#crimson & clover | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thesistersarcheron · 2 years

Text

Pairings: Elriel, background Feysand Rating: E Warnings: Canon-Typical Violence, Murder, Attempted Kidnapping, Inappropriate Erections, BDSM, Blood Kink, Title from a Taylor Swift Song, Elain rips out a man’s throat with her bare hands and that’s a turn-on for Azriel Summary: When a stranger tries to kidnap Nyx during an outing to the park, Elain reacts the same way she did that day on the battlefield: by going for the throat. Azriel distracts her in the aftermath. ——— Find more on my masterlist or read this fic on AO3!

Azriel was at the window in Rhysand’s office, looking out at the garden behind the River House and idly listening to his brothers talking, when Feyre shrieked.

Blood, his shadows whispered. Death.

He turned—and Rhys was gone, winnowing to his mate’s side at the sound of her scream. The wards pulled at Azriel as he tried to do the same, a dozen spiderwebs made of magic strong as steel caging him in. He cursed them and pushed off the window’s ledge, running, chasing the sound of growing panic out of the study and down the hall with Cassian hot on his heels.

Rhys was already there, his back to them, reaching for Feyre.

And as Azriel took in the scene, he realized that she was right to scream, because there, in the wide-open doorway where Elain stood with Nyx…

Azriel saw red, but it wasn’t the glow of Cassian’s Siphons guiding him to a fight. It wasn’t his fury blinding him.

No.

It wasn’t fury. He locked that away, deeper and more primal than his usual icy rage, because he could not waste his time or energy sating it when Elain—

Truth-Teller’s hilt was cold in his palm, the metal biting into skin, and he savored the pain. The clarity it brought.

Because Elain was covered with blood.

She was soaked in it, her pretty blue dress dyed purple and her fine winter coat drenched up to the elbow. It had splashed up onto her neck, her face, painting her cheeks crimson and plastering a lock of hair to her temple. A thick, wet droplet of it was still beaded in the bow of her lip, threatening to slip down onto her tongue.

And Nyx— Nyx’s little wings were similarly covered in gore, the back of his woolen onesie speckled with red.

Cold, murderous darkness billowed out in warning waves from Rhys, staining the sunny afternoon with night. The ground rumbled dangerously with every step he took toward Elain, his hands outstretched to take his son.

But Elain only trembled, clutching her one-year-old nephew closer to her chest as his parents tried to coax her into letting go.

“He’s fine,” she murmured miserably, and Feyre gave up on taking Nyx and wrapped her arms around her sister and her son together. “He’s not hurt.”

Feyre made a low, relieved noise, her head dropping onto Elain’s shoulder. “Are you? What happened?”

Azriel watched, his shadows investigating the small dribbles of blood pooling on the floor beneath Elain, but she said nothing. Her eyes went distant, though, and Feyre inhaled sharply, her knuckles turning white where they clutched Elain’s sodden coat.

And whatever she saw, she shared with her mate, because when Rhys turned back to them, his eyes were devoid of stars. In their place, only calculating fury remained.

“Stay with them,” he ordered. His wings unfurled, he snapped his fingers, and his fine, formal jacket and trousers were replaced by a familiar set of leathers.

Cassian cursed at the sight of them.

Azriel forced himself to stop staring at Elain, to stop drinking in the sight of the blood on her throat, to take a step toward the door. Whatever had happened, whatever threat was coming, he needed to go with Rhys, to investigate— His shadows were already snaking out into Velaris, past the citizens gasping and gaping at the sudden darkness their High Lord brought down on them in search of—

A bit of night-dark power slammed the door shut and the heavy, magical lock thudded home. Rhys blocked his path.

“Stay with her,” he said again, and this time it was less an order than…

“Guard the estate,” he said, the reasoning flimsy, transparent, as if Feyre alone weren’t powerful and pissed enough to protect her family, her son.

Azriel looked at him. His brother's teeth were still bared with fury, that dangerous corona of darkness still wreathed him, but in his eyes, in that knowing look…

Permission.

