Thank you to everyone who participated in Nesta Week 2026! There were so many amazing contributions that they’ve been split into daily round up posts, which you can find all the links to below. Don’t forget to check out our Instagram and AO3 collection!
i'll be updating this day by day with little ficlet snacks for your reading pleasure, because nesta deserves to be worshipped by everyone
Six times people lusted after Nesta Archeron, and one time someone loved her.
Day 7: Free Day - NESSIAN
Driven from bed by ghosts, Nesta seeks Cassian out.
Read on ao3 here, preview below the cut!
The candle illuminates her face from below when Nesta slips through his door just after midnight.
Cassian goes from half-asleep to awake in an instant. Years of barracks and battlefield tents have hammered the instinct into him—but even without them, he'd still feel the erratic thumping of her heart, the shudder of fear down their unspoken bond.
Nesta tucks a lock of loose hair behind her ear, and says nothing. She looks sheepish, like she's just realized what a bad choice this is, and is now seconds from bolting.
"Door's unlocked for a reason," Cassian offers to the question she doesn't ask. He's pleased to see her shoulders relax a fraction from where they're crowding her ears, and he rolls onto his back, hands propped behind his head.
Nesta huffs, making the candle flicker.
“I can’t sleep,” she says cryptically. The candle flickers again, this time from the tremor traveling up her arm.
"Sorry to hear it.”
He tries to keep his tone light, casual. Like it's normal for the most gorgeous female he's ever seen to come sneaking into his bedroom in the middle of the night. Which it is, in his fantasies, and her hair is down like this, though she's usually wearing fewer clothes.
In reality, Nesta's white cotton night dress covers her from neck to ankle.
Cassian isn't sure he minds as he sits up, trying to look more awake. Thank the Mother he wore his underclothes to sleep, though his bare chest still feels too exposed as Nesta surveys him, too, grey blue trailing down the long span of his wings.
She sits on the edge of the bed without invitation, which pleases him for some reason. She's just out of reach, large as the damned bed thing is, but she's close enough that he can see the fluttering hairs around her face in the dim light.
"I just need—" Nesta cuts off, worrying at her lip. "This was foolish. Pretend I wasn't here."
Cassian leans over on an elbow, fingers snagging the back off her night dress as she turns to rise.
I managed to finish this for @nestaarcheronweek just in time, and I'm so excited to share it!
Nesta has a long day at work and does a lot of reflection.
A follow up to "We Would Like A Ring" from Nesta's perspective where the boys pop the question!
Thank you to @dustjacketmusings for betaing this fic last minute for me!
Read a snippet below or the full fic on AO3!
Her desk buzzed from the numerous notifications that kept coming through her phone. Nesta didn’t have to check to know who they were from. Cassin and Azriel had asked her to try and get home early tonight. She knew they had plans, but she didn’t know what they were.
Not only was she not home early, she wasn’t even on time. She’d gotten lost in the book she was editing, and not in a good way. She truly wasn’t sure how this book had gotten past the first round of her co-editor. Then again, he was a man, and he was full of his own problems. Thankfully she’d gotten full control of this book, and just in time. It was full of the same, mundane tropes with no unique take and the deadline for the company to return edits to the author was tomorrow.
She wasn’t sure if she hated the book or herself more for actually being intrigued by it. There was potential, if only the author would put in the effort to follow their own plot points. She wanted to pull her hair out over the numerous contradictions she’d written into her own works. I mean really, she thought to herself, who touts their novel as supporting women when you take away all her power and make her a man’s play thing?
But she knew that the audience would eat this up. And if she could just pitch her points to the author in the right way, she was sure it could be amazing. Something she was proud to edit and publish, something that had a future. So she’d turned off the overhead lights, printed the manuscript, and taken her red pen to the pages with a furor she hadn’t had since her early days of editing. She’d built a name for herself in this career, and she wouldn’t give it up. If anyone was going to fix this book, it was her.
Finish reading on AO3.
Let me know if you want on or off the taglist! @born-to-riot @chunkypossum @bubybubsters @queercontrarian @yams-77 @fieldofdaisiies @iftheshoef1tz @secret-third-thing @jules-writes-stories @the-darkestminds @climbthemountain2020 @amalhe-kofee @molcat07 @sleepyy-ollie @astra-aeterna @popjunkie42 @tegantales
When Cassian accompanies his brother to New York to find a wife, he doesn't expect to be drawn in by the very woman Rhys is intending to court.
