The Things We Understand (Azriel) - Chapter one
Summary: Azriel has spent centuries watching, understanding, and protecting the people around him. Then she arrives - different in ways he doesn't always understand, but never asks him to change her. As he teaches her to navigate the shadows of his world, something quieter begins to grow between them. For the first time, Azriel finds himself wanting something he never expected: not escape, but someone who understands what it's like to be by his side.
The Motherlist - Masterlist
Content Warnings: violence, criminal activity, references to trauma and past hardship, emotional vulnerability, anti-social personality disorder, sociopathy
Author's note: I want to stress that ASPD and sociopathy are spectrums. Some aspects might not be relevant to other neurodivergents on this spectrum.
The House had gone quiet hours ago. Well, not silent, it was never truly silent. The river moved beyond the windows, a low and constant rush beneath the distant sounds of Velaris settling into sleep. Somewhere below, a door closed. The wards hummed faintly through the stone. A fire cracked in one of the rooms on the lower floor.
Azriel sat alone in the study, a report open beneath his hand. He had read the same paragraph three times. It wasn't difficult to understand, but it was irritating.
He turned the page. The report was short. That was usually a good thing. Most problems in Velaris could be dealt with before they became problems at all. A missing shipment. A disagreement between merchants. Someone selling information they shouldn't have. A minor smuggling operation along the Sidra.
This wasn't any of those things. There was no pattern that made sense. No political affiliation. No known associates of interest. No evidence of coercion. No connection to the criminal networks Azriel already knew. No indication that anyone was paying her.
Just trouble. Repeated, deliberate, entirely unnecessary trouble.
He glanced down at the name written at the top of the page.
A shadow curled lazily around his wrist. Azriel had already learned the basic facts. She lived alone. Had no significant family ties in Velaris. No outstanding debts. No known enemies. She held an ordinary position and appeared to live an ordinary life.
And yet, over the past few months, she'd been caught trespassing in places she had no reason to be. She had stolen small things. Nothing valuable enough to suggest profit, a silver hairpin from a merchant's shop, a bottle of expensive liquor from a private cellar, a key from the pocket of a city official.
The key had been returned, liquor consumed, and the hairpin had apparently been left on a bench in the Sidra. Azriel had stared at that last detail for a long time.
The door opened. Rhysand walked in without knocking, as he always did. “You're still working.”
Azriel didn't look up. “So are you.”
“I own the place. I can work whenever I want.”
“You can also sleep whenever you want.”
Rhys poured himself a drink. “That sounds suspiciously like advice.”
Azriel's mouth twitched. “Don't get used to it.”
Rhys leaned against the desk, looking at the report. “So?”
Azriel closed the file. “She isn't working for anyone.”
“That was my conclusion.”
“She's not stealing for money.”
“She doesn't seem interested in hurting anyone.”
Rhys's expression shifted slightly. “That one I wanted you to confirm.”
Azriel finally looked at him. “Why?”
“Because she's been getting into places she shouldn't be able to get into.”
Azriel considered that. There was a difference. He had spent centuries learning that people rarely needed formal training to become dangerous. Sometimes all they needed was opportunity and enough desperation.
But there was no desperation here. That was what bothered him. “Has she been seen?”
Azriel's brows drew together. “And no one stopped her?”
“People have stopped her.”
Rhys took a drink. “She doesn't fight. Doesn't threaten. Doesn't even seem particularly concerned about being caught.”
“Then why keep doing it?”
“That,” Rhys said, “is why I'm asking you.”
Azriel leaned back in his chair. He had expected something else when Rhys first handed him her information. A spy. A smuggler. Someone gathering information. Perhaps an individual testing the defenses of Velaris on behalf of an enemy.
A person who repeatedly broke into restricted places without taking anything was either remarkably stupid or operating according to a motivation Azriel hadn't yet identified. Neither option particularly appealed to him.
“What happens when she's caught?”
“Usually?” Rhys shrugged. “She apologizes.”
Azriel waited. “And then?”
“And then she does it again.”
A shadow slipped from Azriel's shoulder, drifting across the desk. “So she's testing how far she can go.”
“No.” Azriel looked back at the report. Rhys raised a brow. “If she were testing the boundaries, she'd escalate.”
