#elriel angst

[duskandcobalt]

Echoes in the Hallway - III

May I present to you, the third and final part* of Echoes in the Hallway 💕 If you missed the first two parts, you can find them linked in my Masterlist.

Thank you to everyone who has read this and provided so much encouragement and support - as a new writer, I can't tell you how much I appreciate it.

*I lied, I do have one last little chapter planned but it's more of a bonus chapter and will be able to be read separately from this series.

As always, please let me know what you think!

ENJOY XX

Read on AO3

7.6k words - a little bit of angst, a little bit of smut (you know the drill) (18+)

Azriel’s hands form fists at his sides as he fights the urge to reach for Elain’s trembling fingers and pull her back so he can slot her safely behind his body. He can’t see her face. She’s frozen in place, looking up at their High Lord, but he can sense her confusion, her sadness and anger. He can feel it all radiating from her small frame.

There have been very few times in his  life where he struggled to keep up his defenses - that cold, impenetrable guise of indifference - but this was one of them. 

He’d let himself get distracted. 

He had been so absorbed in their blissful bubble, that he hadn’t been paying attention. The world could have been collapsing around them and he wouldn’t have noticed - not when all he cared about was the taste of her on his tongue and the sounds he was drawing from her body.

He should’ve known that Rhys was there. He should’ve picked up the scent, heard his footsteps. He shouldn’t have sent his shadows away when they tried to get his attention ten minutes ago.

He had failed. He could’ve kept this from happening. He could’ve protected her from this. 

Two months of carefully sneaking her away so that they could have a moment to themselves and this is the worst possible way this could’ve gone. Two months of resisting having her completely and of course, of course, Rhysand had caught them together after they’d very clearly just spent hours in bed together.

His High Lord wouldn’t know that it had been for the first time. 

In Rhys’ eyes, this would be all he needed to confirm that his suspicions were right. That Azriel had only been lusting after Elain. That all he wanted from her was sex. Even if that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Rhysand is still staring Azriel down, pure fury in his eyes, when the female in between them turns to face him. 

Her beautiful features are pained, eyebrows knitted together in confusion. Those perfect lips that had been moaning his name against his skin just moments ago, are now parted in shock. 

“What does he mean?” Elain whispers. “Azriel? Tell me it isn’t true.”

Azriel is silent as her eyes flicker over his face. He can practically see the wheels in her head turn as she reads everything he’s left unsaid.

“That’s why you walked away that night.” She says it so quietly, almost like she’s saying it just to herself. 

Her eyes widen slightly and he sees the flame spark behind her eyes, sadness and anger coming together to create fire. “You would’ve done it, you would’ve kissed me. You wouldn’t have pulled back… you said it was a mistake but you only stopped because he called you away?”

Azriel. 

 Just like that night, Rhys’ dark, authoritative voice is in his head. He’s pulling rank again, warning him - ordering him - not to speak.

Azriel can’t let this happen again, not when they’d made so much progress. He wouldn’t keep the truth from her this time.

“Yes.” 

Elain’s shoulders sag. She releases a long breath and turns back to face Rhysand before Azriel can explain himself any further.

“You had no right, you had absolutely no right to do that.” She tells Rhysand.

… 

“What’s going on?” Elain barely hears Cassian’s voice over the roaring in her ears. She only just registers that the Commander of Rhysand’s armies is now standing at the top of the stairs and surveying the scene in front of him, one of his arms bracketing Nesta’s waist to keep her behind him. 

Elain pictures launching herself at Rhysand. Imagines crossing the little distance between them and banging on his leather clad chest until her fists bleed. She contemplates screaming and yelling until her throat is raw. She pictures shouting every single obscenity she’s never dared to say out loud, at him. 

Her blood pulses through her veins, so hot and angry, that she feels like she may combust.

Everything that she thought she knew had just been pulled out from under her with that single sentence from Rhysand coupled with the simple, one word confirmation from the male that she’d just given everything to. 

 Azriel hadn’t just left that night because he was concerned that she had a mate. He had walked away because he’d been told to leave.

He’d been ordered to stay away from her completely by one of his oldest friends. Someone that he considered a brother. Someone that she had come to consider a brother because that was the level of trust that she had in Rhysand.

Elain doesn’t allow herself to launch at him, she doesn’t even let herself scream at him. She cannot stand to look at Rhys for another second. She tucks away her anger and turns from between the two males to walk swiftly down the hallway towards the stairs where Cassian and Nesta are still standing, both already dressed for the day in their training leathers. 

Cassian is shocked as he watches her pass, his mouth agape as he glances between her and his brothers, no doubt trying to decide if he’ll need to interfere in a brewing altercation. 

Her sister, however, doesn’t look nearly as surprised. Nesta’s eyes turn from angry to sad as she shifts her attention from Rhysand to Elain. 

“Come.” She says quietly, gently taking Elain’s hand in hers and guiding her down the stairs without a word to anyone else. 

Elain waits until she’s in the safety of her room before she collapses on the floor, shoulders heaving as she lets all the emotion flood out of her. Tears are streaming down her face when she feels Nesta’s lean, strong arms wrap around her, covering her body with her own. Her sister’s hands run over her as she murmurs into Elain’s hair. 

She can’t hear anything Nesta says over the ringing  in her ears but it’s a welcome comfort at least, to be in the reassuring embrace of the only person alive that has known Elain for every single day of her life. 

…

Elain doesn’t know how long she’s been asleep for but she’s in bed when to the sound of her bedroom door opening and the gentle rustle of sheets as Nesta sits up next to her.  

Cassian’s familiar scent drifts through the room and Elain keeps her eyes shut as she feels the mattress sink under his weight when he takes a seat at the very foot of her bed.

“Rhys went home.” He informs Nesta, keeping his voice low so as to not wake Elain. “He told Azriel to meet him in his office in a few hours.”

“How’s Az?” Nesta asks.

“I don’t know.” Cassian sighs. “He wouldn’t talk to me, not even after Rhys left. He’s probably flying around to blow off some steam… he’ll be there, though. To see Rhys. He gave his word.”

“This is ridiculous.” Nesta huffs. “Will your brother ever stop interfering in everyone else’s life? How is it any business of his who Azriel or Elain choose to spend their time with?”

Cassian doesn’t take the bait. Elain can tell from his voice that he’s dealt with enough confrontation for one morning.

“How’s she doing?” 

“She hasn’t said anything, either.” Nesta sighs. “She’s exhausted. I don’t think she got much sleep, if any, last night.”

Elain’s cheeks heat and Cassian snorts. 

“I can’t wrap my head around it. I mean… Az and Elain? ” He pauses, most likely waiting for Nesta to agree, to tell him that she didn’t see this coming either, but Nesta doesn’t say anything. “You knew?”

Elain tries her best to keep her breathing even as she awaits the answer. 

“Yes.” Nesta admits. “I saw them in the garden one afternoon. Elain was watching Nyx. I thought I’d go spend the day with them since you were away but then Azriel was there and they were…  I could just tell there was something between them. I left, neither of them knew I had been there.”

Elain thanks the gods above that she’s facing away from them because she cannot keep the surprise from her face. If she’s thinking of the same day, it would mean that Nesta had known about them for almost an entire month.

“You never told me.”

“It wasn’t my secret to tell.”

“But I’m your mate.” 

“She’s my sister.” 

Elain can’t see Nesta’s face but she can picture the exact scathing look she’d be giving Cassian. She knows she’s right when Cassian doesn’t argue the point any further. 

“I’ll leave you to it, I have to go to the River House.” The bed shifts as he stands. Elain hears him lean over and kiss Nesta before he makes his way to the door. “Rhys has put me in charge of finding somewhere else for Lucien to be before Azriel shows up this evening. Her scent is all over him and probably will be for days. If Lucien sees him…” 

“You think he’d do something?” Elain can hear the concern in Nesta’s voice. 

“She’s his mate - he’d react on instinct. Even then, he still wouldn’t stand a chance against Az. He’d be dead before he could land a single punch.” 

Cassian leaves, shutting the door behind him and a shudder runs through Elain at the thought of the two males physically fighting. She didn’t want it to come to that. She had no desire to be the reason one of them ended up injured, if not worse.

“I know you just heard all of that.” Nesta swats Elain’s back. 

Elain turns, finally opening her eyes only to see Nesta looking down at her with raised eyebrows. “You knew?”

“When I told you that I knew you came here last night because of him, I didn’t mean Lucien.” Nesta gives her a pointed look. “You may be the Seer of the family, Elain, but I know you. I’ve seen the way you look at Azriel when you think no one’s watching.”

“I really care about him, Nes.” Tears prick at the corner of Elain’s eyes. She presses a hand to her pounding heart.  “I… I can’t explain it but I know in my soul that he’s it for me.”

“Tell me.” Nesta turns her body to face Elain and takes her hand. “Tell me everything.” 

So Elain does. 

She tells Nesta about Solstice and how she felt in the months that followed. Tears are flowing freely as she tells her sister exactly how her feelings for Azriel had developed over the years but especially over the past couple of months. Elain fills Nesta in on almost every single detail that led up to last night, stopping at her decision to make her way to Azriel’s room. 

“So last night was the first time you two had sex? Really?” Nesta’s lips turn up into a cunning grin. “I’m impressed you held out for that long.” 

She knows this is Nesta’s attempt at lightening the mood and it works. Heat rises to Elain’s cheeks as she nods.

“How was it?” Nesta’s icy blue eyes shimmer with amusement. 

“How do you think?” She covers her face with her hands, suddenly shy. 

Nesta’s hands wrap around her wrists, prying them off so she can see Elain’s face. 

“If the wingspan thing is actually true, I’m surprised you can even walk today.” Nesta erupts in laughter and Elain can’t help but join in. A memory from the night before of Azriel asking if she could take more makes her face and chest flush bright red.

The two sisters double over as they laugh, clutching each other’s hands, and Elain is thankful for the distraction as all the stress of the past few hours dissolves for just a moment.

… 

Azriel storms out of Rhys’ office towards the balcony, blatantly ignoring his High Lady as she tries to stop him. He’ll apologise to her later for his abruptness but for now all he can do is launch himself into the sky, flying higher and higher, until the clouds completely block the city below. 

One week. 

From tomorrow morning, Rhys was sending Azriel away for an entire week on some bullshit mission to the continent. 

Rhysand hadn’t even given Azriel an opportunity to explain himself. He had simply fixed him with a glare that had become all too familiar, not even bothering to stand when Azriel walked into the room before he proceeded to give him strict instructions on what information he expected the Spymaster to seek.

It was a task that was so obviously beneath him, something that normally would have been assigned to one of the spies in Azriel’s network. It couldn’t have been clearer that it was a poorly disguised excuse to put distance between him and Elain as a punishment for going against his High Lord’s orders.

The only ounce of sympathy had come from Feyre who had looked at Azriel with such sad eyes from where she had stood next to Rhys. Still, she hadn’t said anything to contradict her Mate’s orders even if it was clear from her expression that she disagreed with his approach. 

“I care about her, Rhys.” Azriel had told his brother a minute before he walked out. “Whether you believe me or not, I care for Elain. Keeping us apart isn’t going to change that.” 

And then, though he shouldn’t have, he had turned to Feyre just before he stepped onto the balcony. “Did he tell you what he said to me on Solstice? Did my brother tell you that he told me to go to a pleasure house? As if that’s all I wanted from Elain? As if that’s all your sister is good for?” 

He couldn’t get the way Feyre’s face had fallen out of his head. His emotions had gotten the best of him but he had to say something. He had to let her know. Rhys had gotten away with too much for too long and it was a low blow, but it was a last second attempt to get Feyre on his side. 

Azriel would take his High Lord’s order. He’d go on this ridiculous mission, he’d bring back whatever pointless information he’d been asked for. He’d stay away for a week that he knew would all but kill him. He’d do it all, but he needed to take care of something else first.

Rhysand hadn’t given him any direct orders as to where he could or could not be tonight and that was all Azriel needed before making his decision. 

… 

Azriel takes a deep breath as he stands outside Elain’s door. 

He’d spent most of the day flying around to delay the inevitable before he finally returned to the House of Wind just as the sun began to set, stopping in his chambers only to bathe quickly before he made his way downstairs to her floor.

He raises his hand to knock and is surprised to hear the musical sound of feminine laughter through the door just as his fist makes contact with the wooden surface.

When he cracks open the door and peers inside, Elain is seated at her vanity and Nesta stands behind her, brushing her younger sister’s hair. They both turn to face him, their laughter dying down at the sight of him even though Nesta has a suspiciously amused look on her face and the remnants of a blush stain Elain’s cheeks. 

“Sorry to interrupt.” He opens the door fully and takes one single step into her room. “Can we talk?”

Elain remains frozen in place as she stares at him but Nesta leans over and sets the brush down on the vanity.  She bends at the waist, whispers something in Elain’s ear and stands back up after a dip of Elain’s chin.

She gives Elain’s shoulder a squeeze and then approaches Azriel. 

Nesta peers up at him, her amused expression turning into something more serious as she pokes his chest with a single finger. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Shadowsinger.”

She doesn’t wait for him to reply before she slips out of the room, shutting the door behind her. 

Azriel walks over to Elain, picks up the brush that Nesta had been using and gestures for Elain to turn back towards the mirror. 

He turns the brush in his hands as he assesses her.

She’s also freshly bathed. Her hair is still damp, a few shades darker than usual, though the golden highlights that run through it are just starting to show through as the strands begin to dry.  She’d changed out of her silky blue slip and into a much more demure cotton nightgown.

Azriel gently drags the brush through her hair from root to tip, just to have something to do with his hands. 

“I’m sorry.” He whispers finally, swallowing down the rush of emotions that threaten to consume him when he meets her eyes in the reflection of the mirror. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

“You lied to me.” He hates the way her chin wobbles as she looks at him. 

“I’m sorry.” He repeats. “I wish I had done things differently.”

“Did you mean any of it?” Elain asks. “Everything that you said about him being better for me… did you actually mean it or were you just covering for Rhys?” 

Azriel continues brushing her hair, focusing his attention on combing out any tangles as he gathers his thoughts.

“I meant it all, Elain.” He says earnestly. “The only thing I didn’t tell you is that I wouldn’t have walked away on Solstice if Rhys hadn’t called me away. But everything else is true. There’s so much tension between the courts and our involvement could have insurmountable impacts because of your mating bond.”

Azriel sees her sit up straighter at that, ready to argue with him once again. He places a gentle hand on her bare shoulder. His thumb strokes over her soft skin, silently asking her to let him continue. “I was willing to overlook it. I told Rhys that I would fight for you. That I would win… he didn’t like that very much. He thinks it’s just lust. He thinks I’m just trying to seduce you.”

Elain’s jaw drops and she laughs. 

“That’s ridiculous.”

Azriel sets the brush down as she turns on the bench to face him. “The way he caught us this morning wouldn’t have helped.”

He can’t help the way his eyes fall to her neck. To the already fading splotches of purple in the shape of his lips that decorate her skin.

“Cassian said you went to meet with him this afternoon?” Elain’s fingers come up to graze over the spot where his eyes linger.

Azriel nods, forcing his attention back up to her face. “He didn’t say anything about us. He just… he’s sending me away for a week.”

“And you’re going?”

“It was an order… I don’t have a choice.” He sighs. 

“So that’s it, then?” Elain stands up, her arms at her sides. “You’ve just come to say goodbye?”

“It’s just a week.” Azriel attempts a small smile. 

“What if it isn’t just a week?” Her eyes shimmer with unshed tears as she looks up at him. 

He sees the unspoken plea in the depths of them, begging him to do anything but leave. But he has to go, he has to let Rhys win just this once. He has to play his cards right if he wants even a chance at making this work without having to keep it a secret.

Azriel takes her face in his hands, presses his lips to her forehead. “I’m sorry.”

It’s all he can say before he makes his way towards the door. His fingers are just about to twist the doorknob when Elain speaks. 

“Stay.” Her voice makes her sound so small. “Don’t go.”

Azriel almost turns to look at her but he can’t do it. Can’t bear to see the yearning and disappointment that he knows will be written on her face. So he turns the handle, walks out of the room, and leaves her standing alone once again. 

… 

He gets all the way to his room, all the way to his bed, when he glances at his bedside table and sees the objects laying there. The items that he’s looked at every night as he attempted to find sleep for the past two years. 

 It’s the sight of the headache powder that makes him realise what a colossal idiot he’s been.

It’s the thoughtfulness behind that gift that has his feet moving on their own accord, carrying him back down the stairs and straight into her bed chambers without so much as a knock on her door. 

Elain’s head whips to face him from where she’d been leaning over her bedside, just about to blow out the candle on her nightstand. Her eyes are wide with shock and there are tears staining her face as she sits up on her knees and silently watches as he approaches her. 

Azriel’s chest heaves as he slowly walks towards her bed, maintaining eye contact with her all the while. He relies on his eyes to convey everything he can’t say out loud. 

That he’s sorry. Sorry that it has to be like this. Sorry that he’d left her like that again. 

He lets her see how much he wants her, how much he wants this. Even if he’s leaving tomorrow. Even if this ended up being the last time. 

 She was worth it. She would always be worth it. 

Not a single word is exchanged as Elain reaches up for him, grasping his face between her hands and pulling him down towards the bed. Her lips part for him as his body settles easily over hers.

Azriel kisses her with everything he has while Elain’s fingers fumble with the soft fabric of his shirt, dragging it up and over his head with some assistance from him until she can get her hands on his bare skin.

Her touch is searing against his body, her movements frantic as she tries to rid him of his pants.

“Slow.” Azriel takes her shaking hand in his, brings it to his lips and kisses her palm. “We have time.”

Elain looks at him and he holds her gaze until her breathing calms and she nods. Only then, does he kiss her again. 

He takes his time dragging her nightgown up her body, his lips brushing every inch of perfect skin that’s revealed to him as he pushes it up, up, up until his mouth is on her breast and she’s tugging her dress off the rest of the way. 

Her hands entwine themselves in his hair, holding him close to her as his tongue swirls and flicks over her peaked nipples. He moves down, his lips never leaving her skin, taking her with him until her back is flat against the mattress and her thighs are slung over his shoulders.

Azriel groans against her core when his tongue slides along her sex only to find that she’s already so wet for him. Her arousal covers his lips, his chin, his nose, as he settles between her legs and works her with his tongue and teeth until her thighs are clamping around his head, holding him in place as her first orgasm wracks through her body. 

Her legs have yet to cease trembling before she’s guiding him back up to her and covering his mouth with hers. She places a small hand on his chest, pushes him down onto his back and kneels beside him. Azriel doesn’t have a chance to utter even a single word before she has his pants off and her tongue slides up the entire length of him.

He reaches down, gathering the curtain of her hair in one hand so that he can see her. So that he can watch in awe as those beautiful pink lips wrap around him, her cheeks hollowing, her tongue swirling and licking as she takes as much of him as she can. Her fingers wrap around the base to compensate for what doesn’t fit.

He feels his cock throb against her cheek and he lightly tugs on her hair.  Elain takes his cue, pulling off of him and ever so delicately wiping her mouth. Her swollen lips turn up in an innocent smile that sends every nerve in his body into overdrive with the undeniable need to be inside her. His hands land on her waist, supporting her as she places a knee on either side of his hips, straddling him. She takes him in her hand and lines him up at her entrance before sinking down just enough to envelop the head of his cock.

Azriel curses at the feel of her sex, so warm and wet and impeccably tight, around him as she takes him further and further until he’s seated deep inside her. He grips her hips, fingers digging into her soft skin as he guides her back and forth, helping her rock against him until she’s found a rhythm. 

He can’t take his eyes off of her. He delights in the way her lips part with pleasure, the way the candlelight catches the thin layer of sweat on her skin and makes her glow. She’s so unbelievably beautiful that he cannot believe how lucky he is, how utterly blessed he is, to bear witness to her on top of him. To watch as she derives her pleasure from him. 

Elain rides him slow and steady, her breasts rising and falling in time with her hips as she sinks down on him over and over again, her walls clenching around him each and every time. Azriel doesn’t know how much longer he can possibly hold it together. 

He wraps an arm around her waist, holding her in place as he shifts them both up so his back is against the headboard and her chest is against his. Her nipples slide against his skin each time he thrusts up into her. His arm stays wrapped firmly around her waist while his other hand threads through the hair at the nape of her neck, gently craning her head back until her eyes are on his. 

He holds her there, his eyes locked on hers, as he picks up his pace and angles his hips slightly to hit the spot that has her falling apart with a sharp cry of his name just a minute later. Azriel follows, letting himself go with a whisper of her name as he comes inside her. Elain buries her head in the crook of his neck and shoulder and he feels the cool dampness of her tears against his heated skin. 

She makes no move to lift off of him, only melts further into his body as he pulls her tighter against him. Azriel holds Elain close as she cries in his arms, his eyes squeezing shut against the feeling of his heart shattering in his chest. 

…

I’m always thinking of you. 

Elain studies the small scrap of paper with the carefully written message that Nuala had quietly slipped into her hand while they prepared dinner together ten days ago.

The note is creased, the paper worn thin from the amount of times she’s unfolded it to read the words over and over again. Those five words are all that keeps her tethered to the earth these days but if she keeps this up, the ink will fade and she’ll have nothing left.

Just as she had feared, what was supposed to be a week apart had somehow turned into almost four. 

Twenty-five days have passed since she had woken up to an empty bed, her hands blindly reaching out only to find her sheets cold where his warm body should have been. 

Twenty-five days and other than this singular note in her hands, Elain had not seen or heard from Azriel.

She had also hardly seen their High Lord despite living under the same roof.

It was evident that Rhysand was doing everything in his power to avoid her. He made excuses to have his meals at different times, he had mysterious meetings that would come up the second Elain stepped foot into the room. If she didn’t know any better, she’d think it was guilt that made it impossible for him to look into her eyes.

Even Feyre had been tiptoeing around her, carefully avoiding bringing up any topic that could possibly lead back to Azriel. Elain knew her sister felt terrible about the situation, that her regret over her Mate’s actions and orders meant that she couldn’t be around Elain for more than five minutes unless they had Nyx in between them as a barrier.

Elain decided that she’d finally had enough when she woke up this morning with fire in her veins. It’s what had her reading that note one last time, folding it neatly and sliding it back into the top of her dress, before she stormed upstairs and let herself into Rhysand’s office. 

He’s in the middle of a meeting with Cassian when she barges in, both their heads turning quickly at her interruption. 

Rhysand looks at her as if he’d been expecting this to happen eventually. Cassian watches on in silence.

“Call him back, Rhys.” Elain spits out, not bothering with any niceties.

“Elain…” Rhys starts, taking a deep breath. 

“Call. Him. Back.” Elain enunciates each word. “I want him back here within the next two days or I swear on the Mother, I will find my way to Autumn Court and cause a scene like you wouldn’t believe.”

Cassian swears under his breath at her threat, obviously taken aback by her unexpected tenacity. Rhys remains looking at her with that infuriating, unwaveringly calm expression that’s so similar to Azriel’s, plastered on his face.

“I want a meeting with you and Feyre as soon as he’s back. Cassian, you can come too.” Elain’s voice is strong even though she feels like she’s about to crumble into dust on the inside. “Invite Nesta. Invite the whole godsdamn circle. I want this done formally since you think this is such a big deal.” 

“He’s coming back tonight.” Rhys says finally, brushing something Elain can’t see from his sleeve. “You both are so very dramatic for being the two quietest people in this house.”

Elain ignores that remark. “He’s coming back? Tonight?” And then because she doesn’t trust Rhys quite like she did before, she turns to Cassian for confirmation. “Really?”

“Really.” Cassian nods, an inkling of a smile on his lips. 

The ache in her chest eases just enough for her to take her first proper breath in what feels like weeks. 

Tonight. He’d be back tonight and then they could finally put this all to rest. 

Hope ignites like a flame low in her stomach as she leaves Rhysand’s office but Elain squashes it, shoves it down until it’s nothing but a tiny, burning ember because hope was a dangerous thing for her to have.

… 

Elain does her best to calm her racing heart as she stands in Rhys’ office, her arms crossed over her chest as if to keep her heart within her body, as she waits for Azriel to arrive so that this meeting can commence. 

