To Ashes and Ruins [Azriel]

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

My fingers ached in complaint as I tightened my grip around the bone hilt of the stolen dagger hidden deep in my pocket. It was nothing spectacular, a blade left behind in the long but narrow chest in my brother's room. I always took at least one, though the bone had come to be my favourite in the familiar way it sat in my palm like the very thing was carved specifically for me. Rhysand never noticed it was gone or he never bothered to say anything.

Ice crunched under my boots. The laces were fraying and the soles worn thin but I refused to purchase anything new until my toes froze at the will of the forsaken winter that stole all semblance of heat in the Illyrian Mountains. Mother labelled me as a stubborn mule for it, but like the blade, I had grown fond of the way they moulded to my feet and would shove away the annoyance of fresh and stilted leather until I had no other choice.

But my brother needed new gloves and he wasn't one to complain about those things. So I trekked through the haze of white, shielding my eyes from the snow being swept by wind threatening to surge into a blizzard. I didn't mind the idea of the storm, a secret and deep part of me hoped it would come and last for as many days as it would hold. The cabin had enough stocked in the pantries that we could outlast two months of raging blizzards. Because even now black forms darted through across the grey sky, landing with a thunderous greeting on the main training field, wings ominously flared on their early return. Rhysand would be amongst them, probably irate at having to cut the day's efforts short.

Rhys typically returned in the hour after dark, drenched in sweat and mud and burdens only a keen eye could find. He'd spend the next part of the night in the baths, shedding from all the things I loathed to see on him before joining us for a meagre meal and finally crawling to his bed to do it all the next day.

But a blizzard would keep him home.

It was not entirely a selfish thought, I contended. I knew that those days when he was forced to laze around gave him the time to regather the strength not just in body, but mind. But yes, I wished for those days for the comfort and company they brought—though I'd never admit those secret wishes, wondering if the Mother truly listened as my own mother always warned.

I could barely see by the time I was shouldering a rickety wooden door open, a copper bell ringing overhead. The shopkeeper, a firm but plump looking merchant had a large piece of his right wing missing. I never dared ask, but from the stories I heard whispered and from those Rhys had told me, he lost that chunk during the War. Male Illyrians were bred for war and battle, bloodshed ingrained in their very bones, and when that was refused to them, they fell to the sour-faced expression the shopkeeper wielded.

"We're closing up," he said stiffly. The stiffness surfaced in recognition of who his customer happened to be, the leering brown eyes finding my own, twitching like an echo of what he couldn't do with the rest of his body.

It didn't affect me. Not when I had spent the past thirty years peering right back into those eyes across many faces. The concoction of hesitance and hatred for the wings they saw on my back they believed were misplaced with the curved point of my ears. Half-breed brute, they called my brother. Half-breed slum they called me.

"I know what I need," I said, turning towards the shelf with gloves, offering no opening for him to argue. I didn't waste time examining each one though, not daring test his patience and scanned across the selections of gloves—leathers and wool—. I pulled a pair of thick but flexible leather. I held the material against my own hand, the black fingers spearing long past my own. "These will do." I tossed them on the counter strewn with swatches of fabric.

The shopkeeper seemed to want to refuse, hands furling where they were near hidden behind the register, but I held like stone and didn't recoil when his expression turned testing. "There's a storm brewing," I said calmly, despite my words, like I had all the time in the world. Though I hadn't meant it, I felt the tendrils of power leak from me. I never meant to. What that power intended to do other than warn, even I wasn't privy to. It came and went at its own desire, lingering but never quite surfacing as though it was a snake burrowed in the long grass, waiting for the right prey for it to finally strike. Apparently, the bloodthirst nature of Illyrian warriors wasn't enough of a threat. "I think we'd both prefer to get this over and done with. How much?"