Pairing: Azriel x Maelís (The King of Hybern’s Daughter. (OC))
Summary: Like her Brothers, the daughter of Hybern was supposed to be a threat.
Azriel just hadn't expected her to be the kind that kept him awake at night.
Azriel had been sent to Hybern to observe the king’s surviving bloodline.
Assess the threat.
Remove it, if necessary.
But the female standing in the rain below him did not look like a remnant of a dead court. She looked like the reason the ruins had not collapsed yet.
And when Maelís lifted her eyes toward the parapet where no one should have been able to see him, Azriel understood two things at once.
She knew death was watching.
And she was amused.
Maelís knew her brother was going to raise his voice before he did.
Alaric had a tell.
Not an obvious one. He was too well-trained for that, too vain to allow his weaknesses to appear plainly in front of a room full of old commanders and half-starved nobles clinging to the remains of a dead king’s court. But his left hand always tightened first. Thumb pressing to the inside of his palm. A small clench. Barely visible unless one had spent years watching for the moment a male decided volume might compensate for intelligence.
Maelís saw it.
So did at least three of the commanders at the table.
None of them looked at Alaric.
They looked at her.
Interesting.
She let him speak anyway.
“This is cowardice,” Alaric snapped, his voice cutting across the chamber. “Prythian is weak from victory. Their courts are divided, their armies wounded, their High Lords too busy pretending unity to notice what we rebuild under their noses.”
The western council chamber had once been beautiful.
Not warm. Hybern’s royal fortresses rarely were. But beautiful in the severe, old way of the island: black stone walls, narrow windows, ironwork shaped like thorns, a ceiling high enough to swallow the sound of rain. The banners had been removed after their father’s death. Not burned. Not publicly destroyed. Folded away, quietly, by people who had decided survival required fewer symbols.
The table remained.
Dark oak. Scarred by generations of knives, rings, goblets, maps, and men trying to carve history into submission.
Maelís sat halfway down it, not at the head.
That offended Alaric more than if she had taken their father’s chair.
It meant she did not need it.
Across from her, Ciar watched the argument with one hand resting near his wine. He had the loose-limbed posture of a male pretending indifference while counting exits. Oran stood near the hearth, pale and severe, a priest at each shoulder like carrion birds given silk.
Her brothers had brought men.
Maelís had brought no one.
Except the three dragons sleeping in the courtyard beyond the chamber wall.
That had been enough.
Alaric turned his attention to Lord Nerevan, an old general with one ruined eye and enough sense not to interrupt fools too quickly.
“We have ships still hidden in the northern coves,” Alaric continued. “Men willing to take coin. Villages still loyal to our father’s name. We have blood. We have claim.”
Claim.
There it was.
Always the word men used when they had not yet earned obedience.
Maelís traced one finger along the rim of her cup.
She had not touched the wine.
No one in that room should have touched the wine.
Ciar had, but Ciar liked to pretend poison was a game he invented.
Nerevan’s ruined eye shifted briefly to her.
Maelís gave him nothing.
Alaric mistook the silence for success.
He always did.
“If we strike along the western coast before spring, Prythian will not have time to answer as one. Autumn will not move unless Night does. Summer still rebuilds its fleet. The humans are disorganised. The wall is gone, yes, but so is the lie that protected them. We can—”
“No.”
The word was not loud.
It did not need to be.
Alaric stopped speaking.
Every head in the room turned toward her.
Maelís lifted her eyes from the cup.
Her eldest brother stared at her from the head of the table. He had their father’s height. Their father’s pale hair. Their father’s belief that cruelty, properly dressed, could pass for command.
But not their father’s patience.
That had always been his weakness.
Alaric smiled.
It was not a pleasant thing.
“No?”
“No,” Maelís said again.
The silence tightened.
Outside, rain struck the narrow windows in thin, cold lines.
Alaric leaned forward, both hands on the table. “And what would you suggest instead, sister? More waiting? More rationing? More of your little village protections and supply ledgers?”
A few men shifted.
Not because they agreed with him.
