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❛ —— 𝐈𝐕 : The Bishop.

to yearn for a mate was to dance around the thin line of blind devotion. azriel thought of himself a maculated sinner with the nerve to beg the cauldron for a sacred connection. he shouted at the skies until his throat dried and his voice lost to the clouds; until his wings were too sore to fly and his heart was too tired to hope.

to abandon the pursuit of a mate was to abandon the thought of everlasting love. yet, there she was. a fever dream above expectations, with similar scars and a soul who mirrored his.

after a rough argument, azriel travels to the core of his mate’s memories, and finds that there’s always more than meets the eye — and that, at last, his prayers were well-answered.

the fourth chapter of onyx sword of sorrow.

check the original post to be aware of the trigger warnings.

azriel/fem!archeron sister. reader with mind control & the ability to shapeshift.

THIS CHAPTER HAS DESCRIPTIONS OF PAST SEXUAL HARASSMENT! please be safe while reading it!

word-count: 5K.

But I don’t know what else that I would do, than to try to kiss the skin that crawls from you; than feel your weight in arms, I’d never use. It feels good, girl, it feels good. Oh, to be alone with you.

— To Be Alone, Hozier.

Azriel felt distressed due to the bothering awareness of the growing sweat running down the extension of his forearms, dripping from his hair to the bridge of his nose; from his elbows to the earth; from his palms to the wooden-hilt of the pair of swords he maneuvered. His steps were fast and precise, crushing the leaves underneath as he retreated, footwork and handiwork aligned to exploit the radius of his abilities. It was a frenetic and relentless pace born from the increase of her amelioration, which granted him the long-awaited opening to no longer repress his movements — since the better [Name] got, less was the need to inhibit his polished instincts, battle aggressiveness, and speed.

The female had a long way to go: more than once had the wooden-sword touched her arm or legs, and if it was made of silver or steel, it would’ve sliced her skin, drawing blood from the teared flesh. However, those occurrences grew infrequent after proper repetition. [Name] had been trained before by a mortal man whose identity she was yet to reveal, and by Mor herself, an experienced and talented warrior in whom Azriel would trust with his life if it was required — had done it even, countless times before. A month under a regained routine of guidance and practice, and [Name]’s muscular memory had already started to act accordingly to what it had been once taught, growing accustomed to the intensity of heated confrontations.

Neither her proficiency nor her dedication were a surprise: [Name] remained with her sais in hand whenever they were meant to rest, spinning the blades on her fingers as though it was an interesting pastime of hers. Azriel presumed that her previous knowledge of daggers and throwing knives was half-responsible for such a swift familiarization, for the sais were turning into an extension of her body. The female spun one in her fingers as they played a match of chess or ate their meals or even jogged on the beach at nighttime, and the male couldn’t help but to grin to himself at the fact that he had given her the most well-suited pair of blades, one that was perfect to her fighting style.

As the two darted around the jungle in quick steps, Azriel reminisced times when a quite drunk Mor had insisted on the importance of having a vast knowledge in the matters of dancing. She would sway left-and-right in a long, red dress, twirling in her feet and dragging Azriel to the center of the room. Mor tried to convince him to learn a few waltzes, arguing that battling was but a mere variation of dancing — only that it also happened to involve swords and life-or-death situations. At last, Azriel brushed her off after two or three songs, their closeness enough to steal his breath away, a fresh and sadistic torture that made his skin crawl. He couldn’t see it back then, and wouldn’t dare to either.

To battle was to reap one’s life, to either stare into their eyes as the Mother claimed their souls or to move forward onto the next opponent. It was a chaotic scenery of gore and severed limbs and warm blood. It wasn’t something that one ought to equate to a delicate and intimate thing such as a waltz. Yet, as his feet stepped back in a defensive manner, being followed-in-suit by [Name]’s offensive stance, he understood what Mor meant.

They were a pair of agile dancers, pooled in sweat and driven by obstinacy and an equal sense of competitiveness. One could presume that [Name] would’ve cowered at the sight of his swords — one in each hand —, but she grew bolder, more courageous, and at last understood the dynamics of that particular match of chess, applying her relentless and unpredictable strategies that drew one to an inescapable and pitiful defensive stance. It had been a long time since Azriel had guided their waltz: the charge of it was entirely hers.

[Name]’s durability remained a matter to work upon whatsoever, especially if he was to consider the intensity of her battling: a repetitive and vexing thing that could tire out even the strongest defense. However, as of then, it happened to do the same to her, and the longer Azriel refused to relent, the more she lost her preciseness and strength.Yet, in terms of technique, she wasn’t at all disappointing.

The Spymaster raised his right arm across his chest, placing the wooden-sword above his left shoulder. That granted him a further boost as he lowered down the weapon, outlining a half-arch towards her carotid; an attack that, were their battle under different circumstances, would’ve been lethal. [Name] spun both her sais. The one in her dominant hand was held horizontally, and it trapped the wooden-sword in between one of its guards; the other one remained somewhat vertical and served as leverage, its blade crossing the inside of the guard from the other pair of sai she held. The movement itself resembled a plus sign, with his wooden-sword caught in the middle due to the positioning of her blades, making it impossible for the opponent to rid his weapon from that lethal trap.

If Azriel had all but a single sword, the battle would have ended then and there. [Name] would have used her sais to snap his blade in two and the lack of protection would have been enough for her to spin one of them and drive its point straight into the side of his neck and pierce through his carotid. That was not the case whatsoever. Because [Name] raised both her arms to meet one of his wooden-swords in the middle, both her armpits were left defenseless.

He pressed the edge of the other sword held by his left arm against one of those vulnerable spots, and his voice had neither cockiness nor glee when he stated: “You’re dead.”

During the first weeks of his training, when he was yet learning about the pressure and most lethal points where it was best to strike the opponent, Azriel found it odd and entirely embarrassing that one could die due to a cut to the armpit. It was, if anything, the stupidest and less dignified manner with which to perish in battle. However, the moment Truthteller first sliced through that vulnerable part of his rival’s body, his misconceptions were muted at the horror of such a death. Blood gushed everywhere as if he had squeezed a cherry in between his fingers to drink its juice. It pulsed non-stop, meeting Azriel’s face and blade and armor, droplets invading his eyes and painting the world in a horrific tone of bright red. His opponent fell to his knees and convulsed in utter agony, his hand clinging to the maimed tissue of his armpit. The sight left him petrified to the point where he was not even able to strike the dying male with a merciful slash of Truthteller and free him from that suffering. Instead, he observed as the Mother claimed that tortured soul and was haunted by the sight of it ever since.

The mere idea of losing his mate in a similar manner brought tremendous dread, and was enough a reason to cause a turmoil in his stomach and a sudden wave of nausea. Azriel pictured it, challenging the discomfort within him, punishing himself with that awful perspective. He had waited more than five centuries for his mate; the other half of his soul; and five more centuries he would torture himself was she to perish due to the lack of training. That end would paint her image not as his love, but as his sin; his greatest failure.

The snap that came when she broke his wooden-sword in two was enough a sound to ground his mind back to the present, drifting it away from the what-ifs as though his thoughts were a lonely sailing boat under the mercy of a turmoiled sea. Azriel didn’t miss the touch of her armpit, how it drove itself straight into the point of the reminiscent wooden-sword, but neither had he missed the glint of her eyes, staring into his very soul.

“You’ve read my mind,” he accused, steadying himself as she took a few steps back, twirling her sais.

“I was invaded by them,” [Name] argued. “Your thoughts are as loud as a parade of drums and tambourines.”

“Rhysand would disagree,” Azriel countered, sensing the need to defend himself.

“I’m more sensitive than a daemati, as we are both well aware.”

He found himself itching to lose himself within the banter that his mate offered. The bewitching character of their bond was quite an odd thing to witness, but the more time he spent with her, the more Azriel believed that it was not their connection to blame for that senseless tendency, but her. Compelling and argumentative, melting the solid ground of the world in which he stood into a puddle of his well-established beliefs. To fall into her words was to abandon all logic; to stare into that puddle and envision a glimpse of the male he had once been, before centuries of war and death engulfed him in the abyss of pessimism and paranoia: convinced, challenging, eager.

It was a sight to behold, neither uncomfortable nor familiar; a reasonable prospect of a version of himself he had long decided was lost and buried under the piles of corpses — both foes and allies. But to stare into the past, to envision himself through the reflection of the lake of his melted world, would do him no good. Because the male that stood above that pile was the strongest, the necessary means for his Court’s survival.

Azriel caught himself stepping on that puddle, returning to reality, avoiding the goodness that his mate could bring to the surface. His thoughts were back to the gore of that slash; the severance of that inconvenient artery. Because a world without his mate was inconceivable, and if to keep her alive meant to remain chained to his worst version, then so be it.

He drove the wooden-sword straight into the ground. The tip shattered, and the entire extension of it came apart in a dozen pieces. [Name] merely glimpsed it with a somewhat sense of unamusement.

“You were careless,” he snapped, for once not caring to conceal his anger.

“I’m well aware,” she bit back with a scowl.

“You’re not,” the Spymaster insisted, his steps diminishing the distance between them. “You’ve never had to witness death at such a close range; never had to feel your opponent’s blood splattering into your face; you don’t know.”

Her nostrils flared and her entire body trembled with the intensity of her own anger. Azriel could smell it, escaping through her pores as though wildfire in a dry forest.

“There’s something that I’ve read,” she started out slowly, an edge to her voice that he had never heard before. “An interesting theory, really, about the limitations of the mind and its projection. Let’s try it out.”

[Name]’s teeth gritted with her last sentence, and Azriel had no time to react before his mate latched one of her hands to his face, her fingers and nails biting into his temple. He felt as though the weight of earth shifted under his feet, his breath stolen from his lungs with a violent and invisible force. The skies, once painted orange and yellow and filled with white clouds, morphed into darkness. The stars were dim — not even a speck of the sight Velaris offered during the night — and the Spymaster was no longer within the borders of a forest; could no longer hear the sound of the waves crashing against the shore far from where he stood. Instead, Azriel was in the middle of an unknown and miserable district, the houses so small and precarious he could not believe half-a-fae fitted inside. The streets were empty, the torches were long put off. He found the scenery as peaceful as it was deplorable, but the previous silence was soon replaced with a loud piece of music.

His eyes followed the source of said cacophony. Azriel could distinguish the sound of lutes and a hurdy-gurdy, flutes and drums. His thoughts wrapped around the concept of a gleeful festival, but were instead met with a single home with bright, colorful lights shining through the closed curtains of many windows; with at least three floors built of bricks and stones, whose roof was a well-planned triangular structure covered in soot and of many different tiles. Above it all, stood a lonely and small gyrfalcon of white feathers, poorly hidden.

The door to that house — so different to the ones from the street before — opened. Azriel noticed the presence of a muscular man, tall to the parameters of a mortal, and concluded that one was most likely to be the guard to that place. He felt the urge to scoff with a well-placed arrogance, aware that he could take that man down with half a blow. However, the smaller frame that walked past through the guard and ventured into the night streets caused his stomach to twist and drop. Azriel hastily read the title painted above the entrance: “The Lupanare”, and felt a sudden urge to throw up; a numbness to his fingers and nerves that refused to subside.

The female figure under the door was dressed in fine silks of translucent shades of blue. The attire had a thin and long skirt divided in four sections; the one in the middle was made to protect the sight of the female’s intimacy; the other two sections began at the side of her hips, leaving the entire front of her legs bare to the external eye; and though he could not see, Azriel figured that the fourth section was a mimic of the first one: a piece of fabric that scarcely protected the ass. The odd skirt was connected to the top through a thin belt made of silver, with adornments meant to mimic shells, that encircled her entire waist. While the bottom had one thicker layer of silk to cover the intimate parts, the top left nothing to the imagination: it was made in the format of a V, leaving her entire waist, back, and part of her abdomen bare. The silk was so thin, one could see the breasts almost as though they were uncovered, as the only barrier that stood between the eye and the body was the top’s dark shade of blue. It was held together by silver ligaments, a large shell above each clavicle and a chain that encircled the neck. Azriel stood far from the female, but he could hear her voice almost as though he was by her side.

“It’s best to change before leaving,” the guard seemed to instruct her in a deep, yet oddly worrying tone.

“I don’t have the time. There’s something wrong at home, I can feel it.”

The voice that answered broke him entirely. It was no ordinary female. For the love of the Mother, it was his mate. Azriel’s heart, all of sudden, danced around two different beats; his breathing was split into two halves; his soul, however, remained one with that of the female that hurried out of the brothel. He felt enraged and saddened; worried and aware. It took him a moment to realize that, by sharing her memories, [Name] began to share her feelings as well.

The Lupanare left his sights as his mate ran into the night, wearing nothing but a set of thin silk wrapped around silver chains. Azriel felt the urge to move; to grab that fragile figure and soar with her through the skies, away from those dull stars and into the dazzling night of Velaris. But he could not. He was stuck into place as though a tree with roots too deep in the soil. One could not change the past any much as one could alter a memory.

When that sight of [Name] came closer, Azriel noticed that she was inches smaller and less agile; she seemed younger, although not too much, perhaps a year or two, at best. He grew used to her fae-form; to how it increased her height and speed and the overall flow of her movements. Seeing her in that mortal shell was unfamiliar to him, and Azriel wondered how his mate felt about that whole ordeal.

The memory shifted accordingly to her steps. The music was long gone, as were the colors. She had left the district of the brothel and was running along the poorest streets, passing through alleyways and locked one-floor houses without a thought in the world. No longer had Azriel started to worry about the safety of those actions, someone grabbed her shoulder, and plunged her against the dirty wall of a narrow alley. His mind shouted at Azriel, all logic evaporating from his entire being upon witnessing that scene. Every nerve within him commanded his limbs, demanding him to move. It was his mate; his heart; the very reason why he had been born, why he had endured those five centuries of sorrow and loneliness. His mate needed his aid, and he wasn’t there.

The revolt that ran through his veins as though liquid fire had gone cold with terror. Not his: hers. Azriel could sense it, had his soul shivering because of it. Again, he felt the need to move; and again, he could not. This time, it was not desperation and rage that moved him, but the utter necessity to comfort her, to keep her safe.

“It was only a matter of time,” the man slurred, and Azriel felt the hot breath and smelt the stench of alcohol, regardless of the distance. “I knew one of that brothel’s little birds would eventually try to flee from the cage earlier than they should. Now, I’ll take what’s mine.”

A hand covered her mouth. Azriel tasted the soot. With a grin, however, the man decided to place his hand on her throat instead. “There’s no need to scream. No one hears the weeps of a whore.”

It was torture. Azriel desperately tried to free himself from his mate’s memories, and thought that, at last, as cowardly as that was, he could tear his eyes from the scene. The Spymaster looked up — seeking solace in the stars and founding none — and his eyes caught on the white gyrfalcon, propped on a roof. He prepared himself for the worst, but instead, heard a masculine shout of pain.

Azriel’s eyes landed on the scene. His mate had managed to hide a dagger somewhere in between the thin silks of her attire. It was on her dominant hand, the blade digging into her attacker’s stomach. She pulled it out just to plung it again. And again. And again. The man fell backwards on the ground, blood was pouring from his mouth and stomach. His mate fell with him, digging her dagger into his chest and ribs and throat. He felt the warmth of blood as it splattered on her; face and chest and legs, the shades of blue mingled with red. He felt the burning behind his eyes as the tears fell down her face.

At last, she got up, spat on the body, and pressed her back to the wall. Her soul shattered in a cacophony of feelings: satisfaction, fear, anger, horror. But no sympathy. Her hands were trembling, but she would not let go of the dagger, whose steel blade was reddened and wet. The minutes that it took for her to compose herself felt like an eternity. His mate turned on her heels, prepared to leave that scenery, and Azriel caught the glimpse of a taller figure observing at the entrance of the alleyway. The Spymaster had only managed to discern the long and bright red hair before the memory faded.

Azriel felt disoriented. His vision burned with the sudden brightness of the afternoon sky. He heard the sound of the waves and felt the warmth of the Sun against his nape. The shared reminiscence took but a small fraction of time, yet it felt as though they had been lost in the tissue of the past for non-ending hours. [Name] had taken a few steps back, her hand no longer touching his face, and despite the consequences, the pain that came with the lack of her was equal to the worst of punishments; to drink the most lethal of poisons. Inside her memories, he had a taste of what it meant to be one’s mate. There, Azriel grew roots inside her soul, and she had nestled herself at his very core.

She was observing him then, and he drowned in her eyes, addicted to the sight of her; to her entire being. “The owner of the Lupanare, Moira, prided herself in the fact that her… workers… were free of diseases.”

Her voice. Azriel regained the control of his nerves and will, commanding his legs to dash towards her. Yet, the Spymaster felt the tug of a bold shadow on his collar. They had developed the tendency of remaining hidden during those times of the day, weak due to the light. Yet, one of them darted forward to ground him, to make Azriel see not with his heart, but with his eyes. [Name] stood far from him, hugging herself; her scent was one of unsuruness and hesitation; she craved the space between them, clung to it as one living in the desert would to water. Azriel stopped in his tracks, not daring to give another step.

“Moira stated that, for the expenses to offer an environment secure from diseases to be worth it, the price to spend an hour with the women should be befitting to the efforts placed in their health,” [Name] gulped, as if the mere act of remembering that treacherous woman brought a sense of great pain. “Safe to say, the men that came to the brothel had coins to pay for their stay. Those who could not afford the time, had to resort to the women on the streets.”

Azriel took in her expressions and the sight alone clawed at his heart. “I get it. You don’t need to tear up old wounds for my sake.”

She moved her head in denial, closing her eyes. “It makes no difference when said wounds never healed enough to make for scars.”

Azriel went quiet. He wished he had a word of comfort to offer, but the typical, easier ones, were of no use. The Spymaster could appeal to the passage of time: [Name] was now immortal. A longer life meant opportunities to rewrite the script of one’s trajectory; to bury the awful instances of time with centuries of greatness. But how could he gather the courage to voice said things, when five centuries later, he remained haunted by what had happened when he was a boy of ten? Reminded of said horrors whenever he caught a glimpse of his hands?

