Chapter Text
Rhys managed to get Azriel back into bed with a sleeping draught. Ellie demanded to be taken to the House of Wind once she knew he was settled. When Rhys refused, she picked up her bag and walked out the door. I’ll climb those steps if I have to she said, stomping up the street. Rhys caved with a heavy sigh and flew her in.
She collapsed in a heap once he left, sobbing on the roof, alone. Ellie hated herself for yelling, for invading his past like that. But the pain, the terror she knew he felt, why did he insist on bearing that weight alone? Was he embarrassed by it? Did he think he deserved it? Ellie’s heart ached at the thought of him so young, so fragile, so terrified of something out of his control.
Ellie had a million questions racing through her mind, one after the other, despite knowing she’d most likely never get any answers. Maybe this was why he never wanted to talk about anything: it would lead to questions that he’d have to answer, reliving those moments every time he spoke. And by touching his hands she’d actually made him experience it all over again.
God she was an asshole.
When the moon was high in the sky, when her body was spent and worn from the tears, she trudged down the stairs and changed and washed her face in the room she stayed in before. She crept down the hall to find Nesta, hoping she wouldn’t have to dodge a knife when she opened the door, but found her sleeping peacefully. Not wishing to wake her, Ellie tried her best to slip in without making the bed move; Nesta shot up instantly.
“It’s me,” Ellie whispered. “Go back to sleep.”
Nesta flicked on the lamp. “Ellie? What?” Brows furrowed, she looked around the room.
“It’s the middle of the night, go back to sleep.”
“Not until you tell me what’s going on.”
Ellie tried to speak calmly, tried to keep her composure, but couldn’t hold it in when Nesta’s face softened. “Azriel,” she choked out. “I touched him.”
“Okay…”
“His hands!” She thrust own towards Nesta, holding them outright for her to see. “His hands, Nesta. He was screaming…”
“Oh no.” Nesta moved to comfort her, but Ellie scrambled back, kicking the sheets, the air. “Don’t touch me!” she sobbed. “Please. I can’t…”
Nesta hesitated for only a second before she got up and grabbed a blanket from the chair, wrapping it around Ellie. She drew her into her arms, shushing her, leting her sob until she was spent.
“Sleep,” she whispered, pressing a soft kiss to Ellie’s temple. “We’ll talk about it in the morning.”
Nesta was in the chair, tea in hand, when she woke. “Everything and everyone is fine.” Ellie blinked, sat up. “Azriel wouldn’t talk to Rhys, so I told him just what you said. I hope that’s alright.”
Ellie nodded. “Nobody’s upset?”
“Nope.” She stood, set the tea down. “You’re right, by the way. Azriel is acting strange, like nothing even happened.” She paced a couple of times. “My sister is keeping an eye on things. I told her you weren’t going to leave here, not yet anyways. Cass comes home tomorrow. I think we should all have a talk about this. Something feels off.”
“I don’t think I’m ready to see him,” Ellie whispered. “I f*cked up, I think. Maybe it’s better if I leave.”
“And go where? This is the easiest place to avoid everything and everyone.”
“No.” Ellie caught her eye, swallowed hard. “I mean leave.”
“Oh.” Nesta gave her a pleading look. “Maybe. Just, don’t make any rash decisions. Think it over.”
Ellie nodded. She reached for Nesta then, pulled her close. She needed to be held, to feel something that was safe. Nesta wrapped herself around Ellie, stroked her hair, placed gentle kisses on her forehead.
Ellie breathed her smokey scent in, relished in the closeness, the intimacy of being vulnerable. She hoped Nesta knew how much she needed this, appreciated it. She fell asleep again, at some point, waking to a tangled mess with Nesta’s limbs. She smiled, first, because Nesta was sleeping with her mouth wide open, but mostly because this was a relationship she never expected.
Nesta was a hard ass to everyone. Even in the stories that were being written about her, she was portrayed as cruel and indifferent. But here she was, soothing Ellie, sharing her mate, letting her own vulnerabilities show. Nesta was a person who cared deeply, but was never given the tools on how to show it.
Ellie ran the back of her fingers across Nesta’s face, smooth and gentle. Nesta stirred, smiling when she opened her eyes. “Thank you,” Ellie whispered.
