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divinemare · 6 months

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Tales Of Oceans and Shadows

(I’ve been dying to post this! It’s been on my drafts for so long, and I missed my babies so much!)

Just some little stories I imagined about Kallistrade and Azriel’s life after the end of Dark Tides.

Oh, Sweet Baby Nyx

summary: little nyx loves his aunt kallistrade, and gets really sad when she has to leave because of her busy pirate life, this time, he will definitely throw a tantrum about it.

Kallistrade wasn’t very good with little kids, she seemed to scare them, even tho she didn’t intended to do so. But when little Nyx arrived to her life, something changed for her.

It had happened the first time she stayed alone with him. Feyre was dead tired after barely any sleep because Nyx had had a rough night. Kallistrade had just arrived of a little trip to Skull Island she had taken of emergency for some issues that needed her urgent attention. She went straight to visit Feyre, and the poor female fell asleep immediately after placing Nyx in Kallistrade’s arms.

She hadn’t known what to do at first, she had even felt scared, not knowing if she was holding the baby right. But she hadn’t wanted to wake Feyre up, so instead went to look for Rhys. Kallistrade found the male sound asleep in his office desk, dead tired too. So she sent a panic alert down the mating bond to Azriel, begging the male showed up quickly.

Nyx had started to babble as if he was seconds away of bursting in tears, and Kallistrade had panicked even more.

“No, no. Don’t you dare, little kraken, don’t. you. dare,” she hadn’t known what she expected to achieve by threatening or pointing him out as if he was one of her crew members, but it had definitely not been that the little baby started smiling at her, and grabbed her finger in his tiny ones to start chewing on it.

She had been at a loss of words, completely shocked by the simplicity yet magnificent moment of the baby smiling up at her.

She immediately felt a protectiveness in her she hadn’t felt before, like that little baby had become something she would cherish and protect against any evil from the darkest and deepest of seas from now on and until the oceans completely dried.

Azriel had arrived just then, and when he had said he could take care of Nyx if she wanted to, Kallistrade immediately rejected his offer and walked away with the baby, telling little Nyx all the things she would show him one day when he grew up, all the seas she would take him to.

They had become inseparable since then. Nyx had fallen completely in love with his aunt, and the only time anyone would catch the mighty and dreaded Captain Devilsbane showing off her sweet bone, was when she was with her nephew.

But that had only made goodbyes even harder. As Kallistrade was regularly traveling all throughout the continent.

“Who would’ve said, that the oh-so-mighty Captain Devilsbane would have such a soft spot for babies,” Azriel laughed, leaning against the door frame with his arms crossed over his chest, and a broad smile while looking at his mate and nephew playing together.

“Don’t say that, he gets jealous, it’s only with this sweet little baby, right, little kraken? Only with you,” she approached the baby with a childlike smile on her face, while lowering her tone of voice ever so slightly.

“Softie,” Azriel mocked, and Kallistrade sent him a dead glare, nothing compared to her previous smile.

“Shut up, I saw you yesterday doing an airplane with a spoon to get him to eat,” the smile in Azriel’s face vanished, and it was Kallistrade’s turn to smiled proudly.

“We’re not talking about this with anyone.”

“Ever,” she laughed, confirming.

They both could have the biggest soft spot for Nyx, but like hell they would willingly admit it to their mocking friends.

It had been their night to take care of Nyx, since Kallistrade was leaving today for a mission in the western part of the Continent, they had offered to babysit so Rhys and Feyre could get a day off.

It was not often that they did babysit all day, since their house turned into a mad house with neither of them knowing what to do in some situations, but Kallistrade always missed her nephew when she was away, so having him a day —even tho it was always a hell of a ride—, didn’t hurt from time to time.

They would not be doing it again tho, in a long, long time. Nyx had recently learn how to walk, and it had progressively gotten worst when he started running. She had never ran so much in circles trying to catch a baby like last night. And Azriel had had to make his shadows envelop Nyx at all times in case he fell or ran into something. Poor shadows had gotten many hits, and they too didn’t want to repeat the occasion again.

“How was it?” When they arrived to the River Estate to drop Nyx off, Rhys had a cheeky smile on his lips when he saw how tired they looked.

