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fanwarriorfictions · 21 days

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Not Again - Part Six

Summary: Azriel had been avoiding her all day after their last encounter, she was willing to let him brood all he wanted. Y/n may have just found her way home, but it comes with a warning.

Series Masterlist

-Part Six-

Y/n was finally back to her research, she’d eaten lunch with the Valkyries, all of them starving after training much longer than the two hours they’d expected. They had ended up talking about books, recommending many of their favorites for Y/n to read, Nesta had promised to drop some off by her room later in the evening. She’d told them of the books she read back home, of Dorian’s personal library that he’d share with her whenever either of them visited, of the libraries of Orynth, filled with stories from every corner of the world. Books scholars had saved from Adarlan’s path of destruction, books her family had found on their journeys around the world, books written of their battles, of hero’s and villains, love and loss.

Once they’d gone their separate ways, Y/n had found her stacks of papers and the Walking Dead in the exact place she’d left them the night before. The scratched out notes making less sense now that she looked them over with a clear mind. She’d been trying to make sense of her rambling for hours, her mind going numb, almost ready to give up when she’d felt his presence.

He’d been avoiding her all day, just like she had avoided him this morning. If it was because she’d lain him flat on his back, or from the dark look in his eyes as he’d look down at her when she’d been pinned to his chest, she wasn’t sure, and she wasn’t going to spend the time wondering. If he had a problem with her showing him up, then he and his ego could deal with that on their own, it wasn’t her problem. And if it was the other reason, she had much more important things to worry about than the gorgeous male staring at the back of her neck. At least that’s what she told herself.

“How many times must you be told?” She doesn’t lift her gaze from her notes, “It’s impolite to stare.”

A cool touch caresses the skin of her ankle, a tendril of shadows gently wrapping around her. Usually she’d snap at the little creature, but instead she just looks over her shoulder at the source, at the male leaning against the doorway. That dark and heavy look in his eye was gone, replaced by that mask of stoic beauty. He doesn’t say anything, only stares into her eyes, and she fights the urge to fidget beneath his gaze. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of it, she refused, no matter how her skin seemed to burn everywhere his eyes touched.

“You’re so upset I beat you that you’d give me the silent treatment,” she clicks her tongue, turning her back to him, “You males have such fragile egos.”

Again, no response, and it digs under her skin in a way she’s sure her cheeky little smiles do to him. Fine, if he wanted to play this game, she could to.

“You’d think after this long someone would’ve house trained you.” She throws that exact irritating saccharine smile over her shoulder, “Teach you some manners.”

Something she’d always known about herself is that she’d inherited her mother’s temper, to her father’s eternal delight. Prone to freezing a room or lighting it on fire during temper tantrums. When he didn’t respond again, she could feel her magic stirring beneath her skin, wanting to lash out, but again, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. He could sit there and play brooding, tall, dark, and handsome warrior all he liked.

That little wisp of shadow gently tugs on her ankle, just enough pressure for her to look down at it, to follow it back to the male who’d taken several silent steps towards her.

She suddenly felt to small, to exposed, sitting there before him, her back on display. She’d been here for only two days and somehow she had already let her guard down. These fae weren’t her own, they weren’t friends she’d known her whole life, they were strangers who could just a easily kill her as she could them. Deadly warriors, skilled magic users, dangerous. She stands from her chair, turning to face him, hand in easy reach of her multiple daggers strapped across her body.

“Are you going to just stare me down, like some feral beast,” she snaps, letting that anger slip its leash, a warning to stay back, “or do you have something to say?”

Those eyes are suddenly not so blank, that mask ripped away to show the male beneath. And she saw that look, that darkness, that desire. It’d been the later that had kept him away, that had him coming back now. A predator stalking his prey, those whiskey eyes dipping down and slowly dragging back up, mapping every dip and curve.

That soft touch at her ankle turns into more than a simple caress, harder. Roughly locking her in place, keeping her from flying away even if she wanted to. He steps closer, and closer, and her heart is pounding in her chest in anger, in fear, in anticipation, she’s not quite sure which.

She has to crane her neck back to keep their eyes locked as he steps right in front of her. Gods he was tall, and gorgeous, and so close she could feel the heat of him.

“Where’d you go, Princess?”

