stop the wedding!
summary: everyone at the House of Wind has accepted the fact that Y/N is hopelessly, shamelessly obsessed with the Shadowsinger, everyone except Azriel, apparently, who acts like he isn't affected by it at all. until the day her flirting stops being funny to him, and he says something he can never take back.
warnings: language, domestic abuse, a jealous and mean Azriel, angst,
The training ring smelled like sweat and pine and the particular ozone tang that always followed a good lightning strike, and Azriel was doing his best not to look like he was listening to Elain talk about her garden.
"—and Nuala says the frost is going to ruin the whole bed if I don't move the roses inside, but I don't want to move them inside, Az, they're happiest by the east wall—"
"Move them," Azriel said, because it seemed like the safe answer, the one that wouldn't require him to have actually retained the last two minutes of horticultural crisis. He was leaning against the low stone wall that bordered the ring, arms crossed, wings tucked in tight, watching the sparring below with only half his attention while the other half stayed fixed, as it always did around Elain, on the small, careful space between them. Not touching. Never touching. Just close enough that the whispers followed them anyway.
It wasn't allowed. Not exactly. Nobody had ever said the word out loud, not to his face, but everyone knew what a mating bond meant, and everyone knew Elain hadn't accepted hers, and everyone knew that whatever this was between the two of them these quiet mornings, these long talks, this comfortable orbit was a thing that lived very carefully in the space between friendship and something neither of them would name.
Azriel didn't let himself think about it too hard. It was easier that way.
"You're not even listening," Elain said, but she was smiling when she said it, soft and a little rueful, and she nudged his boot with hers.
"Roses. East wall. Some sort of botanical tragedy."
She laughed, quiet, the way she laughed at everything and opened her mouth to answer him, but the sound got swallowed by a much louder laugh from across the ring. Bright and unrestrained and completely unbothered by the concept of an indoor voice, the kind of laugh that made half the Valkyrie recruits look over out of pure reflex.
Azriel didn't look over out of reflex. He looked over because some traitorous part of him had already clocked that laugh from fifty feet away, the way he clocked footsteps on stone and blades leaving sheaths, an instinct he'd never admitted to and never would.
Y/N was doubled over near the targets, one hand braced on Nesta's shoulder, laughing so hard she'd gone slightly pink, while Nesta — Nesta, who did not do amusement in public — was fighting visibly and unsuccessfully to keep her mouth flat.
Elain's smile thinned. "I don't like her," she said, low, almost idle, the way you'd comment on weather.
"Me neither," Azriel said, automatic, distracted, not thinking about it at all.
Which was, of course, the exact moment Y/N looked up, spotted him across the ring, and lit up like the whole training yard had personally been rearranged for her benefit.
"Oh gods," Azriel muttered.
"Hiii, Azzie!" she called, already jogging over, hair coming loose from its braid, Nesta trailing behind her at a much more dignified pace with the specific expression of someone who had made peace, long ago, with being dragged into things. Y/N skidded to a stop in front of him, hands finding her hips, head tilting as she looked him up and down with the frank, unhurried appreciation of someone appraising a particularly nice piece of art.
"You look really handsome today, by the way," she said. "Like, offensively handsome. Is that a new—"
"No," Azriel said, before she could finish the sentence, because he knew exactly where it was going. It was always going somewhere. New tunic, new blade oil, new something, and every time the answer was no, and every time she asked anyway, delighted, like his lack of imagination in wardrobe was the funniest thing in Prythian.
"You didn't even let me finish."
"You were going to ask about my hair."
"I was going to ask about your cologne, actually, which, side note, you should absolutely tell me what it is because—"
"Y/N." Elain's voice cut in, soft but pointed, the kind of soft that had edges if you knew where to look. "We were talking."
For half a second, just half a second, something flickered across Y/N's face. Not hurt, exactly. Something quicker and more practiced than that, gone before it had a chance to land. Then the grin was back in full, easy force, hands lifting in mock surrender.
"Right, right, didn't mean to interrupt the garden meeting." She was already backing away, unbothered, or doing an excellent job pretending to be. "Azzie, think about the cologne thing. It's important research."
"It's extremely important research," she called over her shoulder, already turning to go, already laughing again about something Nesta muttered under her breath, and Azriel watched her go for exactly one second too long before he caught himself and looked back at Elain, who was watching him with an expression he chose not to examine too closely.
"Sorry," he said. "You were saying. Roses."
Dinner that night was loud in the particular way it only got loud when the whole Inner Circle actually managed to be in the same place at the same time, Rhys at the head of the table with Feyre tucked against his side, Cassian sprawled sideways in his chair like the furniture had personally offended him by being too small, Mor stealing bread off everyone's plates on principle, Amren picking at something that was decidedly not food-shaped, and a small mountain of pastry boxes sitting in the middle of the table that had already been half-demolished.
"Okay, but what is this," Feyre said, around a mouthful of something golden and glazed and entirely too good, "because I need to have several more of them before I die."
"It's new," Rhys said, looking unreasonably pleased with himself for a male who had contributed nothing to its creation. "From Y/N's family bakery. She dropped it off this morning, said we were her taste-test subjects."
Elain's fork stopped halfway to her mouth.
"Oh, there it is," Mor said, delighted, snatching another one off the tray before Cassian's hand could get there first. "I love her. I genuinely love her. Somebody give that girl a medal."
"She gave me three of these last week for free," Cassian said, mouth full, entirely without shame, "and I didn't even ask."
"You never ask," Nesta said. "You just stand there looking hopeful until people feel bad for you."
"She's the reason I have a stack of new books I haven't even started," Nesta admitted, which coming from Nesta, about anyone counted as a genuine testimonial. "She keeps recommending things and she's annoyingly good at it."
"She's in my painting class," Feyre added, smiling into her wine. "Talks the entire time. Terrible technique. Wonderful company."
"She danced with me at Rita's for two hours straight last week," Mor said. "Didn't even complain when I stepped on her twice."
"I think it's cute," Feyre said suddenly, apropos of the general drift of the conversation, glancing sideways with a small, knowing smile that Azriel did not appreciate. "The whole — thing. With Az."
"I think it's hilarious," Mor said. "I adore her for it, honestly. Someone needed to do it."
"She's sweet," Nesta said, which from her was basically a love letter.
"I think it's annoying," Elain said, quiet, not looking up from her plate.
Nobody responded to that. The silence lasted exactly as long as it took Cassian to lean forward, eyes gleaming with the specific joy of a male who had been waiting all dinner for an opening.
"You all should've heard what she said to him yesterday," he said. "During the sparring drills. I nearly dropped my siphons laughing."
"Cassian," Azriel said, in the tone of a male hoping a warning might still work, even though it never had.
The first memory arrived before Cassian even finished the sentence, unbidden, the way these things always did lately.
Y/N sprawled on the low wall of the training ring, chin in her hands, watching him run drills with an attentiveness that had nothing to do with technique. "You know," she'd called out, entirely too loud, "your shadows like me more than they like you."
"They don't have preferences."
"They do, actually, and I'm winning." A shadow curled affectionately around her wrist as if to prove her point, and Azriel had glared at it with the full weight of five hundred years of authority, which the shadow had ignored completely.
Adjusting her stance mid-drill, his hand at her hip to correct her angle, purely professional, purely instructional, and her voice, pitched low and delighted right by his ear: "Careful, Shadowsinger. A girl could get ideas." He'd stepped back so fast he'd nearly tripped over his own boots, and she had laughed for a full minute while Cassian openly wept with joy from the sidelines.
Pinned under his forearm during a spar, breathless, grinning up at him with absolutely no fear whatsoever in a position most opponents found deeply unpleasant. "If you wanted me on my back this badly, Az, you could've just asked." He'd let her go so abruptly she'd landed on her ass in the dirt, and she'd stayed there laughing while he'd stalked off to go be furious somewhere private.
Handing him a pastry box after dinner, unprompted, eyes doing that thing they did when she was about to say something she knew would land. "For you. Free of charge. Consider it payment for services rendered."
"Emotional support. You looked constipated all through the meal, so I assume it was a rough day."
Complimenting his wings, of all things, running her mouth about wingspan and symmetry with a straight face until he'd actually — actually — felt heat crawl up his neck in front of six people, and she'd caught it, pointed at his face triumphantly, and announced to the entire training ring that the Shadowsinger could blush, actually, she had proof.
"Azzie." Just that. Just his name, warped into something soft and ridiculous that nobody else in five centuries had ever dared use, said with a grin like she knew exactly what she was doing to him and had decided, deliberately, sweetly, to keep doing it anyway.
"—and he just stood there," Cassian was saying, wheezing, "bright red, absolutely silent, and she just walks off like nothing happened, doesn't even look back—"
"I don't blush," Azriel said flatly.
"You absolutely blush," Mor said. "I've seen it. It's the highlight of my month, every time."
"Gods above, leave the man alone," Amren said, in the exact tone of someone who found the entire conversation beneath her while also clearly not wanting it to end. "Though I will say, it is remarkable. Five hundred years and that girl is the one who gets a reaction out of him."
Azriel said nothing. He reached for the pastry box instead, because it was easier than answering, and told himself very firmly that the small, warm feeling sitting under his ribs was indigestion.
Training the next morning was routine, or it was supposed to be recruits running drills in loose clusters across the ring, Cassian barking corrections from the center, the clang and scrape of practice blades, the particular quiet violence of Nesta putting three Valkyries flat on their backs in under a minute.
Y/N found him near the weapons rack, as she always did, hip cocked, sweat-damp hair sticking to her temple, entirely unbothered by the fact that she'd just been thrown twice by Emerie and had the bruise forming on her forearm to prove it.
"You're staring," she said.
"You're staring at my form. Very intently. It's flattering, honestly."
"I'm making sure Emerie doesn't kill you."
"She'd never. She loves me." Y/N grinned, twirled the practice dagger in her hand with more confidence than skill, and struck a pose that was seventy percent theater and thirty percent actual stance correction. "How's this? Better?"
"It's dropping." He reached out, adjusted it without thinking, the way he had a dozen times before, his hand brief and impersonal against her forearm, and she went still under the touch just long enough that he noticed, glanced up, found her looking at him with an expression that flickered and vanished so fast he almost convinced himself he'd imagined it.
Then it was gone, replaced by the usual grin. "You know, if you wanted to hold my hand, you could've just—"
"Y/N." Gwyn's voice, from a few feet away, cutting cheerfully through the moment with all the awareness of someone who had absolutely no idea what she was about to detonate. "Didn't you get back together with your boyfriend?"
The world did not stop. Nothing so dramatic as that. But Y/N's smile did, mid-motion, freezing there like something had reached into her chest and yanked the string that held it up.
"...What?" said Cassian, from somewhere behind her, practice sword lowering.
Azriel went very, very still. Something cold slid down through his chest, fast and unfamiliar, and beneath his collar his shadows went rigid, coiling tight against his throat.
He didn't say it out loud. He didn't need to, a thin thread of shadow peeled off him without permission and curled close to his ear, and he asked it silently, furiously, why didn't you tell me.
You told us to stop talking about her, came the answer, small and almost sheepish. Seven months ago. You said stop mentioning her, so we stopped.
I didn't mean— he started, and then had no idea how to finish that thought, because he had meant exactly that, once, in a moment of wanting some peace from the way she filled every corner of his head, and now the words had come back to bite him precisely where it hurt.
"You have a boyfriend?" Cassian again, louder, more incredulous, the words landing like stones dropped one after another. "Since when — you never said anything—"
"It's — it's complicated," Y/N said, and her voice had lost its usual bounce, gone smaller, quicker.
"You went back to that piece of shit?" Nesta's voice this time, sharp as a blade unsheathing, all traces of amusement gone. "I thought you were done with him. I thought—"
"You told me you were done." Nesta again, and there was real anger there now, real worry dressed up as anger the way it always was with her. "You cried in my rooms for an entire night about him and now you're back with him and you didn't say a word—"
"You have a boyfriend," Cassian cut in again, disbelieving, "and you've been flirting with Az for months?"
"I wasn't — we weren't together when I—" Y/N started, hands lifting, trying to get a single sentence out before the next interruption landed on top of it.
"How long have you had him?" Azriel asked.
His voice was quiet. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that made Cassian's head snap around.
Y/N blinked at him. Of everyone standing there, she looked the most surprised that he was the one talking. "...A week," she said. "Technically."
"We've been — on and off. For three years."
Cassian actually made a sound, something between a laugh and a cough of disbelief. "Three years? You've had a boyfriend for three years and you never once mentioned him, not one time, in all the months you've been—"
"It's complicated," Y/N said again, weaker this time, and her eyes had started doing something bright and glassy that Azriel would have noticed even if he hadn't been staring directly at her, sharp and furious and unable to stop himself.
"You've had a boyfriend for three years," Azriel said, and something in his chest had gone cold and mean and entirely unfamiliar, "and you spend every single day flirting with me in front of everyone."
"Az—" Cassian started, low, warning.
He didn't stop. "Does he know what you do here? Does he know you hang off me every day, say whatever comes into that head of yours, make a show out of it in front of the entire training ring — or is that just for the rest of us to watch?"
"Azriel," Cassian said again, harder.
