shadows don't lie

Chapter Twelve

He had led Inei upstairs once she was calm enough to follow him, and he helped her into bed after letting her change into nightclothes.

Azriel had realized pretty quickly that the memory of her capture was what had caused the panic attack, and he had done his best to bring her out of her shell by talking about other things.

It had taken a couple hours but she had eventually relaxed into the conversations.

Once she was in bed he waited until her soft breathing evened before he left the room, heading for the front door of the house. One of his shadows remained curled up by her ear telling him how she was doing.

He intended to go to the library and look for information on the generals of other courts, but as he closed the door behind him, he changed his mind.

Instead, he unfurled his wings in the chill night time air, and took off towards the distant Mountain palace in the east.

----

Inei had woken up in her bed to sunlight streaming in through the window of her shared room.

Turning over in bed she noticed that Azriel wasn't there and after asking her shadows she was informed that he had been absent since the previous night. Yawning, she sat up and stretched.

One of Azriel’s shadows stirred beside her, and she idly urged it to wrap around her wrist.

“Good morning.” It purred, and she reached out, pulling her own shadows closer to her.

“Morning. Where are you?” She asked him, standing up and walking over to her armoire to dress for the day.

Most of her clothes had already been worn multiple times save for a pale blue dress in the far corner. Shrugging, she decided to wear it since she had nothing else. As she donned the dress, Azriel finally responded.

“I'm just grabbing some things, I’ll be back soon.” She rolled her eyes and left the room, walking downstairs to find a hungover Morrigan sitting in the kitchen.

Morrigan looked up at Inei and raised a brow at the dress, and Inei held up a hand in greeting. "Good morning, can I make you a tea?" Morrigan grimaced but shook her head.

"I'm alright, but thank you." Nodding her head at Inei's shadows, she asked halfheartedly, “Where did he go?”

It amused Inei that Morrigan expected her to know where he had gone, but she just waved a hand. “Not sure, said he’d be back soon.”

The female made a small ‘ah’ and returned to hiding her face beneath her arms and long locks of hair.

Leaving the house through the back door, Inei entered the little yard with a couple of iron wrought chairs and a similarly made table sitting on a good sized stone patio. A small but bountiful garden grew to her right, flowers and vegetables growing beside each other and a clothesline hung beside the wall of the house.

Taking a seat on one of the chairs, Inei breathed in deeply, the autumn air fresh in her lungs.

It had been a little over six months since she had been brought here from her cell across the sea. Just the pure thought of how much time had elapsed shocked her. It still felt like yesterday that she had been that weak little girl.

She sat back looking up at the sky, at those big white clouds she once admired from atop a mountain, and loosened the grip on her shadows. They spread out among the plants and even as far as the neighboring houses, and they began to feed her bits of information as she watched the clouds drift by.