The World Beyond My Cage

I was born in darkness and agony.

My fondest memories in childhood were when my mother was kept in the cage with me. Until I was five the monster that sired me let her stay in there by my side. I still remember the sound of her voice, the songs she sang as she rocked me to sleep… the screams when she was dragged out of my cell and told she could come back once a week- if she behaved.

For me, that cell was my entire world.

Mother was allowed to visit for only a single meal, but she never told me anything about the camp outside. From my window all I could see was a tiny square of sky, and I believed that was all the sky in the universe. I could hear the other Illyrians laughing, playing, fighting, fucking- but that wasn't a world I was part of.

I think my mother's silence on the world outside was because she knew- or thought she knew- that I would never see it.

My guards, my sire, his wife, and my half-brothers- other than my mother they were the only ones I'd ever seen. The guards were wholly indifferent to me… For a long time, I thought that meant we were friends.

Best friends even.

One day my mother told me she was being married to some male in camp, something arranged by my sire. She was scared of what it might mean, but to me it was… nothing.

Of course, anything that frightened my mother usually terrified me, but by then I'd grown despondent. I wanted to be scared for her, but it was an act. One I still feel wretched for.

My wings ached day and night. They hurt so badly that I couldn't sleep, couldn't eat until I was faint and half-mad with starvation. Even then, I could only stomach a few bites at a time. I tried to hide it from her when she came each week. I didn't mention the agony I was in or the voices that whispered to me in the black of night.

Maybe it didn't matter that my sympathy was an act, because after the marriage she was happier. My sire thought one of his warriors might control her better, maybe give her another child so she'd be less vocal about me, but the male he gave her to truly loved her. Somehow, without even knowing me, he became one of my greatest champions.

She smuggled a letter into my cage from her new husband, and the male swore solemn oaths to always keep her safe and bring as much brightness into her life as possible. He called me 'son' and begged me to stay strong for 'just a little longer', then he would show me how big and bright the world was… what it felt like to stand in the wind.

Mother burned the letter after she'd read it. When she looked to me for my reaction I returned her smile… but I felt nothing.

I didn't know what wind was, I didn't know what sun felt like or even what a world outside that cell might be. I couldn't comprehend any of it.

I didn't know that for years my crying had echoed up through the vent that gave me my little window to the sky. I didn't know that sometimes when I whispered with the shadows, there were people on the other side of the darkness. Warriors who heard my little voice and whispered the truth of what I was.

Shadowsinger.

Mother's new husband was one of the ones who decided to use it to do something about the sad little boy kept in the darkness.

A friend of his occasionally was sent to guard trade shipments in Lord Baris' camp. Mother wrote a letter with her husband's help and they gave it to that male.

He left it with a cook, who passed it to a farmer, who gave it to another cook in Lord Eredem's camp, who passed it to his sister, who gave it to her husband, who handed it to a warrior friend in Lord Ilkin's retinue, who had an on-again-off-again affair with a male in Lord Cesper's camp-

Honestly, even now I can't understand how the hell the letter actually survived the journey to Lord Cesper. The fact that it took two years to make the journey is the only rational part of the whole thing.

My wings were warping, the agony shooting into my spine from them was matched only by the eternal burning of my ruined hands- those wounds being only a week old at the time. When mother came to see me she was half-mad with rage and grief at what happened, but I could barely hear her voice. I couldn't even feel her hands on my shoulder.

During that chaos, a messenger arrived from Lord Cesper's camp.

Cesper was among the most dangerous Illyrian Lords, one my sire bitterly resented. Still, when Cesper's messenger met my sire he'd only said, "Hand over the Shadowsinger," and I was free.

That was all it took to end eleven years of agony and torment- four words and he practically controlled the Lord of the camp. If Cesper knew what I was, he could tell the High Lord's mate, she lived in his camp with her son now. She had no reason to care about some random Illyrian child, but word would easily reach her husband of a shadowsinger kept locked in a cage.

If the High Lord of Night found out that my sire had hidden a shadowsinger all these years- and allowed me to fall into such a horrific state- his entire camp could be slaughtered as punishment.

