Chapter Text
There are no footprints in the snow. This close to the border Autumn has with Winter, the clouds hang low to the tops of the conifers. Thick, grey blankets heavy with the flurry of flakes that fall fast to the Autumn floor. Everything is dusted with it, the shells of leaves, the shrubs and weeds that carpet the ground—every burrow is sealed away. Somewhere high in the mountains, the jaws that cut the line of the territories, he waits.
Azriel stands unmoving in a clearing. His feet make no imprint, his breath no steam. The watery, pale light frosts over the scene before him, where even the vivid jewel patterns of autumn fade to grey tones. His chest rises and falls, the only movement apart from the dry bones rustle of barren boughs against each other in the canopies.
Every sense is at attention. The hunter, the executioner—both have been called to this ceremony. He just happened to get here early.
His wings twitch when he hears boots in the snow. The crunching of new frost, hurried footsteps and the scuffling sound of a struggle. All that greets him when he inhales deeply is the crisp scent of cold. A familiar smell from his youth in Windhaven. It burns through his nose all the same.
"Fuck—stop struggling." There, a voice through the trees. Gruff, like it was spoken into the collar of a jacket. He can sense the strain in the words—they're dragging something.
Azriel's head tilts just so. The movement is eerie under his hood, predatory. A wolf cocking its ears. His hands remain behind his back under the fold of his wings. Patience, after all, is part of the fun.
Again, a voice reaches out to him, brought on the hissing tendrils of his accompanying darkness—his shadows.
"I thought you said the faebane would be enough!" It's a normal voice. The rounded vowels of the Autumn Court, and a slight rasp in the throat like he'd been strangled one too many times.
"I—shit, I did. That's what she told me, anyway, though I don't think she called it that."
The other males scoff is ugly, locked up from the chill this far up the mountain slope.
"That's the last time I let you be in charge of the sedative."
Azriel's tongue swipes out, wetting his chapped bottom lip. He can taste the tang of their stress in the wind; bitter like ripened sweat. He feels the pound of their pulse through the breadth of the snow covered ground if he shifts his feet just so. His eyes close. He won't look, won't cheat. Not yet. Besides, he knows all he needs to know about these males: their heads, the nervous trembling to their blue-tinged fingers, the darting of their eyes to every spare corner of the forest. Cornered, disturbed, unafraid to lash out.
He knows that whatever it is they have, has no right being sedated. Hauled like a sack of rice to a little, forgotten corner of this Court and disposed of to no one's eyes under the unsympathetic grey blanket of sky.
No one's eyes, except Azriel's.
He shifts, finding the thread of the males pulses through the ground. Beneath him, the coating of snowfall lays pristine.
The shuffling grows closer, as does the grunts of exertion. Azriel can smell them now, the acrid tang of their sweat and the fetid scent of their breath. Day old alcohol, still lingering on their lips, high in the rosiness of their cheeks.
"Here, we'll do it here." The one with the rasp says. Azriel keeps his back turned at the hollow thump of a body against the earth.
It's pulse is there; weak, but still thumping. The antsy rabbiting of a heart that knows it needs to fight.
His shadows still. Unnatural in its right; the shadows are constantly moving, shaping, bouncing where the light grows and shrinks its domain. Now, they go preternaturally quiet, the buzzing in his head fades as they slink around his shoulders.
This, this, they whisper. We do not know what to make of this.
Azriel nearly rolls his eyes at them. It is not the first time they've had an assignment like this. In now ten years it certainly won't be the last.
He figures now is as good as any time. The males seem distracted, their muscles loosened with ease, warm with adrenaline and the thrill of getting away undetected.
Foolish, foolish souls. They are not worth the blood on Azriel's blade.
This, this. His shadows hiss again, a rising chorus of confusion and spite that sparks embers in his blood.
Azriel turns, silent as the flakes fall, and freezes.
Bright, copper hair spills out onto the snowdrift. A streak of an auburn ribbon in the ever-white world, this in between space of bejeweled autumn and pale winter. His face is turned, right half buried in the swell of the drift. A bruise, like a roiling thundercloud, blooms along the left side of his cheekbone up to his temple where it disappears into his hair. He's pale, skin nearly translucent where it's pressed to the cold snow, blue at the lips. The only color that remains, not leached from his body or under his twitching eyelids, is the copper shock of his hair and the purpling, violet-green contusion on his face.
This. The shadows round his shoulders, his wrists, legs, the tips of his wings and hum.
The first male, the one who seemingly botched the sedative, stretches his back.
"Mother's tits," he curses, blowing hot air into his cupped hands. "Let's get this over with so we can get somewhere warm." His dark, brown hair escapes from behind a pointed ear.
Azriel hasn't moved, hasn't drawn a single breath. The entirety of him is motionless, even his shadows don't dare to make sudden movements. His gaze, under the shade of his hood, is locked on the spill of copper hair. They map upwards from there, tracing it like the curves of a river until they land on familiar, but unknown territory.
