Notes: Many of you asked for the POV for when Cassian slept beside Nesta in the most recent chapter... so here you go! Apologies for any typos etc, I’m really tired today! Let me know if the tags don’t work...
Together, Cassian and Rhys trudged back to the bungalow. It was still snowing, albeit less than it had been earlier. White came down in light flurries, the flakes falling from the sky in whirlpools suctioned by the wind.
“Trust it to snow when we’re in the middle of relocating,” Rhys mused as the wind dropped, his voice purposefully light.
Cassian only grunted in response, weaving through the dug out camp fires set into the ground, which leant a lick of warmth and provided hot food for the Illyrians. Cassian tried not to think of the steam cabins set over the hot springs a few miles outside of the camp. Of how warm they’d be on his tired limbs…
A good steam in one the Illyrian steam huts usually undid the tension from Cassian like nothing else, but he'd prefer to scrub away the excess grime from his skin. Whilst Rhys might have magicked away the blood, sweat and dirt from him, Cassian could still feel it coating him like a thick oil. And whilst the thought of sliding into the tub and staying there until it turned cold would normally be the only thing on Cassian’s mind after this kind of long day, all he wanted was to settle himself anxiously into the armchair beside his bed and make sure Nesta was alive and breathing.
She wasn’t in agony at least. That open tether was enough to tell him that the tincture was working. And from the flash of irritation he had received a few moments ago, Cassian knew that she was finally awake.
“It’s time to build housing,” Cassian told Rhys after a long reprieve of silence, pulling his thoughts away from the female in his bed. He tossed the words over his shoulder, ploughing through the snow for the both of them before he met a well-trodden path. “You saw the state of the widows tents up the mountain. This is the time to start anew. To provide them with proper shelter. To start initiatives…”
“I know,” Rhys agreed. “It’s time to find a solution rather than opting for leniency when it comes to the war-lords and how they rule.”
Cassian nodded tightly. “We don’t have the luxury of allowing them free-reign over the camps anymore. And help needs to extend beyond us relocating one camp of widows. What of the other camps? What of the females there? The bastards? The poor?”
He sighed wearily at the situation that was so impossible he did not know where to start. “Nesta would probably have some good ideas. She comes out with things sometimes…” Cassian paused to drag his hands over his face at the same time as he shook his head, “Ideas like that seem to come to her as easy as breathing…”
Rhys nodded again, but it was not tight or dismissive. Wary, perhaps and a little tentative, as if he was weighing up how tightly wound his brother was. “We need ideas,” he admitted, “but right now you need Feyre and I to leave so you can rest.”
He eyed Cassian with a slight tilt of his head. His blue-black hair did not so much as move or ruffle in the wind. “I’ve never seen your siphons drain that quickly,” he observed, staring at the jewel that rested in Cassian’s armoured scales, right in the middle of his chest like an additional heart. The siphon that did not wink or glint in the dark, but remained cold and lifeless.
The drink Frawley had given Cassian had barely been enough to have his magic whispering back through his veins. He needed to sleep for his power to replenish itself. And whilst Frawley had barked at him to drink more tea before the day was out, he had yet to find the time for another mug.
It was a while before Cassian realised he had not responded to Rhys. He had been too stuck in his own thoughts, and by the time he glanced sideways at his brother, they were approaching the front of the stone bungalow.
Rhys was not looking at him. Instead, he was blinking in a way that told him something had just happened down that bond of his.
“Feyre kick you out?” Cassian asked, making his lips twitch upwards. The action alone was difficult and he just barely willed his facial muscles to obey. He knew that the smile did not reach his eyes. His body yearned for sleep in a way that told him he was ravaged. Something deeper than his bones and blood was begging him to curl up on the mattress beside Nesta whilst she slept.
It was a starved comfort Cassian had not known he hungered for with such ravenous intensity until that moment.
“She’s speaking with Nesta,” Rhys replied smoothly.
Cassian did not tell his brother that he had already guessed that. He only let out a soft grunt and levelled his brother with a ‘no bullshit’ gaze. “If you don’t forgive Nesta you will ruin the healing between the sisters.”
Rhys’s violet eyes came to rest on him. His brother opened his mouth and then closed it. “Is this really something to discuss now?”
When you’re raw and exhausted. When you are this protective.
“Probably not,” Cassian admitted, knowing that it could end in fists and he didn’t have the energy. “But if the sisters want to rebuild a relationship, then you need to let any past grudges go. Focus on the present. On the actions that matter now.”
A long silence. Too long. It wasn’t the sort of prolonged pause that was as sharp as a knife, but it held some quality that Cassian could not decipher.
Cassian hadn’t meant it to come out as a criticism barbed with thorns. Had intended to present it as casual fact. It was a truth that Cassian had only fully realised in that moment when Nesta had challenged Rhys in the living room. When Cassian had thought power could fly.
He’d known who he would have protected.
Rhys did, too.
And magic might have flown if Nesta had not been replenishing her power reserves. If Rhys had not seen Nesta save his mates life and wield her magic in such a selfless way. If his brother had not witnessed how Nesta had changed. How her concern for the females was the reason why her voice was fierce, rather than consumed by trauma and stubborn will.
Cassian wondered how different Nesta appeared to Rhys. Azriel could see it. The shadowsinger had grown to like her, Cassian thought. Enough to break his usual silence and interject when there could have been heated words. Azriel had assisted Nesta when she had been in pain rather than remain cold and impassive. Cassian had even spotted the shadowsinger’s lips twitch upwards at Cassian’s territorial behaviour, knowing all too well that it had irritated the hell out of Nesta.
And Rhys… his brother had welcomed Nesta to the Court of Dreams, something he did not do lightly. He had even said he would train her if Azriel was not available.
That was a concession in itself.
Cassian knew what a peace offering that was from his brother. And whilst it had been a stiff gesture, it had been the first thing Rhys had offered Nesta because she was needed and useful, rather than because she was Feyre’s sister. Because she cared about the Illyrians and she had worth amongst the females in a way that none of the High Fae had ever managed to attain.
Many thought Nesta had a heart of ice, but Feyre had been right all along; Nesta’s heart was too full — too aching — that she encased it into an impenetrable cage to protect herself.
Only now was that cage breaking… and without it, Nesta was more powerful, more formidable than ever before. There was no denying it. Cassian had felt it — all of it — when she melted that cage of ice and let everything finally hit her. And there was no denying that Nesta was someone with good intention. Someone who did care about others. She may have been lost for a very long time, but she had finally fought back.
It made Cassian ashamed for things he had said previously. From the minute Nesta had shed a tear for the humans who would not be protected in war, Cassian had known she was capable of more.
Your sisters love you. I can’t for the life of me understand why, but they do.
Cassian could not have uttered crueler words. Knew what he’d been doing as he’d said them, desperate to get some sort of reaction from her. He had been so successful at reaching her before, but that day he had been unable to pierce that impenetrable, icy tavern. But even though she hadn’t shred him to ribbons, his words had still served a purpose. They had covered up the terrifying fact that he loved her more fiercely than he had ever loved anyone. That most of the time, he couldn't so much as think about her because it hurt too much to know that she wanted nothing to do with him, even after he’d worn his heart on his sleeve for everyone to see.
If Cassian had not brought Nesta back today, she would have died thinking his words to be true. Even as she sacrificed her life for someone so many perceived as unworthy.
“I’m working on it.” Rhys’s words pulled Cassian out of his self-deprecating thoughts.
Nodding shortly, Cassian raised his palm to the wooden door. It clicked beneath his palm and the bungalow hummed to life as he stepped inside.
He was not going to push Rhys now. Another time, yes, but not today.
The bungalow was wonderfully warm. The fire was still blazing silently in the living room, but Cassian barely noticed it. Instead, his gaze flew straight to the bedroom door.
It opened as he shucked off his shoes and knocked the snow from the tread against the doorframe. As he flung the wet snow from his wings that were burning from the cold.
Feyre looked weary and wrung out as the bedroom door clicked shut. She tried to smile but it came out more as a grimace. “She woke for a few minutes,” Feyre told Cassian, “but she’s just falling asleep again.”
“Is she in pain?” Cassian asked, even though he knew it wasn’t half as bad as earlier. Nesta’s walls weren’t back up yet — something he was mercilessly happy about — so he would have known if she was in agony, but it was habit to check. To throw them all off of the scent.
Feyre shook her head. “Not as much as before. She didn’t ask for any more of the tincture.” She rang her hands in front of her hips. She looked nervous. “I told Nesta she could leave, if she wanted to.”
Feyre looked as if she was expecting him to completely lose his temper, but Cassian only nodded tightly. She frowned. “Nesta said she wanted to stay to help, but—”
She stopped abruptly and cocked her head at him. Her brow knitted. “You already told Nesta she could leave, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” Cassian replied tersely, stalking over to the fire to toss some logs onto the burner. He fanned out his wings so the heat sunk into the membrane. It felt delicious and he bit back a groan. “A long time ago,” he clarified. “Did you give her the sedative?”
Hazel met blue. Feyre did not look annoyed. To his surprise, her features only softened, as if her heart were aching.
“No,’ she replied with a small shake of her head, “she didn’t seem to need it. She could barely keep her eyes open.”
A tight nod. “Ok. I can watch her.”
It was not true. Cassian would watch her. It was not a choice he was giving Feyre or himself.
Closing the front door behind him, Rhys came over to press a kiss to his mate’s temple. As if he could sense Cassian’s impatience, he asked, “Ready to go?”
Feyre nodded.
“We’ll be back tomorrow,” Rhys told Cassian.
“And if you hear from Az?” Cassian asked.
“I’ll let you know,” Rhys said, tapping two fingers to the side of his head.
Then they disappeared into nothing.
***
It didn’t take Cassian long to step into the tub. He had checked on Nesta first and foremost, but she had already been far, far under. Her brow had been knitted in anguish, but when he had rested his palm across her forehead, her features had momentarily smoothed, as if his touch had erased the visions beneath her eyelids.
The water was near scolding but Cassian endured it anyway, allowing the burn to scorch through his skin until he was thoroughly thawed. He stood there for too long, trying to wash away the memory of Nesta’s pale, blood-streaked face as her eyes rolled back into her head.
He was just finishing washing the suds from his hair when a sound pierced through the bungalow.
Cassian heard it at the same time as Nesta’s pain hit him square in the chest, travelling down that bond which, for once, was not clamped shut but wide open.
He was out of the tub before he had the time to think. Was half way to his room before he deigned to wrap the towel he’d grabbed on the way out of the bathroom around his waist. He dripped across the carpet, his hair water-logged and running rivulets down his neck and shoulders... But he didn’t even notice because all Cassian could feel was distress and terror so fierce the sensations were bitter on his tongue.
Bursting into his bedroom, Cassian found the sheets twisted around Nesta’s body. Her brow was creased again and fresh tears slid down her already stained face. But it was the sounds coming from Nesta’s throat that that made Cassian’s already aching heart wrench out of his chest. It sounded animalistic rather than Fae. It was deep, wounding horror and he would give anything to rid her of it.
“Sweetheart,” he called desperately. “Sweetheart, it’s a nightmare. You’re ok.”
But no matter how much he called, he couldn’t reach her.
Balling his hands into fists, Cassian sat down in the armchair and buried his head into his hands. But the sounds didn’t stop. Neither did the tears. It took everything in Cassian not to touch her. He was too scared he would trigger her battle trauma, that she was in so deep that her brain would conjure something he was not. Something threatening.
So he watched helplessly as mist began to seep from her fingers, her magic coating the bed in a pearlescent fog as those noises became truly feral. Called for her to come back to him until his voice was hoarse.
Unable to sit still anymore, Cassian tugged on some clothes before he came to sit beside her on the mattress. He rested his outstretched palm on the blanket, hoping that she would sense him nearby, but Nesta only sobbed harder.
“Sweetheart,” he murmured, his voice raw from trying to reach her. “You’re safe. You’re ok. You’re having a nightmare.”
He stayed beside her, murmuring comforting words. Clenched his other hand into a fist at his side. Let his wings snap in and out with such agitation they cracked through the air. He didn’t care. There was no-one to witness it anyway.
Cassian knew all to well how fiercely sedatives could clutch you to sleep. It was why he didn’t use sleep tonics. They made his nightmares worse — more vivid. He would rather suffer from too many sleepless nights than live through terrors he could not escape from. And he’d guess that the severe pain from Nesta’s injuries was manifesting into her dreams but the sedative was too fierce to wake her up.
“You’re safe,” he murmured softly. Words he had been saying over and over.
For a moment, Nesta settled. But then she was moaning again, the sounds torn ragged from her throat as she began to thrash.
Cassian’s blood spiked with panic. Frawley had insisted that Nesta remain as still as possible. That movements to Nesta’s abdomen would not only be incredibly painful, but that they would undo the magic both she and Madja had administered.
And then Nesta started to scream.
It was one of the worst sounds he had ever heard. It knocked the breath from him and the chill that ran through his blood was unlike anything he had ever felt before.
Cassian fell to his knees, barely registering the impact as his bones creaked.
“Amore,” he rasped softly in Illyrian. “Nesta.”
His wings extended outwards, furling around her like a protective shell — an instinct buried deep that pulled through his chest until his limbs obeyed. Something built into his DNA that had only been opened for Nesta. As if a key had finally been fitted into a lock and unveiled the most intrinsic part of him. Something only for her.
“Amore,” Cassian said again. The word soft, curling off the back of his tongue like a caress.
The screaming stopped, falling into stifled, suppressed shouts. Nesta’s pain travelled down their twisted of rope; the bond that had been open since Nesta had started to die that afternoon. The agony of it hit Cassian clean in the gut, knocking the breath from him with a whoosh, but he willed everything in him to soothe, pushed back on the pain…
There was a moment’s reprieve where the agony didn’t cut through him. When for a few seconds, Nesta stopped screaming.
Cassian jumped at the opportunity. Reaching deep inside of himself, he felt for that rope which even now, he could not let go of for fear that it would break.
And then he tugged. It was a gentle movement — smooth. More of a nudge than a prod, using just enough pressure for Nesta to feel it… to cut through the nightmares and offer a hand back to the light.
Gradually, Nesta quieted. Screams turned to shouts. Shouts turned to moans. Moans turned to whimpers. Until eventually, Nesta only murmured in her sleep, the sound unbelievably soft in contrast to the blood-chilling screams.
Hardly daring to breathe, Cassian lifted a hand to rest his palm against her forehead. Nesta’s skin was warm — flushed — but when she leant in a little to his touch, his heart beat so fiercely he felt it pulse in his mouth. And knowing how rare the moment was, Cassian indulged himself; allowing his fingers to trace a path down her cheek where before there had been tears.
Only Nesta could look so heart-achingly beautiful in the midst of a nightmare.
Only Nesta could make him lose all sense of himself.
Only Nesta could make him feel this vulnerable. As if even in her sleep, she was witnessing all of him.
This close up, Cassian could see every one of Nesta’s dark eyelashes. The slight upturn at the tip of her nose. The smattering of freckles that were so faint across the bridge of her cheeks, Cassian wondered if anybody but him had ever noticed them.
If she hadn’t rejected him, Cassian might have traced those freckles with his lips and fingers so many times he would know exactly how many there were… Would know what her lips tasted like when she wasn't about to die with him.