"No wonder he keeps taking you back and no wonder you keep breaking up," Azriel went on, and he could hear how ugly it sounded even as it left his mouth and could not, for some reason he refused to examine, make himself stop. "Maybe that's your problem — you spend so much time performing for everyone else that you never actually learn anything real. You can't hold a stance, you can't keep your guard up, you flinch every time someone comes at you seriously, and it's because you'd rather flirt your way through a lesson than actually listen. That's probably why you can't fight. That's probably why he—"
"Azriel," Cassian snapped, finally loud enough to cut through, sharp as a blade. "That's enough."
It was already too late. It had already landed.
"Stop acting so childish," Azriel said, quieter now, and somehow that was worse, "and grow up."
That was the moment he saw it. Really saw it. The exact second the first tear broke loose and slid down her cheek, and something in his chest went from cold to sick in an instant, some deep animal part of him recoiling from what he'd just done a full breath before the rest of him caught up.
She looked at him — really looked at him, something shattered and furious both at once, jaw trembling, arms wrapping around herself like she could hold the pieces in place by force.
"Look who's talking." Her voice cracked, but she kept going, pushing the words out before they could catch in her throat. "The guy who you flirts with Elain every single day, every single conversation, standing so close, laughing at everything she says — when she has a mate. When you know she has a mate.”
The silence that followed had weight to it, physical, crushing. Somewhere behind him, Azriel heard Nesta's sharp inhale.
Y/N didn't wait for an answer. She turned, dagger clattering to the ground where she dropped it, and walked out of the training ring so fast it was nearly a run, shadows scattering off her shoulders like startled birds his shadows, he realized dimly, his own shadows had been curled around her and were now peeling off her with what looked, impossibly, like reluctance, lingering a half-second too long before finally slipping back toward him, cold and silent and refusing to speak to him at all.
Nobody moved for a long moment.
Then Cassian rounded on him, face dark. "That," he said, low and furious, "was mean, Az. That was really fucking mean."
"I know," Azriel said. His voice had gone hollow.
"She's twenty-one." Cassian shook his head, disgusted, disbelieving. "She's basically still a kid, and you just — gods, Az, in front of everyone? You went for her fighting?"
Azriel didn't answer. He was watching the space where she'd disappeared, chest tight, stomach churning, one hand curling into a fist at his side while his shadows pressed themselves flat and cold against his skin, offering him nothing at all.
Nesta found him twenty minutes later, in the armory, doing absolutely nothing useful with a whetstone and a blade that hadn't needed sharpening in weeks.
She didn't say anything at first. She just stood in the doorway with her arms crossed and let the silence do the work, which was somehow worse than if she'd started shouting the second she walked in.
"Don't." Her voice was flat, controlled in the specific way that meant it was costing her something to keep it that way. "Don't say my name like that's going to fix anything."
Azriel set the whetstone down. "I know."
"Do you?" She stepped further into the room, and now he could see it properly, not just anger, something colder underneath it, something closer to disgust. "Because from where I was standing, it looked like you decided the best way to handle finding out a twenty-one-year-old has a shit boyfriend was to make her cry in front of thirty people."
"She cried in my rooms for an entire night once," Nesta said, and her voice cracked, just slightly, just enough to betray how much this actually cost her to say out loud. "Do you understand that? She sat on my floor and sobbed for hours because of that bastard, and I held her together because that's what you do when someone you — " She stopped herself, jaw tight, and started again, quieter. "That's what you do for someone you care about. And today you stood there and told her, in front of everyone, that it made sense he treats her badly. That she probably deserves it, somehow, for flirting too much."
"You didn't have to say it," Nesta snapped. "That's what it sounded like. That's what she heard."
Azriel's jaw worked. He wanted, badly, to defend himself, and found there was nothing to defend. "I wasn't thinking clearly."
"Clearly." Nesta laughed, short and humorless. "You weren't thinking at all. You were jealous, and instead of just admitting that, you decided to gut her in front of an audience."
Nesta gave him a look so withering it nearly qualified as a physical blow. "Azriel. I have watched you watch that girl for months. Everyone has. Cassian has a running bet with Mor about when you'll finally admit it. You don't get to stand here and tell me you weren't jealous."
He said nothing. There wasn't anything to say to that, not with the truth of it sitting so plainly in his chest.
"She's sweet," Nesta said, quieter now, some of the fury bleeding out into something that sounded almost like grief. "She's sweet, and she's kind to people who don't deserve it, and she's spent three years going back to someone who — " Her voice caught again, and this time she let it, jaw tight, eyes bright. "You don't know what he's like, Az. You don't know what she comes back looking like sometimes. And today, of all people, you were the one who made her feel small."
She left without waiting for a response, and Azriel sat alone in the armory for a long time afterward, blade forgotten, her words sitting in his chest like something with teeth.
Cassian found him an hour after that, dropping into the chair across from him with none of his usual ease, elbows on his knees, expression caught somewhere between exasperation and something gentler.
"I'm serious. You look like you got hit by a wagon." Cassian studied him for a moment. "Nesta already came at you, huh."
"Good." Cassian didn't say it unkindly, just flat, factual. "You deserved it."
"Do you?" Cassian leaned back, arms crossing. "Because I gotta be honest, Az, I've known you a long time, and I've never once heard you talk to anyone like that. Not recruits who screwed up a mission. Not enemies. Nobody. And you went and did it to her, of all people. The one person in this whole Court who's never once looked at you like you were something to be careful around."
Azriel dragged both hands down his face. "I know, Cassian."
"Bullshit." Cassian said it without heat, almost gently, which somehow landed harder than if he'd shouted it. "You know exactly what that was. You've known for months. We all have. You just decided today was the day you'd rather burn it down than admit it."
Cassian sighed, rubbing a hand over his jaw. "Look. I'm not gonna pretend I'm not pissed at you, because I am. But I also know you well enough to know you're currently sitting here hating yourself worse than any of us could manage, so I'm not gonna pile on." He stood, clapping a hand once, briefly, on Azriel's shoulder. "Just — fix it. However you do that. Because that girl adores this family, and she doesn't deserve to feel like she can't come around anymore because of something you said in five furious seconds."
He left. Azriel sat in the quiet that followed, feeling, for possibly the first time in centuries, genuinely and thoroughly ashamed of himself.
The shadows didn't come to him until much later, after dark, after he'd retreated to his room and given up on the pretense of doing anything productive.
They came all at once, which was rare — usually they trickled in one or two at a time, curious about his day, chattering about whatever mischief they'd gotten into. Tonight they arrived as a single mass, hovering near the ceiling, and the silence radiating off them was somehow louder than anything they could have said.
"Say it," Azriel muttered, not looking up from where he sat on the edge of his bed. "Whatever it is. Get it over with."
You were cruel, came the first voice, small and clipped, one of the older shadows, the serious one that rarely spoke unless it mattered. We have never heard you speak to anyone the way you spoke to her.
You made her cry, said another, softer, almost mournful. She has never once been unkind to us. Not once. And you made her cry in front of everyone.
You told her she can't fight, a third snapped, sharper than the others, indignant on her behalf in a way that made something in Azriel's chest crack a little further. That's not even true. You know that's not true. You said it because you wanted it to hurt.
You did, the shadow cut him off, unbothered by interrupting its own master, something it would never have dared a week ago. We felt it. You wanted it to hurt her. Why?
Azriel had no answer for that, because the honest answer — because it was hurting me, and I didn't know what to do with it — wasn't one he was ready to say out loud, not even to them.
You told us seven months ago to stop talking about her, said one of the two younger shadows, small and subdued, none of its usual chaos left in its voice. We only stopped because you told us to. We wanted to keep telling you things. We wanted to tell you when she smiled at something you did. We wanted to tell you when she talked about you when you weren't there. We wanted to.
And you told us to be quiet, the other one added, quieter still. So we were quiet. And now you're angry that you didn't know things we would have told you, if you'd let us.
None of this is fair, the first, older voice said, and something about its tone — flat, disappointed, entirely without its usual patience — hit harder than all of Nesta's fury combined. She has a boyfriend who hurts her. We've felt it on her for months, every time she's near us. Old pain. Old fear. And today, the one person who could have made her feel safe instead made her feel small.
Azriel's stomach turned to ice. "What do you mean, you've felt it on her."
"What do you mean," he said again, sharper, sitting up straighter now, "you've felt pain on her. What pain."
You told us not to talk about her, one of the shadows said, quiet, almost accusatory. So we didn't.
A long pause. Then, from the oldest voice, reluctant: Old bruises. Not always visible. Sometimes on her wrists, under her sleeves. Sometimes along her ribs, when she winces reaching for something. We never said anything because you told us not to speak of her at all, and because it was not our secret to give away.
Azriel felt something cold and violent settle low in his gut, an anger entirely separate from the guilt already sitting there, an anger that had nowhere to go and no target within reach.
Because you shut us out, the shadow said simply. You cannot have it both ways, Master. You cannot silence us and then be furious that we stayed silent.
He had nothing to say to that. It was, infuriatingly, entirely fair.
The shadows lingered a while longer, quieter now, some of them drifting close enough to brush against his hands the way they usually did when he was upset, though tonight the gesture felt withheld, half-hearted, like they weren't quite ready to forgive him either.
Fix it, the smallest one finally whispered, the one that had been so delighted the day they'd found the girl in the woods, back when this was a different story entirely, back before any of them had learned what patience truly cost. Please, Master. Fix it.
They left him alone with that, and Azriel sat in the dark for a long time, turning the shape of his own cruelty over and over, and underneath it, colder and sharper than anything else, the thought of bruises hidden under sleeves.
Varian was already home when Y/N landed outside the bakery that evening, and she knew before she even opened the door that it was going to be a bad night, because the light in the upstairs window was too bright, too still, the particular quality of a room where someone was sitting and waiting.
She wiped her face one more time in the reflection of the shop window, made sure there was no trace left of the tears from the training ring, took a breath, and went inside.
"You're late." He was sitting at the small kitchen table when she came up the back stairs, arms crossed, a bottle of something amber half-empty in front of him.
"I told you training runs long on—"
"I don't care what you told me." His voice was even, which was somehow worse than shouting, because even meant he'd had time to think about it, time to build the argument brick by brick while he waited for her. "You know what I heard today?"
Her stomach dropped straight through the floor. "Varian—"
"I heard," he said, standing now, chair scraping back hard enough to make her flinch, "that my girlfriend spends every single day at that training ring throwing herself at some male with wings. Flirting. In front of everyone. Making a fool of herself. Making a fool of me."
"It's not like that," Y/N said, hating how small her voice sounded even to her own ears. "It's just — it's a joke, everyone knows it's a joke, I don't mean anything by it—"
"You don't mean anything by it." He crossed the room slowly, and every instinct in her screamed to back away and she stayed still anyway, because moving always made it worse. "You spend hours every day with your hands on some other male, calling him pet names, and you expect me to believe you don't mean anything by it."
"Then why the fuck do you act like that?" His voice cracked up sharp and sudden, and she flinched hard this time, couldn't help it. "Why do you humiliate me in front of the entire Night Court? Do you know what people say about me? About the male whose girlfriend can't keep her hands to herself?"
"I'm sorry, I'll stop, I'll stop going—"
"You're always sorry." He laughed, short and ugly. "You're sorry every single time, and then you go right back to doing it, because you don't actually care how it makes me feel. You've never cared."
"Don't." The word came out low, dangerous, and she went quiet immediately, old instinct kicking in faster than thought. "Don't you dare tell me what's true. I know what I saw. I know what people are saying. You think I don't hear the rumors? You think I don't know exactly how you look at him?"
"I don't look at him like anything, he doesn't even—"
The first blow landed before she finished the sentence.
She didn't cry out. She'd learned a long time ago that crying out only made it last longer, made him angrier, made him feel like he needed to make his point more thoroughly. So she stayed silent, arms curling instinctively around herself, absorbing what she could, waiting for it to be over.
"You're going to stop going to that training ring," he said, breathing hard, standing over her now. "You understand me? You're done. No more Valkyries, no more flirting, no more embarrassing me in front of an entire Court."
"Please, Varian, it's the only—"
"I said no more." His hand fisted in her hair, hard enough to bring fresh tears to her eyes, and she bit down on the sound that wanted to escape. "You think I won't find out if you keep going? You think I don't have people watching you?"
"I'll stop," she whispered. "I'll stop, I promise, please—"
"You'd better." He released her, shoving her back a step, and she caught herself against the counter, breathing hard, everything aching in a dozen different places. "Because if you don't, I'm not just going to be angry with you. You understand me? I know where your parents live. I know where that pathetic little bakery of theirs is. It would be so easy, Y/N. So easy to make sure it burns down some night when nobody's watching. So easy to make sure something happens to people who can't protect themselves."
"Please don't hurt them," she said, voice breaking entirely now, all the careful composure she'd built over the years shattering at once. "Please, they haven't done anything, please—"
"Then behave." His voice had gone soft again, almost gentle, the way it always did right after, the whiplash of it more disorienting than the anger itself. "That's all I'm asking, love. Just behave. Stop embarrassing me. Stop humiliating yourself in front of everyone. Is that so much to ask?"
She shook her head, unable to speak past the lump in her throat.
"Good." He reached out, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear with a tenderness that made her stomach turn. "I only get like this because I love you so much. You know that, right? Nobody else would put up with someone who acts the way you do. Nobody else would stay."
"I know," she whispered, because agreeing was always faster, always easier, always ended the night sooner than arguing ever did.
"I'm going out." He grabbed his coat off the back of the chair, entirely unbothered, like the last ten minutes had been nothing more than a minor inconvenience already forgotten. "Don't wait up."
