A/N: Thanks so much for everyone who favorited and followed! Enjoy:)
Her predicament is not new, but it's still a surprise for Nesta when she realizes if she wants to leave, she can simply go. She defers to no one, and hasn't for a while, but her lack of communication with Elain means something else: no one is going to miss her while she is gone.
She'll have to be quick. Feyre will notice, eventually, but there isn't anything odd about the pair of them not seeing each other for a week or so. And since there isn't anyone randomly, infuriatingly checking up on her anymore...
It stings more than she admits to herself.
But no matter. It's almost all behind her now.
With clothes packed enough for fortnight (she's certain she won't be gone that long, but it never hurts to be prepared), Nesta boards her carriage and waits.
A quiet, busy sort of air about her when she walks the streets of Velaris is enough to ensure no one try and talk to her, but evidently, the same is not promised for carriage rides. She supposes the only task she has to pretend to focus on is reading a book, and that's not enough to deter the passengers from incessant conversation.
"Are you traveling, Lady?" one asks her.
Obviously. "Yes," she answers.
"Will the High Lady be joining you?"
Ah, that didn't take long. She supposes she should be pleased-she can answer honestly, the faeries will all be disappointed and bored, and they'll leave her alone.
Alas.
"So are you in need of an escort, Lady?" a pretty female asks eagerly.
"No," she says, sharply. "Thank you," she adds.
"Are you traveling about the Court, Lady?"
"No," she says, hoping she sounds cryptic enough that they think they are not allowed to question further, "I have business elsewhere."
Delighted looks are exchanged amongst the young faeries, excited to have caught real Night Court fieldwork in the act.
Something moves inside of her, but Nesta's not sure what. She's not jealous, of course. She's never desired a career in politics in her life, she definitely doesn't want to start one now under Rhysand, and she certainly doesn't care enough for the well being of the people of this land to do so.
She's angry, she decides. Angry that these people are so taken with the Inner Circle.
Yes, that must be it.
There are magical checkpoints she passes, once she shows her papers and proves she's allowed to travel through five other Courts to get to Spring-most people on the journey seem to depart into Dawn and Summer, and by the time Nesta reaches the southernmost part of Prythian, she is alone.
"Good afternoon, Lady," the footmale says, bidding her goodbye. He and the carriage are gone before she can answer.
There's no point in dallying any longer, so she sets off on her way.
Spring is not as constructed as Night. There are no roads here-at least, not in this part of the Court-and Nesta can't see any buildings at all. Just a dirt path she walks along, with endless, lush green hills, rolling on either side of it. Thick-stemmed flowers of all kinds dot the grass, with fat bees fluttering from one to the next. Songbirds whistle to each other in the fruit trees. The air is almost dizzyingly sweet.
Nesta likes it, she decides. The quiet, the warmth. But probably not too many libraries.
She's not wearing a watch, but she guesses a half an hour of her walk has passed when the first sight of civilization comes into view. A metal gate in the middle of a dying hedge, encircling a mansion-an estate. White marble, with any number of ornate windows and patios and balconies.
Beautiful, but eerie, for every step she draws closer, the quieter it grows. There's not the barest trace of people inside, and even the birds can't be heard up the steps at the gash-ridden oak door.
She knocks, more out of habit than anything else. Of course, no one opens it, so she pushes it on her own.
Black and white checked flooring spills out to several doors and a vast staircase. Sunlight falls limply onto nothing, for any decor has been shoved away.
A door opens on her right. Nesta turns.
They only stare at each other for a minute, not speaking.
Tamlin looks worse than she remembers. Same golden hair, same gem-green eyes, but...thinner, perhaps, in his cheeks. Paler. Hollow.
Quite the same image she imagines others see when she looks at her, she realizes with a start.
"What are you doing here?" he asks, voice...devastated? But why?
Oh, she says to herself, the thought hitting her, he thought I was Feyre.
"You owe me a favor," she says.
He raises an eyebrow.
"Because this is your fault," she explains. "My...Hybern. So you owe me."
"Do I?"
She doesn't back down from his stare, only nods once.
"And who else do you blame? Or am I the only one?" His words are careful but she doesn't understand what he wants.
"You're all to blame," she says. "You're all murderers. None of you did a good enough job keeping humans safe. It's not my place to judge which of you is the most monstrous. I'm content to hate all of you quietly."
Tamlin chuckles-low, dark. "Not your place to judge?"
"Do you deny your role in my murder?" she snaps.
The shadow-grin on his face fades. "No," he says.
