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Gwyn 📚📚📚📚📚
The fight had not been loud.
That was what haunted her most, the absence of raised voices, the lack of sharp words that could be blamed or pointed to later as the breaking point, because instead it had been quiet in the worst possible way, quiet enough that every small shift in his expression had felt magnified, every hesitation echoing louder than a shout ever could.
It had started with something so small she almost hated herself for it now.
“You missed training again,” she had said, trying to keep her tone light, teasing even, though there had been a thread of something else underneath it, something softer and more uncertain. “You promised you’d come.” Azriel had not looked at her right away. That, more than anything, had made her chest tighten.
“I had something to deal with,” he said. Simple. Flat. Final.
Normally, she would have let it go. Normally, she understood his duties, the weight he carried, the way he existed half in shadow and half in obligation. She had always been patient with him. Always careful. But something in her had been fraying for days.
“You’ve had something to deal with every day this week,” she replied, and even she could hear the strain in her voice now, the way it pulled too tight over something fragile.
He finally looked at her then. And she wished he hadn’t. Because there was distance there. Not anger. Not frustration. Distance. Like she was something just out of reach. Like he was already pulling away.
“I don’t have control over that,” he said. And maybe that was true. But it didn’t make it hurt any less.
“You don’t have control over whether you talk to me either?” she asked quietly, her hands curling at her sides because she did not trust them not to reach for him, not to try to pull him closer when he already felt so far away. “Or whether you tell me what’s going on?” His shadows stirred then, restless, uneasy, flickering around him like they did when he was holding something back.
“I’m handling it.”
That was it. That was all he gave her. And something inside her chest cracked open, slow and painful, like a fault line splitting deeper with every passing second.
“You’re shutting me out,” she said, softer now, because anger had never been what this was, not really. It was hurt. It had always been hurt.
“I’m busy,” he replied. Not cold. Not cruel. Just… absent. And that absence cut deeper than anything sharp ever could. Gwyn swallowed hard, her throat tight, her eyes burning in a way she refused to let him see.
“You’re always busy.” Silence. It stretched between them, fragile and trembling, like something that might shatter if either of them moved too quickly.
“I have duties, Gwyn.”
“And I am what?” she asked, her voice barely holding together now, the words slipping out before she could stop them, before she could soften them into something safer. “Something you come back to when you have time?”
His jaw tightened. His shadows lashed once, sharply. “That’s not fair.”
But he didn’t say she was wrong. And that was the moment she felt it. The shift. The fracture. The quiet, devastating realization that she cared more about this moment than he did. That she was reaching, and he was not reaching back.
Her chest ached with it, a deep, hollow pain that made it hard to breathe. “I’m not asking for everything,” she whispered, her voice trembling now despite her best efforts. “I’m just asking for you.”
Something flickered in his eyes then, something almost like regret, like conflict, like he wanted to say something more. But he didn’t.
And that silence became the answer.
He left that night. No goodbye. No soft touch. No reassurance. Just the absence of him, sudden and complete, like a door closing that she didn’t know how to open again.
The next morning, the House of Wind felt unbearable. Every room carried the echo of him, every space too large without his presence filling it, without the quiet way he existed in the same space as her, grounding and steady and always there.
Except now he wasn’t.
Gwyn tried to keep moving. She trained. She worked. She laughed when she was supposed to. But everything felt thinner, like she was only skimming the surface of herself, like something essential had been left behind with him when he walked away.
She lasted three days. Three days of replaying every word, every glance, every second of that conversation until she could recite it perfectly in her head, until she found new ways to blame herself each time she thought about it.
Maybe she had pushed too hard. Maybe she had asked for too much. Maybe she should have been more understanding. More patient. More quiet. The thoughts circled endlessly, tightening around her chest until she could barely breathe through them.
“I’ll fix it,” she whispered to herself, standing alone in the training ring long after the others had left, her hands trembling slightly at her sides. “I’ll fix it.” Because she had to. Because the idea of leaving things like that, unfinished and aching and wrong, felt worse than anything else. Because she loved him. And love was not supposed to end in silence.
The Court of Nightmares felt wrong the moment she stepped into it. The darkness here was not like Velaris, not soft or comforting or alive in a way that felt safe. This darkness pressed in on her, heavy and suffocating, like it wanted to swallow her whole, like it resented her for existing within it. Still, she forced herself forward.
“I’m here to see Azriel,” she said, lifting her chin despite the way unease curled low in her stomach. The guards looked at her. Then at each other. And something in their expressions made her heart stutter.
Amusement, cruel and sharp.
“Are you now,” one of them said, his voice low and mocking.
“Yes,” Gwyn said, more firmly this time, though her pulse had started to race. “He’ll want to know I’m here.”
