Masterlist | Minors, for the sake of my conscience, do not interact | CLOSED
Slowly transitioning this blog into an archive of writing references and advice
Each day a drabble or snippets of chapters will be posted in line with one specific emotion. They explore the past, present, and future of the characters from my fic God’s Game. Characters featured will be mostly Azriel and Ayla, and occasionally Morrigan and Rhysand (as of now). You don’t need to catch up with the main story in order to read these, but some of my OCs will be mentioned and familiarity with them helps.
Based on Moody March prompt list by @/squidlykitten. Since it’s August already, gave a new name to this challenge.
I’ve reordered some themes in the original prompt list as the chapters flow better when read in succession and form a cohesive narrative, but these can be read in any order. Some themes felt repetitive (Loneliness vs Lonely) or the chapters carried more than one emotion (Joyful and Playful) and so they will be published as one.
This is a bridge for when he finds the letter (from Keir) Rhysand hid from him. This is better read with the chapter Azriel of the main story.
Character: Azriel
Warnings: None
Note: We do not pray at the altar of canon around here. It doesn't exist for me. I write whatever comes to me and whatever makes the characters interesting.
Read it on AO3
Mor stayed with them for only a week. Although Azriel never spoke to her, Rhys and Cass did, competing to be the one who drew the most laughs out of her. The trill of her voice echoed throughout the house from morning until past midnight.
Beneath the polite words and mannered decorum of a High Fae, her innocence was misleading.
On the first night, Mor snuck out into the training grounds to feel the cold rain beating on her skin.
On the third, she stole two skins of mead Rhys’s mother had apprehended from them weeks ago when the three lost their spars and returned home with broken noses and ribs.
On the sixth, the night before her departure, she slept with Cass.
Azriel was the one to find them—heard them, to be precise.
Confused and alarmed at first, he stopped at the door, legs freezing under him at the groans and screams filtering through the stone walls. Light went out around him, and his nerves took him back to the cell. When each cry softened into a moan, it dawned on him.
Closing the door behind him gently, Azriel left.
He didn’t know where Rhys or his mother were, and he had no intention of returning soon. He spent the rest of the night wandering the woods, following the moonlight spilling through the canopy.
Thoughts swarmed his mind, yet he hardly grasped one. His heart thrashed in his chest like a bird stuck in a cage, rattling its wings against the bars. His hands were restless, clenching and unclenching around nothing, and his feet refused to stop.
So he went on and on.
The pain caught him by surprise, as did the anger.
What a fool he was to believe he shared something with this girl. That Mor could understand his existence better than his brothers. That her stolen glances meant anything.
Perhaps, he would’ve accepted his misery if he weren’t the one to find her bruised and bloody on the Autumn border. Not Rhys. Not Cass. It was Azriel who broke the rules of two courts, ignoring the order from his High Lord to bring her back home, wherever she wished it to be. If he weren’t the one to remove the nail driven into her, if he weren’t the one to hear her wails ring through the woods.
As he held her face in his blood-soaked hands, he couldn’t stop himself. But Mor winnowed away, leaving him behind as though she hadn’t needed him at all. She let him see her broken, only to get up and leave as soon as he said those words.
For the next five hundred years, Mor turned her back on him again and again.
But those secretive smiles returned once in a while when they were alone. Her eyes lit up as she brushed against him. On the nights of dancing at Rita’s, she pressed against him and whispered into his ear, drunk and almost purring, that she wanted to go home.
Mor held his heart in the palm of her hands.
Azriel didn’t have anywhere else to be. So he stayed. Despite the betrayal, the rage, and the ache.
It was enough for a while. This insidious game where his heart was but a pawn for her whims, yet there was a safety in this uncertainty. A cold shelter protecting him from the sting of a heartbreak. Where nothing progressed, and nothing was ruined either. It was his purgatory.
When the sisters arrived, one by one, their lives changed. Solitude, once so desired, turned into a burden. Everything became a glaring reminder of what he longed for and was being denied.
Then there she was.
Everything Azriel had and hadn’t dreamt of. Everything Mor wasn't.
Her kindness knew no limits, yet it left him aching to earn every ounce she offered. Heart so pure and tender, but it hardened at her will. Eyes that saw everything, even into the soul of someone as dark as him. Everything she was, she was brazenly unapologetic. Every moment lived per her wishes without shame, without pretence. She bared her desires without a care for him.
Mor had once said, sitting on the stoop of the camp house and staring at the bright sky, ‘If I had wings, I’d never stop reaching for the sun.’
That’s how Azriel felt now. Every thread of his being drawn to Ayla. To be the only recipient of her warmth. To be the only one she shone on.
But she was also capable of burning him.
As she took one male after another to punish him, Azriel was reduced to a grudging witness to her cruelty. He was numb to her antics, on most days, but fear was a fierce, loyal companion who refused to leave his side.
What if she preferred one of them over him—a torturer, a killer?
Born bathed in blood, he never got out of it. Everywhere he went, the stench of blood surrounded him.
