Just leaving this here for the record, because I know no matter what happens, people will come out of nowhere to say otherwise.
I’m an Elriel shipper at heart. That’s my favorite, the one I truly root for, the one I hope becomes canon.
But I’ll be honest — I also ship Gwynriel and Elucien.
Why? Because all of these ships have so much potential. Each one could deliver a beautiful, meaningful romance if their differences were explored and developed with care. Any of them could become something deep, emotional, and worth reading.
Plus, my theory is: Azriel is going to be in Elain's shoes.
Elain has a mate, Lucien, but pursues Azriel. So Azriel will have a mate (most probably gwyn) but also longing for Elain. So the whole thing will be: Fate or Free Will? and let tell you whatever end, will be a insane love story!
That said, if you ask me where I stand — I’m Elriel
And if the endgame turns out to be Gwynriel or Elucien, I will be happy. just not as happy as I would be with Elriel because that’s the one I love the most. Still, I’ll be genuinely happy because I also ship them.
At the end of the day, I choose to enjoy all possibilities.
Life is much more beautiful when you can have a favorite ship, but still appreciate them all — and remember, it’s just a book. 💫
warnings: kissing, nothing explicit, clark forgets reader needs to breathe sometimes
a/n: just a little something since i'll be working all week. again. sigh.
Clark hasn't pulled away to breathe once. It's not like he has to, really, but your lungs are burning. Every stolen breath you're able to steal feels like a gift, but your boyfriend is just. Not getting the memo.
His tongue is in your mouth, his hands buried in your hair as he kisses you with the passion of the sun. It's hot. It's incredibly flattering that he can't stand to pull away from you for even a moment. But goddamn, you feel like you're about to pass out, and not just from him.
You're able to wrench yourself away a few moments later. Any longer and you really might have passed out. For as gentle and compassionate as Clark is with you, he seems to forget a very important fact when the two of you start kissing: you can't hold your breath for hours on end!
Clark tries to chase after your lips, not wanting a second of separation. One firm hand on his chest stops him—not because you overpower him, but because he loves and respects you far too much to push a clear boundary.
"Honey? Did I do something?" he asks quietly.
"No, well—" you laugh and press your forehead to his. Clark's hesitation softens at the amusement in your gaze, and his hands rub up and down your sides. "I need to breathe, baby. Not all of us can hold our breath forever."
Clark's eyes widen into that bright blue puppy dog gaze you can never stay mad at, and an embarrassed flush burns his cheeks.
"Sorry," he murmurs. "You're distracting."
"I don't mind, Clarky. Not one bit."
all written work and dividers belong to @ackpplepie!! do not plagiarize, feed my work into ai, or translate it. i do not own the characters used above.
Summary: tired of letting life happen to him, Azriel decides to finally claim something for himself and carve out his own destiny. Only after lighting the very match which risks burning bridges does fate finally return his calls...but have his prayers been answered too little too late?
OR
Azriel is sure he and Elain have something special together, damned what anyone else has to say about it. The Mother has other plans when Azriel finally meets his mate.
chapter one: who do i have to speak to? [2.1k words]
chapter two: please, I've been on my knees [3.4k words]
chapter three: change the prophecy [3.5k words]
chapter four: i'm so afraid i've sealed my fate [3.7k words]
chapter five: a lesser woman would've lost hope [4.2k words]
chapter five and a half: thought i caught lightning in a bottle
(but it's gone again) [2.2k words]
chapter six: let it once be me [5.2k words]
epilogue: who are we to fight the alchemy prophecy? [1.3k words]
extras [feel free to send requests!]
[nothing here yet!]
CW: angst with a happy ending, splash of elriel but az x reader is endgame, perceived/internalized infidelity, strangers/enemies to lovers, mating bonds, fighting fate/destiny, violence and injury, + more to be tagged in appropriate chapters
Summary: Falling into a portal to a fictional world was not on your agenda for your night out.
Author's Note: my first ever x reader fic ahhhhh. Anyway, I've been toying with this idea for a hot sec and I figured I'd finally actually write it out lol.
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If you knew you were going to fall into a portal, you would’ve brought a bigger purse. But when you started getting ready for a night out with your friends, you decided to only bring the essentials – wallet, phone, charger, and your trusty lip combo.
The Atlas was one of the few bars in town that could be relied on to play good music, something evident by the numerous bodies on the dance floor. The air smelled like sweat and cigarette smoke with a slight undercurrent of a fruity perfume from someone who never learned restraint. You could feel a bead of sweat run down the center of your back and the slight frizz your hair had gained from the heat of everyone packed together. At some point, the press of people against you has shifted from comfortable to claustrophobic. You felt a thread of anxiety curl in your chest. Buzz worn off, the colored lights were too bright, the bass too loud, and the dance floor just too damn hot.
The music transitioned to a throwback from the 2000s. The bass thrummed, mirroring the headache growing at your temples. Pulling your phone from your shoulder bag, you could see the time had just passed midnight. Shoving it back in amongst the lip glosses and charging cord you craned your neck trying to get a glimpse of your friends. Two of them were standing by the bar, while the third was pressed up against a man. You dodged and weaved through the grinding couples and girls screaming lyrics at each other to reach the duo at the bar.
“How are you guys feeling?” you shouted at them.
“Pretty good,” one yelled back. You leaned in until your ear was an inch from her mouth.
“We’re ordering another round and then I think we’re going to hit Rosie’s,” she shouted.
“I think I might head out,” you shouted back. “I’m pretty tired and I have a bunch of stuff to do tomorrow.”
She nodded in understanding, asking if you were going to get an Uber back to your apartment. You assured them you would and promised to text when you were home. In turn, you asked them to keep an eye on the fourth member of your group who currently had her tongue in someone else’s mouth.
With a final goodbye, you shoved your way through the mass of people, until you stumbled out into the cool night air. Once again, you pulled your phone out to order a car. If you were lucky maybe you could be in bed by one. Quickly checking the street, you dashed across to the small blinking dot on your screen that showed where the car would get you. A street light cast a circle of illumination on the sidewalk. There, you stood and waited. It was some yards away from the bar’s entrance. You turned from the concrete buildings and looked out over the river. The dark water reflected the lights before smoothing out into an inky blackness. The only barrier between you and the water were short concrete bricks. You wondered how many drunk girls had fallen into the river trying to walk atop them. You stared into the water and wondered what stared back.
The pain wasn’t noticeable at first. At least nothing that couldn’t be chalked up to the vague ache that followed after a night out. Maybe if it had been more intense at first you could have done something. Could’ve called for help. Could’ve gotten someone’s attention. But the slow creeping ache was unremarkable until it wasn’t. By the time you realized something was really wrong it had radiated out from your chest, turning from an ache into a sharp pain. It felt like someone had wrapped a hand around one of your ribs and pulled. You stumbled forward, knees hitting the unforgiving concrete. One hand grabbed at your chest as the other flew out to stop your fall. But where you should have felt the sharp sting of concrete on your palm, you felt only nothing. The pain pulsated again drawing you forward. Something was pulling, tugging. You gasped and lurched forward, falling into the dark water.
It should’ve been fine. Even with the unrelenting pain that now permeated your body, you still should have been fine. You knew how to swim. Your buzz had worn off hours ago. You should have been able to kick your legs and break through the surface. But it seemed like no matter how hard you kicked and fought and thrashed you kept sinking. That pull in your chest, the one that had caused you to fall in the first place now pulled you down. Pain radiated through you, an agony that seemed to burrow down into the marrow of your bones.
Down, down you sunk. Farther and farther. No light shone through the water. The lack of light made it hard to gauge how you moved. It was only the vague sensation of water rippling past your skin that gave you any indication that you were actually moving at all. Time seemed to stretch, seconds turning into minutes and minutes turning into hours. You honestly didn’t know how much time had passed since you fell into the water. It seemed like you drowned for eons until suddenly you felt a shift in the water. It seemed that whatever pulled you down, tethering you to the deep void had abated somewhat. Your legs kicked and for the first time since you fell in, you were able to maneuver yourself through the water. As you squinted, you even thought you saw the glimmer of light. With your newfound freedom, you kicked and swam towards that glimmer, watching it grow and sharpen into focus, until your face broke through the surface. Taking huge gasping breaths you pushed yourself towards the shore with all the grace of a newborn fawn. Once your feet touched muddy ground, you clawed yourself halfway out. Bent over on hands and knees, you coughed up water until you thought you could take a deep breath without half drowning. You stayed like that for a minute on all fours, taking in huge shuddering breaths as you tried to orient yourself. You no longer felt the immense pain deep in your chest, but your throat felt raw from swallowing so much water and then immediately throwing it all back up. Once you wrestled your breathing under some semblance of control, you lifted your head taking in your surroundings. Looking around you felt the tight coil of anxiety in your chest grow tenfold.
You weren’t on the sidewalk outside the bar. You didn’t think you were anywhere near the bar at all. Instead, you were hunched on the shore of a small pond in the middle of a clearing. Tall pine trees towered around the edges of the clearing and you could hear the soft song of birds and the rustle of leaves in the wind. You sunk back until you sat on your haunches, your hands fisting in the fabric of your skirt. The only thought that seemed to echo through your mind was “This is not the Atlas.”
Somehow – despite the turbulent journey you had experienced – you had managed to keep a hold of your bright pink purse. With shaking hands, you unzipped it pulling out your damp phone. With a soft tap, you woke the screen up. No service, but you hadn't expected to get any in the middle of an unknown forest. Swiping the screen, you pulled up the emergency call page and with shaky fingers, dialed 911. The phone began to ring, the sound echoing through the clearing. It rang and rang and rang. Finally it disconnected with a soft beep.
This was bad. This was very, very bad.
The tears started slowly, but as your breathing quicked so did the gasping, heaving sobs as your body folded in on itself. Your wet hair hung around your face as hot tears fell onto the ground. You were never a pretty crier and the complete and utter fear you felt did nothing to help.
After a few minutes of completely losing it, you noticed that the soft noises of the forest had seemed to…quiet. You knew little about the normal sounds of a forest, having spent your whole life in the suburbs. But a distant part of you remembered hearing that when the birds and other small animals went silent, it meant that something dangerous was near.
This was it you thought. This was how you were going to die. Transported to some random pond in the middle of a random forest torn about by a wolf or a bear or a very angry moose.
“If you’re going to kill me get it over with already,” you croaked out. The forest didn’t respond. You sat like that for another few minutes in silence that was only broken by your soft sniffles. A shadow shifted in your periphery drawing your attention to the side. Squinting into the darkness you could barely make out a mass of shadows and the glint of what might’ve been claws or teeth. Your heart stuttered in your chest.
The being shifted through the shadows of the trees, closer to you.
“Please,” you said. You didn’t know what you were asking for. You saw the being shift, almost like it was cocking its head, considering you.
“you are far from home,” came a voice like steel over stone. It wasn’t spoken out loud. It felt more like hearing your own inner monologue. Except the voice inside your head had never been so ancient sounding..
“I don’t know where I am,” you responded. The shadowy being gave what appeared to be a nod, before stepping out of the treeline into the clearing. The clear view of it gave little insight into its appearance. Even in plain view it seemed to be a shifting, shapeless mass of darkness. Every so often a shadow would move to just the right place giving you a glimpse of a claw or tooth. The only thing you could make out clearly were two solid silver eyes..
“you are in Prythian,” the being said.
Prythian. Like the…fictional Prythian? Prythian, the island full of magic and fae that didn’t actually exist because it was from a fictional romance series. Oh God, you thought right as you started hysterically laughing.
“This, this is a joke right? Some sort of really elaborate prank?” you asked.
Its eyes gleamed out of the dark being as it said “this is no joke. you have slipped between.”
Azriel was not happy. If anything, he was boiling.
He tried to restrain his shadows, keep them tight to his shoulders, but they wouldn't listen. It made him look like an angel of death. He tried to suppress the frown pulling at his brow, but every time Helion drifted closer to you, something gave in inside of him, a low, ugly heat curling tighter in his chest with every inch of ground the High Lord closed.
He hated it. He hated that somehow, you remembered glimpses of Helion, but not him. He hated the easy way Helion said your name, like it belonged in his mouth. He hated that some petty, wounded part of him wanted to plant himself between you and every other male in Prythian and never move again. And he hated himself, most of all, for daring to think any of it while you were the one still lost, still frightened, still trying to hold together a mind someone else had torn open.
"What do you mean, how much is she allowed to remember you?" Azriel stepped in front of you, shadows whirling, completely protective, voice sharper than he meant it to be.
Helion, despite Azriel's silent warning, drifted closer to you anyway. His hand hovered over your face. "There is something there," he murmured, closing his eyes. "I can feel it."
A strange pressure stirred behind your eyes, like a shape hiding in the dark had finally been caught. Helion made a move to touch your forehead, but Azriel caught his wrist before he could.
"Do not touch her," he said, calm, lethal, "unless she's given her permission."
Silence fell over the two males. Helion's eyes drifted slowly to Azriel's scarred hand still wrapped around his wrist.
Anxiety took over. You didn't want them to fight. You didn't want to cause any trouble.
Helion smiled lightly. "You're upsetting her, acting like this."
Azriel didn't back down. His voice only went colder. "I'm not the one making her heart race. So I'd suggest, next time you want to touch her, you ask first." His face stayed blank, but the hazel in his eyes had turned to something closer to blazing fire. A vein stood out along his neck, ready to snap.
"I'm only trying to help, Shadowsinger," Helion said, arching a brow.
"I'm fine," you interrupted, before the tension could climb any higher. "Just, do whatever you have to. Please." You shook your head, trying to steady yourself.
Azriel's jaw ticked. He didn't let go of Helion's wrist right away, holding it a beat longer than strictly necessary, some silent, wordless warning passing between the two males before he finally released it, shadows still coiling low and restless around his boots, refusing to fully settle.
"Your mind is clouded," Helion stated, circling you slowly. "It's like something is warding it. Even from you."
"But how can I remember parts of you, then?" you asked.
"What do you remember about me, dear?" Helion stopped in front of you and smirked.
That drew Azriel's attention instantly, something sharp and dangerous flickering behind his eyes. He knew exactly where this was going, and every line of him had gone tense, coiled, a predator deciding whether the situation still warranted patience.
"I, I came here before—" you started, searching your own head. "Several times." You looked at Azriel. "I went to your library. We, we worked together sometimes." You didn't sound fully certain of what you'd just said.
"Yes. Yes, we did." Helion chuckled, throwing a sidelong glance at Azriel, clearly enjoying himself far more than the room warranted. "May I?" He waited, hand extended, offering to take yours.
You nodded, glancing once at the shadows pooling thick around Azriel's feet.
Helion touched your skin, and the room felt colder. "Try to remember something else," he asked, golden light spilling from his hands, slowly wrapping around yours.
Azriel's shadows lunged forward, sudden and violent, and it took a visible act of will, jaw locked, breath held, to drag them back to heel.
You closed your eyes, and reopened them fast. "Oh my gods." You gasped, heat blooming on your cheeks. You remembered the parties, now, Helion drifting toward you with that same easy smile, trying every time to talk you into staying the night. He read the memory off your face before you could hide it, and laughed, loud and delighted, the sound rolling through the room.
Something in Azriel's expression went entirely feral.
His eyes had darkened to something close to black, shadows no longer pooling but rising, curling up his arms, along the floor, a low, dangerous hum filling the air around him like a held growl. His hands had curled into fists at his sides. For one terrible second you thought he might actually lunge, might actually put Helion through the nearest wall for the crime of making you blush at a memory that wasn't his.
"Did you find anything useful," he bit out instead, voice like gravel dragged over stone, forcing the word out through gritted teeth.
Helion's grin widened, entirely unbothered, which only seemed to feed whatever was coiling tighter in Azriel by the second. "I think I did."
You held your breath. "What is it?"
"Whoever was torturing you, you wouldn't give them an answer. Would you."
"No," you answered, aware, even now, of Azriel's eyes still fixed on you, dark and burning.
"Did this male have any powers?" Helion asked, like he already knew the answer.
"I, yes. Yes, he did," you remembered, the words surfacing slow and strange.
"Ah." Helion's tone sharpened. "And what kind of power did this filth have?"
