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Which made it all the more necessary for Azriel to observe who entered and departed Thrudheim, if any emissaries from those territories arrived.
“I want you to find it,” the queen ordered her son. “To bring this boon back to your father, to Vallahan. It should be in our hands, no one else’s.”
He marked that tidbit. Vallahan, Montesere, and Rask might be allied, but could that unity be broken apart by the race to attain whatever this Made weapon was? They’d clearly trusted each other enough to join forces recently, but how strong was that faith? It seemed as if the prince intended to strike out on his own—did Montesere and Rask know Vallahan was going rogue?
Perhaps that was the best route to stopping this invasion: destroying the triple alliance by turning them on each other. He’d have to get spies and agents deep into all three courts, Rask being the most difficult, but if he could undermine them, use the hunt for this Made weapon to get them at each other’s throats, reveal the prince’s unauthorized, secret hunt outside of their alliance . . . it might work. And was precisely the sort of unsavory, dishonorable scheming that he’d always excelled at—a cunning gift. Or curse.
Azriel glanced to the Vallahan queen and prince, but Thrudheim’s gates were already shut, the rams butting heads once more, sealing the royal family within.
His shadows caught it, then. The muttering of the guard.
“Pampered little brat,” one of them grunted. The one who’d nearly been spat on.
None of the guards contradicted him. No one cried foul at the dishonor.
Interesting. A prince who did not command the hearts of his soldiers. Another string to pull. Collapse the triple alliance, undermine the ruling order of each territory, thus ensuring the Fae in the free lands below had no incentive to join them—
Later. He’d already lingered too long here.
With his shadows swirling around him like a living cloak, Az vanished, leaving only a hot puff of his breath behind.
“It went well, then,” Cassian drawled from where he’d thrown himself on the couch before the fire in Rhys’s formal study.
“Supremely well,” Feyre said, easing onto the couch beside him, Nyx in her arms at her bared breast. “They’re even coming for Solstice now.”
Azriel snorted, unable to help it, even as he kept to the armchair by the window, content in the deep shadows of the velvet curtains framing it. They’d all been here when he’d returned, and Rhys had barely given him more than a nod—though he’d definitely eyed the snow still melting on the scales of his armor.
Azriel’s shadows, of course, had reported who was present prior to his entrance, but he’d blocked out their murmuring before they could also report on who else was nearby. That was a distraction he didn’t want or need right now.
Not with so much information in his head, so many plans taking form. His skin tingled with the need to move, to start doing what he did best.
“Another war on the horizon,” Cassian said, crossing his legs at the ankles, the mud splattered on his boots still drying. It smelled of autumnal woods near the sea, Az’s shadows whispered. “What else is new?”
“I don’t know how you can find this the least bit amusing,” Mor scolded, tossing her sheet of golden hair over her shoulder. “This is nothing like Hybern. And will be nothing like the Sundering War, either. It will be worse.”
Az’s cascading plans halted at how somber she sounded.
He couldn’t remember who had started calling the war five centuries ago the Sundering War, but it had stuck. Hopefully, this next conflict wouldn’t require nearly so dramatic a name. Hopefully, it wouldn’t materialize at all—though Az knew that was a fool’s dream. As most of his dreams turned out to be.
Azriel didn’t miss the predatory gleam in Cassian’s eyes as he said casually, “We’ll deal with it.”
His pulse is quickening; fear runs rampant beneath—
Az ignored his shadows again. He didn’t need to know every single detail of Cassian’s emotional state—not when his brother wore it on his face.
Go be somewhere else, he willed his shadows. I’ll have work for you soon enough.
He could have sworn they slunk away, tails between their proverbial legs, and curled up in a pocket of darkness by the shut doors. He ignored them.
“And how do you propose we deal with it, Cassian?” Amren asked from the armchair across from Azriel. “With what army? At what cost?”
Rhys must have filled the others in while Az had been in Vallahan.
Feyre cradled Nyx closer. The only sign of her dread before she said, “They’re all afraid of us. They pretended they weren’t, but they are.”
Az nodded. His shadows had confirmed as much during the meeting. He himself knew the tang of that fear all too well—had grown up with it stinging his senses just before someone called him monster, demon, abomination. He could sense it in others with almost a preternatural ability, shadows or no.
“They’re afraid of the Trove,” Amren corrected, drumming her long red nails on the arm of the chair. “And as long as we retain possession, as long as we have someone here who can wield it, they will limit this invasion to their shores—and leave us alone here in Prythian.”
