⋆˚✩ 𝒲𝒽ℴ𝓂 𝓉𝒽ℯ 𝒮𝒽𝒶𝒹ℴ𝓌𝓈 ℛℯ𝓂ℯ𝓂𝒷ℯ𝓇 ✩˚⋆
「 𝒶𝓏𝓇𝒾ℯ𝓁 𝓍 𝓇ℯ𝒶𝒹ℯ𝓇 」
Summary: A strange break-in leaves twenty-three-year-old Elowen with more questions than answers when the intruder recognizes her and whispers that she “isn’t supposed to be here.” With Azriel intervening before she can be harmed, Elowen begins to suspect that his orders to protect her—and the strange behavior of his shadows—are connected to a past she doesn't remember.
Warnings: Dark romance themes, stalking/voyeurism, surveillance, possessiveness, attempted break-in, violence, mysterious symbols, memory loss, obsessive behaviour, romantic tension.
Word Count: 4,082 words
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Chapter 2: A Face From Before
She woke to sunlight and the lingering certainty that she hadn't been alone.
Elowen opened her eyes slowly, the way you do when you're not sure if you want to be awake yet. The bedroom was bright—too bright, the curtains still drawn but glowing gold at the edges where morning pushed through. She'd forgotten to close them properly. Or maybe she'd been too distracted by the male standing in her room to remember.
She sat up.
The balcony doors were closed. Latched. The curtains hung still in the windless air. Everything was exactly where it should be, exactly as she'd left it, and for a long moment she almost convinced herself she'd imagined the whole thing. A dream. Just another dream, like the one about the winged figure and the scarred hands and the voice saying come back to me.
Then she looked at the floor near the balcony.
Her nightgown had left a faint trail in the dust—she'd crossed the room last night after Azriel disappeared, checking the latch for the dozenth time, and her bare feet had disturbed the fine layer of pale grit that accumulated on hardwood no matter how carefully you cleaned. The trail was still there. And beside it, overlapping it, was another mark.
A footprint.
Too large to be hers. Too broad. The shape of a boot, heavy-soled, the kind a warrior might wear.
Elowen stared at it for a long time.
Then she got out of bed, pulled on a robe, and went downstairs to make tea with hands that didn't quite tremble.
---
The kitchen was bright and cheerful and utterly indifferent to her unease.
Sunlight poured through the window above the sink, catching the copper pots and making them gleam. Someone—Nuala, probably, or one of the other servants she'd been told came by occasionally—had left a bundle of fresh herbs on the counter, rosemary and thyme tied together with kitchen twine. The room smelled green and alive and completely normal, and Elowen stood in the middle of it with her teacup clutched in both hands, trying to decide whether she was angry or frightened or something else entirely.
She settled on angry.
It was easier than frightened.
"He stood in my room," she said aloud, because saying it made it real. "He stood in my room while I was sleeping, and when I asked him how long he'd been there, he said long enough. That's not normal. That's not protective. That's—"
She stopped. Took a sip of tea. Burned her tongue.
"That's Azriel being Azriel," she muttered. "Spymaster of the Night Court. Probably thinks privacy is a polite suggestion."
But the anger didn't quite stick. Beneath it was something more complicated—the memory of his shadows creeping toward her quilt, stopping at the edge like they were waiting for permission. The way he'd said perhaps you're familiarwith that strange, almost vulnerable hesitation. The fact that when she'd looked at him standing in the darkness, she hadn't been afraid.
She should have been afraid.
---
The morning passed in fits and starts.
Elowen tried to distract herself with small tasks—unpacking the last of her belongings, arranging her few books on the shelf in the living room, writing a letter to no one in particular just to feel the scratch of pen on paper. But her attention kept drifting. To the windows. To the balcony doors. To the faint scuff mark on the bedroom floor that she still hadn't wiped away.
Around midday, she noticed the book.
It was sitting on the armchair by the fireplace in the living room—a volume she didn't recognize, bound in dark leather with silver lettering on the spine. Histories of the Northern Courts. She was certain she hadn't put it there. She'd arranged her own books that morning, and none of them were bound in leather, and none of them were about northern history.