“You are a-” Feyre raised an eyebrow to Kallistrade, reminding her of the presence of the little baby. “A son of the holy Cauldron and Mother. A warning that he could run now would’ve been nice!”

Rhysand laughed, taking his son in his arms and looking at him with proudness shining like starts in his night-sky eyes.

“I did not mentioned it?”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Ups, my bad.”

“You’re lucky Nyx is present, because I have a ton of colorful words to describe you right now.”

Rhysand laughed again, and left a sonorous kiss on his son’s head, that made the little toddler laugh.

“We’re sorry,” Feyre said with a smile, shining so glowy that Kallistrade couldn’t help but wink at her friend who had most certainly had sex.

“You’re forgiven. Considering I’m leaving now, and I’m gonna miss this little one.”

Nyx immediately stoped smiling at his father and turned his head to his aunt when he heard the word “leaving”.

“Aunt Lis, no!” He cried, and tried to reach out for her.

“Oh, I’m sorry, little kraken, I have work to do, and people to scare,” that did not help at all, and Nyx started crying for his aunt, so much so that Rhys had to let him go. “I promise I will be back soon with many many presents, ok?” When Kallistrade took the baby, she rocked him in her arms, trying to calm the salty tears that fell over his chubby cheeks.

And sure as hell she would live up to that promise. As she always did. There wasn’t a single travel, as small as it may be, where Kallistrade did not bring her nephew a ton of presents.

“Come on, now, sweetie, your aunt has to go,” Feyre picked up her son from the pirate’s arms and smiled adoringly as she watched her son shake one his little hands while wiping his tears with the other.

“Bye bye, aunt Lis,” his little sobs made all the three adults’ hearts melt.

Kallistrade lowered her hat in farewell to her nephew and his parents, Rhys and Feyre smiled at her and wished her a safe travel before turning around to go back home. While Azriel kissed his mate one last time before she boarded her ship.

Little Nyx watched with read eyes as his aunts ship sailed away, and he did not stay happy about it.

𓆉｡˚ ✧

“Rhys!” When Rhysand heard his mate scream out for him, he stood up from his desk so fast his chair fell to the floor and stormed out of his office with Azriel and Cassian following right behind him.

The three of them had been sharing a drink when they heard Feyre’s scream, and now stormed to Nyx’s nursery, where the female was.

“Feyre!” When Rhys bursted in, he saw his High Lady looking exasperated everywhere, and his baby was nowhere to be seen. “What happened?”

“He did it!” She said without even looking at the three males that looked confused.

“He did what, darling?” Mor, Elain and Amren had soon arrived, and were looking as worried as the three Illyrians.

“Nyx! He learned how to winnow! And now I can’t find him anywhere.”

Oh, good Mother…

Everyone looked at each other and sighed, they gad been dreading this day for months now.

They all took a different part of the estate to search, and Feyre alerted Nesta via daementi to look out wherever she could as well. Now practically everyone was in desperate search of the little heir.

“He’s not anywhere! I can’t find him!” Feyre desperately said after some time of looking.

“Feyre darling, calm down, we’ll-“

“Blimey, this kid learns fast,” both Feyre and Rhys heard on their heads, and instantly recognized that pirate slang. “Relax, he’s with me, landed right on my freshly washed deck.”

Both parents relaxed significantly, embracing each other with heavy sighs. When they parted, Feyre couldn’t help but to start laughing, and Rhysand followed right away.

“Did you find…? Uhhh, what’s going on?” Cassian entered the room with Azriel, then the others came in too with confused expressions.

“Have they…lost it?” Questioned Mor, and they all looked at each other as if confirming that theory.

“It’s ok, guys, don’t fall into insanity, we’ll find him,” Cassian tried to speak over the laughter of his High Lord and Lady.

“Don’t worry,” Feyre calmed her laughter to speak to the group. “He’s ok.”

“Did you find him?” Azriel asked, looking around for his nephew.

“No, Lis did. Or more like he found her.”

𓆉｡˚ ✧

“I want to see my own reflection in this floors, Gio,” Kallistrade ordered to the male mopping. “For the next you think it’s a good idea to throw up on my deck after too much rum, you think it twice.”

“Aye aye, Captain,” the male grunted, surely with a hangover.

Kallistrade went to check on the weather report with Maddox, when suddenly, a loud cry made everyone on deck turn their attention away.

“Mother’s tits!”

