Chapter 11: Celebration
AZRIEL
The winter solstice was upon them.
Small fat drops of snow were falling softly from the sky. It peppered Azriel's dark hair.
To those that marked the seasons, this gentle formation of snow clouds meant they were in the season of wearing heavy jackets to many of the Fae snow-covered cities. Illyrians were not welcome everywhere, and instead of the glamour Rhys would place to mask their obvious Illyrian features, he suggested they wear jackets like all the rest of their party.
"I know Illyrians can still feel the cold," Mor pulled a sweet smile on him when she caught the goosebumps that ran up his arms, she rubbed one of his forearms, raising one of her delicate eyebrows, "don't lie to me Azriel," and Azriel forgot the reason why he was silently brooding in the first place.
He walked forward with Rhys, Mor, and Cassian and felt the unbearable weight once more.
Oh, that's right, he moaned in his mind, I hate feeling like this.
Azriel's jacket felt as if it was suffocating his wings with black suede. It made him feel as if he was trying to stuff them back into his shoulders, rejecting his Illyrian side. Another more practical side of him knew, whatever he was feeling, it was not important, his discretion was necessary to follow Rhys like The Shadow they called him.
In that matter, Rhysand took his High Lord duties very seriously.
The past months he was finishing off late night meetings with the remaining grumbles of nobles, touring the Illyrian war-camps (to remind them of the Night Court's authority), and even making time to visit the orphanages and poor houses of Velaris. Rhys did not do things in halves. He had finished their tour by surprising them with a visit to the Hewn City. It was beneath that mountain that they went to see to it's poor, crippled, and elderly as his late Mother had done during their winter family traditions.
After they left the Court of Nightmares, they returned once more to the orphanages of Velaris, and a final round to the southern one. Mor seemed to be filled with energy and emotion, she spoke up as they took a leisure stroll to the last orphanage, stopping at some vendors for each of their Inner Circle to discretely buy winter season gifts for one another, "Selene would be proud of you Rhys. For keeping this tradition alive."
"I sure hope she would be," Rhys patted the Mor's hand on his bicep when she returned to him, her coin purse depleted, and her bags heavier with gifts. Their High Lord breathed in the biting cold air as if it was something sweet, "she would have loved to have seen us like this."
"You're right about that Rhys." Naturally, Morrigan stood beside him, all she wanted to do was comfort Rhys. "I hope you don't mind if I give them presents that I already bought," Rhys face nodded slowly as if he had already known. "I just don't want to give them to anyone else. I am so happy you agree."
"My sister and mother would have liked that." Rhys bowed his head for them, "thank you Mor."
"That's what family is for." She repeated the heart-warming phrase while holding his arm. She was the expert at knowing what to say, and she came with a charming smile when the people of Velaris wanted to congratulate their newly anointed High Lord.
"Here let me take this. I'll carry them while you do your thing," Cassian took her bags, so she could better distract the audience when the children become overly excited to see Rhys amongst them and seemed to not understand the meaning of enough.
"Thank you, Cass," she winked at Azriel's smug brother, and Cassian looked over at him, gloating, and playfully winking back at a glaring Azriel.
He left Cassian's side, and got out of the crowd itself.
The shadowsinger took to the less inhabited part of the street, leaning up against a wall, and pretending not to be looking for would be High Lord assassins. To Azriel, it was a wonder how much patience Rhys had for small talk and meaningless chatter of the weather, mining business, farming, and sailing business of the past months.
It's not hard to listen, they make me feel so at home here, Rhys mind brushed his when his shadows murmured some unease at the crowd growing around Rhysand. They will not attack me Az. Don't worry, calm brother.
Azriel had to remind himself repeatedly as they stuck their hands out to touch him, Rhys allowing it, they will not harm Rhys, he repeated for himself. They will not harm Rhys, they just want to meet him.
Ah my shadowsinger, what have I told you? Never lose your cautious nature, the dark shadows awoke curling around his shoulders, taking their natural path around the ridge of his clavicles, and for some reason the sight of Rhys surrounded by civilians left them uneasy too, the time will come when you will have need of your cautious nature.
Not in Velaris, Azriel spoke back to the shadows. Not so soon after Selene, Nyx, and even the High Lord.
His shadows did not answer. They flickered for a moment and went back to sleep.
You bastards.
But this is Velaris, Azriel reminded himself.
