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Out of sorrow, entire worlds have been built
Out of longing great wonders have been willed
They're only little tears, darling, let them spill
And lay your head upon my shoulder
Cassian has never felt entirely at home in Velaris.
He’s never really told anyone. He knows better than to tell Rhys, who loves his city with the terrifying, bone-deep devotion of a male who has almost lost it one too many times, or to Mor, who’s found refuge in this city after being locked in the dark for too long. He doesn’t even tell Azriel, who’d probably understand him best. Neither does he confide in Feyre, who’s built herself a life here, in her and Rhys’ new house, with their perfect baby boy.
He’s never truly talked to Nesta about it either.
There are too many variables, too many ways in which people would misunderstand. Too many who would hear ingratitude where there is only a quiet, stubborn grief.
Objectively, he knows Velaris is beautiful. He isn’t some ungrateful brute, despite what several males and females across Prythian, including at least one very irritable dressmaker and his own mate, have implied over the centuries. The city is as if carved from starlight. It has rooftops that gleam silver in the rain, streets that smell of freshly baked bread and river fog at dawn, some native flower that only blooms on the banks of the Sidra, lanterns strung like captured fireflies over market squares, and music spilling from taverns until deep into the night. The city shines brightest when night has fallen, all faelight and windows spilling gold onto its waters.
Velaris has a house for him, a place to come home and rest his wings. It has his family. It’s the place where he finds Nesta walking through the House of Wind in her knitted socks, with her hair falling down her back and a book tucked beneath one arm, scowling at anyone who dares to talk to her before she’s had her morning tea.
Velaris is home, in every way that should matter. Still, at night, Cassian sometimes looks up at the sky and feels the old, quiet panic move beneath his ribs. He’s General of the Night Court’s armies, the Lord of Bloodshed, Carynthian, bastard-born son of a nameless Illyrian woman whose face has been blurred by time. He has survived wars, has been on battlefields so soaked with blood he was afraid he’d never emerge. He has survived losing friends, gaining brothers, and failing people important to him. He’s all that, but still, at times, being in Velaris seems to be the thing that can undo him.
Because there are too many lights, and all of them soften the sky until the stars blur or vanish entirely. Whole constellations disappear above the city, whole stretches of the heavens going missing. Ancient markers, old routes, and familiar shapes, some of which once held him steady through hunger and cold and fear, end up hidden beneath the pretty golden haze of civilization.
Cassian hates that he resents it. He hates it even more that when he returns to miserable, brutal, backward Windhaven, some part of him always breathes easier the first night he looks up at the sky, and sees the entirety of it.
The training ring is muddy, the dirt frozen beneath his boots and slushy in the middle, where the pupils have been going through different drills. The morning has brought a sharp wind and brittle sun, typical mountain weather.
Cassian stands at the edge of the ring with his arms crossed and his siphons gleaming a dull red in the weak light, watching Nesta ruin an arrogant young male’s entire morning for commenting on the females’ training.
It is, admittedly, improving his.
“Again,” Nesta says, dismissing the male and focusing on the female recruit in front of her, who grimaces and adjusts her grip on the practice blade. Her name is Niloufar. Seventeen, maybe eighteen. Old enough to be married, according to most camps, and to be worked until the skin on her hands splits. Old enough to be clipped and bear a male’s children. Looking at her, Cassian gets enraged all over again, working hard to keep his surging power under control. Because apparently, she’s not old enough to hold a sword without causing the collapse of Illyrian civilization.
She’s thin as a winter branch, hunger sharpening her face, with wings she keeps tucked so tightly the muscles at their base must ache. She had arrived from Ironcrest five days ago with split knuckles, a bag of clothes, and a face so carefully blank that Cassian had needed to look away for a moment.
Nesta circles her slowly, cloak snapping in the wind. She wears her fighting leathers underneath. Her hair is braided back from her face in her typical coronet that has already half-loosened from the wind and exertion, strands clinging to her cheeks. Her eyes are bright, looking silver in the weak Illyrian sun. She looks like she belongs, like this purpose is exactly what she was meant to fulfill.
“You’re holding your elbow too high,” Nesta says. “I can break your ribs in the blink of an eye.”
Niloufar flushes.
A male recruit snorts from the sideline, and Cassian turns his head, glaring at him. The Illyrian immediately quiets.
Nesta doesn’t look away from Niloufar. “Lower it,” she repeats, and Niloufar does. “That’s better. Now strike.”
The girl lunges, and Nesta lets her come within a breath of success before pivoting, sweeping her leg, and knocking Niloufar flat onto the muddy floor with such efficient brutality that several observing males make offended noises on the girl’s behalf.
Niloufar wheezes.
A male at the side of the ring mutters, “ Waste of time.” Before Cassian can do anything about it, a dagger crosses the space between the male and Nesta, striking the wooden post beside the male’s head hard enough to split the grain.
Everyone goes silent as Nesta stares at the young, arrogant Illyrian. “Did you say something?” she asks.
The male’s face has gone pale. “No.”
