the iudex

Azriel’s feet press, soft and steady, against the giving earth of Autumn. 

There’s a nice breeze going – a welcome reprieve from the biting cold of the mountains of Night. Sun shines on his back, absorbed by the black of his leathers and heating his skin. If he cranes his ear past the ever-present humming of his shadows, he can even hear the gentle splashing of a lake on shore. 

It’s a wonder, he thinks, that a place so idyllic can breed some of the worst fucking people he’s ever met. 

There! His shadows insist, interrupting him with their song. They dart across the floor like children, skittering to their destination. He dares not cross Them, so of course he leaves it be. 

Where does Your mind take you? He asks back – ili mansi vikra? – but his feet already move behind them. Their senses invade his entirety.

Following patiently, watching the light hit the trees hit the ground from about fifty different angles, from every one of his eyes, he thinks he smells a little bit of smoke.

Naiya, the shadows sing at him. Naiya.

Before Azriel can process why They insist on discussing dogs when there might be an active fire, he hears a bark himself, then a sort of pained yowl. The scent of smoke bites at his nose. 

His feet carry him to a birthing hound, in visible pain, sloughing smoke off her back like a snake shedding skin. 

Azriel stops. There lies a puppy the size of his palm, wiggling in the dirt. The smoke from its dying mother wraps the poor creature in a blanket of ash. The mother closes her eyes, and the remaining smoke billowing off of her fades into nothingness.

Through it all: Naiya, his shadows repeat, chorusing joyously. Naiya!

He takes a moment to whisper a quiet prayer for the felled hound, and for the magic she homed. Finishing his mutterings, he scoops up the infant, its eyes scrunched shut. A little maneuvering and – it’s a girl.

The shadows crow in delight, rushing in at once, peeking down at the little creature. Their joy smothers Azriel and he has to bite against the feelings, the whole force of Them. Then, as fickle as the rain and as changing as the tides, They demand alterations. The love cuts off immediately; it turns into warning. 

Azriel focuses hard to try and split his attention once more, to spread his fracturing being across the shadows and the hounds and the dying and the earth. He hears the thud of footsteps, and concentrates until he smells the fire magic of Autumn. 

It is Eris, Son of Autumn, who rushes into the square, feet slamming against the leafy dirt in his hurry. His eyes catch sight of his smokehound, dead on the floor, and only a flicker of grief lasts in his eyes before it is smothered out by rage. 

He whirls on Azriel. “You.” 

Azriel looks at Eris for a moment, and he sees, from a shadow behind him, a tinge of red beginning to seep through the Heir’s back. His hair, unraveled, matted – not perfectly combed as usual. Cracks on his cuticles. He must’ve just gotten out, Azriel realizes, from a conversation with Beron. Torturous in both a metaphorical and physical sense. 

“She was dead when I arrived,” Azriel says, and it’s as much of a condolence as he can muster, being caught how he is. “I’m unsure why.” 

Eris’s face scrunches up in fury, and it would be comical if it wasn’t so sad. 

He almost looks like the wounded parakeet that his shadows were taken with in Summer, squawking and injured, lashing out with talons too dull to achieve much. “It’s obvious why she died,” Eris spits out. “Smokehounds are blessed by the Mother for their magic. It elongates their lifespan to the hundreds. But magic is finite.” The explanation comes out somehow both bitter and distracted. In fact, the Son of Autumn is not looking at him at all, his eyes instead busy searching for remnants of smoke that no longer exist.

Azriel understands, and thinks clarifying aloud would be a mercy. “The smoke transfers to the infant after birth as the magic cannot sustain two. The mother dies as age catches up to her at once.” It is this truth told to air that breaks the redhead free from his compulsive searching, and amber eyes find him again. 

Eris sneers. “The mother or the father. But Lethe’s mate died already, in the war.” He snaps, once. “This is irrelevant. Where is the pup? What have you done with them?”

Azriel holds his palm out, lifting it up from his shadows, baring the curled up pup within it. “She’s safe,” he says, flatly. “Regardless of what you no doubt think of me, I wouldn’t slaughter a puppy.”

There’s a brief sort of silence before despair hits Eris’s face all at once. It’s a far cry from the relief Azriel expected to see written on his face. “What,” he grits out, “have you done?” 

Eris rushes forward, and Azriel instinctively shields the small animal from him. The heir looks almost sick at the action. 

“I didn’t do anything,” is what Azriel says in his own defense. “I picked it up. It’s unharmed.”

“It’s imprinted to you, you Illyrian bastard.” Eris snaps, incensed, and Azriel stops in his tracks. “Congratulations, shadowsinger. You’ve damned this child to a life bonded to you. ” 

Blood sprouts new flowers beneath his tunic, staining the embroidery red. And silence is all Azriel has to offer, his shadows dancing in the air beside him: victorious.

Eris stares at him. “Not a word in response, shadowsinger?”

With no choices beyond the obvious or obscenely cruel, the spy elects neither and begins to spout nonsense. 

“I’ll take it to Night, then,” he offers, knowing as he says it how empty the suggestion is. He can’t take care of any hound – he barely suffers through caring for himself. Dependent on him for survival, the pup would be lucky if it lasted the week. 

“You will, will you?” Eris taunts, viciously. “It’ll die before it leaves Autumn’s borders. It’s too young and its magic too weak.”

Azriel purses his lips. “Then I’ll leave the pup here.” 

“Are you slow? It will die without you.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. Eris’s shadow sings to Azriel and it’s more like a verse – tense, anxious. Rigid, like the male himself. Cowardice and avarice is all that he finds. 

“Then I’ll visit. Periodically. Once a month.” 

Eris scrunched his nose. “Give her to me. Now.” 

Azriel does, obediently dropping the little puppy in Eris’s waiting hands. Eris examines it, and seems almost distraught when the puppy mewls out for Azriel instead. 

Azriel’s shadows wail in kind, thrashing unhappily at his feet and wriggling in his ears until his head pulses painfully. But he can not acquiesce to Their whims anymore. Rhysand will have his return. 

He winnows out of the clearing, his shadows screeching, singing, chanting oppressively in his ear. He leaves a piece of his soul behind when he departs.

[full fic on AO3!]

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