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Everyone thought his name meant that he sang to the shadows. But really, the shadows sang to him.
( If you are going to stay here , they’d whispered at first, we may as well become familiar with each other .)
They win the war with Hybern. Amren is not like the way she used to be. The shadows sing to Azriel that they like her better like this. She is of this world now, they say. We recognize her now.
He’s still mostly in love with Mor. Anyone with half a brain could see that. Feyre thinks she’s being subtle with her pitying looks. She isn’t. He knows she means well. It doesn’t make it better. But he knows now, for sure, that Mor will not ever love him back.
Do you know of the female she is with? the shadows ask. She seems to like her an awful lot .
Elain is too pure, Azriel thinks. Knows. She is kind and has not let the horrors of war get to her and her first action once they got home was to begin planting another garden. Azriel barely even belongs in the sunshine.
Plus, she’s got Lucien. Even if they never truly become mates, they still have that bond. Azriel thought, for a few weeks, and when he gave her Truth-Teller, that he could love her. But she could never love him. And this time, he’s learned from his mistakes.
Feyre and Rhys are still Feyre and Rhys, but now there’s something even deeper than the mating bond linking them together. Azriel suspects it’s the fact that they have now both died and been brought back. He doesn’t wish that sort of link upon anyone else, isn’t jealous of it, but he is jealous that they at least have each other. That someone cared enough to tell all seven High Lords to bring him back.
Azriel feels as if no one would do that for him.
Are you sure? the shadows ask, a teasing lilt. There may be someone .
“Don’t tell me things that aren’t true,” Azriel tells them. “I don’t want to hear lies.”
Not lies. They almost sound hurt, but it’s obvious they’re joking with him. We know of someone .
“Don’t give me false hope, then,” Azriel manages, and the shadows know him well enough at this point not to press it.
He knows Cassian and Nesta kissed, only because he overheard Nesta and Feyre talking about it. He’d stood in the hall, feet rooted to the floor, not hearing any of their conversation beyond Nesta’s vulnerable “Cassian kissed me, Feyre, and I kissed him back--” because after that something in him went white-hot and even the shadows could not get through to him for a long moment.
That’s good, though, he thinks. Cassian would do well with Nesta. They’d push each other, challenge each other, but ultimately love each other. He wouldn’t wish the force of their arguments on his worst enemies, but they would be good for each other.
Nobody would be good for me, he thinks, taking off for the sky the second he gets outside the walls of the town house. Or rather, I wouldn’t be good for anyone.
Azriel gets in the bath. Turns the water hotter, a bit at a time, until it’s so hot it’s turning his skin red. He doesn’t care.
He doesn’t know how much time passes, but when someone knocks on the door, his skin is screaming at him to get out. He can’t even bring himself to do that.
The door nearly falls off of its hinges with how violently Cassian swings it open. “Dude, you’ve been in here for well over an hour--Az, what the fuck--”
“Sorry,” Azriel says quietly.
“No, don’t be sorry, just--I don’t want to violate your privacy more than I already have, but I have to get you out.” Cassian blows out a long breath. “I just--I won’t look, okay? I promise.”
Azriel shrugs. He doesn’t particularly care. He sees in Cassian’s eyes, for a split second, the readiness to hunt down and kill anyone who’s ever degraded Azriel, told him he’s lesser, done anything at all to hurt him. He isn’t quite sure what to make of that.
His entire body is bright red and feverish when Cassian carefully lifts him out of the bathtub. Azriel’s never felt this empty, this uncaring. He is not sure where it came from, why it struck tonight in particular.
(He would never go so far as to kill himself. But if someone attacked him when he’s feeling like this, he wouldn’t try to stop them.)
“Az, ba--dude,” Cassian hastily amends. Azriel decides not to think about the possibility that Cassian almost just called him babe. He wraps a towel around Azriel, mindful of his wings. “You ought to tell someone when you feel like...like this.”
“I can’t,” Azriel says. It comes out as a croak, scratching against the lump in his throat. “I don’t even have the words.”
Cassian doesn’t say anything again until he’s gotten Azriel dried off and helped him into comfortable clothes. He picks Azriel up again, carrying him to his room. Azriel can feel Cassian’s heartbeat, can feel every time Cassian breathes. It is strangely comforting.
“Just tell me that you need an escape, I guess,” Cassian says. His voice echoes from where Azriel’s got his ear pressed to his chest. “We can figure out something. Together.”
Azriel isn’t brave enough to ask Cassian to stay when he pulls blankets over top of him, but he does manage to fall asleep and stay asleep, so there’s that.
Eleven years shouldn’t be that long when you’re immortal.
Azriel’s lived for over five hundred years, but those first eleven were still the longest of his life.
He runs his fingers over the scars on his hands, sometimes, and when he can’t even bring himself to touch his own skin, the shadows wreathe around him. They obscure his hands from view. Obscure everything from view. Comfort him and murmur to him, in the way they did when he was small and scared and couldn’t see anything.
The shadows could have been his downfall, but instead they became his friends.
The first Starfall after they defeat Hybern, Azriel stands out on a balcony, away from the dancing and the laughter and the warmth. He’d seen Mor whirling around a pretty High Fae female he’d never seen before. The message was clear enough.
It’s taken him five hundred years of being in love with her to realize that she will never love him back. He wonders, if things had been different, if he had never fallen for her in the first place, would he hate himself a little less?
