Started watching Vox Machina and feel like I fell into a time warp, seasons have changed out my window and I am unable to look away from the TV. This show is soooo good!
We asked, Gwynriels recommended! Here’s what media couples other Gwynriels said remind them of Gwyn & Azriel! Part 1 features couples from books, manga, comics, & manhwa.
🎨 credit: venusfolk | aggiedraws_ | gartcicoran for luna.dreams | lucielart for yazthebookish | divider by @diviniyae
💖✨ Click below the cut for an easy to save list ✨💖
Curious about how the votes came together? Well wonder no more! Today we're taking a break from voting, but come back tomorrow for voting in our Top 24!
Thanks so much to everyone for joining us in celebrating our favorite Illyrian General this week! Make sure you check out all of the amazing content that was created on Tumblr, Instagram, and AO3. We can’t wait to see you all again next year 😉
Don’t forget to join us for @nessianweek in September!
"ummm actually that wouldn't happen because-" playing!!! i am playing!!! come play with me!!! i even set up the sandbox with extra shovels!!! don't smack the barbie out of my hands!!
we are doing improv!! pick up a blorbo and yes and with me!!
the year is 2035. the new beauty standard is for women to cut their ears off, as ears are a masculine trait which make the face look too big and hearing isnt necessary as it doesnt align with being demure. evil feminists say perhaps this is unnecessary and ears are natural. women are agressively proclaiming they are cutting their ears off due to sensory issues
The tournament begins with tropes that were great, but couldn’t quite make it into the fight on their own. But don’t you worry! You can help them make it into the fray!
Maybe the one you vote for will even make it all the way!
Welcome, friends, to the Gwynriel Trope Tournament!!
Over the next few days, we will be posting links for Gwynriels to vote for their favorite tropes and micro-tropes in head-to-head matchups. Why? To determine the ultimate trope champion!
He falls first?
“Who did this to you?”
Grumpy x Sunshine?
It’s all up to you!
The winning trope (and maybe some honorable mentions) will be featured in a fanfic oneshot written especially for Gwynriel Weeks 2026!
The PLAY-IN round starts later today, so keep an eye out and get your game face ready!
For @cassianappreciationweek Day 6: Victories and Losses, I (of course) had to focus on the losses. Cassian, Nesta and Gwyn visit Azriel's grave one year after his death. I hope you enjoy Cassian and Gwyn being best friends, and Nesta and Azriel being best friends. Thank you for reading!
Read on AO3 or below
The sky shimmered a soft, bluish gray as the clouds readied themselves to cry. As if the Mother herself were mourning alongside Cassian, Nesta and Gwyn. Nesta clung tightly to Cassian’s chest as he flew them across the flowing pastures beneath the mountains, tucking her even closer when she fought the shiver that reverberated through her body. She had asked to take the scenic route, but now that they were high in the sky, Nesta had not looked down once across the great landscape of the Illyrian Steppes. Cassian did not comment on this fact, just like he did not comment on the tears soaking the front of his nicest sweater. The salty stains were twin to his own.
He landed gently, placing Nesta on her feet and holding her by the waist as she steadied herself. And dried her eyes. Cassian stood tall, taking a deep breath of clear, mountain air in an effort to calm himself.
Gwyn was already outside, sitting on her favorite bench just like she did every evening as the dusk light filtered away and the stars started to shine on the tops of the mountains like crown jewels.
Nesta walked to her friend first, enveloping the redhead in a tight hug that Cassian knew would leave Gwyn with tear stains on her dress that matched the tears on his sweater. Cassian couldn’t help but linger, trying to look anywhere but the solitary headstone.
He kept his hands in his pockets as he looked out across the garden that Elain and Emerie had planted behind Azriel and Gwyn’s mountain home. All the flowers were perfectly aligned and blooming with pleasure despite the cold starting to roll off the mountains. Here to stay for the season. Rhysand and Amren had carved the headstone, working on it together for months. Mor had strung faelights across the trees. Feyre had painted every rock on the walkway. This garden represented all of them. Like a warm embrace.
Cassian had to look away, but the resulting view was not much better.
