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All These Things That I’ve Done
The cool night air over Velaris has settled along the ring. Allowing for the low clouds to mingle with his shadows. A soft moon glow reflecting back the light needed to keep the darkness at bay. She doesn’t turn when he approaches. Shadows and the mist mixing around her ankles, they ebb and flow to and from her following the pattern of her breathing.
She pulls in deeply. Her shoulders rising, rib cage expanding, arms holding a shawl around herself.
“Good evening, Shadowsinger.”
“Good evening, Berdara.” he answers as he arrives. Standing close enough to her to allow for her scent to drift to him, but keeping a distance he believes is respectable. She is looking out over the city that is partially hidden under the low clouds. The rains will arrive soon. These are the last of the cooler nights before late Spring gives over to the hot nights of Summer.
“How was the Mating Ceremony?”
“Nice.” Azriel knows one word answers are rude. He has been through this with Gwyn in other conversations. Before the creeping death of awkwardness can kill this long needed conversation, Azriel begins again.
“It was nice. Nesta looked beautiful. Cassian got drunk. There was a lot of dancing. You were missed.” This is in order of importance, he believes. What she wants to hear, ending with what he needs her to hear.
This could be where he may lose control of this conversation. She would turn to him with those eyes. He would see the regression she feels in them. He would ask the Mother again how she saw fit to choose her to suffer not one, but two traumatic events and then he would shut down. Again.
But she doesn’t look at him. Gwyn takes another deep breath. She puts her hands out onto the ledge, bracing herself and says “It wasn’t the Rite that kept me from going. Not completely. There are other reasons I decided staying home was what was best for me.”
“Hm” is all he can get out. He stretches his wings, comes up on the balls of his feet, rests back down on his heels. Closes his wings.
“You have many valid reasons to not want to attend your best friend's mating ceremony.” In his head he goes over what has happened to her, what he had witnessed first hand. What she has lived through. What that has done to alter who she is.
“Possibly being kidnapped is one of them.” She allows this to come out with a small smile. Her head tilts toward him, eyes turned upward, copper hair framing her pretty face.
He watches as his shadows begin to rise around her. Swirling, as if she is a spiral staircase. One resting over her shoulder the way they rest on his. He turns full bodied towards her “Gwyn. You know you would have been the safest you could ever be at that ceremony?” She has to know this.
She is looking over the city again. Her hair curtains her face from him. “Azriel, It isn’t always the physical threat that keeps me from doing things. There are emotional hurts I do not wish to experience either.”
He understands this. He thinks about how she can say the things he feels better than he could ever dream of saying them. Gwyn knows things about him that others don’t. He has seen her at her worst. She has seen him at his most savage. He refuses to accept that this female, someone he has grown to care deeply for and respects, doesn't see him as a friend. He thought they were friends. She is brave. Braver than he is. Gwyn may be the bravest female he has ever met.
Azriel decides to be brave.
“Can I tell you something?”
“You can tell me anything, Shadowsinger”
Azriel mind stills and then he tells her.
“I thought I was in love with Morrigan for 500 years.”
Gwyn nods. This is no real secret in and around the inner circle.
“I then met Nesta’s sister Elain when Feyre and Rhys first got together.” Gwyn tucks her hair behind her ear. Azriel doesn’t know if this is a subconscious move so that she can fully take in whatever it is that he is about to say, but it allows for him to see her face better. And, if he is going to be brave about this, he needs to see her face.
“Over time we, Elain and myself, seemed to form a bond of sorts. You know? 3 sisters, 3 brothers. It made sense to me. Even after the cauldron gave her as a mate to Lucian, I honestly believed that she somehow was meant for me. She became some sort of prize that I thought I should have won. To the point where I was going to ignore the mating bond and pursue her anyway.”
Azriel leans against the parapet, resting on one arm. Gwyn turns and begins to lean with her back against the parapet. She now pulls her hair all to one side. Azriel can see her face better this way. She is looking at the ends of her hair.
He takes a deep breath.
“This past Solstice I gave her a gift and we almost kissed. Rhys caught us and commanded me to stay away from her.” Azriel takes a moment here. He knows that he has to think about what he will say after this because of how things changed for him that night. Continuing “I was angry. I was hurt. I left the River House and came here. And that was when I saw you.”
