A Pocketful of Stars

Chapter 6: Knitting

Notes:

Quick Warning: This chapter discusses a miscarriage and domestic violence. It's one line, it's not graphic, but it's there.

Chapter 6

By the time he managed to wrangle another free day to visit his mother at Rosehall...it was winter.

A day before her birthday to be exact...just before Winter Solstice and Feyre's birthday.

Regardless of what else was going on... he tried to at least see her around that time, even if not the day of. He would bring flowers that the shadows managed to acquire from the Spring Court and a gift...

Brightly Pink died wool this year...he always brought her something for her craft. She was a seamstress after all. That had always been what she had done.

And while she had never been allowed to provide for him as she had wished, it didn't stop her from trying to do it now.

Didn't stop her from knitting him sweaters and socks and sewing him finely tailored jackets if he as so much let her near him with a measuring tape...

She tried and he tried to, to bridge the time that had been taken from them.

Rosehall had been...When Rhys had become High Lord and he had finally been able to get his mother free of the clutches of his father...when he had gotten her out of there...Rosehall had been nothing but a cottage.

These days, Rosehall was a bustling little hamlet tucked beneath the outskirts of the mountains. Protected by wards and magic...and filled with Illyrians that were unwelcome in the warcamps for one reason and another.

Protected and sheltered and able to live their lives unbothered.

They had trade relations with some of the more liberal warcamps, some of the High Fae villages surrounding them and nowadays even with Velaris, but they were mostly self-sufficient these days. It had taken a long time until they were that.

But they were there now.

Not the least because his mother had taken it in hand and made sure that it was flourishing.

Azriel flew to Rosehall, a trip that took less than an hour from Velaris and he managed to land on the outskirts of the little village. It was just as bustling now as it had ever been, and he couldn't help but bite back a small smile as he saw a couple of younglings run around, doing their best to pelt each other with snowballs.

The boys were old enough that he knew they would have already been thrown into the sparring rings in any war camp, but here...here they were allowed to be kids a little while longer.

It wasn't like they weren't trained. Azriel had made sure of that. There were veterans of wars in the ranks of the Illyrians living in Rosehall and the ones that wanted, the ones that felt able...they trained all the kids in self-defence, and the ones that wanted...they were also trained in more.

But clearly, right now, they were allowed to just be kids.

He trudged through the snow, letting his shadows out to investigate, knowing that one of them would be able to tell him where his mother was.

She's at home, Master!

A part of him was surprised that she wasn't in her dressmaker shop, but then, maybe she had finally taken his advice and started to give some of the work over to the females she hired.

"Azriel!" came a voice from his right and he stopped in place, turning around to find Garvan limp towards him quickly.

"Garvan," he greeted him warmly, concentrating not on the scars that trailed down the side of his face, or the one sole wing that laid limply at his side, but on the warm smile on his face. He had been one of the first inhabitants of Rosehall. An old friend of his mother.