The Sun Will Shine On Us Again

I closed my eyes for a moment before I even turned, already knowing.

Azriel stood a few paces away, shadows drifting lazily around him, softer than I had ever seen them. Not watchful. Not sharp. Gentle.

He studied me with his head tilted slightly, as if trying to read something written between my breaths.

I cleared my throat and set my teacup down carefully on the small table beside me, gathering courage that felt paper-thin.

"Thank you," I said quietly. 

His brows knit faintly. 

"For not saying anything," I clarified, my voice barely more than a whisper.

Something tightened in his jaw. He looked away for a heartbeat, toward the distant mountains, toward the open sky, then back to me. 

Slowly, he took the seat across from mine, wings folding neatly behind him as if he were making himself smaller on purpose.

"We should talk about it," he said gently.

The words alone made my chest constrict. I shook my head at once, too quickly. "Please," I murmured. "Don't make me relive it."

The plea slipped out before I could stop it.

He inhaled as if to argue, lips parting then stopping. His shoulders lowered a fraction, surrendering something unspoken.

Instead, he followed my gaze to the gardens beyond.

"I forget," he said quietly, "how beautiful this city is in the morning."

"I don't," I replied.

I stared at the riot of color before us, the sunlit petals, the laughter drifting faintly from somewhere within the House, the breeze carrying the scent of citrus and wildflowers.

"I wish I could live here forever," I whispered.

The words surprised me as much as they seemed to surprise him. For a moment, Azriel said nothing. Then—

"That could be arranged."

I turned sharply to him. There was no teasing in his expression. No mockery. Just a faint curve of his mouth, restrained and careful, and something earnest in his eyes that made my breath hitch.

He meant it. The idea wasn't fanciful to him. It wasn't impossible. It was real.

Hope should have bloomed. Relief should have followed. Instead panic wrapped tight around my lungs.

Because for the first time, I found myself looking at a male whose gaze held no expectation. No calculation. No hunger for what I could give or what I represented.

Only concern. Only understanding. 

And that terrified me more than cruelty ever had.

"My husband would never," I blurted, the words tumbling out too fast, too sharp. I stood abruptly, as if motion could ward off the thought taking root. "Hewn is his home. His power. He would never leave it."

Azriel watched me closely, saying nothing.

There was no judgment in his gaze. No frustration. Only a quiet understanding that made the air between us feel fragile.

Slowly, carefully, I lowered myself back into my chair, lifting my teacup with hands that betrayed the tremor I was trying to hide. I took a measured sip, pretending composure. Pretending the idea of another life had not just unravelled me.

For a moment, neither of us spoke. 

Then Azriel leaned back slightly, as if giving me space to breathe.

I thought perhaps that would be the end of it. That he would nod, accept my panic for what it was, and retreat. Return to shadows and silence and whatever duty awaited him inside.

He stood.

My stomach dropped. This is it, I thought. I've frightened him away.

But he did not leave.

Instead, he turned toward the flowering hedges lining the stone path. The jasmine vines were in full bloom, white petals bright against dark green leaves, their scent sweet and almost intoxicating in the warmth of the sun.

I watched as he reached out, his scarred fingers careful, so careful, as he plucked a single blossom from its stem.

There was something achingly gentle in the movement. As though even the flower deserved tenderness.

He approached me slowly. I held my breath.

He stopped just before me, close enough that I could feel the faint coolness of his shadows drift across my skin like a soft breeze. 

Up close, I noticed the fine lines at the corners of his eyes, the way sunlight caught in the dark strands of his hair.

He did not ask permission but he did not assume it either. He simply paused.

And I understood.

My pulse fluttered wildly in my throat as I gave the smallest nod, tilting my head slightly to the side.

His fingers lifted, hesitant only for a fraction of a second before tucking the jasmine gently into my hair, just above my ear. The touch was featherlight, reverent almost, as though I might shatter beneath it.

The scent of the blossom mingled with the warmth of the morning.

His hand lingered there a moment longer than necessary.

I felt the heat rise to my cheeks before I could stop it. A blush, genuine and unpracticed, spreading across my skin in a way I had not experienced.

He noticed. Of course he did.

"You deserve to be happy," he whispered.

The words were not grand. Not dramatic. They were simple. And devastating.

Something inside me splintered quietly. No one had ever said that to me as though it were a fact. Not as an obligation. Not as a performance.

Deserve.

The single tear escaped before I could swallow it back. It slid down my cheek, warm and traitorous, carving a path through the careful composure I had rebuilt.

I did not move to wipe it away.

Azriel's expression softened, pain flickering through his eyes, as if my tears wounded him more than any blade could.

His hand shifted from my hair, brushing down slowly until his thumb grazed my jaw. The touch was warm. Steady.

My breath caught in my lungs.

He hesitated just enough to give me time to pull away. I didn't.

And so he leaned in.

The kiss was barely more than a whisper of warmth against my skin, his lips brushing the place where the tear had fallen. Soft. Careful. As if he feared startling me.

Not possessive. Not demanding. Just... there.

For a suspended heartbeat, the world ceased to exist beyond the sunlight and the scent of jasmine and the warmth of his nearness.

I wanted to memorise it.

The feel of his breath against my cheek. The steadiness of his hand. The way my heart raced, not from fear, not from dread but from something bright and terrifyingly alive.

He pulled back slowly. Not far. Just enough to look at me.

Something passed between us then, fragile and unspoken. A possibility neither of us dared name.

Then, as though he knew staying longer would undo us both, he stepped away. His shadows gathered obediently at his shoulders as he turned toward the House.

He did not look back.

I remained there beneath the sun, fingers lifting shakily to touch the jasmine in my hair.

I wished he had stayed. I wished the moment could stretch endlessly, suspended in warmth and light and quiet understanding.

Under open sky. In a city that did not bruise.

With a male who touched me as though I mattered. Not because he had to but because he wanted to.

Azriel's POV - 

Dinner was never meant to be like this.

It had been intended as something small—contained. A quiet evening between myself and Rhysand, a brief reprieve from courts and politics and shadows that never truly slept.

And yet Silas had found his way in. He always did.

Where there was power to be observed or influence to be reinforced, he appeared, smooth and polished, smiling like a male who believed he belonged anywhere he chose.

Which meant she was here too. And gods she stole the breath from my lungs.

She entered at his side, white fabric flowing softly around her like moonlight on still water. Just elegance. Purity, almost. As if Velaris had reached out and dressed her itself.

And there still tucked carefully into her hair was the flower. The jasmine. 

She had kept it. Styled her hair around it, gentle fingers weaving it into place as though it mattered. My chest tightened painfully. 

She looked like something sacred standing beside something rotten.

An angel at the devil's elbow.

"Azriel," Rhys murmured sharply under his breath as we took our seats. "I cannot believe I have to say this, but stop staring at another male's wife."

I blinked, tearing my gaze away too slowly to pretend innocence. Violet eyes cut into me, knowing and unamused.

"I wasn't," I lied easily.

Rhys snorted. "You're a terrible liar when you're emotionally compromised."

I ignored him.

Throughout dinner I watched her with the care of a spymaster, never too long, never too obvious. Just enough. 

A glance here. A moment there. Tracking the way her shoulders rose and fell, the way her smile flickered into place whenever Silas leaned close.

And sometimes, only sometimes, she looked back. Brief. Careful. Almost secret. There would be the faintest smile then. A ghost of warmth. Something real.

It never lasted.

Silas drank as if the table had been set for him alone, glass after glass disappearing into his hand with practised ease. 

The wine loosened his tongue first, his laughter growing sharper, more cutting, then his body, his sense of restraint dissolving until he no longer bothered to pretend.

And his hands—never left her.

At first, it looked almost innocuous. A palm resting high on her thigh beneath the table, fingers curved as if merely anchoring himself. 

I watched the way her spine went rigid. The way her breath shallowed. The way she tried, carefully, to shift an inch away without drawing notice.

Silas followed the movement without even looking.

His grip crept higher, deliberate now. Claimed the space she had tried to reclaim, his thumb pressing possessively, as he continued speaking to Rhys as if nothing were happening at all.

Her jaw locked. Her gaze dropped to her plate, unseeing.

My shadows stirred, restless, agitated.

Then he leaned close to her ear, his mouth brushing her hair as he murmured something meant only for her. Whatever it was, it stole the colour from her face. 

She smiled but it was wrong. Fixed. The kind of smile born from long practice, from knowing exactly what was expected and delivering it before punishment could follow.

Silas smiled back, satisfied.

He draped an arm around her shoulders then, drawing her into his side with unmistakable intent. Not affection. Display. 

His fingers toyed with the neckline of her dress, brushing skin that should never have been touched like that in a room full of witnesses. She startled visibly when his hand pressed too firmly on her breast, her breath catching as humiliation burned bright across her face.

I heard my own pulse roaring in my ears.

She moved away then. Finally. Gently, carefully, as though even the act of reclaiming her own space might provoke something worse.

And as she did the flower slipped free. It fell soundlessly to the marble floor. White against stone.

The look on her face as she watched it fall, like she had lost something irreplaceable was what finally broke me.

I was straightening before I fully realised it.

"Perhaps," I said evenly, my voice calm only through sheer force of will, "you should keep your hands to yourself."

Silas turned slowly, brows lifting in exaggerated confusion. "What?"

"I'm just saying," I continued, shrugging lightly, "you're drunk. And your wife is clearly uncomfortable."

The room went still. I heard Rhys sigh heavily from the head of the table, already resigned to what was coming.

Silas's expression twisted. "I can do whatever I want with my wife."

She straightened beside him, panic flashing across her features. Her hand darted out, gripping his arm as she whispered urgently, desperately, trying to stop him.

He shrugged her off. Hard.

"Spoken like a true gentleman," I bit out.

Silas surged to his feet, palms slamming down on the table. I rose with him instantly, wings flaring wide, shadows coiling in agitation.

"I could bend her across this table right now," he shouted, pointing at me, spittle flying. "And you would do nothing because it is none of your fucking business!"

"Silas!" she gasped, horror threading her voice. She reached for him again, hands shaking, trying to anchor him. "Please—"

"Shut up," he snapped, shoving her aside like an inconvenience.

That did it. 

"Do not speak to her like that," I growled.

"Don't tell me how to speak to my wife!" Silas roared. "She is mine. I can touch her how I please. I can speak to her how I please. This is between us!"

Her composure shattered completely.

"Silas stop," she sobbed, tears streaming freely now, hands clutching at his sleeve as if she could hold him back from the precipice. "Please, let's just go. I'll do anything—just please."

He rounded on me again, eyes wild. "Don't think I haven't noticed how you watch her."

She tugged at him harder. "Silas—baby—please. Let's just leave."

Her voice broke on the word baby.

I said nothing. This was not what I had wanted. I had not meant for her to cry. I had not meant to drag her into the open like this, exposed and bleeding in front of everyone.

I had only wanted him to stop.

Silas ripped free of her grasp and stormed from the room, fury trailing behind him like smoke.

She didn't hesitate. She ran after him. Not to protect herself. To protect him.

And I stood there, wings still flared, shadows trembling with barely leashed violence, watching the female I cared for more than I should disappear after the male who was destroying her.

The jasmine lay forgotten on the floor. Crushed beneath someone else's foot.

And for the first time that night, I did not trust myself to speak because if I did, I knew I would follow.

And I was not sure I would come back without blood on my hands. 

And it would not have saved her.

So I stayed. That was the worst part. 

Sleep never came. I lay awake in the dark, staring at the ceiling of the House of Wind as if it might crack open and swallow me whole. Time stretched, thin and cruel, each minute dragging itself forward with deliberate slowness.

And then I heard it. Not words at first. Just sound.

A muffled sob, sharp and sudden, like it had been torn from her chest before she could stop it. Then another. Softer. Controlled. As if she had learned, long ago, how to quiet herself before someone else did it for her.

My jaw clenched so hard it ached.

The walls here were thick. Old. Built to withstand war and weather and centuries of magic. And still the sounds carried. Not clearly. Not cleanly. But enough.

Enough to haunt.

A low, angry voice followed. Slurred. Accusing. The kind of voice that didn't ask questions, it delivered verdicts. I refused to say his name, even in my own head.

Furniture scraped violently across the floor. Something struck wood. Hard.

Her breath hitched. Another sob broke free before she could swallow it down.

Then a sound I recognised all too well, the dull, sickening impact of flesh meeting something solid. Once. Then again. Each blow punctuated by his voice, raised and vicious, as though every word justified what came after it.

She tried to speak. "Please—"

The word barely formed before it was cut off. Not gently. Not by accident.

Another impact followed, heavier this time. The rhythm uneven. Uncontrolled. Nothing precise about it. Just rage finding a body.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

My shadows crawled tight around me, coiling around my wrists, my ribs, as if they feared what would happen if they loosened their hold.

This is my fault. The thought lodged itself deep and poisonous.

If I had not spoken. If I had not looked at her. If I had not made him feel challenged in front of his High Lord.

I had lit the fuse.

His voice rose again, thick with fury. Another crash. Something fell. Something shattered. Her response came thinner now. Shaking. Not arguing. Not resisting. Appeasing.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. Again. And again. And again.

Each apology landed heavier than the blows.

I turned my face into the pillow, teeth grinding, breath shallow, my chest burning with a pain I could not bleed out. I had endured torture. I had listened to enemies beg, scream, break.

None of it compared to this.

Because this was not cruelty from a stranger.

This was a female who drank tea in the gardens and smiled at flowers. A female who apologised for things that were not her fault. A female who had looked at me like kindness was something dangerous.

And she was hurting because of me.

The sounds continued—duller now. Slower. Like exhaustion had set in before mercy ever could. 

Her sobs grew quieter, more spaced apart, until even those faded into ragged breathing dragged thin through pain.

And then—nothing. Not peace. Aftermath.

I lay there until dawn, counting breaths that were not my own. Memorising every sound I would never forget. The moment his movements slowed. The moment his breathing evened out.

The moment hers did not.

When silence finally settled over the House of Wind, it felt like something had died.

And I knew then with a clarity that terrified me more than rage ever could that whatever line I thought I had been standing behind?

I had already crossed it.

Because I would never sleep through that again.

And I would never forgive myself for the night I listened—and did nothing.

A/N - Everyone lock in for a second because I need to yap x

This part took me so long to write. I originally had a completely different idea planned and while it reflected a very real and serious issue, it ended up feeling heavier than I intended :(

The hardest part was Azriel's choice not to intervene. I went back and forth on it constantly. He absolutely would step in if it was happening in front of him, but here he holds back because he believes pushing Silas further would only make things worse for her behind closed doors. It's not indifference. It's restraint... and it wrecks him.

That doesn't make it right. It doesn't make it easy. The internal conflict is what I wrestled with most—how do you write a male known for decisive action choosing restraint and make it believable?

Thank you for sticking with me through this—I know this part wasn't an easy one <33

The room Silas and I shared was cavernous and immaculate carved from dark stone, lit by low-burning sconces that cast amber light across polished floors. Heavy curtains framed the tall windows that looked out over nothing but endless mountain shadow.

It was beautiful. It was suffocating.

I lay stretched across the expanse of our bed, the silk sheets cool against overheated skin. My hair fanned across the pillows like spilt ink. Even lifting my hand to brush it from my face felt like a task too great.

Sleep hovered at the edge of my consciousness, not gentle, not kind. Just a blank, aching darkness.

The door snapped open. The sound cut through the room like a blade. I did not need to look to know it was him.

"Why are you in bed so early?"

Silas's voice carried mild curiosity, faint irritation threaded through it like silver wire.

I forced my eyes open.

He stood near the foot of the bed, already dressed for the evening. Dark attire fitted to perfection, silver embroidery catching the low light. His posture was as precise as ever, composed, immaculate, unyielding.

He always looked controlled. Even in private.

"I do not feel well," I admitted, my voice quieter than I intended. It scraped on the way out.

His expression shifted, not to concern. Not quite. "To what extent?" he asked, stepping closer.

