Unraveling the Shadowsinger - Pt 15
Azriel x Reader
Part 14 / Masterlist
enemies to lovers / slow burn / banter / forced proximity
You had left Eris only minutes earlier, yet the conversation still clung unpleasantly to your skin no matter how hard you tried to outrun it. The corridors of the House had been quiet when you crossed them, wrapped in that strange late-night stillness that always seemed to settle over Velaris after snowfall, and you had clung to it desperately, convincing yourself that a hot bath, silence, and a few hours alone would be enough to stop your thoughts from devouring you whole.
You had almost managed to believe it.
Then something slammed hard enough into stone that the entire House shuddered beneath your feet.
For one disoriented heartbeat, your mind failed to place the sound. It had not been thunder. Not furniture overturning. Not one of Cassian’s usual disasters during training.
A second impact followed before the first had even fully faded, louder now, close enough that dust drifted faintly from the ceiling overhead, and somewhere beyond the walls a voice barked something sharp and furious.
Your stomach tightened instantly.
Another crash split through the night.
Cold flooded your body so quickly it almost hurt.
You were moving before you consciously realized you had turned around, your pulse beginning to pound harder and harder beneath your ribs as you hurried through the corridor, one hand braced against the wall when the House trembled again beneath another brutal impact. By the time you reached the entrance, your breathing had already gone uneven, dread creeping steadily higher with every step until it lodged somewhere near your throat and refused to move.
The cold outside struck all at once.
Snow whipped violently across the courtyard in sharp spirals, carried by winds that bit against your skin, but you barely felt them. Another explosion of sound tore through the training grounds ahead, followed immediately by the crack of splitting stone, and your gaze lifted instinctively toward the source.
At first all you could see were shadows.
Not ordinary shadows, not the quiet living things that usually curled lazily at Azriel’s shoulders, but something wild and vicious, thrashing violently through the darkness like they had slipped entirely beyond his control. They spread across the snow in writhing tendrils, swallowing the ground beneath them before fire suddenly burst through the night in a sweep of violent gold.
Your breath caught painfully in your throat.
Azriel had Eris pinned against the wall hard enough to fracture the stone behind him.
For one terrible moment, you could only stare.
You had seen Azriel angry before. You had seen him cold, merciless, terrifying in that quiet way he carried violence so naturally it almost became elegant.
This was different. There was nothing restrained about him now.
His shadows lashed around him so violently they seemed almost solid, snapping through the air as Eris drove an elbow hard into his ribs, flames erupting around his hands the second Azriel tightened his grip around his throat. The heat illuminated both their faces for one sharp, unbearable instant, and something inside you twisted painfully at the sight of Azriel’s expression.
Not rage.
Or rather—not only rage.
There was something unraveling beneath it, something raw enough to make your chest tighten.
“You miserable fucking coward,” Azriel snarled, shoving Eris back into the wall with enough force that another crack splintered through the stone.
Eris let out a breathless laugh despite the blood already staining the corner of his mouth. “Coward?” he spat. “That’s rich coming from you.”
“You hide behind your court, your title, your fucking father—”
“And you hide in shadows because you’re too afraid to stand in the light.”
Azriel hit him hard enough that stone cracked again.
Cassian swore somewhere behind them.
Azriel did not even seem to hear him.
Power crackled violently through the courtyard, shadows and flame colliding so brutally the air itself felt unstable.
“You think you're brave?” Eris shoved at him hard enough to break free for half a second before Azriel lunged again. “Listening outside doors like some lovesick fucking adolescent?”
Only for a second, but it was enough—enough for you to see it, enough for the truth to settle into you slowly and horribly as every piece of the evening rearranged itself inside your mind.
The proposal. The alliance. The future you had forced yourself to consider because it was safer than wanting things you could never truly have.
A strange ringing filled your ears.
You had not even realized you’d stepped closer until snow crunched faintly beneath your boots, but none of them looked toward you. Neither male noticed you standing there at the edge of the courtyard, half hidden by darkness, your body rigid with shock.
Eris noticed the shift in Azriel immediately.
Cruel understanding sharpened across his face as he straightened slowly, wiping blood from his mouth with the back of his hand while embers flickered low around his fingers.