Kallistrade rushed to Gio, founding the great surprise of a little giggling toddler sliding in the wet wood of the deck.

“I’m sorry, Captain, he yest appeared outa nowhere,” the male pointed at the winged toddler, and Kallistrade couldn’t help but burst out into laughter.

She went to pick up the child, whose face went red when his aunt lifted him, giving her a look that said he knew he had done something bad.

“You naughty little sea monster.”

She informed Rhys and Feyre, who surely were losing their minds, that Nyx was with her, and after hey told her Azriel would be there soon to pick him up, she took the little boy to her cabin and sat him at her desk.

Nyx had grabbed her hat and put it on himself, and the sight of it was enough to make Kallistrade’s ruthless heart melt.

“I want to travel the seas with you, aunt Lis!” The child mumbled, and Kallistrade laughed sweetly, while she watched him try to use her telescope.

“On day you will, my little kraken, one day you will.”

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divinemare · 5 months

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[Az and Lis arguing about a “pirate adventure”]

Kallistrade (OC): Besides…nobody is getting hurt!

*Someone proceeds to falls off a rooftop*

Kallistrade:

Azriel:

Kallistrade: That guy was already up there when I got here.

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divinemare · 5 months

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Kallistrade (OC): Of course, the best part of anyone's corruption arc is their cool new outfit.

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divinemare · 9 months

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✧*̥₊˚‧☆ﾐ 𝖉𝖆𝖗𝖐 𝖙𝖎𝖉𝖊𝖘!¡ •ଓ.°

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳ azrielxfem!oc

part twelve / final part

𓆝 𓆜 ––––———–––––———–┊⁀➷

Kallistrade was adjusting the belt of her trousers when they heard a nock on the door.

“Oh…fuck,” she cursed under her breath, she had totally forgotten about all the affairs she had that afternoon that she had completely missed.

She shot Azriel a glare that said “this is your fault.”

And the male responded with “you didn’t seem to mind the distraction at all a couple of minutes ago,” a low laugh and raised his eyebrows.

Kallistrade sighed, finishing to adjust her clothes in place. Before she could open the door, another nock sounded, and she cursed under her breath.

“Give me a fucking minute!” She urged the person at the other end, then opened her door with an exasperated grimace.

“Uh, hang the jib, Captain, one would think that that kind of sex would make you less moody,” Zena’s mischievous smile greeted her as soon as she opened the door, and her words, referring to her annoyed frown in what most called “pirate slang”, made her roll her eyes.

Kallistrade tried hard and failed not to smile. She looked behind the female then, where Elijah and Maddox were standing a safe distance, as if Zena had been the only one to dare nock on her door.

“What do you all want.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that whole…thing,” she said, eying the interior of the room, as if she could see past my office and into my room, where Azriel surely stood hearing everything. “Is solved, but, you’re needed outside. We tried to take care of as much things as we could. The only thing we did not manage was to appease that old rat of Ronald.”

Kallistrade sighed again, grabbing the bridge of her nose and closing her eyes for a second. She couldn’t get rid of the bastard now, could she?

She nodded, and asked the three of them to wait for her. They inclined their heads, and said nothing else as she closed the door and walked towards her bedchambers again.

“Problems?” Azriel asked as soon as the door was closed.

He was leaning against the door frame to her bedchamber, with his arms crossed over his bare chest, and his wings tugged behind him.

Mother’s tits…that male was absurdly hot.

“Nothing I can’t solve in 30 minutes,” she adverted her eyes from his defined torso and met his eyes, a sly smile on his beautiful lips indicated that he had caught her staring.

“You want me to go with you?”

Yes, she almost said. She wanted nothing more than to feel his presence beside her. She wanted him to meet the other side of her family, the other side of her life, but…

“I would love to, but I’m not sure if it’s the greatest idea for now, considering your territorial male side is at its maximum now, and there are more than a hundred males out there that would end up with their shit beaten up,” Azriel laughed the sound traveling through her whole body with a shiver. It was so rare; to see him that way, laughing, careless. Kallistrade couldn’t help but smile at the sight of it.

“You’re right,” he pushed himself off the door frame and walked towards her, his wings crawling on the ground, he cupped the sides of her face, then took them to the back of her neck and made circles with his thumbs on her skin. “How about you go do your super pirate stuff, and then when you’re done, we can talk about us. Deal?”

