Content Note: This story explores themes of feeling like an outsider, believing you are unworthy of love, and learning to accept support from others. It contains emotionally heavy scenes involving grief and trauma, but ultimately centers on healing, found family, and hope.
Azriel had spent most of his life mastering the art of disappearing.
It had been necessary. Shadows were easier to trust than people. Silence was safer than honesty. He had learned at a young age that the less of himself he gave away, the less there was for someone else to take.
It was a habit so deeply ingrained that he often did not notice he was doing it.
Until her.
Because after the night at Rita’s, Azriel found that he could no longer look away.
Everyone else seemed to accept that things had returned to normal.
And perhaps, for them, they had.
The morning after, she had woken with a headache and embarrassment burning hotter than any fae wine could have caused. She had apologized to him, quietly, as though he had been inconvenienced by having to catch her.
Azriel had hated that more than anything.
Not the apology itself.
The reason behind it.
She looked at him like she had done something wrong by needing someone.
Like she had taken something from him by allowing him to see her at her lowest.
He knew that feeling. Gods, he knew it.
So he had done the only thing he knew how to do.
He stayed.
Not hovering or watching her like she might break.
Just...staying.
The first time he sought her out, everyone noticed.
Azriel was not unaware of how unusual that was.
He knew exactly how much time he typically spent in silence. He knew that the Inner Circle had grown accustomed to his presence being felt more than heard. He was the shadow in the corner, the quiet male who listened while everyone else spoke.
He had always been comfortable with that.
Until now.
Three mornings after Rita’s, he found her sitting alone at the breakfast table, picking absently at a piece of fruit while the others argued about some ridiculous thing Cassian had done the night before.
Azriel pulled out the chair across from her and sat.
She looked up immediately.
Not because his presence was unwelcome.
Because it was unexpected.
"Good morning," he said. Her brows lifted slightly. "Good morning."
A pause stretched between them.
Azriel realized, with a level of irritation usually reserved for enemies who proved unexpectedly difficult, that he had not considered what came after the greeting.
He was very good at questioning people. Interrogating people. Reading people. Having a normal conversation?
Apparently not.
"How did you sleep?" he asked.
The surprise on her face almost made him regret asking.
Almost.
"I slept well," she answered slowly. "Thank you."
He nodded.
"Good."
Another silence.
Across the table, Cassian stopped mid-sentence.
Mor stared openly.
Feyre looked like she was fighting a smile.
Even Nesta, who had mastered the art of pretending not to care about anything, glanced between them.
Azriel ignored them.
She, unfortunately, noticed.
"Is something wrong?"
"No."
Her eyes flickered toward the others.
"Everyone is staring."
"They do that."
"Why?"
Azriel considered several responses.
Most of them involved admitting that the Inner Circle found his sudden attempt at friendship deeply suspicious.
Instead, he said, "I rarely talk during breakfast."
Cassian immediately snorted.
"That is the understatement of the century."
Azriel looked over.
Cassian grinned.
"What? I'm just saying. We should mark the occasion. Should we also prepare for the apocalypse?"
Despite himself, Azriel felt the corner of his mouth twitch.
And then she laughed.
Softly.
Genuinely.
The sound caught him off guard.
Not because he had never heard her laugh before.
Because he realized he had spent the last three weeks waiting to hear one that did not sound like an apology.
After that, Azriel made an effort.
The word itself felt strange.
Effort.
As though something as simple as talking to someone should not require strategy. But for him, it did.
He had spent centuries learning how to move unseen. How to enter rooms without being noticed. How to disappear into shadows until no one remembered he was there.
Being present was an entirely different skill, so he practiced. He asked her questions.
Not the kind he asked as a spymaster. Not the careful questions designed to uncover secrets. Real ones.
What books she liked.
What foods she missed from the human lands.
What places in Velaris she had not seen yet.
At first, she seemed convinced he was simply being polite. Azriel quickly realized she did not understand what it meant when someone genuinely wanted to know her.
That realization bothered him more than he expected.
A week later, he found her in the library. He had not intended to seek her out. That was the lie he told himself.
His shadows had led him there before he had consciously decided where to go.
She looked up from her book when he entered.
"Are you looking for something?"
Azriel glanced around.
"No."
Her eyes narrowed slightly.
"Then why are you here?"
He looked at the chair beside her.
"To read."
She stared.
"Here?"
"Yes."
"With me?"
"Yes."
The smallest smile tugged at her lips.
"You know, most people announce when they are trying to become friends."
Azriel paused.
"Do they?"
She laughed softly.
"Usually."
"That seems unnecessary."
"Why?"
"Because I'm here."
And somehow, that answer made her smile more.
He brought her things after that.
Never anything extravagant.
Azriel knew better.
She would have been uncomfortable with anything that felt like a debt.
So he brought her small things.
A pressed flower from a mountain trail because she had once mentioned missing springtime in the human lands.
A book from a merchant's stall because he remembered her asking about it.
A small carved wooden bird because she had spent ten minutes admiring similar ones at a market.
Every time, she looked at him with the same expression.
Confusion.
Like she could not understand why someone would think of her when she was not there.
One evening, after he handed her a small bundle of wildflowers, she asked quietly, "Why do you do this?"
Azriel looked at the flowers.
"Do what?"
"Notice."
The answer came before he could stop it.
"Because no one should have to wonder if they matter."
The silence afterward was too heavy.
So he pretended to examine the flowers.
And she pretended she had not heard the truth hidden in his words.
The breaking point happened when Azriel decided she was ready to train.
Not because he thought she was weak.
That had never once been the way he saw her.
If anything, he thought she was one of the strongest people he had ever met.
Strength, Azriel had learned over the centuries, was not always found in warriors holding blades or wielding power capable of bringing mountains to their knees. It was not always found in magic or immortality or the ability to destroy.
Sometimes strength was quieter.
Sometimes it was waking up after the world had taken everything from you and still choosing to be kind. Sometimes it was carrying grief so heavy that it should have crushed you, and somehow finding the courage to keep moving anyway.
That was the strength he saw in her.
The problem was that she could not see it herself.
She saw only what she lacked.
And Azriel had noticed it more and more in the weeks since Rita’s.
The way her eyes lingered whenever Feyre and Rhys spoke about their bond. The way she smiled when Cassian and Nesta argued over something ridiculous, but something in her expression always softened into something quieter afterward. The way she became still whenever conversations turned toward mates, toward family, toward the things that seemed to come so naturally to everyone around her.
Everyone had something.
Everyone belonged to someone.
Everyone had a place in this world.
Except her.
She had been pulled from one life and thrown into another. A world of magic and immortals and ancient histories that existed long before she ever knew they were real. Everyone around her carried centuries of memories, of battles, of love, of loss.
They had families that stretched beyond blood.
They had magic woven into their very bones.
They had mates, rare and impossible and not guaranteed, but still a possibility that existed somewhere in this world.
A promise that the universe might have already written someone for them.
And she had nothing.
Not truly.
She had the people who loved her. She knew that. She did. Feyre, Nesta, Elain, the entire Inner Circle had opened their home to her when they had no reason to.
But some part of her still felt like a guest.
Like someone who had wandered into a story that was never meant to include her.
Azriel understood that feeling.
Not in the same way.
Never in the same way.
But he understood what it meant to stand among people who seemed to belong somewhere while wondering why you had always felt slightly outside of it.
Perhaps that was why he had started showing up.
Perhaps that was why he had started talking.
Because Azriel knew what it was like to convince yourself that being different meant being unwanted.
Training had started as something simple.
A way for her to protect herself.
A way for her to build confidence.
A way to remind her that being human did not mean being helpless.
At least, that was what Azriel told himself.
Cassian had been far less subtle.
"You are teaching her because you are worried about her," he had said one morning.
Azriel had looked up from sharpening his blade.
"I am teaching her because she should know how to defend herself."
Cassian's grin had widened.
"That was a very long way of saying yes."
Azriel had ignored him.
Cassian had laughed.
The first few lessons had been difficult.
Not because she lacked determination.
That was the one thing Azriel never questioned.
She showed up every morning despite bruises and frustration. She practiced until her muscles trembled. She listened. She learned. She complained often enough that Azriel began to suspect she had discovered sarcasm as a second form of exercise.
"You know," she said one afternoon after another failed attempt to disarm him, lowering her dagger as she caught her breath, "for someone who barely speaks, you certainly enjoy saying one particular word."
Azriel tilted his head.
"Again."
She stared at him.
"Exactly."
A laugh sounded from the edge of the training ring.
Cassian.
"Gods, I like her."
Azriel glanced over.
"You liked her before."
"Yes, but before she was polite. Now she threatens you. That's growth."
She pointed her dagger at Cassian.
"I am considering making you my first victim."
Cassian's grin widened.
"See? Progress."
Azriel tried not to smile.
Tried.
He failed.
Her eyes immediately narrowed.
"Was that a smile?"
"No."
"It was."
"It wasn't."
Cassian sat up straighter.
"Did everyone see that?"
Nesta, who had been reading nearby, did not bother looking up.
"I saw nothing."
"Azriel smiled."
"I said I saw nothing."
And despite himself, despite every instinct that told him to retreat back into silence, Azriel found himself enjoying it.
The teasing.
The laughter.
The way she looked at him like he was not something frightening or distant.
Just Azriel.
For a while, it worked.
She improved.
Slowly, painfully, but she improved.
And Azriel found himself looking forward to those moments more than he should have.
The conversations before training.
The way she would arrive with tea and immediately tell him something Mor had done that morning. The way she had started teasing him instead of apologizing every time she spoke. The way she no longer looked surprised when he sought her out.
He had spent centuries being the person people needed when something went wrong.
The weapon.
The shadow.
The male sent into the darkness.
He was not accustomed to being someone people simply wanted around.
And perhaps that was why he noticed when she began to pull away again.
It happened after a training session where she had spent nearly an hour trying to disarm him.
She had improved.
Azriel knew she had.
But she did not.
All she saw was the moment he twisted the dagger from her hand.
The weapon landed in the dirt.
And she went still.
Azriel lowered his own blade immediately.
"Y/n."
She shook her head.
"No."
The word was quiet.
Not angry.
Not yet.
Just exhausted.
"I can't do this."
Azriel studied her carefully.