There's a hollow in him. A space once filled but now not. It echoes when he brushes against it, that old, familiar pain rising up with a gasp and a bite to his heart. Tripping, tumbling, till it knocks against the bones of his rib cage and continues to beat against them. He can faintly feel the bond. This close it's drawing him in: two ends of a book closed together, and he craves it desperately.
Azriel sucks in a breath, harsh and cold, shocking him enough to blink his frozen stare away. Burned cinnamon, and the delectable smell of that nutty, slightly earthy scent greets him.
This, this, this. It's grown into a chant, his shadows moving in the strange, halting way they do when there's an end—a goal.
Eris Vanserra has been brought here to die.
Azriel of the Mother has been ordered here to kill.
The woods hang their breath; fog in the trees, swirling through the limbs of pines. The flurry comes down faster collecting in the strands of Eris's hair and in his sooty eyelashes.
At his side, his blade weighs heavy. The two males continue to talk over the body sprawled in the snow. Their voices ring from far away, lost to the near silence the forest has collected around them in this little clearing.
Azriel makes to take a step toward Eris, but jerks back like a string being pulled taut. He shifts to right the strain, casting a narrow-eyed glance to the barren branches, as if something sits there—watching.
"Would you stop running your mouth and get the knife?" The second male points a long, pale finger to the bag in the snow, having been shucked off in relief when they made it to the clearing.
The knuckles on his fingers are raw, a ruddy red color from dragging a body through the cold. Azriel's shadows follow his gaze, the rage filtered through them that he has no allowance to feel. He watches him; finds the aspects of his face and the clothes he wears and documents it. The male isn't all that impressive, and apart from having the same pointed ears high fae have, he would've easily mistaken him for a lower rank: a farmer, perhaps.
White flakes catch on the dark, muddy brown strands of the fae's hair. He brushes at his runny nose as his beady, dark eyes scan over the clearing.
They sweep over where Azriel is standing, and continue on.
"Got it!" The second male shouts, echoing through the still silent woods. Not a bird calls back. Not a single scamper of little paws through the crunch of snow and twigs answers.
Foolish fae, they should know better than to trust a silent wood. Azriel thinks to himself, the shadows chittering in agreement.
The first male rubs his hands together, the friction faint, his breath pooling like great clouds in front of his narrow face. "Fucking finally." He says, and pulls out a crumpled, awkwardly folded piece of paper from his pocket. "Now, give it here."
He passes the knife over. An unassuming silver shine that catches the watery light, it's hilt wrapped in worn leather. It looks like it would be lost in an armory and never found again.
Azriel feels the muscles along his shoulders tense, his legs stiffening in the snow as if being rooted to the earth. He's much more comfortable with the knife in the second males hand—a little bit awkward, unaware of consequences tied to the blade like a red ribbon.
The shadows go shrill, piercing through the muffled drone of Azriel's thoughts. They bring forth the accompanying jolt of his heart—the twist deep in his stomach as he catches the mad glint in the males eyes as he holds the knife aloft.
"Ten thousand gold marks, Lachlan." He whispers, nearly to himself. There's a sheen on his thin, pale lips from how many times he's licked at them. "And we've got it."
A smile, crooked and strangely excited, grows on Lachlan's face.
Foolish, the shadows whisper, delighting in the wait just as much as Azriel is. Unwise creatures—their spilt blood will be refreshing.
The second male pauses, just enough for Azriel to catch it and take it as his cue.
The forest hushes, a noiseless creature in a cradle. Azriel reaches out into the thin, cold air with his left hand and from nothing a staff appears. The touch of it greets him every time; cool, tingling along his palm as his fingers wrap around the cast metal of it. The weight of it is hefty. Raw, unfinished iron, blackened with use and time. At the top where it stops at his shoulders an intricately crafted head of a raven sits—it's beak long, nearly a forearms length, and wickedly sharp. The base of the staff rests in the snow, a hooked talon of honed iron jutting out of it.
Azriel shifts his shoulders, shrugging into visibility with the blazing glow of his eyes peering out from under the hem of his dark hood.
Lachlan catches on first—a startled, choked scream ripping from his throat as all the blood leaches from his face.
Fear. The undiluted, distinctive scent of it, wafts into the still air. He can feel his shadows grow in response to it, building and churning like angry, seething storm clouds. They billow from him, down from the flare of his dark wings and out across the white landscape. Reaching, tangling, Hel's very own darkness given hands.
"Fuck!" The second male drops the knife hovering over Eris's vulnerable back. A shadow lashes out, quicker than a heartbeat, and catches it.
"Who are you?" He says, unable to hide the shake in his voice, the tremble of his fingers as his pupils turn to pin pricks in his wide eyes.
