#acofas

Azriel counted the seconds in his mind, waiting for this dream to end. 

Any moment now, he'd open his eyes to the ornate carvings etched into his bedroom ceiling, the stone washed in the pale blue glow of the creeping pre-dawn hours. 

After countless nightmares, this exact view became a lifeline to him over the years. The carvings were absolution. Proof that whatever horrors had unfolded moments before belonged to a world with no power over him.

The wounds inflicted upon him would vanish with waking, and the atrocities he'd committed would dissolve into the same oblivion as the dream itself, leaving neither scars nor consequence. The ceiling was his salvation. 

The ceiling never came. 

Instead, Rhys eclipsed his fading view of her retreating form and the slight yet unmistakable shake of her shoulders from sobs he would never unhear. It was clear there was no easy way out, no waking up from this nightmare of his own making. 

“Azriel.”

The stern voice belonged to an eerily formal Rhys as he entered the hallway. The last thing Azriel felt he needed was reprimanding and it irritated him that so many others had involved themselves in his matters of the heart. 

Could he truly have the audacity to be so upset, though, if he was the reason they were involved in the first place? Attempting to break fast at their shared table with hickeys from a woman he barely knew (who also happened to be the elder sister of his High Lady) on full display was hardly discreet behavior. 

“I don’t need this from you,” He found himself churning out the words, if nothing else but to shield his wounded pride. With nauseating clarity, her hatred that he thought would be easier to stomach than her love, “for her own good”, was one of his gravest, if not the gravest, miscalculations of his immortality. 

“I don’t think you’re in any position to make demands right now.” Rhys retorted.

Feyre and Cassian slowly slid into the hall after Rhys’ failed attempt to handle the matter privately from where the others were still trying to finish their meals. 

Cassian’s arms crossed over his thick chest. In his eyes, Azriel found regret, but as soon as Cassian had revealed it, disappointment eclipsed any lingering sympathy toward his brother.

“This has nothing to do with you. With any of you,” Azriel sneered. He was lashing out at himself, but he would strike anyone in his path. 

“You just humiliated our friend in front of everyone, you think we’ll just look the other way? Not to mention, Elain is a mated woman. To a Vanserra. You understand those aren't just personal consequences anymore, Azriel? They're political."

“Political?” Azriel’s nostrils flared. “I never stuck my nose in your business when you were actively courting Feyre away from Tamlin despite the barely passable relationship with Spring at the time. I respected you that much.”

“You keep my mate’s name out of your damn mouth.” Rhys snarled with all the restraint of a beast pacing behind the bars of its cage, keenly aware that the iron between it and its prey was more a suggestion than a true restraint.

“You couldn’t even wait until she was out from Under the Mountain, when she was still in chains. You don’t get to act better than me.” 

Azriel knew exactly which cut to lay. The sick, misplaced satisfaction that flashed across his face lasted only a heartbeat before Rhys was a blur lunging for his brother’s throat.

Cassian caught Rhys around the middle, boots squealing against the marble floors as he wrestled his High Lord backward. With what little wit he began to regain, Rhys allowed Cassian to drive him away from Azriel, if only to keep Feyre from being swept into a brawl between three Illyrians. 

Azriel would not have been nearly so fortunate had they been alone.

Rhys shoved Cassian off of him, eyes trained on Azriel with foreign regard. "Your self-destruction never stops with you, does it?”  

“Enough,” Feyre sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose before smoothing her finger tips across her eyebrows. “You both are lashing out and childishness isn’t going to help her, which is who this is really about.”

Azriel’s demeanor softened in the slightest as he angled towards Feyre. “You know I would never do anything to hurt her.” But even as the words left his mouth, he pegged them for the lies they were. Because everything he had done to hurt her, he had done knowingly. It didn’t matter if he did it for what he believed was her own good. Intention was as useless an excuse as any. 

Feyre winced as the blatant lies landed. “I warned you to not fuck up this one thing. One thing, Azriel. All you’ve done the entire time you’ve known her is agonize over how you don’t deserve her. I hate to think you were right.”

Azriel felt like his world was ending. The realization that he may never be able to fix this, that things may never go back to the way they were, that he couldn’t just turn back time as easily as he had managed to waste it, filled him with despair. 

Rhys impatiently squinted at the dial on his wrist. “I would ask you to stay back, but the Shadowsinger is needed at this meeting in Day. So let me make this perfectly clear,” He stepped closer to his brother, the depersonalizing tone not lost on Azriel. Despite being slightly shorter, what Rhys lacked in physical height he made up for in High Lord menace. Rhys’ voice dropped to something dangerously quiet. "You will not speak to her. You will not go near her. You will not look at her. You will not so much as breathe the same air until we return and settle this."

The fight left Azriel’s body as he accepted Rhys' terms with none of the spite he held just a minute ago. The defiance that had burned so brightly moments before guttered into exhausted resignation. He gave a single nod.

"I mean it." Rhys said, each word sharpened to a blade. His jaw flexed, fury still simmering just beneath the surface. Feyre's hand slipped around his forearm, her gentle touch grounding him before his temper could crest again. Rhys exhaled through his nose, and allowed her to guide him down the hall, leaving Azriel and Cassian alone.

“Cass-”

Cassian shook his head, which surprised him as he did it. But the person before him wasn’t his brother. His brother who had spent so long waiting for love, yearning for it in secret and wishing for it on every star during Starfall, would never do this once he found it. 

“I can't bring myself to understand how you spend decades mourning a future you think you'll never have, only to throw it away the moment it's placed in your hands. I’ve defended you our entire lives because you’re my brother, even when you’ve been wrong. Especially when you’ve been wrong. But I can’t– I can’t stand by you in this.”

Azriel’s words were stupidly stuck in his throat once again. He’d broken her heart but he’d also betrayed his friends’ trust in the process. He watched them rally for her, protect her, and somewhere deep down inside, he felt a strange mix of guilt and relief that perhaps he had done the right thing after all. She had them; why would she ever need him?