Azriel’s cabin home stood tall and proud in the middle of the small valley. He had built this cabin home with Cassian’s help nearly three hundred years ago. They had worked through the cold weather, racing against the clock to finish the roof (At the very least a roof, Cass. She needs a roof!) before Gwyn gave birth to their first daughter. Out here in the cold, Cassian and Azriel had never fought so much. But also, had never laughed so hard. Cassian almost fell off the tall roof more than once, his wings saving his neck countless times.
Cassian felt those memories like a physical thing as the wind whipped through his body, smelling exactly like those very days when they built this house.
He might never laugh like that ever again.
Nesta squeezed Gwyn hard, then meandered through the garden to Azriel’s resting place, kneeling before the headstone, right on the still-healing dirt. Cassian watched with a weight on his chest as she crossed her legs beneath her and touched the ornate headstone, speaking quiet words for just the two of them to hear.
Keeping one eye on his mate, Cassian slowly walked over to Gwyn who was lovingly watching Nesta and Azriel, tears lining her eyes. He sat down on that bench and slid close, not speaking as they watched Nesta bend over slightly, overcome with her emotions. A sob clamored up Cassian’s own throat at the sight, but he pushed it down, and instead turned to Gwyn with a meager smile.
“How are you doing?”
Still watching Nesta, Gwyn nodded, a sorry smile tugging at the corner of her mouth but never blooming. “Okay, I guess.”
“Yeah,” was all he could say.
She took a deep breath. “It’s been a long year…quiet.”
Despite himself, Cassian let out a short laugh. “And when Azriel was around it was loud?”
At least that made Gwyn smile. Throughout their friendship, Cassian had figured out exactly how to make her smile—not that it was hard, the priestess’s light shined effortlessly. But Cassian had unlocked her specific combination.
“No, but when the mood hit him, he rambled. And told jokes. And I just miss his movements, the sound of him rustling around the house kept me company. He used to make noise as he walked. Just for me. He knew how uneasy I could get when I heard a noise. Now our home is…empty. The shadows are gone. Or at least they’re always stagnant.” Gwyn sucked in a long breath and touched her sternum. “The bond will forever be quiet…”
To keep her—and himself—afloat, Cassian noted all these details, but settled on saying, “his jokes were my favorite.”
“Mine too,” Gwyn whispered, wrapping her arms around herself in the face of an unnaturally strong gust of wind.
Cassian’s wing stretched out behind him, shielding her from the bone-chilling cold. She nodded in appreciation, still looking out to her mate's resting place, having his ear talked off by Cassian’s own mate now that she regained some composure. “What do you think they’re talking about?”
Cassian swallowed hard, watching as Nesta spoke with a sharp and unflinching rigor, not caring that her hair was snapping in the wind as she touched Azriel’s headstone lightly, explaining something that the mountains snatched away. “I don’t know, but I’m sure it’s important.”
“They always understood each other. Some fundamental part of them…matched.” Her hand found his, steadying herself in her grief in a way that Cassian needed, but might not have admitted.
“The darkest parts of them, Gwynnie. Their darkness is,” Cassian almost choked on the words, “was the same depth.”
“I’m worried about her. Now that he’s gone.”
Cassian nodded, watching his mate calm down some more, her words slowing but not stalling. Words that Cassian never heard, but that the shadowsinger absorbed endlessly. Both then and now. Words that used to make Azriel want to speak back. He would be quiet forever, now. “I know.”
“And what about you?” she said, quickly wiping at her tears without mentioning them. “How are you doing?”
“I’m,” Cassian thought about it for a moment, his chest aching, “doing okay. But, Mother above Gwyn, I miss him so much.”
Her head fell on his shoulder hearing his facade begin to crack. He leaned his head on top of her own, both of them watching Nesta now, not knowing where else to look, how else to distract themselves. In this kind of unseen but heard privacy, Cassian ventured, “I think about him everyday. I always have something I want to say to him, do with him. And I know I’m supposed to just say it—to keep talking to him—but it’s weird. It’s weird not to have to wait to tell him something when I see him and instead just speak it into thin air, hoping that by some spark of magic it will be carried away. To him. Wherever he is.”
Gwyn nodded, like she knew exactly what he meant. His sweater was wet again, but he did not care.
“But the worst part is being alone during the activities where I would have always had a partner.”
Her face turned into his shoulder, nodding harder now.
“I know you understand exactly what I mean.”
