#shadowsinger x reader

You had long since lost count of time, with nothing but darkness surrounding you and no hope for any light to work its way into this godforsaken pit, days were passing by without your knowledge. It had been years at this point, how many, you didn’t know but long enough for the world outside to be a distant echo and for your presence to have faded into a pitiful whisper.

Years passed by with only the reminders of your old life to keep you company; you often dreamed of those times your brother carved out time in his day to braid your hair or when you would both jump out of the windows late at night to fly over Velaris together. You’d dream of your mother, how she’d let you sit and ‘help’ her make dresses or that time you were so outraged when you were learning how to fly and she pushed you straight from the balcony of the House of Wind so that you had no choice but to fly.

Your days were filled with flashes of them all; your mother, Rhysand, Mor and Cassian.

You wondered how much of life had moved on without you.

Was Rhysand High Lord yet?

If he was, how had your father died?

Had Rhysand found his mate?

Had he made her High Lady like you both always spoke about?

In those extra difficult times that your control slipped even further, those memories of the Shadowsinger would linger the harshest.

You did not like thinking of how much his life had moved on without you.

Rhysand and Feyre stood together in the kitchen of the townhouse, looking through the window into the garden where Elain was tending to the flower garden and Azriel was sprawled out nearby, sunning his wings.

“Do you think the Cauldron can make mistakes with mates?” Feyre asked him, a look of confused anguish on her face.

Rhysand looked towards his mate, surprise dancing in his eyes at her question. “Nobody truly knows what makes the cauldron put two people together. They’re not always perfectly compatible, my own parents were examples of that, they never truly loved each other. Others, like us, are lucky to find love with their mate.”

Feyre continued looking out into the garden. “Why couldn’t the cauldron have made Azriel, Elain’s mate, instead of Lucien. Lucien is good but they look good together,” Feyre pointed out to where the Shadowsinger was still sprawled on the grass.

A pulse of pain pulled through their bond causing Feyre to snap her eyes back to Rhys. She was surprised to see the pain in his eyes, it wasn’t just any pain. It was the sort of pain that lingered and dwelled, a grief that would forever remain no matter how much time passed but there was also a subtle protectiveness in his eyes that could almost be missed.

Feyre was confused.

Rhysand swallowed a lump in his throat before speaking. “Do not mistake Azriel’s kindness towards your sister as affection. He is spending time with her because I ordered him too, to try and understand her powers. You’re reading into something that isn’t there.” His voice was stern but not unkind.

Feyre’s brows furrowed at his words. “It would be an honour for Azriel to find his mate, with anyone.”

“Azriel does not want a mate, Feyre.” The sheer confidence in Rhysand’s words only confused her even more.

“But why would he not want a mate? I thought everyone dreams of having one.” She questioned, looking out at Azriel’s figure in the garden.

She thought Azriel of all people would want a mate.

“Azriel has already had his great love,” Rhysand said. “No mating bond could ever live up to that for him. There are loves that even the cauldron cannot compete with.”

“What?” Feyre asked, shock taking over her face. “Who?”

That pain appeared in Rhys’ eyes again, a quick flash but it was there. “I meant it when I said I have no secrets to keep from you but not all stories are solely mine to tell. I am not going to tell you Azriel’s secrets.”

Feyre nodded silently. She understood, it didn’t diminish her curiosity but she would not pry for answers that weren’t hers to have.

Azriel’s footsteps were silent as always, shadows licking at his heals and fingertips as he walked towards Rhys’ office.

Not bothering to knock, his gloved hand unlatched the handle as he stepped inside. “You called, brother?”

Rhys was sat back in his chair, unsurprisingly dressed in his formals but the conflicted look on his face ruffled his demeanour. “I’d like to preface by saying you haven’t done anything wrong, my mate simply is too nosey for her own good and sees things she hopes are there rather than reality at times.”

Azriel’s face remained at an impasse other than the slight narrowing of his golden, hazel eyes.

Rhysand sighed. “Feyre is under the impression that you and Elain may make for a better match than her and Lucien.”

The control Azriel had on himself immediately slipped as he stepped back, eyes widening in shock, fists clenching by his sides as his shadows fluttered around him. “No. Rhys, I would never-”

“I know” Rhys interrupted. “I am not accusing you of doing anything, Az. I just thought it best to let you know.”

Azriel shifted uncomfortably at his words. “You know there is no one else, there never has been and there will never be anyone else.” He insisted, wanting his brother to believe him.

Rhysand’s gaze softened. “I know. I have never doubted that even though it would be okay if eventually-”

“No!” Azriel’s cut him off, “There will never be another.”

“Okay,” Rhys conceded. “I just wanted to let you know, Azriel.”

Azriel nodded his head, not hesitating in taking his exit, leaving Rhys there in a suffocating silence of loss.

“You’re distracted,” Cassian dropped his stance, looking towards Feyre intently.

His High Lady sighed in frustration, leaning back against the ropes of the sparring ring.

“What’s on your mind?” He asked.

Feyre pursed her lips in contemplation before relenting. “Did you three actually used do things in the same room as each other?”

Cassian barked out a deep laugh at her question. “That’s what’s on your mind?”

Feyre shrugged sheepishly.

Cassian shook his head, a large smirk tugging at his lips. “Well, Rhys and I did. It would be a bit weird and incredibly uncomfortable for us all if Azriel did.”

Feyre tilted her head curiously, “Why?”

“Well, it wouldn’t be very nice for Rhys to see his best friend having his way with the girl he loves more than anything, would it?” He said, as though it was obvious. “Besides, Azriel has way too much respect for him to do that anyways.”

Feyre’s eyes widened in shock but there was also a sickening feeling of jealously bubbling in her stomach. “So, Azriel and Rhys loved the same girl?”

Cassian, way too focused now on stretching to acknowledge how his words had been interpreted. “We all love her but those two always have and always will love her most. She’s their number one girl.”

Number one girl.

Feyre did not like the sound of that at all. She hated it and she hated herself even more because of the jealously that gnawed at her. “They didn’t hate each other for that?” She questioned.

Cassian shook his head, mid lunge. “Azriel had no reason to hate Rhys. It was difficult for Rhys to accept in the beginning and Azriel understood that but Rhys saw how much love was there, it was impossible to miss so who was he to stand in the way of that?”

Feyre stood in thought for a moment. “So, Rhys loved her first?”

Cassian laughed. “Of course he did. It’s not really a competition though, is it?”

She didn’t answer him, she simply stood there, thoughts swirling.

Feyre hated herself, she hated that she could not stop thinking about this girl who must have been something really special for both Rhys and Azriel to both love.

She’s their number one girl.

No matter how hard she had tried to not think about it, she couldn’t help it.

“What’s on your mind, Feyre darling?” Rhys’ smooth voice slipped through the silence of their bedroom.

She looked up at him from her place at the edge of their bed. “It’s nothing,” she stated simply.

Rhys frowned at her dismissal, placing his watch on his bedside table before walking to stand in front of her. He pressed a palm to the side of her face. “Tell me what’s on your mind?”

She sighed, mostly in frustration at herself, partially in his insistence to talk about it. “Where you in love with Azriel’s mate?”

The utter bewilderment that appeared on Rhys’ face made her immediately regret her words and watch to shrink back in on herself. “What!?”

Feyre shook her head. “It doesn’t matter,” she tried to pull away but Rhys kept his hand on the side of her face, steadying her.

“Azriel doesn’t have a mate,” he told her, utter confusion lacing his words.

Feyre shrugged, “Were you in love with the same girl then?”

“I’m so confused, no?” Rhys said, having absolutely no idea where she could’ve gotten this from. “Where have you gotten this from?”

Feyre looked at him, frustration beginning to build within her. “I asked Cassian about how you used to do things in the same room, he said you and him did but not Azriel because it wouldn’t be nice for him to be pleasuring a girl that you loved! He said she was yours and Azriel’s number one girl.”

Rhys pulled his hand from her face and placed it over his mouth. The confusion in his eyes had faded into a an amusing sparkle as his shoulders began shaking with suppressed laughter.

“What!?” Feyre huffed. “What are you laughing at!?”

Rhysand released a full deep chuckle at her frustrations. “Cassian is an idiot and you are utterly beautiful when you’re jealous.”

“I am not jealous!” She argued.

Rhys simply raised an eyebrow at her, completely unconvinced. “You’ve completely misinterpreted Cassian’s words, Feyre darling. It is still not my story to tell but I can promise you that Azriel and I have never been in love with the same girl.”

It had been five centuries since the disappearance of you and your mother and Azriel had never been the same.

Long before he met you, Azriel had learned what it meant to live in loneliness with nothing but his shadows for company but loneliness in response to your absence was never quite something anyone could become familiar with.

It was an endless void of nothing. Normally the thread of silence would at least end somewhere; a place where you simply got used to the feeling of someone not being there; but not with you.

It had been five centuries since your last laugh and that entire time Azriel has spent sleeping in your room. The room that sat right next to his own where your beds were pushed against the shared wall so even in your own beds you would be sleeping as close as you could get to each other.

It remained exactly how you left it, the same books sat on the nightstands, the same jewellery littered across a dressing table and a beautiful dress of deep blue with glittering silver stars on the bodice hung from the door of the closet, preparing to be worn for a day that never came.

Each morning that Azriel woke and got ready for the day, his last words to the House of Wind always remained the same. Leave it exactly how she left it, please.

The House always listened.

Whilst Azriel no longer slept in his own room, it had changed. The walls that were once a basic white had been transformed into a purple so unique it could only reflect the colour of your eyes.

In those rare moments that Azriel was able to relax away from the world, he would lay in his bed and stare at the walls of his room and whilst they could never reflect the light in a sparkle the way your own eyes could, the paint would simply have to do.

The winter chill of the Illyrian Steppes bit harshly into your cheeks as you ran through the thick snow into the forests surrounding the Windhaven camp.

The males were awful here, brutal even but even they knew to leave the daughter of the High Lord alone and so you were free to wander without the risk of your wings being torn from your back.

The trees created sanctuary for you here, as you weaved in between them you thought of your brother, Rhys and how quickly he would lose his mind once he found you gone.

A deep rooted feeling of being watched suddenly stirred in your stomach causing you to pause. It was the most subtle weight you had ever felt and yet you could not help but feel it as it settled into your bones.

You cast a quick glance up into the branches of the trees above you, where their leaves and twigs clashed and combined with one another, it took a moment for you to spot them but eventually you did.

Within a particular tall tree that was shaped in all groves and turns towards the top, deep within the shadows is where you saw him.

A male.

Sitting, observing.

“Hello,” you greeted softly.

No answer.

“What are you doing up there?” You asked.

The shadows fluttered and twitched at first before melting away into a black mist behind the males shoulders, revealing his face.

“Oh,” you whispered, taking in the hard expression of his face. He had hair of a dark midnight sky, eyebrows just a shade lighter that were furrowed deeply, shadowing his eyes that, against his dark features, seemed to glow golden when they narrowed towards you. He was all sharp lines and tensed muscles.

He shifted slightly in his place against the branches of the tree before stepping forward and allowing himself to gracefully drop down in front of you, merely inches away as he stared down into your eyes.

“How did you see me?” He asked, his voice was rough and deep for his age, possibly a couple years older than you, but his tone was steady.

“I didn’t,” you admitted. “I felt your eyes on me.”

It was then that you took notice of just how tightly his wings were pulled in at his back, a complete contrast to yours that were much more relaxed; pulled in just enough to protect them but let out enough that you didn’t have to consciously hold them in all the time, “you’ll get back pain holding them in like that,” you told him, pointing briefly at his wings.

They twitched in response, shadows fluttering wildly around the tips of his wings. It wasn’t a purposeful movement, that you could tell.

“I can’t control them,” He admitted to you.

Your brows furrowed, “what do you mean?”

“I cannot fly,” he said. “I never learned how to control them.”

You stepped back at his words. “You can’t fly!?” You spluttered in outrage. “Why can’t you fly? Are you injured?”

He shrugged in a way that showed this wasn’t a big deal to him, as though it was normal. “I wasn’t allowed outside,” he stated simply.

You frowned, the idea of not being allowed outside was unfathomable to you. “You weren’t allowed?”

“My father didn’t let me,” his words remained even, unaware of the turmoil that was stirring in your gut the more he spoke, a turmoil that you couldn’t quite explain.

“Why?” You asked.

“Because I am a bastard,” he said, his tone empty and detached, as though he had long since accepted that was all he was reduced to.

You did not like how he seemed to convinced that that’s all he was worth.

“You’re a Shadowsinger,” you pointed out, remembering old tales of myths and legends you had read before. “Those are very rare.”

The shadows clinging to him fluttered and preened at the tips of his wings and over his shoulders as though they understood your words.

Azriel nodded in response, feet scuffing into the dirt often forest uncomfortably at your words.

“That’s so cool!” You whispered in awe, the admiration you felt was completely authentic but you were also hoping it comforted him a bit.

He looked at you, the only hint of confusion on his face was the soft crease between his browns and the subtlest tilt of his head. “You’re not scared?” He asked.

“Of what?” You laughed, as though the idea was absurd.

“Of me,” he raised one of his gloved hands, tapping his index finger into his chest.

“Have you given me a reason to be scared?”

He paused at your question, internally baffled at this entire interaction. “I suppose not,” he muttered to himself, the idea of you not being scared simply just from his presence was beyond him.

“What’s your name?” You abruptly changed the subject.

He was silent for a moment, contemplating whether he should tell you or not. “Azriel.”

“Azriel,” you repeated softly, testing how it sounded. “That’s a beautiful name,” you told him.

His shadows twitched, his wings almost flinched at your complement, Azriel shifted uncomfortably.

“Do you want to be my friend, Azriel?”

“I’ve never had a friend before,” he admitted, shrugging his shoulders. “I don’t think I’d be good at it.”

You pursed your lips in response, looking around the forest floor before speaking. “I’ve never really had a friend either, there’s my brother, Rhys, but he doesn’t count. Do you have any siblings?”

Azriel tensed at your question, his entire body stiffening, hands clenching in his gloves. “No, it’s just me.”

“Well,” you began, “I’d be honoured to be your first friend, if you’ll be mine?”

You were beyond confusing to Azriel, the first person besides his mother to not look at him with fear or disgust, to look at him and just see a person.

Azriel did not reply verbally but he didn’t need to, you didn’t mind and so he simply nodded in response earning a beaming smile from you.

“Spread your wings out wide,” you instructed softly.

“They’re heavy,” Azriel muttered, wings spreading in stuttering movements, face twisting slightly as he concentrated on holding them.