Nesta Archeron, the daughter of new money in the railroad industry, is determined to marry the visiting Duke of Velaris in order to secure her family's standing in society. She doesn't expect to be so drawn in by his brother.
-
Or, a Gilded Age Nessian AU
---
New York Harbor, April 1881
Cassian and Azriel stood by the rail of the ship as it approached New York City Harbor. Ever since this morning, when the sun had risen into a dusky haze of fog, the buildings had grown inch by meticulous inch until he could just make the skyline out beyond the clouds.
Their brother had a singular goal — one important enough to drag the two of them on a steamship across the Atlantic: to find a wealthy wife without delay. Preferably a new money heiress that was determined enough to break into London society that she could turn a blind eye to the family’s withering finances.
When Rhys’ father died, all that he inherited from the late duke were dry mines, gambling debt, and starving tenants. Impossible to recover from on his own, at least not within a generation.
Rhys’ face was pale when he joined him and Azriel at the railing. Throughout their journey, Rhys had heaved his stomach into a bucket with every rock of the steamship, unable to hold any of his food down. His soft-handed brother had never experienced such a thing before.
“So,” Cassian said, leveling an appraising glance at the city. “This is New York.”
In my Civilization You’re the King and the Queen (ao3)
Honestly, when I wrote this one-shot in 2024 I had no intention of coming back to it. Then it slowly but surely dawned on me that maybe I wasn’t quite as done with historian!Cassian and archivist!Nesta as I’d thought. So here we are, with a little bonus epilogue in honour of the final day of @nestaarcheronweek ❤️
Also peep the Semper Eadem Easter egg 👀
(Read part one here!)
Nesta Archeron was not the kind of woman who walked blindly into a bad decision.
She was meticulous and careful. Methodical. The kind of person that didn’t so much as walk out of her front door in the morning without first assessing the pitfalls of doing so. She didn’t make mistakes— didn’t entertain them. And so, when she left the library that evening with a short good-bye called over her shoulder to Ron, the guard at the Manuscripts reading room door, she knew with every fibre of her being that this was a very, very bad decision.
And she’d walked into it with her eyes wide open.
There was no excuse for it, really.
Here she was, standing in the early evening light as it filtered through a skylight high above her head, in an almost empty gallery at the British Museum, surrounded by white marble and ancient friezes. It was quiet, peaceful; the man beside her almost a complete stranger. It was ludicrously stupid, to be so alone with a man she’d only just met. And yet she was here anyway, with the only sensible thing being the way she kept her hands tucked into her pockets to avoid any chance of her fingers accidentally brushing his, hanging loosely at his sides, like that’s exactly what he was hoping for.
He looked like the kind of man who’d had the layout of the Somme memorised by the age of fifteen, but still couldn’t name all of Henry VIII’s six wives. The kind of man who couldn’t tell the difference between Romanesque architecture and Gothic— who still used the term ‘dark ages’.
The kind of man she had absolutely no business entertaining for more than five minutes.
And yet. There was a curiosity there— deep within her. Something that, try as she might, did not want to be buried.
She was all about bad decisions today, apparently.
On the walk over, he’d told her about his research, about Rhysand and how they’d been raised together. How they’d gone through every rung of the educational ladder together, until they both wound up working at the same university. He’d asked her how she became an archivist, where she was from originally - ‘because that’s definitely not a London accent, sweetheart’ - before he’d grabbed her arm and pulled her back from the curb, just as a bike came hurtling around the corner with such speed that it definitely would’ve taken her out if he’d not been there to haul her back. She swore, and he laughed a little as he brushed his hand down her sleeve, as if checking no harm had been done. Nesta had been able to feel the blood in her cheeks— told herself it was the indignation, the humiliation at having to be saved by a man.
Nothing at all to do with the way he’d pulled her against him as he’d pulled her back, or how his body had - for just a second - moulded itself to hers.