Feyre is perched on the corner of the desk where Rhys sits, mindlessly flipping through whatever papers are in front of him. Nesta and Cassian are squished together on a loveseat off to the side, his large, siphoned hand heavy on her knee as if to hold her in place. Most likely in case Rhys says one wrong thing and she lets her emotions get the best of her. Something that wasn’t completely out of the question given the way she was currently staring at him with daggers for eyes.

Other than a few initial greetings, no one has said a word. The tension in the air is palpable and Elain feels like every inch of her skin is on fire. It’s a sensation that only gets worse when the doors leading to Rhys’ office open and Azriel finally enters the room. 

His eyes find hers immediately, softening as they travel up and down her body, devouring her with his eyes just as she’s doing to him. 

The sight of him knocks the air out of her, like it usually does. He’s beautiful, dressed in well tailored gray slacks and a simple white shirt. There isn’t a single weapon on him other than Truth-Teller strapped to the belt slung around his hips. 

After going so long without seeing him, it’s only practice from months of pretending that they were nothing more than acquaintances that allows her to drag her gaze from his without launching herself into his arms and showing everyone in this room just how much she wanted him. 

Azriel walks further into the room but carefully maintains the excruciating distance between them, as if standing too close to her would have Rhys sending him back to wherever he just came from.

“Okay.” Rhysand breaks the silence, standing up and walking around to the front of his desk. He leans against it, his arms cross at the same time one ankle crosses over the other. “Let’s hear it.” 

“I won’t stay away from her any longer.” Azriel’s words collide with Elain’s when she speaks at the same time. 

“I want you to tell me why you called him away on Solstice.” 

Rhys’ eyes flicker between them and the way he sighs, as if he had a million other things he’d rather be doing, makes Elain see red. 

“I called him away that night because it would have been incredibly stupid for him to kiss you.” He chooses to respond to Elain. “Both of you seemed to have forgotten that your mate was in the same house.”

“My mate,” Elain repeats his words through clenched teeth, “has nothing to do with this.” 

Rhys’ eyes light as he stands up a bit straighter, fully engaging in the conversation. 

“Your mate has everything to do with this.” His voice is firm. “I will not risk the safety of my Court, of my people, because my Spymaster decided to seduce you.”

“Seduce me?!” Elain’s eyebrows raise. To hear it from Azriel was one thing, but hearing it confirmed from Rhysand hurt in a way she hadn’t expected. “As if I’m so naive that I could be swayed because of what…? Sex? Do you truly think so little of me?”

“That’s not it, Elain.” Rhys replies, patiently. 

“So what is it, then? You think he isn’t capable of pursuing anything except sex? That he couldn’t possibly be interested in me for anything else? That he isn’t capable of actual feelings? Of wanting more for himself?” Elain pauses, “He’s one of your oldest friends and yet you have no idea what he wants.”

“You have no clue what you’re talking about.” Rhys shakes his head, his voice darkening. “I have known him for centuries. You have known him for a few years.”

“Watch your tone.” Azriel’s warning sends a shiver up Elain’s spine but Rhysand only turns to the Shadowsinger with a smirk on his lips. 

“What do you have to say, brother?” 

“I have fought you on very few things in my life, Rhys.” Azriel takes a step forward and Elain catches Cassian sitting up straight out of the corner of her eye. “I’ve obeyed your orders even when I’ve disagreed with them, but I have to put my foot down on this. I will not stay away from her any longer.” 

“What do you want me to do, Azriel?” Rhys laughs. “I may as well set Prythian on fire myself because that’s where this is all headed if Beron or Eris gets word of this. They’ll take any excuse to act and you know it.” 

“I will not be used as a pawn in your political game.” Elain interrupts before Azriel has a chance to reply. “You have ruled this court for almost your entire life. You have won wars. You have kept your people safe for centuries. There has to be another way. I am begging you to find another way. This is my life, Rhys. I won’t let you interfere with what I want and Azriel is what I want.” 

“You haven’t even tried with Lucien!” Rhys raises his voice and Feyre’s hand lands on his arm as she glares at him, silently telling him to calm down.

“I have no desire to try with Lucien.” Elain maintains her composure. “I am glad that the mating bond worked out for you. I’m glad it worked for Nesta and Cassian but my sisters had time to fall in love before they even knew about the bond. They had a choice. I deserve one, too.” 

“I can’t allow this.” He shakes his head. “I cannot risk everything because the two of you are incapable of keeping your hands off each other.”

“Rhys.” Feyre breaks her silence, sighing. “We’ve discussed this.” 

Elain watches as Rhys and her sister exchange words in a conversation only they can hear.

“Let me show you.” Elain’s patience slips and the words are out before she can think about what she’s just offered. “You think this isn’t serious, you think it’s just lust… let me show you that it isn’t.”

“Elain.” Azriel turns to her, his eyes wide. “Don’t.” 

It’s an invasion of their privacy. She knows it and she hates it but it’s a necessary evil. She’d give up the moments that were supposed to be just between them, she’d let Rhys see them if it meant they could have a future. “It’s the only way, Azriel. I don’t know how else to make him believe it. To make him believe us.”

“Rhys, this is unnecessary.” Azriel pleads with his brother. 

Even Feyre speaks up, quietly whispering to her Mate to rethink this. But Elain can tell that his interest is piqued. This could be their only opportunity. 

“I’ll show you.” Nesta stands, pushing Cassian’s hand off her lap. “I saw them one day. I’ll show you.” 

Rhys, Feyre, and Azriel all turn towards her - disbelief clear on all their expressions.

“No.” Elain remains firm, turning to her sister and giving her a soft smile. She appreciates the effort but she knows it won’t be enough. “He needs to see it from my perspective.”

She faces Rhys once more and repeats herself. “Let me show you.”

Rhys closes his eyes for half a second but nods once. 

Elain opens the gates to her mind when Rhys asks for access and then she begins to pull memories, letting him see and feel everything just as she had. 

She starts at the very beginning - let’s him experience that initial flutter of interest that she’d felt the very first time she met Azriel. She lets him see the glimpses of all the quiet conversations they had, lets him feel the relief that had flooded her body when she saw him walk into the tent in Hybern’s camp. She summons memories of the way he’d been the only source of light in her life during her darkest days, the moment he’d been the one person to see her for what she was when even her Mate had failed. 

She shows him the memory of Solstice and the aftermath that followed, the countless nights that she spent crying herself to sleep as she tried to figure out what had gone wrong. 

Elain brings Rhys into what was possibly the most emotionally vulnerable moment of her life - that first night in the hallway where she’d confronted Azriel and laid her whole heart out in front of him. She made sure that Rhys saw that she’d been the one to instigate the conversation, made certain that he heard how Azriel had tried to do what he had once thought was right. 

She pulls memories of the way Azriel looked at her, the softness and reverence in his eyes and voice as they exchanged whispered words in closets and garden sheds. She shows him the way he relaxes around her - the way he laughs, the way he smiles, the gentleness with which he touches her. 

Elain shows him that very last night - the affection in Azriel’s eyes as he watched her in the early hours of the morning before she’d fallen asleep. She lets him see the way he’d wiped the never ending tears from her eyes and held her close, whispering promises that he’d always find his way back to her. 

She lets Rhys view and feel it all. Each intimate moment that couldn’t be written off as just simple physical attraction. She lets him into every moment that should’ve been just between her and Azriel, allows him to feel that light between them that neither of them had ever been able to explain. 

It’s so emotionally exhausting to go through it all that her knees practically give out when she finally retreats from her mind. It’s only Nesta’s arm around her waist that keeps her standing. 

Elain can’t keep her hands from trembling as she looks up at Rhys. She doesn’t dare look over at Azriel. 

She can’t get a read of Rhysand’s face as he stands in front of his desk. There isn’t even a hint in his expression that she’s just shared some of her most cherished and vulnerable moments with him.

It feels like hours before he moves even a muscle but her breath hitches when she sees the slightest tick of his jaw. 

“You love her.” He pivots to Azriel. It’s a statement, not a question. But he still looks at his Spymaster for confirmation.

Nesta’s grip tightens around Elain’s waist. She still can’t bring herself to look at him so she keeps her eyes on Rhys, only breaking to look once at Feyre, who’s tear lined gaze shifts from Elain to Azriel as she too, awaits his answer.

“I’ve been in love with her for ages.” His voice is barely a whisper but his words are assured. Elain can’t help the whimper of relief that escapes her as she gives in and looks over to him only to see that his hazel eyes are already on her. 

“Gods.” Rhys mutters under his breath. “This is to stay within this house. Not a single person outside of the Inner Circle can know about this. Certainly not her Mate. Not until we figure out how to handle this.” 

Rhys gives Azriel a long pointed look before returning his attention to Elain. 

She fights the urge to make a comment about how they’d done a damn good job of keeping things a secret from him these past few months but she holds her tongue lest he change his mind. 

“You’ll still be expected to appear next to Lucien in public. Whether you agree with me or not, this is a serious matter that will backfire if it isn’t handled correctly.”

“Okay.” Elain nods quickly, her fingertips begin to itch with anticipation. 

“Okay.” Rhys says, begrudgingly.

“Really?” Elain can’t keep the hope out of her voice, nor can she stop the tears of relief that pool in her eyes. 

“Yes.” The words are barely out of his mouth before she turns and crosses the room, practically sprinting towards Azriel.

… 

Azriel catches her easily, his arms winding tight around her waist as he lifts her off the ground. Her dress is a whirlwind of colour around them as he spins her once.

He can hardly believe it. It doesn’t feel real to hold her like this in front of everyone after months of only having her in secret. She’d sacrificed so much for this, given up parts of herself to fight for this. For them. He didn’t know how he’d ever convey how much what she had just done meant to him. He didn’t know if he’d ever fully forgive Rhys for letting it go that far but he pushed that thought to the back of his mind, in favor of focusing on the beautiful female currently in his arms.

“I love you.” Azriel murmurs, staring deep into her eyes as he says the words directly to her for the very first time. He leans into her touch when she places both of her hands on either side of his face and looks down from where he’s still holding her off the floor and against his body. “I love you, Elain.”

“I love you.” She cries, dipping her head down to bring her lips to his. 

Azriel sets her down, his arms stay safely around her as he kisses her back. It’s soft and slow and entirely too intimate given their surroundings. But for once in his life, he doesn’t care. He pays no mind to Rhysand taking a seat at his desk, his fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. He hardly sees Feyre standing next to him with a bright smile on her face and tears in her eyes.  

It’s a relief to have her like this. It’s a weight off his shoulder to no longer have to hide, at least not within these walls. He was well practiced in keeping secrets, but it had killed him to bring into this. To have her hide a whole part of her life from her sisters. To have her live in the shadows with him when she was such a bright light on her own.

Azriel knows there’s more to be done. That they still aren’t in the clear. That they may never be in the clear. He knows that there’s more at risk, that so many things could go wrong. But the risk was worth it for the reward of knowing that Elain was his.

#elriel #elriel fic #elriel fanfic #pro elriel #elain x azriel #elain acheron #azriel x elain #acotar fanfiction #ao3 fanfic #ao3 writer #my writing #elriel smut #elriel angst

[nightcourtseer]

All the Blood I’ve Lost with You

Part 2/2

Read on A03

Pairing: Elriel

————————

“Azriel…”

A gentle, teasing voice tickled the hair that fell over his ears.

“It’s time to wake up.”

But Azriel had no desire to do just that. Why would he, when Elain’s warm, bare skin pressed into his own underneath the soft quilt in the room that overlooked the garden of the townhouse. They had pushed the two small beds together. Even though they most certainly could have taken up residence in one of the rooms with a larger bed, this room had the best view.

Cool spring air blew lazily through the open window, which only had him seeking a tighter grip on Elain’s hip and smooth back, turning into her warmth.

“So you are awake.”

Elain’s voice was a balm to his heavy heart. An elaborate melody when before he had heard only the simplest of songs.

His only response was to nuzzle his head further into the crook of her neck. Every muscle relaxing as he breathed her in - honey and night-blooming jasmine. Home.

“Azriel…”

At her insistence he finally hummed a muffled response. But before she could utter a word further, he opened his mouth to carefully wrap his teeth around a portion of the skin of her neck and gently sucked.

Her pulse beat deliciously faster under his ministrations, and a new blooming scent filled the room as Elain lifted a hand to tangle through his sleep-mussed hair, urging him on.

A delicate breath caught in her throat as he worked her.

No, Azriel had no desire to go anywhere. Had no desire to leave this place with her, where he finally felt warm and safe and loved. Wanted.

He would be perfectly happy to stay here forever.

……..

Elain’s broken, horrified scream shattered the silence of the quieted battlefield. Groups of soldiers looked away and kept their distance from the huddled Inner Circle, flinching at the sound of the heartbroken female.

The rain seemed to slow, clouds parting as if even the downpour could not compete with the torrent of tears falling from the seer’s eyes.

Elain had awoken moments before, the dried blood on her bare chest the only indicator that she had ever been injured in the first place. She had woken dazed, confused as to why she felt Azriel’s arms wrapped loosely around her outside of the covert corners and sweet, slow nights their love had been restricted to.

She had broken away from his cool touch, which felt even more frigid than usual as she scrambled to her hands and knees, pulling the cloak tighter around her naked body that someone had draped over her.

Then they knew. They knew what she could do.

Out of habit, she turned to him. Turned to look at the male who could provide her reassurance like no one else.

And then she had screamed. Maybe his name, or maybe it was simply unintelligible wailing to anyone else The voices and hands reaching for her nothing more than ghosts whispering in her ear.

Azriel lay unnaturally still before her. No movement lifting his chest, filling his lungs with slow, even breaths.

Stilled even more than when he had been asleep, tucked safely against her in the mornings they stole away.

Drenched, dark hair clung to his ashen forehead as she, out of habit, bent to move from his eyes. Slight, calloused hands tremoring as her body shook with shock, her own chest heaving in broken cries.

She heard them calling her name, but she did not listen. Did not hear them at all.

———————

Feyre reached for Rhys’ hand behind her, an anchor, as she let her hand fall from her sister’s shoulder.

Elain didn’t seem to even notice her family’s presence.

Cassian had joined them, tucking Nesta into his chest as she shook with quiet sobs moaning over and over again against his sodden leathers, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

The general stood steadfast, face grim as he held his wife while trying to accept the loss of his brother of over 500 years.

Rhys pulled Feyre back into his embrace, curling over her as if he wished he could take the brunt of all her pain - of all of their pain.

“Elain,” Rhys’ midnight voice shook slightly as he addressed his broken sister.

“No,” the middle Archeron snarled through bared teeth, salty tears coating the inside of her lips like brine. A hint of the beast that had only minutes before towered over them. Protecting what was hers.

“Not yet.”

With a new determination, Elain unbuttoned Azriel’s armor with shaking hands, throwing the useless pieces of leather to the side and tearing the ruined, bloody tunic that lay underneath to expose his bare chest. The blood already drying as the flow ceased from the deadly wound.

She showed no hesitation as she covered the gaping hole with her small hand, the edges of her fingertips baring able to touch unmarred, tattooed skin.

“Elain…”

She paid Feyre no mind as she bent down, hair curtaining Azriel’s face from view as she whispered against his lips. A fierce command edged in desperation as her tears dripped on his bloodless cheeks.

“Come back for me.”

And then she pressed her lips to his. Golden light guilding the locks framing their faces as Elain breathed life into his lungs.

Through love all is possible.

With no harp, no crown, no mask.

No High Lord or Lady powers.

With only the carnal, world-ending, earth-shaking power of a heart in love, Elain Archeron did the impossible.

Another heartbeat joined the rest of theirs.

One that Elain had realized she could hear from the very beginning. Over the roar of a mating bond, through wind and stone and time itself.

Azriel took another breath. Darkened siphons flickering back to life, cold blood once more filling his veins.

Hazel eyes blinked open to meet the warmth of those watching over him, her hair still a veil to shield them from those watching in dismay.

“I’m sorry,” Elain sobbed. “I need you still.”

Azriel lifted a weak hand to brush a piece of damp hair from her eyes, tucking it behind a pointed ear. Golden light still pouring forth from Elain’s hand, filling him with warmth and strength from the inside out.

“Don’t apologize,” he managed to whisper hoarsely back. “I want to be wherever you are.”

——————

There was no rational, or magical even, answer to how Elain had healed him.

And as they fought forward, barely leaving the other’s side as the war continued, the whispers followed them. Of the Seer Shifter who had defeated Death itself in the name of her love.

Edit: forgot my tag list!

@ultadverb

@reverie-tales

@illyrian-dreamer

@123moiaussi

@Nivem565

@demarogue

@gracie-rosee

@impossiblescissorspeachpaper

#elriel #elain archeron #azriel #acotar fanfiction #pro elriel #elain x azriel #pro elain #elriel fanfiction #azriel shadowsinger #elriel fic #angst #elriel angst #part 2

[protectorofvel]

Elain had survived her ex-fiancé with Azriel's support. Azriel was the last to hurt her.

''You drew stars around my scars But now I'm bleedin' ''

#pro elriel #elriel #elriel angst #elain x azriel #acotar #pro elain #pro elain archeron #pro azriel #acosf

[tanaquilpriscilla]

The Other Woman

Inspired by The Other Woman by Lana Del Rey

---

His laughter echoed around the room - a sound he had grown to love and embrace, let out more freely over these past months.

His smile brightened up the room. The constant happiness plastered on his face left permanent reminders of intricate lines on his cheeks, each a memory he would keep until the very end, if it ever came to that. The

She watched him with admiring eyes as he talked; teal looking up at his hazel, pouring her love in to his soul. He returned the sentiment: an arm slung around her shoulders, holding her softly against him. Scarred fingers moved up and down her arm, caressingly.

The other woman watched them from where she sat near the garden. She watched them fall in love. She watched what she would never have.

The Other Woman remembered how he would visit her house at night, when he couldn’t sleep or when he was lonely. The Other Woman would always welcome him. He knew she would never leave him on her doorstep. He would leave the teal eyed girl alone in his bed to look into the brown eyes of the Other Woman. He would tilt her head upwards gently, softly kiss her lips, her forehead. She would let him break her heart again and again and again.

He would never stay with the Other Woman.

《 But the other woman will always cry herself to sleep The other woman will never have his love to keep And as the years go by the other woman Will spend her life alone Alone 》

---

I didn't edit this so there might be some grammar errors

#elriel #elain archeron #azriel #elain x azriel #azriel x elain #elriel fanfiction #elriel fanfic #elriel angst #gwyn

[thisblogisaboutabook]

Rainy Season - Part 2

What You Gonna Do?

Azriel x Reader

A short follow up to Rainy Season since you all have been so gracious with your responses - Initially I planned a time jump for part 2 but decided to give a taste of the aftermath of her leaving. Things will eventually look up for our girl, she’s just going through it right now. Stay tuned for more! I’ve decided to make this a short series.

Part 1 Part 3

Warnings: cheating, language

Azriel

Who wakes you when the morning comes?

Azriel awoke to rays filling the room with brightness. Shit - he’d overslept. Why hadn’t Y/N woken him? He looked over to find the bed cold, as if it had been vacant for hours.

Wiping the sleep from his eyes, he wandered to the kitchen, lacking its welcoming aroma of fresh coffee and the sweet and savory aromas of pastries and bacon. No, it was totally empty.

Where was she?

“Y/N?” He groggily called out into the house.

Silence.

Slipping on a pair of pajama pants he wandered to the door. The chill of the house whipping against his bare, muscled abdomen.

Perhaps she was basking in the sunlight on the patio. He always loved how she looked in the morning rays - a deity in her own right. He should probably tell her that sometime.

Padding to the front door, two things caught his attention.

One, his clothes were strewn over top of his bag and two, a note was scrawled in her messy handwriting.

No - not a note. A list of rhetorical questions.

“Who wakes you when the morning comes?

Who gives you all she has to give?

Who fulfills all her promises?

Who sees the good in you?

What are you gonna do when I’m gone?

Where you gonna go when there’s nobody home?

Who’s gonna love you when you’re all alone?”

He dropped his head. Fuck - things were good last night. What happened? As he bent back down to clear up the strewn undergarments, the strong, sweet scent of Elain wafting into his nostrils.

No - those questions were not rhetorical. They were a plea. “Who?” Who is that person to him?

Clutching his chest he realized just how terrible a mistake he’d made when he fucked Elain.

—————

Y/N

The warm rays of the Summer Court and the overwhelming weight of crushing heartbreak greeted me bright and early. A mockery to the pouring rain I’d traveled through last night, showing up at my grandmother’s door like a drowned rat.

Instead of chastising me for how long it had been since I’d paid her a visit, her brown eyes only met me with compassion. She knew me well and every ounce of pain on my face spoke the words that I couldn’t get out.

She pulled me into a bone crushing hug, ran a hot bath and steeped a pot of tea before laying in bed behind me and running her fingers through my hair until my heaving sobs turned to shuddering breaths and eventually a deep sleep.

It was a strange feeling. It had been too long since I’d seen her and yet, she showed me more love and compassion in a span of three hours than I had in the last three years.

Thank the gods the rays woke me early as I had to make it to the palace in Adriata immediately.

“Leaving me so soon?” Grandmother asked as I hurried out the door. “Sorry! I promise I’ll be back before lunch.”

I’d only met Tarquin a handful of times but sensed that he was a kind, benevolent ruler. Still, I expected to meet with his officials before being granted access to his office but when he’d heard who was here to see him, he immediately made time for me.

By the end of our meeting, he’d granted me renewed citizenship in the Summer Court and wrote to Rhysand effectively barring Azriel from his court. Careful to not create tensions in the court, he revoked the current ban on Cassian so long as he could keep himself from destroying any more buildings within his court.

Despite my numb state, a small smile flickered across my face as I imagined Cassian’s reaction to the news. He wasn’t one to hold petty grudges but he certainly clung on to that of being banned from the Summer Court. I just hoped he wouldn’t be angry with me for leaving without saying goodbye.

Additionally, Tarquin discussed my skill set with me and by the end of the meeting I had been offered a paid position in teaching self-defense courses within the palace to a variety of age groups, primarily focusing on women and children. I brought few assets with me upon leaving the Night Court and my pride was too stubborn to withdraw any of the money from Azriel and I’s shared account when I left. No, I could do well enough on my own - thank you very much.

After the battle of Adriata, Tarquin had ramped up efforts of ensuring his citizens were better protected on all fronts so his offer was mutually beneficial for his court and me, ergo not solely extended out of pity. My pride beamed at that.

I gratefully accepted his offer.

—————

I returned home. Home? No, not home - to my grandmother’s house to find that my sister and nephew were there waiting for me.

“Oh my gods!!!!!” My sister Camila yelped. Practically tackling me.

“Gran! You didn’t tell me that Y/N was coming for lunch. You secretive old thing.”

Before he could say anything I swooped my nephew, Alex, up into my arms and - ouch, I was not as strong as I used to be because it was an effort to lift him. He’d grown at least a foot since the last time I’d seen him. A pang of guilt struck me out of my blissful state and back to reality at the thought. It had been far too long since I’d come to visit my family.

“Where’s Uncle Azriel?” he asked.

The question struck me like a knife. My expression faltering as I scrambled to regain composure. “He’s on a mission.” I lied.

My sister’s brows furrowed. She was always too good at reading me but thankfully she didn’t press further. I would talk to her when I was ready.

We spent the rest of the afternoon chatting and catching up. Alex animatedly told me of school and all of his friends - I couldn’t help but smile as the warm summer breeze whisped over my exposed skin. The tea tasted a little bit sweeter, the air a little fresher, and the company a little warmer.

—————

“Y/N?”

Rhysand’s distant voice echoed into my mind as I lay down for bed that night. I always forgot how far his daemati abilities could carry.

“Hello, Rhys.”

“I received Tarquin’s letter. Azriel has been on edge all day and…. Well, I’m not going to ask you to share anything you don’t want to but - it must have been bad. Take all the time you need.”

“I’m not coming back, Rhys.”

The words rolled through me so quickly that I almost believed them but I knew I’d need closure at some point. For now, I wasn’t ready for that.

Seeming to sense that exact thought Rhys only replied, “Write me or Feyre if you need anything at all.”

—————

Who cries knowing you don’t care?

Night time always brought out stronger emotions in me. I’d keep my emotional barriers held high all day but as the sun set, so did those walls. As I lay in bed that night the first waves of grief blew through me. Not a wave of my own grief which had been omnipresent within me but… Azriel’s grief through our bond.

