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Mornings looked different now that they’d left the Night Court.
Rays of sun shone high and bright, much higher than they would have been in years past. The low-angle light was more foreign to them now, as were sweat and steel. No cold, bracing showers to shock vigor into their skin, their bones.
Now there was only quiet, and warmth, and stillness.
Well, as much as her mate was capable of, anyhow.
Even just over the threshold of waking, Cassian stroked an idle hand up and down Nesta’s back, peppered sleepy kisses across her neck, the side of her face. Sensation-seeking, he’d called it once, and she must’ve rolled her eyes fondly. But his movements weren’t driven by invisible unsteadiness anymore, not like they used to be. More like the gentle flow of water over rocks, effortless, natural.
Faint meowing floated beneath their bedroom door, the sound of gentle wind through the chimes on the front porch.
Cassian roused more fully, his petting growing deliberate as one hand swept over her thigh hooked about his waist. “Mmm, you smell good. What time is it?”
Nesta pulled him closer, drawing the blanket up to their ears to block out the light. “Doesn’t matter. Early.”
Cassian mumbled something she couldn’t make out and burrowed deeper into the blankets, sighing.
They both drifted back in and out, sharing hushed kisses, adjusting to fit each other so they touched in as many places as possible. There were moments over the past year where they felt like one body—like they were healing each other sometimes, passing the torch of gentleness back and forth so neither forgot how.
“How’d you sleep, love?” Nesta asked.
“Well.” She shivered at the rough rumble of his voice, how deep and mellow it sounded in his chest. “Though I still feel like a lumber wagon ran over me. I could stay like this all day.”
Nesta couldn’t help smiling against the skin of his neck. New words, new feelings, that he’d fought so hard to claim.
There had been a period when he fought stillness fiercely, still devoted to routine, to discipline. But the cost became too obvious over time. Cassian couldn’t relax in the evenings, couldn’t let himself down long enough for his body to come to complete rest. It had taken a long bout of illness to convince him to slow down at last, the lingering cough still a bitter reminder.
Then came the shaking.
His lifelong vigilance fought with every weapon in its cache not to let go. He’d tremble violently when he tried to soften, a little boy’s tears flowing for want of safety, comfort. She’d held him more times than she could count, shuddering breaths underscoring the roar of winter wind, the gentle patter of spring rain.
It’ll take as long as it takes, was Nesta’s familiar refrain, though it still brought a pained frown to his face. But she knew better than most how the years of strain could alter a person, all it took to clear the smoke of over-effort from a system.
And Cassian had centuries to undo.
“Do we have anything to do today?” he asked anxiously. “I was thinking of going down to the creek for a while.”
He liked to watch the leaves go by, his thoughts too busy for the mind-stilling she practiced every afternoon. But the natural world steadied him, gave him something to anchor to.
Before she could answer, Nesta felt a ripple against the wards.
Unmistakable, the strides purposeful up the path to their front gate. Not wanting Cassian to be disturbed by the impending knock, Nesta untangled herself from his arms and donned one of his shirts.
“Do you want your tea?”
“I’ll make it,” Cassian said even as she pulled on a pair of soft, loose trousers, rising up on one elbow. “You stay and rest.”
“No, I’m feeling stiff anyhow.” Nesta stretched upward, as if to convince him. “I’ll bear Malka’s yelling for the both of us.”
He chuckled, accepting the kiss she offered before sinking back to the pillows, his eyes heavy-lidded once more.
Surely, the cat was waiting outside the bedroom to wind between her legs, indignant about the wait for her breakfast.
“Hello, precious,” Nesta said, bending to scratch between her ears. “Let me deal with your wicked uncle and you can have all the cream you want.”
Padding across the floor of their modest cabin, she swung the front door open just as Rhysand lifted a fist to knock.
“Morning. Oh—” Rhysand looked her up and down, taking in her rumpled clothes. “Are you just getting up?”
“What do you want?” Nesta asked flatly. She leaned in the doorframe, blocking the view inside even as Rhysand craned his neck the tiniest bit. Malka yowled behind her in protest of her apparent starvation. Nesta couldn’t help but agree.
“Ah..hm.” Rhysand picked at nonexistent lint on his sleeve. “I’d hoped to discuss a matter with Cassian. Is he out?”
“You know he’s not,” Nesta sighed. It always went this way. Misdirection cloaked in benign confusion, that always left a stale taste in the back of her mouth. She opened the door wider, recognizing the futility of refusal when it came to her brother-in-law. “Come in, I suppose.”
Rhysand looked laughably out of place in their cabin, simple as it was against his immaculate black uniform. Stiff as he settled onto their squashy green sofa, the one Cassian stretched out on afternoons when then clouds in his head hung low. Or when he tossed and turned too much in bed, seeking the refuge of solitude.