The door shut behind him, and Y/N sank down onto the kitchen floor, back against the cabinets, and finally let herself cry, quiet, controlled, careful even now not to be too loud, in case he came back and heard.
She didn't come to training for a week.
Azriel told himself it didn't matter. Told himself, every single morning he walked into the ring and didn't hear that laugh carrying across the yard, that it was better this way easier, cleaner, one less complication in a life that already had enough of them. He told himself this so many times that by the fourth day he'd nearly convinced himself it was true.
It wasn't true. By the sixth day, he'd caught himself glancing toward the entrance of the ring so many times that Cassian had started watching him do it with an expression that was somewhere between pity and barely-contained amusement.
You miss her, one of his shadows offered on the seventh morning, unhelpfully, as he stood exactly where he always stood, arms crossed, watching an entrance she wasn't walking through.
You keep looking at the gate.
"I'm surveying the training ring. It's part of my job."
You have never once surveyed the training ring before, the shadow said, entirely unconvinced, and drifted off before he could argue further.
She came back on the eighth day.
He heard her before he saw her, that laugh, unmistakable, carrying easily across the yard, and something in his chest unclenched so fast and so completely that he had to physically stop himself from turning toward the sound too quickly, like a male who'd actually been waiting for it. He arranged his face into something neutral. He rehearsed, quietly, stupidly, the shape of the apology he'd been turning over in his head for a week — I was cruel, and I'm sorry, and none of it was fair — and prepared himself for the moment she'd spot him and either ignore the apology entirely to needle him about something else, or accept it, or —
She didn't look at him at all.
She walked straight past the weapons rack where he was standing, laughing at something Emerie had said, already deep in conversation with Gwyn about a book one of them had apparently stayed up too late finishing, and she didn't so much as glance in his direction.
Oh, one of the shadows said quietly, sounding almost as surprised as he felt.
He waited. Surely she'd circle back. Surely, in an hour, or two, she'd find some excuse to wander over, complain about his form, comment on his hair, ask if he'd finally decided on that cologne. That was how this worked. That was how it had always worked, for months, an established rhythm he hadn't realized he'd come to rely on until the ring went through an entire training session without her sparing him a single word.
She spent the whole session laughing with Nesta. She spent a solid twenty minutes deep in conversation with Emerie about something that made both of them nearly cry laughing. She even, at one point, jogged over to where Cassian was correcting someone's stance and said something that made him bark out a laugh loud enough to turn heads.
She never once came near Azriel.
He told himself it was fine. He told himself, repeatedly, standing very still by the weapons rack with his arms crossed and his jaw tight, that this was exactly what he deserved, and that it shouldn't feel like someone had reached into his chest and removed something load-bearing.
It felt like exactly that anyway.
Days turned into a week. The week turned into two, and then, somehow, impossibly, into a month, and Y/N still hadn't spoken a single word to him.
It wasn't dramatic. That was almost the worst part, she wasn't cold to him, wasn't pointed about it, didn't make any kind of show of ignoring him the way someone might if they wanted him to notice the effort of it. She simply behaved, in every way, as though he had quietly ceased to exist. She laughed with everyone else. She teased Cassian mercilessly. She dragged Feyre into long debates about paint colors. She spent every Rita's night wrapped around Mor on the dance floor. She was, by every account, exactly the bright, warm, unfiltered presence she'd always been.
Just never, not once, anywhere near him.
She looked at you today, a shadow reported on the twenty-third day, sounding cautiously hopeful. For almost a full second. Before you noticed.
"That's not a real update."
It's the only update we have, Master.
He tried, more than once, to approach her. It never quite worked.
The first time, he'd worked up something close to nerve, crossed half the training ring with actual intention, and gotten within ten feet of her before Gwyn called her name from across the yard, some question about drills, and Y/N had turned and jogged off without ever noticing he'd been walking toward her at all.
The second time, he'd nearly made it, she was alone, coiling a length of rope by the equipment shed, and he'd opened his mouth to say something, anything, when Elain's voice had called his name from the other side of the ring, something about wanting his opinion on a letter she was drafting, and by the time he'd extracted himself from that conversation, Y/N was long gone.
The third time, he didn't even get the chance to open his mouth. She simply saw him coming, he was almost certain she saw him coming, and gathered her things with the kind of brisk, unhurried efficiency of someone who had somewhere else to be, and was walking away before he'd covered half the distance between them.
You're bad at this, one of the shadows observed, not unkindly, after the third failed attempt.
Maybe try actually saying words to her, instead of just standing there with your mouth open like a fish.
"I didn't have the chance."
You've had a month, Master.
He didn't have a response to that.
It was on the thirty-first day he'd counted, though he refused to examine too closely why he was counting, that he finally caught her alone with nothing and no one to interrupt them.
Training had ended. Most of the recruits had already filtered out, and Y/N was crouched by the low wall, packing her things into a worn leather bag, unhurried, clearly in no rush to be anywhere. Azriel watched her from across the ring for a full minute, rehearsing the apology one more time — I was cruel, and I'm sorry, and I've thought about it every day since— and then made himself walk over before he could talk himself out of it again.
She heard him approaching. He watched her shoulders go faintly rigid, watched her hands still over her bag for half a second before resuming their motion, deliberate, unbothered.
He got close enough to see it properly for the first time, a bruise, dark and spreading, half-hidden beneath the collar of her tunic where it had slipped slightly during training, blooming purple-yellow along her collarbone in a way that made every rehearsed word in his head evaporate at once.
"What happened to you," he said, before he could stop himself, all the careful apology forgotten entirely.
Y/N's hand flew to the collar, adjusting it, covering the mark in one smooth, practiced motion. "Training," she said, flat, not looking up.
"That's not from training."
"Was there something you needed?" She stood, bag slung over one shoulder, and finally looked at him directly for the first time in a month and the look was so cool, so entirely without warmth, that it landed harder than anything Nesta or Cassian had said to him weeks ago.
He hadn't been braced for it. Not really. Not for how much it would hurt to be looked at like that by someone who, a month ago, had looked at him like he'd hung the stars.
"No," he said, after a beat too long. "Nothing."
She nodded once, brief, and walked past him without another word, and Azriel stood alone in the empty training ring for a long time afterward, the ghost of that bruise sitting behind his eyes, the sound of her flat, cold voice echoing louder in his head than anything else had in weeks.
He found Elain in the sitting room two evenings later, curled into her usual corner of the couch with a book she wasn't really reading, and let himself be pulled into conversation the way he always did, grateful, in some distant way, for the familiar comfort of it.
"—and I've been thinking I want to redo the whole east garden, actually start fresh," Elain was saying, tracing a finger along the edge of her book without opening it. "The roses never really recovered from the frost, and I thought — Az?"
He blinked. "Sorry. What?"
"I asked if you'd help me pick out new roses. You've gone somewhere else entirely." She studied him, head tilting, something curious in her expression. "Where'd you go?"
"Nowhere," he said, which was a lie, because he'd gone exactly where he always went lately — to the bruise on Y/N's collarbone, to the flat, cold way she'd looked at him, to the sound of her laugh carried across a training ring he was no longer part of. He wondered, not for the first time, exactly how that bruise had happened. He wondered if he should ask Cassian, quietly, whether he knew anything, whether anyone had noticed anything he hadn't. He wondered if she'd flinched like that before, months ago, and he'd simply never been paying close enough attention to catch it.
"Sorry." He dragged himself back to the present, to Elain watching him with mild, patient concern. "The roses. Yes. Whatever you think is best."
"You're really not listening."
"I am." He wasn't, not fully, some part of him still snagged on that bruise, that cold voice, and it took real effort to focus properly on her face, on the actual conversation happening in front of him. "Sorry. Long week."
Elain let it go, gracious about it the way she usually was, and returned to her roses, and Azriel made himself listen properly this time, made himself nod in the right places and offer real opinions when asked. It was only later, once she'd gone up to bed and he sat alone finishing his wine, that he noticed something that made his stomach turn slightly — his shadows, usually curled loosely around his shoulders even in casual conversation, had drifted noticeably far from him the entire time Elain had been in the room. Not gone, exactly. Just distant. Hovering near the ceiling, or tucked against the far wall, keeping a careful, deliberate space between themselves and wherever Elain sat.
He hadn't noticed it before. He wondered, uneasily, how long they'd been doing it.
Dinner that Friday was loud again, the whole Inner Circle crammed around the table, and it was Nesta of all people, Nesta, who rarely offered up gossip unprompted who brought it up somewhere between the second course and the third.
"She broke up with him again," Nesta said, apropos of nothing, reaching for the wine. "Y/N. Finally."
Every fork at the table went still, briefly, at the word finally, though only Azriel's stillness lasted long enough for anyone to notice.
"Oh, thank the Cauldron," Mor said, dropping her own fork with real relief. "He never let her come to Rita's with me anymore. I've missed her."
"When?" Cassian asked, leaning forward with real interest.
"A few days ago, I think." Nesta shrugged, though something careful sat under the casual delivery, like she was choosing her words with more precision than she usually bothered with. "She hasn't said much about it. You know how she gets."
Azriel found he was listening with an intensity he had no good explanation for, every other sound in the room fading slightly, his fork forgotten halfway to his mouth.
Master's very interested in this conversation, one of his shadows observed, delighted, from somewhere near his collar.
Shh, another hissed. He's listening.
"Good," Cassian said, with real feeling. "I never liked the sound of that guy, from what little she's said."
"She's never said much," Feyre put in, frowning slightly. "Which is its own kind of concerning, honestly."
"She's private about it," Nesta said. "Doesn't like being fussed over."
"I think she just likes attention when it's fun and hates it when it's not," Elain said, and something about her tone made the table go quiet in a different, sharper way. "It's obvious she's going to go back to him again. That's all she ever does, breaks up, gets everyone worked up over it, and then goes crawling back a week later like nothing happened. It's exhausting, honestly, watching her do this over and over. I don't understand why everyone treats it like some big surprise every single time."
The silence that followed had teeth.
"That's not fair," Azriel said, before he'd even fully decided to say it, voice cutting sharp and immediate across the table.
Every head turned toward him at once. Elain blinked, visibly startled. Even Cassian's eyebrows had shot up somewhere near his hairline.
"She's not doing it for attention," Azriel continued, and now that he'd started he found he couldn't quite stop, something protective and furious rising in his chest too fast to check. "You don't know what he's like. None of us do, not really — but I've seen the bruises, Elain, more than once now, and I promise you, whatever's happening in that relationship, it isn't happening because she enjoys the drama of it."
Nobody said anything for a long moment.
"Well," Amren said finally, dry as ever, eyes glinting with something that might have been amusement. "Wasn't expecting that from you tonight."
"Neither was I, honestly," Mor added, staring at Azriel with an expression somewhere between delight and disbelief.
Elain's cheeks had colored, something embarrassed and a little wounded flickering across her face. "I didn't mean it like — I just meant—"
"I know what you meant," Azriel said, quieter now, though no less firm, and he found, somewhat to his own surprise, that he didn't feel the usual instinct to soften it for her sake. "I just don't think it's fair."
Cassian was watching him with an expression that had gone entirely too knowing, and Azriel could see the exact moment his brother decided not to comment on it, which was, in itself, its own kind of commentary.
"Well," Rhys said eventually, into the strange quiet that had settled over the table, clearly deciding someone needed to move the conversation along. "Regardless — I'm glad she's away from him. Whatever the reason for everyone's sudden strong feelings on the matter."
The dinner continued after that, conversation slowly picking back up around them, but Azriel noticed, distantly, that his shadows had gone very quiet and very still around his shoulders, and when he finally glanced down at them, he caught one small, unmistakable ripple of something that felt, for all the world, like pride.
Perfect, Master, it whispered, so quiet only he could hear it. That was perfect.
The Illyrian recruits had never been particularly good at keeping their mouths shut, and Azriel had long since learned to let most of it wash over him, the crude jokes, the running commentary on whichever female had walked through the ring that day, the particular brand of stupidity that seemed to come standard with young males who'd spent too many years in war camps and not nearly enough being taught manners. Cassian usually handled it with a well-placed bark of shut it and run another lap, and Azriel usually didn't bother at all, too busy correcting stances to care what idiocy was being muttered three targets down.
He wasn't listening, not really, running a recruit through drills with half his attention on form and half of it, if he was honest with himself, on the entrance to the ring, the way it had been every day for over a month now.
"What about that girl," one of the recruits said, low, clearly thinking himself quiet enough not to be overheard. "Y/N."
Azriel's attention snapped sideways before he'd consciously decided to listen.
"Oh, yeah," another voice answered, delighted, and a ripple of low laughter went through the small cluster of recruits taking a water break by the wall. "The one who's always here with the Valkyries?"
"Gods, have you seen her ass in those training pants?"
"I bet her tits are perfect"
"I wonder how she'd look bouncing on my dick"
The laughter that followed drowned out the rest of the sentence, crude and self-satisfied, and one of them, emboldened by the group's amusement, added something about the sounds she'd probably make, and that was the exact moment something in Azriel went very, very quiet and very, very cold.
He didn't remember crossing the ring. He remembered, afterward, only fragments the recruit's face going white as Azriel's hand closed around his collar, the way the others had scattered a half-second too late, the visceral, satisfying crack of his fist connecting with the first jaw and then the second, and the third, moving through them with a controlled, methodical violence that had nothing controlled about it at all.
