Azriel couldn't find his way out.

His brothers had closed and locked the door, and he was in the dark again. It was better to be in here by himself - they only hurt him, over and over again, knowing he could not stop them. Azriel curled up as tightly as he could, his small body made even smaller on the bare mattress he slept on, with a blanket and a pillow for company. He curled his wings around himself as well, for extra warmth.

"He's getting pretty," One of his brothers said to the other, just outside. Azriel could hear them, even though they didn't know it. He always heard, and saw, things that no one else did. Nobody ever asked, though, and when he tried to speak they mostly hit him to shut him up.

So he learned not to talk, and not to tell.

"Ha. He won't be pretty for long once the warriors get ahold of him. He's almost half-grown and can't even fly. They'll laugh for an hour, beat him to death, and he won't be our problem anymore, will he?"

"I don't know why Father took him in in the first place. He'd be better off dead."

Azriel, sitting in the dark, felt the curl and the kiss of his shadows, and smiled. He may not be able to get out of here, but he was never, ever alone.

He knew something no one else knew, too. He knew that he was going to make friends at that Illyrian camp. He had already seen their faces.

He even knew one of their names.

"Cas-"

"Sssshhh," Mor's voice, her hand on his forehead, and Azriel fell back. He could smell Cas in here with him, felt someone move next to him wherever he was lying, and relaxed. Cas was here. Mor was here. Amren, too. "Don't get up too fast, Az, you'll regret it."

"It's both of us," Azriel said hoarsely. He could feel the shadows curling around his wrists, and felt himself smile, faintly, at the reassurance of their touch. "It's both of us, Mor."

"What is?" She asked, her hand still on his forehead. He felt more than saw her, through half-lidded, blurry eyes, as she leaned back and murmured, "Still feverish."

"This isn't a fever," Amren said firmly. Azriel couldn't see her, but her voice was nearby. "We both know this isn't a fever."

"He's burning up," Mor said, annoyance in her voice. "Both of them are. What else would you call it?"

Amren was silent for a second. "You know what I call it. They're drowning in her magic. She buried them in it. We're lucky they're alive."

Uncomfortable silence.

Azriel reached out, grabbing Mor's wrist in his hand, turning to stare right into her eyes. I love you. He saw her look away, pretending at concern for Cas, and dropped his hand. She was never going to change.

Maybe he'd always used Mor as a distraction from looking too closely at himself.

No. He needed to not get distracted, he wasn't totally awake. Once he was, he might not be able to finish what he needed to say. Azriel forced himself to speak while he still felt foggy and uncertain, while the chains on his thoughts were easier to slip off. "It's both of us."

Mor frowned, her head tilted, that shining curtain of golden hair falling around her shoulders. "What is both of you?"

"Don't …"

Why can't I say it?

"What?" Mor looked up and to the side, presumably at Amren. "What are you saying, Az?"

He could still hear her, in the back of his mind. His own thoughts were louder, but only just. The low litany of promises, the things she could give him if he obeyed. The person she could give him, if he only obeyed.

Rhys, I could really use your help right now.

"I'm not the shadows," he muttered. He couldn't quite seem to get the words out through the fog.

"Of course you're the shadows," Mor said, worried. "You are literally shadows sometimes, Az."

"Not this time. I'm the song." Az felt tears in his eyes at the baffled look in hers, and turned his face away from her. His heart pounded with fear at the thing he knew he needed to say while he still could. "You have to lock us up."

You can't trust us. The words would not come out.

His scarred hands were shaking.

"You need to stop," Rhys had said, the first night Azriel had stayed with them, the scarred boy opening and closing the door to his sleeping quarters repeatedly, testing. Over and over again. "That is the most annoying thing I've ever seen. Azriel, nobody's going to lock that door. Just quit it."

"Fuck yourself, rich boy," Cas snapped from where he sat, sharpening one of his already copious knives on a rock. Azriel was pretty sure he'd made this knife himself out of somebody else's broken discarded one. "You don't know shit about having a hard life. Let him open a door a few times if he needs to know it'll still open."

Rhys had snarled at Cas, and then dropped it when the other boy snarled back, throwing his hands in the air. "Fine. Whatever. You're both insane," He muttered. "And ungrateful."

"Oh, you want some gratitude, High Lord?" Cas sneered, but there was a playfulness to it that took some of the edge off. "Should we thank your highness for his generosity to us lowly bastards?"

"It's 'we' lowly bastards," Rhys said, and then winced. "Shit."

"My apologies, rich boy, guess I'm too much of a bastard to know my grammar," Cas said, but he was grinning now. "Not all of us get private tutors. Might want to watch your language, are you aristocrats allowed to use such filthy words?"

