and brought those stories back home, of a place where the air was made of sugar and the wind carried nothing but the sound of ticking and whirring.

It was almost magical, but Nesta knew there was no magic involved in the large sundial set into the floor of the square. No magic at all in the cuckoo popping out of the clock at the top of one building and, instead of chiming like the ones at home, it sang like a nightingale. No, it wasn’t magic at all, but pure genius. It was clever, intricate, work. Even the iron posts holding up the shop signs were clever. One clockmaker had a tiny iron mouse balanced atop the horizontal pole holding up its sign, clutching a tiny iron cube of cheese. When Nesta looked around and saw the nearest drainpipe, she spied a matching iron cat, its unseeing gaze fixed on that little mouse.

There was no magic involved in the cafe on the corner either, where the outside tables each had miniature mechanical lions on the tables. Each one roared silently when a patron passed their hand over its snout, revealing sugar cubes. Nesta’s jaw had almost dropped to the floor, and when Cassian had laughed at her expression, she’d hit him on the shoulder and asked how many times he’d been served by a mechanical lion, since such things were hardly common beneath the wall.

It made sense to her, now. When you lived as long as these fae did, it was hardly surprising that they sought to make the mundane extraordinary. That they longed to find the wonder in the most ordinary of things, that they wanted to find their sugar in a mechanical lion’s maw. Living so long drained the wonder from living… the Dawn Court worked hard to put that wonder back, to breathe into the world a childlike sense of joy and curiosity. She thought of Lucien’s golden eye, how it didn’t just serve a purpose. It replaced the eye that he had lost, yes, but it was beautiful too, wondrous in its own way. Nesta looked back at the mouse atop the clockmaker’s shop. That was the point of it all, she supposed. Making things beautiful instead of just practical, putting in the extra time - the extra effort - to make someone like her, destitute and completely without hope, smile at an iron cat at the bottom of a drainpipe.

“Where do you want to start?” Cassian asked.

“That one,” Nesta pointed, right to the one with the tiny mouse and the iron cat.

***

The shop was small, and empty, and filled with the steady ticking beat of the hundreds of clocks lining the walls. Nesta had stopped dead before a small shelf towards the back containing grandfather clocks in miniature.

There was one in particular that was so familiar to Nesta that it almost knocked her senseless. It was— miraculous. That was the word Nesta thought she was searching for as she plucked up the tiny grandfather clock from its wooden shelf. It was no bigger than the length of her finger, but it was an almost exact replica of the one that had stood in their hallway when she was a child. Right down to the grooves and the hinges— it was the exact same clock, only in miniature. She remembered watching the butler wind it almost every night, fascinated when he opened the case as she saw the cogs and the bronze discs. She’d asked him once how it worked, and he’d tried to explain it to her in the best way that he could, but he had been no clockmaker. He only knew how to wind it, not how to explain its intricacies to a seven year old. Nesta looked at the one in her palm, and wondered whether the clockmaker who had crafted the one back at home had ever seen something like this. If, somehow, one of these tiny models had made it below the wall, to a clockmaker in the human realms who had only scaled it up. She could feel the vibrations, could feel it whirring and ticking beneath her fingertips. It was magnificent, and whilst it suggested that things might not be as radically different above the wall as she’d thought… it reminded Nesta so much of the home she had lost that she wanted to sob.

It reminded her of her father, too. The carved wood made her think of the nights her father sat in that cabin and carved wooden animals. The tools on the counter, where a lesser fae was planing wood whilst watching the shop, were all familiar to her. She knew the value of each, because she’d priced them up, debated selling them on the days where their desperation was almost too much to bear. The smell of the wood took her back to that cabin, to the days when her father would oil those little figures to make them shine. She’d never understood it, why someone would buy a tiny horse or a tiny cow off a man by the side of the road. She thought of the mouse over the shop now though, how it had made her smile, and began to understand.

