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“Remember when you promised we’d always be together? Because I remember when I thought you meant it.” Cassian’s voice is cold and hard as he bites those words out, seconds before she’s stepped through the door from outside. His words sting far more than the sudden flare of heat contrasted with the frozen chill outside their house.
On the word ‘promise’ the bond between them burns, almost angrily, inside her chest, reminding her of that promise. She opens her mouth to tell him that she has no idea what he’s talking about and then...The letter he’d been holding when she walked in drops to the table and she understands. She understands the words, the venom in them. She understands the way that he’s looking at her, those hazel eyes of his usually so soft and tender now hard and cold and dark, chips of stone in his face.
The instinct she expects to come, the rising fury she anticipates to come to her aid, to demand to know what he was doing reading her personal letters in the first place, berate him on that, start an argument that has them screaming two different accusations at one another, never listening, never responding to the other- doesn’t come. It doesn’t even threaten. It’s...Gone.
That anger she had clung to like a crutch all those years in the cottage after her mother’s death is no more. The rage that had dragged her through this transformation a year ago and the war that followed is just...gone. Like a candle snuffed out by a thoughtless breath. It had been the only thing to still give her light, the only thing to keep her going and now...
The war, the second war, had ended four months ago. She and Cassian had accepted the mating bond during it. It had been then she had made her promise, the eve of the first battle they had both taken part in, that they would always be together. No matter what this war through at them, no matter what they had to endure they would endure it together, and never be parted. She hadn’t even made it a year without ruining this for them.
The anger still won’t come, the indignation, the desire to spit in his face and tell him what an idiot he is to ever think that but...But it won’t come. Without it she feels lost. She had hated it in the cottage, this one wild part of her that no matter how she had tried she had never been able to tame. Her will had kept her alive all those years, pulled her through her grief at losing her mother, at losing everything, had helped her resist High Lord’s magic and King’s decrees and the Making that had broken her instead had not been enough to control that fire. She had wanted it leashed, had wanted to be able to command it and have it obey her and it had refused. At every turn it had refused.
She had never thought that she might some day miss it. She had never truly considered what might happen if she’d been able to control it, smother it, silence it. She knows now. The silence that echoes through the hollows of her desolate self tells her well enough what that anger was keeping her from becoming. An empty shell, a ghost trapped in this new body, still breathing, still living but...Dead to all other purposes.
She has never felt so lost, so utterly adrift and alone. There have been times she should have felt like this, times she should have and none of them look like this, settled in a home she owns with her mate, with the man she loves more than any other; more than she’d ever thought possible. She should be happy here, they have peace, they have a beautiful home, they have each other. She should be happy and yet....
Cassian waits, staring at her, with an odd expression on his face she can’t quite read. Not desperation or hope or grief just...Sadness. Shifting into resignation. He shakes his head, finally dropping her gaze, and somehow that hurts more than the cutting words and the burning stare, that absence of anything, and she has an inkling of how he feels.
His wings flare slightly behind him in a movement that she’s learned to interpret. She had been surprised at how much of the Illyrian’s body language was connected to their wings, though she supposed she shouldn’t have been, it had been something she’d forced herself to learn to help her read him and understand him. What he feels now...is trapped. He wants to get out, to fly, away from this, away from her. He can’t. Not yet. His wings aren’t strong enough for that but...
There’s nothing to stop him as he strides past her, yanks open the door, and vanishes out into the swirling snow beyond. Nothing but her. And she says nothing, the words sticking in her tight throat. When she opens the bond to reach him, to try and communicate with him through that no matter how much it will hurt to feel his anger and anguish, she finds that she can’t reach him. He’s shut her out from his side and no amount of screaming and hammering on it will convince him to yield to her.
Nesta slides down the wall at her back, crumpling into a small heap on the floor, unable to summon even the energy to weep.
It takes a long time, several hours, for her to prise herself from the floor. Cassian doesn’t return in all that time and she feels nothing at all from the bond. There’s barely enough of a thread still connecting them for her to know that he’s still breathing. But she moves to the table, lifts up the letter in trembling fingers and reads it.
It doesn’t say anything she hadn’t expected but it still crushes her. There’s truly no hope for her now...No hope at all. He had been her last possible solution when the vast libraries she had been able to access in Night and Spring and Autumn had all failed her. Helion spell-cleaver, they named the High Lord, and she had thought that, surely, if anyone could have helped her...It would have been him. His reply is perfectly polite, beautifully written in a flowing, practiced hand, careful courtesy in every sentence. But it said no. He had said no. She has to live with this, not just for the rest of a mortal lifetime, but for the rest of time itself.
That, at last, drags a little emotion from her, a single, small broken sob before she sets the letter alight and watches it curl into ashes before her.