Your eyes ran along his wings now that they weren’t tucked in painfully right, taking in the large span of them, they fluttered under your gaze, completely against Azriel’s control.

“That’s because your back muscles aren’t used to holding their weight, we’ll need to strengthen them,” you explained, eyes snapping away from his wings, towards his own hazel eyes instead.

“How do we strengthen them?” He asked.

“Exercises, most are trained from babies to use their wings so it comes a lot more naturally but we can do it together.” You smiled at him encouragingly.

You knew this was hard for him, you knew he thought he wasn’t worth your help and you knew that this entire situation was uncomfortable for him but you wanted to help him and you liked spending time with him.

“I struggled with flying at first,” you admitted, hoping it would comfort him in some way.

His eyes stopped glancing to the trees around you, now focused. “Really?”

You nodded. “Yeah, Rhys was flying before he could walk but I was too scared to do it. I didn’t trust myself. I kept imagining my wings just not working one day and falling to my death.”

Azriel shifted subtly, shadows restless. “How did you do it?”

“I had no choice,” you said. “One day my mother and I were looking at the stars from the balcony of our home and she just pushed me off, I had no choice but to trust my wings or fall and I flew for the first time that day.”

Azriel’s eyes widened. “She pushed you off the balcony!?”

You smiled widely. “Yeah, I was so angry, I didn’t speak to her for a week but it worked. I won’t be pushing you off ledges until you can hold your wings properly though.”

You could detect the subtle relief that reflected in the golden hazel hue of Azriel’s eyes, as though he expected you to be able to push him off of any ledge and force him to command his wings that didn’t seem willing to answer him yet.

At some point, you will take great joy in pushing him off a cliff.

Not yet though.

Only when he was ready.

“Where does my starlight keep running off to?” Your mother’s gentle voice filtered through your ears as she brushed through your hair carefully.

You were silent for a moment, contemplating whether to reveal your secret. “I made a friend.”

You felt the comb pause briefly against your head before it continued. Your mother hummed absentmindedly. “Did you? Do I get to meet this friend?”

You pursed your lips in contemplation, an unexplainable feeling of protectiveness surging through your body. “He’s shy, he doesn’t like being around people,” you told her.

You missed the amused smile that appeared on your mother’s face, no doubt intrigued at the strange protectiveness that you had for your age. “He?” She asked, almost teasingly.

You huffed in response but a smile grew on your face that you couldn’t stop. “Yes,” you said strongly before your tone shifted to pride. “He’s my friend, I’m teaching him to fly.”

Your mother paused entirely, turning your body to face her own causing your eyes to meet her own that held the same violet hue she passed down to you and your brother. “Teaching him to fly? How old is this friend?”

Your shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe Rhys’ age. His father never let him outside so he can’t fly.”

Worry clouded your mother’s face at your words. “Is he a good boy?”

A bright smile overtook your face at her question. “He’s the best! He’s very quiet but he still speaks to me and he listens to all of my complaining and his shadows play with my hair!”

“Shadows?” Your mother’s eyebrows rose in surprise.

“He’s a Shadowsinger,” you whispered. “Those are very rare.”

“They are,” she repeated. “Don’t tell your father about him, starlight.”

“I would never,” you swore, your voice demonstrating the dramatic outrage of a child who couldn’t fathom sharing information like that to your father. “Mama?”

“Yes, starlight?” She asked, turning you back around so she could start braiding your hair.

“Don’t tell Rhys, okay?” You told her, your brother could get way too protective, it was embarrassing.

“I would never tell Rhys, starlight. Or Cassian.” She promised.

“Definitely not Cassian.” You agreed.

“I’m not ready!” Azriel protested, warily looking over the edge of the cliff you had pretty much dragged him too.

“You are ready!” You argued. “You’ve got great control of your wings and your muscles are as strong as can be!”

Azriel shook his head, shadows darting around him, showing his nerves. “What if I fall?”

“Then I’ll catch you!” You replied simply.

“I’m too heavy for you to catch me!” He protested.

“You are not, I’m strong!” You argued, outraged at his accusation. “I’ll hold your hands?” You proposed, already reaching out towards his own gloved hands.

Azriel looked down at your outstretched hands, hesitation clear on his face, he really wasn’t sure about this but he did really want to be able to fly.

He relented, placing his hands in yours, earning himself one of your bright smiles, stars twinkling happily in your eyes.

Your wings fluttered slowly, not enough to lift you off the ground, just enough to encourage Azriel to copy your actions.

You slowly increased the force at which your wings beat, air building with the crevice of each controlled flap of the membrane.

Azriel copied your movements, his own wings much larger in comparison to any you’ve seen on other children your age, your own were quite big for a female Illyrian so young.

Azriel felt the change in gravity, the way his feet were itching to leave the ground on their own accord, as though his body was fully attuned and aware to what was currently happening even if it was unfamiliar.

“You’re doing it,” you whispered proudly, your own feet lifting off the ground before Azriel’s but your hands stayed in his as you remained stationary in the air, feet just slightly off the ground as you waited patiently for his own body to rise into the wind.

“You’re so close, just a bit more.” You encouraged him.

The second the air swept beneath Azriel’s feet for the first time, it felt as though his entire body was about to fall backwards as he had nothing to stand on but your hands tightened on his own, keeping him straight as he unsteadily rose with you, trying to focus on keeping his wings moving.

“It’ll come naturally the more you do it,” you told him. “You won’t even have to think about it.”

Azriel wasn’t so sure about that but as he felt the wind beneath his wings as he became airborne for the first time, with your hands holding his, he chose to believe you anyway.

“You’re flying Azriel!” Sheer joy and pride filled your face as you looked at him, he thought you looked beautiful like this.

The wind causing your hair to flutter around your face, eyes sparkling at the freedom that flying gave you and your smile took up your whole face as it always did.

Distracted by the sight of you in your element, Azriel lost focus of his wings causing him to quickly drop a few feet but your hands tightened on his just as his heart dropped in his chest out of panic.

He concentrated on beating his wings again, fluttering slightly higher than previously.

But even as he concentrated on flying, his mind was also on something else.

You had caught him, just like you said you would.

Wake. Wake. Wake.

Their hissing little whispers nudged you from unconsciousness. The cold concrete of the cave dug uncomfortably into your back. You groaned, shifting as your eyes opened, adjusting to the thick, clouded darkness you had been forced to endure for five centuries.

Another day it remained the same.

A sharp, slithering coldness nudged against your cheek, and again against your fingertips. You looked down in confusion, taking in the grey-black strands of darkness fluttering around your hands.

You raised your hands slightly, it was hard to see clearly but they resembled beings you had not seen in a very long time. The dark strands fluttered around your fingertips as you stared intently at them and in a movement so sharp, one lone sentient being jumped to your shoulder.

Your head snapped to the side as you looked at it, moving around, nestling into your clothes that had long since been reduced to scraps of fabric.

The beating beneath your chest stuttered as you stared at them.

Shadows.

They were shadows.

Master. Master. Master.

She hears us. She hears us.

They fluttered around you in a way that seemed to portray excitement.

Was that them talking?

“Azriel?” You whispered, broken yet that sick part of you still held a bit of hope.

Many years you had locked out memories of the Shadowsinger yet it never worked too well, you could never forget him and you would never forget the sentient beings that obeyed him either.

No.

They almost sounded like hisses.

“Not Azriel then.” You muttered. It did not surprise you, not really.

You didn’t understand.

“Another Shadowsinger?” You asked, it earned that same excited fluttering dance as before. Yes.

But who? You wondered.

It seemed they knew your thoughts too.

You. You.

Your face contorted into confusion. You weren’t a Shadowsinger.

You allowed yourself to think of Azriel again. Not of him exactly or the feeling of his love that had faded long ago but of his story.

Azriel had not been born a Shadowsinger.

How had Azriel become a Shadowsinger?

He had been locked in a dark cell for eleven years and had no choice but to find companionship within the darkness itself.

Oh.

“You’re my shadows.” You did not question this time.

Yes. They hissed again.

“But the faebane chains?” You wondered aloud.

“Shadows are not magic, they’re simply part of me.” Azriel had told you that before.

You studied them again, more intently this time and whilst they resembled the shadows of Azriel’s so very much there was the slightest hint of a difference; they weren’t just a grey-black, they had the slightest underlying tint of purple.

They truly were yours.

Release chains. They muttered, not to you, to themselves, fluttering around frantically.

“I can’t,” you whispered in long accepted defeat. “They won’t come off, someone else needs to do it.”

Your newly acquired shadows ignored you, muttering to themselves.

Shadowsinger will do it. Spymaster will do it.

But your energy was draining again, conscious slipping into darkness, your shadows slipping through the cracks of the cave without you knowing.

Azriel had been born alone and he would die alone.

He had accepted that was all life was made for him, there were those years he had you, moments were he thought he’d have you forever but you were taken, brutally slaughtered along with your mother in the spring court.

He had never and will never forgive himself for not being there to protect you. Truthfully he did not know how Rhysand could go on with life after that, not that his High Lord and brother didn’t deserve to live, he did, but how had grief not taken his sanity Azriel would never know.

He would never know how Rhys could look in the mirror and not see the shadows of his mother and sister, not when some days Azriel could not look into his eyes and see the very reflection of the young woman he lost, his woman.

It would forever just be Azriel and his shadows.

Another night that Azriel slept in your room alone, beneath your sheets, on the pillows you always hid that ridiculous stuffed bat beneath.

When he awoke this time though, it was different.

His shadows, usually fluttering lazily were muttering and batting around recklessly, their unease settling in Azriel’s chest, having the spymaster looking around the room carefully.

The only thing that seemed wrong were his shadows themselves, it was as though they were fighting each other?

Intruder. Intruder. They hissed, flying into each other as though they were in a sort of disorientated state. Azriel had never seen anything like it before.

Deep down, Azriel understood that there was no intruder in the House of Wind but he did not understand what they could be referring to.

The bond between himself and his shadows was strange. They told him things yes, but a lot of their communication came down to feelings, he felt their unease, their frustration, as though they were participating in an internal battle.

But why?

He sat up in your bed and observed them closely. He too, could see that there was something off but couldn’t quite put his mind to it.

Intruder. But where?

The shadows hissed at each other, floating around the room in distress, it was when the golden rays of the morning sunrise shone through the balcony window that he saw it.

His eyes, always so sharp, caught that difference in his shadows. Not his shadows, he concluded. Eyes widening, he reached out to that invisible thread and called his shadows back to him with a snap.

There it was.

A small cluster that did not return to him, a cluster of shadows that looked just the slightest different to his own. That underlying purple tint was not his.

He tried to reach out, tried to find that tether to them.

Nothing.

They did not seem threatening though.

They fluttered and danced around before him, as though they were trying to communicate with him but could not.

Help. His own shadows muttered.

“Help?” He questioned.

They plead help. They hissed into his ears. Another Shadowmaster. Trapped.

Azriel shook his head, he was the only shadowmaster.

No. They hissed, more stern this time, as though telling him he was wrong.

Azriel removed himself from your bed, pulling on his Illyrian leathers as quickly as possible, not even strapping his weapons to himself. Instead he simply grabbed Truthteller alone into its sheath.

He approached the bedroom door, turning to see if those other shadows would follow, they were.

He let himself out of the room, shadows, his and not his following behind closely, he barged into Rhys’ study causing the High Lord to jump, not that he would ever admit.

“Azriel?” Rhys greeted, looking up from his papers in barely concealed surprise. “A knock would be nice.”

“We have a problem.” Azriel simply responded earning Rhys’ full attention.

“What is it?”

Azriel held out a gloved hand and while Azriel had no means to communicate with these shadows, they understood him and gathered into his palm, fluttering into a rounded shape.

Rhys simply looked at them in confusion. “What am I looking at? New party trick?”

Azriel shook his head, face contorting as he studied them. “They’re not mine, I can’t communicate with them.”

“What?” Rhys uttered to himself.

“There’s another Shadowsinger out there,” Azriel responded, mostly to himself. “They communicate with my shadows but I can’t understand them myself.”

“Another Shadowsinger?” His High Lord mumbled, shaking his head. “No, you’re the only Shadowsinger alive.”

“Not anymore,” Azriel argued, his and the guest shadows beginning to flutter wildly in their own disagreement. “Apparently they’re trapped.”

Chained. His shadows corrected. Caved.

“Chained,” he spoke aloud.

“Perhaps for good reason,” Rhys argued, whilst Azriel was his brother and he trusted him beyond measures, he was well aware just how powerful Shadowsingers were, if this other Shadowsinger was locked away then perhaps it was because it was deserved.

Azriel shook his head, a sort of confused anguish taking over his features as he observed the shadows sitting in his palm. “They don’t feel threatening, or evil. They’re scared, pleading for help, for freedom.”

“How do you know they’re not pretending? That this other Shadowsinger hasn’t sent these here to play a ruse just to get their freedom?” Rhys asked.

The guest shadows in his palm shrunk down in defeat whilst his own fluttered in agitation around his shoulders and the tips of his wings.

She doesn’t know they’re here. She can’t control it yet.

Azriel listened to their whispers with widened eyes before looking at Rhys. “She cannot control them, this ability must be newly manifested, they came here on their own. Besides, shadows don’t work like that, they can’t fake feelings or emotions.”

“She?” Rhys sat up straighter in his chair at the newfound information.

“I can’t explain it, Rhys,” Azriel muttered, deep in thought. “I have this feeling that I need to free her, I don’t know why, it just feels right to.”

Those lone little shadows of yours clung to Azriel in the following days, against your knowledge. Azriel spent that time preparing himself for rescuing you, not that he knew it would be you he was rescuing, trying to gain as much information as he could through his own shadows translating messages back and forth with yours.

It was strange for Azriel, not only that there were sentient echoes of darkness that for some reason he could not communicate with but also knowing that somewhere out there, trapped and alone, there was another like him, another who could communicate with the darkness and melt into the shadows, even if it was a new manifestation.

The cave you were imprisoned in, he learned, was located somewhere in The Middle, because of course it was.

What other place would be sick enough to have trapped a person so long that the shadows had sought them out?

Trapped for centuries. The shadows had told him.

Bound by faebane chains, tormented by memories of a time that had long since faded.

Azriel, in all he had been through and in all his grief and terror over the years, could not imagine being trapped within the same four walls for hundreds of years.

He had barely lasted eleven, Rhys had hardly lasted fifty and yet out there, a poor woman had lasted hundreds of years, alone.

A woman of his kind.

The cave, as Azriel stood before it, was hardly a cave. It was more a carved hole in the ground, hidden by overgrown moss and shrubbery that even he, a spymaster, would have overlooked had he passed by without your shadows leading him to it.