“How very disappointing.” Nesta dismisses him with a look that would’ve brought many a male to their knees, turning back around and planting one boot beside Niloufar’s hip, looking down. “You telegraphed. I could see you coming from miles away.”
“I was trying to kill you,” Niloufar gasps.
“And I appreciate the enthusiasm.” Nesta offers her a hand. “Next time, try to actually reach me first.”
Cassian’s mouth twitches.
He loves her like this. He loves her soft, too, though Nesta would likely stab him with a dessert fork if he described her that way aloud. He loves her in their bed with sleep-warm skin and an irritated noise in her throat when he kisses her awake. He loves her in the little reading nook, frowning at a book as if the author has personally insulted her bloodline. He loves her at family dinners, when they’re civil, letting Nyx wrap jam-smeared fingers around one of her own while pretending not to be taken by the small prince.
But here, like this—
Here, in the ring, not taking shit from anyone, with the wind in her hair and mud on her boots and six female recruits staring at her as if she has carved a door in the side of a mountain and shown them sky beyond it, Cassian feels something in him go dangerously tender.
Nesta hauls Niloufar upright. “Again,” she orders.
Niloufar lifts her chin. This time, she lasts longer, actually sparring with his mate.
Cassian assists where he can. He corrects grips and adjusts stances. He demonstrates how to take a fall without snapping a wrist. He lets the youngest one, Rika, drive a knee into his thigh until she gets the angle right, then pretends to limp so extravagantly that even Nesta’s mouth betrays the smallest curve.
“Your theatrics are undermining the discipline of the ring,” she tells him quietly.
“I am motivating the youth.”
“Sure you are.”
Rika, who is barely five feet tall and has spent most of the morning looking as if she expects to be punished for some unknown crime, says, very quietly, “It’s motivating me to hit him harder.”
The female recruits go silent. Then Cassian laughs and it breaks something open. He looks at Nesta. “See?”
Nesta’s eyes flick toward him, bright as the steel of Ataraxia, and she smiles softly at him.
His chest warms by several degrees.
From the sidelines, not everyone shares the sentiment. There are even more males gathered near the posts now. Older warriors. Fathers and brothers and males who have come to observe the spectacle of female training with some sour sort of fascination. Some show their contempt openly, while others hide it behind folded arms and blank expressions. Cassian isn’t fooled though. The openly cruel ones can be confronted, but the quiet ones wait their opportunity and strike at the most dangerous moments.
Nesta knows it too.
He can see it in how she positions herself. Always between the recruits and the watching males. Always close enough that if a comment is made, she will hear it and retaliate.
Cassian wants to send every spectator off the mountain, but he doesn’t. Progress, he has learned, often feels like swallowing burning coals.
By noon, the girls are exhausted and flushed, hair coming loose, their hands shaking around their wooden practice blades. Nesta lets them stop only after each one manages to break Cassian’s hold in a basic wrist escape.
He makes them work for it. When Rika finally twists correctly and stumbles back, freed from his grip, she looks down at her own hand as if she’s done something miraculous.
“Good job,” Nesta says, voice carrying just enough. Rika’s throat bobs and she nods.
Cassian is helping Nesta show one last sequence of moves when he notices Devlon approaching the ring.
“General.”
Nesta’s blade stops a breath from Cassian’s throat. She flicks her eyes toward the voice, then back to Cassian. Cassian gives the smallest shake of his head in answer.
Nothing to worry about.
Nesta’s stare informs him that she finds this highly unlikely.
Cassian lowers her blade with two fingers. “Try not to murder anyone while I go talk to him, sweetheart.”
“You overestimate my self-restraint.”
He laughs softly, pressing a quick kiss to her lips. Cassian exhales through his nose once, steadying himself, and turns. “Devlon.”
The camp lord stands with his hands clasped behind his back, expression carved with age and eternal disapproval. The wind tugs at the iron-gray strands weaving through the black of his hair. He looks, as always, like a male who has mistaken stubbornness for wisdom for so long that the two are now fused in his bones. “A word.”
Cassian follows Devlon toward the forest edge, away from curious ears and prying eyes. They stop near a large pine, out of easy earshot but not completely out of sight. Cassian makes sure of that, just because he doesn’t trust Devlon farther than he can throw him.
Devlon wastes no time. “This cannot continue at this pace.”
Cassian’s jaw tightens. “The training?”
“The disruption. It’s becoming a spectacle.”
A familiar weariness settles over him. “Choose your next words carefully.”
Devlon’s nostrils flare, but he isn’t stupid enough to mistake Cassian’s calm tone. “You are interfering with dynamics that have held these camps together since before either of us drew breath.” Devlon presses his lips together in a thin line. “You know the balance here is delicate.”
“The balance is rotten down to the core.”
“The females have roles.”
“So do males.” Cassian smiles without humor. “Astonishing how often theirs involve a position of authority and a warm bed.”
The wind drives smoke down from the nearest chimney. It stings Cassian’s eyes. Or perhaps that is simply being in the presence Devlon’s personality.
“You are moving too quickly,” Devlon says.
“There are six females training.”
“Today.”
