Chapter 6 — Azriel - A Court of Splintered Harmony

Three in the morning had come and gone.

Azriel knew he should be asleep. Knew he should be in his own bedroom. Or up at the House of Wind. Probably halfway across the territory, gathering information for his High Lord and Lady.

But here he was, in the kitchens of the river house, the embers in the hearth slumbering. Even his shadows had scattered, as if ready to sleep as well.

Here he was, braced on the counter, nuzzling a warm, silken throat.

Gods, she tasted good. Sweet. Pure. And he was a monster for being here, for tasting her. But he’d accepted his role as the monster that prowled in the night. Long before she’d come along.

The legs wrapped around his middle tightened, pulling him closer against her, and his cock ached, straining against the hard leather of his pants as it brushed up against the core he knew was molten.

He wanted it. Wanted her. More than he’d ever wanted anyone. Without the shadows around him, he was bare—still clothed and yet laid bare before her.

He tipped her head back further, licking up the column of her throat, tasting that delicious skin.

Elain Archeron moaned, and fuck if the sound didn’t kill him.

He shouldn’t be here. For a million reasons.

Rhys had ordered him nearly a year ago to stay away from Elain. And he’d tried. He really had. Until last month, when he’d made the mistake of staying overnight here, just once, and had smelled bread baking in the early hour before dawn, and had ventured into the kitchens.

He’d pretended he hadn’t known who’d be up this early. But his cock had already been hard by the time he’d seen her kneading dough, half-covered in flour. And when she’d lifted her large brown eyes—a doe’s eyes—and her mouth had formed that little, perfect O . . . There had been no words between them. His shadows had fled, the room brightening. The entire world brightening, as it always did in her presence.

It didn’t matter that he’d barely spoken to Elain since Winter Solstice, when he’d attempted to give her a necklace only for her to return it to him. After the shit he’d been through in the caves with Nesta and Bryce, after Truth-Teller had been taken from him and Nesta’s idiocy had threatened everything, after what he’d learned during the Hybern War—nothing fucking mattered.

So after Nesta had given Bryce the Mask, he’d walked up to Elain. Taken her beautiful face in his hands, waited for her whispered yes, and then kissed her. Deep and thorough, the way he’d wanted for so long now.

He’d instantly wondered if he could die from it—that kiss, the touch of her tongue. The way she writhed against him, the softness of her breasts. He’d decided to taste her mouth as he pleased, and when he was done with that, he’d taste her sex, and he’d been halfway through formulating his list of all the things he wanted to do with her when soft steps had scudded beyond the kitchen.

He’d vanished into shadow, leaving her breathless, with barely a moment to right herself before one of the kitchen staff stumbled in, bleary-eyed.

Never again, he’d promised himself. She was another male’s mate.

And yet he’d gone back a week later. Again, in that hour before dawn. He hadn’t touched her—not the way he wanted to—not yet. It had been just a few moments of stolen kisses before the morning she arrived.

Then the next week. The next. Swift, almost brutal encounters that he never let venture beneath their clothes, though he did grasp handfuls of her breasts through her gown, did kiss the tops swelling over the neckline.

Yet that driving need couldn’t blind him to the tinge of the mating bond within her scent. A marking in the blood, not welcomed by Elain, but a marking nonetheless. He loathed it. Forced himself to ignore it that first time, and every time since then.

And here they were once more. Only now it was past three in the morning, and dawn was a long, long way off. He’d stayed the night at the river house, intending to wake at the usual hour—but he’d smelled bread baking, and he’d woken down here. To where the smell of bread mingled with the jasmine and honey scent that was Elain herself. She’d been waiting. Baking . . . and waiting. For him.

Elain’s hand slid down his front, angling toward his cock, but he halted her with a light grip on her wrist. “Not yet,” he mumbled against her neck, then lifted his head to gaze at her face. So beautiful. So trusting and open and everything good in the world. So good that his shadows were still nowhere to be seen. They’d fled the moment he’d stepped into the kitchen.

He couldn’t get enough of it, of her. His salvation. That’s what she was. He might be a monster, might be a worthless, soulless demon, but here, in his arms—here was his salvation. His lone chance at joy. From the flush in her cheeks, the feverish gleam in her eyes, he knew she felt the same.

