Pairing: human Elain Archeron x fae Azriel Shadowsinger
Rating: E
Summary: After learning of her younger sister's fate Under the Mountain, Elain Archeron struggled to envision her future as the lady of the Nolan estate. Sometimes, when she woke in the night and the iron band of her engagement ring was cold as ice on her finger, she knew only dread.
She had no such trouble with the fearsome faerie male who made a habit of checking on her nearly every day. It might have been some trick, a faerie enchantment or thrall, but falling in love with him was the easiest thing she ever did.
Lucien’s voice was quiet, broken, as he whispered to Elain, “You’re my mate.”
Nesta whirled on him, furious, but it was Azriel whose agonized groan rent the air. Every word he ground out through his gritted teeth was raw.
“She’s my wife.”
An ACOTAR Secret Santa Gift Exchange 2022 present for @ultadverb. Read this fic on AO3 here!
Azriel’s blood was too slick and too warm on his leathers, and the hands Mor kept braced on his back and his chest had gone utterly numb.
Across the room, wearing nothing more than their stained, torn nightgowns and rope, two human women wept and raged as they were dragged into the heart of Hybern’s throne room.
And with the appearance of the Archeron sisters, the tiniest shavings of hope that she might get Azriel to Feyre and administer some of her healing blood to the dying male in her arms disintegrated.
With a harsh breath, Azriel managed to lift his head too, to follow that wretched sound that cleaved the silence left in the wake of Feyre’s stunned horror. Mor knew the moment he saw them; his form tensed, the muscled mass of him sliding out of her arms. It was Cassian alone who kept Azriel upright as their brother tripped forward half a step, his teeth bared.
“You made a very big mistake,” the king was saying, and Mor paid him no mind as she scanned the guards surrounding Feyre’s sisters. She cataloged every weapon, every gap in their armor, every twitch.
Nesta was twisting and kicking. Elain was trembling, sobbing and wide-eyed, as Mor met her gaze.
“Mor, grab him,” Cassian hissed beneath his breath as Azriel shifted again. Mor forced feeling back into her fingers and twisted them into the straps across Az’s chest. Her heart clenched as he moaned beneath his breath, but she kept her grip firm, holding him steady.
Holding him back.
She didn’t have to restrain him for long once the king’s eyes flicked back to them as he spoke, his voice a slithery, disgusting thing in her ear.
“...I do not wish to invade the continent—but to work with them. My powers ensconced their court from prying eyes, just to show them the benefits.” Smirking, he waved a lazy hand. Even though he snarled, Azriel sagged between Mor and Cassian again as the bloodbane undoubtedly surged through his veins. “Such impressive attempts to infiltrate their sacred palace, Shadowsinger—and utter proof to their Majesties, of course, that your court is not as benevolent as you seem.”
Mor’s boots slid in the pool of blood growing beneath their feet. “Fuck.”
Somewhere beside them, Feyre hissed, “If you do not let my sisters go, I will slaughter—”
The king interrupted, but Mor’s ears rang with the truth of Feyre's fury.
And, as if in agreement with her, Azriel’s hand twitched on her shoulder like he meant to lift it off and go for his blade. Mor clamped her hand around his wrist—and for once, her competitive, cunning friend didn’t fight back or try to subvert her attention while he made an escape.
He was too weak to shake her.
Gods above. Every breath filled her with icy dread.
On Azriel’s other side, Cassian seemed similarly inclined toward violence. When Mor dared a glance, his eyes were burning, as if smoldering hatred had turned them to live embers.
The queens joined the conversation then, the hateful, scheming bitches who had tarnished Andromache's legacy and doomed the mortals to a war that would decimate them. Mor could have cried out at the injustice of it. They were chattering, bargaining away lives, while Azriel was dying—
“Eternal youth,” the king boasted. “Do you deny the benefits? A mortal queen becomes one who might reign forever. Of course, there are risks—the transition can be... difficult. But a strong- willed individual could survive.”
“Show us. Demonstrate it can be done, that it is safe.”
The words slid in Mor’s ear and out the other, whisked away by the terror that seized her as Azriel’s breathing grew shallower, sweat beading along his brow. He was still staring at the sisters and their guards, but he must have felt her gaze on his face. When his eyes met hers, they were glazed with pain, the skin between them furrowed.
