A Court of Shadows and Thunder // AzrielxOC SlowBurn Romance, ACOTAR FanFiction

Chapter 34 - Ruse

The next moments were like a blur to the shadowsinger. He had one hand round the culprit's throat, so tight that the male's face turned red, that his eyes nearly began to bulge out from their sockets. His other hand was round Brianna's waist, in an attempt to hold her, to keep her close to him.

But a cough from her caught his attention, her blood splattering on his chest. When she grew limp in his arms, when he saw her eyes roll back, closing shut, he had let go of that fisherman, and he began to cradle her. All that anger had suddenly vanished as he attempted to hold her with utmost caution, trying not to harm her any more than she already was.

Summer Court guards had winnowed in around them - no doubt alerted by the crowd that had gathered, that witnessed all that had happened. Some guards were already on the fisherman, holding him down, rendering him helpless. Others were kneeling with Azriel, trying to see what had happened to the Syren, to see how they could help.

The first thing Azriel wanted to do upon seeing how that metallic fork so obscenely protruded from Brianna's back was to pull it out. But he knew that that could only cause more damage, so he tapped upon his siphons, releasing that energy onto her. A blue glow began to wrap round her body, holding the wound together, preventing any more blood to spill from its gaping tears. And when Azriel looked at the damage that had been done, at the amount of blood that poured out, at how helpless Brianna looked too, the anger came back, along with an inexplicable pang of pain tearing through his core.

High Lord Tarquin was suddenly by his side, kneeling beside the shadowsinger, his white robes coating themselves in the Syren's blood upon the stone ground.

"What happened," Tarquin's voice was grave, loud, trying to speak over the cacophony that the crowd was making. But it all sounded so muffled to Azriel, it all sounded so far away.

All he could do was look at Brianna, was to tighten his grip on her as his eyes went to her unmoving face. He couldn't think, couldn't even begin to decipher what did happen.

Azriel just looked up at Tarquin, and the High Lord had never seen such emotion on the shadowsinger's face before.

"What happened?" Tarquin pressed again, a hand going to touch Brianna's shoulder.

Azriel looked down at her - "I - I don't know."

He looked at her closed eyes, her still lips that were slightly agape, blood that had been coughed up trickling down her chin and neck. Lips that, he realised, only moments before, had been whispering something he couldn't see, something he couldn't hear.

And the shadowsinger understood that while he couldn't quite comprehend what had happened, he knew that the unconscious girl in his arms did. Brianna knew what happened, because she had made it happen.

***

When Brianna opened her eyes, she could recognise she was in her chamber again. She was no longer in that market square, no longer surrounded by a crowd that had let out cries and looked at her as she fell, the fae that had either rushed over or fled at the scene before them. But now she was surrounded by silence, the sound of the city and the waves of the ocean only softly wafting through the open window.

She didn't move at first, remembering very well what had happened. She took a breath, finding that she had been laid flat on her stomach, head angled on a plush pillow. Brianna thought she would feel pain where that fork that had once been used to cook fish had found its way planted in her back, but she could only feel a lingering soreness where a wound had once been. She could sense that she had slept for a long time - though how long, she didn't know. The setting sun in the distance told her that it was long enough.