A Court of Wind and Song

6: Rocks

Nesta

Books had always been an escape for me.

When I was a child and my mother and grandmother were busy crafting me into their little puppet, all I had were books to escape from the constant noise. When I grew older and we were starved in that ramshackle cabin, I had only managed to save a few volumes before we were forced to sell our house. And still, I read them cover to cover almost every day. And afterwards, when we suddenly had money again, I still found myself reaching for those same worn and torn books.

And since the Cauldron, I had missed those books more than ever. Even now, walking through stacks upon stacks of books on every genre I could imagine, I found myself missing those books I had savored so much. The stories inside, ones I could have repeated without even thinking about it, still felt different when I read them on those pages. The soft leather bindings and the dusty old pages, that specific scent of books.

I wondered if there was any chance they had survived the blaze Hybern had set on our previous estate. I wondered if somewhere in that rubble lay those books, those parts of myself that I had held onto as if my life depended on it.

I wondered if my father knew where they were.

Of course, finding out would require me to see him. Which was something I still could not bring myself to do, something I could not bring myself to face. No matter if I could not remember the titles of those old volumes anymore, the memories hazy and lost within my mind. The covers were so worn the last time I had seen them, but I could not remember what they originally contained. What had the artwork been? The story? Those characters that had been my saving grace all those years, what had been their names?

Why was it so difficult to remember?

So, I just walked through the halls of this library and missed those volumes. Clotho had assigned me a cart of books to shelve on level three, mindless busy work which left me with nothing to do but to live in my own head.

Alone with my thoughts, where I all I had left to think about was the fact that I was nothing, that I was worthless, that I hated everything I was and everything I had ever done.

Most days, all I could think about was how lovely it would be to be anywhere but my own head. Trapped in thoughts and memories, trapped in the hell I only had myself to blame for.

Fuck, I needed to think about something else.

I had hoped that with enough time and silence, my mind would quiet and fade into a blissful nothing. Just mindlessly working, focused on only one task, assigning books to their shelves and straightening out rows upon rows of books. Up and down the sloping ramp, climbing and decending. Alone.

And yet, my mind kept going back to that roof.

The difference that only a few hours of training had made was startling. As if I could feel the ground beneath my feet now, a steady presence I had always been connected to and had never noticed. It was an improvement, that was for sure, but did nothing to qualm the memories of Leur and Cassian laughing as they ran around the roof. The sound of their joy, like innocent children, the smile on Leur's face whenever she noticed Azriel had arrived, the way her eyes had lit up like a match.

This is how Leur and Cassian cope with things. I know it's difficult to understand, but it's just the way they are.

That was what Azriel had said. And it was strange, seeing happiness and hollowness in his eyes all at once, just a quick flash before he was smiling again. I realized that I had misjudged them, maybe all of them. I had thought that they just moved on, that they had just packed up everything hellish from the war and just let it go. I had hated them for being so happy, hated their perfect golden palaces and the shine in their eyes. I'd cursed them all for having what I could not bring myself to admit that I wanted, and now-