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utterlyazriel · 1 year ago

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whom the shadows sing for — (and the thief's echoing hymn)

a/n: apparently it is easier to push out a new chapter when its a juicy one!!!! sorry for this but did you really think i was done with the angst? oh naur babey we're just setting up the scene i envisioned when i had the original idea <3 strap in babe!

word count: 2.4k

synopsis: A secret you vowed to never reveal gets uncovered and Azriel struggles as all he's known is turned on its head. An unfriendly adversary from the past comes knocking.

CHAPTER SIX :: BETRAYERS

One glimpse at your shelter as he winnows into the forest, the snow crunching loudly underfoot, and Azriel knows it deep in his bones.

Something is wrong.

He stands amongst the pines of the forest behind your shelter and even from the distance, he can sense the change in the air. The wind, wilder than usual, tastes faintly like danger. It's snowing. His shadows wisp about, whispering and twittering, doing nothing to ease the twinge of panic.

There are boards in the back window.

Azriel stalks forward through the snow, his ears keenly sifting through the noises of the forest around him but nothing gives way. Just like he had felt all those days ago, there’s a warped agony that clings to the sides of your shelter.

Last time, there had been blood in the snow. A trail, that led him right to you.

Today, there are only the boards in the windows.

His mind jumps to the other warriors in the camp, wondering if this is their doing— trapping you inside as some sort of sickening test. See if the bastard can fight his way out or starve to death in his own four walls.

Something like pure malice glimmers just beneath his skin, ready to rear up, but—

—But no. As he gets closer, Azriel realises he’s wrong.

This is not the work of the brutes in camp, this is you. The boards have been put up from the inside.

A series of emotions stutter and slam into each other, wrestling with one another in his chest. Confusion shares the top spot with an unwavering concern that seems to grow with every step closer. Boarded up from the inside... what possible reason could warrant you to do this?

Uneasiness coats his every nerve, an uncomfortable prickle rolling along his raised hackles. Something stirs in his chest. Azriel stalks closer to your shelter, snow slushing beneath his boots, torn between calling out and biting his tongue. He goes for the latter.

His shadows glide around him agitatedly, circling his hands where they hover over his weapons. His wings are pulled in tight. He slows as he reaches the front of your shelter.

There's no sound coming from inside. No scent of blood, no crackle of fire. Yet somehow he knows, without question, that you're in there.

As his concern winds down a notch, his rational brain begins to tick. There might be someone else in there with you. As the different scenarios get considered and discarded, Azriel lands on the most likely one. It's a trap.

The reasoning builds up the motive, spinning a story that makes sense. A Shadowsinger, the Spymaster of the Night Court, caught off his guard by using his latest confidant against him.

Azriel turns over the idea slowly and decisively, thinking of Brudam, of Lord Mylind, wondering if they've been buying their time all this while— and he's been too distracted with you to even notice.

Azriel curses himself for being so careless.

There's still no noise from within the shelter.

If it's a trap, it doesn't matter; the only way out is through.

Letting his hand curl around the Truth Teller, Azriel grips it tightly and pretends that the loud thump in his mind isn't the echo from his afraid heart. He can't afford to be afraid — not with what it would mean, not with how it betrays how he feels for you.

Not when it distracts him from doing what is needed from him.

His shadows spiral up around him and Azriel weaves the darkness, folding the fabric of the world til it aligns as he needs, his anger sharpening his resolve. He steps through the rippling darkness and into your boarded-up shelter with one swift motion.

It's dark inside. There are slivers of light that curl around the planks of wood, reaching in the dance upon the floor, distorted by the motion of falling snow. The air is stale, undisturbed.

Azriel's gaze scours the environment for enemies, his grip tight around his knife, prepared to unsheathe it without hesitation. His shadows fly around wildly, whispering the details of the room— each corner empty, except for the one he knows your bed is tucked in. Something loosens in his chest just a fraction.

There's no one else in here but you.

