The Whispers of Shadows - A&A One Shots

meeting aurora - azriel's pov

There wasn't a tremble in Azriel's fingers often, but in this moment, he felt as if his whole body was about to crumble. Sat at the dining table in the House of Wind, Azriel ran through what was to come. Mor had told him to meet the female they had saved, the one held in a dirt room for centuries. He had listened to the soldiers talk about her; he had heard of the creature beneath the ground that was placed there for their own boredom. Azriel despised how they spoke about the female in the dirt room, the names they called her.

"She's not pretty but it gets the job done."

"If you hit her hard enough, she won't fight back."

"They haven't fed her in a week. She shouldn't move too much."

"I heard her screams last night, sounds like you did your work with her."

Azriel cringed at the thoughts spinning in his mind and let out a small yet shaking breath. He saw what she looked like in that environment. The creature they spoke about was a female curled into a ball in the dirt, rags over her too-thin body, hair matted and coated in years of dirt, tears, and who knows what else. The stench was too thick. When he had let those shadows envelope him in the corner of her cell, he knew that her body didn't work well enough to digest the 'food' they provided. He saw the piles of bile and waste, the remnants of stale bread and rotten vegetables.

He couldn't fathom why someone would send a female into that. Azriel had tried to uncover anything he could about why she had been placed in there; if she was some dangerous criminal or mentally unstable enough that she posed a threat. The only thing he found was that she was a child that wished to wield a sword. Disgust rattled through him at the thought of the monster that brought her in there.

Azriel straightened and lifted his eyes to the corridor that Mor had walked down. Footsteps sounded, telling him that it was time to face the female he had saved. Mor appeared first, a grim look on her beautiful face. Azriel swallowed and saw the shuffling feet behind her. He stood and cleared his throat, lifting his chin to feign the cold calm. Mor shifted to the side, allowing the female to be mostly seen.

Green eyes met his, or what could be considered green; they held no light, no life. The dullest of shades that reflected nothing but emptiness. Azriel couldn't help but feel the tightness in his chest at the sight of her. A High Fae female, shorter than the ones in his life already, beside Amren. Her cheeks were sunken in, skin pale enough to see the blue veins beneath.

In that dark room, he hadn't seen her entirely, just a hidden figure swallowed into the shadows that lived with her. Now, he wished he hadn't taken this chance to meet her. Fury rippled in his stomach and fingers. The urge to slaughter the entirety of the Winter Court bit at his every fiber. This female was no larger than a child before maturity. Someone nearly his own age that was drowning in the smallest of Night Court attire.

His eyes ran over the hair that laid down her neck. He remembered what it looked like within that cell: Coated in dirt, blood, vomit. A color that he knew would be the type to capture the essence of the setting sun, but for now, it was nothing more than tattered, stringy, torn strands. A mass of knots sat at the back of her head, the ends braided together. Around her face held a halo of broken hairs that had no where else to go.

Sensing that he had stared far too long, Azriel reached a hand out to her. "I'm Azriel."

He noticed the slight flinch at his motion and then the way those empty eyes fell to his hand. Azriel swallowed and tucked his hand back at his side. That familiar self loathing soured his tongue. How dare he assume she would be so willing to touch a hand like his?

"I'm Aurora." A sweet, small voice. Nothing more than a breath in the wind, yet he heard it in its entirety. His eyes found hers again and he didn't dare blink. It was something about how frail she seemed, he didn't want to lose the contact they had. Would she follow the wind and disappear? Would she run and hide? Would he ever have the chance to see her again? He felt something tug in his stomach. Her eyes remained wide, shadows and veins surrounding that hollow stare.