Author's Notes:

This chapter's head canon story takes place between Chapters 37 & 38 of "A Court of Mist and Fury". Amren now has the Fae Book of Breathings (stolen from Tarquin of the Summer Court), and Tarquin sent Blood Rubies to the Court of Nightmares to let them know he'd put a contract on their heads for that theft. Rhys tells us Azriel was the one who picked up the box with the rubies and delivered it to him very early the morning after everyone returned to Valeris with the stolen Book. Azriel then took off again, and it's not stated where he went.

For the sake of this fic, I'm saying he went to The Prison to talk to the Bone Carver on Rhys' behalf.

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"When he winnowed into the front lines of the army, and I got a look at the body and face he was wearing, I was angry. I thought the form he'd taken-that of an Illyrian soldier-was a final 'fuck you' for forcing him to fight for our side. It was only later, after everything was over, that I understood the truth: our Maker had come to stand between us and our enemies, to give his life for ours...as any good father would do for his children."

~ from "The Carver's Legacy", excerpt by Cassian

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Far above my head, the gates into The Prison opened, and the earth rumbled as the ancient mountain was disturbed once more.

A cool breeze blew past our unexpected visitor, rushing down the long corridors ahead of him, announcing his identity to all the prisoners. It seemed the Wraith was out of his cage again, running free and causing mischief.

…And the Night Court's shadowsinger had returned.

Stiff from sitting for so long, I climbed to my feet and stretched, knowing from the sounds of Azriel's quick, uninterrupted stride that he was heading straight for me once more, and with some urgency. He'd be here any second.

It seemed he needed me again.

My mouth went dry and I clenched my fists with anticipation.

My reaction wasn't for him, though. I was hungry. He was bringing me bags filled with bones, as promised. I would eat again and be able to quiet this gnarling need within me for a little while. That's all this was. That's why…

"Liar,"the shadows whispered in my ears, making my heart pound with their wicked suggestions.

I silenced them with a warning hiss.

They went quiet, knowing to obey by now.

I felt him when he was but a few steps away, and my will, my magick opened the doors for him.

A moment after that, I stood in the Morrigan's skin once more. Familiar, hot resentment flared through me as I shifted. I'd voluntarily surrendered my contact with the world above more than twenty millennia ago, but the curse…it further removed me from everyone else. I was now and forevermore 'other' in every sense of the word. Because of her.

Night's spymaster stepped into the open doorway.

As if the cache was calling out to me, my attention was instantly drawn to a satchel made of smooth goat hide that sat on his muscular hip. Within it, I could smell the bones he'd brought to fulfill our prior agreement. They rattled around in that tight, dark space, seeking release and rest.

He'd brought me quite the feast.

I needed to remember to save half of them for carving…

It was almost an afterthought when I noticed he'd come no closer, as reticent as a first-timer to my lair. He smelled of discomfort, of awkwardness and agitation rolled together. Perhaps he'd realised in retrospect how compromised he'd been by the face I'd worn in his presence last visit. He had stood mere inches away from a Death Knight with no guards or wards to separate us—a fatal mistake had I been one of my siblings.

"You're afraid."

'Of me,' went unspoken, but understood.

Azriel blinked, trying to locate me in the dark, but his expression remained blank, icy calm. He'd taught himself well how to hide his feelings, after all.

"I'd be a fool not to be," he admitted.

"But I am the prisoner here," I reminded him, moving around the outer edge of the room. I purposefully stayed out of his light, drifting through the darkness. "And you, my gaoler."

He attempted to track me with his shadows, but mine were older, eldritch things that, for all his immense power, he had no ability to subdue or coerce. I had willed them to serve me ages ago, when his race was young and Prythian was still a dream unrealised. I commanded them now to shut him out.

"I think you would like the rest of us to believe that," he replied, oh-so-carefully. "But it is clear to me who the High Lord under this mountain truly is."

I chuckled.

What lovely flattery from such a pretty mouth!

"Did you know I was once called such?" I told him, feeling generous with my secrets today.

"High Lord?" His eyebrows rose with surprise and curiosity. "Of which Court?"

"None that exists in the world today," I told him, and bade my shadows direct him to the carvings I'd made on my prison doors. There was the story of my first days in this world after crossing the Void and of the rise of my cult, made up of the primitive faeries that had lived in this land. "Originally, it was a glorious and enchanting place, called the 'Court of Wings' by my supplicants. Later, as it filled with decadence and blood and death, it became known as the 'Court of Ruin', and that sadly became its legacy."

Azriel opened his mouth to ask more questions, but then shut it again. As a spymaster, he struggled with the burning desire to know more versus the price he knew I would eventually ask for such knowledge.

His curiosity won out.

"Why refer to your court as one of 'wings'?"

That hadn't been the question I'd been expecting.

Interesting.

"You'd rather know that than the end of my tale—the part about 'ruin'?"

