𓆩♡𓆪 Dark Matter - Grad student AU ft neuropsych student Gwyn and insomniac Azriel. On hiatus. 1/?
Misc.
ʚ🔮ɞ in the bulrushes - the night court tells many tales about its past—except about Nesta archeron. Years after she left without a trace, Nyx sets out to find his exiled aunt, and learn why. Ongoing, 1/?.
ʚ🔮ɞ Nesta and the Get Down Gang - everyone wants something from Nesta: her body, her power, her penance. But she has many faces depending on the mirror held up to her. 7/7, complete.
ʚ🔮ɞ Thicker Than Water - Nesta gets more than she bargained for when she asks Cassian about his past sexcapades. One-shot.
ʚ🔮ɞ Killing Amren - Killing Eve-inspired Nesta x Amren relationship post-acosf. One-shot.
ʚ🔮ɞ Ash From Your Fire - Angsty Rhysta AU where Rhysand finds a different Archeron on Fire Night. One-shot.
Brother. Friend. Lover. General. Rival. Comrade. Shield.
Seven people tell their story of Cassian. But only one realizes they're all the same.
A series of ficlets for Cassian Week 2026.
Day Six: Victories & Losses for @cassianappreciationweek
RHYSAND
Read below the cut or on ao3
It's the biggest party they've had since the bitch queen was vanquished.
Rhys lets the noise wash over him—crystal clinking, laughter sparkling, the fiddles and flutes and frame drums kicking up with more vigor every song.
It's radiant. Raucous. Relief rains down from the high ceiling of the House of Wind now that Hybern is dead and Prythian is safe once again.
And still, in spite of it, Rhys can't shake the feeling that something's off
And he hates nothing more than being caught unaware.
His tooth throbs again—the same one that's been plaguing him for weeks. Rhys rubs at his jaw, trying to pretend like he's listening to whatever Amren is saying.
"Is it your damned tooth again?" she grumbles. She swats his hand away from his face, her ring leaving a tiny gouge on his finger. "You have been grinding your teeth. I told you to get it looked at. Our High Lord dying of dental failure would hardly put us in an advantageous position."
Rhys smiles with all his perfectly fine teeth before tipping back another sip of sparkling Spring wine.
"You'll have to forgive me if I've had other priorities."
She stares at her nails, bored. "We'll call it a side effect of near-death, then."
Rhys makes himself laugh. Amren laughs, too, but it sounds wrong, and the room still feels too empty even though it's full to bursting.
Maybe it's the company. He doesn't miss the flash of envy on Amren's face when he takes his leave, that his losses were so mild compared to hers.
Anyhow.
Rhys watches his mate moves through the crowd, gliding like starlight on a lake, a wide, white smile on her own lovely face. Feyre's been broken of her disdain for parties since that first Starfall, for which he's grateful.
It gives him a pain to think on it now, how much of a shell she'd been before that.
How hollow they all are.
Were.
Dread crawls down Rhys's spine, and he grips the glass tighter.
Scanning the room, he finds Mor easily. Red and whirling on yet another bewildered courtier's arm, her gold bangles glittering under the huge chandelier. Then Az, playing the knives with Jurian, whose ear he's intentionally nicked at least twice. There's Elain in hyacinth blue, hovering near the confections and trying to pretend like she's not staring at Lucien Vanserra.
They're here, fine—safe.
But Rhys still feels it. The ache. The piece of his heart Amarantha carved out and ate.
Yet… it's not even that. It's something older, more calcified.
A tendril of his power pulls his gaze toward the balcony. Red flickers off the stones..
Cassian.
That's why the room feels so quiet, why the dancing hasn't reached the fervor it usually does by now. The whole time Cass has been the missing note in the symphony and Rhys is a fool for not recognizing immediately.
And he's not one to be a fool for long.
"Too far into your cups?" Rhys asks lightly as he strolls onto the balcony.
Cassian straightens from where he's leaned on the railing, looking sheepish. Like he was hoping not to be found. He's standing with unusual steadiness for this time of night.
Odd.
"No, just getting some air. I don't have—" He breaks off. His voice is weirdly flat. "Yeah. It's a great party. I'm just not in the mood."
He's found the missing piece, yet the silence is thicker out here than it was inside. Rhys can't help his mounting worry when Cassian leans back against the balcony and hangs his head. He looks defeated, though his enemy remains invisible.
"I've always said, you're the loudest thinker in all of Prythian," Rhys chides, sliding next to his brother. Maybe he can assess better up close.
"I know. I…" Cass hesitates.
"I can just break in and find out, you know."