You closed your eyes, reaching for it, the way you'd reach for a word sitting just out of grasp. Flashes came first, disjointed, the smell of tallow smoke, a voice pressing at the inside of your skull like fingers against a locked door, a pressure behind your eyes that hadn't been physical pain at all. "Mind powers." You breathed it out, brow furrowing hard as you strained toward the memory of the camp. "He was trying to get information out of me."
"Did he do this to her?" Azriel didn't ask it so much as growl it, stepping toward you, shadows snapping out ahead of him like they meant to answer the question themselves.
Before you could speak, Helion answered for you. "He surely did. Trying to break her mind to make her speak." His hands tightened gently around yours. "I can feel it. The power of a mind-walker."
Something cold settled low in your stomach, a slow, creeping horror rooted in the plain, simple fact of it: someone had reached inside your skull and tried to pry it open like a locked box. You didn't need to remember the sensation to feel sick imagining it, the violation of it, a stranger's hands rifling through the most private rooms you had. No wonder some buried, desperate part of you had slammed every door in the house shut rather than let him find what he was looking for.
"How do we undo this," Azriel demanded.
"Well—" Helion hesitated, something careful entering his voice for the first time since you'd arrived. "I would have told you to find the source and force it to reverse itself. But—"
He didn't finish the sentence.
Guilt flooded Azriel's face, sudden and total, every trace of his earlier fury collapsing inward into something far worse. "We can't—" It came out barely audible. His hand dragged through his hair, gripping hard. "We can't," he said again, louder this time, ragged. "I killed him." He looked at you, pain written plain and unguarded across every line of his face. "There has to be another way."
His shadows, so violent and jealous only minutes ago, had gone still and small around him now, curling low against his boots like something trying to make itself disappear. "I did it with my bare hands," he said, voice cracking further with every word. "I felt his skull give way and I didn't think, not once, that I might be the one closing the only door back to you. I was so consumed with making him pay for what he'd done that I never once considered I might be erasing the way to undo it. I'm the reason there's no easy answer. Me. No one else."
He was visibly trying to hold himself upright, shoulders squared out of pure habit, but you could see the weight of it crushing down on him regardless, could see the exact moment self-loathing settled into his bones and stayed there. He'd done this. By killing the man, he'd sealed the only door that might have led straight back to you. All of it, in his mind, was his fault. Only his.
His wings dropped, just for a second, and something in you ached to close the distance and reach for him.
"You did what you needed to do," you said quietly.
"Did I." It came out bitter, aimed entirely inward. "Or did I just want him dead, and told myself that was the same thing."
His eyes lifted to yours, sorrow shadowing them entirely now, nothing left of the feral fury from a moment ago. "I will find a way," he said. "I promise you. I will give you back your life."
Something about the rawness of it, the way his composure had cracked wide open in front of a High Lord without him seeming to care at all, sat with you in a way you didn't fully have words for yet. This was a male who had just been ready to tear another male apart over a shade of jealousy, and in the very next breath had folded entirely, grief-stricken, over a mistake he blamed only himself for. There was nothing performed in either version of him. Both were real. Both, somehow, were entirely his.
You didn't know what to do with that yet. But you found you didn't want to look away from it, either.
Helion cleared his throat, gentler now, the earlier amusement entirely gone from his voice. "I'll study what I felt today, and everything else my scholars can find on mind-walkers and the wards that answer to them. It will take time. I won't lie to either of you and promise otherwise." His gold eyes moved between the two of you, something almost kind in them now. "But I intend to find a way to undo this. In the meantime, you should go home. Both of you. She needs rest, and you," his gaze settled on Azriel, not unkindly, "need to stop carrying all of this alone."
Azriel didn't argue. He simply nodded, quiet, hollowed out, and offered you his arm without a word, and this time, you didn't hesitate at all before you took it.
The world folded around you, darkness and pressure and the strange, lurching nothingness of winnowing, and then solid ground again beneath your feet, cool night air replacing the Day Court's golden warmth in an instant.
You stood on the lawn behind the townhouse, grass cool and damp beneath your feet, the River House quiet and steady behind you, its windows glowing soft gold against the settling dusk.
Azriel let out a breath, loud, ragged, like he'd been holding it since the moment Helion's hand had first touched your skin. He crossed to the low stone wall at the edge of the lawn without a word and gripped it, knuckles going white, shoulders bowed forward under some invisible weight he'd clearly been carrying the entire way home and refusing to set down until now.
You watched him for a long moment, unsure whether to approach or give him the space he so often gave you.
"You're quiet," you said, eventually, when the silence had stretched long enough to feel like its own kind of conversation.
"I'm thinking."
"About the man you killed."
His jaw tightened, but he didn't deny it. "About a lot of things."
You studied his profile, the hard, familiar lines of it, the shadows curling low and subdued around him now instead of boiling with fury or grief. Whatever storm had passed through him back in that study seemed to have settled into something quieter, heavier, a weight he was simply carrying instead of fighting.
You turned the day over in your mind, piece by piece, the way you'd learned to turn over everything unfamiliar these past days, searching for the seams. There was no version of this male you could remember trusting. No warmth attached to his name, no history to lean on, nothing but a week and a half of watching him from the careful distance of someone who didn't know if he was safe.
And yet.
You thought of the way he'd demanded Helion ask permission before touching you, every time, not just once. You thought of the shadows lunging forward to protect you and being dragged back before they could do anything you hadn't wanted. You thought of the guilt that had gutted him entirely, unguarded, in front of a High Lord he clearly didn't respect enough to perform for. None of it required memory to read. It was simply there, plain as the color of his eyes, evidence stacking up in front of you with nowhere to hide.
You weren't ready to call it trust. Trust felt like too large a word for something built in a single afternoon. But you were, perhaps, ready to call it a beginning.
"Can I tell you something," you said.
"Anything." His eyes lifted to yours immediately, steady, unguarded, like the word had cost him nothing at all to give.
"I don't remember trusting you. I still don't, not really, not the way I apparently used to." You watched his jaw tick again at that, watched him brace for the rest of the sentence like it might be a blow. "But today, watching you—both versions of you, the one who looked like he wanted to tear Helion apart, and the one who fell apart himself over a mistake that wasn't even a mistake—I noticed I wasn't afraid of either one. I don't know what that means yet. But I don't think it means nothing."
He turned his head to look at you properly for the first time since you'd left the palace, something raw and disbelieving moving across his face.
"You don't have to say that to make me feel better," he said, low. "I know what I looked like in there."
"I'm not saying it to make you feel better." You held his gaze, steady despite the strange vulnerability of admitting it out loud. "I'm saying it because it's true. You didn't perform either of those things for an audience. You were just, you, in both of them. That's not nothing to me. Even without the memories."
Something in his face cracked open, the same way it had in Helion's study, except this time there was no guilt behind it, no grief, just something quiet and stunned and achingly hopeful.
"I killed a man," he said, voice rough. "And it might be the reason we don't have an easy way to bring the rest of you back."
"I know," you said softly.
"That doesn't frighten you?"
You considered the question honestly, turning it over the way you'd learned to turn over every strange, unanchored piece of yourself these past days. "You didn't kill him for cruelty," you said finally. "You killed him because of what he was doing to me. I don't need memory to understand the difference between those two things—I just know it. The same way I knew the stairs in that house before my mind caught up."
He didn't answer right away. When he finally did, his voice had gone thick, unsteady in a way you were coming to recognize as the sound of him giving you more truth than he meant to.
"I don't deserve the grace you keep handing me," he said. "I keep waiting for you to stop."
"Maybe I will, someday." You said it gently, not as a threat, simply as the truth. "But not today."
He didn't answer right away. When he finally did, his voice had gone quiet in a different way, less unguarded, more resigned. "And if Helion never finds a way to undo it? If this is just, what I get. What you get."
You didn't have an easy answer for that. You weren't sure anyone did.
"Then I suppose we find out who we are to each other without it," you said finally. "Whatever that turns out to be."
He didn't smile at that. It wasn't the kind of thing either of you could smile about yet. But something in his shoulders eased, fractionally, the particular ease of a person who'd expected to be handed false comfort and had been given honesty instead.
Behind you, the River House's windows glowed steady gold against the deepening dusk, the quiet hum of Velaris settling in around the two of you. Neither of you moved to go inside. You simply stood there together in the cool grass, two people who didn't yet know how their story ended, and let the not-knowing be enough, for tonight.
A/N: AHHHHHH MY FIRST FIC. Please be gentle, the last time I wrote a fic was when I was 16 on Quotev (ifykyk) that did pretty well...I am 25 now so might be a smidge (a lot) rusty. I'm so down for ideas though so send 'em all in the requests for ACOTAR you freaks :) I hope you enjoy XoXo
When you admit a truth about your magic abilities to the IC, you face the consequences of a certain shadowsinger feeling like a pawn. What happens when the truth you tried so hard to hide, inevitably has to come to the surface?
Warnings; hurt/comfort, angst (just a smidge), fluff, friends to lovers, light topic of death, first fic.
Empathic; An ability derivative of Daemati with very little known otherwise. The minimal knowledge available details an empathic having the power to influence and wield a single emotion how they see fit. The empathic ability has been stated to drive fae to madness if not mastered hence the hunting of them has been encouraged over multiple periods in history.
“Rhys, I swear to god if you don’t give me 15 minutes to take a break, my head will combust.” You said as you shot him a pointed look. Stretching your arms out, a satisfying click of bones had you heaving out a sigh of relief from where you had been hunched over stacks of books “And then you’ll have to tell all of our friends that you made my head explode, now do you really want that?” You had asked the question with complete seriousness, but his lips quirked up at the sides, amusement flickering across his face as he scoffed.
“That seems a little dramatic, but point taken. I admit I may have let my curiosity get the better of me.” He conceded without a hint of remorse in his tone, arms unfolding to rest at his sides as he sat himself on the edge of the desk.
You had both been crammed in one of the study rooms of the library and while it had only been a few hours, it had felt like an eternity. You had been a part of the inner circle for just over a year and had finally entrusted them with the knowledge of what you were. To most, disclosing your empathic ability would make you a threat, a monster or a liability. Majority of the time, you’d be seen as all three.
While you didn’t divulge in more details than simply naming it for what it was, Rhys had proven himself to be quite persuasive in asking if you’d be willing to let him enter your mind and, in his words, try to understand what goes on in that head of yours. You hadn’t accounted for him wanting to go over every snippet of text about Empathics he could find, and asking you to verify their validity. You had to admit though, it was a relief that he had been so open to it and you couldn’t blame him with how little people knew of your kind.
You had been surprised at first at how well everyone had taken it, excluding a certain spymaster. It made sense that they were used to the idea with already having two Daemati in family but for some reason Azriel had been avoiding you since you announced it two weeks ago. The thought that he was that off put by you now made your stomach drop, the dread being a familiar tug by this point. Rhys seemed to notice where your head went at your sudden quietness “He’ll come around you know.” He said, as if there was no doubt at all.
Azriel had been the first person in Velaris that you had genuinely trusted since arriving with barely a dime to your name and a backstory that he pretended to believe. While he wasn’t the most talkative of the bunch, he was a constant that you hadn’t realised you relied on having near you in day to day life. He had become your favourite person. “I know you believe that Rhys, and I thank you for it but I just wish I could too.” You looked down at your hands fiddling in your lap, a habit you couldn’t shake when you got nervous “You should’ve seen his face when I walked past him in the hallway after that dinner…It was like he didn’t even recognise me. I just got stone faced Az like I was some stranger on a mission.”
His eyes softened at that, “It may just need time, I don’t want to push you but maybe if he had more inf-“
“I’m not outing my emotion Rhys.” You immediately butt in before he can finish the suggestion. “You don’t understand what you’d be asking of me, or the power you’d have over my life.” Your voice comes out firm, and with a sigh he nods “alright, but at least try to get some rest for the evening. If you need to crack into the wines just please leave a few of the good ones to us” he teased. You rolled your eyes, a small smile taking over your features as he bid you goodnight and left the room.
As you made your way through the house of wind, you couldn’t shake that nagging feeling. This time of night you’d usually be huddled up on the love seat by the fire with a book and tea while Azriel either read as well or cleaned off his blades if he wasn’t out on a patrol mission. You’d always make him a cup too, and he always accepted it gratefully. His shadows would twirl around your wrist or turn the pages of your book for you which almost always led to Azriel grumbling about them behaving but it was your favourite moment every time it happened. Now the house was dead asleep, the quietness only reminding you of the fact that the usual routine you grew to love so much would no longer exist. Your heart thudded painfully in your chest at the thought, so you forced your legs to take you to your bed chambers instead, yet again.
Sleep didn’t come easily knowing that the reason the pang in your chest was right across the hallway, and after an hour of tossing and turning you eventually fell into a light slumber.
*****************************
Azriel had heard your footsteps before your bedroom door opened and closed again, signalling you turning in for the night. He lay on his back against black silk sheets, his shadows restlessly curling around the room almost as if portraying the chaos that was going on in his mind.
When he had found you two years ago on the border, he knew your little story you told of how you ended up there wasn’t true but he never would’ve thought you’d hide something like this, something so important, from him. He had listened to his instincts that you were not a threat and over the last year he’d started to forget how lonely the house could feel as you quickly became a part of it. At game nights he had an automatic partner, neither of you ever needing to ask to be a pair. Or when he got back from a particularly hard mission and you would just…stay. Without asking anything of him, you would just be there to talk when he was ready despite that being a rare occurrence. For once disregarding not having the full story had seemed to pay off because it led him to have you in his life.
His shadows missed you and he’d be lying to himself if he denied that he missed you as well. He had always become infatuated by females that needed him, having a purpose made him feel like he was worth something and that he could indulge in the softness of being with someone. It wasn’t his best moment but with you it hadn’t been like that at all. You didn’t need rescuing and your wit and intelligence rivalled the likes of even Rhysand. The pull he felt to you was what he thought to be completely organic, you were beautiful in every sense of the word both inside and out. Cassian made a point to tease him every time you walked into a room because his eyes would immediately go after you no matter what he was doing, and he didn’t give a damn about it. That was reason enough for him for once…until you informed them of what you were capable of.
His wings bristled at his back as he thought back to every time he felt that pull, your smile always making his heart skip a beat. His favourite part of it was when your eyes crinkled at the sides. He had finally let himself believe that just maybe, he could have this. Now it seemed tainted, how could he trust that you hadn’t just made him feel that way? You hadn’t clarified what particular emotion you possessed power over and he would’ve never let any other fae enter Velaris with a fake story the way he did with you. He just couldn’t help wanting to protect you in that moment, he always would when it came to you and to him that was proof enough that your influence must have been at play. He didn’t deserve to get the ending his brothers got, and so it had to be fake. All of it.
His jaw ticked at the thought, at his own stupidity for thinking that you were possibly the one he’d been waiting for. With his head aching from all the mental gymnastics, he decided sleep was futile. And so he got up and swapped his sleep pants for his leathers and headed to the roof to attempt to get any sort of distraction.
*******************************
When you woke the sun was slipping through the curtains, casting a yellow glow around the room. It seemed to be earlier on in the morning and with a sigh you begrudgingly got out of bed to face the day. After bathing, you slipped into a summer dress that was one of your favourites, the light blue material soft on your skin as it hugged your waist and flowed out. You left your hair wet to air dry as it framed your face and once you looked decent enough, slowly made your way to the door. It took a moment at the door, and a few deep breaths before you grabbed the handle and opened it. Weirdly enough Azriel’s door was cracked open, but you reigned in your curiosity before you could look into it and make him even more upset. You know you’d have to talk to him eventually but sneaking into his chambers didn’t seem like the best option.
Making your way down the stairs you saw that Cassian, Feyre and Nyx were all at the table, their breakfast conversation paused as they saw you enter. Feyre gave you a warm smile as Nyx babbled away in her arms “Good morning, I hope you slept well. We were actually just talking about how Rhys said that he may have gone overboard yesterday…” She mused, clearly not impressed by her mates actions.
You breathed out a laugh “I can’t say I blame him, he always jumps on opportunities to know more…that mate of yours is quite the nerd.” At that Cassian lets out a snort “I never thought I’d hear someone call Rhys, our all powerful high lord, a nerd.” He grinned, but it was short lived as he seemed to remember something and his face quickly become serious “Oh before I forget, Az has been up at the training ring since mother knows when. I know things are kind of tense but maybe you should go talk to him?” Cassian suggested with a slight shrug. “You say that like it’ll just be a casual chat about the weather.” you mumble in reply. He chuckles, and gives you a pat on the back, his hand coming to rest on your shoulder in an act that you’d like to think of as encouragement.
