A/N: Hello, everyone! So, I'm very excited to finally post this. I've been working on it for such a long time! It'll be told in three time setting, and this chapter has two of them.

I hope you enjoy!

October 12 - 4 years after

It seems autumn has surrendered early to winter this year. The first cool drizzle had arrived in early September and the sun had immediately fled behind a cover of clouds and had not been seen since.

The unseasonable heavy rain has robbed Velaris' people of their last few weeks enjoying the outdoors but Elain does not mind so much, as Feyre's riverfront home has a beautiful dining room with a carved table she had helped picked out, and she is so excited to see her friends-now more like family-all gathered together, she does not care where the meeting commences.

"Oh, am I here before Feyre?" Mor says brightly from behind her. "Excellent. I thought I'd have to make up some excuse for being late."

"What were you thinking of?" Elain asks her, turning around to greet her with a kiss on her cheek.

"Caught in the storm, or something? I don't know."

"That's not very creative," Cassian says, coming into the dining room with Amren behind him. "And the least you could've done was let yourself get wet. Try and sell it. Hello, Elain."

A flurry of hellos and I've missed yous and hadn't realized how long it's beens, combined with hugs, followed, and within fifteen minutes, they are only waiting for one of their Circle to arrive.

Elain sits down near the head of the table, eyes fixed down, able to see the doorway in her periphery. Perfectly prepared, if anyone were to walk in... she hopes no one notices the faint blush she can feel growing on her cheeks-ah, but they are arguing about the food.

"It's only Az," Cassian is saying, "I don't see why we can't at least have some wine."

"We're waiting," Feyre says firmly. "We don't start dinner until everyone's here."

"Get over yourself, Cass," Mor says, cutting him off. "He'll be here soon."

"You started drinking before you got here."

"I did not. Is Varian coming to the High Summit in November, Amren?"

"Oh, no," Feyre says, before Amren got a chance to reply. "No High Summit discussions. No work-related topics."

Cassian whistles low and ran a hand through his hair. "You two have an unfair advantage." He jerks his chin towards Feyre and Rhys, arms entwined together. "You have non-work-related topics going on."

"Oh, please. Speak for yourself," Mor says. "You're the only one without a life."

"Twice as much as you."

"Mmm, not even close."

"Pathetic," Cassian says, shaking his head. "She courts one female, loses her mind. Does Emerie know you've lost your mind, Mor?"

"Emerie's at perfect peace with my-"

"Oh, thank the Mother, that'll be Az," interrupts Feyre. "Now we can eat. Maybe Cassian'll shut up when we put food in his mouth.

"If you wanted me to shut up, you could've put food in my mouth ten minutes ago," Cassian says. "Hey, Az, tell us, what's your brilliant excuse for showing up late? Caught in the rain? See, Mor, at least he got himself wet."

Elain looks up, desperate to keep her thoughts off her face, normally so hard to do whenever he walks into a room.

But one look at Azriel, still wet from the rain, sends everything but dread clear out of her. His expression is sombre, and his eyes sorrowful. He looks at her and Feyre and Cassian.

She knows what's coming.

"No," she tries to say, but can't make any sound come out. Mor, from across the table, reaches out to squeeze her hand, but she yanks it back towards her.

"I've found her," Az says, and his voice sounded lower than usual.

Elain can't move, can't look at Feyre, can't see-

Cassian shakes the table as he stood up, faster than Elain has ever seen him move. Simply sitting one moment, then standing the next. "Where is she," he says, pain laced in his voice.

"She's dead," Amren says flatly to her left, and all the air leaves the room and everything vanishes from inside and around Elain, leaving a living void, pulsing and sucking out the life and light of everything, gone gone gone-

"She's not," Azriel says. And he says something else after that, but Elain can't hear, too focused on the rush of blood in her ears, on she's not she's not she's not she's not, to pay to attention.

"Oh," she says aloud. "Oh."

Feyre pushes out of Rhysand's embrace-had he pulled her into his lap? Elain didn't notice-and sits beside her. She puts an arm around her. "She's alive," she whispers in her ear. "And Az has found her."

Mor makes room for Azriel and he sits down, folding in his wings as he does so. He pulls out what looked like a small crystal ball-one she recognizes. From before, when they were human, Nesta at her side... and six mortal queens opposite. The Veritas. An orb with the power to show anything a previous holder had seen.