"Then help me."
His shoulders tense. "What do you want?"
Nesta inhales deeply. "You struck a deal with him...to undo the mating bond. Between my sister and Rhysand."
Tamlin stops breathing.
"I want to know how to do that."
He doesn't answer her. Stays silent for a full minute, before she presses on.
"Tell me how to do that."
"You're trying to-destroy-whose?" He is desperate, searching.
Her jaw clenches tightly. "That doesn't concern you."
"You can't."
"You thought it could be done, obviously. That's why you were willing to give us to Hybern-"
"I didn't-"
"-so just tell me."
He glares at her, and Nesta wonders, briefly, if she should be concerned. But she's too angry to be nervous. Her world has been thrown off its axis too many times now and this is something she knows she can fix. She has to.
"Don't you think," he says, through gritted teeth, "if I knew of any way to undo a mating bond, I would have done it myself?"
Nesta doesn't bother stifling her eye roll. "But how did you think he was going to do it?"
"I don't know." He looks to the side, to the nothing that lays beyond the manor. "I don't know what I thought."
Nesta does not have time for his introspection nor does she care. She puts her hands on her hips. "Well, who can I go to, then?"
Tamlin looks at her, surprised, as if he'd forgotten she's still here. "I suppose...you can catch a Suriel."
A Suriel. Nesta remembers talk of one, during the war. Feyre had gone to find one. But that one is dead now, she knows.
"How do I do that?"
Tamlin loosens a frustrated sigh. "If I catch one for you, are we even? You'll consider our score settled?"
Nesta scoffs. "I will never consider our score settled. But rest assured, if you catch me this Suriel and it tells me how to undo a mating bond, I will never have any reason to come to Spring again."
His head tilts as he considers her words. "Fine," he says, grudgingly. He stalks past her, out the door and down the steps. "Follow me."
She does, off the path and into a deceptively quiet grove that leads into an even more forbidding forest, and she doesn't know for how long-she really should get a watch-until he finally holds out his arm and says, without turning around, "Wait here."
He disappears into a thatch of shrubbery. Again, she wonders if she should be nervous. Tamlin's a High Lord-this land's High Lord. Surely, if she's here with him, nothing will attack her.
And there is also the matter of...herself.
A sharp hiss escapes the spot where Tamlin crossed into, and then he barks out, "Come here!"
Moving a fair bit of bush aside, Nesta steps into a small clearing. There's a quiet stream. Tamlin, beyond it, with his arms wrapped around...a Suriel.
Hunched over, beneath a robe that might have once been very finely embroidered, the creature looks up at her with eyes filled only with whites.
"For this you have caught me, High Lord?" it-he? She?-says, its cold voice making her flinch.
Tamlin rises, letting go of the Suriel. "She has something to ask you," he says flatly.
The Suriel doesn't run once he lets it go-scared of him or her? It only straightens out the collar of its robe with long gray fingers that appear as though they have been broken more than once. "What is it, Eve-daughter?"
It knows she was human. Once, at least.
No matter. That's not what she has come for.
"I want to know how to undo a mating bond," she says, keeping her voice even. "Please," she adds.
The Suriel clicks its tongue. "Most would consider such a bond a dearly loved gift."
Nesta bites her tongue. It won't do her any good to snap at this creature. "Can you tell me?" she asks.
"But you don't like anything gifted from the Cauldron, do you? No...you prefer your gifts stolen..."
Nesta's heart stutters. Tamlin looks on, curious, but she forces herself to keep eye contact with the Suriel. "Will you tell me?" she says, trying again.
Another hiss. "I can't tell you."
"But you know who can?" she presses, guessing at its linguistic trickery.
The Suriel bites its yellowed teeth together twice. "An old friend of yours, I would say."
An old friend...Amren? But Amren is only High Fae now, surely she doesn't have any powers like this anymore...and Amren's not an old friend. Only a former one.
"Call upon the one your sister bargained with," it says.
"Which one?" There are a great many, she suspects. Each deal more foolish than the last, she's certain. If she's come all the way to Spring just for a Suriel to tell her to go ask Rhysand-
"Bryaxis."
Oh.
Well.
"Where is Bryaxis now?" It had not returned to that library after the war.
"It'll come to you," the Suriel replies. "Call upon it."
Call upon...the only thing that Cassian fears.
Fine.
"What's that in your bag, Eve-daughter?"
Nesta looks down. "Clothes."
"Could you spare any?" it asks, clicking its fingers together.