“How can I fix this?” The sorry words tumbled out of his mouth pathetically.

“I don’t know. I’m not sure you get to.”

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She was vaguely aware of her surroundings. Voices, trying their hardest to remain lighthearted. Afternoon sunlight saturating surfaces in a deep honey hue. Bodies– three to be exact– restless yet well meaning in the way they fidgeted from different areas of her room. She didn’t pick up on it, but their eyes flitted amongst one another in helplessness and concern. She knew she was here, but she wasn’t here.

“Oh you’re definitely taking this.” Mor was nestled in her best friend’s wardrobe, rummaging through the various dresses draped on velvet hangers. She held up a strip of glittering organza as if she’d struck gold. The sheer, summer-hued fabric was just so that it was opaque where it was bunched and left little to the imagination where it laid flat. Two strips of the fabric ran down either shoulder and met just below the navel, gathering there before flowing down to the floor like a waterfall between the legs. 

“It’s a Day Court party, not an orgy,” Amren quipped from where she was perched on the chaise near the window. “Though many would argue there’s no difference.”

It was all white noise to her. Mor was trying to help her find a dress to wear to Helion’s party after the court summit, though the idea of adorning herself in her jewels and a practiced smile felt too much to ask for. 

Certainly, the heartbreak would heal. The pain would wane. The disappointment would linger but otherwise recede, like froth on a beach from a wave long gone. It was the humiliation of letting the wrong person in so deeply that would haunt her from the shadowed crooks of her immortality. There wasn’t a corner of her life he hadn’t touched in some way. 

It was unfortunate enough that over the years she blossomed beneath whatever it was he gave her. She called it love once, but in hindsight attention was likely a better word. Perhaps it was punishment reserved for the foolish to only realize the extent of reality after they could no longer change it. 

She knew what her friends were doing, but there was nothing more she wanted than to be alone. After breakfast they came to check on her, first Mor, then Feyre. Even Amren, who rarely concerned herself with matters of the heart, found herself stopping by unasked. 

It was then she told them everything. Her conversation with Mor, when she stopped Azriel in his pursuit to clarify his intentions, which led to the cruel conversation that followed. A truly unfortunate string of events that was somehow even more humiliating when she recounted the saga to an audience. 

“I’m not wearing that,” she turned beneath her sheets, facing the other side of the room. Vaguely aware of just how pathetic rotting in bed was at the moment, she could barely bring herself to care. It was easier to hide the tears beneath her blankets when she felt them coming on again instead of answering for them when looks of sorrow crossed over her friends’ faces. 

“You didn’t even look.” Mor deadpanned.

“I did look, and I’m not wearing that. I’m not having my tits out in the same room as Beron and his whore son.”

“Eris would have no complaints, by any means.” Amren offered her unneeded two cents. 

“That’s the fucking problem.”

“Your tits won’t be out.”

“They’ll be out enough.”

“Come on! You’ve only worn this once, and I nearly ate you up.” Mor stood up to walk the dress over to her bag. 

“The only other time…” her voice faltered. At first she was trying to remember where she’d worn it, then remembered too suddenly, too rudely, why she’d worn it. Mor all but forced it into her hands when they went shopping for Tarquin’s Summer Solstice party last year. 

“Azriel will drive himself mad over it,” Mor reasoned as she pushed her to the till.

And it had, just as she’d hoped. Azriel’s eyes followed her around the entire day and night. She felt his eyes, even sitting beside him at dinner. He barely touched his food. Nudging her knee with his when he laughed, draping an arm over the back of her chair when the alcohol began to loosen him up, inhaling her scent every time she shifted like it was a drug. Later that night, he slipped into her room in the Summer Palace and Feyre and Rhys who were next door played the game of pretending not to know at breakfast the next morning.

The girls must have read her mind because the room fell silent again. 

She swaddled the blankets tighter around her body, feeling the ghost of his touch against her will. His hands beneath her shirt, the weight of his body against hers, his knee pressing her legs apart the way he knew would push her into the completely pliant state that had preceded all of her most feverish memories. Where she’d once felt herself warm at these thoughts, they now settled like rocks in the pit of her stomach, forever and undeniably linked to the look on his face and the tone of his voice when Azriel told her he’d never have her as anything more than a body to warm his bed. 

“I’m not too keen on vying for his attention anymore, if that’s what you’re getting at.” She referred to Azriel with frigid indifference in her voice, but no one was stupid enough to believe she truly did not care anymore. 

“Oh this is not for Azriel,” Mor smirked. “This is for Helion.”

Mor and Feyre broke into light laughter, but she couldn’t bring herself to join them. Turning back around to face her friends, she felt her jaw loosen in awe but kept her mouth shut. 

“Are you serious?”

She supposed she should’ve seen this coming, and if she wasn’t so preoccupied these past 12 hours, she would have. It was inevitable for her friends to tease her when it came to the High Lord of the Day Court, his persistent courtship (and what she demanded was but a one-sided flirtation) as much a secret among them as the genre of books Nesta kept her nose in. 

It was something that always mildly entertained her, but never anything she put any real stock into, for her heart always sat in Azriel’s hands, and Azriel seemed to attach himself to her at the hip around Helion. A fact she once adored now rendered her ill. Again, love was never the word. Infatuation. Delusion. Possession, even. 

“You know what they say… the only way to get over one male is to get under another one.” Amren supplemented again. 

“That’s literally not how that saying goes,” she grabbed the pillow beside her and smothered her face to block out the light and sound that had suddenly become too much. “And I’m not interested in being under anyone right now, actually.”

“Not even the absurdly tall, unfairly handsome High Lord of Day who has been shamelessly captivated by you since the moment you crossed paths?”

On any other day it would’ve made her laugh and shove Mor in the shoulder. Mor had always been a proponent of “team Helion” as she’d called it. 