"You can."
Her laugh was bitter.
"You always say that."
"Because it's true."
"No."
She looked around the training ring.
At the weapons.
At the warriors.
At the world that seemed to have been built for everyone except her.
"No, it isn't."
Azriel remained silent.
Because this was not about the dagger.
It had never been about the dagger.
"I am never going to be like you."
His expression softened.
"You're not supposed to be."
The words only seemed to hurt her more.
"Then what am I supposed to be?"
The question hung between them.
And Azriel hated that he did not have an answer that could erase it.
"I don't know how to belong here," she whispered.
Her voice cracked.
"I don't mean Velaris. I don't mean the Night Court."
She looked at him.
"I mean this entire world."
The honesty of it cut deeper than anger would have.
"I was brought into a place where everyone has something I don't."
Her fingers curled at her sides.
"You all have magic. You all have centuries of memories and stories and people who have known you your whole lives. You have families. You have bonds that existed before you even met."
Her voice grew quieter.
"And some of you have mates."
Azriel went still. There it was. The wound beneath everything else.
Not the lack of power. Not the lack of training.
The fear that she had been created without a place waiting for her.
"What if there isn't anyone for me?"
The question was barely audible.
"What if there is no one waiting for me?"
Azriel felt something ache inside his chest.
Because she was not asking about romance.
She was asking whether she mattered.
Whether the universe had ever intended for her to belong anywhere.
Azriel stepped closer.
Slowly. Carefully.
This was not something he could fix with a simple reassurance. She had spent years building walls around this pain. He knew better than anyone that walls were not built without reason.
"I know what that feels like."
Her eyes lifted to his. Surprise flickered across her face.
Not because she believed him, but because she had never expected him to say it.
"I know what it feels like to look around a room full of people and wonder why you are the one person who does not fit."
The words were quiet. Azriel rarely spoke about himself.
He could speak of missions. Enemies. Strategies. Anything that kept the focus away from him.
But this?
This was different.
"I have wondered the same thing."
Her expression softened.
"About what?"
His jaw tightened slightly.
"About whether there was a place for me."
The admission seemed to weigh more because it came from him.
"I spent a large part of my life feeling like I was something apart from everyone else. Like I belonged everywhere and nowhere at the same time."
His shadows curled faintly around his feet.
"I was born Illyrian, but I was never enough for some. I have spent centuries surrounded by people who love me, people who would fight beside me without hesitation, and still there have been moments where I wondered why I was always the one standing just outside the circle."
Her eyes filled.
Because perhaps she had never considered that.
That even someone like Azriel could feel alone.
"Not in the same way," he said quietly. "I would never pretend that I understand everything you have lost. I don't."
He held her gaze.
"But I understand the feeling of believing there is something about you that makes you impossible to choose."
That was the truth. She knew it.
She had seen it in him long before he ever admitted it.
Azriel swallowed.
"So when you tell me you think there is no place for you here, I believe you when you say it feels that way."
A tear slipped down her cheek.
"But I also know that feeling is lying to you."
She looked away.
"How do you know?"
His voice softened.
"It lied to me too."
The silence that followed was heavy.
Then Azriel stepped closer.
"Give it to me."
Her brows pulled together.
"What?"
"The anger. The hurt. The fear."
His voice remained steady.
"Everything you have been carrying because you think you have to carry it alone."
Her breath caught.
"Azriel..."
"Give it to me."
Her eyes filled.
"I can't."
"Why?"
"Because you'll see me differently."
Something in his expression broke.
Not anger. Not frustration.
Pain.
"Y/n."
He shook his head slightly.
"I have spent my life seeing the parts of people they try hardest to hide and I have never once looked at someone in pain and thought they were less worthy because of it."
Another step.
"I can take it."
And somehow, those four words were what finally broke her.
Not because they fixed anything. They didn't.
He wasn't telling her the pain didn't matter. He wasn't telling her she should stop hurting. He was simply telling her she didn't have to hurt alone.
The tears came all at once.
Years of loneliness. Years of feeling like an outsider. Years of wondering if she had been forgotten by the very universe that created everyone else with a place to belong.
She broke and Azriel caught her.
This time, she did not apologize. She did not pull away.
She simply let herself be held.
Her hands curled into the back of his leathers, her tears soaking through the fabric as every piece of herself she had tried so desperately to keep together finally fell apart.
"I am so tired," she whispered.
Azriel closed his eyes.
"I know."
"I don't want to be strong anymore."
His arms tightened around her.
"Then don't."
And for the first time in a very long time, she believed someone when they said they would stay.
A/N: Hey guys, it's been a while. I've been trying to write for a months and just didn't feel like there was anything of substance happening. I still am not sure how I feel about this, but I really wanted to give this story a part 2. Let me know what you think! :)
I think there is a strange kind of loneliness that comes with being 27.
Not the kind where you have no one. I have people I love. I have people who make me laugh, people whose happiness I genuinely celebrate. But there is a different kind of loneliness that comes from feeling like you have never truly been chosen.
The kind of love where someone looks at you, all of you, your flaws, your fears, your insecurities, the parts of yourself you wish you could hide, and still thinks, I want you.
Lately, it feels like everyone around me is stepping into a new chapter while I’m still standing at the beginning of mine.
My days are filled with engagement announcements, wedding photos, baby showers, and glimpses of futures being built by people I care about. And I really am happy for them. I love seeing people find their person. I love seeing people create the lives they’ve dreamed of.
But sometimes, underneath that happiness, there is a quiet ache.
A little voice that asks, “What about me?”
I think the hardest part isn’t just being single. It’s wondering why. Wondering if there is something about me that everyone else can see but I can’t. Some flaw I haven’t found yet. Some reason love seems to find its way to everyone else but keeps passing me by.
I know that isn’t the truth. I know my worth isn’t determined by whether or not someone chooses me. I know love doesn’t have a deadline, and I know 27 is still so young.
But sometimes knowing something and feeling it are two completely different things.
Maybe this season isn’t about being left behind. Maybe it’s about becoming. Maybe this is the part of my story where I learn who I am, build a life I’m proud of, and trust that the things meant for me won’t pass me by.
I don’t know when my story will change. I don’t know when I’ll meet the person who makes me understand why it took so long.
But I want to believe that someday I’ll look back at this version of myself, the one who wondered if she was too hard to love, and feel nothing but compassion for her.
So, to anyone who has been where I am now…did you find your person after 27? Did love find you when you had started to wonder if it ever would?
I’d love to hear the stories that remind me that sometimes the best chapters come after the waiting.
Warnings: SMUT, mdni, 18+ ONLY, NSFW, CNC
Summary: Your mate has been working so much lately that the distance leaves you restless and needy, so you decide to take matters into your own hands late one night.
A/N: Inspired by these gifs that I have not been able to stop thinking about.
You couldn't sleep. You had been tossing and turning, staring out the window for what felt like hours now.
The hazy effects of the wine you’d had at dinner had long since faded, leaving only a restless energy beneath your skin.
Well, restless and horny.
Your mate had worked you up all evening without even realizing it. The soft, absentminded caresses of your back and shoulders whenever he passed behind your chair. The gentle way he would rest his hand on your thigh beneath the table, giving it a lazy squeeze every so often.
His sweet kisses pressed to your temple. His genuine attentiveness—always making sure you were comfortable, that your wine glass stayed full, knowing precisely when to switch it for water before you’d had too much. Keeping your plate filled with all the little things he knew you loved most.
He was just so perfect. And you loved him so much.
You had loved Azriel long before either of you knew what the bond between you truly was.
You’d met before Rhys went Under the Mountain, when Azriel had been sent on some mission to the Summer Court, your home. You had been visiting a friend near the palace when someone barreled into you from behind hard enough to send you sprawling. You’d landed badly on your arm, the sharp pain immediate and blinding.
The poor male had looked stricken. Truly horrified. He had insisted on escorting you all the way to the healer’s cottage himself, hovering like a silent shadow the entire time, refusing to leave until the healer declared the break clean and easily mended.
Taking pity on the beautiful, guilt-ridden stranger, you’d informed him the only proper way to make amends for breaking your arm was to have dinner with you and your family.
Reluctantly, and with a suspicious narrowing of those hazel eyes, he’d agreed.
Eventually, friendship blossomed where neither of you expected it to. Azriel began finding reasons to return to the Summer Court. Then reasons for you to visit Velaris. Rhys and Cassian quickly became like brothers to you, welcoming you into their circle as if you had always belonged there. Azriel never once asked Rhys for special favors, but Rhys had always suspected something deeper lingered between you long before either of you were ready to see it.
It was after Rhys was trapped Under the Mountain that the bond finally snapped into place.
In the midst of fear, grief, and helpless waiting, you and Azriel found solace in one another. Pain forged what fate had already begun, tempering it into something unbreakable.
And maybe it was because he was grieving. Maybe because the walls he’d built around himself were too exhausted to stand. But for the first time, Azriel truly let you close.
He let you love the parts of him no one else saw. The quiet, gentle pieces hidden beneath the deadly reputation of the Night Court’s spymaster. The tenderness in him. The softness. The sensitivity he guarded more fiercely than any secret.
You loved all of him equally.
Azriel adored you just as deeply. The newness of being mates had never worn away, even after all these years. You were still just as enamored with each other as you’d always been. He was your best friend, your better half, everything you could have ever asked for.
But gods, did he keep you worked up.
The intimacy between you had never been anything less than devastatingly perfect. Equal parts worship and ruin.
You rolled onto your side and looked at him now as he slept peacefully beside you. Thick dark lashes brushed against his cheeks. His full lips were slightly parted, his handsome face stripped of its usual tension and vigilance. He looked younger when he slept. Softer.
Your mate was so unfairly pretty.
You loved looking at him—always, if you were honest. But especially like this, when he was asleep and couldn’t tease you relentlessly for staring. Though, truthfully, you quite enjoyed when he did that too. Being teased by Azriel was equal parts torment and reward.
Your gaze traced slowly down the sharp line of his jaw, where the faint shadow of stubble had begun to grow in. Along the strong column of his neck. Across the broad expanse of his chest and the sculpted planes of muscle that had no business looking so sinful in moonlight.
The dark swirls of his tattoos beckoned you, winding over golden skin like promises meant only for your eyes.
