Chapter 38 – Elias #3
…the union of two souls, gathered before the old gods and soil, hereby joined together from this day to the end of days.
Beneath that:
Eris Sylas Teylan
Then below:
Azaria Laurel Teylan Sylvenhart
And at the very bottom:
Witness—Dain Virellan
Husband. She’d been his wife all along.
“Azaria…” I started, but had no idea what I meant to say.
Her eyes stayed on the hearth, voice low. “We kept it a secret from everyone. Only Dain knew at first. When we were ready, we asked him to be our witness, to help us with the ceremony. We had to inform Tywin and amend the records, of course, but it was done. Nothing could take it away from us.”
Nothing but Dravareth.
“After the ceremony, Eris and I went to the nearby lake to celebrate, just the two of us.” A faint shadow of a smile touched her lips. “That’s when he showed me. The tidal wave he created out of the lake water. It was breathtaking.”
The parchment trembled in my hand.
It hadn’t just been flirting. Not just passion, trust, or loyalty.
She had married him. Bound before gods and soil.
A life she’d chosen. A life ripped from her before it had even begun.
No wonder she carried his uniform like armor.
No wonder she never spoke his name. This wasn’t a chapter she could close.
This was her entire book, torn in half. And she’d handed me the proof of it.
I set the parchment back down with reverence. “I’m so sorry,” I managed. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
I was part of this. My hands might not have struck the blow, but I was in Dravareth. Quinton was in Dravareth, both of us following orders while Eris died.
“I know,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry, too.”
“Thank you,” I forced out. “For telling me about him. For trusting me. I don’t deserve it.”
Azaria looked at me. Her eyes glistened. “It wasn’t your fault, Elias. You weren’t the one who dealt the blow.”
“Azaria… I need to know. Please.” My voice was careful. “How did he die? Eris had so much power, and yet… will you tell me what happened?”
She met my gaze. She was silent for a long beat. Then she began.
“Eris left for Thalor one day. Captain Torik asked him to carry a message to one of the nobles there. Eris wanted to stop by his parents, visit them while he was there. Shortly after he left, Tywin sent us on an urgent dispatch. Dravareth forces had been spotted for the first time since the treaty. Captains were reporting mages missing. We left immediately to investigate.”
She stopped, breath shuddering, then went on.
“It wasn’t hard to follow their trail. We found them in the collapsed ruins along the Velmara–Thalor border.
Fifteen mages, all dead. All chained, their lives taken by abyssal magic.
” Her voice shook. “Eris was there too. Beaten, chained, bloodied. The Abyss had him, too. There was nothing we could do.”
“Dain used his mind bending on him to find out what really happened.” Her tone hardened.
“They ambushed him on the road. An entire group. He fought them all off easily, but more came. One of them carried a suppression artifact, modified by Dravareth, enhanced not just with suppression runes but with the Abyss itself. Eris had no chance. One moment he was casting, the next he was on his knees. Then a bolt struck his side. The Abyss spread.”
I clenched my fists. I vaguely remembered Malphyr’s whispered projects, experimental weapons kept under lock and seal. They’d used one to take Eris down because he was simply too powerful to kill any other way.
“He suffered for so long…” Azaria’s voice broke, her eyes glassy. “And…” She bit back a sob.
The silence afterward scraped across bone.
“Days, weeks after he died, were a blur,” she whispered. “I drifted. Took job after job, bounty after bounty. I didn’t care. I couldn’t sit still. Because if I stopped, if I let myself breathe for even a moment, I would just see his face. And collapse all over again.”
“I drank myself to sleep,” she said. “Because the sleep wouldn’t come. And when it did, the only thing in my head was his face. Bloodied. Scarred by the Abyss. I couldn’t do it, Elias. I was lost.”
The whisky in her hand made new, ugly sense. Not a drink for pleasure. She’d been trying to drown the nightmare that woke her every time she closed her eyes.
She looked down at her hands, knuckles white around the glass.
When she spoke again, her voice was thin as wire.
“Dain did everything he could to keep me going. To keep me alive.” She let out a low sound.
“I showed up at his house filthy, wounded from fights I didn’t stop, bottle in hand.
Drunk before I crossed the threshold, passed out on his floor half the time.
I woke up in his bed more mornings than I can count and did it all over again. Day after day.”
I thought of Dain. Stone-faced, patient, the sort of man who’d hold you up and never ask for thanks.
“But then another grief settled in,” she said, and the words came in a rush.
“I lost a husband. But Dain lost a friend. A brother. A family he loved. And instead of mourning with him, holding him, I just kept walking into death. I threw myself at it, Elias. I hunted, and I bled, and I drank because I couldn’t face the idea of stopping and letting it all hit me.
So he didn’t have a chance to grieve properly. I took that from him.”
She stopped, and then the dam broke. The sound that came wasn’t sharp. It was ragged and small, a sound a soldier makes in the dark when nothing left will fix the hollow.
“I hate myself for it,” she said. Her voice sounded raw from the admission. “Every single day.”
She didn’t look like the captain who held herself together through blood, war, and loss. She looked like a woman barely holding up under her own grief. I had never seen her like this.
I moved. Crossed the room and sat down on the sofa beside her. “Azaria,” I said quietly. “You didn’t take his life. You couldn’t have stopped it. Dain loved him. He lost him. He lost the person he trusted. That’s on the war, on the people who made weapons of the Abyss. Not on you.”
For a moment, the silence felt fragile, balanced on the edge of something rare. Her breathing slowed.
Then she moved. Straightened, set her glass aside, and stood. The soldier’s mask slid back into place so fast it made my chest ache.
“You need to go, Elias.”
I blinked. “Why? What’s wrong?”
Her face was unreadable; her voice flat. “I have something to take care of.”
“Should I come with you?”
“No.” A pause, then softer, but no less firm: “You should go home, Elias.”
I stood. She didn’t look at me as I moved to the door. The distance between us stretched wider than the whole house.
I rested a hand on the frame. “Azaria. If you’re facing your ghosts again, I’m here. You don’t have to carry them alone.”
For a moment, I thought she wouldn’t answer. Then, almost too soft to catch: “Thanks, Elias.”
It wasn’t much. But it was something.
By the time I reached the barracks, night had settled thick over the city. The apartment was dimly lit, only the lantern in the sitting room burning low. Lyra and Quinton were waiting.
I didn’t say a word as I passed them. I headed straight for the kitchen and pulled down a glass. Poured the first thing I could reach, sat down at the table and drained it in one go.
Everything she’d told me pressed in at once.
Eris’s calm, his power, the way she’d softened for him and only him.
The common room sofa confession said with a smirk.
The marriage document trembling in my hands.
Her voice breaking over Dain’s name, over what she’d taken from him in her grief.
And then the mask slamming back down, the flat voice, the door closing behind me while she walked back into the dark to do whatever it was she wouldn’t let me see.
“Elias,” Quinton’s voice, cautious. A hand on my shoulder. “Brother. Talk to us.”
I dragged my palm across my face. Lyra had moved to the table across from me, her eyes searching.
“I got past the rage,” I said. “She spoke of him. Of Eris. More than she’s said in years, from what I gather.”
They waited. I poured another glass. Didn’t drink it. Just stared at it.
“She was married. Eris was her husband.”
Quinton’s hand dropped from my shoulder. Lyra’s lips parted, no sound coming out.
The silence stretched, vast and terrible.
I lifted the glass and drained it.
And none of us said a word.