Chapter Text
When he, Rhys, and Azriel returned to Rhea’s house, the snow had stopped falling and the moon had passed its peak. Rhys excused himself immediately and disappeared up the stairs. Cassian wanted to follow his brother’s example, wanted to lock himself in his own room and savor that blissful bit of solitude after the awful days in Hewn, but he couldn’t leave Az.
Cassian had been wary of Azriel’s state since he’d turned up a bloody mess in the High Lord’s dining room in Hewn. One look at Azriel standing off to the side, shadows oozing into the floorboards, and Cassian knew tonight was going to be rough.
He stuck his hands back into his pockets and knocked his wing against Azriel’s shoulder. It was an intimate, vulnerable thing that he’d never do with anyone else, not even Rhys, and it was enough to pull Azriel’s attention away from whatever grim place his mind had taken him to.
“Take a flight with me?” he offered.
Azriel nodded stiffly.
They were in the air in moments, banking into a gust of wind that swept them up over Windhaven and north, into the high wilderness. There was a low mountain, hidden behind the peaks of three others, that they flew for. Azriel was the first to set down in a clearing half-way up its face, already storming through the thick layer of snow blanketing the mountain.
Cassian landed directly in front of him, bringing him up short. The look on Azriel’s face promised a punch in the gut if he didn’t move.
“Come on, talk to me, Az.” He gripped the leathers around Azriel’s shoulders. There was never enough excess material to get a good grip on, Azriel always made sure of it, preferring armor suited for stealth over Cassian’s bulkier leathers, so Cassian had to settle for digging his fingers into his shoulders instead. It was enough to get him to stop moving.
He watched as Azriel’s jaw worked, brow pulling low over his face as he chewed through what he needed to voice.
“He sent me after one of Bremend’s associates, the lord whose ships had smuggled the men who-“ Azriel cut himself off with a sharp shake of his head. Who had tried to take Selene. “He had three boys in his basement, three human boys, chained like animals.”
Azriel was shaking, Cassian could feel the tremors under his fingers with every word he managed to grit out. Cassian didn’t like where this was going, not for the boys and not for what that meant for Azriel.
“They were so broken, Cas. I couldn’t just leave them there. So I-” Cassian could hear all the self-loathing and pain as Azriel’s voice broke and gods did that hurt his heart. That unsaid, damning admission hanging heavy between the two of them, seemed like the last thing holding Azriel together. He finally let Cassian get close enough to pull him into a hug, and Cas wasn’t sure if it was Azriel or himself that was more grateful for the contact.
“You did what you had to,” Cassian whispered over the wind. He’d said those words so many times to Azriel after so many bloody, sickening errands that the words were beginning to ring hollow in his own ears. It didn’t matter how they sounded to him, he just needed Azriel to take them to heart. He needed Azriel to believe them. “You did the right thing, Az.”
There was a string of desperate, I know, I know, I know’s from where Az had buried his face into Cassian’s shoulder, like Azriel was trying to reconcile the fact, like he was trying to stuff the truth down his throat enough so that he could believe it. It didn’t sound like it was working.
Cassian squeezed him tighter, trying to offer Azriel any comfort he could. Az’s weight pulled him down to the snow a few seconds later.
He felt Rhys’s incessant tapping on his mind then.
Busy. Cassian speared briefly.
Do you need me to be there? He could hear the heavy concern on Rhys’s voice and assumed Azriel had projected something to him without meaning to.
You need to sleep. I’ve got him.
There was a beat of silence, where Cassian thought Rhys might have gone, but then his voice was back in his head again.
Put his leathers on my dresser. I’ll take care of them in the morning.
No. I said I’ve got him. Get some sleep.
He heard a huff at the refusal but Rhys thankfully didn’t argue more. As quick as he’d been to pester Cassian, he left. It was just him and Azriel in the clearing again.
The last two weeks had been rough on all of them. Between Selene’s near-kidnapping, Bremend’s keep, and Hewn, they’d been put through their lashings. They were strung out and Mother knew he was exhausted, but Az had taken the sharp edge of every hurt while he and Rhys had taken the blunt bruises. Az had been the one unleashed on Velaris like a bloodhound to ferret out Bremend’s men, Az had been the one to find Saiva, and Az had been the one to kill three innocents tonight. As much as Cas wanted to retreat, to just get out and take Az with him, he clung onto Azriel and convinced himself to stay. To endure. To just put up with it. Because he wouldn’t let Az break again. They’d spent too damn long piecing him back together for that to happen.