And that was enough to embolden him to voice what he’d never said to anyone before. He wanted her to know him. “When I was a boy . . .” His throat closed up, but he battled past it. “I lived in hell. Every single moment, of every single day. And . . .” He fought to find the right words to explain—not just what had happened then, but why it mattered that he tell her now.

Elain laid a gentle hand on his cheek, thumb brushing over his feverish skin. “We—could find a bedroom,” she said, shyly.

All thoughts of talking about the past vanished as he swallowed his groan. He knew exactly where the nearest bedroom was. How many steps it would take to get them there. But to cross that final line—“I need you sure,” he said, kissing her throat again and again, where that necklace should have been. They’d talk later about his life in his sire’s dungeon. Or perhaps never. “I need you certain.”

“I am,” Elain said, running her hands down his spine, avoiding his wings. She’d never touched them, and he honestly didn’t know what he’d do when she did. Spill in his pants, most likely. “I am,” she repeated, fingers digging into his lower back, pulling him against her again. He gave her a hint of what she wanted, pushing his hardness against her, a promise of what was to come. Elain writhed, and the heat of her seared him even through their clothes.

“Elain,” he ground out, but merely saying her name threatened to undo him.

When she reached for his cock again, he didn’t stop her. Timidly, tenderly, she brushed her fingers down the front of his leather pants. Mother spare him.

Az gritted his teeth, panting through his nose. “Elain,” he growled.

She flattened her palm against him with a possession that shocked him, nearly took him to his knees. His eyes rolled back in his head.

He needed her naked, needed to taste every inch of her, to lose himself in the pure bliss of her body—

“This ends now.”

It took him a heartbeat to understand. To process the icy command rippling through the room. To understand that Elain had also heard the voice.

Rhys’s voice.

Elain gasped, yanking away, leaping apart from him.

Azriel braced his hands on the counter, willing his brain to reorder the world. No more sex, or the promise of it. Rhys was here. His High Lord was here, and had seen them, and Elain was—

Shaking. She was shaking, gaping at the High Lord looming in the doorway, wings folded and face stormy.

Rhys only glowered at Azriel. As if Elain was no more than a whisper of spring against the dark winter of his rage. Without Az’s shadows nearby, he hadn’t had any warning—certainly not from Rhys, who could sneak up with feline stealth if he wished.

Darkness blotted out the stars in Rhys’s eyes as he said, “This is the last time. You want to fuck each other, go do it somewhere other than my house.” Rhys finally slid his attention to Elain. “Or have the decency to formally end things with your mate first.”

Elain trembled. Az’s rage roared to the surface, ready to bloody, to protect—but he’d left his Siphons next to his bed, and without them to filter his power, he wouldn’t have control over it—

But Elain shook her head, a startled deer, and bolted from the kitchen. Here, and gone. That whisper of spring vanished into the night.

Azriel’s shadows poured back in, wrapping around him, attempting to soothe him, hide him.

But there was no hiding from Rhys. Az stared at his High Lord. And his High Lord stared back.

“Did I or did I not tell you last winter that you were to back off?”

Rhys’s words were terrifyingly calm—flat.

Az said nothing, digging down deep, bracing himself for the storm.

“Did I or did I not tell you,” Rhys repeated, still as a panther ready to strike, “that if you needed to fuck somebody, then go find your pleasure in the city? Not here.” He pointed to the now-empty doorway through which Elain had fled. “Not with her.”

Cold like nothing Az had known surged through him, numbed his as he said to his High Lord, “You can’t tell me who to be with.”

Rhys’s voice remained terrifyingly calm. “Her mate is our ally. You know this. She knows it. And yet you two are here, getting covered in each other’s scents. I had planned to send you down to the human lands tomorrow, but now . . . I’ll go myself. Lucien would take one sniff of you and know immediately what you’ve been doing behind his back. Behind mine as well.”

The very stones of the kitchen shuddered. Az had rarely seen him this angry—certainly not directed at him.