Time passed, stretching out far and wide before them.
Cassian wasn’t sure how long he stayed on his knees. What he did know was that Nesta remained settled. He did not move his hand. He continued to brush his thumb over her skin. Continued to soothe down that bond, until her breath evened out and no longer rattled in her chest.
When his legs had long gone numb beneath him and his back ached from leaning over the mattress, he retracted a wing with the hope of easing himself off the floor.
He had barely moved when she started to moan again.
Immediately, he threw a wing back over her. And everything ached inside of him when she settled again. The knowledge that it was him — the safety he provided — that warded off the nightmares.
“Hold on, sweetheart,” he soothed gently. “I’m just going to move closer, ok?”
And without stopping to think, Cassian allowed himself to do what he had been yearning to do since before he had arrived back in the bungalow; he crawled onto the mattress beside Nesta and curved his wing over her.
Nesta settled immediately, her head turning on the pillow so it was tilted towards him. He could feel the soft flutter of her breath on his cheek. His heart leapt against flimsy strips of bone, reaching outwards until it beat in tandem with hers. The sound melded into one, filling his ears and making his pulse slow until it was thick and sluggish in his veins.
She was so warm. His body was only just ghosting hers but he groaned a relieved sigh as every muscle relaxed at the heat. At the knowledge that the bond had turned peacefully quiet. That Nesta was safe and unharmed. Content.
Notes: Enjoy! And let me know if you’d like to be added to the tag list...
Chapter 26
Nesta
Solstice approached with terrifying speed. Somehow, Azriel managed to carve out time in what Nesta imagined to be a busy schedule to oversee her training when she was in Windhaven. Nesta did not know if that was simply because Rhysand did not want to hold true to his promise to train her himself, or if the Shadowsinger was doing them all a favour by keeping the two of them separate for a little longer.
Nesta could not say that she was disappointed. Whilst there had been a slight shift in the air between them, Nesta was not deluded enough to think that her sister’s arrogant mate had found it in himself to let go of the grudge he so obviously held against her. From the moment they had met in the Human Realm, Nesta had sensed his disdain and simmering anger towards her. Had dissected what he thought was a flawless exterior as something too careful, too polite. It had not quite been as if he was treading on eggshells, but as if he was having to use all of his power to reign in his own temper.
Yet, to Elain... that resentment and hatred had faded into acceptance and forgiveness over time. The same could not be said for he and Nesta. Even though it had been she who had fought and sacrificed her life in the war. Even though she had saved Cassian from the Cauldron’s blast. And even though it had been she who had killed the King, tracked the Cauldron and acted as Emissary, Feyre’s mate had been unable to hide the anger that Nesta had allowed her sister to provide for them when they were young.
So, Nesta had made it worse, testing the waters of that night eternal power to see how far she could go until he snapped completely. If their High Lord wasn’t going to bother to try and see the effort Nesta had made, then she would make life hell for him when she started to drown. She spent his coffers, banished her sisters and wrapped her words in thorns of steel. For some, it was not unlike the work of a petulant child desperate for a reaction. For Nesta, it was a method of slow, numbing destruction until she became nothing but a husk. It had been far more dangerous and much deadlier then any of them had imagined, and now Nesta was out of the other side, she understood why Cassian had look so ravaged when he had searched her face and assaulted her with words that should have been like spears to the heart but never hit home.
Even so, Rhys’s hatred of Nesta was a punishment she believed was deserved. Nesta knew that. And she would not take job offerings which were given out of loving duty and obligation to one’s mate. Nesta would only work for a court she did not view as hers if it was because she had worth and use. If she was needed rather than an irritant one wanted to banish.
This time had been different. The Illyrian cause was greater than the shattered pride Nesta would endure by assisting someone she did not want to be around. And Nesta had vowed to step out of the past and into the present. Had decided she would try with her sisters and start to rebuild who she wanted to be. Nesta did not want to be someone who selfishly stood on the sidelines whilst others suffered. It was true that she had been a victim and made others a victim of her trauma, but she was done weighing up old grievances and her many errors. She would bite her tongue and step forward into the present. And if that meant learning to be civil then Nesta would do it for the females and for Cassian, who she could not bear to make life harder for.
To think that Nesta might cause him to ache made it hard to breathe. So, should the situation demand it, Nesta had decided she would rise above it. She was strong. She was resilient. She was powerful.
She would protect and heal.
Nesta supposed her goals were the same as the rest of the Inner Circle, after all.
When it came to mastering her ability to read others emotions, Nesta found the power now came to her as easy as breathing. With the acceptance of her magic - the understanding that it was part of who she was and who she wanted to be - Nesta found it far easier to lower her walls.
Identifying and concentrating on one target was where she had difficulty, but in the end, even Azriel gave more and more praise in that solemn, cold way of his rather than constructive criticism.
“It’s all down to practice now,” the Shadowsinger had told Nesta after their last training session, as they walked through the camp back to the bungalow. “You know how to do it. It’s just a matter of tuning out the unwanted emotions of others and focussing on those that matter.”
“That’s easier said than done,” Nesta had replied, biting back a grimace. Sometimes she found the background ‘noise’ so overwhelming she wanted to vomit.
“It’s nothing you can’t master,” Azriel replied dismissively, in the way that Nesta had learnt to be a compliment. “As long as you hold on to something as a tether - something to ground you that will always pull you back and stop you from becoming overwhelmed - you will be fine.”
Nesta had glanced sideways at the Shadowsinger as they stepped up to the backdoor of the bungalow. Azriel often stayed for dinner after their training sessions, and Nesta found that she did not mind him joining she and Cassian’s shared space, mainly because it gave her the opportunity to witness the brothers relationship up close.
Whilst Cassian and Azriel might not have been related by blood, their interactions were bound in a way that melded them by flesh and bone regardless. And to Nesta’s surprise, she found that in a smaller group the Shadowsinger was not so quiet. He had a dry wit about him that often had Nesta biting back a smirk, especially as it was usually directed at Cassian, who would either gape in surprise or let out an unabashed bark of laughter that was so lovely it made Nesta want to both stare and look away.
“Do you have a tether?” Nesta asked Azriel curiously as she held her palm to the door. It was a blunt question that she only dared ask because she had no doubt that Azriel would swiftly cut her down if he did not want to answer.
“Of course,” Azriel replied as they stepped into the kitchen.
Cassian was by the sink, the sleeves of his tunic pushed up to his elbows as he washed some grains under the tap. He dared to wink at her as she entered, but he didn’t offer any other formal greeting.
Her blood heated and she ducked down to untie the laces on her boots.
“What is it?” She demanded.
Ariel had already made quick work of his boots, but he flung his wings out of the door to rid them of melted snowflakes. “What’s yours?” he had countered in that chilled way of his, knowing that she would not dare tell him. Would not tell anyone.
So, she had merely snorted in response, quickly disappearing in search of a hot shower before either of them could guess what she was thinking, dare her mask slip and render her readable.
On Solstice morning, Nesta found herself naturally rising with the dawn, even though Cassian had told her that it was the one day of the year that Illyrian’s did not train. Crawling out of bed to open the curtains, Nesta had sat in the window seat to stare out at the ethereal, low mists that shrouded the mountain pass and horizon in moving fog. Not for the first time, she wished she were already halfway up the mountainside; a part of the natural scenery rather than separated by glass, so she could see unhindered, the dusky streaks of colour painted across the sky and the yellow strip of light that signalled the sun was ready to start the day.
Nesta was first to breakfast. Cassian had been in Velaris the evening before and Nesta had not been awake to see him arrive back in Windhaven. He smelt distinctly of stale alcohol as he joined her in the kitchen, dressed in a pair of low slung pants and nothing else but wild hair and endless tan skin licked with ink that made her skin itch.
Sleepily, Cassian batted Nesta away from the stove as if she were an irritating fly, but she only hissed at him with such malice that he barked a hoarse laugh. When she thumped a mug of coffee by his side moments later, she did it with much more force than she usually mustered so early in the morning, and she caught his features soften for a fraction of a second, before he made himself busy at the stove.
They ate eggs and smoked salmon on toasted rye in relative silence, and Nesta watched Cassian proceed to eat two ginormous portions with a mixture of disgust and awe.
When Nesta loftily gave in to the temptation and asked Cassian whether he had considered saving himself for the Solstice feast, he had just snorted and told her that he was stretching his stomach. After that, Nesta was certain that he ate a third portion just to spite her, but even she couldn’t help but slide another piece of smoked salmon onto her plate, much to her chagrin when Cassian’s eyes glinted triumphant.
It was an hour later when a knock sounded at her bedroom door. Nesta was in the process of pinning her hair with the golden leaf pin Elain had sent her all those weeks ago, and she answered the door with one hand whilst the other held her hair in place.
“Are you ready?” Cassian asked as soon as the door opened.
For once, he was not leaning against the doorframe, but standing upright in a wide stance which highlighted just how broad and tell he was.
There was a look of impatience on his face, but Nesta paid it no heed and took a moment to survey how different he looked from usual. Today’s festivities had turned him out in dark pants and a shirt, the collar of which sat just below ink which whorled up the right side of his neck, stopping a few inches below his ear. The clothing made him appear the most human Nesta had ever seen him, if it had not been for the apex of his huge wings which he was holding high behind him.
As if they sensed her attention, his wings flexed in a movement that usually told Nesta that Cassian was either uncomfortable or nervous. They spread wide enough for Nesta to notice how magnificently they shone, as if they had been thoroughly scrubbed and cleaned for the occasion. Even Cassian’s hair gleamed, as if he had run a brush through it before it had scraped it back into a loose bun.
He looked unforgivably, heart-stoppingly handsome, not that Nesta would ever admit it out loud.
Ignoring the unusually apprehensive expression on his face, Nesta frowned and secured the pin at the back of her head. “Am I late?”
She had thought she had given herself plenty of time to get ready, but her half coronet had taken longer than usual. It appeared that three months of only wearing a simple plait had her out of practice. At least she had worn a loose braid overnight, which meant that her hair already hung in soft waves down her back. She knew that the Night Court dressed up on Solstice, and Nesta liked Lorrian and Frawley enough that she did not want to offend them.
Nesta had stayed with them twice since the kerit attack at Windhaven, where she had spent her days learning the art of the bow with Lorrian and practicing her healing powers with Frawley.
And the bow… Nesta loved it. It felt right in her hands, the way her muscles strained and trembled as she pulled back the string. Cassian and Lorrian had her working hard on her upper arm strength to the point that they felt constantly sore, but she did not care. Lorrian and Frawley had even taught her how to fly on Caerleon, with Lorrian insisting that when she was more able, they could practice shooting a moving target. Nesta had the sneaking suspicion that both of them had quickly realised that she hungered for the skies, but she did not mind that they had read her so easily. Being on the back of Caerleon, her fingers buried deep in the mane at his neck, was the most liberated Nesta had ever felt, to the point that she had laughed when the manticore had sent her into a nose dive and the wind had howled so fast around them that Nesta and Caer had become a part of the element rather than separate from it.
When Nesta had not been training with Lorrian, Frawley was teaching her how to harness her healing power. The witch had Nesta look inwards to her two strands of her magic, until Nesta could pick them apart with ease, summoning either silver or white at her palms. When she had mastered that, Frawley had plucked flower after flower from the forest floor, had them wither in her open palm and ordered Nesta to bring them back to life.
It wasn’t so much bringing things back from the brink of death that Nesta struggled with, rather it was knowing when to stop. The key, Frawley had told Nesta, was to constantly observe the patient as she healed. To understand what injuries were fresh and required immediate life-saving attention and what was old enough to be left well alone. The former always shone with a pressing light when Nesta’s magic passed over it, whereas the latter took on a dull, shadowy quality. There was also the matter that Nesta’s power reserves could swell to unprecedented levels, of which the bottom was determined by the energy she had sequestered.
The solution, Frawley had told Nesta, was to know what her reserves felt like, so that when her magic started to give out Nesta would know to stop.
That had been easier said than done, and it had taken Nesta hours to reach into herself and travel down, down, down to scrape the bottom of her own power.
“You will know when you reach it,” Frawley had only told Nesta with an infuriatingly mysterious air that had Nesta wanting to snarl.
But she had. It tasted like the last, bitter dregs of tea and metallic blood. It felt wrong and life threatening, enough for Nesta to pull away so sharply that Frawley had patted a shaking Nesta on the shoulder and passed her a steaming mug of energising tea.
But what Nesta hadn’t told Frawley was that she didn’t just sense white and silver when she looked within herself, but something else. Something hidden behind a veiled curtain which she couldn’t quite touch. A terrified part of Nesta wondered if it was the chunk of the Cauldron she had taken. The piece of inky black which sung of darkness and terror. Nesta had not found the words to ask Frawley about it. Was too scared about what it meant. That perhaps there was something rotting inside of her that would taint her soul and those around her.
It sung to her, the veil. It whispered reverently when she brushed against it. Her name over and over: Nesta, Nesta, Nesta.
She had stayed well away from it, after that, but sometimes she heard it whisper softly, the sensation like her power turning over in her veins.
Like now, as Cassian stared at her rather than reply, his hazel eyes darkening as his pupils widened and pressed against his irises.
Nesta tried and failed not to feel self-conscious. She smoothed down her midnight blue dress and walked past him, her back straight.
“You’ll need to shield my hair,” Nesta clipped, as she headed to the hooks by the door and slipped on her coat.
When she turned, Cassian was still staring at her with something that Nesta almost wished was longing.
She wanted to bite her lip, but she wouldn’t allow herself to do it. “Aren’t we going to be late?” she clipped.
Slowly, Cassian blinked. Then, his gaze dropped to her feet. “Are you going to wear those shoes?”
Nesta scowled. “Yes.”
“They’re not practical for flying.”
“I’m not flying, I’m being carried. And is it not custom to dress nicely for Solstice?”
She stiffened as those sharp eyes dragged over her body with such intensity Nesta felt as if her skin were entirely bare.
“It is custom,” Cassian agreed eventually, his voice so impossibly low she felt it rumble through her bones. Even as there was a bite to his words that suggested he was holding something back.
Perhaps how she had not bothered the year prior.
Nesta nodded as if to indicate that the matter was settled and wound a scarf around her neck. “Don’t set me down in any mud or snow and I won’t find it in myself to set you on fire.”
A derisive snort but no jab or jest as he opened the front door. Cassian stepped onto the concrete step just beyond the threshold and with a flare of his siphons, light-weight armour clicked into place scale by scale over his dark clothes, the action like a ripple of water.
He held out his hand to her. Nesta glared at him but squeezed onto the step beside him. His hands wrapped around her, gathering her to his impossibly warm body and the steady, reliable beating of his heart. He smelt wonderful — of woodland and bracing blue sky which sung Illyria. Begrudgingly, Nesta held on to him, absorbing herself even more in his scent as he shot them into the sky.
They travelled in silence for a long while, Cassian unnervingly quiet. Usually it was he who struck up conversation and Nesta found it disconcerting to be yearning to speak with him rather than the other way around.
She twisted her head up to look at him: the dark eyebrows that always made his hazel eyes stand out so brilliantly; the tan, freshly shaved face which took the ruggedness out of his features; the ebony hair pulled back into a casual bun that she had come to favour on him.