“Exactly.” He tapped one finger against the page. “She keeps doing the same thing. Small thefts. Trespassing. Breaking into places. Nothing that benefits her materially. Nothing that appears designed to send a message. Then what does she get out of it?”
Rhys was quiet. Azriel knew he was thinking through the same possibilities.
Neither did Azriel, and that alone was enough to make him interested. He opened the report again. There was one incident in particular that caught his attention.
Three weeks ago, she had entered a private residence belonging to a minor merchant. She had bypassed the lock on the back door, crossed the house without waking anyone, and taken a silver key from a desk.
She'd then spent eleven minutes inside a locked room. When she'd left, she'd returned the key to exactly where she'd found it. Nothing else had been disturbed. She had triggered wards put in place, and the merchant had later reported the incident, but he'd found nothing missing.
Azriel had initially assumed the key had been used to access something, but there was no evidence of that. No hidden compartment. No stolen documents. No tampering. Just a locked room.
Azriel's gaze sharpened. Rhys smiled faintly. “That's why I didn't send anyone else.”
Of course. Azriel glanced down at the report once more. A female with no apparent political agenda, no criminal network, no financial motive, and a habit of breaking into places seemingly because they were difficult to enter. Potentially harmless... potentially not. The distinction mattered.
“Do you want her watched?”
“I want to know whether she's a threat.”
Azriel stood. His siphons glinted faintly in the firelight. “And if she isn't?”
Rhys's expression turned thoughtful. “Then perhaps I'd like to know what she is.”
Azriel slipped the report into his coat. “That could take a while.”
“I assumed you'd enjoy the challenge.”
Azriel gave him a flat look. Rhys only smiled.
At the door, Azriel paused. “What does she look like?”
Rhys laughed softly. “You've been reading the report for twenty minutes.”
“I'm asking because you haven't included it.”
“Dark hair.” He started. Azriel waited. “Eyes.”
“I thought you liked puzzles.”
Azriel opened the door. Behind him, Rhys called, “Try not to terrify her.”
Azriel glanced over his shoulder. “If she's been doing this for months, she isn't easily terrified.”
“That isn't what I meant.”
Azriel said nothing. He stepped into the corridor, shadows already gathering around his shoulders. By the time he reached the balcony, the city below was a scatter of warm lights against the dark.
Somewhere among them was a female who apparently enjoyed breaking into places she had no business entering. Azriel intended to find out why.
And, more importantly, whether she would ever give him a reason to stop her.
Azriel found her three nights later. It took less than an hour, that was the first thing that irritated him. The second was that she wasn't doing anything particularly interesting.
She had left her home shortly after sunset, carrying a small satchel over one shoulder. She had walked toward the Sidra without hurry, stopping once to buy a piece of fruit from a vendor and once to speak briefly with an elderly female who had nearly dropped a basket in the street.
Nothing unusual. No one followed her, no one met her. She did not appear to be watching for anyone, either.
Azriel kept to the rooftops. The city was familiar beneath him. He knew every alley worth knowing, every balcony that could be reached without being seen, every stretch of roof where a loose tile would betray his weight. Velaris was his city as much as it was Rhys's.
She was simply another figure moving through it. At least, she should have been. She turned away from the river and into a narrower street lined with shops. Most were closed now, their windows dark and doors barred. A bakery sat at the end of the row, its sign hanging crookedly above the entrance.
She stopped. Azriel settled on the roof opposite.
She looked at the bakery. Then at the street. Then at the bakery again.
He waited. She didn't move. A minute passed. Azriel's shadows stirred against his neck, curious. She wasn't watching the door, she was watching the windows.
He followed her gaze. The second-floor windows were dark. The shutters had been drawn, but not completely. One hung slightly open.
She glanced up at them. Then she smiled. Barely.
Azriel narrowed his eyes.
She crossed the street. There was no hesitation when she reached the side of the building. She set her satchel down, checked the alley once, and began climbing.
Not elegantly, but not badly, either. She used a drainpipe for the first few feet, then a narrow ledge, then the edge of an adjoining balcony. Her movements were economical, she didn't look down once.
Azriel moved closer. She reached the second floor, the window was locked.
She took something from her pocket. A thin piece of metal, a lockpick.
Azriel's brows lifted. Three seconds. Four. Then the lock clicked and she slipped inside.
