➺ summary: the death of your mother has paused your studies and, despite everything, brought you back home. the pressure of school, her sudden absence, and the guilt you’ve carried since leaving at eighteen hollow you out in ways you can’t name. in the overgrown quiet of your childhood backyard, you find yourself wishing for an existence that isn’t yours. the wish sinks deep—deep enough to cause a rift, to tear something open in the world. and you, overwhelmed and ever so curious, fall right through it.
➺ or: reader, drowning in a grief so deep it splits the world open, falls through a tear in space in her childhood backyard. she lands in prythian, a land full of fae, courts, and ancient magic.
azriel, who has known for centuries that he has no mate, no missing half, feels the shift the moment she arrive. something in the world changes. something in him changes.
your new existence in his world creates a new piece of his soul he was never meant to find, but what can he do. after all, you don't belong here.
➺ status: ongoing
➺ word count: tbd
➺ taglist: (idk how to do this. dm me or comment if you wanna be on the taglist lol)
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chapters
01 — the homecoming (3.6k)
your mother's death pulls you back to a house that never felt like home — and grief opens a door to someplace else.
02 — the dawn that took (3.5k)
the Dawn Court and Prythian overwhelm you, but Thesan and Elowen offer gentle comfort as you adjust, preparing yourself for the unprecedented meeting of the High Lords.
03 — the pull (4.0k)
the High Lords convene to witness your arrival, and when your eyes meet Azriel’s across the table, an unspoken bond snaps into place, leaving him shaken and unsure.
04 — against the bond (5.6k)
you arrive in Velaris and settle in, but Azriel is absent. when you finally see him, a quiet, tense tea moment leaves unspoken words between you as you leave, him nowhere in sight.
05 — what will it be (3.8k) (posted!!)
Azriel grapples with the agony of distance as you’re unexpectedly sent back to the Night Court, forcing him to confront his restraint, the bond, and the unbearable tension of seeing you again.
06 — returning currents (posting jan 5th (DELAYED SORRY))
A chaotic night at Rita’s leaves you and Azriel sharing quiet moments under the starlight, but morning brings an unexpected visit from Thesan.
➺ summary: the death of your mother has paused your studies and, despite everything, brought you back home. the pressure of school, her sudden absence, and the guilt you’ve carried since leaving at eighteen hollow you out in ways you can’t name. in the overgrown quiet of your childhood backyard, you find yourself wishing for an existence that isn’t yours. the wish sinks deep—deep enough to cause a rift, to tear something open in the world. and you, overwhelmed and ever so curious, fall right through it.
➺ or: reader, drowning in a grief so deep it splits the world open, falls through a tear in space in her childhood backyard. she lands in prythian, a land full of fae, courts, and ancient magic.
azriel, who has known for centuries that he has no mate, no missing half, feels the shift the moment she arrive. something in the world changes. something in him changes.
your new existence in his world creates a new piece of his soul he was never meant to find, but what can he do. after all, you don't belong here.
➺ chapter word count: 3.8k
➺ warnings: angst, grief, mentions of death, parental loss, emotional distress, escapism, mild self-destructive thoughts (non-graphic), accidental world-hopping, yearning, canon divergence, slight rom-com
chapter 5 | what will it be
Azriel does not like remembering.
This time, it is not that memory itself wounds him, considering he has lived too long for that, but rather that remembering you requires him to admit how close he had been to breaking his own vows. How close he still is.
Recounting the last few days of your stay in Velaris makes him feel sick. Not metaphorically. The sensation settles low in his gut, slow and sour, like bad liquor left too long to burn through his system. It’s the kind of warning his body learned long before his mind ever did, back when listening was the difference between survival and something worse.
The city glows beneath him, all starlight and sound. Laughter drifts up from the Sidra, music threading through the night, the steady hum of life continuing exactly as it always does. Velaris is beautiful in that quiet, infuriating way. Untouched. Unaware. And all he can think of is how you were here. How you had walked these streets, breathed this air, stood close enough that he could feel it in his bones even when he refused to look.
Too close. Close enough that it had become dangerous.
He tells himself it was the right choice. He repeats it like a prayer, like a rule he cannot afford to break. Distance is safer. Distance is cleaner. You deserve something untouched by his history, his silence, the weight that comes with him whether he wants it to or not. You deserve to leave without carrying the burden of a bond you never asked for.
Still, the sickness lingers. It doesn’t ease. It only deepens, coiling tighter the longer he lets himself remember.
His mate.
So close.
And he had not gone to you.
Because he could not.
Because he would not.
And because it was his own vocation, his own curse, to know when to step back, even when every instinct screamed to step forward instead.
It is for the best, his brain insists; persists. You are safer this way. Cleaner. Untouched by a bond you never asked for, tethered to a male you do not know, who has too much blood on his hands and too many shadows following him like ghosts. Yet, his heart—the same one tethered to your own—betrays him daily. It bleeds only knowing your name and the way it feels to lose you before ever having you.
Sometimes throughout the day, despite himself, Azriel claws at his chest; trying to find something to hurt more than the absence of you.
He tells himself he is doing you a kindness. That he is keeping you safe not just from the dangers of Prythian, but from him.
Keeping it clean for you, for when you leave.
Keeping it quiet.
Keeping himself from dreaming.
Because dreaming is dangerous.
Dreaming turns into fantasizing, and wondering turns into futures, and futures are not for males like him.
He has already allowed himself too much of you.
That is the part he does not forgive.
He had watched the way you took in Velaris with open wonder, through some balcony when you arrived. Watched you listen when Feyre spoke, laugh when Cassian exaggerated, soften when Nesta pretended not to care. You had folded into the Inner Circle like you belonged there, like the House itself had made room for you before anyone else could.
They had all loved you. Easily. Thoughtlessly.
It had taken restraint he had not known he possessed to stay away.
More than once, he had found himself walking the halls late at night, steps carrying him somewhere his mind pretended not to recognize. Past familiar doors. Past laughter. Past light.
Past your room.
He had stopped there once, when you had first arrived. Just once. Long enough to realize what he was doing.
The scent of you lingered beneath the magic wards, threaded with something unmistakably yours. It had wrapped around him without permission, sinking into his lungs, his chest tightening as though his body were trying to pull you into him by force alone.
He had stood there, hand hovering inches from the door, breath shallow. Forcing himself to breathe you in instead of knocking.
That had been the compromise.
He does not attend family occasions after that. He makes excuses. Missions. Patrols. Things that cannot be questioned. Because if he hears your laughter, then he will want to be the reason for it. And if he sees how easily you fit among them, how naturally you belong, he will begin to imagine a place for himself beside you.
And he cannot afford that.
If he is caught in the house—albeit drunk, which is happening more often than he cares to admit—one of them will tell him about the small, harmless pieces you without meaning to.
Like how you argued with Cassian over dinner. Or how you stayed up late talking with Mor.
He tries to tune them out. He really does. He does not wish to imagine what it would be like to sit beside you, to share a joke meant only for him, to let himself enjoy something so simple and so forbidden as your smile.
Because then he would crave it.
And craving turns into hunger.
And hunger makes men reckless, careless.
He has seen what happens when males like him want things too much. He has cleaned up the aftermath.
He wants you happy.
And happy, he decides, means your home. Somewhere far away from him. Somewhere the shadows cannot reach.
He is certain of one thing: he would break.
It does not matter how the bond would tread past your presence in Prythian. It does not matter if it would rip his heart out whole, leave him hollowed and raw, or vanish entirely as if it had never existed in the first place.
Either way, he would break.
So he avoids you.
He allows himself glimpses only at his drunkest, when his control loosens and the ache dulls enough to become tolerable. And at his most sober, he hears whispers of your voice where there are none. In the quiet between breaths. In the hush before sleep.
He goes out. Finds bars that open in the daytime, the kind that do not ask questions and do not care how early it is to drown something. He drinks the days away, watching the light shift through dirty windows, watching hours pass like they mean nothing.
He almost laughs at himself, sometimes. At how pathetic it feels.
The most loyal customer, he is sure. They do not even look surprised when he returns.
When you leave, he does not have it in him to say goodbye.
He does not stand in the foyer with the others. Does not pretend this is just another departure. Saying goodbye to your mate. For good.
How absolutely fucked.
He considers it, for a minute. Just a minute. Standing there, watching you go, imprinting the sight of you into his memory so deeply it will hurt forever.
And then he decides he cannot.
Because maybe there would be too much alcohol in his system. Or not enough. And he would say something he cannot take back. He would beg. He would confess. He would tell you the truth with shaking hands and no plan, and it would be anything but productive.
It would be cruel.
So he stays away.
Still, he follows your carriage.
From the umbra of the forest, and crooks of the hills. Not close enough for anyone to notice. Or trailing behind through the sky, shadows keeping him hidden as the Night Court stretches beneath him, familiar and unforgiving. He follows as far as he can: to the edge of the southern border. As far as his duty allows. As far as his heart will bear.
He watches until you are physically no longer visible. Until distance steals you from him entirely.
To make sure you are safe.
Then, and only then, does he turn back.
The city greets him the same as always—glittering, alive, indifferent. Velaris does not mourn. It does not pause for broken things.
Neither does he.
He returns to the House in silence, letting the doors close behind him like a finality he does not have the strength to name. The halls feel wrong without you. Too wide. Too empty. As though something vital has been removed and no one has bothered to fix the space it left behind.
After a multi-day bender, his immortal body finally demands rest.
It is almost an accident, the way his feet carry him there.
Your bedroom door is closed. Unassuming. Ordinary. It should not feel like a threshold. It should not feel like trespass.
He opens it anyway.
The room is empty, exactly as he expected. And still, the sight of it hollows him out. The bed neatly made. The air faintly holding your scent, already fading, already betraying him.
Exhausted, he allows himself one thing.
He lies where you lay.
Breathes you in like a prayer. Like a sin.
And for the first time since you arrived, he lets himself sleep.
It had been days now.
You’d probably made it to the Winter Court. Maybe longer. Maybe you were already settling into rooms carved from ice and quiet, learning new halls, new names. Maybe you were finding people you like better. Maybe you were alone. Azriel tried not to think about that part.
He may never see you again, save for another meeting regarding your existence, delivered across a table like a problem to be dealt with.
The thought sits heavy in his chest.
Azriel had sobered.
And that, somehow, feels worse.
His mind is clear now, too. His thoughts line up neatly, coherently, each one precise enough to hurt. There’s no haze to soften the edges, no blur to dull the reality of it. He’s left alone with the truth: that he chose this. That every step away from you had been deliberate. Controlled. Rational.
Necessary.
Or so he tells himself.
He stands near the edge of the training ring, the House of Wind stretching open behind him, the city spread out beyond the arches. The air smells like stone and night-blooming flowers and something faintly metallic—old magic, maybe. Velaris hums on, unbothered by his spiral. People live. Love. Lose things. Keep going.
You’re not here to see it.
He buries the thought deep enough in his mind to believe that it is for the better.
Footsteps approach from the hall that leads toward the backyard and fighting ring. Azriel senses him before he makes himself known—familiar presence, controlled power, an awareness that brushes against his shadows without disturbing them.
“Azriel,” Rhysand says.
Az doesn’t turn right away.
“There’s something important to be discussed.”
It’s the tone that does it. Too casual. Too light. There’s a hint of smugness there, the barest curl of amusement threading through the words. Azriel turns then, suspicion already tightening in his chest.
Rhys stands a few paces away, violet eyes bright, a smirk tugging at his mouth like he’s holding back a joke.
Azriel does not like it.
He’s avoided talking to his family for days now. Avoided people, in general. Avoided conversations that might circle back to you. He doesn’t have the energy to argue or even attempt an excuse, not today, not sober. So he gives a tight nod instead, jaw clenching as he falls into step beside Rhys.
They walk in silence to the office—Rhys’s study, really. The door closes behind them with a soft click.
Cassian is already there, seated generous.
He’s sprawled across one of the chairs, boots propped against the edge of the desk, wings relaxed, posture loose in a way that immediately sets Azriel on edge.
“What the fuck is this meeting about,” Azriel groused.
Cassian grins. “Nice to see you too, brother.”
Rhys moves behind the desk, unhurried. He doesn’t sit. Instead, he reaches into a drawer with deliberate slowness and pulls out a letter.
Azriel’s heart drops the second he sees the seal.
Dawn Court.
For a brief, terrible moment, the room tilts. His shadows curl inward, restless, whispering unease down his spine.
Had something happened to you?
Rhys turns the letter in his fingers, reading the front with exaggerated interest. “‘Addressed to the Night Court,’” he says mildly, “‘but mostly to Azriel Shadowsinger.’” He looks up, smirk deepening. “What a letter opener, right, Az?”
Azriel doesn’t laugh.
He doesn’t breathe.
Cassian’s boots come off the desk as he leans forward, interest sharpening. “Well that doesn’t sound ominous at all.”
Rhys finally breaks the seal.
He skims the letter once, twice, then looks up—amusement giving way to something more measured.
“There’s been,” Rhys begins, “a minor complication at the Winter Court.”
Azriel’s eyebrows furrowed with concern.
“Apparently,” Rhys continues, “your mate got a little too friendly with a glorified snowcat.”
Cassian blinks. “—I’m sorry, what?”
Jaws clenched, Azriel grinds out: “Is she injured.”
“No,” Rhys answers. “But she couldn’t stay.”
Cassian tilts his head. “Couldn’t, or shouldn’t.”
Rhys looks at him. “Both.”
Azriel’s voice tightens. “Why.”
“She interacted with something ancient,” Rhys says. “It’s an ancient guardian tied to the court itself. It attached itself to her, or, well, almost.”
Cassian swears under his breath. “That’s not supposed to happen.”