He wasn’t even sure he’d be able to squeeze his overgrown body into it.

Your shadows shot forward like whips, diving into the underground cave, no doubt snapping back to you, even though your lack of control, they were drawn to you, desired to be close to your being.

Azriel crouched down, inspecting the gap in the ground, his own shadows fluttering around in agitation, some even darting ahead into the cave. He peeled off his outer layers that he strapped his weapons to, sending them down into the cave before him.

Risky, no doubt, but he felt no threat towards whatever presence was inside this cave, only an innocently, trapped Shadowsinger.

One that meant no harm, only desiring freedom.

He heaved himself through the gap, the concrete lining the underground cave scratching against his arms and shoulders as he dragged himself through, gravity doing most of the work, allowing him to drop down onto solid stone and rock.

It smelled awful; blood, dirt, faebane and a hell of a lot like someone had long since lost the will to live.

He saw the chains, loads of them, hanging from the ceiling, from the walls, even some bound to the ground with bolts.

Even as someone bound by shadows and member of the Night Court, Azriel could not see clearly in the darkness of this pit but his shadows led the way, they led him to your shadows.

Your shadows that covered just about every part of you, hiding you as though attempting to protect your presence from anyone who could possibly mean harm, leaving you just the image of a darkened, fuzzy blur.

“I will not harm her,” Azriel promised. “I only want to free her, take her back to the Night Court, help her heal and gain control.”

He saw the way they hesitated, how they debated whether they had made the right decision in finding him or not.

She trusted you. They whispered, confessed. His own shadows translating. Long time ago.

Azriel did not know what they meant by that. Had he known her once upon a time?

It was when they finally relented and made the decision to fade away from covering your body that Azriel, despite all the gore and torment he had witnessed in his life, felt like he was going to be sick as his eyes fell upon the battered figure of a young, fae woman.

His fae woman.

No. He shook his head, as though it would shake the sick illusion from his mind.

Yet you remained in his sight.

He knew that figure, that hair, those lashes. It has all haunted his every sleep and movement for the last five hundred years. The colour beneath your eyelids that he had drenched his walls in, that he would look upon every morning and every night.

Even unhealthily slimmer than you had been five hundred years ago, there would not be a single moment or a single version of you in which Azriel would not recognise.

The first person who had shown him grace, who had shown him that kindness and love does in fact exist, the person who had given him the family that he still clings to today in hopes of grasping at every last remainder of you that he had believed was long lost.

Your name was a ghost on his lips as he surged forward, shadows following, your own fluttering at his shoulders now as he unsheathed truth-teller and sliced through the chains binding you to this sick prison.

The dagger you had given him.

The first gift he had ever received.

He collapsed to his knees beside your battered, unconscious body.

Your breaths shallow, wrists and ankles raw from centuries of imprisonment, body all but skin and bones.

He smoothed a marred thumb over your cheekbone, hands shaking as he took you in, your body surrendered to his touch as though finally, it had found something safe it could relax itself in.

And though you were unaware, still in the depths of your mind, your eyes had fluttered open, a deep purple hue that he had missed for hundreds of years.

Azriel choked on a sob as he gazed upon you again, his soul shattering open at the sight of the only person he had ever loved in his five hundred years walking the lands of Prythian.

He felt the moment part of his soul tore from his chest and landed straight into yours, a golden thread deep within him keeping it tethered to himself even though it now sat with you.

But Azriel? Oh, he was panicking.

His shadows weren’t nearly as sluggish as he was. They kept roaming back and forth between the two of you, brushing soft tendrils delicately across your cheeks, your wrists, your ankles, and then, tentatively, your stomach.

"Baby."

"Baby."

"Baby," they kept repeating back to him, but the poor man remained as frozen as the Winter Court.

"Say something, godsdamn it!" You came to a sudden stop, looking at your mate with widened, watery, panicked eyes. "Are you upset? Do you not want it? Or... do you want it, but not with me? Oh gods, you look pale. White as a ghost. Fuck, I shouldn't have said anything, but Madja and Feyre both said you'd figure it out sooner or later anyway, and I didn't want you to be upset because I kept it from you, so I thought I should just tell you..."

You kept rambling, the words blurring into gibberish because you were completely, utterly terrified. And Azriel just stood there—his hands and jaw slack, pupils blown wide, doing nothing but staring.

Because this dream was something deeply buried inside his chest. It was a dream he had only ever just dared to imagine himself fulfilling.

And now, panic gripped him.

What if he wasn't capable of being a father? He didn't even know what a good father was supposed to look like. What if the child grew up hating him? What if they suffered just for being the child of a bastard, brute Illyrian?

What if—

"Az?" Your voice cut through the endless spiral of his dark, doubting thoughts.

You stood across from him, looking so small, with tears glistening in your eyes.

Oh gods, what have I done?, he thought, his heart squeezing painfully inside his chest.

"Do you not want it?" you asked, your voice small and painfully uncertain.

"No!" he said, but he immediately winced as your face crumpled. "I—I mean… I'm not… I'm not mad about it. At all."

Mother above, he was sweating.

You stood still, anxiously wringing your fingers. "But?" you asked, your voice broken and wobbling.

Azriel remained quiet as he stepped closer to you. He genuinely expected you to step out of his way—to push him away.

But you didn't. You waited for him, waiting for his touch.

"I'm happy because it happened with you," he murmured, tentatively brushing a knuckle over your wet cheek. You bit your lip, but your chin still quivered.

Azriel's heart was beating rapidly—so loud you could hear it—but down the bond, you could feel his unmistakable fear.

His voice was quiet as he spoke. "I don't know how to fulfill the role of a good father."

Your face softened.

You knew all about the painful, terror-filled childhood in which your mate had grown up. You knew that even after all this time, he still beat himself up, still carrying the deep-seated belief that he wasn't deserving of unconditional love. He was terrified that somewhere along the line, that he would mess up and lose you for good. For so long, he had been convinced that you deserved someone else—someone who wasn’t as deeply broken as he was.

It had taken time, but you had never turned your back on him. You had kept showing him, day after day, just how much you loved him. You had proven to him that he was deserving of goodness, of unconditional love, and of protection.

"Az," you whispered softly, gently brushing his hair away from his beautiful eyes to force him to look at you. "I love you."

He sucked in a sharp breath.

"What your father was," you said firmly, "doesn't mean you are him."

His dark eyes bored into yours, his ragged breath fanning over your tear-soaked face. His massive wings, along with his arms, were still heavy and sluggish for someone so feared all across Prythian.

"What if I fuck up?" he whispered carefully, the vulnerability in his voice nearly breaking your heart.

"We’re first-time parents," you said softly. You reached up, gently cupping his face and brushing your palm against his cheek. He instantly leaned into your touch, closing his eyes for a brief second as if your hand was his only anchor. "We’re both going to fuck up sometimes, Az. That's just a part of it."

Azriel weakly shakes his head. "No, I mean… what if they’ll hate me?"

A small, tender smile tugged at your lips, and you let out a soft wet laugh, leaning forward to press your forehead against his. "They won't. Well… maybe when they’re teenagers and want to rebel. But never for real."

He breathed out a shaky sigh, his large hands finally moving to rest gently on your hips, anchoring you to him. "How are you so calm?"

"Because," you murmured, sliding your fingers through the dark strands of his hair, "I know our baby is going to grow up in a house completely overflowing with love. I know his father might be the Shadowsinger—feared across all of Prythian—but to our little one, he’ll just be the center of the world. He’s going to look at you and want to be exactly like his dad."

A spark of something warm and bright lit up his eyes, his grip on your hips tightening just a fraction. "His dad..." He paused, swallowing hard as a soft, rare smile finally broke through his rugged features. "You kept saying 'he.' You think it's a boy?"

You bit your lip, but a soft giggle escaped, suddenly shy as you looked up at him, nodding as you slid your arms around his neck to pull him closer. "I had a dream that you were holding a little winged babe, his little face calm as he snoozed on your chest,” Azriel’s eyes widen slightly, his mouth falling open.

“So, I hope it’s a boy. A sweet little boy who looks just like you,” you kiss him softly. “You're going to show him exactly how beautiful it is to be loved, Az. I know it. You deserve it.”

You deserve it.

The words echoed deeply inside Azriel’s chest. As he looked down at you—at your beautiful, radiant smile, the happy tears now glistening in your eyes, and the way your entire face lit up with an ethereal warmth—he couldn't help but believe it. He believed, that the Mother truly wanted him to be happy. That you, his mate, wanted nothing more than to give him a joyful life.

So, he smiled.

It was a wide, breathtaking smile that bloomed across his face before breaking into a soft, rare laugh. The mating bond between you vibrated violently, flooded with pure love and dizzying excitement.

Azriel gently tucked a stray piece of hair behind your ear, cradling your face inside his large, scarred palms.

Hands that you loved so deeply. Hands that brought an instant wave of comfort, making you feel entirely protected, cherished, and safe.

"You're glowing," he murmured, his voice thick with awe as he looked at you like you were the only thing that mattered in the entire world.

But now it’s two.

"Because you make me happy," you whispered back, leaning into his touch. "Because I'm your mate. I'm your wife."

"And the mother of my child," he added, the words sounding sacred on his lips. His thumbs gently stroked your cheekbones, wiping away the remnants of your tears.

"You're going to be a father, Az," you laughed, the sound watery but bursting with happiness. You slid your hands up to rest over his broad chest, feeling the steady, rapid thrum of his heartbeat beneath your palms. "Is it too early to start picking out baby names?"

Azriel let out another laugh, the sound rich and low in his chest.

He didn't answer with words. Instead, he wrapped his arms securely around your waist, pulling you flush against his chest and burying his face into the crook of your neck. His large wings folded entirely around the two of you, shielding you both from the rest of the world like a cocoon.

As he held you there in the quiet safety of your room, one of his large hands slowly moved down, sliding away from your waist to rest incredibly gentle over your still-flat stomach. He let out a long, contented sigh against your skin, holding you close as if he would never, ever let go.

“I love you,” he whispers against your ear.

————————————————————————

The blonde doesn't need to push him on it further, letting the cloth back into the water with a plop as she spins on her heel. "I'll let her lecture your stubborn ass then." (Y/n) was the only one he listened to when it came to his wellbeing. No one was blind to it, the way they both saw each other with a single shared glance. The same knowing looks all mates gave each other when sharing an unspoken conversation meant for them alone. No one missed it, the way Azriel seemed to watch you as if waiting for each breath before he would allow himself to move. The silent pining when you were already his. Even now, waiting before he would let his wounds be cleaned. You nearly made Mor tumble into the wall from the impact of your shoulder bumping hers, rushing through the halls impatiently towards the infirmary to reach him. Her hand shot out, steadying you both as she took in the near wild look in your eyes, the breathlessness when you spoke, “Where is he?” “He’s okay, just had a run in with-” Pushing past her without letting her finish, entering the dimly lit room to find him sprawled on his stomach over the cot. His head of blue-black turned towards the door already, hazel eyes darker than usual softened. Stopping in your tracks, for a beat, taking him in, breath hitching. Hating the sight of blood on the sensitive membrane of his mighty wings, the shadows flickering in excitement at your presence, feeling relief wash through him. An exhale breaks the tense air, feet shuffling forward until you drop to your knees by his bedside. To be at his level, as always, his equal. Shadows curling around your shoulders to warm you, knowing he couldn’t hold you himself stung. “You were supposed to come right back,” you murmur, lips pressed together, not quite a frown. Unable to hold a pout when he was safe and back where he belonged. Tense shoulders only unwinding when Azriel’s fingers thread through yours with a squeeze. “I know, I was headed back, a guild spotted me while flying.” It was supposed to be a straightforward routine run to the outskirts of Hewn City and back, collecting a few documents passed along from informants. He’d been too damn distracted by his duties, by his focus on getting back home as quickly as possible. He had no idea it was coming until a burning pain had seared through his right wing, sending him diving into the trees below. You had felt it and knew immediately he was in danger, the way his heart picked up suddenly as fight or flight kicked in. It had made your heart drop from miles away when the ache of pain was sent through like a stab to the back. Mor had been in the area and winnowed him back, thank the stars. You’d be sure to supply ‘thank you’ wine later. “And the ones who shot you?” You can’t help but ask, fire burning in your eyes that ensured they wouldn’t be free of consequence. “Why do you think Rhys isn’t here?” He replied with a tug of his lips. You exhaled, letting go of the worry and need for revenge for now. If not Rhys, then Cassian would wreak havoc upon them. “I’m here, it’s okay.” He sent it through, seeing the storm in your eyes. The storm he adored. You shake your head with a quiet laugh. “I’m the one who should be saying that.” Eyes roving over his slumped wings, in a rare state of complete slack. The crimson-staining thin membrane makes the room smell faintly of rust and salt even as the worst is healed over. Your eyebrows knit together in confusion, “Madja didn’t clean-?” He answered before you could finish, “I told her it could wait.” “Az,” You push up to your feet with a near scolding tone, though it holds no bite. He frowns at the loss of your warmth. “It cannot wait, you’re covered in dirt. What if it got infected?”

a/n: Y/N has shadows and starlight powers because why not?🤭 This tid-bit of info will make sense as you read.

Masterlist

———————————————————————————

The late afternoon sun slanted lazily through the windows of the River House, bathing the living room in golden light. The air hummed with quiet conversation and the soft clinking of glasses, the occasional flutter of faelight drifting near the ceiling like drowsy stars. Velaris stretched peacefully outside the tall windows, but inside, the Inner Circle was gathered in their usual chaotic harmony.

Cassian was draped across one of the oversized couches like a lounging mountain, one foot on the coffee table, sipping from a glass of something amber. Nesta was curled beside him, her legs tucked under her as she read, pretending to ignore him—but everyone could see the slight curve to her lips at whatever nonsense he’d just said.

Rhys was stretched on another couch, Feyre leaning against his side as they shared a blanket, her sketchpad resting on her knees. She was absently doodling swirls of starlight and wings, her free hand curled around Rhysand’s fingers. Mor sat on the floor nearby, polishing her nails with a spell that shimmered gold and green with every flick of her hand. Elain, quiet but present, was perched in a window seat with a tray of tea, and Lucien lounged beside her, one arm slung lazily over the backrest as they chatted in low tones.

Amren reclined in a dark armchair, looking like a cat in the sun, sipping a goblet of something no one dared ask about, eyes half-lidded but sharp as ever.

Azriel sat in an armchair near the fireplace, shadows curling lazily around his shoulders like smoke. He had a book in his lap, unopened, because his attention kept flickering toward the open doorway leading to the kitchen.

