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It wasn’t the dull, constant thud of knives in wood that drove Nesta to the roof.
The truth was she couldn’t sleep, feeling a restlessness inside of her that had her lacing up her boots and leaving Cassian alone, sprawled out on their oversized bed.
The House of Wind was silent at night, except for the wind that sometimes howled outside, the cold stone air smelling crisp and mingling with the ash of dead fires from the evening. Nesta moved quietly, reluctant to break the stillness, heading towards the roof for a breath of fresh air.
At the first noise she had tensed, reaching for a knife that wasn’t at her side, but quickly relaxed when she saw the familiar lazy braid of her sister.
The night sky hung over the training ring like a dome, the jeweled stars of the Night Court sparkling overhead. It was a cold night, for spring, and a chill wind whipped across the stone, masking her footsteps.
Feyre was in leathers that looked a size too tight, thrown on hastily. Her youngest sister was never one to shy away from the casual or practical but tonight she looked…disheveled. Light hairs were whipping out of her braid, a halo of fine, frizzy hair framing her forehead and temples. Her boots were thrown on without being laced. She stumbled in them as she leaned forward for a throw.
There was also the fact that she was flinging knives, alone, at almost three in the morning. At someone else’s house.
Only one knife was lodged in the painted wood target, others littered around it. As Feyre released another blade, the wind kicked up and blew the dagger wide.
“Shit,” she muttered into the night.
“Your stance is crooked,” Nesta observed, walking up behind her before she could grab another blade.
Her sister gasped a little and whirled around, revealing a blotchy red face, blue eyes puffy with tears.
“Nesta,” she said, sounding guilty. Feyre quickly wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “Did I wake you up? I’m sorry. I just — I didn’t want to wake anyone at home and I thought it would be quieter —”
“You didn’t wake me. What’s wrong?” Nesta’s mind ran through the options — she wouldn’t be here if something happened to Nyx, and to be alone— “What did he do?” she asked, ready to draw blood.
Feyre laughed in exasperation, sniffling. “Rhys didn’t do anything. I’m fine.”
She turned away, and another knife flew through the air, silent and fast, missing the target by an inch and clattering on the ground amidst a dozen other failed attempts.
“You need to loosen your shoulders.”
“Thanks.” Her voice was clipped, her back stiff. Nesta wondered if she had been hoping for Cassian to be the one to find her. “Do you want me to leave? You can use the ring or whatever you came to do.”
Another knife thudded against the wood, hitting the target but failing to find purchase. Feyre avoided Nesta’s eyes. She swallowed, sorting through the maze of Feyre’s emotions.
If her little sister thought she could hide her avoidance, or if Nesta wouldn’t rise to uncomfortable confrontation, she was sorely mistaken.
“Feyre,” Nesta demanded. That unsettled feeling was only growing, as Feyre’s magic seemed to crackle and hum in front of her. Like her emotions were a storm about to spill out of her body. Nesta hadn’t woken up tonight prepared to deal with this emotional powderkeg.
The way Feyre’s eyes grew cold, like she retreated in on herself, and the stubborn jut of her chin made her look so young. This was the Feyre she was used to tearing apart over a worn dining table — raw with anger and a little self righteousness, fear and cruelty simmering just underneath.
Someone she hadn’t seen in a while, under Feyre the Cursebreaker, under the High Lady.
“I was just stressed, all right? I couldn’t sleep.”
“So you came here to lose all our knives?”
Feyre went stiff.
Her own wisps of wind cast out and gathered the knives, scraping over the stone and into a gently swirling cloud she brought back to the small table beside her. “Maybe I just wanted to throw things. Maybe I don’t care if they hit or not.”
Nesta didn’t know what to say. So she grabbed a knife and stepped up to her sister.
“We don’t have to talk if you don’t want to.” Maybe she could call Cassian. Her stomach sank a bit at the thought, the guilt. Maybe Cassian would be better at this, maybe he wouldn’t fumble and stomp his way through Feyre’s mess of emotions.
Thunk . The tip of Nesta’s knife buried into a bullseye.
Feyre huffed.
This time when her sister stood she anchored her back foot, setting the other in front, bouncing her wrist to feel the weight in her hand.
She pulled back her arm, stepped forward and they both watched as the knife went short, skidding loudly across the stone.
“Your stance is too tight. You need to loosen up your back a little, let your arm go.”
Feyre grunted, her lip curling up in a little angry sneer.
“Hey. Look at me.”
The eyes that met hers were like a beast in the forest.
There was her feral little sister. For a while now she had been the cool High Lady, the head of her house, the responsible sister. To see her old anger flare up again startled Nesta.
They were both far too powerful now to let it get the better of them.
