A Court of Golden Shadow || Elain x Azriel

Chapter 37 - The High Lady of Spring

Azriel arrived at ahead of his family. Surveying the grounds, he began sending out his shadows, drifting in and out of his dark shadow form as he traversed Kallias' castle grounds.

The High Lords had requested the meeting to take place in the Winter Court. Winter and Dawn bookended Under the Mountain, and having used Dawn for the last meeting, it was decided that Winter would be a central enough location. As he stepped gingerly through the snow, the frost clinging to his lashes, Azriel mused that the eternal cold of the Winter Court was not his favorite climate, but he did enjoy the scenery.

Thick snow blanketed the entire landscape, blowing gently into drifts, climbing up the roots of the prominent castle, the sunlight bright and burning his eyes against the glistening white backdrop all around him. Azriel watched with an amused smile as small sleighs pulled by packs of fluffy winter-bred dogs coasted along the castlegrounds.

Kallias' castle, though not sprawling like Helion's palace, was grand in its own right. Vivian had kept it in decent condition during Amarantha's reign, and in the past two years, the High Lord had restored the grounds to their former glory. It was nestled amongst towering evergreens on the side of a sloping mountain, all but buried in the thick snow. Rinks of ice swirled from the sides of the magnificent building, carved into canals and riverways, allowing the servants and local fae a route to skate from the castle to the nearby town and roadways with ease.

The Winter Court was not like the Night Court or even the Day Court in the way that there was no capital city: much like the Spring Court, the citizens of Winter preferred to live in small towns, scattered across the rural countrysides, their trade focusing on various industries of lumber, mining, fishing, and even tourism now that Amarantha had been defeated.

Craning his neck up toward the top of the castle where he knew Kallias meeting hall to be, he observed the stained glass windows. The glasswork was second-to-none in Prythian, and Azriel allowed his eyes to travel across the icy blues and silvers sparkling along the meeting room, breaking out from the top of the castle, almost as if the space was part of the sky. Dropping his gaze down, he noticed a set of polar bears groaning nearby, pulling an enormous sleigh full of coal and lumber to the lower level of the castle, no doubt intended for heating the enormous place.

Where the Day Court sprawled, soaking up the sun while remaining close to the cool ground and rivers, the Winter court seemed to exemplify the concept that heat rises, the homes built in a style to allow the floors to stack upon one another. Similarly, Kallias' estate reached upward, towers and spires piercing the sky. The castle itself was made of an off-white stone with a blueish tint to it, lighter than a robin's egg and outlined with silver accents.

Azriel stepped across the icy terrain and toward the sweeping front steps of the castle, the spire at the top shading the sun on his face as he entered through the side passageway in his shadow form. There was only fifteen minutes before the meeting was to officially begin. His mind slipped back toward the conversation he had with Elain this morning before leaving for Winter.

He had been with her in Feyre's dressing room as Nuala was working on pinning her hair back, looping her curls into a lilac encrusted tiara from Feyre's personal connection. Her warm brown eyes were sparkling with a look of mild anxiety as she readjusted her skirts for what seemed like the hundredth time, Cerridwen leaning down at her feet to lace her feet into pink knee-high boots.

She was wearing a light pink gown, layered with lilac and lavender fabrics and accented with ribbons and embroidery in pastel buttercup yellows. Sage green vines had been embroidered alongside saturated pink and lilac florals, dancing around the skirt and up her corseted waist before trailing across thick bell sleeves, as if she had been woven and braided with real-life botanicals. Her hair was halfway pulled up, revealing her pointed ears, and Azriel had been watching in admiration as the wraiths finished their work on the end of her draping sleeves, hemming the fabric at the last minute.