A Delicate Darkness | AZRIEL (ACOTAR)

xxi. unwanted visitors

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There are rumblings of a death-lord by the name of Koschei seeking to escape his prison, one whose malignant influence has reached the Night Court before and will do so again. Especially now that Auroria Vanserra lives there, so dewy wide-eyed, naive, and fresh for the taking.

—

UNWANTED VISITORS

GOOSEBUMPS PRICKLED THE SMOOTH OF AURORIA'S SKIN. It wasn't the waning afternoon breeze that caused it, but a voice.

It was so quiet that she wondered whether she imagined it or whether it belonged to the whistle of the wind. Governess Eden used to tell her that the wind carried echoes, of torment as well as jubilee.

It floated past her ears once again, like the exhale of a breath. Come to me... it seemed to tell her.

A streak of black caught her eye. A sort of corporeal yet intangible form ducked behind the shrubbery before she could wholly fix her attention to it.

Come.

She took one step towards it — towards the city's perimeter where the leisure district met the outer borders of Velaris, to thick, dense valley woodlands — before stopping, her senses rushing in all of a sudden as if she was doused with cold water.

This was not the shadows she knew. This was something foreign. Something new. By contrast, her shadows were mere wisps of smoke. They never spoke to her and they—

—found her. They spiralled through the air in cartwheeling plumes, arriving without ceremony and void of their usual playfulness. They curled around her wrists in an iron grip that dug into her skin and pulled her along in a way she didn't know the shadows were capable of doing.

Their gesture came clear as day. Into the city. Now.

"Okay," she said, though she threw a glance over her shoulder back at the dense silent woodland. She saw nothing but thick trees and a deluge of shade from the canopy of grey leaves above. But still, she sensed it. Some presence.

The last time an unknown entity spoke to her... Her hands clenched into fists, thumbs idly brushing across scars. The last time a disembodied voice spoke to her belonged to ancient and vengeful magic. To the mirror in Father's office that blinded her and marked the first time that he crushed her bones.

One thing was certain: Father's warnings were not for nought.

Steeling herself, Auroria listened to the incessant tugging of her shadows and ambled into the crowds of the town square, pushing the desolate perimeter to the back of her mind. But even with the shadows tightly wound around her, even among so many faces — faes returning home or milling about for a night in the town — she could not shake the feeling that she was still caught in the web of some malevolent spirit.

Auroria shuddered. Rhysand said it himself. These mountains were far older than the realm known as Prythian existed. Who knew what magic resided here?

· ─────── ·☽𖥸☾· ─────── ·

For the second time that day, Auroria marvelled up at the grandeur of the riverhouse, the official family residence of the court's leaders. Her legs ached from her listless wandering, her stomach growled at her, and the shadows had left her once she was in the depths of Velaris once more.

An afternoon in the city made three things clear to Auroria.

The first observation resonated with Rhysand's and Azriel's previous comments that the city was experiencing some state of metamorphosis. Some change. That much was obvious, from the way that faes who were so obviously not Night (many donned their own court's fashion: Winter's furs, the golden patina sheen of Day, Dawn's zephyr wool-silk) gawked at the mountains and the intact city, to the way that the locals either proudly regaled in the outsider's awe or scowled at the onslaught of tourism.