Lucien And Eris>>>

You watched the bodies of faeries move and grind against one another in a messy rhythm, the music from the band practically vibrating through the floor to drive their movements. “We didn’t have this in the Spring Court,” you said absently, your words faint as you watched in disbelief and a little bit of awe.

“You didn’t have taverns?” Azriel asked, not really all that curious, but not entirely disinterested either. You would take that as a win.

Azriel was an enigma that you were desperate to piece apart. Sometimes you caught yourself staring at him for a few seconds too long. Sometimes you would lay awake at night and replay your brief conversations together. 

You were almost always searching for a way to befriend him.

He was the one person in the inner circle that still had not opened up to you. Everyone told you not to take it personally. They said that was just Azriel—that he would sooner clip his wings before he shared something personal about himself. You were okay with that—really, it was fine—but would a smile every now and then hurt?

He wasn’t unkind. He was polite beyond measure, actually, which was all the more infuriating when you really thought about it. He was just indifferent. Apathetic to your presence, to your existence, when he had inexplicably taken up residence in your mind for free.

Maybe it was the stories your mother told you as a child. Maybe it was the dreams you used to have of his very shadows. Maybe it was the way the very ground seemed to shift beneath your feet the first time you saw him, and you felt settled for the first time in your life when his shadows brushed against your ankles.

“Y/N.”

His voice dragged your mind back to the present, your surroundings tilting a bit as you refocused on the male beside you. “Yeah?”

You thought his lips might have twitched, but you weren’t certain. You weren’t certain of much at the moment, now that you had removed yourself from the adrenaline of the dance floor and you were left to sift through your thoughts that seemed buried in sand. Gods, his lips looked soft.

“How much have you had to drink?”

You blinked, eyes dragging up to meet his again. “Not sure.” You shrugged. “Whatever Mor gave me.”

“Dangerous,” he murmured, then downed the rest of his drink in one go. He sat the glass down with a small thud, tapping the rim. “Do you need help getting home?”

Your lips parted as you stared at him. Was he offering his help?

“No,” Mor huffed, her arms falling around you from behind. “You can’t take her from me.”

You shifted uncomfortably, suddenly tense from being between Mor and Azriel. Nesta may have spilled far too much personal information about the two of them one wine night in the library. The thought of the two of them together…it made your skin feel slimy. You felt nauseous thinking about it—or maybe that was all of the shots and mixed drinks sloshing around in your stomach.

“I think I want to go,” you mumbled, gently pushing her arms off of you.

Mor pouted, but when she looked at Azriel she shrugged. “Fine. I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

You nodded, unsteadily leaning into the quick kiss she pressed on your cheek before pushing her way back into the throng of dancing bodies.

You bit your lip as you looked at Azriel, suddenly nervous about being alone with him when you were this intoxicated—not because you didn’t trust him, but because you didn’t trust yourself. There was no telling what bullshit you might spew when liquor washed away your filter.

Azriel stood, extending his hand to you. You tried not to stare at the scar-mottled skin, tried not to think about just how far they extended up his arm. You had seen them at training, of course. You knew they were there, and you vaguely knew how he got them—yet another thing his family had shared, but not him. You had never touched him, though. Not without gloves covering his skin.

You realized Azriel was waiting after you sat there for too many seconds, and you quickly placed your hand in his to help you stand up. Thank the Mother for Azriel’s hand, because as soon as you stood, the floor started to slide beneath you.

Your grip tightened on Azriel’s hand, clinging to him to stay upright. Panic sluiced through you when he let go, but his arm came around you and he tucked you into his side, letting you lean heavily against his incredibly muscled body. 

He was so warm. You could just stay here forever, actually.

“Alright,” Azriel murmured, shifting you once more and snapping you out of your daze—at least sort of. “Let’s get you home.”

You waved to Rhys and Cassian as you passed them at the bar, worried frowns creasing their face. Azriel shook his head, and he kept walking you toward the exit. Azriel might have been indifferent toward you, but at least he didn’t treat you like you were fragile. 

You weren’t sure how you had made yourself the object of the entire inner circle’s worry. You were slightly clumsy and didn’t have an ounce of training to your name when you first arrived in Velaris, and maybe there were a few accidents at training that ended with a little spilled blood—but it had been over a year now. Now, you were fairly confident in your body. You knew how to wield it, how to trust it, how to use it as a weapon—you were no longer a floundering Spring fae servant girl.  

You just wished your friends would treat you that way. 

You stumbled forward as you stepped over the threshold and into the cool night air, Azriel catching you before you could tumble down the stairs. You blinked a few times, watching your feet closely as Azriel slowly led you down and onto the stone street. You loved the smell of the sea. You loved the fresh salt tinged air that covered Velaris, that made you feel more grounded than you ever did in the Spring Court.

Azriel smelled like the sea. He smelled like salt and cedar—a wonderful combination that you wished you could bottle up and sniff whenever you pleased. You tilted your head a little in toward his chest, your nose bumping against the side of his chest as you inhaled his scent.

“Are you sniffing me?”

If your skin wasn’t already burning from the heat of Rita’s and the alcohol rushing through you, you were certain you would be aflame now after being caught. You shrugged, pulling your nose away but leaning just a little more into him, making him huff as he readjusted his grip.

“Do you think I fit?”

“What?” Azriel murmured, entirely focused on guiding the two of you down the street. You wished he would just fly you. You’ve only flown with him a few times, and the feeling of his arms around you, holding you, protecting you—it made your head fuzzy just thinking about it. Or—more fuzzy.

“I just take up space,” you mumbled, words slowly meshing together just a bit. You had never been this drunk. Faerie wine had nothing on Mor’s drinks. You gestured wildly to the space around you. “But I don’t fit. I don’t do anything. Rhys won’t even send me on missions.”

“You’re still learning,” Azriel said softly, his voice almost gentle. “I promise, you fit.”

He looked like he wanted to say more, but your throat felt funny and your mouth was starting to water. “Azriel,” you cut him off.

“Yeah?”

“I think I’m going to be sick.”

~ ~ ~

You were never drinking again.

It would be a cold day in Hell before you ever took another drink from Mor. You still felt slightly detached from your body, and no matter how many times you rinsed your mouth and scraped your tongue, you could still taste the remnants of the night before.

Gods, you were mortified. You definitely owed Azriel an apology. You didn’t remember much after you spilled the contents of your stomach all over the streets of Velaris, but you were certain he was responsible for somehow getting you up to the House of Wind and into your bed. You awoke in your clothes from the night before, but your shoes were off and your hair was miraculously vomit-free, so you would celebrate the small miracles that were likely orchestrated by Azriel.

You found him at the breakfast table, another small miracle this morning. You weren’t sure how you lived in the same home as the male, yet could count on your hands the number of times you have had breakfast with him.

“Azriel,” you said softly, prompting his gaze to drag up from his oatmeal and berries to your slightly disheveled form. You had to force yourself to put on training leathers this morning, and you were certain he could tell that getting ready this morning was a series of haphazard events..

His eyes lingered at your feet briefly for turning his attention back to his meal. “Your shoe is untied,” he mumbled before taking another bite.

Your face flushed, looking down to find your left boot entirely undone. You cursed as you bent down to fix it, your embarrassment making you fumble through the routine movement. You stood back up quickly, brushing your hands on your thighs nervously as you stood there awkwardly, gathering the courage to talk to him.

“I’m sorry about last night,” you blurted.

Azriel’s spoon paused midway to his mouth, his lips falling shut as his eyes snapped toward yours again.

“Really sorry, actually,” you hurried out, stepping closer. 

He lowered his spoon slowly, watching you for a few agonizing seconds. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, then resumed eating his breakfast.

You blinked a few times. It was a clear dismissal, but you couldn’t wrap your head around his fucking indifference. “Azriel—”

“Y/N,” he cut you off, his eyes glancing at you, “It’s fine. Stop worrying.”

Stop worrying. Wouldn’t that be nice, if you could just stop worrying. Maybe you were delusional, but you thought you might have defrosted his shell at least a little after stumbling home drunk with him. You didn’t have to be close, but you would have liked to be friends. Last night, you thought maybe—

The sound of his chair screeching across the stone made you jump, and you watched as his food vanished and his back disappeared down the hall to the training room.

Right. You were delusional, and if you were really honest with yourself, you had an even more delusional crush on the very Shadowsinger that didn’t seem to care whether you breathed the same air as him.

~ ~ ~

“Y/N.”

You spun around, your head pounding from the abrupt motion. You winced, rubbing at your temple before meeting Rhys’s gaze.

His eyes were narrowed as he watched you, suspicion clear on his face. “Are you okay?”

As if you were going to tell him you were still suffering from a hangover—a hangover caused by the drinks his cousin had supplied you with the night before, no less.

“I’m fine,” you assured, straightening your posture. You immediately snapped your mental shields into place as soon as you felt Rhys brush against your mind, and you sent the male a glare. “I said I’m fine, Rhysand.”

“Rhysand,” he repeated under his breath as he shook his head. “I need to ask you for a favor.”

You immediately perked up, excitement sparking in your chest. “What can I do?”

“I need you to take a visit to the Spring Court.” To check in on Tamlin, is what he didn’t say.

“What about Azriel?”

“I need him in Windhaven.” He studied you for a moment. “I can ask—”

“When do I leave?”

Rhys blinked at you. Suspicion and apprehension limned his eyes, and you rocked nervously on the balls of your feet. You probably should have asked a few more questions. “Tomorrow night,” he said slowly. “You know you can tell me no.” 

You were quietly thanking the Mother he didn’t say tonight, but you would have gone even if he had. You weren’t missing this opportunity.

“No,” you hurried out. “I mean—I want to. I just thought—will me being from the Spring Court make me more of a liability?”

Rhys shook his head. “Azriel thinks it’s the opposite. You should blend in seamlessly since you were born there, and Tamlin…well he hasn’t done much to his wards since the war.”

“Azriel?” you asked quietly, your heart beating a little too hard and your skin feeling a little too warm.

Rhys definitely noticed, his eyes glinting as his lips twitched into a smirk. “Yes,” he said. “Azriel is the one that suggested we start sending you for Spring Court reconnaissance.”

“Oh.”

“Yes,” Rhys hummed. “Oh.”

You glared at him, stepping closer to stab a finger against his chest. “Not a word, Rhysand.”

He laughed as you walked by him, heading back toward your room to pack for your first mission. Rhys’s laugh slowly faded the farther you walked, but you couldn’t stop the grin that stretched across your face as you reached your door. Your first mission, and Azriel had vouched for you.

~ ~ ~

This was a catastrophic failure.

You grew up hearing horror stories about the Naga. The few Spring Court children you knew would taunt each other with threats of sending someone into the woods, serving them up as an offering for the terrifying beasts. Your nursemaid always assured you they only preyed upon mortals, but that never really made you feel much better.

Then Feyre was attacked by the Naga. You saw firsthand how rattled she was by the putrid creatures, and you were content to never venture into the forests lining the border to the mortal realm.

Those were the forests the Naga were meant to live in. They lied there in wait, ready to snatch any poor human soul that fell through the barrier.

They didn’t live in the forests that lined the Spring and Autumn Court border—at least, they weren’t supposed to. It made you question what the hell Tamlin was letting roam elsewhere in his court, and whether Beron was aware just how loose the High Lord of Spring’s grip was on his land.

That’s what you would tell Rhys. It’s all you could tell Rhys, since you had otherwise failed to learn anything else meaningful before one of the wretched creatures grabbed you by your ankle and dragged you through the forest. Their claws had sunk into your flesh, ripping your skin open for a trail of blood to drip down your ankle, now soaking the fabric you had torn from your tunic to tie around it.

Then there was the gash in your side, also staining your tunic and leathers with far too much blood, if you were being honest with yourself. Your head was throbbing too, and you weren’t sure if it was the aftereffects of the hangover from yesterday, the blood loss, or if you hit your head with the fall—likely all of the above.

You should have sensed the Naga.

You should have heard them. You should have been prepared for an ambush from anyone, and instead you were too confident while also too preoccupied by delusional thoughts and fears of fucking up. No wonder Rhys never sent you on a mission, and now that he finally had, per Azriel’s recommendation, you had utterly fucked it.

If any of them saw you like this, you were certain they would swaddle you in a mound of cotton and lock you in the House of Wind for decades before they ever let you step foot in the field again. You needed help, though. Gods, you needed it. Adrenaline was fueling every step, every second you spent running from where you had stabbed the Naga in its eyes, but it was waning, and panic was setting in.

You needed to get out of here. You needed out of these woods, and out of this court, and you needed help.

So you said a prayer to the Mother and winnowed.

~ ~ ~

Azriel had been friends with the ghost of anxiety for his entire life.

For five centuries it had walked behind him, and he had grown to accept its company. He knew how to acknowledge it for the day and then ignore it. He knew how to block out the dull thrum it sometimes sent through his head, begging for his attention, his fear—and yet, today was unusual.

His chest had felt tight the moment he stepped foot in Illyria. At first he thought it might have been because of Illyria and the camp he grew up in, but the band around his lungs kept growing tighter and tighter as the day went on. His heart was racing all day, and by the time he retired from the bullshit political nonsense Rhys had guilted him into handling, the slam of his own front door made him flinch.

Something felt wrong, but he couldn’t place what. His shadows were restless as well, scattering around the living room of the home he and his brothers grew up in as soon as he let them go.

He rubbed at his chest as he sat on the edge of the couch, still clad in his leathers and boots. He watched the faelights around him come to life, his shadows slowly slithering back to hide in the shadows of his wings. 

Even the air around him felt heavy and thick—stagnant, as if it was waiting for something before it could move again. His mouth felt dry as he sat and listened to the silence of the house. A sudden gust of wind outside made him jump, and he shook his head. This was ridiculous.

He stood up to head to the bathing room, ready to rid himself of the chill he had harbored all day beneath the sweat that still somehow coated his skin. A shadow curled around his ear as he took his first step up the stairs, and froze.

The woods.

He turned for the back door immediately, checking his weapons as he moved, and he released a shaky breath as he stepped out into the frigid night air.

Rhys’s mother’s house was along the border of the camp. A blessing and a curse growing up. He and his brothers would often complain about walking farther than the other children to training every day, but it also gave them easy access to the forests where they could fuck around without getting caught.

He walked into those very forests now with far more trepidation than he ever did as a boy, his heart racing as he followed his shadows deeper into the dark and snow-covered woods. He hoped they would warn him if he was in imminent danger, if they were leading him into a fucking ambush—but the entire day had been strange, and he couldn’t be sure of what they saw.

He was also fairly certain he didn’t even need them to lead him, because the rope wrapped around his chest grew tighter and tighter with every step, as if pulling him to keep moving. 

His steps only faltered once he saw a dark form lying in the snow, a light dusting covering the fae’s body. He moved closer slowly, still unsure why his shadows drew him here or who this figure was.

The world dropped from beneath his feet when he saw your face, when your scent fully hit him, when your blood suffocated him. The rope wrapped around his lungs snapped, a million frayed threads coiling around his ribs and flailing before going taught, twining with new threads that left him gasping. Threads that extended directly from his soul, and gods he couldn’t breathe.

He was crouching over your body before he really knew he was moving, before the world had stopped tilting and his mind had stopped spinning. His shaky hand brushed your damp hair from your face, revealing cuts and scrapes across your skin.

Your chest was slowly moving, air still going in and out of your lungs, and Azriel let out a shuddering breath of relief. He took in your bloodied ankle and your bloody leathers, and he wanted to hurl just thinking about moving you—just thinking about how the hell you had ended up here—but he had to get you out of the snow. He had to take care of you.

His mate.

Azriel shook as he fit his arms under your body. Your skin was cold and damp when your head lolled against his neck, and he probably gripped you a little too tight as he held you close. His shadows swarmed around the two of you, enveloping you in darkness and depositing you in the living room of his childhood.

Everything in him was screaming to get you the hell out of Illyria, but he knew this place had the best medical supplies—it was far more likely to be stabbed in Windhaven than at their cabin in the Steppes. He laid you as gently as he could on the worn and gray sofa, the cushions sinking beneath your weight. Drops of blood fell to the fabric as he let you go, and he inhaled a sharp breath when he noticed you trembling.

His shadows darted toward the fireplace, piling together kindling and wood for Azriel to drop a match in quickly. He didn’t even wait for the flames to catch before he went back to drag the couch in front of the slowly growing fire. He glanced at you once more, his fingers digging into the fabric of the couch with barely restrained anger and anxiety. 

He would kill whoever did this—but first, he would take care of his mate.

~ ~ ~

Your face was warm. Too warm, really, to the point you were certain there was heat wafting off of you in waves.

One side of your face was pressed against soft cotton fabric, and your neck was stiff as you tried to move. You whimpered when your core twisted, something tight and hot pulling at your side. You started to shove the heavy wool blanket covering your body off of you, but it was quickly pulled back up, and you flinched when someone’s fingers grazed your bare collarbone—Mother, you had no clothes on under—

“It’s just me,” Azriel murmured softly from above you, circling around to kneel on the floor. His eyes were bright and glossy in the flickering light from the fire, and an inexplicable weight fell from your chest when you saw him.

“Where are my clothes?” you rasped.

He shifted to the side so you could see your clothes and boots draped around the hearth behind him. “I found you in the snow,” he said quietly, leaning back. “And your clothes were in bloody tatters.”

You swallowed, closing your eyes as fresh tears started to burn. You felt one escape from the corner of your eye, falling down the side of your face and into your hair. “Thank you,” you whispered, sniffing slightly. You slowly opened your eyes to meet his patient gaze, and something inside you shifted. “I didn’t know where else to go,” you admitted, your voice cracked and broken.

Visions of the Naga flashed through your mind, the raw pain from when they grabbed your ankle and sliced at your stomach sluicing through you all over again.

You were trembling when Azriel brushed some of your hair behind your ear, the gentle touch making your breath catch and your body freeze, the trembles stopping for a moment. He held a cup to your mouth, gently coaxing your head up slightly to guide your lips to the rim of it. “Drink this,” he murmured.

The water was cool and soothing against your throat, the liquid instantly washing away the sand that had filled your mouth. You took a few gulps before Azriel pulled it away, then helped you lie back down. “I asked one of the camp healers to look at you,” Azriel told you as he set the cup beside him.

Alarm flitted through you, your entire body turning tense.

Azriel glanced at you, as if he could sense your sudden anxiety, and his eyes softened. “It was a female,” he said, “And I was here. You were safe.”

You relaxed slightly, but the anxiety that she might tell Rhysand—that Rhysand might already know how epicly you failed—made your stomach turn.

“Y/N.” You turned to face him, your name on his lips making goosebumps skitter across your skin. His voice was so low, nearly lethal, and you held your breath before he asked, “Who did this to you?”

Mortification flooded your body, a sickly heat washing over you as you thought about just how badly you messed up. “It’s my fault,” you whispered.

His jaw clenched. “How could this possibly be your fault?”

“I didn’t think about the Naga—”

Azriel reeled back. “The Naga? Why were you anywhere near the Naga?”

Confusion swept over you, mixing with the fatigue that was still pinning you down. “Rhys said it was your idea to send me to Spring.”

“Yes—at the Autumn border. Not the Mortal Lands. Why would he send you—”

“I was at the Autumn border,” you hurried out, your heart beating hard in your chest.

Azriel went quiet, his lips parting slightly. His eyes glanced up and down your body as if he could see your injuries through the blanket, and a fresh fury lit behind his irises. “There shouldn’t be Naga anywhere near that border—and if there was, they wouldn’t go after faeries.”

You stared at him for a beat, at a loss for words. “I was unprepared—”

“This was not your fault,” he said, his words holding no room for argument. His hands curled into fists at his side. “I am going to kill Beron before Eris can even—”

“Azriel,” you said softly, hushing his words effectively. You glanced at the door, knowing you were far away from the main camp and his shadows were monitoring the house, but still worried someone might hear him. You came to him because you thought he would be the most calm, the least likely to overreact since he didn’t even really care about you, and yet here you were.

“You think I don’t care?” he rasped.