Azriel couldn’t stop her games. Wouldn’t stop her games.
He would stay in the darkness where he belonged, and be content with the knowing she was there, in his sights, only an arm’s length away. Ayla never turned away from him. She never hid from him. Her eyes never filled with guilt and pity in his presence, because she never looked at him.
This was safer; the serenity of her existing in her world and him watching her from afar, undisturbed by the truth she could deny. As long as Azriel stayed away, he could have her like this.
But fate was not on his side. The letter changed everything.
Fear finally showed its true face, a sinister, vile thing that wrenched his heart until his breath strained.
Ayla was all he thought of, he could think of. Reason didn’t exist anymore, and where once it resided was a haunting ground for her voice, her smiles.
Azriel was nothing more than a creature of dread and despair, driven by the only urge to see her. To ensure she was safe. She was still where he needed her. In his grasp.
And that’s how he found himself at her door, pounding on the wood in the middle of the night.
Character: Azriel
Warnings: None
Note: We do not pray at the altar of canon around here. It doesn't exist for me. I write whatever comes to me and whatever makes the characters interesting.
Read it on AO3
It was an unspoken rule among the four—Never speak of the incident.
And so, they never spoke of these changes, either.
Like when Cass avoided his gaze whenever Mor was around and lingered behind a moment too long for a chance alone with her. Or when Rhys returned from his father’s study with a bruise on his face and a crushed envelope in his fist quite too often. Or when Mor reached for the wine more than the others, a glass between her slender fingers any time of the day.
She looked different, too. Red silks replaced dark velvets, her pale skin on display in ways that she once called outrageous, hair brushed fine in place of intricate braids, and soft pink lips now painted bloody.
Sometimes it was hard to remember, hard to believe, as she was quick to tease and quicker to laugh like on those nights in the camp.
Any caution around Azriel was shed. She wasn’t afraid to speak to him anymore, looking him in the eye as she did. She sat beside him at dinners, lured him into conversations, and smiled at him. She sought him wherever he was in the House and waited on him in silence while Azriel parsed through reports for his High Lord.
Her warmth was contagious, enough to fool them once in a while of the pain she tried to hide. But Azriel recognised a charade when he saw one.
Mor wasn’t the innocent girl anymore who was enchanted by the beauty in the mundane. Her insatiable wonder for the world flickered out the day she was dragged back to Hewn City by her father.
There were no more demands for adventures. Open declarations of her dreams died on her tongue as soon as they began. Her laughs became more frequent and soulless, brown eyes clouding when she ran out of words, as though she needed to dictate the moments between them, shape their perception before their pity twisted it into something else. The desperation to forge a new truth for herself and erase the one her father nailed into her fought inside her hopelessly.
And this only drew Azriel closer. He wasn’t new to this battle. Constantly grappling for the right words to say, nodding and smiling at the right moments to avoid any scrutiny, pretending and pretending always to prove he was not as broken as they wanted him to be.
Mor finally understood what it was to be him. She recovered over the years, but the scars remained, and they always would.
An emptiness where the spirit was meant to be, something one didn’t care for until then and its absence an eternal reminder of what was stolen. A dirty imprint that couldn’t be washed off, couldn’t be concealed. It was part of him.
And now, it was part of her, too.
She was as hollow as him. Insides carved out, and she was left with this husk made of deceptive warmth and insincere smiles.
A beautiful husk.
Decorated in vivid colours and gold and gems as though it compensated for what she had no more.
Mor struggled to meet his eyes still. No longer out of fear or disgust of what tainted him, but of guilt, her denial of the possibility of them, for she knew Azriel would always see through her mask.
Character: Azriel
Warnings: None
Note: We do not pray at the altar of canon around here. It doesn't exist for me. I write whatever comes to me and whatever makes the characters interesting.
Read it on AO3
It was an unspoken rule among the four—Never speak of the incident.
And so, they never spoke of these changes, either.
Like when Cass avoided his gaze whenever Mor was around and lingered behind a moment too long for a chance alone with her. Or when Rhys returned from his father’s study with a bruise on his face and a crushed envelope in his fist quite too often. Or when Mor reached for the wine more than the others, a glass between her slender fingers any time of the day.
She looked different, too. Red silks replaced dark velvets, her pale skin on display in ways that she once called outrageous, hair brushed fine in place of intricate braids, and soft pink lips now painted bloody.
Sometimes it was hard to remember, hard to believe, as she was quick to tease and quicker to laugh like on those nights in the camp.
Any caution around Azriel was shed. She wasn’t afraid to speak to him anymore, looking him in the eye as she did. She sat beside him at dinners, lured him into conversations, and smiled at him. She sought him wherever he was in the House and waited on him in silence while Azriel parsed through reports for his High Lord.
Her warmth was contagious, enough to fool them once in a while of the pain she tried to hide. But Azriel recognised a charade when he saw one.
Mor wasn’t the innocent girl anymore who was enchanted by the beauty in the mundane. Her insatiable wonder for the world flickered out the day she was dragged back to Hewn City by her father.
