Chapter Text
Despite the polite, yet undeniably strained chatter, and despite Eris’s commitment to being a charming and witty guest, the dinner turned out to be just as uncomfortable as he had predicted – the only difference being that he was too preoccupied with his own thoughts to gloat at all the unnecessary drama on his behalf. Foolishly, Eris had believed the dinner would be a turning point, and that he would be introduced as Azriel’s –
Azriel’s what, exactly? Boyfriend? Significant other? It all felt so crude and immature now. He hadn’t been promised anything; had nothing as proof of the shadowsinger’s affection other than the occasional love mark on his body or flimsy memories of heartbreakingly vulnerable touches when night’s shadows obscured them from view.
But now, Azriel hadn’t touched him once since entering the house, had hardly even looked at him. The only scrap of consolation was that he barely looked at anyone – the cold hazel of his eyes staring unseeingly at his gilded plate while a muscle in his jaw fluttered sporadically – but even that self-flagellating introspection couldn’t make up for the pit Eris felt deep in his stomach at being so thoroughly ignored. It was as if the oily feelings of shame and jealousy from their fight in the garden had coated his heart, and the strain on the muscle had his chest tensing painfully beneath his ridiculous Night Court costume.
Eris felt like an imposter; like a cuckoo finding itself in a nest full of fledglings staring darkly at him, knowing exactly how much of a fraud he was. His persona did neither belong in the dreary monochrome of Night – his Autumn heritage impossible to hide when his very appearance evoked images of fallen leaves beneath jeweled canopies – nor did it belong with the male seated next to him. Everyone present thought so, Azriel and his carefully distanced body included, and Eris felt inclined to agree with them.
The tension in his smile was starting to really take its toll by the time for dessert, and Eris found that even his extensive training in courtly manners was beginning to fail him. Eyeing the present party, it was easy to tell that he wasn’t the only one nearing his last straw. The frown on Morrigan’s face from when he first entered had turned into a downright sneer where she sat leaning back in her chair, arms crossed petulantly across her sizeable chest whenever she was not reaching for her red wine.
Cassian sat next to her, and had a constant look of confusion whenever he glanced over at Eris, but still attempted to appear carefree with humorous comments and booming laughs interspersing the conversation. His devastating mate was merely observing with steely cunning in her eyes, as if waiting to make a move until her opponent revealed themselves, the clever thing. The only emotion that slipped through her careful exterior was a slight rolling of said eyes when Rhysand, to her left, lathered on with his slippery charm.
He and the High Lady appeared to have agreed upon acting with a nonchalance that Feyre had more trouble adhering to than him, her laughter a tad shriller than it ought to be. She was placed at the seat of honor – from being their leader or from being the birthday girl, he didn’t know – with her decadent dress and jewelry almost enough to distract from her unease.
Her mate, on the other hand, had over five hundred years of training with the mask of haughty, carefree ruler; his perfect smirk only leaving when he put choice pieces of food into his mouth. He was seated directly opposite his mate, giving her little winks when he caught her blue-gray eyes, and Eris had little doubt his placement was all but coincidence, even if he had made a show of it when they sat down to dinner. Though it could be to make a statement with one ruler on each end, keeping their court together, so to say, Eris had the distinct feeling it was because of him that Rhysand was there. Eris was thankful that even if the High Lord was his watchdog for the evening, the table was large enough that they didn’t have to brush knees unwillingly. He didn’t know which of them would be more disgusted by such an incident.
And while Eris usually had a decent relationship with Varian, having dealt with the male through seasonal court politics for centuries, he must have decided that he’d rather risk their professional comradery than the ire of the fire drake by his side, because he didn’t address Eris directly once. Amren, on the other hand, was the only one that seemed pleased with the turn of events, eyeing the company as if she was a bored emperor finally presented with some inappropriate entertainment to satisfy her depraved hunger.
On the completely opposite end of the spectrum was Elain, almost hidden behind Morrigan with Feyre on her other side, as far away from Eris as the table would allow, as if everyone had decided she needed protection from him. Her big doe eyes were jumping back and forth nervously, and Eris found that he couldn’t blame the middle Archeron sister for her repeated excuses to go check on things in the kitchen. She felt too soft and gentle for the raucous and unscrupulous ways of her court, and though there were more differences than similarities between their situations, Eris felt a quiet sense of camaraderie in recognizing that he wasn’t the only one who didn’t belong. Neither here nor in his own court.
