The Shadows Have No Face || 𝐀𝐂𝐎𝐓𝐀𝐑

Fight For Her

Azriel's POV

Content Warning for violence and sensitive topics

~)(~

Something was wrong with the Cauldron. I knew it, the sisters knew it, she knew it.

With every chant, it seemed to grow in boiling rage. The pot shuddered violently, almost about to spill over with black, bubbling liquid. It was snarling and screaming to drown out the sound of voices around it.

Like a child too afraid to follow orders and go to bed, too afraid to miss out on the world around them. A child throwing a tantrum because no one was listening to it anymore.

"Let go of it," Morta yelled above the noise, taking a step away from the pot. And though everyone else could disconnect just as easily, two remained still as stone.

Very few times in my life did I ever feel my heart sink beneath the void of my being. And each time I remembered clearly. It first happened when the shadows talked to me in that cool and damp cell, it happened when Rhys shielded Velaris and stayed under the mountain for fifty years. When the king nearly killed us all for attempting to nullify the Cauldron—when Rhys died because of it.

It happened more often around Niana, though. Like the moment I realized she was my mate, or when I thought those blind monsters had ended her life.

Or like now, at this very moment, when the Cauldron held onto her and roared.

I could hear her racing heartbeat, her uneven heaves of breath as panic started setting between us. She was terrified, and I couldn't do anything to ease it. No. No, I had to try.

I tried reaching her through the bond, but there was a wall of fire between the borders of our minds. It made my eyes sting as I shut them tight and stumbled back onto a knee. Ringing and pounding filled my head like someone just boxed my ears. And it lingered, slowly fading its poison as I forced myself further away from her side of the bond.

It's all gone wrong. It always goes wrong.

The shadows rumbled against me, their leash taut as I tried keeping them in check. They were screaming at me, thousands of voices in an endless stream of incomplete and threatening words muddled into a high-pitched scream right against my eardrums.

I shook them out of my head like a fog unwilling to release its hold. They scattered about my being, rippling against leather and my skin. I grabbed hold of them and forced them to calm back into control. The darkness fluttered and sighed as it relented, a prey stuck between the claws of a captor.

I reached for her with the shadows, hoping their magic could figure a way through the Cauldron's light and unhook her fingers from the rim of it. There was a jolting snap that reverberated down the extension of magic, slamming into me with a white-hot pain. All at once, the shadows snapped back like a rubber band and silenced against me.

Morta shouted for us to step back, and even though Nesta pulled with all her might, she couldn't get Elain to even look her way. And it seemed the Cauldron just laughed at the attempt. Like the sick thing it was, always finding joy in the pain of those beneath it.

Rhys knew what I was planning before I even started moving, and his arm extended to stop me from taking another step. I stared at him, unable to even think properly anymore. At that moment—that split-second moment between blinks and breaths—I thought I was going to rip his arm off.

Because how dare he? How dare he try to stop me from getting to Niana? He didn't know—he couldn't feel her fear like I could. He didn't have the same panic at the thought that I was unable to help, unable to soothe away the pain. So how dare he try and stop me?