Chapter 1:
Originally I had written and posted this already, but I struggled so hard to write the next few chapters that I figured out it was probably because of what I established in these first few. So I scrapped those and wrote it again and it's entirely better. A good amount of different to re-post as opposed to just going back and fixing it.
So if you have read this once already, well it's better now. If you haven't read it at all: welcome!
Inspired by Billie Eilish's song "When I was older"
Her father once said Nesta had seen the whole world before she'd took her first breath, and she carried it all in her lungs. He said, it was why she could scream the loudest, why even in her silence he could hear her cries. It was so, so easy to feel the world rattle in her chest when she had carried universes in her throat and her father had fed her dreams.
Nesta had been so full of them as she grew. One minute a gasping toddler who yearned for stories about the worlds beyond, the next a young female who couldn't even begin to understand her own. His stories even now floated through her imagination. Past the morning beams of a winter skyline. As quiet as the waking trees.
But Nesta didn't feel fond warmth in her chest as she remembered, all of his words bound together in her own, neat library. She had already learned to resent them, to lock away each book and to label it contraband because Nesta had not been born the adventurer like her father had promised, with the soft beauty in her curious eyes. Nesta had been born the angriest sister—the Archeron with the iron rodded insults to match her steel-cladded heart.
There were no dreams for her, no stories to tell, no mountains to climb.
Nesta had never been anywhere. No place that she had not been forced to go… and every time she remembered his stories, her own lack thereof, she had the sudden urge to break things, and not just any things, but all of the worlds spoken through his jubilant voice.
Even now as she gazed at the crystalline blues and greys, she couldn't help imagining the mountains collapsing. Every house and every tent flattening beneath rock, indistinguishable from the destruction, itself. It would become one with the chaos and Nesta trembled at the vision. Not because her powers demanded her to enact a forgotten memory but for her father who'd seen more lands than Nesta had walked on.
What would he think of Illyria, where cold snipped at her cheeks and the wind barked? Would he rejoice in childlike splendor? Learn each name of every resident, every type of evergreen and conifer? Or would he think like she did—that the forest around them made good kindling? That the smoke that rose from chimneys was a taunt, a risen middle finger to death and chaos and shame.
What would she tell him she'd seen? Smoke wafting from chimneys. An endless amount of trees, that spanned so much of the horizon Nesta wondered how the ground wasn't suffocating. Would she tell him she'd only seen a tiny part of the world and already it was too vast to take in? That she had woken up to sunshine and instead of it being from her bedroom window, it was the light that shined from above. Light and clouds and not the ingrained lines of wood from a cabin she abhorred, but the wind that sang in baritones and did not take a breath.
Would Nesta tell him she sometimes dreamed strange dreams? Ones that felt so real she almost thought she had walked there, herself, talked herself through it, and did not notice until she was half a world away.
What a strange world it turned out to be. For the mountains danced here, and the wind sang, and the sun gleamed and glared at her menacingly and Nesta… swore she saw a mouth. The swollen light with its rows and rows of teeth, sharp and yellowed with age.
Did it watch her with its burning irises? Did it blink back with salacious, wide eyes curious as to what she offered—what she hid? Maybe it could look past the skin, see the bones beneath, hear the echo of a body that should have been filled, and full, and beating.
Nesta wanted to ask it so many questions as she stood there.
Did it see a high fae? A once-called witch? A shadow walking? A severe ache crawling—speaking on her behalf? Did it see a once-born human who'd never forgotten the taste of stale air and poverty?
Or did it only see a piece of her? An unshaded, pale sliver of the moon.
Perhaps—worst of all—did it see nothing? No one at all… Every good and decent thing so dismal it could be hidden in the deep folds of her dress—Someone whose father was in fact a liar and who had never really known what lied beneath her skin, but who had learned at the very least that she was indeed as wicked, as cruel, and as useless as she turned out to be.
Nesta narrowed her eyes at the small, sheltered city. Tents encroaching the center, like little cockroaches that kept running up the partitions, hiding in crevices of cracked drywall. She counted all of the houses, all of the training fields, all of the wings she could see with those fae eyes of her, from distances she could only begin to imagine.
