Avarice

7.

Edit: The timeline for the start of this chapter is around 2 days after the competition when Ms. Martha punishes Ana for spoiling the dress. It's basically the two months in Azriel's PoV.

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It is in a small, lonely park, a short distance away from the orphanage that Azriel finds her.

Cool winds blow around him, the chilled air carrying a barely there hint of frost, and it makes him wonder what the silly little thing is doing dressed in a too-thin coat and a scarf that he doubts has ever seen better days.

She has her knees pulled to her chest, head bowed, the curtain of her hair hiding her face from his eyes as she busily doodles something on a small sketch pad and it makes Azriel feel starved, as if he's been presented with a feast but forced to deny himself so much as a single morsel.

Igor stands by his side, jaw clenched and hands turned to fists, a strange sort of tension in his shoulders that kept increasing by each minute as they stepped foot out of their chopper and into the small town, and now nearly three hours later, the tension seems to be rolling off him in waves as he watches the girl, his girl, disapproval taut in every line of his body.

It makes Azriel throw his head back and laugh.

After all the blood on his hands, after all the unspeakable things he had done with Igors' unwavering loyalty, this was what the older man disapproved of?

"I do not understand you and your fucking morals, Igor," he says slowly, a dark glint of amusement in his eyes.

Igor's jaw muscle twitches. "May I speak freely, my lord?" he asks tightly.

Azriel tilts his head, a cold smile playing on his lips, always intrigued to hear from the other man, who as his blood-sworn guard had a leeway that even his other tenevoys did not enjoy, a privilege to speak.

"The girl." Igor begins slowly, careful enough to not address her by any name, not yet, and Azriel finds himself perversely pleased to see him squirm and struggle under the weight of his thoughts. "She's only seventeen —"

"Seventeen years, eight months, and four days," he throws in casually, wanting to rile the man up further than he already was.

"A child still."

"She's not a child, Igor. You remember what I was doing when I was seventeen?"Azriel murmurs darkly, grimacing when he feels a gust of cold air blow, and he catches the shiver that runs down his milaya's body.

Is she waiting to freeze to death? He thinks, finding himself annoyed by her lack of care towards herself. Why is she not returning to the orphanage?

"It's not the same, Pakhan." Igor refutes and Azriel's head snaps towards the other man at his boldness, who falters momentarily before staring back at him in determination.

"Oh, is it so?" He questions, amused by the show of bravado when he can practically sense the other man's unease.

"Fucking at seventeen and fucking a seventeen-year-old is not the same—"

"Loosen yourself, Igor." Azriel grits, pushing his hair off his forehead. "You act as if I'm about to fuck her against a child's swing."

The other man turns silent and still as if he has been turned to stone.

"My lord, you granted me the leave to speak my mind and I merely wish to understand what it is you desire from her that you've already not had and cannot have?"

"Everything." Azriel replies at once, possessive and hungry, laying bare the depths of his obsession before the other man. "I desire her devotion, her innocence, her misery and her joy, her tears and her smile, her body and her heart and her soul. I desire everything."