[Name] seemed, however, grateful for his silence. “The women of the Lupanare were forbidden fruits to those who couldn’t afford them. Most of them had been either trafficked or expelled from their homes, but some rare exceptions, like me, had a place to return to in the morning. By the end of it, there was only me. The men who couldn’t be regulars at the Lupanare would pry at the edges, waiting for an opportunity to grab the ones who dared to walk home. I was lucky to have a dagger, to know how to wield it. The others were not.”

She took an instance to catch her breath. Azriel was startled to watch his mate take a few steps closer to the trees. He feared he might have upsetted her in some form, but his worries were gone as soon as he caught a glimpse of his shadows whirling around her in mute comfort.

“That memory I showed you… it was from the night Tamlin took Feyre. I wasn’t home then, but I felt a disruption within me, every aggravating instinct shouting at me that I was needed somewhere else. It took me three hours, but at last I was able to flee without being seen. I was careless. I was grabbed. I got rid of the problem. That was my first kill.”

Azriel felt the urge to apologize. He tried doing as much, but his mate brushed that away with a wave of her hand. “You didn’t know.”

“Did I shout my thoughts again?”

A smirk crept over her lips. He felt slightly relieved. “A little bit.”

“Regardless, I lost my temper. I apologize.”

“You weren’t entirely wrong,” she insisted. “I’ve never had to dispose of the men I killed. That first one—”

“Lucian did it for you,” he concluded, and she blinked in shock.

“You glimpsed it so far beyond? Well, yes, he did. Somehow. I never got the courage to ask,” [Name] sighed. “Feyre must’ve let it slip that one of her sisters wasn’t home; either that, or Tamlin saw it through her. Whatever happened, he sent Lucian to fetch for me, and so he did.”

“He enchanted you?”

She nodded. “I returned with instructions to wait outside for him. He gave me a new set of clothes. I changed. When I entered that small home, the fact that Feyre left to help a rich aunt sounded natural. My memories were filled with burlesques, I was the result of a well-placed spell.”

[Name] left the shelter offered by the trees, and Azriel could hear the whispers of protests coming from his shadows. The sudden proximity sent a shiver down his spine, for his mate was but a few inches away, and the feeling of the bond they shared remained fresh in his mind.

She pulled the long sleeve up, and there, inside her forearm, Azriel glimpsed a burnt scar. Fire had maimed his mate as much as it had maimed her. It was a long trail; the flames spreaded from below the shoulder to above the wrist.

“Moira had us tattooed. She said it was a sign of our employment contract, but we all knew better. It was a mark, one meant for the commoners to identify us as whores and to mistreat us in the streets. Moira wanted to make sure that we’d never be able to find a job again, that we’ll always be her property. Tamlin’s spell clouded my family’s memories well enough but not the memories of the town. When we were given another Manor, Elain wanted to celebrate. We threw this enormous party, but the glares I’ve received from the guests that night were enough to undo the spell. Suddenly, my youngest sister was nowhere to be found and I had a past that couldn’t be erased and a tattoo I wanted gone.”

“You’ve… burned yourself?” Azriel inquired, though the thought alone sounded horrendous. He could remember the pain vividly; had frequent nightmares of flames taking over the skin of his hands as though starved beasts. To have a self-inflicted burn scar…

“I’ve tried to, but was too much of a coward to get it through,” she answered, tugging the sleeve down. “I still had three friends — soldiers —, stationed at the village. So, one night, I went to the tavern they were regulars at, and paid them to burn that thing.”

Azriel was appalled. “They accepted it?”

“We all have mouths to feed or broken dreams to drown out with cheap wine,” she came to their defense. “The three were stationed at the end of the Mortal Realm for a reason. I knew they’d never agree to burn me for free, and Tamlin was kind enough to give us some coins, so I used it.”

The last sentence came with a scowl, and her tone was filled with scorn at the mention of the High-Lord of the Spring Court.

“When Nesta went after Feyre, I was still enchanted. And when she told me the news that there was nothing to be done… I guess I also felt the need to punish myself. As if I had to pay.”

Azriel moved his head in denial, holding back the urge to touch her chin. “You’ve paid more than enough for errors that weren’t yours.”

“I know that now,” she whispered. “But not then. So I drank half a bottle of cheap whisky; they soaked my arm with alcohol, and burnt it with a cloth. The pain made me pass out. The healing was one of the worst things I’ve gone through.”

He knew. Mother above, Azriel knew that all too well. The female in front of him was his mate, with aches and scars that had, too, been carved deep into his core, leaving nothing but bitterness and shame on its wake. Azriel should’ve known which words to say; which advice to give; but he doesn’t. He can’t help his mate heal a wound that he hadn’t learned how to heal himself.

The Spymaster watched with certain helplessness as [Name] picked up her sais, twirling the blades between her fingers. Her eyes were glued to his hands — uncovered ever since he learned that gloves were too much of a hassle to keep. Again, his throat dried up with the amount of words unsaid, the sentences that sounded too shallow. Azriel opened his mouth — if only to try —, and watched it in awe as [Name] used her strength to tear the cloth of her shirt. The long sleeves fell on the grass and she kicked it aside, allowing the afternoon light to press kisses to her now bare shoulders.

“Someone told me my training attire wasn’t adequate,” she voiced. A short laughter echoed from his parted lips, sounding odd to his own ears. It had been a long time since he last laughed. [Name] opened a smile at the sound. It had also been a long time since she had smiled.

“You should listen to that someone more often,” he teased, grabbing the fallen branch of a tree to mimic a wooden-sword.

“That wouldn’t be smart. He brings branches to sai fights.”

“And somehow, he manages to win.”

“Beginner’s luck. He’s a bit younger so I cut him some slack.”

“You called me an old male yesterday after managing to outrace me at our beach’s jog.”

“Have I?”

Azriel grinned, using his knee to split the branch in two. “If I win this one, I’ll have you shift into a kitchen mouse to follow Cassian around the House of Wind for a whole day.”

“Well, when I win this one, I’ll have you clean up my bathtub of experiments.”

Azriel remembered the stench left by the chemicals, and the glimpse of the once white marble covered in a dozen different shades of violet. He shuddered at the mere thought of it, knowing that she was making sure that he wouldn’t go easy on her during the rest of their sparring. He dashed forward. The branches were larger than the previous wood-swords, so her range of stances were drastically diminished.

But that was his mate. His [Name]. The world was her chessboard, and she didn’t mind sacrificing pawns for the sake of victory. His offense met hers, and their next match was but a metaphorical waltz on tiles of black and white.

general notes: last chapter I said I wished I had those wild AO3 explanations for delayed updates and, well, talk about manifesting. since I love oversharing!! I had a small surgery!! and my laptop broke, it’s the first time I’m uploading on my cellphone and I feel like a millennial. also, what do we think of what we read of Az in House of Flame and Shadow? let me know, let’s chat!

taglist [comment to be added]: @nyotamalfoy @arilindemann @bsenpai @rachelnicolee @piceous21 @forsiriussake @sassybluebird @esposadomd @brujitafantomatico @witchymomfrien

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azulyrae · 1 month

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— Send in requests!

I have nothing to do or read for the time being so help me out and give me something to write! 🤍🤞

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azulyrae · 1 month

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I believe it’s mentioned somewhere that Azriel’s father is a lord of one of the Illyrian camps. Maybe from the Steppes, since I think that’s where Az is from. Hopefully we get more background on his family, and what growing up in the camps was like in his book!

!!!! Yes 😭 I’m so curious about his mother and whether or not his brothers are still alive (I hope they are because I want to read some revenge 🤞).

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azulyrae · 1 month

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Which book, or books, in the Throne of Glass series is your favorite?❤️

I LOVED QUEEN OF SHADOWS. I don’t know how predictable I’ll sound but I love, love, love Lysandra. My second favorite is Empire of Storms! 🤍

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azulyrae · 1 month

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I loved the newest update of Onyx Sword of Sorrow so much!! You write so beautifully, I feel it in my soul. I love how you describe their emotions and I love their banter. Your writing is some of the best I’ve ever read. Take however long you need to write, and I hope you’re healing well after your surgery!💙

I loved Azriel in House of Flame and Shadow. Nesta, too. I love their friendship. HOFAS further confirmed (at least to me) that Azriel has mommy issues, which is understandable, because his mother was treated awfully. I believe that the next ACOTAR book will probably be Azriel’s, and the main plot will be centered around Illyria & Ramiel. I’m not sure how you feel about ships in the fandom, and I don’t want to turn your blog into something toxic since shippers can be aggressive, and I don’t want to disrespect your safe place, but I did want to share my thought on the bonus chapter with Bryce, Nesta, and Azriel. The ending of that bonus chapter immediately reminded me of the ending of Azriel’s bonus chapter in ACOSF. When Bryce’s phone died (there was no music playing), Azriel was humming and his shadows danced. The shadows have danced to two people so far: Gwyn and Azriel. I honestly think Az and Gwyn are mates. I also think his shadows are an extension of his soul/sentient. Ships aside, though, I like how Azriel seems interested in music and I hope we get more of him singing, and why he seems to have a connection with it.

What were your thoughts on House of Flame and Shadow? And have you read the Throne of Glass series?

Thank you so much for your words 🥹 I’m truly glad that my writing had managed to bring some emotions to light. And thank you! I’m recovering pretty well so far. 🤍

As for HOFAS, it was a pleasant reading experience to me. I tried not to fall into the rabbit hole of theories and first read it with my mind blank, and I was not disappointed at all. Nesta is, by far, my favorite SJM character, while Azriel is one of my favorites from ACOTAR, so reading them as a duo was the highest point of the book to me.

I’m really rooting for his book to come next! I felt that he had some trouble with his mother from a few passages of him from previous books, and I’m sure it’s related to how her father had treated her badly and how she had been seen as somewhat of an inferior female for having a bastard. I presume that Azriel’s father is a figure of military importance (I might be wrong!) and his reputation was maimed after Azriel’s birth. That’d resonate a lot with how lowly he views himself and how he believes that he’s inferior to pretty much everyone else. I need to tap into that man’s tortured mind so much! 😭

One thing I’m hoping for SJM to write in his book is his journey to find Bryaxis. Knowing SJM, he’d probably be accompanied 🫢 And now! Tapping onto ships, I’m hoping that he’d be tracking down Bryaxis with Gwyn. I, too, am a huge truther of their future, especially because of their singing. I need to see him sing. Like, straight up belt something. I’ve always pictured him imprisoned and alone, humming to himself. I have this very vivid image of little Azriel learning that his singing made the shadows move and how he kept singing to draw them closer, because he so desperately needed the company.

This answer is turning out to be huge, but at last, yes! I’ve read Throne of Glass. I’m a huge fan of Manon and the Thirteen and of Rowan, because I apparently have a type. 🤞

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azulyrae · 2 months

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❛ —— 𝐈𝐕 : The Bishop.

to abandon the pursuit of a mate was to abandon the thought of everlasting love. yet, there she was. a fever dream above expectations, with similar scars and a soul who mirrored his.

after a rough argument, azriel travels to the core of his mate’s memories, and finds that there’s always more than meets the eye — and that, at last, his prayers were well-answered.

the fourth chapter of onyx sword of sorrow.

check the original post to be aware of the trigger warnings.

azriel/fem!archeron sister. reader with mind control & the ability to shapeshift.

THIS CHAPTER HAS DESCRIPTIONS OF PAST SEXUAL HARASSMENT! please be safe while reading it!

word-count: 5K.

— To Be Alone, Hozier.

He pressed the edge of the other sword held by his left arm against one of those vulnerable spots, and his voice had neither cockiness nor glee when he stated: “You’re dead.”

“You’ve read my mind,” he accused, steadying himself as she took a few steps back, twirling her sais.

“I was invaded by them,” [Name] argued. “Your thoughts are as loud as a parade of drums and tambourines.”

“Rhysand would disagree,” Azriel countered, sensing the need to defend himself.

“I’m more sensitive than a daemati, as we are both well aware.”

He drove the wooden-sword straight into the ground. The tip shattered, and the entire extension of it came apart in a dozen pieces. [Name] merely glimpsed it with a somewhat sense of unamusement.

“You were careless,” he snapped, for once not caring to conceal his anger.

“I’m well aware,” she bit back with a scowl.

Her nostrils flared and her entire body trembled with the intensity of her own anger. Azriel could smell it, escaping through her pores as though wildfire in a dry forest.

“It’s best to change before leaving,” the guard seemed to instruct her in a deep, yet oddly worrying tone.

“I don’t have the time. There’s something wrong at home, I can feel it.”

A hand covered her mouth. Azriel tasted the soot. With a grin, however, the man decided to place his hand on her throat instead. “There’s no need to scream. No one hears the weeps of a whore.”

Azriel took in her expressions and the sight alone clawed at his heart. “I get it. You don’t need to tear up old wounds for my sake.”

She moved her head in denial, closing her eyes. “It makes no difference when said wounds never healed enough to make for scars.”

Azriel felt the urge to apologize. He tried doing as much, but his mate brushed that away with a wave of her hand. “You didn’t know.”

“Did I shout my thoughts again?”

A smirk crept over her lips. He felt slightly relieved. “A little bit.”

“Regardless, I lost my temper. I apologize.”

“You weren’t entirely wrong,” she insisted. “I’ve never had to dispose of the men I killed. That first one—”

“Lucian did it for you,” he concluded, and she blinked in shock.

“He enchanted you?”

Azriel was appalled. “They accepted it?”

The last sentence came with a scowl, and her tone was filled with scorn at the mention of the High-Lord of the Spring Court.

“When Nesta went after Feyre, I was still enchanted. And when she told me the news that there was nothing to be done… I guess I also felt the need to punish myself. As if I had to pay.”

Azriel moved his head in denial, holding back the urge to touch her chin. “You’ve paid more than enough for errors that weren’t yours.”

“You should listen to that someone more often,” he teased, grabbing the fallen branch of a tree to mimic a wooden-sword.

“That wouldn’t be smart. He brings branches to sai fights.”

“And somehow, he manages to win.”

“Beginner’s luck. He’s a bit younger so I cut him some slack.”

“You called me an old male yesterday after managing to outrace me at our beach’s jog.”

“Have I?”

Azriel grinned, using his knee to split the branch in two. “If I win this one, I’ll have you shift into a kitchen mouse to follow Cassian around the House of Wind for a whole day.”

“Well, when I win this one, I’ll have you clean up my bathtub of experiments.”

taglist [comment to be added]: @nyotamalfoy @arilindemann @bsenpai @rachelnicolee @piceous21 @forsiriussake @sassybluebird @esposadomd @brujitafantomatico @witchymomfrien

#acomaf #acotar #acowar #azriel #azriel imagine #azriel imagines #azriel x reader #acosf #acotar x reader #azriel / reader #azriel x y/n #azriel x you #azriel shadowsinger #sjm

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azulyrae · 2 months

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❪ ˙˖ onyx sword of sorrow | azriel.

whenever a girl is brought into the world, the female deities assemble to weep. the sadder her fate, the stronger their tears; the loudest their cries. a cacophony of sorrow, a preach of forgiveness, a grieving sky. and [name] archeron was born during a thunderstorm.

she had fought in labor. clawing, biting, screaming. a cunning, small thing, bloodied and violent and desperate to live. born fighting, cries of lightning, the girl had not stopped to fight ever since. whether it was for the right to be a father’s heir; a mother’s rogue; a sister’s shelter; [name] had never quite managed to be quiet and lenient, polite and selfless. she was no one’s bride; no one’s princess; she was born a king. regardless of the tragedy of womanhood, [name] was the owner of a soul of thunder and lightning and blood.

dodging her mother’s rage; the misery of poverty; the dehumanizing touch of greedy, vile men with sparing coins to spend on a brothel, she thought nothing could break her spirit. there was nothing the world could throw, no pain she could not endure. until the cauldron proved her wrong.

months after the war, [name] had but a despicable power that stole others’ free-will and symbolized the ugliness of her once immaculate soul. she had not an unique form; being the swallow of rain, the dragon of storms, the white-tiger of grief. [name] wished to be anywhere, but inside her own skin. and azriel did not wish to be anywhere his newly-found mate wasn’t.

the shadowsinger and the siren. the spymaster and the storm shifter. broken and burning with rage, striving to heal during a non-conventional espionage training that would grant [name] the means with which to enter montesere’s magical barriers, and tied by an ambiguous deal.

where there is light, there is shadow. [name] was the lightning bolt that sliced the darkness, and azriel could might as well be the one to silence the weeping of the goddesses.

information: azriel/fem!archeron sister. reader with mind control & the ability to shapeshift.

warnings: descriptions of a life of both misery and prostitution. mentions of disgusting men and a brothel. traumas regarding the male touch. canon violence, gore and fighting. mutual-trust that will lead to smut, minors dni.

[𝐈. the pawn.]

[𝐈𝐈. the spy’s gambit.]

[𝐈𝐈𝐈. the knight.]

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azulyrae · 3 months

Text

❪ ˙˖ onyx sword of sorrow | azriel.

where there is light, there is shadow. [name] was the lightning bolt that sliced the darkness, and azriel could might as well be the one to silence the weeping of the goddesses.

information: azriel/fem!archeron sister. reader with mind control & the ability to shapeshift.

[𝐈. the pawn.]

[𝐈𝐈. the spy’s gambit.]

[𝐈𝐈𝐈. the knight.]

558 notes · View notes

azulyrae · 3 months

Text

❛ —— 𝐈𝐈𝐈 : The Knight.

azriel seemed to be as ruthless with his apprentices as he was with his opponents — and [name] learned soon enough that the title of an archeron did nothing to smooth his edges when it came to her training.

with their hours well-spent and words that lingered amidst the border between the intrinsic fear of vulnerability and the desperate urge for connection, azriel and [name] willingly started to entangle one another in the invisible web placed upon them by fate.

yet, their bond alone is not enough to displace their inner demons, and it is up to them both to establish how far they are willing to allow their secluded training period to take them.

the third chapter of onyx sword of sorrow.

check the original post to be aware of the trigger warnings.

azriel/fem!archeron sister. reader with mind control & the ability to shapeshift.

pinterest board / spotify playlist.

word-count: 7K.

