Archive of Our Own

There is a wine stain on the carpet.

It has soaked into the fibers, made itself one with the filigree swirls and floral patterns. It is violet and dark, and its outline is a haphazard, tenuous shape. The edges blur as his vision swims, and Azriel groans, leaning his head against the back of the couch, and puts his hand over his eyes.

He cannot remember how it got there, only that it is still wet when he accidentally brushes across it with his bare feet. There isn’t much that he can remember, with his head pounding against his skull so hard that it makes his teeth rattle. He even nearly forgets that he isn’t alone, until he feels pressure against the outside of his thigh, and he recognizes it for the heel of her foot. It is almost a kick, except it is left there, pressing and insistent.

He cracks open one eye and allows his head to loll over to the side, to find her raising an eyebrow, a book held open in front of her chest. A flush of pink makes itself at home among the dusting of freckles across her nose and cheeks, and it is not difficult for him to imagine that it is because of him, even though he knows that it is not.

He smiles, and his words come out like there are freshwater pearls in his mouth, and his tongue has to maneuver around them. “Did you need something, Gwyneth?”

That careful arch of a brow lowers back down, and Gwyn reaches unseeingly behind her to lift her glass of wine from the table. It is full to the brim, and violet splashes out onto her wrist as she brings it with fumbling fingers to her lips.

Staring at the miniscule pool like a pomegranate seed on her wrist, he remembers instantly. The stain was from her, from spinning and spinning, with Nesta’s arm above her. From being dipped, leaning back in the air with her arms outstretched and the long column of her throat exposed, Nesta's hand supporting her back. Laughter that spilled from her lips like the wine from that glass, and then a pout that pillowed her mouth when she arose to find her glass was empty. The House had immediately provided her with another.

He can’t be sure how many glasses she’s had. Only, he knows it can’t be more than him, because his head is fuzzy and he can’t stop imagining what it would be like to lick off the stream of wine that falls down over her plush lips and drips from her chin onto her chest. He cannot stop thinking of counting the freckles across her body. He has enough confessions to spare that he could whisper one to all of them, starting with the one that is settled at the corner of her jaw and ending with the one at the center of her chest.

His smile lifts even further, and she narrows her eyes in response.

“I was reading to you,” she slurs. 

Ah, yes. He remembers. The game. She started it again the second Nesta and Cassian left, leaning against each other to keep from tripping over their own feet as they walked out of the library. There had been a distinct pang in his chest, dulled only by that offer. The challenge that drifted off of Gwyn’s lips.

Do you want to play a game?

They’ve been playing that game for a while now, he thinks. The two of them. Not just this one, tonight, the one where she offered to read him erotic passages from her book to see just how long he could maintain his composure. It started ever since she returned back as a Carynthian. It pervades, even through the chaos that his life has become in the aftermath. 

His High Lady and Lord need him now more than ever. It feels to him like none of them are ever safe, like he can never do enough to keep them protected. His shadows whisper to him at all times, even when he feigns sleep. He stays awake, listening to the bits of information they deliver to him. Some of them are inconsequential. Most of them are inconsequential. But he pours over them anyway, night after night. Turns them like gems in the light, to find some sort of inclusion or blemish. Something that demands action, demands he be the one to do further investigation. He wonders if it is possible to atone for the spilling of blood by spilling some more.

Rhysand hardly needs to give him orders anymore; Azriel is constantly away, chasing after dead end, dead end, dead end. Hybern is gone, but they are never safe. He can only assume that it is his fault, even when Feyre tells him that it is not. He can rid his family of all of their problems, if only he is quick enough. Ruthless enough. Kills enough.

There are stains all across his tapestry, and they do not look too entirely unlike the one on the carpet five inches away from his shoes.

But Gwyn lets him play pretend. And so pretend he shall.

“Sorry,” Azriel says. His own words sound unclear, fuzzed by sluggish lips and tongue, but the tension at the corners of her eyes lifts and so he thinks she understands him. “Please, what was next?”

Gwyn clears her throat, and shifts slightly down so that both of her feet are in Azriel’s lap. He looks down at them pointedly, but she is scanning the page in front of her, trying to find her place, and pretends not to realize. She hums in recognition, and when she speaks again, she lowers her voice performatively.

“She slid her fingers into herself, and her mouth fell open at the sensation,” Gwyn reads from her book.

A chuckle immediately bubbles out of his throat as he has caught off guard, and his hands fall to her ankles. Before he can remember that she can probably feel the roughness of his scars, his fingers wrap around and catch on the bone jutting from the side of her ankle. He smooths his fingers across her skin, and turns his head completely so that he can see her. She still looks unbothered.

Good. If she makes this easy, it won’t be as fun.

Gwyn continues, “At first it was an experimental sort of pressure. Her fingers stroked in and out of her, slick already from her bath, and she took note of the way a weight began to settle right at her center. It twisted in around itself, and she gasped when her thumb brushed accidentally across her clit.”

This time, Azriel snorts, and one of his hands leaves her skin to scrub across his mouth so that he can hide his smile. But her eyes drift up from the page, and he can tell from the mirth dancing in her eyes like the reflection of candlelight that she caught it, anyway. A silent question, asking if he gives in.

He nods towards her. “Continue.”

He can lower his voice, too. For a reaction.

Her throat bobs as she swallows, but that is the only indication that he is getting to her, that he is slowly breaking her down. That she may be the one reciting filthy words for him to hear, but his hands and eyes are on her.

Gwyn clears her throat, and then meets his gaze as her tongue slides out of her mouth, lays flat across her chin. Even sitting, he sways, watches the way the lights glisten on the surface, and his attention is rapt on the way the tip of her tongue flicks up across the pad of her finger. She uses the wetted fingertip to flip a page over, all while staring at him.

She is happy with herself. She thinks she is winning. He doesn’t need his shadows to tell him that, doesn’t need them to tell him how she may be proven right, soon enough.

He calls upon his shadows, anyway.

The words she says are like birdsong to his ears. Pleasant, and spoken in such an enchanting tone that he cannot help the way his spine rolls just to hear it. But the words themselves are indiscernible, as he focuses on sending his shadows down, from behind his wings, and lets them tickle the bottoms of her feet.

Gwyn flinches, her heels digging into the inside of his thigh, but his hands keep her feet there, and it is a mistake. His eyes blow wide, and her toes are near less innocent places. He hopes she doesn’t notice.

She notices. Her lips curl up, and she continues reading. Her feet do not move. He does not let them go.

“Her hot breaths filled the air, rising like steam off the surface of the water,” Gwyn says.

He watches her lips form the words, and slowly shifts so that he is no longer leaning back against the couch, and is instead facing her. Her feet are still in his lap, but the shadows have now acted of their own accord. They are twisting up her legs, towards her thighs. She is wearing a thin gown, and he tries not to think about what it would feel like to put his hand over it, to feel the lines of her body through the cool fabric.

Perhaps the blush on her cheek has deepened, or maybe all the wine he has consumed is swimming across his vision, making everything pink. But no, her eyes roving over the page are still the teal of gleaming waters.

“She thought of him,” Gwyn says, and victory swells in his chest, feeling distinctly like a freefall from the clouds into the charged air before a storm. Because she is breathless, and she is blinking rapidly as she tries to read. “She thought of his hands across her breasts, and her own palms went up to mimic them. She pinched a rosy–”

Gwyn snorts abruptly, and her head jerks up to catch his eye. He pauses guiltily. He has been shifting up onto his knees, to lean over her, and she has discovered him.

“Why do they always have to be rosy?” Gwyn says. Her nose wrinkles up, some of the freckles hidden in the lines that cross the bridge of it. “All of the books I read, and the nipples have to be rosy.”

