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The Hundredth Dawn - 5

✶ Pairing: Azriel x Reader

✶ Summary: A century ago, the Night Court didn’t just lose Rhysand’s sister—she was taken, claimed by an old bargain no one dares to name out loud. Now she’s back, with a smile too calm and a power that lives in the dark between sleep and truth, the kind that can soothe a mind or rewrite it. Rhys wants to protect what he once let go, while Azriel finds himself unravelling at the sight of her, because some storms don’t just arrive—they make you realize you were never really looking up at all.

✶ A/N: longer wait on this one but here we are! we get a better peek at her powers more this time :)

⇐ Part 4 | masterlist

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The Montesere delegation entered as if they’d rehearsed how to walk into darkness without letting it show on their faces.

First come the guards whose armor is ornate in a way that suggests they’ve never bled in it. Their steps are measured, their smiles soft, their eyes hard.

Behind him comes the envoy, older, ash-haired, eyes the pale watchful blue of winter sea. Elegant in that clean, curated way that made her teeth itch. And then—

The Crown Prince.

He didn’t stride in like a conqueror.

He entered like a guest.

Like a male who understood charm could be a blade and preferred his cuts clean, no blood, no noise, just the quiet certainty afterward that something had been taken.

Hair tied back. Face handsome in the way carved marble was handsome: symmetrical, careful, cold beneath beauty.

His smile arrived first.

Warm. Polished. Practiced.

It should’ve soothed.

Instead it made the back of her neck prickle, because she knew warmth you earned and warmth you were handled with. The latter always came with a price.

He bowed to Rhys, deep enough to acknowledge power.

“My High Lord,” he said, voice smooth as poured wine. “Thank you for receiving us.”

Rhys didn’t rise. He didn’t need to. He let his gaze drag across the prince.

“Your Royal Highness,” Rhys replied, velvet over steel. “I didn’t realize we were hosting royalty today.”

The prince’s grin widened, charming enough to pass in a sunlit court. Here, in Hewn City’s light, it looked like a mask with teeth.

“Forgive the imposition,” he said. “But this matter felt… too delicate to entrust to distance.”

Delicate.

The word settled in the room like a silk ribbon tied around a throat.

He bowed to Feyre, precise, respectful, just the right amount of reverence.

“And High Lady.”

Feyre didn’t blink. “Your Highness.”

Then he straightened and his attention did what it had been itching to do since the moment he crossed the threshold.

It found her.

Not with hunger, no, that would’ve been simpler.

With recognition.

As if he’d been waiting to see whether the rumor had teeth… and whether those teeth still belonged to him.

His smile softened into something that might have looked fond if she hadn’t heard that exact tone used on weapons people enjoyed owning.

“My lady,” he said quietly, as if they were alone. “How… good it is to see you again.”

A pause, deliberate.

“In such good spirits.”

Something inside her didn’t flinch so much as withdraw—a small step back in the mind, the way you stepped back from a ledge without making a scene.

Azriel had not moved from the edge of the dais, half-claimed by darkness like it recognized him.

But his attention changed.

It tightened.

The cold, precise focus of a knife deciding where to go if it was thrown.

The prince—still smiling—added, almost amused by his own restraint:

“As for spirits, I confess I’ve found yours difficult to forget.”

Mor’s eyes narrowed so hard the air seemed to thin.

Rhys’s power shifted, just a roll beneath skin, a beast waking but not rising.

She gave the prince a smile that was perfectly polite and perfectly empty.

“Your Highness,” she said, voice as immaculate as fresh ink. “It’s a pleasure to be… remembered.”

The envoy stepped forward with a scroll, as if paper could make any of this civilized.

“We bring greetings from His Majesty,” he began, head inclined to Rhys.

But every second sentence was for her.

“Montesere values continuity,” the envoy said. “Stability. The honoring of… agreements.”

“As we value discretion,” he continued smoothly, “when it has been so… generously extended in the past.”

There it was again.

Continued discretion but now dressed in “fond memory,” like you were meant to blush instead of bleed.

Mor’s fingers tightened on her chair.

Rhys’s gaze turned razor-bright. “You speak as if discretion is currency.”

The envoy unfurled the scroll.

“We received your reply with gratitude,” he said. “The willingness to deliberate with reverence honors both our courts.”

Rhys leaned back, arm draped as if bored.

His boredom was a costume. She could feel the violence under it like heat under ice.

“Deliberation,” Rhys drawled, “requires time.”

“Of course,” the prince replied. “And yet—time is often a luxury, is it not? When… circumstances quicken.”

A hint.

A crack in the polished surface.

She slid her gaze, slow and pleasant, to the envoy.

“Circumstances,” she echoed softly. “I’m glad you mention them. It was striking how quickly you mobilized.”

The envoy didn’t change expression.

But the prince’s eyes brightened a fraction, pleased she’d chosen the right thread to pull.

“Our court is efficient,” the envoy said.

Cassian snorted—too loud to be polite, too honest to be accidental.

She pressed anyway, voice gentle as a knife edge.

“Efficient enough to send a Crown Prince across the sea on a matter that tradition could’ve handled through an emissary.” She angled her chin toward him, courtesy as interrogation. “Your Highness. It’s an… uncommon honor.”

The envoy’s mouth opened—

The prince cut in, smoothly, like a male used to catching truths before they fell.

“I insisted,” he said warmly.

Insisted.

The word landed in her bones.

“How decisive,” she murmured.

The prince’s smile sharpened. “I have always been.”

“And I find,” he added, tone light, “that decisive gestures are often appreciated by those who understand the cost of hesitation.”

“And what about me,” she asked lightly—light enough it could be mistaken for flirtation—“makes me so… rare?”

For half a heartbeat, the prince looked like he might answer honestly.

Like he might enjoy saying it.

His mouth parted—

The envoy cut in, too quick. “Lady, you underestimate the esteem with which our court holds your presence.”

A leash tugged tight.

The prince’s eyes flicked to the envoy, amused… then back to her, as if to say: Later.

Rhys’s gaze narrowed. “Esteem is a generous word.”

“Respect,” the envoy corrected smoothly. “For what your presence represents.”

Represents.

Not who you are.