Of course it took me leaving for him to feel anything toward me through our own mating bond. I shut it down as effectively as I could and cried. Tears of anger flowed as I realized that my presence was never enough but my absence was what it took for him to give a damn about me.

Who worries what the future holds?

I grieved the future that could have been ours had he only chosen me. I let the sobs pour out once again as his pain rolled through me in waves. He couldn’t even extend the courtesy of shutting down his end of the bond as he came to grips with the ramifications of his own actions. His emotions only brought me bitterness and maybe that was a flaw on my end but it sure as hell felt justified. I spent so long giving him everything and even now, I still receive only heartache in return.

Who’s tired of empty promises?

He swore he’d love me forever but forever only meant until someone better came along. Certainly it wouldn’t be long before he returned to Elain for comfort. Would he be courteous enough to shut down the bond then or would I feel the pleasure she brought as she soothed his emotional wounds then too? As he healed and made the same empty promises to her that he had to me? Hell, had he already made those promises to her? Would he hold to them for her?

What would he do now that I’m gone?

What would I do now that I’m gone?

———————————————

A/N brace yourselves, we’re getting a different character’s POV in the next chapter 😏 🔥

Tags:

@going-through-shit @kalulakunundrum @lisanna2000 @fxckmiup @sheblogs @emryb @one-big-fangirl @historygeekqueen @isa1b2h3 @bigcreatorwombatdreamer @theravenphoenix26

#acotar #sarah j maas #azriel x reader #Azriel #a court of silver flames #a court of thorns and roses #a court of frost and starlight #a court of mist and fury #a court of wings and ruin #azriel shadowsinger #inspired by hunter hayes #Tarquin #summer court #fuck around and find out #azriel angst #acotar angst #elriel #azriel x elain #elain archeron

[bloomingdarkgarden]

For Him the Bellflower Tolls Confessions in the Rain

Rated M | Angst, Emotional Confessions, Language | 4,8k A Valentines treat for you beauties and @sjmromanceweek Read on AO3

There were more scars on Elain’s slender, elegant hands than stars in the night sky. But nobody seemed to notice. Those elegant hands fidgeted with the dusty pink skirts of her gown as she stood near the townhouse’s great wide windows- admiring her morning efforts in the rosebeds down below. Gardening was a far bloodier business than warfare. A battle of hope and life and loss and grief, only death was far quieter in the end. So nobody seemed to notice. “Remind me again why I’ve agreed to this?” Elain hummed to Feyre, who stood at her back, tidying the loose curtain of curls which now nearly reached her waist.

“Because it’s been ages since Nesta did anything outside of Illyrian leathers and I need a night out.”

Elain couldn’t find it within herself to argue. It had been ages since the three of them even shared a meal together without any of the males hovering about, let alone had a night on the town. Feyre noted her silence and stilled her hands. "I know it's been a difficult week for you, Elain," she said gently. An understatement of the year. "If you'd rather be alone, Nesta and I both understand." Elain waved a hand, dismissing the entire subject she was alluding to. “Rita’s is just rather-” Elain chewed her cheek, “- loud, isn’t it?” Elain wanted nothing to do with Rita’s. But both of her tremendously busy sisters did, and in the end, the need to see them smile won out over most things in the world. “Nothing is loud compared to an Illyrian infant,” Feyre muttered darkly. Elain chuckled beneath her breath. Yes, this sort of night was in order. The High Lady of Night clicked her tongue with satisfaction as she surveyed her handiwork and Elain turned from the window to face her sister fully. Feyre shook her head appreciatively. “Stars above, Elain, little to no effort and you could bring any male in this kingdom to his knees.” Elain ducked her head, batting away the compliment. “I’d rather keep them on their feet, I should think.” It was a lie. There was one male she’d much rather have on his knees than anywhere else. But nobody seemed to notice.

※※※※※

A cool spring breeze rustled Azriel’s dark hair as he landed on a bustling Velaris street with Nesta Archeron in tow. As soon his boots hit the stones, the grey-eyed Archeron stiffened to a stance and glanced across the square. Nesta then paced towards a nearby cobbled lane, yanking him along in the process.

“Is that really necessary?” Azriel asked, voice clipped with annoyance. A shadow attempted to loosen her grasp on his wrist a moment later. “Yes,” she snapped back, not bothering to turn behind. “I was to spend tonight at Roseh-” “Brood to your brothers about it, you’ll see them momentarily,” Nesta waved a dismissive hand, marching on, leading him by the wrist. She turned east, leading them both down a long alleyway laden with twinkling strings of golden faelights. He was scowling now, unabashedly. Nesta halted before a dark wooden door with an iron latch. She turned to face Azriel, rolling her eyes at his silent disdain for being ever so slightly manhandled. Her brows wrinkled as she studied him head to toe like an equation with no solution. After a moment she straightened the collar on his shirt- a simple dark silk piece he wore once a year or so to nicer family dinners. “This was a good choice,” she said, approval tracing her sharp features. “For what occasion?” Azriel’s face remained cold, untrusting and unreadable as ever. Nesta saw through it all, of course. Nesta said nothing, but her steel-grey eyes glittered triumphantly as pulled the iron latch aside. Azriel studied the open doorway acutely. His shadows stilled from their usual idle swirling as if to taste the air. “Cassian and Rhys are not in this building,” he noted darkly, that scowl returning. “No they are not,” Nesta replied, and shoved the shadowsinger over the threshold. The rare, fleeting moment of clumsiness that followed had Azriel’s silent temper flaring as he stumbled into an unfamiliar room. He straightened, correcting his wings with a feline sort of grace and shot Nesta a glare that would send most people fleeing for their lives. Nesta merely shot him the very same look back. “Hurt her again and I will cut off your fingers and wear them as a necklace,” the eldest Archeron hissed, and slammed the door in his face.

※※※※※

Fairies began lighting lanterns and streetlights as dusk whispered across the Night Court skies. The air was damp with the scent of hopeful spring rain. Elain and Feyre strolled down a quiet street, arm in arm. The latter was admiring a beautiful painting on display in a nearby window when Nesta rounded a corner and nearly plowed them over. Elain grinned at her sister in greeting. Nesta smiled serpentine back, murmuring a quick “Shall we?” to Feyre before linking arms with her. The trio chatted as they continued down the lane towards Rita’s, but instead just before reaching the tavern’s wood-carved sign at the end of the street, Nesta made a hard right into an alleyway beyond. “Nesta, Rita’s is-”

“Oh, we’re not going to Rita’s.” Feyre remarked, pulling Elain’s arm just a little bit closer. Her sisters both quickened their pace, giving her no choice but to keep up. “We’re not?”

“Well we are,” Nesta chimed in, stopping before a tall, wooden door. “But you most certainly are not.” A moment later both sisters were hauling Elain over the threshold, and locking the door behind her. Squabbling ensued in the alley in which the words insufferable Illyrian baby could be distinguished. Elain had the distinct feeling that her nephew was not the source of those words. “Oh goodness,” Elain said softly, surveying the dark space around her.

A long, winding stone staircase spiraled up behind her. The steps were lined with candles and dusky primrose petals. Elain swallowed, realizing her two choices in this room consisted of causing a scene or following this mystery to its end. The civilized thing to do won out in the end, as it usually did. Up, up, up she went, soft skirts sighing against the dark stone. Elain reached the final step where another wooden door awaited- this one already wide open to a rooftop beckoning beyond. A warm night-kissed breeze wafted across her skin in greeting. Her breath caught in her lungs as she took it all in. A sea of flower petals blanketed the rooftop- faded primrose, lilac, and gardenia petals fluttering in the wind. A small, candlelit table in the center of the space held two plates full of food, and wine.

And there, leaning against the far balcony, stood a tall, lean, Illyrian warrior. A shadow-wreathed male looking longingly at the oncoming night as if he could hear every song dancing in the dusk-swirled sky. Elain’s heart grew very still and very quiet. Because nobody ever seemed to notice- that he could.

※※※※※

Flower petals stirred in the wake of each hushed footfall.

One foot in front of the other, Elain told herself.

An ebbing dark tide of shame still welled within her from the last time she had found herself alone with the shadowsinger.

This was a mistake.

But seeing him here, a creature of shadow and ruin in a vigil of forgotten flowers- somehow whisked it all away.

Elain knew all about beautiful things.

She had spent an entire lifetime growing, nurturing, and tending them- a thousand breathtaking roses, lilacs, blossoms of gardenia.

But Azriel put all the beautiful things of the world to shame.

Haunting hazel eyes that glimmered like a forge when they beheld her, and her alone.

Why did he always look at her that way?

His mussed ebony hair curled softly against the nape of his neck as it so often did when rain was on the horizon. Shadows whispering things she would never know, drifting in the wake of his beautiful wings.

One look from him and she ached like never before.

“Whatever is a fearsome warrior of night doing in a place like this?” Elain asked softly, stepping closer.

Azriel turned, long, dark lashes blinking at her in rapid succession before he lowered his head in greeting, a golden stain blushing his high cheek.

“I’m not entirely sure,” he said quietly.

Elain swallowed, smoothing her skirts and stepping towards the balcony. “You’re not alone in that regard.” She chose not to look at him.

Propriety came first, embarrassment second, anyway. Two pillars of her life that seemed to go hand in hand. She really ought to offer him a way out of this ridiculous situation. “You can leave- if you like.”

Azriel ran a hand nervously through his sable curls, shadows darkening for the briefest of moments.

“I can leave if that is what you prefer.”

But there was no point turning away from the truth, now that they were left alone with it in a grave full of flowers, so Elain clarified before he could continue.

“I’d prefer you stay, actually. However foolish that makes me.”

It was a long, long moment before Azriel said anything at all. He stared over the dark horizon- at the shades of violet and blue weaving in the cooling twilight.

“There is only one fool standing on this rooftop, Elain, and it isn’t you.”

The words, gentle and shameful, settled something within her. The smallest acknowledgement of the atrocity that had happened on Solstice. A few months ago now, but somehow the rawness of it all made it feel like only yesterday.

But more than that- there was her name.

How long had it been since she heard her own name on his lips?

Far too long A spring wind whispered.

“It’s been some time,” Elain said quietly, tucking an errant curl behind her ear. “Since we last spoke.”

Azriel swallowed thickly. “Eighty six days.”

He looked as if he hadn’t slept a single one.

“Has it been?”

Azriel’s eyes sought her out and some unseen agony swam there- haunting that silent hazel sea.

“I haven’t slept either, you know,” she admitted.

He scanned her pale face, the loneliness carved in the hollow of her cheeks. “I know.”

A curious shadow began leaking down his shoulder towards her. Azriel seemed to yank it back momentarily, a hint of a scowl on his brow, but the shadow only leaked out again a moment later.

“Hello little darling,” Elain leaned on an elbow, cooing a soft breath towards his shadow, which flickered with delight.

Azriel swallowed thickly and seemed incapable of moving.

“I miss watching them flutter through the garden,” Elain murmured. “I used to wonder if they might watch over me in the darkest hours of the night.”

Azriel’s wing twitched as he registered her words.

“Would that-” his throat bobbed as he searched for the words. “- comfort you?”

The question was tender, disbelieving, as if he could not fathom a world where his shadows could be considered comforting rather than terrifying. He looked like the answer could wreck him for the rest of his life.

Elain smiled softly, staring over the city. “It might have, some time ago.” Her hands trailed the pale petals of moonflower blooming in a basket on the balcony. “I might have wondered where they go when you dream.”

She could sense him edging closer. As if the ache was deep within him too. As if it ran too deep to do anything but draw him closer.

“I rarely dream,” Azriel said quietly. “But when I do, your hair is unbound.”

Elain’s heartbeat began beating like a wardrum in her chest. She slowly rose her chestnut eyes to him.

Damn the forgotten gods, he was tragically beautiful this way.

Star-soft wind filtering that ebony hair into his eyes. The top button of his shirt was unbuttoned, and the breeze shimmered through the dark silk, whispering over the muscles of his chest in a way that made her ache inside and out.

She blushed, thoroughly, and allowed him to watch her through it. Allowed him to see that he was responsible for that color rising in her cheeks. That thrum humming in her blood.

“I might make use of that wine bottle if you are going to keep saying things like that to me, Azriel.”

Azriel stepped closer, shadows twirling in the wake of his footstep. “Forgive me,” he said softly, but there was no remorse in his gaze- only unyielding determination and soft, whispering hunger.

Five minutes alone with him and she was already imagining things she absolutely shouldn’t. But it had always been that way.

It would still always be that way.

“I know it wasn’t your intention, or mine,” he paused, “but might I share this evening with you, miss Archeron?”

The gods were particularly tormentful for making him such a gentleman.

Elain swallowed, hating the flicker of bitterness that coursed through her. “Should I expect any sudden departures?”

But Azriel had that look in his eye- that look of unbent will. That look that sent him charging into Hybern’s hell to rescue her without a second thought. That look that told her he needed to right this wrong, or die trying.

“There is nothing that could keep me from sharing this night with you,” he said softly, “aside from your command.”

Elain grinned, casting her eyes downwards.

“A shadowsinger at my command?” she hummed, turning to the night-kissed sky once again. “Whatever will I do with such power?”

“Whatever you wish,” he said, and the promise in his voice made her knees weak. “But you might start letting him pour you some wine.”

Elain cursed the stars above and the seas below for allowing such beautiful, bedroom-eyed, well-mannered males to walk the earth at the same time as herself.

“Very well,” she submitted, turning towards the candlelit table before he could catch sight of her face going up in flames at how perfectly wonderful it all was.

The smallest hint of a smile graced his lips- and gods, the promise of it blooming full before the end of the night was holy.

“I haven’t forgiven you,” Elain said quietly.

“You don’t have to,” Azriel replied, holding her gaze. “Just let me-

Let me watch you Let me want you Let me fix what was lost. “- let me look after you tonight.”

※※※※※

Elain decided there was nothing so lovely in the world as a rosemary-dusted honey fig tart. She wasn’t entirely sure what sort of witchcraft was at work here- but each time she or Azriel finished a course, the next magically appeared. There were perks to having the High Lady as a sister, she supposed. For years now, Elain had lived in the Night Court. But the wonders north of the wall, no matter how small, were still not entirely lost on her. She caught Azriel watching her more than once. Tracking her amusement with the magic, her appreciative noises as she ate. He watched her like it fed something within him far more than the decadent food on the table did. The pair did their best to make polite conversation about a variety of things that had happened in the absence that followed last Solstice. An absence at most family dinners that Elain had distinctly marked for weeks on end. They weren’t addressing that elephant in the room, at any rate. The meal wound to an end eventually and Elain found herself swirling the wine in her glass carefully as she eyed a note Feyre had left on the table. You are both so serious it is dull. Live a little. Damn the consequences. - F+N + Everyone else including His Majesty The last line was scratched in Nesta’s distinct handwriting. Elain wasn’t entirely sure what the quip about Rhysand was about. But she had noticed Azriel’s jaw ticking when he himself read the note. “I can’t believe Nesta did this,” Elain muttered, spilling a splash of wine down her throat. Azriel rubbed his temple gently. “I can.” The veiled, tired look on his face Elain everything she needed to know- that Nesta was giving Azriel hell as often as she saw fit. And despite herself, Elain smiled at her sister’s unbent fierceness. The shadowsinger deserved a little hell, anyway, after walking out on her those weeks ago, little did Nesta know. “How has training been?” Elain asked, studying the shadowsinger over her glass. “With Nesta and the others?” “Grueling. The Valkyrie have more determination than Cass and I did when we began training. With twice as much retribution in their blood.” Elain murmured an agreement and looked over the lights of the city, glowing below them. “I’ve stopped by a few times to pick up some books- the priestesses wish me to join. To train with you all.” Azriel’s fork stilled on the last bite of his lamb. She studied him curiously, sipping her wine. “Does that bother you?” The shadowsinger remained silent. “Anyway it’s a farce- I’ll never do such a thing. I doubt anyone would ever find me frightening anyway, even if I were to wield the sharpest blade in Prythian.” A trace of bitterness in her tone again. Born from a life of being consistently underestimated. Elain knew that softness was a far more formidable weapon than steel. She wore that truth daily as armor. But nobody seemed to notice. “You are frightening,” Azriel said quietly. “Far more so than anyone I’ve met with a blade.” Elain rose her eyes to his. The wine was warming her blood, stoking the flame of her courage. “Whatever makes you say that?” “I should think it’s rather obvious,” he said tenderly. And she saw it all in his eyes- the longing, the need- the hunger. “I wouldn’t mind hearing the words.” A challenge. She knew he would rise to the occasion. “Ask any male who looks upon you and he will give you the same answer,” Azriel murmured. Elain drained her wine to the dregs, resting the empty glass in the space between them. She rose to her feet and held his gaze before turning to the balcony again. “I’m asking the only male I want for the answer.”

The truth laid bare between them. Elain reached the stoned edge and inhaled before resting her back against the abyss of starlight, observing him openly. Azriel drained his wine as well before rising from his seat and stepping towards her on the balcony. “There is a certain sort of beauty that haunts an Illyrian heart,” the dark timbre of his voice danced down her spine as he stepped closer. “The song of the wind, which calls to our wings. The blood hymn of a battle on a long winter night.” The hazel of his eyes burned like a golden beacon in the darkest night. “The divine taste of honey between a female’s legs.” She was unraveling now, her knees weakening with the heat of his words. “Azriel,” Elain said softly. His eyes lowered to the swell of her lips. “And the more we yearn for such things, the more we live in fear of losing them.” He rested his palms on either side of her, caging her in. “In fact what frightens me far more than how beautiful you are,” he paused, voice lowering. “Is what I might do,” heat seared through his gaze “- to earn the right to cherish you.” The words shimmered with the truth of their reality. The mention of that infernal tie to another male she never asked for. Elain  watched as the reminder of that truth darkened his gaze not only with jealousy, but with sorrow. She wanted to chase away every last wisp of it that she could. “Can you show me?” Elain whispered. Azriel’s gaze flickered in response. “Can you show me the song of the wind?” His mouth curled upwards at the notion, yet he didn’t tear his eyes from her. “It might rain,” he said softly. “I don’t care.” A playful glint in his eye now and she would die a thousand deaths before watching it fade away. “You might regret asking me this,” he muttered dryly. Elain held his gaze, not allowing her will to falter. “I don’t care,” she said again, sinking a hand into that nest of curls at the back of his head. She savored the silken strands beneath her fingers and his shadows wrapped around her, murmuring cool breaths over her fingers. Azriel then slowly, carefully, snaked an arm beneath the back of her knees, cradling her to him and gods- it ruined her all over again. She looked up to him. He looked down to her. Elain traced the swell of his sensual lips with a delicate finger as Azriel carried her to the center of the rooftop. His eyes remained locked with hers, and they were both lost to time in a gentle trance. She was aching again with how beautiful he was. “Show me the song of the wind, Azriel,” she said softly. Azriel spread his great, dark wings wide, stirring flower petals and shadows in their wake. “As my lady commands,” he answered, kissing her fingertips ever so gently. Primrose, lilac and moonlilly swirled skyward with each beat of those mighty wings, as Azriel took flight. The blooms drifted back to the earth a moment later, littering the streets below with forgotten flower petals. Elain Archeron’s heart soared into the atmosphere along with the wings of an Illyrian warrior. But nobody seemed to notice.

※※※※※

It was a song. It was a song unlike anything she had ever heard before. It was wild and free and plummeting. It was dancing in the last hushed violet light of dusk. It was basking in the promise of rain waiting to fall from the clouds. It was tasting the gaps between the stars like night-rich wine. It was him. It was her. It was symphony. Azriel flew through the heavens like he never had before with her in his arms. He glided and twirled and dove through the atmosphere, each echo of laughter leaking from her lips chasing him higher. It did start to rain. But Elain was so taken with the light in Azriel’s eyes that she didn’t care.

※※※※※

Drops of rain fell like fallen stars onto the glassy surface of the Sidra as Azriel gently landed on the riverbank.

Bellflower bloomed along the verge- soft blue petals dancing in the wind of the shadowsinger’s wings.

The nearby boulevard was bustling with revelers of the night. Her family, undoubtedly, was somewhere among them. But Elain couldn’t tear her eyes away from the shadowsinger long enough to care as she slipped from his arms to her feet.

The quiet which followed the rush of the flight was deafening.

He was looking at her that way again, as if he might raise cities to the ground if she asked him to. And it was then that Elain realized she needed to know that it was all real.

That it had always been real.

“Why?” Elain whispered, her voice trembling. “Why did you say those words to me on Solstice when you knew it wasn’t true?” This was a mistake.

Azriel’s throat bobbed. He seemed for a moment as if he might avoid the question entirely. But the pleading in her eyes had him speaking instead.

“Because someone told me that being with you was wrong.”

Elain flinched as the words registered. A tangled web of questions coursed through her. The only one that mattered was the one she asked.

“And you believed it?”

Rain was falling, well and truly now. Azriel’s hands remained at her waist, a world of raw emotion swimming in his gaze.

“I wanted to believe it,” he said quietly. “I wanted to believe it the same way I want to believe I am unworthy of most beautiful things.”

Elain drew in a shaking breath, trying to fight back tears that were inevitably gathering.

Azriel brushed a raindrop from her cheek with a gentle thumb. “But one look at you makes me want to believe otherwise.”

Elain raised trembling hands to cup the shadowsinger’s face and willed every ounce of truth she could muster into her gaze.

“You are good, Azriel.”

His eyes shuttered darkly, raindrops clinging to his endlessly long lashes.

“If I ever had goodness within me, it died long ago.”

He began pulling away, that tide of self-hatred drowning out the hazel. But Elain couldn’t stand the thought of his absence now or ever again.

“You found me,” she whispered, turning his cheek to her. “You found me when I was drifting alone in that dark, empty sea.”

A seer. The Cauldron made you a seer.

“You found me,” Elain said again, her voice breaking on the words. “And I will live a thousand years without forgetting what it felt like when you carried me to shore.”

“Elain,”  Azriel breathed, covering her hand with his own.

“There’s something,” she said with a shaking whisper, “Azriel, there’s something I need to-”

Azriel searched her eyes in question and found no answer there.

Elain only skirted the heavy weight of her hair over one shoulder, baring her long, pale neck to him. She then gently pulled him down. Down, down, down, until she could feel his breath against her throat.

A moment passed. And then another, as Azriel softly inhaled the scent of her.

She could feel the blood still in his veins.

A shudder ran down his back, through his wings, scattering silver drops of rain to the grass below.

Azriel’s breathing grew shallow and then his hands were in her hair, carefully careening her head back, so that he might scent her truly.

A staggering breath escaped him and his grip on her waist tightened for the briefest moment. He pulled back to search her face, pupils blown wide.

“Is this-”

The words wouldn’t come. A heartbeat passed. Maybe two.

His voice was a rasp when he spoke again.

“real?”

Elain’s gaze tightened at the disbelief etched in his features.

“Yes,” she breathed, “Azriel, it is real.”

She was shaking now, all over, uncontrollably. “It wasn’t easy,” she whispered, her voice a rasp. “But it is done. He is more relieved than I am.”

Azriel stared at her. He stared and stared and stared and looked as though he was on the verge of collapse.

“I’ve told myself- all this time, the way you felt under my hands when I touched you,” he said softly, “was real.” His hands were shaking too now, tracing her cheeks, her jaw, her throat. “That the song I heard when I first saw your face,” he drew closer, “was real.”

Elain’s heart was fracturing within her chest.

“That all those nights spent staring at the stars thinking about you so long that I woke up bruised within,” he rasped, “were real.” Elain couldn’t breathe.

“It should have been you,” she whispered. Because nothing had ever been so precious, so right, so beautiful as the words leaving his lips. And Cauldron be damned for not giving her the choice. “It should have been you.”

The confession broke something in Azriel and those long abandoned instincts ripped free from their cage.

“Yes it fucking should have.”

And then his lips, his hands, his heart- were all upon her.

Elain parted on instinct and that first, holy taste of him had every piece of her burning alive. Azriel kissed her like he was starving and she kissed him like she needed to be savagely devoured.

His tongue was tender, savoring every taste of her he was allowed, claiming her mouth for his own. Those scarred hands were everywhere, clutching, stroking, pulling her into him, wrapping her in his scent like she belonged to him and gods she was going to die from this.