That was why my mother's husband had sent such a precious letter in secret through the Illyrian camps. When he passed it along, they knew the Lady of Night would one day make for Cesper's camp with her son. They knew that even if Lord Cesper did not tell her about a child abused and neglected he would at least seek to control a Shadowsinger- the most valuable player available to any Illyrian camp. I was a way to gain favor over other camps, and with the High Lord's favor came territory.

True, I would be nothing more than a pawn in a game between two cruel, evil males, but in Cesper's game at least I had a shot of seeing the sky.

The guards dragged me from my cell in the dead of night. I didn't see the new world that opened around me, I only saw my mother sobbing with equal parts joy and grief as a tall male held her.

The male nodded to me, but his face was ashen. Everyone's was when they saw their Camp Lord's son for the first time and realized exactly how great of a monster he truly was. My wings were bent and bowed, thin, pale, and they hung utterly limp behind me. I was nothing more than skin stretched over bone, and dark as the night was something darker stirred in my wake.

To them, it looked as though those guards had dragged me out of the underworld itself, and that world of shadows was reaching out to reclaim me.

My sire and his family only glared as I was handed over to the messenger from Lord Cesper's camp. The male lifted me into his arms, and when he felt how light I was his arrogant superiority melted into a quiet shock and horror.

Why do they keep looking at me the way I look at my brothers?

That was what fear was to me- 'the way I look at my brothers'. I thought I'd asked my mother that question, but only a whimper escaped my lips.

A shadow curled around my mouth and carried that whimper to her ear. She broke free of her husband's comforting arms and raced for the messenger, for her son.

He took off before we got the chance to say goodbye.

I will always regret that.

We never got the chance to say goodbye.

I wouldn't know it until years later, but after I was taken from that camp my sire realized who must have played a role in telling Lord Cesper what I was… Before we were even five minutes flight away, he killed my mother and her husband.

Twice I've lost a mother, and each time all I can think is 'how did I not feel it'? I should have felt the world shudder around me when my mother was killed in that camp. I should have felt it fall apart when Rhys' mother- one I knew as well as my own- was cut down…

I don't remember falling asleep in that messenger's arms. I just remember her voice fading away forever, and then being woken by something incomprehensibly bright, so bright that I thought I was burning again.

I began to scream and thrash against the male's chest, every movement only making the ruined nerves of my hands feel as though they were melting again. That light could only be the fire that destroyed me, all this was just another torture invented by my half-brothers.

"Ssh boy, calm down. It's only the sun." It wasn't the sudden awareness of just how much air was moving around me, the cool kiss of mist as we flew through the clouds, or even the unknown smell of pine and forest that shocked me out of my waking nightmare.

It was the sound of a voice wholly foreign to me.

The messenger still carried me- and would for another few hours- as we flew into the sunrise.

A male who wasn't guard or sire or brother. A face I didn't know.

Then colors I never knew existed were all around me. My sky-it was blue or black or occasionally a color like blood not quite washed out of my ratty gray tunic (I would later learn this was 'pink'). The sky I saw that morning was as golden as the embroidery on my half-brother's swords, as red as my mother's eyes after she'd been crying, and as orange as fire.

Looking back, I like to think it was a gift from her to me- that glorious sunrise.

I stared at it, at the sheer distance of the rising sun, and could only gape the rest of our journey. My body ached, my wings were agony as the wind brushed them, but Cauldron above, that sun was the most incredible thing I'd ever seen.

The trees below were as great a miracle. When the male stopped for a rest, he set me against one and studied me. I was too busy marveling at the softness of this new world. I could hardly stand to touch it, but I also couldn't resist.

"Do you want your father dead?" the male asked quietly.

I slid my fingers into the wet dirt of the forest floor, amazed that the rock beneath me was soft and pliable. I'd only ever felt cold stone. If my brothers kicked me across this, I might not even bleed. My head wouldn't crack quite so hard when they threw me against it either.

Was that a good thing, or did it just mean the beatings would last longer?

"Do you want your father dead?" the male repeated when I didn't answer, "Do you even know how to speak?"

