A Court of Ashes and Daybreak

Nesta

Whilst Cassian was already two hours into the Illyrian mountains, the reason for his heartache was only just waking up. I fought my eyes open and blinked blearily at the clock on the mantelpiece. Light was streaming into the room, despite the layer of dirt across the windows, reflecting off the clock to land on my pillow. Fuck. It was half past 11.

I crawled from beneath the covers, and was instantly rewarded by stabbing pain through my forehead. I struggled to keep down the remnants of last night's dinner, swearing again at the all too obvious signs of a hangover. My room was freezing and I shivered as I stumbled across the floor to my wardrobe. I tripped over my cloak, discarded from last night, and clung to the wardrobe handle. 

Half past 11. I'd promised to meet my sister, Elaine, for early lunch at 12 and it took 20 minutes to walk across Velaris. If it had been anyone else, I would've just stayed in bed, but I owed it to Elaine. Besides, I thought with a grimace, if I didn't, my lovely younger sister, Feyre, would come and find me and drag me, kicking and screaming, to meet Elaine, whether Elaine wanted to see me or not. Or, more likely, she would send her annoying bat-winged boyfriend or one of his equally annoying bat-winged henchmen to do it. Damn me. I ignored the way my tired heart gave a little hopeful twitch at the thought of one of those annoying bat-men. I pushed all thoughts of Cassian deep down to the bottom of my soul.

I pulled on a deep blue cloak, shutting and locking the front door, scrubbing at my clothes hastily to get rid of a large stain of cheap ale from last night's tavern.

Pretty much everyone else in Velaris would've met at least someone that they knew on the 20 minute walk, but no-one approached me or called my name. I was glad. I didn't want to be part of my little sister's perfect city, with it's perfect people and it's perfect rulers (aka my sister and her perfect boyfriend) (although she doesn't call him her boyfriend. They say that they are "mates" or some other bull that makes it sound like it was meant to happen. The very same "mates" bull that was messing around with Elaine.)

I reached Feyre's townhouse as the watery spring sun reached the top of its daytime arc. I didn't go in but instead hurried around the wrought iron fence to the kitchen door. Elaine was standing there, waiting to welcome me into her kitchen, a place of newly baked bread and the smell of hot stew. She pulled out a wooden chair beside the scarred kitchen table. I left my cloak by the door and slipped down to sit beside my sister. Feyre's two half-wraith twin maids (and Elaine's friends) left as silently as always, leaving us alone.

"How are you, Nesta?" Elaine asked softly.

"I'm fine," I told her, stretching my tired lips into a smile. "How are you, how is the garden?"

Elaine's face broke into a happy smile at the mention of her garden, but her chocolate brown eyes remained worried, locked on my face.

"It's good, I've started germinating a few seeds in pots in the kitchen windowsill, and the apple tree is just starting to bloom. I've still been busy with weeding and taking off the covers from the less frost-hardy bushes, and Azriel was helping me make a new raised bed."

I froze as Azriel's name dropped from my sister's lips. Elaine looked round, startled, her eyes big and brown and worried. Azriel. The massive, hulking spymaster, dressed in spiked armour, wreathed in shadows, impossibly cold, impossibly handsome. The spymaster who coordinated all of the night court's spies and informants. The spymaster who looked at my sister like she was worth a million jewels. The brother of Cas- no.

I was not going there.

She looked at me, worry showing in the slightest tremble of her lip. I pulled on yet another smile, trying not to think of all the reasons that Azriel should stay out of my sister's life. I'd lost one sister to the fae, I wasn't going to lose another. And I definitely wasn't ever going to lose myself.

No, don't worry about Azriel, I counselled myself, he's been pining after Morrigan like a lost puppy for 500 years. Your sister isn't going to change that in barely over five months. Especially when she still cries at night over the human man whose iron engagement ring she still wears, the man who threw her out after he saw the fae she'd been forced to become. Forced. Just like me, forced into a strange new body of a species that we'd grown up being taught to fear, who captured and tortured us, who made sure that we would never be welcome in our own homes again. Then happy little Feyre came down and tried to slot us into her happy little world. No way. Not me. Never.