Amarantha's Daughter

Interrupted Training

She'd gotten a different bedroom this time, next to Azriel's, but he hadn't made any further advances on her. He had just kissed her on the forehead and explained that if she needed anything she just had to call out. Dianthe was too tired to contemplate the meaning of his words as she dove into bed and was asleep within minutes. For once, she had no nightmares.

-

The next day Azriel served her breakfast in bed and said to meet him on the roof for her training when she was ready.

Dianthe wasn't sure what to expect, but she did not expect to see Nesta and Cassian up there. And they seemed to be in an awful good mood too. They were flirting! Azriel, it seemed, was just as surprised as her. He was standing on top of the stairs, staring at the pair. He didn't even notice her arrival, all but jumping when she turned to him and asked what the plan was.

The sight of him, Azriel, jumping because he hadn't heard her was absurd. "Some shadowmaster you are." Dianthe teased good-naturedly, but he just looked at her, puzzled as hell.

"My thoughts must have been elsewhere." His mind looked to be buzzing with all kinds of questions, but he shook his head instead and asked: "This roof seems a bit crowded, do you want to train somewhere else?"

"Why? Do you want me all to yourself?" Dianthe tsk-ed.

"Is that a problem?" Azriel asked, gazing deeply into her eyes with an intensity that made her blush.

Dianthe looked over at Nesta and Cassian. They were in a fighting ring working on stances, it looked innocently enough. What did not look innocent was how they were looking at each other, she could practically smell their arousal all the way to where she was standing. No, not practically. She could smell it. And she had also heard them this morning, getting busy. They would probably be distracting. And she actually did want to train. To learn to defend herself and all that came with it.

"Not a problem at all. Where should we go?"

"Follow me." He unfolded his wings and shot up in the air. Dianthe did the same.

They didn't fly far. Just outside of the city, on a plain field. But she was still breathing heavily as Azriel had set one hell of a pace. But at least she managed to land on her feet. She considered that a great success. "That was a hard warmup." She said, stretching her wings.

"That wasn't the warm up, princess." His smile was a tad sadistic to her taste. Maybe she should have just trained with Nesta and Cassian? But Azriel had been pretty patient when he taught her how to fly. This couldn't be that different? Wrong.

The warmup was horrible. He had her running, flying, sprinting, squatting, doing pushups, situps and all types of horrible exercises she'd never even heard of. Just when she was seriously close to giving up did he declare that they were done warming up. He let her get a full minute to catch her breath before he moved on to the actual training. Very polite.

"How did you punch Devlon? Show me."

"Well.. I-" She began, but shut up when out of the blue, 10 fae soldiers appeared in front of them. She could feel Azriel tense up before she realized there was something wrong about them. Their eyes were aloof, all strange.

"Fly back." Azriel commanded her. There was no room for argument in his voice. But she couldn't just leave him here? There would be 10 against 1. Those were horrible odds! And she couldn't remember the way! Not to mention how if she even found it, would the wards allow her back in?

The soldiers didn't wait to see whether she would stay or not. They attacked. Azriel jumped in front of her and pulled out a long dagger with one hand and a shorter sword with the other. He stabbed the dagger through the first soldier's throat so the blood sprayed all over him. The soldier fell lifeless to the side, his eyes still open. It was the first time Dianthe had ever seen anyone die. Azriel kicked another soldier in the stomach to send him back and deflected another sword with his. But there were more soldiers coming. "Dianthe, you're gonna leave right now! That is an order !" He hissed at Dianthe. The time he'd spent turning around to yell this at her was just enough for some fucker to shoot an arrow at him. It went into his leg. Dianthe gasped, but Azriel merely gritted his teeth and pulled it back out. "Ash arrow. Fuck." He mumbled and threw himself back into the fight. The various orbs strapped to his body which had been glowing a bright blue had now dimmed some. Dianthe didn't know what that meant, but it didn't look good, and he was already fighting four soldiers at the same time with more coming.