To be burned or buried? Nesta so often wondered…
Sometimes, she wished to see it burn. All of the buildings. All of the tents. All of the people who did nothing but watch and wait and wonder. Something inside of her begged for it—hoped she'd hear the screams and smell the burning flesh.
But it was only just a wish. A dream. A forgotten memory. It was not real, just as seeing herself stand atop a mountain looking out to Windhaven was not real. Each heartbeat not living, each breath of air a figment of her sleepless, fitful nights. Just another book she'd lock away in the forbidden sections of her mind, where it would keep its company with her father's many lies and the stories she had yet to write herself.
This mountain was not real—its height, the spikes of rock nothing to be afraid of, even if falling meant dying a quick and sudden death.
Nesta was not afraid of death. It could no more kill her in her sleep than it could keep her from plummeting from the edge, the rock a putrid greying white.
What would it feel like to fall? She asked herself. Would wings sprout from her shoulders and catch her mid-air? Or would her blood drip from the jagged edges while Nesta reached for the sun?
Maybe she wouldn't fall at all, Nesta thought disappointedly, as she moved towards the ledge. Maybe she'd never even have the chance to regret the inevitable, or know what she'd call out for in the midst of shutting her eyes.
For when Nesta blinked awake she'd be back in the cabin, tucked into the heavy furs, the cold seeping into sleepy skin. Because all of it had not been real.
But Nesta stepped forward anyways. One foot and then another, until her whole body was ready for the air to catch her.
Nesta was not afraid of death.
After all, it was only just a dream.
XXX
Nesta pushed past the gaping double doors, the hinges swinging just enough that she heard one of the frame's edges bang on a table. The two Illyrians startled at the noise.
She did not greet the female who looked up from over a pan of sizzling sausage, who all but sneered as she made her way to the wall. The aprons dangling from the racks. She did not wave hello to the young Illyrian in the corner peeling potatoes with a bucket and a basket at her side. They were not her friends, and Nesta was not friendly. She did not care at all if they liked her or not.
Nesta watched as the female kept her eyes on the knife, quickly swiping the peel away as it landed in spirals on the table. Perhaps, the Illyrian was thinking of her through each slice, each hard hit to the cutting board one of her fingers.
Nesta grabbed an apron, tied it around her, and took a knife along with a basket of carrots. She could feel their eyes on her as she moved to face the wall. The jade-colored wallpaper with its baby breath print mockingly feminine as she settled into the routine.
Nesta fell into the methodical rhythm. The knife through the carrots, the carrots falling to the cutting board, her hand swiping the contents to a wooden bowl. It almost made her forget that there were people around her. Females whose numbers were added as the time moved still, so pointedly silent that Nesta gripped the knife tighter.
One crunch and then another. One snap and then an ill-timed bang.
It all sounded like bones to her.
She could imagine skin under her knife, fingers on the board, and hands, and legs, and… heads. So many bodies sliced through, cut finely, piled one on top of another in a large wooden bowl—
A sharp laugh broke out behind her and Nesta dropped the knife, the clatter making her jump out of her skin.
She looked down where the blade had landed and bent to retrieve it, but blood dripped from her palm. It splashed with red inky droplets on the floor.
Nesta cursed and ran to the faucet. The running water ice-cold as she plunged her hand in.
Unsurprisingly, when the blood had washed away, the wound had healed. Her skin as pure and untainted as it had been before.
As if no pain had existed at all.
As if there wasn't even a wound to begin with.
Yes, Nesta thought. She wished to see it all burn.
XXX
Let them be buried, Nesta decided as she stared into the night. Little eyes all over its dark body.
She hiked up the skirts of her dress, the ends of it wet and seeping.
Buried under snow, Nesta thought, because they had not shoveled at all.
The streets were winding and up hills and icy and they had not shoveled. And Nesta would spend the rest of the evening walking through the town, past the training fields, onto the forest trail to that blasted cabin she only wanted to see burn.
The night may have been boundless—limitless, but it was not beautiful like those rambling idiots had claimed. It was only cold. Empty and cold and Nesta stood in the middle of it all while it tried to eat at her and the ground tried to swallow her whole.
