I just want to give a huge shoutout to my best friend/sister who has graciously decided to beta for me so that there are less mistakes for you guys! So, Zaridea! Thank you!
To those who consistently review I want to extend my deepest thanks. All these reviews keep me going, it's so nice to have feedback. I only hope I can continue to create content that you all like. Every single follow or favorite means the world to me, so again, thank you.
Also, sorry for the cliffhanger, but don't worry! This is only the beginning. Happy reading!
-Moriarty
I took in an icy breath and the wind forced itself down my throat and into my lungs, stifling any scream that might have wanted to escape. I could see the rocks on the ground. I couldn't even bring myself to close my eyes.
Something slammed into me from behind pushing me faster toward the ground. Strong arms clamped down around my middle pulling me against a solid form before with a thunderous crack and a horrible bruising jerk, my fall slowed. A low grunt from behind me was the only indication of who had tried to save me. Our descent shifted into more of a glide, but we were still going down too fast. The ground raced up.
I finally found my voice as I hit the ground, being jolted from the secure hold around my middle. I heard the beginnings of my scream and then darkness.
There was a tug.
My everything hurt. I could hear the low murmur of concerned voices, feel someone touching my throat as if looking for signs of life. The moonstone bridge suddenly flared and something forcefully tugged as if something inside of me were attached to a tether. My eyes flew open of their own accord and revealed rising so high above me the mountainside I had just fallen from. The very real mountainside.
The sky was the gentle blue of a robins egg, in fact, I could hear distant birdsong and the crashing of waves. The fingers at my throat trailed up to cup my cheek, and even with the pain roaring through my body I noted the fire that trailed behind them. Azriel leaned in eyes flickering over my face landing on multiple spots with pinpoint accuracy until they finally met my gaze.
A cut marred his cheek, slowly leaking blood. I frowned at the injury and shifted to try and sit up, but his other hand pressed down on my stomach halting my progress.
"Don't move." He muttered looking me over. "You could be badly injured." There was an edge to his voice that I hadn't really heard before. I frowned and looked him over noting that something about his eyes was off. I methodically began tensing different bits of my body to see if anything felt broken, but other than a lot of bruising I felt okay. Well that and my head hurt like a son of a bitch.
"I'm fine." I told him trying to push myself up against his hand.
"Do not move." His voice dipped deeper, closer to a growl.
"Azriel, I'm fine."
"We would not be in this situation if you were fine." Every word felt like a punch to the gut. I had never heard him sound so quiet and precise with his words.
"Really, please just let me-"
"Why did you jump?" Azriel leaned in close as he asked, dominating what I could see. There was something unyielding in him that reminded me of iron. Cold and untouchable. I froze, fear flaring in the face of whatever it was that was sliding through those eyes.
The weight of what I had almost done pressed down, shattering the strange clarity of the moment. This wasn't a dream, and I had tried to commit suicide. What little strength I had been using to fight against his hand dropped away from me.
How in the hell was this place reality?
I should have woken up, how could real life be where an unreachable beautiful winged man was currently only inches away from me? A world of magic and possibilities. All the strangers who had shown me kindness were real people, with their own lives. It was too much to take in.
Pretty traveler. The voices sighed almost sounding relieved. I winced at them hating that I could hear them still. Find your tether to this world and hold on. They were fainter at least, seeming to be sinking back into the deep places of my mind.
"Tell me." Azriel's voice cut through my train of thought reminding me that I had been quietly watching him while I unraveled on the inside.
"It's how I wake myself up." I found myself answering him.
"You are not dreaming." The hand on my cheek twitched slightly. His eyes drilled into my own and I felt a storm of emotions in the distance. As if from outside of myself.
Reality was setting in now. That thin layer of disbelief that had been insulating me from what had happened shattered around me. It was real, all of it.
The ground had really fallen out from underneath me. I had really almost been erased then saved only to find out that something else had been mixed in with me. My body was no longer my own, nor was my fate because of that thing that was now a part of me. I was really surrounded by strangers in a foreign land with no clear way on how to get back home.
Even if I could...no one would recognize me. I certainly didn't.
Everything seemed so far away. Even the pain that lanced through the body seemed to mute itself. I knew I should be feeling something, panic, fear, disbelief. But there was nothing. An emptiness where there should have been light. I had jumped off that distant balcony to my death. Azriel had jumped after me. Hurt himself to save me. I should feel something.
"Yeah." I breathed through numb lips.
