Ilona’s eyes were open, her cheeks pink with life. Her head was turned to the side, her arm outstretched to the other side of the bed where Aziel sat. Though his body was covered in blood and sweat, the cloth in his arms was nearly pristine. And there, swaddled within the pale blue fabric, was a sleeping newborn.
“She’s beautiful.” Ilona said softly, voice cracking. “She’s so beautiful.”
Nymiria’s breath was caught in her throat. And though she believed she had no strength to do much else, she pulled herself into the bed beside her old friend. Her gaze hung on the sight before her. It should have been a gruesome thing, with how much blood had been lost, but her heart swelled with intense emotion watching Aziel hold the babe he’d delivered.
A babe that was alive. A babe that would now get to have a mother…
Because she’dtried.
“Hold her for me.” Nymiria finally shifted her gaze to the woman at her side, her mouth falling open in silent protest. But Ilona was having none of it. “I’m still too weak to hold her, Nym. Would you help?”
Before she could refuse, Aziel was already walking towards them. She couldn’t decipher the look she saw in his eyes, but as he passed the sleeping child to her, there was a sense of longing she felt when their hands met. She stared up at him, eyes wide with uncertainty. Aziel smiled and placed his hand upon her elbow, adjusting it just enough so that the baby was cradled perfectly against her chest. “Support her head.” He said quietly.
She’d never held a baby before. It was foreign and terrifying, her stomach dropping with each small movement. When she was safely propped against the headboard of the bed, she finally breathed a sigh of relief. Aziel stood there, freshly cleaned fingers curled around his chin. Nymiria still was not sure what that look in his eyes meant, but there was something about it that made her chest ache.
He must have felt so many things. Not only had his power been so close to taking Ilona’s life, but it probably could have claimed the baby’s as well. A baby that was, by blood, hissister.
As much as Aziel hated the man who sired him, there was no mistaking the fact that he had nothing but love for the ones he shared blood with. She saw the way he watched after Oran.Though their relationship was strained in many ways, there was no mistaking their bond as brothers—loving one another and accepting one another in the only way they knew how.
There was also that longing she felt coming from him, the pain of a future he believed that he could never have. Thattheycould never have because of what her mother took from him.
He wanted to be a father. As a boy, he’d wanted nothing more than to be a father and to have a family of his own. He believed that loving them would be the greatest revenge against his bloodline, that it would prove that he was nothing like Dorid Yaarborough. Nymiria wished that she could tell him that he didn’t need to go to such lengths to prove himself. He’d been born into this world a better man than Dorid could ever dream of being. And for a moment, as she looked down at the little girl in her arms, Nymiria wondered if that ache she felt in her chest was anywhere near what Aziel felt when he looked at her.
Whenever she doubted herself, whenever she hated herself, she wondered if he felt that same deep heartbreak that she felt in that moment.
“It’s tradition in our coven to give girls names that end with anA.” Ilona started. Nymiria and Aziel both turned to her, waiting for her to continue. “I think that I found the perfect name for her.”
Nymiria’s heart warmed over, a small smile breaching her nervous expression. “And—what is it?”
“Azella. Azella Nymiria Forge.”
Chapter 29
It took a few hours before Ilona regained enough strength to move on her own. Nymiria stayed at her side, assisting her with whatever she needed. Aziel excused himself from the cabin nearly an hour before Nymiria did, their eyes lingering on one another longer than usual. She walked back to the palace with the young witches at her side, all of them asking her questions about her godhood that Nymiria still wasn’t too confident answering. It would come with time, she supposed. One day, she would get used to having followers—become acclimated to the fact that she wasn’t as worthless as she once believed she was.
Over the course of her twenty-six years, Nymiria had come to learn the exact shape and size of her hands. Looking at them now, they appeared to be hands that did not belong to her. These hands that’d killed, these hands that’d hurt and maimed, that could grow flowers and procure food from thin air…
Had saved a life.
Not just one, but two.
And while she’d never experienced something so physically exhausting before, she’d also never known this sort of relief.
She was not a monster. She was not a plague, nor was she a curse.
Nymiria pushed the door open to the sleeping chambers, peering around the room in search of him. Despite finding the room empty, she continued forward, following her senses to the washroom. Her steps were light and careful, her hands in knots in front of her. When she saw him, her whole body went still, save for that small organ in her chest that pounded so loudly that it was all that she could hear. With how strongly she felt it, it seemed as if she had two heartbeats instead of one.
He was clean now. And telling by the clarity of the water, Nymiria assumed that he’d repeated the process quite a few times.
Aziel was hunched over his knees in the tub with his arms folded around his bent legs, his head resting against them. He didn’t move, even as she drew closer to him, he stayed in that position. And though the display in front of her was enough to draw a gasp from her lungs, she tampered down the urge, swallowing when she saw his mutilated back. It looked so much worse than she remembered. Perhaps she’d only focused on the runes when she’d seen it last or perhaps he’d hidden them with a glamour of some sort—afraid of what she might think if she saw every small detail. There was hardly an inch of skin that wasn’t blemished with some sort of scarring. Burns, lashes, cuts… he’d experienced it all. The scars were not just on his back. They covered him. Every single limb.
Nymiria moved forward again, prepared to leave the moment he asked her to, but when the moment never came, she finally knelt by the tub and took the still-dry washcloth from the metal tray beside the spigot. She dunked it under the water, saturating the cloth before she brought it up to his shoulders and squeezedthe water out onto his skin. Aziel didn’t move. Even as she poured soap onto the cloth and began washing his skin, he remained in that position.
“Are you alright?” She whispered. A nod was all she received in response. There were things about him that she knew without having to ask. She knew that he felt vulnerable. She knew that he felt shame—not just because of the scars he’d never shown, but because of what she saw of his power. He believed that she would change her mind again, now that she’d seen everything.
It wasn't until she rested her hand onto his arm that he finally looked up at her. She knew the look in his eyes, like he was waiting for repulsion. But even when she looked at the claw-like marks that ran from his ear to his jaw, she felt nothing of the sort.
“Why did you hide them?” She whispered.