“I do,” she cried, holding his hand tighter as she buried her face in his shoulder.
Cassian leaned further back against the bench, letting Gwyn cry on his shoulder as Nesta leaned forward in the middle of the garden and cried on Azriel’s.
The wind died and eased the ache of cold air on his thin wings, though he would not retract them from their place draped around Gwyn. It was the least he could do for her. And for Azriel.
Because Cassian had promised.
One year ago. When Azriel had been torn to shreds, his face translucent from the blood loss. When his scarred hand wrapped around Cassian’s bloody one. When he found the strength to say to Cassian, “make sure she continues to live.”
“I will,” Cassian promised. He managed a dull nod and a wet kiss atop Azriel’s bruised head before Gwyn rushed in and collapsed beside her mate. Cassian held his best friend’s hand—and then Gwyn’s hand, too—until the end. Thankfully, Nesta stayed home. Gwyn and Azriel’s grown children, too, had not witnessed their father in his last moments and would forever remember him as a strong warrior, a cunning spymaster, a loving parent. Gwyn and Cassian would share Azriel’s final moments between them like a sacred stone they carried but never shared. Just for them.
Likewise, his promise to make sure Gwyn didn’t merely survive Azriel’s death but rather continued to live would be just for Cassian.
Since that horrid night last year, Cassian visited Gwyn every evening. Sometimes bringing food and sharing a meal with her, Nesta in tow—even though his mate rarely could bring herself to spend any time at Azriel’s grave. Sometimes on his own, stopping over for just a moment to check in, share a laugh, tell a story. Sometimes to spend the night, sleeping in the living room like a sentinel as a treacherous storm roared beyond the stone walls of Gwyn’s mountain home. But no matter the occasion, Cassian always showed up.
“It hasn’t gone unnoticed, you know.”
“What?” Cassian said, pulling back just enough to peer into Gwyn’s bright eyes. Despite everything, her eyes still shone with a brilliance that Cassian was finding harder and harder to capture himself. Resilience, pure resilience shined there.
Gwyn smiled, speaking to Cassian as she fondly regarded Nesta who was now sitting with her spine straight and speaking slower, softer. “Your love has not gone unnoticed, Cassian. Thank you.”
“I would do anything for you Gwyn, you know that.” He squeezed their joined hands once. “No need to thank me.”
When she turned her face to him, Cassian finally saw it, the slip of the mask she wore so valiantly. Gwyn was strong and bright and kind, but she carried sorrow deep in her heart, only letting it show in the briefest of moments. “You would do anything for Azriel.”
Something in Cassian’s chest threatened to sever in two. “Yes,” he said, closing his eyes in the face of the Illyrian wind that blustered with fury once again. Like home, but somehow emptier. More biting.
“You’ve been very kind.”
“I will continue to be kind.” The words were sharper than he meant, but Gwyn smiled.
“You will,” she agreed, voice growing stronger. “But you don’t need to come everyday.”
“Yes, but, I told him—“
Gwyn held up a hand. “I don’t want to know. Keep that between you and him.”
Cassian smirked, but it was dull. Apologetic.
Gwyn held his hand tighter and for the first time he realized despite her towering height for a female, she was small compared to his hulking form. She must have been small compared to Azriel, too. “You’ve been kind, but it’s been a year now. I am ready to try on my own.”
“I like spending time with you.”
“Well of course you do. I’m excellent company.”
Cassian wiped away a single tear from his eye, a small laugh bubbling out of him. “And Nesta—“
Gwyn’s expression flattened again. “Nesta is different. Different when it comes to him. Different when it comes to me. I know she comes here for different reasons than you. She can come whenever she wants, as much as she wants.”
His eyebrows raised high to his hairline. “Gwyn,” he said incredulously, “are you saying I’m no longer welcome here?”
She lovingly shook her head. “Not at all. Just don’t feel obligated.”
Cassian’s throat worked, watching as Nesta stood, leaving Azriel’s headstone with a single kiss carried on her palm. He smiled at her as she began to walk over, her icy face blotched with red from the wind and tears. “Spending time with you and Azriel is a gift. It will always be a gift.”
Nodding, Gwyn released Cassian’s hand with a single squeeze and stood to greet Nesta. His heart warmed as the sisters embraced one another and walked inside, still clinging their arms around the other’s body like a lifeline.