Just what you could be used for.

The prince turned back to Rhys, charm reassembling itself like armor.

“This proposed union would honor tradition,” he said. “Forge a bridge. A lasting alliance. One that could… ensure peace.”

Peace.

He said it like a lock closing.

Feyre’s voice stayed mild. “Montesere seems eager.”

“We are… committed,” the prince replied.

Committed enough to move ships before asking.

Committed enough to keep touching discretion like it was a bruise they enjoyed pressing.

Rhys folded his hands, expression casual in a way that promised ruin.

“And you expect what, from my sister” he said, emphasizing the word “an engagement within the week? A wedding within the month?”

The envoy’s gaze slid to her again. Always to her.

“We expect sincerity.”

“We expect,” the prince added softly, “to be taken seriously.”

She smiled, warmed it just enough to sell the lie.

“Then you have my word,” she said, “that the Night Court will consider your proposal with the seriousness it deserves.”

Rhys’s eyes flashed at consider.

Good.

Let him see she was still steering.

“However,” she continued before Rhys could tear the conversation open, “we do not rush vows without understanding the shape of what they bind.” Her gaze lifted to the prince, sweet and steady. “Transparency. Time. And the assurance that no ‘delicacy’ is being hidden behind tradition.”

The prince’s smile sharpened like he enjoyed being challenged—so long as it didn’t stop him.

“A reasonable request,” he said. “We would never seek to pressure.”

Pressure lived in the pause after his lie.

⸻

The meeting became a dance.

Not the kind with music.

The kind where every word was a step and one wrong step could become a fall that lasted a century.

He offered trade corridors, forges, grain stores—aid dressed as kindness, each gift shaped like leverage. He spoke of “secure residences” prepared for her, secure the way cages were secure when you called them protection.

And still, through tariffs and rites and ceremony, the prince’s gaze kept returning to her as if the rest was scenery.

As if Rhys and Feyre were the gate.

And she was the prize behind it.

Azriel remained silent. But silence, she was learning, had different kinds.

His was the kind that listened with teeth.

She didn’t look at Azriel.

But she felt him like a ward at her back.

And that—unwanted, unfamiliar—made something in her chest loosen and tighten at once.

So she did what she’d come to do.

She pulled at threads until something snagged.

She complimented their speed until the envoy, too pleased with his own civility, let slip the ships were already positioned when the letter was sent.

She praised the prince’s decisiveness until he, too pleased, let it be known he’d overruled his council.

The prince leaned in, voice soft as a secret meant for her alone.

“You carry yourself differently,” he said. “Stillness suits you.”

Her smile didn’t change.

“Stillness suits survival.”

The prince hummed, pleased.

“I have always admired your… adaptability.”

Rhys’s fingers flexed once against his chair.

Azriel’s shadows went quieter.

She kept her smile.

She kept her spine.

Because if she let them see even a crack, they would press fingers into it and call it affection.

⸻

By the time the final courtesies arrived, she’d given Montesere exactly what it wanted to hear—without giving it a single true yes it could chain her with. A serious consideration.

And behind that door, the Night Court listening in the dark.

She glanced at the torches like she’d only just noticed time.

“How exhausting your journey must have been,” she said warmly. “Sea-sick and sleepless, and all for diplomacy.”

“It is nothing,” the prince replied.

“Not nothing,” she corrected softly. “Not when you came yourself.”

Then she smiled—bright enough to look generous.

“You will stay tonight.”

Rhys’s gaze snapped to her, sharp as a blade.

They hadn’t discussed this. They didn’t want this.

She met Rhys’s stare and smiled at him too—bright, almost innocent.

Trust me.

Or admit you don’t.

The prince’s eyebrows rose, delighted.

“How kind,” he said, voice warm.

But his gaze dipped—deliberately, private—to her wrist.

“It is comforting,” he added softly, “to know you remain the same.”

For a heartbeat, her body stayed in place and her mind moved three steps away.

The words didn’t echo. They sank.

Because she heard what he really meant under the silk:

I still know where you break.

Mor’s stare went murderous. Cassian’s wings flared once, then forced themselves still. Rhys’s smile stayed pleasant while something feral paced behind his eyes.

Azriel, still silent, shifted the smallest fraction.

Not forward. Not threatening.

Just… closer.

A shadow-length of distance shaved away, the way a storm edge creeps in without announcing itself.

Rhys’s voice was velvet over steel. “If my sister has offered, then of course. We are… generous hosts.”

The prince’s smile widened. “Then we accept. Gratefully.”

He rose. The envoy followed, bowing as if any of this had been polite.

The prince stepped closer, not to Rhys, not to Feyre.

To her.

He moved like he owned the space between them.

She stood, because refusing would be loud, and loud was what Montesere wanted.

He took her hand.

Warm fingers. Gentle grip.

Gentle, the way silk was gentle when it slid over bruises.

His thumb brushed the inside of her wrist.

Not accidental. Not tender.

Her skin remembered before her mind could stop it—hands, ink, paper. That same pressure at her pulse, checking sharpness, checking obedience.

Azriel’s shadows went so still it felt like the room had lost a sound.

She didn’t look at him.

But she felt it anyway, his attention, hard as a held breath.

The prince lifted her hand and kissed her wrist, soft and courtly and restrained, like he hadn’t just touched a wound and smiled.

Then he released her and turned toward the doors like he’d already won something.

“Until next time, my lady,” he murmured, like next time was inevitable.

He left with his delegation, footsteps fading into the mountain’s wet breath.

The doors shut.

The room stayed.

And she stood very still, smiling politely at nothing, while the phantom of his thumb burned on her skin like a brand.

Only when the echoes were gone did her fingers curl, slow, careful, like she was reclaiming her own hand one bone at a time.

⸻

The moment the doors sealed, the room changed.

Rhys turned on her the instant the latch clicked into place.

“What in the Mother’s name were you thinking,” Rhys said, voice low and lethal, “inviting them to stay.”

It was the kind of tone that made lesser males shrink. It wasn’t the Hewn City persona—too sharp, too real. It wasn’t theater.

It was fear trying to wear anger like armor.

She didn’t sit.

She didn’t soften.