He pointed at something, now, and Nesta couldn’t help the way her gaze snagged on his wrist, and the slice of skin revealed as the cuff of his jacket shifted with the movement. A silver bracelet encircled that tattooed wrist, chain links against dark ink, and there was something entirely inexplicable - something downright foolish - that had her suddenly wondering just how high those tattoos climbed. How much of his skin had been given over to the curling, curving design that she could only catch a glimpse of. She blinked. Tried to focus on what he was trying to point out to her, but all she could think of was how she’d watched him splay open the pages of a priceless manuscript with those hands. Those tattooed knuckles and broad palms.
She was not thinking about how they would feel on her skin.
Not at all.
Instead she forced herself to watch the way the early evening light slanted through the skylights above; the way the grey danced along his skin.
He was magnetic. The sheer energy of him commanding every ounce of her attention. His jaw was angled up, now, his eyes tracing the top of an ancient Greek frieze, and as he slid his hands into his pockets, a small smile playing at the corner of his lips as his eyes strayed towards her and lingered, she wondered if it wasn’t to stop himself from reaching out and touching her.
“Well?” Cassian said, his voice quiet in the hush of the empty gallery.
It was deserted— one of those Greek and Roman galleries on the ground floor, labyrinthine, little more than a rabbit’s warren of ancient artefacts. Nesta blinked again, stepping towards a glass case containing an ancient black-work vase - Achilles and Penthisilea locked in an eternal embrace in the centre - and forced herself to shrug idly, like she had simply been distracted by nothing more than the beauty of classical art.
“Well what?” she asked, sliding her eyes towards him.
He smirked, moving around the display case until he was looking at her from the other side of the glass. “I said aren’t you glad Rhys asked me for a favour today.”
Nesta snorted as she turned away, her heeled boots sounding on the tiled floor as she fought to keep her face blank. “For the sake of my manuscripts, I think it’s best I not answer.”
He hummed, the sound low and resonant as he caught up with her in a single stride. “I’ll take that as a yes then.”
She rolled her eyes. “Take it how you like. It’s not my fault you’ve never had a day’s worth of proper archival training in your life.”
Honestly— the image of his fingers splayed across the vellum would haunt her for the rest of her life. Never mind how stark those tattoos had looked against the ancient ink, how broad the spread of his palms were as he flattened them against something priceless. She sniffed as he fell into step beside her, winking - winking - as he slid those same hands into his pockets.
“Never needed it, sweetheart. I told you. I’m a modernist.” Another godforsaken wink. “I don’t work with those dusty old books.”
Nesta blinked flatly, sliding her gaze towards him. Letting it slip down from his face and along his arms. “Don’t like getting your hands dirty?”
It was perhaps the one thing nobody ever told you. What the books and period dramas never managed to replicate. How filthy your hands got after a day in the archives.
Cassian only grinned, his eyes dancing as a wicked smile curved that generous mouth. “Oh, I can get them plenty dirty.” He shifted his eyes forwards, all ease and nonchalance as he added, in a voice that dipped so low Nesta felt it in her very centre, “How about I show you sometime?”
God— this man.
She refused to blush. Absolutely, categorically refused to fall prey to that look in his eyes, the spark there that said he was enjoying this. Instead Nesta shook her head, mirroring his indifference. Her steps didn’t falter as she walked through the silence of the gallery, and her eyes didn’t flick his way again. With effort, she kept her attention on the walk back to the atrium.
“I’m curious,” she deadpanned as the hallway narrowed before leading them out into a bigger gallery, right in the centre of the museum. Through a doorway, the light from the atrium poured in, the hushed voices of other patrons echoing on the marble. For a moment Nesta had forgotten there were other people inside the museum; other people existing in London at all. “Has that line ever worked for you?’
Cassian’s laugh echoed in the emptiness, a treasure in and of itself. It was deep and rolling, rich, and Nesta found her steps halting as it faded to a chuckle.
“Worth a shot, isn’t it?” he said, striding past her, hands still in his pockets. The very picture of a man at ease.
Smooth— he was so fucking smooth.
It was ludicrous, really. That a man who came into her archive and managed to manhandle a nine-hundred year old manuscript so badly that she’d genuinely stopped breathing for a moment or two now had her breath hitching and her steps faltering, her eyes gliding across his shoulders and lingering on the fucking bun he’d tied his hair in.