“You should ask her,” he said quietly, and the words cut through the courtyard more effectively than shouting ever could, because Azriel went completely still the moment they landed. “She seemed tempted enough by the offer.”
The silence that followed was somehow worse than the fighting.
Your heart began pounding so hard it hurt.
Azriel’s shadows thickened instantly, darkness turning dense and suffocating around him as the temperature in the courtyard dropped with terrifying speed. Snow swirled violently around his feet, caught in the pulse of power that rolled off him, and when he looked at Eris again there was something so stripped bare in his expression that your breath caught painfully in your throat.
The kind that had nowhere to go except violence.
Then he moved, fast enough that you barely saw it happen.
Eris hit the opposite wall with a force brutal enough to crack stone again, flames exploding outward on instinct as Azriel drove into him with all the restraint of a collapsing storm. Shadows tore wildly through the courtyard now, writhing with such uncontrolled aggression that even Cassian hesitated before stepping forward again.
Did not even seem to hear him.
“You think she would ever want you?” Eris hissed, blood running down his chin now as flames burst violently around his hands. “A male who falls apart this easily?”
Azriel slammed him harder against the wall.
“She was looking for a way out,” Eris continued mercilessly. “And it certainly was not toward you.”
Fire burst between them again and Azriel recoiled instantly—not from the burn, but from something older, deeper, carved so violently into memory that his body reacted before his mind could. The hesitation lasted barely a heartbeat before rage swallowed it whole again, but you saw it.
Mother above, you saw it.
And suddenly your chest tightened for an entirely different reason.
Because this was not ordinary fear.
Every flare of flame made something tense violently in him before he crushed it back down again. His shoulders locked. His breathing changed. Even through the fury tearing through him, his body still reacted instinctively to the fire like it remembered pain too old and deep to ever fully leave him.
Recognition flickered across his bloodied face, sharp enough to make your stomach tighten.
“There it is,” he murmured softly. “Still afraid of fire.”
Something inside Azriel snapped.
The shadows around him exploded so violently that the snow lifted from the ground in spiraling waves as he launched at Eris again with enough force to drive them both through the ruined stone wall behind them.
“You think she’ll choose you?” Eris threw the words like a blade even as Azriel’s fist collided with his jaw. “You, of all people?”
Azriel hit him hard enough that blood splattered across the snow.
Rhys’s power slammed outward a second later, darkness exploding between them with enough force to finally tear the two males apart. Azriel staggered back several steps, chest heaving, shadows still writhing violently around him like living things trying to crawl out of his skin, while Eris remained braced against the ruined wall, bloodied and breathing hard.
For one terrible moment, nobody moved.
Then Azriel lifted his head.
You had thought nothing could feel worse than watching him lose control like this.
Because the second his eyes found yours, everything inside him seemed to fracture all over again.
The rage was still there. The jealousy too. The humiliation of it. The unbearable grief of hearing you consider a life that did not belong to him.
But beneath all of it was something infinitely more devastating: the horrifying realization that you had witnessed every part of it.
The courtyard fell into the kind of silence that only came after violence, when the echoes of it still lingered in the air long after the fighting itself had stopped. Snow drifted steadily around all of you, soft against the ruined stone and scattered ash, against the blood staining the ground in dark splashes where shadows and flame had collided moments earlier.
Rhys remained between them, power still humming faintly beneath the night like the aftermath of a storm, but even he looked tense now, watchful in the way one became around wounded animals that had not yet decided whether they were finished tearing themselves apart.
Azriel stood several feet away from Eris, chest rising unevenly beneath the black of his leathers, one hand flexing faintly at his side like he still physically felt the need to strike something. Blood ran from a split across his mouth, disappearing beneath his jaw before freezing against his skin, though you were no longer entirely sure whether it belonged to him or Eris anymore.
For the first time since you had arrived, he looked away from you.
But long enough for you to see the shame that crossed his face.
As though being seen like this—violent, furious, completely unraveled before you—was somehow worse than the fight itself.
Across from him, Eris looked little better.