There were no more demands for adventures. Open declarations of her dreams died on her tongue as soon as they began. Her laughs became more frequent and soulless, brown eyes clouding when she ran out of words, as though she needed to dictate the moments between them, shape their perception before their pity twisted it into something else. The desperation to forge a new truth for herself and erase the one her father nailed into her fought inside her hopelessly.
And this only drew Azriel closer. He wasn’t new to this battle. Constantly grappling for the right words to say, nodding and smiling at the right moments to avoid any scrutiny, pretending and pretending always to prove he was not as broken as they wanted him to be.
Mor finally understood what it was to be him. She recovered over the years, but the scars remained, and they always would.
An emptiness where the spirit was meant to be, something one didn’t care for until then and its absence an eternal reminder of what was stolen. A dirty imprint that couldn’t be washed off, couldn’t be concealed. It was part of him.
And now, it was part of her, too.
She was as hollow as him. Insides carved out, and she was left with this husk made of deceptive warmth and insincere smiles.
A beautiful husk.
Decorated in vivid colours and gold and gems as though it compensated for what she had no more.
Mor struggled to meet his eyes still. No longer out of fear or disgust of what tainted him, but of guilt, her denial of the possibility of them, for she knew Azriel would always see through her mask.
Azriel meets Morrigan for the first time and his impression on her.
Character: Azriel
Warnings: None
Note: Fucking annoying to type “Rhys’s mother” over and over again, I could name her but Azriel wouldn’t use her name anyway under any circumstances and now I’m stuck writing like SJM.
Dividers in this series by @diviniyae.
Read it on AO3
She was the most beautiful female Azriel had ever seen in his life.
All the years in the Illyrian camp, Rhys’s mother never entertained a guest, except for her daughter, who visited them only twice before she turned thirteen. The harsh wilderness and the scattered military camps hardly made an ideal place for retreat.
So when she arrived, escorted by two High Fae guards who refused to cross the muddy yard in front of the house and vanished as soon as Rhys stepped out, everyone was too stunned to speak.
Morrigan was different back then, remembered Azriel.
From neck to feet, she was covered in layers and layers of silk and velvet, her dress so dark that her skin shone as fair as snow, and her hair a thick cord of threaded gold. Her lips were a soft pink, the colour fading the longer she stood at the door, and tears lined her eyes as lashes battled against the cold.
Rhys’s mother didn’t get a chance to come to terms with the visitor at her doorstep, and Morrigan was already moving towards her, shoulders tensing at the sight of the wings, but that didn’t deter her. Teeth chattering through her tight smile, she threw her arms around her aunt like they had been acquainted for such intimacy. Azriel knew they weren’t. Neither Rhys’s mother nor sister were welcomed in the underground city. They weren’t worthy for those High Fae, for their own family.
Morrigan was unlike anything Azriel had seen before. Prim and poised in every move, in every smile, in every look. Of all the places in the world, Illyria was the one where she didn’t—wouldn’t belong.
In its grim severity, males fought and wasted for glory, pressured to break and break until every drop of resistance and hope was squeezed out of them, and females left to wither waiting on their males, whilst Morrigan was the very spark of spirit these camps sought and snuffed out.
Rhys’s mother had left them alone no longer than a few hours, and Morrigan prattled on as if she had known them all her life.
‘You can call me Mor,’ she insisted to Cass, who flustered and sputtered, tripping over his words. Even he couldn’t keep pace with her.
Mor never spoke to Azriel, but he often caught her curious peeks. Eyes seemed to dart between him and his shadows, and, whenever they found his scars, she turned away and started a conversation with Cass, as if to fill her memories with anything other than them.
Sometimes, she stared too long at him, lips parting, and Azriel thought of excuses to politely decline her attempt at nicety, but he never found use for them. Her face would soften before she hurried out of the room.
As they stood outside in the cold and chopped wood for the fireplace—which they didn’t need but Rhys’s mother made them do nonetheless—Mor idled by the window. Shadows would hiss in disapproval and slink out of her sight, and when Azriel turned her way, she would disappear, too.
One thing remained unchanged about her through the centuries. Her desperation for adventures, to be free and one with the wild.
Her petiteness and sheltered past had fooled the three, meanwhile, Mor brimmed with ardour and endless requests all day long. She wanted to explore the forests. She wanted to see a stream and stroll along it, to watch it fall over a cliff. She wanted to remember the scent of pine mixed with snow and fresh air. She wanted to see sunlight glimmer off the peaks of Ramiel, their sacred mountain. She wanted to bask in the light of sun and moon, charting their journeys across the sky.
The night Rhys went searching for her, she stood in the middle of a training pit, under the open starry sky.
’The moon is real,’ whispered Mor. Eyes shining with tears, she laughed, the sound echoing far and long that Rhys hissed under his breath, looking around for unwanted company. ‘Everything is real here!’
Cass stood speechless, not knowing what to say except that they had better return before Rhys’s mother woke up and found them gone.
Maybe it was then Azriel felt it first.