She could only scowl as he walked ahead, aiming for the door that would take them back into the brightness of the atrium.
“Besides,” he called over his shoulder, a wicked smile curving a mouth so sinful Nesta thought it should have been criminal. “It’s working right now, isn’t it?”
And for the first time in her life, Nesta Archeron was left entirely speechless as she watched him stride away, her mouth parting as she blinked furiously, searching for something to say. A counter-point; an argument that felt convincing. She searched and came up empty— so woefully empty it left her stranded.
Because - God fucking damn it - he was right.
***
He knew exactly how to get her, she’d give him that.
When presented with a map of the museum’s second floor, he hadn’t missed a beat when he suggested they head to the Medieval Europe 1050-1500 gallery first. He’d given her a small, knowing smile. Like he could sense it, somehow— the strings that pulled at her, the things that sparked her interest above all else. He’d even stood there and let her wax lyrical in front of the Sutton Hoo helmet, and asked her which of the Lewis Chessmen was her favourite. Not once did his eyes glaze over. He remained a solid, steady presence at her side.
Cassian, she was starting to understand, was not like other men.
There were others - men she’d briefly dated - who had tended to switch off whenever she started to speak. Had merely pretended to listen, like her intelligence had threatened their own.
Cassian had barely been able to look away from her.
She drifted, now. Through a gallery with later medieval objects and more recent acquisitions. And there— standing isolated from the rest, in the centre of the room, like it had earned pride of place, was a tall, narrow glass case with black velvet lining the inside. Lights illuminated the interior, and even from a distance, Nesta could see the gold.
The museum’s most recent purchase— a stunning example of Tudor jewellery and artistry.
Nesta paused before it, letting her eyes glide along its smooth surface. A pendant the size of her fist hung suspended on a golden chains, with a series of links thick enough to hold the weight of the solid gold heart at its centre. A Tudor rose bloomed across the pendant, inlaid with garnet that sparkled even now, all these centuries later. At the bottom, a scroll proclaimed in French, Always Yours. Five hundred years old— it was five hundred years old, and yet here it was, shining and polished, like it had been crafted only yesterday.
It made her wonder who had commissioned such a beautiful thing. What kind of love had inspired it; compelled somebody, five hundred years ago, to pay for such a priceless treasure.
Priceless— it was priceless.
She hoped the woman who owned the thing had been treasured just as much. That she had been loved just as ardently.
Slowly, Nesta blinked.
The man at her side stopped to admire the pendant in its case. Sliding his hands into his pockets, his eyes scanning the lines of text printed beneath the pendant’s glass case, he let out an audible breath.
“It blows my mind how old this stuff is,” he said quietly, the words barely more than a whisper, like to speak any louder might disturb the treasure inside its case.
Nesta tilted her head, her eyes tracing the heart-shaped pendant, the garnets set so carefully into the gold. “It’s not as old as the manuscript you were so brutally handling earlier.”
He gave her a slashing grin in response. “Are you ever going to forgive me for that?”
“It’s barely been an hour.”
Cassian laughed softly, nudging her with his shoulder. The weight of him was solid, warm, and she couldn’t help but lean into it— just a fraction. Just enough to stave off the chill from the tiled gallery floor.
She drew her gaze back to the pendant in front of her. The workmanship, the detail…
“Enough to take your breath away, huh?”
When her eyes flicked up, Cassian was looking at her, something soft in his eyes. A kind of wonder balanced there, like this moment was something wondrous in and of itself. The same curiosity, the same passion that she knew burned in her eyes was echoed in his own, like he understood - really, truly understood in a way no other man had before - what it was to spend half of one’s life in the past.
“Why did you become a historian, Cassian?” she asked slowly. Softly. Like she, too, was afraid she might break some spell if she spoke too loudly.
He huffed another laugh. “Don’t you feel it?” he asked. “When you see something like that,” - he nodded towards the locket - “don’t you feel it in your chest? That… wonder.”
It was her turn, now, to nudge him with her shoulder. “Of course I do,” she said tartly. “That’s why I became an archivist. To look after precious things.”
He tipped his head back, baring the column of his throat. “Alright, alright. If I apologise to the manuscript, will you forgive me?”
