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Shit.
Shit.
Nesta closed her eyes and rested her head on the cold edge of the toilet, her stomach roiling. It was the second week in a row she’d woken up only to rush to the bathroom and barely make it in time to get sick in the toilet.
The first morning, she’d suspected food poisoning from the restaurant she and Cassian had gone to in Velaris the night before. As he had held her hair back, she’d grunted between bouts of sickness that he was in so much trouble for convincing her to order the fish, that she was going to kick his ass, and her mate probably would have laughed had he not been so concerned for her illness.
But the next morning, it happened again. And the next. And then Cassian had gone off to the Illyrian camp for a week, a mission she had been supposed to attend with him, as she always did. The Illyrian war lords feared her more than they feared any of the Night Court’s Inner Circle. But at that point, she was sure it was an actual illness, and it hadn’t taken much convincing to stick this one out.
Now, it had been two weeks. And she felt fine during the day, at night, literally every other time other than morning. Shit.
She was definitely pregnant.
She took a deep breath and, flushing the toilet, stood up to look in the mirror. She was often still taken aback by the pointed ears and defined features of her face that had not always been that way, though she had long ago learned to accept her new body.
She could not be pregnant.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to share that with Cassian. She saw the way he doted on Elain and Lucien's daughter, Olwen, lifting her into the air and spinning her, her shrieking laughter warming Nesta’s heart in a way that most things couldn’t. She loved the way he took Rhys and Feyre’s son, Ceres, under his wing, making it his personal mission to teach him to be a little Illyrian warrior.
There was no question that Cassian would make a great father. It made her heart flip to think about it. Nesta just didn’t think she would be a very good mother.
She angrily wiped away the tear that fell down her face and turned away from the mirror. She wasn’t going to think about this until she knew for sure, and she wasn’t going to go through this alone.
Meet me in Velaris in twenty minutes? I have to tell you something. She sent the note to Elain before she collapsed back onto her bed for a few more minutes, breathing Cassian’s comforting scent in and wishing he weren’t at the camp when she needed his reassurance the most.
Elain met her in their usual spot right on time, her lavender dress blowing in the easy autumn breeze, the light and lovely contrast to Nesta’s maroon ensemble. “What’s wrong, Nesta?"
“Just come with me, okay?” Nesta tugged her sister’s hand and she dutifully followed, her mouth contorted in an innocent frown. “Where did you go when you needed to…” she paused, breathing deeply. “What healer did you see to test if you were pregnant?"
Elain stopped dead in her tracks and her frown turned to a beaming smile. “Nesta!” she gasped, squeezing her sister’s hand. “You really think-"
“Don’t,” she snapped. "I’m terrified, okay?”
She hadn’t even admitted it to herself yet. But she was actually more scared of this possibility than she was of Hybern returning to dunk her sister back into that Cauldron. Elain looked at her incredulously, and Nesta just shook her head. “Just take me."
Elain didn’t say anything else. She took her to her healer, and twenty minutes later Nesta was face to face with a positive pregnancy result, the healer smiling and telling her to get certain herbs, and Nesta was just nodding and her ears were ringing and she struggled to even respond to the concerned tug on the bond as Cassian felt her anxiety fly through the roof.
“Nesta,” Elain said slowly as they walked along the Sidra, back toward Nesta and Cassian’s townhouse. “Aren’t you happy?"
Nesta clenched her fists and stopped, slamming her elbows onto the edge of the bridge and dropping her head into her fists. Elain hovered behind her shoulder, patient, and Nesta groaned. She’d hold her emotions in with anyone else, and even though Cassian always succeeded in fighting them out of her, Elain was the only one who didn’t have to try to get her to open up.
“Of course. Of course I’m happy, Elain. I just,” she looked at her sister, the brown in her eyes always more comforting than the icy blue in hers or Feyre’s. “I couldn’t even take care of you, or Feyre, and I’m going to be responsible for this innocent life…"
Elain surprised her with a hug and Nesta let her arms surround her for a moment before pulling away, frustrated and angry. She’d bared her grudge against herself and her guilt from all those years ago, and she was reopening a wound that refused to heal. Elain took her hand instead, and Nesta didn’t fight it, but she would not look at her sister.
“Nesta,” Elain said with such stern intensity that Nesta jumped, surprised at her sister’s aggressive tone. “Do not think for one moment you didn’t take care of me."