“We need to clean you two up,” Cassian was saying somewhere above Elain’s head. His hand was firm on her back, sturdy and comforting and warmed by the glowing Siphon atop it. “Warm you up, get a little something to eat.”

But Elain didn’t want to let go of Nyx, still feeling the grabbing, tearing hands on her arms, trying to take the baby from her. She still burned with anger, her teeth still felt sharp and dangerous in her mouth, her nails—sticky and wet as they were—as good as claws.

Nyx hiccuped, and she knew it was the prelude to a tantrum. She couldn’t blame him; his wings were all wet and cold, his dear papa had appeared and left just as quickly without so much as ruffling his hair, and now his uncle was staring down at him with a frown carved into his face while his mama rubbed a firm hand up and down his back.

“Elain.”

That voice… Elain had missed that voice.

“Give me the baby.”

Elain sniffled, but Nyxie whined again, squirming. And how could she say no to that voice? She buried her nose in the baby’s inky black hair, kissed his forehead one more time, and gently lifted him out of the cleverly tied sash that secured him to her. Her hands itched once Azriel took the baby, aching to snatch him back, but his dark eyes met hers over the tips of Nyx’s wings.

He shook his head. She fisted her hands together and curled them over her heart.

Azriel gave Nyx a quick once-over—no damage, no injuries, and Elain could have burst with pride at the impressed look he gave her—and handed him to Feyre. His arm curled around her, his hand resting at the small of her back.

“Come with me.”

#elriel #azriel shadowsinger #elain archeron #elain #feyre archeron #nyx #rhysand #cassian #feyre #a court of thorns and roses fic #acotar #my fics #crimson clover #read the warnings for the love of god #i might write a murderous feysand followup because i have ideas #anon asked for it and i said bet? alright

102 notes · View notes

thesistersarcheron · 1 year

Text

Kissing Azriel felt like waking up from a nightmare.

Every stroke of his tongue against hers, every desperate press of their mouths, his cool breath on her overheated skin, the shadows his wings cast as they shifted and spread and hid the rest of the room from view… It was the first real thing she’d felt since she sank her fingers into that male’s throat and killed him.

Or, she thought, perhaps since Azriel sank into the shadows after that awful Solstice night and remained hidden in them until this morning.

The large hand she held clenched as if he could somehow tell what she was thinking, and Elain could feel the smooth scars that marked it stretching over her fingers. She lifted it to her heart on impulse, needing to share the wild rhythm imprinting itself onto her soul. Azriel groaned, pressing the back of his palm against her breastbone, and Elain wished he could reach into her and cradle her heart in those gentle, nimble fingers.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured against his mouth, vaguely aware that her dress was still sticky with lukewarm blood, that it likely stained his hands now too.

But Azriel’s groan merely deepened, gaining a rough edge, and he rasped back, “Don’t be.”

“I missed you,” she said next into the hairsbreadth of space between them. There were a million things she needed to say to him, a million half-finished conversations that never got closure and idle, musing questions from his letters she needed to answer.

Without missing a beat, barely parting their lips, Azriel shifted so he was no longer seated on the ottoman, his legs spread wide around her. He moved to his knees fluidly instead, the hand on her jaw angling her head so he could continue kissing her as he moved.

The words she’d spent endless hours reading and rereading in his spiky, urgent handwriting brushed across her face on a gentle breath.

“I love you.”

She was half-convinced she was dreaming again; she had never been able to fully imagine what that sentence might sound like in Azriel’s midnight voice. She had crafted million possibilities for those words—spoken in the garden while he brushed a flower over her cheek, laughed over a spilled bag of flour in the kitchen, whispered in a dark hallway late at night, murmured over her breast in a shadowed bedroom—but she felt like a fool for trying now. None could ever match the reality of it. Of hearing the charged, enamored devotion that she knew he reserved only for her. Revealed only to her.

I miss you, I forgive you, I love you, I need you...

Every possible response played through her mind on an endless loop. She couldn’t settle on just one, and she didn’t possess the time or patience to list them all. She chose, in the end, to whisper back the one word she hoped would convey it all.