"Oh, fuck yourself right back. I'm taking a bath." Rhys had a grim set to his jaw, for being all of twelve years old. "If my mother hears you say that, you'll end up in tutoring with me, you know."

Before he'd made it out, Cas had said, a bit more softly, "Hey."

Rhys turned back.

"Look… no hard feelings, yeah? Just… it's what he needs to do right now."

Rhys had finally nodded. "Yeah. No hard feelings. Not about this anyway."

"Not about this," Cas grinned at Rhys's back as he left. "Oh, your lordship? We'll try not to pine away with longing while waiting for your return! Please grace us with your presence once more!" They both heard Rhys laughing in the hall.

Az had waited until he was gone, opened and closed the door two more times, and then looked up to see Cas giving him a half-cocked smile. "It will, right?" Az asked, once he knew Rhys was out of earshot. His voice was softer, a little weaker. "It'll still open? No matter what?"

"Yeah," Cas replied, all the anger out of him for the moment. "Yeah, Az. Trust me, all right? Nobody's ever gonna lock you up again, not while I'm here."

Cas lay next to him in the bed, almost half-out of it, as though Mor and Amren had only been able to carry him so far. His face was peaceful, but even as Az looked at him, he began to shift around, taking a deep breath, his wings opening and closing slightly. Az had heard versions of that breath most of his life; Cas was about to wake up.

He wondered if Cas could still hear her, too.

"What are you trying to say, Azriel?" Amren leaned in closely, those shifting silver eyes locking onto his. Her hair, as usual, a perfect shimmering black where it was cut bluntly at her chin. "Cauldron, the heat coming off of them. What are you trying to tell us about what happened back there?"

"We're not going to lock you up- Az, you hate locks-" Mor stammered, but Amren held up one hand and she went quiet.

He kept his eyes on Cas. "I'm not the shadows, Amren. You can't... augh, I can't say it. There's a song-"

Tied to her throne and forced to sing. He was already starting to lose the feel of the strings, though.

Amren nodded slowly, biting her lower lip, thinking. She and Mor looked at each other. "He's seeing things." Azriel groaned inwardly. They didn't understand. The words didn't mean anything to them at all. He couldn't seem to tell them, couldn't find the words to say. They were locked up in the back of his head, behind a sense of blue smoke and Cas's gentle baritone singing, trying to lull him back to sleep. "All right, Azriel. Just try to rest."

Next to him, Cas's lips moved, as though he were speaking to someone. Azriel could almost understand him… almost.

"We need to talk to Lucien about this," Amren said, standing up and gesturing to Mor, who followed suit, looking worriedly back at him. "He was there."

"Lucien told us what he saw," Mor said, chewing her lower lip again, common when she was nervous. "He doesn't remember much. But he already left."

"You let him leave?" Amren asked, her eyes narrowing.

"He said he had to go Under the Mountain," Mor groaned, putting her head in her hands. "He promised Amarantha he would, when he got back from the Autumn Court. He said he didn't dare let it take too much time."

"Shit," Amren said, but without any particular rancor. "I don't blame him. Better to see her when she's happy he hurried back than pissed that he didn't. We'll just have to figure it out ourselves, then, til he gets back."

"Az, do you remember any of the words Cas said?" Mor asked, her worried eyes on him.

No. Not on him. Past him. On Cas.

"No," Azriel murmured, closing his eyes. When he tried to think, tried to remember exactly what he'd seen, all he could sense was the vanilla smell, the idea of Cassian's empty face, his fingers tightening on Az's throat even as his other hand had been in his hair. A spike of fear, that cold heart of his on fire, with the need to… help him, go to him, be by his side, do whatever he wanted. "I can't remember what he said."

Please don't leave us alone. He couldn't ask. I don't know if he's still in there or not. I don't know if I can stop myself.

"Oh, well. Try to rest," She said gently. "Amren and I will try to find a way to help without locking you up." She and Amren left. Azriel sent shadows to trail them and listen to their conversation, almost instinctively, hardly even a thought. Amren was suggesting a trip to the library to research.

"I might not know what they are," Amren said thoughtfully as she and Mor headed downstairs. "But I think I know their age, and where they came from, and that's a good place to start. I need to get to the library."

"I'll try and find Lucien," Mor said, nodding to herself. "If I can get him back quickly, we won't have to... do what Az says." Her voice wavered, a little, at the end.

"I know," Amren said, their voices almost too faint to her as they made it to the bottom of the steps. "I don't want to lock him in either."

They were gone.

Azriel laid there, his mind still a fog of dreams, his heart a block of ice and worry he could not quite bear to fully examine just yet even as he felt the fire burning around at the edges, leaving ash behind. He couldn't hear it any longer, but he could feel it.