"Not helping the evil tyrant allegations. No, it's just…" Cassian's eyes go far away again. He hunches against the banister, wings pulled close. Like he's trying to become smaller. "When we're all here, celebrating. It makes me think of everyone who can't."
Wind rushes up the cliff's face, ruffling their hair. Rhys flattens his again immediately, but Cassian lets his curls tangle about his face, as if they don't even register. His hair should be braided for an occasion like this, but it's limp and loose about his face.
Rhys draws a sharp breath.
"Our soldiers died defending their home. Their families," he offers. But Cassian only leans forward farther to rest his forehead on his arm.
"Maybe we should be having a funeral instead of a party, then."
Rhys clenches his jaw tight. His tooth throbs. He's been putting this off, but perhaps the Mother was waiting to deliver this moment.
At least, Rhys hopes so.
"There is still the task of meeting with the families," he broaches gently. "Perhaps it would bring you some.. peace, to talk with them. I'm sure it would mean a great deal to them, as well."
He steels himself against the blaze of betrayal on Cassian's face.
It still burns him anyway, as does the rage that edges his brother's voice when he growls, "You're drunker than Mor if you think I'm leaving my mate right now."
"I'm not asking for me."
"I know. But I can't leave."
"We'll look after her. Nesta isn't going anywhere."
"You don't know that."
He's pacing now—that's bad, Rhys knows. Because it means Cassian is torn.
"What am I supposed to say to her? That I can't look her in the eye, because every time I do, I hear my soldiers being blasted by the Cauldron? That I want to scream from the agony of it, that the last thing they saw on this earth was their general abandoning them? That that I left them for her? That I'd do it again?"
Rhys wonders what he'd see if he stole into his brother's thoughts right now.
Two fighters, circling each other in the ring?
Or one staring at his own bloody knuckles?
"So do this, and then be done with it. Feyre will talk to her. She'll understand, Cass."
"Fuck understanding," Cassian shouts, temper flaring. Siphons flaring hotter. "It's about being here for her. It's about duty to my mate. To my family."
"And your duty to Illyria? To yourself?"'
Cassian drops his face into one hand, and rubs hard at his eyes. Like he's trying still to clear away the memories.
Rhys wonders if it's too far. If he's courting a broken nose instead of an accord, but something in him keeps pushing, knowing this is right. Rhys knows in some deep, mangled part of him that his brother needs this, or else the visions will haunt him forever. That he has to pay the price.
He knows it's what a leader does.
Cassian knows, too.
"Alright," he sighs after a thousand years. Defeat hangs on him like a heavy cloak. "I'll go. But promise me," he demands, drawn brows inches from Rhys's own face. "Promise me you'll take care of her."
Rhys waits for the relief to hit him, or the guilt. But instead he just feels… cold.
It's strange. He already knew Cassian would say yes. He's known it since the last horn of victory faded.
Cass grips him by the forearm hard.
"Promise me, Rhys."
"I swear on my mother," Rhys replies. He traces the letter P over his heart.
Cass's face softens almost painfully. He even manages to conjure a smiles, and flicks at the row of medals on Rhys's chest.
"Thought you'd be sparklier tonight, your lord-shit. You're losing your touch."
"Get some sleep. I'll have an itinerary drawn up in the morning. And Cass—"
"Yeah?"
"We wouldn't be here without you."
He scoffs, smirking, and leaps from the balcony without a glance backward. Rhys's wings flare outward, as if wishing to follow.
"Was that Cassian who just jumped off the fucking balcony??" Feyre asks, looking confused, when Rhys ducks inside a moment later. "Is he alright?"
No, he wants to say. No, he'll never be the same.
"He will be. Dance with me."
The drums pound, the flutes swirl, and the night blooms outward. A great black rose, whose stem drinks the blood of the ground.
"What a mess," Elain giggled, looking at the disaster she and Nuala had made of the new kitchen at the River House.
“Mhm…” Nuala examined the mess with a slightly amused expression before glancing at Elain’s hand. Nuala extended her own hand. “May I?” Elain nodded though she could certainly handle washing her own hands. That was what she thought before Nuala took her wrist and brought Elain's finger to her mouth. Elain felt heat creep up the back of her neck as the female’s tongue teased her skin. She swallowed as her fingertip brushed Nuala’s lip. “There we are.”
do it while the ground falls out from under you; do it while everything you loved goes up in smoke; do it while the dream of your future is still burning embers around you; build anew on the hot ashes of everything you worked for; keep going, keep loving, keep living, even as all you want is to turn back (there is no turning back; it is gone already); do it through grief, which feels like fear in the body
The tag I have seen most often on this post is "I needed to hear this," and I am so, so grateful to have said something that was needed. These words came out of the depths of my own grief, and I am so grateful to have made this small connection with others in the midst of it. Grief is isolating and indescribable, but none of us are alone.