She squinted at the stars, glared at them with all her might. What mighty power had gifted her this fate? To be born cold and empty and angry. Cold and empty and angry. Cold and empty and angry. Everyday of her life.
Everyday it had been too dark to walk comfortably. Too quiet to not hear every snap of a twig or some howl from a creature Nesta could only walk faster from. It was never-ending, never changing. With the buildings that turned to houses and the houses that turned to tents and on and on. One day after another. One Nesta after the next.
She could not escape—and she'd not been born with wings. Hadn't been gifted them in the cauldron. It had taken too much from her and it had not given any back, and Nesta had… grabbed from it too. Though whatever it was it did not listen to her, did not keep her warm or safe or offer any comfort or freedom like wings might have.
Nesta was alone. That was another thing about the night, it made her feel lonely. More so than anything else.
But Nesta was not alone. She could hear the snap from the forest. A quick break of a limb. A soft rustle as she moved farther away and she hastened her steps.
Nesta saw nothing in the trees, veiled behind shadows and snow. She looked behind her, but she was too far and the night was too dark to see the soldiers pacing back and forth, guarding that village she hated so much. Not that they would help her if she asked.
Damn Cassian, for not having a house closer to town.
She crossed her arms, lifted her head, and walked straight ahead, never mind looking for things Nesta didn't want to be noticed by. Her heart might have been thumping widely had she not started to hum to herself, some tune she barely remembered.
She kept walking even as she heard the growl. The sniff. The roar. She kept walking because she was not afraid. She kept walking even as she heard the muffle of cantankerous bird calls.
But when she heard the tune she hummed, hum back at her, her stomach squeezed tightly in her fists.
Nesta was too ashamed to admit she wanted to run all the way back to Velaris.
XXX
"I made roast!" Cassian sang, in lieu of a greeting. He raised the dish towards her, his lilac oven mitts contrasting starkly with the black shirt pulled tight across his muscles.
He waited for her response, much like a dog, Nesta thought. Too loud, and too eager to please, and it had taken a long time for Nesta to not blink outright at the display. Cassian had certainly acted different in his own home. Nesta still wasn't sure if she cared for it or not.
"I'm not hungry." Nesta declared. Her voice tired and cranky and just a bit wound from running half-way up the trail. Cassian merely set the dish in the center of the table, moving to take another pan out of the oven.
"Come on, sweetheart." He said, and Nesta rolled her eyes at the term.
"Roast is your favorite. I even made those baby carrots you like. The ones drizzled in glaze…" He enticed moving the carrots around her and away again, so she'd get a whiff of something hot and steaming.
Nesta merely took off her scarf, her hands pink as she pulled off her gloves and she could smell the food of course, without the flourish. The sweet and the savory and the scent of fresh bread.
It made her want to vomit.
It probably would have too. She could barely muster two spoonfuls on occasion without having to run to the bathroom. Though that didn't stop Cassian from trying… or insisting.
Nesta wondered what he thought of the whole ordeal—if Cassian had called her attention-seeking behind her back and was now indulging her. The thought made her want to take the ladle and smack that pretty head of his.
"Wash up." He commanded and Nesta squinted at the tone.
"You have to be cold." Cassian elaborated at her look, his eyebrows raising in mocking innocence.
She indeed was… But she was always cold, and the fire had not offered warmth when it only sounded like bones. Everything bones and blood. Every day ice and emptiness.
She noted the concern flash between heavy lashes, but Nesta didn't offer him a response and only gave him a blank stare.
"I'm going to my room." She settled. No room for any questions or pestering. She was too tired to argue with him and maybe Cassian had seen it too, because he put down the dish without saying a word.
She threw her bag on the side table, peeled her coat off, stuffing it into the armoire, and plopped on the bed. A headache already forming as she closed her eyes.
Sleep would come, Nesta knew. The prospect didn't offer any relief. She never had trouble sleeping. It wasn't what worried her.
It was what came after the sleep…
The moment Nesta opened her eyes again, who knows what she'd see.
AN:
I will be fixing chapter 2, and then posting chapter 3 since that's mostly done and then we'll see how far I get before the next book comes out and I lose all inspiration to write this fic!
Comment and favorites always welcome!
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