“I know what I’m asking, but you have both clearly been miserable. You need to sort it out. Those practice dummies can’t take many more distraction sessions from Az. I also have 50 marks on you two getting together before star fall”. You bite your lip at that to stop the smile escaping at the thought. “I’m scared I can’t fix it” your voice comes out smaller than you’d like as Feyre casts you a sympathetic look while she continues to feed Nyx.
“But can it get any worse than not talking at all, like it is now?” You stared at Cassian, and knew he was right. “For a brute you can be quite insightful” You meant it as a teasing dig but your voice was laced with appreciation that you couldn’t hide. He gave you a wink and motioned to the roof.
“I’ll give it a try, wish me luck” you breathed out, your heart already pounding. You get up, turn on your heel as Feyre cheers you on, and begin walking up to the stairs that lead out to the roof. The closer you get the clammier your palms feel and you can hear the blood rushing in your ears. Mother above, you really didn’t want to do this. You knew that you’d have to give him more than you were ready to but as you walked up step by step, the alternative of not having Azriel in your life seemed so much worse. Your mouth was dry by the time you reached the last step and you froze in place at the sigh before you.
Azriel had forfeited his shirt, his dark hair tousled from hours of relentless physical training. In the sunlight his form glistened. Cassian hadn’t been lying, it seemed as if the practice dummy had personally offended him with the intensity he was punching it. You took note of the bags under his eyes, but not even those took away from the beautiful male in front of you. The sight of his defined chest and those powerful wings looming from his back, it was truly a sight to behold. He was so caught up that he hadn’t realised you were there, and already feeling like a creep you cleared your throat and approached where he stood.
“You know, you should give the dummy a chance to fight back.” You tried lightheartedly but Azriel just stopped his ministrations, soft pants leaving him as he looked at you with the same stoney expression. There was that blank stare again but this time something flickered through his gaze as he turned to walk to his shirt, ignoring you.
“Az…Please can we just talk? I know that you’re upset but I want to fix this.” You hated how weak you sounded, the hurt evident in your tone as you fiddled with your hands. Azriel stopped, his breathing still heavy, his back still towards you. “You can’t fix something that didn’t even exist” he rasped out, his voice low and raw. Hurt slashed through you at his words “Didn’t exist? Azriel, you are the most important person to me, how could you…why would you say that?” You cursed yourself mentally as your voice cracked on the last word.
Azriel turned to you, his hazel eyes finding yours with an intensity that knocked the air from your lungs. “You say all the right things, do all the right things but tell me…if you could hide such a big part of yourself from me, how can I trust anything I feel for you? How can any of It be real?” At his admission a choked sound leaves your throat as tears begin to line your eyes. The panic was starting to rise up as the truth you’d worked so hard to hide slowly became inevitable. You could see him slipping through your fingers and you couldn’t figure out where to start. Your lip trembled as you steadied yourself.
“Azriel…I know that I should’ve told you sooner. I wish I could go back and be honest but I let fear dictate that choice and I will regret that for the rest of my life,” you willed your voice to remain steady, and Azriel seemed to be allowing you space to talk so by the gods you were going to take it. “I won’t let myself regret another choice Azriel, if you allow me to I’d like to tell you everything. If you want the truth I will give you the worst and best truths of who I am, right now, but I need you to understand that you are everything.” At this point the tears are merely streaks down your cheeks. Azriel’s eyes soften, but he doesn’t come closer. He does offer a small nod, allowing you to continue.
You take another deep breath “I am 45 years old, I am an Empathic. Empathics are from the continent but are largely hunted and so it is imperative that even as younglings we do not let anybody know. Its ingrained in our survival so please understand that I always trusted you, but I let fear override instinct to let you in and that’s on me.” Azriel watched you closely, his gaze never straying as he took in the information he was hearing, his shadows were lapping at your feet but not quite able to make contact as he held them back with every attempt they made.
“Another truth is that I have never influenced anybody or used this ability to manipulate any outcome” You hiccup as the tears fall faster, Azriels wings shift behind him. You take a step closer and he doesn’t move away this time
“Azriel I love you, I love your shadows and how you’re a complete neat freak. I love when everyone else is in bed and its just us and it feels like nobody else exists outside our little bubble or how you always try new tea flavours I brew without question…” At this point the words are just tumbling out before you can catch them, but Azriel’s eyes are lined with silver and you can see the tremble in his hands. “I can’t imagine not having you in my life and if you can’t accept that these feelings for you are true because of my mistake then I will be happy to just be a friend. I can’t lose you…” The words of friendship tasted like acid off your tongue, only coming out as whisper by the end. Your chest feels abnormally tight, and before you can even register what’s happening there is a sharp snap within your ribs. You are flooded with emotions instantly, ones that don’t feel as tangible. Your eyes widen, still glassy with tears as you look up at him. His nostrils flare and his pupils dilated and the tether you feel leading straight to him, is all the confirmation you need. For a moment you both stand in silence gazing at the others. His hand cautiously comes to meet your cheek, cradling your face and you instictively lean into his touch, eyes fluttering shut for a moment.
He breathed out your name as his own eyes line with tears that don’t fall “Gods I am such a fool, I should be the one grovelling at your feet apologising.” You look at him, confusion evident on your face “But I-“ you began, only to be cut off by him “No, it wasn’t just on you. I would be a hypocrite to blame you for fear when my mistrust was rooted in it. I was so scared that I had been cursed or forgotten about…that I would never have this with someone. When I found out about your ability, it was a cowardly way to justify not acting on something that I was too scared to.” Azriel stands closer to you, the heat coming off of his body seeps into you and you can’t look away from him as he he rests his forehead against yours.
“I want to know everything about you when you are ready to tell me, I won’t let myself mess this up again I promise you that. You are my light and words will never be able to describe how much I love you.” At his confession a sob escapes you. “You truly are a fool if you think you can get rid of me that easy.” You manage to get out
You aren’t sure who leans in first but his lips are on your as his other hand circles around your waist and pulls you into him. Your arms wrap around his neck and your fingers lace through his soft hair. Your lips move in perfect rhythm, as if this is the 100th time you’d kissed but the bond sings with elation at the closeness of your male. You both break apart briefly for air, a daze coming over you both in the aftermath. Azriel wears a smile that steals your breath away, his dimples peeking through and can’t resist kissing them and giving his lips another quick peck.
“I never let myself hope for this.” He admitted softly and you couldn’t help the small laugh that escaped you. Azriel furrowed his brows as he tucked a stray piece of hair behind your ear “What have you found so funny about that my love?” He asked quietly, almost as if to not disturb the moment. You looked at him with a gleam in your eye as the irony of his words registered to you “Well then you definitely have proof that I had nothing to do with this.” You beamed.
He raised an eyebrow “Please know that I already believe you didn’t, but what do you mean?”
“Well…” You drawled out with a blush, all of a sudden a little shy “…I am hope, that’s kind of my whole thing. I guess now I’m your hope” You smiled, the realisation dawning on him and this time the tears in his eyes fell as he kissed you again, deeper this time as if he couldn’t fathom an inch of space between the two of you.
When you broke away again, he didn’t hesitate in lifting you up. Your thighs wrapped around his waist as his shadows began to open a rift right into his chambers and he smiled up at you with a reverence.
Maybe Azriel but with jealous reader now? With promt 21 “You’re not seriously jealous.” Maybe he doesn’t even realize for a while what’s going on, why reader seems angry/distant cause usually it is him being jealous/overprotective?
(Photos courtesy of Pinterest)
Summary: "You're not seriously jealous."
Authors Note: I hope I did this justice!
It started so subtly that you truly didn't realise when you first started feeling like this.
It wasn't the first time you'd seen them together. Elain had always been kind to Azriel, drawn to his quiet strength and his understanding of darkness that most people couldn't even comprehend due to his experiences in life.
She'd leave an extra cup of tea on the table if he'd been gone on a long mission. Ask after his injuries. Press flowers she'd grown into his hands because they reminded her of him.
Normally, it didn't bother you.
You and Azriel had been together for centuries. Your relationship had survived wars, kingdoms, and enough near-death experiences to last several lifetimes.
You trusted him completely. Which was precisely why this feeling was so irritating.
One afternoon, you found Elain in the garden, quietly braiding tiny wildflowers into the leather wrapping around Truth-Teller's sheath while Azriel sat beside her sharpening the blade.
"It looked a little plain," she said shyly to your inquisitive look.
Azriel looked down at it. A tiny smile tugged at his mouth. "It did."
You smiled too. It was thoughtful and sweet, so you thought nothing more of it.
A few days later, you wandered into the library looking for Azriel.
Instead, you found the pair of them bent over one of Elain's gardening books. She was pointing at a page covered in sketches of herbs.
"This one grows in the mountains."
"It eases pain?"
"So they say."
Azriel nodded thoughtfully. You cleared your throat. Both of them looked up. His entire face brightened the moment he saw you. He was beside you within seconds, kissing your forehead as naturally as breathing.
"Everything alright?"
You smiled. "Just looking for you."
Then came the headaches.
The first time, you'd found Azriel rubbing tiredly at his temples after returning from a mission. You'd quietly pulled him onto the sofa.
"No paperwork tonight."
"I have reports."
"No."
"I have—"
"No."
You'd massaged the knots from his neck until he'd eventually fallen asleep against your shoulder.
The second time, you'd practically dragged him to bed. The third, you'd threatened to tell Rhys if he didn't rest. Azriel jokingly called you a tyrant which you took as a compliment.
Apparently, Elain had noticed too.
You walked into the sitting room on Solstice evening, after you'd disappeared into the kitchen to fetch wine with Mor, to find her handing Azriel a small ceramic pot.
"I made this," she said softly. "Peppermint, lavender... and a few other herbs. It's supposed to help."
Azriel unscrewed the lid. The faint scent drifted through the room. His eyebrows lifted.
"It smells... nice."
Elain smiled. "I hoped it might help."
"Thank you."
Something unpleasant twisted in your stomach. Not because of Elain, she was simply being thoughtful and anything that aided in the care and comfort of your mate you would never argue against.
It was the fact she'd noticed. The fact she'd done something more than encourage him to sleep. She'd gone out of her way to try and fix the problem.
You decided not to retake your seat by his side, not wishing to intrude on the moment, instead you let Mor drag you closer to the fire.
You unconsciously distanced yourself from Azriel for the rest of the evening, allowing your thoughts and insecurities to distract you from meeting his eye from across the room or responding when one of his shadows discreetly nudged you.
By bedtime, you'd convinced yourself you were being ridiculous, but you still couldn't ignore the unsettled feeling in your stomach, which somehow only made you feel worse.
You were halfway through brushing your hair, perched in front of your vanity when Azriel appeared in the doorway.
"You've been avoiding me tonight."
"I haven't."
He didn't look convinced. "Mhm."
He wandered over, coming to a stop behind you, letting his hands rest lightly on your shoulders as he looked at you through the mirror.
"What happened?"
You avoided his eyes, staring stubbornly at your hairbrush instead.
"Nothing."
Silence.
Then—
"It was Elain, wasn't it?"
Damn his perceptiveness.
You groaned. "It sounds so stupid."
His eyebrows rose, but he didn't say anything, instead letting you work your feelings out.
"I know she's just helping."
He nods.
"And I know you've had headaches."
Another nod.
"I just..." You sighed. "I hated that someone else was taking care of you better than I was."
Azriel stared.
Then, completely unexpectedly—
He smiled at you. A proper smile. Warm. Fond. Almost amused.
You frowned. "What?"
He stepped closer, pressing his chest up against your back.
"...You're not seriously jealous?"
Your cheeks heated instantly. "No."
"You are."
"I'm not."
"You absolutely are."
You covered your face with your hands. "This is humiliating."
A quiet laugh escaped him. He moved around to face you better, kneeling before you as he gently pulled your hands away.
"I haven't seen you jealous in centuries."
"I wasn't jealous," you scoffed, trying to pry your hands away.
Azriel held firm, the smile still on his face. "I think the last time, you threatened to hex a diplomat for complimenting my wings."
"He was flirting."
"No he wasn't."
"He could have been with those sexy eyes he was making at you."
Azriel laughed again, shaking his head.
You narrow your eyes at him before muttering, "Besides, you're usually the jealous one."
Azriel looked positively offended.
"Am not."
You gave him a flat look.
"Azriel, you once spent an entire evening attached to my hip because Eris smiled at me twice."
"He smiled three times."
"You counted?"
"...Maybe."
You couldn't help but laugh. Azriel couldn't hide his happiness at hearing the sound, even if it was at his expense.
"I missed this."
You blinked. "You... missed it?"
"Mhm." He slipped an arm around your waist, drawing you against him. "I know you trust me."
"I do."
"Just as I trust you."
"I know."
"And I know you know I love you." His forehead rested against yours. "But every now and then..."
His thumb traced a slow circle against your hip.
"...it's nice to know you still want me all to yourself."
You huffed, trying very hard not to smile. "I always want you all to myself."
Azriel's grin only widened, before he leans down to kiss your forehead.
"For the record, the cream will be Plan B."
You looked up. "Plan B?"
He shook his head. "Plan A is my favourite remedy."
"And what's that?"
"You." His smile turned soft. "A stubborn mate who bullies me into bed and rubs my temples until I fall asleep."
You rolled your eyes. "That's a very specific medical treatment."
"It's been remarkably effective for three hundred years."
You couldn't help laughing. Then you reached up, cupping his face.
"So... no more accepting headache remedies from pretty gardeners."
Azriel's eyes danced with amusement.
"See?"
"What?"
"You are possessive."
You kissed him before he could tease you any further.
And you felt his smile against your lips the entire time.
Warnings: Utter possessiveness from Azriel, morally grey Azriel, hurt/comfort, loss of autonomy, emotional trauma, extreme hyper-vigilance, and obsessive, possessive behaviour masking severe panic. Captivity & Confinement (technically) , Loss of Autonomy, Magical Restraints, Kidnapping (Technically), Heavy Angst,
Synopsis: "I will let you hate me, as long as you stay alive." - To the Night Court, Azriel is a cold, lethal weapon. To YN, he has become a jailer. Driven to madness by the fear of losing her, Azriel will tear Prythian apart, track her across courts, and bind her in enchanted silver to keep her safe. But a captive heart slowly turns to stone. As blood is spilt and secrets break, YN must decide if the male who locked her away is a monster or a soul so shattered by loss that only her forgiveness can free them both.
A/N This story explores an extreme, unhealthy manifestation of Azriel’s trauma and hyper-vigilance following the events Under the Mountain. Every post recently I say this, I am rusty lol you voted for this, here it is! - its long sorry lol
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“YN, what are you doing here?” Mor beamed out through the door of the townhouse to meet your rosy, frost-nipped cheeks.
“Just visiting-” you played it off as cool as you could, tucking your hands behind your back “-Where’s Az?” You asked as innocently as possible. Mor raised an eyebrow, only to step back to allow you into the Velarias' home. Truth be told, you didn’t often visit the Townhouse often since Rhysand was stolen from you; it dredged up too many memories.
“YN, hey!” Cassian called from over his shoulder on the sofa, but you hardly heard him, arms outstretched towards Azriel as he joined the room from the kitchen.
“Oh, hi, YN” Azriel put out his arms to receive what he thought was a hug, only to pull them back as he watched your hands rapidly shrink in distance from one another and angle higher towards his throat.
“I’ll kill you!” You suddenly shrieked, bolting for his throat as Cassian leapt over the back of the couch, knocking it as he went. He reached you faster than Mor could, hauling you over his shoulder as you smacked his spine in annoyance.
“PUT ME DOWN!”
“YN, chill out. What's going on!?”
“Ask Smokey!” You flexed to see Azriel's shell-shocked face over the rim of Cassian's wing, the three of you waiting for a response.
“I did it to prote-”
“THAT IS NOT YOUR J-”
“-YN, please let him speak”, Mor spoke with the decorum you could never mirror.
