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Yes, he wished he could say to her, mind to mind. Yes.
Rhys could go to hell. So could Bryaxis and that vision she’d shown him.
It turned out, he did have something left to fight for.
CHAPTER
18
Nesta
“I’m shocked you’re even staying here tonight,” Cassian said casually to Nesta in the excruciating silence of their river house bedroom. “I thought for sure you’d run back to the House after dinner, Bryaxis or no.”
At the attempt at teasing—so unusual these days—Nesta looked at him from where she sat in her nightgown at the dressing table, unpinning the coils of hair atop her head.
Well, then.
He’d already sprawled himself across the bed, shirtless, wings splayed beneath him. He knew precisely what picture he painted, with all those muscles gleaming in the golden faelights, that arrogant half smile on his lips. A veritable feast of Illyrian maleness.
She made herself return to her reflection, pulling free a ruby-topped hairpin. “Lucien’s staying over.”
“So?” Movement caught her eye, and she glanced over to see Cassian tossing and catching a knife as if it were a ball.
She clicked her tongue. “So I want to be here in case Elain needs me.”
The motion stilled, and she found him holding the knife by its tip—like he’d caught it that way. “Elain needs you to protect her from Lucien?” His face was deadly grave. It didn’t matter what the current state of their mating bond was—if her sister needed help, he’d offer it instantly. No questions asked.
He was that sort of male. Good. Brave. True. Something deep in her chest wrenched.
She’d had all the words prepared last night, had her heart open wide and ready to burst, especially after the House had made it so clear with that pile of splinters that she had done this and only she could fix it, but he hadn’t come back. And then he’d swaggered in this morning, and she’d been so mad at him, so furious, she’d wanted to just start screaming. Or crying. Or both.
“No,” Nesta said thickly, placing her hairpin alongside the others in the drawer of the table. “But Elain’s always on edge when he’s around.”
She could have ended it at that, could have fallen back into that tense silence, but she found herself trying. “I think it comforts Elain to know I’m close by. Especially after the day we had.”
“Hmm.” The knife flipping resumed.
Nesta shut the drawer and met her own stare in the mirror. Gaunt and hollow and—sad. She hated it. Hated everything about this warped, barbed bond between them.
He hadn’t even been there this afternoon when Madja had healed her—the shattered arm, the broken nose. Not a trace of the injuries now remained. As if the horrors of Bryaxis had never happened.
But Cassian seemed to be at least attempting to talk normally. And he seemed to intend to stay here tonight. In their bed. Next to her.
“What did you see today?” she asked as she shook out her hair, scalp giving a quiver of pleasure at her freed tresses.
His knife stilled again. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he rasped.
“Was it the same thing you saw all those years ago in the library?”
“No. It was worse.”
She met his eyes in the mirror. “In what way?”
His handsome face had paled, his eyes distant as he murmured, “The more you have in life, the more people you love, the worse your fears become.”
She couldn’t stand to see in his eyes the answer to the question she wanted to ask: Am I still on that list of people? So she refocused on the mirror and began to brush out her hair.
She didn’t know what to make of today. Nyx, at least, seemed unharmed and unbothered, and Nesta could only pray it would remain that way. Dinner had been . . . fine. Not one of their most cheerful meals, but certainly not the somber misery she’d expected.
