Shadows Whisper | | Azriel

33

For three entire days, Astryn did not speak. She hardly ate, hardly drank water, hardly even moved at all, and she did not speak.

Azriel understood it. He had had days like that when he first found his freedom, when words were beyond him. He, Cassian, and Rhys hadn't yet been friends yet when he still had those days. He dwelled in Rhys's mother's home with the two other boys, but the three of them absolutely detested each other. On very first of all of the days Azriel couldn't bring himself to speak, Rhys and Cassian had assumed he was staying silent just to taunt them. They reacted as any Illyrian boy would at being taunted—they tried to start a fight over it. Azriel could still vividly recall that fight, if it could even be called that.

He had been sitting outside, somewhere I. The back of his mind a ticking clock echoing as if he expected someone to come out and drag him back to his father's keep, to deprive him of sunlight—any light again. He tensed when Rhys and Cassian approached, both already thoroughly annoyed with his silence. Rhys was slightly more peeved than Cassian, because Azriel hadn't even spoken to his mother, hadn't replied when she greeted the boys all with a kind, warm good morning. Rhys saw that as the deepest disrespect possible. Azriel remembered the utter fury that arose in Rhys any time anyone disrespected his mother or sister in any way. So, Azriel ignoring his mother was the deepest of sins as far as young Rhys was concerned. Cassian and Rhys tried one last time to get Azriel to speak, had asked a taunting question about his silence. And his lips didn't even twitch, there wasn't even the beginning of words.

Rhys's fists went flying, landing right on Azriel's face. Cassian joined in, and it was the first time he and Rhys had fought side by side instead of against each other—they first time they were truly any sort of team. They both stopped as soon as they realized that Azriel wasn't fighting back, that he wasn't going to fight back. They could have beat him to death at that moment and he would have allowed it. He didn't make a single sound, he didn't cry or protest or make threats or do anything other than take all the punches in silence. The two young boys had stopped their beating and Azriel could practically taste their guilt, as much as he could taste his own blood in his mouth. Cassian and Rhys hadn't ever really felt guilty over anything before that day.

They left Azriel in the mud, and when he eventually trudged back to the house after the sun set, he didn't say a word when Rhys's mother asked who did that to him.

Azriel was silent the next day too, and when one of the other boys in the camp tried to bother him about it, Rhys and Cassian teamed up for the second time and beat that boy so fiercely he couldn't go to training the next day.

Azriel was dead silent for a week straight that time. During training and at home and when he snuck off and sat in the mud and let himself feel the sun on his skin for as long as it hung in the sky. He had little appetite during that week, but Rhys's mother paid him a little extra attention, made sure he ate and stayed hydrated and didn't waste away in his misery.

After that week, it was like a switch was flipped. Azriel hadn't ever talked much, but even those few words seemed like such a miracle after a week of silence. Over a month went by before Azriel had another one of his spurts of silence. Again, Rhys and Cassian teamed up and beat any boy who dared to taunt Azriel over his unexplained silence. It went on longer that time, long enough that the camp lord took it on himself to try to beat the silence out of Azriel—in front of everyone. It was unnerving even for all the little would-be warriors who practically lived off violence. Azriel took the beating like it was nothing. He made no sounds, did not apologize when the camp lord demanded he did. He didn't cry out a single time, not even when the bone in his arm snapped. The camp lord himself was off-put by the way Azriel took the beating, the complete and utter silence he sat through it with.

Rhys and Cassian had to carry Azriel home at the end of that beating, and he still didn't say a word. He didn't even seem to feel any of the pain he was surely in. It was two days later that he finally spoke. He was confined to his bed because he couldn't walk after that beating—not even his Illyrian healing helped get him back on his feet that soon. Rhys had come in, assigned the chore of bringing Azriel lunch. It was the first and, for many years, only time Rhys had seen Azriel cry. The young shadowsinger had been trying desperately to open the curtains that had been drawn shut, but he only managed to agitate his wounds. He looked to Rhys with so much pain and desperation as he spoke pleadingly.

"The sun," he had sobbed, "I need the sun. I get an hour."

Rhys's eyebrows had furrowed in confusion, but he rushed to open the curtains and Azriel collapsed back again the bed like all the things haunting him had gone out of that window. He didn't speak again for five days.

So, Azriel understood Astryn's silence. He understood the things that must have been going through her head, especially here in her prison.

He didn't press her to speak, to tell him what she was thinking. He just sat and waited. He made sure she ate and drank enough, made sure she didn't allow herself to waste away as he knew she would have if left alone.

The days felt like hell as he waited and waited, but he weathered it by her side in a silence of solidarity. It was what he had wished for all those years ago—for someone to just be silent with him. He gave that to Astryn and he hoped it was enough.