She stood there with her shoulders squared, chin lifted, posture carved into something unbreakable. Azriel had seen her like that in war rooms already since she’d returned—still, composed, unreadable. But this was different.

As if the moment she let herself sag, the tremor under her ribs would turn into something the room could hear.

“We got nothing,” she said evenly. “Not enough. Not the substance.”

Rhys’s eyes flashed. “We got plenty.”

“We still don’t know why they are rushing this, just that they are” she replied, and the words were steady as a blade. “If they stay the night, we have more chances.”

Mor snapped, “Or more opportunities for them to cut your throat in your sleep.”

She didn’t flinch. “They won’t.”

Mor’s eyes flashed. “And how can you possibly know that.”

She only tilted her head slightly and said, “Because they want something.”

Amren’s smile sharpened. “Always.”

Rhys’s voice went dangerous. “And you think hosting them makes it safer?”

“It makes it useful,” she said, then glanced—briefly—toward Azriel.

“And your spymaster,” she added, eyes flicking back to Rhys, “is good at hearing what gets said when people think the walls are on their side.”

The room went very still.

Azriel’s shadows shifted, uneasy at the mention.

Rhys’s gaze snapped to Azriel, a silent demand.

Azriel found himself… delayed.

“It’s not a bad idea,” he said.

Rhys’s head snapped toward him.

The look Rhys gave him was not a look of friendship.

It was a look of how dare you side against me in front of them.

Azriel didn’t flinch.

“Keeping them close for one night,” Azriel added, careful, “gives us angles. Servants talk. Guards move. People slip.”

Rhys’s power simmered—low, furious.

Feyre hovered beside Rhys like a steadying hand she wasn’t sure whether to offer.

Cassian muttered, “This is going to be a long week.”

Rhys ignored him.

Rhys’s attention cut back to her, eyes bright with rage and something worse underneath it—fear.

“You didn’t even ask,” Rhys said, each word measured like he was trying not to explode. “You didn’t consult us. You didn’t—”

“I didn’t need to,” she replied.

Azriel saw the smallest thing then—a flicker at the corner of her mouth. Not smugness. Not satisfaction.

Defiance.

Her voice stayed steady. “We need time. We need proximity. We need their guard patterns, their tells, their habits when they think they’re safe.”

Rhys’s mouth tightened. “This isn’t—”

“This is exactly,” she said, sharper now, a blade finally leaving its sheath, “what we agreed to do.”

Feyre shifted beside Rhys. Azriel didn’t need to look at her face to know what was there—he could hear it in the tiny hitch of her breath, the way her weight moved like she was bracing for impact.

Don’t, her silence pleaded. Don’t do this here. Don’t do it like this.

Rhys ignored it.

Of course he did.

Because Rhys had always been brilliant at war and terrible at the kind of fear that didn’t have an enemy you could stab.

“You agreed to deliberate,” Rhys snapped. “Not to offer them my home like a damned inn.”

“We’re in Hewn City, not Velaris,” she said, voice cutting. “Don’t pretend this is your home.”

That landed. Hard.

Rhys’s expression flinched into something ugly and honest before he smoothed it back down. Azriel saw it anyway—saw the strike hit the place Rhys kept locked behind his ribs, the place that still remembered being made to play monster under the mountain.

Rhys’s power stirred like a storm tasting blood.

And then—

“And what about before?” Rhys said, voice colder now, quieter in a way that promised damage. “Hewn City. Mor. The things you said.” His gaze sharpened. “You plan to invite every disaster into our court and then lecture me on what I’ve failed to fix?”

Her eyes flashed.

There it was—Rhys tugging on the thread he’d refused to touch earlier.

“If you’re waiting for an apology,” she said, each syllable immaculate, “think again.”

Mor inhaled sharply like she’d been slapped.

Cassian’s shoulders tensed.

Feyre’s eyes darted—first to Rhys, then to her, then away again like she couldn’t decide which fire to put her hands in.

“You’ve been gone for a hundred years,” Rhys said, voice hard, and Azriel felt the room tilt because Rhys had just chosen the cruelest weapon he owned: the past.

“Its only been a matter of days since you came back,” he snapped, and there it was—the fracture showing through the High Lord polish. “Is it so fucking difficult to be agreeable for one day.”

The words landed wrong.

Not because they were insulting—though they were.

Because they made her small.

Because they made a century of endurance sound like inconvenience.

Azriel saw it.

Not as a dramatic reaction. Not as some collapse.

As tremor that slipped through her control before she smothered it.

Her jaw locked.

Her eyes went bright—not wet, not pleading. Bright like glass held up to light.

She smiled at Rhys.

It wasn’t a friendly smile.

It was the sort of smile you gave someone who’d just reminded you they could still hurt you, who’d proven they still knew where the soft parts were.

“Agreeable,” she echoed softly, and the word turned to glass in her mouth. “In case you’ve forgotten, High Lord—” she said it mockingly, sweetly, like sugar poured over a blade “—I have always been this way.”

Rhys flinched as if she’d slapped him.

The way his face tightened, Azriel almost felt it in his own teeth.

Cassian made a sound under his breath, half laugh, half horror. “Here we go again—”

“Shut up,” Rhys snarled without looking at him.

Cassian’s mouth snapped shut. For Cassian, that was practically a miracle.

Mor looked like she might cry or kill someone or do both in quick succession. Her hands were clenched so tight her knuckles had gone pale.

Amren, perched like a vulture that had found fresh carrion, looked annoyingly entertained.

Feyre stood frozen, the High Lady caught between the instincts of a mate and the instincts of a peacekeeper. Azriel could see it in her, her body wanting to go to Rhys, her heart tugging toward the female who’d been carved out and returned with edges.

Rhys took a deep breath, evidently trying to calm down, “You —” Rhys began.

She didn’t let him finish.

She turned.

And the movement was the most dangerous thing in the room, because it was quiet.

It wasn’t a scream.

It wasn’t a breakdown.

It was the decision of someone who had learned long ago not to beg.

Azriel tracked her automatically—eyes, shadows, senses following the line of her exit like a map he couldn’t stop drawing.

