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It starts again, months later. It starts, like it began, in the gardens.
The High Lord was busy, and the river was rushing and Azriel stood in the sun for a brief moment. He stretched his wings out wide, ready to take off, soar high into the skies and disappear. He’d only come to the River House for a short meeting anyway. Solstice had long passed, and Spring had come, and the gardens were alive, and her voice came like birdsong to his ears.
“Can you help me with this?” She asked, voice innocent.
And he was never one to refuse her.
She needed him to move a stack of large terracotta pots into the breezeway. As he carried them in his arms, she told him of her plans to pot them with some beautiful low-light plants that would bring life to the grey stones beyond the garden. He placed them down where she said. He didn’t dare say a word, or ask beyond what she told him. Though his shadows whispered that it was safe, his restraint was dangerously low.
Still, once he was done, they both lingered facing each other for a long moment. If she really belonged to another, then why did her eyes linger just as long as his?
“Elain?” Feyre called out from within the house. “Elain, where are you?”
“Coming!” She returned, and walked right around him as though they hadn’t been frozen there.
He shook himself free, telling himself that it was another fluke, another mistake, another mark of poor judgment. But as he flourished his wings once again and shot into the skies unimpeded, he couldn’t get the precise shine of her hair out of his head.
He came to the River House more. His whole family was relieved and rejoiced at his more frequent comings and goings. Even Rhys, with the bliss of his newborn and the weary look from sleepless nights seemed to not notice at all, the precise ways that Azriel counted on betraying him. But if his brother had any sense this should have been exactly what he expected. Azriel had told him as such.
You cannot order me to do that. Rhysand should’ve listened.
For weeks nothing transpired. Elain and Azriel slid back into the routine of before, hands brushing, switching between long gazes. They’d gotten too close too fast, they both knew it. Prythian was watching. Their family was watching.
After dinner, Elain washed the dishes and Azriel helped her dry them. A ruse that worked too well. “Elain, you know what I said on Solstice, about mistakes—”
“I know.”
“He’s a prince.”
“I know.”
“He could be dangerous to the Court.”
“I know.” She said, and cut him a glance to make him stop talking.
He did, and dried the next dish she handed him, his mind spinning like a top when the tips of his fingers accidentally pressed against hers for a brief moment. He was almost humiliated by his reaction, if he hadn’t seen the faint blush that crossed her cheeks as well.
A blazingly hot day in summer caused the next stumble down the mountain of good sense. A mountain Azriel liked to imagine he had conquered some centuries ago. He knew when to back down, he knew when to play his cards right, and he knew how to win. Good sense got him there. But this was not good sense.
His leathers were stripped from his arms, leaving him in a sleeveless shirt to allow his skin to breathe as he came to the Townhouse where’d begun to sequester himself, away from the newly mated couples. Away from any prying eyes who might question his sour mood, his endless training, his sleepless nights.
She was sitting on the front steps, wearing a pale blue dress with a thin blouse beneath it to maintain her modesty. She wore sandals like vines creeping up her shins. Her hair was tied up messily at the back of her head. He’d forgotten that he was supposed to be walking forward, he came up to the front stoop and she quickly got to her feet, meeting his eyes straight on since the steps gave her extra height.
“I tried to go in to gather a few of my old supplies, but I didn’t realize you locked the door.” She smiled a little sheepishly, and looked away from his eyes. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s fine,” he said simply, and procured the key from his shadows and unlocked the front door.
Inside was cooler. She followed in behind him, and the house felt so quiet. Neither of their footsteps made a sound, but there was no way he could ever be unaware of the presence behind him.
The couch chairs in the kitchen felt so formal, the couches in the living room felt so casual. They slid to the floor, they had both picked a side of the wall. She had not gathered a single one of her things.
“Do you sleep well?” She asked after a long pause of silence.
“No.”
“Try to,” she instructed.
A faint smile crossed his lips. “Yes, My Lady.”
It was cooler inside but it was still hot, and she slumped to lay completely on the floor, the coolest place she could be. Her eyes shut, and for a moment she looked peaceful as if she was asleep.
“Tell me how it went wrong,” she said. “At Hybern. Tell me where it went wrong.”
His chest constricted, his hands flexed at his sides. “I don’t know.”
For a moment, her eyes opened, she turned her head to the side to look at him, sitting there on the floor across the room with her. His wings held awkwardly above him. She looked away. “What’d you do with the necklace?”
“Gwyn has it.”
“That’s good,” she replied. “She deserves it.”
His brow twitched, the only display of emotion he allowed for himself. “You deserved it.”
Elain said nothing at all.
Azriel was seized by nightmares of Hybern. Every night. For weeks. As the height of summer slowly cooled. She tended to the gardens in the Townhouse again, baked break in the mornings. Always gone by the time he slipped in from training, leaving scents of bread and roses for him to wander the halls for, like she was still there.
What went wrong in Hybern? Everything. Everything went wrong. She was kidnapped, stolen, thrust into the Cauldron, her soul wrenched from her body and placed into a new one. What went wrong in Hybern? Azriel had allowed himself to fail, to be used as leverage. What went wrong in Hybern? He hadn’t saved her.
He’d known, as he writhed on the floor, he’d felt her go in, be changed irrevocably forever, felt something between his bones warp and change. But it hadn’t mattered, and a prince had been there first.
He scoured the library, searching hopelessly, when Gwyn found him, the necklace around her neck and a slightly amused smile on her face.
“Lost, Shadowsinger?”
He turned to her, the circles under his eyes deep and dark. “Help me.”
He didn’t go into training when, after days of fruitless searching, he’d found a good enough answer. He paced the length of the kitchen when she came in, and he knew that it was her from the way that the air changed and his shadows skittered and heart wrenched.