Azriel’s smile splits wide across his face. She has made no comment about it, and so he allows her feet to slide down off his lap, onto the cushions of the couch that he vacates. He stalks forward on his knees, and she is watching his every movement. Settled with one knee between her legs, the other beside her hip, he plucks the book out of her hands.

“They aren’t in real life?” Azriel asks.

She is too focused on staring at his chest to catch her mistake.

“Mine certainly aren’t,” she says.

Her eyes go wide. He is sure he looks delirious, that the smile on his face is loose with alcohol and with the delight at having made some progress. Won an admission, in this game of theirs.

“You didn’t hear that,” Gwyn says.

Azriel tosses the book onto the floor, and its spine is bent at an odd angle, but his eyes are on hers. On the way she is too slow for her outstretched hand to catch the book, and so it rests beside her head on the arm of the couch, instead. She glances between his lips and the floor, and just to keep her eyes in one place, he reaches out to take the glass of wine that she holds. It draws her attention.

Over the rim of the glass, he sees her breath catch in her throat and he takes several long gulps. Wine tastes sweeter, when he knows that it is hers.

The glass is not empty, and later he will swear he tried to be delicate in setting it down, but it rolls over and another stain joins the first on the rug. Lacing their fingers together, his hand joins hers to rest beside her head, and he hovers over her.

“Sure,” he agrees, nodding. His vision swims, and his head rolls, but he keeps going. “I didn’t hear it.”

Gwyn looks dubious. “Okay.”

“But can I see?”

What he doesn’t expect is for her to laugh. For it to wash over him like seafoam, and make him feel like he is so full of air that he could never possibly breathe again. She has him exactly where she wants, and she tilts her chin up towards him. Pulls him down by the collar of his shirt.

They have been here before. Ever since they started this game. He thinks it is a taste of the heavens, to remind him of what he is missing with the way his hands are always either painfully empty or cupped full of blood. He will take what he is allowed, of this unbearable joy. And then he will tear himself away.

Later, he promises himself. But for now, he can hazard a bit more. He will get as close as he possibly can, and have only a taste before he will drown himself in her.

She holds him in place with her fingers fisted in the fabric at the base of his throat, but her other hand goes up to play with the hair at the nape of his neck. His nerves ignite, electricity jumping across empty spaces, and he needs to clench his jaw to keep from dipping down to kiss her.

“You want to see, Shadowsinger?” she lilts to him.

Her voice always sounds like that. Like she is singing, and it is for his ears alone.

As if they answer to her now, his shadows excite at the mention. They whirl around her waist, are precariously close to the underside of her breasts through that dress.

“That’s cheating,” she chastises. He doesn’t know how to explain to her that he isn’t the one doing it. That he no longer has any control. And his shadows don't even have the decency to look contrite about it.

“Are you offering?” he asks, and he nearly flinches at the desperation in it. How hoarse his voice sounds. “To show me?”

Her fingers loosen around his collar, and then dip down below it. He shivers, and his wings twitch at the feeling of her fingertips across his clavicle. Perhaps he should not have taken that last sip of wine, because his head feels weightless and is about to float off of his shoulders.

“Walk me upstairs,” is all she says.

He nearly leaps off of the couch, and it takes just a second too long to find his balance before she accepts his outstretched hand, and he helps her up. It is a slight comfort, that she is just as wobbly on his feet as he is on his. But only briefly, because then he becomes concerned that perhaps she has had too much to drink, that her body and head will ache in the morning.

When she finally comes to a standstill, it is with her chest pressed against his and a shiver rolling down her shoulders and back.

He is not a fool. Even as walking behind her on the way up the stairs puts his eyes on level with the sway of her hips and threatens to make him into one. They have been here before, he reminds himself. It is the constant ebb and flow of the tides, the way they push and push, until they exceed their limits and retract. It is a bit of levity, a break in the constant gravity that slows his every movement, drops him to the ground. He is a moth in a display case, his legs and wings outstretched and pinned by a weight so heavy, he thinks sometimes that it has crushed him beyond repair.

But these moments. They breathe life back into him.

She turns around suddenly when she reaches the landing, and his hands go out on either side of her, thinking he needs to catch her before she falls. But she is steady.

Gwyn has lived in the House of Wind for a few months. It took a while for Nesta to convince her. But she has her own room, now, and it is across the hall from his. At night, while his shadows whisper to him, he makes sure that he keeps a few stationed in the corners of her bedroom. She never mentions them, but that does not mean she doesn’t notice.

He is quite impressed, when she begins walking backwards down the hall. The lights are off, but she does not stumble. As if he is being pulled back to shore by a rope around his middle, he follows her.

Her hand is on the doorknob that leads to her bedroom. This is usually where they part. Azriel walks right up to her, so close that their toes could touch, and she has to crane her head back to look at him.

“Will you think of me?” he croons to her.

“What thoughts do you hope I’ll have?” Gwyn asks. Her shoulders fall back against the door, and it is like she has forgotten that they are supposed to stop. Here. They are supposed to stop.

“With all of those books you read,” Azriel breathes, “I’m sure your imagination isn’t lacking.”

“And should I take inspiration from tonight’s reading?” Gwyn says. There it is. Her voice is deep again. It draws him forward, like the tides are pulled towards the moon. “Should I think of you, with my hand between my legs?”

He has to put his hands up on the door above her head, to keep from collapsing into her. He has had too much to drink. The wine is making him think less; it makes his legs shaky. Even his fingertips are numb, as she tilts her head to the side and regards him in that irreverent way of hers.

A scent washes over him, and he has to close his eyes when he realizes that this excites her. That the taste of sea salt and sage on the back of his tongue is her, and that she is pressing her thighs together, with her palm flat against the door, her nails digging into the wood.

“You act like it would be the first time,” Azriel says, when he can finally open his eyes again.

They’ve never gotten this far, he thinks as she finally opens the door. It’s like he is falling in, and he can’t spread out his wings fast enough. She doesn’t need to put her hands on him, to make him follow. He shuts the door behind them, and leans back against it.

Moonlight pours in through her window, and it makes the freckles on her shoulders look like the iridescent flecks in the face of an opal. It wanes over half of her face, her expression the still waters of a hidden lake, and it rocks him anyway.

“It isn’t,” she admits. Her hands go to the straps of the dress at her shoulders, and he can’t decide if he wants her to let them fall, or if he is going to stride forward and snatch them back up. They’ve never gotten this far.

He leans forward, but his foot hangs suspended in the air before he can complete the step. Her thumbs glide up and down the thin straps.

“Tell me about the first time,” he says, to make up for the fact that he is hesitating.

He thinks perhaps her smile is lopsided, with how her teeth graze against her bottom lip, but he can only see one side turned up at the corner. His shadows pool like tendrils of smoke around his feet. They are beseeching him to move forward.

She slips one strap down over her shoulder, and his foot falls to the ground. Another step, and another, and soon he is before her, and her face is much clearer to him. She is just as spellbound as he is, and her cheeks are still red. But the wine makes it look like she is staring up at him from beneath the rippling surface of a crystalline pool.

“I was laying in bed,” she says. “I couldn’t sleep, and so I thought about your hands. How they felt on my waist to correct my stance during training. And so I thought about them in other places.”

There is a confession in there somewhere. He hasn’t trained her in forever, not since she first returned as a Carynthian. She trains her own legions now, and Cassian is the one to oversee her. Azriel is too busy. He is away too often. There is a confession in the fact that she has been thinking about him for a long time.

But Azriel’s thoughts linger on something that he already knew.

“You don’t sleep,” he says. It isn’t a question.

She shakes her head, and her hands fall loose at her sides. Divesting herself of her clothing is forgotten for the moment. “I don’t.”

He raises a hand, and pinches the other strap of her dress. Knuckles grazing across her shoulder, he glides it down. “Does the thought of my hands help you sleep?”