Because he had made the mistake of mocking the ledgers that kept their households fed.
Maelís sat back.
Her black armour did not creak. Soft leather beneath dark scale-work, fitted close to her body, light enough to move in. No gown. No jewels beyond the slim dark band at her brow and the rings on her fingers. Her hair was braided away from her face, the long dark length falling over one shoulder.
She knew what she looked like in this room.
Small, compared to them.
A daughter among sons.
A female born into a court that had never forgiven women for surviving its men.
But the commanders did not look at her height.
They looked at her hands.
At the blades on her belt.
At the faint burn of old magic beneath the rings at her knuckles.
At the calm.
That was what frightened them most.
Not anger.
Not power.
Control.
“What I suggest,” Maelís said, “is that we stop confusing revenge with governance.”
Alaric’s smile thinned.
She looked past him to the map spread before his chair.
“Your western strike requires three things we do not have. A fleet that will not splinter the moment coin runs dry. Food enough to sustain men past the first month. And the certainty that Prythian will respond slowly.”
Her gaze shifted to Nerevan.
“Will they?”
The old general did not hesitate. “No.”
Alaric’s jaw tightened.
Maelís looked at him again. “There. One problem solved.”
Ciar’s mouth curved faintly over his cup.
Oran said, softly, “Prythian’s victory made them sentimental. They will hesitate before beginning another war.”
Maelís turned her head.
Oran’s priests went still.
She had always found religious ambition more exhausting than military stupidity. Soldiers at least admitted they wanted blood. Priests made sermons out of it and called the mess holy.
“Prythian may hesitate,” she said. “The Night Court will not.”
That name moved through the room like a cold blade.
Good.
It should.
Alaric’s lip curled. “You give them too much credit.”
“No,” Maelís said. “You give yourself too much.”
His hand clenched again.
There.
That little tell.
She almost sighed.
“Careful,” Ciar murmured from across the table, though whether to Alaric or her, Maelís could not tell.
Alaric rounded on him. “Do not—”
The doors opened.
Not loudly.
That would have been preferable.
A servant slipped in, pale-faced and shaking, eyes lowered to the floor. He carried a folded note on a black tray.
Alaric looked ready to flay him for the interruption.
Maelís lifted two fingers.
The servant came to her instead.
No one corrected him.
That, more than anything else, turned Alaric’s face dark.
Maelís took the note, broke the plain seal, and read.
Three lines.
Eastern road clear.
Second granary secured.
No retaliation taken.
She folded it again.
“Good,” she said.
The servant’s shoulders loosened by a fraction.
“You may go.”
He left quickly.
Alaric watched him go, then slowly looked back at her.
“You issue orders through my household now?”
“No,” Maelís said.
A pause.
“Your household obeys mine when it wants results.”
Ciar coughed into his wine.
One of the younger commanders looked down so quickly it was almost embarrassing.
Alaric’s chair scraped back.
Everyone in the room stilled.
Not because he stood.
Because Maelís did not.
He placed both hands on the table and leaned toward her. “You forget yourself.”
There it was.
At last.
The oldest accusation in Hybern. The one men reached for when they ran out of cleverness.
Maelís looked up at him.
“I have never had that luxury.”
The room went colder.
Alaric’s magic shifted.
A faint ripple beneath the stone. Harsh, inherited, blunt. Their father’s blood in him, but without the discipline to shape it beyond force.
Maelís felt it touch the edge of her own.
Fool.
Her magic rose in answer, not outward, not visibly. It slipped instead into the metal around them. Rings. Buckles. Blades. Nails in the table. Hinges in the doors. The ironwork above the windows. The knife hidden in Alaric’s boot.
Everything in the room remembered her.
Alaric went very still.
Because he felt it then.
The tiny shift of his own dagger pressing against his ankle from inside the sheath.
Not drawing blood.
Not yet.
Just turning.
A whisper of pressure.
A reminder.
Maelís did not blink.
“You may sit down,” she said quietly, “or you may embarrass yourself in front of men who already doubt you.”