One word to offer him everything.

“Azriel.”

A soft growl rent the air between them.

“Look at you.” Even though his shadows had all but disappeared, Azriel’s eyes were dark and wild as they raked over her again, and a pleasant shiver rocked Elain when they lingered on her throat. His teeth bared, just slightly, as if he wanted to sink them into her. “Just fucking look at you.”

“I’m a mess.”

The words weren’t as demure as they should have been. They weren’t colored with the shame or horror she had felt just moments earlier, and Elain didn’t coyly avert her eyes or duck her head while willing a blush to her cheeks.

There was something about being covered in someone’s lifeblood, something she hadn’t been able to pin down in the aftermath of the war. But now that her blind, feral panic had abated and Azriel had finally, finally kissed her, Elain was left with a familiar, heated rush of pride and desire pooling at the base of her throat.

It felt much as it had when she was human, and men used to bow before her and lift her hand to their lips. When they looked at her with glittering, greedy eyes and complimented her laugh, her smile, her hair. When they begged a dance from her, and Elain got to lift her chin and consider them for a long moment, keeping them on tenterhooks while she weighed their status and looks and taste in formalwear.

It felt just like that, but amplified, like the primal, animalistic thing that lurked in the back of her mind now had given the feeling teeth and claws.

Elain felt powerful.

And with Azriel kneeling in front of her, still drinking her in with molten-copper eyes that had shone with the promise of violence when he first saw her drenched in blood, she was not afraid anymore.

The slightest curve of his lips betrayed his amusement, his thumb catching her chin. His lips were a hairsbreadth away from hers, feinting and drawing away with a huff of laughter at her expense as she tried to steal a kiss, when he said, “I like it.”

Elain pouted, but she pressed her legs together and admitted, “I do, too.”

“Fuck, Elain.”

Azriel descended on her again, dropping her hand to curl his arm around her waist instead. He pulled her to the edge of the chair, pushing forward until she had no choice but to spread her legs to make space for him between them.

He kissed her hard, tasting her until her head spun, and only when she withdrew for breath did he bow his head and latch his teeth onto the delicate, oversensitive skin of her neck.

“You’ll leave a mark!” She slid a hand into his hair, pulling hard. He didn’t move, lathing the skin between his teeth with his tongue. She felt every smooth stroke pulsing between her legs. “Az— Azriel. They’ll see!”

The hand on her jaw drifted to her thigh, squeezing a gasp out of her that he lifted his head to swallow. He hooked it under her knee, dragging her closer, close enough that she could feel the ridges of his leathers through her ruined stockings and bunched skirts, and guided her leg around his waist.

“Good,” he murmured into her mouth. “I want them to see what I do to you, Elain. I want them all to see.”

Elain blinked, her vision going hazy with desire, and Azriel grinned. His teeth were a sharp, lethal slash in the dark.

“Hold on,” was all the warning she got before cool shadows whipped at them, and the chair disappeared beneath her.

The sudden sensation of weightlessness pulled a noise of surprise from her, but Azriel was already on his feet, keeping her legs locked around him.

She managed a glance around the hallway where he had winnowed them—and tried to crawl out of Azriel’s grip as he made for a familiar door.

“My room,” she gasped. “I want to do this in my room.”

Azriel stilled, but didn’t let go of her. His brow furrowed and he tilted his head in a deliberate show of consideration. His eyes flicked back to the door to the bedroom set aside for his use when the River House had been built, the one she and Feyre had so carefully decorated together.

The bedroom Azriel hadn’t used in well over a year.

“Why?”

Heat flooded Elain from her hairline to her navel.

“It’s more comfortable,” she said. The excuse was weak to her own ears.

Azriel walked them forward, and Elain involuntarily tightened her legs around him, instinctually protecting herself from the threat of falling despite the firm grip he had on her waist and her thigh. She tried not to focus on how nice the bulk of him pressed against her felt.