She picked it up. Turned it over in her hands. The pages were slightly worn, the spine cracked in a way that suggested someone had read it many times. A bookmark protruded from somewhere near the middle—a slip of paper, blank except for a single handwritten word in elegant, unfamiliar script:
Velaris.
Not a note. Not a message. Just the name of the city, written in ink that had faded slightly with age.
Elowen set the book down carefully on the side table. Then she checked every room in the house.
The bathroom: her hairbrush had been moved from the left side of the sink to the right. The bedroom: the drawer of her nightstand was open half an inch, though she was sure she'd closed it. The kitchen: the bundle of herbs had been untied and retied, the knot different from the one she'd noticed that morning. Nothing was missing. Nothing was damaged. But someone had been here—someone who moved through her home like they'd been doing it for years, touching things and replacing them almost exactly, leaving changes so subtle she might have missed them if she weren't already on edge.
She stood in the center of her living room, breathing slowly, and tried to think.
Not a thief. A thief would have taken something. Not a vandal—nothing was broken. Not even a spy, really, because what was there to spy on? She had no secrets. No political connections. No valuable information. She was just a young woman who'd arrived in Velaris three days ago with nothing but a pack and a sense that she'd never quite belonged anywhere.
Someone had been in her house.
And they hadn't been looking for valuables.
---
She went into the city because staying in the house felt like waiting for something to happen.
Velaris was beautiful in the early afternoon, all golden light and gentle bustle and the distant sound of music drifting from an open window somewhere near the river. The streets were crowded enough to feel alive without being overwhelming, and Elowen walked without any particular destination in mind, letting the flow of foot traffic carry her through the market district and toward the Sidra.
She was being followed.
She knew it within ten minutes. Not because she could see him—she couldn't, not even when she looked—but because the same prickling awareness she'd felt on her first day had returned, sharper now that she knew what she was sensing. It was like a pressure at the back of her neck, a weight between her shoulder blades. The knowledge that someone was watching.
She walked faster.
Turned down a side street, then another, then doubled back through an alley that smelled of baking bread and led her out into a small square she didn't recognize. A fountain burbled in the center, surrounded by benches where elderly fae sat reading newspapers and feeding crumbs to the birds. Very normal. Very public. Very much not the kind of place where you could lurk without being noticed.
She sat down on an empty bench and waited.
Nothing happened for perhaps five minutes. Then a shadow shifted in the corner of her vision, and when she turned her head, Azriel was standing at the edge of the square.
He wasn't trying to hide. That was almost worse—the casual way he leaned against the wall of a building, arms crossed, wings folded behind him like he had every right to be there. His shadows coiled lazily around his shoulders, and his hazel eyes were fixed on her with that same unnerving intensity she'd noticed yesterday.
Elowen stood up.
She didn't walk toward him. Instead, she turned and walked in the opposite direction—away from the square, away from the fountain, toward a narrow street that she knew led to the river. She didn't look back. She just walked, her heart beating faster than it should, waiting to see what he would do.
She felt him follow.
Not close. Not obvious. But there, always there, a presence at the edge of her awareness. She turned left, and a minute later she sensed him turning left behind her. She crossed a bridge, and by the time she reached the other side, she could see his shadow falling across the water from somewhere above.
Rooftops. He was on the rooftops.
She stopped walking.
Turned around.
There was nothing above her but sky and the peaked roofs of the riverside buildings, their tiles gleaming in the afternoon sun. But she knew he was there. She could feel him.
"Are you planning to follow me all day?" she called out.
A pause. Then his voice, quiet and close despite coming from nowhere she could see:
"Are you planning to make it necessary?"
She spun, trying to locate the source of the sound, and found nothing. Just empty street and glinting water and the distant laughter of children playing somewhere downstream.
"This is absurd," she said. "Come down here. Now."
Another pause. Longer this time. Then the air beside her shifted, and Azriel was standing three feet away like he'd been there all along, his wings folding neatly behind him, his expression as unreadable as ever.
"You're very demanding," he observed.
"You're very invasive."
One dark eyebrow lifted. Just slightly. "I'm doing my job."
