Chapter 85
Azriel knocked before he entered, but there was no response. Inside Arwen's room in the town house, her curtains had been pulled mostly shut except for a slit about the width of his arm that Rhysand left to allow some light to penetrate. That was hours ago, for now there was only night. He took the steaming bowl of lentil soup and placed it at her bedside table, eyeing the small form that was curled up in a mound of pillows. Arwen was gaunt and pale, hard to look at knowing what she once was.
Azriel sat down on the edge of her bed, facing the headboard. With his scarred hand, he reached for the head just poking out of the blanket and hooked the raven strands over her ear. "Arwen?" he called softly. Her brows twitched. "Arwen?"
With a quiet groan, Arwen rolled her head and peeled her eyes open. The violets behind them were a dull shade that made his stomach queasy. They found him and he allowed her a minute to awaken properly. She looked at the curtains and sighed.
"I have soup," he told her, picking up the bowl and frowning at it. "Lentil. Elain wanted to cook something for you, and I told her that you liked the one you had at the restaurant. She's not sure how close it will be, but it looks similar."
Pushing herself up against the headboard, she asked, "Elain made it for me?"
Azriel smiled softly. "A peace offering. I've made it clear how I feel about you. She knows where my attention and affection lay. Elain doesn't want to be in your ill graces."
That had been a hard conversation. Not by Elain's account, but because he had no idea what he was supposed to say. He had weaved it into his explanation to Rhysand and Cassian of what had occurred between himself and Arwen at the House of Wind when he returned to the town house with her sleeping in his arms. Elain had been listening by the stairs. Rhysand had been a little confused at Azriel's confession of loving his sister.
"I know you do," he said, sharing a look with Cassian and Feyre. "If you're going to do some great proclamation, wait till she's awake to hear it." But it wasn't Arwen or Rhysand he needed to know. Because he had grown close with Elain, and he had been unwilling to cut anything between them for the fear that he would once again be alone if Arwen turned her back to him. Every time she turned to Cassian, he wanted someone to turn to as well.
And that fear might have cost him the one thing he was fearful of.
"You mean Rhys's ill graces," Arwen croaked, humour shining through her broken smile.
Azriel dragged the spoon through the soup. "After the way he kicked Nesta out, I don't think any of us can blame her for sweetening up her image." She hummed in agreement. He hovered the spoon near her mouth.
"I can feed myself. I'm not a baby bird."
He reluctantly placed the spoon back into the bowl but kept a hold of it after putting it in her lap. Arwen picked up the spoon, dipping it a few times to investigate the soup's consistency before bringing a spoonful to her lips.
"Not bad," she admitted with some reluctance that had him smiling.
"Is it similar?"
"Try some."
Arwen spooned more and like he did for her and hovered the spoon in offering.
His mate was offering him food. She was going to feed him. Accept him. Their proper mateship would be sealed andâ
And it wouldn't. Because there was no bond to accept. And by the tightening of her lips, she had those exact thoughts. So Azriel leant forward and put his mouth around the spoon. It wasn't the soup he ordered at the restaurant, but it was close. Just missing a spice that he couldn't identify. As he licked his lips, Arwen went back to feeding herself, leaving him to contemplate the nothingness of it all. How nothing changed after accepting food offered by what was supposed to be his mate. He carefully watched each mouthful, her attention moving to something on the other side of her room, seemingly in distant thought. He had to keep nudging her hand to remind her to lift it.
Then she paused, metal to her lips. The spoon dropped from her fingers and into the bowl with a loud clang, droplets of the soup flying out and landing on Azriel's lap and the blanket. Reacting quickly, he lifted the bowl as her body made a small lurch, vomiting everything she had eaten right back into it.
With a small sigh, he placed the contaminated bowl aside. "Should I inform Elain of your thoughts on her cooking?" he muttered, meaning to be humorous but now just wishing he kept his mouth shut.
Arwen leant back, closing her eyes and crossed her arms over her stomach, displeased with herself. She had to be starving. She hadn't eaten anything more than that mouthful in four... five days now. And now it was an acidic slosh back in the bowl it came from.