She pursed her lips, keeping her face blank even as her eyes danced. Something skipped through her, something light and airy, that made her want to laugh in earnest too.
“Maybe.”
“I’ll grovel,” he said, turning to face her fully. He dared a step closer, until his chest was almost brushing hers. And then— it was madness, but his hand raised in the space between them, the backs of his knuckles curled to brush lightly - so lightly - against her cheek. “Would you like me to grovel?”
Nesta swallowed. “If it will make you feel better.”
He smiled— all at once, rakish and charming and downright endearing. Nesta felt her heart tighten in her chest, like she’d stopped being able to control the damned thing. Slowly, his eyes slid to the cabinet beside them. That sparkling gold pendant, hanging at eye-level.
“Do you think he loved her?”
“Who?”
“Whoever he was. The man that commissioned it. For whichever woman he gave it to.”
Nesta tilted her head. Wondered silently at how he’d somehow read her mind.
“I hope so,” she said gently.
She looked up, into his face. Something passed between them, something she didn’t have words for. Suddenly it felt like she’d known this man her entire life. Like she would be safe with him, no matter what. Despite how atrociously he’d handled her manuscript…
Oh, she was in trouble.
Her lips parted as she searched for some sharp remark, something cutting, but she couldn’t think. Her mind was blank, and she could only blink as her eyes scanned his face, taking in - for the first time - the scar in his eyebrow, the slight angle to his nose that said it’d been broken in the past. She looked at his eyes, the hazel bright beneath the museum lights, and found she wanted to reach out and brush his cheek in the way he’d brushed hers.
He was looking at her too— just as intently. Like she was something else for him to study, a lesson he so desperately wanted to learn.
And Nesta was about to reach for him, to let her fingers graze his skin when—
The museum will be closing in ten minutes. Please begin making your way to the exit.
The voice came over the speakers, shattering whatever peace Nesta had managed to curate in that little circle of space in front of a sixteenth-century golden pendant. She rolled her eyes, wishing she could drag this out just a little longer, make time still for just a little while. Just long enough to let her catch her breath, to figure out what it was that had her reaching for this man, the force that seemed to pull her into his orbit. Just a little bit longer— she wanted just a little bit longer at his side.
Cassian only offered her a crooked smile as the announcement faded, like he too was cursing the interruption, and held out a hand to escort her to the exit.
And Nesta didn’t know, as they walked towards the doors, if she was surprised or not as his fingers closed around hers.
***
“Is this it?”
Cassian stood a handful of steps away, his back to her as Nesta paused on the museum steps. The forecourt was empty, the sky turning gold as the evening light began to die. The white stone pillars of the museum facade surrounded them, and Nesta hesitated, knowing that to walk down those steps, to leave through the iron gates, would mean that whatever had just happened inside that museum…
It would be over.
The man before her turned. His eyes were wide, lost, like he’d reached a cross-roads and didn’t know which way to turn.
“Am I supposed to walk you to the station and then turn around and walk away?” he asked.
Nesta forced herself to shrug. “You’re not supposed to do anything.”
Except the air between them suddenly felt thin and stretched, and she wanted nothing more than for him to do the exact opposite of walking her to the station and leaving her there. She’d known it was a bad idea, accepting his offer of an evening trip to the British Museum. And now she was on the museum steps wondering where the hell they went from here.
A few hours ago, she hadn’t even known his name. How was it possible that saying goodbye to him now felt so damned difficult?
He gave her a wry smile as he ran a hand through his hair, his fingers snagging on the curls. She looked at those tattooed knuckles, wondering when the fuck that had started to be a turn-on for her. She forced herself to look away, folding her arms across her chest as she looked up at the sky.
“What do you want to do, Cassian?” she asked.
She could see the answer on his face, could hear all the things he didn’t say. He didn’t want to come into her archive on the orders of someone else; didn’t want to live by some set of rules that made no sense to either of them. He didn’t want to take her number and wait two days to call. Didn’t want to pretend that his brother asking for a favour hadn’t somehow led to the most interesting evening he’d had in a while.
He scrubbed a hand along his jaw, hesitating for only a moment. A breath. A heartbeat.