Y/n jerks awake and Azriel pulls his hand away from her shoulder quickly. She’d been laying halfway on the table when he found her, her head resting on one of her arms, a pen loosely dangling between her fingers as if sleep had claimed her without warning. If he was being completely honest, he’d for the briefest moment thought it was cute, the way her cheek was smushed up against her arm, the soft snores that left her mouth. It’d taken him longer than probably necessary to lift his scarred hand to her shoulder and gently shake her a few times, whispering her name. Her skin was warm beneath his palm, and he’d hesitated to move when her lips had twitched up at the corners.

Her eyes frantically search the space around her, a pretty flush on her cheeks. When her eyes finally land on him she jolts, hand flying to her chest as if to cage her galloping heart.

“Gods, someone needs to put a bell on you,” she groans, falling back against her chair, hiding her face between her hands, “What time is it?”

“Well past your bedtime apparently.” He smirks at the glare she sends him from behind her fingers. “I just got back to find you like this.”

She gives him a curious glance, “Where have you been all day? Did your lord and lady give you the day off of babysitting duty?”

“Something like that,” he shrugs nonchalantly, “Why were you drooling all over your notes?”

She glares even deeper, the look in her eyes ice cold like the first night they’d met, “First of all, I was not drooling.”

He pointedly looks at the page she’d been hunched over, “Sure, okay.”

“Second of all,” she growls, shoving that paper across the table like it would hide the smudged ink, “answer my question, where have you been hiding all day? Ego a little bruised?”

She didn’t know the half of it, “I was sent out to check on something. I do have a job you know, and before you say it, no, my job isn’t just babysitting you, Princess.”

“I was going to say it was brooding, but close enough.” She gives him that exasperating smile, and it takes more effort than he’s willing to admit to not stare directly at those lips.

“It’s nearly midnight,” he says instead, glancing at the sky beyond the window.

“Is it really?”

She raises from her chair, putting the thing directly between them, a casual move, to casual. He notices there’s a tension in her shoulders, similar to the way she’d been in the garden that first night, like fight had switched to flight and she was seconds away from running straight through the balcony doors and flying away.

He cocks his head, shadows whispering in his ears, her heart is to fast, something’s wrong. Azriel could tell that himself, her heart hadn’t settled since she’d startled awake, and now she almost refused to meet his eyes. Something was definitely wrong, and he couldn’t keep his thoughts from spiraling.

Did she know that he’d spent the day flying just to cool off, that his blood had roared for hours and hours, that his mind had played the image of her below him, looking up through her lashes, over and over and over. Was she disturbed, disgusted, did the tentative bond they’d formed in the early hours of the morning snap and crumble to dust.

“I should go,” Y/n says, her eyes shift to the doorway beyond his shoulder. “Like you said it’s well past my bedtime. A female needs her beauty rest.”

She doesn’t move though, doesn’t take that first step that would bring her closer to him and Azriel doesn’t like the way it stings.

So he nods, takes a step back and waves a hand towards the door, “Goodnight then, Princess.”

She nods once, “Goodnight, Shadowsinger.”

And then she’s gone, rushing from the room. Azriel keeps his shadows firmly at his side, even as they struggle and beg to follow her, to catch her and keep her there with him. He’d already done enough, already scared her off. Mother above he was pathetic, his heart clenching painfully in his chest, absolutely pathetic.

There were more of those revealing clothes laid out on the dresser when she woke the next morning. Y/n noted that they were in the Terrasen green and silver that she had asked the house for. It eased her heart to wear those colors, made her feel like home wasn’t somewhere far across the stars.

Also laid out on the table by her seating area was a tray full of breakfast, it seemed the house knew she was avoiding a certain male. It may make her a coward, but she needed to put a little bit of space between them, that dream had shaken her, and she needed the time to pull herself together.

She wasn’t a stranger to attraction, to dreaming of males and females alike, to waking up in a bed that wasn’t her own. But this was different, Azriel was different. He wasn’t just some male who’d caught her eye, he was the guard who watched over her to keep her in line, he was the one who’d found her, bleeding and vulnerable on the garden floor, he was a stupidly handsome male from a foreign world who she knew next to nothing about. She had no business feeling anything for him, even if it was just lust.

It took her longer than she’d like to admit to put on a brave face and walk out her door. Azriel had left hours ago, she’d heard him walk into the hall, wait for several minutes as if expecting her to walk out, and then leave when she didn’t.

