Indelible Scars

Chapter 1

Azriel knew pain.

He couldn't really remember a time of his life when he wasn't in pain. The fight for survival had been put into the cradle right next to him, down there in his father's keep.

He knew pain. Every fucking type of it.

The physical pain... was something he had learned to deal with. It hurt but it didn't in a sense. It hurt and it reminded him that he was still alive.

He had often welcomed it. Screaming agony.

But he was alive and he was free and he was no longer in the cell beneath his father's keep...he was free.

So it didn't matter if it was a broken bone or a dagger or ash arrows or anything else. He was alive, he was free...he would survive.

For centuries that had been enough. Survival had been enough.

Survival was all he had wanted.

And then he had grown soft.

He hated himself for that. Because once he grew soft...once surviving was no longer what he concentrated on every fucking day...he had started to want more.

More than simple survival.

He should have known then that that wasn't in the cards for him.

Azriel had wanted...companionship. Somebody who loved him. Who wanted him.

Somebody for whom he was irreplaceable.

And that...that had resulted in something much worse than physical pain.

Emotional pain.

And against that...no healer had a tonic that helped and Azriel was fucking helpless.

It had all started with one beautiful blonde girl.

Morrigan.

To say that he had fallen in love with her like a ton of bricks...it was the understatement of the century.

Mor was sunshine personified, lighting up every room she walked into.

She was everything Azriel was not. Beautiful and gorgeous and kind and good.

For the better half of one millennium...he had wanted her.

Wanted her with every fibre of his being. Like he had never wanted anything before.

Even when Azriel had known that she would never want him. He had always been devoted to impossible causes, after all.

But that didn't stop it from still hurting when Mor took male after male to her bed and none of them were him. She didn't owe him anything. He knew that.

But still, it had hurt. And still, he had stayed devoted in his devotion to the Morrigan.

Because clearly, Azriel was a fucking idiot.

An idiot for even hoping that it would be different...that...

A fucking idiot. And a fool to boot, because then he had set his eyes on Elain.

It had snuck up on him... she was so different than Morrigan.

No fierce warrior, but gentle and delicate, preferring flowers over fighting knives...but she was kind as well. And sweet...so sweet...

And he had been stupid with it. Hadn't thought it through...hadn't allowed him to think it through because then it became real and...then he needed to think about how it would feel if she wasn't interested in him.