To his credit, Cassian had listened to her about her own hair, casting a shield that was void of the gentle breeze he usually allowed to filter through. Instead, Nesta was warm, the
gentle pulse of his siphons indicating that he was expelling his magic to alter the temperature for them both.
“You look clean,” Nesta observed, when she knew she had studied him for too long. He was deliberately not acknowledging her blatant staring. “Is this your first and only bath this year?”
Cassian snickered. “Very good, sweetheart. It’s good to see that the festivities haven’t smoothed over your sharp edges.”
“I wouldn’t want to bore you,” Nesta remarked drily, watching the craggy terrain; the snow capped mountains and the stretch of pine ahead of them. “Consider it a Solstice present.”
A laugh then, soft and throaty. More like himself. “You’ll have to save that fire for the lords tomorrow, sweetheart. It is no way to speak to your beloved.”
Sharply, Nesta craned her neck up to find him smiling down at her. It was a wicked smile that Nesta suspected he had willed into existence solely to stoke her fire.
“What,” she spat. Demanded.
Cassian’s canines flashed. “Consider me your Solstice present. I’d have wrapped myself in a bow, but we were in a rush.”
Nesta glared at him with such ferocity she imagined him burning into cinders. “And when were you planning to tell me that I have to pretend that we’re...” She trailed off, suddenly at a loss to carry on.
“Dating? Courting? Fucking?” Cassian said the last word with a grin that turned feral.
Nesta snarled at him with such savagery that Cassian choked on a laugh. His hazel eyes flared amber.
“If you start smoking I’ll have to drop you,” he warned, as silver sparked from her fingertips. “And I planned on telling you now,” he admitted. There was no apology in his voice, if anything it only carried amusement and a faint layer of… something else. “I thought it best to tell you when we were suspended in midair for my safety.”
“Insufferable,” Nesta muttered under her breath, irritated that she could not let go of him and cross her arms over her chest. “Not only am I to be stuck in a room full of Illyrians, but I have to pretend to be bedding the most irritating of them all.”
“Feel free to boast about my technique to those assholes at any point,” Cassian snickered wryly, but then his playfulness dropped at his next words. Nesta suspected he’d glanced down and seen her solemn expression, “Think of it as an unpleasant few hours for the sake of finding out more information.”
“Who do you usually take?”
A beat of silence followed her demand. Then, “Nobody.”
A disbelieving frown pinched between her eyebrows. “Ever? Not even your friends?”
She craned her neck to look up at him.
“It’s partners only,” Cassian explained, but he was looking ahead of them with an intensity that told Nesta he was deliberately not meeting her eye. “I very rarely have one and never one who I think could hold their own amongst the vultures.”
Some tension bled out of Nesta. She would have thought that Mor might have accompanied him at some point. Those lines were so blurred Nesta had no idea what to make of them other than that she hated it. Would never not hate it.
The amusement had faded from Cassian’s features and a muscle ticked in his jaw. He suddenly seemed angry and Nesta didn’t know whether it was her reaction or another memory. And perhaps her reaction to pretending to court had wounded him, especially given their turbulent past. Sometimes Nesta did not know where they stood with the other. The bond strung between them made everything so complicated, so much more difficult than other narratives. To understand what was fact and fiction. Lust and love.
The thought of pretending they were together, even for two days made it difficult to breathe. It was another twist in their storyline - another complicated strand, which warped what was honest and true.
“Don’t worry, Illyrians aren’t big on public displays of affection,” Cassian assured her, breaking her out of her worrisome thoughts. His dark eyes found hers again, and they looked a little sad, as he admitted, “The males here don’t cherish females the way they should.”
It took everything in Nesta to suppress the shiver that wanted to crash over her body and remain silent. They were tiptoeing around today, using banter and sharp words to cover up what had happened last year. How she had dismissed him so brutally… so effectively. How she had heard the water splash and ripple as he threw her gift in the river. How he had followed her anyway until she lit a light in her apartment, his wings a steady beat as she sunk to the rickety, splintered floorboards utterly numb.
It was not Cassian’s cruel words from that evening that haunted her — not even hers did — but it was oddly the vulnerability in his expression as he finally let her leave that repeatedly churned in the forefront of her mind. That made her think that perhaps Cassian had been genuine. That he wasn’t embarrassed of her, even if his actions — the way he ignored her when his friends were around — insinuated that he did. That he truly had wanted her, enough to swallow his pride and follow her. To continue to flirt and fight for her, even now.
But when Nesta remembered how he had laughed as he held up the satin undershorts from Mor, red slid over her vision.
Cassian seemed to sense that displeasure, remaining silent for the duration of the journey.
Caer trotted out to meet them as soon as they landed outside Lorrian and Frawley’s, his tufted tail dancing in the shape of a question mark. Smoke billowed from the crooked chimney of the cottage and the smells that wafted towards them on the soft breeze were so divine Nesta’s stomach grumbled.
Frawley met them at the open stable door, and to Nesta’s surprise, she bent to place a swift kiss on each of Nesta’s cheeks. She was wearing another dark dress the colour of smoke, the underskirts laced with a misty tulle that shimmered beautifully in the light.
“Happy Solstice, Nesta,” Frawley said brusquely. “We’re being thrown to the wolves tomorrow so we’ll have to make today a pleasant one.”
Cassian’s laugh was low in Nesta’s ear. “If past experience is anything to go by, I’d predict that Nesta will be the wolf and they the sheep,” he corrected, as they both stepped into the warmth of the cottage.
Lorrian appeared behind Frawley as he stepped into the hallway from the living room. His chuckle was deep and delighted. “I’m looking forward to witnessing that.”
Frawley’s grin was terrifying as she levelled her gaze with Nesta’s. “Surely they do not still think you’re a witch after the kerit attack?”
“No,” Nesta said slowly, thinking of Devlon’s begrudging acceptance of her. How the Illyrians no longer looked as if they might spit at her. At the distance the males gave her, as if she were finally a threat rather than a pawn in their game. “They don’t know what I am.”
“That probably terrifies them more,” Cassian told Nesta with a devilish grin as they followed Lorrian and Frawley into the living room.
Like the rest of the house, fresh greenery had been wound into garlands around the room. Beautifully arranged teardrop swags hung beneath the faelights on the white-washed walls: bundles of pine, cones, holly and its ruby berries, ivy and honeysuckle vines.
“Mulled wine,” Frawley told Nesta, thrusting a large mug into her hand. “I’ve magicked it to remove the alcohol. It practically tastes the same. Lorrian likes it, anyway.”
“It’s the closest I’ve had to the real thing,” Lorrian told Nesta with an easy grin as he finally moved forward to greet her. He bent to kiss both of her cheeks in an air of heat laced with sandalwood, the close cut of his stubble rough against her skin. “You look beautiful, as usual,” he told her.
Nesta’s snort was a soft dismissal, but she was secretly pleased. The dress she was wearing had hung off her months ago. She’d still had Mas take it in a little, but she saw her outfit as a symbolic triumph, having finally gained back the majority of the weight she had lost so dangerously after months and months of denying herself sustenance.
“Come,” Frawley beckoned to Nesta, “I’ve put your armchair close to the fire. You’re as bad as Caerleon. Sometimes I think he’d sit on top of the hearth if he could.”
Nesta’s lips twitched but she didn’t comment. It was true that now Nesta could light fires of her own, she could enjoy sitting by the hearth without fearing that it might send her into a downward spiral. Not that Frawley hadn’t taken care of that herself the two times she had visited, and as expected, the fire was already silently eating the glowing wood that had been stacked into the grate.
At the mention of his name, Caerleon padded towards Nesta just as she took a seat in the armchair and pressed his large head into Nesta’s lap. Burying her fingers into the beast’s soft, shaggy mane with her spare hand, Nesta huffed a laugh as the manticore let out a low whine in greeting.
“How do you usually celebrate Solstice, Nesta?” Lorrian asked conversationally, as he seated himself in the twin armchair opposite her and stretched out his long legs.
Nesta didn’t have to glance at Cassian from where he had settled on the low-back couch to know that his expression had turned tight. She felt the trepidation in her stomach. The more and more she dropped her emotional guard, the more keenly she felt him, even through the shield of fire he had resurrected around himself.
“Solstice isn't celebrated in the Human Realm,” Nesta replied in a way that she hoped came across as unaffected.
“Of course it isn’t,” Frawley interjected, glaring at her husband with an intensity Nesta was glad she was not on the receiving end of.
“Well, the good thing about Solstice is the food,” Lorrian told Nesta with an easy grin. “If you need a motivation to start celebrating it.”
Nesta harrumphed in the back of her throat. “I’ll bear that in mind.”
“Speaking of food...” Cassian started hopefully.
Frawley rolled her eyes but dumped a plate of pastries unceremoniously into the warrior’s lap. “Lorrian made these solely to tide you over until dinner.” She tutted as Cassian began to tuck in with gusto. “I’ve never witnessed anybody eat so much and I live with an Illyrian. Did you train this morning?”
“No,” Cassian said around a mouthful of pie. His voice was incredulous — offended, even. “It’s Solstice, witch, or have you forgotten in your old age?”
“I would not put it past you to train three hundred and sixty-five days of the year,” Frawley snapped in retort, “for fear that one day off would have those muscles of yours shrinking.”
When Frawley’s ice blue eye rested on Nesta, it was not sparking with anger but amusement, even as her face remained impassive. She and Cassian often bantered like this; with Frawley seemingly infuriated and Cassian prodding insults. “Am I wrong, Nesta?”
Nesta did not try to fight the slight curve of her lips, she was too amused by Cassian’s mouth which had gone slack. Thankfully, it wasn’t full of food. “No, he preens and puffs like a rooster.”
Lorrian threw his head back and laughed. Frawley snorted with delight. Grinning, Cassian stood to offer Nesta a mince pie with twinkling eyes.
Surprised, Nesta cocked a challenging eyebrow at him.
What she had said wasn’t true. Cassian’s physique was all to do with being a cut above the rest. He trained with an intensity that sung of a determination to prove that he was worthy. He allowed his body to become battered and bloody, his knuckles bruised and his hands calloused. He wore scars as if they were armour… as if they were akin to the black tattoos that licked up his body. Symbols of luck and glory and proof that he would endure, above all else.
So much of Cassian was worn on the surface if you chose to look.
And she certainly wasn’t complaining about his figure. Even if just staring at the corded muscles of his body made her fill with a liquid heat that both embarrassed and thrilled her… She had wondered on more than one occasion what it might feel like to straddle the vast width of him… to allow her fingernails to bite into his sizeable shoulders as she sank down onto him. The way he’d groan, the sound guttural in the depths of his throat. She had dreamt about it more times than she’d like to admit. She knew what it felt like to have his phantom lips bruise her skin and his teeth scrape at her pulse point. Knew what it felt like for that relentless drive to hound her blood, each throb of her veins pulling her towards him.
But if her blood was desire, her mind was logic and she knew why she felt like that. Why he felt like it too, sometimes.
So she kept her ribcage close around her heart. It was a shield rendered with gaps but it worked just fine if she fortified it with ice.
Those glowing amber eyes did not leave hers as she took a sweet pastry dusted with sugar from the plate. For a terrified moment, Nesta thought that he knew what she had been thinking, but then he turned to Frawley and said with such casualness it took her a moment for the words to sink in, “Not all of us can look as effortlessly devastating as Nesta.”
Cassian didn’t look at her for a while, after that.
The day was not like the previous Solstice: full of gifts and banter that she was not a part of. Nesta did not spend her time shying away in the corner for fear that the fire would make her power finally roar.
There was food. Lots of variety without being excessive. Roast meat, potatoes and steamed vegetables. Battered savoury pudding, gravy and pigs in blankets. Nesta ate more than she usually would, each dish so delicious she could not help what she piled onto her plate until she was practically bursting at the seams.
Afterwards, Nesta helped Frawley to carry the dirty dishes back to the kitchen. Lorrian had done the majority of the cooking and Frawley had woefully admitted that meant it was her job to clean up. Nesta had risen without thinking and in a blink of an eye she had her hands submerged in water and bubbles.
Frawley was telling Nesta that it was she and Lorrian’s anniversary the day before Solstice. That they had decided to become chroi on that day many years ago, and had the magic seal their intents a few hours later.
Despite Frawley’s fierce edges, the witch softened when she spoke of her husband in a way that told Nesta that the love ran deep. Not that Nesta couldn’t see that plainly before her whenever the two were in a room. They had a way of moving together that was completely at ease: respectful and kind and pure and accepting.
It made Nesta hungry for the love she had read about in her books. But she knew better than to believe she was deserving of it.
“How did you know Lorrian was the one?” Nesta asked curiously, as Frawley detailed how they had decided to intertwine their lives the same day in front of the other witches.
Taking a plate from Nesta, Frawley began to dry it with a seriousness that told Nesta that she was thinking hard. “I’ve lived a long life,” Frawley said eventually. “After a while, night and day become repetitive. Boring. I didn’t realise I’d fallen into a rut until I met Lorrian. He made me feel alive again.” She shrugged, the action unlike Frawley as she pinned Nesta with both her eyes. “And Caer liked him. Caer has always been an extension of me in some ways, so I knew that Lorrian was right. We fit like two puzzle pieces. We didn’t try to change who we were for the other, but our love made us happier, more content, even in the face of great challenges.”
Nesta wondered if Frawley was referring to their lost witchlings as well as Lorrian’s arm. She could not imagine losing something so precious. The thought made her heart ache with such intensity she wanted to run away for a moment, before she reminded herself that emotion was part of life. It was better than being numb.
Nesta wanted to see the world in colour, not in black and white. Training with Azriel had taught her that.
“It must be nice,” Nesta observed after a moment, “to know you both chose one another. That you had a choice.”
Both eyes swivelled to rest on Nesta’s face. The effect was alarming. Nesta was used to them moving independently rather than together. “Everyone has a choice in love, Nesta.”
Nesta opened her mouth to speak but then Lorrian and Cassian entered the kitchen laden with more dirty dishes. Lorrian mentioned a dessert he needed to take out of the larder and Frawley turned to help him.
Whilst Nesta’s stomach was full in a way that was uncomfortable, her ears perked up at the thought of something sweet, as if it would cut through her savoury food coma.
“I have something I’d like to show you,” Cassian said into Nesta’s ear, as Frawley batted away her husband with a tea towel. He was trying to take the pudding she was carrying from her. “Will you come with me?”
Nesta cast a look at Lorrian and Frawley, but they were still both fussing over the Christmas pudding to notice them. So she nodded and followed him out the back door and into the crisp night air. Already a layer of frost dusted the greenery on the forest floor and pine needles, but Cassian quickly cast a bubble of warmth around them. It had not snowed, a rarity for this time of year Cassian had told her earlier, especially in Illyria which was usually deep in blankets of snow by now.
Gesturing to the outbuilding to the left of the cottage, Cassian walked ahead of her, his large wings bobbing behind him as he moved. They flared slightly as he slid open the huge wooden door, before quickly tucking themselves back in, no doubt to protect them from the bitter cold wind which was doing its best to cut through his shield.
It took Nesta’s eyes a fraction of a second to adjust to the darkness, her Fae eyes gifting her with far better sight than her human body ever had.
She stared around the barn — the bails of hay, the wooden rafters…
She twisted to look up at Cassian, a frown on her face. “What am I looking at?