For one suspended second, hatred stripped his face bare.
There you are, brother.
Then his gaze flicked around the room.
To Nerevan.
To the commanders.
To Ciar, who watched with open amusement now.
To Oran, whose piety did not extend to getting between siblings with knives.
Alaric sat.
Slowly.
The dagger in his boot settled.
Maelís let the metal go.
No one breathed too loudly.
She turned back to the map as if nothing had happened.
“Prythian will watch for armies,” she said. “So we do not give them one. We stabilise the ports. Secure grain. Prevent border raids. Punish commanders who act without sanction. Publicly.”
“You want peace,” Oran said, as if the word were filth.
Maelís looked at him.
“I want time.”
Nerevan’s ruined eye narrowed slightly.
He understood the difference.
Good.
Time to keep Hybern from tearing itself apart. Time to decide which brother would destroy himself first. Time to find which nobles could be bought, which must be frightened, and which should disappear quietly before they made themselves martyrs.
Time to determine whether the island could survive without becoming their father’s ghost.
She did not say any of that.
Not here.
Not with Alaric listening for weakness and Oran listening for sin.
Ciar tipped his cup toward her. “And what shall we do with Prythian during all this time you intend to buy?”
Maelís’s gaze shifted to him.
Ciar was the prettiest of them. Their father’s charm watered with their mother’s cruelty. He had always smiled like a knife beneath silk. Dangerous, but lazy with it.
“We do nothing,” she said.
He laughed softly. “How inspiring.”
“We make them wonder what we are doing.”
His smile faded.
There.
He understood too.
Better than Alaric, at least.
Fear rarely came from what people saw. It came from the space where certainty should have been.
Hybern did not need to bare its teeth yet.
It needed to become impossible to read.
A knock came at the door again.
This time, one of Maelís’ own guards entered.
Marek. Scar down one cheek. Loyal because she had spared his daughter from one of Alaric’s punishments three years ago, though he would never insult either of them by mentioning it.
He did not bow deeply.
She preferred that.
“My lady,” he said.
Alaric’s mouth twisted at the title.
Maelís ignored him. “What?”
“Courtyard disturbance.”
Her eyes sharpened.
Marek’s expression did not change, but his voice lowered by a fraction. “Xorox.”
Ah.
That explained the faint tremor beneath the floor.
Maelís stood.
Every male in the room watched.
“Continue discussing your invasion,” she said, fastening the clasp at her wrist. “Try not to lose the war before I return.”
Ciar smiled.
Alaric did not.
She left them sitting there, surrounded by maps they did not know how to read properly and ambitions too large for their hands.
The corridor outside was colder.
Quieter.
Maelís breathed once.
Only once.
Then began walking.
Marek fell in step beside her.
“What did he do?”
“The stablemaster tried to move Nymoriax from the southern yard.”
Maelís closed her eyes briefly.
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
“Intact?”
“Mostly.”
“Nymoriax or the stablemaster?”
Marek hesitated.
Maelís sighed. “Wonderful.”
They reached the outer stairwell quickly. Rain swept through the open archways, carrying the smell of wet stone, sea salt, and old smoke. Below, the fortress courtyard spread wide and dark beneath the storm.
Three dragons occupied the centre of it.
Eiresone lay near the colonnade, green-and-gold scales gleaming beneath the rain, tail curled with elegant disapproval. Nymoriax was perched on the edge of a broken fountain, golden-white wings half-open, looking far too pleased with himself.
And Xorox stood between them and a cluster of terrified stablehands, dark blue scales nearly black in the stormlight, wings flared, smoke curling faintly from his nostrils despite having no fire to speak of.
Dramatic creature.
Maelís descended the steps.
“Xorox.”
The dragon’s head snapped toward her.
His eyes brightened.
The stablehands looked as if salvation itself had taken human form.
Maelís doubted they would feel that way for long.
She crossed the courtyard without rushing. Rain soaked into her braid, slipped cold beneath the collar of her armour. Xorox lowered his head as she approached, but did not fold his wings.
