ACOTAR One~shots [Discontinued, Will be deleted]

The Songs of Silence

Silence reigns in the House of Wind. The only break in it is the soft scratch and whisper of Azriel’s pen across the paper in front of him, printing rows of neat text – as even and organised as the soldiers drawn up in ranks in Cassian’s armies – orders for his spies seeded into the Court of Nightmares. After what happened there he’s deemed it prudent to monitor the situation a little more closely for the time being until things settle down again, for all their sakes.

It’s late, well past midnight, and the shadows that wreathe him in the same way that smoke hovers above a fire seem to urge him to take refuge in the lingering calm oblivion that sleep offers. But he can’t. Visiting that place, playing that role, embracing the kind of sinister darkness that he did today always unsettles him. He knows himself well enough to be sure that sleep wouldn’t come easily tonight – and even if it came the horrors it would bring with it wouldn’t be welcome.

He shifts slightly in his seat, ruffling his wings to relieve the cramps that have built up in them after hours of being tucked in against his body while he works. A faint breeze whispers in through the open window and he rubs absently at his arms, bare to the elbows, the sleeves of his loose shirt rolled up to protect them from ink droplets spattering from his pen.

Rolling his shoulders to work the knots from them he pulls a fresh sheet of paper towards him, thinking to start on his latest report for Rhys. The pen barely makes contact with the surface of the parchment before a scream that chills his blood and the sound of shattering glass tears through the still silence like honed steel through flesh.

His pen snaps between his contracting fingers, spraying ink across the notes and documents arranged on his desk in a fountain of ebony, looking for all the world like black blood but he’s already on his feet and moving, the pen and report already barely more than distant memory.

Stepping out into the corridor he marks the few servants scurrying away from the disturbance and nods to them, ushering them on. He meanwhile moves towards the sounds of chaos, chasing down the storm that waits for him before it breaks entirely and tears apart the fabric of their world in its raging fury.

When he reaches her bedroom the halls around him are quite empty, experience having long ago taught the staff to flee when the destructive power that lurks beneath her skin breaks loose, heedless and terrible as a furious ocean slamming relentlessly into a cliff face.

He carefully eases the door open and slips inside, silent as the shadows that forever circle him. Her chambers are bright, elegant, and vibrant, reflecting their owner. But right now they look like the churned, violence-stricken battlefield in the aftermath of two armies clashing on it.

 Books have been hurled from their shelves and lie, forlorn and forgotten as dead soldiers on the floor, their spines broken, their pages ripped and shredded; her beautiful clothes have been strewn across the places, ripped and stained with ash and smoke; her battered furniture chipped and smashed form a minefield of splintered wood between the two of them; the shards of glass from the shattered window still fly through the air like arrows, scratching and tearing at his exposed wings and skin.

And at the centre of it all; the eye of the violent hurricane of magic that has exploded from her in its desperate bid to protect her from whatever terror she was being forced to relieve she hunches amid torn and smoking sheets at war with herself.

The destruction barely even registers with him as he crosses the ravaged room. All of his focus is pinned solely on her, the raging magic little more than blurred background noise. Azriel reaches her at last and in a single, fluid motion he lowers himself down onto her four poster bed and folds her into his arms without a thought for the lethal, furious power that still erupts from her.