"You do not," Azriel said, voice low and lethal in a way none of the recruits had ever heard from him before, hauling one of them up by the collar hard enough that his boots left the ground, "talk about her like that. Not her. Not any female. You understand me?"
The recruit made a choked, terrified sound that might have been agreement.
Azriel dropped him, already turning toward the next one, and it was only the sudden press of shadows — his own shadows, dozens of them, coiling tight and furious around the recruits' arms and throats, holding them pinned in place with a kind of vicious enthusiasm that suggested they'd been waiting for permission to join in — that gave Cassian enough time to close the distance and physically haul Azriel back by both shoulders.
"They were talking about her like she's—"
"I heard what they said," Cassian snapped, still holding him back with real effort, because Azriel was fighting the grip with an intensity that suggested he genuinely might have killed someone if left unsupervised another thirty seconds. "I heard it, and I agree, they're disgusting little shits, but you're going to actually murder one of them if you don't calm down, and then I'm the one who has to explain that to Rhys."
Let us finish, one of the shadows hissed, tightening around a recruit's throat with what could only be described as glee. We want to finish.
"Let them go," Cassian ordered, and the shadows obeyed with obvious reluctance, releasing the recruits, who scrambled backward, faces bruised and bleeding, utterly terrified.
"Run," Cassian barked at them, jerking his chin toward the far end of the ring. "Ten laps. Now. And if I hear one more word out of any of you about any female training here, I will let him finish what he started. Go."
They ran. Azriel stood there breathing hard, knuckles split and bleeding, shadows still simmering furious and dark around his shoulders, and Cassian looked at him with an expression that was equal parts impressed and deeply unsettled.
"Well," Cassian said finally, dry, "that was a lot."
"Oh, no argument here." Cassian crossed his arms, studying him with a look that had gone sharper, more knowing. "Funny, though. Funny how that girl seems to have that kind of power over you."
"It's not about her specifically." Azriel flexed his bloodied hand, jaw still tight. "I'd have done that for any female they talked about like that."
"Sure." Cassian didn't bother hiding his disbelief. "Except I've heard those idiots say worse things about half a dozen other females training here, and you've never once so much as looked up from your drills."
Azriel had no answer to that, which was, in itself, its own kind of answer.
"Az." Cassian's voice softened, just slightly, some of the teasing bleeding out of it. "You should talk to her."
"She won't even look at me, Cassian."
"Then figure out how to fix that." Cassian clapped him once on the shoulder, already turning to go check on the recruits. "Because whatever this is you're carrying around, the staring, the jealousy, apparently full-on assault charges waiting to happen, it's not going away on its own. Trust me. I know a little something about being an idiot for too long before finally saying something."
He left Azriel standing alone in the ring, knuckles throbbing, his shadows still coiled tense and watchful around him, and one of them finally spoke, quiet, almost gentle.
You should talk to her today.
Today, Master. Not next month.
He was ready the next morning. He'd told himself that, at least, standing in his usual spot by the weapons rack with something that felt dangerously close to hope sitting in his chest, watching the entrance to the ring with an attention he didn't bother pretending was about anything else.
She's coming, one of the younger shadows announced, practically vibrating with excitement, darting in an excited loop around his head. She's coming, she's coming, maybe today's the day—
Don't get his hopes up, another warned, though it, too, sounded far too eager to be convincing.
Maybe she'll say Azzie again, the first one continued, undeterred. We miss it. We miss when she said Azzie.
"Quiet," Azriel murmured, though there was no real heat in it, his eyes already fixed on the gate.
She walked in a moment later, laughing at something Gwyn had said, hair pulled back in its usual messy braid, and every shadow around Azriel went taut with anticipation, several of them actually drifting toward her before catching themselves and holding back.
She walked straight past him. Not a glance. Not a flicker of acknowledgment. She didn't even alter her path to avoid him, she simply walked through the space as though he genuinely wasn't standing in it at all, already deep in conversation with Gwyn about something that made them both laugh.
The shadows deflated around him all at once, a collective, disappointed sag.
Not today, then, one murmured.
Azriel said nothing, jaw tight, and turned back to his drills, though the rest of the session passed in a fog he barely registered.
Y/N felt it, of course. She felt it every single time the particular weight of his attention, the way she could sense him watching from across the ring even when she refused to look, the way some small, humiliating part of her still lit up every time she heard his voice, even now, even furious with him, even certain she should hate him.
She didn't hate him. That was the worst part, if she was honest with herself, which she tried very hard not to be lately.
She missed it. She missed all of it, the stupid, small things she hadn't realized would matter so much until they were gone, missed teasing him until his ears went red, missed the way his shadows used to curl excitedly around her wrist the second she walked into the ring, missed the particular, private satisfaction of making the most composed male in the Night Court fumble over a single sentence. She missed feeling like she had a place here that was specifically, uniquely hers, carved out in the space between his usual stoicism and her relentless, ridiculous flirting.
She missed being someone who got to make him blush.
She told herself, walking toward the gate at the end of the session, that it didn't matter anymore. That he'd made his feelings about her painfully, publicly clear, and that she was better off keeping her distance, better off protecting whatever was left of her dignity after he'd shredded most of it in front of thirty people a month ago.
She was almost at the gate when she saw him.
Azriel stood near the far wall with Elain, both of them close together, heads bent over something — a letter, maybe, or a book — and he was smiling. Not the small, rare half-smile she'd worked so hard to earn over months of relentless teasing, but something easier, more natural, the kind of smile that came without effort because it had nowhere complicated to travel from his chest to his face.
Something in Y/N's chest cracked, quiet and sudden.
He looks happy, she thought, and hated how much it hurt to think it. Good. He deserves that. He deserves someone who doesn't humiliate herself running around after him.
She thought, distantly, painfully, of Varian, of exactly how bad things had actually been, of how right Azriel had accidentally been about all of it even if he'd never known the real reasons why. She thought about how stupid she must have looked, all those months, coquetting shamelessly with a male who clearly had somewhere better to put his attention.
She turned to go, quick, before either of them could notice her standing there.
Azriel looked up at exactly the wrong moment, gaze catching hers across the ring, and for one full second neither of them moved, something raw and unguarded passing between them before Y/N forced herself to break it, turning and walking briskly toward the gate, heart hammering, refusing to look back.
Azriel watched her go, Elain's voice fading into background noise, something in his chest twisting tight and painful, and it took real effort to drag his attention back to the conversation he'd apparently stopped participating in entirely.
You should go after her, a shadow whispered, low, urgent.
He didn't. He told himself it wasn't the right moment, told himself he needed a real plan this time, not another rushed, badly-timed attempt destined to fail like the last three. He told himself a lot of things, standing there watching the space where she'd disappeared, and none of them made the ache in his chest any smaller.
The bakery was nearly empty by the time he finally worked up the resolve, the evening crowd long since cleared out, most of Velaris settling into the particular hush that fell over the Rainbow after dark. He'd walked past three times already, he wasn't proud to admit, circling the block like some lovesick idiot rather than simply going inside, and it was only the combined, increasingly impatient chorus of shadow-voices in his ear that finally got his feet moving through the door.
You've walked past four times, Master, this is embarrassing—
Three, he corrected silently. It was three times.
It felt like four, the shadow said, unbothered by the correction.
The bell above the door chimed as he stepped inside, warm light spilling over rows of nearly-empty shelves, the smell of sugar and butter still thick in the air even this late. Y/N was behind the counter, wiping down the display case, and she went very still the moment she heard the bell, one shadow — his shadow, he realized, one that had apparently slipped ahead of him without permission — already curling protectively close to her before she even looked up.
No, he heard her think, or maybe felt it, some current of dread passing through the small shadow pressed near her shoulder. No, no, no.
She looked up. Found him standing just inside the door, and something crossed her face too fast to name before it smoothed into careful, professional neutrality.
"We already delivered the bread to the High Lord and Lady," she said, before he could get a single word out, already turning back to the display case. "If you're here about the order."
"Did they finish it already?" She straightened, reaching toward the shelf behind her. "I can grab more, it's not a problem—"
"No." Azriel stepped further inside, and something about the urgency in his own voice surprised even him. "That's not why I'm here."
She paused, hand still hovering near the shelf, and turned back to look at him properly, wary. "Then?"
Don't ruin this, a shadow hissed urgently in his ear, right as his mind went completely, humiliatingly blank. Say something. Apologize. That's why we came.
His eyes landed on the nearest tray instead, something golden and glazed sitting under the glass, and the words that came out of his mouth were not remotely the words he'd rehearsed the entire walk over.
"Could I get one of those?"
Y/N blinked. "...Which one?"
He gestured vaguely, still not quite looking at the pastry, his eyes stuck on her face instead, cataloging every small change since he'd last stood this close — the tired shadows under her eyes, the way her smile didn't quite reach them the way it used to. "That one."
"The lemon ones?" She frowned, faint confusion cutting through the wariness. "I thought you didn't like lemon."
Something in him caught up to itself half a second too late, heat crawling up his neck as he registered what he'd just pointed at entirely at random. "I— I can make an exception."
"You can make an exception," she repeated, deeply unconvinced, one eyebrow arching.
"I realized," he said, grasping for something, anything, that sounded remotely reasonable, "that I'm standing in the best bakery in Velaris. It would be foolish not to try everything on the menu eventually."
That was terrible, one shadow groaned.
He's trying, another defended.
He's trying very badly, the first shot back.
Y/N stared at him a moment longer, clearly torn between deep suspicion and the beginnings of something that might have been amusement, and finally reached for a small paper bag.
"Actually—" He stepped closer to the counter, quicker than he meant to. "Could I eat it here?"
She paused again, bag half-folded in her hands. "...You want to eat it here."
"You're going to just — stand there? Eating a pastry?" Her tone had shifted, something wary but curious threading through it now.
"I could sit," he offered, gesturing vaguely at the small table tucked near the window, the one she usually reserved for regulars who lingered too long over their coffee. "If that's easier."
Ask her to sit with you, idiot, a shadow prompted.
"Could you—" He stopped, started again. "Would you sit with me? For a moment?"
Y/N's hands stilled entirely on the pastry bag. "Pardon?"
"Please. Sit." He gestured toward the empty chair across from where he'd already, somewhat presumptuously, claimed a seat. "If you have a minute."
She looked at him for a long moment, clearly weighing something, and Azriel found himself holding his breath in a way that felt absurd for a male who had once stood calmly in front of armies.
"Fine," she said finally, though she said it like it cost her something, untying her apron and settling into the chair across from him with visible reluctance. "But I don't have long. I still need to close up."
She's sitting with him, one shadow whispered, delighted, already drifting down to settle near her shoulder. She's sitting, she's sitting—
Perfect, another agreed, curling contentedly against her wrist the way it used to, months ago, before all of this.
Y/N glanced down at the shadow now looped affectionately around her arm, something soft flickering across her face despite herself, before she caught it and schooled her expression back into careful neutrality. "You brought reinforcements, I see."
"They came on their own," Azriel said. "They've missed you."
Something in her expression cracked, just slightly, before she looked away, busying herself with straightening a napkin that didn't need straightening. "I missed them too," she admitted, quiet.
It was in that small movement — the tilt of her head, the way she reached up absently to tuck her hair behind her ear — that he saw it properly for the first time up close: a mark along the side of her neck, mostly hidden beneath her hair, dark and unmistakable even in the dim light of the shop.
"What happened there," he asked, before he could stop himself, eyes fixed on the mark.
Y/N's hand flew up instantly, hair falling to cover it, the motion so fast and so practiced it made something in his chest go cold. "Training," she said, flat.
"Y/N, that doesn't look like—"
"Azriel." Her voice cut sharp through his sentence, all the warmth from a moment ago gone entirely. "If you don't have anything else to say, I actually do need to close up soon."
He stopped. Watched her, jaw working, everything he'd rehearsed sitting useless and forgotten somewhere behind his teeth, and finally, quietly, let out a long breath.
Y/N blinked, visibly caught off guard. "...What?"
"I'm sorry," he said again, and once the words had actually left his mouth, the rest came easier, faster, like something long dammed finally breaking loose. "I'm sorry, Y/N. For being an idiot. For everything I said to you that day, for yelling at you in front of everyone, for saying you couldn't fight, for calling you childish when none of that was true, none of it, I said those things because I was jealous and angry and I didn't know what to do with any of it, and instead of being honest I decided to hurt you instead, and I have thought about it every single day since. I've barely slept. My own shadows won't talk to me properly. I ruined the one good thing in my life that made sense without even trying to, and I am so, so sorry."
Silence stretched between them, long enough that Azriel started to wonder if he'd said entirely the wrong thing, if this had all been a colossal miscalculation, if she was simply going to stand up and walk away and leave him sitting there with an apology nobody wanted.
"You hurt me," Y/N said finally, quiet, voice unsteady.
"You really hurt me, Az." Her voice cracked slightly on his name, "You humiliated me in front of everyone. You made me cry. You made me feel like — like every single thing I've ever done was some kind of joke, some kind of embarrassment, and I went home that night and I couldn't stop thinking about it, and it hurt, it hurt so much, and I didn't do anything wrong. I thought we were friends. I thought — I actually thought you found it funny, all of it, the flirting, the teasing, I thought that was just — us. And then you looked at me like I disgusted you."
"You never disgusted me." The words came out rough, immediate. "Y/N, I could never—"
"You could've said something," she cut in, tears bright in her eyes now, though her voice stayed steady, controlled in a way that made his chest ache. "If it bothered you, if I ever made you uncomfortable, you could have just told me. Quietly. Privately. You didn't have to do that. In front of everyone."