"Is there anything you think you can eat?" he asked her, desperate enough that if she asked for a single piece of fruit on a hidden island, he would hunt it down for her.
Arwen shook her head, teary-eyed and avoiding his gaze.
Leaning forward, he pressed a tender kiss to her forehead before standing and picking up the bowl. "I'll bring you something else later," he promised. "Get some more rest." That was all she could do. Sleep and be woken for the occasional try of food. Yesterday she had tried wandering around the house but hadn't been able to make it down the stairs, where Rhys found her clutching the bannister and gave such a harsh scolding that she bawled her eyes out. Cassian knocked sense into him while Azriel brought her to the sitting room to pick out a book from the shelves. They sat in the alcove for a few hours, Arwen reading and Azriel watching the quiet street outside the window.
She didn't look at him. Azriel left her bedroom, shutting the door behind him.
A shadow curled around his ear, whispering. Lucien had arrived downstairs. Another curled around his other ear, settling into a more permanent position. That one too, whispered to him, but of Arwen.
Quiet. Tired. Resigned.
Azriel hissed at his shadow at that last one. Arwen wasn't resigned. She was tired, exhausted and hungry, uncertain, but she wasn't resigned. Resignation was to give up and he wouldn't let that happen.
At Rhysand's behest, he had convinced himself that he would not push his desires onto her. That he wouldn't push her to make her choice. He knew that if she did so before she was ready, she might lead to regret it. That she would resent them for putting that pressure on her. She had gotten through losing her mother on the adamant belief that they would be reunited one day and it pained him to not want her to have that.
But now he feared it was getting too late and her delaying to choose was doing nothing to delay the inevitable. And if she wouldn't choose, he was selfish enough to choose for her, even if he had to drag her to Helion.
Azriel's boots thumped down each step. He set eyes on Lucien Vanserra at the bottom who paused at the sight of him coming down. Azriel stopped five steps from the floor. "Where are you going?" he demanded.
Rhysand and Feyre both sent him looks from the hall behind Lucien. He could hear Cassian and Mor in another room.
Lucien made to glance over his shoulder but thought better and held the spymaster's hard gaze. "I'm going to see Arwen."
Azriel glared over his head, not believing that Rhysand would allow visitors in the town house, let alone near her. "Let her rest."
"Lucien is only here for a few hours," Rhysand said. "Let him see her."
He flared out his wings, blocking the width of the stairwell and bared his teeth in warning. "No." Oh, he was going to get into shit later for this, but he didn't care. Not when he knew how vulnerable his mate was. Bond or not, that is what she was. Rhysand should understand it, how it felt. "She hasn't asked for you."
Perhaps the act of Arwen feeding him did elicit some reaction inside of him because Azriel couldn't stand the idea of people being around her without him in this state. Certainly not another male. Not Lucien, not Cassian, not even Rhysand. Though in truth, that instinct had long been in him. The animalistic side of him that he usually hated because it derived from his Illyrian heritage.
"Azriel." Feyre's soft but firm tone cut through him. His High Lady. "Lucien wants to see his friend and I'm sure Arwen would appreciate the visit. If she doesn't, Lucien will come back. Let him pass and come downstairs."
Where did the line become drawn between obeying his superiors and listening to the voice inside of him that told him to protect his mate at all costs? Rhysand never had to go through that. Rhysand's very voice was law. He should understand, if not for knowing the feeling, then for the knowledge that it was his own sister that Azriel would do anything for.
But Rhysand had made foul choices when it came to her before.
He tucked in a single wing. "Keep the door open," he growled to the emissary who passed him mutely. A shadow dropped to the floor, snaking behind Lucien, following him along the upper floor. Ignoring the looks of his brother and Feyre, Azriel stalked down the rest of the stairs with the soup bowl in hand and went to the kitchen.
Rhysand couldn't drop it, of course, and followed him. Azriel let the bowl drop with a deep clang against the bench as he listened to his shadow's report in the moments before Rhysand made it to his side.