“Yes,” she says. Another word is on the edge of her tongue, but she stops it by snapping her mouth closed. It doesn't matter. It is already another confession: she has thought of him for a long time, and she thinks of him now.

Looking around the room, Azriel pretends that he has forgotten he is touching her. That he is preoccupied by the decorations around her room, but the fact is that there aren’t many. There is her bracelet, laying atop the dresser. A knitted blanket at the foot of her bed. Bandages and salves hastily discarded alongside her leathers on the floor. It has been the better half of a year, and still she has not put down roots here. Azriel’s bedroom isn’t much better, and how long has it been for him?

His eyes snap back to hers. A precipice lays before him, and his toes are over the edge. He jumps.

“I can’t sleep either,” Azriel confides.

It was supposed to be a game. It is funny, until it isn’t. The fact that they have been circling around each other for months, the paths of their orbits never to intersect. Until now. Until the gravity has become too much to fight, and Azriel only wants to rest.

Her hands go up to either side of his face, and he shuts his eyes tightly, so that he doesn’t have to look at the way sorrow distorts her features. So that he doesn’t have to see the moon fogged over with melancholy.

Her fingers are cool. “I’m so exhausted, Azriel.”

Me too, he thinks. But he cannot say it, because he is too busy taking off her dress. It falls to the floor, and his shadows cover it easily. They rise up the lustrous length of her legs, settle and twist around her hips. They swirl around her navel, and wrap around her arms, as she fumbles with the clasps of the leather straps across his chest. With the wine, her fingers are clumsy. He goes to help her, but his own hands are shaking, and it’s a two person job to escape the confines of the leather, and to pull his shirt over his head.

He opens his eyes when her hands unlace his pants and pull them down his hips. All of her is bared before him, but his eyes are caught on a freckle at the side of her wrist, at the sluggish movements of her fingers baring all of him .

She holds in a breath, and for a moment her fingers just trace the patterns of the black ink that decorate his chest. They ghost down his arms, and when she tentatively touches the edge of his wing, his hand flinches, and his arm snaps around her waist.

Her chest stutters as she finally exhales. And rapidly expands in a gasp, when he pulls her with him towards the bed.

Gwyn falls on top of him, and she is pressed against his chest and stomach. Her hands go out to push herself up, but he pulls her back down by wrapping both of his arms around her, clasped at her back, and nuzzles his face into her neck.

“Then let’s rest,” he says.

It might take seconds, or it might take years, but eventually her body relaxes atop his, and his shadows do not whisper to him. They only sing lullabies, and he wonders if she can hear them, too, because it is together that they finally succumb to sleep.

In the morning, the bond lays there glimmering between them–a string of moonlight that connects them by a knot at the center of his spine and a ribbon woven in through her rib cage. For so long, he has been chasing it. Searching for it. But it is settled there across her bedsheets, as if it has always been. And he knows he doesn’t need to feel the snap of it, to understand that this is the lifeline he will always cling to, that he can float on the crest of the waves for all of eternity, and she will be at the other end.

*

All the night-tide he lies down by her side, presses every line of his body into hers. And the nightmares come less often for the both of them. It is easy to forget atonement, when it is a far better use of his time to wrap her in his arms, his shadows, and his wings, and help her to fall asleep.

He still has to go away, has to make trips to other courts, either seen or unseen–but he does it only when it is necessary, and is far more motivated to return by the time the moon beams in through the windows. He always returns to her first. Flies in through her window and peels back her blankets. She waits up for him, does not close her eyes unless he is there.

The first time he kisses her, it is before the stars have fully blinked out of the sky, before the rise of the sun on the horizon. It is the night of the Autumnal Equinox, and they leave the window open to feel a wind blow out of a cloud, and chill their skin. They have been sleeping, but the sudden cold makes them open their eyes simultaneously. Their breaths remain slow.

Her eyes are so bright, and their lips settle into each other like currents meeting in the sea.

The bond glows between them, and it is so blinding that he wonders how she cannot possibly see it, how it can be so vibrant for him and yet dim to her, but he has to leave her in the morning and it all makes sense. He is her mate, but it doesn’t make sense for her to be his. He belongs to her, but he wonders how they can possibly belong to each other, when there is still so much for him to make up for.

Blood, blood, more blood.

He supposes she is well-acquainted with the taste of it now, too. With the slickness of it between her fingers, and wiped across her brow. Gwyneth Berdara is the lethal edge of a blade. He has seen her train her legions, alongside her Valkyrie sisters. She goes with Nesta and Emerie on short missions. It took her a while to feel safe leaving Velaris, but she devotes herself to whatever task she is handed with a sharp enough focus that he knows he does not have to worry about her.

He worries about her anyway, when they fall into bed together. At first, the worry manifests itself only as a wandering hand, smoothing fingertips in the space between her brows, brushing knuckles down her shoulders, squeezing her sides with his palms. All to make sure she is intact, that she is not broken.

Gwyneth Berdara does not break.

But he feels his heart race sometimes, when he wakes up from an incomprehensible dream, and there is something like panic that claws at his throat. He checks with his shadows for a threat, but the only threat is his own mind, and it’s like she can sense it, down that bond that she has not acknowledged, and she wakes up with a sigh to grant him another kiss.

The first time he really touches her, it is on a night that not even the sight of her sleeping soundly can put him at ease. His hands are shaking so forcefully around her that she blinks awake, and grabs them. Pulls his palms to her lips and kisses them. He doesn’t know why they started shaking, but he knows that they stop as soon as she is looking at him.

“Are you scared?” she asks.

“Terrified,” he rasps.

“Me too,” she says.

It is with longing that he rakes his fingers in her hair, fists them among the strands of copper. And when he brings his mouth to hers, he thinks she must be able to feel it. Feel the argent rope that is pulling more and more taut the longer he neglects to tell her about it. But she returns his kiss in kind, and their bodies press together. Her fingers hold onto him so tightly, he can feel the indentations left in his skin, and they are wells still filled with groundwater by the time her touch has moved on to other places. She rolls on top of him, and he slides inside of her with the bond nebulous between them. He can see nothing at all, except for her.

She does not belong to him, but he begins to think that the nights belong to them both. That whispering in her ear in the quiet hours between dusk and daybreak is like speaking to the hand that holds the moon like a pendulum in the sky. It makes their time together move more slowly, so that he can cherish every second, can taste the pearls as they roll over the surface of his tongue. Sometimes, they talk so much that they forget they are supposed to be resting until the sky outside turns from violet to gray.

Their stolen moments begin to seep into the other hours of the day, as well. Urgent kisses in a corner of the library, covered by his shadows. Lifting up her skirts at the dinner table, as soon as Nesta and Cassian leave. Brushing the backs of their hands together as they stand in front of his High Lord and Lady, receiving a mission.

He hates this one. He thinks it is the worst yet. He thinks it will get them both killed.

Smoke billows around him, and it stings his eyes and clings to the sweat that covers his skin. It is thick, but it is vaporous and he can feel it find the openings in his clothes, can feel it covering every inch of him and crawling down his throat. He coughs and he gags on it, he falls to his knees with Truth-Teller in his hand and must somehow crawl along the floor of the burning manor to find a way out.

Discretion is long forgotten, now. So he uses his siphons, hidden behind a black cloak, and with a surge of power blows out a portion of the wall. The sudden gust of air is consumed all too greedily by the burgeoning flame at his back, and as he jumps out, the fire licks across his wings before he can use them to soar high enough that he can look for Gwyn.

He is plummeting towards the earth, and when he falls he hears bones shatter, and he cannot be sure that it is from him. The bond is screaming at him. It sounds not unlike the screams from the inside of the manor, when the High Lord of Autumn fell with a blade across his throat.