Azriel followed. He sent his shadows after her. The upper floor appeared to be storage. Shelves lined the walls, stacked with sacks of flour and jars of preserved fruit. A small desk sat in one corner. She didn't touch any of it. Azriel listened to reports of her moving through the dark, but she wasn’t searching for anything. Instead, she crossed the room without hesitation and pulled a chair into the center of the space.
She sat, and did nothing. Azriel stared. She didn’t open the cupboards. Didn’t look for anything. Didn’t even seem to register the food stored around her. She simply sat there, perfectly still, as if she had all the time in the world. Her face gave nothing away. No satisfaction. No tension. No curiosity. She looked calm.
After a moment, she leaned back slightly in the chair and let her gaze drift across the room - not focusing on anything in particular, as though she were taking in the shape of the space itself rather than its contents. Azriel’s shadows shifted, unsettled by the lack of purpose.
Minutes passed. She did not move. Not once. Then, as quietly as she had entered, she stood, took a single pastry from a cooler, returned the chair to its place, and left the way she had come.
Azriel stared at her exiting the building. She retrieved her satchel and continued walking as if nothing had happened. He remained on the roof for a moment, and then followed her across the street
That was what she had broken into a building for. Not information, not valuables, not access to something hidden, but just to... sit and take a pastry.
He dropped silently onto the next roof. She was already halfway down the street. She walked for another ten minutes before turning toward the river.
There was a small public garden overlooking the Sidra, mostly empty at this hour. She entered through the gate and sat on a stone bench and started eating the pastry.
Azriel stood in the shadows of a nearby building and watched. She didn't look pleased. She didn't look excited. There was no visible rush of satisfaction after the act. She just ate, slowly. Then she leaned back against the bench and looked out over the river.
Azriel's shadows shifted. He didn't understand. If she had wanted the pastry, she could have bought one. The bakery had been open earlier, so the pastry wasn't the point. Neither, apparently, was the theft.
Azriel stayed until she finished eating. She brushed the crumbs from her fingers, stood, and walked home. He followed her the entire way.
The next night, she did it again. Not the bakery this time, somewhere else. A shop belonging to a jeweler. Azriel watched from the roof as she waited until the last customer left. She stood across the street for several minutes, apparently studying the building.
Then she approached the rear entrance. The lock was more complicated than the bakery's. She knelt to work at it. Paused, and tried again. Azriel could have opened it in less than a breath. After nearly a minute, the lock gave and she slipped inside.
This time, Azriel expected her to take something valuable. She didn't. A small ledger book from the jeweler’s counter. She held it between her hands beneath the moonlight. Flipped it open and studied a page. Her expression didn’t change. After a moment, she closed it and tucked it into her pocket.
Azriel waited. She left. No alarm, no hurried footsteps, and no glance over her shoulder.
The following morning, the jeweller reported the missing records. Azriel heard about it before noon.
By evening, he found the ledger. It was lying open on a bench beside the Sidra, pages fluttering slightly in the breeze. Exactly where someone sitting on it would have noticed it.
He stared at it for several seconds before picking it up. There was nothing remarkable about it at first glance. Accounts. Names. Transactions. It was simple bookkeeping. Worth enough to be missed, but not enough to matter to anyone outside the shop.
He turned a few pages. No hidden codes, no altered entries, nothing. He closed it and returned it to a very grateful shopkeeper.
That night, he watched her again. She left her house at the same time. Different route, different destination.
This time she headed toward one of the administrative buildings. Azriel recognised it immediately. It was restricted after sunset. But here she was, approaching the front entrance. She stopped and stared at the locked doors for a moment before walking around the side. He followed her from above. She tried three windows that turned out to be locked before smiling.
Azriel had begun to recognize that expression. It wasn't happiness, it was anticipation. The fourth window opened, and she climbed inside.
Azriel landed silently on the roof above her. He could hear her footsteps through the ceiling. She moved slowly through the building. Not searching, but exploring. He sent his shadows in.
She paused outside an office, and then entered the room. Looked through several drawers. Closed them. Opened a cabinet. Closed it. She moved on. Azriel stared out at the stars from the roof, listening to his shadows reporting on her activities.
There were no documents taken, no correspondence disturbed, no valuables touched. She eventually found a staircase leading to the upper floor.