“No,” Rhys agrees. “Which is why the court panicked and had to send her back.”
Azriel leans forward slightly. “What does that mean for her.”
“It means they can’t remove it without consequences,” Rhys says. “And they won’t risk testing those consequences on her.”
Azriel’s jaw clenches. “So they’re sending her away.”
“They’re sending her here,” Rhys corrects. “Until they figure out what she’s been pulled into.”
Silence.
Cassian glances between them. “And she’s okay with that.”
“She wasn’t given much choice,” Rhys says.
Azriel closes his eyes once. Opens them. “When.”
“Already on her way.”
Back here.
To the Night Court.
To Velaris.
To him.
Relief settles first, unwanted and sharp, followed immediately by guilt for feeling it at all. He has spent days convincing himself distance was mercy, and now mercy the is being undone.
Rhys lifts the letter slightly, eyes gleaming. “‘Take care of her,’” he quotes. “‘Before she continues on her tour. Be a good little mate.’”
Cassian barks out a laugh, full-bodied and delighted. “Oh, this is beautiful.”
Azriel rubs the bridge of his nose, the pressure behind his eyes building fast. He isn’t sure which is more terrible; the idea of never seeing you again, or the thought of seeing you again for an amount of time he cannot control.
“How,” he breathes, “am I supposed to do this.”
Cassian opens his mouth.
Rhys cuts him off with a look.
The room shifts. The levity drains out of it, replaced by something heavier, something closer to concern. Rhys steps out from behind the desk, leaning back against it as he studies Azriel.
“You’re doing that thing,” Rhys says.
Azriel doesn’t ask what thing.
“The self-loathing,” Rhys continues. “The martyrdom. You don’t get to decide for her by removing yourself.”
Azriel’s jaw tightens. “She doesn’t know me.”
“She deserves the choice,” Rhys says evenly.
Azriel looks away.
Rhys pushes gently, voice quieter now. “You’ve lived centuries denying yourself things you wanted because you thought you didn’t deserve them. I won’t stop you from doing it again, but don’t pretend it’s noble.”
Silence stretches.
Cassian shifts uncomfortably, wings rustling. “For what it’s worth,” he adds, “if you don’t at least try, you’re going to regret it. And you know it.”
Azriel swallows.
Rhys straightens. “Let yourself indulge,” he says softly. “Let yourself know her. Even if it ends. Especially if it ends. Don’t rob yourself of this moment because you’re afraid of what comes after. That’s life.”
Azriel closes his eyes.
Millennia stretch out behind him, filled with ghosts, with things unsaid, with moments he walked away from because staying felt too dangerous.
He opens them again.
“When does she arrive,” he asks.
Rhys smiles.
The breath of the shadows feels somehow more comforting than the five step walk to the living room.
Standing in the kitchen, Azriel tells himself that he was simply grabbing a cup of water. The lie barely finishes forming before it dissolves, because he stops the moment he hears your voice.
It carries from the adjacent room in soft bursts, threaded through laughter and the clink of glasses and the low murmur of too many people gathered comfortably in one space. It’s warmer than he remembers. Or maybe he’s imagining that. Maybe everything sounds warmer when you’re standing on the other side of a wall.
He stays where he is, cup in hand, half-shadowed near the archway past the kitchen, one room removed. Close enough to see without being seen. A coward’s distance. A safer one.
The River House glows tonight. Lamps are lit low and golden, fire crackling quietly in the hearth, windows thrown open to let the night air roll in from the Sidra. Everyone is there. Rhys stretched out on the couch like he owns the place—which, irritatingly, he does. Feyre perched on the armrest beside him, eyes bright, hands moving animatedly as she listens. Cassian sprawled on the rug, back against the coffee table, wings relaxed. Mor curled into one of the chairs, boots kicked off. Nesta sits near the fire, arms crossed, expression sharp but mouth twitching like she’s trying not to smile.
And you—
You’re on the floor too, cross-legged on a cushion that looks far too small for the way you keep shifting, hands wrapped around a mug as if it’s anchoring you to the room.
Azriel’s shadows hush.
He hadn’t expected that part. Hadn’t expected them to react to you like this. Like you belong here. Like you always have.
“So,” Cassian says, leaning forward with wicked interest, “tell us again how this started.”
You groan, tipping your head back. “I didn’t mean to start anything.”
“That’s what they all say,” Mor chimes in sweetly.
Feyre grins. “You can’t just say you accidentally bonded with an ancient Winter Court guardian and not expect questions.”
Azriel watches your mouth curve into a helpless smile. Watches the way you shrug, shoulders lifting toward your ears.
“I thought it was just… a cat,” you say.
Cassian chokes. “A cat.”
“A big one, and it was fluffy!” you insist. “And white. And it was sitting in the snow like it was waiting for someone. I thought—” You pause, eyes flicking toward Nesta. “I thought maybe it was lonely.”
Nesta snorts. “Of course you did.”
Rhys lifts a brow. “You tried to pet it.”
You hesitate.
“…Yes.”
The room erupts in laughter.
Cassian actually howls in delight at your retelling, slapping the floor. Mor drops her head into her hands. Feyre is laughing so hard she has to brace herself against Rhys’s shoulder. You don’t think it was that funny, come on.
Azriel’s chest tightens.
He shouldn’t be here. Not even like this. Not lurking in the edges like a ghost haunting his own home. He should walk in. He should sit down. He should hear this story from you directly, hear the cadence of your voice without walls between you.
He doesn’t move.
“It followed me,” you continue, laughing despite yourself. “Everywhere. Some gaurd tried to shoo it away and it just… sat on his foot.”
Rhys wheezes. “I would’ve paid to see that.”
“He apologized to it,” you add.
Nesta lifts her chin. “As he should.”
Cassian wipes at his eyes. “So the Winter Court just, what, couldn’t get rid of it?”
“They could,” you say slowly. “But apparently that would have offended something very old and very violent.”
“Ah,” Cassian says. “So they offended you instead.”
Your smile falters, just a little.
Azriel catches it. Of course he does.
“Well,” you say, quieter now, “they decided it would be best if I wasn’t there for a bit. Until they could… figure things out.”
Feyre’s voice softens. “Are you okay?”
You nod quickly. Too quickly. “Yeah. I mean—yes. I think so.”
That feeling stirs again in Azriel’s chest. Sharp and wrong. The bond, maybe. Or guilt. Or fear dressed up as instinct.
Rhys watches you for a long moment, then tips his glass toward you. “You’re welcome here as long as you need.”
You look around the room, at all of them, something open and uncertain passing over your face.
“Thank you,” you say. And you mean it.
Azriel steps back before he can think better of it.
His retreat is quiet. Deliberate. He keeps to the shadows, lets them fold around him like an old habit, like muscle memory. He tells himself it’s fine. That this is what he decided. That being nearby is enough.
It isn’t.
He turns, intending to slip farther down the hall, to disappear properly this time—
—and that’s when you look up.
Like something pulling you to look at the darkened hallway just beyond the kitchen. A movement out the corner of you peripheral. Your gaze drifts, half-distracted, following something intentionally unseen. Maybe the shift of air. Maybe the instinct you don’t yet have words for.
Your eyes catch on the doorway.
On him.
Just for a second.
Azriel, you are sure.
Your brows knit slightly, confusion flickering across your face. You stare at the space he occupies—at the place he was—as if you’re trying to piece together something you almost noticed.
That feeling again, fills your chest. That pause. That stillness.
Then Cassian says something stupid, probably very loud and very unimportant, and laughter breaks the moment apart.
You blink.
Turn back.
The room swallows you again and you pretend to not think about it.
But as he’s walking away, Azriel doesn’t. Well, he can’t.
He takes a longer route up to his quarters, stopping to staring at the place the two of you interacted, reminiscing at the echo of a connection he refuses to touch.
He tells himself it’s enough that you’re safe.
He tells himself it’s enough that you’re smiling.
He tells himself he can live with the rest.
Behind him, the River House carries on, full of voices and light, but the thought of you lingers in the corners of his awareness subtle but insistent, a weight that presses without breaking, demanding recognition.
And it’ll be soon when the insistence stops whispering and starts answering for itself.
➺ summary: the death of your mother has paused your studies and, despite everything, brought you back home. the pressure of school, her sudden absence, and the guilt you’ve carried since leaving at eighteen hollow you out in ways you can’t name. in the overgrown quiet of your childhood backyard, you find yourself wishing for an existence that isn’t yours. the wish sinks deep—deep enough to cause a rift, to tear something open in the world. and you, overwhelmed and ever so curious, fall right through it.
➺ or: reader, drowning in a grief so deep it splits the world open, falls through a tear in space in her childhood backyard. she lands in prythian, a land full of fae, courts, and ancient magic.
azriel, who has known for centuries that he has no mate, no missing half, feels the shift the moment she arrive. something in the world changes. something in him changes.
your new existence in his world creates a new piece of his soul he was never meant to find, but what can he do. after all, you don't belong here.
➺ chapter word count: 5.6k
➺ warnings: angst, grief, mentions of death, parental loss, emotional distress, escapism, mild self-destructive thoughts (non-graphic), accidental world-hopping, yearning, canon divergence, slight rom-com
chapter 4 | against the bond
Velaris had not known true unrest in years.
Not the kind that crawled beneath the skin and refused to settle. Not the kind that made the Sidra feel too quiet, the stars a little too sharp overhead. Peace sat uneasily over the city now, thin as glass stretched too far.
It had been days where the sun took to the sky and away went the starry night.
Azriel had not returned with them.
At first, no one had said mentioned his absence. They were careful with the realization, circling the truth without touching it, letting the hours pass, then a full turn, and then another. It was talk to the rest that Azriel was doing what he always did when something clawed too close to the bone: disappearing into the margins, into shadow and silence, into places no one could follow.
But this time felt different.
This time, it felt like something was breaking.
You were scheduled to arrive in the Night Court soon. Soon enough that Feyre had started rearranging rooms. Soon enough that Mor kept pacing. Soon enough that Cassian had grown restless at the revelation amongst them, like a storm with nowhere to break.
Azriel, meanwhile, had vanished.
It was a wonder if he had even made at back to the City of Stars.
And that scared them more than they cared to admit.
That night, they gathered in the River House not for any particular reason, not officially. Dinner had been eaten in fragments, conversation drifting and stalling, plates left half-finished as if none of them quite remembered how to be hungry.
They lingered in the living room afterward. Rhys leaned against the mantle, Feyre curled into the couch beside him. Mor sat cross-legged on the rug, absently twisting a strand of hair around her finger. Cassian hovered near the windows, arms crossed, wings twitching faintly, yet keeping his hands on Nesta.
Suddenly, the front door slammed with enough force to send a shudder through the River House.
It wasn’t the sound of someone arriving home.
It was the sound of something being thrown back into a place it did not want to return to.
Footsteps followed. Heavy, uneven, dragging slightly, like each step had to be wrestled from the floor. Shadows slipped in ahead of him, restless and torn at the edges, fraying against the walls as if even they didn’t know where to settle.
“Azriel?” Feyre called softly.
He didn’t answer.
He didn’t look at them.
He crossed the threshold like a storm given a body, eyes dark, jaw set so tightly it looked painful, the sharp scent of alcohol clinging to him not as indulgence, but as evidence — something taken deliberately, recklessly, like he’d been trying to drown a voice that refused to be silenced.
Cassian was on his feet instantly.
“You’ve got some nerve,” he said, already moving. “You disappear for days and—”
“Move.”
The word was flat. Cold. Final.
Cassian stepped aside just long enough to register the look in Azriel’s eyes before he blocked him again. “No. You don’t get to do this.”
Azriel stopped.
For a long moment, he simply stared at Cassian, something dark and volatile simmering behind his gaze. Then he shoved him.
Hard.
Cassian staggered back a step, wings flaring instinctively, shock flashing across his face before irritation took hold. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Azriel laughed.
Not humor. Not amusement.
A sound stripped bare of anything but disbelief.
“What’s wrong with me,” he echoed, voice low and sharp as glass, “is that the Cauldron decided to play some sick joke.”
Rhys moved then, power rolling subtly through the room. “Azriel.”
“Don’t,” Azriel snapped, spinning toward him. “Don’t use that voice. Don’t try to fix this.”
Mor had risen too, her face tight. “You’re being cruel.”
Azriel’s gaze flicked to her. “I’m being honest.”
Silence fell thick and heavy, pressing against the walls.
“I didn’t ask for this,” Azriel said, pacing now, hands flexing like he didn’t know what to do with them. “I didn’t pray for it. I didn’t hope for it. I lived five centuries without it and I was fine.”
His shadows writhed, agitated, mirroring the violence of his thoughts.
“And then the Cauldron decides — after all this time — that now is when I get a mate?” His voice rose, cracking at the edges. “A human. From another world. Grieving. Lost. Already being talked over, decided for, treated like she’s something to fix.”
Cassian crossed his arms. “She’s not a problem.”
“To them she is,” Azriel hissed. “A flaw. A mistake. Someone who doesn’t belong.”
Feyre took a careful step forward. “Az—”
“No,” he said sharply. “You don’t fucking understand.”
He stopped pacing, breath coming fast now, something raw slipping through the cracks of his control.
“They’re already deciding how to send her away,” he continued. “Sitting around a table, calmly discussing spells and doors and distances like she isn’t—” He broke off, jaw clenching. “Like she isn’t already bound to me in a way I didn’t consent to.”
Azriel laughed again, bitter this time. “Of course she will.”
He turned, eyes blazing. “She has a life. A world. A mother she who just died. You think she’s going to stay in a place she never chose, tied to someone she doesn’t even know?”
Mor’s voice was quiet now. “You could let her decide.”