“Nymoriax is not being murdered,” she said.
Xorox huffed.
Nymoriax chirped from the fountain, deeply offended by the entire narrative.
Eiresone made a low sound that was almost certainly judgement.
Maelís looked at the stablemaster.
The male had gone grey.
“What happened?”
“My lady, I only—he was lying in the cart path, and we needed to bring the grain through, and I thought—”
“You thought you would move a dragon.”
The stablemaster swallowed. “Yes.”
Maelís stared at him.
From behind her, Marek made a small sound that might have been a cough.
Nymoriax’s tail flicked.
Maelís looked at the golden dragon. “And you?”
Nymoriax blinked at her with enormous eyes.
Innocence.
Lies.
“All right,” Maelís said. “Everyone stop being ridiculous.”
Xorox made a low grumble.
“Especially you.”
His wings lowered by an inch.
Progress.
Maelís pointed to the eastern archway. “The grain carts use that entrance. Nymoriax, stop blocking functional roads just because the fountain gives you dramatic height. Xorox, stop threatening civilians. Eiresone…”
The green dragon looked at her.
Maelís sighed.
“Continue being superior, I suppose.”
Eiresone closed her eyes, satisfied.
Marek wisely looked away.
Nymoriax hopped down from the fountain with a splash and padded to Maelís, pressing his wet snout against her hip.
She braced one hand on his jaw.
“You are a menace.”
He purred.
Xorox finally folded his wings and came closer too, inserting himself between Maelís and the stablehands with all the subtlety of a war banner.
She patted his neck.
“Heroic, yes. Unnecessary.”
Another huff.
A flicker moved at the edge of the courtyard.
Maelís went still.
Not visibly.
Her hand remained on Xorox. Her posture did not change. Her expression stayed exactly bored enough for the stablehands to believe the matter resolved.
But something had shifted.
Not sound.
Not sight.
Pressure.
A wrongness in the rain.
Her magic reached before she did.
Metal answered across the courtyard: buckles, nails, harness rings, the iron gate, Marek’s sword, the thin blades hidden beneath her own bracers.
Nothing.
No intruder revealed.
No weapon drawn.
But the sensation remained.
A place where attention had been.
Maelís turned her head slightly, as if checking Nymoriax’s wing.
The western parapet stood empty.
No.
Not empty.
Too empty.
The rain there fell wrong for half a heartbeat.
Then corrected itself.
A smile almost touched her mouth.
Almost.
So.
Prythian had finally sent someone.
Or someone wanted her to think they had.
Either way, rude of them to arrive during a domestic crisis.
Xorox’s head lifted.
He had felt something too.
Maelís’s fingers tightened briefly in the scales at his neck.
Not yet.
The dragon stilled.
Good boy.
She looked back at the stablemaster. “You will move the grain through the eastern archway. If Nymoriax blocks it again, you will come to me. You will not attempt to drag him with a rope unless you are personally tired of having arms.”
The male nodded rapidly.
“Yes, my lady.”
“Go.”
The courtyard emptied with impressive speed.
Marek remained.
Maelís did not look at him. “Increase the inner watch.”
His face did not change. “How many?”
“Quietly? Twelve.”
Now he looked at her.
She kept her eyes on the western parapet.
“Something wrong?”
“Probably.”
“Human?”
“No.”
“Hybern?”
Her mouth curved faintly.
“No.”
Marek absorbed that.
Then said, “Prythian?”
“Perhaps.”
“Should I alert your brothers?”
Maelís laughed softly.
“No.”
The sound disappeared under the rain.
She finally looked away from the parapet and down at Nymoriax, who had decided her hip was still the safest place to rest his face.
“Let them enjoy their maps.”
Marek bowed his head and left.
Maelís stayed in the rain.
Her dragons gathered around her, not alarmed now, but alert. Eiresone had risen from her place near the colonnade. Xorox watched the western wall. Nymoriax pressed close, softer but not foolish.
Maelís lifted her face slightly to the storm.
Somewhere nearby, unseen eyes watched.
She could feel the discipline of them.
