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Complete Summary: A tale of Tamlin's little sister and and a shadowsinger born an Illyrian bastard. On opposite ends of Prythian, they fight to keep their friendship strong and their people safe from forces that stretch farther and older than the Kingdom of Hybern.

In later years, Kianna still keeps her promise to stay in the Spring Court, but when Amarantha's curse might finally be broken by a human girl, Kianna travels Under the Mountain to incite the High Lords to rebel for a free Prythian. In the midst of War with Hybern, Kia finds her Illyrian mate surrounded by politics, spying, and too many meddling shadows.

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A Wood Between the Worlds

By Odeveca

Chapter 1: Blood For Blood

AZRIEL

There were no words for it.

No words that could soften what the Illyrian scouts found floating down the river to the camps. Two bloody boxes… filled with two decapitated heads.

After he had gotten over the shock, Azriel felt as if some demon had carved him into a coffin. It had awakened his protectors, swirling dark shadows rose clearer now, whispering warnings of bad blood to come, and they set him on an edge he had not felt in years.

The bad memory bubbled to the surface, like air escaping from a putrid swamp.

"Get in there you bastard." The clipped Illyrian female had once snarled in his rounded ear. Her dress of fine stock slapped around her bare calves as they descended down into his father's cellar, and the silver adorning her delicate wrists gave his skin bruises as she shoved him into that foul darkness that was not his own. As if getting beaten by his half-brothers was not a punishment enough now he had to be exiled here.

"No please." Azriel's small fingers had pleaded against her hostile ones to stop dragging him by his scalp. "I don't like the dark please." She responded by pulling fistfuls of hairs, making his head bleed again as she gets him into the cell of nightmares, throwing him on the stone ground. "Please! I will be good. I won't fight."

"Get in there," his stepmother's hateful lips said again as she shuts the door, leaving him in darkness. Only her voice left, "Bastard boy!"

"No! Don't leave me no!" Azriel screamed for his mother from the inside of that dark cell, pounding the iron-clad door, and scratching until his fingernails came off. He screamed for her to get him out, take him away. When she didn't come for him, he called for the servants that fed and played with him, and then when he grew truly desperate, swallowing his pride, he called for his half-brothers. When his voice became hoarse for some reason he began calling for his father.

No one came for him. Each week he was imprisoned in that cell, with only one hour of reprieve with his mother.

They had done that to him, and not one of them had spoken up against his evil stepmother.

The Illyrian warrior in him demanded he stop letting it get to him, and so Azriel shoved the painful memory deep inside.

Rhysand needed him, especially today.

The dark mood was imprinted when the remainder of the Night Court had winnowed back to the House of Wind. The snobbish Fae nobles added to the whispers of the tragedy that befell the High Lord's wife and child, and of the inevitable blood feud to come.

His shadows whispered to him.

"They're dead. Mother and daughter both."

"What will the High Lord do?"

"Will we go to War?"

"Oh there will be War, depends if Hybern will be apart of it is the question I am asking."

"Oh Cauldron's fuck, this is going to be a bloodbath."

Azriel could feel the anxious sweat weeping from his tattooed arms into his Illyrian leather at the mention of the bloodbath. The tension in the air reminded him of the Blood Rite. For those Fae that did not know Illyrian's tradition, the Blood Rite is when an Illyrian boy is to become a true warrior. To participate his wings are bound and magic leeched from him as the gathered are let lose in the wilds of the caves.

Azriel remembered the Blood Rite keenly, especially the first nights alone thinking of what troubles Cassian and Rhysand must be finding or cooking up as they were dropped on opposite sides of the mountain. Beast and up and coming war-lords' sons seemed to be around every corner, waiting to prove their worth, hunting the other contenders for a chance to join the Illyrian horde of warriors made.

For the Illyrian warrior in him, it seemed impossible to stay so still after learning about the murders, so silent, and not to leap at every uncanny move.

He had been trained to be ready for things like this.

Azriel would spring at any command Rhysand gave him. He had been trained for things like this, but not for the emotional shit-storm it would render him to. The emotional anguish of losing loved ones seemed to rack through his once so composed mind, that it made every wasted minute ruminating the right counter-blow downright agony.

Azriel was not the only one.

His Illyrian brother Cassian was not doing much better. His brother's once so bright face darkened into two ghoulish black eyes staring off into nothing, his wings drooped far too close to the ground, something their Illyrian pride forbid them to do, but it seemed Cass didn't care at the moment. Instead, his focus was on a scarred knuckle tapping one of the red Siphons on the back of his dominant hand. If he kept that tapping up Azriel would have to make him stop.

Thank goodness Mor came.

"Rhys, oh Rhys," Mor had come as soon as she heard of their return, a vision of gold and silver hooped earrings, and the heartbroken tears in her eyes made Azriel want to wrap his arms around her and make sure such tears were given the proper consideration. "I am so sorry"-

"Don't touch me." Rhys gritted out, hands exasperated, before she could console him, "I can't- control myself." He had taken one of the couch seats facing off at the sunset that plunged off the edge of Night, the House of Wind was filled with mist and twilight this windy night, and Rhysand returned to the same stony statue, holding back his overwhelming despair.