A soft sound nearly escaped you as you clenched your thighs together, your gaze catching on the small script over his heart.
Your name.
The tattoo that had appeared the night you accepted the mating bond. Not carved by hand nor inked by needle, but etched into his skin as when fate itself had marked him. Elegant script over the place where his heart beat strongest, a vow written in flesh that he would love you beyond breath, beyond death, beyond the final beat of his immortal heart.
Even now, seeing it made warmth bloom in your chest.
You were carried with him always. Into battle. Into sleep. Into every quiet breath he took.
Azriel sighed softly in his sleep, the sound drawing your attention from the broad planes of his chest down the hard lines of his stomach. Moonlight traced every sculpted ridge of him, and your mouth nearly watered at the sight.
You could wake him. You could climb over him right now, sink down onto him, and take exactly what you wanted. He had told you often enough to do just that.
The memory of his deep voice, rough and breathless in your ear as he made love to you, played through your mind.
"I’m all yours, baby. Use me. Love me. Take me whenever you want me…whenever you need me."
Your gaze wandered back up his body, lingering on the powerful lines of his arms and those rough, beautiful hands. Dark tattoos curled around corded muscle, veins tracing beneath golden skin. Even in sleep, there was strength in every inch of him.
Your breathing grew heavier as the scent of your own arousal filled the room.
Still, you didn’t want to wake him. Your sweet mate had been working himself ragged lately—long nights, early mornings, sent to Windhaven for training more often than not. You missed him terribly, but you knew he needed every scrap of rest he could get.
So when his tongue darted out in sleep to wet his lower lip, your resolve shattered.
Slowly, carefully, you slid your panties down your hips and legs, tossing them onto the floor beside the bed. Your fingers slipped between your thighs, finding yourself slick and aching.
You ran your fingertips through your folds, coating your clit before circling it gently. A shaky breath escaped you. It felt good, good enough to make your back arch, but not enough.
You had been spoiled for decades by your mate’s thick, calloused fingers. Your own touch never quite compared.
As you continued stroking yourself, your eyes landed on his large hand resting beside your hip.
Fuck.
You needed it.
Gently, trying not to wake him, you lifted his hand and guided it between your thighs. You pressed his fingers where you needed them most, using your own hand to move them through your wetness.
Your eyes fluttered shut at the feel of his rough skin against your most sensitive places.
You were just beginning to find a rhythm that might finally send you over the edge—rubbing his middle finger over your swollen clit with the perfect amount of pressure—when his fingers twitched.
Then slid deep inside you.
Your eyes flew open. Panting, you turned to look at him.
Azriel still appeared peacefully asleep beside you, lashes resting against his cheeks, expression calm. Yet his fingers were buried knuckle-deep inside you.
A helpless whine escaped as you rolled your hips, trying to coax movement from him, trying to make him hit that spot only he ever seemed able to find. Your own hand returned to your clit, circling quickly as you rode his fingers.
Pleasure built fast, hot and relentless.
Then he gave the slightest curl of his hand inside you.
You shattered.
Your mouth fell open, unable to hold back the soft cry that spilled free as pleasure rushed through you.
The mattress shifted sharply beside you.
Azriel jolted upright, instantly alert, eyes sweeping the room before landing on you as if checking you were unharmed.
His dark hair was tousled from sleep, lips swollen and soft. It took him only a heartbeat to understand what he was seeing.
His gaze moved over your flushed face, the sheen of sweat on your skin, the rise and fall of your chest. Then lower—realizing his hand was no longer resting at your waist where it usually stayed while he slept.
A low sound rumbled from deep in his chest when he found his fingers still buried inside your trembling body.
Experimentally, he curled them deeper.
You gasped.
His groan answered you.
“What’s this, sweet girl?” he murmured, voice still rough with sleep as he slowly withdrew his fingers. You whimpered at the loss, and a smirk touched his lips. He brought those same fingers to his mouth, wrapping his lips around them as his gaze darkened over your body. “Just for me?”
Your cheeks burned.
“I needed you,” you said, reaching for him with a pitiful pout.
Immediately, he moved over you, covering your body with his own. The delicious weight of him pressed you into the mattress, and you felt how hard he already was against your thigh.
He brushed his nose along the side of your neck before pressing a soft kiss below your ear.
“Poor girl,” he murmured. “Why didn’t you wake me?”
He kissed your pout, then drew back to frown down at you.
“I’m supposed to be taking care of my mate.”
His hands slid up your sides, pushing your nightgown higher as they went.
“You’ve been working so hard lately,” you said seriously, catching his right hand and pressing a kiss into his palm. “I wanted you to rest. I’m sorry for waking you. I should’ve gone to the bathroom.”
He frowned harder at that.
“Don’t ever hide from me. Not for anything.” His voice softened, but the intensity in it made your chest tighten. “I hate being gone so much. You’re all I think about when I’m away.”
He brushed his knuckles over your cheek.
“You waking me in the middle of the night for time with me is never something I’d refuse. Whether it’s to talk, to hold you, for you to boss me around…” His mouth curved wickedly. “Or for whatever wild little thing you were just doing with my fingers.”
You covered your face with both hands, mortified.
Azriel laughed softly and pulled them away, threading his fingers through yours before pinning your hands above your head. He crawled closer until every inch of him surrounded you, then kissed you slow and sweet.
“I love touching you,” he murmured against your lips. “Even in my sleep.”
His hazel eyes held yours, molten with affection and heat.
“Don’t insult me by denying yourself something I’m more than happy to give you. I’ve already told you that.”
Warmth flooded your chest at the look on his face, the love there so open it nearly stole your breath.
You wrapped your arms around his neck, legs hooking around his hips as a smile curved your lips.
“Then I suppose,” you whispered, tugging him closer, “you’re going to have to remind me just how much you love touching me.”
Azriel went still for half a heartbeat, hazel eyes flashing with something hot and possessive before a slow, dangerous smile curved his lips.
“Is that so?” he murmured. “My sleepy little thief steals from me in the dark, then gets demanding when she’s caught.”
You tugged him down by the back of his neck, smiling against his mouth. “I’m your mate. It’s hardly stealing.”
A low laugh rumbled from his chest. Gods, he loved his mate. And Cauldron help him, you knew exactly how to make him weak in the knees. Waking to the feel of your tight warmth wrapped around his fingers, using his hand to chase your own pleasure, had nearly undone him on the spot.
His wicked little female.
Azriel moved over you with practiced grace, shedding the last of his clothing before reaching for the hem of your nightgown. He peeled it slowly over your head, tossing it somewhere into the darkened room without care. His gaze swept over your bare body, open admiration written plainly across his face.
“Beautiful,” he said, voice rough with sleep and want. “Always so beautiful for me.”
Heat climbed your cheeks, but he gave you no time to answer.
He bent to your throat, pressing hot, open-mouthed kisses along the sensitive skin there. His mouth trailed lower, down the line of your neck and across your collarbone, lingering over the swell of your breasts. He groaned softly as he took one nipple into his mouth, tongue circling it with maddening precision while his scarred hand slid between your thighs.
You gasped, back arching as his fingers found the slick heat waiting for him.
“There she is,” he murmured against your skin. “So ready for me.”
His fingers drew slow, rough circles over your swollen clit, the callouses on his hands sending pleasure skittering through every nerve in your body.
“Azriel—”
“I know, sweetheart.” He kissed between your breasts, then lower. “I know exactly what you need.”
He moved down your body, kissing a path across your stomach. When he reached your belly, he paused, nuzzling there affectionately, almost reverently, before pressing one soft kiss to the skin. The tenderness of it made your chest ache.
Then he breathed warm air over the place you needed him most, and every coherent thought vanished.
“I need to taste you,” he growled.
Before you could answer, his tongue swept through your slickness in one long stroke. A deep groan tore from him at the taste of you, like it was something he could never get enough of.
Your fingers buried in his dark hair instantly, tugging hard enough to earn a pleased sound from him. He looked up at you from between your thighs, hazel eyes dark and hooded, mouth shining.
The sight alone nearly sent you over the edge.
“Gods,” you breathed.
“That’s right,” he murmured, kissing the inside of your thigh. “Look at me.”
He licked you again, slower this time, savoring every reaction he pulled from you. Your legs trembled around his shoulders.
“I need you inside me, Az.”
The words came out broken, needy, and Azriel swore under his breath. Who was he to deny you anything? Especially this.
He kissed his way back up your body, leaving your skin flushed and sensitive in his wake. When he reached your mouth, he kissed you deeply, letting you taste yourself on his tongue.
Then he settled between your thighs, broad shoulders fitting there like they belonged nowhere else.
His arms braced on either side of your head, caging you in. You glanced at them immediately, at the flex of muscle, the elegant swirl of tattoos disappearing over powerful forearms.
Azriel caught you staring and smirked. He knew exactly how much you liked his arms. You’d told him enough times.
So, being the arrogant male that he was, he flexed them for you.
Your lips parted. “You’re insufferable.”
“And yet,” he said, dragging the blunt head of himself teasingly along your entrance, “you’re soaked for me.”
He nudged against you once, twice, making you squirm.
“Azriel.”
“What?” he asked innocently. “I’m just enjoying how pretty my mate looks when she’s impatient.”
You reached for him, nails scraping lightly down his back. “Stop teasing me.”
That breathy plea shattered whatever restraint he had left.
His teasing expression softened into something molten and hungry. He bent to kiss you once—slow, deep, claiming—before guiding himself inside you in one steady thrust.
Both of you moaned at the same time.
He buried himself to the hilt and stayed there, forehead dropping to yours as he fought for breath.
“Every time,” he whispered hoarsely. “Every damn time, you feel like the first.”
Your arms wrapped around his neck, legs locking around his hips. “Then stop talking,” you murmured against his lips, “and show me how much you missed me.”
Azriel caught the challenge in your voice, and something heated flashed through his gaze.
“Careful what you ask for, sweet girl,” he murmured.
Then he moved.
The first slow roll of his hips stole the breath from your lungs. He held himself over you on those powerful arms, every line of muscle flexing as he set an unhurried rhythm that felt designed solely to ruin you. Each measured thrust dragged a gasp from your lips, each retreat making you chase him helplessly.