It was starfire and shadow and void and song.

It was symphony.

Elain loosened a breathless sob at the perfection of it all, tears mixing with the raindrops on her cheeks. But Azriel was there a moment later, kissing them all away.

She repaid him in kind for that, claiming him with her mouth so vehemently that she nearly knocked him over. Crowds of partygoers were stopping on the street to watch amusedly as Elain kissed Azriel like she was burning alive from the inside out. The promise of the wild, untamed night had strangers clapping, cheering her on and Cassian was whooping with delight somewhere far off.

But none of it mattered because Azriel was laughing under the fervency of her lips and fuck, if that wasn’t the most beautiful thing she had ever tasted.

It was symphony.

The rain was a lullaby as it struck the earth. The wind was singing as it blew through the grass on the riverbank. The bellflower tolled a lover’s knell that rang out into the night.

And Elain kissed the most beautiful male in Prythian like she could damn the stars with the kiss.

For once, everyone seemed to notice.

But as Elain Archeron claimed Azriel’s lips before all the world-

she didn’t particularly give a damn.

#elriel #elain archeron #azriel #acotar fanfiction #angst #drama in the rain

[bookish-whore]

Exile

Azriel x Reader

Words: 2.5k

Warnings: ANGST, mentions of infidelity, cursing

A/N: Welcome to Day Five!! After the slight hiccup yesterday I have rewritten and replanned this fic. it will still be a few parts but with much more angst and heartbreak. Love you ❤️

My Masterlist -> Here

Join my Taglist -> Here

--------------------------------------------------

It didn’t feel real, I still couldn’t believe it.

I hadn’t been feeling that well and so today while Az was in a meeting with Rhys and Cassian I decided to go to a healer. I thought I had a cold or caught a stomach bug or something but as it turns out it was neither.

Her words were still ringing in my ears.

We hadn’t really talked about having children yet, I mean it had only been two years since the bond became apparent between us and we had accepted it and while I was nervous about telling Az I thought he would be ecstatic about being a father. I saw the way he handled Nyx, the way he would get his longing look in his eyes when he held the babe and I knew it was only a matter of time before we talked about a family of our own…

But now it was real.

I was pregnant.

I couldn’t wait to surprise him with this tonight.

I knew that his senses were finely tuned and in all honesty, I was surprised that he hadn’t been the first to notice the subtle change in my scent. In his defense he had been rather busy with work as of late, Rhysand had him pulling a lot of extra hours and nights doing reconnaissance on the Autumn Court.

I put a shield in place, similar to what Rhys had done for Feyre when she was with child to keep it a secret a little while longer and I grabbed my bag making my way to the market, I was going to surprise him with all of his favorite foods tonight.

I returned to our apartment to find it was still empty.

I spent hours cooking and baking all Azriel’s favorites, I checked the time and it was half past six which meant he would be home any minute. I quickly set the table, lit the candles and set all the food onto it. I even made him a drink to relax him after his day.

And I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

I decided to eat an hour later. The food was delicious even if it was cold. But when I hadn’t heard anything about his whereabouts two hours later I gave up on the notion he was coming home for dinner and began cleaning up. I left him a plate of food wrapped in the fridge in case he was hungry when he arrived. If he arrived.

I made myself a cup of tea and sat by the fire reading a book, I figured he would just be home late but as I watched the time pass by I became worried.

Where was he?

Why hadn’t he come home yet?

I tugged on the bond, needing the confirmation that he was alright but I was met with silence. He had closed his side of the bond and I couldn’t get through. He had shut me out.

That thought only spurred on an avalanche of my worst fears.

I began pacing the apartment my hand absentmindedly resting on my lower abdomen. I contemplated reaching out to Rhys or Feyre but it was so late and perhaps they had sent him on a brief overnight mission and he just forgot to tell me. It wouldn’t be the first time and it would explain the bond’s silence. He usually shut me out during longer missions to keep himself focused.

I concluded that was the explanation as I sat back down curling into one of the large chairs in the living room and focused on my book. He would still have some serious apologizing to do.

I must have fallen asleep because I woke to daylight streaming through the windows of our living room.

The apartment was quiet.

I got up from the chair stretching out my limbs as I made my way to the kitchen for breakfast. As I cooked, I heard the faint sound of footsteps, followed by the clamoring of keys as the front door unlocked and Azriel stepped through the door his hair tussled and his eyes tired.

I ran into his arms, looking over him for any sign he was injured before I hit him square in the chest.

“Where the hell were you?” I exclaimed

“I’m so sorry my love. Rhys had me go to the Autumn Court yesterday to set up a network of informants it all happened so quickly and took much longer than expected” he apologized.

“I was worried sick Azriel” I said “I thought something had happened to you.”

He grabbed my face and kissed me “I love that you worry about me y/n, and I love that you care so much about my safety”

“of course I do you overgrown bat” I said as I wrapped my arms around his torso burying my face in his chest and breathed deeply. I noticed that he smelled…different.

I didn’t think too much of the jasmine and honey scent I thought it had something to do with the baby considering I was already hyper-sensitive to certain smells.

“Are you hungry?” I asked him “I was just making breakfast”

“I need a shower, then I’m all yours” he said pressing a kiss to my temple as he disappeared into our bedroom.

He emerged 10 minutes later, his hair wet and his clothes much more casual. I set a plate of food in front of him and took my seat as we ate in comfortable silence.

“Don’t forget we have dinner tonight at the River House” I reminded him

He nodded taking a sip of his coffee “that’s not until later though” he said suggestively “Come to bed with me” he begged holding his hand out

He did this sometimes, when he would come home off schedule and would spend the day in bed with me. They were my favorite days when the world didn’t exist outside of our room. We laid in bed all day simply holding each other. He fell asleep resting between my legs his head on my stomach as I rubbed small circles on his head and back.

Before we knew it we were headed to dinner.

When we got there Azriel immediately went to find Rhys and Cassian and I rendered my services to Feyre. I helped her put the finishing touches on dinner and set the table.

Dinner was fun as usual. Full of laughter and interesting conversation. I helped Feyre clean up, collecting the dishes and cleaning the table. When we were finished I wondered where Azriel had gone off to.

I walked into the sitting room and saw Mor, Amren, Varian, Nesta and Cassian. I had left Rhys and Feyre in the kitchen and I walked through the house looking for my mate.

As I turned the corner I heard faint voices. As I approached I realized we were outside Azriel’s room in this house, the door was shut but I could scent Azriel but I also scented something else it weirdly smelt like this morning…jasmine and honey?

It was then that I heard her voice through the door.

Elain? What was she doing in there with Azriel?

I couldn’t help but listen, pressing my ear to the wall to hear what they were saying. A part of me felt guilty invading his privacy like this but then they spoke.

“It was a mistake Elain” Azriel said, his voice sounded desperate

“What if it wasn’t. maybe…maybe the cauldron was wrong because Az I-I”

“Don’t” Azriel warned

“I think I love you” she said

“I have a mate Elain, a woman I love very much more than anything else in this world”

“Then why did you spend the night with me”

“I shouldn’t have” he said “it was a mistake, it was a lapse of judgement and it won’t ever happen again”

“Come on Az, you’re telling me that not even a small part of you wants to be with me instead? I am so much better than her, I deserve you, we deserve each other” she pleaded

Their voices suddenly sounded far away as it took a moment for the words to sink in. Last night he told me he was in the Autumn Court, that he was working How many nights had he told me he was working late recently. How many nights had he lied to me, lied to my face and spent time with another woman.

I needed to get out of here.

I felt sick.

So I ran.

I ran through the halls of the River House looking for someone who would tell me the truth. I found Feyre first. her face was full of concern as she took notice of me, my eyes wild and full of tears.

“Y/n” she said softly “what’s wrong, what happened?”

“I need to talk to you and Rhys” I said trying to control my breathing. I didn’t want my emotions to bleed through the bond.

“Okay” she said wrapping her arms around me as she led me to their office.

She sat me in a chair and I immediately put my head between my knees, letting the tears fall as I processed what I heard. I vaguely heard Rhysand enter the office, closing the door behind him he made his way over to me, kneeling down to my level as he spoke gently “What’s going on y/n?”

“It-its Azriel” I choked out

“Hey hey hey. Its alright” the high lord said “take a deep breath and tell me what happened”

I followed his instructions, breathing deeply

“Last night- last night did you send him on an overnight mission?” I asked

“No” Rhys responded “we had a brief meeting and he left around six”

I buried my face in my hands, nodding my head as he confirmed what I knew to be true.

He lied.

“Sweetie what is going on?” Feyre asked looking between her mate and I trying to make sense of my state.

“I planned this big dinner for him last night be-because I-” I couldn’t say it “and he never came ho-home and this morning he told me th-that he was on a mission but I just heard him w-with E-Elain.”

Rhysand seemed to seethe with quiet rage.

Feyre seemed more concerned for me “What was so important about last night?” she asked trying to gather more context on the situation. I lowered my shield allowing them to scent me, to know the secret I was carrying.

“Oh y/n” she said pulling my into an embrace as she soothed my hair form my face “does he know?” she whispered against me.

I shook my head no. “I w-was going to tell him last night”

I sobbed harder recalling our time earlier how he could have held me knowing he lied, how easily he told me he loved me.

Feyre rubbed my back trying to soothe me, to get me to calm down.

“I have to get out of here” I said “please get me away from here.”

Feyre looked at Rhys, no doubt communicating without words.

“Where do you want to go” Rhys asked

--------------------------------------------------

Azriel wandered the rooms of the River House. He hadn’t seen you in a while and was somewhat curious about where you were.

He walked into the kitchen to find Rhys and Feyre engaged in a heated conversation of angry whispers.

“Hey have either of you seen y/n?” he asked

Feyre looked to Rhys her eyes wide. She obviously knew something Azriel didn’t

“What’s going on?” Azriel asked

“Before I tell you. you need to know that we had no choice” Rhys said sternly tapping into his powers for authority in this situation.

Azriel immediately became panicked, he reached inside his chest for the bond, that tether that attached you together and he pulled needing your comfort right now, but there was nothing but silence, the bond was- was cold.

“What the fuck is going on” Azriel demanded

“Y/n asked for our help” Rhys said calmly “She knows you lied about where you were last night and she overheard a conversation you were having with Elain earlier and she was freaking out…Azriel I have never seen her so distraught this- whatever it is you did- its destroying her”

“What did you do” Azriel growled at Rhys his wings flaring behind him

“You didn’t see her Az” Feyre interrupted “She begged us for help…to-to get her away”

“No.” Azriel protested “Rhys come on no you didn’t.”

“She’s-” Rhys began before Feyre shook her head speaking in his mind no doubt.

“She’s what?!” Azriel yelled “tell me where my mate is” he demanded

“She’s- gone” Rhys said “She’s under our protection until she says otherwise and you won’t be able to find her until she wills it”

Azriel screamed, it was a bloodcurdling painful sound.

He ran outside winnowing to your apartment with tears falling down his face. He couldn’t believe this.

“Y/N” he called frantically as he ran through the rooms looking for any sign of you

“no no no no no” he chanted as he ran to your bedroom throwing open the drawers to find them empty. Still not believing it he ran into your closet and found your side empty only a few hangars remained. You were gone.

As his grief overtook him he noticed a folded piece of paper on the bed.

His hands shook as he opened it revealing your delicate script.

Azriel, I never thought I could love someone so deeply, so completely, until I met you. I used to hear stories as a child about mating bonds about how rare it was to find someone who was your perfect equal in every way and when we felt it, the bond - you remember- it was like magic. I’m sure you are feeling very confused, blindsided, betrayed, and probably angry and I am sorry for that. but then again, I never thought you would hurt me. I never thought you would lie to me. I never thought you would spend a night with another woman while I was at home waiting for you. I am in so much pain right now that I actually dream of a time in the future when this won’t hurt so much. I hope that time and distance will help heal this wound, will help heal us. I love you Az, and I will continue to love you even though it’s tearing me apart. But I am putting my love for you aside because I won’t raise my child in this environment. Please forgive me.

Your child.

The words stabbed into him like a knife, and he read it again. He had to be sure he read the words correctly.

Your child.

You were pregnant?

He collapsed on the floor his wings sagging behind him as he sobbed.

--------------------------------------------------

Tune in tomorrow for Day Six ❤️

--------------------------------------------------

Taglist (All Fics) ->

@cherryjain17 @we-were-beautiful @moonfawnx @cityofidek @daily-dose-of-sass @marvelouslyem @moonlightazriel @frieddesigninspiringquotesslime @indaybella99 @gray08 @dreamsofivy @gorgeouslysent @viradeity @kennedy-brooke @maddistyles17 @thewarriormoon @pixiestix13 @lucyysthings @a-frog-with-a-laptop @starswholistenanddreamsanswered @purplevitagen @devilsfoodcake22 @lillithathecat @baby-is-crying @nightcourtwritings @lastwandastan @marudersarehot @georgiastars13

Taglist (Azriel Only) ->

@ellievickstar @supersoldierswhxre @marina468 @positivewitch @holb32

#acotar fanfic #acotar fanfiction #acotar angst #azriel x reader #azriel x y/n #azriel shadowsinger #azriel acotar #azriel x elain #elriel #cassian x nesta #rhys x feyre #nyx acotar #mor acotar

[bolinhoelriel]

For everyone who didn't want Azriel's "rejection" to happen or thinks that Elriel sank after that;

It was very important for what will happen in the next book, that will be Elain's.

It had to happen because when she rejects the bond for life with Lucien, the characters (and even the fandom) can't blame her feelings for Azriel and blame Azriel himself for reciprocating her feelings openly to her.

"But why their romance was developed before and not after the bond breaks in the next book?"

Simple and obvious. It had to be this way because Azriel had to defy the bond. Only him could do that. It was necessary for him to show more than interest for Elain to become her endgame and for their love to blossom in the right time. It couldn't come from anywhere but the unique moments they had and his faith in her choice, independent of bond or not.

Their understanding and acceptance for each other, against all adversities, already built the path.

So Elain is thinking that Azriel rejected her and doesn't feel the same (but he damn surely does, as we saw in his POV). Rhys ordered him to stay away from her too. That will make the time for Elain to walk that path by herself and break the bond without the reason being Azriel.

She is her own reason.

It's a perfect set up. Wait for it.

#just imagine az's angst and later he feeling proud of her #pro elriel #elriel #pro elain #elain x azriel #elain archeron #azriel #acotar

[viridianevergarden]

The implication of Elain having the power of life makes me think with my angst-hungry brain, that what if something happened to Azriel? What if she tapped into some power to save him through her powers? To save him from drawing his last breaths?

The Cauldron bestowed upon Elain a gift of power vs Nesta who took the power from it.

The idea of the powers of life, nature manipulation, and the ability to be a seer all in one sounds so undeniably badass.

I doubt stuff like this will happen but just a thought.

#I love angst #elriel #acotar #pro elriel

[duskandcobalt]

Echoes in the Hallway - II

Let's not talk about how long it's taken me to get this out, here's part two to Echoes in the Hallway

Enjoy 💕

Read on AO3

7.3k words - a little bit of angst, a little bit of smut (18+)

The only light in the small closet is a tiny sliver of evening sun that seeps in through the small gaps in the doorframe. It’s all the light he needs to see how stunning she looks tonight, those big doe eyes shine bright as they rake over his face. Her small hands embed themselves into the leather on his chest and push him back just as he leans forward to close the minimal distance between them.

“You can’t kiss me.”  Those weren’t the words he’d expected to hear from her, they definitely weren’t words that he wanted to hear from her.

Elain checks her reflection one last time in the large hallway mirror before she slowly makes her way downstairs, the airy chiffon of her tiered sage green dress flowing in a small but dramatic train behind her. 

She’d spent a little extra time getting ready for tonight’s dinner. 

Her long hair was pulled back just like she liked. Delicate diamond pins that she’d been gifted by Rhysand dotted the rich brown strands. A sweep of sparkling gold graced her eyelids that brought out the colour of her eyes and her full lips were painted with a shade of pink that was just half a shade darker than their usual hue. The fading violet marks that decorated the exposed skin of her throat and shoulders had been covered with careful precision. 

She was in far better spirits these days, constantly walking around the house and garden humming happily to herself as she fought back the coy smile that threatened to make its way to her lips at any given moment.

It was especially hard to keep from smiling today since she’d gotten word just  this morning that after an excruciating week and a half apart, a certain Spymaster had returned to Velaris and would be dining with them tonight.

It had been two months since that night when she’d broken down and practically begged Azriel for answers. Two months since she’d poured her heart out to him. 

It was just two months ago that he’d kissed her for the very first time, made her come for the first time. 

For two months now, he’d made good on his promise to seek her out and she’d made good on her promise to keep this all just between them. 

They kept up their guise in front of the others, limiting their interactions to mundane greetings and the occasional heated glance that couldn’t be misconstrued as anything but friendly. It wasn’t ideal. Certainly not easy by any means to not talk and touch the way she wanted, but it only made her treasure these secret, fleeting moments even more. 

They were so careful, had made an artform out of sneaking around.

On the all too rare occasions they found themselves in the same place at the same time, they’d taken to pulling each other into hallway closets or empty bedrooms. A couple times they’d even found themselves tangled together in the small shed at the very back of the garden, determined to take advantage of any location, any moment that would allow them to have even a full minute to themselves away from the prying eyes and ears of their family and friends. 

The familiarity between them bloomed with every stolen interaction. The way they came together was so easy, so natural - her arms around his neck, his arms around her waist. Whispered conversations punctuated only by the meeting of eager mouths and wandering hands. Each and every second was sacred, used to further this relationship that for now, was forced to exist solely in the shadows.

Elain was reminded instantly how worth it this was, how worth it he was, when she strides into the sitting room and her eyes immediately land on him.

He’s standing at the far back of the room with Cassian, quietly laughing at whatever ridiculous thing his brother has just said. The sight of Azriel laughing is so achingly beautiful that it takes every ounce of will in Elain’s body to stop herself from crossing the room and placing a hand on his neck to bring his lips down to hers in front of everyone. 

He’s come straight from an assignment. She knows this because he’s still dressed in those leathers that had permeated her thoughts for weeks, months… maybe even years, if she was being honest with herself. 

His hair is slightly dishevelled from flying, the midnight strands falling in soft waves over his forehead. He’d kept his hair just a little longer than he usually did, all because she’d mentioned liking the length when she ran her hands through it in the garden shed a few weeks ago.

His hazel eyes are tired as always, exhaustion written in the dark circles under them. She delights in the way they come to life when he spots her, glancing at her for two long seconds before he looks away. She tears her eyes away from him, does her best to not even think of him while she tries to distract herself by talking to her sisters and playing with Nyx.

But when Azriel catches her eye again a half hour later and beckons her with the slightest tilt of his chin as he casually strolls out of the room, Elain counts to ten before she passes Nyx to Nesta and goes after him.

She’s halfway down the hall before a strong arm wraps around her waist and pulls her backwards into what she thinks is a broom closet. 

…

Azriel hadn’t missed the way Elain’s breath hitched when she’d walked in the room and found him talking to Cassian. He hadn’t missed the way she bit down on that full bottom lip of hers, either. 

It’s been ten full days since he’s seen her. Ten days since he’d allowed himself to wander into the upstairs library and press her up against a shelf for a heated kiss that lasted all of twenty measly seconds before he returned to Rhysand’s office. 

He’d had to force himself to leave it at just a quick kiss then the same way he’d had to force himself to look away from her this evening despite every nerve in his body screaming at him to touch, taste, and take.

His intention had been to wait until after dinner when everyone was too drunk to wonder where he’d gone or too preoccupied to piece together that Elain had also disappeared before he whisked her away, but he couldn’t help himself and she certainly hadn’t made it easy on him.

Azriel couldn’t stop stealing split second glances. Not when she looked so radiant dressed in a shimmering, pale green gown he’s never seen her wear before. The sleeves are non-existent, just simple wisps of chiffon that fell delicately around her upper arms and left her shoulders gloriously bare. Her long curls are unbound but all pinned and gathered with small sparkling diamonds over one shoulder, leaving the elegant column of her neck tantalisingly exposed on the other side.

It’s the third glimpse of that beautiful neck that has him aching to get his lips and tongue on her skin and it’s the thought of his mouth on her body that has him throwing caution to the wind and pulling her into a broom closet hours earlier than he’d originally planned.

The only light in the small closet is a tiny sliver of evening sun that seeps in through the small gaps in the doorframe. It’s all the light he needs to see how stunning she looks tonight, those big doe eyes shine bright as they rake over his face. Her small hands embed themselves into the leather on his chest and push him back just as he leans forward to close the minimal distance between them.

“You can’t kiss me.”  Those weren’t the words he’d expected to hear from her, they definitely weren’t words that he wanted to hear from her.

“Hi, Azriel… I’ve missed you, Azriel… How are you, Azriel?” He teases, grinning. His hands drift from her waist to give her backside a generous squeeze. She makes no move to stop him when his hands close around her soft curves again, tugging her closer until their bodies are pressed tight against each other.

“Very funny.” She playfully smacks his chest even as her smile widens and she reaches up to wind her arms around his neck, her fingertips toying with the ends of his hair. “Hi, Azriel. I’ve missed you, Azriel. How are you, Azriel?”

“Much better.” He whispers, returning her smack to his chest with an equally playful slap to her ass that makes her emit one of those sharp nervous laughs that he loves so much.  “I’ve missed you and I’m fine, but why can’t I kiss you?”

“Because we’re about to have dinner with our family and I spent time doing my face today. If you kiss me,  it’ll be ruined.” Elain traces his bottom lip with the pad of her thumb. “And… if you kiss me the way I want you to kiss me, we won’t make dinner.”

Azriel can’t help but groan at her words. The teasing tone and hungry look in her eyes stokes a fire in him that he fears won’t easily be put out. 

This playful side of her had slowly come out of hiding these past few weeks and he couldn’t get enough, knew it was a surefire sign that she was beginning to feel comfortable around him again.

“Keep talking like that and I’ll rip this pretty dress off of you right now and I don’t think you’d like that very much.” He brings one hand up to tug at the neckline of her gown, as if testing the fabric to see just how easily he’d be able to get it off her. The glimpse he gets of her breasts is an added bonus.

“Maybe that’s exactly what I want.” 

The sweet scent of her arousal drifts up to him, overpowering all his senses and sends his mind reeling as it quickly fills the small space. 

Azriel uses all five centuries worth of carefully practised restraint to keep from giving in to the impulse to pull out Truthteller to get her out of this dress so he can sheath himself inside her.

They’ve seen each other in various states of undress but never completely bare. They’ve had their hands on every part of each other’s bodies. He’s had his tongue in between her legs and his cock in her mouth a few times now. But they hadn’t yet taken that final step, not for a lack of want, but because they’d never had enough time to give in to the temptation. 

Azriel lowers his lips to her ear and gently grips her throat, his thumb traces along the column of her neck in one slow stroke. “When I have you for the first time, Elain, it won’t be in a closet or a bathroom. It will be somewhere I can take my time with you, somewhere I can fuck you like you deserve.”

He hears the way her heart skips a beat at his words, feels quiet satisfaction at the goosebumps that appear along her arms and on her chest even as she recovers quickly, schooling her face into a cool expression that rivals even his usual stoicism. 

“It better be worth it.” She taunts before slotting her mouth over his despite her earlier warning to keep away. “See you at the table.”

She slips out of his arms and back into the hallway before he can even open his eyes. 

…

Elain feels him before she sees him.

Dinner is in full swing, the first course well underway. Everyone is happily chatting, drinking and enjoying the salad and soup Elain and the twins had prepared using produce fresh from her garden, when she notices Azriel visibly tense across the table from her. A shadow is curled around his ear.

She feels a dull ache in her side just a second later, followed by the quiet sound of footsteps on hardwood floor as Lucien enters the dining room. 

“Apologies for joining late.” The emissary says, his russet eye scanning the table for an empty seat. She feels him pause on her face but Elain refuses to look up. She stays completely still, her eyes fixed on her empty bowl as her good mood disintegrates in the time it takes for her mate to take a seat next to Mor, a few spots down from Azriel.

