Rules for Spies

15

Azriel blames his shaking hands on the fact that he stayed up all night, studying old scrolls and scribbling on parchment.

He had barely slept since Gwyn ran from him. As soon as he closed his eyes, the pain in her eyes haunts him.

But when his mind wandered beyond her face, it takes him to the torture chamber, to Merrill's screams and the blank look on her face. To the roiling in his gut, the feelings and sensations that had overwhelmed him.

If he had truly believed that this aspect of his work was good, perhaps Gwyn's censure would not have bothered him so much. Even if it still caused his mate to run from him.

Gwyn had been convinced that on some level Merrill had fought to help them. And if that were true, what more could Merrill have done if he hadn't tried to torture the answers out of her? Every time his thoughts took this direction, bile rrose in his throat and his shadows drew close around him, their melodic sighing nearly a melody.

The more he imagined himself inside the torture chamber of the Hewn City, the more everything in him recoiled.

If he tortures someone else, would Gwyn ever be able to bear his presence?

But Azriel realized there was another, larger question, one he had never truly allowed himself to consider: would he be able to bear it himself?

It became clear to him, in those long dark nights, that to torture someone else might break him beyond his own capacity to heal. That it was not enough for him to refuse to be the Night Court's chief instrument of torture. Rhys could always find another willing instrument in the Hewn City, even in the viler corners of Illyria.

So after his third night tossing and turning in his bed in the House of Wind, he had reached for the parchment and the scrolls, trying to imagine how the Night Court might function if there were no torture, by his hand or any other.

He hadn't made an appointment with Rhys, only shown up unannounced at the river estate for the first time in a year. He hadn't sought Rhys' counsel since last solstice, hadn't tried to mend the break between them, only allowed idle conversation when the two were brought into close proximity.

Now, he taps his papers against his thigh as he waits for Rhys to finish whatever occupies him, tries to still his fingers, steady his breath.

When his brother enters the room, trying to hide the wariness in his violet eyes, Azriel pounces.

"I want to end the use of torture in this court," he says, "and I've come to you with a proposal on alternative methods."

"Is that all?" Rhys asks, a dangerous amusement on his face, one that often precedes a forceful denial, makes it sting all the more. "Does this have anything to do with the fact that your mate has gone running after you attempted to torture Merrill?"

Of course he'd found out.

A thousand accusations fill Azriel's mind, all of them true: that Rhys had demanded he get the information from Merrill, that Rhys had not trusted he could perform his duties with Gwyn present, that he had felt the need to prove himself. And yet they are all insufficient.

After all, Azriel has been torturing people for centuries. He first flayed a male before he turned thirty, perfecting the technique over a long and grisly seven years of war, at the same time learning how to blot the screams from his mind, how to assure himself that he was doing this bloody work for the benefit of the Prythian he and Rhys and Cassian envisioned.

He'd learned under the auspices of the old High Lord himself, who'd wanted a shadowsinger at his side. It had been understood, always, that Azriel's work was necessary, that it could not fall to Rhys. For all that Rhain had scoffed at his son's dreamy tendencies, he had worked to create a court that would support them. A court of monsters that might sustain a more admirable prince.