He rises up onto one leg that looks like it might be at the wrong angle, and as he walks he realizes that the entire left side of his body feels like it is crushed. He is a moth, but he is not fit for a display case because half of him is crumpled beyond repair, and there is an odd sort of freedom in that.

Walking through smoke, and flame, and soot-covered glass he finds her.

“I’ve been looking for you,” she croaks.

The skies are blood orange behind them when he wraps her in one arm and winnows her away. Let the new High Lord of Autumn deal with the aftermath of his own attack. Azriel is done with the bloodshed.

In his palms, he wants to cup clear waters and feel them stream like glimmering starlight down both sides of his chin.

They fly in through a window in the House of Wind, and every current beneath his wings feels like flame all over again. His wings are burned, and he can taste fear like it is oil being poured directly into his mouth and snorted out of his nose. He is tortured by images of his father and his brothers laughing before him, of curling himself over his blistering flesh to try to stop the flames, and with each flicker he can see Gwyn having to endure the same. One of his arms cannot raise higher than his hip, but he uses both hands to rove over her body, to check for bruises or welts, and his heart is torn out through the chest when he sees a shallow cut across her stomach.

Gwyn tears her shirt off completely, so that he doesn’t have to hold it up anymore, and leads him to the bathroom.

The House has already filled the tub with water that is no warmer than his body temperature. It is a shallow pool in the middle of the room, and soaps and towels appear by the faucet. Gwyn helps him peel out of his leathers, sets his siphons down delicately on top of them, and then starts to work on her own clothes. She holds both of his hands, and helps walk him backwards into the bath.

It is their winged hour. The stars blink at them beyond the open windows, and the curtains are whisked aside by a moondusted breeze. The water is up to his hips, and he wants nothing more than to sink his face beneath it.

Gwyn gingerly brings a wet cloth to the bruised skin of his left arm, and her jaw is clenched.

“We have to call Madja,” she says.

Azriel shakes his head. “Feyre and Rhysand first.”

What he doesn’t say is that he returns to her first. Always.

“It looks bad,” Gwyn says, and he can hear the tears like she is swallowing glass. The water ripples around them as she puts the cloth back into it, and brings it up again, dripping, to wipe at his chest. “Azriel, your wings…”

His wings are only burnt. His bones are only fractured. The important thing to him is that there is still a stellar white glowing between them.

She helps him sit on one of the steps into the pool, and when he convinces her that he is comfortable, she perches herself on his lap and taps the cloth gently against the inside of his wings. It is excruciating. It is every single one of his nerves being pulled out through the pores of his skin and shredded between razors. Around her, he knows he does not need to pretend, so he cries out into the open air, and pants, and grits his teeth all until she is satisfied that there is no more dirt in the blisters and cuts.

“When were you going to tell me?” she whispers. The House has turned on the faucet again, is slowly replacing the water so that it feels cool against his skin. He thinks there might be medicinal herbs floating along the top, but all he can smell is sage.

“I found you as soon as I could,” he says. 

“No,” Gwyn shakes her head, and loose tendrils of hair cling to the wetness on her cheeks, sticky with sweat and ash. “I meant when were you going to tell me about the bond?”

If the bond never snapped before, he thinks it snaps now. It pulls so tight he is afraid it will begin to break, and he only wishes he had both hands to use to pull her towards him, to put his palms on either side of her face and tell her that he thought being bonded to him would only be a burden. He is gasping for air.

“Did you not want me?” she asks.

Both of her hands go to his chest, and with her fingers stretched out they are the breadth of the entire sky.

“I want you,” he says. He hopes she can feel the way his heart is thrumming against her fingertips.

Her face looks so serious, and he pulls her towards him by wrapping his arm around her back. In the crook of his neck, her cheek settles. The bond between them is pulsing, and he is glad for the hours they’ve spent together, in the minutes before sleep, because he thinks it has afforded him a little benefit of the doubt. And she listens.

“Gwyn,” he says. It is gossamer unraveling from the spindle of his tongue. “I have been walking in wasteland my entire life, and you are the first drop of rain I have ever felt on my face. And suddenly I’m standing in the middle of this tempest and I cannot believe how lucky I am, that I get to stand there and hold your hand during it.”

She kisses his collarbone, and his eyes slide closed.

“I love you,” he tucks into the space between her jaw and her ear with his lips. “I love you, with all of me. I just didn’t think that all of me was enough for you.”

Her fingers are as light as the breeze coming in through the windows, as they travel up from his chest and to his neck. They stop at the line of his hair, and with just the slightest twitch from her fingertips, he is turning his face towards her and opening his eyes. The bond solidifies from errant moonlight into a brilliant diamond, when he sees the look of wonder glimmering across her face.

“Enough for me?” she breathes. “Azriel, I was ready to accept the mating bond ages ago.”

The moon and the tides work as inverses of each other. They ebb and flow in tandem, they do not ever close the distance. But Azriel thinks that for just a moment, the moon sinks down beneath the surface of the waves and is bathed in it.

She continues, pressing a kiss to his forehead. “I want to be your mate. And I want to love you. I want an entire eternity with you, and even then I will want more of you.”

Their kisses turn gentle. He tucks his confessions into the blank spaces in between her freckles, and she offers some of her own, writes them in scrolling script across the lines of his bones against his skin. They are still in the bath when Rhysand’s voice drifts down to them from upstairs, and Gwyn helps him wrap himself in a towel so that Madja can tend to his wounds.

The next night, they lean against each other at the mouth of the Sidra, and they accept the bond.

The night after that, Gwyn asks him to take her to Sangravah.

The burns are still sensitive across his wings, and so they do not fly. He winnows them closer in successive increments, distance to distance to distance. He has not been to Sangravah since the night he slaughtered her attackers. She has not been there either. Though he supposes that if nightmares count, then it counts for them both.

The temple is dilapidated and ruinous. The stones of the walls have crumbled and turned porous. There might be a lake somewhere nearby, but he cannot hear the sound of birds or a stream that feeds into it. It is alone, and it looks like such a pitiful thing, for it to have been the place she dreaded to return to.

She walks down the halls, and light filters in through cracks in the roof and splits like a breaking in the clouds across her face. As they amble through the temple, she tells him stories of her sister, and of her time growing up in the temple. There is even a smile on her face, as she tells him about teaching the children, and of singing during services.

Then they come to the room, and the rains from over the years have weathered away all texture from the stone. She stands at the center of it, and he is sure she remembers that she is standing in the exact same spot, except her shoulders are relaxed and sloped, and she spins slowly around. She takes in the drying vines that cover the walls–the leaves are crisp and blackened. She looks at the furniture that has either collapsed or collected dust and rotted leaves. When she finishes her surveillance of the space she turns to him, and there is a frown on her face.

This is it? She asks him with a look.

He is surprised too, and so he only shrugs.

The temple is nothingness and it is absolutely silent around them. Not even the wind stirs.

He winnows her back to Velaris the same way, and gives her the space to think, and to process. But evidently there is not much left for her to consider, because as soon as they are back in the House of Wind, she takes one look at Nesta and Cassian at the breakfast table, fighting over the coffee carafe, and she turns towards him with the most determined look on her face.

"Our house will not be quiet," she promises him.

His smile is wide and unencumbered. "No it will not."

*

Their bedroom is full of decoration. In fact, it is a veritable mess, and there is clutter strewn everywhere. Gwyn's leathers and his, thrown over the chair. Knives and blades, staffs and gloves across the top of their dresser. Gwyn has a vanity, but it is covered in wooden horses Feyre's young students painted at the gallery, because Gwyn says she couldn't possibly leave any of them behind. Her perfumes and makeup are shoved without care into the drawer, and she visits Nesta's new house with Cassian whenever she feels like using cosmetics.