Azriel inhales deeply, pulling the frigid air into his lungs. At the back of his tongue lingers the bitter taste of fear, Lachlan managing to have sweat through even his thick winter coat and pants. It's a delicacy, this kind of awe—the terror it brings to the cocky, the hatred it brings to the wise. It's not often his assignments allow him to bask in it, let the scent his presence brings wash over him.
Today, he'll allow a little room for play.
Azriel's hazel eyes blaze, lamps in the thin pale stretch of winter sunlight behind the cloud cover. The staff spins gently in his left hand, the point of the raven's beak ending up directed toward the males.
Lachlan swallows. Azriel hears the awful click of his throat from his spot in the middle of the clearing.
The shadow brings Azriel the dagger. He thanks it with a nod, twirling the blade between his scarred fingers.
"You will not know me." He vows. His voice echoes the emptiness of the forest, the glacial stillness of the trees and everything that lives under it.
"But I promise I know you."
Azriel watches the second males throat bob, his dark eyes casting a glance to his friend—who is wholly trapped in fear looking at Azriel.
"Uh, sorry if we trespassed on some sacrificial grounds." He clears his throat, stepping forward even though Lachlan squeaks out a 'don't.'
"We can leave, no trouble here." He says, raising his hands to Azriel. The delicate skin of his palms bare to him.
Between one breath and the next, Azriel cocks his head and with a flick of his wrist, sends the knife he was playing with straight through the flesh of his hand. It spears through the center. Azriel hears when two of the long bones that connect to the wrist splinter.
The males howl shatters the still air. Sharp as the staff he holds, and nearly breaking with the force of it. Drops of crimson blood splatter onto the white snow, rivers of it running down the palm of his hand where his fingers twitch and curl into as if to soothe the pain.
"As I said," Azriel's eyes flick over to Lachlan, who watches his friend yank the blade from his hand with a green tinge around his dampened, pale face, "I know you."
Azriel watches as he holds his punctured hand to his chest, knees wobbling unsteadily through the haze of pain. The male falls to the snow-covered ground, narrow, watering eyes glaring up at him.
"You absolute fucker." He seethes, spit flying from his thin lips.
"Rohn—" Lachlan tries, reaching for him. He cringes away at the blood streaming from the gash in his hand.
"No—you know what? If you wanted to be the one to kill him, asshole, fine. But we get half of the bounty."
Azriel stalks closer, just a step. The shadows along the breadth of his shoulders and wings writhing along with the frightened pulse of the males.
"I do not want your marks." He says.
His voice so low the words are nearly lost to the hard panting of the second male. Chest heaving, a shaking hand trying and failing to wrap a shred of his coat fabric around the wound.
Lachlan speaks this time. "What can we give you, then?"
He asks to appease. To try and corral the frantic drumming of his heart. Anything to stop the fear leaking slick, black oil down the knobs of spine—pooling in his stomach and festering there like those horrible, horrible shadows.
Snow pack grinds under the base of Azriel's staff as he twists it around once.
"What do you want?" Lachlan asks, a newfound confidence strengthening his voice so it grows in Azriel's silence.
Azriel stills, his scarred knuckles wrapping firmly around the cold metal staff. Rohn whimpers quietly to himself, skin almost as pale as the ground below him—now dotted and stained with the color of his blood.
The scent of it lays against the back of Azriel's tongue. A gash in the side of his cheek, a cut on his lip. The iron, almost warmth of it sits thick in his nose, his mouth.
His chin tilts down toward his chest, stare unwavering. "You."
The wings on his back spread wide, his shadows screeching that eerie call of a silent, dead wood. It's one step into a puddle of darkness on the ground—the next he's face to face with Lachlan.
Horror bleeds all color from his rounded cheeks, the stink of utter terror along with the tang of urine fades into the air between them.
Azriel doesn't give him a chance to scream.
The pure iron head of the staff makes a satisfying crunch of bone and cartilage against the males shoulder. The joint shatters, and his left arm falls limp and starts to swell an ugly red color. Lachlan's mouth falls open in a spine rending scream. He scrambles away, cries falling from his lips—wet and wounded. The muscles along Azriel's back and arms tense as he brings it back up, hooking the sharp blade of the beak around his neck and flinging him into the center of the clearing.
Lachlan goes sprawling, head over ass as a streak of dark blood smears against the snow covered ground. He holds his shoulder, sobbing bitterly to the point the world around him thaws into murky shades of gray, his eyes so full of tears. Azriel approaches slowly, each step unheard, unfelt by the stained earth. The male's bleating grows louder, his voice reaching a desperate, broken pitch as he scoots back frantically.
"Please—please! It was his idea! I just followed along—" his begging falls on the deaf, eager ears of the shadows. They swarm around him, Hel's insects, and he chokes on the swell of bile in his throat.