“Az, you’re even broodier than usual,” Cassian suddenly remarked with a crooked smile. “Lighten up! It’s Solstice, for Cauldron’s sake!”
His comment and subsequent laugh was obviously a misguided attempt at breaking the tension in the room, but when no one seemed to find the humor in it, his grin fell.
A sharp, sour sensation tugged at Eris’s insides when Azriel’s only response to his so-called brother was a scowl and a tightening of his jaw, all intentions for the evening of quiet politeness apparently cast away.
“Well, it’s not hard to guess the reason for said brooding,” purred Amren with a brazen stare in Eris’s direction, and Varian tensed by her side.
Morrigan snorted into her wine glass and rolled her eyes. “What else could you expect from the rotten heir of the Court of Decay?”
The words met their mark, and Eris cringed inwardly at the obvious dig and the heavy silence that followed, but careful not to show any outward reactions. From the end of the table, Feyre was making eyes at Morrigan that the female pretended she was too busy with her glass to see, probably having gotten similar directions of civility for the evening, though undoubtedly in much friendlier terms than the words Rhysand had imparted on Eris.
Exasperation heating his blood over the repeated obsession, Eris couldn’t help himself from breaking the silence with a haughty, “As opposed from the heir of Nightmares?”
A gasp escaped Elain just as Morrigan choked on her wine.
As if they were observing a sporting match with two opposing teams, Eris could feel more than a dozen eyes jumping hastily back and forth between himself and a frozen Morrigan, before the female slammed her glass so hard against the tabletop that it shattered, sending shards of crystal raining over a shrieking Elain, her younger sister jumping to her feet to shield her.
“Mor!” the High Lady reprimanded, her voice carefully laced with command, but not enough to actually hinder Morrigan. Had it been Eris, he would not have been shown such grace.
Blood oozing out between the slim fingers of Morrigan’s severely fisted hand, what remained of her glass surely still cutting into her palm, the female heaved sharp breaths through her exposed teeth. Escaping droplets found their way down to the white tablecloth, marring it with scarlet among the maroon splotches of wine. Involuntarily, it reminded Eris of his own blood spraying onto snow on the shores of that grand lake in Winter, after he had let Cassian run him through with his sword. He had used it as a distraction to not blow his cover, and though it had hurt like hell, it had worked in bringing the attention of the adrenaline-filled people present onto something else.
Eris observed Morrigan, his head co*cked in a loftily yet predatory manner, feeling like there was a reason his thoughts had strayed. But he didn’t get the time to ponder on it more, before the female lifted her bloody fist and pointed a lacquered fingernail at him.
“You know nothing. Nothing about the darkness I escaped.”
Eris scoffed, incapable of stopping his wickedness from surfacing now, even if he felt Azriel and his shadows practically vibrating with emotion next to him, darkness also throbbing out from Rhysand on his other side. “I know that you willfully let everyone else rot in that darkness. None of them are allowed to escape, even if you have.”
Rhysand’s dark powers flickered, and Feyre let out a choked sound of indignation, Morrigang flinching next to her.
“If you’re so noble,” she spat, her upper lip curling. “How come you let your people still suffer, hm?”
Outrage tugged at Eris’s ribs for only a second, before his overwhelming guilt towards his people took over. Her biting words had landed exactly where she wanted them to, because Eris knew well that he would never be able to do enough for Autumn. He would sacrifice all he was to his court, if he could, and it would still be far from satisfactory.
“I’m working on it,” he gritted out, concentrating hard on not letting her see how much her words were cutting into him; cutting into parts he actually cared about; parts he had fought to keep alive all these long years.
She smiled unpleasantly. “Then why haven’t you killed Beron yet?”
Eris closed his eyes. This question again. He didn’t understand how a court filled with such care towards their so-called inner circle, but cruel cunning towards everyone deemed “other” was unable to see past the mirrored actions of said others.