There is a painting from Feyre on the wall above their bed of their mating ceremony. And ribbons hanging off of the posts of their headboard, braided in colors of cobalt blue, white, and teal. Gwyn has taken up weaving, and there are half started projects littering the floor, the nightstand. Their sheets are covered in patches that were never needed. Gifts from the past three solstices, including a pearl necklace from Amren, a scented candle from Cassian, and books from Emerie and Nesta.

Dozens of books. Stacked high, both on his side of the bed and on hers.

It is odd, now, to have the entire House to themselves. Their friends still visit, as often as they can. And the House prepares bountiful feasts for every occasion. The Wind whistles like music through its halls and every open door, and Azriel understands how the House got its name, when he no longer feels the need to shut himself away.

Feyre is holding a wiggling Nyx in her arms, and looks completely disheveled. His nephew is only four, and yet he uses his entire body weight to lean away from his mother, to kick his legs and wave his arms. Feyre blows a strand of hair away from her face and with reddened cheeks from the exertion of trying to wrangle him, she glares at Azriel.

"I blame you," she says.

"You'll never take me alive!" Nyx proclaims, giggling.

"Gwyn is the one who chose his naptime story," Azriel says, shrugging. His smiles come easier now than they ever have, and he can feel it in the lines of his lips like it is innate, now. "You should blame her."

He tries not to think too long on the fact that Nyx, apparently, identifies with the villain of that story, a mercenary fighting against an unjust rule.

He grimaces. “I’ll make it up to you by being the one to teach him how to fly.”

At this, Feyre’s eyes brighten. She evidently remembers the time that Azriel taught her how to fly, and is delighted at the prospect of it being someone else to do it for Nyx.

Gwyn smiles sheepishly, and leans down towards Nyx's ear. The boy stills instantly, deepest blue eyes wide as he hangs on her every word. She whispers, "If I hear from mommy that you've been good, I'll make your uncles act out a play for you next time you visit."

Nyx is immediately calm, plasters on such a contrite expression that it reminds Azriel of Rhysand, of the way he can control his features to convey whatever he wills them to. He knows that Nyx will be quite the force, when it is his turn to be High Lord.

Feyre gives Gwyn a relieved expression, and ushers the boy away before he can decide to make a break for it again. There is a close moment, at the window, when Azriel thinks Nyx is going to insist he can fly the entire way home on his fledgling wings, but Gwyn clears her throat and the boy only lifts his arms to allow Feyre to tuck him into her chest and take him back down to the Riverhouse.

A song drifts from Gwyn’s lips as they both clean up after the whirlwind that is Nyx. She hums it at first, but when he catches her eye as he is fixing the cushions on the couch, she begins to sing the words and he wonders why he didn’t recognize that song before. It is the lullaby they sing together every night. And so he sings along with her, and they make their way up the stairs together, towards the library where Nyx has left books in a mess all across the room in his search for the one pirate fairytale that had inspired his attempt to stage a coup against his parents.

Azriel gathers all of the books, and Gwyn puts them back on the shelf. Their spines scruff lightly against the wood as they slide into place. Gwyn is focused on her task, even as Azriel finishes his. Sneaking up behind her, he wraps his arms and his shadows around her waist, and kisses her on the cheek.

“What book do you want to read?” Azriel asks.

They settle together on the couch, and Gwyn’s head is on his lap as Azriel reads to her. She can hardly keep her eyes open, and there is a strand of her hair curling beneath the highest arch of her cheekbone as her eyes blink shut. She has her fingers fisted at the hem of his shirt, and he brushes his fingers across her knuckles as he continues to turn page after page.

There are wine stains on the carpet, and they just can’t be bothered to clean them up. Once, they were violet, but they are now a dark gray.

Azriel carries Gwyn to their bed, and only when he lays her down does she stir. Her eyes are foggy, and she blinks up from beneath rust colored eyelashes. Her smile is soft when she finally seems to recognize him.

“Do you think we’ll have twins?” Gwyn asks.

If he wasn’t leaning down towards her with his forearms braced on the bed beside her, he would have fallen. It’s like he has suddenly taken in a large gulp of water into both of his lungs, and has discovered that he has gills he can breathe through, instead.

“I think so,” he tells her. His hand lifts off the bed, and his thumb brushes low across her abdomen, feeling the lines of her body through the cool fabric of her dress. Like he can imagine it.

“I want to give you that,” she says, and her voice is shaking just slightly. Like a trickle of water over riverstone. “I want you to give yourself that.”

He wants it, too. He wants to see their house full, wants to see Gwyn with that same exasperated look on Feyre’s face before she flew out the window. Exasperation, and marvelous awe at the tiny, inconceivable thing in her arms. 

Azriel is well acquainted with sound. He recalls his childhood, how he could interpret every cadence of his brothers’ steps upstairs to discern their mood, how he could tell just how long it would take for his father to reach him by how the hinges on the door creaked. He used to thrive in the silence, because it was the only time he didn’t have to hear. But it is quiet in their House, now, and he only wants to fill it with noise. He doesn’t just want their house to not be quiet, he wants it to be uproariously loud. 

He leans forward, and presses a kiss right below his thumb.

“Azriel,” she breathes, and he can hear that she is blushing, just from her voice alone. He tastes sea salt and sage in the back of his throat, and when he looks up, he sees that she has gotten up onto her elbows, and she is scraping her teeth across her bottom lip.

“Aren’t you exhausted?” he asks her. He would laugh, if not for the fact that he is just as affected by her as she is of him.

“No,” she says. She shakes her head, and reaches forward to rake her fingers through his hair. “Are you?”

“No,” he echoes. “I can’t remember the last time that I was.”

Sometimes, he thinks that the bond is like a tangible thing between them. That it twines and twists around their bones to become their interconnected veins, and if he reaches out between them, he will feel it in his hand. He thinks now that he couldn’t ever possibly hold it, because his hands are not large enough. It is thrumming in the air that he breathes, it spreads brilliant light all throughout their room and he thinks into the sky outside, too, and it is impossibly vast.

He crawls up over her and hovers over her lips. She is breathing so that her chest flutters as it expands, and her hand never leaves his hair. Tugging on it, she grins when he has to let her pull his head back.

She raises up and places a kiss on the underside of his jaw, her tongue darting out to trace the line of it. When she finally lets go of his hair, it is to slip her hands beneath the hem of his shirt.

“You should rest now,” Azriel said, but his eyes are sliding shut and the smirk unfurls on his mouth.

“Why?” Gwyn asks. Her nails scrape across the bottom of his ribs, and he feels his heart pulsing like each push will get it closer to the feel of having her hands wrapped around it. “I’m wide awake.”

He can feel how wide awake she is. Can scent it in the air, feel it like a current against his skin. He shivers, and leans down so that he can kiss the side of her neck, leave red marks there like it is the first time, and he whispers.

“Rest now,” he says. “Because when you are pregnant with our child, I’m sure you will be very tired and regretting the sleep you lost out on.”

A sharp gasp blows across the side of his cheek, and he props himself up on his hand to see just how his words alone have affected her. He finds that her cheeks are bright red beneath the tan of her freckles, her eyes are wide, and her breath comes from her nose as if it is a great effort to maintain that last vestige of composure alone.

He slides a hand down, and tugs up the skirt of her dress so that he can draw light, grazing circles right above her knee and on the inside of her thigh.

“Just,” she says, stuttering, “one?”

He drags the entire flat of his palm up her thigh, his thumb remaining on the inside, and watches as that breath stalls in her chest. She groans, tilting her chin up towards the ceiling, and he kisses her just so that she is forced to come back down. So that when he pulls his lips away, she is looking at him.

His hand is at the front of her hip, and her skirt is bunched around his wrist.