At the top was a locked door. She stared at it before turning to the lock. Azriel almost laughed, she spent nearly five minutes opening it. When it finally clicked, she pushed the door open. The room beyond was completely empty, except for a desk and a chair below a window overlooking the city.
Nothing else. She walked to the window, looked out, and sat down. Azriel frowned. She stayed there for twelve minutes. Then she stood, locked the door, returned downstairs, and left. He waited until she was halfway down the street before following.
She stopped at a fountain to drop a small coin into the water before continuing home.
Azriel remained on the roof above her for several moments.
Three nights, three different places. There was no meaningful theft, she clearly wasn't gathering information or threatening anyone. She wasn't casing the city or testing its defences. If she were, she would have been more thorough. And if she were simply stealing for the thrill of it, she would have taken something worth stealing. Instead, she seemed to choose things almost arbitrarily.
Azriel had spent centuries learning that people were predictable when you knew what they wanted. Money, power, revenge, security, love or feat. Everyone had something, and everything else followed. But he couldn't find hers.
The next evening, he watched from a rooftop as she stood in the middle of an empty street, staring up at a building.
A high stone wall surrounded it. She looked at the wall.
Azriel knew the building. It was a private residence, not particularly important or well guarded.
She smiled, and he knew what she was going to do before she moved. She stepped toward the wall and started climbing. This time, Azriel didn't follow immediately. He stayed where he was. Just watching, waiting. For the first time since Rhys had handed him the report, he wasn't wondering whether she was dangerous. He was wondering what, exactly, she was chasing. Because whatever it was, it wasn't the things she stole. It was something that happened somewhere between deciding she shouldn't do something and doing it anyway.
Azriel watched her disappear over the wall. Then followed.
The garden was larger than Azriel had expected. She crossed it without hesitation, keeping to the shadows cast by the trees. The house beyond was dark except for two windows on the ground floor and a single light burning upstairs.
Azriel knew the family. Not well, but he knew of them. A wealthy merchant and his wife. Two children. A reputation for being respectable, charitable, and painfully concerned with appearances. There was nothing here worth taking. At least, nothing that would explain her choice.
She reached the house. Instead of looking for a window, she walked directly toward the back door. Azriel watched her try the handle. It was locked, and she smiled. There it was again, that small shift in her expression whenever she encountered resistance. She crouched. Azriel settled on the branch of a nearby tree, watching.
The lock clicked open and she slipped inside.
He looked closer to the window of the room she'd disappeared into. The kitchen was empty, she closed the door behind her and stood still. Azriel waited for her to move, but she didn't.
Her head tilted slightly, listening. A floorboard creaked somewhere above her. She looked toward the sound, and walked toward the stairs. Azriel's shadows stretched ahead of him, slipping beneath the door to the adjoining hallway.
A servant was coming. He felt the moment she noticed him. She didn't run, instead, she stepped into the narrow space beneath the stairs and waited.
A servant appeared at the top. A young man carrying a stack of folded linens. He descended two steps before stopping. His eyes landed on the open kitchen door, and then on her.
The silence lasted several heartbeats. Azriel prepared himself to intervene. She spoke first. “I was looking for the library.”
The servant stared at her. Azriel almost smiled, it was a terrible lie. There was no reason to be in the kitchen if she were looking for a library. And she had entered through a locked back door.
The servant seemed to reach the same conclusion. “You're not supposed to be here.”
“No.” Her tone was remarkably calm.
He tightened his grip on the linens. “How did you get inside?”
She looked at the door behind her. Then back at him. “I used the door.”
“That doesn't answer the question.”
The servant frowned. “Yes.”
The servant looked genuinely confused. “You broke in.”
“Yes.” She said it so plainly that the servant seemed to lose whatever accusation he'd been preparing.
She considered the question. His shadows reported nothing, no embarrassment, no fear, and no attempt to appear innocent. She just looked at him as if he had asked her something she hadn't considered. “I wanted to see the house.”
The servant stared. “Why?”
That answer seemed to unsettle him more than a lie would have. He glanced toward the stairs. “You need to leave.”
She nodded. “All right.” She turned, but then stopped. Her gaze moved to the linens in his arms. “You're carrying those upstairs.”
The servant's expression changed. Only slightly, but Azriel saw it. So did she.
The servant frowned. “How do you know that?”
“You were carrying them upstairs.”
