Chapter Text

Manon Blackbeak had only been dead for seconds, yet already she felt more at peace than she had in centuries.

Within an instant of dying, she was drowning in a sea of sensory comforts she thought she’d never experience again: the quiet, velvety caress of shadows against her skin; the twinkle of sapphire at the edges of her vision; the faint whiff of leather on a cold wind; the sharp snap of wingbeats against open air. The very things she’d spent centuries starving for were now pouring over her in a veritable tidal wave, as if her death had ripped a hole through time and space, opening floodgates to the great ocean of peace that had apparently awaited her this whole time.

It was intoxicating, it was suffocating, it was heaven—it was far more than she deserved.

When she’d announced her plan to Yield, she’d seen the way some of the younger witches in her coven had adopted the faraway, contemplative look of hope that could only be managed by someone who’d never had their heart broken. It was the look of a witch who would surely go on to call Manon’s sacrifice noble, who would blindly sing her praises for years to come. Only her Thirteen would ever deserve such laudations; the thought of being praised alongside them made Manon feel like utter shit, which in turn strengthened her resolve.

She hoped it had worked, that her last act among the living had been of some help. It had been quite some time since Manon had been a good friend, or a good witch, or very good at all. It was time for her to go.

Her few remaining friends had known her offer to Yield was not a selfless act. Though they’d tried to hide it, they’d looked at her with pity. They’d asked her to reconsider. But she’d refused, knowing that their loyalties were to their family and their people, and that she offered them an assurance of their safety. In the end, Manon Blackbeak’s Yielding was too precious a sacrifice to refuse.

No, her Yielding was the furthest thing from heroic. It was the inevitable conclusion of her life—or rather, what little remained of it. It just so happened that her breaking point came at an opportune time for Erilea and its inhabitants, who would hopefully go on living long after she offered them the last thing she had. But the horrible truth was that she would have Yielded even if there hadn’t been a strategic need for it, and, though it made her a coward to admit it, if she’d known this silken blanket of shadows and soft wings were what awaited her on the other side of existence—she would have Yielded much sooner.

Only—the further she sunk into death, the more tangible it became and the less comfort it gave her.

The shadows she loved so dearly seemed to melt into ghoulish shapes. Didn’t they recognize her? Were they angry with her, for this path she’d chosen? She reached out a tentative hand to touch one, only for it recoil like an affronted cat. As if it didn’t recognize her anymore; as if it had never known her to begin with.

Something wasn’t right.

She blinked her eyes, focusing on the glint of sapphire she’d spotted before, but found it seemed hollow, inorganic. Absent of the depths she’d spent so long exploring on sunny mornings, when she’d placed her chin on his chest and gaze at him with a silent reverence, taking him in. I could look at you forever, she’d said, because she was young and stupid and blissfully unaware that forever wasn’t very much time at all.

And the wings, the wings she loved and missed so much, whose sound she’d come to know like her own heartbeat—they sounded too robust, too symmetric. There was no slight hiccup in the breeze as the soft membrane of wyvern flesh gave way to spidersilk, hard-won and lovingly stitched.

Any remaining illusions of her peaceful not-so-afterlife shattered fully when a jarringly unfamiliar voice mumbled, “Why the fuck does this keep happening?”

The earth rumbled below her, each shake easing her further away from the ground as the owner of the voice wrapped their arm around her neck and pulled her to her knees from behind.

She slackened in the attacker’s grip but moved to grasp at their arm weakly, spurred on by some deeply hardwired self-preservation skills but lacking any of the fight they demanded. In fact, when she curled her gloved fingers around the arm, her half-dead brain convinced her that this almost felt nice. Holding someone close to her, being so vulnerable with someone—it had been a very long time since she’d felt anything like that.

Which was a terribly sad thought to have, especially with a pressure this strong against her windpipe. She wished she could speak, if only to voice these thoughts. Maybe then this person would pity her enough to kill her.

“Where did you come from?” said the stranger.

The voice was low though steady in its timbre, cutting through her like ice. It was rough, deadly, yet somehow still inviting and…decidedly male.

A flicker of some long-dormant indignance sparked in Manon. If even Manon Blackbeak couldn’t kill Manon Blackbeak, she’d be damned if she let a male do the honors.

His hold was sturdy, practiced—he counterbalanced his anterior grip with a second hand behind her head, the pressure of his elbow forcing her chin into extension and keeping her mouth frustratingly shut. A lesser fighter might have left his forearm vulnerable to her teeth. So, she unsheathed her nails instead. They punctured through to his skin, ripping into the male’s flight leathers as he hissed in pain, his grip loosening just enough for her chin to slip free of his hold. Then she bit him, closing the whole force of her jaw around the torn leather on his forearm.

He grunted again in pain and jerked in her grasp, but he’d hesitated a moment too long. He missed the moment her hands flew up to release his hold on the back of her head.

A faraway part of her heard footsteps quickly approaching from several yards away, two other male voices carrying with them. But her teeth were scraping bone and distantly she remembered liking this, in her previous life, the only life she’d ever lived. The tang of blood and leather mixed on her lips tasted like pine sap and wyvern scales and the way her cousin’s hair tangled in the mountain breeze.

She pitched her weight forward and used the momentum to flip the male over her shoulder, briefly mourning the moment she had to release her teeth in order to pin him to the ground. She fell upon him immediately, but he was fast—and, unfortunately, smart enough to have disarmed her before he engaged. He used the precious second she wasted fumbling uselessly at her empty scabbard to raise his blade to her neck, but his companion was already tackling her, sending her into the dirt beside the first male.

She pinned her new opponent with ease, getting a good swipe of her nails across his stomach before a quick whip of his power batted her away. She rolled onto her side and dodged most of the power’s brute force, instead reaching desperately for his weapon as she continued to kick and claw at the second male.

It wasn’t until the third arrived that she began to accept her fate. For someone who had been ready to die moments ago, Manon had to admit that she fought rather well.

She thought, vaguely, that at least she’d go down swinging. That at least it had taken three of them to get her, in the end. She was miserable and outnumbered and alone, but at least she had her instincts, her training. She allowed herself a single moment of pride before the shadows that weren’t Dorian’s stole the breath from her lungs, and the darkness that was not her goddess’ rose to claim her.

𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪

“Are you sure she’s not an escaped prisoner?” Cassian said suspiciously, prodding the worn iron with a calloused finger. He’d somehow made it out of the fight relatively unscathed, with only a few bruises to speak of.

Azriel and Rhys were not so lucky, reluctantly sporting bandages around their respective arms and sides.

The three brothers were gathered around the desk in Rhys’s library with the rest of their inner circle, watching the odd way the stranger’s mirror reacted to the light.

“Yes, and don’t touch that thing of hers,” sighed Rhys, slapping Cassian’s hand away from the table. “We don’t know what it does.” He’d insisted on being the one to transport it back to Velaris after they’d found it when searching the stranger’s pockets.

“Nesta said it’s not really Made,” Cassian grumbled. “How dangerous can it be?”

“It doesn’t have any obvious interface or predictable behaviors like Bryce Quinlan’s mirror did,” said Mor, “So my vote is: plenty dangerous.”

“Can I touch her sword, then?” Cassian asked. He had already unsheathed half the blade by the time Mor turned to respond. When he caught her deadly glare, he added defensively, “It’s a beautiful weapon.”

Cassian held it up for Azriel to admire, and Azriel peered over his brother’s broad shoulder. He had to admit, it was a rather impressive blade.

Amren ignored them. “How many more gods-damned aliens are going to come tumbling out of holes in the Night Court’s sky?” she sighed.

“That’s rich, coming from you,” snorted Mor, earning a scowl from the other woman.

“Something here in Prythian must be calling out to other worlds,” said Feyre thoughtfully. “‘Like calls to like.’ I wonder if it’s Truth-Teller that connects them all.”

“I like to think they’re all drawn to Azriel,” Cassian grinned. “The universe put out an advertisement for an eligible bachelor, and next thing we know it’s raining angry women with swords.”

Azriel opened his mouth to tell Cassian off, but Rhys interrupted.

He’d chosen, it seemed, to take Cassian’s nonsense at face value. “But there were two times the portal opened to Nesta only,” Rhys pointed out.

“Both of those times Bryce Quinlan had Truth-Teller with her,” Feyre said. “It and Gwydion seemed to have sought out each other at first, and then defaulted to the rest of the Trove objects once they were united.”

“But if this female has neither Gwydion nor a Trove object, let alone anything Made, then why did she—” Amren started.

She was interrupted by a sharp inhale. 

Azriel blinked, following Feyre’s pointing finger, and watched as the glass of the mirror flickered and faded and…moved, morphing into a liquid, ethereal depiction of women riding into battle.

“Are those...?” Mor began, but none of them quite had the words to describe the beasts the women commanded. The creatures were distinct from any Azriel had ever seen: like wyrms but flying, sharp talons and teeth on full display. Any finer details were lost to a sea of colored wings fluttering in the breeze.

“They tamed those things?” Cassian let out a low whistle.

But Azriel’s focus was drawn elsewhere. He watched as the image of the woman they’d found today—the white-haired she-demon who’d bitten him—leaned down to kiss the forehead of her winged beast, the movement causing the crown on her head to flash and reflect the sun, as if it were made of light itself. Other women whizzed around her on their mounts, but the red ribbon in her hair captivated Azriel, allowing him to track her easily as she sped through the skies. He watched her catch the eye of a blonde-haired woman and smile against the wind, instantly recognizing the easy exchange between old friends. He’d shared similar moments with Rhys and Cassian countless times and counted them among some of his happiest memories.

He knew, from the wrinkles around the blonde one’s eyes and the raised scars along the scaled back of the red-ribboned woman’s creature, that this was not some sort of moving painting but a memory—hazy at the edges and fading with time but deeply personal, full of the sort of details one only appreciated when they looked upon something with love. Suddenly, he was overcome with the icy horror of accidentally witnessing something intimate, scenes from a life that were never intended to be shared with him.

He had his mouth open and was ready to say they’d seen enough when his gaze snagged on one of the women who had nearly seemed to disappear into the periphery of the image—black-haired, plain-faced, and strangely familiar.

Azriel turned to Feyre immediately and found her already looking at him, a wild glint in her eye.

“Is that—?” she started.

“It has to be,” he replied.

Because there had always been something strange about that girl they’d found at Hybern’s camp when they went to rescue Elain—she wasn’t Fae, and she certainly looked human, but something about her wasn’t fully right. He hadn’t had enough time then to figure out what, exactly, this something was, so he’d settled for adding her to his ever-growing mental list of curiosities. His shadows followed her and reported that she’d stayed in the Winter Court for a few weeks following her rescue, but then she’d simply…disappeared. 

Granted, Azriel’s shadows were spread thin and Prythian had other matters more pressing than a rogue Child of the Blessed to keep track of at the time, but a human escaping a High Lord’s protection was nevertheless unexpected. Azriel had supposed, then, that the girl had simply retreated into the human lands. It was dawning on him now that perhaps she’d never belonged to the human lands to begin with.

“Do you think she—?” Azriel began.

“Maybe,” Feyre said breathlessly, her eyes bright.

“Care to elaborate on whatever’s going on here?” Cassian asked, eyes darting between Azriel and Feyre.

“The girl from Hybern’s camp,” Rhys said slowly after Feyre finished catching the rest of them up to speed.

“I don’t think she was human after all,” said Feyre excitedly. “I think she might be the same as our new…er, guest.”

“Yes, yes, that’s all very fascinating,” Amren said with a wave of her hand, “but what does investigating this girl’s heritage help us accomplish here? Why did she appear next to Azriel in the middle of the Prison Isle?”

“I don’t know, but she might,” said Feyre earnestly. “At the very least, she may know which of her belongings was the one that led her here.” After her audience spent a bit too long contemplating her words she added, “Besides, we’re running out of options. If she has any magical artifacts like the Horn that might be of use, we may well need it.”

“We’ll keep her for questioning,” Rhys agreed. “Where is she?”

“Madja’s. Unconscious,” Azriel said.

Rhys nodded to him. “When she’s awake.” He didn’t need to finish the rest of the command: Get her to talk.

Chapter Text

Azriel did not get her to talk. In his defense, when she finally regained consciousness after nearly five full days, she wasn’t exactly awake.

He’d been making daily trips to the infirmary at Madja’s request, to make sure his arm set correctly as his body worked dutifully to weave it back together. The girl, it turned out, had not only managed to puncture his skin but splinter his bone. 

Madja kept the perpetrator in a private room with the door closed. The sequestration spared Azriel the embarrassment of having her watch as Madja fussed over his arm, but unfortunately also piqued his curiosity. It was because he was curious, he told himself, that he granted his shadows more freedom to poke around than he would have otherwise allowed.

For the first day or two the shadows had explored without purpose, sneaking under the girl’s doorframe and into other corners of the building with equal interest. But as the days passed, Azriel began to grow suspicious that his shadows had taken a liking to the prisoner. Inky tendrils started sneaking ahead of him as he flew to Madja’s in the mornings, beating him to the infirmary and slipping under the girl’s door before he realized where they’d gone. It took nearly constant focus to keep them from gravitating toward her bed, and he failed to wrangle them often enough that Madja started keeping extra faelights in the girl’s room as a deterrent.

He found Madja shooing away a plume of shadows with a broom when he arrived to have his arm checked for the last time. It was healing nicely, the shredded skin already beginning to scar over.

“Control your pests, boy,” Madja chastised him. “They’re starting to frighten the other patients.”

Azriel began to mumble his apologies but was interrupted by the hiss of his shadows as they returned to him, buzzing with the news of a subtle acceleration of the stranger’s pulse. “They tell me she’s awake.”

Granted, the shadows didn’t have much more by way of evidence to support their claim, and Azriel was halfway convinced that they may have exaggerated her level of consciousness to justify spending more time with her.

Madja lifted a skeptical brow. “She is alive, no thanks to you and your brute brothers. But awake is a generous description.”

“Why? Why has she been asleep this long?” He’d kept his questions to himself all week, but today was his last scheduled appointment with Madja and the girl was finally stirring. And, okay, maybe he was curious about her condition, too.

Sure, he may have briefly asphyxiated her, but only because she’d managed to slip out of Cassian’s hold, and even then, he’d only intended to suffocate her long enough to incapacitate her. The effects of his shadows had never sent anyone into a five-day coma before.

Madja clucked her tongue as she applied a poultice to his wound, unconvinced by his sudden interest in medicine. “She’s not asleep, either. She’s somewhere in between.”

As if that clarified things any further. “Rhys has questions for her.”

“I’m sure he does,” Madja said, unamused. “He should prepare to wait some time before she’s able to provide him with any of the answers he seeks, though.” She rubbed another pat of her pungent ointment onto his arm and added, as if sensing the direction of his thoughts, “I’ll allow you to see her now that she’s awake, if you’re under orders to do so, but know that she is in no state for your brand of information-gathering.”

A slight flush spread over Azriel’s cheeks. Madja had tended to enough prisoners, bloodied and broken at Azriel’s hands, to know what he was willing to do for his High Lord.

“She doesn’t move much, or speak,” Madja continued. “I don’t think you’ll have any success trying to question her. She’s stuck somewhere none of us can reach her, not yet. She must decide for herself what will become of her.”

It bothered him, he realized, thinking about such a formidable woman in such a state. He was used to interrogations in the dank privacy of the Hewn City, used to leveling his opponents in a protective shroud of cold petrichor and sharp steel. Part of the sick thrill of holding Truth-Teller to an enemy’s throat was the knowledge that the roles could have easily been reversed, that the information he sought to bleed out of his adversaries was a currency exchanged between equals.

If he spoke to the prisoner now, tried to pry answers from her in the dappled, antiseptic sunlight of Madja’s infirmary while she had no defenses whatsoever, he’d shatter something fragile between them. It wasn’t that he wanted to go easy on her—she’d splintered his radius with her teeth, after all—but there was no honor in trying to break someone who was already broken.

He stared at her closed door and wondered what he’d find if he went inside.

A series of images flashed through his mind, then: Gwyn, auburn hair plastered to her face with her sister’s blood; Elain, shivering in the cold night outside Hybern’s camp; Mor, half dead and hemorrhaging into rich soil.

The urge to save all three of them had been instinctive and rescuing them was undoubtedly the right thing to do. He didn’t regret it, any of it. But as the years passed, he’d come to find that his heroism had…complicated things.

Gwyn still looked at him with an unfiltered admiration, a gratitude deep enough to drown him. Nothing he did would ever live up to the version of him that she held in her mind. He found himself paralyzed before her, perpetually at risk of disappointing her by simply continuing to exist.

Elain would always associate him with the dirt floors of Hybern’s camp and the icy waters of the Cauldron, the most horrific moments of her life irrevocably tied to his presence. She liked him, appreciated him—at some point, she’d even wanted him—but she was afraid of him, would forever confuse her racing heartbeat for attraction instead of the anxiety it was.

And Mor—oh, Mor. When he’d saved her life that day on the border of Autumn, she’d seen his face contort in horror at what they’d done to her, had felt the full weight of his pity. Though she’d never admit it, he knew she resented him for it. He’d accepted her indignation as a burden for him to bear and willingly staggered under its weight as he spent centuries chasing her. Somewhere along the way, he’d deluded herself into thinking that maybe if she loved him, he could forgive himself for being so enamored with the idea of fixing her.

He had, at different points, fantasized about being with all three of them, and he wasn’t proud of the sick sense of safety he found in those daydreams. But there was something lovely and lonely about wanting someone he couldn’t have, and he’d let himself succumb to allure and ruination now three times over.

Something he couldn’t identify gnawed at him as he stared at the closed infirmary door. Something in him begged him to save this woman, to wake her, to do something to make her better, but—She didn't need him to. She was safe, and well cared for. He couldn't be the one to save her.

And he didn’t want to see her like this, either, alive but lifeless on a hospital cot. If the last memory he ever had of her was her silken white hair caught in the island breeze and her gold eyes simmering with rage as she raised her hand to slit his throat, he’d be better for it.  

He dwelled on that image of her, glorious in her ferocity, and tucked it away in his memory. He knew he could get her to talk, as Rhys had asked. But with equal surety he knew he didn’t want to. He thanked Madja for her time and left without ever setting foot into the girl’s room.

With little more than a twinge of guilt, Azriel disobeyed his High Lord and went to find Nesta Archeron instead.

𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪

Manon regained consciousness before regaining any sort of complex thought or control over her body, as if her brain had stopped partway through waking up. She wouldn’t, couldn’t, do much of anything besides melt into her hospital bed, lulled into submission by the beautiful simplicity of doing and feeling nothing at all. Days and weeks slid by like raindrops on a windowpane, getting lost in themselves.

No choppy seas lapped at the edge of the newest prison she’d landed herself in, no snow leopards or white wolves or mountain lions guarded her slumber, no gentle-hearted, winged beast scuffled about the wooden decks above her. No chains bound her to the walls of this cell, but she recognized it as one all the same.

Once again, she’d rushed to meet the Darkness, had leapt into its arms and begged for its mercy, and once again it had refused her, all three faces of her Goddess turned away from her and what she’d let herself become.

Sometimes, if she was feeling particularly ambitious, she stared at the walls. The wall of her room in the library, with its worn sandstone edges that snagged on the sunlight streaming in through the skylights, was somewhat more entertaining than the plain painted wall of the infirmary they’d kept her in during the first week.

No one explained why they’d brought her to this quiet, dusty place, but she supposed this made sense, since she’d never given anyone any indication that she was able to hear at all. But she could hear, could piece together scattered pieces of conversation whispered near her bedside, and gradually she came to learn the names of the women that came to tend to her.

The eldest of them was Clotho, who came to sit next to Manon’s bed for long periods of time with her crippled fingers folded in some sort of prayer. She never spoke a word, but the steady cadence of her breathing was nice enough on its own. Manon liked her most of all.                    

The other older female—Madja—was the healer. For the first few days she came to change Manon’s bandages, clucking wordlessly as she applied potions and tonics to Manon’s various cuts and bruises. There was a strange sort of solace in how badly the foul concoctions burned. Manon would sometimes squeeze her eyes shut tight when they were applied, savoring the pain. After her cuts healed, Madja stopped coming, and Manon quickly forgot what it was like to feel.

Three of them were sisters: Nesta, who helped relocate Manon from the infirmary to the library; Feyre, who visited infrequently and never for long; and Elain, who smelled like sunshine and freshly tilled soil and was the first person in this strange new world to wash Manon’s hair.

Then there was the roster of young priestesses who tended to her with some regularity, doing mundane things like changing Manon’s bedclothes and forcing her to drink foul broth.

Men, it seemed, were discouraged from venturing too far into the library. And though the soft shuffling of papers and the low hum of murmured prayers that filled the stone halls was worlds away from the chaos in which Manon had been raised, something about being surrounded by so many women was still soothing her. She settled into the quiet womb they’d brought her to and waited to die.

Feyre was present for one of Elain’s visits, and they talked about Manon as if she weren’t there, which was fair because she wasn’t there, not really.

“There’s nothing physically wrong with her,” Elain said, gently combing a snarl from Manon’s hair. “She’s just…processing, I think. Like I was.”

“How long will it take?” asked her sister.

Manon watched as Elain’s shadow, cast across the stone wall, tilted its head in thought. “Until she decides she’s ready to heal.”

Manon frowned at the wall and went back to sleep.

𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪

Azriel watched from the House of Wind’s balcony as another plume of smoke appeared over the Prison Isle and wondered if another demon had gotten loose. Any progress the Night Court had made in containing the monsters that had escaped after Bryce Quinlan brought the Prison down on Azriel and Nesta’s heads had been undone the second she’d returned: the second incursion of Bryce Quinlan into Prythian, however brief, had seemed, impossibly, to rankle the Prison Isle itself. 

At least he’d gotten Truth-Teller back.

He flipped the knife absentmindedly between his fingers, a nervous habit he’d developed over centuries of uncertainty. He knew its weight perfectly, knew exactly where the worn hilt of the knife met obsidian blade. He’d missed it dearly.

“Planning some home renovations?” Nesta asked, coming to stand beside him against the balcony’s railing.

Azriel shot her a look.

She smiled—one of her genuine, easy smiles that she usually reserved for him and Cassian.

It sufficiently disarmed him. “I don’t want it, Nes,” he sighed. “I don’t want any of it.”

There was no hint of sympathy in the way she nodded at him. She’d learned the truth of his wretched inheritance alongside Azriel: he was descended from Silene, wielded Truth-Teller to prove it, and in turn had the only legitimate claim to the shattered remnants of the long-forgotten Dusk Court.

Azriel had put off processing this revelation—and telling anyone else—for an impressive amount of time.

At first there was the issue of the escaped prisoners to deal with, which was the perfect excuse to omit any further realizations made in the caves below the Prison. Then, conveniently, Rhys and Nesta spent a few more days arguing about which powerful artifacts were or were not ‘passed through an interdimensional portal without input from the rest of the Night Court.’

When the Mask and Truth-Teller had safely been returned to Velaris, tensions between Nesta and his brothers finally eased enough for Azriel to bring the news of his inheritance to his High Lord.

“You don’t have to claim any of it,” Nesta said softly. “We’ll figure it out.”

“Might not be anything left to claim, if I’m lucky,” Azriel murmured. Another plume of smoke billowed on the horizon.

Miraculously, the universe had started to solve Azriel’s problem within a few days of Bryce Quinlan’s departure: the skies around the Isle darkened, the rubble of the Prison shook, and noxious smoke began to seep from deep within the cracked earth. The island seemed intent on destroying itself, which was fine by Azriel. He and his brothers had been taking advantage of a relatively calm day to scavenge for any useful artifacts in the wreckage when the white-haired demon had appeared.

He’d lived his whole life as a bastard with nothing to his name and never asked for anything more. It made sense—in a sick, cosmic sort of way—that this was his inheritance, that he would be afforded some sort of status at the age of five hundred and forty-one only for it to be swiftly blown to hell.

Nesta paused. Turned to him. Studied him, in a way that made Azriel’s skin crawl.

“You do know you’re allowed to want it, right? That none of us would fault you for it? It’s not like you ask for much, Az.”

Azriel didn’t respond. He clenched his jaw, focusing on the steaming wreck of his birthright on the horizon. Unsurprisingly, Rhys and Amren had been vocal in their endorsements of his claim. He’d shut them down repeatedly, unwilling to even entertain the thought.

“How is the girl?” he asked, changing the subject.

Nesta side-eyed him, no doubt frustrated that he’d avoided her question, but didn’t press him any further. “How are any of the library’s wards?” she asked with a sad smile.

Rhys had been understanding of Azriel’s lack of progress in gathering information, any of his initial frustrations more related to impatience than any perceived impertinence on Azriel’s part.

It seemed Nesta was better suited for the task of rehabilitating their guest, anyway. She’d shown a special kind of determination in her dealings with the library’s newest resident. Azriel wondered if Nesta saw something of herself in the prisoner but valued not having the shit kicked out of him too much to ask.

Nesta added after a moment: “She’s coming around. Healing. Though Madja is worried she’s becoming malnourished.”

“She won’t eat?”

Nesta shook her head. “They’ve been force-feeding her broth every day, but it doesn’t seem to be making much of a difference.”

Azriel scoffed, remembering the ease with which the witch’s teeth had sunk into his arm. “Well, that’s the problem. She’s a predator. They’re trying to feed soup to a wolf.”

𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪

It was Nesta—the tall one, with the sharp tongue—who got Manon to eat, in the end.

She marched into the library’s infirmary on a rainy afternoon and held up an object to Manon. It took her a second to realize what it was: a witch mirror—her witch mirror, one of the two material objects for which she had any sort of affection.

“Is this you?” Nesta asked, nodding to the perpetually repeating image of Manon and the rest of the Thirteen circling low over the Staghorn Mountains, preparing to land in Orynth.

Manon felt the color drain from her face. It was a brutal kind of psychologic warfare, being forced to watch one of the proudest moments of her life while so removed from it. The unexpected stab of grief was enough to momentarily snap her out of her trance. She made an attempt to lunge for the mirror but was quickly hindered by her torn muscles that screamed with the movement.

Nesta tugged it out of Manon’s grasp easily, eyes twinkling dangerously. “Answer the question.”

Her arrogant tone pissed Manon off. She raised her chin toward the female, eyes narrowing. Assessing. Sizing up her prey. Things she hadn’t done for weeks.

Nesta held the witch mirror toward Manon again. “You are wearing a crown here.”

Manon stared at her crossly. “Obviously,” she croaked, hating how weak her unused voice sounded.

A vicious amusement flickered over Nesta’s face, clearly pleased she’d finally gotten Manon to speak. “But you had no such crown when you arrived on our soil,” she continued. “Why?”

“Relinquished my title,” Manon bit out. She couldn’t help the way she jerked forward again at the sight of the mirror, desperate to be close to something that was hers.

“What was your title?” Nesta pressed.

Manon suddenly felt very tired. She wondered if she could fake some sort of seizure that would excuse her from this line of questioning.

“What is your name?” Nesta tried again. “What shall we call you?”

“I am Manon Blackbeak, High Queen of the Crochans and Ironteeth Witch-Clans, and Wing Leader of the Thirteen.” She paused, shocked at the ease with which the words still ran off her tongue. “At least, I was.” 

“Your Majesty,” Nesta said with a small smile and a nod of her chin. “It is an honor to meet you. I’m sorry it is under these circumstances.”

They stared at each other in silence for a few heartbeats.

“But you never answered my question,” said Nesta, producing the mirror again. “Is this you or n—”

Manon’s base instincts took over. She surged forward in the bed to swipe at the other woman, but was again infuriatingly slowed by her body, weak from disuse. Her reaction time had decreased abysmally.

Nesta grinned as she slapped Manon across the face. Hard.

Manon was, embarrassingly, taken by surprise. Everyone—all of the priestesses, all of the pairs of healing hands—in the library had been so gentle with her, so patient. They’d tucked her away into their sheltered cocoon of women and waited for her to be ready, without pressure or complaint.

Nesta was, apparently, not like the priestesses or the healers. Nesta was angry with her.

“There,” she said, smug satisfaction written on her face. “I knew you had some fight left in you.”

Manon glared at her. “I don’t. I don’t have anything left to fight for.”

“I don’t care,” Nesta said primly, returning her hand to her side. “I didn’t say you needed anything to fight for, Your Majesty.”

“Don’t call me that,” Manon said darkly.

Nesta studied her again, but Manon refused to drop her gaze. She leaned in very close. “I’m telling you to fight, Manon,” Nesta commanded.

Fight, Manon.

Live, Manon.

“Ask for something,” Nesta continued, her voice barely more than a hiss. “Allow yourself to want something.”

Manon’s gaze unfocused, falling over Nesta’s shoulder instead. Want. She wanted wind on her cheeks, warm fingers in her hair, blood and leather on her tongue. She’d had it, lived it, and still it wasn’t enough. She burned for it, all of it, with a sudden rush of need so great it threatened to swallow her whole.

Nesta waited her out, refusing to cede an inch. She was patient in the way stone was patient: cold, unyielding. The type of strength Manon had been conditioned to respect. Manon both admired and hated her for it.

Finally, Manon turned her head and met Nesta’s gaze. “I’m hungry,” she admitted sullenly.

“Good,” Nesta said without hesitation. “Tell me what you like to eat.”

“The still-beating hearts of men.”

Nesta stared at her, any of the patience she’d granted Manon disappearing from her face as her eyes narrowed. “Hilarious.”

She thought Manon was messing with her. Making fun of her. The thought hurt Manon more than she liked to admit. So she clarified: “I do not jest. My preferred form of sustenance is sinking my teeth into young, virile men and extracting their blood from them.” Manon bared her teeth as proof, letting the razor-sharp iron show.

Nesta stared. Then her lips twitched. And, as she let the truth of Manon’s words sink in, she began to laugh in earnest.

Manon didn’t know what was so funny, but Nesta’s laugh sounded like Asterin’s and it affected her in a way nothing else had since she’d landed in this world. It had been a very long time since Manon had found someone else’s joy sound so pleasant to witness.

Against her better judgment and in defiance of the stubborn emptiness inside of her, Manon felt the edge of her lip kick up in the beginnings of a smile.

Live, Manon.

Something painful twisted in her chest.

After Nesta had calmed herself, she sighed. “Well,” she said, “at least we’ll finally have a use for Amren’s larder.”

Chapter Text

Shortly after Nesta left, a small, severe female with a shock of dark hair arrived and introduced herself as Amren. She watched with faint amusement as Manon eagerly sucked down the entire gallon of blood she’d brought.

Whatever was in the opaque vessel certainly wasn’t human in origin, but it also wasn’t the miserable slop the priestesses had been trying to shove down Manon’s throat. By comparison, it was delectable.

“I haven’t seen one of your kind in a very long time,” remarked Amren. She remained standing beside Manon’s bed despite the abundance of chairs at her disposal.

Manon wasn’t sure how this piece of information was meant to be received. “There are no witches here?” she asked, not bothering to wipe away the trickle of blood that slid down the corner of her mouth as she spoke.

Amren shook her head. “Not as far as I know. The last I knew any witch who called herself such was thousands of years ago, before I came to this world.”

Manon had guessed as much—that she must have Yielded herself somewhere else entirely, rather than simply appearing in a hidden corner of Erilea—but it sent a spike of anxiety through her to hear her suspicions confirmed all the same. “You came here by choice?”

“You didn’t?” Amren challenged.

“No,” Manon sighed. Then added, if only because she wanted to hear how the words sounded out loud, “I was trying to die.”

Live, Manon.

She felt the words drift through her still-breathing corpse on an endless loop. It was a command that she hadn’t obeyed, a broken promise—yet another way she’d failed Asterin and the rest of them.

She’d tried, for a while. Tried to overcome her grief and settle into an eternity that didn’t include her Thirteen, but she quickly found that no one else she loved had an eternity to spare. She found it better, after most of them were gone, to simply exist, to remain adrift with herself instead of trying to swim. But then she felt the last huff of smoke escape from the scaled snout nestled in her lap, and even just existing was too painful to bear after that.

Amren’s total lack of emotional response to Manon’s statement was impressive, bordering on pathologic. “How did you do it?” she asked.

“I Yielded,” Manon said.

Amren’s face remained wholly impassive, apart from one eyebrow that flicked upward by half a millimeter.

This was a language Manon understood perfectly. She did as she was bidden and elaborated: “Witches don’t have magic to wield the same way the Fae do, but we have a core of it that we can release all at once. It’s deadly. Or, at least, it should have been.”

Amren’s silence was careful this time, as if she had plenty of thoughts on the matter but none she’d deign to share with her captive. She finally asked, “You didn’t have any sort of destination in mind? When you Yielded?”

“No,” Manon repeated, beginning to grow impatient. “I wasn’t trying to go anywhere at all.”

“What of your mirror? Or your sword?”

“What of them?” Manon asked coolly, though the realization that Wind-Cleaver had been recovered sent a flutter of excitement through her chest.

“Who Made them?”

Manon shrugged. “A blacksmith who’s eons dead by now, I’m sure.”

“I’m not asking who made them, girl. Who Made them?”

Made, made, made.

Realms apart from Erilea, Manon remained haunted by that awful word. 

They have made you into monsters. Made, Manon. And we feel sorry for you.

Made, made, made.

Manon beat back the memories that fluttered inside of her, echoes of wingbeats against dark stone. “I don’t know what you’re saying. They’re objects. They’re just things.” Though they were things that she desperately wanted back, if she was being honest.

Amren clearly did not believe her. “The mirror is obviously magical.”

“Yes, well, I instilled it with its ability to hold a memory, if that’s what you mean.”

“But you didn’t Make it? There’s nothing about it that would tie it to another object like it?”

“No,” repeated Manon for what felt like the thousandth time. She was about to tell her new guest to take the rest of her blood and fuck off when Amren sighed.

“We’re just trying to understand what brought you here, girl. We’re trying to learn how to help you.”

That certainly wasn’t the truth—however good at bullshitting Amren might have been, it didn’t make up for what she clearly lacked in selfless goodwill. In another world, Manon might have called her on it, might have taken this as an opportunity to engage in some political maneuvering, but instead she just asked, “Help me do what?”

Amren blinked at her. “Don’t you want to go back? To your world?”

The words hit Manon like a load of bricks. Did she? Shouldn’t she? She searched around inside herself for some sort of answer and came up short. There wasn’t very much of anything left inside her at all.

Amren, made visibly uncomfortable by whatever evidence of Manon’s existential crisis was apparent on her face, promptly excused herself. “I’ll bring you more blood,” she said shortly.

That was a small mercy, at least. The blood tasted good. She’d forgotten how nice it was, having something warm in her stomach. Now that she was sated, it was glaringly obvious that she’d been starving, her body suffering in silent agony for gods knew how long.

As she drifted back to sleep, Manon allowed herself a second to remember how her life had felt when more than just her stomach was full.

𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪

“You went into the witch’s room alone and hit her?” demanded Cassian.

“I got results, didn’t I?” Nesta asked matter-of-factly, folding her napkin in her lap.

There was a whole crowd assembled for dinner at the House of Wind, everyone eager to hear what Nesta and Amren had been able to learn about their prisoner.

“She’s talking, yes, but she didn’t have anything useful to add about her mirror or her sword,” Amren sniffed, as if this girl’s lack of involvement in an intergalactic terrorist scheme was a terrible disappointment.

“I already told you they weren’t Made,” Nesta said impatiently. “And I don’t sense anything Made that’s inherently a part of her, either. She’s not like Quinlan.”

“So how on earth did she get here?” Feyre wondered aloud, bouncing Nyx on her knee. “Maybe it’s something about the ruins under the island. That’s what Quinlan seemed to be interested in, after all.”

“As I’ve been saying,” Cassian began, the hint of a shit-eating grin taking form on his face, “it’s Azriel they’re interested—ouch, fuck!”

Azriel smiled to himself as Cassian jerked his foot back out from underneath Azriel’s boot.

At least they were finally discussing the questions Azriel also wanted answered. Much of the first course had been derailed by various other inquiries, such as ‘does this mean I can’t use witch as an insult anymore’ (Mor) and ‘Amren, why did you have a spare gallon of blood laying around’ (Cassian).

“Well, even if we can’t figure out how she got here, the larger question still remains: what do we do with her?” Mor wondered.

“Sic her on the prisoners,” Cassian said, taking a third helping of the stew the House had prepared. Though it had been meant in jest, it honestly wasn’t one of his worst ideas.

“The prisoners are definitely our most pressing concern,” Rhys agreed. “My wards are good, but they’re only a temporizing measure. The beasts will find a way to outsmart them eventually.”

“The witch is clearly a formidable fighter,” Feyre added. “Perhaps we could arrange some sort of indenture—help her get back to her people if she helps us wrangle the escapees.”

Rhys nodded, eyes brimming with affection at his mate’s unfailing generosity. “An excellent option. Although, in the likely event she isn’t telling us everything she knows about how or why she got here, I don’t love the thought of sending her back to the Prison.”

“She’s in no shape to fight now,” Nesta warned. “Sending her there now would be a death sentence.”

“Seems like that’s what she was going for to begin with,” grumbled Amren. “Maybe allowing her the chance at a warrior’s death would be a kindness.”

Azriel’s shadows began to vibrate at a slightly higher frequency, creating a soft ringing in his ears. Amren, he knew, was absolutely right, but he felt the beginnings of his temper flare at her words anyway. Even after centuries, he remembered what it was like to sit in a cell and wish to die; it wasn’t something he thought he’d ever forget. It was a bitingly cold, deeply personal kind of wish, and he’d be forever grateful to Cassian and Rhys for not letting him grant it.

His hands flexed in his lap.

“What do you think, Az?” Rhys asked.

Azriel started, shaken out of his thoughts by the sound of his name. “Think about what?”

“Your land, boy,” Amren urged. “You have the final say.”

Azriel scowled at his plate. “I don’t want the final say, and I don’t want the land, as I’ve mentioned repeatedly. If the prisoners want to run it into the ground, that’s their prerogative.”

“Here we go again,” Mor groaned. “Surely the fiftieth time we have this conversation we’ll make some meaningful strides.”

Rhys ignored his cousin. “Even the deadliest monsters aren’t going to wipe an entire swath of land off the earth,” he argued. “Things will settle eventually, and then the moment the other courts figure out we have the ruins of an eighth court on our soil, they’ll see it as a power vacuum. We must do something about it before they find out.”

“And who’s going to tell them?” Azriel snapped, with perhaps a bit more cruelty than the situation demanded.

“So, your plan is to keep this all a secret, then? To sit on this information forever and hope the Isle is swallowed into the sea?” Amren challenged him.

Azriel couldn’t help the way his shadows began to churn protectively around him, sensing his mounting ire. His anger, he knew, was not directed at Amren but at himself; he knew she was frustrated with him for the exact same reason he was.

The problem, however, was that only Amren seemed to know what this reason actually was.

“All we’re asking,” Amren went on, her voice low and deadly, “is for you to stop acting like an insolent child and—”

Azriel stood abruptly, knuckles turning white with the force of his grip against the edge of the table.

He made the mistake of glancing at Nyx as he did so. His nephew stared at him, bright blue eyes blown wide with fear, tiny wings tucked tightly against his back.

The familiarity of the image—a scared child, wings trembling, clinging to his mother as he stared into the face of Illyrian male rage—made Azriel want to kick his own ass.

He’d spent so long wholeheartedly rejecting his Illyrian heritage, determined to be from nothing and bound to no one at all. He’d held firm, even when he was asked to answer for it in droves: to fly side-by-side with other Illyrian men during the war; to advocate for Illyrian women like Emerie; to love Illyrian children like Nyx. But now, forced to reckon with an entirely new side of his bloodline, he had nowhere left to hide. He could no longer avoid the fact that he’d never really known who he was to begin with.

Everyone around this table knew him better than anyone else in the world, yet sometimes he still felt that they’d never known him, would never know him at all, because he couldn’t allow himself the same opportunity. The thought made the hollowness inside him reverberate, the lifetime of sheer lack he’d accumulated becoming a physical thing that screamed at him, begging him to allow himself the luxury of being seen.

Nyx had looked to him with curiosity and ended up turning away in fear. It was mortifying, and it broke Azriel’s heart.

“Azriel,” Rhys warned as Azriel stepped away from the table, but it was too late.

The ringing in his ears had only grown louder and his skin was feeling very hot. Maybe if he left the dining room, maybe if he was able to get some fresh air, maybe if he could—

He was halfway through the door before a single thought clawed its way to the forefront of his raging mind. He steadied himself long enough to add, “The witch stays. She can train with Nesta.”

Which was, of course, not the issue that he’d been asked to settle, but he figured he might as well make his preferences known while he had the floor.

“Don’t you dare walk away, Azriel,” Cassian warned.

Azriel barely suppressed the urge to wince. There was nothing more painful than disappointing his brothers. They were his peace, his calm. Even when they fought, they always did it together: screaming at each other until one of them laughed or cried and the others followed suit. They were his whole world—and that was exactly the problem.

As much as Azriel wanted to stay, wanted to yell and scream and fight with his brothers until he felt like himself again, he knew that he couldn’t rely on this to steady himself the same way he once had. Cassian had a mate now; Rhys had a child, for fuck’s sake. Azriel loved them as much as he envied them, wanted to be close to them as much as he couldn’t stand being around them. He was disgusted with himself for it, and it was only a matter of time before they were, too.

He didn’t look back at the empty chair he left at his family’s table.

𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪

Extensive physical rehabilitation, it seemed, was not an uncommon occurrence in the priestesses’ library. Once Manon drank enough blood that she could manage to stay awake for more than ten minutes at a time, she began the slow work of rebuilding her atrophied muscles.

It started small, with short sessions of simple movements that she could perform in her bed, which made Manon immediately suspicious. The first time one of the young priestesses came into her room and told Manon to ‘practice pointing her toes,’ Manon was tempted to slam the girl’s face into the side table for her insolence. Upon realizing she lacked the strength to do even this simple act of violence, however, she grudgingly accepted the help instead.

