A Court of Shadows and Rage (Azriel x OC)

A Warrior Without Wings

They landed into the wet mud with a hard thud, but the warrior's grip on her body was too tight to feel anything but his hands on her skin. Her eyes searched, expression still stoic, no fear etched into her pallid, thin face. She kept her gaze narrowed as she tried to discover what camp they had landed into. 

She sketched the map in her mind, the same one she had slaved over and studied for a year, unable to walk she kept herself preoccupied until strong enough to leave. 

So she knew which camps were located where, and how exactly to find them, or avoid them at all costs. Specifically how not to get lost and returned to a camp that would recognizer her.

Her leather boots were coated in the thick, rain-slick mud already as they threaded through the camp. Brinna would never forget the camps, the thick putrid smell, the loud thrashing sounds of beatings and lashings, leering eyes of males on her back side and the grating cries of females from inside closed tents. She would never forget it, but she had never planned to step foot into another camp, let alone this one. 

Windhaven. Perfect, possibly the only camp she chanced a run-in with someone of the High Lord's Inner Circle, who might put a death warrant above her head. 

Devlon was not nearly as cruel as they came, in term of War-Lords. She had met males who made Devlon look like a new born child with their wickedness. She had served them, been beaten by them, even been sired by one. Luckily enough, Devlon would not recognize her. He might have seen her in passing as a child, when they had trekked through the grand Windhaven grounds, but she was small, and had wings then. Nearly two hundred years ago. 

"General Commander," the one who had landed before the rest called, catching Cassian's attention where he stood before the ring of fighting young Illyrians. Two were females, and a pit settled into Brinna's stomach at the site of them, bloody and beaten, and far too thin and young.

She did not have any room to talk. Bruises and cuts still littered her body, some that would never heal, and she had not eaten in days. Her food ran low from when she first left, and she had given everything she had to her sister. Brinna most likely looked similar to the two children, possibly worse.

The male crossed his arms, his brow furrowing as he took in the gaggle of proud Illyrian warriors toting along a wingless female like they had captured a most precious jewel. 

"What is this?"

Brinna nearly snorted, both as the Commander's clearly uninterest tone, as well as his referral to her as this. Illyrian brutes, all of them. 

Lord Devlon exited his tent, followed by another male figure–the only one who could strike fear into that spot between Brinna's ribs. She felt the male holding her against him go still as he recognized the Spymaster beside Lord Devlon. Shadows indeed curled around his wrists and up to his neck, gliding down his legs to his ankles as if he could disappear into nothing as suddenly as a cool breeze. 

Shadowsinger. The terrifying near myth of a male who worked only for the High Lord, who carried a blade that had skinned every enemy to the bone and left them alive in torment. Shadowsinging was a rare, important gift, and myths said only the darkest of souls had enough shadow in their soul to bare the gift. They could feel and sense things others could not, making this shadowsinger the perfect spymaster.

Brinna gulped down a deep breath to calm her already wired nerves at the site of him. If anyone could figure out her identity, it was him.   

The shadowsinger stared at her, eyes locking and she saw him go completely, utterly still. Frozen, locked, the only thing moving were his shadows slithering down towards her before he reigned them back in with a shuttering step forward, as if he could not help it.