Pretty pleasee (with a cherry onm top) tell us more about how Underage hewn city mate is raised in river house with the IC while Azriel is in close proximity trying not to be a predator.
it's just suuuch a sticky situation for azriel because he does not want to be in this position. his inclination is towards self-imposed exile until she's reached her age of majority to avoid this exact sort of weirdness, which means that his family (rhysand) is encouraging him to stay for ??? some reason. eventually, i think that will lead him to question rhysand and reckon with the fact that rhysand is valuing his functionality as spymaster over his comfort as a brother. but until that happens...
she is young and confused and unmoored and entirely uncertain of the expectations of this new life in a place she never new existed—much the way azriel was upon being freed of his confinement. he is the only one of the inner circle who can truly understand how she's feeling. when she stumbles socially and is offered no explanation for what she's done wrong, he feels her discomfort and shame as his own. this is how they bond at first: he's the only one able and willing to put to words the implicit social norms of velaris she's supposed to already know. he's the only one willing to answer her questions, so she feels safe in asking them. he's the only one who could understand why she uses her emerging powers to blacken her room to the cool dark of an underground city—the only one who could have known that a jar of glow worms would comfort her enough to sleep, even though it was gifted to her through the tall, golden female who she knows well the name of: morrigan. when she thanks azriel for it, he stiffens up, but he doesn't deny that it came from him.
azriel becomes a semi-safe harbor for her. she's willing to cling to any sort of stability she can hold onto—especially because she hasn't seen her family and her friends in so long, and not even azriel will tell her why. but every time she begins to feel comforted in any way, he withdraws his attentions. when she comes to read or play in the same room as him, he inevitably excuses himself, especially if he's alone. when she goes to him excited about a realization regarding the new world she's in, her eyes sparkling and joyful, he always shutters over halfway through listening, leans away from her, makes those same excuses to leave. when she starts learning to bake with elain, he refuses to eat anything she offers him, no matter how excited she is for him to—but if elain takes it from her and gives it to him, he'll try it. (she doesn't know why this bothers her so much, but it does.) per the wrinkly brain of @buffy-vanserra, when she has nightmares and the jar of glow worms doesn't help and she inevitably goes to knock at his door with tears in her eyes, he never takes her into his arms to hush and shush her back to sleep like her mama would have. he always goes to wake up elain or feyre or morrigan. sometimes he'll bring them up some tea, but he never stays long after that.
she doesn't know how, but she can just tell he doesn't want to be around her. even when he does want to be around her, even when they're having a nice conversation or he's teaching her something she didn't know before, he doesn't want to be around her. this hurts, and so much already hurts without her home and her family. so she seeks out other connections: elain, who reminds her most of her mother; cassian, who reminds her most of her older brother; nyx, who reminds her most of her younger brother—and who, most excitingly, is a child, too, and really not that far from her age at all. azriel experiencing extremely inappropriate surges of jealousy. he's most hostile towards cassian. he's absolutely furious the first time cassian takes her up with him to fly around the river estate. it's dangerous, azriel snaps, even though they both know it wasn't, even though they both know part of him is just warring with the fact that he wanted to be the one to do that with her and couldn't. it reaches its worst point when nyx's childhood crush has the potential to develop into a budding romance between them in their adolescence. there are a lot of competing emotions there for azriel, foremost this is what she deserves; a male her own age, who she can learn with, who is an appropriate match for her and i am not a good enough male to sit by and allow that; why is rhysand subjecting me to this, why, why, why, why am i letting him
but the worst of it all is that their bond is fully intact. he tries to get her to reject it when she first arrives, but to do that, he'd first have to get her to acknowledge that there is a bond between them at all, which feels uniquely disgusting and perverse. beyond that, to take it from her would mean to rob her of her future choice in having a mate or not—and in the moment, it would leave her completely bereft and alone. she has no family to return to because they faked her death. if the bond is gone, ripping her from her life (even though it was the right thing to do. it was the right thing to do, wasn't it?) was done for no reason. and selfishly, terribly, in a way he cannot even admit to himself, he doesn't want it to be rejected. so the bond remains, and her emotions drop down it like a pebble in a well—especially once she begins maturing and experiencing attraction and wanting to act on it. once she starts developing fantasies and thinking about them and dreaming about them, and it's sickening when they're about him, but it's even worse when they're about other fae. add to this that his shadows truly do not understand why he is around his mate but not pursuing her in any way, so they hover near her always, without his permission, and feed constant information back to him about her and what she's doing. increasingly more inappropriate information because their singer is being incredibly foolish.
a very bad no good time for azriel all around :•)