“There you are,” he said softly, watching every expression that crossed your face as though it were something sacred. “Missed this look on you.”
You could barely form words. “Azriel…”
“I know.” His mouth found your throat, kissing the spot beneath your ear that always made you shiver. “I missed hearing my name like that too.”
His hand slid between your bodies, fingers finding the place that made your body tighten instantly. The contrast of his rough touch and the tenderness in his eyes nearly undid you.
He always knew exactly how to touch you. Exactly how to take you apart and hold you together all at once.
The room filled with the soft sounds of breath and whispered praise. Azriel never stopped speaking to you when he loved you like this, telling you how beautiful you were, how much he missed you, how perfectly you fit him, how he thought about you every night he was away.
You clung to him, nails dragging lightly across his back as pleasure built hot and relentless inside you.
“That’s it,” he encouraged, voice roughening. “Let me have it, baby. Let me feel you.”
Your body trembled beneath him. He dropped lower, bracing on one forearm while the other arm flexed beside your head, bicep taut beneath your grasp.
When release finally crashed through you, you cried out and bit down on his bicep to muffle the sound.
Azriel groaned low and deep at the sensation, the sound vibrating straight through you. Instead of pulling away, he pressed closer, letting you hold onto him however you needed while waves of pleasure rolled through your body.
“Good girl,” he whispered against your temple, kissing there gently. “That’s it.”
Your legs tightened around him, body still trembling.
The feel of you coming apart around him was what finally shattered the last of his own control. He buried his face in the curve of your neck with a broken sound, arms tightening around you as he found his own release, holding you so close it was hard to tell where one of you ended and the other began.
For a long moment, neither of you moved.
Then Azriel lifted his head, hair tousled, lips swollen, and eyes heavy with satisfaction as he glanced down at the mark blooming darkly across his bicep.
A slow, smug grin spread across his face.
“You bit me.”
You buried your burning face against his chest. “I did not.”
He huffed a laugh, wrapping an arm tighter around you before lifting the marked arm into the moonlight like evidence.
“This says otherwise.” He admired it shamelessly. “Think I’ll need to get this tattooed. Memorialize the best morning of my life.”
“It is not morning,” you mumbled into his skin.
“Feels like it.” He kissed the top of your head. “Waking up with my mate using my hand to make herself come, then leaving me a pretty little mark while I finish the job?” He gave a thoughtful hum. “Best way I’ve ever woken up.”
You groaned and tried to hide deeper against him. “You’re insufferable.”
“And you love me.”
He tipped your chin up just enough to kiss your pout away, smiling against your lips.
“Next time,” he murmured, brushing his thumb over your cheek, “bite harder.”
Trigger Warnings: allusions to depression and suicide. Angst, but not like the devasting hopeless kind (I don't have it in me yet).
A/N: I'm working my way out of a writing slump with this little one. Maybe I could write a part 2? Let me know your thoughts.
Summary: You are a human from the village the Archeron sisters grew up in, discovered by the Shadowsinger post war. You find yourself struggling with more than just cold and hunger now.
You were giggling.
Actually giggling—soft, breathless, a little unsteady—as you leaned against the wall outside the bathroom at Rita’s. The hallway tilted ever so slightly beneath your feet, the world swaying in a way that should have alarmed you.
Instead, it only made you laugh harder.
When had you ever felt like this? So light. So untethered. As if nothing in the world could touch you.
Certainly not back in the human village.
Those days had been cold. Quiet. Hungry in a way that never truly left you. You’d spent them scavenging scraps from neighbors’ refuse, setting pitiful traps behind your collapsing shack, if it could even be called that, hoping to catch something, anything, to stretch your survival a little longer.
That was all it had been. Survival. Hour by hour. Day by day. No hope, no future, just endurance.
The fever had taken everything. Your parents. Your brothers. It had spared you, for reasons you’d never understood. Sometimes that felt less like mercy and more like cruelty.
Two years ago.
It felt like another lifetime.
The starving loneliness had eventually shifted into something quieter, heavier. A different kind of emptiness.
After the war with Hybern, Nesta and the spymaster had found you—though “found” felt too generous a word. You’d been barely alive, collapsed in the forest, too weak to crawl any farther from the battlefield. The ground had trembled with magic and steel, each distant impact rattling through your fragile body.
You had almost welcomed it. The idea that a stray arrow or lash of power might find you.
End it.
Instead, there had been hands. Large, steady hands, cradling your face. A voice you couldn’t quite hear. And then—
Warmth.
When you woke again, it came in fragments. Heat seeping into your bones. Darkness pulling you under again. Over and over, for weeks.
Later, you’d learn it had been the House of Wind. That you’d spent nearly three weeks drifting in and out of consciousness, your body fighting infections it had no strength left to battle. That healers had worked tirelessly to keep you alive.
You remembered flashes.
Golden light pouring into your chest as a healer hovered above you.
A winged male in the corner, silent and watchful, shadows curling around him like living things.
And then...
Nesta was there. Familiar, impossible. You had to be hallucinating.
“Nesta?” you’d whispered, your voice barely there.
She’d hushed you gently, brushing your hair back.
“Am I dead?” you had asked.
“No,” she told you softly. “You’re safe.”
Safe.
The word had felt foreign.
And so you learned everything. About your rescue. About the war. About how Nesta, Feyre, and Elain were no longer human. About how you now lived among them in a world of magic and power you did not belong to.
They had been kind. All of them. Patient. Welcoming.
And still, you had never felt more alone.
You were the only human. No power. No purpose. Nothing to offer in a place where everyone seemed extraordinary.
You watched them fight, lead, protect.
You sat still.
So when Mor invited you out—to Rita’s, of all places—you said yes before you could think too hard about it. Desperate to feel included. To pretend, if only for a night, that you belonged somewhere again.
And now here you were.
Drunk. Laughing. Weightless.
The fae wine burned sweeter than anything you’d ever tasted, and far stronger. It blurred the sharp edges of your thoughts, softened the ache you carried so constantly.
For once, you didn’t feel like the girl who had survived.
You just felt…free.
You stumbled toward the staircase before you could reconsider, your mind chasing a single, glittering thought.
I want to fly.
The cold air on the rooftop should have sobered you. Your dress, thin, silk, barely more than a whisper against your skin, offered no protection from the biting wind.
But you barely felt it.
Velaris stretched out before you, glowing. Lights shimmering along the Sidra, laughter echoing faintly from the streets below. Life, vibrant and full, unfolding all around you.
And above...
Stars.
Closer than you’d ever seen them. Bright enough to feel within reach.
If you could just get a little higher…
You stepped onto the ledge, swaying, a soft laugh slipping from your lips.
Almost.
“Y/n, sweetheart…what are you doing up there?”
The voice cut through the haze.
You turned too quickly, your balance faltering as shadows surged toward you—alive, reaching.
And then he stepped from them.
Azriel.
Still. Controlled. But his jaw was tight, his eyes sharp with something dangerously close to fear.
So pretty, you thought distantly.
“So are you,” he said softly, you must have said that out loud. “You look beautiful tonight. Why don’t you come down so I can see you properly?”
You smiled, but it didn’t quite reach your eyes.
“I want to fly,” you told him.
Another unsteady shift of your feet. His shadows lashed more urgently now.
“I can take you,” he said quickly, voice roughening. “Right now. We’ll go together. You want to see the stars? I’ll take you.”
You shook your head.
“You can’t.”
A wave of dizziness hit, your vision tilting.
“I have to do it myself.”
“Y/n…” He stepped closer. Careful. Measured. “Please. Let me help you.”
“You can’t!” The words broke out of you, sharp and sudden. “No one can.”
Your throat tightened, a sob forcing its way free.
“I’m alone. I have nothing. No family, no friends—”
"That's not true. You have Nesta and Feyre and Elain," he interrupted, firm but gentle.
"They only care because of their guilt."
Silence stretched between you.
Then, quieter...
“You have me.”
Something in his voice made your chest ache.
“I’m your friend,” he said. “Let me be that. Please.”
For a moment, the world stilled.
And then your foot slipped.
The edge vanished beneath you.
There was no fear. No panic.
Just a strange, quiet relief.
Finally-
Strong arms wrapped around you before the thought could finish. You were yanked back, lifted, the world dropping away as you were pulled into a solid chest.
Air rushed past as you rose.
Not falling.
Flying. Into the stars.
“I’ve got you,” Azriel murmured against your temple, his grip unyielding. “I’ve got you.” His heart hammered wildly beneath your cheek, each beat loud, insistent.
Real.
“I promise.”
And as you broke, tears spilling, body trembling, he felt it.
A sharp, searing pull just above his heart.
A promise etching itself into his skin, an oath he knew he spend the rest of his life making sure you knew.
Summary: A soft moment fractures without warning, exposing a vulnerability Y/N has spent years hiding. Her secrets stay just out of reach, and Azriel can feel that whatever broke inside her didn’t break for him.
TW: Emotional distress & mentions of past trauma
It was much later, deep into the velvet-blue hours of the night, when Cassian finally pushed himself to his feet, wings rustling in agitation.
“I’m going to patrol,” he announced, already scowling at the windows as though they personally offended him. “Those wards around your land are a century past their prime. I don’t trust them.”
Y/N huffed from where she sat by the hearth. “My wards are fine, General.”
Cassian lifted a brow. “Are they?” He turned to Azriel. “You coming?”
Azriel didn’t even look away from her. “No. I’ll guard the cottage.”
“I don’t need guarding,” she muttered.
Azriel just held her stare, unreadable and unmoving, as if he could see the truth buried under her stubbornness.
Cassian hesitated. A rare thing. His eyes flicked between them, between the shadows curling at Azriel’s boots and the girl whose calm was too carefully crafted to be natural.
Something about her unsettled him.
“Fine,” he said at last, though the word was reluctant. “I’ll sweep the perimeter.”
He stepped outside into the cold night air, and the moment the door shut behind him, his unease finally buzzed to the surface. Cassian pressed a hand to his temple and sent the thread of thought spiraling down the bond.
Rhys. We found her. But something is…off.
Rhys’s voice came sharp through the mental link. Are you certain?
Yes. And Azriel, Cassian swallowed. He knows her. Or she knows him. They’re acting like they’ve met before, but neither of them is saying it.
A long pause.