“I made the judgment to protect YN, as I remind you all that that is my job-”
“THAT IS NOT YOUR JOB!” You couldn't contain that shout, locking your arms and legs straight in an attempt to slip from the Illyrian. Mor only raised a single hand, silencing you like a small child.
“So far, I'm on his side, YN; we can’t be too careful”
“Just remember where my knee is right now Cass” You applied gentle pressure before threateningly recoiling your leg back, ready to send your knee into Cassian's crotch; he immediately apologised.
“As I was saying, I was protecting YNN from the recently graduated warriors and any of their advanc-”
“YOU TOLD THEM I QUOTE “WAS RIDDLED WITH DISEASE” AND CASSIAN WOULD INCINERATE THEM FOR EVEN LOOKING AT ME”
“Oh Gods Az” Mor pinched the bridge of her nose, begging her body not to give in to the grin that ghosted on her lips.
“Maybe I shouldn't be holding you if you're riddled” You didn't give Cassian a warning, sending your knee with force into his groin. He groaned, releasing his grip on you, allowing you to slide down his torso to face Azriel. Through choked breath, Cassian caught hold of your shoulders from behind.
“I was right to protect you, Mor, you have to agree with me, they're too much fo-”
“You're too much for me, Azriel! You! All the time! Would you just leave me alone and stop meddling in my life!” You jerked your shoulders free from Cassian, releasing an exasperated breath before storming out of the house back into the frost.
“YNN, you'll freeze” Azriel was quick to catch up, draping a long, thick woollen cloak over your shoulders, his scent still clinging to the fibres. A rough sigh left your throat, but you still clutched the cloak to your chest.
“You didn't really mean to leave you alone? Right?” He said softly towards his shoes, flakes of snow blotting out the black leather. You turned from your path to face him, enraged eyes softening at the seemingly shrinking Illyrian. In the dim lights of the sinking sun, Azriel was almost difficult to make out, his shadows cautiously traipsing towards your ankles.
“Az, you've been like this since we were kids, but we're not anymore. I want my life, my choices, my way while I still can-”
“-YN, I can’t have anything else happen to any of you” he dipped his head in quiet shame, and your voice softened.
“Az-” You put a gentle hand on his shoulder, your fingertips turning a blue hue without the safety of the cloak. “-Let me live my life, don't become another one of my jailers.” You scanned his eyes for a sign of a breakthrough, only to see something else break behind his irises.
“My protection of you is because I care; you are mine to protect” The sternness of his voice was not something you were used to from him, a soft chuckle leaving your lips as you stepped back from him.
“I will go to the end of the earth to avoid becoming anyone's but my own” still taking paces away from him.
“And I will follow you there to ensure your safety” he kept your eyeline until you sank into shadow, winnowing from the chilling street, leaving your words with the Illyrian to singe to his skin. Jailer.
-----
“You're such a liar!” You snorted lightly, kicking Cassian in his chest with the ball of your foot, the other foot resting on his lap.
“No violence, YN, please, decorum, decorum” he smirked back, sinking further into the sofa as you rested your head on the arm at the other end.
“Spell decorum Cass”, Mor laughed, taking a swig from her wine as she settled into her armchair, weeks after you had stormed the house, the dust settling between you and Azriel as it always did.
“Whatever your High Ass”
“Thats acting High Ass, and thank you for noticing” Mor batted her eyelashes, receiving a clip of a rogue pillow from Cassian.
“When's Az going to be back?”
“I'm surprised you want to speak to him after that tongue-lashing you gave him”
“That's not the only thing she wants to do with her tongue to him Mor” The pillowey weapon was returned with a soft thud.
“Hit me all you want, you looooooove him”
“Wow, I didn't realise you were 7”
“Actually, I'm 8” You stuck your tongue out at Cassian's rebuttal.
“Didn't sound like a denial” Mor smirked. “We'll speak at your wedding YNN, we'll say, I remember when they denied it for years before getting over themselves and just fucked already” Mor choked on the smug sip she took, your head snapping back to Cassian.
“Cass! Don't be ridiculous, we don’t need to complicate our lives any further” You fought to keep playfulness in your voice, failing slightly.
“What’s complicating your life YN?” Azriel strode in, smiling to the sound of your voice in his home. “Your ass” You shot daggers at Cassian as Mor once again nearly lost her life to a sip of wine.
“What do you mean my-” The sound of a heavy thud upstairs cut Azriel off. Immediately, you were all on your feet, ready for the shift in heavy energy that absorbed the house. You were first up the stairs despite Azriel trying to overtake you, drawing a blade from seemingly thin air, an enchanted bracelet you were never without since losing Rhysand.
“Let me in first, YN!”
“Not likely; it's been ages since I’ve had some fun” You winked, reaching for the doorknob that concealed the sound. You dove into the room, blade angled to pin the figure that huddled on the floor back down to the splintering wood.
“What do you think you’re doing- wait, Rhys?” You pulled back the blade, colour entirely gone from your face as you looked down at the ghost of your cousin.
“Rhysand!” You shouted again, pulling him into you as your family crowded the High Lord.
“She-she’s my mate”, he cried into your shoulder, his body rattling against yours as he heaved into his sob. You looked worriedly to Azriel, tears in your own eyes before you buried your face into your cousin's hair and reassured him.
“She’s alive,” Rhys gasped, his chest heaving as he clung to you, his fingernails digging into the fabric of your shirt. “But she’s... she’s there. With him. She doesn’t know. YN, she doesn’t know” Rhysand’s body shook against yours. “Shh, it's okay. We'll figure it out,” you murmured, rocking him slightly. You looked up, meeting Azriel’s intense, hazel eyes. The spymaster didn't say a word, but the raw emotion in his gaze spoke volumes. He stepped forward, his shadows gently wrapping around the perimeter of the room like a protective shield, keeping the harsh reality of the outside world at bay.
-
Rhysand’s breathing finally steadied as he sat in the armchair in his once-abandoned room. Mor rested a hand on his shoulder while Cassian sat across from his brother, plotting deaths. You placed a tray of his favourite food alongside him, Mor’s voice interrupting your close examination of the High Lord. "Go get some air, YN. Cass and I have him. You're shaking."You hadn't realised you were trembling until she pointed it out, the china cup rattling against its saucer. Nodding silently, your knees feeling like water, you took another look at Rhysand before slipping out of the room.
The long hallway of the townhouse was cool, but you welcomed the chill against your flushed skin. You leaned against the wooden bannister, closing your eyes and letting out a breath you felt like you’d been holding for 50 years.
"YN." You opened your eyes to find Azriel standing on the staircase, another blanket for Rhysand in his arms. Without another word, he stepped closer and draped the blanket across your shoulders. It was warm, smelling of cedar, rain, and his distinct, comforting scent. "Thank you," you whispered, pulling the cotton tighter around yourself. A silence returned to the landing.
"You shouldn't have been the first one through the door," Azriel said softly, his voice a low rumble in the quiet corridor. "If it had been an intruder—" "But it wasn't," you interrupted gently, taking a step to face him, a hand on the bannister to steady your still-shaking legs. "It was Rhys. And I'm fine, Az." He closed the distance between you, his hand reaching out to brush a stray tear from your cheek.
"I heard what you said earlier-" Azriel murmured, his eyes searching yours, deciding to leave the conversation about intruders alone, for now. "-About not wanting me to be your jailer. The last thing I ever want to do is make you feel trapped, YN. But seeing Rhys like this... knowing what they did to him... it makes the thought of losing you unbearable." Your heart hammered against your ribs. The playful banter from downstairs was entirely gone, replaced by the raw, dangerous truth that always simmered between the two of you.
"I don't want to be kept in a gilded cage, Azriel," you said, your voice barely a whisper as you looked up at him. "But I don't want to run from you, either." Azriel’s shadows crept up, gently curling around your wrists, warm and reassuring. He leaned down, his forehead resting lightly against yours. "Then don't run," he breathed, his hand moving to cup the back of your neck. "Let me stand beside you. Not in front of you. Beside you."
You let out a soft, shaky laugh, sliding your hands up his chest. "I suppose I can agree to those terms. Just promise you won't tell any more recruits that I have a plague. "A rare, genuine smile tugged at the corner of Azriel's lips, his eyes softening as he held you close. "Only if they stay away."
-------------------------------
4 months later
The recovery of the Night Court had been a slow, gruelling climb out of the dark. With Rhysand back on his throne and Feyre now safe within the borders of Velaris, the city should have felt like a sanctuary. Instead, for you, it was beginning to feel like a beautifully decorated cell you told Azriel you didn’t want.
You stared down at the ink of your denied scouting requisition. It was the third time this month your request to assist the front line with recon.
"You're going to burn a hole through that parchment," Mor said, leaning against the doorframe of your office. Her eyes were sympathetic, but there was a weary, tight-lipped look to her mouth that told you she had already tried, and failed, to fight your corner. "He bypassed Rhys," you said, your voice dangerously quiet. "He went straight to the commanders. Again."
"Azriel is... hyper-focused right now, YN. With the threat of Hybern growing, he's barely sleeping." Her eyes softened. "He's not sleeping because he's spending twenty-four hours a day playing warden to my life!" You tossed the scroll aside, standing up so fast your chair scraped harshly against the floorboards. "Look at the corner of the room, Mor!" Mor winced slightly, knowing already what she’d see there before turning. Her eyes found the shadows pooling unnaturally thick in the rafters above your wardrobe. Before she could offer comfort, you were gone.
You landed somewhat harshly into the training ring within the boundaries of the House of Wind; Azriel sat to one side, wiping down the discarded training swords. Cassian had already fled the scene, years of training saving him from the crossfire that was about to be fired.
"Get rid of them," you demanded, walking straight into his personal space. Azriel didn't flinch. He didn't even look up from his blade at first, his long, scarred fingers moving with methodical precision "You'll have to be more specific." You replied to Azriel with a bored look, not here to play games. “You know what I’m talking about, Azriel! I’ve had enough, I’m going on the mission!”
Azriel dropped the armour into its case, tossing the rag to the dish, his eyes then looking to you. You fought to not stagger back, the sheer exhaustion guarded by an immovable wall of sheer stubbornness. "Hybern scouts are infiltrating the southern passage," he said, his voice flat, devoid of the warmth he usually reserved for you. "The wards are holding, but they are being tested. I cannot guarantee your safety if you leave the city limits."
"I am a trained fighter! I survived all my training just like you! I survived the multiple borages that came for the Court of Nightmares!"
"You survived by luck and by hiding, YN!" Azriel snapped, standing up, you recoiled as if he had slapped you. He towered over you, his wings flaring slightly, casting a massive shadow across the stone ring. "This isn't a game. If they catch you, they won't just kill you. They will use you to get to Rhys. They will use you to break me."
"And so your solution is to break me first?" Your voice cracked, the anger suddenly morphing into a profound, suffocating hurt. "You promised. You stood in that hallway and promised you would stand beside me, not in front of me."
"I lied," he whispered, stony resolve unwavering. "I will lie to you, I will anger you, and I will let you hate me," Azriel murmured, his voice trembling with a terrifying conviction, the weight of his words slamming into you like the shadows suddenly swirling on your wrists. "But I will keep you alive. Even if I have to lock you in the heart of this mountain myself."
"If you do this, Azriel," you whispered, looking from the shadows to the eyes of the male you loved, "you might keep my heart beating. But you won't have me. You'll just have a ghost." He didn't release his shadows. He only closed his eyes, leaning his forehead against yours, breathing you in as if you were already slipping through his fingers. "Then I will live with a ghost”.
A shuddering breath rattled in your chest, the coldness of his forehead against yours contrasting sharply with the suffocating heat of his shadows. For a long, agonising moment, neither of you moved. The wind howled off the peaks of the mountain, whipping your hair across your face, but within the boundary of Azriel’s wings and his darkness, the air was entirely, terrifyingly still. Slowly, you pulled back.
The shadows didn't want to let you go. They clung to your skin like static, dragging against your wrists and ankles as if begging you to stay within his reach. But you pulled anyway, step by backward step, until the physical contact was broken. Azriel opened his eyes. Raw, desperate hunger in them as he watched you put space between you both. He didn't pursue you, but his shadows lingered at the hem of your clothes, hovering like guard dogs.
" I hope the ghosts can keep you warm at night, Az," you said, your voice barely louder than the wind. "Because I won't." You turned on your heel and winnowed.
You crashed into your room, frantically pulling clothing from the wardrobe, shoving it into your old duffle. You hardly heard Feyre’s footsteps come into the room until she was behind you.
“Gods! Feyre, you scared me!” You let out a breathy laugh, hand across your heart until you returned to packing. Feyre bent down, picking up one of your dropped scarves and handing it to you with a sad smile. “You’re running away from here” It wasn't a question. "I have to," you said, your hands trembling as you buckled a sheath to your thigh. "If I stay here, I'm going to end up hating him. Truly hating him. And I don't want to do that."
Feyre sighed, walking over to take a gentle hold of your hands. "He's terrified, YN. We all are. With Hybern's forces moving, Azriel's mind is going to the darkest places. He sees threats in every corner."
"He's making me the threat," you countered, looking up at her. "He's treating me like an asset to be guarded, not a person. Feyre, you of all people know what it's like to be locked in a house for your 'own safety.' You know how it erodes you." Feyre’s expression tightened, a flicker of old, painful memories crossing her face. She looked at the shadows lingering in the corners of your room, her jaw setting. "I do."
"Then don't tell him," you pleaded. "Don't let Rhys track me. Just give me a week. A few days. Just enough time to breathe without his shadows down my throat." Feyre looked at your packed bag, then back to your desperate, exhausted face. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small, heavy silver ring, slipping it into your palm.
"It's a stealth spell, woven into the metal," Feyre whispered. "It won't hide you from Rhys forever, but it will mask your scent and your magic from Azriel's shadows for a few days. Go rest in Adriata; a change of scenery will be good for you." She offered you a sad smile as you cupped her cheeks before kissing her on the forehead "Thank you."
The ring worked a treat. As soon as it was on, the shadowy guards in the corner of the room seemingly hissed, slipping to the floor and gliding through you, unable to register your scent or heartbeat. They began swirling in a frenzy before racing back to their master. You gave Feyre’s hands one last squeeze before sinking into shadow.
You landed on one of the many beaches of Adriata; salt air filled your lungs, the feeling of freedom.
------
For six months, you had lived as a ghost. Tarquin’s Summer house was a beautiful, sun-bleached stone villa overlooking a private cove. With Feyre’s cloaking ring permanently hugging your finger, you had carved out a quiet, independent existence. You trained on the beach at sunrise, bought fresh figs and fish from the local markets, and finally, finally breathed without the constant, heavy weight of cobalt-blue eyes watching your every move from the darkness. But freedom, you quickly learned, had a habit of making you soft.
You sat on the stone terrace, the balmy evening breeze catching the hem of your loose linen shirt. The sun was dipping below the horizon, painting the sea in shades of bruised purple and gold. You took a sip of local plum wine, letting your guard drop just a fraction. Then, the shadows came.
It didn't start with a sound. It started with the temperature. The warm, tropical breeze instantly froze, the jasmine flowers curling and dying in their pots as a sudden, unnatural frost coated the stone balustrade. Your heart stopped.
Azriel stepped out from the darkness.
You gasped, the sheer force of his presence hitting you like a physical blow as shadows swarmed. He looked terrible. The shadows under his eyes were so dark they looked like bruises. He had lost weight; his leather armour clung to a frame that was dangerously lean, and his jaw was covered in a rough, untrimmed dark beard. He looked like a male who hadn't slept, eaten, or smiled in half a year. In his scarred hand, he held a small, shattered piece of silver. Your stomach dropped as you looked down at your hand. The cloaking ring was gone from your finger.
"How..." you whispered, your voice trembling as you fought against the shadowy bonds.
"Feyre is a powerful High Lady," Azriel said, his voice deadly quiet as he took a slow, deliberate step toward you. "But she is not a spymaster. She forgot that the ring has a magical frequency. It took me three months to isolate it. Another three to bypass the wards of the Summer Court." He tossed the crushed silver onto the stone table. It clattered uselessly against your wine glass.
"Six months, YN," he breathed, stopping only inches from you. "Six months of thinking you were dead. Of wondering if Hybern had taken you, tortured you, scattered your ashes into the sea."
