Nesta and the Mercenary

Chapter 1

My hands slackened at my sides. "You went after me," I said. "You went after me—to Prythian."

"I got to the wall. I couldn't find a way through."

I raised a shaking hand to my throat. "You trekked two days there and two days back—through the winter woods?"

She shrugged, looking at the sliver she'd pried from the table. "I hired that mercenary from town to bring me a week after you were taken. With the money from your pelt. She was the only one who seemed like she would believe me."

"You did that—for me?"

Nesta's eyes—my eyes, our mother's eyes—met mine. "It wasn't right," she said again. Tamlin had been wrong when we'd discussed whether my father would have ever come after me—he didn't possess the courage, the anger. If anything, he would have hired someone to do it for him. But Nesta had gone with that mercenary. My hateful, cold sister had been willing to brave Prythian to rescue me.

"What happened to Tomas Mandray?" I asked, the words strangled.

"I realized he wouldn't have gone with me to save you from Prythian."

—A Court of Thorns and Roses, Chapter 30

✦✦✦

As they sat around the fire for the quiet hour before bed, the faerie came.

Later, Nesta's memories of the encounter were crystal-clear, but frantic and scattered with her terror. She remembered the faerie's golden fur and elk-like horns and snarling voice. She remembered how Feyre tried to stave him off with a hunting knife. She remembered protecting Elain with her own body like a shield of skin and bone, despite her own fear, always putting Elain's safety above all else.

Most of all, she remembered her father telling Feyre to go, and live well, and never come back, because she was better than all of them.

She remembered how deep down, she agreed.

Then Feyre's eyes were on Nesta and she was saying, "Whatever you do, don't see Tomas Mandray again. His father beats his wife, and he's never done anything to stop it." Nesta set her jaw so her lips wouldn't quiver. "Bruises are harder to conceal than poverty."

Those were Feyre's last words to any of them as she left with the beast.

As much as the encounter had made her fear for her life, nothing could have prepared her for the growing horror she felt as she watched Elain and her father dry their tears and go from cowering in terror and sobbing with grief, to bland smiles and mindless conversation in mere minutes.

"To think we had an aunt on the island, all along. I do wish we could have met Aunt Ripleigh before she grew too ill," their father said, idly picking up his wood carving supplies.

Elain smiled dreamily. "I wonder what her mansion is like, or if she has any handsome bachelors for neighbors. Feyre is so lucky to get to travel, even if it's for such a sad reason."

Nesta looked from her sister to her father in disbelief as they chattered away about Aunt Ripleigh, who, as far as Nesta could tell, was a figment of their imaginations.

Elain continued, "Isn't it funny, how you wrote to our other relatives on the Continent so often for help, when we had one just a few days' ride away?"

"Feyre left with a beast, Elain. What the fuck are you two talking about?" she hissed.

"I'm sorry, Nesta, that you did not get to go," Elain said mildly. "But that's no reason to curse at me or call Aunt Ripleigh's coachman a beast. He seemed perfectly well-mannered to me. Are you on your cycle? We should have picked up some willow bark tea from the hedge-woman at the market."

Nesta sputtered, unable to form a response. She looked toward the door, which had been shattered by the faerie mere minutes before. The door was now whole, but it had a little round window that had not been there before. And all of Feyre's paintings were now missing from the wood.

"When did we get a window in the front door?"

"Hm?" her father said. "Oh, I suppose Feyre must have done that before she left, after the wind damaged it."

Her eyes fell upon Feyre's hunting knife, lodged in the cabinet that Feyre had painted with little blue flowers. She pulled the knife from the wood, then looked outside the bare front door's new window. It hadn't snowed since that morning, and there was not a footstep in the snow, not even from when Nesta had returned home an hour before.

And Nesta Archeron knew, with absolute certainty, that she was the only one left who knew the truth.

✦✦✦

Nesta got up early the next Sunday and marched into town alone, before Elain could wake and tag along. The market was still sleepy and most vendors were still arranging their wares in their stalls and wagons when Nesta arrived. But the person she was looking for was already there, leaning against the broken fountain.

"What will it cost for you to accompany me to the wall? No more, no less," Nesta asked the only woman of the handful of mercenaries who awaited work in the town square.

She was a mountain of a woman, perhaps in her late twenties, with scars through her eyebrow and along her forearm, chin-length dark hair, and thick muscles draped in silver fur—the very wolf that had earned Feyre her life sentence in Prythian. She narrowed her obsidian-dark eyes as she spoke in voice that was at once husky and girlish, "Have the Children of the Blessed brainwashed you into thinking you'll find a faerie husband in Prythian?"

"The Children are simpering fools," Nesta scoffed. "I'm looking for a human, and I won't expect you to go over the wall with me. Just get me through the woods."

The mercenary appraised Nesta from toe to head, her gaze lingering on Nesta's curves and once-fine wool dress. "It won't be cheap, what with rumors of faeries getting over the wall. For what exactly does a fine lady want to spend two days hiking through wolf territory?"

"I am no lady," Nesta said, steeling her spine to her full height, which was still several inches shorter than the mercenary. "Just tell me your price and I will pay it."

"You're the brassy-haired huntress's sister," the mercenary said, fingering the silver fur on her shoulders.

"They took her last week because of the very pelt you wear."

The mercenary looked at Nesta for a long moment, then clicked her tongue. "Forty silver. And you'll need more practical clothes, princess. Your boots are fine, but you need pants and warm layers."

Nesta counted out twenty silver. "Don't call me that. You get the rest when I see the wall. We leave tomorrow at dawn." It was more than she had expected, though she had not actually known what to expect. The silver, plus the cost of whatever clothes she couldn't salvage from Feyre's old hunting garb, would eat up the rest of the little fund from the pelts Feyre had sold. But if there was even half a chance of finding Feyre and rescuing her from the faerie beast who had stolen her and bewitched their family, it would be more than worth it.

"Whatever you say, princess."

"My name is Nesta," she said, frowning up at the other woman.

"The princess has manners! I'm Rab." The mercenary grinned, extending her hand. "It will be my pleasure to do business with you."

Nesta glared at Rab, but shook on their deal anyway.