“There," Cassian said with a jut of his chin. Nesta followed the direction he had pointed in and then her eyes went wide.
There, on a makeshift bed of hay was a manticore. It was not like Caer. There was no orange mane, only beautiful sandy fur and a handsome, elegant head, large ears and huge, almond eyes. Her leathery wings were smaller than Caer’s but in proportion to her body and tucked in tight.
Her amber eyes glowed in the dark, that regal head cocking as her gaze clicked into place with Nesta’s. That one look had Nesta’s heart thumping in her chest. It was not from fear, but utter awe.
“Do you know the associations surrounding manticores?” Cassian asked. His voice was low in her ear. Intimate.
Frowning, Nesta dragged her eyes away from the manticore with regret. “They are an apex predator known to devour their prey whole,” Nesta said, reciting what she had been told since she was young. “They are vicious and deadly and cannot be overcome by man.”
But even as she said the words, Nesta knew them not to be true, because she knew Caer. Knew his empathetic heart and the way he had comforted her when she was sad. “Obviously, that’s another human myth that holds no truth,” she finished with a lift to her chin, daring him to laugh.
But Cassian did not mock her, he only nodded. “Yes. Manticores are ruthless creatures and because of their ability to kill with such ease they have been labelled as bringing strife and suffering to the world. But that is not true. Manticores are rare and hard to come by because they are born from the blood of true sacrifice.”
Nesta wondered what Frawley had done to earn Caer’s loyalty. For him to serve her above all others. From what Cassian had told her, Caerleon had been with Frawley for so long even history could not pinpoint an exact date.
“Rhys found this manticore in the spot where you healed Mas.”
A long, long silence. “Frawley took her back to The Steppes to raise her. Manticores grow incredibly quickly, as you can see, but are incredibly vulnerable when they are young, largely because their wings are not fully developed. Fae and humans alike also have a nasty habit of trying to kill young manticores as it is when they are at their weakest. They try to damage their tails so they cannot take life from range and injure their wings so they never develop.
The thought made Nesta’s stomach roll. To harm something so beautiful and pure.
“Sala is only two weeks but she has already taken adult form. Only a fool would try to take her down now.”
“If manticores are so deadly, why isn’t she trying to kill us?” Nesta breathed, her gaze again connecting with the beast’s.
“Because we believe that she is yours, if you want her.”
“She’s mine?” Nesta asked sharply, too surprised to arrange her expression into one of indifference. “How do you know?”
At the words, the manticore raised her beautiful, beautiful head. Golden eyes settled on Nesta as leathery wings unfurled from the beast’s back — stretching — as if she had woken from a long sleep. She rose until she was on her haunches and then her four huge paws.
The beast padded towards them, her hips slinking, her head low and assessing. Yet none of it was threatening. Instead, Nesta only felt a rush of calm as the manticore moved towards them. She stopped in front of Nesta, so close that Nesta could feel the warmth of her breath on her skin, could see that close up the shimmer of gold in Sala’s eyes, the dotted muzzle and the long, pointed incisors.
And then, the beast hopped up onto her haunches, her impossibly large paws coming to rest on Nesta’s shoulders. Despite the enormity of the animal, Nesta remained grounded without having to brace herself. Mesmerising gold filled her vision. It was an ancient, omniscient stare that sung of wisdom and knowledge, of years lived and lived and lived.
And then Nesta saw herself: a reflection of silver-grey; of elegantly pointed ears; of pale skin and pink lips; as if she had become a part of the beast, their lives entangled. Bowing her large head, the manticore closed the distance between them and rubbed her forehead against Nesta’s.
The action was gentle — a familial caress — and when the beast was done, she kept her head against Nesta’s, the gesture solicitous and binding. They breathed together, their chests moving at the same time, and Nesta revelled in the softness of Sala’s fur and the affection that laced the movement. The implication behind it.
“A manticore chooses an owner it deems worthy. Someone pure of heart.”
Cassian’s voice was a low rumble as Sala dropped to all fours. When Nesta twisted around to look at him she found him leaning against the barn, as if he had stepped away to give she and Sala space. His smile was crooked and so beautiful Nesta wanted to touch it; to trace the lines of his mouth where it curved upwards. But most of all, to draw the lines that creased around his eyes that softened the wildness of his features.
“The tuft of her tail is made of silver fire, which is also a giveaway,” Cassian mused, his hazel eyes glowing with what Nesta dissected as amusement. Had she been staring at him a little too long? “Manticores take on elements of their partner.”
Nesta hadn’t even noticed Sala’s tail, but now she could see the trail of silver flame as the tip flicked slowly from side to side in the dark.
The ice that protected everything creaked and cracked at the sight.
Nesta let it. She wanted to refute it — to tell Cassian that he was wrong and Sala wasn’t hers — but the moment Sala had rested her heads on hers, she knew that they were bound together. The manticore made her blood sing, as if their paths were irrevocably entangled in such a beautiful way that Nesta daren’t question it. It was a similar feeling she had encountered when Cassian had delivered the letter in the Human Realm; that compelling pull of destiny.
After the war, Nesta had thought they were done. That she and Cassian had made history and were now travelling on parallel paths of a forked road. But now she was not so sure. She had not been sure for a while now.
“And what if I were of bad intention?” Nesta asked, smoothing her palm over the manticore’s head. The fur was as soft as the finest silk; the touch so divine that Nesta wanted to bury her face in the beast’s ruff and breathe her in again.
A frown worried itself onto Cassian’s expression. Nesta pushed it to the periphery, keeping her attention focussed on Sala.
Nesta had thought revenge would be sweet. Thought that killing the King would have rendered her new and swept away all of the regrets and the pain of the past, but it had only set a deep fear within her. What if her palms only sung death and destruction? What if she was evil and cruel and a thorn in the side of everyone she met? What if she was bloodthirsty and she would not stop until she had quenched that thirst?
But when she had dropped to her knees in front of Mas, Nesta had felt a different hum of power; a magic that had been pushed down and quieted but was wholly good. And as Nesta had forged herself anew, she realised that her magic had presented her with a choice. She could be death if she wished. She could cause destruction and wreak havoc but she could also protect and heal. And whilst Nesta had decided who she was, the knowledge that she had the ability to take away life as she pleased still terrified her. The kerits were different. They were not Fae or human. They did not look like her, did not think like her, did not have conscious thought. Their heads did not tumble right, and whilst life disappeared from the depth of their eyes, it was not akin to the way her father’s eyes had faded, his very being sputtering out until there was only vacant emptiness.
Nesta did not want to take life. Not unless she had to.
She was not a killer.
Scar-flecked fingers tilted her chin and urged her to look upwards. Nesta had not heard him move, but she registered his warmth and saw his earnest expression as she stared up into Cassian’s tan face.
“You are not of bad intention,” Cassian said, as if he somehow could sense her self-deprecating thoughts. His voice had dropped; the tone soft, like a brush stroking tenderly against a canvas.
“What would happen?” Nesta insisted. She needed to know. Needed to understand as surely as she needed to understand that she would wake tomorrow and he would still be there; her steady presence.
“Then Sala would disappear into the ether, as it were. An allegiance can be changed, after all. Manticores are highly intelligent creatures.”
Nesta did not know what to say. Yet, whilst she had no words, she knew with a fierce conviction that she would not allow herself to lose Sala. This beast… she was a gift. Sala was the first true blessing that Nesta had been granted in a life that had only been bleak and cruel.
Sala was hers just as she would be the beast’s. A companion in the grey of her life. Another flicker of light in the dark.
“I thought she would give you more freedom around the camps.”
Nesta blinked. Cassian had dropped his hand but remained close to her. His warmth seeped through her clothing, the sensation welcome in the shadows of the barn. Sometimes Nesta felt as if his warmth was directed solely to heat her limbs.
“I know you must feel limited in where you can go,” Cassian elaborated, stretching his wings slightly. He kept the one closest to her outstretched; a barrier against the cold.
To Nesta’s surprise, Cassian’s cheeks stained a faint pink and he looked away. “I can’t imagine being in Windhaven and not being able to fly,” he confessed. “Sala can carry you about if you want to taste the wind. She can also fight alongside you should you ever need it, both on ground and in the skies.” Another crooked smile as those dark eyes rested back on her, as if he were making himself do it. It nearly knocked the breath from her lungs, the vulnerability in his expression. “She’s not a steed, but perhaps she will become a close second.”
Nesta didn’t know what to do with her body. She felt self-conscious beyond belief, thrown completely by the repeated offering — of freedom. Cassian knew of her growing love of flying. He had truly listened when she confessed that the air rushing around her made her feel alive. That she hungered for it — desperate to gobble up the adrenaline that for the short time, made her feel awake. The rush was akin to an orgasm; the sensation of hot, silky skin sliding against hers as the wave crested and shattered on the shore. Better in some ways. Healthier. More attainable.
Even though words flashed through her mind, Nesta only asked, “Sala?”
Cassian’s lips turned up at the corners as if he were accessing a memory. “It means fire in Illyrian. A temporary name should you wish to call her something else. Although she is rather attached to it, as you can see.”
Indeed, the manticore’s round honey-coloured ears had pricked forward at the sound of her name. She tilted her head slightly at Cassian, as if she were waiting for him to give her a command.
Nesta bent to scratch behind Sala’s ears.
“But where will she stay?”
It seemed a stupid question to ask, but the words blurted forth anyway.
Cassian shrugged but the gesture appeared relieved. Had he thought she would turn Sala away? He must have asked Frawley to keep the manticore secret so he could show her the beast himself. “She can come into the bungalow if she likes. Manticores are needy creatures who bond fast to their chosen companion. She’ll like to exercise and hunt, but she’ll always want to come home to you. It is in her instincts to protect and serve.”
Silence fell. Nesta brushed her knuckles across the beast’s muzzle, just as she’d seen Frawley do with Caer. Sala’s purr was loud and she dropped to the ground as if she were in heaven, rolling onto her back and stretching her legs out.
Nesta mouth widened into an unstoppable smile at the sight — of the open display of trust and affection which Nesta found so difficult — and squatted down beside the manticore to ruffle her ears.
“Do you like her?”
Cassian’s words caught her, reminding her that he was watching her. His eyes were soft and wide when she twisted to look up at him. The faint ghost of a smile was still hovering on her lips.
“Yes,” she said, in a way that she hoped didn’t come out stiffly. “Very much.” Then she frowned. “What if I’m made to go back to Velaris.”
It was a possibility Nesta couldn’t cast from her mind. Even though Feyre had insisted Nesta could leave Illyria should she want to, Nesta could not help but fear that some event would call her back to their City of Starlight before she chose it herself. That her involvement in court matters would demand her presence.
Cassian’s expression hardened, showing a hint of the warrior she had been privy to earlier. “I promise you don’t have to go back there if you don’t want to.”
“But what if—"
“I don’t care if it’s demanded of you, Nesta. You never have to go back if you don’t want to.”
The way Cassian spoke was short and dark… and troubled. He truly meant it.
Another creak reverberated in Nesta’s ears as ice tumbled from a glacier. Cassian’s words had reminded her of what she needed to do — what Nesta had known for a while but did not want to admit. It was another path that had been cleared of vines and brambles, but remained laced with thorns. It was not an easy route, but it was what she had chosen. “I do want to go back.”
Everything stilled. The air went taut around them and Cassian’s angry expression shifted into something else entirely.
Nesta watched him open and close his mouth, the movement small but enough to indicate that she had stunned him. Eventually he said, “Ok.”
Another long, long pause. She watched him swallow, the column of his throat moving up and then down as he looked away. “We can move you back, if that’s what you want.”
Arrows formed between her brows as she frowned. Did he think…?
Stupid bat.
“I have no intention of moving back there permanently,” she clipped. “I have things I need to take care of. I’ll go back with you. You said you were going for New Year’s Eve.”
Again, Cassian’s lips parted. “You want to visit?” he asked with a disbelieving frown. “I’m going for a few days. I’ll return New Year’s Day.”
Dread twisted inside of her but Nesta did not let it show. Determination won out. She would not stray from her path. Her intention was bigger then her fear to return back to Velaris, to undoubtedly have to face member’s of the Inner Circle in their home — their territory. Where she had been broken and lost and so numb she could not remember the year that had slid by in a roll of bare flesh and the burn of alcohol.
“Yes, for a visit,” she confirmed. Then, she added, “As long as I don’t have to stay in that wretched new house.”
Cassian looked away from her. “Your apartment is still there.”
Worrying her lip between her teeth, Nesta thought of that cold and dirty apartment with its four locks on the door. She had never felt safe there. And it was not a place for her now. A different Nesta had lived there … and Nesta was not that Fae any longer.
“Where will you stay?” she asked.
“I usually stay with Rhys and Feyre or at the House of Wind.”
“Why don’t you have your own place.”
Cassian laugh was rough and throaty and it made the hairs on her arm stand on end. “Why, would you want to stay there?”
Nesta scowled, even as she asked, “How insufferable would you be if I said yes.”
“Very insufferable,” Cassian assured her, his eyes twinkling.
“No, then,” Nesta replied … and Cassian laughed. The sound was bright and so, so delighted that she couldn’t help the twitch of her lips.
“Shall I send word ahead that you’re coming?”
Nesta shrugged. “If you like.”
A pause.
“Elain will be pleased.”
“Yes,” Nesta said tightly. Already she was starting to backtrack, the thought of heading back to Velaris too much. But then she thought about her purpose and the courage it gave her made her stand that little bit taller. Stiffer… but taller.
“How about this,” Cassian offered, as if he sensed her trepidation. “We won’t send word ahead until the night before. Then you have the night to sleep on it. If you decide you don’t want to go back, nobody is any the wiser and it means you won’t overthink things.” His expression was carefully neutral. “You could even have Sala come to meet you,” he added. “The journey would help to strengthen her wings.”
Armour. He was offering her armour amongst her fire.
Nesta loosed a slow breath and played with Sala’s soft ears. “Ok.”
Then she looked up at him, those stormy eyes suddenly clearing to blue as a small smile crept onto her face — she was still in too much disbelief to control it. “She’s really for me?”
Cassian reached a hand downwards. It hesitated in midair, but when she did not move away his thumb brushed the dimple in her cheek with such reverence something inside of her glowed hot.
“She’s all yours,” Cassian assured her, his expression so soft he looked as young as her. “We can bring her inside now if you like. We’ll have to watch Caer, he’s taken a shine to her.”
Nesta woke the next morning in the small bedroom she had been allocated at the cottage with Sala spread out on the bed beside her. The manticore’s body was deliciously warm and Nesta raised a hand to scratch behind the animal’s ears.
Already the beast was Nesta’s steadfast companion.
Sala let out a deep rumbling purr that continued to vibrate as she knocked her head gently against Nesta’s in greeting, and Nesta allowed herself a moment to rest her forehead against Sala’s, holding her close and breathing her in.
The night of festivities had bled into the early hours, and Nesta had only dragged herself to bed when her eyelids had become so heavy she could barely keep them open.
Blearily, Nesta dragged herself to join her friends for breakfast before heading back upstairs to get ready to fly to Ironcrest. She was just finishing weaving her hair into a coronet, when a knock sounded at the door.