That said, these tags were what I needed to hear:
we're all gonna make it
it's okay if you can't see how yet. you don't have to believe in better. for now it is enough to just keep going, and eventually the path will emerge. you are not alone. you are not lost in the woods forever. keep going. I love you.
i made a post like this before but I can't find it now. so. I'll just redo it.
What's the first "big news story" you remember from when you were a kid?
It's something I love to ask mixed-aged groups sometimes because I think it's really interesting to see the responses. I've gotten answers from the Olympics of [whatever year] to Watergate to more recent stuff from my niblings.
My first news thing I remember is the OJ Simpson trial. I vaguely remember watching the news with my grandparents before that, but that's the first story I remember, in part because my second grade teacher had us go play so she could watch the verdict 😂
Brother. Friend. Lover. General. Rival. Comrade. Shield.
Seven people tell their story of Cassian. But only one realizes they're all the same.
A series of ficlets for Cassian Week 2026.
Day Five: Home for @cassianappreciationweek
AZRIEL
Read below the cut or on ao3
(this takes place during the 50 years the IC was quarantined in Velaris by Rhys's magic while he was Under the Mountain)
It's weird to recognize your best friend by his belt buckle.
Perhaps it should worry him that the wings and giant, hulking size didn't register first. But the buckle gleams when Cassian strides through the door of the the Copper Lantern. He spears immediately toward the booth where Azriel's been slumping lower and lower for hours.
Azriel sighs. It was only a matter of time til one of them found him.
Holding up Cass's sword belt, it's just a simple wind rune. wind rune. The sigil of all Illyrian bastards, it's triplet spirals here wrought with defiance in silver and jet. The ruby eye in the center glares at him in condemnation, sickened by his weakness,
Azriel usually pays for a few companions to sit with him. They smoke, they gossip, they laugh amongst themselves while he drinks and takes slow pulls from the water pipe. It keeps the rest of the house from bothering him.
Occasionally one of them will slide a hand up his thigh. One in ten times he gives in.
The eye draws closer, it's gaze askance from the belt tilting toward Cassian's sword side, until it's staring him down from right across the table.
"What do you want, Cass?" Azriel asks, rubbing two palms down his face before looking up.
Cassian's beard is longer that the last time they saw each other. His brother snorts.
"You look like shit. Hello, Mirabelle."
Preening, the sharp-nosed fae to Azriel's right stands and kisses him on both cheeks,
"General. When are you coming to visit me again?"
Azriel feels woozy watching Cass smile down at her, twirling a lock of her silky red hair around one finger and pulling twice.
"Occupied every night this week, I'm afraid," he says before releasing her. Then he frowns down at Az, something darker flickering behind his eyes. "Get up. We're going."
Azriel thinks about arguing. The words get lost in the haze of his brain. Each scrap of his conscience wanders an endless maze—like the labyrinth of Velaris, their prison these last four decades.
"Nowhere to go," Azriel mumbles.
Cass clenches his jaw and grips the pommel of his sword for a moment, as if he's considering kidnapping as an option. His knuckles are bandaged from a recent bout in the underground fighting pits.
There's a bruise fading on one cheek.
"Humor me," he says, holding up both hands in surrender.
There's no point in arguing once he's made up his mind. But Azriel doesn't want to give him the satisfaction of agreeing. Instead he hefts himself up and plods past him without responding.
Cassian's chuckle follows him through the parlor and out the door.
Stubborn ass Cass.
The sky above Velaris sparkles with starlight, a slipper moon shining off the inky bay. Azriel should feel freer stepping out into the night air, but the cold only reminds him of the chill above the clouds, the one he hasn't felt since Rhys was captured
The one time they tried to leave, Cassian insisted on going first. He got within ten lengths before he dropped from the sky.
How limp he looked, his unseeing eyes when Mor caught him just before he hit the ground. The memory makes Azriel's legs go weak. Makes the world spin, the cobblestones rush up to meet him.
Oh fuck.
His knees crack hard on the stone.
"Easy, killer," Cass chides, chuckling. Azriel manages to mumble something, but not even he knows what as a shadow falls over him and strong hands close around his ribs.
It's inconceivable, how Cassian can heft him over one shoulder like a sack of grain. Humiliating, except for the reality that Azriel couldn't walk right now if he tried.
He lets his arms dangle. Blood trickles sluggishly toward his head.
"You can't keep doing this, Az."