None of the priestesses, to their credit, ever balked at or even mentioned her weakness, and Manon grew to understand that many of them had completed the same training program. Nesta, apparently, had introduced it not long ago. The more Manon got to know the eldest Archeron, the more this made sense: although Nesta lacked Feyre’s patience and Elain’s skill for more traditional caretaking, she had a natural ability to train. She taught without condescension and challenged without judgment, using her firmness to guide but not punish. The other women in the library—even those she hadn’t trained—seemed to regard her with a certain level of unspoken respect.

It made Manon’s stomach churn to think about the sort of situations that might have landed these other women here in such bad shape—and it made her feel even worse to think about the countless others who’d never gotten the chance.

This line of thinking often led her thoughts to Morath, and then she’d shudder and try to beat back the memory of Kaltain Rompier’s lifeless eyes. For some cruel reason, the universe had chosen Manon, of all people, to receive a second chance. Her recognition of this unexpected generosity only filled her with a vague sense of unease.

Although, on second thought, the bottomless pit in the center of the library might have contributed to that as well.

It had been the first thing she noticed when she was steady enough on her feet to make it out of her bedchamber. She wasn’t allowed to wander the library unsupervised, which was just as well—she didn’t have to venture very far into the stacks of books at all to notice the gaping chasm boring its way through the stone shelves, waiting ominously for nothing in particular as the priestesses silently went about their work aside it.

Nesta seemed surprised the first time Manon asked about it, as if she was so used to the casual horror of the thing that she forgot to think about it on a regular basis.

“A creature used to live there,” Nesta explained. “Its name was Bryaxis.”

“Bryaxis,” Manon repeated, turning the word over on her tongue. A very old name, from a very old language.

Nesta nodded. “It was…I’m not sure what it was, to be honest. Nothing of this world. But it took a liking to my sister and agreed to help us fight.”  

With this new knowledge, Manon leaned her palms on the cold stone railing and peered over the edge, but the yawning nothingness below was just as empty and dark as it had been before she’d learned its name.

She and Nesta were on one of their walks around the library that grew longer by the day with Manon’s newfound stamina. They were both pleased with the speed of Manon’s recovery, although Manon’s content secretly extended beyond the relief of regaining her physical strength: longer walks meant more time with Nesta, something Manon quickly realized she looked forward to each day. 

When they weren’t talking in as close to whispering as they could manage (or being chastised by a passing librarian for not managing well enough), they simply strode side-by-side in companionable silence. Manon refused to delude herself into thinking that Nesta viewed their walks as anything besides a duty, but she was fairly certain Nesta had never punched any of her other trainees in the face, and this made Manon feel good about herself.

“It came to this world with three ancient death-gods, and seemed to have allied itself with the two more tolerable siblings—the Bone Carver and the Weaver, as they were more commonly known. They both died in the war against Hybern,” Nesta went on. “Bryaxis wasn’t seen again after that.”

“It’s grieving,” Manon stated.

Nesta frowned, considering. “Can the pets of ancient death-gods grieve?”

“Maybe they don’t have a word to describe it, but they must.” 

Nesta digested this for a moment, then spoke softly. “I can’t imagine losing one of my sisters. I’ve come close to it too many times. I don’t know how one could go on living after something like that.”

Manon watched Nesta’s gaze travel to her red-headed friend—Gwyn, the priestess in charge of giving Manon fresh clothes—who was humming to herself as she stocked bookshelves one level below where they stood.

“Companions,” Manon repeated slowly, gears beginning to turn in her mind. Nesta tilted her head inquisitively at her, so Manon quickly changed the subject. “Where is Bryaxis now?”

“We don’t know. Az tried looking for it, but no luck.”

Sometimes Nesta would offer Manon snippets like this, glimpses into her life above the library. They were usually ordinary things, stories about her friends or small annoyances from her day. Manon liked hearing about them anyway, so much so that she found details of her own past beginning to slip out in return. Nesta listened quietly when they did, never probing further than Manon would have allowed her to.

Granted, Nesta also often seemed to forget Manon wasn’t familiar with the intricacies of her social life and failed to provide basic information just as often.

“Who?” asked Manon.

“Azriel. One of the Illyrians.”

Manon stared at her blankly.

“Bat wings. Blue crystals. Missing a bite-sized chunk out of his left forearm.”

An adequate description. “Oh.”

Nesta smiled. “It’s too bad he never found it, really. Feyre promised Bryaxis that if it came back to the library after the war, she’d install a window at the top. So it could see the sky and the sun.”

Manon blinked up into the center of the mountain and thought about the creature who’d lived here, who’d disappeared into the darkness for thousands of years but left willingly when called forward by a friend.

When she turned to look at Nesta again, she found the other woman’s brows drawn, as if she were debating something.

“Come on,” Nesta said after a beat, holding out her hand to Manon.

It wasn’t nearly time for Manon to return to her room, and there were far too many librarians lurking about to chance slipping down to one of the lower levels. This was different—an offering. A risk.

“Where are you taking me?”

Nesta smiled. “To see the sky and the sun.”

Manon’s flicker of curiosity was quieted by a wave of apprehension. She’d been inside for so long that suddenly, irrationally, the idea of expanding her world any further seemed unmanageable. “There’s a window in my room.”

Nesta rolled her eyes. “Do you want me to break the rules and take you outside, or would you rather spend the day talking with Merrill?”

So, Manon took Nesta’s hand and left the firelit safety of the library.

Nothing could have prepared Manon for the world of sights and sounds exploded before her. The library, apparently, was part of a complex of buildings carved into the face of a mountain. Archways and massive windows opened onto sprawling, sun-soaked patios speckled with well-groomed trees, and the patios themselves ended in expansive balconies, offering unparalleled views of the city below. The view was nothing short of breathtaking, but Manon found her vision soon narrowed to the large training ring filled with women at the center of a great plaza.

She was unfathomably far from Erilea, and yet all of it—the sweaty strands of hair slipping from careful plaits, the giddy laughter knocked out of burning lungs, the calloused hands reaching out to pull opponents to their feet—all of it made her heart clench with a painful sensation that felt dangerously close to homesickness.

“What are they doing?” she asked uselessly.

“Training,” Nesta grinned. “They’re the warriors I’ve told you about—the Valkyries. At least, they’re working to become them. Do you want to see?” She was looking at Manon expectantly, unfiltered pride and excitement shining in her eyes.

With a great amount of caution, Manon began to wonder if she and Nesta might be friends, after all.

She raised a pale hand to shield her eyes and stepped into the sun.

𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪

Nesta found Azriel in the House of Wind’s sitting room at sunset. He had just returned from another brutal afternoon of wrangling prisoners, something he had taken to doing after training with the Valkyries in the mornings. He’d like to be able to go more often, but the Isle was often shaking or steaming or in another one of its unpredictable moods that made it temporarily uninhabitable.

He was largely unsuccessful in catching any of the escapees, but at least it made him feel like he was doing something to help his brother. And, he had to admit, driving Truth-Teller through a few monster skulls had the added bonus of helping to stave off the nothingness that tended to gnaw at him when he was idle for too long.

“What ever became of your search for Bryaxis?” Nesta said by way of greeting.

Azriel looked up from his book, surprised. “Petered out into nothing, really. What made you think of that?”

“The witch asked about it when we walked through the library today,” Nesta explained, “and I realized I never thought about where it went, after its companions died in the war.”

“The last reports of it I heard were from the southern border of Dawn,” Azriel said. “The trail went cold after that, and Rhys didn’t think it was important enough to continue searching.”

Nesta rolled her eyes. “Yes, well, we all know what I think about Rhys considers important.” She cast her eyes to Azriel and added after a beat, “No offense.”

It hurt him, in a small way he couldn’t quite describe, to know Nesta still felt the urge to censor her thoughts about Rhys around him. “It’s your home, Nes, you can say whatever you want,” Azriel said with a small smile.

She leveled him with a withering look and corrected him, not for the first time: “Our home.”

“Right.”

She thumped him upside the head with her book as she crossed the room but didn’t ask him anything more. They read together in easy silence well into the evening.

𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪

Long after Nesta retired to her bed, Azriel lay on the sofa with his book closed, turning her words over in his mind. Its companions, she’d said, which was an odd way to talk about the co-spawn of an unearthly creature of death and destruction. Not that the Weaver and the Bone Carver were any less unearthly—they’d simply occupied visages more intelligible to the human eye. But it still felt odd to think about them as creatures who might have cared for one another. Companions implied some level of connectedness; some degree of similarity that transcended the physical.

A kind of…understanding, a bond deep enough that one might miss it when it was gone.

Azriel sat bolt upright as pieces of a thought he didn’t know he’d been forming began to fall into place.

Chapter Text

Cassian screamed when Azriel burst into his and Nesta’s room at an ungodly hour, nearly punching his mate in the face when he threw out a protective arm to defend her.

Nesta yawned, swatting Cassian’s hand away as she sat up in bed. “What the fuck, Az?”

They were both naked, but this no longer scandalized Azriel the way it once had. More than a year of living with Cassian and Nesta had fully desensitized him to the loud—and often materially destructive—realities of their sex life.

And, all right, maybe he’d joined in once or twice or a dozen times, because he was bored and lonely and the first time had felt fucking fantastic. Just for the hell of it.

Just to take the edge off.

“You pick a time we’re not actively fucking to crawl into our bed?” Cassian asked with genuine disappointment as Azriel scrambled to a seat at the foot of their mattress.

Azriel ignored them both. “I know how to fix it,” he said breathlessly. “I know how to fix the Prison Isle. I just need your help.”

Despite having just awoken from sleep, Nesta and Cassian actually entertained Azriel’s ramblings for a respectable amount of time. They might have continued to listen to him until a real plan had taken shape, if it weren’t for—

“Absolutely not,” Cassian said before the word Bryaxis had even finished exiting Azriel’s mouth. “You know how I feel about that thing, Az. I won’t do it.”

“Aw, Cassian’s afraid of the big mean monster,” Nesta said amicably, patting her mate’s thigh. “Apparently enough to say no to a boys’ trip.”

Cassian frowned but didn’t bother trying to contradict her.

Azriel turned his attention to her. “Nes?” he pleaded.

“I can’t,” she said apologetically. “Emerie thinks the group of Illyrians she’s been working with in Windhaven will be ready to start as early next week—I need to be ready. You could ask Rhys?”

Azriel shook his head, knowing full well he wouldn’t ask his brother to leave his son behind for some ridiculous, half-baked scheme.

“I’ll just go alone.”

“Like hell you will,” Cassian warned. “If it means that much to you, I’ll go.”

And Azriel knew that he would, that Cassian in his unfailing loyalty would swallow his fear and follow him into the dark.

Nesta knew it, too, and loved them both enough to shoot down the suggestion immediately.

“Neither of you are going anywhere without half a plan,” she snapped. Her eyes narrowed when she saw Azriel open his mouth to argue.

Azriel shut his mouth.

“We’ll find a way to make it happen, Az,” Cassian said. “Nes is right, though. We have to be smart about it.” He looked sad saying this last sentence, as if it pained him to deny Azriel the same recklessness he would have once encouraged without a second thought.

“Fine,” Azriel sighed, laying facedown at the foot of the bed.

Neither of them had said anything even remotely incendiary to him and yet he felt it flare, the overwhelming restlessness that liked to find him when he was awake and alone in the middle of the night. And that was it, wasn’t it? Restlessness. An itch he noticed when everyone else was asleep, when he felt like time was moving on for his brothers but refusing to wash over him.

Nesta extended a foot under the covers to kick him where he lay. “Stop that,” she mumbled, her voice still soft with sleep.

“Stop what?”

“Moping,” Cassian answered for her.

“Not moping,” Azriel argued with his face still buried in their quilt. His line delivery, to be fair, left a bit to be desired.

“Yes, you are,” Cassian scoffed. “Come here.”

Slowly, Azriel crawled up the bed until he lay between them on top of the covers, carefully tucking his wings below Nesta’s arm and his head against Cassian’s chest.

He had to admit it was peaceful here, nestled between two people who loved him. It was all right that they didn’t love him the way they loved each other; theirs was the only love he had, and he’d never known any better. He was glad for this small mercy, at least. It hurt less that way.

He had almost drifted off to sleep when his nose twitched, reminding him whose bed it was, exactly, that he was sharing.

Azriel’s head snapped up. “What was that you said about not actively fucking?”

Cassian raised his hands out from under the quilt defensively, though the undeniable scent of his arousal failed to support his display of innocence. “You know what having both of you in my bed does to me, but I swear I’m behaving myself.”

“I’m not,” admitted Nesta.

Azriel smiled to himself as he sat up and rid himself of his shirt, throwing it into a corner of the room. He could allow himself this. He could allow his friends to show him they cared for him the best way they knew how. He could allow himself the indulgence of basking in the steadiness and warmth of their love, even if it was only for a few minutes.

Just to take the edge off.

𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪

It took Nesta quite a while to convince Manon to begin training with the Valkyries. Her negotiation tactics ranged wildly, from cold logic (“you’ll never get back into fighting shape without fighting”), to shameless guilting (“it would mean so much to the priestesses who’ve taken care of you”), and outright threats of violence (“if you say ‘no’ to me one more time, I swear to fuck I’ll break your arm”).

Because her acquiescence was so hard-won, Manon half expected Nesta to celebrate when she finally relented. Instead, Manon’s very first assignment as a Valkyrie-in-training involved being subjected to a day in a war camp that reeked of self-important men and despair. Which was exactly what Manon would have done with a new witchling under her charge, but it nonetheless irritated her to be on the receiving end of such principled leadership.

Why do you care so much? Manon had asked. Why are you all so insistent on keeping me alive at all?

That’s exactly why I wanted you to spend your first day with Emerie. To see why we do it.

Nesta’s parting words didn’t mean anything to Manon until she arrived in Windhaven.

Feyre brought Manon there at Nesta’s request with an odd bit of magic she called winnowing, but left quickly thereafter, claiming she had other duties to attend to. This was undoubtedly true, but Manon also didn’t blame the High Lady for wanting to get the fuck out of the miserable town as soon as possible.

Despite the late spring settling over the Night Court and its more southern territories, Windhaven remained brutally cold, shrouded by the perpetual shade of evergreens and nipped at by the snow-capped gales that eddied between the opposing mountain-faces bordering the settlement. Why any people would choose to take up residence in such an unfriendly clime was anyone’s guess, and indeed Windhaven’s rusted tin roofs and low-lying buildings gave the town the appearance of something that was intended to be temporary, and which had accepted its permanence only after many years of resistance and a certain degree of resentment.

Based on what Nesta had told Manon of Illyria, this was quite likely. The people who lived here, Manon had learned, were used to being at war. Centuries ago, these had been wars of their own design, homegrown campaigns waged against nearby peoples for land or power or access to resources. But as the decades had passed and Illyria’s military might was better recognized, it had been commodified. Soon enough, Illyrians had found themselves fighting on the front lines of foreign wars, tokens on a battle-map to be moved around by higher powers who would rather pay the winged soldiers than risk the lives of their own people.

So it was that Illyria’s wartime economy had become Illyria’s entire economy, and Illyria itself had grown restless, unsure where to direct all of its fervor that had been roused by the wars of old. This anxious energy had morphed into a vague anger in Illyria’s men, so deeply entrenched in their society that it surpassed any individual’s ability to comprehend it. And although sometimes these men turned against each other in spats between camps, too often their anger seeped out inside their own homes, resulting in an awful, perpetually one-sided war against Illyrian women.

One such woman was waiting to meet them now. Manon had heard plenty about Emerie from Nesta, but she never would have guessed that the tired-looking, grim-faced woman who approached her and Feyre was the same person Nesta had been reading romance novels and sharing bubble baths with.

Nesta had also warned Manon about Emerie’s wings—or, rather, what remained of them. Manon was grateful for the preparation; she feared she would have stared in stunned silence at the gnarled scars and crudely cut tendons without it. The kind of person—the kind of people—who could do that to their own…

Emerie’s first words to Manon, spoken in a rushed whisper, were equally foreboding: “I’d tell you ‘welcome,’ but I don’t want to bullshit you. Just keep your head down—I promise I’ll tell you more when we get to the shop.”

Keeping one’s head down was certainly not in keeping with the Blackbeak tradition, but after weathering a few of the blatantly angry stares leveled at her after only a few steps down Windhaven’s main street, Manon began to understand how one might become tempted to do such a thing in a place like this.

Manon, as the former heir to a similarly militant dynasty, could understand well enough the predicament the Illyrians had ended up in over the past generations, but she refused to allow herself to sympathize. The Ironteeth, admittedly, had a habit of violence against men—but never their own men, which Manon felt was an important distinction. As she and Emerie trod through the mud and took in the sights and sounds of the wretched town, Manon felt as if she’d landed in a perfect mirror of her childhood, where the women were beaten into silence and submission and forced to shoulder alone the sorrow of an entire people.

Emerie relaxed visibly as they neared her shop, which turned out to be a humble two-story building with mismatched shingles and peeling paint on the leaded-glass door.

Due to the supposedly covert nature of the Valkyries’ operation in Windhaven, Manon had been confused when Nesta told her this meeting would occur in the morning. Broad daylight, after all, seemed an odd time to organize a civil uprising.

Cassian, Nesta had told her, had been working hard to ensure that Illyrian girls would be allowed to train with their male peers. Their inclusion had been hard-won, but the camp’s youth instructors could easily accommodate an extra girl or two who had been freed from her domestic duties for the day.

The crowd gathered in Emerie’s workshop, on the other hand, represented a different sort of Illyrian female interested in combat training.

These women, Nesta had explained prior to Manon’s visit, were not seeking to be let in, in the way a little girl might beseech her relatively forward-thinking parents to let her learn to handle a sword alongside her brothers. No, these women sought a way out. Out of their relationships, out of their homes, out of Windhaven, out of Illyria altogether.

The subtle genius of it all finally struck Manon when Emerie opened the door to her shop’s workroom. They found a half-dozen Illyrian women with the same crudely clipped wings and a young man with a boyish face inside, talking excitedly while they patted towels against their sweaty faces. A makeshift training area had been constructed in the middle of the room, bolts of dark fabrics and stray knitting needles pushed to the side to accommodate a simple mat and some rudimentary weapons.

“Now I can say ‘welcome’ and mean it,” Emerie said with a sigh of relief and a genuine smile. “So welcome, Manon, to the Valkyries’ Illyrian regiment.”

Collectively, they bore the weather-worn look of people used to harsh climes and physical labor. Like the townsfolk Manon passed on her walk through Windhaven’s streets, they had scuffed boots, calloused hands, and the same rich complexions. But unlike the men outside, these people seemed alive, humming with the excitement of a new generation itching to break ancient rules.

One of the women—older, more cautious-looking—caught Manon’s eye and blushed. “It may not be much, but it’s all we have.”

“It may not be much yet,” another—bright-eyed, with a splash of freckles across the bridge of her nose—corrected her.

“It’s brilliant,” Manon said, and she meant it. None of the thick-headed men outside would ever have guessed that such a gathering was taking place, nor would they have ventured far enough into the clothier’s shop to suspect it.

Emerie beamed with pride. Manon could see her then: the woman who’d carried Gwyneth to the top of Mount Ramiel, who’d sewn her entire life and yet still agreed to stitch bracelets on quiet evenings with her friends because it made them happy.

“Manon is a friend of Nesta’s, and new to the Night Court,” was all Emerie said before making individual introductions. There were six women, in total, and a lone male named Balthazar; he had met Nesta, Emerie, and Gwyneth during their Rite and had apparently behaved himself well enough then to remain in their good graces afterward.

The women greeted Manon shyly, but warmed quickly once her genuine interest in their endeavors became clear, and soon they were nearly interrupting one another to speak with hushed excitement about their training progress. Balthazar, like any well-trained male, remained appropriately silent throughout.

“The shop gets rather stuffy sometimes when all of us are in here at once, but beyond that it’s a very comfortable place to train,” a middle-aged woman named Lilith was saying.

Though the comment clearly had nothing to do with her hosting abilities, Emerie winced at the words, as if the weather were her personal responsibility. “I’m hopeful we’ll have evacuated all those who seek asylum to the House of Wind by the summer solstice, anyway. The whims of Illyria’s climate won’t be an obstacle to your training after that.”

“A climate with a mind of its own can be a great boon to a warrior’s training,” Manon insisted, suddenly and inexplicably feeling the need to defend the tempests that swept through the Wastes. Though Rhiannon’s curse had only ever affected the land of the Witch Kingdom, the skies had always behaved as if they had been similarly aggrieved.

She realized her mistake when Keziah, one of the younger women with tightly-braided hair, suddenly gave a start. “Please forgive us for getting too ahead of ourselves in our excitement, but I don’t think we ever asked—where are you from, exactly?”

It was the first time anyone had asked. Despite the intensity of Amren’s initial questioning, the strange female had backed off quickly after it became clear Manon had no knowledge about any Made objects—whatever those were. And though Nesta had been more tenacious in her pursuit to get Manon talking, her questions were often directly related to their current conversation or limited to logistical matters (such as her most recent inquiry into witch physiology: ‘how quickly are you going to keel over dead if Amren’s spare blood runs out?’).

Certainly none of the priestesses had pressed Manon for any details of her history—in their library, it seemed, one’s past was to be treated like an ancient tome: brought several levels down into patient darkness, shelved in a location so obscure as to be a secret to anyone who hadn’t placed it there, and retrieved only by its author when she was ready to revisit it.

Windhaven, by its very nature, seemed to exist in stark contrast to the quiet, interior life the priestesses had carved out for themselves in their deep well of a mountain. Windhaven was bright and sharp and exposed from all sides; Windhaven was perpetually under threat of onslaught by blizzards or avalanches or invading bands of airborne soldiers.

And Manon, for all her purported ability to hear the songs of the wind, had gotten caught up in one of its gales.

A quick glance to Emerie revealed that Nesta had not divulged to her friend the entire truth about how Manon ended up in Prythian: Emerie merely cocked her head at Manon, awaiting her answer with the same bland curiosity as her neighbors. 

“I come from a windswept land far away from here, where women have always ruled,” Manon hedged.

As she’d hoped, the latter part of the sentence garnered enough interest to overshadow the vagaries of the former.

The Illyrians hung onto Manon’s words with near-rapture, eyes wide at just the barest details of the Witch Kingdom. They were so hungry—so eager to imagine a culture where females were the dominant gender—that Manon nearly felt bad describing it to them.

“When will you go back?” the youngest of them chirped.

“That’s not polite, Delilah,” hissed her neighbor, punctuating her admonishment with an elbow to Delilah’s side.

Manon shifted her jaw. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “And I don’t know if it would be the same, if I managed to.”

They stared at her in sad silence, looking at her knowingly.

She didn’t get the sense that they were taking pity on her, but their attention made Manon uncomfortable regardless. “But I saw them change,” she said, suddenly determined to end her monologue on a more hopeful note. “They raised me to be one thing and I became another. It took a long time, but I changed. My people changed.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” said Delilah.

Shortly after, they excused themselves to go about their normal duties.

It hurt Manon, to watch each pair of mutilated wings pass by as the women filed back out into the street. Not because she had any concept of what the pain of losing one’s wings must be like, but because it felt cruel to watch them flit so helplessly in a room that had been designed with the purpose of mending and making new.

She briefly wondered if spidersilk existed in this world, but the thought snagged on a sharp hurt. She released it before it could cause too much damage.

Balthazar lingered a few minutes longer to clean the equipment they’d used. He blushed and mumbled his farewell as he passed Manon and Emerie on his way out the door.

“He’s a good kid,” Emerie said with a smile, noting the suspicion with which Manon watched him go. “He saved my life. And besides, we need someone on the inside who’s willing to funnel supplies out from under Devlon’s nose.”

“I thought training Illyrian women was made legal after the war,” Manon said.

“Training Illyrian women is no longer illegal, but supplying them with the means to train is another matter.” Emerie sighed. “And that’s just one of many frequently cited loopholes that make my life a fucking nightmare.”

“And nothing has been done about this?” Manon pressed, horrified.

“Well, attitudes have certainly started to change,” Emerie said slowly. Cautiously. “Especially in the younger generations—take Balthazar, for example. But I think the customs and the habits they’ve created will be a lot harder to break. Until they have, what we’re asking these women to do is very dangerous. That’s why we’re planning to let those who wish to leave stay at the House of Wind, once we find a reasonable means of evacuating them.”

There was clearly more to this story than Emerie was willing to disclose, though based on Manon’s very limited time with the Illyrians, it was already abundantly clear that a certain fear of retribution had been beaten into her from childhood.

“And when they’re trained, who will lead them into battle? Who will lead you?”

Manon hoped the question didn’t offend Emerie. It was clear she, Nesta, and Gwyneth had all become formidable fighters in their own regard, but no amount of practice could ever make up for time spent on the front lines.

If she was insulted by Manon’s words, Emerie didn’t let it show. “Cassian or Azriel, I suppose.”

Manon scoffed. “Nesta’s Illyrians? They’d only have learned how to command men.”

“Is commanding women much different?” Emerie wondered.

“Yes,” Manon said flatly. To prove her point she added, “Two of my Thirteen were lovers.”

Emerie smiled. “Say no more. I shudder at thought of Cassian and Azriel being forced to settle a lovers’ quarrel.”

Manon decided that if she and Nesta could become friends, then she and Emerie stood a good chance of doing so, too.

She insisted on helping Emerie pack away some of her winter stock while they waited for someone to come shuttle Manon back to the House of Wind. It was nice, feeling the fresh leather in her hands as she counted and folded and sorted. This had been her job before she’d been made Wingleader, and she had been good at it. She had liked the feeling of being able to provide her companions with what they needed. She liked being needed.

Emerie was in the middle of spinning some inane tale about tiny horses with wings when the shop door swung open to reveal a blonde Fae who was egregiously overdressed for the occasion.

The speed with which Emerie’s demeanor changed was so unexpected that Manon nearly mistook the newcomer as a threat. Instinctively, her hand rose to where Wind-Cleaver’s pommel was usually accessible before Manon remembered she had not yet regained the privilege of arming herself. Which was lucky for this female and her carelessly exposed vital organs.  

Emerie’s cheeks darkened a shade, her steady hands fumbled over the garment she was folding, and she took an almost imperceptible sharp inhale before she said, “Hello, Morrigan.”

“Hi, Emerie,” the other woman said with a bat of her eyelashes so disarmingly casual it had to be intentional. She nodded at Manon. “And it’s a pleasure, Manon. Call me Mor. Both of you,” she added with a pointed look at Emerie.

Emerie looked as if she might faint.

“Anyway, are you about ready to leave this gods-forsaken place?” Morrigan sighed. “Nesta is expecting you both.”

𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪

Azriel watched with guarded fondness as Nyx toddled furiously after a plume of shadow he’d shaped into a cat. His nephew, it seemed, was quick to forget any of Azriel’s wrongdoings, and even quicker to forgive them.

Nyx’s father, on the other hand, was in a less compassionate mood.

Part of the problem was that Azriel had remembered his personal modesty as far as remnants of the night prior were concerned, but he had forgotten to glamour the scent of the House itself. Rhys had gagged immediately upon winnowing into the room and was holding Nyx at arm’s length out of the nearest window before Azriel realized his mistake.

Azriel was forced to maintain his composure while enduring a lecture about ‘basic decency in front of children’ that was longer than it needed to be, but his patience paid off. He presented his idea to Rhys calmly, and with quite a bit more finesse than his initial pitch to Cassian and Nesta.

Rhys, to his credit, didn’t balk at the mention of Bryaxis the way Cassian had.

“I suppose it does make sense,” he mused. “The only authority the prisoners ever really respected was the Bone Carver. His companion is as good a shot as any we have at finding another warden for them.”

“Exactly,” Azriel said, relieved. “I just can’t think of a good reason Bryaxis would want the job, even if we were able to find it. It’s not like the Bone Carver was there of his own volition, after all.”

Rhys considered this for a while. “Feyre is right about most other things, so why not about the Isle, too? Maybe there was a reason the witch landed there to begin with—something energetically distinct about the place. If we could figure that out, then I think it’s worth—what the fuck is that?” Rhys asked suddenly, his attention catching on something happening two stories below.

Azriel leaned over the balcony and was met with the bone-chilling sight of nearly every woman he’d ever loved engaged in conversation with one another. Though the image of Gwyn talking to Elain talking to Mor—talking to Nesta, the only one he’d ever actually slept with, Cauldron boil him—was his own personal hell, he didn’t realize what had Rhys so bothered until he spotted a flash of white hair.

The last he’d seen of the witch, she’d been unconscious, hanging over Cassian’s shoulder on her way to Madja’s infirmary. The woman standing next to Nesta now looked more like the vision of her that perpetually repeated itself in that magic glass of hers: silent but steady, radiating an air of easy grace.

She still managed to unnerve him, though, and he found himself suddenly glad he and Rhys were so far away. At least she and Emerie were there to serve as a buffer amidst the wreckage of his love life.

“Nesta let her leave?” Rhys groaned.

His shadows had informed Azriel that the witch had gone with Feyre to Windhaven today, but based on Rhys’s reaction to the sight of her no more than a meter outside the library, Azriel was willing to bet his High Lady hadn’t shared the specifics of her morning with her mate.

“Going to be the fucking death of me, I swear,” Rhys muttered, quietly enough to prevent his cursing from reaching impressionable ears. He returned to sit at the table with fingers pressed over the bridge of his nose.

Azriel honestly wasn’t sure which one of the women he meant, but took his best guess. “You agreed to let Nesta train her,” he reminded Rhys gently.

“I suppose I did,” Rhys sighed. “I just don’t know what our end goal is with her, and that makes me uneasy.”

“Why can’t we just treat her like another one of the priestesses seeking refuge?”

“Because she’s not,” Rhys said. “She’ll remain a threat as long as she’s here, even if she claims she didn’t arrive with some ulterior motive like Quinlan did. Who knows what she’s capable of?”

Azriel felt the beginnings of a headache coming on. He slumped back in his chair, arms crossed. “So just read her mind and be done with it.”

“What, so you can all pile on and wring my fucking neck for committing some grievous moral sin again? No, thank you.”

Azriel stared at him, surprised. These past few months had been difficult for Rhys, Azriel knew. But although Rhys had been testier than usual since Feyre learned of her pregnancy, he rarely voiced his frustrations this freely. 

Rhys, at the sound of Azriel’s silence, seemed to snap out of his stewing. “I—I’m sorry, Az,” he said, sounding defeated. He reached out to grab Nyx as he toddled by and pulled his son into his lap, as if it comforted him to have him close. “I’ve just been so on edge recently—and, well, in general, as of late.”

His brother, Azriel thought, was beginning to look his age. Despite nearly fifty years of abuse Under the Mountain and the subsequent war, only fatherhood had managed to truly shake him.

“Sometimes,” Rhys said, drawing in a ragged breath, “I catch a glimpse of the person I’m becoming, and I don’t like him very much. I tell myself it’s for him,” he went on, pressing a kiss to the top of Nyx’s head, “and maybe it once was, but I don’t think that’s true anymore. And that scares me.”

The expression on Rhys’s face then was raw—so unlike the airs he put on when he was holding court in the Hewn City or over their dining table. Azriel found himself abruptly reminded that before Rhys was a father and a husband and a High Lord, he’d been just another scared little boy in Windhaven.

Azriel rose from his seat and went to stand beside Rhys, holding his head against his stomach in the best hug they could manage while Nyx sat in Rhys’s lap. Rhys sighed and leaned into Azriel’s touch, pulling Nyx closer to him at the same time.

Azriel wondered how often Rhys let his guard down like this. He hoped he still managed it sometimes. For Feyre, and for his son.

It must be exhausting, Azriel thought, to love so much.

𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪

Elain, Nesta and Gwyneth were waiting for them—or rather, waiting for Morrigan and Emerie—when Manon was forcibly relocated into the entrance of the library.

Winnowing had felt an apt term to use when the magic involved belonged to Feyre, but whatever Morrigan had done to Manon and Emerie felt more like an induced seizure.

Nesta’s eyes were immediately on Emerie, looking at her with a knowing smirk, but Gwyneth bounded straight to Manon.

“Well?” she said, almost vibrating with excitement. “What did you think?”

“It’s amazing, what all of you are doing,” Manon admitted, once she had steeled herself against the surge of nausea Morrigan’s magic had brought about. “What the Illyrian women are doing, especially,” she clarified. She wasn’t sure exactly why Elain, Morrigan, Feyre and Amren were considered independent agents while Nesta, Gwyneth, and Emerie firmly identified as Valkyries, but she had centuries’ worth of experience with female interpersonal dynamics under her belt and she certainly wasn’t going to start committing grave social blunders today.

Thankfully, no one seemed to notice her near faux pax.

“I knew you’d love it,” Gwyneth beamed. 

“Good job, Em,” Nesta grinned, nudging her friend. “You won her over.”

“And you actually got Mor here on time for our appointment,” Elain said with a soft smile.

“I resent that,” huffed Morrigan, but she threw her arm around Elain’s shoulder and planted a kiss on her head.

None of the other women reacted to this gesture, as if such an easy, practiced exchange of affection was commonplace between them.

The longer she spent without it, Manon realized longed for this kind of companionship, this kind of ease with women who she respected enough to fear and who felt the same about her. She missed her friends—her sisters. Her cousin. She wanted to feel their arms around her, their laughter at her back, their words filling the space between their bedrolls in the dark.

A feeling clawed desperately at her insides, begging to be given a name.

Conversation continued unhurried between the women of the Night Court, as if they were all completely unaware they’d just borne witness to something wonderful.

“Feyre finally has an evening free, so Mor’s going to take us to a show,” Elain explained.

“They finally taught His Grace how to change a diaper on his own, then?” Nesta grumbled.

“Don’t talk too loud, Nesta, the bats in the rafters will hear you,” Morrigan teased.

Manon followed her gaze up two stories to where two sets of wings peeked above the railings of one of the House of Wind’s many balconies.

“I don’t give a fuck,” Nesta griped. “Do you think if I threw a rock from here, I could hit him in the head?”

Manon deduced from her tone that one of the pairs of wings belonged to their High Lord—Rhysand.  

That was fine with her, based on what she’d heard of him so far. In fact, if Rhysand had any idea how much time she’d been spending with Nesta, she imagined he might feel similarly ambivalent about speaking with her. Did he have any idea, though? In addition to Nesta’s obvious disdain for Rhysand, her sister’s husband, did she also harbor resentment toward Rhysand, her High Lord? Did any of these women?

“Well, that’s our cue to take this one inside for the evening,” Emerie sighed, grabbing Nesta by the arm.

Manon took a moment to exchange a few words of goodbye with each of them: she promised Nesta she’d at least watch a training session tomorrow morning; she thanked Emerie for her time; she warned Morrigan never to subject her to “a fun detour” while winnowing ever again.

Then Manon was alone again, her shadow the only one that walked unaccompanied as she turned her back to the late afternoon sun.

That same, unsettling feeling spread through her once more. It sank into each of her bones but did so slowly, as if it were unsure of itself. It burned hotter than grief and sat heavier than anxiety, but still it would not tell her its true name.

One of the shadows that loomed alongside hers moved. She watched as the silhouettes of two talon-tipped wings took shape and stepped forth from the sharp lines of the House of Wind and the soft crags of the mountain. They unruffled themselves above the pillars of the railing, then flapped once and suddenly spanned the balcony fully.

Fully developed, well-exercised wings. Male wings.

In the warped dimension granted to them by the lowering sun, they seemed to reach out for her as their owner took flight. How simple it was, for them to fly. How freeing it must be, to leap off the face of a mountain without fear of falling. And how utterly barbaric it was, to take that from someone else.

She didn’t know exactly what to do with the mounting feeling inside of her and was too afraid of it to find its center, but she could examine it. She could prod it. She could…mold it. It was molten, eager to be given a purpose, so she let it take the shape of something she knew.

As she watched the shadowed, steady wingbeats disappear over the horizon, she felt herself grow angry.

Manon hadn’t felt true anger—hadn’t felt anything, really—in so long that now even the embers of it were enough to set her alight. Anger was familiar to her; anger was easier to manage than anything else spending time with the Valkyries might have unearthed within her.

Centuries of supposedly just, progressive rule, and this was the best the Night Court had to show for its Illyrian women? Regardless of war or political circumstance, something could undoubtedly have been done before things got to this point. Surely it couldn’t have taken the arrival of a formerly human woman to actually begin righting some of these horrendous wrongs.

But she’d seen Windhaven for herself, and that was enough.

She wasn’t Illyrian. She didn’t owe anything to Emerie or Delilah or any of their kind. The Illyrians were a vicious, backward, and bloody people, but…so were hers. She knew what such an upbringing had done to her. She thought of Delilah’s freckles and the blush on Balthazar’s cheeks. She thought of how hopeful all of the women in Emerie’s shop had looked when she told them of her home. She wondered what it would have been like, if she’d have heard such things when she was a young girl who let her fear harden around her like armor.

Maybe she could find purpose here, with all of them. Maybe they could help her find herself again, in return.

As she shut the door to the priestesses’ quiet library and sealed the shadows behind her, it struck her how infuriatingly well Nesta’s plan to motivate her had worked.

Chapter Text

Days broke gently in this land, the solemn coos of mourning doves the only things that seemed to coax the city into shrugging off its star-studded shawl of night.

These early hours—when the first tendrils of sunlight peeked above the snow-capped eastern peaks—were Manon’s favorite times to explore outside the library, if only because they were no one else’s. In fact, she suspected the reason she was able to roam about with such freedom was that no one else wanted to wake up and supervise her at such an hour.

The more Manon explored, though, the more foolish the idea of an escort seemed, seeing as how there was no clear way to get the fuck down from the mountain. The library’s front door was apparently the only entrance that the priestesses used to access the streets of the city below, and that was kept secure by magic courtesy of the High Lord himself. The rest of the House of Wind’s visitors seemed to get in and out only with the help of wings or that odd magic they called winnowing. Manon, meanwhile, was left with absolutely no recourse to escape, save for a very long tumble down the jagged cliffs.

For the first time since she tumbled into this world, she was struck with the profundity of her need to fly. Wyvern wings or ironwood broom, the means of doing so didn’t matter as much as the all-consuming desire to throw herself into the wind again. But, as it might have done months ago, the thought of throwing herself over the mountain’s edge with the goal of surrendering herself to the Darkness did not tempt her. No, now she found herself wanting to become part of the wind again, rather than a weight falling through it; she wanted to rudder herself against great gales of it, to let it guide her as she rallied against it.

She was sick of falling.

She had no means of flying, but this realization in itself was enough. The view from the top of the cliffs here, where she could see the red rays of dawn blend into the white-capped waves on the horizon, was pleasant enough, anyhow. She sank to a seat on one of the stone benches lining the westernmost face of the balcony and waited.

She’d woken up too early, abuzz with equal parts anxiety and excitement to join Nesta and the rest of the Valkyries this morning.

The library had nursed her back to health, but it was static and dusty and quiet, the stone walls themselves made timid in the face of the horrors that had driven its residents to seek solace there. It was a gentle and necessary place, but now that she’d felt the sun on her skin and the familiar warmth of anger in her blood, Manon knew she’d outgrown it.

She knew she was ready to move again, to challenge herself. She itched to sweat and fight and learn.

She focused as far as her eyes would let her, as if the horizon might expand under the gentle prod of her gaze. The thought that there was a whole world out there, alien and undiscovered, somehow didn’t seem so overwhelming when she let herself bask in the vastness of it all.

She’d known what it was like to have a whole world, before. Erilea had seemed so inconsequential when she’d been sailing over its waves and flying over its plains next to the people she loved.

And, though she was likely several lightyears (and maybe even an entire dimension) away from the life she’d once had, she felt close to it here, in the last moments before sunrise on a foreign mountain. She ached for it, sometimes so badly she swore she could hear them, could hear the whispers of everyone she’d loved so thoroughly and missed so deeply—but only here, in the fading shadow of night. Here, everything felt transitory, which was the permission she needed to allow herself to feel their memories like drops of dew on her skin, cold but ready to be melted away by inevitable daylight.

She sat by the balcony at the edge of the shadows and let dawn break over her as if she were the mountain itself, standing resolute but open in the face of change.

A better world.

The words crept into her mind unbidden—a promise she’d made long ago.

She drew in a shaky breath and looked over her shoulder, where women were starting to file into the training arena. She let the words ring through her only once more before she stood and walked into the rising sun.

𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪

Azriel tugged absentmindedly on his shadows’ invisible tether, calling them back from where they’d wandered into the courtyard. They purred with excitement as they returned to him, apparently eager to tell him something, but he ignored them. 

He’d been at work for hours, tracing maps and reading old parchments, and still he was nowhere closer to figuring out where on earth Bryaxis might be hiding.

He angled his left wing slightly, blocking the rays of the morning sun that poured in through the window of the study and threatened to disrupt his focus on the great map of Prythian spread out in front of him. When he’d sat down, it had still been dark out.

“Did you sleep at all?”

“Mhm,” Azriel lied, not looking up from his work.

“Liar.” The old floors creaked under heavy footsteps as Cassian strode toward him and waved his hand under Azriel’s nose.

Azriel swatted him away. “Stop that.”

“What are you doing?”

“Trying to figure out where it went. Any ideas?”

Cassian shuddered. “Bryaxis, again? Is it that urgent?”

Azriel shot his brother a look. He recognized that in his near-manic, sleep-deprived state, he’d let the hunt for Bryaxis consume more of his brain space than it deserved. And, yes, that was in part because having such a specific mission prevented his mind from becoming idle and eating itself alive, as it was wont to do—but there was also appeal in being able to do something about the Prison Isle.

