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Az gave her a half shrug that sent his shadows scattering. “It is. I’m here to help Cassian. I just couldn’t stand being out there for much longer.”
“It’s a cold day.” Emerie returned to her accounts. That wasn’t what he’d meant, but Az didn’t correct her. “There’s rabbit stew in the back,” she said without looking up. “Help yourself.”
“I’m good, thank you.” Maybe asking for a glass of mead or a bottle of Rhys’s wine—she’d acquired a collection thanks to Nesta—would be strange. It was only eleven in the morning, after all.
“Then make yourself comfortable wherever.” The Valkyrie’s dark hair gleamed in the light streaming through the glass window. The glass itself was a luxury—a novelty here, even.
Az did as he was told, shadows settling around his boots as he claimed a chair by a display of heavy, dark wool capes. Plain, simple garments. No patterns, no color. The way people here liked things.
“Business is . . . good?” he asked into the silence. He was usually fine with silence—preferred it. But he’d trained Emerie, had become friendly with her. And after all the hardship she’d endured at the hands of the Illyrians, he could offer her basic kind words.
Emerie grunted. She’d never been shy around him—certainly never nervous, not like others in Windhaven. “Busy enough that I’m almost considering giving my hateful uncle this shop just to get a good night’s rest without wondering if I’ve done the accounts wrong.”
Azriel snorted. But he angled his head as her words sank in, his wings shifting. “Has he been giving you any trouble?”
“No. Rumor has it he went mad with grief after his son was killed during the Rite. Crumpled into a ball and won’t get out of bed for anything except a piss and a meal.”
Az nodded, unsure what to say. He’d seen via Rhys a compilation of the events of the most recent Blood Rite, all told through the eyes of Nesta, Gwyn, and Emerie. The trials they had endured had been beyond even the normal depravity of the Rite.
Az took in the female at the counter. Technically, she was the first female Illyrian to have ever won the Blood Rite. The first Illyrian female to ever even compete in it. And considering that only six males had ever won the entire thing before—reaching the monolith at Ramiel’s peak—that was saying something.
But then Emerie had returned here and resumed her work as if she’d never left. Guessing that she might have untapped magic, Rhys had offered her the chance to draw a Siphon from the sacred flames, just like any other Illyrian who’d completed the Rite, but she’d refused, and hadn’t mentioned it since. Az had seen her at training before he’d stopped going after Bryce Quinlan’s arrival, but it seemed that now Emerie had slipped right back into the life she’d had before the Rite.
Perhaps it was a form of self-preservation. To show this village she wasn’t anything special, anything worth fretting about. No, it wasn’t a big deal at all that she’d won the Blood Rite. She wasn’t going to talk about it, and certainly wasn’t going to start pulling females away from their so-called traditional duties to join her in Valkyriehood.
Because she, like Az, knew the alternative. She would have been run out of Windhaven—if she were lucky enough to leave alive at all. And to lose this shop after she’d fought so hard for it would have been devastating.
He didn’t blame her for it, but he loathed that this was the choice she’d been left to make. Rhys was wasting his time with these assholes. If someone like Emerie couldn’t get them to change their ways, get them to see the value each and every female innately possessed beyond childbearing, if Emerie had returned here after winning the damned Blood Rite and still had to make herself smaller to survive . . . then they’d never change.
“Is this all right?” she asked suddenly, and Az realized he’d been staring at a display of candles for long minutes. She went on, “I thought I’d try it on today to make sure it still fits before tomorrow.”
He glanced over, shadows peering, too, to see her motion to her simple dark blue dress, cut elegantly to her slender frame.
“I don’t own anything fancy like the rest of you, but this one at least doesn’t have any stains—”
“It’s perfect,” he said, giving her a slight smile.
She smiled back, a bit self-consciously. “I know how the rest of you lot dress.”
Nervous, his shadows informed him. Excited, but nervous. He asked, pushing aside his fury at their people, “When was the last time you were in Velaris? Not for training, but out in the city itself.”
“Nesta and Cassian’s mating ceremony.” She winced. “So . . . a while. And I haven’t been to training in nearly a month.”
“Work has kept you away?”
“Sure,” she said, and he knew from that tone not to push it. It was odd enough that Emerie was willing to leave Illyrian territory—most females here never left the borders of Illyria.
She was holding her wings up now, though even from here, Az could see the asymmetry of their heights. It had evened out during those months training with the Valkyries, as her core and back muscles grew stronger, but with so much time since then without exercises, it had gotten worse again.
It was a good thing her father was dead. Azriel would have killed him himself if he wasn’t. The male had been a piece of shit. All these people here, in all of Illyria, were pieces of shit.
He got to his feet, shadows trailing, unable to sit a moment longer with the thought forming in his head. “I should check on Cassian,” he lied, then added, “I’ll be back tomorrow morning to pick you up.”
She lifted a hand in farewell, focused on her ledger. She clearly didn’t think twice about having a shadowsinger in her shop, and he took a small amount of comfort from it.
He’d nearly made it to the door when she said, “Azriel—your sheath. The strap’s fraying.”
His hand went to Truth-Teller, since the only other weapon he wore was his Illyrian blade, whose sheath was built into the back of his armor. Indeed, the ancient leather near the buckle had thinned. When had that happened?