Cassian waits for him to continue, knowing that the camp lord is nowhere near done. Devlon spreads his hands, a gesture of reason unbefitting him. “Tomorrow there will be twelve. Then twenty. Then females will start abandoning their duties because they believe themselves warriors.”
“Enlighten me, Devlon. What duties would those be, according to you?” Cassian asks.
“You know our customs.”
“Ancient customs,” Cassian says flatly, the tide of his anger rising once again. Somehow, the phrase always gets thrown into the conversation when a male needs to explain why another person’s pain must continue for the sake of order. Cassian would know. He has experienced it first-hand, after all.
“Yes.”
“Funny. They always seem to become customs when someone benefits from the cruelty.”
Devlon’s eyes flash. “Mock if you like, but you were raised here. You know what happens when order frays.”
Raised here.
As if that word belongs anywhere near the dirt where Cassian was left in, or the banishment to the edge of the camp where he was forced to suffer from hunger and cold. Cassian thinks of trying to sleep while his wings were frozen, actual frost coating the talons. He thinks of boys twice his size kicking his ribs because he was a bastard-born nobody.
He thinks of his mother’s hands, raw from work, closing around his face, and of males entering her tent and yanking him away from her, only to never see her again.
Raised.
He feels his power surge up and can’t stop his siphons from flaring. Across the ring, Nesta’s head lifts.
Cassian forces the power back down. This is a fight he has fought numerous times, in one form or another, across five centuries. In council rooms, war tents, and training rings, against males who sneer and smile and use words like order and tradition and protection as if they are not just dressing chains in ceremonial cloth.
He is so tired of it that for a moment, the exhaustion feels physical, like a weight across his wings.
“You are training them to challenge their fathers, brothers, husbands,” Devlon says. “You think that will end safely?”
“I think teaching them to survive is safer than teaching them to be obedient.”
“You are not the commander of this camp, bastard.”
Cassian steps closer, the ground crunching beneath his boot. “No,” he says softly, his tone laced with violence. He’s well and truly itching for a fight, wishing Devlon would strike so he could unleash himself upon the male. “But I am the one your High Lord put in command of Illyria and its armies. And as your general, I am the one telling you this training continues.”
Devlon’s gaze flicks briefly toward the ring. Toward Nesta. It’s a mistake. Cassian feels the rage sharpen. “And if you or any male in this camp touches those females for daring to learn what they should have been taught centuries ago,” Cassian says, each word low and precise, “I will not need ancient custom to decide what happens next.”
Devlon’s face hardens. “You threaten your own people so easily.”
“I do when they threaten Illyria’s females.”
He’s met with silence. Devlon’s expression shifts, closing entirely. Cassian hates him for it.
“General,” Devlon says at last, coolly, “this camp has survived without you interfering with the education of its people for centuries. Without you bringing this witch into our midst.”
Cassian’s laugh is quiet. “Call my mate a witch again, and you will suffer the consequences.”
He turns before Devlon can answer.
By dusk, Cassian feels hollowed out.
The cabin he had built centuries ago sits at the far edge of the camp, far away from prying eyes. There are two rooms with uneven floorboards, because he hadn’t really known what he was doing at that point in his life. There’s a hearth, a large couch, a small kitchen and a bed piled with bear and wolf furs thick enough to survive Illyrian winter. Nesta had wrinkled her nose at the dust when they arrived and then proceeded to make the place habitable through sheer offended will. She had beaten rugs over the railing until Cassian feared for their structural integrity, bullied him into repairing the shutters and building her a reading nook, and she’d arranged their books on the uneven shelf beside the bed, somehow making the whole room smell faintly of a combination of her honeysuckle and his pine, peppermint tea and clean wool.
Home, part of him had thought at the time, watching her fold one of his shirts over the back of a chair and putter around the cabin.
Now, the fire burns low and quiet. Both their boots sit drying near the hearth. Nesta’s leathers hang over the back of a chair. A teapot steams faintly on the table. Someone, either Rhys or Az, has left a stack of reports on the table, and Cassian has been staring at the top page for twenty minutes.
Nesta sits in the corner of the couch, one leg folded beneath her, hair loose around her shoulders. She has changed into a wool dress and a heavy sweater that is almost certainly his, because it hangs off one shoulder and makes him want things he is far too tired for at the moment.
She turns a page in her book while Cassian stares at the report. The silence stretches, but Cassian can’t take in a single word. Eventually, he looks up to find Nesta asleep with the book open on her chest, her face softened in the firelight. He looks at her for a long moment, marveling at the fact that she sleeps so easily, so deeply now. She used to wake at every minor sound, whereas now she feels safe enough, trusts him enough, to give in to exhaustion. The thought is enough to make his ribs ache.
He quietly puts on his boots and shrugs into his jacket, careful not to wake her.
Outside, the cold hits like a slap to the face. Cassian inhales until it burns his lungs. The camp is mostly quiet at this time, the fires banked low and quiet voices muffled behind canvas and wood. The mountains rise black and jagged on every side of the clearing behind their cabin, their ridges silvered under the moon. Snow clings stubbornly to the higher slopes, though the clearing is covered in coarse mountain grass, bent flat by wind.