That was where Y/N was.

They could hear her moving, her bare feet padding softly across the tile, cabinet doors opening and shutting, and an unmistakably muttered, “Where the fuck are the cheesy things?” drifting into the room.

Azriel’s lips quirked at that—barely—but the others noticed.

Cassian saw it first. And grinned like a predator spotting prey.

“Hey, Az,” Cassian said loudly, his voice a low drawl. “I dare you to call Y/N a good girl when she walks back in.”

The room went still for a beat.

Azriel’s shadows recoiled, like startled birds.

Feyre choked on her tea. Mor burst out laughing. Nesta looked up sharply, her brows lifting. Even Amren cracked one glowing eye open, clearly intrigued.

Elain blinked in quiet horror. Lucien looked like someone had lit a match under his chair.

Azriel didn’t move. Didn’t even breathe for a second.

“That’s low,” he muttered, but his voice betrayed the flicker of interest. Mischief.

Cassian leaned in, devilish. “Come on, brother. She melts when you say it. Like a dying star. She forgets her name. For science.”

“You’re an idiot,” Azriel replied, but he was already shifting, the barest smile tugging at his lips.

Cassian’s eyes glinted with glee. “For the record, I dare you.”

From the kitchen came the crinkling sound of a bag being triumphantly torn open. And a triumphant, “Aha!”

Y/N stepped into the doorway, holding a bag of some cheesy snack triumphantly, her hair catching the sunlight, shadows trailing behind her like a cloak, starlight dancing in her eyes.

And Azriel, cool as ever, looked up at her from his chair and said—soft and low, like a forbidden promise, the kind of voice that could make anyone forget the world—

“Good girl.”

Y/N froze.

The snack bag slipped slightly in her fingers.

The world—no, the entire house—held its breath.

Her pupils dilated. Her chest rose sharply with a breath. Knees buckled just a little. A flush crept up her cheeks, slow and deep. Her lips parted, but no sound came out.

Cassian exploded into laughter. “CAUGHT!”

Nesta threw a pillow at him.

Mor squealed. “She’s literally blushing! Az, do it again—do it again!”

Feyre nearly dropped her sketchpad as she laughed. Rhysand looked vaguely scandalized. Amren smirked over the rim of her goblet.

Azriel… was already on his feet, stalking toward Y/N like a shadow come to life, all dark promise and slow steps, his smirk lazy, knowing.

Y/N stood there like someone had unplugged her brain, cheesy snack bag clutched in one limp hand, completely undone by two words.

“Stars,” she muttered, barely audible. “That’s not fair.”

He stopped just in front of her, dipped his head until their mouths almost touched, and whispered once more, like a gift and a curse—

“Good girl.”

The snack bag hit the floor.

Chaos erupted in the living room behind them.

But Y/N only had eyes for Azriel, and he for her.

Cassian, somewhere behind them, crowed: “Best. Dare. Ever.”

Y/N didn’t stand a chance.

Not with that voice in her ear. Not when his hand slid around her waist with the barest pressure, fingers splaying possessively over her hip. Not when his shadows curled around her ankles and calves like warm silk, winding upward in slow, teasing spirals. Her knees gave a telltale wobble, and she might’ve leaned into him more than she meant to.

Azriel tilted his head, studying her with that impossibly focused gaze, the one that said he saw everything—every blush, every flicker of breath, every tremble she couldn’t quite hide.

“You dropped your snack,” he murmured, his lips brushing her cheek, but there was laughter in his tone now. Teasing. Dangerous.

Y/N’s voice was a whisper, scandalized and aroused and helpless all at once. “You’re evil.”

Cassian, from the couch: “Confirmed. Absolute menace. But we love him anyway.”

Rhys groaned into Feyre’s hair. “We need to start setting rules for these gatherings. Like no weaponized mating rituals in the living room.”

Mor was wiping tears from her eyes, still giggling. “Can’t believe how fast her soul left her body. Az, what did you do to her?”

“I said two words,” Azriel said innocently, though his hands hadn’t left Y/N’s waist.

“That you said them,” Feyre pointed out, grinning. “Big difference. If Cassian said it, she’d punch him.”

“True,” Y/N muttered, finding her voice again as she blinked up at her mate, trying to gather her strength. “You’re the only one allowed to say that.”

Azriel’s smirk deepened, pure male satisfaction.

“Say it again and I swear I will melt into the floor,” she whispered, half a warning, half a dare.

He leaned closer, and it was ridiculous—how even his breath on her skin made her insides twist.

But he didn’t say it again. No, instead he brushed a kiss just beneath her ear and murmured something else, something private, only for her—

And whatever he said made her clutch his shirt and mutter something in a language none of them understood. Her accent had thickened, her cheeks were flaming, and her shadows were writhing like they didn’t know what to do with themselves.

Azriel just smiled.

Lucien raised a brow from his seat. “I think we just witnessed the mating equivalent of a death blow.”

Elain looked down into her teacup, face burning.

Cassian was howling with laughter. “She short-circuited! You broke her! Y/N, you good?”

Y/N slowly turned her head over Azriel’s shoulder and leveled Cassian with a look of pure venom—except her lips were twitching upward at the corners.

“I’m going to shove cheesy snacks into your mouth until you shut up.”

“Promising me snacks? That’s not the threat you think it is.”

Azriel sighed, then bent down and retrieved the snack bag from the floor, brushing it off before pressing it into her hands. “Here. For your trouble.”

She squinted at him. “If you say it again in that voice, I will not survive the night.”

“I’ll be gentle.”

“Azriel.”

But she was laughing now, flushed and glowing in that way she always got around him—like starlight blooming just beneath her skin. He pressed a soft kiss to her temple and led her back toward the couch, one hand still at her waist, and she let him.

The others watched them settle onto the floor near the hearth, Y/N leaning into Azriel’s side with the snack bag in her lap, still looking vaguely dazed. Azriel passed her one of the cheesy crisps like she was the queen of Prythian and this was some sacred offering.

Cassian, watching them with exaggerated horror: “We just enabled something truly terrible.”

Nesta: “Good. Now shut up.”

And as laughter filled the room once again, Y/N whispered, only loud enough for Azriel to hear, “I like being your good girl.”

Azriel didn’t say a word.

But his shadows swirled with contentment, and his smile—slow and secret—could’ve set the whole house on fire.

Cassian leaned back against the couch like a smug, overgrown cat, swirling the remains of his drink in his glass. He was watching Y/N and Azriel with that all-too-familiar gleam in his hazel eyes—the one that usually meant trouble was brewing.

Y/N was still nestled beside Azriel near the hearth, curled into his side, her legs tucked beneath her, munching on a cheesy crisp like it was the last edible thing in Prythian. Her cheeks were finally losing some of their deep blush, her breathing mostly even again.

Cassian clearly decided that peace had lasted too long.

With a slow, sly grin, he said to the room—loudly enough that everyone could hear, especially the couple in question—

“Now I’m just curious what her reaction would be if Az said, ‘on your knees.’”

Silence.

Actual, stunned silence.

Rhys choked on air.

Feyre gasped, her eyes wide as dinner plates.

Mor made a noise that was half-squeal, half-scream. “CASSIAN!”

Elain made a soft, scandalized squeak and buried her face in her hands. Lucien immediately reached for his drink, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like, “I’m not drunk enough for this.”

Nesta didn’t look up from her book, but her lips twitched as if she were biting back a laugh. “Gods, you’re such a shit-stirrer.”

Azriel didn’t even blink.

Y/N?

Y/N went completely still.

The kind of still that said every system in her body had shut down and restarted in a blaze of chaotic what the fuck.

Her hand froze halfway to her mouth, cheesy crisp inches from her lips. Her pupils dilated so fast it was like someone flipped a switch. She made a small, choked sound and looked at Azriel like he’d somehow already said it.

And Azriel… gods-damned Azriel…

The corner of his mouth lifted. Just slightly. Slowly. Like he was very aware of her reaction—and storing it for later use.

He said nothing.

But his shadows purred.

Y/N slowly turned her head toward Cassian, blinking like someone had just slapped her with a lightning bolt.

“Do you want to die?” she asked sweetly.

Cassian threw his head back and cackled. “Stars, it’s even worse than I thought! You didn’t even say it and she nearly melted into the floor!”

“Cass,” Azriel said, voice low and dangerous—not angry, but possessive, like a quiet warning growl. “Keep talking, and I’ll give her that command right here.”

Y/N made another helpless noise, turning red from her collarbones up.

Mor was dying, absolutely shrieking. “I can’t! I can’t—Az, if you say it I swear I’ll combust!”

Rhys, rubbing his temples like a father who’s lost control of his children: “Someone—anyone—please stop this. Elain looks like she might faint.”

Lucien reached over and gently moved Elain’s teacup away from her lap before something catastrophic could happen.

Meanwhile, Y/N was clutching Azriel’s shirt now, her head buried against his shoulder like she could hide from the conversation—but her body betrayed her. The way her legs shifted, the arch in her back, the way her shadows curled tight around her thighs—

Azriel bent his head close, and whispered something only she could hear. Her gasp was audible.

Cassian, watching the whole thing unfold like a delighted villain, grinned ear to ear. “Yup. That’s going in the record book.”

Nesta rolled her eyes. “You have a record book?”

He waggled his brows. “I do now.”

Y/N finally peeked up from Azriel’s shoulder, her voice hoarse but steady. “I hope you know that when I recover from this, I’m kicking your ass.”

Cassian smirked. “Fair. But worth it.”

Azriel ran his hand slowly down her spine, a look of dark promise in his eyes.

And he murmured—not loud enough for anyone else to hear, but enough to make her shiver—

“Later.”

Y/N didn’t make a sound.

She just melted. Again.

And Cassian lost his mind.

“YOU GUYS! YOU’RE GONNA KILL HER! STOP!”

Azriel just smiled. And this time… even Rhys looked a little afraid.

But, of course, he was not done.

Because Azriel never let go of an advantage once he had it—and right now, Y/N was flushed, breathless, barely hanging on to the frayed remains of her composure. Cassian’s comment had been the match, but Azriel? Azriel was the flame.

The Shadowsinger reached lazily into the snack bag still resting in Y/N’s lap, pulled out one of the crisps—one of those curled, golden cheesy ones—and held it between his fingers.

Completely casual. Like he hadn’t just whispered promises into her ear. Like he wasn’t still the reason her entire nervous system was currently short-circuiting.

Then, ever so innocently, he turned to her and murmured—

“Open your mouth for me.”

The room went dead silent.

Again.

Feyre’s jaw dropped.

Mor screamed.

Cassian made a wheezing sound and nearly fell off the couch.

Lucien covered his face with his hands and muttered something like, “Oh, for the love of—”

Even Amren, lounging in a chair like some ancient, unimpressed cat, raised a single dark brow.

Y/N?

Y/N made a sound that could only be described as a high-pitched whimper.

Her spine straightened like she’d just been electrocuted, and her hands flew up as if she didn’t know whether to push him away or drag him closer. Her mouth opened—and then promptly snapped shut again, eyes wide in horror at her own reaction.

Azriel blinked at her, all innocence. “What? It’s a snack.”

Liar.

Y/N was staring at the chip like it was the One Ring and she was about to fall to her doom.

“Y-you…” she tried. “You know what you’re doing.”

Azriel tilted his head. “I’m feeding you.”

Cassian, clutching his stomach, howled. “Oh my gods, she doesn’t know whether to eat it or beg.”

Nesta muttered, “I swear if he keeps this up, she’s going to ascend to another plane.”

Mor flung a pillow at Azriel. “Stop corrupting her!”

“Too late,” Y/N whispered, eyes still locked on her mate.

She was vibrating. Her shadows were wrapped tight around her legs again, her starlight flickering faintly along her fingers like her powers couldn’t figure out how to help her.

Azriel leaned in, his voice velvet and low, and added with that damn smirk—

“Be a good girl and open up.”

Y/N made a strangled sound and obeyed before she could think. Mouth open, eyes dazed, spine arching slightly like every cell in her body had been commanded.

He placed the chip on her tongue with gentle, devastating precision.

She didn’t even taste it.

Cassian died.

Dropped off the couch entirely.

Nesta didn’t bother catching him.

Rhys buried his face in Feyre’s lap and moaned. “Make it stop, please, make it stop—”

Elain looked like she was experiencing a crisis. Lucien had gone utterly still beside her, wide-eyed. Mor was wheezing through her laughter.

Y/N, eyes fluttering closed around the cheesy crisp, finally swallowed, then slumped back against Azriel’s shoulder, absolutely done.

“I hate you,” she mumbled.

Azriel just brushed her cheek with the backs of his fingers, utterly unrepentant.

“No, you don’t.”

And stars help her—

He was right.

Azriel, the insufferable, beautiful bastard, glanced down at his fingers—now dusted with that unmistakable cheesy orange powder from the crisp he’d just fed her. He inspected them with a faint smirk, clearly considering his next move.

Y/N, still recovering, was half-sprawled against his side, her mind mush, her pride in shambles. Her heart was racing, her skin still flushed. One little command and she’d folded like wet parchment.

So, of course, of course he wasn’t done.

Without a word, he lifted his hand—the one with the cheesy dust—and held two fingers in front of her lips, tilting them slightly in offering.

And then, in that dark, low murmur that somehow sounded like a kiss laced with sin—

“Clean my fingers for me, sweetheart.”

Cassian let out an actual scream. Mor shrieked with laughter and nearly fell off the couch.

Feyre smacked Rhys on the arm to stop his uncontrollable snorting. Elain made a noise that may have been a gasp—or a gasped prayer. Lucien had gone completely still again, one eye twitching.

Nesta was watching now, intrigued. “I want to see if she combusts.”

Y/N stared at Azriel’s fingers like they were the gates to Hel. Her lips parted—reflex—and then she slapped a hand over her own mouth.

“Azriel!” she squeaked behind her fingers, eyes wide with shock, heat flooding her cheeks again. “You can’t just—in front of everyone—”

He didn’t move. Didn’t flinch. Just kept his hand out, that smug little tilt to his mouth.

“I’m just asking for help,” he said, utterly innocent. “You made me touch those chips. Now I’m all messy.”

Cassian, choking on laughter: “This is torture. I didn’t know watching someone descend into horny chaos could be this entertaining.”

Mor couldn’t breathe. “She’s gonna spontaneously ascend. Like full fae goddess mode, just out of sheer flustered thirst.”

Y/N, trembling with internal conflict, very slowly lowered her hand from her mouth. Her eyes were locked on Azriel’s, pupils dilated, lips parted, and her voice came out as a whisper:

“…You’re going to pay for this.”

