A Court of Three Stars

10: Not Being Dead

House of Song, Velaris

Azriel

"You need to eat something." Cassian looked over at Leur, his voice no more than a whisper.

She didn't answer, just kept staring at Ruhn. I knew what she was doing, could practically feel her thoughts down the bond. She was listening to the beat of his heart, watching his chest rise and fall with each breath. It didn't matter that he couldn't die unless we did, didn't matter that his injuries were gone and there was no risk anymore.

I was doing the same thing, as if I could look away for a moment, and he'd stop breathing. If I blinked, his heart would stop. If I closed my eyes and slept again, those horrific injuries would reappear. If I left this room, someone would come in here and take him.

It was irrational and ridiculous, but I couldn't get it out of my head.

knew torture. I had felt it, seen it, done it. I knew it better than I knew most things in this world. Depravity and pain had been a constant in my life, darkness to match the black abyss I belonged in, or I had thought I belonged in. And somehow, despite everything I had seen, those marks on my son's body...

Almost every bone had been broken in that final questioning by Rigelus. He had nearly shattered everything into dust. That on top of all the other wounds, massive deep gashes, times when we had felt him creep too close to death, times when we could feel his pain through our hearts. Punctured lungs and burns all over him, whip lashes leaving his back no more than a bloody mess of ripped skin. I had broken those gorsian shackles off of him with my bare hands and felt myself shatter alongside them as the healers worked on him.

He had been dying under our hands when Feyre got to him. I heard his heart slow, heard his breathing get shallow. And it didn't matter that he wouldn't stay dead. The rational part of me knew that it might have even been better if his heart stopped, so the star could heal him.

I had thrown rationality out the window the moment Bryce showed up on our porch.

And now I couldn't move.

I could only sit here with my hand gripped tight in Leur's and try not to go insane.

"Leur." Cassian nudged her shoulder before he turned to me, "Az."

"I'm not hungry." She said.

A lie. I could hear her stomach growling.

"Go take a shower. Get a cup of coffee. Do something other than sitting here staring." Cass tried again.

We both answered at the same time, "No."

"One of you go and one of you stay." Our brother offered.

Neither of us answered, we just kept staring. We were together in this.

We weren't moving.

There was a moment where he just stood there and stared at us, as if he was waiting for us to do something, to move, to acknowledge him. If I had more of my sanity left, I might have tried to convince Leur to get up, would have promised her that I would stay and watch him. I thought about it for a moment, and then decided that I liked not being dead.

Ruhn and his friends had been right to call her momma bear.

Cassian just sighed and walked out of the room, leaving the door open. It bothered me, but not enough for me to get up and close it.

I was so fucking tired that all I could really do was keep my eyes open and watch him. Leur wasn't faring much better. We had been in and out of sleep all night, and now at the break of day, we were both barely even people anymore.