And then—
“This,” he said, as he surged forward and took her face between his palms.
It was a desperate kiss, one that wasn’t tentative or sweet or delicate. His lips moved against hers with a fervour that made her breathless, that had her turning molten in his arms. Only the arm he wound around her waist kept her upright, her entire body giving itself over to the way his mouth moved against her own. His hands turned to fists at her waist, gripping her, holding her against him, as he kissed her with such abandon, she forgot they were in public.
She forgot how to breathe.
Did she even need to anymore?
She didn’t think so, not when that damned kiss seemed to be everything she had ever needed and more; more vital to her than air.
Her hands travelled up his chest, across his collarbone. A groan reverberated through him as her fingers splayed across his jaw, tilting him towards her as he tore his lips away, gasping for breath.
His eyes sparked as he took in lungfuls of air, like he’d only broken the kiss because necessity had demanded it.
“Fucking hell,” he said, his chest rising and falling as rapidly as Nesta’s own, “I wanted to do that since the moment I saw you.”
“I was scolding you the moment you saw me,” Nesta pointed out, even as her body arced into his, entirely of its own accord. His hand lingered at the small of her back, his thumb pressing into her spine.
He grinned. “Exactly.”
She laughed, in a way that she hadn’t for a long, long time. The sound of it seemed to make the smile bloom wider across his face, his hands tightening at her spine as he held her that little bit closer.
He really was beautiful, she thought. In a rugged kind of way— the way that was so different to the men she’d been with in the past. He felt like something new, something exciting. Something that was about to turn her world upside down in every kind of way.
Slowly, she let herself smile too.
“Now what?” she asked.
Cassian hummed, letting the tip of his nose graze her cheek as he dipped his head towards hers. Still, he didn’t let go of her. And it surprised her— that she didn’t really want him to.
“Now,” he said slowly, pulling back just enough to study her face. “Can I take you for a drink?”
Nesta looked into his face. The man she had glared at with such fury such a short time ago. The man who had strolled into her archive like he owned the damn place, caring little for the rules and regulations. Who had, somehow, worked his way into her good graces regardless.
She blamed the tattoos.
No man should be so good looking, she concluded. It simply wasn’t fair.
Still, she made an effort to consider his request. Made a show of casting her eyes about his face, like she was weighing up the merits of it. Of him. He blinked, that smile still lingering at the corner of the lips she longed to kiss again— and again, and again. She made herself hum, as though the answer needed careful consideration. As though she hadn’t made up her mind the moment the question had passed his lips.
And when Nesta laid a hand right above his heart, she smiled as she said,
If you’d like to be added to or taken off the taglist, let me know!
Snippet below the cut
Summer settles over Westminster like a heavy cloak, turning the stone corridors warm and the gardens lush with roses and honeysuckle.
Nesta rises before dawn each morning to attend Lady Margery, a minor noblewoman who serves in the Queen’s household. It’s humble work, fetching her wash water, helping her dress, managing her correspondence with a brother who serves as a minor official in Kent, as well as occasionally translating letters from French or Flemish to English. Lady Margery is kind enough, if rather vague and prone to forgetting Nesta’s name, calling her “girl” more often than not.
But the position gives Nesta a foothold at court, and for that she’s grateful.
On a morning in early June, barely a fortnight after her arrival, Lady Margery sends her on an unusual errand.
“The Queen requires embroidery silks,” Lady Margery announces over her morning ale, waving a hand vaguely. “Blue and gold, I believe. Or was it green? Well, you’ll sort it out. They’re in the stillroom off the south gallery. Take them to Her Majesty’s solar before she returns from her morning prayers.”
Nesta curtseys and makes her way through the castle, which is just beginning to stir. Servants move through corridors with buckets and brooms, preparing for the day ahead. The kitchens are already roaring with activity, the smell of baking bread wafting through the halls.
She finds the stillroom and gathers what she thinks the Queen might need—skeins in shades of blue and gold, plus green and crimson for good measure, wrapping them carefully in a linen cloth. The bundle is awkward, and Nesta tries to make sure the skeins won’t tangle. She tucks it under her arm as she makes her way back through the castle.
