Work Text:
1.
Choice
It was not destiny that drew them together. The hand of fate had not tethered one heart to another by an invisible cord.
They were the choice they got to make for themselves.
2.
Ruin
You’re wasted at the Night Court. Absolutely wasted.
Unbidden, his words come to her like flames licking fabric—until one day Nesta can't deny the warmth they bring her cold heart. She burns with them, aflame with their implication—the intimacy of being understood.
But marrying him would be folly. Her head warns of foolishness, of the dangers of too many romantic stories devoured in loneliness, "shackled" to a male who does not and would never truly understand.
Eris Vanserra would be her ruin, her sisters say. Night's Inner Circle warns that he would only take Nesta and delight in the breaking of her. Yet she had already been broken, and when they took the pieces, it was to break them further, to form her into their own desired shape.
Eris is not truly cold—he is fire made flesh.
He desires her for who she is, not for who she could be.
3.
Twin Flames
Circumstances took many things from them : stability, emotional vulnerability, and siblings.
With a parent so merciless and calculating, the position of eldest called for perfection. Not a hair should be out of place, not a word was to be spoken or a move to be made without careful consideration.
They turned caustic over the years, expressing themselves through barbs of cold sarcasm, cruel in their chill beauty.
But it was fire that kept them going, tempering them so they could bend and not break.
The Cauldron and the Mother did not bring them together—it was that fire. Their flames met, like calling to like, and they burned together as a blaze.
4.
Strength
Her upbringing had well prepared her for navigating Autumn's court. Nesta settles quite easily into marriage.
It helps that Eris is not the snake he was said to be—or, at least, that his fangs are not for her. It is his father he waits for in the grass, poised and ready to strike.
They actually get along like a village family's house on fire, Nesta thinks morbidly.
She had been thinking of poor Clare a lot lately. Nesta can imagine her reaction to Eris, hearing her voice as if they had spoken only yesterday...
What a clever, well-dressed devil, Clare would say of him. Men like that you can't ever admit how handsome they are. They're already so smug with it! Knock him off his high horse!"
When Eris asks why she accepted him as her husband, Nesta cannot find the words for a while.
Finally, she answers, "I wanted to run away. Because I'm weak at heart, I suppose..."
“No," Eris says simply. "Strength is more than endurance; sometimes it is saying 'no more'."
5.
Across The Stars
Nesta huffs in wry amusement, saying in that ever-cool-and-composed way of hers, "You're an asshole, you know."
Eris smiles as if she had offered a compliment. It wasn't a question, but he answers like it was, saying without a beat, "I do. And you can be quite the bitch; it's what I like most about you."
She rolls her eyes but lets him buy her a coffee—their debate taken to a second location morphing into a date.