"Father?" my voice was rough.

"Yeah, your father. Serkan? Camp Lord?"

"My sire?" Mother had never used that word to describe the male who she said gave me to her. 'Father'- it had absolutely no meaning to me then.

"Sure." The messenger shrugged, "Do you want him, his wife, and those brats of his killed, or do you want to be the one that kills them?"

It never even occurred to me they could die. I could die, I was completely breakable and my brothers reminded me of it daily. I was a toy for them to amuse themselves with.

Could they be killed? Could they be made to feel how I did every single day?

"I- I don't know." I whispered.

The messenger nodded, "Then when you're asked, tell the Camp Lord they didn't know you were a shadowsinger. If they did know, he'd pass it along to the High Lord. Serkan- your sire- plus his entire family would be executed as traitors. When you're fully grown you'll be too valuable to punish significantly if you were to massacre a camp. You can always kill them then." The messenger tapped his thumb against his leg and shot me another look, "Mind you remember- in case you feel the need to pass on what I said to you- that I'm not telling you to protect a traitor. I'm just saying, I know how cathartic it can be to kill someone who's wronged you. I'm just telling you how to keep that option open."

Eleven years old, nothing more than skin, bones, and bent little wings and this male already knew to be terrified of what I would one day become. Not Rhys' spymaster, but his father's. A male made of iron will and uncompromising wrath for those who dared defy him. The messenger was protecting his ass in case a fully grown shadowsinger decided his advice went against the will of the High Lord.

"What's going to happen?" I asked, "Will I be in a new cell?"

"You won't be in any cells. At least, you won't be the one who's locked in them at night. Lord Cesper has decided you will be trained as a warrior, but Shadowsinger or not, you won't get any special treatment. A soft Shadowsinger is hardly worth his power, and the High Lord killed his last one because he lost the stomach to do what was needed. Even he's going to expect Lord Cesper to push you. You'll learn to fight, build some damn muscle, and we'll try to get those wings sorted out."

"Can I learn how to run like you?" I asked wide-eyed.

"Run?" the messenger was baffled.

I'd pointed up at the now-blue sky, "Run up there."

"Fly?"

"Fly," I whispered it as if I knew how precious that word was. My mother never dared speak of flying (not that she could, with her wings clipped). It was like the outside world- something I would never know, so why tell me what I was missing? I didn't have room in the cell to even open them properly, and the muscles were so weak I couldn't even try. Eleven-year-old me those wings were nothing more than an aching, useless appendage. I'd even asked my mother to cut them off once.

"I think I'm going to be sick," the messenger looked away a moment, "what kind of Illyrian doesn't even know the word 'fly'? Shit, I might have to kill Serkan for you."

"I did something wrong? I'm sorry," I winced.

"You didn't do anything wrong, boy. They did." He shuddered, "I can't wait to see what you'll do to them when you learn the word 'hate'."

After that the messenger left me to stare open-mouthed at a leaf for half an hour, until he was ready to carry me the rest of the way to Lord Cesper's camp.

By the time we landed, I was almost optimistic about what awaited me. The messenger had sworn time and again that I wouldn't be kept in a cage, I would learn to fight and fly, I wouldn't live underground, I could watch the sunrise each morning and- the part that almost made me burst into tears- I would be healed.

A world without pain- that was something I'd dreamed of more often than anything else.

The first day was a flurry of activity- answering questions (No, my sire didn't know I was a Shadowsinger), collecting gear, eating food (that apparently could be served hot), and being poked and prodded by a wizened old camp medic.

She coated my hands in a thick paste and wrapped them in bandages. Her siphons flashed red as she poured magic into my skin, directing the paste to burrow into the flesh and help repair mangled nerves. They went numb for a long time, then a burning cold settled in that gave way to-

-to nothing. Nothing at all. Not pain, not cold, not agony. When she'd unwrapped my hands they were still mutilated and scarred, but I felt her touch my palm and- and that was it.

I sat in the middle of the camp, across from that old lady, and cried harder than I had in a long time. I could hear some of the boys yelling those same insults my brothers had hurled, but it didn't matter. I'd long since forgotten just how much my hands had hurt, how great that ache was.