We’re on our way, Rhys said.
No. Don’t. Cassian’s reply was immediate, almost panicked. It’s better with just the two of us. She doesn’t feel hostile. Just…old. And powerful. Too powerful. But she’s open to Az. Maybe only to him. She looks like a normal girl living a quiet farm life but, Cauldron, Rhys, I can feel something beneath her skin. Something ancient. It’s…unsettling.
Another silence, heavier this time.
Keep your distance. And keep Azriel breathing.
Cassian snorted. That’s the plan.
He continued his sweep, but even the forest felt unsettled.
Inside the cottage, quiet pressed in like snowfall.
Azriel took the chair opposite her, his posture loose but watchful. Shadows curled and uncurled around him, drawn to her like smoke seeking a flame.
They watched each other for a long time.
Finally, Azriel’s restraint cracked.
“Are you truly the lost heir?” he asked softly. “The one all of the old stories talk about?”
Her lips curved, too neutral to be a smile, too knowing to be anything else. “I’m whatever the world needed me to be,” she said. “And nothing more.”
It was an answer meant to confuse him. It did.
Azriel leaned forward, voice barely above a whisper. “How did you appear to me in that cell? How did you look no older than I was?”
She shrugged, almost carelessly. “I was told to go there. So I did. And I found you.”
“Who told you?”
No answer. Only the faintest tightening of her jaw.
His shadows fluttered toward her, curious, remembering. He followed their movement with his eyes.
“And the shadows?” he asked quietly.
She looked at them, really looked, and for the first time since he’d arrived, something soft, nearly tender, passed across her face.
“They were a gift,” she murmured.
“From who?”
“A shadowsinger,” she whispered, her voice carrying the echo of centuries. “One who gave them to me a long time ago. He asked me to return them to the one they were meant for.”
Azriel’s heart slammed once, hard, against his ribs.
Y/N said nothing else. But beneath her calm, she was fraying. Tension rippled under her skin. Her gaze skittered to the window, the door, the corners of the room, every exit, every hidden angle.
“You’re afraid,” he said.
Her head snapped toward him. “I’m not afraid of anyone.” A beat. “Only myself and—”
She stopped herself. But he’d already heard it.
Azriel exhaled slowly, leaning back.
So he told her everything.
About Hybern. The war. Their desperate, blood-soaked victory. The friends who stood beside him, who lived, who didn’t.
When he spoke Amren’s name, Y/N’s entire body went still. She turned sharply toward him, eyes gleaming with something bright and sharp and ancient...mischief? Sorrow? It was impossible to tell.
He spoke of the Weaver and the Bone Carver. She flinched when their names left his mouth, then went quiet as stone.
When he mentioned Bryaxis, he saw her lips twitch upward.
“Cassian is terrified of her,” he admitted, lips twitching upward at the memory of his brother screaming that day he flew out of the library like she was chasing him.
“Bryaxis will come back,” Y/N said softly. “When she’s good and ready.”
The quiet that followed was thick, heavy, stretched thin by the weight of too many secrets.
Azriel shifted. “The courts are…tense. Especially with the humans. And now there’s talk again of a single ruler of Prythian. Personally, I believe my High Lord and Lady—”
“One ruler,” Y/N murmured, interrupting him for the first time. She stared into the fire, its glow turning her eyes to molten gold. “A blessing. And a curse.”
Her voice dipped lower, threaded with an old, weary truth that made Azriel’s shadows still.
“It’s a blessing,” she said, “if your ruler is good and fair and just.” Her eyes reflected flames, bright, endless, ancient. “But eventually, you’ll get an heir who is too hungry. Too eager. Too blinded by the allure of power to think of anything but his own victory.”
She turned her face fully toward the firelight, and for the first time, Azriel saw the centuries behind her expression.
“Those are the rulers who take,” she whispered. “And take. And never stop taking until everything in their path is devoured.”
The flames crackled. The shadows held their breath. Outside, the forest went silent.
And Azriel realized.
She wasn’t speaking of hypotheticals. She was remembering.
The fire snapped, sending a ripple of light across her face. For a moment, Azriel thought she had gone someplace far away, some century he could never reach, some memory too heavy to share.
Then her expression shuttered, all that ancient grief and knowing vanishing behind a practiced quiet.
Azriel swallowed. “Y/N,” he said softly, “you speak as if you’ve seen these rulers firsthand.”
Her eyes flicked to him, quick, sharp, almost startled. She caught herself too late.
Azriel leaned forward. “Haven’t you?”
But she only looked back at the flames, jaw tightening, throat working as if swallowing something bitter.
When she finally spoke, her voice carried a faint tremor. Not fear. Not exactly.
Restraint.
“I’ve seen enough,” she murmured. “More than enough. And even a fool could see that granting a single ruler such power breeds consequences that cannot easily be unraveled.”
Azriel wanted to push, to demand. But her silence was suddenly a wall he couldn’t scale.
Outside, something rustled, Cassian, likely, circling the cottage like an overprotective wolf. Shadows curled around Azriel’s ankles, restless, tugging, whispering.
She watched them with that same unsettling tenderness, as if she knew every word they breathed.
Azriel exhaled once. “Who told you to go to me that night?” he asked again, quieter this time. “In the cell. When you appeared.”
Her breath caught, barely, but he heard it.
“I...can’t say.”
“Or won’t?”
She didn’t answer.
The shadows pressed closer, drawn to her pulse, to something thrumming beneath her skin. And she didn’t shy away. She lifted her hand, slowly, carefully, as if not to frighten them.
A single shadow curled around her fingertip like a cat brushing a warm palm.
Something in Azriel’s chest pulled taut.
“Why me?” he asked, his voice rougher than intended. “Why did the shadows choose me?”
Y/N didn’t look at him. Her eyes stayed on the shadow twined around her hand, like an old friend returned.
“They didn’t choose you,” she murmured, barely audible. “They were returning home.”
Azriel’s throat closed.
His shadows froze, as though they, too, understood something unimaginable had just been said aloud.
Azriel’s voice cut through the warm crackle of the fire.
“Who sent you to me on that night, Y/N?”
He asked again, the question landed like a blade, not sharp, but heavy. Purposeful. A weight she had carried alone for far too long.
Y/N kept her eyes on the flames, willing her breath to stay steady. But the memories didn’t listen.
They surged.
Flashback — Y/N’s POV
The world was nothing but screams and smoke and the choking scent of iron.
She knelt in the mud, palms pressed to a broad chest that barely rose anymore. His blood was everywhere, on her hands, her dress, the earth beneath them. Shadows writhed around his body in panicked spirals, as if trying to hold him together by sheer desperation.
“No,” she sobbed, her voice raw. “No, no, don’t you dare, don’t you dare leave me.”
He laughed, or the sound was close to one. Weak. Broken. His hand, trembling, lifted to cup her cheek.
“Little star,” he rasped, voice scraping against death. “Don’t cry.”
She shook her head violently. “I can fix this, I can...please—”
“You can’t.” His fingers tightened just barely. “But you can…listen.”
The shadows surged, as if they sensed what was coming. He swallowed, blood slipping from the corner of his mouth.
“Take them,” he whispered. “My shadows. Take them with you.”
“No,” she choked, pushing against him as if her hands could force life back into him. “They’re yours. They’re not meant for me.”
“They were…never meant for me alone.” His eyes, dark, gentle, full of knowing, locked onto hers. “Bring them home…when you find the one they belong to.”
The shadows keened. She shook with sobs.
“Please,” she begged. “Don’t make me do this alone.”
“You won’t be alone,” he murmured, voice fading like smoke. “You’ll find him. And he’ll need you…more than you know...they all will.”
The shadows flowed toward her then, slow, mournful, choosing her as their vessel. Their weight, their grief, their loyalty, all winding around her as his chest rose one final time...
And fell.
Her breath snapped sharply in her lungs.
She blinked, and the cottage returned. The fire, the walls, the scent of pine and smoke that clung to her senses. And Azriel, watching her with that still, searching gaze that made her feel too seen.
Her eyes burned. She couldn’t let him see any more. Couldn’t let him ask what came after. Couldn’t let him peel back the centuries she had glued shut.
She stood abruptly, the chair scraping across the floorboards.
“Leave.”
Azriel’s brows drew together, confusion flickering across his features. “What?”
“I said leave.” Her voice cracked like a whip, sharp, sudden, too harsh, even to her own ears. Tears blurred her vision, but she refused to wipe them away. “You need to go. Now.”
“Y/N—”
“No.” Her throat tightened. “I’ve said enough.”
The shadows around him shifted uneasily, responding to her frayed power, to the storm trembling beneath her skin.
She turned her back to him, the only way to keep herself from shattering completely.
“Go, Azriel,” she whispered, voice trembling despite her will.
The words barely faded before something inside his chest pulled taut, tight, aching, as though her pain had sunk claws into him. Her shoulders were rigid, her breath sharp, and even without seeing her face he knew she was falling apart.
“Y/N,” he said softly, taking one step toward her. “Please…just talk to me.”
She flinched.
A full-body tremor, small but unmistakable.
The closer he came, the more she seemed to shrink, not away from him, but inward, as if the weight of something old and unbearable threatened to crush her. Her fingers curled against her sides, white-knuckled. Her breath came in uneven bursts, and the firelight caught the wet shine in her eyes before she could hide it.
“Y/N,” he tried again, voice cracking despite his control. “You’re trembling.”
“I’m fine,” she said, barely audible. But her voice was fraying, unraveling thread by thread.
Another step closer. Then the tears finally fell.
Her knees buckled.
Azriel lunged instantly, catching her before she hit the floor. Her hands curled into his leathers, her body shaking violently with sobs she could no longer hold back.
“Hey, hey, I’ve got you,” he murmured, arms tightening around her. “You’re safe. Just breathe.”
But she wasn’t hearing him.
Her eyes were open, but unfocused. Wide with terror, not of him, but of some memory dragging her under. Her breaths tore out of her in broken gasps, as if she were reliving something she had spent a lifetime burying.
“Go…” she whispered again, but the word wasn’t meant for him. He could hear it. Feel it. It was meant for a ghost. A nightmare. A moment she couldn’t escape. He knew that feeling all too well.
“Y/N,” he said firmly, cupping the back of her head, grounding her. “Look at me. You’re here. You’re not there, you’re with me.”
