A Court of Dreams and Promise

Chapter Ten

 ✦ ───── ✧ Déjà Vu ✧ ───── ✦

Azriel

Rhysand had lectured Azriel for a couple of minutes in the training ring before they had decided to transfer into Rhysand's office where his tone had immediately softened. Soon after he had begun to lecture Azriel not as a member of his Inner Circle, but as his brother, the pressure of keeping up a mask in public gone. Rhysand even tried to give him brotherly advice, something that utterly surprised Azriel and which he hadn't seen in centuries.

Azriel carefully shut the door to Rhysand's study, thinking back on what he had heard from Velaria before he and Rhysand had winnowed away.

Azriel was sweet, and he opened up for me. That was before the world broke him so utterly.

He clutched his head, his heart pounding at the sympathy within her words. Velaria was the person who truly knew him best, his best friend and mate, even after all these centuries apart.

After learning that he was a shadowsinger, the High Lord of Night,
Velaria and Rhysand's father, had taken Azriel under his wing and sent him to do his dirty work. Torture, capture, and killing that Azriel would never forget. The nightmares used to plague him every night, haunting him with glimpses of every fae he had ever hurt, every fae that he had ever killed or tortured?

And Velaria–

Velaria had been the one to break his cycle of neverending nightmares, had sat with him every night until her presence gradually chased the nightmares away.

And they had never come back.

Azriel walked out of the river house and down to the streets of Velaris, trying to clear his head. He hadn't been able to think properly since the day that Velaria had returned.

He passed by Feyre's painting studio and Emerie's story, waving hello to them both as he walked past.

He walked the entirety of the Sidra, but still he could not make up his mind, no matter how much deliberation he did.

Elain Archeron was kind, and sweet. She was so impossibly sweet after the hell she had been through. She was docile on the outside but misunderstood. Her two sisters were mates with his two brothers. They fit like an untold prophecy. The three made sisters with the three brothers of power.

Gwyn, on the other hand, had Elain's kindness to a greater degree, but she had a fire within her with a desire to be stronger than she believed herself to be. She was strong, fierce, graceful.

And then there was Velaria. Fiery, amicable, loving Velaria. His mate, his best friend. He had loved her for so long, had tried to conceal it for so long for fear of ruining their friendship, until the night they kissed for the first time.

The night at the rocks. He had taken her to the meteor shower. Their laughs had echoed into the night as they watched the bright stars shoot across the inky sky.

At the end of it, he had finally given in to his angry heart's wishes, leaned over, and kissed her.

Azriel groaned, collapsing onto a random bench. This was an impossible decision, and a decision with which he had forced himself into a corner. Each female was amazing and strong in their own right, and didn't deserve any of this. Relationships went two ways, but he had three females in front of him he had to choose from.

Was this even a decision?

Velaria was his mate, his best friend. He had spent the first century after she died searching for any sign of her in secret until Rhysand had discovered him and ordered him to stop.