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Chapter Text

Azriel has always wondered about time.

Standing by the edge of the Sidra, the night barely begun as buttery rays melt into the sight of dark sky and thousands of stars. He’s holding his hands behind his back, unable to fight the urge of a warrior in the safety of the place that is supposed to be his home.

Home.

Such a word feels like a foreign language on his tongue.

He’s fought and lost and conquered in his centuries of life. He’s followed his High Lord since they were mere boys. Azriel has watched the Night Court lose their greatest and then gain another in the shape of the first High Lady.

So why does he feel lonely? It’s like he is drifting on the winds of time, fading from existence as he slowly becomes one with the shadows. He can hear their siren’s call now, whispering the secrets of existence in his ear, sending tendrils down his arms in a mockery of comfort.

Azriel sighs and tilts his head up to bask in the last few rays of daylight. 

By the Caldron, he feels exhausted. And not just the tiredness after a long battle, but something far deeper. By something that has long festered in his bones, leaving him but a puppet in its hands. He wants to rest. He wants to sit back and just be.

His heart aches.

The shadows whither in excitement, their cold caress slithering like excited children as footsteps suddenly echo in the distance. Azriel can hear their chant. Their secret song. The song he refuses to put to name.

It is not quite shame. But he can’t say it’s not exactly that, either. 

Azriel tugs the shadows back, drawing them inside him until he feels heavy, pained. His scars feel itchy under his gloves. He can pretend they don’t exist like this. Like he is not a broken male hiding under a stoic mask.

He wonders what it would be like to break apart, just so he can heal. He wonders whether it’ll hurt.

Azriel looks to the footsteps and almost winces at the sight of Cassian.

He looks... He looks beaten. Downtrodden. Forgotten. Azriel sees the lips that easily stretch into an annoyingly endearing grin, and comes short at the lack of it. He’s never seen Cassian look so much... look so much like him.

Azriel tenses. He doesn’t like this.

And yet, past it all, he looks stunning. Not many would call him stunning. Handsome, perhaps. Attractive definitely. But Azriel sees the sharp edge of his jaw, the beginnings of stubble, his eyes that forever change colours and a slightly crocked nose, and thinks he’s the most breathtaking sight he’s seen. Even when so saddened.

“You okay?” He asks quietly, pushing at the shadows that squirm to reach out, to touch and feel. Idiot, he thinks. Of course he’s not okay. What sort of person asks this? What sort of person can’t muster up the words his friend, his... no... need. 

Useless, the dark part of his mind says. Useless. Useless, useless, useless. It sounds frighteningly like his brothers. Like their nasty taunts, the pain left in their wake. Pain he sees in the dead of night.

Cassian shrugs and moves stand by his side, and Azriel realises he stinks. Alcohol lingers on his breath, his armour and it stings his eyes into a nasty red. Azriel’s hands twitch with the urge to reach out and banish it all away.

You don’t have the right, he tells himself.

But he can’t smell Cassian’s woodsy and mint scent. He can’t taste the linger of it on his lips. And he shouldn’t be surprised how much that hurts.

Azriel realises that Cassian’s hands clench and unclench, as if wanting to hold something that isn’t there. He doesn’t want to ask, he doesn’t, his shadows are murmuring no, but he can’t help himself, “What happened?”

Cassian slouches inwards, looking physically pained. Azriel wants to kill whoever made him look this way. Truth Teller burns into his leg as if wanting too as well.

“I tried to give her a gift.” Cassian says. “I tried and she spat in my face. Told me she isn’t interested, that she doesn’t care. And I, it hurts Az. I said I didn’t care about who she’s been with, who sleeps in her bed. I don’t think she even registered my words.” Cassian looks at him out of the corner of his eyes, his dark hair tied loosely by the name of his neck. Azriel has never despised Nesta more. “What do I do?”

Azriel looks down at his covered hands. Tainted hands. Hands that have maimed, tortured and killed and yet still yearn to cherish warm skin and eyes that glimmer gold in the light and green in the shadows. It’s a pointless wish, but he wishes nonetheless.

What do I do?

He doesn’t know. He can’t know. He’s the bastard who’s been yearning for so long that the pain in his heart and the faint bond in his body is nothing anymore. Just another broken part of Azriel, the Spymaster, the Shadowsinger. The male who’s mate doesn’t want him, and never will.

“I think you’re asking the wrong person for this.” Azriel replies, ignoring his dark thoughts to smile lightly at Cassian.

Cassian laughs, and it’s not necessarily a nice thing, but it’s still a laugh. A small slither of joy.

“Nonsense, you have more game than all of us.” Cassian snickers.

Azriel thinks of the females he lets them see him with. Fae with pretty eyes, curvy figures and tight dresses. Hair like spun gold. Skin the shades of rainbows. But always too feminine, not muscular enough. Females he sends home, and never into his bed. Females he looks at, and feels nothing for. Because he can’t. Because he’s not attracted to them.

What would they do if they found out their friend, their brother was nothing more than a liar? That the yearning he knows they all see isn’t for the one they think it is for. 

That’s not to hate on Mor. She’s beautiful. If Feyre is a sapphire, Elain an ever changing opal and Amren a burning topaz, then Mor is like a clear cut ruby. All fiery, wonderful passion. There’s someone out there who is going to cherish her as she deserves. But it’s not him. Azriel feels nothing but brotherly love toward her. 

But it’s easy to redirect the real love he does feel, and aim it at her. It’s not hard. A word, a look, a dangerous thought that he places on her head. And they all think he’s desperate for her attention.

He can’t be. His heart says otherwise.

“Do you love her?” Azriel diverts the conversation.

Cassian’s brightness dims and he shrugs halfheartedly. “I don’t know. Maybe? One day, perhaps.” He pinches his lips in thought. “How do you know when you love someone?”

Azriel looks at him in despair, though his face is carefully blank.

How do you know when you love someone?

When your heart pounds when they enter a room.

When your waking thoughts are on their smile, their laugh, their eyes, their hearts, their soul.

When you see them and think, yes, it’s this one. This is the one for me.

When you crave to be their only thought.

When the sight of them threatens to send you to your knees.

When you sleep at night, and dream of them.

But Azriel only pinches at the skin between his thumb and finger as he replies, “I don’t know. I suppose you just know.”

Cassian sends him a skeptical look, “You would know, right?”

“Right.” Azriel murmurs. “I would.”

Cassian sighs and places a calloused hand on his shoulder. Azriel hates the feel of someone else’s touch. Feyre he can manage, just barely. Elain’s hands have only known kindness so she brings nothing but calmness. But he cannot stray from Cassian’s. If he held Azriel in his arms forever, Azriel may just learn to be content. He may find the meaning of true happiness.

“Who would of thought?” Cassian muses in jest, his lips widening into a familiar grin, “That the two of the biggest heroes of the War of the Caldron would be so hopeless in their love lives. How Amren must mock us.”

Azriel rolls his eyes at his friend and nudges at his hand with his shoulder, “You say that as if she doesn’t have her own issues.”

Which, he isn’t sure how to feel about it. He doesn’t trust Amren, never has. Now she is High Fae, something that rears it’s protective head in him has settled. His shadows don’t hiss old curses at her anymore.

He once was disgusted by that. About how purely intertwined his feelings and those of his shadows were. Now they are his greatest confident, maybe the only thing in this vast world that really knows him.

Cassian lets go of his shoulder and Azriel pretends not to mourn the warm touch. Instead he squints his eyes just barely and Cassian sends him a shits-eating grin in return.

“Want to join me?” He asks.

Azriel raises an eyebrow, “Where?”

Cassian flips his head, looking all smug as though the heartbreak evident before is gone. Azriel knows better, he can see it in the twitching of his fingers, in the dull gaze of his eyes.

“Anywhere.” Cassian drawls, crossing his arms. “Or Rita’s. I need a drinking partner.”

“You’re already drunk.” Azriel deadpans.

Cassian, the absolute bastard he is, only pouts. Pouts. Like a child. And it looks far too adorable for Azriel to comprehend, so he stores the memory away to reminisce on later.

“So? We’re Illyrians, we have an impossibly high intolerance for alcohol and I’m too sober.” Cassian sends him a stare that would have lesser males trembling. “Don’t be a prick.”

Azriel already knows he’s going to go. And he knows he’s going to regret it when Cassian will expect him to take home a lover. A Fae his lips will have to touch and ruin with his darkness and misery. A female he’ll have to turn away. There’s a taste of bile in his throat.

“Fine.” Azriel groans and ignores the shout of joy from Cassian. “But I’m not picking your drunk head out of vomit again. No matter how pitiful you look.”

Cassian looks horrified, and there’s an embarrassed flush on his face, “That happened one time.”

Azriel only stares at him.

Cassian groans and rubs his forehead, “Fine. One time I can remember.”

Azriel chuckles under his throat, and begins the walk toward Rita’s, sending one wistful glance at the Sidra and it’s calming small waves. He’s not sure if he’s ready for the loud noises of Velaris’ nightlife so soon. His head is still too jumbled with the pained sounds of war and death.

But he would do anything for Cassian, even if the male doesn’t know it. It’s always for Cassian, to Cassian, with Cassian.

As they walk toward the infuriating club, he hears the coos of his shadows eager in his ear. Over and over again. They have become too restless at being pushed away, and are now louder than ever. They sing their only true lullaby.

Mate, Mate, Mate. Mate, Mate, Mate.

He truly does wonder about time. It’s a cruel thing, stealing mortals away, wasting away the seasons. And it only seems to make Azriel’s peril worse. It only makes him fall further in love.

Cassian says something to his left, his deep voice like warm honey. All he can hear is the whispers of Mate, in his head and heart. The bond flickers, diminished into a pitiful thing. Unlike the tremors of it freshly born.

Time is truly cruel. 

Chapter Text

Cassian wakes up to the worst headache and a faint taste of vomit in his mouth.

He groans and rubs his forehead, pulling off stray tendrils of hair that had stuck to it from sweat. His body was aching like after a long workout, and his vision blurs despite how much he blinks to clear it.

He shuffles to move out of his bed but there’s a weight on his chest that stops him.

Oh, by the Mother.

“Shit.” Cassian swears as he focuses on the female on his chest. 

She’s pretty, he guesses. Light pink skin, with rosy hair and long, narrowed ears. But Cassian looks down at her with a mixture of shame and disgust. Here he was, thinking of the life Nesta had chosen to take, the males she takes to bed like tallies on a large chart. He acted like she was wasting her life away.

And he knows she is. God’s, Nesta is the most beautiful female he has seen. She has this inferno inside her, cold and brutal but overwhelming nonetheless. He’s watched her waste away, and it hurts to see it.

But looking at this lesser Fae in his bed, curled on his chest - is he really any better? He fucks away his feelings as if the pain would lessen in someone else. And yet, he wakes up feeling more miserable by the day.

Cassian grits his teeth and pushes that thought away. He needs water, a good workout by plummeting someone, preferably Az, to the ground and food before he contemplates how much of a whore he is.