He didn't always need the shadow's affirmation to know the truth. To anyone's eye Velaris had only excitement and respect instead of the fear and loathing for Rhys' like other cities seemed to harbor for him and his extended family.
Watching Rhys bend down to speak to a small Fae child, Azriel had never noticed it until now.
Being a shadowsinger for Rhys was very different from being a shadowsinger for his father. Rhysand had a gentle hand, and Azriel felt lost amongst the onlookers. He knew he should not feel so, not after years of orders for bloodshed at his father's command, and yet he could not understand why he could not just be happy that this High Lord's rule would be a better one.
Someone came to break his attention. "Lighten up Az, it's Velaris, we can catch some drinks after Rhys is finished, meet up with a few of my friends, a certain lady friend has her eye out for you-" Cassian said as if he could forget the certain lady friend that he was mentioning.
"I don't know who you're talking about."
"Liar," Cassian smirked, "I caught you once with her."
"It wasn't me." Azriel bit right back. It wasn't him anymore, he reminded himself.
"Liar!" Cassian looked as if he was winning.
It reminded him of the horny female. The previous months Azriel had been bombarded with plays by a raven-haired temptress that must have been provoked by Cassian to get to know his shadowsinger brother intimately. She was unrelenting in her chase, even showed up at his house one time.
She wanted to congratulate him on the peace their High Lord had made final in the Night Court. For those that had yet to hear, the Great War was coming to an end, the Spring Court had pulled out from Hybern, humans slaves freed, and the Velaris clubs were a place of celebration and getting wasted until you could no longer feel your face.
Azriel felt less needed by Rhys' side due to peaceful declarations amongst Prythian's High Lords. He had not known a time without War with the humans or Hybern, and now that it was over, it was as Azriel said before, he felt lost.
He felt lost most of all in the celebratory nightclubs.
Despite that new development, Azriel felt comfortably in the streets of Velaris, with his friends and his wards Nuala and Cerridwen, and even if Kianna seemed farther away from him as time shifted like sand under his feet. The little Fae Lady seemed to be just the skin and bone of a fading memory, one he latched onto most nights for some tormented reason.
"I think I will go home Cass, perhaps another night," Azriel left it in the air.
He took none of it. "Don't puss out you big baby!" Cassian grabbed him by the neck and pulled him into bicep, digging his fist into his head and scrapping his scalp with his knuckles. "Did you lose your balls in the Spring Court or something, huh? What the fuck is the matter with you?"
He wasn't going to respond to that, but when Cassian kicked Azriel's ass with the back of his foot, the shadowsinger had enough of this public embarrassment. "What the fuck is the matter with you?" Azriel bit back, pushing on the snake constricting bicep cutting the oxygen to his brain. "Why the hell are you being an asshole to me?"
"About the time that you decided to be a sore ass. Tell me what is wrong with you!"
Azriel gritted out, feeling his face becoming red. "I am fine! How many times do you I have to tell you! Bastard."
"Until I start to believe you, bastard boy," Azriel squirmed harder at that horrible name, roaring at Cassian to let him go when his vision got white spots.
"Fine you big baby!"
Azriel got out of his hold, but he knew Cassian had let him get out of it. His heart was not in fighting either, especially the play fighting his brother enjoyed.
"I got you big baby." The Bastard had the biggest smile he had seen in a long time, and the brooding shadowsinger was not in the mood for this.
Azriel felt tired of repeating himself. "I've told you a hundred times. What am I going to have to do for you to stop bothering me?"
"I'll never stop bothering you brother," there was a bit of seriousness in his tone. As if it was his choice to keep finding out what bothered him. It was nice to know that he cared on a deeper level, that this was not all just a way for him to keep busting his balls.
"I know," Azriel shrugged the heavy emotions Cassian was sending his way. "I know you do Cass."
"Am I interrupting something?" Rhys came up to them, that boyish smirk Azriel had never thought he would see, sealed on his lips. "I swear, just a few more minutes and I would have to walk Azriel down the aisle. How did you get him all wound up like this Cassian?"
"What can I say?" He boasted for some reason, "Azriel just can't get enough of me," Cassian tried to make a pass at slapping the shadowsinger's ass, and Azriel leapt away, back to his perpetual brooding.
"Oh, leave him alone," Mor noticed what was happening, and Azriel bit back the groan at having to be rescued by the female he dreamed of rescuing, "never mind what you boys fight about, look who decided to come along Az?" His eyes went down to her clasping hands with his silent twin wards.
