The Dark Flower (Azriel x OC)

1. The Human (Persephone)

Persephone had familiarized herself with every inch of the sprawling green estate of the Spring Court Manor, Rosehall. She'd resided here since she was eight-years-old and her father had done what he could to accommodate his blind daughter, which for the most part simply meant that very little ever changed in terms of placement. 

Even the staff and the people allowed access to her hadn't changed in the eight years that Persephone had lived in Rosehall. Given the current state of the world and Persephone's own fragility, High Lord Tamlin was very careful in his selection of who had access to the manor. 

The human woman locked away upstairs would be the first new person that Percy had met in eight years. However, circumstances made it so Percy was not quite sure whether or not this human would ever be someone she truly liked to share her space with. 

"You've seen her already, haven't you?" Percy asked Lucien as she took his arm and let him lead her through the garden. She already knew the path by heart - had memorized it within her first month here - but she liked being able to have contact with another. There were so few who dared to touch her here that over the years, touch had become something almost taboo.

"Yes," Lucien answered curtly. "Only briefly." 

"What was she like?" Percy asked him warily. 

Lucien huffed out an irritated sound. "Scrawny. How someone like her managed to kill Andras is beyond me." 

Percy fell silent. Andras had been her personal guard and she had adored him. He'd always known just how to talk to her... how to describe the world around them so that she didn't feel left out. No one else had ever really bothered taking the time. If she asked how the garden looked one day, someone like Lucien or her father would simply tell her that the flowers were in bloom, but not Andras. He'd tell her which flowers seemed to look particularly well that day. He'd take her over to smell them and would pluck one or two to put behind her ear. 

Her heart ached as she thought of him dying all alone in the forest... of the horrors he endured in his last moments. No one knew better than her how cruel humans could be. The fae tended to speak of them as insignificant and meaningless, incapable of doing anything of use, but they hadn't experienced the humans as Percy had. 

"Do you think it was worth it?" Percy found herself asking. 

Lucien took a deep breath. "I don't know, Percy. I really don't know." 

Percy lingered in the music room for the rest of the day, practicing her pianoforte.  She anxiously awaited supper with a mixture of dread and apprehension. All afternoon, she'd been wrestling with her desire to thrash the human woman her father had brought home because of Andras's murder. But every time she found herself taking a step towards the stairs, she had to sit back and remind herself that Andras had gone out there willingly, knowing full well what awaited him on the other side of the wall. Instead, Percy tried to remember her last moments with him - the way he'd kissed her forehead and told her he'd see her soon. That had been a lie, though neither of them had known it at the time. 

Moira, Percy's governess, eventually urged her up to her room to help her dress for the evening. She quietly scolded Percy for avoiding her lessons for the day and Percy made a half-hearted apology.