Requiem

4. Azriel - Choices

Time had lost all meaning to Azriel.

He'd lived for over five hundred years and yet they had flown by faster than the last minute.

Something was amiss. The energy of the room was suddenly charged with anticipation and the unmistakable undertone of unrestricted terror. Even Nesta's distant roars of rage had quieted. Whatever thread had been anchoring him was dangerously close to snapping. It took all of his might to concentrate on the ceiling above him.

Azriel broke into a coughing fit. He felt the squeeze of a hand around his. Mor...yes, she was there. How could he have forgotten?

"You will be okay," she whispered. Those were tears in her eyes. And somehow, he'd been responsible for them. Even if they did manage to get out of there, he would not deserve to live. "You cannot leave me, do you hear me?"

Her face was contorted by her sobs as she looked between him and Cassian who lay beside them, unconscious and bleeding. His brother's wings were shredded, he could see the full extent of the blow now that the warrior rested on his stomach after having tried to crawl to Nesta. After having tried to keep that promise he made to her to protect Elain. The mere thought of Cassian losing his wings...being unable to fly with his brothers or his men ever again, made Azriel hurt more than the spear and the poison still invading his chest. That could not happen, he would not allow it. And he most certainly could not die so easily if it did.

If Cassian was to lose his wings, then he had to live if only for his brother to claim Azriel's life. Or claim his wings as punishment. The first option would be too kind, Azriel thought. Grounding him forever, being forced to never taste the skies again, would be a far more apt sentence to atone for what he'd done.

He felt a tear roll down the side of his face as he closed his eyes. Focusing on the ash bolt that impaled him. Soaking every ounce of pain into his battered soul.

"What did you do?"

Feyre's cry broke through the air. Her words were desolate as if she was having her heart ripped out of her chest. Azriel's consciousness faltered and when he returned to himself, his brother's mate was clinging to Tamlin as if he was holding her together. Something wasn't right. "Take me home." She said to him, and Azriel understood.

She was sacrificing herself for them. She was returning to Tamlin's gilded prison for them – even for him – she was renouncing her mate, her court, her family, and her freedom. Cassian stirred as if he too had been shaken into consciousness by Feyre's bravery.

Whatever happened next, he did not feel except for the sudden absence of Mor's warmth at his side. Rhys was on the floor with unfocused eyes, a screaming Mor shaking him by the collar of his jacket. Feyre was cradled in Tamlin's arm and the sight was so jarring Azriel could not look at it. He snarled, a reflex from seeing his brother's mate touched by another.

That's when he noticed that his blood no longer burned. The ash bolt still tore through his bone and muscle but the poison had stopped spilling into his system. He lifted his head enough to find his High Lord crawling toward him and Cassian.

Azriel looked to Feyre, whose face was tainted by tears, and then to his brother whose eyes were void and empty, no longer violet but an intense black.

The king spoke to grant their leave, not without mocking the state of Cassian's wings. Azriel's revenge for that comment would have to wait, but that would make it even sweeter. That he vowed.

Mor winnowed to Lucien and reached a hand to Elain and Nesta who looked at her in surprise. Finally, Rhysand reached them. Azriel reached for his brother's shoulder beside him and upon the first graze of his f,ingertips they all faded into shadow and away from the King of Hybern and the Gods-damned Cauldron.