#for ages

My best friend the masked shadow.

qiu dingjie & eliot huang via 小红书/IG

Need I say more?

wink

Nesta Archeron had imagined that there was no ego, no audacity left that could truly surprise her. Bound up in funeral white from head to toe, her every joint and muscle was aching. She’d tried and failed to braid up her hair. Resolutely did not think of the last hands that had done so besides her sister, shivering as she pulled a veil over the lot, formal, proper, alone. Poison of magic did not harm or degrade the way mortal toxins did- it was one thing to know and another to understand, her whole body rendered foreign. Everything hurt, and yet she could walk. Everything hurt, bloody edges where her home had been, wards anchored her very being torn out alongside vitality. Mist was not so familiar. She could feel it, safe. Cool. A blue calm that seemed to go on forever, but she could hardly bear to accept a second more of its shelter. And so Nesta Archeron was in the gardens, catching her breath against a a pillar, trellised flowers a solid canopy overhead, nearly to the pyres, when the Morrigan arrived. Nesta rose so fast she wondered briefly if the arrow had been a sick dream, before the pain roared back in, agony that did not stop a single one of her furious steps. “Everyone inside,” she murmured, not so low her Illyrian guards did not hear. “Everyone. Make sure the children aren’t seen.” Kali had disappeared with the swords of the fallen, replaced in lockstep by four legionnaires, who looked more grim now than when she’d said she was going to help tend their dead. Still, they listened. Morrigan made a show of waving, her sheer, sliced burgundy sleeves wafting. Behind her, like a mirage, like a madness, trunks and boxes were popping into existence, carelessly deposited on the wet grass. Nesta wondered if she were strong enough to break those fine, fine waggling fae fingers of hers. Her weak grip said otherwise. Perhaps if she stomped hard enough. “Nesta,” Morrigan crooned once she was near, wafting an airy kiss her way Nesta only barely managed not to flinch from, “I come bearing gifts!”