Chapter Text
Azriel knew Rhys hadn’t meant to make him feel like some kind of creature last night. He’d done what he thought was right for the Night Court, because the impending war and their need for alliances was looming over him like a predator aiming to strike. But Rhys’s words had made Azriel feel like some lowly, forgettable creature. Like he was just another pitiful, lust-filled male beneath the likes of his chosen brothers.
Rhys’s words rang through his head for hours, twisting their way into the recesses of Azriel’s mind, finding homes in places that were supposed to be safe from insecurity. The shadowsinger had been doing better at quieting the ugly voices…or at least, he thought he had, until one conversation with Rhys had torn down the painstakingly crafted brick walls Azriel kept around himself. Now, the mental shields he used to get through each day were rubble, unable to protect his mottled, battered heart.
Snarl all you want. But if I see you panting after her again, I’ll make you regret it.
Azriel could still feel the wind being knocked out of his lungs at Rhys’s threat. Rhys didn’t do that. Not to Azriel, at least. He didn’t pull rank on Azriel like that. Rhys treated his bond with Azriel and Cassian as one too precious to endanger. Too precious to burn. And yet, Azriel had the sinking feeling that Rhys was holding a candle to one end, ready for it to catch fire and burn away whatever Azriel wanted to say.
If I see you panting after her again…
Azriel knew Rhys hadn’t meant to make him feel like he was back in that godforsaken cell from his childhood, but he had. Accusing him of panting. Of chasing. Of being territorial. He might as well have pulled out all the stops and called Azriel a bad dog. Azriel could almost hear his stepbrothers taunting him if he thought about last night. As if they were hiding in the shadows, echoing Rhys’s words with an added malicious spark. “Don’t whine. Only bad dogs whine.” The raucous laughter as they threw mud at him. The spit flung into the cell, nowhere for him to run so it wouldn’t hit him.
Pushing the memories aside, Azriel took a shaking breath, reminding himself between counts of four that Rhys was not like his stepbrothers. Rhys was just…complicated. Torn between being a brother and a leader. Imperfect, and therefore not always capable of finding the perfect balance. And if Rhys had made Azriel feel like he was nothing last night, that was just one of many side effects that Azriel had known could occur when Rhys rose to power.
Yes, Azriel was angry at Rhys, but he refused to hold onto that anger. Because letting himself wallow in it would not help him, and it would not affect Rhys in the slightest. Instead it would only allow Azriel to sink back into the depression of his teens, and he did not need the Nesta treatment. Not when he had a job to do; not when the Night Court needed their shadowsinger and his spies.
He had to put extra strength into fighting off the despair as he wondered if the Inner Circle even truly needed him anymore, or if they just needed the shadowsinger. Sometimes he suspected that they forgot that Azriel and the Shadowsinger were not the same. That Azriel was more than just the Spymaster. Maybe that’s why he found his old insecurities cropping up, telling him that he wasn’t truly part of the Inner Circle anymore.
Usually he’d quiet such thoughts, but there was part of him that wondered if there was some truth to them. After all, if Rhys and Cassian were each mated to an Archeron sister, and Elain was mated to Lucien, it almost seemed as if even the Cauldron wanted him replaced. Azriel could be the Spymaster without being part of the Inner Circle. If Rhys truly wanted to, he could welcome Lucien into the fold and give Azriel the boot. Azriel didn’t truly think he would do that, not to his own brother, but the worry was still there.
The next few days, as Azriel sulked in the shadows, that worry festered. It grew from a tiny slithering taunt into a larger and larger monster that Azriel refused to acknowledge. He went about his duties clinically, only interacting with people when necessary. He tried not to make it too obvious—he wasn’t making a plea for attention, after all—but if anyone did notice, they didn’t say anything. He assumed that the Inner Circle simply thought he was brooding again, and Rhys, the only one who truly knew what was going on, was not going to correct them. Not if it meant revealing what he’d said to everyone. Despite the tactical strategy of Rhys’s command to Azriel, the shadowsinger liked to think that the rest of the Inner Circle would not commend the High Lord’s words.
It didn’t matter, though, not when Azriel wasn’t planning on telling anyone what Rhys had said to him. The part of him that wasn’t curled up in a ball in the corner of a dirty cell understood that creating a rift within the Inner Circle at a time like this was the last thing he should do. He’d just work all of those extra feelings out during training. Maybe punch a wall if he really needed to. Or possibly go on a flight during the coldest hour of the night to shock himself back into a tactical state of mind.
Yes, that’s what he’d do. Azriel would go for a flight and fly until his wings were so numb that he could barely keep himself aloft. The feeling of gravity pulling him down when he fell would be just the shock of fear he needed to jolt himself out of his memory and back into his body. Then he’d be able to move on, forget these insecurities, and go back to the cold, calculated shadowsinger that everyone wanted to see.