"You'll tell me that eventually," he said without sounding boastful.

Had I become that predictable, or was he just that good at sizing up his opponents?

"Will I?" I asked and made sure he heard the dangerous edge to my tone.

I didn't like being tested.

He cleared his throat. "Actually, I've been sent here on a rather urgent matter. Perhaps we can put off that discussion for another time?" He peered into the absolute darkness, searching for me. "May I see and speak with you today about my errand?"

The sudden switch caught my interest, for Azriel would never be so rude unless the want of my services was great. "Now you've got me curious, shadowsinger," I said and stepped into his circle of light, ending our game. It had been fun while it had lasted, but it was clear from my visitor's expression that he was in no mood for such amusements. I stepped out of the darkness, appearing right next to him. "What is your need, my adept Thief of Secrets? Ask me."

He seemed relieved that I'd agreed to his audience, so much so that he hadn't blinked an eye at the endearment that had slipped from my mouth.

"My Lord begs a favour. Rhysand desires to know if you can read the Leshon Hakodesh, the Holy Tongue."

I stared up at him, at that handsome face etched in ice, at the cat-like hazel eyes that burned a green-gold mystery in the light from the torch he held…and I felt my blood abruptly quicken and my words arrested by a strange, sentimental tugging upon my blackened soul.

He was so beautiful.

So alive in every way…and yet death followed after him, haunted his footsteps.

It's just the smell of the bones he carries. Heady and sweet. That's all it is.

"Do you know it?" he pressed, but I was having the strangest reaction to being this close to him again after our last visit, and found it difficult to speak all of a sudden. My throat closed up, my nose was filled with the scent of his leather and his sweat, my tongue was twisted.

‒And deep, deep inside me, in a place I'd sworn was long dead and buried under my bloodied, cynical heart, under layers of contempt and physical repulsion and emotional desolation, something changed.

Click.

For the first time in a very long time, I felt fear.

Distracted as I was by drinking in my fill of his beauty, I didn't notice at first how he'd sent his sneaky shadows creeping towards me. It wasn't until I actually heard them cajoling me in a lover's whisper to tell him my secrets that I realised what he was attempting to do.

Irritated by both my distraction and his attempt to force my hand, I blew a small stream of air at the sly attackers, fortifying my breath with the arresting magick of Death.

Curling wisps of inky smoke stopped instantly in their tracks, unable to move forward, unwilling to risk destruction. They swirled and eddied in frustration as they drifted mere inches above the height of the stone floor, thwarted by my barrier. Their whispers grew harsher, more hissed, agitated.

Hot anger flared through me that Azriel would dare try such a thing. I stepped back, hissing at him.

"Would you attempt to rip the answers from me, daemati? I could kill you where you stand with a mere thought!"

The sharp edged reminder of who I was, what I knew about him, and that our relationship had always existed from a place of mutual respect that had now been jeopardized caused Azriel to drop his eyes in shame.

"I apologise," he murmured, his contrition sincere. I sensed his remorse, and following alongside it a trickle of self-loathing, something I hadn't expected from him. "It's just that things are...they're…"

"Desperate," I supplied when he faltered, guessing as much by his rash action.

He nodded. To my surprise, he dropped to one knee. "I offer you atonement."

Just like that, I was defeated.

I sighed. It seemed I was weak where Illyrians were concerned. Besides, if there was one surety in this world, it was that members of the Night Court had been designed to frequently try my patience.

Rarely had any of them so blatantly tempted my wrath, though—and certainly not without a bribe in advance to soften the blow and sweeten the pot. That he was offering me himself now…

"You must truly need my help to dare such stupidity."

He only bowed his head lower. "Please."

It was the pleading that swept away the last of my wrath, for I knew this male would never beg for anything. That he was humbling himself now meant that not only was he failing in his latest tasks, but that he was also beginning to despair.

That understanding brought me no joy. Quite the opposite, in fact.

However, with the Fae, nothing was ever to be given away for free. They lived to bargain, and I knew precisely what to ask from him, as I had urgent needs, too. "In addition to the bag of bones you'll be bringing me from our last agreement, the next time you hunt something big, you will bring me all of that prey's bones as well," I instructed. "After you've personally cleaned them, of course. Yours must be the only hands to touch them."

I wanted to taste the death he created.

I wanted his magick inside me, filling me.

He nodded. "As you will it."

"Of course."

I was suddenly very tired. Removing bones from my walls and re-forging them to fulfill my needs took a great deal of energy, as did the carving of new bone, and although I rarely needed sleep here in this world, where time moved slowly and I aged at a snail's pace, I was not truly immortal. No creature on this planet was, not even Azriel's friend, the angel.

Death would come for all of us, eventually.