To do anything in general, really, that would propel his life forward instead of remaining stuck on the defensive as he had for so many years. If he could manage that, then maybe Rhys would get off his back about the Prison Isle and the rest of them would stop feeling so fucking sorry for him.

“All of you are on my ass for weeks about needing to do something about the Isle, and the second I come up with an idea it’s no longer urgent?”

Cassian frowned. “I’m sorry, Az. I didn’t mean it like that.”

Azriel immediately regretted his tone, but only shrugged in response.

“I came to ask if you’ll join me in Windhaven later today,” Cassian said, trying valiantly to change the subject.

“Fuck, no,” Azriel snapped, returning his attention to the parchment.

After a few heartbeats, Cassian dropped to a seat across from him. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“Well, my shadows last reported seeing it somewhere in Dawn, so I figured if I could get in contact with Thesan, then maybe—”

“Not about Bryaxis,” Cassian said gently. “What’s wrong, Az?”

A prickle of anger shot through Azriel. Didn’t he know? “You know I fucking hate that place. Tell Nesta and Emerie I’m sorry, but I’m not going. I don’t know how you stand it.”

Windhaven was a miserable dump that didn’t deserve a second of Cassian’s thoughts, let alone his patient efforts to improve it. Azriel had no idea how his brother managed to return time and again to a place that had hurt him—and Azriel, and Rhys—so badly, let alone to stay resolute in his hope that it might be reformed.

“I still hate it as much as you do,” Cassian hastened to add. “It’s not that I stand Windhaven. It’s just…easier to bear now.”

Easier to bear now that I have Nesta alongside me, was what he left unsaid.

An ugly twinge of jealousy lurched up the back of Azriel’s throat. For so long it had been the three of them against the world, unified in their resentment toward their brutal upbringing. But in just a few short years, everything had changed; his brothers had found mates, had been loved so thoroughly that they now held steadier in the face of their pasts than Azriel ever thought possible.

Proof of the matter stood before him in the form of Cassian, a male who’d been beaten bloody by Windhaven, yet was now its loudest advocate, all because Nesta had inspired him to believe it was capable of change.

“It’s not worth your time,” Azriel said shortly. “It’s a lost fucking cause.”

“Since when do you get to tell me how I spend my time?” Cassian asked, his patience for Azriel’s self-pity clearly worn through. “Maybe I care about it. Maybe I think it can change. Maybe I feel about Windhaven the way you feel about the Prison Isle.”

Azriel glared at his brother, mostly because he couldn’t think of anything to say to that. Here he was, chastising Cassian for having grand designs about Windhaven, meanwhile he himself had spent all night researching a library demon.

Luckily, it seemed Cassian was in no mood to pick an actual fight. “If you’re not coming to Windhaven, you at least need to leave this room,” Cassian declared with a sigh. “It’s a beautiful day.”

Azriel looked over his shoulder, squinting in the bright light. He could hear Nesta and her Valkyries outside, laughter and chanted drills and the scrape of steel.

He and Cassian had taken a step back from training the women in recent weeks, Nesta and Gwyn and Emerie having proven themselves more than prepared to train the next wave of recruits on their own. Though it made him happy to watch Nesta and her friends soar in their new roles, he did miss spending hours there in the ring with them. There was something thrilling about it, spending so much time in the presence of people who believed in something. He couldn’t remember the last time anything else had made him feel that alive.

Cassian followed the direction of his gaze. “Get up,” he demanded. “I’m going to beat the shit out of you.”

For the first time that morning, Azriel smiled.

𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪

It all came back to her, as effortless as breathing.

She was a bit rusty, yes—she heard one of her hips pop when she sank into too ambitious of a lunge, and was slow in dodging a few blows that never should have landed to begin with—but they were all there, the paths between nerves and muscles she’d spent centuries honing. She returned to her old fighting stances with practiced ease, savoring the way the cold morning air sawed through her with each hard-earned breath.

She’d hung back and avoided the sparring pits at first, especially once she realized that her definition of training was much different from this group’s. The Blackbeaks raised their young to kill, and blood was shed routinely in the training arenas of the Witch Kingdom.

These women, on the other hand, were not being trained as weapons but rather as versions of themselves, making up for years of lost time by becoming familiar with their bodies and how to wield them in ways they’d never thought possible. It made Manon equal parts sad and hesitant, unwilling to spar with one of them lest she acted on instinct and accidentally split a lip or sliced off a finger.

But then Nesta had pulled her into one of the rings and, oh, how Manon had missed it.

“This is all you have?” Manon asked as she looked at the cabinet of rudimentary weapons kept by the arenas. She didn’t bother trying to school her face into an expression any politer than distinctly unimpressed.

Nesta shot her a petulant look and thrust a wooden staff into Manon’s hands. “Obviously not. But I’m not going to keep my own sword in a dusty shed, am I?”

Something lurched in Manon’s chest. “What’s your blade called?”

“Ataraxia,” Nesta said, smiling almost shyly as she picked out a staff of her own.

A very old name, for what appeared to be a very young woman. “Inner Peace,” Manon translated.

Nesta's brows rose in surprise. “You speak the Old Language?”

Manon shrugged noncommittally. “I've picked up a few phrases here and there. Do you?”

Nesta huffed a laugh. “Certainly not. I picked it up from one of the older texts on the original Valkyries.” She began to lead Manon to one of the empty rings and asked, “Does your sword have a name?”

“Yes,” Manon said. “It's called Wind-Cleaver.”

“I like that,” Nesta smiled, a thoughtful glaze passing over her face. She looked, in that moment, very, very young.

“As do I. I'd also like it returned to me,” Manon said flatly.

Nesta looked surprised, as if she'd forgotten the fact that Manon was technically being held captive, separated from her two material possessions. “Rhys didn't give it back it to you, after your questioning?”

Manon's irritated look was answer enough.

“I suppose that makes sense—he threw a fit after he learned I'd even set foot into a blacksmith's shop. I shouldn't have assumed he'd do the right thing when it came to his charity cases,” Nesta grumbled. Then she shot a sheepish look to Manon and added, “No offense.”

Manon shrugged and kept her face impassive, though it pained her to know Nesta had apparently suffered the same sort of indignities she had. And if even Nesta, the High Lady's eldest sister and the General's mate, still found herself on unequal footing with the rest of the Court, then what chance did Manon stand of regaining any sort of freedom?

“All that to say, I don't know where your sword is,” Nesta said with a sigh. “That's apparently state business that's far beyond my security clearance, now that they have no need of me. I'm sorry.”

Manon bit back the urge to apologize to Nesta in turn, for being held a hostage of the Night Court in her own way. She accepted Rhys's belittling because she loved her sister and agreed to remain under his purview because she loved his brother, and still she was kept in the dark about matters that directly concerned her. What else aren’t they telling you? Manon wondered. 

“How old are you, Nesta?”

Nesta raised an eyebrow as she set her feet in an opening stance. “Twenty-six.”

Manon waited a beat for her to add a word such as decades or hundred that might set her more at ease, but no such relief came.

Doing her best to shake off her surprise and end this conversation before she learned of any additional horrors, Manon made her first move. She’d never been one to waste time with posturing and preening in a fight, and she certainly wasn’t going to start now. She lunged for Nesta’s flank, left carelessly exposed by the way she was holding her staff.

Nesta, to her credit, reacted swiftly, pivoting out of the path of offense—and, unbeknownst to her, directly into the secondary trap Manon had laid out for her. “Why? How old are you?”

Just for that, Manon put some weight into the smack of her staff she landed against Nesta’s arm. “It’s rude to ask that of a woman.”

Nesta huffed as she regrouped, clearly not used to taking any sort of blow this early into a fight. “You just asked me.”

“I never said I was polite.” To emphasize her point, Manon swept her staff out again, this time aiming for Nesta’s knees.

Nesta, now partial to Manon’s ruthlessness, sidestepped just in time. “Over or under one hundred?”

“I’m not playing this game,” Manon snipped, taking another swing.

“Come on,” Nesta chided her, dancing out of her reach once more. “Over or under one thousand?” As if this weren’t enough of an insult, she coupled her question with her first offensive strike, flourishing her staff in a textbook-perfect configuration.

Manon, despite her apparent advanced age, blocked it easily. “Old enough to know how to kill you in a second, even in my weakened state. Is that answer enough for you?”

“Over or under five hundred and forty-one?” Nesta pressed on, attempting to jab at Manon from a new angle.

Though she was loath to admit it, Manon was beginning to tire. If Nesta’s game was to wear her out, it just might work. She tried not to pant as she replied, “That one’s oddly specific.” And oddly close to being correct.

“That’s how old those dusty bats are.” Nesta nodded her chin and cast a quick glance over Manon’s shoulder.

It was just enough. Manon undercut her in two swift strikes, knocking the wood from Nesta’s hand and her feet from beneath her. With thinly veiled satisfaction at the frown on Nesta’s face, Manon leaned over her to add, “Never take your eyes off of your opponent.”

Only when she’d helped the other woman back to her feet did Manon look to the neighboring ring that had caught Nesta’s eye.

Two winged males stood inside of it. Neither held a weapon in their hands, though they were clearly at the end of their own sparring match, strands of hair plastered to their sweaty brows and fighting leathers scuffed with fresh dirt.

Were it not for Balthazar’s balancing presence the day prior, Manon might have sprung across the arena and ripped their faces off on sight purely because they were Illyrian males, and she was still feeling the sting of the injustices she’d witnessed in Windhaven. But she supposed these two were blameless enough for now, especially if Nesta trusted them enough to tolerate their presence in the priestesses’ sacred space.

Nesta clapped Manon on the back good-naturedly before walking to the broader one and pulling him into a kiss. Her mate, then—Cassian.

Manon had every intention of turning her back to this offensively public display of affection and returning to the rest of the women, but the sight of the Illyrians had caused a memory deeper than her day in Windhaven to stir. They’d been there, these two and their High Lord, when she first landed here in Prythian.

And she’d been disarmed before she’d fought them, which meant one of them had to have taken her sword. Most likely Azriel—the one she’d attacked first. He would know where Wind-Cleaver was.

This realization was enough for her to spare the male a second glance.

Now that she wasn’t being choked out by his shadows or sinking her teeth into his arm, Manon could properly study the man for the first time. He stood an inch or two taller than Nesta’s mate and yet somehow seemed to take up less space, his wings tucked tightly against his back and his face equally guarded, softening only slightly when Nesta ran a playful hand through his dark hair.

It was apparently Manon’s presence that prevented him from surrendering to Nesta’s affection, evidenced by the way he instinctively pulled his left arm—the one she’d bitten, she realized with a small amount of pride—closer to his chest and eyed her warily.

The fact that this male and Nesta were obviously friends fed her earlier speculation. If they trusted each other, why hadn’t he told Nesta where Manon's belongings were? What else were he and his High Lord keeping from her?

How deep did his—or anyone’s—loyalties to Rhysand run?

If she was going to get any answers for herself, she’d have to wear at least one of the High Lord’s confidants down, and these two seemed as good a target as any. They were just males, after all—how difficult could they be?

𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪

Azriel had spent the better part of an hour sparring with Cassian, but it was only after they’d exited the ring that Azriel was overcome with the urge to punch his brother’s face in.

The affront on Azriel’s introversion began when Nesta brokered an uncomfortable introduction between Azriel and Manon. Despite being much too casual considering the circumstances of their first meeting, it might have been bearable enough as an isolated incident. But then Cassian, damn him, had smiled sweetly at the two new acquaintances and prompted, “Az will see you back to the library, won’t he?”

Then he and Nesta were gone off to Windhaven, and Azriel was left standing awkwardly before the female who’d shattered his forearm. The fact that Nesta hadn’t thought twice about leaving them alone together wasn’t as comforting as it should have been—Nesta did, after all, have a well-known soft spot for the dangerous and off-putting.

And off-putting she was. The witch studied him in a way that made his skin crawl, gold eyes scanning him without a trace of subtlety, wholly unafraid to be caught staring. Challenging him to look away first, like a predator asserting her dominance. 

Azriel looked away first. He knew the polite thing to do in this situation would be to strike up a casual conversation and lead her back to the library as he’d been bidden, but he couldn’t for the life of him figure out a way to enact the first part of this genius plan. He desperately searched for something to say to the witch, but he’d never had Rhys’s courtly charm or Cassian’s easy extraversion. All he could manage was a gruff, “Come on, then.”

To his great dismay, the witch didn’t move. She kept her eyes trained on him instead and said, “You’re the one who tried to find it.”

“What?”

Manon nodded over Azriel’s shoulder toward the library. “You tried to find the creature who once lived there. Bryaxis.”

Her voice was clear as midnight, her strange accent sharpening the syllables of Bryaxis’ name, giving it a musical quality he’d never thought to expect from it. Despite being spoken by someone wholly foreign to its native land, the creature’s name sounded more at home on her tongue.

“Yes,” Azriel said cautiously. The witch, he remembered, was the reason Nesta had sparked his memory about Bryaxis in the first place, but he wasn’t sure exactly how much of its situation Nesta had disclosed.

“But you weren’t able to locate it.”

“No,” he said shortly, as if he hadn’t spent the better part of the past twelve hours being painfully reminded of that fact. How on earth was this the first thing she asked him about? He’d been with Cassian all morning and witnessed his only conversation with Nesta, so there was no conceivable way Manon knew how Azriel had spent his sleepless night.

And yet, she’d known exactly where to strike.

Manon rolled her eyes and folded her arms across her chest in a way that reminded Azriel distinctly of Nesta. “Do you speak in more than one-word phrases?”

The familiarity of her irreverence quashed Azriel’s sense of unease, leaving him simply annoyed instead. He scowled. “Why are you so interested in a missing library monster?”

“It intrigues me,” Manon said simply, tilting her head as she turned her body in line with her gaze, staring at the tall rock formation that housed the library. “I want to know where else a strange creature might go in this world, when it had the option of returning to its home.” 

She said them without any particular emotional intonation, but her words moved something deep inside Azriel nonetheless. He followed her gaze to the mountain, its crags glowing cozily in the midday sun, belying its dark underbelly. He thought of the dungeon he’d spent his childhood in—and the dungeons he’d been shamefully drawn back to as an adult. In a way he, too, was a creature of the dark, most comfortable in the shadows and their quiet.

“The last reports I heard of Bryaxis came from the southern border of Dawn,” he said after a long while.

Manon turned to him, seemingly surprised he’d offered more information. Azriel, in fairness, was equally surprised with himself.

“Dawn?” Manon echoed.

“The Dawn Court,” he clarified.

Manon’s face remained impassive, uncomprehending. Of course, the court system wouldn’t mean anything to anyone not of this world. She’d have none of the foundational knowledge that he and most everyone else took for granted.

Maybe it was because he felt bad, knowing he was keeping the news that one of her kind was possibly alive in this world from her, despite the way she clearly longed for her home. Maybe it was because it had been a long day and an even longer night. Or maybe it was because he sensed a loneliness in her that was undeniably similar to his own, but—

“I’ll show you,” he blurted.

She blinked at him, both of them surprised once more.

“All right.”

As he and Manon Blackbeak walked together toward the House of Wind, Azriel prayed that he hadn’t just done something catastrophically stupid.

𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪

It was strange to be in someone’s home.

Manon had spent the first hundred-odd years of her life as a nomad, camping wherever and whenever the Blackbeak Matron demanded, departing on sometimes months-long journeys to flush out Crochan settlements. Then there had been the war, and the homeland she’d regained without any elements of home left within it to speak of, and there was also the matter of Dorian, who was based in Rifthold and traveled often. When he was gone, she became even more restless, finding excuses to hop from city to city within the Witch Kingdom as it slowly rebuilt, or leave entirely to visit her remaining friends. Then Erilea devolved into another war, and she was set in motion once again, a shark swimming about the world, fearful she’d drown if she allowed herself to stop for too long.

She’d never had anything like this, anything like the House of Wind. Azriel introduced it as “Cassian and Nesta’s home,” but it was clear he was just as much an inhabitant of it as they were.

It was, without a doubt, a High Lord’s estate, with ballrooms and marble floors and vast mahogany tables and crystal chandeliers, but it also had unmistakable signs of being lived in: scuffs on the stone under the legs of favored dining chairs; bookcases overflowing with yellowed scrolls and fresh spines alike; shoes of varying sizes caked in dried mud in a pile by the front door.

Despite its vastness, no one else seemed to be inside, which was just as well—Manon had a sense that she wouldn’t have been extended this same hospitality if there had been anyone else to bear witness to it.

Azriel led her into some sort of study that looked like it had been ravaged by an unsupervised toddler. Books had been plucked from their floor-to-ceiling cases haphazardly, leaving the shelves gap-toothed and off-balance. Tomes littered the faded carpet, either as ballasts to pin down the curling edges of hand-inked maps or in carefully separated stacks with no apparent organizational scheme.

It was immediately obvious that the works stored in this room were different from the ones stored in the library. The priestesses kept a meticulous catalog of primary sources and original texts, dedicating themselves to providing accurate and unbiased materials to any visiting scholar. The texts in here would have horrified Clotho and the rest of them: some had stains from coffee mugs and hurriedly scribbled notes in the margins; some appeared to be personal accounts, written in varying colors of ink; and others appeared to be collections of loose papers grouped together without clear reason. No, the words that lived here were personal—loved.

Azriel picked his way over the maze of clutter toward the largest of the maps, spread out in the middle of the carpet, and gestured for Manon to follow suit.

His shadows seemed to melt contentedly into the room as he sank to his knees, draping themselves under side tables and over the arms of the sofa. They seemed at home, happy to see their master at ease, in a way that reminded her painfully of—

Dorian would have loved it here. The thought ripped into an old hurt, one that had never fully scabbed over. As if they could read her thoughts, Azriel’s shadows twitched in the corner of her eye.

Manon bristled, turning her back to them to focus on Azriel instead. “Are you quite well in the head?”

“Excuse me?”

“Are you well in the head?” Manon demanded. “This looks like the workroom of a madman.”

Azriel looked up at her crossly, which Manon was beginning to think was his default state. “Do you want answers or not?”

Manon’s curiosity won out, as it often did.

If Azriel was bothered by her accidentally stepping on a map or two while she picked her way across the room, he didn’t mention it.

𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪

“So, this is Windhaven, and this is where we are now?” Manon asked, placing a careful (and conspicuously non-iron tipped) finger on the sketch of the Night Court.

She knelt before the large map of Prythian, the first document that the House had graciously conjured up last night at Azriel’s request. It was fairly accurate, for something that was clearly hand-drawn and centuries old, although the chicken-scratch stylizations seemingly added for artistic flair didn’t exactly facilitate readability. But, he figured, if any document would give an outsider a sense of the land’s culture, it would be this one: aged, embellished, worn down by the hands of multiple generations of cartographers and storytellers alike. Personal.

Manon had simply stared at the map when she first sat down, something like guarded awe lighting up her eyes. She’d settled closer to it and began to pore over it with an unexpected intensity, peppering Azriel with all sorts of questions about Prythian and its history as she soared above its black and white lands like a bird unbound by time or dimension.

He’d been reticent to answer her inquiries at first, wary of divulging information about troops or defenses or resources to a stranger. But her questions were nowhere close to political—she asked instead of folklore and fables, foundation myths and tall tales; the stories of Prythian that were readily available in books, but more frequently communicated in the form of song or poetry.

Much to his surprise, he didn’t grow tired of answering her: when he began to speak of the Cauldron and the Daglan and the very first High Lords, he found he did so with the same cadence his mother had, an almost rhythmic recitation of cultural identity, so practiced it became soothing, capable of lulling young children to sleep.

Time passed in the form of Manon’s hair escaping its plait, a gradual undoing that progressed each time she tossed the braid over her shoulder while leaning in closer to the map. In what felt like minutes, morning became afternoon and afternoon became evening, and soon Manon’s hair slid freely over her shoulders like white silk, catching the last rays of daylight in its warm glow.

His shadows churned about Azriel and Manon happily, as they had all afternoon. He did his best to keep them from bothering her, but as the day passed it became more difficult to restrain them, the pesky things made bolder by their natural predilection for sunset.

He opened his mouth to apologize when he noticed, moments too late, that one particularly bold wisp of shadow had crept out of the baseboards to sniff at her foot.

Manon brushed it away without a word before he could react, her touch firm yet gentle. Her attention never strayed from the map. “Where was it I landed?”

When she’d come close to exhausting Azriel’s knowledge of ancient history, Manon skipped over the more recent past and began to ask about her own genesis in this land. This story was new and far less musical, though as Azriel filled in the gaps of her knowledge, he had the distinct sense that she was composing a legend of her own.

“The Prison Isle, to the northwest,” Azriel said. He extended a finger toward the map and paused for what felt like the hundredth time that day, painfully aware of how obviously this would expose his scars.

If Manon noticed his hesitation this or any time that afternoon, she didn’t say anything of it.

She quickly found the spot herself. “I landed in a prison?”

“A former prison,” Azriel corrected. “It’s ruined, now.”

“Did I ruin it?” Manon asked, sounding more hopeful than remorseful.

Azriel felt himself begin to smile, despite his better judgment. “I hate to be the one to tell you this, but no. There was a recent, ah, incident on the Isle that destroyed most of it. It was where the Bone Carver—one of Bryaxis’s companions—lived, though.”

Distantly, he realized that he was fast approaching a dangerously gray area, in which the histories he told were too recent to be widely available in public documents and too sensitive to be shared outside Rhys’s Inner Circle. But if Manon truly was some sort of intergalactic spy who had infiltrated his good graces by having him recite bedtime stories, then she had more than earned his respect and the right to bring about Prythian’s downfall by such creative means.

The mention of Bryaxis seemed to spur Manon’s interest anew. She leaned in further, trying to make out the half-faded ink near the Prison. “Was he a prisoner?”

“The Bone Carver? No. Well, sort of, at least originally. He became more of a warden, after a while.”

Manon hummed thoughtfully. “And what of the sister?”

Azriel swallowed his pride and placed a brutalized finger on The Middle, which was illustrated in far less detail than the rest of the map, save for the Bog of Oorid and the Weaver’s Cottage. “She had a house here.”

“Landed aristocracy,” Manon said solemnly.

It took Azriel a second to realize she’d made a joke. He huffed a laugh, a beat too late. “Something like that.”

“Well,” Manon said, “now that I’ve given you an excellent start to finding your missing monster, I’ll make you a deal.”

Azriel wondered if someone had hit him over the head with a shovel and caused him to black out the past three minutes of conversation. What was she talking about? “You—what?”

She stared at him as if he were stupid, which he was beginning to believe he was. “You last saw Bryaxis at the southern border of Dawn, mere miles away from its friend’s cottage. If the brother’s home was destroyed, that’s the logical place for it to go. Or, at least, a good place to keep looking.”

Of course. It made perfect sense. She was brilliant; she was a genius. She had deduced in seconds what he’d been unable to fathom for years. Why on earth hadn’t he thought—

“I—I don’t know what to say. Besides thank you, truly.”

The witch only continued to stare at him expectantly, a bored expression on her face and the slightest pout on her blood-red lips.

“Don’t you want to hear the terms of my deal?”

Right—there was more, somehow. He cleared his throat. “Go on.”

“I’ll translate the rest of the map for you, under two conditions.”

He was, once again, clueless as to what the fuck she was talking about. Azriel stared at Manon, then at the map, then at Manon again, unsure what she could possibly mean. “It’s already written in the Mother’s tongue. I can read, you know.”

“Gods above,” Manon muttered to herself, closing her eyes and sighing deeply, as if to center herself before she carried on. “Not the words on the map. The Wyrdmarks.” This time, the finger she placed on the map gleamed with a razor-sharp iron tip.

It took him longer than he cared to admit to realize what she was pointing at: the shading on the illustrated mountains snaking across the map, from the face of Ramiel to the crags of the Prison Isle and the great mountain under which Rhys had been held hostage. Upon closer examination, what he’d previously dismissed as stylized hash-marks intended to give the mountains depth for added artistic flair had a distinct pattern to them. Though their ink had faded under centuries and sunshine, they were, without a doubt, familiar symbols, the likes of which he’d only seen a few times before: the Book of Breathings; the tunnels leading to the Prison Isle; Bryce Quinlan’s strange tattoo.

The ramifications of such a discovery were so complicated and far-reaching that his half-mad, sleep-deprived mind refused to even begin pondering them.

“What are your terms?” he asked before any other question with potentially devastating political implications could escape him.

Manon’s smile was terrifying and self-assured. She knew she could ask for just about anything and he’d grant it to her. The witch, it seemed, was used to getting what she wanted. “You will return my sword to me,” she said matter-of-factly.

That was easy enough to accommodate, Azriel figured—almost deceptively so, even if he wasn’t about to admit that to her. Which made him nervous to ask: “And your second condition?”

She cast a long glance around the library, its rich wooden shelves dyed hues of dark red and gold in the late afternoon sun. “I would like to come back here.”

Azriel blinked, the soft tone of her voice taking him utterly by surprise after the surety with which she’d issued her first demand.

“Supervised,” he said.

Manon nodded once, apparently satisfied enough with this answer. “Very well.” 

Azriel found himself, for the second time that day, caught before Manon in silent stasis, unsure what to say. After a deeply uncomfortable pause, he managed: “Cassian promised I’d see you back to the library.”

“Chivalrous. Do the wild priestesses roaming the mountainside at night pose a threat to my safety?”

He couldn’t help the way his lips twitched into a split-second smile, his mood lightened both by her joke and the uneasy alliance blossoming between them. “If Nesta trained them, absolutely,” he replied.

When she shot him a small smile in return, the sunset seemed to dance in her golden eyes.

Then he watched her disappear into the dusk, secretly glad that she’d asked to return.

Chapter Text

It had been a calculated risk, revealing her ability to read the Wyrdmarks on the map, but she’d had a feeling, based on how surprised Nesta had been to hear Manon interpret her sword’s name, that the Old Language had not been spoken in their land for quite some time. She’d considered asking Azriel for his discretion, to allow her to translate first and tell his High Lord later, but that request would have sown an unnecessary distrust. No, instead she’d gambled on the male, suspecting that he wouldn’t reveal any new information to Rhysand until he was sure it was accurate and complete. 

The fact that she hadn’t immediately been summoned for an audience with the High Lord suggested that she had been correct—but that was not to say the so-called Spymaster had kept all of their afternoon a secret.

“I heard you had quite the afternoon with Azriel,” Nesta said as they strolled toward the training ring the next morning, with a teasing smirk that reassured Manon nothing serious had been divulged.  

She’d guessed as much, but hearing it confirmed provided an extra layer of relief. Beyond keeping Manon’s secret as a means to guaranteeing the quality of his data, Azriel also seemed to have a personal stake in the hunt for this creature. Why that was the case, she didn’t know. She wondered if his motivations might become clearer when she returned to the study. 

When she returned to the study. How quickly she’d grown presumptuous, taking a stranger for their word. It wasn’t like her, and it certainly wasn’t strategic. It was, she realized, due to the embarrassingly simple fact that she just…wanted to return to the study. 

 
She was disgusted with herself.  

“You have a lovely home,” said Manon by way of answer. 

“Was his conspiratorial nonsense really interesting enough to entertain you for hours?” Nesta wondered. She hastened to explain, “It smelled quite strongly of you in there by the time Cassian and I returned home.” 

Manon wrinkled her nose, displeased by the realization that this breed of Fae shared the same odd fascination with scents as Aelin and Rowan’s. It was an annoying, intrusive ability that served little purpose outside of fucking and fighting. Her people, at least, had the decorum to develop their sense of smell to distinguish between useful things like fresh blood and rotten meat, rather than which of their kind was about to run off to rut like a bitch in heat. 

At the very least, it meant that Nesta had no grounds to doubt Manon’s chastity when she answered honestly, “Yes. I quite like to read.” 

Nesta smiled, in that knowing way she often did, with a tilt of her head and a sharp turn of her lips. “You live in a library.”

Well, she had her there. “You should know as well as anyone that the books in your house are different,” Manon sniffed. 

“It’s true,” Nesta grinned. “The House has great taste. And besides, I can’t think of better company than Azriel for reading in complete silence for hours on end.”

Manon chuckled. “The bat? He had quite a lot to say, actually. A decent storyteller, at that.” 

That was an understatement, almost to the point of insult. Though she’d never admit it to anyone, she could have sat there for hours more just listening to him speak. His voice was cool and slow-moving, like the deepest currents of the ocean. The tales he shared were undoubtedly popular ones, but he told them with the melodic intimacy of a secret that she’d very much like to keep. 

Nesta stared at her as if she’d just sprouted horns. “You’re joking.” 

Manon frowned. “Why would I do that?” 

So Azriel really hadn’t shared much detail about their dealings at all, even with Nesta, his housemate and apparent confidante. Though—did he trust this young woman any more than his general? Than his High Lord? There were, it seemed, deeper layers to the personal politics of the Night Court still; she would have to plot any next moves carefully. 

“He spoke to you?” Nesta pressed on as they neared the edge of the ring. “Multiple times? Of his own free will?” 

“You’re well aware I have no sword to hold to his neck, if that’s what you’re implying.” 

“And I’m sorry about that,” Nesta said with a slight wince. “Truly. It’s just that—” she stopped suddenly, holding up a hand in pause, urging Manon to stay outside the ring. “I almost forgot!” she exclaimed. “Ilana’s presenting the ribbon today.”

Manon followed Nesta’s line of vision to the opposite edge of the sparring ring where two priestesses stood. One brandished a sword that looked ill-suited for her wafish frame, and the other was working carefully to affix a white silk ribbon to an iron loop at the end of a wooden contraption.

“Cutting the ribbon,” Nesta explained. “The ritual that proves your readiness for battle. It’s symbolic, more than anything, based the original Valkyries’ traditions. Azriel was the one to introduce it to our training, actually, although he’d never take credit for it.”

The white ribbon rippled in the breeze as Ilana released it, and Manon found herself wondering what something so soft and delicate would look like running between Azriel’s brutalized hands. 

She shook off the unbidden thought with a near-visceral revulsion at her own soft-heartedness and focused again on the steel in the younger priestess’s hands. 

“Remember when that was us?” 

Manon looked up at the sound of a new voice and found Gwyneth wrapping her arms around Nesta’s shoulders from behind. 

“Little baby Valkyries,” Nesta cooed back. “Couldn’t slice that thing to save our lives.” 

“Until we could,” Gwyneth smiled. 

Loathe as she was to interrupt their moment, Manon spoke, unable to contain her curiosity. “The point is to cut it?”

Nesta nodded. “We tell the trainees they’ll need the sharpest steel, the fastest reflexes, and the purest hearts to do it. It’s not clear how many of those things are actually necessities, but feeling confident about all three certainly can’t hurt.” 

“Took me months to figure out,” Gwyneth admitted. 

Manon nodded and returned her attention to Ilana and her young ward, doing the best she could to look stoic when, really, every fiber of her being begged her to race across the ring, push Ilana’s protégé out of the way, and see how fast she could cut the thing down. How hard could it possibly be?

“Thank you to all who were able to join us this morning,” Ilana was saying to the crowd. “Angharad, whenever you’re ready.” 

The young woman nodded, raising both her blade and her head high. She readjusted the grip on her pommel. The small crowd that had gathered went silent, waiting with bated breath. 

It inhaled deeper still as Angharad raised the blade behind her head, cut a perfect arc with her shoulders squared, and—missed, the ribbon fluttering softly in the breeze of the crowd’s collective sigh. 

Manon half expected Ilana to curse Angharad’s lineage or cut off a hand—the kind of punishment that would have befallen a young witch for such a public embarrassment—but instead watched as mentor knelt before mentee, grasping her by the forearms and saying something too soft for the rest of the crowd to hear. 

“The Valkyries are very forgiving when it comes to second chances,” Nesta half-whispered. “As it stands, most of our trainees are on their third or fourth before even stepping in the ring. Sometimes we watch these ceremonies drag on for hours.” 

Gwyneth rolled her eyes and shoved her friend in the side with a light chuckle. “You’re horrible.” 

“I’ve never claimed to be better than the rest of us,” Nesta said defensively. “I was probably on my sixth or seventh chance when Feyre landed my ass here.” 

The leniency of this rite struck Manon as preposterous. How on earth was repeatedly choking under pressure meant to signify readiness for battle? Consistency and predictability were baseline expectations of each witch in a given clan, and in a legion as small and tightly regimented as the Thirteen, the weight of these demands were magnified exponentially. One had to trust each individual member with her life. 

But, then again, this wasn’t the Witch Kingdom; it wasn’t even Erilea, and it certainly wasn’t Windhaven. Maybe there was something to be said for this kind of patience with one’s trainees, with this kind of support. To Angharad’s credit, after all, she’d kept her head high despite the murmurings of the audience. When she raised her sword again, her grip seemed steadier. 

The ribbon was cut on her fourth try, and the reaction from Angharad’s onlookers was just as riotous and jubilant as if she’d done it on the first. Ilana swept the younger woman up in her arms and several more priestesses hopped over the edge of the ring to share in their embrace. 

“I am proud to name you, Angharad, my newest sister in rank, having achieved the title of Valkyrie. Congratulations.”

Sister. For the second time in a week, the word clanged through Manon with the humble beginnings of a realization as well as a vague sense of guilt that she wasn’t ready to explore. She returned her attention to Nesta and Gwyneth.

“Always makes me tear up a little,” Nesta admitted. 

Gwyneth nudged her in the side again. “You old sap, you.”

Then she was off to join in the celebration, leaving Manon and Nesta at the edge of the ring. 

“That could be you, if you like,” Nesta said. “Completing the ritual, I mean. No one would doubt your ability to fight in battle.”

Manon didn’t bother trying to hide her surprise. “You would have me become one of your Valkyries?”

Nesta shrugged. “They’re not my Valkyries, first of all. And second—why not? You’ve seen our vision and I’ve no doubt you’ll excel in training. You’ve suffered just like the rest of us and deserve some recognition for it.” 

Manon felt heat rise to her cheeks and quickly brushed past the deeper currents carried by Nesta’s words. “Do you actually intend to have these women march into battle?” 

There was a slight shift in Nesta’s stance. “Well, we’re technically in a time of peace, but we can never get too comfortable. Things are…evolving. And there may come a day the Valkyries could be of use as extra ground forces.” 

Manon looked up at Nesta sharply. “These women are not ready for war, especially not one as soon as you seem to be implying.” 

A flash of cold passed over Nesta’s face. “You’ve only watched us train for a day.”

“And that was enough,” Manon said simply. “It’s no fault of yours, or your companions. It’s just that the traditional Valkyrie fighting style is clearly developed for aerial as well as ground combat. I can imagine it makes good sense to an Illyrian who has the same tactical advantages, but there are vastly different considerations when flight isn’t an option.” 

“Oh,” said Nesta, her defensiveness lessening just a touch. “I suppose that makes sense.” She seemed to consider for a moment then added, “Your Thirteen fought flying as well?” 

“We preferred to, yes.” 

Nesta hummed thoughtfully. “All the more reason for you to join us, then. We could use your expertise, even if we don’t have a means of flying.”

There was still a small part of Manon that wondered why. Why Nesta and her court had bothered to expend so much time and energy rehabilitating her, why they’d spent hours a day working her back into fighting shape but still refused to give her back her sword. She wasn’t sure where she stood on the prisoner-guest spectrum anymore, and it was quite possible the rest of the Night Court remained undecided, too. 

Her strategic mind itched, trying desperately to think in the long term but coming up empty-handed. The possible paths open to her in this world were so vast and nebulous that they overwhelmed her. Certainly remaining a hostage to the library wouldn’t work for her long-term, but she also wasn’t sure how she’d convince her—captors? Consorts?—to let her walk freely. And if she did, where would she go? She had nothing, no one. She might still be a prisoner, but in a way she was as free as she’d ever been. 

So, when Manon spoke next, it was with the voice of the former High Queen of the Witch Kingdom—the words of a strategist, who recognized a tool for leverage when she saw one. “I want to re-negotiate my status as your court’s hostage,” she said. “I want to understand what my choices are, for a future here. If I help you, will you help me? Will you allow me to see the rest of your world?” 

Get out of the Night Court to do what, exactly, she wasn’t sure—but she’d asked for her sword back and now she seemed to be set in some kind of unstoppable forward motion, her innate will to survive unwittingly rekindled by the few instances of fantastic luck she’d clung to when shipwrecked in the sea of her own choices. 

She had no home to return to, no allies to call upon, and yet…something about sitting above that map in the sun-drenched study, watching the inked rivers running into churning seas and abutting foreign shores that so far existed only in her imagination, had made her hungry. To look at a map was to trust, to believe that those who had drawn it had seen far greater wonders than she could think to imagine. In a way, it felt like flying and falling all at once. 

Nesta smiled at her, her face lighting up like the rising sun behind the trees. 

“Why are you so cheery?” Manon asked. 

“It’s the first time I’ve heard you talk about the future. That’s all.” 

Manon turned her attention back to the training ring. “Gwyneth was right. You are a sap.” 

“Don’t be so eager to destroy the big, bad reputation I’ve earned myself.” Nesta knocked her playfully on the shoulder, much in the same way she’d done to Gwyneth, but her voice carried none of the gesture’s lightness when she went on: “I may be a sap, and I may not seem like I give a shit when I talk about Court politics, but this—” she nodded to the ring full of her companions “—I’m serious about. Do as you say you will—train with us, learn from us, teach us—and I’ll talk to my sister about what freedoms that will earn you.” 

Manon responded with a terse nod. “I give you my word.” 

Nesta studied her for a beat before returning the gesture. “Very well.” She turned to the weapons cabinet at the edge of the ring and produced two of the woefully heavy, ill-suited swords with which the Valkyries insisted on training. “Let’s begin.” 

𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪

Azriel met his High Lady on the coast south of Velaris three days later, at the edge of the same forest of needled evergreens where he’d taught her to fly. His recent disagreements with Rhys, he realized, had made him shyer around Feyre. He hadn’t realized how badly he’d needed a morning together, walking amid the birdsong and the smell of pine sap, to remind him that they were friends.

“Before I forget, here’s the design you asked for,” Feyre said, reaching into her pack and handing him a thin roll of canvas. “It’s not perfect, but I had to copy it down quickly.” 

“It’s amazing,” he assured her. “Just what I was hoping for.” 

“Remind me again how this is helpful for finding Bryaxis?” 

“Analyzing the Horn for some sort of tracking spell—something I could conceivably ask Nesta to use to hunt the thing.” Which wasn’t the truth, of course, but also wasn’t entirely a lie. 

“Right,” Feyre said, tilting her head in a way that suggested she was about to ask an insightful question with the potential to blow right through his ruse. 

“How did your meeting with Mor and Elain go?” he prompted instead.

“It was fine—I wish you could have been there to hear their reports firsthand. You were welcome to join us, you know.”

Azriel would have rather eaten glass. “I know.” 

Feyre sighed. “Can the three of you start being normal together again? Please?”

“I thought I was being normal.” 

Feyre gave him a long look, but evidently decided it wasn’t worth the argument and began to speak while she walked instead. “Mor asked Viviane in as casual a way as she could manage, but all she said was that Kallias had offered Briar’s safe passage back to the Human Lands, and she declined. They settled her on some land in northern Winter instead and heard very little after that.”

“No one thought that suspicious at the time?”

“She was pretending to be one of the Children of the Blessed, remember. It wouldn’t necessarily have struck them as odd that she’d want to stay in the Fae lands despite everything she’d been through.” 

An odd creature disguising itself with the oddities of another. 

“Viviane is quite perceptive,” Azriel admitted. “She would’ve noticed if anything was amiss. And hopefully trusts Mor enough to tell her if she did.” 

Feyre shook her head. “If anything, the witches seem to be well-suited to blending in. No distinct smell to distinguish them as non-Fae, no obvious magic to speak of. Well, besides, apparently, the ability to sheath their teeth and nails at will.” 

“Though it’s hard to disguise the blue blood, I imagine.” 

“The what?”

“They bleed blue,” Azriel amended, feeling his cheeks beginning to heat, remembering the scrapes Manon had sustained on the Prison Island and the jarring midnight liquid that had escaped her skin. 

“Well,” Feyre sighed, “I suppose no one noticed that particular detail about our dear friend Briar. Assuming she even has the same quirk.” 

“And Elain? She didn’t have anything else to add?”

Feyre shook her head. “She looked at the witch’s mirror for quite some time to see if the image of Briar jogged any additional memories from that night at the camp—but, no luck.” 

“So a whole lot of nothing, with no good place to start searching.”

“Seems that way,” Feyre said apologetically. “Do you intend to seek Briar out?”

“No,” said Azriel. “I don’t want to scare her off, especially if we don’t have any questions for her beyond those meant to satisfy our own curiosity about how she ended up here.” He kicked a loose stone further down the dirt trail.

“Do you plan to tell Manon?”

Azriel felt his pulse quicken, briefly overcome with the irrational fear that Feyre had somehow caught him in the House of Wind’s study fraternizing with the witch. “Nesta tells me she’s begun asking about her future here,” Azriel said by way of answer. “If a peaceful existence with her companion in the Winter countryside is a viable option, then she might like to know of it.” 

“That could be a fairly well-packaged sell to Rhys,” Feyre commented. 

Azriel’s eyes slid toward her. “Yes,” he said carefully. 

“Oh, don’t look at me like that. I think he’s being ridiculous, too. The witch hasn’t done anything to incriminate herself. Disregarding the bodily harm on the first day she showed up, of course. But at the same time, proving her innocence to Rhys will be a challenge if there’s no crime to speak of.”

“You mentioned the possibility of her earning her freedom early on.” 

“I did,” Feyre said. “But that feels a bit barbaric now after we’ve spent so much time rehabilitating her, no? ‘Go out and do our bidding, so we can prove we ought to have treated you like a human being this whole time?’ Doesn’t sit fantastically with me. No, I think Rhys would respond better to granting her her freedom as a gift, rather than a reward.” 