Kallistrade smiled. Us. It sounded fucking beautiful.

“Deal,” she got on the tips of her toes to kiss him goodbye, a long, deep kiss.

He tossed her her captain hat when she was opening the door. Zena laughed and whistled as soon as the door opened, and Maddox and Elijah backed away immediately from the view of the shadowsinger.

𓆉｡˚ ✧

She had returned half an hour later, like she had promised. Azriel was all dressed now, and a plate of food laid on her desk. Which, she noticed, was more cleaned that she had ever had it in the almost 200 years she’d been High Pirate Lady.

“I hope you don’t mind, but this place was a mess,” Azriel said, walking towards her giving her a greeting kiss.

“Damn it was,” Kallistrade laughed. “What is this?” She asked looking at the plate.

“I got Jazemin to bring some food over, considering you haven’t eaten anything other than cookies and rum.”

They sat down, first, while Kallistrade ate with a hunger she hadn’t stoped to feel before, the moment so…normal, it was a rare feeling, they both barely ever got to have “normal” moments, that it just made this one all the more important.

Then, after she was done, they agreed both wanted to get back to Velaris, mainly to give the official news to the Inner Circle, and finally hear Cassian’s “Fucking-finally!”.

Kallistrade knew things were about to get rather interesting, she had a life here she wasn’t planning on abandoning anytime soon, neither would she ever leave her duties as High Pirate Lady. Good day Skull Island was just two days away from Velaris. Either way, they had a lot work to do in their relationship, but they would make it work.

She knew they would.

It was talking to her crew that made her a little uneasy. She knew they were all happy for her, but this would me a major change in their life’s too, and she wouldn’t want them to have to travel every now and then to a city they wouldn’t wanna be in.

“So…is it forever?” Jazemin asked first as she walked with her, Maddox, Elijah and Zena. Azriel kept quiet beside her, his presence reassurance with every slight brush of his shadows against her.

“No! Of course not.”

Everyone had been so quiet she was starting to worry, but then Jazemin beamed an excited, wide smile and clapped her hands together. Surprising Kallistrade, who stoped walking to stare completely at the female.

“Oh, yay! I have been dying to go back to Velaris!”

“What? I-“” she didn’t even got to finish her sentence when Maddox cut in. Kallistrade knew him like no one in the world, so she was the only one to catch the slight shine in his eyes when he spoke.

“I’ll tell the crew,” she arched an eyebrow, looking at him with surprise.

She hadn’t known he had liked the city as well..

“You coming too, Maddox?”

“Well of course, Captain, how could I ever let you go anywhere alone?” She felt Azriel stiffen beside her, and she almost barked a laugh, sending him her exact thoughts anyways.

“Fae territorial bullshit.”

“Yeah, well, bare with me,” was everything he responded.

“Is there a reason why you seem so eager to go back?” She inquired, lifting an eyebrow.

“None more than my duty with you, Captain,” he bowed his head, surely in an attempt to hide his eyes, that he knew Kallistrade had already read.

“None at all?”

“None at all,” she suppressed a smirk, but nodded anyway. There was something he still didn’t tell her…or maybe someone, she could only wait until he felt like sharing that information with her, as they always did.

“Ok, then.”

“My Captain,” he bowed slightly, and then lifted his head to wink at Azriel.

Maddox had 100% choose his wording to specially taunt Azriel. And Kallistrade couldn’t help but roll her eyes. She muffled a laugh while she took Azriel’s arm to ground him with her touch, and looked at Maddox with an amused accusatory look.

“Ok, you come with me, you territorial male, and you, go tell the crew, see who what’s to come and who wants to stay, before I have to find another first mate.”

Maddox dipped his head again and smiled smugly, turning around to do Kallistrade’s bidding. While she took Azriel to the edge of the harbor, and ducked his head deep into the cold ocean water to cool down his temper

“Thank you, I really needed that,” Azriel breathed out, passing a hand through his wet hair.

“Yeah, I figured,” she laughed, and they stood up to her back to the others. Cassius had arrived, and Zena was talking to him with an excited grin on her face. “Just out of curiosity, how do you plan to stand a two days trip with a crew of males that are sworn to me?” Kallistrade arched a brow with a sly grin.

