Summary: months after you returned with your mate from a getaway, the girls can’t help but want to know everything.
Warnings: talks of sex, smut, p in v, degradation (in a soft way), pussydrunk!azriel (all he does is talk), small sub and dom play, shadow play (shadows use you)
Authors note: this is a second part of “Chatter Box” but both parts can be read as standalone!
Main Masterlist:
Chatter Box:
❖─────❖─────❖
Months later, the cabin feels like a distant, perfect memory you still carry with you.
Two weeks.
You were only supposed to stay for a weekend… and somehow, neither of you ever found a reason to leave.
Now, laughter fills the room again—but this time it’s different.
Girls’ night.
Wine flows freely, glasses half-full and refilled before they ever empty, the soft glow of the room wrapping around you as you sit sprawled comfortably with Feyre, Nesta, Elain, Mor, and Amren. The males are gone for the night, leaving you all to your own chaos.
Nesta is in the middle of a story, completely unbothered.
“I’m serious,” she says, taking a slow sip of her wine. “He would not stop. I had to kick him out just to get a moment of silence.”
Elain groans softly from beside her. “I didn’t even get a moment. I had to leave. You two were so loud.”
Mor bursts out laughing.
You try to hide your own laughter behind your glass, shoulders shaking slightly as you take a sip—
—and that’s when they all notice.
Every single one of them turns toward you.
Eyes narrowing.
Curious.
“What?” you ask, trying to sound innocent.
Mor leans forward, grin wicked. “You never talk about Azriel.”
Feyre nods. “Ever.”
Nesta tilts her head slightly. “It’s suspicious.”
You shrug, taking another sip. “There’s not much to talk about.”
Silence.
Then—
Mor cackles.
“Not much to talk about?” she repeats. “Says the one who got caught with Azriel between her legs on the dining table.”
Feyre whips her head toward her. “My dining table.”
Your cheeks heat instantly, but you just shrug again, trying—and failing—to look unaffected.
“What can I say?” you mumble. “Azriel likes… being attentive.”
The room erupts.
Elain gasps, hands flying to her face. Mor is practically doubled over, and even Nesta’s lips twitch.
“Gods,” Mor laughs. “I knew it.”
Nesta leans forward slightly, eyes sharp with interest. “Is it true?”
You blink at her. “Is what true?”
She gestures vaguely—then very specifically—toward her lap. “He has the biggest wingspan. So… does that translate?”
You stare at her for a second.
Then you laugh.
Shaking your head as you take another sip of wine. “He’s not small, that’s for sure.”
Amren, who has been quietly observing all of this, lifts her glass. “Keep the wine coming. I need more for this conversation.”
Everyone laughs again.
Feyre, however, is watching you with a smirk.
“Did you like the gift?” she asks casually.
You choke slightly on your drink, cheeks immediately flushing.
“Oh my gods,” Mor says, sitting up straighter. “What gift?”
Elain looks between you all. “What gift?”
You groan softly, dragging a hand down your face. “You gave me that gift… and then wondered why we stayed at the cabin for two weeks.”
The room explodes.
Nesta actually laughs out loud. Mor is practically wheezing, and even Elain is blushing as she giggles behind her hand.
Amren just looks deeply satisfied.
And then—
A throat clears.
Every head turns.
Cassian, Azriel, and Rhysand stand at the entrance.
They’ve clearly heard enough.
Nesta is on her feet instantly. “Well,” she says smoothly, setting her glass down. “I think our night is done. I need my mate.”
Cassian’s grin is all teeth as a low, approving sound rumbles from his chest.
Feyre rises next, already smiling as she crosses the room and presses a soft kiss to Rhysand’s lips.
You shake your head, laughing under your breath as you turn back to the remaining girls. “Goodnight.”
Mor wiggles her fingers at you. “Have fun.”
You roll your eyes—but you’re smiling.
Then you stand, stepping forward—
—and right into Azriel’s arms.
He catches you easily, like he always does, one arm wrapping around your waist as you let out a soft, content sigh against him.
“Hi,” he murmurs quietly.
You tilt your head up, smiling at him. “Hi.”
And just like that, the noise fades into the background again.
Right where you belong.
The shimmer of light swirls around you, and in the blink of an eye, you’re on the balcony of your shared chambers. The night air is crisp, carrying the soft scent of pine and the faint warmth of the hearth from below.
Azriel pauses just inside, glancing at the bed. Your blankets are still in the chaotic jumble you left them in this morning—never made, just like always. A small smirk tugs at his lips.
He closes the distance in a heartbeat, leaning down to press his lips to the side of your neck. “Gods… I missed you,” he murmurs, voice rough and low.
You giggle, squirming slightly in his hold, pushing him back just enough to turn around and get ready for bed.
He whines softly, following you, voice pained. “Help me with my training leathers… please?”
You sigh, rolling your eyes, but your fingers work quickly, unbuckling the straps and loosening the pins that hold your hair in place. Azriel leans closer as your hair tumbles free, brushing against your shoulders.
He smiles down at you, shadows flickering over his face, and you catch the way his eyes soften as they trace yours—violet, like Rhysand’s, with just enough depth to hold him completely. Your jet-black hair carries that faint blue tone he can’t stop admiring, reminding him of the siphons stones he has to help his powers.