You blinked. “How did you—”

“Of course I fucking care.” He ran his hands through his hair as he stood up, his wings twitching behind him. “I probably care too much, but now—” He ran a hand over his face shaking his head. “Now it makes sense, I guess,” he said quietly, more to himself now.

He started to walk away, and in a panic, you reached for his hand, your clammy fingers wrapping around his warm and scarred ones. 

Something inside you cleaved in two, the pieces falling away to reveal a crackling rope of energy that was connected to the male beside you. His soul was twined with yours, and you pressed your other hand to your chest as you felt him quietly glowing inside you. You scrambled to put the new scattered pieces together, your brain struggling to make sense of what your heart and soul knew.

Azriel squeezed your hand gently, and you slowly dragged your gaze up to meet his. “I’ve always cared,” he whispered. 

“You knew?” you rasped.

He shook his head, his own breath shaky now. “Not until I found you in the snow.”

You pulled your hand away. “Then you don’t need to pretend.”

“I’m not pretending,” he argued, his voice pleading with you to hear him. “I promise, I’m not pretending.”

You sat up slowly, your back resting against the arm rest. You clutched the blanket to your chest, suddenly feeling so exposed. “I want a shirt,” you whispered.

Azriel moved in an instant, returning only seconds later with a soft black tee in his hands. He held it to you, and you took the fabric with one hand, then glanced down at your other holding the blanket in place. Azriel crouched beside you, offering his hand. “Let me help?” he asked softly.

You took a second to decide, embarrassment and shame and raw vulnerability making your arms shake as you finally handed him back the shirt. He smiled at you. A small, close-lipped smile, that was so soft and gentle it made you relax just a little.

He pulled the shirt over your head, pulling your hair out from the neckline before guiding one arm through the sleeve. He let the hem fall around you, and only then did you let the blanket drop and pushed your arm through the other sleeve. 

You crossed your arms over your body, unease and apprehension still tugging at you. “I don’t understand,” you told him quietly.

Azriel’s throat bobbed. “The day you came here with Feyre,” he started quietly, “I felt something shift.”

You bit your lip, your pulse drumming in your ears as you waited to hear what he had to say. 

His eyes shut, and his face screwed up slightly, as if what he was about to say shamed him. “I have a tendency to love what I cannot have,” he admitted quietly. His eyes opened again, and your heart cracked when you saw the sheen in his eyes. “When I saw you, there was a part of me that knew you were special. You were this strong and beautiful female standing in front of me, and I just knew—I knew it would be so easy to fall in love with you.”

He sniffed, and you had to blink a few times to keep your own tears at bay. He called you strong.

“So I kept you at arms length. I thought it would be easier. Fuck, was I wrong.” Azriel let out a self-deprecating laugh. “You are consuming, Y/N. Every smile, every word, every breath of yours sent me spinning. Sometimes, when you looked at me during training with such undiluted pride in yourself for learning something new, I would nearly faint. The way you interact with everyone, the way you treat everyone with kindness—everything about you pulled me in.”

You swallowed, your mouth feeling dry. “I honestly thought you wouldn’t notice if I just disappeared one day,” you admitted nervously.

Azriel looked stricken. “I would notice. Hell, I would tear the world apart until I found you.” He shook his head. “Y/N, everything about you is magnanimous. Every day that passed with you in my life shifted my center of gravity closer and closer to you, and now—” Azriel let out a shuddering breath. “Now I feel like a fool for pushing you away.”

You bit the inside of your cheek, unsure whether you should share this so quickly with him, but he did save your life. He was your mate. “When I was a girl,” you said softly, “My mother would tell me stories about the Shadowsinger of Prythian.”

Azriel went still.

You laughed sadly. “They were meant to scare me. She was never really kind, never actually spent time with me or cared for my happiness. She was cruel, actually,” you added as an afterthought, the words tasting sour in your mouth. You shook your head. “But I would beg her not to tell that story, secretly hoping that she would. It usually worked.” You shrugged weakly.

“Why?” Azriel rasped.

Your lips twitched, more tears starting to burn at your eyes. “They made me feel safe,” you whispered. “They made me feel less alone, knowing that someone out there found friends in the darkness, and that maybe one day, I would too.” You wiped away a tear. “I dreamed about the Night Court my whole life, but sometimes, I would see your shadows.”

As if sensing your attention, one slithered away from Azriel to brush against your neck, its touch cool and comforting. “The first time I saw them, I nearly cried. When I saw you—” You sucked in a breath. “I just knew I was home,” you whispered, your face feeling warm. 

Azriel’s hand reached tentatively for your face, his body leaning closer in the small space between him and the couch. His touch was gentle at first, his fingers grazing the side of your face as he watched you closely, until eventually he cupped the underside of your jaw. 

You leaned into the touch, electricity sparking all along where his skin met yours. His eyes flicked down to your lips, and you found yourself nodding before he even looked at you again for permission. He leaned forward, his lips meeting yours in the most delicately soul-crushing kiss. His lips were so soft, and he tasted like the rose-hip tea you always saw him drinking, and you were fairly certain this is what heaven felt like.

The kiss was short, but even the brief minute pressed against him left you breathless and your heart racing.

“You are home,” Azriel murmured, pressing one last peck against your lips before pulling away.

His hand slid up to push your hair back, his fingers running along your scalp. You closed your eyes, his touch releasing the tension still lingering in your body. “You should rest,” he murmured, and you followed his guidance to lie back down easily.

You blinked slowly at him, your eyelids growing heavy as he ran his fingers through your tangled hair, but Azriel didn’t seem to care. “You can always come to me,” he whispered, his eyes never leaving yours. “Always. Because I care.”

You smiled softly, your eyes finally falling shut. “Yes, mate,” you mumbled.

“I wasn’t ignoring you,” he said quietly, still pretending to look at the gloves that neither of you would be buying.

“I have not seen your face since you dropped me on the terrace and then vanished into the night.”

“I did not vanish,” he argued, but his voice wavered. He finally met your eyes, and the wariness in his gaze only made you more exasperated.

You had spent the last four days torturing yourself with all of the possible reasons Azriel had disappeared. You had agonized over the very real possibility that your brief moment of foolishness in Windhaven had sent him right into the arms of his mate—because that was exactly where he should be.

You had nearly kissed him, and you knew he knew. He was the spymaster, for fuck’s sake. He was fluent in the art of body language. He knew you were about to kiss him in the middle of the kitchen of your pseudo-childhood home, and he pulled away from you. He pulled away, then ferried the two of you off to Velaris, and he disappeared. For four days.

Until now.

Because he wanted help buying Cassian’s birthday gift.

The slimy mixture of mortification, humiliation, and jealousy turned your stomach sour and your heart cold as you stared at the male across from you. Maybe it was hypocritical to be mad at him for the very thing you had done to him not long ago, but it felt justifiable at the time. It still did. You were acting out of self-preservation. Azriel—well you didn’t know what Azriel was doing, actually, which made it all the more infuriating.

“Will either of you be buying something today?” the female manning the merchant table asked pointedly, breaking you from your stupor.

You smiled at the female, fighting a wince at the irritation in her gaze. “Sorry, not today. Thank you for your time.” She pursed her lips in disapproval, and you hurried to add, “Your work is lovely.”

Azriel sent his own apologetic glance toward the female as he laid down the unfortunately ugly gloves, then he stepped around the table to grab you by your elbow and guide you away. You pulled away from his touch as soon as you were away from the disgruntled merchant, glaring at him. His hand fell to his side, curling into a fist. “We always buy Cassian a gift together,” he said.

“Not always.”

“Fine, for the last decade.”

“Well,” you said, voice tight, “things are different.”

Azriel reached for you again, pulling you to an abrupt stop in the middle of the market. “What does that mean?”

Sometimes you felt like you were losing your mind. You had been in love with him for over five centuries. You didn’t know it was love for that long—you didn’t really even let yourself consider it until much, much later—but it didn’t change the fact that it was love.

You had spent every night for the last couple of months replaying every memory you had with Azriel, trying to pinpoint when things changed for you. When did you fall for the male that was your closest friend? The soul-crushing truth was that there never was a change, there was never a shift that sent you toppling, because you loved him from the very beginning.

And it did not make sense to you how he could not feel even a fraction of what you felt for him, when you had lived through it all together.

Anger flared deep in your chest, smoking out the words tumbling around inside you before you could think them through. “Because you have a mate,” you snapped. “You should give Cassian a gift from you and your mate.”

Azriel might have tried to say something, but you didn’t stop. “Is that where you disappeared to? To be with her?” you asked, the center of your chest fracturing outward with every word. “Will she be there tomorrow? At Rita’s?”

The ache in your chest was somehow worse than it had ever been, so many clashing sources of heartbreak melding together into one messy and convoluted vat of poison. It was unfair. You should be able to shop with your friend for your other friend’s birthday without having an existential crisis over it, but this was too much. It was all just too much.

Azriel, to his credit, looked bewildered. “What are you talking about?”

Sometimes his oblivion to the heartache he had caused you, unintentionally or not, hurt worse than anything else.

“You have to be fucking kidding me—”

His hands suddenly grabbed your shoulders, his grip firm and unrelenting as his shadows swallowed the two of you whole. As soon as they deposited you on a familiar outcropping of the mountains overlooking the city, you shoved away from him, your fury building irrationally fast.

“Don’t do that,” you gritted through your teeth.

Azriel looked like he was at a loss. “I want to talk to you without the whole of the Velaris market square watching us.”

You stared at him, your arms falling to your sides. “You want to talk to me.”

“Yes!” he exclaimed, running a hand through his hair. “I want to talk to you.” His hand fell to his side, his wings drooping slightly behind him. “I don’t understand what is happening,” he said, and the quiet desolation in his voice made your heart twinge, despite everything.

“What do you mean?” you murmured, looking down at your boots.

“Don’t do that,” he snapped, his eyes wild with more emotion than he usually ever showed. Then his voice softened as he said, “Please. Please just—” He shook his head. “Things have been different,” he finally said, and all you could do was stare at him as your heart thundered against your chest, your mind racing to find a way to protect yourself from any more heartache. “Since that night at Rita’s, things have been different.”

You couldn’t stop the scoff that flew from your lips, though regret sliced through your chest at the wounded look on Azriel’s face. His throat bobbed as he stared off into the forest behind you. “Y/N,” he rasped, “I don’t know what I said.” He looked at you, and Mother, his eyes were glossy. “I don’t know what I did that night. I—I know I told you I have a mate,” he hurried to add, and the words seemed to feel like sandpaper against his throat. “I know that, but my shadows refuse to tell me anything else and, I just, I’m sorry if I said or did something—”

“You did nothing wrong, Azriel,” you cut him off quietly. As angry and hurt as you were, as much as you wished he had done something you could rationally hate him for just so it might dull some of this pain, you could not let him go on thinking he had done something terrible—not when all he had really done was find something everyone could only hope for. “You—” You swallowed hard, shoulders deflating as you forced the words out of your mouth. “You told me you found your mate, and you said nothing but lovely things about her.”

He looked like he didn’t believe you.

“I promise,” you said softly. “You had fun at Rita’s, and I helped you home, and you told your friend about something wonderful. That’s all.”

He stared at you for a moment, blinking slowly. Silence wrapped around you like a stiff blanket, scratching at your skin with every passing second. The sunlight beating down on your face was unseasonably warm. It felt wrong to be illuminated so brightly while Azriel grappled to tear apart the invisible walls you had desperately built between you. There was nowhere to hide.

Azriel stepped closer, and you hated the small hitch in your breath. You hated the way he noticed, and you hated that his steps faltered when he heard. You hated that there were mere feet between you, and he still felt worlds away.

“Why didn’t you visit my mother with me?”

Your eyes snapped to his, guilt sliding down your throat. “I—”

“And don’t lie to me,” Azriel cut you off, near pleading.

And what could you really say? That you were worried his mother would see your broken heart the second she set eyes on you? That you were worried you would have to endure his loving confessions about his long-awaited mate to his mother—his mother you loved and that you had known for centuries? That jealousy so potent and toxic would eat you alive and ruin anything that might still be salvageable of your friendship?

“I couldn’t.”

It wasn’t an answer. It didn’t explain anything, but it was the only thing you could say that was not a lie, and that was not as baring as the truth.

Azriel shook his head, looking up at the sky. “You know,” he said quietly, “I thought maybe things were okay, when you asked me to go to Windhaven.”

Your pulse pounded in your ears, thinking about how there was never any question of who would go with you to Windhaven. You were selfish, and there was never anyone else that could have gone with you to that camp.

“And when you came to me that night,” he continued, his eyes slowly falling back to yours. He looked lost, and you hated it. He huffed out a sad laugh. “I was actually grateful that we were there. That things felt normal.” His nose twitched, and his shadows seemed to spread outward in agitation. “Then you were pissed at me again.”

You shook your head slowly. “It wasn’t you I was angry with,” you said quietly. “Not really.”

Azriel looked at you incredulously. 

You looked up to the sky. “Fine,” you admitted. “I was pissed at you for taking over.”  You were pissed that he felt the need, that he acted like it was his duty, to protect you from some self-righteous male. 

You were not his responsibility.

“I did not take over.” Azriel moved toward you, his boots stopping mere inches from yours, and you had to look up slightly to meet his eyes. “You can be pissed at me all you want, Y/N, I don’t care. No one will speak to you that way and get away with it.”

“I do not need—”

“I am always going to protect you!” His hands came up to cup your face, his gentle touch a startling contrast to the ferocity of his words. You stared at him wide eyed, his own gaze searching yours. “I told you that. You know that,” his voice softened exponentially, but his words were spoken with fervor. “I don’t care how angry you are. I don’t care if it pisses you off. I don’t care. I’m sorry—” He closed his eyes briefly, inhaling deep before letting it out slowly. “You are the most important person in my life,” he said softly. Your eyes burned. “I will always protect you with my life.”

Your hand came up to curl around one of his that was still cradling your cheek. Your mind was racing with his words. It didn’t make sense. None of this made sense. A foolish, hopeful part of you wanted to consider that maybe—maybe he did feel the same. Maybe—

But you could not forget the terrible reality that he had a mate.

You loved him so much. It was intertwined with every fiber of your being and every thread of it throbbed with painful longing and hope that it might finally be recognized. Every thread was fraying with dread that it might never be tied off, that this love might be unmoored forever until you completely unraveled.

“Sweetheart,” Azriel murmured, and you closed your eyes as his thumb grazed the top of your cheek. “You’re shaking.”

Your eyes flew open, and you suddenly pulled away, his touch falling away from your face abruptly. 

“Y/N—”

“I’m fine.”

You were not fine.

You had to get out of there.

“Wait, Y/N—”

You shook your head, your wings flaring out before you really even thought about flying. “I have to get Cassian a gift,” you muttered. Then you took off into the sky, leaving Azriel and your heart behind.

You shook off the tendril of shadow that clung to your wrist.

~ ~ ~

“And explain to me, Rhysand, why I should take this young female into my court?”

Your heart pounded in your chest as you fought against the urge to lean against Azriel. Your muscles trembled from the weight of your exhaustion and dread that this disillusioned plan would all collapse around you at any moment. You could not appear weak in front of the High Lord, not if you wanted this plan to work.

You could stand on your own two feet.

Azriel’s pinky grazed the back of your hand, a gentle touch that could easily be an accident, but then his wing bumped into yours, and you knew Azriel was far too careful for accidental touches. You let yourself breathe in deep, let the comforting and familiar scent of Azriel wash over you as Rhysand argued with his father.

Rhysand’s mother stood a step back from him, but still in front of you and Az, watching their exchange with pursed lips. Rhysand and his father had been talking in circles, their voices growing louder and the room growing darker with every passing minute.

“I think that’s enough,” Rhysand’s mother cut in, without an ounce of fear in her voice. 

Rhysand and his father both went silent. Then his father’s eyes narrowed. “The boy must learn how to advocate for himself, Melina—”

“And he has, my Lord,” she agreed placatingly. She stepped closer, and Rhys fell back to stand beside you. “But this is ultimately my request of you. She is Rhysand’s friend, yes.” She glanced back at you with so much warmth and pity it made your stomach twist. “But she has no one. She is of no use in Illyria, no one who cares for her.”

Your eyes burned as her words lodged in your chest, the truth wrapped around them like barbed wire. Azriel stepped closer to you, his arm now nearly pressed against yours. The High Lord’s eyes fell to the two of you, and maybe you should have stepped away, maybe you should have moved closer to Rhys, but the thought of leaving Azriel made your head spin. So you stayed in place, with your arm pressed against Azriel’s, and his shadows licking against the back of your neck and hands.

“No one but us,” she continued, her voice softening, and it took everything in you to keep your tears at bay. “She is not safe in Illyria. Let her stay in the House of Wind. Let her work for me. I need the help.”

The High Lord was quiet for far too long. You desperately wanted to grab Azriel’s hand, but you didn't move. Instead, you waited, the four of you silent as you prayed to the Mother the High Lord agreed.

“Alright,” he said. “She can stay.” You were going to throw up. “But you are mine.”

He wasn’t looking at you. Your eyes slowly followed his gaze, slowly looking at the male standing still beside you.

“Father—” Rhysand started to protest, taking one step forward, but the High Lord cut him off.

“That’s my condition. You want her to stay here? Fine. She can stay. But so does he.”

“He still has to pass the Blood Rite,” Rhys argued.

“Fine,” the High Lord agreed. “You will finish your training, complete the Blood Rite in Spring, and then you will come work for me, Shadowsinger.”

This was insane. Azriel couldn’t sign his life away to the High Lord just because you asked for help.

“But father—”

“Okay.” Azriel stepped forward, his warmth vanishing from your side. “I agree, on one condition.”

“Azriel—” you and Rhysand both spoke at the same time. He glared at both of you.

The High Lord grinned. “In addition to her sanctuary here, you mean?”

You hated that he had yet to refer to you by your name, but you knew that, really, it was inconsequential compared to what your fate would be in Illyria.

“Yes,” Azriel said.

He was so large, standing in front of you. His leathers were stretched around muscles that lined his body, and his wings were wide behind his back that was ramrod straight, his head held high as he met his High Lord’s eye.

You weren’t children any more.

The High Lord waved his hand at Azriel. “Go on.”

“Y/N keeps her wings.”

You stopped breathing.

The High Lord raised his brows, but said nothing.

“Y/N stays here and works for the Lady of Night, and she keeps her wings.” He spared a brief glance at you, and when his eyes met yours, you finally released the breath trapped in your chest. “And I will work for you.”

An inexplicable warmth washed over you, working outward from the center of your chest, thawing the icy terror that you had been trapped in for the last 48 hours, even as you now feared for Azriel. You worried it was selfish to feel such relief when Azriel was practically signing his life away for you.

The High Lord smiled. “I accept.”

~ ~ ~

“We need to talk.”

You glanced at the male behind you, shaking your head as you focused on the training bag in front of you. You landed another punch, a heavy thud reverberating through the room. “Not now, Cassian.”

You heard his steps draw closer as you continued throwing punches, relishing in the dull ache blooming around your knuckles. The sun was just starting to rise, but you had been here for hours.

Cassian caught your fist before you could land the next punch, his face looking unimpressed. “Yes, now.”

You yanked your hand away, scowling at him as you shook your hand out. “What do you want?”

He raised his brows, a flash of amusement passing through his eyes. “Happy Birthday, Cassian. You're my dearest friend, Cassian. I’m so happy to celebrate another year of life with you, Cassian—”

You grabbed his shoulder quickly, your eyes wide. “I’m sorry. Mother—Cassian—”

Cassian smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “It’s okay, Y/N.” He pushed gently at your shoulder, knocking your hand away from his own. “I’m just messing with you.”

“Still,” you murmured, shame making your face warm. You looked down to start unwrapping the cloth around your hands, then you looked back up at him sheepishly. “Happy Birthday.”

He grinned, tugging you into his side. “Thank you.” Then he turned you toward the terrace, guiding you to lean against the cool stone railing not yet warmed by the morning sun. “Now, we need to talk.”

You fought the urge to roll your eyes. “Fine. What is it?”

He leaned forward on his elbows, looking out over the city before glancing at you. “What’s going on with you and Az?”

