Page 27 of Court of Wolves

He thought the words were unspoken, safe inside his mind, but he realised he’d said them aloud when those green eyes flickered like air passing through a candle’s flame. The misery was there and gone in a moment, so brief that Az might have hallucinated it. His body was cold, like ice embedded beneath his skin and muscle, as if glacial water flowed through his veins instead of hot fae blood. He’d been mended, his wounds closed, but the pain of them remained. Pain and the cold. Hallucination was more than possible.

“Don’t leave me,” he repeated, cracked lips breaking until he tasted blood among the dark, fell herbs he’d been forced to choke down. It was no plant of this world; his earth magic told him that much. It was something the saints brought with them from their prison realm, something smuggled through the circle into the Saintlands. If Az had the strength, he’d spit upon that name. Why should their entire realm be named for these monsters?

“Fight,Jaro,” he rasped, in halting, breathless words, each syllable a battle. His head began to spin. “I know you can hear me. You’re stronger than this. You’re the Dagger. You’re the man who held me together every time I got twisted up with guilt. You helped me breathe when the weight of being responsible for so many crushed me. You’re the friend who never left my side. You’re the heart of the rebellion. The heart of our family. None of it works without you.”

Az could barely gasp a breath by the time he ran out of words. He stared at the corner, praying for another flash of emotion in those empty jade eyes. But there was nothing. Az closed his own eyes and choked on ice cold misery. He was so weak, sotiredright down to his bones, but he tensed his arms, his legs, called on the muscles in his stomach, and rolled over. Pain eclipsed everything for a long moment. For minutes. He lay there, panting, and then when he could breathe, he began to crawl.

Azrail dragged himself, inch by tortuous inch, across the floor. He knew he left a trail of blood from wounds he’d reopened but he didn’t give a shit. Jaro was in there. He hadn’t been erased like Az had feared for days. He hadn’t been hollowed out for the saints’ commands; he was caged inside his head, roaring with fear and rage just like Azrail.

Jaro didn’t move, didn’t even blink. Az lost sight of his eyes when he drew close; he didn’t know if there was another flash of misery, didn’t know if there was another sign Jaro was still alive inside the shell of his body. That didn't stop dragging him himself across the cell until he could, finally, rest his clammy head on Jaro’s paws. The fur was warm against his cool face, a relief that made him sag and his eyes droop.

“Don’t leave,” he breathed, hoping Jaro heard.

Then he was unconscious.

Azrail was jerkedawake by rough, foreboding hands. His chest sank, filling with a fast-moving, endless form of despair when he realised Maia hadn’t been in his dream this time. She’d been there before. He hadn’t seen her but he’dfelther, and it made the next session with the Brightwrath bearable.

Her absence was like a thorn gouging his chest, like his earth magic had turned on him and filled his insides with a gnarled mass of barbs and poison. Why wasn’t she there? Was she merely awake, unable to dream with him, or had theyhurther?Had they broken her like they’d broken him? Had they killed her?

“Get up,” Samlyn’s droning voice commanded.

Azrail pulled his knees under his blood-streaked body, pressed his palms flat to the cold floor, and pulled himself away from the comforting heat of his best friend. He stood, against his will. It wasn’t the first thing he’d done against his will. Samlyn and the Brightwrath had taken him into the coliseum where Jaro was pitted against innocent people and monsters. Had made him watch everything, unable to fight alongside Jaro.

“Follow.”

Azrail’s body immediately obeyed the command, but inside he was snarling, his teeth bared. He couldn’t leave Jaro here to their mercy. If he walked away, who would protect him? Az had done a shit job of that so far, but at least he’d beenhere,at his side. Who would sit with him, who would remind him to fight, remind him that he was loved, if Az was taken away?

Samlyn sighed and turned to give Az a look on the threshold of the austere cell, his long colourless robes seeming to float around him. “Don’t be dramatic. You’ll be brought back. One little job, and you can go right back to sleeping on the cold floor, forsaken one.”

Azrail hated the name. It clawed its way under his skin and convinced him he’d never mattered, that soon he’d be like the Wolven Lord. People would forget the good deeds he’d done and remember him for every monstrous thing he’d done. They would spit on his body, celebrate his death, and forget his name.

“Jaro,” he forced out, the saint’s will pressing on him, squeezing all the air from his lungs until he croaked. He knew he wasn’t permitted to speak, couldsenseit, the command sliding through the ice in his veins. He lived and died and breathed and screamed at Samlyn’s will.

“He’s not coming with you,” Samlyn sighed, shaking his head, his mouth pressed thin. “Don’t dawdle, we’ve got places to be. And no more talking.”

Just like that, Azrail’s mouth snapped shut, his back straightened, and he followed Samlyn without another word or complaint. The cell door closed with a resounding boom, leaving Jaro alone with no one to protect him, no one to keep him from giving up. Something shrivelled and wilted in the centre of Az’s chest.

Instead of going right, down the familiar pathways under the cracked marble dome to the coliseum, Samlyn strode left and Azrail followed like a faithful dog. The solid doors continued for minutes, so many there must have been sixty of them, and Az’s stomach knotted at the thought of how many people the saints had locked up here. Plants and cornflower-blue flowers grew wildly along the floor, pushing through cracks in the marble. Part of Azrail reached out to them, basking in the bright feel of their life stroking along his senses. When he reached for his magic, he slammed into a solid wall of grey, looming stone.

Samlyn laughed under his breath.

Az wanted to gnash his teeth, wanted to use every bit of magic that had been walled off from him to rip the saint to pieces. He’d make it quick and bloody and ruthless. He’d enjoy it. For the empty look in Jaro’s eyes and all the people he’d made him kill, for Maia’s screams that Az could still hear echoing through his skull, for the roars of pain their friends and allies had made. Yes, he’d make it quick. And as painful as possible.

He was so consumed with thoughts of violence, he didn’t hear the screams at first. They were sharp and agonised andfemale,a fae’s piercing howl. Even with Samlyn’s compulsion, Azrail staggered into the wall, clutching his chest. He was being rent apart, nails gouging his insides until they wept blood, thepain more severe than anything the Brightwrath had done. This cut through his soul until it hung in tatters.

When the scream registered, when he realisedwhowas screaming, his lip curled back from his teeth and he was surging forward.

“Maia!”he roared, his body momentarily under his control as he sprinted as fast as he could, darkness pouring from his shoulders in a deadly cloak.Maia!Now he was bellowing inside his head, roaring down the bond that connected them,Maia!

Az?Her voice was a sob, faint and ragged.

I’m coming. I’m here. I’m—

Samlyn grabbed Azrail’s head and slammed his skull into the wall. So fast he couldn’t stop it, everything went black and Az fell into a heap on the floor.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Isak tossed and turned on the tiny sofa in Anzhelika’s living room, his leg protesting the cramped position, whatever ease draining the ground had given him earlier long gone. It was the middle of the night, and dark enough both inside and outside that Isak had cracked open the curtains across the small, square window opposite him so he could check for stars. It allowed a filter of silvery light to fall across the tidy, charming room and its well-loved furniture.

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