Above him, the sky is mercilessly clear. There are nights in Illyria when the constellations look less like distant lights and more like pinholes punched through the fabric of the world, some great fire burning just beyond it. Tonight is one of those nights. For a moment, the day drops away. Cassian exhales and something inside him loosens by one notch. He stands in the grass with his head tipped back, wings relaxed despite the cold, and scours the sky, finding the familiar constellations.
He’s not sure how long he remains there. It’s long enough for his cheeks to go numb and the wind to creep beneath his clothes. Long enough that his thoughts go back in time, to moments that might have happened or which he might have made up. It doesn’t matter, he can still feel the phantom warmth of his mother’s hand covering his forehead as she turned his face upward.
Look, little flame.
She used to call him that, that he does remember. She had several names for him. Little flame. My brave one. My heart.
Cassian closes his eyes.
The cabin door opens behind him, and he knows it’s Nesta before she makes herself known with words. He knows the tread of her footsteps, and recognizes the slight hiss of breath as the cold hits her. He hears the quiet scrape of the door closing again, and he knows he should turn and smile at her. He should make some ridiculous comment about her missing him so desperately she woke up from a perfectly good nap.
He does none of those things. Nesta crosses the clearing slowly, coming to a stop behind him. She drops a bundle of furs at their feet and circles her arms around him, resting her cheek between the base of his wings.
“You left,” she says softly.
Cassian keeps his eyes on the stars. “You were sleeping.”
“You could’ve woken me up.”
“Couldn’t. You looked too comfortable, sweetheart.”
Nesta hums softly. A moment later, she releases him to stand beside him, shoulder brushing his arm. She’s still wrapped in his sweater, the sleeves swallowing her hands. Her hair is a dark gold tangle over one shoulder. In Velaris, under faelights or city lanterns, Nesta can look carved from ice, untouchable and gleaming. Here, beneath the Illyrian sky, she looks warmer and wilder. Like she belongs.
She tilts her face upward and Cassian watches her instead of the stars.
“They’re clearer here,” she says.
“Yes.”
Nesta bows down and spreads one fur across the grass, then another over it, as if they’ve come outside for a picnic rather than whatever this is. He watches her hands move over the thick pelts, smoothing them with unnecessary precision, and something tender twists through him.
When she finishes, she sits and looks up at him.
“Well, what are you waiting for? Sit.”
Cassian blinks. “You came outside to order me around?”
“I came outside because my mate was standing in the cold looking like a tragic war hero.”
“I have never looked tragic a day in my life.”
“Sit down, Cass.”
He obeys because he’s not an idiot, whatever Azriel says.
The furs are cold at first, then warm beneath his weight. Nesta leans against him and for a while they sit shoulder to shoulder, looking upward. Wind moves over the clearing, lifting strands of Nesta’s hair. Cassian’s wing shifts by instinct, curving behind her back.
She notices and smiles softly. “Come here,” she says.
“I am here.”
“No.” She pats her lap. “Here.”
The wind whistles through the grass again.
“Nesta.”
“Cassian.”
“You want me to put my head in your lap.”
“An astonishing display of comprehension.”
“I’m too heavy.”
“You are not putting your entire massive body in my lap, just your head. Though I appreciate that the distinction may be difficult for you.”
A laugh breaks out of him before he can stop it. It’s rusty and embarrassingly close to something else.
Nesta’s expression softens. “Come here, Cass,” she says again, quieter.
And just like that, he’s powerless. In the end, he can’t deny his mate anything, no matter how hard he tries. He lowers himself carefully, stretching out on the furs until his wings settle awkwardly around him and his head rests in Nesta’s lap. For a moment, he is aware of every part of himself. The weight of his body. The sprawl of his legs. The breadth of his wings. For one strange, suspended moment, he feels absurdly large. Too winged, too muscled, too scarred, too much. The same old discomfort crawls up his spine: the knowledge that he was built for battlefields, not tenderness. That there is no graceful way to be held when one’s body has been made into a weapon.
Then Nesta’s fingers slide into his hair and the thought disappears. She starts at his temples, slow and careful, her nails grazing lightly over his scalp. Cassian’s eyes close of their own accord, his breath leaving him in a long, quiet stream. The day, the camp, the anger lodged beneath his sternum—they don’t vanish, but they recede. Nesta works her fingers through his wind-tangled strands, finding the leather tie that holds the top half in its knot.
“This is abhorrent,” she murmurs.
“I was under duress.”
“While tying your hair? Were you attacked by the concept of grooming?”
“Several times, yes.”
Her fingers still and she snorts. The sound is so private, so utterly hers, that Cassian smiles into the darkness.
Nesta tugs the leather band free. His hair falls loose around his face and over her lap. She slips the tie around her own wrist, possessive as a queen taking tribute. Cassian’s chest goes tight at the sight.
She resumes combing through his hair.
Above him, stars burn. Below them, the earth is cold and hard. Between the two, Nesta holds him as if there is nothing strange about it, as if he isn’t the sort of male who learned at a very young age that wanting comfort was an excellent way to be denied it.