A harmless bit of entertainment between friends somewhere along the way became a bandwagon that the rest of the Inner Circle jumped on. Helion, of course, was always more than happy to oblige, admiring her openly and without apology, simply because he loved to.

She never thought much of it. 

Flirting was as natural to Helion as breathing, offered as freely as his laughter and with no more expectation than a smile in return. There was something wonderfully uncomplicated about it. She knew where she stood with him because he never asked her to decipher hidden intentions or search for words left unsaid. If he thought she looked beautiful, he told her. If he wanted a dance, he asked. If he wanted to make her blush with some outrageous compliment, he did so with all the confidence of a mate which he was not.

So she played along, feigning exasperation at his relentless charm, batting away compliments she secretly loved to receive, indulging his theatrics because, at the end of the day, that was the nature of her friendship with Helion. He flirted, she humored him, they laughed; it was fun. Helion was fun. He was charming, beautiful, and entirely too much, but she never expected anything more from it.

Perhaps she would have, had her heart not already been elsewhere.

Mor, however, delighted in challenging otherwise, and by extension, challenging Azriel’s restraint. 

Her favorite scheme consisted of “drunkenly” pushing her best friend into the high lord at a party and watching him catch her by the waist to steady her. They’d exchange smiles, a cheeky comment perhaps, before Helion’s hands would slide lower to her waist and get her to dance with him. 

"Careful," Mor would tease afterward. "Someone might think you actually like him."

She would laugh because the idea was ridiculous, but Mor always said it as if she knew something no one else did. 

"Hmm," Mor would muse. "It's awfully easy with Helion, wouldn’t you say?."

"It's easy with Az," she would correct without hesitation.

"I don’t know. You never have to guess with Helion. You’re always wondering with Az." 

She’d dismiss the challenge. “Love isn’t supposed to be easy.” 

She believed that then; that loving someone meant accepting the silences, learning the language of half-finished thoughts and lingering glances, believing that the things left unsaid somehow carried more meaning than the things spoken aloud. How painfully naïve that seemed now; why wouldn’t loving someone be easy if it were right?

Azriel never found any of it as amusing as Mor and the rest of their friends did.

He noticed every lingering touch after a winnow, every dance Helion coaxed her into, every smile he managed to draw from her with effortless ease. He noticed the way he leaned close when speaking to her, the casual intimacy with which he occupied her space and she never seemed to object.

To her, it was harmless.

To Azriel, it was proof. Proof that there would always be someone better equipped to love her than he was. Someone quicker with a smile, lighter with their words, unafraid to let themselves be known. Helion never seemed to hesitate before speaking, never weighed every sentence until the moment had long since passed. He simply existed beside her with an ease Azriel had spent years trying and failing to imitate. 

Everything that Azriel did in front of her was life or death, the difference between earning her love or losing it forever. Helion seemed to carry none of the same burden and it worked for him. Jealousy had never been a close and personal friend to Azriel until he met her. 

She could reassure him a thousand times that Helion was only Helion. Yet in hindsight, she never stopped to wonder why she felt compelled to defend their friendship to a male who was neither her mate nor, apparently, her lover. 

Love, she thought now, was perhaps not a question of difficulty or ease, but of wisdom and foolishness.

Mor reverently laid the dress on the bed, careful not to rumple the delicate fabric. Her voice softened. “You know you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, and this is all in good fun. It’s all we can do for you right now.”

She sighed, suddenly guilty for the inconvenience of her own emotions. “I know, I’m sorry. It seems as though I’m only capable of offering my gratitude in cruelty."

“Don’t be. Just be ready to leave tonight, that’s all. We’ll take care of the rest.”

In silent acknowledgement, Mor, Amren, and Feyre readied to take their leave. Her heart broke, knowing they would not take her uncharacteristic defiance personally, but it also swelled in gratitude that they afforded her the chance to be alone without her explicitly asking for it. She slowly sat up, watching her friends file out of her room. 

She hated this, feeling pathetic. She hated being the one that needed tending to and taking care of. She was the one that took care of others. 

Most of all, she despised that one male had the power to make her feel so distraught, so small. She wished she could snap herself up and carry herself as tall as she usually stood, to continue as if nothing had happened, to be able to lie to herself that he was nothing. For everything to go back to normal. 

“Thank you,” her voice was smaller than she intended for it to come out, but it was all she could manage. Tears rimmed her bloodshot eyes again.

“You can thank me by bringing that dress.” Mor snarked, but her eyes were tender. 

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She’d never admit it to Rhys, but the Day Court always held a special place in her heart. Of course, there was comfort in an endless expanse of velvety night sky generously punctuated with stars. Comfort in the dominating, snowcapped mountains that guarded the life enclosed within their valleys, with their resilient purple-gray faces that have gazed upon their wards for centuries. 

Yet, there was equal comfort for her in the long days and buttery skies of Day. At any given window she was gifted a view of the rolling green hills hemmed with all manner of flora, fauna, and flowing streams. They stretched until they winked out of sight where the grass met the sky, and beyond still.  

Those views became something of a lifeline to her against Azriel’s constantly flicking gaze, measuring every shift in her expression and demeanor, waiting for the perfect time to get her alone with minimal outburst.

The feeling of being watched which once made her gut twist with anticipation now made it turn over uneasily. 

Since their arrival, Azriel had been relentless. Not in the way he once was, though. No quiet shadows curling around her hips or ankles, no careful distance disguised as patience. He sought her out openly now. His gaze followed her across rooms, catching on her every movement, every attempt to disappear into conversation with someone else. More than once, she felt him begin to approach, only for Rhys to appear at her side with effortless timing, placing himself between them under the guise of some casual remark.

Cassian was even less subtle. A hand on Azriel’s shoulder, a loud interruption, a poorly disguised question that redirected the conversation elsewhere, anything to keep Azriel from reaching her without turning the situation into a spectacle in front of Helion. The effort was almost comical, if not for the desperation behind it.

