A Court of Shadows and Thunder // AzrielxOC SlowBurn Romance, ACOTAR FanFiction

Chapter 50 - Choice

Azriel simply looked at him for a while, as if he were caught in a daze, not quite able to do or say anything.

He thought over what had just happened, tried to process it in his mind. But he couldn't put answers to his questions, because more questions just began to pile up and filling up his mind, just as he felt an overwhelming sense of emotion coming over him.

"Can't say that I'm all that surprised," Yohann told Azriel, his eyes still trained to the direction where Brianna had fled to.

That seemed to have snapped Azriel out of his thoughts.

"You didn't know?"

Yohann simply frowned at his somewhat accusatory tone, as if he too had been keeping this secret from him. And Azriel felt like biting his tongue, because he didn't mean to sound so bitter.

"I only just found out that you've known about Bri's curse," Yohann said rather plainly, giving him a pointed look, "What I do know is that she's a vault of secrets, and I stopped trying to get into her brain long ago."

That was, if anything, a confirmation that Yohann hadn't a clue that they were mates. And that, as he now alluded, perhaps Yohann truly didn't know anything that was going on in Brianna's mind. It didn't matter how well they knew one another - there are some things that aren't ever said out loud.

"There's also something else that I know," Yohann said, breaking the silence that had begun to settle in. He was looking at him differently now, almost like in a new light, almost scrutinising, "When she wants to, when she's ready, Brianna will talk."

Yohann didn't say anything else after that, and he began to push the branches he had found into a pile, flinging some of them into the dying fire. But Azriel was far too preoccupied to pay attention to him, his last words swirling in his mind.

That tug that was ever present within him, that small little pull he had grown used to had come to make itself known. He felt it beneath his ribs, he felt it coiling up in his stomach, and he felt it grow warm and hot. And the urge he had to follow Brianna came back, and so he went after her.

It didn't take long to get to her, because she hadn't ventured too far. Still, it was quiet where they stood, the light from the fire where Yohann was now only a dim glow within the trees.

He found her in the stream, alone and standing still, like a solitary statue. Her slippers had been discarded on the grass, her feet obscured by the running water in which she stood in to her calfs. The moonlight reflected off the stream casted onto her skin, bouncing off the wings she had summoned and wrapped around her shoulders. And how those wings had changed, too.

He saw how the brown in her feathers had turned jet black, mirroring the ones that lined her arms, the smooth curve of her wings had twisted into sinister pikes, twin horns on both ends. Nothing like they were before, when they were beautiful, when they matched her lovely brown locks. Now they matched the rest of her, they added on to the other parts that had shifted into her true form.

Azriel was quiet, but he knew she had sensed him come to her. Now he knew she could sense him all along, that she would feel him forever more.

And that she had known, she had known all this while.

He didn't say anything as he paused his steps, standing a mere few feet away from her. He didn't know what to say, didn't know how to start a conversation that would lead to what he wanted to know. But he needed answers, because the selfish part of him demanded them, the confused part of him begged for it. And he felt hurt, almost bordering frustration.

When she wants to, when she's ready, she will talk. Azriel hoped that now was that time, but he also did not feel like giving her the option.