The Dark Flower (Azriel x OC)

30. Blue (Azriel)

"All that talk about round two was just that then... talk," Saphira mused from where laid sprawled out across the bed. Pale blond hair spilled across the sheets as she lazily turned her head to look at him. "It's not like you to leave a girl hanging, Azriel." 

Azriel barely bothered to spare her a glance as he slid back into his leathers. He would have preferred to spend the rest of the night buried between Saphira's thighs, but the persistent knocking on the mental walls shielding his mind was beginning to give him a headache. A constant reminder that he was meant to be at dinner in forty-five minutes, introducing himself to Feyre. 

And Persephone. 

"I'm needed elsewhere," Azriel told her. 

Saphira arched a single brow. She was lovely and more than skilled with her body. A seductress. A useful skill for a spy and an assassin, one that had benefited his court time and time again. And occasionally, when she deemed fit, it benefitted him too. 

"Business with the High Lord?" As one of his longest serving spies, Saphira knew more than most. She was entrusted with Velaris and managed a lower circle of spies in the Day Court for him. He wouldn't consider her a friend, but a confidant seemed close enough. 

He opened the door to the small apartment he'd taken to staying in from time to time. Fifty years trapped in a city had made the House of Wind too confining. There had been days when just the mere sight of Cassian had made him want to start throwing punches. Now that he was able to escape the city - to fly wherever he wished whenever he wished it, he'd likely have far less cause to stay here. 

"Goodnight, Saphira," he merely said as he shut the door behind him. Her low laugh seemed to follow him through the wind as he made his way down to the cobbled streets below. 

"I won't be late,"  he thought to Rhysand as he lowered his shields. 

"I half suspected you'd try to run,"  Rhysand's voice filled his mind.

Azriel's jaw ticked. "I'm not a coward."  Besides, he had no reason to run. His dislike for Persephone only made him more determined to figure the young female out. And her presence here was temporary. He gave it a week before the little princess went running back home to her father and governess. 

Rhysand laughed. "Only when it comes to your mate." 

Azriel barely restrained his growl. "She is not my mate. I pity the girl for all that she went through Under the Mountain but that does not mean that she has a place with us, brother." 

"We'll see," was Rhys's only reply. 

Yes, they certainly would see. 

Azriel arrived early to the House of Wind, and as if Rhysand had planned it, the High Lord landed less than a minute after him, Persephone pale faced and wide eyed in his arms. The wind from the flight up here hadn't managed to dislodge a single hair - which had been painstakingly braided into dozens of small braids that had thus been formed into a singular larger braid.