“As long as you need, Az,” he whispered as another violent tremble shook the body in his arms. Cassian had long since wrapped his wings around them, keeping the bitter bite of the wind at bay, but it was still night in the Ilyrian north. It was still freezing. Cas let his power seep from his siphons just a bit—not enough to alert anyone slinking around on the adjacent peaks to their presence, but enough to shield them from the wind. And in their tiny sliver of silence, under the shield guarding them from the rest of the world, Azriel wept.
When they winnowed back to the house, Azriel looked vacant. It scared him like nothing else, but Cas knew that he’d be okay in the morning. Or, as okay as any of them could be.
He bullied Azriel out of his leathers and weapons and left him to find his own way to bed, aware that Az needed time to himself just as much as he’d needed the time on the mountain.
Cas shut Azriel’s door behind him and stood in the hall, arms laden with bloody leather and steel, feeling adrift. It was late, everyone was asleep, the night was quiet.
It didn’t feel real.
Maybe he was just tired.
Cassian shook his head and wandered to his room, locking his door behind him so Selene couldn’t pester him in the morning. He loved her, but at the moment, he loved the idea of a full day of sleep more.
His bedroom was small, like Azriel’s and Selene’s, but it was larger than any tent he’d ever huddled under and for that he’d always be grateful. The red blanket on his bed, the soft, dove-grey rug by the window, and the ladder in the corner he used to hang the quilts Rhea made for him were his. All his.
He dumped all of Azriel’s things on a square stool beneath the small table with the washbasin perched on it, and peeled off his own leathers, adding them to the pile. His sword and knives didn’t need cleaning at least, so he set them on the floor under his bed.
He grumbled to find the water in the wooden tub in the corner of his room still warm.
Rhysand’s doing, undoubtedly. The fucking busybody. He never listened.
He washed quickly, thankful for the small bit of decency warm water meant even if it meant Rhys hadn’t gone to sleep like he should have. He made sure to scrub his hair thoroughly, getting rid of the bothersome gel and oil Rhys had threatened him into using in Hewn. That, at least, Cas couldn’t blame on Rhys; he’d just added it to the ever-growing list of reasons he hated the High Lord.
Cassian dripped water over half his room before remembering his towel was actually by the tub this time, and when he was dry and dressed in the Rhea-demanded minimum of Cassian-if-you-do-not-put-some-pants-on-I-will-never-let-you-drink-wine-in-my-house-again, he sat on the floor and started to work on cleaning Azriel’s things.
He separated the inner-lining on Az's leathers from the leather carapace, unfastening the simple knots and peeling the worn-soft grey fabric off the leather it was plastered to. One look at the black stains where blood had seeped in around the wrists and neck, and he tossed the lining into his tub to soak.
He busied himself with scouring the dried blood off the metal buckles first, making sure every seam, joint, and bend was free from any hint of blood, before working at the leather itself. When the leather started looking less blood-tacky and more clean-glossy, he buffed in a peppermint conditioner he saved for special occasions and tossed the clean armor onto his bed so he could work on his own set.
Cassian’s leathers didn’t need much. He just stripped the lining and threw it in his tub to soak with Az’s, and gave it a cursory once-over before deeming it clean enough. He worked a conditioner into a few of the joints and tossed his leathers next to Az’s.
Then, he set to the task of cleaning Truth Teller and the menagerie of knives and swords Az armored himself with. Cleaning leather was detail work; cleaning knives was not. Cassian finally let his mind wander, let his tension unspool, as his hands moved through the familiar motions, running a soapy rag over every surface to remove the dried blood, then working in a blade wax. It was a repetitive process—rag and soap, rag and wax, rag and soap, rag and wax—and by the time he was done with it, knives lined up in neat rows along his floorboards and he had caught himself falling asleep twice.
He didn’t give the linings soaking in the tub another thought as he evicted the leathers from his bed and finally, finally got to sleep.
Rhea was in the kitchen with Selene by her side when he walked down the stairs the next day.
“Morning,” he said, reaching past Rhea to snatch a slice of thick crusty bread out of the bread box. She slapped his arm with the side of the knife she was holding.
“Out of my kitchen,” she huffed, giving him a sharp warning look.
“Yeah, Cassian! Out of the kitchen!” Selene laughed, stomping in the basin of crushed blackberries just so and splattering the bottom of his pants with purple juice.