Those things that I told Azriel. Letting him see how broken I had felt inside. Telling him what I really thought. Telling him that he deserved what I did not.
That was what death felt like, rushing toward me. It was my actions that brought it so close to me. Would it have even mattered if I had hit the ground? What would anyone here lose? What did anyone back home lose? A worker. A roommate. A dissapointment.
"That's all you have to say?" The iciness in his voice could have given a polar bear frostbite. His eyes were the opposite, nearly aflame with some emotion I couldn't recognize. His body hot against mine as he held me down. People were offering help, but he didn't seem to see them. Hear them. It was like he could only see me. Maybe he was really seeing me for the first time.
I should feel something.
"I'm sorry to cause you trouble." My voice, which wasn't my voice...not really, sounded like it was coming from outside of me. Everything was different now. Changed.
Made. It's what they kept telling me but I wouldn't listen. Not really. Not with the hope that all of the trauma, confusion, and pain was just some dream and that I was safe and sound in bed. But the truth of it was finally laid bare. Even now, I was all too aware of the hand that slid from my cheek. The feeling of those clever fingers trailing slowly down my neck to rest at my shoulder trailing fire that I had never felt before. A physical response that was beyond what emotions I was feeling. Did I feel anything?
"Trouble." He nearly stumbled over the word, and those strange burning emotions in his eyes shifted to something else. The moonstone bridge pulsed, but even that intimate thing that I hadn't explained to anyone, was dim near me.
I had never felt anything even close to an urge toward people before. No matter how much they tried to coax it out of me it just didn't feel right. Kissing was pleasant but it didn't affect me the way it seemed to affect everyone else. It never felt the way they said it was supposed to feel when I read books about romance and love.
I had made peace with the fact that no one would draw those feelings out in me.
And now, just by shifting his hold on me I felt my body respond. I wondered if my soul was changed too. Was I even the same person who fell to begin with? Did it matter anymore? Azriel searched my face for a moment and the hand pressed to my stomach pulled away.
"Hold still." He murmured as he began softly pressing and checking my right arm his face lapsing back into an unreadable mask.
I watched as he carefully pressed along my arms, for the most part avoiding the different bleeding scratches. There were more than I expected.
His hands were efficient, moving with a speed and precision that was rather impressive. I hadn't really seen Azriel work with his hands before, in fact I hadn't even seen him train. I had tried not to notice anything about him at all. But now…
His hands were scarred. It was the first time I had really paid attention to them, and without a thought I reached out and caught one of his hands with my own, concern cutting through the haze that surrounded me.
Azriel went very still for a moment. I traced the scars frowning to myself. Whatever caused these had to be awful. They almost looked like burn scars.
"Are you okay?" I asked looking up at him. "Do they hurt?"
Azriel watched me for a long moment. "They don't hurt anymore." His gaze flickered down to his hands.
"That's good at least." I traced them for a moment longer still deeply disturbed by the marks on his skin. His scent washed over me, all leather, crisp air, and musk intermingled with sweat and blood. He tugged his hand from my grip and continued, pressing gently down my arm till he got to my hand. Satisfied with that arm he quickly moved onto the next.
He was very precise with his movements, no effort wasted. I could tell he was trying to be detached from the process as there was nothing in his face that echoed the jolting in my stomach with every practiced brush of those elegant fingers. I tried not to think about it. He moved to my sides and the fluttering increased, as did a slow curling heat.
"I'm fine, you don't have to-" I sucked in a sharp breath as pain exploded in my side. For a moment I couldn't breathe. Azriel frowned his brows knitting together.
"Broken," he muttered, "or at the very least bruised."
"Please just let me up." I growled at him trying to pull back from his probing fingers.
"No."
There was something so absolute in his refusal that it finally sparked something inside of me. I grit my teeth restraining from the urge to bare my teeth at him like some feral animal.
"I'm not asking anymore." I tried to push him off, but he easily deflected my hands. "Let me go!"
"No."
What an arrogant bastard. I swung at him before I knew what I was doing. This wasn't like when I would swing at Cassian. Azriel so easily batted aside my attempt that it seemed laughable in comparison. I swung again, and this time he caught my arm pinning it down at my side.
"You have no right to hold me here!" I hissed at him.
"I have every right." His voice was dangerous and low. "You tried to kill yourself just minutes before, why do you think I would trust you to do anything alone?"