Her back hit the wall, and Azriel’s wings flared, caging her in his embrace. He let her drop a few inches, let her heartbeat catch as she shrieked in surprise, before he caught her in his arms, tighter than before.

“Liar.”

She could feel Truth-Teller’s hilt digging into her thigh, but as she tried to shift, Azriel shifted with her until it bit deeper into her flesh, a playful, warning glint in his eyes.

“Your room is closer to the stairs. Do you want Feyre and Cassian to hear you, too, kitten?”

Her stomach swooped at the endearment, at the thick length of him she could feel clearly pressed against her now that they had stopped moving. She shook her head.

“You have one chance to tell me the truth, Elain.” When Elain pulled her lip into her mouth and shook her head again—gods, the truth was too embarrassing, too mortifying—and Azriel jostled her, Truth-Teller settling into the crease between her leg and the very center of her. “You can kill as coldly as any of us, but you can’t tell me why I’m not allowed to take you in my own bedroom?”

Once more, Elain shook her head. Some thrill flashed through Azriel’s expression, there and gone, and then a tendril of shadow curled around his ear.

Azriel didn’t break eye contact, didn’t so much as breathe.

And then the shadows consumed them again.

———

Azriel dropped Elain onto the plush duvet atop his immaculately made bed and stepped back into the darkness.

“Clever girl.” The praise fell from his lips too easily as he reappeared across the room. He took a deep breath and slid open a drawer of the otherwise empty desk set against the wall. A bundle of letters lay inside, and he pulled them out, examining them with closely.

The seals were all carefully shut, having once been pried up from the paper and then ever-so-slightly melted and re-sealed; he could tell by the way the edges weren’t quite as adhered to the paper as they once were. The folds and corners were all crisp, barely worn down; as if he himself had only worried the letters once or twice before committing to sealing them.

And hidden away, tied together with a bit of the leather cord he used for all the packages and missives he sent to the River House, it looked as if Elain had never touched the letters. As if he, the foolish, doomed romantic that he was, had torn out his heart and stored it in a room just a couple of hallways away from Elain rather than carry the sorry thing with him.

“Very clever,” he said again.

Elain lifted herself onto her elbows, shucking her singed wool coat with a little wrinkle of her nose at the clean bedspread, oblivious of how badly Azriel wanted to be the one undressing her.

When she pressed her knees together, it took all of his control not to stride across the room to pull them apart again, to settle himself between them and stake his claim, make his home in her sweet cunt. Already, every muscle in his body was taut with the agony of being parted from her, a dozen feet transformed into a yawning chasm.

Azriel planted his feet, tamping down the temptation to crawl atop her.

“I avoid this wing of the house like a plague,” she told him, but her eyelashes flickered ever-so-slightly.

“During the day.”

Elain’s kiss-swollen lips parted.

Amusement lanced through him, but Azriel speared her with a look, just so he could see the way she trembled. “You would have been more successful at convincing me if I couldn’t smell you on my sheets from here.”

Her pale skin went impossibly pinker, and his cock pulsed with the need to be inside of her.

“How many nights have you spent touching yourself in my bed?” he asked, prowling closer. It was second nature to let his hand drift to his side, to wrap it around his dagger and pull it from its sheath. When Elain didn’t answer, he flipped the blade in his hand, lightning-sharp desire coursing through him as she watched it spin in the air and licked her lips. “Did you hope I would come in here one day and scent it?”

He reached the end of the bed, and Elain nodded, her doe eyes dark. “Yes.”

“Did you imagine us doing the things I wrote in my letters?”

“I did.” Elain’s scent deepened again, matching the warm, aroused trace of her on his sheets.

Azriel wrapped his hand around her delicate ankle, tracing the curves of the bone there with a fingertip and watching chills raise her smooth skin. “Which one did you like most?”

The silence was weighted as she considered her answer, her eyes sliding over to the bundle on his desk. Her pretty eyes were heavily lidded, and each breath she took pressed her breasts up against the bodice of her blood-stained gown. Azriel wanted to cover them in marks to match the bright bruise blooming on her neck.

