Letters Of Grief

Letters of Grief

Part 1 | Part 6 | AO3 | ACOTAR Masterpost | Masterpost of masterposts |

A/N: Inspired slightly by this Tumblr post

Word Count: 2516

Each week, each visit had done nothing to quell the rage and grief within Azriel. He’d gone on missions for Rhys, spent time with his family on Solstice; had even managed to go to Illyria and assist Cassian with keeping some of the camps in check.

Despite it all, despite his routine, the hollowness within him only grew. It was a festering wound, he knew, and would cause him to bleed and explode over people who had in no way wronged him. The problem with being far too self-aware was, he didn’t know what to do with this terrifying piece of knowledge about himself.

As the Night Court’s Spymaster, it was his job to notice subtleties about others that a usual glance or once-over would miss. The slightest pinch of a brow, the crook of a mouth, the barely-there shrug of a shoulder…Azriel had accustomed himself to observing and cataloguing anything and everything that he came across. The trait was as much a part of him as his wings. He didn’t know who he’d be without it.

A moment of weakness on a more recent mission when he’d failed to do exactly that, however, had nearly cost Azriel his life. He’d been scouting the continent for any sign of the mortal queens, any whisper from his spies that indicated a plan or even movement towards Prythian. Sitting on the roof of a ramshackle little hut that was no doubt abandoned, he got the perfect view of the palace they lived in. The decrepit little cottage sat on a small mound (it was too small to even refer to it as a hill) and provided Azriel with enough of a view that he could easily monitor any movements through the main gates.

He’d scoured the smaller, less frequently used drawbridges, though his shadows and his own findings had only ever led to the same conclusion: only the main gates were used. The queens likely preferred their servants to be kept out of sight and thus encouraged them to use to side passageways. Azriel had only ever found servants leaving to get to the stables or go to the market. It was nothing out of the ordinary.

At least, that was how it had seemed until a naga had pounced on him. Azriel barely had any time to react before it had ripped a decent chunk of armour off, penetrating through the metal until the muscle. He’d hissed in pain and barely fought it off, finally killing the damn thing, before he’d winnowed straight home. 

There was no way in hell he was surviving a naga attack when one of his limbs was rendered immobile.

Azriel didn’t remember how he ended up in a warm bed at the House of Wind that night. Cassian must have seen him and called for Madja.

Indeed, she was a talented healer who’d patched him up in less than an hour. He’d felt guilty for coming back so soon with no intel, nothing to report, but he also knew his body’s limits. He wasn’t about to stretch it for the sake of his pride, not when his ignorance had nearly gotten him killed. By a naga, no less.

Upon further contemplation, Azriel made a mental note to ask Rhys about the naga. He’d encountered a few here and there on his countless missions to the other courts, but he couldn’t remember them ever hunting faeries specifcally, or the ability to scale trees with such ruthless efficiency. From what he remembered, they preferred the safety of solid land beneath their feet and only ever hunted mortals for sport and entertainment.

Az? Why are you still awake? As if summoned by his thoughts, the High Lord of Night spoke into Azriel’s mind. A naga attacked me while I was doing reconnaissance of the palace. I’m fine, nothing for you to fret over, but I did have to come back and get Madja to heal me.

I don’t care that you had to come back halfway through a mission. I care about you. Damnnit, Az, why didn’t you tell either of us? There was irritation lining Rhys’ voice, yes, but also concern. It was palpable even through his absence.

I told you, I’m fine. Visit me in the morning. Cass will probably startle awake like a frenzied boar the moment you land. If this was what Azriel had to do to avoid Rhys getting all worked up like a mother hen then that was what he would do.

He’s a deep sleeper. I doubt he’d notice my presence until I made it glaringly obvious to him that I was staying for the night. A pause. Then…Good night, Azriel. I hope you feel better soon.