Her father’s hands— she thought of them. Calloused and blistered from those tools, those hands had tried to comfort her once in that cabin, and only once. It wasn’t a mistake he’d made twice, when his hand had curled around her forearm and she’d wrenched herself so violently from his grip that her skin had stung for an hour afterwards. She had hated that those hands were trying to offer her comfort and consolation when he was the one who had plunged them into poverty. She had hated it— hated him. But now, as she held that tiny clock in her hands, breathed in the scent of the wood and heard the hiss of the carving tools, the ticking of the clocks and the whirring of the mechanisms, Nesta longed for her father. She had never been good at apologies, but Nesta wanted to apologise now. She wanted a reminder of those hands, the ones she had scorned when she was alive, but would do anything to hold just one more time.

A solitary tear slipped down her cheek, and within a moment, warm hands were folding her fingers around the clock in her palm. Cassian had been on the other side of the shop, looking at something Nesta hadn’t noticed, but now he stood before her, one hand around hers and the other digging into his pocket, rooting for coins. He plucked out four gold pieces and tucked them into the hand that held the clock.

“Take it,” he said gently, nodding to the clock. He didn’t ask why it had upset her. Didn’t ask how something so small and so ordinary could provoke such a reaction. His thumb swiped away the single tear on her cheek, and Nesta breathed easily for the first time when his skin touched hers. He didn’t ask— but Nesta found she wanted to tell him anyway. Wanted to let him in rather than shut him out.

“We had one just like it,” she explained. “Exactly like it, in fact, only full size. Elain once went crashing into it when she was a child, running over the marble floor in only her stockings. She slipped and bashed her head so hard she went dizzy. Mother was furious.”

“About the damage to Elain or the damage to the clock?” Cassian asked with a wry kind of smile. Nesta huffed a laugh.

“Oh, the clock, undoubtedly. It had cost a king’s ransom.”

Cassian gave her a soft smile, and when she looked down at the clock in her hand, he tilted her face towards him with a thumb under her chin. “Buy it, Nesta. You should have something that reminds you of—“ he hesitated. “Home,” he added, a moment too late, as if it burdened him, that the manor below the wall was still home to Nesta— not the faerie lands above the wall, and certainly not Velaris.

The clock was so tiny, but it was her mortal, human life colliding brutally with who she was now. It was the human need to count time and measure heartbeats, to mark the passing of the hours, crashing into fae ingenuity and novelty. That’s all time was to these creatures, after all. Novelty. It wasn’t as if it mattered what day or season or year it was, not when centuries passed and no mark was made on any of them. Nesta looked down at the clock again, at the clock face ticking down the seconds. It was so arbitrary, so mundane… and it was everything to her.

“You don’t have to let go of what you were before completely, you know,” Cassian said softly. “You’re still the same person, Nes. Fundamentally, you’ll always be that stupidly fierce woman who put me so firmly in my place the first time we met.”

She said nothing, unable to ask how he’d zeroed in on exactly the thing she feared the most: how the passing of time would affect her, and whether the Nesta Archeron from before would vanish, replaced by someone she didn’t recognise and didn’t like. She only swallowed as his hand tightened around hers, the one still clutching that clock.

“You should have a reminder of who you were— who you are,” he murmured. “And of what you lost, too.” A beat of silence, and then he said, “Trust me. I wish I had something to remember what was stolen from me.”

And Nesta realised then, that they weren’t so different at all. They had both lost parents, both been scorned by the communities they grew up in, both lived in poverty. Both suffered and mourned, and somehow found each other despite it all.

“Your mother?” Nesta asked.

Cassian nodded mutely, and right there, in the middle of a Dawn Court clockmakers, Nesta wanted to throw her arms around him, wanted to cling to him and have him cling to her, to be his salvation as much as he was hers.

“I have nothing,” he shrugged. “So take the clock, Nesta. No matter how much it costs, it’s worth it.”

“Not nothing,” Nesta corrected. She pressed a palm to his chest, over his heart, above his leathers. “You always had her love. You still do.”

Cassian took her hand and pulled her closer, resting his forehead against hers. One of her hands still rested on his chest, the other clutched that miniature clock, his fingers still curled around her hand. He was beyond words, apparently, but there was emotion swimming in his eyes— enough that Nesta understood everything he didn’t say. It didn’t matter how long it had been, how many centuries, it was something Cassian still felt keenly, a pain that hadn’t dulled with the passage of time.

