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She would not go. She didn't think about it that way. What she thought looked like this: very sharp and long and burning the way ice can burn. It was a sword of a thought, and it was nasty and inappropriate for children.
And then, Like hell I'm going.
They could come and try to make her. The most powerful Highlord in history could come and try himself. They felt so dangerous, she could see it in their cocky smiles, in the way they filled a room with their egos and selfishness. And they were dangerous, she had seen that too. But she was danger.
Nesta hasn't felt anything in such a long time that this resolution felt both foreign and deeply buried in her soul, a part of her like no other. It was a terrible beast opening an eye and considering not going back to sleep.
Care to write, Cassian had said that night during the Solstice festivities. But she wouldn't. She had stayed enough, waiting, waiting, waiting. Until she couldn't remember what she was waiting for. It had been the end of winter, first. Then it had been Elain or Cassian. Even Feyre. At some point she had waited for herself. No one had come, and now she was going, but not to the Illyrian Mountains, not when war camps and faceless Illyrian soldiers filled her nightmares every night, not when her own sister was getting rid of her as if she was an old piece of furniture.
And so she packed. She filled her pockets with the money she had left and wore the only present she was given on her birthday. Whatever filthy clothes she had, fit perfectly well in a small handbag she sometimes used for going out and that wouldn’t attract any attention.
How long would it take for Feyre to even notice she was gone? Would she even notice?
One by one she unlocked the locks on the door. Last time, she told herself, and she found the thought hard to process. Elain had had a doll, once upon a time. She had cried when their nana took it away. She looks after me when I'm asleep, Elain had cried covering her face, because good girls were not supposed to cry. Nesta thought she could understand now, the crushing loss of small mercies.
"Going anywhere, sweetheart?"
Nesta closed her eyes at the sight of him and pressed her mouth in a thin line. When she opened her eyes again, she made sure she kept her head high. Cassian smirked, leaning on a dirty wall covered in humidity spots.
"Where I go or stop going is none of your concern"
"Oh, but it is" he said with a dangerous softness, the way people move before battles begin, testing the field, measuring their opponents. She stared him down.
"Is it?" She mused, cocking her head slightly, "In that case, I'm going down for a drink". Or five.
"Good. Nothing like a liquid lunch" he said, uncrossing his arms.
"No, you won't. Because after that I will fuck someone senseless and if you were to come, which you are not, you would scare them all away", she said, and felt her words were like grabbing a bow and an arrow in front of an animal who’s being offered food and is not yet sure if it’s all a trap.
"They don't deserve you" he said, struggling to keep the light tone of their conversation and not let it get tinged with whatever feeling that was making him clench his fists. She smirked.
Deserve. How much she hated that word and how it filled her with dread when she thought about what she deserved and what miserable creature was that one that deserved her .
"At least they're no bastards" she replied with a cold ease, her cheap shot reaching the target, making it bleed. Hurting. She shrugged. "You better come and wake me up tomorrow if you want me to go. You can also pack my belongings, I can't be bothered".
She left him there, before he decided the benefits of killing her outnumbered the consequences. Or before he gave her one of those grieving looks of his, the ones that make her feel small and shattered and ugly. And seen, naked.
She went to the bar, in case he was still there, his shadow a constant companion these days. She bought cheese and bread and she used the back door to go through the maze of Velaris darkest, filthiest alleys. Their beautiful city of happiness had also this corner of decadence, of rotting misery, and something about it spoke to Nesta. Feyre and her friends ignored this other side of the city as much as they ignored her, because Nesta's pain was not lovely and quiet as Elain's or an epic grieving like Feyre's. Hers was the shredding rage of endless despair, the full force of nasty feelings, everything but beautiful.
Beauty was everything Fae seemed to care about. They said it was what humans were obsessed about, but she had known to love people you wouldn't look at twice, whose beauty was placed somewhere else and would cover them up slowly, if you cared enough to look. She had seen humans loving things other than beauty. What could beauty do against intelligence or kindness? What was eternity worth? Where was now the lullaby of the clock ticking, the secret wish of wrinkled hands holding wrinkled hands in the sunset of all things?
