This chapter is early to celebrate 8,000 followers on Rhysand-vs-Rowan Tumblr

Chapter 3

Rhys threw up a glamour around himself and Feyre so that Nesta couldn't see him take her hand. She was trembling- but from what he could only guess. Seeing Nesta again, or the possibility that the Cauldron was in Prythian once more?

Azriel was gone from the throne room for only thirty minutes. Whatever Nesta did to convince him to bring her meant the spymaster saw merit in her words. He wouldn't bring her to the Hewn City otherwise.

Still, Nesta hardly looked like someone who could be taken at their word. Even if Rhys didn't know her he would be skeptical. She was barely able to stand, fever burned her cheeks and yet the rest of her was corpse-pale. She'd lost more weight than she could afford, stunk of sweat and earth, and was in stained clothes that looked… damp. She might believe whatever she'd seen was real, but that didn't necessarily mean it was.

Adding back into the equation her history with alcohol abuse and presumed sobriety since disappearing, it was equally possible that Nesta was hallucinating or misunderstanding whatever it was she might have seen.

But was Rhysand really prepared to risk the safety of Night and Prythian as a whole on this being some misunderstanding?

Hidden by the glamour, he looked to Cassian. He was staring straight ahead, eyes locked and jaw set. No emotion or recognition betrayed him. At his side, Mor had a comforting hand on Cassian's shoulder and open hostility on her face. If anyone knew what he was feeling, it would be her.

Nesta hadn't noticed the female on the other side of the throne yet. Elain's kohl-lined eyes were filled with a deep, aching sadness. She fidgeted in place, sending flickers of light off the crystals in her black gown. Carefully prepared blossoms of nightshade were braided into her long hair, and a petal fell as she looked back at Rhys. The way she held his gaze told him she saw through the glamour as she silently begged him to be kind.

"Azriel, go to Miryam and Drakon. Verify that the Cauldron has been taken. Find out when, how, and by whom. Be quick." Azriel nodded once and vanished. To Nesta, he simply said, "Show me."

He felt her icy shields crumble and Rhys entered the inky depths of her mind. He didn't look further than the image she hauled up, didn't want to know her feelings or hear her formulate more excuses for her conduct. The mind of Nesta Archeron was a dark, vile place he couldn't escape fast enough.

Rhys watched through her eyes as she crossed the threshold of trees onto a rocky ledge. He saw the valley below cloaked in mist. A breeze stirred the air, the haze shifted, and the army came into view.

At least three hundred beings stalked through a rough camp. Paths between rising tents formed a precise grid through which males, females, and species of beast he could only guess at roamed. An aura of might hung over the camp, a world of power contained by the unnatural mist that cloaked them.

But where the various paths combined, at the epicenter of the camp- a massive gray cauldron, bubbling and foaming. No part of it resembled the Cauldron Rhys died repairing, but the power whispering from it and the sheer force that struck Nesta until the mist finally hid it from sight- there was no doubt they were cut of the same cloth.

'Show me where you were,' Rhys whispered into Nesta's mind. She showed him the path she'd taken over the mountains, and the distances traveled both there and back again. Eleven days into the mountains and she was exhausted, but still well within her right mind. The illness was likely in her body by then, but it couldn't have taken hold yet.

Rhys asked directions for Cassian's sake as much as his own assessment. So his friend wouldn't have to address Nesta directly to find out where he had to fly. Rhys turned on his throne to face his friend, "West from Devlon's camp for two hours, then southeast for three. Circle the third peak from the left and turn twenty degrees. Do not engage them under any circumstances."

Nesta turned quickly, as though she might say something, but Cassian was already gone. Only Mor's hate-filled eyes met hers. She was the one who listened to his angry ranting without comment, and she was the one who knew better than any in the Inner Circle how deeply Nesta's betrayal had wounded him. From the beginning Mor knew Nesta would break his heart, but Cassian couldn't resist sticking his hand into the flame anyways.

"You will stay in the Hewn Palace while we figure out if what you saw was even real," Feyre said. "We'll give you food, clothing, and a place to sleep, but you are not our guest. You cannot leave your suite or send for anyone. Visitors may seek you out if they care to see you, but that is all."

To spare Cassian, Feyre would not let her sister draw him in again. Any notes she slipped out into the hallway would go straight into a fireplace, and Nesta couldn't climb the thousands of stairs necessary to reach the Palace of Nightmares on top of the mountain.

Rhys tightened his grip on Feyre's hand. Through the bond he could feel her rage and grief. There was more she wanted to say- tried to say- but Rhys stole away her voice before she could cross that line. Feyre shot him a wrathful glare, but he knew if those words left her lips she would regret them forever.

For his mate's own sake, he betrayed her trust and love.

'I no longer recognize you as family. Any future claims of kinship will be considered fraud and slander. You will be compensated for your warning as any stranger would be. On pain of banishment from Night itself, never show yourself here again.'

As a youngling, Rhys read a poem that said anger was just love disappointed. Nesta had given Feyre a lifetime's worth of disappointment to fuel her wrath.

