It just hit me how it must seem to Nesta that Cassian is just toying with her and that his heart is with Mor.
- He and Mor have centuries of history together. Mor is stunning and sensual and open and warm and all the things Nesta doesn’t see herself being.
- Mor is the one who angrily warns Nesta off Cassian. To Nesta, it must feel like a territorial pissing match, (despite the fact that readers know Mor is just being a protective friend).
- Mor is the one who tries to disrupt the nessian winnowing moment, grabbing for Cassian while he’s clearly engaged with Nesta.
- Mor is the one who warns Nesta away from Cassian’s healing tent after the battle.
- Cassian is touchy and protective around Mor in front of Nesta all the time. He massages her feet after the High Lord meeting, he physically comforts her after Rhys gives Keir access to Velaris, they lounge together on couches. They show a level of physical comfort together that screams togetherness. To someone observant like Nesta, that would be setting off a thousand warning bells no matter how much flirting cassian does with her privately.
- The infamous battle tent scene, where Nesta shows rare, nearly unheard of vulnerability with Cassian. She touches him willingly for the first time, and stares into his eyes, and— he yanks his hand away as soon as Mor enters the tent. Must be *gutting* for someone who feels so much and guards her heart so zealously. She must have felt so foolish.
- While all Nesta can do is watch in the rain, Mor is able to go cut a path to Cassian mid-battle. Mor is the trained soldier with centuries of fighting experience under her belt. To Nesta, it must feel like she can’t compete - two celebrated warriors with that much rapport and history and mutual hotness.
- After the Nessian hybern death scene, it’s somehow Mor who winds up escorting Cassian off the field, with nesta watching. We don’t know how it happens, but somehow it’s Nesta on the fringes and cassian and Mor leaning on each other. Depending on how that went down, that may be the reason Nesta made it clear she wanted nothing to do with Cassian after the war.
In ACOFAS, it seems like Nesta knows Cassian is her mate. She tries to block out “all that he was,” and can sense that he follows her home. Knowing that must torture Nesta. Feeling like the cauldron shackled Cassian to her when he really wants to be with Mor. Feeling like all the attention he pays her is just the result of fate pushing them together and not his own natural wishes. Especially if she fears it was her feelings for him that bound them together when she was in the cauldron...she’d fight that with everything in her. She’d never want to take his freedom like that; and it would be so humiliating to her to have him want her only because magic forced him to.
That’s why his choice of her must be CRYSTAL clear in acosf. The Mor situation is going to have to come to a head. Cassian is going to have to put Nesta first - ahead of the Inner Circle, ahead of Mor. He’s going to have to do something to prove to Nesta that he wants her for herself. I need Nesta to know she’s IT for him and always has been, since the very first day she stared him down at that table.
