Chapter 20 — Azriel / Lucien - A Court of Splintered Harmony

How the hell had Lucien walked right into this room and Azriel had no fucking idea until the male was in the doorway?

He knew how. In the back of his mind, Az knew it was because his shadows had fled the moment he’d sought out Elain. They had gone to sulk in the hall, so they hadn’t been here to warn him of the male’s approach. And now it was too late to fade into a shadow himself, to deny this had happened.

“I …” Elain began, sitting upright, the blanket clutched to her chest. Covering those beautiful little breasts that he’d been exploring, the first steps in his journey toward what lay between her legs, which, despite their nakedness, he hadn’t yet touched, tasted—

“Get out of her room.”

Lucien’s low demand was barely audible.

Az knew that growl. A predator descending into a level of primitive violence that would only end with spilled blood.

Az didn’t take his focus off the male as he peeled his body from Elain’s. As he stood, his hardened cock already subsiding, and set his feet into a defensive position. Braced his wings.

“This is,” Elain gasped frantically, “this is a misunderstanding—”

She scrambled to her feet beside Azriel, and he extended a wing to let her slide back into her nightgown in privacy. Privacy from the male, her mate, still staring as if he didn’t quite believe what he was seeing.

“What’s there to misunderstand?” Lucien’s voice was cold, even as Az could have sworn red-hot flame flickered in his eyes.

Where the hell were his shadows? There—out in the hall. Watching everything.

Come, Az commanded them. They refused. Didn’t move one inch closer.

Lucien pointed at Azriel, flame simmering at his fingertip. Its light bounced off his mechanical gold eye. Or was that magic brewing there, too? “Get out.”

“I’m not leaving her alone with you.”

Lucien bared his teeth. “Get. Out.”

Searing power crackled from the High Lord of Autumn’s youngest son. Az’s hand curled at his side, the Siphon atop it flaring to life. But if he manifested that power, drew a weapon—

What worse could he do to Lucien? The male had already found Az in bed with his mate.

“I’m going to rip out your fucking throat.” Lucien’s voice was soft with menace.

Az couldn’t stop his snort. “I’d like to see you try.”

“Please,” Elain begged, stepping between them, nightgown white and pure as moonlight. Az hauled her back behind him.

Lucien snarled, the noise reverberating through the floors. “You don’t touch her—you don’t touch her.” Doors along the hall began opening.

Elain sobbed, softly and miserably, so at odds with the unmitigated pleasure she’d been lost to moments ago. Az hadn’t been able to stop himself from seeking her out, even with her mate under the same roof. His salvation—that was what Elain was, what he’d been willing to fight for.

Well, now it seemed he would.

Footsteps thudded in the hall. “What the fuck?” Cassian choked as he stepped into the room, taking in Az’s and Elain’s states of undress, scenting the desire still thick in the room. His brother’s eyes went as wide as Az had ever seen them. “What the fuck, Az?”

Then Nesta was there, shoving past Cassian, past Lucien, who had the audacity to try to stop her. That earned a warning glare from both Nesta and her mate.

Nesta scanned Az’s face as she neared, her own sharp with dismay and disappointment.

Az broke Nesta’s stare first, focusing on the two males by the door.

“Let’s take this into the hall,” Cassian instructed Lucien, calm despite the Siphon atop his hand roiling with ruby fire.

“I agree,” a dark voice rumbled.

Az steadied himself. Rhys had arrived, Feyre in tow. Mor was a step behind them, a flash of gold and color. Az couldn’t bear to look at her.

Lucien turned on his heel, sparks trailing in his wake, and obeyed the High Lord. Leaving Az with his family in the suddenly too-small room. Even if his shadows had been willing to come to his hand, there would have been no hiding from this. From them.

“Put on your fucking clothes,” Rhys bit out at Azriel from where he darkened the doorway.

“Watch your tone,” Nesta snapped at Rhys, and Azriel blinked at her in surprise.

But Nesta had already sat beside Elain on the bed and placed a hand on her sister’s back as Elain covered her face with her hands and trembled.

Some part of Az remained functional enough that he decided to spare Elain from any further ugliness, and he shoved his legs into his pants. He left his shirt and jacket on the floor.

On leaden feet, head feeling distant, he crossed the lush bedroom that smelled of brewing sex and emerged into the vast, dark hall that smelled of fury and death. His shadows at last rushed to him, twining about his ankles, his wrists.