“You look like you’ve melted,” Nesta murmurs.
“I’m relaxed.”
“You’re liquid.”
“Your hands are unusually competent.”
“That they are.”
He cracks one eye open and she looks down at him, the corner of her mouth curving. The old retort rises in him, filthy and easy, and the shape of it must show on his face because Nesta’s fingers tighten once in his curls.
“Behave.”
Cassian smiles despite himself.
Then she scratches her nails lightly over his scalp again, and all thoughts of cleverness depart him in a single humiliating rush. “Mother above,” he mutters.
Nesta’s smile deepens. She works slowly, fingertips pressing at his temples, nails dragging through the hair above his ears, thumbs smoothing along his brow. She separates the knots in his curls with a patience she rarely grants anything that can’t be threatened into obedience. Her nails scratch lightly again, and his wings slacken over the furs.
“Tell me,” she says.
His eyes open, and he’s immediately caught in her silver orbs, which are focused on him with that unnerving, beloved steadiness. Above them, stars burn in every direction.
“Tell you what?”
“About the stars.” His heart gives one hard, painful beat.
Nesta looks up again, fingers still in his hair. “You know all of them, don’t you?”
“Not all.”
“Liar.”
He huffs. “Most of them.”
“Tell me about most of them, then.”
The words should be easy. He has told these stories before, to young warriors on the night before their first battle and adolescents before their first Blood Rite, when they pretended not to be frightened. To Azriel once, centuries ago, when they had both been half-starved and too uncomfortable in the comfort of an actual bed, and actual house, while Rhys had been snoring like an over-privileged prince between them.
Cassian lifts a hand and points east. “That,” he says, softly, “is the Spear Maiden. She guards the eastern parts of the sky.”
The Spear Maiden stands bright above the ridge, seven stars forming a figure mid-throw, arm drawn back, spear forever poised to strike.
Cassian’s throat tightens.
Nesta’s fingers continue moving, slow and steady. She tilts her head back, studying the shape. “What is she guarding?”
“The Hearthfire.”
He raises a hand and points to the cluster near the Maiden’s feet, tight and gold-white, brighter than the surrounding stars. “In the old stories,” Cassian says, voice rougher than he expects, “a dark god came down from the mountains to extinguish the fire that breathes life into the world, kept at the village on the most eastern ridge of Illyria. According to the stories, if the fire dies, the world would die with it. The warriors were away to wage war on a faraway continent, and there was no one left to guard the village but children, elders, and a shepherd’s daughter with a broken cooking spit.”
Nesta’s hands pause. “A cooking spit?”
“It worked.”
“I think I like her already.”
“I thought you might.” His mouth curves. “She fought the god all night. Every time he tried to pass, she drove him back. By dawn, the gods were so impressed that they lifted her into the sky and gave her a true spear, so she could keep guarding the world’s light forever.”
“You stood like that once, on that battlefield in Summer, right before you took out that Hybernian commander.”
Cassian scoffs. “I didn’t look that heroic, Nes.”
“You did to me,” Nesta responds quietly. Cassian can feel the thing she isn’t saying, that she’d been as focused on him as he has been on her ever since first meeting her. That she had been frightened. Nesta is quiet for a moment, before speaking up again. “Does she ever rest?”
“The Spear Maiden? No.”
“That seems unfair.”
Cassian looks up at the constellation. “Most Illyrian stories are.”
Nesta hums, continuing her slow massage.
“More practically,” he says, “the Hearthfire is a guide. If you can find it, you can find east. If you can find east, you can usually find your way back to camp before the cold kills you. It’s the first thing a young Illyrian learns.”
“That sounds less heroic.”
Cassian hums in agreement and looks up at her. Nesta’s face is framed by stars, so painfully beautiful he has a faint urge to cry. The wind pinks her nose and her eyes are on the sky, but her hand rests lightly over his temple, holding him there as if it is the most natural thing in the world.
Cassian distracts himself by pointing north. “That’s the River of Souls.”
Nesta follows his finger. The constellation winds pale and silver across the dark, a serpentine band of faint stars curling toward the mountain peaks.
“It’s where the dead reside until they choose their final resting place,” he says. “Some become stars. Some return to the mountain as wind, or snow, or water. Drops in rivers. Frost on grass. Mist in the passes.”
Nesta’s nails still against his scalp.
“Do you believe that?”
He could make a joke. He almost does. “I don’t know,” he says instead.
Nesta waits for him to continue.
“I believe the Illyrians who fought beside me are up there somewhere.” He stares at the ribbon of stars winding through the sky until they blur slightly. “There are too many of them to think otherwise.”
Her hand slides from his hair to his cheek and his jaw tightens. “My mother too,” he says softly.