"Fair enough," she gave him back his space. "But to be clear," she said in that Mor tone of hers. "I am not going anywhere," said the stubborn Morrigan that Azriel and his brothers knew so well. Despite her presence, Rhys' Illyrian brothers, Cassian and Azriel pretended to be still looking on at the last rays of sun, as if they were not waiting for the inevitable counter-attack against the Spring Court.

He was not sure what his brothers wanted, but Azriel wanted this fight.

Selene and Nyx had been their family, still family, they had been apart of their daily lives, a painful empty space was left in their place, and Azriel was sure this is how it would feel if were ever to loose his brothers... but that was too painful to even imagine, it was like losing both his arms. How could he live like that? How could anyone live like that?

Rhys met his eyes in understanding, and then shut his own when the emotion became too great.

Poor Rhys, and his father. Selene and Nyx had been far too kind for this savage game between Hybern and Prythian, Fae and human, and wholly unprepared for the attack on their lives. Azriel pushed away the shame of not discovering this danger, and reminded himself that his guilt was nothing compared to what Rhysand or his father must be feeling in placing their trust in the wrong places.

It was obvious what would happen now, War, bloodshed between Courts, and daggers in the night. Azriel's shadows whispered hot threats...

'Blood for blood. Get them now, strike into their necks, kill, kill them Azriel…'

No.

Be Calm.

Azriel forbade that part of the shadows from ever taking control of him.

Still, they had their uses, telling him the cold tragedy of Selene and Nyx as it had occurred.

The shadows whispered of Tamlin, his brothers, and father's descending upon Selene and Nyx. Of spilling their guts upon finding them, of slicing the wings from their shoulders, and at last cutting their heads like gifts for his High Lord.

Those were things Azriel could never say.

They also told him of when High Lord and Rhysand had considered the boxes, at last opening them, their dark High Fae power swelled at the terrible cruelty, Rhys had fallen to his knees, too far gone to reason with his father, and that same Father all but destroyed everyone and everything in a mile's radius (or so Azriel had also heard from his spies that had been left alive).

"I'm sorry Rhys," Azriel had first told him. "I hold myself accountable-"

"Don't even." Rhys spoke up for him when they returned, and before his father had shut himself away in his study.

He had never seen Rhysand look so defeated."I still feel responsible."

Rhys would not hear it, grasping his shoulder in a vice grip. "You couldn't have known Az."

After that guilt-ridden moment, Azriel felt compelled to be here for Rhysand in whatever way he could.

Even if Rhysand was inconsolable.

"Rhys what can we do? How can we fix this?" Cassian spoke up for them all, their eyes widening as Rhys' knuckles turned bone white. "What should we do about your father? He can't hide away from this?"

Azriel bit his lip. This was not the time to question the High Lord's methods. Illyrian warriors had been butchered and clipped of their wings for lesser insults. Thankfully Rhys was not his father. Their brother cleared his throat, "he's too unstable right now. I don't want you guys near him-"

"He wouldn't hurt us," Morrigan shook her head, as if she knew brutality only ran in some High Fae, and not the male that had once cuddled on the couch with Selene as she made dresses for Morrigan and Rhys' future bride. "He wouldn't do that Rhys, he's-"

"He lost my mother," Rhys told her, "he's too lost to think. I don't want to risk him hurting any of you"- preying on her once so strong confidence of course Rhysand won the argument.

Azriel subtly agreed with a nod of his head. He wouldn't want Mor to get in the middle of a deathblow meant for Tamlin and his filthy Hybern loving family.

Despite what they knew or what they could sense.

Azriel knew Rhysand's father demanded blood. Azriel's whispering shadows, that coiled liked grasping fingers around his shoulders, reacted defensively to the High Lord's dark waves of shadow that moved through stone and wood to reach their room. It was like a bomb was going to go off, and Azriel was the only one that knew it was ticking.

Azriel racked his fingers on Truth-Teller to calm himself, and then shut his eyes when his seven cobalt Siphons began thrumming. He knew none could reason with a male after the death of his mate and daughter, who would dare to, and an energy like that would have to be unleashed one way or another.

He just hoped his friends would not suffer when it did.

"Help us." Azriel muttered to whatever unseen power watched their lives. To the Cauldron. To a Prythian that had once been whole. "Please."

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Previously called. Like Calls To Like or more recently For the Beast In Our Bones. The name pays homage to C.S. Lewis wonderful world of the Chronicles of Narnia, and I will have many more hints at other Fae and fairie lore based novels, kudos if you can catch some :)

So...what do you think?

Please tell me what you think of this revised storyline, and thank you for clicking on this story!

A/N: I own nothing (this serves for the entire fanfic).
This was written because ACOTAR is a sandbox I couldn't help but want to play in.
Love to hear what you guys think of my OC (KIANNA) x Azriel. OC POV. Rated T could go to M in future chapters for mature themes: sex, violence, profanity.
This first chapter starts way before the novels, then it will pick up just a bit before A Court of Thorns and Roses and will go beyond A Court of Wings and Ruin, and the sequel A Court of Frost and Starlight.
Please enjoy :)