She blinks. But she remembers all too well what it was like to be freezing, and is still at the mercy of stronger Fae, and she meant what she told Tamlin: they are all monsters here and she's not any authority on who amongst them is the worst.
"Sure," she says, and takes out the cloak she had brought. Simple. Charcoal gray, with purple hem so deep it's nearly black. She steels her arms as she extends it, willing herself not to show emotion when her fingers brush its.
The Suriel rises to its full height-taller than Nesta, obviously, but taller even than Tamlin. It slips off the tattered robe and lets it fall at its feet. Nesta's cloak hits its knees.
"Well," she says. "Goodbye, then." She turns on her heel and heads back through the bushes.
This time, Tamlin follows her. "Where are you going?" he asks.
"Back to Night." Where else can she go?
"You missed the last cross-Court carriage of the day. I'm not winnowing you there."
Her steps only falter slightly. "Well. I packed for this. Where's an inn?"
"You can stay at my estate."
This causes Nesta to stop and turn to him. "What do you think this is about?"
He doesn't miss a beat. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"You are not coming with me to see Bryaxis. This is not about my sister."
He flinches. "I know that," he says, voice low, rough. "I...I let her go. Weren't you there?"
When Rhysand died, he means. "I don't care," she says honestly.
"You can stay at my home for tonight," he says again. "See Bryaxis in the morning."
Nesta thinks about it. Is staying in Tamlin's home worse than staying in Rhysand's?
No.
But she still doesn't want to.
"No," she says to him. "I won't come ask you for anything again. You can consider us square, if you like."
So for the second time, she turns and leaves him. This time, he does not follow.
When the sun sets, Nesta stops walking. This was a good idea, she thinks, even as her heart beats in her throat. It's good precisely because of her fear. Her fear of being alone in a strange land, at night, with no sense of direction, and no way to get back until tomorrow.
Because now, what choice does she have but to go to Bryaxis.
Hoping her walk has helped to summon some nerve, Nesta lays her bag down neatly at her feet and smoothes her hair. She clears her throat.
"Bryaxis," she says, the stupidity she feels stronger than any scariness, "I call upon you."
She stands there, looking out onto flowing hills and nothing else, feeling foolish, at best.
Perhaps Tamlin had offered her a kindness. A safe place for the night. Then she could have taken a carriage back in the morning and swallowed her pride and asked Amren for help finding Bryaxis.
Her spine straightens suddenly-only then does she hear. Her body recognizes it before her mind.
"Nesta Archeron," it says, from behind her.
She does not turn to look, keeps herself focused on a spot on a distant hill. "Hello," she says.
"You have grown thinner," it notes.
"I can't be sure, but I imagine you look much the same." The words are out before she can stop them.
But-Bryaxis laughs. Dark, shivering, under her bones. But a laugh, all the same.
Not so terrifying, she thinks. Just...stare ahead. Don't turn around. She can do that.
"To what do I owe the pleasure? So far from...your home."
"The Night Court is not my home."
"Oh?" it asks, mildly interested. "So where would it be?"
She hesitates. "I...am from the south of the island."
"Is that your home?"
Nesta exhales slowly. The Suriel had called her Eve-daughter, had it not? Why shouldn't she be allowed to claim human lands as hers?
"But I believe you have a question for me, Nesta Archeron."
"I do." Nesta takes another deep breath. "I want to undo my mating bond."
"That's not a question."
"...can you undo my mating bond?"
"I can."
She almost wishes she could turn around. Almost.
"Will you?" she asks, and pinches her fingers.
"Neither you nor I come from the Night Court," Bryaxis says, "but we have both found ourselves residing there, have we not?"
"I...yes." Small talk with this demon...is that the price to say? To ensure her sister's happiness, get her to speak to her again?
"A special history of bargains in the Night Court. Your sister broke ours, you know."
Nesta stiffens. "You left. How could she fulfill it?"
That laugh again. "Perhaps you can fulfill it for her."
She hesitates, bringing her hand up to touch her hair. "What...would you like me to do?"
"Tell me why you want your bond broken."
Sucking in her bottom lip, Nesta tugs a lock of her hair out of its coronet. "It was only given to me to hurt me. Because my sister cares for him."
"Tell me why, Nesta Archeron."
She closes her eyes. Do it, she commands herself. Just-say it, just this once, and then it'll be over.
Eyes still shut tight, she nods slowly. "The bond...hurts me because it hurts Elain because she cares for Azriel. And it hurts me..." Just say it, you stupid girl. "...because I...care for his brother." Her voice cracks, barely a whisper on the last word.