Azriel’s voice dropped even lower. “Gladly.”

And gods help her—

She leaned forward.

Just the barest brush of her tongue over his fingertips, her eyes fluttering shut like she hated herself for it—and also maybe wanted to crawl into his lap and never leave again.

The moment her tongue touched his skin, his shadows shuddered.

Azriel inhaled through his nose like he’d just been handed every fantasy he’d never dared admit aloud.

Cassian actually collapsed, face-down on the floor, sob-laughing.

Rhys sat up and pointed a warning finger. “No one is allowed to say another word for the rest of the evening.”

Mor was crying. “It’s too late! They’ve corrupted this space forever!”

Y/N leaned back again, cheeks aflame, and buried her face in Azriel’s shoulder with a muffled groan.

“You’re evil,” she muttered.

Azriel wrapped an arm around her and kissed the top of her head, his voice velvet and pure satisfaction.

“You love it.”

Cassian was still on the floor, pounding the hardwood with his fist like this was the greatest entertainment Velaris had ever known. “I take it back—this is better than sparring. Someone bring popcorn. No—cheesy crisps. Give me the cheesy crisps. I want to see what happens if I hold out my fingers.”

Azriel didn’t even look at him. “Try it and lose them.”

Y/N was vibrating in place, her face buried in Azriel’s neck, clearly trying to become one with his shadows to escape the utter humiliation and arousal that had consumed her.

Feyre had thrown a pillow at Rhys. “You’re the High Lord, do something!”

Rhys looked entirely too amused for someone supposedly in control. “This is divine punishment. For all of us.”

Lucien muttered, “I feel like I’m intruding on some very private mating ritual.”

Elain was pink, sipping her tea with trembling hands, her eyes so wide they looked like they’d never close again.

Amren hadn’t moved. “Honestly, I want to see how far this goes. My money’s on Y/N throwing Azriel through the wall before the hour’s done.”

Nesta, still cool and unreadable, just said, “I’ll help patch the wall when it happens.”

Azriel turned to Y/N, still cradling her like she was precious—and absolutely wrecked.

He tilted her chin up just enough to see her eyes, voice low and wicked.

“Still hungry, love?”

Y/N blinked up at him, her voice a whisper. “You are cruel.”

Cassian, from the floor: “He is! Isn’t it amazing? It’s like watching a temple girl be corrupted by the darkest male in existence—”

He paused. “Wait. That’s kinda what’s happening.”

Mor was crying again. “Y/N’s going to explode, and I’m not missing it.”

Y/N—desperate for payback—finally pushed herself upright. Her shadows flickered, starlight trailing her fingertips as she glared at Cassian.

“Oh, you think you’re safe?” she said, voice still breathy but gaining strength. “You want chaos? Fine.”

She pointed a single glowing finger at him. “If you don’t shut your mouth, I will say something to Nesta that will leave you begging.”

Cassian’s smugness vanished instantly.

His head snapped toward Nesta. “She’s bluffing.”

Nesta looked up slowly, like a lioness stirring in the sun. “She’s not.”

Cassian’s eyes went wide. “Y/N. Y/N. We’re friends. Friends.”

Y/N, voice sweet and laced with vengeance: “Then be quiet, General.”

Everyone howled.

Cassian threw a pillow at her. She caught it mid-air, shadows snatching it and gently setting it down beside her.

Azriel was beaming. Actually smiling, proud and delighted.

“That’s my girl,” he murmured in her ear.

Y/N melted. Again. “Gods-dammit—Azriel—!”

“Language,” he whispered, far too amused.

Feyre buried her face in her hands. “We’re never having a normal night again.”

Rhys sighed dramatically. “There’s no such thing as ‘normal’ when your brother’s sex voice ruins the entire living room.”

Azriel looked entirely unbothered. “Not my fault she’s obedient.”

Y/N shrieked.

Lucien spit out his wine.

Cassian groaned. “I will never get that image out of my mind.”

Amren sipped her bloodwine and muttered, “Good. Maybe next time you’ll think before daring the Shadowsinger to speak.”

Y/N launched a pillow at Azriel’s face.

He caught it one-handed, grinning. “You missed.”

Her voice came out in a growl, low and breathy.

“I never miss.”

Everyone froze.

Cassian: “Oh, she’s fighting back now.”

Nesta closed her book. “Let her.”

Azriel leaned in again, a challenge in his eyes, his voice practically dripping shadow and seduction.

“Then prove it, little star.”

And just like that—

That was it.

Y/N snapped.

With a strangled sound—something between a shriek and a gasp of pure exasperated sexual frustration—she launched herself fully into Azriel’s lap.

Azriel barely had time to blink before—

WHUMP.

A pillow hit him square in the face.

Then again.

WHUMP. WHUMP. WHUMP.

“Y/N—” he choked, trying to grab her wrists. “Y/N—”

She straddled him, knees on either side of his thighs, hair wild and falling into her face, eyes blazing, and just kept hitting him with the pillow.

“You. Smug. Bastard. That. Voice. Is. A. Warcrime!”

WHUMP. WHUMP. WHUMP.

Azriel’s shadows scattered in shock, clearly not sure whether to defend him or help Y/N.

Cassian was on his back on the floor, kicking his legs in hysterical laughter. “She snapped, I told you! She SNAPPED!”

Nesta smirked, folding her arms. “I like her more every day.”

Feyre was howling now, clinging to Rhys who looked like he’d aged ten years in the last five minutes. “I don’t even know who I’m rooting for anymore!”

Lucien murmured to Elain, “Should we look away?”

Elain: “I want to…but I can’t.”

Mor had completely lost it, tears running down her cheeks. “This is the best night of my life. I’m going to commission Feyre to paint this.”

Azriel had given up trying to stop her. He just sat there, letting her rain down justice, biting back laughter—though his shadows were trembling, and his smile was only growing wider the more she attacked.

“Mercy,” he said finally, shielding his face with one hand, catching the pillow with the other. “I surrender.”

“You do not!” Y/N shouted, WHACKING him again. “You think you can just ruin my brain in front of everyone and get away with it?!”

“Technically, you climbed into my lap,” he said, the corner of his mouth twitching.

WHACK.

“I hate you.”

“You love me.”

WHACK.

“You’re not allowed to be hot and smug at the same time!”

Azriel caught the pillow again and suddenly flipped them, faster than anyone could react. Y/N gasped as her back hit the cushions beneath him, the pillow pinned between them, his body covering hers. Shadows coiled around them like a barrier, separating them from the howling laughter around the room.

He leaned close, nose brushing hers.

His voice, damn him, dropped again—

“You like me best like this.”

Y/N’s breath caught in her throat. Her fingers fisted in the front of his shirt.

Cassian yelled from the floor, “STOP! I’M TOO YOUNG TO BE EXPOSED TO THIS MUCH TENSION!”

Amren stood and dusted off her pants. “Alright. That’s enough. If they start dry-humping on this couch, I’m burning the place down.”

Azriel looked at her without moving. “We’d at least move to the guest room.”

WHACK. The pillow hit him one more time.

Y/N, face flushed and breathless, just stared up at him and muttered:

“…You’re sleeping on the couch tonight.”

Azriel’s grin was all teeth and shadows.

“We both know that’s a lie.”

And every single person in that living room just lost it.

Y/N made a noise—a sound that wasn’t even a word, more like the wail of someone at the very edge of sanity and desire. A feral, strangled growl of pure exasperated chaos.

Then—

Her hands flew up.

And she wrapped them around Azriel’s throat.

Not tight—just enough to shake him.

Azriel let it happen.

His head bobbed slightly as she rattled him like a goblet of wine she was about to shatter. “I hate you!” she half-snarled, half-whimpered, glaring into his stupidly beautiful, smug, night-kissed face.

Azriel didn’t fight back. Just sat there on top of her with that infuriating little smirk tugging at his lips, shadows dancing gleefully behind him like they lived for this exact brand of foreplay.

“You are insufferable,” she hissed, still shaking him, face flushed, heart pounding.

Azriel blinked at her, calm as ever, and asked in the softest, silkiest voice:

“Harder?”

Cassian screamed. “I’M GOING TO ASCEND. AZRIEL’S KINKY. I CALLED IT. I KNEW IT.”

Feyre launched a pillow at him. Rhys tackled him with another.

Lucien actually choked on air and wheezed, “Is this what mating bonds are supposed to be like? Is this…normal?!”

Mor fell off the couch this time, full-on cackling.

Elain had gone completely still, blinking very slowly like her brain was buffering.

Nesta looked like she’d just been handed her favorite wine and a front-row seat to the greatest soap opera in Prythian. “I’m learning things I can never unlearn.”

Y/N released his throat with a groan of utter despair and let her arms flop back down against the cushions.

Azriel, absolutely pleased with himself, leaned down again until his nose brushed hers, shadows still coiling like smug little bastards.

“Finished?” he asked, voice all dark silk.

Y/N stared up at him with narrowed eyes and a trembling lip.

“…No,” she said.

Then she pulled him down by the collar and bit his jaw.

Azriel groaned, low and sharp, the kind that made everyone in the room turn to stone.

Cassian’s voice, faint: “I don’t know if I’m scared or impressed or—actually, no, I’m just scared.”

Rhys looked like he wanted to bury himself in the floor. “Mother above. Take me now.”

Amren drained her glass and muttered, “I told you. We should’ve just let her kill him that day.”

Mor was wheezing, pointing at Azriel. “He’s not even pretending to be cool anymore!”

Azriel, who was now half-lost in Y/N’s hair, let out a satisfied sigh against her ear.

“Still sleeping on the couch?” he murmured.

Y/N’s voice came out breathless, dangerous.

“You’re lucky I don’t banish you to the Illyrian mountains.”

Azriel nuzzled her. “You’d miss me by sundown.”

And Y/N—poor, flustered, still-fuming Y/N—just groaned again and muttered:

“Mother help me, I would.”

The entire Inner Circle groaned in unison.

Cassian had dragged a blanket off the couch and was now dramatically wrapping himself in it, rocking back and forth on the floor like a war survivor. “They’re saying the cutest filth to each other. I can’t live like this. I can’t go on. I need therapy. I need a temple. I need to bathe in salt.”

Nesta kicked him lightly. “You’re the one who started this.”

“I didn’t know it would become a religious experience!” he shot back, clutching the blanket tighter. “He whispered ‘harder’ while being choked—I can never look him in the eyes again.”

Feyre had officially surrendered, head in Rhys’s lap as she weakly muttered, “This is our house. Our house. We have a child. A toddler. We had dinner here an hour ago.”

Rhys was staring blankly at the ceiling. “We should burn the furniture.”

Azriel had not moved.

Still straddling Y/N, his chest rising and falling a bit faster now, jaw still tingling from where she’d bitten him. His shadows rolled lazily over her hips, slipping under the hem of her shirt like they knew no shame, brushing her skin like they were claiming her all over again.

Y/N glared up at him, cheeks burning, breath coming fast.

“I will get revenge for this,” she hissed. “This humiliation. This entire performance.”

Azriel only smiled, infuriatingly calm. “Then I look forward to it.”

WHUMP.

She hit him in the chest with the pillow again.

WHUMP.

He caught it and held it there, pinning her hands beneath his, voice low.

“Or you could surrender now. I’ll go easy on you… maybe.”

Her eyes blazed.

“You want surrender?” she whispered.

And then—in front of everyone—she arched up and bit his collarbone.

Azriel made a sound that could only be described as a choked growl, his wings flaring just a bit, shadows suddenly swirling like a storm.

Mor shrieked. “OH MY GODS.”

Cassian threw the blanket over his entire head. “I’M DEAD. BURY ME WITH HONOR.”

Lucien stood up and announced, “I’m going to go walk into the Sidra and never come back.”

Elain, softly: “I didn’t even know Fae could blush that much.”

Amren just stood, hands on her hips, and said, “Someone bring the child. Let him see what he must never become.”

Azriel looked like he was this close to losing every last shred of composure. His fingers curled around Y/N’s hips, grip possessive, eyes glowing faintly gold in the low light.

Y/N’s voice was a purr now, dangerous and smug. “Still think I’m the one surrendering?”

Azriel blinked down at her—and then, in the most unbothered voice possible, purred back:

“I’m letting you win.”

Y/N howled in rage and launched the pillow at his head again.

Mor collapsed in screaming laughter.

Cassian rolled onto his side and yelled into the floor:

“WHEN THEY GET MARRIED WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE.”

Nesta, dry as bone, replied, “Good. Maybe then we’ll have peace.”

And Feyre just reached for the wine bottle with one trembling hand.

“…I need three glasses just to forget tonight even happened.”

Azriel was laughing now—an actual full-on laugh, rare and wicked and infuriatingly attractive, his head tilted back slightly as Y/N shoved at his chest again, huffing like a dragon about to breathe literal star fire.

“You’re not letting me win,” she snapped, trying to sit up—only for him to lean down again and trap her with his body, his smirk infuriatingly close.

“Oh, but I am,” he purred, his voice brushing over her skin like velvet wrapped in shadows. “Letting you think you have the upper hand… while I enjoy the view.”

Y/N’s eyes blazed. “You are unbelievable.”

“And yet…” Azriel hummed, brushing his nose lightly along her jaw, just enough to make her entire soul glitch, “you’re still under me.”

There was a pause.

And then—Y/N’s voice went low and dangerous, her accent cutting through like a blade of silk.

“Fine.”

She grinned slowly.

“Let me show you what I do to people who underestimate me.”

Everyone in the room simultaneously—

“OH MY GODS.”

Cassian, muffled under his blanket: “SHE’S GONNA DOM HIM I KNEW IT—”

Feyre was openly drinking from the wine bottle now. “Rhys, portal me to Hewn City. I’d rather deal with Keir.”

Rhys, wide-eyed, whispered, “They’re worse than us.”

Mor was gone, rolling off the couch, clutching her ribs. “I can’t. I can’t—this is the best mating bond I’ve ever witnessed—how are they not combusting?!”

Nesta gave a sharp nod. “I give them ten minutes before they disappear upstairs.”

“Five,” Amren said flatly. “Three if he says anything else in that voice.”

Lucien had left the room. Vanished. There was no trace of him. Smart man.

Azriel’s shadows coiled tighter around Y/N’s waist, amused and pleased, while she leaned up again and whispered something in his ear—inaudible to the others, but it made his breath hitch, his hands tighten around her hips, his wings flex like he was very suddenly and urgently remembering he had a mate, and that she was his.

Cassian peeked out from under his blanket. “Did she just—did she say something or—did his soul just exit his body?”