Gwyn is now looking at him. She shifts her whole body to mirror him. Azriel realizes she wants to look directly in his eyes as he lays himself bare to her. Azriel now understands why some people piss themselves during his interrogations.
“Can I just go back for a moment?” he asks
“Absolutely” Gwyn replies.
“Sometimes the highlight of my day or week would be if you asked for a private training session. Even before Solstice I found that I enjoyed being around you. Your company is something I grew to enjoy very much”
This earns him a smile. Not the big toothy one that makes his face want to explode, but he will take it.
“When I landed that night and you were here I was so angry. I couldn’t understand why my brother would do that to me. Stand in the way of my happiness after all these centuries. I was bitter. I was hurt. I wanted to hurt things, myself. Normally I would have. But you were there. And I didn’t want to be angry after seeing you. I stopped wanting to be angry.”
Gwyn takes a step closer to him. He isn’t sure how he is meant to respond, but he continues before he loses his courage.
“She returned the gift. Which hurt”
Gwyn nods in an understanding way.
“That day we had our annual snowball fight and Rhys told me again to stay away from her. I knew it could cause problems with other courts, I knew that I of all people should respect the bond. The next month or so after Solstice Elain and I found ways to be around each other but it never got to that point again. To the point where I found myself wanting to kiss her again.”
Azriel pauses.
“We had opportunities”
Gwyn breaths through her nose and her nostrils flare just a little. Azriel lets this small act of aggression go because he knows there may be more aggression to come.
“Anyway” Azriel stands fully now. “I walked around with her gift in my pocket for a whole day after Solstice. But then I thought about you. And how you had given me a little bit of happiness when you didn’t know I needed it. So I gave it to Clotho to give to you.”
He watches as her hand shoots up to her chest. Her eyes narrow. Those nostrils flare again. Her scent changes.
“I didn’t truly understand how stupid it was of me to do that until I started to understand how I felt about you.”
Gwyn’s eyebrows have entered the conversation and Azriel now knows what skeptical looks like.
He chuckles. He doesn’t know if he has ever witnessed her being so quiet. He also doesn’t know if she knows she is capable of having an entire conversation just with her face.
“After Solstice you started asking for more one on one time. I, not understanding fully what was happening to me, was very glad to have the distraction. And, for a short amount of time, I really thought that is what being around you would be. A distraction from my feelings for Elain.”
Gwyn's head tilts forward now. She pulls her hair forward to close off her face again.
Azriel cannot abide this. He takes a small step closer to Gwyn and gently tucks the left side of her hair behind her ear. He allows his fingertips to glide along her jaw. He rests them on her chin. He pushes her face up so that his eyes can meet hers.
“I was wrong. I was very very wrong, Gwyn. It wasn’t you that was the distraction.”
Gwyn trembles. Azriel doesn't know if she is cold or if he has hurt her with the things he is saying.
Sighing to himself Azriel says “I should have asked you to go to the ceremony with me but I talked myself out of it.”
The Shadows are as quiet as she is. Azriel is not used to this level of silence from either of them. He can tell Gwyn is counting in her head, using her techniques to calm herself. If she is smart she will tell him that she never wants to see him again.
“Why would you do that?” She sincerely asks him.
“Which that? If it is the necklace that, it was because I didn’t understand at the time how stupid it was. If it was my thing with Elain that, I guess the same reasoning can be applied”
Gwyn shakes her head.
Azriel continues. Because hey, he is all in at this point
Quietly, because he feels like such a fool, Azriel says “I thought I knew what love was. With Mor, with Elain. I thought I understood what it was. But I was wrong. So wrong.”
“What do you think love is, Azriel?”
“I am not exactly sure, Gwyn. But I do know that what I have felt before is not the same way I feel about you.”
“And how do you feel about me, Shadowsinger?”
“When you were in the Blood Rite I felt like a part of my rib cage was missing.”
“Oh” Gwyn bites her lower lip. She follows with “I thought I would have had to spend the night watching you make eyes at Elain”
Leaning closer to her, Azriel says “I would prefer to make eyes at you”
“It isn’t going to be easy for us. You know that, Azriel?”
Azriel knows this. But as Gwyn allows him to pull her into his arms, he knows it is worth it.