This is getting added to my Drabbles with Friends collection on AO3, but this is about twice as long as a drabble should have been. I just have no self-control.
This prompt came from @booknerd87, who requested feral Az/mortal peril Gwyn, fighting during an attack on the library.
Read on AO3
Gwyn’s arms felt wobbly as noodles, the daggers like leaden weights in her hands. But she couldn’t stop, not even as her breaths became more labored and she found herself growing more and more sluggish. She had to persevere, there were no other options. Ananke and Roslin and Dierdre were with her, sisters in arms, and she’d calmly directed some of the novices to escort the rest of the priestesses out and up toward the House. The House was warded. They would be safe. But she remained, to head off this new, unknown threat and to buy them time. Her lungs heaved as she spun away from another blade held at the end of an armored arm.
The attack on the sanctuary reeked of Koschei. As did… whatever these creatures were. They appeared as men - or males - but their skin was a sickening gray that even the golden torchlight could not warm. They were killable, but not wholly alive. Luckily, it appeared that a blade to the heart or the base of the skull - or removing the head entirely - would still render them lifeless.
But there had been so many, and they just kept coming. She was tiring, and she knew the others were, as well. Gwyn had warned everyone to conserve their strength as much as they could, but there was only so much that could be done when fighting for your life, and the lives of the people you’d sworn to protect.
Time… they just needed a little more time. Surely the alarm had sounded almost immediately. Surely the High Lord and Lady, the General, the Spymaster, the Morrigan… surely they would be here any second. Surely–
Ice and fire exploded in her thigh, and she fell to the cold stone floor with a cry. Heart pounding, the agony seeping into her soul, she looked down to her leg. The hilt of a dagger protruded, the blade sunk deep into flesh. It was not a killing blow on its own. Not for fae. But she’d been training for well over a year, now, and she knew that the wound would likely cost her life. She was now immobile, and would only be a distraction to her fellow Valkyries. With grim acceptance, she took a shuddering breath.
“Fall back!” she called, beckoning as well as she could toward the ramp that would lead up into the library. “Help should be here soon, but you’ll have a better chance if you retreat to the upper levels and regroup.” It was Roslin whose eyes flashed her way first, briefly assessing the situation.
“Ananke, break away and grab Gwyn. We’ll hold–”
“No,” the copper-haired Valkyrie cut her off, pressure building behind her eyes. “You all have to go. Now. It’s not worth you getting killed just for the chance to save me.” Gods this was harder than she thought, her hope dimming with each backward step her warrior sisters were forced to take. A sob caught in her throat, and out of her corner of her eye she saw a figure shambling toward her, sword raised. “Tell Azriel that I’m sorry. That I wish–”
There was a deafening roar, a fierce pull against her heart.
And then everything was a rush of screams and terror and blackness.
Azriel had winnowed into the sky above the house as soon as he’d received word from Rhys.
The library has been infiltrated. I just received word.
The spymaster hadn’t needed more than that, immediately stepping into his shadows and reappearing above the training ring. Priestesses had already emerged from below, a few of whom he recognized from their daily instruction. One of the females, a petite brunette with golden skin, seemed to be waving the rest of them forward, trying to create space as the robed women filed up the stairs. She didn’t wait for him to ask.
“I don’t know who it is, but they were armed and there were a lot of them. Gwyn told us to bring the priestesses this way.”
There wasn’t any more he needed to hear, his heart hammering as he pushed his way past the line of powder blue and white robes, trying his best to be gentle and patient. All the while schooling his features in an attempt to hide his feral desperation to find her.
Of course her first thought was to send as many as she could to safety. It was exactly what she had done on that night a few years ago. Once again, her sanctuary had been invaded. Once again she was in danger. Once again he wasn’t there to protect her.
His chest rumbled, though he was miraculously able to keep his snarl from echoing down the hall. When he finally reached the library there was room to breathe, room to run. He sprinted past Clotho’s empty desk, his attention called to the pit.
One agonized scream, and his entire body buckled. It was her. Gwyn. Gwyn was hurt.
Hang on. Just hang on, Berdara.
Azriel was almost to the railing, the sound of frantic voices and clashing steel growing louder, a cacophony that overwhelmed all logic. The only thing that mattered was getting to her. Skidding to a stop at the railing he gazed down. Cauldron, there were so many bodies, but none of them belonged to the female warriors, and the shadowsinger felt a twinge of pride at that. But Gwyn wasn’t one of the women being backed toward the ramp, and his shadows writhed around him as her voice rose from the darkness below. She was on the ground, nearly on the other side of the circle, her leg drenched in blood.
“No. You all have to go. Now. It’s not worth you getting killed just for the chance to save me.” Movement caught his eye, and he saw the form moving in on the Carynthian, preparing to strike. His eyes widened in horror, and he flung himself over the edge. “Tell Azriel that I’m sorry. That I wish–” The spymaster’s roar drowned out any remaining sound as he plummeted to the ground, his shadows thickening and multiplying until the bottom level was consumed in inky darkness. He felt the killing power crackling around him, noted absently the way it flashed like cobalt lightning. But there was nothing in him except for feral rage that anyone would dare touch her, hurt her. Gods, had he been only a moment later she would be dead. And every drop of power within him viscerally rebuked the notion. Azriel was here, now, and he would slaughter these invaders in a matter of moments.
There was nothing. No sound. No light. Nothing but his lungs sucking in air and the feel of oily blood splattered across his skin. The shadowsinger had made short work of the remaining soldiers, but for the life of him he couldn’t recall how long he’d been standing there. Muscles tense and twitching, waiting for more violence. Begging for it. Desperate to tear something apart, knowing that his Valkyrie had been–
“Gwyn,” he breathed, her name bringing everything back into focus. His shadows dispersed, thin wisps falling over his shoulders as he turned and fell to his knees next to the priestess on the ground. His hands found her face, cupping it as he stared into her blazing teal eyes. “Fuck, Gwyn.” Somehow his mind remembered her injury, even as he pulled her into his arms and pressed his mouth to her hair. So close. She’d been so close to death. Again. And he couldn’t let her go. He had to remind himself that she was still there, still whole in his embrace. His eyes stung and his heart lurched, the truth of his panic lancing him through the chest.
So he held her, clutching the Valkyrie against his chest, letting his heartbeat calm and fall in rhythm with hers. Silent and comfortable, just two people who had just been faced with mortality.
“I was going to say that I wish we had more time.” Gwyn’s voice was quiet. Delicate. So brittle he thought it might break. Somehow, once those words seeped into his blood, his soul, his whole body relaxed. He’d never spoken his feelings for her aloud, and yet here was his answer nonetheless.
Dipping his chin, he kissed her temple tenderly, his hands splaying wide across her back.
“We have it now, Gwyneth. And I have no intention of wasting another moment.”
Ah yes, my favorite part of editing: the existential dread that no matter how many happy to glads changes you do, the inherent body is flawed and irreparable and the only thing to do is toss the whole thing out.
I’ve come to a conclusion that I need to write less. Like... I keep trying to tell too much of any given story and I really don’t need to provide so many transitions. Stick to plot points, Shan. STICK TO PLOT POINTS!
And my first order of business is name changing because when I started this the first time everything was really fantasy name based but it grew to be less fantasy.
I just need a good surname for a cartographer hhhhh-
i love ao3 but why do they always describe the characters as their ethnicity. like 'the australian did this' or 'the brit washed his hands' or 'the russian wrote something down'