She was okay.
Rhysand leant against the bench to his left, arms folded. The loose posture, at least, gave Azriel the knowing that the male he would be speaking to was his brother, not a High Lord. "I trust Lucien."
"I don't," Azriel countered. "I don't know how you're trusting anyone near her."
Rhysand laid a hand on Azriel's forearm. "You're in overdrive. Trust me, I know how that feels. Like everything is suddenly a threat and you are scared because you don't know how to take them all on at once. Do you remember how I drank myself to the gutters at Rita's when I knew Feyre was back with Tamlin and not happy? After I had watched her die and then felt the bond snap in place?"
"I've had to watch Arwen die already feeling the bond. And lived with it for over two hundred years." Azriel rounded off his shoulder and shrugged away Rhysand's hand. "And now I'm watching her die again because we've chosen to give her the dignity of taking her time to decide her own damn fate, so I'm not interested in drinking myself into bliss or pretending not to care to deal with it." Hurt slashed across Rhysand's face, but it left as quickly as it came. Azriel glanced down at the soup he had yet to discard. "You've realised what I have, haven't you?"
Rhysand narrowed his eyes. "About what?"
Azriel stared out of the window, the balls of his palm pressed into the bench, knuckles whitening as he rolled his fingers into a fist. He nudged the bowl of soup towards his brother. Mixed in with the yellowish, thick liquid was blood. Not the bright, crimson blood that he had seen in the theatre toilet, but black, inky blood. The blood that had stained the very sink to his right, stained the walls and the floors, painting her struggle before they found her on the floor in the hall behind him. Rhysand looked into it, pain rippling through his eyes.
"The blood. Being unable to eat. Feeling ill and irritable. I can hear her struggling to breathe now. Arwen is dying the same way she did before. Just slower. Her body is breaking down but it's also remembering."
Rhysand whispered, "Yes. I've realised."
"There are no more warning stages, Rhysand." Azriel picked up the bowl, dumping the contents into the sink in an effort to occupy his hands. "Once her ears start to bleed, it's too late. Her lungs will fill with blood and she'll drown in it. You need to push her. If you're so adamant in giving her the choice, then fucking convince her to make the right one."
"And which one is that?" Azriel spun on Rhysand in complete disbelief that he just heard that question from him. Rhysand's jaw ticked, his turn to look out of the window. "I want her to stay with us, Az. More than even you can imagine so don't look at me like that. But how do we know that making her stay is the best choice for her."
Azriel couldn't believe his ears. "Is that what you would say if Feyre was in this position? Would you be alright if she decided to leave you?"
"You're acting like you're the main part of the equation, Azriel," growled Rhys. "You're not. I'm not."
"You're her brother!" Azriel slammed the side of his fist against the bench, causing the contents on it to rattle loudly. Pivoting on his heels, he leant the low of his back against the lip and brought that fist to his mouth as Rhysand glowered. "You're her brother and you're keeping your mouth shut because you're scared. She will only listen to you. You're scared that she'll resent you if you ask her to stay but at least if she's dead, you don't have to face that. Right? If you do nothing, you are going to be burying her again because she is not making the decision. It is going to kill her. And it will be your fault." He needed Rhysand to act because he couldn't risk it coming from him. His relationship with Arwen was tense, hanging by a thin thread that he didn't dare disturb. Even if that meant blaming his brotherâprovoking him. "I will make sure you are the one to bury her since you couldn't be bothered the first time."
The wrath, hot as burning coals, clashed with the cold cloak of night that wrapped the kitchen. "Don't you dare, Azriel." Never before had Rhysand used such a dark, violent tone on him, barely more than a feral growl that managed to sound like words. A tone that rarely even showed in the Court of Nightmares. It belonged to the beast roaming inside of him. Sure enough, the talons were there in places of fingers. It rattled some primal instinct in him to run, but he didn't. This was the exact reaction he wanted from Rhysand. "Don't you dare fucking accuse me of not caring."