Blood pounds in her ears so loud that she’s barely aware of Rhysand and Feyre welcoming him with broad smiles, insisting apologies are unnecessary. She barely hears Lucien when he addresses her directly with a soft spoken and aggravatingly gentle “Good evening, My Lady.”

Every eye in the room falls to her, each of them waiting with bated breath for her response. She does her best to stop her skin from flushing with anger and embarrassment at the unwanted attention. No one had warned her he’d be here tonight. 

She hadn’t been prepared to see him, hadn’t been prepared to feel the way their bond intensified when they were in close proximity. It was easier to forget that she was tied to anyone when he was far away, traversing the human territories. 

Elain doesn't say anything, only lifts her gaze to his for as long as it takes to acknowledge his presence with a small nod. She risks a quick glance at Azriel before returning her eyes to her place setting but she’s dismayed to find that he isn’t looking at her. His eyes are on his own plate and his hand is wrapped so tight around his glass of whisky that she’s concerned it may shatter. 

… 

Azriel had been looking forward to this dinner all week. 

Excitement, an emotion he hardly ever felt, had brewed within him at the prospect of spending time with his family. At finally being able to see Elain again. He wonders how he ever stayed away from her because lately, even a few days apart felt like a lifetime. It’s why the disappointment he feels is all the more crushing when any joy from being in her presence and the high he’d been riding from that kiss in the cupboard, crumbles midway through dinner when one of his shadows curls around his ear to alert him of an unexpected presence in the house. 

Rhysand hadn’t informed him that Lucien would be in attendance tonight. The one person he had no desire to see, even if he had no real grievances with the Night Court emissary other than the fact that the Cauldron thought him worthy of being Elain’s mate. 

It was like history repeating itself.

They were all in the same house, albeit a different location. Instead of sitting on a sofa, Elain was seated directly across from him at the table in between Nesta and Feyre. Lucien was just a few seats away from Azriel, his eyes perpetually on Elain as she avoided even glancing in his direction. 

Azriel could feel it all. He was painfully aware of the way Lucien looked at her, sensed the longing in his gaze. He felt that strong, painful tug on his own heart at the exact same time Elain’s hand subtly clutched at her side. 

Like a knife in her side. That was how she’d described the bond to him that night.

He couldn’t do it. Couldn’t sit at this table and stomach this for the night. He couldn’t handle the sight and smell of their bond. Couldn’t stand to feel his longing and her pain. He’d find a way to make it up to Elain but he refused to put himself through it again. It hadn’t ended well for him on Solstice and he had a feeling it wouldn’t end well for him tonight if he stayed.

Still, he tried for a while, fought his way through the main course and attempted to engage in conversation but he made up his mind before dessert could be served. He came up with a flimsy excuse and quietly departed while Elain was in the kitchen. 

He needed the rush of wind, craved the clarity that being high in the sky would bring. Azriel was in the air in a matter of seconds, his massive wings carrying him high above the river and the sparkling lights of the city.

…

Elain sat quietly at the dining table, unable to focus on anything else except the empty chair across from hers. A slice of lemon cake sat untouched in front of her. 

Azriel hadn’t stayed for more than an hour before he disappeared. Elain had been in the kitchen cutting the cake she’d made especially for him only to return to the dining room and find that he’d slipped away. 

A headache was his flimsy excuse, something she only knew because she’d overheard Cassian tell Nesta that Azriel had headed back to the House of Wind to get some rest. 

Her hands clutch at her fork as she stabs at the pale yellow cake. She can’t even bring herself to eat, can’t bring herself to pretend that nothing’s wrong.  She’s too distracted. Frustration surges through her. Frustration at herself. At Azriel. At her mate sitting across from her. 

She wonders if he can feel her frustration the same way she can feel his longing.

She needed to get out, couldn’t sit here and pretend like that pull in her side wasn’t killing her slowly. She knew Lucien was doing his best to tug on the bond, to get her attention. To get her to look at him for even a fleeting second. 

She’s infuriated  that she feels the urge to meet his eyes, to give him her attention - that cursed connection between them trying to overpower every other instinct in her body telling her that this isn’t right. That her heart is somewhere else entirely.

The worst thing is that Elain feels terrible about it all. She knows Lucien means no harm. Knows that he's a good male that would treat her well, just as Azriel had told her. She just couldn’t give in, wouldn’t allow the Cauldron to use her as a marionette in the story of her own life. She was determined to create her own future and make her own decisions. 

She had already made her decision. 

She wouldn’t stay in this house tonight. Refused to spend a night in the same house as the emissary, listening to his heart beat through the walls. 

She needed to get out. Needed to see Azriel.

“I’d like to come spend a couple days at the House of Wind.” She blurts out, interrupting whatever conversation was currently going on around her. 

Cassian and Nesta turn to her, both surprised at her sudden outburst after she’d seemingly taken a vow of silence upon Lucien’s arrival.

“It’s just, I’ve been meaning to ask you for a while…” She improvises, her brain trying to catch up with her reckless mouth. “I’d like to go through the library for some gardening books so I can prepare for spring.” 

She thinks for a moment before quickly adding on the next part because she knew it would excite Feyre. “And maybe I could observe Valkyrie training in the morning? I’ve been thinking about joining…”

“Oh Elain!” Feyre practically squeals, a sleeping Nyx startling in her arms. “That’s a great idea! You should absolutely go, getting involved in training would be so great for you. Don’t you think, Rhys?” 

“Mhm. That sounds nice.” Rhys looks sceptical as he carefully shifts his attention to Elain. 

Her brother-in-law had always been extremely supportive of her hobbies but if he’s questioning her intentions now, he wasn’t about to say anything. Not when his wife was already on board.

Elain’s plan had worked like a charm. On one sister at least. 

Nesta had been staring daggers at Elain during this entire exchange and Elain knows it’s because she’s suspicious but she doesn’t engage with her. What Nesta doesn’t know won’t kill her.

“Will you take me? Can I come tonight?” Elain turns to Cassian, gives him her best dazzling smile, knows that he won’t be able to say no. 

“Of course.” He returns her smile with one just as bright. 

Relief floods Elain’s body but beneath that relief, she can feel a twinge of disappointment that doesn’t belong to her settle uncomfortably in her stomach.

…

“Are you going to tell me why you really wanted to stay here?” Nesta fixes Elain with a sharp stare as she sets her book down on her lap and practically dares her sister to try lying to her. “Because you and I both know you have no interest in training tomorrow morning.”

The two sisters are sitting across from each other on twin armchairs in the library at the House of Wind. Both of them nurse cups of peppermint tea while quietly reading their respective books in front of a large picture window that perfectly frames the crescent moon.

“I told you…” Elain starts, looking up from her book and picking up her teacup. It was practically empty but she needed something to do with her hands lest they give her away. “I’m planning for spring and I need ideas for the garden. The library here is more extensive than the one at the house.”

“Bullshit.” Nesta cuts her off with a knowing stare. “You’re here because of him.” 

Elain freezes. She’s sure Nesta means Lucien but Elain still hesitates for a minute before she pushes the doubt away. There’s no way she could possibly know. Although if anyone were to figure it out, Nesta would likely be the first. 

“I don’t really agree with everyone saying you should give Lucien a chance.” Nesta continued. 

Elain really looks at her sister then, surprise evident on her face at Nesta’s admission. “You don’t?”

“He’s not entitled to you. You’re not something to be given away freely.”  She scoffs. “You don’t owe him anything just because the Cauldron or the Mother or whoever decided he should be your mate.”

“But you and Cassian are mates.” Elain states. “Feyre and Rhys are mates.”

“I didn’t know for certain.” Nesta’s voice softens. She takes a moment to think, choosing her next words carefully. “Neither did Feyre… we both had time, Elain. We didn’t have the pressure of that title. We didn’t have anyone telling us what to do. We had the opportunity to work things out for ourselves first.”

Elain’s quiet as she ponders what Nesta had said and just how right she was. 

“Do you think… Do you think if he hadn’t told me that I was his mate that things would be different? Do you think I would’ve eventually felt a pull towards him anyway?” She asks finally. 

“I certainly knew that there was something with Cassian before I figured out that we were mates. Even when I was human. I fought it tooth and nail, but I think I always knew… from the very first moment I saw him, I knew.”

Elain says nothing.

“Did you have a similar feeling?” 

“Yes.” She admits. “But…”

Not for Lucien. 

“I feel something for him but it isn’t like you described. It isn’t love. It isn’t even want or desire.” Elain blushes. “It’s more that I can feel him constantly tugging on the bond, as if he’s trying to get my attention. It’s painful.”

Nesta observes her younger sister, her eyes are sad as she studies Elain carefully before she speaks. “It never felt like that for me. I don’t think… I don’t think it’s supposed to hurt.”

Elain swallows, wills away the tears that are pricking at the corner of her eyes before she sets her teacup down and unfurls her legs from beneath her, smoothing out her dress with the palms of her hands. 

There’s so much she wishes she could tell Nesta. So much she wants to say if only to hear it all voiced out loud. Just to get a little bit of sisterly advice. But she’d made a promise and she wouldn’t break it. 

“I’m really tired.” She says finally. “I should go to bed.”

“Of course.” Nesta nods quickly, standing up and looping a reassuring arm through Elain’s. “Come. I’ll show you to your room.”

… 

“We’re just down the hall if you need anything. Goodnight.” Nesta gives her younger sister a small smile and a kiss on the cheek before she exits the room.

Elain’s  in a different room to the one she occupied when she’d first stayed at the House of Wind after they’d been Made. This one is on the same floor but on the opposite end of the hall from the room she used to stay in which had been directly next to Nesta's, the one her sister still resided in but now shared with Cassian. 

Elain shoves the memories of those first few months aside before the heaviness of them can consume her. She goes into the attached bathing chamber and cleans herself up before slipping out of her dress and into the pale blue nightgown she’d brought with her. 

She sits on the bed with her legs crossed, a gardening book in her lap. Her eyes glaze over as she mindlessly flips the pages, not consuming a single bit of information as she listens and waits. 

When the house is completely silent, when she’s sure Nesta and Cassian would be asleep, Elain shuts her book and sets it aside. She ties a blue silk robe that matches her nightgown tight around her body and quietly slips out of her room, moving silently down the hall to the staircase that would take her one floor up. 

She knows where his room is from the time she lived here but she’s never been inside. Even if she hadn’t known, the captivating scent of him is so heavy in this hallway that she would have found his room based on that alone. 

Elain stands outside the door to his bedchamber, listening carefully for any sound. Any proof that he was inside. 

Stupid really, when she thought about it. Azriel would never be heard unless he wanted to. 

She takes a deep breath and knocks on the door quietly, just twice. 

…

Azriel’s in bed, laying on his back and staring at his ceiling when he hears the knock on his bedroom door. 

It’s late, the sun is due to rise in just a few hours. His shadows are asleep, so there’s no getting answers out of them but he knows Nesta would never knock on his door which only left one person. He rolls his eyes, tossing aside his sheets and crossing his room to swing open the door to see what the hell his brother, his eternal pain in the ass, could possibly want at this hour. 

“Shouldn’t you be warming Nesta’s bed? What do you -” Azriel’s remark is cut short when he sees that it’s not a towering Illyrian warrior standing in front of his door late at night. Instead, it’s the last person he expected to see. He looks down, takes in the sight of her. Breathes in the scent of jasmine and hone. A scent that he’s committed to memory.

His eyes focus on her. Her hair is unbound, sparkling diamond pins nowhere to be seen, and she’s washed off her cosmetics. He scans her pretty face before glancing down, lingering a little too long on the silky robe that clings to each and every curve of her body.

When his eyes drag back up to her, he holds back a smirk at the bright blush gracing her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. Her eyes don’t meet his because her eyes are decidedly not on Azriel’s face.

Elain’s surveying him just as he had surveyed her. He’s wearing nothing save for a thin pair of pants slung obscenely low on his hips. His chest is bare and he’s fully aware that this is the first time she’s seen him dressed so casually.

By the time she finally looks up from the smattering of fine hair under his belly button that trails down to the waistband of his pants, Azriel has wrapped a hand firmly around her wrist and is pulling her into his room. 

He lets go of her and watches as she looks everywhere but at him. She walks around, surveys his bedroom as if trying to learn more about him through his taste in interiors. 

Azriel’s room is almost worryingly neat. The only signs of life are the rumpled white linen sheets on his bed and the mountains of papers stacked neatly on his desk. There are no portraits, no small trinkets from his travels. The only personal items are on his bedside table - the vial of headache powder that she’d given him once upon a time, still untouched. Next to that are earplugs that she’d also gifted him this past solstice before he’d given her the necklace that had been the catalyst for everything that had happened since. 

“I didn’t know you were staying here tonight.” Azriel takes a seat at the edge of his bed, still watching her.

Elain stands a few feet away from him at his desk but she turns and looks at him. 

“I didn’t know, either.” She shrugs, hands fidgeting with the ties on her robe. “I couldn’t stand to be in that house for another minute.” 

Azriel sighs, running a hand through his hair to buy him time as he thinks carefully about what to say. 

“I couldn’t stand to be there either.” He says finally. 

“I just wish you would’ve said something before leaving.”

“I don’t know how to do this, Elain.” He looks away from her, picks at a loose thread on his pants. 

“What do you mean?”

Azriel can hardly bear to hear the slight hurt in her voice at his words, even as she does her best to disguise it. 

“I don’t know how to be with you when I’m not even sure I can give you what you want.”

“Who said you aren’t giving me what I want?” 

Azriel laughs but there’s no humor in it. His blunt nails dig into his palms as he looks up at her. 

“Is this really what you want, Elain?” He questions. “Someone who can’t even hold your hand, can’t even talk to you openly? You really want to be with someone who can only be with you for minutes at a time?”

“I don’t care.” Elain tells him. “You know I don’t care. I like sneaking around. I like it being just between us.” 

“You say that now but how much longer can we do this?”

“It doesn’t matter. You promised you’d figure it out. We’ll figure it out.” 

“What if I can’t? What if there’s no conceivable way to make this work?” He shakes his head. “I won’t let you stand in the middle of a pathway that only leads to destruction. You shouldn’t have to hide half your life from the people you love.”

“Where is this coming from? What changed, Azriel?” She challenges him. “Because this certainly wasn’t your attitude when you were threatening to undress me in a closet hours ago.”

“I can feel your bond.” He admits. “I could feel it at dinner. I can smell it. I know exactly how your- how Lucien feels towards you.” 

He didn’t know if it hurt more to call him her mate or say his name. 

“Azriel, please.” She beseeches him. “You know I’m not interested in him.”

“Feyre thought she had no interest in Rhysand when she was with Tamlin.” The words are out of his mouth before he can even think to stop himself from saying it.

Anger sparks in Elain’s eyes, clear as day, as she stalks towards him.

“Don’t you ever compare our situation to theirs. You are��not Tamlin.”. 

“Aren’t I?” Azriel's voice is tinged with sadness. “I’m falling for someone mated to someone else.”

“It’s not the same.” She shakes her head, calms down long enough to sit down beside him and take his hands in hers. “You haven’t locked me away. You haven’t forced my hand or tricked me into anything. I wanted this. I chose this. I chose you.” 

Azriel can’t look away from their entwined hands. His thumb traces the fading scars on her hands, the result of her refusal to wear gloves while working in the garden. They’re the only marks on his otherwise perfect girl.

“I stayed away from you for so long because I refused to be the reason you’re pulled into the middle of something that shouldn’t even be a question.”

“Do you truly think I should try with Lucien?”

It’s reluctant but he nods, just the slightest downward tilt of his chin.

“Why?”

“Because he’s good for you.”

Elain stands, squeezes her eyes shut and pinches the bridge of her nose. 

“I refuse to have this conversation again. I will not continue to argue with you over this.” Elain whirls towards him again and points a finger at him. 

He’s once again reminded that she carries the same fire in her as her older sister. 

“You will not tell me what’s good for me. No one will tell me what’s good for me - not you, not my sisters, not the Cauldron. I will decide that for myself.”

“But…” Azriel stands up as well. His fingers itch to reach for her because despite whatever he believes is right in his mind, his body and his heart will forever yearn for her. He fights the urge, forces his hands to stay at his sides.

“You are good.” She interrupts him. “I can stand here and say it to you over and over again until I run out of breath, Azriel. I don’t know why you think you aren’t but you are good and you are deserving of love and you are deserving of happiness and I don’t know how many different ways to say it until you start to believe it but all I can tell you is that I want you. Only you.”

Azriel isn’t sure why he’s so surprised that she could read him so well. He doesn’t understand why he’s taken aback that she’s the first person to pinpoint something that he hadn’t even been able to admit to himself for all these years. 

She’d so easily seen in him the feeling of unworthiness that had followed him like his shadows for his entire life. The belief that he was undeserving of receiving love in the same way his brothers had. 

Perhaps it’s why he’s only chased after females that had no interest in him or why he only involved himself with lovers that only wanted him for a night or two every now and then. It was easier that way, to meet physical needs without having to involve emotions. It was easier to yearn and pine for something that he knew he’d never get than to allow himself to get close to someone, to give someone the power to destroy him. 

Elain was the closest he’d ever come to letting his guard down and it terrified him. It absolutely terrified him to his very core that she’d managed to break down his walls without him even realising and now he was standing here in front of her scrambling to build them back up for reasons he couldn’t even properly justify.

“Az.” Her hands are on his jaw, tilting his face down until he’s staring into her deep brown eyes. They were so sure, so determined. “You deserve this.”

Her lips brush his, so feather light in their touch that he wonders if he imagined it. 

Elain takes half a step back, her fingers slowly undo the tie that holds her robe together. 

“What are you doing?”

“We’re alone and we have time.” She says simply, shrugging the robe off her shoulders. He watches as it falls in a silky heap at her feet. “I don’t want to fight anymore.”

Azriel’s tired of fighting, too. So tired of denying himself what he knows without a doubt that he wants. 

He reaches for her, choosing to apologise for leaving, for pulling away from her, with action instead of words.

His fingers grip her hips at the same time his mouth meets hers. His hands slide ever so slowly up Elain’s body, taking the short, strappy blue scrap of silk he supposed could be called a nightgown with him as he goes. He pulls it up and over her head and then lets it join her robe on the floor of his room until she’s standing bare in front of him.

…

“540 years of life and you’re the most beautiful female I’ve ever seen.”

Elain can’t help but feel suddenly shy under his gaze as she stands in front of him without a single stitch of fabric on her body. 

His eyes leave a trail of heat wherever they linger as he takes in the sight of her naked body for the very first time - her throat, her collarbones, her breasts. The soft curves of her stomach, hips, and thighs… her sex. 

There isn’t a single part of her he doesn’t look at with absolute reverence before his eyes are once again back on hers. “You’re sure you want this?”

Elain closes the small distance between them until her breasts are pressed against his chest. Her lips press against his once before she pulls back just enough to look up at him and takes one of his large hands and brings it in between her legs - allows him to feel just how much she wants this. “You tell me.” 

Just like that first night, Azriel trails a finger down her centre, collecting her arousal before bringing it to his lips and tasting her on his hand. He reaches for her again, lifts her up easily. She wraps her legs around his waist and he carries her to the bed, lays her in the middle. 

He moves to lower his mouth to her sex but Elain stops him with a gentle hand on his shoulder. She beckons him up and he obliges, trailing his lips along her sternum and up her throat until they’re back on hers. 

He kisses her like they have all the time in the world because compared to usual, it feels like they do.  It’s the first time they haven’t had to worry about rushing. The first time they haven’t had to worry about someone coming around the corner. 

She pushes his pants off, takes his cock in her hands and pumps him as she opens her legs and invites him to find his home between her thighs.

He settles himself at her entrance and then grasps her thighs, lifting her legs so they’re once again around his waist. His eyes meet hers, silently seeking permission. Elain nods, her fingers tangle in his hair, and then Azriel pushes into her.

Her lips part as she feels her body stretch around him. She’s spent countless nights contemplating what having him inside her would feel like but nothing she could’ve ever come up with would match the intensity of this moment.

He fills her so completely, so perfectly that she’s sure he was made just for her. Nothing has ever felt more right than this, than him deep inside of her. 

“Can you take more?” Azriel asks, lips moving to her throat where he seeks to add more marks for her to cover up in the morning.

Elain can’t help the shocked laughter that leaves her body even as her legs wrap tighter around him and her hands move down to grasp his shoulders. “There’s more?”

“Just a bit.” Azriel bites back an apologetic smile but she hears the inkling of pure male pride behind it.

She nods, her nails dig into his skin, leaving half moon shaped indentations on his shoulder blades as he sinks in the rest of the way until his hips are flat against hers. 

This moment is so different from all the rushed, frantic moments they’ve had leading up to this moment. When he finally starts to move inside her, he takes his time just as he’d promised her he would earlier this evening. His thrusts are long and measured, almost experimental as he adjusts himself until he figures out what angle of his hips elicits the response he wants out of her. 

His hands are gentle but confident as they move along her body - grasping and groping, bringing her impossibly closer to him until her legs are over his shoulders and his fingers are threaded through hers on either side of her head. Azriel’s eyes stay on hers as he rocks into her, over and over. He brings her to the brink and then eases off, takes her right to the edge again and again and then retreats until she’s begging him to let her come.

Few words are exchanged when they finally do come together but Elain lets him see the unspoken words in her eyes as she holds him close, as her body pulses around him and he gives her every bit of himself. 

It’s too soon to say them outloud even though she’s sure that he knows how she feels. She swears she sees the same words reflected back in his eyes right before he collapses against her chest. 

They lay in silence for a few minutes, steadying their breath. Their sweaty bodies are pressed together as her hands drift lazily across the broad expanse of his back and his fingers trace patterns on her sternum. 

It isn’t long before his touch results in a new wave of arousal. 

“Again?” Azriel looks up at her when her scent hits him, his eyebrows raised in amusement.

“Please.” She nods, completely unabashed as she moves out from underneath him and shifts onto her stomach.

Azriel isn’t quite as gentle when he takes her for the second time that night, gripping her hips and fucking into her until her moans echo through his room.

… 

The first golden light of morning begins to filter in through the heavy curtains that cover his windows by the time they finally pull apart. Elain has lost count of how many times she’s come. All she knows is that her muscles are simultaneously loose and sore and she’s never been so satisfied in her entire life. 

Azriel refuses to stop kissing her even as they make their way to his door. He doesn’t stop even as presses her against it and his hands move to re-tie her robe. She places one hand on his bare chest as her other hand fumbles behind her for the doorknob. 

“I really have to go.” She laughs, halfheartedly pushing him away when he tries to close the distance between them yet again. 

“Just one more.” She can feel his lips curl up into a smile against the curve of her neck and she has the fleeting thought that the only thing that she enjoys more than seeing Azriel smile, is feeling his smile against her skin.

“No.” Elain holds firm, refusing to give in to him even if she desires it too. “It’s never just ‘one more’ with you. I need to be back in my room, Nesta will be up for training soon if she isn’t already.”

“Fine.” Azriel relents,  his only consolation is the press of Elain’s body against his as she kisses his cheek and promises she’ll pay him another visit tonight since Cassian isn’t taking her back until tomorrow morning.

Elain turns around, twists the doorknob and proceeds to walk out of Azriel’s room only to be blocked by a leather clad chest and violet eyes that aren’t looking at her but are focused on the shirtless Shadowsinger behind her. 

She feels Azriel go completely still behind her, his hands dropping from her waist. Her own eyes go wide as she stares up at her brother-in-law and fumbles for words, for an excuse for her to be leaving Azriel’s room this early in the morning. It’s a useless effort - her bruised lips and the state of her hair would give her away even if the imprint of his lips on her neck didn’t.  

She’s just about to try to say something just to fill the silence when all her thoughts are replaced with feelings of confusion when Rhysand speaks.

“I thought I instructed you to stay away from her.”

#here it is #finally #elriel fic #elriel smut #elriel angst #elain x azriel #azriel x elain fanfiction #azriel smut #elain archeron #azriel #acotar fanfiction #ao3 fanfic #acotar #acosf #pro elain #elriel #my writing #mine

[nightcourtseer]

All the Blood I’ve Lost with You

Summary: The first battle against Koschei’s army.

Pairing: Elriel

Read on A03

A/N: I took a second job doing some freelancing which has been super fun creatively, but unfortunately means I had to step away from Tumblr/writing. I try to pop on as often as I can, but wanted to at least finish and post a final fic from Elriel month. I plan to make this two parts. Thanks for reading and bearing with me!