Azriel shook his head. “No.”
The word was heavy. Absolute.
“I won’t be the thing that traps her here,” he said. “I won’t be the reason she stays out of obligation or guilt or some ancient magic she doesn’t understand.”
Cassian stared at him. “So what? You just—what—ignore her?”
“Yes.”
The answer came instantly.
“When she comes to Velaris, I won’t be here. I won’t see her. I won’t speak to her,” Azriel said, each sentence deliberate, like carving rules into stone. “You can welcome her. Show her the city. Pretend this is all normal.”
He stepped toward the stairs.
“But I’m done letting it tear me apart.”
Feyre’s voice trembled. “Avoiding her won’t make this go away.”
Azriel paused at the first step.
“No,” he said quietly. “But seeing her will destroy me.”
He didn’t look back.
Shadows swallowed him as he disappeared upstairs, leaving behind a room full of people who loved him, and a silence that felt far too large for the space it occupied.
Cassian exhaled slowly, rubbing a hand over his face. “He’s being an idiot.”
Mor nodded. “He’s terrified.”
Rhys remained still, eyes fixed on the empty stairwell, “He’ll realize he’s making a mistake.”
Your stay in the Day Court had been nothing short of radiant.
Sunlight seemed to follow you wherever you went, spilling through open archways and gilded halls, catching on polished marble and glass in a way that made everything feel warm and alive. You met Helion in passing, all sharp wit and brighter smiles, who greeted you like a curiosity rather than a threat, asking endless questions about your world as if it were a story he couldn’t wait to finish reading. He showed you libraries that breathed with living magic, scrolls that rearranged themselves when no one was looking, and observatories where the sky felt close enough to touch.
There were small traditions, too. Like quiet breakfasts taken in sun-drenched courtyards, where light filtered through citrus trees and laughter came easily. Or afternoons spent watching scholars debate philosophy like it was a sport, and evenings marked by shared wine and stories told beneath open skies, where the stars faded reluctantly in the face of dawn. The Day Court welcomed you not as a guest. Sometimes, you thought, something fragile, perhaps, but cherished all the same.
And still, your few days there passed as swiftly as the journey that carried you next, winding through rolling landscapes toward the heart of the Night Court.
Velaris.
A hidden city of which you felt before even nearing. In the air, a subtle shift, like the world itself was breathing. When the city finally revealed itself, nestled along the water, beneath a canopy of stars, something in your chest tightened.
Maybe it was the years of working late into the night that had made you intimately familiar with darkness. It was the kind softened by city lights and the glow of your desk lamp , the kind that carried the comfort of your mother, tucked in your childhood bedroom. Maybe that was why the night sky had always felt like an old friend. Why the stars had never intimidated you.
Oh how you miss your mother. Your only ever constant haven.
And maybe that was why Velaris felt like something calling you home, even as you knew better than to trust that instinct.
Or maybe, you admitted reluctantly, it was because your thoughts kept circling back to a certain shadowsinger.
The male who had named your grief without hesitation. Who had said it had a scent, so sharp and unmistakable he had no choice but to voice it. The one with amber-honey eyes and shadows that curled and shifted like they were alive, as if they, too, had been listening.
You replayed the moment again and again as the city drew closer, wondering if you’d misunderstood him. And, well, you’re whole interaction. If the bluntness had been cruelty or simply truth spoken without polish. Perhaps you’d both been wrong-footed. Just two strangers colliding at the worst possible moment, in a world neither of you fully understood yet.
Lost in the spiral of thought, in the weight of your strange new reality and the ache you carried with you everywhere, you barely noticed when the carriage slowed.
Until Velaris opened before you and the feeling returned.
That pull.
That sense that something here was waiting for you.
Whether you were ready or not.
Lost in thought of your mystifyingly new reality, it took the door to your carriage opening before you realized you had stop. You startled slightly, blinking as the world rushed back in, and looked up to find the person who had opened it for you.
A gorgeous blonde female beamed down at you, hands braced on the edge of the carriage, sunlight catching in her hair like it had been waiting for her specifically. You recognized her instantly as one of the Night Court’s inner circle, seated close to the High Lord at the meeting of the courts.
Here, though, she looked nothing like the formal figure you remembered, just easy confidence and warmth, as if excitement lived comfortably in her bones.
“Oh, I’m so glad you’re here,” she said, voice bright and genuine. “We’ve been excited all day.”
You smiled back without thinking. Maybe it was the way she said it. Maybe it was simply that after days of being observed, her enthusiasm didn’t feel overwhelming. But more so genuinely welcoming.
You took her offered hand and stepped down from the carriage, the breeze hitting you all at once. Being this high above the city, with starlight beginning to gather and the Sidra glinting far below, made something in your chest loosen.
You breathed in.
You felt alive like you hadn’t in a long time.
Ahead of you, at the top of the steps leading into a stunning estate carved from pale stone and glass, stood the High Lord and Lady of the Night Court. Rhysand looked every bit the effortless power you remembered, with violet eyes sharp with amusement, posture relaxed in a way that suggested nothing in this city truly threatened him. Feyre stood beside him, hand in his, her smile softer but no less knowing.
To their left stood another male you recognized from the meeting: tall, broad-shouldered, dark hair falling just past his ears, wings tucked neatly behind him. He looked carved from motion and muscle, like someone perpetually on the verge of laughter or violence—and perhaps enjoyed both equally.
You glanced instinctively around the group.
And, instinctively, noticed that; someone was missing.
“Welcome to Velaris,” Rhysand said, spreading his hands slightly, as if presenting the city itself to you.
You hesitated, unsure of the etiquette, and began to dip into what you hoped resembled a curtsy.
The blonde female scoffed gently and looped her arm through yours, halting you mid-motion. “Gods no,” she said, waving a hand. “Trust me, Rhys needs none of that. In front of others, maybe—but with us?” She half rolled her eyes and flicked her wrist dismissively, already tugging you forward.
“She’s right,” Rhys said easily. “We’re all friends here. I’m Rhysand, and this is my wife, Feyre. We met briefly at the meeting.”
You smiled again, feeling the word friends settle somewhere warm.
The winged male stepped forward next, grinning like he’d been waiting for his turn. “And I’m Cassian,” he said, grinning. “Welcome to the best city in all of Prythian.”
You can feel her eye roll before she speaks. “And I’m Morrigan,” she says sweetly. “My advice? When in doubt, ignore him.”
“Shut up, Mor,” Cassian shoots back, already bounding down the steps to snag your small bag from your hand like this is a rescue mission he’s been waiting his whole life for.
Feyre steps forward before you can protest, warmth radiating from her as she pulls you into a hug that’s gentle but grounding, like she somehow knows you need it. “I’ll give you a tour of the house,” she says, smiling. “Then I’ll show you to your room.”
“Wait, I thought I was showing her around,” Cassian protests. “I’m literally carrying her bags.”
“Bag,” Mor corrects, glancing pointedly at the single strap over his shoulder. “Singular.”
Feyre sighs, already herding everyone toward the door. “Come on. We had the entire day to make it seem like we’re at least a little put together. Let’s not ruin that illusion in the first five minutes.”
Cassian mutters something about being perfectly put together as Mor laughs, and somehow—despite the nerves, the strangeness, the weight of everything that brought you here—you find yourself smiling.
After showing you around the house with sunlit rooms and winding halls, art tucked into corners like it had grown there, Feyre and Cassian eventually leave you at the threshold of your bedroom, smiling and insisting you take your time.
The door clicks shut behind them.
For a moment, you simply stand there.
Your room is warm and inviting, carved in soft lines and pale stone, the windows thrown wide to the city beyond. Velaris stretches out beneath you, rooftops catching the dying light as day gives way to dusk, the Sidra winding through it all like a ribbon of molten gold. Lanterns begin to flicker to life one by one, and the air hums with that gentle, unhurried magic that seems woven into the bones of the place.
You’re not sure whether to unpack or leave everything as it is.
Your belongings are few. Some light, flowing fabrics from the Dawn and Day Courts, some practical garments Elowen had given you. Trinkets and small keepsakes collected along the way. Proof that you’ve been here. That this somehow isn’t a dream.
You’d been nowhere aside from your college and workplace in New York, and your family estate. Never was up to it. Traveling wasn’t exactly your forte.
Eventually, you decide to unpack anyway.
The act is, however, grounding. You smooth fabric, hang dresses, tuck things neatly into drawers as if you’re convincing yourself that you belong here. Even if only temporarily. You set your mother’s letter on the nightstand, your fingers lingering on the worn paper longer than necessary, as though it might steady you simply by being close.
It all feels… good.
And in a few days, you’ll move on again.
You step back to the window, resting your palms against the cool stone as the last rays of sunlight kiss the city goodnight. Velaris glows now with its soft, luminous, alive. A city that feels both impossibly ancient and achingly present.
You think, absently, that it’s beautiful.
Then something shifts.
Not a sound. Not a movement you can name. Just the faint, unmistakable sense that the air has grown heavier, fuller, as though the space behind you has been gently occupied. Like standing at the edge of deep water and feeling the tide turn, even before it reaches your feet.
Your shoulders tense, then ease.
There’s no fear in it. No alarm.
Only a strange awareness. A tug low in your chest, as if you’ve stepped into the orbit of something you can’t quite see. You glance over your shoulder, but the room is empty, serene, exactly as you left it.
A knock breaks the moment.
You turn just as the door opens, Morrigan peeking in with a bright, familiar smile. “Dinner time.”
You nod, the feeling already slipping away, leaving only a faint echo behind. As you step into the hall after her and pull the door closed, you catch a flicker of movement at the far end of the corridor. Dark, fleeting, but gone before you can focus on it.
You pause, head tilting.
Nothing.
You shake it off and follow Morrigan down the hall, unaware of the way the air seems to exhale once you’re gone—of how the presence you felt lingers a moment longer, aching in the quiet you leave behind.
The dining room is warm, golden with candlelight and the faint, floral undertone of Feyre’s cooking. Plates clink, glasses chime, and voices rise and fall in easy rhythms. You feel yourself being woven into the laughter, the teasing, the small jokes that feel like threads pulling you into the fold.
Cassian’s booming voice dominates one corner of the table, recounting a ridiculous training mishap from the camp, while Rhys interjects with a smirk and a perfectly timed quip that sends everyone into a fit of laughter. You’re introduced to Nesta first. A beautiful woman with her eyes sharp, scanning you as if testing whether you belong. And to Amren, whose gaze is curious and measuring, the faintest curve of a smile betraying amusement at something you cannot yet name.
The conversation folds around you. Feyre laughs, recalling the time she’d tripped over a stray tapestry in the hall, sending a teetering stack of books and a startled Rhysand tumbling into a perfectly orchestrated mess, leaving everyone doubled over at the memory. You’re still learning names: Elain, Mor, and a few others, but each introduction carries with it a warmth, a sense of the Inner Circle as more than just power, more than just magic and politics. They are home, somehow, in a way your chest remembers before your mind does.
When the meal winds down, no one seems to notice, no one in a hurry to leave. The chairs scrape back softly, and you drift into the living room along with the rest of them. Glasses are refilled, wine and water swapping hands, and Feyre is already at the center of a story, gesturing wildly as she describes a trip to the city that went sideways in a most comical fashion.
You look at a wall of photographs with snaps of past adventures, pranks gone wrong, battles, quiet moments in the court. Feyre pauses at one, her lips quirking in that familiar smile.
“Oh, yes,” she says, eyes glinting, “that was the time Azriel nearly… well, it wasn’t exactly graceful.”
You note the shadow that crosses the memory, subtle but there, in the photograph: Azriel, quiet at the edge of the group, wings folded neatly, posture protective even in the stillness of a past moment. You froze at the sight of him.
And despite yourself, look around to room to find that, of course, the male was no where to be found.
You glance at the photo once more before returning to the flowing conversations around you.
Sleep refuses to come.
It isn’t fear, exactly. Not excitement either. It’s something restless and humming beneath your skin, like your body has adjusted to a new gravity and now doesn’t quite know how to lie still under it.
Two days in Velaris and somehow it already feels… crowded with memory.
You lay there staring at the ceiling, at the unfamiliar beams and the faint glow of the city filtering through sheer curtains, your body exhausted in the way that comes from too much — too much newness, too many names and stories and laughter pressed into too few days.
Cassian had taken it upon himself to make you laugh at least once an hour, whether you wanted to or not. Morrigan had dragged you through half the city with a grin and a list of places you absolutely had to see. Feyre painted while you watched, explaining colors the way other people explained emotions. You talk about your own appreciation of the arts back at home. Nesta had even been kind, despite her husbands’ implied warnings, offering wine and honesty during conversations. Even Amren, terrifying and small and ancient, had studied you like a puzzle and decided you were solvable.
You fit. Shockingly, effortlessly.
And somehow that made everything worse.
It has been… good. Overwhelming, but good. The kind of good that makes your chest ache afterward, because you don’t yet trust it not to disappear.
By the third and final night, your thoughts refuse to slow. The room is too quiet. The city beyond your window too alive. So you give up on sleep, slip from your bed, and pad out into the hallway.
The night did not come softly to Velaris.
It settles instead; a blue hush laid over rooftops and river and stone, the city dimming not into darkness but into something gentler, something watchful. Starlight does most of the work here, caught in windows and water alike, making everything feel a little unreal, as if you’ve stepped into the memory of a place rather than the place itself.
The River House is silent at this hour. Moonlight spills through tall windows and arches carved into the stone walls, painting everything in silver-blue. The hallway opens along one side, a series of graceful arches that look out over Velaris and the Sidra, the river winding through the city like a ribbon of glass.
Your steps echo faintly as you make your way toward the kitchen, following memory and instinct rather than direction.
