A Court Of Shadow and Blood

☆ Traitorous Heart ☆

Shadow danced across curtain, and Azriel woke, startled, into a pale dawn. Silk slipped across his skin as he rose, midnight sheets dipping from his bare torso and down into a pool of darkness in his lap.

He scrubbed his head, frowning at the light spewing from the windows. He'd forgotten to close them the night before.

Azriel stepped from his bed and clad himself in a casual shirt and pants, only bothering to strap Truth-Teller at his waist before making his way from the room. His head swirled, plied with the many cups of wine and ale from Elain's birthday celebration the night before. A stupid smirk spread when he remembered the poor female needing to be carried back to the Estate afterwards by an almost-equally drunk Rhys and Feyre.

Nesta had disappeared to the House of Wind without a word, and Cassian and Mor had made their way to Rita's to extend the night of drinking.

Eblis...she'd gone to bed early without a drop of alcohol in her system, her violet eyes watching where everyone went with a wariness that made him wince at their boisterousness. He loved his family so much it made his heart hurt sometimes, but he could understand how...bewildering it was to be around a group so weightless yet holding the world on their shoulders.

Even for him—having to disappear and spy on courts much less casual than them and then return to this openness was still strange to him sometimes. He couldn't imagine how Eblis felt after five centuries in Hybern.

He settled into the cherrywood dining table, his back to the floor to ceiling windows that shed a calm warmth across his wings. As food appeared before him, he rolled his neck and relaxed his wings, the shadows that liked to coil around them hissing and disappearing into the dark.

Azriel dug in calmly, the eggs and bacon and hashed browns filling his stomach deliciously as he enjoyed the quiet morning while it lasted. He knew he was in the Townhouse, but he also suspected that at any moment, someone could burst through the door with bile on their tongues begging to be fed. Almost as soon as he thought it, his shadows purred at the presence of someone walking towards the house.

"Azriel," Cerridwen said, nodding her head in greeting. Her dark eyebrows were knotted together, the gold bracelets and earrings gracing her cobweb-skin glimmering heartily in the sunlight. Azriel looked up from beneath lowered brows.

This was not what he had expected.

"What's wrong? Where's Nuala?"

Cerridwen shook her head, heavy curtains of hair swaying. "In the city. She's looking for Eblis."

***

Azriel never finished his meal. He ran up the stairs two at a time to Eblis's room, only to find it pleasantly warm and devoid of the female. Her scent lingered slightly, as if she had returned to her room the night before but only briefly before disappearing. One of her windows was open.

He cursed.

She might’ve been kidnapped. They’d never managed to find her attackers from the Hewn City; in fact, he was supposed to go and do that today as well as alerting Keir to get his Nightbringers ready for battle. And, with the army hovering above somewhere out of sight, who knew if the Queen had sent another group to try and finish her off again?

The thoughts were a swirling tempest in his mind.

Without waiting, he dressed into his leathers and speared his thoughts to anyone who could listen; then, with a flap of his dark wings, he took off into the perfectly clear sky. Wind roared in his ears, sending his bed-head into a heavy mess of tangled darkness. His blue siphons glimmered in the heat, his shadows disappearing into every dark corner of Velaris. One such band of writhing onyx alerted him to the shadow-wraith sweeping the streets alone in the Rainbow, Cerridwen staying at the Townhouse in case Eblis returned.