Azriel leans down again, lips capturing yours in a slow, demanding kiss. Your breath hitches, a soft moan escaping as his hands ghost over your back.
When he finally pulls back, he gently turns you, hands lingering at your waist as he murmurs, voice low and curious, “Help me undo your dress… and… what were you guys talking about?”
You smirk over your shoulder. “Wing spans.”
Azriel freezes, air catching in his throat. “W…wing spans?” he stutters, voice faltering like he can’t quite process it.
You let the dress slip from your shoulders, the fabric pooling at your feet, before grabbing your robe. His hands hover, hesitant, still trying to process, and he starts stammering.
“Why… why would you… talk about… that?”
You laugh softly, playful, tapping his nose with your finger. “Because, silly—they wanted to know if the rumors about wing spans were true.”
His lips twitch into a reluctant chuckle, but your grin widens. “And I said… well, he isn’t small.”
Azriel chokes on his own breath, eyes widening in shock. “You… you told them… my… dick size—”
You shake your head, laughing, eyes sparkling as you take in his stunned, pouting expression. You can’t resist leaning in, pressing a soft, teasing kiss to his lips.
“Never, love,” you murmur against his mouth, voice low, possessive. “That’s only for me to know.”
He growls, possessive and low, as he kisses you back, all shadow and fire, and the night air around you hums with the kind of intimacy only the two of you share.
It’s yours. Only yours. And Azriel makes sure you both know it.
Azriel scoops you up effortlessly—strong arms banding around your waist—and tosses you onto the rumpled bed with a playful growl. You giggle, bouncing once, legs splaying invitingly as you prop on your elbows, robe half-open, teasing him.
He stalks over like a predator, looming above you, hazel eyes blazing. Large hands grip your thighs, spreading them wide—exposing your glistening pussy to the cool night air. He drops to his knees, kissing up your inner thighs—slow, open-mouthed, teeth grazing, leaving hot trails that make your skin prickle.
You moan, arching. “Oh—and I got called out for you doing this... on the dining table.”
Azriel moans against your skin, tongue flicking closer to your core. “Gods, should I do it again? Make you scream so loud for me everyone in this house knows who you belong to... have everyone in this court know?” His breath fans your folds, voice wrecked with possession.
You shake your head, moaning as his lips finally brush your pussy—soft, teasing. “Everyone already knows, baby... yours.”
“Good,” he mumbles, nipping your clit lightly. He unties your robe fully, baring you completely. Shadows swirl from his wings—cool, silky tendrils slithering to your nipples, pinching and twisting like phantom mouths. The chill zaps straight to your core.
You moan louder, begging, “Azriel... please...”
He chuckles dark, rising to shove his pants down—cock springing free, thick and leaking, veins pulsing. “Gods, my shadows love you more than anything. Maybe I should let them have you, sweet girl.”
You nod frantically, pussy clenching. “Yes... fuck.”
“They’re the ones who tell me everything I should do,” he rasps, stroking himself once before lining up and sliding into you—slow, deep stretch. You both moan, your hands flying to his wings, fingers tracing the sensitive membranes, making him shudder and thrust harder. “They wanna fuck you so bad... want every inch of you.”
You nod, moaning—and spot his shadows fetching the black vibrator Nesta and Feyre gifted you, sleek and curved, hovering it near. Azriel laughs, fucking into you with wet slaps, balls heavy against your ass. “See? They know exactly what you want, baby.”
He snatches it, flicks it on—low buzz building—and presses it firm to your clit. Pleasure explodes, coiling tight. You open your mouth to scream—but shadows coil over it, cool and muffling, whispering in your ear: Such a sweet whore for our master... love our sweet girl... such a sweet pussy taking our master's cock.
You moan into the shadows, eyes rolling back. Azriel blabs filthy, pounding deeper: “They wanna fuck this tight hole... fill you up... gods, you're my good girl, taking me so perfect...”
He flips you sudden—onto all fours, vibrator tossed aside. Cock slams back in from behind—brutal angle, hitting your cervix. Shadows swarm your front: teasing nipples, circling clit with licking, cool suction. Az smacks your ass reddening your ass, gripping your hips bruising as he rails you, wings flaring.
Shadows whisper Come, mimicking a tongue lashing your clit—wet, insistent—and you shatter, orgasm ripping through like lightning, pussy gushing, squirting around his pistoning cock, thighs quaking.
Azriel comes behind you—roaring your name, flooding your walls with thick, hot ropes of cum, hips grinding deep.
He coos, pulling you back against his chest, petting your hair. “My good girl... so good for me, baby. Perfect little mate.”
Shadows drape over you like a cool sheet, soothing fevered skin. Azriel grabs a warm cloth, cleaning your messy thighs tenderly. They kiss your forehead—whispering Love our master's mate... so good for our master—as you melt into bliss.
❖─────❖─────❖
You wake to a cooling sensation teasing your clit—ethereal, insistent flicks—and a finger-like shadow thrusting in and out of your pussy, slick and probing deep, curling just right. Your eyes flutter open with a soft moan, body arching into the delicious intrusion.