His mate could hate him for silencing her, but Rhys wasn't about to let her hate herself for cutting away her own blood. Besides- there was a void in Nesta's eyes he'd seen in Feyre when she was at her worst. Elain saw it before anyone else, and he wasn't entirely sure Nesta could survive the blow of estrangement in her condition.

Rhys nodded to Nuala and Cerridwen, waiting in the shadows. The led Nesta from the room and only when they were gone did he release Feyre's tongue.

"How dare you," she spat. "Find somewhere else to sleep tonight," she got up and stormed out of the room with Elain hot on her heels.

Rhys slumped in his throne and made no move to speak or strike down the black wall that kept Kier and his loathsome ilk at bay.

Mor came to pat his shoulder on her own way out. She would spend the night waiting for Cassian's report and standing by to offer her friendship now that his nightmare was back. If he needed to talk, she would be there. If he needed to play cards and drink until he blacked out- well, she would be there for that too. Cassian did as much for her after Kier mutilated her.

"Another point to Hurricane Nesta," Rhys muttered to himself. "And another loss for everyone else."

Nesta was led to a wing of the Hewn Palace, not the residence atop the city. That was for honored guests, not strangers.

She knew Rhys did something to seal Feyre's lips. She also knew what he probably prevented her from saying.

The chambers were sparsely decorated, but nice all the same. A bathing room with a fine marble tub and privy, a bedroom with a wardrobe of basic gray clothes, and an impersonal selection of Court histories on a squat bookcase. Nothing more or less than one might expect in a modest inn.

Nesta told herself she didn't care, but something was broken inside her. It shattered when Devlon told her Cassian watched her walk out of camp and she realized he'd never been looking for her. No matter how many people she alienated, no matter how many walls she put up, the only constant was Cassian.

Was Cassian.

For the first time in over a month Nesta drew a bath and scrubbed herself clean, but she couldn't appreciate the water's warmth or the perfume of soaps. All she could do was look back on her time in the camp and everything she'd done to push Cassian away.

How she broke his relentless need to save her… without even realizing how desperately she needed to know he was still trying.

When did it begin? When did she turn family and friends into strangers?

'They were never my friends though,' she thought. 'I never let them come close. Not even Amren.'

Once upon a time Feyre brought Rhys, Azriel, and Cassian to meet her- to perhaps save the entire continent from war and how did Nesta greet her?

'Not in my house,' she'd declared.

My house. As if she did anything to earn the wealth Tamlin showered on them. As if she were the one who sacrificed everything and walked off to her doom not once, but twice as a mortal while her sisters stood and watched.

And as they ate, she attacked Feyre for being unable to eat mortal food. The sister who once chewed strips of bark because there wasn't enough to go around.

Nesta looked back with a sober mind for the first time in years and weighed her sins against every slight her youngest sister committed. Nesta told herself time and again those insults were earned but-

For keeping the Archerons alive, clothed, and fed, she'd only made Feyre's life harder.

For showing disapproval at what even Nesta knew was a disastrous and abusive relationship with Thomas Mandray, she called her sister a slut in front of their father.

For surviving the worst of Prythian and returning changed, Nesta offered open hostility to both her sister and Feyre's saviors.

For giving herself to Tamlin that everyone else might escape Hybern- and for returning from his viper pit of a Court with information to save Prythian- Nesta offered only open hostility.

And for every attempt Feyre made to rescue her from her isolation- every offer of a job within the Court, invitations for trips or meals, and any attempt she made to break through- Nesta spat in her face

When Feyre invited her to Solstice- both a holiday and birthday- Nesta demanded payment. That was her greatest shame- and one she could never forgive herself for.

No, Nesta realized at long last. Feyre wasn't right to send her to the Illyrian Steppes to try and find her peace. She should have given up and cut out the rot in her life much sooner. She should have thrown Nesta to the wild and wolves while they lived in that cabin.

As broken as Nesta was, Feyre had been too. How did she find the strength to keep walking with a sister-sized noose around her throat?

Nesta emptied and refilled the tub over and over again as she bathed, but she couldn't warm herself. Maybe it was the fever, the hunger, or exhaustion, but she felt something in the heart of her darkness that grew just a bit clearer as she counted her sins. She couldn't make herself stop- not until it was exposed.

"Are you ever coming out, or are you trying to see if you can soak off boot-rot?" A female voice called from the sitting room. It was old and sharp- not Feyre, Elain, or Amren, but familiar still.

"Coming," Nesta answered reluctantly. She didn't want to speak to anyone. She wanted to be miserable and alone, it was what she deserved.

"Put on the clothes outside the door," the woman instructed.

With a sigh, Nesta pulled the drain plug and climbed out of the tub. She toweled dry before squatting by the door and cracking it just enough to retrieve a thin robe and knee length shift.

"Do you consent to a full exam?" the woman asked.

Nesta's breath caught. She felt bad enough, did she need to add humiliation?

"Do what you want," she left the door cracked as she pulled on the clothes and picked at the tangled mess of her hair.

Three glass cups were placed on the floor just inside the door, "Urine, spit, and shit."