Her hungry eyes fascinated by this new world, her obsession and eagerness to learn everything before this freedom was snatched away, before she realised this was but a dream and she was trapped somewhere, at someone’s mercy forever. It brought forth the longing Azriel had buried long ago.
The wishes of a child he once held dear, fooling himself with bold promises of breaking those iron doors and wandering the world, escaping to places hadn’t been discovered yet so to never be found again.
By the time he was let out of captivity, they were forgotten, just like Azriel had forgotten that he could still dream.
As he saw this girl live hers, the very ones that had lightened his days and kept his soul alive, his heart began to thaw.
Azriel meets Morrigan for the first time and his impression on her.
Character: Azriel
Warnings: None
Note: Fucking annoying to type “Rhys’s mother” over and over again, I could name her but Azriel wouldn’t use her name anyway under any circumstances and now I’m stuck writing like SJM.
Dividers in this series by @diviniyae.
Read it on AO3
She was the most beautiful female Azriel had ever seen in his life.
All the years in the Illyrian camp, Rhys’s mother never entertained a guest, except for her daughter, who visited them only twice before she turned thirteen. The harsh wilderness and the scattered military camps hardly made an ideal place for retreat.
So when she arrived, escorted by two High Fae guards who refused to cross the muddy yard in front of the house and vanished as soon as Rhys stepped out, everyone was too stunned to speak.
Morrigan was different back then, remembered Azriel.
From neck to feet, she was covered in layers and layers of silk and velvet, her dress so dark that her skin shone as fair as snow, and her hair a thick cord of threaded gold. Her lips were a soft pink, the colour fading the longer she stood at the door, and tears lined her eyes as lashes battled against the cold.
Rhys’s mother didn’t get a chance to come to terms with the visitor at her doorstep, and Morrigan was already moving towards her, shoulders tensing at the sight of the wings, but that didn’t deter her. Teeth chattering through her tight smile, she threw her arms around her aunt like they had been acquainted for such intimacy. Azriel knew they weren’t. Neither Rhys’s mother nor sister were welcomed in the underground city. They weren’t worthy for those High Fae, for their own family.
Morrigan was unlike anything Azriel had seen before. Prim and poised in every move, in every smile, in every look. Of all the places in the world, Illyria was the one where she didn’t—wouldn’t belong.
In its grim severity, males fought and wasted for glory, pressured to break and break until every drop of resistance and hope was squeezed out of them, and females left to wither waiting on their males, whilst Morrigan was the very spark of spirit these camps sought and snuffed out.
Rhys’s mother had left them alone no longer than a few hours, and Morrigan prattled on as if she had known them all her life.
‘You can call me Mor,’ she insisted to Cass, who flustered and sputtered, tripping over his words. Even he couldn’t keep pace with her.
Mor never spoke to Azriel, but he often caught her curious peeks. Eyes seemed to dart between him and his shadows, and, whenever they found his scars, she turned away and started a conversation with Cass, as if to fill her memories with anything other than them.
Sometimes, she stared too long at him, lips parting, and Azriel thought of excuses to politely decline her attempt at nicety, but he never found use for them. Her face would soften before she hurried out of the room.
As they stood outside in the cold and chopped wood for the fireplace—which they didn’t need but Rhys’s mother made them do nonetheless—Mor idled by the window. Shadows would hiss in disapproval and slink out of her sight, and when Azriel turned her way, she would disappear, too.
One thing remained unchanged about her through the centuries. Her desperation for adventures, to be free and one with the wild.
Her petiteness and sheltered past had fooled the three, meanwhile, Mor brimmed with ardour and endless requests all day long. She wanted to explore the forests. She wanted to see a stream and stroll along it, to watch it fall over a cliff. She wanted to remember the scent of pine mixed with snow and fresh air. She wanted to see sunlight glimmer off the peaks of Ramiel, their sacred mountain. She wanted to bask in the light of sun and moon, charting their journeys across the sky.
The night Rhys went searching for her, she stood in the middle of a training pit, under the open starry sky.
’The moon is real,’ whispered Mor. Eyes shining with tears, she laughed, the sound echoing far and long that Rhys hissed under his breath, looking around for unwanted company. ‘Everything is real here!’
Cass stood speechless, not knowing what to say except that they had better return before Rhys’s mother woke up and found them gone.
Maybe it was then Azriel felt it first.
Her hungry eyes fascinated by this new world, her obsession and eagerness to learn everything before this freedom was snatched away, before she realised this was but a dream and she was trapped somewhere, at someone’s mercy forever. It brought forth the longing Azriel had buried long ago.
The wishes of a child he once held dear, fooling himself with bold promises of breaking those iron doors and wandering the world, escaping to places hadn’t been discovered yet so to never be found again.
By the time he was let out of captivity, they were forgotten, just like Azriel had forgotten that he could still dream.
As he saw this girl live hers, the very ones that had lightened his days and kept his soul alive, his heart began to thaw.