“I know how to take care of the scents,” Az dared say. With a flick of his hand, his shadows swirled around him, the kitchen, the hallway, all the way to Elain—running upstairs to her rooms, his shadows reported. They curled around him, and the scents were gone. Or rather, veiled. Tucked between one shadow and the next. As he had been doing each and every time they’d met like this. As he had learned to do as spymaster so their enemies never caught one whiff that he was in their midst.

Rhys’s jaw tightened. “As much as I admire that little trick of yours, it is beside the point.” Before Az could say more, Rhys angled his head to one side, all predator. “Is it worth it to you? To jeopardize the few allies we have for this?”

Ice cracked through Az’s heart. “We already had this conversation at Solstice.”

“Apparently, it did not stick.” No light whatsoever shone in Rhys’s eyes. “And apparently, you didn’t understand the consequences I promised.”

Azriel bit out a laugh, harsh and lifeless. “Consequences? Like what? You’ll banish me to the House of Wind like you did Nesta last year?”

He was an idiot for taunting his High Lord like this, for challenging a predator already on the edge of spilling blood. But Az was a predator, too—and could match Rhys’s monster with his own any day.

Rhys considered him like he’d never seen him before, that murderous intent melting into something incredulous. Disgusted. Some small part of Azriel curdled in shame. That expression wasn’t from his High Lord, but his brother.

Rhys said softly, “Alliance with Lucien aside, I spent months in agony, you know. After realizing Feyre was my mate. Months of agony, knowing that she was my mate and she was sharing someone else’s bed.”

“It was Feyre’s choice then, just as it is Elain’s choice now,” Azriel snarled.

“That is true on all accounts,” Rhys said with that awful quiet. “But it doesn’t erase the fact that as Feyre’s mate, it destroyed a part of me to know she was with someone else. Feyre didn’t know what we were—she had no idea she was even making that choice. But Elain does. And perhaps she doesn’t understand the agony it will cause Lucien, but I do. You do.”

Azriel scoffed. “Lucien has no right to agonize over her. It is her life, her body. She can do as she pleases, with whomever she pleases.”

“I have no argument with that—and I fully support that autonomy for anyone. But I would not wish the pain that I felt during those months on my greatest enemy, and certainly not on a valued ally like Lucien. And I will not allow myself to be complicit in deceiving him, especially when it is undertaken in my home. So either tell Lucien about it and destroy what we’ve built with him, or fuck Elain somewhere else. But not here. Never here.”

Azriel let drop all pretense of being civilized, of being a decent male. He wasn’t those things. Had never been those things, though the Mother knew he’d tried. “Lucien isn’t entitled to any explanation from Elain. She didn’t choose him—doesn’t want to be mated to him. It’s a fluke of nature.”

It had to be.

“Why are you doing this?” Rhys asked hoarsely, bleakly. “Do you still think you’re entitled to her?”

Azriel had told him on Solstice—three sisters, for three brothers.

But the third sister had been given to another. A worthy male, if he was being honest, but not one who played any part in their lives. It made no sense. If it wasn’t a fluke of nature, then it had to be some sort of divine joke. Perhaps the Mother was condemning Az for all the blood he’d spilled, the pain he’d unleashed.

Well, the Mother could condemn him all she liked. He’d pursue what he wanted, mate or no.

When it became clear that Azriel wouldn’t respond, Rhysand slowly shook his head. “I’m not going to punish you.”

Az loosed a breath. He and Cassian and Rhys had beaten the shit out of each other over the centuries, of course, but never had Rhys actually punished his brothers. Like they were his subjects.

The anger melted fully from Rhys’s face. But that undiluted disgust remained. Az had never seen Rhys look at him like that. He never wanted to experience it again.

And Rhys knew it. But his High Lord said, disappointment and exhaustion dripping from his words, “Do what you want, Azriel. The world’s already burning.” Rhys slid his hands into his pockets before he turned on his heel to walk away. “I have too many other fires to put out to bother dealing with your mess, too.”

“Fuck you,” Azriel breathed.

Rhys paused. “I used to be proud to call you brother.” The words tore something low and deep in Az’s chest.

Rhys vanished into a wisp of night.

And even as Azriel’s shadows pressed close, murmuring in his ear like the lover whose honey-sweet scent still lingered in his nose, he’d never felt more alone.