"I don't remember the way!" She hissed back. Then she saw the glinting of steel on the ground. The dead soldier's sword. She hastily ducked under Azriel's arm, grabbed the sword and shoved it through the stomach of a soldier who was coming towards Azriel from the side. It made the most sickening sound, she could feel the bile coming up her throat at the smell, but there was no time to stop and throw up. The soldier wasn't even dead yet. He raised his sword, but before he was able to make a move towards her, a dagger was embedded into his brain. She looked in the direction it had come from. Azriel had thrown it and was now down to one short sword against 6 of the strange fae soldiers. These had to be Beron's soldiers, she realized. Soldiers under her sister's control. What were they doing here? Didn't Briallyn's control require close proximity? So where was she?

A sudden burning sensation appeared in her upper back and she turned around with a start, just in time to parry a lunging soldier. There was so much force in his attack that Dianthe nearly dropped the sword parring it. He slashed out again and Dianthe retreated. Another soldier joined in and Dianthe managed to dodge his advances in the last possible second. Her head would have been rolling had she not. Instead, he'd cut her hair two inches shorter. "Thanks for the haircut." She mumbled. Her heart was pounding, but it was pounding with adrenaline. She'd never felt so alive and she'd never been so close to dying. Out of the corner of her eye she could see that Azriel was still fighting. There were more dead soldiers on the ground, but he was still alive.

"If you lay down the weapon, we won't harm you." One of the soldiers told her without lowering his sword. His voice was emotionless. She laughed despite the situation. Did they really think she was that dumb? "

"Why don't you let down your weapons and I'll let you go?" She asked.

The answer came in the form of another strike. But it was like she could see it before it happened. Dianthe simply sidestepped him and with a yell slashed the sword through his neck. She was showered with his blood. Some of it even got into her mouth. Gross! She gagged and fell onto her knees to throw up. But before she got anything out, the other soldier kicked her in the stomach so hard he knocked the wind out of her. She fell onto her side, gasping for air. The soldier pointed his sword towards her neck and opened his mouth to say something. And yet again, she was saved by Azriel's knife-throwing skills. The soldier died instantly and started falling towards her. She'd never rolled away so fast in her life. Getting her breath back, she realized Azriel now had no weapons left. She turned towards him. There were 3 soldiers left standing. The ground had been painted red by blood, some of which she realized was from Azriel. He was fighting with his hands against swords now.

She grabbed his daggers out of the dead soldiers. A memory she would try her best to suppress later and went to charge. Just then, one of the soldiers managed to thrust his sword into Azriel's ribs, forcing him to his knees. For a second, it felt as if time stopped. Then she released a gut-wrenching scream and watched as the 3 remaining soldiers turned to mist. She thought it was very strange, but didn't waste any time running to Azriel. He was kneeling on the ground with the sword sticking out of his ribs, face pale, but he was alive. "DO I PULL IT OUT?" She all but screamed in his face. The adrenaline was still coursing through her body.

Azriel winced at the volume of her voice, but mumbled a; "I got it." before he pulled the sword out himself with only a pained expression on his face. Dianthe jumped to her knees and put her hands on the wound. She didn't know anything about fighting, but she had read in a book once that one should put pressure on a wound to stop the bleeding. So that's what she did. He was looking at her with a startled look on his face. Was he gonna die?

"Talk to me! Are you okay?"

"I will be." She wasn't convinced, but then he put his hands on hers and moved them away from the wound to show her that the wound was already closing.

"Oh." She sat down on her butt. The adrenaline in her body was slowly shutting down. She felt really tired.

Azriel looked at her then and must have seen something he didn't like, because he grabbed her shoulder to make her look up at him. "Princess, take your shirt off." He told her as if he was in a dire rush to see her naked.

She looked up at him with an incredulous look before she giggled at the impropriety of it."Do you think this is a good time to get naked then? You sure are eager." She said and giggled some more. She was definitely in shock, but for some reason, it was just so funny to her that he wanted to see her naked now. She had blood all over her. There were 10 dead soldiers on the ground. They'd both almost died and now he was feeling frisky?

"Dianthe... you have been shot."