His lower lip had split open entirely, crimson staining the pale gold of his skin while bruises had already begun darkening beneath one eye. One sleeve of his coat had burned away near the shoulder where Azriel’s shadows had collided with flame, leaving blackened fabric hanging loose against his arm.
And still, somehow, neither of them looked finished.
Because the second his gaze returned to you, that terrible rawness was still there beneath the rage.
Because suddenly, with horrifying clarity, you understood that this had never truly been about politics, Autumn, or even the proposal itself, but about the unbearable idea of losing you.
Cassian exhaled harshly somewhere beside Rhys, clearly trying to determine whether the situation had de-escalated enough to stop expecting another explosion of violence every few seconds.
“Az,” he said carefully, voice lower now. “Let it go.”
His shadows moved restlessly behind him, no longer lashing wildly through the courtyard but still unsettled, still sharp around the edges in a way that made the darkness itself feel tense.
Eris gave a soft, humorless laugh as he wiped blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. “I have to admit,” he drawled, breathing slightly unevenly now, “I didn’t realize the shadowsinger was quite this emotionally unstable.”
Cassian closed his eyes briefly. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
Rhys’s gaze snapped toward Eris instantly. “I would strongly advise you to stop talking.”
But Eris ignored him completely. His attention remained fixed on Azriel with the sharpness of someone who had already identified exactly where the wound was and had every intention of pressing harder against it.
“You nearly killed me over a conversation,” Eris continued coolly. “And here I thought you prided yourself on restraint.”
Azriel’s jaw tightened, his shoulders locking beneath the tension gathering through his body as the shadows behind him thickened instinctively, responding to emotions he was very clearly failing to contain.
Then Eris looked at you, and somehow that felt infinitely worse.
“Though perhaps I misjudged the situation,” he said, his voice deceptively calm now despite the blood staining it. “Maybe I should be flattered. She did seem willing enough to leave with me.”
Something in Azriel’s expression gave way then, quietly and with devastating subtlety, like the last remaining thread holding him together had finally been pulled too tight.
But Azriel was already moving.
You barely saw him cross the distance before he had Eris by the front of his coat again, slamming him backward hard enough that the damaged wall cracked further beneath the impact.
“Azriel—” Cassian started.
“Yes, keep talking,” Azriel snarled, the sound rough enough to scrape through the entire courtyard. “See what happens.”
Flames burst instantly around Eris’s hands on instinct, bright and vicious against the darkness curling from Azriel’s body, and you saw the exact moment Azriel reacted to the fire before he could stop himself. The flinch was small, almost imperceptible beneath the violence of the fight, but you caught it anyway—the brief tightening in his shoulders, the split second of hesitation that crossed his body before fury swallowed it whole again.
Something darkly satisfied flickered across the Autumn heir’s face, sharp and vicious enough to make your stomach twist.
“There it is,” he said softly, almost thoughtfully, flames curling lazily around his fingers now as though he had finally found the weapon he’d been searching for. “I was wondering when that would happen.”
Azriel drove him harder into the wall, the impact splintering stone as shadows exploded violently around them.
“Keep pushing me,” he snarled, “and see what’s left of you when I’m done.”
Eris only smiled, blood staining his teeth. “Does she know?” he asked quietly. “Or is this another thing you’ve buried so deep in the dark you pretend it no longer exists?”
Something dangerous shifted through Azriel’s expression.
“Say another word,” Azriel said quietly, shadows curling violently at his back, “and I’ll make you choke on every fucking one of them.”
Eris’s smile only sharpened as flames curled higher around his hands. “I’ve never seen you this out of control.”
The flames surged higher between them, bright and vicious against the darkness twisting from Azriel’s body, and you saw the exact moment his body betrayed him despite every effort to hide it. The reaction was small—a brief tightening through his shoulders, a split second of hesitation before fury swallowed it whole again—but it was enough.
Enough for you to notice.
Enough for Eris to notice too.
And the moment Eris realized it, something cold and satisfied flickered across his face, like he had finally found the exact fracture line capable of bringing Azriel to his knees.
The shadows exploded outward violently enough that snow lifted from the ground around them in sharp spirals.