His eyes go right to your bed. It's hard to see within the darkness but your figure is there, hunched up even tighter than the last time he had found you wounded, wings pulled up in an uncomfortable hold around yourself.

As the possibility of a trap tapers away, another scenario creeps in — you've been attacked and holed yourself up before they can finish the job.

Almost as the thought crosses his mind, the scent of blood reaches his senses. Azriel stills, each limb locking up as the information filters through his mind, aided by the murmurs of his shadows. Blood, they chant, new blood.

Not blood from an injury, not from an enemy.

A sickening type of surprise coils up Azriel's spine.

"Y/n?" He dares to speak. Your name comes out like it's completely foreign in his mouth.

There's a stunned web that seems to cling to him, dulling all his usually keen senses, as the pieces of this puzzle whiz around and begin to slot into place. New blood— new blood means— it means—

"Azriel?" Your voice sounds from the darkness in the corner. It's smaller than usual, thick with emotion.

There's the sound of you shifting. Azriel can't move at all. Even his shadows have slowed in their surprise.

With his eyes rapidly adjusting to the dimness, he can just see the features on your face as you untuck it from your curled-up position.

Someone is beating loudly against the walls—or at least it sounds that way with how hard his heart is beating in his chest, valves working in overdrive. Is it his heart? It feels like something else, something deeper.

New blood, new blood, new blood. A thousand different instances burst from his memory, glazed in a new light.

"He tells me that your absences during training have come to be somewhat expected,"—

—"You're smaller than usual Illyrians,”—

—Hands, weathered and much smaller than most males—

—You're small but your wings are still large and beautiful, tucked up neatly behind your back. Most warriors in camp must have at least a head of height on you—

—A Fae with long hair like Cassian's, chopped at the shoulder and scraped back — and a voice softer than most. A Fae with eyes that burn with a promise for retribution, with icy fury like his own.

Each one threatens to send him staggering to his knees. How the Cauldron did he miss it? How could he have missed it? He's the fucking Spymaster of the Night Court. You've been lying to his face from the very beginning and he's believed you hook, line, and sinker.

You're smaller than the males in camp because you aren't one at all.

You're so driven to help the others, to mend the clipped girls because... because...

His hazel eyes catch on your wings, snaked around yourself protectively and Azriel suddenly feels very, very sick.

You seem to realise all of a sudden that he's real and not just some hallucinated fever-dream version of him. Despite the efforts to keep everyone out, he's here, on the inside with you. He knows.

"Azriel," You say his name again, like a plea this time. Wings uncurling a fraction, you make a move to stand but an invisible pain cripples you and he watches as you shudder, a pained whimper leaking out your mouth. An instinct within him roars to rush to your side but his feet are rooted to the floor.

"You..." He begins, his voice far away.

Something is unravelling in his chest with an alarming speed, something growing and churning, fiery hot. It feels like dread—panicky, horrified fear boiling in his stomach. He doesn't realise that it isn't his own.

"You're not a male."

His words look like they cause you more pain, agony shifting across your features, and Azriel wishes he could take them back the moment they leave his lips. But he's not wrong.

Even from across the room, he can see the quiver in your bottom lip. You're frozen in fear, he realises.

Tentatively, you shake your head. "I'm- I'm not."

You're not. Perhaps, he was wrong about you and you're not some beaten-down warrior, striving for justice against the tides that try to hold you back. Maybe you're a snake in the grass, hiding yourself, cocooning in a lie. You've been lying since the first moment you met him.

Azriel can't tell why it hurts so much in his chest, why it feels so close to betrayal, why it feels like his heart is bleeding. Who are you really?

"I—" Your words get cut off with another wince as you slump over, your cycle ravaging your body with pain. "Azriel, wait—"

He's taken a step back without even realising.

Who are you? Stranger, ally, friend; all the titles you've earned feel like they're getting stripped back forcibly and his heart warbles agonisingly in response. His shadows have picked up speed, darting around him. His wings have risen an inch, flared a little wider.