Nesta slopes into the living room, settles herself in the vast, overstuffed armchair that is Cassian’s favourite lounging spot. It doesn’t face the door or the window beside it that reveals the outside word, but instead the huge fire on the adjacent wall. Usually kept huge and roaring, spreading light and heat through the room it’s now burned down to faint, glowing embers. She doesn’t stir herself to stoke it, or use her magic to coax it back to life. It suits her just fine as it is now.
The soft, worn leather of the chair she’s huddled in smells like him, like her mate. Being sat in it, having it cradling her smaller body, almost makes her feel as though he’s here, holding her, helping her through this. She doesn’t know if she wants that or not, doesn’t know if it would help. It would. Of course it would. But...Judging by his reaction to that letter, this armchair is probably the best she’s going to get. She’ll be lucky if he ever even looks at her again, much less holds her.
She hadn’t properly considered what she would do if Helion had actually offered her a solution to everything that’s been destroying her since peace claimed Prythian at long, long last. She hadn’t truly thought about the consequences of undoing what had been done, of what it would mean for her and Cassian...Cassian. She loves him. Even in this empty, desolate state where she struggles to feel anything at all she still feels like, still knows that. She loves that man with her whole ragged, feeble heart. Not much to give someone like him but...It’s his anyway. It will always be his. Even if he never wants it again.
She isn’t sure if that love would have been enough...She supposes it doesn’t really matter now. She’s stuck this way. In this body that she still hasn’t adjusted to, still hasn’t gotten used to what it does to her. During the war it had been easy to ignore. She hadn’t so much purpose, so much anger to fuel her and fire her and keep her going, ignoring her discomfort and the terror that was swelling in her at this horrifying change to everything she had ever known.
She had never adapted well and she hadn’t to this either. She had simply ignored the changes, had seen this new body as a tool that she could use to get what she wanted, to protect those that she loved. It was a thing that she had used but now...Now it was just hers. Her body. Her life. Her burden. She can’t ignore it any longer. She can’t pretend any longer. There’s nothing at all to drown out the agony that comes with being trapped like this.
Everything about it feels wrong. Every step feels like she’s treading on broken glass, sending pain shooting through her legs, screaming that this isn’t right. Her stride is doing long, her steps too soft, too delicate, too graceful, it isn’t her. Nothing about this is her. Her body hadn’t been altered when she’d been thrust into that Cauldron. Instead her soul had been torn out of the only home she’d still had left and stuffed into this...Thing. Everyone looks at her and smiles and says her name as though they can’t tell, as though they don’t notice how wrong it is, as though they still see her when she doesn’t think she’s ever seen anything less like her in her life.
And the way it makes her feel. Nesta had already been burdened by the world, by experiencing everything so intensely sometimes she thought it might destroy her. But now, with this new body, these new heightened senses, every second makes her feel the need to tear herself out of her skin just to get away from it all because it’s too much, it’s all too much.
Every soft sound outside is like the world shrieking in her ear until they might burst. Every sight is distorted, the lines too sharp, too find, the colours too bright, too vibrant, blinding her. Every light touch seems to rattle through her very bones, in constant danger of grazing her soul, making her feel so vulnerable. Too vulnerable. The clothes on her body, so fine and well made, feel like coarse salt being rubbed into already raw skin. She’s drowning in experiences that she can’t process, can’t comprehend, can’t deal with. It’s been driving her slowly insane for months, destroying her piece by piece.
Finally she had snapped. She had written to Helion in the desperation, in the hopes that the ancient, scholarly High Lord might know of something to help her, to change her back, to make her human again, to take this horrible ‘gift’ away from her. He had told her no. She had known he would, had known it was futile and yet...
Elain and Feyre had both adjusted. It had taken them time, had hurt them, had scared them but...They’re happy now. They belong here now, with their mates, they found their place in this new world, found themselves...She had hoped she might find that too. She had Cassian, they had peace, time, as much time as she could wish for. It would come, it would come, she would find peace within herself the way this war torn land had, she would, she could, she had to. It hadn’t.
Now she has no choice. No way out. She’s trapped like this. Helion had told her simply that nothing but death could undo what she had become. She has no doubt she’ll still be fae then, too, that she will never escape this fate.
Not only has she lost any chance of being normal again, it seems this ridiculous request has lost her Cassian too. As the grief overwhelms her she notes, dimly, in the back of her mind, that she still can’t feel him through the bond. This is what you wanted she reminds herself dully. Humans don’t have mating bonds, not like this, they don’t have the magic in their bloods to feel them as deeply as fae do. The bond would likely feel like this always...
She isn’t sure how she feels about that. When it had been explained to her she had been sure she would despise this bond and everything about it. Having another person who could access her that way, who could feel everything that she felt, know what she was thinking. It had disgusted her. She had wanted nothing more than to reject it then and there. She could be with Cassian, could even let herself love him but...She could not give him that.