“I don’t think I even have that,” she whispered after a minute, when he clutched her so tightly she realised that he was leaning on her for support as much as she was leaning on him. “I hated my father when he was alive. And now I’d do anything to see him once more. To tell him how— how sorry I am.”

“He knew,” he murmured. “At the end, your father knew.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I saw the look in his eyes.”

“You were halfway dead. You probably hallucinated it.”

“No,” Cassian said firmly. “What I saw on his face can’t be conjured or imagined, and it can’t be faked either. He loved you till his last breath.”

Nesta shook her head to keep the tears at bay. She curled her fingers in the leathers above his heart. “And your mother loved you till hers.”

He swallowed and tugged her even closer, until he could rest his chin on the crown of her head.

“Buy the clock, Nesta,” he muttered into her hair. “And then let’s get out of here.”

It didn’t matter that they were in a shop roughly the size of a postage stamp. That Cassian’s wings took up enough space for two people. It didn’t matter that the clockmaker was shooting them bemused glances every now and then, or that someone outside the shop apparently even recognised Cassian somehow, muttering to another fae about how that’s the Night Court general.

None of it mattered, because Nesta’s world had narrowed down to this: to the space between Cassian’s arms, and the beating of his heart.

***

She bought the clock. The fae behind the counter wrapped it carefully, and said nothing about how, in his empty shop, she and the Night Court’s fearsome general had both been close to tears. He wrapped it gently, reverently, in brown paper, and tied it with white string. Cassian took it and placed it in the deep pocket of his leather jacket for safekeeping, and Nesta took his hand as they left the shop and stepped back into the street. It was second nature now, reaching for him, and neither of them so much as blinked as her fingers laced between his, fitting so perfectly that Nesta wondered if any other hand would have fit hers like this, or if it was just his, as if all of their jagged edges lined up and fit together like a Dawn Court puzzle.

Cassian spied a shop on the other side of the square, and his hazel eyes lit up. Nesta was about to ask what it was when he dragged her to the other side, across the constellations and signs marked on the giant sun dial set into the floor. She saw weapons glinting in the sunlight, and the question died on her tongue. Of course it would be weapons, she thought to herself. Of course.

“Why it is always weapons with you?” she asked witheringly. Cassian took another step forwards and pulled her along, shooting her a smirk over his shoulder.

“Why is it always books with you?” he shot back, stepping into the shop and bringing her with him. It was a fair question, she supposed, so she let it lie. He had, after all, endured hours of shopping for books in the Day Court. She figured she could endure just one shop filled with glinting, deadly weapons. Cassian looked like he’d just entered a sweet shop, almost fizzing with excitement. She noticed his siphons glowing brighter on his chest, and made a mental note to ask him what it meant, when they glowed like that. She wanted to know how to decode them, what it meant when they pulsed, and glowed, and what it meant when they seemed to sparkle. When the light was steady and when it shuddered. It was a language, she supposed, one utterly unique to Cassian, and one she was determined to figure out.

She was about to ask, but he gasped as he plucked up a blade from where it hung on the wall. To be fair to him, it was beautiful— as beautiful as a dagger could be, she supposed. The steel was gleaming, and, as a shop assistant was so eager to tell them, imbibed with something to repel dirt and blood. “Self-cleaning,” the lesser fae explained. Cassian hummed in approval, testing the weight of the blade and dragging a hand down the flat of it, watching as not even a fingerprint was left behind. He let out another soft sound of approval. The hilt was wrapped in black leather, and Cassian hummed softly as he tested it within his grip. It was curved, flowing over the curve of his thumb and giving him better grip. “Very nice,” he said to himself as he tested it. Nesta rolled her eyes, muttering something about men and their toys.

He flipped it over his knuckles, as if he were about to throw it. “Light, too.”

The shop assistant nodded, and launched into a detailed explanation about the properties of the metal and the technique they used to make sure the blade was as balanced as it could be, and as light as possible too. Nesta didn’t pretend to understand any of it, and she wondered if this was what Cassian felt every time he took her into a bookshop.

Embedded in the pommel was a shining garnet, almost the exact shade of his siphons. The shopkeeper said as much, and Cassian grinned.

“What do you think, Nes?” he said, twisting the blade around his knuckles again. “It was practically made for me, wasn’t it?”