The curved sword smacks against his wing with every step. Cassian wears the stupid thing everywhere—Amren's idea—as a symbol of strength and order. The citizens of Velaris love it. Their general looks out for the city, and they preserve their sanity.
"You can't numb yourself out like this," Cass goes on, and he sounds like Mor when she begs him to give up playing the knives in the back of Rita's. "We need you. At least until Rhys returns, we—"
"He isn't coming back."
Cassian pitches forward suddenly, and Azriel's stomach drops out as he sprawls onto the cobblestones.
It takes all his effort for the contents of it not to follow.
"Don't you ever fucking say that to me again," Cassian snarls. He's terrifying like this, wings flared, his face in shadow. "I cannot believe you."
"Gonna court martial me for treason?"
"No, I'm gonna rip your fucking head off and stuff it up your ass."
Cass crosses his arms over his chest like he means it. He'll fight to the last shred of himself, as he always has, because he can't help it.
Azriel wishes he didn't love that so much about him.
Out of fight, Azriel flops backward, hearing more than feeling the thud of his skull against the pavement.
"I'm not made for this, Cass. I'm not—I can't inspire the people like you and Mor. I can't get out of here to find Rhys. I can't do anything but send spy after spy under that fucking mountain only to never hear from them again.
Shame is a river through him, rushing toward the conclusion that he might as well not be here.
"Hey."
Cass's face swims above him. He's crouching next to Azriel—when did he do that? It doesn't matter. His eyes are drenched with pain. But his voice is steady when he recites,
"Nephelle carried the queen across the sea floor, the water closing in on all sides, but her friend was not heavy."
Azriel breathes in sharply, though he doesn't look away.
So many nights they've whispered the words to each other. Shouted them jokingly when they're in their cups. Inked them on their skin in secret, the three of them, with only the Illyrian wolf moon looking on.
The next line comes to him as easy as breathing, like they're carved into his bones instead of his skin.
"For she was not afraid, and her wings did not fail her, and she outraced death itself."
Azriel's startled to feel tears prickle at the corners of his eyes. Damned dreamleaf.
But he knows it's not the drugs when Cassian reaches out his hand, the phantom of an old smile playing at the corners of his mouth. The echo of the thousand times he's done this before, in the ring, on the battlefield. On the nights Azriel can't drag himself off the bedroom floor.
It's all he can manage now to swipe at his eyes. Cass reaches closer.
"We're not done yet. Get up," he says softly, though Azriel can tell it isn't a request.
They watch the sunrise on the roof of the townhouse. Trading sips of one of Rhys's last bottles, Azriel studies Cassian's profile in the growing light—the streaks of lighter brown in his beard, the scalloped scar on his left ear.
Cass catches him after a while.
"You think I'd be tired of it after all this time," he muses, staring out over the pinkening horizon. Azriel can't look away, but he can't disagree, either.
They stand there as weak winter sun spreads over Velaris, shoulder to shoulder, like twin pillars holding up the sky.
Brother. Friend. Lover. General. Rival. Comrade. Shield.
Seven people tell their story of Cassian. But only one realizes they're all the same.
A series of ficlets for Cassian Week 2026.
Day Four: Lover for @cassianappreciationweek
ERIS
Read below the cut or on ao3
They're bickering again.
Through the trees, Eris watches Nesta Archeron alights from her mates arms just before he sneezes.
"I told you to take your tonic before we got here."
"Did you want me to drop you to reach in my—"
Cassian sneezes again, so forcefully he stumbles back a few feet. His wings shoot out wide, spanning the whole courtyard, and the leaves they kick up make him sneeze again. And again.
Nesta rolls her eyes, reaching up to tug on her mate's earlobe, and the spike of envy in Eris's gut is buried under a wave of boredom.
They do this every fucking time.
Dressed all in black scale armor, the mated pair looks absurd against the fiery maples in his private courtyard at the Forest House. Like they've shown up for training instead of a trade negotiation. Like they'd start rolling around on the flagstones if no one was looking.
What a waste.
Nesta should be sitting on that swinging bench reading poetry. Cassian should be in the mud somewhere.
Instead she's unstoppering a bottle from the satchel at his side, and he's pinching his nose while downing the acid-green liquid with a grimace.
What an utter waste.
But it's fine. Eris rather enjoys playing audience to these squabbles, if he's honest. Though unfortunately, it's time for this one to end.
"Sounds like there's a galewyrm out here, I was about to send the hounds on you," he says loudly, strolling from the alcove where he's been observing them.
They both turn to him at the same moment, Cassian laughing while Nesta's expression flattens.
"Nope, just leaves. You've got a real problem with those around here."
"You're late," Nesta says tartly. "You two talk. I'm going to raid your library."