Strange, she thinks now. She had been so vehemently against this connection for so long but now...Now that she’s sealed it, now that it’s hers, the intimacy it brings her, the insight she has into Cassian as well, soothes her. It’s something she’s never felt with another person, this...Ease. This deep understanding that she has of him, of them, is unlike anything she’s ever had before. Elain had been the one who had always known how to please people, how to make them smile and laugh and wish to help her. Nesta had never had that, never known how to have that, even when she’d tried...Never...Except with him.
Could she really have lost that? Would she really have given that up, given this up, to be human again? It would have stopped the world scrabbling at her new body like a dog scratching desperately at a door to be let in to shield it from the howling storm outside but...But it would have cost her Cassian. Cost her the bond, their future. As a mortal she would only have a few decades left with him and then she would die, would leave him alone here...
She understands now why he had been so upset earlier when reading her letter, the callous way she had asked for this all to be stripped away, to lose everything being fae had brought her...Including him.
It wouldn’t be enough. The knowledge comes to her in a single, striking moment. That a few decades would him as human; the price she would have to pay for her return to normality, to the past, to her old life....Would be too high. A few decades to love and be with Cassian is not enough. A few centuries would not be enough. She needs what this immortality offers her. She needs an eternity with him and that...That might be enough.
And it might also be something that she’s thrown away, something that she’s lost. She had hurt him so deeply with that letter, that request, what looked like the desperate desire to be rid of him and this bond. She had hurt him. She had hurt her mate. She had never meant to, had never wanted that, even her caged human heart would love him and he should know that but...But what else could he think after what she’d done? She’d ruined them. She’d destroyed them, the only thing that made facing her immortality seem, not only possible, but pleasurable.
Closing her eyes she lets herself tremble, lets herself shake, lets herself break down. For all that she’s gained. For all that she’s lost. She shatters.
****
She must fall asleep in his chair without meaning to. The next thing she knows it’s pitch black in the room. The fire has burned itself out at last. The house is silent. Haunted. She wonders what can have woken her, until she sees the figure moving quietly towards the chair and helps loudly. Instinct flares and her magic sends flames bursting into the grate again, the candles around the room flaring to life, the sudden change from pure darkness to the bright flare of her magic blinds her.
When she manages to open her eyes again she finds Cassian opposite her, having slid into a defensive stance at her cry, instinctively placing himself in front of her to shield her from danger. He covers the move quickly, tucking his wings in tight again, turning his back on her as he continues spreading blankets on the couch opposite her.
Nesta pushes herself into a sitting position, rubbing the back of her neck where it aches from the position she fell asleep in. She opens her mouth to ask him what he’s doing but he speaks before she can. “I thought you were in bed,” he says, voice stiff but toneless.
She shakes her head, forgetting that he’s not looking at her. Swallowing with difficulty, her raw throat protesting, she rasps out a quiet, “No.” He glances over his shoulder at her at the sound of her voice, hoarse and pained from her crying, but looks away again as soon as she makes eye contact with him. “What are you doing?” she asks tremulously, though she already knows.
“You look like hell,” is his only reply, his back still to her, “You should go to bed, get some sleep.” Without me he doesn’t need to say for her to feel the sting of it as though he’s slapped her.
“Cassian-“ she croaks, half-rising from his armchair, the blanket he keeps over the back of it to wrap around them when they cuddle there falling away from her as she does.
He stops laying his blankets out, straightening, taking a deep breath. His hands curl into fists at his side and she can see him trembling as she approaches. He doesn’t look at her, doesn’t seem able to, when he whispers, voice breaking and letting the storm of emotion she knows is tearing at him beneath the surface show through, “Why?” He demands, shaking worse than ever as he says it, “Why?”
He turns to face her and for a moment she wishes that he hadn’t, wishes he’d kept his back to her. No matter how much that had hurt, this, the look on his face, in his eyes, the agony that comes from him thinking that she might wish to abandon him. “Is it really so terrible?” he whispers quietly, “This life, this bond...Are you really so desperate to escape it all?” To escape me she hears in the silence that stretches between them, filled with the words that, even now, raw and ravaged and hopeless as he is, he still can’t bring himself to say.
“No,” she replies quietly, simply, not sure what else to say, not sure how to begin explaining what’s taken place inside her in his absence.
“No?” he repeats, the word lined with temper as he frowns, “It’s not unbearable? You just wrote to Helion for the fun of it, did you? Begging him to change you back, make you mortal again, so you won’t have to endure life with us anymore?”