Cassian was wearing elaborate leathers that she had not seen before. He had scraped half of his hair back into a top knot tied tightly with leather and red cloth. The rest hung to his shoulders in gleaming ebony, as if he had deigned to run a brush through his hair yet again.
Nesta considered making a comment about how he had brushed his hair two days in a row but stopped herself at the last minute. There was a tense set to his shoulders that she had not expected to see given yesterday’s festivities. She doubted it was because he was hungover. Nesta had noticed that he had not gorged himself on wine like he had the year prior, only enjoying a few glasses over the course of the day, as if he knew he needed his wits about him for the luncheon. And, she imagined, so as not to drink excessively around her. Not that she hungered for a drink, any longer. She hadn’t for a long time.
The solidity to Cassian’s frame was the sort that he used to wear when she first arrived in Velaris. It was a stance prepared for barbed words and insults, even as he feigned casual joviality. A stance ready for a fight he did not want to participate in.
Perhaps he was worried about today… That was a possibility. She had heard him tell Rhys ‘no’ when he asked them to stay the night at Ironcrest. There had been no contemplation, just fierce, adamant refusal…
Nesta had a feeling it had nothing to do with his safety but her own. And even though Nesta had her silver flames and her beginner’s training in combat, she was still the female who craved four locks on a door before she could go to sleep. The bungalow was different, it had a magical protection that Nesta had cause to doubt, but in a camp where the General and their High Lord were out of favour…
Even as her power moved restlessly beneath her skin, Nesta hoped she and Cassian were sharing a room. She would gladly pretend to be seen as a couple if it meant she would not sleep alone in a strange place. Just the thought of it made her fire want to roar, even as the thought of sleeping beside him made her want to self-combust.
Oblivious to her thoughts, Cassian bent to scratch behind Sala’s ears with a large hand. “Ready to go?”
Nesta’s eyes snagged on the chain dangling from his other hand and her magic gushed through her veins as if it were a flood.
“What’s that?” Nesta asked with a scowl.
For a moment, Nesta actually thought Cassian was going to turn on his heel and leave. A muscle feathered in his jaw, but in the end, he only stepped so close to her she almost had to take a step back to steady herself.
Sala came to sit by Nesta’s side. The manticore stared up at them with her beautiful, almond eyes that shone gold as Cassian thrust a hand out. “Here.”
Nesta stared at the silver chain that dangled from his fist and the pendant that hung from it. It was so odd to see an impossibly broad warrior holding something so delicate that Nesta wanted to laugh — the first time the sound wanted to desperately bubble out of her in his presence— but she knew to do so would be a fatal move; a wound that could not be healed. So she swallowed down the sensation and tilted her head to study the necklace instead.
She hoped that he couldn’t hear how fast her heart was beating in her chest.
When she opened her mouth to speak, Cassian swiftly changed tactic, steering her around so her back was to him. The movement was abrupt and uncontrolled, designed to stop her speaking and laced with something that Nesta thought she detected as panic.
The firm touch of his hands on her skin made everything hiss, like steam as water hit a hot pan on the stove. And once she had her back to him and the room stopped spinning, everything slowed. Hyper-aware, Nesta felt the movement of air against the arch of her neck; felt the way her body betrayed her and covered her in goosebumps as his calloused fingers brushed her neck. The pleasure at being touched coursed through her and she stiffened, suppressing the shiver that wanted to sweep her away.
She hadn’t been touched intimately in months. Hadn’t been touched tenderly ever and she found she craved for it.
The comprehension made her both sad and angry: a double-edged sword plunged into the gut.
“What do you think—” she started to snap, but she broke off as a light weight nestled on her sternum, a few inches below her clavicle.
For a moment, the stone was cool, but then it pulsed against her skin, as if it were a heart and it had been kicked into life for the first time. The pendant was a colour Nesta had never seen before - not quite gold and not quite silver. Understated but undoubtedly beautiful.
Nesta snapped her gaze up to Cassian as all seven siphons on his ornate armour glowed softly.
He was staring at her with apprehension… and he looked strangely vulnerable, as if he were ready to take a step back. As if he were about to take a hit.
Despite that, Nesta couldn’t help to stamp out the intimacy of the moment, even as her mind chanted for more. His head was bowed slightly towards her and she was so consumed by his scent that too much derision flooded her voice, “You’re giving me jewellery? I’m touched.”
“Very good,” Cassian snickered. His wary expression was suddenly replaced with determination, the shadows shifting on his dark, untameable features.
“I know you don’t usually wear jewellery,” Cassian said with forced lightness, “but I thought you might make an exception. The stone is made of pyrite. Pyrite is revered in Illyria for its protective properties—it’s very rare. It provides a level of protection over the wearer.”
Nesta fingered the beautiful pendant, the stone which was still warm against her skin. It reminded her of safety: of being curled up by a silent fire with a storm raging outside; of a hot meal settling in a stomach carved out hollow from weeks of barely having enough to survive.
She should accept the necklace and get him to leave, Nesta knew that, but her curiosity had been piqued even as something warned her to remain quiet, “When did you have time to hunt down a rare protective charm?”
A muscle feathered in Cassian’s jaw. Suddenly he was not looking at her again but past her, as if something had captivated his attention on the wall. “A while ago.”
And somehow she knew from those three words exactly what this was: the Solstice gift he had tried to give her.
All the fight bled out of her, because somehow Nesta knew that he had found this for her so she would feel safe. So when she closed the door to her apartment at night with the four locks or walked home well after dark in an inebriated state, that it would offer her protection. That even though she had rejected him and he knew that she was fucking male after male, that no harm would come to her.
At the time she would have been furious at the gift — at the audacity that he thought he should protect her. But that wasn’t it at all. It was because deep down, despite all her sharp words and his confusing actions, he had cared. And whilst post-war Nesta would have been so blinded by rage and numbing grief that she would have been unable to see the gift for what it was… the Nesta here and now - the female who was slowly emerging out of the dark - felt as if dawn was peeking on the horizon.
A lump formed in her throat. Had Cassian dived into the Sidra to retrieve it? When she had been so cruel to him and he so cruel to her? When she had lashed out because he would not listen. Because he had ignored her and flirted with Mor in front of her face as she felt discarded in the corner.
“It will provide you with an added layer of security during our trip,” Cassian told her.
Even now, Nesta did not want to discuss what they had been. What they could have been. So she said, “You think I need it today?”
“I think that I don’t trust Illyrian males, especially Illyrian males from Ironcrest. I think that you are stronger and more powerful than any of them, but I would rather die than have something happen to you on the off-chance that they got closer than you’d like or if they teamed up on you.” His words were a low vigorous rumble that shook her bones.
Then he hesitated. “And Illyrian males give a piece of jewellery to females they are promised to — it’s a symbolic gesture. For the sake of today’s pretence, it would be good if you wore it.”
A long, long silence where Nesta could feel Cassian’s pulse thumping against the skin of his neck. For one true beat, their eyes locked. His eyes were so dark and intense that Nesta couldn’t bare it.
She was thankful when they shifted slightly to stare right past her rather than tunnel far inside of her.
“It’s beautiful,” she conceded, unable to voice what she wanted to say. There was too much churning around in her mind, so she stared down at the teardrop pendant that glimmered against her pale skin.
“Good,” Cassian said, moving away from her with such abruptness it was almost military with intent. “Put it on and come downstairs.”
Cassian had known it as soon as he had woken that morning; dread lining his stomach, the sensation as heavy as lead.
That knowledge had grown as they trained in the sparring ring, Nesta deathly silent as she fought with an intensity that almost left him reeling.
He knew it as they walked home: as she disappeared into the bathroom; as he loitered around the house stalling his departure…
Something in his bones had told him to stay, even as she had told him to go. He had followed her to the bottom of the mountain, forcing himself to stay quiet lest he ruin the progress they had made.
Until he had broken, of course…
Words he would once have never dared say to her poured forth. And then he’d touched her again. He needed to stop doing it, he knew that, but he couldn’t help himself. His blood had leapt in his veins at the touch, as if it were trying to burst through his skin… to go where he did not know.
Afterwards, as he tracked through the endless grey snow clouds, all Cassian truly saw was the way Nesta’s lips had parted in surprise. A few mere months ago her entire body would have recoiled from him, as if his touch disgusted her. But like the previous time, after the attack from the kerits, Nesta had only stilled. Not spat. Not batted him away. Only stared at him, as if his touch had made everything go quiet.
It wasn’t just the potential meeting with Feyre that Cassian was concerned about, but everything that came with it. If Nesta decided to meet her sister, Cassian had no doubt that there would be repercussions, the biggest being Nesta retreating into herself. With that came more consequences: a lack of eating, battle trauma, panic attacks and loss of control, to name a few. Cassian’s worry had been so palpable that he'd given up on trying to stifle it and he knew that Nesta had sensed it. It was what had resulted in her snapping at him to leave the house, even after he had promised her dosas — her favourite Illyrian dish.
So with all of that in mind, it was miraculous that Cassian made it an hour into his flight to Swallow’s Ridge before he realised the true gravity of his mistake. Because whilst Nesta may have pushed everyone away after the war, what she had really wanted was for someone to stay and fight for her. And now… he was leaving. Again.
With a long stream of curses, Cassian banked sharply to the left.
Once he’d taken a complete U-turn, he followed the wind that moaned her name, all the way back to Windhaven.
The mountain pass had just come into sight when it hit him: emotion beyond his wildest reckoning. Panic and fear assaulted him with such ferocity that Cassian dropped, a dead weight in the skies, his hands flying to his ribcage as if he could hold in the pain that wanted to burst forth. It took him a few seconds of free falling before he managed to shudder for breath, and an even longer moment for his brain to kick into gear. He threw his wings out wide, his muscles screaming against the force of the wind as he readied his body in the sky.
Siphons flaring, Cassian tried to swallow down his panic just as the scent of her filled his lungs — jasmine and vanilla — rising above the smell of blood and shit and death.
And Cassian knew even though it should not be possible, as surely as he knew the sun would rise tomorrow, exactly where Nesta was as he sped through the sky with impossible speed to the widows camp.
Screams and the flash of steel filled the air as he landed with a thud amongst the tents that made up the Eastern side of the camp. Siphons flaring, Cassian started running just as a sword appeared in his hands, the steel encrusted with a ruby light that gleamed with the promise of bloodshed. Warriors were already on the terrain, steel arcing through the air as they gutted and slashed the remaining kerits. Around him, Cassian could hear sobbing females and the sight of hollow, stricken faces splattered with blood. Some warriors were using their magic to patch up the severely injured, jewelled light flaring amongst the grey terrain. Yet Cassian did not stop. Instead, he allowed his legs to lead him to where he needed to be, giving in to the force that always tugged at him towards Nesta, as if their power were magnets undeniably and inexplicably drawn to the other.
His heart all but stopped when he spied a crowd of females, orphans and warriors at the Eastern-most point.
Crowds were never good he had learnt, it meant there was something worth witnessing.
Nesta’s name left his lips without realising he had done it, the word pouring forth again and again and again until his throat was raw; “Nesta. Nesta. Nesta.”
The low depth of his voice had bodies jumping to the side, until finally he heard his name. “Cassian.”
It was not the voice he had wanted to hear, but relief flooded him all the same as Feyre’s terrified face swam into view. Her slim fingers closed around his arms as he gave her a quick once over to check she was in one piece. She was covered in black blood as thick as tar but otherwise appeared unharmed.
She was in the middle of the crowd and when his eyes slid past her to the figure on the floor and the familiar, leather clad female beside her, Feyre’s grasp tightened on him, as if she might be the one that needed to hold him up.
“I can’t get her to stop,” Feyre said. Her voice was muffled — distant — as Cassian pushed his High Lady aside. Feyre did not seem bothered, she only followed him with a wild sort of panic he had only witnessed from her when Rhys had died in front of their eyes. “Nesta brought the widow back to life. She healed her injuries with her magic but now she won’t stop. She’s not responding to anything and her nose is bleeding…”
Cassian wasn’t sure if Feyre trailed off or if he just stopped hearing. Everything froze inside of him as his eyes took in Mas on the ground. Her wings were splayed wide beneath her twisted body but her chest… it was moving, even though she was lying in a pool of blood; the colour bright and glistening against the grey stone.
And knelt beside her, her slim, shaking hands suspended over Mas’s body, was Nesta.
White, radiant light poured from her palms — healing power that sung with overwhelming brilliance — but through the fog clouding his brain, Cassian knew something was deathly wrong. His siphons knew it too — they blinked, ready to rally his power, as if they too sensed the healing magic that shone from Nesta’s palms straight down onto Mas’s bloody body.
“She won’t stop.” Feyre’s voice tuned back into his ears with a high-pitched ringing sound. “It’s killing her.”
Feyre moved as if she were about to shake her sister, but Cassian’s hand moved of its own accord. “No,” he ordered, knowing somehow that it wouldn’t work — that it would be dangerous to summon Nesta out of the trance she had fallen into.
He forced himself to remain calm as he studied his equal. Her skin was deathly pale, a trickle of fresh blood dropping from her nose and onto the red-soaked stone… as if she were mustering the last of her strength into that pure, magnificent light that sung of devotion rather than the promise of death.
Cassian could feel Nesta exhaustion as surely as he could sense his own, the sensation threatening to pull them both down as his siphons winked in warning. He felt as if he had been wrung out to dry, his magic on its last legs as he said, “Nesta.”
Blood seeped through his layers as he dropped to his knees beside her. He did not feel the way his kneecaps collided with rock, even though he would find twin bruises on his kneecaps later that evening.
“Nesta.”
Her name left his lips again as if it were sacred. Inside of him, something flickered. Slowly, he held a palm up to cup her face, even as the terror that had clamped down inside of him wanted to shake her until she woke up. More blood trickled from her nose, down her lips and chin before it started to make its way down his wrist. Nesta’s body shuddered in response, as if it knew she couldn’t give anything more — that her magic was dying out, and with it, her.
In the background, Cassian heard a youngling start to cry — Roksana. The sound twisted as sharp as a knife.
“Sweetheart, you did it. Mas is breathing. You can stop now,” he said hoarsely. Desperately. “You don’t need to give any more of yourself. It’s ok. You can stop.”
Light sputtered at Nesta’s palms, as if her focus had been pulled away for a fraction of a moment. A part of Cassian chastised his habit for assuming that he could bring her back, even though he wasn’t so sure he was wrong.
Pouncing at the respite in her power, Cassian dared to take a glowing hand in his. Her fingers were ice cold as he placed it to his chest. His heart was thumping hard and his breath heaved from his lungs as if it were his last. He knew somehow that Nesta could feel it — that it would ground her — just as it had the other day.
Nesta’s eyes opened with a terrifying snap. They connected with his for the briefest of moments — mercury on hazel — before they rolled back into her head.
And as if someone had cut a cord loose in her spine, Nesta collapsed like a puppet on a string.
Cassian caught her, rearranging her body into his arms with an urgency that he did not usually let himself show. But he was undone. He did not have time to arrange himself or decide how to behave. He was no longer the general of the Night Court, he was just a male watching his life disappear.
Nesta’s long hair had come free of her braid and the red of Mas’s blood seeped into the golden strands. The image burned behind his retinas as he begged, “Sweetheart.”