A threat. A promise. A song.

All he had to do was open a door, and he would have what his cold heart truly wanted.

Cas was trapped.

The silver cuff was back around his neck and he was locked in that jail cell, in the dark, with only the hint of a light down the hall to see by. The smell was everywhere, the prison smell of blood and shit and worse. He tried to get free, pulled to the end of his chain, screamed in fury and scratched himself bloody. Nothing happened. He heard the sound of someone else coming, looked up to see Azriel escorted by guards, dragged by them really, only an agonized groan giving away that he was still alive, bloody stumps protruding from his back where his wings had once been-

No. That didn't happen. I'd have torn the bars down to get to him, bitch.

He was tied to her throne, watching her fuck Tamlin, hopeless and helplessly trapped, just some object for her to show off. She was making him watch, and it wasn't Tamlin, it was Azriel. It was Azriel who twisted, miserably hard, underneath her, who turned his blank hazel eyes on Cas, full of tears-

I'll kill you and myself and everyone Under the Mountain before you'll touch him. Try me.

He'd been making his way up the mountain for days, climbing higher and higher. Had killed so many by now, so many warriors who might have been friends if it weren't for the Blood Rite. He'd taken everything off of the bodies for supplies, had changed boots every time he found someone with warm, dry boots that were close to his size. His clothes were nearly stiff with the need to be washed. His hair hung in clumps around his face, and he was nursing a bad, potentially infected cut to one arm he was trying to forget existed. His wings, tied tightly behind him, ached to be released.

He rounded a bend, found some rocks that had natural gripping spots, and climbed straight up with his arm muscles screaming at him to ease up. He couldn't, though; he'd seen signs of others nearby, and he had to move fast enough not to become yet another target. His gloves were nearly in tatters, and he'd lose a finger or two if he didn't find someone to kill and steal a new set from soon enough. He told himself to focus, to simply put one foot up and then the other, digging his already torn fingernails into the rocks.

He made it, pulling himself up onto a ledge that led to a small line of trees just below the line where they stopped growing, got to his feet, and took a deep breath.

A knife to your neck is an unmistakable sensation, and Cassian's eyes widened as he saw the weak sun shimmer slightly off a blade that had nearly drawn blood, wondering who had gotten the drop on him. He slowly turned, realizing first that the knife was held by an ungloved hand, horribly scarred.

Cassian's heart beat so loud he could hear his pulse in his ears. Azriel stood at the other end of the blade, smiling at him. Not his usual small, quiet expression, the kind of smile he had learned as a child was so unobtrusive that no one would hurt him for it. No, this was a smile Cassian had only seen perhaps four times in their whole long lives, a bright, natural, wide smile that lit up every bit of his beautiful face.

That had been the first time he'd seen Azriel smile like that. And it had been for him.

"Hey, Cas," Azriel said, and dropped his hand, sheathing the knife. "Where have you been? I've been waiting for you to catch up with me."

Cas grabbed him, just grabbed onto him and held him, and it was probably right then that he knew. He'd spend the next five centuries ignoring it, but in that moment, he knew. "Az, you're alive. You're still alive." Az's shadows slithered around them, a kiss of cold dark along Cas's neck, ruffling his hair. The first time Azriel's shadows had touched him of their own volition.

"So are you," Azriel said, holding him just as tightly. His voice cracked and broke, just slightly, before he brought it back under control. "So are you. So are you."

There was a silence, their arms around each other, both of them ignoring the way the other one smelled by this point. Cas pulled back, finally, looking at him again, searchingly. Azriel had a couple of healing cuts on his face, one across his nose, that would probably heal into scars, but otherwise he looked good. "Missed you. Mostly."

"Missed you, too. More than mostly," Az said, and then his eyes scanned around them. "Let's see what food we've both got and work out a ration schedule. There's a cave near here I'm using for shelter, but I haven't dared start a fire."

"We'll just have to huddle together for warmth," Cas joked. Azriel mock-punched him in the arm and led him away.

"We'll find Rhys in the morning. If I found you today, I bet he's close, too."

Cassian almost said, I hope it's just us for a while.

No. Don't want you to see this. Not yours to remember. Not yours, you fucking bitch. This memory is mine. This is mine.

He felt himself rip it away from her, the burst of her frustrated rage that, even if just for a moment, he was stronger. But it was his: that memory, the memory of the first time he knew himself. It belonged only to him.

Cas shifted in his sleep, felt himself take a breath, tried to swim back up to consciousness, melted back into the dream nonetheless. He could vaguely hear them talking, but he couldn't quite bring himself awake to understand what they were saying. He could hear Azriel's tenor voice singing in his mind, beckoning him back down into sleep.