Rhys swore, low and vicious, then dropped back into his chair like the weight of his own words had finally landed. He rubbed his temples, hard enough that Azriel wondered if Rhys was trying to scrub the moment out of his skull.

Cassian hovered, torn, then shifted a half-step toward Rhys.

Mor shifted a half-step toward the door.

Neither moved fully.

The whole room caught on indecision like a snagged thread.

Feyre looked frozen in place, eyes wide, caught between Rhys and the corridor she’d disappeared into.

A High Lady in a nightmare she hadn’t grown up in.

Cassian—bless him, disaster that he was—filled the silence because he couldn’t bear a quiet that had blood in it.

“It’s… normal,” he offered Feyre too quickly, too loud. “For them. When they were younger, their arguments would wake half of Velaris.”

Rhys’s hands covered his face.

“Cassian,” Rhys growled, muffled against his palms, “I will winnow you into the Sidra.”

“Noted,” Cassian said brightly, because Cassian had never possessed a functioning sense of self-preservation in the presence of an emotional catastrophe.

Feyre’s eyes flicked to Azriel then—quiet, questioning, a plea without words.

Is this normal? her gaze asked. Is she okay? Is he okay? What do I do with this?

Azriel didn’t answer aloud.

He looked at Rhys hunched in his chair, High Lord folded in on himself like a male trying to hold a whole court together with his bare hands. He looked at Mor’s trembling fingers, the raw grief under her anger. He looked at Feyre’s tight mouth, trying to make ten decisions at once and not break.

Then he looked at the door she’d gone through.

And something in him—something he didn’t have a name for yet—went tight.

Because she had stood there and taken that threat with a smile.

She had swallowed humiliation like it was water and not poison.

And Rhys had just—

Rhys had just thrown her absence at her like a weapon.

Azriel’s shadows stirred, restless and dark.

Before he could talk himself out of it—before he could file this moment away into duty and let silence do what it always did—

Azriel heard himself speak.

Quietly. Clearly.

“She has a point.”

The room froze.

It wasn’t dramatic—no one lunged, no one shouted—but the air stilled the way it did when a blade slid from a sheath and everyone realized they’d been standing too close.

Even Cassian went statue-still, like his lungs forgot how to work for a heartbeat.

Rhys’s head lifted slowly.

His eyes were dark with fury—and something else beneath it, something old and ugly and painfully familiar. The kind of look that said I’ve been holding the roof up for five hundred years and you’re asking me why my hands shake.

“You too,” Rhys said, voice flat. “Brilliant.”

Azriel didn’t flinch.

He didn’t soften the blow. He didn’t dress the truth in courtesy.

Because he’d watched her stand in that room and take a threat like it was weather. He’d watched her be carved at and not bleed where anyone could see. And then he’d watched Rhys—Rhys—throw agreeable at his own sister like she was a problem to be managed.

Azriel surprised himself with the next words.

He rarely pushed back on Rhys. Not because he was afraid—Azriel didn’t do fear the way other males did—but because Rhys was Rhys, and Azriel had long ago learned which battles were worth starting.

This one—

This one crawled up his throat anyway.

“You didn’t hear her in there,” Azriel said, steady, and the steadiness was almost a warning. “Not really.”

Rhys’s gaze sharpened. “I heard plenty.”

“No,” Azriel said, and his shadows coiled closer, restless. Not aggressive—protective, in their own feral way. “You heard defiance. You heard anger. You heard whatever you could label so it would fit into something you know how to handle.”

A thin, dangerous silence followed—so clean it felt deliberate, like the room had decided to hold its breath.

Mor’s eyes flicked to Azriel like she’d never seen him speak like this, like she was searching his face for the punchline he wasn’t offering. Her mouth parted a fraction—then shut, as if even she didn’t know what to do with Azriel choosing a side out loud.

Feyre went utterly still, mouth parted the tiniest fraction, brows knitting like she was trying to remember the last time Azriel had said anything this long without being asked a direct question. Her gaze darted to Rhys, bracing for impact,

Cassian’s brows rose, slow disbelief written across his face—Az?—like he’d just watched a mountain shift its weight.

Nesta didn’t flinch. But there was something like approval, quiet, razor-thin, etched into the slight tilt of her chin

Azriel kept his gaze on Rhys throughout it all.

Because the shock in the room didn’t matter.

Because Rhys needed someone to say it plain, without theatrics, without the High Lord mask.

“You keep calling it reckless,” Azriel continued quietly, “but it’s the first time anyone’s said what should’ve been said about Hewn City in a long time.”

Rhys’s jaw ticked, hard. “Don’t start with that.”

“I’m not starting,” Azriel said. “She did. And maybe she had to.”

Rhys’s nostrils flared. “You’re taking her side now?”

Azriel’s pulse didn’t change. His breath didn’t hitch.

But something in him tightened anyway—because Rhys sounded like a male cornered by grief, not a High Lord in control.

“I’m taking the truth’s side,” Azriel said. Then, because he couldn’t help it, because the image of her eyes still sat behind his eyes like a bruise, he added, softer, sharper: “And I’m taking the side of your sister who just stood there and swallowed a threat without blinking while you—”

He cut himself off.

Not because the thought wasn’t true.

Because he could hear the edge on it, and he knew exactly where it would land.

Rhys’s voice dropped, lethal velvet.

“What are you,” Rhys said, “her advocate now?”

The words bit.

Cassian made a small sound like oh, gods.

Feyre’s hand lifted a fraction, then stopped—as if she didn’t know whether to reach for Rhys or let him have his rage.

Azriel stared at Rhys for a beat, and in that beat he felt something rare and uncomfortable: the temptation to step into a role he’d never claimed.

“I’m just saying what I saw.” Azriel said at last, and the honesty of it surprised him as much as it would’ve surprised anyone else.

Rhys’s eyes flashed. “I’m trying to protect her.”

There it was.

Not control for the sake of control.

Care, jagged and panicked and badly aimed—care that grabbed too hard because it didn’t know how to hold gently without losing.

“You’re trying,” Azriel agreed, voice measured. “But you’re doing it like you always do—by making decisions for her. By choking the room with your fear and calling it safety.”

Rhys’s mouth tightened into something like pain.

Azriel didn’t let himself look away.