“My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep; the more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite.”

— Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare.

The scalding light of the midday Sun made the sweat pool on her nape and bind the light tissue of [Name]’s long-sleeved shirt to the skin underneath. Regardless of her panting, Azriel’s pace remained ruthless, as though the heat was of no bother when it came to his jogging. As she tried — and failed — to reach him, [Name] reminisced the night before, when the moon stood tall and proud in the night sky, and the breeze was refreshing and less erratic.

Azriel had lost match after match, with [Name] cornering him at each and every strategy that he meant to engage in. Thirty — at best, thirty-five — movements on their part, and the Spymaster was left with a limited amount of choices: to surrender peacefully, or to try to postpone the inevitable and be predictably crushed. Five matches in with the morrow drawing close, [Name] noted that she scarcely had five questions of her own for him to answer. In order to have doubts regarding a person’s life and achievements, one needed to know the basics of the other, and [Name] refused to waste a single question — since she had battled with her wits and strategies to win her matches, — in a stupid inquiry such as what was his favorite food or weather. So, smug and malicious, she had suggested for them to engage in an unprecedented strand of chess: the quick chess. Their plays were less pondered, for their time to move their pieces were scarce, and, therefore, the mental space offered for a well-planned strategy and predictions was close to none. [Name] was sure that she would win yet another match, since her opponent had never engaged in a match of quick chess before, but her arrogance would be soon humbled, since Azriel began to win — round after round, match after match, — until they were tied: each one had the right to ask five questions, where the other was naturally obliged to answer honestly.

Her competitive spirit and stubbornness muted all but the occurrences on the board as [Name] studied the pieces after a loss, guaranteeing that she would not commit the same error twice. Yet, despite her very efforts, it seemed as though Azriel had been expecting her every move, countering her every strategy, and she was left dumbfounded at the seemingly never-ending streak of defeats that unraveled right before her eyes. The male, however, seemed to have noticed — or either learned for that matter, — something about her during those matches, and his insight was surprising when, roughly four or five hours later, he expressed his thoughts at the table, while [Name] drank a warm cup of black coffee.

“You were not exactly made for a full-blown sword fight,” he said it back then, and she raised an eyebrow, suddenly on edge.

“What is that supposed to mean?” [Name] had asked carefully, placing her mug on the wooden table.

“Close-ranged fights are chaotic, fast, erratic. They require quick thinking, the confidence that your body and muscles are prepared for the battle at hand: your brain and acts must be in perfect sync, otherwise your head will be sliced from your neck before you can raise your sword in a defensive stance, regardless of either your mind was capable of predicting that the was blow coming or not,” Azriel explained, stirring his porridge bowl. “Quick chess is a lot like it. The time to think is narrowed, and rather than to move a piece while thinking about a distant situation, you need to adapt with what you’re presented and create the best strategy possible with the very few seconds you’re offered. I’m a warrior, a soldier, those confrontations are second nature to me. You’re a strategist.”

“I never believed that to be a bad thing,” she bitterly answered, unsure of what to make of his precise comments.

“It isn’t,” Azriel countered, and [Name] nearly collapsed at the sight of his warm, hazel eyes landing on her face with such consideration. “Battles and wars are doomed without strategy. An army can’t expect to win without order and pre-established positioning, and you’re a fantastic strategist, [Name].”

She blushed, unable to tell whether it was over the sincere compliment, or the fact that he had voiced her name as though it was a natural thing; the sound of it on his tongue presenting itself as a dangerously addictive substance to her ears. Mayhap, she had blushed over both of those.

“You predicted the Mortal Queens’ plans, managed to help us destabilize the formation of Hybern’s army, and went as far as outwitting more experienced and older High-Lords and Generals.”

His praises seemed as though a precedent for a bitter truth, a low punch to her well-placed confidence. “But?”

“But, in a full-blown hand-to-hand battle, you would be useless.”

Azriel was brutal. His analytics were not once incorrect, and he rarely ever did try to sugarcoat his words. He strived for excellence in his students, that much was clear, and she doubted that the Spymaster would take it easy on her merely because she was the older sister of his High-Lady. Unaware of her grim reaction — or not caring about it whatsoever, — Azriel continued.

“Shifting into whichever being you desire and going as far as masking your scent is an incredibly useful ability. That, combined with your commanding voice and the strength granted by the body of a High-Fae is—”

“Catastrophic,” she intervened then, taking a sip of her coffee.

“Incredible,” he corrected, his voice slightly softer. “But mortals as well as faes are well aware of our strength and how to counter it. Faebane, ash-made weaponry: those are threats none of us is immune to.”

[Name] stirred her own porridge, grimacing at the dull taste once the spoon met her lips. “Which means, I will need to learn how to handle myself without those abilities.”

He grinned. “Scared?”

“Excited,” she had corrected. “I’m not used to magic, as you pointed it out. And to be fair, I’d rather never grow to rely on it either.”

[Name] thought she had covered the bitterness in her tone well enough. However, Azriel creased his forehead and tilted his head to the side with curiosity, scanning her features for further understanding. “Why?”

“Is that a chess-question?”

“A chess-question?”

“Yes,” another spoonful of porridge and she was done, grimacing just as much as before. “The question we earned through a victory in chess, whose answer is mandatory and must be sincere.”

Azriel crossed his arms against his chest, and it took her every ounce of focus in her nerves not to stare at the flexed muscles. “Well, then yes. That was a chess-question.”

“I like getting my hands dirty,” she answered him immediately. “I have never once agreed to hiring a maiden to do my tasks. I have learned how to cook; how to tidy my clothes; how to read and write so that I could send my own letters; I remember going as far as learning how to draw my own prototypes of ships, so that I would not need to rely on external brands once my father passed down his legacy to me. I remember refusing further aid as soon as I learned something — whether it was politics, to lie, to tell a seasoning from another by the scent, and many others.”

[Name] stopped for a second, her eyes getting lost on the half-empty mug of coffee as the memories from her earliest years of life came back in a haze of pain and nostalgia. She could feel Azriel’s attention on her, his gaze lingering as though a spark that could set her entire being aflame if she was not careful.

“I was particularly fond of the thought process that came with the activities I engaged with. The path that led to the end was more enjoyable than the end itself. Magic makes it all… easier. I don’t need to cook, or walk down the way to the library to fetch myself a book, or even prepare my own bath. It’s easy to forget the hardships when things start to get offered to you on a silver platter.”

His silence was not one accompanied by uneasiness. In fact, Azriel’s presence was anything but. There were, she presumed, many obvious reasons for that: he was much experienced; had a vast knowledge of combat and strategizing; the shadows answered to his every command, and could hide his figure from the eye-sight in a second; that, combined to his willingness to learn more and to polish fields in which he was yet not perfect at, brewed a capable individual, a lethal weapon built on a muscular body. However, it was not the clear threat that Azriel inspired in their enemies that soothed her nerves. It was his stance towards her; the manner with which his eyes seemed to reflect a pool of warm honey whenever they met hers; it was the lack of judgment, the respect of boundaries, and most importantly: the rare perception of noticing when one didn’t need advices or pity, but simply to vent a little.

Azriel could’ve said something back then. [Name] was well aware of the fact that he neither agreed nor disagreed with her beliefs regarding magic, but that he had a thing or two to point out whatsoever, and out of respect, chose not to. For decades, she managed to hide her heart well and in plain sight — no one could catch on a single thought of hers through her expressions unless she so desired, no one could predict her next movement until the very last moment, — no one but, as it seemed, Azriel. Her decision not to rely much on magic was based on fear and failed logic, both entangled in roots of [Name]’s mortal past that she was not yet willing to let go. He caught onto that, but didn’t say a thing about it regardless. Because, somehow during the past year and through their previous interactions, he had learned that his interjections in situations such as those wouldn’t be at all welcomed — that [Name] valued ruthlessness and honesty so long as her most hidden feelings were not involved.

The sense of being stripped from her barriers in another person’s presence, to be so deeply seen and understood, was one that she had never experienced before, and [Name] had yet to decide whether she wished for that to linger or not. It would be a relief to be more than an inscrutable puzzle, but the thought was one that brought great dread, for she had hidden below countless facades for a long period of time, and was unsure of what to make of the person awaiting underneath. To shapeshift was to tear a path through another’s skin, to live on another’s body. It was more than fitting for the Cauldron to have given her such an ability, and that statement filled [Name] with a sense of corruption, as if her soul was a fragmented and treacherous thing that deserved to have the means with which to be hidden.

Incredible, Azriel’s voice echoed through her thoughts: his answer to when she had insinuated the vile character of her powers. And while the terror settled at the pit of her stomach whenever she dared to ponder on the possibility of being thoroughly seen by someone else, Azriel’s presence made it seem as though that wasn’t entirely negative.

She wouldn’t ask him to change the subject. She wouldn’t cower if he chose to press on the reasons behind her discomfort with magic. She would neither beg nor argue if Azriel so decided to vex her with questions she was unwilling to answer. However, when he raised from his seat and said: “Let’s craft a warrior out of your strategist’s skin,” [Name] was grateful anyway.

Of course, the Archeron decided that she wouldn’t have been as grateful if she was to know beforehand how demanding his training-style was. After five more laps around the shore, Azriel caved to the sound of her breathless curses and chose to spare her a few minutes of rest. That is if one could even call walking a proper pause.

“If you were to sit, your muscles would grow lazy, and it would be twice as hard to return to the exercise afterwards,” Azriel had explained with a shrug after noticing her ugly stare, but the grin plastered on his face as he oh-so-thoughtfully matched her pace was enough to let her know that he hadn’t forgotten of her little jest the day before.

The wind did nothing to relieve the heat, for it suffered with the influence of the Sun above them, and as [Name] walked, her feet seemed to succumb to the weight of the sand at each step, and she felt a sudden wave of dizziness.

Fitting enough, as soon as her mind processed the state of her body, a long, dark wing appeared behind her back, meeting her shoulder-blades and bolstering her up. Azriel spared a single side-glance before he mentioned: “You wouldn’t be this lightheaded if you had chosen something suitable for intense training sessions.”

And [Name] was well aware of what he meant: the stupid long-sleeved shirt that she wore was doing nothing to prevent her heat exhaustion. Yet, the thought of uncovering what was underneath the fabric was so unthinkable that she gritted her teeth and straightened her posture.

“I can handle it well enough.”

“You’re smarter than this,” he immediately countered. “And I’m sure that you understand that your choice of clothing is slowing both of us down. This pact of ours won’t work unless I can train you properly.”

“I know,” she snapped, staring at him — or what she figured was him, considering that the sunlight nearly blinded her as she did so, — and Azriel raised an eyebrow as he reciprocated her glance.

“Then, what’s the matter?” The Spymaster insisted, his tone being enough an indicator that he wasn’t planning on changing the subject.

“I’d rather use long-sleeved shirts.”

“No one in their right mind would opt for warm clothes on a beach under the midday Sun.”

“Then we will conclude that I’m both smart and deranged.”

“[Name],” he sternly called, and perhaps it was because he had finally halted in his steps, no longer walking or running, but she turned on her heels to meet his figure, feeling compelled to let that banter go. “What’s the matter?”

At his repetition, the words escaped her mouth before her mind managed to demand otherwise. “Is that a chess-question?”

He blinked, his mouth parting ever-so-slightly in shock. “Is the answer that delicate?”

She merely nodded, freeing her mind from the memories that surfaced at the reason behind her reluctance. Azriel read enough through her reactions though, because he proceeded to scratch his nape with an unusual concern. “One that, I presume, you’re not prepared to answer.”

“I’m not.”

“Meaning that you’re also irreducible in terms of wearing proper clothes for the hot weather,” she cocked her hip, about to give him a verbal answer, when Azriel crossed his arms against his chest with a grumble. “Morning jogs aren’t merely meant to strengthen your physique and stamina, they also take on the position of a warm-up to the rest of our training for the day.”

None of those sentences were unprecedented. [Name] understood both the importance of those hellish laps and the stupidity of her obstinacy regarding the inadequate clothes that she packed. However, it was one thing to have part of her motivations and thoughts laid bare under the preciseness of his glance; it was another thing entirely to offer him the view of the physical scarring that followed-in-suit to the past that [Name] so heavily relied on and ran away from. Azriel’s intonation filled her with reluctance as she pondered on a possible mistake of judgment, fearing a disappointment that would surely occur was he to insist on the subject.

However, Azriel merely bit his lip — vexing her profusely, for that proved to be an efficient distraction, — and continued: “We will still run every day. I chose the beach on purpose, since the sand will help build your musculature faster, and will fix your poor resistance and the bad management of your breathing. However, we can jog under the moonlight for a while.”

She sighed in relief, but the feeling was short-lived as Azriel’s words carried on. “I was planning to train you in the forest above during the afternoon and first hours of the night. It was mainly to increase your fae-senses, as I noticed you’re neither using nor understanding them and their full potential. But for now, I guess we can use the forest to work on your aim and footwork and your fighting abilities overall.”

“Thank you, I—”

“It’s temporary,” he pointed out, interrupting her. “I’m far beyond the idea of forcing you to share painful memories, but I won’t overlook the morning jogs. The heat is crucial to further your resistance and you need to learn how to rely on your other senses in dark environments.” Azriel clicked his tongue. “And we will work twice as hard on your shifting.”

[Name] opened her mouth, bewildered at that sudden demand. “Why?”

“Because it’s useful, and because you’re scared of it,” Azriel answered flatly. “And I plan on leading you to challenging, Illyrian-based training trials once you’re ready for them — trials where paralyzing dread isn’t welcomed.”

Somewhere deep inside her being, the dragon shifted with certain laziness. [Name] could feel it waking up from a boring nap, opening its huge jaw in a yawn filled with anticipation; she could smell the ozone and sense the electricity within her nerves, bringing both an itch and a sudden soreness to her throat. She moved her head in denial. “What’s the problem with fear? It keeps us alive.”

It was a childish, borderline-innocent counter. [Name] had not a chance to win that argument, and her obstinacy was a meek attempt to postpone the inevitable. Azriel’s voice was low and menacing when he answered, staring deep into her eyes. “Fear is a lethal disease that spreads through one’s body like wildfire. By refusing to treat it, you are bound to burn until there’s nothing in your path but certain death.”

[Name] was, too, aware of it all. Yet, her entire life had been a gamble of fear-driven predictions. Logic came to her as a tool to avoid betrayals, disappointments and losses. A merchant had the need to be aware, to observe the patterns and fleets and harvests. It wasn’t merely about being great at smooth talking and forging promising partnerships — it was about perceiving the entire environment and betting on the most profitable option. [Name] wasn’t one to take unnecessary risks, to jump on hasted conclusions or to even indulge herself in the adrenaline of a particularly ambiguous choice. She never had the luxury to get rid of fear — not when she had been, for all her life, the very line that separated her sisters from a miserable life. But she stared at Azriel, the male who managed to be both logical and instinctive; bold and scheming; the spear and the shield; and she had no choice but to believe that the same could, eventually, apply to her.

“And how do I treat fear?” [Name] asked, filled with temptation.

Azriel’s grin stole the breath from both her lungs and crumbled the ground in which she stood. “By facing it.”

Not long after, both were back into the comfort of their hidden cave. [Name] took a fast, yet long-awaited cold bath before changing into clean clothes and returning to the entrance, encountering Azriel at their chess table, observing the scattered pieces from their latest game — one that [Name] had lost. Sensing her presence, whatsoever, he turned to face her, pointing to the board with his head.

“Your movements are mostly based on quick logic, and you have an aggressive and sharp playing style,” he began to say, his eyes drifting to her fallen Queen. “You’re also relentless, creative, smart: you see the entire board, and draw the potential from it.”

When Azriel clicked his tongue and proceeded to grin, she knew that the streak of compliments was over. “That is, of course, unless you’re playing quick chess.”

[Name] scoffed, but drew herself closer to the table regardless, being careful as not to brush past his wings as she did so. “Enlighten me then, how did you manage to beat me?”

“When you’re cornered, without the chance to step back and rely on careful pondering, your aggression turns into recklessness. Recklessness is equal to predictability — I could see your movements as clear as day because you were desperate to win, and desperate at the prospect of losing. It’s fear, isn’t it? You step into unknown territory and all of sudden, your instincts lose accuracy, your sharpness melts, and you turn into a shallow shell of wasted potential.”

She blinked, and the entire board took on a different meaning, the sudden shift in perspective making [Name] understand every grave error, every missed opportunity, and every tactic she could’ve used to defeat him. Under ideal circumstances, her style was ruthless. Where others chose to cower and preserve their pawns, she opted otherwise, sacrificing them to either create a trap or to further the effectiveness of her tactics. Because no one expected her to do such a thing, she, more often than not, won. But her aggressiveness was of no good when she felt threatened. [Name] remembered using similar strategies in real life: to sweet-talk suppliers and merchants into an alliance; to convince someone to do something they would rather not do; to financially demolish those who had wronged her family with the aid of regained fortune brought by Tamlin’s gold. When such matters were at hand, [Name] was not shy: she was relentless. Only once she decided to take a step back, to abandon her well-polished tactics and hide under frail defenses. It had costed, to both her and her family, everything.

It was briefly after her mother’s death. Grief had seemed to cloud her father’s senses, for he meant to bet their entire revenue on a single crusade. [Name], who had been studying the fairly new science of weather prediction, noted that the seas were wild at that time of the year — that storms were frequent and often devastating, — meaning that it would be unwise to bet it all, since that decision alone was bound to fail. [Name] knew that well, for that decision was taken close to her birthday, and the skies then were a cacophony of thunder, a terrifying spectacle of lightning. She brought her concerns to her father, and pushed the subject as much as she could; relentless, aggressive, obstinate. But her father had snapped at her, denied her insights and said that, were she to insist on the matter any further, he’d quit on making her his heir and find her a suitable husband at once.

