Shadows Whisper | | Azriel

75

y'all are about to hate me soooooo much will not blame u if u yell at me over the next 2-3 chapters

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Azriel finished cooking for Astryn and took the plate to where she was still curled up in bed. She didn't even glance his way.

"You need to eat," he said, his tone devoid of the affection he usually spoke to her with as he held out the plate piled high with pancakes and bacon.

"I'm not hungry," she responded, still not bothering to spare him a glance.

Azriel took let out a sharp breath.

"Fine," he muttered, "don't eat then."

Despite his words, he left the plate on the nightstand for her.

He wandered back outside and sat at the table he had out there. Cassian joined him within a few minutes.

"You know avoiding her isn't going to make this go away," Cassian pointed out, "you're going to have to have a conversation with her."

"I don't recall asking you for advice," Azriel snapped, glaring at the horizon, "mind your own business before I decide you've overstayed your welcome."

"I think you forget how little time has gone by," Cassian remarked, a frown on his face. "You know what she came from. How well do you think ordering her around about her powers will go?"

"So, you think it would be better if I just let her hurt herself? Hurt you? Wreck the entire city?" Azriel challenged, fear underlying the frustration he hid behind.

"It would be better if you just talked to her instead of giving her orders about what she has to do," Cassian reasoned, "you can't tell her what to do with her power. She needs to make this decision for herself."

"If it was left up to her, she'd just resort to faebane to try to make it go away," Azriel muttered bitterly, "she doesn't want to deal with it. She just wants to hide from it and I can't...she won't even try because she's so fucking scared of it but I—I'll lose her if she doesn't learn to control herself. I'll lose her. Fuck. I can't lose her."

"Tell her how you feel instead of ordering her around," Cassian advised, his tone letting Azriel know he thought this was something that shouldn't have to be said. It should be obvious.

"I doubt it would make a difference if I did," Azriel mumbled, anger seeping into his tone. It wasn't anger at Astryn, but instead anger at everyone who had hurt her and taught her to fear herself, everyone who made her resent the power she was robbed of the chance to learn and weird as it developed. And at himself, at himself for the words that slipped out next. "They broke so many parts of her."

Cassian's eyes lit up with rage now, and he whirled on Azriel, standing so swiftly that the chair tipped over and clattered to the ground. His fist slammed against Azriel's jaw, and the shadows milling about the backyard did nothing to stop that blow from landing—as if they too thought he deserved it.

"Don't you dare let your own fucking self pity reflect on her," Cassian hissed lowly before he stormed inside.

Inside, Astryn could hear the thought as it fluttered through her mate's mind.

He thought she was broken.

It was something she had thought about herself so many times already, but Azriel hadn't ever treated her like she was broken. He hadn't ever looked at her like she was broken. But then she shook an entire city and still refused to learn to take control of her power, and now he saw what she saw. He saw that she had been broken.

She wondered if he would still love her now, or if that had vanished when he stopped seeing her as whole. Maybe he would stop loving her, stop wanting her. Maybe he already had.

The plate of food he had left for her turned to dust, and then the dust turned to nothing as she stared at it. She sat up in bed then. Her movements were numb as she stood and slipped her slippers on.

"You are not allowed to follow," she muttered to the shadows that tried to trail after her, "you are not welcome."

Quietly, numbly, she walked right out of the house.

She didn't know where she was going, not really. Azriel's house was on the furthest outskirts of the city, so far from its lovely center. But she didn't even really want to go into the heart of Velaris. That heart that she nearly reduced to rubble, all because she wasn't brave enough to learn some damn self-control.

She didn't want to be in Velaris. But where else was there for her? It was this city, or the cave, or the hell that was the Autumn Court. Those places were the only things she had ever known.

This city...she didn't think she was worthy of it anymore. If she returned to the cave, Azriel would just find her there and bring her back here because, whether either of them liked it or not, there was no escaping the bond they had accepted. The Autumn Court wasn't an option, because it would likely eventually lead to Rhys's death.

She was left with the bleak, terrifying realization that she really had nothing of her own. She hadn't thought about it before. She lived in her brother's home in his city. When she wasn't there, she was at Azriel's house. Her clothes came from Rhys. Her food came from either Rhys or Azriel.

She didn't know how she hadn't thought about it before. She had nothing. Absolutely nothing. There wasn't a single thing to her name. Even her own name had paled in comparison to the titles she had been given—the High Lord's sister, the shadowsinger's mate. Those things mattered more than her name, more than anything about herself. She was no one outside of those things, had nothing outside of those things.

Even before this, before she was rescued from that cave, she was still just Rhys's sister, the sister who could one day bring death to him. She was locked away and used because she was his sister.

Her mind drifted to Cassian as she wondered if he might be the only person in the world who saw her as anything other than Azriel's mate and Rhys's sister. She remembered what he had said to her one day.

"It doesn't matter to me who you are to them," he had said so genuinely, "I'm your friend because of who you are. Not because of who you are to anyone else, just because of who you are."

She didn't know who she was though, who it was that Cassian had said he thought of as a friend. She didn't ever take the time to figure that out. She had been content with letting herself be Azriel's mate, had begun to accept being Rhys's sister. She now found herself wondering if she wanted to be either of those things anymore.

She didn't know if she could just walk away from the bond, or if she could somehow part with her own bloodline. Those things both seemed inescapable. But maybe if she found a place far enough away, her resemblance to her brother wouldn't be seen because his face wouldn't be known. Maybe in that place Azriel's name wouldn't be a thing that struck fear into anyone because it would be a name no one there knew. Maybe a place like that existed and she could escape and find some identity for herself, an identity worthy of that care her only friend had shown her.

She tried to ignore the bond as she walked, tried to ignore the burst of panic she felt from Azriel's end of it when he realized she was gone hours after she left, when he realized she had forbidden the shadows from following her, when he realized that dreadful thought he had had echoed in her mind.

And she didn't care. She didn't know how it happened, but like a flick of a switch inside of her, she just didn't care about Azriel's panic. He would get over it when he realized she did them both a favor by leaving. He wouldn't have a broken mate to put up with, and she wouldn't have to look at him knowing what he truly thought of her.

Astryn wasn't sure if it was closure or maybe some bit of cruelty that she didn't know she had that had her sending one thought down the bond towards Azriel. She could see the way the one word crashed against his mind like a wave that threatened to drown his entire existence.

Goodbye.