Rhys, Feyre, Amren, Nesta, and Cassian were seated around the dining table at the House of Wind. Ellie stood at the head of the table, fidgeting with the carved top of the chair in front of her. Nesta had called them all here, but Ellie asked to speak first.
“I, umm, well first I wanted to say how grateful I am for these past months. I consider you all my friends. Good friends. Family, even. But I uhh, I think maybe it’s time for me to move on.”
Cass sat up straight; his head darted between Nesta and Ellie. Even Rhys shifted in his seat, trying to pry into what everyone was thinking, no doubt.
“This meeting is mostly about Az, but really, it’s about me. I’m the problem here, so I’ve decided to remove myself. Let your lives get back to normal.”
“The hell you are,” Cassian said. “You’re no problem for any of us.”
“No, Cass, I am. And you know why.” She took a deep breath. “It’s no secret between any of us that I…I like Az. But there’s things I don’t think all of you know. The way he disappears-”
“He disappears all the time,” Cass interrupted. “So what?”
“The so what is that it’s because of me. I am now interfering with your ability to run your Court the way it needs to be run. Az and I…every time we get close, he implodes. So, it’s just easier this way. For him…and me.”
“What do you mean implodes?” Amren asked, head slowly swiveling towards Rhys. “Because this is the first I’m hearing about it.”
Rhys looked at Ellie; she could feel that gentle brush in her mind, asking permission, so she let him. Specifically showed him the way Az was hurting himself, their fight. Reminded him of the way he looked at her before, with such anger and hatred. He nodded and showed everyone at the table.
Nesta shot her a look, as if saying you undersold it, big time; she offered her an apologetic look.
“What’s changed then?” Amren asked. “Besides the girl, I mean.” They looked around the table at each other with mostly blank stares. “If it was her, this would have happened sooner. Not, what, five months later? Has he been compromised, Rhysand?”
Rhys leveled Amren with a look like he would kill her for even suggesting such a thing. “Nothing. I looked in his head last night when he was out of it. Not a trace of anything out of the ordinary.”
Amren looked at Ellie. “The two of you spent some time away, outside of Prythian. Anything happen there?”
Ellie thought back to that night; she rubbed the tattoo on her wrist. “Just this,” she said. “We ate, we drank, we got the tattoos, and…” Ellie’s eye widened. “When we went to the lab, so they could do all the tests and stuff on me, they had us drink this antidote. Hypaxia said something about a parasite in their water…”
“What?” Rhys barked. “Why didn’t you tell me this? This is why I needed him to communicate-”
“Rhys,” Feyre interrupted, her voice sterner than Ellie had ever heard it. He ran his hand through his hair, exhaled loudly. “Did they explain it to you? What the parasite was, I mean?”
“Az understood what Hypaxia was talking about. He was the first one to drink it. Something about when Bryce came here.” Ellie wracked her brain, trying to remember. “Does Asteri sound right?”
“It’s the same one,”Nesta said, confirming what the table already knew. “She told us about it limiting their powers, that they took that cure and got back to their full potential as Fae. You guys obviously drank some water while you were there, but I wonder why she thought it would affect you.”
“It was just a precaution. Neither of us felt anything.”
“Remind me, when did this happen?” Amren asked. “Was it before Mor returned?”
“It was,” Ellie confirmed. “Why?”
“You took a cure for magic, you came back, and now you have this.” She pointed to Ellie’s hands. “Perhaps it awoke something in you.”
“Sure,” Rhys said. “We can table that thought as a possible answer for what happened to Ellie, but why would that make Azriel act like…” he waved his hand in the air. “Like this?”
“Could it have given him some kind of new magic he doesn’t understand?” Cass asked. “Maybe he doesn’t realize it even happened.”
Rhys tapped a finger on the table. Ellie watched as the entire group turned to him for answers, for guidance. It was the first time she’d seen them in action, as High Lord and his council.
“Shadowsinger,” Amren mused. “Rhysand, can you show it to me again?” Rhys leaned forward, tried to glean where Amren was heading in her train of thought. “Perhaps it’s nothing, but could it be his shadows that have changed, and not Azriel himself? They were not present last night, if you did not notice.”
