Shadows Whisper | | Azriel

2

Azriel spent the next three days going back and forth between being unconscious and being awake but almost entirely incoherent.

He was feverish—pale, constantly too warm, drenched in sweat, and vomiting every so often. At least he wasn't bleeding anymore. Whenever he was awake, he kept mumbling about what the shadows were screaming at him.

"She's coming," he muttered, half asleep, "she's coming, she's coming, she's coming."

"Has he said anything else?" Mor asked, looking at Rhys over Azriel.

"Not since the first night but even then it was hardly anything I understood," Rhys answered with a grave expression, "Amren is looking into it but she's finding nothing. I'm considering going to the Day Court and asking Helion for his assistance. Maybe this is some sort of spell."

"You think someone did this to him?" Mor pressed, eyes narrowing.

"A spy has no shortage of enemies," Rhysand reasoned, "it might be whoever the she his shadows are talking about that's responsible for this."

"Then we'll find her and kill her," Mor said simply.

"That might not put an end to his suffering," Rhys pointed out the obvious. "Killing her might not bring him back to us."

"That doesn't mean she should live," Mor snapped, glaring at her cousin. "If she's responsible for this, she dies."

"I agree," Rhysand assured her, "but we can't just find and kill her right away. We have to question her—figure out how to stop this. And even if we could just kill her no questions asked, we have no idea who she is or where she is or even what she looks like. It'd be impossible to find her based off the one thing we know."

"If the one thing we do know about her is true, then we won't need to find her," Mor reminded him, glancing down at Azriel as his lips moved forming the words again but no sound came out. "According to him, she's coming."

Rhys started to reply but cut himself off when Azriel's breathing quickened—shallow, panicked breaths escaping him as gasps. His eyes were glazed over, glassy and distant, and his lips were no longer forming the same words over and over.

Azriel's shadows had broken into his brain and once again sent him back into that cave where the girl was chained away. This time, there was light. The girl wasn't the only one there. Azriel couldn't tell who the others were, but they stood right outside of her cell with their appearances glamoured so they were nothing more than blurs.

The girl, though, Azriel could see her clearly now. Her violet eyes shined with fear as she stared at the blurry figures standing outside of her cell. They were talking, but their voices were wrong, glamoured just as their appearances were. She had dark hair, long and tangled and dirty. Every bit of her seemed to be dirty, caked in dirt and bruises and cuts. Azriel's eyes zeroed in on the chains and he took in a sharp breath—faebane, he could smell it. It made him nauseous. She was thin, and Azriel wondered when the last time she had been fed was. She looked like she had been starved for years. Nothing stood out the way her violet eyes did. They seemed to burn right through Azriel's skin and bones and into his soul.

He stopped breathing for a moment when she looked at him again, her violet eyes going wide.

"Please," she begged him, "please don't leave me here again."

"Who are you?" Azriel asked before a better question occurred to him. "Where are you?"

"I don't know. I don't know. Please just don't leave me here with them. Please," she pressed urgently, "don't do it again, please."

"Who are you?" he repeated, but he could feel everything starting to fade away. The shadows laughed at him as the girl sobbed, the attention of the two blurry figures turned to her now—demanding to know who she was speaking to.

"Please," the girl screamed as Azriel disappeared.

Those violet eyes burned his brain.

When he came back to himself, there was another pair of violet eyes, these ones more familiar. Despite the familiarity, these eyes still filled him with dread and a strangled scream escaped him as he weakly tried to shove Rhys away.

"Azriel—" Mor started off, exchanging a worried look with Rhys.

"No," Azriel screamed, clutching his head in pain as the shadows cackled in his mind, "no, no—"

He rolled over onto his side and vomited on the floor before turning back over to lay on his back. He writhed around in pain on the bed, mumbling so incoherently that Mor and Rhys couldn't make out a single word of it.

"I'm going to Helion for help," Rhys said after a moment of tense silence. "This has to be some type of spell. If he can't undo it, maybe he could at least find a way to lead us to the source. Make sure Azriel is not left alone."

Mor could only manage a nod in response, her eyes not leaving Azriel. It was unsettling to see him like this. She didn't think she had ever seen him show it when he was in pain. He was normally so skilled at hiding things that he could be in agony and no one would guess it. But here he was, pale and sweating and squirming in pain. Shadows swirled around him uncontrollably and she knew from what she had been told that the shadows had turned against him and were screaming in his mind. The thought alone was enough to make her own head hurt.

A pained groan slipped out of Azriel and he squeezed his eyes shut.

"She's coming," he muttered again, "she's coming, she's coming, she's coming—"

"Az," Mor cut in quietly, "who is she? Do you know who she is?"

"She's coming," he repeated as if she hadn't said a word, "she's coming, she's coming, she's coming."

"Who is she?" Mor pressed, and Azriel's breath shook.

"She's coming," he said again, "she's coming."

"Azriel, come on, do you know who she is?" Mor urged, searching his pained expression for any hints.

"She has his eyes," he croaked out, sounding like it hurt to say anything other than what he had been muttering on repeat. "She has his eyes. She's coming, she's coming—"

"What? Whose eyes?" Mor questioned urgently, relieved to have gotten anything but trying to find more still. Something to lead them to the girl.

Azriel opened his mouth and then shut it again, a sob shaking his body. It hurt. It was agonizing to try to share any of the information. The shadows didn't want him to say it. They screamed and curled around his throat and down it, choking him. Despite that, he forced himself to try to speak.

"Rh—Rhys," he spoke in a strangled voice, "Rhys. She has Rhys's eyes."

"What else?" Mor pushed, hoping there was something more he could tell her. "What else do you know about her? Do you know where she is?"

"Cave," he gritted out, face twisted up in pain, "chains. She's in chains. She—"

He cut himself off with a gasp and his hands shot up to his throat. His nails dragged down his throat, tearing the skin.

"Azriel," Mor's voice was muffled to him as he scratched his throat. She grabbed his wrists and pulled his hands away from his throat, feeling a little nauseated by the shredded skin. Azriel was still trying to talk but nothing but incoherent mutters could escape him. "It's okay," she tried to assure him, "you don't have to say anything else. Just relax, it's okay."

"She's coming," he sobbed, his voice so painfully strained, "she's coming, she's coming."