A.N.: Several things have influenced Nesta's characterisation in this. Max from Mad Max: Fury Road (animalistic survival versus helping others); Bruce Banner saying the secret to staying in control of shifting into The Hulk is that he's "always angry"; Newt Scamander's uniqueness and creativity; Beth Dutton and Cristina Yang as forces of nature who choose to put themselves first.
Rajiv Surendra's YouTube videos (including the ones on the HGTV Handmade channel) inspired Azriel's home, and his attitude toward it and everything in it. They're incredibly soothing to watch – and instructional.
I'm interested in the idea that because the IC is actually toxic and its members are villains who have convinced themselves they're righteous and good heroes (echoes of Daenerys Targaryen here!) their perception of everyone else around them is utterly skewed. So why not turn everything on its head? I want to play on the fact that Rhysand is an incompetent narcissist while showing that Lord Keir is actually a thoughtful and progressive leader who is the only one brave enough to stand up to Rhysand for the good of his people. I think I've figured out how Morrigan fits into all this: conspiring with her cousin Rhysand to provoke a war between Night and Autumn to get Rhysand's father killed, so Rhysand can usurp power? Only Eris is too clever and foils their plans – so they try again, this time with Tamlin and the Spring Court, with far better success. Ever wonder why Rhysand befriended the much-younger Tamlin? Why Morrigan is so afraid of anyone hearing the truth from Eris? Scapegoating Tamlin and Eris: why the hell not?
And I like the idea that Rhysand's magic is quite literally smoke-and-mirrors: he is absolutely not "the most powerful High Lord in history" but he knows how to use what little he has to create the illusion of strength – and manipulate people stronger than him to do his bidding. So that's the angle I'm going to take in this fic.
Shadow and Flame
05
Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken
It's about knowing exactly what they want of you and learning to use it as a weapon against them.
Azriel's words tumbled through her head, again and again, as they had for days.
She was left to her own thoughts whenever Azriel left for long periods of time, which was becoming more and more frequent the more she showed signs of getting stronger. It was a different kind of isolation in this house – calmer. She would dare say safer. It felt different – cosy and calm in a way she had not experienced in ages. But it was still isolation.
And it left her alone to overanalyse every conversation they had ever had, everything that went unsaid between them, her observations, his subtle deflections, the retorts she wished she'd hurled at his self-righteous friends, overthinking every interaction she had ever had with the Inner Circle and second-guessing all of their motivations.
What do they want of me? Everything.
What was she willing to give them? Nothing more than what they have already taken.
Rhysand and his enforcers had locked her in a box. All of this – the brutal training, the isolation, Cassian – were designed to keep her inside it. Until they allowed her out of it to unleash her as they saw fit – as they had that creature from the Library, and the other from the Prison – then return her to it. They thought of her the same way they thought of them – a monster. A monster to be controlled and unleashed at their convenience then imprisoned for the safety of others. And they wanted her complicit in her own imprisonment, to break her down until she submitted utterly, forgetting why she had ever needed to defy them to begin with.
I am the descendent of slaves who took their freedom with the edge of their blades.
She had no weapon but she had taken. She had taken from the Cauldron.
Azriel was right, in a certain regard. He spoke of perspective. Knowing how to read others, to appear to become what they wanted, to use it against them. But what was that, but another cage? She would only be playing their game, defined by their rules. Rules she did not know or understand. They had every advantage and knew it. They were centuries old, knowledgeable in a way it would take her lifetimes to become. Lifetimes, and access to a lot of resources…and people with different perspectives than the Inner Circle's. They'd never allow that.
But Azriel was right about her needing to shift her perspective, for her own good.
She had taken from the Cauldron, ripped its heart out even as it tore her apart, stripping her of her humanity, all that she was and could ever be. Perhaps, though, it was more than that. She had taken from the Cauldron exactly what she needed.
To free herself from Rhysand's tyranny.
He made the rules because he embraced, as his due, all that he had been given as High Lord. And all that he could take from everyone because of it. He knew exactly how to utilise his many powers as weapons to intimidate, to manipulate, to control, to oppress and destroy. As he sought to intimidate, control and ultimately destroy her.
What had she taken from the Cauldron?
The power to take her freedom for herself. The power to rewrite the rules.
They had locked her in a box. Within her veins simmered the power to break down its walls.
Nesta sighed, rolling over. The dawn light shimmered softly off the tiny gold paper box on the dresser, which still contained the last few nibbles of her half of the chocolate Elain had sent her. Her smile softened at the sight of the box, her heart warming at the reminder of what it meant. So much more than a treat. A promise.
A secret.
They may fight like lionesses but they would do whatever they must to protect each other.
Elain would do whatever she must to protect her, in the only way she knew how.
The sunlight reflected off of the golden paper, glimmering on the wall…on the door…
A door.
Rhysand had locked her inside a box. What was preventing her from creating a door?
One day, she knew, she would inevitably be imprisoned back in the House of Wind, being convinced by the Inner Circle that it was for "her own good". No winnowing, no wings. Ten thousand steps to freedom. No contact but with those they approved – the meek, shattered priestesses in the Library, the brutal, sexually assertive Cassian. Those were their rules.
But what if…
What if she created her own rules? What if she did not break down the walls of her prison so much as create a doorway to her freedom and simply saunter out? A hidden doorway only she could use, that only she knew about, that let her slip in and out.