“The shadows. On my knees,” she finally admitted, blinking hard—as if she were picturing it. As if she could see it clearly—or had Seen it clearly. “When you wrote about—“

Azriel knew exactly which letter she was referring to; he kept every fantasy tucked away in the back of his mind, but especially the ones he had shared with Elain once his shadows told him what she did with his more innocent love notes.

And with the mental image of her pleasuring herself to the thought of being bound in his shadows at the forefront of his mind, he couldn’t resist any longer. He dragged Elain to him by the ankle.

“Az!”

He relished her little squeak of surprise and the sound of his name on her lips.

Once she was at the end of his bed, her legs spread around him again as they always should be, he raised Truth-Teller. “Say the word and I stop.”

Elain, the brave, playful thing, looked at him for a long moment and then raised a hand to her smiling lips. She mimed turning a key, and Azriel couldn’t help but laugh as he dipped his fingers and then the tip of Truth-Teller’s blade into the bodice between those perfect breasts and cut her free.

———

Azriel was not a gentle lover.

The moment he finished slicing her bloody gown to bits—too many to be practical, but the thrill had sliced through Elain as surely as Truth-Teller’s blade through delicate lace—he knelt at her feet, gazing up at her with reverent eyes as he gave the slip of silk between her legs the same treatment.

And then his fingers filled her—one then two then three in quick succession—and stretched her until she burned. They curled upward against the sensitive spot inside her until that burn transformed into stunning, desperate need for more. The second she opened her mouth to beg for it, his was on her clit, licking and biting and sucking endlessly, the low vibration of his growling voice dragging her into the dark.

Her chest ached with the force she used to keep herself silent, every breath filling her throat until she was lightheaded with it. She almost cried out when he pulled away, licking her own glistening wetness off of his lips like a starved male.

“Scream,” he ordered her before returning his mouth to her cunt.

So Elain screamed as she came, heedless of who might overhear them, stars bursting behind her eyelids and her hips pushing against the hand holding her down.

She barely had a moment to come back to her sensesbefore he was above her, wings spread wide as he balanced on one hand.

The other, the one that helped him pull that orgasm out of her, dipped into her mouth.

“Suck, kitten.” His voice was softer now, fond and fascinated, and Elain couldn’t help but smile as she wrapped her lips around his scarred, shimmering fingers and licked them clean. Her sex was sweet and slick as salted honey, but she hardly paid attention to that as she mapped the ridges of Azriel’s scars with her tongue.

Beautiful.

Awestruck surprise peered out at her from behind the mask Azriel usually wore. She could have licked at him all night, but he slid his fingers out of her and down her chin. They ghosted over her neck, and then the world spun out around her, and she was on her stomach.

Dark, solid ropes of shadows curled around her wrists, dragging her forward until she was propped only on her knees, her breasts pressed into the mattress, prone and weak as a—

Well, as a kitten.

She could only listen as Azriel stripped himself, leathers creaking and falling to the floor with hushed whispers of material. Each popped button ratcheted up her anticipation and, finally, the snapping of his Siphons as he tore them from his hands threatened to drive her mad with need. Already, she could feel herself dripping onto the bed.

He was on her in an instant, grabbing a handful of her ass with one hand, the other snaking around her to roll a pebbled nipple between his fingers as she moaned. He laid his weight on her, spread his wings out around her, until all she knew was the all-too-real press of her shadowsinger and the darkness that accompanied him everywhere.

“Sweet, lovely thing…” The tip of his cock pressed against her entrance, teasing and maddening. Elain pulled at the shadows keeping her wrists bound above her head, pushing her hips back, trying to draw him in. But a strong hand pressed against the small of her back, nearly spanning the width of the space between her hips, and pushed her back into the mattress.

He clicked his tongue. “Did I say you could move?”

Elain could have cried.

“No, but I need it.”

“What do you need?”

“I need you,” she whined, trying to roll her hips toward him again. His hand pressed more firmly against her, and she could have sworn that she could feel the heat from his palm in her belly.

