sburnheart

Something about the two males scratched at a door she didn’t remember locking. A low, persistent scrape in the back of her skull. They didn’t move, didn’t blink. Their eyes tracked Cassian, then Azriel—only them. As if Feyre and Rhys and Amren weren’t there at all.

Rage smoldered in their gazes. Rage without focus. As if it had been stoked too long and left to burn out of control.

Feyre’s voice barely rose above the silence. “They’re like rabid dogs. Lost to sanity.”

Cassian grunted. He hadn’t moved from his place near the wall, his arms crossed, expression grim. “Fought like it too. No intelligence—just a desire to kill.”

Elara’s gaze flicked to the trapdoor in the floor. She didn’t need to look directly at the males to feel the wrongness radiating off them. Her fingers curled slightly at her sides.

“Their actions aren’t their own,” she said, flatly.

Amren turned to her, silver eyes narrowing. “And how would you know that, girl?”

Elara didn’t look at her. She kept her eyes on the males. Their lips were still curled in those strange, half-snarl expressions, their bodies oddly still. There was no recognition in their features. No light behind their eyes. Only the echo of something puppeted. Hollow.

“I’ve lived it,” she said, and her voice came out too tight, too thin. Silence followed, not the heavy kind, but brittle. As if someone had cracked the wrong floorboard and everyone was deciding whether to look. Elara exhaled through her nose. “Not exactly like this,” she added, softer now. “But close. Close enough.”

Elara kicked forward, muscles straining against the weight of the Bog. Every motion felt like swimming through pitch. She didn’t get far. The Bog pushed back, almost like it didn’t want her there, like it knew she didn’t belong. It pressed at her, sluggish and cruel, slowing her arms, dragging at her legs.

Then it changed.

It started with something brushing against her ankle—soft, slick. And then it tightened.

Her entire body jolted as something coiled around her leg and yanked.

She twisted, desperate to see, and the water blurred worse with her panic. The thing around her ankle looked like a vine—but not. It pulsed faintly, like it had a heartbeat of its own, and it glistened with something dark and clinging. Before she could reach for it, more wrapped around her other leg, then both wrists, jerking her back like a puppet on strings.

She thrashed, panic rising. Her hands strained against the binds, trying to claw free, but the vines—if that’s what they were—only squeezed tighter, drawing her deeper and deeper into the gloom. The surface was gone. Nesta was gone. All she could see was the faint glow of something vanishing above, and the slow blur of her own arms as she fought.

Her lungs were on fire now. Her chest heaved, instinct screaming at her to breathe even as her mind begged her not to. She wouldn’t last much longer.

Not down here.

She flew a little ahead, letting the air clear her head. The wind was cold up here, and her arms ached from holding steady. They’d been flying for a while now. It felt like too long.

She sensed him before he spoke.

“Elara—”

“I promise I’m not going to fly off, Shadowsinger,” she said, not looking at him. Her voice came out more tired than anything else.

They flew in silence, the wind cold between them. Elara kept her eyes forward, scanning the bog below—though there wasn’t much to see. Just more water, more rot, more of that same gray fog curling between broken tree limbs. But Azriel stayed close, his presence constant at her side. She could feel him watching her, again and again.

Eventually, he spoke.

“Elara.”

She didn’t answer. She just kept flying. He edged a little closer, voice low. “We need to talk about the other night.”

“No,” she said flatly. “We don’t.”

“Elara—”

“It’s not the time, Shadowsinger.” She didn’t raise her voice, but the edge in it was sharp.

He didn’t back off. “You’ve been avoiding me.”

She exhaled through her nose, trying not to let the frustration show, even though it was already bubbling beneath her skin. “Maybe because I have a good reason,” she said coolly. “Maybe you should take the hint.”

She wrapped her arms around herself and leaned into the wind, eyes closed. Mist clung to the night air, brushing her face like breath. She told herself it hadn’t meant anything. That they’d been shaken. That she hadn’t known what else to do in that moment, and neither had he.

It had been adrenaline. That was all. The rush of fear, the nearness of him, the sharp echo of magic still vibrating in her bones—it had short-circuited her judgment. Anyone might’ve reacted that way, after so much tension wound tight.

Anyone.

That was what Elara told herself. Because anything else—anything real—meant opening a door she had no right to walk through.

Her fingers moved without thought to the leather cuff around her wrist. The stitching was frayed in places—she traced one of them with her thumb, slow and rhythmic. A quiet motion, something to do with her hands while her thoughts prowled too close to the surface.

They all wanted her to believe she was getting better. Like if Elara stayed long enough, followed the rules, sat quietly through meetings and training and dinners, the Court of Dreams would just... absorb her. Assimilate her. Pretend her past — that Munin— was a shadow already outgrown.

But they didn’t know the whole of it.

They hadn’t stood ankle-deep in blood and did not even blink an eye. Hadn’t watched human boys sob and beg for their lives while their throats were slit. Hadn’t left messages scrawled in gore on cottage walls. Rhysand didn’t know. Cassian didn’t. Feyre, maybe, suspected—but she looked at Elara like she was a sad thing, not a monstrous one.

Azriel didn’t know either. Or maybe he did and refused to let it fully land, wouldn’t let himself name it. If he truly understood the depths of what she’d done—what had been asked of her and what she’d done anyway—he never would’ve looked at her like that. Never would’ve let his mouth brush against hers like he had last night. Never would’ve whispered her name like that.

If he saw clearly, he’d flinch.

So whatever had happened between them—whatever fragile, aching thing had stirred to life on the balcony—it couldn’t happen again.