A Court of Wind and Song

19: Failure

Nesta

It was to be a boy.

My nephew.

Feyre had said she wanted me to know first, since Elain had been the one to discover her pregnancy. She wanted to share it with me, and I didn't entirely know what to do with that. All I knew was that there was some happiness, some sense of entirety that had sprouted within her. A joy in her eyes I had never noticed before, and maybe that was why I had taken to researching anything I could on the Dread Trove. I had even asked Gwyn to look into it for me too.

For the happiness in Feyre's eyes after so long, the babe in her womb, there was some large part of me that could not bear to see them threatened.

Maybe it wasn't only that. Maybe it was also the shadows under Leur's eyes when she had checked in on me a few days ago, something else rejuvenated in her stare at the same time. She had taken me to the sewing room again, saying absolutely nothing as she held swatches of fabric up to my skin and draping them across me. I wanted to ask what she was doing, why she was bothering with me when she had so many other things to worry about. But she had seemed calmer than I had seen her in a while, a bit happier, and I hadn't had the heart to destroy it.

So, I had just let her do anything she wanted.

The next morning, I woke up to a more casual set of leathers and a new dress hung neatly on the doorknob of my bedroom. The leathers were embroidered by hand, bands of silver twisted through the grayish fabric. The dress was a casual summer style, light linen and a soft corseted waistline. Made in the deepest blue fabric, the black corset embroidered with the same silver embroidery to match the small details on the ends of the billowed sleeves. A small note was pinned to the apron of it, with extra large, deep pockets sewn into it.

For working in the library.

Let me know if your friend would like one too.

-L

I didn't know how she knew about Gwyn, but I figured it was best not to ask. Nonetheless, I had asked my new friend. In her eyes, I could have sworn there was a hint of desire. As if she wanted to say yes to a hand sewn garment made by her Princess, wanted to take the step outside of her comfort zone, and still shook her head no. Maybe it was a habit, or maybe she did not feel that she deserved it.

I knew the feeling.

I almost sent a message to Leur to make it anyways, to simply force Gwyn outside of that secret hole of comfort the way Leur did for me. I would just give her no other choice, and that would be the end of it. I wrote the note, fully prepared to ask the house to send it for me.

And at the last moment, I had thrown it into the fire.

And as I watched it burn, its ashes billowing into the cool Autumn air, another idea came to me. I had cleared it with Cassian and Clotho, had spent all night creating a sign up sheet for morning trainings to hang in the Library.

A week had passed since then, and not one singular name was written.

I had even asked Gwyn why she didn't sign up. She had simply said it wasn't her thing.

But it wasn't mine either.

At least, I hadn't thought it would be. Not until I fell in love with the feeling of my body getting stronger, with the light that shot threw me as I finally got something right, with the soreness in my muscles and the visible progress. Knowing that I wasn't weak, that I could fight- it had been enough to drag me halfway out of the pit I had drug myself into.

The other half of me was the part that ran away from nightmares by climbing up and down the 10,000 steps down to Velaris every night. The part of me that I only let loose in that damp, dark stairwell, where there was no light to shine on my tears or the fear that lived within me. The fear for Feyre and her child, for Leur and the target on her back, for whatever had happened to Gwyn, for the way that Cassian looked at me when he thought I wasn't paying attention.