Terrified at the idea of losing both her heirdom and freedom, [Name] left the man alone, catering as many jewels and monetary savings as she could, hiding it all under a loose wooden-made tile found at her bed foot. And the abandonment of her tactics had been fatal: she was right; they lost everything; and all of sudden, there was nothing ahead of her family but poverty and hunger and suffering.

“Next time we face one another in a quick-chess match,” Azriel began, tearing her away from her thoughts. “You’ll beat me.”

“You can’t be so sure,” she answered, moving her head in denial.

“You’re now well aware of where you went wrong, and I’m sure you memorized my playing tactics long ago. You, [Name], is a terrifying opponent to go against in a chess match. I’ll make sure that the same thing will be said about you in battle.”

Azriel motioned for them to leave the cavern, and once again, [Name] chose to shift into the comfortable form of a falcon, not quite yet prepared to face the wildfire of her fears. Considering the hellish hours under the Sun, the flight towards the forest was, sadly enough, a short one. Azriel had been the one to carry the bag where [Name] kept her sai blades and throwing knives, and soon, the two were at a small glade amidst the forest, surrounded by tall trees and the pleasant chirping of birds. At the center, three trunks had been cut to create targets for her aim training, hovering above the grass while supported and tied to thinner wooden-piles. Staring left, [Name] found a clean site, with nothing but wooden-swords plastered on the ground. That made her scoff.

“I can handle my blades,” she argued, and Azriel followed her glance.

“Swords, maybe,” he shrugged. “But sai blades are different weapons, less sharp on the edges and more lethal on their tips. They require complete, fast, and immaculate control of your fingers and are meant to be an extension of your forearms.” Azriel pointed to the wooden-swords. “They are great against spears and long blades, and once I’m done polishing your overall blade-like abilities, I’ll use those wooden-swords to teach you how to use the sai to split a real sword in two.”

Azriel moved toward her bag. “Why did you decide that I was suitable for the sais?”

“They’re fast and lethal, meant to be aimed at the weakest parts of one’s body: the throat, the face, the neck and the legs. You can only maneuver a sword by its handle, but the sais can also be held by the fingers at the wing base, allowing you to easily rotate it in your hand. Mor had mentioned you were better with small blades, but I figured that a dagger would be too dull.”

Azriel kneeled, and [Name] could sense a tinge of pride in his voice, showcasing how confident he was in his choice of weaponry. As though it was second nature, she caught herself observing him with unbreakable attention, noticing the pattern of his movements and even catching on the steady sound of his breathing. Perhaps that was why she was startled upon realizing that Azriel’s breath ceased for a second, stuck in his throat. His hands gripped on the set of throwing knives he had given her the year before, polished and sharp as new, but the leather by the handles was slightly sunk in, carrying the marks of her grip.

Azriel turned to her, as if shocked beyond himself, and his voice had lost all composure when he said: “You’ve been using them.”

Thin tendrils of shadows nestled themselves close to his ear, as if both teasing and reassuring their master. [Name] merely cursed the bright sunlight, as she had been missing the comforting presence of those shadows, somehow filled with personality. “Since the moment I laid my eyes on them.”

“Where?” He seemed to demand, trying — and failing, — to regain his composure. And though [Name] couldn’t quite understand what had brought that sudden wave of emotion on, she knew that this conversation was different than their previous ones: it was crucial for the character of their relationship from then on.

“There’s a small place in the mountains in Velaris. It’s hidden in the middle of the ridges, somehow untouched by the snow. I found it accidentally, and started to fly to it every morning. I used the throwing knives to practice my aim,” she motioned to the weapons, and Azriel cleared his throat, his eyes growing slightly bigger as if he seemed to connect the pieces of a long abandoned puzzle.

“So that’s where you’ve been going to?”

“How did you even know that I was flying around somewhere in the first place?”

Shock gave way to cockiness as Azriel pointed to himself with his index finger. “Spymaster.”

She scoffed. “And why were you spying on me then, Spymaster?”

The humor within his expression had vanished, his grin fading as though leaves flowing away with the breeze. “Chess-question?”

“Will you refuse to answer me otherwise?”

“I might.”

[Name] crossed her arms, slightly puzzled. If she pulled the right strings, tempting Azriel enough to throw him under a trap of their usual banters, it was possible for him to answer her either way, eager to have the last word. It would’ve been an ideal proposition: she’d get her answers without needing to waste a chess-question. But then again, what else would she ask? [Name] barely knew him, and further inquiries about what seemed obvious: his hands, his relationship with the Inner Circle, the many battles he had faced… she didn’t find proper to touch on those subjects — unless he mentioned it first.

Deciding at last that, since his reluctance seemed to be due to embarrassment, his answer would hardly be complicated to him. She shrugged, nodding to herself. He seemed amused whatsoever, and [Name] was slightly compelled to stick her tongue out to him before speaking: “Yes, that’s a chess-question.”

He made a noise that sounded a lot like a curse — one that would have her mother gasping and calling for the house’s guards, — and, shockingly, he seemed to hesitate. Azriel cleared his throat, avoiding her glance, and that alone made her grin widely.

“I hardly ever sleep, which I’m sure you can relate to,” she hummed, cocking her hip, enjoying that situation more than she believed possible. “And, like any fae that can use their enhanced senses…”

[Name]’s amusement faded at his stirring, and a scowl edged on her features as Azriel continued his speech.

“I was used to hearing some commotion near your window at specific hours,” immediately, she raised an eyebrow.

“Answers to chess-questions are supposed to be honest,” [Name] pointed out, and he stared at her as though she was the most annoying being that had ever stepped on the Land.

“I knew you weren’t well after the last battle against Hybern, but any attempt to speak to you seemed impossible. Not only because it was hard to figure out the place you chose to hide inside for the day, but also because I was prohibited.”

She grew quiet, guilt burning at the pit of her stomach. [Name] overused her abilities against him, constantly repeating words soaked in treacherous power whenever she caught the slightest glint of rebellion within his will. Back then, she was terrified — not to say that she wasn’t still, — and Azriel’s desire to be a recurrent presence was more than merely odd: it was a trigger to painful remembrances that the Cauldron did not erase, but rather increased.

As a mortal, [Name] was of no interest to immortal and powerful beings that, surely enough, had witnessed more than she could’ve ever dream of. Since a toddler, she has heard of how she was, undeniably, her mother’s daughter: they had the same nose; the same posture; the same sharp eyes and crude judgment; the same height; the same hair. [Name] was her mother’s doppelganger, a fact that neither pleased the mother nor the daughter. But [Name] was not blind to the woman’s beauty, and guessed that she, too, had some attractiveness within herself — a hunch that proved to be correct once poverty closed its talons in the Archerons’ calves and forced her to a life of prostitution. She figured that, to Feyre’s new friends, she was nothing beyond a beautiful face, just as she hadn’t been to the men that called upon her in the brothel.

However, as her conversations with the males deepened and shifted into political subjects, it was clear that in the very least, her intellect had managed to spike their curiosity more than her external appearance — something that hadn’t happened for years. But it was Azriel who respected her the most back then, who saw her as a fitting opponent, an equal in terms of strategizing and sacrificing, hence why his first reaction upon seeing her as a High-Fae stung the deepest. The usual respect had been replaced, and instead, he eyed her with both awe and a poorly hidden desire. The fae-body made her taller, her legs were longer and her limbs seemed lighter. She was well-aware of every change: from the — previously nonexistent, — brightness of her hair to the new length of her fingers, but [Name] couldn’t stand the prospect of no longer being Azriel’s friend-against-all-odds; one with whom he could speak in puzzles; to instead be turned into a possible notch in his belt. The Cauldron stole enough of her, and she refused to allow it to steal the very few precious memories she still held untouched. Commanding him was not her smartest idea, but at least, she told herself, kept him from desiring her the way those men had.

Seeing him now, free from her powers and with his self-will intact, [Name] could not help but find herself an antrum of stupidity. The predators from the brothel had never cared for her well-being, never bothered to observe her day-by-day moving patterns, not once gave her heartfelt gifts meant for her protection. It had been unfair to judge Azriel so deeply and in the long-term over a single second, a bewildered gaze sent her way in a moment of unprecedented change.

“I made some mistakes,” which both agreed was a feeble attempt at an apology, but [Name] wasn’t quite sure whether or not she would’ve been standing on that same spot, sharing that same conversation, if she hadn’t taken those pre-mentioned precautions regarding their proximity in the past year. Hence why, while she regretted the early judgment and the imposition of her voice, she couldn’t quite say the same about taking a step back from the overall partnership that came with the Inner Circle.

Noticing that he wouldn’t get any further atonement, Azriel held out a throwing knife by the blade, inciting her to grab its handle. [Name] complied and stood in position, the wooden-made target in her line of sight, although far in distance. Azriel had the other nine pieces in hand, his eyes locked on how she held herself.

“Clotho’s weekly reports weren’t enough to settle me down, so I started to track your movements,” he broke the silence at once, and motioned with his head towards the target. “Throw it.”

She raised the blade in her dominant hand, sighting down along the line of her arm. [Name] calculated the overall distance between the weapon and the target, aware that she’d need to aim it a little higher so as to compensate for the weight shift during the trajectory. A memory resurfaced, whispering its existence from the pits of her mind: a fourteen year-old Feyre, with fresh calluses on her fingers, extending the bowstring and releasing a makeshift arrow into the trunk of a tree. It was one of the rare mornings in which [Name] was sober enough — and not as sore as usual, — to observe her sister’s endeavors. Back then, she had been taken by a mix of both dread and pride as she noticed Feyre’s talents and aim, and paid her quiet company until it was time for her sister politely send her off, as [Name] couldn’t follow her inside the forest.

During those years, her life had turned upside down with nights spent inside a brothel: a disposable doll by the hands of men too eager and cruel and rich. She’d stumble back home with a bottle of cheap liquor, tired, humiliated and wishing to be anywhere but inside her own skin. [Name] would never drink it fully, for the alcohol helped them to light the miserable hearth when their stock of coal was scarce. Instead, she’d puke outside if that was necessary, place the half-empty bottle somewhere inside the kitchen, and throw her tired body on the extra mattress that she managed to gamble at the market. Elain was usually the one to wake her up when it was time for her to leave again, straight into the worst nightmare of a woman, and the one that she was forced to call a job. [Name] would bathe in cold water, not wanting to be a bother, and leave their house in a normal attire, since Moira — the headmistress of the brothel, — refused to have [Name] walking around the dirty streets in the silks she oh-so-kindly provided for her employees.

Keeping one’s mind clear was a borderline-impossible task when under the circumstances that [Name] had been during those terrible times, however, she had goals back then: to protect her sisters from the same fate; to make sure they’d have food and a roof over their heads. They were surprisingly simpler times, — that she did not miss whatsoever, — when [Name] knew no magic, trusted no fate, and instead focused entirely on her sisters’ safety.

Perhaps it was that sudden memory, combined with the absurdity of the present, that led her to such a strained throw, her blade losing both strength and speed as it landed far under the center of the target. Azriel made a noise that resembled a contained laughter and she gritted her teeth. The second after, however, he was in a similar position — only smoother and much more collected, — holding the handle of the throwing knife. [Name] hadn’t thrown knives with Azriel before, yet was unsurprised to see that his posture and grip — his thumb parallel to the blade — were perfect. He seemed nearly bored as he released the knife; it flew through the air and thumped into the central ring of the target. [Name] knew that if the blade had been slightly longer and he used more of his strength, the knife would have destroyed the wood, passing straight through the center and craving itself on the grass underneath.

“Sometimes I’d go check on you myself, other times I’d ask my shadows. You always left early; a small, lonely swallow soaring through the morrow’s sky; and returned past after midday, taking on the shape of a gyrfalcon,” he stated, offering her yet another throwing knife. “May I?”

He briefly motioned with his hands towards her hips and waist. She nodded, her eyes glued to the target as she sucked in a breath. When Azriel first touched her, correcting her posture, the Archeron had expected a somewhat sudden wave of terror and disgust; she expected her mind to make her travel back to the rooms of the brothel, with its exaggerated silks adorning the walls and the red-colored lightning granted by the candles. However, [Name] felt none of that. Instead, what startled her the most was to ascertain that she grew unused to another’s touch. When had been the last time she had felt the warmth of one’s body against her own? [Name] had hugged her two younger sisters after their father’s burial, but that had happened nearly a year ago: almost three-sixty-five days since she had dared to challenge the boundaries of the mental scarring left by the time spent within the walls of the brothel.

It took her yet another minute to understand what was different in his touch. It was brief, filled with respect and care, and she flushed with embarrassment and guilt, remembering how reckless she had been upon her judgment of him; how stupid she had been to command him to leave her alone, to place Azriel under the same category of the men [Name] had once laid with. Then, when he moved to fix her elbow and his fingers grazed over the uncovered skin of her wrist, she noticed the texture of his touch: unique in its own way, scarred from the fire and callused from years of sword-training. [Name] couldn’t have confused his hands with another’s even if she wanted to, and that fact alone brought not discomfort but reassurance, as if his hands were an anchor to the present, a sign that she had much to overcome and wouldn’t give a single step forward if all she could do was stare back.

Azriel’s touch didn’t linger whatsoever. Once her posture was fixed, he pointed towards the target. “I’ve heard from Mor that you were skilled — much more skilled than your last throw evidenced. Clear your head, focus on the target, otherwise you’ll be as good as dead on an actual confrontation. Again.”

[Name] took a step back from the invisible throwing line. She wasn’t entirely self-taught in terms of knife throwing and managing small blades in general: the Archeron once had a close friend, a lifetime ago, who made sure to train her the best he could. But after the War and the biting loneliness that accompanied it, [Name] thought it’d be profitable to improve that particular set of abilities. Over the course of a year, she spent hours of her day with blades in her hands, throwing it again and again, watching how the repetition and strength would split the wood, similar to the shattering of nerves and bones. There was only so much one could go in their training while relying on past lessons and step-by-step techniques found in books, but she managed well enough. [Name]’s step back was slowly taking on a more direct trajectory — rather than a diagonal one, — ever since she began to try and be ambidextrous. Her arm went back before she moved it forward; the knife flew from her opened hand as if it was a falcon whose leashes had been ripped. The weapon soared toward the target, slicing the air in a steadier trajectory, and thudded close to its heart, less than two centimeters from where Azriel’s own knife had landed.

“When I first started training in Windhaven, I was older and much less experienced than soldiers who were five, sometimes six years younger than me,” Azriel began, his pace relaxed as he reached the target and plunged the throwing knives from where they were craved on the wood. “Knowing that my abilities weren’t far beyond those of a kid of six vexed me. So, I practiced harder — and by myself, — after every training session. I thought I was being smart, doing great.”

His back was facing her, and [Name] caught on a scent of something uncommon, noticing with certain startle that her senses had opened themselves to Azriel’s hidden emotions; that what she smelt wasn’t from a native flower of the forest or even a curious animal, observing from afar: it was him, somewhat vulnerable, telling a fact from his past that, under different circumstances, could only have been uncovered through a chess-question. So, the Archeron took note of every shift in intonation; every word; every fidget of his scarred fingers; drinking in that sudden proximity, finding that she was starving for meaningful connections after an entire year of self-isolation.

“When Devlon caught me, he scowled. He told me then that the stupidest thing to do as a beginner was to train without guidance,” Azriel turned, and just as he had done before, he held the blade and extended the handle towards her. “Training by oneself serves for a single thing: enhancing your errors. If you’re not well-instructed, lapses in your stance will go unnoticed; those lapses will turn into vices; and vices are not only lethal, but difficult for a warrior to abandon.”

[Name] grabbed the handle, closing her fingers around it. Soon enough, Azriel’s hand covered hers as he corrected her grip — thumb facing the blade. He raised her elbow, straightened her shoulders, and lightly kicked her left foot, instructing her to open a further distance between her feet.

“Your arms are over-bent,” at her puzzled expression, he let out the first smile in almost half-an-hour, and [Name] was shocked to notice how badly she had missed the sight of it. “To throw a knife and land it on the center, it’s crucial to raise your aim a little bit so as to compensate for the loss of momentum caused by the weight shift, you caught that right. However, what you also noticed, at least subconsciously, is that your aim is more precise when you bend your arm more than needed. That unnecessary arc is meant to compensate for the fact that you’re not using your strength correctly, hence why your throws need this extra boost.”

“And that’s a vice,” [Name] pointed out, to which he nodded. The Archeron thought about his initiative to share more of himself — no chess-questions needed, — and sighed as her parted lips shone the light on one of the secrets kept inside the coffins of her chest. “I received just a brief training in knife throwing, and I’m guessing the one to teach me hadn’t caught on that vice.”

“Mor would’ve noticed,” he rebuked, tilting his head ever-so-slightly.

“It wasn’t Mor.”

That caught him off-guard, his previous relaxed stance grew more wary as he seemed to ponder his next words. “You were trained by someone else?”

“Yes, some years ago,” she muttered with her eyes glued to the target. [Name] caught on another odd scent, and failed to assign it to an emotion.

“Who?”

The easy lies came to mind all at once, false-hearted words meant to deceive those who had dared to request an answer whose implications she was not comfortable with. From training received from her father’s sailors to winning a bet against a talented fae-huntress and having to fight a bear for the loser’s most favored dagger, [Name]’s lies ventured from realistic to absurd, each suitable to specific situations.

But for once, the truth presented itself with more vigor, and she decided to oblige it.

“Some fairly stubborn pirates were stealing provisions and taxes sent to the Queens by sea, so they gathered parts of their armies and scattered them across the shores of the Mortal Lands, one being close to my family’s old village. I was twenty at the time, made an unexpected friendship with three soldiers, and one taught me some nice tricks.”

Azriel grew silent for a second, and his thoughts were a chaotic turmoil, flirting with her senses as she tried her best to keep them out, not daring to read his mind. “What happened to them?”

“Two decided to fight alongside Jurian during the War and are now part of his troops,” she answered, her tone growing sharper. Her scent must’ve been a strong indicator of the unraveling of the third one’s story — and oh, how she envied the Spymaster for being able to tell them apart, — and soon enough, Azriel dropped the subject.