Azriel’s shadows swirl around you, tendrils everywhere—pinching nipples, stroking thighs. One whispers silkily in your ear: Master’s taking a shower... told us to wake you up. But he didn’t tell us how.
You just moan louder, spreading wider as they play—cool suction on your clit, another shadow licking like a phantom tongue, wet and swirling. Pleasure builds fast; you snatch a pillow, shoving it over your face to muffle the desperate cries, hips bucking wildly. Let them use you, shadows fucking your pussy with rhythmic pumps, clit throbbing under their cool assault.
Then—a cold cock presses in, thick and real, sliding alongside a shadow to stretch you impossibly. You moan into the pillow, clenching. A deep chuckle rumbles above.
You rip the pillow away, gasping—and there’s Azriel, naked post-shower, water droplets glistening on his scarred chest, hair damp, cock buried deep. His hazel eyes gleam as he stares at his shadows, still writhing over you. “They’re so greedy,” he mutters, amused, as the shadows thrust lazy once—making you whimper.
You reach for him, needy hands grasping air. He smirks, sauntering closer, leaning down to rub your clit—firm circles with callused fingers, sparks flying. “You love this, don’t you, baby? My shadows fucking you awake... greedy little slut for them.”
His hand slaps your clit—sharp smack, wet and stinging. You moan high and broken, pussy fluttering around his cock, chasing more.
You moan, begging, “Please...”
The shadows nod in unison, mouths not moving, eyes flashing crimson. They swirl around you, pleasure building, coiling tight—teasing and tormenting until you can’t take it anymore.
You cum hard, body shaking—shudders rolling through as they claim you fully. Azriel laughs darkly, watching, gripping your hips to hold you still for his shadows' pleasure. His lips brush yours tenderly, breath hot against your ear. "My good girl... such a nasty whore for them..."
You nod, panting, eyes closed. His words arouse you even more—heat pooling low in your belly. "Y-yes," you whisper, "love it..."
Suddenly, he stands, pulling away with a frown. "Let's get you in the bath," he grumbles, voice rough.
You pout slightly but follow him to the bathroom, allowing him to help you undress and step into the steaming water. He washes your body slowly, tenderly—running soapy hands over every inch of your skin. When he reaches your ass, he can't help but smack it lightly, leaving a faint handprint.
"Hard to believe this belonged to someone else," he mumbles, stroking his fingers through your hair. You blush but nod—you know what he means. This kind of intimacy... it's all for him now.
He kisses you softly, leaning down to soap up your body together. "Mine," he whispers against your collarbone before picking up the loofah and scrubbing your skin. You moan again as he washes between your legs, chuckling darkly. "My little mate... always ready for me."
❖─────❖─────❖
Two nights later, the cabin feels alive again, though in a different way. You’re perched with a glass in hand, smirking into it as the wine warms your cheeks. Laughter bubbles around you, the room filled with the chatter and teasing of your friends—Mor, Feyre, Nesta, and Elain.
A soft brush against your shoulder makes you shiver. One of the shadows is lingering, a dark whisper of movement that’s been allowed to follow you since… well, ever since it was safe for them to touch you.
Mor notices immediately, arching an eyebrow. “What’s that shadow doing?”
Nesta, smirking and finishing her story with that dangerous glint in her eyes, leans back. “Yeah… I want to know. Does Azriel use them?”
You look up, confused, eyes scanning the room—and then the shadow leans in, brushing against your neck, teasing, almost sentient in its movements.
You whisper, just loud enough for the girls to hear, “Use them… how?”
Nesta shrugs, voice low and amused. “In bed. Does he… make them pin you down or something?”
Your cheeks flame instantly, and Feyre squeals loudly. “Oh my gods… he does?”
You bite your lip, nodding slightly, the shadow pressing a soft bite to your neck. Feyre squeals again, delighted, “I knew it!”
You shake your head, laughing softly at them, and murmur, “They… do have a mind of their own, though.”
The girls giggle, eyes sparkling with mischief, and you can’t help but laugh with them, smiling at the shadow as it detaches and drifts off, no doubt to report back to Azriel exactly what you’ve said.
You take a slow sip of your wine, letting the warmth spread through you, and quietly muse, I’ll deal with Azriel later.
The thought alone makes your lips curl into a satisfied, mischievous smile.
inspired by Fear of the Water by SYML. a love story told in eight movements. from still water to the river after.
✶ Pairing: Azriel x Reader
✶ Summary: Azriel has always been afraid of the water. Of anything that could hold him completely and slip through his fingers all the same. Five centuries of standing at the edge, refusing to wade in.
Then she shows up and he doesn't just wade — he drowns. willingly. gratefully. with both scarred hands open.
✶ A/N: i was listening to the song and DEEP in my feels and this sort of song-fic was the result haha, very much hurt/comfort, i'm pretty proud of this one i think 🥹 hope you like it ❤️ 🌊 all italicized lines are taken from the lyrics of the song!
────────♢★✶⋆✶★♢────────
i. still water
Before her, Azriel is a lake with no wind.
He has perfected this: the art of being untouched. Centuries of practice have made his surface so smooth that most mistake it for emptiness, when really it is discipline—a violent, deliberate calm held in place by a boy who learned, very early, that to ripple is to be seen, and to be seen is to be hurt.
He was eleven years old the first time he understood water.