"Feverish. Tired."

"Mmh." A small sound of dismissal. "None of that."

Before I could brace myself, his hand closed around my forearm, not painfully, not cruelly but firmly enough to make refusal pointless.

He pulled me upright.

The room tilted for a moment. A wave of dizziness washed through me, and I steadied myself against him out of instinct more than affection.

"Silas..." I whispered. "Please. I feel ill."

He exhaled long and slow, as though I were a mildly inconvenient child rather than his wife.

Then he knelt before me. His hands came up to cradle my face. I flinched automatically. It was subtle. Barely noticeable. 

But he noticed. He always noticed.

His lips curved into a patient smile, the one he wore when coaxing information from reluctant mouths.

"The High Lord has invited us to dinner," he said softly. Calmly. As though that alone resolved the matter. "Do you understand what that means?"

I did. An invitation from Rhysand was not casual. It was not social. It was political.

"It is an honour," he continued. "An opportunity. We do not decline such things."

I swallowed, my throat dry.

"Can you not go without me?" I asked, already knowing the answer. Already feeling the futility settle in my chest.

His thumb brushed lightly along my cheekbone. "And forget about my best girl?" he murmured, a low chuckle escaping him. "Nonsense."

Best girl. The phrase should have warmed me. Instead, it felt like ownership wrapped in affection.

"You know how they watch," he went on. "Appearances matter. Especially tonight."

Appearances. Yes.

He leaned closer, his forehead nearly brushing mine. "Get up," he said gently. Not a command. Not quite.

But I obeyed all the same.

I let him pull me to my feet. My legs wavered beneath me, and for a fleeting, humiliating second, I feared I might collapse.

His arm slipped around my waist, steadying me. "There," he murmured approvingly. "That wasn't so difficult."

The fever pulsed hotter beneath my skin.

He bent, his lips brushing just below my ear. "Wear the violet gown," he whispered. "The one that hugs you just perfectly."

His hand trailed slowly down the curve of my back, deliberate. Possessive. Appreciative in the way one admires finely crafted art.

I tilted my head slightly away, body stiffening without permission.

His mouth pressed to my neck, a brief kiss, almost absent-minded. Then he patted my hip once, satisfied.

"At least tonight will not be dull," he added lightly before straightening. "Do not keep me waiting."

And then he was gone. The door clicked shut. Silence rushed back in.

I stood in the centre of the room, swaying slightly, the fever humming beneath my skin like a distant drum.

At least he seemed pleased tonight. At least he was in good spirits. That counted for something.

In this Court, a husband's good mood could be the difference between ease and humiliation.

So I moved. Slowly. Methodically. I crossed to the vanity and began brushing my hair, each stroke careful, practised. I pinned it just so, soft waves cascading over one shoulder.

The violet gown waited in the wardrobe.

It was beautiful.

Deep amethyst silk, cut to flatter every curve, the bodice structured enough to shape me into something elegant and enviable. The fabric shimmered faintly in low light, rich and decadent.

I undressed with mechanical precision, ignoring the way my skin burned beneath the air.

The gown slid over me like liquid dusk. It fit exactly as he remembered.

I fastened the delicate clasps. Slipped into heeled shoes that elongated my posture into something regal and untouchable. Selected jewels that complemented the violet without overpowering it.

By the time I finished, the girl in the mirror looked radiant. Flawless.

Untouched by fever. Untouched by fatigue. Untouched by the quiet ache that lived beneath her ribs.

I practised a smile. Soft. Warm. Decorative. Perfect. Silas would be proud. 

I inhaled once, steadying myself, feeling the weakness pulse faintly beneath the silk. Then I turned toward the door.

Ready to stand at his side. Ready to be admired. Ready to be exactly what I had always been raised to be.

His. And nothing more.

The Moonstone Palace was as beautiful as it always was.

Carved from luminous white stone veined faintly with silver, the palace seemed to glow from within, as though the mountain itself had chosen to cradle starlight. 

Chandeliers of cut crystal hung like constellations overhead, refracting soft golden light across sweeping marble floors. 

Music drifted through the corridors, not decadent and heavy like in the Hewn City, but refined. Controlled. Every note measured.

Even the air felt different here. Cleaner. Sharper.

Honest, in a way the Court of Nightmares would never be.

Silas's hand rested firmly at my hip as we entered the grand hall, guiding rather than leading but there was no mistaking the ownership in the touch. His thumb pressed in slow, rhythmic squeezes as we walked, subtle reminders that I was exactly where I belonged.

At his side.

He leaned close as we moved through the corridor.

"You look exquisite," he murmured against my ear, his breath warm. "The violet was the right choice."

I inclined my head slightly in acknowledgment, careful not to sway. 

The fever had not broken. If anything, it pulsed more insistently beneath my skin now that we were surrounded by light and movement and sound.

His hand tightened briefly at my waist. "Stand tall tonight," he added softly. "Let them look."

They would look. They always did.

We stepped into the dining room, and the shift in atmosphere was immediate.

The High Lord stood near the head of the long table, dark power coiled around him like a living thing. Rhysand did not need to demand attention, the room bent toward him regardless. Conversations quieted. Spines straightened.

Silas felt it too.

The moment the High Lord's gaze flickered in our direction, my husband's posture shifted, sharper. Intent.

He pressed a brief kiss to my cheek. "Don't wander far," he murmured.

And then he was gone.

Vanished into conversation with Rhysand as though I had been a stepping stone on his path rather than his wife.

I released a quiet breath I had not realised I'd been holding. The room felt too warm. Too bright.

The edges of my vision shimmered faintly, the fever reminding me of its presence. I moved toward one of the long-backed chairs, careful, measured, refusing to appear weak even as my knees threatened treachery.

I placed a hand on the carved wood to steady myself. The scent of night-blooming jasmine drifted through the open windows.

"So we meet again."

The voice was low. Familiar. A startled breath escaped me before I could stop it. I turned.

Azriel stood a step behind me, shadows curling lazily over his shoulders like sentient smoke. In the glow of the chandeliers, he looked almost unreal, dark hair falling slightly over his brow, broad shoulders encased in midnight fabric, wings tucked neatly behind him.

Beautiful was too simple a word.

He was composed of contrasts, power held in restraint, danger softened by silence. There was something about him that did not belong in rooms like this.

"We do indeed," I replied, smoothing my expression into something polite.

His gaze travelled over me. Not crudely. Not hungrily. Appreciatively. "The violet suits you," he said.

A faint smile touched my lips. "I was told as much."

"Told," he repeated, one brow lifting slightly.

"My husband has strong opinions."

"I gathered."

There was something in the way he said it, measured. Thoughtful. Before I could form a response, the air shifted. Subtle. Deliberate.

"Azriel."

Silas's voice slid between us like silk drawn over steel.

I stiffened automatically. He approached with unhurried confidence, his expression smooth, pleasant even. But his eyes were calculating as they flicked between us.

"With my wife again, I see."

The words were light. Almost amused. But there was an edge beneath them.

Azriel did not move. Did not step back. "Do you blame me?" he replied evenly.

The silence that followed was razor-thin.

Silas's head tilted slightly. "What?" he asked, tone still mild but no longer warm.

I felt it then. The tightening. The invisible thread between the two males pulling taut.

"He's joking," I rushed gently, stepping half a pace closer to Silas without thinking. "We merely ran into one another."

Azriel's gaze flicked to me, assessing. "Yes," he added smoothly. "Your wife and I seem to have a talent for accidental encounters."

Silas's hand settled at the small of my back. Not harsh. Not painful. But firm. "Accidents can be... costly," he said.

Azriel held his stare. "I've already paid for the last one."

A faint beat. Then Silas smiled. It was polished. Controlled. Public. "I'm sure you did."

His fingers flexed subtly against my spine. "You'll forgive me," Silas continued, eyes still locked on Azriel, "if I prefer my wife remain intact."

The words were wrapped in civility. The message was not.

Azriel's expression did not shift. "I assure you," he said quietly, "I have no intention of damaging something so carefully maintained."

Something flickered across Silas's face, so fast it might have been imagined. Possessiveness. Approval. Or perhaps irritation that Azriel had noticed at all.

"I would hope not," Silas replied.

The tension coiled tighter. And I felt suddenly, acutely aware of my fever, of how fragile I must look standing between them.

"I should sit," I murmured softly, pressing a hand lightly to Silas's arm. "I'm feeling warm."

His attention snapped instantly back to me. Concern, real or performative, softened his features. "Of course," he said smoothly. "You should have said something sooner."

I had.

Azriel's gaze darkened slightly, but he stepped back. Silas guided me toward the table, his hand never leaving my back.

As we moved away, I risked one glance over my shoulder.

Azriel still stood where we had left him. Watching. Not with longing. Not with hunger. But with something far more dangerous.

Understanding.

And for the briefest, most treacherous moment—I wished Silas had not returned so quickly.

Azriel's POV - 

The dynamics between them were... wrong. Not broken. Not volatile. Not cruel in any obvious way. Just wrong.

It was in the spaces between them. In the way Silas's hand rested at the small of her back not in affection, but in placement. In the way she adjusted herself subtly whenever he entered a room, like a piece on a game board anticipating its next move.

He touched her often. Too often. Not with hunger. Not with tenderness. With ownership.

And she accepted it with a stillness that unsettled me more than resistance ever could have.

Dinner carried on in its usual monotony, measured conversation, veiled threats disguised as politics, wine poured and refilled with calculated timing. 

The High Lord presided with effortless command, Rhysand's expression relaxed but sharp beneath the surface, every word in the room weighed whether the speaker realised it or not.

Silas thrived in that environment.

He leaned toward Rhysand now, voice low, discussing some recent "discovery" in the southern territories. His posture was intent, shoulders angled just slightly inward in a display of focus and respect.

A performance. A good one.

But she—she was not performing as well tonight.

She sat a few seats away, a glass of water clasped between slender fingers instead of wine. Her movements were slower. Blinks heavier. A faint flush lingered high on her cheekbones that had nothing to do with candlelight.

Even from across the table, I could see the strain in the way she held her spine straight, as if gravity itself had grown heavier.

The realisation irritated me more than it should have.

It is not your concern, I told myself. Still... I rose.

I moved quietly around the table, shadows slipping along the floor beside me like silent accomplices. Silas did not glance up. He was too deep in conversation, too confident in his control.

I stopped opposite her chair. "You do not look well," I said quietly.

She startled again. Her head lifted too quickly, eyes widening for half a breath before composure smoothed over her features. 

Instinctively, her gaze flicked past me toward her husband. Measuring. Calculating whether this conversation was worth the risk.

"Only a little feverish," she replied softly.

Feverish. The word sharpened something in my chest. Up close, the warmth radiating from her was unmistakable. Not imagined. Not dramatic. Real.

"You should be resting then," I said, lowering myself into the seat across from her without asking permission.

Her fingers tightened slightly around the glass. "I will be fine."

"That is not what I said."

Her lashes lowered briefly, as if steadying herself. "Silas wanted me to come."

There it was again. Not I wished to attend. Not we decided. Silas wanted.

The faintest edge of irritation threaded through my voice before I could stop it. "You shouldn't put yourself in discomfort for others." Her gaze snapped back to mine. "Husband or not," I added more quietly.

The words hung between us, dangerous and uninvited. She seemed genuinely taken aback.

Colour rose faintly to her cheeks whether from fever or surprise, I could not tell. "No, no—Silas only means well," she rushed out, too quickly. Too carefully.

As if correcting a narrative before it could form.

My shadows stirred, restless against my shoulders. "Meaning well," I said evenly, "does not negate harm."

Her breath caught. It was subtle. Nearly imperceptible. But I saw it. She looked away first.

"You misunderstand," she said, though there was less conviction in it now. "It is an honour to be invited here."

"An honour," I repeated, glancing briefly toward Silas. He had not once looked in her direction since resuming his conversation. "Is it?"

Her fingers trembled slightly as she lifted the glass to her lips. She took a slow sip of water, as if buying time.

"You think poorly of him," she observed quietly.

"I think carefully of him."

That earned me her attention again. And for a moment, just a moment, the hollowness in her eyes cracked. Not fully. Not dramatically. But enough.

"You are very bold, Spymaster," she murmured.

"Am I?"

"Yes." A faint, weary curve touched her mouth. "It will get you into trouble."

"Perhaps."

My gaze softened despite myself. "But you are ill."

She held my stare. And something fragile passed between us, something neither political nor flirtatious. Concern.

"You are flushed," I continued more quietly. "Your hands are shaking."

Her composure faltered for half a heartbeat before she forced stillness back into her fingers. "It is nothing."

"It does not look like nothing."

Silence settled.

Around us, cutlery chimed against porcelain. Laughter rose from the far end of the table. Power shifted invisibly in currents only a few of us truly felt.

And yet this—this quiet exchange, felt louder than any of it.

"You should not push yourself for appearances," I said, lower now. "The Court will survive one dinner without perfect decor."

Her lips parted slightly. "You sound as though you have little regard for tradition."

"I have little regard for suffering dressed as duty."

That landed. 

Her gaze dropped to the tablecloth, tracing the embroidered silver vines along its edge. "I was raised to endure," she said after a moment. "It is not... difficult."

I leaned back slightly, studying her. "No," I said. "You were raised not to protest."

Her eyes lifted sharply. There it was again, that flicker beneath the surface. Something alive. Something that wanted to argue. To resist.

Instead, she simply whispered, "It is the same thing."

"It isn't."

For a breath, neither of us spoke.

"You look tired," I added softly, before the moment closed. "You should listen to your body."

Her throat worked as she swallowed. "You are very perceptive."

"It is my profession."

A faint exhale left her lips, almost a laugh. Almost. And then it was gone.

The shutters slid back into place behind her eyes. Composure reassembled. Shoulders squared. Chin lifted just so.

Silas's presence approached moments later, smooth and deliberate, and I stepped away before the air could tighten again.

I left her alone.

Because this was not my place. Because she had a husband.

I returned to my seat. Forced my attention to the rhythm of conversation. To the political undercurrents threading through the table. To the subtle shifts in Rhysand's expression as reports were delivered and promises traded.

But my awareness remained split. Every few minutes, my gaze betrayed me.

She grew worse as the night wore on.

The flush on her cheeks deepened unnaturally. Her fingers curled tighter around her water glass. Once, her hand drifted briefly to her temple, as if steadying the world.

Silas did not notice. Or if he did, he prioritised differently.

He laughed at something Rhysand said. Leaned forward, animated. Engaged. His focus sharpened like a blade being honed.

She sat beside him like a statue carved from porcelain. Perfect. And cracking.

The final course was being cleared when I saw it.

Her lips parted slightly as if to speak. She turned toward Silas, murmured something too soft for me to hear.

He did not look at her. He continued speaking, one hand lifting in casual emphasis as he made a point about border intelligence.

She tried again.

This time I saw her fingers brush lightly against his sleeve. A small gesture. A wife seeking her husband's attention.

Silas's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. He shifted his arm, not roughly but enough that her hand slipped away. He did not break eye contact with the High Lord.

My teeth ground together.

She swallowed. I saw the moment her vision blurred. Her posture wavered just slightly.

She pushed her chair back. Slowly. Carefully. The sound of wood scraping marble was too loud in the refined quiet of the room.

"I—" she began softly.

Silas exhaled through his nose, irritation flickering as he finally glanced at her. "Sit down," he murmured under his breath. A command disguised as concern.

But she was already standing.

Her knees buckled. It happened in a breath. The room tilted. Her body swayed, fragile and weightless all at once.

I was moving before thought could intervene. My chair hit the floor behind me as I crossed the space in two strides.

I caught her just before she struck the marble.

Her body was burning. Heat seared through the thin fabric between us as I wrapped an arm around her waist, the other bracing beneath her shoulders. Her head lolled slightly against my chest, breath shallow.

The entire table had gone silent.

"Easy," I murmured instinctively.

Her lashes fluttered weakly. "I'm—fine," she whispered. A lie.