“Selene!” Rhea frowned as Selene hiccuped a laugh. Sometimes, Cassian forgot how young Rhea was. For all her wisdom, all those gentle reprimands and fiery scoldings, she was still just eighteen years older than him. At Cassian's age, she'd already been mated, had Rhys, and had been taking care of both Cas and Azriel. Maybe that was why here, now, in the morning light pouring in through the kitchen windows, she looked worn down. She never lost that spark in her eye, but she was older in experience than she was in years, and maybe that meant something more. Maybe that was why Cassian always thought of her as mother and not sister. “Rhys was going to help me wash her off. Would you-“
“I got it, don’t worry,” Cas said easily, brushing off her concern. He stuffed the slice of bread in his mouth and picked Selene up under her arms, setting her on the counter above the basin so her feet wouldn’t make a mess. There was already a stack of towels nearby.
“Where’d Rhys go?” he asked, soaking a towel to use while Selene flicked blackberry juice off her feet at him.
“Out. Training with Devlon's soldiers,” Rhea said. “He said he’d be back soon.”
He nodded. He didn't like the idea of Rhys being around those males alone, but he trusted Rhys could handle himself. If they were anyone else, the Bloodrite would have been enough to prove their worth in the eyes of the Ilyrian horde, but Cassian and Azriel were bastards and Rhys was a half-breed—the Ilyrians wanted males of worth to have their respect. Cas, Rhys, and Az could have all the power in Ilyria and still be the nothing more than the snow on the ground to an Ilyrian grunt.
Once Selene’s feet were clean and dry, he set her down and she skipped off to her harpsicord in the corner of the living room. When he turned back, Rhea had miraculously produced breakfast for him; sweet barley with blueberries, walnuts, and a dollop of cream on top. Cas kissed her cheek in thanks and tucked in at the butcher’s counter, careful to keep out of her way.
He watched her work, content to be silent and cram food into his mouth—he was, he realized, starving. She was making a dough for a pie and chopping vegetables roughly for a broth, jumping between the tasks with practiced efficiency. The blackberries, however, were left alone.
“What are you doing with the juice?” he asked between bites.
“Hmm?” She looked over at him while dumping chicken bones from, what he assumed, was last night’s supper into a pot. Then she pointed to the dining room table, where a folded heap of fine white fabric sat. “Oh. I want to dye that bolt of fabric a nice shade of purple. The blackberries are just a start.”
Cassian smiled.
“Another dress for Rhys?”
“For Rhys’s future Lady,” Rhea corrected, happy to fall for his baiting if the smile on her face was sign enough. “And no. I’m making a skirt for Selene and a dress for our guest.”
That was enough to make him pause. He set down his spoon.
“For… Saiva?” He tested the name out.
“She deserves a nice thing, don’t you think?” Rhea said wistfully in that way she did when she meant a dozen different things at once. She deserves a nice dress, some dignity, to feel beautiful, to be cherished—he could think of a hundred things Rhea could mean. And he’d never argue with that, never in his life argue that someone didn’t deserve Rhea’s kindness, but a worry did clatter around in his mind. Cassian knew better than most what it was like to have nothing and then be offered the smallest decency. Those scraps felt like gold—like a trap.
“She might not want it,” he said carefully.
Anyone else would have shrugged him off, but Rhea turned to listen to him.
“She’s already in an unfamiliar house with unfamiliar people. I don’t know what happened to her, but she might think she’s-“ he search for the right word, “obligated to you if you gift her something.”
Rhea looked thoughtful, worrying her lip with her teeth as she wiped off her hands on her apron. Then she nodded.
“I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you, Cassian.”
“Welcome,” he said quickly, diving back into his food. He shoveled another few bites of the sweet barley into himself before asking, “How is she?”
“She’s sedated.” A non-answer. Not good then. “We got food into her yesterday and the day before which is good, and she was signing with Azriel before he left. She was animated but it was only a matter of time before-“ she stopped herself. She didn't need to continue; they had all been there.
“She must have had a little sister,” he said quietly, feeling sick at the memory. There’d been silence and then out of nowhere, that awful screaming. He’d been downstairs, but he’d gotten the story out of Rhys: she’d been fine, and then she’d seen Selene.
“Maybe,” Rhea murmured. It was the way she said it that revealed she didn’t believe it, but he didn’t press. His mind, however, latched on. He didn’t have to figure out the girl, but there was that needling in the back of his head, that incessant need to protect and to care and to heal. He got it with Az, with Rhys, with Selen and Rhea, and now he was getting it with the girl in Selene’s room. He decided to voice the thought that had been bothering him all week.