Azriel was still for a heartbeat. Two.

Then he stood.

Effortlessly. With Y/N still in his arms.

She let out a very pleased, smug hum, arms twining around his neck, chin perched on his shoulder.

“Don’t wait up,” she said sweetly over his shoulder.

Cassian dramatically fell back onto the rug. “THEY’RE LEAVING. THEY’RE DOING THE THING. ABANDON SHIP.”

Rhys, cradling a glass of wine now, muttered, “I am the High Lord. I should be able to kick people out of my house.”

“Should being the key word,” Feyre muttered, pouring herself another glass and handing one to Nesta.

Amren raised her empty glass. “May the walls stay standing.”

“Unlikely,” Mor replied, still giggling. “But we’ll have fun guessing what breaks first.”

He taught you to fly. Gently. When it didn’t work, your mother took it into her own hands, doing precisely what she had done to Rhys. It worked. And you’d fly with him, sometimes, whenever you returned to the Night Court after a rotation throughout Prythian. You’d tell him of Dawn and Day and Summer, and he’d look at you, grinning like you were showing him the world.

With a past of deprivation and enclosure, your mother knew more of what she didn’t want for you than what she did want. She wanted none of the barrenness that came from being raised an Illyrian woman, terrified to lose her wings. Doing anything to prevent her cycle, to deny her body its natural course, only to have it come anyway, sending her to the square to have her freedom stripped. Caged. Clipped.

She wanted none of that for you.

You grew up around Prythian—as free as she could make you. It was a boarding school sort of arrangement; cycled throughout the courts for your schooling. Dawn, Day, Winter, Summer. Night Court was but a resting point, a home. You did your basic schooling there, but it was among the other four courts you attended that you truly grew, meeting new people who taught you various crafts and trades.

Your mother justified the system to your father by claiming it would teach you how to gain the favor of the other courts, encouraging alliances. For all you knew, perhaps it would lead to marrying you off someday. The daughter of a High Lord, even half-Illyrian, was still a daughter, after all. But for the first decades of your life, you couldn’t be bothered to care. Not when women in your court—women like your own cousin—were suffering from within their cages, trapped.

It was thanks to your mother that you were nothing like them. That you were happy, safe, free.

You were barely twelve when Morrigan was brutalized by her own family, too young to truly understand the capacity of your eighteen year-old cousin’s suffering at the time. But you grew to  appreciate the gift your mother gave you. It became your guiding star, your saving grace.

Freedom. Freedom. Freedom.

Even with so much time away from the Night Court, you saw Rhys often; despite being as worthy a warrior as his bastard brothers, he was in and out of Illyria to visit the Night Court as the High Lord’s son. You’d grown to know many sons of High Lords and found your brother to be a better, gentler, more cunning heir than the rest. More importantly, even as you saw him growing stronger, he was still just your brother; you saw none of that politics in him. He always seemed to make sure of that around you, as if he’d wanted to spare you. Considering he was the one your father focused on for such things, it wasn’t too difficult. It was your mother that placed any weight in your endeavors, who knew you truly.

Your mother had been merciless to Rhys in the way most Illyrian mothers were, though not unkind and generous—far from it. You knew it was your mother that made Rhys the way he was, who made your brother someone so fiercely loving despite your father and not someone cold and sharp because of him.

You might not have seen him often, but never once did you doubt him.

Rhys’s love always glimmered behind his eyes, even in that stony mask of cold he put on outside in court matters. You could see it whenever you met his gaze, that hidden warmth behind his cunning violet. But you most often saw that part of him that was a brother more than anything  in your mother’s house—when he was with the two he considered his own siblings. 

It was different for you, to know those two other Illyrian boys. You never stayed in your mother’s Illyrian house—she did all she could to keep you from Illyria, after all—and when you first began to visit her house at eighteen during your Night Court months, sick of staying in the Hewn City and desperate not to become what had been destined for Mor, it felt like being among intruders. Because throughout your life, you had been moving constantly, from court to court and back again. You had never had one safe harbor or refuge besides people. Home was Rhys and your mother—not these two Illyrians. Yet they were here, familiar to your home and not to you, born before you were even conceived. And they fit like puzzle pieces, even if you did not recognize them.

You were no stranger to Illyrians and their twisted ways; it was part of why your mother was so insistent on having you study abroad so often, unchained to any sort of possibility of what she had endured. That made you wary of Cassian and Azriel. What your mother had suffered—and almost suffered—at the hands of their kind, her kind, was horrific. Nearly unspeakable. Illyrians were brash, ruthless, lethal, merciless, and these two were no exception. But you soon learned the brash and ruthless one had been shamed and abandoned, had lost his own mother. And the lethal and merciless one had endured horrors and torture that turned his soul inwards. Yet neither brought their wrath upon you. No, they seemed tentative, careful with you at first. And yet—urgent. Steadfastly attentive. As if anything with a drop of their honorary brother’s blood was their own.

You would remember that day forever: returning from a month in Day Court, languid and sleepy after poring endlessly in Helion’s sprawling, glittering libraries, and opening the door to a swaggering, thunderous Cassian who moved rather comfortably in the house. You'd opened your mouth when your mother embraced you, wanting to mention that she hadn’t mentioned there would be other people here, too. You’d shaken hands with a quiet, cool Azriel introducing himself without an ounce of acknowledgement of the shadows cloaking him or the fact that he was a stranger in your home. A sleepy-eyed Rhys had slid into the house after dusk, shrugging off his leathers and kissing the top of your head before collapsing into one of the dinner table chairs. Then he smiled and chuckled and laughed, as if those two filled him with life.

For years, you couldn’t help your spark of ire. 

A part of you—a hateful part of you—considered that perhaps you weren’t sufficient. But then Rhys would come home and you’d see how his eyes would crease in the corners when he faced his brothers. His voice would lilt between the brothers’ animalistic fighting and thrown words, and even silent Azriel’s eyes would sometimes grow soft, losing that fogged, haunted gaze that had always seemed to cloud him. And so even if they were more brothers than you were a sister, perhaps Cass and Az were Rhys’s brothers. And if anything, you were glad there was a place for him to keep tending to the flames of his warmth.

There was a period later on, of course, when he’d become withdrawn at the hands of your father, who separated him from his brothers entirely. You’d seen little of them, with the shadowsinger at the High Lord's whim and Cassian commanding legions. Rhys only had you until the trio reunited at the Blood Rite. That week, you were staying at the Night Court, and you couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t think. You had no doubt in Rhys, in his abilities, and you had heard enough about his brothers by then to know that they, too, were formidable. But there was always a chance. And those who expected Rhys’s survival—all of the Night Court—thought him unbreakable. But you had seen him broken and softened too many times to imagine him as the rest of Prythian did.

And when Rhys won the Blood Rite and returned… he’d come back with his brothers, but you were the first place he winnowed to, taking you into his arms and holding you with such ferocity you thought you might crumble. He’d always cared for you, loved you as your brother, fiercely protective in the way many Fae males were, and you had always attributed it to those instincts and later; his guilt. But that day, when he’d held you so tightly, like it was this he’d been waiting for after reaching the top of Ramiel, you he was climbing towards rather than the summit, you realized how much he loved you for the sake of it. How much he needed you. And how much you needed him. 

Nearly two decades drifted by. The war passed. Rhys gained and lost legions—gained and lost himself. He’d fought in battle, again separated from Cassian among the troops while Azriel was kept close to your father as spymaster. There were no more warm days in Illyria, no more voices filling the walls of your mother’s home. You hadn’t realized that it was the presence of those three and your mother that had made Illyria bearable at all—made it feel like a home at all.

You spent most of those seven years in Dawn, Day, and Velaris. Your mother, too, retreated from Illyria as it busied with warriors and preparations and kept to the City of Starlight. 

Your brother, at least, kept in touch through your mind. There was no bond there, no steady assurance between you, but sometimes you’d be within one of Helion’s libraries when Rhys’s voice would find you, courts away.

He tried to hide it every time—how war hollowed him, stripped him bare. 

And his walls were always up—those mental shields, blocking out the horrors of what he’d seen. Whenever the Illyrian legions returned to their home bases, you’d abandon Velaris entirely, relieved to find Rhys with your mother in her home. You always knew he was alive—nearly every night, he’d manage to send some kind of message to you, which you’d pass to your mother—but that never dulled the blow when you finally saw him.

One night, though, he hadn’t sent word before his arrival. You’d woken to the sound of the door opening, and you found him in the living room, sitting on the ground, wings drooping and his head in his hands, as if he’d been too tired to even sit on the couch.

I couldn’t find them, he’d always tell you first. It was often the first thing he’d update you with—if he’d found his brothers among the dead. This time, however, he hadn’t noticed you. Hadn’t even lifted his head. Instinctively, you slipped into his mind, finding the answer without startling him—

And was struck with the scene, so visceral and bloody you stopped short in your tracks.

That carnal, raw violence of the final stretches of battle, when weapons did little. When it was flesh upon flesh, brute force against brute force, and will against will. Bones cracking and guttural screams. No mercy. And the aftermath: bodies upon bodies, piling under the smoke. Flies and insects like maidens of death, flitting about the sea of the fallen. 

And your brother, digging through them, hurling corpses aside at every sight of a wing.

Gently—so gently—you retreated from his mind. So smoothly and soft, as if you were part of his own darkness, soft enough for him not to notice.

“Rhys,” you whispered, and his chin lifted to you. His eyes were black, but his face was raw. “Are you hurt?”

He shook his head. Rasped, “Didn’t find them.” 

Good news, a relief. But there was little warmth in your brother’s voice. Only exhaustion. Bone-deep and so, so, lonely.

You said nothing. You only kneeled at his side and held him. Let him shed his tears in this darkness and solitude so that his legions would never know the heir to command was breaking apart. You knew that this place was a reprieve for him, that it was a pocket of the world that didn’t know bloodlust and death. You and your mother helped Rhys heal from that absence of love during the War, but it was difficult when there was always a return to the battlefield.

That night you saw your mother from her doorway, woken from sleep. Even an Illyrian mother, never coddling, her eyes would narrow in that way they always did when she saw either of you in pain—in true pain. In sorrow and desolation. As if she felt it, too.

Yet so softly, she would smile. As if her children, loving each other in a realm of so many brothers and sisters warring for power across the courts—it made up for it.

Impossibly, those seven years passed. You’d barely been able to study or focus knowing Rhys was off in the war, and to even imagine the rest of those you knew fighting made you sick.

Morrigan. Cassian. Azriel.

Your cousin, you were the most assured of. For she was making legends of herself with her successes, and there was always word of her—off with the human queens, leading the charges and strategy, formidable and guided by truth. And Cassian, though never in the same rotations as Rhys, would pass through the Illyrian camp near your mother’s house with his own legion, and whenever you were there, the relief was disarming. You’d find Rhys’s mind—or try to; he had always been better at the ways of daemati than you—and tell him his brother was still alive.

But Azriel… he was nowhere to be found. Nowhere at all.

Rhys told you it must have been because he was with your father, working closely as spymaster. You had little access to your father as it was and only Rhys’s word to count on. But you couldn’t erase the shadowsinger’s nature from your memory, no matter how vague it was. He was the only one who might thrive in solitude. In desolation. Still—at least Rhys and Cass were able to reconnect with your family in their own ways, no matter how rarely. Meanwhile, Azriel was the only Night Court spymaster there was. For all any of you knew, he could have been entirely alone with his shadows for those seven years. Just as he had been long, long ago.

As your family fought, you traveled between allied courts and mastered all else. Your studies were a welcome distraction as you grew, cultured yourself. You learned academics and the ways of healing and crafting and art. You practiced magic and glamours and fostered power. By three decades of life you knew things that Fae in their centuries hadn’t yet learned.

By the end of the war, when the wall was built and humans were given freedom, you were not hailed as a hero, as the others were, but had still become formidable in your own way. A jewel of all courts.

You did not know politics, however. Not like Rhys. And you had met Tamlin before, albeit briefly, and Rhys had spoken highly of him. You didn’t know that the rest of the Spring Court—Tamlin’s father and two brothers—hated your court for ridding them of their human slaves. Hated Rhys for the power he so clearly demonstrated. What you knew was what your studies and travels had shown you: the kindness of Fae. The warmth of different courts.

It hadn’t occurred to you that there was a reason you’d never been sent to Spring Court. No more than their stance on humans in the past.

Five years after the war ended, your benefit of the doubt was enough for the sight of Tamlin’s father, the Spring Court High Lord, at the traveling Illyrian camp not to scare you. Not when you saw him over her mother’s shoulder.

Not until he drew a blade and plunged it through your mother’s chest.

You had learned healing in Dawn and Day, been taught things overseas that many your age would never have acquired. And though your power was not the same as those with such magic native to them, you think there had always been a part of you, unexplainable, that could tap into anything. Any little bit of magic if you tried hard enough. And it was Dawn and Day you had honed most finely, grown to feel at home in. It was the skills learned there that let you survive the onslaught and play dead, fashion a glamour until you seemed no more than a corpse for him to abandon. To try to heal your mother through the tears and delirium—to mend the horrific, bloody strips of membrane left from being cut off. To somehow heal where the wings had been serrated from her, taken as if meant to be some prize or decoration. Her life force and freedom stolen to be framed like a prize of war.

You had failed in healing her, of course. Her head was already gone by then. But that didn’t stop you from being covered in your mother’s blood by the time Rhys found you. You still don’t remember what happened after that. Only the sight of Rhys when you woke in the House of Wind: his face in his hands, shuddering, too worn and shattered to even hear you wake. To even prevent you from hearing his voice when he thought you were asleep. It should have been me. It should have been me.

You did not fly after that. Not because you couldn’t—your wings were intact, summoned at will like Rhys—but rather because there was no part of you that could face your own Illyrian blood again. To use so freely what your mother had lost in agony with her life. Because it could have been you. Could have been you, keeping your wings in your mother’s place rather than tucked back behind you, disappearing into wisps of shadow. You could have been the prize, the target, rather than the spare that survived only because the Spring High Lord had underestimated you.

 You never told Rhys what you heard him say when you first woke in the House of Wind, but you so terribly wanted to tell him that he was wrong. That it should have been you.

“Just something. Anything.”

You hated it when Rhys sounded like this. Strained. As if it physically hurt him, grated the insides of his throat to speak to you.

“Please,” he said for perhaps the sixth time that morning, his chin tipped down so low that he looked through his lashes at you, hugging yourself under the covers. His violet eyes glistened with miserably breathtaking beauty. Beauty you hated yourself for dimming. “You love the Rainbow. Come on. Just an hour. Half an hour.”