"I told you I was leaving!" you yelled, trying to twist your wrists free, but his shadows only tightened, holding you in an unbreakable, velvet vice. "I left a note! I told Feyre!"
"I don't care about notes!" Azriel roared, the sudden outburst cracking his usually stoic facade. His wings flared, casting a massive, terrifying silhouette against the dying light of the cove. "You stripped away my ability to protect you! You left me blind!"
"I left you because you were suffocating me!" you screamed back, tears of frustration hot against your cheeks. "Look at this! Look at what you are doing right now! You track me down like an animal, you bind me with your magic, and you expect me to thank you?"
Azriel’s chest heaved. He stared down at you, his hazel eyes wild, swimming with a dangerous mix of relief and utter fury. Slowly, he reached out, his scarred, gloved hand cupping your jaw. His thumb brushed over your cheekbone, his touch incredibly gentle, even as his shadows held you like iron chains. "I am not asking for your thanks," he whispered, leaning down until his lips were brushing the shell of your ear. "And I am done asking for your permission." A cold dread pooled in your stomach. "Azriel... what are you doing?"
"I let you have your run," he murmured, his grip on your jaw tightening just enough to force you to look into his dark, unyielding eyes. "I let you breathe. But the war is at our doorstep, YN. I am taking you back to the Night Court. And this time, you will stay where I can see you."
"If you drag me back there in chains, I will never look at you the same way again, I’ll hate you" you choked out, the tears finally spilling over. Azriel paused, a flicker of profound, agonising pain crossing his handsome face.
But as he looked at the open sea, at the vulnerability of the Summer house, the terror of losing you won. "Then hate me," Azriel whispered, his forehead dropping against yours one last time. "Hate me all you want, sweetheart. But you will do it where you are safe." With a flick of his wrist, the shadows rose up, engulfing you both in a suffocating, freezing darkness, winnowing you back to the mountain you had fought so hard to escape.
On contact with the familiar stone flooring of your room, you spun around, your hand immediately flying to your hip. But your weapons were gone. Azriel stood by the heavy oak door, your daggers already lined up neatly on his desk, completely out of your reach.
"Don't look at me like that," he said, his voice flat, though his shoulders remained tense, his wings locked tight against his back "Like what?" you spat, walking toward him, your bare feet slapping against the cold stone. "Like you're a monster? Like you're exactly what I said you were?"
"I am what I have to be to keep you alive." He didn't look at you. Instead, he began checking the heavy iron latches on the massive arched windows that overlooked the chasm. He was locking them. One by one."Azriel, stop!" You grabbed his arm, yanked him around, and stared up at him. "You locked the windows? Are you seriously locking me in here? This is a fortress! Where am I going to go, jump?!"
"You managed to slip past the wards of Velaris once," he said, his hazel eyes completely devoid of the warmth they used to hold. "You won't do it again. The wards on this room are tied directly to my siphons. If you try to winnow, if you try to use even a drop of magic, I will know instantly."
"You're insane," you whispered, stepping back from him. The sheer gravity of what he was doing finally settled over you. This wasn't just a heated argument in a hallway anymore. This was a captivity born of a devotion so warped it had curdled into something terrifying. "What are you going to tell the others? What is Rhys going to say when he finds out you've locked me in your rooms?"
"Rhysand knows exactly where you are," Azriel said, his voice dropping to a low, grim baritone. "He didn't agree with my methods, but he agreed that you are a target. Hybern's hounds are hunting, YN. They found a village three miles from the Summer Court border yesterday. They slaughtered everyone looking for you." The blood drained from your face. "What?"
"They knew you left Velaris. They were tracking your scent. If I had been even twelve hours later..." Azriel stepped close, his breath hot against your cold cheek. He reached out, his scarred fingers wrapping gently but immovably around your wrist, pulling you against his chest. "You think I want this? You think I enjoy seeing you look at me with disgust? I would rather you spend the next five hundred years screaming at me in this room than spend a single day mourning your corpse."
He pulled you flush against him, his arms locking around your waist. He buried his face in the crook of your neck, inhaling deeply, desperately, as if he were trying to imprint the very essence of you into his lungs. He was trembling. The great, unyielding Spymaster of the Night Court was shaking against you. "Please," he whispered, the stoic warden cracking to reveal the broken male underneath. "Just let me keep you safe. Just stay."
For a second, the sheer tragedy of his terror tempted you to soften. You loved him. You had loved him for centuries. But as you looked past his shoulder at the bolted windows and the shadows guarding the door, the invisible bars of the cage pressed hard against your chest.
You didn't wrap your arms around him. You kept your hands flat against his chest, holding him at a distance even as he held you tight. "I am here, Azriel," you said, your voice dead, completely hollow of the fire he had fallen in love with. "My body is here. But I hope your shadows are enough to keep you company. Because you've officially locked out the only part of me that ever wanted to stay."
He flinched, a sharp, ragged gasp leaving his throat, but his grip on you didn't loosen. If anything, he only held you tighter, choosing the cold comfort of your physical presence over the agonising freedom of your love.
----------
6 months Later
The Palace of Light in the Dawn Court was a cruel joke of a setting. Beneath ceilings made of spun gold and towering archways of white marble, the High Lords of Prythian had gathered for an information summit. You stood near a balcony, a glass of effervescent pear wine untouched in your hand. Your gown was a masterpiece of Night Court craftsmanship, but the most beautiful piece of your attire was the delicate, collar-like necklace of dark silver resting against your collarbones. To the untrained eye, it was a stunning heirloom. To you, it was a leash. An elegant, enchanted anchor that tied your physical location directly to the Spymaster.
Across the glittering ballroom, Azriel stood in the periphery of the Night Court delegation. He looked impeccable in his black velvet doublet, the blue siphons on his hands gleaming under the warm solar light of the Dawn Court. On his shoulders, his shadows were coiled tight, resembling a dark, living cloak. He hadn't taken his eyes off you once.
"You look beautiful, YN. Though you look about as thrilled to be here as a prisoner on trial," a voice murmured beside you. You turned to see Tarquin. The High Lord of Summer wore robes of sea-foam green, his silver hair catching the golden light. There was no resentment in his eyes, only a quiet, profound pity.
"I'm managing," you said, offering a tight, practised smile. "It’s good to see you, Tarquin."
"Is it?" Tarquin’s eyes drifted to the silver collar around your neck, then flicked across the room to where Azriel’s jaw had clenched so hard a muscle feathered in his cheek. "He looks ready to flay me just for standing in your drafts. Tell me... is the cage comfortable?" Before you could reply, a sudden, sharp pressure registered in your chest. The silver collar hummed, warming against your skin. A warning.
“Step away from him”, the shadows seemed to whisper in the back of your mind. "I should go," you whispered to Tarquin, your heart sinking as you saw Azriel push off from his pillar, his stride purposeful and predatory.
"Lord Tarquin," Azriel’s voice cut through the air like a honed blade as he closed the distance. He didn't bow. He simply stood beside you, his massive wings partially flaring. "I believe the High Lord of Winter was looking for you."
"Azriel, stop," you muttered under your breath, the humiliation burning hot in your chest. Tarquin didn't flinch. He matched Azriel's cold gaze with the stubbornness of the ocean. "I was merely greeting an old friend, Spymaster. I didn't realise the Night Court had begun chaining its family members." The air in the immediate radius dropped ten degrees. Azriel's shadows flared, rising from his shoulders like striking cobras. "Our family business is our own. Move along, Tarquin."
"Az, please," you pleaded, grabbing his forearm. The moment your fingers touched his sleeve, a sudden, violent crash echoed from the centre of the ballroom. A magical dispute between two minor lords from the Autumn and Spring delegations had turned physical. Red-hot fire met a torrent of thorny, razor-sharp vines, shattering a massive, enchanted glass sculpture hanging from the ceiling. Panic erupted. Heavy shards of enchanted glass and residual, explosive magic rained down upon the crowd.
In the chaos, your instinct was to draw the dagger you no longer carried. You braced for the impact of the falling debris. But you felt nothing.
Azriel had moved faster than you thought. In a fraction of a second, he spun you into his chest, his massive, powerful wings snapping shut around you like an iron dome. He shielded you entirely with his body, pinning you against the marble balustrade as the lethal rain of glass and magic pelted his back. A heavy groan escaped his throat as a jagged shard of glass sliced through his velvet doublet, followed by the sizzle of rogue Autumn fire singing his wing-membranes. Yet, he didn't move an inch. He only held you tighter, his hands framing your face, shielding your eyes from the blinding flashes of light.
When the chaos finally settled, and the guards rushed to subdue the brawling lords, Azriel slowly unfurled his wings. You looked up, expecting to see the cold, unyielding warden who had kept you locked away for a year. Instead, you saw him.
His hazel eyes were wide, dilated with a raw, agonising panic that had nothing to do with anger and everything to do with a boy who was terrified of losing the only light in his world. His breathing was ragged, his lips parted as he frantically scanned your face.
"Are you hurt?" he breathed, his scarred hands trembling as they cupped your cheeks. He didn't check the collar; he didn't look at Tarquin; he didn't care about the diplomatic nightmare unfolding around them. "YN... tell me you're not hurt. Please." His thumbs brushed over your cheekbones, and for the first time in a year, his touch wasn't a demand of ownership. It was the soft, desperate touch of the male who used to sneak wildberries into your room when you were sad, the male who used to hide his scarred hands because he thought he wasn't worthy of holding yours.
He was bleeding from a cut on his shoulder, his blood staining the navy silk of your gown, but he didn't seem to feel it. "I'm okay, Az," you whispered, your hand instinctively rising to cover his scarred knuckles. "I'm not hurt."
A shaky, broken breath escaped him. Relief washed over his face so intensely that his knees seemed to weaken for a split second. He leaned down, pressing his forehead against yours right there in the middle of the crowded, ruined ballroom. "Thank the Mother," he whispered into the space between you, his voice cracking. "Thank the Mother."
In that quiet, vulnerable second, the invisible iron bars of your cage seemed to melt. You saw the tragic truth of him: he wasn't your jailer because he wanted to rule you. He was your jailer because he was too broken to survive your loss, carrying a trauma so deep he would gladly let you hate him if it meant you drew breath. The glimpse of your sweet, fiercely loyal spymaster was brief. Within moments, Rhysand and Cassian were by his side, and the cold, stoic mask slipped back over Azriel’s handsome features as he stood tall, his shadows rising once more to wall you off from the world.
But as you allowed him to lead you out of the ruined hall, your hand remained in his. And for the first time in a very long time, you didn't pull away.
---
You lay looking up at the plush canopy draping your bed. The night's events flashed across your eyeline before you let out a hefty sigh. You pushed your bones from the bed, traipsing down one of the many staircases of the House of Wind.
The silhouette of a weary soldier sat in front of the fire. You watched his shoulders stiffen; he already knew you left your room before you got to the back of the armchair he rested on. For twelve months, the quiet between you had been frozen solid a wall of resentment on your side and absolute, immovable vigilance on his. But as the wind whipped past the windows of the great house, the air felt different. Thinner. Almost fragile.
You sat on the plush velvet bench alongside him, staring out the window. He had refused to let the healers in the Dawn Court touch his shoulder, and a dark, damp patch of blood had dried over the torn velvet of his doublet. "Let me look at it," you said quietly. Azriel blinked, as if surprised you were speaking to him at all. His shadows, which usually swarmed defensively around him whenever you moved, flinched back, retreating into his cloak. "It's fine," he murmured, his voice rough. "It’s already healing."
"Azriel." You held his gaze, your voice dropping to that firm, no-nonsense tone you hadn't used since before you ran to Adriata. "Let me look at it." Slowly, hesitatingly, he leaned forward. You gave it a quick look before winnowing to your room and back again in a fraction of a second with some thick salve and a damp cloth. You moved closer, sitting on the edge of your seat. When your fingers gently brushed the collar of his shirt to pull the fabric away from the wound, Azriel let out a ragged breath. He closed his eyes, his entire body shuddering at the simple, voluntary warmth of your touch. The cut was deep, jagged from the glass, and slightly singed by the Autumn fire. You cleaned it with practised, gentle movements.
"You didn't hesitate," you said softly, dabbing the cooling salve onto the torn flesh. "You didn't think about the High Lords, or the treaty, or your own wings. You just threw yourself over me."
"I will always throw myself between you and the world, YN," he whispered, his eyes still closed. "That will never change."
"I know," you replied, your heart aching with a complex, heavy sorrow. "But there is a difference between shielding me from a falling ceiling... and shielding me from living."
Azriel opened his eyes. In the dim, amber light of the fire, they looked incredibly tired. The manic, desperate edge that had driven him to lock you away for a year seemed to have burned itself out in the chaos of the Dawn Court. Seeing you almost crushed had shattered something in him. "I saw the way you looked at Tarquin," Azriel said, his voice barely a breath. "And I saw the way you looked at me when I pulled you away. You looked at him like he was a person. You looked at me like I was a plague."
You paused, your fingers hovering over his collarbone. "You told the recruits I was riddled with disease, remember? I guess it came true. I became sick of my own life." A grim, self-deprecating shadow of a smile touched his lips, but it quickly faded into a look of profound guilt. He looked down at his scarred hands, the blue siphons resting quietly on his knuckles.
"I have spent my entire life watching the people I love get taken, tortured, or broken," he said softly. "When Rhys was gone... when you ran... I felt the world collapsing. I thought, if I can just keep her in this room, if I can just watch her every second, the universe cannot steal her from me. I thought I was being strong." He looked up, his gaze raw and pleading. "But I was just terrified." You stared at him, seeing the boy who had been locked in a dark cell by his own father, now realising he had built the exact same cell for the person he loved most.
Slowly, you reached up and touched the heavy silver collar around your neck. "Then let me go, Az," you whispered. "Not away from you. But let me go from this." Azriel looked at your throat, at the silver leash he had forged. His hand trembled as he raised it, his scarred fingers brushing the cold metal. With a quiet, agonising swallow, he tapped his cobalt siphon against the centre clasp. The magic hummed, a soft blue light dissolving the wards, and the collar clicked open.
He caught it as it fell, holding the heavy metal in his palm like a handful of ash. He didn't look victorious. He looked entirely stripped bare, waiting for you to winnow away the second the restriction was gone. You looked at your bare hands. You felt the phantom weight lift from your chest. You could winnow right now. You could go back to Adriata, or to the Spring Court, or to the ends of the earth. Instead, you took the silver collar from his hand, set it on the table beside you, and sat back down right next to him.
You slid your hand into his, weaving your fingers through his scarred, calloused ones. His grip tightened instantly, desperate but no longer suffocating.
"I'm not running," you said quietly, leaning your head against his uninjured shoulder. "But tomorrow, I'm going to the training rings. And you're going to let me." Azriel let out a long, shaky breath, burying his face in your hair, his shadows gently wrapping around both of you like a soft, protective blanket—no longer a cage, but a shelter.
"Tomorrow," he murmured, his voice thick with emotion. "I'll even let you win."
-
Forgiveness, you quickly realised, wasn't a sudden floodgates-opening moment. It was a tedious, daily choice. It was a path built of small, deliberate bricks, and some days, the mortar felt incredibly dry. The week after the attack, you went to the markets in Velaris alone. When you returned to the townhouse, Azriel was sitting on the sofa, his knuckles white as he gripped a book he clearly hadn't read a page of. But he hadn't followed you. His shadows had stayed in his cloak. You walked over, sat beside him, and handed him a sweet plum. He ate it like it was a lifeline.
Two weeks after, you had dinner with the Inner Circle. When Cassian made a loud, teasing joke about your stubbornness, you actually laughed. Azriel watched you laugh from across the table, his own expression softening into a look of quiet, humble worship.
But amonth after the attack, another one crashed into the Townhouse, where you once again happily slept. It happened in the dead of night. A violent, concussive blast rattled the stone foundations of the Townhouse, throwing you from your bed. The air instantly turned foul, thick with the oily, metallic stench of Hybern’s dark magic. They hadn't just bypassed the perimeter; a strike team of elite commanders had managed to cleave a temporary tear straight into the upper corridors.
Before you could even draw the breath to scream, your bedroom door was blasted off its hinges. Three massive Hybern soldiers, clad in serrated iron armour, flooded the room. You scrambled backwards, reaching desperately for the dagger beneath your pillow, but the lead soldier was already upon you, his heavy, spiked gauntlet swinging directly for your temple.