Nesta busied herself with the kettle, pulling down two tins marked with their respective names in Emerie’s neat handwriting.
“Never thought I’d see the day Cassian skipped training to stay in bed,” Rhysand called out, his tone a shade too light. It made her bristle, puff up like the hedgehogs that hid beneath their bayberry bush.
“We do things differently now. Tea?”
“Please.”
His presence left a pressure at her back—still, after these years—but Nesta told herself not to rush. To measure the tea leaves as she always did, pouring the water into three cups. She dropped a sugar cube in Cassian’s and her own, plus a dollop of cream for her before she tipped a healthy portion into a dish for the near-inconsolable cat.
“What’s the topic of discussion?” Nesta asked at last when she settled into the armchair furthest from the fire. The sounds of Malka lapping underscored the silence before Rhysand cleared his throat, violet eyes wary at the edges.
“A mission I think he’d be suited for.”
She fought the urge to sneer. Took a sip of her tea instead, the familiar sweetness grounding. “And the timeline?”
“Three days, likely. As soon as possible.”
“No.”
Rhysand shrugged, adjusting to rest an ankle on his knee. “We’ll see what Cassian thinks.”
“Fine. He’s going to say no, too, but it’ll hurt more.”
His scowl was like the slash of a blade, quick and brutal. “You don’t—”
Before he could finish, Cassian emerged from the bedroom clad in a thick wool sweater, the back fastened below his wings. He must’ve heard Rhysand’s voice—Nesta could kick herself for letting him in, but it would’ve likely led to a greater hubbub.
“Morning, brother.” They embraced fondly, though the fraction when Rhysand clung longer set Nesta’s teeth on edge. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”
There was no good use for her here. They’d agreed long ago that Cassian would handle his own family. Any time she was in the middle, whether through force or intentionally, things seemed to trend sideways. So as much as she wanted to stand between them and gnash her teeth until Rhysand scampered away, she knew it would only cause her mate more pain.
Standing, Nesta offer her seat to Cassian, set his tea on the side table, which he wrapped two hands around gratefully.
“I’ll be outside. Come on, precious,” she said to Malka, shooting a warning look at Rhysand over her shoulder before stepping out into the air.
Much had changed since Nesta and Cassian’s move a year ago to the islands just off their border with Day. Rhysand only understood some of why, though they’d tried to explain—we need some space, we want some time just us. Lately he suspected much deeper motives, ones he hadn’t merited telling.
It put a weird feeling inside him, like a snake coiling around his spine.
Cassian’s face was much as it had always been to him. Though sometimes it was hard to tell, when one had seen a face over so many centuries. Had that groove always lived so deeply between his brows? Had his hands always trembled as they did when he set his tea down?
Cold shame spread through his chest that he couldn’t remember.
“You look well,” Rhys said around the dryness in his throat, adjusting his cuff. He tracked Cassian’s long swallow of tea before answering, the way his throat bobbed.
“Thanks. I feel.. I don’t even know. Fine.” Cass rubbed at his eyes, still foggy with sleep. “Anyway, to what do we owe the pleasure?”
It wasn’t the first time Rhys had come with a request, but it was the first time in a while. The last time he hadn’t heard from Cassian for a whole month after, Nesta dutifully declining their dinner invitations every week.
Perhaps he should feel guiltier for asking. There was no courtly training for what to do when one’s general was on indefinite hiatus.
But Cassian was a grown male. He could make decisions for himself, he could tell Rhys to go to hel. And he was never one to sit by when another truly needed him, or to be left out of the opportunity to help. Rhys breathed in sharply through his nose—better to get on with it.
“Nesta doesn’t want me to ask you, but there’s been a report of a chimera near Ironcrest.”
Cass straightened, the whole of him suddenly on alert.
“The same one as near Bloodstone?”
“No, this one’s all black, mostly active at night.” He sent the sentry’s memory into Cass’s mind. Tried to ignore how his mental shields sagged at his touch, thick and sluggish as mud.
“Hm. Strange,” Cassian said once he’d seen the flash of the beast’s scaly tail. “Looks like a big one.”
There was a question inside it, or a.. doubt. Rhys sensed the glimmer of anxiety before he pulled his own mind back, mirrored on his brother’s face, the nervous tap of his finger against the armrest.
That snakey feeling curled up his spine again, bolstering something he couldn’t make sense of.
Cass took another long sip of tea, thinking.
And thinking.
The silence stretched so long, Cassian’s body so wound and tense now Rhys thought there might be a punch thrown soon. But instead Cassian deflated back into the chair, which was somehow worse.
“I mean, I could—” he started.
“If you’re not up for it—” Rhys said at once, though unsure where the sentence ended.
“What if I’m not.”
Cass’s voice was quiet, his head bowed. It made Rhys want to shake him for some perverse reason. To say remember, remember? Remember who we are, what we do?