You sniffed, rubbing at your nose as you looked out at the city, mirroring his position. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” he said pointedly, shifting his body so he faced you. “Why are things so damn awkward?”

Your face was hot now, and you wished you could pass it off as the sunlight hitting your cheeks. “They’re not,” you lied, terribly.

Cassian scoffed. “Y/N,” he said, unimpressed. You met his eyes warily. His eyes narrowed. “First, you avoided him for weeks. Then, there was the lovely dinner from Hell—”

Gods.

“—then you refused to visit his Mother—”

“He told you about that?” you interrupted, that same shame from when Azriel confronted you yesterday curdling in your stomach.

Cassian paused, seeming to think over his words before just saying, “Yes.” Then he kept going, “Then there was Windhaven, which we will also be talking about, by the way. Then he avoided you for days—”

So he was avoiding you.

“Then he apparently saw you yesterday, but walked into Rhys’s office like a storm cloud, and has been in a foul mood since.” He studied you quietly, and you knew he was leaving out every ounce of unbearable tension and awkwardness that had infused every minute between the events he laid in front of you. “So tell me,” he said, voice softening, “what happened?”

You could probably tell Cassian. You could probably cry, right now, in front of him on this terrace—on his birthday, no less—and he would not hesitate to try to pick up your broken pieces and find a way to glue them back together. He wouldn’t judge you.

But you felt too fragile to do that right now, and he deserved better than that on his birthday.

But he also deserved something, and maybe it would be nice to hand off just a piece of the weight crushing your soul.

“Do you know who his mate is?” you asked quietly, your voice as small as you felt.

Cassian was quiet for so long that you turned to look at him, and when you saw the painful understanding in his eyes you thought you might actually cry. “He hasn’t told me,” is what he finally says, looking back out over the city.

You chuckled weakly. “That’s not a no.”

His lips twitched. “It’s not a yes.”

“Cassian,” you said, staring at the side of his face until his eyes met yours again.

He sighed, leaning heavily against the balcony now. “I don’t know, no.”

Oh.

You bit your lip, not sure what you were expecting. You weren’t sure what you even wanted to hear. Maybe that he did know, and he hated her? Maybe that she was a terrible match and he didn’t know what the Mother was thinking?

You didn’t know.

“Nothing makes sense, if I’m honest with you,” Cassian said.

“What do you mean?”

He glanced at you. “I mean Azriel and his mate.” He tossed his hand toward you haphazardly, as if that cleared anything up.

“What?”

“I didn’t know he told you he found his mate.”

You blinked. You felt like he was talking in circles.

“Cassian,” you said, voice flat and tired. “We were all at that dinner.”

Cassian shook his head. “I mean before that.”

You swallowed, mouth suddenly dry. “Yeah, well,” you said, “he did.”

His mouth twisted in thought. “Right. Surprising.”

“Cassian, what does this have to do with anything?”

He shrugged. “How long ago did he tell you?”

You threw your arms out. “I don’t know!” You did know. “A couple months ago? After Rita’s.”

He hummed. “Which is when things started to get tense—”

“Cassian,” you cut him off, your heart starting to race. “I’m not in the mood for this.”

Cassian immediately sobered, his expression turning serious. “Azriel found his mate over a year ago.”

You went cold. His words practically shoved you outside of your body, and you were floating just a few inches away from where you stood in front of him, grappling to reorient your already fractured reality to his words. “What?” you rasped.

Cassian shrugged, as if this was an entirely inconsequential detail. “He told me and Rhys a little over a year ago.”

You blinked. “So this entire time he—”

Cassian killed your words with a hard stare. “He what, Y/N?”

“I had no idea,” you said quietly. You had no idea things had changed so much sooner than you were even aware.

Yet they hadn’t, had they? Azriel never acted any different toward you. You were the one that made everything turn sour.

You frowned. “Over a year ago…we were at war,” you said slowly.

Cassian didn’t say anything.

“I thought he must have met her in Velaris, but—” You were going to be sick. “Oh gods, is it Elain?”

Cassian whipped his head to you. “What?” he asked. “Are you insane? Elain is mated to Lucien.”

You shook your head, all logic having been replaced with sick terror. “Mor then—”

“Y/N, for fuck’s sake,” Cassian said, cutting you off quickly. “It’s not Elain, and it’s not Mor.”

“You said you didn’t know—”

“Well I know it’s not them.”

“But—”

“I don’t know where or when he met her,” he said. “He didn’t tell us anything. He just…told us he had a mate. We were pestering him and he snapped, and then made us swear not to say a word because she didn’t know. That’s all, but I’m also not a fool.”

You scowled, recognizing his insinuation that you were a fool.

You were also tired of this conversation, and you were tired of the emotional whiplash. After a long beat of silence, you said, “Is it Nesta?”

Cassian growled, his eyes flashing with brief rage. You smiled, relieved that your jab landed successfully. His nostrils flared. “Enough.”

You rolled your eyes, leaning forward on the balcony again, letting your head droop. The two of you stood in silence for a while, the sun slowly rising higher in the sky as the sounds of the city slowly waking up washed over you.

Velaris had always felt like home.

Even that first night you crossed the city’s borders, clinging to Rhys and Azriel in mild terror, something settled inside you as soon as you were within the city’s limits. The air was cleaner. Fresh. It was still just as cold as Illyria, but it didn’t have that bitter tang that licked at your skin when you crossed the camp’s borders.

The air smelled like salt and jasmine. It was so unlike the stale and rotten air that wafted through Windhaven that, at the time, you could hardly fathom that a whole city full of faeries lived here. Now you were one of them.

“I heard about Windhaven.”

You let out a long breath, your shoulders falling. You were tired. “Cassian,” you said, a warning, but he shook his head.

“I’m done talking about Az.”

You rolled your lip between your teeth and looked out over the city, taking in the soft and joyful life that pulsed through the streets. The stark contrast between here and an Illyrian camp was sometimes so jarring it made your bones ache. “Yeah,” you said quietly, not sure what else to say.

He placed a hand on your shoulder, squeezing once. “You saved that girl.”

You let out a bitter laugh, refusing to meet his eyes. “Right,” you said, “or I just made it worse for her after we left.”

“You didn’t.”

His words held so much certainty, you couldn’t help but turn to meet his gaze. Cassian wasn’t necessarily one for platitudes, but how could he know that for sure? “What?”

“You didn’t make things worse,” he said. “You saved her wings.”

“But how—”

“I’ve been to Windhaven every day since your return,” he explained, his voice unusually soft. Your eyes burned as he stared back at you with overwhelming sincerity. “I’m headed there after this. No one will touch her wings. They all know what will happen if anything happens to that girl—oh.”

You threw yourself into Cassian before he could finish his sentence, your arms circling him in a vice. He let out a soft chuckle before he quickly returned the hug, one hand coming up to rest on the back of your head. “This is much nicer than, What do you want, Cassian? Not now, Cassian—”

You squeezed him harder. “Shut up.”

~ ~ ~

“I want to teach you how to fight.”

You barely glanced at Azriel as you slid another book back onto the shelf. “Me?” you asked, disbelieving.

Azriel followed behind you as you pushed the shelving cart further down the aisle. “Yes.”

“Why?” you asked, pointedly sliding another book back into place.

Why me? Is what you didn’t say. I’m a scholar. I’m the High Lady’s right-hand. I’m not a warrior.

“Why not?”

You ignored him, continuing on with your shelving duties—which, really, were not yours, but there was also no one else willing to voluntarily work in the library. At least, no one that the High Lord had authorized. You liked being here anyway, and the few librarians scattered throughout didn’t mind.

“You are more than capable.”

You hummed. “Yes,” you agreed. “Doesn’t mean I want to.”

Suddenly Azriel’s hand was on your wrist, and he had you twisted around so that your chest was pinned to the book shelf. His point was clearly made, but still he didn’t move away. His body was pressed against yours, his chest grazing the base of your wings with every inhale.

His lips might have briefly brushed the shell of your ear before he said, “I’m serious, Y/N.” His grip on you relaxed, letting go of your arm that he had pinned behind your back, but he didn’t move away. “War is coming.” Which sounded very serious, but all you could think about was how his body was pressed against yours, and his breath was warm against your ear. Goosebumps pebbled along your arms.

Azriel pulled away, and you had to blink yourself back to reality before you slowly turned around to face him.

Your face was warm. Azriel seemed unaffected—serious and stoic as always.

“This city is meant to be impenetrable, I know, but—” He cut himself off, looking away.

“You’re worried,” you said quietly.

He nodded. His shadows slowly curled around your ankles, one gliding up your leg to then curl around your wrist. “If we go to war,” he said, voice hushed, “I won’t be here.”

Your stomach twisted. It had been years since you moved to Velaris, and years since Azriel had become the High Lord’s spy. Your time with Azriel was fleeting as it was. Stolen moments peppered over the years whenever he could slip away, but he has always been around. Sometimes months passed without talking to him, but you knew deep in your bones that if Azriel was worried about this war, it would happen, and he would be gone much longer than a couple of months.

“I just want to know that you’re safe,” he continued, as if he thought he still had to convince you. “I know it might be complicated for you,” he said slowly, gently, as if he was coaxing a timid animal. “Training, I mean. After everything that happened in Windhaven. But it would just be me, and—”

“That was a test,” you cut him off, realization washing over you.

Azriel’s mouth shut, his eyes wide.

“That—” You gestured between him and the bookshelf behind you. “You—you were seeing how I would react?”

Azriel looked only mildly guilty. “Yes.”

Irritation flared in your gut. He was right, of course. You had never spoken about why you never trained. You had never even told him outright that you didn’t want to, but the offer had always been there, unspoken, waiting quietly, and you never took it. Now Azriel was forcing you to confront it, and he knew fully well why you might be hesitant to let someone put their hands on you.

But Azriel had just pinned you to a shelf with his entire body, and not even a flicker of fear arose inside you. Fear was the last thing you felt.

“I’m sorry,” Azriel eventually said. You knew he meant it, but you also knew he didn’t regret it. 

“No,” you said, biting the inside of your cheek once as you contemplated his words. “You made your point. And you’re right.”

Azriel’s gaze was a mix of sympathy and worry. “I’m sorry—” he started to say again.

“I want to know how to fight,” you cut him off. His shoulders seemed to visibly relax at the words, and your stomach fluttered at the flash of pride you might have seen in his eyes. You weren’t doing this for him, though. You needed to be able to defend yourself. It was unwise as it was that you had gone this long in the House of Wind without learning.   

“But I also want to know how to hide,” you said, and his eyes glinted with excitement. You couldn’t help but grin when you added, “Like a spy.”

~ ~ ~

Your steps faltered as soon as you felt his presence. Your blade wobbled as it came down, losing its clean momentum from your misplaced footing. You growled in frustration, slashing the blade through the air once more before spinning around.

Azriel was standing there in the shadows, watching you quietly.

“What are you doing here, Azriel?”

He walked closer, the moonlight illuminating his face as he stepped into the clearing. He studied you for a moment, his eyes lingering on the sword in your hand. “You’re late for Rita’s.”

You glanced at the sky, your heart dropping when you realized just how far the moon had traveled. You had meant to leave at sunset. “Fuck,” you cursed. Your grip tightened on your sword as you ran a hand through your hair, cursing again when your fingers got caught.

“It’s okay,” Azriel said, voice soft. He moved closer to gently guide your hand away from your face, then smoothed a hand over your hair. He smiled softly when he pulled his hand away, almost hesitant. “Cassian won’t mind.”

You stared at him, taking in the way the moonlight illuminated the hazel of his eyes and glinted off the inky strands of hair that fell over his forehead. He was wearing a black button-up that clung to his body perfectly, molding the contour of his muscles with perfect definition.

You blinked, then shook your head. “It’s not okay,” you grumbled, taking a step back.

Cassian had just spent the morning of his birthday comforting you, letting you lean on him. The least you could do is show up to his birthday party.

“Y/N,” Azriel said, “It’s okay. They were only just leaving the River House when I left to find you. I told them I was picking you up.”

You frowned. “How did you know where I was?”

Azriel’s lips twitched, like the question amused him. “You weren’t hard to find.”

You tried to argue, wanting to point out that you were in a random clearing in the mountains, but Azriel silenced you when he stepped closer again. “You were sloppy,” he said, nodding toward the sword.

“I’m aware,” you snapped.

“You’re fighting angry.”

“I know, Az,” you groaned. “I don’t need the lecture right now.”

“I’m not trying to lecture you,” he said gently. He stepped even closer, the heat from his body pressing against your skin. “Lift the sword.”

“We’re late,” you warned.

“So what’s a few more minutes? Lift it.” He circled around you, moving so that he stood at your back. You waited a moment, but eventually lifted the sword again.

“Good,” he murmured. He was crowding your space now, his body brushing against yours. You could hardly breathe. “Lower your wings for me?” he asked softly, a low hum that reverberated through your body.

Your wings lowered.

Azriel’s arm covered yours, his hand enclosing yours that held the hilt of the sword. “Right now,” he said, practically talking directly into your ear. “You’re angry, and it’s making your movements messy, because that anger is radiating in every direction. Your body doesn’t know what to do with it.”

You swallowed hard, your breaths heavy as you let the truth in his words wash over you. You were angry. You had been angry for months, and sometimes it felt so loud and potent that it might just consume you. It felt like there was nowhere for it to go.

“I always taught you not to fight angry—but, really, that’s shit advice,” he said.

You couldn’t help but smile.

“You care too much to not get angry when you’re fighting,” he continued. You weren’t sure if you should be insulted, but then he said, “That’s not a bad thing, Y/N. Just channel it. Let that anger stabilize you.”

You sucked in a sharp breath when his other hand grazed the membrane of your wing, your body going still when that hand settled on your hip.

“I’m sorry,” Azriel said quietly, his body also going still.

Your heart was beating frantically in your chest, and you were sure he could hear it, but you nodded your head anyway. “It’s okay,” you told him breathlessly.

A beat of silence passed, then Azriel’s hand slid a little closer to your front, his fingers grazing your abdomen. “Direct that anger to your core,” he murmured. His tone had permanently dropped, a low lull in the delicate silence around you. His hand slid back to your hip, then pushed you to step forward with him. “Let that anger guide your movements. Don’t let it force them.”

The two of you stepped back, and his chest was flush with your back. “Now swing. Let your anger extend into your blade. Keep it sharp and defined.”

You closed your eyes for just a moment, taking a deep and steadying breath as you gripped the anger swirling through you. You imagined it as an anchor, locking your mind and body as one. You imagined it as sharp as the blade in your hand. You imagined it washing over your muscles, powering the force of your movements. You swung the blade in one of the most complicated moves you knew, the angles between movements sharp and defined with an elegance you had been reaching for all night.

You grinned as you finished, relief you had been desperate for settling over you. Azriel’s touch fell away, and you turned around to meet his eyes.

He was smiling too. “Now we can go to the party.”

Your grin only widened. “Thank you.”

Azriel’s smile then wavered, his expression suddenly sobering. “Y/N,” he said, “about yesterday—”

“Az—”

“I’m sorry.”

You stared at him. “You’re sorry? Az, you did nothing—”

“I did nothing wrong, so you’ve said,” he brushed you off. “But something is upsetting you,” he went on, voice gentle again. “And Windhaven—it was hard. I know that. And I wasn’t there for you when we got back, and so I’m sorry for that.”

You looked away, eyes falling to your boots, your toes mere inches away from Azriel’s. You shrugged a little, then finally met his eyes again. “I haven’t really been there for you that last couple of months,” you admitted quietly. “So I guess we’re even. Or, really, I still have much to make up—”

“We don’t do that,” Azriel interrupted softly.

“Do what?”

“Keep score,” he said. You felt warm all over as you stood under his gaze, relishing in the comfort of this male you had known and loved your entire life. Just his presence, without worrying about mates or relationships or boundaries that may or may not exist for the first time in months, was enough to quell the fury and despair that had been warring inside your soul for weeks.

You nodded, knowing he was right.

“Whenever you’re ready to talk about whatever is bothering you, I’ll be here to listen,” he promised. “But for tonight,” he said, a smile slowly stretching across his face again, “Let’s have fun and celebrate our friend.”

Your own smile didn’t quite reach your eyes as you half-heartedly joked, “Will you be getting as drunk as our last night at Rita’s?”

Azriel grabbed your hand, jostling it lightly between you before tugging you close again, his shadows already creeping in around you. “No,” he hummed, mirth in his eyes. “I think it’s your turn tonight.”

Your grin was real as you said, “I like the sound of that.”

~ ~ ~

You weren’t kidding when you told Azriel you liked his plan for tonight—specifically, you getting drunk.

He had taken you back to the House of Wind, and he waited for you to bathe and get dressed before taking you to Rita’s. You would like to think that his cheeks were tinged pink as he grabbed your waist because of you—because you were in a silken dress that shimmered in the moonlight and defined every curve of your body, and you felt good, for the first time in a while.

The two of you were silent as he pulled you in close by your hips, his chest lightly brushing yours before his shadows cocooned the two of you in their familiar embrace. Time always seemed to bend when you traveled through the shadows, warping around your body in a way that felt too fast and too slow all at once. The entire time your eyes were glued to his, his own gaze unwavering as he stared back.

You were in front of Rita’s before you could blink, and yet it felt like those seconds with Azriel’s hands on your body and his eyes stuck to yours had stretched into years. Your heart was racing again. It was becoming a problem.

You stepped back, breaking eye contact with an awkward cough. Your body felt far too warm in the chilled night air. Azriel’s hands fell away from your waist, and you took a second to smooth your hands over your dress, recentering yourself before walking into the crowded tavern.

Azriel watched you, and eventually you forced yourself to smile before meeting his gaze again. “Here we go,” you said with a grin that felt too tight on your face.

You didn’t wait for Azriel before you pushed through the door, the dim lighting and cacophony of music and voices disorienting at first. You scanned the room for your friends, and it wasn’t until Azriel placed a gentle hand on the small of your back and pointed toward a corner of the room that you found them.

He laced his fingers with yours before you could even take a step, guiding you through the sea of bodies. His skin was warm against yours, and you relished in the feeling of your hand in his. He pulled you closer to him when an especially tipsy faerie bumped into your shoulder, jostling the two of you.

Eventually you reached the booth everyone was crammed in, Cassian sitting on the end with a wide grin. You expected Azriel to drop your hand, but he only squeezed it tighter when the two of you stopped in front of the table. Your face was hot when Cassian’s gaze dragged up from your hands to your face.

His eyes were already glossy in the dim light, and empty glasses were scattered across the surface of the table. You hoped he kept his questions and observations to himself tonight.

He pushed up from the table, with Nesta stabilizing it frantically as he bumped the corner and glasses clattered together. Cassian didn’t notice, and he pulled you into him for a hug, effectively breaking Azriel’s hold on your hand. “You’re here!” Cassian cheered.

You laughed as your face squished awkwardly against his chest, his arm squeezing your waist on just the verge of too tight. “Happy Birthday, Cass,” you said again, even if you already saw him this morning. This morning felt forever ago anyway.

Cassian pulled back, his gaze set on the male behind you. He kept one arm around your waist before he reached for Azriel, tugging him into a clumsy hug that you were still held hostage in. The three of you were a mess of arms and wings, Azriel’s body half covering your own and Cassian held you both by one arm. 

Azriel would deny it, but he was smiling as Cassian hugged him. Even if he didn’t wait long before extricating himself from the messy embrace. You managed to break away too, your hands squeezing Cassian’s forearms once before falling away. “I’ll have to give your gift tomorrow,” you told him.

Cassian’s brow furrowed. “Az already gave me—” His words died as his gaze flicked behind you, and your neck felt hot. Cassian’s smile faltered, but you could tell he fought to keep it on his face, even if the alcohol running through him had eroded his already thin filter. “I can’t wait,” he said.

Your smile was tight, and you were ready to escape the awkward tension that had fallen over you. You locked eyes with Mor on the end of the booth, relief washing over you when she stood up. She grabbed your hand, immediately dragging you toward the bar as she declared it was time for more drinks.

She dropped your hand once you reached the bar, her gaze sympathetic as you gathered your bearings. You didn’t hear what she ordered as you took in the crowd around you, the floor flooded with dancing bodies and loud music. Mor handed you a glass of blue liquid, and you didn’t bother asking what it was before you tossed it back.

