To Kill A Kingdom | ACOTAR ✔️

Chapter 14 - "Well...it's not secret."

Evette found herself at the Drop, she was stood on the edge as she began to think, as the cold wind encased her. She knew they could easily win this war were they to help - she just knew she had to get around doing things predictable of them. She knew they had to make decisions that would not be predictable.

She knew one thing that was unpredictable - Romulus. They would not expect her and Romulus to work together. So, she knew that had to happen, yet he didn't want to go to war. So she had to convince him - she supposed it was lucky that she had something that would interest him.

She also had another idea on how to be unpredictable - yet this one was a lot harder to get around than all the others. And her mother would have to be heavily involved in that one.

But she wasn't sure what else she could do to avoid being predictable.

Evette felt him, before she saw him, as he approached her from behind silently. "Have we done something to make you angry? You've been cold, and have barely spoken to us." Azriel asked her softly as he moved to stand beside her, and she turned to look at him. His dark hair was a little disheveled as if he had ran his hand through it several times, his brows were furrowed lightly, and there was a frown upon his mouth. His wings tucked in tightly behind his back, and his shadows surrounded him.

Evette was hit with the knowledge that he was devastatingly beautiful as she looked at him. It was sometimes easy to forget when she paid more attention to the others due to his silent demeanour.

"Of course you have." Evette replied to him. "It was going to be subtle because I will put my kingdom before any of you."

"So, what changed?"

"You invited Tattoon to the meeting without telling or warning me." Evette replied. "Tattoon would just love to see my lovely head on a spike...I told you all of the tensions between us, and you all just expected me to be okay with them being invited as if we were mere acquaintances! No one said a thing."

"They would not manage to ever achieve that...I would have made sure." Azriel told her, and she turned to face him curiously at this. But he didn't look at her, he only looked out at the land. "They'd have died before they could set a hand on you."

"That's oddly...comforting." Evette spoke in confusion as she still stared at him in slight shock. She didn't even think he liked her - she thought that he only really tolerated her.

"Is that all?" Azriel asked her. "That is the only thing making you mad?"

"No, I'm also mad that Feyre would have the balls to try and assert herself in my council room in my Court meeting. To threaten my kind when she knows nothing of how we feel about this." Evette admitted with a shrug. "She is Fae - she does not have authority here, so it pisses me off that she thinks she could, and would. Friends or not, this is my kingdom. She may be special in Prythian, but here she is seen as lesser. I do not do such things when in her land, so the fact she'd do so in mine...makes me angry."

"I can talk to her." Azriel told her gently. "Let her know of your thoughts and feelings."

"You're being very nice, Azriel." Evette said softly, and Azriel turned to look at her upon realising that she hadn't, for once, called him shadowsinger. She had called him by his name, and that made him want to smile. Because it was perhaps proof that she was finally warming up to him. "I think I like it."

This time Azriel did smile, and having glimpsed a smile on his face for what she was sure was the first time ever, her heart seized. It seized because even his smile was beautiful - she felt that it was unfair to other men that he could be just beautiful 24/7.

"And...are you mad at me for what I almost did to Eris?" Azriel asked her, and she wondered why he was asking such a question. She wondered why it would matter were she mad at him. "I know you and him are...fond of one another."