The flight was short. The rain pounded against Cassian, cooling his head. He had felt that darkness in her, long before he had ever touched her. It never scared him, only one more thing about her that endlessly fascinated him. But then, on the beach, it was so raw and so powerful, his own power responded hungrily. That darkness made the bond bleak and fragile like glass. He felt it under her skin with every touch, tasted it on her tongue.
He didn't know why he could still feel it toying with him even as Nesta walked out of his arms at the estate, not bothering to look back at him, swishing her hips and lifting her chin.
Cassian tried- really really tried- not to watch those sinful hips as he gathered himself and followed her into the estate.
Rhys greeted them at the door. To his credit, he only stopped for a few seconds, looking at the two of them side by side through the door. Cassian knew he could smell it on them, if not the lingering arousal then the stronger bond that the two now shared.
Rhys took a breath and spoke to Cassian first, "We have a healer waiting for you upstairs." He stepped aside so the two of them could walk in, Nesta cutting Cassian off to walk in first.
So it was back to that then.
The only difference was that now whenever she brought a hand up to mindlessly stroke her collarbone as she listened to Rhys- a nervous habit she did often- he knew exactly what that collarbone felt like under his lips. What sounds he could draw from her when he kissed them. Lower.
His crotch tightened.
Nesta's face went red and she brought her hand down to her side, letting her hair fall over her shoulder and over those collar bones.
Not that it helped Cassians situation, as Nesta with her hair down and drenched in that white dress made him want to kick Rhys out of his own house and take his time to-
"Cassian, did you hear me?"
His head snapped toward Rhys, and he realized he had been staring at Nesta. She was beet red, eyes down. She now had a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Rhys was holding out a blanket to Cassian.
Cassian shook his head a bit and ran a hand through his hair. He gripped the blanket and wrapped it around himself as he replied to his brother, "Healer in my room, yes. I'll go up there after we talk."
Nesta's lips pursed at that. She didn't want to talk.
"No, brother." Rhys said, stepping past Nesta toward Cassian. "Go now. We can talk later."
Cassian paused. "That's a half truth?" He could sense it in Rhys, the lingering end of the sentence.
Rhys put a hand on Cassian's back and turned him toward the stairs, in the exact opposite direction of Nesta. The animal in him, the part of him that could still feel Nesta's skin under his fingers, could still hear her moans- that part of him screamed at the idea of leaving her so soon after the beach. After he was so close to finally joining with her, giving her the life she deserved, making her happy and abolishing all of that darkness.
His soul screamed at having to leave her, even for a moment.
She would hate him if he knew he was thinking that.
Her head snapped up, eyes locking with Cassians, and gave him a small nod.
Go.
His heart eased at that, if only a little.
"We, you and I, will talk about this later. I'll brief you on everything," Rhys said as he led Cassian up the stairs.
Rhys kept talking, about what they were going to do at the camps, updates on Devlon the snake and his latest efforts to disobey Rhys, and to his credit the General in him was listening.
But Cassian was distracted by the new feeling in his gut. The connection that was usually only a thread between himself and Nesta was now a rope, strong and resilient. It was bright white as he rounded the bend in the twisting stairs and stopped to look down.
Icy grey eyes met his. She was staring up at him, and he knew she had watched every step he took up the stairs. He braced his hands on the railing.
Standing there, with the setting sun spilling in through the door lighting her like an angel, she was the most beautiful thing Cassian had ever seen.
She had a faint glow all around her. Her auburn hair shined golden as it fell just under her bosom, wild and wet. Her eyes warmed ever so slightly meeting his own.
He just stared. His heart sang.
Nesta took three deep breaths. Then her breath caught and her eyes widened.
And then, suddenly, as if someone had knocked the wind out of him, she blocked her end of that bond, completely shutting him out. Nesta looked away from him, as if he were nothing, a fly on the wall, and walked into the sitting room, out of Cassians view.
Cassian wasn't ready for how much that hurt him.
_______________________________________________________________________________
She couldn't look at him for another second. That stare, the contentment to just look at her as if he had all day to do so. His eyes were warm pools of honey and she remember exactly how his arms felt around her waist.
It made her feel sick to her stomach.
She had barely walked into the sitting room when Feyre ran into her and threw her arms around her neck.
A hug. From Feyre.
Nesta slowly brought her arms up to embrace her sister back. Feyre was shaking.
"Mother above, Nesta." Feyre pulled back and ran her hands over Nesta, examining her, asking various, Are you okay? and You're not hurt anywhere?
Nesta could only shake her head at her sister. She had to look down to meet Feyre's eye, as she stood several inches taller then her sister.
Nesta stepped out of her sisters arms. "I'm fine. I'm okay." She said.
