Daisy Blooms - Azriel

Chapter 14

"I should go with you," Rhys said to Cassian as we gathered in the foyer of the river house the next morning. We're heading off to the Middle.

"I should go with you," Feyre countered, leaning against the stair railing, frowning at her mate and Cassian. Nesta watched them in silence, me and Azriel standing next to her.

"We both should go with you," Rhys amended. "But at least Azriel and Daisy will be there."

"Thanks for your confidence," Cassian said wryly, and kissed Feyre's cheek. Rhys must have lowered her shield-for the moment.

"You two aren't even parents yet and your mother-henning has reached an unbearable level."

"Mother-henning?" Feyre choked on a laugh.

"It's a word," Cassian said like we aren't walking into danger. We were about to venture into a lethal, ancient bog. Cassian didn't seem as disturbed as the rest of us were.

Rhys sighed to the ceiling. "Shall we?"

"I don't like this," Feyre blurted, stepping toward Nesta. "You haven't had enough training."

Cassian smirked. "She has two Illyrian warriors and a Peregryn warrior guarding her. What could go wrong?"

"Don't answer that," Rhys said drily to his mate. He met Nesta's gaze. "If you don't want to go-"

"You need me," Nesta said, chin lifting. "The bog is large enough that you won't he able to find the Mask without my...gifts."

Feyre seemed poised to object, but Azriel extended his scarred hands to Cassian and Nesta. Feyre stepped forward again. "The Middle is like nothing you have experienced before, Nesta. Don't let your guard down for a moment."

Nesta nodded. Azriel didn't give them a chance to exchange another word before murmuring shadows swept around them.

Then gray, watery light hit us. And the air-the air was heavy, full of slow-running water and mold and loamy earth. No wind moved around them; not even a breeze.

Cassian whistled. "Look at this hellhole."

Oorid stretched before us. I have never seen a place so dead.

Azriel winced. The shadowsinger of the Night Court winced as the full brunt of Oorid's oppressive air and scent and stillness hit him.

The four of us surveyed the wasteland.

In the shallows mere feet away, where the water met the grass, not one blade was visible where the surface touched it. Dead trees, gray with age and weather, jutted like the broken lances of a thousand soldiers, some draped with curtains of moss. No leaves clung to their branches. Most of the branches leaving jagged spears extending from the trunks.

"Not one insect," Azriel observed. "Not one bird."

"This is so creepy." I say.

Only silence answered. Empty of even a whistle of a breeze.

"Who would bury their dead here?"

"They didn't put them in the earth," Cassian said, his voice oddly muffled, as if that thick air gobbled up any echo. "These were water burials."

Nesta said, "I'd rather be burned to ashes and cast to the wind than be left here."

"Noted," Cassian said.

"This is an evil place," Azriel whispered. True fear shone in the shadowsinger's hazel eyes.

"What manner of creature dwells here?"