On the third night, Elain awaited the spymaster atop her sheets. It had been several days since she had last slept, and sleep had become a tantalizing prospect. But she knew in her bones that he would come tonight and something in her… She did not want to be asleep when he arrived.

Not because she thought Azriel would be disappointed. In truth, the selfish part of her did not care if Azriel was keen to find her awake or not. She would play no role to please him.

But Elain knew she had always been the selfish child. Nesta was hard and Feyre put them before herself with every breath in those winters; now Feyre put the world before her own needs at times. But Elain was selfish. She could be quiet, demure, but now she did as she wished. Even if her wishes were not terribly extravagant.

Whether that wish was to talk to Azriel in the anonymity of night time or to not see her father's broken neck everytime she was careless enough to blink.

Though she could not see him, she felt as he arrived. It was as though the lonely curtain around her parted ever so slightly to let him in.

"Come in," she murmured from atop her sheets.

Azriel appeared, half perched in her window, unusual waves of uncertainty rolling off the hardened Illyrian warrior. "Hello."

"Hello."

She did not beckon him to her bed, so Azriel pulled her customary chair away from her desk and sat. It was uncomfortable against his wings.

Seeing Azriel in her room was not unpleasant, Elain decided. But the chair wouldn't do. "You can sit on my bed. I'm not Amren; I don't bite."

That earned a small chuckle. "Amren had never bitten me. She says I'm not tender enough."

Elain appraised the warrior in his tight leathers. Physically, perhaps.

"Nonetheless," she said with a pat on the mattress. It was wide enough to allow for a space between them.

Azriel moved over, still, as if waiting.

"In the Illyrian war camps, are there only stools?"

A nod. Azriel searched for words. "You seem to be in better spirits this eve."

She smiled at the shadowsinger, in a broad way that seemed almost too bright to be sincere and yet it was. "I'm tired enough that my thoughts can't hold on to the dreary ones. It takes a few days, but I expect I'll at least sleep tonight."

"I can leave if you need to rest," he assured her, making no move to get up.

An eye roll. "Any moment I'm too tired to be miserable is worth the sleep I miss. Besides, I've been meaning to ask you something."

Azriel gave a solemn nod, awaiting any question she would ask. He felt certain it would not be an easy one, but he resolved to be like his blade, a truth teller.

"Is it true you have the biggest wingspan?"

As Azriel registered her question, Elain would have sworn the shadows nearly peeled off the wall.

"Who, exactly, brought up the, err, wingspan discussion?"

Elain ignored the question. Best let Azriel guess between Mor and Amren rather than Nuala and Cerridwen.

"Is it true?" she repeated.

"Who brought it up?"

A shrug from Elain.

Azriel was happy to let the subject talk.

This was not to say the spymaster did not have exact measurements of the winged members of their circle. He simply would rather not tell Elain that her sister outdid all of them.

"Is it difficult to have wings?"

Another question. "Difficult?"

She waved at the chair. "Is it troublesome to deal with them each day?"

"I suppose I've learned how to handle them over time, to anticipate knocking into a doorway and tuck them close and such."

Elain waited, seeming certain there was more though Azriel had not intended to expand on it. A few moments passed, the candle on her night table barely more than a stub, flickering, flickering.

"There was a time when I did not know if I should love or hate my wings."

Elain waited again.

"If I did not have them… I doubt they would ever have let me out. I would have been too other; the wings led to empathy." Empathy? Azriel wondered at his word choice. Did those… kin of his ever look at him, see a brother, and still chose to torture him? "But I cursed the wings for making me one of them."

"You're not."

The candle blew out, but Azriel held her gaze anyway. "I'm not?"

"You're no more like them because of your wings than I am like High Fae for having pointed ears. We are different."

Azriel almost tasted the regret as the words slipped from him: "But isn't our difference our nightmare?"

In the dark he saw her eyes dim, the sleepless kindness retracting, replacing the seer with a broken shell.

She drew herself under the covers. "Good night."

I'm sorry. Azriel flew away.