A Court of Shadows and Thunder // AzrielxOC SlowBurn Romance, ACOTAR FanFiction

Chapter 29 - Just a Dream

Purely based on what type of person Azriel was, and based on how much she had come to know him over the time they've spent together, Brianna fully believed that the shadowsinger was someone who was well-put, poised, who never let slip any inkling of the reality behind that mask of indifference. But his chamber, it was the exact opposite of that.

Messy was perhaps not quite the right word to describe it, but the room had a certain disorganisation to it.

There were stacks of books, filling walls of shelves, piled one upon another here and about. His desk was filled with all sorts of papers, as well as the occasional dagger and small weapons. And knives seemed to be something Azriel was fond of, for he had quite the collection lying about the room, as well as different kinds of armour and all sorts of weapons ranging from long swords to even a few intricate spears.

It felt lived in, the strange yet somehow organised mess a sign of centuries spent within these walls, and to Brianna's eyes it looked like a treasure trove into who Azriel was.

But her eyes soon fell to the person in question, to the Illyrian asleep upon a grand poster bed pushed to the corner of the wide chamber. Though there were no hanging curtains upon the bed, leaving it barren and opened up to the room, as well as leaving Azriel in full view from where Brianna stood by the door. A door that she had silently closed behind her, her hand still upon its handle.

There was a moment where Brianna realised what she had done, suddenly barging into a person's room without invitation, completely unsolicited in the middle of the night, while that very person was asleep and hadn't even a clue of her presence. But it was the fact that Azriel hadn't so much as stirred in his sleep when Brianna had walked in that made the Syren take a step toward him.

It was curiosity, more than anything, that led Brianna to walk over to Azriel's bed in silent steps. That and, that ever-present, ever-pushing little tug within her seemed to guide her towards his sleeping figure.

And just like she had felt while she was standing on the other side of the door, Brianna was now met with an overwhelming feeling of discomfort and fear as she took in the sight of the shadowsinger.

For even in the darkness of the room, the thick curtains having been drawn to a near close, with only a small stream of moonlight pooling into the chamber, Brianna could clearly see that Azriel seemed to be trapped in a torment of his own doing.

Upon first glance, Brianna thought that Azriel's shadows were attacking him, just by the way they were moving in such an unruly manner around him. But Brianna also knew that Azriel wielded such shadows, commanded them and they him, and it only made sense that they were reacting to his own thoughts, his own emotions, going about according to whatever was happening within the shadowsinger's mind.

A nightmare, clearly, for the shadows swirled and trashed about, those tendrils of darkness moving above and around him. They too, like that sensation inside of Brianna, could feel his unrest, could feel his worry, his fear, his pain.

And Brianna now felt compelled by them, by that tug inside her chest, to take another step closer, and then another, and another, until she only stretched her arm out at them, and they came toward her.

Her hand reached out slowly, yet without any hesitation at all, her fingertips now mere inches away from those swirling forms of darkness and night.

The shadows went to her in either a silent command, or on their own doing, going to coil around her fingers. Slowly, tentatively, they roamed around onto her palm, past her hand. They began to wrap themselves around her forearm, and Brianna was overcome with that same sensation she had felt before, whenever she had winnowed with the shadowsinger and had been engulfed by such shadows.