Not one of her brothers’ spies, then. They were too loud in their silence. Not a courtier. Not a priest. Not one of Ciar’s smugglers.
This watcher was patient.
Careful.
Professional.
Her pulse did not quicken.
But something in her sharpened.
A blade recognising another blade in the dark.
She smiled at last.
Only a little.
Then turned and walked back toward the fortress, dragons following in her wake like a storm learning obedience.
Whoever had come for her would need to do better than shadows in the rain.
After all, she had been raised in Hybern.
She knew when death was watching.
And she knew, with sudden and absolute certainty, that this one was watching her with interest.
Pairing: Azriel x Maelís (The King of Hybern’s Daughter. (OC))
Summary: Like her Brothers, the daughter of Hybern was supposed to be a threat.
Azriel just hadn't expected her to be the kind that kept him awake at night.
Azriel had been sent to Hybern to observe the king’s surviving bloodline.
Assess the threat.
Remove it, if necessary.
But the female standing in the rain below him did not look like a remnant of a dead court. She looked like the reason the ruins had not collapsed yet.
And when Maelís lifted her eyes toward the parapet where no one should have been able to see him, Azriel understood two things at once.
She knew death was watching.
And she was amused.
The war room was too quiet.
Azriel had spent enough years in rooms like this to know the difference between silence and restraint. Silence was absence. Restraint was pressure with nowhere to go.
This was restraint.
Rhys stood at the head of the table, one hand braced beside a spread of maps that had been weighted at the corners with dark stones. Feyre sat to his right, expression composed but eyes sharp. Cassian stood with his arms folded near the hearth, wings tucked in tight enough to tell Azriel he had already argued and lost. Mor leaned against the wall, jaw set. Amren sat in one of the chairs as if boredom were a throne.
Nesta was there too.
That told him enough before anyone spoke.
Not because she belonged in every piece of Night Court strategy — though increasingly, she did — but because this one touched Hybern.
Because so much still did.
The name alone had a way of making old wounds open beneath the skin.
Hybern.
A dead king. A broken army. A war won at the cost of too much blood. Feyre’s sisters dragged into a Cauldron they had never asked to touch. The wall gone. Humans displaced. Courts rebuilding. Treaties stitched together with suspicion and exhaustion.
And now, apparently, the island was not done with them.
Azriel looked down at the map.
The continent was marked in Rhys’s neat hand. Coastlines. Old fortresses. Military roads. Ports. Supply routes. Names of surviving commanders. Names of noble houses that had bent knee to the late king and now claimed they had only ever obeyed under threat.
Liars, most likely.
Practical liars.
Those were always the hardest kind.
Rhys’s violet eyes lifted to his. “We received confirmation from three sources.”
Azriel waited.
He did not ask what. Rhys would tell him.
“Hybern’s remaining royal line is not extinct.”
Cassian swore under his breath.
Not surprise, then. Anger.
Azriel’s shadows pooled at his feet.
He kept his face still.
Feyre’s hand tightened once on the arm of her chair. Just once.
Rhys continued, “The king had more children than were publicly acknowledged. Some legitimate. Some not. Most hidden outside the capital during the war.”
“How many?” Azriel asked.
“Four confirmed living.” Rhys touched the map. “Possibly five.”
Mor pushed off the wall. “And this information only surfaces now?”
“Because until recently, they were hiding from each other as much as from us,” Amren said.
Her silver eyes did not leave the map.
Rhys nodded. “The king’s death created a vacuum. His sons are gathering old loyalists, commanders, and surviving court factions. Quietly for now. But the reports are consistent.”
Cassian’s expression hardened. “They’re trying to rebuild.”
“Some of them are,” Rhys said.
Azriel noted the phrasing.
Some.
There it was.
The complication.
He looked at Rhys. “And the others?”
Rhys’s attention flicked to Feyre.
Brief.
Important.
Then back to Azriel.
“One daughter.”
The room shifted.
Not visibly, not to an untrained eye. But Azriel felt it in the tension of wings, breath, power. In Feyre’s silence. In Nesta’s gaze sharpening from the corner of the room.
