𝙳𝚊𝚛𝚔 𝙿𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚍𝚒𝚜𝚎(𝙰𝙲𝙾𝚃𝙰𝚁)

𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖊𝖗 𝖙𝖜𝖊𝖑𝖛𝖊**

     Rhysand was sharing a room with Feyre, which meant I would share with my brother and his mate. I fluffed the pillow of one of the beds.

"Wouldn't it make more sense for you to share with Rhys, and me with Feyre and Eve?" I wondered, raising an eyebrow.

"Rhys just wanted an excuse to share a room with Feyre," Az joked. I laughed, but I knew he very likely wasn't wrong.

"They're mates," Eve mumbled as she put her wings away and crawled into the bed she was sharing with Az.

     I froze, eyes going wide as I turned my attention to Evelina. Mates. Rhysand had found his mate. 

"You're joking," I scoffed.

"Rhys has known for a while," she confessed. "He told me and Mor when he got back from Under the Mountain. It was the first thing he said. Not 'Eve, I missed you so much,' just 'she's my mate.'"

"Did you know this, Azriel?" I demanded, fuming because nobody told me a thing.  

"Yes," he confirmed. "My shadows found it out. But Eve had already told me."

"Nobody told me!" I argued, as I got into the bed on the right.

"We just did," he smiled, getting under the covers of his bed and adjusting his wings. "She doesn't know yet. We can't tell her." I sighed, staring at the ceiling.

"Now that I know, it seems obvious," I muttered, wondering how I hadn't caught it before. Az chuckled.

      The three of us were silent for a while as Eve cuddled up to her husband, laying her head on his chest as he wrapped his arms and wings around her. 

      Eve fell asleep quite quickly, her soft snores filling the room after just a half hour. I rolled onto my side to face my still awake brother.

"Evie was getting quite defensive of Feyre," Azriel murmured, stroking Eve's hair as she snoozed on his shoulder. 

"Well, Eve wasn't entirely wrong. She did nothing while Feyre gave everything for them," I said quietly. 

"You gave everything for me," Az recalled, glancing up at me. "I didn't do anything to stop it."

"You didn't know about it," I reminded him. "You were just a kid. I made sure to shield you from it. You had no idea about the . . . arrangement or what it entailed."

"If I had figured it out, I could've done something--"

"No," I said quietly. "There was nothing either of us could do. I mean, the one time I rejected him, look what he did to your hands. Our hands."

     Honestly, I had rejected him every time. I always kicked, screamed, and begged. Sometimes I had even hid from him. It never mattered.

     That day, he was going to let his older brother use me, too. I was to be a present for his birthday, Demetri had said.

      I rejected him. I hadn't begged like I normally did, I just said 'no.' I said vile, insulting things to both of them and spat in their faces.

     They went and found Azriel, punishing me by lighting his hands on fire. And then they did the same to me.

"Mother wrote to us," he informed me. I scoffed. "She misses you."

"I don't care," I murmured, flipping onto my back to stare at the ceiling. 

     My mother was sold to my father once she had come of age. He tortured her brutally and threw her out when she got pregnant with me.

     The two of us lived in an inn, and she was a kind female back then. She and I were closer than anything. 

     When I turned four, she began working for Az's father, I was allowed to stick around as long as I helped with the house work.

     When Az came along, everything changed. The Lord's wife, Belinda, decided to lock Az and I away from the world.

     We spent twenty-three hours a day in that cell, and I had to take care of Az all by myself. He was an infant, and I knew nothing about infants. I was only five years old. But I managed, and I raised him myself.

     While my mother had been horrified when she found out of the arrangement between Demetri and me, she had never done anything to stop it.

     She would never admit it, but I was sure part of her was relieved that Az was protected. But after she found out about the bargain, she stopped caring much about protecting me.

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

     Rhys and I stepped into the sitting room the next day. We found Nesta curled up on the couch, a book in her hands. She had her hair swept up in a braid over her head, and she was wearing a simple, lavender dress. 

     I couldn't help but notice that she looked almost peaceful like this. No sneer on her face, her eyes following the words on the page. 

     Until she realized we had entered the room. She immediately tensed, her grip on her book tightening. 

"You know how to read," I observed. She huffed, slamming her book shut.

"Do you believe all humans to be illiterate?" she snapped, her nostrils flaring.

"Not at all," I objected, shrugging. "I'm just surprised, seeing as Feyre could not read."

"Astraea's just intimidated because she couldn't read until she was sixteen," Rhys teased me. Nesta rolled her eyes, judgement in them.

"Nobody ever taught me," I defended myself to him. "Do you enjoy reading?" 

"Why are you speaking to me?" she simply asked, then went back to her book. I huffed at the dismissal as Rhys laughed at me.