A Song of Faithless Shadows

21. Wayfare

Azriel

So much for getting Gwyneth's sleeping schedule fixed. The second we take flight the following morning, she's asleep in my arms, nose tucked into my chest. Gods she could fall asleep anywhere.

I can tell there's something stewing in Avar. A question. A curse. Something. My shadows confirm as much. He was... troubled. If I had any sense, I'd wake Gwyneth. I wasn't good with alleviating pain. I was good at sitting in it.

"You said that the High Lord offered you diplomatic immunity long ago," he says into the biting wind, reasoning out each syllable. "To take your revenge."

I adjust my grip on Gwyneth. "Is that a question?"

"A prompt."

I glance at the kid. I didn't really speak about my family much, lest of all to strangers, but in all fairness, the only thing strange about Avar is that he was like looking in a mirror. When I was his age, I, too, had been seduced by the idea of revenge, uncertain on how to take it.

"The thing about revenge is that you really can't get it on the behalf of another," I say. "I could've shredded my father to ribbons, bound my half brothers to the bottom of a lake, locked my step mother up where she used to chain me, and it wouldn't have done a thing for my mother. It would've been for me and my retribution alone."

"So they walk freely?" Avar blinks, unable to understand it.

I shake my head. "I didn't have to do a thing to them but survive," I reply. "There is no freedom in looking over your shoulder the rest of your life." I knew precisely what had become of them. My father had succumbed to fever not even a century ago. My promotion in Rhysand's court gave them no peace. It was enough to scare my step mother and half-brothers into moving far from Lajeet to the countryside. My half-brothers never quite could make it as warriors, so they lived with their mother as fur trappers, forever skinning the weak and defenseless for their own benefit.

"Was that your intention in leaving them alive?"

A smile graces my lips. "An unexpected perk."

"I always hear tales about you. The Shadowsinger," he says allusively, as if speaking about some far off folktale- like Balthazar. "They say you can make a man wish he was dead in twenty minutes with just a dagger and a dark room."

"Ten."

"But you aren't nearly as insidious." He sounds disappointed.

"That's because you're just a kid, and this is me trying to be gentle," I reply, though I have heard rumors that some Illyrians mothers tell bedtime stories about the boy locked in the dark, who comes out of the shadows when children misbehave. I honestly don't mind the stories as long as no one tells my nephew.

Avar scoffs. "I'm not just a kid."

I glance at him again to verify. "In the grand scheme of things, yeah, you're just a kid."

"And you're escorting me to a nest of traitors," he replies solidly. "So I suppose that makes this child endangerment."

I roll my eyes. This little asshole is definitely me a couple centuries ago. "And would you have gone back home if I suggested it?"

"Kicking and screaming."

"Then, there you go."

Avar smiles for the first time since we found him, and I find myself smiling too. It's not often I can do that for people... make things better. It's short-lived, the whisper of shadows in my ear. "Look alive, Gwyneth," I adjust my grip, letting my shadows wake her. She was much more receptive to them than me.