He carefully manoeuvres the female onto the bed as he shuffles out of her surprisingly tight grasp. She sighs and sinks deeper into his pillow, her vanilla and floral scent clashing uncomfortably with his. Cassian wrinkles his nose. He needs to wash this bedding too, clearly.

Finally, finally, after what feels like hours, he’s free from her grip. Cassian searches the floor for his nearest pants and tunic and slugs them on. There’s a bitter scent of alcohol on them, and he knows someone is going to give him shit for it but frankly he’s too tired to care.

Right, water and food. 

With the grace of a newborn foal, Cassian stumbles out of the room he’s designated as his, at least until he buys something more permanent.

He pauses at the thought.

There’s certain words he likes to describe himself as. Head strong, stubborn and a bit of an ass most of the time. But not someone permanent. He’s never been anyone for permanence. Cassian feels he’s spent his entire life jumping from one great adventure to the next. Following Rhys’ path to greatness, becoming the General of his army...

But Cassian never really settled. Not like Feyre and Rhys. By Gods, not even like Amren. He feels he lives on a constant move. Free as a bird, or some shit like that. 

Cassian has hopes Nesta is his final destination. He would like her to be. He thinks she’s his mate. It’s not fully confirmed yet, but he has enamoured with the female the moment he met her and she turned her perfectly shaped nose up at him. There’s no one else he’s felt like that with.

He rolls his eyes and charges down the stairs, tucking his wings tight as he enters the lower room of the house.

It’s quiet, the early morning sun sending the place in a dazy sort of glow. Cassian rubs his eyes and makes for the kitchen, heaving his body along because it feels like the Caldron-damned thing weighs a fucking tonne.

However, unlike the other room, the kitchen is definitely not mercifully empty.

Az sits there, completely still with a cup of something steaming in his gloved hands. His wings lay as lax as they can from his stool. He’s already dressed in a fine tunic in a deep blue, and black pants. Cassian frowns. Did Az go shopping with Mor without him? 

Az looks him up and down, and raises an unamused eyebrow. Cassian sends him a sheepish grin back and Az doesn’t move, doesn’t act. He just stays like that, the shadows shuddering behind him, obscuring his wings from view.

“Don’t do that.” Cassian says and flaps his hand at the last word.

Az only replies smoothly with that voice of cold death, “Do what?”

Cassian is already regretting everything last night. He glares at Az with as much might as he can with a hangover and walks around to make his own drink. 

“You know what.” Cassian says grumbly, listening to Az laugh in response.

There’s always been something about Azriel’s laugh. His voice is cold and smooth, like his shadows given verbal form. But his laugh, his laugh. It’s more imperfect, with a slight trembling hum, warm as coffee. 

He can remember the first time he heard that laugh. They were mere children, Cassian barely sixteen, and he and Azriel were huddled together watching Rhys pace a sizeable dent in the snow. 

There’s nothing as cold as those nights in the Steppes. It swallows you whole, sucking your breath from your very mouth. He and Az were trying to preserve body heat, bodies curled into one another with their legs intertwined.

He can’t remember what words he used, exactly. He made some joke about Rhys and the snow and his overly worrying personality. And Az had laughed. Laughed. Really, truly laughed. The quiet Illyrian who had joined the camps wrapped in shadows and an expressionless face - he had laughed.

Cassian had blinked in shock and laughed right along with him. It was that time when he realised that he, Az and Rhys, they were a package deal. He thinks that the was the moment he saw Az as more than the lethal weapon he was. Saw Az as vulnerable and alive and feeling as him.

Az rarely laughed. Not his real laugh. The laugh that came from his stomach, that had that little breathless note to it. And it fills Cassian with immense pride to know he causes it. He seems to be the only one capable of bringing it forward.

Az breaks him from his thoughts as he slides next to Cassian by the counter, leaning his body slightly to it. His handsome face is like a swirling mass of darkness and the sharp, classically pretty features of his nose, lips and jaw.

“You mean the fact that I’m watching you attempt not to appear hungover?” Az says goading, crossing his arms.

Cassian scowls and stirs his drink with as much aggression as he can muster, “I meant your silent judgment.”

“I wasn’t meaning for it to be silent.”

“Great.” Cassian says. “Fantastic. Brilliant.”

Az’s lips twitch in a barely formed smile and his eyes glimmer.

That’s the strange thing about him. He’s a stoic mask. Imposing. Terrifying to those who don’t know him. Many would look at the unfeeling face, the large, built body and shadows like nightmares given form - and they would cower in fear.

But Cassian can see most emotions Azriel tries to hide in his eyes. They glow when he’s amused or happy. Now and then, they are this blank dullness that squeezes Cassian’s stomach like two meaty hands are twisting it around like a wet cloth.

But most of the time, Cassian cannot make out the emotion that make them truly alive. 

For someone who seems so emotionless, Az has the most emotions out of them all. If only he expressed them.

“What do you expect.” Az says and it’s not a question. “When you stumble into a club half drunk, proceed to drink enough for five Fae and grab the first female who sent you eyes.”

Cassian winces. Yeah, he wasn’t thinking clearly last night. But his heart was sorely breaking, and he needed a break from this torment, this desire to just be loved by someone who wants him. Not the General of the Night Court’s armies. Not one of the most powerful Illyrian’s alive. 

Just Cassian.

If only Nesta feels the same way.

So he snaps to his defence mechanism, “Well can you blame me?” Cassian looks at Azriel face on, drink forgotten. “Can you really blame me for not wanting to deal with everything sober?”

The moment is shattered.

Az stands straighter and his shadows reach out to curl around his shoulders. It paints a menacing picture. Az looks down at Cassian, his wings flared as far as they can go. There’s something so territorial about the pose. Az looks every part of the Spymaster.

He looks unfairly good with it too.

“Don’t think you’re the only one who’s suffered heartbreak, Cassian.” Azriel says heated, hazel eyes like fire with the most emotion Cassian has heard spilling from his lips.

But he’s not one to back down from a fight.

So he braces himself and stands in a similar position to Az. His hands clench with the urge to hold a sword, but that would be a stupid idea to do inside the house. Feyre would kill him. Rhys would too just because his mate was.

“What?” He bites back. “Are you going to lecture me on how to cope like you?”

Az flares his nose and sends him a low snarl, “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” Cassian growls, feeling his irrational temper rise within in.

This isn’t about Az. It’s not. It’s directed at his shitty situation. It’s aimed at Nesta who seems to enjoy breaking his heart. It’s aimed at the world for wanting to tear him down.

“Don’t pin your anger on me.” Azriel says lowly, shadowing slithering further across his face. 

Cassian wants to laugh. He wants to punch something, badly. He also wants to apologise to his friend for being such an asshole. By the Caldron, Az doesn’t deserve this. 

He needs to go somewhere. Fly away and sort his head out. But like he said, he’s stubborn. He can’t.

“You started this, this,” Cassian tosses his hand to try and find the words he wants to say, “This pissing match.”

“Mature.” Az says simply, and unfolds his arms and turns away.

Cassian watches him in shock. It’s like the anger from before is gone. There’s that coldness over his friend now. It’s like watching a smothering blanket draped over him. Cassian wants to charge over there and rip it off.

He wants to rip a lot of things off. Starting with his own stupidity.

“Where are you going?” He asks harshly, and Azriel’s back tenses.

“Anywhere that isn’t here.” Az replies in that calm tone. “We both need to calm down.”

Cassian slams his hand on the counter, “What I need is for you to talk to me. Really talk.”

Azriel tilts his head in thought, his dark hair ruffling with the movement, “I can’t.”

“What do you mean?” Cassian questions, because it’s him. He and Az have been through so much together. They crawled out the horrible hole of the bastard born together, fought together, won together. And yet, since the war, Cassian looks at him and sees a stranger.

What happened to them?

“Look, Az, it’s me.” Cassian says with a self-deprecating laugh. “Just me. There’s no one else around. Please.”

He doesn’t like how his voice trembles when he begs.

Azriel pauses before he repeats in an impassioned tone, “I can’t.”

Cassian opens his mouth and closes it immediately. He needs to see his brother again. He needs some control in his life or he may just go mad. Nesta doesn’t want him. He looks at Feyre and Rhys and wants that love. He looks at how Amren is settling into her new body.

Why can’t he and Az have that too?

“I won’t be your distraction for your heartbreak.” Azriel says quietly, back still turned, shadows always dancing to their own tune. “I can’t do that.”

Az looks back at him.

His hazel eyes are shadowed in old pain. His face is devastatingly blank, and still manages to be so handsome. Like the lethal edge of his sword. His brows aren’t furrowed, his lips pressed in a thin line with the faint shadow of stubble forming on his face.

Does Az even realise he wears his face like a mask? Does he even care?

His body is so taunt, Cassian thinks there must be a wire that is shoved down his spine to keep him that way. Like a perfect warrior. He’s always been this way. Cassian has never seen him cry, seen him crumble under the immense pressure or darkness of his past.

Out of them all, Az is the only real stable one. And now Cassian is apparently taking advantage of that to forget the events of yesterday and the gift he spent days finding sinking to the bottom of the Sidra.

Cassian never intends for him to be distraction. He didn’t even think of it until Azriel put it into words. And they sting. It cuts him so deeply to realise that he may have just been trying to use his friend. What sort of selfish person does that make him?

Cassian stares at his friend, who stares back. He thinks there’s something expectant about his gaze, heavy as it is. As if Az is waiting for him to realise something, maybe. See something?

But what?

There is a few silent seconds and Cassian desperately tries to grapple on what Az can want from him. He blinks and looks down at his calloused hand, still held in a fist at his side. They still say nothing. And, then, Azriel sighs loudly and turns around again. Cassian watches him walk away, standing immobilised with the horror and faint echoes of anger still coursing through him.

There’s so many things he could do. Stop Az. Talk it out. Shout some more. Anything. Just anything.

Cassian draws himself up for it.

But he doesn’t do anything and watches silently as Az opens the door, steps out into Velaris’ early morning and quietly shuts it behind him.

Chapter Text

Azriel is shaking as he flies across Velaris, heart pounding in his ears. He’s sure he can feel the harsh shaped splinters of heartbreak digging deeper and deeper.

What is wrong with him? Why can’t he do this one thing right? 

He can see the pleading in Cassian’s eyes. His hands had quivered and Azriel had wanted nothing more than to reach out and grab them, squeeze them. But then he sees the female Cassian had stumbled in with. He can smell her scent over him, roses and sugar. All wrong. Too feminine.

His mate needs him, needs someone to comfort him, love him steadily and Azriel ran away - again.

He ignores that tiny voice in his head, the nasty thing that says that that’s all he’s good for, running and hiding. Made to be in the shadows. He was born in them, and hasn’t left them since.

Coward.

Weak.

Bastard.

Azriel grits his teeth hard enough that they threaten to break. His hands sweat under his gloves, but at least the harsh bit of winter air keeps him cool. His clothes are loose enough that the wind drifts over his bare skin.