Cassian dragged a thumb across the arch of Nesta’s cheekbone — just as he done earlier when she was healthy and well. Now, Nesta’s skin was ice to the touch rather than warm. “Nesta,” he implored.
Wildly, he tried to scan Nesta’s body with his magic, just as Feyre fell to her knees beside him.
He imagined the grey-blue eyes that were wide with panic were a mirror of his own.
“I can’t patch her up,” Cassian told Feyre with a look that was wholly unhinged. His voice was rising with panic but he didn’t give a shit who heard it. He scanned Nesta’s body again with dim red light but came up empty. “I don’t know what’s wrong.”
“It must be internal bleeding,” Feyre said shakily. Her words blended together with a rushed sort of panic that Cassian knew was coming out of him as well. “The widow’s body stitched itself back together but Nesta didn’t stop. It was as if she was in a trance and then her nose started to bleed…”
Each word stabbed through his stomach as if a blade were being repeatedly thrust through Cassian’s flesh. More blood leaked from Nesta’s nose and inside of him, those twisted strands of rope started to fray and unravel.
Cassian squeezed his eyes shut, his expression wringing at the pain. His siphons pulsed as he looked into himself; to the braided rope that had been strung between them long, long ago but left alone. He willed his magic to strengthen them; red twisting around light wrapped around light. And at the end — her end — no ice.
In the distance, Cassian felt Feyre’s hands on him. They didn’t feel real. “Cassian, what is it? What’s going on?”
His siphons sputtered as Nesta’s light started to turn dark.
Urgently, he snapped his eyelids open.
Feyre was already standing, as if she knew what he was going to say.
“Get Madja.”
Feyre did not respond, she only folded her blood-streaked body into the air at the command until she vanished into nothing.
Feyre arrived at the bungalow with Madja just as Cassian placed Nesta on top of his bed.
He had shot into the skies with Nesta in his arms as soon as Feyre had vanished. Behind him, warriors carried Mas and a blood-soaked Roksana.
In the few seconds before he had taken flight, the housekeeper had woken with an alertness that told Cassian that whatever Nesta had done had worked. Whilst her clothes were tattered and stained red, Mas’s skin was unmarred and her eyes… they were bright, if not a little round.
Cassian was keen to have her checked over by a Velaris healer, but… she was alive and breathing, thanks to Nesta.
Cassian did not think he could have dealt with the loss of Mas.
To put an Illyrian female in his bed went against every cultural tradition engrained into his cold and miserable upbringing, so Cassian had barked at the warriors to put Mas in Nesta’s room and had taken Nesta straight to his. The sight of Nesta amongst his sheets and wrapped in his scent had the territorial part of him clawing at his self-control; he barely saw the other healers arrive on a star-kissed wind, or noticed the speed at which Feyre entered the room. All he saw was Nesta looking pale and small against the blankets, her chest barely moving as blood continued to leak from her nose.
Panic had taken on a new definition. He was consumed with it. Burning as fiercely as Nesta’s flames, and he wanted to snarl and snap, to do something to make everything move faster. To wind time forward to a moment when Nesta was going to be well and he didn’t feel like his whole world was being cleaved in two.
At the doorway, Cassian felt his brother step out of shadow. Cassian only had to share a look with Azriel for the shadowsinger to fold back into darkness, as if he had never been there at all.
With Azriel’s disappearance came Rhys and Madja. The healer hobbled into the room, the aura of calm in a hurricane of panic, but Rhys remained at the threshold, as if he knew that to step in would have Cassian snarling.
The leather of Madja’s medical bag let out a gentle, creaking thump as she placed it onto the bedside table.
“Step away from the patient, please,” Madja ordered with that ancient voice of hers, her hands immediately hovering over Nesta’s head to start a body scan. “And anybody who does not need to be here, it is time for you to leave.”
Shrewd eyes landed on Rhys. Violet met hazel in warning as his brother quickly strode to his mate and placed a kiss to Feyre’s blood-streaked forehead. Feyre did not turn, she only clasped Nesta’s hand in her own with a blankness to her expression that Cassian knew would have Rhys beside himself with worry. Feyre squeezed her sister’s hand tightly, as if her hold would convey the words she would not say out loud, before she reluctantly let it drop.
Rhys clicked his fingers and the blood and grime disappeared from all of their bodies. Without it, Nesta looked as if she were in a deep, pained sleep. The arrows at the base of her nose had taken up permanent residence, and Cassian was so busy scanning Nesta’s body for any obvious signs of injury, that he only just registered the way Rhys paused to clasp Cassian on the shoulder on his way out. The gesture was brotherly but Cassian could not bring himself to acknowledge it. Rhys seemed to understand, disappearing from the bungalow altogether, taking Madja’s healers with him to tend to the injured and set the females up towards the back of the mountain pass where it would be safer.
Madja listened to Feyre and Cassian with an unruffled sense of ease that Cassian suspected only came with years upon years of healing the wounded. The sweet thrum of her magic hummed to life as she slowly ran her hands over Nesta’s thin body.
“She healed a widow,” Feyre told Madja. Her voice shook. Cassian would have reached out to comfort his friend if it weren’t for the hole he was wearing into the carpet as he paced back and forth. He could not stop, even for a moment, the unease in his stomach too intense as he clung to that rope inside of him, not letting himself retreat for a moment in fear that it would snap. “I watched the wounds knit themselves back together and her wings regrow.”
Cassian’s eyes snapped to Feyre just as Madja’s dark hands snagged on Nesta’s abdomen, her magic flaring as if it were setting itself to work. “What do you mean Nesta regrew her wings?” he demanded.
“They were in tatters,” Feyre told him. “There was barely anything left of them—”
Cassian just had time to see Feyre’s mouth fall open in disbelief as he turned sharply on his heel and left the room.
Because Cassian had suspected that day on the battlefield, when he had left with bones that had somehow half knitted themselves back together — fractured rather than broken in the places he had heard them snap, that Nesta might have power beyond death.
Cassian had been too consumed with panic and worry for Nesta that he hadn’t looked at Mas’s own wings… At what Nesta might have done…
“Masak.”
The housekeeper was propped up in Nesta’s bed surrounded by two healers with Roksana tucked into her side. She shot him a shaky smile as he strode into the room. It was a look halfway between trauma and disbelief; of someone who had survived unimaginable pain but was now completely well.
“Show me your wings.”
The order was there and Mas obeyed, holding up a wing in turn, like one might lift an elbow. The look in her eyes was knowing as he gently grasped at her shoulder and squeezed, urging her to lean forward… to showcase the white line that no longer marred the back of them, nor the riddled scar tissue and the missing claw.
Cassian’s hand tightened on Mas’s shoulder. “Your wings —” he started, his voice breaking at the understanding of what Nesta had done — of the freedom she had granted Mas at her own cost.
Mas’s eyes shone. “I do not deserve this.”
“It is everything you deserve,” Cassian told her hoarsely, levelling his gaze with hers to show his words were genuine. “I’m sorry, I will be back. I...”
He trailed off, unable to finish the sentence. To explain that he did not know what was wrong with Nesta, let alone whether she would be ok.
“Sinta.”
Mas’s soft voice had Cassian halting at the doorway. He leant heavily against the doorframe, his body using the reprieve to sag. He was so tired. He felt utterly drained, as if every movement had him wading through mud. “Yes?”
He did not turn around to look at the female who was the closest thing he had to a mother. She would know how close he was to breaking if he looked at her, and right now, Cassian needed to be strong.
“Lady Nesta... she is going to be ok?”
His voice cracked despite his best efforts. “I don’t know.” Reaching inside of himself he grazed that twisted piece of rope — the tether that he had not let go of since he had felt Nesta starting to slip. “I am glad that you are all right. I’ll be back later,” he promised, and unable to look at her for fear of breaking, he returned to his bedroom.
Feyre and Madja were where he had left them: Feyre white-faced and perched on the armchair beside his bed; Madja hovering over Nesta with her eyes shut in concentration.
Yellow healing light poured from the hands that hovered over Nesta’s lower abdomen with an intensity that told Cassian that Madja’s healing magic had been set to work.
It seemed to be helping; when Cassian looked to Nesta’s face, he was relieved to see the colour back in her cheeks and that blood had stopped trickling from her nose. A path of dried blood remained there instead, the copper flaky.
He wanted to wipe it away — to rid Nesta of all traces that said she was suffering.
Feyre shot him a concerned look as he stepped fully into the room, but he paid her no heed. “Mas’s wings were damaged long before today,” he announced. “They were torn, cut and riddled with scar tissue. Nesta didn’t just regrow her wings, she healed them completely.”
Understanding dawned on Madja’s face. When she opened her ancient eye, something akin to awe flitted across her features.
After a moment, Madja’s hands dropped. She beckoned to them with a thin, bony hand to leave the room.
They followed the healer as she hobbled into the living area, where she rested a hand on the couch, as if to steady herself.
She stared first at Feyre and then to Cassian where she held his gaze — as if she could feel the territorial panic that threatened to consume him. “A healer usually uses a combination of magic and their own energy to restore health to the sick or injured,” Madja started to explain. “If we run out of magic, we simply cannot heal, but Nesta’s magic is unlike I’ve ever felt before, and as such, it does not work like mine.”
“Even healers as old and as experienced as I cannot mend long-term injuries in one go,” Madja continued quietly. “We have to dig deep into the trauma to correct what has been pushed down with time. Regrowing long-healed wounds takes an enormous amount of healing magic. Today Nesta went beyond the urgent life-threatening wounds and started to heal past injuries.”
“Is that why Nesta started to bleed out?” Feyre asked, as she tried to connect the dots. “Because her magic was too depleted?”
Madja nodded seriously. “Yes. By not only bringing Mas back from the brink of death but healing her completely, I would guess that Nesta gave too much of herself. Magic is balance. For healers, it’s about giving our own energy. For Nesta, it appears the consequences are far more dire if she is not careful, and her body will give up on her.”
Spindrift hair as light as cotton wool moved as though soft breeze was running through the house. Madja’s dark eyes came to rest on Cassian. “Nesta will recover just fine. I have stopped the internal bleeding, but she will be sore for a few days. Her body will do the rest. She has completely drained herself of magic and will need to sleep a great deal, but there is no need to hold on any longer. She will be perfectly well.”
Madja’s gaze on Cassian deepened until it became pointed. “It would be worth having a healer train Nesta in her magic so she can learn when to stop. Healing magic is not unlike a trance, it lures you in with its beautiful song, but one must learn the arch of the melody to ensure it does not sacrifice your own health. After all, how can one heal if they are not healed themselves?”
Feyre’s hand darted across the mattress to grasp Nesta’s hand. “When will she be able to leave her bed?”
“A few days,” Madja said, but she patted Cassian’s arm rather than Feyre’s. “She will be in a great deal of pain until the morning.”
Madja bent stiffly to pick up her leather bag from the carpet. “I’m surprised I’m not treating you on your death bed, General.”
For once in his life, Cassian did not banter. “Will you check over the widow before you go? Just for a second opinion?”
Cassian waited for Madja to explain with ancient wisdom that her healers were competent enough, but she only bowed her head.
“Of course.” Madja heaved her bag of supplies into one hand, and Cassian resisted plucking it into his own arms to save the elderly Fae from carrying it herself. He suspected that she would not appreciate the gesture. “She’s a miracle that I would very much like to witness.”
Turning to Feyre, Madja handed two glass vials stoppered with cork. “A sedative to help her sleep and a tincture to manage the pain. Administer the tincture every hour for the next six. Dip a bit onto a rag and wet it on her mouth until she wakes. A teaspoon of the sedative will do — it’s very strong.” Then the healer added, “She’ll need both, so see that they are not forgotten.”
Administering the tincture was easier said than done. Cassian had watched Feyre try to coax Nesta’s lips open for minutes before he had left the house entirely, unable to stand the pain that ran through him in waves whenever Nesta came close enough to resurface. There was also the fact that he did not trust himself to betray how intensely he felt for her in the bungalow that had become theirs, even if that was something he admitted only in his mind.
It was not because he was embarrassed. No, he was certain that all of his family knew the gravity of his feelings, even if it was something he did not wish to voice out loud. They all knew what had happened in the war, after all. Rather it was the knowledge that Nesta would not want his emotions to sit so clearly on the surface for everyone to see. She was a private person and showcasing his obvious feelings for her in front of others without her knowledge could be seen as mockery on her part: her family and his friends knowing what he believed her to either be oblivious to or unwilling to recognise.
And being a territorial bastard on top of all of that… Well, Cassian imagined that if Nesta was awake she would have burnt him to cinders by now.
Fighting the exhaustion that made his limbs as heavy as lead, Cassian made his way to the back of the mountain pass, close to where he and Nesta trained in the mornings. The Illyrian’s had made quick work moving the widows and orphans to safety and setting up camp. To the far left of the pass, nestled under the safety of some pine trees, were a series of large makeshift tents. Their flaps were open despite the elements, and Madja’s healers worked inside, their warm, golden light hard at work as they treated the injured.
In the middle of it all was Rhys. Devlon was by his side, the war lord’s expression set even harder than usual. An outsider would assume that Illyrians, who cared little for the widows and female orphans, would see today’s events only as an inconvenience, but that was not the truth. The truth was that the Illyrian’s viewed it as a wound on their pride — of a fault in their patrols. They also saw it as being kicked whilst they were down — another reason why their High Lord was failing them after they had suffered such losses in the war. And thanks to Kallon’s propaganda after the attacks on the other camps, the sentiment amongst many of the Illyrian’s was that they had been abandoned to rot and die at the teeth of beasts now the Night Court no longer needed them on the battlefield.
It was an attitude felt most keenly by those who had suffered, but here at Windhaven, with Nesta and Feyre on the scene so quickly, the casualties had been far less than they should have been. Without them… it would have been a bloodbath. Cassian had no doubt that they’d have lost far, far more and Rhys’s presence now… it was best that he was here even if the Illyrian’s did survey him with dark, depthless eyes.
They needed to see their High Lord and High Lady. Needed to understand that their Court cared and fought for them. That they had not been abandoned.
Drawing up beside his brother, Cassian did not bother with formalities. “How many?” he demanded to the war lord.
“Thirteen deaths and thirty plus casualties,” Devlon replied, his expression tight at the order. “All contained to the mountain. The guards killed any kerits that ventured further down the mountain path to the main camp.”
Cassian didn’t want to ask at the same time that he had. “And how many were younglings?”
“None. The widows distracted the kerits until the High Lady and her sister arrived on the scene to fight them off.”
Cassian could not think of the destruction those kerits would have wreaked if it were not for Feyre and Nesta. He could tell from the way that Devlon had not spit the word witch that it was a sentiment begrudgingly shared.
Devlon hadn’t given Nesta hell that morning at the sparring ring either. Cassian had all but stalked over to them only to find Devlon telling Nesta to watch where she blasted her fire without a trace of a sneer. Then, later, when he put Nesta through her paces with the blade, Devlon had still been there, watching with those dark, beady eyes of his. It was a look Cassian recognised. It was the same assessing gaze he and Azriel had received all of those years ago, when they had proved themselves to be stronger than every other opponent in the ring.The same look that had allowed them to perform in the Rite and earn their siphons. The same look that allowed Cassian to be standing in front of the war lord not as a meagre foot soldier, but as General of the Night Court’s Armies.