She would embrace the illusion of her continued imprisonment.
A smile lingered at the corners of her lips.
Let them believe what they needed to believe, to feel powerful. Use what they wanted her to be as a weapon against them? Rhysand needed to believe she was safely locked away, a threat he had neutralised. Let him believe she was locked away, downtrodden, isolated, unwilling to embrace her power – let him believe she was vulnerable. Let him believe she was powerless.
And use it as a weapon?
As long as she was locked in the House of Wind, they believed they were winning. As long as she was locked in the House of Wind, she could… She could take every advantage.
And if she could learn to utilise her power…they would never know.
So how did she take advantage of them? How did she begin to embrace the power she was so afraid of?
Logically, the answer was simple: stop being afraid of it.
Whenever she was hesitant about taking on a new challenge, her father used to tell her, Fear does not stop death, it stops life.
How did she stop being afraid of something? She frowned, thinking that over. The only way to stop being truly afraid of something…was to understand it.
How did she begin to understand herself? She and Elain were the only beings that had been recreated by the Cauldron. Their powers were…other. They were direct from the source – if the Fae's belief about the Mother creating all of this world using the Cauldron was accurate. She frowned. A disembodied, all-powerful driving force that had used a magical object to create life? That granted magic? If Nesta believed that the Mother had created this world, that she had used it to design everything, that meant she had crafted the magic that was inherited by High Lords, that chose those High Lords. Why… Why would this all-powerful entity give a person like Rhysand near-unlimited magic?
And what did it mean that Nesta –
No.
She was not of the Fae. She did not believe in the Mother. But the Cauldron…that was real. Its power…she shuddered. Its power was otherworldly, unquantifiable. And she could no more explain her experience in the Cauldron than…well… There was no way to explain her experience, not in any way that would accurately encapsulate the grief and terror and bewilderment, the fury and the power, as if she had been shoved into a furnace from which all creation had burned into being.
She did not believe in the Mother. But there was no-one in the world who could truly understand the Cauldron.
She believed Rhysand was a tyrant. And she believed she had taken from the Cauldron everything she needed to defy him.
She was the descendant of slaves who had fought for their freedom. She would not bow to him. She would not bend to his will. She would not be broken by him.
"Unbowed, unbent, unbroken," she whispered to the ceiling. Her eyes stung and she nodded to herself. Unbowed, unbent, unbroken.
A soft knock on the door preceded Azriel's appearance, his eyebrows raised in mild curiosity. "Did you say something?"
Nesta raised her head from her pillow and sighed. "You returned late. Did you sleep at all?" she asked. Azriel shrugged a shoulder noncommittally.
"It's a beautiful morning," he said, deflecting. "Would you care to eat breakfast outside?"
"I'll help you cook," Nesta groaned softly, climbing out of bed. She was sore: yesterday, she had made it downstairs, around the entire house and the perimeter of Azriel's beautiful garden. But she had tripped and fallen heavily on her hands, battering them and bruising her hip. Azriel had found her grimacing under a beautiful apple tree laden with blossom, the ground beneath it carpeted with forget-me-nots and jewel-toned tulips, her hands cut up, her head swimming.
Instead of laughing at her, as Cassian would have, Azriel had retrieved a healing tonic and cloths to clean her wounds, carefully treating them before sitting down beside her beneath the blossom. He had gazed toward the house, which had a worn pergola overgrown with clematis, its tendrils laden with buds ready to burst.
Nesta had wondered aloud whether she would be allowed to remain long enough to witness the clematis flower. It would be absolutely stunning.
Azriel had replied carefully, "I will return you to the House of Wind only when you are ready."
Nesta had murmured, "Let's not leave this place. Not ever."
Azriel had smiled, a rarity.
"If it was all we knew, we would soon lose appreciation for it," he had muttered.
"You're probably right," Nesta sighed.
"You like it here," Azriel said, squinting as spears of sunlight pierced through the apple-blossom. His shadows scampered about in the patches of dappled darkness around them. Nesta was becoming accustomed to them, as constant companions: she sometimes forgot that they answered to Azriel. She found herself talking to them, as she might a pet. Even when Azriel was absent, some of his shadows remained. She could see them lurking, the same way she had seen Feyre shove herself into Lucien's mind that day. She couldn't describe it and doubted anyone could explain it.
"It's… I feel calm here," Nesta admitted quietly. "Almost as if I am safe."
"You haven't felt safe in a very long time," Azriel murmured, and Nesta nodded her silent agreement. What more was there to say to that? She had not felt safe. He was the only one to acknowledge it. The only one to perhaps guess why she chose to live in the Faveli slums rather than in one of Feyre's many palaces. Because they were not safe spaces for her. Because she did not consider herself safe in the company of Feyre's friends, who had been intimidating and hostile toward her from their first meeting and now ensured there was never any doubt that Nesta was in the way of Feyre's true family.
The only one with the strength to defy them had been pushed out – an outsider, a villain.
"It's such an abstract concept, isn't it?" Nesta sighed. "Safety. What does it mean to feel safe – to be safe?"
"Safety implies freedom from fear," Azriel mused. "None of us are without fear."
"None of us are truly safe."
"Some would say it's an illusion," Azriel sighed. "Safety does not exist; neither does trust."