It made no sense that the absence of pain could mean so much, but it did. How was I ever strong enough to survive that?

The woman held my hands- and the messenger held me- as two warriors took my wings and pulled them open. She murmured comforts to me, told me to be brave and promised me a sweet if I could just endure. I didn't know what a 'sweet' was, but I didn't fight them. I wanted to know what it would feel like if that pain was gone too… But as the wings opened fully for the first time in my life and those atrophied muscles began to wake, the new agony that washed over me had me whimpering.

I was screaming by the time the wings were fully extended, but the old woman and the messenger held me tight. A couple gifted warriors shielded the ones who pulled my wings to their full length. My shadows thrashed and shot for the hands that held me down, they tried to spear those who grabbed at my wings. They protected them as well.

The shields began to crack beneath my assault immediately and the warriors cursed. My full power wouldn't be known until I was fifteen, but even then I was stronger than any stunted little boy had any right to be.

Then something infinitely darker- something made of talons and adamantine- grabbed my mind, whipped my shadows aside, and a dark-haired child glared at me with violet eyes, "Stop screaming like an idiot. You're giving me a headache."

I felt the words in my very soul, and the sound was ripped from my lungs. The adults hurried to finish their assessment of my wings, but I was held too strongly by the other boy to so much as whimper.

"You're a puny little runt, aren't you?" The boy made a face, "What a waste of power."

That boy held my mind firm as the healer's magic flooded my wings. I wanted to scream as curved bone was forced back into straight lines and my wings popped, but the boy's will didn't allow it. I fought against those claws in my mind and fueled that fight with the agony I could not express.

He ground his teeth together and adjusted how he stood. All the power that filled that boy already, and he had to brace himself against me.

By the time the healer was done and he released my mind, both of us were sweating.

"Like I said, waste of power." The other boy tried to hide his racing heart. He spat at my feet, snorted, and walked away.

"It's going to hurt for a while yet," the healer crouched down in front of me and held my face as I began to cry again. "Your whole body is going to have to adjust, they were quite bent. Every morning and every night you come to the healer's tent, understood?" I nodded, but I was crying too hard to really hear her.

It was the first day of what would turn out to be weeks of fresh agony.

Every morning and night the healer (or her assistant) would massage the bones of my wings. The other trainees made lewd comments and told increasingly vulgar stories about what 'really' went on during my sessions with the females. I didn't say anything. I wished I could trade places with them.

They thought something fun was happening while I screamed and sobbed on the floor. In reality, the healers forced blood to flow into my atrophied wings again. I thought they hurt before, but when I began to actually feel them that pain seemed like a joke.

"You have no hope of building muscle until we restore circulation, and unfortunately Illyrians don't possess the healing magic necessary to do that quickly," the healer would tell me each and every time. "Just endure this Azriel, and I promise a day will come when this doesn't hurt."

The messenger who predicted I would learn to hate- how right he was.

I hated the healer for the torture she inflicted on me. I hated the arrogant boy who'd grabbed my mind- a boy who looked down on me and laughed in my face when I was the first to collapse during training. I hated all the males of my group- each and every one of which was just as cruel as my half-brothers. They didn't burn me, but they hit me for no reason, flipped my food into the mud, mocked my wings, my inability to fly, and even laughed at the scars on my hands. I was nothing more than a runt and a bastard to them, worthless to both Illyrian and faerie kind.

Even outside of training the torture didn't stop- though that future Lord of Night never participated in more than general teasing. When I slept amongst the other trainees beneath that endless sky, I was often woken by a foot stomping on my wings, with a kick to the head, or when one of the males relieved themselves on me.

Their mocking made my blood feel like acid. My shadows became edged and sharp as a knife point, and eventually the healers strapped blue siphons to the backs of my hands- a way to contain the power that sparked around me when the rage built.

Oh, scrawny and weak I may be, but the raw might in my veins was enough to make Lord Cesper himself nervous. What would I be like when his power truly woke? The adults whispered of it among themselves.

