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Chapter 9: know you by heart✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ . ✦
"It's nice. The music is good. I think you wouldn't hate it," Oriana ended her presentation of why he should accompany her to dance.
Quite frankly, Azriel had been willing to agree with anything Oriana had been saying, because she was sitting on his lap after they had shared lunch. He had managed to take a break from his duties for once and lunch with Oriana was definitely worth the detour he had needed to make it happen.
And he was more than willing to agree when Oriana told him that she liked going there with friends to dance, as it was quick stomping dances that reminded her of the mountain.
"Let's go tonight," he said impulsively. Even if he ended up hating it, he would have seen Oriana do something that she loved. He could sit through a few hours of that.
And really, sitting through a few hours with live music was a far cry from the less pleasant aspects of his job. So really…
"Yeah?" Oriana made sure, but a smile was growing on her face and he nodded.
"Yeah," he agreed, and the kiss she bestowed on him at that was worth so much more than sitting through 4 hours of music that may be horrible.
He caught her face in his hands when she pulled back, kissing her again…and then another time.
He only pulled back suddenly, when he felt a razor-sharp talon at the edge of his mind.
He wanted to curse.
It must have shown on his face because Oriana cradled his head in her hands.
"Are you alright?" she asked him, eyebrows furrowing, and he nodded.
"My Brother," he gave out with a sigh, as Rhys scraped at his mind edge, obviously unwilling to wait.
"Your brother," Oriana repeated flatly.
"He's a daemati," Azriel explained. A daemati and a pain in his ass.
He slipped open his mental shields just enough so that Rhys could slip into them.
His shadows hadn't told him that anything was amiss, so really, what could this be about?
What happened, Rhys? he asked.
Elain and Lucien are coming over from Day.
Right. And that mattered to him how exactly?
It was nice that Feyre and Nesta could see their sister. But Azriel himself…well, he doubted that either Lucien or Elain would be happy to see him.
Good for them? Azriel responded bemused.
He hadn't heard that it was a diplomatic mission of any kind between Day and Night, Helion hadn't been the one dispatching his son and heir.
So really, what did it matter?
We'll have dinner at the River House this evening.
Now, he had his answer.
I have plans, Azriel responded quickly.
He did. And he could really imagine a better use of his time than sit through the awkwardness than that dinner promised to be.
Everything so that he didn't need to sit through that.
Being cooped up alone in your house isn't a plan, Rhys responded pointedly. Azriel wanted to bristle.
He wasn't the only one. His shadows actually did.
Besides, we are talking about the future High Lord and High Lady of Day, so I am sure you can make space in your busy schedule for them, Rhys' mental voice dripped with sarcasm but Azriel just stayed silent.
Rhys sighed.
Get over yourself, Azriel, Rhys said quietly.
Right.
That's all he was ever supposed to do, right?
He smashed down against the bitterness that welled up into him at that because quite frankly, it didn't fucking matter anymore.
It didn't.
I actually do have plans, Rhysand. I can come for dinner, but I am not staying for dessert, he gave back clipped instead.
Fine.
Rhys left. Azriel snapped his mental walls down behind him with far more force than necessary.
He focused back on Oriana, who still sat on his lap, watching him carefully.
"I am expected for dinner," he said quietly.
"Want to go out dancing another time?"
Maybe he shouldn't have expected something else, because Oriana had never asked him to tell her anything more than he had been willing to offer up by himself, but he still was. He still waited for the moment when she would be upset or angry with him because he couldn't force himself to drag her into the abyss that was his work. Couldn't force himself to answer a question.
That was one thing. Oriana was another thing.
It was unfair, he realised that. She told him about her family. About growing up and how Enya braided her hair and Kiran had used to let her run wild in his forge, about how Samson had let her hold his sword when she had just been a child of no more than 5, about how Titania was strict and seemed arrogant but had still sobbed over her husband losing a leg, and weeks later about the prothetic that Oriana had enchanted…about Cyrus and her playing together, the brother with whom she shared a father and the reality of being a child of two worlds and somehow not belonging into either.
He couldn't even open his mouth and tell her about Cassian or Rhys.
He wanted to sometimes. Sometimes he thought about it.
About what Cassian would say if he came to his brother the next day and admitted the whole thing.
Cassian would be happy for him. He knew that.
At first at least.
But he didn't know how Rhys would react and he wasn't willing to stake Oriana's happiness or safety on it.
Not yet.
"No," he said quietly. "I'll be done by nine? Is that early enough?"