He ignored them. Spineless, soulless traitors, all of them.

Feyre stood to his right, arms crossed, lips a thin line. She lifted her blue-gray eyes to him, full of nothing but pity.

Az bristled. He didn’t need her pity, didn’t need shit from any of them other than to—

“Did you know this was happening?” Lucien asked Rhys. The lordling seethed by the wall across from the door, nose crinkled with rage.

There was nothing Az could do as Rhys held the male’s stare and said plainly, “Yes.”

Cassian blew out a long breath that sounded an awful lot like Fuck. Az didn’t look at either brother. Only at Lucien, burning with white-hot power.

But Lucien pointed at Azriel without so much as a glance in his direction. It took everything in Az not to grab that finger and snap it in two. “You let that male touch my mate under your roof, and yet you still asked me to do your dirty work?”

That male. That monster. That demon. Az might have bared his teeth had he not known it to be true.

A muscle ticked in Rhys’s jaw. “Yes.”

Lucien spat at Rhys’s feet. Mor hissed from nearby. “You’re despicable,” Lucien raged. Pure loathing twisted his pretty features. “All of you.” His gaze landed on Feyre, and his chest heaved once before he accused, “You knew, too.”

Az hated the pain and worry tightening his High Lady’s face. “I guessed.” A grimace back toward Nesta. “We both did.” And had apparently kept it between sisters. “But I . . . Lucien.”

Lucien spat at her feet, too.

Rhys’s growl drowned out the sound that ruptured from Azriel. Yet his brother’s voice was terrifyingly calm as he informed Lucien, “Roar at me all you like, lordling, but do that again to my mate and you’ll find yourself lacking a tongue to spit with.”

“Lucien,” Feyre tried again, ignoring her mate’s threat. “Let’s go downstairs. I know it’s late, but we should talk about this—”

Azriel refrained from arguing that no discussion was needed. It was Elain’s life, her body. It was hers to decide who she shared it with.

“I’m done talking to you,” Lucien shot back, chest heaving. “I’m done with all of you. You want someone to help you find proof of Koschei’s schemes? Want a spy in the Autumn Court? Go do it yourselves. I’m done.” The Veritas orb appeared in his hands—and then thudded to the floor.

His heart is breaking, his soul is cleaving—

Az shut out his shadows. He didn’t give a shit about Lucien’s feelings.

“Lucien,” Feyre pleaded. “Listen.”

Lucien again jabbed an accusing finger at Azriel. Every muscle in Az’s body tensed, wings tightening, readying to spring. But Lucien’s words were eerily steady as he said, “I hope you get everything that’s coming to you. Every moment of suffering you deserve.”

Az gave him a mocking bow of the head.

Lucien turned toward the doorway, toward Elain, still crying on the bed with Nesta. “I won’t be darkening your doorstep again.”

“I don’t think she’s shedding tears over that,” Az couldn’t refrain from saying.

Lucien slowly turned. And Az knew Rhys could have stopped it—and yet his brother let it happen. Lucien exploded with flame.

Az had all of a second to cast a shield of blue light from his Siphon, easily taking the brunt of the fire, but Lucien had launched himself in that second, too. Faster than Az had anticipated.

Lucien tackled him into the wall with a slam that shuddered through the entire house. Plaster and wood cracked beneath his wings, his back.

Az’s shadows advised, Feyre vanished to guard the baby; Lucien means to kill you; Rhys is debating letting him—

Only a second lapsed before Azriel’s training kicked in. He slammed an elbow into Lucien’s face, so hard bone crunched. Blood sprayed, its tang coating the air, and Az ducked as another wall of flame blasted for his head.

Darkness snuffed out the flame.

Arms stronger than steel banded around Azriel’s bare middle, hauling him back. Az surged, but Cassian held firm, fuming in Az’s ear, “You dumb fuck.”

Az thrashed to no avail. Rhys was talking to Lucien on the other side of the wall of black. Flame licked at the ceiling.

And then it vanished. Only darkness remained.

Lucien is gone, his shadows supplied. Rhys now turns toward you, speaks to you and you alone— Get out of my house.”

Cassian loosened his grip on Az in shock.

Rhys’s voice became like thunder from behind that wall of darkness. Once the wall fell, it wouldn’t be his brother standing behind it.

A small female hand gripped his, tugging hard. Mor. Her eyes were wide with pleading. “You need to go. Right now.”