You braced for the impact, closing your eyes.
The blow never landed.
A deafening, monstrous roar shook the rafters as a cyclone of living, roaring darkness exploded into the room. Azriel materialised out of thin air, his face completely twisted into a mask of pure, unadulterated slaughter. He didn't use Truth-Teller. He didn't use his siphons. He used his bare hands.
With a terrifying, brutal grace, he caught the soldier's gauntlet mid-swing, the bones in the enemy's wrist shattering under his grip with a sickening crunch. In the next heartbeat, Azriel drove his elbow into the soldier's throat, crushing his windpipe, before spinning to catch the second assailant. You watched, paralysed, as the Spymaster fought. His shadows actively ripped flesh from the bones, his wings slicing through air like razors while still somehow shielding you from the thick spray of enemy blood.
The third soldier, realising they were outmatched, desperately lunged past Azriel, throwing a jagged throwing star directly at your chest.
"YN!" Azriel screamed.He didn't try to deflect it with magic. He didn't have time. Instead, he threw his entire body over yours, slamming you down onto the mattress as the poisoned star buried itself deep into the meat of his shoulder blade. A choked, agonising groan escaped his lips, but he didn't falter. He spun around, his cobalt siphons flaring with a blinding, apocalyptic light, and blasted the remaining soldier to dust.
Silence descended on the ruined room, broken only by the sound of Azriel’s ragged, frantic breathing. The danger was over. The sound of the rest of the Inner Circle was already shouting in the hallway, rushing to secure the rest of the tear. But Azriel didn't move. He remained hovering over you, his hands trembling violently as they came up to frame your face. He didn't check his own wound. His hazel eyes were wild, dilated with a raw, agonising panic so profound it made your chest ache.
"Are you cut? Did they touch you?" he breathed, his voice cracking, entirely stripped of his usual stoic composure. His hands frantically swept down your arms, checking your shoulders, your neck, his fingers slick with the blood of the males he had just slaughtered. "Tell me you're unhurt. Please. YN, please speak to me." You stared up at him, the cold wall of resentment you had built over the last few months suddenly cracking down the centre.
You looked at the terror in his eyes. You looked at the way his body was shaking from the sheer, paralysing fear that he had almost been too late and not the deepening wound. You looked at the bleeding wound on his back
And in that quiet, terrible moment, a profound, heavy realisation washed over you. He wasn't your jailer because he wanted to rule you. He wasn't doing this out of a desire for control, or power, or arrogance. He was doing this because he was fundamentally, deeply broken by a lifetime of loss. He was a boy who had been locked in the dark, watching everything he loved get destroyed, and he genuinely did not possess the emotional capacity to survive your death. He would gladly let you hate him; he would gladly let you look at him like a monster, and he would carry the weight of your eternal scorn if it meant your heart kept beating. It was a sick, warped kind of devotion, but it wasn't malicious. It was tragic.
"I'm okay, Az," you whispered, your voice trembling as you reached up, your fingers tentatively brushing against his sweat-soaked brow. "I'm not hurt. Look at me. I'm fine." A ragged, broken sob escaped his throat, a sound you had never heard the Spymaster make. The manic energy suddenly left his body, his knees buckling as he collapsed forward, burying his face into the crook of your neck. He clutched you to his chest, his grip incredibly tight, but for the first time in months, it didn't feel like a cage. It felt like a male begging you to save him from his own darkness.
You didn't fully forgive him in that moment. The anger of the stolen months still lingered in your blood. But as you felt his blood stain your skin, you finally stopped fighting him. You wrapped your arms around his trembling shoulders, holding him back against the cold mountain air. "I've got you," you murmured into his dark hair, staring out at the shattered room. "I'm right here”.
An hour or so later, calm had returned to the Town House, everyone back in their beds, Azriel still in yours. "I'm angry, Az," you admitted, your voice cracking. "I'm still so angry about the lost year. About the collar. About the way you made me feel so small."
"You have every right to be," he murmured, his hand gently stroking your hair, his touch so light it was almost a whisper. "I will carry your anger for as long as you need to throw it at me."
"I don't want to throw it at you forever," you sighed, closing your eyes. "I just want it to stop hurting."
"Then let me help you carry it," he whispered, pressing a soft kiss to the crown of your head. "Until it’s light enough to drop."
------
One Year later
The Windhaven training camp was a symphony of clashing steel, harsh Illyrian grunts, and the crisp, clean scent of fresh pine. Up here, high in the Lord’s peaks, the war felt like a distant, bad dream, replaced instead by the gruelling routine of rebuilding the armies. You stood in the centre of the dusty ring, spinning a light parrying dagger between your fingers. Your leather armour was well-worn, moulding perfectly to your body, and your hair was tied back in a messy braid. You were flushed, breathing heavily, and thoroughly enjoying yourself.
"You're leaving your left flank open again," a deep, low gravel purred from the edge of the ring. You didn't need to turn to know who it was. The sudden, delicious warmth that settled over your skin.
Azriel leaned against a wooden post, his arms crossed over his chest. He had discarded his heavy leathers for a simple, form-fitting black training shirt that did absolutely nothing to hide the broad stretch of his shoulders or the lethal contour of his chest. His wings were relaxed, occasionally twitching to catch the mountain draft.
"I'm not open," you countered, turning slowly to face him with a teasing arch of your brow. "I'm baiting."
"Is that so?" Azriel stepped into the ring. The young Illyrian camp recruits, who usually trembled under the Spymaster's cold gaze, scrambled to make room, practically tripping over their own boots to get out of his way. "Care to test my guard, Spymaster?" you challenged, shifting your weight onto the balls of your feet. "Or are you too busy looking pretty by the fence?"
A slow, devastating smile tugged at the corner of Azriel’s mouth. It was an expression he wore much more often these days. "I'm always busy looking pretty, sweetheart," he murmured, his voice dropping to a seductive rumble that only you could hear. He reached to his thigh, slowly drawing a wooden practice blade. "But I suppose I can spare a moment to put you on your back."
"You wish," you snorted. You lunged first. The clatter of your wooden blades echoed through the camp. Two years ago, a spar like this would have been laced with tension, with Azriel pulling his punches out of fear of hurting you, or you fighting with a desperate, angry edge to prove your independence. Now, it was pure, unadulterated play.
You swept high, aiming for his shoulder. He parried effortlessly, the wood of his blade sliding against yours with a satisfying creak. He stepped into your guard, his chest pressing close to yours for a split second. "Too slow," he whispered, his breath hot against your ear before he spun out of your reach, his wings flared just enough to blind your line of sight. You ducked beneath his wing, executing a tight, fluid spin that brought you directly behind him. You tapped the flat of your wooden dagger lightly against his lower back. "Dead," you crowed.
Azriel didn't even look flustered. In a move so fast your eyes could barely track it, he spun on his heel, caught your wrist with his scarred hand, and used your own momentum to pull you flush against him.His free hand locked around your waist, hoisting you slightly off your feet. Your wooden daggers clattered to the dirt, completely forgotten.
"Am I dead?" he murmured, his hazel eyes sparkling with a wicked, brilliant light. He held you effortlessly, his chest rising and falling against yours. "Because it feels a lot like heaven from where I'm standing."
"Ugh, that was incredibly corny," you laughed, though your hands instinctively found their way to his shoulders, your fingers gently tangling in the soft fabric of his shirt. "Who taught you how to flirt? Cassian?"
"Don't insult me," Azriel chuckled, his grip on your waist tightening just a fraction, not to hold you hostage, but to pull you closer, his thumbs tracing the line of your hip. "Cassian's idea of flirting is flexing his biceps until his seams rip."
"And yours is?"
"Giving you a head start," he whispered, his gaze dropping to your lips. The young recruits around the ring had long since stopped pretending to train, openly gaping at the legendary, terrifying Spymaster looking completely whipped by the female in his arms. “Az, people are staring," you whispered, though you didn't make a single move to pull away. "Let them," he said softly.
He slowly lowered you until your boots touched the dusty ground, but his hands remained resting gently on your waist. On his shoulders, his shadows rose, but they weren't the dark, suffocating monsters of your past. They were light, wispy, and mischievous. One of them drifted over to your cheek, gently nudging your nose like a playful pup before dissolving into a puff of cool air.
You let out a soft laugh, reaching up to cup his jaw. The rough stubble of his dark beard tickled your palm, a grounding, beautiful reality."You've gotten very good at letting me go," you murmured, your eyes softening as you looked up at him. "You didn't even twitch when I winnowed to the Autumn Court border yesterday." Azriel’s expression turned quiet, a deep, profound warmth washing over his handsome features. "I still worry," he admitted honestly, his hand rising to cover yours on his cheek. "My heart still stops every time you leave the wards. I don't think that will ever fully go away, YN."
"I know," you said gently."But I trust you," he whispered, leaning down to press a soft, lingering kiss to your forehead, his lips warm against your skin. "And more importantly, I trust us. You always come back to me."
"Always," you promised, sliding your arms around his neck and pulling him down for a proper kiss, right there in the middle of the training ring, letting the whole world see that the Spymaster’s heart was entirely, beautifully yours by choice.
-------------
One Week Later
The lingering heat of the wind-whipped training rings had faded, replaced by the cool, starlit glamor of the House of Wind’s private lounge. Rhys and Feyre had hosted a small, intimate gathering to welcome a few visiting emissaries from the Winter and Autumn Courts.
You stood by the roaring hearth, swirling a glass of ruby-red wine. Across the room, Azriel was engaged in a quiet, intense conversation with Rhys and a stern-looking commander from the Winter Court. He looked devastatingly handsome in his formal black leathers, the blue siphons on his hands catching the firelight.
Even in a room full of people, his attention was anchored to you. Every few minutes, those sharp hazel eyes would track across the rug, checking your posture, ensuring you were warm, ensuring you were safe. It was sweet. It was healthy. But as you watched him effortlessly command the room with that stoic, untouchable Spymaster energy, a tiny, wicked spark of mischief ignited in your chest.
I trust us, he had said earlier. You always come back to me. You smiled into your wine. He did trust you. And you loved him for it. But a year of being locked in his rooms and another year of agonizingly slow, careful rebuilding had left you with a massive backlog of unspent, playful vengeance. It was time to see just how much of that famous, cold composure the Spymaster could actually maintain.
You scanned the room and spotted your perfect accomplice: Eris Vanserra. The Autumn Court heir was leaning against a marble pillar, looking thoroughly bored as he sipped his amber liquor. He was clever, a master of political theater. You smoothed down the front of your silk gown, taking a slow, deliberate sip of your wine, and glided over to him.
"Lord Eris," you purred, stepping directly into his line of sight. "You look like you're plotting treason, or perhaps just looking for better company." Eris’s amber eyes flicked to you, a slow, predatory smirk spreading across his face. He didn't miss the way your hips swayed, nor did he miss the immediate, violent shift in the room's temperature.
"YN," Eris chuckled, bowing his head with mock chivalry. "I am always looking for better company, especially when it comes in such a breathtaking package. Tell me, has the shadow-ferret finally let you off your leash?"
"I don't have a leash, Eris," you said, stepping just a fraction closer, letting your shoulder brush his. You tilted your head back, laughing at a joke he hadn't even made yet, making sure the sound carried over the low hum of the room. "In fact, I do whatever I want."
Across the room, the conversation at Rhys's side abruptly died. You didn't look, but you felt it. The air in the lounge instantly lost five degrees. A heavy, suffocating silence seemed to drape over the corner where the Spymaster stood.
Eris noticed, his eyes gleaming with sheer, unadulterated delight. "Oh, this is marvellous. He’s staring at me as if he wants to feed my entrails to the mountain beasts."
"Let him stare," you whispered, offering Eris a bright, dazzling smile. You reached out, your fingers lightly dusting an imaginary speck of lint from the lapel of Eris's collar. Your touch lingered just a second too long. "You know, Eris, I've always thought the Autumn Court's styling was so much more... vibrant than ours."
"Is that so?" Eris leaned in, playing along beautifully, his voice dropping to a smooth, intimate register. He reached out, his hand hovering inches from your waist, purely to bait the male watching from the dark. "Perhaps you should come visit. I could show you the forest canopies at the peak of harvest. I'm sure we could find... plenty of things to keep you entert-." Before Eris could even finish the sentence, the shadows in the room went completely, utterly wild.
The fire in the hearth violently flickered, the flames shrinking as if terrified of the darkness spilling into the room. The shadows didn't rise in a gentle mist; they swarmed across the ceiling in a silent, suffocating wave of pure, dark jealousy. A sudden draft of cold wind and cedar whipped through the lounge.
You didn't even have time to blink before a towering, dark figure materialised directly between you and Eris. Azriel didn't say a word. He didn't need to. His massive wings flared, a solid wall of black completely cutting off Eris’s view of you. "Eris," Azriel said. The voice wasn't gravelly; it was a low, guttural vibration that made the glass in your hand rattle. "Your carriage is waiting outside."
Eris raised his hands in mock surrender, though his smirk was wider than ever. "Just making polite conversation, Spymaster. No need to lose your temper."
"Leave," Azriel repeated, his hand shifting toward the hilt of Truth-Teller. Rhysand cleared his throat from across the room, a highly amused, knowing look on his face. "Eris, perhaps it is time we wrap up the evening's discussions."
Eris bowed to you, his eyes dancing. "Until next time, YN. Do try to keep him on a tighter grip." With a wink, the Autumn prince turned and glided out of the room, thoroughly satisfied with the chaos he had caused.
The moment the doors closed behind Eris, Azriel spun around.His face was a mask of tightly controlled, white-hot fury. His jaw was clenched so hard the bone looked ready to snap, and his hazel eyes were practically burning. Without a word, he grabbed your wrist, his grip gentle, but entirely unyielding and winnowed.
The dark snapped away, and you tumbled onto the thick, plush rug of his bedroom. The door slammed shut behind you, the heavy iron bolt sliding into place with a definitive thud. Azriel stood before the door, his chest heaving, his wings slightly flared as he stared at you. "What," he breathed, his voice dangerously low, "was that?"
"What was what?" you asked innocently, setting your wine glass down on his desk and smoothing your dress. "I was just networking, Az. Eris was telling me about the forests in Autumn."
"He was looking at you like he wanted to taste you," Azriel growled, stepping into your space. The shadows around him were a chaotic, swirling mess of possessive energy. He stopped inches from you, towering over you, his hands clenched into fists at his sides as if restraining himself. "You let him touch you."
"He didn't touch me," you pointed out, tilting your chin up to meet his fierce, burning gaze. "And besides... I thought you trusted me?" Azriel let out a frustrated, ragged sound, closing the final inch of distance between you. He caught your waist, his large, scarred hands gripping you tight, pulling your hips flush against his.
"I trust you," he growled, his lips brushing against yours as he spoke, his breath hot and ragged. "I don't trust him. And I do not like other males smelling you, YN. You are mine."
"Oh?" You wrapped your arms around his neck, a smug, triumphant smile spreading across your face. "Is that the Spymaster speaking, or my jailer?" Azriel paused, the realisatio of what you had done finally clicking behind his hazel eyes. He looked at your teasing, triumphant smile, then at the playful spark in your eyes.
A slow, breathless laugh escaped his throat, the terrifying tension in his shoulders finally snapping. He leaned his forehead against yours, shaking his head. "You did that on purpose," he murmured, his hands sliding up to cup your face, his thumbs brushing your cheeks. "You absolute menace."
"You locked me in a room for twelve months, Azriel," you whispered, your lips brushing his teasingly. "You're lucky I didn't flirt with Helion."
"If you ever flirt with Helion, I will simply die of a heart attack on the spot," he muttered, before his lips finally slammed into yours. The kiss was fierce, possessive, and thick with a desperate, beautiful love. His shadows wrapped around you both, no longer a cage to keep you in, but a heavy, warm curtain shutting out the rest of the world, leaving only the two of you in the dark.
When his lips finally parted from yours, he didn't pull away far. His forehead rested against yours, both of your chests heaving in tandem as the room settled into a profound, peaceful quiet. The shadows that had wrapped around you softened, flickering lazily like twilight against your skin, entirely tame, entirely yours. Azriel’s hands shifted from your face, his scarred fingers sliding down to gently entwine with your own. He brought your hands up to his chest, pressing your palms right against his shirt, directly over his heart.