He finds there is something so alluringly beautiful about winter. In the Steeps, the snow was made to hurt. The frost was like death’s grip. Illyrians used it as a way to become stronger, to be unbreakable. But here, here it is nothing but elegant beauty. It’s easily his favourite season. Snow settles on rooftops in an endearing picture, the warmth of reds and greens alighting the Rainbow. 

Winter here brings smiles to people’s faces.

He ignores the sight of the buildings now - both old and newly rebuilt - as he nears the mountains that peak in the far distance. Azriel doesn’t have an exact destination in mind, but for a rare, precious moment, he lets his heart guide him.

Cassian has always been ruled by his heart. It was what made him, Rhys and Azriel so powerful together. Azriel is guided by his head, Cassian by his heart and Rhys is always the bridge in between.

What would they do if they knew the truth? If the brotherhood they have crafted so preciously has become corrupted by Azriel’s shameful feelings.

No, not shameful. Not for Cassian, not ever. Shameful that it was Azriel that yearned for him, not someone who truly deserved the Illyrian. Someone who isn’t terrified of the unknown. Of themselves.

Ignoring those dangerous thoughts, Azriel spotted a safe space to land, a small clearing between the dense spreading of trees. There is a light splattering of snow littered around them, the leaves of the trees still holding firm.

Azriel flies down, wary to angle himself away from the sharp edges of the leaves - spreading his wings to glide himself to the centre of the clearing. He spreads his legs, leaning forward as he collides to the ground, bending his knees.

There’s a familiar burn along his back and stomach as he stands. It’s something he enjoys, the ache that’s the right side of painful as if reminding himself that he’s alive, that he’s still capable of this. Strong enough for it.

The thought brings a memory of Cassian, lying in a pool of his own blood. Wings shredded. Face pale and slack. A bond that cried out in the distance between them as if it were mourning what had never been. A bond that has barely whispered since.

Azriel rubs that spot on his chest, just to the right of his heart, in a familiar pattern. If he reached deep enough he would find that little string of something like flames and darkness that stretched out to someone else. His shadows quiver with the image.

Mate, they hum to him. One kisses his ear. Take him. Tell him. Want him.

“I want him too.” Azriel whispers in the hiss of the air and shadows. 

Mate. 

Mate.

Mate.

They get louder, restless when Azriel takes time to really revel in the bond and his feelings for Cassian. They engulf his arms like snakes, colder than snow and chant their funny little language that isn’t quite like anything Azriel has heard before.

Go to him, go to him, go to him.

“I can’t.” Azriel says, and they grip tighter in response. It’s possibly the only thing the shadows and him disagree over. They can’t measure emotion like any other living Fae. They can’t understand why he has to keep this distance between them.

They’re not really alive, but they’re not tethered to him either. They had chosen him, once, and he had crawled out of the darkness with them at his side. His control over them is sentimental at best.

Mate. Want him. 

They lick across his face, the voices - both male and female - raising in volume until it echoed in Azriel’s ears, into his very self. His legs wobble with the aftermath.

“Stop.” 

They don’t listen.

Instead the chorus seems to rise in a wicked crescendo and Azriel slams his hands over his ears to try and make it stop. He can’t cope with it. The noise. The never ending desperation. Too much. It’s all too much.

Mate. Mate. MATE. MATE. MATE.

Azriel tears at his hair. He hates this. There’s bile in his throat, and his stomach feels as though it’s colliding to the floor. This is all his fault. If he wasn’t so selfish, so needy, so wanting with his desire then his shadows wouldn’t play up this way.

He can’t control them like this.

Their touch is cold now. They’re heavy with expectance, tearing at his self-control as the tendrils spread wide in the clearing. Little black arms slither through the trees, trailing along the ground and the dual sensations makes Azriel shiver. 

This is the secret no one can know. Just how uncontrollable, just how powerful these shadows are. They’re found in every corner, every dark room. And they have chosen Azriel to learn their song, but even then, he cannot fully let them obey him.

Mate, they say. 

Azriel sighs in exhaustion, and the shadows sigh in response. He tilts his head up and lets the voices wash away the slight hiss of the wind, and the soft murmur of Velaris. The shadows greedily take up this spot. One curls through his fingers like it’s dancing. The pain fades when he lets them take control.

He can barely see the shades of day around him. It’s muted with greys and umbras that shift across his vision. His mind drifts to Cassian’s face when he laughs. The crinkles in the corner of his eyes. The way his smile can bring dimples to his cheeks. And his laugh is boisterous, loud and uneven.

Azriel lets a small smile grow.

The shadows shake with the thought.

Then suddenly they stop. The darkness fades into a soft twirl around him, the tendrils untangling from the trees and readjusting around him. They’re not as cold as before, but there’s something different.

Azriel frowns and looks down at the one still weaving through his fingers.

Go, they whisper. Go, go, go.

Azriel lifts his gloved hand, and the shadow moves to his ear.

Imbalance.

His spine tingles. The shadows don’t often tell him their findings unless it suits him. They know most things, most secrets but rarely do those secrets get told. But, now they’re unsettled enough to warn him. He’s learnt from experience that ignoring their call is dangerous, and foolish.

Azriel flares his wings and rolls his shoulders.

“Take me.” He says to them in their language, a soft hissing sound to most ears.

The shadows respond in eagerness and they engulf him, some of the tendrils reaching out to what corner of the world they have just uncovered. It’s not winnowing. It’s more shifting between the shadows that spread across the world. He can move where the shadows lay.

They have their own little pocket realm.

A dizzying sensation overtakes him and Azriel is washed away in a twist of darkness.

~*~

The first thing he registers is the dirt below his feet. Dirt that is caping floors of diamond black and white, that once would have been majestic but now has fallen to age and despair.

Azriel tightens his wings around himself and looks up.

He doesn’t recognise the place, manor, from first glance. It’s vast, with a sweeping staircase gracing the left, a large open expanse where a door would have situated at the far end. Paintings lay shatter and destroyed on the floor. Petals of flowers litter the room, rotten and brown.

His eyes, however, are caught on the image a few feet from where he is standing. There’s a Fae, possibly a High Fae with the pointed ears, lying hopelessly in a pool of blood. It glitters like rubies under the harsh light of the sun.

Azriel nears him with care. Why did his shadows take him here? Why to this male?

He’s close enough to make out the small details. He’s blond, with hair carelessly cut around his shoulders in jagged edges. He’s naked and thin, pale. But that’s not what troubles him.

There are five large, unforgiving claw marks carved through his chest. Blood spills from the wound in a steady flow, the lines uneven and cruel. 

Azriel’s breath is caught. The image brings him back to the war. The screams. The noise. Warriors falling on blades. Wings shredding. Blood, blood, blood.

“You’re nothing.” A voice snides, “look at you, you’re just a cripple.”

Azriel digs his fingers into his palm to make it stop.

Focus, the shadows say. Focus.

Azriel kneels in the blood, pulling the hair flopping over the male’s face over his shoulder. His fingers pause when he takes in the face underneath it. He knows this High Fae. Most do. And he’s awake. Alive.

Tired eyes look up at him. 

Not tired in the superficial way. This tiredness is soul deep. Eyes like emeralds, with bloodshot veins running across them. There’s a weight of wisdom and age in their depths. And a faint power thrums around his shadows, though not threatening. But those eyes, which Azriel remembers burning with hateful fire, now only stare at him with an emptiness that shakes Azriel to the core.

He feels as though he’s looking into a mirror.

This is him, in the shadows of his prison all those years ago. This is the Azriel before the shadows learnt to be his friend, not his enemy. This is the Azriel that hasn’t yet got to learn what love, compassion or happiness is. Before Rhysand. Before Cassian. Before hope.

This is Azriel from before. The scared child. The lost boy. Someone so lost they feel they can no longer be saved. The similarity is so startling that Azriel’s breath is torn out, short. He has never realised how terrifying despair looks before now. It’s unsettling. It feels like something is tearing his stomach up from inside.

The dead green eyes, flecked with gold just stare at him. He doesn’t move nor attempt to fight the intruder in his home. Maybe he can’t. And those wounds... those marks. He knows what this male’s power is. Azriel looks back in a mixture of horror and realisation. This is not the High Fae he can remember. 

Where’s the anger? Where’s the passion, disguised as disgust?

What has it taken for him to do something like this?

“Shadowsinger.” He whispers in a voice that has no emotion. No pain. No joy.

Azriel flexes his fingers. His shadows curl around him in a poor attempt of comfort. The blood is uncomfortably warm under his knees.

He replies, quietly, “High Lord, Tamlin.” 

Chapter Text

Tamlin stares up at him then coughs violently, blood splattering across the stained marble of the floor in a mockery of an abstract painting. Azriel tried not to flinch at the gruesome sight, tries not to imagine the countless people he had left like this. Dying, useless, alone.

Not a monster, he tells himself. He’s not, he’s not.

Azriel’s hands shake as he reaches out to gently hold Tamlin’s arm. The High Lord flinches, face blanching in fear then sinks into the warm grip as though he has no strength to fight for his instincts. Azriel flattens his lips but says nothing. The shadows murmur in anticipation.

“Are you going to kill me?” Tamlin whispers, trails of ruby pooling in his otherwise paling face.

Azriel grimaces and holds his forearm tighter. His skin is cold, “No.”

Tamlin’s eyes flash then and he heaves a breath.

“Why?”

Azriel doesn’t answer him, but moves his grip so his hands curl around the High Lord’s waist, the skin tacky with blood. The shadows pool around the motionless body as if they wish to help, but don’t know how. Azriel ignores them for now.

“Don’t flinch.” Azriel warns and then he’s pulling the High Lord snug against his body, his arms tightening around him in protection. His wings flare wide in preparation and Azriel glances down at the bloody picture to check the High Lord is alive.

Disbelieving eyes stare back at him. He understands them. Azriel should hate him. Perhaps he should let Tamlin die for what he has done. But he cannot do it. He cannot kill someone who is so desperately in need for help.

The claw marks are punishment enough, he thinks.

Azriel stands, cradling the surprisingly thin and light body against his chest. Tamlin murmurs something under his breath but does nothing. Azriel nods in response and starts walking toward the large door to the outside.

Blood sleeps through his tunic, grime and warm. The High Lord starts to shake against him, maybe from exhaustion, or fear - Azriel cannot tell. His heart pounds in his chest, his shadows crying in his ear. Time seems to be a steady countdown in his mind.

He has to go now.

He tightens his wings, bouncing on his knees to prepare for flight. He looks down briefly at the miserable sight of Tamlin in his arms before he sets for a healer. He doesn’t know enough to save the High Lord.

“Don’t fall asleep.” He warns bluntly and then he takes off into the air, the harsh bite of wind screaming in his ears and sending his heart alive. His wings cut through the air, his gloves warm on cooling skin. He tries not to imagine what will happen if he’s too late as he makes for the nearest village for a proper healer. 

~*~

The healer shuffles around the High Lord, his sapphire blue hair tired in a tight braid at the name of his neck. Two large wings, thin and coloured like stained glass flutter at his back. Azriel knows of the Illyrian are the winged folk of the Night, Peregryns native to the Dawn court but he assumed the Levens of the Spring Court were all extinct. The thin yet strong wings the shade of the ocean, pooling greens and blues, say otherwise.