Feyre looked over her own shoulder, back at the window sill. Nesta's eyes followed, only to see that blackness, that rot was still there. She could also see a small plume of black smoke rising from the footprints, also still rotten into the ground on the floor of the house.
Her eyes went blank, that darkness inside of her stirred, and any and all passion she had felt only moments before was wiped clean as her sister looked back to her and said, slowly,
"No, Nesta. No, you're not."
Nesta looked back to her sister. She only nodded, and Feyre led her through the sitting room to a large oak door next to the book shelf. She lifted to her tip toes to reach on top of the book shelf and pulled her hand away with a key.
The lock clicked and Feyre turned the key and opened the door.
The room was not like any other room in the house. It was a small room. The walls were dark wood and small glass lamps hung on the walls. One large light fixture hung from the ceiling.
"Welcome to my office." Her sister said hesitantly as she scurried behind the desk.
"Its...small."
Feyre huffed a laugh. "Small is comfortable for me."
Nesta took in the room. Every square inch of the walls were covered. Some paintings, some pressed flowers, small bookshelves with three or four books each. What caught Nesta was what the paintings were.
These paintings were different from the others in her house. The ones in the house were light and warm and rosy, filled with yellows and oranges and reds.
These were cold and dark and real. So much more realistic then the others in the house. Painted with blues and blacks and purples.
There was one of their father. He was sitting in a broken chair, intently carving a small piece of wood, smiling to himself.
There was one of their old cabin, where they had lived before everything went to Hel. That seemed like a thousand years ago, in reality only a little over two.
Right below that, there was a painting of all three of them. Of Elain, Feyre, and Nesta sitting around the fire in their cabin.
Feyre had painted her. Only once, in this picture, but still. Nesta stared at the picture, letting that sink in for only a moment, and moved on.
As Nesta inspected the walls, the paintings from their past lives, the flowers, the books, Feyre went behind the desk. A familiar sound caught Nesta's attention, and she snapped her head around.
There, behind the desk, the third creaky drawer open, was the dresser her and her sisters shared.
The paint was chipped and faded, but Nesta could see it as if it had been painted only yesterday. Flowers on Elain's drawer, the night sky on Feyre's, and flames on her own.
It was her drawer, on the bottom, that had let out the creak, such a familiar and haunting song it made Nesta's gut wrench. She walked behind the desk, scattered with parchments and books and the like.
In that bottom drawer, in Nesta's drawer, lay some kind of jewelry set. Just at the sight of it, the acid she always felt burning her receded.
Nesta could only stare at the small dresser.
Feyre reached down and picked up a silver ring with a beautiful gemstone of some kind set into it. The gem's colors seemed to simmer and shift.
She held it out to Nesta.
"Do you know what these are, Nesta?" Feyre asked, and Nesta took the ring, inspecting it.
No, this was no regular gemstone. "It's some kind of magic." She said to her sister, looking down at her as she handed the ring back.
Feyre didn't accept it. Instead, she bent back down and wiggled the drawer out of the dresser, setting the entire drawer on top.
Nesta furrowed her brows and crouched down next to the dresser.
"Feyre, how did you get this? The whole place was destoryed..." She let her voice trail off as she ran her hand down the side of the old wood.
Rough and raw, the wood was completely unfinished, aside from the faded paint Feyre had added so long ago.
Feyre crouched to Nesta's level, running her finger along the top of her drawer.
She didn't look at Nesta as she said, "Rhys saved it. I don't know how, but he gave it to me as a house-warming gift once the estate was finished." Feyre smiled as she pulled her finger away and brushed the dust off on her pants.
"I only use it to hold these." Feyre stood back up, and Nesta followed her up hesitantly. She would not accept anything from her sister, especially nothing of value. She had done enough damage, taken and taken and taken.
Looking down at the jewelry and jewels in the wood drawer before her, she knew it must have been VERY expensive.
It was a set of two rings, a pair of earrings, and a thin black lace choker. Then there was a black velvet drawstring jewelry bag, weighed down with something.
The rings were set in an intricate and elegant silver, beautifully framing the gems. The choker was simple enough, with one of those same gems at the center. The earrings were a simple dangle with the same gem set in each.
The gems themselves though...
Nesta gasped.
"Those are Dragons Breath Opals." She said, taking a step back.
(seriously, google dragons breath opal. stunning.)
They were so recognizable. More rare to the Fae then children, they were a deep beautiful purple with a orange streak through the middle.
They also held an intense magical quality.
Amren had told her about them. She herself had only one, the only one in the Night Court, Amren had told her, and that little fireball protected it with a passion. Amren had insisted that they were so rare because they needed a magic pulse to become formed. One powerful enough to wipe out hundreds of men at once.