Azriel smiled. “You know him well.” 

“Is that what this side project actually about?” Feyre asked with a raised eyebrow, nodding to the parchment folded in Azriel’s hands. 

“Don’t tell him yet,” Azriel pleaded. 

Feyre only chuckled. “You’re allowed your secrets, Spymaster.” 

“I—thank you.” 

It was a small reassurance, but it was unexpectedly soothing. Not because it wasn’t in keeping with Feyre’s character, but because Azriel realized he’d become tense, coiled up like a cobra poised to strike at the mere mention of Rhys, ready to lash out at his High Lady and his friend if she’d said anything less than disarming. 

He didn’t like that, didn’t like that he’d apparently stopped noticing when this ill-directed resentment began to crest within him. It made him feel helpless. Out of control. Small—like a child with hands that continued to burn long after they’d been removed from oil, screaming warnings of their impending eruption before they began to bubble with ghastly, fluid-filled sores. 

He tilted his head to the sky, the sun, the sound of birds, and the familiar smell of a friend on the breeze. He steadied himself in these things, some of the many he’d lacked in that horrible prison of a home.

Suddenly eager to return to the House of Wind, he spread his wings, reveling in the stretch and tug of them unfurling in the sea breeze. 

“Fly home?”

Feyre grinned. “Race you.” 

𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪

Manon took to Valkyrie training like a fish to water, immediately more sure of herself after formally accepting the role of trainee. She was out of bed early, without needing to be woken, and often in the ring late into the afternoon, running drills in the hot midday sun with any woman who seemed to need extra tutelage or was bold enough to ask.  

Which was why it pissed her off when Azriel approached her three days into her new routine at just barely noon.

She assumed one of the Illyrians was approaching by the way Ilana, with whom Manon had been reviewing the intricacies of footwork on rocky terrain, suddenly stumbled after glancing over Manon’s shoulder, and proceeded to blush more deeply than the relatively mild weather demanded of her. 

“Manon,” he said brusquely. “May I speak with you?”

The man apparently had no conception of the phrase excuse me, or even hello. He sounded almost breathless, too, as if he’d run a great distance just to interrupt her. 

“It’s barely noon,” Manon said in response, reaching a hand out to steady Ilana rather than turn around. “Weren’t you the one to design this schedule? I’m in the middle of something.” 

In truth, Nesta, Gwyneth, and Emerie had taken over the day-to-day operations of the Valkyrie training program; Cassian had been there only sporadically to run select drills in the past few days, and she hadn’t seen Azriel at all.

Which just made his sudden intrusion all the more irritating. 

“No!” Ilana said quickly. “We were just finishing up. I don’t want to get in the way of anything.” 

As Ilana scurried away, Manon made a mental note to discuss combat negotiations with the young priestess the next time she sought her out. 

She turned to Azriel with a scowl.

“Apologies for the interruption, Ilana,” he hastened to add as the priestess departed. “I truly am sorry,” he said, to Manon this time. He ran a hand through his tousled hair. “I have a tendency to get…ah, single-minded. Anyway, I have something to show you.”

He did seem genuinely sorry, but her ire didn’t budge. Because, well, maybe she was also annoyed that he hadn’t come back for her sooner.

Maybe.

She raised her eyebrows. “Let’s see it, then.” 

“I don’t have it with me,” he hastened. “It’s in the study.” 

Manon didn’t have any equipment on her that needed putting away, but she felt as though Azriel could stand to be mildly inconvenienced. She stared in silence at Azriel for several long moments to make him sweat before saying, “All right.” 

Either due to his being successfully shamed into submission or his reportedly reticent nature, Azriel remained silent on their walk across the grounds. 

Ilana hadn’t been entirely wrong when she’d reasoned away her hasty escape; it was around the time of day where most priestesses began to return their supplies, do a few last cool-down laps, and catch up with one another before their afternoon posts. Unfortunately for Manon, this meant that her leaving the Valkyrie training area with one of its founding members was witnessed by far too many curious onlookers for her liking. 

Azriel, Nesta had said, was the High Lord’s Spymaster—whatever that meant—and had been trained in the cold wastelands of Windhaven prior to his promotion. She was sure he was as aware of the attention on the pair of them as she was, but he didn’t let any of his feelings on the matter show. Perhaps he was used to it, by now. 

The House of Wind was empty again when they arrived. Most of the study’s interior was unchanged, save for a stool that had been pulled up beside the desk in addition to its cushioned chair. 

Azriel nudged the stool aside with his boot and gestured for her to sit in the chair. 

Manon shot him a withering look for his belated attempt at chivalry but sank into the chair, her curiosity getting the better of her. The window overhanging the desk was open to allow in the warm breeze, and Manon had to brush strands of hair out of her face. 

Azriel bent to retrieve something from one of the desk’s drawers and then spread a piece of canvas before her. It contained hand-scrawled Wyrdmarks arranged oddly, in neither lines nor columns. 

“What’s this?”

Azriel sat down on the stool beside her. “You tell me.” 

It was a cipher, she figured, or some other test to prove her ability to translate. Manon didn’t appreciate having her intellect questioned, but Azriel was wise to assume she’d double-cross him.

She wanted her sword, and she had very little to lose from decoding the ephemera of a world she didn’t belong to. She’d play his game. 

She studied the document anew. The designs were identifiable as Wyrdmarks, but their proportions were off. Some characters had strokes that protruded at odd angles; other phrases seemed dangerously close to overlapping. If it was meant to be an artistic arrangement of words, its aesthetic appeal wasn’t immediately clear, either. 

“Why are they arranged so oddly?”

A spark of interest lit in Azriel’s eyes. “It was originally a tattoo.”

“Where?”

“Back. Human.” And then, after a moment, he clarified, “Wingless.” 

Like Aelin’s. Like Rowan’s. She swallowed. Though she’d had quite a few years to learn how to read the Wyrd, it wasn’t her first language and it took a while for Aelin’s teachings to come back to her. She stumbled over a few of the more complex characters at first, returning to them only once she had a better idea of the whole text. 

It soon became clear why the groupings of characters appeared so odd—it was the same ancient alphabet she’d learned, but written with the cadence and phrasing of a more modern tongue.

Azriel watched her with silent intensity. 

“It’s an artifact,” she said finally. “One of great importance. One of four. It longs to return to its companions. Why anyone would want that sort of thing tattooed on them, however, is beyond me.” 

“Well, shit,” said Azriel. 

Manon raised an eyebrow. “Did you doubt me?” 

Azriel shrugged. “I’d be a fool, if I hadn’t.” 

Manon considered this. Weighed her options. Then went on: “This text is different from the map, and voice and scope. The map doesn’t have information like this on it; it’s stories, mostly. At least the parts I skimmed.” 

“Stories?” Azriel repeated. 

“Yes. Fables, maybe, or at least very old accounts about the places labeled. Similar to the ones you told me.” 

“Huh.” Azriel’s brow furrowed. 

She wondered if she’d just squandered everything. The male very well knew the stories she was about to translate; perhaps he wouldn’t care enough about an older version of them to have them repeated. Perhaps he’d thought there was far more important information encoded on the map than folklore.

Judging from the concerned look on his face, she’d overplayed her hand. He didn’t give a shit about the written traditions of his people, and now she had no more bargaining card with which to win back Wind-Cleaver. 

Pulling herself out of her ruminations, she blurted, “Give me something else to translate, if you don’t care about the map.”

Her sudden interjection seemed to snap Azriel out of his contemplative trance. “I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to,” Manon said crossly. “I thought it prudent to warn you now that what’s written on the map is nothing like what’s written here.” She gestured to the document in front of her. “And if you don’t give a shit about dead people’s versions of stories you already know, then I’d like you to give me another way to win my sword back.”

A corner of Azriel’s lip quirked in an almost smile. “Do you doubt me?” he asked, turning her own words back on her.

“Very much so, yes.” 

The other corner of his mouth twitched. “It’ll be returned to you once the map is translated. As promised. I give you my word.” 

Manon studied him. He did care about the map, then—or, at least, cared about some part of this deal that was not immediately clear to her. She was confused, but she’d already come dangerously close to fumbling the deal she’d made once today, and she wasn’t about to question it again. Echoing Nesta’s words from three days prior, she nodded, stood up from the desk, and announced, “Very well. Let’s begin.”

𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪

Bryce’s tattoo had been a test, both of Manon’s purported ability to understand the strange symbols as well as her knowledge of the Dread Trove. It was the only text whose meaning he had any sort of grasp of, and either she really could read what it said, or she knew of the Trove and was an exceptionally good liar. 

He felt sure—or maybe simply hoped—that it was the former. 

He hadn’t wanted to bring her back to the study before seeing proof of her talents. As much as he’d enjoyed her company on that first day, he wouldn’t be a Spymaster worth his salt if he’d been willing to gamble potentially sensitive information for the chance at another few nice afternoons. But he felt oddly relieved that she’d passed his ersatz evaluation; pleased that he’d secured at least a few more hours with her in front of the old map. 

He assumed she’d be most interested in translating the northernmost part of the map, which had been the focus of most of their conversation three days ago, so he pointed to where the Wyrdmarks first appeared along northern range of the Illyrian mountains and prompted, “Start from the top.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Manon snapped. But she leaned in close to Ramiel and began to read.

This time it was her turn to weave a story—and that was what she had to be doing, since the marks themselves were faded and smudged and not clearly arranged in lines, snaking along the crags of Ramiel and following its mountain streams into rivers and basins and back into the northern seas. She would take a moment to digest a portion of the map and then synthesize it for him, reciting ancient Illyrian legends in her lilting accent. They were familiar stories, but she seemed to strip them of the weight they’d been given by his horrible people, allowing them to become beautiful again. 

She told him of Enalius, and Ramiel, and how the stars came to be strung in the sky. She told him of a fearsome race of winged warriors who had appeared out of nothing, as if birthed through a weak point in the cosmic fabric of the sky. 

“This phrase is actually repeated quite a lot,” she said, tracing her finger along a short run of the marks at the foot of Ramiel. “Its direct translation is delicate—or maybe weak—but I think when used here it might mean thin.” 

He felt some rusted memory stir in his mind, too deep for him to be able to pinpoint where it came from. “Thin,” he repeated. 

“Yes, but not in the physical sense of the word,” she mused. “More like…energetically thin. They write that the soul of these areas is thinner than others, similar to the way air thins with altitude.”

Azriel thought of the top of Ramiel, his brothers’ hands in his. Something about the moment where they’d become Carynthians had been charged, magnificent in a way nothing else in his life had been. He’d always attributed this to the thrill of finishing the Rite along with a hefty dose of altitude sickness, but maybe there was something fundamentally different about the top of the mountain itself. 

“Speaking of thin…Pen?” She stuck out her hand and looked at Azriel expectantly, then jumped a millisecond later when a pen appeared in her hand, courtesy of the House’s strange magic. 

He did his best not to laugh at the shock on her face. 

“Do not,” she said with a scowl, “do that again.” 

“I don’t have that kind of magic,” he corrected. “It’s the House. And it seems to have taken a liking to you.” 

His shadows murmured happily from where they’d draped themselves across the furniture, as if in agreement with him.

“Well, tell it to fuck off,” Manon grumbled. 

In response, three more pens appeared before her. She pushed them out of her way with an aggrieved sigh and uncapped the first, bending over the map once more. 

Azriel’s life flashed briefly before his eyes as he imagined Rhys walking in on this scene: his Spymaster, shoulder-to-shoulder with a witch from another realm, watching with calm interest as she defaced a priceless artifact. 

“Are you drawing on the map?” he choked.

“Not drawing,” she corrected. “Just tracing. Many of these marks are almost too faded to read.” 

He almost said something, but then figured what Rhys didn’t know about the restoration of one of his documents wouldn’t hurt him. 

Manon went over each of the delicate lines with a steady hand and an unexpected tenderness, pausing every now and then to re-orient herself at a better angle. Her unruly hair was once more slipping over her shoulders, at times reaching dangerously close to the fresh ink. He almost sent out one of his shadows to brush it back from her face, if only so her white hair didn’t stain, but then remembered how she’d reacted to his shadows’ proximity before and thought the better of it. 

It was transfixing, watching her work with such patience and dedication. So transfixing that full minutes passed before he realized he’d been sitting there just staring at her, like some sort of strange, artistic voyeur. 

“Tell me the way you learned them,” she said without looking up from her work. “These stories—tell me how they were told to you.” 

“All right,” he said, and he did, because he wanted to. 

He liked watching the subtle way her sharp nose crinkled and her dark lashes curled starkly against her white brows as he spoke. Her lips moved and her jaw set at all the right times, taking in each tale he told with genuine interest as she traced the letters that immortalized them.

Without a conscious effort on his part, the stories of his people became personal. His telling of Enalius’s triumph blended into the telling of his own Rite, only this time Manon was there with him and Rhys and Cassian as they clawed and killed their way up the side of a cold mountain. 

“That was the first year a cross-breed was allowed to participate, let alone two bastards,” Azriel remarked. “People gave Devlon a hard time for centuries afterward.” 

“Which are you?” Manon murmured, her eyes never moving from the parchment. “Bastard or cross-breed?” 

Azriel huffed a laugh. “Bastard. Obviously. But my father recognized me, unlike Cas’s, so I think it was easier for the older set to stomach my participation in such a sacred Rite.” 

He wasn’t sure why he was telling her all of this. It wasn’t part of the legends, it wasn’t anything she’d asked for, and it certainly wasn’t information she needed to know. Hell, it was information hardly anyone else knew at all. 

He would do better to keep his mouth shut. He would do better to not have a strange witch learning anything of his court or of him at all. It was just that—

“I think I was a bastard too, in a way,” Manon reflected, defining the point on a Wyrdmark she’d just gone over. “My grandmother slit my mother’s throat after I was born for ever having lain with my father. She killed him, too, much later, after she tracked him down. I never met him.” 

Azriel stared at the woman in front of him as she recounted this history. It was difficult to fathom a childhood worse than his, yet the way Manon spoke so calmly of her parents’ murders suggested she had experienced one far more brutal. 

“A bastard, but you still became queen?” 

Manon flinched, as if the title caused her a flash of pain. “The Blackbeaks are a matriarchal clan; men are seen as expendable. It shouldn’t have mattered who my father was, so long as he was anything but a Crochan.” 

“I’m guessing he broke that rule.” 

Manon smiled. “Yes. In any case, the lands I inherited were laid to waste centuries before I was born, so I don’t think the title of queen was in too high of a demand regardless of my pedigree.”

Mental images of the desolate Prison Isle bombarded Azriel’s consciousness immediately, and the questions he hadn’t been able to ask anyone for months swarmed at the tip of his tongue. 

He realized his mouth was open. If he could phrase it casually enough, if he could ask in such a way that he wouldn’t have to explain—

By some grace of the gods, Manon spoke before Azriel could carelessly unleash the Night Court’s best guarded secret. “So you’re Oristian if you make it to the mountain, but the three of you reached the pillar. What was it like at the top?”

Azriel, prevented from from committing an unforgivably reckless breach of his Spymaster duties, eagerly resumed his account of the Rite, if only to give his traitorous tongue something else to do. 

They reached the peak of Ramiel. Azriel was once again standing in the mist on a dark night, his pulse pounding in his ears and his head swimming with a dizzying sort of euphoria he’d never before experienced. As he described it to Manon, sitting in the House of Wind’s study on a warm afternoon, he could have sworn there was a brief moment where the energy thinned between the two of them, too. 

Chapter Text

Despite having spent the better part of five centuries honing his ability to adapt, Azriel fell easily into routines. 

Be ready for anything, the Illyrians taught their young. Never be lulled by comfort, lest your enemy exploit your complacency for the weakness it is. These catechisms were committed to memory by the “lessons” that accompanied them: being forcibly sleep deprived for three days straight; getting thrown over the edge of a cliff with weights attached to their wings; having any inter-trainee relationship deemed too intimate be swiftly and publicly extinguished. 

Cassian, gods love him, flunked trials such as these abysmally. Despite the numerous and often brutal punishments afforded to him for his misbehavior, he had continued to be effusive in his love for his brothers, had never laughed at any volume less than raucous, and remained a notoriously deep sleeper. 

No, Windhaven’s lessons in self-discipline had made a great many things out of Cassian, but stoic was not one of them. What their elders no doubt considered a licentious disregard for Illyrian custom, however, Azriel recognized as an inscrutable confidence in the goodness of the world. Cassian was a fantastic soldier, but simply refused to partake in (or, at the very least, made unfathomably difficult) any training activities that went against his own, deeply personal set of principles, despite being told repeatedly what these principles ought to be. 

Azriel, on the other hand, excelled in these subjects as spectacularly as Cassian failed. Windhaven demanded self-sacrifice, moral surrender, and near-inhuman levels of pessimism, all of which Azriel achieved without second thought. His instructors were always pleased with his performance (though they would never admit it in front of his high-born fellow recruits), and likely attributed his achievements to their success as teachers. 

The dark truth, however, was that Azriel’s ability to maintain his composure in an environment of chaos and deprivation had been instilled in him long before Windhaven. Shows of cruelty that were repeated yearly with every new batch of Illyrian recruits could never hurt as badly as cruelty for cruelty’s sake, and even a public scolding from the village elders would never cut as deeply as outright, repeated rejection from one’s own flesh and blood. 

Indeed, Azriel had learned early and often that comfort wasn’t something he could afford. He must never sleep easily, lest he awaken to the smell of smoke in his locked bedroom and the laughter of his half-brothers. He must never retaliate against those with more power, lest he make his weekly trip to his mother’s house and find her whimpering on the dirt floor, both of her wings having been brutally wrenched from their sockets. He must never exist, in the first place, lest his stepmother and half-brothers make his life a living hell. 

Of course, some of these lessons had diuresed out of him with age and time. Retaliation, for example, was now one of many tactics he employed with ease. Sleep was still difficult, though, and he’d long ago accepted that his penchant for pessimism was a life-long affliction. 

The footholds that other teachings kept in his mind, though, were far deeper and far more difficult to extricate from his sense of self. How could he love someone else, when he still felt vaguely that he owed the world an apology for having even been born? How could he ever know comfort, when people as sweet and innocent as Rhys’s mother and sister could be happy and alive one moment, and brutally beheaded the next?

No, he had learned time and again, without the help of any Windhaven training program, that the universe would never fail to break his heart. 

And yet…

In spite of his birth family’s cruelty and his masters’ teachings, he seemed to have emerged from Windhaven with a shred of Cassian’s influence. Something in him, however shriveled and malnourished, dared to hope for structure and stability. It was as if part of him—perhaps the one that was still, and that would always be, a child, scared and alone in darkness of his father’s design—craved the comfort of any sort of consistency, however small. He blamed this part of him for the fact that, after all these years, he still found himself succumbing to the allure of routine. 

The latest spell he’d fallen under was this: he’d awake early; he’d attend to Court business through the early afternoon, taking meetings with Rhys or Amren or Feyre; and then he’d find Manon when she was done with Valkyrie training and sit with her in the study, often late into the evening. 

It was the ninth day, late in the afternoon, midway through Manon’s transcription of the Wyrdmarks decorating the Dawn Court, when the illusion shattered—as it always had and always would, despite his misplaced hope. 

A few minutes before he learned this lesson once more, he had been helping Manon make sense of a Wyrdmark she couldn’t seem to translate exactly right. 

“They definitely have wings,” Azriel was saying. “And they’re trained for combat, like Illyrians—that’s how Dawn is able to maintain an aerial legion.”

“Then from what Emerie and Nesta said, the word is pegasus,” Manon argued. 

She was lying on her stomach while she worked, the ends of her hair starting to curl in the humidity that had been steadily building over the past weeks. 

“No, these are people,” Azriel chuckled. “No part of the Peregryn are a horse.”

He had started transcribing her translation efforts and was laying on the chaise, notebook in hand. Despite the hours they’d spent in this room, he hadn’t filled that many of its pages. More often, he and Manon spun off into ridiculous tangents like these, poking fun at the absurdities of Prythian etymology—and sometimes at themselves.

He’d gotten a better handle on himself and hadn’t come close to divulging any specifics of his inheritance again, but even under his own close supervision, things seemed to slip through the cracks. Most were harmless enough: thanks to the House’s unrelenting hospitality, Manon know knew how he took his tea (she preferred blood, but her second choice would be coffee); after a long debate about flight dynamics, he had to admit he didn’t know why Illyrians could keep their eyes open at such high wind speeds (she then demonstrated her ability to engage her second layer of translucent eyelids, which was jarring to behold); while working their way through a particularly faded patch of runes deep in the Illyrian mountains, she learned he’d won his brothers’ Winter Solstice snowball contest five years running (she didn’t know what birchin meant, but agreed it sounded fun).

She didn’t press him for any of these anecdotes, nor did her follow-up questions ever feel like information-gathering. While Rhys might have assumed she was grilling Azriel for high-stakes specifics (And the fourth inter-dimensional Trove object is where, exactly?), instead Manon only asked him bizarre things like Why do you think you responded that way? In response, he might say something thoughtful if he was comfortable talking about it, or he might say something short to indicate he was not, and that would be that. It was simply…conversation. 

Maybe it was because of this that talking to Manon had initially felt so vulnerable to him, so raw. He was used to negotiations and half-truths and interrogations; the process of learning about someone simply because he was curious about them exercised a muscle he hadn’t flexed in quite some time. 

But as the days passed, he found himself opening up more, and was pleased to note she’d started to do the same. He clung to the pieces of her previous life that she shared with him tightly, collecting them like small treasures. More fascinating still were the insights he got into the way she thought, fragments of the lens through which she saw the world, all of them jagged and beautiful. 

All the while, he felt an intangible sense of predictability grew around them. He (and the House) now knew which pen she favored, how she took her coffee, where in the hall she left her shoes. From their long conversations and longer afternoons had emerged something like comfort: luxurious, elusive, eternally ephemeral. 

This time, the messenger of the lesson about complacency (that he, apparently and repeatedly, refused to learn) came in the form of Nesta. 

Usually respectful of the time he and Manon spent in the study, today Nesta burst in unannounced, her gray eyes wide with concern. 

“I just spoke to Em,” Nesta said gravely. “Sarai was injured by her husband again. Badly. The extraction has to happen tonight.” 

It would have to be today, then—the new recruits were to be evacuated from Windhaven. There would be more Valkyries to train, more meetings to attend, less time to spend here in the sun on quiet afternoons. Things would change, as they always did. 

That old ache in him, the one that yearned for sameness and stability, roared to life anew with this latest twinge of loss. 

His shadows, which had been resting peacefully under the desk, stirred back to attention upon sensing his discomfort.

Manon was already on her feet, ready for orders. “What will you have us do?” 

Despite his mounting dread, a feeling not unlike pride flooded him as he watched her switch handily from scholar to soldier. 

He wondered if Nesta might be feeling something similar, because despite the worry etched on her face, she offered the witch a small smile. “We need you in the Library, ready to receive Sarai and any more injured. And Az,” Nesta turned to him, “we need your help winnowing them out.” 

“Are you sure I’m the best person for this job?” Azriel asked. An Illyrian male, he reasoned, was probably the last person Sarai and the other women wanted to see after a lifetime in Windhaven. Though, if he was being honest, his hesitation had as much to do with his own discomfort as his respect for the Illyrian women’s bodily autonomy. 

Nesta sighed. “No, of course not, but there are too many for Mor to take on her own, and if Feyre or Rhys were discovered abducting Illyrians from Windhaven, the political implications would be catastrophic.”

She was right about that. The House of Wind's Library was considered a diplomatic safe harbor, and anyone who was able to make it there on their own was offered political clemency without requiring any sort of proof. Having the High Lord and Lady of the Night Court be witnessed removing Illyrian citizens from their homeland, on the other hand, would be a different story altogether.

“All right,” he agreed grimly. He cast one last glance at Manon, let himself grieve his latest failed attempt at hope, and turned his attention to Nesta. “Tell me where I need to be.” 

𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪

So that was how Azriel ended up on the outskirts of Windhaven at nightfall, alone with Mor for the first time in gods-knew-how long, awaiting their signal from Emerie. 

There was an abandoned cowshed about a quarter mile north from the town center where he, Cas, Rhys, and Mor had often gathered to drink moonshine or smoke something questionable as teenagers. This seemed an appropriate rendezvous point to share with Mor, given how the two of them always seemed to devolve into some juvenile argument or another whenever they were together as of late. 

Mor appeared five feet away from the shed in a huff, no doubt equally as displeased as he was about having to spend time in Windhaven. 

She had, apparently, left her penchant for red behind in Velaris. It was almost surprising to see her in black, the effect of her stark attire and the weak moonlight combining to neutralize the sunlight she usually seemed to radiate from her bronze skin and golden hair.

“What’s that look for?” she snapped almost immediately. 

“I’m just not used to seeing you in black,” he retorted. “It’s weird.” 

“‘You look like shit tonight, Mor,’” she intoned in an (appallingly inaccurate) impression of his voice. “What a nice way to greet a lady!” 

Or maybe, he considered, that displeasure of hers that he’d sensed was about having to spend time with him.

They’d both shown up fifteen minutes earlier than agreed, which gave them plenty of time to immediately launch into a (very repetitive) argument over their varying opinions about the future of the Prison Isle. 

Azriel was ready to concede her point about its potential use as a naval stronghold when she blindsided him by jumping straight to her next point of contention. 

“When do you plan to tell the witch of Briar?” She crossed her arms over her dark tunic and studied him.

Gods, why was everyone asking him that?

“I didn’t say I was going to,” Azriel snapped, doing his best to adapt to her abrupt change of course.

“No, but I can practically hear you thinking about it. It’s overpowering your usual depressing internal monologue.” The beginnings of a smug smile began to take shape on her face. “You like her.” 

“I have nothing against her,” he clarified. He balked internally at his own assertion, but reassured himself that this small piece of the truth was all Mor needed to know. “I just feel badly that we’re keeping information from her.” 

“You feel badly for withholding information,” Mor repeated, skepticism dripping from her voice. “You, the spymaster of the Night Court?”

“This isn’t court business.”

“Isn’t it, though? Isn’t everything we do court business?” 

They were both quite good at this, at carefully refusing to acknowledge the history that hung thickly between them. 

“Maybe that’s the fucking problem.” 

“You’re testy,” Mor pointed out. She had always been able to do this, to cut down to the quick of him without lifting a finger. It irritated him endlessly. It was also why he’d fallen in love with her.

“I am not.”

“You are. You’re as brooding and sallow as you’ve always been, but recently you’ve been more vocal about it. You’ve never been afraid to question Rhys, but now you can barely be in the same room without ripping each other’s throats out. It’s all gotten worse since the witch arrived, but you seem to insist on blaming it all on this Dusk Court bullshit. Why?” 

They were sitting side-by-side, leaning against the splintering back wall of the shed and staring out into the empty field before it, but Azriel had the distinct impression he was being talked down to. 

She wasn’t wrong, of course. “I just don’t see how it’s fair to hold her hostage for a crime there’s no evidence of her committing,” Azriel said, ignoring the deeper probe in Mor’s last statement. 

“Listen to yourself, Az!” Mor exclaimed. “You’ve essentially been in charge of Night Court security for how many centuries, and suddenly this is your stance, just because Rhys disagrees with you? I think you’re projecting, and I think it’s making you lose your touch.” 

“So are you telling me I should keep the truth about Briar to myself or not?” Azriel asked, exasperated. Somehow it always ended up like this, with them fighting in circles.

“I’m telling you to trust your instincts without doubting them.”

“Stop being so fucking cryptic.” 

“Fine: stop being such a fucking baby.” 

“I am not being a baby, and—Hey! You don’t have to push me to—” 

“Az,” she interrupted him with a shove to his shoulder, rising to her feet. “Signal.” 

Sure enough, there was a plume of smoke billowing out of the northern chimney of Emerie’s tailor shop. 

Quarrel forgotten, they set off at a jog. 

“It wasn’t a push, by the way,” Mor addended as they approached the edge of the town. “It was a tap. An awareness tap.”

“An awareness tap,” he repeated skeptically.  

“Yes,” she agreed. “Frankly, I like to think that’s what I’m doing to you psychologically, as well. An awareness tap on your ego.” 

“Well, stop doing that,” he grumbled, but the heaviness of their argument had been lifted. They’d eased instead into their normal bickering, a language they’d spoken together since childhood, and which was especially effective in distracting him from situations like the unpleasantness he was about to see. 

“Run me through it again,” Mor said, at a whisper this time, as they neared Emerie’s shop. She hadn’t trained in Windhaven with Azriel and his brothers, but she’d been on more than enough missions with the three of them. 

“Six to evacuate, one confirmed injury, likely more if they’re discovered trying to flee. Emerie’s shop is to be used as the base to winnow in and out of, but she’ll mostly be running interference with Balthazar, making sure everyone makes it out of their homes who’s intending to. I’ll take any who are willing, and help Emerie stabilize while you transport the rest.” 

“Copy,” Mor agreed. “Let’s do it.” 

𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪

The scene inside Emerie’s shop was worse than he’d been expecting. 

Three women were already there waiting for them, in various states of disrepair. He thought he recognized some of their faces, but realized with no small amount of shame that it was only in the vague way he recognized Illyrian wives and daughters, sisters and shopkeepers, laundry maids and wet nurses. The women who held Windhaven together, yet blended easily into its background. 

The most acute wound belonged to a young woman that Mor called Zillah, who had sustained a jagged gash along her inner thigh from making her escape over a barbed wire fence. 

“Spurting or oozing?” had been the first thing Mor asked, which was never a promising way to start battlefield triage. 

Only, it was worse than battlefield triage, because he was all but useless. He turned away from Zillah, ears burning, in a noble attempt to spare the young woman her dignity as Mor knelt between her legs with a stack of fresh cloths and a bucket of warm water. The elder of the two remaining Illyrians, a woman who Azriel did recognize as the butcher’s wife, helped Mor work.

“You all should take Zillah first,” urged the last, a girl named Delilah who couldn’t have been more than eighteen. “I’m unharmed.” 

Which, he thought, was not at all true, at least in the more chronic sense. One of the girl's wings appeared to be burnt, curled and charred by a cruel hand raised to a defenseless child. Just as he had been. Just looking at it made Azriel’s stomach churn.

The thought that arose to him then made him a horrible person, it did, but—gods, he’d rather not be around them. Each woman was a very physical reminder of the life he’d tried desperately to put behind him, and they were growing more present by the day. 

He cared for each of the Illyrian women, but only in the detached, ascetic way one cared for distant relatives. Perhaps, if he allowed himself to know them, he’d begin to care for them as friends, as he cared for Emerie. But in knowing them, as in knowing Emerie, there lurked the danger of knowing himself through their eyes and, worse still, knowing his mother more intimately than he’d be able to bear. 

She’d be disappointed in him. She’d started the long, loving process of raising him to be better than this—but she’d only had one day a week, and his father and stepmother had been all to eager to finish the job, and now he was…this. A detached, easily angered Illyrian male, no better than the rest of them.

“Az,” Mor said gently, pulling him out of his catastrophizing. “I’m taking Zillah and Lilith. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Wait here with Delilah, in case whoever’s next to arrive needs stabilization.”

He nodded, and watched with Delilah as Mor disappeared with the House of Wind’s two newest Valkyries. 

The lull in excitement was far more foreboding than what had come before it, and Azriel found himself growing restless. Though, in fairness, part of his anxiety might have been due to Delilah’s incessant pacing around the perimeter of the shop. 

“It’s far beyond the agreed-upon time,” he said. “Where are the rest of them?” 

“Sarai wasn’t doing well,” Delilah said. “I wonder if they’re still with her.”

She looked at Azriel directly when she spoke, youthful confidence lending her a spark in her gaze. She seemed to have no qualms about his presence, making him wonder if whatever she’d endured in Windhaven ran deeper than simple male Illyrian violence. 

The two of them were an odd pair, him leaning against the back wall with his arms crossed against his chest and her walking endless circles around the room, first on her tip-toes, then her heels, then her toes again. Both Illyrian, yes—but separated by age and lived experience and the silly human construction of gender. 

“Did you get to pick the color of your siphons?” she asked on her second lap around the shop, her voice an octave too loud for their stealth mission. Delilah, apparently, had not been pondering the silly human construction of gender on her walk. 

“No,” he said, exaggerating his whisper in the hopes that she’d follow suit. 

“Do you think I’ll get one?” She had dropped her voice to a whisper, and let it fall to a near-conspiratorial hush when she added, “When I’m a Valkyrie?” 

“I honestly don’t know,” he admitted. “It’s been so long since I’ve been around young Illyrians. I’m not even sure if the processes for imbuing the first siphon are the same anymore.” 

What he did not say was that no Illyrian woman in history had ever been given a siphon. Delilah—and Lilith and Zillah and Sarai and Emerie and the rest of them—were undoubtedly already keenly aware of this. Yet still, she’d asked. Yet still, she’d hoped. 

Delilah stopped her pacing, landing on her tip-toes two paces before him. “How old are you, anyway?”

Azriel frowned, the burden of his five hundred and forty-one years suddenly weighing heavily on him. “Why does that matter?” 

She shrugged. “It doesn’t, I suppose. I just want to know how long I have to wait before I’ll have seven siphons, too.”

He was spared the need to intervene with a dose of reality by the door of Emerie’s shop banging open. Balthazar, the young male who Nesta, Gwyn, and Emerie had befriended during their Rite, burst in carrying a limp-looking Sarai. 

“Fuck,” Azriel swore, gathering up another round of makeshift wound-care supplies. “What happened?” 

Delilah had gone pale. 

“Her husband,” Balthazar said gravely. “We heard reports from her neighbors that there had been some sort of altercation this afternoon,” he explained, “but none of us knew how bad it was. From what I can gather, he tried to push her over the railing of their second story, but she caught herself on the balcony. The wing caught on one of the posts and saved her life.”

Sarai was breathing—shallowly, but that was enough—and moaning in discomfort as the pair shuffled into the shop. 

“At least, before the fucker stomped on her fingers, too, and she fell the rest of the way,” Balthazar said bitterly. 

It was all Azriel could do not to recoil at the sight of the damage that had been ravaged upon her. The delicate webbing of muscle that was supposed to connect her wing to her back had been shredded, and she held wing and arm alike at an unnatural angle. He felt faint, the face of the woman before him threatening to blur with the vision of his mother crumpled on a dirt floor— 

He shoved the thought from his mind. Not here, not now, not here, not now. “The wing needs to be stabilized,” he urged. Without thinking, he moved toward Sarai. 

The woman flinched and shuddered a small cry, as if he’d slapped her. Azriel wanted to vomit. 

“It’s all right,” Balthazar said gently, but it wasn’t clear if he intended his words for Sarai or for Azriel. Likely, they were for both. “We’ll figure out another way.” 

He turned to Azriel and asked under his breath, “Where is Mor? She’ll need a female to help transport her.”

“Where is Emerie?” he fired back, the panic he rising in his throat felt disguising itself as impatience. “I can explain how to stabilize the wing to her, and then Mor can winnow them both when she’s back.” 

“She’s with Keziah, who’s not much better off,” Balthazar said. 

“Show me how to do it,” Delilah interrupted, her eyes bright. “I can do it.” Her hands were shaking.  

The young woman, he was certain, was capable of—and would go on to do—many great things. But right now, in this moment, she was a child and she was scared. He’d dealt with enough wing injuries to know that the second Sarai’s was corrected, her instinct would be to jerk and scream and lash against the pain. Even if Delilah were able to maintain a hold on Sarai through her protesting, she’d then have to withstand the additional wind shifts during winnowing, and adjust the pressure she kept on the wing to compensate. 

“I know you could,” he said gently. He dared a step toward her. 

Delilah did not shy away from him. 

“And I’m sure you’d do it well,” he went on, as softly and steadily as he could manage. “But Emerie’s not here yet, and I need you to oversee this for her, while the rest of us figure out how to get Sarai to Velaris safely.”

Delilah squared her shoulders and nodded, apparently pleased with her new role. “All right.” 

Which left the problem of who was best suited to help Sarai. Mor would be back shortly, but the anatomy of an Illyrian wing was complex enough that he feared even she wouldn’t be able to hold it correctly, let alone alter her grasp when needed to reduce pressure on vital areas while she focused on winnowing.

Emerie, of course, would be the ideal person for the job—she could hold Sarai’s wing and be winnowed out by Mor—but there was no telling when she’d be back. He needed extra hands. He needed—

“I’m getting help. Don’t let her go. I’ll be right back,” he promised Delilah and Balthazar before he winnowed out of Windhaven.

Chapter Text

“What are you doing here alone? What’s wrong?” 

Nesta’s voice cut sharply across the uneasy murmurs reverberating through the library, a new layer of anxiety threatening the otherwise admirable composure she’d been able to maintain throughout the evening. 

Manon’s head jerked up at the sound, tracking Nesta as she hurried toward the doorway where Azriel stood—alone. She understood Nesta’s concern; something must have gone horribly wrong, for him to have returned without any other Illyrians in tow. 

Morrigan, who had just dropped off the first two recruits and was helping Manon and Gwyneth bandage Zillah’s wound, rushed to join them.

“I’ll explain when we’re back with Sarai,” Azriel said hurriedly, his gaze darting over Nesta and Morrigan’s shoulders into the chaos unfolding in the foyer. “Mor, you need to be the one to winnow her. I’m here because I think she also needs—” his eyes locked with Manon’s “—Manon.” 

Manon blinked. 

Her? What could she possibly add to such a delicate situation? Morrigan could winnow, Gwyneth and the other priestesses were adept healers, and Nesta had masterminded the whole operation. Surely there was nothing that required Manon so specifically, what with her woeful lack of expertise in any of those domains. 

Despite her confusion, Manon was a soldier and she could sense she was about to be given a command. Her body urged her to stand, to obey. 

“You can go,” Gwyneth assured her softly. The priestess had done most of the work in tending to Zillah’s wound, anyway—Manon was fairly suspicious Gwyneth hadn’t needed her at all, and was instead indulging Manon’s participation in the way one might patiently allow a child to “help” in the kitchen. 

Sufficiently excused, Manon finished knotting the bandage she was tying and rose to her feet. Still, she hesitated a moment, casting a worried glance over the woman in front of her. 

Zillah might be young, but she was not brimming with youth in the same way that her friend Delilah was. Manon had noticed the wariness she carried with her, even that first day in Emerie’s shop. Zillah had tired eyes and shoulders that sagged forward in a way that hinted she understood her world more deeply than her years would suggest. But, at the same time, there was a certain vivacity in the way she spoke and unmistakable intention behind the way she presented herself: unlike the rest of the Illyrian women Manon had met, Zillah wore her hair short, in a style similar to the one Sorrel had favored. The choice was a quiet one, but communicated Zillah’s defiance all the same. She seemed to have taken the weight of the world upon her shoulders and strained against it, letting it strengthen her resolve rather than cowing her into passive defeat.

Therefore, Manon had no doubt about the veracity of her words as she gave Zillah’s hand a final squeeze and said softly, “You’ll be all right.”

The Illyrian woman nodded, offering Manon a subdued smile that turned into a slight wince as Gwyneth massaged more of the pungent salve into her wound. 

Manon crossed the foyer to where Azriel stood with Morrigan and an increasingly concerned-looking Nesta. 

“Do you have need of me?”

“Your wyverns,” Azriel said hurriedly by way of answer. “Wing injuries—how much experience do you have stabilizing them?” 

Wyrms, was the word he’d supplied three days prior, when they were sitting in the study and her voice had caught as she attempted to translate a cluster of Wyrdmarks that described great beasts of talon and scale. She’d traced her finger over the accompanying sketch, no more than a centimeter in size, and swallowed the lump that rose in her throat.

That’s what we call them, he’d said. The creatures in your mirror—were they wyrms, too? 

Wyverns, she’d clarified, suppressing a huff of indignation at his misclassification. The wings distinguish them. Wyverns are noble beasts; wyrms are useless pests. 

The wyrms in this land are quite vicious, he’d remarked. Your wyverns—they were good-natured, then?

 
She’d smiled fondly to herself as she’d responded, Not particularly. 

She’d been purposefully broad in her description of the unique bonds between witch and wyvern, avoiding any personal (and therefore painful) details, but he’d listened with calm fascination all the same. 

The man standing in front of her now was clearly flustered, unusually pressured in his speech. Yet still, she couldn’t help but notice, he’d managed to remember the proper term, the word wyvern rolling easily from his lips.  

That didn’t make his question any less confusing. 

“Some experience,” Manon said, frowning. “Why?” 

“It’s Sarai. She has a patagialis tear that extends into the joint space, and she already has signs of nerve damage. It needs to be stabilized before she can be winnowed out.” 

The anatomical terms were close enough to what Manon knew of wyverns that she was able to make sense of them, and what she understood made her stomach churn. Those kinds of injuries happened when the wing was forced upward—Edda’s wyvern had suffered a similar accident once, when she’d gotten her wing punctured by a tree branch mid-flight. The creature’s forward momentum had nearly ripped the wing from her back; the equivalent force that would be needed to inflict such an injury on a winged humanoid, especially one who was incapable of flight, was sickening. 

“I’d do it myself, but it would be best if a female with knowledge of wing anatomy holds her for transport,” Azriel continued on. He turned to Morrigan and added, “I mean no offense. It’s just that it would take a lot of concentration to hold and winnow at the same time, and...” 

Morrigan didn’t respond with any of her usual snark, her face impassive as she offered him a single nod. “Understood.”  

“All right,” Manon said, wiping her bloodied hands on the front of her pants. “Take me to her.” 

Relief flashed across Azriel’s face in the brief moment before the three of them set off at a run, out the front door of the library and beyond the House’s wards. The whole world tilted as Morrigan grabbed Manon’s arm and whisked her back to Windhaven. 

𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪

Returning to Emerie’s shop in such a different context was deeply unsettling. Instead of dusty sunshine and smiles, the atmosphere greeting Manon on this night was utterly grim. It was such a shock as compared to her first visit that she felt physically disoriented, her knees threatening to buckle as she and Morrigan rematerialized.

Actually, Manon realized with a lurch of her stomach, some of that shock might well be nausea, thanks to Morrigan’s slap-dash winnowing. 

Azriel appeared beside them an instant later and was already talking. “Sarai is with Balthazar in the back, next to the—are you quite all right?”

Manon felt Morrigan’s hand tighten around her arm as the chipped-paint walls of Emerie’s shop began to sway like a ship at sea. 

The humiliation of needing to be stabilized afforded Manon a sudden surge of strength. She wrangled herself out of Morrigan’s grip and bit out, “Piss off.” 

“Apologies,” Morrigan offered sheepishly.

Manon lifted her middle finger in what she hoped was Morrigan’s general direction as she braced her hands on her knees, waiting for her vision to stop spinning. 

“Manon?” came Azriel’s voice, a reprehensible amount of concern in his tone. 

The fool was really wasting energy worrying about her, when everyone could hear Sarai’s pained whimpers at the back of the shop. 

“I’m fine,” she insisted, hoping she’d succeed in commanding her nausea to subside by sheer force of will. “I just hate that fucking winnowing thing you people insist on doing.” 

“Mor has always been a bit of a reckless driver. Here.” Azriel rummaged in one of his pockets and produced a small piece of root. “Ginger. Chew on it. Helps with the nausea.” 

She was too ill to pretend to put up a fight. “Thank you.” 

Thankfully, she regained her bearings a few moments after the tang of ginger hit her tongue. She wouldn’t have been able to forgive herself—let alone survive the blow to her self-esteem—if she’d ended up a second victim after having been specially recruited to help Sarai. 

Speaking of Sarai—Azriel had been correct in his assessment. 

Although the jagged edges of the delicate muscle that ought to have attached to the Illyrian’s side were distractingly gory, the tissue was thin enough that the blood loss wasn’t significant, and the repair would be relatively straightforward. It was the way Sarai was holding her injured limb—awkwardly, the remaining phalanges of her clipped wing curling at odd angles—that betrayed the severity of her injury. 

Manon pushed past the worried onlookers and knelt before the woman, who was still moaning softly in pain. 

She recognized Sarai from her prior visit to Windhaven. The woman had sun-leathered skin—from her job as a washerwoman, if Manon recalled correctly—and thick-lashed eyes that softened her otherwise sharply angled face. A face which, Manon had to assume, rarely showed pain quite like this. 

“Sarai,” she said softly, placing a gentle hand on Sarai’s uninjured arm. “I’m Manon—we met a few weeks ago. I’m going to help get you out of here.” 

Sarai nodded weakly. The color had nearly all drained from her face; she was likely going into shock. They would have to work quickly. 

“In order to winnow you out, we need to get your wing back into a neutral position, where it can heal. It’s going to hurt,” Manon admitted. “Probably quite a lot, but just once—I’ll be quick. Then I’ll hold it there while Morrigan brings us back, and we’ll get you better care. First, you’ll have to stand up.” 

Sarai sucked in her breath and nodded once more, pulling herself to her feet with the help of both Manon and Morrigan, who had been waiting at Manon’s side, waiting for her command. 

“You’re going to want to scream—that’s good. Use this.” Manon handed the woman a scrap of thick cloth she’d found in one of the open first-aid kits. 

Sarai bit down on the cloth. 

“Get ready,” Manon said grimly, both to Sarai and Morrigan. A wave of nausea that had nothing to do with motion sickness roiled through Manon’s gut as she steadied herself for what she was about to do. 

Manon took a deep breath. She walked behind Sarai, positioning herself between her two wings, and briefly locked gazes with Azriel, who watching them from a decorous distance with concern in his hazel eyes. His scarred hands twitched at his sides, as if his body was physically rebelling against his inaction.

It must feel shameful, she imagined, being an Illyrian male so obviously willing to help yet so unable to, paralyzed by his own masculinity. The scars of Illyrian male violence, it seemed, echoed long after individual acts of aggression, harms made double by the wholesale exclusion of their perpetrators from playing a role in their being mended.

Well, he’d just have to get over it. She returned her attention to Sarai. 

“Deep breath in—” Manon hovered her hands over Sarai’s shoulders, assessing her anatomy for one last time, hoping it was close enough to a wyvern’s for her instincts to be trusted “—and out.” 

Sarai wailed into the cloth as Manon grabbed the Illyrian from behind, using her forearms to guide Sarai’s shoulders into external rotation, forcing the young woman’s scapulae into neutral alignment and her wings back into symmetry. 

She held on tightly as Sarai bucked against her grasp, pressing her face up against the woman’s spine to stabilize herself without touching her wings. Sarai might have been injured, but she was strong, the fine musculature of her laundress’ arms rock-solid and straining beneath Manon’s grip.

As Sarai rebelled against her, Manon thought idly that the woman would make a fine Valkyrie, when she was healed—and she would heal. 

Manon did not yield. She met Sarai’s response with an equal display of strength, holding them both firmly, letting her world narrow to the shift of muscle against her arms and steady flow of her breathing against Sarai’s back. 

Then Morrigan’s arms encircled the pair of them, and they were whisked through space once more. 

Manon stayed clinging to Sarai, eyes closed, steadying herself as Nesta and Clotho rushed over to them. 

“Left wing,” she reported through gritted teeth. “Immobilize it in exactly the position I have it—and, please, get her something for the pain.” 

Morrigan whispered her thanks, placing a grateful palm on Manon’s back briefly before hurrying out the door past the wards to return to Windhaven once more. 

Nesta and Clotho worked quickly to fix Sarai into a sling—a more permanent device would have to be made when time and resources allowed, but the cloth binding they’d devised would be serviceable for now.

Merrill, thank the gods, was equally fast in procuring some sort of tincture that she aerosolized with a soft puff of her magic and placed in front of Sarai’s nose. In no more than two inhales, the color began to return to Sarai’s face. 

Finally, when Manon was certain she’d handed her patient off to more capable individuals, she took three steps away from the cot and promptly vomited into a pail of bloodied linens. 

𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪

The next few hours blurred into one another. 

After the isolated moment in which she’d further defamed the used linens, Manon thankfully felt much improved, the lingering effects from the ginger chew and the relief of no longer having to fucking winnow anywhere again enough to bolster her through the remainder of the evening. She made herself as useful as she could, fetching fresh supplies and serving as an extra set of hands wherever needed.

Sarai had, thankfully, stabilized rapidly and was resting comfortably within an hour of her arrival. 

Zillah had lost quite a bit of blood, but had been lucky—the barbed wire had come just shy of nicking any major blood vessels. She felt so much better, in fact, that Lilith had been assigned the very important job of not letting Zillah stand up and try to help. 

Keziah was not as fortunate. 

As Emerie speculated when she finally arrived to the library, Keziah’s father must have discovered her plan to escape after finding her packed bag hidden in her room and beaten her until she could not leave at all. Emerie and Shiloh had searched for nearly an hour before they eventually found her in the stable next to her home, bruised and bloodied to the point that she was nearly unrecognizable. They’d carried her back to the shop, over a mile in total, and apparently looked so poorly upon arriving that Morrigan had run out of the shop and winnowed them back to the library from the street, not even attempting an initial assessment in the shop. 

Manon, although equipped with the rudimentary knowledge of the human body all warriors ought to have, was not a healer, not in the same way that the priestesses were. It was all she could do to keep clean supplies and fresh water flowing as Merrill and Gwyneth and Clotho and the rest of them set to work, with an efficiency that was as precise as it was gentle. 

“I’m hopeful she’s just severely concussed,” Merrill had said, once they’d checked Keziah over for additional injuries, found none, and tucked her into a bed in the infirmary ward. 

“And if she’s not?” Delilah had wondered between bites of her fingernails. She hadn’t moved from her friend’s bedside since she’d arrived—winnowed in by Azriel, with Balthazar in tow. 

No one had answered. 

Finally, Merrill had announced that the larger crowd of well-wishers was dismissed for the evening, and those with idle hands dispersed to gather laundry or mop floors or show the Illyrians to their beds. 

Manon had just left Zillah and Lilith in their new room down the east corridor. She hardly spent any time in this wing of the library; it was mostly occupied by the more established priestesses, and there was never any reason for her to spend time in any of their chambers. So she took her time as she walked through the now-silent corridors, faintly surprised that the chambers looked so similar to her own. 

She had always assumed she’d been stuffed away in some sort of cast-off ward, chambers that had been intended for shorter-term guests, if not outright prisoners of the Night Court such as herself. But the rooms she’d seen Zillah and Lilith to were nearly identical to her own: small, but not constrictive; simply furnished, but not sparse. 

One of the chamber doors at the end of the hallway had been left open, faelight spilling out into the hallway. She ducked into the alcove, intending to close it, and happened upon the sight of Gwyneth, Nesta, and Emerie asleep in each other’s arms, curled up on Gwyneth’s bed. 

Manon found herself smiling as she extinguished the lights and closed the door. 

All was quiet on her walk back to the western corridor, where her bedchamber was. Those who had been tasked with cleaning had done an excellent job with the entryway; it looked like nothing out of the ordinary whatsoever had happened that night. 

Only, that wasn’t true at all; what Manon had witnessed had been nothing short of miraculous. It was humbling to see the way so many women—many of whom must have endured similar abuses to the Illyrians they’d welcomed with open arms—had quickly and quietly set about helping their newest neighbors. They’d moved in unspoken unity, as if their multiple hands belonged to one being. As if the library itself was determined to heal them, weaving some indomitable thread of its strange magic between its new occupants before just…cleaning up and going to bed, six inhabitants richer and stronger for it. 

Manon stopped for a moment in the center of the building, between east wing and west, where the library spiraled down in on itself, thousands of dusty tomes descending into peaceful darkness. She thought, as she often did, of Bryaxis, the strange being who had dwelt at the heart of that strange magic, who had called this lovely place its home and then left to see the rest of the world. 

Maybe it was the dwindling aftershocks of adrenaline that continued to thrum through her veins or the fact that she was rarely awake this late at night, but tonight she thought she might actually sense Bryaxis. The silent chasm in the center of the library seemed to vibrate with life, the ghost of the thing that had once burrowed there making its presence known in the dark womb of the mountain. Could it be that it called to her, somehow? That it agreed with her suspicion that this creature’s loneliness and grief had never been so different from her own?

Of course not, she admonished herself. Such thoughts were the result of an overtired mind, and nothing more. Humoring them in the first place was absurd. 

But acknowledging the absurdity of the situation didn’t quash her growing certainty that something was definitely churning through the old stacks of books alongside her. Or—was the floor swaying? Had she not fully recovered her sense of balance after being winnowed after all? 

She looked about the rest of the library, desperate for some explanation, but it offered none. The reddish stone of the walls stood as sturdily as it always had; the neat rows of shelving along the upper levels held firmly under her gaze. 

But, yes—there it was, the tremulous crack in reality that shivered against the library floor, moving again. She hastened a step forward and it twitched once more, confirming her mounting suspicion that whatever incongruity she was investigating was localized to the stacks just in front of her. Their bases—that was the source of the it. It was as if the floor was attempting to swallow them up, as if their shadows were…moving. 

“Azriel?” she asked into the dark. Cautiously, quietly; a secret she would admit in the liminal silence of the library and nowhere else. 

The second she spoke his name, though, she knew she was correct. Though she received no sound of confirmation, the shadows that simmered at the bases of the bookshelves seemed to perk up at her voice. Dark tendrils eagerly turned their attention to her, wrapping around her feet in urgent eddies, demanding her attention. 

She made a futile show of shaking her ankle to rid herself of the most insistent of the inky plumes, but allowed them nonetheless to guide her down. Down she went, one soft step after another, down, down, toward the library’s dark, empty heart. 

Despite living in the library, Manon had apparently not done a thorough job of exploring it. The shadows nudged her to a place three levels below that she’d simply never known existed, a little alcove carved out of the stone wall and mostly hidden behind a particularly boring-looking selection of aged tomes labeled Estate Law. Inside, she found: an unlit, hopelessly rusted fireplace; a single, wavering bulb of faelight; and a cracked-leather armchair that sagged under Azriel’s huddled form. 

His shadows returned to their master, draping themselves protectively over his tucked wings and shoulders, such that Azriel all but disappeared into the chair.

He had his legs curled to his chest and was breathing in a shallow, inefficient way that was sooner to render him unconscious than to make him feel any better. For such a stupidly large male, he appeared rather small. 

“Azriel.” 

There was a slight turn of his head in her general direction, such that she guessed he’d heard her, but she could tell he wasn’t listening, lost to the cacophony of thoughts that were no doubt racing through his mind. How long must he have been down here, working himself up into such a state? She hadn’t seen him in at least an hour. 

All signs seemed to indicate he was beyond being able to pull himself out of this hole, but she’d at least give him the chance. 

Exhausted though she was, she marched to the front of the chair with purpose, placed her hands on the armrests, and said in the most stern tone she could manage, “Azriel. Compose yourself.” 

Shadows swirled as he turned to face her. His usually aloof hazel eyes were blown wide with terror, his gaze glassed over with the haze of unmasked panic, his chest rising and falling rapidly with the rate of his breath. 

He was, she could tell, immersed somewhere inside of himself, somewhere deeply personal and painful. Still, she could recognize it, having gotten lost in a similar abyss herself too many times to count. 

She sighed. There was no use trying to reason with him. Better to just get to it, then. 

“Azriel,” she tried again, keeping her voice cool and firm. “I’m going to help you.” 

He didn’t respond, kept looking straight past her, lost in himself.

Probably, she could do anything she wanted to him, but it was still polite to explain herself first. “I’m going to touch your neck.” Then, because she knew who she was dealing with, she added with a touch of command: “You’re going to let me.” 

She held two fingers to his frantic pulse and pushed.

As she’d expected he would, he thrashed instinctively under the pressure—a primitive reflex, the base wiring of his brain recognizing that he’d left his neck exposed to threat. 

Manon was ready for him, as she’d been ready for Sarai. She held her other hand firmly at the angle of his jaw, resisting the jerk of his head as he tried to escape the insistent press of her fingers against the rhythmic strain of his carotid. 

His eyes widened further, his prior existential panic now mixed with the primal fear of an animal who’d been caught in a snare. 

“I’m not trying to kill you,” she said, forcing herself to maintain the icy calm in her voice. “Just focus—focus on me. Focus on the pressure.” 

One of his scarred hands scrabbled up to grasp her wrist. 

She tensed, bracing herself for another attempt at escape, ready to fend him off should he try to wrench out of her grip. 

He didn’t try anything of the sort. Though his hold was tight—almost painfully so—he didn’t attempt to escape her constraint, or even wrest her fingers from his pulse. Instead, he just…held her there, as if trying to anchor himself against her. He let out a tiny, almost imperceptible huff of breath at the contact, even though his pulse continued to race. 

Manon hadn’t attempted this maneuver in quite some time, but she didn’t recall this being part of the standard protocol. Regardless, she carried on. She maintained pressure on his neck, steadily now that he was no longer trying to resist her. 

It was working, thank the gods—she knew she’d hit the correct point when she felt the rate of his pulse begin to slow and his eyes fluttered shut. 

She nearly breathed out a sigh of relief herself, but kept her steady tone as she continued. “Breathe into it. Let your body do its job.” 

The rapid heave of his chest began to subside. 

What happened next was a movement so small that Manon ought to have missed it, were it not for the way she was quickly becoming hyperaware of every millimeter of contact where her skin met his: Azriel turned his face into her hand, the one whose palm lay outstretched to resist his jaw.

He tilted his chin just so, pressing his cheek into her palm and his bounding pulse more firmly under the weight of her steady fingers.  

He relaxed—against her, into her.

She could feel the moment his body reset, his pulse losing its frenzy beneath her touch and his chest beginning to move at a normal rate. 

Her fingers fell away from his neck, but they were still touching, his fingers clasped around the bones of her forearm. His hands were cool and clammy, the tattoos trailing down them textured with a thin layer of sweat. 

Senses apparently regained, Azriel’s eyes fluttered open again. He looked somewhat confused, an expression that was quickly replaced with fresh terror as he traced Manon’s gaze down her shoulder to the place where they remained joined. 

Azriel released her wrist abruptly, a dusting of red flashing across the tips of his ears and the swell of his cheeks as he did so.

“I’m—I’m so sorry.” 

He was staring with abject horror at her wrist, which bore five wounds in the shape of crescent moons where his fingernails had dug into her skin. Slow rivulets of midnight-blue blood seeped from them, lazy drops of rain on foggy glass.  

She hadn’t noticed. “It’ll heal,” she said simply. Then, remembering their first encounter, looked pointedly at his left forearm. “Consider it a debt fairly repaid.” 

He offered her a small, grateful smile. 

She stood back as he uncurled himself from the chair, still looking slightly beleaguered. 

“What was that you did to me?” he asked at last. “Some kind of witch-magic?”

Manon huffed a short laugh. “No. Witches have no magic—at least, no more than exists in any human body. I merely activated a reflex.” She tapped the same spot on her own neck. “Powerful pressure receptors, at the carotid pulses. They function as kind of a control switch for the nervous system. One of several interesting anatomical discoveries those of us who drink blood to survive tend to learn the hard way.” 

Azriel, somewhat absent-mindedly, brought his hand to his neck and traced his own fingers over his pulse. “Huh,” he said finally. “Well, thank you. I…” he trailed off, brow furrowing. “I’m sorry you had to see me like that. I’m usually better at controlling myself, but something about being around Illyrian women, seeing what happened to them…” he shook his head. “Never mind. I know how foolish I sound. It’s their trauma, after all—how I feel about it is entirely irrelevant.”

It’s not foolish at all, she wanted to say, the horrific image of Sarai’s mangled wings still greeting her every time she blinked, but she kept quiet. Her reassurances would likely mean nothing to him. 

“Come on,” she said instead, turning on her heel. “It’s late.” 

They trudged back to the library’s main level in silence. Their roles had been reversed, she realized—after so many afternoons in his study, now it was her turn to walk him to the door of her home.

They paused before the threshold, the empty terrace of the House of Wind stretching out into the dark beyond them. 

He met her eyes, and suddenly she remembered the way he’d looked at her in the study that morning. Though the memory was less than twenty-four hours old, it may as well have been lifetimes ago that he’d gazed at her before responding to Nesta, with something that looked like sorrow in his eyes. 

If any element of his expression had been terror in the face of Nesta’s news, this now made sense to Manon. She’d witnessed the bloody mess of Emerie’s shop for herself. Surely, Azriel had known what sadism his people were capable of and was not eager to face it. 

Any fear that he’d had, she understood. It was the pain in his face that confused her as much now as it had then. 

Grief, had been her immediate interpretation. She’d been translating for the several hours leading up to that moment, after all—primed to take visual clues and package them into a digestible concept as quickly and efficiently as possible. 

She knew she was an adept interpreter of Wyrdmarks and an even better judge of body language, so she trusted her initial instinct. Still, she couldn’t quite get her interpretation to make sense. Why would Azriel be feeling grief? Perhaps this was grief for the plight of the Illyrian women in a broad sense. But if that were the case, why had his pained expression been directed explicitly at her—rather than Nesta, who had brought the bad news? 

Whatever the origin of his intense emotions had been this morning, it had clearly been exacerbated by the proceedings in Windhaven. This night had pushed him to a tipping point, and now he was looking at her with similar anguish on his face yet again. 

What she did know was that she had just witnessed him having an emotional break. No, it was worse than that—she’d needed to lay hands on him to physically help him out of said break. 

Azriel was not any breed of fae that she was used to, but she knew he had been raised a warrior, and that his clan had a penchant for brutality. This, she understood well: such a display of emotion would likely have seen him beaten in his youth, same as any witchling. 

The look he wore now had the same desperate, pleading quality to it that Manon had witnessed hundreds of times growing up in her coven, one that often accompanied the words, Please don’t tell Matron about this.

She might not be able to understand why he’d looked at her with grief in his eyes that morning, but she thought she might understand what he needed to hear in this moment. 

To a fellow witchling, she might have said, Your secret is safe with me. What that really meant was, of course, I don’t think of you any differently.

She could offer him that. She could offer him the comfort of normalcy, however small. 

In any case, she figured, someone really ought to fill the silence that was steadily growing between them. 

“See you tomorrow afternoon?” she offered. 

She nearly breathed an audible sigh of relief as she watched some of the pain eddy from his face, a hesitant smile taking shape on his lips in its wake.  

He nodded. “I’d like that.”

𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪

Azriel slept fitfully, and for no more than a few minutes at once. Whenever he closed his eyes, he was buffeted about by the jumbled black leather of broken wings. He spent most of the night staring at the ceiling instead, hoping that sleep would rise up to claim him without any effort on his part. 

It didn’t. 

He gave up entirely at dawn, rolling out of bed and starting his day instead. 

His first task was fetching Madja, as he and the Valkyries had planned. Although her expertise would have been much appreciated the night prior, they hadn’t wanted to implicate Madja in the initial extraction efforts, which were technically punishable by Illyrian law. Calling upon the Night Court’s healer to see to the injuries of some new tenants of the House of Wind, however, was perfectly legal, and not without precedent. 

Although Madja made her usual show of puttering about crossly when he arrived at her door, bemoaning his not having fetched her sooner for such serious injuries, Azriel knew by now that she’d adopt her usual, no-questions-asked approach to the Illyrian women’s care. 

He winnowed her to the library’s entryway, then waited politely by the door. 

“Wait here, boy,” she told him, despite the fact that he hadn’t moved a muscle. 

Last night had been an extenuating circumstance, but in the light of day he preferred to afford the priestesses and their new guests some privacy from male intrusion, especially under Madja’s modest eye. 

And…well. Maybe he wasn’t eager to be reminded of the fool he’d made of himself the last time he’d been inside, either.

The healer emerged several minutes later with a handwritten list of supplies he was to gather from her infirmary before disappearing back inside. He set off without complaint, grateful to have something to do, to feel like he was being useful in whatever small way that could be asked of him.

Then there was, of course, another list ready for him when he returned to the library with the first shipment, and another after that. The contents of delivery crate number three were both heavy (did she really need six full bottles of tea tree oil?) and bulky, with sprays of fresh herbs poking out of the wooden slats at odd angles. He tried to shift its weight in his grip and ended up with a faceful of fresh lavender instead, temporarily blinding himself such that he almost ran straight into Mor as he staggered into the library’s anteroom. 

“Ol’ Madj has you on delivery duty, huh?” she laughed, reaching out her arms. “I can take that inside.” 

“Thank you,” he said, hoping he didn’t sound too relieved to be rid of the weight. 

She ducked the spray of lavender during their handoff with enviable ease.

They regarded each other in silence that might have been uncomfortable, were it not for their centuries-long history that spread unspoken between them to fill the dusty corners of the warm stone room, a presence as rare and familiar as his shadows.

“Your help last night was vital, Az,” she said, once again cutting directly to the quick of his self-doubts. “I know being there couldn’t have been easy for you, but you showed up, and you did it.” 

No, I didn’t, a cruel voice in his head replied. He’d lost control of himself. He’d let his past get to him, in a way he hadn’t allowed it to in quite some time. I choked. I panicked. I let my own shit get in the way of helping them. I failed.  

“You and Emerie did most of it,” he deflected reflexively, as if this was just another one of their fights. 

Expecting an eyeroll, Azriel was instead taken aback by the quick flush of red that rose to Mor’s cheeks. 

“Take the fucking compliment, asshole,” she snapped. Then she drew in a deep breath, as if trying to focus. Her voice was steadier and her face its usual color as she continued, “You’re a good male, Azriel. Truly.” 

That was laughable. He might not be the kind of Illyrian male who tortured unarmed females just because he could—but what of his other crimes? What of the immeasurable burden of pain he’d inflicted on other living beings for the good of his Court, or in defense of his brothers? And what could be said of his character, such that he was capable of creating such pain, but unable to stomach the sight of someone else’s?

Of course, this vicious moral commentary was all his own; he could tell Mor was being sincere. She really was trying—trying to reopen the deeper channels of their relationship that had lain dormant for centuries. And while they certainly weren’t back to the point where he felt comfortable walking her through the intricacies of his emotional milieu, Azriel wondered for the second time in as many days if they stood at chance at being friends again. 

He ought to try, too. He owed her at least that much. 

“I certainly try to be.”

“Well, stop trying so hard. I think you’ll find it comes naturally to you.” 

He offered her a small smile in return. “Shall I consider this one of your awareness taps to my ego?” 

Mor laughed, short and bright. “I didn’t intend it as such, but you can have this one in parting.” She purposefully knocked into him with Madja’s box of supplies as she walked back through the library’s entryway, leaving him standing alone in the anteroom with a small smile on his face.

It still felt more like a push. 

Chapter Text

The bat was distracting her. 

He wasn’t even supposed to be here at Valkyrie training, beyond rare appearances to help more advanced recruits with particularly complicated skills, or when an extra set of hands were needed for combat drills. 

At least, that was how it had been before the Illyrian recruits arrived. Their addition to the library, however, seemed to have instilled a renewed sense of purpose into their neighbors. Though only Delilah, Lilith, and Shiloh were yet in fighting shape as far as newcomers went, the Valkyries’ morning sessions boasted record-high attendance rates, mostly from priestesses who’d fallen out of the habit of daily attendance, but with a few notable appearances from some who’d never attended before.

As a result, Nesta, Gwyneth, and Emerie needed all the help they could get as far as instructors went, which meant Azriel was now a fixture in the training rings more often than not.

On this day he was co-leading a combat drill with Roslin, and—from what Manon could tell based on Roslin’s frequent noises of exasperation—doing a piss-poor job of it. 

Manon and Azriel had, in fact, met the day after the Illyrian evacuation to work on the map as they’d discussed. So far, though, this was the only proof that their conversation in the library stacks that night had happened at all. The afternoons they’d shared since then weren’t uncomfortable, by any means, but were spent with far longer stretches of silence than their prior encounters, during which they’d spent the majority of the time talking.

She was sure she’d been correct in her initial assumption, which was that Azriel would consider his breakdown a moment of weakness. She was also sure she’d been correct in assuming that said moment of weakness wasn’t a topic he’d be eager to debrief with her.

This would have been fine, if he’d never spoken of the incident again and continued acting normally, but instead he’d chosen the unacceptable middle ground of both not talking about it and making it her problem. If he was going to let her witnessing his moment of vulnerability affect the afternoons she’d started looking forward to, then it had to be addressed. Ignoring it completely only made their silences longer, and the all-too-frequent moments when they caught the other’s gaze during Valkyrie training more charged. 

Except, she was starting to realize that Azriel was the type of male who would probably rather suffer in silence forever than confront an issue head-on, if his insistence on wearing full battle regalia in the increasingly intolerable summer heat was any indication. 

It was viciously hot outside, the open training arena baking in the afternoon sun. Many of the women had stripped down to their breastbands and trousers, but Azriel remained fully dressed. This was ostensibly out of modesty for the more conservative women in his midst, but he looked unbearably warm in his fighting leathers; she could see his sweat from where she stood.

No, anyone who was stubborn enough to remain in full combat attire—at noon, in the open sun, on the top of a mountain, in early summer—was also going to be too stubborn to initiate an adult conversation. 

And this realization was starting to piss her off. 

She had hoped, stupidly, that he would talk to her about his moment of panic, rather than let it cause their budding friendship to rust. She resented the fact that now she’d have to be the one to do it, and, as a result, now found herself resentful of just about everything else he did, in turn. 

For example: the way he repeatedly ran his hand through his sweat-slicked hair to keep it off his face. It was a tic that would get him killed in battle, and it had the annoying side effect of making his hair look perfectly tousled.

It was indecent, really. 

And also: his shadows, which pestered her incessantly despite their ebbing strength in the rising sun. They were never far away, swarming around her ankles like little minnows in a river, and they seemed to enjoy attempting to trip her when she was employing any fighting tactic where neat footwork was key. 

She swore under her breath as she narrowly missed twisting her ankle, thanks to one of them. 

Her current opponent—a pale-faced girl with golden hair named Ananke—cleverly used Manon’s fumble to her advantage, landing a hit against Manon’s side with her wooden training blade.

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Azriel staring at her, with what looked suspiciously like a smirk on his face. 

“Good,” Manon encouraged Ananke, using all of her energy to suppress the scowl she had half a mind to shoot Azriel’s way. “Your opponent stumbles, you strike.”

Ananke’s pale face (which had, much like Manon’s, begun to burn in the sun) lit up at the praise, her chest puffing out with pride. 

Unfortunately for Ananke, her preening off-set her center of gravity. 

Following her own sage advice, Manon took advantage of her opponent’s stumble and struck. Quick as the wind, she swiped low with the wooden blade, taking out Ananke’s knees from behind. 

“Never rest on your laurels,” Manon scolded, reaching out a hand to help the priestess to her feet. “It destabilized your fighting stance. But I meant what I said—that was quick thinking.” 

Ananke accepted her hand and nodded sharply, clearly somewhat cowed by her latest defeat, but still eager to accept Manon’s commendation. 

Good—that meant she was learning.

“Take a break—get some water,” Manon suggested. “We’ll use steel for the next bout.” 

“All right,” Ananke grinned, understandably eager to graduate beyond the silly wooden blades. 

Manon wiped the sweat from her brow and took the two wooden swords they’d been using to the weapons rack. Though Ananke was excited to hang up the wooden sword, she’d find that the metal options weren’t much deadlier. 

Manon sighed, side-stepped another intrusive plume of shadows, and grabbed two of the least useless-looking practice swords. 

She found Morrigan at the whetstone, sharpening one of her already perfectly deadly daggers. 

Illyrian, by the looks of them; Manon was slowly acclimating herself to the finer points of Prythian weaponry. 

“Hello, Manon,” Morrigan said politely. 

“Morrigan.” 

Morrigan rolled her eyes. “How many times must I tell you? It’s Mor. Only my father calls me Morrigan, and he’s a rat bastard.” 

Morrigan—fine, Mor—had been spending much more time at the House of Wind since the night of the extraction, which seemed to puzzle Azriel. He’d voiced his confusion two days prior, speculating about why Mor, who had never regarded Valkyrie business with particular interest in the past, was suddenly much more involved. Mor, to her credit, had come up with an impressive variety of excuses to explain her frequent visits, ranging from “delivering extra supplies for Madja” to “follow-up interviews with the Illyrian women to make sure their affairs were tended to.” 

The actual reason for Mor’s increased presence at the House was fairly obvious to Manon—and was, in fact, currently standing at the water cooler across the training ring right at that very moment. 

No, bury that—those were two sets of Illyrian wings at the water cooler, and she was going to be caught staring again. Just her luck.

Mor followed Manon’s gaze across the ring, to where Azriel and Emerie discussed something, their voices too far away to follow.

“You know, I don’t think I ever thanked you,” Mor said, “for all you did that night.”

It took Manon a moment to realize that Mor had assumed she was looking at Emerie, and was therefore talking about female Illyrians. By the time she’d banished the memory of Azriel’s frantic pulse beneath her fingers, Manon only had the wherewithal to nod shortly.

“It was no trouble. I’m glad I was able to help.” 

Mor nodded, a sentimental look passing over her face. Her gaze was still cast in the general direction of Azriel and Emerie where they stood across the training rings, but her mind seemed to have traveled somewhere else entirely. 

“Did you have humans, in your world?” Mor asked. 

“Yes,” Manon said slowly, doing her best not to think about any of them in particular. 

Mor nodded, then summarily shattered Manon’s resolve as she went on: “I loved one once. A human. It was a very long time ago, but hardly anyone knows that.” She sighed wistfully and leaned with her forearms against the railing of the training pit, as if she were about to address an audience.

Manon stood silently, hoping her total lack of engagement would be enough to get Mor to stop talking. 

Mor, it seemed, was used to monologuing. 

“It was a wartime romance, and it burned brightly—as those tend to,” she continued. “But she was a queen, and she needed to ensure her succession. So I left her, to allow her that. I thought I was doing her a favor.” 

Manon stood frozen, her mouth beginning to go dry. How many times had she stood in their bedroom in Rifthold and had that same fight? How many times had she asked him, told him, begged him to leave her, knowing she would never be strong enough to be the one that left him? How may times had he stubbornly refused? 

The first iteration of these conversations had happened in the quiet of his tent at the Crochan camp, the night before he’d left for Morath. And if I asked you to stay? she’d beseeched him.  

He’d hesitated for a long while before answering. 

I’d need a very convincing reason, I suppose.

I don’t want you to go, she’d admitted. She’d bared her body to him before offering him her crown, begging him to claim the parts of her she’d assumed no male could refuse. 

An alliance, she’d proposed. Between you and me. The real question followed mere moments later: Would that be enough to make you stay?

In response, he’d only fucked her hard enough to make her eyes swim with the same stars he’d insisted she keep perched upon her brow.

That night, he’d claimed her body but left her crown untouched. Half of an answer given; half of a promise made. He’d left in the morning, anyway.

Whenever this argument had repeated itself, the words often varied somewhat, but it always ended the same way.

As if to amplify the painful memory, a stray shadow bumped up against her ankles, cool and soft in the midday sun. Her knees felt weak, her stomach beginning to enter a state of too-familiar free fall.

Wholly oblivious to Manon’s mounting distress, Mor yammered on. “By the time I realized how stupid I’d been, she was married. Happily, I think—I hope. They had five children, in the end. So I left her to live the rest of her life—short, by my standards but long, by hers—in peace. But I never forgot her.” 

And suddenly Manon was jerked into another, equally agonizing set of memories: Asterin’s unfailingly steady hands trembling as they unbuttoned her shirt on a plateau of purple and orange wildflowers between Morath and the Oakwald Forest; Asterin’s unfailingly steady voice shaking as she told Manon of her hunter and their child, neither of whom she’d ever forget. 

No, one never forgot. Manon knew this, despite never having borne her own children. She knew it because of Asterin and Aelin and Elide, Lysandra and Yrene and Petrah, every woman she’d known who’d gone on laboring for their children long after they’d exited the womb. They all claimed it had been worth the suffering.

Manon had never been convinced.

How many times had she looked at the brood of little Lochans and wondered—brutally, selfishly—how their parents could bring them into a life so long, knowing they’d both be dust in the wind by the time they reached the height of their powers? How many times had she wondered how Aedion could tolerate being around Gavi in his snow leopard form, prowling around like a ghost centuries after his mother had gone? 

Despite the century she’d spent believing herself to be heartless and acting accordingly, Manon had always felt that the evilest, most wicked thing she could have ever possibly done would have been to bring an immortal child into the world, only to watch their heart break when time claimed their thoughtful, loving, kind-hearted father.

She could never do anything so cruel, and she stood by her choice, even now.

Yet, despite her conviction, the wondering never stopped. Would a child of theirs have borne his eyes? His ink-black hair? His dimpled, dazzling smile? Would she have written off her cruelty and selfishness if she’d looked upon their child’s face and seen any of these hints of him, living reminders of him that she might hold close to her long after he was gone?

Somehow, Mor was still talking. 

“Anyway, I think that’s why I found Emerie and Nesta’s cause worthwhile. I didn’t know what to do with the weight of all of that memory for a very long time, but helping other women live long, happy lives feels decent enough.” Mor sighed and pushed herself off the railing, the spell she’d been weaving broken. “Don’t tell anyone that story, by the way. I have a mysterious—and convincingly heterosexual, if I do say so myself—reputation to uphold.” 

Mor turned back to Manon with a conspiratorial smile, no doubt expecting her to be wholly unaffected by her sentimentality. 

Whatever she saw on Manon’s face had her furrowing her brow in concern instead. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s nothing,” Manon assured her, perhaps to abruptly. 

At least the shadows were gone. She could focus. She could place all of the thoughts that thrummed through her head back inside the iron vault she kept buried in the depths of her mind, where they belonged. 

Manon gestured vaguely at the sparring ring. “I should really get back to it.” 

Mor nodded good-naturedly and left to sharpen her blades once more, no doubt wondering what had gotten Manon’s hackles raised so suddenly. 

Ananke took up her steel eagerly, holding the blade with the practiced caution of a student. 

Manon found this laughably endearing—despite her best efforts at sharpening the thing, the sword was likely incapable of rendering any wound more painful than a paper-cut. 

“Same drills as we practiced with the wooden sword,” she commanded Ananke, dropping into an opening stance. “Just this time, mind the edge.” 

As it turned out, Manon might have stood to benefit from a lesson on blade safety from Ananke. 

Mor’s charming little tale of woe had destabilized Manon, and she found herself having difficulty following her own advice. Her reflexes were slower than usual; her mind wandered. She was churning with a hot surge of discomfort that prickled at the inside of her skin and threatened to burn her alive. 

Complicating her already pathetic lack of composure was the added annoyance of having to witness Azriel spar with Wynne. His little group had chosen the ring right next to Manon and Ananke’s, and now both he and his shadows were once again oppressively close to Manon’s fragile sensorium. 

How far had she fallen from her former military grace, if she was truly allowing trivial things like memories and men to fluster her? 

“We’ll practice breaking a bind,” she said to Ananke, refocusing herself and changing tack. Perhaps the new exercise would sharpen her senses.  

She sank into a solid stance that Ananke mirrored, and their two blades met between them with the unhappy clank of dull metal. 

“Wrist,” Manon corrected, flicking her eyes to Ananke’s grip. 

The young woman readjusted her hold, wrist straightening. 

“Good. Now, explain one way to break out.” 

“I’d come up with the hilt?” Ananke suggested. 

“Are you asking me or telling me?” 

“Telling,” Ananke said firmly, the press of her sword against Manon’s steadying. 

“Good. Demonstrate.” 

Ananke did, wrenching her pommel upward and away from their bind with a surge of forward momentum. 

“Pause. What did you miss?”

Ananke froze, sword suspended in the air above them, and considered. “I didn’t move my feet.” 

“Right,” Manon agreed. “The technique is only good if you move off to the side and out of my line of attack while you do it—then, you have a chance at disarming me. Otherwise, I’m able to maintain my balance and my weapon. Again.” 

Out of the corner of her eye, Azriel had begun drilling basic attacks with Wynne. 

“The motion should come from your hips,” he was saying, lunging forward in a swift, fluid movement. 

Her clothes were too tight. The sun was too hot. Worse still, Mor’s words continued to blaze under her skin, licks of flame that erupted from her chest and clawed their way up her throat. 

She wouldn’t let herself be distracted. She wouldn’t. 

 “Like this?”

Manon’s attention returned to Ananke just in time to watch her slip from their bind once more, this time coupled with an efficient sidestep.  

“Fantastic. Pause, again. How would you disrupt my grip now?”

Ananke studied Manon’s stance from her side. 

“Outward pressure on your wrist,” she stated—not a question, this time. 

“Right. With any luck, I’m still reeling forward from having you escape our bind, too—I should be fairly vulnerable to an attack from the side. Depending on your armor, you could even tuck my blade under your shoulder as you rotate away to increase the torque.” 

Ananke’s face brightened. “Can I see?” 

“You should just try it. There’s no sense in me explaining it, if it doesn’t feel right. Break the bind again, and try to intuit the disarm rather than listening to me. We’ll go slowly.” 

Ananke steeled herself, meeting Manon’s blade with hers between them once more. She broke their bind with a proper sidestep and—

There was a muted grunt from the next ring over. Manon glanced away, just for a second, just long enough to watch as Azriel shook his head rapidly like a wet dog, sending beads of moisture flying. 

Ananke trapped Manon’s blade under her shoulder, knocked her wrist from the side, and disarmed her. 

She looked rather surprised that she’d managed it. 

The priestess clearly had enough trust in Manon’s mentorship that she’d interpreted the move as a purposeful concession on Manon’s account, but the truth was that Manon had deserved it. If this were a real battle, she might well be dead. 

Well, good. That served her right, for allowing herself to get so preoccupied by Mor’s self-indulgent prattling and the unnecessarily lewd sight of the sweat beading at the back of Azriel’s neck. 

The man was sweating buckets, really. If he spent much longer outside, he might well die of heat stroke. 

Well, that wouldn’t be how she met her end. She could be reasonable. 

She stripped off her shirt, picked up her stupid practice blade, and said to Ananke, “Again.”

𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪

The witch was distracting him. 

With the arrival of six new Valkyries-in-training, even Nesta’s seemingly limitless ability to triage was finally stretched, and Azriel found himself once more in the training arena on a regular basis. 

He worked mostly with the Blades—the slightly more advanced, much less Illyrian priestesses—who were more comfortable with his and Cassian’s presence. He was happy to do it; he’d liked training Nesta and Emerie and Gwyn, and he liked being able to help these women, in whatever small way they allowed.

Having a more active role in daily training sessions, though, meant that he often felt Manon watching him. 

Azriel didn’t mind having spectators watch the Valkyries train—it was, in fact, commonplace for priestesses to do so, assessing the training environment before they decided whether or not they wanted to sign up. Delilah, Lilith, and Shiloh had come by to do as much just yesterday.

The issue was that Manon was very much not a priestess, nor was she an Illyrian woman deciding if she wanted to learn to fight. She might have been temporarily deconditioned, but she was a warrior, born and bred. She’d likely spent just as much time in the skies over battlefields as Azriel had, and—judging from the ease with which she trained the priestesses—had likely been in command for most of that time. She was clearly used to doing rather than watching, leading rather than following. 

She was a force of nature, a breath of fresh air in the arena that the Valkyries flocked to like flies to honey. Despite her formidable exterior, she’d clearly become a trusted member of their community, and a friend to Nesta. 

And, if Azriel wasn’t mistaken, now she seemed to be mad at him.