It was beating fast, frantic and alive beneath your fingertips. "I mean it, you know," he whispered into the warm space between your lips, a rare, breathtaking smile curving his mouth. "No more cages. No more collars. I will be sorry to the end of my days. I am sorry YN"
You looked into his hazel eyes, seeing no trace of the frantic, paranoid jailer who had once locked you away. In his place was just Azriel, your Azriel. The male who had fought his way through his own deepest, darkest horrors just to learn how to love you properly.
"And no more running," you murmured back, leaning up to press a soft, lingering kiss to the corner of his jaw. "Though... I make no promises about teasing you in front of Eris again. You're far too handsome when you're protective." Azriel let out a quiet, velvety chuckle, his wings unfurling just enough to sweep around the two of you, shielding you from the rest of the world. He leaned down, pressing his lips to your crown, inhaling the scent of you, the scent of home, of freedom, and of a future built together.
"Fair enough," he whispered into your hair, his grip on your hands warm and steady. "As long as you always come back to the dark with me." You squeezed his hands tight, closing your eyes as you sank into his warmth, finally, completely at peace. "Always."
Courage finally found your way, but you weren't entirely ready for the truth waiting at the end of the hallway.
You hadn't left the room in three days. You couldn't. The only person you trusted right now was Madja, the healer. Something about her made you feel safe, the way she tended your wounds, the way she was always there, but also never truly. You didn't want to face the outside, hell, you didn't want to face the people living in this house.
The one named Azriel knocked on your door from time to time, announcing himself, but you never answered. You only stood at the window, looking at the starry night, trying to put back together the pieces, trying to solve this puzzle your life had become.
Sometimes, you caught a glimpse of a familiar feeling here, like you knew this place, but it quickly went away the second after. It was like your mind was clouded, like someone had put a veil there, making you unable to access your own head.
Something was off. You could tell.
The nightmares were getting worse. You refused to sleep because of them. You often woke up crying in the night, back there, tortured again. Every time you jolted awake you swore you saw a shadow curling under your door.
Madja was sorting vials, prepping formulas to heal your skin. It was still scorched in certain areas. She had been really quiet this morning, as quiet as she could be. You surveyed her, eyeing her every move.
"When you were younger, you used to come to my cabinet and watch me heal the patients," she said softly, clearly aware of being observed.
You tore your eyes from her, not answering.
"You would have made a wonderful healer," she murmured, sighing softly as she turned her back on you, grabbing another salve.
Healer? Did you want to be a healer? What were you, then. Here. In this court.
Hesitantly, chewing your bottom lip, you mustered the courage to ask her, "What, what am I here?" You lifted your eyes to hers.
She smiled softly. "Maybe you should discover that part yourself." You looked at her, confused. She got up and started to gather her medicine.
"You should get out of this room." She gave you a look of encouragement. "There are no beasts roaming free in this house," she added.
You stared at the door long after she was gone. Then you moved, fast, before your mind could catch up with your feet.
The hallway didn't feel unfamiliar. That was the strangest part.
Your feet knew the turns before your mind caught up with them, left past the window with the cracked latch, right at the second landing, down a narrow staircase you hadn't consciously chosen and somehow already knew would be there. The house was quiet at this hour, empty in a way that let you move without an audience, without anyone's careful, watchful eyes tracking your every flinch.
You didn't know where you were going. You only knew your body seemed to, some current pulling you forward that had nothing to do with memory and everything to do with muscle, with instinct, with a hundred small unconscious things your mind had lost and your feet apparently hadn't.
You ended up in front of a study.
The door was cracked, warm light spilling out in a narrow gold seam across the dark floorboards, and before you could decide whether to knock, whether to retreat, whether to do anything at all, you heard voices.
"—burn the entire camp to the ground, Rhys, I don't care what's left standing when I'm done, I want every single soul who touched her to know exactly what that costs."
Azriel's voice. Low, and viciously controlled in a way that was somehow worse than shouting, like something enormous being held down by sheer force of will.
"And then what?" Rhys, quieter, steadier, though you could hear the strain threading through it too. "You raze Hybern's camp and start a war we're not ready for, and she wakes up tomorrow not remembering any of it, not remembering you, and you're in a cell somewhere or dead, and what good does that do her, Az? What good does that do either of you?"
"I can't just sit here."
"You've been doing exactly that for a week and a half and it's the only reason she's still alive." Cassian's voice this time, rougher, but not unkind. "You want to be furious, be furious. Hells, I'll help you burn it down myself when the time is right. But not like this. Not off a cliff of rage with no plan behind it."
You crept closer, some old, careful part of you keeping your steps silent without any conscious decision to make them that way, until you could see through the gap in the door.
Azriel stood in the center of the room, wings half-flared, shadows boiling thick and restless around his boots, looking like something barely holding its own shape. Rhys stood in front of him, one hand braced firm on his shoulder, not gripping, just steady, an anchor thrown to someone who looked like he might come apart without it.
"I let this happen to her." Azriel's voice cracked clean through, all the fury draining out of it at once, leaving something much rawer standing in its place. "I wasn't fast enough, and now she looks at me like a stranger, and I don't know how to fix either of those things, Rhys, I don't know how."
"You didn't let anything happen," Rhys said, low, fierce. "You went into that camp and you tore it apart with your bare hands to bring her home. That's not failure. That's not something you get to carry like a debt."
"It feels like a debt."
"I know." Rhys's grip tightened slightly on his shoulder. "I know it does. But burning Hybern's camp tonight doesn't pay it. It just gets you killed somewhere she can't reach you, and I am not explaining that to her when she's finally strong enough to ask where you've gone."
Something in your chest twisted, sharp and sudden and entirely without explanation, watching a male you didn't remember come apart over you in a room you'd never consciously seen before.
That was when you felt it.
A cool brush against your wrist, faint, deliberate, like a current of air that had no business existing in a still hallway. You looked down. A thin tendril of shadow curled loosely around your skin, there and then gone, retreating back toward the study door like it had simply been checking, making sure you were real, before slipping away.
Azriel's head turned.
His eyes found yours through the gap in the door, and for one suspended second neither of you moved at all. You watched the fury and grief both drain out of his face at once, replaced by something startled, almost stricken, the look of a male caught entirely unprepared.
Silence fell over the room for a few seconds. Then Azriel crossed to the door and opened it fully.
"You're out of your room." His voice was careful, but underneath the care was something rawer, genuine concern that hadn't had time to arrange itself into anything more composed.
You froze.
He didn't crowd you. He never did. "Are you all right?" His voice was low, soft, careful in a way that did something strange and unwelcome to your heart, something you had no name for and no memory to explain. "Do you need anything? I can get Madja, if—"
For once, you weren't retreating from him. That was new. You hadn't seen any of them, not since the last time you'd all been in a room together, and you could feel the tension still clinging to the air, thick enough to touch.
You didn't answer him. No words formed in your throat. You just stared at the wall behind him.
There, hanging, a painting. You, with the three of them, and a few other people, opening presents beneath a tree. Solstice, maybe. You recognized the names now, tossed around often enough to stick, Rhysand, Cassian, Azriel, matched to the faces in the frame. Two beautiful women stood beside them, one small and brunette, one mesmerizing and golden-haired. The faces all looked so young, so unguarded. And there you were, right in the middle of them, a present in your hands, smiling so widely it looked like it might have hurt.
Your brows furrowed. Slowly, you stepped past him into the office, drawn toward the painting the same way your feet had known the stairs without asking your mind first.
You rose onto your toes, fingers brushing the edge of the frame, and murmured, mostly to yourself, "What…," the word dying somewhere in your throat before it could become anything more than that, no sentence behind it, nothing but the shape of a question you didn't have words for.
The three of them exchanged a look, none of them moving, none of them speaking, all of them clearly afraid that a single wrong word might be enough to break whatever fragile thing was happening in front of them.
It was Cassian, in the end, who moved first, slow and careful, the way you imagined a person might approach something wild and easily spooked.
"That was a few Solstices back," he said, quiet, nodding toward the painting without quite closing the distance between you. "Feyre painted it. She does that, sometimes, when something feels worth keeping."
"Feyre." You tried the name out loud, the way you'd tried Azriel's, searching for a shape underneath it and finding nothing but the general, aching sense that it should have meant something.
"The blonde." Cassian's mouth curved, small and careful, like even a smile felt risky right now. "Mor. And the small one, that's Amren. Don't let her size fool you, she's older than most things in this room combined."
Your eyes moved back to the painting, to your own face, so unguarded it barely looked like something you could have made. You didn't recognize the joy in it. You didn't recognize any of it, not really, but something in your chest pulled toward it anyway, insistent, wordless, like your body remembered even where your mind had gone dark.
"You threw a snowball at Az's head about ten minutes after this was painted," Cassian added, a little too casually, watching for a reaction. "Hit him square in the face. Mor nearly fell off the table laughing. Thought you should know you weren't always this quiet around him."
Something in you wanted to laugh at that, an odd, unfamiliar tug at the corner of your mouth that felt almost like muscle memory. You didn't, not quite. But you noted it, filed it away next to everything else you didn't understand yet.
"I was happy." It came out barely above a whisper, more observation than confession, like you weren't sure you'd earned the right to say it out loud yet.
You felt Azriel move closer, a step, no more, careful not to close the last of the distance between you.
You didn't turn around. Some old caution kept you rooted where you stood, even as something in your chest strained toward the warmth of him behind you. You simply looked at the painting a moment longer, then took a small, deliberate step back, putting a little more air between yourself and all three of them.
Rhys, still by the door, cleared his throat softly, something gentler than his earlier urgency now threading through his voice. "For what it's worth, that dress you're wearing in the painting is still in your closet. Third door on the left, upstairs. In case that's a place you'd like to start."
You looked back at the painting once more, at the woman smiling like nothing in the world could touch her, and felt the strange, hollow ache settle deeper into your chest instead of fading.
You didn't answer Rhys.
Azriel stepped closer instead, careful, unhurried, and offered his arm, palm turned up, an invitation rather than a demand. "I can show you," he said quietly. "If you'd like to."
You stared at his open hand for a long moment. Long enough that you saw the exact instant he braced himself for you to refuse, the careful stillness that came over him whenever he expected to be told no and had already decided he'd accept it without complaint.
Hesitantly, you reached out and took his arm.
You swore, faint and almost silent, that he sighed. Relief, maybe, or something close enough to it that you felt it more than heard it, a small give in the tension that had been sitting in his shoulders since the moment you'd appeared in the study doorway.
He led you up the stairs slowly, matching his pace to yours without seeming to think about it, and stopped in front of the third door on the left, exactly where Rhys had said it would be.
The room beyond it felt familiar in a way that ached.
Not the sharp, disorienting familiarity of the hallway downstairs, your feet knowing turns your mind didn't. This was softer, quieter, a sense memory more than a real one, the particular slant of afternoon light through the window, the low, warm color of the walls, a scent that lingered faintly beneath dust and disuse, something like citrus and old parchment that felt, inexplicably, like yours.
You stepped inside on your own, Azriel a careful distance behind you, and let your eyes travel the room. A wardrobe. A desk. A shelf of books you didn't recognize the titles of and somehow already knew the order of.
That was when you saw it.
Sitting on the desk, half tucked beneath a stack of unopened correspondence, was a small wooden box, carved with a pattern of vines curling around its lid. You crossed to it without deciding to, some magnetic pull drawing you across the room, and lifted it into your hands.
Behind you, Azriel had gone very still.
You didn't notice it, too absorbed in the weight of the box in your palms, but if you'd turned around you would have seen something flicker hard and fast across his face, recognition, and beneath it something rawer, older, a memory he didn't offer and you didn't think to ask for.
His jaw tightened. His hands, loose at his sides a moment ago, curled slightly, like he was resisting the urge to cross the room and take the box from you, or perhaps to simply watch you hold it a little longer.
It was the same box from the painting. The same gift you'd been holding, mid-unwrapping, smiling so widely it looked like it might have hurt.
Your fingers traced the carved vines, and something in your chest went very still, very quiet, a held breath with no name and no memory attached to it, just the overwhelming, wordless certainty that this small object mattered, had always mattered, long before you'd lost the reason why.
You didn't say anything to Azriel. You didn't know how to shape the feeling into words yet, didn't trust yourself not to shatter something fragile and half-formed by speaking too soon.
You only looked around the room instead, slow and searching, cataloguing every object like it might hold the next piece of you.
Azriel didn't ask. He simply stood in the doorway, watching, something quiet and aching and endlessly patient in his face, and let you look. His eyes drifted, once, to the box still cradled in your hands, and something that might have been longing crossed his face before he caught it and smoothed it carefully away, offering you nothing more than his silence and his patience, whatever it cost him to give you both.
You stayed in that room until the light outside went gold, then gray, then dark enough that Azriel quietly lit the lamps without being asked, careful and unobtrusive, like he'd done it a hundred times before in this exact room and knew precisely where every match and wick lived.
You set the box down eventually, though you didn't let it go far, keeping it within reach on the corner of the desk like something you weren't ready to lose again. You sat on the edge of the bed instead, and found Azriel still there, still patient, settling slowly into the chair across the room rather than crowding the space beside you.
"Can I ask you something," you said, into the quiet.
"Anything."
"There's someone you mentioned once. Helion." You turned the name over carefully, the way you'd turned over every unfamiliar word these last few days, testing it for a shape you could hold onto. "You said his library might know what's wrong with me. Why haven't we gone?"
Something crossed his face, hesitation, or maybe guilt. "I wasn't sure you were ready. Or wanting to go there, honestly."
"I want to go."
He studied you for a long moment, something unreadable moving behind his eyes, hesitation warring with whatever else sat underneath it. Then, slowly, he nodded. "Then I'll take you."
The Day Court hit you like a change in pressure the second you crossed the border, the sun-warmed air, the golden light so different from Velaris's cool violet dusk that it felt almost like waking a second time.
And something in your chest, for the first time in days, eased.
You didn't understand it at first. You thought it was simply the flight, the relief of movement after so many days confined to that house. But by the time Helion's palace rose gleaming on the horizon, marble and gold catching the light like something out of a dream you couldn't quite place, the strange, suffocating fog that had sat behind your eyes since the moment you woke had thinned, just slightly, just enough that you noticed its absence.
You didn't fully understand the lightness settling into your chest, only that it was there, and that some small, buried part of you didn't want to question it too closely in case naming it made it stop.
The palace doors opened ahead of you, gold catching the afternoon light in a way that made the whole entryway seem to glow, and then he was there. Helion. High Lord of Day, tall and radiant and utterly unhurried, moving toward you both with the easy confidence of someone who owned every inch of the ground he walked on.
The second his eyes found yours, you gasped.
It came out of you unbidden, sharp and involuntary, like surfacing from underwater after holding your breath too long, air rushing back into lungs that hadn't realized how starved they were.
"I know you," you breathed.
Helion's mouth curved, slow and knowing, something warm and wicked in it all at once.
"Yes," he said, quieter now, something old and knowing settling beneath the charm. "I imagine you do."
He surveyed you with curious eyes. "The question is: how much of me are you allowed to remember?"
Entanglement series PT0.5 PT2 PT3 PT4 EPILOGUE ALT ENDING
Little Rainbow
Kidnapping at the knight court
Fallow series
Azriel x Reader Mordern AU
At the sake of you
Azriel x Fairy Reader
Wings Universe Series
Azriel x Mermaid Reader
Sing to me series
All graphics unless stated are from @saradika-graphics 💜
All fics on this list are recommendations of what to read next. None of these are written by me. These are just simply some of my favorite fics. All credit goes to the amazingly talented writers who have created these masterpieces.
When you go missing behind Hybern's lines, Azriel doesn't need the word to know what you are to him. The shadowsinger goes full rage mode to bring home what belongs to him.
Azriel hadn't slept in two days.
He wouldn't have called it sleep even if he'd tried. Not with your scent going cold on a jacket he refused to let anyone move from the war table. Not with the shadows themselves seeming restless, curling and snapping at his heels like they, too, couldn't settle.