“If they stay,” Azriel said, pulling it back to what he could anchor in—strategy, surveillance, the work his hands were made for—“we can learn more. We can hear what they say when they think our walls are thick enough to keep secrets.”

Rhys’s mouth tightened. “And if they say nothing.”

“They always say something,” Azriel replied.

His shadows slid across the stone at his feet, eager. Hungry. As if they could already taste unfamiliar whispers.

“I’ll place eyes and ears on them,” Azriel continued. “Every corridor. Every servant route. Every door. Every moment they think they’re alone.”

He paused, then added—quietly, because it mattered even if no one wanted to name it:

“And we’ll learn what they think they own.”

Rhys’s jaw ticked.

A long, charged silence settled—heavy as the mountain itself. Azriel could feel Rhys fighting with himself: the instinct to protect versus the instinct to control. The brother who’d already lost her once versus the High Lord who couldn’t afford to hesitate.

Finally, Rhys exhaled through his nose like he was swallowing a war.

“Do it,” Rhys said.

Then, lower, like it tore at him to say it out loud:

“And if he touches her again—”

Cassian’s chair scraped as he leaned forward, expression savage. “I’ll break his hand.”

Mor’s voice came low, shaking with contained violence. “I’ll break his spine.”

Amren smiled, delighted. “I’ll break his soul.”

Feyre’s expression pinched. “Let’s… aim for diplomacy first.”

No one listened.

Azriel didn’t either.

Azriel remains still for a beat, watching Rhys breathe through it.

Then, quietly, he says, “You shouldn’t have said that to her.”

Rhys’s jaw ticks. His eyes don’t lift. “I know.”

Azriel turned before he could see more.

Before he could watch Feyre try to decide whether to comfort Rhys or hit him.

Before he could watch Rhys sit in his own ruin and call it control.

He left the chamber quietly.

His shadows followed.

Reluctant.

⸻

He found her where the corridor narrowed and the torches burned lower, far enough from the meeting chamber that the air felt less like knives, more like stone and quiet.

He told himself it was instinct. Procedure. The spymaster’s habit of accounting for every loose end the moment a door shut.

He told himself he’d come because she’d invited them to stay without blinking, because that was either reckless or calculated, and he knew her too well to think it was reckless. Because it hadn’t been just a gambit tossed onto the table for Azriel to play.

Because there was something in her smile at the prince, too bright, too practiced, that read less like confidence and more like concealment.

It had been… too clean.

Too intentional.

As if she’d decided something while everyone else was still arguing in circles, and kept it behind her teeth.

Azriel told himself that was a problem.

A potential threat.

A secret in the wrong hands.

He told himself that was why he followed the pull of his shadows through the narrowing corridors.

He repeated it until it sounded almost true.

But his shadows had been pulling him down this corridor long before his mind caught up—curling ahead like hounds that had caught a scent they couldn’t name. And beneath the stone and torches and damp air, there was the other thing he didn’t want to give language to: the look on her face when Rhys’s words landed. The way she’d gone very still, as if the world had asked her to swallow herself again.

He found her where the corridor narrowed and the torches burned lower, far enough from the meeting chamber that the air felt less like knives, more like stone and quiet.

She stood with her back to the wall, shoulders square, face angled toward nothing.

Breathing slow.

Controlled.

Drawing herself back together stitch by stitch, like she’d learned how to resew her own skin in silence.

Azriel stopped a few paces away.

Didn’t crowd.

Didn’t give her the courtesy of pretending he hadn’t sought her out.

His shadows drifted forward, hesitant, touching the air near her sleeves, then recoiling, as if they’d reached for a flame and remembered they could burn.

She didn’t look up.

“You shouldn’t be alone,” he said, voice low.

A small laugh left her—sharp, humorless. “Is that concern,” she murmured, “or policy.”

“Safety,” he replied, and heard how flat it sounded, even to himself.

A laugh—small, sharp, all teeth. “Spare me.”

He waited.

Her shoulders lifted a fraction on a breath, then settled again, the way someone settles a blade back into its sheath.

“I don’t need another lecture from you,” she added, still staring at the torchlight like it had something worth watching. “About safety. Or strategy. Or how I should behave so my brother doesn’t feel… inconvenienced.”

The last word was soft.

Carefully placed.

Azriel felt it land anyway—felt it scrape, because he’d watched it scrape her.

“I’m not here to lecture,” he said.

She finally turned her head, just enough for him to catch the edge of her expression, composed, yes, but brittle in the way glass is composed before it shatters.

“Then why are you here,” she asked, polite as a blade.

Azriel’s throat tightened.

Because he could answer with duty and it would be true enough.

Because he could answer with I need to know what you’re hiding and it would be sharp enough to protect him from admitting the other thing—that he hadn’t come for answers, not really.

He’d come because something about her silence felt like a locked door that mattered.

“Because you invited them to stay,” he said instead, careful. “And you didn’t do it just to give me an opportunity to listen.”

Her eyes narrowed, a glint of something dangerous sparking. “Didn’t I.”

It wasn’t a question.

It was a challenge.

Azriel didn’t rise to it. He kept his posture loose, his voice even.

“You’re keeping something,” he said quietly.

A beat.

“And if it’s a threat,” he added, “I need to know.”

There—easy language. Clean. Impersonal.

Her mouth curved faintly. Not amused. Not warm. A little cruel.

“You’re very good at finding threats,” she murmured. “Congratulations.”

Azriel’s shadows stirred, agitated.

Because he heard what she meant beneath it.

You’re very good at finding monsters in everyone except the ones wearing your own court’s faces.

He let it sit.

He didn’t apologize. He didn’t defend Rhys. He didn’t drag the argument back into the corridor to make it bigger.

“I wasn’t going to lecture you,” he said.

Her brow arched—skeptical, almost amused. “No?”

“No,” he repeated, and for a heartbeat it felt like stepping onto ice that might crack.

And Azriel—who lived in shadows and secrets—was suddenly aware of how much he hated not knowing what happened to her in the dark.

His fingers flexed once.

Then, because he didn’t know how to offer comfort the way Cassian did—with noise and warmth and hands you could feel—Azriel did the only thing he could think of.