"You're right." He held her gaze, unflinching, though everything in him wanted to look away from the hurt still written plainly across her face. "You're completely right. There was no version of that where I needed to say it like I did, in front of anyone, let alone everyone. I have no excuse. I was wrong, and I'm sorry, and I understand if that's not enough."
Y/N studied him for a long moment, something working behind her eyes, and when she finally spoke again, her voice had softened, just slightly, the edges worn smooth.
Azriel blinked. "...Really?"
"Really." A small, tired smile tugged at her mouth. "You clearly feel terrible. And you actually apologized, properly, which — honestly, I wasn't expecting. So. Yes. I forgive you."
Something in his chest loosened so completely he nearly laughed with the relief of it. "Thank you," he said, and meant it more than the words could carry. "For listening. For — all of it."
He did it, a shadow whispered, awestruck. He actually did it.
We're proud of you, Master, another added, curling warmly around his wrist. That was hard, and you did it anyway.
Azriel almost smiled at that, warmth spreading slow through his chest that had nothing to do with the pastry sitting forgotten on the table between them.
"Can we—" He hesitated, and then made himself finish it anyway. "Could we be friends again? I know I don't deserve it. But I'd like to try, if you'll let me."
Ugh, one shadow groaned immediately, deeply put out. Idiot. We don't want to just be her friend.
Shut up, another hissed, mortified. He's trying.
Y/N, thankfully, hadn't caught the exchange, too focused on Azriel's face, something soft and considering in her expression. "Yeah," she said finally, quiet but genuine. "I'd like that."
"Thank you." He said it again, quieter this time, and found he meant it in about a dozen different ways all at once — thank you for listening, thank you for forgiving him so easily when he hadn't earned it, thank you for the months before all of this, the flirting and the teasing and the way she'd made him feel more alive than he had in centuries without even trying.
"You should eat your pastry," she said, nodding at the lemon tart still sitting untouched between them, "before it gets cold."
He ate it. It was, unfairly, one of the best things he'd ever tasted, though he suspected that had less to do with the actual pastry and more to do with the fact that she was watching him eat it with badly-concealed anticipation, waiting for his reaction.
"It's good," he admitted.
They talked a while longer after that, careful, easy things — nothing like the effortless banter from before, not yet, but warmer than the cold civility of the past month, something slowly, tentatively rebuilding itself in the space between them. She told him about a new recipe she was testing. He told her, somewhat reluctantly, about the recruits and exactly how thoroughly he'd rearranged their faces, and she'd laughed so hard she'd had to set down the rag she was using to wipe the counter.
"Cassian had to physically restrain you?"
"Oh, I would have paid to see that." She was grinning now, something bright and familiar creeping back into her expression, and Azriel felt something in his chest settle properly into place for the first time in over a month.
Eventually, though, she began stacking chairs, glancing toward the clock, and he understood the shift for what it was time to go, time to let her finish closing, time not to overstay whatever fragile goodwill they'd just rebuilt.
"How much do I owe you?" he asked, reaching for his coin purse.
"Nothing." She waved him off, already moving toward the door to flip the sign.
"I don't charge friends, Az." She said it simply, easily, like it wasn't worth arguing about, and something about the casual certainty of it — friends — settled warm in his chest even as some small, inexplicable part of it ached in a way he couldn't quite name.
"Thank you," he said again, because apparently it was the only thing he knew how to say properly tonight. "For the pastry. And for listening. And for forgiving me, when I know I didn't make it easy."
"Thank you for actually apologizing," she said, holding the door open for him, the night air cool and quiet outside. "It means a lot, Az. More than you probably realize."
He stepped out into the dark, shadows trailing after him in a loose, contented cloud, and glanced back once to find her still standing in the doorway, watching him go, something unreadable in her expression before she offered a small, genuine smile and shut the door.
That went well, a shadow said, smug, as they made their way down the quiet street.
"It did," Azriel agreed, and found, despite the late hour and the ache still sitting somewhere in his chest, that he meant it entirely.
She said friends, another shadow added, softer now.
Are you happy about that, Master?
He didn't answer right away, turning the word over, friends, feeling the small, strange sting of it sit alongside the very real relief of simply having her back — even in whatever limited capacity she was willing to give him.
"Yes," he said finally, and mostly believed it. "I'm happy about that."
The shadows didn't push further, though he caught, faintly, the murmur of a few of them exchanging looks amongst themselves, something knowing and quietly amused passing between them that he chose, wisely, not to ask about.
Azriel had, if he was being honest with himself, built the entire morning around the moment she'd walk into the training ring.
He'd told himself it was nothing. He'd told himself, standing in his usual spot with his arms crossed and his heart doing something distinctly un-Illyrian in his chest, that he was simply looking forward to training resuming its normal rhythm, nothing more. He had not, absolutely had not, spent the walk over rehearsing what he might say if she called him Azzie again, if she slid back into the easy, teasing warmth of months ago now that the apology was behind them.
She's going to say it, one of the younger shadows whispered, practically buzzing with anticipation. She's going to walk in and say Azzie and everything's going to be normal again.
Don't get his hopes up, another warned, though it, too, was drifting closer to the gate than strictly necessary.
She walked in a few minutes later, laughing at something Emerie had said, and spotted him almost immediately.
"Hi, Azriel," she said, warm and easy and entirely, devastatingly normal, before turning straight back to her conversation with Emerie.
...Azriel? one of the shadows repeated, aghast, like the word itself had personally offended it. Not Azzie?
She said Azriel, another confirmed, equally stricken. Full name. Formal. That's a friend name.
That IS a friend name, the first agreed, horrified.
"It's fine," Azriel said, to absolutely no one, watching her walk off toward the targets without a backward glance. "We're friends. That's what friends call each other."
He was not sad. He spent the rest of the training session very deliberately not being sad, which mostly manifested as running drills with slightly more force than necessary and ignoring Cassian's increasingly curious glances from across the ring.
"You've got a face," Cassian said finally, sidling up during a water break, studying him with open suspicion.
"You've got a very specific face. It's the face you make when something's bothering you and you refuse to admit it." Cassian took a long drink from his waterskin, watching Y/N laugh at something across the ring. "Did something happen?"
"Right." Cassian didn't sound remotely convinced. "Well. Whatever it is, it's making you spar like you're trying to break someone's ribs, so maybe work through it before the next round, yeah?"
Azriel didn't dignify that with a response, though he did, grudgingly, ease off the intensity for the rest of the session.
The second day went exactly the same. So did the third.
By the fourth, Azriel had entirely given up pretending to himself that it didn't bother him, though he still hadn't found the nerve to do anything about it, watching from his usual spot as she breezed past with a cheerful, entirely platonic hi, Azriel that landed somewhere in his chest like a small, precise wound each time.
You could just talk to her, a shadow suggested, not for the first time.
You stand near her and say very little and hope she notices you being sad.
It is exactly what you do, Master.
On the fifth day, he decided, with the particular grim resolve of someone who'd finally run out of patience with his own cowardice, that he was going to do something about it.
Training ended late that afternoon, the sky going gold and soft over the mountains, most of the recruits already filtering out toward the House. Y/N lingered near the equipment shed, gathering her things, and Azriel crossed the ring before he could talk himself out of it, heart doing something entirely unhelpful in his chest.
"Hi, Azriel," she said, glancing up with that same easy warmth, and it still landed strange, still felt like the wrong name in her mouth, though he pushed the thought aside.
"Hi," he managed, and then, before he could stall further, "Would you like me to fly you home?"
She blinked at him. "...What?"
"You mentioned earlier," he said, gesturing vaguely, feeling distinctly like he was improvising badly, "that your legs were sore. From Cassian's drills. I thought — if you're tired, I could fly you home. It would be faster."
"You want to fly me home."
She studied him for a long moment, something considering in her expression, and Azriel braced himself for the polite, friendly refusal he was fairly certain was coming.
"...Okay," she said instead, surprising them both, apparently, given the way her own eyebrows had gone up slightly. "Sure. Yeah. That'd be nice, actually."
Azriel's chest did something complicated and warm.
He did it, a shadow whispered, delighted. He actually asked her something.
Don't ruin it now, another warned. Fly carefully. Don't drop her.
I'm not going to drop her, Azriel thought back, exasperated, already moving toward her, wings shifting loose behind him.
"I've never actually flown with anyone before," Y/N admitted, eyeing his wings with open curiosity as he approached. "Should I be worried?"
"That's exactly what someone who's about to drop me would say."
"I'm not going to drop you."
"That's what they all say, Az." She was grinning now, the old teasing lilt creeping back into her voice for the first time in his entire memory of the last month, and something in his chest eased at the familiarity of it even as his pulse spiked at the way she'd slipped, without thinking, back into the shortened version of his name.
He held his arms out, feeling suddenly, absurdly nervous. "Here. I'll carry you."
She stepped closer, hesitant, and he swept her up carefully, one arm beneath her knees and the other braced firm against her back, and felt her go rigid and startled the second her feet left the ground.
"Oh — okay, this is happening—"
"Hold onto me," he said, low, and felt her arms wind tight around his neck, her face pressing instinctively into the curve of his shoulder.
Look how she's holding him, a shadow sighed, delighted, curling close around them both. Look at that.
She's scared, not romantic, another corrected, though it sounded equally pleased regardless.
"I can't do this," Y/N said, muffled against his shoulder, voice pitched somewhere between panic and laughter. "This is a mistake. Az, I've changed my mind."
"You'll be fine." He was fighting a smile, could feel it pulling at the corner of his mouth despite himself. "I won't let you fall."
"That's not comforting, that's exactly what someone says right before—"
He launched them both into the air before she could finish the sentence, and her voice cut off into a sharp, startled gasp, arms tightening around his neck hard enough to nearly cut off his air.
"Oh my — oh my gods, oh my gods, we're so high—"
"You're safe," he said, and found, somewhat to his own surprise, that he was laughing, actually laughing, something light and unguarded he hadn't let himself feel in what felt like ages. "Look. Just look down, once. It's beautiful up here."
"I am not looking down, are you insane—"
She peeked, finally, one eye cracking open against his shoulder, and went very still, taking in the whole sprawl of Velaris spread golden and glittering beneath them, rooftops and rivers catching the last of the sunset light.
"...Oh," she breathed, some of the panic bleeding out of her voice, replaced by something closer to wonder. "Okay. That's — that's actually incredible."
"Don't get smug about it."
"You're extremely smug. I can feel it radiating off you." But she'd relaxed slightly against him, no longer clinging quite so desperately, allowing herself to actually take in the view, and Azriel found himself glancing down at her more than the flight path strictly required, watching the way her face had gone soft and delighted, hair whipping loose around her shoulders in the wind.
She's so pretty, a shadow sighed.
Focus on flying, Master, another said, considerably more practical. You're drifting.
He course-corrected, cheeks warming slightly, grateful she couldn't see his face from this angle.
They flew in relative quiet for a while after that, Y/N gradually loosening her death grip on his neck, occasionally pointing out landmarks below with open delight — “is that Rita's? Oh, and there's the market, I love that stall, they have the best”— and Azriel found himself answering every question, offering up small pieces of the city's history he hadn't thought about in years, simply for the pleasure of hearing her interested, engaged voice against his ear.
By the time he touched down outside the bakery, gentle as he could manage, she was laughing again, breathless and bright, and it took a genuine effort of will not to hold onto the moment longer than necessary once her feet found solid ground.
"That was terrifying," she announced, still catching her breath, "and also kind of amazing. Can we do that again sometime?"
Something in his chest went warm and full at the again, at the casual, easy assumption that there would be a next time.
"Whenever you'd like," he said, and meant it entirely.
The friend era, as Mor had taken to calling it with a knowing look that made Azriel deeply suspicious, settled into its own rhythm over the following weeks.
He found himself at the bakery more evenings than not, ostensibly to check on deliveries, though the deliveries rarely took longer than a minute and the conversations that followed regularly stretched past midnight. They fell into an easy pattern of late-night talking, Y/N perched on the counter with her legs swinging while she closed up, Azriel leaning against the opposite counter, both of them trading stories that had nothing to do with anything important and everything to do with simply wanting to keep talking.
"Okay, but you have to read it," Y/N said one such evening, brandishing a well-worn book at him with the fervor of someone presenting a legal argument. "I need someone to discuss it with, and Nesta and Gwyn are still working through the last one, and I am desperate, Az. Desperate."
Azriel eyed the book with open suspicion. "What is it."
"Fine." She huffed, cheeks going faintly pink. "It's — okay, it's romance. Very popular in the Valkyries reading circle. It's extremely good, the writing is genuinely excellent, and it's also — " She cleared her throat. "Somewhat spicy."
"Please." She'd abandoned the counter now, crossing to stand directly in front of him, book held out like an offering, eyes doing something wide and pleading that he suspected she knew exactly the effect of. "That's what friends are for, Azriel. Emotional support through romance novels."
"Nesta's still on the last one. I need to talk about this one now, and you're the only person I know who isn't currently in the middle of a different book, and I will actually go insane if I don't get to discuss the ending with someone." She pushed the book firmly into his hands before he could protest further. "Please. Pretty please. I'll bring you pastries for a week."
"You already bring me pastries."
"I'll bring you more pastries."