That’s when you see him.
For a heartbeat, you’re convinced you’ve imagined it.
A trick of moonlight. A ghost conjured by exhaustion and memory.
He stands at the far end of the arched hallway, half-swallowed by darkness, the city spread out before him through the open stonework like a spill of stars. Tall. Still. One arm braced against a stone pillar, his forehead pressed to his forearm as if the stone is the only thing keeping him upright. His wings are folded tight, feathers dark and nearly invisible against the darkness behind him.
Azriel.
Then he shifts.
Just slightly. Enough for the moonlight to catch the sharp line of his jaw, the familiar fall of dark hair. Enough for the scent to reach you — rich and bitter and unmistakably alcohol you realize distantly. Or Prythian’s version of it.
Your chest tightens.
He lifts his head slowly, like the movement costs him something, and turns.
And the look in his eyes — god.
It isn’t quite anger. Not exactly. It’s worse than that. Something raw and exhausted and restrained so tightly it feels like it might snap if you breathe wrong.
Your brows furrow at that feeling gnawing at your chest .
For a moment, neither of you speak.
His shadows stir, peeling away from the darkness at his feet, drifting toward you like they recognize you before he allows himself to.
He exhales a short, humorless breath. A laugh, almost. Twisted with irony.
You stiffen, taking his actions as hostility, even if his face doesn’t fully match it. You keep your distance, careful now, every instinct suddenly alert.
“Hello,” you say, quietly.
He doesn’t answer.
Turns back to the view, one hand still braced against the stone, the city reflected faintly in his amber eyes.
The silence stretches.
You hesitate, then clear your throat.
“About what happened in the Dawn Court,” you begin, the words tumbling out a little too quickly now that you’ve started. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have taken offense the way I did. I— I could have reacted better. It was just… new. All of it.”
You pause, fingers curling into the fabric at your sides.
“You understand that,” you add quietly. “I’m sure.”
When he doesn’t answer, heat crawls up your neck. Embarrassment. Yet another awkward encounter between the two of you to add to your counter.
“Well,” you say finally, forcing a small, polite smile he doesn’t see, “I was just going to make some tea. I’ll leave you to your… night.”
You step past him.
Too close.
Too fast.
His hand closes around your wrist.
You gasp, sharp and startled — the sound echoes too loudly in the quiet hall.
Immediately, he lets go.
His fingers curl around nothing, clenching hard enough that you can see the tension ripple up his arm. He steps back like he’s been burned.
“I—” he starts, then stops.
The air between you feels charged now, humming, alive.
Your heart is racing. You stare at where his hand had been, warmth still lingering on your skin.
He looks at you like he’s standing on the edge of something terrible.
For a moment, neither of you moves.
Your wrist still tingles at the spot of contact, heat blooming under your skin like a bruise that hasn’t decided whether it will hurt yet. His hand hangs uselessly at his side, fingers flexing around the air once, twice, like they’re searching for something they’ve already lost.
You reach for words to describe the sensation. Your eyes search his in question: Did you feel that too?
“I’m y—” Azriel says, voice rough, the word catching badly in his throat.
He swallows.
“I’m sorry too,” he finishes quietly.
The apology sounds like it costs him something. Like it’s been held behind his teeth for days, pressing and pressing until it finally slipped free. His wings shift behind him, feathers brushing the stone with a soft sound, and he looks at you before he seems to think better of it, memorizing you.
“Forgive me,” he adds, just as softly.
Then he turns his head away.
Not in dismissal.
In restraint.
Like if he keeps looking at you, he’ll say something he can’t take back.
You stand there, heart thudding far too loudly in your chest, unsure what exactly you’re forgiving him for. Was it the well, the touch, the silence, or something deeper you can’t name yet. But you nod anyway. It feels right. It feels necessary.
“Well, I was just going to make tea,” you say again, the words steadier now. You take a step backwards. And when you go to turn around:
“I’ll make it,” it sounds like a plea.
You blink and almost break your neck turning back around. “What?”
“I’ll make it,” he says again, already turning toward the kitchen. “If that’s all right.”
There’s no expectation in his tone. No pressure. Just an offering.
You nod and follow.
The kitchen is dim, lit only by moonlight spilling through tall windows and the faint glow of enchanted embers in the hearth. The stone counters gleam softly, everything hushed and intimate in a way daylight would ruin.
He moves through the space quietly, efficiently for a drunk man, sleeves pushed up just enough to expose strong forearms dusted with faint scars you pretend not to notice. He fills the kettle, sets it to heat, reaches for a tin of dried leaves you don’t recognize.
“Chamomile,” he says, glancing over his shoulder. “With a little starflower. It helps settle the nerves.”
You smile despite yourself. “You do this often?”
“For others,” he says.
The words linger.
You sit at the counter, watching him, noticing the small things: the way his shadows behave differently here, less restless, curling lazily along the floor and the base of your chair; the way his shoulders slowly ease as the minutes pass; the way the sharp edge of him dulls into something almost… gentle.
The kettle begins to sing.
He pours the water carefully, steam curling upward, carrying a soft, floral scent. When he hands you the cup, you notice the tremble in his fingers. You notice his eyes avoiding yours.
“Thank you,” you say.
He nods once, leaning back against the counter across from you, arms folded loosely, gaze fixed on the mug in your hands like he’s anchoring himself to it. When he notices you staring, he goes to pour himself a cup as well.
You watch the steam curl up from your mug, watch it dissolve into the air like it never existed at all. And suddenly finding your voice,
“You’ve been drinking,” you say.
A truth spoken aloud because it’s already sitting between you, heavy and unmistakable.
Azriel stills.
For a long moment, he doesn’t look at you. His gaze drops instead to his own cup, to the faint ripple on its surface. He drags his thumb along the rim, slow, almost reverent, like the motion grounds him.
“Yes,” he says finally. Then, quieter, like an afterthought he didn’t mean to release, “Bad habit.”
You frown, something tugging tight beneath your ribs. “You don’t strike me as someone who does things without a reason.”
That gets him.
His head lifts abruptly, amber eyes cutting into you with sudden clarity — sharp enough to steal your breath. For a heartbeat, you think you’ve pushed too far, that you’ve reached for something feral and cornered it.
Then his mouth curves.
Not into a smile.
Into something bitter. Crooked. Almost broken.
A quiet laugh slips out of him, rough and short, like it scraped its way free. He looks away again just as quickly, shoulders dipping as if the sound cost him more than it should have.
“You’d be surprised,” he mutters.
Silence swells. Presses.
He swallows. You see the flex of his throat, the way his jaw tightens as though he’s forcing words back down.
Then, barely above a breath:
“Sobriety makes me careless.”
The atmosphere changes.
You blink, caught off guard by the nakedness of it. A laugh ghosts at the back of your throat — not amusement, but shock — and you bite it back hard, unsure whether it would shatter him or yourself.
“Careless,” you repeat softly. “With what?”
Painfully slow, Azriel turns toward you.
This time, he doesn’t look away.
He studies your face like he’s trying to memorize it under duress. Like the act of seeing you clearly is dangerous, indulgent. But it’s terribly late. And this may be the most sober he’s been in days. And so he’s allowing himself one mistake.
His lips part.
“Who.”
The word is soft. Bare. Unarmored.
It settles between you like a held breath.
His jaw tightens immediately, regret flickering fast and sharp across his expression. He looks away before you can respond, before the weight of it can press too hard against either of you.
“You should drink your tea,” he says, voice low, measured with effort. “Before it cools.”
He lifts his mug and takes a slow sip, the movement deliberate, practiced. Armor sliding back into place.
But it’s too late for you.
Your chest aches now, tight and full of questions you don’t have language for yet. The tea is warm in your hands, but you barely feel it.
Because whatever he almost said is still there.
Unspoken.
Lingering.
And you know, with a certainty that settles uncomfortably deep in your bones, that it was meant for you.
You stay.
Long enough for the steam to fade from your cup, for twilight’s blue hush to soften into the faint rose of dawn. The world changes around you and you hardly notice, suspended in the quiet he left behind.
You remain at the counter long after Azriel is gone, after his shadows and silence have emptied the room.
It’s the first thin line of sunlight across your cheek that finally brings you back.
Fuck.
You leave today. You should have been packing.
Everything after that happens in a blur. Clothes folded. Trinkets gathered. Your bag heavier than it should be. The house feels unreal, like a place you passed through rather than stayed in.
You meet the Inner Circle in the foyer. Smiles. Words. Movement. You nod at the right moments, say the right things.
You glance once, just once, down the hallway. Toward the arches. Toward the shadows.
But it does not matter.
The shadowsinger is nowhere to be seen as you leave.
a/n: this was soo long and i did not mean it to be but i hope you guys enjoy anyway
➺ summary: the death of your mother has paused your studies and, despite everything, brought you back home. the pressure of school, her sudden absence, and the guilt you’ve carried since leaving at eighteen hollow you out in ways you can’t name. in the overgrown quiet of your childhood backyard, you find yourself wishing for an existence that isn’t yours. the wish sinks deep—deep enough to cause a rift, to tear something open in the world. and you, overwhelmed and ever so curious, fall right through it.
➺ or: reader, drowning in a grief so deep it splits the world open, falls through a tear in space in her childhood backyard. she lands in prythian, a land full of fae, courts, and ancient magic.
azriel, who has known for centuries that he has no mate, no missing half, feels the shift the moment she arrive. something in the world changes. something in him changes.
your new existence in his world creates a new piece of his soul he was never meant to find, but what can he do. after all, you don't belong here.
➺ chapter word count: 4.0k
➺ warnings: angst, grief, mentions of death, parental loss, emotional distress, escapism, mild self-destructive thoughts (non-graphic), accidental world-hopping, yearning, canon divergence, slight rom-com
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chapter 3 | the pull
The Dawn Court had not hosted this many people in centuries.
Word of a dimensional tear had spread like wildfire, and Prythian had responded exactly as Thesan predicted.
For two days, the palace glowed brighter than sunrise itself. Gilded halls swept clean, gardens polished to perfection, fountains humming with magic. Even the sky seemed to shimmer with something expectant, as though the air itself was holding its breath.
Thesan kept saying it was “for diplomacy.”
The servants whispered it was “for the impossible mortal girl.”
You weren’t sure what it was for.
You only knew your stomach hadn’t stopped twisting since sunrise. And for once, in this strange magic world, you hoped that it would stay dawn forever.
The procession began before midmorning.
From your guest balcony, you watched the first carriages crest over the horizon, accompanied by banners of gold that shimmered like molten sunlight.
Day Court.
Tall, illuminated, terrifyingly perfect.
Their soldiers marched in armor that reflected the entire courtyard like a mirror so radiant and blinding, carved from some holy metal, you conclude. Their high priests glided in long robes trimmed with solar motifs. Every single one of them looked like they had been blessed at birth with divine confidence.
You swallowed so hard.
You’d never felt more human.
Next came a glitter of frost.
Winter Court.
Silver, sharp, pristine. Snow-dusted cloaks that didn’t melt. Eyes like blue steel. Their magic crackled through the air like ice fracturing on a lake.
After them, a column of emerald and antlered helms called in the Spring Court.
Bright, fragrant, too lovely to trust.
Then came Summer. With sunlight on their skin, sea breeze woven through silk clothes, turquoise gems scattered like tide pools. They were warm in the way beaches were warm. Inviting, but hiding dangerous depths.
Then
Shadows.
Stars.
A presence so heavy it seemed to alter gravity itself.
The Night Court.
Even from the balcony, you felt it.
A shift, a stillness, like the moment before lightning strikes. Their carriage was sleek black, outlined in starlight. Their retinue half winged, half shadow-born, all breathtakingly composed.
Your eyes snagged immediately on one of them.
Tall.
Dark.
Broad-shouldered.
A cloak draped like midnight, with siphons glimmering faintly blue at his hands. Shapes of shadows curled lazily around him as though whispering secrets.
He didn’t look at anything.
Not the gardens, not the palace, not the sky.
But something about him made your pulse move strangely.
You stepped back from the window and back into the safety of your room.
Azriel had been silent for the entire journey.
Cassian knew something was wrong. Mor knew something was wrong. Rhysand was very aware something was wrong. Feyre was half convinced something is always wrong with Azirel.
Azriel, however, refused to admit anything.
He walked ahead of the rest of the Court of Night with the false calm of a man trying desperately not to implode. His shadows were restless, slipping into corners, testing doorframes, swirling around his wings like smoke.
Cassian finally muttered, “You’re pacing. Except you’re not even walking. Which is worse.”
Azriel didn’t look at him. “I’m thinking.”
His brothers share a look. Rhysand glanced over, “Your version of thinking looks suspiciously like having a spiritual crisis.”
Azriel did not dignify that with a response.
Because what could he say?
That his soul felt like someone had reached in and rearranged the architecture of it overnight?
That there was some new weight inside him, a presence he didn’t know, but needed? A change he was scared to need, scared to even hope for?
Azirel knew it had something to do with his mate. But centuries of knowing for certain you did not have one, then seeing everyone around find theirs, had taken its toll. He had accepted it then, a lone soul.
He’d had centuries of being complete.
And now he wasn’t.
It felt like drowning in air.
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Thesan found you sitting on the edge of your bed, wringing your hands.
You wore the soft sunrise-toned robes they’d given you; silken ivory, gold-threaded, light enough to move like water. They’d braided your hair with small pieces of sunstone. The effect was ethereal.
And yet, you felt like an impostor.
Thesan knelt slightly so he was eye-level with you; a gesture so gentle it almost undid you.
“You will speak only if you wish to,” he said softly. “You will not be forced. You will not be harmed. And I will be beside you the entire time.”
