1. Seraphic

𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒑𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒆𝒕𝒆𝒆𝒏. healing hands

a z r i e l

☽ ☾

After an entire week of biting cold, the weather had become unbearably hot, and thunder had been rumbling within the clouds all day because of it. A storm was no doubt going to settle in the later hours.

The weather was what Azriel had chosen to distract himself with while awaiting Seraphina's presence.

Had he not, his mind would have strayed to the last place either of them wanted it.

"Focus," he told himself.

He snatched the week's report off the table, just as his shadows woke, indicating towards Seraphina's arrival as she walked through into the war room.

"Good morning. Well, half-afternoon, half-evening," she said, hesitantly approaching the seats around the table.

Azriel had to stifle a small, betraying bit of laughter that threatened to make its way out as he got up and helped her back onto the stool before sitting back down in his.

"This arrived last night." He set the report in front of her. "I wouldn't get your hopes up, Angel."

Her brows furrowed slightly, a crinkle forming between them, something he realised happened whenever she was nervous, anxious, worried, or stressed and afraid, or even offended, anything she shouldn't have been feeling and he wished she didn't—like after they'd been together, when she was trembling in the aftermath of their time.

Azriel cursed at himself inside, telling that part of him he locked away during the day to go away; just because she was there didn't give his mind free rein to go wild with their thoughts. He didn't want them even at night, but he supposed night was better than day—at least he wasn't urgently busy at night.

Seraphina pulled the report open, eyes desperately moving over the writing inside. It was a few moments before her shoulders slumped and she breathed a sigh of relief.

Relief?

"These numbers are amazing!" she exclaimed. "They are up almost into the hundreds. Mortality is down by almost three times as much. Just think what more time could do." She looked up at him. "This is good news, General. Not a disappointment."

"We could do better," he said with a shrug. "Why should we not already be into the hundreds? Why should the mortality rate of our soldiers not be down by five or ten times as much?"

"Focus on the positives. At least a change is being made. You need to have patience."

"Patience?" He scoffed. "I am nineteen. For all the time I have been born, a war has been raging. One between our kingdom and an old, another between our kingdom and its people. I think I have waited long enough and endured enough to no longer have patience and to want real change."

"We will make change," she said. "We already are. It is not that difficult to focus on that rather than how you could continue to further increase that change. Just accepting you have made a difference and taking things slow is okay."

"Maybe for you," he said. "But some of us do not work the same way as others. Some of us are not lazy."

Her brows furrowed. "I am not lazy."