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Elain gasped looking at the card on the table. Azriel’s face remained unreadable, the way people always look in books and paintings but not in real life. Not that life felt very real lately, but Nesta had no intention of going there. Not now. Instead, what she was going to do, was to look up from her card carefully placed on the table, in front of her, and smirk ever so slowly at Cassian.
“I curse you” she says, finally, and she could’ve sworn something like amusement danced in Azriel’s masked expression. Cassian frowned. “Kill him” Nesta ordered Azriel, who had sat at her left. Elain giggled at her right, covering her mouth with her cards spread on her hands. Nesta’s heart missed a beat at the noise, and even if she wouldn’t deign to look at the corner where he pretended to be reading, she imagined Lucien’s heart did as well. Elain’s laughter was once a sound like spring itself. A warm promise of flowers and berries, everything soft and lovely. It was now the rumour of a long winter vanishing, of snow melting and trees getting ready to welcome green leaves again.
“Wait a minute!” protested Cassian. Nesta raised an eyebrow. Azriel simply looked between them, his card ready in his hand. He waited.
“Make it painful” Nesta told Azriel, just before Cassian blurted
“How come you always get the curses!”
“Make him scream” she added, rolling her eyes. Azriel coughed a laugh and Elain looked brighten as morning sunlight for it.
“She doesn’t mean that,” Elain told Cassian. He only smiled, lazy and slowly, and Nesta felt something inside of her body opening a sleepy eye and looking towards him, to the unspoken promises in that smile.
“She wishes she could make me scream” he winked at Elain, whose eyes narrowed.
“What do you mea—?” Elain started saying, but was cut off by Cassian’s yelp. Azriel was laughing properly now, and Lucien had to cough to conceal his own laugh. Elain looked at them all in confusion, avoiding only Lucien, as if that was another sort of game they were playing, a careful, never ending hiding and seek match, even if they couldn’t tell who was hiding and who was seeking, or if the roles were estable.
“You kick me again, Nesta Archeron, and I—” started saying Cassian, his hazel eyes dark and stormy. Nesta held her chin high, bracing herself to dismiss a threat that she had no doubt would ignite either terror or something worse in her stomach, something she would not admit to herself.
“Just die”, said Azriel, placing his card in front of Cassian before he could finish his threat. Elain clamped her lips together.
They had been playing for a couple of hours now, to indulge Elain in the only game she knew how to play, Curses and kingdoms.
“This game is terrible” complained Cassian. Nesta lifted an eyebrow and barely had time to smirk, before noting how Elain shrunk slightly in her chair.
“He’s a terrible loser” Azriel intervened before Nesta could suggest Cassian what he could do if he didn’t like the game.
“You can talk!” growled Cassian. “I mean. It’s not bad. Or at least not as bad as Mor’s idea of a game...But, how did you learn this game, anyway?”
“Amren taught me” Elain replied, and then smiled gently at the astonished faces surrounding hers. She shrugs slightly. “She was very kind”.
“I bet she was” Cassian ironized. Nesta noted the way he was always talking to her sister. He wouldn’t talk her down the way Rhysand did, nor would be condescending like Feyre. He was not soft and quiet the way Azriel was. Cassian treated Elain the way he treated everyone else, and yet wouldn’t go at her with the edges Nesta found around her when they were near, he wouldn’t snap at Elain with the quick, easy remarks he would use to address the blond fae, nor would he provoke her like he did with Rhysand and Azriel, but there, a small taunt, an open, careful invitation to get into a fighting stance with him, to get rid of some other feelings in the process and relax. Nesta wasn’t sure that was what Elain needed. It worked fine with Feyre and sometimes it worked with her too. Nesta enjoyed the challenge and she would never lose a fight that involved language. But Elain was not like them, she has never been.
Elain ignored him and placed her cards on the table, all of them.
“I guess this makes me the queen” she smiled. Azriel bowed slightly towards her and Elain blushed. Nesta rolled her eyes.
“Enough of this” Nesta decided, getting up.
“Would you stay for tea?” Elain offered. Nesta couldn’t tell if her sister wanted her to stay or if she deemed it rude to let her go without insisting first. She also considered leaving her sister alone in the same room as her mate. She decided she trusted the quiet Illyrian to stay around, and so she said
“No”, using that tone that would save Elain from protesting or insisting, which she probably didn’t want to do, but would do anyway, if only to be polite. They worked that way, Elain and her. And her sister would hear her answer for what it was, even if no one else did —especially when no one else did.
Nesta reached for her coat. She had no scarf. She hated the first minutes outside after being cozy and warm, but she wouldn’t let them see it. If she grabbed everything she felt and held it tightly, then it would be okay.
She opened the door and straightened her back, getting ready to embrace the first colds of the season. Except Cassian grabbed her elbow before she could go. She wondered if he was brave enough to ask her to stay.
Instead he said, “Next time you decide you want to make me scream, I have a suggestion or two”
She wasn’t sure if she sneered at him or if she simply imagined it. It was hard to tell.
“And I know I can make you scream too. I also have an idea or two on that matter”.
It was not a threat, and yet her body demanded to be shielded. There was something melting hot in his eyes and she could feel it too, running down her throat, her stomach, her. She shook her elbow free and shrugged. The weather outside didn’t feel so cold now.
She realized too late she hadn’t refused.