Chapter 34 #3
The Valenul soldiers who did not try to run became what Azriel decided at that moment to call walking corpses.
While they continued to fight and some even managed to bring down a dhemon every now and again, most had suddenly become so preoccupied with the thought of being snatched up by a dragon that they could not properly focus on what was happening in front of them.
A shadow swept overhead, accompanied by gentle mental claws that raked through Azriel’s thoughts, and dove down to pluck a pair of crimson soldiers from the fray.
Razer’s amusement at the way they flailed in his grasp made Azriel grin as the dragon tossed them like discarded rubbish at the back of the Valenul army.
The bodies barrelled into standing soldiers with such force that he would be shocked if any of them stood up again.
But Azriel did not stop to look through Razer’s eyes and observe the battle from above. There was no need when he stood in the middle of it. Doing something so reckless would only land him in Phulan’s tent—and that would be the best of cases.
Instead, he turned and slashed, broke and pierced, hacked and parried. One soldier to the next, he never looked at their faces. Never let their fear sway his actions.
Because he was afraid, too. Afraid that what they did was wrong. Afraid that he couldn’t possibly fight long enough. Afraid that he’d made a mistake in sending Ariadne to an entirely different battalion to fight alongside Whelan instead. Whelan, who could no longer watch her back.
Fear was what drove Azriel forward. Though his bond had begun its healing process since the ritual, bringing him back from the depths of his own insanity, it still plagued him with horrific images and thoughts. What if the bond wasn’t like other fae, and he couldn’t feel if she was in trouble?
Ariadne’s severed head returned to the forefront of his mind, strangling him as he drove his blade into the exposed side of a soldier before the vampire could turn to face him fully.
The soft flesh gave way beneath his fingers despite the gloves he wore and the sword he wielded.
The pain of her loss haunted him as readily as when it first occurred.
This is your fault.
There would come a night when Melia’s voice would fade from Azriel’s memory. That night could not come soon enough. Azriel could only pray to Keon that the longer he had with his mate, the less frequent those haunting words would become.
Until then, he breathed through the agony, clinging to the reality that she was there.
She was safe.
She was his.
For, yes…yes, the bond still connected them, even separated by blood and bone.
It was such a different feeling than the connection between him and Razer.
The vinculum that fastened his bondheart to him was like a tangible thread that wove them together.
Azriel could almost pluck it like a harp string, testing its durability and feeling its very solid existence.
The connection with Ariadne, however, was nothing he could find in his consciousness and strike, like with Razer.
It was a deeper, more subconscious plait of the very fabric of their souls wound together through space and time.
Where he and Razer were separate, two beings held together by a cord, Azriel could find no separation between himself and Ariadne.
They were and would forever more be of one spirit.
Such an intricate fusion was at once difficult to locate and impossible to lose.
A violet dragon landed a stone’s throw from Azriel, and for the first time since the bondhearts had joined the battle, his heart stuttered. The lithe, shining dragon tore into the crimson soldiers with a vicious roar before taking a single spear to the side and launching back into the sky.
“Fasj?” Azriel didn’t dare to watch her continue her attack, but reached out nonetheless.
The only response he received from the dragon he’d believed to have died the night Ehrun attacked outside Anwenja was a brief acknowledgement. Then, before he could press for further information, she cut off all contact with Razer.
“How did she survive?” Azriel asked his bondheart.
Razer’s answer was accompanied by screams he knew to be soldiers set aflame. “Arthin cut the vinculum before it could take Fasj with him.”
Cracking his knuckles across a vampire’s face, Azriel followed up with another question, “Why did she choose to come help?”
For that, Razer didn’t have an answer. He sent back his own confusion before refocusing on his task of tearing through as many Valenul soldiers as he could get his claws and teeth on.
Azriel didn’t press further. They needed every ounce of help others were willing to give him, so he would not question Fasj’s motives. What she gained from her aid in this battle was for her alone, just like everyone else.
Everyone except, perhaps, Ariadne. His wife fought not for herself, but for her friends and family. Even Azriel’s incentives were for his own gain: the end of the war meant he could live the rest of his life in peace with her. It’s all he ever wanted.
And he would be damned if anyone was going to take it from him.