Az did no such thing. Let Rhys wipe him from existence, let his brother turn him into stardust splattered on the wall.

“Azriel,” Mor begged, and that was genuine fear in her face. Elain was still crying in her room. He started turning to her—

“Stupid bastard,” Mor spat, and before Az could stop her, she winnowed them both out of the house. Or rather, to the front door, where she dragged him, step by step, beyond the wards on the lawn. Lucien’s smell lingered, ashes on the wind. He’d come this way, too.

But Mor grabbed Az by the back of the neck and hissed, “Idiot,” before she winnowed them again.

They plunged into black, roaring wind, but they didn’t go far, landing atop one of the city’s elegant bridges spanning the Sidra. At this hour, few people were on the streets to witness them standing there, Mor in her silken red nightgown, Az shirtless, pants barely buttoned.

She slapped him. The sound rang out across the city like pealing bells.

“Are you stupid?” she shouted. “Are you insane?” Az just stared at her, pain rippling across his cheek. Her brown eyes were agonized. “What were you thinking?”

“She’s not his property,” Azriel snarled, shoving down the pain with five centuries of training. Shoving back the shadows that now gathered, poised to reveal truths he couldn’t bear to hear. “She can do what she likes. She gets to choose who to share her body with.”

“She can and she does, but you couldn’t stay away? For one night? You couldn’t stay the hell away from her?” Mor had never screamed at him like this. “Is that why you baited Lucien about Hybern at dinner? You were that petty? That jealous?”

“What’s it to you?” He couldn’t stop the question. “You don’t care.”

Mor shook her head, unfairly beautiful in the moonlight, in her nightgown. “That you even have to ask tells me how clueless you are.” She looked him up and down, missing nothing. “I don’t—I don’t even know who this person is in front of me.”

He scowled, turning toward the river. It wasn’t enough to block out the disgust radiating off her in waves.

“I suggest you lie low for a while,” Mor said, frigid as the autumn night around them. “Go to the House of Wind. Go to the town house, actually, if you want to avoid the ass-kicking Cassian is going to give you.”

He didn’t care. Cassian could do what he wanted.

When he didn’t answer, Mor demanded, “Is this because of me?”

He whipped his head toward her. “What?”

She splayed her arms, pale as alabaster in the moonlight. “Is this because I don’t love you? Not the way you want, at least. So you’re on some insane path of self-destruction?”

“It has nothing to do with you.” His shadows skulked behind one of the lampposts along the bridge. “And since when does sleeping with someone count as self-destruction?”

“When it involves the mate of a key ally, who was about to aid us at great danger to himself. When you were told to find someone else. Anyone else.”

“And if I don’t want anyone else?”

Mor let out a broken laugh. “Don’t worry—I’m sure some other equally unavailable female will come along to tempt you.”

He glowered at her, so many words now spiking between them, sharp as knives and more lethal. Mor backed away a step—not in fear of him, but of those words. What remained unsaid.

And since he’d already started down this path to hell, Az growled, “Go ahead and say it, Mor.”

She retreated another step, into the dimness beyond the pool of the lamppost’s light, the hue of her nightgown darkening to bloodred. “I’m not going to engage in this absurdity with you. If Lucien evokes the Blood Duel, you’re on your own.”

With that, she winnowed.

The scant number of people on the streets had stopped to stare.

With their keen Fae hearing, they must have heard every word. Az ignored them as he spread his wings and launched into the sky. His shadows trailed a few beats behind—farther than usual.

As if even they were repulsed by him.

He landed on the town house roof moments later, flinging open the door and half leaping down the stairs. His usual room on the third floor was stale from disuse—he’d need supplies. Clothes, weapons—

He glanced at Truth-Teller, still buckled at his waist—barely. Emerie had been right to caution him that it was fraying. One of the straps had now entirely severed, likely when Lucien had slammed into him. The knife dangled precariously, bouncing against his leg.

A useless, worthless weapon.

Az grabbed the remaining strap, the sheath, the knife, and snapped it off himself with one clean yank. Threw it across the room in the same motion, the blade slamming into the wall so hard it dented the plaster. As it fell to the ground, debris rained, burying it in a fine ivory coating.

That would be the blade’s final resting place, as far as he was concerned. It could lie in that corner coated in dust until it turned to dust itself. Until the world had forgotten it ever existed.

If he got lucky, maybe the world would forget he’d ever existed, too.