Nesta’s thumb brushes once beneath his cheekbone. He exhales slowly. “I used to think she became part of the wind, when I was younger. She was always cold while she was alive, and it seemed cruel that she would be cold after death too, but the wind can go everywhere. She never could, not with her clipped wings. The wind doesn’t adhere to camp borders and doesn’t have to listen to males telling it where it can go. The wind can go to the sea, if it wants to. It can’t be ordered around. I used to—” his voice breaks and he has to clear his throat before continuing. “Back when I was still a youngling, before I’d been taken away, I think I remember telling her that when my wings were strong enough, I’d carry her over the mountain peaks myself, and show her what a hawk would see. She’d laugh and say she’d settle for me landing without breaking my neck.” He huffs a soft laugh, and even he can hear the old pain underneath. “I never got to.”
Nesta’s face changes, and he looks at her just in time to see the quick, precise flicker of pain. “And now?” she asks.
His gaze shifts to the cluster of stars scattered along the River of Souls.
“Now I think she sits by one of those fires.”
Nesta’s fingers move into his hair again, slower this time.
“She told me some clusters of stars were campfires,” he says. “That the greatest warriors who died honorably sat around them telling stories, waiting for the ones they loved before choosing their final resting form. When I was little, I thought she meant males with siphons. Soldiers and heroes. The sort of warriors people sing about.”
“And now?” Nesta asks again, softly.
“Now I think she meant herself.” The words scrape out of him. He closes his eyes, fighting the sudden burn. For a moment he isn’t in the clearing. He is under threadbare blankets, small enough to fit against his mother’s side. Her hands are cracked from work, rough against his hair. Her voice is low so no one outside the tent will hear. The cold is everywhere, but so are the stars. She points through the opening in the hide and names them one by one.
The Spear Maiden.
The Hearthfire.
The River of Souls.
My brave one, she whispers. Look. As long as you can find them, you are never lost.
Cassian’s breath catches and Nesta hears it. She bends over him, her hair falling like a curtain around his face, and presses her lips to his forehead. His eyes burn, and he stops fighting it.
“Cassian,” she murmurs against her skin. He opens them and finds her face very close. He wants to pull her even closer. He wonders what he did to deserve her. To deserve such a beautiful soul tied to his, who understands his ugly truths without requiring him to explain. Who knows what it’s like for a place to feel safe and still not fit against the bruised, misshapen parts of the soul, and that gratitude and sorrow can live side by side in the same body. Who somehow, miraculously, understands him.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
“I want to.” The truth surprises him. He swallows. “I don’t know. I think I remember pieces of my mother, and that I may have invented the rest. The way she smelled like smoke, and her hair that had streaks of silver in it from working too hard. The feel of her hands, cracked at the knuckles from lye and river water. She’d rub tallow into them at night, hissing at the sting, and be back at the washboards by dawn. She used to tell me stories when I was cold, or frightened, or hungry enough to cry. I think I remember one time, when my wings ached from growing pains, the bones outrunning the rest of me, when she worked the sore joints with her thumbs and told me stories of the stars until I slept. Sometimes she sang, too, though she had a terrible voice.”
Nesta’s mouth tightens. “Cassian.”
“I forgot the tune. I’ve spent centuries trying to find it, listening for it. Once in Day, someone was humming at one of the market stalls and I stood there like a stunned ox for minutes, because I thought I’d found it, but it wasn’t right.”
“She sang to you.”
“Yes.” His soft laugh breaks. Nesta’s fingers tighten in his hair.
“She had a scar here,” he says, hooking his finger through the leather band around Nesta’s wrist at the exact same spot. “From a cooking knife. I remember that better than her face sometimes.”
Nesta’s expression softens into something almost unbearable.
“She never received a grave, you know. I… I did something terrible, when I found out about her death. I was fresh out of the Blood Rite and ready to show her my accomplishments. I was so excited. When I found out I’d never get to talk to her again I… I lost it. I razed the entire camp to the ground.”
“Cass—”
“Rhys and Az were there, trying to get through to me, but all I could do was sit in the ash of what I’d done. Rhys tried to find her grave too, but never did. Whatever they did to her, they never marked it. Someone told me they’d thrown her off the cliff. So I picked a star, and have been hoping ever since that she’d be there, at the campfire, when my time comes.”
“Which one?” Nesta whispers. Cassian points up towards the Hearthfire, to a small, bright star that’s peaking just above the mountain top, at the tail of the River. “That one. You can only see it when it’s truly dark. Last to appear, first to disappear.”
Nesta is quiet for a beat, letting out a slow breath. She kisses his forehead again, before she whispers, “You can’t see it in Velaris.”
Cassian closes his eyes. Leave it to his mate to read him so clearly. “No, I can’t.”
“Cass…”
“It’s fine, Nes.”
“What did she call you?” Nesta asks, changing the direction of the conversation.
He looks up at the sky. The answer sits behind his teeth like a live coal. “Little flame,” he says. “Mostly.”
Nesta waits and his throat works.
“My brave one, sometimes.”
Her fingers slip to the back of his neck.
“My heart,” he says, voice barely there.
Nesta goes still. The wind crosses the clearing and lifts the loose ends of her hair. Her hand remains warm against his neck. Cassian stares upward because if he looks at her, he’s pretty sure he’ll break.
“She loved you,” Nesta says.
He nods once. “She loved me.”
“She would be proud of you.”