Not the rivers of the Illyrian steppes, not the rain that battered the mountains or the melted snow that pooled in the training pits. No. He understood water in a basement—the way condensation wept down stone walls in the dark, the way it gathered in the hollows of the floor where he slept. He used to press his palms flat against the wet rock and imagine he could sink through it, become liquid himself, slip between the cracks of his father's house and disappear entirely. Water could go anywhere. Water couldn't be locked in a room and forgotten. Water was the only free thing he knew.
He did not understand, then, the other truth about water: that it always moves on. That the very thing that makes it free is the thing that makes it impossible to hold.
He was eight when his brothers poured oil on his hands.
And then came fire, and then came a scream that didn't sound like his own voice, and then came a silence so vast it swallowed the next several years whole. The healers wrapped what was left of his hands in damp cloth, and the coolness of it was the first mercy he could remember. He held onto that feeling, water against burning skin, like a prayer whispered into the dark.
He learned, in that basement, that love is a thing with teeth.
His father's love had teeth. It bit when Azriel was too loud, too present, too much of a reminder. His stepmother's love—if it could be called that—was an absence so complete it became its own kind of violence. And his brothers, those two boys who shared his blood but none of his suffering, they loved the power they held over the quiet one. The shadows they didn't understand. The boy who never fought back because fighting back meant believing he deserved to.
So Azriel learned stillness. He made himself into something flat and reflective, a surface that gave others back their own image and revealed nothing of what lay beneath. His shadows helped. They came to him in that dark room, curled around his ruined fingers like a second skin, and whispered: We will be your depth. Let them see the surface. We'll keep the rest.
For five hundred years, it works.
He becomes the Spymaster. Rhysand's blade in the dark, the thing that moves through rooms without displacing air. He is very, very good at being still. At watching without wanting. At standing in rooms full of warmth and laughter and telling himself that the cold at his center is a choice, not a wound.
His brothers are called brothers. His family is called family. But there is a membrane between Azriel and the word belonging—thin, invisible, and utterly impenetrable. He sits at their table, he fights at their side, he would die for any one of them without hesitation. But he does not let them see the bottom of him. He is not sure there is a bottom. He is not sure that if they looked, they wouldn't flinch.
He watches Cassian love Nesta freely—watches his brother throw himself into every feeling like a man leaping from a cliff, trusting the fall. He watches Rhysand love Feyre with a devotion so total it rewrites the laws of their world. He watches, and he catalogs, and he tells himself: That is not for you. You are the still water. You are the thing that reflects. You do not move.
It is a lie, of course. All stillness is.
Beneath the surface, Azriel is a churning, desperate, aching thing. He wants so much it terrifies him. He has always wanted—wanted warmth, wanted safety, wanted someone to look at his hands and not see damage but history. Survival. Proof of endurance.
But wanting is dangerous. Wanting is what got him burned.
So he keeps his surface smooth. He keeps his depths hidden. He tells himself this is enough.
It is not enough. It has never been enough. But Azriel has five hundred years of practice in pretending, and he is, above all else, a patient creature.
He waits.
I thought I was alone. Unaware of what I thought I needed.
ii. first rain
She arrives like weather.
Not a storm, he would have braced for a storm. Not a drizzle, either, something he could ignore, brush from his shoulders. She arrives like the first rain after a long drought: so deeply needed that the earth cracks open to receive her before the mind even registers what's happening.
He notices her in pieces. As this is how Azriel processes the world: in fragments, intelligence, the small details that betray the whole. He notices her hands first: the way she holds a teacup with both palms wrapped around it, fingers laced, as though warmth is something to be cradled. He notices the way she laughs: not performed, nor curated, rather startled out of her, like joy is a bird she keeps accidentally releasing.
He notices that she looks at his shadows with curiosity, not fear.
He also notices, and this will not make sense to him until much later, that some part of him is already memorizing her. Not consciously. Not deliberately. But the way an animal memorizes the location of water in a drought: urgently, instinctively, as though his body knows something his mind hasn't caught up to yet.
Most people flinch. It's subtle—a tightening of the jaw, a half-step backward, a flicker of unease in the eyes. Five hundred years of watching people flinch has taught Azriel to expect it the way one expects gravity. Inevitable. Impersonal. A law of his existence.
She doesn't flinch.
She tilts her head, watches the way they curl around his wrists, and says, "They move like cats. Do they purr, too?"
Something inside him cracks. A fissure. Hairline, barely there. But water is patient, and even the smallest fracture will, given time, split stone.
He doesn't fall in love with her then. That would be too simple, too clean, and Azriel has never been allowed anything simple or clean. What happens instead is worse: he becomes aware of her. She takes up residence in the periphery of his consciousness, and suddenly every room she's in has a different gravity. He finds himself orienting toward her without deciding to, the way a compass doesn't choose north but points there anyway.
He hates it.
He hates the way his chest tightens when she's near, the way his shadows reach for her before he can stop them, the way her voice has started appearing in the silence between his thoughts. He hates it because it means the surface is cracking, and beneath the surface is everything he's spent centuries burying, and if she sees it—if she sees him—
He cannot finish that thought. The ending is a basement. The ending is fire.
