Long thought dead, Seren finds herself free and thrust back into a world she no longer recognizes. Her hopes for peace and happy reunions are overshadowed by years of torment and rearing new threats. Once a beloved sister and emerging contender for...
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AZRIEL
Azriel rushed through the mud to the riverbank, pushing past wings and shoulders to get a better look. Floating down the river on a small, makeshift raft were two lifeless heads. The one to the left held ageless beauty and had smiled at him countless times like not even his own mother ever had.
The other...was that of horrific beauty. Skin so pale it was almost grey and stark black veins winding up cheeks that would never fill with a pink flush again.
Azriel sank to his knees and helplessly watched the current bring it closer and closer as those around him backed away. When the raft was within reach and Azriel could see nothing else in his field of vision other than that severed head. A distant nagging tugged at his gut at the wrongness of it all.
Before he could wrap his mind around the oddity causing him so much sorrow, everything in sight exploded into suffocating smoke.
---
A biting winter wind tore at every patch Alya had sewn into his leathers. Day-old snow crunched loudly with each step he took further into the woods. The sun hadn't set quite yet but the tall pine trees all veiled most of the remaining light, forcing Azriel to rely on the sapphire glow of his siphons to see where his shadows were leading him.
He'd been following their winding path for hours and he swore they were deliberately leading him in circles to stall him. Despite thinking Windhaven was too far back in the direction he'd come for this area to hold what he sought, he pushed on.
If he came back empty-handed for the sixth day in a row, he doubted he survive the consequences. After having his leg broken in a spar he couldn't refuse, Cassian could only scour the wide expanse of their court from the skies. And Rhys was too distraught to be of the right mind to hunt down his young sister. Cronan swore up and down that if something happened to Seren, he'd kill Rhys too to ensure she had eternal company in whatever afterlife there may be. When he was done eviscerating them all, he'd spend the remainder of his days misting every Illyrian he could get his hands on.
So Azriel pressed forward until he began to note some unusual marks in the snow. Not footprints, but small irregularities in otherwise untouched snowbanks. Seren's visits to Illyrian were short and monitored closely, but somehow she'd still figured out how to flutter above the snow and fill in any signs she'd stepped somewhere. If it weren't so cold and he wasn't so desperate, he might have been impressed.
Nearby, he found a large cluster of shadows darkening a shelter of sticks and half-frozen fallen leaves. Just as he bent down and was about to thank the mother, the scent of blood overwhelmed his sense. Shoving his glowing, siphoned hand down to get a better look inside, he saw no sign of her, but she should have been there. He knew she had been there, but he didn't understand how he was so sure of it.
With steps growing more frantic, he followed a trail of blood-stained snow to an area of denser trees that grew with hardly any space between them. His hoarse cry at the sight of a frozen child nailed between two tree trunks rattled his bones and made his head spin.