As the weeks turned into months, I began to see the Lordling of Night as one of the nice boys. He looked at me with disdain and disinterest as the novelty of me wore off, but that was better than the physical beatings. A few boys took cues from him, but that only made the brutal ones so much worse. The camp bully- a thug named 'Cassian'- never touched me, but the others made up for it every chance they got.

Eventually, I took to sleeping off on my own at the edge of camp, far from the large bonfire that kept us all warm. When tents were handed out in anticipation of winter, I quietly returned mine to the storeroom. I was miserable, angry, and too weak to take it out on anyone. Sleeping in a tent where I couldn't see the stars- how would it be any different from when I was locked in that cell?

Hate- the messenger had acted as if that would be some gift for me, a tool I could use against my enemies. What good was hate to me when I was still miles behind the other boys? My power was unfocused and uncontrolled, even with those siphons. My wings could twitch on command, but I still couldn't fly. I couldn't throw a punch strong enough to bruise or run as far as the others. I couldn't swing a sword without getting tangled in my own awkward limbs- whatever 'hate' might give me, embarrassment and frustration gave me more.

Winter came hard and fast, but in it I finally found one thing I was good at. I used his magic to wrap a thin layer of warm air around me as he slept, staving off the cold. It was a trick I'd learned in my cell, a magic too delicate for the Illyrian bastards to even attempt. I could sleep in peace out where not even the adult's eyes wandered, and when I woke in the seclusion of the laundry tents, I could practice trying to open and close my wings.

The stretching helped ease that pain (which was at last fading as muscle built), and I could take pride in the little improvements before those evil boys set in on me again. I felt freedom, sleeping out on my own, and wondered what it might be like to simply walk into that wilderness. I wouldn't be an Illyrian, I wouldn't be a warrior- maybe I'd take up farming or build a hut for mother and her husband to live in with me. We could be safe, far from the cruel inhabitants of the world.

The Lordling of Night had lost interest in me quickly enough, but even his eyes were drawn when I trudged off at night to that abandoned corner of the camp. Even he said once (seemingly to no one at all), "Winters out here sure are brutal, I've heard. If you're stupid enough to sleep outside, you'll get the icy death that you're asking for".

I ignored him… though if I'd been able to see through my hatred, I might have noticed that as the nights grew colder, my magic felt thinner in the mornings. I might have noticed that day after day it took just a little more to keep me warm beneath my thin blanket. My cell was horrible and cold- but the reason my little trick had worked was because it kept the icy winds away. Out on the steppes, those winds blasted constantly.

One night a great storm rocked the mountains and when I woke the next morning, I was shivering beneath a blanket of ice.

The following night, I found a new area behind the forge bellows, where heat leaked out from the building. I curled into a tight ball against the outer wall and let the heat help fill my shield.

In the morning I was weak, pale, and shaking. My magic was nothing more than a whisper in my veins.

The Illyrian warriors led us all through drills and swordplay, but I kept tripping. My hands had trouble gripping the hilt of the sword, and if anything I was less coordinated than I'd been when I first arrived.

That Lordling had deigned to look at me a few times. When we ate our dinners of stew, he distracted the worst of the bullies with a bawdy song he'd learned in the Hewn City. I ate my hot meal in peace for once- but when he looked at me something still wasn't right.

"Hey, runt." The Lordling grabbed my arm as I put his empty bowl among the others. "Look, in case I was too subtle before- this place gets fucking cold at night. Go get your Cauldron-damned tent and don't be an idiot."

"Fuck off," I murmured, "and don't talk to me." It ranks among my weakest comebacks, but at the time it was all I was capable of.

That night I tried sleeping near the stables where some warming magic kept the animals comfortable. I thought perhaps the heat would radiate out from the walls.

It was close to the stone cottages of the most powerful in the camp, but still out of sight of the males who tormented and tortured me. I would be alright, I didn't need some tent- it was just another cage to be thrust in. Besides, I was raised in a cold cell. Winter couldn't be any worse than what I'd endured already.

I could not have been more wrong.