Here everyone was beautiful. And it seemed meaningless. Behind it there was nothing.
She was not beautiful. Not the way they wanted her to be. Pleasant to be around, nice to look at. Making them all feel better about themselves. Well, there was nothing to feel better about. And so she walked, her knees complaining with the cobblestones and her legs barking with every steep street, but without stopping.
Endless hours she walked, leaving the city behind, and then the small towns of the countryside, and when night came she was still unafraid, for she couldn’t feel anything anymore, only the soft rumor of her rage, of her resolution.
She paid to sleep in a room that made her home look like a palace. And she did not sleep, for there was no lock on the door to protect her from outsiders or to protect the outsiders from her. She braced her knees, sat on the wooden floor no one has ever bothered to mop, and clenched her fists a little bit tighter every time the fireplace from the floor below made the wood crunch like bones.
She buried her face in her arms and closed her eyes, trying to shut it all out. Inside the lid of her eyes, darkness surrounded her. Darkness like the Night Court has never seen before, the one that would make warriors wet their beds like children. The darkness of the beginning and the end, the unseen side of all things. The rotten part of her heart, the essence of the cauldron itself. Outside, the remaining horrors of war, a painful scream, unseeing eyes, snap, crunch, metal, blood. Inside, this darkness. Her power growling and thrashing against her, a promise of horrible things to come. And wings. Soft — soothing, opening and closing slowly, a small mercy as that one of her locks, of Elain’s long lost doll.
The presence of wings in the darkness fade. She wanted to scream. Stay! Stay, stay, stay. But it was useless. The wings were gone and gone was the soothing calmness they brought. Her power snapped at her, but she held it tight. It felt like eternity was eating her alive.
The door of her room opening had her straightening her body, until then locked in that position that sheltered her from the outside and sheltered the outside from her.
“There you are” Cassian said, in a tone that was hard to read. It was a chaos of fury and relief. Yet, it was not unkind. He looked devastating, every inch the illyrian warrior of the war. His stance and the unconcealed fury of his face would have made more than one experienced soldier run. She knew no fear anymore. He looked at her anxiously, his sight checking every spot of her body looking for injuries and wrong signs. He sighed, as if in relief, and one hand went right to his messy hair, falling everywhere, as if he had flown a very long way. She forced herself to stare at him, to not let him see the miserable state in which he had found her.
“Hello, sweetheart”, he said at last. She refused to acknowledge what his voice, what his words did to her. Nesta didn’t bother to reply nor to move from the floor. “Let’s go”.
“Get out” she said, and it came out as a snarl. He took one step closer. “GET OUT!” she growled, getting quickly on her feet. As soon as he smirked, she realized her posture was a mirror of his as she had seen him every so often during the past year, ready to face whatever enemy might come forwards looking for him. Her body remembered: she would not go.
“Are you going to fight with me now?” he mocked her. For a moment she felt as if she might. Then she let her shoulders sink slightly.
“Just go”, she said, and she hated the way it sounded, as if she might have said please, instead. Cassian opened his mouth and then closed it again.
“Let’s go” he said again, as if he didn't know how to get to her without the illusion of a fight. His wings twitched behind his back, still tugged in.
Cassian was still so angry. He knew anger was not the best of him. With him, anger was dangerous, and he still couldn’t place who he was angrier with, if it was her, for leaving, for the blatant lies, for the panic of not knowing if she would be alright, or if it was himself, for having letting her go, for all the time he have been doing everything wrong, for failing her over and over again.
