𝔸 ℂ𝕠𝕦𝕣𝕥 𝕠𝕗 𝕃𝕠𝕧𝕖 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕎𝕣𝕒𝕥𝕙 (Book 2)

Thirty-one

Azriel turned to Cassian, who was looking at Rhys by my side with a mix of love and admiration. So pure and agonized that some dead part of me had the instinct to reach across the table and comfort him.

    A quick grin spread across Cassian's face as he processed my question, "We all hated each other at first."

    I looked at the High Lord, noticing that the light had winked out of his eyes as he remembered the horrors that haunted all of us Under the Mountain. I had been there for only a fraction of the time he had and it had left me scattered. I couldn't begin to imagine everything that had happened to him...

    Cassian went on, "We are bastards, you know. Az and I. The Illyrians... We love our people, and our traditions, but they dwell in clans and camps deep in the mountains of the North, and do not like outsiders. Especially High Fae who try to tell them what to do. But they're just as obsessed with lineage and have their own princes and Lords among them. Az," He pointed to the Illyrian wreathed in shadows. The siphon on his hand glittered again. "Was the bastard of one of the local Lords. And if you think the bastard son of a Lord is hated, then you can't imagine how hated the bastard is of a war-camp laundress and a warrior she couldn't or wouldn't remember." His casual shrug didn't cover the haunted look in his eyes, "Az's father sent him to our camp for training once he and his charming wife realized he was a shadowsinger."

    My eyes snapped to Azriel's in an instant. How the fuck did I miss that. I'd never seen one in person, only read about them. It was clear as day now that I realized, no wonder his shadows curled around him as though he could hear them. He could.

    It only made me all the more curious. Shadowsingers had been yet another of my fascinations along with Wyverns and old legends and folktales.

"Like the daemati," Rhys spoke, "shadowsingers are rare—coveted by courts and territories across the world for their stealth and predisposition to hear and feel things others can't."

    Azriel's face yielded nothing.

    Cassian continued his story, "the camp lord practically shit himself with excitement the day Az was dumped into our camp. But me...once my mother weaned me and I was able to walk, they flew me to a distant camp, and chucked me into the mud to see if I would live or die."

    "They would have been smarter throwing you off a cliff." Mor snorted.

    "Oh, definitely," he agreed, his grin sharp as razors, "Especially because when I was old and strong enough to go back to the camp I'd been born in, I'd learned those pricks worked my mother until she died."

    Again, silence fell. This time filled with frustration and simmering anger. They had all survived so much...felt each other's pain so starkly.

    "The Illyrians," Rhys finally cut in as the light came back to his eyes. It struck a small chord of relief in me. "Are unparalleled warriors, and are rich with stories and traditions. But they are also brutal, and backward, particularly in regard to how they treat their females."

Azriel's eyes had gone almost vacant as he stared at the wall. As though memories had played in front of his eyes.

"They're barbarians," Amren said. No one objected. Mor nodded even as she noted Azriel's posture and bit her lip. "They cripple their females so that they can keep them for breeding more flawless warriors."

Rhysand cringed at my side, "My mother was low-born," he spoke as he looked at me, "and worked as a seamstress in one of their many mountain war camps. When females come of age in the camps—when they have their first bleeding—their wings are...clipped. Just an incision in the right place, left to improperly heal, can cripple you forever. And my mother—she was gentle and wild and loved to fly. So she did everything in her power to keep herself from maturing. She starved herself, and gathered illegal herbs—anything to halt the natural course of her body. She turned eighteen and hadn't yet bled, to the mortification of her parents. But her bleeding finally arrived, and all it took was of there to be in the wrong place, at the wrong time, before a male scented it on her and told the camps lord. She tried to flee—took right to the skies. But she was young, and the warriors were faster, and they dragged her back. They were about to tie her to the posts in the center of the camp when my father winnowed in for a meeting with the camp's lord about readying for the War. He saw my mother thrashing and fighting like a wildcat, and..." he swallowed, "the Mating Bond between them clicked into place. One look at her, and he knew what she was. He misted the Guards holding her."

"Misted?" I asked.

Cassian let out a wicked chuckle, Rhys raised a hand and an orange floated up from one of the plates on the table. With a flick of his finger, it turned into citrus-scented mist.

I gaped. Oh, how I wished I could do that.

"Through the blood-rain," He continued, "my mother looked at him. And the bond fell into place for her. My father took her back to the Night Court and made her his bride. She loved her people, and missed them, but never forgot what they tried to do to her—what they did to the females among them. She tried for decades to get my father to ban it, but the war was coming, and he wouldn't risk isolating the Illyrians when he needed them to lead his armies. And to die for him."

"A real prize your father," Mor grumbled.

"At least he liked you," Rhys countered, then clarified for us, "my father and mother, despite being mates, were wrong for each other. My father was cold and calculating and could be vicious, as he had been trained to since birth. My mother was soft and fiery and beloved by everyone she met. She hated him after a time—but never stopped gratefully that he had saved her wings, that he had allowed her to fly whenever and wherever she wished. And when I was born and could summon the Illyrian wings as I pleased...she wanted me to know her people's culture."

"She wanted to keep you out of your father's claws," Mor commented as she twirled her wine.

"That too," Rhys conceded, "When I turned eight, my mother brought me to one of the Illyrian war camps. To be trained, as all Illyrian males were trained. And like all Illyrian mothers, she shoved me toward the sparring ring on the first day, and walked away without looking back."

"She abandoned you?" Asked Feyre.

"No—Never," Rhys growled with a ferocity I'd heard only twice, "She was staying at the camp as well. But it is considered an embarrassment for a mother to coddle her son when he goes to train."

I gave an incredulous look and Cassian laughed, "Backward, like he said,"

"I was scared out of my mind," Rhys admitted, no shame to be found. "I'd been learning to wield my powers, but Illyrian magic was a mere fraction of it. And its rare amongst them—and its rare amongst them—usually possessed only by the most powerful, pure-bred warriors." I narrowed my eyes in curiosity, "I tried to use a siphon during those years," he said, "and shattered about a dozen before I realized it wasn't compatible—the stones couldn't hold it. My power flows, and is honed in other ways."

"So difficult being such a powerful High Lord," Mor teased.

Rhys rolled his eyes at his cousin, "the camp lord banned me from using my magic. For all our sakes. But I had no idea how to fight when I set foot into that training ring that day. The other boys in my age group knew it, too. Especially one in particular, who took a look at me, and beat me into a bloody mess."

"You were so clean," Cassian said.

─── · 。ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

A/N: Omgggg, thank you all sooooo much for your comments, I literally sobbed reading them.