She’s startled when she saw him there. She wore a lavender dress, her hair tied back with a floral headband. He stood there, shoeless and shirtless and wide-eyed and frantic. Her eyes softened like soft butter. “I thought I told you to try and sleep more.”
“I know what happened in Hybern. It was—”
She pressed a hand to his chest. Her soft skin on his left him speechless. Wanting. His eyelids fluttered as he tried to keep his head on straight. When he managed to meet her eyes, they were sad, nearly glistening.
“Don’t say it. Pretend you don’t know,” she said, voice so soft it was barely a caress against his ears.
“I can free you.”
She shook her head. “It’s too delicate right now.”
“I don’t care if it’s too delicate,” he snapped. She didn’t even flinch.
Her head tilted to one side, brow creasing. “Yes, you do.” She reached up and held his face in her gentle and well-worn hands. Her thumb slid across his cheekbone. “You’re tired, Az. You should sleep.”
“I don’t need sleep. I need you.”
It felt like falling flat on his face. Like losing the snowball fight. Like heeding Rhysand’s order on Solstice. Stupid, avoidable, and unnecessary. He shut his eyes. Her hands fell from his face. He clenched his jaw. When he opened his eyes after a moment, and she was by the stove, heating up water for tea, taking out her container of starter for bread. She was going on, even though Azriel was the only one who knew how much she was suffering, because alongside all of his grief, there was also hers, hurting that much more.
At dinner parties Azriel brooded in the corner in an armchair and a whole bottle of scotch. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. She knows , his heart groaned. She knows. She knows. She knows. She knows. His shadows were no help, rapt up in the glorious knowledge of her, reporting on everything she did and said and it was torturous but he couldn’t help it, feasting on the knowledge of her day-to-day life. How she still struggled with visions, attempted to learn scrying, training quietly with the wraiths she called friends.
“Don’t you know there are many here who would love to talk to you?” Rhys asked him, flopping carelessly into the chair beside him.
Azriel only grunted in response.
“Charming,” Rhys commented. He paused for a moment. “What is it, Az?”
“Nothing.”
“What, there can’t be something you’re not telling me, is there?”
“Of course, there’s something I’m not telling you, Rhysand,” Azriel stated, cutting his brother a sharp glare, before a burst of laughter from Elain cause his eyesight to wander once again. Azriel knew that his brother was watching his gaze, and where it had fallen. Rhys sighed.
“I don’t find joy in denying you what you want.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
“But Elain isn’t just any female… She’s Feyre’s family, she's my family, she’s yours.”
“Indeed,” Azriel murmured distractedly, forcing his eyes to behave themselves.
“With… the fire brat’s true parentage he technically has no right to the duel, however…”
“War between Autumn and Day,” Azriel answered, meeting his brother's eyes. “I’m more than aware. So is she.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’ve spoken to her about this?”
“She’s not a fool,” Azriel snapped.
Rhysand sat back, and let his head fall onto the back of the chair. “I love you, Azriel, and I love Elain.”
“Spare me your sentimentalities until I'm dead,” he muttered, taking a long sip of his bottle. “Or at least drunk enough.”
Rhysand paused uncomfortably, as if unsure as to how to proceed. So rare was it that his brother wasn’t in total control of the happiness of his family. “You weren’t even this torn up over… well, you know.”
“This is not the same.”
“Isn’t it?” Rhys huffed out, smiling to ease the tension.
Azriel suddenly felt a bone-deep tiredness fill his whole body. So much so, that Elain searched out the source of the sudden echo in her chest from across the room. Azriel knew her eyes were watching when he said. “It’s not. Not even close.”
Azriel slept all night, and all day, and all night again. He fell in and out of consciousness, between dreams and nightmares, waking and not. He couldn’t tell for a while what was real. Elain reaching out her hand, smoothing back his hair from his eyes. Rhys spitting orders at him, horrified and disgusted by the weight of his heart. Nesta, her dark eyes and quiet understanding, watching him from Cassian’s arm.
The King of Hybern laughing, the sound echoing around the room as he thanked the Seventh Prince of Autumn with a freshly Made Fae, for this cooperation in stealing her. Could that be real? Had it really happened.
“Wake up, Az.” A little bird sang to him. “Wake up.”
His eyes fluttered open to the brightness of day, to his own small drop of sunlight taken shape in front of him.
“You took my advice,” Elain said to him as his vision cleared. Her hand still in his hair, the house was quiet. “How did you sleep?”
It was real. It was all real. He was still half asleep, and so he wrapped her up in his arms and pulled her onto the sheets with him, stale with the scent of him, but she was brand new. She didn’t stop him, just threw her arms around his neck and laughed, laughed and laughed. There was no disgust, there was no nightmare. It was just her.
He propped himself up, holding himself above her, looking down. Her smile faded. They’d never been in such an uncompromising position.
“What do you want, Az?” She asked, laying still, eyes blinking slow.
“You’re the Seer,” he whispered. Morning sun streamed in behind him. “Tell me how this ends.”
Her smile was true, if pained. “I wish it worked like that.”
He pressed his forehead to hers and for a moment that’s all they did, breathing each other’s air, entrenched in each other’s space. He could pretend for a moment that it was all he wanted. He wasn’t a Seer. He couldn’t see the future. But he knew that if he had her, intimately, carnally, it was over. There was no going back. He couldn’t pretend. He couldn’t act. This was him before the edge of the cliff, a drop straight down into the depths of the world.
“What kind of bread are you making,” he whispered instead.
Her lips twitched, into a smile? A frown? He was too close to know. “Whatever you want,” she muttered.
He made himself withdraw, shadows cloaked his movements, but he couldn’t cloak them from her eyes. He left her laying there in his bed, there was no other option. He couldn’t stay away, but he couldn’t stay either. His voice was quiet. “I’ll get the starter for you.”