Mor and Feyre were quicker still. The moment Helion’s initial greetings were exchanged and the group began making their way toward the chambers to freshen up, they slipped an arm through hers and pulled her away, filling the silence with chatter and refusing to give Azriel so much as an opening.

She was grateful, but she also knew there was only so much her friends could do to keep a determined male at bay. 

Elain, meanwhile, followed Azriel like a duckling.

She almost felt pity for her, unable to keep herself from putting herself in Elain’s shoes. The man she found some incidental infatuation with finally takes her to bed, in what must have felt like an alignment of the stars and the beginning of her new life, then refuses to so much as look at her the next morning. But Elain clung to Azriel despite his coldness toward her, and that’s where her sympathy ended. 

“Where have you been?” Helion’s voice was her tether to reality, bringing her back to the porcelain columns and hand tufted rugs of his palace’s dining room. “You usually afford me a longer bout of feigned interest in my stories before you completely disregard me. In my own home, at that.” 

The smile that came to her lips was easy. If nothing else, she could count on Helion to make things feel normal. To make her feel normal. 

She’d zoned out as Helion regaled the dinner table with his latest crowd-pleaser, a story in which he and his injured pegasus Meallan had found themselves stranded in the deep valleys at the outskirts of his court. Creative liberties were taken in his recounting to be sure, given this was most likely the fifth or sixth time he was telling it. However, she didn’t think her lack of awareness was so obvious.

“I’m quite over it already. You lost me when somehow your toga tore right off as Meallan fell out of the sky.”

“Well, I added that detail just for you, I recall you have quite the active imagination.”

“Then how lucky am I that I was able to entertain myself just before my brain could conjure any images against my will.”

“You wound me.”

“I take pleasure in it.”

“No doubt, you make no effort to hide that,” Helion’s smile was easy and light, but his eyes squinted as if assessing the lack of edge in her tone. “But it would take a little more effort to hide that something has been bothering you.”

“Helion–” she sighed. 

“I could tell the minute you arrived.”

“I’m fine.”

“Mm.” His eyes flickered over her, far too attentive. “I supposed you’re exhausted.”

“Yes, how perceptive you are.”

“And yet you’ve barely touched your meal.”

She glanced down at the untouched plate in front of her.

“Mother above Helion, your obsession with me reaches new heights.” She scoffed, trying to turn around where the conversation was headed.

“I couldn’t help myself even if I tried,” The words were teasing, but now it was his turn to lack the usual quipping tone that accompanied his banter. 

Helion waited for her to reply, to give him even an inch to go off of. 

“You are many things,” he said quietly. “Sharp-tongued. Quick. Maddening.” The corner of his mouth lifted when hers did. “But quiet? I’ve never known you to be quiet.”

Her smile faltered. When he looked at her deeper, as if urging her eyes to speak with his, she looked away, reaching for her wine instead.

“You’re reading too much into it.” 

“Perhaps,” Helion leaned back, giving her space rather than pressing closer. “I’m not going to ask if you want to talk about it, but–”

“Good.”

As it was, more people than she was comfortable with were already aware of the innards of her love life against her will. She’d be grateful if no one else was privy to the specifics of her humiliation if she could help it. 

Helion took the hint and put the rest of the conversation to bed, even if there was more he wanted to say. Before he could change the subject, Elain’s laughter bounced off of the porcelain columns, bright and airy, as delicate as she was. 

The sound was out of place enough against the quiet chatter that it drew attention immediately. Conversations softened, heads turned. And despite herself, she looked across the table. Elain’s hand was barely wrapped around Azriel’s bicep, as if she needed him to steady her.

Azriel’s reaction was immediate. His frame tightened, eyes snapping toward her, and for one awful moment, their gazes caught.

She looked away first.

Azriel removed Elain’s hand from his arm. Not harshly. Not enough for Elain to notice. She only smiled and leaned closer into his side, oblivious. She found herself feeling equally cold towards Elain, the very feeling riddling some tender part of her heart with guilt.  

No, she thought to herself. You’re acting like a child. If he did this with Elain, he could’ve done it with any woman. It changes nothing. But Azriel was still looking at her, praying to catch her eyes again if even for a second.

Feeling the pathetic, warm tears prick her waterline once again, she made a show of exasperatedly attempting to evict a pesky eyelash from her waterline. “It’s been a long day.” 

“Filthy liar.” Helion nudged her knee with his beneath the table. 

She let herself lean into it for a moment; his warmth, his kindness, his familiarity. 

She loved her family. Rhys, Feyre. Cassian. Amren, Mor, and she’d even found herself one of the few people Nesta could tolerate. But in the past few hours, that bubble had begun to feel impossibly small, everyone a bit too close for comfort, through no fault of their own. Every look, every question, every attempt to help carried the weight of their concern, and she was so tired of being worried over. So tired of being known, of having the most private parts of herself laid bare for everyone to see, even if it was out of love. Even if every person around her only wanted to protect her. 

There was no room left for her to unravel quietly, without a dozen people standing by to witness it.

Jumping at the opportunity to leave Velaris felt like a betrayal, but perhaps she needed the distance more than she realized. Helion was a breath of fresh air, a reminder that she could exist outside of her heartbreak. That she could be loved without needing to reach into every wound to somehow feel worthy of it. 

“Regardless of what’s bothering you, I’m glad you’re here. These halls have missed you.”

“I miss being here as well. Given your good sense, my role as Rhys’ emissary doesn’t allow me nearly as much time at your court as I would like. I’m mostly in Autumn nowadays, Mother help me.”

“Mother help you indeed,” Helion chuckled, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “Or, Mother help Beron, knowing you.” 

She snorted a genuine laugh for the first time in a day. “Eh, at the end of the day he’s senile at best, clinging on to his last few shreds of testosterone if only to prove to himself his withering faculties still serve him well.”