Ellie blinked as she realized that more and more his shadows weren’t as prominent as they used to be. She assumed it was because he was more comfortable with her, but she also didn’t know enough about them to even begin to guess how they worked. She wasn’t sure anyone but Azriel knew their true purpose or function.
Ellie waved her hand in the air, as if clearing away everyone’s thoughts. “Forget all of that for a moment. Why are you so sure something had to have happened? If it’s just me, my presence affecting him because of how his shadows work or because I touched the Veritas, it’s a real simple fix.”
“It’s not you,” Nesta, Cassian, and Rhys said in unison.
Ellie shook her head. “You can’t know that. And the easiest test there is, is to let me go.”
Feyre frowned. “Ellie’s not wrong. Maybe we should let her go. If nothing changes then we can at least rule that out. Give Ellie the peace of mind she needs.”
“Please,” Ellie pleaded. “I don’t want to go, I really don’t. I love it here. But I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep being thrown back to the ground every time he brings me up. I can’t deal with the stress that I’m the one hurting him.”
“Could send her to the cabin, so she doesn’t have to leave,” Cass suggested.
“And leave her stranded all alone on the top of a mountain?” Nesta looked at him like he was crazy.
“We’ll we’d visit her,” Cassian countered.
“Enough,” Rhys commanded, and the table fell silent. “None of us should make this decision for her. It’s Ellie’s choice what to do, and whatever she chooses, we will decide then how we move forward.”
She felt her eyes prick with heat as they all looked her way. “I already made up my mind.”
“Does he even know I’m leaving?” Ellie asked as Rhys walked her to the portal.
“I told him.”
Ellie nodded. She wanted to ask how he reacted, but Rhys would have offered up the information if he’d begged for her to stay.
She watched as he pulled a white crystal out of his pocket; it was filled with light. Rhys touched it to one of the stones, and the portal began to glow.
“Hunt’s lightning,” he offered. While they waited under the large tree for Bryce to arrive, Rhys explained that the stone triggered something on their end, and they’d have to wait until she could get there. Sure enough, Bryce came bursting through, a dagger in one hand, Hunt trailing her with his own array of weapons.
“sh*t,” Ellie said, standing. “It’s not that!” she yelled. Bryce and Hunt relaxed, only slightly, when they realized it was just the two of them.
“Something happen?” Bryce asked, looking them over.
“Kinda?” Ellie answered. “I need to crash at your place.”
“Oh.” Bryce looked between the two of them. “Do I get an explanation?”
“Yes. It’s…complicated. He can show you a bit of it.”
Bryce gave Rhys a hesitant nod; her eyes glazed over a bit as he showed her the things that had gone on. “Oh, I see.” She looked between the two of them. “For how long?”
“Until Starfall,” Rhys answered. “That should be enough time to determine what’s going on. Give Ellie the reassurance she needs that none of this is her fault.”
Hunt looked at Rhys, gave him the okay to show him too; Ellie was surprised at the flash of anger that crossed his face. “We’ll keep her safe,” he said.
“See you in a couple of months then, Ellie.” Rhys took her hands, squeezed them tight. “I promise you we’ll figure this out, one way or another. We want you to stay.”
“I know,” she whispered, and pressed a kiss to his cheek. Images flooded her mind of Rhys writhing in bed with her, passionately making love to one another. She gasped and gave him a little shove.
“Just something for the road,” he said with a wink.
Syrinx yowled as she walked into Bryce’s apartment; Ellie bent down, rubbed his head. “I missed you too, buddy.”
She could feel the cold hard stare from both Hunt and Bryce boring into her back, looking for more of an explanation on what Rhys had just shown them. Ellie plopped on the couch with a heavy sigh, then went through as much as she could, sparing no detail.
“I was ready to kick Azriel’s ass at first, but now feel like none of this makes any sense.” Bryce rubbed her temples. “Why the Hel would the antidote trigger any of that? I mean, I guess I can see you getting your gift from it. But to basically turn Az into this crazy, dual personality type person? I’m not buying it.”
“I don’t like it either,” Hunt agreed. “Something doesn’t feel right.”
Ellie offered them both a tentative smile. “Guess we gotta wait and see then.”