“This is insane,” you whispered. “This is actually insane, Thesan.”
“Yes,” he agreed cheerfully. “But we will get through it. Breathe.”
You tried, but it felt like impending death.
Breathing just did not work.
He offered you his hand. Like a father might his kindergartener walking to the first day of school.
You took it, anyway, and the two of you walked toward the meeting hall.
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The Solar Court’s council chamber was enormous in a way that felt intentional—built not merely to house meetings, but to impress, to remind anyone who entered that diplomacy here was conducted beneath the full, unrelenting gaze of the sun.
Light poured in through towering arched windows, sunlight refracting through enchanted glass and spilling across the marble floor in molten gold. Veins of inlay traced the stone like living vines, curling and spiraling outward from the circular table at the chamber’s heart, as if the room itself had grown rather than been built. The air carried the faint scent of citrus and warm stone, bright and clean and utterly Dawn.
Every court had taken a seat.
High Lords and Ladies arranged themselves around the table in careful choreography—power measured not just in magic, but in posture. Some lounged with practiced ease. Others sat rigid, spines straight, hands folded as if daring someone to test them.
Thesan stood at the head, luminous as ever, sunlight seeming to cling to him like a second skin.
Some courts watched him with open respect, expressions attentive and calm. Some regarded him with narrowed eyes, suspicion sharpening their features. Some barely bothered to look up at all, boredom thinly veiled behind polite disinterest.
The Night Court watched everything.
Azriel sat between Cassian and Rhys, wings folded tightly behind him, posture honed to a blade’s edge. He was perfectly still, almost too still, every muscle locked in readiness, as though the chamber itself were a battlefield he had yet to map.
His shadows crept along the floor at his feet, stretching toward the table, pooling in the carved grooves of the marble. They pressed low, restless, as if listening for something only they could hear.
As if waiting.
Thesan drew in a slow breath.
“Thank you for coming,” he said, voice steady, carrying easily through the chamber. “What I bring before you today is… unprecedented.”
A ripple of attention passed through the room.
He spoke of the tear in the air beneath the willow trees. Of the way reality itself had split, glowing and breathing like a living thing. Of the witnesses, of gardeners, sentries, courtiers who had seen it widen.
And then, of you.
Your sudden appearance. Your confusion. Your grief.
Your insistence that you came from a world called Earth.
Autumn Court scoffed openly, a sharp sound that echoed off the stone.
Winter Court said nothing, pale eyes fixed on Thesan as though already calculating threat and advantage.
Day Court leaned forward in their seats, fascination lighting their faces, minds already spinning with theories and impossible equations.
Summer Court whispered among themselves, voices low and rapid, like waves pulling secrets beneath the surface.
Azriel listened.
He listened too closely.
Every word scraped against something inside his chest, tightening, twisting, like a warning bell he could not silence.
Before Thesan could continue, a voice cut across the chamber too sharp, too impatient.
“Well?” the speaker drawled. “Where is this infamous human, Thesan? Can we see her?”
A pause.
Then Thesan smiled. Polite. Pleasant. And it was all teeth.
“Why, of course,” he said mildly. “I was just getting there.”
He lifted a hand and the guards moved in perfect unison.
The massive doors at the far end of the chamber swung open.
And you walked in.
Azriel felt it before he saw you.
A pull.
A snap.
A choking, unstoppable force connecting something deep within him to something in the doorway. Then he looked.
And everything fell away.
His hands gripped the edge of the table. Fingers clenched so hard the polished wood cracked. A sharp, splintering sound swallowed only by the murmurs of the room.
Cassian eyed the table before assessing his brother’s face.
Rhysand turned sharply at the sound, violet eyes narrowing. He followed Azriel’s rigid stare to the doorway and then flicked a glance toward Feyre, something unspoken passing between them in the space of a breath.
Mor’s gaze shifted slowly, thoughtful, between you and Azriel. Her brows knit together.
That’s impossible, her expression seemed to say. Right?
You saw none of it. You were too busy trying not to faint as you stepped into a room full of immortal, impossibly powerful beings.
Your gaze swept the table, colliding with Azriel’s.
You froze.
He froze.
You didn’t know him.
But some small part of you recognized the gravity in his stare.
He looked away so fast it was almost violent. You almost wanted to ask him to look at you again. Maybe it’d give you more of an understanding of just what that feeling was. Why it had left you so breathless. Maybe a full analysis would’ve given you some peace of mind.
But it did not matter. For the mysterious shadowsinger did not look at you once more the rest of the meeting.
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You sat beside Thesan, clutching your hands, listening to High Lords argue about you like you weren’t even there at all.
Day Court discussed magical theory.
Spring Court wondered about ancient gateways.
Summer Court debated the oceanic lines of magic.
Night Court remained all but silent.
Then Feyre, you figured, spoke gently, “Perhaps… she should see the courts. Learn about Prythian. It may help us understand the nature of the magic that brought her here.”
Azriel’s head snapped toward her, eyes flashing.
Feyre subtly raised an eyebrow as if to say, don’t start.
Azriel glared harder.
You noticed and shrank a little.
God, does he hate you? Have you made an enemy? Already?
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After a solid hour of arguing and smoothing over plans, all courts agreed that you needed protection, you needed observation, you would travel among them, peacefully, as Thesan requested, and everyone would contribute to finding a way home
Thesan offered to host everyone overnight for the productivity of the meeting. He was sure there were already rumors that the courts haven’t gotten along this well since the creation of Prythian.
Rhysand accepted before Azriel could object.
Azriel’s stomach dropped.
He would have to stay.
He would have to stay near you.
And it made him sick.
Long after the feast and small talk ended, Azriel slipped out into the gardens. The same gardens where you had arrived, presumably. The gardens of the Dawn Court glowed faintly, eternal sunrise softening every edge. It should’ve been peaceful.
Moonlight painted the leaves silver.
The fountain murmured.
The willow branches swayed lightly.
He sat on a stone bench, head bowed, shadows whispering frantically.
He felt like he was mourning something still alive.
His mate existed.
His mate was human.
His mate had no idea.
His mate would be leaving Prythian as soon as they figured out how.
He pressed a hand to his chest, swallowing hard.
He didn’t want this.
Didn’t ask for this.
Didn’t deserve someone soft and mortal and bright.
He was already planning how to let you go.
The bond. That newly opened, raw wound in his chest pulsed with every breath, every heartbeat. A constant ache. A missing piece he’d never known he was missing.
He despised it.
He despised how it made him feel unbalanced, unsteady, human.
His shadows were restless, circling him like agitated birds.
Then, they froze.
Footsteps. Light. Hesitant.
He didn’t turn. He already knew. He squeezed his eyes shut.
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You weren’t trying to find him.
But you simply couldn’t sleep with the events of today fresh on your mind. Ironically enough, the gardens were the only place in this foreign world that felt alive in a way that didn’t scare you. And, well, you needed air, space, anything.
And instead you found him. Sat on the edge of the fountain.
The brooding, winged, terrifyingly beautiful male from the meeting. The one who hadn’t looked at you so much as through you.
You hesitated.
But he was the only familiar, non-frightening face in that meeting.
So you approached and cleared your throat.
“Hi,” you whispered.
Azriel lifted his head. And God, something in his expression cracked when he saw you. You couldn’t read it. And hated that you couldn’t read it
He looked back down to the down. “Hello,” he muttered to the stone path.
You swallowed. “Can I… sit with you?”
A pause. Longer than necessary.
“If you want,” he said quietly.
You sat careful to keep space between you, but even then, you felt the tension radiating from him, a storm barely leashed.
For a moment, everything was quiet.
“I don’t understand how you’re here,” he murmured, soft, angry, confused. “How you’re—”
He cut himself off, jaw tight, frustration threading his voice. You weren’t sure why he thought of your suffering as his personal mystery. Why it’d intrigue him so much as to be upset he couldn’t find the answer. You let out a little laugh anyways, “I don’t understand either, trust me.”
You turned to look at him, just to find that he was already looking at you. Meeting him eyes for the second knocked the breath out of you. Hazel and honey stare back at you, and it was like you forgot how to breathe, forgot how to remember.
“You’re grieving.”
It wasn’t a guess.
He just… knew.
“Rather blunt, isn’t it?” you murmured.
He finally turned his head toward you, shadows shifting with the movement. “Grief has a scent,” he said. “Yours is… strong.”
The words hit harder than they should’ve. You didn’t even know emotions had smells.
“Oh.” Your throat bobbed. “Well. I’m sorry to bother you with my smell of sadness.” Maybe it had been overwhelming him so much at the meeting that he'd rather you not be anywhere near him or his court.
His jaw flexed. “That’s not— I wasn’t complaining.”
You huffed a breath, somewhere between a laugh and disbelief. “That’s definitely what it sounded like.”
He shook his head once, frustrated, at himself, not at you. “I only meant that I—”
He cut himself off, as if the rest was too revealing.
You waited.
He didn’t finish.
And just like that, the illusion broke, and you remember. Oh you remember.
The memories of your mom, her death, your family’s cruelty, the letter you keep tucked away but in reach at all times. It all hit you, along with the surreal awareness that you’re in a different realm. You must be dreaming. You have to be.
But the look on his face. Why did the the look on his face bring you physical pain. None of this should be here. None of it was real.
It was all too much. Your throat tightened so fast you recoiled, standing abruptly before tears could betray you.
“I—I need a minute, I’m sorry—”
The words barely made it out before you were already moving, instinctively retreating from the heat of his gaze, too many emotions, too much everything. Your heel caught first, skidding against stone you hadn’t seen beneath the riot of ivy and white blossoms curling along the garden’s edge.
Too far.
The world tipped and you let out a noise so ungodly it would haunt Azriel for decades.
Then you vanished.
Straight down the well.
Azriel swore so loudly half the palace probably heard.
Without hesitation, he hit the edge and went in after you, shadows tearing free of him like startled birds as he dove headlong into the dark.
You broke the surface in a violent, choking gasp, arms flailing as cold flooded your senses, water stinging your eyes and throat. You coughed, sputtering, lungs burning as you dragged in air that tasted like stone and moss and panic.
A heartbeat later, the water beside you broke and Azriel surfaced hard, breath coming fast, hair plastered to his face, wings half-spread even in the narrow confines, breathless and furious and dripping. Eyes wild and blazing as he took you in.
Relief hit him so hard it nearly knocked him back under.
“Gods,” he started, voice rough, then stopped, jaw tightening as fury rushed in to fill the space terror had left.
You shoved wet hair out of your eyes, blinking at him through dripping lashes, chest heaving.
“I—” You coughed again, water spilling from your mouth. “I think—” another cough, more violent this time, “—I just drank the entire Dawn Court.”
“Why were you walking backward?” Azriel demanded, voice still edged with panic he hadn’t quite managed to bury.
“Why is there a well here?”
His jaw tightened. “That doesn’t answer the question.”
“I needed space,” you said, breathless, words tumbling over one another. “I— I was startled. You said something, and then you looked at me like— like— I don’t even know—”
“Like what?” he pressed.
“Like I’d personally offended you by existing.”
His brows slammed together. “I wasn’t trying to scare you.”
“You said my grief smelled,” you shot back.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“And then you stared at me like I’d just kicked your dog.”
“I do not have a dog.”
“That’s not the point!”
He blinked at you, utterly soaked and utterly done.
“You panicked,” he said finally, voice flat, disbelieving.
“Yes,” you said, nodding fervently. “You have—” you hesitated, searching for the right word, “—a very intense presence. It’s very disorienting!”
His lips pressed into a thin line. “My presence did not put you in the well.”
“You’re right. Gravity did,” you deadpanned. “But you helped!”
Azriel pinched the bridge of his nose like he was developing an migraine.
Then you slipped again, and latched onto him with both arms.
He froze so hard he may as well have turned to stone.
And very, very quietly, he muttered something that might’ve been a curse or a prayer or both.
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Everyone wakes up.
Because of course they did.
Voices.
Lots of them, Azriel notes. But they blur at the edges of his awareness. Because the only thing he can focus on is you.
He lifted you from the water first, carefully, reverently, his scarred hands circling your waist as though you were something fragile carved from starlight. He set you gently onto the stone rim of the well. You were trembling, soaked through, tears indistinguishable from the well water dripping down your cheeks.
He climbed out after you, landing in a kneel beside you because he just couldn’t make himself step away.
Because the bond—whatever it was, whatever it meant—was pulling tight. Tightening until his ribs ached.
You looked so small like that. So tired. So breakable.
“Are you hurt?” he asked, voice low and raw, shaking in a way he despised himself for.
You shook your head, still not looking at him. As if you feared what you’d find in his eyes. As if everything had just come crashing down around you.
Azriel swallowed hard.
He silently begged, Look at me. He didn’t know why, only that suddenly, he wanted to take every piece of hurt inside you and shoulder it himself. As if he had any right.
He shifted closer without meaning to, hands hovering near yours, fighting the urge to touch, to soothe, to anchor.
A lantern swung into the clearing.
Then another.
The rest of the world arrived, but Azriel’s whole universe was still sitting on the stone rim of that well, dripping water and grief and stars he could not have.
A dozen figures burst through the hedges.
Cassian.
Rhysand.
Feyre.
Mor.
Thesan appeared last, in pajamas. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Azriel,” he sighed. “I asked for one night of peace. One.”
Cassian’s face was a mix of concern and amusement.
Mor gasped. “She’s soaked. You didn’t— Azriel, tell me you didn’t scare the poor girl into a well.”
Your eyes widened in horror. “No! He didn’t—” Despite the fact that you tried blaming him too, at first.
But the assumptions were already flying.
Rhys’s stare sharpened. “Azriel. Explain.”