The words land with brutal softness. Cassian shuts his eyes against the sudden rush of emotion. He didn’t know he needed to hear it, but still his instinct is to fight, to deny, to reject. “I don’t know that.”
“I do.”
“You never even met her.”
“No.” Nesta’s voice is quiet, but there is no uncertainty in it. “But I know you.”
His eyes open and Nesta looks down at him with all her steel stripped away. “Nesta—”
“I know you, Cass,” she says, brooking no argument. “And I love you.”
Cassian looks away. Nesta does not let him hide. Her hand slides along his jaw, not forcing him back but anchoring him.
“Today was hard. Devlon he… I’ve heard those arguments hundreds of thousands of times,” he says. “Tradition, and order, the importance of roles and balance, the old ways. It feels hopeless sometimes. Endless.” Cassian’s chest goes tight. “For a moment there, I wanted to kill him.”
“I know.”
“I have wanted to kill him for centuries.”
“I know.”
“I’m so tired of fighting the same fight.”
Nesta’s thumb moves over his jaw.
Now that he’s started, he can’t stop the words from flowing off his tongue. “I thought if I became strong enough, if Az, Rhys and I had enough power, if we made enough laws, won enough wars, tore down enough camp lords, things would change. Not everything at once. I was never that stupid. But enough.” His hand covers hers on his jaw. “And then I stand in that ring and hear the same words I heard when I was a boy, the same excuses, and for a moment I feel like I’m still there. Still in the mud, still a bastard.”
Nesta’s face changes with a mix of pain, fury and love, so bright it almost frightens him.
“You’re no longer that boy,” she says.
Cassian doesn’t answer.
She leans closer. “You’re not, Cass.”
The bond between them warms beneath his ribs.
“You survived,” Nesta says, voice fierce now, low and trembling at the edges. “And you came back stronger than every one of them. Not because you can kill every single one that dares to cross you, but because you can stand in front of girls who have been told all their lives to be small and teach them how to take up space.”
Cassian can’t speak. Nesta’s hand cups his cheek. “She would be proud of you,” she says again. “Not because of your titles or because of the battles you’ve won, and not because the males who once spat at your feet now have to listen to you. She would be proud because you are still kind, Cass.”
His breath leaves him unevenly, the slight hitch clear. Nesta bends and kisses him. She presses her lips to his softly, full of warmth, and Cassian forgets the cold, the day, the weight of five centuries pressing down on his shoulders. There is only Nesta, the sweet taste of her mouth, the scent of her skin, and the brush of her hair against his cheek.
When Nesta draws back, his hand has found her wrist, the one with his leather hair tie around it. He rubs his thumb over the band and she looks down. Something in her expression turns shy for half a breath before she lifts her chin, defiant as ever. Her fingers return to his curls, scratching lightly again, and his eyes half-close despite himself.
“Tell me another,” she says.
He huffs. “You are relentless.”
“Yes.”
“You should be inside. You’re cold.”
“I have furs and a personal furnace. That should be enough.”
“Emotionally fragile furnace.”
“My favorite kind.”
He smiles up at her, helpless and entirely caught. Then a gust of wind tears across the clearing and Nesta shivers. Cassian sits up immediately, wings flaring. “That’s it.”
“I’m fine.”
“You just shook like a leaf.”
“Hey!”
He shifts before she can argue further, drawing her towards him, arranging them so he sits behind her with his legs bracketing hers and the furs tucked around them both. His wings curve forward, blocking the wind. Nesta makes one half-hearted sound of protest, then settles back against his chest with a sigh that goes straight through him.
“There,” he murmurs against her temple. “Better.” He breathes her in for an indulgent second, relishing in the feel of his mate securely in his arms.
“You’re very pleased with yourself.”
“I’ve saved my mate from a breeze.”
“A heroic evening.”
He smiles into her hair.
For a while they sit like that, Cassian wrapped around her, Nesta’s hands resting over his forearms where they cross her waist.
“That one,” he says, lifting a hand from beneath the fur to point west, deciding to indulge her earlier request, “is the Mountain Lion. She hunts the Bone-Crowned King across the sky, signaling the changing of the seasons.”
Nesta follows his finger. “I already dislike him.”
“Excellent instincts.”
“What did he do?”
“He brings in winter every year.”
“Yes, I dislike him.”
Cassian chuckles. “According to the stories, he buried the valleys in snow and frost. Warriors tried to stop him, but every blade shattered against his crown, made entirely out of deer antlers. So a huntress followed him alone through the mountains. She changed into a Mountain Lion and scared him off, allowing spring to return.”
Nesta turns her head slightly. “See, her I like.”
“As you should. The gods made sure she kept her form so she could chase him forever. Every winter he returns. Every spring, she chases him off.”
“But she never kills him?”
“No.”
“Why?”
Cassian looks at the stars. “Because darkness cannot always be killed once and for all. It has to be hunted back every once in a while.”
Nesta’s hand tightens over his arm. Neither of them speaks for a long moment. They don’t need to. Cassian instead lowers his chin to Nesta’s shoulder and simply breathes. The bond glows between them, warm and golden.