Oh, her poor little mate was about to get in for hell of a ride.

“I have a lot of things in mind for that,” his smile was full of lust while he pulled her from her waist towards him.

“Yeah, I’m sure of that,” she mimicked his smile, but pulled away just as he was about to kiss her with a teasing sway of her hips.

“Oh, Lis, I want to go please! I’ve never been to Prythian! Other than, you know, for war. Cassius wants to come too, but he figured it was wiser to stay three feet away until the waters are a bit more…calm,” Zena said with a playful smile, eying Azriel behind her.

“Very wise, indeed,” Kallistrade laughed, then nodded at her friend and Third. “Of course you can come, I’ll send a letter to Rhys telling him his city will be invaded by pirates soon.”

He did told her they were welcomed in Velaris anytime, so…

“Perfect! I’ll tell Cassius,” she beamed, her scar moving with the motion, and walked away towards the other male.

Kallistrade laughed, shaking her head. Oh, her life was about to give a big ass turn. And she would be lying if she said she was not fucking terrified of it.

𓆉｡˚ ✧

Kallistrade had sent Sylvie with a letter for Rhys before they departed, and the male had written back immediately telling her it was absolutely fine, and that he had the perfect place for all of them to stay already in mind.

So, two days later, the Bright Nightmare and the Shadowed Star sailed towards Velaris. Elijah and her Dark Dream stayed in Skull Island as they usually did, to take care of her place in her absence. Pirate Lords usually didn’t stay longer than a week in the island, going only to the mandatory monthly meetings of the Brethren. Other than that, they spent their days ruminating the seven seas.

That first night after departing Skull Island, Kallistrade waited until Azriel was asleep, or at least pretended to be asleep, since she knew very well the male rarely got any sleep, to go outside to stare at the night sky. She did it always before going to sleep, when everyone but the crow’s nest vigilante at shift was above deck, resting.

She would stay there for an hour or so, contemplating the stars in the dark blue sky with a heavy heart. Now, it was not a heavy heart that accompanied her evening, but a light feeling she had forgotten she was ever able to feel in all those centuries.

She took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of wood and sea salt that had become so familiar, so calming to her. She loved the sea, every last bit of it. From its beautiful, magical waters to its darkest and more mysterious ones. But she also loved the night sky, the stars, the dreams that lived within them, what they meant for her, and all the stories that had been whispered to them.

They were both part of her; night and ocean, stars and tides.

“So, no potion tonight,” Kallistrade didn’t turn around when the familiar voice spoke behind her, only opened her eyes with a small, carefree smile spreading in her lips watching both sky and ocean above and beneath her.

“Yeah, no potion tonight,” she whispered to Jazemin, and saw from the corner of her eye the smile the female gave her before disappearing again.

𓆉｡˚ ✧

They had arrived to Velaris in exactly two days, and she had seen and heard Zena’s excitement coming from the Shadowed Star.

Mor and Cassian where there to greet them, the blonde female lounged to Kallistrade’s arms as soon as she stepped food on land.

“I’ve missed you!”

“It’s only been three weeks,” Kallistrade laughed, still hugging the female tightly.

“I know, but still!”

Then she had moved to let Cassian hug her as tightly as he had done the first time they were here. Breathing a “Fucking-finally!” That made Kallistrade laugh. And both then had cornered her, whispering with shit-eating grins on their faces.

“Tonight. Rita’s. You have a lot of explaining to do. We want to hear everything!”

“You know I can hear you, right?” Azriel said behind her, an amused eyebrow raised and his arms crossed over his chest.

His territorial instinct had worn off during the trip here, so Cassian knew it was safe to come close.

They told her Rhys and Feyre hadn’t been able to come, High Lord and Lady duties were keeping them constantly occupied after the war, but that they would be expecting them in the townhouse later to chat and have some lunch.

Kallistrade understood perfectly. For two weeks she had been deep in work herself, good thing pirates didn’t need much to get everything fixed up, and they all returned to the seas rather fast, spreading out of the territory that she cared about. Good thing pirates didn’t care about much in general, for that matter.