“Hmm. You’re a cruel woman.”

“I thought I was known for my sharp tongue?”

“I never said I didn’t like it.” Helion defended himself with a self-satisfied smirk. 

She rolled her eyes, feeling a tug at her lips again. “Besides, Lucien tries to make the trip down whenever I have to go. It helps, having a friend around.”

“I’m glad he can be there for you, then. You have a good head on your shoulders, that’s for sure. It’s why I’ve been trying to openly poach you to Day. We could use your smarts here. And I’d selfishly appreciate having a friend around too.”

For the first time, she did not immediately defy his offer to move here. It was only a pause that lasted all but 2 seconds, but Helion caught it. 

“You always have a home here, you know that.”

A shrill snap pierced the air. 

A few silent seconds followed, swallowing the room and every conversation with it.

The look toward Azriel was instinctual, as much as she hated to admit it. 

There was blood.

Despite her better judgement, panic still twisted low in her stomach as she regarded Azriel’s bloodied hand dripping one crimson drop after another onto the hand-woven placemat. 

Feyre and Elain gasped at the same time Rhys expelled a tired breath. Cassian murmured something unintelligible. The others were dead silent. 

Azriel had shattered the wine glass in his hand, sending the liquid and glass across his plate. He barely seemed aware of the damage he’d done, his attention instead on Helion. On Her. On Helion’s attention to her. 

Had he been eavesdropping on their conversation? The realization took root as Azriel's attention remained fixed on Helion. 

Nausea churned in her gut, threaded now with a fear that he wasn't going to let her go. She couldn’t make sense of what was going on in his head for him to cut her loose then refuse to leave her be, neither did she care to understand anymore. Yesterday, she wanted to talk. Today, it was too late. 

“For fuck’s sake,” Rhys muttered, perhaps not as quietly has he intended.

Helion said nothing, only glanced between Azriel and her. His brow drew into a deep furrow when he realized he couldn’t hear her heart beat. She had stopped breathing.

“I’m so sorry–” Rhys began, but Helion lifted a hand. 

“Accidents happen,” Helion said simply. His eyes narrowed ever so slightly that only Azriel caught it and brought him out of his strange trance. He absorbed the mess he’d made and quickly set upon cleaning up what he could. 

“I’m sorry,” Azriel repeated, looking up at her again between carelessly handling the shards of glass, still so far away from his current situation he couldn’t even register the further harm he was causing himself. 

All he could focus on was trying to meet her eyes again, and instead felt sick to his stomach when her head was turned the other way. She didn’t even seem to realize that her fingers had curled into the table cloth beside her plate, desperately trying to keep herself together in front of everyone. 

The leash Azriel kept on himself, usually tight and unyielding, had slackened without his consent. He wasn’t proud of sharpening his hearing to their conversation. He was aware he had no right. And yet, watching Helion touch her however briefly, watching her smile and soften in his presence drove him past a line he wasn’t aware of and his body acted before his mind could even register it. 

You continue to embarrass her, disrespect her. You are insufferable. He told himself as he uselessly dabbed at the wine stains on his trousers. 

Helion’s large fingers gently prodded between hers and the table cloth to release her hold. As soon as he felt her loosen, he pulled his hand back. 

“I think it’s best if we rain check dessert. It’s quite late, and I imagine everyone would benefit from some rest before the remaining courts arrive tomorrow. Please, enjoy the sitting room or the balcony if you wish,” Helion’s smile was gracious, the born host he was. But it was clear the night was over. “Azriel, please let my healer Flora take a look at that hand before you retire for the night.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Rhys wiped the corner of his mouth with his napkin before chucking it on the table harder than he meant to. 

“Let me take a look,” Elain frantically took Azriel’s hand in hers. She was the only one who would care to even touch him now, so he pathetically let her. 

She barely inspected the wound, instead holding his hand just to hold it and fussing over the amount of blood. He guiltily drank in the physical contact, the light fingertips over his wrist and forearm until, from across the table, she stood up quickly and left the dining hall. As if the shame had finally overridden his desperation, he yanked his hand from the cradle of Elain’s arms and rose to follow. 

Rhys stopped him, grabbing his bicep with such easy force that it looked harmless to anyone else. “You will not create more of a scene than you already have. You will take care of this yourself, am I clear?”

Azriel shrugged out of Rhys’ hold. Everyone else filed out of the dining room, desperate to release themselves from the uncomfortable energy the night ended on.  

“Are you alright?” Feyre asked quietly, more out of obligation than care. 

“Guess it doesn’t matter, does it?” Azriel whispered, unable to meet her eye. 

Feyre said nothing, offered no help or words of comfort. She shook her head and left as well, leaving Azriel to stew in his wounds, emotional and physical. 

Eventually, everyone retreated to their respective chambers, exhausted from the travel and lethargic from the feast Helion insisted upon for his company. 

Helion found her leaning against the threshold to the balcony off the sitting room, eyes closed against the nighttime breeze, the closest thing to relief she’s had in over a day. 

“Do you need anything?” Helion asked from behind.

She shook her head without opening her eyes or turning around. She was so sick of feeling this way, so foreign to her own self. 

“Do you need a distraction?”

Her eyes fluttered open at that, finally turning around and raising her eyebrows to feign playfulness. “You’ll have to be more specific, your many definitions of a ‘distraction’ concern me.”

He chuckled fondly at her suspicion, neither could he fault her for it. “I did acquire a few manuscripts from Thesian's libraries. Not as impressive as mine, obviously, but they’re worth a few hours of your time, I think.”

She snorted.

“I haven’t gotten a chance to look through them yet. Truthfully, I think I was waiting for you. Just the two of us, like old times,” He watched a twinkle form in her eyes. “Of course, they are in my bedchambers currently.”

She rolled her eyes so hard she felt them pulse. “You are relentless.”

“I know how it sounds.”