But she didn’t hear him.
Her voice broke, barely a breath, barely a sound, yet it pierced straight through him.
“Silas…”
The name trembled out of her like a wound splitting open.
And Azriel froze.
Because the moment the name left her lips, the shadows on his shoulders, shy, loyal, responsive to only him, snapped toward her in a rush. They curled around her waist, her arms, her shaking hands, clinging to her with unmistakable familiarity and desperate comfort.
As if they had been waiting centuries to hear that name again.
I just want to take a moment to thank everyone who’s taken the time to read my little fic and share such kind words with me. It truly means the world to know that something I’ve written is enjoyed by others.
I stopped writing several years ago after getting into a relationship that, unfortunately, wasn’t the healthiest. During that time, I lost all motivation to write or create, which is weird because ever since I was a little girl, all I’ve ever wanted to do was write.
When that chapter of my life ended, I slowly started dipping my toes back into writing again, mostly on my other blog, and it reminded me just how much I’ve always loved it. Now that that rocky season is behind me, I’m in the process of moving and starting over and I am feeling more inspired than ever.
It fills my heart (and my creative cup) to know that these late night stories, scribbled out simply because I need to get the words out, are something you enjoy reading. Thank you so much for your kindness and encouragement. I’m so excited to keep writing, both for me and for you.
Summary: Y/N has unexpected visitors, and long-buried truths begin to reveal themselves.
TW: Minor mention of past trauma (non-graphic)
The night pressed close against the small cottage, wrapping its cold fingers around the edges of the roof and threading through the cracks in the shutters. Y/N lay awake, the blanket drawn loosely around her, listening to the faint hum of the hearth and the occasional creak of the old timbers. The wind whispered outside, but beneath it was something sharper, something alive. She could feel it, just beyond the reach of her senses, the weight of eyes tracing her every motion.
Her chest tightened with unease. She had lived long enough to know the signs, the subtle tremor of the air, the faint shift in the scent of the woods, but something about this felt… different. Persistent. Watching.
She pressed her palms against the cool sheets and thought through her wards, long dormant and quiet, etched into the soil and stone around the cottage. Would they hold? Were they strong enough? Her fingers traced the edge of the quilt, pulling her mind into a familiar debate. She did not want to use her magic. She had not for decades. Using it would draw attention, rip her careful silence apart. But the thought of waiting, of letting unseen observers circle her home, gnawed at her patience.
A sigh slipped past her lips. The answer, she realized, was in surprise. Not in the raw force of her magic, but in her own cunning. If she moved quietly, thought carefully, she could approach them before they realized anyone was near. Quieter than even shadows, she could step into their world and turn it upside down before they knew what had happened.
She rose, bare feet brushing against the cold floor, hair falling loose from its ties. Her movements were measured, silent. The cottage exhaled with her, creaking in familiar acknowledgment, as if it had been waiting for her decision. She slipped into the misted night, the forest beyond the fields welcoming her with the faint rustle of leaves.
Her senses sharpened. Every twig beneath her foot, every breath of wind through the pines, every scent in the damp earth registered. She moved closer, and then she saw them.
Two figures, half-hidden by the thick shadows of the trees. One, larger, with long hair that caught the faint moonlight, whispered something, the tone teasing. The other, stoic and beautifully formed, leaned slightly forward, listening.
“I swear,” the male with long hair one said softly, worry in his voice, “if we don't find that shadow beast soon, we may all meet our ends.”
The stoic one didn’t laugh, though a corner of his mouth twitched as the long haired male quickly said, "your shadows aren't beasts." Y/N allowed herself the tiniest smile behind a tree, hidden in the folds of shadow.
She stepped closer, careful to make no sound. “Have you found what you are looking for?” she asked softly, voice light but steady.
The wind shifted, the moment breaking. Both men spun at once, weapons drawn, eyes wide. Her hands lifted slowly, deliberately empty.
The stoic one lowered his blade almost immediately, eyes fixed on her. The larger one bared his teeth, growling low in his throat. “Who are you?” he demanded, voice rumbling in the quiet.
She did not flinch. She stepped past them, calm, serene, her presence taking command of the forest. “Would you like to spy on me from my cottage rather than the forest?” she asked, almost conversational, as if inviting them into her little bubble was the simplest thing in the world.
Confused, they slowly trailed after her, leaving a distance between themselves and her retreating figure.
By the time they reached the small cottage, Y/N was tending the hearth, setting a tea kettle down, and poking at the logs with precise, unhurried movements. The scent of burning pine and herbs filled the space.
She glanced over her shoulder at them without turning fully. “Now, who are you?”
They lingered by the doorway with wary looks. Their eyes traced every movement, noting her youth, the fluid grace in her gestures, the calm precision of someone who had lived alone for a long, long time. She looked far younger than they expected, almost fragile, yet the weight in her gaze contradicted every impression of delicacy. There was depth, experience, and the faint echo of power she had not needed to display.
Azriel stepped forward first, his voice quiet, deliberate. “I am Azriel,” he said. “And this is Cassian.” Something unspoken pressed between him and the words, a subtle need to be known by her.
Cassian gave a half-smirk, half-roll of his eyes. “Our High Lord sent us on a scouting mission. We must have taken a wrong turn.”
Azriel interrupted immediately, tone low, steady, impossibly certain. “No. We didn’t.” His eyes were locked on her, dark, impossibly deep. “I’ve been looking for you.”
Y/N raised an eyebrow but did not speak. She gestured to the small kitchen table, her motion effortless. “Sit,” she said. “It has been a long time since I’ve had company.”
They waited, remaining by the door, the scent of tea rising from the kettle, the fire crackling softly between them. Silence stretched.
Then she looked directly at Azriel. “How do you know me? And what is it that you want?”
He let the question hang, allowing the weight to fill the room. “You already know the answer,” he said simply.
Her lips curved into a smile, small and knowing, the kind that suggested secrets shared long before words could be spoken. She studied him then, really looked at him.
“You have grown up to be one of the most beautiful males I have ever seen,” she said quietly, almost reverently. “And yet you still look the same as you did when you were a boy. Though I only ever saw you once.”
The room seemed to hold its breath, the firelight flickering over Azriel’s face, shadows stretching toward her like tentative hands. She glanced at them with fond look on her face, her lips curving upwards in the smallest smile.
Cassian shifted, uneasy, yet Azriel’s gaze never wavered. In that moment, time was irrelevant, and every careful choice she had made to hide and survive fell away as she looked at the male before her; some instinct telling her she could trust him with this.
Azriel’s POV
Azriel’s gaze never left her, but his mind shifted, reaching back into a memory long buried. The memory was hazy, fractured by pain and years, yet it burned with clarity all the same.
He remembered that night, the night his shadows had finally appeared to him, spiraling out of his grief and hurt, a gift born from agony. He had been a boy then, lost and broken, and in the darkness, he had seen her.
She had knelt before him, small and steady, her hands extended toward him as though offering something fragile yet powerful. Her voice, soft and certain, had whispered words he had not understood at the time.
“I will meet you again one day,” she whispered urgently to his small aching body. “I am giving you these shadows until that day comes. Protect them and they will protect you.”
The memory had haunted him, a flicker at the edge of his mind, a moment of guidance he could not place or name. Sometimes he wondered if he had dreamed it.
And now, standing before her, the realization struck him like a physical blow. She was the one from that night. The one who had been there when he had first met his shadows, the one who had touched his life without leaving a trace.
He stumbled slightly, caught off guard by the intensity of the recognition. His throat went dry. “It was you,” he murmured, almost reverently, voice barely more than a breath.
Y/N’s eyes never wavered. She watched him, calm, unreadable, like a still pool reflecting a storm. There was no acknowledgment, no confirmation, not even the smallest flicker of recognition on her face. She simply waited, allowing him to grasp the truth on his own.
“How…?” he began, but words failed him. He wanted to ask how she had been there, how she had known, how she had shaped his path without him even realizing. But the questions felt insignificant.
Y/N’s lips curved faintly, almost imperceptibly, as if to say that some things were never meant to be explained. The knowledge was enough, and yet she refused to name herself, refusing to give him the pieces he so desperately wanted.
Azriel’s chest tightened. The pull he had felt since her name was spoken, since her presence became undeniable, now rooted itself in history, in destiny, in something older than either of them. And even as the longing surged through him, he realized he might never fully know her, and yet he could not turn away.
Y/N poured the tea, her movements steady, almost meditative. Her eyes held his, sharp and knowing, millennia of experience and secret histories behind them. He wanted to speak, to ask the questions that burned in his mind, but he could not. The words tangled in his throat.
“You know something,” she said softly, voice quiet but certain, “and yet you hesitate.”
Azriel swallowed. Shadows coiled slightly around him, restless, protective. “I… not yet,” he murmured, voice low, a promise and a recognition all at once.
Her gaze lifted to him, piercing, unreadable. “Good,” she said, tilting her head slightly, “because some truths cannot be rushed.”
He felt it then, the pull he had sensed since hearing her name. A recognition older than words, older than years, older than memory itself. And yet, she gave nothing away, offering only her calm presence and that faint, knowing smile that suggested she had always understood more than she let on.
Azriel leaned forward slightly, shadows leaning with him, the weight of unspoken questions pressing between them. “Y/N…” he began, but she only watched him, still, patient, and impossibly serene.
She gestured toward the small kitchen table. “Sit,” she said softly. “It has been a long time since I had anyone to share tea with.”
He obeyed, Cassian following reluctantly, but all Azriel could see was her, her eyes, her presence, the way she seemed both impossibly young and impossibly eternal.
And as they sat, the quiet stretching between them, Azriel realized with a jolt that this moment was only the beginning. The questions, the answers, the history he had glimpsed that night long ago, it had led him here. And somehow, he knew, meeting her like this would change everything.
He stared at her, searching, hoping, and she returned his gaze without a word. And then, with the faintest smile, she said, almost to herself, “Perhaps you have finally found me.”
Azriel’s shadows shivered. Something shifted in the air, not frightening, not threatening, but inevitable. And in that shift, he knew he could not turn away.
Summary: Whispers of a long-lost heir reach Velaris, and curiosity turns into action. Feyre seeks the truth, Amren warns against it, and Azriel feels a pull he cannot explain, leading him toward someone the world thought it had forgotten.