Your voice cracked through the courtyard sharper than intended, panic finally breaking through the paralysis that had held you frozen until now.
The reaction was almost immediate the moment he heard your voice. Not calm—not fully—but enough. Enough that his grip loosened fractionally around Eris’s coat. Enough that the shadows tearing violently through the air slowed their frenzy.
His head turned toward you, breathing still ragged, blood still running from his mouth, and Gods—
the look in his eyes nearly undid you.
Because beneath the rage, beneath the jealousy and devastation and all that barely restrained fury, there had been fear all along—not of Eris, not of the fight, but of losing you.
“Please,” you said again, breath uneven now. “Just stop.”
For one fragile moment, you thought he would.
You watched the fight begin draining slowly from his body, watched his shadows settle by mere fractions as he stared at you like he was trying desperately to remember how to breathe.
Eris watched Azriel with open fascination, the way one might study a male walking willingly toward his own execution.
And then, very softly, he smiled.
It was not a pleasant expression.
“Cauldron,” he murmured, glancing briefly toward you before returning his attention to Azriel. “She really doesn’t know.”
Every part of Azriel went rigid.
Cassian frowned immediately. Rhys’s head snapped toward Eris with a sharpness that made the temperature in the courtyard seem to drop another degree, but Eris only continued watching Azriel with that same terrible calm.
“You should tell her,” he said mildly. “Watching you destroy yourself while she stands there completely unaware is becoming painful even for me.”
The word left Azriel low enough to scrape across your skin.
You looked between them, confusion twisting tighter inside your chest. “Know what?”
Azriel’s shadows had gone unnaturally still behind him, every trace of movement suddenly restrained with brutal force, like he was holding them back through sheer will alone.
Eris’s gaze flickered toward you then, thoughtful now, almost pitying, before returning lazily to Azriel, and slowly, deliberately, a smirk spread across his bloodied face.
“She was going to say yes, you know.”
Azriel went completely motionless.
“That’s not true,” you snapped immediately.
But Eris continued anyway, his gaze never leaving Azriel’s face.
“She was thinking about marrying me,” he said softly. “About leaving with me willingly.”
You saw the exact moment something inside Azriel broke apart again, like the final restraint holding him together had finally collapsed beneath the weight of it.
Shadows exploded through the courtyard.
Flames erupted upward from Eris in answer.
And then both males crashed into each other again at once.
Power collided so violently the ground beneath your feet trembled. Azriel’s shadows tore through the air like living things while fire erupted against them in brutal bursts of gold and amber, heat and darkness colliding hard enough that the entire courtyard vanished behind smoke and power and snow.
“Stop!” you shouted again, your voice nearly lost beneath the violent collision of shadows and flame.
Neither of them heard you.
Or perhaps they no longer could.
Because this had stopped feeling like a fight several moments ago. It felt like watching two males tear themselves apart with every ounce of rage, grief, and jealousy they no longer knew how to contain.
Fear hit you so suddenly it hurt.
For the way his power had become completely unstable. For the fire still forcing instinctive flinches from him every time it came too close. For the horrifying realization that he was no longer fighting Eris because of pride or politics or territorial anger—
he was fighting like someone whose entire world had just cracked open.
And something inside you reacted.
The panic. The desperation. The unbearable need for it to stop.
It tore through your body so suddenly that, for one suspended instant, you thought something inside your chest had split open.
Then the courtyard answered.
Light burst from beneath your skin in a violent wave, not shining outward so much as swallowing everything it touched. The collision of shadows and flame vanished instantly, ripped out of existence so abruptly that the entire courtyard fell into a stunned, unnatural stillness.
Eris’s fire disappeared first.
One moment flames were raging around his hands, violent and golden against the snow, and the next there was nothing at all, the embers extinguished so completely it felt as though fire itself had ceased to exist.
Azriel’s shadows reacted a heartbeat later.
They recoiled violently, writhing through the air as if trying to escape whatever had awakened inside you before they too vanished entirely, dissolving into nothing beneath the force of your power.
Rhys cursed under his breath.
His power rose instinctively, dark and immense as it swept toward yours in an attempt to contain it, but the moment it touched the light spilling from your body, it shattered apart into mist.