"That's the time, I am just starting to drink at," Oriana said with a grin. "I'll be waiting. I am the one in the red dress."
He couldn't help but smile at that.
"So who is coming for dinner? If you can tell me?" she asked curiously. "Your brother?"
"Both brothers," he answered. "Their mates. Some old friends. Lucien and Elain."
He could give her the names. It didn't matter.
She pulled back, looking at him curiously. "Lucien Vanserra? Or whatever he calls himself these days?" she asked, her voice curious, but there was something else there.
"You know him?" he asked carefully. How? Why?
"Yeah, I know him," Oriana said with a laugh. "He's my cousin, Azriel."
His brain felt like it was freezing in place.
What.
"His mother and my father were siblings," Oriana explained. "You knew my father was from the Autumn Court. When my parents married it was quite the scandal. Lucien is a few decades older than me, but we are cousins. Haven't talked to him in…over a century, I think though."
Azriel had no clue how to even react to that particular bit of knowledge.
This was entirely unexpected. And he wasn't sure that he liked it.
"So. I am thinking I am gonna make rabbit stew next week," Oriana changed the topic, without asking another question or saying anything else. "Are you gonna hunt me one and bring it to me like some barbarian warlord returning home with the carcass slung over your shoulder like a prized kill or should I just go buy one already dead?"
He dropped his head to her shoulder and started shaking with laughter.
Azriel left Oriana with the promise to be the one responsible for the demise of a poor bunny later that week and then trudged his way towards the River House for dinner.
He was really not looking forward to that.
Not because he had some kind of feud with Lucien or Elain at that matter, but because seeing Elain was a constant fucking reminder of that solstice night.
And that still pissed him off to no end, even when it was 2 years and a mating bond for him ago.
It was still the night where Rhys had pulled rank with him about something purely personal and expected him to just accept that, without even a discussion.
Something inside him, Azriel was quite sure, had fractured that night and he wasn't certain if he was ever going to piece it back together again like it was before.
If he even wanted it to
The only thing he was sure of was that his private life was going to be kept far out of Rhys' grasp.
Oriana was his and no one else's and nobody was going to take her from him.
And now he sounded like a possessive asshole.
Weakly, he wondered if that was the mating bond at play, pulling out every territorial instinct he had…and he had quite a few of them. He had never really had anything that was his and his alone after all.
Still, every thought of Oriana was banned from his mind as soon as he arrived, instead replaced with once again contemplating table linens.
Why not.
If Rhys picked up a stray thought, he would probably think that Azriel had gone completely mad, but hey, that was fine too.
Still, Elain looked as lovely as always, and Azriel managed to snag a seat at a corner of the table, next to Cassian on the other side, and Morrigan at the head.
It could be worse, he imagined.
Like this, he was far, far away from Rhys…and from Lucien as well.
The one thing that did quip his curiosity was the incessant whirring of Lucien's mechanical eye though.
"Is everything alright with your eye?" Feyre was the one who asked the question that Azriel also had. He listened with half an ear, not that interested in the answer.
"No, it has decided to act like this," Lucien gave back sarcastically. "Nuan already took it apart, she has no clue what is wrong with it. She has reached out to some old friends of hers, including the person who figured out the spell in the first place. But until then, I am stuck with this."
He means Mistress, his shadows piped up suddenly and Azriel's eyebrows rose with that.
You are sure?
Mistress figured out a way to make artificial limbs feel real when her brother-in-law lost his leg in a mining explosion. She spent around a decade concentrating on that, his shadows hissed.
He knew about the prosthetic leg. He hadn't known that she had spent a decade working on that.
Mistress talks to us while she is working, his shadows answered the unspoken question. Mistress is very smart.
Yeah, Azriel agreed with that assessment.
But if Nuan, the Master Tinkerer from Dawn Court had already taken the eye apart and not figured out anything that was wrong with it…well. Then it clearly wasn't a mechanical problem. It was a problem with the enchantment that made it work.
"You need an enchanter," he said evenly. The conversation quieted down at that.
"I do not," Lucien sniped back.
"Yes, you do," Azriel disagreed. "If it was a mechanical problem, Nuan would have figured it out. So it's a problem with the enchantment. Who did it the first time?"
"Nuan did," Lucien answered, crossing his arms.
"She's an alchemist, not an enchantress. You need one of those to fix…whatever the problem is," he said with a wave of his hand.
"What do you even know about it?" Lucien asked with a snort.
"I know that it is a completely different skill set," Azriel gave back tightly. And then, he said something he shouldn't have because his temper got the better of him. "I also know that you are related to one."