“He’ll survive.” The healer says in a voice like the warmest honey, or a gentle autumn day.

Azriel nods then speaks when he realises the healers back is to him, “thank you.”

The healer turns to face him, a single eyebrow raised. He’s pretty, if Azriel is willing to let that thought blossom. He has a sharp, inhuman jaw with thin, feline pure black eyes with a strange runic symbol carved in the centre of his forehead. He’s pale like snow and muscled, but lithe like his body was made to curl through the air like a blade.

Azriel refuses to go down that path. His mind, heart and soul has been so enamoured with Cassian that he can’t think of anyone else in that mindset. It’s always been Cassian. It’ll always be Cassian, even if he has to watch his mate love and grow older with another.

He pushes that thought away. Cassian is not a thought he needs now.

“You’re an Illyrian, aren’t you?” The healer asks, head tilted in question.

“Yes.” Azriel answers simply.

The healer nods but still looks confused, tendrils of blue curling around his thin pointed ears.

“Illyrians are native to the Night Court.” The healer says simply, and it isn’t a question.

Azriel clenches and unclenches his fist, glancing briefly at Tamlin who lies still in a silk bed, golden hair spilled around the pillow. He looks calm at last. Peaceful as though the world has yet to harm him.

Azriel knows better.

“What of it?” Azriel asks in reply.

The healer smiles with a sharp grin that doesn’t feel like a smile, “I know of your High Lady. Feyre Acheron.” The healer looks back at Tamlin, his face twisting into something complicated, “Perhaps this is inappropriate for me to say but she was responsible for the destruction for our court, the ruination of our military, our leaders, our High Lord with her petty revenge. Why would you, a Night Court servant, save the man that is your enemy by your Lady’s decree?”

Azriel’s head goes silent.

He thinks of the ruined mansion. He thinks of the lack of guards, the lack of warriors in the villages and around the High Lord. He looks around the shack they reside in. The bedsheets look expensive but they stand out in the disarray of the rotting wood, the simple furniture. He thinks of the wary faces, the whispers in the town he landed in, the careful distance everyone had around him when he landed. He’s never seen such such distain in such a small area.

Was the rest of the court really in this state?

The healer looks at him as though he understands when Azriel’s doesn’t reply.

“I am sorry Shadowsinger, that was rude of me to ask. Please forgive me.” The healer says, and bows low. His words sound sincere but Azriel can make out the faint hint of sarcasm in his words.

He’s not welcome here, the unspoken words seem to say.

Azriel grits his teeth and flushes with shame. He won’t ever apologise for being Rhysand’s spymaster nor for loving Feyre like a brother. But he has enough morality to admit that this destruction is horrifying. No one should suffer like this. Not for a single individual’s revenge.

The punishment should have lain with Tamlin alone.

But as Azriel thinks of the claw marks, self inflicted, he imagines that the punishment may have already been dealt.

“What is your name?” Azriel asks instead.

The healer looks at him in surprise but answers, “Selvi.”

Azriel nods and holds a hand out for the healer to take. Selvi does with a furrowed brow, his grip surprisingly strong. Azriel smiles faintly at him, and steps back.

“I want to thank you.” Azriel says, the words difficult to say. He thinks his daily word limit is coming up fast, but he needs to say this before it becomes too much and his speech becomes poisonous in his mouth. “I wouldn’t have been able to save him alone.”

Selvi stares at him, dark eyes glimmering with emotions like stars in the night sky.

“Of course, he’s my High Lord, it isn’t a trouble.”

Azriel hears that there’s something else Selvi thinks but doesn’t say, but he ignores it for now.

“Despite that, you allowed me into your home when you distrust my court.” Azriel feels a shadow curl over his shoulder, “I don’t take that for granted.”

“It was no hardship.” Selvi says politely.

Azriel nods but knows better. A careful silence starts over them, and it isn’t awkward in nature but there’s something in the air that neither acknowledge, Azriel unsure how to. Words font come easy to him. That is Cassian’s thing. Selvi takes a seat by Tamlin’s side, legs curling on the silken bed sheets.

They sit like that in that heavy quiet, Selvi occasionally checking over Tamlin’s wounds, his thin hands spilling over him in reverence. They remind Azriel of skeletal bones - fragile, weak. His wings flutter behind him, like they’re showing the emotion Selvi doesn’t portray outwardly.

Safe, his shadows whisper. Safe, protected, safe. Peace.

Azriel grimaces and ignores them.

“I need to go collect some herbs from downstairs.” Selvi says but doesn’t look back, his finger briefly caressing down the edge of the High Lord’s cheek. “I’ll be but a moment.”

Azriel pretends not to heat the veiled threat in that promise, and watches as Selvi leaves. He walks as he looks, like he is floating. Wraith like. Illyrians are heavy warriors, relying brute strength than speed. Many have always thought of the Levens as weak because of this. It is why they are thought of as extinct.

 A shuffle broke him out of his thoughts, and Azriel looks at Tamlin to see tired but clear, alive, eyes staring back at him. The relief is overwhelming.

He quickly stands and moves by the Lord’s side, examining the wounds. Selvi has tightly wrapped them in bandages, and there is faint spills of blood seeping through the fabric, but it’s very sparse in comparison to the ruin of his chest before. His chest rises evenly and Azriel relaxes knowing that he is safe, for now.

“Selvi, your healer, is gone momentarily.” Azriel confirms, not looking at the High Lord in the face. It’s probably cowardly. “He’ll be back soon.”

Tamlin says nothing.

Azriel winces internally and his fingernails scrap against the insides of his palm, just lightly scratching the skin to calm himself.

“Do you need anything?”

Instead of answering, Tamlin shuffled upwards so his head is half balanced between the headboard of the bed and the pillow, his hair laying across his chest in golden waves. Azriel looks at him in wary expectance. His shadows don’t seem fretful nor panicked and their whispering are quieter, the tendrils embracing neatly against his back so he doesn’t think he’s in immediate danger.

“I know what you think of me.” Tamlin says lowly.

Azriel raises an eyebrow at him but doesn’t reply. He doesn’t think there are words that need to be spoken right now, not any that will help. Words would only bring hurt, and Azriel is cautioned enough to make sure the High Lord doesn’t slip again, lest Azriel arrive too late the next time.

“I’m a monster to you.” Tamlin continues, gaze drifting to the side of Azriel’s head. “I didn’t see it at first, back before the war but now I look at myself in the mirror and all I see is the monster that everyone has been seeing for so long. I wasn’t like this once. I never wanted to be High Lord.” He grits his teeth and his fists claw through the silken bedding. Azriel can make out the sharp edges of claws where fingernails should be.

“It’s so lonely being a High Lord, with all that power and no one to understand. And Feyre was different, she treated me differently. I think I got so scared of losing the only person who cared for me, saw me behind my title that I lost myself in despair.”

Azriel says, “That doesn’t make it right.”

Tamlin nods his agreement and unclasps his bedding, the golden sheets shredded, “no, it doesn’t. I am a horrible person, I’m not going to deny it. I’m scarred, I’m broken and I’ve lost myself in a title I never wanted for so long that I’m not sure who I am anymore.”

Azriel looks away. He hates that he understands. He hates that the male who managed to tear down Feyre, can be understood like that. But he can’t help but understand. Life is cruel. He thinks it lets everyone suffer in its cruel grasp, even if they don’t deserve it, and it hurts to breath sometimes. He couldn’t imagine the burden of the High Lord title, but he understands being something you don’t wish to be.

He thinks if he tried hard enough to see it, Tamlin’s story may not be completely unlike his own.

“Why are you telling me this?” He asks instead.

“Because you saved me.” Tamlin admits and his voice is weak, vulnerable. “Because out of my court who should love me, my friend who I thought loved me, the only one who came to my help was someone who should despise me. I don’t take that lightly.”

Azriel closes his eyes. 

“I’m not looking for pity.” Tamlin continues. “And it may mean nothing to you, but I’m grateful. I thought I knew what I wanted but it wasn’t until those deadly last moments did I realise that I wasn’t ready to die. Not yet.”

“I understand.” Azriel replies.

He wasn’t unlike Tamlin, once. Before Cassian, before Rhys even, Azriel was as close to the edge as Tamlin had been, sometimes still is. He used to look at the burns on his hands as a death sentence. Being so different, so cursed, had been his prison for many years. It wasn’t until he was sat with Cassian, huddled together for warmth, had Azriel realised that he wasn’t destined to die yet. 

He wonders if Cassian ever knew that he managed to save Azriel that night when they were boys.

Tamlin’s broken laugh broke Azriel free from his spell, and he looked at the High Lord as he smiles sarcastically at him. The smile is a mockery of what it should have been. His canines gleam, polished, under the faint light of the room.

Tamlin shakes his head, loose tendrils of golden hair spilling across his cheek. There’s a faint glimmer in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. The sight of it eased an uncomfortably tight feeling in Azriel’s stomach that he hadn’t realised is there.

“I just,” Tamlin says, almost to himself, “I made you out to be a villain for so long. All of your court, really, for taking away my freedom, my choice, and my mother. But I suppose everyone is a villain in someone’s story, me more than most.”

Azriel smiles a little at that. 

“It was the shadows, wasn’t it?” Azriel muses, said shadows doing a little dance around his shoulders in whorls and twirls. Their voices are warm in his head.

Tamlin lets out a boisterous laugh at that, his chest vibrating with the motion. He stares at Azriel in a mixture of disbelief, awe and confusion that seems to be printed on his face as if he’s unaware he’s even feeling it. Azriel doesn’t want to imagine what would have happened if he had arrive any later. What sort of despair the court would have been left in. Perhaps that is why the shadows called him here, to prevent that future.

Such raw power is not to be left without a host. That is the duty of the High Lord, after all. To hold and govern the volatile raw power that courses throughout each court’s earth.

And anyways, no matter what Tamlin has done, no one deserves to be alone. No one. His life has taught him that. 

Azriel looks down at his bare hands, his usual leather gloves too damaged to wear. The scars weave and overlap in sickening lines and patches, too pale against the tan of his skin. His middle finger twists slightly at the knuckle, and there is cracks where the scar tissue has ripped.

He had Cassian all those years ago. Who did Tamlin have to save him?

He grimaces and seals his decisions. Azriel  looks back at Tamlin with determination, jaw set and eyes sharp. Tamlin stares back with an inquisitive gaze but doesn’t make a sound. His chest rises uneasily against the tight bandaging.

He reaches out and picks up the dirty rags soaked in blood, wings flaring out before settling comfortably at his back. He ignores how the ruby stains the skin of his hand, so much like the blood from the battlefield.

“What are you doing?” Tamlin says tiredly.

Azriel stands and moves to drop the rags in a bowl at the foot of the bed before replying, “Someone needs to tend to your wounds when Selvi isn’t here.”