Sunlight streamed in through the now-open window, the House having drawn the curtains. Azriel still wasn’t used to the fact that the House was sentient, and had found it extremely odd to utter a ‘thank you’ when no one was around. Was it wrong to want a magical house which summoned nearly everything under the sun to like you?

Azriel was awake, and was propped up with a mountain of pillows surrounding him. He hadn’t had the heart to tell Madja that so many pillows would make him feel as if he was drowning in cotton; not as she’d fussed over him and groused over his deteriorating health.

By deteriorating health, she’d meant his lack of a structured sleep schedule, irregular meal times, lack of hydration…the usual. It wasn’t odd for Azriel to receive these comments from most of the healers he visited, each one expressing varying degrees of concern over how and why his regimes were so lax.

This time, however, it seemed that the female wasn’t going to leave without a proper argument. “You need to start taking care of yourself. This neglect and unwillingness to listen to you body’s needs is going to catch up to you one day, and you’ll be worse off for it.”

“I do listen to my body’s needs,” he protested halfheartedly, looking up at the healer who had her arms on her hips in a clear show of disappointment. “I came to you when my arm was nearly bitten off by a naga, didn’t I?”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

“Madja.” Azriel’s tone had softened. “My body does fine on its own. There’s no point interfering in things that are working well enough unattended.”

“Except you’re not.” It seemed that Azriel’s placating voice had done nothing to ease the healer’s worry. “You neglect yourself. Your needs, your wants.”

“I go to a mind healer once every week.” That had Madja sobering up, a newer, more assessing look in her eyes as she took Azriel in again. “Since when?”

“A few months.”

“And have you found that it has helped?”

Azriel fell silent. No, the visits weren’t helping, but he wasn’t getting much better, either. It was hard to tell. A couple of months was hardly anything to the Fae, after all. The loss of his mate was still fresh as ever, the wound just as deep as the day he’d seen her die.

“I see.” Her brow furrowed, clearly interpreting the silence as a negative. Azriel didn’t even know why he’d told her. Maybe he’d needed someone to talk to, and Madja had been the closest person, the one most willing to listen. It wasn’t like there was a line of people outside his door ready to listen to his plights and tragedies, but…it felt good getting that particular truth off his chest. Azriel trusted her. She’d tell no one without explicit permission from Azriel. She was discreet that way, and that was perhaps one of the things he admired most about Madja, aside from her healing abilities.

“I will check on you once this afternoon. If the wounds are not fully healed then I will have to visit once more.”

Azriel knew his body, knew that the wounds had begun healing and would likely disappear by the next afternoon.

✦ ✦ ✦

“I just…I want to go back. To her. To a time when we would have been happy simply because we had each other and we needed nothing more. Every day, I wake up and my first thought is of her. Every morning, I think about what I wouldn’t do to go back. Just once.”

Azriel had been encouraged to go back to the mind healer even if he felt as if the visits weren’t helping. No, encouraging was too weak a word for what Madja had done. Despite being nearly a foot shorter than him, the healer had nearly threatened to freeze his balls off if he didn’t go. It had been amusing, at the very least, to see Madja so worked up, and Azriel had thought nothing but her agitated expression as he made his way down to the too-familiar, all-white room.

All laughter had evaporated, however, when she’d asked how he’d been doing and Azriel hadn’t quite known how to answer. The response he’d given had been an echo, a glimpse into the true stumbling mess that he was.

She’d looked at him as he told her the words he’d been willing to give voice to; an odd, contemplative sort of expression that Azriel hadn’t been able to place. “You could go back. But there is nothing and no one waiting for you there.”

“I am waiting for her there,” he’d answered as he fought not to let his temper get the best of him. “I’ve been waiting for her, and I will continue to wait for the day I die because then it will mean that we will be together.”

“And what will you do once you are together?”

“Simply hold each other. Bask in the other’s presence. She was my light, my sunshine, my everything, and I cannot imagine myself in a world without her.”