So he pulls back. He is skilled at retreat, at the tactical withdrawal. He speaks to her less. He leaves rooms she enters. He trains until his muscles scream louder than the thing in his chest, and when that fails, he flies—up and up, into air so thin and cold it burns his lungs, and he stays there until the altitude makes him dizzy and the wanting feels farther away.
It doesn't work.
It never works.
Because she is rain, and he is cracked earth, and the water always finds its way in.
iii. undercurrent
There is a word for what he feels, but he refuses to use it.
If he names it, it becomes real. If it becomes real, it can be taken from him. Azriel has had enough things taken from him to know that the universe does not discriminate in its cruelty—it will strip you of anything you hold too tightly, and it will do so without ceremony.
So he holds loosely. He keeps her at the distance a hand keeps from flame—close enough to feel the warmth, far enough to deny the burning.
But the undercurrent pulls.
It pulls when she falls asleep on the couch during a long evening at the River House and he carries her to the guest room, and the weight of her in his arms is so profoundly right that his wings tremble with the effort of not pulling her closer. It pulls when she finds him on the roof after a mission gone wrong, blood still drying in the creases of his palms, and she doesn't ask what happened—she just sits beside him and exists, a warm and breathing presence in the aftermath of violence, the Sidra winding silver and silent far below them.
He watches the river while she watches him, and something about the pairing settles in his chest like a stone finding the riverbed. Her quiet. The water's movement. He doesn't understand why the combination feels so important. He files it away and doesn't look at it again. He will come to love that river—doesn't know how many mornings he'll spend at its edge, or why.
It pulls hardest when she touches him.
She is not careful with her affection. She is not deliberate or strategic or measured. She touches the way she laughs: instinctively and thoughtlessly, as though tenderness is something that simply falls from her. A hand on his arm when she talks, fingers brushing his when she passes him something, a palm pressed flat against his shoulder blade when she squeezes past him in a narrow hallway. These are nothing-touches, meaningless by most standards.
They undo him completely.
Because no one touches Azriel like that- casually, without agenda, without the caution that comes from knowing what lies beneath his gloves. She doesn't treat his body like a thing to be cautious around. She treats it like a body. And something about that simplicity—that refusal to see him as fragile—reaches the boy in the basement and tells him: You are not glass. You are not going to break.
One night, she reaches across the dinner table and wipes a smear of sauce from the corner of his mouth with her thumb, laughing at something Cassian said, not even looking at him, and Azriel's entire world tilts on its axis.
His shadows go absolutely haywire. They spiral out from him in tendrils, reaching for her wrist, her hair, the sound of her laughter, and he has to clench his jaw so hard his teeth ache to keep from making a sound. Beneath the table, his scarred hands grip his knees.
Stop, he tells himself. Stop this. You know where this leads.
But the undercurrent has its own logic, its own physics, and it does not care about his fear.
That night, alone in his room, Azriel presses his forehead to the cool glass of his window and breathes. His reflection stares back at him—hazel eyes, shadows pooling at his temples, the set of a jaw that has not unclenched in five hundred years.
"You're a fool," he whispers to the glass.
His shadows hum in agreement. Or maybe disagreement. He can never tell anymore.
iv. submersion
The thing about water is that you don't notice you're sinking until the light above you starts to dim.
He doesn't remember the exact moment he stops resisting. There is no dramatic surrender, no single event that breaks the dam. It's more like erosion—a slow, patient wearing-away of every wall he's built, every reason he's curated, every careful argument he's constructed for why this is dangerous, why she is dangerous, why the safest thing he can do is remain untouched.
She erodes him with tea.
She makes it for him without being asked—learns how he takes it, remembers when he forgets to eat, leaves a warm cup on his desk in the hours after midnight when the rest of the house is asleep and Azriel is still reading intelligence reports in the dim glow of faelight. Always the same cup—the blue one with the chip on the handle, the one she refuses to throw away because imperfect things hold warmth the longest, Az. She never lingers when she brings it. She never makes it into a moment. She just sets it down, sometimes with a hand ghosting across his shoulders, and disappears.
He memorizes the way she does it anyway. The exact pour, the steeping time, the way she holds the cup with both hands before setting it down. He tells himself this is love—paying attention. He does not ask himself why it feels so much like archiving.
She erodes him with patience.
When he is silent-which is often-she does not fill the space with chatter. She lets the silence exist between them, unafraid of it, and he realizes with a start that she is the first person who has never tried to pry him open. Everyone else pushes: Cassian with his relentless warmth, Feyre with her gentle questions, Rhysand with the knowing look that says I see you, brother, even when you don't want to be seen. They push because they love him, and he knows this, but their love is sometimes a spotlight and Azriel has spent his whole life in shadow.
She doesn't push. She just stays.
And somehow, in the staying, he finds himself opening like a door that forgot it was locked.
He tells her things. Small things, at first—his favorite time of day, why he prefers the cold, what his shadows sound like when they're content. She listens with her whole body, turned toward him, and she never looks at him like he's revealed something strange.
Then bigger things. The missions that haunt him. The interrogations he can't scrub from his memory. The face of a man he killed three centuries ago whose name he still remembers, whose scream still visits him in the space between sleeping and waking.