—————————

The rain was relentless. And maybe that should have been their omen. Someone who believed in the gods may have taken it as an ill sign of what was to come.

The endless downpour was drowning them all, as they faced off in a clearing not some fifteen miles from Koschei’s lake. Buying time for a fae and two half-wraiths to slip away to search for the final piece of a closely guarded puzzle that when completed, could hold the key to their salvation.

A method to kill the deathless one.

But what they had not prepared for, when assembling their ranks to fight against the human queen’s army as they allied with Koschei, was that the title of deathless was now bestowed against the former humans they fought.

A bargain had been struck, out of sight of the Night Court’s eyes and ears.

Feyre heaved a stuttering gasp of breath as she steadied herself, her aching arm lowering her sword after what felt like hours of swinging and slashing. The rain kept sluicing down her face as she pushed a drenched piece of hair from her eyes that had escaped her sodden braid.

“Darling?”

The soft scrape of claws swept cautiously along the fortress of her mind.

She let out a sigh of relief at the call of her mate, lifting her heavy head to sweep her gaze across the muddied field, squinting through the downpour.

He stood on the other side of the clearing with Cassian, the general’s own shoulder length locks whipping about in the end after coming loose from its leather tie.

Feyre couldn’t find the energy to lift her hand to signal, so she reached out a mental hand to caress the clawed one still reaching for her.

“I’m alright. We’re taking care of any stragglers. Az will bring them back to the Prison.”

The night-flecked talons gave her a final sweep of reassurance before retreating, as he and Cassian continued their patrol along the western perimeter.

Relative stillness quelled the ground that had just minutes before had been wrought with blood and hellfire. Now, only the stray blast or scream or cry of pain broke through the eerie stillness as death, or temporary death for some, calmed the battlefield. The patter of rain in water-logged holes and divets began the earth’s own cleansing of the violence that had been committed upon it.

Feyre scanned her immediate area, searching for any stray enemy that still posed a threat. Her eyes found nothing, catching only on Azriel as he walked slowly, tiredly, among the broken bodies on the field, midnight hair falling as it covered his eyes almost completely from view, head down as he searched for the telltale sign of Illyrian wings or the familiar color of their armor as he searched for survivors.

When he saw nothing, Feyre watched as he lifted his head, turning to look at the horizon of trees to their left, congregating at the edge of the dark forest. His head tilted, curls formed by the rain and his own sweat blowing softly in the breeze around his face.

Feyre did not have time to warn him. Her own eyes barely catching the minute movement of a bloodied hand raising from a mass of tangled limbs.

Time seemed to slow as raw killing power, bestowed by the death god himself, struck Azriel right through the chest.

He fired back out of instinct. Dull siphons flaring bright cobalt as he sent a final answering blast in the direction of where the blast had come from, even as the force of it sent him to the ground, head hitting the ground at a sickening angle as he lay still.

Before Feyre could move, as she desperately tried to muster the energy to winnow to her friend’s side, an outraged roar shook the treeline, reverberating over the quiet battlefield.

An enormous beast flew from the shadows.

Not to spear toward Feyre, but to meet a pair of naga hounds head on as the beasts saw an opportunity in the fallen illyrian, emerging from somewhere close by to prey on a barely beating heart and freshly spilled blood.

They did not stand a chance against the large beast, as it clenched one and then the other in its massive jaws, footlong fangs ripping each in two and flinging them yards away, still alive and spasming as they hit the ground.

The beast let out a pained cry, like a wounded animal, even as the dark blood of its defeated prey spilled from its open mouth.

It stalked toward Azriel, and Feyre lifted a shaking hand willing her exhausted power to resurface, ready to defend him.

But the beast merely nudged his still form with its nose. Once, and then again, before it whimpered.

When he did not move, it howled once again. It tipped its fanged head to the cloud-filled sky and let out an earth-shaking howl of agony that echoed across the field that was now still once more.

At first glance, Feyre started in surprise, as the beast that hovered protectively over Azriel appeared so similarly to Tamlin’s beast form. A large, bear like body, although this one appeared smaller and more feline than the High Lord’s form. No antlers to be seen, but massive fangs protruded from its snarling mouth as it snapped at any movement that appeared too close to the limp form of the shadowsinger. Its hide was not the mass of gold that Feyre knew, but rather the spottled, tawny hide of a fawn.

When Feyre took a hesitant step forward and caught the eyes of the beast, she stopped breathing.

Deep brown eyes met her own.

Eyes that saw everything.

Endless pain filled their dark depths.

Eyes that she had known since the day she had been born.

“Elain…” Feyre breathed, her eyes not leaving that of her sister’s.

She took another step forward. Her tattooed arm outstretched and reaching, palm up as she took another step closer to where Elain crouched over Azriel’s body.

Feyre could just make out the rattling movement of his chest - blood seeping out and around the hole that had blasted straight though it.

If she could just make it to Azriel, then she could give him some of her blood and it might be enough…

A wide pair of jaws snapped at her outstretched arm.

There was no recognition in the eyes of the beast staring back at her. Only the primal instinct of a wounded animal, protecting what belonged to it.

“Feyre!” Rhys appeared behind her, pulling her back against his chest and away from the snapping jaws in front of her.

“It’s Elain…”

Feyre’s voice shook as she stumbled over her words.

“Rhys, it’s Elain.”

His violet eyes widened in shock as he pulled them another step back.

“I can’t feel her, inside of it. I can’t reach her mind.”

Rhys took a step closer.

“Elain, I know you’re frightened.”

The beast let out a low growl from deep in her chest, sinking lower into her crouch. Almost entirely shielding Azriel from view.

Rhys was not deterred, and inched another step closer.

“Azriel’s hurt, and you’ve done a perfect job of protecting him, Elain.”

The beast let out a low whimper of recognition at his name.

“But we need to help him too, Elain. He’s my brother, and I love him too.”

Rhys took another step.

“Can you trust us Elain, to help him? Please, we have to get him Feyre’s blood, and quickly.”

Elain straightened a small amount, Azriel coming closer into view.

“Nesta, NO!”

An arrow shot from no more than 30 yards away, striking the beast through her chest.

The beast that was Elain let out a wild cry of pain before shrinking back, thrashing as blood spilt from her breast and soaking her tawny fur in scarlet.

Unsteady legs leaned instinctively away from Azriel, and away from where Nesta stood with her empty bow drawn, confusion written across her face as the shape of the beast began to change.

It shifted as it fell, until a fae female collapsed to the ground. Pale skin bare besides the thick coat of red blood staining her chest and stomach.

She fell on her side, curled around the protruding arrow lodged in her sternum, even as one hand reached out toward where Azriel lay silently.

Matted curls covered her face, but Nesta recognized her sister immediately.

The eldest Archeron let out a blood-curdling scream.

She tripped over herself, stumbling as she ran to where Elain lay unconscious, hand outstretched for Azriel as Feyre and Rhys rushed for the pair, Feyre already slipping a blade against her palm.

Nesta was shaking her head and mumbling as she held quivering hands over the form of her little sister.

“No, no, no, no…” she wailed. “No…”

Feyre swallowed her own fears tightly and called to Nesta, even as she pressed her bloody wrist to Azriel’s mouth. His skin frighteningly pale against his dark hair.

“Make sure she keeps breathing, Nesta, I’ll be right there.”

Rhys approached Nesta and crouched over Elain next to her, quickly unbuckling his leathers and then shrugging over the thick tunic he wore beneath it to cover most of Elain’s bare frame.

Elain came to with a jolt, a large gasp of breath loosing as her body began to seize. Her eyes flicked back forth wildly, unseeing, as though she were searching for something.

The sounds she made were nearly unintelligible, but Rhys responded as if she were perfectly clear. A gentle hand pressed to her chest and back so that she did not dislodge the arrows spearing through her spine.

“Feyre is healing Azriel now, Elain,” he spoke in a soft, soothing voice typically reserved for his son. “You can’t move though, alright? You’ll hurt yourself. Feyre will be here soon, darling.”

Elain’s breath heaved as she panicked, gasping for breath.

Nesta cried quietly as she stroked the mass of knotted curls, pushing them away from Elain’s blood-stained face and mouth. Pressing careful kisses to her younger sister’s temple.

“You’ll both be alright, hmm? You’re both going to be alright, Elain.”

Feyre’s hands shook as they hovered over Azriel, one on the wound in his chest releasing golden light, her other wrist still feeding him blood - his mouth turning scarlet as she willed him to swallow.

“Feyre, you have to go into his mind and tell him to wake. Up.”

Desperation colored Rhys’ voice in midnight blue.

“Please Feyre, he’s stubborn. You have to get him to wake up.”

A brotherhood forged over 500 years, carefully melted together like iron but wearing quickly apart.

At the pain in her mate’s eyes, Feyre did not hesitate. She closed her own, and stepped into the darkness.

Entering Azriel’s mind for the very first time.

————

His shields were completely down, in his injured state. Feyre stepped through the open doors to his mind, not a hint of protest to keep her out. It was eerie, as she had never entered another’s mind so easily before, unless they were actively inviting her in.

A small bit of flickering light caught her attention in the eternal blackness, and so she followed it.

Images flickered in the small bursts of light fading in Azriel’s mind.

Most were unpleasant.

Two adolescent Illyrian boys pouring a dark liquid on the two trembling hands of a boy. Not much larger than that of her son’s.

Flames, and endless screaming.

Misshapen, unused wings and endless bruises from crashing into the ground, over and over again.

Flying. Flying as far as his wings would take him.

A deal with the devil.

Being tortured to learn how to torture.

Bloody hands. Blood and blood and blood, endlessly coating his skin.

Endless, restless nights alone staring up at the moon.

A flash of golden hair and a warm smile painted with red lips.

Bloody hands and feet and knives and swords.

Fading violet eyes for 50 years. Silence.

Too much drinking.

Two figures dancing on a balcony at Starfall. A flash of a glittering silver dress.

Two wide, warm brown eyes.

Those eyes again. And then a hand. And then.. oh

Her sister’s face, her laugh, her smile. Over and over and over and over again.

A battlefield. And then another.

Empty hallways and quiet rooms and her sister’s face, brow furrowed as she pressed into his chest.

A blast to that same chest where Elain had just pressed a gentle kiss, the pain unimaginable and then… quiet.

Feyre felt tears slipping from her eyes, where her body waited for her return.

I’m so tired, Feyre.

A cool, deep voice spoke to her from the fading light inside of Azriel’s mind.

“I know,” she pleaded back to him, her mental claws reaching for him in the darkness. “But we need you. She needs you.”

With every bit of her mental strength, she called to mind the memory of the Battle of Hybern, hovering over the Cauldron. The final I love you. When she had thrown herself over Rhys’ dead body. Everything she had felt in that moment, when her heart had fissured messily in two. All of that agony, that fear, that loneliness, the anger of him leaving her.

Don’t leave me don’t leave don’t leave me

She shoved it his way, through the heavy darkness separating them as he drifted further away.

“She needs you,” Feyre whispered once more, over the roar of her own mental anguish she fought to remember.

Before she had a chance to hear his response, she was violently ripped out of his consciousness back into her own body.

“No-“ she gasped, twisting Azriel’s leathers in her hands as she looked down, fearing the worst possible reason that she had been thrown from his mind.

Disoriented hazel eyes blinked heavily back at her, as Azriel swallowed the first drops of her blood that had pooled in his mouth.

He had come back, for Elain.

He would always come for her.

“Feyre,” Rhys called warningly.

Elain had begun to choke on her own blood. Scarlet clots spilling from her coated lips as she shook unnaturally under Rhys’ hands. Her eyes unseeing, and half-closed.

As Azriel came back to awareness, his eyes widened in panic as he scented Elain, her injury.

He shoved at Feyre’s wrist and hand with more strength than she would have thought possible from the spymaster who had just nearly died in front of her.

“Help HER,” he choked out a snarl, swallowing thickly, choking down more of her healing blood.

Feyre didn’t need to be asked twice as she turned, crouching over Elain and shoving her still bleeding wrist onto her sister’s mouth. Her other hand dropping to Elain’s chest, Rhys at the ready to remove the arrow.

“I’m going to get this out now, alright, Elain?”

Without hesitation he pulled, the arrow coming through cleanly as Elain screamed hoarsely and bit down on Feyre’s wrist. Feyre winced, but held steady.

Elain’s eyes fluttered shut as her tremors stilled. Nesta continued weeping quietly, wiping Elain’s face and stroking her hair as Rhys went to check on Azriel who still struggled to remain conscious.

He held Azriel’s face in his hands, looking to him unwaveringly as he spoke to the shadowsinger.

“She’ll be alright, brother. Just stay with us.”

Azriel’s eyes drifted shut in relief, though a bit of color had already returned to his complexion. His breath returning from an eerily quiet death rattle to a steadier rise and fall.

Feyre went horrifying still as Elain stopped moving beneath her. Hoarse, choking breaths quieted to a labored, slow rise of her blood-stained chest.

“Rhys…” Feyre whispered in horror, her eyes widening as her heart sank. “It’s not working fast enough.”

“Give her to me,” Azriel choked out.

“She needs….”

“I know what she needs,” Azriel grinded out through clenched teeth. His face ghostly pale once more.

Rhys didn’t move, so Feyre did. At the desperation in the shadowsinger’s eyes. At the way that his gaze had narrowed in on Elain’s ashen face - as if it would never widen once again.

Feyre gently removed her wrist from Elain’s blood-stained lips, and carefully lifted her sister to where Azriel had pushed himself up on his elbows, waiting to pull her onto his chest.

“Azriel, your wound.”

“Just do it,” he ground out through the agony of the movement and Elain’s body weight pressing onto his. The same resoluteness Feyre had seen on his face when his wings had been shredded by that beast of Hybern’s in midair. The shadowsinger held no room for pain - not anymore.

He held Elain chest to chest, immediately wrapping his shaking arms around her and closing his eyes, burying his hand in her hair, stroking the knotted curls as he murmured something in her ear.

Elain did not stir.

Azriel took a long, shaky breath as the rest of them watched, holding their own breaths as he released a final exhale.

Feyre heard something in the wind that passed from his lips - as if a shadow had murmured it to her.

Acceptance.

Shadows began to stir from where they had lain protectively coated to Azriel’s wan skin - and began to dance with the golden beams of light that had started to seep out of Elain’s own paleness.

An unwordly brightness began to emanate from where the blood on their chests mingled and mixed, where their very hearts seemed to slow, matching the rhythm of the other.

Time and the wind and the stone buried beneath their feet all held its breath.

Azriel’s eyes shut, as Elain’s opened wide.

To be continued…

#elriel #elain archeron #azriel #acotar fanfiction #pro elriel #elain x azriel #pro elain #elriel fanfiction #azriel shadowsinger #elriel fic #elriel angst

[thefangirlofhp]

leaning on everlasting arms [1]

in which the world seems to have a problem with Elain Archeron insisting on remaining by Azriel’s side. 

(world slows ‘till there’s nothing left)

Winnowing directly in front of the front door was not what Elain had in mind; usually she prefers to arrive at the edge of their property, just a little before the protective enchantments where the trek to the estate would allow her those few minutes of a quiet reprieve as she walks towards her home, effectively shedding the weary layers accumulated over her skin. There’s something about the routine of normalcy that is more effective than remedies, healing powers and prophylactic nature. Each step is a greeting to the earth that surrounds her home, each moment spent is one for reflection and appreciation that reels her back into her head, helps in that transition from work to home.

But she has to smile faintly to herself at the doorknob, as she grabs it and pushes it in with enough arm power whilst conceding to herself how thoroughly rattled she must be, if she cannot wait to be buried beneath the very air inside. 

The door creaks shut behind her, and Elain faces the grand empty entryway with a sigh that seems to originate from her very soul. Her back thuds against the door for a second before she pushes herself off it, letting her satchel slide of her shoulder and land with a quitting thud.

I’m home, she half-heartedly announces, regarding the empty doorway with a disappointed pinch in her chest. 

Granted, it’s not her usual time of arrival, but the hour’s not so late so as to excuse this bare home welcome. With a frown tugging her lips, she toes out of her heeled shoes and crosses the threshold on relieved feet sinking into the plush carpet. But she barely makes it two steps up the stairs before a familiar sight comes rushing along the railing to greet her. It tugs a smile from her lips as the shadows cord their delighted way around her extended arm and up towards her face and neck. 

Hello, I missed you as well! 

They’re ticklish and teasing in their soft brushes along her neck, enough to tug a grin out from her. She wonders sometimes what they sound like. 

Where is he? 

Loyal subjects so easily betray their master as they unanimously point towards the rest of the winding stairs immediately. Chuckling, Elain hurries along the steps eagerly, her skirt swishing about her legs before she hitches it up and eagerly looks ahead of her—

Only to be greeted at the landing with a bear hug that squeezes the life, exhaustion and dust of travel right out of her. It startles a laugh out of her, if only because she’s surprised by how much she only now realises that she needs it, but she is not so insensible as to resist melting in those arms. That warmth. 

“I was waiting outside!” Azriel is laughing, a sound that is welcome and cherished, one of his arms wound tight around her waist, the other across her shoulder blades and both equally tight in their embrace. Elain presses her face against him. “Did you winnow directly in?”

She melts into his shoulder, her hands rising to cup his own shoulder blades and the base of the wings that wrap all around her, covering her like a shade, or blanket. Ever reaching. A single nod, where her eyes flutter shut and a shaking exhale escapes her lips. She’s missed this more than she cares to admit, following this particularly interesting week. 

No matter. It all melts away when her husband holds her against him, always a pillar of strength she can always, always, afford to lean on. Elain breathes in his scent, and the minute her mind acclimates itself to it, it’s like she has lost sense of her own sense. She doesn’t find the strength in her knees to keep her standing, so she melts against his chest. His arms further tighten around her, shift a little to hold her up against him more reliably and if Elain can have nothing else but this, then she will be quite content for the rest of her life.

“How are you?” His voice very nearly coos in its adoration. He presses his cheek to her head and breathes her scent in. She in turn notices the whiffs about him; he has changed his clothes, even used that cologne she gifted him last solstice that smells like him, and washed up. The house is spotless from what she can see and smell, so the staff must have been in here earlier today. 

She’d snuggle closer into him if possible. It isn’t. The locket dutifully worn around his neck makes its presence known as it presses into Elain’s chest. She isn’t quite sure anymore where she begins and he ends. She’s long since discarded any care for that. His body’s become her own home after all this time, and her his. 

“I drew you a bath,” he murmurs, moving one hand to drag it gently over her head and along her hair. “And dinner’s still hot. Rhodri’s sleeping over with Nyx.”

She is not in a hurry to escape his hold. And Rhys agreed to that? 

Azriel smiles widely at the sound of her once more. It is sickeningly vocal in his voice. “Didn’t have much of a choice. All three babies were ecstatic. He couldn’t be their villain.”

Three? 

“Feyre’s never had a sleepover before,” he quips and Elain softly chuckles. 

I missed you.

Azriel positively sinks into her at this admission, some pride and satisfaction nearly oozing out of him at being so cherished in one’s life this dearly. All he does is bow into her, sways them side to side gently and hums, delighted. 

“Will you tell me all about it?” 

Elain finally finds it in herself to draw back, and meet his hazel, gorgeous green-golden eyes. Nothing’s changed since she last saw him, but the more she looks and examines his face, the more some aching sorrow in her grows at having been so long apart. 

Later, she decides, making note of his eyes and the fact he’s utterly focused on her. I don’t feel like talking. 

A gentle smile touches his lips, and he cups the side of her face. “That’s all-right,” he touches their foreheads and just smiles. It’s a handsome accessory to his face, so frequent nowadays that she’s forgotten what he looks like without it, that there are smile wrinkles around his eyes now. The loveliest of marks, Elain fondly touches a finger to one and smiles, herself. 

Azriel doesn’t press her to share her mind, as he doesn’t press her for anything at all. He is quite content sitting with her in silence, to exist around her without much words exchanged while Elain begins to acknowledge her built-up exhaustion. A few shadows linger around, if only to play and excitedly swirl around the kitchen while they eat. 

How was your week? 

Azriel looks up from his steak, and meets her eyes. Gives a little shrug of the shoulders. “A little busy.” 

She chews around her meat. What did you do? 

Azriel’s fingers push through his hair, attracting Elain’s attention to its length and due haircut before he rests his chin in his palm. “Rhodri, ah, didn’t have a good time at school. I’ve let him take the week off. Mother and Father couldn’t look after him, so…”

She stills. Did something happen? 

Azriel shakes his head. “Not really. He was just frustrated, something stupid about a game with his classmates. His teacher said it was a misunderstanding but it got to him. One look at him and I realized he needed time to calm down. Figured school could wait, that it’s not worth fraying his nerves over.”

Elain nods, her mind drifting towards her side-project that’s consumed the majority of her time during her studies at Day. She focuses on him again. What did Rhys want? 

Azriel’s eyes remain on his plate, and his smile softening in intensity and presence, until it is nothing more than a forgotten attempt at masking. “Ah.”

Has he asked you to resume your role again? 

His lips turn, faintly. “Am I that obvious?” 

I’d be concerned if you weren’t to me, Elain smiles. I’m the one supposed to intimately know you. 

Azriel smiles back. “Can we forget about that, for now?”

Elain smiles, if a little stiffly, and nods. She too can drop a subject for later.

 (no other arms would do)

The issue was that she has started to dream again.

It’s been so long since her mind has been breached by her own exhaustion and magic, and she cannot help but resent its comeback a little. If only because she is always loath to wake Azriel up with her, and she always ends up doing it when they happen, regardless of her intentions.

“You’re all-right,” he delivers their usual nightly script in his hoarse voice as he pulls himself up and towards her, struggling to find purchase in the lush mattress and pillows with his wings and the twisted sheets she’s gone and entangled around themselves. He is reaching for her just as she is leaning towards him, mindlessly going through their usual routine as Elain’s vision begins to clears up from its cloudy haze and she is reacquainted with her own head once more. “It’s ok. I’ve got you. It’s been a minute since you’ve had them, huh?”

She’d apologize if she had the strength, or if she is confident he’d handle further disturbing his sleeping-now-crudely awakened shadows. From past experiences, they are a menace when disturbed, but when it is the dead of night and it is only them, her and Azriel, bare as they get without magic and shadows and songs, it feels easy to breathe. To find her feet once more.

“Are you okay?” he murmurs, half-asleep, as they rescind to the twisted sheets situation with awkwardly bent and lying bodies. Still the fact Elain’s got her head on him is the only thing she requires. She exhales, hot and sharp, and catches her breath. She blinks repeatedly, trying to find her sight once more.

It is always an unnerving deal to lose her sight when she is awake, but she’s made her peace with it, so long she’s got her head on Azriel.

“Take your time,” he reminds, smoothing his fingers over her elbow. “Water?”

She shakes her head. Tightens her clutch on whatever part of him she’s holding.

“The fae, again?” Azriel somberly asks.

She nods.

“It’s going to be okay.”

She believes him.

(my hands couldn’t keep you safe)

In the morning when she wakes up, to sunlight streaming through her bedroom windows and a breeze dancing with her curtains, and her son curled up in her arms, Elain is absent mindedly immediately smiling.

He’s much like Azriel in the sense that the pair of them curl up like a cat before a fireplace when they are asleep next to someone they love. Elain’s hobby is to keep adding to her list all the eccentric places she finds Azriel asleep in, and recently Rhodri has been trying to get away with doing something similar, in his attempts to sleep anywhere but in his own bed.

She tickles her fingers along his cheek, because she knows he is trying to make it seem like he’s asleep but the boy is a terrible liar. His breathing is too regular and purposeful, and his lashes keep tickling her skin.

I know you’re awake, she brushes her thumb along his jaw and feels him smile.

He looks up, bedsheets rustling and his hair standing up in all sorts of directions, with a wide sheepish grin on his face. Elain finds herself smiling as she blinks the morning bleariness out of her eyes, and presses a good morning kiss to his forehead.

“Go’oh moarhhing,” he says, proud and off-tune, and charming enough to make Elain beam.