Admittedly, things had been different between them since the night she’d found him in the library alcove. It still made his cheeks flush when he remembered the way he’d turned into her palm and grabbed onto her wrist, mortifyingly eager for human contact, even when he’d otherwise lost control of his mental faculties. That she’d been willing to speak with him at all—let alone continue to spend afternoons with him—after he’d made her bleed and fucking nuzzled her was miracle enough; he ought to be grateful. 

But instead he found himself feeling gloomily resigned. The way he’d acted had changed things between them, complicating what had become an otherwise comfortable dynamic. Now when they were together, he found himself more often thinking (and overthinking, and re-thinking, and thinking again) than conversing with her, resulting in stretches of long silence that he didn’t know how to fill. 

He was sure she sensed this growing divide between them, and he was fairly certain this was why she seemed to be sending psychic waves of exasperation in his direction whenever she caught him looking at her. 

Just act normally, you absolute ass, she seemed to say. This was, as it happened, exactly what he continued to beg of himself. 

But all he could manage was increasingly stilted conversations and too-frequent instances of eye contact in the training ring, both of which seemed to piss her off further. 

He was, to borrow Cassian’s parlance, fucking it up big time, and he didn’t know how to fix it. 

As if his mental anguish weren’t enough, the environment was now doubly punishing him with what was gearing up to be an unbearably hot summer. He was often drenched through his leathers within an hour after arriving to the training rings, and frequently left looking half-drowned.  

The combined effect of Manon’s not-so-subtle scrutiny, his own relentless mental castigation, and the unyielding heat was his recent poor showing as Valkyrie trainer. 

Today, he was supposed to be co-leading partnered combat drills with Roslin. So far, the drill had inspired a lot of confidence in Blades Aoife and Wynne, which had not exactly been the point. The Blades were advancing satisfactorily, to be sure, but they shouldn’t have been landing quite so many strikes against him and Roslin’s combined expertise. 

“How was that?” Wynne was asking him, resetting herself after her counterattack.

“Good,” he admitted, “but you let me take up too much space. You should dominate the energy in the room—take charge of every square inch you can.” 

Cassian often mocked Azriel for his woeful inability to describe things simply. Sometimes Azriel heard himself talk and couldn’t help but agree with his brother. 

Wynne rolled her eyes at his cryptic advice. “We don’t all have shadows that can do that for us.”  

“Reset,” he advised her, but her lip reminded him—

Shit—his shadows. They’d taken advantage of his recent distractibility and had started escaping with an almost adolescent rebelliousness, especially during Valkyrie practices when most of his mental energy was focused elsewhere. They were especially partial to Manon—even now, a few stray plumes of them were wending around her, as if eager to participate in whatever lesson she was currently teaching Ananke. 

He sighed and willed them back to him, but not before they nudged up against Manon’s ankles, forcing her into an impressively agile series of steps to avoid tripping. Despite his shadows’ attempted obstruction, she was unflappable. 

He found himself smiling. 

Aoife quickly knocked him out of his reverie with a well-placed strike of her wooden blade to his negligently exposed flank. 

He recoiled, confused. Aoife wasn’t even his sparring partner—

He was met with a shit-eating grin from Wynne, who was. 

Roslin sighed. “Why don’t we take five and get a drink? Then we’ll practice basic attacks,” she suggested. Her use of the word we was, Azriel could tell, very polite co-leader speak that he interpreted as, Azriel, you specifically are performing like shit—get a hold of yourself before it becomes truly embarrassing.  

Sufficiently chastised, Azriel walked over to the water cooler without another word. 

Roslin was right, even if she hadn’t said anything out loud. He had to focus. It was just…difficult to do so, when he kept being dragged back into the riptide of his ever-churning thoughts. Though he followed Roslin’s directions and sipped—well, chugged—some much-needed water, he found his mind wandering once again. And where his thoughts went…

“Az,” came Emerie’s voice as she moved to stand beside him. “You’re…interfering.”

Sure enough, his shadows were back to winding themselves at Manon’s heels, coming dangerously close to tripping her and sending her face-first into the weapons cabinet. 

“Oh, fuck,” he mumbled, giving them a sharp psychic tug. “They’ve been unruly lately. Lots of new people lately for them to inspect.”

“Uh-huh,” said Emerie in a way that suggested she detected his words for the excuse they were. 

He wrenched his focus away from the weapons cabinet and back to his friend at his side, instead. 

With the six new Valkyries safely established at the House of Wind, Azriel had expected that some of Emerie’s lightness might return. Instead, she still seemed preoccupied, her brow almost permanently furrowed. 

“How has it been?” he probed gently. “Back in Windhaven?”

Emerie pursed her lips and shrugged. “Could be better. Could be worse.” 

That was putting things mildly. Emerie had been keeping a low profile since the night of the winnowings. None of the Windhaven elite could prove her involvement in the disappearances, of course, but the townsfolk needed someone to blame for the upheaval, and the young Illyrian who’d been vocally in favor of women’s liberation efforts made a logical target. Emerie’s store had, as a result, been victim to several instances of theft and low-level vandalism in the meantime.

“The important thing is that we got all of them out, thanks to you.” 

“You” was clearly meant in the broad sense of the word, as Emerie coupled it with a nod across the veranda to where Mor was speaking with Manon at the whetstone. Or—more likely, knowing the two of them—Mor was talking at Manon. 

Emerie was clearly not interested in delving deeper into his first question, so he followed her lead and changed the subject. 

“Are things with Mor are going well?”

“What?” Emerie blurted, her blunted affect suddenly sharpening into a fierce point. 

Azriel frowned, worried he’d offended her somehow. Perhaps she thought the Night Court had sent Mor to Windhaven because they were worried Emerie couldn’t handle the fallout on her own? He couldn’t let her go on believing that, if it was indeed the cause of her alarm. 

“I just mean that she’s been out there in Windhaven quite a lot,” he attempted to explain. “The thought was that she could be helpful in easing tensions, but if her presence is causing too much of a stir, then I’m sure she’d be happy to pull back.”

“Oh,” said Emerie, a flush rising to her cheeks. “No, she’s great—well, not great, I just meant that she’s not—that won’t be necessary. Thank you, though,” she added. 

Well, that had gone swimmingly. He might as well add Emerie’s name to the list of women in this ring he’d offended within in the past week. 

He nodded at her, sensing she’d prefer it if he shut the fuck up. “I should be going to finish the lesson.” 

He wiped the sweat that had already accumulated on his brow with the back of his sleeve and returned to the training ring where Roslin was waiting with Aoife and Wynne—a different training ring. 

In a terrible turn of fate, the one they’d been using previously was now occupied by Nesta and Deirdre, leaving his group to establish themselves in the ring immediately next to Manon’s. 

So much for Roslin’s hope that a water break would magically restore his focus. At least the lesson on the agenda was basic forward attacks—nearly impossible for someone with five centuries’ worth of training to fuck up. 

“Basic attack,” he commanded Wynne, sinking into a basic defensive stance. 

The young woman took a deep breath and nodded, readjusting her grip on the pommel. Her sword came down in a steady, controlled arc, and Azriel met it with the edge of his own. 

“The swing was good,” Azriel remarked as her opponent reset. “But you didn’t move your feet. Here—repeat what you just did, but slower. Good—pause.” 

Wynne’s sword stilled in the air between them. 

“You want to accompany the movement with a feint,” Azriel explained. “You’re still in my line of attack. If I were to counterstrike, it’s an easy hit.” He brought his own sword down—slowly, exaggeratedly—to prove his point, tapping the dull blade against Wynne’s exposed elbow joint for good measure. 

Wynne nodded. “Is it better to go left or right?” 

“The motion should come from your hips, but your blade will follow.” He demonstrated, lunging forward with an arc of the wooden blade. 

“See, now that made sense! Maybe you should start demonstrating everything. Then I wouldn’t have to spend so much time deciphering what you’re saying,” Wynne suggested cheerfully. 

One ring over, Manon appeared to be engaging Ananke in a similarly involved method of instruction. The dull steel in her hands glinted in the sunlight, bringing out the silvery undertones of her hair. Manon held her blade, borrowed though it was, like an extension of her own arm, wielding it with practiced ease and enviable dexterity. 

Stupidly, fleetingly, he wished he could sit out the rest of his own lesson and just watch her, instead. 

Granted, he might still be fucking it up big time, but as he watched Manon slice handily with the practice sword, he began to formulate an idea about how he might begin to win back some of her favor. 

Wynne repeated her downswing, this time coupling it nicely with a rightward motion that brought her out of Azriel’s range.

“That was excellent,” Azriel said, pleased with how hard he’d had to exert himself to adjust his counterstance. “Reset.” He gave up trying to wipe away the sweat from his brow with his already damp sleeve and resorted to shaking his whole head out, instead.  

“Gross,” Wynne lamented, dodging out of the way just in time to avoid getting hit. 

Azriel cringed. He hadn’t realized how productive that particular maneuver would be. Still, he was pleased with how quickly she’d ducked—her reflexes were being honed nicely. “A Valkyrie must be ready for anything, Wynne,” he chided her. “Go again—underhand, this time.” 

He was hitting his stride. He was good at this, he remembered—good at being an instructor, especially with such an attentive pupil. 

Wynne readied herself to strike, and he assumed another defensive stance, finally with some amount of confidence. 

Manon chose that exact moment to remove her shirt. 

She flung it unceremoniously to the edge of the ring, revealing a black breastband. It was a garment common enough that it should have been unremarkable—indeed, many of the trainees were already similarly attired, and had been for the past several days without Azriel sparing them a second thought. 

He was, he thought, generally quite good at keeping his thoughts from straying anywhere dangerous during training sessions with the Valkyries. He had a job to do and professional boundaries to uphold, and he’d never before let his more base thoughts get in the way when focused on training. 

The underlying issue, once again revealed, was that Manon remained solidly other in his mind. She was not a priestess, was not an Illyrian, was not his soldier to train. She was, in many ways, still a mystery—and what were shadows and secrets if not mysteries in and of themselves? He’d trained his entire life to notice enigmas like Manon, and he’d treated them like puzzles: running them through his mind, over and over again, until the dense webs that secrets liked to hide themselves in began to unravel. 

His Spymaster instincts, it seemed, were to blame for the way his attention continually snagged on the details of her, even when they should have been perfectly mundane. For example: the maddening way a perfectly normal undergarment cut across her moon-white skin, the dark fabric accentuating the jut of her collarbones and every soft angle of her sculpted stomach. 

Wynne delivered a blow to the back of his knees that should not have landed, were he not in such a vulnerable state. 

“You let me have that one,” she huffed.

He was getting heat stroke. 

Yes, that had to be it. He’d drink some more water and maybe punch himself in the face, and then he’d feel better. 

And a shower—he definitely needed a shower, too. 

Cold. 

Unwilling to admit what had actually caused him to temporarily lose focus, Azriel didn’t bother to correct the priestess. “You swung like you were expecting me to dodge—let the force you deliver match every potential outcome. Again.” 

“Can’t you speak normally?” Wynne lamented. 

 
And, oh, how he wished he could.

𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪

Removing her shirt had done wonders for Manon’s performance. She was infinitely more comfortable for the remainder of the session, which in turn allowed her to regain control over her lesson with Ananke. 

And, all right, maybe she was also partially fueled by the smug satisfaction that had rippled through her upon seeing Azriel destabilized—both literally and figuratively—after she undressed. 

In any case, she was feeling grounded and pleased when the session came to an end, which was a vast improvement from her earlier state of simmering with festering rage. 

‘Grounded’ and ‘pleased’ were likely not how Azriel would describe himself when he emerged from the sparring ring positively drenched with sweat, and with a defeated look on his face to match. 

After returning his and Wynne’s weapons to the shed, he trudged solemnly to face Manon where she stood by the water cooler. 

“Out with it,” he said, almost miserably. “You’re angry with me, and I can’t figure out why. Please tell me.” 

There was no hint of frustration in his tone, only fatigued curiosity. He knew she was angry with him, but he’d clearly misjudged the reason, realized he’d misjudged the reason, become frustrated with himself for his own lack of awareness, and finally decided it would be better just to ask.

The man, she realized, spent far too much time thinking for his own good. 

Manon studied him closely for a long moment, trying not to let any of the small degree of surprise she felt show on her face as she decided how to answer him.  

Practice was over. Manon and Azriel stood mostly out of earshot of the remaining trainees, though the few who lingered watched the two of them with poorly disguised interest. Her allotted time for instruction was done for the day, but she decided she had the energy to teach one final lesson. 

She tilted her chin toward the far corner of the arena, where Nesta and Emerie were disappearing over the horizon. “Did they make progress faster than these priestesses?” 

“Who—Nesta and Emerie? Yes, I suppose so.”

“And was it ever this hot outside when you trained Nesta and Emerie?” 

His brow furrowed, as if he were warring between his curiosity and his desire not to be made a fool of. “It was,” he said slowly, his curiosity winning out. 

“And what were you wearing then?” 

“This,” he said. 

“No, you weren’t. Unless you’re fucking stupid, you know how easy it is to get heat stroke in weather like this. You’re comfortable with Nesta. I’d bet anything you were wearing something more comfortable, when you trained her. What were you wearing?” 

The flush that rose in his cheeks appeared too acutely to be blamed on the sun. “This, but without a shirt.” 

“I figured. So why are you torturing yourself now?” 

“The priestesses,” he said, wiping his hand on his brow. “They…many of them have difficult past relationships with men. I don’t want to make them uncomfortable. It’s complicated.” 

“You’re babying them,” she challenged. 

“I am not,” he said crossly. “I’m being respectful.” 

“Respect has nothing to do with whether or not your tits are out,” Manon said flatly, “but everything to do with treating someone no differently than you would anyone else. My point is that I can tell you’re coddling them, in a way you clearly didn’t coddle Nesta.”

“I’m not coddling them!”

“Did you ask them?” she challenged. “Did you ask them if it would bother them to see you appropriately dressed for the weather? Or would you prefer they get their weight training in for the day when they’re forced to drag your stubborn corpse back into your house after you die from hyperthermia?” 

“That’s awfully morbid,” Azriel grumbled. 

She could tell she’d won, but she wanted to hear him say it. She folded her arms across her chest. “Tell me I’m wrong.” 

“You’re right,” he conceded. “I fully admit that it’s obscenely hot, and that I am overdressed.” He paused. “Would you be willing to finish this lecture inside, so that you don’t have to be the one dragging my stubborn corpse?”

“Fine.” 

During their short walk, Manon was pleased to note that their shared silence once again felt companionable.

That was, until Azriel ruined the moment by opening his mouth again a few yards away from the door. 

Maintaining his gaze steadily in front of them, but with the hint of a wary smile in his tone he ventured, “Is that really what you were so mad at me for? My disregard for basic environmental safety?” 

Manon sniffed. “Maybe. Maybe not. You’ll find out soon enough, or you won’t. Don’t push your luck.” 

She pretended not to see him smiling to himself. 

Azriel’s home was refreshingly cool, its shaded interior a relief even to Manon, who was appropriately dressed for the weather. The House of Wind, it seemed, withstood the summer by living up to its name: open windows and archways ushered the warm outside breeze into contact with the cool stone walls and floors, creating coordinated currents that kept its rooms airy and pleasant. 

Her relief was short-lived.

Manon deeply regretted taking Azriel to task for his modesty when he began stripping off his outermost layers of leathers the second they set foot inside. 

“Gods, it really is fucking hot out there.” He threw off pauldrons and holsters, boots and greaves, his practiced fingers flying over buckles and laces with impressive speed. 

Manon thought about turning away, but doing so would severely undercut the impassioned argument she’d delivered not five minutes prior. Instead, she was forced to watch in a state of mute paralysis as Azriel disarmed himself, apparently oblivious to the show he was putting on. 

“Are you quite done?” she asked stiffly when he stood in only socks, trousers, and a simple long-sleeved undershirt, cuffed with the leather gauntlets that held the strange blue crystals he kept strapped to his hands. 

Surely there was nothing else to remove. Surely they could go to the study and—

Abruptly, Azriel untucked the hem of his undershirt and lifted it to wipe the sweat from his face. 

It was a quick, practiced movement, one that he’d surely repeated thousands of times in his life. But it was not quick enough for Manon to avoid being lambasted by an unobstructed view of the tanned skin of his lower abdomen, the panes of shifting muscle, and the dark swath of hair that stretched past his navel and disappeared into the waist of his pants.

“Yeah,” he announced happily. “I feel much better. Let’s go.” 

Unaware that he’d just conjured a whole array of assaults to Manon’s senses, Azriel dropped his shirt and ambled into the study. 

The House seemed to pity her, filling the room with a cool breeze. 

She shook her head, appalled at herself, and followed him. Since when was she distracted by the body of a man?

Maybe the sun had gotten to her, after all.

𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪

They’d moved on to the desolate island of Hybern, and were frightfully close to being done with the map entirely. Azriel preferred not to think about what would happen when they finished, and not only because he had yet to procure her sword from Rhys. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be done at all. 

Miraculously, his fervent plea to Manon after training (and the lecture that ensued) seemed to have released some of the festering tension between them, even though he was fairly certain there was more on her mind than what she’d revealed. He was hopeful that whatever insanity had been plaguing him since the night of the extraction was temporary, and that she might be able to overlook his regrettable behavior in the library with enough distance from the incident. Given how easily they’d fallen back into conversation this afternoon, he was cautiously optimistic that the imbalance between them would correct as surely as his body temperature. 

Also: she’d put her shirt back on before they went inside, which helped his focus. 

As for her sword—he was starting to formulate a plan. For now, they had time. There was, after all, plenty to be said about Hybern. 

“Does Hybern have High Lords and Ladies?” Manon asked. 

Azriel shook his head. “It’s a monarchy. At least—it used to be. The king was…dispatched, during the most recent war. I don’t know what’s become of their leadership structure since then.” 

Manon looked up at him from where she lay on the floor, an eyebrow quirked. “‘Dispatched?’”

“Stabbed in the neck by Elain, and fully beheaded by Nesta,” he clarified. 

“Huh,” Manon said with a nod, sounding impressed. “He must have wronged them quite spectacularly.” 

“Indeed,” Azriel agreed. “Nesta and Elain have that wretched male to thank for their turning into High Fae—they were humans, same as Feyre, before he pushed them into the Cauldron.” 

“Neither of them desired immortality?” 

“No,” Azriel admitted. “Nesta has softened to the immortality piece now that she’s mated to Cas, but Elain…I’m not sure she’ll ever stop wanting her humanity back.”

“She might come around, in time. Humans are short-lived,” Manon said tightly, returning her attention to the map. 

Azriel shrugged. “Yes, they are—but only in comparison to us. We fae, after all, are short-lived compared to Amren’s kind, and all of us are inconsequential in the history of the world itself.”

“What, exactly, is Amren’s kind?”

He huffed a laugh. “Well, she’s High Fae now, after the war. But before that she was something…else. Not a god, exactly, but comparable to one in many ways.” He paused, considering. “I often wonder how Amren might be different, if we’d met her when she was only centuries old. I’ve asked her how she thinks she’s changed, and she can hardly remember. So I think you lose something, in a way, living that long. I think humans might be the fullest out of all of us, only because they don’t have the time to waste.”

Manon had gone silent. 

He looked up and found her nearly frozen, with his shadows curled over her legs and twined in her milk-white hair. She looked upon them with something that went beyond her usual tempered frustration and strayed closer to apprehension. 

Worse—she was breathing with the steady, controlled determinatino of someone who was trying very hard not to panic. As Azriel had tried and failed to do in the library, all those nights ago.

He felt a cold wave of horror wash over him. Had he completely misunderstood? Had what he’d always interpreted as mild annoyance with his shadows really been disguising fear? 

His terror deepened as he remembered how long his shadows had spent in her hospital room. Had she been frightened of them then, too? Had he unintentionally slowed her recovery by torturing her from afar? Worse still—did she think he’d done it on purpose? 

“I’m sorry,” he said hurriedly, feeling color begin to rise in his cheeks as he beckoned the inky plumes back to his side. “If I don’t pay close attention, they have a tendency to wander.” 

“It’s all right,” she said, in a voice as controlled as her breathing. 

“I can control them, but not fully. They’re easy to lose track of—like loose change, I suppose. I keep a better handle on them when I’m focused. They’re part of me, but also their own entities, and we can communicate, but they don’t always do as they’re asked,” he continued, as if dumping a gallon of information on the flame of his embarrassment could stop its burning. “I can try harder to redirect them, if they upset you.” 

Manon shook her head. “It’s not that.” In a rare display of discomfort, she shifted slightly, as if warring internally with herself. 

She opened her mouth. Closed it again.

Azriel waited, barely daring to breathe. He felt like they were close to that opaque, unknowable thing that he often felt separating the two of them. An obelisk, he imagined: black as night and wider than the span of his wings, wide enough that either one of them might slip behind one of the thing’s many faces at any given time. Sometimes, one of them caught up to the other so that both of their reflections were visible against the black stone; but more often they walked around it in perfect mirror, only catching glimpses of the other before they dipped out of sight again.

“It’s…never mind.” She sighed. 

The door between them—the archway that sometimes flickered into being within the solid onyx pillar that they circled in tandem, offering a rare glimpse to the person on the other side—shut again. 

Even though it had ended abruptly, this conversation had been a small wonder; it was rare that either of them shared information about themselves without the map providing a safety net of context. Perhaps it could also be considered a sign that—despite his apparent insistence on ruining the fragile alliance forming between them—they could return to normalcy after the awkwardness he’d caused in the library. 

He’d take that small piece of hope and call it a win for the night. He was halfway to standing, about to cut his losses and offer to see her to the door, when she surprised him. 

“I’m meeting with your High Lady tomorrow evening. And her sisters. Nesta is taking me.” 

Azriel sat back down. 

“To talk about my future. What comes next for me, I suppose.” 

Azriel nodded, a funny tightness threatening his throat. “Oh? And what is that?” 

Manon was still facing the map, though Azriel could tell her gaze wasn’t focused on it. 

“I’m not sure,” she admitted. “I don’t know what there is to want.” She traced a finger over the nearly-finished document, over each river and valley and mountain. Her careful work had given a gift to each and everyone one of them: their original names, traced in her patient script. 

“I don’t see myself settling in the Human Lands, though it might be fun to scare the shit out of some people for a while,” she went on with a small smile. 

Azriel huffed a laugh despite the cloying discomfort rising in him. 

“I certainly won’t be going to Windhaven,” she said with a scoff. “I could stay here, keep training the Valkyries, keep reading in the library, maybe get an apartment in the city. But that feels like awfully little to ask from a world as big as this.” She removed her hands from the map, folding them in her lap instead. Then shook her head quickly, as if she’d just thought better of their whole conversation. 

“Don’t mind me. I’ll think of something.” 

Azriel remembered his conversation with Mor on the outskirts of Windhaven as he watched Manon disappear across the veranda, and continued remembering it long into the night.

When do you plan to tell the witch of Briar?

He’d been right today, in spite of the maddening heat and his racing thoughts: Manon was not a priestess. She was not an Illyrian. She was not his student to train. But as he crawled into bed that night, he realized with a start that he’d forgotten something vital on this list: Manon was not Bryce Quinlan. 

The near-comedic chaos that had ensued as a result of Quinlan’s entry into Prythian had been embarrassing for Azriel (who had been outsmarted and robbed, in quick succession) and doubly unfortunate for Nesta. On top of having damn near forfeited her mortal soul when she put on the Mask to kill the wyrm, she’d also paid the price for her generosity in lending the Mask to Quinlan in the weeks that followed. Quinlan’s parents—who had been the most pleasant things to come from the whole ordeal—had a quaint little phrase to describe the verbal flagellation Nesta had endured at Rhys’s hands: “in the doghouse.” 

And all of that chaos, every last second of it, had stemmed from the fact that Quinlan was desperate to go home. She was willing to lie and undermine and kill in order to return to her people. 

Manon, he realized, had displayed absolutely none of this patriotic zeal. Though Azriel wasn’t privy to many of the details of her first weeks in Prythian, he’d inferred through Nesta’s vague reports that Manon had slowly emerged from her initial weeks of mute contemplation with a resigned, docile indifference to her new situation.

Granted, much of this comparative apathy could be due to the vastly different circumstances under which Manon and Quinlan had arrived in Prythian. Bryce had arrived with a purpose, and had nearly taken out Azriel and Nesta to achieve it; Manon had arrived equipped with a sword and a mirror, but at the same time completely disarmed. The faith that had caused Bryce to jump headfirst into frigid underground rapids, the conviction that drove her to wake a fucking Daglan from its slumber…Manon, it seemed, had more complicated feelings toward the home she’d attempted to leave behind. 

Hope—yes, that was what it was, that’s what she’d been trying to tell him she was looking for. Something to fuel her, something that ran deeper than the tasks she’d been assigned here in the House of Wind, something of her own design. 

Was such a thing so hard to find that she’d turn to dinner with the Archeron sisters, of all things, to help point her toward it? 

The thought struck Azriel with a deep, heavy sort of sadness. The wound he’d felt when he’d learned of Manon’s apparent ongoing suffering pained him well enough, but the added weight of the secret he continued to keep made it sting. A right royal bastard it made him, purposefully withholding information that might help make her next direction clear.

I’ll tell her, he vowed to himself as he drifted off to sleep. I’ll tell her about her friend Briar. But first…

He really ought to return her sword.

𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪

The next day, equally oppressively humid, Azriel showed up to training in a loose-fitting tank top. 

He was impressionable, Manon realized—malleable. Worthwhile traits for anyone to have, but especially a male. 

And, for whatever it was worth—which was very little, she promised herself—he had nice arms.

Chapter Text

Manon was making the final touches on the Wyrdmarks surrounding the isle of Hybern the next day when Nesta marched into the House of Wind’s study with purpose. 

“You,” she commanded. “Up.” 

Azriel, who had been focused on his notebook, scrambled in his seat. 

“Not you,” Nesta clarified, “although, I’m pleased to see how seriously you take my commands.” 

Azriel settled back into the sofa, sulking. 

Manon frowned, turning to look out the window. “Is it really that close to evening?” 

She’d thought she’d have more time before Nesta came to fetch her for their meeting with Feyre. She’d been sitting here after training in the sun for hours, she needed to bathe first—

“No,” Nesta said, in agreement with the sun’s still-dominant position in the afternoon sky. “But you have a hot date with the High Lady of the Night Court and her devastatingly beautiful sisters, and we need to make sure you look the part. Come on.” 

Manon cast a pleading glance to Azriel, who only shrugged sheepishly. 

“Sorry. The first and only rule of this house is ‘don’t disobey Nesta.’” 

Nesta grinned. “Correct.” She turned her attention back to Manon. “You heard the man. My House, my rules.” 

Manon trudged out of the study behind Nesta, but her disappointment in being pulled away from the map was quickly tampered by the prospect of exploring the rest of the House of Wind. 

The study was a relatively straight shot from the airy foyer that opened onto the patio where Valkyrie practices were held, so there was little reason or opportunity for Manon to have ever strayed further into the building. Besides the study’s adjacent washroom and the glimpses into the kitchen and ballroom that the archways of the corridor between the study and the entryway offered, Manon hadn’t seen a single other room. 

Nesta led her down the one familiar corridor and back through the foyer into an entirely different wing of the house. Manon tried her best to keep pace, but frequently found herself wanting to stop and stare at the sheer opulence of the place. 

“Only three of you live here?” she asked skeptically as they passed yet another private chamber, its door left open to reveal a meticulously-made four-poster bed and an unparalleled view of the mountainside. 

“For the time being. I don’t disagree with you that it seems an absurd waste of space,” Nesta said, correctly guessing at Manon’s undertones, “but it’s useful for large gatherings. And it’s nice being able to offer a place for longer-term guests, too.” Her eyes darted to Manon’s as she added with a smile, “We have a habit of putting up strays.” 

Nesta’s bedchambers overlooked the Valkyrie training pits, which had emptied out by the late afternoon. 

Though she thought knew Nesta fairly well by now, Manon found herself somewhat humbled by the intimacy of seeing her living space. Traces of her life had seeped into every corner of the room, from the satin slippers by one side of the bed and the half-empty glasses of water on the rosewood end-tables to the teetering stacks of well-worn books next to an upholstered armchair by one of the open windows. And amidst it all there were undertones of someone else: spiced jars of aftershave, half-repaired bowstrings, and thick blankets hand-woven with the same intricate designs as the tattoos Illyrian men bore. Manon barely knew Nesta’s mate at all, so seeing what had to be touches of Cassian’s presence in her life was all the more fascinating.

Though he clearly slept elsewhere, there were traces of Azriel here, too. A note, written in hurried, looping script lay atop a book on Nesta’s desk:

Nes—More like this one!! - Az

Something not entirely unpleasant twisted in her chest, and Manon found herself wondering if Azriel’s room was similarly lived-in, if the state of permanent clutter he maintained in the House’s study was indicative of the way he kept his own chambers. 

If there were traces of anyone else that had bled into his space, too. 

Nesta did not seem to notice Manon’s being lost in thought. She flung open the door of an absurdly large armoire—stuffed nearly to bursting with skirts and sleeves and shoes—and announced, “There should be something in here that’s to your taste.” 

Manon frowned. “What’s wrong with what I already have?” 

Of course, Manon hadn’t planned on wearing her borrowed Valkyrie leathers on her first excursion into Velaris, but she’d figured something from the cache of simple linens the priestesses had given her by way of casual attire would have sufficed. 

“Be serious.” Nesta put her hands on her hips. “It’s time you stopped dressing like a priestess. This meeting is about you, so you should attend it looking like…well, you.”  

The open doors of the armoire in front of Manon suddenly looked like the yawning jaws of a beast. Different facets of Nesta’s personality stared back at her: fighting leathers and ball gowns, long skirts and nightdresses. Had Manon ever in her life owned so many different clothes? Witches traveled light, slept naked, and had little use for finery. On the rare occasions she’d needed to appear before the nobles of Adarlan or Terrasen, she’d let Yrene or Aelin dress her, caring little about their explanations for what outfit best suited which events. 

All her life, she’d been told what to wear and done so willingly. Beyond determining which of them could keep her alive in battle or warm when flying at great heights, why would she have wasted her time developing opinions about fabrics? 

She was spared the embarrassment of having to explain she wasn’t sure what looking like herself meant when she turned back to Nesta and found the other woman waiting there with a luxuriously fluffy towel on offer. 

“Please don’t take this the wrong way, but…you should probably use my bathing chamber, first.” Nesta tossed it to Manon, smiling devilishly as she added, “You smell like wet bat.” 

𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪

Sufficiently scrubbed clean and wearing one of Nesta’s dressing gowns, Manon emerged from Nesta’s bathing chamber to find an absolute wreckage of fabric. The eye of the hurricane appeared to be a massive pile of clothing, nearly as tall as she was and five times as wide. Despite the chaos, the armoire Nesta had shown her prior looked almost entirely untouched, as if additional clothing had been conjured from thin air. 

As it turned out, this was exactly the case. 

“The House doesn’t know what you like yet,” Nesta hastened to explain. “It likes to provide options, but it tends to overcompensate.”

The whole concept of referring to a house as a thing that could know was still alien to Manon, but she couldn’t deny the convenience of it. 

Manon hadn’t spent much time alone with Nesta in weeks, owing to the sustained popularity of Valkyrie training sessions and her ongoing work with Azriel. Still, the dynamic between them was easy. Nesta had grown up with sisters and Manon had grown up surrounded by twelve other women; the concept of dressing together was an activity they both understood innately—even if Manon’s childhood memories of the process involved quite a bit more artillery. 

The two of them set to work searching through the House’s offerings for something that might suit Manon. 

“See, this looks like something I’d wear,” Nesta said, throwing a smart, button-down dress with a high neckline into one of several sub-piles she was creating, “and this—” she pulled out a scrap of red silk barely large enough to fashion a handkerchief with, “—screams Mor, and just about no one else.” 

“Wouldn’t cover a single tit,” Manon agreed, preening internally when Nesta rewarded her with a genuine laugh. 

“Who do we have to thank for this?” Manon peeled the next dress off of the pile, a frilly little floral thing with an excessive amount of pockets. 

“Definitely Elain,” Nesta said, nodding toward a growing pile of pastels and lace in her periphery. 

Manon deposited the dress in its proper place. “Forgive my ignorance, but…” Manon trailed off, unable to make the question polite no matter how she tried to frame it. 

“Why did Elain want to attend tonight’s meeting when you’ve barely spoken to her?” Nesta supplied cheerfully. 

Elain, Manon remembered, had been the first one to wash her hair when she was catatonic in her library room; had been the one to remark to Feyre that Manon would continue to process all that had happened to her in silent agony until she “decided to heal.” Then, once Manon had awoken and apparently aligned her interests more with Nesta’s, Elain had quietly slunk into the background of Manon’s life. It…unnerved her, if she was being honest. 

“Yes—that.” 

Nesta took a moment to consider. “Did you have anyone in your world who was…perceptive? Maybe not in terms of magical power, necessarily, but who was able to see things in a manner most people couldn’t?”

“Some of the younger Bluebloods claim to be oracles, which I’ve never fully believed, but elders in the Witch Clan all eventually develop clairvoyance. It is what marks them as an Ancient.” 

Nesta stared at her for a moment, as if expecting her to translate some or all of those words. Manon did not bother. 

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Nesta sighed. “Anyway, Elain is similarly gifted. Her insights are always helpful, even if she doesn’t intimately know all the parties involved.”

What was unspoken was still communicated to Manon loud and clear: We still don’t trust you. Someone magically perceptive must be a part of whatever negotiations were to be had, lest Manon prove herself a threat to her benevolent captors.

Nesta must have sensed her offense, since she went on to say, somewhat begrudgingly, “Rhys insisted we have a neutral third party.” She sighed. Paused. Then added with a sheepish grin, “Besides, we’re not the best at keeping up with our standing monthly sister outing. Tonight will count for this month’s.” 

Despite Nesta’s attempt to recover the quickly souring mood, Manon felt it again: the shadow of their High Lord, cast over a meeting he ostensibly didn’t have a thing to do with.  

How differently these people operated their Court, compared to the other Fae Manon had known. Aelin, Manon speculated distantly, would have incinerated her mate on the spot for presuming himself so central to her plans. 

The thought left her with a heavy pang. She’d been ruthlessly subjected to all manner of talk about humans just yesterday, and now here she was, plagued once more with silly thoughts about loved ones she’d never see again. Swallowing roughly against the familiar taste of grief, she returned her attention to sorting. 

About halfway through the House’s abundant offering, there were enough garments in the potentially Manon pile to warrant a more careful assessment. 

“This is a good first pass,” Nesta agreed. “It’s all pretty fashionable, at least by Night Court standards, without having too much…” she gestured around the room at the piles of discarded fabric that represented her sisters and friends, “unnecessary personality. Go ahead, see if you like anything.” 

A flush of color splashed across Nesta’s cheeks and she quickly turned back to sorting the larger pile when Manon let her dressing gown fall to the floor. 

Sisters, Manon reminded herself as she donned the carefully selected underthings. Nesta had grown up with human sisters, not witches—the poor woman likely had the same strange hangups about nudity as the humans Manon had known. 

Then again, Manon had blushed like an idiotic schoolgirl when confronted with less than a second’s-worth of exposure to Azriel’s stomach yesterday. Perhaps some aspects of humanity were contagious.

Banishing the memory of that from her mind—and determined to make her host more comfortable—Manon attempted what she hoped was some idle chatter. 

She tugged on a pair of pants and gestured to a stray plume of shadows that had begun poking around the pile of clothing. “Does it ever get annoying, having these buggers all over the house?” 

Nesta followed her gaze and jumped slightly—she hadn’t realized they were there. “No,” she said slowly. “Mostly because they don’t come in here often, unless Az is with them.” 

Manon frowned. “Huh.” 

As if they’d heard Nesta, the inky tendrils snuck closer still to Manon, coiling themselves around her feet. 

Nesta tracked their path closely. “They’ve really taken a liking to you,” she went on in that same, slow voice, as if coming to some sort of realization. 

“Yes, well, I wish they wouldn’t,” Manon said flatly. “They’re always trying to trip me.” 

“No, definitely not,” Nesta said, treating Manon’s attempt to laugh the whole thing off with unnecessary sincerity. “I’ve seen Az’s shadows get mean, and this is…far from that.” 

Manon didn’t have to think too hard about what the shadows ‘getting mean’ might entail—she’d experienced it herself, that first day on the Prison Isle: inky black tendrils shoving their way down her throat, stealing the breath from her lungs. 

Five centuries old, and she’d never encountered any sort of magic quite like them. The comparisons between the shadows and Dorian’s phantom touches were the easiest to make, and indeed she’d often used the word shadows to describe the gentle currents of his power that seemed to enjoy teasing and buffeting her about. But this facet of Dorian’s magic had never been paired with any identifiable visual effect, and had always remained fully under his control. 

They’re part of me, Azriel had told her apologetically, but also their own entities. 

In truth, his shadows seemed to behave more like loyal pack animals: sniffing around curiously when left unattended, but more than willing to defend their master. 

And defend him they had, when they’d rendered her unconscious on the Prison Isle. Manon did not remember much of that first day, but she remembered the feeling of the shadows’ onslaught, and it was unlike like anything she’d experienced before. It was not the dank, misty sort of dark helplessness the Valg dealt in; nor the rough charcoal of Kaltain’s shadowfire that licked and wended and burned; nor the precise, razor-sharp jettisons of Lorcan’s death-magic, gifted to him by Hellas himself. 

Azriel’s shadows were whisper-soft but solid like velvet, silent but thrumming and ever-moving, as if in a perpetual dance to the beat of their own internal rhythm. They were a cool, welcome sort of quiet; a patch of shade on a warm day, a dark corner in a familiar place, a vague memory of something ancient and wise. They felt like an unburdening rather than a loss. They’d felt this way, even when they’d suffocated her. Even when they’d gotten mean. 

She kept these details to herself. 

“They’re not mean,” Manon clarified, pulling on the top the House had laid out. As if in response, one of the plumes on the chair beside her curled tighter, a cat settling in for a nap. “I meant more that they’re…meddlesome.” 

Nightmarishly, Nesta made meaningful eye contact with Manon while she added, “I think they just want to be near you.” 

Well, so much for her attempt at small talk. 

“I think you should be done trying out outfits, by the way, because you look incredible,” Nesta interrupted with a sudden grin. She grabbed Manon’s shoulders and pushed her toward the bureau. “See for yourself!”

Manon hadn’t looked at herself in a mirror in ages. 

There was a small one above the washbasin in her library chambers, but she hadn’t done a great job keeping it clean. She only really used it on accident, anyway, while splashing water on her face or cleaning her teeth. The mirror she’d arrived with—her witch mirror, that she hadn’t seen since that day Nesta used it to get her talking for the first time—wasn’t designed with vanity in mind, and didn’t have a reflective surface. 

Dimly, she realized she hadn’t thought about the thing in quite some time—the last being when an image of it popped into her head after Nesta used the word sister during their first conversation about Bryaxis. 

The thought occurred to her with a vague sense of guilt. She really should tell someone about the theory that had sprung to mind along with the memory, in case it was important. Not important to her, necessarily, but to whatever Court business had them concerned enough to lock her up in the first place. Maybe she could tell Azriel, now that they seemed to be on their way out of whatever patch of awkwardness they’d been stuck in. Almost certainly, she could tell Nesta, who’d been so kind to her and was taking the matter of her future so seriously. 

No—she should tell Nesta. It was the right thing to do.

But…but. What if it affected the outcome of the meeting they were about to have? What if it changed the way Nesta thought of her? While a rough patch with Azriel had irritated Manon, the fracturing of her relationship with Nesta might actually destroy the small flame of optimism that had begun to burn anew in the hearth deep within her. 

She couldn’t chance it. At least, not tonight. She banished her traitorous thoughts from her mind and focused instead on the mirror in front of her. 

A mirror like the one in Nesta’s dressing room—floor-length, pristine—she hadn’t encountered for a long while. The last would have been in Erilea, probably, although she wouldn’t have considered it a last at the time, and likely wouldn’t have studied herself in it, anyway. 

Today, she looked. 

A steady supply of blood, regular exercise, and long days in the sun had done wonders, and she looked like the person she remembered herself to be: rosy-cheeked, taut-muscled, with a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. But there was something different about her, too—something harder to define that gave more depth to her face. The metallic gold of her eyes looked almost…burnished, as if a great weight had been lifted from them. She didn’t pause too long to think about what that might be, instead returning to the rest of herself, which was far easier to admire. 

The outfit the House had presented to her consisted of two parts, both made of a lush, raven-black fabric that captured streaks of violet in the afternoon sun: a pair of the wide-legged trousers that the citizens of the Night Court seemed to favor, and a top that had taken her a while longer to figure out how to put on. A band of the same silk clung to her breasts, but the neckline was made of a different fabric, a translucent black gossamer that tumbled down her arms in billowing sleeves that floated behind her when she spun. It rather left the impression that she had a wings of her own. 

She spun once in front of the glass, then twice, because the view had been so nice the first time.

The low rise of the pants and the sharp cut of her top exposed a good deal of her toned midriff. The trousers should have been more modest, but despite their baggier fit, they seemed to chastely suggest that the rest of her might look that good, too. 

She caught herself smiling shyly at her reflection. It had been quite some time, she realized, since she’d admired herself like this—since she’d cared what she’d looked like at all. 

If Nesta noticed this unbecoming display of vanity, she was wise not to mention it as she stepped to Manon’s side. 

“Here,” she said softly, peering over Manon’s shoulder to seek her permission in the mirror’s reflection before setting to work on the ties at Manon’s back. 

Though the intricate pattern of laces clearly demanded a certain amount of skill, Nesta worked deftly. Occasionally, her fingers brushed against Manon’s exposed skin. Nesta flicked her gray eyes back to the mirror each time in silent, unnecessary apology. 

She made quick work of the task, though, and soon she stepped back to admire her work with a sigh of relief. 

