Effloresce snippet
It felt ugly, the sheer breadth of her desire that came in still night. A hunger, unimaginable to be satisfied by any simple, singular thing.
She wanted to queens of her people dead. She wanted Hybern, burned and brought low, desecrated as they had innocent human life.
She wanted the yawning midnight blue mountains of her dreams freed from Rhysands deathgrip.
Nesta wanted his head on a pike and her sister to remember even a shred of her own humanity.
Cassian as he had been, minutes spun out into a silent eternity: that look that was too pained to be called joy. Honest. Every inch of his body still, sure, Nesta’s reaction somehow made the sole point of a universe.
Too much for a person to hold over another. Too much, and how she wanted it.
To take and keep taking, like fae would: Nesta’s land. From wall to sea. Spring, empty, all that bounty that would never know their harsh winters. The ships she could build from enchanted trees, the places the Archerons could reach without fear now that no one else could claim their name.
Power.
Freedom.
She wanted and wanted and wanted, impossibly.
But here, as dark began to fade to day, dawn light just a pale whisper, was one resolute truth beside her. Absolute. Graven as a the blade that would not allow her to bleed, even with her bare hand wrapped around it.
Grip locked tight.
A safety she did not have to question, in this vast, hateful land.
Perhaps she would carry it with her, when she took back her home.