Y/n took the now familiar path to the dining room, where she found Feyre and Amren sitting at the clear spaces away from Y/n’s sprawling notes.

“Finally,” Amren sneers, “how long does it take you to get ready, girl.”

“Amren,” Feyre warns softly, “Good morning, Y/n, how’d you sleep.”

“Morning, Feyre. I slept fine, thank you.” She’d slept like shit actually, but she wasn’t going to say that and have to explain that a certain shadowsinger wouldn’t leave her mind. “Was there something you needed?”

“It took some convincing Amren.” Feyre gestures to the small scowling female, “But we’d like you to take a look at the Book of Breathings. It’s full of those marks and I wonder if you’d have an easier time looking for what you need.”

Y/n glances at the table between them, searching for the mysterious book. When she doesn’t find it Feyre’s hand comes up, snapping once, and all of a sudden a terrible presence fills the room. It’s heavy and old and whatever it is has Y/n’s defenses rising.

It’s not a book in the traditional sense, no paper, no leather, but metal plates bound by metal rings. It thumps onto the table, and the sound seems to echo around the room, through Y/n’s head.

“I’ll warn you,” Amren says, “the thing has a nasty habit of speaking out of turn. Don’t let it get to you.”

Feyre looks visibly uncomfortable in its presence, leaning back in her chair away from it. Y/n was half tempted to turn and fly out of the room, instead she sits before the ancient book.

Hello little stranger, it whispers, and she recoils away from it, teller of many stories, none of her own.

“Hello, creepy book,” she answers, “Do you have any stories to share?”

“Don’t humor it,” Amren snaps, glaring when Feyre shushes her.

I have many stories, it answers, many stories that may intrigue you, storyteller.

“Any on how I may get home?”

Look and see, it says, the answer you seek is already there, though I wonder if you truly want to see it.

Her brow furrows in confusion, “All I want is to go home.”

Ah, home, it sighs, what is home to you, storyteller? A castle, family, books, whiskey, shadows, a lover?

She forces away the image that comes to mind, “Terrasen, thats my home.”

Land of pine and snow, the book seems to take a deep breath, godless, the gods killer queen, the kings flame blooming year round. Why did it throw you out? Why did the stag turn his back on you.

Anger flares through her, “Enough.”

The Wyrd has plans for you, hesitate to turn your back on the gifts she gives you, it says, she will not take the slight kindly.

“I didn’t ask for a gift,” she snarls, “I didn’t ask to be ripped away from my home, from my family. I didn’t ask to have everything taken from me.”

And yet you have so much to gain.

Just like that it goes quiet, presence fading till it was nothing but a book. Y/n wants to scream, to force it to come back and tell her exactly how to get home.

“It hasn’t been that active since the halves were joined,” Feyre breathes, face pale.

Amren watches Y/n with curious eyes, “It’s interested in her, the same way it was with you. I don’t think we want to find out why.”

Y/n lifts her hand to the first plate, cold metal stinger her flesh. That ancient power floods through her, though the book stays quiet. It feels like the presence is weighing her down, holding her in her seat. She grits her teeth and forces the book open, eyes flowing over the words that she could not read, over the marks she could. It was a mixture of them, spells and marks, most she knew, some she didn’t. Those were the ones she focused on, the world seeming to hold its breath.

It took her several moments to figure out what exactly she was looking at, a mark she’d seen before, so similar to the one for unlock that she’d overlooked it the first time, open. It was so simple she almost laughs. Open, to open the rifts between worlds, to open a gate. That ancient presence seems to sigh in her mind, the only confirmation she needed before slamming the book shut and shoving it away from her.

“What is it?” Feyre asks, “Are you alright?”

Y/n nods, “Get that thing out of here.”

Amren snaps her fingers and it’s gone, “What did you find, girl? Did it give you what you needed?”

She nods her head again, “I need some paint.”

Tag List-

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#this one is a bit shorter because there’s a scene I desperately want to write but it doesn’t fit in this chapter #but there’s more tension from her side this time because I need it #Azriel is an angst mother fucker #also I know the language in the book of breathings has already been established but I needed to connect them somehow #acotar #acotar x reader #azriel #azriel x reader #rowaelin daughter #rowaelin #not again

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