FOR ALL AZRIEL, ELRIEL AND GWYNRIEL FANS!!! 🦇🦇🦇
Can I get you to read my Azriel x oc novel on ao3 with just a snippet of their convo? đź‘€
Let's see (This is a little snippet from chapter 5 written in Az's pov):
Ophelia is waiting at my door, her eyes fixed on me as I saunter across the landing. She follows the line of my shoulders down to the wine clutched in my hand, and back up, almost looking blasé with her posture.
It is the most comfortable I have seen her, dressed in a white nightgown that fluffs around her in tender-looking layers. Her wild hair is down again and messy waves frame her scarlet cheeks, as if she pinched them to bring forth some colour. Judging by her conscious tracking of my appraisal, it is very possible she did.
“Changing strategies?” I ask dryly. The fae-lights of the hallway hurt behind my eyelids every time I blink, and the door to my room is an enticing invitation to lock myself in comforting darkness.
She shrugs, leaning back into the wall, beside my door. “Can’t have you feeling too comfortable.”
“While I do appreciate the effort, such obvious tactics don’t particularly impress me.”
She crinkles her nose, hands fidgeting with themselves in what I assume is an effort to rein her offense in. “It wasn’t that obvious. I left the window open. You usually come home later, so the scent would have been gone. Window closed, no snooping detected.”
Not a bad strategy, if a little amateur. Though stooping down to spying—this prim, uptight female spying—should warrant a reward for the act itself. A smirk pulls at the corner of my mouth as I imagine her trying to find anything of my presence in the room, and jumping at every sound. All while I was miles away in Velaris.
I can’t help but lean into her. “Well, obviously I did detect it. You know how?”
She shakes her head, pinching her lips together so demurely, my perfect bride. Whatever may be said about her, Ophelia is a fascinating opponent to mentally spar with.
“Your scent, even in its fading notes,” I whisper, “How could I not recognise my darling wife?”
I step back and swallow a mouthful of wine to hide the chuckle threatening to break through. She scoffs and looks at my shadows— perched along my back like extensions of my wings. Her eyes call me out on my drivel, and I bend my head forward in a little mocking bow.
“Well, for all that effort, who am I to stop you from enjoying a perfectly good bottle of wine?”
A moment of silence follows. “You are… inviting me to drink? With you?”
I… am surprised by the impulsive invitation myself. It must be the lingering guilt from my interaction with Rhys that is attempting to soothe itself with misplaced acts of gentleness. Not to mention the wine.
Still, I do not let my internal hesitation leak into my words. “It was clearly implied. Unless you wish to lock yourself in your room like the brittle bird you appear to be.”
With that, I lean and lean into her, and—when her breath fans delicately over my lips—push open the door with my right hand. It is a rewarding sight, watching the blush bloom high over her cheeks—a high I have been craving since the night I cut the wedding ribbon. Maybe—I acknowledge—it is a little punishment for making me trip so much with my words, even if Ophelia does not realise it.
The door swings on its hinges noiselessly, and I move inside, unsure whether Ophelia will choose to prolong our game tonight.
..... (a lil block of txt removed, cuz, babe?!! read the fic on ao3??)
I drop onto the sofa pushed into a corner of the room, lounging with my legs slightly apart, and rest my head on the cushion. Ophelia follows suit, sitting on the other side, close to the handle, with her feet thrown in front of her. She rests them on my lap, and gives an innocent smile when I raise an eyebrow at her.Â
Fine, if this is how she wants to play it.
I pass the bottle to her, our fingers brushing, and then the wine is with her. She tips her head back and swallows a generous mouthful.
“Do you know what I am thinking right now?” She ventures, her calculating stare returning to me. “I am thinking that this will only remain as interesting if we even out the field.”
“Really?” I ask. “Because I thought you already did that.”
She stills—stills for the barest of seconds, but it is there. And though I usually do not let my cards fly so freely—so quickly—the wine takes pleasure in the power.