Tamlin pursues his lips open in shock then a gentle grin grows on his lips. It is the first genuine smile he’s used since Azriel first arrived. There’s a warmth in his gaze that hadn’t been there before, making the gold of his eyes gleam and Azriel’s shadows quiver like they’re preening. They feel happy, content in his mind. They wanted this. 

Azriel secretly sighs into the lack of whispers in his ears.

He knows why they are at ease, at least for know. Azriel looks at the broken High Lord and understands.

If the High Lord of Spring had no one to help him save himself, then Azriel will just have to take the role himself.

Chapter Text

There is darkness.

Torches flicker amongst the swarms of night, their dying embers like fleeting hope. He stares at the small licks of orange and gold, their petals like stolen sunlight in the midst of the eve.

He reaches out to touch one. He fingers linger just beyond the flames, though there seems to be no heat, no scalding. His fingers are pretty, he notices. Pale like moonlight, untouched by the immortal years, fresh as a babe. His hand shakes with the thought. It feels so wrong to think of.

Something in the hallway calls. It is a vast thing thing, with no doors, no windows. No light. He looks down at his bare feet, the toes smudged with dirt. They seem to move on their own accord. Left, right. Left, right. Left, right.

Left... right...

The torches’ light wanes as the shadows grow. Something drags along his back, heavy and large as he stumbles like a foal who has yet to walk. He reaches out for that call. Too far he reasons when his hand only finds cold air.

What is he walking to? 

He finds that the darkness isn’t scary. It almost seems.... welcoming. Like a friend. Someone to rely on, someone always there. It fills his heart with this warm feeling, his body soaking in that heady thing amongst the slight breeze.

What is a friend?

That thing calls again. It’s louder now. More persistent. He doesn’t recognise the language, the sounds hissing yet strangely alluring. It’s words seem to be spoken right in his mind, gentle and intimate as a lover. He feels his fingers twitch in rhythm to the call. Its almost like they are in sync; one body, one mind.

His hand raises up and he finally feels something solid through the weaves of shadows. His palm rests upon it, trembling slightly as his breath curled through the air, as though death’s touch has frozen it. The call sounds alongside his heartbeat, the voices so achingly familiar he feels they have known him forever.

The solid mass under his hand creaks. Then it opens.

There is a boy before him - in a dark, empty room - with a young and pale faced as he stared back at him. Two hazel eyes peered at him curiously, his naked body curled into a small ball - knees resting at his chest. His uncut hair lay in a disarray across his shoulders, the inky mess sticking to his face. Something inside hims starts to ache.

“Hello.” The boy whispers. His voice is rough like he had been screaming, or like he hadn’t used it in a long time.

He doesn’t say anything. He just steps closer.

There is a loud slam and he jumped, the large mass at his back folding across his body in an instinctive need to protect. The little boy only looks at him, face a scary blank.

The shadows shift, then leave in a way that feels like betrayal. The voices stop.

He begins trembling when the boy looks just beyond him, his gaze stubbornly just grazing over his shoulders. He doesn’t look scared, not really. More... reluctant if anything.

Who is he?

“Awww, look,” someone says behind him. He turns around to see only dark, dark eyes and a cruel smile. “It’s the little bastard.”

He moves his head to shake no but found himself paralysed as another set of eyes and mouth joined the first, equally as wicked and malicious. His fingers twitch for the shadows to come back. He is so, so, so, so, so cold.

“He doesn’t even talk, the freak.”

“What a pathetic thing. He’s not even an proper Illyrian. More like a weak, snivelling runt.”

He tries to block the voices with his hands but they stay glued to his side. His lips feels as though they’re stitched up and useless. His tongue is a weight in his mouth. It’s so dark.

One of the leers nears and the grin grows and grows and grows until it feels it’s going to stretch forever. Something tingling, surprisingly warm as it licks over his skin.

The eyes are so cold. “I’m going to teach you a lesson, you runt.”

The warmth grows. He thrashes in his mind, unable to do anything like he has chains on his feet and hands and neck and body. Everywhere. The eyes seem to multiple. There is too many. Too many smiles. Too many dark eyes. And that cruel heat only persists.

It starts on his hands. They scald, and sickening white shadows curl between the whorls of pitch black in front of his eyes. There’s something wrong with the image.

It hurts. Why does it hurt so much?

“He’s crying.” Someone says mockingly. “The little bastard is crying like a girl.”

The pain just stays, lingering.

He can’t move.

It spreads up his back, lashing through the barrier of his skin. It’s on his chest, his back. The tears pour down his face as he wishes for it all to end. He wants the shadows back. He wants that call that means home. He just wants it gone.

He can’t see beyond the smoke and pain. He knows it should smell. He does. He does. But it doesn’t.

Laughter rings out in the space. Laughter like music. Only it’s a nasty thing and he shivers as the phantom pain takes him as it’s prisoner. The smoke doesn’t fade.

“Does It hurt?”

He nods.

Then suddenly it’s all gone. The smoke. The pain. The eyes. The laughter.

He heaves an unsteady breath and looks for the little boy when he remembers him. They couldn’t hurt him. He wouldn’t know what he’d do if they hurt him too.

Only he isn’t here.

He looks down at his body. Knees are pressed against his chest. His arms are wrapped around them in a pathetic hug. And there is long tendrils of hair spilling across him like shadows. His skin is no longer pale, but weaved with pink and red lines and patches. It’s disgusting.

He looks up for the voice. He thinks he can hear it. It’s better than the laughter. And it’s certainly better than silence.

The boy isn’t here, he knows. He looks down again as the shadows begin to cleave around him as he becomes one with them.

The boy isn’t here. Because he is the boy.

And the shadows are his friends.

Azriel wakes, sweat on his forehead as he heaves unsteady breaths. He reaches up and touches his face to make sure it’s real, feeling the slick sensation of cooled sweat on his cheek and then he’s leaning over his bed, throwing up on the floor.

He hasn’t had a nightmare in so long. He’s not sure what brought it on. Maybe it was seeing Tamlin on the floor, dying. Maybe it was his shadows acting up yet again over things he can’t control.

Or maybe it was just the effects of the rejected bond that has been aching more and more these days. As the male it belongs to is slowly falling for another, and the bond lies dormant in his chest.

“Shit.” He mumbles to himself and lifts himself upright on the bed.

He does try to not look down. He does. He really does. But he’s not very successful.

The sight isn’t a pretty one. At night is the only time he feels safe enough to lower the heavy glamour he has cloaking his body, day after day since he was a mere boy and learnt how to. His chest is in a state no better than his hands. Heavy, uneven scars twine through the tattoos, patches of skin patterned in uneven shades of pink and white. The same scars are littered down his arms and along his back. There isn’t much of his body which doesn’t have them.

This is his curse. His hands remain glamour free as a reminder to himself of what he endured and what he continues to survive from. But he hates the sight of mangled body, the brokenness of it. He’s not strong enough to see it for more than a few minutes.

No one knows about it. They think the scars belong to his hands alone. They are so wrong.

He feels a single tear break free and trail down his face. He just wants to be free from this torment. He wants happiness and love and freedom from the curse of himself. The shadows wail in mourning alongside him. 

He brushes the tear away, hating the feeling. It makes him feel useless, weak. Illyrians don’t cry. They never show fear.

Azriel flexes his fingers then flicks his hands, the glamour shimmering over his body as the scars fade until there is only a smooth chest, with dark tattoos curling amongst the skin. The relief is overwhelming and yet there’s that burden of guilt that lingers still.

His shadows kiss the areas he hid and he smiles down at them. The whisper things in comfort and he lifts a single hand to flutter through the mass, feeling the slightly cool caress of them. Some lay dormant at his sides while others stay active, carving their own space through the air.

Azriel chuckles at them and looks at the sky of the Night Court from his small apartment. The stars glimmer in the iridescent of the sky, faint hues of purple and blue interweaving. It’s beautiful sight he has yet to grow bored of.

Although there seems to be something lacking.

He blinks then frowns when he notices that something is amiss in the image. He can’t figure out what it is. But it’s wrong. Something shifts, though it is gone in a mere second.

Azriel rises from his bed, heart seemingly starting to pound in his ears, and makes his way to the window slowly. His apartment is a small building, along the most populated area of Velaris but it’s his home, his sanctuary. There isn’t a place that he feels safer.

Azriel ignores that needy part of him that knows better. That someone out there makes him feel safer.

His fingernails dig into the uneven layer of skin on his hands.

The sky doesn’t look any different at first glance. The stars blink unbothered by the burden of the world. The moon burns a brilliant silver. The roofs of Velaris make the sky look as though it drips through the city.

But there. Just there, to the left of the picture, in the corner of his vision, is a blip. It’s not very noticeable. But his hands begin to tremble when a seemingly innocent shadow moves out of its natural occurrence.

Danger, his shadows say. Danger.

“Danger.” Azriel echoes with them in their own tongue, pulling his own tighter around his body.

The foreign shadows slithers closer. It’s tendrils don’t invite that warm sensation in his chest, that tingling as though he is feeling with a separate part of his body. He can’t fully explain it, it doesn’t have the words, but these shadows - they feel dangerous, cruel.

He shivers as the unknown shadow grazes his shoulder. It burns like ice fire and he stumbles back a step as his shadows hiss and throw out angry threads toward the threat. There’s a silent but thundering clash and the invading shadow slithers away like a snake, he imagines that they’re are retreating.

Azriel walks even closer toward the open window with his chest huffing, leanjng slightly out, and looks toward the direction here the shadow crawls back to. It leads itself down to a small alleyway between two houses, concealed by natural shadows of its own from the height of the apartments. Azriel watches as the shadows conjoined with something else, curling along a body much like his own do.

He leans even closer then pauses.

Two gleaming, bright yellow, almost lupine, eyes stare back at him. Cold. Merciless. They blink in and out of existence in a manner of seconds but it’s enough to turn Azriel’s world upside down.

His own shadows seem to quake in fear and he lets them play through his fingers in a weak attempt of reassuring them. His gaze is stubbornly stuck in that area below him. The image, he knows, has been permanently marked in his mind.

He doesn’t know what this means. But he does understand enough.

There’s another Shadowsinger out there. And they don’t seem friendly, or willing to talk, if they willingly snuck through the wards Rhysand has long held up. 

Those gold eyes haunt his mind.

Azriel’s blood runs cold.

Chapter Text

Azriel waits until morning before he seeks out Amren, not wanting anyone to see him in the  he was in the previous night. He barely slept, terrified of the nightmares that may have returned. He can still see the leers every time he closes his eyes.

Amren’s house is as extravagant as the female it belongs to. Sitting in its own secluded area, with a large extensive forest reaching behind it - it is large enough to house a dozen people. It’s not situated in Verlais, but just off the territory as her own plot of land.

As he walks up the marble steps to the home, in his full armour, his shadows tighten to his back. Though she is no longer a other, the shadows remain wary of her. Less so than before but they cannot forget how impossible it was to read her, understand her.

The large ebony door opens before Azriel makes himself known. The slight female stands on the other side of it, her ruby lips pulled into an amused but slightly wolfish smirk. Her silver eyes gleam, though dulled from the wicked sharpness that they used to be.