Azriel flips his staff, the head of the raven dragging through the drift. A deep trough in the powder. The only mark he'll ever leave.
Lachlan's face goes white, his eyes so wide there's hardly any pupil left. "Please…" He whispers. "What are you?"
There's none of the earlier hesitancy. None of the confidence that had so quickly grown and wilted in the presence of Azriel's frigid, ancient presence. Azriel can hear every inch of superiority he once carried be burned away in the heat of his thundering, drumming heart.
It beats and beats and beats—Azriel knows it knows what's coming. The last useless kick of the rabbits legs against the trap its neck is caught in.
Azriel stops before him, crouching down to meet his eyes. He'll give him this one dignity in death, eye to eye.
Lachlan shudders at the sight. Whatever he sees beneath the hood of his armor makes his bottom lip tremble.
As if caught in a loop, he asks again. Wet, choked, but clear: "what are you?"
Azriel tightens his grip on the staff, breathing in deeply and letting the cold air pass again through his lips. It smells like defeat.
His lips thin, protesting the confession on his tongue. "Wrath." He says.
Lachlan's final words are nothing more than a gurgle through blood and fluid when Azriel lurches. The hand wielding his staff coming up and ending his breath with a crack of steel against the bone of his skull. It caves easily. Messily.
This is, after all, how death comes. Without ceremony or haste. It steals away the last breath until the chest collapses and the heart gives in to the lure—the pull. There is no fighting when Azriel brings it. A forceful reckoning death merely makes an appearance at.
The body slumps to the side, landing with a hollow thump in the snowdrift. Glazed unseeing eyes stare into the thick of the woods. Rivers of blood run from the fatal blow down the limp slopes of his face. It pools under his head, turning the snow to a dark, nearly black slush that soaks his hair.
Azriel thumbs away speckles of blood from his cheek. With little more than a glance back at the corpse, he rises on steady feet, his shadows a chorus around his ears.
Gone, gone. They cry, rage making them steam in the early morning light. Azriel's brows furrow, the curve of his full lips slipping into a frown.
"What—" He has no chance to ask. The shadows writhe, deepening like spilled ink in one breath and then turning to nothing more than a puff of smoke in another.
The bloody one stole him from us. It's a hiss against the shell of his ear, nothing more than a warning.
Azriel spins around, frantic as his glowing eyes search the clearing before him.
There's footprints in the powdered snow, leading off into a grove of trees further in the woods.
Eris is gone. His body missing from the shape it pressed into the ground.
Azriel's hand curls tight, knuckles whitening. His back teeth clench as the hooked base of his staff grinds deeper into the blood-slush ground beneath him. A bitterly cold wind sweeps over the clearing, little flakes of loose snow swirling around his legs, a shudder running through his wings. Azriel sinks into it; the forest opening at his call, the lamp-like glow of his eyes peering through trees, shrubs, and the hazy mist of fog.
He juts his chin over his shoulder though he does not break his predatory stare from those footprints leading away from the glade.
"Find him," he growls.
…
Rohn has to stop several times—not because he hears the echo of Lachlan's cries, pathetically wrung from him by that…thing. The body he's dragging is heavy, complete dead weight and he's down one hand. Trying to hold anything with the mangled, bloody mess of his right is a bad idea.
It doesn't stop him from trying.
His face burns from the cold, and with another tug against the limp high fae he feels another set of tears track down his face. They come faster, sticky against his wind-blown cheeks, when he tries to bend his fingers enough to hold onto the forearm his other hand is grasping. The fingers twitch, a dying breath, and fire spreads through the exposed muscles and veins in the wound.
A scream stays trapped in his throat. His vision fades out for a second, black spots in the corner of his eyes as he turns his face to the collar of his coat and bites down on the fabric.
Every inch of his body is covered in sweat. If he bleeds any more he may just pass out next to his bounty—and then what? All of this for nothing? Just to lie forgotten and half dead, only to be eaten by some wild boar?
Rohn holds his hand close to him, ignoring the smear of blood he left on the heirs forearm. His stomach twists unpleasantly, head going light at the sight of what looks like the yellow-tinged hint of bone in the wound.
"Fuck." He curses quietly.
There's no room for pausing—not enough space between the creature in that clearing and him and his prize.
What else could it have been? A shiver crawls down his spine with errant, cold fingers. It's not from the wind, coasting along the snow-dusted pines and through the drifts on the ground. The bitter chill keeps him alert—the memory of the monster in the clearing keeps his pulse from stabilizing.
The heirs unconscious body digs a furrow into the ground, a trail that will lead whatever's hunting them right to their location. Rohn drops his arm, letting it fall heavily to the ground as he scrambles for sprigs of branches to conceal their path. The pine needles scratch away any trace of his footsteps or the dragged body from the powdered snow.