“It sounds exactly how you intended it to.”

“Well... yes. But it’s true, they are. Then again, multiple things can be true at once…” Helion’s flirting was so effortless, and at times so ridiculous, but he knew it always managed to make her laugh, and that’s really all he was after. 

“I think I just need to be alone tonight.” Her voice was barely higher than the ticking of the clock in the dining room behind them. 

Helion’s smile was kind and gorgeous. He shifted closer to her, if only to push open the second balcony door to widen her view. 

“Whatever you need. I know you enjoy the nights here, so I will leave her highness to her balcony,” Helion dramatically gestured towards the view, knowing she loved to spend a lot of her own time there. It was one of her favorite places, after all. “And consider the little something on the table there a gift from an old friend.”

A warm breeze carrying the faintest scent of verbena and portulaca. The railing cooled her palms as she wrapped her hands around the iron, savoring the shock of the sensation. 

Up here, it was only her. Her and the hills. Many times over the years she wished she could disappear into them, build herself a modest cottage, and never return. Nothing entirely advanced and definitely far from perfect. It would most likely remain unremarkable– a hole in the roof, a gap in the window, mismatched stonework– far from what she was used to in Velaris to be sure. But it would be hers, a product of her own two hands, and that would make it more of a home than anywhere else she’d been before. In place of the fae-light chandeliers, marble staircases, and plum-sized jewels in coffers just below her feet, she would hang herbs to dry above the kitchen sink, line crystals on the windowsills, tend to her misbehaving garden, leave out dishes of milk for the animals that wandered in and out as they pleased, and fill every empty nook of space with her favorite books.

She ached for it. At one point, she ached for it with Azriel. Just the two of them, away from court politics, Illyria, their shame, everything left behind exactly as they’d intended. She wanted a life and home with him so deeply that it played like a film reel in her mind. She'd write her stories and read them to him, rattle off the names of their most frequent animal visitors while Azriel struggled to keep up with them. Azriel would be the one to fix the hole in their roof and the gap in their window, to brew her tea and bring her to sit beside the fire until they were hungry for dinner or wine or for each other. 

Thinking about it now, she laughed bitterly with shame that she so easily let him infiltrate her dreams. A fantasy she’d created solely for herself and cultivated over the years was so easily amenable to the presence of a male she only thought she knew. She was the one who let him in, and scrubbing him from her life would begin with scrubbing him from her cottage in the hills.

Behind her, a shallow ceramic dish rested on the small bone-inlaid table between two cushioned chairs. The contents of the dish made her huff a tiny relenting laugh. She could never mistake the familiar mounds of dried leaves for anything other than mirthroot, her and Helion’s vice of choice whenever they were together. They’d always indulge towards the end of a visit, sitting at this very balcony for hours, as if they had no responsibility other than smoking every last roll they drew. These skies had heard all manner of conversion between the two. But she was thankful to partake alone, just for tonight. 

Sinking into the cushions of the over-stuffed chair, she lit the end of a small roll of mirthroot wrapped within its paper, begging the warmth of the smoke she breathed in to quell her broken heart. She liked pretending the warmth settled somewhere deeper than her lungs. Somewhere closer to the place that actually hurt.

Try as she might to erase Azriel’s image from the back of her eyelids, she could not manage to do it. With another two puffs, the familiar relaxation set into her bones. Instead of bringing the relief she expected, she felt her shoulders sag deeper into the cushions before the tears began again. They came swiftly, silently, relentlessly. She didn’t try to stop them. 

She was mourning. Mourning the version of life she had just last night before the drinking started. Mourning the version of Azriel she’d fallen in love with. Mourning the version of herself she now was because of how close she let Azriel come. 

Despite the feeling of her entire life jolting to a stop, the Day Court buzzed on below her. The world never stops spinning. How extravagant of her to nurse a broken heart on this beautiful balcony overlooking a beautiful mural of nature and life, with this beautiful fucking joint between her fingers. It could truly be worse. She couldn’t spend much longer feeling so sorry like this when truly the only loss that had happened was Azriel’s.

She was so taken by her own plight, of her fantasy cottage she was so desperately trying to reclaim, at the beauty of her surroundings, she barely registered the figure at the entrance to the balcony behind her.  

“Are you okay?” Azriel realized how stupid the question was as soon as it left his mouth. 

She quickly swiveled her neck at his voice and regarded him standing awkwardly at the threshold, as if uncertain whether stepping onto the balcony would be crossing a line.

The dark circles beneath his eyes, the way his shoulders bowed as though something invisible had settled across them— Azriel looked nothing like the Shadowsinger who could bring armies to heel with a glance. He looked exactly as miserable as she hoped he felt.

She didn’t expect to laugh in his face. Albeit mirthless, the response caught him off guard too. 

“The first time you speak to me since you tell me I was nothing more than a good fuck to you all these years, and you ask me if I’m okay?”

His face crumpled.

"I know." He swallowed. "I know, I'm sorry. It was stupid. I didn't—I didn't know what to say. I just needed to say something, I suppose."

She turned back toward the balcony, the mirthroot between her lips. This time her hand trembled slightly as she dragged the thick smoke into her lungs. Quickly wiping the tears already staining her cheeks, she scolded herself for not wiping them earlier. 

His voice was hoarse as he attempted to fill the silence, to make his appearance worth her while. "I have no right to come speak to you. No right to ask for forgiveness–”

“Yet here you are.”

“But if we could just talk…"

She didn’t respond. Instead she closed her eyes, trying to preserve the serenity that she’d come out here for in the first place before Azriel had done what he seemed incapable of resisting lately– tainting it with his presence. 

Azriel waited for her to respond, mistaking her silence for permission. “I’m not asking for much–”

“I think you’re asking for a lot.”

“Please.” His single plea was as shattered as it could get. 

“You want me to make you feel better, that’s why you’re here. This has nothing to do with me.”