“Sorry,” he corrects. He dips down for a quick peck across the bridge of her nose, and she immediately scrunches it up at him. “I meant one hundred.”

She huffs out a breath, ducking her head to the side, and acts like she’s about to push him away with her hands on his chest, but then he moves again, and his hand is right over her stomach, gently curved around the slight slope of it.

“You’ll be even more beautiful,” he murmurs, “when you’re carrying our child.”

She is perfectly still, and her eyes are half-lidded and glossy, and he sees her lips begin to part. Her fingers slide further up his chest, and the air feels incredibly cool against his skin when she tugs his shirt off.

“There’s no way I’m sleeping now,” Gwyn promises, and her voice is like wading in waters that are up to his throat at the beach. 

The dress is forgotten, pooled around her waist, and he has to tear his eyes away from hers to look down at it. The skin of her stomach is taut and covered in small bumps as she shivers, and he entwines his hands with hers, pins them to her sides so that he can dip down and kiss right below her navel.

Her fingers curl like claws in their sheets, and she tries to catch him off guard so that he releases his hold, but he is expecting it and only holds on tighter.

He looks up at her, and his cheek is resting against her soft skin. He can see her breasts heaving, and she is wetting her lips. Finally, he lets go of one of her hands, but it is only so that he can curve a finger around the hemline of her panties, and glide his finger back and forth across the elastic.

“We can make a baby together, Gwyn,” he suggests, and his voice is already light and airy from the laugh he knows she will bring out of him. 

“A hundred,” she amends, and there it is. A laugh bubbling from his throat, and his hands stop somewhere along her hip to begin to tug down her panties.

He shifts up onto an elbow, and with languid movements, guides her panties down. She has to swing her legs over to one side, so he can finish, and he thinks she does it perhaps a little too quickly, on purpose, so that he has to duck. When she is bared to him, and her panties are on the floor, he catches her leg before it can swing all the way back to where it was, and pushes upward, so that her knee is drawing towards her chest, and then he presses it to the side.

Perfectly bare before him, and he blankets her belly in another chorus of kisses to portray his overwhelming gratitude.

“Right now,” he adds. “Can you picture it?”

Her heel catches somewhere behind him, on his shoulder as she shifts. She tries to use it as leverage, to bring her hips closer to where he is hovering in front of her, but his hold on her knee, pressing it into the bed, is firm. He does not waver.

“What exactly,” she pants, “am I picturing?”

He moves like he is about to dip his face down, even opens his mouth slightly, and as he looks up at her he can see her eyes spark. Her abdomen tightens in anticipation, bracing herself, but he goes no further. The hand that is not busy holding her in place rests against her hip, and he taps his fingers across the arch of the bone.

“Me,” he says. So slowly, he can sense his voice is sinking into her. It falls across her skin and melts like snow. She arches her back and then falls back down onto the mattress, huffing and looking like she is on the edge of madness. He continues, “When I’m deep inside of you, and you feel my cum filling you up completely.”

Releasing her grip on the sheets, Gwyn jolts, and attempts to lean up so that she can look at him, but his hand snaps out to release her hip, and instead shove her back down with his entire hand spread across the center of her chest. He can feel her heartbeat, erratic and frenzied beneath his hand, and he strokes his thumb across the underside of her breast to soothe her. The dress is still in his way, and he realizes he resents a scrap of fabric, of all things. 

“Is that what you want, Gwyn?” he asks. “You want to feel my cum inside of you, and have me do it over and over and over again?”

“You’re not doing much of anything right now,” Gwyn mutters. Her hands go to his wrist, and she might try to pry him off, except he lowers his mouth.

So that his lips brush across her center as he speaks, “Would you want it soft? Or do you want me pounding into you? How should we make a child, Gwyn?”

“Both,” Gwyn says immediately. Her head rolls back and forth on the bed, and he can feel her hand tightening and then flexing around his wrist. “Both. All of it. We’ll have to try at least a few times, won’t we?”

“Gwyn,” he says. She sucks in a breath, and his hand lifts with the expansion of her chest. He brushes his thumb across her again, and she sinks back into the bed. He has not lifted his lips from where every whisper of a word is a kiss across the juncture between her thighs. “I don’t have to try.”

He slips out his tongue, and he is already close enough that it finds her immediately. She jumps, and both of her hands grasp at his hair as his tongue flicks lightly across that bud above her entrance. It might have stung, her pulling at the roots of his hair, if not for the fact that he is already so enthralled by the taste of her, not much else matters.

She moans up into the open air, and he feels her nails rake across his scalp.

They know each other well, by now. He knows exactly what he can do to have her writhing and begging beneath his mouth. Her taste is as familiar to him as the taste of salt air or of flying through it. But he wants to explore her, anyway. Wants to caress every inch of her, move so slowly that he isn’t sure where he ends and she begins. It is like looking at his favorite painting, and being so in awe of it that he wants to paint it again, and again, and again. He uses what he knows of her as a reference, and etches the same lines on a blank canvas. He will have a thousand reiterations of her by the time he is done, and then he will have even more.

With his tongue lapping at her, he is less preoccupied with holding her down and far more interested in exposing every inch of her to him. He drags his hand down her stomach, and it finds its home at the inside of her thigh. His fingers curl, leave indentations in the silk of her skin, and he pushes so that her legs are spread.

“Azriel,” she says incredulously. “More. Please, I need more.”

He knows what she needs. It’s quite silly of her not to remember. But she is trembling, and he knows what it is like, to be at the complete mercy of your mate. She has held him in her palms enough times for him to know what she must be feeling, with him moving so achingly slow. He presses the flat of his tongue against the source of her pleasure, moves it from one side and then to the next. And then in circles.

His hand slips down her thigh–partly due to her writhing, and partly due to him not being able to get close enough–he is clutching onto her so tightly that something has to give. And rather than curse himself for losing control, he turns the happenstance into fortuity, and the thumb that has drifted closer to her center strokes slowly up the inside of her sex, where she is wet and dripping onto the sheets. He spreads her even more, and then uses the forefinger of his same hand to trace around her opening

All it would take, is to draw her into his mouth, to suck and flick the tip of his tongue across her, with his finger inside to have her melt at his touch. He has brought her to this edge between pleasure and ecstasy, and the taste of her brings him to the exact same spot. She always sounds like this, like she is singing and it is for his ears alone.

He pulls away from her under the guise of needing to take a breath, but it is only so he can shift his arm, so that both hands are spreading her wide. She gasps, and seems like she is debating between wrenching him back down to finish what he started and pulling him up to kiss her like that would be some kind of punishment–when in fact he would like nothing more.

Perhaps there is one thing he would like more.

“Do you want to come on my mouth?” he asks her. “Before you come around my cock?”

She’s looking at him like he is the center of the universe, and for some reason he believes her.

“Yes, Azriel,” she says. “Please, just–”

His head falls back down, and this time he can tell that his brief pause has made her all that much more sensitive. Like he knows to do, he draws her clit into his mouth and sucks, harshly, and then soothes it with strokes of his tongue. She is screaming around clenched teeth, breathing like an entire world of air cannot possibly be enough. He feels the muscles of her thighs tense near his wrists, but his hands are busy keeping all of her exposed, and she cannot move to wrap her legs around his head.

Once, she shakes, and he sucks at her clit again so that lines appear in his cheeks, and then is licking at her in the way he knows will make her come undone.

She is nearly there, when finally he slips a finger into her. Her muscles welcome him in greedily, clenching and relaxing in a delicious cycle, as he strokes inside of her. Again, he is lost in simply feeling, in memorizing what is already ingrained to him now. How smooth she is. How wet she is. For him.