He's panting by the time he returns to pulling Eris further away, the gentle murmur of a stream meeting them in the strained huff of his breath. Rohn grits his teeth, and aims for it. His pulse rings in his ears, in the wound in his hand. The water would be good to clean it, maybe even to make it to the other bank and throw the creature off their scent.
Or he could stop here, do it now. Rohn hesitates crossing the stream, his worn leather boots sinking into the silt and ice slush of the bank. He pats down his coat and pants with one hand, holding the other above his head and trying to ignore the slick slide of blood down his wrist.
A noise of triumph falls from his lips as he feels the worn leather hilt of his knife. Rohn brings it out of his coat pocket, keeping his hand above his head, and pauses. He raises it to his face, watching the glint of light reflect off the blade. Kept sharp even though the wrap around the hilt is old—his father's treasured possession. It seems only right Rohn would use it now, for this.
The high lords son's neck lay bare, hair loose and unbound, spread among the snow and nearly soaked a dark brown. Entirely vulnerable, his pulse throbs innocently under the tender skin of his neck. It would be so easy, he thinks, to slide the knife across right under his jugular.
Despite the rampant thoughts in his head, Rohn's never slit someone's throat. He's not a murderer; the closest he'd ever come to intentional bloodshed being a gooses neck to a wooden chopping block, lopping it off with an axe. The mechanics of it seem easy enough—maybe with a little more finesse than he's used to.
The babbling of the stream falls to an arrant drone of noise in the back of his head. He can feel each breath he takes; more aware of them than ever. The rise and fall of his chest, the nip of cold air through his nose.
None of it deters him, and he finds himself straddling the heirs chest. On top of his delicately embroidered red doublet, looking like splotch of wildly out of place color among the grays and whites of the landscape.
He looks so still, could already be dead. Maybe that makes it easier. Rohn steadies himself—
Darkness grows. A writhing shadow in the corners of his bloodshot eyes. It's like the sun had disappeared behind the jaws of the mountain range, but when he tips his head back to the sky it reveals nothing but the same watery, gray quilt of clouds hovering above. Thin sunlight, but sunlight nonetheless, spears through.
Yet the stream is silent. Nothing but the stillness of the woods rings in his head, beating against his own pulse in his temples.
The hand holding the knife begins to tremble. He doesn't know if the growing, stretching darkness is the blood loss or something else.
It answers for him. Tendrils of shadow, familiar and horrible, shoot out from under stones and fallen, rotting logs. They spear down from the tangled boughs of branches and swarm around him.
He shouts, lost in the thick of them, fear clogging his throat as he throws his arms over his head to block the nonexistent noise. He falls sideways off the unconscious heir, knife buried in the snow next to him as he clenches his eyes shut and bears his teeth through the feel of them. Crawling under his coat, spindly against his skin—like tiny needles. Thousands of them.
It's a madness all in itself.
"I should've taken both hands." A voice, pitched so deep it nearly rattles his skull, sounds through their little spot in the woods by a silent stream.
The swarm abates, and Rohn dares to peek one eye open, sweat beading his face like ugly pearls.
There, harboring the shadows along his shoulders and hands, stands the creature. The ghost.
Rohn realizes now the simple look he had gotten earlier was a mercy. The sun does not shine on Azriel's figure, cast in his own darkness, shaded by it. His stomach drops to his toes, frozen as they are, at the glimpse of those haunting, lamp-like eyes. They search him, through muscle and blood and bone and are left finding him wanting. The giant spread of his dark wings leaves Rohn swallowing a whimper.
His boots make no imprint in the powdered snow below him.
A ghost indeed. An unmarked soul left to wander the earth, apart from everyone, never to touch or be touched.
But that's not right.
Rohn digs in the snow next to him, searching for the knife. The snow-dusted leather grip of it in his hand he swings out with abandon, aiming the point of it directly at Azriel.
He cocks his head, a flicker of those glowing eyes blinking at him. The shadows pulse around his head, a dark halo.
"I don't fear death." Rohn says, rising to his feet. There's a shaky quality to his limbs, not quite fear, but not the composure he's donning either.
Azriel smiles. A wickedly sharp blade cutting through the thin, frigid air between them. What little color remaining in Rohn's face drains like a blood-let wound.
"Good thing I'm not death."
Something tugs at him; instinct or terror he doesn't know. Maybe a noxious combination of the two that sets his veins and heart ablaze. He'll go down fighting, his father didn't raise a wimp. The painful churn of his gut disagrees, the breadth of the woods across the stream looking more and more enticing as the silence stretches on.
Rohn steadies his feet in the ground, leveling the glinting blade of his knife. It looks like a toothpick compared to the onyx black staff Azriel holds. A hysterical laugh bubbles up his throat, it's only the tense knot at the back of his mouth that keeps it down.