Which might have been a mistake, because it was foul.

You gagged, clanking the glass down on the counter. “Mor, what the hell was that?”

She also gagged as she downed her own, her class clinking against yours as she sat it down. “Disgusting,” she said, wiping her mouth. Then her eyes glinted. “But effective.” She waved toward the bartender ordering another round of something that hopefully didn’t taste like acid.

She leaned against the bar while you waited, her gaze flitting up and down before settling back on your eyes. “I figured it was that kind of night.”

You leaned against the bar next to her, your arm brushing hers as someone bumped into you. “Yeah,” you said with a weak laugh. “You could say that.”

Mor glanced toward the table with your friends. You followed her gaze, and your heart skipped a beat when your eyes met Azriel’s, who had taken Mor’s seat at the booth. His shadows were mostly hidden behind his wings, but a few stray ones pulsed to a slow beat. You averted your gaze, your skin feeling even more flushed.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Mor asked, and you were fairly certain she knew more than you had ever told her, just like Cassian, and Nesta, and probably everyone else around you.

“Nope.”

The bartender brought your drinks, and Mor handed you another glass, this time with a pink liquid. “This one is better, I promise,” she said, then clinked her glass against yours. “Let’s get drunk.” Then she tossed the liquid back.

You grinned, following her lead, relieved when the liquid was smooth and sweet. “Let’s dance,” you said, grabbing her hand as you sat the glass down, the two of you giggling as you pushed into the sea of bodies.

It was hot. So many bodies brushed against yours, so many faeries overheating the room as you all moved to the music. Song after song drifted over you, and Mor came and went with drinks in hand more times than you could count. Your blood felt fuzzy, your entire body vibrating from the alcohol coursing through your veins and the electric buzz that permeated the air.

At some point Cassian and Nesta joined you, periodically dancing with you and Mor when they weren’t entirely absorbed with each other. Your head was light and hazy, and you almost forgot why you had felt so heavy before.

Then a hand grabbed your waist from behind, familiar scarred fingers curling around the curve of your hip. You leaned back, your body connecting with a warm chest you knew better than your own skin. Your skin was hot and flushed, tingling all over as the scent of salt and cedar and something so uniquely Azriel enveloped you.

Your head lulled against him, your body moving against his in time with the music. His other hand settled on your other hip, and you let him guide your body however he saw fit. Your heart was racing and your stomach was fluttering, and you never wanted this feeling to end. You never wanted Azriel’s grip on your body to fade, and you never wanted another male to touch you like he was now. You wanted him to claim you in this crowd of people. You wanted everyone to know that you were his.

You wanted everyone to know that he was yours.

Azriel had always been yours.

Your hand came up to curl around the back of his neck, pulling his face down to meet your gaze. You had to tilt your head back to see him, but Mother above, he was everything you ever wanted. He was the most beautiful male alive, and you wanted him so much it hurt.

Why did it have to hurt?

You turned around to face him, his hands never leaving your hips. Your chest grazed against his, and you met his eyes as he continued guiding your bodies together in a dance that was for the two of you alone. Your eyes never left his, his own eyes glossy in the lights streaming across the room. He had a lazy smile on his face that made your stomach flutter, and when he tugged your body closer you sucked in a sharp breath.

“Azriel,” you murmured. In the back of your head, you thought it should have been a warning, but really it was a plea.

Your arms looped around his neck as his thigh slotted between yours, and you thought you might die when your core grazed the rough fabric of his pants. The hem of your dress was undoubtedly rucked indecently high, but you didn’t care. You just wanted more. You wanted everything.

Azriel slowly ground your bodies together in a rhythm that you thought might have loosely followed the music, but it was hard to tell. It was hard to think of anything other than the building pleasure low in your belly and Azriel’s hands on your waist and his breath against your cheek. You guided his head up with your hand splayed on his cheek, and when he met your eyes he looked like he might devour you there in the middle of Rita’s.

It was exactly how you had always wanted him to look at you.

You wanted him to want you. You wanted him to forget about anyone else that might think they had a piece of his heart, because Azriel was yours.

Azriel’s tongue briefly wet his lips, and you didn’t think before you pushed yourself up on your toes to capture his lips with yours. 

And he kissed you back.

Your head was floating, possibly completely detached from the rest of you. You weren’t entirely sure you were even still inside your own body, except for the feeling of an undeniable warmth that flooded through your chest. Azriel’s hands slid from your hips to the back of your thighs, his fingers curling around the hem of your dress and tugging it down, all while his lips chased yours.

His hands gripped your legs tight, his fingers undoubtedly leaving indents in your flesh as he simultaneously tugged you closer and kept your dress from sliding too far up. Sparks of electricity flew everywhere your body touched his, leaving your entire body vibrating. The sounds of the music and the voices around dulled into a muffled buzz, your entire world view shifting to focus solely on Azriel.

Your skin was hot with want, flamed only by inconceivable stores of repressed emotions and desire breaking through the surface. You wanted to curl inside of Azriel and never leave. You wanted this moment to stretch for an eternity, bottling up the euphoria coursing through you and never letting it fizzle away.

One of his hands had migrated to your face, cupping your jaw in a way that you thought might have been reverence. The touch was so gentle compared to the firm grip his other hand still had on your thigh, guiding your body against his lazily as your lips melded with fervor.

Why had you never done this?

Well, you had once—

His teeth nipped your lower lip, making you gasp at the light sting before his lips latched onto the sensitive skin below your ear. Your stomach flipped, and your heart was pounding as he moved down the column of your throat, the drag of his lips leaving goosebumps in their wake.

Someone bumped into Azriel, and the two of you careened to the side a bit, his grip tightening on you as a low growl rumbled from his throat. The floor still tilted beneath you even as he held you upright, and you blinked once, and then twice, willing the feeling away.

Then you were engulfed in darkness that was cool against your skin, and you were stumbling backward until your back met a wall. Azriel started laughing against your neck, his hands still holding your hips, and he was likely the reason you didn’t completely crash into the wooden wall behind you.

You started laughing too, vaguely recognizing that you were outside of Rita’s now, only the moon lighting the dim alley. The air was cool, but it only made you feel more flushed, more exposed now that you were alone with Azriel. 

Azriel resumed his kisses along your neck, trailing down to your collarbone as he slotted his thigh back between your legs. The pressure at your core was consuming, traveling upward in shaky tendrils that stole your breath and twisted your stomach.

There was a cacophony of sensations traveling through your body. Azriel’s hands on your waist. His lips on your neck. His whispers that sounded like “perfect” and “beautiful” but you couldn’t be sure because your ears sort of felt like they had been stuffed with cotton. The tension in your core that felt like a confusing blend of impending euphoria smeared with doom.

Your breaths started to grow faster, and fuck, it was really hot.

The world was spinning.

You gripped Azriel’s shoulders, and at first he sank further into you, his body melting into yours. Then your motions slowed, and your mouth was watering, and you must have pushed him back a bit, because his lips were no longer on your skin, and his hands were cupping your face.

“Hey,” he said, squeezing your face slightly to drag your eyes to him. You blinked, trying to focus, but the high you had been riding was crashing down fast, and your head was no longer blissfully floating. “Y/N,” he said, and you pulled your gaze back to him again. “Are you okay?”

He sounded worried.

Maybe you should be?

Maybe you shouldn’t have drank that last shot Mor gave you, or the one before that.

You might be really drunk.

You might—

You threw up.

Everything came rushing up, and you crumbled to the ground, knees hitting the stone hard with stray pebbles biting at your skin. You heaved, and heaved, expelling the monstrous cocktail of alcohol you had tossed down throughout the night.

Gentle hands brushed your hair away from your face, rubbing your back soothingly as you shook, irrational fear coursing through you. Maybe you were dying.

But eventually the nausea passed, and while your head still spun and your thoughts were covered in mud, you knew you were not, in fact, dying. You were just drunk.

Far drunker than you had ever been, but still just drunk.

You were also crying, but your tears were quiet and quickly wiped away by Azriel with gentle hushes. “You’re okay,” he murmured. “You’re okay, sweetheart.”

“I’m sorry,” you said, or maybe it sounded more like a whimper. Your throat hurt. You weren’t sure what exactly you were apologizing for, but you felt like it needed to be said.

“No,” Azriel choked out, wiping his thumb under your eye again. He swayed a bit, or maybe that was you. “My turn to take care of you, right?”

You closed your eyes, smiling a little, leaning your head back against the wall that you somehow had ended up sitting against. Your chest pulsed with warmth again, washing away the chill that had crashed inside you, and replacing the uncomfortable heat you had been washed in moments ago. 

Azriel lifted you, your body curling into his chest with ease. You hid your face against his chest, the thump of his heart calming your still racing one.

Azriel would take care of you.

You loved him.

~ ~ ~

a/n: I won't lie this part was a little hard for me to write because it felt it little bit like a filler but I needed it to get to the next part which I'm excited for!!

No more winnowing. 

You had tried—it hadn’t worked. 

As you walked, stumbling through families taking strolls and having normal days, you searched within you for that golden thread. It had been absent for longer than it had been alive, your time as mates barely reaching a decade before your disappearance. 

You sifted through the pain and grief and loneliness, desperate for the relief you would find once you felt the weight of him. 

Nothing yet. 

He had to know things had changed Under the Mountain. Even amidst the secrecy and the hiding, you knew he would check.  His shadows would cross continents to find you. 

But—you stressed, as you made it to a main road lined with cobblestones—that could mean he went there. Azriel could be under that mountain at this very moment, searching through the fae still sorting out their lives before they went home. 

And you were here. 

You had no reason to panic. 

You were home, safe, alive; you had more reason to feel at peace than you had in the last 50 years. But if Azriel wasn’t here… 

Your breath came out in short pants as your fingers found purchase on a wall. But you kept going, kept watching your feet as they stumbled past each other, just to have the chance of seeing him. 

There were no shadows yet. 

They always found you first. 

You weren't sure how much time had passed—seconds, minutes, hours all lost their meaning under Amarantha—but the shadow of the mountain that held your home was soon cast over your body. You gasped out uneven breaths and pressed a hand to the towering figure, to the entrance that held the ten thousand steps you had every intention of climbing. 

Your body would surely fail. 

The last five decades had not been kind. 

With a determination fueled solely by desperation and hope, you began the tunneled pathway to the harrowing climb, but then you stopped at the entryway. 

A broken rendition of your name met your ears, so cracked and ruined you could have passed it off for something else. 

But you knew that voice, the way the vowels flowed and connected. 

Another broken sound permeated the air, this time from your own lips. 

You couldn’t look. You wanted to, ached to, but you couldn’t. So much anticipation led up to this moment. And you were different now, a fraction of the person you had been all those years ago. 

“Y/n, my love, look at me,” Azriel begged, the lowest you’d ever heard him speak. But you hadn’t heard him speak in so long, so perhaps you were misremembering. “Please.” 

You couldn’t. 

Moving was impossible. 

Your legs began to shake at the sound of footsteps, and then your knees gave out. 

A loud sound vibrated against the tunnel walls as your hands slapped against the floor. On the ground, steps away from the only person who could fix this, your waterline filled with tears. 

But you didn’t have time to second-guess or run or wonder if this was all too much. You were gathered into a strong pair of arms, pressed into a firm chest that smelled like home, and tears made paths down your cheeks. They flowed in damp trails in silence, Azriel holding you closer and closer until you weren’t sure space existed between you. 

His nose pressed into your hair. 

His chest rose and fell in uneven patterns. 

More silence. You felt your body begin to rock gently back and forth. 

This wasn’t real—it couldn’t be. 

You had resigned yourself to never seeing him again many years ago. Even as you ran through the streets of Velaris without your breath or your reasonable mind, you hadn’t expected to find him. This was a dream, Azriel wasn’t here, it was only a cruel play on your mind. 

Someone was trying to hurt you, and it was working. 

Maybe Amarantha had finally gotten Rhys to crack. 

Maybe this was his doing, his manipulation of your deepest hopes. 

Something was moving against your ear, soft and rushed and incoherent. A hand smoothed back your hair. You kept rocking. 

“You’re okay.” Words filtered through ringing. “You’re okay. You’re okay. I’m here.” 

Over and over. On a loop. 

Something encased you. Darkness followed—you were used to darkness. 

The pattern of the words lulled your heart back to a normal rate. Tears continued to fall. Your breath was shaky. 

“I love you so much,” Azriel broke the repetition, shocking your system. “I love you. I love you—” 

A sob wracked your body, the first real sound to leave your mouth. Azriel shushed you in response, but when he buried his face in your neck you felt the wetness of his own cheeks. 

This had to be real, it had to. There was no other alternative. You wouldn't survive feeling this way just to be thrust back into that nightmare. 

It had to be real, it had to—

“It is,” Azriel choked out. He pulled back, your face in his hands, his expression conveying a picture of pain and love and disbelief. “It’s real, angel. Gods, you’re so beautiful. I never thought I’d—” Words cut off and restarted. “I tried so hard to get to you.” 

His forehead met yours. 

This was real. 

You felt the shadows wisp along your skin. 

You could never feel them in dreams. 

“I missed you,” you croaked, voice so unused to the words. “So much.” 

Azriel squeezed his eyes shut only to open them after not even a breath. Desperate not to lose sight of you. Anguished at the thought of missing the picture of you in his arms. 

You lay draped across his chest, your weight a comfortable, grounding thing. His heartbeat thudded beneath your cheek, slow and sure, and the warmth of his skin seeped through the thin fabric of his shirt. One of his hands rested at the small of your back, tracing lazy circles under your sweater, while the other curled lightly around the nape of your neck, fingertips brushing idly over your skin. 

You sighed, nuzzling deeper against him, letting the scent of cedar and night-chilled wind wrap around you like a second blanket. Your fingers trailed absentmindedly over his ribs, feeling the rise and fall of his breathing, and when you finally lifted your gaze to meet his, your heart did that ridiculous little stutter it always did. 

Because Azriel was looking at you like that again—like you were something precious. Something worth holding onto. 

The firelight flickered in his hazel eyes, turning them molten, but there was something softer underneath. Something quiet and steady, tucked between the affection in his gaze and the slight curve of his mouth. You weren’t sure you’d ever get used to it. 

You exhaled, barely above a whisper, as if afraid you might shatter the fragile silence. “I can’t believe you’re here with me.”

It wasn’t meant to be a confession. Just a passing thought, one that had been lingering in the back of your mind since the moment you started whatever this was—since the moment you realized someone like him could want someone like you. 

But Azriel stilled beneath you. It was subtle, just a flicker of tension in his fingertips, a pause in the slow drag of his hand against your back. Gone in an instant. 

You wouldn’t have noticed if you hadn’t been laying on his chest, if you hadn’t felt the way his heartbeat faltered for just a second before steadying again. You didn’t call attention to it, just as Az hadn’t. Hadn’t asked what you meant. 

Instead, he shifted slightly, adjusting his wings so they wrapped around you both, pulling you deeper into the warmth of his body. His fingers resumed their slow, absentminded tracing, his thumb sweeping over the back of your neck in a way that made you shiver. 

“Where else would I be?” he murmured. 

You huffed a soft laugh, tucking your face into the crook of his neck. Anywhere. Everywhere. Someone like you doesn’t end up with someone like me.

But you didn’t say that. Just let yourself sink into his warmth, let yourself savor the way his arms tightened around you, as if holding you closer would make you understand. 

Because Azriel didn’t know—not yet. But he was starting to notice. 

And he didn’t like it. 

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

Dinner at the River House was always an event. Not a formal one by any means—the kind where the table was too small for all the elbows knocking together where laughter wove itself between the clinking of glasses and the scrape of silverware. Where the air smelled of roasted lamb and rosemary, of spiced wine and honeyed bread, warmth curling through the candlelit room like an embrace.

Nesta and Cassian had somehow gotten into a debate over who was worse at flirting—Rhysand or Azriel—which had quickly turned into a full-blown conversation about all their past entanglements. 

“You’re all fools,” Amren said simply, swirling the deep red in her glass. “None of you were half as charming as you thought you were.”

Cassian scoffed. “I was charming.”

Nesta didn’t even look up as she speared a piece of meat. “Debatable.”

Across the table, Mor snickered. “He was charming, in the way a golden retriever puppy is charming.”

Azriel smirked into his wine glass. Cassian pointed at him accusingly. “You don’t get to laugh. You spent centuries avoiding love like the Mother herself would smite you for it.”

“That’s because he’s got high standards,” Mor shot back. “Honestly, I’m just surprised Az’s even dating.”

Feyre hummed, shifting Nyx higher against her shoulder as he dozed, his tiny fingers curled into the fabric of her sweater. “Dating? I’m surprised he’s managed to keep someone around long enough to–”

“Feyre.” His voice was soft, but the weight behind it was enough to cut her off. His expression was still easy, his lips curling at the edges, but there was something there—something firm, something protective. 

Your stomach twisted. 

The words weren’t meant to hurt. You knew that. They were lighthearted, Feyre smiling at her brother-in-law, the way siblings poked fun without malice. And Azriel had cut her off before she could finish—before she could say something that might have struck deeper.

But it was already unraveling in your head.

High standards. 

Avoiding love.

Managed to keep someone around long enough.

Because is that all this is? A fling? Something temporary? Another short-lived thing in a string of them? 

Your grip tightened subtly around your glass, the air suddenly too warm, your pulse thrumming a little too fast. And before you could stop yourself, before you could sit with the spiraling thoughts for even a second longer, you laughed. Too loud. Too sharp. A sound that cut through the warmth of the room rather than settling into it. 

“Yeah, just wait until he realizes how much of a pain I am.”

Silence, just for a beat. 

Azriel’s head snapped toward you, sharp enough that you felt it before you saw it—the weight of his gaze landing on you, the furrow in his brows, the shift in the air between you. But you didn’t look. Couldn’t. 

Rhysand chuckled, breaking the brief pause, shaking his head. “Yeah, right. You’re practically a saint for dealing with him.”

Cassian smirked, lifting his glass. “Agreed.”

Laughter rippled through the table again, and just like that, the moment passed—folded itself into the fabric of the conversation, buried beneath the easy back and forth, the scraping of plates, the pouring of wine. 

Azriel let it go. Again. 

But it lingered.

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

Azriel eventually pushed past that uneasy feeling. It wasn’t a big deal—not really. He figured you probably hadn’t even meant anything by it. But something about it rubbed him the wrong way, settled uneasily in his chest, and he couldn’t explain why. 

But then it happened again. 

And again. 

Little things, small enough that they would have slipped through the cracks if he hadn’t been paying attention. The way you waved off his compliments, dodging them with a laugh like they were jokes rather than truths. The way your smile sometimes faltered, like you’d caught yourself enjoying the moment a little too much. The way your fingers curled into the fabric of your sleeve when he touched you, like you were steadying yourself. 

And then there was the way you looked at him—that was what unsettled him the most. 

Because he was used to being looked at in a thousand different ways—calculating, cautious, reverent, fearful. People looked at him and saw a legend, a warning, a weapon. He’d spent a lifetime standing on the outskirts of things, watching them unfold from the shadows, knowing that no matter how close he got, he would always be separate.

But you looked at him like he was something untouchable. 

Like you didn’t quite believe he was real. 

Like you were waiting for the moment he’d come to his senses and walk away. 

And Azriel—who had spent years mastering the art of patience, of knowing when to hold back—found himself growing more and more frustrated. 

Not at you, gods, never at you. 

But at the way you’d convinced yourself that you were less. 

That he was something more. 

It all came to a head one evening in the training ring. 

You weren’t training, just sitting on one of the benches, legs tucked beneath you, book resting open in your lap. You liked being here with him, and he liked having you here, even if neither of you’d ever said it out loud. He could feel your eyes on him as he moved through his drills, the steady weight of your attention like a tether pulling him back to earth. 

When he finally finished, muscles burning, wings flexing as he rolled his shoulders, he walked over to you. You grinned up at him, eyes warm despite the sharp winter air, and handed him a cup of water without a word.

Az took a long drink before murmuring, “You staring at me again?”