Rhys had gotten them an apartment building enough to fit everyone that accompanied her. Kallistrade noticed right away why he had chosen that place for them, it was a rather vintage place, with lots of windows that faced the port behind it, that just made it infinitely perfect for them, the sea view, the wood in witch its floors were built, even the old chandeliers and decorations made it feel like a pirate ship had been turned into a building, and she made a note to herself to thank him for the thought and care he had given the place.

They all had separated rather quickly; part of her crew had immediately gone to the taverns they already knew and had apparently loved in Velaris, Zena and Mor had met at their arrival, and well…they had gotten pretty well along rather fast, now Mor was showing her and Cassius the city, and the last thing Zena did before leaving with the other blonde was hugging Kallistrade tightly and saying.

“This city is beautiful, I’m gonna come visit you till you’re tired of me.”

Her words lingered in my mind for the rest of the afternoon, for some reason. They made me feel some kind of way. Strange, nervous, unfamiliar.

She tried to brush the feelings off, ignoring the tugging in her chest that left me taking several deep breaths to fill her lungs with air. But later that afternoon, it came back rather quickly with Jazemin’s comment.

“Oh, I saw the healers working just down the street! I could maybe go ask for a job,” Kallistrade turned around to look at Jazemin with a raised eyebrow, they were going to meet Mor and Zena and Cassius just down the street to go to the townhouse, but Jazemin’s comment brought her to a halt.

“A job? We’re not staying that long,” at her words, Azriel too raised an eyebrow.

“Are you not?”

“Well, am I?” She turned to face him, and her throat bobbed at her harsh swallow. “I’m not leaving my life as a pirate.”

Pirates, as terrible as they seemed to be, were part of her family, her life. She couldn’t leave the ocean behind as much as she couldn’t leave the Night Court.

“I would never ask you to, I love how that hat looks on you,” his smirk was mischievous, yet Kallistrade did not change her troubled expression.

“I have a really important job,” she didn’t want to stop being High Pirate Lady either, and feed up those shit eating males that were waiting for her to quit.

“I’m aware, and I’m really proud of how you put all those males in line, my wicked High Pirate Lady,” he brushed a strand of hair out of her face, and let his hand on the back of her neck, pulling her closer to him.

“I travel a lot,” at this point she was only looking for excuses to feed up her nervous thoughts.

“So do I,” he knew she couldn’t as only but making excuses, and he had a comeback for every an each of them.

“I…” She blew out a breath, and closed her eyes in defeat I ran out of excuses.”

“Finally,” Azriel laughed low, and his shadows traveled up her body in silent teases. “We’ll make it work, Lis, but there’s not one single chance I’ll let you go again.”

His words sent a shiver down her body, and Kallistrade couldn’t help but smile as he admired every inch of her face, leaving soft caresses on the skin of her jaw.

“Will you travel and live amongst pirates?”She said with a tease smile, and Azriel only drew closer.

“I will even start saying arrgh.”

Kallistrade couldn’t help but laugh at the word coming out of his mouth, it came so unnaturally funny for a male so serious as Azriel to be saying such silly things.

“We don’t say arrgh.”

Just as she said so, Maddox, who was behind her discussing something with Jazemin, muttered an “Arrgh.”

When she looked at Azriel, he had a shit-eating grin on his face that made her roll her eyes.

“Okey maybe we do. Sometimes,” he laughed in that low, rasped tone of his that made Kallistrade’s blood hot and her lower stomach tickling.

“From today till forever, Kallistrade.”

She took a deep breath, closing her eyes and leaning her forehead against his, breathing in his scent. This was her life now. Him. Velaris. The ocean. All together, all she could have ever asked for, and never thought she would have.

So Kallistrade took a deep breath, convincing herself that she deserved this, she deserved some peace. She had lived 500 years with a raging internal war that had convinced her that the only way she could find peace and happiness was by killing and taking vengeance of the people that had ruined her life.

But now…looking at Azriel’s beautiful hazel eyes, in the streets of her favorite city in the world, with her ships at its bay and part of her crew and family ruminating its street…yeah, there was more to life that vengeance and blood and killing, there was happiness before him, but now there was happiness because of him, and she would cherish it until the Mother and Cauldron claimed her last breath.

“From today till forever, Azriel.”

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divinemare · 10 months

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✧*̥₊˚‧☆ﾐ 𝖉𝖆𝖗𝖐 𝖙𝖎𝖉𝖊𝖘!¡ •ଓ.°

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳ azrielxfem!oc

part eleven

TW: smut

𓆝 𓆜 ––––———–––––———–┊⁀➷

Kallistrade looked out over the horizon, once a battlefield, now the memory of a victory.