Originally tempted to disparage the lacing as a needlessly convoluted embellishment, Manon had to admit the top being properly fitted had made a difference: her shoulders appeared more squared, her breasts sat higher. 

“Feyre won’t be here for for another few minutes, if you want to try anything else on before we go,” Nesta offered gently. 

“No,” Manon said, taking one last look at herself in the mirror, “this will do just fine.” 

𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪

Azriel arrived to the house along the Sidra River shortly before sunset. 

He hadn’t been here often in recent months. In part, this was because he thought his brother’s little family deserved space and time away from Court-related matters. But if he were being honest with himself, he had also been avoiding the estate due to its reminding him of his…more regrettable recent behaviors. 

Cerridwen saw him inside. She had donned her mostly-corporeal form, yet still only portions of her face flickered into focus at any given time. Even in her most solid state, she still seemed to float rather than walk, in that liquid, wraith-like way of hers that made her near-imperceptible to his Illyrian senses, but which caused his shadows to vibrate with familiarity and delight. 

“Azriel!” 

She embraced him fondly, despite the fact that he hadn’t spoken with her or her twin in...it must have been weeks by now. Mother above, had he really neglected two of his oldest friends for that long? 

Without having sent Nuala or Cerridwen on any missions recently, he supposed he’d lost the pretense of progress update meetings as reasons to check in with them. Not that it made him a particularly good friend, needing to rely on work to justify spending time with them.  

The wraiths’ stepping back from spywork after returning from Under the Mountain had been a shared decision. Azriel had been hesitant to send them back into any sort of work that might remind them of their time spent under Amarantha’s thumb, and they’d expressed their gratitude when he’d told them so, claiming they enjoyed the slower-paced work that life in Velaris had to offer. 

As it had with Rhys, Azriel’s knowledge that the twins had suffered during Amarantha’s reign colored the way he’d interacted with them when they’d first reunited, but this discomfort had melted away with time and was not to blame for Azriel’s recent absence from their lives. 

No, what had actually kept Azriel from seeing his friends as much as he ought to was their blossoming friendship with Elain. 

Elain, who had…Well. Been on the receiving end of some of the regrettable recent behaviors that colored his memories of Rhys’s estates. 

Though he knew Elain and Feyre to be out for the evening—though he knew the seasons had changed, and his feelings along with them—he couldn’t help be transported back to the night of that Solstice whenever he stepped inside Rhysand’s study, where Cerridwen was leading him now. 

The room was largely unchanged since the night he’d sat in this same upholstered chair across from his brother and been reproved within an inch of his life: a painting of Feyre’s—one of the first she’d created, after arriving to the Night Court—hung on proud display on an interior wall; a fashionable bronze lamp shone soft faelight from a corner; a high-pile, hand-woven rug lapped at the wooden feet of the furniture spread atop it. 

Though—there was one major difference in the scenery, balanced halfheartedly on an otherwise empty shelf affixed to the wall behind the desk: a sword, leather-wrapped pommel faded and discolored with centuries of use, but whose blade appeared as sharp and severe as the day it was forged. 

It seemed almost absurd, Azriel thought, to be sitting here brimming with anticipation to share the deal he’d spent so long coming up with, only to have his audience absent and his prize hanging in front of him mockingly, like a trophy of some petty conquest. 

The thought would piss him off, if he let it. Destabilize him, before Rhys had even arrived to the meeting. Azriel refused to let himself arrive to this hard-won conversation wound-up and fractious, in exactly the mood Rhys always criticized him for falling into. 

No—he wouldn’t let himself reach that point, wouldn’t let himself prove Rhys right. He ripped his gaze away from Manon’s sword and returned his attention to Nuala, who had joined him and her sister. 

They spent a good while catching up. The twins were pleased to learn that six Illyrians had been successfully evacuated to the House of Wind, and Azriel chuckled at the news that his intrepid nephew had been quickly discovering new ways to evade bedtime—it had taken Nuala over an hour to put him to sleep that night. 

It filled him with a strange sort of longing, learning these little details about his family second-hand. The twins spoke so readily and effusively about their days in the riverside manor, about baking with Elain and watching Nyx grow. While Azriel had feared they might view their new, more domestic roles as boring, they seemed perfectly at peace. 

“You’re still liking it here, though?” he asked. Somewhat quieter he added, “They’re treating you well?”

Though he knew each woman well enough to be sure they wouldn’t deign to accept any role they didn’t feel befit their tastes or station, he worried for the twins. It seemed a fantastic waste of their talents, having them relegated to glorified housekeepers and babysitters. 

“Oh, yes,” Cerridwen said primly. 

Neither twin had ever been particularly expressive—having been trained, after all, to blend into their surroundings—but he’d known them long enough by now to recognize that Cerridwen’s small, satisfied smile and Nuala’s calm demeanor were the equivalent of overjoyed. 

Knowing quite well they’d politely decline he said, “Well, if you ever miss the excitement, there’s still no one I trust more with a mission.”

“That’s very flattering,” was all Nuala said. 

Cerridwen patted his hand somewhat sympathetically. 

“Though…” Nuala ventured, “sometimes I do miss having an ear in all of the city’s sitting parlors. I always found the talk very entertaining.” 

Azriel chuckled. “You always did have an exceptional ear for gossip. And an exceptionally sly way of asking for it.” 

Nuala leaned toward him in her seat, abandoning all airs of ladylike curiosity. “What trouble stirs on the Prison Isle? There is talk of its frequent rumblings.” 

Though they were practically family, Azriel was sure the twins did not yet know of his inheritance; they must have gathered this information from another source. 

“What talk?”  

Nuala shrugged, faelight warping against the ebony jut of her collarbone as she did so. “The exact source of gossip is difficult to pinpoint, as always. But my guess is that it comes from the Tartera.” 

Cerridwen nodded her agreement. “They have always been the most attuned to the whims of the mountains.”

A pit had begun to form in Azriel’s stomach. “Have their homes been affected? Their businesses?” 

The Tartera-run mines, Azriel knew, were but small branches of the complex root system that cobwebbed beneath the entire Night Court, connecting all three of their holy peaks. An energetic disturbance in any one of the mountains might well have repercussions in the other two and the networks of caverns that connected them. 

“I’m afraid I haven’t paid Neve a visit in some time,” Nuala answered. “She would know better than any.” 

“We can ask about town, if you’d like,” Cerridwen said gently. 

Azriel nodded hollowly, barely hearing what either wraith had said. 

How could he not have stopped to consider the miners, both their livelihoods and their homes? How had he not expected the rot of the Prison Isle to spread into the rest of the Court? Rhys’s wards, he knew, could keep the prisoners themselves at bay, but could not be expected to hold the ominous thrum of energy reverberating outward from the wretched mountain when no one knew exactly what it was that it threatened to unleash into the world. 

It made him a selfish fool indeed, letting himself believe the inevitable implosion of the Isle would not matter to anyone outside of his family. How could he have been so blind? 

Are you out of your mind? Rhys had asked him in this study two Solstices ago. 

It was still a fair question now, as it had been then. 

I don’t know what you’re talking about, Azriel had lied, knowing full well how angry he was then, bending in the gales of his own frustrations and ready to snap at just the scent of Elain and Lucien’s mating bond—and for what? The rebellious, juvenile thrill of sneaking around under his family’s nose? Even his shadows had suddenly found somewhere else to be when he’d fastened that necklace for her, as if embarrassed to be associated with him.

Rhys had gone on to admonish him for his indiscretion like a naughty schoolboy, even going so far as to bring up Mor, which was an ugly thing to do. In response Azriel had spouted all sorts of inane shit, even suggesting the Cauldron ought to have bound Elain to himself instead Lucien. But he hadn’t let that be the end of it, had he? No, in an act of catastrophic stupidity for which Nesta still laughed at him to this day, he’d left the damned necklace for Gwyn instead. He’d as good as doused his entire love life in kerosene and lit a match, all in one evening.

What he had not said to Rhys—what he hadn’t even had the words to explain to himself, at the time—was that he had begun to suspect his fixations on Mor and Elain and Gwyn had been symptoms of something deeper.

Something that had taken root within him at about the same time Eris Vanserra had. 

Rhys had berated Azriel for the potential ramifications on the alliance with Autumn over Azriel’s breathing a few heavy sighs and letting a hand brush Elain’s neck. If Rhys had known the ramifications on the alliance with Autumn Azriel had experienced while bent over the edge of one of the Moonstone Palace’s bathing pools mere hours prior to that lecture, Rhys might well have misted his Shadowsinger on the spot. 

And he’d have deserved it. It was precisely because he knew he’d have deserved it that Azriel had gone into that Solstice uniquely tormented, desperate to have whatever wretched part of him Eris had awoken be exorcised from him like the unwelcome demon it was. 

Let me want something normal, he’d prayed, scarred fingers fumbling as he’d fixed the clasp around Elain’s neck. Let me want what my brothers have, someone whose appeal they’ll understand. Let me find someone. 

Let me have something that’s mine.

The universe, it seemed, had a sick sense of humor. Instead of a love like the ones his brothers had found, the Cauldron had given Azriel a slab of haunted rock, shrouded in perpetual mist and crawling with monsters. 

Perhaps he deserved it. He had, after all, nearly ravished Elain one story below her mate’s nose two years ago, as part of some sick attempt to prove himself capable of recovering from the ruination he’d brought upon himself by taking up with Eris. 

Maybe his recklessness with Elain—with Lucien’s mate—had been an attempt to punish himself for that, to plant a lightning rod in the field of his sins and beg someone to strike him down. All the better, were his executioner the brother of the male he’d repeatedly sought out since, even though their encounters always ended the same way. Even if he’d been told—repeatedly, and in no uncertain terms—that he must not mistake the hazy boundary between scorn and affection that they met each other within as love. 

But Rhys had intervened, and Azriel had been spared the beheading he deserved. He’d been punished duly nonetheless with ownership of the Prison Isle and eternal embarrassment in Elain’s presence, though neither of those were Rhys’s doing. 

The trickle of a chilling realization began to seep its way into Azriel’s mind. Had his woeful inaction with regards to the Prison Isle been another iteration of this, of waiting for Rhys to act on his behalf? Was that exactly what he was doing now, sitting in this chair, staring down Manon’s sword—waiting for Rhys to intervene? 

Speaking of intervention, speaking of waiting, speaking of Rhys—where was he, anyway? 

Azriel turned his attention back to the twins and found Nuala’s dark brow furrowed in slight concern. What little was visible of her gaze held the faraway look of someone being spoken to mind-to-mind. 

“Azriel,” she said gently, when her attention returned to the room.

“He’s not coming, is he?” Azriel had guessed as much. 

“I’m afraid not,” Nuala said. 

“I assume he offered some sort of explanation?” 

“He did,” Nuala agreed—and remained silent. 

Azriel huffed a short laugh. They’d worked together long enough for her to know that Azriel wasn’t particularly interested in hearing whatever excuse Nuala had been told. 

Usually, though, this sort of situation was accompanied by—

Ah, yes, there it was: the familiar grate of night-tipped claws against his mental shields. 

Az, his brother called into the void between the two of them. 

A void they shared, on occasion, but a void that didn’t belong to both of them, because only Rhys decided when and how it could be used. Nothing in this house—or in this city, or in this Court, or even in his own fucking mind—belonged fully to Azriel. Rhys as his brother laid claim to Azriel’s feelings, and Rhysand as his High Lord directed Azriel’s actions. As if the man needed anything more to own, with his loyal Court and his loving mate and his multiple houses and his beautiful son and his rules, all of his fucking rules.  

Azriel ignored his brother and rose from his chair. Standing, his eyesight was perfectly in line with Manon’s sword which hung tantalizingly behind the desk, firmly within his reach. All he would have to do would be to reach out and take it, and that would be that. Azriel had been woven into the spellwork of the house, a trusted party in its complex security systems; no alarms would go off, no traps would spring around him. 

Reach out; take. 

As a child, he’d reached. On a good day, there was nothing for him to take. On a bad one, his hands had been burnt. He’d stopped reaching, soon after that. 

Reach out; take. 

He’d garnered enough courage to reach out for Eris centuries later, but Eris had made it clear that he had nothing to give. So Azriel had let himself be taken, instead. 

Reach out; take. 

In this very house, he’d reached out again, desperately, trembling hands brushing the back of Elain’s neck. She was not his to take, though, and Rhys had as good as rapped the back of his greedy hands for his believing that she might be.

Reach out; take. 

Rhys urged him to claim the Prison Isle, but Azriel did not know how to reach for something so impossibly important, let alone take it.  

Reach out; take.

Rhys’s claws scrabbled for purchase against the iron will of Azriel’s mind. Though he could be reached for, Azriel would not be taken—not now. 

Reach out; take. 

Azriel stared at Manon’s sword on the wall. The reaching was as easy as defying his High Lord, the taking as easy as undermining his brother. 

He found he was unable to do either. His hands were still too scarred to let himself reach, and the childish fear he’d tried desperately to outgrow still too present to let himself take. 

“I should go,” he told the twins, as steadily as he could manage. They nodded, almost apologetically.

At once proud of and disgusted with himself, Azriel disappeared into a patch of night, enjoying the millisecond of time spent in a space that was his alone. 

𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪

Feyre met Nesta and Manon on the balcony of the House of Wind and winnowed them onto a street corner in the heart of the city. Elain was already there, waiting to meet them. 

“I thought you might like to see the city up close,” the High Lady said almost shyly, as if she were introducing Manon to a treasured childhood friend. 

Indeed, it did seem to be the kind of city that one could grow fond of. 

In her heart, Manon would always be a child of the Witch Kingdom, more at home amid the stark brutality of nature. She loved forests of sharp-needled trees that sprouted taller just to spite their neighbors, fields of wildflowers that grew rampant amid humble grasses, dwellings of stone that blended into cragged mountainsides, wending rivers that carved severe canyons in their wake. She had loved watching her homeland return eagerly to life after it had spent so many centuries laying dormant and wasted.  

But she had also loved Dorian and, in doing so, had learned to love his city. 

Rifthold had been unpredictable, its population growing faster than its ability to host and its skyline growing ever taller as a result. It was perpetually unsure of itself—did it want its technological advancements to define its postwar image, or its art sector? Was it grateful to Dorian, for shattering its centerpiece, or would it forever bear a scar? It did not know. 

Manon had initially been wary of Rifthold’s chaos and contradictions, finding its streets too dirty and its taverns too boisterous, but it had grown on her with time. 

Though—perhaps some of the charm she’d come to find in Rifthold had been Dorian’s, because when he was gone it had gone back to being too dirty, too boisterous. Too empty. 

Velaris seemed to lack some of Rifthold’s rough-and-tumble spirit, but it more than made up for it in its character. It was loud, both in the volume of its inhabitants and the colors of its walls, the sunny yellow stucco of one building unafraid to abut the cobalt blue of its neighbor. 

She could see how people must love this city; she could see how she might grow to be one of them. 

Desperate to drive that melancholic thought out of her head—they hadn’t even started the discussion portion of the evening, for Darkness’ sake—Manon returned her attention to Feyre and Nesta’s guided neighborhood tour. 

Feyre, despite the relatively short walk, had done a decent job of recounting some of the city’s history in reference to landmarks and local art installations. Nesta’s contributions, on the other hand, tended to have a more personal touch. 

“That’s the tavern I used to frequent when I was on my liquor-fueled bender and trying to fuck my way through every male in town,” Nesta said fondly, indicating what appeared to be—even by Rifthold’s egregiously low standards—a real dump of a bar. 

Feyre sighed. “Yes, well, thanks for pointing out that important landmark.” 

“It is important,” Nesta argued. “An important place for Manon to avoid at all costs. Unless, I don’t know, she wants some over-priced, watered-down ale and an extremely disappointing sexual experience.” 

“Nesta,” Feyre warned. 

Elain, who had remained mostly silent, began to blush.

Manon only smiled. “Had enough of those for a lifetime, thanks.” 

This concession seemed to pique Nesta’s interest. “I could also tell you where to find sexual experiences that have the potential to be halfway decent, if you’re interested.” 

“Nesta!” Feyre hissed. 

“This is also important information!” Nesta said defensively. “You started bedding the High Lord immediately upon arriving so you wouldn’t know, but some of us had to scavenge in the Night Court’s streets.” 

Feyre flushed a shade of crimson. “I wouldn’t say immediately—” 

The spat of bickering was interrupted by a sudden interjection from Elain. 

“This,” she said, in that melodic, soft-spoken voice of hers. “This is my favorite part of the city.” 

They’d evidently reached their destination, but Elain wasn’t looking at the gallery door Feyre had just unlocked. She remained several paces behind the rest of the group and was looking out over the Sidra River, where the sun had begun to set despite the ever-rising heat. 

The combination of the humid haze and the oncoming night was, Manon had to admit, breathtaking. Vibrant splashes of orange and red cut across the sky, turning the cerulean blue sheen of summer into a gentle blanket of periwinkle on which several stars had already begun to shine. The reflections of buildings trembled against the darkening water, as if prostrating themselves before the Night Court’s namesake. 

Elain often spoke as though she was somewhere far away, but this time Manon let herself go with her, imagining herself traveling down Prythian’s western shore like nightfall.

As she and the Archeron sisters watched on in appreciative silence, the sunset danced and turned, each swath of cloudless color becoming something new and bold in the face of the oncoming dark.

“It’s beautiful,” Manon said. 

“I’ll never get used to it,” Feyre admitted. 

The four of them turned to head upstairs a moment later, the sisters all seemingly satisfied with the show the sunset had put on and Manon absentmindedly following their lead. 

The twilight followed them indoors, with the gallery’s broad windows offering an unparalleled view of the Sidra’s darkening waters and the lights of the city dancing along its banks. 

Even though she was sure Velaris at night was equally picturesque as Velaris at dusk, Manon found herself wishing the darkness would never come, would somehow let the shifting colors of day continue their futile struggle against the emerging stars. 

But nightfall always came. Manon was sure of it, and she had been sure, for at least three centuries, that she’d been living through it. She’d become a creature of the night, bleak and unchanging, waiting for the Darkness to take her home to her Thirteen…And it had never come. She’d even gone so far as to Yield, surrendering herself to the burst of dark magic that erupted around her like flame, and the night had refused to take her then, too. She’d gone on burning, a new color streaking across a faraway sky.

The sun inside of her had never set. 

It’s beautiful, she’d said of the streaks of pastels in Velaris’s sky. 

Maybe the interminable sunset inside of her—the one she’d tried so hard to banish into premature night—was, too. 

𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪

The High Lady’s art studio was…unremarkable. A vestige of normalcy from her human life, perhaps, if Manon’s memory about the Archeron sisters’ origins in Prythian was to be believed. 

Manon stopped in front of a crude depiction of the Sidra’s riverbed and tried to think of something kind to say about it. 

“Your work is very nice,” Manon said, hoping she sounded genuine. 

Nesta snorted a laugh. 

“A seven-year-old made that one, I think,” Feyre corrected her, not unkindly. “I host a weekly class for local children to come paint here, free of charge.” 

Well, so much for her attempt at flattery. 

“They express themselves any way they see fit, although usually more paint ends up on the floor than on the canvases. I leave their work here to dry, before they come to collect it.” 

“I see.”

Manon continued her forced attempt at admiring the artwork, the old wooden floors creaking pleasantly beneath her as she went. 

Lackluster display of talent aside, Feyre’s studio struck Manon as a strategic location for this meeting: personal enough to be considered a display of good faith, but public enough to communicate that there were still boundaries when it came to the Night Court that Manon ought not to cross. Manon would be permitted entry to the ruling family’s establishments, but not their homes. 

Again, Manon found herself wondering just how much Nesta and Azriel shared with their High Lady and Lord. Feyre had collected Manon and Nesta from the veranda outside the House of Wind, hidden away from the evidence that they’d dressed together; besides the small chance that Feyre recognized the clothes Manon now wore, there was little possibility she knew how she had obtained them, nor whose fingers had tied their bows. 

Nesta and Elain made quiet conversation with one another while Manon continued her perusal of the artwork.  

The most interesting piece of art in the studio was not a painting at all, but a tapestry that hung between two of the arched windows. It certainly appeared to be made of fabric, but the material was like nothing Manon had ever seen before, so completely lacking in color that it seemed to swallow the remaining beams of sunset traveling through the open space whole. The only thing that seemed to give it any sort of depth was a delicate, iridescent band of thread that cut through it to depict a mountain with three stars overlying it. 

Ramiel, Manon remembered from her afternoons in the House of Wind, beneath the trio of stars Arktos, Carynth, and Oristes. The sigil of the Night Court. 

“Void,” Feyre supplied, apparently having noticed Manon lingering before the piece. “The black material is called Void. The weaver who made it, Aranea, lost her husband in the war. She told me she sought to create a fabric bleak enough to represent her grief, and a thread to represent the power that compelled her to go on through it. She called that part Hope.” 

Manon stared at her, unimpressed. “That’s rather on-the-nose, isn’t it?” 

“That’s what I said,” Nesta agreed. 

Had that been…it? Was this piece of art the reason Feyre had selected this place? Had Manon then ruined her chance at bargaining by criticizing—

“Come.” Feyre ushered the four of them into a small sitting area, recessed from the main gallery and with fewer windows to let in the soft summer twilight. 

“Nesta tells me you have been asking about your future in these lands,” Feyre said, settling into one of the upholstered armchairs and beckoning for Manon and her sisters to follow suit.  

Not a question, but an invitation all the same. 

Manon sat; the other Archerons did the same. 

Manon had been a High Queen for far longer than this tenderfoot had, and she understood Feyre’s statement for what it was. Which was to say, not a trap, exactly—Manon did not truly believe the High Lady to be so malicious—but a stumbling block; an opportunity for Manon to perjure herself, to overplay her hand in a way that would disservice her in any future negotiations. 

“I have, High Lady,” she said. Best to start these sorts of negotiations with a show of deference, however undeserved. Then she was silent, watching on with poised neutrality. Urging Feyre back into the snare she’d laid. 

Nesta looked on with faint amusement; Elain stared out the window at the last vestiges of daylight. 

Feyre broke first, as Manon had known she would.

“My sister has told me you have thrived at the House of Wind since your arrival. What’s more, you have become a fine ally to her and Emerie’s cause. When I heard you had been asking about your standing with our Court, I was very much interested to hear your thoughts on the matter.” 

Thrived was a choice word for the past few months of Manon’s life, but the overall sentiment was about what Manon had expected to hear. Feyre’s words were dolled up in the phrasings of courtly manners, but they did little to hide her youthful earnestness. They were too docile, too flattering They left far too much room for Manon to maneuver within. 

If you have plans of leaving this Court, I would hear them, is perhaps what Manon would have said. Sharp and exacting, more accusatory than complimentary; presenting her listening ear as a great favor, yet promising nothing.  

Of course, these were the sorts of nuances one picked up over five centuries’ worth of leadership; Feyre could hardly be blamed for being twenty-two. 

She was therefore succinct in her response: “You are High Lady; I am not. Though I do not know yet whether you consider me captive, civilian, or colleague, I had assumed there was little room for negotiation.” 

Ignoring the praises, ignoring the audience on offer, and instead calling attention to the impossibility of it, that a prisoner should be allowed such power when it came to her sentence. 

A flicker of something almost like hurt passed over Feyre’s face, but she schooled her expression back into a show of indifference soon enough. “You will understand if I say your arrival here was…unprecedented. There are no laws, no edicts that could have foreseen a visitor like yourself.” 

Thousands of years ago, the boundaries between this world and others were ill-defined. It is said this was how the gods of old arrived here. Azriel had been the one to voice them but the words were older than he, belonging to one of the foundational myths he’d shared while they’d worked on the map. 

The last I knew any witch who called herself such was thousands of years ago, before I came to this world, Amren had told her. 

It seemed to Manon that a lost wanderer between worlds was not as a strange an occurrence as Feyre seemed to believe; to have no protocols in place to address the possibility was a foolish oversight. 

Yet here they had returned, to the crux of the issue: Manon was too similar to them to kill, yet too different to trust. They had not prepared for her, had not predicted her, had no plans for her, yet they could not let her go free. 

Granted, Manon did not know yet what she wanted from this world, had not seen enough of it yet to decide, but she knew she could not live like this, two things at once, prisoner and peer. She may as well cut right to the core of that truth.

“I am an outsider and therefore a security threat, yet my motivations for any subterfuge are unclear. I have shown that I am willing to be rehabilitated past the state in which I arrived, and am willing to help other women achieve the same ends. You do not know how to trust me, but I do not know how to prove to you that you can.”

“Yes,” said Feyre, sounding somewhat surprised. “That’s exactly it.” 

“And what if I have no proof of my virtue to offer you beyond my word? On the basis of what faith would you ask that I negotiate with you?” 

Feyre studied Manon for a moment, then nodded to Elain. “There are…ways. Ways to look; ways to gaze into your future here and see what you might do.”

A chill ran down Manon’s spine. “What do you mean?” 

“There is magic here—old magic—which allows those of us with old gifts to see what might come to pass.” With a wave of her hand, Feyre produced a dish onto the table before the four of them.

The arrival of the platter was so sudden, so casual that it took Manon more than a beat to realize what the High Lady had summoned. When realization dawned, it was with the force of a hammer to her skull.  

Manon was on her feet, scrambling away from the reflective dish of small animal bones and rubble. “What do you think you’re doing?” she asked, though she had a sinking suspicion. 

“Scrying,” Nesta said, looking puzzled at Manon’s sudden unease. “Elain has become quite adept in it.”

Manon looked upon the middle sister with new eyes. Elain was watching her with her usual taciturn regard, her face unnaturally blank despite the depths that swum in her dark eyes.

No wonder the woman always seemed so…untethered, so lost. How often had her Court made her scry for them without an ounce of protection? How long had she spent adrift between this plane and the next? How much of her was lost in the ether during each journey?

“Do you recognize this practice?” Feyre asked. 

“This is witchcraft,” Manon snapped. “Of course I recognize it. But it’s all wrong. This is…” she shook her head. “This is dangerous.” She gestured to the carelessly selected array of bones—some from the same animal—and the miserable collection of stones, which looked like they’d been scrounged up from a riverbed rather than harvested from a fresh volcanic flow. 

The most grave insult to her people, however, was the reckless lack of any sort of protective warding. Without it, the arrangement seemed to thrum unhappily with old, imbalanced magic. 

Manon’s blue blood granted her a natural layer of protection against the effect of such things and Feyre and Nesta looked no worse for the wear beyond an appropriate display of concern for their sister. Elain, however, had begun to look uneasy, almost grayish, as the pall of lopsided magic set upon her. 

“Can you fix it?” Feyre asked. 

Manon was already back in the studio. She returned with a paintbrush that had evaded cleaning, still dripping azure paint from its bristles. 

“What are you—,” Feyre began, but Manon had already begun to work, placing brush to wood. 

It had been many years since she’d produced such a thing. Manon’s hand was unsteady at first, but memory rose to claim her easily. Petrah and the other Bluebloods had always been more adept at such things, but the words and gestures were drilled into every witchling regardless of their clan. 

“Maiden hear us, Mother spare us, Crone guide us. Grant us wisdom and safety as we attempt to look through the Goddess’ eye to gaze within sacred heart of Darkness.” Manon finished the incantation with a flourish of paint. Brush discarded, she then traced the same sigil over her heart with her fingers. 

Immediately, the platter of bones seemed to settle. Its energy still wasn’t right—and Manon would slit the throat of anyone who tried to use such a pitiful array of offerings to communicate with her Goddess—but it had been appeased. 

“Much better,” Elain said, some of the cloud hanging over her seeming to lift. 

Nesta blew out a low whistle under her breath. “No wonder I felt like pure shit every time the lot of you made me scry.”

Feyre was studying the painted sigil carefully. “Is it safe to use now?” 

“No,” Manon said emphatically. “The offering is all wrong. Imbalanced. But I’ve bought us the time to…” she gestured vaguely, “put that back wherever you got it.” 

Sufficiently chastised, Feyre banished the offensive platter back to whatever cursed pocked of space had spawned it. 

Immediately, Manon turned to Elain. “You must never let them send you back there again, unless they have collaborated with someone versed in the Old Ways. Do you understand?” 

Elain merely tilted her head to the side, studying her. 

“‘The Old Ways?’” Feyre repeated.

“Are none of your priestesses devoted to the worship of the Three-Faced Goddess?” 

Blank looks. 

Manon sighed. “Who taught you this, then?”

Feyre shrugged. “It’s just…known, I suppose. All of our more seasoned family seemed familiar with the practice, if not as…well-versed in it, as you.” 

“Well, stop it, before you do something truly stupid.” 

Elain broke the silence that followed. “I should like to know more of your people’s practices. Doing so might help me.” 

Feyre and Nesta both blinked at their middle sister, as if surprised to hear her speaking so frankly. The elder reached out to squeeze Elain’s hand in affirmation. 

Manon offered Elain a stiff nod. She wasn’t about to divulge millennia’s worth of secrets, of course, but the poor thing could use a hand in navigating whatever strange affliction made her so susceptible to magic’s whims. 

The High Lady returned her attention to Manon. “You had asked us about the grounds upon which we expected you to negotiate. It seems now we owe you a debt, so let us sppeak freely: what is it that you hope for?”

The way Feyre had phrased the question was so unexpected that Manon felt herself jerked backward through time, and for a moment she was not in an artist’s studio but the windswept aerie of Morath. 

My kingdom was conquered, Elide had insisted. I understand what it is like to wish—to hope. 

It is not hope, what my Thirteen and I are doing, Manon had argued. It is survival.

There had been a brief flash of time where they’d had hope, all Thirteen of them, and then a very long period of solitary survival, and then an attempt to cease even that. 

Manon swallowed the lump that had begun to form in her throat. “What of your consort? Would he not want a say in this negotiation?” 

“We speak as one. He will honor whatever conclusion I arrive at. What would you ask of us?” 

Feyre paired the first two sentences as though she genuinely believed they held equal meaning, but it would serve Manon little to point out the yoke around the High Lady’s neck. 

“Citizenship,” Manon said, at last giving voice to the request that had been sitting on her tongue all night. “Bind my fate to the soil upon which I arrived. Grant me what protections I would be offered had I been born there, and let me pay whatever tithe or service I would owe in return.” 

Manon had expected this to be the easy part of the negotiation. Instead, she did her best to cloak her surprise as she watched Feyre’s composure slip. It was very slight—a quick furrowing of her brows and a darted glance to Nesta—but it had happened, all the same. 

Elain’s face betrayed nothing, but Nesta’s cycled between an array of emotions as the three of them stared at each other for a prolonged period of time, as if having some silent, sisterly conversation. 

After some time, Feyre turned back to Manon. “Very well. It shall be done.” 

Something very odd happened then. 

A burst of power surged forth, tugging at Manon’s feet like quicksand and ripping through the rest of her once it found purchase. With it came a ripple of current like a wisp of smoke, a blinding flash of iridescence not unlike the last sliver of daylight as the sun slipped below the horizon. The phantom wind in its wake made Manon’s hair stand on end and her nose fill with the iron-and-salt tang of old magic and the petrichor of nightfall. 

A flash, and then it was over quick as it began. 

“Was that some sort of party trick to celebrate my indenture?” Manon asked flatly, an attempt to stanch the panic rising within her. 

“No,” Elain answered, her eyes still alight with the ghost of whatever had just ripped through Manon. She did not elaborate. 

Manon looked again at the shoddily constructed remnants of the scrying circle, but it remained empty. Peaceful. No—whatever had happened to her just then was not witchcraft.

“Bargain tattoos are an old piece of Night Court magic,” Nesta offered, sweeping her hair aside to reveal an inked depiction of an ocean wave at her nape. “This is one of mine—perhaps this was an odd manifestation of the same power.”

“You branded me?” Manon asked, aghast. She looked frantically over her exposed skin, then down the front of her shirt—

“No,” Feyre interrupted firmly, “whatever that was, it was not Night Court magic and should not have produced a bargain tattoo.” She turned to her sisters as she added, “It wasn’t my magic at all—my magic did not recognize it. No part of it did.” 

This distinction apparently meant something to Nesta and Elain, who were beginning to look as unsettled as Manon felt. 

As far as she could tell, no part of Manon had been altered, but she couldn’t shake the knowledge that something had happened to her. Not knowing what that was made the suffocating sameness feel all the more ominous.

She had succeeded in winning some semblance of freedom, but it seemed the universe had won something unknowable in return. 

After another long silence, Nesta clapped her hands together once. “Well, I think that’ll do it for me for this evening.”

Feyre nodded wearily and extended a hand to Manon. “Come. I’ll bring you home.”  

𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪

Azriel flew back to the House of Wind in a huff and landed with unnecessary force, his shadows churning around him like waves in a stormy sea. Indeed, the humidity hanging thickly in the night air was intense enough that to move through it almost felt like swimming. 

The hot press of the sun no longer loomed over the veranda, but nightfall had done little to cool down the baked red stone of the mountain or the turmoil in his veins. 

Over and over again, he turned the details of the meeting—or lack thereof—in his mind. He’d carefully considered what he was going to say and was fairly confident he’d put together a well-thought-out proposition for his brother. He’d been ready to take Mor’s words to heart and negotiate with Rhys like an adult. Finally, he’d told himself, he was ready to hear his brother out with grace, and was willing to be patient instead of allowing their conversation to devolve into yet another circular argument. 

But then Rhys had bailed, and Azriel had sunk into the same foul mood that plagued him whenever he felt most vulnerable. A familiar ghost that he’d shouldered since childhood; the most unwelcome of his shadows. 

As if mocking him, a volley of rumbles rolled across the bay courtesy of the Prison Isle.

Even that was now tied up in Azriel’s shroud of shame. With every quake and puff of smoke, Azriel now thought of the poor Tartera. What would become of their mines, should the Isle decide to give up and self-destruct fully in the silence of its heir’s indecisiveness?

Azriel began to walk toward the front door, but stopped short when he was once again subjected to the echo of Rhys’s voice in the antechamber of his mind. 

Az. Talk to me. 

Azriel made sure his internal shields were fully raised. He was done waiting; he did not need Rhys to intervene. 

Let me apologize. We’ll reschedule—I’ll come to you. Tomorrow morning? 

Azriel let down his mental barricade just a sliver. Not far enough for anyone’s prying voice to be able to commune with him fully, but far enough that the owner of said prying voice would feel it when Azriel slammed the wall back into place for dramatic effect. 

An unusual sensation swept through Azriel as the fortress of his mind steeled itself anew. For the faintest of seconds, he swore he could taste iron and salt on his tongue, could feel the spray of the ocean as it slammed ever upward against rocky crags of the Prison Isle. Just a flash—then it was gone. 

Perhaps Rhys had grown frustrated with him and was lobbing odd magics Azriel’s way as an attempt to get him to retaliate. Whatever the case, Azriel felt Rhys’s mental presence slink away.

This was good. It left Azriel more space to breathe. To think.  

No—on second thought, he’d done quite enough thinking recently. And look where it had gotten him.

He needed to take a break from thinking, lest his brain melt out of his ears from overexertion. Perhaps he wasn’t as cerebral as he’d always thought himself to be; perhaps he needed to revert to something more primal.

Was he not, at the end of the day, just another big Illyrian brute? Was that not the truth at the foundation of himself that had never wavered, despite how much he might disparage his people?

Illyria had taken much from Azriel, but it had at least given him the means of expressing pent-up frustrations. 

He turned away from the House and back toward the training pits. He’d go find something to hit. 

 
𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪

Nesta opted to wait behind in Velaris, claiming Cassian was also downtown and would drop by the gallery shortly to pick her up. Thi left Feyre to see Manon and Elain home. 

The High Lady extended hands to both, offering to winnow Elain back to wherever it was that she lived once Manon had been safely deposited back at the House of Wind. 

Manon’s holding cell, as it were; the citizenship she had won herself, however strange, was only the first step of many. There was still much to be negotiated. 

Thankfully, the winnowing process was slightly more tolerable when it wasn’t being done by Mor. Manon even found herself enjoying the last twenty feet of the journey, wherein Feyre slowed their descent to the House of Wind’s stone patio with two steady beats of her wings. 

The grounds were quiet—the priestesses and Illyrians were likely all abed—and the House appeared to be unoccupied. 

 
“Well, I guess we should be—” Feyre began, only to be cut off by her sister. 

“Why is it,” interrupted Elain, “that you’ve never asked about going back to your kingdom? To your home?”

The woman had barely said three sentences all night, and she chose now to ask the most cutting question possible? 

In fairness, it was not the first time Manon had been asked such a thing. 

Don’t you want to go back? To your world? Amren had asked shortly after Manon’s arrival. Thankfully, she’d understood Manon’s refusal to respond as the answer it was. 

When will you go back? Delilah had wondered that morning in Windhaven, though she couldn’t possibly have understood the depth of what she was asking.

To Manon’s surprise, the memory of a third such question sprung to mind, the second time that night she’d thought of Morath:

Is your broken kingdom worth it? Elide had pressed her. 

I do not expect a human to understand what it is like to be an immortal with no homeland, Manon had snapped in response. To be cursed with eternal exile. 

Again, she smothered the flicker of this memory before it could catch. “I didn’t think that was an option.” 

“It’s not. At least, not for now,” said Elain, that infuriating faraway look beginning to glaze over her eyes once more. “But we know a portal can be opened between our two worlds—you managed it, once. And Bryce—”

“Elain,” Feyre said sharply. 

Whoever Bryce was, it seemed their name was not one Manon ought to know. 

Elain didn’t seem to react to the interruption. “I merely wonder why you’ve never asked about the possibility. Another in your situation might be desperate to return home, however impossible the odds and however great the cost.”

Though she claimed she wondered, Elain’s words landed on Manon’s ears with the force of an accusation. 

It is hope for your homeland that guides you, Elide had told her. Hope, that makes you obey.

And what of your future? Manon had retorted, turning the question on Elide instead. 

Elide had answered her in the thoughtful, open-hearted way she approached everything. She’d explained to Manon why she still dared to hope, despite her strange belief that she was not worth saving, and succinctly turned the focus back to Manon once more: I think hope is why you obey—your grandmother, and the Duke. 

The gravity of what Manon had done to escape Erilea, the legacy she’d left behind, the ghosts of all the loved ones who’d been dead for centuries—all of it now bubbled to the surface, burning like acid in her veins. 

“You wouldn’t understand.”

An uncharacteristic surge of fire flashed in Elain’s eyes. “Try me.” 

For so long, going home had been Manon’s goal, and she’d let it make a monster of her. 

I would fight with tooth and claw for my home, Elide had claimed. But there are lines I would not cross. 

Tooth and claw, Manon had crossed all of them. And what good had it done her, in the end? What had she become, when she’d allowed herself to hope? 

Blood pounded in Manon’s ears, but this did little to drown out the cacophonous memory as it washed over her. 

Elain went on, quiet and steady: “You might find I know quite a bit about what it is to long for an old life in a home that will not take you back. About what it is to hope.”

You have been hoping every day of your miserable, hideous life that you’ll get to go home.

Manon snapped.

“I said you wouldn’t understand, Elide!” 

The silence that followed was denser than the humid night air. 

Feyre had tensed immediately at Elain’s side, as if ready to cut Manon down should she continue to berate her sister, but unwilling to make the first move. Had Nesta still been here, Manon was sure she’d be sporting a broken nose. 

Elain, however, just continued to stare at Manon, with that thoughtful, serene look on her face. It was jarring.  

“I’m sorry,” Manon said at last, taking a breath to steady herself. What was she doing? These women had only offered her their goodwill, and now she was snapping at them like a feral beast. “I apologize for being short with you. It’s just that…Well, it’s personal. I find it hard to talk about, and sometimes I… Anyway. I—I should get back to the library.” 

She turned to leave. 

“Who is Elide?” asked Elain.

Manon stopped cold in her tracks, her head whipping back to where the sisters stood at the edge of the courtyard. 

For all this talk of Elain’s gift of perception—however strong it might be—there was no way she could know. There was no chance she had sifted through Manon’s thoughts and found Elide’s name—

“You called me Elide,” Elain prompted. “Who is she?” 

“Was,” corrected Manon. “She was my friend.”

Not-Elide tilted her head to the side. Dark-eyed, hair too golden; full chest, not bound; pointed ears, steady on her feet. Not Elide at all.

“I’m very sorry.” 

Something cracked inside Manon’s chest. She felt the blistering core of her spit and splutter, threatening to burn her alive. “It’s fine,” Manon managed, turning again to leave.  

“Was she a witch, like you?” 

Elain continued to stare at Manon with her giant, soul-sucking eyes. Why on earth did she choose now, of all times, to be the talkative sister? 

“No—well. Partly. It’s not important.” 

“She sounds important. Important to you.” 

The glass casing Manon had insulated herself within since arriving here splintered, a single break sending cracks cobwebbing through the whole of it. 

“Thank you, again. For tonight,” she managed to bite out, ignoring Elain’s prompting. 

She walked as fast as she could across the veranda, trying desperately to soothe the volcanic flow that churned inside of her. 

But it raged and thrashed beneath her skin, even as she heard the pop that indicated the Archerons had left her alone once more. She wouldn’t be able to sleep like this; she’d end up pacing around her room like a caged beast. She felt wound up tight, ready to burst. What was inside of her was hot and raw, like unprocessed molten ore begging to be given shape. 

Manon stopped short of the library door and took a deep breath. Spun on her heel; rerouted. Redirected. 

Do you believe monsters are born, or made?

She would not let her emotions get the best of her; she’d dispose of them in the way she’d been trained to since birth. 

Tooth. Claw. 

She’d go find something to hit. 