“She doesn't like the morning staff touching her things. If you're bringing them up now, you'll put them outside her room.” The servant stared at her. She continued before he could respond. “And if you leave them outside, she'll complain tomorrow that they're wrinkled.”
A pause. The servant looked down at the linens. “She does do that.”
The servant seemed to forget, for a moment, that there was a stranger standing inside the house. “She's impossible.”
“She is.” The agreement came easily, too easily.
The servant shifted the linens against his hip. “You still can't be here.”
He nodded. Then started up the stairs. Halfway up, he stopped. “Wait.”
She looked at him. “What?”
“How did you know about Mrs. Knopps?”
The servant stared at her for another second. Then shook his head and continued upstairs. She waited until he disappeared before calmly walking back toward the kitchen.
Azriel looked at her through the kitchen window, his shadows drawing back to him when she exited through the door and closed it behind her. She locked it again and walked back into the garden.
Azriel remained where he was in the tree. Interesting, very interesting. It hadn't been the lie, the lie had been poor. It was everything that came afterward. She had watched the servant. Not just his words, but his hands. His clothes. What he carried. Where he was going. She had noticed the particular linens, the hour, the likely habits of the female whose room they belonged to.
Then she'd used what she knew to give him something he wanted more than an explanation. A conversation. Someone who understood his irritation. She hadn't needed to threaten him, she hadn't even needed to deceive him particularly well. She had found the easiest path through him.
Azriel had seen trained interrogators work harder for less.
When she got to the wall, she stopped. Her gaze lifted straight toward the tree where Azriel was hidden. He went still. She looked at the branches, nothing moved. Her eyes remained there for a long moment.
Then she climbed. Azriel watched her hands find the stones. She reached the top and sat on the wall before looking directly toward him again. He remained motionless. She couldn't see him. He knew that, his shadows had already swallowed him into darkness.
Still, she stared. Then she looked away and dropped lightly onto the other side. She walked for several streets before stopping beneath an awning. Light rain had started while she was inside the house. She looked up at the sky.
Azriel remained across from her, wrapped in shadows. She didn't move. For a while, neither did he. Then she spoke. “You're not very good at being invisible.”
Azriel stilled. The words were quiet, not accusing, almost conversational. He stepped from the shadows. She looked at him. For the first time, he saw her properly. Dark hair, as Rhys had said. Eyes that were difficult to read in the low light. Her face was composed. She didn't seem surprised or frightened. Not even curious, just attentive.
Azriel studied her. “You knew.”
She shrugged. “The bakery.”
His shadows stirred. She glanced at them. That explained some things.
“You weren't there.” She tilted her head. “But your shadows were.”
Azriel said nothing. She looked toward the rooftops. “You followed me the next night too.”
“And the night after that.”
She seemed to consider that. “About what?”
That earned him the faintest change in her expression. “That's unfortunate.”
Azriel almost smiled. “Why?”
“Because I'm not particularly interesting.”
She shrugged. Rain began to collect along the edge of the awning. Azriel watched a drop slide from her hair onto her cheek. She didn't wipe it away.
“You knew the servant would let you go.”
That answer came too quickly. He looked at her. “You didn't?”
“Yes.” She seemed to think about that.“You're good at this.”
Azriel said nothing. She looked at him for another moment. “You watch them.”
“You decide what they want.”
“And then you give it to them.”
Azriel's shadows shifted. She had described his profession with uncomfortable accuracy. “Sometimes.”
She nodded, then looked down the street. “That's useful.”
She glanced back at him. “Whatever you were going to ask me.”
There it was. The first real indication that she had understood more than he had given her credit for.
Azriel studied her face. There was nothing there for him to read. No fear he could latch onto, no nervousness to betray her thoughts, no flicker of calculation, no attempt to impress, no telltale shift that would give away whether she was lying or simply confident enough to make it sound like truth. It was as if her expression refused to offer him anything at all.
That, more than anything, was what threw him off. He was not used to emptiness where people should have been readable. Very few things like that escaped him. “You're not going to ask me who I am?”
“You'll tell me if you want me to know.”
Azriel's brows lifted. “And if I don't?”
She shrugged. “Then I won't know.”
The rain thickened. She stepped out from beneath the awning. Azriel watched her walk into it. After three steps, she looked back. “Goodnight.”