"Your job." Elowen crossed her arms. "Your job is to stand in my bedroom while I sleep? To follow me through the city like I'm a threat? To appear behind me on deserted paths and tell me I shouldn't be somewhere without explaining why?"
"Yes."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the truth." His voice was calm. Infuriatingly calm. "I was assigned to protect you. I'm protecting you."
"From what?"
He didn't answer.
Elowen stepped closer to him—not because she wanted to be closer, she told herself, but because she wanted to see his face more clearly. Wanted to read whatever he was hiding behind those hazel eyes. "Someone broke into my house last night," she said. "Or this morning, I'm not sure which. They moved things. Touched things. Didn't take anything—just... looked. Do you know anything about that?"
Something flickered in Azriel's expression. It was gone before she could identify it, but she saw it—a tightening around his eyes, a subtle shift in the set of his jaw.
"No," he said. "I didn't know."
"But you're not surprised."
"I'm rarely surprised."
"That must be exhausting."
The corner of his mouth moved. Not a smile. But close. "You have no idea."
They stood there in the middle of the riverside street, facing each other, and Elowen became abruptly aware of how close she was to him. Close enough to see the faint scars that traced along his jaw. Close enough to notice that his shadows were reaching toward her again, curling through the air between them like curious fingers. Close enough to smell him—something dark and clean, like rain on stone, like night air in a forest.
She stepped back.
"I want to know who gave you the order to watch me," she said. "And I want to know what I'm supposed to be in danger from. And I want you to stop standing in my bedroom while I sleep."
"Rhysand gave the order." Azriel's voice was even. "As for the other two requests—I can't."
"Can't or won't?"
"Both."
"Why?"
His shadows coiled tighter around his shoulders. "Because I don't know what you're in danger from. And I'm not willing to risk finding out by leaving you unguarded."
"That's not—" She stopped. Took a breath. "I don't need a guard. I've taken care of myself for years. I've traveled through courts far more dangerous than this one, and I've done it alone, and I'm still alive. I don't need you lurking in my shadows like some kind of—of—"
"Spymaster?" he suggested.
"Menace."
Another almost-smile. "I've been called worse."
"I'm sure you have." She was breathing harder than she should be, her cheeks flushed with irritation, and she hated that he looked so calm. Hated that he was watching her with that steady, unhurried attention, like he had all the time in the world and nothing better to do than catalogue every expression that crossed her face. "Why do you keep looking at me like that?"
"Like what?"
"Like—" She gestured vaguely. "Like you're trying to memorize me."
He didn't answer immediately. His shadows drifted closer to her, and he pulled them back with what looked like conscious effort, his jaw tightening.
"Perhaps I am," he said quietly.
Elowen's breath caught.
The moment stretched—too long, too charged, the air between them thick with something she couldn't name. Then Azriel stepped back, his wings shifting, his expression settling into its usual unreadable mask.
"You should go home," he said. "I'll make sure no one's been inside since this morning."
"And after that?"
"After that, I'll be nearby."
She wanted to argue. Wanted to tell him that she didn't want him nearby, that she didn't need his protection, that she was perfectly capable of taking care of herself. But the words wouldn't come. Because some part of her—the part that had touched the feather in her nightstand and felt home, the part that had dreamed of scarred hands reaching for her in the darkness—didn't want him to leave.
She hated that part of herself.
"Fine," she said. "But if I find you in my bedroom again, I'm throwing something at you."
This time, the corner of his mouth definitely moved.
---
The sun was beginning its slow descent toward the mountains when Elowen finally returned home.
She'd spent the rest of the afternoon in a café near the Rainbow, trying to read a novel she'd bought at the bookshop and failing to absorb a single word. Her mind kept circling back to Azriel—to the way his shadows had reached for her, to the strange hesitation in his voice when he'd said perhaps I am, to the fact that someone had been in her house and he hadn't seemed surprised.
She unlocked the front door and stepped inside.
The house was quiet. Still. Exactly as she'd left it, except—
The book was gone.
The leather-bound volume she'd found on the armchair earlier, the one with the bookmark that said Velaris. It was no longer on the side table where she'd left it. She checked the floor, the bookshelf, the kitchen counter. Nothing. The book had vanished as completely as if it had never been there at all.