Chapter Text

The balm of nightfall did little to soothe the calcined patio of the House of Wind, which continued to steam in protest of the sun’s having lain siege to it all day. Despite the more benevolent oversight of the moon, angry waves of heat rose from the stone under Manon’s silk-slippered feet, freely gusting under the hem of her loose trousers to lap at her shins. Though clouds had begun to gather in the twilit sky, even those seemed more evidence of the sun’s next assault rather than concerted efforts against it, mere barracks where the forces of humidity might regroup to set out again come sunrise. 

It was through this militant, moonlit haze that Manon now strode, determined to unleash some of the destructive energy that roiled in her mind. If she could merely turn it out into the world, the force of it might be channeled. The essence of it might be made anew, into something she understood; let her angst become a scuff in the dirt or the scrape of steel on stone, so that it might not plague her so. 

Preoccupied as she was, she did not notice the other figure in the ring until the brief moment where the silhouette of a curved talon slipped into focus against the night sky. 

“Azriel.” 

She didn’t leave any room for question in her tone—she knew Cassian was with Nesta and figured none of the Illyrian women would be skulking around the training pits at such an hour—but she was relieved all the same when the pair of wings stilled in recognition. 

It was too late to turn back to the Library without looking foolish. She’d wanted to be alone when she’d come here, but she’d apparently become so nearsighted in her brooding that she’d lost her Goddess-given ability to see in the dark.

This place was making her soft. 

The alternative explanation—slightly kinder on herself—was that Azriel had similarly intended not to be found. 

Indeed, at the sound of her voice, the darkness that hung around him dispersed as if called away and the shape of him finally came into focus. 

“Manon,” he responded. “You look…” He spent several seconds searching for a word, and eventually came up with only: “nice.” 

She chose to ignore what was either an uncharacteristically cruel jab or an offensively uninspired attempt at flattery. “What are you doing here so late?”

There was a sword in his hands and sweat on his brow, but he mentioned neither. “I could ask you the same.” 

Manon glared at him. He should consider himself lucky, she thought, that she’d acknowledged him at all when she was in such a mood. 

Azriel, wisely, took one look at her face and immediately answered the question he’d been asked. “Can’t sleep.” He sheathed the blade he’d been using—one of the practice swords, she noted. No doubt his personal weapons were close by, but he’d chosen to use one of the needlessly bulky, eternally dull training blades instead. “How was your meeting with the Archerons?” he asked. 

“Fine,” she said tersely. She nodded to the sword he’d just put away. “Pick that back up.” 

He didn’t, eyeing her suspiciously instead. “Why?” 

“I came to the training pits to hit something, and you’re as good a target as any. Pick your sword back up.” 

He didn’t. “You’re unarmed.”

It wouldn’t have mattered; she’d felled plenty an opponent with tooth and claw alone. Still, she stalked over to the cupboard he’d left open and brandished a training blade, identical to the one still slung at his side. “There. Happy?”

“Don’t want to ruin your nice clothes,” he said uselessly, his eyes tracking the scabbard she sent skidding along the ground behind her. 

Manon scoffed at his repeated use of the word nice. For a male she knew to be quite well-read, he was proving to possess an atrociously limited vocabulary. “Spoken like someone who thinks he’ll be able to hit me in the first place. Arm yourself.” 

He was staring at her in the odd way he sometimes did, like he had something to say to her but was wise enough not to open his mouth. At last, he drew his sword. 

She charged him without another word, feigning a swipe at his abdomen and pivoting to hit his shins at the last moment instead. 

He recorrected a beat too late, and her dull blade snagged the fabric of his trousers as he jumped out of her path. 

“Are you actually trying to cut me?” he sulked, blocking her next attack with a sloppy excuse for a back-handed parry. 

She threw her weight into the nexus where their blades crossed. The resulting refrain of metal against metal was a relaxing, familiar tune; a sound as dissonant and ancient as the wind. Neither wind nor blade had ever failed her. 

When she felt Azriel’s elbow lock with the effort needed to maintain their stalemate, she bore down on the vulnerable joint with her free forearm and disarmed him. 

The blade fell to the ground with an unsatisfying thud. Azriel made no move to pick it up, watching her closely instead. 

Since she’d last seen him hours prior, Azriel had changed into cloth trousers and a plain tunic. Both were far removed from the stiff leathers he’d worn in the first several weeks training the Valkyries, but even the sleeveless top he’d begrudgingly begun to wear on days as hot as this one was clearly Illyrian-made, the type of garment one might be handed for their rare days off once conscripted. But tonight, when he’d clearly thought he’d be alone in the dark, he appeared merely…himself. More simply attired, at last he had arrived in the Valkyrie training pits as neither the instructor nor the oppressor he believed himself to be. 

Perhaps his change of clothing had been a choice more deliberate than he realized, borne of an unconscious urge to exercise his will against the press of nightfall. For it seemed that darkness seemed to exist in perpetual conversation with him, giving and taking in equal parts. The shadows he controlled—the tangible, pesky ones that liked to nip at her feet—were less conspicuous in the night, but the others that plagued him stood out in starker relief. In the dim sheen of moonlight, the shadows that limned the sockets beneath his eyes and lurked in the dip of his collarbones took on an almost nightmarish aspect. 

He looked more tired than she’d ever seen him, the gloom of his exhaustion clinging to him like a physical weight. Without the sun was to grant his shadows their strength, he was unable to hide within their darkness as he usually did. 

It was natural, then, to wonder how many similarly sleepless nights he’d had, how many times he’d found himself out here losing track of where his shadows ended and the pitch of night began. 

Can’t sleep.

Despite the way the moonlight leeched her sight of color and depth, Manon was afforded the clearest vision of Azriel yet: merely another child of a war-clan whose restless mind guided him back to the fighting pits when there was nowhere else for him to go. 

With a sword in each hand, she turned to face him again. “I told you to arm yourself.” 

“Yes, well, I did, for all of about two seconds,” he sulked.

“Take it back.” 

He darted to her left, then attempted to duck under her arm, then feigned right. She rebuffed him at every turn and landed a few good hits with the flat of the blades, for good measure. He was making it too easy to do so, his movements dishonorably heavy and his flanks carelessly unguarded. 

“Stop that,” Manon glowered. 

“Stop what?” he huffed, darting out of her sword’s reach—but only just. 

“Going easy on me. Being gentle with me. Feeling sorry for me.” 

To prove her point, she turned, presenting her back to him. It should have been easy to disarm her from such a position, but he made no attempt to do so beyond a single, lazy step in her direction. 

“I am not—” 

Manon shut him up with an elbow to his stomach and spun to face him again. “You’re sparring with me, but you’re not fighting.”

He shuffled back a step without readying himself to make any sort of counterattack. “I don’t want to fight you.” 

“Coward,” she said flatly, both of their blades still firmly in her hands. “You’ve ceaselessly failed to return my sword to me, and still you refuse to fight. You’re a coward.” 

Which wasn’t entirely fair of her to say, but she wanted him to fight, wanted him to feel even just a bite of the anger that was gnawing its way through her. 

He stiffened, an unexpected sharpness undercutting his next words. “Why not just ask Rhys for your sword?” he spat. “Rid yourself of the cowardly middleman altogether?” 

Oh, he was riled. Pissed off about something he deemed either too personal or too unimportant to share but wearing his ire like a suit of armor, polished and perfected with centuries of careful attention. Could he not see how it shone like a silvery beacon when cast with just a sliver of moonlight? Or did he think of himself too wholly as a creature of darkness to recognize the punctures in his cloak of shadow where starlight fell through? 

Well, if he was riled, all the better for it. She wanted to fight, and she’d start by treating him as she would any opponent: striking at multiple areas, seeing which was weakest, prodding at any open wound she could find. If that made her cruel, so be it. She’d chip away at every chink in his armor until he wanted to fight, too. 

“And tell me, Shadowsinger, would you prefer that?” she leered, sinking into another opening stance and raising all of her weapons anew—blade and tongue alike. “I was starting to get the sense that you liked our time together.” 

He leapt so quickly she almost didn’t see him move. But then: there he was, diving at her midsection, ducking under the arc of his lost sword and immobilizing the elbow wielding the other before she could lose him in another blink. 

Though she was able to overcome him easily, it was more fight than she’d seen from him all evening. “Thank you,” she said as she twisted free of his grip and turned to face him once more. “Was that really so hard?” 

Azriel rolled his shoulders and squared himself against her. The darkness was such that most of the hazel was lost from his eyes, but it did little to disguise the new flash of metal in them. 

She smiled as she charged at him again. 

Manon could see the focus as it took hold of him. It washed over him wholly and he wore it everywhere, from the asymmetric tuck of his wings as he dodged the twin arcs of her blades to the dart of his eyes as they studied her hands. 

Lunge, step, duck, retreat. She was not able to land a hit on him, but she’d tried; he made no attempt to disarm her, but seemed satisfied with whatever he’d learned during this exchange as he took up his starting stance again. 

“Take it,” she hissed, flipping the pommel of his blade in her right hand as they circled each other again. “Take it back. Stand up for yourself.” 

Though he remained quiet as ever, the effect of her words flashed across his face all the same. 

She swung, steel cutting uncaringly through tepid moonlight. 

This time, the full force of him was there to meet her. 

He surrendered to the underhanded strike of the blade in her left hand, the slam of it against his ribcage an exchange for the proximity he gained in lunging toward her. Ducking under the arc of the sword in her right hand, he stalled her downswing by jutting the cross of his wrists against her forearm and redirecting her, his fingers digging viciously into muscle and forcing her shoulder into internal rotation. 

A jerk of his left arm against her elbow and a yank of his right hand and it was done, his blade wrenched from her grasp and returned to him at last. 

If she’d been expecting such a maneuver—if she’d planned such an ostentatious overhanded strike as an attempt to goad him into exactly the disarm he’d just performed—she’d never admit it to him. 

“See now, wasn’t that fun?” she said with a grin, backing off a step while he reacquainted himself with his weapon. “Nice of you to participate.” 

Wordlessly, they circled one another again. She allowed herself to delve further into her analysis of him, now that they were poised as equals at last. 

Manon watched the way Azriel’s fingers flexed once, twice, too many times against the hilt of the sword, as if to loosen the tendons that lay dormant and stiff beneath his scarred flesh. She noted the way his wings ruffled like sails in the humid wind that had begun to pick up. She tracked the path of his eyes as he unabashedly assessed her in much the same way. 

She could not say for certain which of them moved first after that. Perhaps this was due to the simple—yet statistically preposterous—explanation that they’d charged at exactly the same moment, but perhaps it was more complex. Perhaps they’d each anticipated the other’s attack so accurately that the intent to strike was swallowed by the need to defend. 

Ultimately, Manon found the distinction mattered very little. They surged to meet each other, tide and shore, force and intent, steel and steel. 

And then, at last, they were locked in combat. 

The beauty in combat, as in everything, was in the balance of it. Fights to the death were simple: no rules besides one’s sense of honor, no objective other than survival. One emerged victorious or not at all. 

Combat was different entirely. Without the finality of killing or maiming, combat could be won in countless, creative ways and required a far greater level of skill. The goal became not just to survive, but to draw out shows of strategy long enough that one might learn from their opponent. Combat, therefore, thrived in the tension between strength and endurance, strategy and skill, reflex and anticipation. 

And so it was like this, blade and blade, that Manon and Azriel met each other. Strike and counterstrike, they anticipated each other. Darkness and moonlight, they found each other. Again and again, all the rest of the world silent beside the intermittent scuffing of feet and clanging of steel. 

As she’d been born to, Manon lost herself in the meditative trance of movement, a dance choreographed to bladesong and mountain air. Whatever small freedom she’d managed to win herself today, she knew she was still a prisoner in every way that mattered, held captive here by her ignorance and stripped of her ability to fly. 

But in this moment—while her lungs heaved with exertion and her calloused hands warmed around the pommel of a sword—she could at least breathe, could at least experience a moment where there was no question of how much of herself she ought to expose or hold back. 

Amidst it all, Manon found herself wondering if Azriel might be feeling similarly unburdened. Without Valkyries to train, Azriel had lost all of the didactic precision he otherwise displayed in these sparring pits. He retained his infuriating ability to move seamlessly between swaths of darkness, but revealed a surprising amount of emotion in the force with which he swung his blade and the tense hunch he tried unsuccessfully to shake out of his shoulders. 

The reason that he’d come here tonight couldn’t be something as simple as exhaustion; he must have been angry. 

Angry about what, she couldn’t be sure. But they were otherwise so evenly balanced here that Manon allowed herself to consider an ugly, self-indulgent comparison: perhaps the two of them were similarly disadvantaged in the eyes of this Court, which seemed to hold them both captive in its endless dark. Freedom, after all, was a concept that only existed at the razor-sharp edge of power and helplessness—in much the same way that shadows crept forth where darkness reared up in its opposition to light. 

It must be suffocating, she thought, for a creature like Azriel, made wholly of contrasts, to be subjected to such uncompromising night. 

After studying the other’s movements for so many rounds, the inevitable moment arrived where Manon and Azriel attempted the same attack, punching their blades downward from mirror-opposite stances. 

Their eyes met over the perfect deadlock of their blades. 

Manon’s tricep strained. A trickle of sweat ran down Azriel’s brow. Neither of them gave up so much as an inch of ground.

Launching a new sort of assault, Azriel broke the silence between them. 

“For what it’s worth,” he said on a heavy breath, “I do enjoy our time together.”

Manon frowned and instilled a new surge of force into the crux of their blades, but Azriel yielded nothing, frustratingly attuned to the maneuver she’d just attempted and resisting her with equal effort. 

More infuriating still, he smirked at her as he added, “Your Majesty.”

The words clanged discordantly within her, iron against stone. “Do not call me that.” She tried again to force him out of their bind. 

He did not budge. “It’s your title, is it not?” 

“I am queen of nothing and no one, and you know that,” she snapped. 

“How shall I address you, then?” 

She scoffed. “You’re too afraid to address me at all.”

“I’m not afraid of you, Manon,” he said simply. 

Her pulse rose to her ears. If he could fight dirty, so could she. 

She let her sword fall from her grasp entirely. In the split second before it clattered to the ground, she took advantage of Azriel’s stumble forward at the sudden loss of ballast and dove at him. Sliding the foot of distance between them on one of her knees, she used her freed hands to grab him by the leg and propel herself upward from beneath him, sending them both tumbling into the dirt. 

Somewhere in the ensuing scuffle of fists and knees and elbows, he’d let go of his sword. It had to have been intentional—she’d left him armed on purpose, eager to see how his steel might fare against her iron nails. Perhaps he hadn’t figured this into his mental calculus, preferring to keep the two of them equally matched. 

It was only when she began landing blows into his side with her knee that she realized the grave error she’d made in foregoing the physical boundary of a sword.

 
Besides the first day on the Prison Isle, they’d never been this close before. Even the night the Illyrian women had arrived—even with his pulse fluttering beneath her fingers—he’d been at arm’s length, and the imbalance between them had created a greater divide still. 

But out here in the moonlight that wavered under gathering clouds, armed with nothing and both angry in their own way, they were closer, more equal than they’d ever been. With every tackle and scuff of boot on the ground, leather and talon met tooth and claw. A fuse inside of her that she’d been only vaguely aware had lit spluttered a reminder of its existence.

The next time either of them spoke, it was when he’d managed to grapple her in a a truly ingenious hold—one that he’d managed despite her originally having the upper hand. One of his arms strained against her neck, leaving her little to do besides try and lever it off, while one of his legs encircled the both of her thighs, trapping her such that he was able to convert each counter-maneuver of hers into momentum he could use to rock himself back onto his feet. It was something of shrewd beauty, truly—as much as it pissed her off to admit. 

Any grudging praise she might have owed him was lost, however, when he pushed his luck by opening his mouth again. 

“I don’t suppose you’ll allow me another chance to express that I do enjoy our time together,” he mused, affirming his hold against her collarbone. To be spoken to so snidely while he nearly had her beat was insult enough, but his assault was far from over. Azriel leaned down and added, his voice a hot whisper against her ear as she strained against the pressure of him against her throat, “Wingleader.” 

Flame caught. In her cheeks, her throat, her belly. 

How long had it been, since she’d been referred to by this title? To hear it was an awakening, a witch-hearth, a call to war.

She jerked her head back and felt skull connect with his jaw. In the brief second of confusion this allowed her, she wrenched her hands from his grasp and twisted beneath him, aiming a kick to the inside of his thigh to destabilize him as she wrenched herself to her feet again. 

Azriel wiped away blood from his split lip with a scarred hand and smiled as the Wingleader of the Thirteen stood to face her first opponent in centuries.

𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪

Sparring with Manon was nothing like sparring with the Valkyries, who Azriel had been instrumental in training. It wasn’t like fighting Cassian or Rhys, either, because they’d learned the same techniques and run the same drills alongside him in the cold Windhaven mud. In terms of actual, no-holds-barred fights in his adult life, there had been only enemies on the battlefield.

Now, there was Manon: viciously unpredictable, a ripple of chaos tearing through the House of Wind’s carefully-crafted shelter. When any Illyrian would have dodged, she struck; when he’d come to expect that an opponent would attempt a hit, she held back. She blocked him in ways he’d never considered before and surprised him at every turn, keeping him perpetually off-balance. 

She fought like the wind itself, unpredictable as a storm, her white plait slashing in the moonlight with the relentlessness of lightning strikes. And indeed raw electricity seemed to crackle in her wake, as if the energy behind each of her blows was too great to be translated into physical force alone, some of it sloughing off in necessary concession to the entropic balance of the universe. 

She must have come straight from her meeting with the Archerons because she was still dressed elegantly in silk and tiffany, so unlike anything he’d ever seen her wear before. Though it was foreign to her, she was resplendent in Night Court black, looking for all the world like a goddess of the darkness itself as she moved. The gossamer on her shirt captured the moonlight wherever she went, casting it devotedly upon her white hair and granting it an almost otherworldly shine. 

None of those descriptors, of course, had come to mind when he’d first seen her. 

Nice? He deserved every blow of the beating she was raining down upon him. He thought about suggesting she kick his face in, for good measure.  

Swords long forgotten, they circled each other in the moments between matches with palms flexing against nothing, fingers like conduits coaxing currents out of the thick night air. During these brief respites he allowed himself the private privilege of studying her further, parsing out what he might use to challenge her in dimensions beyond the physical.

“Tell me about your meeting,” he wagered during one such pause. 

“I told you,” she said, stretching her neck sharply enough to release an audible pop of a joint, “it went fine.” 

He took an additional step to the side in his pacing, closing the diameter between them by another inch. “You returned and immediately wanted to kick the shit out of me, and I’m supposed to believe you when you say it went fine?” 

She shrugged. “I don’t need an excuse to want to kick the shit out of you.”

“Did you at least get what you asked for?” he tried again. Fishing around like this made him selfish, in a way, for she owed him nothing by way of explanation. Still, his knowledge that she wouldn’t allow him to take an inch beyond what she felt like giving him granted him a recklessness he seldom felt with other opponents. 

“Of course I did.” 

She lunged closer, and he darted out to meet her—but it had just been a feint. They both retreated; he reached out again.

“And did you get what you wanted?” 

A muscle in Manon’s jaw flexed. “Fancy yourself a wordsmith now, do you?” 

“Did you even think to ask for it?” he pressed. 

Then she was in his space again, as he had crowded into hers. She landed a perfect combination at his sides with her fists, but he was careful not to hunch forward, resisting the inclination to lean further into her oncoming wrath. 

Miraculously, it seemed she’d anticipated this outcome, too. Without a second thought, she used the space he’d opened up between them to kick him square in the stomach. 

This time he did hunch forward, and she captured his ear in her opposite hand, dragging him mouth-first onto her now-bent knee. With the cross-grip she’d formed across his front he could hardly defend his face, so he allowed the momentum to carry him downward instead. He could at least take advantage of his size, if she insisted on being so evenly matched in terms of strength and skill. 

Though she was quick to recover into a more defensive position, he was able to land several successive hits to the side of her head, reminiscent of the move she’d just used on him. His ears still rung from it, tinny and dissonant and more than a bit thrilling. 

This was vicious, vital; the type of fight he’d used to pick with the older boys in Windhaven when he was still eager to prove himself. He never, ever, fought with the Valkyries this way; he’d barely even fought Cass or Rhys with such fervor since before the last war. 

Yet he returned to the baseness of such combat with a primitive sort of hunger, the precision he’d sharpened over centuries falling away in an instant to reveal the rough-edged core of himself that he’d never quite been able to cover. 

It was the proximity of it, he thought—the adrenaline surge of facing a new opponent coupled with the heightened threat of being hit bodily, without swords to separate them—that had him feeling so unwound. 

“What is it?” he panted, continuing his onslaught of blows and words. “What is it that you’re running from?” He could be fairly accused of spewing bullshit at this point. He had no reason to think that she was running from anything, of course, nor could he truly defend any of the nonsense that had come out of his mouth within the past hour. It was just that—

“Stop,” she seethed. Somehow, she’d managed to wedge a knee between the two of them and promptly succeeded in levering herself out from under him, such that they were once again side by side, attempting to crush each other into the dirt. 

That, right there, had to have been why he’d kept at his nonsense. 

He liked her like this: unwound, vicious, ready to snap. It thrilled him, excited him in a way he hadn’t been in quite some time. She was so sharp, so exacting, so animated.

She was… she was—

—still actively grappling with him, and about to successfully pin him for good.

“I did get what I asked for, by the way,” she said, driving the flat of her forearm against his throat. 

The weight of it forced a small chuckle out of his mouth. “Then why are you so angry?” 

To his surprise, her response came readily. 

“I am sick,” she said emphatically, “of not knowing how anything in this Goddess-damned world works.” 

In what Azriel thought was a fair argument in opposition to her point, Manon wrenched his arm unnaturally above his head. Her grip was uncomfortable enough to send a twinge through his shoulder, but she managed to pin his wrist to the ground in a hold that stayed well-clear of his wings. 

 
Using his spare arm to leverage himself against her, he gained just enough of an advantage to jerk his neck out of her warpath. “You don’t need to know a damn thing about this world if you know how to fight like that,” he said. “You already speak our oldest language.” 

“Violence?” she asked with a scoff that suggested she’d come to the conclusion he’d reached just now centuries prior. “If that were true, I wouldn’t have had to learn so many others.” 

And, well, if that didn’t sum up his complex feelings toward his Illyrian heritage perfectly. 

While at times he’d been grateful for it, this part of him that was so easily soothed by violence, he’d never been particularly proud of it. Much like his dealings in the dungeons of the Hewn City, it was simply a fact of his life, a thirst that he must slake every so often, lest the need for it drive him to more baser urges still. 

Could the explanation for his lifetime of unidentifiable grief be as simple as what she offered him now: violence, repackaged as a native tongue, to be used or forgotten as its bearer saw fit?

For all of her justifiable frustrations with Prythian’s society, she’d somehow managed to slice cleanly to the core of it without ever setting foot outside the Night Court. 

“Although in a way you’re right, I suppose,” she went on as she wrested control away from remaining hand, pinning it on top of the other. “There is something rather soothing about using one’s mother tongue.” 

In a silvery flash, a set of iron fangs snapped into place. If her smile had been fearsome before, now it was downright terrifying. 

Above his head, he was vaguely aware of two more metallic thrums cutting through the night and knew she’d unsheathed her nails, too. 

“Strike me,” she ordered. Nothing about her voice had changed with her teeth in place, but the command landed more firmly on his ears.

“I can’t,” he said crossly, forcing his hands against her grip for good measure. 

Manon scoffed. “Since when are your fists your only weapon? Strike me.” 

Heat roiled in waves beneath Azriel’s skin. She was right, of course; his fists were not his only weapon, because all of him was. He was blade and darkness both, his penchant for violence a result of his woeful breeding and his proficiency with shadows a product of his even more lamentable upbringing. 

“Stand up for yourself,” she repeated, her voice a dark hiss of thunder. 

His shadows—his greatest love, his deepest shame—were positively vibrating with excitement, dancing in the mounting humidity like waves of heat themselves. Let us, let us, they implored him.

He opened his mouth to argue, but snapped it shut the second he caught a glimpse of Manon’s face. There was no doubt in his mind that she would keep him pinned here until he obeyed. 

Let us, let us.

Shadows whorled and coiled, positively pouncing at the chance to participate. With little input from their master, they slid between Manon’s fingers and writhed, levering themselves between her fingers and finally wrenching his wrists free of her grasp. 

She smiled again as he shook out the ache in his hands, a wicked flash of moonlight across a starry sky. “There you are.”

His shadows seemed to thrum contentedly in response. 

In this next round of their dance, they each moved with an additional weight affixed: Azriel with his obsidian and Manon her iron. Though a sharp edge meant nothing to something as immaterial as shadow, the inclusion of these weapons granted each skirmish an added layer of difficulty. Shadows swum and snapped their jaws, forcing Manon to be faster on her feet; Manon’s iron blades loomed ever closer to Azriel’s exposed skin, demanding more flexibility from him than he’d used in years. 

Back and forth and around they went, engaged and disengaged, assessing and reassessing. Yet with each concession and each defeat, the pendulum between them swung only slightly, just enough to cover the distance between brief upper hands and clever undercuts. 

Even the Prison Isle seemed momentarily appeased, its rhythmic growls from across the bay dropping out from the orchestral din in his head. 

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d purposefully employed his shadows during sparring sessions. Doing so was cause for punishment in Windhaven, and the source of eye rolling at Valkyrie practice. How freeing it was, to let them stretch and explore their bounds in private. How happy they seemed, vibrating with playful enthusiasm as they struck out for Manon with unabashed curiosity. 

Happiness—could his shadows truly feel such a thing? Or was that the stirring of some oft-ignored fragment of his mind, bashful to the point of being childlike in its glee, that his consciousness had ascribed to his shadows rather than accept as a part of himself? 

The momentary pause for consideration cost him, and he found himself facing down the end of another match. 

He was well and truly beat this time, somehow having ended up facedown with his arms pinned uselessly underneath his wings. His options were severely limited, and none of them really allowed him any tactical advantage. Still, because he was still riding this feverish, playful high—and because he thought it might piss Manon off a bit—he jerked his hips beneath her, sending her bucking into the air for a heartbeat.

As he’d expected they would, her nails only dug further into his wrist in response to his outburst. “Fucker,” she hissed.

Finally, as Manon ground his face into the dirt, the word he’d been desperately searching for occurred to him: she was magnificent. 

𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪

As she stood in her subterranean bedchamber and washed the dirt from her face and hands, Manon stopped to look at herself in front of the dingy, under-utilized mirror above the basin. 

Per usual, her stubborn hair was falling out of its braid; she’d never mastered the ability to weave it tightly enough to withstand even a light bout of sparring. Even once scrubbed clean of dirt, her face was still splotchy from exertion and the cool water. The fabric of her top had shifted slightly despite the effort Nesta had put into fastening it. In truth, she looked…well. As if she’d just been in a fight. 

But loose hair and ruddy cheeks were nothing more than signs of recent use, the same surface-level scuffs acquired by anything that had a purpose. They made her appear lived-in, full. 

Alive. 

For the second time that day, Manon found herself admiring her reflection. Nesta had been right—she really did look incredible. 

For all the time that had been spent lacing Manon into her top, removing it was as easy as tugging at the ends of the ribbons, and the silk pants were equally painless to slip off. Once she’d collected both and folded them neatly on her bureau, she returned to the sink.  

Entirely bared save for her underthings, Manon twisted in the mirror and began the responsible post-combat ritual of looking herself over for any damage. Though it wasn’t a necessary part of the assessment, she cupped her breasts as she spun, the shape of them familiar and comforting in her palms. Then she let her hands drift lower, lingering against the dip of her waist and the swell of her thighs. Just because she could. Just because she’d thought to, in the first place. 

The search revealed nothing more serious than a smattering of scratches and bruises, of course; though she’d finally succeeded in getting Azriel to fight her, he hadn’t actually hurt her. 

No, the only uncomfortable physical sensation currently plaguing her was the slow swell of heat that had begun to pool in the bowl of her hips. 

Sex wasn’t something Manon had thought about in a long while. Certainly not since prior to her arrival in Prythian, and not even in the years before her Yielding. A century or two ago, there had been a brief period of time in which she’d tried to rally from her various heartbreaks, but no one she’d taken to her bed had held a candle to the forbidding jury of ghosts that lurked in her memories. What was the point of seeking out another person’s touch, when it would inevitably remind her of someone else’s? She could finish herself off with her hands just as well. 

Shortly thereafter, there had come that awful, bleak stretch of years where she hadn’t been able to feel anything at all, and any remaining desire for sex had disappeared in turn. 

She realized with a start that she’d never even considered that desire might return one day. For so long, everything in her life had been static. At the end of her time in Erilea, each day was the same as the last and was likewise the same as the next. She’d stopped expecting anything more than the cold sameness of her past few years. She’d stopped believing things could change. 

Then so much had changed, and all at once: the air she breathed, the ground she walked on, the number of stars in the sky. The whiplash of her arrival into Prythian had completely altered every detail of her existence on a macroscopic level. Perhaps, she pondered, she’d forgotten to assume herself capable of change on a smaller scale. 

That was: until today.

Seeing herself in the reflection of Nesta’s bedroom mirror—her body toned from regular use and her face flushed with the first signs of life she’d seen in years—had shocked her. Sure as the skies, she had changed; sure as the sunset, she had burned. 

And burn she did. When the spark had been set off, she couldn’t be sure, but if she were a betting woman, she’d guess it had been some time between the brush of Nesta’s fingers against the small of her back and the off-handed comments about Velaris’s pleasure houses. 

The match that had been struck to rekindle her sexuality, however, was less conspicuous than the blaze of it that had reared up hours later in the training ring. 

It had been raw, directionless angst that had drawn her to the sparring pits in the first place. She knew herself, knew that physicality tended to soothe her frayed nerves. Indeed, the restless Blackbeak blood within her had been sated within the first two rounds. 

What she had not accounted for was the growing flame of desire that sparring had stoked, even after her need for violence had been quenched. 

Much like combat, desire fed on balance. It was yet another exercise in tension, requiring a constant, almost cerebral recalibration of reflex and anticipation, dominance and submission. Rare indeed was an opponent who recognized this, or at least one who was able to cede and withhold in equal measure. 

And sparring with Azriel had played out like a duel between equals, even though she felt distinctly as if she’d always ended up on top. 

It wasn’t that Azriel had let her win, not after she’d goaded him into trying—each of her gains was fairly gotten, loathe to admit this as she was. It was that he seemed to like it when she did, a wild kind of joy coming over his face whenever she had him pinned. It was as if he enjoyed being at her mercy, being forced to fight his way out of ever-more complicated entanglements. A different type of dominance, disguised in an act of submission.

More disconcerting still were the less frequent moments when their positions were reversed. 

Wingleader.

The way he’d said it, husky and drawn-out, like he’d known—he knew—it would do something to her. 

And it had. She couldn’t soon forget the weight of him as it encircled her fully, the pressure of his arm trapped at her throat, the sway of his wings as he balanced himself over her hips, the hot puff of air on her face as he curled over her to whisper into her ear. 

It was intimate, sensual, almost like—

A flurry of memories swarmed her then, fast and fleeting: The impossibly smooth warmth of Elide’s thighs and the shuddering intake of breath she’d loosed as Manon had brought her to her peak for the first time in her life; the hard press of Dorian, leaking insistent against her belly while she bucked against the confines of Rolfe’s ship; the hot glide of him as he’d slid into her from behind years later, murmuring her name with such reverence while she sent Aelin into wave after wave of pleasure speared upon Rowan’s cock. 

Having lips brushed over her skin, hands gripping her thighs, sweet nothings whispered into her ear—it had been satisfying, hadn’t it? Hadn’t it been nice, to be touched? To be held?

A faraway warning shot of thunder scattered across the mountains.

Her nipples peaked despite the pleasant thrum of heat that continued to pulse through her. She used a hand to trace its source, trailing from the valley between her breasts to the expanse of stomach that arose where ribs gave way. Gooseflesh pebbled in her wake; she reached out her free arm to steady herself against the sink basin. All of it was familiar.

Because, yes, there were many feelings she’d had since arriving to Prythian that were too complicated to name, but this wasn’t one of them. This was exactly what she’d realized she hadn’t been expecting, when Nesta drew her attention back to sex earlier that day. This was something known to her, an animal instinct that she had been taking care of on her own since her first blood. 

Instinct, she reminded herself as she let her hand roam from the jut of her hips to the fold of her thighs, watching in the mirror as her fingers disappeared down the front of her underwear. A normal physiologic response; a way for her to reacquaint herself with her body after feeling disconnected from it for so long.

Wingleader, a voice in her head repeated.

She shooed it away, focusing on the comforting press of her fingers and the image of them moving beneath her underwear instead. 

Wingleader, the voice in her head reminded her. 

Not Your Majesty, for Queen had always been a solitary role. Wingleader carried a sense of deference without isolating its bearer from the whole.

The title Wingleader implied the presence of others, witnesses to whatever acts of love might be performed for them. 

And for a few short, beautiful years that was what she’d been; someone with others, someone whose love the others had deemed a sacrifice, despite it not costing her a thing. 

Strangely, this thought did not strike her with gale force, the way such memories usually did. Maybe it was because when she was here, alone and vulnerable in this rare moment of kindness that she was affording herself, she felt a shadow of that same sort of love. 

The fingers of her free hand curled around the basin of the sink before her, knuckles whitening as they gripped the ceramic.

Wingleader, the voice in her head soothed as she slid two fingers into herself.

Her breathing quickened and her pulse ratcheted up beside it, both rising like smoke. With the knuckle of her thumb and the steady pump of her wrist, she drew out weeks’ worth of tensions with her practiced fingers. 

Wingleader. 

In the end, she shut her eyes and ducked her head, turning away her reflection just before her peak. She was, after all, much more accustomed to the fall.  

Instinct, she reassured herself again when she was in her right mind again and the midnight flush had begun to ebb from her cheeks. 

That was all it was, all it could be. 

𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪 𓆩𓆪

Azriel was deeply unwell. He felt crazed, near-manic. 

The issue at hand was made physical in the form of his cock, which was positively aching in his pants. 

He turned onto his stomach in an attempt to relieve some of the pressure, buried his face in the crook of his arm, and tried to focus on the sounds this limited him to: the beginnings of thunder stirring outside; the echo of his own breath in his ears; the quiver of his heartbeat against the mattress.

Nesta and Cassian had crashed through the veranda door minutes after Azriel had returned from the sparring pits. He had already been in his bed by the time his roommates made their entrance, but he’d heard their uneven steps and theatrical moans as they stumbled past his closed door regardless. It was probably intentional, on their part; he was sure he’d have been met with overwhelming enthusiasm if he’d followed along behind them. 

He’d done so plenty before, and he’d always left their bed feeling satisfied. Nesta and Cassian, for all their dramatic flair, genuinely loved and cared for each other, and they loved and cared for Azriel, in turn. 

For any normal person—Cauldron, maybe even for the Azriel that Azriel had been centuries ago—this would have been enough. But then he’d gone and ruined his own life by fucking Eris Vanserra, and now nothing ever seemed to be enough. Whatever depraved beast Eris had awoken inside of him was demanding, merciless, and highly specific in its tastes. It cared not for gentle sensuality or respectful lovemaking; it wanted to be called awful names and pleasured to the point of pain. It might be momentarily appeased by Azriel’s visiting Nesta and Cassian, but it was never completely sated. 

The edge could be dulled, but the blade would ever linger at his throat. 

This was the beast that now stirred under his taut, overheated skin, the beast who’d been summoned tonight in the sparring pits when Azriel had been handled roughly and allowed himself to enjoy it. The beast drew upon a specific set of urges that Azriel couldn’t share with Nesta or Cassian, ones that wanted to be kept private and sacred. Secrets, all of them, negotiated between his knack for self-preservation and his darkest desires. 

Such was the side of himself that Eris had lured out. But though Azriel could credit Eris for awakening this beast, he knew it had always been there. It was a monster that Eris enjoyed riling up, but it certainly wasn’t Eris’s creation.

And he had always been quick to tell Azriel as much. Oh no, absolutely not, he’d said the first time Azriel gazed upon him with a look just shy of neutral. Do not look at me with those kicked-puppy eyes. Do not make me regret bedding you. I told you from the start I wouldn’t put up with any maudlin delusions about hand-holding and futures and profound declarations of centuries-long love. 

Fair enough. Eris had always been explicitly clear about what he wanted and what he was willing to give, and he’d always had the uncanny knack of scolding Azriel back into the boundaries of their agreement whenever he even thought about stepping out of line. One dozen smokehounds, it seemed, was the maximum amount of feral creatures Eris was willing to be responsible for. 

Enough years of not-quite-patient reminding, and Azriel had finally fallen into line, expecting no more from his and Eris’s infrequent encounters than an excellent fuck, several bruises, and the same blind hope for romance that had him exchanging secret Solstice presents under his High Lord’s nose. 

That woefully sentimental part of him couldn’t be helped, but neither did it ask much of him. It was not what had sent him lurching back into his bed tonight with his cock near-agonizingly hard. 

No, that was the part of him that craved severity—the part only Eris had ever been able to set alight. 

That was, until Manon Blackbeak had knocked his sword out of his hands and called him a coward. She’d baited him easily and he’d all but jumped at the invitation, jaws open, not bothering to disguise his delight when she’d met him with the same deadly enthusiasm. She’d all but demanded he call upon his basest urges to act on behalf of his self-preservation. 

Perhaps that was why fighting with her had elicited the same thrill that had come over him in Hewn City two Solstices ago. In the Moonstone Palace then and in the Valkyrie pits now, he’d so easily shed the guise of indifference he’d negotiated with himself. Easy as breathing.  

Though he felt he’d been lain utterly bare this evening, he’d attempted to preserve his own modesty by pulling on sleeping pants before falling into bed. A hapless thrust of his still-clothed pelvis into his mattress had him uncomfortably aware of how greatly he’d failed in this regard, so he turned onto his back again, desperate to relieve some of the ache. 

Now facing the high-arched ceilings, he dragged the heel of his palm over the fierce strain of himself against his trousers, lingering over the drip of hot fluid against the soft fabric that had already seeped from him. He breached the waistband, palming himself lightly, and passed his thumb through the slickness his pants had betrayed. Evidence, he thought, of how thoroughly some part of him had broken. 

Finally he fisted the base of himself, giving a vicious squeeze, imagining lithe fingers in place of his own, how good they might feel, how sweet the threat of iron talons unfurling—

No, he scolded himself. That was wrong; he couldn’t bring Manon into this, the darkest well of himself. She’d want no part in this depravity, would surely be horrified to learn of her implication in such an act. 

But she had been solid and warm beneath him, on top of him; quick as the wind and sharp as a blade. She had been there, not even an hour ago, perfectly seated above his hips and toying with him like prey. 

Another wave of electricity coursed through him and he rutted helplessly against his hand. For no good reason, he bit his arm to staunch the moan that threatened to escape him. 

Unfortunately, feeling teeth in his arm was not in the least bit helpful in his valiant attempts to banish Manon from his thoughts. 

How easy it had been for them to set a rhythm, to fall into one another in a dance of giving and taking. He’d been asking without words for her to direct him, to lend him a purpose, and she had; but she’d also refused to let him bow out entirely, keeping him engaged, keeping him light-footed and fast-thinking. 

How good it felt to be well and truly challenged. It was the same raw, adolescent way his brothers had once challenged him, before there were things unsaid and scores to settle and punches pulled. How exhilarating, to realize that this same sort of challenge could arise so distantly from his youth. How freeing it was to react, to think, to anticipate—to fear. How suddenly he’d been seen, in a way no one had bothered to look at him for quite some time, with his cloak of shadows shed and his staunch aversion to savagery renegotiated. 

Thunder still rumbled, the Isle still seethed and roiled in the sea. But there was something to be said for his unusual affinity for nature’s severity; he’d managed to find his shadows while imprisoned in pitch dark, after all. He allowed the rolls of thunder to propel him through each beat of his fist, heat lightning crawling under his skin to set the tip of each finger alight. 

Manon had been a force of nature, engulfing him in her, and he had let her…but she’d pushed him further than that, hadn’t she? She had demanded he match her with the same energy she’d given and refused to relent once he had, forcing him to keep up, spurring him on in that reckless pursuit around the endless pillar of midnight between them.  

Stand up for yourself, Manon said, eyes glowing gold in stark opposition to the fallen night, promises of a sunrise to come. 

He groaned and reached over to his bedside table, tipping a small amount of oil onto his fingers and massaging it into the base of his cock. The initial shock of cool liquid against his overheated skin faded quickly and pleasurably. By the time a rivulet of oil trickled its way underneath his balls, the sensation was pleasant enough to chase, first with one finger and then two. 

Shadows writhed, prisoners in the cells of his skin, seeping out with sweat as he fisted his cock in one hand and worked himself open with the other.  

Greedy, Eris had called him the first time he’d taken him this way. 

The descriptor had struck Azriel as odd at the time, but it made a good deal of sense now. Even the palm of his hand wasn’t enough for him anymore; ever since he’d known Eris’s touch he’d been a slave to the sensation of being filled in addition to being pleasured, in being given as much as he could take. He wanted ever more, chasing some next high, some fresh kill. 

He was just as greedy as Eris had accused him of being and just as desperate to be known as he’d always feared. 

His shadows pooled out of him in a relentless turmoil as he worked himself to the point of insanity, shivering in the warm mountain wind. 

There you are.

He spent himself into his hand with a grunt and a twist of his thumb. 

In the cast of night the windows allowed onto his bed, the pool of spend glowed milk-white on his stomach. 

The beast released its clutches on him and sunk back into the shadows. The imminent danger gone, but the threat of it ever-present. 

Sweat-soaked and panting, he allowed himself to sink into his bed. The House produced a towel for him, but he left it untouched. It was fine, he thought, to stay like this for a while, to savor the illusion of moonlight dancing on his skin. 

The Prison Isle rumbled; thunder cracked. Spent, Azriel slept.