Sometime in the night, a blizzard struck. By the time my mind recognized it through the freezing haze, I was half-buried and too far gone to move my arms or legs. My stupid wings refused to even tryand curl around me, just as they refused to go numb in the burningcold.

I willed the sun to rise as violent shaking wracked my body, as bit by bit it became difficult to breathe.

I was cold, so damnably cold… The darkness wrapped around me as my face was buried beneath snow, and that old friend whispered to me that I would not make it to the dawn. Precious shadowsinger or no, I would be found buried and dead in the snow of the Illyrian Steppes. I would never show the other boys that I was capable of everything they were. I would never be free of the hate and rage that I'd learned since leaving my-

Cauldron, I hoped they wouldn't tell my mother.

Her face filled my mind as I thought of the Hell I'd escaped. Her equal grief and joy as I was carried away, her voice as she sang to me in my cell, the feeling of her sleeping beside me when I was an infant and thought that cell was simply the world we inhabited together.

She'd been so proud when that messenger took me, even though she knew she might never see her son again. I had a chance at being a real warrior- and as a Shadowsinger it was possible even the High Lord would one day take me into his employ. Her little boy would no longer be imprisoned and neglected- he could become something great and mighty.

Don't take her dream from her, I prayed to my darkness- and to the silver-edged night that reached into it, don't tell her I died alone in the cold.

As the frozen darkness closed around me, my consciousness slipped away.

I never heard the commotion that erupted.

"MOM! The INBRED BASTARD left his SHIT in the chamber pot AGAIN!" Rhysand had shouted.

"Did not you cauldron-damned prick!" Cassian took the bait immediately.

"RHYSAND! APOLOGIZE RIGHT THIS SECOND!" A female voice snapped, "IN THIS HOUSE, WE TREAT OTHERS WITH RESPECT!"

"FINE! I'm sorry."

"DO IT PROPERLY!"

"I'm sorry Cassian for calling you an 'inbred bastard'."

Cassian had snickered until the wrath of the female had turned on him, "And if I have to tell either of you one more time-"

"I'm sorry I cursed, Lady Night. It was juvenile and beneath my measure as a male." Cassian- the suck-up- earned a rude gesture from Rhys.

"Both of you can empty that chamber pot. While you do, Cassian will think about basic hygiene including emptying your own waste, and Rhysand- you get to think about basic decency as you stand next to your friend and do the same chores he's doing. I'm not raising some arrogant little Lordling, you'll be a proper male even if it takes a thousand years."

"Yes, mother," Rhys rolled his eyes even as he took the (empty) chamber pot, grabbed Cassian, and ran out of the house.

"What the fuck was all that about?! I emptied the pot!" Cassian shoved him as soon as they were out of earshot.

"I need to look for something and didn't want to make a big scene."

"You call that not making a big scene?"

"Shut up!" Rhysand had shoved Cassian just as hard, sending the boy into the wall of the stables as Rhys looked around at the world of snow and ice.

He'd felt something in the night- a shadow that speared for his own darkness and seemed to be frantically pulling him. It didn't feel like anything he'd seen before- it wasn't a mind per se, it was more like… like the shadows were frightened for someone.

Then he'd heard the whispered prayer of that little runt and Rhysand knew he had to get outside fast.

Cassian ran at Rhysand's back. He was taking advantage of the Lordling's distraction to get a bit of revenge for bating him inside. Near the edge of the stables, Cassian's boot collided with something buried beneath the snow. He fell forward hard, only a few feet from Rhys', and when his hand vanished into the snow it was sliced by something sharp.

"You're graceful, I'll give you that." Rhysand huffed as Cassian swore.

"Shove it up your ass, I tripped on something." He glared at the blood welling in his palm and delivered a sound kick to whatever it was that tripped him.

The violent, earth-shattering pain of Cassian standing on my frozen wings had snapped me back to something resembling consciousness. When Cassian's boot collided with my spine, my mind screamed out.

"Wait- what was that?" Rhysand snapped to attention in an instant.

"I didn't hear anything." Cassian looked down at whatever it was he'd tripped on. Enough moonlight was reflecting on the snow that he could see into the hole where he'd cut his hand- and he saw the sharpened talon of an obsidian wing.

