A Court of Fate and Failure | Azriel

1: Cons and Connections

Naoise shifted on the tiles of that roof above it all, and blinked to clear her vision. To set sights on what she'd waited 50 years to do. With a gentle flapping of large midnight wings that caught the brief attention of a few awed citizens, she descended into the dark alley between that building and the next. Then the raven was gone, and in its place a simple high fae, brown hair her own, ears sharper than normal, the wings upon her back merely glamored away from sight. As she stepped into the dimming light of the sky and the sparkling lights of the city around her, Naoise shifted her wings anxiously, feeling the path of the air and the breeze brush by, ushering her up the cobbled streets. Each step was measured and her arms hanging by her side, despite every effort of her own, were tense and clenched rhythmically to the click of her boots on the streets of Velaris.

Velaris... her chest tightened its hold on her heart. She was really here. Among passing laughter unburdened by a war that stained her beyond repair. 50 years but a flash of their lives passing them by, children growing and families evolving. Something she longed for an instant to know with such intimacy. But that was all it was. An instant.

It is not the time.

It never was.

Though admittedly, she'd never been much of anywhere before, Naoise had never experienced a place quite like this one. They smiled her way. Children laughed and their parents danced. A river roared beneath her feet as she passed over a bridge, gazing up as the sun continued to fall and the stars that gave this court its name winked from above. Mountains cradled the city at their heart on all sides, icy peaks and rough stone. In the side of the largest, she briefly considered a grand manor built into the side. Surely a home built for a High Lord. And it was just as the last of sunset bled from the horizon that the siphon tucked away in hiding above her heart gave a harsh tug. Naoise stumbled and continued on the course it claimed. Legs shaking once more from keeping the swirling mass of darkness always at her feet within such a feeble thing as a siphon stolen off the body of an Illyrian soldier killed at her hand when she was only 30.

And only when she stood on the doorstep of an assuming townhouse among many others did she know for certain that this was all real. The pain that traced through her bones, darkness and ice and all these powers not her own, thrummed and threatened destruction of the body she lay claim to. One that had already outlived the one before it, her mother torn apart from an ancestor's gifted powers from within at the age of 400. The lights that shone from the windows. The warmth and the fear so palpable in her own being that she tasted it as bile on her tongue. An ocean breeze tracing along the leather of her wings. The power that called to her own, stolen from an ancestor thousands of years prior, inside this home among those it ruled, and those it protected.

Then she knocked on the ornate door and surrendered to the breath that tore through her. And the fate she chose all those years ago.

Steps approached from the other side, her advanced hearing recognizing the regality in each floating clack of a heel upon the ground. Naoise straightened and shoved down the ache that begged her forth, begged the door to shatter and begged for the speeding of time. Something lodged in her throat and she shifted her stance to one of a soldier at attention before their general, clammy hands laced behind her back. It brought a sense of familiarity that slowed her heart rate down to a steady pulse, strong against her ribs. In time with swirling darkness that begged to billow over the earth. She listened not.

And then it was opening and the breath that she finally reclaimed escaped her once more. The high fae female before her... Naoise swore she'd never seen beauty on such a level. Long billowing blonde locks, a crimson dress she wore as surely as it were her own skin, and piercing brown eyes. It was none other than the Morrigan of stories and legends who was eyeing her with warranted unease and distrust.