He let his shadows slip away.

They returned a moment later with a small bundle wrapped in cloth—stolen from a kitchen that didn’t belong to Hewn City, carried through corridors like contraband. He hadn’t ordered it, not in words. His shadows had simply gone, as if they remembered hunger and sweetness and old habits that belonged to a time before rot.

He held it out.

Honey cakes.

Soft. Sticky. Innocent in the most dangerous way, like a memory you could bite into.

Her gaze dropped to it.

For the first time since she’d walked out of that room, something in her expression shifted.

Not softness.

Surprise—quick and unwilling, like a crack she hadn’t meant to show.

“I don’t—…Why,” she asked quietly, as if the word tasted unfamiliar.

Azriel’s throat tightened.

He regretted it immediately, regretted the assumption, the way memory could be clumsy, could reach for the girl he’d categorized as safe and come up empty-handed.

“You used to—” he started, then stopped, because used to was a dangerous phrase with her.

He tried again, lower. “You used to like them. When you were… upset.”

A pause.

Her eyes stayed on the bundle as if it might unspool a century if she stared long enough.

Then she exhaled slowly—one controlled breath, the kind that kept the world from seeing you shake.

“I don’t really like them anymore,” she said. Not cruel. Not dismissive. Just… truth.

Azriel felt the words like a small, precise cut.

Because it wasn’t about sugar.

It was about the way he’d reached for a memory and found only absence.

His shoulders went stiff. His shadows recoiled a fraction, embarrassed on his behalf.

He lowered his hand. “Right. Sorry. It was—”

“Azriel,” she cut in, softer.

He looked up.

Her eyes were on his face now—steady, unreadable, and in that unreadability there was something that made his chest tighten.

Not affection.

Not gratitude.

Her face did something strange.

Because of the fact he remembered.

Because of the fact he’d noticed her before she left, even if he’d never… looked.

“I appreciate it,” she said quietly. “Even if my tastes have changed.”

She reached out and took one anyway.

Not because she wanted it.

Because she understood what he’d been trying to say with sugar and memory.

Her fingers brushed his for half a heartbeat.

It was everything his body registered anyway:

the brief heat, the fact that she didn’t recoil from him, the fact that he didn’t flinch away from her touch like she was a wound he didn’t know how to hold.

She tucked the cake into her palm, not eating it yet, like it was an object to anchor herself to.

“Rhys is furious,” Azriel said, because it was easier than asking the question that mattered.

Her mouth curved faintly. “He can join the list.”

“He shouldn’t have said that,” Azriel said quietly.

Her eyes sharpened. “Which part.”

Azriel didn’t answer.

Because if he named it—agreeable for one day—it would become real in the air between them. It would widen the crack. It would make her armor tighten, the way it always did when someone came too close.

And Azriel, who had spent centuries learning how to keep secrets, found himself, stupidly, wanting her not to lock him out.

So he chose a different truth.

“You did the right thing,” Azriel said, voice even. “Inviting them to stay.”

Her brows lifted slightly, as if she hadn’t expected him to side with her.

Azriel kept going, because stopping would mean looking too hard at the reason he’d come.

“We can learn more,” he added. “My shadows will listen. I’ll have eyes on them all night.”

She studied him for a long beat—like she was testing whether he meant it, whether it was strategy or something closer to allegiance.

“Good,” she said finally. “Because we need something real. Not phrases. Not polish.” Her gaze drifted, distant for half a second. “Not fond memories.”

Azriel felt something in his ribs tighten.

The question had been scraping at him since the prince’s thumb brushed bone—since that small, proprietary gesture had dragged the room’s air tight around her throat. He’d rehearsed a dozen ways to ask it on the walk here, and none of them fit in his mouth.

He opened it anyway.

“Are you—” His voice snagged, the word catching like a hook. He cleared his throat, irritation flashing hot and immediate—at himself, at the corridor, at the fact that he could face armies and still trip over gentleness. “Are you all right?”

The last two words came out quieter than intended. Not soft, exactly. More like careful. Like he’d set them down between them and stepped back, waiting to see if they shattered.

Her mouth curved, barely. A small breath of a laugh slipped out—more exhale than humor, but it carried something that made his shadows still.

Azriel fixed on it anyway, as if it were proof she was still in there, somewhere beneath the composure.

“You were never really good with words,” she murmured, not unkind. Almost… fond, in the way you were fond of a blade you trusted to hold.

Heat crawled up Azriel’s throat—annoyance, embarrassment, something worse. He swallowed it down.

“A century wasn’t enough to teach me,” he said, dry enough to sound like indifference if you didn’t know how hard he’d worked for that tone. “It seems.”

Her eyes softened at that—just a fraction, just long enough to feel like stepping into sunlight and realizing you’d forgotten what warmth did.

She shook her head, slow. “No.” The word came out quieter than the corridor deserved. “It was never the words.”

Azriel didn’t move.

Didn’t let himself breathe too loud.

She shook her head slowly, gaze on the torchlight for a beat as if she was looking at another time entirely.

“I always liked that about you,” she said. . Then, as if she realized she’d said too much, she added, quieter, “You never wasted them. When you did speak, it meant something.”

Her gaze held his, steady and unreadable and suddenly—dangerously—open.

“And when you didn’t…” Her fingers tightened around the honey cake, as if anchoring herself to something solid. “You still showed up. You still did something. Like it mattered.”

The silence that followed wasn’t empty.

It was full, of all the times he’d stood guard without being asked, of all the things he’d never said because he’d assumed she didn’t need hearing them, of the sick recognition that he’d only started paying attention after she became unreadable.

Her smile flickered again—faint, almost reluctant.

For a heartbeat, they simply looked at each other.

No court masks. No High Lord’s temper. No prince’s touch lingering like an insult.

Just the corridor, the low torches, and the fact that Azriel’s pulse had no business being this loud.

Then she inhaled, slow and controlled, and let her gaze slide away first, like she’d caught herself standing too close to a ledge.

The moment snapped back into place around them, brittle but intact.

Azriel’s throat worked once. He hated himself for how much he wanted to hold on to that softness. He hated himself more for the relief it brought.

A beat.