They all lean in. Elain can imagine Cassian and Feyre's pain mirrors her own, but she feels something quite suddenly she doesn't expect to: envy. Who has seen Nesta? Who, when she has not, she who has the power to gaze across the world, across time, who has looked so hard for her sister... who has seen her?

Pale clouds swirled inside the Veritas, the same she had seen a lifetime ago, with weaker eyes, and this time, instead of a city from above, appeared a figure. A female's figure, wearing a hooded cloak, and holding a large bundle.

The image isn't quite clear; whoever had held the Veritas and spotted Nesta had done so from a distance.

The female in the scene turns, holding up an arm, and waves, like she is calling someone over.

"It doesn't look like her," Mor whispers, and Amren shushed her.

"It's her posture," Feyre says. "That's her walk."

The female puts down the bundle, but instead of staying in its place, it... moves. Waddles. Closer to the female... hugging her legs.

Feyre sucks in a breath.

"Is that a child?" Rhysand asks, entirely incredulous.

Elain's eyes dare to flicker away from the Veritas, to Cassian, just for a moment. Fear and shock are on his face.

The female bends down and picks up the child again as she waves the person she had called before into the scene. Two someones.

Two more children.

"Maybe she's helping out a friend," Amren says, her voice low. "With their children."

"I still don't think it looks like her."

"Watch," Azriel says. She feels his eyes on her as he says, "I wouldn't have brought this if I hadn't made certain it was her."

And sure enough, a moment later, the female puts the first child down. She tugs on one of the other two's cloak, fixing it around the toddler's chin. As she does, her own hood falls back.

Revealing her elder sister's perfect face.

Feyre gasps, and someone else does, and Amren snarls and Cassian says her name, aloud, the first time she has heard it in four years: "Nesta."

He says it just once, but it's so heavy, his voice rasp with four years worth of pain and longing and everything, just everything, because Nesta is everything to Cassian, is she not?

Just as she is everything to Elain.

Because the bond they had was not the same as the bond she has with Feyre. She doesn't love either more, but she loves them differently. And Cassian... Cassian feels now what she's feeling. This she knows.

So this time, when Mor and Feyre reach over to comfort her, she pushes them both aside, and stand to sit by Cassian.

"She's all right," she says to him, her voice low. "And now we know where she is."

He looks down at her, finally tearing his gaze away from the orb on the table, which still shows Nesta and the three children walking along.

"I know," she says to him softly.

He looks back at the table, at Nesta.

"Where is she, Azriel?" Rhys asks. He's running a hand up and down Feyre's back. Elain can tell he's already planning who to send, how to get her back. For Feyre.

"Gilameyva," he says, and Elain has never heard of it, but the others clearly have.

"Gilameya?" Cassian and Amren say.

"The berry lands?" Mor asks.

"Sugar Valley," Azriel continues. "One of the berry-townships, yes."

"What's a berry-township?" Elain asks, watching her sister-her sister-herd the three children along a pavement. In Gilameyva, apparently. "And where's Gilameyva?"

"Just across the sea," Cassian says, struggling to keep his voice even. "Ships dock from Gilameyva in Illyria once a month. And vice-versa."

"And she's been there four years?"

"Whose are the kids?"

"How'd you find her?"

"Gilameyva is not like a Court of Prythian," Azriel says, ignoring them all and addressing her. "It's self-governed by councils in each of their cities and towns. The council's are elected and there isn't a High Lord or a ruler's assets and there isn't a tithe. They sell berries."

"Berries?"

"Each township has their own speciality. Nesta's in Sugar Valley. They specialize in sugar berries."

"You expect me to believe Nesta Archeron has spent the last four years picking sugar berries in Gilameyva?" Amren says with vitriol, before Elain has a chance to respond.

But Azriel does not answer in kind, and says calmly, "She has not been picking berries. I have reason to believe she works at a bookstore."

A bookstore.

They have been worried out of their minds, every second for four years, and she has been at a bookstore.

"What about the children?" Cassian says.

"Watch," Azriel says, and he sounds a bit more gentle. It's the tone he normally takes with her.

Nesta and the children have made it to a neighborhood, lined with tiny houses with red roofs. They've all got little gardens in front. Toys on some front lawns.