“Az?”
Cassian’s so kind, always, unrelentingly. Azriel isn’t sure why. It’s not like he deserves it.
“What are you thinking about?” Cassian asks. “I’ll give you a thought if you give me one of yours.”
Azriel draws in a shaky breath. “I’m thinking that I wish I was one of those star spirits so that I didn’t have to be...here. So that I didn’t have to be me.”
Cassian doesn’t say anything for a long moment. Azriel’s scared him off, said too much, revealed too much about himself, can’t even do one stupid simple thing right--
“I’m thinking,” Cassian says, barely more than a whisper, “that it would be a pity if we didn’t dance.”
The shadows that have been gradually fading Azriel from view stop abruptly.
“With me,” Azriel says flatly. “You want to dance with me.”
Cassian nods. He holds out a hand. Azriel wants so badly to take it.
“You wouldn’t rather dance with Nesta?” It hurts to say, but he has to be sure. He does not want to be on Nesta’s bad side. He does not want to take this for anything more than Cassian means it to be.
Cassian grimaces. “She was not a mistake, I will not degrade her as such. But she is not the one I wish to dance with, no.”
“And I am that person.”
A roguish grin. A wink that carries far more innuendo than it should. “You are indeed, Azriel. Spymaster. Shadowsinger.”
Azriel rolls his eyes. “So formal, Cassian. General.”
Cassian grows tired of waiting for Azriel to take his outstretched hand and grabs Azriel’s for himself. “But of course. Only the best for you, my darling.”
The shadows are too busy smiling to themselves to shield the two of them from view. Amren is the only one who sees, though, and she’s too busy clicking her tongue at how long it took the two of them to pull their heads out of their asses to tell anyone.
“I need to escape.”
Cassian tilts his chair back, sizing Azriel up. The shadowsinger is standing with fists clenched, trying desperately to ward off the sinking feeling of hopelessness and doing a poor job of it. He hates it when he gets like this, hates that he can’t just let shit go, hates that he has to go ask Cassian for help instead of just dealing with it on his own--
“You’re flickering in and out of view,” Cassian says, surprise and alarm decorating his tone. “The shadows have never done...that before.”
He’s too agitated, damnit. They can tell, swirling around him. He’s never tried to fight it before when he gets like this.
“I have been thinking of possible solutions, though,” Cassian says. Azriel focuses on the words, clings to them, holds tight. “All obviously only with your consent.”
“What are they?” Azriel grits out.
Cassian moves until he’s standing right in front of Azriel and lifts a hand to cup his cheek. “Can I kiss you?”
And okay, Azriel probably should have expected this, especially after they danced (Cassian’s mouth so close to his neck, foreheads touching, hands and arms on waists and shoulders, bare skin against bare skin), but it still comes as a shock. He doesn’t mean to pull away, but he does, and sees the immediate panic entering Cassian’s eyes.
“Wait, sorry, shit--yes. Please. Kiss me.”
Cassian smirks. He’s always looked unfairly hot when he smirks. Azriel wonders why he didn’t realize it until now, and then Cassian’s mouth is on his, and he’s not wondering much at all.
“Did that help?” Cassian asks, lazily drawing a finger over Azriel’s stomach.
Azriel would smack him, but he’s too tired to lift an arm. The good kind of tired, though. The kind of tired where he’s warm and content.
“Very much,” Azriel murmurs, and he falls asleep with Cassian’s arm still over him.
“Oh my god, I slept with Cassian.”
Rhysand laughs a tiny laugh at Azriel’s panic. “Az, it’s okay. I’ve seen the way that man looks at you. It isn’t just some throwaway thing.”
Azriel buries his face in his hands. “Why would he choose me, out of everyone--”
“Don’t be so down on yourself.” Rhys puts a hand on Azriel’s shoulder. Azriel doesn’t feel the urge to get away. He considers that progress. “The two of you have been dancing around each other for centuries, you’ve just never seen it.”
“If you say so,” Azriel grumbles.
“I think I’m in love with you,” Cassian says.
Azriel detaches his mouth from Cassian’s neck. “Um.”
“No, really.” Cassian sits up fully and shifts away from Azriel to better look him in the eyes. “I’ve thought about you--about kissing you--about you being mine--for a long, long time, and I never really made much sense of it. But. I know myself well enough now, know you well enough now, that I’m--god, Azriel, I’ve fallen in love with you.”
Azriel lifts a hand but can’t bring himself to touch Cassian’s face, so it just hangs there, suspended in midair. “You’re not just saying this for the sex?” He has to check, because it's some damn spectacular sex, the kind that almost made Azriel tell Cassian this exact same thing yesterday night.
“No,” Cassian says, the most genuine Azriel has ever heard him. Azriel doesn’t deserve him. Nobody deserves him, this angel among men. “No, I mean it. With everything that I am.”
Azriel kisses him for ages, not separating their mouths even when he starts crying, when Cassian tastes the salt of his tears on his lips. Cassian’s arms are wrapped around him and he doesn’t show any signs of wanting to break the kiss either.
“I think I’m in love with you too,” Azriel says finally. “I don’t deserve anything close to what you are, but.”
“That’s the first thing we’ll have to work on,” Cassian says thoughtfully. “Well, second. Fhe first is this.”
Azriel squeaks when Cassian flips their position and smiles down at him, but he wraps his legs around Cassian’s waist and grins right back.