Azriel’s desperation rose. This was the most she’d talked to him in the past 24 hours and her attention, regardless of the frigidity of it, was a high even more intoxicating than the mirthroot could be. “No– no that’s not true. Please.”

She clenched her teeth at his persistence and crushed the remaining mirthroot in the dish with a force she mentally directed at Azriel’s head. Finally, she rose from her chair, spinning on her heels to face him once again.

“Do you know how pathetic you sound?”

“I know. I don’t care.” he shrugged with defeat. 

"What did you think was going to happen?" Her hands flew outward. "Hmm? That you’d finally get me alone, say your piece, and I’d forgive you instantly? All it would take for me to forget you insulting me, humiliating me, wasting my fucking time was a sorry? Then what? I'd hike my dress back up and we'd pretend none of it happened?”

“No." He shook his head so quickly it bordered on frantic.“No, I don’t want– I don’t expect– it wasn’t my intention–”

“But it was, wasn’t it? It was just about the sex all these years to you? We bore our souls to each other, shared everything. I knew things about you no one else did and I told you things I thought I’d take to my grave. The sex came because of that. It was real to me, and I thought it was real for you too.” She didn’t realize when the tears had started again, or when her voice began to rise, but she couldn’t stop herself now that Azriel had opened the floodgates. 

"I just..." He scrubbed both hands over his face, feeling a situation that had already spiralled out of his control slip further. "I needed you to know I didn't mean it."

“Then why say it? Am I supposed to believe you simply because you said so?”

“I panicked. I panicked, and the first thing I thought to do was push you away. I wish it were different–”

“You told me I meant nothing to you!”

Azriel stepped closer but she immediately took a step back. Her body rejected him entirely, and although the aversion was foreign at first, it also gave her the slightest comfort that she would be okay one day without him. 

"I was trying to protect you."

She stared at him for a long moment, as though she genuinely couldn't decide whether he was actually that stupid. 

"Protect me?" she repeated quietly. "That's what you're calling this?"

"I—”

"Humiliating me and using me was protecting me?"

"I didn't mean for it to become into… everything that it has." 

"But it did," Her voice sharpened. "Whether you meant it or not, that's what happened. You stood there and made me feel small in front of you that night, in front of everyone I love that morning, and somehow you've convinced yourself that it was an act of mercy?"

"I thought if you hated me," His jaw flexed. "I thought it would make it easier for you to let me go. I never deserved you. I would’ve given you much less than you deserve."

"I refuse to let you think yourself so sacrificing," Her voice trembled with barely restrained anger. "You decided what I deserved. You decided what I could handle. You decided I should hate you. Did it ever occur to you to consider what I wanted?"

She searched his face as if hoping she'd find some trace of the man she'd loved. She couldn’t find him, even if she tried, for she did not know the man in front of her at all. 

Yes, she still loved him, but in the way a muscle retains a memory. It wasn’t the same. The brain does not always forget a memory just because it is traumatic. An arm does not forget the pain just because the bandage is off. The heart does not immediately stop loving just because it was broken. 

He opened his mouth to speak, with it came another step closer to her based on pure instinct. 

She backed up, closer to the railing now.

“Stay the fuck away from me.”

“I couldn’t sleep–”

“Go find Elain, I’m sure she’ll put you right to bed again.” Her eyes darted to his neck, where the stain had mostly faded, but it was still there– a bloom of purple against blanched skin. She’d never seen him so pale, save for when he’d almost died in her arms years ago on a mission in the Bog of Oorid.

Azriel sighed, frustrated. “I told you that was a mistake.”

“Elain of all people, Azriel? You can’t tell me that was a mistake when I was the one who sat with you while you cried over her being mated to Lucien? Who listened to you mourn another woman because you thought she was taken from you. I was the one to sit with you and console you, all while aching for you.”

"I was caught up in the idea of her," His words tumbled over each other. "Because Rhys had Feyre. Cassian had Nesta. I convinced myself... I don't know... that it was supposed to happen that way. That she was supposed to be mine. It wasn't love. It was convenience. Desperation." He laughed bitterly at himself. "At that point... I would've taken anything."

She went still. 

"Anything?"

Azriel’s stomach dropped.

"I didn't mean–"

"You did. Anything but me." Her voice was unstable, the mirthroot in her system not doing her any favors.

"It wasn't because you weren't enough."

"Oh please," Tears blurred her view of his disheveled face once again. "From where I'm standing, I spent years loving someone who would've rather settled for anyone else than take the chance on me."

“You never saw it, and I never understood how. You were always too good for me.”

"Stop saying that."

"It's true."

"No," She shook her head harder this time. "If I'm too good for you, then you never have to try. You never have to become better. You just get to decide I'm unattainable and call it selflessness.”

As she spoke, the realizations of him repulsed her. His cowardice, his self-pitying nature. She wondered how much of his own anxieties he’d projected onto her unconsciously. 

"That's not fair."

"You want to talk about fair?" The laugh she gave him was humorless and accusatory. "I see it, now. Your self-loathing has always been about you. Not me."

"It doesn't have to make sense to you," Azriel said weakly. "It's just what you do for people you love. You let them go."

"You fight to become worthy of the people you love. You don't throw yourself a pity party and call it sacrifice. You don't let your wounds keep festering because they're familiar. You heal for them, if not for yourself. That’s love, and if it really does mean something different to you, then perhaps you never loved me at all.”

The weight of her words landed squarely in his chest, in some deep part of his inner self he didn’t know could still be hurt as an adult male. The pain was only as great as it was because of the truth behind her words, the knowledge he’d failed her.  

Azriel panicked anew. Something in this already fucked conversation became worse. Became wicked, rotten, wrong. All wrong. It was worse, infinitely worse to lose her, than risk hurting her. Somehow, he’d managed both now. This was not what he wanted, what he meant to do. All he wanted now was to get her back, but the possibility of that seemed farther and farther gone. 