"Some would say?" Nesta said, glancing at Azriel. It was rare that he showed emotion. Azriel was excellent at cards. But so was she. The evenings he was at home – and this was his home, there was no doubt about that – they played cards until she could not keep her eyes open. She wondered if he ever slept.
Now, she allowed herself the indulgence of noticing he was attractive – breathtakingly handsome, actually, with high cheekbones, an elegant nose and lips that might have been lush and soft if they weren't usually pressed in a firm line. He was one of those infuriating men who had gorgeous eyelashes. His hazel eyes, Nesta had observed, were beautiful and incredibly changeable. Sometimes they appeared amber, other times rich warm brown, sometimes hazy grey and, as now, a gentle green. She had observed that the shifts in his eye-colour had nothing to do with emotion, though, and everything to do with lighting. His eyes always appeared a muted grey when he wore his leathers. Under the blossom and fresh green leaves of the apple-tree, his eyes picked up the vibrant, lush colours all around him. He seemed to have more life in him in this home he had painstakingly created for himself. He let his guard down in a way he never did in Velaris, not even with the others.
Nesta knew she had nothing to do with that; it was this place.
"Mm," Azriel hummed. He did that a lot. Not quite a response. He was always careful with his words; he knew how much power they wielded. "Some would say."
"Would you?"
"No. I've seen too much of the world to be such a pessimist."
Nesta laughed. "Some people would say they've seen too much of the world to be such an optimist," she said. His lips quirked in the corners.
"It's easy to see the bad in everything," he said quietly. "In my work I actively hunt for it."
"And in your own time?" Nesta prompted. Everything in Azriel's home had such beautiful practicality – nothing was there that did not serve a purpose, but it was always incredibly beautiful, from hand-caned chairs to glazed pots for plants that had been nurtured for decades to silver serving spoons, crochet-trimmed linen bedsheets, antique lace curtains, watercolours on the walls, beautifully bound books in the study, even the vase of flowers beautifully arranged under the parlour window.
"Mm. What little I have of it, I spend here," Azriel said, "surrounding myself with the magnificence of nature."
"It is beautiful," Nesta sighed.
"Nothing in this world or any other has the power to destroy it," Azriel said. "No matter how much damage may be inflicted, it endures; and returns, stronger than ever. It defies; it thrives."
"People in the Night Court could take a lot of inspiration from that," Nesta said quietly.
Azriel glanced at her. He swept those changeable hazel eyes over her, saying, "Three great people sit in a room: a king, a priestess and a wealthy man. Between them stands a mercenary. Each of the great people bids the mercenary kill the other two."
"Are you sure they're great people?" Nesta retorted.
"Who lives and who dies?" Azriel asked.
Nesta frowned, shrugging. "Depends on the mercenary."
"Does it?" Azriel asked. "They have neither crown, nor gold, nor favour with the Mother."
Nesta rolled her eyes at the mention of the Mother but shrugged. "They have a sword, the power of life and death."
"But if it's mercenaries who rule, why do we pretend High Lords hold all the power?" Azriel pressed. "When Amarantha was killed, who was truly responsible? Feyre? Lord Tamlin? Or something else?"
"I've decided I don't like riddles," Nesta muttered, frowning at him. Azriel chuckled softly.
"Power resides where we believe it resides," he said softly. "It's a trick. A shadow on the wall."
"Interesting turn of phrase," Nesta said, and Azriel's eyes twinkled.
"Power is something different entirely than magic," Azriel said. "You can have all the magic in the world but still be powerless. And someone with no magic at all can wield extraordinary power."
"Like Jurian," Nesta said suddenly, remembering the leader of the slaves' revolt. Handsome but wild-eyed, as if he had seen too much. Azriel nodded.
Azriel told her, "Magic just is. But power is what people believe it is."
"Power and magic," Nesta mused, and Azriel nodded.
"Far too often, people mistake the two," Azriel said. "Rhysand has magic; that makes people believe he has power."
Nesta glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. "But not in fact?"
Azriel sighed. "I think you have observed enough of the Night Court to come to your own conclusions."
Nesta smirked to herself. Ever evasive. He hadn't given any indication of his own thoughts whatsoever – nothing she could use against him. But alluded to the fact that he knew she was not ignorant of the true state of things in the Night Court, no matter how overbearing the Inner Circle was about insisting they were wise and benevolent rulers.
Based on her own experiences, and what she had seen in Velaris, the Hewn City and the Steppes, Nesta would say that they were the exact opposite – inept, self-indulgent and absolutely vicious to anyone who threatened their self-perception.
She reflected on Azriel's riddle. He had made a very clear distinction between magic and power.
She had magic but no power. That did not mean that she could not one day accumulate power. What was power but influence? The Fae liked to believe they were so different from humans and so evolved, superior in every way – yet the same rules applied in human politics as Fae. People would do whatever it took, use whatever guile and advantage they had, to get ahead. To be a trend-setter, a leader, a person with influence. Because influence was power. Who needed to raise an army to take control in a violent coup when they could more easily manipulate the people in positions of authority into making decisions that benefited them?
It was the same as high-society. And Nesta – well, she couldn't abide the vapid, self-indulgent people who had the time and wealth to live frivolously. But had she been able to navigate high-society, rising to the top in a very short amount of time, through strength of will, an acerbic wit and a refreshing attitude – a breath of fresh air in a room of cloying perfume. Yes. She had dominated high-society – purely to promote Elain's place in it, to ensure that Elain's life…was beautiful.