Audrine sighed. Not an exasperated sigh by any means, but a quieter one. No, there hadn’t been an ounce of displeasure on her face, only an exhaustion that had Azriel wondering if she was alright. It vanished as quickly as it had appeared, though, and Azriel didn’t have any more time to contemplate her well-being as she asked him another question.

“What made you decide to come down here once more?”

As always, her question had caught him completely unawares, and he was only able to utter a one-word response. “Madja.”

“She forced you?” Audrine quirked a brow, but it seemed that the situation was not unusual for either of them: Madja for having to force patients to the mind healers, and them expecting nothing less as they took in patient after unwilling patient.

“No. She…persuaded me.”

The priestess snorted. “Trust me, I know exactly how persuasive she can be.”

Despite himself, Azriel snorted. “She did play a role in getting me to come visit, yes, but that’s not the only reason I came down. I was…involved in a mission recently, so to speak. The outcome wasn’t as I hoped it would be, and I found my thoughts getting the better of me once more. I thought being in the company of others in a quieter environment would help.”

“And these sessions have helped you so much that the first thing you decided to do was to talk to me?”

“Not quite,” Azriel replied with no small amount of hesitation, attempting to soften the blow. “But I told her that I take counselling when she healed me, and she encouraged me to go even if it doesn’t help. She said I lack routine, and that this will help build it. According to her, training for hours on the roof of the House without a break isn’t acceptable,” he finished with a snicker.

“No indeed.” A small smile graced Audrine’s lips as she made more notes, hastily scrawling them in the margins of her notepad. “I do have to ask, though,” she began. “Is there any specific reason you train for so long? I mean, you’re well over five hundred now. Surely the lack of training for a few days, maybe even weeks, wouldn’t be the end of the world?”

How was it possible for someone to see through him at every turn? He’d managed for a long time, so why were his walls beginning to crack now?

“No. I suppose not.” His reply was more brittle, more jagged than he would have liked it to be. At his unwillingness to supply more, she asked again. “Then why do you train so much?’

“It’s…the only way I know how to channel my emotions. It keeps them at bay. That’s how it’s been for as long as I can remember, and I can’t think of another explanation other than old habits die hard.”

“Have you tried journaling?”

“Yes.” This time, Azriel looked away, his eyes finding the wood panelled floor in front of the priestess’ feet far more riveting than their current conversation.

“How did it go?”

“I couldn’t write more than half a page. My hand cramped up.”

“Have you been to a healer to see if anything can be salvaged underneath the scarring?” It was noble of her to care so much for wounds that would never fade.

“Yes.” These were questions Azriel had endured for as long as he could remember. The condescending, pitying tone that most took on when talking about him and his hands nearly had the male seeing red. He was tired of being infantilised, dammnit. “Nothing could be done. The healer did as much as she could, and now I must live with them the way they are.”

The finality with which he said the statement might cause a fresh wave of pity to rise in some, believing Azriel was being pessimistic. He was not. He was practical, and many seemed to confuse practicality with pessimism. If others chose to believe in fantasies they’d spun out of the seemingly endless depths of hope they somehow possessed, they could not complain when that same hope crushed their spirits as it tumbled down like a house of cards blown away with the wind.

Azriel had hoped once. Long ago, before High Ladies or mates or the inevitable grief which followed death like a shroud, an invisible veil he couldn’t seem to rid himself of. He had hoped there was a better life, one where there was no pain, no punishment, no cruelty. They had been the fickle dreams of a child, and he’d held onto them so tightly his nails and cracked and left crescent-shaped marks on his palms, until his fingers went numb and all he could think about was holding on lest he was left behind in the aftermath.

Azriel remembered the days the healer had tried for hours to save at least some part of his hands, to ensure he retained some mobility. When nothing good had come of it, he’d been given a salve for the pain until that too, and rendered the scarring permanent. He’d long since given up on trying to fix it. It was too late now.

Line dividers credit goes to @enchanthings