Then she continued down the street. Azriel remained beneath the awning. He watched until she disappeared around the corner.
He had spent centuries learning how to make people reveal themselves. He had learned to recognize fear before someone knew they were afraid. To hear lies in the smallest changes of a voice. To find the pressure points people protected most fiercely. She had given him none of that. Instead, she had noticed him.
And worse- she had seemed entirely comfortable with the fact that he was there. He was wondering what she would look like if someone gave her something worth being dangerous for.
“So you don't know whether she's useful.”
Rhys studied him for a moment. “And you're going to find out.”
Azriel's gaze moved toward the windows. “I'll ask her.”
Rhys blinked. For once, his expression held genuine surprise. “You're going to talk to her?”
“That's not what I meant.”
Azriel said nothing. Rhys's mouth curved. “You've been following this female for days, and now you're going to walk up to her and ask what she's doing?”
“I don't need her to know everything I'm thinking.”
Azriel ignored him. He left before Rhys could say anything else.
He found her that evening. By now he knew where she went when she had nothing else to do.
The public gardens beside the Sidra. She was sitting on the same stone bench he'd seen her use before, one ankle resting over the opposite knee. There was a book open in her lap. She wasn't reading it.
Azriel watched from the roof opposite for several minutes. Her eyes moved over the same paragraph twice before she looked toward the river. Her fingers tapped once against the cover.
Azriel dropped from the roof. He crossed the street without bothering to hide.
She looked up at him before he reached the bench, not surprised. He stopped several feet away. “You knew I was here again.”
She glanced at the book in her lap. “You've been following me.”
“That wasn't what I asked.”
Her gaze returned to him. “I knew you were coming.”
Azriel studied her. “How?”
“You've been watching me for days.”
“And eventually you'd want something.”
He nearly smiled. She wasn't wrong. He sat in the empty space beside her. For a while, neither spoke. The river moved steadily beside them. Somewhere farther down the street, someone laughed. A carriage passed over the bridge.
She didn't look at him. “What do you want?” she asked eventually.
Azriel looked at her. “I could ask you the same thing.”
She shrugged. “Then we're both going to be disappointed.”
His mouth twitched. “You don't know?”
“Why do you keep doing it?”
She looked at the river. “Doing what?”
“Because they're locked.”
Azriel waited. She seemed to consider whether to elaborate. “I like going where I’m not supposed to be.”
She looked at him then. “People.”
Azriel stilled, it was the closest thing to an answer she'd given him. “You like people?”
“No.” Her gaze dropped to the book in her hands. “I like knowing how they work.”
Azriel leaned back. There it was. Something familiar. He had spent centuries doing precisely that. Watching, listening, learning where a person bent and where they broke. “Why?”
She shrugged. “It's useful.”
Azriel looked at her profile. She wasn't smiling, there was no pride in her voice. She said it as though it were obvious. He knew that feeling. The quiet satisfaction of understanding something other people didn't. Of noticing what others overlooked. Of being able to walk into a room and know, within moments, who held the power.
He had built an entire life around it. “Do you enjoy it?”
She thought about that. “Yes.” The answer was immediate.
“Because I know what happens next.”
Azriel frowned. “You know?”
She looked at him. “Then I want to find out.”
Something in his chest shifted. That, too, was familiar. Curiosity. The need to understand. The discomfort of leaving something unexplained. He could understand that. Perhaps too easily. “You aren't afraid of being caught.”
She considered him. “Should I be?”
She shrugged again. “Being caught isn't very interesting.”
Azriel watched her carefully. There was no bravado in it. No attempt to appear fearless. She genuinely seemed to mean it.
“What about the consequences?”
“If you steal something, someone can come after you.”
“And that doesn't bother you?”
Azriel studied her face. Nothing. Again. He had expected some form of calculation. Instead, there was simply an absence of concern. “You don't care what people think of you.”
She frowned slightly. “Why would I?”
Azriel almost laughed, she made it sound so simple. Most people spent their lives worrying about the opinions of others. Even those who claimed otherwise. He knew that better than most. He had spent centuries hiding pieces of himself because he understood exactly how people would react if they saw them. She didn't appear to have that instinct. He wondered what it would be like, to simply stop caring.
“You're very calm,” he said.
She looked toward the river again. “When I'm bored.”