All it took was a few hard flaps of Cassian's wings to scatter the snow and reveal my face. At the sight of my blue skin, he'd loosed an impressive string of panicked curses, "Is he- is he dead?"

"Help me get him to mother, NOW!" Rhysand dropped the chamber pot immediately, shielded the area from the still-falling snow, and tried to warm the ground beneath me. I had no idea what was happening, all I knew was that a different kind of pain screamed through my wings as those two pried me from the frozen ground, then the light changed and a female was trying to pry my eyes open.

She held a knife to my nose when I couldn't reply and checked the way air fogged the blade to see if I was even breathing. The female gave quick, firm directions to those two panicked eleven-year-olds who'd retrieved me from the cold.

My vision blurred, the shadows wrapped around me tightly, and even as that female turned to speak to me, I faded once more into oblivion.

—

I was cold, so cold that for a long time I was sure I'd died.

Then I heard a voice.

"Slowly, Rhysand. You have to go very slowly, or it could do as much harm as good."

Mother? I might have spoken, but they gave no indication they'd heard me.

"Why can't I just make the water hot? If it's hot, he'll get warm faster. Or why can't I just heat him up? I can control the magic enough now that he won't get hurt!"

"That isn't how it works. His blood is cold too. If you warm him up too fast, it will all start rushing and you could stop his heart. With humans or wing-less fae you can use blankets. With everyone else, you need to be delicate. That's why we use water. Slowly Rhysand, and focus only on the water around his chest. Don't try for his arms or wings. They'll warm as he warms."

It certainly wasn't my mother's voice. My heart sank.

My eyes fluttered open to see that little Lordling staring hard at the water of a full bath. I was laying in it with my wings stretched around me. The Lordling's brows were furrowed in concentration and he kept only the tip of a finger in the water. It was cold enough that goosebumps rose on his arm, but in miniscule steps he was warming the water and bringing me back from the darkness.

"He's awake!" Cassian was standing behind Lady Night with his arms crossed, "You made me trip, runt." He glared at me even though relief was plain on his face.

"Cassian," the lady's voice was soft, but there was a warning in her tone. She looked like her son, with raven black hair and violet eyes. Her wings were stretched wide to catch some of the heat from the fireplace and send it down to me in the tub. My snow-soaked clothes were shredded beside her where Rhys and Cassian had thrown them in their haste to get me into that tub.

"Is he going to be alright?" Rhysand dared a glance at my eyes. His voice was softer than I'd ever heard. Some sort of hard edge was gone from him, like he'd managed to peel back the arrogance for once.

"You'll be just fine." She answered Rhys' question, but directed it to me, "And I've already informed Cesper that you'll be moving in here with us. I'm not letting you out in that cold again."

"Mother," Rhysand rolled his eyes, "how many strays are you planning on taking in?"

"Rhysand!" She didn't even look at her son as she curved a wing around and whacked him upside the head, "Apologize immediately."

"Fine, I'm sorry I called you a stray." As soon as his mother's attention returned to me, Rhysand and Cassian both stuck their tongues out at me. It felt… somehow different to the torment I'd faced before. Less… less like genuine hatred and more good-natured, if that was possible.

"Don't mind my boys, they're Illyrian through-and-through. I'm trying to break them of it." She winked at me as if she knew I wasn't Illyrian- not really. Just like her and Rhys, I looked Illyrian but would never be one of them.

My shadows whispered to me of something on Cassian's face- a glimmer of pain and love when Lady Night said those words- 'my boys'- and claimed him in the same breath as her own blood child. Rhys rolled his eyes, but Cassian's lips twitched with the ghost of a smile.

"I-I'm sorry, I-" my body was still too cold to allow speech.

"You have nothing to be sorry for," she took my pale hand in hers.

"I-I don't w-want-"

"You don't want to be a burden? You don't want special treatment?" it was Cassian who snorted, "Too late. I speak from personal experience: consider yourself adopted. You're everyone's burden now."

"Well, I can think 'burden', but she makes me say 'brother'." Rhysand smiled as Cassian flipped him off.