“Take a deep breath. Just like me. And hold. Ready?” Nesta exaggerated the swell of her lungs, the lift of her shoulders. Cold night air filled her chest and she felt her feet ground into the stone, like she was an extension of the mountain.
Feyre fought her at first. She had to close her eyes to take in the deep breaths and let go.
“Let your thoughts come to you, whatever’s on your mind. Just let them fill you and then pass through. Keep breathing.”
Nesta watched Feyre breathe, watched the tension in her with some queasy feeling. At how quickly tempers still flared between them.
So different from her Valkyrie sisters. They were a unit, complements to each other. Unlike the Archeron sisters, always discordant foils to one another. An ongoing play of hurts and scores and changing allegiances that tore at them all.
The specter that was between them: sleeping but still present, of jealousy. Of hunger. Of two skinny, vicious girls scrabbling for whatever was left on the table. Teaching themselves not to need love from the inhospitable desert that was their family.
Feyre took deep breaths until her muscles relaxed, just a little.
“I’m sorry. I know you’re trying to help,” she finally said.
Nesta’s voice was as cold as ice. “I think maybe we spent so long fighting over scraps, and now it’s hard to remember —”
“That there’s enough?”
Nesta nodded.
It was hard to put into words. She was still getting used to the endless affection that poured from her mate, how she could ask for things and be given them without a thought, without a cost.
Even though a new peace lay between her and Feyre, the old scars were human, and wouldn’t heal so easily.
“Why don’t you tell me why you’re here?”
Feyre sighed again, her eyes focusing on the shining knives in front of her.
“Nyx finally went down and I was trying to fall asleep, but I remembered this fae a few weeks ago who came to petition - she and her family needed help with their farmland since their father died unexpectedly. And I told them we would send assistance — and then I just — forgot.” she swallowed thickly.
“I got up and was at my office trying to find the notes, and Rhys tried to send me back to bed, like he isn’t up working late into the night most days. Like the weight on me isn’t the same as his,” she played with a knife, pricking her fingertips on the tip of the blade idly.
“Then Nyx started crying, and it was like my whole body seized up. It was weird. It was like…my body didn’t belong to me.” Feyre shook her head, looking pale. “I just thought about that family, waiting every day for help, waking up every morning thinking ‘this will be the day.’ And I just…forgot.”
For a moment, something vicious slithered inside Nesta’s gut: a preening, satisfied feeling. At perfect Feyre, finally stumbling for once.
No. Nesta breathed through the thought, watching her sister’s tight face. Checked frantically that her shields were up.
That was an old way of thinking. When she thought they were competing. Let the thought pass through you. Feel it and let it go.
Nesta shifted on her feet. This was her terrain, her familiar training grounds. How would Feyre fit in this space?
She tried to shift the way she saw her sister. How would Cassian, or Azriel, size up a new recruit? What would Nesta feel towards her if she was a new priestess, walking nervously through that door?
How had she felt when she saw Gwyn pass that threshold for the first time, scared and seeking strength? Why was her sister any different?
“I might not be able to give any High Lady advice. But why don’t you pick up a sword? Let your body work it out.”
Feyre shook her head, her arms wrapping around her stomach. “I haven’t trained in months. And — I feel different. My body feels different. Even with everything healed I just feel…changed.”
“We can start at the beginning. I won’t go too hard on you.” Nesta cocked her head, unsure of what to make of the writhing mass of Feyre’s emotions.
“I don’t want this. I don’t want to —” Feyre paused, looking away, unable to meet Nesta’s eyes. “I don’t want some competition to see who’s the better fighter. You can be the warrior now. I don’t want it. Maybe I never did.”
Nesta swallowed. Thought about the emptiness that came when she first spilled blood –
She let the thought pass through. Focused back on Feyre, circling her slowly, watching the way she was tracked with her sister’s eyes, how her body turned instinctively to keep Nesta in her sights.
Not a fighter, she said.
This one needed an anchor. A goal. Something outside of her own panic to hold to, to pull herself up.
“Koschei is coming.”
Her words were casual. As if he were arriving tomorrow for tea.
Feyre’s face hardened. “Yes.”
“And are you ready to face him? Ready to protect your family?”
“Nesta…”
“Are you?”
Silver lined Feyre’s eyes. Nesta felt her heart crack. But she stayed still.
“No.” It was a whisper in the wind.
She watched as Feyre worked through it, the seizing fear, the desperation, the stubborn Archeron resolve to face it.
Mother knew there was nothing Nesta wanted more than her life here, small but full, with Cassian in her bed and next to her in the training ring, with her friends nearby and her work. Growing every day, luxuriating in love and happiness and sore muscles like it was a warm bath.