You scoffed, though the way your mouth twitched told him you were fighting a smile. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

He smirked, resting a hand on the bench’s backrest beside you, bracing himself as he leaned down. “Too late.”

You made a face, but the slight pink creeping up your neck gave you away. He kissed you softly, just a brush of lips, tasting warmth and wind and something undeniably you.

And then you said it.

“I still don’t know what you see in me.”

You said it casually. Offhanded. Like it wasn’t a confession. Like it wasn’t the worst thing you could’ve said.

Azriel  went still.

The words settled like a stone in his chest, heavy and suffocating. And suddenly, every little moment from the past few weeks clicked into place—the deflected compliments, the hesitations, the way you looked at him like you were waiting for him to wake up and realize you weren't enough.

The frustration that had been simmering in the back of his mind finally snapped.

His voice was quiet, but firm. “Don’t do that.”

You blinked, tilting your head slightly. “Do what?”

“That.” He straightened, looking down at you, jaw tight. “Talk about yourself like that.”

You shifted, clearly thrown off by the sudden change in his tone. “Az, I was just—”

“I mean it.” His wings flared slightly, a flicker of restrained emotion. “You say things like that all the time. Like you don’t think you belong here. Like I’m some…” He exhaled sharply, shaking his head. “Some gift the Mother decided to bestow on you.”

You opened your mouth, but he wasn’t finished.

“You don’t think I notice, but I do,” he said, voice softer now, rough around the edges. “I can see it in the way you dodge compliments, the way you downplay yourself like you’re the lucky one—as if I’m not the one who should be grateful every damn day that you want to be with me.”

You swallowed hard, looking away. “That’s not—”

“Look at me.”

You did.

And when your eyes met, something inside Az ached.

Because you really didn’t see it.

Didn’t see what he saw every time he looked at you—the quiet strength, the unwavering kindness, the way you fit so effortlessly into the parts of him that had always felt empty.

Didn’t see how, before you, he had spent centuries standing on the outside looking in, wondering if he would ever have anything or anyone just for himself.

Didn’t see how you were already everything.

Azriel exhaled, slow and steady, forcing himself to find the words. “You are not some… temporary thing I decided to entertain myself with.” He took your hand, curling your fingers between his own. “You’re not lucky to have me.” He squeezed, firm but gentle. “I’m lucky to have you.”

Your lips parted slightly, but no words came out. You looked like you wanted to argue, to tell him he had it backwards, but there was something raw in his expression—something that made you hesitate.

Az lifted your joined hands and pressed a slow, lingering kiss to the back of yours, his lips brushing your skin as he whispered, “Stop acting like you’re less than.”

Silence stretched between you, heavy with everything unsaid.

Finally, you exhaled shakily and leaned forward, pressing your forehead against his. “I don’t know how to stop feeling like I am.”

Az closed his eyes, letting himself breathe you in. And then he whispered, “Then let me remind you.”

And he would.

You snorted and then turned back to your fries.

You had always been a constant in Bucky's life—first in middle school, then high school, and now entering your last year in college. Inseparable was a common term used to describe your relationship, but there was something that separated you, and it had been a more... recent development.

Bucky had joined a frat. A very popular frat. You had not liked the frat, but you put up with it. But then Bucky started sleeping with women, and you put up with that far less, because Bucky started sleeping with... a lot of women. So, it was fair. You kept your distance, made your own friends, and you made time to see each other when you could.

Bucky coveted those times, even if he wouldn't admit to it. Even if each quick dinner, each passing coffee in the dining hall, began to feel like he was falling off a cliff. A very sudden, very steep cliff.

The women were not a distraction at first. He was supposed to have sex with women. That's what guys like him did in college. But, recently, for the past few weeks, they were a distraction. A distraction from you. He couldn't stop thinking about you, and that wasn't the plan.

"Why are you staring off into space like a freak?" you laughed, tossing a fry at his face. It smacked between his eyes.

"I'm not," he argued. "What, a guy can't think anymore? That illegal?"

You puffed out a laugh. "What could you possibly be thinking about?" You shoved the plate away and rested your face in your hands. "The next girl you'll waste the time of? Maybe you're worried that you left one in your bed and now she's going through your underwear drawer."

"Ha. Ha," Bucky mocked. "No, smart ass. I was thinking about what to get you for your birthday, but now, since I'm not allowed to think, I think I'll just forget."

"Not my birthday!" you gasped, hands coming down on the table. "You said you were going to take me to Disneyland."

"I was kidding about that. You actually want to go to Disneyland?"

"Not anymore. Not after you've dangled it in front of my nose like this."

Bucky let out another sarcastic laugh, sliding out of the booth after tossing a few bills on the table. He shrugged his jacket on and held out an expectant hand that you stared at dubiously before taking with a roll of your eyes.

"Yeah, yeah," Bucky droned. "Let's get out of here before your hysterics get us kicked out."

He helped you into your own jacket, lingered with his nose by your temple and greedily took time he wasn't allowed, and then pushed a rough kiss to the side of your head because that was a normal thing to do. He was being normal. His feelings were normal.

You tugged him into the parking lot and blabbed on about Disneyland and terrible fries and looked at him like you always did, and he looked at you like you were holding his entire life in your hands. You didn't seem to notice the difference.

Bucky kept it to himself and pretended he wasn't crossing a line.

“Stealth missions are so boring,” Cassian states from behind you.

“Maybe that’s why you usually don’t get assigned on stealth missions, dummy,” you reply while looking through the desk drawers.

“I’m not even sure what I’m supposed to be looking for. Sometimes Azriel talks and I just tune him out.” Cassian mimes with his hands a talking motion and rolls his eyes.

“Cassian, why are you even on this mission if you don’t know what we’re looking for and you don’t like stealth missions?” You ask not looking up at him as you search through the papers on the desk.

“Hmm,” he says, pretending to search through the papers as he drops his voice, “it’s been a while since we’ve hung out the two of us.”

You pause and turn to look at him, a big grin overtaking your face.

“You missed me,” you say, delight coating your voice.

“No, I didn’t say that. You’re twisting my words,” he says, pretending to be annoyed, going to search a different part of the room.

You had been a part of the inner circle for about three years when the mating bond snapped into place. All throughout those three years Cassian did everything he could think of to put you and Azriel together. He’d constantly ask you two to dinner and be ‘sick’ and then magically be okay the next day. He’d force you two to sit next to each other during every dinner, solstice, lunch, breakfast, meeting. Any event where you had to sit down, you had to sit next to each other. Anytime you had to be flown somewhere, Cassian would mysteriously have flown away, leaving Azriel to fly you. The cauldron works hard, but Cassian works harder.

No one else could figure out Cassian’s borderline obsession with the two of you. Whenever Rhys or Feyre or anyone would ask him, he’d simply shrug and say “I have a hunch” or, if he was feeling particularly chatty, “I think they’d have stunning children”.

The truth was Cassian loved the both of you so much that he wanted to see you two happy. He also knew there was something between the two of you, he just didn’t know what. He was there the day you and Azriel were introduced, and he felt something. He wasn’t sure if it was possible to feel someone else’s mating bond, but he could feel the potential between you two.

You laugh as you continue rifling through the desk. “You know Cassian if you want to spend time together all you had to do was ask-“

You’re cut off by a cloud of pink dust coming out of a drawer you opened and covering your face. You start coughing and backing away.

“Shit,” Cassian says, coming over to you. He starts looking you over, assessing for damage.

“I’m fine,” you say, in between coughs, “dusty old drawer.”

Cassian looks skeptical. “Yes, because pink dust is so common.”

You roll your eyes. “We’ve searched the room, there’s nothing here. Let’s go home.”

The mission debrief was short - not much to report. The two of you searched an abandoned outpost, seeing if anything of interest was left behind, finding nothing of value or interest.

You enjoyed stealth missions, but you especially loved coming home to your overly protective mate. You two had a tradition - your own personal debrief, where Azriel would inspect every inch of you for any sign of injury. Wherever you were injured, whether it be bruise, scrap, or cut, he would place long kisses on the spot.

“Better than a healer,” he’d say.

The length of the mission would determine how long the two of you stayed locked up in each other. You two usually spent double the length of the mission together uninterrupted.

Once, after a four day long mission, no one had seen either of you for a week. Rhys had to send a telepathic message to find proof of life from either of you.

That night, Azriel checked your wounds, which you’re not even sure you had any. You considered even “accidentally” cutting your finger, but decided against it.

-

You woke up to a dark room, feeling a heavy presence wrapped around you. Whoever it was was massive, incredibly warm, and had quite the grip on you.

You’re not crazy about casual flings, but it’s not too unheard of, especially considering you spent last night drinking with Cassian and Mor at Rita’s. Mor loved playing matchmaker with you, trying to set you up with the most eligible males she could find.

You look around the room, the realization of being naked hitting you. You spot a pile of clothes on the floor and gently lift the arm off of you and slip out from under the male. You grab the clothes, putting the shirt on first. It seems to be the mystery male’s - it’s incredibly long on you, smelling of pine and mist.

“Going somewhere?” the male asks, rising up from the bed to meet you where you stand.

“Yes, I’m uh I’m so sorry but I don’t remember getting here, so I’m just going to head home.” You say, walking backwards towards the door. As the male comes closer, you recognize him.

“Azriel?” You ask.

“Yes, who else would I be?” Azriel replies, a hint of confusion dancing in his eyes, “come back to bed, you’re probably just confused after a dream.”

“Uh, wow, um I-“ you dart your eyes around the room “I’m so sorry but I don’t remember how I got here, let me go back to my room.”

He stops, all signs of playfulness gone. “You don’t have a room. This is your room. This is our room.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Sweetheart, you moved into my room a few years ago. Your room is just another guest room now.”

You blush at the nickname. Despite your best efforts, he had hardly said much to you in the time you’ve known him. Despite the nickname, the weight of his words starts to settle on you.

“Um, no I have a room here. This isn’t a very good joke, Az.” You say, opening the door to go to your room across the hall. Your feet carry you to your room, your hand resting on the knob as Azriel reaches for you, calling for you. You’re not sure why there’s such confusion in his tone. You open the door to what used to be your room, only to find it devoid of any signs you had lived in it.

The room looked like it had the day you moved in, sans the welcome basket Feyre and Rhys had assembled for you and left on the bed. The blue barren walls stare back at you, the four poster bed neatly made.

No hearth in the fire, no books on the nightstand, no flowers on the desk. Even your beloved stuffed wolf that Cassian teased you about was nowhere to be seen.

“Azriel, where is my stuff?”

Azriel stares at you, in utter shock and disbelief. He grabs your hand, leading you through the house. You’re forced to follow him, due to both his tight but gentle grip on you and your curiosity at where all of your things went. The sounds of his footsteps echo through the hall, a level of noise you’ve never heard from him. Usually he glides through these halls, not a trace of noise made to alert anyone of his presence.

“Azriel, what’s wrong?” You keep asking, and he won’t reply until you’re face to face with Rhys’s bedroom door, where Azriel starts banging fiercely on it.

Cassian is the first to poke his head out, his door down the hall from Rhys’s. Once he sees Azriel is the one causing all the commotion, he comes out into the hall, looking around for any unseen threats.

Rhys opens the door, a pair of sweatpants hastily put on as he allows the three of you entry. You assume Rhys had the same reaction to Cassian, annoyance quickly changing to concern at Azriel’s tone.

You assume that Azriel, Rhys, and Feyre are all communicating telepathically because it is dead silent in the room until Feyre comes up and tells you to have a seat in one of their chairs by the fire.

“Okay, now tell me, what happened?” Rhys asked, putting his hands on your shoulders in reassurance.

“Well I um think I’m missing a few pieces but uh last night I went to Rita’s with Cassian and Mor, I got pretty drunk, and I woke up naked in Azriel’s room. I woke up, I tried to leave, only to find out my room is gone.”

Cassian looks at you, concern etching his face, “we went to Rita’s?” He asks, pointing a finger between you and him.

“Yeah,” you say, “you had been out to see Devlen and when you came back you asked if Mor and I wanted to go out with you. No one else was here.” You look to Feyre and Rhys, becoming even more confused. “Why are you guys all back so early?”

“What do you mean “back early”?”

“Well, Azriel had some mission on the continent, and Feyre and Rhys were visiting the summer court with Amren.”

“Mother help us,” Cassian muttered, as he realized his error, dragging a hand across his face. “On our mission yesterday, she breathed in an unknown powder. It had slipped my mind, she seemed so fine, I didn’t think anything of it.”

You could feel the anger vibrating off of Azriel as he turned to Cassian, spitting “What do you mean you didn’t think anything of it? You didn’t think anything of my mate on your mission?”

Azriel’s words don’t register with you as you were too focused on Cassian’s. “But I didn’t go on any missions yesterday. I spent the day at the library, doing research. Cassian found me, asked me to go to Rita’s, and I told him I’d pay for all of his drinks if he went down to the bottom level of the library.”

“Oh, Mother.” Cassian muttered. “Let’s stop for a moment.” Rhys said, crouching in front of you. His violet eyes shone with kindness and concern as he tells you, “Feyre and I went to the summer court with Amren five years ago.”

“That’s not possible” you scoff, “you guys just left three days ago.”

You look towards Azriel, his usual stoicism a thing of comfort in times like this. Instead you’re met with deep despair as he looks back at you, and somehow you can feel that despair deep in your chest.

Rhys moves away from you as Azriel walks towards you and crouches down in front of you, looking at you like you hold his entire life in the palm of your hands, “Sweetheart,” he starts, “what am I to you?”

Your cheeks flare with heat. You start stammering, his gaze overwhelming. He wants some specific answer, this you know. His gaze is piercing and you can’t look away.

“When we were in the summer court,” Feyre starts musing, “that was… before, right?”

“Before what?” You ask, while Azriel nods his head, confirming Feyre’s question.

The room has grown silent again, before Azriel takes your hands and says “before we became mates.”

Your cheeks are on fire now, wishing you could be having this conversation in private, instead of in front of your family.

“Wait, is that why you came back early? You realized we were mates when you were on the continent?” You whisper the last part as of it’s a secret.

As if Azriel’s face couldn’t show you anymore devastation, he replies, “Sweetheart, we’ve been mated for two years.”

You couldn’t have heard him correctly. “I’m sorry,” you say, “have you been keeping it from me for two years? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Rhys steps in, sparing Azriel the pain of further explaining this to you, “you two have been mates for two years. The war with Hybern is over.”

You look into everyone’s eyes, trying to find a trace of humor, “this isn’t a funny joke, it’s quite cruel.”

“No one is joking,” Cassian says. You stand up, beginning to pace the room.

“No no no, you have to be, because either Mor thought this would be a funny joke because of my crush on Azriel or I’ve forgotten the last five years of my life, including getting a mate and surviving the war.”

You look around the room, everyone looking at either you or Azriel, not a trace of humor in the room.

“This has to be a joke because how cruel would it be for Azriel to find a mate just for them to forget everything about him. Five years! Five years of my life are gone! Up to this point in time, Azriel has said maybe five words to me!”

You are hyperventilating by this point, pacing the room, shaking.

“Rhys,” Azriel says, “please.”

Rhys envelops you in a hug, and everything goes dark for you as you slump into his arms. He picks you up, gently laying you on their couch, draping a blanket over you.

Everyone in the room is just staring at you, praying for you to just jump up and tell them this was all a joke. Azriel just sits on the floor next to you, holding your hand, tears streaming down his face.

“I-“ he starts saying quietly, “I-uh I always wondered how the Cauldron would make me suffer for making her my mate. I always knew it would take her away from me in the end, but not like this. I never could have dreamt of this outcome. I never.. never could have imagined how painful it’d be to see her forget me.”

No one is dry-eyed. Everyone is devastated for you, but especially for Azriel. Cassian, Feyre, and Rhys leave the bedroom, allowing Azriel to stay with you while Rhys keeps you under. They all head to Rhys’ study.

“There is some good news in this.”

Cassian and Feyre snap their heads to look at him, urging him to continue.

“When I was in her mind to sedate her, I could tell she still had memories of the past five years. Some of them were memories so ingrained to her that she has no idea what they are. Another thing is that I could tell the memories were there, they’re just… locked up.”

“Locked up? Like a prisoner?” Feyre asks.

“Yes,” Rhys replies, “like a prisoner.”

“So this powder is keeping her memories hostage?”

He sighs, looking towards the door, thinking about his brother’s face. “It would appear that way.”

Madja was called to look over you in your unconscious state, and after she found nothing wrong, they decided to wake you back up.

While you were unconscious, they decided that Mor and Cassian would watch over you unless you ask otherwise. Rhys wakes you up gently, asking if you need anything. After you decline, he leaves you alone with Mor and Cassian.

“So, um..” you start, not sure where to begin. “Five years?”

Mor nods.

“The war is over?”

Cassian smiles solemnly and nods.

“And Az and I?”

Cassian’s grin widens as he looks at you, thinking about the love you share with his brother. You play with your thumbs, unsure what to ask.

“What do you guys, uh, think of us? Do we seem happy?”

Cassian snorts while Mor replies, “oh we adore the two of you. Cassian is convinced he knew of your mating bond the day you two met.”

Cassian puffs out his chest in pride. “I most certainly knew, years before they did.”

“What made you know?” You ask, curiosity filling your eyes as you sat up.

“Well,” Cassian says, “the two of you didn’t interact much the first few years. Azriel needs time to warm up to people, and he’s worried he’ll scare people off if he comes on too strong. But I could just tell that he so desperately wanted to be your friend.”

“Hmm,” you muse, looking at Cassian in a confused way, “I always assumed he didn’t like me.”

Cassian looks at you quizzically, “and why is that?”

You sigh. “I always thought he found me… too soft. Too delicate.” You look out the window, and Cassian feels a pang of guilt. He knew Azriel could be a bit icy at times, but he hadn’t remembered what it felt like to not have that friendship.

Cassian studies you, “Why’d you think that?”

“I don’t know, it was just little things, I suppose. He’d never laugh at my jokes or talk to me much. Once you had paired us to be sparring partners and he just told you no and walked away to work with someone else.”

You remember a version of Azriel who hardly knew you. You’ve been placed in time right before Cassian started forcing you two to spend time together. For you, Azriel is practically a stranger.

Tears start rolling down your cheeks, “I don’t know him,” you say, “but it’s like my body knows him. I don’t.. know him.”

You take a deep breath, looking around the room to avoid Cassian’s sad face. “But I want him here. I don’t know why, maybe it’s the bond, but I just… want him here.”

You look down sighing, “I feel so bad that this is happening to him, he doesn’t deserve this. Even if I don’t know him.”

Cassian didn’t think his heart could break anymore, but he was wrong. Watching you cry over Azriel’s predicament but not your own gutted him. He moved to sit next to you on the couch and pulled you into his lap, letting you cry for a while.

After several hours of sitting with Mor and Cassian, Elain had recommended you get some fresh air, take a walk in the gardens. You ask if Azriel can join you, so he is staying near you, keeping an eye on you, but not too close.

You walked slowly, not sure if you wanted Azriel to catch up to you or to stay back. You felt gutted that this would happen to Azriel, despite your next to non-existent relationship with him up to this point.

The male trailed behind you, keeping the same distance in spite of your constantly changing pace. Your thoughts whirled and swirled, much like the shadows that dance around your mate. Your mate. You have a mate. And he’s here. That realization caused you to take some deep breaths, trying to keep yourself from spiraling into a panic.

Your brain can’t recall these things, but your body calls for him, wanting you to reach out and grab his hand. It is telling you that you stand on his left normally, allowing free range of motion for his dominant hand. It is telling you to let him lay on top of you, resting his head on your chest while he dozes off to nap. It is telling you to reach out and cup his jaw, that he will smile as you do so and pull you closer to him.

You don’t have memories of him, you have imprints of him, leaving whispers into your skin of how you were made for him. The yearning becomes too much and you need to hear him, so you turn to him and ask, “who did it snap for first?”

He blinks, a bit taken aback by your talking to him. He hasn’t heard you speak since the realization in Rhys’s office, much less speak to him directly. He takes longer strides, catching up to you quickly. He clears his throat and looks at you, “it snapped for me first, and I got to watch it snap for you.”