What wouldn't she do for her sister?
Why shouldn't she do the same for herself?
Why shouldn't she fight for herself, for a change?
Rhysand could only erase her if she let him. And she refused to let him.
She couldn't help wonder…what was Rhysand without his magic? Was it truly all he told everyone it was?
So… If she did not wish to lean on her magic as a crutch, what she need to become, separate from her magic? Who did she need to be?
No-one but herself. She had always been a force of nature. Becoming Fae had not changed that. Nesta was who she was. She did not apologise for it. And that was perhaps the greatest weapon she had. She was herself, unrepentantly. And who she was, well… She had never needed magic before in her life, the way Rhysand had to rely on it for everything.
She didn't need magic…but it would certainly help.
What could her magic do?
She started small. Plucking a single blossom from the laden bough above her, she cradled it tenderly in her palm and focused all her thoughts on it – on what she wanted it to become. She reached out, tentatively touching the dam she had built to keep her magic from overwhelming her. A single brush of an imaginary hand and she could feel her magic searing through her veins – hot and good, a heady rush, natural – and her magic unfurled, slowly, almost tentatively, curious as a cat. She focused on the blossom. And before her eyes, the blossom withered, replaced by a tight bud that swelled, a mottled red-green apple ripening before her eyes, heavy in her hands. She wrinkled her nose as the flesh of the apple rotted away but from one of the shining black seeds, a root appeared, followed by tiny rounded leaves – the first sprouting leaves that gave way to longer, more jagged-edged leaves, larger, brighter, turning toward the sunlight streaming through the blossoms above.
Azriel stared at her hand, his lips parted.
"I don't suppose you have a pot to plant it in?" she asked. Dazedly, Azriel led her to the garden shed hidden behind a sprawling silver-leafed tree. By the time he had filled a terracotta pot with his own mixture of compost and Nesta had planted the seedling, its long stem was over twenty centimetres long, a reddish-green colour, and covered in offshoots with vibrant green leaves.
The pot now stood on the windowsill above the kitchen-sink. As Nesta climbed down the stairs, taking her time, she saw Azriel's gaze return to the apple-tree seedling again and again as he prepared the first pot of tea of the day.
"You were asleep when I returned," Azriel said, and Nesta nodded, rubbing her face. She knotted her robe around her waist and went to the small basket of eggs collected from the hencoop every morning, retrieving several to turn into scrambled eggs.
"You should have woken me," Nesta said. They usually had a few games of cards before bed – if Azriel went to bed.
"It was late," Azriel said, and Nesta could see the strain around his eyes, the corners of his mouth. She frowned.
"Were you in Velaris again?"
"And other places," Azriel said vaguely. They shared their breakfast – bacon and eggs, thick yoghurt with nuts, blueberries and sliced figs drizzled with honey, a grapefruit halved and shared, tea and juice – and worked together to clean up, doing the dishes and tidying the kitchen. Over the last few days, they had found a rhythm, working together – especially to cook.
Nesta adored dishes full of spice, texture and flavour, vibrant with colour and heady with scent. The fact that Azriel did, too, had genuinely surprised Nesta. So he had started telling her about different dishes he had eaten in foreign lands, what their cultures were like, how they prepared certain ingredients and how they were used. The more he spoke about different foods he had tried abroad, the more Nesta revealed about food culture in human Prythian. The more she revealed about it, the more she itched to cook her favourite meals. Azriel provided all the ingredients and she instructed him how to cook them. One of her exercises to increase the dexterity in her fingers was to write down the recipes.
They sat under the pergola, at a hand-carved table of beautiful oak, listening to the riotous birdsong and the hum of insects droning around the flowerbeds, and after finishing their breakfast they sat working on a new jigsaw-puzzle. Azriel refreshed the teapot and set it down on the table before sitting down: he always chose the chair closest to the wall, facing outward across the garden. Still subconsciously vigilant of being taken by surprise, even here. He sat with his wings loosely unfurled, basking in the sunshine.
His shadows drifted away. In fact, Nesta would say there were few days she had even seen them recently. They tended to just melt away and she wondered whether they were off gathering information for him. She set about organising the puzzle pieces. That was her life: puzzles in the morning, walks in the afternoon, reading before bed. Lots of food in between and long sleeps. She was recuperating, her physical strength growing with every passing day. Her head still felt tender sometimes, but she was regaining dexterity in her fingers and had to use a walking-stick far less.
"If you want to ask something," she remarked idly without raising her gaze from the table, hiding a slight wince as she reached out for a jigsaw puzzle piece and sent it skittering across the flagstone patio, "do stop agonising over the opportune moment and ask."
Azriel's lips quirked. How was it she could read him so well? It was always in the back of his mind that Nesta had seen through Lord Tamlin's glamour. She was incredibly shrewd. And they had spent a good deal of time together in each other's company; she was likely learning the few tells that even he had no power to control.
"What I said earlier isn't quite true. I've been spending time a lot of time in Velaris," he told her quietly.
"And yet with all its delights to lure you, most of your time is spent watching me struggle to pick up puzzle pieces," Nesta said. The puzzle was a request from Nesta: picking up and manipulating the pieces was to help increase her coordination and at the same time prevent her from succumbing to boredom.
