Chapter 36
Arwen shared her morning tea with Azriel over the dining table. He had woken up on the better side of his bed that morning and even managed to break a few smiles at her lousy attempts of jests. She had woken in her bed that morning, but with no memory of returning to it, Arwen was left with only the impression that he had carried her up. And the thought of itâwell, it was a warmth she tried to not acknowledge.
But she realised exactly what it meant. The lie she told herself, and Cassian. I don't care about him. Not anymore. A lie bigger than Cassian's inflated head. Because as she looked across the table, her mind reeling with something else to say that would lift his lips and offer her a hoarse chuckle, she knew she did care. A lot. And maybe it was just the mate bond or maybe it was something else, but Arwen didn't find herself caring to define the difference.
It was either the worst thing to befall her, or the best.
She still wore his dark sweater, pulled over her palms to form a barrier against the mug's heat. He had indeed asked for it back upon seeing her move down the stairs. Arwen promptly laughed, shook her head and darted around him. The narrowed eyes of warning informed her that he wouldn't give up on the challenge so quickly but had yet to mention it again.
Rhysand was the first of the other three to show his face in the late morning in black slacks and a plain cotton shirt. "Morning," he rasped, peering into the dining room. He lifted a brow at Arwen. "You want to go to that café for breakfast?"
She lifted her tea. "I'm not that hungry." Arwen hoped he had forgotten the offer. To talk, he had said.
He glanced down at her hand. "Lunch then," he decided.
She could read between what he said; that he didn't want to leave whatever he had said to her last night as the end of their conversation. But Arwen knew she had heard enough. It wasn't a conversation she wanted to sit through with anybody, let alone her brother. "I don't feel like going out today, Rhys."
Rhysand shifted on his feet, glancing at Azriel then back at her. 'I want to talk with you', he sent to her.
Azriel played oblivious, entertaining himself with his tea.
"There's nothing to talk about. I'm fine and you're fine," she answered aloud. "Unless you're not fine but then again, you have a habit of keeping that to yourself and wouldn't offer to take me to lunch just to tell me such. So everything is fine, Rhys. We don't need to talk."
Azriel's training in remaining stoic proved to serve him well, sitting there between them as if didn't hear a single word.
Rhysand sighed again, this time in frustration. Rather than entertain her frustrating responses, he only tightened his lips before saying, "I'll be in my office if you change your mind. Have the day off, Az. We all seem to need it." He stalked off and Arwen looked back down at her drink.
"Sounds like you need to talk," Azriel murmured, his eyes tracing her as though expecting a lash in response. Arwen was near thinking of giving it.
"He's being a hypocrite is all," she muttered back, certain that her brother could still hear the words. Rounding her shoulders as if to shed the past moments, she said, "Feel like training? I feel like training. Let's go training."
Azriel opened his mouth, the sound taking a few more seconds to follow. "Rooftop?"
"Where else?" Arwen placed down her mug, and he looked at it in surprise that she decided to move so fast. Following her lead, he placed down his own and rose to his feet. "I'll get dressed," she told him.
Darting upstairs, Arwen passed a languid Mor and slipped into her chamber. Stripping down and re-dressing into her leathers, she was back downstairs before Azriel had even cleaned up their small breakfast. Clutching his wrist, she took him with her outside.
Arwen couldn't remember the last time they flew together. And that hesitance ricocheted of them both. He stood still before her, his wings in a slight flare that prepared him to fly. Swallowing the dryness of her through, she asked, "Would you rather I cling to you or that you carry me?"
His lips tightened into a small smile with a slow blink accompanying it. In answer, he bent at his knees and she let herself fall into his opening arms. Her own encircled his neck as her feet lifted from the roadside. Arwen's nose brushed against his jaw, welcoming her with his cedar scent. Her stomach cinched as he readjusted his arms under her. Her eyes fell to the way his fingers indented the flesh of her thigh above her knee.
In a single beat of his wings, they were in the air. Arwen tightened her grip, but as always, a smile rose as the city of Velaris grew smaller below her. Smaller, but so much wider as the entire expanse of the land filled her sights.