A soft smile graces his lips as he recalls the moment, so clearly in his memories he wishes he could send it directly to you. He can, he thinks, deciding that if you don’t have your memories, he’ll provide them for you.

“I bought you a locket for your birthday. A bit presumptuous, I know, but I had Feyre do a tiny portrait of myself to put in the locket. I also had a tiny piece of one of my siphons placed in the center so you could carry a piece of me everywhere.

“Your face lit up, but I was so nervous. I was trembling as I gave it to you. I almost dropped it when you asked me to clasp it around your neck. You hugged me so tightly, the locket pressing to my chest siphon and my siphon glowed.”

He smiles and reaches for your hand out of instinct, and you don’t pull away. When he notices what he’s done, he goes to retract his hand, but you clasp onto him harder.

“You had told me you would carry your loved ones in your pocket if you could and I got you the closest thing I could to that. I also had a shadow stay in the locket, they rotate who gets to be in the locket, but they like being close to you too. And in case of emergency they can slip out and find me.”

He pulls at the collar of his shirt, pulling out his own chain with a heart locket at the end. “You gave me one a week later. No siphon, but you used some of your light magic to embue a tiny stone so that it will glow forever.”

The locket looks so familiar, as if it was in a fairy tale you had read as a child. Your hand twitches, as if it wants to touch the locket. “You gave me the locket and when you saw it on my chest, your eyes lit up and I could feel you in my chest.”

You motion to a bench in the garden, and the two of you sit underneath a beautiful cherry blossom tree, its petals falling in the wind.

He moves his collar to tuck the necklace back in, pats it to his chest, then asks, “I’m guessing this is a lot to take in?”

You nod, “I mean it’s just been what five years? I have a hot mate that up until now he’s had no idea I’m hopelessly in love with him, the war is over, I missed Feyre and Rhys’s mating ceremony. It’s all sunshines and rainbows.”

He looks at you, “if it makes you feel better, they snuck out and did the ceremony in secret.”

He hears you grumble, “bastards” under your breath, making him chuckle.

“As for the hot mate who had no idea you were in love with him,” he pauses, watching your cheeks heat up with embarrassment, “he was the same way.”

You gape at him, hitting him on the shoulder, “don’t tell me things just to try to make me feel better!”

He laughs, “I’m not lying!”

You scoff, “You’ve spoken to me three times! One of those times you had asked me to move.”

He looks down, “okay maybe I wasn’t great at conveying it to you, but I thought about you constantly.”

You scoff again, thumping his chest, “you did not!”

“I did so!” He replies, just as childishly as you, “I spent so much of my energy trying to keep my shadows from harassing you at all hours. They kept pulling me, trying to coerce me into rooms you were in.”

He turns to look at you, your eyes a gateway to the before.

“I thought you were so pretty when you first showed up, I forgot how to breathe.”

Your cheeks heat as you look down at the ground, Azriel’s undivided attention being too much.

You look up at him, “okay, well if you were soooo in love with me, how come you refused to spar with me?”

You cross your arms over your chest, looking at the shadowsinger next to you, unable to believe that he’s your mate.

His wings flare ever so slightly, as he quietly tells you, “because being that close to you was too much.”

You look at him quizically, not quite getting what he’s referencing.

Azriel, for all his credit, is trying to be as coy as possible. The you from the present has an absolutely filthy mouth, the dirty talk between you two could strip paint off of walls. But this version of you? It feels wrong, violating almost. You’re not some innocent doe, far from it, but the way you two speak now was built on years of trust, a foundation that doesn’t exist for the version of you he’s looking at.

He sighs, coughing as he says, “I knew if I were to get that close to you, I’d have a hard time and I didn’t want to make a fool of myself in front of you.”

You bring your hand up to your mouth, giggling. “Aww the big, scary shadowsinger is afraid he’ll get a hard on while sparring. Do you have these fears with anyone else? Cassian, perhaps?”

He laughs, the first genuine laugh since you woke up yesterday morning. “Can’t say I’ve ever had that concern with him.” He shakes his head, “but also Cassian isn’t a pretty female.”

You smile, “no, I guess not. He’s not pretty, not like you.” You clamp your mouth shut, despite knowing you’ve been seeing him for years. Parts of you know this, but other parts feel the newness, the uncertainty.

He smiles, looking at you through the side of his eye. “You think I’m pretty?” It’s a sentiment you’ve told him before, but this version of you thinking it too is fascinating.

“Oh yeah, prettiest male I’ve ever seen.” You blush, deciding to tell him everything, “I uh- I asked Mor to make sure I can always sit next to you when we go out.”

Your confession causes him to pause, something he never knew about you. “Oh?” He asks, curious about this new information.

“Yeah, once she even pushed Cassian out of a seat so I could make it in time.” You laugh, remembering the shock on his face as he laid on the ground and you quickly grabbed his seat. “I thought if I sat next to you, you’d uh- fall in love with me.” You rush out the last part, your voice going quiet.

“But uh, I actually told her to forget about it, just last night. Or whenever that was….” You trail off, remembering your current predicament.

But Azriel was stuck in the past, stuck on your latest admission. “Wait, why did you tell her to let it go?”

You sigh, picking up a dandelion out of the grass, “well, I’d try really hard to get you to notice me or talk to me, but you never did.” You pick at the petals of the flower. “I figured I was annoying you, or you hated that I was keeping other girls from being able to chat you up. So I told her to let it go.”

Azriel balks at your admission, having no idea the extent of his effect on you. “I had no idea how to talk to you! You were so pretty, especially whenever we were at Rita’s.” He sighs, remembering how he’d overanalyze how to reapond to you, only to never say anything.

“It wasn’t until… Cassian.” He pauses, trailing off. “Cassian what?” You asked, crossing your arms over your chest at the slight breeze.

“Cassian told me he spent a lot of time trying to seat us next to each other, to get me to talk to you. I wonder if he… got the idea after talking to you last night about it.”

You shake your head, “no, I only told Mor that - no way he knows.”

Azriel looks at you, “And how is the biggest gossip and busybody you know?”

Your eyes widen, realization hitting you, “oh my god,” you whine. “He heard me! He heard how pathetic I am!”

Azriel rolls his eyes, but you continue, “I was so drunk! I kept talking about you - and how you smell, and your hands, and your legs, oh my god.”

Your cheeks flare in heat, and your voice drops to a whisper. “I told Mor I had a dirty dream about you the other day - in detail!”

He smirks, “and what were we doing in this dirty dream?”

Your cheeks flame tomato red, as he laughs at you. “I guarantee you, sweetheart, whatever it was, we’ve done dirtier.”

He’s always enjoyed making you flustered, but this is an opportunity to fluster past you, one he will not let go to waste.

“About that,” you start, a sheepish grin adorning the cherry red of your cheeks. “How is our sex life? Is it good?” You ask, your voice lowered.

He laughs, “we make Cassian look like a prude with the amount of sex we have.” You gasp, approval for this future version of yourself. He leans in close to your ear, and whispers, “genuinely the best sex of my life.”

You bite your lip, but he continues. “Our general rule is for every night I’m gone on a mission, when I come back I have to make you finish at least once per day I’m gone.”

He chuckles low, the memory coming to him so easily. “I was once gone for twelve nights.” He pulled back, looking into your eyes. “And yes, all in one night.”

Your eyes widen, and you take a quick glimpse down towards his crotch. He watches you check him out, a smile ghosting on his lips.

You spent several days like that, most of your time spent with Azriel. You asked him about your lives together - where you two lived, what your days looked like together, what your lives with the Inner Circle looked like.

“Have I been able to convince you to take a day off?” You ask, the two of you eating at your favorite cafe in Velaris. Rhys had encouraged you to explore the city, hopeful it’s constant changing is able to jog something in you.

He smiles at you, chewing his croissant. “Actually, yes.” He says after swallowing. “We actually took a vacation to Summer during this past winter.”

You gasp, your eyes widening in excitement. “I’ve always wanted to go to Summer! How was it? Did we see any mermaids?”

He chuckles, “no, much to your disappointment.”

You huff, crossing your arms over your chest. “Can’t believe I didn’t get to see a mermaid.”

He smiles at your childish antics, looking at your pouting face. He still couldn’t process it - this was you, but it wasn’t his mate. You weren’t taking a bite of his croissant for yourself, you weren’t touching his knee with yours, you weren’t making up terrible excuses to hold his hand in yours.

Looking at you was excruciating, questions plagueing his mind as he looked. Will you ever remember him? Your life together? The late nights, the early mornings, the small moments that made up your relationship?

Or were you destined to be this past version of yourself forever? Would you develop new habits? Would you even fall in love with him, this version of himself who knows everything about you?

“Did we have a mating ceremony?”

He’s jolted back to the present, his mind finding itself in the past that your mind resides in. He smiles, warmth flooding his heart at the meer mention of that day. He gazes at you, telling you all about it. How all of Velaris loved you so much the town was covered in flowers, much to Cassian’s annoyance.

“I was so nervous, the whole day my hands kept shaking. The minutes before I saw you it got so bad my wings started shaking.”

“Why were you nervous?”

He breathes in deeply, surprised that tidbit came out of his mouth. He had never told you how nervous he had been - he didn’t want you to misconstrue it as reservations about you or your relationship.

He exhales, looking at his empty plate. “Being so vulnerable so publicly, declaring for everyone to know that I am yours and you are mine, felt so… intimidating.”

He grabs a napkin and starts shredding it, an effort to keep his hands occupied to keep them from shaking like they did that day. The shadowsinger rarely showed such nerves, but he always allowed you to see past the cool exterior he usually wore. “I was so scared. No one has ever loved me as openly as you do. My brothers love me, Feyre, Nesta, Mor - they love me. Elain, the Valkyries. All of them love me, but you wear your love on your sleeve. It’s practically on your face.”

He laughs as your hands reach up to your face, as if there was some physical marking there conveying your deep love.

“I’ve never had that. It made me a little scared.”

Without meaning to your hand reaches out to his, halting his napkin shredding. It’s the first time you’ve touched him since you woke up five days ago, and it lights Azriel’s heart aglow. He hadn’t realized how much he had been needing your soothing touch, the one way to know you were here with him.

He doesn’t move, allowing you to process what you’ve done as you see fit. He expects you to pull your hand back, retreating back into yourself as you used to do in the early stages of your relationship.

Your hand stays on his, your eyes meeting his. Your thumb grazes over the scarred skin, as if you could soothe the injury from centuries ago with a delicate touch.

It is quiet between you two, the sounds of the other patrons filling his ears. The soft clinking of spoons on plates, the murmured chatter, the scraping of chairs against the floor.

You’re looking at him like you know him, like you remember it all. He feels his heart in his throat, hoping to hear those words from you. You open your mouth and tell him, “I’m sure I was nervous too.”

The moment is gone, you pull your hand away to stir your coffee once more. Suddenly the patrons are too loud, their conversations too idiotic, the smell of the coffee is overwhelming.

A few days later you wake up to an empty bed in a room you aren’t familiar with. It takes you a moment to remember that you’re in Azriel’s room.

Your room.

The room around you is proof that this wasn’t a dream, despite almost two weeks having passed since your memory was lost. You get up, your nightgown grazing your thighs as you take in the room. You walk in front of the bookshelves, fingers grazing the titles.

Azriel really likes detective novels, you think. You’re continuing through when you find some unmarked books. Opening them, you find your own handwriting back at you.

Entries dated 2 years into your future, 3 years in your past. You’re skimming through the journal, Cassian having done something to annoy you to write several paragraphs until you find a new paragraph.

“Azriel.

Azriel is my mate. My mate. He gave me a locket. We stood on the balcony, just watching the stars. He told me about how the stars led him through the depths of his childhood, and how he would spend most of his nights gazing at the moon, hoping, praying for better days.

“Did you find better days?” I had asked him, and he told me, “I found you, didn’t I?”

You shut the notebook, Azriel’s words invading your sense.

“I found you, didn’t I?”

You hear his voice and are transported back, back to that rooftop, back to that cool night where he laid everything bare for you. That cool night where he draped his wings over you to keep you warm, to keep you wrapped in his arms.

You two spent all night on that roof, talking, making out like two teenagers, staying until the sun began to rose and the citizens of Velaris began waking.

You can smell the scent of cedar and mist, a smell you recognize as Azriel. You can see the slight pink hue dusting his cheeks as you kissed his face, littering his cheeks with dozens of kisses.

It all comes flooding back to you as you drop your journal, racing out of your room. You take the stairs down, searching, needing to hold him.

Him.

Your precious mate.

The male who holds an infinite amount of patience for you.

You see him as you round the corner of the kitchen, launching yourself into his arms. He catches you with a soft oof as your legs wrap around his waist. He holds you there, breathing you in, and you whisper in his ear, “I found you, didn’t I?”

Azriel grip on you tightens, a soft sob escaping him as clutches you, holding you like the world could be collapsing around him and it wouldn’t matter.

“I would have done everything to make you fall in love with me again,” he tells you, kissing your cheeks, his tears mixing with yours.

“And I would have kept falling in love with you.” You grab his face, and kiss him, pouring everything into it and down the bond. He responds with his own love and adoration down the bond, his lips soft and delicate against yours as he does so.

You two hear a groan from the doorway, but don’t pull apart. “We make food in here!” Cassian groans, stepping past you two, “go somewhere else!” He picks up a piece of a cookie and throws it at you, hitting you in the forehead.

You grumble, turning to face him, your eyebrows knitted together and a scowl on your lips. Cassian gasps, “you remember!”

You jump off of Azriel and start running towards Cassian, throwing bits of cookie at him as he runs away, “I remember you telling my mate you wish it was your memories gone so you wouldn’t have to be reminded how annoying I am!”

The King of Hybern had called her the wild one.

She had fought harder than her sisters, screamed louder, clawed and thrashed as they dragged her forward. 

The youngest Archeron, the one Feyre had sworn to protect, was thrown first into the Cauldron’s boiling black waters.

Lucien still saw her face from that night.

The Cauldron's magic had made her thin, white nightdress sheer, the wet fabric leaving her more exposed than any eighteen-year-old girl should be.

Drenched and trembling, she lay sprawled across the stone floor of Hybern’s throne room, her body shuddering with every breath.

The Cauldron had transformed her, in blood and flame: her skin shimmering in shades of gold and red, smoke curling past her lips.

Fire in human flesh.

“Divine,” the king said, his gaze lingering for too long. “I think I might keep this one.”

Lucien couldn't hold back the snarl that escaped his lips.

“No.”

The word meant nothing, not to them, not as they dragged her sisters forward.

Her eyes searched the room, desperate for escape, instead they found his.

In that instant, the bond snapped into place.

His chest tightened, his mouth went dry, and his magic flared uncontrollably.

My mate.

Before he could move or remove his coat to cover her trembling body, she was gone.

Taken away by the Night Court.

One year later.

The war had ended.

Hybern had fallen, and the Cauldron had been repaired.

Everyone had survived. 

Everyone was healing.

Everyone except him.

Time had not dulled that memory; if anything, it had sharpened it. 

Each day without her pulled the bond tighter, until he wondered if it might strangle him.

He had watched her grow from the trembling girl dragged before the king into something untamed and impossible to ignore.

She was loud, bright, and impossible to ignore. She laughed loudly with Cassian, who teased her like a sister.

Even Azriel, the shadowsinger who rarely smiled, allowed his mouth to twitch upward whenever she was near.

The sight burned into something hot and ugly in Lucien’s chest.

She had smiles for everyone, everyone but him.

Never for him.

He watched silently from a distance. Every word he might have spoken was caught in his throat.

He told himself the distance was better for them both.

That she deserved distance. 

That he had no right to demand more.

Yet, sometimes her eyes lingered. Just for a heartbeat. Long enough for the ache to return, that merciless tug in his chest.

Lucien wondered if one year were enough for forgiveness, or if her heart had already decided it would never forgive.

He had avoided her for months, not because he wanted to, but because he felt undone each time she was near.

That evening, at the annual Solstice dinner held at the River House, there was no escaping her.

The Inner Circle gathered, laughter echoing through the halls.

Lucien kept to his corner by the window, a glass of wine in hand, watching, waiting, hiding.

Until she appeared at his side.

The youngest Archeron sister.

His mate.

Her hair gleamed in the lamplight, eyes fixed on him.

She didn’t sit. 

Didn’t smile. 

She tilted her head slightly, considering whether he was worth the trouble.

Her lips curved, not the sneer he expected, but something that looked almost amused.

“You have a habit of lurking in corners,” she said.

Lucien tensed and raised an eyebrow.

“Do I?” he said, too fast and defensive.

She hummed, hair falling over one shoulder. “You’re not nearly as subtle as you think.”

It wasn't cruel words. If anything, they sounded more like playful teasing.

His mouth formed a half-smile. "I thought brooding silence was one of my better qualities."

That earned him a soft laugh, a sound he never thought he’d hear directed at him from her.

"I don't particularly enjoy silence," she responded, a glint of mischief in her eyes.

He should have said more. The words he had repeated in his mind over the past year.

The apologies, explanations, and confessions.

Instead, all that came out was:

“I thought you preferred it that way.”

Her eyebrows raised in surprise, but before she could respond, Cassian's voice echoed across the room, calling her name.

She glanced back at Lucien once, as if considering saying more, but she shook her head and turned toward the sound of laughter.

Lucien couldn’t look away.

Cassian grinned, leaning close to murmur something that made her laugh. Azriel sat beside them, shadows curling lazily, his hand draped across the back of the sofa, close enough that his fingers brushed her arm.

She leaned in closer and whispered something that made the shadowsinger smile.

Lucien’s fingers tightened around the stem of his glass until it threatened to snap.

He had no right to feel this way.

That’s what he told himself, but the words felt empty as her gaze returned to him, lingering a heartbeat too long.

It knotted his chest with a feeling dangerously close to jealousy.

Possessiveness. 

A claim he had no right to make.

As the night continued, gifts were unwrapped, wine flowed, and laughter echoed throughout the house.

Lucien remained in the shadows, with his glass emptied and forgotten.

He convinced himself that it was enough to see her alive and hear her laugh, even if it wasn’t meant for him.

By the time the fire burned low, Morrigan clapped her hands, with a wide grin.

“Rita’s. All of you. No excuses.”

Cassian slammed his fist on the table. Azriel nodded as he finished his glass. Elain smiled and nodded in agreement. Nesta groaned but stood up anyway. Feyre and Rhys exchanged a glance before also standing.

She stood at the back, her cheeks flushed, her hair cascading in loose, messy waves, and her eyes sparkling with wine warmth. For the briefest moment, her gaze met with his again.

He thought she might ask if he was coming, but she turned away laughing when Cassian called her name.

Lucien slipped out before anyone noticed.

No goodbyes.

No gifts.

Nothing.

The wind from the Sidra was sharp against his face as he followed the river. Above, stars shone brightly, while the moon cast silver light across the path.

He tightened his coat and quickened his pace as the chill crept higher along his spine.

“Lucien.”

A voice cut through the wind.

He turned.

She stood there, her cloak pulled close, cheeks flushed from the wine and firelight, her hair wild in the breeze.

She had followed him.

For a moment, neither spoke.

A smile tugged at her lips. “Are you really leaving without saying goodbye?”

His chest tightened. The cold bit at his skin, but all he felt was her: her fire, her voice, her laugh, and their bond, a tether he had spent a year trying to smother.

She stepped closer, the heel of her shoe crunching against the stone path.

“Are you coming with us to Rita’s?”

Lucien shook his head. “I’m not much for crowds. Best let them have their fun without me brooding in the corner.”

“But you do brood so well,” she teased.

His eyes found hers. 

The silence filled the air, the river rushing behind them, her cloak tugging in the wind, her hair swirling around her face.

She sighed and turned away.

"Suit yourself," she said.

Her silhouette gradually faded into the soft glow of the faelight at the River House.

Lucien stood where she had left him, the ache in his chest heavy and trembling, not from the cold, but from her.

Since that night, he had started to fall apart more each day.

He told himself it was just the bond being starved of her. Yet, the bond howled when he discovered the gift on the step of his apartment.

At first, he nearly stepped over it.

A small box, neatly wrapped in shimmering silver paper and tied with a ribbon.

