Page 35 of At The End There Was You

He stepped right in front of her, wrapping an arm around her body and hugging her tightly. “There.”

“But you’re missing the rain.”

He kissed the top of her head. “I missed one thing. And that is holding you.” Azriel threw his coat back over her, and pulled her close.

Soon after they’d sat on the train ride back to Urvalis, she’d fallen asleep with her head on his shoulder and his hands still clutched on her lap. A staticky melody was playing over the speakers, the sound fighting with that of the rain colliding against the metal and glass of the wagon.

The man that had sat before them that morning suddenly faced them again, wide eyed as he stared between the two. He loudly cleared his throat and sent Azriel a discerning look. “She’s a priestess, you can’t pursue her. Have some respect.”

“Make another sound that can wake her up and I’ll send you to pay respects in a burning hell hole.”

The man pursed his lips shut and pulled his newspaper open.

Winter squirmed in her sleep, a small whimper falling out of her parted lips, and Azriel had never wanted anything more than to be able to look in there—in her dreams and nightmares, both.

“Shhhh,” he cooed, kissing her brow, and she let out a little exhale. “Maybe I should tell you,” Azriel whispered against her skin, “that I might have found a way to stop Death. You can be the shepherd, my little sun.”

She stirred again, this time to get closer to him. Azriel wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pressed his lips on her hair, smiling. No one had seeked his closeness before her. “You better be dreaming about me,” he murmured.

“I was,” she mumbled, yawning.

He stiffened. “You’re awake.”

Winter looked up at him, still resting her head on his shoulder as she reached a hand to his face and pulled him down for a kiss. “You’re hard as a rock and very uncomfortable to lay on.”

“I am,” he said, tugging on her lip. “I could be more comfortable if you sat on my lap while I’m—”

She put a hand over his mouth, and slowly rolled her eyes to the man hiding behind the newspaper. When he made no move or sound, she threw her scathing look back at Azriel. “Later,” she whispered, and then felt him smile against her palm.

They’d parted after arriving at the sanctum, he’d headed to the library after insisting she needed rest. But she’d been convinced to do so only after he’d promised that he’d join her later.

She shed his jacket that was still around her shoulders and brought it to her nose, inhaling his scent. After changing into her nightgown, she laid on the bed, hugging his jacket to her chest and sighing. Her hand brushed something cold, and she pulled it back to see his glasses still in the breast pocket. Surely, he needed those. And Winter needed to see him again even if it was for a couple seconds.

Not even bothering to throw on a robe, she rushed towards the library in her nightgown, hoping he was still there and had not disappeared to his room where others would see her roam and question why.

She halted just past the library’s doorstep, hiding behind a shelf, frozen at what laid ahead. At least a dozen men led by Miriam faced Azriel. His back was to her, but she didn’t need to see his face to know that he had a menacing look on him. She could tell by the way the men and Miriam shook a little and avoided his gaze, and she could tell by the way he stood, as if the world laid at his feet and way beneath him.

“I never expected your loyalty,” Azriel said to the men, folding back his sleeves to reveal skin marked corner to corner with tattoos. “But I did not expect this either.” A cruel laughter left him, and shock rippled through her at that odd unexpected sound. “I lied. I did expect this and much more. To contest me is one thing. To want to kill me is another. Do you think I’ve not studied every little trick of yours? You’ve been planning to kill me for decades, centuries. Only waiting for the right moment to do that. Was defacing one another not enough that you wish to go after my realm and my power, too? Did I not give you enough? Perhaps I gave you much more than you all deserved.”

Winter’s blood grew cold. She couldn’t…she couldn’t think what she was thinking. It couldn’t be true. He was Azriel. A Mage. He was Azriel, her Azriel. He couldn’t be anyone else.

“Is that what you have been doing all this time? Trying to figure out how we’d kill you?” It was Miriam who had asked. “You gave your word that you’d look for a reason to stop your plague!”

His plague. Death’s plague. His plague. Azriel’s.

“My word,” he hummed, circling them. “What value does it have in this world?”

One of the Mages began choking, hands wrapping around his throat as his skin began crawling with black little insects.

Winter put a hand over her mouth to stop the scream when the Mage then dissolved into dust.

Azriel spread his arms wide, and a pair of massive black wings sprung from between his shoulder blades. “Kill me then.”

Her skin pimpled when the air filled with magic. Runes spread all around where he stood, circling him, and trapping him inside. She’d never witnessed that type of magic—the type that seeked life, the same that had seeked her father’s after he’d spent more than half of his life conjuring without care—the unforgiving kind. Thin thorny branches rose from the ground and shot towards him, wrapping around his arm. Winter pushed back a cry when his skin began covering and dripping with blood. In one click of his fingers, the branches disappeared, and so did the man who had conjured them.

Contempt filled the Mages only briefly because Azriel stepped out of the runes, tearing through the barrier of magic as if it was mist. “You all draw power from me, from your servitude to me, from your humility towards me, from the fear of my power, yet you think you can use it against me. You think. Yes, that is the problem. You all think. Never stop to question before doing so. Never actually think twice.” He walked towards them, a trail of blood following after him. “Only because the punishment beyond will be sweeter, you might go. Even you, Miriam. You, I want to see beyond this world the most. Alone. Abandoned in your own sin. Sitting between hellish fire.”

With one last frustrated raging look at him, they all fled towards the exit and Winter hid behind the shelves, not making out why she’d stayed and not followed after. What more there was to know? He’d lied. He’d plotted. What else was there to know?