Elowen's skin prickled.
She moved through the house room by room, checking for any other changes. The hairbrush was back on the left side of the sink. The nightstand drawer was fully closed. The bundle of herbs in the kitchen had been retied again, the knot now matching exactly the one she'd noticed that morning.
Someone had been here. Again. And this time they'd taken something.
She was standing in the living room, trying to decide whether to be frightened or furious, when she heard it.
A sound at the front door.
Not a knock. Not the polite tap of someone announcing their presence. This was something else—a scrape of metal on metal, the click of a lock being tested. The sound of someone trying to get in.
Elowen's heart slammed against her ribs.
She backed away from the door, her eyes scanning the room for—what? A weapon? She didn't own weapons. She'd never needed them. She was a traveler, a wanderer, a young woman who'd spent years moving from place to place without ever once needing to fight.
The scraping sound came again.
Then the lock clicked open.
The door swung inward, and a figure stepped through—tall, cloaked, features hidden in the shadow of a deep hood. Magic crackled around their fingers like lightning waiting to strike, and their presence filled the entryway with a pressure that made Elowen's ears pop.
She stumbled backward.
The figure saw her. Paused. And then—
"She's not supposed to be here."
The words were barely a whisper, spoken with a shock so genuine that it stopped Elowen in her tracks. The intruder was staring at her like they'd seen a ghost, their hooded face frozen, their crackling magic flickering uncertainly.
"What—" Elowen started.
And then the shadows exploded.
Azriel appeared between her and the intruder so fast she didn't see him move. One moment there was empty air, and the next there were wings and darkness and the glint of a blade that seemed to materialize from the shadows themselves. His shadows weren't gentle now—they were vicious, lashing out like living weapons, filling the entryway with a darkness so absolute that Elowen couldn't see anything beyond the span of her own outstretched hands.
She heard the fight more than she saw it. The clash of steel on steel. The grunt of impact. The sharp crack of magic discharging. Feet scrambling on hardwood. Something shattered—the vase on the entry table, probably, the one with the fresh flowers.
And through it all, Azriel's shadows wrapped around her like a shield, cool and dark and strangely gentle despite the violence happening just feet away. They pressed against her skin, her shoulders, her arms, and she had the sudden, inexplicable sense that they were protecting her. Not just blocking her from the fight—actively shielding her, deflecting something that might have hit her.
The intruder cried out—a sound of pain, surprise, and then frustration. There was another burst of magic, another clash of blades, and then the pressure in the room shifted as the front door slammed open and the intruder fled into the gathering dusk.
Silence.
The shadows receded slowly, pulling back from Elowen's skin with something that felt almost like reluctance. Azriel stood in the middle of the ruined entryway, his chest heaving, his blade still drawn, his wings half-spread in a posture of barely contained violence.
He turned to look at her.
"Are you hurt?"
His voice was rough. Strained in a way she hadn't heard before. His shadows still swirled around him like a storm barely held in check, and there was a cut on his forearm that was already healing, the blood dark against his scarred skin.
"No," Elowen managed. "I'm—no. What was that? Who was that?"
"Someone who shouldn't have been able to get past the wards." He sheathed his blade and moved toward her, his eyes scanning her face, her throat, her shoulders. Checking for injuries. "The protections on this house were set by Rhysand himself. Only someone with considerable power could have bypassed them."
"They said—" She swallowed. "They said she's not supposed to be here. They were looking at me when they said it. They recognized me."
Azriel's expression flickered.
"You know what they meant," Elowen said. "Don't you? You recognized that symbol on their—" She paused. "There was something. I saw it. A token around their neck."
She hadn't seen it consciously—not in the chaos of the fight—but the image surfaced now, dredged up from some deep well of observation she hadn't known she possessed. A silver disc, old and tarnished, engraved with something she couldn't quite remember.
Azriel said nothing.
But his hand moved to his pocket—an instinctive gesture, quickly aborted—and Elowen's eyes tracked the movement.
"What did you find?" she demanded.
"Nothing."
"You're lying again."