A tag dangled from it: Happy Solstice.

His hands trembled as he carried it inside.

At his desk, he untied the ribbon and removed the wrapping as if it might crumble in his grasp.

Inside was a sphere of silver, etched with delicate carvings that caught and bent the light. When his finger brushed it, the orb hummed, then rose into the air.

An orange and gold flame glowed within its centre, alive and dancing.

Her fire.

Like dawn's first rays, soft and steady golden light spilled over the walls.

Lucien sank into his chair, chest burning as if the bond itself were reaching for the flame.

Her flame.

That night, he watched it until the warmth blurred his vision and sleep finally pulled him under.

When morning came, the sphere still shone on his desk, its golden glow warm and bright against the morning light.

He hadn’t slept much, with the bond tugging in his chest and that beautiful sphere of firelight watching from the shadows.

It was during those early hours that the summons arrived: Rhysand’s request for breakfast at the River House.

By the time Feyre opened the front door, Lucien could hear Cassian’s booming laugh echoing down the hall.

“Thank you for coming,” Feyre whispered, guiding him inside.

“Thank you for the invitation,” Lucien replied with a slight bow.

A sigh escaped her as Nesta’s voice cut through the house, answered by Cassian’s roaring laugh.

“They’ve been at it all morning,” Feyre muttered as she led him to the dining room.

The Inner Circle was already gathered, their noise and warmth filling the long table.

“Please, sit,” Feyre said, gesturing toward the only empty chair.

Lucien hesitated before taking the seat, his eyes searching the room until he saw her.

She sat across from him, her hair still damp from a bath, strands clinging to her flushed cheeks.

He tightened his grip around the porcelain teacup, forcing himself to look away and focus on the petals floating in the steaming tea.

The bond burned deep within his chest. 

Eventually, his restraint broke, and his eyes betrayed him.

She was already watching.

Her gaze was fixed on the cup that was halfway to his mouth before their eyes met. The corner of her lips tugged upward into a small, knowing smile before she turned away, as if he hadn’t noticed her staring.

Breakfast continued, and laughter filled the room. Stories were shared across the table. He listened and nodded when spoken to, and yet, even from across the table, he felt her presence.

When their eyes met again, she slowly lifted her teacup. She darted her tongue to moisten her lips before drinking.

It was just a subconscious movement; still, Lucien’s pulse thundered as if she had tugged on the end of the bond, beginning to unravel him thread by thread.

At last, the breakfast came to an end. 

Lucien rose with the others, already planning his silent departure.

“Did you like your gift?”

Her voice cut through the noise of the others, all of whom fell silent at once.

Lucien froze.

Cassian muttered to Nesta across the room, his voice loud enough for everyone to hear.

“She gave Fireling a gift?”

Nesta smacked him hard in the chest. 

Cassian hissed, “She didn’t even give me anything—”

“Cassian,” Nesta snapped.

Lucien turned back to her, noticing her beautiful smile fade as she searched his face in silence.

“Did you not like it?” she asked, head tilting slightly.

His voice was low and rough. “It was beautiful.”

Relief washed over her features, brightening into a grin that made his chest tighten.

“I was going to give it to you on Solstice,” she said, “but you seemed… distracted.”

She didn’t step back; if anything, she took a half step closer, looking up at him with eyes that were too soft.

The others left one by one, their glances lingering. At last, only Rhysand and Feyre remained, whispering near the door.

She shifted closer still.

"You’re brooding again," she teased, her voice low so only he could hear.

“Apologies,” he murmured with a soft laugh.

Her gaze dropped to the floor, lingered there for a moment, before lifting to meet his gaze again.

Neither of them spoke. 

He didn't know if she wanted him to stay or leave.

Finally, she spoke. “I was thinking of exploring Velaris today if you wanted to join me. Azriel mentioned a bookstore near the market.”

She hesitated. 

“Unless, of course, hiding in your apartment is more appealing.”

The bond burned hot, tugging, tightening.

“Would you like to go now?” he asked, the words escaping before his reason could stop them.

Her smile widened, unrestrained, a grin he had never seen before. The sight stole the breath from his lungs.

"I'll get my shoes," she said, her voice filled with excitement.

Lucien nodded, every muscle tense, as if one wrong move might destroy the delicate moment between them.

Before he could let his thoughts spiral, she stumbled back into the room, hopping as she pulled on her boots. Her cloak was wrapped around her shoulders and fastened at her throat.

“Are you ready?” she asked as she moved toward the door.

Lucien nodded and walked alongside her as they stepped into the chilled air. The breeze was sharp and biting as they walked together.

They followed the winding path of the river toward the heart of Velaris.

Their arms brushed with each step, each soft touch sending sparks across his skin.

The city was bright and loud as they walked deeper into the center of town. The shop windows were filled with clothing, books, food, and trinkets.

She moved closer, and without thinking, his hand shifted, his fingers gently brushing against hers. She didn’t hesitate; her hand slipped into his, fingers threading through his own.

Her fire, Cauldron-born and untamed, threaded itself through him. 

His grip tightened instinctively, desperate for more.

She breathed out softly, shoulders relaxing, her body leaning into his side. 

Lanterns flickered above their heads, fogging the glass of the shopfronts. The scents of roasted chestnuts, fresh coffee, and sugared pastries filled the air as the city hummed alive around them.

Her boots clicked against the stone as she guided him along, but her eyes always found his. Each time they did, her smile widened, and Lucien’s chest tightened until it ached.

“Lucien,” she said suddenly, tugging at his sleeve and pulling him toward a flower stall. “Help me pick some flowers.”

He stood beside her, watching as she lifted each bundle to her face, inhaling their sweetness. The blooms she selected were delicate pinks, pale blues, and whites.

They reminded him of her, bright and wild.

Lucien picked flowers in deep red, burnt orange, rich gold, and russet hues, colours of autumn and fire.

As she reached for her coin purse, he moved quicker. He pressed a small bag of coins into the vendor’s palm before she could object.

“Thank you,” the older fae said with a warm smile. “You make such a lovely couple.”

Neither of them corrected her; they only smiled faintly, glancing at each other before looking away.

“You didn’t have to,” she said as they stepped away, reaching out to take the flowers.

Lucien carefully lifted them into his arms, interlocking their fingers once more.

His touch had become an addiction, a necessity he wasn’t sure he could live without.

They moved from stall to stall, her questions coming quickly, her laughter following right after.

Her joy was infectious.

“Cinnamon cakes or honey rolls?” she asked.

He brought her both.

Every brush of her shoulder and each glance thrown his way, leaving cracks in the mask he had worn for years.

By the time they reached the bookshop, her cheeks were flushed from the cold, his arms full.

She pushed the door open, golden light spilling across her face. She looked back at him then, that smile curving her lips, the one that made his heart ache in his chest.

The cracks didn’t spread.

The mask he wore shattered.

Lucien lingered on the step, watching his mate, his fire, his undoing, before finally stepping inside.

They explored the city, visiting bookshops, market squares, and the Sidra River.

By the afternoon, his arms felt heavy with bags and flowers; she had stopped arguing about carrying items hours ago and only smiled when he offered to help.

He led her toward the River House as the sun set, painting the sky a burnt orange.

They paused before the front door. 

“I don’t understand you,” she whispered. “For the past year, you’ve ignored me. You avoided my eyes, walked away when I came near, and barely spoke to me.”

Her fingers tangled nervously in her hair.

“Then Solstice… I left you a gift: my flames. I knew that if I felt like I was falling apart without you, you must be feeling worse.” Her voice cracked.

Lucien felt the world shifting beneath him.

Her words, filled with accusation, hurt, and hope, were like a knife to the ribs.

"Do you feel like you’re falling apart without me?" he asked, struggling to find the right words.

You’re my mate," she whispered. "I can hardly sleep at night. My heart aches whenever I see you. I thought maybe you felt the same way. I thought you wanted me to be your mate.

Tears welled in her eyes.

He could no longer hold back.

The bags of clothes, sweets, and flowers tumbled to the ground.

He closed the distance. 

His mouth found hers in a desperate kiss. His hands gripped her waist while hers tangled in his hair.

She tasted of strawberries and vanilla cream.

She rose onto her toes to meet him, and when they broke apart, they were both trembling.

“How long have you known?” he asked, forehead pressed to hers.

“Since Hybern,” she whispered, her lips brushing against his. “I had been waiting for you to say it.”

For a long moment, all that could be heard was their heavy breathing.

Kiss me again," she whispered. "Kiss me until I taste nothing but you.

He did.

He kissed her passionately until everything around them felt like fire and skin.

That night, as the fire burned low, he gave her the Solstice gift he had hidden for months: a simple silver chain with a single ruby, red as flame.

He had convinced himself he would never have the chance to give it, but as her eyes filled with tears, the bond thrummed between them while he fastened it at her throat.

Two weeks later, she had nearly moved into his apartment. 

They picked out rugs and furniture, filled cupboards with her favourite teas and sweets. 

He learned about her fears, her nightmares, the music she loved, and the romance stories she devoured.

She learned about him too; his scars, his court, and the pieces of his past he had never shared with another soul.

The bond, once neglected, now burned with desire, need, and comfort. It was something he had never allowed himself to hope for.

Weeks turned into months. 

On the anniversary of that night, a ceremony was held in the gardens of River House beneath the stars and a full moon.

Surrounded by flames, they whispered their vows, their hands bound by the priestesses, the bond finally sealed.

The bond burned brighter and louder, no longer burdened by guilt or fear, but alive with a care so fierce it left him trembling.

That night, in the estate that Rhysand and Feyre gifted to them, they fully surrendered, body and soul, to the bond that had always belonged to them.

No more brooding silences. 

No more jealous glances across crowded rooms. 

No more sleepless nights.

He was hers. 

She was his.

General Taglist:

Keir hadn’t said much this morning—just that the heir of Autumn would be joining him for “a conversation of mutual interest,” whatever that meant. You hadn’t asked questions. You’d learned by now that curiosity only invited irritation.

But still. Eris Vanserra didn’t come to the Hewn City for polite formalities. No one did. And Keir had been in a mood ever since the messenger confirmed the High Lord had set the meeting. He’d spent the morning stalking the halls like a male preparing for war.

Which meant you were walking in late to something very, very important.

You swore softly and slipped inside.

You hesitated at the heavy double doors of the Council Chamber, the low murmur of voices inside fading the moment you stepped over the threshold. The scent of burning incense mixed with cold stone filled your lungs. Your footsteps echoed softly on the polished floor as you moved forward, eyes deliberately fixed on the ground. As you crossed the room, the tension prickled at your skin. 

“You’re late,” Keir’s voice was calm but sharp enough to cut through the hum of conversation. 

The room quieted around him.

You stopped just shy of your chair, spine straightening instinctively.

You’d expected the reprimand. The public humiliation. He rarely missed an opportunity to remind you who held the reins. 

Keir didn’t motion for you to sit. “Late,” he repeated, the word twisting with disdain. “As though your time is more valuable than mine. Than the court’s. Than our guest’s.”

You kept your gaze low, jaw tightening. 

Keir rose slowly from his seat, not to tower but to command. His voice stayed even, deliberate. “I give you responsibility, and this is how you meet it? I allow you opportunities I would grant no other female. Not even your mother.”

You flinched. 

“Do you think we can afford such carelessness?” 

He didn’t wait for an answer—there never was room for one. 

He turned slightly, gesturing toward Eris with an open palm. “Beron sends us his heir, a rare opportunity for diplomacy. And you walk in like a distracted servant girl, too absorbed in your own little errands to arrive on time.” 

You felt the heat creeping up your neck. 

“I bring you here to observe, to learn,” Keir continued, each word striking like a lash, “and instead, you’ve set an example I’d be ashamed to see from one of my lowest courtiers.” 

Still standing, still silent, you braced yourself for the worst of it. 

Keir waved a hand. “Apologize,” he said simply, resuming his seat. “You’ve made a spectacle of yourself. You will not make one of me.” 

Only then did you finally allow yourself to move. 

You turned—slowly, deliberately—your movements stiff with the effort of keeping your expression blank. You didn’t rush, though your stomach twisted with the burn of humiliation. You kept your chin high anyway. You’d learned that from Keir: if you must be dragged, at least look like you walked of your own will.

You faced the heir of Autumn like you were stepping into a performance you hadn’t rehearsed.

Eris Vanserra.

He was exactly as you’d imagined—sharp angles and cool composure, seated like the chair belonged to him. His golden-red hair caught the torchlight, flickering like open flame, but his posture was still and unbothered. One ankle crossed over a knee, a single finger resting against the corner of his mouth. His gaze was unreadable. Not cold, but closed. Guarded.

He said nothing. Only watched.

And when your eyes met his—

Not gently. Not like the brushing of threads or a soft breath of recognition. It hit like a tether pulled taut all at once, yanked from the depths of your chest, snapping into place so violently it nearly knocked you back a step. Something inside you reeled, flinched—like a door long rusted shut had been forced open from the inside.

Your breath caught, too sharp, too sudden. 

The world narrowed.

You felt it everywhere—like heat blooming low in your stomach, like your lungs weren’t your own, like your pulse had been dragged into rhythm with someone else’s. It was not pain, not exactly. But it was overwhelming. Terrifying. Your heart scrambled to understand what your body already knew: something irreversible had just happened. Something ancient and final.

It was as if an unknown magic inside you had reared its head for the first time in your life and whispered, there you are.

And he was the answer.

You couldn’t look away.

Didn’t dare blink. Not yet.

Eris’ posture didn’t shift. Not even a flicker of recognition across his face. He sat still as stone, gaze steady, unreadable. A master of silence. If his eyes were a fortress, his control was the outer wall—built stone by stone over years, and just as immovable. 

But you—

Your face betrayed everything.

Your lips parted before you could stop them. Your breath stuttered once, then again, too shallow. The blood had drained from your fingertips and rushed to your throat. You felt your lashes flutter, a single blink too slow, too stunned.

And from the corner of your vision, you saw your grandfather’s head tilt—just slightly.

He had seen it.

And you knew, before you even looked at him, that he understood exactly what had happened.

The silence in the chamber stretched thinner than glass. A breath, then another. You could feel the air shift—not with magic, but with attention. Every gaze in the room was waiting. Watching.

Then Eris stood.

Not abruptly. Not with surprise. But like he had been planning to stand all along. Like your new bond had changed absolutely nothing.

You barely stopped yourself from stepping back. Your throat bobbed, dry.

He didn’t speak. Not yet.

He looked at Keir first, his expression unreadable. Not quite expectant—no, it was cooler than that. Measured. His eyes lingered a beat too long. Like he was assessing your grandfather, weighing something invisible.

Then he turned his gaze to you.

Slowly.

And for a moment—just a moment—you wondered what he saw.

Not the expression you’d failed to mask. Not the shock still ringing in your bones. But you. You. The girl your grandfather had hidden behind a hundred veils of courtly obedience. The girl who’d never, in all her fifty years, breathed real air or touched soil or seen the sun. Did he see that? Did he see a possession, or a person?

What does a male like that think when a bond snaps into place?

What does he do with it?

He turned back to Keir.

You braced yourself—he would speak now, you were sure of it. Would begin the negotiations, would play whatever game the two of them had arranged behind closed doors. You knew how this worked. You knew how your story was supposed to be told.

But he didn’t go to Keir.

He came to you.

You froze.

He crossed the room without hesitation, the distance vanishing beneath the sure, easy weight of his steps. And then he was before you—taller, closer than you’d ever expected.

His fingers found yours, gloved hand brushing bare skin. And without asking, without hesitating, he lifted your hand to his mouth.

And kissed it.

Slowly. Deliberately. His gaze never leaving yours.

“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

You couldn’t answer. Your voice stuck behind your teeth, behind the shock, behind the weight of everything unspoken. You weren’t sure your lungs had remembered how to pull air.

Then he turned, your hand still in his.

As if you had already agreed.

As if your silence meant yes.

As if you were already behind him.

“I’d like her hand,” he said, gaze returning to Keir. “Formally. As mate. As future lady of Autumn.”

The words didn’t seem real.

You heard them. You understood each one. But they landed out of order, scattered, like someone had tipped your mind sideways and let your thoughts spill into a pile.

Her hand. Mate. Lady of Autumn.

Was this—was this a proposal? A declaration? A transaction?

Your heart was still beating too fast. Your palm still burned faintly where his mouth had touched it. The bond hummed along your spine and through each rib like a second heartbeat, louder now, more insistent, as though it was pleased with itself for being named.

But your body hadn’t caught up with your brain. You felt removed from it—like you were standing in the wrong version of yourself. The version that would have looked to her grandfather for approval. That would have nodded, smiled, curtsied, spoken her lines.

You weren’t smiling now.

He had asked for you. Claimed you. Not in metaphor, not in theory, not in the slow-burn romantic sense you’d once imagined while reading contraband books in the dim corners of your room.

No—he had asked for you like you were an estate: measurable, ownable, transferable. 

You opened your mouth. You weren’t even sure what you meant to say. Maybe No, maybe What are you doing, maybe just your own name to remind the room you had one.

But whatever it was, it didn’t make it past your tongue.

“Vanserra,” your grandfather said smoothly, eyes narrowed just enough to reveal his doubt. “You expect me to believe you would bind yourself, your future court, to someone you’ve not yet had a full conversation with?”

His voice was amused. Skeptical. But not insulted.

Not dismissive.

And that, somehow, made the panic press tighter behind your ribs.

You’d thought—naively, maybe—that your grandfather would laugh. That he’d bristle with offense. That he’d dismiss Eris’s request outright, just for the insult of asking.

But instead, Keir was considering it.

That amusement in his tone wasn’t mockery—it was interest, cloaked in skepticism. Testing the weight of the offer. Looking for the angle.

Your fingers curled in on themselves slowly, like your body was trying to reclaim what had been taken, as if you could reverse it, undo it, pull back from the moment and make it a mistake someone else had made.

Eris didn’t flinch beneath Keir’s scrutiny. His stance remained relaxed—too relaxed. He finally released you in favor of clasping both hands behind his back, chin slightly lifted. 

“Curious choice,” Keir mused, voice light with false interest. “Hardly the most advantageous offer on the table.”

A pause. Your face heated. 

“I don’t make decisions I haven’t already considered in full,” Eris said. “And I don’t waste time asking for what I don’t intend to keep.”

A faint smirk touched his lips, but it wasn’t cruel. It was worse than cruel—it was calm. Certain.

“Let that be answer enough.”

Your knees nearly gave out.

That was the story, then. That was how they’d frame it. As strategy. As inevitability.

Your mouth parted again, and this time, words came. Shaky, quiet.

“I haven’t—”

“Be silent,” Keir said, without looking at you.

And just like that, your voice vanished again.

Not by magic. By command. 

By obedience. 

You looked at Eris then. You wanted to see something—anything—in his face. Doubt, maybe. Hesitation. Some flicker of recognition that this was wrong, or too much, or too fast.

But there was only stillness.

Keir leaned back in his chair with the ease of a male who had just found himself holding the sharpest blade in the room.

“And here I thought,” he said, almost idly, “you’d come to posture and circle, like every other male with a title to defend.” His fingers drummed once against the armrest. 

Eris didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.

Keir let the silence settle before continuing, voice shifting—cooler now, more precise. “She wasn’t part of the original arrangement. Not in any meaningful way.”

You flinched, barely, at the word meaningful.

“She’s young. Inexperienced. Untried in court or politics. I wouldn’t call her… an asset.”

Your stomach turned.

“But,” Keir went on, tone sharpening, “it seems the bond has given her value. At least to you.”

He smiled then, the kind that didn’t touch his eyes.

“So let’s discuss what her hand is worth.”

It was like being stripped bare in the center of the room—like the torchlight itself was meant to spotlight your stillness, your silence, your helplessness. You didn’t know if they saw you blush or pale or tremble. You didn’t think it mattered.

They weren’t looking at you anymore.

Only at what you could buy.

“What do you offer, Vanserra?” Keir asked, gaze gleaming. “Because I can promise you, I don’t sell cheaply.”