“Shadowsinger.” She coos, leaning against a chair in the foyer, her purple robes fluttering around her legs. “What can I do for you?”

“Can I come in?” Azriel asks.

She raises an eyebrow but gestures widely. Azriel sees the sharp claw like fingernails and prefers not to ask why she’s polished them that way. He sometimes wonders whether she has got past her lust for blood.

He steps into the house. It’s beautiful, he has to admit. Almost foreboding in its elegance. Everything is dark and perfectly polished, from the wooden floors to the crystal chandeliers. Large pillars stand proud in the centre of the room, a double sweeping staircase running alongside the far sides of the wall. A whole length of the room holds three large aching windows. Another displays a wall dedicated to just bookcases.

He suspects there are tomes in there that surpass his age.

Amren sits slowly down on a chair, the back of it a velvet red and she leans back, a leg tossed over the other in a carelessness slump. She looks like a queen even in the comfort of her home. Even in her most vulnerable state.

The shadows get eagerly loud at the thought. Azriel pushes down their excitement before it worsens. Desire his caution of the female, she is Rhys’ second and therefore, under the protection of Azriel and his spies. She is a lady of his own inner court, even if she doesn’t realise it.

By the knowing look in her eyes as he sits beside her, he thinks she just may know it too.

“You’ve never been here before.” Amren observes in a statement.

Azriel says blankly, “No.”

She tilts her head in a feline movement and her fingers begin to tap along the wooden arm of the chair, “Why now?”

Azriel pinches his lips and stares at her in determination. He knows coming here would never be easy, not with how his shadows seem petrified of the small female. But he needs answers, and knows she is best to offer it.

“What do you know of Shadowsingers?” Azriel asks carefully.

If Amren is surprised, she’s doesn’t show it as she replies, “Why do you ask?”

Azriel diverts, “Can there be more than one?”

Her eyes immediately glint dangerously and she sits up. Amren’s looks him up and down slowly, eyes too heavy and his shadows hiss in displeasure, trying to worm through the heavy block on her aura. They are unsuccessful and so cover his body like a cloak.

Amren leers widely at the sight.

“What have you seen Shadowsinger?” She muses.

Azriel sighs but relents to her, pinching the skin of his hand through the glove lightly, “I thought I saw something, someone else.” He looks away and remembers the sickening aura of shadows that he doesn’t control and gold, gold eyes, “Is it possible?”

Amren hums, “Possibly. It’s certainly not common, but even one Shadowsinger is rare. It is not easy to learn the language of the shadows. You have to live through them, tame them, bend them. It’s a rare gift.” Azriel faces her, and she’s closer than before, her hand resting precariously on the edge of his own chair in lazy arrogance, “If there is another one, you would feel it, right here.” And she points at her heart.

Azriel thinks of the cold sensation, the tightened if his chest and swears under his breath.

“And if I have?” Azriel says back, his face pulled in a heavy frown.

Amren taps a fingernail against the chair once, “If it was cold, dreadful feeling, then I’d say you’ve got another Shadowsinger on your hands. Which isn’t great news for your shadows, I’d say they’re going to feel threatened for having to share their space.”

Azriel raises an eyebrow in question. Amren tuts at him like he’s a child and lounges back. She examines him with an unreadable expression.

“How much do you know about being a Shadowsinger?”

Azriel sends her incredulous look and she shakes her head.

“I’m guessing from that unnecessary expression,” she says and rolls her eyes, “That you know little. Do you know how to fight with them, see with them, be one of them?”

Azriel pauses and sits back. Fight with his shadows? He knows their language, knows how to command them to tell him the secrets of the world, but to fight and see with them? He had never even considered it.

“I didn’t realise it was possible.” Azriel admits.

Amren makes a noise of agreement, “Not surprised, you’ve had no tutor, no one who can understand their full potential before now.”

“Before now?”

Amren sends him a lazy smirk and rolls her head around her neck, her ebony hair falling softly across her face, “Of course. I’ve met my fair share of Shadowsingers over my time. I may not be one myself but I certainly know how to train one.”

“And you’re willing to help me?” Azriel says in disbelief and his shadows seem to hum in response.

Amren snickers, “Yes, Spymaster. Just because you’ve always been threatened by me.” She says as she points a finger in his direction, “Doesn’t mean I hate you. You’ve not even scratched the surface of your talents, a pity really.”

Azriel sits back and mulls it over. Amren is certainly right with how little he knows about his shadows. He knows they won’t hurt him, not after they so possessively claimed him as theirs. But if this is his chance to protect the people he loves, he’d be a fool to ignore it. His wariness of Amren was insignificant to opportunity she offered.

So he looks at her with a flat expression and only says, “Okay.”

Amren replies with a dangerously eager expression, “Okay?”

“Okay. I’ll let you train me.”

She claps her hands together, “Brilliant. We start tomorrow at sunrise. Here.”

Azriel feels as though he may just regret this. But he can’t forget the lupine eyes and the feeling of utter terror at the sight of those shadows. Perhaps if he understands his shadows better, then someday he’ll no longer look at himself in the mirror in shame.

Azriel stands and faces Amren with an unusually open expression but what she offers? It’s worth it.

“Thank you.”

Amren smirks widely but tosses her hand to gesture for him to leave.

Azriel obeys her, pulling his shadows tighter to his body when he feels a few traitorous ones slither toward Amren. He steps toward the still open door when Amren says something that makes him stop still.

“Are you going to tell your mate that you’re training with me?”

Azriel feels his heart echo hollowly in his chest. His fists tighten and he stands his ground, refusing to look back at her in a silent fear he may just break down if she saw him, looked at him in those terrifyingly all knowing eyes.

“What mate?” He says, his voice dark as the shadows begin to wriggle free of his control.

Mate, they say in his ear. Want mate. Want mate. Mate, mate, mate.

“No.” Azriel whispers threateningly to them in response.

“You know whom I talk about Shadowsinger.” Amren says flippantly and Azriel grinds his teeth at how uncaring she is when she’s upturning his world with a single sentence.

Does Cassian know? Mor? Rhysand? Fuck, does even Feyre, or her sisters know? Was he really that useless at trying to keep one stupid damned secret? Do they all mock him for his stupidity behind his back?

He doesn’t know what he’ll do if Cassian knew all this time, and never said anything. He thinks it’ll be the closet he’s going to be to the edge since that day in the dungeon with his half brothers. With the flames and pain and torture.

He squeezes his eyes shut to maintain a level of control.

“Who knows?” Azriel asks, his voice cold as he turns, his wings spread wide.

Amren frowns disapprovingly at him but doesn’t make a move to protect herself, “No one.”

Azriel steps closer and sends her his darkest look, his shadows spreading their violence in his mind. He’s this close to losing all semblance of control.

“Who knows?” He echoes, and his voice thunders with the voices of his shadows greedily digging claws into his mind.

“Like I said,” Amren repeats and stands up smoothly with him. “No one.”

Azriel refuses to back down, “How do you know, then.” It’s not a question.

“I am not omniscient, I cannot read minds.” Amren says, her posture just ever so slightly defensive. She’s awfully still. “But I’ve learnt to see past the barriers of flesh over time.” She taps his forehead once, the edge of her fingernail digging into the skin. “And you? You are yearning more than any other I have seen. A yearning most mistake for another, though I suspect that’s your own doing, no?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Azriel lies and he hates how weak his voice sounds just at the acknowledgment of his manipulation he has spread throughout his years.

Amren looks unamused, “Don't lie, Azriel.” He freezes at the sound of his name on her lips. He cannot recall a time he’s heard it uttered from her, “Cassian has no idea, does he?”

Azriel grits his teeth to stop himself breaking down, “No.”

“And you plan to keep it that way?”

Azriel shivers, though not for the cold. His heart feels suspiciously dead in his chest and his shadows ruffle, agitated on his back. He refuses to break down, to tremble. He is made of stronger stuff than that.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Azriel stares at her blankly, “Because he doesn’t feel the same. He doesn’t even look at males like that. Besides, we all know he loves Nesta.” And, oh, by the Caldron, does he try to not say that name with venom. He tries, but he feels that he fails pitifully.

Amren is silent for a few seconds, “I wouldn’t be so sure.”

“About what?” Azriel says. His voice is slowly going with gruff with the unusual amount he has used it. His fingers twitch with the need to speak with his hands instead. But he doesn’t want to appear weak to Amren, not her. Not ever.

She flaps a hand in a dismissive gesture, “You decide.”

Azriel lets a shuddered breath out, “Why tell me you know?”

Amren tilts her head in consideration, “To amuse myself, I suppose. To see if you’ll deny it, also.”

Azriel scowls, “This is not a game.”

“I never said it was.”

Azriel looks at a window, the forest stretching for miles beyond in a labyrinth of green and brown. The trees intertwine with one another like cautious lovers. Paths are littered with old fallen leaves and petals of flowers that have long died.

He’s never felt so unsettled. Azriel has mapped out his life, second by second the moment was dumped into the camp and told to survive. He’s never planned to tell Cassian the truth. He’d never wanted to give so much pressure to the male he has loved with whole heart for over two centuries, at least. Who would want the burden of loving him and all his ugly scars? 

He doesn’t want to admit that no one would.

But Amren has this piece of information over him. He doesn’t like the thought of having that held over him for the rest of his life.

So he carefully asks when faces her again, “Are you going to tell him?”

Amren purses her lips, “I am not that cruel, Spymaster. Your story is your own. I would never take something so precious from you. Not when I am incapable of having it myself.” There is a distant look in her eyes at that. Something almost mournful. It’s gone in a breath. “Besides, loving that blubbering idiot is punishment enough, I think.”

Azriel huffs a laugh in shock though he tries not to, all the panic evaporating. Amren grins viciously back at him. His shadows curl over his ear, whispering their displeasure at what is occurring.

Who would of thought that he and Amren would ever find respite from the tension that seems to underlay their interactions. Azriel isn’t all that surprised at how good it feels to knock a weight off his shoulders. His head feels lighter, his chest less tight. There’s still this fear of being so throughly read, but he knows that his secret is safe, for now.

Perhaps one day he’ll be able to look at Amren without the threatening feeling of being undone.

“Thank you.” Azriel says genuinely.

Amren frowns like she’s displeased but there’s something softer in her face. Like this, the female isn’t so ancient, not so foreboding even in her slight body. Sometimes he forgets just what she had lost too after the war. What she sacrificed to save them all.

“I’ll see you tomorrow for training.” Amren leers but Azriel thinks he doesn’t mistake the faint undertone of warmth underneath it all.

He stares at her for a second, then nods and leaves without another word. He doesn’t miss how his shadows linger tighter to his body almost as though they are afraid at every thought that had passed through his head.

~*~

Azriel decides to meet Rhysand in the House of Wind, but not before he’s updated Nuala and Cerridwen to look out for someone in the Night Court with lupine eyes. The twins had murmured their worries to him but had done what they were commanded, fading into the shadows forms to spy amongst the civilians.