Lucien's knife hit the plate with a clang. "How do you even know that?" he demanded.
"I am the spymaster of the Night Court," Azriel gave back like that answered every single question Lucien could possibly pose.
And maybe it did.
It was nothing that he could not also have found out through very different channels.
"So what, you care about gossip from 3 centuries ago?" Lucien responded sharply. "Do you have nothing better to do?"
"Luce…" Elain said softly, but Azirel ignored her.
"If it's useful, yes."
"How could it possibly be useful to you? Also, he's dead. Has been dead, for over a century," Lucien told him harshly.
Oh.
Well, that made it better. Lucien didn't even think about Oriana. He thought that Azriel had been talking about her father.
"That didn't show up in your research, did it?" Lucien asked with a harsh smile.
Oh, he was willing to let Lucien have that round.
Can you ask Oriana if she would be willing to take a look at Lucien's eye? She probably already got a letter about it from the Head Tinkerer from Dawn.
The answer came minutes later, not by a sentence hissed by his shadows, but by the letter they dropped next to his plate.
He opened the note. It smelled like peppermint.
Yes, of course. Just give him the note enclosed. Tomorrow morning. And just tell him that we share a common acquaintance, if you don't want him to know that we know each other, Sweetling.
Also, If you have read this note, drop it in a glass, please.
He did just that.
It went up in flames, just seconds later.
"By the cauldron, you are seeing Eris!" Cassian blurted out and Azriel felt like his brain froze for the second time that day.
"Cassian!" Nesta snapped, for some reason managing to sound long-suffering, "We talked about this."
"The letter just went up in flames! That's how the Autumn Court sends correspondence!" Cassian reasoned. "You are seeing Eris!"
"And because of that, you are now thinking that Azriel has a love affair with Lucien's half-brother?" Feyre asked, sounding like…she couldn't quite believe what she was hearing.
Well, neither could Azriel.
"Yes!" Cassian exclaimed.
"No," Azriel deadpanned.
Over his dead body. Not after what happened with Mor. Never.
"But…" Cassian started to protest.
"Cassian, I have absolutely no idea what makes you think that I am in some kind of romantic relationship with Eris Vanserra but I'll gladly swear to you on my own life, that that is not happening in a million years," he said drily. "And Eris was not the one writing me."
"Who was writing to you then?" Rhys questioned pointedly. "Must be somebody from autumn."
"I know somebody that knows somebody," he gave back evenly, as he handed the second not for Cassian to pass to Lucien. "An enchantress is willing to meet you tomorrow. Bright and Early."
Lucien reached out for the note with some trepidation.
"If I wanted you dead, the plan would be a lot less convoluted. Just for your information," Azriel said drily.
Lucien glared at him.
"Where did you meet her?" he demanded.
"I know somebody that knows somebody," Azriel repeated. "That's my job. And that reminds me, I have to go."
Far away from Cassian and his conspiracy theories, that much was certain.
He still had no idea how Cassian had even come up with this. He didn't know if he even wanted to know.
"So soon?" Feyre asked surprised.
"I have plans."
"What kind of plans?" She wondered.
"The kind of plans that I am not willing to change."
Quite frankly, all he wanted was to curl up on Oriana's couch, underneath the ugliest blanket he had ever seen, but he should have known that it was not gonna be quite that easy.
So he went to the pleasure hall she had named him and let his shadows lead him right to the female in the bright red dress.
He would have found her even without knowing the colour of the dress, because even now, in a dress with nothing that proclaimed her a goldsmith by trade…there was traces of it, everywhere. From the points of her shoes that were decorated with a gold tip, to the low open back of her dress that was held in place at her neck with a myriad of chains.
From the front…it was deceptively simple. From the back…not so much.
She suited the colour. Not as much as Blue did in his opinion though.
"Sorry, I am late," he said softly as he slid to her side at the bar and she grinned brightly at him, just as the bartender, pushed four glasses in her direction and she immediately handed two off to him.
"You aren't, Sweetling," she assured him. "Ready to meet my friends?"
He just nodded.
The fluttering pearlescent wings that resembled a butterfly, were the first thing he saw.
He immediately placed that to belong to Palote Fairy, a lesser Faeries, often found in the summer court.
Far from home, that much was certain.
She turned to him, a head covered in blue hair that matched her wings and she stared at him.
"By the cauldron, you are real!" she explained as Oriana slid into the seat beside her. A High Fae male was with her, blonde and blue-eyed, looking like he wanted to be everywhere but here.
