Chapter 101
Arwen wiped at her sleepy eyes, each step she took down the staircase of the town house making a resounding thumping noise. "Good morning," Rhysand greeted her quietly as she made her way to the bottom. "You look dreadful."
She dropped her hands from her face. "It is always pleasant seeing you," she grumbled. "Do you have to insult me first thing in the morning?"
"I say it in worry," he countered, though his tone hinted that an insult was still somewhat intended.
Arwen had slept alone. Though sleep had hardly taken her as she tossed and turned well into the midnight hours. "Didn't sleep well," she informed her brother. "I blame the full moon."
"The moon?" he echoed in amused curiosity, turning on the spot as she passed him.
"Haven't you heard the tales of the moon turning people into lunatics?" she said over her shoulder. "It's sort of in the name."
He pursed his lips. "Can't say I've put much thought into it. Besides, you look terrible but your ability to be snarky at such an early hour informs me that your head is still perfectly on straight."
She gave a glare but couldn't be bothered to continue the banter. He caught her hand. She looked back at him. Rhys's head was tilted, a look that could mean a hundred different things, but today she knew which one he intended. "I'm okay," she promised.
Slipping from his hold and wandering down the hall to the kitchen, she was surprised to see Cassian leant over the island benchtop. Arwen hadn't known that he would be here as he hadn't spent the night but if Rhysand's description of her appearance was anything of truth, Cassian didn't look far better.
"Would you like a drink?" she asked.
He lifted his bowed head and smiled tightly with a nod.
Arwen made them both a honey and camomile tea, placing the steaming mug that matched hers in front of him. Cassian cupped it, taking his time before bringing it to his lips. "What's got you so glum?" she dared ask.
At his dry answer, she wished she never had. "Who do you think?" Nesta. Arwen wasn't aware he had gone to see herâif that is how their interaction had occurred. "She pisses me off. The way she actsâspeaks about Rhys."
Arwen caught a slight hesitance in his words. "And me?" she guessed. Not that she'd be surprised, or truly offended. She believed what she told Cassian; Nesta was angry at the world and Arwen belonged to it.
Cassian rounded his jaw, the muscle straining, but gave another nod.
"Should I be curious to know?"
His eyes darkened. "I'm not going to repeat her. It's not worth it."
She fingered the ring of the ceramic mug's lip in thought, weighing the choice of pushing him to speak more or forgetting the subject altogether. Taking a deep breath, she finally said, "I told Azriel. About everything."
He stared at her for a moment, perhaps attempting to deduce how he would approach the topic. "How did it go?"
"How do you expect?" Arwen glanced around the kitchen. "He listened then he left. I don't suspect he went back to the House of Wind last night?"
Cassian shook his head, a crease forming between his brows. "No," he answered. "Fucking prat."
She was unaffected. Or at least, not angry in the way that Cassian was showing himself to be. So, she told him just that. "I'm not sure what else you would have expected from him. You know Azriel as well as I do."
"He shouldn't have left," he replied fiercely.
"He is not like you and me," Arwen said softly, her morning headache unappreciative of his guttural tone. "Azriel doesn't like talking things through with people. He deals with things by being alone and thinking. By fighting and getting it out of his system. He will return when he is ready."
"When he's ready?" Cassian placed his mug back down on the table. "It's not about him and what he needs. He needed to know for your sake, Arwen."
She sipped at hers. "I seem to remember you being quite fraught at the information. You were upset because you believed it affected you."
Narrow-eyed he said, "I'm trying to be on your side here. I needed to know so I could understand how to help you if you needed it, not to go wallow in self-pity."
Arwen kept herself steady. "I have a feeling that you're more upset than you would usually be because things with Nesta haven't been going your way." She waited, watching his grim features twitch. "We have a fantasy of our mates being perfect for us and it's troubling you that they're not."
His throat bobbed but the anger receded, letting something more sullen take place. "Maybe Azriel and Nesta were made for each other. They both seem to be in the habit of running. Of fucking away their feelings."