But that did not erase the fact that females had died today because of a gap in Devlon’s patrols.
So he said coldly, “By distracted, you mean that those females gave their lives to protect the youngling’s.” Cassian stared out at the new tents that Rhys had magicked for the widows. Cassian was going to insist to Rhys that buildings were erected immediately. Tents were not protection enough against the kerits and the Illyrian’s were no longer in a place to turn down financial help.
“The females will remain here permanently,” Cassian told Devlon with an air of finality that dissuaded argument. “It is not safe for them to relocate back up to the mountain. This is the third attack in little more than a month on three separate camps.”
“Which leads me to my next question,” Cassian continued, his voice falling into a growl, anger finally creeping into the shock that had taken a hold of him. “Where were the aerial warriors that should have been patrolling the perimeter? It is routine to fly over the widows camp. They should have spotted those beasts from a mile off.”
Cassian had no doubt that it was Nesta’s silver fire and the screams of agony carrying on the wind that had alerted the warriors. What if Nesta and Feyre had not been there to defend the females? Cassian didn’t want to think of the torn limbs and the trailing guts, of the small, lifeless bodies and the staring eyes. He had already seen them at Forktail and Swallow’s Ridge. Had watched the pyres burn and the hatred for their High Lord simmering beneath the Illyrian’s skin.
Perhaps here Nesta and Feyre had done enough to douse the fires fuelling the dissent. Perhaps Windhaven would be the only camp not to fall into the rebellion’s open claws.
Devlon’s dark, beady eyes settled coldly on Rhys. “He pulled extra warriors to guard the bottom of the mountain,” he sneered, jerking his chin to Cassian. “We were short on numbers.”
“They are foot soldiers not aerial,” Rhys interrupted smoothly, before Cassian could snarl a response. “Which,” he added lightly, “you are more than aware of. Where were the aerial soldiers patrolling the Eastern skies of the camp? You have known about the attacks on the other camps and were ordered to tighten the patrols and increase security. So I will ask again: where were the soldiers patrolling the Eastern skies of the camp?”
Rhys’s voice had dropped into a fury which crackled with power, the promise of deathly night hanging in the atmosphere around them. Devlon’s hard eyes flicked to Rhys’s hands, where just one click had the ability to shatter his mind.
He shifted onto another foot, betraying his unease but did not reply.
“Let’s go into the war tent,” Rhys ordered with a calm fervour that Devlon did not dare to contradict.
They stalked to the tent with such intent that warrior’s jumped out of their path with fierce attention.
Rhys waited until they were inside and then he cast a soundproof bubble around them with a flick of his fingers.
He turned to Devlon with a deadly calm that Cassian knew was dangerous. Devlon knew it too. Had witnessed it before.
“My mate saw three figures flying above the mountain pass minutes before the attack,” Rhys said conversationally, his violet eyes piercing.
“Flying across the camps is permitted,” Devlon drawled, with more nerve than Cassian had expected. Illyrian’s did not like to be called incompetent, and although Devlon was the fairest of the war lord’s, sometimes it pained Cassian that he could be no different.
Rhys inspected the invisible dirt beneath his fingernails. “They were not flying the perimeter. They cut straight across the belly of the camp. Now, I can use my own means to suss out who they are by calling in my shadowsinger, or you can do your job as war lord and identify who they were, why they were there and where they are now. They certainly weren’t reporting an attack. Your warriors landed well after my mate and her sister arrived on the scene.”
Devlon bristled. Rose up taller, nostrils flaring. Rhys stared him down, utterly unfazed. The dominant alpha male, always, High Lord or no.
“I’d also like to see the males responsible for the gap in patrol as a matter of urgency,” Rhys continued. “I trust that you and your close circle of most faithful warriors will perform this task as a matter or urgency.”
Together, Rhys and Cassian watched Devlon stalk off, his shoulders set in fury and determination.
Already, dread lined Cassian’s stomach as Rhys violet eyes rested on him, “Do you think this was manufactured?”
Straight to the point. It was a question Cassian had been asking himself again and again as he stared at Nesta’s pale face and the blood trickling from her nose.
“One camp attack can be seen as a tragedy, even two can be passed off as a bad coincidence. But three attacks on three separate camps? It’s pre-meditated, I’m sure of it,” Cassian admitted grimly. “It could be Kallon. It would be smart, to orchestrate attacks on the vulnerable but disposable. It would cement his cause in the minds of the rest of the community. It would make them more open to listening to his ideology and wish for a united Illyria under his rule.”
“It’s a possibility,” Rhys admitted soberly, his features mirroring Cassian’s. “We would need concrete evidence to reveal that there was intent behind the attacks. Illyrian’s are already patrolling the area, but I don’t trust them. The resistance could have infiltrated any of the soldiers without us knowing. Without proof there is nothing we can do. I’ll have Azriel scour the mountain range when he returns.”
Cassian rubbed his palms over his tired face. He needed to sleep more than anything. He was utterly drained, his siphons near exhausted, his emotions rubbed raw. He wanted to curl up beside Nesta to make sure that she was safe. There was an insistent tugging in his ribcage, a persistent force urging him to go back to the bungalow and protect, even when he knew Nesta was safer in the bungalow than anywhere else in the entirety of Prythian.
“There’s something else you should see,” Rhys said. He was eyeing his brother in that all-seeing way of his, as if only now he was witnessing the true gravity of what today had done to Cassian. Of what it all meant.
The tightness to his voice had dread lining Cassian’s stomach. He couldn’t take anymore bad news. He couldn’t.
“What?” he asked begrudgingly, but Rhys just wordlessly held out his hand for Cassian to grasp.
As soon as their hand’s touched, they disappeared.
He and Rhys were at the top of the mountain when Cassian sensed claws clipping on the stone around the fire that shielded his mind.
Feyre had never been inside Cassian’s head before, but Cassian knew it was his High Lady. Knew in the way that the glimmer of worry and concern carried on a breeze of pear and lilac, making his flames dance.
Unlike Rhys, who had built centuries of trust between his inner circle in order to request access to their minds, Feyre had never shown any intention of doing the same. Cassian was not sure whether that was a lack of habit or because she saw it as an invasion of privacy. Yet, Cassian did not hesitate in parting his flames, just barely, enough that Feyre’s voice floated into his head: Nesta’s waking up. You should come.
“I have to go.”
Rhys did not ask why, he only nodded, his blue-black hair moving elegantly in the wind rather than tangling like his own. “I’ve got it here.”
Violet eyes flicked over Cassian’s face, no doubt taking in the deep-set worry and fatigue. “Nesta will be ok, brother.”
Cassian looked away — out at the peaked mountains and the white-dusted pine trees. It had started to snow, and the vast scenery before them was cascaded in a flurry of cotton. His jaw feathered.
Then a hand was on his shoulder. Cassian turned his head in surprise. “Nesta saved Feyre’s life,” Rhys said. “Would you like to see?”
A gift. A concession. An offer to show Cassian Nesta strong and indestructible.
A raked claw down his fire. Parted flames. Nesta alive and breathing, wielding a sword of silver flame, moving as if she had not been taught the dance, but had choreographed it herself.
Feyre’s terror was like hot, fresh blood in his mouth as a kerit leapt at her out of nowhere, but then Nesta’s sword was sizzling through muscle and sinew. Cassian tasted Feyre’s heartbeat, the frantic pulse of it, the relief that followed as the beast collapsed to the ground.
Blinking, the present Windhaven came back into sight. Already the trauma and bloodstains of the day’s events were being erased by snow; wiped off the scenery, but not from history.
“I’ve only ever seen you fight like that,” Rhys said quietly. “The way Nesta cut through those kerits with only months of training… She reminds me of you.”
“I trained her,” Cassian reminded his brother tightly.
But Rhys shook his head, as if that was not what he meant at all.
There was a beat. A pause. It stretched out for what felt like eternity as words were formed and reformed in his brother’s mind. But in the end, all Rhys said was, “Go. Feyre says Nesta’s distressed.”
When Cassian arrived at the house Nesta was in the throes of a flashback. Halfway between sleeping and waking, nonsensical ragged moans rose from her throat, and the sheets lay tangled around her leg, as if she had kicked them off in her panic. Although her fingers sparked silver, the magic died at the tips, not replenished enough to do any damage. Cassian suspected it was the pain that had started to make her lucid, the sensation enough to drag her from the deep realms which confused nightmare and reality.
Was Nesta reliving old battle trauma or was she still stuck in the events from earlier that day, caked in blood as she fought snarling beasts?
“Nesta, it’s all right,” Feyre said frantically, her voice trying to soothe but only rising in panic as Nesta continued to thrash. She threw a wild, accusing look over her shoulder as Cassian entered the room before she refocussed her attention back on her sister, as if to say, what took you so long? “You’re at the bungalow. You passed out but Madja says you’re going to be just fine.”
She reached out a hand to push Nesta back down into the mattress, to stop her from causing herself more pain but Cassian caught her hands before they made contact.
“Don’t touch her,” he warned. “She will lash out at you,” he elaborated in an attempt to ease the surprise from Feyre’s face.
Crouching beside the bed, Cassian made sure to strike a careful balance between proximity and space. He forced his words to be casual rather than full of worry — made sure to erase the word sweetheart from the tip of his tongue. The affection crept in anyway. It always did when he said her name. “Nesta. You’re safe. The kerits are gone. The widows and younglings are out of danger. You’re ok.”
For a moment, Nesta stilled but then she moaned again, the sound expelled on a long, pained breath. Her hands crept to her abdomen, the action meditated enough that Cassian could tell she was awake.
Everything hurt as her expression crumpled in agony.
“You suffered some internal bleeding which is probably why you feel like shit,” Cassian told Nesta with forced lightness, hoping that the depth of his voice would keep her above the surface.
He had fisted his hands at his sides to stop himself from reaching for her, but then her hand started to search across the mattress, blindly following his voice. It took him a few seconds to form the scrambled realisation that she was trying to find him. He unfurled a palm and lay it on the coverlets, letting her discover it for herself rather than startle her.
Her fingers were ice cold as they met with his. He hadn’t dared light the fire, not even whilst she was firmly under. Feyre had looked at him with confusion when he had ordered her not to light it in his absence, but she had only taken the extra blankets he had pulled from the cupboard without a word.
Cassian twitched a finger at the contact, letting Nesta know he was there, but otherwise remaining still. He only realised he had been holding his breath when her cold fingers wrapped clumsily around his palm — ice on fire.
“Are you in a lot of pain?” he asked, because he was too scared to say what he really felt, especially with Feyre there.
You nearly died.
I’m so proud of you.
You’re a healer.
We haven’t had time — not yet.
The last was a stupidly loaded comment that would only remain inside the cages surrounding his heart. He had lost his chance with Nesta long ago and Cassian was not foolish enough to think that them living together was fate presenting them with another chance. Besides, Nesta’s recovery was more important than his selfish wants and needs. And although the magnitude of his yearning for Nesta made his previous desire for anyone else completely inconsequential, he would let it lie.
Nesta’s finger twitching against his palm brought him back to himself. The movement was only once, the action deliberately purposeful. The communication he had strung between them all those months ago when words were too hard.
Yes.
“I’m not surprised you’re hurting,” Cassian chided as he turned to Feyre, gesturing silently for the morphine. Feyre leapt up, passing Cassian the glass vial and the cloth she had been trying to get Nesta to take since Madja had left.
“Mouth open, sweetheart. I’m going to give you something to take the edge off.”
He dipped the rag in the medicine before he pressed it to her lips.
“Tastes like shit,” Cassian told Nesta conversationally as he rung the cloth gently so the liquid passed between her lips, “but it will dull the pain.” His smile was crooked as those steel-blue eyes slowly flickered open. They were bleary and streaked with red, but her gaze locked onto his with a strength that should not have surprised him. He watched her struggle to swallow and the wince that came with the bitter medicine. “Maybe I’ll ask Madja if I can mix it into some chai,” he tried in an attempt to lighten the mood. “Make it more palatable.”
Nesta’s expression did not change, but he could have sworn he heard a huff of breath.
He watched the column of her pale, beautiful neck move as she swallowed again. And then her cracked lips parted.
Her tentative whisper was hoarse. “Mas…”
“Healed thanks to you,” Cassian told her quickly as he moved over to the dresser to stopper the medicine. It put Feyre into Nesta’s line of vision, but Nesta was only looking at him when he turned back around. “More than healed, actually. She’s in your bed resting. Not that she hasn’t tried to get out already. That female is as stubborn as a—”
“Don’t move!”
Feyre’s warning burst out of her before Cassian had turned back around. When he did, Feyre was lurching forwards as Nesta stuttered a gasp — as if the breath had been sucked out of her lungs. Her body arching as her hands flew to her abdomen.
A deep, agonising sort of pain rippled through him. And if it hurt him rather than discomforted him, the pain must be indescribably bad for Nesta.
“You suffered internal bleeding,” Feyre explained as Cassian tried to catch his breath. “Madja thinks your body started to give out as you ran out of healing magic.”
Steel grey bore into Feyre for a moment and then that crease worried between her eyebrows. As usual, it just made Nesta look more beautiful, even when her expression was still pained.
Somehow Cassian knew what she needed, even though he was still reeling from the pain. So he adopted a drawl that usually had her hissing at him. “Difficult even when you’re bedridden,” he scolded. “If I bring Mas to you will you stop trying to get out of bed?”
Mercury eyes slid to his as she allowed Feyre to ease her back against the pillows. “I promise,” he assured her. “Stay here, I’ll go get her.”
To Cassian’s absolute disbelief, he found Mas in the bathroom bathing Roksana.
He considered barking at her to get back in bed and rest but even he couldn’t deny that Mas looked healthy and well. Really well, if he thought about it properly. There was a light in her eyes that Cassian had never seen; a spark of hope and determination despite the atrocities she and her fellow females had endured that morning. It was sad, Cassian thought, that Mas was not more traumatised. That she was used to such unimaginable suffering that for her, the kerits was just another mark on an already bleak life.
“You need to come,” he told Mas, as she hauled Roksana from the bath and wrapped the little girl’s wet body wrapped in a fluffy grey towel. “And I thought you were told not to do any lifting.”
Mas snorted, her beautiful, unmarred wings rustling behind her. The housekeeper must be desperate to launch into the skies, yet here she was looking after Roksana. “And I suppose someone else is going to bathe this dirty youngling?”
“Please stop,” Cassian pleaded, resting a hand on her arm as she started to towel Roksana. “You need to rest. I’ll organise someone to look after Roksana. Stay in Nesta’s room whilst you recover.”
“I am recovered,” Mas told Cassian sternly, as she pulled a sleeveless shirt of Nesta’s over Roksana’s head. It fell to Roksana’s feet like a makeshift nightdress. “As the healer’s told both you and I. You should count yourself lucky that I have not yet gone to help the other females. And this little one stays with me. The last thing she needs is to be separated right now.”
Cassian’s snort was soft, but all he said was, “Nesta is awake. She wishes to see you. Both of you.” He nodded to Roksana who had been nestled back onto Mas’s hip. The youngling was silent in the haunted sort of way that Nesta had been when she first arrived at Windhaven, clinging to Mas as if she were terrified the housekeeper would disappear.
The healer had been very clear that Mas was not to do anything strenuous, and Cassian bet that counted hauling around a youngling.
