Chapter Text
There are few moments a war camp can truly be called quiet, but this is one of them. Songs have been sung, meals shared, weapons honed, and once-bright fires are burnt down to embers. Even the crickets sing their song softly in these grey twilight hours before the dawn.
The dying light of the fire just outside your tent is hardly enough to read the maps spilling over your lap, but by now you have the troop movements long memorized. Secure the high ground. Feint towards the left flank. Send a squad of Illyrians to smash the right. Get to their general. Put his head on a pike and watch the lines break. Shadows dance over where the enemy camp is marked. You swear they start moving through the progression of tomorrow’s battle, even as you inch the parchment closer to the fire’s light to dispel them.
“It’s a solid plan,” a voice says softly.
“ Shit ,” you clutch your papers to your chest. “I’ll never live to see it work if you keep scaring me like that.”
Azriel emerges from the darkness with that faintly amused expression he seems to save just for psychologically tormenting you. His dark hair is unkempt, for him, and even in the low light you can see the dark circles under his eyes. He’s probably been skipping meals again, too. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”
“Says the kettle to the pot,” you quip. He rolls his eyes.
It’s a rare moment when either of you manages to slip away from the High Lord anymore, but when you do you almost always find each other. This war has been brutal. Demanding. Costly. His position as spymaster and yours as a favored battle strategist have left little time for anything else. You can count on one hand the number of nights you’ve slept more than just a few restless hours, and your last meal yesterday was a hard hunk of stale bread. Azriel is just as bad - worse, even - but neither of you stops fussing. A tentative friendship forged in firelight and stolen moments.
It’s… nice. Normal , despite everything else. And putting someone over yourself is always easier than justifying a pause for a meal or a nap or even just a small break when so many lives are on the line. Human and faerie blood alike water the battlefields every day, seeping into the ground and growing carrion for the crows in Death’s cruel perversion of a garden.
“I still find it hard to sleep on the eve of battle.” Azriel’s admission is a hushed thing. Just for you and the shadows.
He extends a scarred hand and you take it without hesitation, maps left in disarray beside the smoky remains of your fire. You don’t let go until he leads you to the edge of camp, where the sun will be rising soon over the plain so many soldiers will die upon.
“Do you think it will ever get easier?” you ask. You’re not sure if you mean the sleeping or the killing or the hopelessness that chokes you amidst endless, meaningless slaughter for a peace that slips further and further away.
“I’m not sure.” Both of you stare pointedly at the horizon, too scared to face one another in these fragile predawn moments, but you know he understands. All of it. “Will you watch?”
You don’t answer right away.
The sky is slow to wake as the two of you stand, looking, but already streaks of blood-red sun paint the morning with deadly promise.
“I always watch.”