Azriel clenched his jaw. “She fell. I pulled her out.”
Cassian muttered, “Yeah, probably because you glared at her until she ran. Straight down a w—”
“I didn’t glare,” Azriel snapped. So sharp. Too defensive.
Thesan knelt in front of you, voice soft and furious all at once.
“My dear, are you alright? Did he—”
“No!” you interrupted. “He saved me.”
Thesan exhaled sharply, relieved, but still shot Azriel a warning look that would’ve cowed lesser men. “You can’t keep scaring my guests,” he muttered, exasperated.
He hooked an arm under yours and hauled you up with far more grace than you managed. You scrambled upright, wide-eyed, soaked through, dress dripping a trail across the polished stones like some bedraggled fountain statue.
The guards were already halfway across the garden, weapons drawn, wings flared. Thesan lifted a hand sharply.
“Stand down. They are—” he exhaled through his nose, “—not dying.”
He steered you forward with a firm, fatherly hand between your shoulder blades.
“You,” he said gently to you, “are going to your room. Preferably without falling into anything else that isn’t a door.”
You nodded, mortified.
“And you,” he added over his shoulder, still not looking at Azriel, voice edged with a razor-thin I am too old for this, “are no longer permitted near the east wing.”
A pair of guards immediately fell into step behind you, as if escorting a dignitary. Or a flight risk.
You didn’t see Azriel’s expression.
But Thesan did. And he knew. And Azriel knew that he knew.
And the look he gave as he guided you away, leaving Azriel standing in the middle of the garden dripping of well water and regret, was one full of caution.
Azriel wanted to disappear.
The rest of the High Lords dispersed quickly, finding that sleep was a much better use of their time this whatever witnessing this was. But that left the rest of the Inner Circle. And Azriel at their mercy.
Cassian crossed his arms. “So,” he began, far too casually, “explain to me how you managed to terrorize the poor girl into falling down a well.”
Azriel pinched the bridge of his nose. “I didn’t terrorize her.”
Mor, theatrical as ever, added: “Did she jump to escape you? Oh my gods, Az.”
“I wasn’t—”
Feyre raised a finger. “Just to clarify, you found her crying—”
“Not crying,” Azriel muttered.
“—and your solution was to corner her near a well?”
“It was an accident.”
Rhys stepped forward then, expression the picture of calm authority, ruined only by the unmistakable amusement glinting in his eyes. He clapped a hand on Azriel’s shoulder.
“Brother,” he said softly, “what is the matter with you?”
Azriel exhaled, long and shaky.
Cassian arched a brow. “Yeah, Az. What’s got you acting like you swallowed a beehive?”
Az knew he couldn’t do this. Couldn’t take the probing. But admitting the truth felt like condemnation. Felt like he could no longer spin webs of lies into his own head like how it was improbable and maybe the centuries of living in solitude had finally rendered him mad. Maybe it wasn’t a mate bond, he’d pondered. How was he supposed to know what that felt like? Maybe this was something as juvenile as infatuation.
But the moment he said it out loud, it would become real.
Speaking the words would deem all his hard work in conjuring up different solutions that you were not his mate completely useless. But under his family’s gentle eyes, he knew he couldn’t lie. They already knew something was wrong. They’d known for days. His shadows had been twitching like things possessed. His composure cracked at the edges. Azriel had never been subtle.
He couldn’t lie. But he could avoid, right? He had to get out of there.
Azirel went to turn, call it a night. Maybe say it’s been a rough week and the you incident was all a big misunderstanding.
He got less than forty-five degrees before Rhys grabbed his shoulder and spun him back.
“No,” Rhys snarled. “You don’t get to leave. Tell us what the fuck is wrong, Az, or I’ll go into your brain and dig it out myself.”
“Fuck off, Rhysand,” Azriel snapped, shadows flaring. “Now is not the time.”
Rhys stepped closer. “When is it ever the time with you? Hm? You walk into peaceful territory and immediately lose your self-control around the one person everyone’s got their attention on. Why? That’s not you, Azriel. So what the hell is it?”
Azriel shoved his hand off with a scowl and went again to turn away. This time, Cassian faced him and steadied his hands on both of Az’s shoulders.
“Az,” he was pissed, eyes searching his face. “What the hell is your problem?”
He squeezed his eyes shut. Can’t. Can’t. Can’t.
In the end, he broke.
“She’s my fucking mate,” Azriel bit out, voice low and vicious and wrecked. “That’s my problem.”
➺ summary: the death of your mother has paused your studies and, despite everything, brought you back home. the pressure of school, her sudden absence, and the guilt you’ve carried since leaving at eighteen hollow you out in ways you can’t name. in the overgrown quiet of your childhood backyard, you find yourself wishing for an existence that isn’t yours. the wish sinks deep—deep enough to cause a rift, to tear something open in the world. and you, overwhelmed and ever so curious, fall right through it.
➺ or: reader, drowning in a grief so deep it splits the world open, falls through a tear in space in her childhood backyard. she lands in prythian, a land full of fae, courts, and ancient magic.
azriel, who has known for centuries that he has no mate, no missing half, feels the shift the moment she arrive. something in the world changes. something in him changes.
your new existence in his world creates a new piece of his soul he was never meant to find, but what can he do. after all, you don't belong here.
➺ chapter word count: 3.5k
➺ warnings: angst, grief, mentions of death, parental loss, emotional distress, escapism, mild self-destructive thoughts (non-graphic), accidental world-hopping, yearning, canon divergence, slight rom-com
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chapter 2 | the dawn that took
It hit him between breaths.
One moment, Azriel was focused on the rhythm of sparring—inhale, strike, pivot, exhale—shadows curling around his body in familiar, silent loops. It’s a danced he’s practiced for centuries. A routine more familiar than sharing a laugh. Cassian’s blade whistled toward his ribs, and Azriel raised his own to block—
And then his chest seized.
A ghost of pain.
A hint of fear.
Something… opening.
A shift so deep it scraped the foundation of him.
Azriel staggered back a step, hand flying to the center of his sternum. His siphons dimmed. The world tilted, blurred, sharpened again. His shadows recoiled, then surged forward, agitated, whispering frantic, unintelligible things.
Cassian froze instantly. “Brother?”
Azriel didn’t answer at first. Couldn’t.
His lungs dragged in air that didn’t feel like enough.
Because inside him, in the place he’d never once questioned, never thought to inspect, something had changed.
His soul, once singular, once whole and self-sufficient… now felt as if a space had opened within it. A new edge, a gap shaped like a second puzzle piece that had not existed a heartbeat earlier.
A missing part.
Waiting.
His body didn’t know what to do with the sensation, this impossible shift, this pulling ache, this echo of something that was not him, yet belonged to him.
People who had mates always spoke of it casually; the way one speaks of a limp they’ve had since childhood.
A familiar ache.
A quiet yearning.
A gentle, constant tug toward someone they had never met.
A sense of halfness they carried with the same ease as breath.
They were born knowing something was missing.
They lived knowing a part of themselves waited elsewhere. It was normal for them. Expected, though maybe so rare.
A background hum in the soul.
Azriel had never felt that.
Not the ache. Or the emptiness.
Not the hollow echo of a missing half.
For five centuries, his soul had been whole; solid, steady, singular. A puzzle complete with its own lone piece. He had questioned it in centuries. Stopped wondering if something was absent. Stopped wishing for more.
Wholeness with that had been his constant.
Until now.
“What the fuck,” He thought.
Now, it felt as though a new weight had been placed inside his ribcage. A gravitational pull so sudden and immense it knocked the breath from him.
What others lived with from birth, he was feeling all at once:
The heaviness of belonging to someone he had never touched.
The ache of needing someone he had never seen.
The echo of a soul that had not existed for him yesterday.
His heart strained. His shadows trembled. And Azriel could do nothing to stop the crushing weight of this new truth settling into place.
He was no longer alone in his soul.
And the change was so profound, so absolute, it felt like the world had shifted beneath his feet.
He pressed a hand harder against his chest. “Something’s wrong.”
Cassian speared his sword approached slowly, like Azriel was a wounded animal that might lash out. “You look like you’re about to pass out. What happened?”
How was he supposed to explain this?
How could he tell Cassian that it felt like a new door had opened inside him. One that led somewhere he could not see, but could feel pulling at him like a distant thread tugged taut?
So he didn’t try.
Azriel forced his breathing to steady, forced his shadows to settle, forced the tremor in his fingers to still.
“It’s nothing,” he said at last, lying with a warrior’s ease. “Bad omen, maybe. Feels like… something’s about to happen.”
Cassian rolled his eyes with a laugh that didn’t mask his worry. “Brother, don’t jinx our five days and counting of peace.”
Azriel attempted a smirk, but the hollow in his chest throbbed again.
Calling.
Waiting.
Cassian resumed his stance. Azriel tried to follow.
But his shadows didn’t.
They wouldn’t stop moving.
Restless. Searching.
Circling him like they were trying to point toward something unseen.
Or, rather, someone.
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Your fall from grace into Prythian would have been laughable, if anything inside you still knew how to laugh.
One moment, your mother’s letter had been warm in your hands. The paper creased from how tightly you’d been holding it, as if you could press her words back into her, as if the ink might still be alive enough to answer you. The familiar scent of old stationery and lavender soap had clung to it, grounding you in the only thing that felt real anymore these days.
The next—
The light changed. As though the world itself had inhaled sharply and forgotten how to exhale.
The air tore.
You didn’t step through it so much as get drawn, tugged forward by something you didn’t understand and hadn’t consented to, the willow’s drooping branches parting around you like curtains being pulled aside by invisible hands. For half a breath, there was pressure, and the sensation of being threaded through the eye of a needle.
And then you were standing somewhere else entirely.
You stumbled forward, disoriented, the ground solid beneath your feet but unfamiliar in a way that made your stomach lurch. The sky above you was so impossibly vast it hurt to look at, a cobalt expanse washed in the lingering blush of sunrise that clung to the edges of clouds like molten gold, as though the morning had decided to stay just a little longer.
The air was cool and dewy, sweet in a way you’d never smelled before — alive. It filled your lungs with something that felt almost like relief and almost like grief, a scent that reminded you of your first summer away from home, of childhood mornings before the world had taught you how sharp it could be.
Grass brushed your ankles, lush and impossibly green. Flowers bloomed everywhere, petals glowing faintly as if lit from within, colors so saturated they felt unreal. Vines climbed marble arches that gleamed in the sun, curling lovingly around stone as though the garden itself had grown them there on purpose. Fountains whispered nearby, silvery streams of water catching the light, every droplet humming with a low, thrumming magic you felt in your bones before you understood it with your mind.
It was beautiful.
Beautiful and, oh, so wrong.
Gasps cut through the stillness.
You turned, heart hammering, and realized you weren’t alone.
People had been scattered through the garden — reading beneath trees, walking quiet paths, murmuring softly to one another — and now every single pair of eyes was fixed on you. Their faces were sharp in an inhuman way, beautiful and unsettling all at once. Their ears tapered to delicate points. Their clothing flowed and shimmered, elegant and impractical and utterly foreign.
You took a shaky step back, clutching the letter tighter to your chest as if it were a shield.
“What— what is—?” Your voice broke before the question could finish forming.
Movement. Fast. Purposeful.
Guards surged forward, weapons drawn, metal glinting in the sunlight. The sound of it. Of steel being raised, boots against stone. It all sent a jolt of terror through you.
“Identify yourself,” one demanded sharply. “How did you gain access to the Palace of Dawn?”
The words barely registered.
Palace.
Of Dawn.
The absurdity of it hit you all at once, a hysterical thought bubbling up through the fog of your grief.
What the f—
Your breath hitched. Tears burned hotter as your fingers curled around the envelope, your mother’s handwriting smudging beneath your thumb where you pressed too hard.
“I—I don’t know where I am,” you stammered, the words tumbling over themselves. “I swear, I didn’t do anything—I just— there was this tear, and then—”
“From the Mortal Lands?” another guard snapped. “Witchcraft? Portal magic hasn’t been seen in—”
“I’m not a witch!” The denial ripped out of you, half-sob, half-laugh, hysteria clawing its way up your throat. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about! I don’t know where I am or who you are or why—”
“Enough.”
The voice was warm. Calm. It cut through the tension like sunlight breaking through cloud cover.
The crowd parted.
A male approached, his presence carrying something steady and luminous with it, as if dawn itself had learned how to walk and speak. His smile held warmth without mockery, curiosity without cruelty, and his eyes, so soft and bright, studied you not like a threat, but rather a question. One worth answering.
Thesan.
Though you did not know his name yet.
He lifted a hand, palm outward, and the guards immediately lowered their weapons.
“Come,” he said gently. “Let’s give you space to breathe.”
He guided you away from the gathering, toward a shaded alcove wrapped in flowering vines. The air there was cooler, quieter, the hum of magic less overwhelming. Your legs trembled with every step, as if your body were only just realizing how much it had been holding together.
Thesan waited until you were seated on a smooth stone bench before speaking again.
“Where are you from?”
You laughed. A small, broken sound that surprised even you. “You wouldn’t believe me.”
His smile was soft. “Try me.”
You stared at your hands, at the letter still clutched between them. “I don’t even know where to start. I mean— is this still Earth?” The question felt foolish the moment it left your mouth.
He shook his head slowly.
Something inside you sank and shattered all at once. “Okay,” you whispered, almost to yourself. “Okay, well… I’m from Earth. New York. I can’t be from this world. Places like this don’t exist. People like you don’t exist. Magic doesn’t exist. I must’ve— I don’t know. Lost my mind. Or I’m dreaming. Or…” Your voice faltered. “Or I died.”
His expression softened immediately. “Died?”
