Shadows Whisper | | Azriel

32

Astryn was curled up on the floor when she heard Azriel approaching. For a split second, she wondered if he was here to kill her. She knew that couldn't be the case though. He wouldn't have come alone if it were true.

Azriel stopped short when he saw Astryn. She was curled up in a corner, and the scent of her power was diminished slightly. He knew why—she had wrapped the remnants of the faebane chains Rhys had broken her out of around herself. Around her neck and her wrists. Azriel felt like he might vomit.

"Astryn...let's get those things off of you," Azriel said softly, taking a small step closer.

"No," Astryn muttered, pressing herself back against the wall—away from him. "They make it quieter."

Azriel swore he felt something inside of him break.

"Please," he whispered with some terrible desperation, "please. We can stay in here if you need it but you have to take those things off. Please."

"I need it," she mumbled, "I need it, Azriel. I don't want power or—or anything. It's so loud and heavy. I want...I need to stay here like this. I need it."

Azriel took in a sharp breath as he winced. He took in her appearance a bit more now. She was paler than usual, shaking and sweaty on the stone floor.

"Astryn—" he began, but she didn't let him finish as a sob tore through her and she gripped the chains like she thought he would yank them off of her.

"I need it," she repeated through her tears, "I need it."

Azriel wondered if it was possible for her to be suffering from withdrawal, if she was addicted to the nothingness faebane filled her with. She clearly didn't want her power. Maybe that numbness was better to her. Maybe it was something she craved so deeply that she would take whatever of it she could get even if it was from the broken remains of chains.

"Those chains won't make your power go away," Azriel told her gently, approaching slowly and sitting next to her. "No amount of faebane could eve make your power really go away. It can stifle it—stifle you, but that power won't ever go away. It's part of you. You can learn to master it, to control that part of yourself. Faebane won't help you. Feeling that power and learning to control it is what will help. Please take those chains off."

"I can't," she sobbed, curling up on herself a little more. "I can't."

"Then let me," Azriel requested, "let me do it for you."

Astryn sniffled as tears ran down her cheeks, but she nodded.

She sobbed harder as Azriel unwrapped the chains from around her neck first. She didn't want him to take the chains off, not really. But he sounded so sad that she couldn't bear to say no to him. She couldn't do it, couldn't hurt him like that. So, she let him do it even as she shook and cried at the loss of that feeling of protection the faebane gave her.

"It's okay," he muttered, so soft and kind, "it'll be okay."

He gently pulled her to himself, cradled her against himself on his lap with his arms around her securely.

He remembered when he was a child and he had first been given his freedom. He remembered those nights he would sob all alone in his room while Rhys and Cassian slept alone in theirs. He remembered when Rhys's mother caught him crying one night, and she held him while he cried. He had resisted it at first—Illyrians weren't supposed to cry and be cradled like that, they were supposed to be stronger—so she just sat with him instead of forcing him to let her hold him. But, night after night, when he sobbed over nightmares and memories, Rhys's mother came and sat by his side. Eventually, after so many nights, he crawled onto her lap and let her hold him like she was his own mother. He let her hold him and comfort him as he mourned himself, mourned the years that he spent so alone that he thought he might as well have been dead during the those years save for the hour each week that he had with his mother. He doubted he ever would have recovered even a little bit if Rhys's mother hadn't stayed awake with him those nights, hadn't sat with him while he cried and sat with him when he stopped crying enough to speak and told her about the horrors he had faced in the time he spent living with his father and his wicked brothers—told her things he never spoke a word of to anyone else.

Rhys's mother helped him put so many broken pieces of himself back together, and he wished she was here now, because he knew she would do the same for Astryn if she was. It wouldn't matter that Astryn was born from her mate's disloyalty, that evil intentions brought her into this world. Rhys's mother wouldn't care about those things. She'd care that Astryn was lost, lost like Azriel had been all those years ago. And Azriel knew, deep in his soul, that she would have held Astryn in her arms and stitched together everything that was falling apart.

But Rhys's mother had died twenty years ago, and Astryn would never know that comfort. Azriel wished he could give it to her in the ways it had been given to him, but he wasn't quite as skilled at it. He held her though, he held her in his arms and hoped it was even half as comforting as it had been for him when his pieces all came apart and Rhys's mother put them back together bit by broken bit.

"It'll be okay," Azriel repeated gently, Astryn's head against his chest. "It'll all be okay."

He didn't know how long it would take. Sometimes he didn't think he had ever even finished healing from his own wounds, but he was as okay as he could be. And she would be too one day. He wondered if maybe wounds like this didn't ever heal completely, if there would always be times when cold, lonely darkness felt more like home than any warm, bright family did. Never fully okay, but okay enough. Maybe that was all either of them could hope for.