“Do you think…” he trailed off, stabbing his spoon idly into a blueberry. “I mean, all those other females were ready to claw my eyes out until I told them Saiva was safe. Do you think bringing one of them here could help? They could ease something in her, or- I don’t know.”
Rhea tilted her head, considering, as she chopped a mound of greens into slivers.
“They could, but-“ She looked at him seriously, mouth fallen into a firm frown, sapphire eyes a dark and deep blue-black under the shadow stretching over her cheeks—the face of the Lady of the Night Court, not a seamstress, not a mother. “You would have to get into and out of Velaris without my mate knowing and that is too much of a risk. If you were caught, and he discovered Saiva, he’d press her about Bremend. That would not go over well.”
There was another lingering accusation that came with the words ‘if you were caught’: if he were caught in a situation like that, the High Lord would suspect Cassian was attached to Saiva and use her as leverage. That might bruise him, but it would hurt Azriel more, and though he didn’t know her, Saiva certainly didn’t deserve it either.
“Better not,” he said.
“Better not,” Rhea repeated. And that was that.
Cassian spent the rest of the day puttering around after Selene or watching things in the oven while Rhea tended to Saiva. It surprised him that he wasn’t bristling with energy after being cooped up in a damn mountain for three days doing nothing. Maybe it was because he was still tired and it was snowing heavily outside, but all he really wanted to physically do was have Selene walk all over his back to work the knots in his shoulders out.
Rhys came back eventually, Azriel in tow; the latter must have winnowed out if Cassian hadn’t seen him come down from his room. Rhys looked refreshed, Azriel mellowed if still withdrawn, and for the first time in a while, the three of them enjoyed a normal dinner and a peaceful evening.
The next day he went to the training rings with Rhys and Azriel, chopped firewood to replenish their stockpile, and helped Rhea dye her bolt of fabric. That involved hours of hauling scalding wet fabric between pots of dyes and conditioner, and stringing clothing lines across the ceiling of the kitchen for the fabric to dry on. Cassian ended up with purple hands and a stained chest. Rhea ended up with several dozen lengths of beautiful periwinkle muslin.
Azriel was still a nervous, angry shadow slinking around the house, but the edge he’d had the night they left Hewn was gone and that was enough for Cassian to give him his space for the day. Rhys, however, was being fucking weird and wouldn’t tell him why. The ‘I’m just thinking. You should try it sometime,’ when Cas asked him what he was staring at the ceiling for, and the ‘Mother asked for you in the kitchen, princess,’ when he had caught Rhys staring guiltily up the stairs did not help or answer any questions.
Fucking prick.
If this was why he’d dragged Cassian into that horrible “library” in Hewn, he was going to hurl Rhys out of a window. If he had to put up with that lunatic bookkeeper, then he deserved to know what Rhys was up to. It was only fair.
Asking Azriel got him nowhere, so he asked Selene. The only hint she gave him was ‘his mind is busy. Canyouplaydollswithme?’ So, he played dolls with Selene and chewed through the little sliver of information she’d given him. Rhys’s mind was busy with what? How to make his hair even shinier, probably.
Cassian snorted, which Selene gave him a funny look about.
Right. Dolls.
Dolls meant it was another few minutes before he could sink his teeth into the problem again.
The three of them had been talking about a rebellion on the continent just a few nights ago and he couldn’t fault Rhys for getting wrapped up in the implications of it—talk of war had put Cassian on edge, too. If that were the case, then maybe he was “busy” with a contact in Velaris close to the High Lord? He knew Rhys had several of them. But they’d been talking about the rebellion after the library, and if it had something to do with the library then it had something to do with Temple magic but-
Saiva.
The females they’d brought back said they were from a Temple in Rask.
That. Bastard.
“Cas?” Selene had noticed he’d gone quiet.
“Sorry, I’ll be back.” He ruffled Selene’s hair as he stood. He left Selene in Rhea’s room, where all her dolls and things had been moved to, and opened Azriel’s door, not bothering to knock. Az was reclining on his bed, the curls fallen in front of his face shielding his eyes from the light slanting in through the window. Cas hated to disturb his peace, but...
Az looked up from a book when he walked in.
“Come on. We’re finding Rhys.”
Azriel snapped his book closed, frowning.
“What for?”