When Nesta had said, "Well how did you get yours then?" Amren had not replied.
Only smiled like a serpent and laughed under her breath.
Feyre closed Nesta's hand back around the ring as she said, "They are yours, Nesta."
"No." Nesta said, not needing to even think about it. "I want nothing from you, especially not those cursed gems." She practically threw the ring back into the drawer.
She went around to the other side of the desk, content to storm off and wipe this entire day from her mind, when her sister interrupted her.
"You created them." She said.
Nesta turned back to her sister.
"Start making sense or I am leaving." Nesta shot back.
Feyre picked up the choker and came around the other side of the desk toward Nesta.
"As soon as I knew you had power, as soon as I knew how much after the Battle of Hybern," Nesta flinched at the memory, "I wanted to get these for you. These are Siphons, Nesta." She held the choker out to her sister.
"They were white this morning, but after your blast in the Sidra, when I came back to grab them for you, they had changed to this. They were normal Opals."
The weight of the words settled on Nesta.
"Your power changed them, Nesta. Into the most rare gem in Pyrithain. That isn't a coincidence." When Nesta again didn't take the necklace, Feyre returned behind the desk, setting it back into the drawer.
"They...reacted to my power? How...?" Nesta had no idea what to do, how to move forward.
Only the most powerful warriors and magic wielders wore Siphons. Most of that small group only wore one. Yet here, before her as she rounded the desk, sitting back onto the edge of it, were 5 Siphons. Two on the rings, two on the earrings, and one on the choker.
Nesta reached out to the small black lace bag, and pulled the drawstring to open it.
There, in the bag, were 4 more.
And they were giant.
The size of her hand.
The destruction, the absolute devastation it would take to create these would be astronomical.
Nesta was stick to her stomach.
"What the hell did you do to make these?" She spat at her sister, not knowing if she really wanted an answer.
As Feyre took a breath to answer, Rhysand stepped into the small room.
All the air dissipated.
He said to Feyre, low and slow, "Is everything alright in here?"
Nesta couldn't break his stare as he walked toward the desk and took a seat in one of the two armchairs that sat before the desk.
She heard Feyre behind her, "Yes, I was actually hoping you could help me explain-" Feyre picked the black drawstring bag up and placed it on the desk in Rhysand's view.
Upon seeing the bag, Rhysand stiffened, took a deep breath, and looked at Nesta.
"You should sit down." He said, waving a hand to the seat across from him.
Feyre rounded the desk, and Nesta couldn't help but feel surrounded by sharks, circling and waiting.
Nesta couldn't help but wish Cassian were there.
She shook her head.
"I'm fine standing." Nesta said, taking a small step back. Small, but she knew both of them noticed.
Feyre sighed and held the black bag in her hands. She looked at Rhysand, who nodded, and she turned to Nesta.
"We found these while counting the dead on the beach after Hybern. These were laying in decayed ground, which was odd, because no where else on the beach was the ground decayed." She looked down. "We found in-tact bodies everywhere on the beach, none of them decayed, but where we found these..."
Her mate cut her off. "There were no bodies. Just green gunky ground and four Dragons Breath Opals." He leaned forward in his chair. "Do you know how Dragons Breath Opals are formed, Nesta?"
Her throat was so dry she didn't know if she could answer. She wasn't looking at either of them, only at the wall ahead of her. A painting of the winter woods.
The room felt colder.
"Nesta?"
Nesta shifted her vision to her sister. Small tears sprung in her eyes, and she cursed herself for it.
She asked her sister, more meekly then she wanted to, "It was me?"
Horror gripped her tongue as she asked the truth she already knew. Nesta had carried the weight of her blast that day, her rage, for months and months. All the people she had killed with just one release.
And that horror, the repulsion, grew tenfold as Feyre responded, "Yes, Nesta. It was."
Seeing the pity in her sister's eyes, Nesta burst.
"I never asked for this. I never wanted this- this- power that you have. I was content being nobody." She spat at her sister. Rhysand flashed his teeth, but Feyre stood betweem them.
Nesta couldn't help herself as she continued."The three of us never had ANYONE but eachother!" She huffed. "No one. Our own father wouldn't even move out of his chair to help stop us from starving- to - death." She emphasized each word, watched as that pain sank into Feyre.
"That's not fair, Nesta, and you know it." She shot back, to which Nesta snorted.
"You were only 15 when you started hunting. When you saw we were dying, rotting were we stood you were the one who saved us. Not Father." Nesta stopped. Feyre had saved them.
"I always loved him." Nesta whispered. "I still do. But he was not the one who kept us alive."
Nesta stepped closer to Feyre.
"You were." She said. Feyre caught her breath.