So he smiled gently at Roksana, crouching down to her level and making his voice soft as he could muster, as he asked in Illyrian, “Vultis venire ad me?”
Dark eyes studied him warily, but then she held her short arms out. The gesture was half-hearted but Cassian took her from the housekeeper anyway. Roksana was small for her age and weighed barely anything in his arms. She did not hold on tightly to him as she had done for Mas. Instead, she sat away from his body, as if she were not comfortable enough to cling on to him.
When he looked back to Mas, there was a ghost of a sad smile on her lips before she headed to his room.
Feyre had managed to prop Nesta up onto some pillows when they arrived. There was a look of intense irritation lining the exhaustion on Nesta’s face, telling Cassian her emotions were rubbed raw.
He had no idea how her meeting with Feyre had gone, but he thought it a good sign that Nesta had not banished Feyre from the room from the get-go. Despite being bedridden, Cassian had no qualms that Nesta had the strength to do it. Although her eyes did look a little glassy, as if the tincture had kicked in, so that could have something to do with it too.
When Mas walked into the room, Nesta’s face twisted and crumpled, a ghost of a memory sliding across her expression; as if she were replaying the sight of Mas’s torn body as she bled out. Cassian watched Nesta’s eyes dart to Mas’s abdomen before they assessed every inch of the housekeeper’s body, as if she did not believe that she was standing before her, alive and breathing and wholly well.
When blue-grey slid to the wings on Mas’s back, the emotion that rushed over him was akin to a tidal wave crashing onto hot sand.
“Mas.”
The word came out broken, Nesta’s hand immediately reaching out for the housekeeper — to the proud and beautiful wings that spanned from her back. Her fingers curled despite the distance; a deliberate move to show she did not intend to touch them. Cassian did not know if someone had told Nesta that it was not acceptable to touch an Illyrian’s wings or whether she was sharp enough to have figured it out on her own. He suspected the latter. Nesta was the goddamns smartest person he had ever met. If she were an Illyrian in his army, Cassian would not think twice before placing her on his war council. With the right experience, she could be invaluable.
Stopping a foot away from the bed, Mas spread out her wings. They were the colour of umber in the gentle faelight and the membrane was completely unmarred; free of the scar tissue her wings had been riddled with. Hesitantly, Mas flexed the two claws that stood at the apex of her wings, as if she were working a long unused muscle.
“Aren’t they beautiful?” the housekeeper asked conversationally, but her eyes were suddenly swimming with tears, as if the flood gates had opened and she could not control the inevitable.
Closing the distance between she and Nesta, Mas leant down, her weathered hands framing Nesta’s face. When she spoke next, her voice cracked, “Diyosa. You are our miracle. You are my miracle. You gave me back my freedom. I can never thank you enough—”
A sob broke from Nesta. Cassian watched that beautiful face crumple as the sound splintered around the room, her hands instinctively flying up to cover her mouth as if she wished to suppress it.
Mas caught Nesta’s fingers before they could stifle it. Gently, she brushed away the stream of rolling tears that ran down Nesta’s face. When the housekeeper smiled, Cassian could have sworn that light radiated around the room despite the dull grey weather outside.
The action just made Nesta cry harder and Mas hushed her as if she were admonishing a child, carefully cradling Nesta’s golden-brown head to her chest.
“Come now,” Mas soothed, running a hand over Nesta’s tangled hair — a mother comforting her offspring. “I am perfectly fine, thanks to you. There’s no need to shed any tears for me.”
Pulling away so she could look Nesta in the eye, Mas smiled toothily through her own tears. “We must find you some wings so you can come flying with me, sinta. What do you think, huh?”
A huff caught between a sob. It was a sound of disbelief and was akin to what Cassian felt; that Mas could endure such hardship but still joke and smile. That despite everything, she could find joy and happiness and broadcast such love.
Mas’s eyes sparked at the sound and she cast a quick look towards Cassian. Roksana seemed to have forgotten that she was wary of Cassian and had automatically grasped his hand as he set her down on the carpet. Her grip was tight and fearful and had not changed, even when he had gently squeezed them in reassurance.
“Shall I have General Cassian train me so I can learn to carry you with me? He’ll be pleased to finally have me in the sparring ring. Do you know how long he has tried to get me in there? A few hundred years at least.”
Another sound from Nesta. This time a broken laugh, even if it was laced with a sob. It was the most beautiful sound Cassian had ever heard. It radiated from within him, flaring with the force of a star twinkling in the darkest sky. Even through the tears, the transformation on Nesta’s face was something he’d never forget. It was as if the clouds had parted and made way for the sun.
His heart twisted as Mas grinned. She peered into Nesta’s face for a long while in the way she often did to him. The action was loving and motherly and all-seeing. Eventually, she softly patted Nesta’s cheek. “You are tired, diyosa. You must rest now. Ok?”
At the words, Nesta slumped slightly. Not from disappointment but as if she were just realising how exhausted she was.
Mas nodded to indicate that she understood — that it was all going to be ok. “Let your sister get you comfortable. General Cassian will get you that drink to boost your energy. You wasted a lot of magic on me.”
A fierceness found its way into Nesta’s voice… her expression. “I would do it again.”
Mas stared at Nesta for a moment, but then she nodded to indicate she understood. “I know you would. If I had your magic, I would do the same for you. Always. Do not doubt that.”
Cassian touched Feyre’s arm, indicating that she should follow him out of the room as Mas eased Nesta onto her back.
Only once the door was shut did he glance at Feyre. She was staring at him, her expression undone. Huge tears ran down her face and dripped off her chin, as she said in disbelief, “I’ve never seen Nesta cry like that before. She’s my sister and I have never seen it. Not once.”
Cassian wrapped an arm around Feyre, pulling her close as best he could, his other hand still clasping Roksana’s.
Feyre leant into his embrace, burying her head against his chest. He watched her wipe away her tears. Watched her sniff as she tried to contain her sobs. Ran his palm up and down her arm in a bid to comfort her.
When her breathing had regulated, she peered up at him with those eyes that were so similar to her sister’s, but not quite right. “What does diyosa mean?” she asked quietly.
Cassian’s smile was crooked. “It means goddess,” he said.
Azriel and Frawley appeared in the living room a half hour later, bleeding out of shadow until their dark outlines took on finer details and colour.
Nesta had fallen back into sleep again, her body drained and exhausted to the point that she had passed out mid-conversation, her hand clasping Mas’s so tightly her knuckles had turned white, as if she were afraid that to let go would mean the housekeeper would disappear.
Rhys had arrived back at the house with a look that told Cassian the news was not good, but he had only followed the bond to find his mate in the kitchen. When Cassian had stepped between the alcoves a few moments later to rid himself of Nesta’s empty mug, he had found Feyre wrapped tightly in Rhys’s arms, her face stained already with fresh tears.
Cassian levelled his brother with a gaze. “Took you long enough,” he remarked tersely.
“My wards are too effective, it seems,” Frawley clipped before the shadowsinger could open his mouth. The witch cast her eyes around the room, ice blue moving independently of her other brown eye. “It appears that I’m holding quite the company today.”
Frawley nodded to Rhysand who had taken up residence by the fireplace. Feyre seated herself on the left-branch of the couch. “Rhysand. It has been a while.”
“Frawley,” Rhys drawled in greeting. Frawley gave another short nod but then an eye snagged on the fire and she frowned in irritation.
With a quick flick of a hand the crackling fire turned quiet. “Why have the fires not been silenced?” she said shortly. “Battle trauma is at its worst when magic has been depleted. Tell me you have not lit it in your room?”
Two eyes snapped to Cassian and he bristled. Usually he would not rise to the accusation, but the day had been long and turbulent and he wanted nothing more than to be left alone with Nesta so she could heal in peace. “Of course not,” he replied tightly, refraining from saying more; reeling in the restraint that was hanging on by a thread.
No apology came forth but Frawley was not one to do so. “And did you give her one of the tonics I made?”
“We managed to get her to drink one before she passed out,” Cassian replied smoothly, ignoring Feyre’s frown and the understanding dawning on Rhys’s face. “She’s exhausted,” he added.
“And so are you by the looks of it,” Frawley observed, running a discerning eye over him. “Magic depleted again, but I suppose you have not been thinking about yourself to drink a tonic of your own?”
Cassian’s jaw tensed. “I thought it more important that Nesta have them.”
He expected to be scolded, but nothing came. Frawley only flicked her wrist again. In his hand appeared a mug full of liquid. The porcelain was warm rather than scolding — perfect drinking temperature. He should not have expected less from the master of her craft.
“Sit,” Frawley ordered. Unthinkingly, Cassian did as he was told. The couch cushions were soft against his body and he resisted leaning into them for fear that he might not stand up again. “Drink,” Frawley commanded. “I can’t have you passing out on me before you tell me everything that happened.”
Her eyes rested on Feyre then. “I’d ask which sister you are but I can scent your mating bond. You are Feyre.”
Not High Lady of the Night Court, but Cassian expected no less. Frawley had been alive longer than all of them… longer than Rhys’s mother and father and their parents before them. Rumour had it that Frawley had been present at the first Illyrian battle with Oya and Enalius, although Cassian had never been brave enough to press her for details. If Frawley had seen Enalius’s sword before, Cassian suspected she had been alive during Enalius’s lifetime. And whilst she respected Rhys, Frawley was not one to bother with titles…
“Yes,” Feyre confirmed. “I am.”
“This is Frawley,” Rhys explained to Feyre to save his mate from confusion. “Witch of the Eastern Steppes and a long-term friend.”
“A healing witch,” Cassian added. He had downed the drink and already he felt stronger, the whisper of his power travelling through his veins. His siphons thrummed. “Feyre can tell you what happened, she was with Nesta the entire time.”
In a swish of skirts that moved like smoke, Frawley seated herself on the right-most edge of the couch and looked expectantly at Feyre across the low-set coffee table.
It was command enough and Cassian listened to Feyre began to retell the day’s events.
When Feyre finished speaking, Frawley remained quiet, keeping her chin rested on her steepled fingers. After a few moments she sat up. Even Azriel, who was the master at playing aloof and disinterested, straightened, but Frawley looked only at Cassian.
“From what I could tell on our first meeting, Nesta’s magic has two strands: the ability to defend and the ability to heal,” Frawley began. “Someone who is gifted with healing magic uses their own energy to restore health to the sick or injured. If we run out of magic, we simply cannot heal, but I have only seen magic like Nesta’s once in my life and she is entirely her own being — ancient yet new. As a witch, I can amass more power than my natural reserve from my partnership with the elements, but there is always a price. Magic is give and take, a fine balance that must be respected. Nesta is no witch, but I believe her power works in similar ways. The problem is, the more magic you have, the more dire the consequences if you use too much at once.”
A blue eye swivelled to Rhys at the fireplace. “As,” Frawley remarked pointedly, “some of us are all too aware.”
A nod to Hybern, when Rhys had exchanged his life to knit the Cauldron back together.
Rhys’s expression hardened. At the nod to the fact that he and Nesta shared a common burden. At the fact that they both saw themselves as disposable, especially when it meant saving those they loved.
Feyre looked haunted. Cassian remembered the way she had scrabbled at Rhys’s layers as she tried to bring him back. The way she had begged on her hands and knees.
“It sounds to me,” Frawley continued, “as if Nesta’s magic did not recognise when she had healed the fatal injuries. Instead, Nesta continued to heal, moving on to old injuries that demanded far more from the healer and upset the balance between healing and magic. Either willingly or unwillingly, Nesta started to give her life and take on the death that nearly took hold of the patient.”
Frawley looked to Feyre. “You said the widow had injuries to the gut? From the sounds of it, Nesta has the ability to take on the injury of the patient should her magic start to run dry — an extra reserve of life. Nesta suffered internal bleeding to the intestine so that Mas would not only be healed of her immediate injury, but all of her previous physical trauma.”
Silence fell for a moment as they all digested Frawley’s words. Feyre looked pained, as if she were wondering what Cassian already knew to be true: that Nesta, who loved her chosen few fiercely, would willingly offer up her life to ensure that they lived.
“You could sense the two strands of magic when we last met,” Cassian said to Frawley as he connected the dots; remembering when Frawley had asked Nesta what happened when she felt something other than rage.
“Yes,” Frawley agreed with a firm nod. “I could sense the hum of healing magic deep within her, and of course, we saw her silver fire that day and the weeks before it. I put two and two together.”
What happens when you feel joy?
I wouldn’t know.
“And you,” Frawley said after a heartbeat, her ice blue eye swivelling to focus on him, “are not surprised.”
“No,” Cassian admitted begrudgingly. He felt violet and steel-grey boring into him, pressing him for an explanation. Even Azriel’s shadows stilled. “My wings were snapped in multiple places at Hybern, but by the time Fae arrived on the scene some of them had been regrown.”
Frawley’s hazel eye — the exact colour of Lorrian’s — came to rest on him. “And why,” she said softly, “is that?”
Cassian did not react to her pointed question, only stared her down. In his mind’s eye, all he could see was Nesta leaning over his body, sacrificing her life with his when she could have run.
I can’t.
Cassian was thankful when Azriel interjected. “Nesta has just woken again. Perhaps it is time for someone to explain the finer details of why she is in bed. I do not think I would like everyone knowing my business before I knew it myself.”
A calm yet direct way of highlighting Nesta’s penchant for privacy.
“I will check Nesta over to make sure the healer didn’t miss anything and get her to take a stronger tonic to replenish her energy levels. It will cut her time in bed by half,” Frawley told them as she stood. “If Nesta wishes to harness her healing skills, I will teach her what I know. To hold so much power in your hands is a terrifying thing.” Again, that blue eye rested on Rhys, and in that gaze… challenge and understanding. “I know of someone else who struggled with the enormity of it, and he turned out to be an admirable leader.”
For a moment, Frawley and Rhys stared at one another. In the air, Cassian could taste the hum of magic; of starlight eternal and the scent of damp, cold earth after rain… of cold air streaked with fire smoke.
No-one moved. No-one breathed. Everything felt taut and expectant and then, as suddenly as it all came, the atmosphere dropped.
“Caerleon is flying to meet me,” Frawley told no-one in particular as she headed to Cassian’s room. “Do let him in, otherwise he might start terrorising some males and I might not find it in myself to stop him.”
And then with a swish of her skirts, Frawley was gone.
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A one-shot where Cassian builds Nesta some bookshelves in Illyria.
Technically this is a missing scene in Embers & Light but it can easily standalone 😊
Excerpt:
Her question held slightly more vigour than before, but not as much as it usually did. In these moments when Nesta felt like she had broken yet again and was muddling herself back together, she couldn’t summon the strength to be normal.
“Well, are you going to tell me what you’re doing?”
“I’m building you new bookshelves.”
Nesta set her book down in her lap. She made her eyes narrow. “Don’t you have work to do?”
“Yes,” Cassian said simply, as if he were the most intelligent of them and he were giving her a lecture. “Building you more shelves is on today’s agenda. If I had known I’d be living with someone who spends half her life indulging in raunchy smut, I would have built a reading room.”
I’m so behind on updating this fic on here I’m just going to post the Ao3 link and be done with it. Anybody wanting to read all of it, chapter fifteen is currently up and full of Nessian goodness.