Azriel's POV
The storm began in whispers.
It started with Feyre.
Despite Amren’s sharp warning and the shadow of caution in Rhys’s eyes, Feyre’s curiosity was a tide that could not be turned once it rose. Elain’s words at dinner had haunted her, the strange certainty in her voice, the otherworldly distance in her gaze. And so, three days later, Feyre called a meeting in the River House, long after the city had gone to sleep.
Azriel was there when the firelight flickered over her face, painting gold along her cheekbones as she unfolded a map across the table. Nesta sat beside her, posture stiff, arms crossed as though she had been dragged here against her better judgment. Elain sat quietly at the end of the table, her hands folded in her lap, eyes still wide and soft but not unfocused. Tonight she looked present, almost fragile in that awareness.
Amren lingered in the corner, wine in hand, her expression unreadable. Shadows curled around her ankles like smoke.
“I thought we agreed to leave this alone,” she said, her voice smooth and cold.
“We agreed to be cautious,” Feyre replied, her tone firm but not unkind. “But I can’t stop thinking about it. About her.”
Rhys, standing behind Feyre’s chair, rested a hand on her shoulder. “You know better than anyone that old power rarely comes without consequence.”
Feyre looked up at him, the glow of the fire caught in her violet eyes. “If someone truly has the right to that throne, Rhys, shouldn’t we at least know? Shouldn’t Prythian know?”
Nesta let out a quiet scoff. “Knowledge is not the same as peace.”
Elain lifted her gaze, voice soft as snowfall. “But hiding the truth never kept peace either.”
That silenced the room for a moment.
Amren tipped her glass back and sighed. “You’re all fools if you think the crown of the first court can be worn without blood.”
Feyre’s jaw tightened. “I don’t want to claim it. I want to understand it. If Elain saw something, if Y/N truly lives, she deserves to be found before someone else finds her.”
Her words hung in the still air.
Azriel stood near the window, the same position he had taken the night Elain first spoke the name. The city lights shimmered below like fallen stars. His shadows whispered restlessly, threads of sound curling around his shoulders, tugging at something deep in his chest.
He hadn’t said her name aloud since that night, but it lived in him now. He could feel it. A faint pull, an ache he couldn’t name.
Rhys exhaled slowly, eyes on the map. “What kind of lead do you think you have?”
Feyre spread her fingers across the parchment. “It’s nothing certain, but Elain’s visions showed fields. Rolling hills. A forest edge. Nesta and I searched the old border records, the ones before the courts divided. There was once a small estate there, just beyond the human lands. No one has claimed it for centuries. But…” she hesitated, tracing a faint mark near the edge of the paper. “Someone has been tending the land. There are crops. Fences. Smoke from a hearth. Too isolated to belong to a human village.”
Cassian leaned forward, frowning. “So you think she’s been living there all this time? Alone?”
Feyre met his gaze. “If she’s alive, yes.”
Amren’s low voice cut through. “You have no idea what she’ll be if she is.”
Rhys looked at her. “Meaning?”
Amren’s eyes glowed faintly, like coals banked beneath ash. “Power like that does not fade with time. It twists. It waits. You think she has been living quietly for the sake of peace? Or do you think the world simply forgot how to fear her?”
A ripple of unease passed through the room. Feyre’s expression hardened, but Rhys’s jaw tensed.
Finally, he turned toward Azriel. “What do you think?”
Azriel met his High Lord’s eyes, calm and steady. “If she’s out there, she’s already being hunted. Secrets that old never stay buried forever.”
Rhys studied him for a moment, then nodded. “And you would go?”
“I should,” Azriel said quietly. “If she is what they say she is, she’ll trust no one. Not easily. I can find her without drawing attention.”
Cassian made a low sound, half a groan, half a protest. “Like hell you’re going alone.”
Azriel didn’t look at him. “I’ve done harder things alone.”
“Not this time,” Cassian said. His voice had lost its humor. “If she’s as powerful as Amren says, you won’t be able to reason with her if she feels threatened. Someone needs to watch your back.”
Rhys considered both of them. The fire cracked softly.
At last, he said, “Go. Both of you. Don’t engage unless you must. I want answers, not casualties.”
Azriel inclined his head once. Cassian nodded, already restless to move.
Amren set her empty glass down. “You’re chasing ghosts,” she murmured, her silver eyes catching the firelight. “Be careful what finds you instead.”
The night before they left, Velaris was restless. Clouds rolled low over the Sidra, heavy and dark with rain. Azriel stood at the edge of his balcony, wings half-spread, eyes on the distant mountains where the world beyond waited.
His shadows were quieter than usual, subdued but watchful. He could feel the weight of their curiosity, the way they whispered the name they’d learned to crave. Y/N.
He closed his eyes and let the wind brush against him, cold and sharp. There was something beneath it, faint but steady, a pulse, an echo of power that didn’t belong to any court. Ancient, patient, waiting.
By dawn, the rain had stopped.
Cassian met him on the cliffs outside the city, his armor gleaming dully in the grey light. “You sure about this?” he asked, tightening the strap on his sword.
Azriel checked the blades at his thigh. “You weren’t planning to let me go without you anyway.”
Cassian grinned faintly. “You know me too well.”
They launched into the morning sky together, wings slicing through the thinning mist. The air grew colder as they climbed, the peaks of the Illyrian mountains breaking through the clouds like dark teeth.
They flew for hours, the land rolling out beneath them, wild and untamed. The forests grew denser, rivers cut through the earth like silver threads. Every mile carried them farther from the safety of home, deeper into forgotten lands.
For a long while, the only sounds were the wind and the rhythmic beat of their wings. Then Cassian spoke, voice low but thoughtful. “You’ve been different since Elain said her name.”
Azriel didn’t respond at first. He adjusted his flight, eyes scanning the horizon.
Cassian pressed. “You’ve hunted hundreds of ghosts and stories, but this one feels personal. Why?”
Azriel’s gaze stayed fixed ahead. The air smelled of pine and rain. “Because it is,” he said quietly.
Cassian looked over. “You know her?”
“No,” Azriel said. “At least, I don’t think I do.” He hesitated, searching for words. “It’s strange. When I heard her name, it felt… familiar. Like a sound I had been waiting to hear without knowing it. I keep thinking I’ve met her before, but I can’t remember when or where.”
Cassian frowned. “Maybe you crossed paths when you were a boy?”
“Maybe,” Azriel said. His voice grew even softer. “There was a feeling once. Back then. Like someone was watching over me. I used to think it was the Mother, or my shadows. But now…” His throat tightened, and he let the thought fade into the wind. “Now I’m not so sure.”
Cassian studied him a moment longer, but he didn’t push. “Well, if she’s as ancient as they say, maybe you did meet her. Maybe she’s been waiting for you to find her again.”
Azriel didn’t answer. He only flew harder, faster, until the mountains fell away and the human lands stretched wide and endless before them.
When they crossed into the human realm, the shift was palpable. The air felt heavier, older. The magic thinned but didn’t vanish, it changed, bending into something foreign.
Cassian slowed beside him. “You feel that?”
Azriel nodded once. “Old wards. Broken, but still there.”
“Think she put them up?”
“Someone did.”
They descended toward a valley blanketed in fog, the faint outlines of fields and fences visible beneath the haze. A thin trail of smoke rose from a small chimney near the edge of the woods.
Cassian’s voice dropped low. “Looks quiet.”
Azriel didn’t answer. His gaze locked on the cottage below, on the small figure moving between the barn and the house, her skirts brushing through the tall grass.
For a moment, the world stilled. The wind, the forest, even his own heartbeat seemed to pause.
He didn’t need shadows to tell him. He knew.
Y/N.
She was alive.
And somehow, impossibly, she was looking straight at him.
a/n - I was really excited to post part II so I might have rushed it a little bit, but I am already halfway done with part III! I haven't decided how many parts of this I will post yet but I am really excited about the direction I am envisioning for this story!
Summary: Years of solitude have kept her hidden, a life shaped by routine and quiet. But the world beyond her fields has not forgotten her, and unseen eyes begin to watch, drawing her toward a past she thought she left behind.
The mornings began before the sun.
The cottage always woke first, its bones stretching, the roof sighing with the chill. Y/N stirred with it, rising from her small bed as the first grey light crept through the shutters. Her breath clouded faintly in the air. Another cold morning.
She dressed without hurry, the fabric of her skirts soft from years of wear, her fingers finding the ties by habit. Her hair was gathered back, the movement easy, unthinking.
When she stepped outside, dawn still lingered half-asleep across the fields. Mist drifted low over the furrows, and the last of the night stars faded behind it. The air smelled of wet grass and turned earth. A robin called somewhere in the hedge, its song clear and brave against the hush.
She crossed the yard with slow steps, boots whispering over damp soil.
“Morning, my beauties,” she said softly as she opened the barn door. Her voice came out rough with sleep, but the sound made the hens stir and cluck as if they understood. “Yes, yes, I’m late again.”
The goats bleated next, indignant, and she smiled despite herself. Their little hooves clicked impatiently on the boards as she filled the trough.
“Greedy things,” she murmured, reaching to scratch one behind the ear. The animal leaned into her hand with an eager huff.
Her movements were sure and familiar. She had done this a thousand times, maybe more. The quiet rhythm steadied her heart in a way nothing else did.
As she worked, her mind wandered. The sound of grain spilling from her palm, the smell of straw, it all felt older than she was, older than the cottage or the farm. A life that belonged to her and yet didn’t.
When she finished tending the animals, she wiped her hands on her apron and paused at the barn door. The mist had begun to thin, curling away from the fields as if it were being drawn toward the forest beyond.
The line of trees stood dark and still. Watching.
She looked away quickly.
“Head down, eyes sharp,” she said under her breath. The words fell from her tongue before she could stop them. Old words, strange, formal. She frowned at herself, unsure why she’d said them at all. It was a bad habit she hadn't been able to let go of over the years.
By the time the sun climbed over the hills, she had pushed the thought aside. There was bread to make, fences to check, a garden to weed before the frost came again. The work kept her hands busy, and the steady movement of her day left little room for odd memories to settle.
