Chapter 103
"Good," Cassian said, holding up the sparring pads between them. Arwen's focus narrowed on each one, her knuckles even under their bandages feeling like they were raw and burning. "Strengthen your core."
She tightened her stomach.
By the time he called for them to finish, sweat glistened down her temples and onto her cheeks, soaking the collar of her sleeved shirt. The early summer days were already hot. Arwen retied her bun that had fallen across her neck, strands sticking to her wet skin. Cassian discarded the pads. "I don't feel like I've improved from last week," she muttered, squinting against the sun.
"Since last week?" he echoed. "You've got to give yourself a bigger timeline. You're doing better than you were a month ago. Far better than two months ago."
Arwen looked at him. "But not last week." She needed the improvementâneeded to see that she was bettering. If this life was all she had, then she needed to move like there was no tomorrow. It had instilled an urgency in her, a constant wind under her feet that hurt to refuse.
Cassian looked her up and down. "You left strikes are getting more accurate," he said after a moment. "Have you been eating what I've told you to?"
She nodded. Her diet wasn't strict by any means, but the choices had become more deliberate. Meats, legumes, vegetables. Her body had already regained much of her prior weight, muscle building with it. Most of her dresses sat better against her skin and she even had to toss away the ones she had bought in the past few months. Azriel appreciated her returned curves. Spent an entire night admiring them with his hands. And mouth.
Cassian moved on to training with Feyre when Arwen left. Each step she made into the House of Wind was heavy with exhaustion. Cassian wouldn't be ready to fly her down to the town house for another hour or so, and Rhysand and Azriel were off somewhere together which meant she was stuck here for a while and might as well do work while she was. There was nothing immediate to tend to as emissary here, but Arwen made do with responding to one of Lucien's letters and writing an introductory letter to the Summer Court. She had only met Tarquin through her death and was now quite set on reaffirming the newly regained, but still rocky, friendship between their courts.
She jumped as two hands smoothed down her arms, a shadow looming over her. "Hello, Az," she greeted softly, sinking back into her chair and her mate. "I didn't even hear you come in."
"I wasn't trying to be quiet, you were just very concentrated, " he replied. He leant over her, picking up the letter she had been working on and examined it. "You need to work on your handwriting."
Arwen snatched the letter back, crumpling it enough that she knew she'd have to rewrite it, his laughter warm in her ear. "I could not write for over two centuries, I'll remind you. My fingers have forgotten how to."
Azriel's arms crossed over her chest as he bowed to her height. "Practice makes perfect. But breaks are a necessity. Come have lunch with us."
"Lunch? Already?" Indeed, beyond the window, the sun had reached its peak. "I haven't even gotten two letters done."
"Letters that are in no rush," he told her, rising slowly and using the strength of his arms to urge her to rise with him.
"How would you know?"
"Spymaster."
She rolled her eyes, finally obliging his silent request for her to stand. They joined Cassian, Mor and Feyre for lunch. Arwen piled her plate with salad and chicken, mixing them together with her heavy, silver fork. "Where's Rhys?" she asked.
"I think he's with Amren," Feyre answered. "Boring business, he told me."
"Usually, he's getting me to do that," Mor chimed. "Finally, the sympathies must be rolling in."
"Please," Arwen laughed. "Boring business is code for something interesting that he wants to do himself. Probably working with the merchants for the summer solstice festival." She waved her fork around. "He loves deciding all that for some reason. I think it's tedious."
Feyre frowned mockingly. "Well, now I'm upset that I wasn't invited."
"Considering how you and Cassian decorated for Winter Solstice," said Azriel, low and smooth, "I'm not surprised."
Cassian whistled and placed a hand on his leathered chest. "Right in the heart, Az. Right in the heart. You better be putting that big mouth of yours to good use." Cassian's gaze diverted to Arwen. He winked.
Her jaw fell and she flung a cut of tomato across the table. Azriel laughed as the juice hit Cassian's eye, his hand slipping onto her thigh with a squeeze of affirmation at her assault.
"You did deserve that," Mor concluded, watching Cassian struggle to wipe his eye clean as she blindly shoved her fork into her mouth. He cursed her name, groaning as his eyes watered.
~
Arwen held her knees to her chest as she sat in the faded white square on her bedchamber floor. Her eyes were set high, beyond her open curtains and on the night sky. The opaque drapes were pushed far to either side, the transparent hangings still half-across the glass. Nothing moved inside of her room, or outside of it, the rest of the town house residents retreated to their rooms.
The door creaked open behind her. Her lips tightened and the soft footsteps warned her of his approach. Azriel knelt beside her, slipping her resting hand into his. "What are you doing on the floor?" he gently asked.
"Talking," she croaked. "With the stars."
He glanced to the window. "Was it a good conversation?"
