#azrielshadowsingerweek2022

The footsteps halted at his bedside, and a stifled giggle was promptly muffled by a blanket that was surely being pressed across the bedroom creeper’s lips. Azriel braced his abdominals for what he knew was to come, just as he knew his daughters’ knees were bending, readying herself to push off the ground as she fluttered her little wings and landed feet first on his stomach, her bottom following soon after.

Umph! He heard the little puff of her breath leave her as she landed on his stomach, shuffling to straddle his torso. She was still working on her crash landings, or rather, learning how to try to avoid them.

“Wake up daddy! I got you!” Rune squealed, her little fingers poked at his face, giggling as she did so. The sound of her tinkling laughter filled his heart with unbridled joy. He never thought he’d be the reason for a youngling’s happiness.

Azriel made a display of acting surprised, exclaiming theatrically “Rue! You got me good today, baby.”

Rune giggled and wrapped her little arms around his neck, stretching herself over her father’s chest, pulling her blanket up with her. A broad hand came up to rest on her back, stroking her long, unruly mane. So much like his own but softer, finer in the delicate way only a child’s hair can be. He breathed in her honey and morning dew scent.

“I’m a good sneaker, you know.”

Azriel smiled down at his four-year-old. Her little feet were planted either side of his waist as she rested her chin on a fist, her elbows digging into his chest.

Azriel arched an eyebrow, regarding his daughter. “A sneaker? Or a spy?”

“Oh, a spy!” she corrected.  “I’m gonna be Spymaster for Nyxie when we’re all grown up. Just like you and Uncle Rhysie.”

Azriel chuckled, “Oh really?”

She nodded matter of factly. “Ahuh! I’m good at finding secrets.”

He snorted, knowing very well how much of a snoop Rune was. He barely had a spare second with her mother alone.

“I know you are. But you see, what you also must understand is that you have to be good at keeping secrets, too.”

Azriel gave her a smirk as he bopped her on the nose pointedly. It was only just last week that Rune had announced to his brothers at family dinner that mama and daddy were doing yoga in bed again when Rhys had been ribbing Azriel about missing morning training sessions for three consecutive days. Cassian had looked like he was about to combust from laughter.

“I can keep ‘em!” Her bright eyes gazed back into his, the perfect portrait of righteous indignation painted across her features. She looked so much like him, big hazel eyes, raven black hair and golden-brown skin, thankfully still smooth and mostly unblemished. The only thing marring her perfect skin were the regular knicks and grazes a happy child would encounter. But her temperament, her way with people and her kindness, that was all her mother.

“Oh really? Didn’t you tell me just yesterday at bedtime that Benedict has been sneaking mama’s cookies from the kitchen?”

Rune blushed, fiddling with her blanket between her hands, her mind working to form a rebuttal to her father’s accusation.

“Yeah but… I’m just being a good spy for you daddy! You still the master now, so I tell you all the secrets. But when I’m the master, you gotta tell me when Beny steals the cookies!”

“Well in that case I guess you were just being a loyal subject then, is that right? It had nothing to do with tattling on your brother.”

“Yep! Mama said that the master is nothing without the network, daddy.” She waved her arms about as she spoke and that combined with the stern look on her little face had Azriel grimacing to contain his amusement.

“That’s very true, Rue. Mama is very smart; the Master is nothing without his network. That is why you have to all work together to protect the ones you love and the ones that trust you to protect them.”

Rune nodded solemnly; glimpses of such wisdom shown beyond her years already.

“Is that why you’re Spymaster daddy? So you can protect mama and Beny and me?”

Azriel smiled at his daughter. A whisper of sadness at the edge of his mind as he thought about the solitary reason he had been employed as Spymaster by Rhys’ cruel father centuries ago.

Shadowsinger.

So rare, so coveted.

It was no secret that his shadows could infiltrate almost any court, any kingdom. The edge his affinity over the shadows provided him, and therefore the court that he served.

Rune had always been fascinated with his vein of work. Enamoured with everything investigative and the gathering of intelligence. He wouldn’t tell his daughter today the full scope of what being Spymaster meant. He wouldn’t tell her that the pools of their enemies’ blood stained into the skin of his hands are never fully washed away. He wouldn’t expose her yet to the methods employed to gain access to vital information required to protect his family, his court and its citizens. He wouldn’t yet share with her the mental and physical lengths it takes to reel yourself back from the pit of wickedness you slip into in order to protect the fragile walls of your mind, so you do not lose yourself to the infinite realm of darkness and despair as you spiral.

No, he wouldn’t share all that with her today.

How the feared Spymaster and Shadowsinger of the Night Court had found himself with the most beautiful female he had ever known remained a mystery even to himself. Of all his proficiency in uncovering the truth, he still had no idea how a female as kind and warm as her loved his jagged and twisted soul so fiercely. And to bestow him with two children that not only loved and worshipped him, seeing not fearsome warrior, but just saw…daddy. Saw their protector, their play mate, their teacher and friend.

“That’s right baby, I do it all to protect you and mama and Beny. And before I had all of you in my life I did it all for Uncle Rhys and Uncle Cass.”

He wrapped a large hand around her head, threading his fingers gently in her soft hair and pulled her back onto his chest, pressing a kiss atop her head as she snuggled into his embrace. A small fist came to rub at her nose, her other hand still clutching her blanket.

“Mama is making pancakes,” she murmured into his chest, seemingly done with their previous conversation.