"Please," You gasp, trying to shuffle forward again but halted by the waves of pain. One of your hands grips around your midriff tightly and there's a sheen on your face that tells him you're crying. He's never seen you cry before.

Who are you? Is your name even your real name? Azriel doesn't know where the hurt is coming from, why it's so strong— except he thinks he does.

He's known from that first week with you. Known from the first time he laid eyes on your face and his very soul seemed to call out in response. He's known and he's been ignoring it all this time. His mate.

"You— you have to understand," You're still grasping at words desperately, even as you give up trying to move through your afflicted torment. Azriel takes another step back. What is he doing? "Please, I- I just wanted to keep my wings."

Choked sobs begin to claw their way up your throat and Azriel feels the thickness in his own throat, connected from the inside. You're connected. The pounding on the door, on his chest, in his heart, is the only thing he can focus on, getting louder and louder. Bile threatens at his throat.

He can't be here.

"I just- just wanted to keep—" The words keep coming, even as he steps back once more, shadows swirling. Words lurch up his throat, questions, explanations, accusations. None of them escape. His mouth is dry.

His wings rustle as he tucks them in and forces his gaze down to stare at the floorboards. He's been here, lived here, in your lie for how many months? His mate, a liar.

He shifts the space between inside and elsewhere, scrunching the fabric so it aligns with somewhere, anywhere he can think of.

"P-Please, you have to understand—Azriel!"

Your call echoes as he steps through his magic, letting it carry him away from your shelter, from your agony that he can feel from the inside, from the lie he's been fed.

He lands on a hilltop and when he opens his eyes, he's looking at a familiar cabin. His shadows move about almost limply, his magic and siphons depleted from overuse in such a short time. He can feel the chill of snow on the tips of his wings which drag behind him.

He's...drained. Stunned.

And where he's always dreamed of a golden thread, a lover's tug, rooted deep in his being that connects him to his mate... there is only a pull of utter misery.

—

You had thought of this before; what it might be like to have him find out.

The trust severed. Your friend, the only one you've ever truly had, lost to your betrayal. The first couple weeks in his company as you learnt slowly to let your guard down had been the first times in decades you had been freed from night terrors.

You had thought of it then, during one of those nights—you did not want to lose him in any way.

The cost was too high, the sheer magnitude of your secret that you never intended on him finding out. You had promised yourself you couldn't, you wouldn't tell him, no matter how much you yearned to.

You wonder now if you would have been better off if you'd never met him at all.

Never trusted him, never took his hand, and stood by his side to learn how to fight. No learning how to trust after years of desolate solitude, just to have it ripped from you. No shared smiles in the dim light of the evening, glancing away when you're caught looking for too long.

No hurt, no pain, no replaying the look on his face as he uttered the secret you had kept hidden for nearly three decades.

The burning spasms of your cycle seem almost dull compared to the ache in your heart. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts. You feel like you're burning up from the inside, like there's a hurricane of regret building in your chest and its' howl is as torturous as it is loud.

Time passes. Outside, the snow turns to heavy rain.

The painful throbs that wrack your body ebb and flow but the heaviness in your heart never seems to fade. You can't decide between being angry at Azriel or at yourself.

How could he be so... so unfeeling? So merciless, not giving you even a moment to truly explain?

There had been a time where you thought when he looked at you, he saw beyond the surface; more than a mutt, more than just another bastard. You half hoped he saw through your facade and didn't care anyway.

You're a fool for that, you realise now.

Your consciousness wanes as you burrow as deep as you can into your blankets, wanting them to swallow you whole, wrapped in half-hearted warmth and ribbons of pain. He's never coming back, you realise. The tears start up all over again, your heart sobbing out for a piece of it that's missing. He's never coming back.

You know that for sure— so when there's a slushing of feet through the snow and a pounding knock on your door, your hackles rise in pure fright. Your wings tuck around yourself a little tighter, right as another spasm of agony rocks through your bones. You cry out weakly, teeth gritted tightly.

There's someone at the door who's come sniffing for a fight. It's not Azriel.

[NEXT PART: MATES]

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