“Remember that your mind must be clear while handling a blade,” he told her instead.

[Name] noticed the implication underneath: forget we ever talked about that. And so, she nodded, filled with relief. Her arm was pulled back; Azriel corrected her small vice with a push of his fingers. [Name] stabilized her breath, calculating the distance; Azriel stepped aside. The Archeron released the knife; it sliced through the air, carrying a strength she was still unused to using, and landed on the center of the target, just where Azriel’s previous blade had been, shattering wood and paint until the handle was the only thing stopping it from going through the target entirely. The male at her side grinned, and she figured that at last, the idea of taking profit of the abilities and magic granted by her fae-body didn’t sound entirely too bad.

She lost their third match, but surprisingly enough, wasn’t bothered by it.

general notes: me when I’m a pathological liar that swore she wouldn’t take too long to release the new chapter and ended up taking too long anyway. I wish I had those cool stories found in AO3 like: I robbed a bank and went to jail or I fought with my mother over a racoon and was homeless for three months, but my life isn’t that exciting lmao I’m just a slow writer!! anyways, please reblog it and tell me your thoughts on this chapter. lots of love <3

taglist [comment to be added]: @nyotamalfoy @arilindemann @bsenpai @rachelnicolee @piceous21 @forsiriussake @sassybluebird @esposadomd

#acomaf #acotar #acowar #azriel #azriel imagine #azriel imagines #azriel x reader #acosf #acotar x reader #azriel / reader #azriel x you #azriel shadowsinger #sjmaas #sjm books #a court of thorns and roses #azriel x y/n

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azulyrae · 7 months

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❛ —— Requests are open!

Since I have a single long fanfiction on-going at the moment, I thought it’d be good for me to open requests and write smaller stories.

Every single information about the fandoms that I write for can be found in my pinned post. I write mainly for literature characters and if you want me to write something about a non-listed character, please ask away!

Right now, I’m more focused in writing about characters written by Sarah J. Maas, (ACOTAR, Throne Of Glass, Crescent City), Leigh Bardugo (the Grishaverse), and Cassandra Clare (The Shadowhunter Chronicles). But that doesn’t mean I am opposed to write other stuff.

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azulyrae · 7 months

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I loved the second chapter! They way you wrote their dynamic honestly reminded me of Azriel and Gwyn; them challenging each other and their banter, I loved it so much. I laughed multiple times when reading, especially when she perched on his neck. ps, you should write your own novel one day!💘

Oh my God, thank you 😭 this honestly made my day, I am so so glad that you enjoyed their dynamic so far! Would love to write a novel of my own eventually and this truly gave me a boost of confidence, thank you, thank you. 🩷

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azulyrae · 7 months

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❛ —— 𝐈𝐈 : The Spy’s Gambit.

after a long year — one lost due to grief and isolation and non-spoken ache — [name] archeron had finally been granted the awaited opportunity to flee from the constricting borders of velaris. what she did not predict would happen, whatsoever, was the insistence of a ruthless — asshole — spymaster on demolishing the barriers of her lone fortress and testing the limits of her powers and patience, during the single travel needed to reach their training destination.

past the illyrian mountains and west from rask, the shifter had two well-stabilished objectives in mind: one, train with diligence to finally move towards her own goals in the mortal lands; and two, try not to permanently disfigure azriel’s face with a scratch of her jaguar claws. five minutes in, and the oldest sister was sure that the latter would be the most difficult of her tasks.

the second chapter of onyx sword of sorrow.

check the original post to be aware of the trigger warnings.

azriel/fem!archeron sister. reader with mind control & the ability to shapeshift.

pinterest board / spotify playlist.

word-count: 14K.

“We felt the imprisonment of being a girl.”

— The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides.

The Gods whistled a melodic tone. One to carry a whiff of fate and purpose; one to invade a girl’s lung and fill it with her first breath into the living. The soft whisper of the divine converges with the unknown; no longer a benediction, but a sacrilegious bawl of confusion and grief. For a girl is born in a man’s world, and that is perhaps the cruelest form of torture offered by the Gods.

The room’s shutters were trembling from the strength of the boisterous storm. The wind howled, a treacherous and machiavellian whisper, an omen of disaster. Lightning brought sudden brightness to the obscure sky, and there was no natural occurrence so alluring, yet so violent. Bolts were but a fast-paced concentration of lethal energy, tearing and clawing and parting the unaware clouds.

The woman laid on the linen-sheets, coated in sweat and blood. Her babe’s voice matched the screams of the storm, challenging it with every breath. Maids moved with trained-agility, clamping the umbilical cord; cleaning bloodied legs with a white cloth, until one could no longer see a single tone other than bright red; and opening the curtains so as the father could hold the bawling babe closer to the light. All around her, there was noise and movement. Yet, she could not tear her eyes from the vile thing that had clawed through her, slicing her open as a lighting bolt would to a cloud. Her husband swooned, whispering a gibberish she did not care enough to decipher.

“The Goddesses weep,” an old maid whispered. “A girl is born, and the skies are grieving.”

But she was wrong. The storms were not a symbol of grief, they were the purest image of violent rejoice. It shouted and celebrated for it had observed the birth of a babe meant for chaos and disappointment. The mother was disgusted, cursing the natural spell that fell upon a room whenever one witnessed a birth. No other soul could see the same as she did, all blinded by the supposed wonder of a newborn’s cries. But the mother saw past the veil. Rather than a girl, she had given birth to a vessel of malice, a child of deceit and destruction. The storm would not have matched the babe’s shouts otherwise; the wind would not have answered; the husband would not have forgotten about his wife — bloodied and vulnerable — if not for the treachery of the child.

“She’s beautiful,” he whispered, cradling the uproarious creature close to his chest. The mother had hoped for the monster to bite and pierce the father’s heart, showcasing the true horror of her spirit. Perhaps, such wishes did point to malice — only it was not her daughter’s, but hers instead.

“She’s not,” was her matter-of-fact answer. “No babe is ever born beautiful.”

The man came closer, if only to defend his daughter’s honor. She loathed him then, for allowing himself to be stolen from her opened arms, straight into the unconditional love of fatherhood; loathed the child, too, for she had dared to claim him; and pitied herself, for being a victim of a tragedy no other being could understand. The mother had spent nine months whispering to her growing belly, singing and welcoming the kicks. In her heart, with all of her motherly instincts, she knew it was a boy she carried. Surely, that miscalculation of nature had murdered her brother; surely, the doctors had missed the occurrence where her boy was discarded and eaten by his monstrous twin-sister. There was no other proper explanation, if not that one.

“Oh, but ours is,” insisted her husband, a stranger. He forced the babe into her arms, caressing the crown of the creature’s head. He did not care whether the mother remained in pain; whether she was feeling tired and dirty and in terrible need of rest and clean sheets. His eyes remained glued to that devious thing. “See the strength of her grip? The curling of her lip, the form of her nose? She is a made copy of yours.”

The woman shuddered. Was there a greater insult than being compared to one you despised? She had wanted to shout, demand them all to leave her chambers, cause a scandal and give their servants a lifetime worthy of gossip. However, the little serpent clung to her, and she had a strong grip indeed. In awe, the woman found herself pressing the babe closer to her chest, touching the skin as soft as the silk-sheets that she bloodied during childbirth.

The presence was compelling, demanding. “Nurse me,” it seemed to shout. “Feed me,” it cried. “Love me,” it begged. The mother spent an entire year doing as she was expected and coerced to do. The babe was fed from her breast, regardless of the nipping and pain, sipping the milk along occasional droplets of her mother’s blood; received tender care and warm clothing, constant baths and cradling whenever she cried during the night — which she did, constantly. However, the thing the woman had never managed to do was the latter. She could not love that eager and violent parasite, regardless of the motherhood instincts and the sayings that she had given birth to a physical copy of hers. The creature stole a year of her already decaying youth before it lost the taste for the maimed breast. She would no longer allow it to seize another single thing.

The mother conquered a second pregnancy briefly two years after that disastrous disappointment, yet, she had never quite mastered the art of ignoring the small serpent and its midnight cries. Despite it all, her firstborn was the one she could not abide to watch out for. The same did not apply to those who came after whatsoever, for the woman had three more babies — three more little girls — and failed to love them at all, as if the small, twisted amount she could give had been entirely devoted to her child of chaos.

Following-in-suit to the behavior of her firstborn, the three kicked and moved within her, but this time, she was much more prepared, and learned not to love them too soon. Motherly love was the death of logic and boundaries; it was an open door for obsession and worry, and girls were undeserving of that, for the gender inequality had long stolen the heirdom from their grips, and the mother refused not to bear an heir of her own.

[Name] had cried for two entire years. No one could understand the reason quite well. Overall, she was quite a spoiled babe, resting on a gold-made cradle and receiving professional and qualified assistance, hence the general confusion. However, when the moon grew wide in the pitch-black sky and her first sister was born, [Name] had stopped crying. It was as though she had granted herself enough time to share her discontentment, to allow the conflicted feelings to pour from her eyes and form small lakes of crystal-clear tears. Crying would no longer do her well, not when her sister had a pain of her own to be mended. Twenty-four years later, [Name] did not manage to find her tears still, for they remained buried underneath the soil of her deepest hidden fears and failures.

Perhaps, [Name] had but used all of her tears when she did not need them; perhaps, she should have stocked a few before the damage became unrecoverable; for, as of now, alone in a house she could not learn to feel comfortable in, her eyes remained dry.

Well, not entirely dry.

[Name] cursed out loud as she went to grab a white and clean cloth, applying pressure on her closed eyelids, tearing up from the awfully strong stench of the toxins she had been experimenting with. Months prior, she had received an invitation from her sister. She was missed, said the letter delivered to her by Clotho. And in all honesty, [Name] was entirely aware of that fact; of how her absence was a dagger twisting inside her closest sister’s heart; of how badly Feyre had been hurting. [Name] couldn’t do a thing against her own numbness, her silence and lack of expression; she didn’t wish to strike a conversation with a single soul, but Feyre had called, and [Name] would always answer.

Though the female was barely there, her sister did not quit: they sat together for hours in her studio as she finished a painting, commenting on her routine in order to encourage [Name] to do the same. Between the humming reverberating on the porcelain of [Name]’s warm teacup, and her mute nods and forced smiles, Feyre had caught onto something and ended their brief encounter, no longer sending letters, as [Name] knew the youngest began to feel as though she was a bother.

When [Name] left her sister’s newest home — seeing patterns of her in every wall and furniture and color — she was fighting back tears, cursing herself for the consequences of the overbearing and paralyzing sadness that came after a particular morning, when she woke up with enough time to ponder on her purpose in that new life, and realized she had none. Although [Name] refused to linger her glance on the pieces her sister painted, they gave her a small thread of hope, an olive branch to be offered in the future. Throughout her small talk and monologues, Feyre did complain that she was struggling with a specific painting of her mate in the Summer Court. She scurried through every shop in Velaris, and still couldn’t find an ink with the exact shade of violet of his eyes when the sun shone on it. [Name] didn’t quite understand the rest — something about how she couldn’t create the colors herself because it was impossible to get it right — but what she did decide was to try and give her sister that small gift.

Of course, that proved to be a hassle.

[Name] decided that the conventional path would serve her for nothing. Feyre was a fantastic and experienced artist, combining already-made ink and trying to get a result through red and blue and droplets of white had led her sister nowhere. [Name] would not succeed where her sister had failed, not when art, and many other matters, were concerned. Of course, she resorted to someplace else, traveled to the inside of a place that had never once left her alone: science.

Chemistry, to be more precise. It was a somewhat unknown concept, poor in substantiation and mostly filled with theories that, on their hand, inspired and fed countless experiments. Experiments that she meant to learn from in order to conduct her own; a path that, of course, was infertile and leading nowhere.

[Name] had been tied to Velaris. Her departure was inconceivable: the barriers kept the female in place, regardless of the animal form she chose to overfly it. Her options, of course, grew limited to the scarce flora of the mountains, hence her constant flights of exploration. She found wild red roses and blue tiger-lilies; squashed the petals and placed them on separate glass-jars, filled with an alcoholic solution she created with sugar, yeast and water. After that, things grew slightly more complicated. [Name] calculated the amount of petals and alcohol to create paints with different tones of blue and red, started to mix them together and attempted to achieve the said variation of violet. Once that failed her, [Name] started to collect resin from the trees, create her own solution of water and propylene that would serve as a solvent, and finally, add the pigment.

Resin, solvent, pigment. She had been creating ink after ink ever since, her eyes wet and her fingers scarred from the constant contact with acid; her limbs tired from the everyday transformations of her fae body to the body of a gyrfalcon; and yet, the violet desired by her sister was never found.

After months into that search filled with failing attempts, [Name] noticed that she had lost her reasons. The process of finding that exact shade of violet was no longer an olive branch to be offered to Feyre: it was a reason for her to remain awake in the night — to fight off the sleep that often came with nightmares from times she did not wish to remember. From overflying the mountains in the morning; to finding the spot she claimed to train her throws with daggers; to reading and studying at the library in the afternoon, weirdly mourning the absence of Bryaxis, the monster that kept her company before the war; to creating paint from dusk to morrow, repeating the entire process every single day; those were all a well-manufactured web of excuses.

[Name] did not wish to be left alone with her thoughts. She first tried it during her father’s burial — the one she refused to attend, deciding to be by herself instead — and it did not end well. Reminiscing was a troubling effort, for the previous battle was a blur. [Name] could remember overflying the field in the gyrfalcon form, dodging the attacks of the dark faeries; she could remember being in the middle of it, too far from Feyre, even further from Elain and Nesta; she could remember her father arriving with four well-familiar ships and men-at-arms to reinforce their armies; she could remember Hybern’s hiding fleet that had followed them close, with at least six thousand soldiers.

Then, came the rage.

Her sisters were fighting Hybern: Feyre was trying to connect with the Cauldron that stole everything from them; her allies were about to be faced with an unfair battle at the bay, and she could do nothing to prevent it. Once again, she found herself being an useless burden, unable to protect her sisters, regardless of her efforts and training; regardless of her wits and her words; she was never enough. The poverty, Feyre being taken away by Tamlin, her sisters being thrown inside the Cauldron, Elain being kidnapped right under her nose, were all but some of the most crucial moments in which she failed them. Despite the things [Name] did to give them comfort, the people she murdered, the lives she financially ruined, the men she was touched by, all for her sisters to suffer still, to grieve and to face horrors [Name] had, too, failed to shield them from.

Rage brought forward a boisterous roar. The clouds darkened, thunder competed against the deafening shout of a vengeful and seemingly-wounded animal. [Name] moved her head down and saw nothing but a terrifyingly huge and fast shadow, flying towards the open sea. She felt her throat burn, her jaw oddly heavy as she opened it, and then lightning: pure chaotic energy, mortal and devastating, passed through her mouth and teeth with yet another roar. It took a second for her mind to wrap around the fact that the beast — that thunderous and large creature — was her. After that, she was led by rage and instinct, her mind a fog that couldn’t process the events through the lenses of the creature.

Tapping into the dragon’s core — trying to understand it — terrified her. The feelings that it brought, the chaos and glimpses that it gave her, it was all too much. The treacherous act of repression against the dragon inside had brought her immense sadness. [Name] had watched as Feyre met her happiness, protected by a male that loved her beyond himself; had watched as Nesta moved out, her coping mechanisms against pain being so similar to the ones [Name] herself had once resorted to; had watched as Elain tried to make for a comfortable home in that new life, filled with the support of Feyre’s new family. [Name] had watched as the world — and everyone around her — moved quite too fast, while she was stuck in the same spot, sitting alone in the cold as the realization came to mind: she no longer had use to them.

[Name], who had ceased to weep when her first sister was born; [Name], who had been raised to provide for them through the heritage of their father’s business; [Name], who had abandoned herself and her innocence to a brothel so that her sisters could have food and proper clothes; [Name], whose life had been dedicated to give them comfort, to shield them from misery, was no longer necessary. Her task had been gladfully taken from her shoulders, and [Name] couldn’t help but wish that she had clung to it a little tighter.

But then, realization came: she was no longer required to aid her sisters, but there were still people left in the mortal lands that had once relied on her. Perhaps, if she tied the business left open, if she checked on their financial situation after her departure, that would give her closure. Hence to say, Azriel’s proposition was the whiff of summer-air that caressed her skin where the cold previously hurt. He was her getaway from the suffocating barriers of Velaris, from the acid air of her room, from the shackles of her thoughts. The male was freedom.

Or so she thought.

She had waited for his second knock for an entire week. If their matters were as urgent as he stated, then surely he meant to be his annoying-prick-self first thing on the morrow, barging in with that infuriating grin and the banters she secretly missed. But he vanished — literally. [Name] wasn’t sure why she had expected otherwise.

The sight of their piled gifts was a knife that she refused to turn inside herself; it was the excruciating pain of knowing one had been a disappointment to others, that one had failed to grab the hands of those who were extending it. However, she did grab Azriel’s gifts, presuming it was a clear message of her intentions. The male gave her a weapon she had no experience with; surely, if [Name] retrieved it from the pile, he’d understand that small peace offering of hers and they’d grow closer yet again. Because, regardless of her words and her poison, [Name] did value their once long held conversations. Azriel had been the one to strategize with her, he had been the one to search for her in the crowds, he had been the one to sit with her through a whole night after Elain’s kidnapping, and after sleep stopped coming to [Name] entirely.

He was a friend that she abruptly pushed away and that, yet, insisted on fighting against her voice. Keeping his gift close to her chest should have been enough to drive him nearer, but perhaps she had been too arrogant in her thoughts. For months, [Name] witnessed his never-ending struggle against the chains of her power, his obstination to go against her orders, to offer an aiding hand, and for months, he failed. Until, as it seemed, he stopped trying.