Cassian staggered backward, wings flaring wide to steady himself as the siphons across the courtyard dimmed one by one, every trace of magic in reach collapsing beneath the weight of yours.
No High Lord power humming through the night.
The kind that felt wrong.
Across the courtyard, Eris stared openly at his empty hands, disbelief flickering across his bloodied face as though he could not comprehend the absence where his magic should have been.
Because the shadows that had followed him for centuries, the living darkness that had never once truly abandoned him, were simply… gone.
For once, both males remained exactly where they were, as though neither of them remembered how to move beneath the weight of what had just happened.
Your magic held the entire courtyard in a terrible, breathless stillness, pressing down over every living thing around you with quiet, absolute authority, and you realized with a sickening twist that it was not merely stopping the fight.
It was commanding power itself to cease.
Light crawled over your arms in sharp fractures, spreading beneath your skin like veins of molten starlight, while the frozen stone beneath your feet split wider and wider beneath the pressure of whatever had awakened inside you.
And the fear that crossed his face then had nothing to do with Eris anymore.
The word left him raw, stripped of everything but terror.
Because he remembered the ring. Remembered the way your power had torn through you before. Remembered what it had cost.
And despite everything—despite the blood and rage and devastation still staining the courtyard—he still took a half-step toward you instinctively before stopping himself, like every part of him wanted to reach for you while another part feared what touching you now might do.
You tried to breathe, tried to pull the magic back, but it did not listen.
It kept pressing outward over the courtyard with terrifying, absolute authority, holding every living thing beneath its weight. Fire remained extinguished. Shadows refused to return. Even Rhys’s power had vanished entirely beneath yours, leaving behind a silence so unnatural it made your skin crawl.
Even the wind seemed hesitant to disturb the wreckage surrounding you.
Snow drifted softly through the silence while shattered stone and extinguished embers lay scattered across the courtyard, and somewhere in the distance the Sidra continued flowing through Velaris completely unaware that your entire world had just cracked open.
Breathing hard now, your body trembling violently beneath the aftermath of the power still crackling faintly beneath your skin, you looked between the two males standing across from one another—both bloodied, both wrecked, both staring at you like they no longer knew what to say.
And suddenly exhaustion hit harder than anger.
“You are two fucking idiots,” you whispered hoarsely.
Neither of them answered, and for once, you were grateful for the silence, because if either of them spoke right now, you thought you might genuinely lose your mind.
“You,” you said, turning toward Eris first, “need to stop treating people’s feelings like some twisted game.”
For once, Eris actually looked mildly ashamed.
Then you looked at Azriel, and somehow that was infinitely worse.
Because beneath the blood and fury still clinging to him, he looked terrified—not of himself, not of what he had done, but of you and whatever had just awakened inside you.
Blood streaked down his face, dark against the cold night, and without his shadows surrounding him, he somehow looked even more exposed than before, stripped bare in a way that made something painful tighten sharply in your chest.
And the look written across his face—Mother above, the sheer anguish of it—almost destroyed your resolve entirely.
“You,” you said more quietly now, your throat painfully tight, “cannot keep reacting like this every time something hurts you.”
Azriel opened his mouth as though to say something, then stopped himself just as quickly, his jaw tightening as silence settled heavily between you once more.
You thought, for one terrible moment, that he might actually try to come closer.
His body shifted slightly, almost imperceptibly, before stopping again the moment his gaze flickered toward the fading traces of light still trembling across your skin.
That hurt more than it should have.
“I can’t do this right now,” you whispered.
Your voice sounded exhausted.
And this time, nobody tried to stop you when you turned away.
The only sound behind you as you walked back toward the House was the soft crunch of snow beneath your boots, the wind threading through shattered stone, and the terrible silence of two bloodied males left standing motionless in the cold.
Then, somewhere behind you, something hit the ground hard enough to echo faintly through the ruined courtyard.
But deep down, you knew exactly which of them had finally dropped to his knees.
A/n : i have been DREAMING about a fight between Az and Erus (sue me). This part was supposed to in the previous chapter, but the scene itself was so special, it deserved it own chapter 💙
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