“Rhys.” You sounded hoarse. “Leave.”

He didn’t answer for a moment, but you saw him stiffen. It was the first time you’d spoken in nine days. It had been like this for three months, having you lock yourself into your room in the House of Wind, with Rhys visiting every morning and night to try to coax you out of bed. Nobody else had tried to. Nobody else could.

Robbed of your mother, you had abandoned everything, body and mind. You didn’t want to move or eat or speak. You did not use your wings. Did not summon them. 

“I don’t know,” Rhys said at last, impossibly soft. “I don’t know how to help you.”

You swallowed a wince at the pang that shot through you. It hurt to see him this way, and you turned your back.

He called your name so desperately that you nearly whipped around.

“Please,” he repeated, and the break in his voice this time was unfamiliar. Strange. “Father wants to send you to the Hewn City. But if you find a life here in Velaris, I think you can… I don’t know,” he said, nearly frantic. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I’m sorry I—” His voice cracked entirely, and there was a sharp intake of breath that made the first tear slip down your cheek. “Please. You need to get up. You can’t be like this forever. If Father sends you down there, I don’t know if you’ll come back.”

To the Hewn City. To the place you insisted on being sent away from barely a decade ago, just a few years before the start of the War.

“Rhysand,” you breathed. “Go. Away.”

“Like hell I will,” he growled, but his voice died instantly. “I’m not leaving you here to rot any longer. I need you to let me help you. You need to live again. Even just a little.”

You squeezed your eyes shut. “Why?”

“You can’t—can’t be sent down there. You know what’ll happen.”

Whatever would have happened to Morrigan.

You all but pounced past the barriers of your brother’s mental shields, tearing through walls of dark, foggy smoke. Get the fuck out of my room, you snarled into his mind.

Get up and make me.

Prodding my anger won’t get you what you want, Rhysand.

A pause. All I want is for you to be all right.

For a moment, you saw yourself from his eyes—a silhouette under the covers, cloaked in night. You felt his anguish and fear and rage. The deep, languid shadows of his mind were familiar, warm to you despite their inherent cold, and he was permitting you free rein—you knew he was—but you also knew that you could pass through his defenses most of the time already. You retreated back into your own mind, sending out your next words, brisk and toneless: Get out.

Let me see it, he replied. 

No.

I won’t do anything to hurt you.

No.

I just need to see what hap—

No.

Father has been wanting to—

GET OUT.

Out of your head. Your room. Your life. Your grief. You thinned your defenses to the scrape of his talons on your shields, letting your brother see precisely what it was you meant, what it was you wanted. To wither away, to fall from the cliffs you’d once flown from. After years of soaring in the sky, to crash headfirst into the ground.

Rhys slipped past your mental shields like smoke spilling into glass. I’m mourning her too, he said. I didn’t endure what you did, but I understand your pain, sister. I want to help alleviate it. Any way I can. Let me.

You said nothing.

He sighed. I can arrange for someone else to escort you out, if you’d like.

The very thought of anyone new, unfamiliar, untrustworthy made your stomach roil.

Cassian, then. He’d be happy to join you.

I barely know Cassian. 

You trust him.

No more than you.

Who would you trust more than me, then?

Your mother’s face flashed into your mind.

I’m sorry.

Get out of my head.

You felt him retreat.

“Please,” Rhys said out loud. Again. “Just let me watch the memory. It could help Father find him. Make him pay. If you want, I can remove—”

Don’t finish that sentence. Your pillowcase was damp now, and you didn’t have the energy to speak. Just go.

For a moment, there was only stillness. I’ve apologized to you endlessly, and I’ll continue to do it until the day I die, he said. But I need to help you. How about Day? I’m sure Helion would be willing to host you for a time.

Helion has a court to run.

You are like a daughter to him.

I am nobody’s daughter anymore.

Rhys let out a shuddering breath.

“Go,” you said hoarsely. “Please.”

He sounded faint. “How can I leave you like this?”

Just like you have every other night I ignore you.

Talons scraped against your shields.

If my company is the issue, he said, consider Cassian or Azriel, at least. Genuinely. Just let them take you to the Artist’s Quarter for twenty minutes. Walk around. Say nothing. Wear a glamour for a while. Just leave the house. Even the room. I don’t have to be with you.

You felt it then, his pain. His guilt. Felt his regret at not meeting you and your mother halfway on your way to him as he was meant to, instead training his Illyrian legions. For mentioning to Tamlin where you were at all.

You turned back over to your brother. Faced his twisted expression. Your company is not the issue, Rhys.

Your brother’s brows quivered. How could you have forgotten, you thought, that he was the same male who had blamed himself for every fall you made when learning to fly? Who’d snarled at even Cassian’s sly remarks at your expense in the first year you’d lived with them for your Night Court visits? He had been gifted the power to experience the minds and lives of others—yet it surely tormented him now, to feel any of it. 

You were evil, you thought, for making someone so fiercely loyal suffer with you like this. 

His eyes softened. “Tell me what to do to make it better for you. Tell me how, and I’ll do it.”

And you knew he meant it.

For the first time, you settled in a place indefinitely. You moved to Velaris and dealt with the grief until it dulled enough to paint itself into the sky rather than every living thing the sun touched; just enough to function again. To start visiting Dawn or Day again and even sometimes Summer or Winter. 

Never Spring. Never Autumn. 

The latter was filled with power hungry hounds. Beron’s sons, you’d learned, weren’t all terrible—Eris was somewhat tolerable alone, you’d discovered in a solstice ball, when he’d proven himself not as vile as his brothers—and in turn had learned you were not as the Night Court had been made out to be. 

Lucien Vanserra was the only Autumn Court son you’d come to somewhat befriend. You’d seen how his own court was cruel to him, how he, too, had love stripped away from him before his eyes. But when he fled Autumn to serve as an emissary for the Spring Court, you never saw him or sought to. You wouldn’t hold it against Lucien, knowing that in a life like his, any kindness at all, any safe harbor, was deeply, wholly necessary. Let him have it, even under the court that killed your mother. Even after you would hear years later that the order for your head instated by Tamlin’s father had been annulled by Tamlin himself upon coming to power. Let Lucien have that kindness; so long as you would never lay any eye upon it.

You kept to Velaris. You had already been fond of it, but you grew to find a true, steadfast love for it, walking along the Sidra and visiting the Artist’s Quarter. Nodding to passersby faeries who had never needed to face the monstrosity of the world beyond.

You still did not fly. Did not summon your wings.

Even as you began to smile again, enjoy yourself again—when fleeting moments of joy would find you, and for just a breath, you would forget the hole burrowed deep within you—seeing Illyrian wings made you want to collapse in on yourself. They struck you like the memory of blood against stone, like a fragment of the past thrust upon the present.

Rhys had never summoned his wings when begging for you to leave your chambers those first few months of your grief. He had no reason to. And outside of your nightmares, you never saw such wings at all, But half a year after your mother’s murder, when you did try, slowly, to live again, it turned out Azriel had begun to take partial residence in Velaris almost immediately following the incident while serving as your father’s spymaster.

“He’s rarely here because of missions,” Rhys told you a month after you began to join him for dinner. “He’ll be here for this week before the next. I just thought you should be made aware if you hear someone arrive in the middle of the night, or if you see any shadows slipping around. Chances are you won’t hear him at all.”

That much, you knew. In your mother’s house, Azriel was only heard when he wanted to be—when he knew you needed to know someone was in the house or approaching. Mostly when Rhys or Cassian were doing Cauldron knew what in their chambers and Azriel’s presence was enough to humiliate them into silence.

“When was the last time you saw him?” Rhys asked over his shoulder. He looked rested today—though worn. He’d been warmer lately, almost relieved. Perhaps he thought you were truly getting better.

“Starfall,” you said absently, following Rhys to the hall. You’d seen Azriel in the years following the war before your mother’s death. You’d taken those five years for granted—your brother, his brothers, and your cousin who felt more like your sister finally united with you again. There had still been affairs following the war that drew them to their duties, but you’d been able to sleep easily for once and learn to work without an undercurrent of dread. Gods, you’d replay the memory of Azriel coming back to the House of Wind forever after the War: how he’d embraced Rhysand and Cassian like they were air. The shadowsinger had never been so overwrought with emotion—and your brother never so relieved.

And you, watching them reunite… you’d decided right then that you would never forgive your father.

“That’s almost a year,” replied Rhysand.

You hummed distractedly, gaze trailing the archway. A month ago, you’d finally agreed to leave your bedroom to join Rhys for dinner—and only because you’d heard him arguing with your father. The High Lord had visited you those first few months, but you were too hollowed out and empty to care. After that, whenever he came, you often only heard the tenor of his voice burgeoning until Rhysand’s joined him—until they were roaring at one another, then the sound barrier would come up, and you would lose any hold on what they said. It became clear to you, though, what was happening.

Rhys was suffering for what you had become, in more ways than one.

You had decided that would be no longer. Even if a part of you would always thrum with dread when you opened a door to an unfamiliar knock, even if you would never fly again, at least Rhysand could heal. He could thrive if he didn’t have you weighing on his conscience. You could endure being hollow and broken, but you were tired of being a burden.

As you followed Rhys into the dining room, you saw Azriel—his back to you as he moved something along the kitchen counter. Behind him, as they often were, his wings were tucked in tight.

The memory struck you like thunder.

It was clear as day: wings, discarded and shriveled from detachment, as if they had tucked into themselves without their host. Red fluid from the membrane glimmering over wooden floors.

You stopped short, blood screaming through your veins.

A hand caught your shoulder, and you flinched, a yelp slipping from you. Rhys’s eyes were round, and the certainty of the panic in his expression—as if he wasn’t surprised but ready for this, waiting for you to crumble even if he didn’t know why—struck you with startling humiliation.

This is what you had become. Something skittish and fragile. So easily shattered. 

“What is it?” Rhys asked softly. Behind him, Azriel had turned, brows lifted—then settled as he found you. Shadows danced around him like ocean currents.

He said nothing, eyes flicking to Rhysand first. You already knew there was a conversation happening between them.

“Speak out loud,” you snapped. “Don’t tread around me like a child.”

Azriel’s gaze finally landed upon you. Darkness incarnate. Yet warm. “I’ve been wanting to check on you for weeks, but Rhys said you wanted to be alone.” His eyes were unreadable, but his throat shifted. “How are you doing?”

“Fine.”

His chin dipped, as if it were a perfectly sufficient response. You’d forgotten what it was like to speak to Azriel, the only one of those three brothers who seemed to accept your silence.

What is it? Rhys repeated. Your mental shields weren’t up—they rarely were lately, with how little you left the House. And how little energy you had.

You swallowed, passing by your brother to get a glass from the cabinet. Nothing.

Something exasperated and tiresome pulsed towards your mind. Please don’t do this.

I’m too tired to push you out, Rhys.

Good. I don’t want you to. You practically threw terror at my shields a moment ago.

Azriel reached over you when you opened the cabinet, giving you a glass from the upper shelf. “Thank you,” you murmured.

Still waiting, by the way.

Your fingers clenched around the glass as you went to the faucet. Go back to Azriel’s head.

I’m afraid he already beat you to cursing me and throwing up his walls.

You slammed your shields up—much to your detriment, squinting your eyes for a moment as you filled the glass. Azriel’s gaze warmed you from your side, but you pretended not to notice for the sake of your dignity. There was already one Illyrian male coddling you. One too many.

Clouds of darkness surrounded your mental shields, slipping into the thinnest of crevices of your mind. Don’t tell me you forgot we can bypass each other, sister dearest, Rhys purred.

You jerked the faucet down and whipped around to him, glaring. Stop. Out.

Won’t do that.

Rhysand.

Tell me.

Why the fuck do you want to know so badly?

Because I haven’t felt that level of fear from you in months, he said. Did something trigger it?

You loosed a breath. I’m fine.

For Cauldron’s sake, stop trying to put on a show. His eyes burned. Just tell me what’s fucking wrong.

“My mother is dead is what’s fucking wrong,” you hissed, then froze. Azriel was at your side, and you could have sworn his shadows winced. Rhys blinked, then his features seemed to twist. 

Shame flushed over you in an instant. “Fuck,” you muttered, practically dropping the glass into the sink and shouldering past Azriel.

You were already out the door by the time you heard Rhys call your name.

It wasn’t your room you went to, but the balcony outside the dining room. 

When you’d begun to leave the House again, whenever your brother was out carrying your father’s orders, you were often left entirely by yourself. Rhys had managed to modify the wards of the House to allow you—and only you—to winnow in and out so that you wouldn’t be dependent upon his flying.

Because you certainly couldn’t depend on yours.

Rhys knew why you wouldn’t fly. He knew. But that hadn’t stopped him from pressing, over and over again, for weeks, months. And now, as you heard footsteps approaching behind you, you braced yourself for more questions, more why’s and tell me’s even though he knew damn well what had happened to you. It was as if enough questions would give the truth room to change. As if you could return to the way you were half a year ago, before the attack.

Biting your cheek as you stared out towards Velaris, you managed a weak, “I don’t want to hear it.”

“Hear what?”

You turned to Azriel. He glanced over his shoulder, as if your brother would be there.

“He left, if you’re expecting him.” The shadowsinger reached your side, looking out onto the glowing streets far below. “I think he understands now.” 

“Understands what?” you asked.

“That he crossed a line.”

“No shit,” you muttered.

HIs gaze flicked to you. But he kept quiet.

“I shouldn’t have told him that,” you said. “I was just… I don’t know.”

Azriel shrugged. His shadows trickled onto the terrace rails, curling over your fingers. “He was pushing you too far.”

“You couldn’t even hear him.”

“No,” he admitted. “But I could see you.”

You felt your neck flush. “Lovely knowing my brother isn’t the only one watching me closely for damage control.”

“I’m not watching closely. It’s obvious. You’re an open book.”

“I’m not an open book. You’re just a spymaster. It’s your job to observe.”

He shrugged again. But his shadows seemed to compress—darken.

You frowned at him as his gaze drifted along the winding Sidra. “When did you start working directly under my father again?” After the war, his duties had loosened considerably—enough for him not to work at your father’s every whim. Enough for your brother to see him again.

“Only this year. After the ambush.” 

The ambush. Not the Spring Court attack. Not your mother’s murder. Nameless yet direct. You didn’t know what to make of it.

“Is it… all right?” you asked. When his eyes met yours, questioning, you added, “I mean, I remember the war—how long you were gone. And I know my father. I can imagine working under his command is… demanding. Besides, the last time I saw you was last year.” You scoped his features. Azriel did look tired, you realized. Not entirely, but enough, with darkness pooling in more places than before—under his eyes, in the hollows under his cheekbones. The angles and planes of that undeniably beautiful Illyrian face had been sharpened. Honed. “You seem… preoccupied.”