The worst, most devastating part of it all, was that at the time, she wasn’t sure whether his sudden absence was deliberate or a direct consequence of her power. Azriel fought against her speech for such a long time that when he ceased, [Name] couldn’t tell if he lost that battle, or free-willingly walked away. She had presumed it wasn’t the latter, no one managed to get rid of her treacherous grip once they were caught by it. Hence why she loathed the Cauldron the most, it gave her not a power but a death sentence, the living proof that her mother was right all along. [Name] was not a living being, she was a slick force of chaos that used her speech to manipulate and cheat and lie. The female could not control that aspect of herself, therefore, she failed to control the intensity with which her commands affected those around her.

She did attempt to learn more about their extent and whether the voice intonation was of any importance when it came to her power’s usage. However, she reached no conclusion. It was a concept so simple, yet so maleficent. The results would always be the same, regardless of external speech factors; a whisper of hers had the ability of convincing a powerful foe to throw himself off a cliff, so long as he heard her and understood the language she spoke in. Cruel, dishonest, menacing. The power capable of annihilating an entire army, of sending previous allies against one another. The damage it could cause when combined to her shapeshifting was incalculable, yet the thought did not reassure her regarding her strength. Instead, it showed [Name] that in a world of capable warriors and diplomats and leaders, she didn’t fit in a single of them; she was the poison mingled with wine and ministered to those who were fair, she was the least trustworthy, the least honored one — she was a monster.

[Name] had spent nine years of her life wishing that someone would be merciful enough to attend her request to kill her. And apparently, now she was fated to spend the rest of her miserable and immortal existence commanding the acts of every sentient being around her, while actively wishing that at least one refused to obey her. [Name] had been strong ever since she was a small toddler, arguing for the privilege of having her hair combed first. Even then, she had always been prepared to fight for what she wanted or judged correct. Rather than using brute force, [Name] relied on the efficiency of well-aimed words and smiles and praises thrown at those who valued it; she was a little girl on a stage, playing countless parts and having countless masks to please whoever was near in order to achieve her ambitions. It was who she was at her core, regardless of her mother’s thoughts on the matter. [Name] didn’t know how to live, if not by fighting to convince others to respect her stance and thoughts, and deem her a valuable ally. And suddenly, there was no need for her to pick such battles, because the fighting spirit could be stolen from everyone else, if only she desired as such.

During her darkest times, it was the thrill of a debate that managed to keep her alive, the soothing adrenaline of emerging victorious from a purchase. When the touch of men grew too harsh or too violent, when their hunger and greed tore her soul apart, the solace of her being could be found in a well-balanced chess match played against herself or other activities that she considered challenging. Upon noticing that it was no longer required of her to strive, to fight, the world around her grew null. The Cauldron stole too much, in the process of giving her too much.

There was no point in entering a match, when one knew they already won. Whatever were the strategies she offered, the propositions she gave, the arguments she spoke, so long as she triggered her voice correctly, they would abide by. The prospect of their lack of opposition, of counter-arguments, was exasperating. The Priestesses simply nodded when she commanded them to grant her access to prohibited lanes. Her conversations ceased to be interesting. Even an ancient monster, one feared for it represented the concept of nightmares itself, felt victim to her commands. There wasn’t a single being residing in that world that [Name] failed to convince.

Where, before, others around her bent to the strength of her will, the wittiness of her words, now, they just bent. She didn’t need to argue anymore, didn’t need to fight. The very reason for her euphoria regarding life was gone. [Name] had endured enough pain — metaphorical and physical — survived enough aches, to understand that the loss of what the Cauldron had claimed from her was something she could never recover from.

Yet, the most devastating acknowledgement came when she caught herself relying on such a curse. Quickly enough, the comfort of immediately having whatever she needed became addicting. Whenever she grew tired of an argument, of the debate to convince one to do something she wished for, [Name] crawled back to the comfortable bushes of control. At first, it was impossible. The words that fell from her lips were poisonous, even when she didn’t mean to order, even when it was barely a suggestion — a request — whoever heard would give her what she wished.

[Name] found herself slipping into madness, stumbling through darkness, until she understood that the curse that fell upon her might as well be the opening key for her biggest punishment. She stole a mirror from a nearby room and started to practice on herself, over and over, hour after hour, the female stared at her own reflection and polished the control of her capabilities. Her suggestions were, again, suggestions, her voice would only be harmful if so she wished to. [Name] granted herself the privilege of speaking with others without fearing to accidentally command them; yet, the more time she spent with herself and her thoughts and her frustration, the less she wished to interact with the external world.

Worst came to her when, during one of her experiments — while Nesta and the reminiscent parties of the Inner Circle had traveled to a Council with the other High-Lords — [Name] accidentally exploded her bathtub. Cassian barged in, quick as the wind and as armed as he could, fearing an intromission, only to find [Name] all covered in soot. He had helped her clean the entire thing — even though both knew the House of Wind could magically do it by itself — and all in the while, they talked. First, it was of politics and the upcoming war, followed by their Court’s plans, the Cauldron, [Name]’s trauma and even a small bit of his own. The commander was emotionally smart and entirely non-judgmental. The female relied on him and his council, watched as a small friendship started to bloom, and ended up teaching him how to polish his chess abilities until he advised they should get some sleep.

It was a pleasant day, one [Name] hadn’t experienced in months. Yet, the fear accompanied by what she confided was paralyzing, so much that she commanded Cassian to forget about it all: what she told him, the explosion, their chess matches. It didn’t matter that he, too, had told her personal things of his past; it didn’t matter that it was unfair of her to keep his secrets while actively denying him the rights to be reminded of her own ones; in that moment, she meant only to keep herself safe, to keep the mask of the unshakeable sister intact. And so, she controlled him, stole his free-will, and was met with no opposition.

[Name] found herself unable to face the general ever since, yet it seemed as though he hadn’t forgotten entirely, or, in the very least, his instincts and care weren’t as laid-back as they were before that day. Perhaps her commands lost strength if her will wasn’t as strict; perhaps a traitorous part of her wished that her voice would fail to work and, as a consequence, her grip wasn’t as strong. Regardless, she hasn’t used that power ever since. It was awful enough to have a blood-lust dragon residing inside her heart, [Name] didn’t need to be met with more trouble. Besides, she had a problem of bigger importance in mind: the reason why Azriel was immune.

[Name] left her bedroom, swiftly moving towards the library in one of the many alternative routes she found efficient when it came to avoiding the two Illyrian warriors that once insisted on checking up on her. Upon entering, she waved at Clotho, noticing the deep purple color on her fingertips. The priestess placed a white tissue on the counter, and [Name] moved to grab it, beginning to scrub her skin clean.

“You’re early today,” she wrote out curiously. In fact, she was. Usually, at this hour, [Name] would be at her training spot, in a secluded space amidst the furthest mountain range. But, because she wasn’t sure when Azriel meant to call her for their training, [Name] chose not to leave the House of Wind at all, fearing to miss his knocks.

“I’ve been adjusting my routine,” she lied. As insane as it sounded, the female could almost feel the huff that Clotho meant to give her. [Name] didn’t smile at her — she rarely did smile at all nowadays — but she did attempt to give the priestess a reassuring glance.

When [Name] was first introduced to the immensity of that library, Clotho had been the one to welcome her. At the time, granting her access to that space seemed to be Rhysand’s way of offering [Name] an agreement of peace, one that she willingly accepted, for the amount of books and knowledge and possibilities inside that place was more than enough. She didn’t yet speak at the time, fearing that her voice might come out as a command, and she could still remember Clotho’s handwritten note, slipped inside her pocket. When [Name] had found it, she almost wept.

This is a safe place. You needn’t fear nor cower from it. We’re all females.

Females who had suffered from fates similar to [Name]’s. Females who understood the invisible mind scarring — and physical scarring, too — left by the worst a male could offer. Females who would never judge, for they shared her hurt, and fought the same battles. She had never stopped visiting since. Whether it was to read her fair amount of books, to share a moment of silence, or to, at least when it was still possible, spend time with Bryaxis. [Name] found solace inside that place, and strived not to bother whoever resided in it.

Quietly, the female made her way to the corridor reserved to the almost untouched books that were written in the ancient language. At first, the thought of mastering it seemed absurd and ambitious. The language itself was filled with trials and ambiguous phrasing — [Name] had studied countless alphabets throughout her brief mortal life, and was still left aghast at the complexity of them all. However, moving past her initial desperation, determined to spend her time with activities that could be of use in the future, [Name] began to learn through association. The ancient language was somewhat close to the Glacolithic, Runic, and Ogham alphabets: three written-patterns found in excavations and searches by the mortals from the continents beyond the great ocean. Of course, [Name] didn’t speak any of those, but she did study certain translations before, when life was easier and she had a purpose.

Afterwards, the task grew slightly less demanding, though it remained tiresome. [Name] had to resort to tactics from her childhood and teen-years, in which she would read a text in a foreign language, circle the words she did not have knowledge of, rewrite them in a separate paper and then proceed to search about their meaning. Before the war, she had Bryaxis to scoff at her naivety, correct her terrible pronunciation, and guide her through some phrases. Overall, even if it refused to do a thing more — for it enjoyed watching her exasperation — the creature proved to be quite an useful teacher. However, as of now, with Bryaxis long lost, [Name] had to work with her already-gained knowledge, which was maddening. If she was even a little more advanced, she would’ve been able to read a specific book that promised to solve more than half her problems: The Binding Magic of the Fae and Other Rare Talents. When the Archeron moved towards the shelf, she scoffed at the said book’s cover and grabbed the one next to it instead: Fables and Myths for Unruly Children.

[Name] sat at the closest table, searching for the page in which she had stopped reading the day before. Because materials written in the ancient language were rare — and such few understood it, since they lacked the basis [Name] herself had been privileged enough to get from Bryaxis — the fae gathered whichever book or text or diary they could find, so long as the pages had the complicated alphabet of those who came before them. Childishly, they believed that every book was academic, which led them to retain it, all offering the same excuse: one day, they would learn the ancient language; one day, they would get to read and understand the pages of the piece they found. Of course, they never did. Hence why, in that very moment, [Name] was finishing to read the fable of a very stupid Queen that ignored the warnings of a witch and ended up giving birth to a dragon, rather than a child.

“That’s such a terrible moral,” she muttered to herself, suddenly being reminded of why she had decided to stop reading that book in the first place.

Mid-sentence, she felt his presence without a single failure of a heartbeat. When [Name] was yet a mortal, Azriel found it amusing to arrive unannounced, hiding in the shadows until she passed by, appearing behind her with a shit-eating grin that only grew when she jumped out of her skin and cursed him out loud. The Spymaster managed to pull that prank thrice before she grew used to it. [Name] would never fail to spot his figure, regardless of how well-hid he was: the shadows around him were different, the air hung with an odd electricity whenever the male was near, and she could guess his position based on instinct alone.

It wasn’t a surprise to raise her eyes from the book and catch sight of him sitting on the chair in front of her. Azriel moved his head to take a glimpse of the text at hand and frowned upon noticing the language in which it was written.

“I didn’t know you were allowed to this part of the library,” he stated matter-of-factly, waiting for a confirmation that she refused to give him: I wasn’t, until I commanded them to believe otherwise.

“It’s been seven days,” [Name] retorted, ignoring his previous point. She closed the book of fables and myths with unnecessary strength, cringing at the loud sound it made.

“You’ve been counting. Eager, much?”

His taunt made her blood boil — although she did ignore the fact that her cheeks felt hotter all of the sudden. Azriel’s grin, and the confident manner with which he placed his hands on his nape, pointed out that he, on the other hand, did not. The second he opened his mouth — whether it was to tease her some more or try to get to her nerves — [Name] interrupted him.

“Fall from the chair,” she commanded, and he rolled his eyes at her, nearly scowling. At least she had wiped off the grin from his face.

“Nice try,” the Spymaster told her with annoying nonchalance and that unknown immunity she could not track the source from.

“Couldn’t hurt,” [Name] shrugged, and he felt silent with his arms closed.

When Azriel had been assigned to a position in which he needed to return to the Archeron manner weekly, Feyre pushed her older sister aside for a private conversation. Her voice was soft — yet more mature, as if Feyre had aged five decades in five months — while she tried to soothe [Name]’s tension. She could still remember the slight heads-up, the promise that Azriel was naturally quiet and introspective, and that did not mean that he held some unspoken grudge against her or her ideas. Although that proved to be true to some degree, [Name] was quick to notice that the male was not as quiet as previously stated. Each word of his carried some sort of taunt or invite to a private competition that [Name] never failed to accept or stumble upon. The male seemed to thrive on her annoyance, and though she was not entirely amused herself, [Name] noted the clear difference between his treatment towards her, and the general treatment she received from others.

After an entire decade of misery and prostitution, [Name] saw herself as though a crumbling stone fortress, one that once stood high and tall, proudful and unshakable, but that started to deteriorate with the acid rain and the constant attacks from external forces. The fortress was filled with mug and cracks and thorns, and people grew wary whenever they approached it. No one treated her the same, as if they feared that a single touch would be enough for the entire fortress to crumble entirely; she could sense their hesitance in their contradiction, their pity and the glances given whenever they thought she wasn’t looking. Azriel challenged her, treated her like he would everyone else. Even when she was a mortal whose life hung by a limited thread, he valued her thoughts, and never once sugarcoated his words.

As of now, she could yet feel the same determination and notice the same treatment. Even though [Name] had spent nearly a year hiding away, avoiding the reality and feeling stuck in the same place, Azriel refused to act as though she was a scared and lashing animal in the woods: he was not wary nor was he pitiful — he was ruthless, challenging, taunting, his logic and sense of duty matching her own. Azriel was everything that she needed at that moment.

However, that did not mean that she was willing to give him any further sense of amusement. Her pride was a chalice of lethal poison, one that she drank from until there was not a single droplet left. To fill their silence with an inquiry meant that he would have a possible confirmation of her eagerness, and [Name] would rather share a teacup of warm tar with her late grandmother inside the Cauldron than to fulfill his ego.

She felt a slight tug coming from his mind. Because her abilities granted her free-passage, regardless of their barriers, to the thoughts of those around her, [Name] made sure to never roam close to the limits of their brains. A single misstep was enough for her to stumble on the deep roots of one’s memories, and she learned the consequences of her accidental prying when, during a shared dinner, [Name] was bombarded with the indecent mental-conversation held by Feyre and her mate. Since it was rude — and awkward — to listen to those small things left unsaid, [Name] learned to deactivate that side of her power, and only did use them when invited to. That tug coming from his part was an invitation, as if he had opened the front gate of his mental barrier and invited her in.

With a slight raise of her eyebrow, [Name] extended the invisible string of her power, entering his mind. Surprisingly enough, Azriel seemed to have closed his fist around it, not letting go of that small connection between them. Although his expression remained that same one of nonchalance, the memories sent her way explained enough of the given situation, and what led the Inner Circle to vote for her training and participation in that particular task.

It was a marvel to witness how one’s train of thoughts mirrored their particular personality. Azriel’s memories were brief and to-the-point; he didn’t dwell much on unnecessary details and favored an efficient approach that covered most of the basis as fast as it could. It was as though he was in a constant state of haste, a master-spy that understood the importance of offering a good résumé in a limited span of time.

“Who would’ve thought you hold me to such high regards?” Azriel taunted, and she blinked, caught offhand.

“What?”

“A master-spy?”

“You can read my thoughts as well?” [Name] inquired, too shocked to take note of his cockiness.

“Was I not supposed to?” His grin fell from his face, giving way to a wary crease of his forehead.

“It never happened before,” and though she chose her words with care, the female could feel the sudden pressure around her reach, understanding that the Spymaster was demanding her to leave his mind. She did as it was urged, respectfully stepping away from his conscience. A further inspection of his sudden rigid features told her that he did not mean to speak on the later occurrence, and aware of his vexing capacity of staying silent for a long period of time, [Name] changed the subject to what mattered the most. “Why am I the one most suitable to breach Montesere’s barriers?”

Azriel stretched, shifting uncomfortably in his seat — one that was obviously not meant for the wings of an Illyrian warrior — and sat upright. His expression was one of concentration, whereas his stance was the same he held whenever he meant to speak in a tone of politics and strategies. It made her reminisce those hours spent inside the four walls of her office, discussing tactics based on the most accurate predictions of their opponents’ movements, and her chest ached with sudden longing.

“Montesere had a particularly rough war against Vallahan, a hundred years after the First War against Hybern,” he briefly began to summarize, and [Name] failed to hold her tongue.

“Yes, I’ve read about it,” she interrupted, mentally scolding herself.

“Why would you read about Montesere, of all places?” Azriel inquired, before realization passed over his features. “Right, their dragons.”

It was an affirmation. He did not need to ask that of her, when the answer presented itself as white as a layer of untouched and recent snow. [Name] did not mean to lie either, even if the misleading sentence was formed not longer after he deduced her past reasoning. The two had never lied to one another, or so she preferred to presume. Without a doubt, both hid their fair sum of secrets, but it was not of their character to dance around the truth whenever the other figured a thing or two out. It was a dynamic as old as their unstable friendship — if one could call it that way — and one the pair remained loyal to for more than a year. She never would have told him of her research about the dragons during the most ungodly hours of the night — at least not then — yet, since his speculations came close enough to the truth, [Name] would not lie to him either.

“I traced their origins and inevitable extinction back to Montesere,” she confirmed, the fact alone bringing an odd sense of grief to her chest. Those next words came as a whisper, hardly audible. “I figured they weren’t creatures from our world, which was somehow soothing. These realms are so filled with magic, it was a nice twist to learn of something fantastical that we had no access to.”

Azriel stared at her in silent pondering, and [Name] caught the phantom of a warmth glance sent her way before he masked it. “We don’t know exactly when the dragons roamed into our world. The most acceptable theory is that another portal opened up, one similar to the one that brought Amren, and some creatures passed through it. Amidst the chaos of the war, every King and High-Lord was too preoccupied with their barriers and battles to take note of a lone portal somewhere near Montesere. We presume it happened during or after the conflict.”

“Of course,” [Name] agreed with a slight movement of her shoulders. “They would have used the dragons against their enemies’ forces — your forces — otherwise. The fact that they didn’t merely points out that there was no time to train those creatures or tame them.”

