The Symphony of Shadow

1: 'The Hunter'

-  S T A R T   O F   P A R T   O N E  -

A Z R I E L

Azriel had often contemplated what the most harrowing method of torture was.

On his most loathed enemies - those whom had brought harm to his family - he usually opted for his trusted blade, Truthteller. Using it in places that could elongate an already painful death, for days, weeks even.

However, in this moment, Azriel discovered that there was an ordeal worse than that.

As he pushed with all his force against his brothers, who used their own immeasurable strength to hold him back, all he heard was a harsh ringing sound which echoed around him. He screamed with anguish as he tried to escape their grip, as he tried and failed to pull himself towards the lake, which was now impossibly alight with flames.

He didn't even think he was breathing as he watched her fall. Fall from the Death Lord's grasp from where he hovered hundreds of feet above them. Azriel roared in agony as her body hit the water's surface, no doubt breaking every bone in her body - his mate, his beautiful mate, whom he'd had so little time with. Gwyn.

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F O U R    M O N T H S    E A R L I E R

A Z R I E L

Incessant, white-hot, nauseating dread churned through Azriel's stomach at the thought of tomorrow's family dinner - which had never usually been the case, not until after Solstice. Now he was faced with another few hours of jealousy pumping through his veins, as he watched everyone around him in love, or denying him of love.

His heart, somehow, had remained intact all these years. It was weathered, and scarred, and incomplete. It had been mercilessly sliced into with a blade forged by none other than himself. But through everything, his heart had been stitched back together, time after time again.

Once again, the renowned shadowsinger was brooding.

In the sparse, but personal space that was the spymaster's bedroom, its owner lay comfortably sprawled across his mammoth of a bed, wings spread wide, staring at the ceiling.

Just moments before, Azriel had sauntered back from the latest in a series of unsuccessful trips to the outskirts of the lake Koschei was said to be imprisoned within – trapped by a fae warrior on the continent, long before even the cauldron ever existed.

As usual, he hadn't heard anything of Koschei. His spies hadn't heard anything. No one had heard anything. And it would be an understatement to say it wasn't driving him insane - especially with the knowledge that Briallyn had allied with the Death God so easily, just months before her demise.

Spy-work was an art of patience and waiting, he knew. But two lengthy, quiet months had passed since he had begun searching for... something, anything that could give any insight as to what Koschei was planning - if he were planning anything. If he was even in that damned lake.

He felt like a fucking failure each time he dutifully attended a meeting in recent weeks. Every time his family asked if he'd found anything, a flicker of hope on all their faces - which was wiped out the second he told them that there was nothing. Guilt engulfed him every, single, time.

On returning to the House Of Wind, Cassian and Nesta were nowhere in sight - no doubt they were enjoying one another behind the warded walls of their shared bedroom. More misery washed over him is he was yet again reminded that everybody was having sex. Stupid, loving, mate sex that everybody in his family seemed to be having. Everybody except for him. Cauldron, he was pathetic.