He looked down at the book in his hands, the cover alone suggested exactly the kind of content he'd been trying to avoid, and then back up at her hopeful, wide-eyed expression, and felt the last of his resolve crumble entirely.
Y/N's whole face lit up. "Yes! Okay, no spoilers, obviously, but I need your honest opinion on chapter fourteen specifically, it destroyed me—"
He read the entire book that night. He would deny, later, under any circumstances, exactly how much of it he'd read while lying flat on his back with his ears burning, or how many times he'd had to stop and stare at the ceiling for a full minute before continuing, or the fact that several of the more — involved — scenes had conjured images distinctly, unhelpfully starring a certain bakery owner rather than the book's actual characters.
You're blushing, Master, a shadow observed with barely-contained delight, somewhere around chapter twenty.
You are extremely red. We can feel the heat coming off you.
He finished the book somewhere near dawn, thoroughly unsettled in several new and specific ways, and arrived at the bakery the next evening with a very carefully composed expression that lasted exactly as long as it took Y/N to ask, with entirely too much glee, what he'd thought of chapter fourteen.
He did not, in fact, manage to discuss chapter fourteen without going faintly red, and Y/N laughed so hard she'd had to sit down, and pretended, very unconvincingly, not to notice how satisfied she looked about the whole thing.
The painting class was Y/N's idea, delivered with the same relentless, wide-eyed persistence that had gotten him to read an entire spicy romance novel against his better judgment.
"You're coming with me," she announced one evening, hopping up onto her usual spot on the counter. "To Feyre's class. This Thursday."
"Nobody's good at it the first time, that's not the point."
"You always have work, Az, that's not an excuse, that's just a personality trait at this point." She fixed him with a look that suggested she'd already anticipated and dismantled every objection he might raise. "Come on. It'll be fun. And Feyre would love to have you."
"She would! She's mentioned it before, actually she thinks it's funny that you never come, given how much time you spend—" She stopped herself abruptly, something flickering across her face too fast to name, and cleared her throat. "Anyway. Please come. For me."
He went, obviously, because apparently there was very little he wouldn't do when she asked him with that particular tone.
Feyre's studio was bright and cluttered, canvases stacked against every wall, the whole room smelling of linseed oil and turpentine, and Feyre herself looked up from arranging supplies the moment they walked in, eyebrows shooting up so fast and so dramatically that Azriel immediately regretted every decision that had led him here.
"Well," Feyre said, drawing the word out with obvious relish, eyes flicking between the two of them. "This is a surprise."
"I dragged him," Y/N said cheerfully, entirely oblivious to the way Feyre's expression had gone thoroughly, knowingly delighted.
"I can see that." Feyre's mouth twitched, fighting a smile. "Welcome, Az. Grab a canvas. We're doing free painting today, so — whatever inspires you."
The class settled into its usual quiet rhythm, brushes against canvas, Feyre wandering between easels offering soft, encouraging notes, and Azriel found himself entirely unprepared for how much concentration it took to make even the simplest shapes look like anything at all.
He was also entirely unprepared for the sensation, some twenty minutes in, of being watched.
He glanced up to find Y/N studying him with narrowed, assessing eyes, head tilted, brush hovering forgotten over her own canvas.
"Nothing." She didn't stop staring. "Just concentrating."
"On my art," she said, entirely unconvincing, and returned to her canvas with a small, private smile that made his shadows — several of which had drifted over to hover curiously near her shoulder — dissolve into quiet, delighted laughter.
"What are you laughing at," he asked them, low.
Nothing, Master, one said, entirely too innocent.
"You're clearly laughing at something."
We're not allowed to say, another added, which was somehow worse.
Twenty minutes later, Y/N set her brush down with a satisfied little flourish. "Done."
"Come see." She was grinning, entirely too pleased with herself, and turned the canvas around to reveal what could generously be described as a portrait of him — flat, unimpressed expression rendered in surprisingly confident brushstrokes, absolutely enormous wings taking up nearly the entire canvas, and a body that bore only passing resemblance to actual anatomy but had clearly been drawn with real enthusiasm.
Feyre, passing by at exactly the wrong moment, took one look and had to physically cover her mouth to keep from laughing outright.
"That's — quite something," Azriel said, studying it with an expression he was fairly certain matched the deeply unimpressed one she'd painted onto his face.
"I think it's a very accurate likeness."
"I don't look like that."
"You absolutely look like that."
"At least you could have painted me smiling."
"What are you talking about?" Y/N pointed indignantly at the canvas. "You're literally smiling right there. Look!" She gestured at what was, undeniably, a completely flat, straight line where a mouth should be. "I painted you in your happiest moment."
"It's the happiest I've ever seen you," she said, entirely serious, and something about the absurdity of the whole exchange made a real laugh escape him despite himself, low and surprised.
She made you laugh, a shadow whispered, delighted.
"If you're quite finished mocking my artistic abilities," Y/N said, setting the canvas aside with exaggerated dignity, "let's see what you made, Shadowsinger. Since you clearly think you can do better."
He hesitated. He'd been deliberately angling the canvas away from her the entire session, and now, faced with actually turning it around, felt a strange, unfamiliar flicker of nerves.
He turned it, reluctant, and watched her face do something complicated and still.
He'd painted her. Not deliberately, not consciously, at least not until the piece was half-finished and it was too late to start over — Y/N mid-laugh behind the bakery counter, hair falling loose from its braid, flour dusted across one cheek, captured in a moment of warmth he'd apparently absorbed more thoroughly than he'd realized over the past weeks. It wasn't perfect. His technique was clearly amateur, proportions slightly off in places. But something about it had come out genuinely, unmistakably beautiful anyway.
Y/N didn't say anything for a long moment, staring at the canvas with an expression Azriel couldn't read at all, cheeks slowly going pink.
"Nice job, Az," Feyre said warmly, appearing at his shoulder, sounding genuinely, unmistakably proud. "That's really good."
"Thanks," Azriel muttered, feeling distinctly like he'd revealed something he hadn't meant to, watching Y/N still staring at the canvas without a word.
She likes it, a shadow whispered. Look at her face.
"She hasn't said anything."
She's blushing, Master. That's a good sign.
That's the first time we've made her blush, another added, sounding thoroughly delighted with the observation. Usually it's the other way around.
"Thank you," Y/N said finally, quiet, still not quite meeting his eyes, cheeks visibly warm. "It's — really good, Az. I didn't know you could paint like that."
"Neither did I," he admitted, and felt something in his chest settle, warm and satisfied, at having finally, for the first time in their entire strange, complicated history, been the one to make her flush instead of the other way around.
Feyre excused herself not long after, citing some urgent matter involving Rhys and High Lord business that Azriel suspected, given the particular knowing glint in her eye, was almost entirely fabricated.
"Would you two mind closing up?" she asked, already gathering her things with suspicious speed. "Just wipe down the brushes, stack the canvases against the wall. Shouldn't take long."
"Of course," Y/N said, entirely oblivious, already moving toward the supply table.
Feyre caught Azriel's eye on her way out and gave him the smallest, most unmistakable wink, and Azriel, deeply unsettled by his sister-in-law's meddling, chose to simply ignore it entirely.
They worked in easy quiet for a while, Y/N humming something under her breath while she gathered brushes, Azriel stacking canvases with considerably more care than the task strictly required, stealing glances at her when he thought she wasn't looking.
"You know," Y/N said, apropos of nothing, crouching to gather a stray tube of paint that had rolled beneath the table, "I actually think I'm getting better at this. The painting thing."
"You painted me with a body that defies several laws of anatomy."
"Artistic interpretation." She straightened up too fast, arms full of paint tubes, and immediately caught her foot on the leg of an easel she hadn't seen, going down hard with a startled shriek.
She landed in the middle of a puddle of spilled paint that had pooled near the supply table, colors splattering everywhere — across her clothes, up one side of her face, streaking through her hair — and for one horrified second Azriel genuinely thought she might be hurt, already crossing the room fast, shadows arriving a half-second before he did, curling anxiously around her.
Full, uncontrollable, doubled-over laughter, paint dripping down one cheek, both hands pressed flat against the puddle beneath her, and Azriel felt the tension drain out of him all at once, a startled laugh of his own escaping before he could stop it.
"Shit, you scared me," he said, crouching beside her, still half-laughing, reaching to help her up.
"Oh my god," she wheezed, barely able to get the words out. "Oh my god, Feyre is going to kill us."
"You're covered in paint."
"I'm aware, thank you." She was grinning at him, breathless, paint smudged clear across one cheek and streaked through her hair, and Azriel found himself thinking, entirely unhelpfully, that she looked ridiculous and somehow still managed to look beautiful doing it.
He helped her up, both of them still laughing, and made the mistake of turning to go retrieve a mop from the supply closet without paying proper attention to where he was stepping — directly into the same puddle of paint, boots losing purchase entirely, and he went down hard, sprawling flat on his back in a fresh burst of blue and gold.
"Oh my god—" She was doubled over now, one hand braced against the wall, laughing so hard she could barely breathe, and Azriel lay there on the floor, paint-soaked, staring up at the ceiling, feeling a genuine laugh building in his own chest at the sheer ridiculousness of the whole situation.
"You could help me up," he said, still laughing.
"I could," she agreed, wiping tears from her eyes, "but this is so much funnier."
She took a single step toward him anyway, presumably to help, and her foot found the exact same treacherous patch of paint her own fall had created — and Azriel watched, with something between horror and reluctant amusement, as her legs went entirely out from under her, sending her tumbling directly on top of him with a startled yelp.
For a second, neither of them moved.
Y/N was sprawled across his chest, both of them frozen, paint smeared between them, her face inches from his, and Azriel felt his heart doing something entirely unreasonable in his chest.
"Shit," Y/N breathed, cheeks flooding red. "I'm so sorry, I—"
"It's fine." He was very aware, suddenly, of exactly how close she was, of the warmth of her weight against him, of the fact that neither of them had moved yet. "Are you hurt?"
"No, I—" She tried to push herself up, hand slipping against the wet floor, and went sliding sideways instead, taking Azriel with her in the shift, until somehow, impossibly, their positions had reversed entirely and he was the one hovering above her now, paint-streaked and breathless.
"I'm sorry," he said immediately, bracing himself up on both hands to give her space, cheeks going warm.
Don't apologize, this is going well, a shadow hissed, delighted.
Get off her before Feyre comes back, another said, considerably more practical, though Azriel could have sworn he caught a few shadows near the ceiling nudging each other with obvious satisfaction, entirely too pleased with the current arrangement to actually be helpful.
Y/N stared up at him for a long moment, paint smudged across one cheek, breathing slightly unsteady, and then dissolved into laughter again, the tension breaking all at once.
"Oh my god," she wheezed, covering her face with both hands, paint smearing further across her cheeks. "This is a disaster."
Azriel pushed himself up and off her carefully, offering a hand to help her sit up this time, and found himself laughing again too, something light and unguarded filling his chest.
"You're covered in paint," he observed.
"So are you." She reached up, entirely without thinking, and swiped a streak of blue off his cheek with her thumb, and then went very still, apparently registering what she'd just done, cheeks flooding even brighter red. "Sorry — I didn't — "
"It's fine," he said, quiet, and found he meant it entirely, something warm and full sitting in his chest at the small, easy intimacy of it.
They eventually got up properly, both thoroughly ruined by paint, and spent the next half hour attempting, with limited success, to clean up the worst of the mess before giving up and simply agreeing to tell Feyre the truth.
"Oh my god," Y/N said again, surveying the studio with something between horror and continued amusement. "Feyre's going to murder us."
"I'll take responsibility."
"You fell on top of me, Az, I don't think that qualifies as taking responsibility for the paint."
"I meant for the studio."
"Sure you did." She was grinning at him, entirely unbothered by the whole disaster, paint still drying in her hair, and Azriel thought, not for the first time and with an intensity that startled him slightly, that he would happily ruin every painting studio in Velaris if it meant getting to hear her laugh like that again.
He scrubbed paint out of his hair for the better part of an hour that night, grinning at his own reflection in a way he couldn't quite explain, and arrived at dinner the next evening to find the entire Inner Circle already thoroughly briefed.
"So," Mor said the second he sat down, practically vibrating with barely-contained glee, "painting classes now?"
"Feyre told everyone," Cassian said, grinning wide. "Including the part about the portrait."
Azriel shot Feyre a look. Feyre, entirely unrepentant, simply smiled into her wine.
"You should have seen his face," Feyre said to the table at large, delighted. "When she turned that canvas around. I thought he was going to melt into the floor."
"I did not melt into the floor."
"You painted her like she hung the stars, Az," Feyre said, unbothered by his protest. "It was genuinely lovely. Also deeply, deeply obvious."
"It was a painting exercise."
"Sure it was," Cassian said, grinning. "And I'm sure the part where you both ended up covered head to toe in paint was also just a painting exercise."
"A very fortunate accident," Mor said, entirely too pleased with herself, and the table dissolved into general laughter, everyone offering their own increasingly ridiculous commentary while Azriel sat there, ears burning, refusing to dignify any of it with a response.
Elain, notably, said nothing at all through the entire exchange, quiet in her seat with an expression Azriel didn't examine too closely, and it was only later, once the conversation had moved on, that he registered he hadn't thought to check on her reaction even once during the whole thing.
"Rita's," Y/N announced one evening, some weeks later, perched on her usual spot on the bakery counter. "You're coming with me."