They didn't speak the entire flight to the House, nor in the minutes after they landed on the rooftop. Azriel let her lead, assisting in her stretches and performing his own. When she began to bandage her hands, he cocked his head. "Is me or Rhys that you want to fight?"
Arwen twisted her lips into a smirk, void of true amusement. "Does it matter?"
"He seemed keen for your company this morning. Perhaps you would benefit speaking with him between punches rather than bites of delicate sandwiches."
Tucking in the end of the bandage, she dropped her hands to her side. "I don't want to hear what he has to say and it's not your matter to speak your opinions on." He bowed his head momentarily in submission. She couldn't stand it. "He's all I have." Her throat stung. "Not that... Not that I think of you and the others so distantly, but he's the only thing I've had since the day I was born that's been mine."
Azriel removed some of his leathers, stripping down to the bare skins of it. "So why are you pushing him away?"
Arwen chuckled bitterly. "I'm not the one pushing him away." She shook out her hands as they veered into one of the training circles. "I just thought... That he needed me as much as I needed him. I was wrong."
Her chest grew with a long breath. He stood opposite her, his fists unfurled at his sides and his dark brows burrowed slightly over his nose. Thinking. Arwen could see those thoughts rising to his lips, so she lifted her arms and feet into a fighting stance and sent a right hook.
He caught it and twisted her arm until he held it pin-straight against his chest, the back of her shoulder against the front of his. "He does need you," he said into her ear.
Arwen twisted her way out of the hold with a well aimed kick of her heel to his knee. "In a reiteration of his own words, he just needs me to stand around. To be a painting he looks at when he wants to."
"At least you know what to get him for his birthday."
She dropped her arms as they stood apart. "That is not funny Azriel." Despite herself, she laughed and he broke into a smile, hidden beneath his ducked head. Arwen took the opportunity to lunge forward but he was too ahead of her and caught the punch.
The rest of their training went on in with only grunts filling in the silence between. Arwen endeavoured to ensure that it was a strenuous session for him just as much as it was for her, making him work hard to get any strike on her and kept him in holds that had even the centuries-long trained spymaster pausing to contemplate his next move.
Panting as they lay in the training ring, Arwen waved her hand and a flagon of water and two glasses appeared between them. Azriel looked down at them with surprise. "New trick?" he inquired.
She shrugged. "My magic is finally showing itself. Seems I can do more than travel into the spirit realm." Pouring him then herself a glass, she added, "This is far more useful."
"Yes, I'll admit I haven't quite seen the benefit of your other little trick yet."
"Other than scarring a decade off Cassian's lifespan?" she crooned. He made a toast with his glass in agreement. Arwen sipped at her chilled drink, playing with the buckle on his leather boots. "I'm sorry if I'm tossing stuff on you about Rhys and me. I... know he means well but he thinks I'm capable of just sitting back."
Azriel looked into his glass with furrowed brows.
"What?" she prompted slowly, seeing the edge of his thoughts seep into his face.
He gradually moved his gaze from the water to her, a pensive look etched into his skin. "Maybe that is all he needs from you."
Arwen's gut churned, the muscles in her jaw swelling at the skin as she clenched it shut. Was she truly being reduced to being a vase on a mantleâsomething pretty to have around and give the occasional water for the flowers? Did Azriel not believe her capable either? Not capable of being a confidant to her own brother?
"Arwen." Her eyes cut back to the spymaster who seemed to have been calling for attention for longer than she had been listening. His gaze softenedâsomething not commonly seen, but still all the more welcome. Azriel hooked his arm over his single raised knee. "You nearly died in Rhys's arms."
"Ten years ago," she muttered.
He loosened a breath. "Ten, twenty. It doesn't matter. I still don't know today if he meant to, but Cassian and I were pulled into his mind when he found you." Azriel rolled his bottom lip in, blinking as he glanced away and turning a shade paler. "Blood just kept pouring from you. More than I thought your body could hold. You were screaming but the worst part was when you went silent. When he kept shaking you but you wouldn't respond. I thought I was watching you die."
Arwen shook her head in a slight daze, a phantom pain burning through the scars. "What does this have to do with anything?"
