Requiem

6. Azriel, Sirena & Rachlan - Return

Quick little author's note: It gets good from here on out; Scout's honor. 

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Azriel

His hair was getting a bit too long for his liking.

For some Mother-forsaken reason, that thought seemed to have taken root at the forefront of Azriel's mind.

It was nowhere near the length at which Cassian dutifully kept his, just brushing his shoulders. But the slightly curled strands tickled his brow more than he was accustomed to. As his forehead became slick with sweat, it stuck. The feeling was slowly driving him to madness.

The Hybern guard currently strapped to the wooden table made a gurgling noise, snapping Azriel out of his daze.

Blood was curdling at the male's mouth, dripping down the corners of his lips, and turning his face into a grotesque mockery of a smile. He would not choke on it, but the suffocation would be...unpleasant. The table was angled just right.

Azriel did not look up from where his gaze had been focused on polishing Truth Teller with a cloth when he spoke. "Who are they?"

The tone was practiced, fake, unearthly, and altogether too damn easy for Azriel to take on.

It had frightened him once.

When Rhysand's father had kept him off the battlefield to serve as his personal spymaster, he'd been young. When he first tore a person to pieces in a dungeon and heard them beg for mercy. Enemies yes, many of them. But others...Innocent people whose only crime was knowing what they were not meant to know. In their screams, he would hear his own. His own when cried and begged – begged – his brothers to stop and...

The day he no longer heard the echo of a desperate child reverberating off the walls of the chamber along with the tortured screams of the male he'd been questioning, his head spun out of control.

What did it mean? He was too far gone. There was no saving him now.

He ran out, hands trembling. Vomited onto the hard stone floor as he rested on his knees.

If that old him could see him now, unfazed by his own ability to rip and hurt and torture without blinking, he'd vomit all over again at the disgust he'd feel.

The male coughed, and the specks of blood flew at the nearby wall.

"I-I-I d-don't kn-know," his words were obscured by the blood gushing from his mouth.

"What did the king use the Cauldron to summon?" Azriel was on his feet now, inching closer to the slab.

"Nothing! N-Nothing, I s-s-s-swear," the soldier was crying. Pathetic. But he'd lost control over himself long ago if the dark stain on the front of his pants was any indication. "The k-king sent us to look for h-her, but he d-didn't know who she was! I swear! I swear! I swear!"

Azriel stepped into the male's field of vision, causing him to tense in response. His head angled as he asked "Her? There are two of them," The knife pricked the skin of the guard's hand just between his fingers, and he winced, "Why does the king only want her? Who is she?"

"H-He didn't tell us! He kept rambling about life and death and the doors between worlds and things that made no sense!" The male swallowed, his voice clearer, "Our orders were to capture the female, the male was expendable."

It was apparent the king knew something that Rhysand did not about the unexpected arrivals.

Something Azriel would soon find out.