"I'm only filling two of those," Nesta growled in response.

"Whatever you can give me."

Madja didn't look at the female when she finally emerged. Just as well- Nesta couldn't look at her either as she handed over two of the requested samples.

"Is this how guests are usually treated? Does everyone get a private physician?" Who broke Feyre's decree? Elain? Cassian? Feyre herself?

"I was asked to look over an ill female in an Illyrian Camp," Madja said as she portioned the samples of spit and urine into smaller containers on the coffee table. From a black bag the crone fished out various chemicals and began to add small drops of them to the fluids.

Azriel had summoned her then, and probably stopped to winnow her into the Court of Nightmares before heading to Cretea. The hope that had blossomed in Nesta's chest faded away.

"I will be honest- I've heard a few things about you," Madja stirred the mixes with over a dozen glass pipettes, then studied the ones that changed color. She nodded to herself, "Better than I was expecting."

"What? What does that mean?" Nesta pointed to a vivid blue sample.

Madja answered even as she produced a notebook and wrote down her findings, "Liver condition is bad, but not beyond help. Your kidneys are fine, but you are dehydrated and in sore need of iron. You have three intimacy-related illnesses, but nothing I can't fix. There's been a bit of an outbreak in the Velaris slums, so I still have some extra herbs laying about. Judging by that," she pointed to a now-red sample of urine, "you have worms."

"Why did you say you've heard about me?" Nesta wrapped her arms around her too-thin frame, feeling naked.

Madja smiled kindly, "When males enjoy the pleasures of the flesh, their manhood is confirmed. Females are shamed for it. When someone is found to have intimacy-related illnesses, I ask for a history of partners. Your name has come up a few times. There is nothing to be ashamed of in an anonymous fling, so long as you take care of yourself and participate for the right reasons. You, Nesta Archeron, do not take care of yourself and have all the wrong reasons."

"I don't-"

"Suicide by neglect," Madja pointed to the couch. After a moment's hesitation, Nesta sat, "I've been trying to see you for more than a year, but every time your sisters tried to make appointments, you didn't come."

Missed visits to Elain and Feyre, even Amren. Nesta thought they were trying to force her into something- was it a meeting with Madja?

"Tell me how it began," Madja ordered as she grabbed a comb, gloves, and a bottle of something green. She moved behind Nesta and the girl braced for hands on her still-tangled hair.

Sick, hungry, exhausted- Nesta's heart couldn't muster the energy to turn back into stone. If it wanted to bleed, she'd cut it wide open.

She told Madja everything. The sins she'd counted, how the silence devoured her after she took Hybern's head, how she drank to escape and embrace the cold in turn, and how even sex couldn't jarr her from her prison. It was just more… nothing. She told the wizened old woman how much she hated her father, Feyre, and everyone who'd decided she was Cassian's before she even had a chance to figure it out… and how much she needed him to forgive her now.

As Nesta spoke, cried, and ranted, the thing at the center of her tempest made itself known: What she hated more than anything else in creation was herself.

She was never the lady her mother worked so hard to sculpt, she wasn't the heroine from one of her storybooks, she wasn't even a passable sister anymore. Everything Nesta had ever tried to become, and everything she thought she should be, she simply wasn't.

A failure. From the soul out.

Madja picked through her scalp in silence, untangling hair and removing lice as she went. She let Nesta talk, come to her own realizations, and at long last fall silent.

"You know about the mirror Ouroborous?" Madja asked after a few minutes.

"Yes." The thing that drove fae insane. It showed the essence of a person, the truth of who and what they were.

If Nesta looked into the mirror, she knew what she would see. Something small and repulsive, a parasite that fed to the detriment of the host. Leech, tapeworm, tick- maybe she would even be revealed as one of the lice Madja was working to remove.

"Some people are cursed to know the world as Ouroborous sees it. Everything lays bare, free of embellishment or glamour, but they still try to understand from the eyes of someone unburdened by that clarity. A fairy tale tells you about charming heroes and worthy heroines, but you will never find such simplicity in the real world."

Madja sighed as she finished her work, "Nesta Archeron, you are more than what those young eyes can see right now. No one will ever be perfect, and you only hurt yourself trying to be. You're a good person at your core."

"No I'm not."

"Not in those dark days, and not when you walked out of that camp, but our lives as Fae are long. It's never too late to change your legacy."

"I've spent my entire life hurting anyone who tried to care about me."

"And today you came back to save them." Madja removed her gloves and patted Nesta's cheek, "It sounds to me like today you did something to show you still care about them, and every day you were cold and exhausted in those woods for their sake, you continued to do better than the day you left."

"They won't see it that way."

"They will once the sting fades, don't give up." She released Nesta and went back to sorting through her supplies for the next part of the examination, "Give yourself some credit Nesta. You've never been crueler to anyone than you are to yourself."

"I can't change anything, it's too late," she murmured.

"Are you here?"

"Yes."

"Are you willing to climb mountains and brave monsters to protect them?" Nesta thought for a long time before nodding. "Then it's not too late at all."