Spent-his-childhood-in-a-dark-cell-with-no-windows Azriel meeting Born-and-raised-in-an-underground-city-and-never-once-seen-the-outside-world Morrigan and falling in love instantly because she’s the only other person he's met to understand what it was like only to be reduced to an incel in canon who obsesses over every woman he meets
Each day a drabble or snippets of chapters will be posted in line with one specific emotion. They explore the past, present, and future of the characters from my fic God’s Game. Characters featured will be mostly Azriel and Ayla, and occasionally Morrigan and Rhysand (as of now). You don’t need to catch up with the main story in order to read these, but some of my OCs will be mentioned and familiarity with them helps.
Based on Moody March prompt list by @/squidlykitten. Since it’s August already, gave a new name to this challenge.
I’ve reordered some themes in the original prompt list as the chapters flow better when read in succession and form a cohesive narrative, but these can be read in any order. Some themes felt repetitive (Loneliness vs Lonely) or the chapters carried more than one emotion (Joyful and Playful) and so they will be published as one.
This is all about Azriel's relationship with Rhysand's father. This one began as something and ended up being something else. I wrote this in one sitting and now you get to read whatever atrocity this is. I wasn’t going to publish it since it’s supposed to be character notes, but I guess it turned out okay. A lot of first times going on here and I love the subtlety of it all and the insights it offers into Azriel’s relationship with Rhysand's father and thereby with Rhysand, and what it implicates about serving two different High Lords closely.
Read it on AO3
It was the first time Azriel tasted faerie wine. In Illyria, he had indulged in many vices; fucking and fighting among the common ones, but never drinking. There was something about Illyrian mead that made his senses thrum with life. Whenever the three had gathered in front of the fireplace, neither Cass nor Rhys minded that his mother slept upstairs. But Azriel did.
Besides, he had never been wholly certain that no one would walk through the door. If it came to it, he didn’t wish to be rendered powerless while surrounded by enemies. The disorientation, the blurred visions, the darkness a slow enticing possession leaving one vulnerable to the slightest threat—Azriel had known it well to orchestrate it on his own again.
Rhys had pretended to understand without words, but Cass had accused him of cowardice. ‘You’re not a true Illyrian until you take this.’
And Azriel was glad for it.
When the High Lord brought him to Velaris, it was easier to resist. On his first day, he remembered it vividly: the sternness in those dark blue eyes, the dare to defy that almost stirred the rebelliousness in him. Right before he was dismissed came the last instruction: No females. No friends. No liquor.
Hard not to obey when he was prohibited from leaving the House of Wind without explicit orders or permission. And he was rarely granted either.
Over time, it became easier—to be alone again. To live by the rules, for they weren’t far from the life he would prefer either.
Azriel never left the House unless demanded otherwise.
He never spoke to anyone. He never wrote to anyone. Unless the High Lord asked of him.
He never took females. There was neither Rhys nor Cass to look him strange when he refused.
He stayed in the chamber until it was expected of him to accompany the High Lord.
His chamber. To his surprise, he was given a private one, one that shared a wall with the High Lord’s. Which he didn’t care for, but apart from the massive bed with silk sheets, it reminded him of his old cell. Rough walls, dark floors, and cold, cold damp air. It was finally the lone window spanning the height of a wall looking on the city below that freed him from those memories.
His first morning here, he remembered waking up and scrambling across the floor to a corner as soon as the first ray of sun hit him in the face. The brilliance of it had startled him out of his slumber. He had years to accommodate to it, however, he had always been on the ground. Slinking under the cover of trees, he had avoided daylight as much as he could. He had nowhere to hide here, not atop a mountain. It was as inevitable as breathing.
Later that day, the High Lord was waiting for him in the training ground carved out on the side of the mountain—a flat expanse of ledge under the plain blue sky where even the clouds refused shelter—as though he had anticipated his aversions and was determined to beat it out of Azriel right away.
The High Lord designed the training himself. It made perfect sense. He couldn’t let another come between him and his spy. Who better to nurture their trust if not himself?
He soared as high as his wings would take him under the High Lord’s observing eyes.
He trained in the quiet, empty ground alone regardless of the High Lord’s demands.
He learnt to wield the shadows as well as his body itself.
He memorised the names and lineage of families of every court. Their powers, their scandals, their skeletons.
He charted their world with its territories and factions, with its dead routes from memory as tests.
Azriel wouldn’t describe these as hard. They were far kinder than the brutal, strenuous day-long drills he was used to, and these rarely left him exhausted by nightfall. It was the unpredictability that bothered him. Summons arrived at any time of the day, and sometimes, more than once. At dawn-break, in the noons, evenings, and even the middle of the night.
The most difficult one was what none would suspect. Learning to write.
‘I have no use for a spy who can’t read or write,’ said the High Lord, thrusting parchments into his hands. His voice was sharp and definitive, but not. . .unkind.
Azriel had mastered the letters while in Windhaven, and he was only spared the pain of writing, but he refrained from correcting the High Lord.