At his feet, the unconscious form of the heir begins to stir. A twitch of his pale fingers, his eyelids flickering. Rohn's eyes widen, watching everything he'd been planning for weeks unravel in just a heartbeat with the slow rise and fall of Eris's chest.
His heart lurches, and he realizes his mistake too late.
Whipping his head up to face Azriel—he finds two scarred, mangled hands reaching for him. They seize his skull, an angry fire burning in those hateful eyes, and Rohn yelps as he feels sharp nails dig into his scalp. His thumbs land under his eyes, digging in harder and harder until gashes open and bleed down his cheeks. It doesn't matter that Rohn swings out wildly with his fists-having dropped his knife in surprise. All composure is forgotten as pain lances through his head and face. His swings bounce harmlessly off the cold leather plates of his armor, his screams echo and fall against the silent stream—and there is only fire spreading through him as the creatures grip grows harder, stronger.
His own hands claw at the ones on his skull, and he yells through gritted teeth and watering eyes when he tries to flex his wounded hand.
The grip strengthens, and his head cannot mold under the power of it—his bones will splinter, will cave and break and Rohn begins to panic as his heart leaps into his throat.
He thrashes with abandon, refusing to lock gazes with the knife-like grin of Azriel's, his glowing eyes. Those great, dark wings spread and try and counter his movements, and Rohn begins to kick out.
With nothing more than a grunt, he's tossed aside into the snow, near the copse of trees by the bank of the stream. His skull aches, bruises appearing like splotches along his temple where his pulse pounds furiously. He's up and scrambling away on his stomach. Panting through his mouth, the tang of his own blood sitting heavy on his tongue.
A hand wraps around Rohn's ankle and yanks him back—his scream is lost to the snow and rich earth against his mouth, soil under his fingernails as he tries to claw himself away.
He's kicking, cursing at the top of his lungs at Azriel, the forest, Lachlan, his life. The grip on his foot lightens slightly and he nearly weeps with relief until a hard boot comes down on the back of his knee—and something snaps.
The sound doesn't leave his throat, so caught and tangled with the race of his heart and the bile dredged up from the base of his stomach. His vision flickers, eyes widening in his sockets as his mouth falls open in soundless torment.
There's a race in his chest that tells him to fight; stand up and swing his fist, something, anything. But the blazing swell of agony in his knee, slowly sliding down to his calf and up his thigh, tells him to lay down—let death be a mercy.
There is no mercy in these woods. He should've known from the first step inside it. Every hushed rustle of trees and the skittering of creatures falling voiceless like deaths knell.
There is no mercy for him, not here. Not when his pale face pressed against the snow is yanked up by the roots of his hair. Soft sniveling rings in his ears and it's only a distant realization that it's coming from him. That there's snot under his nose, and wet around his mouth that could be saliva, tears, or blood.
Azriel brings him up and rams the side of his head hard against the rough bark of a tree. Rohn whimpers at the sting of it against the gashes on his face, his head, and struggles to breathe through the panic.
"L-let me go. Please." He begs, throat scraped raw from the screams that were ripped from it by those unfeeling hands.
"I tire of your sounds." He hisses, the warning of a snake in the grass and Rohn lets a cry fall from his lips at the growing pressure of his skull against the tree.
The wings spread again, blocking even the sunlight from his dark eyes. The shadows hanging around him begin to buzz around Rohn's head, his eyes and ears and nose and mouth. An infestation of the most invasive kind.
"No—no, please!" His voice is fevered, breaking slightly as he tries to avoid the press of them, cold and ancient, along his skin.
The staff appears in Azriel's hand. Like it had melted out of the darkness of this sunless spot. It looks just as terrifying, if not more so, close up. The raw quality of it—unpolished and rough. But the razor-sharp beak of the raven was just as deadly from afar as it is now: aimed right at his neck.
Rohn feels hot, wet tears slip from his eyes down his sticky cheeks.
"Mother save me," he whispers, nearly buckling at the sight of what he realizes now is nothing of this world.
As if he can hear his thoughts, Azriel lowers the hooked blade of the staff, now barely touching his skin. He can feel the threat of it like a brand and tries to wiggle away from it.
His mouth lowers towards him, the rest of the face shaded by the hood.
Softly, quietly, as if bestowing a gift, he says, "She doesn't even know your name."
Rohn's eyes go wide, his mouth fallen open in a picture of devastation as Azriel takes one large step back and with deadly precision cuts through the still air between them and severs his head from his shoulders.
The blood sprays from the hacked arteries like a fountain. It drips down the grooves and furrows of the pine tree behind the fallen body in disturbed curtains of crimson. Some of it lands on Azriel—a diagonal spatter of it across the black leather of his chest piece. The headless body twitches, soaking the snow below it until it's a melted puddle smelling so strongly of iron he wrinkles his nose.