The most direct route to the Queen’s solar takes her through the gardens—a calculated risk, as the paths are often muddy after the morning dew, but it saves nearly ten minutes of walking through crowded corridors. And this early, the gardens should be deserted. She’s halfway across the rose garden, the morning sun just beginning to burn off the mist that clings to the ground, when she rounds a hedge and nearly collides with a wall of muscle and leather. Strong hands catch her arms, steadying her before she makes impact, and embroidery silks scatter across the gravel path like a rainbow spilled from heaven.
“Careful,” a deep voice says. “These paths can be treacherous in the morning dew.”
Fanbind: "Could You Love Me While I Hate Myself", by Cee_Darling
A special post for #NestaWeek2026! I realized I hadn't shared any of my fanbinds here yet, so what better way to start than with this amazing story. Sharing on Nesta Week Day 7: Free Day because this fic has it all - good ol' dragon-fighting adventure, fierce and sweet romance, struggles between Fate and Choice and of course, chapter after chapter, Nesta's resilient character, unyielding in the face of any challenge.
@nestaarcheronweek
"Could You Love Me While I Hate Myself" - by @witch-and-her-witcher
Typeset and binding by me, with author permission.
In this beautiful story about resilience and learning to accept love, we see what would have happened if Nesta Archeron met Cassian, a young Illyrian warrior, during the War of the Wall. Nesta is a woman of action, who will not shy away from battle or marriage with an almost complete stranger if that's what it takes to protect her only remaining sister, Elain. But as she moves North to Illyria, she will find that the greatest battle she has yet to face is to accept the untamed, selfless love she never believed she deserved, both from her partner and her community.
(summary by me)
For this bind, I wanted to recreate the feeling of the Illyrian mountains, so I dared try my hand at painting once again. The cover material has a velvet-like touch that is quite rough for a paint brush, so I ended up not being able to draw the lines as fine as I'd like, but I'm still happy with the result. Simple white acryllic paint did the job :)
Chapter headers and title page were made in Canva. I particularly liked the imagery of "keep reaching out your hand", as canon-Amren said; one of my favorite character traits of this fic's Cassian is that he does just that without having to be told and without losing his personality. And we see Nesta gradually growing into accepting it not as pity or a demand of fate, but as the kindness she's always deserved.
Below are some of my favorite snippets from this fic, where we see Nesta's character is all its splendor: a mother's care and concern for her sister, and all the guilt that comes with believing she's not doing enough; the sense of duty that moves her to use whatever skills available to her to save her community; the soul-eating doubt about her self-worth; and her selfless love for her partner, the undying passion that she gives in to just because it's him.
The whole fic is free to read on AO3 here.
Materials and techniques:
Typeset on MS Word, graphics made in Canva.
Printed on 80gsm white paper on an inkjet Epson ET-2850 printer.
A5 folio, sewn on tapes with French link stitch
Case-bound using 2mm bookboard and covered in self-adhesive paper with velvet texture -> if you want to live a stress-free life, stay clear of this self-adhesive stuff at all costs, it's hell to glue on.
Cover painted with white acryllic paint.
Author name drawn with 3D effect liner paint for fabric.
Endpapers are Pepin's gift/creative paper, Belle Epoque collection
“Best and worst day,” he echoed Emerie’s statement. “That was the first time we-”
“Yes,” Emerie reached for Cassian’s hand. He gave it, shifting out of Nesta’s grip to comfort his friend. “Cassian spoke to me after. After my father hit me, after my uncle demanded I be clipped early for flying too high. He stopped it and he … well, he knew what it was like.”
Nesta felt her brows draw together. “I understand why they were upset about Emerie, but why you? Why-”
“Some people believe they are born for greatness and others are born to be canon fodder. When you come from a long line of greatness you don’t like to see the canon fodder flying higher than your son.”
Nesta did not say the obvious - that it was a horrible, despicable thing. Instead, she smiled. Cast an eye across his massive form. Ceremonial leathers with metal pieces that would have been impractical in battle. Solid gold encircling each oblong siphon, a three-strand chain crossing from one shoulder to the other. Jewel-handled scabbards crossed in a useless X over his back; his only real weapon affixed tightly to his hip.
“They must really hate you now.”
My very last contribution to @nestaarcheronweek!!!