But her heart did not feel victorious, did not feel the glory that her crew mates and fellow pirates celebrated. Instead she waited, and waited, and waited.

She stretched her departure until only the Night Court remained, the others retreating to their respective territories, stretched her departure until Rhysand came to say goodbye, until Feyre wrapped her in an embrace, and told her she would always have a place on their table, until Cassian and Mor shedded a tear or two as they said goodbye, until Amren gave her a knowing look, until Nesta Archeron came forward to say that it had been a pleasure to meet her, and that she hoped this wasn't the last time they would see each other, until Elain Archeron told her that she couldn't wait to hear more stories of mermaids and sea monsters, and until Azriel showed no sign at all, not a whisper of a shadow, nothing.

“Captain, are we waiting for something?” Maddox asked behind her.

Pirates were already growing tired of being here, and she knew she couldn’t stretch her departure any longer.

“No. Nothing. Set the sails, we are going home.”

𓆉｡˚ ✧

She was heartbroken, to say the least. Had she had a moment to cry, she would’ve done so until she felt her insides dry, but the left overs of the war left her so busy day and night that she had no time to show an ounce of the pain that awoke everyday within her.

But maybe she deserved that pain, maybe she deserved everything that had happened, the fact that her mate had fallen for someone so opposite of her, so far from what she was. She deserved all of it, after all, she left him first, she ran away and didn’t look back, she hurt him first, she left his heart broken first.

Still, it hurt like a mother damn bitch.

Kallistrade spent her days doing accounts, repairing expenses, paying tribute to the fallen, conducting funerals and reassembling her city. She had not had a single moment to sit and think, and when night came, she was so tired that sometimes she did not even make it to her bed, but fell asleep at her desk or wherever she was. Elijah had been carrying her to her bed every time that happened, which saved her from waking up with pains in her neck and back.

Now, in her messy and disastrous office, Kallistrade was having a deep discussion with one of her reconstruction managers about the name of the tavern that had been destroyed by Hybern in their attack. For the fifth time that week.

“For the last time, Salomon, the tavern is not going to be called ‘Didy Big Tiddies’, if you want to change the name, go speak with the fucking owner, not me. Now get out of my office before I carve those lyrics into your flesh with my knife,” she said with a sigh, with her face in her hands trying to scrub away the sleepiness.

She heard the door close, and let out another loud, tired sigh, throwing her head on the table on her arms. A few papers, from the ton sitting in her desk, fell to the floor, and Kallistrade groaned at the thought of having to get up to pick them.

She had a meeting in half an hour with the other Lords, and she hadn't finished half her work yet.

Cauldron fucking boil me, she cursed in her head.

“Didy Big Tiddies? Sounds rather inviting.”

From all her tiredness she had almost fallen asleep right there, and did not feel the presence in her office until it spoke in a dark, amused voice.

A voice Kallistrade knew, a voice that made her lift her head from the table like a spring, that dispelled her sleep and replaced it with surprise and uncertainty. A voice that belonged to...

“Azriel,” she was out of breath, out of coherent words, she didn't even know if what she was seeing was real, or a product of her tiredness coming to the point of hallucinations.

But her heart...no, her heart was beating too fast, too hard for this to be a hallucination.

He stepped out of the shadows, his muscular arms crossed over his equally muscular chest, a sly grin in his devilishly beautiful lips, his honey kissed eyes flaring with amusement and something else. “Before you ask how I got here-“

“You’re very good at your job. Yeah, I know,” Kallistrade stood up from her desk, her mouth suddenly too dry and her eyes twinkling with uncertainty, still not 100% sure that Azriel was there, in front of her.

Azriel, reading her thoughts precisely, sent shadows to her side, to touch her skin delicately, to caress her hands, to confirm that it was him, there, in her office. The realization of that moment hit her like a stream of cold water, waking her up completely.

“Is everything ok? Did something happened? I’m sorry if I haven’t been able to check any letters, it must have gotten lost in these terrible sack of papers, I really ought to-” she started to panic, thinking that perhaps, her family was still in trouble.