She listens to these, too. She doesn't flinch at the darkness. She holds it with the same steady hands that hold her teacup, and he thinks: Oh. This is what it means to be known.
It terrifies him more than anything he's ever faced.
Because being known means being seen, and being seen means there is no more surface to hide behind. She has found the depth of him, and she has not looked away, and Azriel doesn't know what to do with a person who knows his worst and stays anyway.
So he does the only thing he can think of.
He falls.
v. the drowning
This is the part where the fear lives.
Not at the beginning—the beginning was easy, in retrospect. The beginning was ripples on a calm surface, disturbances he could pretend away. And not at the end, because the end is surrender, and surrender is its own kind of peace.
The fear lives in the middle. The middle is the deep water, the place where the light doesn't reach, where the pressure builds until breathing becomes something you have to think about.
The fear sounds like his father's voice. Bastard. Unwanted. A mistake that breathes.
The fear sounds like fire.
It crackles at the edges of every good moment, licking at the borders of every kiss, every whispered word, every night she falls asleep against his chest and he lies awake counting her heartbeats because he's terrified that if he sleeps, he'll wake up and she'll be gone. He memorizes the rhythm the way he once memorized escape routes—compulsively, desperately, as though one day he'll need to recreate the sound from memory alone.
On missions, when it goes bad—and it always goes bad eventually—her face is the last thing he sees before the dark takes him. Behind his eyelids, in the space between consciousness and nothing, she is there. Smiling. The way she always smiles. And his only thought, every time, clawing its way up from the animal core of him: come back. You have to come back. You can't not come back.
He always does. He fights his way out of the black because she is waiting on the other side of it.
He does not think about what would happen if someone didn't come back. He can't. The thought is a door he keeps bolted shut.
He knows what he is. He is the boy in the basement. He is centuries of violence dressed in shadow and silence, a weapon that learned to mimic a person.
He is not good. He is not kind. He is simply very, very good at performing those things.
And she—she is real in a way that frightens him. Her kindness is not performance. Her softness is not strategy. She is the genuine article, the beating heart of something warm and alive and whole, and he is terrified that his proximity will ruin her. That one day she'll look at him and see not the man she loves but the wreckage of a boy who was set on fire by his own blood and never quite healed.
"You're spiraling," she tells him one night, because she can read him now, because he let her learn the language.
They are on the rooftop, the city sprawled below them. Her hand finds his—the scarred one, always the scarred one, like she knows he needs that hand to be touched the most. She threads her fingers through his, and the contact is a bridge over dark water.
"Talk to me," she says. Not a demand. An offering.
His jaw works. His shadows writhe. The words are lodged somewhere deep in his chest, behind the scar tissue and the steel.
"I don't know how to do this," he manages, and his voice is ragged, stripped bare. "I don't know how to love you without being afraid that it's going to destroy us both."
She doesn't let go. She tightens her grip, as if she can hold him together with the sheer force of her fingers.
"Then be afraid," she says. "Be afraid and love me anyway."
He looks at her the way he only allows himself to when he thinks she's sleeping. Her eyes hold no pity. No hesitation. Only an unwavering, almost stubborn certainty that he is worth the risk.
No one has ever thought he was worth the risk.
"I was put in a cage for eleven years," he says, and the words taste like basement stone. "My brothers burned my hands while my father watched. I grew up believing that if anyone got too close, they would either hurt me or I would hurt them." His voice cracks. He lets it. "And then you showed up. And you were so—" He stops. Breathes. His wings shudder. "You were so warm. And I realized that the thing I've been most afraid of my entire life isn't the dark, or the pain, or even dying."
"What is it?" she whispers.
He looks down at their hands, intertwined. Her skin is warm against his scars.
"It's this." He lifts their joined hands. "Holding something I can't survive losing."
Silence. The city hums below them. His shadows pool at their feet like a dark tide.
And then she brings his hand to her lips and presses a kiss to each scarred knuckle, one by one, with a tenderness so deliberate it undoes him at the seams.
"Then I won't let you lose me," she breathes against his skin.
And he believes her. Not because anyone can promise such a thing—not in this world, not with the lives they lead—but because his mind will not go to the alternative. It stands at the edge of that thought the way a man stands at the edge of a river and refuses to look down.
He breaks.
Not violently—not the way he breaks on the battlefield or in the interrogation rooms. He breaks the way ice breaks in spring: like something frozen for so long it forgot it was once water.
His forehead drops to her shoulder. His arms circle her waist and pull her close, and he holds her, desperately, completely, with the full and terrifying knowledge that this is the only thing keeping him above the surface.
So hold my body. Yeah, hold my breath.
She holds him back.
And in the holding, something shifts. The fear doesn't disappear—it never disappears entirely, not for someone like him. But it loosens its grip. It recedes, like a tide pulling back from shore, and in its absence there is something new: a raw, aching, breathtaking vulnerability that feels less like weakness and more like the bravest thing he's ever done.
vi. surfacing
He learns to love the way he learned to fly: by falling first.
The first time he tells her, it's an accident.
They're in the kitchen—of all the grand, dramatic places in Velaris, the kitchen. She's making tea. He's watching her from the doorway, shadows curled contentedly at his feet, and she's humming something tuneless and off-key, swaying slightly as she reaches for the honey. He has noticed something about her humming: when she stops, the room holds the shape of it for a moment, a resonance in the silence, as though the walls have learned her music and are reluctant to let it go. He's begun to notice this about every room she moves through—the way they change when she's been in them. The way they keep her even after she's gone.