"Maybe that's all Rhys needs," he said, echoing his earlier words. "For you to be here. Alive. That's all he will dare ask the Mother for. The Cauldron for. I know it's all I do."
She didn't know what to say. Didn't know if she believed his assumption. But Arwen didn't pour every ounce of her attention into thinking about her brother at that moment. Her lashes fluttered as she watched Azriel stare out towards the city, his eyes filled with some semblance of remorse. Remorse for herâfor what almost became of her. "I need a bath," she said quietly. "Care to take me back down?"
Fortunately sensing her desire to leave the topic on the rooftop, Azriel nodded and stood, offering her a hand. Arwen smiled as she took it, barely given a moment before he swept her off her feet. Literally and metaphorically. She admired the way his wings stretched as he took flight, smothering her temptation to reach and trace the line of an artery. His grip had significantly tightened compared to their flight to the House.
Their landing, almost directly in front of the town house, was graceful. Almost feline. Azriel took care in letting her take her foot before releasing her but Arwen let her hands linger on his shoulders. "Thank you," she whispered. "For the training and... the advice. Who knew you would be good at it?"
He cocked his head closer to his shoulder. "I'm not sure why people find that surprising."
Arwen didn't battle her grin. "Suppose I'm just used to taking Cassian's."
Azriel choked on a laugh. "It's a wonder you haven't turned up in a ditch if you listen to him."
She sang a hum of agreement, her thoughts only half on the conversation. The gilded sunlight honeyed his tanned face, which glistened with a thin sheet of sweat. His dark lashes accentuated the sharpness of his almond eyes and the utter handsomeness of the rest of his face. She had never seen another male come close to his beauty. "Thank you," she said again, forgetting she had said it at all.
Azriel nodded gently, looking over her once and the way his eyes took her in was Arwen's undoing. Forgetting her silent vow of a decade, forgetting all the nights she spent telling herself that the Mother or the Cauldronâwhoever it wasâmade a mistake, she placed her hands on either side of his neck. And kissed him.
Even her Winter Solstice coco couldn't compare to the sweetness of his lips. She rose onto her toes to relieve the straining of her neck, granting her a better angle in the process.
But there was no movement against her.
The realisation sent a tremor through her body akin to a shiver, only this one sickening and lingering. Arwen slowed her movements, a sliver of light peeking through her lashes as they began to part, terrified of what she would be facing.
Then a hand laid on her waist, then a second. And they kept her there, close to him. Azriel started to kiss her back, moving in ways she couldn't anticipate. Arwen rose back higher onto her toes, tightening her arms around his neck. His fingers cinched the waist fabric of her trousers before one arm snapped around her completely, decidedly locking her to him. Possessive or passionate, she couldn't and didn't care to tell apart.
Before it could deepen, despite her desire for it, Arwen pulled herself away. Delightfully, Azriel seemed just as flushed as her. Rose dusted his cheeks and ears and the back of his hair had been scuffled by her arms. Tightening her lips, she said, "That could have happened a decade ago if you weren't such a stupid prick."
He paled, the cartilage in his throat bobbing.
Arwen sighed, releasing the energy that had just erupted inside of her. Saying nothing, she turned and headed into her home, letting him decide whether to follow or return to the House to be alone. Not hearing anything, she shut the foyer door behind her.
The town house remained unusually quiet, especially for a late morning, though Mor and Cassian were likely still languid in their chambers. Arwen didn't particularly want to be with them at that time anyway. She made her way across the first floor, barely a creak sounding underneath her feet. Her fist closed around the cold brass of her brother's office door.
Rhysand sat behind his desk, a foot propped against the edge of the wood and little work actually appearing to be performed. He said nothing at her entrance but waited patiently as she shifted weight to each foot. Then, as though her thoughts were as vivid as a painted sunset, he stood and spread his arms. Arwen marched across the small room and around the desk, enveloping herself in his embrace. She clutched the back of his jacket as he rested his chin against the crown of her head and he held her with the same desperation.
"I wouldn't be fine without you," he whispered into her hair. "Not at all."
Thank you for the comments and the votes! <3
If you also would enjoy a Rhysandxoc fic I have 'A Court of Heart and Fealty' being published on my profile. Will probably be updated at a similiar pace to this one.