The comment stung Arwen in a way she wasn't prepared for. The idea that she and Azriel were a mistake had long since been a wound she carried and now it felt like it had been prodded at with the tip of a sharp knife. Cassian only said it from a place of hurt, but it didn't stop it from hurting.
He must have read her expression because he added, "I didn't mean that Azriel has beenâ"
"I know," she cut him off. She knew he hadn't been with another since her return. She would have discovered that like a bloodhound on a hunt. "Is that what you believe of mates?" she asked, quieter than she meant. "That they are meant because they are alike?"
Rhysand and Feyre were similar in many measures, but there were also just as many differences. Arwen didn't feel as though she could properly compare herself to Azrielâher view distorted by her own perception of herself.
"I believe it would make it a hell-of-a-lot easier," Cassian said, gentler like he realised what his words had done to her but refused to take them back. "It's hard not to be jealous of them."
Feyre and Rhys, he meant. Arwen agreed. "They went through their own trials," she murmured. "If I recall correctly, she was about ten feet away from marrying another male at one point. At least Nesta has yet to get a proposal for marriage. If Azriel was agreeing to marry someone, I'd have another name on my to-kill list for blackmailing him."
For the first time that morning, Cassian gave a smile. "Always on the bright side, you are."
Arwen sipped again at her tea and looked away.
~
Cold engulfed her. Black tendrils billowed around her, floating, and stealing the light. She had stared at the stars too long. Her necklace, the one that Rhysand gave her all those Starfalls ago lay abandoned at the gold claw foot of the bathtub. Arwen hadn't yet gathered the courage to put it on before today. The longer it sat around her neck, the heavier it felt and the heavier it felt, the more she felt like she was going to throw up.
The world was little more than a halo of light piercing through the bathwater, not a sound besides her own heartbeat in her ear. Her lungs were beginning to starve, but her thoughts were still in a place she could not let them go, so until they learned, she would remain underwater.
It was working. Her thoughts grew foggy, less worried about anything other than the need for her to breathe. Arwen let her eyes close, focusing on that struggle. Focused on how desperately her body wanted to stay aliveâ
A hand scooped under her neck, forcing her upright. Coughing and spluttering, she wiped away her hanging wet hair from her face. Azriel was crouched next to the large tub. "You were under there for nearly a minute," he said, accusation in his tone.
Arwen stared at him. "You're back," she said after a minute of silence. It had been a week. "When did you get back?" Her arm rose from the bathwater, droplets dripping down like rain first over the water, the bath's edge, then the floor as she rested her hand on his cheek.
He swallowed. "Just now. I'm sorry for leaving. It was just..."
She nodded. "I know. I know you, Azriel." Whether or not Cassian was right didn't matter. Azriel had his own ways of dealing with his emotions and as long as he dealt with them, Arwen would not force him to speak of them.
He leant into her palm, eyes angled down to the water between them. "It was hard, those years without you. I don't know if knowing you were actually there makes me feel better or a thousand times worse." His hair was messier than usual, she noticed. The waves were more defined, almost curled in some places. She brushed them away from his forehead, leaving a glistening trail of moisture. "May I join you?"
She frowned down at the long-since tepid water. "It is not warm anymore."
He tapped her chin. "I believe you have magic."
Arwen gave a small breath through rounded lips, realising he was right. At her smile and nod, Azriel stood, moving to unlatch the clasps of his leathers. She warmed the water, feeling the slight tug on her reservoir of magic. As the new warmth stole away with her goosebumps, she turned towards the edge of the bath and reached out, her fingers making to work on the belt of his trousers as he pulled the pieces off his torso.
He tugged her hands away gently, leaving only the buckle undone. "It won't work in that order." Turning his bare back to her, he sat on the thick edge of the bath and leant down to take off his boots.