Her husband was at my side in an instant. Silas's expression was no longer polished. No longer measured. It was sharp. Controlled fury simmered in his eyes.

"I can take care of my wife," he said evenly.

Each word precise. Hard. His hand closed around her arm, firm enough to reclaim, not to comfort. I did not release her immediately. 

My shadows flared instinctively, coiling at my back. "She needs a healer," I said.

"I said," Silas repeated, quieter now, more dangerous, "I can take care of my wife."

The possessiveness in it scraped something raw in my chest.

My grip tightened fractionally, not on her, but in restraint. "She nearly collapsed," I bit out.

"She did collapse," Silas corrected coldly.

His fingers dug deeper into her arm as he pulled her toward him. Not violently. But with unmistakable authority.

She stirred faintly in my hold, and instinct forced me to loosen my grasp before I could stop myself.

Silas drew her into his arms. Ownership reclaimed.

"She has been feverish," I said, teeth beginning to bare despite myself. "You brought her here regardless."

A dangerous silence fell. Around us, nobles watched with poorly concealed fascination.

Silas's eyes flashed. "You presume much," he said softly.

"And you ignore much," I shot back.

His jaw ticked. Power coiled around him, not loud, not explosive, but venomous and precise. "Careful, Shadowsinger."

I was very close to not being careful at all. My teeth were fully bared now, wings shifting slightly at my back as instinct surged forward.

Then a presence settled behind me. Cool. Immense. Commanding. 

Rhysand. Not touching. Not speaking. But there. A silent wall at my back. A reminder. 

Not here. Not over this. Not over someone else's wife.

His power pressed gently but firmly against my restraint, threading through my temper like cold night air over flame.

I exhaled slowly through my nose.

Silas adjusted her in his arms, lifting her fully against his chest. She looked small there. Too small.

Her head rested limply against his shoulder, lips parted, skin flushed unnaturally bright.

"I will see to her," Silas said smoothly now, composure snapping back into place as if nothing had occurred. "My apologies for the disruption."

He did not look at me again.

He turned, carrying her toward the exit with controlled urgency. The doors closed behind them. The room slowly resumed its polite murmur.

I remained standing. My hands flexed at my sides, shadows writhing restlessly.

Rhys stepped closer at last. "Azriel," he said quietly.

A warning. A question. A command to stand down—all in one.

I dragged my gaze from the doorway. "I was only ensuring she did not crack her skull open on your marble floors," I said evenly.

Rhys's violet eyes studied me for a long moment. "Of course," he replied.

But something in his gaze told me he had seen more than that.

I looked back toward the closed doors. 

Silas had taken her from my arms. And yet the imprint of her warmth still burned against my chest. And for the first time that night, I understood something with uncomfortable clarity.

This was no longer curiosity. And that made it far more dangerous.

A/N - I wanted to show the... interesting dynamics between her and Silas. He's not exactly the world's best husband (understatement of the century), and she... well, she mostly just goes along with it :(

Azriel is of course going to notice. He's the professional busybody, the one who can't help but intervene when something seems... off. He's judging Silas pretty hard, and he just can't resist making her his business x

Thank you for reading <33

So when he found himself standing in a moonlit clearing he'd never seen before, surrounded by ancient oaks humming with old magic, his first instinct was to reach for Truth-Teller.

The blade wasn't there.

Neither were his leathers.

Instead, he wore simple black clothing, and his shadows swirled around him with restless energy, reaching toward something he couldn't yet see.

That's when you stepped into the clearing.

The breath left his lungs in a rush.

Beautiful. The word felt inadequate for what stood before him.

You were ethereal in the moonlight, all flowing hair and luminous skin that seemed to glow from within. Your bow was held with easy confidence, but it was your face that undid him completely. Delicate features arranged in perfect harmony, eyes that sparkled with mischief, lips that looked made for kissing.

You were the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. In five centuries of existence, through courts filled with fae females of legendary beauty, nothing had prepared him for you.

When you saw him, you didn't scream or run. Instead, you tilted your head and said, "Well. You're definitely not a deer."

"No," he managed, voice rougher than usual. "I'm not."

You studied him with those captivating eyes, not assessing him as a threat but with genuine curiosity. "This is a dream, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Thank the gods," you breathed, lowering your bow completely. "I was starting to think I'd finally cracked and gone completely mad."

Despite five centuries of training that screamed at him to maintain distance, Azriel found his mouth curving upward. There was something infectiously warm about your presence.

"And why would you think that?"

"Because I've been having the strangest dreams lately," you said, gesturing animatedly. "Places that don't exist, magic that feels real enough to taste. And now there's you, looking like some dark god of war who wandered out of a fairy tale." You paused, color blooming across your cheeks. "I mean, not that you look like... I didn't mean to..."

The stammering was adorable. When was the last time anyone had blushed because of something they'd said to him?

"You're not afraid," he observed.

"Should I be?" You settled onto a moss-covered log, then immediately stood back up. "Actually, wait. That looked more elegant in my head."

You sat again, more carefully this time, but somehow managed to catch your braid on a low branch. As you untangled yourself with muttered curses, Azriel felt something unprecedented happen. He wanted to genuinely smile.

"It's a dream," you continued once you'd freed yourself. "What's the worst that could happen?"

"You could be a nightmare," he pointed out, moving closer despite every instinct.

"Could be." Your smile was warm, inviting. "Are you?"

His shadows crept closer despite his attempts to call them back.

"I don't know," he admitted.

You patted the space beside you with such casual invitation that he found himself sitting before he'd consciously decided to. His shadows immediately betrayed him, reaching toward you.

"Oh," you breathed, extending a hand toward the wisps of darkness. "They're beautiful."

Beautiful. Applied to parts of him others had only called terrifying.

"They're dangerous," he said quickly.

"So are thunderstorms," you replied, letting one curl around your wrist like a bracelet. "Doesn't make them any less gorgeous."

The shadow settled against your skin as if it belonged there. His shadows didn't behave this way. They didn't seek out strangers, didn't show interest in anyone outside his small circle of family.

"That's impossible," he murmured.

"Good impossible or bad impossible?"

The question made him look at you, really look. You were smiling at the darkness surrounding him as if it had given you some precious gift.

"I don't know," he said again.

"What's your name?" you asked.

Names had power. Names created connections.

But this was a dream, and you were looking at him like he was someone worth knowing.

"Azriel."

"Azriel." You repeated it carefully, and something about the way you said his name made his shadows pulse with satisfaction. "I'm—"

"Don't," he said quickly. "Don't tell me your name. Not yet."

You tilted your head curiously. "Why not?"

He couldn't explain the sudden certainty that knowing your name would make this too real, too dangerous. That it would cement something he wasn't ready to face.

"What do you do, Azriel? When you're not appearing in strange dreams looking like every maiden's fantasy?"

The casual compliment hit him like a physical blow. Every maiden's fantasy. You thought he was...

"I serve my High Lord," he managed. "I gather information."

You nodded as if he'd told you he tended gardens. "Sounds important. Lonely, though."

The observation hit close to home. "It can be."

"When's the last time you did something just for yourself?"

The question made him blink. "What do you mean?"

"Fun. Enjoyment. You know, that thing people do when they're not being brooding warriors of darkness?" You tilted your head, studying him with perceptive eyes. "You carry the weight of the world on your shoulders, don't you? Everyone's safety, everyone's secrets. When do you get to just... exist?"

No one had ever asked him that. No one had ever looked at him and seen the burden he carried, the way he'd made himself into a weapon at the cost of his own happiness.

"I don't think I know how," he admitted quietly.

Your face lit up with something fierce and determined. "Then I'll have to teach you. Starting with the revolutionary concept of having absolutely no agenda whatsoever."

Despite himself, Azriel found himself smiling.

The dreams became his obsession.

Every night, he counted hours until he could see you again. You appeared like clockwork in that moonlit clearing, always with some new lesson in "having fun."

You taught him to skip stones across the stream, laughing when his attempts sent rocks plunging with military precision.

"You're thinking too hard," you said, demonstrating with a smooth motion. Then you immediately tripped over your own feet and nearly tumbled into the stream.

"Graceful," he observed, steadying you.

"Shut up," you muttered, grinning. "I'm a woman of many talents. Coordination just isn't one of them."

Watching you laugh at your own clumsiness, seeing starlight catch in your hair and make your eyes sparkle, Azriel felt something shift in his chest. Something warm and golden and terrifyingly precious.

You convinced him to weave flower crowns, your nimble fingers creating delicate circlets while his fumbled with stems.

"This is ridiculous," he muttered when you insisted he wear the crown.

"This is fun," you corrected, reaching up to adjust the flowers in his hair. "There's a difference."

Your fingers brushed his forehead as you worked. You were close enough that he could smell your sweet scent, count the freckles scattered across your nose like stars.

"There," you said, stepping back to admire your work. "Now you look like a proper fairy prince instead of a terrifying shadow lord."

"I am a terrifying shadow lord," he protested weakly.

"Not in here," you said simply. "In here, you're just Azriel. And Azriel looks very handsome in flower crowns."

The casual compliment made his shadows flutter with something like preening.

His shadows seemed to enjoy the flower petals, playing with them instead of their usual vigilant hovering. You watched with delight, occasionally reaching out to let them wind around your fingers.

"They really like you," he observed.

"I really like them too," you replied. "They're like curious little pets."

"They're extensions of my will," he said automatically. "They don't have personalities."

You shot him a look that clearly said you thought he was an idiot. "Right. And I suppose they investigate my hair because you will them to?"

He followed your gaze and realized several shadows had wound through your hair, seeming to enjoy the silky texture. He hadn't commanded that.

"That's not normal," he said.

"Maybe normal is overrated," you shrugged.

One night, you lay side by side in soft grass, pointing out constellations. The casual intimacy of it, your shoulder pressed against his, your hand occasionally brushing his arm as you gestured, was driving him slowly mad.

"There," you whispered when a star fell, catching his scarred hand and pointing it toward the light. "Make a wish."

The feel of your skin against his scars sent electricity through him. You didn't flinch, didn't pull away from the evidence of his past. Instead, your thumb traced over one of the worst scars with such tenderness it made his breath catch.

"What did you wish for?" you asked softly.

He turned his head to study your profile, noting how moonlight caught on your lips.

For the first time in centuries, he wasn't cataloguing exits or potential threats. He was simply here. Present.

Memorizing the way your lashes cast shadows on your cheeks, the small smile playing at your lips, the way your braid had come undone and spilled across the grass like silk.

When had he stopped being the shadowsinger and started being just Azriel?

"Can't tell you, or it won't come true," he said quietly.

But he could tell you.

He'd wished for this to be real, for you to be real, for some impossible way to keep you. He'd wished to always feel this strange peace that seemed to settle in his bones whenever you looked at him.

The space between you seemed to crackle with tension. He wanted to kiss you, had wanted to since that first night, but something held him back. Some instinct that this was precious, fragile, not to be rushed.

Instead, he traced the curve of your cheek with one finger, marveling when you leaned into the touch like a cat seeking warmth.

"This doesn't feel like a dream," you murmured, your breath ghosting across his palm.

"No," he agreed, voice rougher than intended. "It doesn't."

It was on the night you attempted to teach him to whittle that everything changed.

"It's supposed to be relaxing," you said, demonstrating with a piece of wood and a small knife. "Meditative."

Azriel watched your hands move with practiced ease, creating delicate curls of wood. "I don't think I'm built for relaxation."

"Everyone's built for relaxation. You just have to find the right kind." You handed him the knife and a fresh piece of wood, your fingers brushing his wrist as you did. The contact sent sparks up his arm. "Try it."

He took the tools, hyperaware of every point where your skin had touched his, the lingering warmth like a brand.

"What am I supposed to make?"

"Whatever wants to emerge," you said with that dreamy smile he'd grown to love. You shifted closer, your knee bumping against his thigh as you settled beside him. "Sometimes the wood tells you."

"The wood tells you," he repeated dryly, trying to ignore the heat radiating from where you touched him.

"Mock me all you want, but—oh!"

You'd been gesturing enthusiastically when your elbow knocked into his wing. The unexpected contact sent a shockwave of sensation through him. Wings were sensitive, intimate, and his sharp intake of breath made you freeze.

"I'm sorry," you said quickly, but your hand had landed on his forearm to steady yourself, fingers pressing against his skin. "I didn't mean to—are you hurt?"

"No," he managed, voice strained. The dual sensation of your touch on his wing and arm was making his head spin. "Wings are just... sensitive."

Understanding dawned in your eyes, followed by something that looked like hunger disguised as curiosity. "Sensitive how?"

The innocent question, delivered in that slightly breathless tone, made heat pool low in his belly.

"Sorry," you said again, but you weren't moving away. If anything, you'd leaned closer, your fascinated gaze tracking over the membranous expanse. "I just—they're beautiful. Can I...?"

You reached out tentatively, stopping just short of touching. The anticipation was exquisite torture.

"Yes," he breathed.

Your fingertips brushed the edge of his wing, feather-light, and Azriel bit back a groan. The sensation was overwhelming, part pleasure, part pain, entirely consuming.

"Like that?" you asked softly, voice gone husky.

He could only nod, not trusting his voice. You grew bolder, trailing your fingers along the sensitive membrane, and he felt his carefully constructed control beginning to fracture.

"You're trembling," you observed, wonder in your voice.

"You're touching my wings," he said roughly. "It's... intense."

"Good intense?"

Before he could answer, you leaned closer to examine the intricate patterns, your breath ghosting across his skin.

Your free hand came up to steady yourself against his chest, palm flat over his racing heart. The innocent curiosity in your expression, combined with the intimacy of touching him like this, made him feel like he was coming apart at the seams.

That's when you stumbled.

Your foot caught on something and you pitched forward. Instinct had him catching you before you could fall, his arms coming around you as his wings flared instinctively to shield you both from harm.

Time crystallized.

You were pressed against his chest, your hands fisted in his shirt, face tilted up toward his. Moonlight streamed through your disheveled hair, turning it to liquid silver, and when you looked up at him with those bright, beautiful eyes, pupils dilated, lips parted in surprise, something ancient and primal roared to life in his chest.

The mating bond didn't just snap into place.

It erupted.

The world exploded into sensation and color and rightness so overwhelming it drove him to his knees. Golden threads of light blazed between your souls, weaving together everything he was with everything you were until he couldn't tell where he ended and you began. Five centuries of emptiness, of believing himself unworthy of love, of carefully controlled loneliness, all of it shattered in an instant.

Mate. Mine. Forever.

The words weren't thoughts so much as truths written into the fabric of reality itself. His shadows went wild, streaming around you both in a protective cocoon, some part of him desperate to shield this moment from anything that might disturb it.

Distantly, he was aware that he'd pulled you both down onto the grass, that he was cradling you against him like you might disappear, that his hands were shaking with the force of restraining himself from claiming your mouth, your body, your soul.

"Azriel?" Your voice seemed to come from underwater. "What's happening?"

He tried to speak and found he couldn't. The bond was singing in his blood, demanding he tell you what you were to him, demanding he make you understand that you belonged to him now, that he would burn the world down before letting anything harm you.

But you were human. You didn't know what this meant, what had just changed between you. To you, this was still just a dream.

To him, you had just become his entire reason for existing.

"I..." He tried to form words, but his voice came out raw, broken. "You're..."

"What?" you whispered, reaching up to cup his face. Your thumb traced his cheekbone with devastating gentleness. "What's wrong?"

Wrong? Nothing was wrong.

Everything was perfect and terrifying and he was drowning in the need to kiss you, to taste you, to bury himself so deep in your soul that you'd never question who you belonged to.

"Mine," he breathed, the word torn from somewhere primal and possessive. "You're mine."

Before he could stop himself, before sanity could intervene, he crushed his mouth to yours.

You made a soft sound of surprise that turned into something hungrier when he deepened the kiss, his control finally snapping entirely.

You tasted like starlight and forever, like every good thing he'd never dared hope for. The bond blazed brighter with each touch of your tongue against his, each breathless gasp you gave when he traced the curve of your lower lip.