"Did you think I was lying?" Oriana said with a snort
"No!" The female hurried to add. "I just didn't…Hi! I am Hyacinth! That's Evander!" she said quickly. The male fae, Evander, lifted his glass in greeting, obviously quieter than his companion.
"Nice to meet you. Oriana has told us literally nothing about you," he said drily. "Which is good, because Hyacinth wouldn't have believed her anyway."
Hyacinth just glared at her companion.
"Hey! It's just that she came out of it with nowhere! She disappears for a few weeks and then shows up with, Oh I met my mate! By the way, he's Illyrian!" Hyacinth defended herself.
"Because Oriana has totally bothered to lie to you before. We all remember that one time…"
Or maybe the male wasn't quite after all, because these two started squabbling in a way that was worse than Cassian and Nesta sometimes were prone to be doing.
"What happened that one time?" he wondered quietly to Oriana, who just snorted.
"Hyacinth and I didn't know each other very well and she didn't take me at all seriously when I told her that I could control fire. So I showed her. Right there in the middle of her flower shop. And she dumped water all over me…Did I mention that the flowers were still in said pot of water? I got to pick out tulips out of my hair for ten minutes afterwards."
The mental picture that painted, made him snort, even as Oriana leaned into his side.
Nobody threw water at Oriana that evening, though she did seem to seemingly know every person who attended and dragged him down onto the floor as soon as there was a dance that wasn't the very quick stomping dances that she seemed to enjoy the most.
Still, for once he was very thankful that centuries of fighting training meant that he was very quick on his feet and managed to figure out the steps behind it quickly.
But even if he didn't…he wouldn't have cared, because Oriana glowed with happiness throughout that night. It seemingly surrounded her, an effervescent beauty that he couldn't name. He could just stare at it in wonder.
"Thank you for coming," she said as they spilt out into the night air as the evening ended, her arm slipping through his, her hair curling against her neck, where she had sweat from her dancing.
"Of course."
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"So Dinner didn't go that well, did it?" She asked Azriel as they ambled their way to her apartment. The walk wasn't longer than maybe 5 minutes, and it was a night in the Rainbow…of course, it was still filled with faes and fairies of all kinds mulling around.
And still, Azriel had showed up at The Moonlight Vault with a face like thunder. (Yes, the name sucked. It was still one of the best establishments Velairs had to offer as far as Oriana was concerned.)
"…How," Azriel wondered and Oriana just shrugged, holding his arm a little bit tighter.
"You were looking ready to flee as soon as you entered," she said drily. "You know, you could have just had your shadows tell me that you weren't in the mood. That would have been totally fine, Azriel."
She didn't want him to go through that kind of torture if he didn't want to. It wasn't…His day job already promised to be horrible enough.
"I wanted to be with you," Azriel gave back quietly like that explained everything.
Her heart melted a little bit at that. She just grasped his arms a little bit tighter.
"I ordered the couch we picked by the way," she said at that moment. Furnishing the Lake House was coming along…questionably.
They had managed to pick out a couch, thanks to her offering up multiple furniture catalogues for Azriel's perusal and him having opinions about interior design that she never even thought he would have.
They had ended up going with a brown leather couch, big enough to fill some of the empty space in their house.
"Sounds great," Azriel said softly.
"Any luck with your table linens?" she teased him as they finally reached her apartment and she unlocked the door.
"Not yet," Azriel answered with a snort.
"Haven't had any luck with chairs yet…especially none that look like they are comfortable for your wings," she admitted. "Still working on that."
"Just buy whatever you want. I'll deal with it," Azriel said, like that was completely reasonable as he followed behind her up the stairs.
Completely reasonable for him to be uncomfortable.
"It's your home, you don't need to deal with it. I already found you one chair that works with your wings, I'll find dining chairs that work as well," she pointed out drily. "You maybe can't expect the rest of the world to accommodate you, but you definitely can expect that at home."
Especially as far as she was concerned. "What else?" she added, tapping a finger against her lips. "I am working on a warding net by the way."
"A warding net?" Azriel asked her, sounding confused as she shrugged off her coat.
"You can put it into stones," she explained with a shrug. No need to shoulder the magic for it on their own. It was something she had made for the mountain. Granted the road to the final version had been, pardon the pun, stony.
"That works?" Azriel wondered.
"Of course it works, I made it," Oriana said drily. She had trust in her abilities. More than she should probably have. Azriel stared at her for a moment.
"How many things do you make that you never bother telling anybody about?" he asked her curiously, shrugging off his own coat. She thought about it for a minute.