"I thought it was a dream! You would have too if you came from where I do!" Something began to well up from deep within me, something lashing and angry that felt completely different from the strange ancient power from before. "Magic isn't real there! Your life, your world is just a story to us! Yet somehow here I am, surrounded by strangers in a land where magic is real! You have wings! People don't have wings where I'm from. All these things keep happening to me and I don't understand any of it!" I wasn't sure when I started yelling, but the force of it stung my throat. "Nobody has even taken the time to explain any of this to me! You are all too busy grooming me for a world I don't know. And even if I did try to kill myself, what does that have to do with you?" Using my free arm I pushed at his chest, my bloody fingertips splayed and pressing against the bare base of his throat. "You don't even know me! Why should you care?"
That strange burning entered his eyes again, but his voice was soft as he replied. "I have my reasons."
"What reasons?!" That strange lashing feeling increased, thrashing around inside of me like it was looking for some sort of direction. Needing me to guide it.
"You are my Mate." Azriel snapped. "Of course your death means something!"
"What does that even mean, Azriel? No one has told me anything!"
I watched as he shut down. As the anger that had gotten him to speak was pushed down, conquered. Whatever openness we had achieved yesterday was just...gone.
"Nothing that you need to worry about right now." His voice was gentler. Cooler.
"No, you're going to answer me. Someone is going to tell me what this is supposed to be!" I glared at him, and the thrashing suddenly speared for him. Twisting through my body, reaching out and connecting to him through the very tips of my fingers. The fingers coated in both of our blood. The power hit home, and I watched as his eyes bled into a fathomless black. I felt his heartbeat match my own, his breathing match my own.
"What is a Mate?"
"A rare and sacred bond between two fae." His voice was strained, raspy. "They are your soul's other half. It is the deepest connection that can exist between two people."
"I don't understand." I breathed even as something massive thrashed at me, at my hold on him. Azriel's willpower tried to throw me off. Shadows spilled around us, causing startled cries from the people who had been watching the display. "You think I'm your Mate?"
"I know it. You can feel your connection to your Mate as much as you can feel your limbs."
"There's no way. You don't even like me." I breathed reeling back from him. The moment my fingers were no longer touching his skin he gasped, the black draining from his eyes as I scrambled to get away from him.
It felt natural, like it was a perfectly normal thing to do. Whatever I had done I knew deep in my soul that what he said was the truth. He caught my leg before I could get fully away from him. Panic hit me low in the gut.
"Illadrin." Azriel's eyes were wide, his breathing heavy. Absolute shock shivered to me from across that moonstone bridge. "You're an Illadrin."
"Let me go." The panic spiked and once again that ancient power flared to life deep in my core.
"We have to tell Rhysand. This changes everything." He muttered.
I reached out to anyone willing to help me, anything to get me away from the revelation in Azriel's eyes. From the fact that I knew that what I did had forced him to answer me. A Mate. I wasn't sure I understood or believed him, but if it was true. That would make him something akin to a soulmate. Azriel, cold detached Azriel, was notmy soulmate.
Soulmates were supposed to care about you. Want to be around you. Not seem conflicted everytime he looked at me. Soulmates didn't look at another the way he did. The way he looked at Mor. It was like my heart was tearing, breaking into a thousand pieces and I had no idea why.
All of the hurt and confusion welled up, and up, and up until I couldn't contain it anymore.
"You are not my soulmate!" I cried at him. Azriel blinked as if pulled from whatever train of thought his revelation had sent him down. I kicked at him, actually connecting and knocking his hand away. I scrambled to my feet and skittered backwards.
"We are Mates," Azriel grunted hauling himself up onto his feet. "I understand that it can be a lot to take in, and I'm-"
"You of all people are not the other half to my soul!" I snarled cutting him off. Hurt flashed through my mind, sharp and tinged with a lifetime of longing and loneliness. "I-If I had a soulmate, which I don't because those don't exist, they would actually care about me! They wouldn't be head over heels for someone else!"
Azriel jerked back eyes going wide, his wings flaring slightly. The shadows that had been concealing us from the rest of the world flocked to him, wrapping him up until he was nothing but a living shadow.
"A-and I can't have a soulmate because I can't give anything that anyone wants! I'm just a burden. I was one back home and I'm the same here too! It doesn't matter that there's magic here. It doesn't matter that this body isn't mine. That whatever that water and darkness was that tore me apart and put me back together, even that couldn't change what I am." Something deep within me splintered. "I'm broken and a nobody and you should have let me fall! No one here would mourn me. No one back home would mourn me. What's even the point of all of this?!"