You swallowed hard. “My mother just—” The words splintered. “She passed a couple days ago. I got her letter. I went into our backyard and then…” You gestured weakly around you. “I was here.”
For a long moment, Thesan said nothing.
Then he reached out and placed his hand over yours. “I am very sorry for your loss.”
The kindness nearly undid you. It pressed against the raw places inside you, gentle and relentless, and you had to blink rapidly to keep from dissolving entirely.
“I just want to go home,” you whispered.
He nodded, slow and solemn. “And we will do everything we can to find a way.”
Even you could hear the uncertainty threaded through his reassurance.
His gaze drifted briefly to your clothes. Your jeans, your dark, tight-fitting shirt. His curiosity was polite, careful. “Your attire is unlike anything from the Mortal Realms.”
“I think we've established I'm not from your 'Mortal Lands',” you muttered, exhaustion making you braver than usual.
To your surprise, he laughed, soft, genuine. “Fair enough.”
But his expression grew thoughtful again. “This is beyond my immediate knowledge. Portal magic has been lost for centuries. I’ll gather my best scholars, mages, historians. And…” He hesitated. “I will need to call a meeting.”
Your chest tightened. “A meeting?”
“Of the Solar Courts, at minimum.” A pause. “Possibly all of Prythian.”
You stared at him. “Because of me?”
“Because of what brought you here,” he corrected gently. “This tear in reality. It cannot be ignored.”
Your head felt light. Your chest felt unbearably heavy.
“We’ll get you settled,” he continued. “Fed. Rested. Dressed more comfortably. The meeting will take place in two days.”
Two days.
Two days wandering palace halls that glowed with sunrise. Two days trying to understand a world that felt like it had been painted over reality. Two days carrying your grief with you like a shadow, unfolding your mother’s letter at night just to remind yourself that she had existed. That you had existed, somewhere else.
Two days in which Thesan treated you with a father’s gentleness, checking on you, offering quiet comfort, promising answers he wasn’t sure he could give.
They fitted you into Dawn Court garments: light, airy fabrics that shimmered like morning light, clothes that felt nothing like home and everything like a dream you weren’t certain you wanted to stay in.
And then—
Thesan came to you, hands clasped behind his back, expression calm but intent.
“They’re arriving,” he said softly. “All the High Lords. And their most trusted advisors.”
As he listed the names of the courts in his world, one stood out to you, though you could not name why.
The Night Court
Something stirred in your chest at that.
Just a strange, inexplicable pull.
Like a thread drawing tight.
You didn’t know toward what.
Or who.
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The room they gave you was too beautiful to be real.
That was your first thought as you stood in the center of it, turning in a slow circle like if you looked long enough, the illusion might crack.
Sunlight spilled through tall arched windows, warm and golden, filtering through sheer curtains that fluttered gently as if the room itself breathed. The walls were painted a soft ivory, etched with faint, curling patterns that caught the light when you moved. Vines trailed along the stone near the windows, leaves glossy and alive, blooming with small pale flowers that smelled faintly like citrus and honey.
Your bed was enormous.
Almost ridiculous. Draped in layers of pale gold and cream, pillows stacked like clouds, the fabric so soft it looked unreal. A low table near the window held a vase of fresh flowers you didn’t recognize and a plate of food that was steaming gently, untouched.
You took three steps in.
Stopped.
Let out a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a sob.
“What the fuck,” you whispered to no one.
You pressed your palms into your eyes, breathing hard. When you looked again, the room was still there. Still glowing. Still impossible.
You walked to the window and looked out.
Gardens stretched endlessly below, fountains catching the sun, pathways winding like they’d been grown rather than built. White stone towers rose in the distance, bathed in light so soft it felt unreal. No traffic. No sirens. No concrete. No skyline.
New York felt like a fever dream.
Your mother’s letter crinkled softly in your hand.
That was the only thing that hadn’t changed.
You sat on the edge of the bed and stared at it for a long moment, chest tight, then tucked it carefully into the drawer beside you. Close enough to reach, but not so close it would undo you completely.
“I’ve officially lost my mind,” you murmured. “That’s it. This is what a breakdown looks like.”
You drifted closer to the windows again, drawn not just by the light, but by the structure of the space itself.
It was instinct. Muscle memory. Survival.
You traced the lines of the arch with your eyes, noting how the curve wasn’t perfect. How it bowed ever so slightly, as if it had been shaped by hand rather than measured and forced into symmetry. The stone blocks weren’t uniform either. Each one subtly different, fitted together with a precision that felt almost… organic.
No harsh corners.
No aggressive geometry.
Everything here flowed.
You moved slowly through the room, fingertips grazing the wall, feeling faint warmth beneath the stone. Load-bearing arches disguised as decoration. Light wells positioned to catch the sun at its highest point, refracting it inward so the room never felt closed or dark. The ceiling sloped just enough to guide the eye upward without overwhelming the space.
You exhaled shakily.
“Okay,” you whispered. “That’s… that’s really good design.”
You hated yourself a little for how comforting it was. For how your brain latched onto structure when your heart was in freefall. But it made sense. Buildings didn’t abandon you. Walls didn’t die. Spaces held, even when everything else collapsed.
You leaned out the window, studying the palace grounds below.
You turned to studying the layout.
Paths curved gently, but with intention. Circulation routes guiding movement without dictating it. Gardens arranged in layers, transitioning from public to private spaces with subtle shifts in elevation and foliage density. Water features placed where sound would carry just enough to soften silence without overwhelming conversation.
It was… perfect.
Designed for living, not displaying.
A city built to breathe.
Your chest tightened.
You should’ve been sketching this. Taking notes. Losing yourself in it the way you always did. The way your mother used to smile at, the way she’d say you see the world differently, and that’s a gift.
Instead, your hands trembled.
Because none of this should exist.
Because no amount of beautiful architecture could explain how you went from a willow tree in your childhood backyard to a palace bathed in perpetual dawn.
You stepped back from the window, pressing your fingers to your temple.
“This isn’t real,” you murmured. “It can’t be.” But hey, if there was any place you’d lose your mind and end up in, you weren’t going to complain about this one.
And that was when the knock came at the door.
You jumped.
“Yes—? I mean— come in?”
The door opened slowly, and a female stepped inside, hands folded neatly in front of her. She was tall and slender, her pale gold hair braided down her back, ears delicately pointed. Her expression was gentle, curious, not at all alarmed by the fact that you looked like you were five seconds from lying flat on the floor.
“Hello,” she said warmly. “I’m Elowen.”
You blinked at her. Once. Twice.
“Of course you are.”
She smiled, unfazed. “Lord Thesan asked me to see to you while you’re here.”
“Right,” you said faintly. “Naturally.”
Elowen glanced around the room, then back at you. “Is everything to your liking?”
You looked at the bed. The sunlight. The glowing walls.
“Define… liking,” you said carefully. “Because if you mean ‘does it feel like I accidentally fell into a fantasy novel,’ then yes. Nailed it.”
Her smile widened just a little. “That reaction is not uncommon.”
That made you pause. “Wait. Really?”
“Oh yes,” Elowen said lightly. “Most mortals require at least a day to stop trying to wake themselves up.”
“Mmm,” you nodded. “Good to know I’m on schedule.”
She gestured to the table near the window. “You haven’t eaten.”
“I’m afraid it might be poisoned,” you joked.
Elowen raised a brow. “We don’t poison guests.”
“You say that now.”
She laughed softly and picked up a small piece of golden fruit from the plate, biting into it without hesitation. “See? Still alive.”
You pretend to eye it suspiciously. “Okay, but what if it’s a delayed thing.”
“If I collapse dramatically in the next hour,” she said, “you’re free to panic.”
You snorted despite yourself and finally stood, approaching the table. The food smelled incredible. Warm bread brushed with something citrusy, soft cheese, fruit that shimmered faintly like it had been kissed by sunlight.
You took a tentative bite.
Your eyes widened immediately.
“Oh,” you breathed. “Oh my god.”
Elowen beamed. “Dawn Court cuisine is meant to remind you the world can still be kind.”
What sweet words. Maybe your world could learn a thing or two about this so-called Prythian.
Instead of voicing that and seeming crazier than you probably already seem, you swallowed and nodded quickly, taking another bite like if you stopped, the weight of everything might catch up to you.
Elowen watched you for a moment, then crossed to a wardrobe near the wall and opened it. Inside hung clothes in shades of soft gold, cream, pale blue, fabrics so light they barely seemed to exist.
“These are for you,” she said. “You don’t have to wear them if you don’t want to.”
You touched one sleeve, marveling at how it slid through your fingers. “They’re beautiful.”
“They’ll be more comfortable than what you arrived in,” she added gently.
You hesitated. “Can I… ask you something?”
“Of course.”
You stared at the clothes, then at the floor. “Do you ever wake up and think this isn’t my life. I don’t belong where I am.”
Elowen’s expression softened. “Often.”
That surprised you.
She met your gaze. “I was not originally from the Court of Dawn. Belonging is not always immediate. Sometimes it grows. Sometimes it hurts first.”
You swallowed, nodding slowly. “Yeah. That tracks.”
Elowen gave you a small, reassuring smile. “Rest. Eat. Wander if you wish. The palace is safe.”
She paused at the door. “And… I’m glad you’re here. Even if you don’t understand why yet.”
After she left, you stood alone in the glowing room, bread still warm in your hands, strange clothes draped over your skin.
You let out a long breath.
“Okay,” you whispered to the sunlit walls. “I guess we’re doing this.”
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azriel x modern!reader
series masterlist | part 2
➺ summary: the death of your mother has paused your studies and, despite everything, brought you back home. the pressure of school, her sudden absence, and the guilt you’ve carried since leaving at eighteen hollow you out in ways you can’t name. in the overgrown quiet of your childhood backyard, you find yourself wishing for an existence that isn’t yours. the wish sinks deep—deep enough to cause a rift, to tear something open in the world. and you, overwhelmed and ever so curious, fall right through it.
➺ or: reader, drowning in a grief so deep it splits the world open, falls through a tear in space in her childhood backyard. she lands in prythian, a land full of fae, courts, and ancient magic.
azriel, who has known for centuries that he has no mate, no missing half, feels the shift the moment she arrive. something in the world changes. something in him changes.
your new existence in his world creates a new piece of his soul he was never meant to find, but what can he do. after all, you don't belong here.
➺ chapter word count: 3.6k
➺ warnings: angst, grief, mentions of death, parental loss, emotional distress, escapism, mild self-destructive thoughts (non-graphic), accidental world-hopping, yearning, canon divergence, slight rom-com
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chapter 1 | the homecoming
You got the call during the middle of the day.
It was the kind of afternoon New York specializes in. Loud, indifferent, and sun-streaked in a way that feels almost mocking. Outside the bakery window, taxis barked at each other, strangers argued, a dog howled at nothing.
You had your hair up, the latest drafts of your design for the new stadium tucked into your purse and beneath your arm. Coffee in hand, you were just about to head back to the office after your lunch break. Life, ever so persistent, relentless, kept going.
And then your phone rang, and suddenly life didn’t.
The world didn’t crack or shatter. It just stopped. Quietly. Almost politely. As if the universe were whispering I’m sorry before placing the weight of a second life on your shoulders.
Your brother’s name lit up the screen.
You almost didn’t answer. You almost let it ring. He never called unless he needed something. Whether it was money advice, approval, or an audience, you knew your brother’s name flashing across your screen meant one thing: no good.
And you almost turned your phone off, shoved it back into your purse and pretended like the call just didn’t come through. But something in your gut tightened, a cold, metallic pinch that made your stomach drop.
You picked up.
And then came the words.
Simple. Cruel. Final.
“Mom’s gone.”
There were other things said. Maybe the date of the funeral, the time, your father’s instructions. But they slid off you like water. All you heard was gone. A single word that managed to rearrange your entire understanding of the world.
People kept walking around you, bumping into your shoulders and spilling your coffee just a bit onto your hands. The slight sting of the burn was the only proof that you were alive.
The rest of you was far away, beyond reach. The pieces retreated back to when you were 18, getting that acceptance letter into your dream college. With your mother’s hand tight on your shoulders, her smile reassuring, you let yourself dream. Dream of being somewhere the air didn’t suffocate you for simply existing, dreaming of a place where it wasn’t a burden to live.
The pieces of you that left, morphed into the you that accepted that college admission, that packed up everything and didn’t even return home for the summer.
It manifested in the you that left your mother when she had been there for you every second that you needed her to be. Into a monster riddled in guilt.
Grief, you’d learn, is just love with nowhere left to land.
It gathered immediately; behind your eyes, in the hollow of your chest, in the cracking, uneven rhythm of your heartbeat. It expanded, slow and terrible, like flooding water rising past the point of no return.
Your mother was dead.
And you hadn’t been there.
You entered your apartment, threw open your laptop emailed your program chair with trembling fingers, typing a sentence you couldn’t believe you were writing.
There has been a loss in my family. I need to go home.
It looked wrong on the screen. Stark and small. Too small to contain the earthquake that had split your world wide open.
The cursor blinked beneath your words, impatient, steady, indifferent. It felt unreal that something so monumental could be reduced to thirteen plain words, that the devastation hollowing out your chest could be translated into something administrative, something that would go into a file somewhere, archived under “excused absence” or “bereavement leave.”
Your finger hovered over the trackpad before finally hitting send.
You sat back in your chair, breath uneven, and stared at the mess of your workspace.
Architecture had been consuming you for months, maybe even years.
You had been devoured slowly, methodically, like something being carved down into usefulness. Endless deadlines layered themselves over your days; harsh critiques built nests in your ribs; sleepless nights ate at your skin and your sanity and your softness.