His head dipped lower, so close that his brow met hers, his damp hair clinging to her skin. His scent, familiar mist and cedar, was saturated with terror. His lips ghosted over her cheek and then met her ear.
“Please.”
A dying wish. Mor had to swallow her sob.
“I’ve got it,” she promised him. It was lie and truth in one; she doubted she would be able to keep it if Azriel died, if any of her family died in this hellhole... But for Azriel, for him, she would do anything. “Don’t worry, don’t worry. I’ve got it.”
Azriel shuddered, the smallest of thankful nods, and Mor tore her eyes off of him, staring over his shoulder at the human women again. At vicious Nesta, who still confounded and infuriated her at every turn but now kept herself between the guards and her little sister. At kind, gentle Elain Archeron, and the tears streaking her face and soaking her gag, her eyes pleading.
Mor took a breath.
Save them, and save her family.
Save them, and save Azriel.
A loathsome, vile name snagged Mor’s attention, and then Lucien Vanserra’s courtier-smooth voice cracked as he said, “She sold out—she sold out Feyre’s family. To you.”
Ianthe.
Mor could have echoed the silent, pained growl that vibrated in Azriel’s chest. She added that name to the long, long list she kept in the back of her mind. Centuries of loathing the witch, and now—
She was Feyre’s to kill. Nesta’s and Elain’s, too, if they had the stomach for it, but…
“Sold out?” The king had the gall to laugh. “Or saved from the shackles of mortal death? Ianthe suggested they were both strong-willed women, like their sister. No doubt they’ll survive. And prove to our queens it can be done. If one has the strength.”
Cassian surged as Feyre snapped at the king, seeing something Mor hadn’t, and then—
“I would suggest bracing yourselves.”
Fire and light and unholy magic exploded.
Mor hit her knees hard so hard that she felt the reverberation of the blow in her teeth, her jaw aching, but Cassian—
Cassian was screaming, a soul-shredding noise she’d never heard him make before, and blood was in the air, clogging her senses with a metallic, pungent, unwelcome mist.
Blood and membrane.
His wings.
She threw herself at Cassian and his shredded, sprawling wings with a wild screech, reaching for the power leashed deep inside her. It was no use; there was no accessing her magic, no throwing up a wall between them and the king.
But Cassian was already clutching her, dragging her off of him with shaking hands, ordering, “Go, go!”
“You’re wounded,” Mor bit back. Her hands only hovered over his ruined wings, though, unsure where to begin, how not to destroy those beautiful, damaged limbs any further.
Behind her, she heard Elain cry out with wild urgency. Azriel, prone on the flagstones, twitched in response.
“The sisters,” Cassian slapped her hands away, his Siphons glimmering weakly. Pure command filled his voice, weak as it was, as he ordered, “Go!”
So Mor went, harnessing wrath instead of magic as she drew a dagger and threw herself at the king on the dais, making herself a willing distraction and sidestepping the black curse he flung at her—
And then froze as the king waved his hand and made Azriel cry out, fresh agony in that sound.
The king’s eyes were filled with too-familar greed as he regarded her with black eyes. “What a mighty queen you are. What a prize.”
Mor didn’t dare glance at the chaos unfolding behind her as she lifted her hands and backed away. As she returned to Azriel’s side.
Cold, roiling disgust churned in her stomach. Unnatural. That gaze…
It left her, locking on something behind her, and Mor knew only fear and the bitter taste of a promise broken as she fell to her knees beside Azriel, beside Feyre where she now tended to Cassian. She couldn’t meet his eyes as she pressed her hand to the wound in his chest again, willing that poison away from his heart with all she had. Despite her failure, there was gratitude in the way he curled one scarred hand over her own.
But she could barely look at him as he tracked the king’s gaze and lifted his head, his grip tightening on Mor, and snarled at the king with renewed wrath written into every line of his tortured, tensed body, “Don’t you touch her.”
If the king heard him, he made no indication of it. “Put the prettier one in first.”
Feyre lunged, guards lunged, Rhys lunged, and Azriel screamed, his body contorting as the poison spread again. His head fell back, his eyes clenched shut.
“If any of you interfere, the shadowsinger dies. Pity about the other brute’s wings.” Mor glanced upward to catch the king’s mocking bow toward the sisters as he said, “Ladies, eternity awaits. Prove to their Majesties the Cauldron is safe for… strong-willed individuals.”