"Don't forget, you peeling carrots is also mesmerising," Azriel retorted, and Nesta's lips twitched. Her eyes glittered as she glanced up, enjoying his teasing. To his great aggravation, Nesta was becoming more mobile. She was also stubbornly independent. And that meant she had had a few tumbles while he wasn't there to help her.
In the early days, she used to rest in a caned bentwood chair, propped up against a cushion, a blanket over her knees, and watch while he baked bread and cooked their meals, giving him a steady commentary and occasionally weighing out ingredients for him, taste-testing and squabbling good-naturedly about his technique versus how she had been taught and which way was best. Day by day, she had worked on walking, on her fine-motor skills.
Two days ago, her great victory had been peeling the vegetables. She had set herself the challenge of peeling the carrots in one continuous spiral, the peel never breaking; she had managed it, on the last carrot. Her strength and dexterity was improving.
That didn't mean he hadn't scolded her for nearly scalding herself while attempting to pour boiling water from the copper kettle to make them a fresh pot of tea.
"Does it say more about you or about the delights of Velaris that you prefer to spend your time as my nursemaid?" Nesta asked.
"I'd say it says more about you," Azriel said, and Nesta quirked an eyebrow.
He sighed and gazed at her, unabashedly examining her face. He wondered how she would react when he asked her, but he needed to know.
"Nesta… Why is it you prefer to spend your time with prostitutes and dung-sweepers and drug-addled faeries?" Azriel asked curiously. Of all he had learned of Nesta's life in Velaris, there was little he could say genuinely stunned him. The more he learned, the more he formed a clearer, more cohesive picture of Nesta in his mind, of what her truest nature was. She had had unique neighbours who had already come to adore her in the short time they had shared their former tenement building. And they remained loyal to her now, not giving an inch until he had coaxed them with the truth of her circumstances. Slowly, carefully, he was sowing the seeds for the truth to spread around Velaris.
"You do appreciate that I prefer not to spend time with Rhysand's Inner Circle," she retorted, and Azriel raised his eyebrows, his expression bewildered. "Morrigan, who throws herself at anyone who so much as catches her eye at Rita's; Cassian, who cleans up Rhysand's messes; and vicious little Amren, suffering from the withdrawal of that immense power that gave her such a thrill and such a sense of superiority over everyone."
Azriel stared at her, nonplussed. Because… Wasn't that all accurate?
He frowned and cleared his throat. "Nesta." She rolled her eyes at his stern tone but huffed.
"I wanted to learn about the city," she relented. "The parts that the wealthy and well-fed consider a scourge, if they acknowledge them at all."
"Why?" Azriel asked curiously. It was only startling to think that Nesta, so modest and shrewd, so elegant and unruffled, would ever associate with, well, the dregs of any society. She seemed so haughty, so imperious. And she was. To the people who believed themselves superior. Not those who, by all accounts, had far lower status to her. She didn't seem to care. That was what interested Azriel. Status did not seem to matter to Nesta. People did.
"Because how those people are treated, the conditions in which they are forced to live, tells you everything you need to know about the ruling classes of any society," Nesta said earnestly. "I shouldn't have to tell you that."
"What did you learn?" Azriel asked, ignoring her last comment.
"That if you are poor, you have done something to deserve it," she said bluntly. "Power, wealth and beauty are synonymous with goodness; weakness, ugliness, poverty are all punishments earned by the unworthy."
Azriel sighed heavily. He wished he could say that the Inner Circle went out of their way to champion the weak and the vulnerable and raise the poor…but it would be a lie. In centuries of being Rhysand's third, Morrigan had never lifted a finger to help the vulnerable in the Hewn City and in fact perpetuated the oppressive culture within the court based on fear and ritual humiliation. That was if she went there at all. The females of the Estoc clan were routinely mutilated and raped, their leaders' influence spreading throughout the Steppes with Rhysand's support. The territories were neglected, considered by most to be lawless and terrifying, monsters worse than nightmares roaming freely. It was no wonder Fae had fled to Velaris, lured by the promise of a better life. Instead, they found themselves in a different kind of Hel.
"You have made friends in the city," Azriel said quietly.
"Oh, well done. You managed to not sound stunned by the very idea that anyone could actually like me," Nesta remarked.
He pressed her again, asking, "Why do you prefer to spend time with prostitutes and dung-sweepers and old sailors?"
"They have better stories," Nesta said, shrugging. At his stony look, she elaborated. "The last thing a prostitute wants to talk about in her free time is sex, and that's all you ever talk about, as if you're adolescents who have newly discovered it. It's disturbing that everything turns to innuendo. Conversation is always exciting because you never know where it is going to go – philosophy or literature, music, food or mythology. And they know all the dirt on the members of high society. The very people who shout about whores sullying their streets are the ones who spend small fortunes on them. Dung-sweepers appreciate the truth value of things. They can find anything or anyone if you're polite about asking… The sailors have taught me all about foreign Fae ports and what popular imports are, who is fighting over control of the shipping-lanes. That tells me who the greater powers on the Continent are and what relations are like with the Night Court. These people are the life-blood of Velaris' economy but are denied the benefit of it."
"I spoke to some of the sailors; they said you showed an interest in boats," he said.
"I was reminding myself what I learned as a girl," Nesta said, delicately picking through the puzzle pieces.
"What do you mean?"
"My father started his life as a sailor, until he eventually managed to purchase his own ship," Nesta said. "He built his empire from nothing. I grew up on the water. My parents gifted me my very own dinghy when I was nine; I could manage it all by myself." He heard a touch of true pride in her voice he had rarely heard before.
