Elain’s smile was as bright as the setting sun beyond the windows. “I thought I’d drop by to see how you were doing.”
Someone had brought Elain here, since there was no way in hell she had climbed those ten thousand steps.
Nesta didn’t return her sister’s smile, but rather gestured to her body, the leathers, the dust. “I’ve been busy.”
“You look a little better than you did a few weeks ago.”
The last time she’d seen Elain—a week before she’d come to the House. She’d passed her sister in the bustling market square they called the Palace of Bone and Salt, and though Elain had halted, no doubt intending to speak to her, Nesta had kept walking. Hadn’t looked back before vanishing into the throng. Nesta didn’t wish to consider how poorly she’d looked then, if the picture she presented now was better.
“You’ve got good coloring, I mean,” Elain clarified, striding from the windows to cross the room. She stopped a few feet away. As if holding herself back from the embrace she might have given.
Like Nesta was some sort of disease-ridden leper.
How many times had they been in this room during those initial months? How many times had it been this way, only with their positions switched? Elain had been the ghost then, too thin, with her thoughts turned inward.
Somehow, Nesta had become the ghost.
Worse than a ghost. A wraith, whose rage and hunger were bottomless, eternal.
Elain had only needed time to adjust. But Nesta knew she herself needed more than that.
“Are you enjoying your time up here?”
Nesta met her sister’s warm brown eyes. When human, Elain had easily been the prettiest of the three of them, and when she’d been turned High Fae, that beauty had been amplified. Nesta couldn’t put her finger on what changes had been wrought beyond the pointed ears, but Elain had gone from lovely to devastatingly beautiful. Elain never seemed to realize it.
It was always that way between them: Elain, sweet and oblivious, and Nesta, the snarling wolf at her side, poised to shred anyone who threatened her.
Elain is pleasant to look at, her mother had once mused while Nesta sat beside her dressing table, a servant silently brushing her mother’s gold-brown hair, but she has no ambition. She does not dream beyond her garden and pretty clothes. She will be an asset on the marriage market for us one day, if that beauty holds, but it will be our own maneuverings, Nesta, not hers, that win us an advantageous match.
Nesta had been twelve at the time. Elain barely eleven.
She’d absorbed every word of her mother’s scheming, plans for futures that had never come to pass.
We shall have to petition your father to go to the continent when the time is right, her mother had often said. There are no men here worthy of either of you. Feyre hadn’t even been considered at that point, a sullen, strange child whom her mother ignored. Human royalty rules there still—lords and dukes and princes—but their wealth is tapped out, many of their estates nearing ruin. Two beautiful ladies with a king’s fortune could go far.
I might marry a prince? Nesta had asked. Her mother had only smiled.
Nesta shook her head clear of the memories and said at last, “I don’t have any choice but to be here, so I don’t see how I could be enjoying myself.”
Elain wrung her slender fingers, nails kept trimmed short for her work in the gardens. “I know the circumstances for your coming here were awful, Nesta, but it doesn’t mean you need to be so miserable about it.”
“I sat by your side for weeks,” Nesta said flatly. “Weeks, while you wasted away, refusing food and drink. While you appeared to hope you’d just wither and die.”
Elain flinched. But Nesta couldn’t stop the words from pouring out. “No one suggested you either shape up or be shipped back to the human lands.”
Elain, surprisingly, held her ground. “I wasn’t drinking myself into oblivion and—and doing those other things.”
“Fucking strangers?”
Elain flinched again, her face coloring.
Nesta snorted. “You’re living amongst beings who have none of our human primness, you know.” Elain squared her shoulders again, just as Nesta added, “It’s not like you and Graysen didn’t act on your feelings.”
It was a low blow, but Nesta didn’t care. She knew Elain had given her maidenhead to Graysen a month before they’d been turned Fae. Elain had been glowing the next morning.
Elain cocked her head. Didn’t dissolve into the crying mess she usually became when Graysen came up. Instead she said, “You’re angry with me.”
Fine, then. She could be direct, too. Nesta shot back, “For packing my things while Rhysand and Feyre told me I’m a worthless pile of shit? Yes.”
Elain crossed her arms and said calmly, sadly, “Feyre warned me this might happen.”
The words struck Nesta like a slap. They’d spoken of her, her behavior, her attitude. Elain and Feyre—that was the new status of things. The bond Elain had chosen.
It was inevitable, Nesta supposed, stomach churning. She was the monster. Why shouldn’t the two of them band together and shove her out? Even if she’d foolishly believed that Elain had always seen every horrible part of her and decided to stick by her anyway.
“I still wanted to come,” Elain went on with that focused calm, the quiet steel building in her voice. “I wanted to see you, to explain.”
Elain had chosen Feyre, chosen her perfect little world. Amren hadn’t been any different. Nesta’s spine stiffened. “There is nothing to explain.”
Elain held up her hands. “We did this because we love you.”
“Spare me the bullshit, please.”
Elain stepped closer, brown eyes wide. Undoubtedly wholly convinced of her own innocence, her innate goodness. “It’s the truth. We did this because we love you, and worry for you, and if Father were here—”
“Don’t ever mention him.” Nesta bared her teeth, but kept her voice low. “Never fucking mention him again.”
She forbade her leash to slip completely. But she felt it—the stirring of that terrible beast inside her. Felt its power surge, blazing yet cold. She lunged for it, shoving it down, down, down, but it was too late. Elain’s gasp confirmed that Nesta’s eyes had gone to silver fire, as Cassian had described it.
But Nesta smothered the fire in her darkness, until she was cold and empty and still once more.
Pain slowly washed over Elain’s face. And understanding. “Is that what this is all about? Father?”
Nesta pointed to the door, finger shaking with the effort of keeping that writhing power at bay. Each word from Elain’s mouth threatened to undo her restraint. “Get out.”
Silver lined Elain’s eyes, but her voice remained steady, sure. “There was nothing that could have been done to save him, Nesta.”
The words were kindling. Elain had accepted his death as inevitable. She hadn’t bothered to fight for him, as if he hadn’t been worth the effort, precisely as Nesta knew she herself wasn’t worth the effort.
This time, Nesta didn’t stop the power from shining in her eyes; she shook so violently she had to fist her hands. “You tell yourself there’s nothing that could have been done because it’s unbearable to think that you could have saved him, if you’d only deigned to show up a few minutes earlier.” The lie was bitter in her mouth.