“I didn’t beg,” she snaps, a little of that anger coming to her but it’s...Different now. It’s not that harsh, spiteful, raging fury that had possessed her before this...This comes from a different place, deeper, stronger, hers. “You have no idea what it feels like, what it’s done to me, being trapped in this body, trapped in this world where everything is different, nothing is mine, nothing feels right-“ He opens his mouth and she can feel his pain blossoming in the space between them where that bond connects them, no matter how he tries to stop it.
She forces herself to finish what she had started before he shatters, “Except you.”
He shuts his mouth, his eyes wide as he stares down at her. She steps closer, reaches up and cups his face softly in her hand, letting her fingers brush over his cheek, scraping the scruff on his jaw. The harshness of the sensation is somehow comforting. It doesn’t make her want to jerk away, repelled by it, as so many others do. It grounds her. It makes him feel real and for the first time she appreciates what these senses might give her. The ability to know her mate so fully, so completely, to know every inch of him more fully and completely than anyone ever could; to know his world that way too. It could be a gift. A gift that she had come so close to throwing away because it was different, because it scared her, because the past, the comfortable, familiar past was so much safer and that made it feel kinder. This new world might have smothered her, drowned her over and over but the old one...The old one had not been good to her either, not with the pain it had caused her, the anger that had become so known, to accepted, that she had felt lost when at peace.
“I- Everything about this- Ever since-“ she closes her eyes, shaking her head and grimacing. How does she explain this to him? How can she tell him that the world and her own body are conspiring to drive her insane? Finally she opens her eyes, looks up at him and whispers softly, “Please...Let me show you.”
He bows his head, giving her his consent, and she opens the bond between them, letting it flare wide so wide that it swallows them both. Through it she pushes her experiences of the world, the way it feels to her, what it does to her. When she feels him flinch back, aghast, she quickly dulls them, not wanting to hurt him. He blinks down at her, a mix of shock and horror evident across his handsome features.
“Nesta...” he whispers softly, shaking his head, “I had no idea, I...” he closes his eyes, pain creasing his face as he buries his face in a hand. “It’s...It’s truly that bad?” She nods. She had given him her truth, she doesn’t see any point in trying to gentle it now. “Nesta,” he says again, as though that word, her name, is the only one he has, the only thing he’s capable of anchoring himself to at the moment. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks hoarsely.
“I...I didn’t know how,” she whispers, voice cracking. She should have told him, she should have just explained all of his to him months ago; as soon as the war ended and her nightmare had begun in full. “It was so strange, so overwhelming, and no-one else seemed to feel it at all, no-one else seemed to understand. They all just dealt so easily with things that brought me to my knees and I...” She doesn’t have to put it into words. She knows that he can feel her shame; as she can feel his pain at not noticing it, not understanding. “I hoped it would go away, I hoped I would get used to it, that it would stop, that I would learn to live with it. But it only got worse. Worse and worse and worse and it...It scared me, Cassian, I was scared, and I didn’t know how, I didn’t know, I didn’t-“
“Oh Nes,” he whispers, surging forwards and wrapping her in his arms, pulling her in close, as though he’ll hold her here for the rest of their days, safe within his embrace, refusing to let the world touch her or torment her ever again. He cradles the back of her head to his chest, his fingers stroking tenderly through her hair. “I’m sorry,” he breathes, his voice trembling, “I’m so sorry.”
She looks up at him, her own face streaked with tears, a mirror of his own; to ask him what he means but he cuts her off, leaning down and pressing a tender kiss to her forehead. “I understand now,” he whispers, smoothing her hair back from her face with both hands, “Of course- If this is what you want, to be human again, to make this stop, I’ll help you. Whatever you need, Nes, whatever-“
“No,” she interrupts him sharply, shaking her head, unable to let him go on thinking that, even for a second. “No,” she repeats, voice quieter and more controlled this time, “I don’t want that.”
“But-“ Cassian begins, frowning deeply as he looks down at her, clearly confused.
“I want you,” she breathes to him, gently caressing his cheek with her thumb. “My mate. I want you. And not as a human I-“ she swallows, struggling to put what she’s come to terms with in the past hours into words for him. “I want this bond,” she murmurs, “I want to be able to feel every bit of it, every bit of you. And...” she presses in close to him, nuzzling against his chest, “I don’t think a handful of decades would be enough time with you, Cassian,” she breathes, “Not nearly enough.”
He tilts his fingers under her chin, has her lift her head, look him in the eyes as he whispers, with such devotion it nearly undoes her all over again, “I love you, Nesta Archeron.” She nods to him and he softly strokes her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “We’ll find a way to help you deal with this,” he murmurs quietly, “I promise, Nes.”
She finds a smile for him and as he dips down, tilting her chin a little higher, his lips brushing softly against hers. He kisses her, and as he does that fire inside her that had dulled to embers when the anger fled her roars to life in her bones once more.