The snap of the door shutting caused dread to creep through his bones. He was alone.
Azriel awaited him.
Despite the cold air, Cassian raked his sweaty palms down his pants and stood on steady legs. He took his time meandering through the beautiful garden, and if he took longer than necessary to walk to Azriel’s headstone, it was only because he needed to distract his mind. Calm his racing thoughts.
This would never get easier, he thought to himself.
But eventually, he approached Azriel’s grave, veiled in a single shadow that made his heart clench so much he fell to his knees. Cassian had intended to remain composed at this visit. He had been doing so well not falling apart every time he spoke with Azriel in the last few months.
Today was different. He knew that. One year.
One year without his best friend, his brother-in-arms, his partner. Anguish clawed up his throat in the form of a sob and Cassian bellowed into the wind, his hands colliding with the dirt as if he could rip the male from the ground and bring him back.
He knew it was impossible, but the desire still burned bright within him.
For the first few months after Azriel died, Cassian had been a hot ball of fire. Rage coursed through his blood with every beat of his dark heart. Rage because he hadn’t been able to defend his friend. Rage because he had to witness his brother’s last breath. Rage because fate ripped Azriel away from his family first. Rage because some small part of Cassian was gone and would never be returned.
Nesta had been the only one to freeze the rage burning his chest, to calm it and channel it into something more productive. She met him where he stood, her own icy depression cooling his rage. His explosive heart warming her own. Gwyn had helped Cassian, too. Visiting her every evening had been as much for himself as it had been for her and Azriel.
And then, Cassian, Nesta and Gwyn decided to do something about it.
Together. The three of them met their grief for Azriel together, training high in the wind against the backdrop of a snowy mountain peak like they used to do all those years ago. With Azriel. Eventually, Cassian’s rage cooled. Nesta’s depression shallowed. And Gwyn’s perseverance raised her up.
That thought comforted Cassian, until he looked down at Azriel’s name etched in the headstone, his dull siphons embedded in the rock, never to shine again.
And for one moment, Cassian didn’t want to be strong anymore. He didn’t want to feel rage, he didn’t want to calm his mind with a sword in his hand, he didn’t want to soar through the clouds to chase away his feelings. He just…didn’t want to feel anything at all.
For only a moment, if such a thing were possible.
The air was frigid, the dirt freezing, but Cassian didn’t care as he laid down on his back next to his best friend and looked up at the darkening clouds overhead, losing color from the fading light and the growing storm. Night was drawing near, the sky about to open and cry. But for now, there was nothing.
That was okay.
Cassian settled with his head on his arm like a makeshift pillow, the other resting gently on his stomach, his wings spread out wide. Everything was quiet—too quiet, even for his silent shadowsinger.
Staring at the sky, Cassian licked his lips, searching for something more poetic to say to commemorate one year without his best friend, but nothing seemed worthy enough. He wanted to make a joke, but he couldn’t find the words. His tongue was stale. Nothing felt right.
“Gods, Az, I miss you. I wish I had something else to say. But I don’t.”
Naturally, Azriel did not respond. And for anyone else, this might have been a harrowing realization, but it soothed Cassian. Azriel hardly responded when he was alive. This was nothing new.
Cassian sighed. “I visit Gwyn everyday, and I have always cared for Gwyn. We have always been great friends, but this past year I have grown to understand a fraction of the joy she must have unleashed in you. Your mate is a joy, Az.” He swallowed hard. “And she tells the best stories about you. Things I never knew.”
He thought about one story Gwyn told him, about the week after their mating ritual, when they vacationed in the Summer Court. They spent as much time as they could in the water, Gwyn swimming circles around Azriel as they played games like children in the waves. Later in the week, Azriel rented a small row bow, rowing diligently to bring Gwyn to the most beautiful waterfalls hidden farther up the watersheds in the hills of the Summer Court. Gwyn said it had been beautiful at first, but one wrong turn and their romantic getaway morphed into a horror story. After aimlessly rowing and trying to find their way back to the city, they had clutched one another in the mud and given themselves over to their early demise. Until in the morning, a Summer Court tour guide with a tour group of twenty fae found them tangled together and sleeping, a ten minute walk from the city’s edge. They laughed about their melodrama all the way back to their hotel and didn’t leave their room for the rest of the vacation.
