Chapter Text
NESTA'S FIRST VELARIS ABDUCTION SNIPPET
Rhys had avoided Nesta for days- over a week possibly, she’d not bothered to count. The idiot hulking one--Cassian-- had made some passing remark about Rhys being “away”, but she didn’t believe it. Far too convenient. She had rarely left the room he had made over for her when Cassian burst through the door one afternoon.
“I’ve been sent to coax you out of your mood,” he said too cheerily. She mistrusted him immediately.
“And how do you plan to do that?”
“Rhys sent me to give you a present.”
Nesta huffed. “If that bastard thinks he can buy my favor with that absurd wealth of his, he’s got another thing coming. Tell him to take whatever silly trinket he’s pawning off on me and shove it up his ass.”
Cassian just laughed heartily. “I’m happy to relay the message, but you might want to look at the present before we decide to shove it up there.” At that, he pulled a little black and white kitten out of his jacket pocket. It was skinny and scraggly- underfed, poor thing. “I promise, he didn’t spend a cent on it. Found it on his walk around the city this morning. Couldn’t find its mother. He thought he might ask you to take care of it.”
Nesta wanted to turn it away, she really did. But the damned thing’s giant golden eyes just stared at her with such plaintiveness, she couldn’t help but sigh, holding out her hands to take it from Cassian, who grinned at his victory.
“I’ll tell Rhys you like it.”
“Don’t you dare.”
Five days of bolstering his courage to talk to her, and there she was, sitting on the floor with her long legs tucked under her, laughing as she let the ratty little kitten attack her fingers. She had made a fool of him and his cowardice already, and the thought and the sight made Rhys smile.
“So you like my gift then,” Rhys asked, feigning nonchalance as he leaned against the doorframe, watching her.
Nesta’s head snapped to him at that, just a second of catching the surprise on her lovely face, before she put the mask of indifference back on. She turned back to the kitten, scratching his head. “This isn’t some sort of fae beast wearing the guise of a kitten, is it? Will it morph and attack me in my sleep?” Nesta kept petting the creature, so Rhys found it unlikely she felt any threat.
“The ugly little thing seems fond of you, so an attack seems unlikely,” Rhys said with a smirk. He made his way to her in quiet steps, crouching beside her to scratch the cat behind the ears. “But no. He…” he looked to Nesta for confirmation of the gender, but she shook her head, “SHE is basically the same as any cat in the mortal realm. Extended lifelines, a bit. As I understand it, cats in the mortal realm live around fifteen to twenty years. With good health and no trouble, she has about a hundred. It's fortunate, as fifteen years is a blink of an eye to a fae.” He hesitated, keeping his eyes off Nesta, feeling strangely, uncomfortably vulnerable. “I have no desire to endanger you, Nesta. That isn’t my intent bringing you here.”
She too kept her eyes off of him, and how he wished he could feel that devastating icy blue gaze on him. “And what is your intent then?” She asked in a clipped tone.
To own you, to have you, he thought so violently, it felt as if it was seeping out of his pores. But Rhys knew he could never let her know this. He watched her now, ready to enjoy her reaction at his words. “To fulfill our bargain. For you to fulfill your end— you have a pet now, just as I do.” He explained, his voice as cool and mocking as he could make it.
Her eyes snapped to his, blazing in fury. “And what does being your pet entail?”
Rhys shrugged, enjoying playing the asshole for his own sake now, instead of forced into the role by circumstance. “Similar enough to what it did Under the Mountain, I suppose. Companionship. A pretty decoration for my hearth and home. Nothing too taxing for how well you’re being kept.” His eyes raked over her purposefully at that, toying with her temper as he watched her being surveyed. She hated his assessing, seemed to hate his cocky grin at her even more. But whether she’d ever admit it or not, she was being well-kept, far better than the too-thin, malnourished girl he had met in the woods by the Wall. He had thought that the Fae Realm would be too harmful for a mortal, that the magic would overwhelm and start to destroy them.
But Nesta seemed to glow with it. After a week in Velaris (and sequestered in his rooms Under the Mountain), her hair grew out more lustrously, her cheeks less hollowed and with a healthy rosiness. To his appreciative eye, her thinness had started to fill out, giving her form a delicious curvature. He reached up a hand to touch that rosy cheek, and was surprised that Nesta had let him, had permitted him to soak in that soft warmth. But her eyes were an ice storm, piercing him so fiercely with her hatred.
“People don’t enjoy being KEPT, Rhysand. It is the reason my people have hated yours for centuries.”