Chapter 114
The morning sun was a glorious thing. Arwen thought so, at least, and decided to spend her morning underneath it. The vines wrapped around the webbing of the lattice tickled her neck and snagged her hair, and the late summer blooms were a strange concoction in her nose. The stone path she sat upon, legs outstretched before her, was warm and almost uncomfortably so but a weight resting on her thighs kept them from lifting.
Arwen paused from her writing, the parchment rested on the stone next to her, to smile at Azriel's eased expression. His eyes were closed over, dark lashes dusting his cheeks. "Do you not have work to do today?" she asked.
He took a long breath, eyes remaining closed. "Do not speak to me of work. It ruins..." He trailed off, lifting a hand and making a loose wave. "This."
She kept her chuckle silent if only not to disturb him further. It was awkward attempting to write a letter at the angle she did and used a flat book to prop it up but she wouldn't dare ask him to move. Instead, she rested her palm on his far cheek and let her thumb idly move as her concentration went back to the words she would be sending off to Kallias whom she would be visiting in a few short weeks.
"What are you thinking about that has you so relaxed?" she asked after signing off the letter and reaching for her now cold tea.
"The song you played on the pianoforte last night," he said, one corner of his lips turning up.
Arwen frowned. "I didn't play on... Oh." She had indeed made noises with her body and the ivory keys. "I'm not sure that's a relaxing thing to think about." Her heartbeat sped at the mere thought. "But I'm glad to know it made a lasting impression."
Azriel sighed and lifted his head, angling towards her with a hand bracing him on the other side of her legs. "Clearly it's not what you're thinking about." Humming, she thought about what to answer with. A hooked finger lifted her fallen chin. "Tell me."
Placing down her tea, her fingers went into her lap to fiddle with themselves. "Cassian," she admitted, pushing her thoughts of Elain to the side. "I'm worried. We've fought before but this one felt bigger."
"He was worried for you, as I was."
"He was also angry, as you were."
He smiled. "And look how easy it was for us to make things right again. You worry for no reason."
Arwen sighed and rested her head against the lattice which was marginally uncomfortable. "Cassian is not you. And I..."
Azriel tilted his head to her height. "And you what?"
Guilt swelled in her heart. "After you left I threw some things away," she admitted, hoping that he would say something that she could spring the conversation off to anything else, but he remained waiting. "I threw the bracelet away that he gave me. The one with the amethyst. Into the fireplace."
His eyes went to her now empty wrist where it had come to sit every day but was now bare.
"I threw my birthday present to you in there too," she whispered, hiding her wrist in her lap. "I'm sorry."
Azriel's expression softened. He assessed her quietly for a few moments, then asked, "What did you get me?"
She looked away. "It doesn't matter. It's gone now, burnt to ash."
"It matters to me. I want to know what you thought to give me, so I can appreciate it nevertheless."
His hazel eyes had a way of drawing hers back. "Drawings," she answered beneath her breath. "I was making a scrapbook of my favourite memories of you."
He didn't say anything for a long while. The hand not holding himself up lifted, his hooked finger brushing along her jaw, over her lips and down to her neck where it trailed off into the air. "I remember all of them. Every moment with you."
"You're telling me the present was useless then?"
Laughing dryly, he licked his lips. "Alright, I should have thought that through more."
She managed a half-hearted sound of mirth before her throat tightened. "I've never thrown a gift away, Azriel. If I had been that angry, that upsetâto do something like that to what I treasure, I fear what he must have felt. I was angry and upset at you, as you were at me, but we did not fight as Cassian and I did."
Azriel's lips drew into a proper smile as he looked to the garden. "Perhaps you can do the same thing as you did with me. Steal him from his room force him, I don't know, the training ring? His fists are his words. I'd prefer you to end the conversation once you have forgiven each other, however."
Despite herself, Arwen chuckled lightly. "I would never do that to you."
Shrugging, he said, "We never set up those boundaries properly."
She eyed him carefully. "Do you wish to bring other females into our bed too? With or without me?" She didn't know how his answer would strike her if he said yes. It had been a fleeting thought of possibility weeks ago but until now he hadn't said much of a hint towards it.
"I have no interest in occupying my time with other females." The words were a balm to the burn she didn't know existed. But if he had said it was of his interest, would it have only been fair to entertain it as he entertained Cassian? As if reading those thoughts, Azriel continued, "Cassian is my brother and there's a trust there that I will never share with others. My pleasure comes from yours, even if not by my own hands. It's also my way of telling you that I trust you to always come back to me."
"So it was a test?"
He laughed and tore a weed growing between the cracks of the stone with the heel of his boot. "Not a test. You wanted it, I wanted it. After you mentioned being worried about how I would be around Cassian after the..." He paused. She filled in the words: the mating bond. The one they had organised and she had hidden from him. "I wanted to show you that I would not chain you down because of my fears."
