Shadows Whisper | | Azriel

31

Azriel could sense Astryn's absence before he was even halfway to her room, but he still ran there. Ran there as if he didn't trust his own senses and thought he would find her in the room.

The room was empty, as he knew it would be. His heart felt like it stopped in his chest.

He stormed right back out of the room, door left open behind himself, and back to Rhys's office. The High Lord was still sat at his desk looking like misery personified, but he straightened up and became alert at how Azriel came in.

"Astryn is gone," the shadowsinger announced, "she must have managed to winnow passed the wards again. She's gone."

"Do you think she went back—back to that place?" Rhys questioned, standing up suddenly.

"That's the most likely place," Azriel muttered with a nod, "that's where she went last time."

Azriel was angry. He was furious with himself for not being with her, for not staying by her side so she at least didn't go there alone. But, heavier than the anger, was his complete devastation. Astryn would rather be in that cell than be here. How much horror had she been put through that she was so accustomed to imprisonment that freedom wasn't something she knew how to handle?

Azriel remembered when he was a child, when he had been dumped in that camp where he met Rhys and Cassian and everything was so new and overwhelming. He remembered that, for a long time, he craved the darkness he had been kept in for the beginning of his life because he didn't know what to do with so much light and life and noise. He took a long time to adjust to being outside for longer than an hour each day, to having even that much freedom. Getting used to the sun on his face for more than that painfully short hour took him a long time. Getting used to everything else took even longer. And, some days, as vile as he knew it was and as much as he resented what had been done to him, he didn't know how to deal with being free. He didn't know how to deal with the strict training regimen or the two boys and the kind female who brought him into their home or the fact that he could go outside as often as he wanted for as long as he wanted. He didn't know how to deal with not being locked away, and it took him so long to accept freedom and find a way to grow beyond what had been done to him. Freedom was a privilege to him, and he was surrounded by people who only knew it to be a right. Some days, he still felt overly aware of the differences between him and his brothers, what had been taken from him that they had never once lost. And it had been over a hundred years.

For Astryn, it had only been a few days. And she had run back to her prison. He knew what drove her there are surely as he knew the thought process that would keep her there. It might not be good—it might be the most horrid thing she had ever endured, but at least it was consistent.

He knew things were different for Astryn than they were for him—she didn't get the hour every day that he got. Even if an hour was hardly anything, it was better than nothing. And he saw his mother once a week, only for an hour, but still once every week. Astryn didn't have that—her mother had thrown her to her captors like she was worth nothing to her. Her mother was just as vile as everyone else involved in her torment. Azriel understood completely why Astryn didn't know how to be here, how to feel okay with freedom when she hadn't ever known it. She had spent her whole life imprisoned. He knew the scars that left, the deep, unhealing wounds that never fully stopped stinging. He knew why that cell felt like more of a home than the strange world she had been shoved into.

He swallowed back the nausea that filled him and looked to Rhys.

"She won't be ready to leave that place yet," he spoke the words slowly and carefully. "I'm going to pack a bag—food and water and clothes—and I'll stay with her there for however long it takes for her to be ready to face the world. If you try to make her leave before she's ready, I will tear you apart, Rhys."

"Staying there can't be good for her," Rhys insisted weakly, but he knew Azriel wouldn't be swayed.

"Do not rush her," Azriel warned lowly, "I'll stay by her side in that place for as long as she needs it. And then I'll bring her home."

Rhys swallowed back the emotions rising in him and just nodded. He knew he didn't understand this the way Azriel seemed to. He knew Azriel's understanding of this had nothing to do with Astryn being his mate. This has to do with the ways the two of them were the same, the ways both of their childhoods had been robbed from them as they were locked away in darkness.

This was a connection wholly different than the mating bond, something formed in deeply rooted trauma that Rhys knew he would never understand. Even if he were to be locked away now, it wouldn't give him the understanding Azriel had of what was going through Astryn's head. If he were to be locked away now, he'd have still known freedom, he'd know how to readjust himself to it. Astryn and Azriel couldn't readjust to freedom when they first escaped their prisons, because they hadn't ever had freedom. They had only known fear and darkness and imprisonment since the very beginning of their lives, and that was something Rhys knew he was incapable of ever truly grasping.

So, he gave Azriel a nod and he promised to stay away.