"Did you name her?"
"Of course. The Black Pearl. After one of my favourite pirate stories," Nesta said, her eyes glowing softly. "Thinking back, the impact of the name was rather diminished by the sunny yellow paint."
"The fishermen said you would often be there on the docks and offer to help clean and fillet their catches," Azriel said.
"You get the best choice of the catch if you're there early. And I liked their songs," Nesta shrugged again. "The best voices in Velaris are down at the docks and in the back rooms of bakeries and brothels. The Rainbow is so elitist. It's full of its own self-importance." She crinkled her nose in disdain. The Rainbow was a self-contained community within Velaris, a celebration of beauty – but also of wealth. It was only so beautiful because it was wealthy. And only the wealthy – the powerful, the beautiful – could afford to spend time and coin there.
"Nesta… The fishermen bring their catches in before daybreak. Why were you out on the docks at that time of night?" he asked carefully.
Nesta stared at him. "If I couldn't sleep, I walked," she said simply. "You see all sorts of things that time of night. People think they can hide in the dark."
He sighed and summoned some of his shadows. They drifted throughout the house, undulating like silent waves. Nesta watched them eddy about her, whispering around her ankles and entwining around her slender throat, over the daintily-pointed tip of her ears, lovingly caressing her jaw before oozing down her arms to billow over the table like a cloth. Where the shadows were densest, they moved more slowly, settling on the kitchen table with a soft rustle. A heartbeat later, the shadows drifted away like a receding tide, revealing a tiny notebook. Nesta's tiny notebook, which Azriel had had stashed in his pocket the night he went to dinner at the River House. The notebook Elain had somehow known he was carrying.
Nesta turned still as a statue. Watching her, Azriel realised it wasn't his shadows that concerned her, the way they unnerved everyone; no, the notebook had rattled her. He scented her dread, her discomfort. She was afraid. Of what?
"Where did you get that?"
"Before the tenement was demolished, your things were put into storage," Azriel told her, and Nesta's eyes flashed dangerously.
"And you went rummaging through them," she hissed, scowling. Yet another violation she was forced to endure.
"I did," Azriel said. "I'd like you to explain what these mean."
"Nothing is in code," Nesta said, raising her chin stubbornly.
"No, but there is zero context," Azriel said. "And context is important." Nesta scoffed.
With great reluctance, Nesta reached out and took the notebook. It was very small, fitting easily into the palm of her hand. Azriel had flicked through it; beautiful, precise handwriting filled every page. Nesta's. If she could be taught to remember all that information without having to risk writing it down, she might make a decent spy.
She cleared her throat delicately. "I catalogue everyone I come in contact with on the streets of the Faveli. Names, descriptions, what they're wearing, identifying features."
Azriel stared at her, his eyebrows raised.
"You lived in Velaris for months yet you're already acquainted with the local terms for the less savoury district?" Azriel said, slightly stunned.
"Call them what they are; slums," Nesta said, with a stern bite. "I lived there. I started noticing fewer and fewer every week."
"Fewer of what?" Azriel frowned.
"Of them – of drifters and prostitutes and faeries addicted to powdered fungi, the youths smoking mirthroot who make their living stealing off the wealthy, the runaways, the refugees, disabled veterans, the families who cannot afford basic accommodation and must survive where they can in whatever part of the city they can defend," Nesta exclaimed, visibly flustered. In her indignation, her cheeks were tinged with a beautiful rosy hue.
"Most would only see a reduction in homelessness, lower crime-rates," Azriel sighed. "Most would claim it a cause for celebration."
"A reduction in homelessness and lower crime-rates would imply something had been done to help the situation," Nesta said, the accusation in her tone thinly-veiled. "And I know no-one has done anything to improve their lives." She sneered. "What is it Rhysand likes to say? 'Change takes time'? Crimes have gone down because the people committing them have disappeared."
"Nesta… Without wishing to sound patronising, that is the nature of these groups of people; they are transient," Azriel frowned.
"Not at these rates. The last… The last few weeks that I was free to go about Velaris, people were disappearing every day, a couple at a time," Nesta said. "I'd share my breakfast with some and by lunchtime they had been wiped off the face of the earth, as if they had never existed at all."
Azriel frowned. "How many?"
"Seventy-two."
Azriel did a double-take. "What?"
"Seventy-two people. At least. All types of faeries," Nesta said. "People that I regularly saw and talked to are…gone."
"Seventy-two… Are you sure?" Azriel asked, his heart sinking. He had recognised more than a few descriptions and some of the names, though he knew them by different ones. He had been growing concerned over the last few months that less information had been brought to him by certain lines of communication, but following the war, and with general discontent so vast in the Night Court, he had wondered whether his informants hadn't simply taken advantage of their new freedoms and made their homes elsewhere. He hadn't blamed them. His immediate reaction on seeing their names and descriptions in Nesta's notebook, however, was that she had had something to do with their disappearances. But she had merely noticed the same thing he had; that they were gone. No traces whatsoever.
What had happened to them? And was it coincidence that some of his informants were among the number of the vanished?