Hunching his shoulders, letting his wings droop low to the ground, he lowers his staff. Azriel pants hard into the air, steaming with the slowly building heat of the mid-morning sun. The shadows have gone quiet, almost like they're distracted, and Azriel knows the hardest part has not yet been dealt with.
The staff slips back into it's in-between space with merely a waver of it's physicality before it disappears. Azriel takes a deep breath, letting it settle in his lungs before he turns around.
And for the second time that day, lays his eyes on the figure of Eris Vanserra.
Everything in his chest whooshes out, a physical blow to his sternum that leaves him gasping for air.
The shadows are gentle, curving around the landscape toward him in Azriel's frozen state. They reach him, brush tenderly against the shape of his cheekbones and the tip of his nose. Eris twitches slightly, and Azriel notices the blue tinge to his lips, the tips of his pale fingers.
For ten years it's been a dream. Azriel has kept it close to his chest, hidden in the dark corners of his mind to keep away from the prying of his Master. But for ten years, he has harbored this secret desire like a midnight flower and let it bloom in the moonlight springs of his devotion.
Eris is everything. Here, now, forever. Azriel understands it, bears it, and walks towards him.
He drops to his knee, heart thundering in his chest as his shadows cover and blanket him, swim around the talons of Azriel's wings in a mixture of joy and sadness.
Eris has always been beautiful, even on the day he died he was hauntingly so. Death could not touch him in the way it touched others. Azriel's hands hesitate before him, hovering around his cheek, his waist. The snow still flakes in his thick, copper hair like pearls, and when he bends closer, he can see them collect on his eyelashes, dotting his cheeks.
The moment he had knelt beside Eris, his face had crumpled into an expression of awe. To be this close, after years, to see his chest rise and fall with easy breaths, his eyelids twitching. It's nothing short of a divine encounter.
Carefully, Azriel scoops Eris up in his arms, holding him close against his chest and never looking away from his face. What a picture they must make—the Heir of Fire and his Shadow. The shadows romp around them, some kind of chittering chant echoing through his head. The sounds of the forest awake from their slumber, the stream babbling away, lapping at the slush of it's banks.
Azriel rises to his feet, his breathing shaky. Eris has not moved, and Azriel doubts he will with the strong sedative working through his blood still.
The muscles in his arms tense, holding Eris closer, selfishly he basks in the warmth emanating from him. Being a cold, empty hearth for so long, the heat of another—his one other—is nearly overwhelming. It sends his heart skittering, bashing against his rib cage as his stomach tingles pleasantly.
Not a single glance is spared to the forest—to the decapitated body still bleeding out by the copse of trees near the creek. Azriel breathes in the scent of cinnamon, Eris's head resting against his shoulder, and breathes out into the damp loam of the leaf-strewn ground of the Autumn woods, a hint of spice from the wild ginger that grows under its dappled shade.
Rising from the limestone and gray granite mountain slope in the north is the Forest House. In all it's intricately detailed grandeur; from the carved archways of marble, to the bridges across the off shoots of the waterfall that run down the rock face. There's no windows, every entry left open for the cool autumn air, the whole place dotted with jewel-toned trees of ginkgo and dogwood, the sumac saplings spread like a moss along the cliff-edge of the rock face, little rivulets of streams from the waterfall running around them.
The waterfall, A Primavera Sagrada, was the main feature of the place, the sacred water carving a curtain of silver on the side of the mountain that ran down and under the structure of the Forest House. Some of the tales Autumn Court natives spun wove the legend of the Mother gifting them that waterfall to fill the lake below it, for a drought had drained it to nearly nothing. Other's found it to be a mystical force of nature, nothing more.
Azriel likes to watch how the curtain of it's fall sparkles like a million shattered diamonds in the morning light.
He shadow-walks again, appearing on the elegantly carved balcony that leads directly into Eris's bedroom. His shadows fly through the room, flipping through the pages of a book Eris left open on his bedside table, rustling through loose leaf papers—no doubt mandates from Beron's court and documents overflowing with legalese Eris would pour through long after dark. A couple of them play in the emerald comforter, tunneling under them with the same ferocity as a gopher.
"Enough," Azriel hisses. "Behave yourselves."
Slowly, they coalesce back to him, tendrils of shame that sneak behind him and hide away in the shade of his wings. A couple of the more curious ones peek over his shoulder, brushing gently against Eris's cheek.
He can't begrudge them that.
The mid-morning sunlight streams into the room, lighting upon the dark cherry wood desk and pooling upon his mahogany floors and the decorative woven rugs. Azriel takes uneasy steps inside, his gaze caught by everything; the towering, overfilled bookshelf, the collection of wild, lush plants in the corner of the balcony, the golden telescope sitting next to the desk.
He stops by his bedside, hefting Eris closer as he narrows his eyes at the bedding.