Rhys slid one small portrait across the table.
Azriel did not reach for it immediately.
He looked at it where it rested between them.
A female rendered in dark ink and fading colour. Long dark hair. Honey-brown eyes. A face too composed to be called beautiful first, though it was. The artist had caught something in the angle of her chin, in the controlled line of her mouth.
Not softness.
Command.
She wore black armour cut close to the body, no crown, no excessive jewels. Only a narrow circlet-like piece of dark metal at her brow, more blade than ornament.
Beside the portrait was a name.
Maelís.
No family name.
No title written underneath.
That was interesting.
Azriel picked up the portrait.
The paper was old enough to have been folded and hidden more than once.
“She is confirmed as his daughter?”
“Yes,” Rhys said. “Privately acknowledged. Never presented as heir. Never paraded at court. But old records confirm bloodline. So do two intercepted letters and one priest from Hybern’s eastern court who was very eager not to die with his secrets intact.”
Cassian looked at the portrait from across the room. “She doesn’t look like him.”
“No,” Mor said quietly. “Lucky her.”
Azriel studied the eyes.
Honey-brown, direct, and somehow already irritated with being observed.
An artist’s choice, perhaps.
Or a warning.
“What do we know?” he asked.
Rhys’s mouth tightened.
“That she is dangerous.”
“Everyone on that island is dangerous.”
“Not like this.”
Azriel looked up.
Rhys did not exaggerate. Not in this room. Not with him.
Feyre spoke this time. “Her brothers are loud about power. She isn’t.”
Azriel’s gaze moved to her.
Feyre’s expression was calm, but the muscle at her jaw ticked once.
“She has not publicly claimed the throne,” she said. “She has not declared loyalty to the old king’s cause. She has not called armies. But every report mentions her.”
Rhys tapped a paper beside the map. “Commanders lower their voices when they speak of her. Servants survive in households she controls. Supply routes remain stable where her influence reaches. Two border villages that should have been burned in retaliation after the king’s death are still standing because her seal appeared on the orders.”
Cassian frowned. “That sounds less like a threat.”
“No,” Azriel said quietly.
The room looked at him.
He set the portrait down.
“That sounds like discipline.”
Rhys nodded. “Exactly.”
A cruel heir was simple. A stupid one, simpler still. Cruelty made enemies. Stupidity made openings.
Discipline made rulers.
Azriel looked at the map again. “Her brothers fear her.”
Rhys’s gaze sharpened.
Not surprise.
Confirmation.
“Yes.”
A faint stir of interest moved through Azriel’s shadows.
Rhys continued, “The eldest, Alaric, has the largest formal claim. He is brutal, popular among old military houses, and unimaginative.”
“Dangerous enough,” Cassian said.
“Yes,” Rhys agreed. “But predictable. The second, Ciar, controls a port faction and half the smuggling routes along the southern coast. The third, Oran, is gathering religious loyalists who believe the king’s bloodline was chosen by the Cauldron.”
Nesta’s face went very still at that.
Azriel filed it away.
“And Maelís?” he asked.
Rhys’s expression changed.
Barely.
But Azriel saw the distaste in it.
Not for her.
For what he was about to say.
“She controls no formal army. Holds no declared title. Has made no public claim. And yet all three brothers have failed to move against her.”
Mor said, “Why?”
Amren smiled faintly. “Because they enjoy breathing.”
No one laughed.
Rhys slid another report toward Azriel. “She was trained outside court records. Blades. Strategy. Wards. Old Hybern magic. Interrogation resistance. Diplomacy. Poison craft, possibly.”
Cassian looked disgusted. “Of course.”
“Her household guard is small,” Rhys said, “but intensely loyal. More concerning, several commanders who served her father appear to be waiting.”
“For what?” Feyre asked, though Azriel had a feeling she already knew.
Rhys looked at the portrait.
“For her to ask.”
There it was.
The reason they were all in this room.
Not because Hybern had surviving princes.