He hummed in confirmation. “After Hybern’s defeat, his allies were left in economical misery. But we had no idea of those dragons whatsoever until Montesere’s battle against Vallahan. Considering the scarce extension of their nation’s territory, a sudden declaration of war was imminent. They had no space to train those dragons, and surely enough, Vallahan offered the expansion they needed.”

“I’ve read that those dragons spat fire,” she muttered, haunted by the loss of a sight she would never have a glimpse of. “But it was not enough to conquer Vallahan.”

“Fire can not breach solid stone,” Azriel pointed out, and [Name] did not miss how he hid his hands under his armpits. “Vallahan has the geographical advantage of being surrounded by a steep and towering extension of mountain ranges. To spit fire, Montesere’s dragons needed to reach the Capital, and once the kingdom started to retaliate—”

“I know,” she sharply stopped him. “They placed catapults on strategic points of those mountains. Even so, I hardly think those traps were responsible for so many losses. A dragon is unstoppable in the air.”

“They had a very scarce training,” Azriel retorted, and though his taunt was imminent, she fell victim to his invitation, well aware that he meant to rile her up in order to understand how well-educated she was in that particular subject.

“Most were grown during their passage, those dragons weren’t lacking in terms of flight,” [Name] scowled, sitting upright herself. Mentally, she could see a chess board unravel — those sixty-four black and white tiles that, somehow, always managed to be a metaphor whenever a conversation between them was concerned.

“They lacked discipline.”

“They lacked purpose,” she hissed, surprised at her own rage. “Montesere sawed their back-spines to make way to their saddles, chastised them with whips, and stole them of their previous freedom. Most of those creatures threw themselves on the mountains with the intention of retrieving their free-will through death.”

The Cemetery of Rocks. [Name] once saw the name in an old map. It was written all over the mountain range of Vallahan, and she trembled with the mere thought of how many dragon skulls and bones laid on those lands.

“It might be true but it’s not the entire reason, you know that,” Azriel half-conceded, and his trust on her judgment despite her past outburst was astonishing. [Name] blinked, regaining her composure not longer after.

“Well, obviously. The altitude of those mountains was an opponent of its own. The safest crossing option was through the highest route, but an unprepared rider would lose consciousness with the lack of air that came from such tall heights,” the female absentmindedly completed, growing tired of that conversation. It was more a genocide than a war, and at each attempt to breach Vallahan’s borders, Montesere returned with less dragons and soldiers, until there were none left. “But that’s not the point, is it? What have they done after that loss?”

“Montesere raised a magical barrier,” Azriel commented with a grimace. It was clear that, for his own reasons, he was not quite pleased with that obstacle.

“I caught on to that, what surprises me is how long you took to find out,” it was not a taunt on her part. She was merely being sincere. “Neglecting them to that extent seems reckless.”

“It was, but we all had worse worries than Montesere at the time. Hewn City, the Illyrian soldiers’ insolence towards the Night Court’s orders, and our own lack of experience on how to manage the entire territory after Rhys’ father passed away are just some examples of our concerns. We did send them letters, but those remained unanswered.”

“You’re finding excuses,” now, that was a taunt.

He broke into a grin. “Think you could have done better?”

“I’m sure that I could.”

“You’ll get to prove that soon enough. Our efforts can’t breach through their barriers, we’re hoping that your magic will be the exception.”

“Because I was Made?”

The memory was painful enough, and he merely nodded before rising from his uncomfortable seat. “Go grab your stuff, we’re leaving now.”

Although that was a thing she had anticipated, [Name] was startled with his abruptness still. Giving herself a moment to recollect her thoughts and priorities, she remained glued to her chair. “We’ll train and go to the Mortal Lands. I’m not helping otherwise.”

“I have the tattoo to remind me of that,” he bit back with a roll of his eyes. “And even if I didn’t, I could still drag your ass to our training site.”

“You’d lose both your hands before you got the chance to,” she threatened, the thought of a male touch bringing back memories that she was quick to bury.

“To do that, you’d need to shift into something more harmful than a small bird,” he spoke with a boredom that made her want to claw at his neck. How he was aware of her morning flights, she had no interest in finding out, but his remark boiled her blood regardless, and the challenging expression on his face let her know that Azriel mentioned that on purpose.

With an everlasting sourness, [Name] strolled to her bedroom, nearly kicking the door open as she went to grab her pack. Azriel, who was close behind her, coughed immediately, and the sound made her smile briefly. She felt the phantom touch of a daring shadow on her shoulder, as if it hummed contentedly with the slight shift in her mood.

“What the hell have you been doing here? It smells like horse shit,” he complained. [Name] made no move to open up the windows — she merely closed the bathroom door — and Azriel’s eyes laid on the shadow on her shoulder.

“Leave it be,” she hissed at him with a scolding glare, growing tired of his urge to drive his shadows away from her. Azriel’s scoff was muffled by his arm as he had used it to cover his nose. “I was trying to replicate your scent, did you not like it?”

The second they moved from the stench of her bedroom and towards the main balcony, Azriel’s impossible behavior returned. “I had no idea you missed me that much. What was the plan afterwards, sprinkle the perfume on a pillow and hug it in your sleep?”

“You’re despicable.”

“You’re speechless.”

As the pair approached the main hall, [Name] did not fail to note the absence of her sisters. Her mind was conflicted, unsure on whether that occurrence was deserving of relief or grief. Falling quiet and crossing her arms, she had decided on both. No one but herself could be blamed for the insecurity of her younger sisters regarding [Name]’s feelings on a farewell visit of their part. Her emotional withdrawal had brought the solitude that ravaged her insides, a bittersweet and well-deserved fate: to miss her sisters as a punishment for how badly and frequently she had failed them.

“You’re leaving already?” A particularly deep voice came from behind them, and [Name]’s body grew rigid at the sound. Shadows curled on her nape and shoulders, seeming to whisper a soothing harmony on her ear.

“It’s been a week,” Azriel shifted on his heels to stare at his brother, and his shoulder brushed hers slightly. [Name] almost missed his warmth.

“So? You weren’t given a deadline,” Cassian noted. The female moved ever so slightly to stare at him, unable to bear with her impoliteness otherwise. Azriel’s shadows accompanied her frame as her back met the nearest wall, and [Name] waved awkwardly when Cassian’s warm, hazel eyes laid on her.

“Doesn’t make the situation less urgent,” the Shadowsinger retorted. Cassian tore his glance from [Name] lazily, observing his brother with his mouth tightly shut. The two seemed to have a quiet, yet heated argument, their expressions shifting as they spoke in a secret language born from centuries of acquaintanceship.

At last, Cassian’s shoulders slumped a bit. Whatever those glances and the discussion hidden in between them meant, the General raised the flag of surrender. [Name] could still see the creases on his forehead, the predictions and strategies regarding Azriel’s motivations, but it became clear that he would rather not voice them nor meddle any further.

She was slightly startled, whatsoever, at the sudden outburst of foreign thoughts that poured inside her own mind. Regardless of the barriers and training to maintain one’s consciousness on a leash, during certain stressing moments, it was natural to lose a bit of that composure and untighten the ruthless clutch, allowing the river currents of thoughts to run its wild course. Whenever [Name] attempted to put that specific occurrence into words, she felt as though a madwoman would. How could she complain to Cassian that, unbeknownst to him, he started to think too loudly? The female caught an overall understanding of his worries and hesitation before burying her power, refusing to pry on the General’s mind without his consent.

What she heard, however, was clear enough. Although guilt tore her apart with its greedy fingers, clawing on skin and muscle, [Name] offered a nod of reassurance and a small upward curve of her lips to Cassian, attempting to demonstrate her willingness to ignite a frail ember of friendship. He was suddenly aghast, but the grin that broke free was almost a key to free her from the self-imposed prison of remorse.

“Give him hell,” Cassian told her, pointing to Azriel with his head. A single shadow roamed closer to her face at the act, and [Name]’s grin somehow found a way to her lips.

“Planning on it.”

Azriel rolled his eyes and his brother gave his shoulder a nudge, offering [Name] a last farewell smile before he made his way to the stairwell at the end of the hallway. The female was well aware of where that path led: the training rink at the very top of the House of Wind. She had started to observe the entire architecture of the place from the first moment her feet met its surface. [Name] studied the cracks and turns and patterns, from the substructure to the truss, and was left mesmerized at the intrinsic manner with which the house converged with the mountain it was built on. [Name] had concluded that, if not for the aid of magic, the entire structure would not last longer than a single month in such hostile ground. It was, matter-of-factly, a finished subject: magic had built what the common hands could not. However, she could not help the wandering thoughts and plans, pondering the most suitable approach to use was she the one assigned to architect the foundation, with nothing more than calculus and trials.

It was a pastime that came back from when she was but a toddler, fidgeting with her hands and sitting on her father’s lap at his office. [Name] was an eager girl, aware of her responsibilities as the oldest, desperate to learn more of the Archeron trade. Of course, her father could not teach a single important subject regarding the stratagems of a merchant’s life to a child of six, for she would scarcely understand the basis. Rather than sending her off to find suitable entertainment elsewhere, the man gave her detailed drawings of the family’s fleet, instructing that she was to trace the ships’ plans and try to recreate it with as much accuracy as she could. Soon enough, [Name] began to draw ships of her own, using a ruler and the knowledge gained with the already done projects she so eagerly stared at. The interest evolved, from ships to houses to structures with many floors and windows. [Name] enjoyed the process of drawing particular projects through calculus, the right pencil and different sorts of rulers and compasses; she adored the immersion of her observation; her attempts to guess the thought-process of the one responsible to architect the base of the finished construction where she stood.

Yet, it was an infertile and incongruous activity. Someone of her age and responsibilities could not give oneself the luxury of wasting time on straight lined-doodles and unfinished ideas.

[Name] had spent much of her years reading about economy, learning about negotiations, practicing the sweet-tongued mischief that led one to agree to a risky, yet calculated partnership. It was a necessary sacrifice, for it granted her younger sisters the freedom and privilege to dedicate themselves to more pleasant pastimes. Elain fell for the art of gardening, Feyre began to experiment with paintings, and even Nesta had, for a while, devoted herself to dancing, before their mother managed to poison that love too. It was not proper for [Name] to try and do the same — not when her passions were so strict, and scarcely as interesting as her sisters’.

Chess was an interesting game with valuable strategies that could be recreated in battle; chemistry aided her understanding of their world, for it could be found everywhere, and was an important tool when it came to the creation of substances and devices that didn’t rely on magic; the studies of the weather and barometric were crucial if one meant to predict the most appropriate moment to patch off a fleet of goods; and even those silly texts about body language had somehow helped her in her craft. But coming up with the structure of mansions and houses, alternative internal systems and weaponry? It was of no use.

[Name] had ceased to dream of those creations, and decided to never draw a single thing again after she had nearly crumbled at the sight of her father, coming to Velaris with four ships — the same ones she drew, the same ones she showed him, the same ones whose plans he kept safe, even during poverty — to aid in their battle against Hybern. It should not be hard to abandon those childish desires after such a brutal loss. However, during most of the times, the female caught herself observing and predicting, as she was doing just then, and had to tear her gaze from the walls, forcing her mind back to the present.

“There’s drool on your chin,” Azriel called out through gritted teeth and an odd, ironical smile, as she moved to touch her skin, scowling at him immediately. “We could stay for another hour if you want to stare a little more.”

Despite the venom on his words, [Name] gave the male an ironic grin. “I’m sure that wall is much more interesting than whatever you’ll have to show me.”

“Right,” he scoffed. “The wall.”

Azriel walked straight through her, and his shadows moved all around him, covering the outline of his broad back in the incorporeal of pitch-black. The sudden abandonment of both left her puzzled, and the silence that overcame their past banter was a fruit of their bewilderment.

Upon reaching the balcony, [Name] was reminded of Clotho’s note. Observing the position in which the sun held itself on the sky, she noted that it was, indeed, quite early. Time had the odd tendency of becoming a mere nuisance when one was too focused on a more pleasant task, and to [Name], who thought very little of reality and dreamt of detaching herself from it, the passage of time was constantly forgotten. She thought it was, at best, one in the afternoon. Instead, her brief glance told her it couldn’t be past nine.

Azriel leaned sideways on the balcony, staring at her with a vexing expression of impatience. Her scowl all but deepened as she followed in suit, noting how the yet-to-be warm sunrays basked on the columns, all made of white stone and marble. [Name] was sure that an artist of some sort had been a part of the construction, for architecture could only travel so far alone. The pattern of those columns, from the base to the abacus, surpassed the limitations of a ruler and calculus: it was the heritage of a talented artist who understood and valued Velaris, who managed to engrave a Starfall with nothing but marble and argil. It was magnificent, and yet, she would have enjoyed the observation better if not for a bad-mannered Illyrian soldier groaning at her delay.

“Where are we meant to go?” [Name] inquired, ignoring his ill temper. “If you try to drag me to those Illyrian mountains I’m going back to my room.”

“And survive amidst that stench?” Azriel mocked, finally breaking into a grin. “We have a deal.”

“That never mentioned where you would be training me. I ain’t going back there.”

“As much as I would love to drag you and watch as you gave them reasons to call the Archeron sisters witches,” he commented, seeming to be delighted with his own thoughts. “I, too, won’t step foot into that hole unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

The sudden bitterness in his tone made her swallow the taunt that hung prepared at the tip of her tongue. She, instead, fixed the bag on her shoulder and moved closer, seeing the fall that awaited for a misstep, as though a starving beast. Ten thousand steps. A journey she had never longed for, never had the need for either. To create wings was, as of now, as simple as taking a deep breath. [Name] wished she had been given that ability sooner. She could think of countless painful scenarios, all involving a bed, a man, and a tiled ceiling, in which flying away would have been useful. But she pushed that memory aside, observing Azriel’s wandering glance, and the experimental close of his hand, as if he was making sure that his fingers still worked, that his long-ago healed skin remained to be covered in scars rather than flames. It was a situation she understood well enough: when one was trapped into unpleasant memories and could not tear oneself from them without external help.

“Where are we going, then?” [Name] asked, her voice seeming to be enough to free the Spymaster from that trance.

“Northwest, past the mountains and the Faerie realms.”

The female’s next words caught in her throat as she stared at him in utter shock. Azriel outstretched his hand, the single wisp of a shadow nestling itself in the strap of her bag. She hadn’t need a phrasal command, understanding his intentions immediately. [Name] gave him her bag, and Azriel held it as he took flight, gliding over her. His frame and wings covered the sun, creating a patch of shadows that moved ever so slightly from where she stood.

“Shift into something bigger than a swallow, or you won’t be able to keep up with my flight,” that brought her words back.

“Excuse me?” The idea of shifting into a bigger winged predator made her mouth dry with fear, the core of the dragon within her still a vivid memory that kept her rooted in place.

“When in the skies, wingspan is crucial for how fast the creature can move—”

“I know that,” she nearly hissed, irked at his tone, as if he had been trying to explain a difficult concept to a toddler.

“So? Shift. We don’t have the whole day.”

“Why can’t you just winnow us there? Too weak to do that while with me and a single bag?” Her taunts might as well have been flies surrounding his ego. Azriel was not at all moved, seeming merely out of patience as he awaited for her.

“You need to learn the path for yourself. A single shift in the wind and you’ll be overflying Rask without knowing. I’m not taking that risk.”

[Name] crossed her arms against her chest. He would not drag her, nor would he insist further. If truth was being told, Azriel had not touched her once in months — and those rare times in which their bodies met were fruits of accidents or desperate measures. More than anyone, he respected her space. The Shadowsinger would not grab her and drag her body to where she needed to be, which left them both in a competition fueled by obstination and pride.

“I’m going there once and never again, why would I need to learn anything?”

If he was hurt by her statement, the pain trespassed his features as swiftly as a blink. “You can’t possibly expect us to winnow you around wherever your heart desires. It is one thing to help your sisters, who can not winnow nor fly, but you are more than well-equipped to go through those miles alone. The length from Velaris to beyond the mountains is a long one, and winnowing there would be tiresome. Move your ass and shift.”

[Name] gritted her teeth, feeling as though a child that had been scolded. He remained the same, not bothering to move a single inch, his breathlessly handsome face taken with stoic challenge. If she had dared to do as though those architects that evolved into artists of their own craft, how would her columns be? Her once frustratingly short life had but turned into an infinite thread of centuries and possibilities. Time was no longer a reaper, but a welcoming host. At last, immortality offered her plaster and resin, tools for modeling and argil. Still, she dodged it, for she would not have built a column or two, she would have sculpted him, right in that glorious stance, wings wide open, with eyes that burned with arrogance, and hands that she longed to touch after what seemed to be a lifetime of avoidance and fear.

Her eyes met his. [Name] hated the male that brought such feelings to the surface, and she hated him even more for knowing that she was not capable of tormenting him with the same urge, the same treacherous bite of desire that hid amongst roses of feigned distaste.

“Don’t expect a dragon,” she told him at last, trying to think of an animal whose wings matched the span of an Illyrian’s, resenting those who saw her as nothing but a beast.

“I never asked for one,” he answered matter-of-factly. In his face, she noted the slightest sign of comprehension, hiding somewhere in between the cracks of that mask of nonchalance.

Harpies and eagles came to mind at once, but those were birds of both size and violence, animals she had never shifted into. [Name] learned the hardest way that each and every animal had an instinct, one that was deserving of proper attention and care. When she shifted into a creature, the first seconds were crucial, for the very core of the chosen animal would overcome her own mind and desires. Because she failed to control the dragon, [Name] had lost the grip of her actions and memories throughout the battle, acting on an instinct that was not hers. Showing such a vulnerability in front of Azriel was not a part of her plans — especially when he was cocky enough without that knowledge. So she played it safe. In a brief of a second, she was no longer a High Fae, but an ensemble of white and brown and black feathers, eyes as pitch as Azriel’s shadows. A gyrfalcon, slightly bigger than the ones found in the wild, and the same form she adopted during the last battle against Hybern.