When he finally pulled back, lungs burning, hands fisted in your hair to keep you close, you stared up at him with dazed wonder.

"That felt..." you started, voice dreamy and confused.

"Real," he finished roughly. "It felt real because it is real."

You went very still in his arms, and when you looked at him again, there was something heartbreaking in your expression.

"Azriel," you said gently, "this isn't real."

The words hit him like a physical blow. "What?"

"This is just a dream." Your voice was soft, patient, like you were explaining something to a child. "A beautiful dream, but still just a dream. And I'm—" You took a shaky breath. "I'm dying. In the real world. I've been sick for months, and the healers can't do anything more for me."

"No." The word tore from his throat. "No, you don't understand. You're my mate. This bond between us, it's real. I can feel it."

You reached up to cup his face, and he could see tears gathering in your eyes. "I know you feel it. I feel it too. But that doesn't make it real."

"It is real," he said desperately. "You have to believe me. I'm going to find you, I'm going to save you."

"You can't save me from a dream," you whispered. "And you can't save me from dying."

"This isn't a dream," he insisted, but even as he spoke, he could feel the world beginning to fracture around them. "You're real. We're real."

"I'm dying, Azriel." The words were gentle but final. "My body is failing, and my mind is creating this beautiful fantasy because it's easier than facing the truth. You're everything I've ever wanted, everything I've ever dreamed of, but you're not real."

"I am real," he said, panic rising in his chest as the dream continued to dissolve. "Please, you have to believe me. I exist, I'm coming for you, just hold on."

But you were already fading, becoming translucent around the edges.

"This is just a dream," you said again, and this time there was peace in your voice. Acceptance. "A beautiful, impossible dream."

"No," he breathed, reaching for you as you slipped away. "Please, just tell me where you are. Tell me your name, tell me something I can use to find you."

But the last thing he saw before everything went dark was your sad, sweet smile, and the last words you spoke echoed in the silence:

"It's just a dream. Just a dream."

Azriel woke with a roar that shook the foundations of the House of Wind.

The mating bond blazed in his chest like a dying star, gold and molten and desperate. Your phantom scent still clung to his skin, jasmine and starlight and something fading, like flowers pressed between the pages of a book.

His mate was dying, and he had no idea how to find you.

His shadows writhed around him, agitated and hungry, still reaching for the ghost of your touch. They whispered of dreams and dying girls, of bonds that burned across impossible distances, and Azriel felt something cold and determined settle in his chest.

You thought he was just a dream. You thought none of it was real.

But the mating bond didn't lie. And neither did the way his shadows had responded to you, the way they'd played in your hair like they belonged there.

Somewhere in the mortal lands, his mate was dying, convinced that the love she'd found was nothing more than her mind's final gift to itself.

Azriel rose from his bed, shadows streaming around him like liquid night, and began to plan.

He would find you.

Author’s Note:

Azriel didn't look up from the map spread across his desk, covered in marks and crossed-out locations. Red ink bled across mortal territories like wounds. "I'm fine."

"Right. And I'm a delicate flower." Cassian stepped inside, noting the clothes scattered on the floor, the unmade bed, the way Azriel's hands trembled as he traced routes through the mortal lands. "When's the last time you slept? Actually slept?"

"I sleep." Azriel's voice was rough from disuse.

"Having visions doesn't count as rest, brother."

Azriel's head snapped up, hazel eyes blazing. "They're not visions."

The rawness in his voice made Cassian take a step back. In five centuries of friendship, he'd seen Azriel angry, cold, even broken. But he'd never seen him desperate.

"Az," Cassian said carefully. "What's going on?"

Before Azriel could answer, his shadows suddenly coalesced into a tight spiral. He doubled over as the mating bond flared with such intensity it stole his breath. Somewhere—somewhere—his mate was in pain.

"Fuck," he gasped, white-knuckled against his desk.

Cassian was beside him instantly. "Azriel, what—"

"Get Rhys. Now."

"A mating bond," Rhysand said slowly, violet eyes studying Azriel with careful intensity. "Through dreams."

They gathered in Rhys's study—Azriel rigid in his chair, Cassian hovering by the window, Feyre perched on the arm of Rhys's chair. The High Lord had probed gently at Azriel's mental shields, and even that light touch had been enough to feel the bond's golden fire.

"It's real," Azriel said for the third time. "She's real. And she's dying."

"Dream-bonds are theoretical at best," Rhys said carefully. "The few documented cases—"

"I don't care about documentation." Azriel's shadows began to writhe more violently, responding to his agitation. "I can smell her on my skin. My shadows reach for her even when I'm awake. The bond is there, Rhys. You felt it yourself."

"I felt something," Rhys agreed. "But bonds don't typically form with humans, and they certainly don't form across planes of existence."

"She's not typical." Azriel's voice quieted, and something tender crept into his expression. "She can touch my shadows. They play with her like they're pets." He looked up, and Feyre's heart clenched at the desperation in his eyes. "She taught me to make flower crowns."

The simple statement hung in the air. Azriel, who hadn't allowed himself simple pleasures in centuries, making flower crowns with a dying girl in his dreams.

"What do you need?" Feyre asked softly.

Rhys shot her a warning look, but she ignored it. She knew what it was like to feel a bond snap into place, knew the desperate need to reach your mate, to protect them.

"Information," Azriel said immediately. "Access to the mortal healers' records. Permission to cross court boundaries without diplomatic protocol." His shadows curled around his wrists like shackles. "And time. I need time."

"Az," Cassian said gently. "Even if she is real, if she's dying—"

"Then I'll find a way to save her." The words carried such fierce conviction that no one dared argue.

Rhys studied his brother's face—the hollow cheeks, the way his hands clenched into fists, the barely leashed violence in his posture. This was Azriel stripped to his most essential self: a creature built for hunting, for finding what was lost.

"You have three weeks," he said finally. "After that, you come home and we reassess."

"I'll need longer—"

"Three weeks, Azriel." Rhys's voice carried the weight of a High Lord's command. "If the bond is real, if she exists, you'll find her. You always find what you're hunting for."

Always, Azriel thought grimly. But what if this time was different? What if this time he was already too late?

The dreams were becoming his salvation and his torment.

Each night, you looked paler, more translucent, but for those precious hours, you were his.

Completely, utterly his. And he was falling apart trying to hold onto you.

"You look tired," you observed during what might have been the tenth shared dream, or the hundredth. Time had no meaning in this place between sleep and waking, where golden light filtered through ancient oak leaves and the air always smelled of lavender and something uniquely you.

"I am tired," he admitted, settling beside you on the blanket you'd somehow conjured in their clearing. In the waking world, he'd been searching for six days. Six days of false hope and crushing disappointment. But here, here you were warm and whole and reaching for him.

"Come here," you murmured, opening your arms.

He went without hesitation, something in his chest unclenching as you pulled him down to rest his head in your lap. Your fingers found his hair, threading through the dark strands with a tenderness that made his throat tight.

"You carry too much," you said softly, and he could hear the frown in your voice. "Even in dreams, you can't let go."

He wanted to tell you that he couldn't let go because you were fading, because each night brought less of you to hold. Instead, he turned his face into your stomach, breathing in your scent like a drowning man gulping air.

"Tell me about your day," you said, the same request you made every night. As if his daily search for you was just ordinary work, as if this was simply a lover's reunion at day's end.

So he did, editing out the desperation, the way his hands shook when leads went cold. He told you about flying over the mortal lands, about villages tucked into valleys, about the way morning mist clung to rivers.

Safe things. Beautiful things.

Your fingers never stopped moving in his hair, occasionally trailing down to trace the shell of his ear, the line of his jaw. Touch-starved as he was, each caress sent heat racing through his veins.

"I missed you," he said against your skin, the words muffled but honest. "Every second I'm awake, I miss you."

"I'm right here," you said, but your voice sounded farther away than it should have. "I'm always here."

He lifted his head to look at you, taking in the soft curve of your mouth, the way your eyes seemed to hold starlight.

You were beautiful—heartbreakingly so—and you were his in a way that defied logic or reason.

"Kiss me," he said, the words torn from somewhere deep in his chest.

You smiled, that slow, sweet smile that undid him completely, and leaned down to press your lips to his. The kiss was soft at first, gentle, but when he made a low sound of need, you deepened it, your tongue sliding against his in a way that made him forget everything but this—you, warm and alive and wanting him.

When you finally pulled back, you were both breathing hard.

"I’ll find you," he said, the words spilling out before he could stop them. "I'm going to find you, and I'm going to save you."

Something flickered across your face—confusion, maybe, or fear. "Save me from what?"

The question hit him like ice water. "You're sick," he said carefully. "In the waking world, you're dying, and I'm trying to—"

"I don't feel sick," you interrupted, your brow furrowing. "I feel... tired sometimes. Like I'm forgetting something important. But not sick."

He cupped your face in his hands, memorizing every detail. "Promise me something," he said urgently. "Promise me you'll fight. Whatever is happening to you out there, promise me you won't give up."

"I don't understand," you said, but you leaned into his touch anyway, nuzzling into his palm like a cat seeking warmth.

"Promise me," he repeated, and there was something broken in his voice that made you nod.

"I promise," you whispered. "I promise I'll fight."

He kissed you again, desperate and claiming, pouring all his love and fear and desperation into the contact. You responded with equal fervor, your arms winding around his neck, pulling him closer until there was no space between you.

You curled against his side then, your head on his chest, one leg tangled between his. His shadows, which had been agitated all day, finally settled, wrapping around you both like a dark, protective cocoon. Your fingers traced idle patterns over his heart, and he caught your hand, bringing it to his lips to press soft kisses to your knuckles.

"I wish I could stay here forever," you murmured against his skin. "Just like this."

"So do I," he said, pressing a kiss to the top of your head. "So do I."

But even as he held you, he could feel you beginning to fade, your edges growing translucent in the golden light. He tightened his grip, trying to anchor you somehow, but you slipped through his fingers like morning mist.

"I have to go," you said sleepily, though you made no move to leave his arms.

"Not yet," he said, desperation creeping into his voice. "Please, not yet."

"I'm sorry," you whispered, and then you were gone, leaving him alone in the empty clearing with nothing but the memory of your warmth and the taste of your kiss on his lips.

He woke to cold dawn light streaming through his tent, the mating bond a dull ache in his chest, and the terrible knowledge that he was running out of time.

"The Shadow Lord looks ready to murder someone," Mor observed, watching Azriel interrogate a healer in one of the mortal villages.

They'd been at this for twelve days. Twelve days of flying from village to village, of Azriel questioning anyone who might have information about dying girls, of following his shadows as they searched for a scent that seemed to exist only in his memory.

The healer—a middle-aged woman with kind eyes that had turned fearful—trembled under Azriel's stare. His shadows coiled around him like living smoke, and his voice carried the promise of violence barely held in check.

"Think carefully," Azriel said, leaning forward. "A young woman. Sick for months. Dreams of places that don't exist. Has anyone mentioned—"

"Please," the healer whispered. "I've told you everything I know. There was a girl in Rosehall, but she died last week. And the merchant's daughter in Millbrook, but her illness is consumption, not—"

Azriel's shadows surged forward, and the woman flinched back.

"He might actually kill someone," Cassian muttered. "We should probably intervene before—"

"No." Rhys's voice came from behind them. They turned to see him approaching, his face grim. "Let him work. He's gotten more information in twelve days than our spies have gathered in months."

It was true. Azriel's intensity had a way of making people very eager to be helpful. Fear, it turned out, was an excellent motivator.

"Any luck?" Mor asked.

"Three possibilities," Rhys said. "A girl in Rosehall who was having prophetic dreams before slipping into a coma—but she died two days ago. A healer's daughter two villages north who's been wasting away from some unknown illness. And..." He paused, watching as Azriel's shadows suddenly stilled, as if listening to something none of them could hear. "A girl near the mortal queens' territory who's been asking about shadow-touched magic."

"Shadow-touched?" Cassian straightened. "That's not exactly common knowledge in mortal lands."

"No," Rhys agreed. "It's not."

They watched as Azriel finished with the healer, his shadows coiling around him like a dark crown. When he turned toward them, his face was carved from stone, but his eyes—his eyes burned with something that might have been hope.

"The girl near Rosehall is dead," he said flatly. "The healer's daughter has bone-rot, not the wasting sickness." His shadows began to stream in a specific direction, like a compass needle finding true north. "But there's a third option. A girl who's been asking about dream magic and shadow-touched fae. She's been sick for months, having dreams about places that don't exist."

"Where?" Cassian asked, though he could see the answer in the way Azriel's entire being seemed to orient toward something distant.

"Near Thornfield. In a cottage by the white cliffs." Azriel's voice was steady, but Cassian caught the tremor underneath. "She's there. I can feel it."

For the first time in nearly two weeks, the mating bond felt strong enough to follow.

The girl was already cold when they found her.

Azriel stood in the doorway of the modest cottage, staring at the still form beneath a patchwork quilt. She looked peaceful, younger in death than she probably had in life.

But she wasn't you. The bond lay silent in his chest, cold as winter stone.

The mother—red-eyed and hollow-cheeked—wrung her hands behind him. "She passed in her sleep," the woman whispered. "Just... slipped away."

His shadows recoiled from the body as if burned.

Wrong, they seemed to whisper. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

"Not you," he breathed, and turned away.

He was airborne before the woman could speak again, wings cutting through gray morning sky. Below him, Cassian called his name, but Azriel didn't slow. Couldn't slow.

The bond pulled him east, toward the sea cliffs, toward white stone and dying light.

That night, you flickered in and out of focus like candlelight in a draft.

"You look sad," you observed, reaching up to trace the line of his jaw. Your fingers felt insubstantial, more memory than flesh.

"I found a girl today," he said, catching your hand and pressing it firmly to his cheek. "I thought... I hoped it might be you."

"But I'm right here," you said, confused.

"The real you," he clarified gently. "Your body. Where you are when you're not dreaming."

You tilted your head, and the gesture was so familiar, so perfectly you, that it made his chest ache. "I don't understand. This feels real to me."

It felt real to him too. More real than the waking world, where everything was sharp edges and bitter disappointment. Here, in this place between dreams, you were warm and whole and his. Here, the bond sang true and bright.

But here wasn't enough. Not when he could feel you slipping away a little more each night.

"Tell me about the shadows," you murmured against his throat, just as you had every night for the past week.

So he did. He told you how they'd first come to him in that dark cellar, how they'd wrapped around him like living things seeking comfort. He told you how they danced for you in the dreams, how they seemed more alive when you were near.

He told you everything, storing each moment like a treasure against the growing certainty that soon there would be nothing left to hold.

The daughter was wasting away, but her eyes were clear and lucid when they met his. Brown eyes, not the color he'd memorized from his dreams. No recognition. No pull from the bond.

"Bone-rot," her father said grimly. "Been eating at her for months. Nothing I can do now but make her comfortable."

Azriel's shadows curled inward like wounded animals. He'd been so sure, had felt something tugging him here, but the bond remained silent. Dead.

Another false lead. Another failure.

He thanked the healer and walked away, his steps mechanical. Behind him, he heard Cassian making their excuses, offering gold for their time, but the words seemed to come from very far away.

Cassian found him hours later, sitting motionless on a rooftop overlooking the village. His brother settled beside him with careful grace, close enough to offer comfort but far enough to avoid crowding.

"Az," Cassian said gently. "When did you last eat?"

"I'll eat when I find her."

"And if you don't? If you die of exhaustion before—"

"I'll find her." The words were mechanical, hollow. "I have to."

Cassian studied his brother's profile—the hollow cheeks, the way his hands trembled against his knees, the shadows that writhed restlessly around him like caged things. In all their centuries together, he'd never seen Azriel like this. Even during the worst missions, even when torture had broken his body, Azriel had maintained that core of steel that made him the Spymaster.

This was different. This was unraveling.

"What if she's not—"

"She's real." Azriel's voice cracked like a whip. "Don't."