Because the one person capable of making the island dangerous again had not yet decided what she wanted.
Azriel looked down at the female’s face.
Maelís.
Daughter of Hybern.
Potential heir.
Potential stabilising force.
Potential future enemy.
The kind of person who could save a country or sharpen it into a blade.
Rhys let the silence sit for a few seconds before he spoke again.
“Our official position is non-interference.”
Cassian gave a humourless laugh. “Of course it is.”
“Our allies would not support Night Court action inside Hybern unless Hybern acted first,” Rhys said.
“And by then it may be too late,” Mor said.
“Yes.”
Azriel did not need the rest spelled out.
Still, Rhys gave it to him.
“You will leave tonight.”
The room tightened.
Feyre looked at Rhys, and there was old argument in her eyes. Not disagreement now. The echo of it.
Azriel said nothing.
Rhys’s voice remained even. “You are to enter Hybern unseen. Confirm the number and location of the surviving royal offspring. Assess which factions are aligning behind them. Determine whether any immediate threat is forming against Prythian.”
“And if one is?” Azriel asked.
Rhys’s eyes met his.
The High Lord was there now.
Not brother.
Not friend.
High Lord.
“Remove it.”
The words were quiet.
They did not need to be louder.
Nesta’s gaze shifted to Azriel.
Cassian looked at the floor.
Feyre did not look away.
Azriel absorbed the order without blinking.
He had taken uglier ones.
He had given himself worse.
But something in the shape of this one dragged against the room.
Because the threat was not an army marching.
Not yet.
It was bloodline. Possibility. Future danger.
A daughter who had not declared war.
A female who had not asked to be born to a dead monster.
Azriel looked at Rhys. “That includes her.”
Rhys’s jaw tightened.
“Yes.”
The fire cracked softly.
Feyre closed her eyes for one breath.
When she opened them again, she was High Lady.
“Yes,” she said.
The confirmation mattered.
Azriel understood why she gave it.
This mission touched her too. Her body. Her sisters. Her family. Her court. The war had not ended cleanly for any of them, but Hybern’s name lived under Feyre’s skin in ways no treaty could erase.
If Maelís became a threat, Feyre would not shield her because she was female.
Nor because she was young.
Nor because she had not yet chosen a side.
Azriel respected that.
He hated it a little, too.
“Is elimination the objective?” he asked.
Rhys held his gaze.
“The objective is to prevent another war.”
Not the same thing.
Not different enough.
Azriel nodded once.
Amren’s silver eyes gleamed. “Careful, boy.”
His gaze slid to her.
She smiled. “The dangerous ones rarely look as monstrous as they should.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
His shadows darkened.
Amren’s smile deepened.
Rhys cut in. “You are not to make contact unless necessary.”
Azriel looked back at him.
“Define necessary.”
“If remaining unseen prevents accurate assessment.”
“If she is what you think she is, remaining unseen may not be possible.”
“If you are,” Cassian said, ignoring the interruption, “this becomes more than one mission.”
Yes.
If Hybern discovered the Night Court’s spymaster moving through its territory after the war, every fragile diplomatic thread would strain. Beron would feast on it. Tarquin would ask what else Rhys had hidden. Helion would understand and still object. The human queens, if any still had ears there, would twist it into proof that fae treaties meant nothing.
And Hybern’s surviving royal line would gain the one thing it lacked.
A common enemy.
Azriel knew.
Rhys knew he knew.
That was why Rhys looked as if the order tasted bitter.
“You will have no official support,” Rhys said. “No extraction unless the situation threatens to expose the court.”
Cassian’s head snapped up. “Rhys.”
Azriel did not react.
He had expected that.
Rhys’s gaze stayed on him. “If this becomes public, I cannot acknowledge the mission.”
Feyre’s hand closed around his beneath the table.
Azriel saw.
So did everyone.
Rhys’s voice dropped by a fraction. “You know why.”
“Yes.”
Cassian looked murderous.
Not at Rhys.
At the truth.
Azriel glanced at him. “I’ve worked alone before.”