Nesta and the three children stop in front of a blue two-story and walk up the pavement to a the white door. Just as they reach, one of the children-Elain thinks it's a boy-turns away and runs towards a corner of the lawn. He grabs a toy Elain can't quite make out.

And as he turns back to rejoin Nesta and the other two children, the observer, Azriel's spy, moves bit closer and gets a perfect view of his back. And the child chooses right then to stretch... to stretch out...

To stretch out his black leather wings.

He flies, just a foot off the ground, to Nesta's side.

They walk in the house together.

The Veritas fades.

"My source says no one left or entered the house again. They were gone at sunrise."

"They can't be hers." Mor glances at Cassian as she speaks.

"We believe they are," Azriel says. He looks straight at Elain, and then at Feyre. "They called her mother. Two boys and a girl."

"So they are." Feyre rubs her temples. " Those are her children."

"What ages?" Cassian says. His voice is soft, nearly weak.

Azriel looks at him now, something akin to pity in his eyes. "We guess around three."

Cassian rubs his neck and stands up.

"Well?" Elain says to him.

He looks down and slowly drags his gaze to her face.

"Yes," he says.

Elain hears the self-loathing, knows he must be in pain, but the camaraderie she felt with him mere minutes ago is gone. Now all she can think of is her sister, her big sister, alone in a land she doesn't know, pregnant in a body that she couldn't call her own, with triplets.

"What...have...we...done," she sobs. "Feyre, what have we done?"

"Elain," Feyre says, standing up, and she's crying too. "We'll-we'll go to her-I'm sorry-oh, Nesta-"

"It's not your fault," Rhysand mumbles against her hair, and that's it for Elain.

"Oh, yes it is!" she says, nearly choking on her tears. "It most certainly is our fault!"

"I'm going to Gilameyva," Cassian says, through gritted teeth.

Mor stands up. "Don't, Cassian-wait a moment."

"No," he says, and nearly charges out the door.

"He's distraught. He'll kill himself like this. Az, let's go after-"

"No!" Elain cries out. "He should go!"

Mor looks at her in surprise. Elain is not a voice of dissent, and she certainly never raises her tone. "Elain, please-"

"He should go, he should have gone, he should have gone years ago. We should have gone years ago...when she sent those letters!"

"Elain," Feyre says. But she doesn't say anything else. Because there is nothing else to say.

Amren, still seated at the table, says softly, "You're right."

"Amren," Rhysand says. "Elain, be reasonable, I know you're upset. We're all upset. None of us knew."

"You've always hated her. From the second you saw her. You were glad she was gone. You were glad she stopped sending letters."

Because she had sent letters. They had not been worried for four years. They had been worried for three.

"Elain, don't blame Rhys," Feyre says, wiping her eyes.

"I blame myself," Elain says, voice shaking, "but I blame you, too. And I blame you more!"

"Elain," Azriel says, his voice in her ear. She jumps a little. She hadn't realized he was right behind her. "Sit down. Let's get you some tea."

"You all hated her," Elain says, pushing him away. "And I loved her and I didn't..." Elain can't finish her sentence for her crying. "Oh, all the gods, I didn't even read a letter, oh, I shouldn't have let you send her to Illyria, I should've... I should have..."

"Sit down, Elain," Azriel says again. "Cassian will be there by tomorrow morning. We'll hear back from him soon. I'll take you to meet her myself."

His words are quiet, only for her. But she is too upset to stay and hear more, and makes her way out of the dining room, to her room.

Nesta's perfect face appears in her mind's eye. She looked well in the image, but all Elain can see is her frightened, alone, lost, desperately waiting for a reply that would never come.

She should have answered a letter. She shouldn't have let Feyre send her to Illyria. And she shouldn't have looked for her herself, when it became clear something was wrong.

She feels guilty, too guilty to breathe properly, because it's suffocating her, oozing out, enveloping her body-

And perhaps some of it does ooze out, because she feels a cautious tug on her rib.

She gasps a little; she'll never get used to that.

Her relationship with... her mate is not a romantic one, but it's there. And so she sends a little tug back, to let him know not to worry.

And then throws up her shields, to let him know to stay out of it.

Cassian is on his way to Nesta now. But Elain needs to see her herself, to tell her she's sorry, to offer help, to bring her back to Velaris-and then it hits her. The children.