His jaw tightened. "Elowen—"
"I've been in this city for three days. Three days, and I've been watched, followed, my house has been broken into twice, and now someone just tried to—what? Attack me? Kidnap me? And all of it, all of it, seems to be about something I don't remember and something you won't tell me." She was breathing hard now, her voice rising despite herself. "So I am asking you, Azriel. What is going on?"
He looked at her for a long moment. The shadows around his shoulders had gone very still.
"The intruder dropped something," he said finally. "When they fled. A token."
"Show me."
"Elowen—"
"Show me."
He reached into his pocket. Pulled out something small and silver that gleamed dully in the fading light from the doorway. A coin, or a medallion, old enough that the edges had worn smooth. Engraved on its surface was a symbol she didn't recognize—a woman, or the shape of a woman, surrounded by curls of what might have been shadow or might have been hair.
Elowen stared at it.
Something stirred in the back of her mind. Not a memory. Not quite. The shape of a memory—the sense that she'd seen this symbol before, in a dream or a book or a life she couldn't quite reach.
"I don't—" She stopped. Took the token from his hand. The metal was cold against her palm. "Why does this feel familiar?"
Azriel didn't answer.
She looked up at him. "You know what it means."
"I have... suspicions."
"Then tell me."
He was silent for so long she thought he wasn't going to answer. Then he said, very quietly: "The symbol is ancient. Older than the Night Court. Older than the courts themselves, maybe. It depicts a woman bound to shadows—not trapped by them, but one with them. There are stories. Legends, mostly. About a figure who existed before the courts were formed. A woman who could command darkness the way I command my shadows. Who was feared and revered in equal measure."
"And you think that woman is me?"
"I don't know what I think." His voice was rough. "But my shadows have never reacted to anyone the way they react to you. And that token—" He nodded toward the silver disc in her palm. "That token is not something you find by accident. Whoever attacked you tonight is connected to something very old. Something that was supposed to have been lost."
Elowen closed her fingers around the token. The metal had begun to warm against her skin.
"She's not supposed to be here," she repeated. "That's what they said."
"Yes."
"Which means someone thought I was dead. Or gone. Or—" She stopped. "Or someone wanted me to be."
Azriel's expression was answer enough.
---
They searched the house together, room by room, checking for any sign that the intruder had left something behind. They found nothing—no hidden weapons, no listening charms, no further evidence of tampering. Whoever had broken in, they'd been singularly focused on the entryway. On Elowen.
Azriel walked her to her bedroom when the search was done.
"I'll be outside," he said. "The balcony. The rooftop. Somewhere close. If you need me—"
"I'll scream," Elowen said. "Loudly."
"Good."
He turned to go. Paused in the doorway. His wings shifted, and for a moment he looked like he wanted to say something else—something that mattered, something that might explain the strange tension that had been humming between them since the moment they'd met.
But all he said was: "Lock the door."
She locked it.
She locked every door, every window, every latch. She closed the curtains and checked the balcony doors twice and climbed into bed with the silver token still clutched in her hand. She should have been terrified. Someone had broken into her home. Someone had recognized her. Someone thought she wasn't supposed to exist.
But all she could think about was the way Azriel's shadows had wrapped around her during the fight. The way they'd pressed against her skin like they knew her. The way he'd looked at her afterward—like he was trying to solve a puzzle he'd been working on for centuries.
She fell asleep with the token in her palm and the feather in her drawer and the sense that something enormous was shifting just beneath the surface of her life.
---
She dreamed again.
The same vast darkness. The same winged figure. This time she could see his face more clearly—the sharp jaw, the hazel eyes, the shadows that curled around him like a second skin. He was reaching for her. Always reaching for her.
And she was reaching back.
"Come back to me," he said.
And this time, in the dream, she answered: "I'm trying."
---
Across the city, on a rooftop that overlooked a quiet house with a balcony and tall windows and curtains that moved when there was no wind, Azriel turned the silver token over in his scarred hands.
His shadows whispered to him. They'd been whispering all night, ever since the fight, ever since they'd wrapped around Elowen and felt something he still couldn't explain.
Mistress, they whispered. Mistress. Mistress.
He'd never heard them use that word before.
He tucked the token into his pocket and watched the curtains of Elowen's bedroom flutter in a breeze that wasn't there.