They laughed. The sound echoed down the stone corridors, hollow and wrong. “An intruder, then.”
“No,” she said quickly, stepping forward, her hands lifting slightly in a placating gesture. “I just need to speak to him. Please.”
“He’ll hear about you,” the other guard said. And there was something in the way he said it that made fear spike, sudden and sharp. That was the last moment she had control. They grabbed her. Hard. Pain shot through her arm as they twisted it behind her back, forcing her forward before she could react properly, before she could even gather her thoughts into something coherent.
“Wait,” she gasped, struggling instinctively, her training kicking in even as panic flared. “You don’t understand, I know him, I just need—” Her words were cut off as they shoved her down a corridor, her feet stumbling to keep up, her shoulder slamming into stone when she faltered. She fought. Of course she did. She twisted, kicked, tried to wrench free, but there were too many of them, and they were stronger, and this place bent itself around their cruelty like it had been built for it.
“Get Azriel,” she said, louder now, desperation creeping into her voice despite her attempts to hold onto control. “He’ll want to see me, he’ll—”
“Keep talking,” one of them sneered. “It makes this more entertaining.”
The cell door opened with a groan that seemed to echo through her bones. And then they threw her inside. The impact stole the breath from her lungs completely, her body slamming into the stone floor with a force that sent sharp, blinding pain through her ribs, through her shoulder, through her head as it struck something unyielding. For a moment, she could not breathe. Could not think. Could not do anything but lie there and feel the world spin violently around her.
The door slammed shut. The sound rang, loud and final. The cell was not just dark. It was oppressive. The kind of darkness that felt alive in the worst way, clinging to her skin, pressing into her lungs, making every breath feel heavier than the last. The air smelled of damp stone and rust and something older, something that lingered beneath it all like decay. She tried to push herself up. Her arms shook violently under her weight, her muscles screaming in protest, her head swimming as pain flared behind her eyes.
“Please,” she said, her voice breaking despite her efforts to keep it steady. “Get Azriel. Please. He’ll—he’ll want to know.”
Laughter filtered through the door. Distant. Cruel.
“Beg louder,” someone called. “Maybe he’ll come running.”
Her chest tightened painfully. Not from injury. From something deeper. They didn’t believe her. And worse, a small, horrible part of her wondered if they were right. Time stopped making sense after that. It stretched into something unrecognizable, each moment dragging into the next until she could not tell how long she had been there, could not separate one second from the next through the haze of pain and exhaustion.
Her body ached everywhere. Sharp pain in her ribs every time she tried to breathe too deeply.
A dull, throbbing ache in her head where blood had dried against her temple. Her lip split and stinging.
Her limbs heavy and weak, like they no longer fully belonged to her.
She tried to sit up again. The world tilted violently. Her vision blurred.
“Azriel,” she whispered, her voice barely there, the name falling from her lips like something fragile.
No answer. Of course there wasn’t. But she said it again anyway. Because it was the only thing tethering her to something outside of this place.
“I just… need him,” she murmured, her head resting weakly against the cold stone, her fingers curling slightly as if reaching for something that wasn’t there. “Please.”
Her voice echoed back at her. Empty. I shouldn’t have let him leave. The thought came unbidden, sharp and immediate, cutting deeper than any physical pain.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her throat tight, her chest aching with something that had nothing to do with her injuries. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just… I just wanted you.”
Her eyes slipped closed for a moment. Too long. “I didn’t want you to go,” she breathed.
And the silence answered her.
Azriel 🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇
Something was wrong.
He felt it in the spaces between his breaths, in the way his shadows had grown restless and sharp around him, whispering incessantly in a language that usually comforted him but now grated against his nerves like something frayed and breaking. He had not slept properly in days. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw her. The way her expression had shifted during their fight, the hurt that had crept in slowly, quietly, until it had filled the entire space between them.
“You’re shutting me out.”
The memory pressed in on him, heavy and unrelenting. He exhaled slowly, dragging a hand over his face, but it did nothing to ease the tension coiled tightly in his chest. He should go back. The thought had been constant. Relentless.
He should go back and fix it. He should go back and tell her that he hadn’t meant it, that he hadn’t realized how far he had pulled away until he saw it reflected in her eyes. He should go back and remind her that she was not something he fit into the gaps of his life. She was the part that made the rest of it bearable.
Instead, he stayed. Duty. Always duty. It felt hollow now. Like an excuse he was hiding behind because facing her meant facing the way he had failed her.
“You’ve been distracted.”
The voice pulled him back. One of the guards stood a few steps behind him, careful, wary. Azriel did not turn their way.
“Speak.”
“There was an intruder captured yesterday.”
