Mastermind | | Azriel

1

Rhysand stared at Azriel, unblinking as he took in the information he was being presented with. After a long few moments of quiet, he spoke.

"This is the stupidest thing you've ever done. This is stupider than anything I've ever done."

"Maybe," Azriel conceded with a shrug.

"You just hired the most notorious assassin to ever exist in Prythian to kill you, Az," Rhys burst out, "how do you know you'll be able to catch him? He might just put an arrow through your back before you ever even see him."

"He won't put an arrow through me," Azriel dismissed, "and, if he does, it will be to wound, not to kill. The contract includes very specific instructions. The assassin is to capture me and torture me for information about the Night Court and then deliver my head to the Autumn Court as proof of the job done."

"You're framing the Autumn Court?" Rhys sputtered. "You can't just...you can't do this. You're not doing this."

"Too late," the shadowsinger replied, "I already delivered the contract to the assassin's drop point. It was picked up, which means the contract was accepted."

"Why didn't you just catch him when he picked up the damned contract?" he demanded furiously. "And why did you do this without consulting me first?"

"I knew you would say no," he answered honestly, "and the contracts don't work that way. They're transported with some sort of enchantment. He doesn't pick them up himself."

"He's the most notorious assassin in Prythian's history for a reason, Azriel. What if he catches you off guard and you end up dead?"

"Then you needed a better spymaster anyway," Azriel reasoned, tone dripping with indifference, "you were the one who asked me to find him."

"Not like this. In a sane way, that wouldn't end with your head on Beron Vanserra's doorstep," Rhys exclaimed in frustration. And Azriel, damn him, his eyes twinkled with amusement.

"I wasn't aware that you had a preference regarding whose doorstep my head ends up on," he quipped with dry humor. Rhys let out a huff.

"At the moment, I might leave your head on my own doorstep. This is stupid and dangerous and unnecessary and you knew it when you did it. Whatever you think you're going to prove, you're not. You made a bad call, Az, and if it ends with you dead, what are we supposed to do? We didn't all survive the godsdamn war and—we didn't survive all of that just for you to throw yourself into the chopping block."

Azriel's amusement drained away and he only shrugged, because he did not know how to tell Rhys they did not survive the same war. Rhys and Cassian...they suffered on the battlefields. Not together, of course, but they were both there, always in the fight. There was some honor in that, in a messy, twisted sort of way. It wasn't easy or clean or even close to moral, but it was more moral than what their enemies did. They were soldiers in a war. There was honor in that. Azriel was not a soldier. He was a spy, he was an assassin, he was a torturer.

His atrocities didn't occur on the battlefield. His atrocities happened in dark rooms, in cells with enemies who had set down their weapons and been promised peace. His atrocities were the families of the enemy army. Knowing if it wasn't them, it would be him. And then, in the aftermath, wondering why it hadn't been him.

He was on the right side of the war, at least that much he could say. He fought against the would be conqueror King of Hybern. He saved the lives of humans who had little chance of surviving a Fae army on their own. He was on the right side, but he fought in all the wrong ways. On the battlefield, there were...casualties. In those cells and those dark corners, there was murder. It was different to him.

Their lives in exchange for his. In exchange for Cassian's. In exchange for Mor's. Eventually, even, in exchange for Rhys's. Azriel hadn't ever mentioned that to any of them. He hadn't told them much of anything about what he did in the war, but he certainly hadn't and wouldn't ever tell them that he might have quit and just let himself be killed if not for the fact that they were threatened too.

The blood on his hands was different than what stained Rhys and Cassian.

"Az...just find a way to call this off," Rhys's tone was pleading now, "I don't need the assassin. Get the contract canceled. End this."

Azriel's stare was hard and unwavering, and Rhys knew exactly what it would take to make him back down. He was High Lord now—newly so. He could give an order, and Azriel would be helpless to so anything but follow it.

But he couldn't bring himself to do it.