Femme Fatale (Azriel x OC)

1. Esmeray

"You're afraid," Rhysand said, taking a seat on one of the plush chairs that adorned the balcony. He was dressed in his usual finery, a weapon that the wasn't entirely sure how to go about removing just yet. And clothes were most definitely a weapon, even if only a psychological one.

I let my eyes flicker over him, trying to match him with the male that I knew all those years ago, but it just wasn't possible. Life under Amarantha's rule had stripped away what we had once been, turning us animalistic and cruel. And I... I wasn't sure how to go back from that. I wasn't sure Rhys was either.

"So are you," I stated, letting my eyes drift back over to the view of the rising sun. It had been years since I'd actually seen the sun. In the rare instances that Amarantha allowed me out of Under the Mountain, it was almost always at night.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Rhysand shrugging his shoulders in a carefree, lazy sort of way. That was just another one of the High Lord's masks - a way to hide the true extent of the threat that he was. Even when it was just the two of us, we couldn't drop the facade.

"We've already waited long enough," he said softly. "They know that things have ended... Too much longer and they'll come for us."

I let out a tinkling laugh, one that was feminine and soft and so well rehearsed that I was certain that I could do it in my sleep. Or when I was so drunk that I couldn't remember my own name - which was the same thing really.

"You," I corrected, sending him the slightest of smiles. "They'll come for you."

"You're one of us," Rhysand insisted, voice sharper than what I've grown accustomed to. "You spent fifty years as a slave to help keep them safe and they'll respect that, no matter your differences before."

I just shook my head. "Easy for you to say. You've been stuck here with me." I looked at him, really looked at him. We had seen each other at our ugliest, with blood, sweat, and tears binding us together in a way that I hadn't known possible. "If it hadn't just been the two of us all these years... If it had just been me that disappeared for almost fifty years and I just showed back up out of nowhere. Would you see me as someone other than the female you knew back then?"

Rhys ran a hand through his hair, a rare break of character. "Esme... If I could take it all back-"

"That wasn't the question," I told him with a soft sigh. It was sweet of him to attempt to spare my feelings, but I already knew the answer. "If we had been separated for that fifty years only to come back into contact... neither of us knowing what the other had gone through... you would look at me and see the bratty, problem-making child that you had to keep close because of the threat I posed."

He looked down at his clasped hands. We hadn't been close until after we were both forced into slavery. Before that, I'd just been a fae child too powerful to let fall into the wrong hands. A nuisance to him and his plans, but his morals had kept him from executing me, so I had been more or less shoved off to the side.

Rhys nodded his head slowly. "Fine. You're right."