The single word carried enough warning to silence even Cassian. They sat in silence as the sun set, painting the sky the color of old blood. Finally, Cassian spoke again.

"What's she like? In the dreams?"

Azriel was quiet for so long that Cassian thought he wouldn't answer. When he finally spoke, his voice was softer than Cassian had heard it in decades.

"She laughs," Azriel said. "Real laughter, not the polite kind you hear at court. She makes flower crowns and tells me stories about her grandmother's garden. She's not afraid of my shadows—she treats them like pets, lets them wind around her fingers." He paused, swallowing hard. "She sees me. Not the Spymaster, not the shadowsinger. Just... me."

"And she's forgetting?"

"More each night." Azriel's hands clenched into fists. "Last night she couldn't remember my name. Tonight..." He trailed off, shaking his head.

"We'll find her, Az."

"Will we?" The question held all of Azriel's fears, all his desperate hope. "What if I'm too late? What if she's already—"

"She's not." Cassian's voice was firm, certain. "She's fighting. The bond wouldn't be this strong if she wasn't."

But even as he said it, Cassian wondered if he was lying. The bond had been growing weaker, hadn't it? More fragile each day?

In your shared dream that night, you fell asleep against his chest under the oak tree, and Azriel thought his heart might stop from the sheer rightness of it.

You'd come to him immediately when the dream began, as you always did, but tonight there was something different in your eyes. A fragility that made his shadows writhe with unease.

"You're scared," you'd observed, settling into his arms without hesitation.

"I'm terrified," he'd admitted, because in dreams, his walls crumbled to nothing.

You'd kissed him then, soft and sweet and lingering, tasting like summer rain and promises. Your hands had found the places that comforted him—threading through his hair, tracing the line of his jaw, the worried furrow between his brows.

"I'm here," you'd whispered between kisses. "I'm right here."

And you were. Warm and solid and perfect in his arms, your body fitting against his like you'd been made for each other. Which, according to the mating bond singing in his chest, you had been.

You curled against his side then, your head on his chest, one leg tangled between his. His shadows, which had been agitated all day, finally settled, wrapping around you both like a dark, protective cocoon. Your fingers traced idle patterns over his heart, and he caught your hand, bringing it to his lips to press soft kisses to your knuckles.

The cottage near Thornwood sat in a clearing ringed by ancient oaks, and for a moment—just a moment—Azriel thought he'd found his dream made real. As he approached, the mating bond flared brighter than it had in days, and his shadows surged forward like hounds on a scent.

This is it, he thought, landing hard in the overgrown garden. She's here.

The bond was singing now, a golden rope pulling him toward the cottage door. His shadows raced ahead of him, and he could almost smell lavender on the wind.

A girl emerged from the cottage—young, pale, with the wasted look of chronic illness. But when she saw him, she didn't run toward him with recognition. She stumbled backward, eyes wide with terror.

"Please," she gasped. "I don't know anything. I just heard the stories—"

The bond went silent. Cold. Dead.

The devastating disappointment hit him like a physical blow. Not you. Not you again. How many more false leads? How many more dying girls who weren't his mate?

"Stories?" His voice was barely human.

"About the dream-sick girl," she stammered. "The one who asks about shadow-touched magic, who dreams of places that don't exist. But she's not here—she lives east, near the white cliffs. Everyone knows about her."

White cliffs. His shadows had been whispering those words for weeks, and he'd assumed they meant white stone buildings or walls. But cliffs—cliffs by the sea.

Hope blazed to life again, fierce and desperate.

"The white cliffs," he repeated.

"By the sea," the girl whispered. "Where the old watchtower stands. They say she's been sick for months, getting worse. The healers don't know what's wrong with her—she just wastes away, like she's fading from the world." She met his eyes, and something in his expression made her add urgently, "If you're looking for her, you should hurry."

The mating bond suddenly flared to life, a golden thread of fire that pointed east like a compass needle. His shadows streamed in the same direction, eager and urgent.

White stone. Not buildings—cliffs. The white cliffs by the sea, where dying light would paint them gold each evening.

"How far?" he demanded.

"Two days' ride," the girl said, shrinking back from the intensity in his voice. "Maybe less if you... if you fly."

Azriel was already spreading his wings.

He launched into the night sky, cutting through darkness toward the distant sea. Behind him, his brothers called his name, but he didn't look back. Couldn't look back.

For the first time in nineteen days, the mating bond sang with certainty.

"Three weeks, Azriel." Rhysand's voice cut through the dawn air as Azriel prepared to leave camp. "That was the deal."

Azriel didn't look up from checking his daggers, ensuring his siphons were functioning. Making final preparations for what he knew would be his last chance. "The deal's changed."

"I could order you back."

Azriel finally met his brother's violet eyes, and Rhysand took an involuntary step back at what he saw there. Not the controlled Spymaster, not even the desperate male from weeks past. This was something else entirely—something wild and dangerous and barely leashed.

"You could try," Azriel said quietly.

The threat hung unspoken but clear. Rhysand was powerful, arguably one of the most powerful High Lords in Prythian's history. But Azriel was desperate. And desperate creatures were the most dangerous of all.

"If you're wrong about this," Rhysand said carefully, "if she doesn't exist—"

"Then I'll die looking for her." Azriel's shadows coiled around him like armor. "But I'm not wrong, Rhys. The bond is pointing east, stronger than it's ever been. She's at the white cliffs. And she's running out of time."

He could feel it in his bones, in the way the bond flickered like a candle in a hurricane. Whatever was killing you was winning. He had hours, maybe less.

"The Inner Circle—"

"Will survive without me," Azriel cut him off. "They always have."

"Azriel." Rhys's voice softened, became the voice of a brother rather than a High Lord. "What if you find her and she's already gone? What if you're too late?"

Azriel was quiet for a long moment, his shadows settling around him like a dark cloak. When he spoke, his voice was steady, resolved.

"Then at least I'll know I tried. At least I'll know I didn't give up on her." He looked at Rhys, and for a moment, his mask slipped entirely. "I can't live with myself if I don't try, Rhys. She's out there, she's dying, and she's mine. How could I live with myself if I didn't exhaust every possibility?"

The raw honesty in his voice—the complete vulnerability—made Rhys's chest tighten. This wasn't about duty or mission success. This was about love. About a bond so deep that severing it might destroy Azriel entirely.

"Go," Rhys said finally. "Find her."

Azriel nodded curtly and spread his wings.

"Az," Cassian called from behind them. "Let us come with you."

"No." Azriel didn't turn around. "This is mine to do."

"You don't have to face this alone, brother."

Azriel paused at that, his shoulders tensing. "I've been alone for five centuries," he said quietly. "I can handle a few more hours."

He launched himself into the sky, leaving his brothers standing in the camp below. The mating bond pulled at him like a golden rope, leading him toward the distant sea cliffs where morning mist clung to white stone.

As he flew, his shadows whispered constantly now: hurry, hurry, dying light, almost gone, hurry. The bond grew stronger with each mile, but also more fragile, like spun glass ready to shatter.

Somewhere ahead, past leagues of countryside and forest, past villages and rivers and rolling hills, you were waiting.

You were dying.

But you were real.

And Azriel would find you, even if it killed him.

The sun climbed higher as he flew east, his shadows streaming behind him like a comet's tail, the mating bond burning bright and true in his chest—a beacon guiding him home.

Azriel collapsed beneath an ancient oak as darkness fell, his wings trembling from exhaustion. He'd been flying for nearly two days straight, the mating bond pulling him relentlessly eastward. The white cliffs were close now—he could taste salt on the wind, feel the pull growing stronger with each league.

But his body had reached its limits. Even shadowsingers needed rest.

His shadows curled around him protectively as sleep claimed him, and for the first time in days, he let himself hope. Tomorrow. Tomorrow he would find you.

The dream-clearing materialized around him, but something was wrong. The golden light that usually filtered through the oak leaves was dim, flickering like a dying flame. And you—

You were crying.

Azriel's heart clenched as he took in your appearance. You were more translucent than ever, your edges blurred like watercolors in rain. Tears tracked down your cheeks as you sat beneath the oak tree, your knees drawn up to your chest.

"What's wrong?" he asked, crossing to you immediately. His shadows reached for you instinctively, wrapping around your shoulders like a dark embrace. "Why are you crying?"

You looked up at him, and the devastation in your eyes nearly brought him to his knees. "You have to go back," you said, your voice raw with desperation. "Please, Azriel. Turn around. Go home to your family."

"What?" He knelt beside you, reaching for your face with trembling hands. His fingers found the warmth of your skin, real and solid despite everything. "No. I'm so close—I can feel you. The bond is stronger than it's ever been."

"Please," you begged, gripping his wrists. "I'm begging you. Just go home. Go back to Rhys and Cassian and—"

"Never." The word came out fierce, desperate. "I can't. I won't leave you."

Your face crumpled. "You don't understand—"

"Then explain it to me." His hazel eyes searched yours, wild with need. "Tell me why you want me to abandon you when you're dying."

"I can't be happy without you." He pulled you against him, his voice breaking. "Don't you understand? You're everything. You're the only light I've ever had."

"Because I need you to be safe!" The words exploded from you, anguished. "I need you to live and be happy and—"

"No." You pushed against his chest, tears streaming. "No, you have so much light already. Your brothers, your family, your purpose—"

"None of it matters without you."

"It has to matter!" You were shouting now, desperate and furious. "It has to be enough!"

"Why?" He gripped your shoulders, his own voice rising. "Why are you so determined to push me away? Why won't you let me save you?"

"Because you can't!" The scream tore from your throat, raw and broken. "You can't save me, and you're going to destroy yourself trying!"

"I don't care!" His shadows exploded outward, responding to his desperation. "I'd rather die trying than live without you!"

"Well, I care!" You shoved him hard, your face twisted with grief and rage. "I care that you're killing yourself! I care that you're abandoning everyone who loves you for someone who—"

You cut yourself off, pressing your hands to your mouth.

"Someone who what?" His voice was deadly quiet.

You shook your head, backing away from him. "Go home, Azriel. Please. I'm begging you."

"No." He stalked toward you, his entire being focused on you with predatory intensity. "I'm going to find you. Tomorrow. I'm going to reach those cliffs and I'm going to save you."

"You stubborn, impossible male!" Fresh tears spilled down your cheeks. "Why won't you listen to me?"

"Because I love you," he said simply, reaching for you again. "Because you're mine and I'm yours, and I would tear apart the world before I gave up on you."

You let him pull you close this time, sobbing against his chest. "I love you too," you whispered. "I love you so much it's killing me."

"Then why—"

"Because love means letting go sometimes." You pulled back to look at him, your hands framing his face. "Sometimes it means choosing what's best for the person you love, even when it destroys you."

"No." His voice was broken, desperate. "That's not love. Love is fighting. Love is never giving up."

"Oh, my shadow-singer." You traced the lines of his face like you were memorizing them. "My beautiful, stubborn, impossible male. You have such a good heart."

"Don't talk like you're saying goodbye." His grip on you tightened. "This isn't goodbye."

"Azriel—"

"No." He kissed you then, desperate and claiming, pouring all his love and determination into the contact. "I'm going to find you. Do you hear me? I'm going to find you and save you and we're going to have forever."

You kissed him back with equal desperation, your fingers tangling in his hair. "I wish we could," you whispered against his lips. "I wish—"

The dream began to fade at the edges, reality creeping in. Azriel pulled you tighter against him, trying to anchor you somehow.

"Promise me you'll fight," he commanded, his voice rough with emotion. "Whatever's happening out there, promise me you'll hold on until I reach you."

Your face crumpled with fresh grief. "Azriel—"

"Promise me." His grip on you was desperate, almost painful. "Say the words."

You stared at him for a long moment, love and anguish warring in your eyes. Finally, you whispered, "I promise I'll try."

"Not try. Promise me you'll fight. Promise me you won't give up."

The lie came easily, born of love. "I promise," you said, even as you felt yourself beginning to fade. "I promise I'll fight."

He kissed you one last time, fierce and claiming. "I love you. I'm coming for you."

"I love you too," you whispered, and then you were gone.

Azriel woke to pale dawn light filtering through the oak leaves above him, his cheeks wet with tears and the mating bond burning like fire in his chest. Your pleas echoed in his mind, but he pushed them aside as he spread his wings.

The white cliffs were only hours away. Whatever you were afraid of, whatever had made you beg him to turn back—none of it would stop him.

His shadows streamed behind him as he launched into the morning sky, racing toward his mate with single-minded determination. Behind him, your desperate words followed on the wind: Go home, go home, go home.

But Azriel had never been good at following orders when it came to the people he loved.

The white cliffs rose from the sea like ancient guardians, their limestone faces catching the afternoon sun. Azriel's shadows surged ahead of him as he crested the final hill, eager and electric with anticipation. The mating bond sang in his chest, stronger than it had ever been—a golden rope pulling him toward a small cottage nestled in the clifftop meadow.

This was it. This was where you lived.

The cottage was exactly as his shadows had whispered: white stone walls, a thatched roof, lavender growing wild in the garden. On such a cool day, smoke should have been rising from the chimney.

But the air was still.

Too still.

Azriel circled overhead once more, wings catching the salt breeze. His shadows whispered unease, coiling tighter around his shoulders—behavior he'd learned to read over centuries of missions. They only acted this way around death.

No. Not possible.

The garden below looked abandoned. From this height, he could see the lavender had turned brown at the edges, petals scattered by weeks of wind. The same lavender scent that had haunted his dreams, now withered.

He landed hard among the brittle stems, the sound too loud in the unnatural quiet. His shadows recoiled from the cottage door like they'd been burned, forming anxious spirals around his wings.

"Sweetheart?" The endearment slipped out—a word he'd whispered in dreams but never spoken aloud. "I'm here. I found you."

No answer.

The door stood ajar. Not forced—simply open, as if you'd stepped outside for air and never returned. His spymaster instincts catalogued details automatically: no signs of struggle, no blood, no indication of violence. But his shadows kept hissing warnings he didn't want to understand.

The bond is weaker. Why is it weaker?

Each step toward the threshold felt like walking through water. The rational part of his mind—the part trained for five centuries to assess and adapt—whispered truths he refused to hear. His shadows' behavior. The dead garden. The too-quiet cottage.

The smell hit him as he crossed the threshold. Not violence or fear, but something worse in its gentleness. Decay. Natural. Peaceful.

Wrong.

The cottage was pristine except for dust coating every surface. No overturned furniture. No signs of struggle. Just... absence. And through the open bedroom doorway, a small form beneath white sheets.

She's sleeping. That's all. Just sleeping.

His feet carried him forward without conscious thought, each footfall echoing in the silence. The bond in his chest flickered like a candle in wind.

You lay in the bed as if you'd simply decided to rest. Your face peaceful, unmarked by pain or fear. For one desperate moment, Azriel's mind conjured explanations.

Sick, not dead. Unconscious. Under some spell he could break with true love's kiss like the human fairy tales.

But his shadows knew better. They circled the bed in a wide perimeter, keening softly.

"Wake up," he whispered, reaching toward your face before stopping. His hand trembled inches from your skin. "Please. I'm here now. I found you."

The stillness of your chest. The waxy quality of your skin. The way the bond that had sung so strongly now felt like an echo chamber.

Dead. She's dead.

The thought hit him like a physical blow. His knees buckled, catching himself against the bedframe with white knuckles.

How long? Days? Weeks?

His spymaster training kicked in against his will. Body temperature. Decomposition. The state of the garden outside. You'd been gone for at least two weeks.

While he'd been dreaming of you every night.

The dreams. Understanding crashed over him like a cold wave. She was already dead. The dreams were... what? Her spirit? Her soul trying to reach me?

In every dream, you'd grown more translucent. More desperate to send him away. Begging him to go home, to forget you, to stay safe in Velaris.

"Don't come for me, Azriel. Please. Just go home."

You'd known. Somehow, you'd known you were already gone and had been trying to spare him this moment. Even in death, your first instinct had been to protect him from pain.

The mating bond gave one last, desperate flutter—and snapped.