Azriel laughed. The attention spans of four-year-olds never failed to entertain him. This kid may have had his eyes and fierce loyalty, but she had Cassian’s appetite.

Rising swiftly out of bed, still clutching Rune in his arms, he exclaimed, “Well then, let’s go get pancakes!”

*******

@azrielshadowsingerweek

He is quite impressed, when she begins walking backwards down the hall. The lights are off, but she does not stumble. As if he is being pulled back to shore by a rope around his middle, he follows her.

Her hand is on the doorknob that leads to her bedroom. This is usually where they part. Azriel walks right up to her, so close that their toes could touch, and she has to crane her head back to look at him.

“Will you think of me?” he croons to her.

“What thoughts do you hope I’ll have?” Gwyn asks. Her shoulders fall back against the door, and it is like she has forgotten that they are supposed to stop. Here. They are supposed to stop.

“With all of those books you read,” Azriel breathes, “I’m sure your imagination isn’t lacking.”

“And should I take inspiration from tonight’s reading?” Gwyn says. There it is. Her voice is deep again. It draws him forward, like the tides are pulled towards the moon. “Should I think of you, with my hand between my legs?”

He has to put his hands up on the door above her head, to keep from collapsing into her. He has had too much to drink. The wine is making him think less; it makes his legs shaky. Even his fingertips are numb, as she tilts her head to the side and regards him in that irreverent way of hers.

A scent washes over him, and he has to close his eyes when he realizes that this excites her. That the taste of sea salt and sage on the back of his tongue is her, and that she is pressing her thighs together, with her palm flat against the door, her nails digging into the wood.

“You act like it would be the first time,” Azriel says, when he can finally open his eyes again.

They’ve never gotten this far, he thinks as she finally opens the door. It’s like he is falling in, and he can’t spread out his wings fast enough. She doesn’t need to put her hands on him, to make him follow. He shuts the door behind them, and leans back against it.

Moonlight pours in through her window, and it makes the freckles on her shoulders look like the iridescent flecks in the face of an opal. It wanes over half of her face, her expression the still waters of a hidden lake, and it rocks him anyway.

“One day I’m going to best you, Shadowsinger. Mark my words.”

Azriel smirked as the copper-haired Valkyrie dramatically flopped onto her back, perspiration sparkling over her brow in the moonlight. Gwyn seemed to be improving by the hour and, though he’d never admit it, it was quite possible that she would manage to win a sparring match in the not-so-distant future. But he wouldn’t make it easy for her. With an arrogant snicker he loomed over her, arms crossed over his chest.

“In your dreams, Berdara.” Offering a hand, he helped her up from the dirt floor of the ring.

“In your nightmares,” she corrected, and his laugh echoed into the warm summer evening.

“Terrifying indeed,” he answered. “Ready for core?” The priestess groaned in response, but her scowl transformed before his very eyes, her bright, beautiful gaze lighting with mischief.

“How about a little competition. Dagger throwing.” She gestured to the targets on the other side of the ring. “If you win, I’ll do whatever hellish core workout that depraved mind of yours can concoct.”

The shadowsinger raised a skeptical brow. “And if you win?”

Gwyn dragged her plump, pink lower lip between her teeth. “If I win, you give me a kiss. And we get to skip core for the night.”

His heart stuttered, lungs seizing in his chest at her suggestion. The silence stretched between them as he studied her expression, shy smile and wide, innocent eyes that glimmered with a hint of uncertainty. In a blur their interactions flashed through his mind, all of the times that he’d hoped that he had seen a hint of the same interest that he held for her. Azriel had been too afraid to test those waters, unwilling to make Gwyn even the slightest bit uncomfortable. But perhaps…

“I agree to your terms, priestess,” he murmured, reveling in the way roses bloomed on her cheeks. The Illyrian made his way to the weapons rack and retrieved six daggers, offering three of them to his companion. “Ladies first.”

“How very chivalrous of you,” she quipped. Her irreverence pulled another smile out of him, as it did quite often these days.

Azriel watched as Gwyn studied the blade and turned it over in her hand, testing the grip and the weight and the balance. Then, gripping the blade, she cocked her arm back and let it fly, the metal burying itself just to the right of where the dummy’s heart would be. She shrugged, lips turned down in an accepting grimace, before nodding to him.

The spymaster’s dagger struck true in the heart of his own target. And, since he had made the better hit, he quickly threw first for the second round, his blade burying itself in the padded sphere that was the figurine’s head.

He turned to the Valkyrie, only to be met with a heated, challenging glare. Gwyn sent her second dagger whizzing to the target, striking an area that would be… rather sensitive to a male. Azriel choked on a cough, and she now raised her own eyebrow.

“Point taken, Berdara. That round is yours.” His heart fluttered at the ear-splitting grin she gave him. With a jerk of his chin he added, “Final round. It all comes down to this.”

Gwyn’s answering eye-roll made him chuckle, but she didn’t give a witty retort. She was solely focused on the target, firing her last blade. It lodged itself in what would have been the stomach, and her nose crinkled in disappointment. It wasn’t a poor shot - it would be a grave injury - but it was not a killing blow.

The priestess was gnawing on her lip when he turned to him, no doubt waiting for his victory and subsequent abdominal agony.But Azriel didn’t want to work core. Didn’t want to make her, didn’t want to watch her. His hazel eyes burned into fathomless seas, his gaze never leaving hers as he tossed his third dagger over his shoulder. It earned him a gasp and a delicious blush as he stepped up to her, cupped her cheek, and slanted his mouth over hers.