"Please." She'd already deployed the wide, pleading eyes, and Azriel felt his resolve crumbling embarrassingly fast, the way it always did when she looked at him like that. "Please, please, please. It's not the same without someone there who actually likes me sober. Mor's great but she's usually three drinks in by the time I show up."
"You don't have to dance. Just come. Sit with Cassian and Rhys, drink something, watch me have fun. That's all I'm asking."
"Gwyn's visiting her family this week." She was giving him the look again, the one that had gotten him through an entire spicy romance novel and a painting class he'd sworn he'd never attend. "Please, Az. For me?"
Rita's was loud and crowded and smelled like spilled wine and too much perfume, and Azriel found himself installed at a corner table with Cassian and Rhys within minutes, nursing a drink he had no intention of finishing while his eyes tracked Y/N across the room with an attention he wasn't bothering to hide anymore.
She'd worn a dress the color of deep wine, and she looked — Azriel didn't have a word for how she looked, standing there laughing with Mor near the bar, hair loose and catching the low light, and he was fairly certain his mouth had gone slightly slack watching her.
"You're staring," Cassian observed, entirely too pleased with himself.
"You are extremely staring." Cassian leaned back in his chair, grinning. "It's honestly kind of beautiful, watching you lose this battle in real time."
"I'm not losing any battle."
"Az." Rhys, mercifully calmer about the whole thing, though no less amused, nodded toward the dance floor. "She's beautiful. You can just say it. It's not a crime."
Azriel watched her spin, laughing, into Mor's arms, dress catching the light, and felt something in his chest simply surrender.
"She's beautiful," he admitted, quiet, and both Cassian and Rhys immediately dissolved into delighted, obnoxious laughter.
"There it is," Cassian crowed. "Finally. After — what, eleven months of this?"
He said it, a shadow whispered, gleeful, drifting near his shoulder. He finally said it out loud.
We've been saying it for months, another added, smug. Glad you caught up, Master.
He watched her dance for a while longer, something warm and helpless sitting heavy in his chest, and it was only when he noticed several of his shadows had drifted off toward the dance floor entirely, without permission, that he sat up properly, alarmed.
"What are they doing," he muttered, watching as three of his shadows curled excitedly around Y/N's wrists, spinning with her, weaving through the air in time with the music.
"Dancing, looks like," Cassian said, grinning wider.
Y/N laughed, delighted, spinning one of the shadows around like it was a dance partner of its own, entirely charmed, and Azriel felt a strange, unwelcome twist of something that took him a moment to identify.
He was jealous of his own shadows.
"Oh, this is incredible," Cassian said, watching his face. "You're jealous of your shadows, Az."
"You look like someone stole your favorite toy," Rhys added, unhelpfully amused, and Azriel scowled harder, watching one of the shadows curl affectionately around Y/N's shoulders while she laughed, spinning in place, utterly delighted.
Wish you were down there instead of us, Master? one of the shadows called back to him, gleeful, and Azriel shot it a look sharp enough that it should have vaporized on contact, though it simply drifted off, entirely unbothered, back toward the dance floor.
He watched, jaw tight, arms crossed, as Y/N spent a solid twenty minutes utterly charmed by his own shadows, laughing every time one of them did something particularly ridiculous, and it was somewhere around the point where one of them attempted to form a small, wobbly crown atop her head that she finally glanced over and spotted him watching from the corner.
She said something to the shadows, laughing, and made her way over, still slightly breathless from dancing, cheeks flushed pink.
"Your shadows," she said, dropping into the empty chair beside him, "are significantly better dancers than you'll probably ever be."
"That's what I said." She grinned, nudging his shoulder with hers. "Come on, one dance. Just one. Your shadows already embarrassed you by being more fun than you, might as well finish the job yourself."
"I really don't dance, Y/N."
"Please." She was doing the eyes again, and Azriel felt every last shred of his resistance crumbling in real time. "One song. That's all I'm asking. If you hate it, you never have to do it again."
He glanced at Cassian and Rhys, both of whom were watching this exchange with barely-suppressed glee, clearly enjoying every second of his suffering.
"Fine," he muttered. "One song."
Y/N's whole face lit up, and she was pulling him up out of his chair before he could reconsider, dragging him toward the dance floor while Cassian's delighted laughter chased them the whole way.
He was, predictably, terrible at it, stiff, unsure of his own feet, entirely too aware of every eye that might be watching, but Y/N simply laughed, unbothered, guiding his hands to her waist with an ease that suggested she'd been waiting for this exact moment for a while now.
"You're overthinking it," she said, swaying easily despite his obvious stiffness.
"I don't know what I'm doing."
"Nobody does, that's the secret. Just move."
He tried. It was, by any objective measure, a fairly uncoordinated attempt at dancing, and he was fairly certain Cassian was going to bring this up for the rest of his natural life, but Y/N was smiling up at him, genuinely delighted, close enough that he could feel the warmth radiating off her, and something about the whole moment settled deep and warm in his chest despite the awkwardness of his own feet.
"See," she said softly, some of the teasing bleeding out of her voice into something quieter. "Not so bad."
"Not so bad," he agreed, and meant it far more than the simple words could carry.
The song ended too soon. Neither of them moved to step apart right away, and for one long, suspended moment, the noise of Rita's seemed to fade into something distant and unimportant, the two of them simply standing there, closer than strictly necessary, neither quite willing to be the one to end it.
Then someone bumped into them from behind, and the moment broke, and Y/N stepped back with a small, flustered laugh, cheeks going pink.
"Well," she said. "That wasn't terrible."
"Don't let it go to your head." But she was smiling, warm and genuine, and as she led him back toward the table, Azriel caught the unmistakable sound of several shadows whispering excitedly amongst themselves overhead, entirely too pleased with how the whole evening had gone.
Progress, Master, one whispered, smug.
Big progress, another agreed.
He didn't argue with them this time.
The bakery had been closed for well over an hour, the sign flipped, the lights dimmed to the low golden glow of the single lamp Y/N kept lit for exactly these evenings, the ones that stretched long past closing, when neither of them had anywhere better to be.
Azriel sat on his usual stool at the counter, working through a slice of lemon cake with the kind of quiet enthusiasm that would have been unthinkable to him three months ago, and Y/N sat across from him with a chocolate milkshake she'd made herself, mostly for the excuse to keep her hands busy.
"Can I ask you something," she said, after a while, turning the glass slowly between her palms.
"You don't have to answer if it's — I don't know. Too much." She was watching the malt instead of him, something careful in the set of her shoulders. "But I think I want to actually tell you. About Varian. All of it. Not just the parts that come out sideways when Nesta brings it up at dinner."
Azriel set his fork down slowly, giving her his full attention, something in his chest already bracing itself. "You don't have to."
"I know." She glanced up, small and a little uncertain. "I want to."
She took a breath, long and steadying, and started.
"I met him when I was eighteen." Her voice was quiet, even, the careful tone of someone who'd rehearsed this in her head a hundred times before ever saying it out loud. "He was — gods, he was everything, at first. Charming. Attentive. He'd show up at the bakery just to walk me home, even though it was completely out of his way. He used to leave little notes tucked into the bread boxes before deliveries." A small, humorless laugh. "It was like something out of one of my books, honestly. Every single beat of it. The slow build, the grand gestures, the way he looked at me like I was the only person in the room."
"What happened," Azriel asked, quiet, though something in him had already started to go very still.
"It was good. For a while, it was genuinely good." She was still turning the glass between her hands, not quite meeting his eyes. "Even the — " she cleared her throat, cheeks going faintly pink " — even the physical stuff was good. He was my first everything, if that makes sense. So for a long time I didn't have anything to compare it to. I thought that was just what it was supposed to feel like."
Azriel felt heat crawl up the back of his neck at that, though he kept his expression carefully neutral, focused entirely on her face, on the story she was clearly working hard to get through.
"And then it started small." Her jaw tightened. "He didn't like that I went out so much. I had a lot of friends back then — more than I do now, obviously — and I liked going out, liked staying late at Rita's, liked having a life that wasn't just him. And he'd get quiet about it at first. Sulky. Ask why I needed to go out so much when I could just stay in with him instead."
"That's not love," Azriel said, low.
"I know that now." She smiled, thin and humorless. "I didn't know it then. I was eighteen, and he was so upset every time I left, and I thought — I don't know. I thought it meant he cared. Can you blame me? I had all these friends, all this attention, and here was someone telling me he just wanted more time with me. It felt flattering, for a while, before it felt like something else."
"Jealousy." Her hands had stilled on the glass. "About everyone. Not just other males — my friends, too. He'd get furious if I spent an evening with the girls instead of him. He picked fights with anyone he thought was too friendly with me. He hit a man once, at Rita's, just for buying me a drink I never even asked for." She said it flat, matter-of-fact, the way you'd describe weather from years ago. "I broke up with him after that. First time."
"First time," Azriel repeated, and something cold settled in his stomach at the implication of it.
"There were a lot of times." She finally looked up at him, something raw and tired in her expression. "That's the part nobody really understands unless they've lived it. It's never just one clean break. He'd come back within a week, every single time, on his knees, crying, swearing he'd change, showing up with flowers or some ridiculous gift he definitely couldn't afford. And I believed him. Every time. Because when we got back together, things really were good again — for a while. Better than good. He'd be so attentive, so sweet, and I'd think, okay, this time it's different, this time he actually means it."
"And then it wasn't different."
"And then it wasn't different." Her voice had gone quieter now, harder to hear even in the stillness of the empty bakery. "It got worse, actually, every single cycle. He started picking apart other things. What I wore. He didn't like it when I dressed up for anything that wasn't specifically for him — said it made him look bad, like I was trying to get other males' attention. He didn't like it when I laughed too loud in public. He started — " She stopped, swallowed. "He started isolating me from people, slowly, without me even really noticing at first. He'd find some reason to be upset about each friend, one at a time, until I just — stopped seeing them, mostly, to avoid the fights. By the time I met the Valkyries, most of my old friendships had just quietly died out. I didn't even really register how alone I'd gotten until Nesta pointed it out, actually. Pretty bluntly, too."
Azriel's jaw had gone tight enough to ache. "And the hitting."
Y/N was quiet for a long moment, staring down at the counter.
"It started small," she said finally, very quiet. "A grab that was too hard. A shove during an argument that he'd immediately apologize for, blame on being upset, promise would never happen again. And then it wasn't small anymore." Her hand drifted, unconsciously, to her collarbone, to the place where Azriel had once seen a bruise she'd tried to hide beneath her hair. "He always apologized after. Always cried, always said he hated himself for it, always said it was because he loved me so much he couldn't stand the thought of losing me, and I believed that too, for way too long, because — I don't know. Because it's easier to believe someone loves you too much than to accept that someone you love doesn't actually love you the way they should."
Something in Azriel's chest had gone from cold to burning, a low, controlled fury building steady beneath his ribs.
"I'm going to kill him," he said, quiet, entirely serious.
"I mean it, Y/N." His hands had curled into fists on the counter without him fully deciding to make them. "I am going to find him, and I am going to—"
"No." She reached across the counter, catching one of his hands in both of hers, and the contact was enough to derail whatever violent sentence he'd been building. "No, Az. Please. It's over. I'm not going back to him, not ever, this time it's actually real, I promise you that."
"He hurt you for years, Y/N. Years."
"And you're asking me to just let that go?"
"I'm asking you not to do something that gets you thrown in a cell, or worse, over someone who isn't worth a single second of your time." Her hands tightened around his, steady despite everything. "He's not worth it, Az. He's really, genuinely not worth it. I don't want you anywhere near him. I mean that."
Azriel breathed hard through his nose, every instinct in him screaming to disagree, to go find Varian that very night and make him understand, viscerally, exactly what happened to males who put their hands on people who couldn't defend themselves. He forced himself, with real effort, to stay still.
"Fine," he said, though the word came out rough, unconvincing even to his own ears.
"I said fine." He exhaled slowly, some of the tension bleeding out of his shoulders, though the anger still simmered low and unresolved beneath it. "I won't go after him. Because you asked me not to. Not because I think he deserves to walk away from what he did to you."
Y/N studied him for a long moment, something soft crossing her face, and then, quietly "Thank you."
He turned his hand over beneath hers, threading their fingers together properly, and neither of them commented on it, though something in his chest settled at the small, simple contact.
"The bruises I saw," he said eventually, careful. "The training excuses. Those were all—"
"Yeah." She said it simply, without elaboration, and the confirmation alone made his jaw tighten all over again.
"Why didn't you tell someone?"
"I did, eventually. Nesta knew, mostly. Some of it." She shrugged, small, tired. "It's hard to explain if you haven't lived it. There's so much shame in it. You start thinking it's your fault, somehow, that you did something to deserve it, that if you'd just been better, quieter, less — whatever the complaint of the week was — none of it would have happened. And you're so scared of what happens if you actually leave for good, because he'd always threaten things, awful things, if I ever really tried to end it for good."
Something flickered across her face, brief and shadowed. "He said he knew where my parents lived. Said it would be so easy to make something happen to the bakery, to them, if I ever really left him. I believed him. I still believe he'd try, honestly, which is part of why I need you to promise me you won't go looking for a fight with him — I don't want him deciding to take anything out on my family because you scared him."
Azriel's stomach turned entirely to ice. "He threatened your family."
"I know." Her voice cracked, just slightly, the composed retelling finally showing its cost. "I know it's awful. I know I should have left sooner, I know all of it, you don't have to tell me—"
"I wasn't going to say that." He tightened his grip on her hand, gentle but firm. "I would never say that to you. None of this is your fault. Not one part of it."