Then, softer—almost as if the words surprised her when they left her mouth—

“Thank you,” she murmured.

Azriel—who had spent his life earning affection by being useful—felt something in his chest shift.

Then she looked away first, because that was safer.

“You should go,” she said. “Before Rhys decides you’re conspiring against him.”

Azriel’s mouth twitched faintly. “Too late.”

She huffed something that might have been a laugh if it hadn’t been edged with exhaustion.

Her gaze narrowed then. “Don’t get caught.”

“I won’t,” Azriel said, and the promise was too easy—because not getting caught by courts was his profession.

Getting caught by her was something else.

She stared at him for a beat longer than necessary, then turned slightly away, as if reminding herself distance was safer.

Azriel inclined his head.

And Azriel left, shadows trailing behind him like reluctant smoke, because he had work to do.

And because if he stood there any longer, he might do something foolish—like ask her what else she was hiding.

⸻

She returned to her room and shut the door.

Sat on the edge of her bed with the honey cake still in her palm.

It had gone slightly warm from her skin—sugar softened, edges tacky where it clung. It smelled like childhood in the cruelest way: not nostalgia, but proof. Proof that there had been a version of her who could be soothed by sweetness, who could be bribed out of a storm with something small and kind.

Azriel’s gesture had landed like that—small. Kind. Unasked for.

And for a heartbeat in the corridor, it had made something in her loosen that shouldn’t have.

Now, alone, it made her throat tighten.

She stared at it until the faint shine of the glaze blurred. Then she set it on the bedside table as if it might burn her, and went to the basin.

She washed her hands because it felt like she needed to scrub something off—something invisible, something that wasn’t sugar.

She hadn’t invited Montesere to stay out of hospitality.

She’d invited them because proximity loosened tongues.

Because sleep loosened minds.

Because her power—carefully leashed, carefully denied—could slip into dreams like a blade between ribs if she let it.

She stared at her reflection in the basin water.

Her eyes looked too bright. Too awake. Like the dark had taken up permanent residence behind them.

When she finally lay down, she did not wait for sleep to take her gently.

She reached for it the way she’d been trained to reach for minds.

Slow.

Precise.

A careful unhooking of the self.

Sound softened, as if someone draped velvet over the world.

Her breathing steadied—not into relaxation, but into readiness. The room dimmed at the edges, not because the candles guttered, but because her focus narrowed, tunneling toward that thin, shimmering border where consciousness became current.

She let her thoughts thin out, strand by strand, until they were something a dream could catch.

And then—

She slipped.

Not like falling.

Like stepping into cold water that did not splash.

Like the world became an ocean and she became a knife laid flat to slide between waves.

Dreams were not doors.

They were currents.

They did not open.

They carried.

And the prince’s mind—trained, guarded, polished—was a river lined with marble.

At first it was only sensation—salt-bright flashes and sound muffled by distance: a laugh half-heard through walls, a heartbeat that wasn’t hers, the impression of silk against skin, the phantom weight of jewelry on someone else’s throat. She drifted through it all like a diver moving through silt, careful not to stir what slept.

A mind could turn its attention and feel the intrusion like a fingertip pressed to a bruise.

The prince’s dream was… polished.

Not clear—dreams were never clear—but curated. Like even his subconscious preferred to wear gloves.

She moved through whiteness—walls and corridors and archways that repeated in slow, impossible logic, turning back on themselves like a maze designed to make you doubt your own direction.

Citrus threaded the air—sharp and artificial, the scent of peels crushed to hide something older beneath.

And under all of it, faint as a hairline crack beneath paint—

Water.

Not the sound of it. The presence.

A pressure in the air, a dampness that had no source, the sense of a shoreline waiting just out of sight.

Her skin prickled.

She kept herself shallow. Surface-level..

Not plunging deep enough to pull images into focus—because focus meant friction, and friction meant being felt.

Still, impressions rose to meet her like bubbles from a drowning thing.

Chains.

Not seen, not yet—heard. A soft clink that slid along her bones. The kind of sound that promised restraint. The kind of sound that didn’t belong in anyone’s sleep unless they’d invited it.

A circle of voices existed somewhere nearby—not words, not fully, but cadence. Reverence. The murmur-prayer of people who wanted to be overheard by something that wasn’t a god, but would accept worship all the same.

She drifted toward it, careful, and the dream shifted as if the current changed.

The corridor widened.

Then narrowed.

Then vanished entirely.

And she was standing—not standing, hovering—at the edge of a lake that was too large to fit inside any mind, too black to be water, too still to be real.

It wasn’t a memory. It wasn’t a place.

It was a symbol a mind kept returning to, because it could not contain the real thing any other way.

The surface was dark glass. It held no reflection. It drank light. It drank sound.

And from it—rising in slow, patient silhouettes—came chain after chain, heavy links breaking the surface like ribs. They disappeared into the water again, tethered to something that did not rise.

The sky above it was wrong. Not night—absence. As if someone had scraped the stars away with a blade and left only an empty bruise of nothing.

She felt the prince at the edge of the lake not as a body, but as intent.

A presence that leaned forward with interest, not fear.

A soft satisfaction. A hungry patience.

And through the murmur of that unseen circle, a name moved, never fully spoken, never fully formed, as if the dream itself refused to give it shape.

But she tasted it anyway.

Old water.

Rust.

A smile behind a locked door.

Koschei.

The lake answered.

Not with sound.

With pressure, like something on the other side of the world pressing its palm against the inside of glass.

Her stomach went cold. Her pulse stumbled.

She held herself still, willing her presence to be no heavier than mist.

The chant—if it was a chant—shifted. The cadence turned, like a spell being angled toward a seam.

Words surfaced in her mind not as sentences, but as fragments that carried weight:

…not yet…

…the wards…

…irritating…

And then—

A laugh.

Low. pleased. Not loud enough to be a sound in a room—more like the feeling of someone smiling behind you.

The prince’s dream held it like a gem.

A phrase rose, clear enough to sting:

Open what is locked.

Her breath caught.

Her power flinched like a hound hearing its name.

She stayed shallow.

She forced herself to stay shallow.

Because the moment she latched onto meaning, she would sink.