“But I let them take us, that night. I let father starve us-"
"Do not,” she continued, brazenly interrupting Nesta, “think for one moment you didn’t make up for it tenfold when you cared for me every day after being Made, when you helped rescue Feyre from the Spring Court, when you decided to fight Hybern. Nesta, you’re not mother. You’re not father. You learned to fight for the ones you love. And that’s more effort than innately doing so. You tried harder than anyone, and you’re going to be a wonderful mother."
Nesta wiped her eyes viciously and looked up, to the sky that was turning to night, to the place that had become her home and her sanctuary and a place she felt she belonged. She thought of the love she already felt burning in her for the child, for her and Cassian’s child, and she found it more overwhelming than she could ever imagine. That overwhelming love always struck her too hard and too deep to know what to do about it, and always made her run in fear. She knew in her heart that this was her chance to learn to do it differently than she had done with her youngest sister, with her mate, and maybe to even forgive herself. She just didn’t know if it was possible.
Nesta looked at her sister wearily. “Just take me home."
--
Nesta couldn’t focus. She paced back and forth, nearly wearing down the bedroom carpet, and stared at the clock on the wall. She counted down the minutes in a panic. Cassian would be home in three hours. Two hours. One. She plopped down on their bed when there were 45 minutes to go, her head in her hands, and tried to think of how in the name of the Mother she was going to tell Cassian.
Part of her knew it didn’t matter. She knew in her heart that he would be overjoyed, no matter how she told him. But there was a little voice, deep in her mind, that remembered…
Someone who let her youngest sister risk her life every day in the woods while she did nothing.
You failed. You did not care until it was too late.
All I see is a bored and spoiled girl.
He’d said those things long ago, and had long ago apologized for them, had long ago seen her much more deeply. And yet the words still stuck with her. Because he had been right.
And maybe he’d remember, too, how she failed to care, and he’d be wary about this child, their child, and she didn’t know if she could endure that.
Just as that insecurity hit her, hard, the door to the townhouse flew open. It took all of a moment for Cassian to make his way up the stairs and there he was, standing in their bedroom doorway, grinning widely.
Nesta didn’t move from the bed. “You’re early,” she said.
Cassian's grin had faded when she didn’t get up to greet him. If he was away, especially for a long time, Nesta was usually on him in about three seconds to welcome him home. He took a tentative step forward, his eyebrows creased in concern. “Hello to you too, sweetheart,” he said, and proceeded to walk the rest of the length of the room and sit down beside her on the bed. She still didn’t move, but she didn’t protest when he put one arm around her waist and a hand on her knee. His gaze pierced her and she couldn’t meet it. “What’s wrong?"
“Nothing,” she said too quickly, so she rested her head where it fit perfectly on his shoulder. His arm tightened around her. “Just glad you’re home now."
“You certainly have a funny way of showing it,” he murmured into her hair, “considering the anxiety you’ve been hurling down the bond all day is coming at me like one of your fireballs right now."
Nesta shrugged from his grip and finally looked at him. His hazel eyes were full of confusion and worry. “I was just anxious about you being gone. You know I hate the way the war lords treat you."
“Yes, Nesta, because it’s so like you to sit around and worry about me,” he deadpanned. “Seriously. Even if I bought that, here I am, at home with you, and you’re still anxious."
“What makes you think I don’t worry about you?” she snapped, suddenly very annoyed. “You think I’m so heartless that I don’t worry about you?”
Cassian blinked. He opened his mouth to say something, and closed it again, biting his lip. After a moment, he spoke. “No, I believe I said you wouldn’t sit around and worry. That you would haul your ass to wherever I was if you were worried enough, ready to knock someone into the dirt in my defense.”
Her face flushed. She was so on edge she couldn’t even breathe, and the grin that Cassian gave her when he finished speaking only made her want to catch on fire. “Oh,” she whispered; it was all she could manage.
“Sweetheart, please tell me what’s wrong."
“I told you, I’m fine,” Nesta got up from the bed and started toward the door. "Let’s go eat dinner or something-”
Cassian grabbed her wrist before she could walk too far, and she turned toward him, trailing off as she saw a new emotion in his eyes. Fear. “Nesta, is it your illness?” he said cautiously, running his thumb over her hand gently. “Did you find something out about it? Is that why you’re acting so…” He pulled her closer and she let him put his arms around her waist. She tensed in response. His hands around her middle, where there was life growing, where his life and hers converged to create a new life, a life that depended on them, on her...
“Whatever it is, please tell me."