The severing was unlike any pain he'd ever endured. Not the sharp agony of a blade or the burning of fire, but something fundamental being torn from his very essence. Azriel doubled over, a sound ripping from his chest that belonged more to a wounded animal than a warrior. It felt like losing a limb he'd never known he possessed, like having his soul carved out with molten metal.

When the initial wave subsided, something worse took its place. Emptiness. A gaping void where the golden thread had hummed with promise and possibility.

She died alone.

His hands shook as he finally reached out to touch your face. Your skin was cold as winter stone, but there was peace in your expression. No fear. No pain. You'd simply... stopped.

I would have protected her. I would have loved her. I would have been worthy of her.

But he'd been too late. Again.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, his voice breaking on the words. "I'm so sorry, sweetheart. I tried to get here faster. I dreamed of you every night and I thought—I thought I had time."

The cruel irony wasn't lost on him. Five hundred years of perfect timing. Every mission, every extraction, every kill—he'd built his reputation on being exactly where he needed to be, when he needed to be there. The Night Court's spymaster who never missed his mark.

Except when it mattered most.

Rhysand felt the wrongness before they reached the cottage. Through the mental link all three brothers shared, Azriel's presence wasn't fractured or wounded—it was absent. Like reaching for something that had never been there.

He's not responding to any of our calls, Rhys told Cassian as they flew through storm clouds toward the coastal cliffs. Something's happened.

How long since he checked in? Cassian's mental voice was tight with worry.

Four days. He was following intelligence about his mate.

The word hung heavy between them. They'd all heard stories of what finding a dead mate could do to a male. The lucky ones went quietly mad. The unlucky ones took half the continent with them.

But this felt different. Worse.

If she's dead...

Then we help him through it, Rhys replied, though uncertainty colored his mental voice. Whatever state we find him in.

They saw the cottage before they smelled it—shadows writhing around the structure in patterns that defied wind or natural light. Azriel's power, but leashed so tightly it seemed mechanical. Like watching clockwork move.

The scent hit them as they landed in the overgrown garden. Death, but old. Peaceful. And underneath it, the complete absence of Azriel's usual emotional signature.

He's alive, Rhys confirmed, carefully probing the mental link. But there's... nothing there. Not shields, not withdrawal. It's like probing an empty room.

They found him in the bedroom, exactly as he'd been for three days. Sitting in perfect stillness beside a bed where a small female lay in peaceful repose. He didn't react when they entered—didn't even acknowledge their presence. His shadows circled him and the female in precise, emotionless patterns.

The cottage told its own story. Dust on everything except the path between the chair and the door. A kitchen with opened containers of food that hadn't been touched. Water basins that had been refilled multiple times.

He'd been caring for your body. Keeping vigil.

"Az?" Cassian called softly.

No response. Azriel stared at the female's face with perfect stillness. His hazel eyes held no pain, no emptiness—just complete and utter void. Like looking at a doll's glass eyes.

Brother, Rhys tried through their mental link.

The connection was there, but led nowhere. Not blocked or protected—simply vacant.

Cassian stepped closer, boots creaking on old floorboards. Still no reaction. "Azriel."

Finally, slowly, Azriel's gaze shifted to them. His face remained perfectly neutral, but something flickered behind his eyes—not recognition, just the automatic cataloging of new variables in his environment.

He said nothing. Just looked at them with those empty eyes and waited. Not for comfort or help or conversation. He simply... waited.

He's not processing our presence as significant, Rhys realized with growing unease. It's like he's suspended outside of normal emotional experience entirely.

"We came to find you," Cassian said, his voice gentler than either of them had heard in decades.

Azriel blinked once. Slow. Deliberate. Then turned back to stare at the female. The movement was perfectly controlled, devoid of any human warmth or urgency.

This isn't grief, Cassian realized with horror. This is complete emotional shutdown.

His mind is... Rhys searched for words. Not broken. Not retreated. Gone. Like he's burned out every emotional pathway he had rather than feel what happened here.

The silence stretched. Azriel's breathing was perfectly measured, his shadows the only movement in the room as they continued their mechanical circles.

"She's beautiful," Cassian offered quietly, hoping for any reaction.

Nothing. Not even a flicker of acknowledgment.

"What happened, brother?" Rhys asked aloud.

For a long moment, nothing. Then Azriel spoke, his voice completely flat and emotionless.

"Dead for weeks. Bond snapped three days ago."

That was all. No pain in the recitation, no hint that these facts held any meaning for him personally. He might have been reporting the weather.

He's not dissociated, Rhys understood with growing alarm. He's completely severed himself from emotional experience. This isn't survival—this is systematic self-destruction.

Rhys carefully extended his mental touch, assessing his brother's state. What he found made his chest tight with fear. Not madness—madness would have been preferable. This was the complete absence of feeling, so thorough it was like touching a void shaped like his brother.

"What do you need?" Cassian asked, though he doubted the question had any meaning for Azriel now.

Azriel turned those empty eyes on him again. "She deserves better than this," he said with the same flat affect he'd use to discuss supply requisitions. "She deserves to be laid to rest properly. With honor."

He spoke of you with perfect detachment, as if discussing a stranger's funeral arrangements.

"She doesn't have any family," Azriel continued in that same emotionless tone. "No one to mourn her. No one to remember her."

The words that should have been devastating were delivered with complete neutrality. He understood intellectually that these were tragic circumstances, but they held no emotional weight for him.

Cassian crouched beside his brother's chair, careful not to disturb the mechanical circle of shadows. "Then we'll make sure she's honored. All of us."

Rhys nodded, though his heart was breaking. "We'll take her to Velaris. Give her a proper funeral."

"The House of Wind has a garden," Cassian added. "Peaceful. Overlooking the city."

Azriel's shadows pulsed once—not with emotion, but with programmed response. A reflex, nothing more.

"I can't carry her," Azriel whispered.

Not an admission of pain or weakness. Simply a statement of current limitations, delivered with the same tone he'd use to report a broken weapon.

"We'll carry her," Cassian said, though he felt like he was speaking to an automaton wearing his brother's face.

"She was alone when she died because I failed to arrive in time," Azriel noted without inflection. "This is factually accurate."

No self-recrimination. No guilt. Just data.

Rhys and Cassian exchanged a look of pure terror. This wasn't their brother anymore. This was what remained when Azriel had systematically excised every part of himself capable of pain—which meant every part capable of love, joy, hope, or basic human connection.

He'd saved himself from drowning in grief by cutting out his ability to feel anything at all. And unlike madness, this wasn't something they could heal.

This was a choice. And Azriel had chosen to become nothing rather than face what losing his mate truly meant.

But even nothing had its limits.

Azriel's body finally surrendered what his mind had refused to acknowledge. The three days without sleep, without food, without moving from that chair—combined with the trauma of the severed bond—caught up to him all at once.

His vision blurred mid-sentence as he gave Rhys coordinates for the cottage's location. The world tilted sideways, and then he was falling, his brothers' voices fading as darkness claimed him.

For the first time in days, Azriel felt something.

Relief.

The meadow stretched endlessly under starlight, exactly as it had been in all those other dreams. The same wildflowers, the same gentle breeze, the same sense of peace that had called to him night after night.

But you weren't there.

Azriel stood in the center of the meadow, his shadows coiling anxiously around him as he turned in slow circles.

"Sweetheart?" His voice cracked on the endearment. "I know you're here. You have to be here."

Nothing. Just wind through the grass and the distant sound of waves against cliffs.

He began to run, crashing through the wildflowers with desperate urgency. "Please!" His voice echoed strangely in the dream-space. "I found you! I came for you, just like you wanted!"

But even as he said it, he knew it was a lie.

You had never wanted him to come. In every dream, you'd begged him to stay away, to go home, to be safe. And he'd ignored you, driven by his own selfish need to find his mate.

The realization hit him like a physical blow, and he sank to his knees among the wildflowers, his wings folding tight against his back—a gesture of submission he hadn't made since childhood.

"Mother," he whispered, his voice breaking on the word. His scarred hands shook as he pressed them to his chest, over his heart. "Please. I know I'm not... I know I've done terrible things. My hands are stained with blood, my soul is probably damned, but she was innocent. She was pure and kind and—" His breath hitched as he doubled over, forehead nearly touching the grass. "She didn't deserve to die alone and afraid."

Tears tracked down his cheeks as he pressed his palms flat to the dream-earth, his wings trembling with the effort of holding himself upright. "I've served faithfully for five hundred years. I've been your sword in the darkness, your silent protector." His voice cracked as he bent lower, shoulders shaking with barely contained sobs. "I never complained, never asked for mercy when others received it freely. But I'm begging you now."

He collapsed forward completely, his forehead pressed to the earth in complete submission, his wings spread wide and dragging in the grass. "Please, just let me save her. Let me take her place. Let me—"

Silence.

The meadow remained empty, untouched by divine intervention or mercy. No gentle voice offering comfort. No sign that his centuries of devotion meant anything at all.

Something inside him snapped.

"NOTHING?" He surged to his feet, tears streaming down his face as grief transformed into something darker, more dangerous. "I bare my fucking soul to you and you give me NOTHING?"

"WHERE WERE YOU?" he roared at the empty sky, his shadows exploding outward in violent tendrils. Wildflowers withered black beneath their touch. "Where were you when she was dying alone? Where were you when I was locked in the dungeon as a child? Where were you during five centuries of war and blood and death?"

His voice cracked, raw with centuries of suppressed fury. "I never asked for anything. I took the beatings. I killed on command. And the one thing—the only thing—I ever wanted for myself... you let slip away!"

He collapsed to his knees among the ruined flowers, his carefully constructed emotional barriers finally shattering completely. "She was MINE!" The word tore from his throat like a battle cry. "My mate, my other half, and you let her die before I could even hold her hand!"

The meadow went silent. Even his shadows trembled now—not violent anymore, but grieving, like children who had lost their mother.

"What kind of Mother lets her children suffer like this?" His voice broke to a whisper. "What kind of divine plan requires me to lose everything that ever mattered?"

Azriel's fists slammed into the dream-earth, his shadows writhing around him like living things in pain. "I just wanted to love someone." The confession scraped from his throat. "I just wanted someone to love me back. After everything I've endured, was that too fucking much?"

He doubled over, forehead pressing into the grass as sobs wracked his frame. Five hundred years of stored pain poured out of him—every beating from his father and brothers, every mission that had cost him pieces of his soul, every night he'd lain awake wondering if he was even capable of being loved.

"Please," he begged, no longer caring about pride or strength. "Please, just let me see her. Let me tell her I'm sorry. Let me tell her I would have loved her with everything I had left."

The meadow shimmered. Around his knees, the blackened wildflowers began to bloom again—soft purple and white, touched with silver starlight.

The air changed. Not empty anymore, but filled with a presence so familiar his shadows stilled instantly.

"Azriel."

He looked up through his tears to find you kneeling beside him, translucent but there—more real than anything had ever been. Your face was wet with tears that mirrored his own.

"My love," you whispered, reaching out to cup his cheek. Your touch was like starlight made solid. "My beautiful, broken love."

"You're here," he breathed, afraid to move, afraid you'd disappear. "You're really here."

"I've been trying to reach you," you said, your voice thick with emotion. "But your pain was so loud, I couldn't break through. Until now."

Azriel pulled you against him, and somehow—impossibly—you were solid in his arms. You clung to each other in that dreamscape meadow, both of you crying with relief and grief and love that transcended death itself.

"I'm so sorry I left you," you sobbed against his chest. "I didn't want to go. I fought it, but my body just... gave up."

"Don't apologize." His voice was fierce despite his tears, protective even here. "Never apologize. You tried to protect me even after you were gone."

You pulled back to look at him, your hands framing his scarred face with infinite tenderness. "Tell me," you whispered. "Tell me about the life we would have had."

The question broke something loose in his chest. "Velaris," he said, his voice cracking. "The House of Wind. You would have loved the library—all those books, the priestesses would have adored you."

"What else?" Your thumbs traced his cheekbones, catching his tears.

"Breakfasts I'd burn, gardens you'd fill with jasmine, laughter softening every ruined meal." The words tumbled out, desperate and raw. "Flying at sunset over the Sidra. You fearless in my arms, wind in your hair."

His shadows wound around both of you, gentle as silk. "Children," he whispered. "Little ones with your eyes. Teaching them to fly, watching you sing them to sleep. I would have been so gentle with them. So different from my own father."

"You would have been perfect," you said fiercely. "And I would have helped you heal. All those scars on your hands, on your heart—I would have kissed every one until you believed you deserved love."

"We would have had centuries." His forehead pressed to yours. "I would have memorized every expression, every hum while you garden, how you take your tea."

"With honey," you said, smiling through your tears. "Two spoons, and I always drink it too fast and burn my tongue."

"I would have kissed it better."

You both laughed—broken, watery sounds that held infinite tenderness.

"Reading by the fire. Dancing in our kitchen to no music at all. Mornings when we didn't have to be anywhere." His voice grew softer, more reverent. "I would have worshipped you until you were breathless and perfect and mine."

"I would have traced your tattoos," you murmured. "Every shadow-mark. Made you tell me the stories behind your scars until you stopped being ashamed of them."

"This isn't the end, Azriel." Your voice grew stronger, more certain. "Souls like ours don't just disappear. We're connected by something deeper than one lifetime."

"How can you be sure?"

"Because love this strong doesn't die." You pressed your forehead to his. "Promise me you'll keep living. Promise me you'll keep your heart open. When I come back—and I will come back—I want to find you still capable of all that love you just described."

"I promise," he whispered. "I'll wait for you. However long it takes."

"I love you, Azriel." The words he'd never gotten to hear in life. "In this life and whatever comes next."

"I love you too." His voice broke completely. "I love you so much it feels like dying and being born at the same time."

As the dream began to fade, you smiled one last time. "Find the jasmine, my love. When you smell jasmine, know that I'm thinking of you. And know that somewhere, in some other life, we're getting that forever."

He woke in the House of Wind's healing room, Madja fussing over his dehydrated form.

He lived. Not thrived—that would take time he wasn't sure he had. But he kept his promise. He completed his missions, protected his family, and kept his heart carefully guarded but not completely closed.

And when jasmine drifted through the summer air, he would close his eyes and see the meadow—endless, starlit, waiting.

One Hundred Years Later

The Dawn Court's summer solstice festival blazed around Azriel like a living thing—music and laughter spilling from every corner, fae dancing in the streets with crowns of golden flowers. He moved through the crowd like a shadow, his mission clear: gather intelligence on the Dawn Court's new trade agreements, then return to Velaris before sunrise.

He'd kept his promise to you, more or less. He lived. He breathed. He served his court with the same lethal efficiency he always had. The jasmine Rhys had planted bloomed every summer in the garden where your body rested, and Azriel visited when the pain became too sharp to carry alone.

But he didn't hope anymore. Hope was a luxury he'd learned to live without.

The crowd pressed closer as the festival reached its peak, and Azriel slipped between bodies with practiced ease, his shadows mapping exits and cataloging faces. Just another mission. Just another—

The scent hit him like a blade between the ribs.

Jasmine.

But not just jasmine. Your jasmine—that exact combination of night-blooming flowers and something indefinably sweet that had haunted his dreams for a century.

This wasn't possible. He was hallucinating. The mission stress, the lack of sleep, the anniversary of your death approaching—his mind was finally cracking.

His shadows went wild, writhing around him in recognition, reaching toward something he couldn't see yet. They remembered too, and shadows didn't lie. Shadows didn't dream.

His hands shook as cold dread and desperate hope warred in his chest. He couldn't survive losing you again. Not even in his imagination.

Around him, the festival continued, but the music seemed to fade to a distant hum. His heartbeat thundered in his ears, so loud he was certain the entire Dawn Court could hear it. Each breath came short and sharp, like he'd been running for miles. The air itself felt thick, charged, electric.

Then the lights began to flicker.

