Chapter Thirty-five
The claws of darkness stroked at the recesses of her mind, gentler than she'd expected it to be. She was a child again, looking out through her own eyes. She could not control where they went or which way they flickered. Her fingers did not curl when she asked them to. Her legs did not carry her forward when she tried.
She was a spectator, like the two Illyrians who stood beside her, just in her peripheral, unseen by her child self. She could only experience things that she already had, could only relive them the exact way they had happened.
Her child self was no more than four. Her tiny legs were curled beneath her, tucked to protect their bareness from the cold. Her wings wrapped around her body, a makeshift blanket to fend off the chill.
Her eyes lifted when a grown female walked into the tent, an annoyed bark already aiming at her. Her tiny heart pumped into a rapid beat.
"What do you think you're doing, girl?" her mother snapped, and she was ripping her up by her arm. She came clean off her feet from the yank before she was set back on them. Her elbow popped. It was painful, but not as much as when her father struck her. She could still feel the handprint he'd left across her back.
"Get your chores done before you have both of our hides torn into!" Her mother was shoving her, forcing her forward. "Go on! You can't go around being useless forever!"
Naya was thankful when Rhys pulled them away from the scene. Her mind swirled and searched, landed on anther memory.
She was older, but not by much, and her father was enraged at something she'd done. He had her pinned to the ground beneath him, his knees holding her in place in the space between her shoulder blades, a leather strap in his hand.
Azriel stepped into her line of sight, as enraged as her father, reached as though he could rip the memory of him off of her. Her child self did not get to see his show of protection, could not be comforted by it.
Rhys landed them in another.
Her hands were working the ties of an Illyrian male's pants. He'd brought her soup, and he held it above her head where it would go grow cold before she finished him and could get to it.
The shame would eat her on the inside, worse than the starvation ever did, devouring pieces of her innocence she could never get back.
She blinked and when her lids lifted, she was looking up at the night sky, the loss of her wings fresh and crippling as she was carried through the darkness. He was whispering words to her. Azriel. Even as she couldn't see him fully, couldn't do anything but cling to that voice, the voice of her savior…
The real Azriel looked away from her mangled body; she just barely caught the movement from where he stood, not flew, directly in front of them like a chess piece plucked and placed to float there impossibly.
Memories of Elain followed, first weighted down from the depression that had tried to kill her. She was running a rag over Naya's forehead, dabbing away at the sweat and grime, not caring that Naya would not look her in the eyes or add to the constant flow of meaningless conversation.
Then sweeter ones grew in happiness as the weeks passed and things got easier, easier because she'd had unconditional support.
Elain was laughing, her perfect teeth showing brightly as she threw her head back and giggled. Naya's laughter joined her, rich and pure, and though Naya didn't feel like laughing now, remembering how they'd done so warmed her pounding heart.
Elain was giving her a flower, one Naya hesitated to take, concerned with what she'd have to give in return, scared from experience that had scorned her. It would be a while yet before she learned Elain would never ask for more than friendship, that her gifts were presents of love.
Rhysand ticked through the days, and neither Illyrian made mention, if they could even talk here, of the increasing glances Naya would throw Azriel's way when he wasn't looking so that she could admire him, or the sound of her breath quickening when he'd entered a room.
They came to a stop on the first accusation and time slowed. Naya walked down the cobblestone streets, her shoes tapping along the pathways. Both Illyrians were invisible beside her as they strode alongside. She was excited, slightly scared of the new responsibility, but mostly excited. She'd never been able to pick out her own clothes.
Her hand reached for the first knob on a door made of twelve glass panes framed in a beautiful wood painted white. She had seen the display clothes in the window, had taken a particular liking to a light blue cloak with flowers embroidered along the bottom.
She guessed it had caught her eye, had made her happy, because it had reminded her of Elain.
"Get out!" the owner of the shop ran around the front counter before she had fully stepped over the threshold and shooed her away with a wave of her hands. "We don't take your kind here! Get!"