And his mind, traitor that it is, simply says it: I love her.
Except it isn't his mind. It's his mouth. The words are out before he can catch them—quiet, almost inaudible, but she stills. The honey jar hovers in midair.
She turns. Her eyes are wide and soft and searching, and he thinks about running. Five hundred years of instinct tells him to run—to dissolve into shadow, to fly until the words can't follow him.
He stays.
"What did you say?" she asks, voice hushed.
Azriel swallows. His throat is a desert. His heart is a fist against his ribs.
"I love you," he says, and the second time is harder than the first because the first was reflex and this is choice. This is him, standing in the kitchen with his hands exposed, choosing to be seen. "I love you. And it terrifies me. And I'm saying it anyway because—" He exhales, shaky. "Because you taught me that being afraid doesn't mean I have to be still."
She crosses the kitchen in three steps and kisses him, and the honey jar clatters to the counter, and his shadows surge around them both like a celebration.
She tastes like home. She has always tasted like home, and he was just too scared to walk through the door.
After that, the words come easier. Not easy, nothing about Azriel is easy, and she knows this, accepts this, but easier. He says it in the mornings, pressing the words into her hair before she's fully awake. He says it at night, when they're tangled together and his wings form a canopy over their bodies and the world outside doesn't exist. He says it with his hands—learning to touch without flinching, learning that these ruined fingers can hold something precious without crushing it.
He says it with his shadows, too. They adore her. They have adored her since the beginning, since before he was ready to admit what their reaching meant. They curl around her ankles when she reads, drape across her shoulders when she's cold, twine through her hair when she's sleeping. She calls them her cats. Azriel pretends to be offended.
But sometimes—in the early hours, when the light is thin and she is still asleep—they do something else. They spread across the bed and pool in the space around her, not touching, just hovering, as if mapping the outline of her body. As if learning her shape so they could find it again in the dark. He watches them do this and feels something he cannot name. Something that tastes like hurry.
He is not healed. He wants to make this clear—not to her, she already knows, but to himself. The basement is still in him. The fire is still in him. There are nights when he wakes gasping, hands burning with phantom pain, and she pulls him close and holds him until the shaking stops. There are days when the darkness rises like a flood and he retreats into himself, unable to speak, unable to explain, and she sits with him in the silence and doesn't ask him to be anything other than what he is.
He is not healed, but he is healing. And the difference, he's learning, is everything.
vii. the sea
Here is what Azriel knows now, after all of it—the stillness and the rain, the undercurrent and the drowning, the long and terrifying work of surfacing:
Love is not the absence of fear. Love is the decision to remain, trembling, in the water.
He used to think vulnerability was the thing that got you burned. He was wrong. Vulnerability is the only thing that lets you be held. And being held, truly held, by someone who has seen the bottom of you and chosen to stay, is the closest thing to salvation he has ever known.
She is his sea.
Not a pool, not a river, not something contained or conquerable. She is vast and deep and endlessly surprising, and he could spend the rest of his immortal life learning the currents of her and never reach the end. She is the tide that comes in and doesn't leave—or so he tells himself, because he has never been able to stomach the truth about tides. She is the water that holds him when he's too tired to swim.
Some mornings he lies beside her, tracing the delicate architecture of her sleeping face, and the love he feels is so enormous it borders on pain. It fills the cavity of his chest and presses outward, demanding more room, and he thinks: How did I live for five hundred years without this? How did I breathe?
He didn't. He knows that now. He existed. He functioned. But he did not breathe. Not really. Not the way he breathes now—deep and slow and full, with her warmth at his side and her heartbeat syncing with his, those twin rhythms composing a music he never knew he was missing.
He is still afraid, sometimes. The fear is quieter now—a whisper instead of a scream—but it's there. It lives in the spaces between moments of joy, reminding him that everything he holds can be lost. But he's learning something about that fear, too: it is not a warning. It is proof. Proof that he has something worth protecting. Something so precious that the mere thought of its absence makes the shadowsinger, the spymaster, the warrior who has faced death a thousand times and never blinked—
It makes him tremble.
And that trembling is not weakness. It is the most honest thing he has ever felt.
Some mornings, before she wakes, he stands at the window and watches the Sidra catch the earliest light. He doesn't know why he does it—only that the river is the first thing in the world that moves each day, and there is something comforting in that constancy. Something that feels like a rehearsal for a ritual he doesn't yet need.
Tonight, she is reading in their bed. Lamplight spills across the page and paints her in gold, and his shadows curl at her feet like loyal hounds, and Azriel stands in the doorway and watches her the way he watched the water on those basement walls all those centuries ago—
Except this time, he is not imagining escape.
He is imagining staying.
She looks up. Sees him. Her face softens into that smile—the one that is only for him, that lives nowhere else in the world, that he would give every remaining century to see one more time.
"Coming to bed?" she asks.
And Azriel—the boy who was burned, the man who was still, the shadowsinger who spent five hundred years standing at the edge of the water and refusing to wade in—
He goes to her.