The air warmed by midday. She knelt by the rows of herbs, dirt pressing under her fingernails as she worked the soil loose around their roots. The scent of rosemary and sage clung to her fingers. Bees drifted lazily from flower to flower, unhurried.
When she straightened, brushing soil from her skirts, she caught sight of the horizon, the faint shimmer of heat rising off the fields, the forest edge hazed with distance. For a heartbeat, she thought she saw something move among the trees. A shape, dark and still against the light.
She blinked, and it was gone.
“Just the wind,” she whispered, though the air was perfectly calm.
Her afternoon passed quietly. The rhythm of chores filled the hours: kneading dough until her arms ached, gathering apples from the trees out back, mending the small tear in her shawl. When she pricked her finger with the needle, she hissed and shook her head.
“Mind your hand, child,” she muttered softly, the scolding so instinctive she almost looked over her shoulder for the voice that had once said it to her. No one was there. Only the ticking of the clock and the low hum of the kettle on the stove. Another habit she had yet to break.
By dusk, the world had turned to gold. The sun sank behind the hills, lighting the fields in a last, quiet blaze. Y/N stood at the edge of her porch for a moment, watching the light fade, her arms folded loosely across her chest.
It was a good life. Small, steady, honest. She told herself that every evening.
When the sky darkened fully, she lit her single candle and set it by the window. The little flame cast gentle light across the walls, softening every edge. She sat for her meal, listening to the faint crackle of the fire and the night sounds beginning outside, the chirr of insects, the distant call of an owl.
She had lived alone for so long that silence had become its own kind of company. It no longer pressed on her; it held her.
Until it didn’t.
A sound broke through it, a low snap, like a branch giving way beneath weight. Not close, but not far. She could almost hear the hiss of someone's breath following the noise.
Her spoon stilled. The night beyond her window seemed to deepen. She didn’t move, only listened. One heartbeat. Two.
Nothing followed.
Her pulse slowed again, steady, measured. “Old wood,” she murmured. “The wind.”
She blew out the candle and crossed the room, the faint glow from the hearth guiding her to bed. The sheets were cool and smelled faintly of lavender from the garden.
She lay down slowly, pulling the blanket to her chin.
And when she closed her eyes, she chose to ignore the figures standing among the trees, tall, motionless, wings stretched wide and dark against the starlight as they watched the last flicker of her candle fade.
I am trying my hand at writing fanfiction again. I'm about 6 years out of practice but I am currently on an Azriel high and decided that I would start writing all my fantasies/day dreams that live in my head rent free. I'm a little rusty and have to write around my work schedule, but I'll be writing part 2 to the Shadows of a Crown Unseen fic before the week is over.
15 year old me is kicking her feet that 26 year old me has started writing again. Please feel free to message me any ideas you want to read about or just to chat!
If you guys want to read about my hopeless love life you can check out my personal blog, lettersfromkaley - I have dedicated this one to writing all my unsent letters to lovers and a certain someone I have being pining after for years, it's disgustingly angsty.
Summary: Elain whispers a name, and something deep inside Azriel stirs, a reaction rare and unsettling, one he cannot understand. The shadows echo it, and suddenly he knows he cannot ignore her.
Sweat rolled down Azriel’s temple and disappeared into the collar of his leathers. The wind screamed in his ears as he flew, wings cutting through the night. Cassian’s voice carried behind him, loud and exasperated.
“Slow down, shadows! You’re going to take out my wings trying to prove a point!”
Azriel ignored him. He angled higher where the air thinned and the stars stretched endless above the world.
Since the war with Hybern ended, sleep had been a stranger. Every time he closed his eyes something inside him stirred awake again, a tension with no name and no end. He knew that feeling. He had lived with it his entire life, but now it felt different. There was no war to fight, no enemy to hunt, no monster to kill. Only peace. And somehow that was worse.
Rhys and Feyre had found joy in rebuilding. Cassian and Nesta were mated, spending their days between sparring and loving each other so fiercely that everyone else learned to stay out of the way. Amren had settled with Varian in her own sharp and feral way. Even Elain had begun to find her footing again. She laughed more, sometimes even visited Lucien in the Day Court.
Everyone had someone.
Everyone except him.
He filled the quiet with work until Rhys forced him to rest. He helped Cassian train the priestesses, pushed himself harder, further, faster. He even let Gwyn’s bright humor pull him into friendship, though they both quickly realized that was all it would ever be.
So he trained alone. It was the only thing that quieted the noise in his mind.
“If you can’t keep up, just say it,” Azriel called over his shoulder, his voice even.
Cassian’s laugh echoed across the wind. “Please. You couldn’t lose me if you tried. You fly like an old man.”
Azriel’s mouth curved slightly. “And yet I’m still ahead of you.”
“You mean barely,” Cassian said, drawing level. “What are we doing, Az? You trying to outfly your thoughts again?”
Azriel didn’t answer. He tilted his wings and dropped into a dive. The wind howled. Cassian swore and followed, landing hard beside him on the balcony of the House of Wind.
Cassian flexed his wings, grinning. “You’re insufferable, you know that?”
Azriel tugged his leathers tighter. “You talk too much.”
Cassian laughed, clapping him on the back. “And yet you keep me around. Must be love.”
“Or pity.”
Cassian’s grin widened. “I’ll take either.”
“Come on,” he said as they stepped inside. “Nesta’s still in the ring. She’ll say I’m avoiding her again.”
Nesta was, in fact, still training when they reached the courtyard. Her braid was loose and sweat gleamed along her neck as she corrected one of the priestesses’ stances. The air rang with the sound of steel and breath.
Cassian leaned against the railing, arms crossed, eyes soft with pride. “Look at them. I can barely keep up anymore.”
“She’s effective,” Azriel said, watching the sharpness in Nesta’s movements.
Cassian chuckled. “You mean terrifying and effective.”
Nesta turned toward them as if sensing their eyes. “You’re late,” she called, voice cool.
Cassian spread his hands. “Azriel needed air. I’m being supportive.”
“You’re being annoying,” she said.
“Same thing.”
Her eyes rolled skyward but her mouth twitched, a smile threatening before she turned back to the ring.
Azriel stayed a moment longer, watching the priestesses train. There was strength in the rhythm of their blades, quiet and deliberate. He admired it. They were rebuilding themselves piece by piece, just as he was trying to do.
Dinner that night was loud. Cassian’s laughter boomed, Mor’s stories filled the air, Feyre smiled softly beside Rhys as he watched her like she was the only thing that existed. Even Amren looked entertained, in her own cool and predatory way.
Azriel sat at his usual place across from Rhys, Elain beside him. Her presence was gentle, grounding.
Cassian was in the middle of another ridiculous story when Mor cut in. “That is not how it happened,” she said, laughing.
“You weren’t even there,” Cassian replied.
“I was the one who saved you,” she said.
“You distracted the wrong guard.”
“I distracted the right one,” Mor said. “He just didn’t survive it.”
Rhys chuckled quietly. “Remind me to never send the two of you on a diplomatic mission together.”
Amren lifted her glass. “Diplomacy is wasted on them.”
“Better than being boring,” Cassian muttered.
Feyre laughed softly and leaned against Rhys’s shoulder. The warmth of the room wrapped around them all.
Until Elain went still.
Her fork slipped from her hand and hit the plate with a sound that cut through the chatter.
“Elain?” Feyre asked, her voice careful.
Elain didn’t look at her. Her gaze had gone unfocused, lips parting as if she were listening to something none of them could hear.
“She ran,” Elain said quietly. “Long ago, before the courts were divided.”
The table went silent.
“She was meant to rule them all,” she continued, her voice distant. “But she hid. She hid so well that even the stars forgot her.”
Cassian straightened in his chair. Nesta froze.
“Elain,” Feyre said again, cautious and soft, “who are you talking about?”
Elain blinked, her voice trembling. “The heir. The last one. She’s alive.”
Then her eyes cleared. Confusion washed over her face. “I don’t know what I just said.”
No one spoke.
Dinner ended quietly.
Later, they gathered in Rhys’s office. The fire burned low, shadows stretching long across the marble floor.
Cassian paced, restless. “You can feel it. The human queens are whispering again. Spring is a mess. Autumn’s too quiet. If someone doesn’t take control soon, this peace will break.”
Feyre frowned. “You think we should be the ones to do that.”
Cassian glanced at Rhys. “You already lead, whether you admit it or not. Maybe Prythian needs that officially. One ruler. One command.”
Rhys leaned back in his chair, calm as ever. “Unity doesn’t come from a crown.”
Azriel stood near the window, watching the lights of Velaris flicker far below. His shadows curled along the glass. “He isn’t wrong,” he said. “Division has always been our weakness.”
Feyre’s gaze found him. “And you think one ruler would fix that?”
Azriel’s expression didn’t change. “Someone will try, eventually. Better it be someone we trust.”
Amren, who had been silent until then, made a low sound of amusement. “Perhaps that’s why Elain opened her pretty mouth tonight.”
Cassian turned. “You think she was seeing something real?”
Amren smiled, all teeth and shadows. “You’d be a fool to dismiss her visions.”
Rhys’s tone sharpened. “You know something.”
“I know many things,” she said lazily, turning her wine glass in her hand. “Some are better left sleeping.”
Mor crossed her arms. “You’re talking about the old stories again.”
Amren’s eyes gleamed. “Stories have roots. Sometimes they still breathe.”
Feyre tilted her head. “Do you remember the name?”
For a moment Amren’s expression shifted. The air seemed to still. Then she said, “Y/N.”
The name hung in the air like the echo of a bell.
Azriel froze. His heart stumbled once before steadying again. His shadows recoiled from the sound, then crept closer, restless and uncertain.
Feyre glanced around the room. “Who is that?”
Amren finished her wine and set the glass down. “Someone the world forgot,” she said quietly. “Perhaps wisely.” She paused at the door, the firelight catching the edge of her smile. “But not everything buried stays lost.”
And she was gone.
The room stayed silent long after the door closed.
Cassian’s usual humor was nowhere to be found. Rhys sat thoughtful and still, his eyes on the flames. Feyre’s hand was tight around his.
Azriel said nothing. The name echoed inside him, unfamiliar yet heavy, as if it belonged somewhere deep in his bones.
His shadows whispered it again and again, their voices low and unending.