Remember the world we’re fighting for?
But then he noticed the scars.
Dozens of them flecked Cassian’s hands, his forearms. Some cutting through the swirls of his tattoos, some beneath them, a mosaic of wounds and burns and close calls. A whole tapestry of pain and sacrifice he wore on his skin.
How many of those had come at his own command?
“Then I’ll find someone else,” Rhys said firmly. “I just wanted to offer.”
It cracked something in him, to see the way Cassian sighed in relief.
“Can I think about it?”
Malka had returned to rub against his legs. She hopped up onto the arm of his chair, turning in a tight circle before settling with her eyes closed.
“Of course. Take the day,” Rhys said, though he’d already resolved to find another.
“Thanks. Would you like to stay for breakfast?”
Clinking sounded, and a platter filled with fruits and pastries materialized on the low table between them.
“No, thank you. But I’d like to call on you again soon—not for business,” Rhys added quickly after catching the flash of panic so foreign to his brother’s face. “We haven’t had a game of gwydbwyll in a while.”
“That’s because I always take all your money,” Cass shot back, his true grin returning. “Though I’m not as sharp as I used to be, so maybe you’ve got a chance.”
Cassian felt different when Rhys hugged him. The tight line of his shoulders softened like a clothesline relieved of its load.
“I’ll bring Nyx up sometime. He’d love to see you, despite being determined to hate everyone right now.”
His sweet, surly son, thirteen and every bit of it. More like his other uncle most days, though he’d had flashes of Cass’s stubborn streak since he was old enough to say no want it.
“I’d like that.” His brother’s smile crinkled the corners of his eyes, settling in familiar lines. “Give him and Feyre my love.”
It was near torture turning away—he was still horrible with goodbye, after so many past partings he hadn’t known would be the last. Rhys ran a hand through his hair to comb away the memories as he stepped outside.
Nesta sat on a carved iron bench just at the edge of their garden, spring sun through the cherry tree dappling the pages of her book. She must’ve sensed him approach, for she closed it as he drew level, staring off into the woods lining their yard.
“You were right,” Rhys said before she could open her mouth. There was no use pretending she wasn’t. Might as well admit it before she reminded him with her claws.
“That should be obvious by now. You can’t keep calling on him when you run out of options.”
“I know. I mean, I see that now.” Rhys rubbed at his forehead. A pounding headache was building, unspent magic pressing in. “Thank you for.. I don’t think he would’ve slowed down. If not for you.”
Nesta tipped her chin, clearly taken aback. Though things had thawed between them in the last decade, it was still rare for them to be alone. And to speak so candidly.
“He deserves to rest. He’s given so much,” she said, and he didn’t miss the accusation in her tone. “Too much.”
Rhys bristled. “Of his own will.”
“Perhaps.”
A light breeze played across his cheeks, tinged with salt from the sea not far off. He spied a pocket gopher rooting in the underbrush, busy paws digging without ceasing.
“He would’ve let me run him into the ground, wouldn’t he.”
Rhys sank onto the bench beside Nesta unasked. She didn’t shy away, to his surprise, but twisted to lean on the arm. Surveyed him with perceptive eyes that were so like his mate’s, seeing all.
“Don’t take it too personally,” she said with a shrug. “He’d’ve done the same for me. It’s who he is. Was.”
“That’s what worries me.”
Cassian knew how to say no. Rhys knew that—had just seen it—but the snake on his spine squeeze tightly, cutting off sensation. Nesta regarded him still, her sheet of hair drifting in the wind.
“It unsettles you, doesn’t it? Seeing him like this,” she observed.
Rhys swallowed. His thoughts, normally so organized, ricocheted around his skull.
“It unsettled me too at first,” Nesta went on, turning once more to the woods. “But then I realized how much work he was doing to stay in motion, how much it was hurting him. How much of his candle he was burning for others’ sake. For mine, even. So now I’ll do anything I can to shield him, for as long as it takes.”
The snake was around his throat now, choking. Rhys was too aware he needed to leave—there was a replacement to secure, plans to finalize—but he found himself utterly rooted to the bench. Crushed beneath the weight of his own responsibility, all the times he’d told himself to hold out for the day when everything would be peaceful.
Because none of that mattered if the people he loved couldn’t find peace in themselves.
“I would do the same for Feyre. No matter the cost,” he managed around the lump in his throat.
“Let him evolve,” Nesta advised, though not unkindly. The gopher moved deeper into the forest, the sound of his scurrying fading. “You might find you like this version more. It’s.. a blessing, seeing him settle. Find ease.”
Rhys smiled in spite of himself, though it took more effort than he was keen to note.
“Right again, dear sister.”
Nesta snorted, opening her book to where a scrap of leather held her place. “You should expect that by now.”