“If you say so,” she shrugged.

“I’ll take it,” he said firmly, and the shopkeeper looked so elated Nesta knew for sure that he’d be telling every customer the story of how the Night Court General used Dawn Court steel bought from this very shop. Cassian had, it seemed, unwittingly just become an advert. The shopkeeper took it from Cassian with both hands, and went away to wrap it.

Cassian left the shop with his purchase, wrapped in the same kind of brown paper, tucked into the same deep pocket that held Nesta’s clock. He didn’t take her hand this time, only offered her his arm. She looped hers through it, and let him lead her around the square where, somehow, they’d spent the entire day.

“Hungry?” Cassian asked. When Nesta nodded he said, “We can go back to the inn for dinner.”

She let him pull her along, since she had no idea how to get back to the inn. A large, winged, fae stepped aside to let them pass in a particularly narrow street. He had feathers, and Nesta remembered seeing feathered wings at the meeting of the High Lords, remembered noting how they had white, soft-looking feathers, but she didn’t remember being curious about it. Back then, she’d found all wings awful, all of them evidence of how other the fae were, how different and terrifying.

She looked up at the tips of Cassian’s wings after they’d bowed their heads in thanks and passed the other winged fae. With a jolt, she realised she’d grown used to his wings. She’d been grateful for how they shielded her from the cold, how he would extend them behind her just slightly when he wanted to protect her, and how he thought she hadn’t ever noticed.

“I have a question,” she said, still looking at those wings. “How come they have feathers and you don’t?”

Cassian blinked down at her. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Nes, but it’s a stupid question.” He shrugged. “They’re not Illyrian. That’s like asking why chickens cluck whereas ducks quack.”

“But wouldn’t it make more sense for Illyrians to have feathered wings?” she pressed, ignoring the fact that he’d called her question stupid. She did, though, make a mental note to slap him round the head for it later. “For warmth?”

He considered it, and shrugged again. “Maybe,” he acceded. “Why, do you like feathery wings better, Nes?” he winked, and nudged her with the tip of one leathery wing. She glared and nudged him away.

“Absolutely not.”

“Good,” Cassian said lightly, throwing an arm around her shoulders. “You prefer mine, then.”

“I don’t think that’s what I said.”

“Mhm,” Cassian said, “I think it is.”

“I seem to remember somebody said Azriel has the best wings.”

“Azriel has the biggest wings,” he clarified, somewhat bitterly. “But I told you this morning. Size isn’t everything.”

Nesta’s cheeks burned, and she didn’t know how they’d gotten onto this topic, but they certainly weren’t talking about wings anymore. She slapped him on the arm and shrugged out from underneath him.

“Pig.”

He laughed, and stretched out those wings as much as he could in the narrow street for emphasis. The bottom was a mass of scar tissue, and she knew that some of those scars… some of them he’d earned defending her. Giving his life to save hers. They weren’t so bad at all, Nesta supposed, in that case.

He caught her looking at them, and they rustled in the sunlight, as if he were preening. He grinned.

“You do prefer mine.”

“Maybe I prefer Azriel’s,” she said airily. He raised an eyebrow.

“And maybe I could say that I prefer Feyre to you,” he shrugged. “But we’d both be lying, so let’s stop with the pretence, hm?”

Nesta was trying to think of a suitable response - something insulting and witty - when he smirked again. They were outside the inn, she realised, at the entrance to the courtyard.

“Admit that you like my wings and I’ll buy you dinner.”

“Maybe I’ll flutter my eyelashes at someone else and get them to buy me dinner.”

He turned to face her, and she tried to move past him, but one of those wings shot out and blocked her path. “Oh, you’d have a line of suitors stretching around the building if word got out that you were looking for one of them to buy you dinner, I’m sure,” he said with an idle shrug. “But you wouldn’t like any of them. So admit it, and let’s go and find a table.”

“Why are you so insufferable?”

He grinned down at her, and leaned forwards, so that his lips brushed her ear.

“Admit it.”

She fought the shiver that crawled down her spine as he dragged a finger down her jaw. His other hand ghosted across her waist, not touching her, but close enough that she could feel his heat. Her toes curled, and it was an effort to keep her eyes from sliding closed. He hummed against her ear, as if he knew exactly what he was doing to her, exactly the reaction he was provoking. Bastard.