Because she was so shocked, she had listened immediately, backing up and watching as the owner shut the door in her face. The owner glared at her through the glass as she flipped her open sign to say closed and bolted the door against her.
Naya thought first that it was because she was an Illyrian and her kind was not always accepted, but then she remembered she had no wings and was left in confusion and hurt.
The same encounter repeated itself at each shop she entered, with varying degrees of insults thrown her way, until she finally understood their rejections. They thought she belonged the people of the Hewn City and Mor had made clear the status they would be allowed.
When the sky was blackened, and the sun had set, Naya marched back up to a shop she'd already been to, the last one she would have to.
This would be the answer to one of their claims against her. She didn't know why she felt afraid.
The thin woman at the counter ignored her as she had the first time, snapped that they were closed. Naya could feel her own frustration, her desperate need to not fail the High Lord. He felt it too, turned away from the intensity of it.
He was standing behind the counter with the owner, eyes raking awkwardly over the shop she didn't know if he could even see fully if she wasn't looking. Was he trapped to only see what she saw, held by the same laws she abided by?
Naya's voice turned pleading. She was trying to convince them that she knew Rhysand and the others. She described Mor first, would have laughed at her own description of the female if it were a different time under different circumstances.
"Elain splits her time between the House of Wind and the house by the Sidra where Rhysand and Feyre stay." She heard herself say, and tried to snap her own mouth shut. The words poured out anyways. "She's small and kind and never says a bad word about anyone."
The other occupants of the shop had stopped to listen. She noticed them now, both her past self and present. Before, she had only thought they were nosy, entertained by the show she was putting on. She feared it had gone beyond that, knew it had to.
If that was how Keir had gotten his information to capture Elain…
She wanted to look away, to stop the scene before her. Her present mind fought against it, even as her past one carried on with ignorance. She thought she had been doing something right, that getting clothes would somehow prove her worth to her High Lord.
Rhysand looked on with sadness, felt the grief of her fear, but did not stop the memory. He let it play out until she had bought all she needed and had returned to them. No stops were made on the way back. No persons had slunk from the shadow to buy her information.
When she lay in bed at the end of the day, exhausted from her excursion, and sleep found her quickly, Rhysand sent them to the camps.
Days of time with Azriel passed at a speed that only allowed her glimpses of their smiles over the dinner table, moments her hands had itched to reach for his, times she had seen his own twitch as though he wanted to do the same.
The females in the clearing were rejecting her, the males coming over her after she'd left them. They shoved her into the snow and threatened her. Azriel and Rhysand stood with her attackers, almost as if they belonged there, almost if they had taken part, but their furious gazes weren't on her. They were memorizing the faces of the males, flickering across the color of their hair, the shape of their eyes, the set of their mouths. A promise of what would come to them was clear on their expressions, even if the males could not see it, would not have warning when retribution came.
They followed her back to the tent, watched her brush off her clothes of snow before she walked in.
Another leap through time and she was kissing Azriel, kneeling and encased in his embrace. He tore away, leaving her empty and discarded when things went too far.
She was burning, hands on fire as she watched the females die in front of her.
Azriel was sobbing into her shoulder, his pouring tears wetting her neck.
More intimate memories heated her cheeks in a blush because Rhysand was there to witness them.
Azriel's fingers were inside of her, bringing back the hope that this time he'd stay. Her mouth wrapped around the length of him, pulled moans from his lips.
Rhys mercifully sped up further, only stopping when Kirtida's face appeared in their minds. She was sobbing, telling her story of her abandoned son and Naya felt the pain she'd shared with her, the remorse for a mother's desperate action.
Naya wanted to punch that face now, to scream in it and tell her where her deceit and betrayal would have her in the end.
Instead, she took her to Marcius where he would agree to fly them to her camp.
Seeing him, alive and breathing before her hit too hard, cut too close to the bone. Because now he was dead. Because of Kirtida. Because they had trusted her. And maybe, more than a little bit, because of Naya too.