"A lot," she admitted with a sigh. "If it's easy enough to replicate and scale, and selling it would give me a profit…then I go to the mountains, to our guild and file a kind of patent on it. So nobody can replicate that without paying me for the right to use it," she explained. "Like the teapots," she pointed out as an example. "But the warding net? It's going to take me at least a couple more weeks of working on it before it's ready to be placed. It's a question of want and need. Not many people would have the money to pay me enough to make the work worth my time," she admitted. "It just takes too long to be financially sound. I just make it because the time is worth it to me for the security it provides."
"It's safe?" Azriel asked, his voice and eyes serious. Oriana met his gaze.
"As safe as I can make it. The safest ward I ever made."
"Did you put an anti-winnowing ward into it?" he asked her, and she grinned at him.
"Who do you think I am? Of course. Shadow Walking will work though."
She took a quick bath, and by the time she got to crawl into her bed, Azriel was already waiting for her, paging through the book that she had had on her bedside table. The Knight and the Dragon's Heart.
Quite frankly, she slept better curled up underneath his wing than she did anywhere else. Especially after she got a kiss goodnight and then got to sleep straight through until the next morning, when they had breakfast together with some pastries he had fetched from the bakery two buildings down.
He went to work and Oriana opened her shop, greeting Cilla, the second female that she had come in to help in the shop these days so that she could concentrate on her forge.
Penelope and her did a great job at manning the till so that Oriana could go back to creating and quite frankly, she quite enjoyed it.
Still, that day she lingered in the front room of her shop at least until she recognised a shock of auburn hair.
Lucien.
Time had been kind to him, though the brutal scars that ran down the left side of his face…that was another thing entirely.
She had never actually seen them, though she had heard what had happened to him. Gossip was strong, even in Velaris.
"Lucien," she greeted him, adopting the persona of her mother's daughter. Her shoulders went back, her voice found that perfect tone of polite and warm.
Normally she didn't see the need for it. But he wasn't alone.
With him was a beautiful female. Golden Brown hair that fell down her back in soft waves and was tied away from her face with a little ribbon, big doe eyes, and a lithe frame.
Delicate was a good description for her.
"Oriana," he greeted her. "Last I heard you were no longer an enchantress," he quipped as he came to stand before her.
"Well, family has privileges," she said calmly. "And it is my work that is keeping that eye from exploding, so I figured, I should lend a hand, of course."
Both polite, but pointed as well.
Making it very clear that she may be 2 centuries younger than him, but she was the best in her trade. And she said that with no arrogance.
A smile stretched over Lucien's face at that.
"Of course," he repeated. "My wife, Elain. My cousin, Oriana," he introduced his wife who stared at Oriana wide-eyed for a moment. Oriana mentally checked that her eyes were black and not fucking creepy as Cyurs liked to say and smiled at her. Suddenly, Elain smiled prettily at Oriana, offering her hand.
"It's nice to meet you," she said, her voice high and light. "I never met an enchantress before."
"We are a rare breed," she said drily as she took Elain's soft hand surprised at the calloused she had. Not a delicate little flower after all, maybe?
One should never judge a book by its cover, she had learned that early.
"Let's go into the forge. Then you can tell me what is wrong with your eye," she invited Lucien and waved him and his wife through to the backroom. She had even tidied up a bit for him.
Elain stared around like it was the first time she had seen something like that and Oriana imagined it probably was.
"It looks like it does at the blacksmith's," Elain said suddenly.
"Oriana is half Tartera," Lucien hurried to explain. "They are lesser faeries and life in the mountains surrounding Velaris. They are known for their jewellery making."
One could break it down like that.
"Lucien and I are cousins through his mother and my father," Oriana explained as Lucien carefully removed the golden eye. She held out a tissue for him to place it in because she would need to completely take it apart.
"The last time I met Oriana, she was still living in the mountain full time though," Lucien said quietly. "The jewellery shop seems to be a new addition."
"If you call new a hundred years ago, yes," Oriana said with some amusement as she received the eye and carried it over to her workbench to take it apart.
She had even pulled out the tiny screwdrivers for this job.
"I left the mountains over a century ago," she picked up the conversation.
"Why?" Elain wondered. "Didn't you grow up there?" she seemed actually curious about it, a kind and gentle fae or at least willing to make every appearance of it.
"I did. But I feel out of love with my job," Oriana answered honestly.
"How is Wynstan?" Lucien wondered. "Did he come with you?"