Azriel can only hope that they find the unknown Shadowsinger.

He lands smoothly at the House of Wind. Truth-teller hums on his thigh, the blade once again infused with shadows after he had given it to Elain. There was a moment when he thought that the blade would never respond to him again, that it would forbid him to be its master after he so carelessly abandoned it when it wanted him the most.

Rolling his head around his neck, Azriel pulled his wings tight against his back, the muscles soothingly achy. His shadows hiss something in his ear, not fully understandable but satisfied nonetheless.

He’s about to respond to them when another body lands next to him, a flash of red appearing in the corner of his vision.

Azriel grimaces internally but turns to face Cassian with an impassive face, and defensive body. He may love Cassian, and the male may be his mate but the sting of their last conversation hasn’t faded yet. The hurt of his mate trying to wound him is worse than any other blow.

Cassian, to his benefit, does look sheepish as he shuffles his feet like a child who knows they have done something naughty. Inwardly Azriel snickers at the sight. Cassian has never been one to train himself to hide his emotions like him.

There’s a steady silence, then, “Az.” Cassian says quietly. It’s only one word but it says so much in its subtext.

Azriel lowers his head a fraction and looks at Cassian under heavy brows. He’s windswept, his hair a loose tangle, and his face is flushed red from his flight. There’s the beginning sign of stubble on his cheeks. This Cassian at his most raw, his most realest.

Azriel has never seen someone so breathtaking.

“Cassian.” He responds in a carefully blank voice.

Cassian winces and rubs his neck, his cheeks now flushed with embarrassment, “I’m sorry.”

Azriel doesn’t move, “For?”

Cassian moves closer, and Azriel secretly takes in the mint and wood scent of him. It’s not, for once, interwoven with another female, and there is no stink of alcohol. It’s purely and utterly Cassian. In his long years alive, Azriel has never found a scent as pleasant, something so heady that he yearns to wrap himself in it forever. 

He has tried to purchase something to replicate it, but has been unsuccessful so far. He’s long accepted that this scent would belong to Cassian, and Cassian alone. And if Azriel has to be near Cassian to seek it forever, it would be no hardship.

Azriel looks closer at the deep purple bruises under Cassian’s eyes and tries not to react. His heart is wrung with guilt, squeezing tighter and tighter with every breath. Maybe he didn’t do this Cassian intentionally, but he has a part to play in it. 

The voice in his head is snidely remarking that he did this, he hurt his mate, he hurts everyone, he’s not good enough. Azriel wills it down.

“I’ve been a bastard.” Cassian says bluntly and crosses his arms stiffly, “I was upset and I took it out on you. I shouldn’t have done that.”

Azriel’s fingers twitch with the urge to rub his thumb under Cassian’s eye, to caress his cheek.

“You have but I should have reacted better.” Azriel says.

Cassian shakes his head, “No, don’t blame yourself for this. We both know it’s my fault I’m acting this way.”

No just yours, Azriel thinks but doesn’t say. Cold eyes like ice and blue fire peak through his mind. He thinks of the beautiful but cruel female and wishes he could hate her, for what she is making him lose. But much like Tamlin, there’s something in her that makes him understand.

It’s his curse, he thinks. To be burdened with the survivors’ guilt that makes him unable to hate anyone who has suffered like him. He has learnt that nothing in this bleak, bleak world is black or white. Everyone is made up in shades of murky grey, even those who have been so intentionally cruel.

But Azriel only replies, “It’s fine, Cassian.”

Cassian looks pissed now and he scowls darkly, “Bullshit. It’s not. I hurt you.”

Azriel sighs, “And?”

“And what?” Cassian parrots, looking affronted, eyes suspiciously dull, like the blunt edge of a used sword, “You’re my brother, Az, you don’t have to take my shit all the time.”

Azriel really damn well tries not to flinch at that word.

Brother.

The bane of his life, for it’s that name and all its supposed meaning that reminds Azriel in his darkest points at how wishful it is to hope for a future he so desperately wants with Cassian, so badly sometimes that he closes his eyes and imagines that world to be real, not his own. 

Brother. Not mate. Not lover.

By the Caldron, not even husband.

“Az?” Cassian says slowly when he doesn’t reply.

Azriel looks down at his hands and feels so numb. That bloody word circulates like some stupid cruel taunt in his head. He tries to open his mouth to say something, but feels his throat glue up shut, the words unable to pass his lips. 

So carefully he lifts his hands and begins gesturing back to Cassian instead, “Isn’t that what brothers are for?”

He looks up to see Cassian grinning widely. There’s no pity, no disgust or sympathy in his kind gaze. Only acceptance and understanding. It was them, after all, who invented this secret language between them when Azriel spent months unable to communicate, the frustration of his own weakness eating him alive.

It was that day that he realised that he loved Cassian, more than a friend, more than a brother. Completely and utterly. Heart, soul and mind.

His bond flickers in pathetic plead with the remembrance. The other end of it slams on a steely wall, cold and lifeless. His own end droops, forgotten again.

“Brothers also should be there for each other.” Cassian echoes, and he’s closer now, close enough to reach out, to touch. “So tell me when I’m being a prick and shout at me Az, or hit me. Don’t let me hurt you, okay?”

Azriel stares at him, wordless.

Cassian shakes his head in fondness and reaches out to grab Azriel’s hands in his own. His fingers wrap around Azriel’s palms, warm and real and sturdy. The fingernails dig into the leather of his gloves. His hands seem to be the perfect size, not larger nor smaller than Azriel’s.

His heart echoes a drum in his chest.

They’re so close. Cassian’s breath brushes across his face, hot against the cold bite of the air. His hair lays in disarray around his handsome face, the curls tangled. Azriel dares a mere second to look at Cassian’s lips, and he yearns so badly that it is like his body is set on fire.

But not a bad fire from his past. This one is warm and gentle and yet so passionate, it could consume him completely and he would wish for it to takes him again once it was done. Something in his body alights.

Azriel is still shocked still when Cassian continues, his voice low and husky, “Promise me?”

Azriel looks down at their clasped hands. Why have they’ve always been so close? Why does every touch he gives Azriel make his yearning worse? Why does Cassian make every gesture so intimate when it hurts but heals so much?

But all he does is nod sharply, just once, instead of voicing the millions of questions that build up in his head. Sometimes he feels he may explode from the sheer weight of them.

Cassian takes that as an answer and lets go of Azriel’s hands. He misses the warmth and steadiness of them immediately. Cassian smirks and nudges Azriel’s shoulder as he moves to stand near him. 

He pretends that, as he moves his hands to the side, he doesn’t keep his hands slightly curled as if waiting for Cassian to slot his back again - like two puzzle pieces, forming a whole.

“You’re seeing Rhys, right?” Cassian jests, his voice lighter now, “I’ll come with.”

Azriel gestures the sign for okay, and watches the broad back of Cassian as he makes his way into the house. His armour lays snug against his body. His eyes greedily takes in the wide spread of Cassian’s wings, though they are held close to his body. Large, large wings; only slightly smaller than his own. The implications are enough to make his head swim.

His throat feels raw as he swallows. His limbs burn. And desire floods through his blood, her wants unbridled as she seems to swallow him whole. And though he loathes to admit it, watching Cassian leave with a prowl of a seasoned warrior, his cock hardens slightly. The still lingering warmth of Cassian’s hands in his only seems to encourage it all.

He closes his eyes and tries to imagine anything else. The Illyrian mountains. Elain’s soft laughter when he sits by her gardening. The steel gaze of Amren that seems to strip him of every barrier.

Cassian’s eyes, when he dances in the lull of alcohol, his body swaying with the precision he uses for his kills. Gleaming like molten lava amongst the pretence of browns.

Fuck, he says to himself, in his head, and he thinks he hears his shadows snigger in response.

Azriel is so wholly and truly screwed when it comes to his mate.

Chapter Text

“What is going on, Az?” Rhys asks as he leans his hand under his chin, looking every inch the poised High Lord even though Azriel can tell he’s tense by the clench of his jaw.

Azriel dares a glance at Cassian. His mate looks expectant back at him, his hazel eyes warm with encouragement. He knows there is no expectation to speak, and he knows that Cassian will be here to translate for him with not even a glimpse of judgment. It’s a thought that curdles his stomach with acid, feeling the bitter taste of the forbidden word upon his lips as he stares at the male who loves him platonically, though Azriel is lucky he loves him at all.

Brother.

This not the time, he knows. He has to remember the cold yellow eyes peering back at him through the shadows and darkness of their joined fate. He thinks about speaking, he’s never dared to sign in front of his High Lady before. And he know it’s not a weakness. It can’t be. Though sometimes in the dark of night, he wonders whether the burden of his existence doesn’t equal the benefits. 

Not now, he promises himself, not here.

But he grits his teeth as he sighs slowly, looking only at Cassian and his eyes that hide gems of colour amongst brown and forcing the shadows to withdraw further back from view, “There is another Shadowsinger.”

Cassian blinks and gapes slightly, eyes shifting uneasy toward Rhys before focusing back to Azriel. There’s something so empowering, Azriel thinks, about being the centre of that gaze. Such eyes have power to decimate armies alone and yet, they look at Azriel with gentleness that still freezes him to the spot.

“Are you sure?” Cassian says dumbly.

Azriel resists the urge to raise his eyebrows at his mate and simply replies, “Yes.”

Cassian nods and faces Rhys, “Az says there is another Shadowsinger.”

He dares a glance at Rhys. His High Lord looks troubled, his face pensive. Feyre, by his side, reaches out and holds his hands in her small palms decorated in the whorls of ink. He notices how her own stare lingers upon his own gloves hands, though she doesn’t ask the question she seemingly wants too. He has to admire her for her restraint. Once, not too long ago, she may have not had the same reaction. Not that she is at fault for it.

When she mets his gaze, Az sends his Lady a small tilt of his head and gestures his hands to his throat. She frowns slightly but seems to understand as much as she is able to, her blue eyes swimming not with pity, but with sympathy. 

“Where did you see them?” Rhys asks, and Azriel recognises the male before him. Not his brother. Not his friend. But rather the High Lord of the Night Court, his leader and master. Perhaps one of the only Faes he’ll ever have to submit to. And one of the only ones he would be willing to.

Azriel answers, “In Verlais, last night.”

Cassian relays his answer back and Rhys’ eyes darken from the pale violet to the deep purple as anger flickers across his features. Feyre squeezes his hands but she too looks troubled. Azriel understands why.

To breach Rhys’ own wards, to enter through the barriers without the most powerful High Lord in history, in theory, being able to notice is startling. Azriel’s shadows hiss with the displeasure of the thought and scurry along his skin, leaving trails of goosebumps.

“They were in Verlais?” Rhys asks.

Azriel nods, face blank.

Rhys tightens his hand into a fist and slams it down upon the table, and the room darkens impossibly. Azriel’s own shadows send tendrils out, sucking the natural shadows’ power in response to Rhys’ own darkness. Feeling energised, they happily sit upon his shoulders, singing satisfaction in his mind.