Poor thing. The voices were loud, even above the roaring in my head. Pretty thing. Such a lovely madness brews here. I laughed but the sound was bitter and broken.
"They were right all along." What I had feared finally rose to the surface. "They were right." I couldn't think past it. "They were right."
"Who?" Azriel's voice was raw. "Right about what?"
"WHY WOULD YOU CARE?" My voice ripped itself apart. My throat burned, and it took me a moment to realize that tears were now flowing down my face. Of course the body would betray me in this too.
What do you want, pretty traveler?
"It's obvious to everyone but you that you're in love with her. You seem so conflicted like you have to make a choice, but that's not it is it? You've already made your choice. Because if you really cared about this bond, if you really believed in it, there wouldn't be a choice." I didn't know much about him, but I knew that this would hurt him. No one talked about what was obviously between the two of them. It had to be a weak spot. I had to get him to go away. I couldn't be here. Couldn't look at him without my heart breaking over and over again.
I could see the soft and open longing that had been plain on his face when he had looked at Mor last night. The sheer and overwhelming love in that one look. A lifetime of it. It crushed me.
What do you want?
"Love someone worth loving." I spat at him the fury and hopelessness coming to a head. What did I want? I wanted to get away.
So be it. The well of power deep within me surged, and I turned to run. I folded myself down, collapsing into mist and shadow, into the sliver of myself that was left, and I shot away not caring about the consequences. I soared, ripping myself through the world, feeling the fabric of it's very makeup sliding against me, and then in a rush of light I hit the ground.
The world spun around me, and darkness threatened to overtake my senses. I was so damn tired.
The world no longer smelled of the ocean. It wasn't overrun with Azriel's dizzying scent either. Instead it was the slightly sweet smell of decay. Leaves and moss were the cushion underneath my battered body. I managed to roll myself onto my back, and saw magnificent and ancient trees soaring up above me, the leaves a riot of colors that made the world look like it was on fire.
There was a minute of nothing. Just the sound of me breathing. The feel of the ground, solid underneath me. Then, without warning, I was somewhere else.
I was someone else.
Gone. The thought echoed in his head like the tolling of a bell. One moment she was here, all fury and hurt, an inferno that peeled back his defenses with almost no effort. And then she was gone.
'Love someone worth loving.'
Fury, deeper than any he had ever felt before raged through his body. He had felt the beginnings of it when she had thrown herself off the balcony, but this didn't go away. She wasn't here. He couldn't see her breathing, smell the intoxicating mixture of jasmine and vanilla that seemed to hang about her like a shroud.
Gone. One moment he was standing on the street, attempting to hold himself in check, and the next he was hitting the balcony of the House of Wind. Cassian was there looking confused, but the moment he saw him, Cassian's mouth hardened. Somehow Cassian could tell. He wanted to fight. Rip into someone, anyone until she was back. He had to get her back. It wasn't just a thought, it was a command written into his very existence. It was taking all of his willpower to stand still, to not roar at the world.
Gone. Where was she?
All he could see was the festering hurt that she'd laid bare. The confusion at her own feelings shining along with her tears. He had made her cry. The shaky way she held herself, as if she didn't trust herself. She had admitted as much. He roared for Rhysand in his mind even as Cassian jogged up to him concern crossing his face.
"What's going on?"
"She's gone." Two words that nearly undid hundreds of years of discipline.
Azriel, what's going on? Rhysand's voice spilled into his head and he allowed him inside. Let him see what had happened.
"Don't worry she can't have gone far." Cassian looked as if he were already planning for the search for her.
"She's an Illadrin." He forced himself to say.
"Fuck,"Cassian groaned.
Rhysand echoed the sentiment, already on his way with Feyre in tow.
"If anyone finds out…" He'd kill them all. He'd rip apart anyone who tried to take her from him. All he could see was the gentle smiles she'd allowed him. The music of her laugh. The look on her face as she created music so moving and beautiful he had to move closer to her. How gently she touched his hands, how she didn't shy away from them.
Gone.
As quickly as the vision hit me it left, leaving me with a hollowed out feeling in my stomach. Maybe I was going insane. Or maybe I dreamt it. Either way I slowly tried to push to my feet, already feeling drained. Leaves rustled near me, some buried instinct flared to life having me turn toward the sound. Nothing but trees. I sighed in relief and surveyed my surroundings. It was nothing but trees as far as I could see. It was rather beautiful.
A forest draped in fall.