I crossed my lair, banishing it of shadows for the now, and slid down the wall until I was sitting on the floor. I drew the Morrigan's long, graceful knees to my chest, and felt the smooth, cold granite under my bare toes. The dress Azriel had put me in shimmered with blue starlight in the torch he carried, and I noted how his eyes were drawn to its gleam and its provocative dips…noted the lust he fought to hide as he looked his fill of the woman he could never have.

I sighed again.

"Once I enjoyed the sight of adherents and penitents doing obeisance before me, but now…I do not care to see you kneeling on my floor, Shadowsinger. Rise."

He was half way returned to his feet when I added:

"Unless you wish to service me, thus."

I don't think I have ever seen anyone as surprised as Azriel was in that moment. His head jerked up and his eyes zeroed in on me, widening in astonishment at my jest.

Laughter bubbled up in my chest, escaped through my full, perfectly rouged mouth. How I enjoyed that moment, the reaction I achieved when I said or did something wholly unexpected. I did not have the luxury of seeing it often, so I relished it now.

"To answer your question, no, I cannot. The Holy Tongue is unreadable to my kind. A servant of Death is not allowed to fathom the magick of Life. It is only in abstract, in theory that I understand the purpose and use of the Cauldron and the Books of Breathings. I could never recreate what they do, nor interpret their true mysteries."

"May I ask why?"

Such humbleness. He'd learned his lessons well today.

"Creation, like love, requires complete selflessness," I told him. "When I embraced my Ruin over my Wings, I…lost such a gift."

"Not true, not true!"my shadows whispered in my ears, but I shushed them once more, not wanting to listen to such hopeful prattling. I needed no further disappointments in my life.

"I send you back to your High Lord with no hope for an easy answer."

Azriel frowned. "Rhysand will be discouraged, that is true."

I watched him climb to his feet and felt again, that unexpected and sudden desire to keep him close for a little longer. I gave into it…but on my terms.

"Come, now, Illyrian. Have I ever left you empty-handed?"

Once again, I caught him off guard. "I…I have nothing to offer you for any trade of information, except these bones that were already promised." He patted the satchel at his hip, and then pulled the strap over his head and set them gently on the ground next to the door. The bones inside clacked together softly and my stomach rumbled with hunger. "And I have already consented to bring you my next kill. What more do you want?"

I considered that. What more did I want from him? He was Fae, and a bargain was in their blood…

"You will come back and visit me seven days hence," I said, and held up a hand as he made to protest. "If your High Lord does not have need of you, that is. You will stay for at least three hours. We will talk. Trade secrets."

I knew that last would be like candy to him, an irresistible temptation. I threw down a bit more extra bait: an explanation for my request, something I might not have otherwise done, except today…today I was feeling a bit free with my tongue.

"My time in this world is ending. I would like to share my stories with others, so they will not fade from all memory."

Azriel's stare pierced straight through to my soul, and I knew he fathomed my meaning. "You don't want to be forgotten."

"Who does, shadowsinger?"

He grunted in agreement.

"So, do we have a deal?"

His agreement was warily wrung from him, and I understood why: we were entering a dangerous time now that Feyre Curse-breaker had stolen the half of the Book of Breathings from Tarquin, the High Lord of Summer. The earth had shuddered as she'd taken it from its place of rest and opened it, and I'd felt the hands of fate tighten around my throat.

"Very well, then here is my advice: when the Morrigan asks to speak to the Mortal Queens within their own realm, refuse her. Insist she not go. Do not allow her to talk Rhysand into allowing it."

Azriel had stiffened at his female's name, and his focus had become absolute as my warning hit him hard. "Why?" he asked.

I gave him the only answer I knew would sway him. "I have used some of my strength and Gazed, and seen a Death Mark upon her brow as she stands before the queens and shames them. They will never forget such a slight. I believe she can avoid that fate if she avoids them…for the now."

The torch in the spymaster's hand shook. He took several deep breaths, seeking to calm the heart I could hear pounding under his ribs. "Thank you," he finally said and then bowed at the waist, eyes to the floor, exposing the back of his neck to me in the way of one who was profoundly grateful. "I owe you."

I waved him off. "Seven days hence, share with me your presence, a bit of your time, and a few choice words in conversation. That is all I require."

He left soon after that, and I shut the door to my prison behind him, readjusting to my true body and the cool, soothing balm of darkness once he was out of sight.

I sat for a long time, thinking about the changes wrought in me today, wondering what they all meant. I had felt something come to life within me as I'd stood before Azriel, a sensation I hadn't experienced since before I'd felt her die—the female I'd made my own, the mother of the Illyrians, my betrayer. I'd felt need for something other than the grave.

Until this afternoon, I'd believed my sex as withered as my heart, but I was finding that being stalked by Death was altering how I viewed my life, stirring me in strange ways, and causing me to wonder about the legacy I would leave behind.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Author's Notes:

Reviews are love! :)

XOXO,

- RZZMG