She’s so good. She is wonderful and it is intoxicating, to feel the way her taste changes on his tongue at the exact moment she comes. Her fingers leave his hair to drag up her own body, to scrape across her own throat, and then wrap tightly around the top of the headboard above her as she arches. She screams his name, and it is the sweetest symphony he has ever heard.

He continues to kiss and lick at her center, until her thighs are twitching, and her moans sound more like whimpers. That is when he finally pulls away.

His tongue darts out to lick away the remaining wetness left over on his lips, and that is when he knows he is smiling. Fingers still tight around the headboard, Gwyn looks down at him, and does not relax in the slightest.

“More,” she says again.

Come here, she means. He can hear the words down the bond, as clearly as if she has spoken them. Come here. Let me wrap my legs around you, and fuck me. Give me all of it. It might be intentional, or it might be such a glaring thought that she can’t help but let it slip. He knows what she means, and yet he cannot resist. He is already drunk, and it tastes sweeter when it is coming from her.

“Okay,” he says. He is thrilled, he is getting carried away.

He wraps his hands around the backs of her thighs, and with one sharp tug to pull her towards him, the dress gets caught beneath her and bunches even further up her waist. It is a collection of fabric right at the bottom of her breasts, and it looks taut enough that it might rip, but then he doesn’t look at it anymore, and instead presses his face between her legs once again.

He repeats the process, this time going even slower. She is already so sensitive, that every movement of his tongue is like a bolt of lightning through her body. She lets go of the headboard, and then her arms are jumping wildly, trying to gain purchase in the pillow beside her head, in her hair, on her breasts, her stomach, his hair, his hands– anything. Some kind of anchor to this world. But he wants her out of her mind, he wants her to know only one thing, and that is his name.

So he buries himself in her. He drowns in her. And when she comes again, it is calamity all around him. She repeats his name, over and over, a whisper and a song all at once. His shadows were coiled so tightly behind him, but now they come forth. They spread like mist all across her skin, every inch, and he can tell it is a comfort to her, because she finally relaxes.

While the remnants of his name are still tumbling from her clumsy tongue, he crawls over her, and brushes the auburn hair from her face so that he can kiss her. She returns the kiss, but he thinks she is still trying to say something, or doesn’t know what she’s saying, and he laughs delightedly into her mouth.

When he pulls away, just looking at her–her face as mesmerizing as the sky between dusk and daybreak–her lips are still moving, and he leans closer so that he can hear.

“– not part of the plan,” she is saying, with her eyes closed. “I thought you were going to fuck me, let me feel your–”

“You’re insatiable,” he chastises her. He goes to pinch her side lightly in retribution and finds that her dress is there. He fists it in his hands, and begins to tug it up her body. “Take this off.”

“Your words are contradictory,” she shoots back. Finally, she opens her eyes, and he is completely disarmed by that oceanic blue. He thinks she means to be snide, but she helps him peel the dress off over her head by lifting up her shoulders. When she is finally bare, he takes a deep, wavering breath.

His pants are still on, and all at once, both of their hands go down to rectify that particular problem. Their hands move in harmony, unlacing and then going to their respective sides to help him slide the pants down off of his hips. His clothes join hers on the floor, and then he captures both sides of her face in his hands so that all he can see is her, and the wild corona of metallic hair that frames her face.

She is beautiful. He can’t say it enough, in as many ways, because he is being swallowed by that profound depth to her gaze. Like he is sinking to the very bottom of the sea, where all around him is glorious pressure that holds him together. It is not much unlike his shadows, at the center of which he does not need to see because it is so magnificently dark that all he needs is to feel. And in that depthless dark, the silver that glows between them is that much more apparent.

She is beautiful, and he is both undone and held together by her all at the same time.

It is unfathomable, and so his gaze deepens, he shakes his head in his disbelief. His lips part, and she is smiling at him like she knows everything. So he folds her up in his arms, and with his cheek pressed to the top of her head, rolls backwards so that they are both sitting up, and her legs can wrap around his waist.

One of her arms is draped across his back, the fingertips brushing across the joint where his left wing meets his shoulder. He stretches out both wings, just so he can see the way her already wide eyes widen even more. Her hand is caressing the side of his face, and when he rocks his hips upward, her fingers curl, and she hisses in a breath.

“Fuck,” she says, and her eyes flutter closed. He can feel her wet across his laps, and moves his hips again just so that he can settle more fully against her. She repeats, “Fuck.”

“You wanted more,” he warns her. 

His hand drifts down from the small of her back to grip her ass, and then he is pulling her forward, helping her grind against him. Her mouth falls open, and her head leans back.

“Take it,” he says.

Her limbs are loose and her movements languorous. Her head rolls back down, and she looks up at him through half-lidded eyes. It is not cold, but he is sure that her breaths are coming as puffs of clouds in the air between them anyway. She takes a moment, but he does not begrudge her for it, because it is a moment that he savors. The feeling of the ends of her hair falling down her back and brushing across his fingertips. Blinding, blinking stars behind his eyelids as she grinds into him. Her breasts, pressed up against his bare chest, a frenzied heat between them.

She might still be adjusting, so–with his hand supporting her back–he helps her lean back. It puts her hips even closer to his, pins his hand between his thigh and her ass, and presses her chest right up into his face. He ducks down, licking across the curve of her breast, kissing and leaving round red marks. Melodic moans to his ears, and then he draws her nipple into his mouth and grazes his teeth against it.

That gets through to her, in her haze. She straightens, a strangled sound in her throat, and lets go of his face so she can reach down between them. Her hand wraps around his cock and she strokes him lightly. He releases her breast, leaves it wet and catching the light from the window as he looks down between them, just to see. His cock is almost painfully hard. Every brush of her thumb or her fingertips across him is both agony and bliss. He is so sensitive, his outstretched wings twitch each time she touches a spot right below the head. She is enraptured by the sight of a bit of clear liquid collected at the tip, and swipes a thumb through it so she can spread it with the pumping of her palm.

He looks up at her, to see that reverent look on her face for only a split second, before her head snaps up, their gazes meet, and reverence is eclipsed by absolute blitheness. Her smile is ardent, and her eyes are still glazed over with her lust.

Gwyn’s hips cant forward, and even while she is still stroking his cock, her centerline is pressed against him, and she is rocking forward.

There are spots in his vision, and she is showing no signs of stopping soon, of offering him any relief.

“I like you like this,” she comments, and just her voice has him moaning low in his throat.

“Wont to your every whim?” he asks.

“Dumb,” she says. He huffs out an incredulous laugh, and his fingers tighten on her skin. It only helps her to move forward, when his fingers knead at the flesh of her ass. Her hold tightens around his cock, and she says, “What are you thinking of, Shadowsinger, with that distant look on your face?”

Inside you, his mind offers immediately. “I want to be inside you,” he says.

“Is that all?” Gwyn asks. Her hand has picked up quite the punitive rhythm. He is worried, for a moment, that he won’t be able to last, that all of his plans and his wants to spill himself inside of her will be in vain. “Just inside of me, and nothing else?”

“What else is there?” he says. The words come forward automatically. It is surface level thought, and it is all he is capable of, because his nerves are singing for her. His shadows are around them both, and they twine with her hair. Orange and black. 

“I believe you promised me your cum,” Gwyn says. “Deep inside, if I remember correctly. Don’t you want more? Because I want you inside of me until I’m sure that none of it will come out with you. Until I’m sure that you’ve emptied yourself completely.”

He sees it so clearly, through that connection in their mind. Gwyn is enthralled by the image of him shaking above her, buried up to the hilt inside of her and coming. Collapsed on top of her, with the feel of heat between her legs. But he knows, just as he can sense that image that she is practically throwing at him from across the bond, that she is just as enamored with the idea that by doing all of that, her abdomen can become swollen with their child. That they can create a family.