Nesta is not pregnant and alone, because she has the children. Three half-Illyrian, half-whatever-Nesta-is children.

And are they what children are supposed to be? Are they a blessing? Are they the joy of her sister's life? As she wonders, a tiny bud of hope blooms inside her.

Because if they are, perhaps Nesta is not so angry. And perhaps she will forgive her.

But whether or not she will, Elain knows she will never forgive herself for agreeing to Feyre's plan years ago...

September 10 - Day of

She had not attended dinner the day before. Elain had thought it would be nice, just the three of them, saying goodbye to each other. Nesta had scoffed at that when she tentatively approached her in the sitting room, just after Feyre had finished delivering her judgment upon her. They were not saying goodbye to each other. They were exiling her. To a war camp, to hated mountains, with a male she could barely stand to look at.

"But if we won't be seeing each other for a while..." Elain trailed off, one hand tugging on a lock of her gold-brown hair, color identical to Nesta's and Feyre's. She did not finish her sentence at the look in Nesta's eyes.

And whose fault is that she couldn't bring herself to say. Instead, she had turned on her heel and made her way back to her own apartment.

"She'll come," she heard Feyre tell Elain.

Well. She hadn't.

She hadn't done anything else, though, when she had arrived. Feyre's words left an echo of pain inside her, a dulled sort of ache. She was mildly, almost distantly surprised she had felt anything at all; she was so used to numbing every emotion that flared inside her. She could still hear her sister's voice in her head again and again. I want you out of Velaris. Shaking, like she was nervous, or maybe even scared.

What was she scared of? She was not being sent away. She was still in charge of her own fate.

She woke in her room, in her bed, but she did not remember when she fell asleep.

She was sitting on her couch, but she did not remember getting out of bed, getting dressed. She was trying to remember if she'd eaten when he knocked on the door.

The same way he had yesterday, hard enough to rattle the entire apartment. Nesta felt every cell in her body fighting against her as she moved to open it. She took a deep breath before she pulled the door open, blocking his entrance.

He had the same insufferable grin he always had on to greet her, but she was too hollow to feel proper anger, just...cold.

"Hungry?" he said, pushing her aside and making his way in. "We could stop for breakfast before we go." Before she started her life in her baby sister's exile. "Where are your bags?"

He looked around the living area, and then at her, as if expecting her to pull them out of thin air. She didn't say anything.

"Right, I guess I'll just go get them," he said under his breath.

Nesta put a hand on her couch and gazed around the room as she heard Cassian pull a bag out from somewhere and stuff her clothes inside. Her apartment was small and the location was miserable and sparsely decorated was a generous description, but it was hers. Four locks, one that only she could open-safe. Dodgy neighbors, sure, but they couldn't get in.

Her piles of books everywhere...Nesta would've liked shelves, perhaps a mahogany or rosewood or cedar. And...pictures. On the walls. Not of people, not like the portraits Feyre had everywhere, more like the still lives that once decorated their estate. And a piano.

Her apartment was far too small for a piano. She was being ridiculous, creating the illusion of happiness here, just to give herself something to miss in Illyria.

"All right, here's the essentials," Cassian said, coming out of her bedroom. She ignored him, taking a last look at her...home. Her place. Her own. Paid for by her sister's mate, maybe, but as close to hers as anything could be.

"We'll send for the rest later. Your books, and...whatever else."

She brushed her hand over the cushions. She had never liked this pattern. Stripes. She'd have liked a couch with one solid color, maybe some throw pillows with swirling decals.

"And we can pick up anything you need in Illyria. There are some shops...we'll be fine. It'll just be a month or so. Till we get the rest of your things."

And she hated the color, too. A dull cornflower and faded cream.

"So, shall we go to breakfast, then?"

Nesta lifted her head and looked at him. Not even glared, just bore her eyes into his. He shifted his gaze.

"Look, we aren't winnowing. We're flying. It'll take a while. I think you should eat first."

But still she did not answer. Did not trust herself to open her mouth, and could not find anything to say anyway.

"All right," he said, giving in even though it didn't matter because he had already won and she had lost, "but we're not stopping on the way."

And even if it wasn't an empty threat, it did not bother her. Nesta had gone far longer than a morning without eating.

A/N: So, that was the first chapter! It'll have around twenty. I'm going to have the second chapter up by next Thursday at the latest.

I'd love a review, if you've got the time!