A Court of Death || ACOTAR

49

"I don't suppose you sought me out for anything as simple as questions about the Weaver," Azriel drawled out, quiet and cold as he stared at the night sky. He did not spare Feyre a glance as she approached.

"I didn't know maybe bonds could break," she decided to jump right into it. She doubted she would get anywhere without being direct.

"Neither did I," his response was simple, but full of a type of pain Feyre thought might end lives.

"I didn't know mates could...break up," she added on. She didn't know much about mates at all, but the concept sounded so final—so happily ever after.

"Neither did I," he repeated, expression unreadable, "according to Death, I created a new future. She wasn't supposed to leave. I made it happen. We all did."

She didn't think she had heard Azriel speak so much before. Cassian had hinted that Azriel could get talkative under the right conditions. It wasn't hard to conclude that the right conditions was code for drinking and sad. The drink in his hand and the pain in his voice were a lethal mix.

"What happened?" she pressed. Nothing about this lined up with what she knew of Rhys. The thought of him casting aside his own sister was hard to swallow.

Azriel let a long, slow breath and then took a sip of his drink.

"They're half siblings. Same father, different mothers. She was fed a steady diet of faebane and kept in chains to prevent her from accessing her power. That was the first twenty years of her life before we knew she existed. Rhys rescued her from her prison and brought her here. Turned out she was already married to one of the Vanserra boys. They hauled her off to the Autumn Court. It was only after...after she had been taken, Rhys was the one to realize she was my mate. I never would have guessed it. Cassian and I went to Autumn and slaughtered anyone who got in our way, and we brought her back home. Her power came back to her all at once, it exploded. And then it was mostly dormant for a while. But, one day, a male from her past scared her so badly that she shook Velaris."

He paused, staring up at the sky as if he could find absolution in the stars.

"The beginning of the end," he murmured before speaking more clearly, "no one was hurt. Cassian had a bump on the head but that was it. Nothing but the townhouse was damaged. We never did give her credit for the control it must've taken to limit the damage like that. I thought she was broken. She knew I thought that. So, she left. She found that same male who had scared her before and she was...vulnerable. He offered her exactly what she thought she needed, and as soon as she was pliant, he killed her. I felt her die."

He let out a long, pained exhale.

"Death brought her back to life because he believed he was in love with her and she said she wanted to live, so he gave her what she wanted despite having a crown and a throne waiting for her. She gained the ability to travel between his realm and this one, became friends with him. I couldn't accept that. We fought about it. And then I revealed that we had all been lying to her."

He finally looked at Feyre, only for a moment. Just long enough for her to see the guilt and regret in his eyes.

"Tamlin locked you in the house," he began, "we did that to her. We agreed the city needed to be protected from her. She had hated her power for a long time. How can you control something you hate? That was how we reasoned with it. We all agreed she shouldn't be allowed out of the house without one of us there. We lied and said it was for her own protection. It was easy at first. There was always someone to go out with her whenever she wanted at first. Then it became maybe tomorrow or next week or just I can't today. And, in a pointless fight, I let it slip that we had all been lying to her. She refused to be caged, to be disrespected, to be treated as anything less than an equal. So, she left. She came back, briefly, gave me—gave all of us a second chance. I wasted that too. She moved away, left the Night Court."

"And no one tried to apologize? For four centuries?" Feyre asked, trying and failing to keep that little hint of judgment from seeping into her voice. She could no reconcile this with who she had come to know. Rhys had made sure Tamlin didn't trap her, had sent Mor to rescue her. But he wrote off his own sister for being unwilling to be trapped?

"Cassian did," Azriel said with a heavy sigh. "I stayed away because I had wasted my apologies. Saying you're sorry means nothing when every action you've taken proves you haven't changed. And by the time I did change, I knew her forgiveness was not something I deserved. She was happier away from me than she had ever been with me. I wouldn't sully that happiness by begging for forgiveness I could never be worthy of. I think Amren agreed Astryn was better off away from us. Mor hadn't ever trusted her to begin with."

"And Rhys?"

"Coward's way out," he repeated Rhys's own words, "if he doesn't allow himself to think about her, he doesn't have to feel guilty over failing her. Cowardly, but effective. Or it was until she went to try to save him Under the Mountain. And he slit her throat. Over and over and over. I lost count of it by the time the mate bond turned to nothing. Somehow, she ended up in Hybern. For the forty-nine years Rhys was with Amarantha, Astryn was in Hybern. You don't want to know that part of the story."

Feyre swallowed back the horror of all the thoughts of what might've happened. She focused on something else instead.

"Will you ever apologize to her?" she questioned softly, as if she could not accept that the story would end without resolution between them,

"I can't," he answered honestly, "for fear that she might forgive me."

Because if she forgave him, and they tried again, and he lost her again, he knew he would not survive it.