"He's dead," Oriana said drily. "Has been. For over a century. I am surprised that you haven't heard that story," she quipped. "It was quite the thing when it happened."
Though since she had gotten rid of the necklace…the only thing she was still feeling when she thought about Wynstan was fury for what he had taken from her.
It clearly wasn't what Lucien had expected though.
"My…condolences," he hurried to say but she waved him off."
"Oh don't worry about it," she said absentmindedly as she peered into the inner workings of his eye until she found the culprit.
"Ah, I found your problem," Oriana said, as she poked at the runic array. "Some of the runes have eroded."
"Can you fix it?" Lucien asked, his voice trembling slightly.
She looked up from her work.
"I used to be the Master Enchantress of my people, one of the foremost goldsmiths they have, and you ask me if I can fix an eroded rune?" she asked him, her voice bone dry. "Yes, Lucien, I can fix that. I can also make sure that it never happens again and even renew the runic array so it works better than before."
"And you aren't an enchantress any longer?" Lucien asked with a raised brow.
"I still have the training. I just tend to use it for personal projects. These days there are other titles I would much rather claim," she answered drily, as she went back to her work.
A few minutes later, she polished the golden eye, before she offered it to Lucien.
"All done," she said.
"How did you meet Azriel?" Elain piped up suddenly and Oriana went back to picking up her workbench. "He was the one who told you that…"
"Azriel didn't tell me anything," she corrected. "We have a common acquaintance. Azriel pulled a lot of strings and a lot of favours. My acquaintance asked me as a favour to him, just as he did it as a favour to Azriel."
Lucien seemed less than pleased with the sudden change of conversation.
Or maybe less than pleased with the topic of conversation.
She wondered what that was about, but she didn't want to outright ask.
"Azriel didn't need to do that," she pointed out, keeping her voice even. "I hope you are aware of that."
Lucien ignored that pointed comment.
So there was definitely something.
"Are you one of his spies?" Elain asked, sounding somehow wide-eyed and naive and for a moment Oriana froze.
Spies.
Somehow that answered so many questions that she hadn't even known she had had. Azriel's spies. He was a Shadowsinger. He was the spymaster of this whole damn court, wasn't he?
"Do you really think that if I was, I would tell you?" she gave back, forcing out a high tinkling laugh that sounded only natural because she had spent decades honing it. "And the answer is a very resounding no. I am not subtle enough for that."
"She's not," Lucien snorted. "People that annoy her are getting set on fire on the regular."
She just shrugged, even at Elain's horrified look.
She was not going to apologize for that. She had only ever done it to people that really deserved it.
Still, the list was quite amusing. It not only included the current High Lord when he had been a few hundred years younger but also her brother on more than one occasion and as a 5-year-old even her grandmother.
"Thank you," Lucien said at that moment, and she looked at him, the gold eye moving smoothly. "It's better than new."
"Of course it is. Do you still not have any trust in my abilities?" Oriana quipped. "And I am not the one you need to thank."
"What do I owe you?" Lucien asked but she shook her head.
"It's taken care of."
Still, as she watched, Lucien and Eleain leave, she couldn't help but wonder, her mind running wild, as she thrummed her fingernails against her workbench.
"How did it go?" Azriel asked her that evening.
"I fixed the eye," she answered honestly. "I met his wife."
She watched Azriel as she said these words, watched how his fingers tightened near imperceptively around his cutlery.
"Lucien was the mate, wasn't he?" she asked evenly. Lucien had been the mate of the female that Azriel fell in love with after he spent 500 years pining after a female that couldn't be less interested in him.
That's what he had told her. Right at the very beginning.
"Lucien is the mate. Elain is the one who got away."
"Yes," Azriel said, his voice hoarse. "Ask."
"Ask what?" she asked him, needing Azriel to say it. Needing him to…
She wasn't even sure why. He had been honest to her from the beginning. there was no reason for her to doubt him. And she felt bad that she even thought about it.
"Ask if I still love her," Azriel said softly. "That's what you are wondering about."
"Do you?" Oriana said quietly. Did he?
She was his mate. But was she…
"No." There was no doubt in Azriel's tone. "I liked her. I have loved her. I was in love with her. I was infatuated with her. And I'll always think that…how it was dealt with wasn't right," he struggled to form the words. "It wasn't…Being ordered not to pursue her wasn't right," he repeated, the words low and she stared at him. Who had…Who had the power to order Azriel not to pursue a female? What…what even… "But it did work out."
"Elain is lovely. But she isn't you…what I had with her was a spark, Oriana. You are a whole firestorm."