“You could’ve picked something bigger,” Azriel commented, observing the bird she chose, and [Name] chirped her discontentment, flying to his eyes with her claws in position.

He chuckled, his chest rising and falling as his lips parted way to a sound she had never once heard until then. [Name] cursed him mentally, for the shape of the falcon did not allow her ears to capture the sound entirely. Azriel dodged her claws and began his descent towards the city. [Name]’s smaller and more agile frame allowed her to harness the speed faster, and her wings opened wide as she drew closer to the ground. In a swift movement born from practice, she was flapping her way up, swirling in a mute laugh at gravity’s failed attempt to keep her anchored to the soil.

Flying was something she would never give up nor grow tired of. When the breeze shifted into a stronger current of air, when there was nothing underneath her feet, when she was being caressed by the freedom brought by the wind, it was as though she had been reborn. For the duration of the flight, there was nothing but her form, the wisp of wind and the infinity of the sky. [Name] only mourned that she had never learned how to fly the same as her sister and the Illyrians — with an actual body rather than the shape of a smaller animal.

Azriel’s shadow appeared above her in an instant, and he naturally picked up a faster pace as they began to fly horizontally. None thought that haste was necessary, and their flight to the barriers of Velaris was one of utter calmness, in which the pair overflew the city while [Name] danced around the strings of his daring shadows. Once met with the invisible barriers, she grew tense, fearing the denial that had been thrown her way countless times before. However, Azriel flew swiftly through it, and once her turn came, [Name] was met with the same lack of opposition.

The air felt different then, and so did the Spymaster’s disposition. He quickened his pace, and [Name] forced her wings to grow larger, biting back a painful chirp as her bones stretched into place. In order to shift into an animal, she learned there were a few prerequisites. The female needed to grow familiar with the creature. It went beyond seeing them in a drawing: she had to master their behavior, understand their instincts, and study their entire anatomy. For months at hand, Morrigan winnowed her outside Velaris not only to train, but for her to see those animals in the wild, and although that came into use, there was also the case of bodily difference. It was a matter of compression and expansion. When one had to shift into a smaller bird, their previous body would, of course, suffer from brief consequences of adaptation. [Name] understood it as the process of folding and unfolding a sheet of paper: the possibilities were limitless, but the more you folded, the more lines would appear on the surface that was once straight and clear. Her shape-shifting ability relied on imagination and pain tolerance. [Name]’s bones could stretch or break under pressure to give way to a different structure; she could take over the impressive size of a dragon or the insignificant form of a ladybug; so long as she was able to endure the agonizing seconds that preceded the change.

But pain and I came to an understanding a few years ago, she thought to herself, no longer suffering from the lingering ache left in her bones, ignoring it as one would do to a mere casualty.

Her eyes were trained to the perimeter as she took in the sight of the mountains. The two of them overflew an extension of rock, trees, and eventual rivers, and when she was faced with unknown and plain territory, [Name] knew they had surpassed the frontier of the Faerie Realms. Her small heart dropped and a spontaneous chirp escaped her beak. It was a land of infinite possibilities, of wonders to be unraveled in a biome of sand and heat that she had read about but never met. If fate had been kinder, [Name] would have glided to Azriel’s arms and shifted into her fae body; she would have gaped at the vision before her and wept at the opportunity to be met with such a wide extension of land; she would not have flinched at the sound of his scoff against her earlobe, would not have frozen when his grip tightened around her body. But then again, if fate had been kinder, she would never have gotten so far as beyond the Faerie Realms. With that resolution, she merely flew faster, resting on his nape with enough care as to not maim his skin with her claws.

“Getting comfortable?” Azriel mocked, and in her silence, he continued. “Or was I right and your tired ass should have turned into a bigger bird?”

A single claw scratched his nape, threatening to pierce the smooth skin. He hissed, but she did not bother staring down at his reaction, her eyes glued to the scenario that unfolded underneath them. Azriel himself grew quiet, and did not attempt to stop the scarce and frail shadows when some pooled at her feet and made her company. It could have been hours or minutes — she would not know — but eventually, the desert gave way to sporadic specks of green, that, on their hand, grew into a huge forest, miles and miles of trees and rivers, of mountainscapes covered in moss and leaves, some standing so tall that they kissed the clouds and were coated in snow.

Azriel began his descent, and once they were sheltered from the burning midday sun, she noted the sweat pooling on his neck. [Name] had barely felt the heat back then, but dressed in Illyrian leather, undoubtedly the Spymaster had been punished by the warmth. Not wishing to add further discomfort, [Name] flew away from his nape and re-started the diligent flapping pattern of her wings, losing herself amidst the trees and enjoying the breeze on her feathers. Eventually, she nearly lost the way through all of that freedom, and had to be guided back to Azriel by one of his shadows, who grew stronger and with a bigger range after the pair escaped the ruthless ministration from the scalding sun.

It was the start of the afternoon when she heard the waves. Azriel led them west, clearing their way through the forest and propelling himself up whenever the trees grew too troublesome to dodge. [Name] had half the notion that their overall altitude decreased mid-flight, and although the increase of the heat was an imminent indicator of their destination, her mind would never have wrapped itself around the existence of a beach. It seemed unreal to her — someone who had been rooted into a home in the middle of a small town, someone who had never been allowed to travel, someone who had thought it was impossible to see the world in that life — that a single place could hold both a forest and a beach, that tree and sand could share a neighborhood, but there it was.

The soil began to lose its domain as the pair flew closer west. The more they descended, the more the earth shifted into solid rock. Although she could point out natural coexistence, the trees and its leaves built a thicket glued to the ground, as if they had forgotten the proper way to grow and started to be pulled by gravity and its invisible string. She could see them more as huge bushes than trees per say, for the stalks were so small and thin, and palm trees were now a common sight, their movement following the sway of the wind. There was a small quantity of moss covering the rocks closer to the sea, and mountains of mid-length were caught in between forest and shore, as though it was the one thing connecting the two.

The waves kept their steady onslaught against the tall and sharp rocks of the shore, and Azriel duck, his frame a dark contrast to that haven of sun and sand and sea. She followed in suit, noting that, from a huge cavern located on the top of a cliff at her right, plummeted a thin waterfall. Once Azriel landed on his knees — a dramatic pose he seemed to treasure — he stretched his neck and placed her bag on the sand. Staring up at her, who chose to keep gliding, the well-deserved resting made for the return of his teasing spirit.

“If you want to fly some more, I’m sure those seagulls back there would be up for a good fight.”

A revolted chirp died on her throat as the opportunity ensued. Azriel got himself distracted with the disappearance of his Illyrian armor, and [Name] duck, shifting back into her fae form mid-air. She fell on his back and the Spymaster — who was still on his knees — fell face flat on the sand. The female got up as soon as her body touched his, grabbing her bag and staring at the sea.

“Did you make me wait an entire week for us to sleep under a cliff and live off the coconuts from the palm trees?” [Name] taunted him, whistling innocently once his deadly glance fell over her form. She had no doubt that he would find a way to retribute that prank of hers with twice as much force.

“Look behind you, smartass,” he scoffed. The second she did as so, hot sand was thrown on her nape, particles of it entering her jacket. [Name] didn’t need to spare a single glance to understand what had happened, and the sound of his own whistle — meant to mock her previous one — made her blood boil. However, before she could engage in a childish sand-battle that was beyond her normal behavior, her mouth fell agape at the sight above her.

There was a large cavity in the middle of the towering cliff. She squeezed her eyes to catch on it, for the entrance was covered by yet another pair of waterfalls, the two with a current stronger than the one she had seen earlier, acting as though a curtain of slight fog and liquid. The water fell on a small pool — surely one that had been made due to erosion — and followed a short route through rock and sand that disembogued on the sea. For a second, the female believed that her enhanced ears granted by the fae body had begun to fail her. She could hear the sound of the waves against the shore, the seagulls fighting for a poor, freshly caught fish, and the wind rustling the palm trees’ leaves, but she could not hear the sound of the waterfall, which was alarming considering the intensity of the flow.

Damn were those explosions! Soon enough, her sight would fall victim to the same tragedy, due to action of the toxins she so diligently worked with, the thought made her shiver. Perhaps it was a sign to start using those stupid leather-strapped googles.

As if caughting on her confusion, Azriel chuckled somewhere behind her. “The sound is muted by magic.”

Ah, [Name] realized. Magic, of course. The very thing that made the faes’ lives easier, that granted them the means to create things that no mortal could dare to aspire, not even during their most drunk state. [Name] was unused to that kind of commodity, and would sometimes fail to phantom the extensive lengths in which one could go with the aid of magic. Magic that she wielded, and that she refused to use out of the fear of forgetting the pleasure of building and drawing with her own hands, of cooking and preparing her own bath, rather than handling it to an external and incomprehensible force.

Azriel was suddenly by her side, eyeing her curiously before continuing. “I’ve created that cavern. It’s not born from a natural process, nor was it there already. I wanted a quiet place of my own, far from any boundary, so I grabbed a good enough pickaxe and built myself an entrance.”

“You’re fucking with me,” she scoffed, her glance holding his own. “You opened a hole through solid rock with your strength alone?”

Azriel himself was shocked. “You forget how strong we are, don’t you? How strong you are. [Name], considering the entire set of our abilities and scarce limitations of our bodies, opening a cleft is the least we are able to do.”

Her breath nearly caught on her throat at the sound of her name on his tongue. Rare were the moments in which both addressed one another by their given names, and she had only noticed it now, that not sooner he had said her name, she wanted to hear it again. And again. And again. During the most diverse of circumstances, some dirtier than she predicted; the sudden desire, a wave that the female had never thought she was capable of nurturing for someone else after all of those harsh years. She swallowed a lump of nervousness, stared at the entrance above them, and Azriel continued.

“It took me a while to create it, though. It was not the home I cared for, it was the process of reaching it. I wanted something to do with my hands after the war,” his voice shuddered ever so slightly at the mention of his scarred skin. It was a sound so vulnerable and, yet so swift, that one could even argue that they had imagined it. But [Name], who paid attention to his every movement without, had caught on it.

Allowing him to ignore that change in tone — to never address it — was the thing she loved the most about their dynamic. Azriel did not want her pity, nor did she want his, however, if one was to slip — opening an unwanted crack on the solid walls of their fortresses — rather than acting as though a listening ear to a pain neither wished to address, the other would simply wait until that fissure was mended. They would not offer each other soothing sentences or draw the illusion, born from a childish desire, of a future without battle and suffering. The two had experienced the worst that could come from the cruelest beings; had been both maimed by constant cruelty; had been scarred enough to refuse that blind idealism that drove pure hearts to the possible existence of long-lasting peace. They were born not to protect, but to survive. And silently acknowledging that single slip, granting the other a second of vulnerability, was their way to keep each other strong, to keep marching forward — without pity, without unnecessary emotion.

Like Calls to like. It seemed to be a keen enough saying when it came to the two of them.

“Sometimes, I would come here and punch the rocks until they gave in. Sometimes, I would use the power of my Siphons. Rarely, I actually used the pickaxe,” [Name] snickered at that. “I’ve built this entrance through rage and boredom and ease. It is a creation from every single feeling I’ve had during the years. When I noticed that I had opened enough space, and that it was about time I started decorating for once, I was kind of disappointed.”

She hummed, sweat pooling on her nape from where the fabric of her jacket clung to. “I’m sure those rocks back there would be up for a good fight,” the female commented, using his previous words against him.

“Better to fight a rock than a seagull, at least cliffs are tough opponents.”

“Seagulls actually move and fight back,” she countered.

“So you admit that you would struggle in a fight against seagulls?”

His tone was amused, causing her to grit her teeth. “I’ll give them your severed arm for lunch.”

“With this heat and your heavy choice of clothing, you’ll faint before managing to land a single punch,” Azriel noted, and [Name] shifted in full-force to stare at him, about to comment on his choice for Illyrian leather, just for her words to flee from both mind and tongue at the sight of him with merely a black tank-top and matching trousers.

“When did you—”

“Magic,” this time, his winning grin and mocking tone did nothing to vex her. [Name] was quite too busy tearing her eyes from his frame. She heard a dry laugh, followed by the sound of his wings propelling him up in the air.

Feyre had once said that [Name]’s transformations were one of the most beautiful sights she laid eyes on. According to her youngest sister, her previous form would vanish, giving way to the brief appearance of grouped particles that gleamed in silver, as if her magic was the manifestation of stardust. From the core of ethereal light, she arose in the newest form that suited her desires best. As [Name] took the body of the gyrfalcon, she couldn’t help but wonder whether or not the breeze born from the flapping of her wings scattered the said gleaming essence of her magic. It was hard to imagine that she could be the source of such a beautiful thing, but it was not unpleasant.

To reach the inside of the cave, she had to go through the liquid curtain of the waterfall. When [Name] shifted back, her body and clothes were drenched in seawater. Azriel waited ahead, leaning on the arched frameway of the wooden-door. He had gone through the trouble of building an entire entrance, with an external leisure area located left from the door, surrounded by fences made of polished wood. As soon as she began to walk towards him, hissing at the feeling of her wet socks, talons of shadows came to circle her wrists, guiding her to the entryway. She did not need their assistance, but accepted it still. The cave’s ceiling was enchanted, and although she could see the stalactites, they seemed awfully out of place, for rather than pitch-black darkness above, [Name] saw a mimic of the ethereal afternoon-sky of Velaris, with the bright blue shade accompanied by the faint hues of pink and lilac, a sign that dusk was near. His shadows swirled more comfortably now, as if the shore and burning sun from the outside drained them of life.

“We never managed to get the sky right,” Azriel commented as she reached the entrance, stepping foot on the single step that led to the leisure area. A shadow seemed to point the way left, and [Name] noted a set of armchairs, two common chairs, both suitable for Illyrian wings, and finally, at the corner in between the two latter, a chess set displayed on a table.

“We?” [Name] whispered half-attentively, her eyes glued to those damned pieces and that damned board, her fingers stretching due to the sudden urge to play.

“Rhys and I,” he explained, and she could sense a tinge of amusement in his voice. “The house itself wasn’t meant to be heavily enchanted or guarded. It was glamoured to avoid unwelcome visitors, but I hadn’t felt the need for further protection until I came up with the idea of bringing you here.”

[Name]’s eyes met his attentive ones, and the depth of his sea of longing was hued in hazel and golden-light.

“Hence why you made me wait for a week?” She inquired, and the sound of her voice was almost a treacherous profanity after it slashed through their previous silence, loud with words unsaid.

He swallowed hard, gripping the doorknob. “I like to keep you on edge, impatience suits you well. The threats are my personal favorite.”

Perhaps, she went mad with the heat; perhaps, the water clinging to her ribs had made her reckless; perhaps, her mind remained filled with much too many thoughts about chess and constructions and sculptures to process another thought if not one of those subjects; because the trap was an obvious obstacle placed on the side of her foot, and [Name] chose to willingly step on it, if only to amuse the Spymaster further.

“I will punch your teeth.”

“Feeble excuse to touch my lips.”

[Name]’s mouth shot open and she felt the blush that crept up her neck. His winning-grin had given her the actual desire to punch his teeth, but then again, that would make him smile more. Azriel gave her bag a light kick and pointed with his head towards the chess board.

“Change into something fresher and we’ll play a match or two.”

“Weren’t we here to train?” [Name] questioned, ignoring his first sentence. She hadn’t brought fresher clothes; all of her wardrobe was of long-sleeved shirts and dresses, for she meant to cover the inside of her left forearm.

“We are, but it’s almost dusk and we’ve flown most of the day,” he pointed out, crossing his arms against his chest. [Name] tried not to notice the muscles of his biceps, nearly shivering at the sight.

“I don’t have fresher clothes,” she blurted out, fearing that he could catch the trail of her thoughts otherwise.

He raised an eyebrow. “Cut the sleeves of some shirts, then.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t need to.”

“We will be training under the scalding midday sun, you need to,” he stated matter-of-factly, annoyingly unbothered.

“I can handle—”

“Why, [Name]?” The Spymaster asked again, the sound of her name nearly causing her knees to buckle. Once met with her silence, however, he continued. “Wanna strike another deal?”

The challenge left her on edge, a shiver running down her spine where the tattoo of their pact had appeared a week prior. “We’re striking deals whenever we find an impasse?”

“If that’s what I need to crack open that mouth of yours,” a sea of curses poured from her thoughts but Azriel did not give her the chance to voice them. “Only this time, I was thinking of chess rather than magic.”

“Chess?” She asked him, tentatively. The bastard sure knew how to spike her interests.

“We play a match. Winner asks a question, loser is obliged to answer honestly.”

This got her to crack a laugh, one that echoed with arrogance. “You won’t get many answers from me.”

“You’d be surprised.”

“No, I wouldn’t,” the ambient had shifted into something more electrifying, a sudden string of shared anticipation. “But I like that deal, you’ll be forced to speak up more.”

“I speak,” he countered, almost offended.

“Sure. I’ve known you for a year and the only things I’m sure of are your name and the friends you have.”

“Well, I know your name and the fact that you have three sisters.”

“You know more than that,” she rebuked immediately.

“Like?”

She fell silent. He grinned. His hand turned on the doorknob, and the passage to his home-cave was granted.

“Alright, Azriel,” she said, and his entire body seemed to shudder. “You’ve got yourself another deal.”

Their second chess match began.

trivia: the war between montesere and vallahan is entirely made-up and not a part of canon, alongside the story of the dragons. i came up with a few things of my own for the sake of the reader’s development! ;)

general notes: i am deeply sorry for how long it took me to post the second chapter. if i am being honest, i struggled a lot with their dynamics, since what i once wanted for them seemed to be very out-of-character with the az we know. i decided to work with his silent-little-shit-self and his very brief (SJM i am inside your walls) interaction with gwyn. i hope you enjoyed this chapter and i would love to hear your opinions and criticism on it. i promise i will try my best to write smaller chapters and to post them a little faster! lots of love <3

taglist [comment to be added]: @nyotamalfoy @arilindemann @bsenpai @rachelnicolee @piceous21 @forsiriussake @sassybluebird @esposadomd

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