Brother.

Everything in me recoiled from that word.

Brothers were cruel, sadistic monsters. Brothers brought only pain and misery. Brothers made you hate every living breath and pray for death- pray for your wings to be cut off. Brothers saw someone in a cage and made them an experiment.

If they were to be my brothers- if I was to be trapped inside a stone prison with them- then I would crawl out of that tub and return to the cold and snow to die.

Lady Night only smirked, "One day you'll be happy to call them your brothers Rhysand, mark my words."

"Only if you mark them when you're wrong," Rhysand mimicked his father's arrogance, then immediately softened both tone and stance at the flash in her eyes, "I'm sorry, mom, I'll do better."

"Yeah you will, or no wings for a month."

"I-I-I d-don't w-want-" I yanked my hand from hers and began to thrash in the tub. I couldn't get the words out, couldn't make my arms move high enough to grip the edge or bend my legs beneath me. Cassian and Rhysand both reached for me quickly and I tucked my hands tight beneath my armpits. My shadows refused to appear and all I could do was roll over in the tub so that my wings were between me and the boys.

It was Rhysand who pushed Cassian back and slid away from the tub, giving me all the space I needed, "You had brothers, didn't you?" his voice was quiet and fearful at my panic, "They did that to your hands?"

"Cauldron, I thought that was just some shadowsinger thing. Someone did that to you?" Cassian gaped.

"Boys, not right now." Lady Night put a gentle hand on my wings, "Azriel, listen to me. I will never let anyone hurt you like that again. You are safe here, I swear it to you as the Lady of Night. Please, let me help you."

It took a bit of coaxing to convince me to let them turn me back around. Rhysand returned slowly to the edge of the tub and began to warm the water again, but I remained weary.

"I'll make a deal with you, alright?" Rhysand offered. He looked to Cassian and waved him over, "All three of us make a deal together."

"Let's hear it first, Lordling." Cassian glared.

"We swear to be brothers- but not the kind who hurt each other. The kind who protect each other."

"We can't be pansies in training," Cassian said, "we have to fight, genius."

"I don't mean like that," Rhys waved him off. "I mean that outside of training, we never do anything to intentionally hurt one another and if we see someone hurting one of us, the others step in. We act like how real brothers do. Even if we don't get along and we fight- we don't let anyone hurt us." Rhys glanced to his mother. She smiled with pride and nodded her encouragement, "From now until forever- deal?"

Cassian didn't miss the approval in the eyes of Rhys' mother- and if only to earn a bit of that for himself too he choked back his sarcastic reply of 'What if you deserve to have your face bashed in' and instead said simply, "It's a deal."

I was still shaking when they looked to me, "You aren't allowed to hurt me?"

"No one is allowed to hurt you, and if anyone pulls any shit they go through us." Cassian winced before Rhysand's mother even looked at him, "I'm sorry. 'Stuff'. Anyone who pulls any stuff has to go through us."

"No one hurts you, especially not us, and we'll cut down anyone who tries from now until forever." Rhysand's quiet rage- even at eleven- carried in it a silver of the wrath that he would one day unleash upon the battlefields of Prythian.

My stomach churned, but my exhausted and half-frozen mind couldn't find any loopholes in the bargain. I nodded once, "D-d-deal."

Warmth rippled across my chest, and even as the whorls and ridges appeared on Cassian and Rhysand, I knew a similar tattoo had formed on my own body. Lady Night smiled at the markings that sunk beneath the skin of her son and the two Illyrian boys- a mark of brotherhood each of us would carry from that day unto our last.

By the end of winter, I could hold my own against a handful of the other trainees. I began to build muscle onto my frame, and while I still worked alone on my flying, Cassian and Rhysand kept the other boys from shoving me around or teasing me for my disadvantage.

It would be years yet before I could bring myself to call those other males 'brother', but the day I did the smiles on their faces was matched only by the pride and joy that lit the eyes of Rhys' mother. Our mother.

When the sun had set on that dark, frigid night, I was alone in the world.

When it rose the next morning, if I realized it or not, I had something I'd never really known before:

A family.