Good morning, she mouths back. She has many, many miles to go still in her learning of his Illyrian dialect, but so far the pair of them have crossed some bridges in order to meet one-another half-way. Simple greetings and nouns that get them by around one another, and they have Azriel to step in for the more complicated matters. It leaves a nice touch to their relationship, because Elain doesn’t have to be the strict lecturing parent if she cannot go on a tangent in the first place, and Azriel frets over the boy enough for the pair of them so she’s seen as the more easy-going, fun one.

Did you have fun with Nyx? She asks, in Illyrian and Rhodri eagerly nods.

She looks around her, noting Azriel’s absence, and his night-clothes tossed on her vanity chair as he always does.

Is Azriel…Did he bring you?

Again, Rhodri nods, sitting up and yawning widely. He’s grown so fast and so much, Elain’s heart spasms at the fact sadly and she finds herself surging after him to wrap her arms around him tightly before he can grow up too big to fit in her hold anymore.

Dressed and washed for the day, she comes downstairs for breakfast feeling a little better than she had last night. Glad that she hadn’t breached whatever was on her mind last night when she is sure the outcome would have been unfavorable, she twists her wedding band around her finger while approaching the table and the food laid out on it. Rhodri points towards the fields outside when she meets his eyes questioningly, and it is clear then where Azriel has wandered off to while she took her time coming down.

She opens the backdoor, and steps out into the fresh air.

He’s crouched in the grass, his arms wrapped around his shoulders as he stares at the steadily standing sapling with its small green leaves swishing in the breeze. Elain gathers her skirts to go after him when he perks up and looks over.

“Morning,” he bids, voice softer than it is prone to be without the feelings layering it. He stands up, stretching his wings and folding them back in once more. “How’re you feeling now?”

She nods, gives him a smile for his troubles, and glances at the little sapling planted in honor of the life that failed to take place in her womb. Elain had figured back then if it couldn’t find purchase enough in her, then at least giving it a place to dig roots in with a tree was better than nothing. Azriel only comes here when there’s a song playing in his head, a tune that Elain doesn’t like him listening to alone.

So she holds out her hand and threads their fingers together when he accepts it.

Are you all-right?

He nods. Glances at the tree growing up in the way nothing they could ever conceive would. “Yeah. Just—Just a little sore, today, you know?”

Damn her if she doesn’t feel tender in her own soul as well, the way that warrants gentle hands and kind words.

Does it have to do with what Rhys asked of you?

Azriel meets her eyes, his mouth twitching. “Yeah, I suppose,” he replies lowly, the sores too chafed and sensitive to stand lying. “Why are you bruised?”

She chuckles. The Order; they want me to take my rightful place amongst them.

His eyes squint a little as they flicker between hers. “Your precious Order likes to peacock around this continent like they’re a sophisticated elite of superior purebreds elevated above the superfluous and lousy workings of everyone else, but in the end they’re exactly like every other system on this earth.”

Elain smiles wryly as she follows him back inside, hands still clasped.

“It’s primitive, do they realize that?” he makes her take a seat while grabbing a slice of toast. “Basing the system of their hierarchy on pure strength alone.”

It’s lovely to hear you berate the way the witches operate just because they want me to lead them. Every day you flatter me more.

Azriel grins, filling up her plate with her favorite foods. “Don’t pretend you don’t hate it,” he knowingly says. “If you didn’t, you’d be skipping your way all to the top.”

I hate that I must shoulder a responsibility I have yet to understand the scope of its burden, she shoots, biting into a bright red strawberry that immediately softens all her tense muscles and locked up jaw. She indulges in the rich savory taste coating her tongue in all its fresh sweetness. Mhm, these have come in nicely.

“I remembered to water them every day,” he says proudly, pushing Rhodri’s plate towards him. In Illyrian, Elain manages to figure out him telling the boy to eat his fruits before turning back to her. “They still hounding you about it?”

All week, she scoffed. Oh and there’s a new song they’re preaching, as well. About my marital status, they want me to remedy that in order to achieve my full potential.

It does exactly what she anticipated it doing. Azriel’s smile slides off, and his tone sobers as he abandons his interest in breakfast.

“I see,” he slowly remarks, reaching for his coffee. “But you are married.”

Not according to magic.

Azriel slowly tenses, working food from between his teeth as he regards her, and she wonders if his intelligence is a curse or a gift. It surely saves her from having to find all the words.

“You’ve been told to remedy your partner,” he points out tightly.

Elain nods. She’s heard nothing all week-long but objections and whines and pleas from her fellow witches, from her own teachers. “You could have picked anyone but the shadowsinger,” is the general bemoaning. “Anyone but him.”

He is quiet for long.

“I suppose the witches have someone suitable in mind?” he adds quietly, his eyes lidded and coded. “Your mate, by chance?”

Your intelligence is one of the things I love so much about you. Elain blinks back at him.

Why this week, one might wonder?

The simple headache: Lucien has finally plucked up the courage and strength to give Day its lost-heir, and meet Helion with his mother in tow. It has been the event of the entire week, the court celebrating day and night by order of one rejoicing Helion unable to adequately function beneath the weight of all that happiness and reconciliation. Elain was pleased to once again make the acquaintance of Lucien who has become a sort of friendly face in a sea of strangers that Elain would be glad to talk to in a mixer. Yet during those parties, Elain had felt the weight of the entire court’s eyes on her, and him, simply edging them on. Waiting with sheer baited breath for the dramatic conclusion to a climax that has enthralled so many souls.

“She’s married,” Elain overheard a conversation, one that was repeated time and time again in different tones and words. “I hear she’s raising a child, as well.”

“To the Night Court spymaster,” was the sneering reply, the abashed and disgusted opinion. “A shadowsinger. She shall definitely drop that farce of a relationship soon and find her rightful place.”

Elain has come to loath the term: rightful place.

Azriel? Say something?

He leans back in his seat, regarding her with hooded eyes and an impassive face. His lips part as he breathes in and says: “You pledged yourself to me for all eternity. You’re mine, and I can’t pretend like it doesn’t enrage me when others say otherwise. By what right do they see me as the lesser option?”

People don’t see us that way, she replies, twirling her fork between her knuckles.

“Fuck people,” he states, as he had that night once upon several years ago when he tipped the axis of her world and asked her to choose him. “Fuck the world. You’re mine; it’s a done deal. No-one’s giving you to anyone else, ‘cause I won’t let them, yeah? I’ll do whatever it takes to drive that message home.”

I’m not going anywhere, she gently reassures him.

“Then why are you thinking about it?”

It silences her. Not that there is some truth to the sentence, that Elain is seriously contemplating somehow exchanging her current life for another, but by merit of the shine in his eyes he quickly blinks away from Rhodri’s watchful gaze and the cracked syllables of his tone privy to her ears only.

I-I’m not, she answers, steeling herself against the hurt in his voice that is not allowed to reflect on his poker face. I only told you about it to share my mind, and what happened.

Azriel looks down into his cup of coffee. Does he somehow think that Elain would ever give this up for anything in the universe?

Here is a small truth about her: although she is nestled in the friendships of people who will sacrifice their livelihoods and lives for the greater good, for the common dream, are willing to give up and suffer so that others do not, Elain is not that person. To sacrifice means to give up something precious, and if Elain is willing to part with it no matter how much it hurts, then it is not precious to her. Sacrifice meant things like giving up Azriel, these mornings having breakfast together in the kitchen with the sun shining and exchanging conversation and teasings, giving up this life that Elain has never thought she could ever have.

Elain could never give those up.

“It does not feel good,” he confesses softly. “Being reminded of all the reasons we cannot exist together. Sometimes I think about everything you’re sacrificing and giving up, and it gets hard to breathe under all that weight.”

Again, with the sacrifice.

I don’t regret my decisions. They’re not yours to be responsible for.

His lips twitch. “I know that. But when I’m reminded of everything you ought to be, the people you’re meant to be with, I feel a crushing responsibility to live up to it. I feel that I must make it worth it, for you. Everything you’ve given up.”

Azriel glances out the large windows at the gardens outside, where he’d been a moment ago, and Elain’s heart sinks in her chest. She doesn’t pretend that this is a wound that has not existed since she accepted Azriel’s proposal, and it is still raw a little to bear.

Although she had agreed to Azriel’s one condition on getting married, the pregnancy was still an accident that neither of them meant to happen. Though Elain had been overjoyed at the start, it was Azriel who grieved from the very moment because he had the foresight Elain was too blinded by joy to use.

It wasn’t even a babe; when Elain miscarried, it was only a slough of tissues and blood—a lot of blood—and in the midst of it, a peculiarly shaped blob that would have become a body. Madja had taken one look at it, at the horrific way it was malformed and the word monster was left unspoken but hanging in the air. Elain had still loved it, and grieved for it and buried it outside in the gardens while her heart learned to carry the weight of this particular wound.

Azriel, naturally, took no joy in being right. They could never reproduce, by merit of their adverse powers that are usually passed on to the child. It seemed the shadowsinger curse and the witch’s magic were not able to adequately co-exist in the child, had ended up killing it.

There was simply no place in Prythian, or the world, that could adequately host this assault on nature.

That’s not fair to you, she pipes up. I don’t hold you responsible, and I’m sorry if you do. But what is love if not something we constantly use to better ourselves? I’m not sorry you’re constantly trying to be a better person, but I am sorry it plagues you.

“Yeah,” he breathes, looking down at his plate. “I know.”

Would…What would you say to coming with me to Day and attending a formal function to quash any thoughts?

He looks up. “Aren’t you meant to do that?”

She pauses as the implication of her words sinks in.

Oh, no I apologize. I don’t want you to assume I accept people’s opinion, or that I entertain them. I am very vocal about my marriage. I only meant it would help cement the permanence of our relationship in my colleagues’ regards.

“You’ve never been vocal about anything in your life,” he quirks a brow and she makes a face back for his joke. “Elain, be honest with me about something.”

Her heart slows down.

He leans forward on his elbows. “When we got together, we spent weeks working out all the implications of it and being aware of the aftermath. So far, it is nothing we have not expected.”

She bops her head, breakfast forgotten.

His eyes flicker between hers curiously and her heart perks up at the spark in his gaze. She should have known better than to fly under the radar of his intelligence.

“There’s something new at play we hadn’t anticipated. Isn’t there?”

It feels like the entire morning comes to halt, and though his words are gentle they have the effect of buzzing in her ears as if he’d bellowed them. Elain’s fingers tighten over her fork and knife and his eyes flicker briefly to the action before returning to her eyes.

It’s just a thing. She says pathetically. The witches have been telling me. H-Helion warned me about it a while ago. It’s why everyone’s fretting over everything that is their business and not.

Azriel pauses, eyes sharp and alert.

Golden witches aren’t in the habit of living long, she says to the plate of barely-touched food. It’s an opinion. Well, a paranoia really, because witches like me are extremely rare in the order by merit of… the lack of longevity. And they’re not willing to let it happen, in my case.

Azriel, to his credit, doesn’t say anything.

Rhodri decides that moment to pipe up. Tapping his spoon against his plate and pointing to the plate of lemon tarts. Elain averts her eyes from her husband to quickly help him to a serving and other pastries. Rhodri gives her a charming beam before tucking in without a care in the world.

When she looks back at Azriel, he is paler than he was a few seconds before. His heart is violently thundering in his chest and shadows are a thick swarm around him before he waves them away sharply.

“Why.”

No-one knows why, Elain tells the fruit bowl with a shrug. There are opinions that the magical load is too much of a burden. That we take more than we are meant to, and it exhausts our life. It’s—it’s why I’m pushed to entertain Lucien as a mate, there’s an opinion that sharing the load would be…beneficial.

“An opinion?” Azriel rushes out, breathless.

I’m not particularly convinced because other witches before me were documented to have mates and it didn’t change anything. Hypatia was un-mated, and as you know, a legend. But she died by treason, not her magic. So it’s a flimsy reasoning, and I didn’t want to tell you because of that.

“How long have you known?”

She meets his eyes, finally. I’ve been warned from the start to put a leash on it, or it’d turn against me. It’s why Helion was pressed to offer me an education and a chance to control it. But the mates thing—it was only seriously proposed this week.

See, times like this, it’s one of the reasons she has tumbled and fallen and rolled down a mountain slope in love with him. Azriel does not panic, doesn’t lose his head as she feared and has seen her sisters’ mate do. All he does is stare, and stare, and stare long and hard at her quietly for so long. Elain could imagine his mind a collection of cogs and metals furiously turning and working themselves into a dysfunction.

“And there’s no way to stop it?”

It… she searches for the words. It’s not much of an inevitable demise, Azriel. Just a pattern noticed amongst witches like me.

“Of dying, by some tragedy or their own magic turning against them,” he clarifies. “Right?”

Well, when put that way.

I suppose. But—But it could be millennia from now.

“Or a couple of years.”

She purses her lips. Nods.

He blows out a long breath between his lips and reclines back in his chair. “What is the problem, exactly?”

I keep telling you, it’s—

“Elain, just entertain me.”

Well I don’t know, do I? If I did for sure, we’d have the answers by now.

“But there’s a general hypothesis, isn’t there?” he folds his hands behind his head. “Otherwise the witches wouldn’t be pushing you to Lucien as a solution.”

I think the idea is that the magic grows in you the more you practice. And inevitably you cannot handle it anymore and it turns on you. The idea of a mate is to split that burden, but it’s useless in my opinion because by that reasoning it will also overpower the mate.

His eyes flicker. “That’s not a mate bond. You’re looking for carranam.”

The word feels heavy on her ears. She’d never heard of it before.

I don’t understand.

“The premise of sharing powers,” Azriel clarifies as he leans forward, his wings shifting behind him as he sweeps aside breadcrumbs off the table. “Mates don’t do that.”

…Oh?

“Yeah,” he nods, examining her face closely. “I thought the witches would know the difference.”

Well…either way it’s not a solution.

“Sounds to me you need a siphon.”

She blinks. If the answer were so easy, surely the witches would have long guessed it by now. If it is such a problem of existence for an entire subspecies of witches, surely the answer cannot be so simple.

It’s not a matter of summoning the magic, she slowly says, confused. But an abundance. I think.

He nods.

Can you somehow store magic in it?

“I don’t know about storage, but it’s the nature of siphons to drain. You can siphon your magic through it consistently, without having to use it.”

Elain blinks. That easy?

Would it be able to stand a witch’s magic?

He chuckles. “Sweetheart, it channels Illyrian power. Power meant purely for destruction and havoc. They don’t fracture. The average blood-shedding agent of terror we call a warrior needs only one and it adequately serves him. I think you’ll do just fine.”

Somehow Elain gets caught up once more in the realization.

And you use—no, need seven constantly.

Azriel quietly stares back at her. Arms folded on the table as he leans forward, in a simple sleeveless black shirt hugging his torso, the locket hanging from his neck, black fitting pants and arm-guards bearing two cobalt siphons and he looks so normal, sat in the sunlight with breakfast before him and a child next to him and smelling like Elain’s lavender bar of soap that he must have used again this morning, freshly cleaned hair swept back to the sides. Sometimes, most of the times, Elain forgets. That with her lives one of the world’s most renown terrors, one of the most powerful people in history.

And Elain has him watering strawberry bushes. Brewing chamomile tea on rainy days. Folding laundry.

“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to you constantly forgetting that,” he points out. “I’ve never been anything else to anyone, and that you’ve never seen me that way…”

Elain blinks, and remembers herself and what they were discussing.

So would a siphon do the trick?

He raises his hands. “I wouldn’t know. You and your witches should be able to say so.”

If it’s so simple, why hasn’t it been used before?

Azriel stares. “You want the Illyrians to export their siphons to the world? They’d rather export their own decapitated heads than expose their secrets. Here, try using one of mine.”

She hesitates in accepting the siphon delivered into his palm from a dutiful shadow.

What if I break it?

He smiles softly. “That’ll be a first. They’re not breakable.”

Elain cocks her head. What happens if you channel all your power using only one?

Azriel wryly grins. “All-right, they’d break. For now, try using it and see if it helps.”

To accept the cobalt blue gemstone somehow feels to Elain like they’ve exchanged wedding bands on their fingers once more, or something equally significant. Elain cradles the stone in her palms as if it is the most precious thing she can hold, despite being told she cannot break it, but still she is gentle. It’s more of a personal statement, that a possession of Azriel’s must be treated with respect on principle.

Would I be able to have my own?

“I don’t know,” Azriel says softly. “They’re handed out to warriors. Illyrians, most importantly.”

I’m married to one, am raising one, and daughter-by-law to two, no, three. And one half-Illyrian. Am I not Illyrian enough?

His lips tug into a smile she loves to see. “When you put it that way, it sounds so simple.”

Could I try?

“You needn’t ask me for permission, I wouldn’t mind giving you all seven of mine. But I’ll take you to see one, if you’re serious and it helps.”

It’s something about the way he says the words, how his lips twist around them, that makes Elain snag onto something tucked between the consonants.

She smiles. Thank you.

He hums, folding his hands behind his neck while watching her. He glances at Rhodri and his face twitches before he taps the table and sharply points to the boy’s leftover eggs with a warning glare. Elain has to hide a smile. Sometimes the language of parenting needed no words to be heard, nor was it restricted by languages and meanings. It was touchingly universal.

“I’ll take you up on the invitation to Day, though,” he muses and snags her attention back once more. “There’s a few things I want to find out.”

Elain leans forward. Will you attend some functions with me, please?

His brows twitch as he fails to hide an amusement off his face. “Don’t look at me like that.”

Elain knows exactly what he means. Her eyebrows further curve. Oh please, please, Azriel? It would mean a lot to me. It’s so easier to shut up gossipers and opinionated people by simply shoving it in their faces rather than go blue in the face explaining.

��I wouldn’t know what to do.”

Oh it’s simple. You just exist there, dance a few with me if they’re warranted, do your brooding and scary male act and quite simply get the message across that no-one is to mess with you or us.

His face softens and his eyes roll away. Elain feels that she has snagged whatever that something was, hidden deep inside him ever since she got home last night.

“I don’t want to do that.”

The words are spoken so simply, softly as well yet they knock the breath from Elain’s chest.

Before her mind can spiral, she forces herself to understand.

Why?

He is looking out the kitchen windows, his expression open and vulnerable and Elain doesn’t think she’ll ever get used to seeing him expose himself to her this way. Safe enough to do so.

“I…” he begins slowly, working through his thoughts and determining his words at his own pace. “Rhys asked me to take up my previous post.”

So. Bullseye.

And?

“I don’t want to do that, either,” Azriel murmurs. “I think I’ve hung up my armor for good. I don’t want nor need all seven siphons. I don’t want to be a nightmare anymore.”

He glances at her, stunned as she is, before adding: “Nor do I want to scare people into respecting me.”

Elain doesn’t have the words.

He clears his throat. “I’ve gotten used to being the way you see me. It’s a nice thing to be—I don’t hate myself for it. I don’t want to hate myself again. It’s a bitter taste.”

In a sense, Elain falls even more.

 (my compass, my transport)

Elain’s apartment is quaint and tidy. No-where near the estate they live in, yet it fulfills her purposes adequately. Azriel is somehow too large for it, but fits right in as he always has.

She wakes up early as she always does, feeling beads of sweat rolling down her forehead and sticking her hair to her head. Still, she finds herself asleep on his shoulder, even though he is too warm a body for her coping skills, and just as sticky.

Conjuring a cooling spell does just the trick, and the little smile curling his lips in answer startles her.

“Well called,” he mutters, mostly asleep, and curling into her as if she isn’t gasping for air. Truly, the whole engulf-your-loved-one-in-your-sleep phenomenon is impractical and claustrophobic but damn Elain if it doesn’t make her feel safer, in the otherworldly sense, and a little smug.

To her surprise, Azriel spends his time actually browsing the libraries in Day instead of the attractions. Somehow she is a little disappointed that he shadows her in the library for educational purposes, and not some as fun distraction. Elain works on her project while he flips through ancient texts and tomes, and consults scholars.

In the evenings, Elain takes him to the functions she’s obliged to attend. Dinner parties and mixers and actual parties thrown in Lucien’s honor still. Whenever he is placed in the vicinity of a witch, it is like squaring down a cat and dog, but it’s to Elain’s surprise that Azriel charms every soul he meets and their mother.

It’s not that she doesn’t know he is a painfully polite person—it’s one of the things about him Elain loves the most. How civil he is, and levelheaded in situations. But some part of her realizes that she’s never really seen him around strangers, in the sense of people not from Velaris which by now all feel like an extension of family. He is formal and polite, respectful and charming, and Elain realizes it’s one of his sharply honed skills for espionage. After-all, one did get more flies with honey than vinegar.

And soon, he is naught but the talk of anyone who knows Elain and is in on the gossip. Even the witches end up somewhat tolerating him, if not liking him.

But still, it does not stop them pushing the Marry-Your-Chosen-Mate agenda.

After escaping one strenuous discussion of the matter, Elain seeks refuge by the refreshments table of the party, gasping for air as she downs one glass after the other.

“Hey, who’s gotten you sweating like a traitor at court?”

She whirls around, finds herself face to face with an amused-looking Lucien.

Madeline. She’s very close to driving me off a cliff.

“Hmm,” he nods, brows jumping. “To be honest, she’s been hounding me as well.”

Oh no.

“I know,” he crosses his arms over his chest. “I figured if people saw us talking, it’d shut them up for a while. It’s hard to have a whole court meddle in your affairs, I think I am becoming nostalgic for the times I was mostly ignored and neglected my entire life.”

Elain gives him a fleeting grin. How are you finding it?

Lucien shrugs, but there is a smile on his face. “I like it, really. And seeing Mother happy makes it tenfold easier.”

She really did seem to blossom here.

Lucien glances at her. “Surprisingly enough, so has your husband.”

Oh, he’s just showing off his manners. Deep down, he can’t wait to go home. To be honest, neither can I.

“What’s he here for, exactly?”

I caught him with Girona heads-buried-in-tomes and making notes like they’re about to be tested, so I didn’t bother prying. He’s finding answers.

“What for?” Lucien nicks some of the finger sandwiches plated behind them.

The question of the longevity of my survival, how to make sure my own magic doesn’t betray me, things like that.

“Excuse me?”

Mmhm. He’s starting to have nightmares I’m going to drop dead any day now.

Lucien stares. “What’s—I had no idea.”

Apparently golden witches don’t survive long and so Azriel and the entire Order is trying to amend that. They’ve got a whole plan which includes pushing me to take my place as the Grand Witch Supreme, accepting you as a mate, and a whole lot of hoops to jump through.

“What?”

Don’t worry, I shot down our bond from the start. It’s not an option, so you needn’t worry about having to make some grand heroic sacrifice to save my life.

He stares. “So that’s why I’ve been hounded. I would be somehow helping alleviate your demise, in a way?”

No, at least not by merit of being my mate. Azriel says it’s a feature of carranam, which happens to be extremely rare, so we needn’t worry about that either. The witches didn’t know that, surprisingly. Oooh…or did they?

Elain sighs through her nose, watching the socializing fae make conversation until she catches Azriel speaking with Helion.

Her husband does clean up nicely, if she gets to say so. Physically and temperament-wise, as well. Everything about him is relaxed and conversational, easy going and sociable. This is the same male who hides in the storage cupboard under the stairs during family dinners when Cassian has had too much to drink.

“Well if you need my help, I’ll be glad to offer it,” Lucien bids her a goodbye before walking off, just as Azriel finishes his conversation with the High Lord of Day and comes find her.

“There you are.”

Here I am.

His arm cords around her waist as he presses his lips to her temple.

Elain leans into him, the reliable weight of him, sturdy and always there. She is of half a mind to fall asleep against him right now and then, confident in his arm to keep her up. The past weeks have been nothing short of exhausting, and she has the urge to scrub it out of her very skin.  

Have you found your magical solution?

Azriel brushes his lips against her temple again. “We’ll see.”