"Can you—" He begins to ask, but a blur of smoke and ink has his mouth closing as the shadows work to pull the bed spread down enough to slide Eris in.
Ours, ours, ours.
They coo gently, a lullaby of the sweetest form. Azriel lets the air shudder from his lungs as he lowers Eris down, resting him on the cushion of his mattress as if he might fracture and break like an eggshell if he used any force.
But his head merely lays on the pillow, the down feathers molding to the shape of his head as it tips gently to the side. His copper hair falls in a curtain against his face, and Azriel takes the very tips of his fingers to brush it away and over the point of his ear. He slides his other arm out from under him, and watches as Eris's body melts into the bed.
Azriel should leave. His mission is complete—in both terms, and staying now would only give the half-healed wound a chance to open again.
Yet, try as he might to make his feet move and step away from the side of the bed, he stays rooted to the floor like a hundred year old tree. Eris's hands lay splayed on his abdomen above the comforter, his shadows twining around his pale fingers.
With nothing but the distant roar of the waterfall against the stone, rushing into the lake meters below, Azriel sinks to his knees. His wings fall, held stiff behind him until now, they rest on the floor in the spread of a dark, membranous cape.
Azriel's eyes are burning, he hasn't blinked in what's felt like an hour, yet he knows it's only been a moment or two. Heartbeats lined up where Eris was in his arms and then wasn't. He can't help but trace the contours of his face like the topography of a land he doesn't know. Every dip and shadow a question, the slight part of Eris's pink lips an answer.
It would be his gentle admiration to bring him to his knees—not a knife, or a whip, or time itself.
Ever so carefully, Azriel reaches forward, gaze unwavering, and holds a strand of Eris's hair strewn on the white silk pillow. He lifts it to his nose, his mouth, presses it to his lips and his eyelashes flutter shut. The hollow in his chest jolts, a bolt of lighting striking him from the ground and up until he releases the building energy through the shaky exhale he breathes against Eris's cinnamon scented hair.
Worship never had a name before Eris. Before ten years of secret longings hidden in the dark became the drink he sates himself on.
If his Master could see him now, supplicant at the heirs bedside like a fool. If she knew that he would forever lay himself upon Eris's alter and push the hand holding the knife into his own chest—she would taunt him, scorn him, make him even more invisible than he already is.
It is not enough to move him from this position. Eris's hair pressed against his lips, the lamp-shine of his eyes fixed solely on his face. He watches eagerly, every detail a reward, as the one who holds the silver thread sleeps soundly on. The ache is something fierce, claws and teeth that don't hesitate to dig into his soft underbelly. Azriel's brow crumples as his other hand on instinct comes up to clutch against his chest. A gasp working up his throat as his fingers dig into the leather of his chest piece, as if they'll be able to reach inside and weave something in that hollow to replace what was lost.
What a horrible thing, fate, to give him this wonderful mystery of a person and never give him the chance to know him. Unravel him; down to the core, to bone, to the heart of all he's ever been and all he'll ever be.
What a beautiful thing, chance, that the same person glows with a gentle inner-light while he sleeps off the sedative in his blood, chest rising and falling and rising again.
What a horrible thing, Azriel is, in his blood stained armor with grasping, greedy hands. Yet he could not care less; would kill and slaughter again if it meant Eris was back in his bed, none the wiser, safe.
It is the one promise he made ten years ago—the only one that matters.
Azriel kneels—and would gladly turn into a statue to kneel for the rest of his life. Forever frozen at Eris's bedside. But the golden rays of late-morning sun creep forward, warm and welcoming, a clock ticking down.
Azriel caresses the lock of hair with his thumb, brushing over the gold tints of it, and turns covetous. He spots a loose thread at the hem of the comforter, and snaps it away easily. He ties it around the piece of hair, about two fingers width from the base, and unsheathes Truth Teller. The only time he'll ever wield the blade against him.
The lock of hair comes free with a snip, and Azriel tucks it behind the leather plate of his armor over his chest.
Azriel rises to his knees slowly, bending over the mattress to press his lips gently against the jut of bone in Eris's wrist. It's enough for now, a placation. He has to leave or he never will.
Standing is almost too much of an effort. He has to avert his gaze from Eris's relaxed face in order to back away from the bed, step by step. The shadows follow his lead, sullen but understanding.
Healing, they whisper to him. No longer the excited collection of voices they were when he first appeared in the room. Ours will sleep well.
"I know." He whispers back, the end of his sentence breaking. At the arched opening to the balcony he glances back, heart in his throat. "I know." He says again, this time for himself.
He disappears in a pool of shadow on the balcony, sunlight barely touching it. The next second he's gone and all that's left is the soft rumble of the waterfall and the timid song of the swallows in the maple trees.
Eris's hand falls to the mattress, reaching out to the side of the bed. He sleeps on, falling deeper into the welcoming arms of rest.