Your notebooks and hands smelled like graphite and exhaustion. Your models, crooked, collapsing, painstaking, sat in corners like small monuments to your fraying patience. Your professors lived in your skull like ghosts, echoing their favorite phrases:
“This isn’t strong enough conceptually.”
“You’re not pushing yourself.”
“Try again.”
You tried.
God, you tried until you forgot what trying felt like.
A master’s program in New York sounded glamorous to everyone else. It was a thing adorned with prestige and promise. You learned quickly that prestige was just another word for pain. That promise was another word for pressure.
Inside, architecture gnawed.
It burrowed.
It fed on every insecurity you had.
You felt alone in ways you didn’t know how to articulate.
Lonely even in crowded studios, lonely even while surrounded by students who all seemed to breathe differently, as if the air of ambition came naturally to them and suffocated you. Lonely in the moldy corners between deadlines, where your heart sat like wet paper, unable to dry.
You were already drowning. And your mother’s death pulled you under.
She had been the only piece of driftwood in a sea designed to swallow you whole.
And now she was gone.
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When your flight landed, you barely felt the plane touch the ground.
Your body existed in a suspended, brittle state. Like one wrong breath might shatter you entirely. You walked down the jet bridge because your legs moved on autopilot, not because you truly understood where you were or why.
The airport smelled exactly the same as when you left at eighteen — cold and sanitized, with a faint undertone of burnt coffee and recycled air. A sterile kind of familiarity that made something deep inside you ache.
People rushed around you with the single-minded impatience of travelers who still had lives to return to. You stood still for a moment, gripping the handle of your small suitcase until your knuckles went white.
It felt like someone had peeled open your ribcage and scooped out everything soft, leaving only a trembling shell in its place.
You don’t remember how exactly you made it home. But you knew when. Home was unmistakable.
Too big,
Too cold,
Too perfect,
a monument to wealth and unhappiness.
Its white paint gleamed with the kind of shine only money and misery shared. The windows sparkled soullessly, sterile, watching you like polished eyes. The front lawn looked sculpted by angels with hedge trimmers, every blade of grass lined up in military precision.
It was the kind of house people admired from a distance.
The kind of house that looked like a dream to outsiders.
The kind of house that had swallowed your mother whole.
You made it as far as the foyer before the silence hit you.
Your childhood home didn’t smell like itself anymore.
No lavender.
No warm sugar.
No hint of your mother humming in the kitchen.
Just air. Lifeless and thin.
Your brother spotted you first.
He walked toward you with his usual Wall Street swagger, shoulders stiff, jaw tight, dressed in a suit he absolutely didn’t need for an airport pickup. His frown was perfectly curated, the kind of expression someone wears when they want to appear appropriately somber but can’t quite hide the annoyance beneath.
“You look… rough,” he said, lips curling like he’d discovered an unpleasant smell.
You didn’t dignify it with a response.
Your silence never mattered to him anyway.
Your father arrived moments later, his cologne striking you before his presence did — sharp, expensive, suffocating. A scent you had always hated because it never smelled like him, but like the man he wanted the world to believe he was.
He didn’t open his arms.
Didn’t soften his expression.
Didn’t offer a single gesture of comfort.
He just looked at you the way he’d always looked at your mother — with frustration, with regret, with the quiet resentment of a man who hated the very thing he depended on.
“You weren’t here,” he said.
Four words, dipped in venom.
A simple sentence sharpened into a blade.
Your throat burned as you forced out, “I didn’t know.”
He shrugged.
A gesture so dismissive it made nausea climb your throat.
“We all knew,” your brother added, tone dripping with superiority. “Maybe if you visited more—”
There was no need for him to finish.
The accusation landed anyway.
Maybe if you visited more, maybe if you cared more, maybe if you weren’t selfish, maybe if you weren’t always so busy, maybe if you hadn’t run away from this family, maybe if you hadn’t abandoned your mother—
The guilt sliced through you cleanly, leaving you breathless.
But beneath it, something clicked into place.
A cold, grim understanding.
Their grief wasn’t grief at all.
It was convenience.
A performance.
A socially acceptable mask of sadness to hide the fact that none of them had loved her the way she deserved. That your mother — gentle, warm, soft-spoken, radiant — had always been out of place in this family built from rot and generational cruelty.
They grieved because it was expected.
Not because it hurt.
Your mother had been the only true light among them.
Of course they resented her for it.
Your family had never deserved her.
They still didn’t.
You cried yourself to sleep in your old childhood bedroom that night.
You hadn’t even known she’d been sick.
Not once.
Not in any of the weekly calls she never missed, no matter how busy she was, no matter how tired she sounded beneath the brightness of her voice.
Every Sunday, without fail, she’d answer the phone with the same soft greeting. So warm and tender.
“Tell me everything.”
And you would.
Or rather, you tried to.
You told her about studio deadlines, about professors who didn’t know how to speak without condescension, about subway delays and overpriced coffee and your apartment’s newest leak. You complained about your peers, about your own exhaustion, about the heaviness settling behind your eyes.
You left out the worst parts because you didn’t want to worry her.
You thought you were protecting her.
You didn’t realize she was doing the same for you.
Every call ended the same way, her voice softer than a whisper, full of a love that made your ribs ache:
“I’m so proud of you.”
You didn’t know she said it through pain.
You didn’t know she said it while hiding lab results in a drawer.
You didn’t know that after hanging up, she’d sit quietly with her eyes closed and breathe through aches she told nobody about.
You didn’t know she didn’t want you to hear her suffering in the tremble of her voice.
You didn’t know she spared you.
Because that’s who she was.
She died protecting you.
She loved you harder than anyone had ever loved anything.
And she let you go.
She let you chase the future she would never see.
She let you believe she was fine so you wouldn’t fracture under the weight of worrying.
She let you laugh without guilt.
She let you stay in the life she’d been so proud you built, even as hers slipped through her fingers.
The thought alone almost brought you to your knees.
Because that meant she’d died holding her pain alone.
That meant she’d carried her fear in solitude.
That meant she had protected you from the truth even when she was the one who needed protecting.
And what a terrible, beautiful thing — to be loved so much that someone hides their dying just so you won’t lose yourself before they’re gone.
You pressed a hand to your chest, fingertips trembling, as if you could physically hold the grief in place before it shattered something vital.
But grief is not containable.
Grief is not quiet.
Grief is not gentle.
Grief is the echo of love with no place to go.
And now all of it — the love she had for you, the love you still had for her — had nowhere to land but inside your breaking body.
It hurt.
God, it hurt.
You felt it in your throat, tight and swollen.
In your lungs, unable to expand fully.
In the hollow behind your sternum, where something soft had lived before the call and now lived only in memory.
You sank into a chair — or maybe you collapsed; you weren’t entirely sure — and the world tilted, blurred, wavered.
Because the truth hit you with the force of a confession:
Your mother didn’t tell you she was dying
because she didn’t want to steal one more piece of your future.
And you would spend the rest of your life wishing she had.
Your father stood near the doorway, stiff-backed, as though your arrival was an inconvenience he had to endure rather than a loss he was also grieving.
Of course father dearest couldn’t even look at you.
Instead, he reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and extended something forward, holding it between two fingers like it was fragile. Or guilty.
A letter.
Your name written on the front in your mother’s handwriting. Soft, looping, familiar enough to make your breath stutter.
It looked impossibly alive against everything else in the room.
“She left that for you,” your father said, voice clipped, uninterested in the weight of the moment. “By her nightstand. Thought you should have it.”
You waited stupidly for him to say something else. Something human.
But he didn’t.
He just adjusted his cufflinks and stepped aside like he was granting you permission to resume existing in a house that no longer felt like yours.
You held the envelope carefully, as if warmth still radiated from it.
As if she had just sealed it that morning.
Your brother wandered through next, face pinched, eyes red in a way that didn’t quite match his earlier expression. He slowed when he saw the letter in your hand, something unreadable flickering across his face, then he kept walking, disappearing into the kitchen without a word.
You were surrounded by people, yet completely alone.
And you couldn’t open it here.
Not under their eyes.
Not under this roof where her absence screamed louder than her presence ever had.
Not while standing on the same hardwood she’d stood on days, maybe hours, before she’d gone.
You stepped backward, hand still wrapped around the delicate envelope, and slipped out the back door.
The air outside was warmer, thicker, almost comforting compared to the cold sterility inside. Your breath trembled as you exhaled, your fingers tightening around paper thin enough to tear if you breathed wrong.
You walked.
Past the fence your mother always meant to repaint.
Past the mailbox she decorated every winter.
Past neighbors who nodded at you with pity that tasted sour.
You walked until the hum of suburban traffic faded into cicadas.
Until pavement softened into dirt beneath your shoes.
Until the sky dimmed into that deep, dusky blue she used to call storytelling light.
You didn’t look back.
Couldn’t.
Somewhere between the trees and the quiet, the grief inside you shifted. No longer a stabbing ache, but a pressure so dense it felt like it might split you open.
And still, you kept walking.
You didn’t go to a friend’s house.
Didn’t wander downtown.
Didn’t try to outrun anything.
You walked home.
Not the home. Not the house your father stood in like a guard dog, not the place your mother died.
But your home.
The backyard you grew up in.
The place you used to read under the old oak tree.
The grass she used to braid flowers into for you.
The corner of the world where she had loved you freely, without interference or witnesses.
You stopped there, finally, breath shaking, the letter pressed to your chest like a second heartbeat.
And for a moment, it felt like she might still be somewhere close enough to hear you breathe.
The willow trees were the first to greet you.
Their long branches bowed like old friends lowering their heads in mourning, brushing against your shoulders as you passed — a soft, leafy embrace.
Vines curled over the fence in gentle spirals, unpruned and unbothered, growing the way your mother always encouraged you to grow: freely.
Wildly.
Toward the sun.
The evening hum rose to meet you. Cicadas, rustling leaves, the distant sigh of warm wind.
It wrapped around you, familiar and golden, like the echo of a childhood lullaby.
Here was where your mother had read to you, her voice weaving stories through the branches, filling the air with magic.
Here was where she held you after fights that weren’t your fault, brushing tears from your cheeks with hands that never shook even when everything else did.
Here was where she protected you, with love so steady it felt like a shield.
Here, the world had always gentled itself for you.
Here, you didn’t have to pretend to be strong.
You sank to the ground beneath your favorite willow, knees folding as if the earth had pulled you down gently, knowing you could stand no longer.
Your hands trembled as you opened the letter.
That soft envelope.
Your name had been written like a blessing.
Her handwriting wavered across the page, but it was unmistakably hers.
Tender in the way she’d always been.
And then her voice rose up from the ink itself, speaking through time, through death, through paper:
My love, I don’t want you to come home when I die. I want you to live. Truly live. You were never meant to be tied to this place, to these people, to the darkness they carry like an inheritance. Go where the light is. And don’t look back. I love you more than all the years I won’t get to see. — Mom
You stopped breathing somewhere in the middle.
Or maybe you breathed too much, shallow, frantic, breaking yourself open breath by breath.
Because grief does that.
It takes love, all the unspent, overflowing, un-given love, and leaves it nowhere to go except out of you in sobs and shaking and silence.
Your sobs tore throw the air of the backyard.
Your body folded in on itself, your hands clutching the letter like it was both a lifeline and the knife that cut it.
Your forehead hit the ground, your shoulders shaking, sound pouring out of you in broken, uneven waves.
All of the grief you’d been holding—the guilt, the fear, the love—all the unsent words, all the calls you should have made, all the time you didn’t know you were losing, it surged out of you like a storm that had waited years to break.
The world blurred.
The willow above you wept with you, leaves shuddering, branches swaying, as if the tree itself felt your loss.
The air thickened, heavy, humming, trembling with something you couldn’t name.
Your heartbeat roared in your ears, loud enough to drown out everything else.
It felt like the earth itself was shifting beneath you.
Like your grief was so vast, so consuming, it pulled at the seams of reality —
stretching,
creaking,
tearing
something open.
And somewhere beneath you,
beneath the roots and soil and memories,
the ground began to, the slightest bit, give way.
And then,
you heard it.
A ripping sound.
Soft at first.
Then louder.
Like fabric tearing.
Like reality giving way.
You looked up, breath caught in your throat.
Beneath the willow’s hanging branches, the air was… splitting. A thin seam forming, glowing faintly, shimmering like heat above asphalt. You blinked through tears, unsure if you were hallucinating.
But the tear widened.
And through it you saw visions alive in a way the world had forgotten how to be. Greens so vivid they looked lit from within. Flowers dripping with luminescent petals, their hues shifting like galaxies moving beneath their skins. Light that looked nothing like sunlight, gentler, richer, shimmering as though magic was exhaling through the opening.
You blinked but the vision didn’t dissolve.
You crawled closer.
Your grief pulsed, answering something on the other side.
And the tear responded.
Maybe if you hadn’t been drowning in sorrow, you would have stepped back. Maybe if you weren’t so hollow, so broken, so unbearably tired, you would have ran.
You leaned closer—just an inch, just enough for the air on the other side to brush against your skin.
Warm. Sweet. Electric.
It felt like the breath before a miracle. Or the breath after a heartbreak.
And then the world answered your movement.
The seam split wide in an instant.
Light flared.
Wind tore through the willow branches, spiraling around you, tugging your hair, your clothes, the grief-stained air itself.
And then, you were falling.
Through the tear in space and time, straight out of your grief, and into another land entirely.
Into Prythian.
Into a world where someone else was already turning his head, shadows curling around him in warning, knowing instantly that something impossible had shifted.
Azriel, who had spent centuries believing he had no mate, no missing piece, no destined other half, felt it.
Felt you.
Felt the universe stitch a new thread into the fabric of his soul the moment you crossed the boundary of his world.