Her hand twists, and if it weren’t for his shadows behind him, he would have fallen backward and come immediately into her palm.

She must have noticed, because she dips down, and licks along his jaw line as her hand slows. Her fingers stroke more insistently along the juncture between his wings and his skin, and even as he is shivering, she shifts in his lap. Her legs are spread wide on either side, and she is supported up on her knees.

He is ready for it, but that doesn’t stop his heart from hammering in his chest and molten ore from pooling low in his gut the second she aligns herself over him, and then begins to sink down.

It feels like skimming your hand over the surface of the water, that is how smooth she is, how wet she is. Except that there is much more pressure, and she is stretching around him and even though he is not caught off guard, he wants to fall back anyway. Just to feel her ride him, feel exactly how she wants to be pleasured by his cock.

But she’s holding onto him tightly, and each rise and then fall of her against him is stardust directly to his veins, is moonbeams across his skin. He sighs and moans up towards her. He can’t decide if he wants her mouth to continue its descent across his chest, on his neck, or if he wants to kiss her, to taste her tongue for what isn’t the first and will never be the last time.

“I love you,” he says. It falls out like all of the freshwater pearls have grown tired of being polished by his mouth. 

She lifts up from where she had been drawing warm lines across his skin with her lips and tongue, and she is still rocking into him when she says. “I love you, too. With all of me.”

That’s all he needs, to kick their legs out from underneath them and toss her back down to the bed. He still keeps his hands behind her, so that she never comes off of him completely, but her back falls against the mattress unceremoniously, and her arms wrap around his neck as she gasps. He is hovering above her, and his wings are spread out as far as they can go. There is a shadow over her face, only the smallest crescent of light at the very edge.

She might admonish him. But then he snaps his hips forward, and her chin tilts up as she groans.

“I love you,” she repeats. He begins thrusting into her. Slow, for now. Steady tides, up into her as his fingers tangle in her hair, and one hand drifts down, down, to cup her breast. “I love you.”

She wraps her legs around his waist, and locks each of her ankles around the other so that as he strokes in and out of her, he is pushed impossibly deep. His pelvis hits against hers, and he leaps forward to crush her mouth with his. He wants her words on his tongue.

“I love you,” he says back, his lips brushing across hers. 

He can’t say it enough. He can’t have enough. He is completely drowned by her, is surrounded by waters on all sides and it is a velveteen black all around him, aside from the silvery thread that connects his bones and his soul to hers. If he wasn’t on the edge already, her voice would do him in.

“Come for me,” she says. Her voice is pleading, it shakes and wavers and he presses his body more fully against her. His hips are rocking and grinding, and his chest and stomach are aligned with hers. He hums in response. She says, “Please come. I want to feel it inside of me. I can tell you’re close, just please–”

He wants to. He will. He wants to pour himself into her, like this. He lets go of her hair to cradle her head in the crook of his arm. He places feathery light kisses across her brow and her nose–the corner of her lips. Oh, he has already poured all of himself. He’d be an empty vessel, if not for the fact that she fills him up and up again. He is overflowing, and he wants to give her more.

His thumb is light and soft, when he slips it between them, and brushes it across her clit. Once. Twice. As many times as there are stars in the sky. Her eyes burst open, and all sound is caught in her throat. Their eyes are locked and he loves her, loves her and then he feels it. Feels her muscles fluttering around him, and his wings stretch and flinch when it makes that pool of molten ore in his stomach instantly grow white hot. Her fingers are bruising, against his shoulders, and they slip and glance across the first outcropping of his wing.

It spills. He comes, and it would be catastrophe with the way all of his blood vessels burst and his nerves are scorching with the heat of it–except she’s still looking at him, and his hips stop moving. His cock pulses, and her eyes nearly roll back. He is as deep as he can be inside of her, does not move even as he continues to come. They are panting, they can’t breathe.

Azriel lifts his hand, drags it slowly up her abdomen, and then presses down, right over her stomach.

“Don’t move,” he says.

She shakes her head. Her voice is hoarse. “I won’t.”

Calm is a ribbon he wraps around her, by tracing smoothing circles in the skin of her belly, by stroking her hair and leaning down to kiss lighty across her face and shoulders. She traces the lines of his wings, and it makes them twitch and has him gritting his teeth because he just came, is still inside of her, and it feels like flying. But eventually the ribbon is completely spooled around her, and he looks down between them.

He gently slips his arm out from behind her head, and then slips a hand down between her back and the mattress, so that her hips are tilted slightly forward. He is so sensitive, that his cock pulses again, but he merely groans and begins to pull out of her.

Slowly. Carefully. Her wetness gleams across his length, and they are both looking down to witness it, to take in every detail. Eventually, he is out of her completely and it is such an undeniable loss that he nearly thrusts back forward again.

Azriel leans back on his heels, and uses both hands to position her, so that he can see. Her muscles are still fluttering, at uneven intervals. There is pearlescent white, and it drips slowly down.

Quickly, he lifts his hand off of her stomach and swipes a finger out to catch it. Before he can think much of it, his finger is back inside of her, and she is gasping.

“Fuck, Azriel,” she says.

“I want to make sure you get it all,” he says. And even as his finger is in her, he plunges in another.

He looks up to her face, and she is so flushed that even the skin of her chest and her shoulders is a pleasant, blotchy red. He grins at her, and she traces her fingers up both sides of her stomach, over her breasts. To her nipples. And then her smile is ravenous.

He keeps his hand behind her back, but as his fingers go slowly–tortuously for them both–in and out of her, he lets himself fall down onto his elbow. Taking turns between looking at her face to see the undiluted pleasure there, and down between her legs to make sure he doesn’t miss a single drop, his gaze is rapturous. He wants her there, forever, with his fingers plunging his cum even deeper into her.

“That’s it, baby,” he tells her, when her hips abruptly thrust upward and she moans. His fingers circle that same spot inside of her, and she does it again. “Do you feel it?”

Because she feels incredibly wet, with her arousal and the result of his climax between the space of his fingers. They are curling and coaxing, rubbing against all of the spots he knows, now. And she whimpers, like she is breaking, kneads her breasts with such desperation that the blush of her skin turns streaks of white in the wake of her fingers. Her hips keep rocking forward, and he presses the heel of his palm up against her clit to help her alleviate some of the pressure.

She sings to him like she is breaking, but he knows Gwyneth Berdara does not break.

She bends. Her entire body lifts off of the bed, bending towards him, and then suddenly she is grinding against his hand. She lets go of her breasts to reach down and hold it against her, as she rocks into him. It is her pleasure at his hand, and his fingers thrust into her with much more purpose. So slick, and it is from him.

Her orgasm is a cataclysmic flood. It fills their entire space, makes him see the brightness of the lightening skies outside through ripples of shadows over the surface of their waters. He watches, enchanted by those keening sounds she makes like silver bells. He’d keep her here forever, full of his seed and of his fingers, if he thought she would let him. But Gwyn is pulling at him, tugging him by the shoulders and the hair. Reluctantly, he slips his hand out of her, drags it up over her stomach, the length of her sternum, and wraps it lightly around her throat so he can kiss her, and perhaps get to see her eyes again, once she is done bending towards him.

It is not nearly dark enough, not even close to evening, but night triumphs all around them. It is stars and planets and other worlds, shooting across their vision as he presses every line of his body against hers. He always feels most peaceful when she is around, like listening to her heart is a lulling sound. He lines himself up next to her, presses his cheek against her chest.

To love and be loved by her, he covets it and encircles it in both of his palms. It is bright, shining silver, peeking out through the cracks in his fingers like the moon through breaks in the clouds. Their House is quiet. It is calm, and it is theirs. So he sleeps, for now, and awaits for the moment that it will be marvelously, uproariously loud.