Her cheeks heat up. There-she's admitted it. She's said it.
Oh, she-she hates this. Hates it so much. She hates him. For everything he's done to her. How he treats her, even though he makes her feel-how he makes her feel! Far too many ways!
Everything about him. His hair and his eyes and his skin and his arms and his stupid smirk and his vile tongue and every single one of his fingertips and his scent and his thighs and his shoulders and-
"There, Nesta Archeron," Bryaxis says softly. "That's it."
Nesta fists her hands together. "Will you just end it now?"
"Certainly," it says. Something cool reaches out and caresses her cheek. "Face me."
The touch is gentle, almost loving. Not scary. Not threatening. So she does.
The gentleness ends there-it all goes dark.
When she opens her eyes, the sun is rising...in the Night Court.
"Good morning, Nesta Archeron," Bryaxis says from behind her.
Nesta pushes up off the ground. She's dressed in one of the night-things she brought in her bag.
"I brought you to this place neither of us call home," it says. "Our bargain is done."
She reaches down to pick a cardigan out of her bag, but her arms are shaking. That same touch from before-gentle, sweet-picks it and helps her put it on.
"Thank you," she says, her voice coming out in a whisper. She tries to swallow, but it burns.
"You should go to the High Lord's house. They're all waiting for you." Bryaxis pushes her a bit forward. Not roughly, just enough to get her legs moving on their own again. "Call upon me again, Nesta Archeron...when you'd like."
Bryaxis' essence disappears. Without looking behind her, she knows it is gone.
Strange looks punctuate her on her walk to Feyre's home. The High Lady's sister, dressed in a nightdress, clutching a travel bag. All she wants to is get back to her apartment and shower off the past day, but if they're all waiting for her...she supposes it can wait.
She wants to see Elain, anyway. Wants to show her...how much she loves her. What she did for her.
Bryaxis had been kind, though. Had hidden most of the pain from her. Only the aftermath remains, like the hollowness she always feels after her cycle, or shaking after being sick.
She stops dead in her tracks and gasps violently. The hollowness...it's not hollowness at all. It's...wholeness. Because she's whole. She's alone.
The mating bond is gone.
A laugh-a real laugh, carefree and joyous-escapes her. For the first time in...she can't remember how long. Every step after is easier, lighter. And she is more eager to take it. Elain awaits. Elain and...
She practically skips up to the riverfront manor, not able to fully suppress the small smile on her face as she throws the door open. She starts to call her sister's name, but the sight in the front room cuts her off.
Elain is there, with Feyre. Elain lies in the latter's lap, shaking slightly. Rhysand sits behind Feyre, on the floor, his hand on her back. Her tear-stained face is still. Azriel sits on a chair, arms propped up on his lap and head buried in his palms. Morrigan sits on a couch by Amren, who stares blankly at the wall.
It is Amren who first looks up and sees her. She inhales sharply, which makes them all, one by one, look to her...and then to what she is staring at. Nesta.
Elain notices last, her face still at Feyre's legs. With their younger sister's soft cry, Elain picks up her head and turns.
She bolts upright. Nesta jerks back for her suddenness. She is wrecked.
"Nesta?" she breathes.
Nesta looks around. "What?" she says, uncomfortable and bewildered.
"You..." Elain reaches out a hand. She stumbles a few feet forward, and touches Nesta's cheek. Clammier than Bryaxis, and not nearly as gentle. "You're alive."
Morrigan rises next. "I'm going to find Cassian," she says, to no one in particular. "Tell him..." She gives Nesta a look of-fright?-and scurries out of the house.
Quite suddenly, Nesta comes back to herself. "What is going on?" she demands.
Elain draws her hands back towards herself, looking at her fingers, as if she thinks they are not real, either.
"Feyre, it's okay," Rhys says to her sister, who has gone very white.
"What is going on?" she says again.
It's Azriel who answers, standing up fast. Far too fast. "You...were...dead."
"I...what?" Nesta asks. "What are you-oh."
The bond...when it had...because she had not told them.
Oh.
Perhaps...this has not been her best thought out plan, she thinks.
"Well," she says. "I'm...I'm not dead." She looks to Azriel. "I...undid the bond."
Every one of them-like they're all puppets on a string controlled by one person-tenses at the same time. In any other situation, it would be funny.
But it's this situation. So all that happens is Elain, bursting into hysterical tears, and running away.
No, Nesta decides. Not her best thought out plan.
A/N: I'd love to hear your thoughts!