"Something is happening to them. Despite the name they are given, transient communities stay within defined areas based on familiarity and services they can access," Nesta said passionately. "I – when I was a medic, I would go to one of the communities they had built for themselves and give them whatever medical aid they would accept. Human or faerie, these people look after each other, they protect each other from outsiders. They're cautious. They pay attention. They don't disappear. Not that many. Not that quickly."
"This hasn't been reported," Azriel said, frowning. Who would they report it to? Amren? She would sooner feast on their blood than help them.
"Because nobody cares about tired whores and drug-users who have no strength to keep fighting their own demons or people who fought for our freedom and came back altered and were rejected and abandoned because of it," Nesta said fiercely, then blanched. She had inadvertently revealed something she hadn't intended to. Looking highly uncomfortable, she still raised her gaze to his and continued, "They're people. They can be hurt, they can be frightened and they can be killed."
"Nesta…" Azriel sighed, frowning. And though he dreaded her response, he asked, "Why haven't you brought this to us?"
"Because I don't trust that you don't have something to do with it," she said vehemently. A muscle ticked in her jaw as she glared at him. "The City of Starlight is being cleansed of the undesirables polluting it. Over seventy street-smart people have disappeared without leaving a trace. No-one has seen anything. Nobody knows anything. But nobody dares do anything in Velaris without Rhysand's say-so."
Azriel stared back at her, his heart sinking. "You're implying he has something to do with these disappearances?"
"At the very least, he knows about them."
"If I did not, he will not," Azriel said.
Nesta's lips pursed. "And he informs you of everything?"
No. Rhysand was a miser with information. He told them only enough so they could do the jobs he demanded of them, never anything more. It was easier to maintain control of them that way.
Or rather, easier to maintain the illusion of control.
Rhysand only knew what he knew.
And what Rhysand did not know would condemn him.
"This is how you'd been spending your time," he said quietly, eyeing the notebook.
"Amongst other things," Nesta said vaguely.
"I had no idea you were doing this."
"I'm surprised to hear you haven't had your spies following me," Nesta said archly.
Azriel murmured, "We're all entitled to our privacy."
Nesta's glare was glacial. "If my experiences with the Night Court have taught me anything, it is that privacy is a privilege. So are autonomy and kindness and compassion and respect."
Azriel sighed and reached for the teapot, annoyed to find that the tea had stewed. He returned from the kitchen a few moments later with a fresh pot.
"I'm sorry for being so unpleasant to you," Nesta said quietly. He glanced over at her, carefully setting the teapot down without sloshing any tea on the jigsaw puzzle pieces. "I… I don't want to – I don't want to be like this – this angry. But I… You're the only person who's cared to listen."
"I understand," he said softly. "You've kept it all inside for too long."
"I tend to do that," Nesta murmured. "I let things build. I know I shouldn't."
"It's not always so easy to confront things," Azriel sighed. "You hold your own when it counts."
"Apparently not; or I wouldn't be in this situation."
"What did I tell you, the first day you awoke here?" Azriel reminded her. He set the teapot down on the table, sitting closer than he had before. "Use it as a weapon against them. At the very least, an opportunity."
"Azriel, the House of Wind was chosen as my prison precisely because there are no opportunities there," Nesta said, rolling her eyes.
"I would have thought it the perfect place to unleash your frustration – in the name of training your power, of course," Azriel said. "Would you pour the tea?"
Nesta eyed the teapot with as much ferocity as any Illyrian warrior facing down their foe. She reached out to grip the handle and, with absolute focus, used one hand to balance the other as she lifted the teapot and poured them both a fragrant cup of tea.
"You wouldn't be encouraging me to destroy the House of Wind, would you?" she asked, pushing his cup and saucer toward him.
"I would never," Azriel retorted, his tone deadpan. She smirked. "I would encourage you to use the isolation to your advantage. If you were to choose to explore your magic, there would be no-one nearby you could accidentally harm. Or even purposefully."
"Challenge myself not to turn it into a smoking husk?"
"You assume your magic will be destructive." He flicked his gaze at the apple seedling on the windowsill.
"They told me my power is pure death."
"That says nothing about your magic and everything about their fear," Azriel said sharply. "You know yourself. Only you can feel your magic. Does it feel evil?"
"No. But death is not itself evil. It is nature." Azriel blinked at Nesta.
"And all nature is balance," Azriel said. "Where there is death and destruction there is also life and creation. Rebirth. As you were reborn."
"All of this is conjecture; I don't know anything about my magic," Nesta said. "And the last thing I want is for Rhysand and his Inner Circle to learn anything about it either." He pretended not to notice the hesitant look she gave him out of the corner of her eye, the regret that she had spoken without thinking and remembered too late that he, too, was part of the Inner Circle she so rightly distrusted.
"I used to think the same of my shadow-singing abilities," Azriel said quietly, gazing thoughtfully into his teacup. "The shadows were once all I knew. I never realised I was…different. Lord Namid once told me that anything I do not know about myself is a weapon my enemies can use against me."
"I'm more concerned that the more I learn about my magic, the more confident I am wielding it, the more I will be considered a threat," Nesta said. It was as honest and vulnerable as she had ever been about her magic. And it went to the heart of the issue –that she distrusted Rhysand and knew he wished to eradicate her as a potential threat.
"You'll always be a threat, whether or not you embrace your magic. But if you don't, you leave yourself vulnerable. Do you not wish to have the strength to protect yourself?"
"I did protect myself. For years. And now I am exhausted," Nesta said, the shadows under her eyes pronounced as if to emphasise her words. "I am exhausted and out of my depth."
