Chapter 3: Battlefield Claim
The rain finally broke as Feyre fled the stables. It wasn’t the soft, cleansing shower she’d smelled on the wind, but a cold, punishing deluge that soaked her to the skin in seconds. It didn’t matter. The water on her face hid the hot, silent tears of fury and confusion.
She didn’t go to her chambers. She went to the cellars, to the racks of faerie wine that glowed with subtle magic. She pulled a bottle at random, not caring about vintage or potency, and drank straight from the neck. The wine was dark and sweet, like liquid night, and it burned a path of numbness down her throat. She drank until the image of Rhys’s possessive grip and Nesta’s defiant pleasure blurred at the edges. She drank until the hollow ache in her chest was replaced by a floating, reckless heat.
The war camp was a three-mile flight through sheeting rain. She didn’t remember deciding to go. Her wings carried her on instinct, the beat of them uneven from the wine. She landed in the mud, stumbling before righting herself. The camp was a grim, functional sprawl, the aftermath of a recent skirmish clinging to everything—the scent of wet ash, of blood not fully scrubbed from armor.
Cassian’s tent was the largest, aside from the command post. A lantern glowed from within, casting his silhouette against the canvas. She didn’t announce herself. She just shoved the flap aside and stood there, dripping, the empty wine bottle clutched in her hand.
He was at his field table, frowning over a terrain map weighted with stone pins. He looked up, and his eyebrows shot toward his hairline. “Feyre? What in the seven hells—”
“Shut up,” she slurred, dropping the bottle. It rolled across the ground, clinking against a discarded greave.
She walked toward him. Her movements were unsteady, but her intent was a clear, blunt force. The memory of Nesta’s bloodied back, of Rhys’s detached stare, spun in her wine-fogged mind. She needed to erase it. She needed to feel something so concrete, so brutally physical, it would scour everything else away.
“You’re wasted,” Cassian said, rising to his feet. Concern etched his rugged features. “What happened? Is it Rhys? Did something—”
She grabbed the front of his leathers. “I said shut up.”
Then she kissed him. It was less a kiss and more an assault, all teeth and desperation and the sour-sweet tang of wine. Cassian went rigid, his hands coming up to her shoulders, not to pull her closer but to hold her at bay.
“Feyre, stop,” he growled against her mouth. “This isn’t you.”
“You don’t know me,” she hissed, her fingers fumbling with the straps of his armor. “None of you do.” The words were bitter, choked. “He fucked her. In the stables. Like she was nothing. Like I was nothing.”
The confession hung in the tent, ugly and raw. Cassian stilled, understanding dawning in his hazel eyes. He saw the pain beneath the fury, the shattered trust. His grip on her shoulders softened, just for a heartbeat.
That was all she needed.
She pushed him back until his thighs hit the edge of the heavy oak table. Maps rustled. “Feyre,” he warned, but his voice was strained.
“Don’t you want to?” she taunted, her hands sliding down his chest, over the hard planes of his stomach, lower. She found the laces of his trousers, her fingers clumsy but determined. “Or are you afraid of him, too?”
It was the wrong thing to say. A challenge to a warrior’s pride. A spark ignited in his gaze, hot and dark. The concern was burned away by something more primal, a response to her blatant aggression, to the scent of hurt and wine and wildness pouring off her.
“You have no idea what you’re asking for,” he said, his voice low and dangerous.
“Show me.”
With a rough sound, he took over. His hands, calloused and huge, gripped her hips and hoisted her onto the table. Parchment ripped beneath her. Stone pins scattered, clattering to the wooden floor. He shoved her skirts up around her waist, exposing her to the cool, damp air. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath.
“Look at you,” he muttered, his gaze sweeping over her. “Drunk and furious and desperate for a fight.” He pushed her thighs apart, his thumbs digging into the soft flesh of her inner legs. “This what you need? You need to be fucked until you can’t think?”
“Yes,” she breathed, the admission torn from her.
He didn’t wait. He freed himself, his cock already thick and hard in his fist. He gave himself one rough stroke, then notched the head at her entrance. She was wet—shamefully, angrily wet. He pressed in, not with tenderness, but with a single, searing thrust that filled her completely, brutally.
The air left her lungs in a sharp gasp. It burned, a stretch that bordered on pain, and it was perfect. It was real.
“Fuck,” Cassian hissed, his head dropping forward for a second as he sheathed himself inside her.
Then he moved. There was no rhythm, no art to it. It was a raw, punishing piston of his hips, each drive sending a jolt through her body, making the table legs screech against the ground. The tent walls seemed to shake with the force of it.
She cried out, a ragged, broken sound. He leaned over her, one hand braced on the table by her head, the other slamming over her mouth. His palm tasted of leather and salt.
“Quiet,” he rasped into her ear, his breath hot. “You wanted this, you take it. You don’t get to scream and let the whole camp know what a little slut you’re being.”
The obscenity sent a shocking bolt of heat through her core. She bit down on his hand, her body clenching around him. He groaned, his pace becoming even more frantic, more violent. Each thrust was a punctuation to her chaotic thoughts. Rhys. Nesta. Betrayal. Lies. With every slam of his body into hers, the images fractured a little more.
She was close, hurtling toward it with terrifying speed. The pleasure was twisted, gritty, built on a foundation of anger and cheap wine. It felt like degradation. It felt like truth.
“Come on,” he grunted, his control fraying. “Come on that cock. Do it. Spill all that pretty anger out.”
His words, filthy and direct, tipped her over the edge. A silent scream ripped through her behind his hand as her orgasm detonated, a wave of brutal, convulsing pleasure that left her vision whiting out. She pulsed around him, milking him, and with a final, deep grind and a choked curse, Cassian followed her. His release was hot and sudden, flooding her as his hips stuttered against hers.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing and the drumming rain on the canvas. Slowly, he removed his hand from her mouth. He pulled out of her, the separation leaving her feeling empty and used in the most visceral way.
He stepped back, tucking himself away, his face unreadable in the lantern light. Feyre lay on the ruined maps, her skirts a soggy mess around her waist, her body throbbing. The numbness of the wine was gone, replaced by a clear, sharp ache.
Cassian turned and picked up a nearby canteen, taking a long swig. He didn’t offer her any. He just stared at her, his expression hardening into something grim.
“Feel better?” he asked, his voice flat.
She pushed herself up on trembling arms. She didn’t answer. She couldn’t.
“He’s my brother,” Cassian said, the words quiet but absolute. “And you’re his mate. What we just did… that doesn’t leave this tent. Ever.”
It wasn’t a request. It was an order. The finality in his voice cut deeper than any physical mark. She had sought a fire to burn away her pain, and she had found one. Now she sat in the ashes, cold and sober, with the face of a friend turned to stone before her.
She slid off the table, her legs barely holding her. She straightened her clothes, not meeting his eyes. Without a word, she turned and walked out into the rain, leaving the warmth of the tent, the scent of their joining, and the last shred of her uncomplicated self behind.
The storm outside had settled into a steady, mournful pour, washing the camp clean. It did nothing to wash her clean. She knew, as she made her way back through the dark, that some stains were permanent.