Not the festival lanterns—something else. Something that shouldn't exist. Tiny orbs of soft, silvery light appeared in the air, identical to the ones from your shared dream. They pulsed in rhythm with his erratic heartbeat, forming a path through the crowd.

His shadows strained toward them like plants reaching for sunlight, and Azriel's knees nearly gave out.

Dreams didn't leave evidence. Dreams didn't create light.

With trembling hands, he reached toward one of the orbs. It pulsed warmly against his scarred fingertip before drifting further along the path, exactly as it had in the meadow where he'd found you a century ago.

Terror and hope warred in his chest as he followed the impossible path. What if this was real and he ruined it? What if it wasn't real and following it finally broke him? Each step felt like walking to his execution.

The crowd thinned as he moved, the music fading to nothing. The lights led him past vendor stalls and dancing couples, past fountains carved with Dawn Court suns, until finally they guided him to a small overlook where the plaza met the rolling hills beyond.

The meadow spread before him—moonlit, dotted with wildflowers that swayed in the gentle breeze. It was smaller than the one in his dreams, more contained, but the scent of jasmine grew stronger here, and those impossible lights danced over the grass like fallen stars.

There, standing at the stone railing with your back to him, was you.

You wore a gown the color of sunrise—silk that seemed to glow in the moonlight. Your hair caught the light like spun gold, and when you shifted, the jasmine scent that clung to your skin made his chest ache with recognition.

High Fae. Dawn Court nobility, from the way you held yourself. But even from behind, even in this new form, he knew.

His shadows reached for you before he could stop them, stretching across the space like desperate fingers.

It was the way you tilted your head—exactly as you used to when you were thinking—that shattered his last doubt.

This was real. You were real.

You must have sensed him—or perhaps the way his shadows reached toward you like starved, desperate things—because you slowly turned.

When your eyes met his, the air left his lungs entirely.

The mating bond didn't just snap—it exploded back into place. Golden thread blazing between your souls, molten and fierce and so brilliant it lit up every dark corner of his being. The force of it drove him to his knees on the stone, his wings flaring wide as a century of numbness shattered like glass.

But what destroyed him completely wasn't the bond.

It was your smile.

Soft. Knowing. Secret.

Like you'd been waiting for him to find you, like you'd orchestrated every step that led him here. In your eyes was the weight of memory—dreams shared across lifetimes, promises kept in meadows that existed between sleeping and waking.

Find the jasmine, my love.

The lights around you pulsed once more before fading, leaving only moonlight and wildflowers and the golden thread singing between your souls.

And in that smile, he knew—death was just another door you'd walked through to find your way back to him.

Author’s Note:

Okay so 😬 The Night We Met was supposed to be a one-shot. ONE. A tragic lil ✨emotional grenade✨ to ruin your evening and then I’d move on with my life.

But nooo, y’all showed up in my inbox like: “👀 Part 2 when??” “🥺 Please??” “😈 Make Azriel suffer more.” And I-weak, soft, bond-sick fool that I am, caved.

So here’s Part 2: aka me violently shaking Azriel like a grief snow globe. Hope your tears are salty and delicious.

And just so we’re clear: there was never supposed to be a Part 3. ❌ (…unless 👀👀)

Taglist:

_______________________________________

The room was buzzing—cameras being adjusted, light stands tweaked and a handful of crew members chatting as they waited for everything to come together.

Lewis sat comfortably on the low-slung, cushy armchair beside his wife, his hand resting casually on the back of her seat tracing lazy circles on her back. They looked impossibly relaxed, as if the cameras were invisible, and this was just another day at home.

The director, a laid-back guy with a coffee stain on his jeans and a clipboard that looked way too serious for the vibe of the shoot, strolled over.

He was juggling his phone and an energy drink, clearly a man trying to keep his cool while wrangling two of the most charismatic people in motorsports.

“Okay, so this should be easy” he started, his voice overly casual like he almost didn’t want to disturb the couple’s chemistry “No serious stuff. No PR-approved answers. We’re here for the real deal. Just answering a few questions about each other, nothing too scandalous. Think... fun, but, y’know, juicy enough to make people smile.”

Lewis’s wife, legs crossed and leaning slightly into her husband’s space, raised an eyebrow. “Define juicy” a sly smile tugging at her lips.

The director chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck. “You know, like... light-hearted scandal. Stuff people don’t already know. Maybe embarrass him a little—" he motioned to Lewis—"but in a cute way.”

Lewis shot the director a mock glare “Right, you don’t really need to ask her that” he said, his voice dripping with good-humored sarcasm.

His wife snorted, turning to face him with a grin. “Promise not to dig too deep. Unless we’re talking about those sneakers you wore to the beach...”

Lewis groaned, tilting his head back dramatically. “Not the beach sneakers again! One time and I’m branded for life.”

The crew around them snickered, and even the sound guy adjusted his headphones to cover a grin.

There was something about the way they bickered that had the whole room leaning in, as if everyone was witnessing the most intimate, casual conversation between two people who just fit.

The director, fully entertained, motioned to the cameraman to get ready. “Alright, alright. Let’s save the good stuff for the shoot. Remember, it’s just you two being yourselves. No need to put on a show.”

His wife reached over and squeezed Lewis’s hand. “No promises.”

As they shared a quiet laugh, the subtle touches and glances between them were enough to make anyone nearby smile. There was no need for grand gestures—the way they leaned into each other, how their conversations flowed effortlessly, said more than any scripted moment ever could.

They had that kind of love that made everyone else feel like they were in on something out of ordinary, just by watching.

The cameras zoomed in slowly as the couple got comfortable in their seats. Lewis leaned back, his arm still slung casually around his wife’s chair, his body slight angled so he could face her better, and she tucked one leg underneath her, turning toward him like she always did when they were in the middle of one of their many quiet conversations.

Except this wasn’t quite so quiet. The cameras were rolling now, and the world was about to get a glimpse into how they were with each other.

The director's voice came through, just loud enough to hear but never intrusive.

“Alright, let’s get this rolling. What embarrassing fashion trend did you take part in?”

Lewis immediately leaned forward, rubbing his hands together as if he was preparing for battle. “I’ll own this one. Bandanas. Wore them with everything back in the day. Thought I was some kind of rockstar or something.”

She tilted her head, eyebrows shooting up. “Bandanas?” she asked, feigning surprise. Her eyes glimmered with mischief, and she leaned closer, as if letting the audience in on a secret. “You sure it wasn’t the Timberlands?”

Lewis threw his head back with a groan, already knowing where this was headed. “Not the Timbs,” he mumbled, shaking his head like he was in actual pain.

“Yeah, the Timbs” she said, fully grinning now. “Let me remind you, you used to wear them with everything. Jeans, tracksuits, shorts, suits—”

Lewis raised a hand, stopping her, though there was a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. “I still stand by those, alright? I don’t care what anyone says. Timbs are timeless.”

She rolled her eyes playfully, patting his leg. “Sure, babe. Whatever helps you sleep at night.”

The banter between them came so naturally, it was easy to forget there were cameras pointed right at them. The crew standing around had mostly stopped what they were doing, some watching the couple with amused smirks, others clearly touched by how playful yet undeniably affectionate they were towards each other.

“Okay, next question: What first attracted you to each other?”

Lewis’s wife leaned back, narrowing her eyes like she was trying to come up with something profound. “His sense of style,” she deadpanned, lips twitching as she fought back a grin.

Lewis blinked, his head cocked to the side. “Seriously? You were just attacking my Timbs? That guy’s sense of style?”

For a moment, she held her ground, lips pursed in mock-seriousness. But after a few seconds of staring at him—his bewildered look, the way he was just waiting for her to crack—she broke. Her laugh wasn’t exactly loud but it filled the room.

“Okay, fine!” She reached out, her hand landing on his thigh, fingers curling into the fabric of his pants. “It was your eyes.”

Lewis’s eyebrows shot up as he gave her a soft smile. He just stared at her, thrown off by her sudden honesty.

She smiled, her gaze softening too as she looked at him. “They’re intense, you know? Like you see things really deeply. The way you look at the world... it’s impossible not to notice.”

Lewis was quiet for a beat, his usual witty retorts momentarily forgotten. His hand moved instinctively to cover hers on his leg, squeezing it gently. “Well, damn” he finally said, his voice quieter than before, almost reverent.

The room around them seemed to still. There was something about the way they looked at each other that made it feel like they were the only ones there, like everyone else had faded away.

“Next one—‘On what occasion have you lied to me?’”

Lewis’s eyes went wide, a mischievous grin spreading across his face as he glanced at his wife. “Uh… Remember when I blamed Roscoe for loosing up your house shoes?”

Her mouth dropped open as she stared at him in disbelief. “No. You’re telling me you wore my house shoes, Lewis?!”

He winced, trying to play it cool. “I mean… It was just that one time! They looked comfy, and my feet were cold. I didn’t think you’d notice.”

“Oh, I noticed,” she said, crossing her arms. “I just thought Roscoe had lied on them, not that your big feet had wrecked them!”

The crew chuckled, sensing the playful tension building between them.

“Roscoe was the perfect scapegoat…” Lewis defended himself.

“My poor baby” she sighed dramatically, shaking her head. “You threw him under the bus!”

“He didn’t seem to mind,” Lewis replied with a smirk, leaning closer to her, his tone turning softer. “But hey, I bought you new ones”

She raised a brow, clearly amused but still pretending to be serious.

“Have I ever made you jealous?”

Lewis leaned back, arms crossed over his chest, a playful smirk creeping across his face as he quipped in before she could. “She has, yes.”

His wife’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Oh? When exactly?”

He didn’t answer immediately, taking his time like he always did when he wanted to build up the suspense. She leaned in; her curiosity evident in the way her lips quirked. “Come on, give me the details.”

Lewis shook his head, clearly amused. “The silver dress” he said, voice low.

For a second, she didn’t react, clearly trying to place the memory. Then, like a lightbulb flicking on, her eyes widened in recognition. “Ohhh, that night!”

Her laughter exploded from her, loud and sudden, catching even the crew off guard. She leaned back in her chair, clutching her stomach slightly as she laughed, while Lewis sat there, arms still crossed, trying his best to look annoyed but clearly failing.

“That night was something” she said between laughs, her eyes shimmering with tears of amusement.

Lewis sighed, shaking his head. “I’m glad you think it was so funny.”

“Oh, babe, you were so grumpy” she teased, nudging him with her foot.

Lewis didn’t respond immediately. Instead, he just looked at her with that mix of exasperation and fondness that made it clear that, no matter what she did, she was always going to get away with it.

“What’s a song that reminds you of each other?”

This time, she didn’t even hesitate. “A Life Like This by Nao.”

Lewis’s face softened immediately. “Why that one?”

She smiled, but it wasn’t her usual teasing grin. This one was softer, more intimate. “Because... before you, I was just going through life, you know? Things were just happening, and I wasn’t really... present. Then you came along, and it was like everything shifted. It was like my Saturn return was finally over, and I could just... breathe.”

For a moment, Lewis said nothing. His face betrayed him—no amount of his typical coolness could hide the way her words hit him.

He leaned forward slightly, his hand brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. “You’re really gonna get me emotional, huh?” he murmured, his voice so low only she and the mic could pick up on his voice.

She just smiled; her eyes full of love. “That’s the plan.”

The crew exchanged looks and quiet smiles. It was impossible not to feel the connection between them, like they were watching something precious unfold right in front of them.

“What’s something you wish you did more often?”

Lewis leaned back, thinking for a moment. “Lazy mornings.”

She smiled, nodding. “Yeah?”

“Yeah” he said softly, his eyes on her. “No alarms, no schedules, no meetings. Just us. Laying in bed, talking, laughing... not worrying about what we have to do next.”

She nodded again, her smile turning wistful. “Yeah.”

Their eyes met, and once again, the room seemed to shrink around them, leaving just the two of them in their little bubble.

“Okay love birds, next up ‘What is the most treasured possession that the other has given you?’”

She paused, tapping her chin as if she really had to think about it, though the answer was clearly already on her mind. “The necklace you gave me on our third date.”

The director blinked, looking between them. “Third date?”

“Oh yeah” she nodded, leaning back in her chair, eyes sparkling as she shot Lewis a teasing look. “He was whipped by then.”

Lewis rolled his eyes, though a smile tugged at his lips. “You make it sound like I was proposing marriage.”

“You weren’t far off, though” she teased, reaching for the necklace hanging delicately around her neck. “He gave me this beautiful pendant, that he designed himself, by the way, and I remember thinking, ‘Okay, this guy is serious.’”

Lewis chuckled, scratching the back of his neck. “I knew what I wanted.”

“That you did” she teased, nudging him with her elbow.

“Yeah” he grinned. “No point in playing games.”

She looked down at the necklace again, her voice softening. “It’s not just the necklace though. It’s what it represented. He was showing me he wasn’t just there for fun—he was there for real.”

Lewis met her gaze, his smile quieter now, filled with affection. “I meant it then, and I mean it now.”

“When did you first know that you were in love?”

This time, she was the one to hesitate, a mischievous glint in her eye. “In love with whom?” she asked, biting her lip to keep from laughing.

Lewis groaned, leaning forward and pinching the bridge of his nose. “Oh, don’t start.”

She giggled, clearly enjoying every second of his exasperation. “I knew I loved you when we went through about a dozen paint stores in Milan looking for the perfect shade of gold for that painting.”

Lewis raised an eyebrow, intrigued. “Oh, didn’t remember that.”

“Yeah,” she said softly. “I could’ve just mixed the colors myself and gotten something close. But you were so invested in finding the exact match that I just... I kept going. And I knew it then. I knew I loved you because you cared about the little things, the details that most people would overlook.”

Lewis stared at her; his face unreadable. Then, slowly, he smiled—a soft, genuine smile that seemed to melt the room around them.

“What’s your favorite memory of the two of you?”

Lewis leaned back, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “That time we missed the flight in Paris.”

She let out a groan, breaking the feeling in the room, she already knew where this story was headed. “Nooo, not that!”

“Yep,” Lewis said with a smile. “So we were in Paris, right? And someone—” he pointed at her playfully, “—was absolutely convinced that the subway would get us to the airport faster than any car could.”

“It would’ve!” she protested, already laughing. “The traffic was insane!”

“Yeah sure” he replied, his eyes twinkling with mischief. “So there we were, dragging our bumps through the subway stations, hopping from one line to the next. Every station was like a maze, and we were so lost. I kept telling you, ‘Let’s just get a cab,’ but nooo, you were determined.”

She shook her head, smiling. “It was an adventure!”

“It was chaos and we missed the flight by hours” Lewis corrected, his voice teasing but fond.

“But honestly? It’s one of my favorite memories. You were so carefree, so determined, so in the present. We were lost in Paris but we weren’t lost within ourselves.”

Her smile softened, her eyes holding his for a long moment. “You never told me that was your favorite memory.”

“Yeah” he said quietly, his voice more sincere now. “I felt like we could just... slow down. Be present. No pressure, no expectations. Just you and me.”

For a moment, they were silent, the weight of his words settling between them. The room around them was so still that the soft hum of the cameras was the only sound. The crew watched them closely, as if holding their collective breath.

She leaned over, resting her head on his shoulder, and whispered just loud enough for the microphones to catch “I think that’s my favorite memory now, too.”

Lewis smiled, pressing a soft kiss to the top of her head, and for a few seconds, it was like the cameras weren’t even there. It was just them, lost in a shared memory, a world of their own.

The director, sensing the intimacy of the moment, cleared his throat gently.

“Alright, now to wrap this up ‘When can we expect little Hamiltons running around?”

Both Lewis and his wife exchanged quick glances, and almost in unison, they burst out laughing—only this time, their laughter had a bit of an edge, like they knew something the room didn’t.

Lewis leaned back in his chair, rubbing his hands together. “Ooooh, good one.”

“You had to go there, didn’t you?” she added, her eyes wide with exaggerated innocence. “Real smooth.”

The crew, sensing the couple was playing coy, leaned in just a bit, waiting for a juicy response. But instead, Lewis leaned forward, lowering his voice as if sharing a secret. “Well, you never know, right?”