But she was fine. She was fine. She was fine. Not dead on the road, not killed by the creatures of the night, not injured by strangers, not bleeding in the mud with a shredded dress. She was fine. And she was everything but fine. She hasn’t been fine in such a long time that Cassian could barely remember what she was like before. And yet she stood there, still on her feet, still fighting a fight she was about to lose, beaten up and bleeding and scared. He was so angry and yet all he wanted to do was to fall on his knees and beg her to go back home. He knew, as soon as he thought about it, that home would be the wrong word for her. Nesta was so full of the wrong things to say, he felt constantly about to fall. And falling was not a thing he was used to.
“Why” she said, and neither of them could tell if it was a question.
“Because”, he said, restraining his frustration “what else are you going to do? Where are you going to sleep when you run out of money? Did you even — Tell me that you at least brought a dagger” he felt the anger filling him up once more and he had to focus on her well-being to keep the ghost of the early panic from hunting him down. She held her head high, and the moment she pressed her lips tighter he knew she had not brought any sort of weapon.
“Nesta!” he growled, fists clenching. She didn’t run away from his general voice. She did not move a step back, but held her ground.
“What would have been the point? I don’t know how to use it”
“I told you a million times —”
“I don’t want to learn! I don’t want to use weapons and I want you OUT”
“Well, too bad, sweetheart, because the only way of me getting out of here is with you”.
“Why”
“I already told you. And let me tell you my patience here is running…”
“Whatever I do or happens to me is none of your business”
“Like hell it’s not”, he growled, and the way he said it surprised them both. She braced herself and made the effort of rolling her eyes at him, letting the silence settle uncomfortably between them.
“I don’t belong there” she said.
“Of course you do”
“Who sent you to look after me?”
“No one did”
“Because no one noticed” she gave him a little nasty smile full of hatred, the only one she could offer these days, and the same one that drove him crazy. He stared at her, but he didn’t deny it.
“I offer you a deal”
“No”
“Hear me out. I — “ he sighed. “You come with me now and we go to the Mountains together. It might help us — both of us” she snorted, but he didn’t let her interrupt him before adding “if you come and decide that you don’t like it there, then I’ll take you wherever you want to go and help you settle there if you want to, or leave you alone and never look back. Up to you. But not like this, not running away, not being reckless and putting yourself at risk”.
She swallowed. A predator moved inside her eyes and Cassian could almost see the information being processed. She had a head for strategy, this wicked, terrible creature. If only she used it for such matters.
“What if Feyre or your Highlord refuse my right of going?”
He ignored her tone. He had never met anybody who could make pronouns sound like the worst insults, the way she did.
“They won’t”
“What if they do?”
“Then, I guess I’ll have to kick both their asses”, he smiled slightly, and she stared at him. He stared back at her. There were no jokes in that look of his, only promises.
She nodded slowly.
“Whenever I say I want out —”
“No questions asked, not talking you out of it” he promised, serious as she has never seen him.
She nodded again, and they both waited in silence for her to win whatever inner battle that kept her words from crossing her mouth.
“Deal” she said, the words strangled and full of teeth. She breathed in and he thought he could feel it too, the small tattoo forming around her left arm like a bracelet above her elbow, hidden by her dress.
“Shall we?” he grinned, offering her a hand that she ignored when she walked out of the room, her muscles protesting after a long day of walking. She felt his laughter following her downstairs, warm and light.
The night was cold and dark. This darkness was different from the one inside of her, of the cauldron. It was alive in a mundane, mortal way. Cassian’s body behind hers brought the warmth from inside the tavern and she allowed herself to enjoy it before they reached the skies and it was too late. He lifted her up as if she was made of air and she placed one hand on his chest, but removed it immediately. He chuckled.
“We both know you have done worse to males, Nesta Archeron”
“Shut up”
His laugh was warm against her skin and his body against hers was softer than she remembered. His hair, moved by the wind, tickled her face. She closed her eyes, hiding her face against his body to protect herself from the wind. The cauldron sort of darkness stepped back, the pressure from her own powers recoiled. For the first time in months she dreamt of something other than the war and her father’s eyes when he died.