But Rhysand had shared Cassian’s memories with them all, of a frozen lake, of a chill wind that promised death and malice. Of even Cassian’s quaking fear.
“Then we’ll get there. I’ll help you. If you want. Or Cass can or — whoever you want.”
Nesta tried not to feel the worry of rejection. Every swing of the axe, or pull of the bow in lessons between them before had been fraught with sizzling tempers and cold viciousness.
She thought about Gwyn and Emerie, about Roslin and the other priestesses she worked with, encouraged, cheered for everyday. Thought about those emotions like a cloak and tried to see how it would fit around her sister.
“You would train me?” Feyre asked. Nesta tried not to bristle at her surprise, at whatever part of that offer caught her sister off guard.
“I could show you the Valkyrie techniques that will work with your Illyrian training. Sometimes these days, I’m the one teaching Cassian things.”
Feyre gave a watery grin. “I’m glad. Someone needs to check that Illyrian arrogance.”
“Maybe that’s why we’re mates. The Mother knew they all needed to be put in their place.”
A blade turned slowly in her sister’s hand. “You’re the Oristian.” A small, wistful smile came over her face. “I wish I could’ve been there when Devlon and the camp lords found out.”
Nesta’s smile was cold. “They don’t know what they’ve unleashed.”
“I’m proud of you,” Feyre said, her voice a choked whisper, Nesta's eyes going wide. “Not that — I know you don’t need —”
“Feyre.” At her tone, her sister stopped babbling. “That’s —” Nesta took a deep breath, letting all the discomfort and swaying emotions from her sister settle and pass through. Whatever anger or resentment she might have from before had washed away when she smelled the blood in that birthing room, when she had to beg for her baby sister’s life from the Mother herself. “Thank you. It was really hard, for a long time. But I’m happy. I’m happy here.”
Her sister’s chin wobbled and her face crumpled just before she buried it in her hands.
Breathe. In and out.
Nesta thought about her Valkyrie sisters. How sharing their heavy stories had made them feel lighter. How they looked into each other’s souls and didn’t turn away.
“Feyre. It’s ok.” Nesta rested her hand on Feyre’s arm, feeling her body shake with sobs under her palm.
At her touch, Feyre fell forward, burying her face in Nesta’s shoulder, covering her leathers with tears.
Nesta stiffened, unused to her sister’s touch.
Hating how she felt like her mother.
How would she want her mother to hold her? How would they all hold Nyx from this day forward - without reservation?
You can do this .
She could do it - accept love, and give it too. It would be hard but - she reached out her hand, pulling Feyre closer, rubbing her back gently, breathing through her discomfort and trying to bring down those walls.
When Feyre had tired herself, she stepped back, looking somewhat ridiculous with a swollen nose but with a new lightness in her eyes.
“I thought — I worried — you and Elain might never be happy here.” Nesta thought of her library and her friends there, of Cassian’s scent, and his stupidly handsome face. Happy.
The moment sat quietly between them, Feyre’s fears and the miles they’d traveled unraveling.
“I’m sorry I’m falling apart,” her brow furrowed in frustration. “I had Nyx and everything makes me cry now. Yesterday I stepped on a worm in Elain’s garden and Rhys raced home from the Governor’s council because he thought I was dying.”
Nesta’s lip curled. “I think Nyx has the power to turn all of us soft.”
“Do you ever look at him, and —” Feyre stopped short, like the words died in her mouth.
“What?”
“Sometimes I look at Nyx, and I think…I hate them. Mother. And…father. Sometimes.”
Nesta stayed still. Like the admonition would have her sister bolting at any wrong move. “I think I know what you mean.”
Feyre nodded. “I love him so much. And how could they have seen us so young and still do what they did? How could they have let themselves look away? It seems impossible. And then I worry: what if there’s some secret terrible thing that will happen that will make me feel the same way someday?”
“You will be a thousand times a better mother than our parents ever were to us. There’s no way you could ever be like them, Feyre. It’s impossible.”
“But —”
“Feyre. You’re a good mother already.” Feyre’s chin wobbled again. “And if you do slip up, I’m sure your sisters will let you know about it.”
Feyre took a deep breath, in and out through her nose. “You promise?”
“Try and stop us.”
A smile was on her sister’s face.
Nesta grabbed a throwing knife, the metal warming in her hand.
“Ok, do ten shoulder rolls, then we’re working on your stance.”
The yellow-pink fingers of dawn were pulling at the horizon by the time Feyre’s boots were tied, her muscles stretched. It wasn’t enough to warm them, yet, but the light shone on something brighter in Feyre’s face. Nesta reveled in the new feeling of being the cause of it.
She turned to her new recruit.
“Are you ready?”