Azriel
I was floating.
One minute, there was chaos. Explosions of power, white smoke and fire, hell itself coming to claim us all, twin blades in my hand.
Someone was next to me, I remembered that.
I remembered her eyes, glowing gold. I remembered her bloodstained face, cut only with tear tracks running down her cheeks. I remembered how beautiful she looked even when the world was ending around us, a ray of light in the darkness, a song in the silence.
And I was loved, I knew that.
Undoubtedly, unconditionally- I knew that whoever she was, she loved me.
And then there was a flash of pain, white hot and excruciating, and it was all over. There was the utter chaos, the end of everything. And then there was nothing.
An endless abyss of nothingness.
Something was pulling on me though, like a string tying me to wherever reality was hidden in the darkness. A glowing rope, tied around my soul or whatever I was- anchoring me from drifting too far away.
Pain.
I could feel pain.
Absolute sorrow, soul-crushing pain. Not my own, I was sure I could no longer feel it. But someone else's.
Hers.
I could see her then.
She was covered in ash and blood, small cuts on her cheeks and temples, her skin paler than it should have been. And she was screaming.
The kind of scream that rattled the world, that ended everything. A scream that could only be created by pure heartbreak, an irrevocable breaking of one's soul.
I wanted her to stop.
I hated the sound, hated seeing her upset, hated seeing tears streaming down her face, hated feeling fear roll off of her. Some part of me was screaming in answer, trying to crawl its way back to her, trying and failing, relentless,
"Please don't go. Please don't leave me."
I didn't want to.
I wanted to stay.
And yet I was stuck here. I ran but went nowhere, kicked but hit nothing, swam but never moved. I was floating in this abyss, unable to find my way back to her.
"Look, everyone is here. Everyone is waiting for you, my love."
A group of males and females appeared in the nothingness. All of them with tear-stained faces, all of them so familiar.
And yet no names came to me.
No memories accompanied the sight of them.
All I knew was that they were there, crying, arguing, desperately trying to find a way to undo what had been done.
And then there was a spark of hope. So quick I could have missed it, lost within that undying stream of pain but there nonetheless.
And then she was holding me.
I did not know how, did not know what was happening. All I knew was that beautiful wide wings had sprouted from her back and she was holding me. Warmth and safety and comfort.
Undying determination.
And even while she cried, even when that pain did not cease- she spoke to me. She gave me the names I had forgotten, told me the story of our love, of our lives- of everything that seemed so unattainable now.
"I am going to fix you. I am going to bring you back, just hold on for me."
For her, I would wait.
For my mate, I would wait here forever.
I had waited my whole life for her. All those years in darkness, and she was the light. And when she was gone, when I thought she would never return to me- I had been waiting to join her in the afterlife. There was no one else, nothing else that could compare to her. I would wait, even if it took thousands of years.
Not just because she was my mate, not just because she was beautiful- but because she made me into a better person. A never-failing partner, a ray of sunshine in a court of only darkness- she brought me to life with every touch. Every laugh, every breath, every word; she was my salvation. The only person who truly understood me, who had never judged me even for a moment, who had loved me even when I was lost.
Relentless in her passionate beliefs, stubborn as all hell- even when the Mother herself denied her request to bring me back, she did not falter. She cursed at the sky with a temper like pure fire, screaming that I had given enough to warrant living.
What she did not realize was that I did not die to save everyone- I could have cared less if everyone in that field had died, save for my family. I had died to save her, just as she had for me all those years ago. Perhaps this was our fate, meant to love one another from afar, beyond the grave and through exile.
The moon and the sun never did appear in the sky at the same time.
Always on opposite ends of the world, and now on opposite sides of life. She died and I lived, or I died and she lived. Never together, never as one.
But then something shifted.
Something inside of her, something intrinsic. That star that contained her very life force split into two, changed to become something else. It was her spirit, her very soul... drifting closer and closer towards me as I floated in the darkness. Just as she always had been, my anchor to light, the hope in nothing but blackness.
Never again would it swallow me whole. Never again would I be locked away in the darkness. Not only because she would always be at my side with that golden light- but because she had given me a light of my own.
I was nothing, just a whisper of a soul in whatever was beyond life. Hell or purgatory or whatever this may have been, clinging onto her with whatever strength it was that kept me here.
And then that drop of light hit me, and I was something.
Rushing water? Maybe it was water, or something else. I did not know, only could sense that I was falling. Deeper and deeper into some abyss, and she was not there. I was alone in this drop, and something was changing inside of me.
Something vital, something that powered my very soul. It was shifting into something else, a burning within my chest.
My chest.
I had a body. A heart, a chest, a head, arms and legs.
Where is she?
Who?
Who was I missing?
Why couldn't I remember? Why couldn't I see or feel anything? Where was I? What was I?
And then I hit the bottom.
I couldn't breathe, couldn't get myself to move. I saw nothing but silver, nothing but glowing light. There was no direction, no sense of anything, just my soul locked in an unmoving body, stuck down here.
I can't breathe, can't breathe, can't breathe.
Don't I need to breathe?
Shouldn't this hurt?
Why couldn't I remember what it was like to make myself move? Why couldn't I hear anything, see anything? Wasn't I trying to hold onto something? What did I lose?
I heard it then.
A melody, a humming. A voice like starlight, soft and gentle, beautiful in its every note. Familiar, so very familiar. Where had I heard it before?
A memory of a female with curly black hair, young hands drifting over piano keys, the very same melody I could hear now.
It called to me, to my very soul. Calming the raging panic inside of me, willing the darkness away, replacing the shadows with joy and laughter and everything good...
A soft ray of gold appeared in that endless sea of silver.
A glowing hand grabbed my own, and I felt the moment my heart began beating again. She was pulling me, up and up. Bringing me back to life, unbreaking what had been broken, unburning the ashes, undoing what was irrevocable.
And then I realized what she had been singing.
They were melodies of memories, songs of my life- of everything I was. Names and faces came back to me as a burning began in my chest, as my shadows translated her words.
Shadows.
I was a shadowsinger.
I was a shadowsinger, just like my mate.
Leuruna.
She was saving me, pulling me out of this endless silver water, helping me swim towards to surface- to where life was waiting, to where everyone and everything was waiting, our family...
Family.
Cassian and Rhys and Mor, Amren, Nesta, Feyre, and Elain- how could I have forgotten any of them? Our home, Velaris, my wings, the rush of wind as I flew, the feeling of the sun on my face, nights spent at Rita's, a cabin nestled in the outskirts of Windhaven, my mother's face, a 6-year-old Leur holding a hand wreathed in violet shadow out towards me, a vision of her sitting awake in the bed at the House of Wind after I hadn't seen her in 500 long years-
Memories. The good and the bad and everything in between.
And then I was kicking, fighting to swim alongside her. Moving, I was moving. I could move and fight and live.
My mate, my moon.
I love you, Azriel.
Her voice was a melody, a simple truth spoken through the shadows.
My name. She had given me my name.
I broke the surface at the same moment she did, my eyes flying open as I gasped for breath.