Azriel knew the real reason Rhysand hadn't been the one to bury her. He couldn't. He physically couldn't bring himself to do it. Throughout the entire trip to that spot on the mountainside he had to keep diverting to throw up and almost hadn't made it at all. He couldn't even stay for the burial ritual and Mor had to winnow him home. Azriel had been almost completely numb, every emotion seeming to have been washed away from him. He had carried Mor since Cassian was the only one that could bring himself to touch Arwen's corpse. To Azriel, the body hadn't seemed real. It was too cold and lifeless to be his mate. He wanted nothing to do with the strange replica of her.
He didn't want to know what it would be like this time.
Rhysand winnowed, a loud whipping noise like the crack of lightning all that was left in his wake. Cassian and Feyre appeared from the hall, carefully investigating the scene before them. Azriel turned away from Cassian's piercing look.
"You're a dick," said Cassian.
"I did what had to be done."
"Did it have to cost that? Or was that just some pent-up resentment you've been wanting to get out for decades on him?"
Azriel pulled his nose into a silent snarl. It was Feyre who stepped forward, her gaze icy. With the voice of a High Lady, she said, "You will never speak to my mate, your High Lord, like that again, Azriel."
"I'm doing for his sake as much as I am hers," Azriel said, cool and quiet. "You weren't there, Feyre, the first time. You don't understand how he was. He became exactly who the rest of Prythian saw him as. Cruel and wicked and vicious. It took us years to bring him back."
Feyre's eyes had grown wide. She glanced back at Cassian who confirmed it with a small nod, his throat bobbing.
"The grief was enough to turn him into the very person he hated," he continued coldly. "I don't underestimate that it would be even worse if it happened again."
Feyre sighed deeply and wrapped her arms around herself, eyes downcast. Cassian and Azriel both recognised that certain look.
"Feyre," Cassian said in a low voice, "what do you know?"
Feyre looked back up at them, her expression grim.
~
Arwen unwound the towel from her hair, letting her damp hair fall across her shoulders. Despite sleeping all day, she was crawling back into her bed again. Her thoughts carried to the book on her nightstand, but also to the drawing pad tucked into the draw.
Lucien had been a nice visit. Though she wouldn't admit it aloud, she liked that the others weren't overly fond of him other than Feyre. It made him her friend, not theirs. Deciding that if she got the opportunity, Arwen would continue to write to him, maybe even visit him in the mortal lands one day.
Someone knocked at her door as she yawned, her warped voice behind her hand approving entry. Arwen straightened and smiled. "Rhys. Feyre said you left a few hours ago. She wasn't expecting you back until tomorrow."
He quietly shut the door behind him. Wandering to her bedside, he sunk down onto the mattress next to her, kicking off his boots before planting his feet atop the blanket. "Just needed some fresh air."
Arwen glanced at her near-closed window. "Spring is on its way. Most of the snow is gone."
"My least favourite season," he groused, earning a nudge in his side and a smile from her. "I know, I know. Starfall. I wonder if there'll be more this year. After the war." She shrugged, still looking out into the darkness at nothing in particular. "Do you mind if I stay here the night?"
"Feyre kicking you out of bed?" she crooned. "What did you do, Rhysie?"
He rolled his eyes. "She tells me I'm too clingy. Won't let go of her when we sleep." Arwen chuckled as his arm dug under her, tugging her into his side, enveloping her completely, his cheek squished against hers. "I don't think this is clingy. Do you?"
"You're forgetting that I'm worse," she reminded him with another laugh. "I think it's because you let me crawl into your bed too often when I was younger. I hated falling asleep alone."
Her brother continued to smile, but it softened, no longer of amusement but of affection. He rested a kiss on her temple. "I liked knowing that you were safe. I know you had Mother and Father, but you always felt like my responsibility."
"I'm sorry."
"No," he said, shaking his head, smile unwavering. "I enjoyed it. I wanted to be responsible for you. I enjoy being a brother. I fear many days that I get it wrong."
"You've always done everything you could." Arwen tucked her head under his chin. "Everything you thought was right."
He didn't speak after that, but she was halfway to sleep, anyway.