And sinking meant the dream would wrap around her. It would notice her weight. It would feel her fingers on its ribs.

And then, as if the dream had leaned closer, as if the water beneath the chains had lifted its head—

A whisper slid through the black surface, not spoken by any mouth in the circle.

Not language. Not quite.

A thought that tasted like ancient water and iron.

Bring—

Her power recoiled.

She yanked herself backward on instinct, ripping her presence up through the current before the dream could turn and put a name to the disturbance. The marble corridors flashed—white on white on white—lanterns smearing into pale streaks, the lake stretching impossibly wide like a mouth opening—

And in the last heartbeat before she tore free, a sound hit her—sharp, clean, utterly certain:

Dreamwalker.

The word did not echo.

It hooked.

A soft, low laugh followed it, like something pleased to have remembered she existed.

She ripped herself out of the tide.

⸻

She woke with a gasp that scraped her throat raw.

The room was dark.

Her sheets twisted.

Her skin damp with sweat that felt too cold.

Her heart hammered like a fist against bone.

She sat up fast, pressing her palm to her sternum as if she could hold herself in place—anchor herself in flesh, in breath, in now.

For a moment she could still feel it: the current, the pull, the black silence that had pressed back against her mind like a palm against glass.

Dreamwalker.

The word did not fade the way dreams usually did. It kept its shape—sharp, hooked—echoing behind her eyes as if it had been carved there instead of heard.

The honey cake sat on the table.

Sweetness, in the middle of the night, like a cruel joke.

She stared at it until her vision swam.

She swallowed hard.

She closed her eyes and forced it steady.

This was why she’d invited them to stay.

This was why she’d smiled.

Because now she knew.

Montesere wasn’t courting her for an alliance.

They were trying to use her as a key.

⸻

Azriel is already moving when he realizes he isn’t awake.

The corridor keeps changing its mind, marble to damp stone to moonlit snow,each turn rewriting itself the moment his boot lands. His footsteps make no sound. Or too much sound. Or the wrong sound entirely, like the echo arrives before he does.

His shadows scrape the walls like fingernails, frantic in a way they never are when he’s conscious. They coil around his calves, surge ahead, recoil, surge again, hunting and hesitating, like they can scent something they’ve never learned to name.

There’s a door at the end of the hall.

There’s always a door.

He reaches for the handle and it’s cold enough to sting through leather. He yanks—

—nothing.

The door isn’t locked. The door is refusing.

Azriel bares his teeth at it, breath fogging the air that shouldn’t be cold and is. He digs in harder, shoulder braced, muscles straining against something that has no weight and infinite resistance, and his shadows flare, pushing—pressing—pulling—

A voice threads through the stone.

Not spoken aloud.

Remembered.

“Azriel.”

His spine goes rigid.

It isn’t a shout. It isn’t even a plea. It’s the way she says his name when she’s trying not to need anyone to answer.

The sound does something vicious to his ribs. Tightens. Twists. He turns sharply, scanning corridors that don’t want to be mapped.

“Where—” The word comes out ragged, too loud in a world that drinks sound. “Where are you?”

His voice lands and disappears, swallowed like it never existed.

But her voice—hers moves through this place like it belongs.

“Azriel,” she says again, closer this time. Not kinder. Just nearer. Like a candle being carried down a long tunnel, the light unseen but undeniable.

He follows it.

The corridor narrows until the walls nearly brush his shoulders. Torches bloom and die in their sconces as he passes, each flame flaring an unnatural blue before guttering out, leaving soot that looks like ink spilled by a shaking hand. The air tastes of citrus and iron. Of something too polished trying to hide something old.

The passage splits.

Left: marble gleaming too clean, veined with silver like a blade’s edge.

Right: stone wet with condensation, chains hammered into the walls like decorations.

His feet hesitate, one heartbeat too long.

His shadows choose for him—spilling right, tugging at him like impatient hands.

And the moment he commits, the left corridor collapses into nothing. Not crumbling. Vanishing. As if it was never an option at all.

His chest tightens.

He runs faster.

The walls begin to breathe. Not literally—yet he feels it: the subtle give and take, the pressure shifts, the way the air thickens as if it’s being exhaled by something vast and sleeping behind the stone. His shadows flatten, skimming low, wary. Every so often one darts forward and freezes, as if it’s touched a thought sharp enough to cut.

“Azriel,” her voice calls, and now it isn’t ahead.

It’s above.

He looks up.

The ceiling is gone.

He’s running under open night.

Except the night is wrong.

No stars. No moon. Just a sky scraped clean, a blackness so pure it feels deliberate—as if someone erased every point of light to leave him nothing to navigate by but her.

He keeps going because that’s what he does. He follows. He tracks. He finds.

He finds her.

He has to.

And then—

Her voice.

Right beside him.

Not ahead. Not distant.

At his ear.

“Azriel.”

He spins so fast it jolts his breath.

There’s nothing.

And yet—everything.

The scent of rain on stone. The warmth of a hand that never quite touches. The outline of her presence drawn in absence, close enough that his shadows surge toward it like they’ve been starved.

His throat works. He hates how it comes out, how naked it sounds.

“Where are you?” he whispers, suddenly terrified of how much it isn’t a question and how much it is a plea.

For a heartbeat, the air holds.

He thinks—ridiculously—that if he turns his head just right he’ll see her. That she’ll be there, solid and sharp-eyed and furious at him for intruding.

Instead, her voice comes again, softer now.

Ruined.

Certain.

“You’re too late.”

The words slide between his ribs and twist.

The dream fractures.

Marble flashes—damp stone—moonlit snow—chains—black water rising, rising—

He jerks awake with a violent gasp.

His shadows swarm the room, agitated, slamming into corners and recoiling as if the walls are suddenly too small.

Azriel clamps both hands to his head, fingers digging into his scalp as if he can hold his thoughts in place.

His breath comes fast. Ragged.

He stares at the ceiling, at nothing, at everything.

His hands don’t stop shaking.

“What in hell.”

A/N: in case u wonder where i am going with this story lol I HAVE A PLAN I PROMISE we are slowlyyy getting there, ty to u guys for sticking through this story and my slow updates 😅 ty for reading and commenting they make my day <3

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