Cassian’s jaw tightened. “That doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
“You rarely do.”
Mor’s mouth twitched despite the tension.
For one moment, something like ordinary life brushed the room.
Then it was gone.
Rhys slid a final paper across the table.
“This is the most recent report.”
Azriel took it.
A gathering at one of Hybern’s old western fortresses. Three royal sons expected. Several military houses. Religious faction representatives. Smugglers from the south. One unknown guest from the eastern territories.
And Maelís.
Listed separately.
Of course.
At the bottom of the report, one line had been underlined.
If she speaks, the room will follow.
Azriel read it twice.
Then folded the report and placed it beneath the portrait.
“When?”
“Three nights from now,” Rhys said.
“So I leave tonight.”
“Yes.”
Feyre rose then.
The movement drew Azriel’s attention.
She came around the table, not as High Lady, not quite. Something quieter than that. She stopped before him, eyes steady.
“If she is not what the reports claim,” Feyre said, “I want to know.”
Azriel nodded.
“And if she is?”
Feyre’s face hardened.
“Then I want to know that too.”
There was no softness in the request.
But there was fairness.
Feyre, of all of them, had earned the right to want Hybern’s bloodline ended.
Still, she was asking for truth before vengeance.
Azriel inclined his head. “You’ll have it.”
Nesta spoke from the corner.
“Don’t let her blood decide for you.”
Every eye turned toward her.
Her expression was unreadable.
Cold, perhaps.
Or controlled.
“She did not put me in that Cauldron,” Nesta said.
The room went painfully still.
Cassian looked at her, but did not move.
Nesta’s eyes stayed on Azriel. “If she carries her father’s work, end it. But do not pretend the blood alone is proof.”
Azriel held her gaze.
Something heavy settled between them.
Not forgiveness.
Not mercy.
Justice, perhaps.
The sharper kind.
“I won’t,” he said.
Nesta nodded once.
That was all.
Rhys breathed in slowly.
The meeting was ending. Azriel could feel it. The shape of the mission had been drawn. The moral edges left jagged because there was no way to smooth them without lying.
He gathered the portrait, the maps, the reports.
Maelís’ painted eyes stared up from the stack.
Top of the list.
He wondered, absently, whether she knew.
A royal daughter raised among wolves would know death when it came near.
Perhaps she already expected him.
That thought should not have interested him.
It did.
Rhys stepped closer once the others began to shift away.
Brother again now, or trying to be.
“Az.”
Azriel looked up.
Rhys’s face was quiet.
Too quiet.
“If there is another way, find it.”
There.
The order beneath the order.
The thing Rhys could not write down.
Could not say to the room as High Lord.
But could say to him.
Azriel held his gaze.
“And if there isn’t?”
Rhys did not look away.
“Then come home.”
Not do what must be done.
Not finish it.
Come home.
Azriel’s shadows curled once around his boots.
He nodded.
“I will.”
He did not know which part of the promise he had just answered.
Perhaps neither did Rhys.
⸻
Later, alone in his room, Azriel laid the portrait on his desk.
He should have packed first.
Instead, he stood over the image.
Maelís.
Daughter of Hybern.
Four reports had called her dangerous.
Two had called her disciplined.
One had called her beloved by no one and obeyed by everyone.
One had claimed her brothers avoided being alone with her.
That one interested him most.
Fear within family had a particular taste.
He knew it.
His scarred fingers rested on the edge of the paper.
He studied the eyes again.
Honey-brown.
Steady.
A painter’s invention, maybe.
Or not.
His mission was simple in structure.
Infiltrate.
Observe.
Assess.
Remove threats.
But as his shadows crept over the desk, reaching toward the portrait like curious smoke, Azriel felt the first faint shift of unease.
Not doubt.
Not yet.
Something more irritating.
Anticipation.
He withdrew his hand.
The shadows retreated.
Three nights from now, Hybern’s remnants would gather.
And the daughter of the dead king would walk into a room full of males who feared her.
Azriel would be watching.
And if the reports were right, he would decide whether she lived.
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