Every sign of his discomfort was observed with silent disregard. The stiff, scarred skin broke in places and bled into the pages, and he was not relieved from scribing until his scrawls were deemed legible by the High Lord. Who knew holding a quill was crueller than handling a sword?
Azriel had his doubts, but he knew better than to voice them, no matter how strange the orders were. Like standing in the desolate woods outside Hewn City dressed in the simple Valerian garments that were neither thick nor durable as his leathers against this cold. The High Lord was there, too, cloaked and coddled under layers of fleece trimmed with fur. Though they lacked the elegance of glimmering threads of Rhys’s coats and tunics, the stark, polished garbs were staunchly regal against the grey mountains behind him.
Azriel’s test was to survive the night. Supplies were scattered in these woods, he was told, in plain sight.
‘Find them, and they are yours.’
A harmless drill given scavenging was a norm in the Illyrian grooming.
Then the High Lord added, ‘No flights. Winnow, if you must.’
Azriel couldn’t winnow, he reminded, voice quiet and low. Always quiet and low. He knew of the High Lord’s misting powers, had seen him vaporise a prisoner once. It was then he decided never to disobey his will, for his own sake. At least, not in front of him.
‘Of course,’ said the High Lord with a smirk so familiar that Azriel almost smiled along.
He began his trek through the forest in soft-soled shoes that were better suited for the levelled, cobbled pavements of Velaris. They lasted only a few leagues, the cold seeping in so biting that he might have believed he was barefoot. The trees grew dense around him, their barks as grey as the mountain beyond, and their bald branches reaching as far as the sky.
Azriel didn’t come across any creature, nor did he hear any. Very little cover for them to lurk and hide, but they wouldn’t need much either, he guessed, the winter would slow their prey down. Besides, the worst of the predators would be in hibernation. That should’ve granted him a sense of safety, but he felt nothing.
The sun was a hazy smidge in the sky. He wasn’t sure how far he had walked, or for how long. Every breath of air burned his lungs. Winds howled and shrieked, warring against the silence that smothered the woods. The swirling flurries of snow reminded him of the Illyrian mountains, but these terrains were far more forgiving than those.
His shadows faded with every shiver of his body. Their whispering quietened as time went by, and Azriel felt truly alone. When he wrapped his arms around his torso and tucked his hands under his armpits, he found no comfort as they had gone numb a while ago, as did his face and his feet. Wings sheathed against him offered protection from sudden gusts and kept his legs steady. However, snow piled along them, turning them into dead weight on his shoulders, and he was too weary to care about brushing them clean.
The paths looked similar, the trees looked similar. Azriel should’ve marked his way. His first mistake, he realised. Though the High Lord wasn’t behind him anymore, he wouldn’t be happy if he found out.
A chill went down his spine, worse than what he endured, as though this cold had depths he could never fathom, something real, something alive.
Azriel dared to look around and found nothing. But it was there. In the air. A dark presence.
It crept up his skin like heat from growing fires in a fireplace, the way warmth filled the space and consumed everyone in it. It cared for no permission; it just swelled and swelled until it was all one felt.
Breathing became unbearable, like forcing icy waters down his lungs. His heart was frozen, heavy, yet it kept pounding and pounding like a fist, jolting an ache through his bones with every beat. His wings flared open, the muscles on his back screaming in protest. His body wanted to leave, to get out of reach of whatever was watching him.
No flights, the command rang in his mind, snuffing out his every instinct.
Azriel didn’t have a weapon on him. It was part of his quest. The trail still fresh behind him, he stood in the middle of the woods, unarmed, his body shrivelling, shrinking, making itself small and invisible. He took one step, and another, and another. He kept his pace so as not to alarm the beast.
The presence was unlike anything he had felt before—dark, wicked, oppressive. It flowed through his blood, thick and corrupting. So potent, it could will his breath to cease; his body trembling under its power. It didn’t need to hunt; everything in existence was its prey by design. The High Lord had him memorise every creature known to be born in this world, and Azriel couldn’t name one that evoked such suffering without showing its face.
It closed in on him.
His foot lifted off the ground, and his legs turned to stone. Azriel fell, his face buried in the snow, yet the cold that burrowed into his bones belonged to the predator. He needed to leave, if he wanted to live.
Death had never frightened him before. He had welcomed it, dreamt of it one too many times in his early life. As he lay in the never-ending frigid forest, he perhaps understood what was so daunting about it.
It wasn’t pain. It was the everlasting loneliness, in death and afterwards. As breaths withered and body froze, no one to witness the passing.
For a moment, Azriel entertained the thought—of giving in. To let the creature drag him to his demise.
Instead, he kept going.
He put an arm in front of the other and pulled himself forward. Leadened and brittle, his wings trembled. Every gust of wind threatened to rip them off him. He would survive this winter, even the predator that toyed with him, but if the High Lord saw him like this, weak and crumbling, that would be his real death.