And Nesta let her eyes turn icy as she said, "And then you left us. You abandoned us for a life a mates and riches and magic as Elain and I had to watch our life be ripped from our hands. If you really wanted to help me, to help Elain or I, you should have thought about that before you became High Lady. Before you abandoned your family for the Fae."
The room was deadly quiet.
"You don't get to drag me into Hel and then offer me a cool drink of water. You don't get to play savior when it's convenient for you."
Rhysand shot to his feet, shouting obscenities at Nesta. This time, Nesta did back up, until she slammed into the wall and Rhysand was still advancing on her.
Feyre placed her body between Rhysand and Nesta, making the High Lord of the Night Court stop dead in his tracks.
Rhysand huffed at his High Lady, "Shes already going crazy, Feyre, she's wrong-"
Nesta furrowed her brows "I'm going crazy? What are you talking-"
"She's right, Rhys." Feyre said, and both Rhysand and Nesta stilled.
Feyre made a gesture with her head toward the door, and Rhysand growled but stalked out of the oak room. The silence after was thick.
Feyre took a step forward, hanging her head and taking a deep breath. Nesta stayed right where she was against the wall.
Her younger sister turned back to her, all the decorum of a leader gone. Just a sister beaten down from argument after argument.
She shrugged her shoulders and said, "You are right. I should never have brought you or Elain anywhere into this. You didn't ask to have this power, and now that you have it it's like your body- your mind- isn't even yours.It's foreign."
Nesta nodded.
Her sister continued. "When I went back to the Spring Court the first time, I went to a place called Under the Mountian."
Then, her sister told her a story.
A story of love and determination. Of self discovery and of honesty. A story of beating death, only to return to the place that would eventually suffocate you.
By the time Feyre was finished, sitting facing away from her in the armchair, Nesta's heart was heavy.
Nesta said nothing as she sat down in the armchair across from Feyre.
Feyre didn't shift in her chair as she said, "When I tell you I know exactly how you feel, I mean it."
Nesta could only ask, "What will the opals do then."
Feyre looked at Nesta for a moment, then stood and walked behind the desk. She grabbed the drawer from where it sat on the dresser and set it on the desk. Nesta only watched as her sister picked up the rings and came back to sit in the arm chair.
She suddenly grabbed Nesta's hand and slipped one ring on. Nesta flinched at first, but when she felt the power calm and center inside her, she didn't hesitate to grab the second ring from Feyre and slip it onto the ring finger of her opposite hand.
Feyre almost smiled. "They will help you filter and control your power. Cassian has Siphons, he can explain better then I can, but he uses his for battle." She put her hand over her sisters. "You are going to use yours to safely filter out power to release the strain."
Nesta flexed her fingers a few times, feeling the flow of power through her body now include the rings.
She looked at her sister as she stood, walked behind the desk, and said, "Rhysand said I was going crazy." She let the question hang in the air as she put on the earrings and the choker.
Feyre looked away and sighed. "Well, if you don't use your power for an extended period of time-" Nesta slipped one earring into her ear. "- then a person can go insane from the pressure."
Nesta slipped the other earring in.
"You haven't touched your power-" Nesta picked up the choker,"-in almost 7 months."
Nesta hooked the choker around her neck. She almost groaned at the feeling of relief and release the flowed through her. That noise, that feeling of that thing waiting just under her skin lessened considerably now that she had all five on. She could feel the 5 Siphons helping ease the burden of that screaming under her skin, clearing her mind and sharpening her focus.
She barely heard her sister say, "Rhys and I think that part of the reason for your outburst the other day and your anger and your-" Feyre searched for the word, "-erratic behavior is because that insanity is already taking its toll."
Nesta retorted, "I've always been cold, Feyre, I don't think it has to do with me being insane, I think it has to do with me being in a completely foreign world in a foreign body with-"
"Always cold yes, but cold and honorable. Loyal. Honest. That's changed, Nesta."
She didn't respond.
"You've been hearing voices, haven't you?"
Nesta stilled. She looked at her sister. Apparently that was all the answer Feyre needed.
"You've been having worse and worse flashbacks. Reactions to water. A constant pressure in your head, under your skin."
She cocked a hip and crossed her arms as she said to her younger sister, "Cassian told you."
Feyre didn't hesitate. "He's the only way I know if you're alive or not. So when he came back from your apartment, yes, I did ask him what happened."
Nesta decided she would curse him for that later.
"These will help, Nesta. These, and going to the mountains to learn to control it."
Nesta only nodded at her younger sister.
"Let's go upstairs." Feyre said, as she picked up the black bag and handed it to Nesta. Slowly, Nesta wrapped her hands around the smooth velvet.
"I have a change of clothes for you and a place to sleep."
She turned to her sister.
"You're leaving for the mountains tomorrow, Nesta."