The Prophecy - ACOTAR

Chapter 71

Astrid slid through the shadows until she stepped into the sitting area of the townhouse. She found Nesta, Amren, and Mor waiting there as she looked around for her mate. Mor directed her to the patio with a soft smile and a glitter of something in her eyes. Astrid didn't venture out to the patio though; she moved over to the wide window that overlooked it and the garden.

Her bare arms hung loosely by her sides as she stared out at her mate and sister. Azriel or one of the twins must have gotten Elain a cup of tea since she was sitting at one of the wrought-iron tables sipping on a cup. Azriel was sprawled across the chaise longue with his wings sprawled out while he flipped through a stack of papers.

As if he could sense her presence, Azriel looked up from his reports and any tension that had been marring his elegant features melted away as he smiled at her. Her heart warmed in her chest as she felt tears pooling on her bottom lids. She wasn't sad, so much had happened in the last few months, and she never could have imagined that her life would be like this. First, she had been estranged from Feyre, then it was Elain, and now she had them both back.

Her relationship with Feyre was so drastically different, she mourned the loss of her twin and she figured she always would, but this new path was special in its own way. They were still sisters, but they didn't know each other as well anymore. Before they had both known everything about the other, but now, there was so much that had happened, and it would be impossible for them to get back to what they had before. There were some things that Feyre would never understand about Astrid and if Astrid let it, that knowledge would hurt, but it was just the truth, and she couldn't let herself dwell on that. And as much as Astrid wanted to understand Feyre's perspective on things, she never truly could now that her mind was fully restored. She would never fully grasp how Feyre perceived things Under the Mountain, she wasn't used to the way of the Fae, so how could she possibly have understood what Astrid had been up to with Amarantha. The assumptions Feyre had made would always hurt, but the more they pushed forward, the duller that ache would become.

Astrid had never had a close relationship with Elain, and she understood that Elain also didn't really understand the ways of her race, but it didn't and would never excuse her continued flirtations towards Azriel. There was no excuse for going after someone else's partner when you knew they were together. It was something they were working out; Elain had apologized, and Astrid had welcomed her into her Court.

Astrid mouthed 'thank you' to him before she turned around to join the other three females in the sitting room. As she took a seat next to Mor on the couch, she glanced over at Nesta who was dressed in a simple black dress. A spark of unease slithered up her spine and she had to resist the urge to shiver. She'd had major fall outs with her other two sisters because of her Fae heritage and this world they all now shared. She didn't want the same to happen with Nesta, but she couldn't shut down the little voice that whispered what ifs in her mind. Something had happened with the other two, so surely something would happen with Nesta, right?

She shook her head slightly because that didn't have to be their truth. She wasn't prophetic so it didn't have to be true. They get to pick their own path, not her ill-founded anxieties.

"Aren't you going to be cold?" Nesta asked her with a hard expression, it was one she frequently wore these days. Astrid couldn't quite tell if it was because of everything that had happened, because she had been spending more time with Amren the past few days, or a mixture of the two.

Astrid looked down at her own gown. It was a velvet sapphire floor length gown that fully exposed her left leg to just below her hip bone, that way nothing important showed to others. The dress covered both breasts, but it had a V that dipped in between them, and it left her chest above them completely bare. It had off the shoulder straps that rested just below her shoulder joint and her feet were strapped into silver, open toed heels.