When he was recruited, the High Lord had conveniently said nothing of the services he required or when or the consequences if Azriel failed. He remembered his father’s smile, full pride of owning something even a High Lord coveted. Azriel had never seen one before, a smile on that gritty face. It always seemed to be twisted in contempt or anger whenever his gaze happened to fall on him. Never in his life had his father touched him either, and he did that day. A heavy pat on the shoulder, ignorant of his stiff wing trapped under his palm. Azriel had refused to show the pain on his face.
And the High Lord’s only words, A bastard. Will do.
Seven years later, he came to collect his dues. And seven months later, Azriel was dying in the wilderness, proving what a terrible investment he was, proving why his father was eager to get rid of him.
A laughter rumbled through the woods, through the very ground.
Azriel froze.
It was part ethereal, part animalistic. He looked up and saw no one, and he hadn’t the strength to turn around.
He heard it again, the laughter, more than one this time. Young, raucous. Of the boys who found him struggling to fly.
‘He’s weak, Cass,’ said the new boy. More disinterest than cruelty on his face.
Weak was not one to be as an Illyrian; Azriel had learnt it the first day in the camps. And he wasn’t to be anything more than weak as a bastard; he had learnt that as a boy. The irony of his existence.
‘He’s got no one to watch his back,’ said the boy he had met the day before. ‘Just like us.’ There was almost a glee in his eyes as he said it.
The boy turned to Azriel, extending an arm. ‘Last chance.’
An invitation to accept their charity after Cass had pummelled into him and left him at the edge of a cliff. Azriel had lain there until sunrise, unable to drag himself up.
He had learnt that, too—to never fight back, never rise up, never make a sound at times like these. Or it never stopped. So he waited all night for the boy to jump out of the darkness and have another run at him. But he found himself alone, with his shadows. They knew it, too, when to withdraw.
Like now. They couldn’t provoke his tormentor. Their mere existence was a challenge.
The presence was upon him, weighing him down as though it sensed his mind wander and this was a disrespect it couldn’t tolerate.
Azriel gritted his teeth to keep them from chattering. His insides caved in on themselves. A pain behind his eyes so blinding that everything flashed white. A darkness began to surround him, and he dragged himself faster. He couldn’t stall this any longer. He had lost sense of his legs. His wings were useless.
He tried; he truly did.
His eyes seemed to deceive him, his mind reassured him that he wasn’t in danger, yet the invisible claws around his heart suggested otherwise.
He knew the moment was close. He was going to die.
If not by the faceless predator, by this feeling that consumed him. All he knew was that he had to run. As fast and far as possible.
The siphons on the back of his hands flickered. Blue crackled through dark swirls like lightning across a night sky.
Breath breaking and shuddering, he lifted onto his arms only to collapse again. He hit a rock hidden underneath the layers of snow. The familiarity of metallic sweetness pierced through his dying senses. Azriel hissed at the warmth, chuckling as blood dripped down his face and bright spatters stained the white below.
The presence retreated for a moment, and when it returned, it knocked the breath out of him. He felt it stomping towards him more than he heard it.
Something within him came alive, and Azriel pushed himself up, hauling his legs and wings along.
Fear. The fuel that coursed through his veins, giving him the strength to attempt once more, was fear.
His knees scraped, tripping over the very rock that had painted his vision red. A throbbing spread through his legs, the pain finally cutting through the numbness. Behind him was the trail now smeared with his blood, a proof of his existence to anyone who came after him. He was here. Lost, abandoned, and hunted.
Azriel longed to turn around, look the creature in the eye once. Yet, his body refused to obey.
Run. Run. Run.
As the presence moved right above him, with no shadow, with no physical form, his siphons blazed.
His vision warped with its shine. Darkness swirled around him, fast and frenzied, and his body became weightless. The ground beneath him ceased to exist, and the winter was nothing more than a fading caress. The sky disappeared, the woods disappeared, and so did the presence.
The world spun around him, and his head with it. Nausea churned in his gut. A breath later, he collapsed on something solid.
Azriel blinked at the glow pulsing within his siphons. The world had stilled around him. The snow, the woods, the glooming sky, all still there.
Snow crunched as footsteps approached him. Real footsteps.
His face entered his vision first as the High Lord crouched beside him. For a long minute, he watched Azriel lying on the floor, gasping and bleeding like a dying mutt. A crack resounded through the air and a dark lump appeared in his grasp. With a faint smile, the High Lord dangled it in front of him like he was baiting one of his blind beasts.
Azriel got to his feet, reaching and stumbling, sheathing himself with the cloak. Made of the softest velvet he had ever felt, it carried a warmth beyond his bruised body could bear. Yet, he swallowed his complaints.
As the High Lord joined him, he sensed it again. The dark presence. Not as severe as before, but lingering enough for him to piece it together.
‘Again,’ said the High Lord.
And Azriel spent the night replicating his feat over and over, scouring for the treasures hidden through the woods, and the High Lord never moved from his place again.
Then on, the training truly began.
Day after day, Azriel did everything he was commanded without question. The one lesson behind it all was to survive—long enough to return to the High Lord.