No, no, no.
Her head whipped back to Feyre’s sisters, back to Elain as she trembled and stumbled forward, pushed toward the Cauldron by the guards. A glimmer caught Mor’s eye, a slim band of metal on the girl’s ring finger, and her heart dropped again.
A future. Elain Archeron was supposed to have a future. Not… not whatever this would do. Whatever horrors the king would mete out.
“Mor.” Azriel’s low voice was a near-silent rumble.
Mor held him. “I know.”
Fight, she ordered the kind slip of a woman in her mind, willing her to hear it, having never been so desperate to share her cousin’s daemati power. Fight.
A clamor filled the hall as both of Elain’s sisters struggled, as Tamlin and Lucien tried weakly to command a king in his own domain, as water rushed into the Cauldron from some space between worlds. The static of latent magic singed Mor’s nerves, the wrongness of the liquid that vast metal basin all too apparent. She didn’t dare move as Elain was shuffled closer and closer, only watching as the ring on her hand sparkled and shone in the dim light.
In the chaos, the king collared and chained a High Lord of Prythian. Tamlin's right hand staggered forward to put a stop to Elain’s undoing—only to be leashed beside him.
And finally, finally, Elain threw herself backward, shouting and wrenching at the hands pulling her to the dais. Azriel loosed a rasping, shaking breath—but Mor didn’t dare look away from the woman as she kicked and writhed. Her foot dipped into the water on a kick, and Azriel’s grasp on Mor’s hand turned bruising as Elain shrieked. It was a sound of pure terror and pain.
And in the next instant, the cry was drowned as Elain was unceremoniously shoved below the surface.
Mor kept her eyes on the Cauldron, every second Elain was under slower than the last.
She kept her eyes on the deluge of unholy, tainted water as it tipped.
She kept her eyes on the body that emerged. As Elain took her first breath, the sound sending a silent, shuddering wave of relief through the throne room. As Elain found some deep well of strength and pushed herself upward, revealing her glowing skin and pointed ears to her breathless audience. As the Vanserra boy broke his bonds and did one good thing by covering the shivering, exposed female with his jacket.
All the while, Mor kept watch because Azriel couldn’t.
In her periphery, she saw Nesta follow her sister into the Cauldron. Saw a death-promise made and felt the raw honesty in it. Saw Cassian reach for her. Saw Feyre vomit as Nesta was poured out like Elain, Made into something altogether strange and different.
And although Nesta emerged with some terrible power trailing in her wake, Mor still watched Elain. She watched until Nesta threw herself at her sister, her own grief turning into a vicious attack on Lucien as she pushed and clawed.
“Elain, Elain, Elain,” Nesta sobbed once she had her sister in her grasp. Beneath Mor’s palm, Azriel’s heart beat to the same rhythm.
Azriel held tight to her wrist, and asked desperately, almost silently, “What's happening."
Mor didn’t know what to say or how to describe the way Elain stared vacantly over Nesta’s shaking shoulder. How Lucien took a small, hesitant step forward, his hands raised…
She didn’t need to. Lucien’s voice was shaking, broken, but audible as a crack of thunder cleaving the room as he whispered to Elain, “You’re my mate.”
Nesta whirled on him, furious, but it was Azriel whose agonized groan rent the air.
Mor tore her attention from Elain just in time to see Azriel’s glazed hazel eyes open, to murmur a warning as he pushed himself up on his elbows. More blood rushed out between her fingers, but Azriel ignored her and took a wet, rasping breath at the sight of Elain.
Of the glittering silver and sapphire ring that Mor knew she wore only to bed.
Azriel batted her away when she tried to push him back down, pinning Lucien Vanserra with the dark look she had only ever seen him wear on battlefields.
Every word he ground out through his gritted teeth was raw.
“She’s my wife.”
I'm so sorry for spending the last month sneaking around and trying to trick you (I'm not sure it worked and you definitely knew this fic was coming well in advance), but I do hope you know that I'd only write a nine chapter Christmas gift with an absolutely absurd premise like this for you. 💕 There's a longer apology and a link to this fic's playlist on AO3!
Also, you said you wanted wingwoman Mor, so please enjoy this gratuitous serving of Mor facilitating all of Azriel's most impulsive decisions to date.
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