Azriel would best describe the action as them being threatened of the supernatural unpredictability of the depths of his High Lord’s power. They do not like to have their natural superiority to be undermined. He has to yank at them hard with a firm, silent command to make sure they don’t play up.

He can’t have them rebelling against his control.

Not here. Not in front of everyone.

“And you’re sure they’re a Shadowsinger?” Feyre speaks as she moves to stand behind Rhys, her hands coming to rest upon his shoulders in an image of strength. Azriel almost wants to smile at the sight, remembering the fragile girl who flinched at the thought of her own power, her very self and the person she could be. And here she is, becoming someone Azriel knows eventually will surpass Rhysand himself if she so wishes.

Azriel tilts his head to look Cassian. He can’t quite make out the expression in his mate’s face, but he knows it isn’t a good one. He wants to question it, feels the instinctual need to protect and understand his mate right down to his very soul. 

But that is something for when they are alone.

“I visited Amren. She believes what I saw is a Shadowsinger, and claims that whilst it is rare two may live at once, it is not impossible.” Cassian says, his usual jovial eyes dulling with every word and if the nature of the news isn’t so troubling, then Azriel would feel touched and perhaps, hopeful.

“How does that work?” Feyre asks curiously, looking down at her mate.

Rhys sighs and gestures aimlessly as he answers, his temper eased, “Shadowsingers aren’t well documented, they’re usually secretive about their abilities and they appear too infrequently in history for patterns to be analysed thoroughly but if Amren says it’s possible, it must be.” Rhys smirks slightly then, a bare uptick of his lips as he stares at Azriel. His shadows don’t know how to feel about it, shuffling along his shoulders with something alike to unease. “We’re lucky that Az is loyal to us to know much about him at all. I’ve heard Shadowsingers make excellent assassins, and they tend to be lonely souls.”

Azriel sends Rhys a deadpan look. To think they knew everything about him, it sends shivers down his spine, though he isn’t incorrect with his analysis. He tries not to picture how his family would feel if they knew his deepest secret. Despite the Night Court being progressive about same sex couples, far more than the likes of Autumn to say the least, he can’t imagine him hiding a mating bond with someone awfully close to them all would go down well.

Sometimes he likes to think they’ll be supportive. Other times he’s haunted with the names his tormentors once taunted him with.

“Is the Shadowsinger a threat?” Feyre says, interrupting Azriel’s thoughts.

He considers it. To even breach the wards, to stand before Azriel and look unafraid at the solider of death, it is answer enough.

Cassian doesn’t even wait for him to reply, his heated stare like a brand upon Azriel’s skin. “If they managed to enter Verlais, I think we have to consider them as one.”

Rhys hums but doesn’t say anything. Feyre begins to work her hands upon his shoulders, working out the tension evident there. Azriel feels as though he is intruding though he knows those two can barely keep their hands off each other at the best of times.

Azriel’s own relationship with desire is complicated. He knows he feels it, he has spent nights in the seclusion of his sheets pining for Cassian as he works himself over the edge, imagining being under him, over him, joined with him. Worshipping him with his mouth, his hands, even his whole being. But he has never quite managed it for anyone else. Not matter how beautiful. Or handsome. 

It must be some self imposed punishment to feel such a way but Azriel likes to save himself for that hope that someday his mate will be the only one to touch him in such a way. It’s a foolish dream. But dreaming keeps him going.

“So what’s the plan?” Cassian says bored when no one speaks, “Do we chase them down, interrogate them, ban them from our lands, kill them?”

Rhys rolls his eyes at Cassian, “For now we need to find them.”

“Easier said than done.” Cassian admits.

“It is but not impossible.” Rhys turns to face Azriel and he knows what his High Lord is about to say before he even opens his mouth, “I want you to look for them, by any means necessary then bring them to the Court of Nightmares.”

Cassian makes a loud noise and Azriel turns to him surprised, seeing the male poised for attack standing as he leans on the table with his fingers flared, “Why should he?” 

“Pardon?” Rhys says slowly, with a raised eyebrow and violet eyes glittering dangerously.

Cassian frowns like a stubborn bastard, “Why just Az? I can help too, he shouldn’t be looking out for them alone.”

Rhys tilts his head, “Azriel is my Spymaster, Cassian, and he is a Shadowsinger also. He has a greater chance than anyone else.”

“That’s bullshit.”

Azriel almost opens his mouth in shock but pulls himself back at the last second. Cassian’s breath thunders against his chest in irregular intervals and his cheeks are flushed darkly in anger. Azriel feels something primal coo inside him at seeing his mate so passionate about protecting him, his wings out on display though Azriel thinks it isn’t on purpose. 

He’s never looked so stunning, and Azriel shadows shudder in reaction to the mighty Illyrian before him. Lust and love move unbidden and uncontrolled within him, side by side, and Azriel has to stop himself from reaching out and claiming him right here, right now.

“And why is that?” Someone says in the background but Azriel can barely hear them, regarding them as irrelevant to the want pooling through himself, unable to stop. He doesn’t even have to listen to the begging to his shadows to know that anything but Cassian is pointless.

“You can’t expect him to face a threat that big alone.” Cassian snarls and he looks deadly, his eyes so very dark that Azriel can’t see colour but endless, pooling, wonderful black. His blood heats. His lips burn with the desire to kiss every inch of his mate and take him far away into the darkness of his shadows embrace and never let him leave.

“Why not? He has before.” 

Cassian curls his hands into fists, “That was different.”

“How so?” A voice says but Azriel disregards it. Cassian flares his nose in response, and Azriel has a sudden urge to run his thumb along the skin of his cheek to calm the flaring red. Perhaps even press into the warmth of his mouth, and Azriel feels his stomach stir.

“Because,” Cassian says and grinds his jaw, refusing to finish the sentence.

Azriel has never felt so off balance, with the exception of the bond forming those many years ago. His body aches to reward his mate for protecting him so furiously even though subconsciously Azriel knows he has no need for it. But, oh, does he want it.

“Because?” A cocky voice echoes.

Cassian growls and moves so quickly that Azriel just registers him kicking the chair he was sat on, the wood slamming against the wall of the room before he’s storming out of the room, wings flared wide in a territorial move and his powerful body on a prowl like some rapid animal. Azriel watches him go in desperate want and desire and wishful nonsense.

What is wrong with him?

He doesn’t even need to answer that. It’s always Cassian that unsteadily unnerves him with a single look. 

Azriel stares at the area Cassian had just stood in, now empty. The air lingers with the minty scent of his mate, and he curls his hands to pick at the scars to calm his need to follow Cassian. Some part of him knows he should question why Cassian is acting in such a way but Azriel disregards it for now.

“Az?” Someone says carefully.

Azriel blinks and shivers, and suddenly he’s thrown into the real world, feeling awfully disoriented. He pushes every dirty thought he has into the back of his mind, knowing it’ll haunt him tonight in the loneliness of his bed. Now is not the time for his irrationality. But, by the Caldron, he wishes that he could just take and let himself drift away, free from the burden of his mind.

He turns to face Rhys with a stubborn mask showing none of his thoughts. His High Lord peers at him inquisitively and Azriel feels himself bristle at the knowing gaze. He can’t let it sink to deep within himself. He knows how fragile the mind is to someone like Rhysand. And sometimes Azriel worries that he’ll pierce Azriel’s own and be confronted with all his shit.

“I’ll do it.” Azriel says instead, the words rough on his tongue.

Rhys stares at him in question.

“Are you sure?” He asks and Azriel doesn’t like the tone in his voice. 

So he simply stands and regards his High Lord and Lady with passiveness, his shadows running pattern along his still arms, in their own attempt of soothing his pounding heart. “It is my job, is it not?”

Rhys smiles lightly at him but Feyre looks concerned, her hands still upon her mate’s shoulder as though she forget she had placed them there. He doesn’t deserve such a gaze. Not if he knows that if they knew the truth, they’ll run far from him.

Azriel chuckles humourlessly, and tries to fight the urge to chase his mate down, and instead allows the glare of yellow lupine eyes to overtake him instead.

He’s good at finding people, killing them for his family. Being a lover, he is not. And he supposes he might never get a chance to learn.

And that’s okay. It’s all okay.

~*~

Cassian lands on some area in some stupid forest before he’s pulling back his fist and slamming it into the first tree he sees. The stab of pain offers him no respite.

What the fuck is wrong with him? What was he thinking?

By the Caldron, what is happening to him?

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” He swears and alternatives his fists meeting the rough bark of the tree. His skin quickly becomes red with blood and he watches as droplets splatter amongst the pristine white of the snow. He laughs coldly and shakes his hands to stop himself.

Something instinctive is telling him to go back, to fight Az’s corner because no one else will, clearly. Do none of them see how he is suffering? Does Rhys not see his hands forming that intricate language, Az unable to even speak and not want to protect him from what’s coming?

Cassian runs a bloody hand through his hair and despairs.

“Why am I feeling like this?” He asks himself, or the air, and wants to hurl at the silence in return.

Azriel hasn’t dared to not speak in front of Feyre before. Hadn’t wanted to look weak. He isn’t, by the Caldron, he’s the opposite. But by the very fact he had to resort to the language he fears to use says too much for Cassian.

And it’s not like he’s anymore help. Not with him causing this, aiding it. He’s a shit friend and an even shitter brother. His lips curl as he considers the thought, the word feeling wrong in his mind. How Cassian wishes to return to the days before Under the Mountain, before the War, before Nesta, before all this crap. When he and Az were alone without expectations and threats that could undo them all.

Cassian sighs and falls to his knees, ignoring the cold sting of snow. He just misses the old times. He misses the times where he could read Az like an open book.

Now he’s unsure of everything. Of Az and his suffering that no one can help because no one knows what he is feeling. Of Nesta and her cold, cold eyes and loveless words that shatter Cassian’s heart further with every interaction. And of himself, and his heart that tells him too much and too little.

And he tries to pretend that it’s all okay.

But it’s not.

And it hasn’t been okay for a long time.

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An update on this fic!

Firstly, I would like to say I am in no ways abandoning this fic. In fact, it is the opposite. When I first started to write Cazriel, I wasn’t actually expecting as strong of a response to my work as I have because this ship has always been treated as a ‘joke’ ship. As such, the plot for this was weak originally as I was just going with the flow.

However, due to the amount of love I have received (it’s been amazing to see so many love them as much as I have), I’ve since come up with an an actual plot that I want to continue with. It’s mostly the same as you’ve read but there are a few key differences - such as Tamlin not appearing until later, and the action is much more centred from the very beginning. And the chapters are now much longer, averaging around 4000-5000ish words as it allows me to tell the story better.

I have reorganised and rewritten all the chapters I have released before so that it works better as a fully fledged story. I just want to know how you wish for me to upload them. I can either update them on this work, or start a whole new fic and upload them there. Please let me know what to do so I’ll start posting immediately.

Once again, thank you for the amazing response! I’m so glad there are others who love Cazriel as much as I do.

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Please click the link above to access the new fic quickly!