“Never,” Nesta breathed, the stubborn part of her winning out over everything else. Cassian smirked, as if he knew it, as if he enjoyed it.

“Not even if I swore to bring you chocolate covered strawberries every day for breakfast for a month straight?”

“No.”

The hand at her waist rested on her hip, and the fabric of her dress suddenly felt like nothing. She could feel the warmth of his palm in her very bones.

“I’ll take you dancing in Velaris.”

“No.”

“Buy you as many books as you want.”

“Someone’s desperate,” Nesta hummed and Cassian laughed, daring to capture her earlobe between his teeth. She gasped, and the sound made Cassian laugh, a deep rumble that echoed in his chest. She didn’t care that they were in the courtyard of the inn— didn’t care that they were in public, that people could see. She leaned into his touch.

“When it comes to you,” he said roughly, “I’m always desperate.”

Nesta blinked, and looked up at him as he pulled his lips away from her ear. He looked down at her, and she could have sworn he was about to kiss her. He was so close— barely an inch away, all she’d have to do was tilt her face just slightly and they would meet. So close. They were so close. He lowered his lips until they were hovering above hers, until there wasn’t more than a hairsbreadth between them.

“Admit it,” he whispered again.

Nesta groaned in frustration and pulled away with a huff, glaring as he laughed.

“Fine,” she said at last. “I prefer your wings. Are you happy now?”

“Exceptionally so,” he said with a smug grin. “Now let’s eat.”

***

“Can you understand them?” Nesta asked, dipping her spoon into the stew the inn was serving for dinner. It was thick and warm, deliciously spiced like nothing Nesta had ever had before. She fought the urge to groan around her spoon, focusing instead on the voices around them. There were, on the next table, a group of what appeared to be merchants. Their clothes were weather worn and fraying at the edges, and they spoke in a tongue Nesta neither understood nor recognised.

Cassian shook his head and raised an eyebrow, his own spoon frozen just inches from his mouth. “We can’t all speak seven languages, sweetheart.”

Nesta rolled her eyes. “I don’t speak seven,” she said flatly. “I speak three.”

She’d told him the day before that she liked languages, that she had been taught three when she was a child. The language of this land, the language of the continent, and another, older, language that many considered dead. It had always been a small thrill for her, tasting different words on her tongue, gleaning their meaning. Her language tutor had been particularly impressed, and if they hadn’t had lost all their money, perhaps Nesta would have been able to speak seven languages.

“Well, I can speak only two. This and Illyrian.”

Nesta looked down at her soup in contemplation. She wondered what Illyrian would feel like, how quickly she could learn it after so many years speaking nothing but her mother tongue. She wondered if he could teach her, if Illyrian could be her fourth language. She wanted to ask, but didn’t know if she should dare. Didn’t know what line it would be crossing— or if it would be crossing a line at all. The lines had always been so blurred between her and Cassian, so much so that there had never really been lines at all, just arbitrary goalposts and markers, ones that were constantly moving and shifting.

“You’re thinking so loud I can almost hear it,” Cassian said. “It’s ruining my soup.”

“How tragic,” Nesta replied sarcastically, ignoring the grin he flashed her. “Will you teach me?” she asked at last. “Teach me Illyrian?”

He choked on his soup. He coughed, and coughed and coughed, until he drank deeply from the water on the table and looked up at her from underneath his eyelashes.

“Teach you Illyrian?” he repeated numbly.

“Why not?”

“I think the better question is why?” he asked incredulously, setting down his soup spoon with a clatter.

“If you don’t want to then—“

“No, it’s not that,” he cut in hurriedly. “You just— despise Illyria. Fucking everybody despises Illyria. Why learn the language?”

She shrugged. “I like learning languages.”

He let out a soft, incredulous laugh and ran a hand through his hair. “Alright,” he said after a minute, no small amount of shock lingering in his tone. “But in return you can help me name my new dagger.”

“Why?” Nesta asked with a quirked brow. “I didn’t realise picking a name for a curved piece of metal would be taxing.”