“Perhaps,” Eris answered as he fixed burning amber back onto the female, voice dangerously low to keep it from quacking, “for the same reasons you haven’t killed Keir?”
The growls and hisses that went around the table told Eris that he had gone too far for his current audience, and Morrigan shot to her feet, ready to launch herself at him.
“That’s enough!” Rhysand thundered.
The domineering voice of the High Lord echoed through the room as well as inside Eris’s skull, rattling his bones and thoughts alike, demanding that he kneel. From the tight-lipped and frozen expressions around him, he could tell he was not the only one feeling how the raw power unjustly called to something primal in him, something that long ago was made to answer.
Morrigan’s usually tan face was pale with wrath as she fought against the command, her body jerking against the ancient magic that obligated her to listen. Her teeth were clenched so harshly together that she shook, her eyes wild and furious, and she snarled when her body finally hit down into her seat.
Not my High Lord, not my High Lord, Eris repeated to himself over and over while gritting his teeth, forcing his body not to listen to the oily, foreign call of authority. His nails bit torturously into his palms underneath the massive table, and he fought through black taloned restraints on his precious thoughts and caged words. He would be damned if he let Rhysand take away his autonomy. He would be damned .
“Well, it was merely a question,” Eris drawled, his words for once not slowed because of a game of perceived arrogance, but from the effort of pushing off the command. “If you cannot take it, I suggest that you do not dish it out.”
Though the last part was said without her name, or even a glance in her direction, Eris could feel Morrigan bristle with bloodred anger from the other end of the room.
A collective shudder went through those gathered as Rhysand let his dark restraints fall, the High Lady letting go of a raw breath slumped back in her high back chair, her oh-so-young eyes flying between her mate and his cousin.
“Mor,” Rhysand began, but she only lifted her hand to stop him.
Without another word, she got up from her seat in one fluid motion, her predatory attention trained on eyes of flaming amber all the while.
No one dared speak as she made her way around the table slowly, and Eris could tell that several people were readying their powers to stop a physical altercation, he himself also digging down into cavernous reserves of fire. The air was practically sparkling with the metallic tang of magic, making the fine hairs on the back of his neck stand up as the regal head of gold neared his back. Only sheer stubbornness – and his father’s ingrained disgust with appearing weak – was what kept Eris from doing anything but observing her out of the corner of his eye, feigning a nonchalance against her attitude that he had no grounds for.
But before she reached him, Morrigan stopped just shy of Azriel’s seat instead. He had silently turned his chair towards her as she walked, and he now faced her fully, making it so that Eris could not see his expression, even though he now shifted in his seat to get ready. Behind the squared back and magnificent wings, the shadows were pulsing with frenzy, as if ready to leap over his shoulder to greet the female their master had yearned for all these years.
Several breaths passed, the room painfully quiet save for the cacophony of wildly beating hearts and the barely audible static snaps of magic. The crackling force emanating off of Morrigan was worst of all, the electricity on the back of Eris’s tongue making him feel queasy with anticipation.
The female leaned forward so that her sheet of golden hair fell over bronzed shoulders, until her hands were placed onto the armrests of Azriel’s chair, her full mouth next to his ear. Eris struggled against a burning urge to growl, to snap his teeth at her and shove her away from the magnificent Illyrian who sat perfectly still; instead he held onto his own armrests with such force he could vaguely hear the wood quake beneath his white knuckles.
“I will never forgive you for bringing him into my city,” Morrigan ground out at Azriel, her eyes shining like hot coals that urged to sear the outsider behind him with their intensity. “I never realized you play the torture master against those who reject you, as well.”
She pushed off with a final scowl, before turning on her heel and striding out of the room, a vision in furious gold and red.
Nobody stopped her.
The door closed behind her with a loud bang that rattled the paintings on the walls, the sound trumping the frantic beat of pulsing in his ears, while Eris’s held breath finally escaped the bound of his lips.
No one made any attempts to speak, to make reparations towards what was undoubtedly the most disastrous Solstice dinner any of them had attended, or could even imagine.
All that lingered of Morrigan was the faint scent of her; cinnamon and citrus, and the sickening metallic tang of her blood, left like droplets on the snow-white table and the imprint of her palm on Azriel’s armrest.