He decided to shift the conversation in a different direction. "Why did you read so many romance novels when you first arrived in the Night Court? When we were all healing, I remember you devouring books. You do not strike me as a person who would find any particular value in them."
Nesta blinked at the rapid change of topic. "They are a reflection of the society for which they are written," she said thoughtfully. "Everything you need to know is encapsulated within their pages. I do find enjoyment in romance novels, by the way – just the well-written ones. The ones in the House of Wind are absolutely dire. But then, they do reflect the culture of Velaris."
"How so?"
"They're rigidly heterosexual. Traditional gender roles are brutally enforced. And there is a rigid hierarchy, with any but High Fae deemed as vastly inferior. And there is always an absurd power-imbalance between the love interests – either age, wealth or status. And, as I said before, wealth, beauty and power are synonymous with goodness. Even if the characters who are wealthy, beautiful and powerful are absolutely vile and treat other characters horrendously, the authors justify the abusive behaviours because they are wealthy and beautiful and powerful, which means that they are righteous… There is no accountability, no growth from the characters who need to be developed."
"You got all that from romance novels?"
"If I had my favourite series with me, I'd show you what I meant," Nesta sighed.
"Favourite series?"
"My… My human books," Nesta said hesitantly, her shoulders drooping ever so slightly. "You can learn a lot about human culture from them. How we celebrate sexuality, how fluid gender roles are, our views on marriage and inherited wealth and family planning and our responsibilities to the vulnerable – to the sick, the wounded, the orphaned and elderly."
"What are they called?" Azriel asked, making a mental note to obtain copies of the books. Not purely because Nesta enjoyed them; because she considered them a useful tool to understanding human culture.
As they worked on the puzzle, Azriel basked in the sunshine beaming down on him, warming his wings. He adored sunlight, could never get enough of it. He despised the winter and its agonisingly long days; the Spring Equinox was his favourite day of the year, the first sign that they were out of the darkness and heading toward the light.
At his prompting, Nesta told him about the book series she adored. She explained jokes and historical events that any human would take for granted but which no Fae would ever have any knowledge of. Five centuries was nothing to the Fae but for humans… They had been embroiled in wars, revolutions and conflicts that had devastated lands but also spurred advances in medicine and technology. They had a rich culture in art, literature and theatre, and above all, humans worshiped music and dance. And magic helped them enjoy and advance in all those things.
Azriel learned that while humans had and would forever continue to reject the Fae and slavery in any form, they had never denied magic. They called it Nature and worshiped her, as they revered their ancestors in beautiful, reflective ceremonies to honour the past and never take for granted the lives of freedom they were privileged to lead or the futures they could have.
It was fascinating to listen to Nesta talk about her favourite books, not just because she seemed to come alive in her enthusiasm but because she was so knowledgeable. No character was just a character; they were a reflection of human ideals. No setting was ever chosen arbitrarily, even a planet in a universe far, far away. They were stories not just of human ambition but of their enduring connection to each other, a shared history that bound them together and propelled them ever further, to overcome incredible obstacles, to share their successes and support each other in times of direst need, to see the potential in everyone to make a difference, to contribute, to push their society ever higher.
"I'm not saying human culture is without its flaws," Nesta said, leaning over the table to manoeuvre a section of the puzzle in place. He poured another pot of tea and retrieved some split buns to eat with them for elevenses, something Nesta said humans observed, as well as afternoon-tea. "Because of the technological boom, much of our culture was shifting toward consumerism, toward immediate gratification and speed and excess over quality. Our cultures and our traditions, what was truly important to us and our identity as humans, was starting to suffer. But I think…with the Wall coming down, priorities will be forced to shift back."
"That's not a bad thing," Azriel sighed heavily. He wished the Night Court had taken a similar step back to truly look at itself and re-evaluate priorities after Amarantha's reign ended.
Humans reached for the stars and never faltered when they failed; they were there to support each other and keep holding out their hands, ready to take hold of their fates, always mindful of the foundations firm and strong beneath their feet that supported everything they attempted, everything they built.
As they shared a fresh pot of tea and soft buns filled with a line of jam and another of sweetened whipped cream, Nesta grew quiet, introspective. Talking about human culture had drained her. Talking about home had upset her. He was coming to pick up little things, details that showed him the difference between Nesta when she was angry and Nesta when she was frustrated and heartbroken. It was almost imperceptible, but he had learned the difference.
The Inner Circle purposely misunderstood Nesta's nature, insisting that she was a vicious shrew. They had done nothing but exacerbate her fear and distrust. But she concealed her pain behind barbed words and vicious condescending glares. Sometimes the best way to defend was to attack.
Sometimes.
He had noticed the subtlest shift in Nesta this morning. He couldn't help wonder whether she had figured out a wiser way to fight her own battles. To win this war Rhysand had declared on her.
A.N.: I love calm Azriel and Nesta, just drinking tea, enjoying the sun and doing a puzzle! The book series Nesta loves is an in-verse equivalent of Kresley Cole's Immortals After Dark with a bit of Mad Max: Fury Road, The Last of Us and Star Wars thrown in for good measure. Again, I would highly recommend Immortals After Dark.
The buns Azriel and Nesta eat at the end of the chapter are Devonshire Splits. I'd highly recommend Paul Hollywood's recipe for them.