She blinked hard, eyes going bright, and Azriel felt something in his chest crack clean open at the sight of it.
"The only people I really have left, honestly," she said, voice unsteady, "are the Valkyries. Nesta, Mor, Gwyn, Emerie. Feyre's been so kind to me too, in the painting classes. Cassian, somehow, despite constantly stealing my pastries." A watery laugh. "And now you, I guess."
Something warm cut through the anger sitting in his chest at that, quiet and unexpected. "Now me."
"Yeah." She looked up at him, something soft and a little vulnerable in her expression. "Thank you for listening to all of that. I know it's a lot."
"I would listen to all of it a hundred times, if you needed to say it a hundred times." He meant it entirely, and watched something in her face ease at the sincerity of it. "Thank you for trusting me with it."
They sat there a while longer, hands still loosely joined on the counter, the anger in Azriel's chest slowly settling into something steadier — not gone, never entirely gone, but banked now, controlled, held for her sake rather than his own.
He was real bad, Master, one of his shadows offered quietly, some time later, once the conversation had drifted to gentler things. We're glad he's gone.
We should still find him, another added, considerably less diplomatic.
"We're not finding him," Azriel murmured, low enough that Y/N, deep in some story about a customer earlier that day, didn't notice him talking to empty air.
She'll never know, the shadow wheedled.
She would absolutely know, the first one said. And she'd be furious. Behave.
He told her about his own scars, eventually, weeks after that, not all at once, not the way she'd given him everything in one long, careful unburdening, but in pieces, over several late nights, offered slowly the way something precious gets handed over only once trust has been properly earned.
He told her about the war camps, about Rhys and Cassian, about a childhood that had shaped him into someone who flinched at kindness for longer than he cared to admit. He told her, one particularly quiet evening, about his hands, the burns, the truth behind them, voice going low and careful in a way she'd never heard from him before.
"You don't have to tell me if it's hard," she'd said, watching him with the same careful patience he'd offered her.
"I want to." He'd turned his hands over on the counter, studying the old scarring like it belonged to someone else. "You told me everything. It's only fair."
She'd listened the whole way through without interrupting once, and when he finished, she'd simply reached over and taken his scarred hand in both of hers, thumb tracing gently over the ruined skin, and said, quiet and sure “Thank you for telling me."
It became, without either of them quite naming it, a habit, her hand finding his without much fanfare, threading their fingers together over the counter while they talked, or during flights home, or once, memorably, while walking through the market when she'd grabbed his hand entirely without thinking to pull him toward a stall selling something she absolutely had to show him.
"Az, come on, you're going to miss it—" She was tugging him along, fingers laced through his, entirely unbothered by the gesture, and Azriel let himself be pulled, feeling something warm and slightly dazed settle over him at how natural it felt, how she hadn't hesitated at all, how his ruined hand fit against hers like it belonged there.
She's holding his hand, a shadow whispered, delighted.
She does that a lot now, another said, smug. We told you it would happen eventually.
You told me nothing, Azriel thought back, though there was no real bite to it, too distracted by the warmth of her fingers threaded through his.
Weeks passed like that, easy and warm, and it was somewhere in the middle of them that Azriel realized, with a small, quiet start, that he hadn't sought out Elain's company in longer than he could remember. He hadn't noticed the absence happening. It had simply, gradually, stopped mattering the way it once had, replaced entirely by whoever was sitting across the bakery counter from him most nights.
The slip happened on an entirely ordinary evening, weeks into whatever this had become, over nothing more significant than Azriel losing an argument about the correct way to frost a particular pastry.
"You're doing it wrong," Y/N said, watching him attempt to pipe frosting with an expression somewhere between horror and delight.
"I'm following your exact instructions."
"You are not, that's a war crime against buttercream, give it here—" She'd reached over to correct his grip, laughing, and something about the frustrated, focused look on his face apparently proved too much, because she said, without thinking, entirely without ceremony, "Honestly, Azzie, how are you this bad at something so simple—"
She kept talking, moving straight on to the next sentence about proper piping technique, completely unbothered, completely oblivious to what she'd just said.
Azriel had gone very, very still.
She said it, a shadow whispered, awestruck.
She said Azzie, another confirmed, equally stunned.
"Y/N," he said, cutting into whatever she'd been explaining about frosting consistency.
She blinked at him, genuinely confused for a second, clearly replaying the last few sentences in her head, and then went faintly pink. "...Did I?"
"Huh." She looked almost surprised at herself, though not remotely as affected by it as he clearly was. "Guess it just slipped out. Old habit." She shrugged, entirely unbothered, and turned back to the frosting like nothing of any significance had happened at all.
Azriel, meanwhile, was fighting an expression he suspected made him look faintly deranged, warmth spreading slow and unstoppable through his whole chest.
"What's wrong with your face," Y/N asked, glancing back at him, amusement creeping into her voice.
"You look like you just won something."
He did, a shadow said, delighted, spinning in an excited loop near the ceiling. He absolutely did.
Look at his face, another added.
"Why are your shadows going crazy right now," Y/N asked, watching several of them dart around the room in barely-contained celebration. "What did I say?"
"Nothing," Azriel said again, though he was fighting a smile hard enough that it was clearly failing.
"That is not nothing, look at them, they're doing a whole—" She gestured at the shadows currently performing an enthusiastic loop around the kitchen. "What is happening right now?"
"They're just happy," he said, which was, technically, entirely true.
She narrowed her eyes at him, clearly unconvinced, but let it go eventually, returning to the frosting with a small, curious smile still lingering on her face, and Azriel spent the rest of the evening quietly, privately delighted in a way he made absolutely no effort to explain.
Some nights, he simply came to watch her work.
He'd taken to arriving before closing more often than not, claiming some excuse about deliveries that had grown increasingly thin over the weeks, and would settle into his usual corner table with a slice of lemon cake, his favorite now, without question, though he still hadn't fully forgiven himself for ever claiming otherwise, and simply watch.
She was good at it, he'd noticed, in a way that went beyond the actual baking. Good with people, patient in a way that seemed effortless, genuinely warm even with the customers who clearly didn't deserve it — the ones who complained about prices, the ones who were short and rude and left without so much as a thank you. She smiled at all of them anyway, offered the same warmth regardless of what she got back, and Azriel found himself watching the whole performance of it with quiet, helpless fondness.
She was also, he'd come to learn, remarkably, almost impressively clumsy.
"Watch out—" A shadow curled quick around a stack of plates that had started sliding off the counter as she reached across for a bag, catching them a half-second before disaster, and Y/N didn't even look up, already murmuring a distracted "thanks" as she continued ringing up an order.
Another shadow drifted close, tucking a loose strand of hair back behind her ear when it fell across her face mid-conversation with a customer, and a third adjusted the strings of her apron when they'd come loose, all with the easy, practiced familiarity of a routine they'd clearly perfected over weeks of watching her nearly disaster her way through every shift.
"They're basically running this place at this point," Azriel murmured to himself, watching another shadow catch a rolling pin before it could clatter to the floor.
Someone has to, one of them said, smug, drifting past him toward the counter to help stack a fresh tray of pastries. She'd have broken every dish in this building three times over without us.
She's ours now, Master, another added, entirely too pleased with the observation. We've decided.
He didn't argue further, mostly because it was, he suspected, at least partially true.
You know, one of the more mischievous shadows said, drifting close to whisper directly in his ear while Y/N rang up another customer across the shop, you could just admit she's beautiful. We've been waiting months.
You've admitted it to us, the shadow corrected. Once. Quietly. At Rita's. That barely counts.
"That's not happening tonight."
Coward, the shadow said, entirely without malice, drifting off before he could respond, and Azriel returned his attention to his cake, ears warm, watching Y/N laugh at something a customer had said, radiant and unbothered and utterly unaware of the conversation happening about her not ten feet away.
He caught himself smiling, unguarded, watching her work, and didn't bother trying to stop it.
The sparring match happened almost by accident, Cassian pairing them together during a routine drill with the specific, unmistakable grin of someone who had absolutely engineered the matchup on purpose.
"Have fun, you two," he said, already backing away to observe from a safe distance, entirely too pleased with himself.
Y/N rolled her shoulders, settling into a ready stance across from Azriel with a grin that had nothing to do with proper training discipline and everything to do with the particular glint she used to get, months ago, right before saying something designed to make him blush.
"Try not to go easy on me. I know you like to hold back."
"You absolutely hold back." She circled him slowly, testing his guard with a few light jabs he deflected easily. "It's cute, actually. Very chivalrous. Very unnecessary."
"Careful," he said, catching her next strike and redirecting it smoothly, "or I might actually try."
They traded blows for a while, the drill settling into an easy rhythm, and it was somewhere around the third exchange that Y/N, ducking beneath a swing, came up close enough to murmur, low and teasing, "You know, for someone with such enormous wings, you're surprisingly light on your feet."
Azriel faltered, just slightly, heat crawling up his neck. "That an insult or a compliment?"
"Depends entirely on how well you dodge the next one." She swept low, and he barely avoided it, recovering with a laugh he hadn't meant to let slip.
"I've had a good teacher." She grinned, pressing her advantage, forcing him back a step. "Though I hear he's also extremely good with his hands. Been told that recently, actually."
Azriel nearly missed his next block entirely, ears going properly red this time. "Where did you hear that."
"Around." She was clearly delighted with herself, pressing forward with renewed energy. "Apparently there's a whole bakery full of pastries that would beg to differ if he claimed otherwise."
"That's not — that's a completely different context—"
He caught her next strike and used the momentum to spin her, close, controlled, until her back was nearly against his chest, both of them breathing hard, and murmured, low and deliberate right by her ear, "You should be more careful with comments like that during a spar. Distracted opponents lose."
Y/N went pink, faltering just enough for him to press the advantage, and he heard, distantly, an appreciative murmur ripple through the small crowd of Valkyries who'd gathered to watch.
"That's cheating," she said, breathless, twisting to try and regain her footing.
"That's flirting, Az, during a spar—"
"I always start it, that's not the point—" She managed to break free, spinning to face him again, cheeks still faintly flushed, and Azriel felt something warm and unfamiliar settle in his chest at having, for the first time in their entire history, been the one to make her blush during one of these exchanges instead of the reverse.
He did it again, a shadow whispered, delighted, drifting close to observe the match with obvious interest. Twice in one week. He's getting good at this.
She's rattled, another added, gleeful. Look at her. Push harder, Master.
Y/N came at him again, faster this time, and he met her blow for blow, both of them grinning now, something charged and easy passing between every exchange.
"You've definitely gotten better," she admitted, ducking one of his swings. "Suspiciously better."
"Oh?" She arched an eyebrow, circling him. "Care to share?"
"Come on, Az." She feinted left, and he anticipated it easily, correcting his stance. "What's the big secret motivation for suddenly sparring like you actually mean it?"
"Maybe I just don't like losing to someone half my age."
"Rude. Also a lie. You've never minded losing to me before."
"I've never actually lost to you before."
He used the distraction of the argument to sweep her legs, controlled and gentle, and she went down with a startled gasp, catching herself with practiced ease, though he was already following, pinning her wrists lightly to the mat before she could recover her footing, careful weight settled over her, close enough that both of them went very still.
"Yield?" he asked, low, breathing slightly unsteady.
Y/N stared up at him, cheeks flushed, eyes bright, something charged and warm passing between them that had very little to do with training anymore.
"Never," she said, breathless, and made a token effort to twist free that they both knew wasn't going anywhere.
The crowd of watching Valkyries had gone very quiet, several of them exchanging significant looks, and Cassian, from somewhere off to the side, made a strangled sound that might have been a laugh he was trying very hard to suppress.
Azriel, momentarily distracted by the sheer proximity of her, by the way she was looking up at him, by the particular warmth radiating off her skin where their wrists still touched, didn't notice his grip had loosened until it was already too late.
Y/N surged up in a sudden burst of movement, quick as anything, closing the last of the distance between them to press a fast, deliberate kiss to his cheek — and was gone, twisting neatly out from beneath him and scrambling back to her feet, laughing, before Azriel had fully registered what had happened.
He lay there on the mat, one hand rising slowly to his cheek, face burning, utterly, completely undone.
"And that's a win," Y/N announced to the small gathering of delighted Valkyries, breathless and triumphant, already backing toward Nesta and Emerie with a grin so wide it looked like it might split her face in half.
The Valkyries erupted into cheers and laughter, several of them clapping, and Y/N was immediately swept up into the group, retelling the whole thing with dramatic embellishment while Azriel remained flat on his back, still frozen, hand still pressed to his cheek.
Cassian appeared above him a moment later, peering down with an expression of pure, undiluted delight.
"You're whipped," Cassian announced, entirely unnecessary given the circumstances.
Azriel didn't argue. He didn't even try to deny it, which was, in itself, its own kind of confession. He simply lay there, staring up at the sky, a slow, helpless smile spreading across his face that he made absolutely no effort to hide, while somewhere above him his shadows dissolved into a chorus of delighted, knowing whispers he chose, for once, not to argue with at all.
Finally, one of them sighed, deeply satisfied.
Get up, Master, another added, considerably more practical. You're just lying there smiling like an idiot.
He was, in fact, still lying there smiling like an idiot several minutes later, and found, entirely without regret, that he didn't particularly care.
a/n: this is so long that i´m going to have to make this a part 2!! i’ll upload it soon ;)”
