A Song of Faithless Shadows

35. The Gray Between Us

Azriel

The moment Gwyneth slips beneath the surface, I'm off my heels, bounding into the bank, Emerie right beside me with just as much clumsied urgency. We aren't even ankle deep by the time Gwyneth emerges though, eyes shut, drenched and ascending upwards, cloaked in a light so bright I almost have to look away.

Fear seizes my gut as my wings flap once, meaning to fly to her, but Emerie drags me back down by the shoulder, pointing to the dragonflies being pulverized in her glow, holes slowly burning in the gauzy fabric of her robe. Flying to her would be like flying into a star right now.

I look back to Nesta, Cassian, and fucking Lucien. Does anyone know what to do? We need Rhys or Feyre. We need someone to get into her mind and snap her back. We need-

The water is boiling now, Emerie attempting to drag me out of the glittering bank. I call to my shadows, meeting her light in some grayed blur of the two as I shake Emerie's grip, flying to face her whited eyes. I see the saturation slipping back into them slowly, my wings flapping behind me as I reach forward, bracing the searing of her radiance against my already scarred hands.

I don't pull back.

I've seen this in opposite measure. Shadow, even my own, could be such a cool caress, and that darkness has leached people of warmth before when I hadn't been careful enough. Surely, her light was the opposite, white hot like a star before a supernova, scalding in a way fire couldn't match. The only thing it's equal would be darkness.

"Gwyneth," I say into the void of gray around us. The world seemed so quiet. I found myself doubting that the people on the ground could even see us, let alone hear my voice.

Her lids rapidly blink, as if she were shaking water from her eyes, perhaps whatever diamond vision she found beneath the surface of the pond. Blue returns to it, a shade much lighter than the siphons on my wrists, glistening with a different sort of power. I watch the light retreat within her as I withdraw my shadows, flapping forward to catch her as gravity gives.

Her body is hot against mine, her robes dried from such heat, seared at the white edges in black as I set her on the grass. She continues to blink, not entirely out of whatever had been, squeezing her eyes shut as she presses the back of her hand to her head. "Gwyneth," I murmur, her eyes dilating, at last focusing on the world around her. At last focusing on me.

"Azriel," she murmurs, voice rasped from disuse, brows drawn. Something between a sigh and a laugh of obscene joy breaks from my lips, a sound I'm not sure I've ever made before. We got it back. Somehow.

I almost kiss her.

In fact, the only thing that stops me from doing it is how selfish the impulse feels in the moment. She just got her voice back, and I want to quiet her? I want to make this about me? I want to make claim on her? It's ridiculous, and I feel nothing but shame in myself when she says, "Azriel," her eyes focusing at something beyond me. "Let me go. Stay here. Just a moment."

My hands immediately drop before I know what I'm doing, watching her with glossy eyes walk past me, walk past me right towards a snarling beast at the edge of the trees.

Tamlin.

I still, glancing at Lucien who stops Nesta from retrieving Gwyneth- much to his own risk. Catching my eye, he shakes his head. Cautiously, I draw my knife but allow her space to approach. She saw something beneath that water. I'm sure of it, my shadows trailing her every step, ebbing and flowing with each caress of her light.

Tamlin waits there, claws digging into the ground, but he doesn't move.  Deciding to throw all caution to the wind, I attempt to take a step closer, but find my feet all but glued to the ground. Stay here, such a sing-songy command in it. I let on nothing of it. If my theory was correct, nobody would know this of her. I wouldn't allow it.

Gwyneth's form moves with an unhurried curiosity that unsettles me. She's practically sleepwalking. I glance at Lucien again, at the wits of irony, hoping he doesn't get her killed. He knows Tamlin better than anyone, and so help me if he...

Gwyneth extends her bloodied hand to Tamlin, tendrils of light dancing harmlessly across her knuckles as she offers her palm. If she knows that's the High Lord, she doesn't act like it, offering her scent to the beast as if he were any other feral cat. I'm even more shocked when he raises his nose, shutting his eyes.

Abruptly, he takes a step back, and my shadows raise up behind her unflinching form. But he takes another step, staggering into a tree as he clumsily transforms, coming to form in askew clothing and overgrown facial hair. He was a man overgrown, in fact, hair too long, too unkept, nails still as sharp as claws. He looked at Gwyneth with a sort of helpless surprise I couldn't understand. "I don't," his voice is just as raspy from disuse as Gwyneth. "I don't- I didn't know."

"Lucien...." I say in low warning. I need to know what the fuck is going on.

"The river showed me how you play the fiddle," she says, her voice still lofty and angelic. I don't think she knows she's doing it. "My mother and sister- they had no regard for music, but I adore singing. I always figured I must've gotten it from my father."

"Gwyneth," Nesta cuts in, brows raised. "Do you know who you're talking to right now?" She looked frantic, Gwyneth impossibly calm, eyes squinting.

"The pond showed me my father, showed me that he was a high fae male in spring, showed me his eyes," Gwyneth looks back at Tamlin. "Your eyes."

"Tam-" Lucien starts, cautious, uncertain. I make eye contact with Cassian, pleased to find both he and Emerie's knives drawn at their hips.

Tamlin shakes his head. "I'm so sorry," his nails dig into the tree he's grasping, genuine remorse on his face. I nod at Cassian. I know a loose cannon when I see one. We're all in agreement to put Tamlin down if he does anything, political consequence be damned. "I'm so sorry. I didn't know- I didn't know I had... had a daughter."

I still as I watch tears slip from his eyes, wetting his cheeks. I believe him. That's the really sick part. I believe he didn't know. I believe that finding this out is ripping a hole in what remains of his heart. I believe that he's genuinely sorry.

Lucien clears his throat. "Gwyneth Berdera," he says. "This is Tamlin, High Lord of the Spring Court."

That shakes the calm in Gwyneth at last, her lips parting, her light splintering as she steps backwards. She glances at her sisters as she steps backwards more and more. Lucien would bring them home. A nod told her as much as she backs square into me where my feet stay cemented to the ground.

I hold her shoulders, attempting to steady her, not knowing how to tell her that she has sung me into her command unwittingly, so I whisper, "tell me to take you home."

She nods, watching Tamlin with eyes that are suddenly wide and teary as he says against the tree, my arms slipping around her. "Take me," she murmurs.

The world blackens, and we are gone.