Arwen pushed to her knees, in line with his spine. Leaning forward, she pressed her lips to the protruding bone between the trunks of his wings. Azriel paused and moved a hand behind him, taking her arm. "This is not a day for me," he whispered.
She tilted her head as he turned his.
"I just want to focus on you," he said. In her silence, he stripped completely. She admired everything about him. Arwen fell back into the deep water as he sunk in with her, his wings giving a small stretch as they became partially submerged.
"Will you let me touch you at least?" she questioned. Azriel's hand moved across the surface of the water, extending to her. Taking it, she let it anchor her as she drifted to him before circling both arms around his neck, settling lightly in his lap as the water lapped around their chests. "I didn't tell anybody because I wanted to forget. It was easier to deal with it alone."
He rested his chin on her head, an arm wrapping around her waist. "When you're alone for so long, it becomes hard to remember what it is like for other people to care."
How could she have forgotten that Azriel spent many years of his childhood in solitude? Locked in a dark chamber with only shadows for company. The thought had her heart aching, her jaw clenching at the feeling of his scarred hands on her skin. "At least I was not a child," she found herself saying out of anger. "At least it was not by someone else's cruelty. Locked in darkness."
The hand not at her waist went to the side of her face, the tips of his fingers curving around her ear. He dipped his chin to press a kiss to her forehead. "Not about me," he reminded her softly.
Cassian was wrong, Arwen decided. She knew that before, but the thought solidified now. "I am lucky to have you," she said. "The others do not understand." Not even Rhysânot in the same way. "They think it is better to speak of it. To share it. They don't understand that it just makes it all feel heavier."
Azriel needed to know, Arwen would accept that. But she had no desire to speak of the true pits of that loneliness with him. Her talks with Rhysand were of memories they already shared, her pain in that she could not help him. But never about the weight of being alone. She and Azriel shared knowing what that sort of loneliness did to someone. They shared the scars of that time and what people had done to them. Perhaps they were different in many ways as Cassian had implied, yet they were alike in many others.
"Where did you go?" she asked, leaning away from him to gauge his face. "You were gone for the entire week."
He looked away. "It doesn't matter."
"It does to me." She pulled his face back to hers, her expression grave which she soon realised was a mirror of his. "Tell me."
His hazel eyes lowered down to her chest and in another moment she might have blushed as he looked intently at her bare skin, but there was a distance in his gaze that told her he wasn't truly seeing. Arwen didn't let him retreat, keeping her hand on his jaw and cheek, letting the weight of her own eyes bore on him.
"I went Under the Mountain."
She stilled. He finally looked at her.
"Rhys told me months ago that some of Amarantha's dark creatures still lingered there, in the shadows. You were there with Rhys. I..." The point in his throat bobbed as he strained to get the words out. "I had to get it out." She knew what he meant. The cold fury that burned inside of him. She also knew what that rage meant. He had spent the week killing, like the vicious and unfeeling assassin her father had trained him to be. "I wanted to keep going. I could have gone on for weeksâbut there was nothing left. And I needed to come back to you."
His hands moved up until the backs of his wet fingers stroked along either cheek. Hands that had no doubt been covered in blood now delicately caressing her with a lover's gesture. Taking notice of them now, she could see the markings on his knuckles, faded red with splotches of yellow, signs of healing bruises, and the new, white scars that would fade completely by the end of the week. She didn't want to imagine the scene, the intimate way she knew Azriel liked to kill with.
Arwen nestled into the crook of his neck and shoulder, the slope of her nose fitting with the curve of his throat. She kept the water at a constant, comfortable warmth, listening to nothing but the sound of her mate's breathing and the occasional trickling of water. He remained so still that if he weren't holding her upright, she would have thought him asleep. So when a droplet of cold water fell onto her shoulder, she lifted his head.
Azriel seemed to ignore the existence of his tears altogether, even though they streamed silently down his cheeks and his eyes were rimmed with red. He kissed the corner of her mouth, then guided her head back under his and she had the distinct feeling that the hold was as much for him as it was for her.