She breezes past him without another word, disappearing into his study. Chuckling still , Cassian fishes in his satchel before producing a folded document stamped with a violet seal.
"Here you go. Guaranteed safe passage through the Breakwater for all ships with Autumn Court banners."
Eris blinks, taken aback. He takes the parchment and unfolds it, half-expecting Rhysand to have sent a diatribe of expletives.
Instead he finds… exactly the terms he asked for?
"So he agreed to my terms after all?" Eris asks, incredulous.
"Yeah."
"But he stoutly refused just days ago."
An understatement. The words I'd sooner give Tamlin a seat at my table come to mind.
Cassian shrugs. "Changed his mind, I guess."
"Why the devil would he do that?"
"Maybe he liked your idea better."
Fire sparks at Eris's fingertips, and he mumbles an incantation to keep it from damaging the paper. Cauldron boil him, he's in no mood for games today. Whatever racket the Night Court is trying to run, he's not about to be snookered.
"Don't have me on," he growls. "Rhysand would hate the wind if someone else were lord of it."
Leaning a wrist on the pommel of his sword, Cassian shrugs again.
"The Breakwater's already crawling with foreign traders. One more court at Saltspire won't make a difference."
"Then what was all that dithering about Helion getting shirty?"
"Sometimes Rhys needs to hear from—well."
He's silent long enough that Eris starts to feel the thickness of it.
"Not you," Cassian finishes at last.
Eris lowers the parchment. Cassian's eyes dart left, then up—subterfuge. Concealment. But for what?
"You convinced him."
"I mean… yeah?"
The general scratches absently at the back of his neck, as though it's no more remarkable than asking someone to pass the salt.
So Eris waits for the catch.
The trick. The caveat. The great oaf is about to ask for something more than just a handful of books for his wife, and Eris has the low ground, having just gotten everything he wanted.
It doesn't come.
It irks him.
"This simpleton act is wearing thin," he snaps, more harshly than intended.
But Cassian only smiles.
"What act?"
"Come now. You scratch my back, and I scratch your vile, hairy—"
"Are you misbehaving again, Eris?" Nesta asks lightly, appearing at his shoulder. "Don't tell me you've forgotten what happened last time."
He certainly hasn't. The carpet in his study still bears silver scorch marks.
Cassian smirks and swipes his hand over his nose before reaching for her pillaged stack. Nesta doesn't move. Only arches a brow until her mate wipes his palm off on his thigh before she finally cedes her books.
"I still don't understand why you refuse to use a handkerchief," she grouses.
"The world is my handkerchief, Nes."
Their bickering disappears on the wind, and he ignores the fizzle of malcontent in his chest watching them go. Especially when Cassian's wings rush faster and they shoot above the clouds, Nesta's wild laughter raining down on him like silver coins tossed from the heavens.
The irony, that the bastard is somehow richer than he'll ever be.
Eris drinks too much wine that night. He falls into bed woozy and over-full, angry at nothing, which is as close to lonely as he ever gets.
I loved this idea of a peaceful moment between them after they accepted their mate bond, knowing that alcohol would no longer be an excess since she no longer needed to suppress her feelings 🥹
Even with dried blood across his jaw, a split lip, and exhaustion pulling at the corners of his eyes, he found the energy to smile at her as though they weren't sitting in a tent full of his wounded family.
Nesta tried not to think about anything else, anything bigger, as she finished her work and tied off the wrapping in a clean, deliberate knot.
But of course, as she finished, he didn’t let her pull away. Cassian grasped her fingers in his, the warmth flooding down to her toes. War was cold. Even when it was hot out, there was something cold inside of battle. It was the first time Nesta hadn’t felt like shivering in days.
His eyes caught her. Caught, because she wasn’t sure she offered the too-intimate gaze freely. She swallowed, preparing for a stupid joke or ridiculous innuendo.
But Cassian only said, low, serious – “Thank you.”
And it was like Nesta was looking at him for the first time. She stared too long. Longer than she’d ever allowed herself before. Checking, she realized, to make sure he really was there. Really was (mostly) unharmed and solid in front of her. Real. Her throat was stuck, dry, but she did not pull her hand away. And he did not move his gaze once. Eyes riveted to her face with such heat she thought she might never be cold again. Trying to make her throat untick and her lips part, Nesta prepared to say–
Cold air swept in with the rain outside as the tent flap pulled open.
“You’re hurt.”
And Nesta disappeared with the same words she had spoken only minutes earlier. She could feel it, the way she became a ghost to him. Hand snatched back like he was holding enemy steel.
Prythian University @wishcamper - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