“Rhys was poking around that wretched library in Hewn for books on Temple magic, and Selene just said that Rhys’s mind has been busy,” Cassian relayed, his irritation working its way into his tone. It took Azriel a fraction of the time it had taken Cas to puzzle that one out.
“He wouldn’t,” Azriel hissed, already rising from his bed, already sliding Truth Teller into its sheathe. The look on his face promised death and Cassian couldn't say he felt much different.
“He’s a prick,” Cas agreed.
Azriel just clicked his tongue, too angry and seething to be of much more coherent use, and grabbed Cassian’s collar before dragging them both through the shadows.
Rhys was outside with the new healer, Madja, helping her somehow in brewing something in a copper pot. The astringent, medicinal smell of it made Cassian’s eyes water.
“RHYS!” Azriel snarled. Rhys’s head shot up just as Azriel yanked him back by his shirt collar and punched him square across the face. The blow landed with a brutal crack and sent Rhys sprawling into the snow, inches away from the fire blazing beneath the pot. Cassian had the sense to haul Azriel off Rhys and shove him away before Madja could yell at him, but took the opportunity afforded to him while pulling Rhys off the ground to slug him across the face. Because Mother damn him if he wasn’t furious too.
The skin and meat and bones crunching under his knuckles felt right for once.
“What the hell did I do?” Rhys sputtered, struggling against the grip Cas had on his jacket as he dragged him through the snow toward Az.
“I can not fucking believe you’d pry into that girl’s mind, you arrogant fuck,” Cassian spat, throwing him at Azriel’s feet.
It wasn’t Rhys or Az, but Madja, who screamed, “You WHAT?”
Rhys flinched, face draining of color save for the blood dribbling out of his nose and the red mark on his cheek, as Madja stormed over. The healer wasn’t young and didn’t have a particularly strong frame, but the force she put into shoving Cassian out of the way so she could loom over Rhys was formidable. A female scorned had nothing on a healer charged.
“What, exactly, are they talking about, prince?” she spat at him, sticking a wooden spoon, still steaming with boiling water, in Rhys’s face. “Explain it.”
Rhys tried to scramble backwards, but she stomped on his pant leg and swatted his other cheek with her spoon. Azriel laughed softly. Cruelly.
“I was trying to see if she was going to die or not!” Rhys snapped, glaring at Cassian. It did not go unnoticed to Cassian how hard Azriel flinched at Rhys's words. “I did not pry. I wouldn’t do that. Selene was attached to her and I was worried what the girl dying might do to her.”
Azriel kicked at Rhys’s shoulder, a silent, painful demand for more. Cassian couldn't deny the anger boiling in his chest, writhing like a rabid animal and frothing at the mouth to be let out, but it wasn't Cas's privacy Rhys had violated, so he ignored the call of the power rumbling under his skin. As eager as Cassian might have been to join Azriel, and as little as he believed Rhys's proclaimed innocence, he reigned it in and settled for simply crossing his arm instead.
“Even if I had wanted to, I couldn’t reach her—there’s some kind of magic shielding her- OW,” Rhys complained loudly when Madja smacked him on his ear this time. He snatched at his ear.
“Stupid boy. She’s a Temple girl, of course the Mother’s protected her from your misguided, BULL-HEADED-“ she smacked him again, “snooping. She’s been through enough.” Madja smacked him one last time. “Do not let me catch you at it again,” she hissed.
As Madja stalked back off to her boiling pot, Cassian vowed never to get on the healer’s bad side. He turned a back to Rhys.
“Well,” he said heavily, leaving it up to Rhys what ‘well’ meant. It was his second-best method of getting the brat to talk; first method being Madja. Apparently.
“I would never invade her privacy,” Rhys said, pulling himself up so he was sitting. Blood from his nose gushed into his lap. He coughed and tilted his head back, pinching his nose and swearing up a storm while needling Azriel with a frosty look. “I would never look into her mind. Ever. What do you take me for?”
“An idiot,” Azriel said at the same time Cas said, “A prick.”
Rhys rolled his eyes.
“I just-“ he gestured wildly with the hand that wasn’t cupped over his bleeding nose. “If she were going to die, her mind would be this tiny, weak little thing. If she were just, I don’t know, lost, it’d be like- like a beating heart amidst a sea of nothing. That’s all I was looking for. I wouldn't even have to touch it, just see it,” he finished lamely.
Azriel scuffed his boot in the snow and Rhys jumped into another defense.