“No. I’m not sick,” she snarled. A tear of frustration fell and he immediately let go of her waist with one arm to wipe it away. He sighed and she felt relief wash through him over the bond, and she realized just how much of her anxiety had been his too.
“So what is it?"
“I. Am. Fine. Cassian."
“Nesta, your walls are up so high that I can barely see over them. Do I need to inspire you to insult me to get you to open up? I thought we were past that,” he was getting annoyed now, his magnificent wings flared out behind him, and she wanted to explode.
They both stared at each other. A standoff. An equally matched battle of stubborn will.
And he knew just how to break her.
“Fine,” he said. "If you’re so insistent on doing nothing about whatever’s wrong-"
Doing nothing.
You did nothing.
“Because that’s what I do right?” she snapped, stepping back. “I do nothing? I did nothing when my sisters were starving in that hovel, I did nothing when a faerie stole Feyre from our home, I did nothing when Elain was thrown into that Cauldron. I’m heartless, and I don’t worry about anyone but myself, and I don’t do anything, I do nothing.” She was sobbing now, and Cassian just watched her, although at some point during her tangent he had grabbed her hand, and she realized she was squeezing it, hard.
"Nesta Archeron, the older sister who was so bitter that she let everyone around her suffer, helpless, while she did nothing. How could I ever think that I had changed? It’s my nature to shut down when things get hard, Cass. I don’t let anyone in."
“You let me in,” he said quietly, but she barely heard him.
“I’m never going to be good enough. No one can rely on me, because I’ll just do nothing. And now I’m pregnant, and a life is going to depend on me, and I’m so, so afraid I’m just going to do nothing,” she sobbed.
Suddenly, Cassian was standing, his free hand lifting her chin up gently so she could look into his face. He was staring at her with wonder, the way he looked at her when she told him she loved him for the first time, the way he looked at her when she accepted their mating bond, the way he often looked at her when he thought she wasn’t looking.
“Nesta,” he breathed. “What did you just say?"
“I’m pregnant, Cass,” she said thickly, tears still running down her face.
“Nesta.” Cassian smiled broadly and fell back onto the bed, as if he could not take the news standing, and pulled her down onto his lap. He wiped tears from her eyes and the contrast of her sobbing and him grinning like an idiot was almost enough to make Nesta laugh. Cassian beat her to the punch. He laughed, a full-bodied, joyful laugh, and he ran a hand through her hair.
“Nesta,” he said again. “Are you really?"
“Yes. And I’m not exactly as eager as you to see me fuck up this child’s life."
“Nesta.” He could not stop saying her name. He said it like a prayer, like it was the only thing that made sense to him in the world. “The fact that you’re so worried about this child that I can feel it in every bone of my body, the fact that you are scared and the fact that you want so desperately for this to be different from your sisters’ lives, that just shows how…” He trailed off, his hand lowering to her abdomen. He placed his hand there reverently, and he laughed again. “It just shows that you’re going to be an amazing mother."
She sniffed, looking down at his hand on her stomach. “You think?"
“I know,” he said, and she looked up to meet his eyes. “Nesta, you’re not that person. You love more fiercely than anyone I’ve known in six centuries of life. And, not that you need to prove it to me, or to anyone, but you will prove it to yourself. This child, our child,” he kissed her, gently, lovingly. “Our child is so, so lucky, sweetheart."
“Cassian,” Nesta sighed.
“Almost as lucky as I am."
She dropped her head down to nuzzle it in his chest, and his arms and wings enveloped her. And that reassurance from her mate, that confidence… maybe she could do this. With him, maybe it was possible.
He pulled back to press his forehead to hers, the two of them alone together in the cocoon of his wings, and the outside world didn’t matter. “You’re pregnant,” he whispered. “We’re going to have a baby."
He sounded so incredibly happy that Nesta managed to smile. “Let’s just hope the baby gets my looks and my brains,” she quipped.
“There’s the Nesta I love,” he huffed a laugh and kissed her more deeply this time. “I wasn’t joking about being lucky. Maybe I could get even luckier later…"
“Asshole.” She slapped him playfully on the shoulder, and suddenly he was standing and holding her in his arms and spinning her, and she couldn’t help but laugh with him. His joy was infectious, and she could see him spinning their daughter, or teaching their son to fly, and now she was there too. She was teaching their daughter to stand up for herself, and she was cheering on their son as he attempted to fight his father. She saw the future, and she saw the possibilities, and she saw the Illyrian male holding her in his arms, and she was ready.