Cassian snorted. “You’re the one with the extensive vocabulary sweetheart. I want something memorable. Think of Truth-Teller. Something to instil fear in the hearts of the wicked,” he said with a gleam in his eye. Nesta snorted.

“Something intimidating. Bloodthirsty,” Cassian continued, tapping a finger against his chin. “Befitting the mighty warrior I am, of course.”

“Of course,” Nesta parroted flatly. “What’s ‘arrogant prick’ in Illyrian?”

“Nice try,” Cassian shot back. “How about I teach you hello in Illyrian first?”

“I think I’d get more use out of arrogant prick.”

Cassian hummed in exasperation. “Pick a name, Nesta. I’ll go with whatever you choose, so long as it’s not arrogant prick, or anything along those lines.”

Nesta raised an eyebrow. “Whatever I choose?”

“So long as it’s not insulting, then yes.”

“Why?”

“Told you,” he shrugged. “I want something memorable. You’re the one with your head always in a book. Why don’t you use those posh words of yours and give me something?”

“Posh?”

He raised an eyebrow in challenge, leaned back in his chair, and folded his arms. “Posh.”

“We lived in a cabin in the woods for eight years.”

He snorted. “That’s nothing, princess. I’d bet my life you were still posh even then.”

“Ah yes,” Nesta said archly. “So posh that I agreed to marry a brute of a man just so Feyre would have one less mouth to feed.”

The words were out before Nesta could take them back— before she realised, really, what she’d said. What she’d admitted. Cassian’s gaze softened, and she hated it. Hated that he pitied her.

“Nes,” he breathed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—“

Silence. For the first time in a long, long time… the silence between them was uncomfortable. There were too many things Nesta wanted to say, too many things she needed to say. How Tomas had never seen her for who she was, not the way that Cassian did. Tomas had never understood her, never even really known her. He wanted her for what she could give to him, for the children she would bear him and the prize she would be on his arm. Nesta looked across the table at the warrior gazing at her with wide, sorrowful, eyes.

“It’s— fine,” she said at last.

“No, it’s not.” Cassian frowned down at the table, as if he didn’t want to meet her eyes. “I don’t like it,” he said after a moment. “I can’t stand the thought of you having to endure it. Of being tied to a man like that.”

“Why?” she breathed, already knowing the answer. Knowing the answer but needing him to say it, needing to hear it out loud.

“Because you’re everything, Nesta. My everything, and the thought of him with his hands on you, hurting you, I could kill him for it. Tear him apart in the most brutal, painful way imaginable.” His gaze flicked to his new knife, lying on the table between them. She didn’t doubt it, not for a moment.

“My mother was subjected to it, and I’d tear apart the world before I let anything similar happen to you,” he continued, and she heard the promise of violence there, noted the way his siphons seemed to blaze.

“I told you once before that both our people could be barbarous,” she managed, little more than a whisper. “We’ve both been on the receiving end of their cruelty.”

“Never again,” he swore. “Never again.”

He reached across the table for her hand, and she weaved her fingers through his, her grief and despair settling as soon as she felt his warmth.

“I don’t want to sleep alone anymore,” she said quietly. His fingers tightened, and she felt him pause. Heard him swallow thickly.

“You’re sure?”

“Don’t ask me what it means. Don’t ask me what it makes this… makes us.”

She couldn’t face that yet, couldn’t bear it. She just wanted him beside her in the darkness, somebody to hold her hand in the dead of night, when the nightmares came and reduced her to a trembling mess.

“Alright,” he breathed. He lifted her hand to his lips, kissing her skin so softly she barely felt it. It was all she could bear right now— small touches, soft and innocent kisses. She wrapped her fingers around his wrist, feeling his pulse in his veins, reminding her that he was alive. She was alive.

“Doris,” she said after a beat of silence, more comfortable than the last. He raised an eyebrow and lowered her hand from his mouth.

“Excuse me?”

“The dagger.”

“I asked for something bloodthirsty and you came up with Doris?”

“You asked for something memorable,” Nesta corrected. “What’s more memorable than Doris the Dagger?”

Cassian let out a laugh that made the merchants on the table nearest to them turn. He shook his head as his laughter died away.

“Doris the Dagger it is, then.”