A Court of Blood & Mercy || Elriel Dual POV

Chapter 4 - The Beginning of the End

Azriel flew through the columned archway in a silent streak, his dark wings trailing behind him in a flourish as he landed on the marble without a sound.

Padding lightly across the cold floor, he sent his shadows piercing into the darkness, their only assignment to seek for signs of life.

Alone.

The way he preferred it.

He felt a thin layer of tension release from his shoulders. Glancing down at the long shadow in front of him, he surveyed his silhouette casting a dark mark against the light stone.

His silhouette was a shadow of nature, not magic... always following him, reminding him in a strange way, that he was a mere mortal just like the rest of Prythian. Not a god or a demon. Just a fae.

And tonight it was illuminated not by the sun, but by moonlight.

He turned his face back toward the star-speckled sky, his eyes drawn toward the luminescent moon shrouded in ivory night clouds.

A full moon.

His eyes flickered to the tree rooted in the marble balcony below the archway, grown into the very structure of the Moonstone Palace from back when the structure was first conceived. It had been a way to symbolize the seasons of Velaris, almost like a calendar. Because the occupants of the palace found themselves so high in the clouds, almost to the heavens, it was easy to forget the mortal existence of natural seasons. The Palace itself was charmed with eternal warmth while the surrounding mountains were coated in evergreen cedars and thick mist. No matter the season, the view from the palace seemed to stay the same.

His eyes scanned the ancient branches coated in amber and crimson leaves.

Autumn.

He looked back up at the moon. It was a Hunter's Moon.

Soon it would be time for the Harvest Moon to really celebrate Autumn.

He felt the skin tighten around his jaw and turned, sweeping deeper into the palace with a flourish, the moonlight tracing his shadowed steps as he walked.

Azriel sighed, stripping his knives and weapons as he walked, carelessly dropping them in his wake, allowing his shadows to spirit them to their proper homes. He stripped down to his tattoos before arriving at the winding marble staircase, his bare feet chilled by the stone, taking the steps two at a time until he reached the barren room at the top of the palace, overlooking the rest of the valley.

He ran his fingers over his stubbled scalp, scanning the barren space he called "home."

As it had been for the past ten years.

The Shadowsingter finally roosting in a nest above the place he belonged– The Court of Nightmares.

It had all started with Feyre's suggestion to integrate the Illyrians into modern Prythian.

Apparently, including females in warrior training had not been enough to transform the primal culture of the Illyrians. The program had become a waste of time, and resources, and an immense source of internal conflict. Which Azriel could have told anyone who would have bothered asking for his opinion. Those fucking ingrates weren't just going to magically learn how to be moral or fair by weak equality initiatives.

He had scoffed at Feyre's suggestion, suggesting the Inner Circle just leave the Illyrians alone, respecting their culture and way of life, as backward as it was to the Velaris philosophes.

But Feyre's heart for the impoverished was too big.

It was Cassian who was ultimately sent, to reorganize the Illyrian regions and decentralize warrior culture by annexing the soldiers and fighting camps to reserved sections of the mountains, releasing the camps to the females to set up trade and agriculture in their wake.