A Court of Blood & Mercy || Elriel Dual POV

Chapter 32 - A Portrait of Her

Azriel's eyes travelled over Elain's soft hair, the winding curls glinting in the light of the pink sunrise now spilling through the foggy window at the foot of her bed, the hair haloing her beautiful sleeping face. He could be buried alive in her curls and he knew he would die with a smile.

Azriel always knew he had a bit of a fixation with Elain's hair... those addicting curls... he nearly shivered, winding and tangling his hand deeper against her scalp as her ribs rose and fell beneath his arm, buried under the silken sheets. His memory flashed to the moment her hair had dropped out from behind that blood red veil, all those weeks ago, when he had merely been a droplet of rain on her windowpane, watching her from beyond a glass ocean he had thought he would never cross.

He felt his heart thrum in his chest, watching her sleep, nestled against his skin on the bed he had also only seen through that window, surrounded by the floral sweeping wallpaper rising up all around them in the house bought by the blood and sweat of her mate. A smattering of glimmering light from the rising sun was warming his face, and he inhaled deeply, the top of her head resting against his lip.

She had shared her mating bed with him.

It was a turn of fate that he knew would never feel quite real: like the Cauldron or the Mother or possibly the entire universe was playing a trick on him.

He inhaled another breath, nuzzling his face into the coiled hair.

Azriel had avoided curly hair for two decades. Hells, he had even shaved his own curls off, keeping his scalp razed and raw like his broken heart rather than look in the mirror every day with a piece of her staring back at him.

Because even the idea of being near curls that were not hers felt somehow sacrilegious; a betrayal of the highest order in his religion of the worship of Elain Archeron. Perhaps it was a monkish quality about him, to practice an unnecessary sadistic ritual of self-denial for decades. Because truthfully, the Shadowsinger would have given anything to feel her curls that even a shoddy replica would have sufficed.

And her hair was so much longer than he remembered.

Running his finger down the length of a lock, he savoured the feeling of pulling it straight before it sprang back, bouncing and joyful in the light. Sometimes he saw a hint of blonde in her hair, a golden streak amongst coils of honey brown, especially when the sun lit up the kitchen here at Kuskova, or how it was glimmering right now, nearly the color of sand or dusky sunset shattered against the pillow. It was so different from her sisters.

He wondered if it was strange to be so obsessed with the details of another person.

But Azriel also knew he had never truly loved another like this, so perhaps this was just how he was when in love: obsessive.

He was so obsessed that just the thought of another male's hand hand exploring her curls had made him want to winnow out of the room and seek immediate violence. He believed that no male's hands deserved a soft home as pure as Elain's hair, not even his own. Certainly not his own. But somehow, in his fucked-up hierarchy of deservedness, he wanted to place his competitors much lower than himself when it came to Elain.

Because Azriel had always been a bit jealous.

Maybe a lot jealous.

He knew it was why he drank and why he injected his veins and why he drowned out the world with females and isolation and torture.

Azriel's blurred and numbed psyche was the only thing holding him back from descending from the skies and kidnapping her from the Autumn Court during those first few years after she had left. And even before then, he had wanted to call a Blood Duel before kissing her openly in front of the Inner Circle, even after Rhys had told him to stand down. He had imagined winnowing directly into the garden of the River Mansion as Lucien was prattling on about his pathetic childhood before simply strangling him from behind.