Wind Wielder

Chapter 18 - The Letter

*** Trigger warning: Brief mention of alcohol dependency** 

Zara Aphelion was drowning. And she wasn't sure if she could muster the energy to bother coming up for air.

The Spymaster was utterly infuriating. He had stormed into her room, woken her from her tortured nightmares, and then decided to play mother hen.

Had Zara not been begging and yanking that horrible power within herself down by her teeth, she might have felt grateful for his interference. Even if it came with him seeing her in her nightgown, with bile dripping from her lips. Again. 

But once the Spymaster had tired of playing mother hen, Azriel had grabbed Zara by the chin, something that had horrifyingly had the beast in her quieting entirely, and had her leaning into him for more, and had proceeded to give her what Zara was sure he supposed was a rousing pep talk. To be honest, Zara really didn't feel like thinking about all the kinds of emotions the gentleness of his arms around her conveyed, or that firm yet kind grip on her chin. Or the way it felt to be held by him for those brief moments. And if Zara hadn't been so caught up at staring at his hands, at blinking back the tears in her eyes, she supposed his pep talk might have worked.

But by the Cauldron. His hands.

Zara had always assumed Azriel had been a war victim. She knew he was old enough to be an active participant in the first war. She had seen the scars on his hands, and figured he had been captured then and tortured for questioning.

But to be burned as a boy. As a child.

Zara did not pay attention to shit in their first lesson. Nor the one after that.

Rhys came to collect her in the afternoons once Azriel was finished with her, and for the next week Zara fell into a sort of routine, only half aware of what was going on around her.

In the mornings she trained with Azriel, trying not to stare at his hands, at the legacy of his trauma as he led her through exercises one after another. Zara supposed she should be feeling tired after the brutal workouts he led her through. He had her doing barbell back squats, and planks, and laps around the training arena atop the House of Wind. Things that made her muscles burn and her lungs beg for oxygen.

But Zara had put herself through exercises as vigorous as this in Dawn. In the place she was no longer welcome. And oddly enough, whenever she remembered that fact, whenever golden plumage and brown eyes flashed in her mind, she found herself gasping for breath for entirely different reasons.

Rhys had grown tired of waiting for Zara to unleash her lightning. She didn't. She had utterly no fucking interest in doing so. And surprisingly, Rhys tried far less hard to coax it out of her than Zara had expected.

Instead, he worked with Zara on how to summon glamors of her own. How to make herself look like someone else entirely. How to release the dampers on her aura, how to lock shields over her mind.

She didn't care.

She didn't care whatever the hell Rhys or Azriel had her doing. The ache in Zara's muscles was secondary to the ache in her heart. The strain on her magic was hardly existent at all. But if it kept Rhys happy with her, she'd do whatever it took to keep him from leaving her too.

Whenever Zara was not training, she stayed huddled in her room. The House had finally started restricting her liquor. And honestly after developing her tolerance to be able to withstand a full bottle a night without puking from consumption, Zara was only surprised the House had taken so long to do so.