She tilted her head backward, and the breath was stolen from her lungs at the sight of Azriel smiling wildly down at her. It was the most untamed she had ever seen him, his hair falling into eyes that burned with feral need. His mouth opened, and Elain braced herself—

“What part of me do you need, Elain?”

“I… you…”

“You can tear out a male’s throat with your bare hands, but you can’t say cock?” The tip of him left her entrance, and she could have cried out at the loss—until Azriel pressed the long, pulsing length of it fully against her, catching at her clit and then sliding past it, over it… “That’s precious.”

“Please, Azriel, please.”

“Say it, Elain. Tell me you want my cock as your reward for killing that male, and I’ll give it to you.”

His hand traced a path up her spine as she buried her burning face in the sheets, mustering the nerve to ask for what she wanted. By the time she lifted her head, it was tangled in the loose, sodden ends of her hair.

“I want your cock.”

Azriel wound her hair into a rope around his hand and tugged. “As…?”

“As my reward.” The words tumbled out of her mouth as he pressed the broad, thick tip into her. He paused, and she gasped, “For killing that male.”

“Good girl,” Azriel murmured, and then his hand was on her throat, long fingers curled around it, as he buried the rest of his length into her in one smooth stroke. “Look at you, taking every inch of it so well… Such a filthy girl, Elain.”

Even if his hand weren’t around her throat, she would have been breathless—at the drag of him against her innermost walls, the sharp, burning stretch, the insistent, aching push of his cock against the deepest part of herself. He stroked his thumb over her pulse, which fluttered wildly beneath his touch. It should be sickening, should disgust her, the reminder of what she had done—

But, as Azriel tightened his hold and began to fuck her in earnest and she tugged desperately against the shadows binding her wrists, she couldn’t bring herself to care.

Every thrust pushed what little air she managed to gulp down from her lungs. Every lazy sweep of his thumb made her dizzier and dizzier.

“Waited so long for this,” he was growling against her shoulder, teeth dragging a painful line across her skin. “Couldn’t imagine how you’d taste, how fucking wet you’d be, how you’d sound—“ Suddenly, Elain was aware of the weak, mewling whines he was pulling out of her. “Would’ve slaughtered that bastard months ago if it got us here sooner.”

It was insensible—what would killing that male do before he became a threat?—but Elain sobbed with pleasure anyway, rocking back on her knees to meet his next thrust.

So much time lost. The deep, vast well of her immortal life and the sweet, welcome visions she had seen of it seemed like nothing compared to the endless months of yearning that stretched behind them.

“Never again,” Azriel was promising into her ear, over and over. “Never again.”

Unrestrained power, brutal and hard, rocked into her. Her hair stood on end as it indiscriminately consumed the space around them, warming the air. This— Was this the legendary Illyrian killing power? The one Azriel needed an unprecedented seven Siphons to contain? Was that what he would use to keep that vow?

“Breathe, love.” Azriel’s grip on her neck loosened, the bonds around her wrists lengthening. He pulled her back until she was flush against his chest, his own breath cool on her cheek. She took a breath. All she knew was his body against hers, inside of hers. She would kill for this, too, if that’s what it took; a life for every day she was granted with Azriel.

“Azriel, please.”

Azriel’s voice rumbled in her ear, as if he knew what she were thinking and agreed. “Good girl. Good. Now come.”

“With me,” Elain managed to say as she tilted her head back once more. Her climax tore through her, shredding her to pieces, and Azriel’s lips met hers, a frantic Yes, yes, I’m with you murmured into her mouth.

———

“She was thorough.”

Rhys’s voice was frozen as it cut through the dark in the cells below the Hewn City. He rolled his shoulders, as if to relieve himself of the excess energy wound up in his muscles—energy he hadn’t gotten to use when he’d found a cooling corpse by the swingset in the park, just where Elain left it for him.

Feyre stood at his side, white-faced as she examined the partially decapitated corpse of Soren Vanserra laid out on a slab of stone. Her eyes glimmered with the same cold, foreboding thirst for blood that leaked off of her mate in razor-sharp ribbons of darkness.

“She did this? With her bare hands?”