‘You can withstand torture,’ he said, staring at his scars pointedly. He meant his words, and he didn’t hesitate like the others. ‘I don’t doubt your ability to fight till the very end. You won’t break, but allegiance can. So, who do you belong to, boy?’
The answer he expected was Rhysand. His son, who saved him from the camps and protected him through the years. His son he feared might one day usurp him. He wanted to hear it so he could break Azriel again.
‘High Lord of Night.’
Silence stretched between them. The crown atop his head glinted as the High Lord stepped forward, so close Azriel felt his breath on his face. ‘High Lords come and go,’ he said, far too calm and collected to be a threat or anger.
‘My High Lord.’ Azriel levelled his gaze, his breath steady. Nothing to give him away. ‘You.’
It was always High Lord, never his name. Azriel didn’t dare even think it, for he was convinced the misstep was treacherous in his thoughts as well.
It took a year to mould Azriel into who he was to be. There were new tests and newer trainings, and every time he met the standards, they rose and rose. He never knew anyone other than his High Lord. He never knew a world outside his High Lord. When Rhys returned with his mother and Cass, he hardly recognised them. They wore familiar faces, but the people beneath were strangers again.
Rhys cornered him outside the library one night, seething. ‘What did he do to you?’
I don’t need you tonight, had said the High Lord to his request to accompany him, to protect him, leaving him alone in a house full of people who expected him to be someone long forgotten.
Azriel didn’t answer. He didn’t have one. When he retreated quietly to his chamber, he heard woods shattering, fabric ripping, a storm brewing beyond his walls. He didn't bother with it either as the House would mend it, erase any traces of this before the High Lord returned.
A scream, raw and thundering, echoed in the night.
Soon, it all came to an end. The ambush was unexpected. Azriel was not privy to the details of the retaliation, the father-son pair had decided it was theirs and theirs alone.
‘It’s a private affair,’ said the High Lord, dismissing Cass and him. There was no rebuttal from Rhys this time.
The wait was short, too. Rhys arrived, drenched in blood and gore.
With a corpse.
Azriel spared one long look at the lone gash that sliced across his face and torso, almost tore him into halves, and the insides on display.
Both his brothers are mated. Both his brothers are happily in love. But after five centuries of rejection, Azriel doesn’t hope for such luxury in his life. When he meets the bar owner who is too mysterious even for the spymaster to decipher, his intrigue turns into more. Lines between mystery and secret blur. The closer he gets to her, the more his instincts warn him to stay away.
God's Game Masterlist
Word count: ~5.1k
Warning: Angst. Time skip [ROMANCE]
A/N: This chapter is in Ayla's point of view and takes place way in the future and we're nowhere near yet in the main plot but when a character possesses you, you really don't have a say in it. So yeah, it's Ayla's turn I guess. There's no (major) spoiler in this, so you can still read it.
Both his brothers are mated. Both his brothers are happily in love. But after five centuries of rejection, Azriel doesn’t hope for such luxury in his life. When he meets the bar owner who is too mysterious even for the spymaster to decipher, his intrigue turns into more. Lines between mystery and secret blur. The closer he gets to her, the more his instincts warn him to stay away.
it is honestly amazing how much of writing and editing is just. logistics. like... do i use a name here or a pronoun? if i move this dialogue tag to the middle of this line and break it in half, does the end of the line hit harder that way? what if i move the tag to the front? what if i remove it entirely? ...wait, whose point of view am i in; can i reasonably say this character is appalled, or must i say they look or seem or sound appalled? is this a deliberate action or a step-removed one; is her hand closing on his shoulder, or is she closing her hand on his shoulder? environment environment environment, we need to break all this dialogue up with some narration, the scene is coming untethered. what! are! they doing! with! the rest of their bodies that are not hands! fuck fuck fuck FUCK i forgot we covered this two chapters ago and now i either need to cut this whole chunk or find a reason to reprise the conversation from earlier. name or pronoun? name or pronoun? name or pronoun? move this clause around in this sentence? oh i'll add this phrase-- nope, never mind, past!me added the same phrase two lines down. okay, if i add too much environmental narration it's going to take away from this bit, but not enough and it won't feel grounded. what if i move this to its own line? where the FUCK are their hands?
Engineer (gruff Italian American woman from NYC): That is a load bearing participle. We remove it and the whole chapter implodes. On the other hand, the purple prose on page three gotta go.
Architect ( impeccably dress man): I was going for an open concept chapter. Can we brace the surrounding paragraphs to open this section up?
Engineer, tapping on a calculator: In order to remove that section, we gotta go back 4 chapters.
Architect: Then we go back 4 chapters.
Engineer: We go back that far and we lose 6 hours of writing. You ok with the labor costs? You ok extending the deadline?
Architect: Yes. Strip it back.
Engineer, to her guys: You heard the man. Demo the chapters. We are starting over again.
Groans all around.
Me: Sigh. They are right. Let's open a new document.
Some lily of the valley dividers (and other random blue and gold stuff) for @jadedbug ! You suggested these ages ago and I had them as a draft of mine for too long😩