Arwen leant forward and tapped her finger under his chin. "There are no plans in my head to leave you. As I hope there are none in yours."
"I have been yours since the day the bond fell into place. Even when it broke, I remained yours. Even when you pushed me away, my heart remained yours to shatter."
Her heart twisted. "I know those were meant to be words of romance, but I could have very quickly become the villain in your story, Az. The one that left you with that broken heart."
Azriel met her in the middle of her lean, a soft kiss pressing between her brows. "It was my choice, is my choice, to give it. Like a gift, I can do little more than deliver it. After that, you may treasure it or you may throw it in the fire." Arwen leant away, the pain inside of her returning as he taunted her sour memory. He laughed again. "But unlike a diary, a heart can be mended."
"Unfortunately, I don't have Cassian's heart to mend. Only a bracelet which is no doubt utterly beyond repair," Arwen said dryly.
"Hearts are not just for passionate romance. I would find it safe to say you have a large portion of his as he has yours."
Thinning her eyes, she told him in a speculative and perhaps accusatory tone, "You are being very... Talkative today. And not in the dry way that you usually do."
Azriel shrugged and pushed off his arm, facing the lattice still but sitting next to her. "It's what you need and you're easy to talk to. Should I be offended that you think my conversation is usually dry?"
"No," she quickly muttered with a sheepish grin. "I just meant that it is usually... flatter. Not so from your heart. It's hard to get below the surface with you."
He inspected his shortcut nails. "Congratulations on wearing me down. It only took someone five centuries to be stubborn enough." She lightly smacked his hand at the return of his usual tone. Azriel laughed and turned away from her but it was only for him to lay his head back down in her lap.
~
Arwen couldn't help but be jealous of her brother's muscles. It was a weird statement for her mind to conjure, but it came. They just seemed to grow and strengthen at an unnaturally fast pace, at least in comparison to hers. Though she was far stronger and fitter than she had been months ago, she was nowhere near looking as they did even with the same training.
"Ow!" Rhysand griped, holding his knee with his padded hand.
"Sorry," she murmured, having let the bitterness slip into a fuelled kick even though she was supposed to be working on her punches.
"My bad knee too," he said, shaking it off. "It's been raining recently." Indeed, it had been raining incessantly the past week and though the clouds had held through their early morning training, the stone was slick and glistening.
Pulling off the bandages protecting her knuckles, all she could say was: "It was a good target. Just bent out like that. Asking to be kicked if you ask me." He flicked her nose. Hard. "Hey!"
Rhysand only looked at her. "It was a good target, just so big and pointing out like thatâ" With a yelp, he jumped out of her flying fist. They fell into a light scuffle of petty slaps and pinches until somehow, they made it to a resting mat and sat down on it. "Stretch out. I want to spar properly."
With a slight wince, her brother extended his leg and rounded his toes. Begrudging the pity inside her, she summoned a small handtowel, dampened it with the jug of water and used her magic to heat it up. Yanking up his pant leg above his knee, she folded the cloth and situated it over the spot she knew would be aching.
Rhysand smiled languidly at her. "I am just being dramatic. It's a family trait."
"You are very dramatic," she agreed, rolling her eyes. "But I also saw that wince and if I don't do this it'll play on my conscience. I really don't need anything more on it at this point in time." For her sake, or maybe his own, he yielded no more argument. But he did stare at her for a while with a look of amusement. "What?" she demanded. He shook his head and looked away. "What, Rhys?"
"Just the way you care for me," he said. "It's so... exasperated. I think I find it more endearing than any sort of gentle tenderness."
"Well having you as a brother is an exasperating thing. I have no energy left to be delicate," she sang.
Their private session was later interrupted by the joining of Cassian and a grumbling Mor. Arwen remained frozen on the soft mat, watching the general cross the training grounds straight to the weapons. He did not look to meet her eye.
Automatically, she rose with Rhysand as he mentioned something about getting to that spar he wanted. Arwen didn't really hear him and somehow found herself walking towards Cassian as Mor stretched out her back.
She paused quite a few feet away from him, yet it was clear her intent. Cassian, if he felt her presence, did not turn around until he had the things he wanted. When he did, he looked at her. That was it. No sorrow or remorse or anger. What was she to say?
The moment seemed suspended in time, the world hanging still around them.
Cassian broke first. "Mor!" he bellowed, looking away.
Arwen could only stand as he moved past her, hearing her own name called from another direction. Her brother shot her an expression of sympathy and directed her to a ring on the far side of the rooftop.
"Turn whatever you're feeling right now into something productive. Focus and strength," he told her, slapping each of her knuckles with the flat of his palmâhis way of telling her to warm them up and prepare. "Don't hold back."