The journey into the camp had them all tensed, even though they knew they would all make it out safe. They watched Kirtida say goodbye to her son, felt Naya's protesting lungs as they ran from the place when they'd been discovered.
Her time in the cave with Marcius flashed by quickly, none of them able to look on for too long, the grief too fresh.
When they made it back to the female-led camp, Azriel kissed her, the first he'd given her in view of anyone, the one that made her dreams of something with him root a little deeper in her heart.
They flew away and passed her time in the bathtub, over her fight with Cassian, the pride she felt of knocking him down.
Naya realized suddenly where they were headed, where this path was leading. She tried to block her thoughts, tried to force them out. She concentrated on pushing, shoving, kicking and screaming.
Rhysand fought her easily, holding the metal gates of her mind open.
"No." she thought inside of her mind, didn't know if they could hear it or would care if they had. "Don't go here. Please don't go here."
They were close. Azriel was coming to her tent each night, lingering to watch her even when she didn't lift her head to see him. She could always feel him, always knew when he was near.
The real Azriel, not one made of memory, walked to stand in her view. Any suspicion he'd lost as they'd travelled through her mind was back. He levelled her with a stare, waited for whatever it was that she was hiding.
He would know. He was telling her with that stare that he would find out what she desperately didn't want him to. This would be the part that proved she had been a liar, that no one could ever truly want to get that close to him.
It was so much easier to believe than the truth.
They were arguing. Her voice raised louder than she had thought it had as she accused him of being too afraid to fix himself.
If her present self could, she would be seeking out air, needed it to calm a heart that was pumping wildly for two different reasons at once: her past self in anticipation of having him, her present self in fear of what was to come.
He would know the truth, could reject it and her with it.
He was on top of her, pushing himself inside, filling her up as she screamed in pleasure. The friction was building her, taking her to the top.
Rhys started to blur past again, but Azriel held up a hand, signaled for him to keep the memory playing.
The orgasm crashed over her and in flooded her past realization.
Mate. Mate. Mate.
The cord snapped them together, bound them for eternity.
Past Azriel continued to caress her, unaware of what had just happened, still lost in touching her wherever he could even as she reeled with the discovery, tried to keep it hidden as she bathed in its warm light.
Present Azriel stumbled. He actually stumbled backwards. The anger faded from him quickly, the suspicion and the blame. He parted his lips. His eyes went wide as the pupils dilated and took over the hazel.
Rhys slammed the gates of her mind closed and they were thrown back to their darkened room. Azriel fell, knees hitting the hard floor as he collapsed. His head dropped into his hands, blocking his face from her view.
She wanted to tell him that it would be okay, tell him this was proof that he was worthy, so much so that the Mother granted him a rare gift. But again, fear held her back.
Everything was on him again, and if he went the other path, the one he'd been so determined to follow that kept everyone at arm's length, too far from a heart he swore was shriveled and decayed, he could reject the bond and throw away both of their happiness forever.
Azriel shook before her, wings dipping and spreading across the floor behind him. She was still strapped to the chair and so she couldn't go to him, couldn't stroke calmness into his arms.
She turned pleading eyes to Rhysand, and in an instant he was untying her.
The straps left red across her wrists, thick and welting, but she didn't care. When she was at last free of them, she didn't even stop long enough to rub the soreness away.
She dropped beside him so that she was kneeling too.
"Azriel." She called out softly, reached but too afraid to touch.
"I'm so sorry." He shook his head against the apology, harsh and quick. "I'm so sorry."
She did reach for him then, pried his hands from his face gently so that he would look at her. She tried to keep her expression soft, not too demanding, not too longing so as not to frighten him away.
She placed her palm against his cheek and whispered the promise she had made to him the first night they'd made love, "Through anything."
He pulled her into his embrace, buried her into his chest. "I didn't know." He rocked her against him. "I didn't know I could have something like this."