Azriel waited. Her fingers began tapping against her knee. He recognized the movement from the other night. “You're bored now.”
“And what do you do when you're bored?”
She glanced at him. “You've seen what I do.”
She smiled faintly. “You haven't been following me that closely.”
Azriel's brows lifted. “I've been following you every night.”
“So I don't do it every night.”
There was no challenge in the statement. Just fact. Azriel considered that. “What do you do instead?”
She looked genuinely puzzled by the question. “Because nothing is boring.”
Azriel understood that. He remembered nights spent pacing the House because sleep wouldn't come. Hours in the training ring after everyone else had gone. Missions that had lasted days because stillness had never sat easily with him.
He had always needed something to occupy his hands, his mind, his attention. He realised he recognised himself in her. The restlessness need to do, the comfort in silence. The ability to look at a person without needing to fill the space between them with words.
He found himself relaxing slightly. That was unexpected. “You don't seem to like being told no.”
She looked at him. “I don't like not knowing why I’m being told no.”
Azriel considered that. “Would knowing the reason change your mind?”
“Then I'd probably do it anyway.”
He nodded. Honest. At least, he thought it was. “What would make you stop?”
She thought for longer this time. “Someone getting hurt.”
Azriel's attention sharpened. “Anyone?”
“Even someone you don't know?”
She was silent. For the first time since he'd sat beside her, he saw something resembling uncertainty cross her face. “I don't know.”
Azriel waited. She looked down at the book in her lap. “I don't like it.”
“Because you feel sorry for them?”
Her brow furrowed. “No.” That answer came quietly. She looked at him. “I just don't want to be the reason.”
Azriel held her gaze. It wasn't empathy, at least not in the way he understood it, it was a boundary. An important one.
He leaned back against the bench. “So you have rules.”
She shrugged. “I suppose.”
“You've never hurt anyone.”
“And you don't intend to.”
She looked at him for a long moment. “Because I don't need to.” There was something uncomfortable about the simplicity of it. It wasn't a moral declaration, or a claim that violence was beneath her. Just necessity, if she didn't need to hurt someone, she wouldn't. Azriel understood that, too. Perhaps that was why he found himself less concerned than he should have been. He had spent enough time around people who enjoyed cruelty to recognize the difference. She wasn't cruel, but she didn't seem particularly interested in being good.
There was a distinction. A dangerous one, but a useful one.
She glanced toward him. “What about it?”
“Doesn't that hurt people?”
She thought for a moment. “I don't know.”
Azriel looked at her. “You've said that a lot.”
“And it doesn't bother you not knowing?”
That answer stopped him. He had spent half his life trying to understand things that had happened to him. Why he felt certain things, why he reacted in certain ways, and why some memories remained when others had faded. Not knowing had always been something he fought. For her, it seemed almost irrelevant.
He looked toward the river. “You're difficult to read.”
He glanced at her. There was the faintest hint of amusement in her expression. “Do you find that funny?”
“Because you keep trying.”
Azriel looked at her. She met his gaze without flinching. He should have been annoyed. Instead, he found himself almost smiling. “Perhaps I am.”
She nodded. “That's fine.”
The words were simple, but something about them lingered.
Azriel studied her again. He had expected to find someone reckless. Instead, he had found someone controlled in a way he understood. Someone who didn't fear the things that frightened other people. Someone who preferred observation to conversation. Someone who seemed more comfortable with silence than most. Someone who didn't need to be liked. He recognized more of himself in her than he wanted to admit. And perhaps that was why the absence of an obvious motive bothered him so much. He knew what it was to hide pieces of yourself, to keep people at a distance, to find comfort in the shadows. But he had never met anyone who seemed to do it without appearing to need anyone's permission.
She looked up at him. “Are we finished?”
She nodded. Azriel took a step away. Then stopped. “You're going to keep doing it.”
It wasn't a question. She looked toward the river. “Yes.”
“Even knowing I'll be watching?”
This time, she smiled. “Because you're watching.”
Azriel stared at her. Then, despite himself, he laughed softly. It was brief, barely more than a sharp exhale, but it was real. He turned away before she could see the smile that followed.
He had gone looking for a threat. Instead, he'd found something far more inconvenient. Someone who understood pieces of him without understanding him at all. And he wasn't yet certain which was more dangerous.