His resolve was bursting at the seams. 

“I do love you.” he whispered. 

She only shook her head, exhausted, and finished with the conversation. Finished with him. 

“You have to understand. You could have any male you wanted. You have had every male across Prythian throw themselves at your feet and you never even realized. For whatever reason, you chose me,” he tried to reason, her waning attention somehow spurring all of the fight he refused to give this entire time. Only when it was too late did he feel the need to try in the way she’d needed him to all along. “When you told me you wanted to be with me… when you wanted this to be real… I'd spent years convincing myself we were only friends because it was safer that way. As long as you didn't ask for more, I could pretend I wasn't failing you. I told myself if all you wanted from me was the sex, the least I could do was give you that, it was all I could be good for.”

“You knew I loved you all these years?”

A long silence followed, filled in only by the whistling breeze and voices far below the balcony’s edge. Nothing Azriel could say seemed to be the right thing. “I did.”

“So this game you played where you pretended that the love I poured into you all those years was just charity, was that to make it easier for you to cut me loose when I inevitably wanted more?”

He bristled. When she said it aloud, stripped of every excuse he'd spent years wrapping around it, it sounded exactly as evil as it was. In Azriel’s insecurity he had also been extremely selfish. He’d wasted these years he could’ve otherwise basked in her companionship.

She gestured helplessly toward him. “And it wasn’t enough.”

The panic did not subside. It grew with intensity, faster than he could manage to digest, and his heart felt like it would give out at any moment. Azriel would have never been able to predict that she would become so hurt, so distrustful of him, that every explanation would land wrong and every truth would sound uglier than the lie. 

Azriel stepped forward again, stupidly mute and unable to resist her pull he’d been at the mercy of since they’d met. 

There was nowhere for her to step back now. Her back pressed into the rail and she was reminded against her will of another railing, another night, another version of him in this exact dance, but to a very different tune. 

Suddenly he was too close. Too close in memory, too close in front of her now, it was all too much. For all of her efforts to keep him at arm’s length today, he was suddenly consuming all of her air, her mind, and now her good sense. 

Azriel intruded upon her violently, claiming every single reprieve she could possibly take. It was too much. He was too much and she was not enough. It made even more sense now than it did before. The bite of the cold rail against her back as she tried to move away again should have spurred her to leave, but instead it cemented her in place, immobile in her despair. 

"Get..." She shoved his chest, but he barely moved.

“I can’t go.” His voice cracked, finally.

She shoved harder. "Get away from me."

She shoved again. 

“Azriel, I mean it.”

One last futile shove before her voice broke entirely.

"GET AWAY!”

The anguish in his bones from her desperate screams loosened his own limbs, rocked him off balance, and he began to stumble back as though she’d struck him. 

“Get away from her. Now.” A second voice rose above the night, low and deadly. Above the muffling in her ears, the irregular beat of Azriel’s splintered heart. Azriel stepped back in shock, and a large gust of air abandoned her aching lungs. Her shoulders sagged and she gripped onto the railing to keep upright. 

Helion was already crossing the balcony before his command had reached their ears, pulling Azriel away from her by the shoulder. It wasn’t a rough tug, nor was it all that civil either. His hosting duties had taken quite a new level tonight and his patience with the male was wearing thin.

Behind him, a stone faced Rhys, flanked by Feyre and Cassian. She couldn’t find it in herself to be embarrassed tonight. The exhaustion was too great and all she wanted– all she ever wanted tonight– was to be alone. 

“I didn’t mean to,” no one would be able to tell that the voice that uttered those words belonged to the Shadowsinger of the Night Court. 

“I told you to stay away from her,” Rhys’ words were precise and measured. “I thought I made myself exceedingly clear to you this morning, but apparently you cannot be trusted with the simplest of instructions.”

Feyre and Cassian regarded Azriel with something foreign in their eyes.

Only Helion saw her. He wanted to close the distance, to put himself between Azriel and her completely, but she’d had enough of male nonsense for a lifetime. His eyes swept over her trembling hands, still clutching the iron railing. “What do you need?” 

His voice was strong, not careful or cautious like she expected. She tried to harness some of that strength into herself, just enough to get her away from here. 

“Just keep him the fuck AWAY from me.” She didn’t mean for that to come out as a sob too, but she wouldn't have been able to stop it anyway. Anger was hot in her bones, her tears, her throat. 

She stormed off the balcony, past a disheveled Azriel, a fuming Rhys, a stricken Feyre, and an unsettled Helion. 

She didn’t notice Mor waiting before the threshold of the balcony until she nearly collided with her.

Mor fell into step behind her friend without a word after giving Rhys a small nod, careful to remain a few paces behind until they got to her chambers. 

Mor caught the door she tried to slam with ease, shutting it softly behind her and they were both in the room. 

“Leave me alone,” she choked out. “I just need to be alone, no one is leaving me alone!”

“Then I’m not here.” Mor offered softly. 

She had no fight left in her. She couldn’t scrounge up the energy to tell Mor to leave or allow her stay. Detached from her immediate surroundings, she didn’t really take in the room at all. It was much less than the soft bed with extra fur blankets Helion knew she enjoyed, the stacks of books above the bureau near the window, or the marble tub of warm water sitting on a private balcony jutting off the edge of the room. The room was simply a collection of edges, able to walk this way and that, but nothing more. 

She stripped out of her clothes and put on the pajamas that may as well have materialized from thin air as she still didn’t register Mor pulling her things out of her bags for her. 

The pair of them climbed into bed. The plush mattress and the weight of the many blankets Mor pulled over them broke her out of her spell. Mor’s warmth radiated from beside her and the anger broke like hot glass, melting into an ache so seizing she could barely catch her breath.

She clutched the arm Mor wrapped around her shaking body, sobbing into her elbow. Mor squeezed her best friend as hard as she could, but said nothing in the hours that passed. Enough had already been said.