His wife smirked, glancing at him sideways, playing along. “When you least expect it”

The director, not quite satisfied, pressed on. “Any plans in the near future?”

“Oh, besides, like, tomorrow’s plans?” she quipped, keeping the teasing energy alive.

Lewis chimed in again, grinning like a Cheshire cat. “We’ve got a lot of plans. Travel, Roscoe’s bath time…”

The director chuckled, shaking his head. “Dodging the question, I see.”

Lewis gave a knowing look to the camera, adding one final, cryptic comment. “We’ll let you know when it happens... maybe.”

And with that, they both smiled at the cameras, their laughter filling the air as the director called “cut” for the final time.

The room gradually came back to life, the hum of equipment being packed up and crew members chatting quietly filling the air. The couple stayed seated, though, still caught in the gentle pull of their shared moment, almost unaware of the bustling scene around them.

Lewis exhaled slowly, his shoulders relaxing as he glanced at his wife, his arm instinctively pulling her a little closer. She smiled, still leaning into him, her head resting against his shoulder, fingers absentmindedly playing with his fingers.

“That was a bit mushy, wasn’t it?” she murmured, a teasing lilt to her voice, though there was warmth in her eyes as she gazed up at him.

Lewis smirked, brushing his thumb gently against her arm. “Just a little. But you started it.”

She chuckled softly, nuzzling into his shoulder. “Tou’re not usually one for getting all sentimental on camera.”

He shrugged lightly, but there was no real defensiveness in his posture.

She smiled, her heart swelling at the softness in his gestures. “Good. I like you better that way.”

She sighed softly, sitting up a little and stretching her arms out with a satisfied groan. “People are going to think we’re a pair of softies.”

Lewis chuckled, the sound low and rumbling in his chest. “Let them.”

She smiled, sitting back in her chair and looking at him with a tenderness that only deepened as she reached out, her hand cupping his cheek for a brief moment. “I guess it’s not the worst thing to be.”

He leaned into her touch, his eyes closing briefly before he opened them and looked straight at her. “Nah, it’s not.”

Unbeknownst to them, the cameras were still rolling—just a little, a behind-the-scenes shot meant to capture those moments of candidness. The crew tried to keep their distance, giving the couple their space, but every now and then, someone would glance over, a quiet smile tugging at their lips. There was something undeniably magnetic about Lewis and his wife, the way they moved around each other, the way they fit together.

Without thinking, he stood up and extended a hand to her, pulling her up from her seat. As she stood, she let out a small laugh, one that was soft and filled with affection. But before she could fully straighten up, Lewis slipped his arms around her waist, pulling her into his chest in a gentle, protective embrace.

For a second, she stiffened—more out of surprise than anything—but then she melted into him, wrapping her arms around his neck. It was a simple gesture, nothing extravagant, but in that moment, it was everything.

“Alright, lover boy” she murmured, her voice laced with contentment. “What’s all this about?”

“Just holding you” he replied simply, his voice low and soothing, the kind of tone he used when it was just the two of them, no audience, no pressure. “Feels like we haven’t had a minute to ourselves in forever.”

She smiled as she found her place on the crock of his neck, her fingers absently tracing circles on the back of his neck “You’ll get them,” she promised quietly. “We’ll make time.”

Eventually, Lewis pulled back slightly, just enough to look down at her, his eyes twinkling with mischief. “You know,” he started, his tone teasing “about those Timbs.”

She groaned, playfully swatting at his chest. “I thought we agreed to leave the Timbs in the past.”

“I never agreed to that” he grinned, tightening his arms around her playfully. “I’m still rocking them, remember?”

She rolled her eyes, but the smile on her face betrayed her. “Well, at least one of us has evolved.”

He laughed, pressing a soft kiss to her head. “Maybe. But you love me anyway.”

“I do,” she said softly, the sincerity of the words wrapping around them both like a warm blanket. “I really do.”

______________________________________________________________

TAGLIST - @saturnssunflower @xoscar03 @chocolatediplomatdreamerzonk @itsmrshamilton @vicurious28

@0710khj @thecubanator2 @neilakk @bigratbitchsworld @adriswrld

@fearfam69691 @cmleitora @goldenroutledge @timmychalametsstuff @jpgnsf

@priopp123 @strqirlhrts @hmmmmm-01 @bisexual-babygirl-mj @bebesobrielo @hiireadstuff

He was absentmindedly scrolling through his phone, but his mind was elsewhere, and she could tell.

“Alright, what’s going on in that head of yours?” she asked, giving his leg a playful nudge. “You’re scrolling aimlessly”

He looked up at her, his brow furrowing. “Just thinking…” he said, his voice quiet. “The racing, the travel... sometimes it feels like I’m chasing something I don’t even know anymore.”

Y/n didn’t say anything right away. She just watched him, waiting to see if his thinking would get anywhere.

That was one of the things he loved about her—she never rushed him. She gave him the space to work through his thoughts, knowing he’d get there in his own time.

“And?” when she finally asked, her tone was light although it held a tone of curiosity.

Lewis shrugged, glancing away for a second before meeting her gaze again. “I guess I’m just thinking about what happens after all of this. What happens when I stop? What do I want then?”

He could see the question in her eyes, even before she asked it. “And what do you want?”

There it was, the question that had been lingering in the back of his mind for a while now. He took a deep breath, his heart beating a little faster as he said it out loud for the first time. “I want... you.”

Y/n blinked, a soft smile tugging at her lips. She didn’t need grand speeches or promises—her fingers brushed against his leg, a simple touch that said, I do too.

“Well,” she said, her voice teasing but affectionate, “that’s good to know, because I’ve kinda been banking on forever with you too.”

There was the nights after tough races. When nothing had gone right.

Lewis had been frustrated, angry, and wound up tight. He’d spent the drive to the hotel from the track stewing in his thoughts, his jaw clenched as the weight of the day pressed down on him.

Y/n had been waiting for him when he got back, her eyes searching his face, reading his mood instantly.

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” she said, her voice quiet but firm. “But you’re not allowed to take it out on yourself.”

He had looked at her, caught off guard by her words, but also relieved that she knew exactly what he needed to hear. She always knew.

He sank down onto the couch next to her, fidgeting with his phone in his hands to try and control the turmoil in his head

“What if I’m losing it” he admitted, his voice raw. “What if I’m not good enough anymore.”

Y/n didn’t try to fix it, didn’t try to tell him he was wrong. Instead, she reached for his hand, threading her fingers through his.

“You’re allowed to have bad days, bad seasons even” she said softly. “It doesn’t make you any less incredible. But you need to give yourself a break, Lew. You’re still a champion, and one bad race doesn’t change that.”

She saw him, every flawed and imperfect part, and she loved him anyway.

There was the small things, the little moments that made up their everyday life together.

 Like the way she’d always let him pick what they were watching during dinner, even though he knew she didn’t care about half the stuff he was into.

He had noticed it one night, as they sat on the couch with takeout containers in their laps, a random documentary on space missions playing on the screen.

“You know, we don’t always have to watch what I want” he said, glancing over at her.

Y/n raised an eyebrow, giving him a playful smirk. “Oh, so you do get bored of these documentaries too?”

He laughed, shaking his head. “No, I’m just saying, you don’t have to sit through this if you don’t want to.”

She leaned in, pressing a quick kiss to his cheek before settling back against the couch. “I don’t mind,” she said simply. “Besides, watching you get all excited about it makes it worth it.”

It was such a small thing, something most people wouldn’t even think twice about. But She wasn’t just with him for the big moments—the wins, the parties, the glamorous lifestyle.

She was there for the quiet nights on the couch, for the moments when it was just them, being themselves.

And there were the harder times, the moments when life tried to pull them apart.

Like when he had been away for a few weeks, consumed by the demands of racing, and she had been dealing with her own stresses back home.

They had fought—really fought—for the first time in a while. He had been short with her on the phone, and she had snapped back, both of them too exhausted to think straight.

He remembered calling her later that night, after everything had calmed down. His heart pounding in his chest as he waited for her to pick up, unsure of what to say, unsure if she’d even want to talk to him.

But she had answered, her voice soft and tired. “Hey.”

Lewis exhaled, relief washing over him at the sound of her voice. “I’m sorry” he said, the words tumbling out before he could stop them. “I was being an ass, and I hate that we’re fighting. I hate that I’m not there with you.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line, and for a moment, he thought he’d messed it all up. But then she spoke, her voice quiet but steady.

“I hate it too,” she admitted. “But I know you’re doing what you love, and I love you for that. I just... I need to know that when all of this is done, you’ll still come back to me.”

Her words hit him harder than he expected. And that’s when he knew—she wasn’t just his safe place. He was hers too.

And of course, there was the night he was sure.

The night he knew without a doubt that he couldn’t imagine a life without her.

They had been lying in bed, the city lights filtering in through the curtains, casting soft shadows across the room. Y/n was curled up against him, her head resting on his chest, her fingers tracing lazy patterns on his skin.

They weren’t talking—just lying there in the quiet comfort of each other’s presence.

After a long stretch of silence, she spoke, her voice barely above a whisper. “Do you think we’ll always be like this?”

Lewis looked down at her, his brow furrowing. “What do you mean?”

She shifted slightly, her gaze still focused on the rise and fall of his chest. “I mean... us. Do you think we’ll always be this close? This... in love?”

He didn’t hesitate. “Yeah,” he said softly, his fingers brushing through her hair. “I do.”

She looked up at him then, her eyes searching his face as if she were looking for something. And whatever it was, she found it, because she smiled—a soft, almost wistful smile.

“Good,” she whispered, settling back against him. “Because I don’t ever want to be without you.”

And now, as Lewis sat in the plush chair, staring down at the array of engagement rings designs laid out before him on the velvet tray, all those moments flashed through his mind.

And he realized he wasn’t overwhelmed by the choices; he was overwhelmed by the gravity of what that ring would symbolize.

"Mr. Hamilton," the designer said from across the table, his voice calm, professional. "You mentioned wanting something unique. Something that reflects your relationship with Y/n. I can help you with that, but how would you describe your love, as in one sentence?"

He looked down at the designs again, his mind filled with the memories of their time together— every laugh, every argument, every quiet moment that build on the decision he’d known for so long.  

A delicate twisted band with intertwined diamonds caught his eye, reminding him of the nights she would trace lazy patterns on his skin, their fingers intertwining.

And when he finally looked up, meeting the designer’s gaze, he smiled. “Our love is... my greatest victory.”

And she was his forever.

______________________________________________________________

TAGLIST - @saturnssunflower @xoscar03 @chocolatediplomatdreamerzonk @itsmrshamilton @vicurious28

@0710khj @thecubanator2 @neilakk @bigratbitchsworld @adriswrld

@fearfam69691 @cmleitora @goldenroutledge @timmychalametsstuff @jpgnsf

@priopp123 @strqirlhrts @hmmmmm-01 @bisexual-babygirl-mj @bebesobrielo

@hiireadstuff @f1-football-fiend

The most popular one was called "Max Verstappen being the perfect boyfriend: a compilation," and it began with a video of Max arriving to the paddock for media day, Red Bull's social media team filming him while he answered some rapid fire questions.

"Waffles or Pancakes? You know I used to love pancakes but I think I've had too many because my girlfriend is obsessed with making them," he said as he signed some stuff, "So I would go for Waffles at the moment, but if my girlfriend is watching this I'd say I take her pancakes every day."

The next clip was from a post qualifying interview, and of course, Max earned the pole position, the interviewer had asked him what was expecting for the race the following day.

"To win of course, that's what I'm here for," he said with so hesitation, "But I'm also looking forward to it because my girlfriend will be here, it's the first race she attends this season and I can't wait to see her in the crowd while I take on the podium."

The video moved to show Max with his teammate Sergio Perez, they were playing a game of Green Flag or Red Flag, they were asked about people who film themselves at the gym and Max immediately waved the red flag.

"I actually don't go to the gym anymore," Max added, "I get annoyed by everyone else so I just exercise at home."

"So no topless selfies, not even at home," the interviewer said.

"I don't need to impress anyone, I've got my girlfriend, so," Max shrugged.

The next clip was taken from Max's own Youtube channel, he was showing some of his preparation routine for a race, that included some neck training, checking statistics, quick meetings with his team and engineers among other things.

And of course, his girlfriend made an appearance, standing in a corner watching everything unfold. He approached her, race suit on and helmet in hand, kissed her lips gently as she caressed his arm.

"Be safe out there okay?" her voice could be faintly heard.

"Always schatje, I love you."

In the next segment, Max had just earned his second world championship and was doing a casual interview for a sports channel.

"Do you have your girlfriend now call you 'Two time world champion Max Verstappen' or just Max,"

"Definitely not the first one," Max laughed, "She'd never do that, she says she likes to keep me humble."

"Your girlfriend has a pet name for you?" the guy asked again.

"We call each other a bit different but I prefer not to say that on camera," Max laughed again, "I don't want the internet to make fun of me for being cheesy."

The next clip was from Max's streamings, he was too immersed in a game that he didn't hear his girlfriend come into the room, noticing her presence when she leaned into him.

Out of habit of keeping their privacy, he covered the camera but forgot to turn his mic off.

"Schatje I'm streaming," he said, unaware that everyone could hear him.

"Oh I'm sorry, I was going to ask if you could feed the cats but I'll do it myself," his girlfriend spoke.

"No I'll do it, just let me get off the stream,"

"Baby, there's no need," she insisted.

"I was missing you anyways, just give me a minute."

His audience couldn't see anything but they clearly heard how Max kissed his girlfriend's lips, turning his attention back to the screen, he realized that he was broadcasting their conversation to everyone.

His viewers went wild in the chat, spamming heart emojis and comments about how sweet the couple was. Max ended the stream with a laugh, addressing his fans. "Alright, you heard the boss. I gotta go feed the cats. See you all next time."

On the same note, another clip from a video for RedBull with Checo was included, they had been asked to show the most recent picture in their phones.

"Oh it's from this morning, my girlfriend with the kids," Max said, showing the picture to the camera.

"The kids?" Checo asked with a laugh.

"The cats are our kids," Max shrugged, "Jimmy and Sassy Verstappen."

A particularly touching moment was from a press conference after a difficult race. Max had finished fifth, a rare position for him given his usual dominance. When asked how he dealt with setbacks, he gave a candid response.

"It can be tough, but my girlfriend always knows how to lift my spirits. She's my biggest supporter and always finds the right words to say. Just being with her makes everything better, no matter how bad the race went."

During a clip of Max giving a tour of the Red Bull factory, he stopped at a wall covered in race-winning memorabilia. Among the trophies and champagne bottles, there was a small, framed photograph.

"This is special to me," Max pointed it out, "It's from my first win with Red Bull. But look closer..."

The camera zoomed in to show a young woman in the background of the photo, cheering in the pit lane.

"That's my girlfriend," Max said softly. "She was there for my first win, and she's been there for every one since - even if she can't always be at the track. The team knew how much that meant to me, so they made sure she was in this photo when they framed it."

In the next segment, Max was asked about his favorite off-track activity.

"I love cooking," Max grinned, "Well, more like watching my girlfriend cook. She's amazing in the kitchen, and I'm just there to taste-test everything."

The compilation included a moment during a press conference, Max addressed a question about his girlfriend facing criticism online. The question arose after she received negative comments following a public appearance with him.

"Look, it's tough sometimes," Max began, his expression turning serious. "She didn't choose this life, but she supports me through everything. It's not fair for her to get hate just because of who she's dating. If you have a problem with me that's fine but don't go after my family or my girlfriend because that is just unacceptable."

The final clip that wrapped the video us was from the FIA Prize Giving ceremony, Max received his trophy for winning the 2023 championship.

In his acceptance speech, he thanked his team, his family, and, of course, his girlfriend.

"Winning races and championships is amazing, but having someone by your side who believes in you and supports you unconditionally is truly special. To my girlfriend, thank you for being my rock and my biggest cheerleader. I love you."