“I couldn’t even get close! It was like an ice field all over and a void where she should have been! I felt watched,” he hissed at them. “It wasn’t right.”
Cassian looked over at Azriel, who looked perfectly neutral on the entire matter. They were in agreement, then: they both kicked him.
“You’ll apologize to Saiva, after she’s feeling better,” Azriel said. Rhys nodded, looking chastened as if baleful eyes would do him any good.
“And you’ll tell Rhea,” Cassian added.
Rhys gaped at him.
“I will not-“ the objection was cut short because Azriel moved to cuff Rhys on the back of his head and Rhys retaliated by pulling Azriel down to the ground. They scuffled, grappling for control, and then Azriel caught enough of an opening to smash his forehead into Rhys’s nose and Rhys kneed Azriel in the stomach. No knives were pulled, so Cassian was content to put himself between the brawl and Madja. Mother willing, nothing would happen to Madja or her horrible smelling concoction. He did not want to be on the steaming end of that spoon.
Rhea came out after Azriel had bit Rhys and thrown him into the wood shed—the sound of their fighting having gone on too long to ignore.
Cassian’s stomach bottomed out at the look on Rhea's face when she saw Rhys strewn among a toppled pile of split wood.
Cauldron help him. Cauldron help them all.
The three of them were on the floor in the living room bright and early the next day, mending a pile of clothes and leathers; Rhys and Azriel’s punishment for brawling and Cas’s for… not doing anything. He thought. It wasn’t actually clear to him what he was mending clothes for, but he wouldn’t cross Rhea. Her word was law as far as he was concerned.
He didn’t mind the work and his stitching was even, but he’d never been any good at not poking himself with a needle. Rhys was good with a needle, and Azriel was the best, but by the time an hour had passed them by, Cassian had all his fingertips wrapped in bandages.
They’d just gotten through the bulk of their own clothes—the majority of their mending—when a bloodcurdling scream came from up the stairs.
Cassian had gotten hurt in his life—really, truly, hurt—but Saiva’s screaming was another beast entirely. It gripped his heart and squeezed and squeezed and squeezed until it felt like he couldn’t breathe. Broken bones and bruised ribs were nothing compared to a brutalized girl screaming in her bed.
“Watch your sister,” Rhea said to the three of them as she bolted up the stairs to help Madja settle their guest.
“Cassian,” Rhys said. He didn’t voice any instructions but it was in his tone: get Selene, get out of the house. She didn’t need to hear this.
Cassian stuck his bone needle into the pincushion and left a half-mended shirt on the floor. Selene was at the table and looked close to tears, lavender eyes rimmed with silver. Her gaze kept darting to the stairs and her wings were already shaking. He scooped her up without pretense and carted her to the door, where Rhys shuffled her into her coat and boots and hurried her outside. Azriel threw Rhys’s jacket after him and he caught it deftly before the door slammed between them. Cas and Azriel lingered inside for long enough to pull their own jackets on, and then they were following two trails of bootprints through the snow, one large and one small.
When they returned, all Rhea told them was that Saiva was sedated again, and then an hour later Madja had come down the stairs and delivered the grim news that Saiva was sick.
She’d taken ill with a blood fever that raged for days, and for days, all anyone could hear from under the door of Selene’s room was the occasional scream tearing the girl from a night terror and the gasping, rattling breath of someone too-close to the edge of death.
He, Rhys, and Azriel were used to someone being injured in the house. But this—Saiva—was different. Worse. When Cassian had broken his arm, he’d still bullied himself into training the next day. When Azriel had smashed his head against a signpost during one of their brawls, he had sat with Rhea at the kitchen table and peeled potatoes, occasionally flicking the skins at Cassian’s face. When Rhys had walked into a warhammer knee-first, he had lain himself like a decadent, bejeweled swan across one of the couches and demanded attention in all forms. All injuries and illnesses faced so far, with the only exception being Azriel’s burns, had been taken head on with a careless innocence. But that wasn’t the case for Saiva, and from what Cas had gathered about her injuries, he hadn’t expected it to be any other way.
He just hadn’t imagined it would be this painful to bear witness to.
Saiva was angry and scared and hurting. It poured off her in waves, in screams, in hurled glasses—in anything that could cut her pain into the world as violently as it had cut into her.
A week after Saiva had fallen ill, Madja had told them she was somehow, miraculously, pulling through. Delirious still, but swimming back to shore.
Everyone breathed a deep sigh of relief, and the house settled once more.