A Court of Dark and Decay

Chapter 27- Moments

Extra long chapter to make up for missing last week. Im so sorry and please accept this 6,000 word chapter as a token of my sentiment. :)

Nesta did not remember the face of the male she had chosen to grace her bed for the night. She had probably been to drunk the night before and couldn't remember. She chose not to dwell on it. 

She was sweaty, her hair half falling out of the braid it had been in the day before. Her arms here flung around a solid torso, her head tucker underneath a stubly chin.

He was hot. It was like sleeping next to a fireplace. As she opened her eyes into the darkened room, Nesta realized it was not even sunrise yet. 

Uncurling her arms from around him, she sat up to look at the face of her latest mistake. 

And when she turned her head to look down at him, Nesta was looking at Cassian. 

Nesta remembered. 

She remembered how she had confessed, plead guilty to wasting thier time. 

Remembered how she had cursed his name in her mind as he praised her against that doorframe. 

Looking down at him then, she could still see the scratch marks on his chest and arms. One of his arms was slung loosley around her waist, almost to her hips now as she sat up and it slipped down. 

Nesta took that arm by the wrist, slowly and gently removing it from around her and guiding it onto the bed. She even went as far as to move the pillow she was laying her head on moments ago under that arm, so his sleep wouldn't be to distupted as she carefully slid out of bed. 

Cassian's shoulders rose and fell steadily as he slept. Nesta grabbed a throw blanket from the edge of the bed and flung it around her shoulders. Leaning agianst the bed post, she watched him sleep. 

There was no going back. She had told him she didn't want to go back. 

That was true. 

Nesta sat on the edge of the bed. She began undoing the messy braid, detangling her hair with her fingers. She watched as Cassian's wings fluttered slightly. 

She smiled. Cassian must be dreaming. 

Now they were treading this dangerous line. They weren't mated. Not fully, not yet. But the bond was unsettled, uneven in this limbo they found themselves in. 

Nesta's gut churned. She was anxious, so anxious. That gut dropping, petrifing feeling of losing your balance and falling, the split second before you actually start to fall.

That's what it felt like. The two of them had been dancing on the edge of a cliff for a long time, and last night they had pushed eachother over the edge. They were trapped in that split second before the fall begins, that state of terror. 

Cassian took a deep breath and pulled the pillow into his chest, resting his head on top of it. 

She had thought of him as 'hers' last night. High on the shining of the bond and on the feeling between her legs and the love in her heart she had started to become that posessive agressive being she promised herself she would never become. 

Nesta curled her legs under herself and under the throw blanket. 

But he was hers, wasn't he? And she was his. They belonged to eachother. 

It would be hard. They would fight. Two fires only burn brighter when conjoined. 

She frowned.