“Did you come out here often?” Nesta asks.
“When I was young?”
“Yes.”
“Whenever I could.”
“Because of the stories?”
“Because of the quiet.” He watches the Hearthfire burn above the ridge. “Because if I looked up, I felt watched over. I could pretend the world was bigger than the camp.”
Nesta’s cheek brushes his jaw as she nods.
“It is,” she says.
His arms tighten around her.
“Yes.”
“Is that why you feel more at home here? Because you feel watched over?”
“When I can’t see the stars I feel… Untethered. I used to think that was why Illyria would always be home.”
“Is that still how you feel?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No, Nes. Now, home is something else entirely. Sure, I feel more at ease in Illyria. More like I belong. But I’m truly at home wherever you are.”
“Cassian…”
“It’s true, sweetheart. You are my home, my hearth, my love.”
Cassian catches her hand and brings it to his mouth. He kisses her knuckles, then the inside of her wrist just beneath the leather tie.
Nesta’s breath changes, and just like that, the air between them changes. It happens delicately at first. The grief remains, but warmth moves beneath it. Nesta’s eyes darken. Cassian feels the bond flare softly, not with urgency but with awareness. Of her hand in his, and his mouth against her skin. Of his wings curved around them, the thin membrane catching the wind.
Nesta turns around and sits up unto her knees in the cradle of his body. Her gaze flicks over his shoulder.
Cassian goes still. “Nesta.”
“Hm?”
“That’s not an innocent face.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
Cassian huffs. “Sure you don’t.”
Her mouth curves. Then, deliberately, while looking directly at him, she reaches past his shoulder and grazes the edge of his wing.
Cassian’s entire body locks.
The touch is feather light, barely more than the backs of her fingers along the membrane. Not enough to do anything except send a bolt of sensation straight through him, bright and vicious and sweet. His wings snap tighter around them in response. Nesta’s smile turns wicked.
Cassian’s voice comes out low. “Careful.”
She leans closer. “Or what?”
The words are breath against his mouth.
He forgets every constellation above them. Cassian catches her waist and drags her onto his lap. Nesta gasps at the sudden man-handling, then laughs once, quiet and delighted, before his mouth is on hers, not soft or careful this time. She meets him with equal force, hands plunging into his loose curls, nails scraping his scalp in a way that makes him groan against her lips. The sound disappears into her mouth, swallowed. Her knees bracket his hips and the leather tie on her wrist brushes his neck as she pulls him impossibly closer.
The sky wheels overhead.
Cassian kisses Nesta beneath it like she is the only fire left in the world, chasing her taste and her warmth to fill all the holes inside his soul that he’d just laid bare for her. She responds in kind, kissing him like she wants to heal him with her stubborn love. She tastes of peppermint and winter air. Her mouth opens beneath his, and the kiss deepens, turns slightly hungry, turns into teeth and breath and the low, helpless sound she makes when his hands slide beneath the hem of her dress up to the warm skin of her thighs.
His wings tremble around them. Nesta notices, and her fingers drift again. This time she touches lower, along the sensitive inner edge. Cassian breaks the kiss with a curse against her jaw.
Nesta laughs softly, breathless and smug. “I love doing that.”
“You are playing a dangerous game.”
She draws back enough to look at him. Her hair is wild from the wind. Her lips are swollen. Her eyes are bright with tenderness and love, both so open that something in his chest aches all over again. He presses his face against her neck, burrowing close and breathing her in.
“I love you,” she says, holding him to her. “You’re my home too.”
The words undo him more thoroughly than her hand on his wing.
“Thank you.”
“For what, Nes?” He looks up at her.
“For telling me,” she says, tracing the shape of his brows with one finger, the slope of his nose, the bow of his lip. “About everything.”
“You are the only one who I want to tell.” He nips at her finger and she huffs, flicking at his nose, missing him by a hair.
“Besides, now I know where to turn to when you annoy me to no end. Your mother will know what to do with you and guide me, I’m sure.”
Cassian stares at her, at the soft look in her eyes, the tentative teasing glint. He kisses her again, slower this time, deep and lingering, savoring. A kiss that still carries heat, but also the thing beneath it. The old, aching hurt, that she can’t completely heal for him but will try her hardest to do so anyway.
Nesta softens against him. His arms wrap fully around her. His wings follow, sheltering them from the outside world and every old ghost.
When they part, their foreheads rest together. Cassian’s breathing is unsteady. So is hers. Suddenly, he can’t help but laugh, feeling deliriously happy and wildly undeserving of her. He won’t question his luck, though.
“What?” Nesta whispers.
Another laugh moves through him, low and disbelieving. “Nothing, sweetheart.”
He nips her lower lip and she smiles. “Cassian.”
“I just love you, Nesta. So much.”
He presses one last kiss to her mouth, and another to her cheek, before he tucks her against his chest again. He looks up at the sky. Cassian will never feel entirely at home in Velaris, but here, with the Illyrian sky above him and Nesta safe and warm in his arms, he thinks home might not be a place at all. It is exactly this.