Somewhere behind Hybern's lines, in a camp his spies had barely confirmed and couldn't yet locate, you were his one unbearable thought, over and over, a wound that wouldn't close because he didn't know how deep it went.
"You need to eat something," Cassian said, for the third time that hour, sliding a plate toward him that Azriel didn't look at.
"I need a location."
"We're getting one," Rhys said, calm in the way that meant he was working very hard to sound calm. "Az. Look at me."
Azriel didn't. He couldn't. If he looked up he thought something in him might come apart in front of both of them, and he didn't have that to give right now, not when every piece of him needed to stay sharp enough to be useful.
"You're no use to her half-mad," Rhys said, quieter now. "You know that better than anyone. Going in blind gets people killed. Gets her killed."
"Don't you think I know that." Azriel's hands curled into fists on the table, knuckles white. "You think I don't feel every second she's out there? It's not just worry, Rhys, it's wrong, something in me is wrong, like a piece of me is missing and I can't—"
He cut himself off, jaw clenched, but it was too late. Rhys and Cassian exchanged a look over his bowed head, quick and wordless, the kind neither of them would have bothered hiding a year ago.
Neither of them said anything else about it. The silence stretched a beat too long, taut with everything unsaid, until Azriel couldn't stand to sit inside it any longer.
"Then find her!" The words tore out of him, sharp enough that Cassian actually flinched, his fist coming down on the table hard enough to crack the wood beneath it. For a moment fury was the only thing holding him upright, black and consuming, aimed at everything and nothing, at Hybern, at the map, at his own uselessness standing here instead of out there.
Then it broke, just as fast as it had risen, and what was left underneath was worse. "I can't. I can't sit here and do nothing while she—" His voice cracked clean through, low and raw, nothing like him at all, and he didn't finish it. He didn't have to. No one in that room could remember Azriel unraveling out loud about anything, and yet here he was, hands braced on the splintered table, shaking too hard to hide it, saying more with his silence than he ever had with his voice.
Cassian's hand landed on his shoulder, heavy and steadying, and said nothing more. There was nothing left to say.
Azriel didn't answer that. Couldn't. He'd never said the word out loud, not once, not even alone in the dark where no one could hear him say it, and it was clawing its way up his throat now regardless of whether he wanted it to.
He barely registered the next hour. Fragments only: Mor's voice near the door, the map dissolving into hurried coordinates, his own shadows dragging themselves back to him at last, reeking of stone and rust and the copper tang of your blood. They whispered a place to him, finally, a name scratched into the corner of Hybern's territory, and it was enough. It had to be enough.
Rhys caught his arm before he could vanish into the dark, and for once there was nothing calm left in his face at all.
"Bring her home, Az." Rhys said it quiet and fierce, every year of their friendship packed into three words.
Azriel didn't answer. He didn't need to. He was already gone.
The camp reeked of tallow smoke and wet stone, Hybern's banners hanging limp somewhere above the earthworks. Azriel came down out of the dark like something the night itself had been dreading, and for one suspended second he simply stood in the doorway of the holding tent and looked at you, and something in his chest didn't break so much as stop.
You were slumped against a post, wrists bound above your head, one eye swollen shut, your shirt torn and dark with more blood than a person should lose and still be breathing. Your skin had gone pale under the bruising, lips cracked, head hanging like it cost too much to hold up.
But your chest still rose. Still fell. He fixed on that, on the rise and fall of it, because it was the only thing keeping him upright himself.
He hadn't even crossed the threshold when he heard boots approaching from the path behind him, unhurried, almost bored. A soldier shouldered past him into the tent without so much as a glance, chain looped over one fist, already reaching for something laid out on the table, a blade, a brand, it didn't matter what. He was already reaching for the next thing he meant to do to you.
Something in Azriel simply gave way.
He didn't remember crossing the tent. He remembered the man's skull under his bare hands, one on either side, and the sheer animal need to make it stop, make it end, wringing every ounce of restraint he'd ever built right out of him.
Shadow poured off him faster and darker than he had ever let it move, lashing around the soldier's throat and wrists and ankles, dragging him down and pinning him there. Then it was just his hands. No blade. No weapon. Nothing between him and the reason you were bleeding but his own strength and his own fury.
It was over in seconds. It felt like it took an hour and no time at all. When he came back to himself the man was dead on the ground, skull broken beneath his palms, blood slicking his fingers and dripping steady onto the dirt, and his hands were shaking again, for an entirely different reason.
You hadn't made a sound the whole time. Not one.
He was in front of you before his pulse had slowed at all, and everything about him changed the instant he reached for you, the same hands that had just broken bone going impossibly gentle, like you were something that might come apart if he moved too fast.
Blood still clung to his knuckles, drying tacky between his fingers, and some distant part of him hated that it was the last thing to touch you before he could get you clean.
He cut the bindings with Truth-Teller, angling the blade away from your skin with a precision that had nothing to do with skill and everything to do with fear of hurting you further.
When the ropes fell away he didn't pull you to him. He gathered you instead, one hand cradling the back of your head, the other sliding beneath your knees. He lifted you like you weighed nothing at all. Like you were the most fragile thing he'd ever held in his long, long life.
"I've got you," he murmured, easing you against his chest by degrees, watching your face the entire time for any flinch, any wince, adjusting his hold instantly at the smallest change in your breathing. He smoothed the hair back from your bruised temple with two fingers, barely a touch, reverent in a way no one alive had ever witnessed from him, not Rhys, not Cassian, not even Mor in four centuries of friendship. "Slowly. I'm going slowly. I won't hurt you, I promise, I've got you."
The male who moved through the world like a blade himself was holding you like porcelain, like something sacred, every motion measured down to the smallest fraction he could manage.
The second he had you settled fully against him, safe, held — you broke.
Not loudly. You didn't have the strength left for loud. Just silent tears, spilling fast and endless down a face too bruised to show much else, your whole body shaking with the effort of holding them in even now, even safe, like some part of you still didn't believe it was allowed to stop being strong.
"I'm here," he said, voice wrecked, pressing his mouth to your hair, to your temple, anywhere he could reach that wasn't hurt. "I'm here. I got you. I'm not letting go."
You turned your face into his throat instead of answering, and he felt every silent sob against his skin like a blow.
"I didn't tell them anything, Az," you finally whispered, so faint he had to lean in to catch it. Your fingers found the front of his jacket, closing around the fabric with what little strength you had left. "I didn't break."
He pulled back only far enough to look at you, at the pride flickering somehow through the wreckage of your face, like that was the one thing you needed him to know before anything else, more than the pain, more than the fear still shaking through you.
"Oh, sweetheart." The words came out rough, worn thin, entirely too soft for a male whose hands were still slick with what he'd just done. "I know. I know you didn't. You never would have."
"I wasn't scared," you breathed, though the tremor in your voice said otherwise, said everything.
"My brave girl," he murmured, voice splintering on the words, and pressed his forehead to yours, shadows curling tight and close around you both like they could shield you from the memory of the last hours if they just held on hard enough.
You just held on, fingers still fisted in his jacket, forehead still pressed to his, as he rose in one smooth motion, already scanning the tent flap, already listening for boots that weren't his.
He didn't have long, Hybern's camp would notice the silence soon enough, and he moved fast even as he held you like glass, shadows sweeping ahead of them to smother torchlight, to muffle sound, clearing a path out of the dark before either of you had to think about it.
Twice he froze mid-stride, shadows flattening against the earthworks as a patrol passed close enough to hear breathing, and both times he angled his body between you and the open air without seeming to decide to at all, like it wasn't a choice so much as instinct. By the time the wards of the camp fell away behind them and he finally broke into open sky, his heart was still hammering, though nothing in the world could have made him admit that out loud.
"I'm taking you home, love," Azriel murmured against your hair, voice rough with everything he wasn't letting himself say outright. "Wherever I am, that's where you belong now." The words came out low, unguarded, more than he meant to give away, and neither of you was steady enough yet to call him on it.
Somewhere over the tree line, your grip on his jacket went slack, and he knew, without needing to check, that you were gone under.
The townhouse door didn't open. It exploded inward, torn off one hinge as Azriel didn't so much land as crash through the threshold, wings still half-spread, shadows boiling off him in every direction and swallowing every lamp in the front hall at once. A vase shattered against the wall. Wood splintered underfoot. He was already moving, already shouting, before the door had even finished swinging on its ruined hinge behind him.
"MADJA!" His voice tore through the quiet halls, raw and cracking, nothing like the male who moved through this house on silent feet, who never raised his voice for anything. "MADJA, NOW! I need her now!"
He didn't wait for the echo to die before he was shouting again, a second time when no answer came fast enough, a third when he still didn't hear footsteps, some ragged, unraveling part of him convinced that if he stopped shouting for even a second, it would mean he'd given up.
Rhys and Cassian came down the stairs at a dead run, half-dressed, Cassian's shirt still hanging open, and neither of them slowed at the sight of Azriel with you in his arms, they just moved faster. Cassian was shouting orders before he'd even reached the bottom step, barking for hot water, for linens, for someone to send word to Madja now.
Rhys crossed the hall in three strides, gripping his shoulder hard, steadying him, though nothing about the moment felt steady at all. Mor was already gone, winnowed out to fetch the healer herself.
The rest of the house erupted right behind them. A door slammed open somewhere above, more feet pounding down the stairs two and three at a time. Nuala came flying out of the kitchen with a lit candle still in hand, wax spattering the floor behind her. Somewhere a glass shattered. Someone was shouting for towels, someone else for water, voices overlapping and tripping over each other in the dark, the whole household jolted awake and moving at once.
"Someone get her, NOW," Azriel snarled, to no one, to everyone, shouldering his way into the nearest bedroom without waiting for an answer, still cradling you, limp and unmoving, your head lolling against his chest with none of the strength left to hold itself up, like you might shatter against his own urgency, the whole house in motion around him, doors banging, feet pounding, his family scrambling to keep pace with a fear that had no shape yet, only speed.
He laid you down on the bed like it cost him something, like every inch of distance between his hands and your skin was a small betrayal, and even once your head was settled against the pillows his hands wouldn't stay still, hovering over you, touching your jaw, your throat, your wrist, as if he couldn't decide which part of you needed him most and so tried to hold all of it at once.
"Stay with me," he said, low, urgent, voice fraying at the edges. "Stay with me, sweetheart, come on, look at me, come on—"
You didn't answer. You hadn't answered in longer than he wanted to think about, your face slack and pale against the pillow, your breathing shallow but steady, at least, steady enough that he clung to that single fact like a lifeline, repeating it to himself under his breath, steady, she's steady, she's still breathing, like it might stop being true the moment he stopped saying it.
Madja swept in with Mor close behind her, already rolling her sleeves, already assessing the damage with the practiced eye of someone who'd seen far worse than this and survived worse still. "Azriel. I need room to work."
He didn't move.
"Azriel." Sharper now. "I can't help her with you hovering over every inch of her like a wall."
"I'm not in your way."
"You are exactly in my way." Madja's eyes flicked, not unkindly, to where his hand was still fused to your jaw. "Let me see her ribs. Let me see what they did to her wrists. I promise you, I am not going to hurt her worse than she already is."
His jaw worked. For a moment it looked like he might actually argue with a healer three centuries his senior, might plant himself at your side like a second spine and refuse to be moved by anything short of a direct order.
That order came in the form of two sets of hands.
"Az." Cassian's voice, low, careful, right before he and Rhys took an arm each and hauled him bodily back from the bed. Azriel fought it, snarling, shadows lashing out toward both of them before some last shred of reason clamped down and stopped him from actually hurting either of his brothers.
"Let her work. Let her work, you're going to break her ribs worse holding on like that."
"Get off me," he snarled, teeth bared, shadows spiking off him in every direction, nothing left in his voice but raw animal warning.
"Listen to me." Rhys's grip didn't loosen, arm locked hard across Azriel's chest, voice low and even despite the effort it clearly cost him to hold on. "I know you're not thinking straight right now. I know. But you have to let Madja touch her, Az. You have to let her work. You can hate us for it after."
Azriel strained against them for one more heartbeat, every muscle in him screaming to get back to your side, and then, all at once, the fight went out of him. He sagged between his brothers like something had been cut, chest heaving, eyes never once leaving your face even from three feet away.
When he finally spoke his voice had gone somewhere Rhys and Cassian had never heard it go before, cracked open, stripped of every wall he'd ever built, nothing left to hide behind. "I can't lose her. I didn't have time with her." It came out small, almost childlike, nothing like a warrior who'd just crushed a man's skull with his own hands. "Not enough time. I needed more time."
Something wet caught in his throat, and he pressed the heel of his hand hard against his eyes, furious with himself for it, unable to stop it either.
Rhys and Cassian exchanged a look over his bowed head and eased their grip, though neither of them stepped far.
Madja, wisely, didn't waste the opening. She worked fast, probing your ribs with careful hands, checking your pulse, lifting one eyelid and then the other with a frown that deepened by the second, while Azriel stood frozen between his brothers, hands opening and closing at his sides, aching to be back at your side and not trusting himself yet to go there gently.
"Two ribs broken, maybe a third," Madja murmured, moving to your wrists next, tsking softly at the raw, rope-burned skin beneath the deeper marks scored into it. "That, I can fix. That, time and salve will handle." She straightened, wiping her hands on her apron, her expression giving nothing away yet. "Let her rest. Sleep is the best thing for her right now."
"Why isn't she waking up?"
"She's been through a great deal, Azriel. Give it time." Madja glanced past him to where Rhys, Cassian, and Mor still hovered in the doorway, none of them having moved an inch since they'd first crowded in behind him. "The rest of you, out. She needs quiet." Her eyes flicked to Azriel, still hovering close, and something in her expression softened, understanding written into it in a way she didn't bother explaining to the others. "He stays."
Rhys didn't argue. He gripped Azriel's shoulder once, wordless, and steered Cassian out ahead of him before he could protest. Mor lingered a moment longer in the doorway, something soft and worried in her face, before she too slipped out and pulled the door most of the way shut behind her, leaving it cracked just enough that none of them would be far.
Then it was just the two of you.
Azriel didn't move from that spot at your bedside, not once, not even as the hours bled past and your breathing stayed shallow and even and your eyes stayed closed. He just sat there in the low lamplight, watching you breathe, memorizing the rhythm of it like he was terrified it might stop the second he looked away.
"I'm here, love," he said quietly, to a room that couldn't hear him. "I'm staying. Just, please, come back."
The hours passed like that, in silence, in lamplight, in the small, endless proof of your breathing.
Somewhere past midnight Nuala came and went with fresh bandages and a look she didn't voice. Somewhere after that the candle guttered low, and Azriel didn't move to relight it, content to sit in the dark with your hand in his.
Sleep never came for him. He didn't want it to.
Azriel simply watched the night bleed slowly toward morning, waiting for a sign that didn't come.
Summary - She was Rhysand's heart—his mate, his wife, his beginning and end.
Until she was stolen, her memories rewritten, their bond buried beneath lies. And Rhys? He never stopped searching.
Now, she's a stranger to herself, haunted by dreams she can't explain and a pull she doesn't understand. Velaris is unfamiliar. Her family, forgotten. And Rhys is just a shadow on the edge, grieving, waiting.
But the truth always finds a way.
The story of a High Lady lost, and the High Lord who never let her go. A love that even death couldn't erase.
Tags - Manipulated memories, hurt/comfort, amnesia, love that never dies, bittersweet, emotional reunions
Contents -
➷ One | Forgotten Stars | 2.3k words
➷ Two | All That Was Lost | 2.7k words
➷ Three | A Hollow Place | 2.4k words
➷ Four | Bitter Truths | 2.1k words
➷ Five | Crawling Back to You | 2.6k words
➷ Six | Mine Again | 2.8k words
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A/n - This series will include content warnings at the start of each chapter, so please be sure to read them before continuing.
As you probably guessed from the summary, this is a lost memories/reunion story (aka my personal brand, pain with a side of longing). It's a shorter series, only six parts but I had sm fun writing it. Probably too much fun, honestly. I thrive on angst xx
As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Your votes and comments mean the world to me <3
Being the youngest archeron sister often meant that you were the forgotten one, no one ever saw her, until he did.
part 1 - a female deer
part 2 - a drop of golden sun
part 3 - a name i call myself
part 4 - a long long way to run
part 5 - a needle pulling thread
Entire work
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