Azriel's frown grew, when they looked up at him with sheepish smiles, and those bright amber eyes in dark faces were downright pleading with him to let them stay.
They disobeyed you shadowsinger. Their shadows shrunk back in the presence of his own. He held back the fatherly reprimand that was tempted to come out of his mouth.
After a moment, he gave in. "I thought I told you both to wait for me to get home," Azriel found his voice, no longer worried about his ever-falling pride to Cassian and Rhys. "I already made plans for us to go out later, you both know that."
"I invited them," Mor spoke up for them both, and his twin wards, Cerridwen and Nuala, nestled their guilty heads into Mor's sides, pleased with the lovely Lady's invitation, but awaiting his approval as their keeper. For a selfish moment he thought he would go home with them, prove that it was not right to disobey his rules, but then he was reminded of the celebrations all over Velaris, and how the twins had wanted to get out since the day before.
"Very well," Azriel nodded, "come with us. Mind your manners and come to me if you need..." Devious grins broke across their faces, and they ran into the crowd of orphanage's children before hearing him out. Perhaps they were eager to meet some of the friends they had made on their last outing this way of Velaris, and once again he was lost on how to be a guardian to them.
"That was nice of you Az," Mor took his arm in account that Rhys and Cassian had found a stall with gem encrusted swords and daggers. "You are doing a wonderful job with them."
"I don't have enough time to go places with them," Azriel spoke up, sullen for that fact alone when it came to Naula and Cerridwen's happiness, "they deserve better than me."
"Then I guess we will all have to pitch in," Mor pinched his arm playfully. "It's no use just watching you get all anxious like this, we should help each other."
"Now that is a good idea." Azriel couldn't help the tiniest of smirks when Mor squealed at his agreement to her proposal, she had been hoping for this.
"Oh, thank you Azriel, thank you, you won't regret this. I will make sure Cassian will behave himself, but I know Rhys will be just the happiest, he loves children, didn't you see how he just bloomed when the little"-
Azriel's shadows awoke for some reason.
His eyes picked up and away from Mor's lively face to the crowded street, and to the hidden eyes that he could feel latched onto his person. He didn't notice it at first, but when he saw whom was watching all his muscles froze and sprung upon those furious green little eyes.
"Az? What is it? What's wrong?"
Azriel detached himself from Mor, "excuse me, I have to"-
He was already stalking through the crowd, going straight to where Kianna stared so angrily at him. What did I do? Azriel could not find the answer. Perhaps if he asked her, asked what had made him so, it would stop the fist that had curled itself around his thrumming heart.
A group of chittering children got in the way between him and her smaller person, and he pushed past them to get to her. His fingers grasping for the space between them.
It was all for naught, Kianna was gone in a second.
Only the empty space where she was once standing remained. He spun in a full circle searching amongst the happy faces, finding not even one looking back with the face he been trying to run to. She had disappeared, winnowed perhaps, but he was torn over how such a small faeling was able to winnow so efficiently, and first how she had entered Velaris in the first place.
It left him far more worried than before. "Kianna?"
"Azriel," Mor had followed him, she was breathless, "who was it?" Right behind her came Rhys and Cassian, both wearing scowls, hands on their hidden blades, as if they half expected him to attack or save someone from some terrible fate.
What is wrong Az? Rhys touched his mind.
"Nothing." Azriel made his mind an impenetrable wall. "Nothing at all."
o0o0o0o0o0o0o
He was not able to keep away.
"Fuck it." One of the colder winter mornings he just left. Without telling Mor, and especially not Rhys or Cassian. He settled the twins at the House of Wind, in one of the guest bedrooms when sleep was still heavy over them, and to sate his need to protect them while he was away. It would be easier for them to reach Mor here if they woke and needed someone, as the twins put it, Mor was their new Lady mother, and all three females had but all become inseparable in the past weeks. To the terror of Azriel that had become the focus of their giggles and simple pranks.
Azriel was still getting sap out of his bed.
Whatever was growing between Mor and his wards, he was glad for it. They would be fine without him gone, and that was incentive enough for him to set out across Prythian once more.
Azriel kept Rhys' glamour over himself as he stayed perched in the great Oak tree that had haunted his dreams, looking through magicked lenses at the reconstructed Manor house and the abundantly absent human slaves that he expected to still see harvesting the lands of the Spring Court. Alas, the reports had been right. Tamlin was a different High Lord than his own beast of a father.
Azriel rubbed his lips of the sweat that puddled there, hopefully that was good news for Kianna.