His shadows stilled slightly. He should have cared. Normally, he would have. “Then deal with it.”
“They’ve been asking for you.”
A pause. Something tightened low in his chest, sharp and sudden, like a thread being pulled too tight.
“Specifically, sir.”
For a moment, something flickered in his mind. A thought. A possibility. But he pushed it away just as quickly, dismissing it as absurd. There were countless reasons someone might ask for him. Prisoners always thought they could bargain, could trade information for mercy, could manipulate their way into survival. It meant nothing.
“Later,” he said. The guard hesitated, Then left. And Azriel stayed exactly where he was. For hours. Trying to focus. Failing. The unease did not fade. It grew. It twisted. It dug its claws deeper into his chest until it became something unbearable, something he could no longer ignore no matter how hard he tried. By the time he finally made his way down to the lower levels, his shadows had gone completely still.
Not calm. Not at peace. Still in the way the air stills before a storm breaks. The guard unlocked the door.
Azriel stepped inside. And everything inside him stopped. She was on the floor. Curled in on herself. Too small. Too still.
For a single, endless moment, his mind refused to understand what he was seeing, refused to connect the image in front of him with the person he knew, the person who burned so brightly she had carved a place for herself in the darkest parts of him.
“Gwyn.” Her name came out broken. Unrecognizable even to his own ears. She didn’t move. Didn’t respond. And something inside his chest caved in completely.
“What did you do to her.” His voice was quiet. But it shook with something violent.
“She was an intruder—” He didn’t hear the rest. He didn’t care. Rage consumed him so completely it felt like it stripped him down to something primal, something raw and vicious and uncontrollable. His shadows exploded outward, wrapping around the guards with brutal precision, slamming them into the stone with a force that echoed through the cell. One of them screamed. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except the sight of her lying there, broken and bleeding and alone.
You left her. The thought hit like a blow. You weren’t here.
By the time the guards stopped moving, the room had gone silent again. Azriel was breathing too hard. Too fast.His hands were shaking. He dropped to his knees beside her, the movement abrupt, desperate, his control shattering completely as he reached for her. He hesitated for half a second. Terrified. Terrified that touching her would make it real. Terrified that she wouldn’t respond.
“Gwyn,” he whispered, his voice breaking entirely now.
Her eyes fluttered. Slowly, Weakly. But they opened and they found him. And even through the pain, even through the exhaustion that dragged at her features, there was something in her expression that shattered him more completely than anything else could have- relief.
“You came,” she breathed.
His heart stuttered so violently it felt like it might stop altogether. “I’m here,” he said immediately, the words rushing out of him, frantic, uneven, his hands cradling her face with a gentleness that contrasted so sharply with the violence that still lingered in his veins. “I’m here, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I should have been here, I should have—”
“I tried to find you,” she murmured, her voice slipping, her strength fading even as she spoke. “I wanted to fix it.”
“There was nothing to fix,” he said, too quickly, too fiercely, his forehead pressing lightly against hers as if he could anchor her there, keep her from slipping away. “Nothing that was worth this. Nothing that was worth you getting hurt.”
Her fingers twitched weakly against his arm. “I didn’t want you to go.”
The words were soft. Barely there. But they tore through him.
“I know,” he whispered, his voice breaking under the weight of it, his chest aching so violently it felt like it might split open. “I know, and I should have stayed, I should have listened, I should have chosen you.”
I should have chosen you. The thought echoed, sharp and unforgiving.
He gathered her into his arms with impossible care, one hand supporting her head, the other wrapped securely around her as he lifted her from the cold stone.
She was too light. Too fragile. It terrified him.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured, his voice low and shaking, his wings shifting slightly as if to shield her from everything, from the world, from himself. “You’re safe. I’ve got you.” Her head rested against his chest. Her breathing was shallow. Each inhale felt like a countdown. Panic surged, hot and suffocating.
“I’m not losing you,” he whispered, the words rough and desperate, his grip tightening just slightly as if holding her closer could keep her here. “Do you hear me? I’m not losing you.”
He didn’t remember leaving the Court of Nightmares. One second he was there, the next, he was in Velaris, the world shifting around him in a blur of shadow and desperation. “Magda,” he called, his voice ringing with a sharp edge of command and fear that he did not bother to hide. “Now.”
He did not set her down. Not for a second, Not even when others approached. Not even when hands reached out to help. He could not. Would not. “I’m here,” he kept whispering, over and over, his voice softer now, breaking apart with every repetition as he pressed his forehead gently to hers. “I’m right here, Gwyn. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
Because if he stopped saying it, if he let even a second of silence fall between them, he was afraid she might disappear into it. And he knew, with a certainty that hollowed him out completely, that if she did, he would follow.