The faint flicker of torchlight caught the sharp angles of Eris’ face, casting shadows that made him look almost carved from stone. His eyes narrowed slightly, the faintest curve touching his lips—not quite a smile, but close. He leaned forward, his voice low, measured.

“You won’t find a more valuable alliance, Keir.”

He let the words hang between them.

“I offer the full backing of Autumn once I am its High Lord—its armies, its resources, its influence. A bond with me is a bond with the power of my court.”

His gaze flicked briefly to you, cool and appraising, then back to Keir.

“This union will strengthen your hold on the Hewn City, and send a clear message to any who would challenge you.”

He paused, voice dipping with a quiet threat.

“Turn away from this offer, and you risk everything Autumn’s power can undo.”

The room grew heavier with unspoken implications.

Your grandfather’s smile was thin but sharp. “Bold words. But fitting for the Vanserra heir.”

Keir leaned forward, steepling his fingers beneath his chin as he studied Eris for a long moment. Then, at last, he nodded slowly, the hint of a smile ghosting across his lips.

“Very well,” he said with deliberate finality. “The alliance is formed. The hand is promised.”

His gaze snapped to you, sharp and unyielding. “You have thirty minutes.”

The weight of his words fell like a stone in your chest.

There was no room for protest. No space to bargain or plead.

This was not a question.

This was command.

Keir rose from his chair, gathering his cloak with a casual authority that brooked no argument.

“Leave us.”

You swallowed hard, every nerve taut, as you turned on unsteady legs, the silent watch of Eris burning at your back.

The path ahead was certain. And terrifying.

You closed the heavy chamber door behind you with a muted click, but the weight of the moment pressed against your chest so hard it felt like stone. Your knees wobbled, breath shallow and uneven, as you leaned against the cold wall just outside the Council Chamber.

The words kept spinning through your mind, relentless: You have thirty minutes. You have thirty minutes. You have thirty minutes. 

Your mind scrambled to make sense of it all. You’d been dealt like a pawn, bargained over like a piece of trade—no voice, no choice, no say. And yet, beneath the shock and numbness, something deeper roiled. 

Not just because Eris had asked for your hand without so much as a conversation, but because your grandfather had agreed so easily, like you were a thing, not a person. Like your life, your future, was a token to be wagered.

You hated the quiet calm in the chamber, hated the way Eris had kissed your hand like it was a prize, hated the way you’d frozen when you wanted to scream.

You wanted to yell. To fight. To rip the whole arrangement apart.

But mostly, you hated the emptiness.

When you finally reached your chambers, the door swung open to reveal the room you had grown up in—familiar, but suddenly stripped bare of comfort.

You stared around at your belongings. A handful of dresses neatly hung or folded, books lined on a shelf, a worn cloak hanging by the door. Nothing worth packing.

What was there to take with you when everything you were about to leave behind was all you’d ever known?

You sank onto the edge of your bed, hands clenched in your lap. The silence screamed louder than the council ever had.

You forced yourself to stand, to move, to do what you had to do.

First, you found your friends. You avoided their eyes at first, unsure how to explain what was happening—or how to bear the pity you already saw lurking there. But they hugged you tight, whispered promises and farewells. 

Then, you made your way to the cremation grounds—an austere place carved into the stone, where your parents’ ashes rested beneath a polished granite marker.

You knelt, fingertips tracing the cool surface, and whispered a goodbye you hadn’t dared to say aloud until now. The names carved into the stone were tethers, memories heavy as iron. 

They had never seen the surface. Never felt true sun, never lived anywhere but in this damn mountain. Born, bound, and buried beneath it. Your chest ached at the thought.

You closed your eyes, let the silence stretch—let it echo with everything you couldn’t give them. Everything they should’ve had. The dust of their memory settled quietly around you as you rose, a small flame of resolve kindling in your chest.

“I’ll wait, if you need more time.”

You didn’t flinch, didn’t so much as turn to look at him. His voice didn’t startle so much as settle—low and composed, like the rest of him. But still unexpected. 

For a long moment, you just stared at the stone. At your parents’ names carved into it, slightly worn by time and your fingertips. 

“I can’t say I expected you to be here,” you said quietly. 

And then—because curiosity always got the better of you, and because something in you bristled at the fact that it was him standing there—you turned. 

He was standing a careful distance away. Hands clasped behind his back, gaze on the marker like he owed it something.

“I would have brought flowers,” Eris said after a beat. “If I’d known.”

“They weren’t the type.” Your voice cracked a little. “Anything sentimental would’ve embarrassed them.”

A ghost of a smile touched his mouth. “Practical, then. Like you.”

You bristled. “You don’t know me.”

“No,” he conceded, meeting your eyes. “Not yet.”

Something in the way he said it—not with the arrogance you heard before, but something quieter, steadier—made your throat tighten.

“I’m still angry,” you admitted, folding your arms like you could hold the feeling in place. 

Eris nodded once, slowly. “You have every right to be.”

You didn’t respond. Just stared at the stone again, at the faint lichen creeping over the edge. It unsettled you, how easily he’d said that. How quickly he’d handed you that piece of ground to stand on. You weren’t used to your feelings being named, let alone validated. It felt like a trick. Like something sharp might be hidden beneath it. 

“It wasn’t what I wanted,” he said, voice low. “But it was the best way to get Keir to let you go.”

You glanced at him, wary. “You bought me.”

His jaw tensed. “No. I negotiated a release. From a court that would never stop holding this bond over our heads.”

Your silence stretched a little too long. 

“I know,” he went on, quieter now, “that Rhysand wouldn’t have allowed me to set foot in the Night Court again if it meant keeping me away from you. Not if Morrigan had anything to say about it.”

You blinked. 

And then—gods. Morrigan.

Your aunt Morrigan. Your father’s sister. 

This was the male she’d been promised to. The male she’d “sullied” herself to escape. Your whole life, your family had cursed her name. Called her tainted. Faithless. A disgrace to her bloodline. Whispers you’d grown up hearing, sharp as knives tucked behind closed doors. That she’d betrayed her own. That she’d been ungrateful for the match.

But now… after having to stand in silence as you were bartered… 

Now you finally understood.

What kind of cruelty had she been trying to avoid?

Surely not worse than what you’d seen in the Hewn City. Surely not worse than what you had endured under Keir’s thumb.

But the question clung like smoke, refusing to leave you.

“So this is it, then?” You gestured to the empty stone corridor. “This is how it starts?”

Eris didn’t immediately respond. Instead, he studied you, the weight of his gaze something you couldn’t quite avoid. And then, as if the weight of it had become too much, he said, “No. This is how it was forced to begin. What comes next… that’s something we decide.”

You believed him. And it infuriated you. Because believing him meant accepting that this—this loss of control—had been the cleanest option. That all the quiet fury in your chest had nowhere to go.

After a long pause, Eris stepped forward. “Take my hand,” he said quietly, extending his gloved fingertips toward you. His tone wasn’t gentle—merely firm, as if it carried the weight of inevitability. “It would be my pleasure to welcome you to Autumn.”

At those words, your heart lurched. You had never stepped beyond the Hewn City, never ventured to the surface where a world existed beyond cold stone and perpetual shadow. The thought alone made you shudder with both apprehension and a spark of fragile hope.

Before you could protest, Eris murmured, “Please. Trust me—even if you can’t fully do so right now.”

And then, his hand pressed to your arm. At his command, your surroundings began to shift. At first, it was subtle—a soft darkening of the edges of your vision, as though a veil were draped over the world. The corridor’s harsh, angular stone and the ever-present damp chill faded into a deeper gloom, the familiar replaced by an almost dreamlike dusk.

The subtle shift in sensation, like the brush of silk over your mind. The way color and texture pulled away from you slightly—not gone, not dulled, but… filtered.

Your stomach clenched.

“What did you do?” you demanded, already blinking hard against the strange dimness. “You glamoured me.”

“Yes.”

“Why—”

“I didn’t want it to overwhelm you,” Eris said, voice steady but not unkind. “You’ve never seen the sun. Not really. I thought easing you into it might be… gentler.”

It should’ve infuriated you. It did—for a breath. But even through the soft, unnatural dimness, you could feel something shifting in the air around you.

Your eyes dropped to the ground.

Leaves.

Thousands of them, scattered in every direction, mottled gold and rust-red and brown. Some crisp, curled in on themselves; others flattened by the damp, pressed into the dirt like forgotten pages.

The ground was dirt. Dirt.

And you were standing on it. Not stone. Not carved, cursed floors. Just—ground.

Your knees wobbled.

You tried to look up—to follow the drifting fall of a leaf—and froze again.

The glamour had begun to lift. Slowly, gradually, but it made all the difference. 

Light filtered through in ribbons. Warm and golden, but not the artificial flickering of faelights or the guttering orange of torches. It hit the edge of your face and you jerked away, blinking rapidly, hand lifting on instinct.

You turned, staring at the strange, living world around you. Everything moved. Not like it did in the Hewn City, where the only shifting things were people and shadows and smoke. Here, even the air moved. The trees swayed. The grass trembled. Light dappled and danced without ever once flickering out.

There were no books about this.

Why would there be? 

What need would any of you have to understand this, when you were never meant to leave? 

The surface was spoken of in fragments, in dismissals wrapped in soft smiles. Your parents had told you once—when you were young and asking too many questions—that they’d gone up, years ago. That it was nothing special. More stone. More dark. Just bigger. Emptier. That the Hewn City was safer, more efficient. Cleaner. The lie had worked for a while. You were a child who still believed adults wouldn’t lie for no reason. 

But you remembered their faces when they eventually admitted the truth: they’d never been above ground. 

Not once. 

But oh, how they’d wanted to. 

They didn’t know what waited for them up here. Didn’t know what the air felt like when it didn’t cling. Didn’t know that cold could come from something other than absence. They didn’t know what it was to hear the earth breathe. 

They never got to find out.

You exhaled through your nose, slow and uneven. The glamour loosened its hold over your sight like fingers unthreading from your hair, slow, gradual, calm. You were starting to see more, now—color edging its way in around the world. 

Something darted between two tree trunks ahead. You flinched. It flapped.

A bird. Not like the crows some kept in the Hewn City—those clever-eyed, miserable things bred for messages and menace. This one was bright. Red all over. Smaller, rounder. It seemed… unnecessary. Beautiful in a way that served no purpose at all.

And the air. You hadn’t realized before—it was scented. Not perfumed, not thick with the smell of candles and sweat and opium or whatever poison the courts were drinking. This was sharp. Crisp. Like snow, but not quite. Like spice, but not any kind you’d tasted. It filled your lungs, slid into your mouth and over your tongue. It was—

Alive.

So was the cold. Not the heavy, hollow kind that leached from stone walls and seeped into your bones while you sat still for too long. This cold had movement. It brushed your cheekbones, bit at your fingers, made your teeth press together—but the sunlight, wherever it touched you, answered it. Like they were playing. Like they were supposed to exist together.

The light was almost fully clear now.

You squinted up, following the glow that filtered through high branches, and—

“Ow—fuck,” you muttered, jerking back a step.

Eris shifted in front of you before you could blink. “Yeah,” he said, amused. “Don’t look straight at the sun. Even mortals know better than that.”

You rubbed your eyes, half-glaring at him. “Thanks for the tip.”

But even now, blinking past the blur, the world stayed. The trees. The grass. The slow roll of clouds, and the strange freedom of air that didn’t sit stale and pressed against a ceiling. It was too much. You didn’t know where to look. You didn’t know what to do with it all.

A whisper, so quiet you weren’t sure at first if you imagined it: “Turn around.”

You did. Slowly. The way he’d said it—low, reverent—it pinned you still.

“And don’t make a sound,” he added, barely audible. “Just look.”

You turned.

And the world opened again.

A small clearing spread before you, rimmed by trees. And in it—movement. Dozens of them. More. Creatures you couldn’t name. Slender, long-legged, soft-eyed. Some with antlers that curved like branches, others smaller, delicate, trailing behind.

Eris leaned in close, voice barely more than breath. “The ones with antlers? Those are bucks—the males.” You watched as they stepped, and grazed, and flicked their ears. 

“The others are does. And…” His smile warmed his words. “Looks like they’ve got fawns with them. Babies.”

They didn’t look real.

They looked like myths given flesh—gentle and silent and unreal in their serenity. You couldn’t breathe. You couldn’t remember how.

One of the younger ones looked up, ears twitching. It stared directly at you.

And for one impossibly long second, you felt seen in a way no one from the Hewn City had ever dared to look.

Not as something to be shaped. Not as a petulant granddaughter. Not as a tool.

Just… someone standing in the woods.

Alive. 

The fawn blinked. Its ears flicked once more. Then it turned, unafraid, and trotted after its mother through the trees.

You didn’t realize your fingers had curled into Eris’s sleeve until he shifted to glance down at them. You let go at once, heart lurching, but he said nothing.

The clearing quieted again, the herd melting into the underbrush as if they’d never been there at all. But the stillness they left behind was different. Settled. And full.

“I didn’t think anything like that could exist,” you whispered, like the words might scare the memory off too. You looked back to where the deer had vanished. “They weren’t afraid of us.”

“No,” he said. “They didn’t need to be.”

A breeze stirred the trees, and sunlight flickered between the leaves like rippling gold. Somewhere overhead, a bird you didn’t know the name of called out—sharp and clear and free.

You wrapped your arms around yourself. Not because you were cold.

There was moss, impossibly green, clinging to the north side of the trees. Clusters of wildflowers pushing up through soft earth, in shades too delicate to name. A squirrel—tiny, absurdly fast—scrambled up a trunk nearby and vanished into the leaves with a rustle. Even the rocks here didn’t seem lifeless. Sun-warmed and dappled in lichen, they felt like they belonged to the scene, not just cluttered it.

And when you turned back, Eris was looking at you.

His smile was soft. Crooked. Lit not by torchfire, but something gentler. And his eyes—amber, bright as honey in the sun—sparkled with it.

You blinked at him. “What?”

He tilted his head, just a bit. “You’re smiling.”

You were.

Big and bright and wide and completely unrestrained. Not the practiced curve you offered at court. Not the polite, tight-lipped expression your family had called pretty when appropriate.

This was something else. A whole-body kind of smile. A laugh trying to form even though nothing had been said. And you hadn’t even noticed.

Heat crept to your cheeks. “Oh.”

Eris didn’t tease you for it. Didn’t smirk or say something sharp. He only studied you, as if trying to memorize the exact shape of it. 

His voice was quiet when he spoke again. Not uncertain, exactly, but… careful. Like the words mattered more than they usually did.

“Would you…” He hesitated, just a beat. His gaze flicked away, then returned to yours. “Would you like to see more? Take a walk?”

He said it like he wasn’t sure if you’d want to go—with him, specifically. Because it hadn’t occurred to him, maybe, that someone might say yes to something like this. To him, like this.

The breeze rustled again, lifting strands of his hair where it had slipped loose from the ribbon at his nape. In the sunlight, it was all shades of flame—copper and gold, a glint of red. His coat had caught some of the forest too: a few leaves clung to the velvet near his shoulder, unnoticed. His collar was slightly askew.

He looked nothing like the High Lord’s heir here. Nothing like the snarling, coiled force you’d seen before.

He just looked… warm. And waiting. One arm extended in quiet offering, elbow bent like some chivalrous male out of an old tale. Like he meant to escort you, not lead.

You slipped your hand into the crook of his arm. 

He didn’t start walking right away—just stood there a moment, like he was letting you decide when to begin. And when you finally did, your steps slow and quiet beneath the trees, he matched them without question.

For a while, neither of you spoke. The woods did enough talking for you.

“There’s no rush,” Eris said, softly. “Take it as slowly as you like.”

You glanced up at him, but his gaze stayed ahead, following the winding path.

“We’ve got nothing but time.”

It sounded like he meant the walk.

Behind you, Azriel shifted in the bed, turning his head the other way to shield his hazel eyes from the sliver of sun that had decided to place itself at perfect blinding height. He released a soft groan as he fully came to. One arm reached out for your form but you were already up and out, watching him affectionately grasping for you.

You shifted to block the sun from his face, allowing him to peer up at you through half-lidded eyes. “Come back to bed,” he murmured sleepily, making your heart bump against your rib cage as you took in his languid form, relaxed from the night past. “It’s morning, time to get up,” you spoke softly, still in your nightgown as you crawled onto the bed and gently shook his shoulder. He turned his head, a wing shifting and flaring around you. The urge to crawl beneath his wing and tuck yourself back into his warmth was astounding.

Azriel grumbled when you didn’t fall for it, snapping his wing shut to keep the cool air out. “Come on, Az. Wake up,” you chuckled, now grappling with the same wing as he used it to cover himself, content to return to sleep. “Let me rest in peace,” he muttered playfully from beneath his cover and you sighed heavily, removing yourself from the bed and heading for the kitchen, planning your next move.

————

The pancakes were all finished and ready for eating by the time Azriel padded into the kitchen, coming up behind you silently and wrapping his powerful arms around your waist. “Let me cook in peace,” you muttered playfully when his hands lowered to your hips, pressing himself into your backside. There was a moment’s silence before Azriel snaked a hand up to your jaw, tipping it to one side as he ravished your neck with soft licks and nips.

You yelped, squeezing your eyes shut as laughter bubbled from within. His mouth pressed hot kisses up the side of your throat, pausing to nose the underside of your jaw. The ticklish sensation made it impossible not to smile. You shifted in his grip, enough to turn and face him, back pressing against the counter as you tried to glare up at the male, but he was already grinning down at you.

Reaching behind you, you grabbed the spatula from the utensils holder, brandishing it and raising your brow in challenge. The cocky male just leaned closer, placing his arms on either side of you as he tilted his head mockingly, peering down at you from beneath inky locks. “Or what?” Heat pooled in your stomach at the tone, but you lifted the spatula higher. “Or no pancakes.”

Azriel sighed, reluctantly pulling away from you as he padded over to the kitchen table, settling down in his chair while you picked up the plate holding a stack of pancakes and brought it over to the table. You placed one of front of either of you, the Shadowsinger closing his eyes momentarily as he scented the air in delight. “I love you. So much,” he sighed, contented. A slight grin lifted the corners of your mouth as you only hummed in response, standing upright to take your seat.

His eyes flicked open, brow narrowing when you didn’t say it back. “Is someone grumpy?” He teased, lifting his hands to brace your hips, preventing you from moving away. Azriel span you around effortlessly, and you had to place your hands atop his broad shoulders to keep from toppling. You tried to scowl down at him but you knew he could see through it. Still, he pulled you into his lap, your legs settling either side of his hips as his nose brushed yours.

“I love you,” he murmured against your lips, so close you could feel his lashes brushing your cheek as his eyes shut. You hummed again and felt him pull you closer in response. He was leant back in his chair with you pressed against his front, hands now splayed flat against his bare chest. “I love you,” he spoke again, lips finding yours and pressing against them firmly; affectionately.

This time a smile managed to crawl to your mouth, slanting your lips as you pulled back to look at him, heart fluttering when he came after you. “More than pancakes?” You asked teasingly and he nodded, sincerely.

“More than pancakes,” he replied, pressing a brief kiss to your mouth.

“More than sleep?” You pushed, curving your back to feel more of his warmth through your thin robe.

“More than sleep,” he mumbled against your mouth, his hands rubbing softly up and down your sides. “More than anything,” he added when he saw your mouth opening again, “more than anything.”

A full smile bloomed on your mouth as you curled your arms around his shoulders, pressing your mouth against his neck and delivering soft kisses down the side until you reached his collar. You nosed at the hot skin briefly before nipping with your teeth, moving back up to beneath his jaw. His head tipped upward to give you more room as you peppered small kisses until you reached his mouth again. “I love you,” he murmured again, the words uttered with painful adoration against your mouth.

“I love you too, Azriel,” you mumbled into his mouth, feeling as his heart picked up, bumping against his chest, the pace matching your own. “More than anything.”

“Even more than sleep and pancakes?” He spoke softly, an affectionate grin playing on his mouth, warmth gleaming in his hazel eyes.

“So much more than sleep and pancakes,” you pressed a firm kiss against his mouth, hands moving over his chest and sloping up the back of his neck to tangle in his hair.

Both of you worked that final vow out silently as your mouths slanted over one another adoringly.