All that mattered was Azriel and Rhys, Mor and Amren after that. The rest of the world could go to hell.

He'd brought hell with him into the world.

Cas stood on a bloody battlefield under a red sky, his Illyrian leathers smeared with it, grinning wickedly at the carnage he had wrought. His soldiers flew above, still picking off those who had tried to separate from their regiments, men hoping to return to families long since herded away or massacred. His Siphons glowed bright with more power than he'd ever had, and all these bodies were here because of him. He could see a line of mortals being led away in chains and found no empathy for them within himself.

He had been ordered to kill whatever he could not enslave. Their fates were none of his concern.

He turned, and Azriel stood just behind, smiling back at him, in his own armor with the blue Siphons glowing wildly bright. Not much of an expression, maybe, but Cas had known him for centuries. This was Azriel, content. Cas was the Queen's Killer, her living blade turned upon the continent, and the Killer's Shadowsinger the eternal darkness beside him.

"Are you with me?" He asked, already knowing the answer.

Azriel smiled. "I am always with you, Cas," he replied, shadows twisting around him so that he seemed to disappear and reappear.

Together, they looked back out at the death and destruction they had wrought. Cas laughed, a wild and carefree sound, and Azriel walked up, standing next to him.

Cas turned his head to the side, leaned forward until he and Azriel's foreheads touched. Azriel reached up with one scarred hand and wiped a spot of blood off Cas's face, licked it off his own thumb. They stood there for a moment, two unrepentant killers, their eyes on each other, and then Cas whispered. "Together, no matter what."

"No matter what," Azriel replied. "Always."

All he had to do was welcome her in.

"What I want," Cas mumbled, and realized only after the words were out that he'd actually said them, not just thought them, and was awake. Lying on a bed. Home. He groaned, putting his hands up over his eyes.

Everything still smelled like vanilla and woodsmoke.

What had happened back there? The last thing he remembered was looking into the fire while those hateful silver cuffs burned. Then… nothing. Absolute blank nothing. Now this.

"It's okay," Az murmured beside him, and Cas tried to blink himself fully awake, slowly pushing himself up. He turned to look. Azriel's hair was a mess around his head, half of it sticking straight up, the other half smashed down from his pillow. Cas couldn't quite keep back his smile.

"Hey, Cas," Az said when they met eyes. "Where have you been?"

"Dreaming, I think," Cas said blearily, then pushed himself up until he was sitting, looking down. He was still wearing his clothes from earlier, so it couldn't have been too long. Azriel sat up too, when he did, and there was a moment of silence as Cas looked around. It was the same guest room he'd been in since… "I thought I was supposed to stop being sleepy when you got that shit off me?"

"You did stop being sleepy. Then we went outside to burn them." Az groaned, rubbing at his left eye with one fist. Cas swallowed hard, watching him. "Something happened out there. I don't… I remember your face…"

"Yeah. It's all a mess for me, just… a weird smell and heat."

"I said something to Amren, about it," Az muttered, shaking his head. "I don't remember what I said. I wasn't all the way awake. They said Lucien was there, I think, or… saw something? We'll ask when they come back. Cas, I…" Azriel trailed off. Something changed in his face, an expression Cassian hadn't seen in centuries, at least.

"What is it?"

"I asked them to lock us up," Azriel said. His voice cracked, just slightly, on the word 'lock'. "And I can't remember why. I can't remember so much..."

"Az, no-"

"I think they need to, but I can't remember why. I don't want to be locked up, Cas. I-I hate-"

"I know you do. Never again," Cas said, grabbing onto one of Azriel's scarred hands in both of his, the rough, ropelike scars shifting under his grip. They met eyes, and Cas leaned in slightly closer. "Do you hear me? I made a promise to you, Az. No one's ever going to lock you up again."

"I don't know why I asked, Cas. I can't remember. It seemed important, but... I don't want to-"

"I won't let them," Cas hissed. "Don't worry, Az. I'll never let them lock you up. We're together in this, right?"

There was a warning bell inside his head, but he didn't know why. A warning bell muffled by the sense that it was fine, it would all be fine, as long as he kept Azriel by his side.

"Together," Azriel repeated, and smiled at him, that small quiet smile. "No matter what."

The warning bells rang louder. What had happened by that fire? He remembered he had been dreaming… but no. Whatever the dream was, it was gone.

I can make sure that he is never locked up again. I can help you keep him safe.

All he had to do was let her in.

So he did.

Cas grinned, sitting up in bed. He felt amazing, suddenly, lighter than air. "Always."