He lifted the far-seeing lenses that Cass had given him from the Day Court, they aided his eyes to see farther, and once he wiped his brows he could see a clearer vision, searching for any signs in the heat of spring.
Cauldron balls, it's hot. Even in winter this was a place of warmth and sun. Among the sun's rays, he narrowed his eyes in search for anything that could put his mind at ease. What he could see was that in the place of human slaves, lesser Fae had been brought into the fields to pluck, package, and export the fields of plenty. There were three very large mud circles to the northern part of the Manor house, and he wondered if those were those were the mass graves of both Fae and human his spies had whispered of.
Azriel was surprised that the High Fae of Tamlin's Court had not spit upon being buried with those they deemed less worthy, and still his shadows could not pick any distrust or trouble. There seemed to only a tired peace had settled over the Spring Court, and he wiped his sweaty brow as he waited for any news, the jacket he still wore was like a heavy rag of sweat across his back, but he stifled back the weakness with his resolve to see Kianna safe.
He needed to know.
Azriel tried to reach out to the memory of her, of her angered green little eyes, her wild golden curls, and her courage to go back to her brother even when he offered her a way out. Azriel remembered her clinging to him, asking him to stay when he knew it would only spell trouble for her… he brought the lenses up for a final time, perhaps he could get a closer look. Perhaps there was a tree-line down-wind to the Manor House, and he cursed when he could not find it.
"Azriel."
He looked down at the base of the Oak Tree, and there she was.
"Azriel," she repeated his name, hugging the tree, and her shining green eyes, only happiness at finding out it was him, "you're here!" Her grin had no deviousness or loveliness in it, only appreciation for seeing him safe and here. She had grown in the three months he had not seen her, she was half-an inch taller, and her hair went down to the small of her back making it seem like she was more hair than girl.
"Kianna," he felt something flicker around his wings when he said her name, and he jumped down without a single thought to his safety, his wings trying to open against the constrictive jacket, but groaning as he rolled on them to break his impact.
"Ow." That hurt.
He soon forgot his pain at the sight of Kianna sprinting at him. Her shriek of delight was swallowed when she jumped on him as he was trying to get up, "Azriel! Azriel! It is you! I knew you would come back!"
He held her and closed his eyes to enjoy the moment of her freely enjoying his company. So she didn't think him a monster. His nightmares would be better after this, he whispered into her hair, "I had to know you were safe. I felt as if you were trying to reach me, that you were angry with me"-
"Angry?" Her brows furrowed as she leaned back to look at his face, her scrunched nose and furrowed brows meant she had no idea what he meant. "Why would I be angry at you?"
"No reason." Azriel felt silly, "tell me, what has happened here since I have been away? What of Tamlin? What has he planned for you?"
"Oh that, he's just being Tam," she rolled her eyes in a childish antic that he had not even seen in Cerridwen or Nuala. Both of his wards were too preoccupied and hesitant with his shadows to see the concern that laced his every word.
"Tam?" He was pleasantly surprised with this new development, "Has he been kind to you?"
"Of course, he's very nice, especially when he wants me to behave, and so I guess I listen to him," she delivered the words he needed, as if she had trusted her brother's character from the start. He felt a bit of frustration at her brushing Tamlin's blood-soaked past, but the shadowsinger was unsure how much she knew, and how much he was willing to explain of why the Night and Spring Courts could never find apology and forgiveness with one another.
He found a safer topic. "Do you still feel alone?" That had bothered him the most when he had left her, "have your family made you feel safe..."
"Oh they have." She rubbed at his hands, unafraid at the roughness of them, and that was all the incentive she needed, "it's kind of a long story."
"We have time." Azriel looked back to the Manor surprised to see none had noticed her absence.
Kianna jumped right into her story.
Her delighted face meant to world to him, but he reigned his happiness at the mention of being visited and having conversations with her dead mother, and on a more dangerous note, a personal visit from Hybern to give condolences to her High Lord brother.
Azriel's skin prickled at the mention of the pack of Hybern nobles returning soon to help smooth the unease in her brother's radical changes in their Court, such as freeing all human slaves, sending them South to the villages of their people, and of his proposal to the six High Lord's to build a Wall that would separate a Fae Prythian from their human world...
Did you enjoy Azriel's POV? Tell me what you guys would love to see in this story,
as always you have all my love, and appreciation for reviewing and reading this story,
have a wonderful rest of the week,
Odeveca