In Kael’s study, in the barely lit room that held a desk overflowing with scrolls and a shrewd man whose mere attention was abhorrent, the shadows had whispered of her with a glee I hadn’t known them to be capable of.
All darkness did not bow to me, and the further from me my shadows got, the less I could control them. But the darkness was congenial in a way the fae did not expect them to be, communicating with their brethren to speak of the female listening in from somewhere.
Though I could not pin-point her presence, exactly, I knew Ophelia was there. Knew, and let her be. Could almost feel her scent enveloping me, which was impossible. I had wondered, throughout my conversation with Kael, how he could not sense the third presence that almost suffocated the room with her attention.
“Yet you let me listen in. Which means you wanted me to be wounded by the secrets you keep.”
She is not wrong. “Maybe I am just hoping the sooner you break, the sooner I can work around the pieces.”
She tilts her head, and for a moment, the poise in her face frustrates me. “Sounds like an unimaginative way to play.”
I relent. “What do you suggest then?”
She passes the wine back to me. “Nothing excessive. Just what ordinary couples do, so I can wrest all your secrets from right under your nose.”
I slide my hands over the smooth arch of her feet, over the red toenails with chipping paint. Her dress rises a little as she shifts, and it reveals a thin silver anklet. The colour is not dissimilar to her eyes.
“I accept,” I finally say, my fingers slipping between the anklet and her skin under it.
She smiles—a small, private smile that she probably did not mean for me to see. It is fascinating, watching her reveal the malice she keeps so deeply embedded from sight.
“Is tonight a start, then?”
She raises an eyebrow. “Will you throw me out if I say it isn’t?”
I shrug. “I can tolerate anything, but my patience does wear thin when there is nothing to win by the end of it.”
“How do you handle spy work, then? Surely not every lead yields something important. Where do you—where do you keep the fire?”
I am not usually likened to fire, I realise as I mull over her question. If my family—my Velaris family—weighed in on it, I am certain Cassian would be the fire. I am… ice— unfeeling, pragmatic ice. I am struck by the difference in how Ophelia sees me.
“It’s just that—” Ophelia fills in the silence, mistaking my meditation for reluctance. “I tried it today—I don’t believe the scent part, so I am assuming your shadows had something to do with it—but it was frustrating. Not finding anything, and realising I will have to start over differently.”
“You learn from it—your mistakes,” I advise, even as I realise how ridiculous it is I am coaching my wife on how to spy on me. How to ruin me.
I continue, remembering being young— fresh to work under Rhys’s father. The frigidity in him, the ruthlessness—and the little, scarred boy subject to all of it. My voice is choked when I say, “Eventually, you realise the consequences of failure, and that makes you more meticulous, despite the haste. But you can’t stop—because the power gets addicting.”
Ophelia’s attention is locked into me now, more intense than it had been. When I take a sip of the wine again, I feel her eyes rove over everything—my hands, my face, my neck. My hands—still stroking her feet.
“Is the power…,” she bites her lips, looking away. “Is it just the information, or what comes… after? The—the tor...” She trails off.
“The torture?” I complete for her with a wry smile. After a pause, she nods.
It is dangerous, letting her in on so many things. But… “Partly. My duties are pretty interchangeable—spymaster and official torturer. They are one and the same. You cannot expect people to give up secrets when it outweighs money—and we already know how short greed’s hands are. I am—” I let my eyes glaze over, reflect the horror of things I have seen, have done, “—I am not a merciful man—some I have tortured, and I have done so with a smile on my face and their broken parts lying around my feet.”
Ophelia shivers, but not much breaks through her body language otherwise. After a prolonged quiet, when I begin to think I have finally scared her away, she speaks, “I would take power, too, in any way I get it.”
So, if you liked it, consider reading my story An Eternity Between Stars on ao3.
I don't really have any writer friends irl, even acotar fandom people irl, to talk much with. And a part of sharing my fic (a full blown novel on the acotar world) is a part of me trying to reach out to the community with my contribution, my work, my passion. So, don't be shy to reach out đź’•đź’•