Azriel couldn’t help but let out an impressed breath as Rhys answered her questions. Four deep gouges in the side of Vanserra’s neck widened into a gaping, life-ending wound, his throat wholly exposed. Something akin to terror was etched onto his face, and it gave him a cool, sweet sense of satisfaction to know the male had seen his death coming before it claimed him.

Amazingly, however, he was covered in less blood than Elain herself had been.

Regardless of how impressed he was, of how his blood heated at the sight of Elain’s handiwork, his hand drifted to Truth-Teller. There were no signs of life in any of the other cells, but… “Did you find the others?”

A muscle in Rhys’s jaw ticked, and Feyre reached out a hand to smooth it out. “No, but I could scent the other two.”

His High Lady’s eyes went distant, and Rhys trained his gaze on Vanserra’s blood-soaked hair as he captured her hand in his own. Whatever they were discussing mind-to-mind made Rhys’s shadows darken, and Feyre wound her arms around his middle and pressed a long kiss to his cheek, utterly uncaring that they had an audience.

“We will deal with them tomorrow,” Feyre told Azriel when she pulled away, her eyes clearing.

Azriel dipped his head. “I will inform Cassian to prepare—“

“No,” Rhys’s voice was quieter, rougher. “Just us.”

Azriel stilled. He couldn’t help his glance downward—down, into the heart of the mountains beneath the moonstone palace and the Hewn City, where all of the High Lords of the Night Court were laid to rest. Where Rhys’s father was entombed.

Rhys shook his head. Perhaps he skimmed the question off the top of Azriel’s mind. “Go.”

Without waiting for a response, Rhys pulled a wickedly sharp blade and a brand bearing the Night Court’s sigil out of thin air. He handed the brand to Feyre, who accepted it with wide eyes, and then an unlit brazier blinked into existence at his side.

There would be no magic to inflict these final wounds. If tradition held, Elain would be the one to mark her kill and mount his head—and Azriel was beginning to wonder if she would even balk at the task, the way he sometimes did when the sizzle and tang of burning flesh in these dungeons became too much—but Rhys was poised over the brazier with a flint in one hand. He paused, a small mercy, and then Feyre tilted her head at Azriel.

Despite the empty, russet eyes staring out at her from a dead male’s face, despite the plans for bloody vengeance she and Rhys were undoubtedly making together in their minds, she flashed him a brilliant, pleased smile.

“Stay with Elain and Nyx for me?” The smile dimmed, and she worried her lip between her teeth as she glanced back at Rhys, but the plain affection in her eyes as she looked at Azriel threatened to knock him on his ass. “We won’t be home tonight.”

The implications of that should concern Azriel—at the very least, he ought to ask how widespread the slaughter would be, how many Illyrians they ought to prepare and station at their borders, if the Darkbringers and the Vaklyries might be necessary… But Rhys sparked the flint against his steel blade, and Azriel felt the absence of Elain in his arms like a wound that was bleeding him dry.

So he bowed to his lady and stepped away.

He resurfaced outside the gates of the River House. The guards stationed there nodded, and he cut a path through the gardens and into the house as his shadows slipped away in all directions. They returned quickly, telling him what he already knew—Cassian and Nesta were bickering in the dining room, the other Valkyries were beside the Sidra behind the house, the wards were strong, unbreached…

And there she was.

Elain, her golden hair illuminated by a shaft of buttery sunshine streaming in through the window, bouncing a giggling Illyrian baby on her knees. She looked up when he stepped into the doorway, his shadows sweeping through the room and then slipping away, as they always did in her presence.

She smiled, brilliant and bold, and held out her hand.

He went to her.

#elriel #elain archeron #azriel shadowsinger #elain #a court of thorns and roses fic #acotar #my fics #post-acosf #acosf #elain x azriel #azriel x elain #crimson clover #rhysand #feysand #(minor - but it sets up the next story in this series)#feyre archeron #here’s 5000 words of smut where azriel is kinda mean(?) about it but also super infatuated with his flower girl

76 notes · View notes