He always goes to her.
Because she is the water, and he is no longer afraid.
See your face when I black out. I'm never coming back.
viii. the river, after
The Sidra is quiet this morning.
Azriel stands at its edge the way he has every morning for months now—still, patient, his shadows pooled at his feet like something faithful and tired. The water moves the way it always moves: onward, unhurried, indifferent to the man watching it pass. He holds a single flower in his scarred hand. He has been holding it for a while. His grip is careful—the way he held her, toward the end. Like something that might break. Like something already breaking.
He doesn't bring the tea anymore. He did, at first—brewed it the way she taught him, carried it to the river in the blue cup with the chipped handle, set it on the stone ledge beside him as though she might reach for it. Imperfect things hold warmth the longest, Az. As though the seat beside him wasn't empty. As though coming to bed? was a question he'd hear again if he just waited long enough.
He stopped bringing the tea when he realized he'd started answering her.
He brings flowers instead. One for the river. One for the stone on the hillside that bears her name, where the grass has grown over the turned earth and wildflowers have begun to bloom without anyone planting them. She would have loved that, he thinks. She would have said the Mother was gardening.
The flower goes into the water. He watches it catch the current—spinning once, twice—and then it's moving, carried downstream, growing smaller. He tracks it until it disappears.
You smiled when you dove in, Like you were never coming back.
His shadows stir. They've been doing that lately, reaching for something he can't see, curling toward a warmth that isn't there. They still search the bed at night. They still pool in the hollow where she slept, spreading across the sheets like dark water filling a space that was never meant to be empty.
He lets them search. He doesn't have the heart to tell them to stop.
And if you return for me, I'd never want for more.
Some ancient call. That's what this is—the pull that brings him to the river each morning, that turns his face toward water the way her face used to turn toward him.
Some ancient call, That I've answered before
He has answered it before. In a basement, pressing his palms to wet stone. In the rain, the first time she touched his hand. In every moment of his life where water meant survival, meant mercy, meant her.
If this was meant for me, why does it hurt so much?
The Sidra doesn't answer. It just keeps moving—onward, outward, toward the sea. Carrying everything. Letting go of nothing.
He stands there until the sun is high and the light catches the surface, and for a moment—just a moment—the whole river turns to gold. Her color. Her warmth. The exact shade of the world when she was still in it.
Azriel breathes.
Deep and slow and full, the way she taught him.
Then he turns, and he walks home, and the bed is empty, and the tea is cold, and his shadows search and search and search. The rooms don't hold her music anymore. He's listened. He's stood in the kitchen doorway and held his breath and begged the walls to give him one last echo of her humming. They have nothing left to give.
But he opens the door.
Every morning, he opens the door.
Because she was the water. And the water reshapes the stone even after it's gone. And the stone remembers. The stone always remembers.
And Azriel—the boy who was afraid, the man who dove in anyway, the shadowsinger who loved someone so deeply it carved a river through the center of him that will never, ever run dry—
The outcome of Elucien might be a mystery still but friendly reminder that Az's bonus ended with the thought of another females happiness sparking something in his chest and Sarah never once mentioned him in connection with Elain in nearly two hours.
But please, keep thinking last night was a win for e/riel.
If you don't want to ship Elucien maybe you should start considering someone new for her because Az isn't going to be her endgame.
When banter in the ring turned into pillow talk and soft laughs in the dark. Two lost souls finding salvation in each other. 🤍🩵💙
@brielyasmin never fails to amaze me with her artwork, she captured Gwyn and Azriel so beautifully, as always. They look so at peace together. From the lighting to the overall vibe, perfection! Thank you @brielyasmin ! It’s always a pleasure working together.
🚫 No reposts, edits, AI use, or printing — respect the artist & the art, always.
fake relationship is such a good trope. they have to act in love and they are in love but they think the other isn’t in love. oscar. pulitzer. nobel prize
This was Sarah's face when she heard about the "Gwyn's a child/young for Azriel theory"
This was her face when she heard about the Gwyn singing = glee theory
If the author herself is having such reactions to some of your most famous theories, then you still go on to say a dynamic is “problematic” when it’s the exact same dynamic used for the main couples and even your own delusional ship, then maybe you need to pause.
Most of your arguments rely on “the author wouldn’t write about this subject,” when she’s already written about it before. You say “it would be a whiplash for Gwynriel because of all the buildup,” when that so-called buildup isn’t even three pages in a 1500+ page series and is usually just you shaming readers, hiding behind toxic feminism and toxic masculinity, and pushing narratives that have absolutely nothing to do with the books.
So maybe you should really sit with the possibility that you’re the problem here not the people whose arguments are actually based on the text, on the author’s own Pinterest inspirations, and on what her own friends have said.
Gwyn and Az cherish celebrations with friends and family, but when the party ends; they love slipping away into the quiet, where it's just them, the silence after the noise, the intimacy after the crowd, a love that feels endless. 🌙🥂
Once again I can’t thank lulybot for another masterpiece of Azriel and Gwyn, the way she captured their intimacy is so beautifully done. Thank you again
REPOST, EDITING, PRINTING OR FEEDING TO AI NOT ALLOWED. PLEASE BE RESPECFTUL OF ARTIST WORK.
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