“It’s been fine,” he answered simply, not wasting a breath. Rhys had told you the truth—that Azriel had been on constant missions, put under even more unrelenting pressure than even Rhys himself. At least your brother had the comfort of familial bonds to push back against your father when needed. Azriel had nobody and nothing to protect him. Nothing but his duty and honor as a shadowsinger.

“How’s Cassian?” you asked. You’d only seen him weekly since moving to Velaris. According to Rhys, he’d tried to visit almost every other day during those first few months when you isolated yourself, but Rhys hadn’t allowed anyone to see you. You’d barely been able to face your own brother and father, much less anyone else. When you began to enter the world again, it was Cassian and Mor who escorted you to the Rainbow on the days Rhys went off to his duties. Cass was kind, warm, easy. A welcome light in your pit of darkness.

And you hated it, how both him and your brother so easily looked after you.

“I haven’t seen him in a month,” Azriel replied. “But he seemed fine when I last did.”

You shifted on your feet. When you had resided in your mother’s home, Rhys and his brothers couldn’t go more than a day without needing each other’s company. Now things felt like the war—but without their resistance as they tried so desperately to find each other. “Rhys said he barely sees you these days, too.”

His wings seemed to tighten impossibly more—drawing your attention to them again and lodging in your chest.

Blood on wood. Blood on stone. Blood on wings. Blood on your hands.

Your breath caught, and you pressed a palm to the marble rails, drumming your fingers to stay in reality. To feel the cold. This is real, you told yourself. Velaris glittered, pulsed at your feet. This is where you are. The memories are just memories. What happened in them is over. 

“What you said to Rhys wasn’t wrong,” Azriel told you suddenly. You looked at him. He was already watching you. “I know you regret telling him that. But if anything, it made Rhys see a little more clearly.”

You exhaled. “I just… feel bad. He’s suffering.”

Azriel swallowed. “I know.”

“I don’t know what to do. How to make it easier for him. I feel like I’m making him suffer more.”

Azriel looked at you. Blinked, as if… startled.

You bristled. “What?” 

He seemed to regain his focus. “Nothing, just… he said the exact same thing about you just now. Word for word.”

Somehow, that made it worse. More tangible. You were the face of Rhys’s guilt, and you knew it. 

“I know that you know,” he went on, “but he cares for you. Deeply. The kind of love he has for you is rare, even among siblings. Just be patient with him.”

You winced and hated yourself for it. Your brother loved you, and you knew it, and yet the idea only felt like a burden. “I don’t want him to. I don’t want him to worry for me anymore.”

“It can’t be helped,” Azriel said. “Both of you need time to heal. He’s grieving for himself, but he’s also grieving for you. You’ve always meant the world to him. You’re one of the only things he has that the court can’t take away from him.”

Perhaps when you were being schooled all across Prythian so long ago, when you had recounted the other courts to Rhys and he looked at you with such wondrous love, as if you were the world—it had been the world you were showing him. Perhaps to your brother, you had been a breath of freedom. And when you collapsed into yourself—turned into a shell—he had lost that. Been trapped in the world he was born into again.

Heat welled into your vision. “Fuck,” you said, and you turned from Azriel, now humiliated as much as you were heartbroken. If you weren’t so damn fragile, so weak-hearted, Rhys wouldn’t know you were irreparable. He could have found peace if you could just force this fear down, this grief. He could have had you as a safe harbor while his brothers were gone, pulled apart by politics and time and war.

Azriel shifted behind you, coming closer. You felt his shadow pass over you. “They will pay,” he said, deathly soft. “They will pay for everything they did to you.”

You squeezed your eyes shut, tears slipping down your cheeks. Shook your head. “They might not.”

“I swear it.” He sounded rougher now. Sharper. “I swear to the Mother.”

“Don’t do that.”

“Give me your hand.”

You sniffed, turning back to him. “What?”

“Give me your hand.” He extended his palm to you. “I’ll make a bargain with you. My primary task under your father has been to find the Spring Court’s weaknesses to counterattack.” His shadows whirled around him, almost entirely shrouding his wings. “Let me prove it to you. Let me promise you.”

You blinked. “I don’t… don’t want to force you.”

“I’m already bound to this mission by the High Lord himself. There’s no more forcing to be done.”

You held Azriel’s gaze, that hazel in the gilded fae light. They carried more than you had ever seen from him in those passing months each year in your youth.

“I swear on my life, daughter of the Night Court,” he said. “The High Lord of Spring and his sons will pay for what they did to you.”

Your brows furrowed. “That’s a vow, not a bargain.”

He inclined his head. “Then if I succeed, you’ll do a favor of my choosing. Deal?”

Azriel’s outstretched hand was lined and marred with scars, whorls of roughened skin. Memory, nightmares, permanently engrained into him. The darkest backbone of his life, wearing his promise.

You accepted. It felt like something had finally steadied within you as Azriel’s hand gripped yours, warm and firm. “It’s a deal, Shadowsinger.”

Almost imperceptibly, Azriel’s mouth tugged. And when you finally released his hand, your own was inked with the mark of the bargain, covered in night-dark lines. 

author's note thank u for reading lovelies <3 let me know what you think! i've been in genuine flow state writing this fic because the concept of a half-illyrian daemati who isn't rhys and is a girlboss is just… well yes. i'm hoping to update weeklyish if not sooner. taglist is open, just comment to be added!

series masterlist | next chapter

Ever since you’d started studying to become a Healer, you hadn’t been able to spend much time anywhere but the library.

Thankfully, you were close enough with Gwyn and Clotho that they gave you an office to keep your books in and have a quiet, private study space.

You sat in the desk chair of your office, elbows propped up on the desk and chin in hand. It was past midnight, but study calls. 

You flipped through one of your pre-Healer books half-asleep when a shadow landed on your shoulder and tickled at your neck.

“Hey Az,” you giggled, smiling.

Moments later, he appeared in the doorway with your favourite flowers in hand. 

He wasn’t in his battle attire, he wasn’t the scary Spymaster, he was just your loving mate.

You rose from your chair, heading to the doorway to greet him.

“Aw Azriel,” you grabbed the flowers then touched his face, “you’re the sweetest male in the world.”

“I miss my mate,” he said wearily.

Guilt swallowed you whole. You knew that Azriel hadn’t been on any official Night Court business trips in a while, and it was getting to him.

It was kind of a good thing because it meant no shady shit was going on that needed taking care of, but it was also a bad thing because Azriel needed the adrenaline of Spymaster duties. He was restless without it, and without you.

It was like he didn’t know what to do with all his free time. Especially since you were so busy studying. 

You couldn’t even remember the last time you had sex, which seemed to be exactly what Azriel was thinking too. 

You swatted some notebooks out of the way and placed the flowers on your desk, Azriel following you into your office.

“I know Az, I miss you too. I’m sorry I’ve been so busy lately and I haven’t had much time for us.”

“It’s okay princess…it makes me happy knowing you’re studying for something you want so bad. I’m really proud of you.”

Your heart melted at your mates reassuring words. You really loved him more than anything, and he was the only one to ever say he was proud of you, so every time he said it it was the best feeling in the world.

You leaned against your desk as Az put his hands on your waist.

“I love you,” you whispered to him.

He pressed his forehead to yours and the scent of him made your head spin.

“I love you too,” he whispered back and placed a soft kiss on your lips.

“What’d you do today?”

“I paced around our bedroom, sparred with Rhys because I was jealous that he has his mate around all the time, made dinner, ate dinner, then Nesta said she was sick of my brooding and gave me one of her smutty books, and now I’m here because I don’t want to be away from you any longer.”

He nudged you with his head like a cat.

“Aw…so you read Nesta’s books huh?”

He smirked at you and bit his lip to hide his smile.

“Is that why you’re really here, Az?” You teased, “Did those books get you all worked up?”

“Maybe…but I do really miss you princess, I miss touching you,” he breathed and started moving his hands up your body.

You closed your eyes and inhaled. Your final exam was only two days away. You couldn’t get distracted now, when you were so close to the finish line.

You pushed off the desk and out of Azriel’s grasp.

“I miss you too sweetheart, I really do,” you started as you circled the desk to reach your chair, “but my exam is in two days. Just use that Spymaster patience for two more little days and then we can fuck like rabbits. I promise.”

He didn’t look convinced. 

“Babyy,” he whined, rolling his eyes and sinking defeatedly into the seat across your desk. 

“I’m sorry Az! You know how important this is, c’mon don’t be a big bat-baby, it's two days.”

“Just because you put emphasis on ‘two’ doesn’t make it sound better you know.”

You scoffed playfully at Azriel’s needy attitude, but you stood your ground.

“You heard me, Shadowsinger.”

He dipped his head and looked at you intensely with his hazel eyes; one of his wings twitched. 

“Fine,” he huffed, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms.

You smiled at having won, and because you liked seeing your mate all sexually frustrated like this. A little teasing never killed anyone. 

You assumed the same position you were in before Azriel entered. 

Roughly five minutes passed of you two sitting in complete silence. The only sound was the one of you flipping the page every now and again. 

Azriel was completely still the whole time, focused on you. Then, he moved.

He pushed his seat back, but instead of getting up, he tucked his wings in tight and got on his knees, crawling beneath the desk.

Your eyebrows rose.

“Az? What are you doing…?”

You looked down and he appeared right at your knees, placing a scarred hand on either one and slowly spreading them apart.

“You can keep reading your books all you want princess, but I can’t wait two minutes for you, let alone two days.”

You were at a loss for words. You knew Az loved going down on you, but you’d never seen him this desperate to taste and touch you. 

Once your knees were spread to his liking, he hooked his hands beneath your thighs and pulled your hips closer to him. You gasped as your ass slid down the seat of the chair. 

He bunched your short skirt up to your waist and lifted your legs so that your ankles rested atop your desk. You pushed your ankles down onto the desk to help you lift your hips up so Azriel could peel your panties off.

You were spread out, on full display before your mate who was on his knees, looking at your pussy like it was God. 

You softly moaned at the sight of him, and he did the same. 

He dragged his eyes from your wetting core back up to your eyes. 

“Keep reading.”

“What?”

“You need to study, right? So keep reading.”

Cauldron. There’s no way you’d be able to retain any of the information you read while Azriel ate you out. That male can and has made you scream on his tongue. 

“Read out loud this time,” he added before placing his hands on your thighs, readying himself.

He looked up at you in a way that you knew meant he wouldn’t start until you did. 

You grabbed the book off the desk and leaned back into the chair. 

“Chapter six, the limits of healing,” you started.

You felt Azriel’s breath against your pussy, and heard him mumble something along the lines of ‘I need you’ before he started pressing kisses to your cunt and flicking his tongue up and down it.

Your voice trembled as you continued reading.

“Th-there are b-boundaries of healing that should n-never be crossed, fuck, the c-conseq-quences will be deadly.”

Azriel licked and sucked at your pussy with wild desperation. 

He moaned as he sucked on you and spit on your pussy, licking his spit back up as it slid down your core and burying his face in you. 

His grip on your thighs was tight enough to leave bruises that matched his siphons. 

His wings began twitching underneath the desk, making it shake left and right. 

Azriel’s wings only twitched in unison like that when he was close to cumming…

Was he gonna cum just from tasting you? 

The thought pushed you right to the edge.

“Fuck, A-Azriel, I’m g-gonna cum.”

He groaned his approval against your pussy and plunged his tongue inside you, fucking you with it until you came on his tongue, your wetness dripping onto his chin. 

“It’s not enough,” he said as he practically threw the desk off his wings and stood up again, pulling you off the chair and bending you over the desk that was now five feet away from where it should be.

“I’m sorry princess, but your books can wait two minutes until I’ve had my turn with you,” he pulled your tank top over your head and grabbed your breasts, pulling you against his hard on.

“Azriel,” you breathed out, “I love it when you get like this.”

“Yeah? I’m sure you do,” he responded while he stripped out of his pants and underwear, “you’ve made me wait way too fucking long, I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

He lined his hard length up with your entrance and moved himself against your clit.

“I’m sorry baby,” you moaned out, “I swear I didn’t mean to.”

Azriel placed your hands on the desk, then placed his own hands beside yours, towering over you and hovering atop your head. 

He leaned forward and kissed your temple.

“Don’t apologize princess, I feel so much better now,” he whispered close to your ear as he slid himself into you and you moaned in pleasure.

Azriel started fucking you at a steady pace, grabbing your jaw and tilting your head upwards to look at him.

“I fucking needed this,” he groaned.

“Mmm, yes, Azriel, fuck,” you drawled out as the sound of Azriel’s hips snapping against your ass filled the office, maybe even the whole library. 

You braced your hands more firmly on your desk and used them to help push your hips back against Azriel’s dick.

He whimpered as he gripped your hips with both hands and started pounding into you, faster and harder. 

“I need to cum in you, I need it so bad princess, please can I cum in you?”

“Cum in me Azriel please,” you replied out-of-breath as you neared your orgasm too.

“Fuck, f-fuck baby,” he moaned as his wings twitched and he emptied himself inside you, your orgasm following right after. 

He put his arms around you and held your shaking body through it until you caught your breath.

Azriel slid out of you ever so slowly, so as to make sure you kept all his cum inside you. 

You pressed your thighs together once he was fully out to keep his cum from sliding down them.

Azriel, still with his hands on your hips, turned you around to meet his gaze.

“Thank you princess,” he whispered, leaning his forehead against yours once more.

“Thank you Az, I needed to decompress.”

He giggled lightly and held you close in the silence for a few moments.

“Do you think you’re gonna do some more studying?”

“I don’t think I can focus on a single sentence with my brain this warm and fuzzy.”

He smiled.

“Then, do you think I could have more?”

You furrowed your eyebrows at him in confusion.

“You wanna have sex again?”

“No,” he said rather shyly, “I want to make you cum on my face again.”

Your pussy filled with butterflies. 

“What happened to the Azriel who told me never to be too greedy?”

“What can I say,” he said as he began lowering himself to his knees before you, “you healed me princess.”

You smiled down at him and put your fingers in his hair as his shadows skittered up your arms.

Azriel placed a kiss on your pussy then looked up at you.

“You really are gonna make a great Healer.”

You looked at him with admiration.

“Thank you, my Azriel.”

He whined at the sound of you calling him your Azriel, and buried his face in you once more. 

thanks for reading!

xoxo, luna e. clips ✧ ೃ༄*ੈ✩