Shadowsinger

Chapter 41

This is super late, I'm sorry, my whole life decided to kick off at the same time, enjoy!

Cassian gripped Azriel's shoulder as he leaned against the table in Rhys' war room, the map spread across the table practically taunting him. He hadn't taken his gaze off the camp in the North of Illyria, that same keep he'd visited a few months ago, it was screaming at him, filling his mind with flame and blood and darkness.

"Az?" Cassian's voice broke through the thoughts, and Azriel looked up to his brother, worry lining his face, "Send someone else, you don't have to do everything yourself. It's okay, I swear." Azriel dropped his gaze from Cassian's, something like shame burning his insides at the cowardice Cassian had picked up on.

"I do have to. He'll know why if I don't, he'll spin lies or just refuse until I go." Azriel rolled his shoulders, wings trembling with the effort of staying in the room and not diving out of the nearest window to fly until his mind went quiet again.

"You want me to come?" Yes. No. Maybe,

"No, I'm not bringing a safety blanket,"

"Is that all I am?" Cassian teased, and some of the strain on Azriel's mind eased, but he said, voice still tense,

"Gwyn will insist, and that's okay because she helped capture him and works with me these days, you don't in the same way, Cass, it'll be obvious you're just there for support, which is a weakness I don't need to display." Rhys could get away with it, but he'd already offered, and Azriel had convinced him to stay, not wanting to show their hand yet, perhaps 'Asshole Number One', as Gwyn had called him, might talk better if he thought it was just Azriel, and that they didn't already know some of his plans. It would be hard enough to pretend he knew nothing of those plans, the bloodshed and chaos his own blood wanted to sow across the land, the pain he wanted to cause. Azriel closed his eyes in an attempt to quell the nausea threatening to crest, but all that did was show him the male's laughing face as Azriel screamed, too young to understand what they had done, or why. Both brothers had always been cruel, tyrannical, but this? It was something else, and he knew he could act to halt it, but all his traitorous mind would focus on was the memories of them, of that place, ancient and recent memories blending into one. It wasn't the male himself that made him sick, but their relation, and the knowledge that Azriel himself was no better.

"He made his choice, Az. It has no bearing on you," Rhys assured him, "You have nothing to do with him. You are nothing like him." Truth and lie. Maybe Rhys truly believed him, maybe Cassian did, but it wasn't true. He was like that male. Rhys had seen the results of interrogations, but he had never seen the male, the monster, that Azriel became to achieve those results. Almost five hundred years, and he still vomited his guts up after every one of them, it didn't matter if they deserved it, if it was to save more lives. The justification didn't matter, not really. He deserved to share that damned name, the one branding him a monster, a murderer, the one that not even his true brothers could replace, just like the monster prowling beneath his skin that they could never be allowed to see, that they couldn't separate from the male they knew. They were one and the same, Azriel and the monster, he had never quite been able to kill it, just to keep it at bay, he'd noticed its demands for blood and pain lessening at times, with his family, with Gwyn in particular, but it was always there, there was always a chance it could wake. He was like that male, he was just better at hiding it. But he didn't say that, he couldn't, so he just nodded his thanks,

"Let's have a drink later," Cassian suggested, "Take our minds off things for a while, I bet Rita would be glad to see us, and it'd do the people good to see us all out." Azriel barely heard himself agreeing, barely felt himself moving, the preparation for leaving in twenty minutes all an old instinct now.