Silent Requiem

With Nesta:

“Nesta glanced at his scarred hands, and Azriel tucked them behind his back, as if he noted her attention.”

With Elain:

“He knew it was wrong, but there he was, sliding the necklace around her. Letting his scarred fingers touch her immaculate skin. Letting them brush the side of her throat, savoring the velvet-soft texture.”

“Such terrible things that it was a sacrilege for his fingers to skin, tainting her with his presence.”

His scars make him feel unworthy. Like he’s tainting someone just by touching them.

But then, with Gwyn:

“You’re turning the blade a fraction as it comes parallel to the ground,” Azriel explained, drawing his Illyrian blade from down his back.

“Watch.” He slowly demonstrated, rotating his wrist where she did.

“You see how you open up right here?” He corrected his position. “Keep your wrist like that. The blade is an extension of your arm.”

There’s no hesitation or internal monologue of self-loathing. He doesn’t hide.

Like really sit with that and think about what you just said for a second. That’s how you chose to describe rape. A bad AFTERNOON. That alone is so off that I don’t even know how someone typed it out and still decided to hit send.

If you weren’t aware, trauma isn’t something you can sort into neat categories and rank like it’s a competition. It doesn’t follow some clean logic where you line up experiences side by side and decide which one “counts more” based on how long it lasted. People don’t experience things the same way, and they don’t carry them the same way either.

Two things can be completely different in nature and still both be deeply and life altering painful. One doesn’t cancel the other out, and one doesn’t need to be minimized to make space for the other. The whole idea that suffering can be measured at all completely misses how trauma actually works, because it’s not just about the event itself, it’s about what it does to you after, how it settles into your life, how it changes you in ways that aren’t always visible.

Also, this whole argument only works if you treat rape like it’s some one time event that just idk… happens and then ends, like it’s contained to a few hours and that’s it. I don’t even want to get into how wrong that framing is.

⭑

This bonus chapter proves, once again, that his dancing shadows are a good thing. They’re dancing because Azriel is enjoying himself. He’s relaxed and happy.

Like… you’re mad at people for hoping she finds happiness, but not at the ones saying disgusting stuff like “we don’t have proof she was raped so she’s probably lying” (which is not only gross, but also literally canonically false)? Or “she’s seducing males and faking fear” or “she has the same eye color as a rapist so she must be like her”??? Be serious.

Some of y’all have no problem reducing Gwyn to her trauma only when it’s about shipping her with Azriel. But when it comes to calling her a “men-eating monster” or secretly evil? Suddenly the SA doesn’t matter at all. Suddenly it’s fair game to throw canon out the window and claim she’s a lightsinger or whatever because it fits your agenda. And when people push back, you cry “they’re weaponizing SA”? Be for real.

Hunt had done that for her. She’d never stop being grateful for it—for him. Bryce’s heart tightened and something brighter than starlight filled her veins. It remained, shimmering and secret, glowing inside her for the rest of the day.

⭑

✴︎

Gwyn had been distracted today—one eye on the other side of the ring. Cassian could only assume she was watching his brother, who had given Gwyn a small smile of greeting upon arrival. (...) She’d said nothing about it during the lesson. Only glanced every now and then toward Az.

He nodded to Gwyn and Emerie, the former glancing toward Azriel, who watched in silence. (...) Gwyn again glanced to Azriel, who drifted closer.

Cassian glanced over at Az, but his attention was fixed on the young priestess, admiration and quiet encouragement shining from his face.

That means that when Azriel turns around because he hears Gwyn squealing, or when he smiles at her as he first joins them, or when he drifts closer as she explains the ribbon before eventually turning back to his task, it is because he is deliberately paying attention to her. It is not his responsibility to do so, since his role is to focus on his own trainees, and Gwyn is not one of them.

“If Rhysand was the most beautiful male I’d ever seen, she was his female equivalent. Her bright, golden hair was tied back in a casual braid, and the turquoise of her clothes—fashioned like my own—offset her sun-kissed skin, making her practically glow in the morning light.”

— Morrigan, A Court of Mist and Fury

“Merrill turned at that, and Nesta was greeted with a surprisingly young face—and a stunningly beautiful one. All the High Fae were beautiful, but Merrill made even Mor look drab. Hair white as fresh snow contrasted against the light brown of her skin, and eyes the color of a twilight sky blinked once, twice.”

— Merrill, A Court of Silver Flames

“The priestess had been pretty in the library, but with that joy, that confidence as she aimed for the three priestesses, she had emerged into a beauty to rival Merrill or Mor.”

— Gwyn, A Court of Silver Flames

Mor is canonically the most beautiful female Feyre had ever seen. Merrill is so breathtaking she makes Mor look drab. And Gwyn?

”…she had emerged into a beauty to rival Merrill or Mor.”

⭑

Gwyn has such a big heart.

During the Blood Rite, when she was hit by an arrow, she begged Nesta and Emerie to leave her behind. She knew they had little chance of making it across the bridge before those males caught up to them, and she knew exactly what would happen to her if they did. She knew she was about to relive the nightmare of that last night in Sangravah. And yet, she was willing to accept it if it meant her sisters would make it out alive—if it meant Nesta and Emerie would be spared the same fate she had endured.

Later, when Nesta was ready to make that same sacrifice and stay behind so Gwyn and Emerie could win, Gwyn refused to leave her. She cried and begged Nesta not to do it, and Nesta ultimately had to knock her unconscious because she knew there was no convincing Gwyn otherwise.

That mirrors what happened at Sangravah. Gwyn left Catrin to protect the children. Catrin was captured and killed, and even though there was nothing Gwyn could have done to save her, she carried that guilt with her and blamed herself for years afterward.

During the Blood Rite, Nesta may have felt like a second chance. Gwyn had already lost one sister. She wasn’t going to lose another. She wasn’t going to fail her again. Whatever was waiting for them—death, capture, another nightmare—they would face it together.