Azriel had never shared that story, and Gwyn had kept it private for all these years. But when the priestess told Cassian one night as they drank tea by the fire, Cassian laughed so hard that his heart ached. He was still learning new things about his best friend despite him no longer being here. In exchange, he told Gwyn stories about her mate from their time together as children, revealing tales that Cassian knew were only acceptable to be uttered because the shadowsinger was no longer here to pummel him for sharing the details. He loved the way Gwyn hung onto every word, eager for more information about her mate. The same as Cassian.
He hoped they continued to swap stories.
“I’ve been doing what you asked. I’ve been making sure she lives.” He chuckled wryly, shifting ever so slightly on the unforgiving ground. “But I’m worried I’ve been thinking so much about her own journey that I haven’t been checking in on Nesta’s as much. On my own.”
He turned his head to the side as if he could meet Azriel’s smoky gaze. “What were you and my mate talking about, Az?”
This time, he waited for an answer, forgetting himself for a moment and feeling foolish. Cassian shook his head, returning his gaze to the sky as a single rain drop fell on his face. “I know Nesta doesn’t visit as often, but I hope you understand why. She’s different from me and from Gwyn.” He let out a single breath. “She’s more like you.”
Wind whipped through his hair, another few fat drops of rain landing on his face, now. He did not wipe them away. “I’m sure you understand, though.” Nesta did not visit Azriel as much as Cassian did—certainly not as much as Gwyn. But she always showed the most emotion when she did, the tears she so rarely let fall dropping onto the shadowsinger’s grave with ease. “I hope that whatever she said, it helped you both. She’s been doing so much better as the year has gone on, but…I still worry. I know you would too.”
A sharp curse loosed from his breath. “Actually, I’m sure you’d know just what to say to calm her.”
Cassian sat up, then, looked at the house, the warm light that glowed in the window as Gwyn and Nesta warmed themselves by the fire. He knew that they would take care of one another, too. Their partnership rival only to Cassian and Azriel’s.
And now, Cassian was all alone.
But so was Azriel, laying out here in the cold for the rest of time.
Cassian’s chest seized and another sob tore out of him as he fell back to the dirt with a thud, not caring about the jagged rocks on the ground that stung his head and bent his wings at odd angles. “I miss you,” he whispered again, with even less grace than before. “I want to fight with you, beat you into the ground and make your nose bleed,” he chuckled, dark and strained. “And I can’t even do that.”
Gods, he wished Azriel would answer him. He wished to see that surly smirk just one more time, so much knowingness hidden behind his friend’s eyes.
“It’ll never be the same again.”
The rain fell harder, now, drenching Cassian to the bone. He didn’t shiver. Didn’t hold himself. Did tuck his wings in tight. Azriel could do none of those things, so he wouldn’t either.
He would have to find a way to be okay again, he knew that to be inevitable. The alternative was too grim to even consider. But…it was hard. To accept Azriel’s death as a wound that might heal, but would never close over.
The fire flared bright in the house, and for a moment, Cassian swore he saw blue tinge the edges of the light.
Nesta and Gwyn were inside. Healing in any way they could. Living. Together.
Cassian could try to do the same. Even if the task felt insurmountable.
“One step at a time,” Cassian whispered, sitting up, his hair now soaked from the storm. Through the rainy haze, Nesta appeared at the door of the cottage, her tall, strong body leaning against the door frame.
Across the garden, they locked eyes, and Cassian could read her words despite neither of their mouths moving. Come inside, she seemed to whisper. A gentle hand in his own, guiding him to safety.
He smiled just a little, bittersweet and achy. Not quite yet, his heart said.
Nesta nodded, leaving the door open just a crack for him. Through the window, he watched Nesta return to Gwyn’s side, the redhead animatedly starting a story that had Nesta rapt with attention and smiling wide.
Next to his own best friend, Cassian turned towards Azriel’s headstone, a smile mirror to his mate’s pulling at the corner of his mouth. And despite the cold, despite the rain, despite the mud, despite the pain, Cassian settled into a comfortable position, resting his chin on his hand and said, “I have to tell you about what happened last week. Nesta and Gwyn were on the couch playing this new card game…”
