misc musings

Notes:

this takes place in the spring between acofas and acosf

Feyre is in trouble.

Her hands are shaky, anxiety charging through her insides like the Middengard worm. And there's only one person who can help her stab the hell out of it, who she's sure will know what to do.

God, he better be home.

Her gown swishes against the red rock floor and her dread mounts and it's like trying to climb a wall made of mud.

But, blessedly, he's here.

Bent over a large folio of maps, Cassian has one hand fisted in his hair when Feyre skids to a halt in his doorway.

"Help," she pants, unable to get the rest of it out. Damned High Lady duties haven't left much time for training.

Cassian half-rises, looking alarmed. But Feyre shakes her head, her breath mercifully returning.

"No no, it's not—I'm not in danger."

He relaxes back down, and she does too.

For the last few months, Cassian's study has become somewhat of a haven for her. The huge armchairs, the strategy table with it's tiny iron figurines. The well-stocked bar. It's a place where she can be confused or scared or crabby without having to make someone else feel better about it.

So a familiar warmth spreads through Feyre's chest when Cassian smirks, leaning back in his chair and sighing, "What did Rhys do this time?"

She's already in the chair opposite before he closes the folio.

"I don't know what to do," she admits. "I come down to breakfast this morning. And Rhys is sitting there, drinking his tea. Reading the last-minute details for the opera house reopening. You remember that's happening today."

"I definitely did not remember that."

Feyre rolls her eyes.

"Anyway. I'm about to tell him my plans to paint part of the bedroom today, when he looks up from his papers and says Darling, would you make the opening remarks for me this afternoon? Just jot a few things down, you'll do wonderfully."

She feels sick. But Cassian just raises a quizzical brow.

"Alright? And that's… bad?"

"Yes, it's fucking bad! I don't know what to say!

Feyre shivers as goosebumps sweep down her arms. It's chilly in here, which is strange this close to the cusp of summer.

"Just say what Rhys usually does," Cassian advises. He rubs, a hand over his jaw, thinking. "Honor and progress and prosperity. And write it down so you don't forget. I've made that mistake too many times."

But Feyre's already whipping her head back and forth. It's not enough, she isn't enough—

"I don't even know what to write! A year ago, I didn't even know how to fucking write!"

He makes that face that tells her she's hit his soft spot. "Then dictate, I'll write it down for you. Just talk about the future, the 'brilliant dawn approaching' and all that."

"But I don't know what that is. I don't know the… the future. I don't know when it'll feel normal."

It hurts to admit. She wants to be worthy of her title so badly. But in moments like this, it's hard to feel like that's ever possible.

Feyre looks down, ashamed. But the confession loosens something in her, and the words flow freely, pouring out like rainwater from a downspout.

"I keep waiting for someone to point and shout that I don't belong here. And I can't tell Rhys that, because what if he thinks he made a mistake? What if he looks at me and thinks 'Why did I make this stupid girl my High Lady? She can't even write. She can't even keep her own sister from drinking and fucking every—'"

"Stop," Cassian says.

Feyre takes a breath, but she can't look at him still. It's too much to imagine the understanding look on his face, the easy calm she's come to depend on.

"I don't know what I'm doing, Cass. And there's no on I can ask without admitting that I'm so not the person they—"

"Stop," he repeats, more firmly. "Rhys wouldn't give this to you if he didn't think you could do it. Remember the Weaver? The first task Under the Mountain?"

She slumps into her chair, worn wood biting into her forearms, and the silence stretches between them. It's only broken by brief flutters of papers falling onto his desk.

At last she grumbles, "Thrown me in the mud, and I'm fine. Put me in a dress, and I'm useless."

"Me, too."

Her eyes snap upward and Cassian is smiling down at her, bright and wide and undaunted. Feyre can't help but laugh and relief sparkles through her chest when he laughs, too.

"You know that shit they say. Speak from the heart."

He always knows what to say. Even more so than Rhys sometimes, because it doesn't come with the added pressure, of needing her to be alright. There's never been a problem Cassian couldn't fix. Well, except Nesta, though Feyre suspects he'll capture that victory, too. Eventually.

"C'mon, Cursebreaker. Let me escort you." Cassian slaps his thighs before standing. "I'll say something stupid before you go so you'll sound better. And afterward, I'll yell at Rhys to get you an aide for these kinds of things."

More papers fall to the desk.

"Why don't you have an aide?"

"I have the camp lords. When I can get them to stop complaining about each other."

Feyre laughs, imagining him playing priest to a line of cranky confessors. Though she supposes she's one as well.

"I don't know how we'd survive without you, Cass."

"You'd survive. Life would be dull, though."

A ribbon of guilt ripples through her for some reason. She stops, turning to face him.

"You're sure you don't mind giving up your afternoon?

He waves a bored hand.

"Opera beats paperwork."

Yet the rustling is still unceasing from down the hall, near constant now.

"Sounds like someone needs you."

"Yeah. But not as much as you right now, eh?" He claps her on the shoulder. "Let's go. I'm hungry, and at least Rhys doesn't skimp on the food for these things."

In the end, Cassian is right. He makes a bawdy joke before her that loosens the crowd. The very next day, a sweet-faced but surprisingly militant assistant arrives to her office.

Bent over her sketchbook, she hears Cassian's whistle down the hall, down the stairs, and out the front door.

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Cassian rolled his freshly-taped shoulder, sitting on the bench with one boot tied and the other abandoned next to his foot, pretending to check the weather forecast but instead checking for any new messages, against his better judgement. His eyes roamed over his last exchange with Nesta, lingering on the unanswered question about who would win in a fight, a vampire or a zombie. He’d taken it too far, perhaps. Probably. He was almost completely convinced he ruined it for good, that she’d never talk to him again. Perhaps Azriel had been right, and this had been a stupid idea.

He’d really tried to stay calm and act normal about the fact that she hadn’t answered. He’d gone about his days. He’d done his usual pre-training ritual. He’d been perfectly normal, if he ignored the fact that he’d poured boiling water into a cup that morning and stared at it for almost five minutes, before remembering to put in the actual tea. He was also ignoring the fact that he’d listened to her voice note more times than he should admit, falling asleep to the sound of her voice ranting about Arthurian legends the night before. Cassian knew he wasn’t acting normal, lying on his back in bed with his phone on his chest and Nesta Archeron’s voice cutting through the dark, furious and precise and devastatingly posh, but he couldn’t help it.

He just couldn’t stop listening, and he couldn’t prevent the way she had him under her spell. He had thought, the first time he listened to it, that no woman had ever sounded more enraged about medieval pseudo-history while simultaneously sounding devastatingly concerned about his welfare. By the time he fell asleep, her voice had gone softer in his ear, not because she had softened—God forbid—but because sleep had sanded down the sharp edges. By the end, he’d listened to the rhythm of her voice more than the words. The clipped irritation, and the breath she took halfway through, as if she had realised how long she had been talking and considered stopping, only to continue because the point was apparently too important to abandon. The little, sharp emphases she put on certain words had made him grin into his pillow like an idiot. Around midnight, Cassian was pretty sure he’d probably listen to her tell him off about fraudulent relics, plague transmission, or the ridiculousness of fantastic creatures until the end of his natural life.

—————