Arwen shook her head. "They weren't very talkative tonight. I think they're busy."
He squeezed her hand and slowly rose. "Well, I'm all ears if you still want to talk. I promise to listen but come to bed first." He pulled her up with him, just as he had done earlier that day in the office. "What were you talking about?"
"Nothing really." Her voice felt meeker than usual. "I just wanted to hear them again."
"Do you truly hear them, or is that just something... you like to believe?"
That was the first time someone had ever asked her that. She assumed most people just believed the latterâthat it was a habit she picked up, like writing in a journal, a way to gather her thoughts. "I hear them, Az." Arwen looked back to the window as she reached their bed. "They speak in a language that I'm not sure how I know, but they do speak. It's like... whispers on a mountain." A mountain that had become unnaturally silent now. It felt like standing in the midst of a bustling market, seeing seagulls flying overhead or a bard strumming on his lute and hearing absolutely nothing. It was wrong. Unnatural.
"Maybe Rhys is taking up all their time."
She snorted weakly and agreed, shimming her legs under the blanket. "I'll have a talk with him about that. Just because he's a High Lord of the Night Court does not mean he can steal the stars for himself."
Azriel lay next to her, turned on his side so they face each other. Now in the warmer months, he wore only light pants, leaving his torso bare for her to admire. She often fell asleep tracing the Illyrian markings inked into his skin.
Arwen stared at the one on his chest, the dark whorls a delight for the mind. "I don't think they want to talk to me," she confessed quietly.
His hand lay over her cheek, thumb caressing her brow. "Why would you say that?"
"Because I do not belong with them anymore. They spoke with me because I was one of them and now I am not." She wrinkled her nose and sniffed, stifling the pain from rising to her face. "Maybe they still do but I can't hear them. Everybody else lives with this silence, but it makes it harder to fall asleep some nights."
Azriel shifted closer, curling his arm around her head, letting his thumb stroke her forehead from above. His scent tingled her nose. "Will it help if I talk?"
She traced that tattoo. "I like when you fall asleep before me." Which was not often. The ease upon his face was not something she would ever see in his waking. It made her feel at peace. "I will get used to it. Things have been silent for... many years now."
Azriel smiled grimly, smoothing his hand down the side of her face and holding it in place as he kissed her. He pulled away first, softly taming her hairs with his fingertips. "If the stars will not listen to you, they are not worth the worship this court gives them."
Arwen couldn't help her smile and burrowed herself into his chest to hide it. He held her there, tight and secure, her own little cage safe away from the world.
Yet when Azriel fell asleep, she could not. She lay in the bed, for some time in his arms, then with her back to him. With the blanket and without. With the curtains open and with them closed. Tears of frustration prickled at her eyes when not a wink of sleep would come. Arwen wiped them away and sat up, scowling at the empty air.
She sat like that until her back grew stiff and sore, then moved onto her feet and out into the hallway.
Standing in front of Feyre and Rhysand's room, she fisted her hand and lifted it to the wood. Her knuckles hovered as she gave a shaky breath. Slowly, her palm pressed against the cool surface, before her hand snapped back down to her side without a sound. He didn't need to know. He didn't need to worry. There wasn't anything her brother could do.
Arwen lightly rapped her knuckles against the doorâlightly enough to not wake any sleeping occupants. But when she ducked her head, she found amber light slipping through the thin groove near her feet. Her bottom lip twitched as guilt built up inside of her, urging her to leave before the footsteps made it to the door.
It opened soundlessly to reveal Feyre on the other side, dressed in a beautiful nightgown slip. Beyond her, in the well-lit bedroom, Rhysand sat on their bed, the blanket pulled over his lap with one knee tented. "Arwen," Feyre breathed. "Is something wrong?"
Arwen parted her lips. "I'm sorry, I..." Her lip trembled as the tears sprung back from where she had wiped them away moments before. She couldn't speak anymore, her throat tight and stinging.
Feyre glanced over her shoulder, Rhysand's name forming on her lips but he was already on his feet and making his way to them. "I'll go get something to drink," she murmured, slipping past Arwen in the doorway.
Rhysand rested his arm around Arwen's shoulders, drawing her into the room and closing the door behind them. "Talk to me," he whispered to her. She folded her arms across her stomach. He pulled her to his front, embracing her even though she would not embrace him back. Kissing her hair, he said, "I need you to talk to me."
Talking was the hard part. The words felt stuck in her throat, a dark claw inside of her trying to pull them back down before they were put into the world and made real. But they both felt her shift because when her lips finally broke apart, he took a step back.
"I'm struggling." The two words alone felt like they might break her to admit. But she did, and now they were truth. A truth she could not back away from.
Rhysand opened his arms again and she fell into them, finally letting the bottled feelings bubble over, sobbing into his chest.