___

tags: @tswaney17 @julesherondalex @mis-lil-red @gorl-power @thesirenwashere  @stars-falling @trying-to-read @dreamerforever-5  @hail-doodles @eloeloeheheh @i-am-lost-in-my-world @abraxos-is-toothless  @queen-of-glass @elrielllll @negativenesta @b00kworm @harmonyindark245 @ducksmurf135   @empress-ofbloodshed-writing @sleeping-and-books @thewayshedreamed @agem10 @superspiritfestival @maybekindasortaace @maastrash @courtofjurdan @ireallyshouldsleeprn @gracie-rosee @bookstaninthesoul @elriel4life @fawnandshadows​ @123moiaussi @impossiblescissorspeachpaper

#elriel fic #companion piece to your voice in autumn #a sequel one might call it #i'll be adding chapters gauging the reaction #and maybe we'll take it into elrielmonth #this isn't some brainy plot-ish fic #more like a ficlet #and the story? take a look at the color scheme and you'll figure it out #miscarriage #refreenced angst #is it a fany installment if there isn't a dash of angst? #at this point I am only referencing Elriel Lore #cheers lads #fluff #we'll see #it aint rocket science #why am i hiting publish #Livi are you happy there's more yvia?

[going-through-shit]

i’m so confused, i’m only really ever in the “your tags” section of this app bc i’m here to read Az(or character) x reader fics, and i filter by all my Azriel x Reader tags. Now i’m a very anti-elriel person but that’s not what i’m getting into lately there have been so many elriel posts showing up in the my tags section, and this has never happened before and i’ve been doing it like this all year, one of the filtered tags is even anti elriel. i’m just ranting cause i’m frustrated tbh

#azriel x oc #azriel shadowsinger #azriel #azriel angst #azriel x female!reader #acotar #anti elriel #anti elain #pro azriel #anti azriel #pro gwynriel #pro azris

[acourtoflight]

Personally, I will have this song playing during Elain and Azriel’s first kiss. I’m gnawing at the bars of my enclosure 😫

#elriel #pro elriel #it’s so hot #pls make it full of angst #Spotify

[thisblogisaboutabook]

Bad Idea, Right? - Part 8

Eris x Reader/Azriel’s Daughter

If things go according to plan, Eris and Y/N’s first official date could end in hot, steamy sex. Or, it could end in complete and utter chaos - because when do things ever go according to plan? Azriel almost has a good time, until he doesn’t. We also FINALLY meet Tamlin’s daughter.

Part 7 Part 7.5 Headcanon

Warnings: Alcohol, language, smutty content, assault with non-consensual kissing, breeding kink (kind of)

An evening breeze blew through Velaris sending a slight chill through the champagne golden silk dress I’d chosen for the evening. A caress of warmth rose up from the fingers I’d threaded through Eris’, heat continuing up my arm and throughout my body, counteracting the mild chill.

When he’d shown up to my door right on time, dressed in a deep forest green tailored suit with the top unbuttoned and a turtleneck that was - For one, so perfectly molded to his torso that I practically salivated as fantasies of licking his abs flashed through my mind. And two, conveniently matched my dress perfectly - I almost said “Fuck the date.” and jumped on him then and there.

He’d arrived carrying three things. A bouquet of hydrangeas for my mother, symbolizing gratitude for her grace with the current situation. Freesia bulbs for my little sister to add to her Sprite garden if she wished, a symbol of friendship. I realized the double meaning of it, to draw in sprites with wishes for friendship but also to symbolize their new budding friendship. My mother smiled softly as she realized it too.

For me, he’d brought a “Fire Poppy”, apparently native to his court. His hesitance to express the meaning of the flowers, told me enough. Fire. Passion. But the incredibly faint dust of pink on his freckled cheeks left me wondering if perhaps there was something more.

Father only appeared at the last moment to kiss my forehead and likely give a seething look toward Eris while doing so that warned, Just because I haven’t killed you yet doesn’t mean I won’t. Eris paid no mind.

And now here we were, walking through the streets of Velaris hand in hand. Eris’ focus remained intently upon me as I pointed out various shops that I would frequent. I pointed out one that I loved as a child and Azalea still adored. The window was decorated with paint splatters of primary colors that blended together into a rainbow mirroring the Sidra and inside floated hundreds of miniature fae lights imitating the skies of Night Court.

Eris paused as we stood before the shop. “Can we take a look inside?”

“Why?” I asked, genuinely perplexed by his interest in this shop of all the ones we’d wandered past.

“It’s a surprise.” He stated.

Because why would anything with Eris be anything but secretive?

Eris read my responding roll of the eyes for exactly what it was. “Surely you realize there is a difference between a surprise and a secret?”

I couldn’t help myself. “Many of your secrets have left me feeling quite surprised, Eris. Certainly you would realize that?”

He huffed a silent laugh leaving me on the street to go into the store. Set in my stubborn ways, I refused to let him win and stood outside waiting.

Eris was back by my side eight minutes later with a small canvas bag. I raised an eyebrow. “What’d you get?”

“Ah, if you wanted to know, you could have come in with me. Guess it’s my secret to keep.”

“Mother spare me. You are insufferable.” I muttered stepping ahead of him down the street. His long strides caught up with mine within a few steps.

He once again wound his fingers through mine. “You love it.”

And I hated that it was true.

“You’re not going to tell me what you got?”

“Just a gift for a friend.”

———————-

Eris had reserved a table at Sevenda’s where Sevenda herself eagerly greeted us. She ushered us to a private section of the restaurant, lit with candles and within earshot of a performing pianist. She’d kissed me on the cheek and given Eris a respectful bow of the head before bringing out a mouthwatering appetizer of some delectable cheese sauce she’d recently added to her menu.

The secluded setting of our table, incandescent glow flickering off the candles, and soft melody floating in from the piano, all flowed together into a very intimate setting. Strange that I had bared myself to this male so many times, and performed every sexual act imaginable with him, yet I’d never felt so exposed to him as I did in this very moment.

Eris checked his blazer, and gods… I only ever wanted to see him in fitted turtle necks or absolutely fucking nothing again. The male was delicious and his gaze…. He was greedily drinking me in as if he’d splay me out on the table itself and feast. There was no way he couldn’t smell the arousal pouring off of me. I sure as hell could smell his, and it was far more mouthwatering than any of the glorious spices wafting through the restaurant.

Before I could give in to my instincts, Eris’ low tone interrupted. “If you keep looking at me like that, Y/N, I’m not going to make it through this dinner.”

“Maybe I don’t want you to.”

He audibly groaned. “You’re going to be the death of me.”

Just as our mutual eye fucking grew so intense that I genuinely wondered if Eris really was about take me then and there, our waiter approached with a bottle of the Inner Circle’s favorite wine. “Compliments of the High Lord.” Making eye contact with Eris, the male suddenly seemed to remember who he was in the presence of as he uncomfortably cleared his throat, “of the Night Court.”

Eris paid no mind and thanked the waiter. Surprise crossed the males face as Eris took the bottle from him and poured our glasses himself.

When the waiter took our orders and returned to the kitchen, Eris’ gaze returned to me. His eyes again roving over my body but lingering on my face. He smirked when he realized I was flushing under his intense eyes. “Are you nervous, little Shadowsinger?” He asked. His tone predatory.

I took the opportunity to send a shadow to caress the shell of his ear, effectively shutting him up.

“Now that we’re alone,” I ran my foot up the length of his leg, stopping the journey just short of where I so desperately wanted to feel him. “How long have you had an an apartment here and why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“Ahh yes, excellent talk for a first date.” Eris mused, raising the wine glass to his plush lips and taking a long, slow sip before continuing. “Perhaps, I wanted a place to see you without you having to travel through multiple courts to find me.”

“Do you not wish for me to come to the Autumn Keep any longer?”

Eris’ change in tone took me by surprise as it became stern, the voice of a High Lord and not the bedroom voice of my lover. “Don’t you dare think that for a second. There’s nothing mo-“

He stopped himself mid-sentence shifting uncomfortably. “I enjoy your presence in my keep, in my bed, Y/N. But I also like to have the opportunity to visit you in your home court.”

My heartbeat quickened at the power flowing off of him, the desire in his amber eyes.

“So, Rhys was totally fine with you having a place here, just to hook up with his niece?”

“Diplomacy, darling. It is far easier to have a place here for times that negotiations and other meetings run over. It also benefits him to be able to have eyes on a fellow High Lord, no? It was not a difficult matter to convince him.

And I was going to tell you, you just happened to pick up the hobby of drunkenly wandering the streets before I had the opportunity.”

“I was fine.”

I was not fine. He knew it. I knew it. I was borderline feral that night.

“It wasn’t you I was concerned about. It was the poor citizens running the other way, screaming of a rabid, shadow-creature roaming Velaris in search of its next meal.”

I smiled. “For the second time this evening, Eris Vanserra, you are insufferable.”

“And again, little one, you love it.”

I rolled my eyes and took a swig of wine.

————————

Eris

She was fucking captivating. Eris drunk in every detail of Y/N like she was the wine flowing from her glass.

She had to know she looked like a goddess. Had he told her? She could read him like a well-adored book at this point. She read every look he gave her without him needing to speak a word. I want you. You’re perfect. I need you. You’re more perfect than I ever dared dream. I would kiss the earth you walked on if you only asked.

Shit, could she read that all on his face? Should he tell her how damned gorgeous she was or would she give him that all-too-enticing look of “Spare me the compliments, High Lord, you can strip and ravish me once we’re alone.”

And gods, he was going to. He had plans for his little Shadowsinger tonight, plans involving carefully undressing her and pressing kisses to her silken skin, replacing each bit of fabric slipping off of her body with a press of his lips. Instead of burning that lovely little number that was hugging her mouth-watering curves, he would proudly display it in the Autumn Court’s archives. He was a romantic, after all.

Of course, before putting it behind glass for safe keeping, he’d be binding those pretty little wrists behind her back with said dress. He was also a deviant.

As for his plans after that? They were far too filthy to fantasize about at the table.

“Your aroma is rather fragrant.” Her teasing voice broke him from his thoughts.

“And you’re rather intoxicating. We make quite the pair, love.”

And there it was - the little blush she always tried so hard to hide from him.

If just the term “love” brought that to her face, what lovely shades of pink would her cheeks light up with if he laid it all out right now? If he told her how she’d fucking ruined him for anyone else? That to taste her was to taste the nectar of the gods? That he was so hopelessly in love with her that there was no crawling out of this pit of desire, and he’d sooner drown in his need for her than ever swim up for air.

The urge to do just that frightened him. Why did he think this date was a good idea? As far as his self control went, it was a terrible idea. And as far as he cared at this point, it was the best idea. He was here, in front of her, and nothing else mattered.

————————————

Eris had always thought himself better than the primitive beasts fae turned into when it came to their mates. But he truly realized how wrong he was when after dinner, Y/N had requested to walk very slowly along the river until her stomach wasn’t, as she so elegantly stated it, “bursting at the seams.”

Given that after the wonderful meal they’d devoured, he too was struggling, he obliged her, draping his suit’s jacket as well as his arm over her shoulders. She pressed a hand to her very, very, slightly bloated abdomen, in an effort of easing the discomfort. Such a simple gesture that should have meant absolutely nothing but….

An inferno blazed within him at the thought of her glowing with a round belly, the mating bond’s most primal instinct roaring at him to winnow her away immediately and fill her so utterly full of him that there would be no questioning of whose she was. His.

He prayed to the mother or whomever would listen that the breeze would blow the sickeningly strong scent of his arousal far away.

————————

Y/N

The gallery was packed. Unsurprisingly, anyone and everyone wanted to come out to brush elbows with the Inner Circle and who could blame them? Unlike the other courts of Prythian, Uncle Rhys and Aunt Feyre actually interacted with their people. Well, the people of Velaris at least. Feyre was respected as High Lady but she was revered as an artist. Proceeds from her own work went directly back into the arts district.

“Beautiful.” Eris mused approaching a work of art toward the back wall but keeping his eyes on me. I sipped the champagne an attendant handed me upon arrival, needing it to get through the rest of this evening.

Especially needing it to get through the work of art he was approaching.

“This.” Eris motioned toward the piece, “is stunning.”

“It’s not for sale. Just a work from one of Feyre’s students.”

The art, featuring darkness floating upward from the bottom and a blaze falling from the top, intertwining with licks and whirls of flame and shadow in the middle.

“Cost is of no concern to me, little one. I need it.”

A sing-song voice came from behind us. “It’s magnificent isn’t it?” Feyre asked.

“What can I do to acquire such a fine piece of art?”

“You’ll have to ask the artist.” She nodded toward me.

“Aww, come on my lovely niece. Think of all the supplies it could fund.”

“You’re a busybody.”

She only gave an airy laugh before disconnecting the mental bond and returning to the attendees.

“Wouldn’t it look lovely displayed for all of my court to see?”

My gut lurched and I wasn’t sure if it was from imposter syndrome or excitement.

“Fine.” I’ll make a deal with you, Eris Vanserra. He raised an eyebrow. “This art is very personal to me. And despite the fact that it is hanging in the gallery, I want it to be for your eyes only. Do you agree to hang it in your chambers?”

Eris gave a faux pout. “And not show my lovely lady’s art for all the world to admire?”

My heart raced as I quipped too quickly, not allowing the time to change my mind. “Perhaps I only want to be yours to admire.”

Eris visibly gaped at the statement and my heart sank. Had I read all of his adoration wrong? Was I going to humiliate myself just as I had two years ago when he’d left me on the dance floor and I swore I’d never let him have that power over me again?

He swallowed a lump in his throat. His voice breaking slightly. “And your payment terms?”

“Oh you’ll be paying out the ass for it.”

He grinned. “As one does for the finest things in life. I’ll take it.”

A beat of silence.

“And I’ll take you too, if you’ll have me.”

And with that he leaned in to kiss me, soft and hard, fervently and slowly, wanting more yet only needing this.

A throat cleared behind us as father interrupted. He looked to me and to the art behind me.

“I never realized….” He spoke softly as he took in the work.

I flushed, the work now feeling far too intimate under his gaze.

My father turned to Eris. “You’re purchasing this?”

Eris nodded. “A worthy investment, yes?”

My father remained tense but something in his eyes softened. “A very worthy investment.”

Father leaned in to kiss my forehead. “Enjoy your night sweetheart.”

It was at that moment Adish appeared, his Day Court friends Hem and Apollo in tow along with Nyx and a female I’d never seen before. Nyx looked in my direction with a wink as he saw the piece Eris and I stood before, before heading with the group for glasses of champagne.

Eris spoke, “I’m going to speak with Feyre regarding reservation of the piece before anyone else tries to snag it out from under me.”

“It’s not for sale, Eris. Nobody else would be able to purchase it.”

He pressed his warm lips into mine. “I won’t risk a good thing.”

I blushed, dismissing him.

Nursing my champagne, I perused the various pieces decorating the gallery walls when a female voice came from behind me. “If you wanted your father’s attention, there are better ways than whoring yourself to Autumn Court trash.”

I turned around to see the female Nyx had entered with. Her dark hair and blue eyes fooling nobody. Clever little shapeshifter.

“And I didn’t realize your father was in the habit of allowing females to leave his manor.”

She grinned. “Oh come on, he locked her in ONE time...or at least that’s what he tells me. He really can be an overbearing asshole sometimes.”

I laughed. “I missed you so much, you bitch. Nyx needs to stop hoarding you.”

“Please” she scoffed. “I don’t need Tamlin and Rhys’ melodrama to complicate things.”

“Ha, I’m sure Nyx filled you in on all of the drama in my world recently.”

She lifted an eyebrow. “Oh yes, I’ve been living vicariously through your escapades.”

She leaned in to hug me. “So” I took in the brown hair she’d chosen for the evening. “Does the carpet match the drapes?”

“Why don’t you find out?”

“Mmm, as enticing as that would be. I prefer your blonde hair and green eyes. It does something for me.”

“It does something for Nyx too.”

I pretended to vomit before Nyx stepped in. “If you’ll excuse me, I’d like to spend time with my lady before she decides to leave with you instead and I get stuck with the fireling.”

“He’s quite fun, Nyx. I’m sure you’d enjoy the ride.”

Nyx choked on his drink and whisked Layla away with him, leaving me to take in the art in peace.

A few more minutes passed and my shadows grew restless as if contemplating the same thing as me: Eris should be back by now.

Feyre had returned to the gallery with no Eris in sight. I searched, passing Adish and Apollo, my parents and Azalea, Rhys and Feyre, Cassian and Nesta, even Amren, but no Eris.

Had he left? Did I scare him away?

No, his response was sincere. He couldn’t have. He wouldn’t, right?

I walked down a quiet hallway, stepping away from the crowd. “Eris?” I whispered into the quiet of the hall.

Two shadows returned with no information but another returned frantic. “Bad.” “Go.”

I hurried in the direction my shadows shot out, winding further and further down the hall.

My heart stopped. In front of me was the radiant, gorgeous Hemera, pressed up against my man. Lips crashing into his.

“Bad.” My shadow repeated. Whirling to show me something.

Eris saw me and his eyes blew wide, shaking his head.

Hemera turned, wicked grin contorting her gorgeous features into something cruel.

“Sorry, hon. He’s just so needy and so pretty. Can you blame me?”

Did this bitch really think I’d simper and turn away? Oh no. My shadows continued their whispers.

“Blade.”

“Bad.”

“Blade.”

“Bad.”

A sliver of silver caught the dim lights shining down upon them, a blade held to Eris’ neck.

Eris stared at me wide eyed as my shadows erupted into a frenzy around me in effort to distract the Day Court female.

She jolted and her blade knicked his neck and I felt a sudden spike of fear in my gut but the fear, it didn’t come from me. It was coming from…. Eris.

Holy shit.

Willing all of my power to the surface, my tone turned cold, dangerous. “I suggest you step away from my mate.”

The High Lord of the Autumn Court. Eris fucking Vanserra. My mate.

I gave a tug in return to his emotions. A gentle reminder that I had this under control and he instantly tugged back.

He knew. Holy shit, he had known.

I could be angry later, now I needed to save his ass.

A commotion came from behind me. Adish and Apollo rushing in. “What the-“ Adish started. “Sorry, friend.” Apollo spoke before the fucker cast a sedation spell on him.

Apollo towered over me. “You weren’t supposed to find them. For what it’s worth, you would have been a great friend.”

He moved, but I moved faster. Sending a blast of power knocking the male on his ass. My shadows binding him.

“You talk too much.” I spat.

Turning back to Hem and Eris she held him in front of her. “Don’t make me kill him.” She spoke. Now using him as a shield. With his front exposed, I could see the shackles around his wrists. “This could go much more easily if you let me leave here with him. Why do you want a cheating male? You deserve better than that.”

I needed time to assess. My shadows busy with Apollo. Fuck. This was bad.

I laughed. “I hardly call you forcing yourself upon him ‘cheating’, in fact most would call that ‘assault’. And I have no patience for those who force themselves upon others.”

Just then a flurry of shadows shot into the room, ripping Hem’s wrist and dagger from Eris’ throat. My father winnowed into the room. No, this wasn’t my father. This was the feared Shadowsinger, the infamous Spymaster of the Night Court. His tone promised death as he commanded Hem to step away from Eris. She fought his demand, shaking with fear as she remained in place. “Please, you don’t understand. My father is wrongfully imprisoned in HIS court.”

“And this is how you feel it best to approach?” Father stepped closer, a thick, violent air emanating from him. “I will ask you one final time to step away from the High Lord.”

Hemera knew she was no match as she dropped the knife stepping back away from Eris.

Eris ran to me, in an attempt to shield me from any fallout but there was no more danger as father’s shadows apprehended the female.

Rhys and Feyre raced into the room, Nesta and Cassian on their tail.

Rhys whispered to Feyre. “Let Elain know it’s handled.”

Feyre’s gaze went distant as she communicated to my mother.

Rhys commanded Apollo to remove the sedation spell from Adish as Cassian jerked the apprehended male off the ground.

Nesta’s eyes flared with silver as she stared down Hemera before apprehending her as well. My mother and sister rushed in as we followed Rhys down to the gallery basement toward an empty office where the two would be held until Helion arrived. Since they were denizens of his court, it was only right to determine the next steps with him.

As the group strode toward the office, Azalea began tugging at my sleeve. “Sissy.”

“Not now, Azzie.” She gasped, her little legs trying to keep up. “Sissy, please.”

“Just a minute, Azzie”

I felt guilty for ignoring her but my mind was coming out of the adrenaline state it had been in and my heart racing with rage and shock as I processed the revelation that Eris was my mate. That he knew and didn’t tell me.

Ironic considering that I always found Aunt Feyre and Aunt Nesta to be overly dramatic for their reactions to finding out about their own mates.

They were good, loving males who had enough money to live in lavish comfort for all of their days, and were highly regarded among the people of Velaris. How terrible.

Yet here I was. Fuming. Humiliated. That this male, a gorgeous High Lord and a damn good one at that, with a far softer heart than he’d ever let the world see, courted me because I was his mate.

I thought he wanted me for me.

“Sissy-“ Azalea drew me from my thoughts once again. “What?” I finally asked, raising my voice. But it was too late as the door to the empty office was opened, only to unveil a half naked Nyx, trousers unlaced, his body pinning a no longer shifted Layla with the bottom of her dress hiked up, and breasts fully exposed.

Nyx gaped. Eyes wide and frantic. I sent my shadows out to shield them, my father’s following suit, my hand instantly covering Azalea’s eyes.

Layla only pulled her dress up over her tits as she let out a laugh. “Whoops, we thought this room was unused.”

“I tried to tell you.” Azalea’s little voice whispered.

Darkness erupted through the room as Rhys clenched his fists. “What the fuck?” He growled out to Nyx.

My father only grinned, not caring who saw the smug satisfaction on his face. Fully conveying the look of that’s how it feels, you pompous asshole. Get it now? How’s it feel to be humiliated in front of an audience by the unconventional partner your child has chosen to fuck.

Feyre only covered her mouth, stifling a giggle at the situation. Nesta and mother quietly giggling with her.

I used the distraction to remove the enchanted shackles that were still stifling Eris’ power and apparently his ability to speak.

Fury blazed within me, my restraint failing as I spat out my next words much louder than intended.

“How long, Eris?”

Guilt flooded his features, his head hanging low.

“How. Long? How long have you known that I’m your mate?”

My father choked. The shit-eating grin instantly fading from his face, jaw and fists clenching.

A pitiful sound escaped Eris. “Since the first night… in the alley.”

“Wow.” was all I could manage as the walls began closing in around me.

I stepped away but Eris grabbed my wrist. “Please, Y/N. Just hear me out.” his broken voice pleaded. I couldn’t think. I needed space. Needed to breathe.

“Mom.” I looked to my mother. “Can we go home?”

She gave an empathetic look to Eris. “Come on, Azalea.” She reached out a hand. “Sissy needs us.”

Azalea looked to Eris, letting out a “hmph” as she scrunched her nose and crossed her arms. “That was bad.” She scolded, little wings ruffling with each word.

His face crumpled further as his little friend glared at him with disdain, words failing as she stuck her tongue out and winnowed away with mother.

“I love you.” was the last thing I heard as I spirited away.

———————————————-

A/N: I have had so much fun writing this series! Part 9 will be the final chapter but I may eventually give our main character a name and add a few spin off chapters as well. If that would be of interested to you, let me know!

Tags:

ACOTAR list: @lilah-asteria

Eris list: @angiedsv

Series list: @b0xerdancer-writes @myheartfollower @ang-taylorsversion @acotarobsessed @uniquecolorwizard @justasillylittlegoofyguy @thelov3lybookworm @starryhiraeth @5moremin @azrielsmate3 @coolepowersthings @isa1b2h3 @inloveallthetime @julesofvolterra @deeshag @starswholistenanddreamsanswered @courtofbatboydreams @yourmumsdumptruck @nebarious @glitterypirateduck @mybestfriendmademe

#acotar #sarah j maas #a court of thorns and roses #azriel #a court of silver flames #a court of frost and starlight #a court of mist and fury #azriel shadowsinger #a court of wings and ruin #elain archeron #nesta archeron #cassian #nessian #elriel #tamlin’s daughter #azriel’s daughter #elriel’s daughter #acotar x Olivia Rodrigo #bad idea right #acotar smut #acotar angst #acotar fluff #eris vandaddy #eris vanserra #daddy eris #Eris #rhysand #feyre #feysand #nyx archeron

[bloomingdarkgarden]

Not me, writing a flashback / memory sequence in which Azriel finds Elain immobile in the townhouse after she killed Hybern in book 3, and he gently helps her wash the blood off of her hands. They bond over what murdering people does to the soul while he tries not to wrap her in his arms and she tries not to ask him to hold her through the night.

Ch.33 people. Ch.33.

#elriel #angst #darkgarden