“Lis,” Azriel tried to interrupt her, getting a step closer, but the sudden rush of energy made her go into a frenzy.

“I cant even find my own knifes in these place, is seriously out of-”

“Kallistrade,” he gave two steps closer this time, raising his voice just a tiny bit, not angry, but amused, and finally make her stop talking and look him in the eye.

“Everything is ok in Prythian, you haven’t missed any letters begging for aid, don’t worry.”

Confusion took over her features, and her lips moved momentarily and slightly to the right, Azriel recognised the movement immediately, and had to take a deep breath. She had always done that little thing whenever she was confused or overwhelmed. There weren’t any soft features in her face now, but, still, it was the same grimace he had always considered endearing, even with its wickedness now.

“Oh, then, what are you doing here?” She asked trying not to sound too shaky, crossing her arms over her chest.

Azriel gave another step closer and raised an eyebrow, amused, what the hell was amusing him so much?

“Can’t I come visit a friend? I always wondered how the famous pirate citadel was, I’ve heard so many dreadful stories, I’m actually surprised to say it’s a decent place.”

“Yes, well, I might be a pirate, but I still like clean streets and pretty cities, these place was a hideous mess before I became High Pirate Lady, my first action as it was to renew the whole damn island. Poor rats were giving to the sharks but, we have had less sickness since,” Kallistrade lifted a shoulder and shifted her weight in one leg.

Azriel looked her over, as if assessing all and each of her little movements, peeling off her layers one by one and getting to the bottom of her real uncertainty.

Fucking spymaster abilities.

“What would the pirates have done without you,” he smirked, and she, letting go off a little bit of her tension, smirked back.

“Die of terrible infections, I’m sure,” silence followed, and Kallistrade took a deep breath, straightening her back to its full length, and looking Azriel over, assessing him too. She wasn’t a spymaster, but she had learned a thing or two of him in the past, and she was done with the bullshit now. “What are you doing here, Azriel, really. I…I’m really busy, these place needs a lot of fixing after Hybern tried to wipe us out, and I have to take care of the damages of the war-”

“Kallistrade, stop, will you? Just…shut up,” he gave a final step closer, now so close she could feel the cold rush of his shadows against her skin, and admire the specs of gold in his hazel eyes. Her breath got caught up in her throat, and she cursed herself internally.

“I can’t do this, Azriel, you should go back to Velaris, with Elain, and…and I…just please, go back to her,” she tried to back away, to get far enough away from him so that she no longer had to smell his fresh scent so close to her, altering her senses and making her stupid heart race with every breath.

“No,” he said simply, face grim with utter seriousness.

“Azriel, I’m am busy, I- ”she tried to protest again, but his shadows rush to her to shut her up. Literally shut her up. She fell silent, and looked at him with disbelief.

“You owe me this, Kallistrade, so just let me say what I came here to say. You. Owe. Me. This,” he was so serious, that even his shadows stiffen. She swallowed, and nodded with an awaiting, and a little annoyed look.

“Yes. Elain is very beautiful. Yes she’s sweet. Yes she’s loving. And yes she’s perfect.”

Kallistrade rolled her eyes, backing away from the shadows enough for her to be able to speak, and crossed her arms with a disbelief eyebrow raised.

“Wow, was that supposed to make me feel better or to make me feel more miserable? Because if you were aiming for the second option, congratulations, you did it spectacularly, but you should have saved all that trouble traveling and simply write it in a letter,” he shot her an exasperated look, and rubbed his scarred hands through his face. Kallistrade’s challenging expression did not falter.

“Will. You. Shut. Up? Just for one second, stop talking, please. Don’t say another word for one. Fucking. Second.”

“Blimey, ok, I guess you cannot make me feel worse,” she rolled her eyes again, but waited for him to continue.

“As I was saying, she is perfect and I did liked her a lot.”

“Oop, I was wrong, there it is, would you like a knife to finish me off? I have plenty lost on my desk,” this time, he didn’t bother giving her dirty look, he straight up sent his shadows to shut her up again, and she huffed a breath that almost, almost made him smile.

“I did liked her. But I liked her because she reminded me of you,” at her very deep frown, he sighed, trying to look for the right words, he wasn’t a male good with words, and Kallistrade was making it damn hard, she always did. “The old you, I mean, the one I first fell in love with. I hadn’t realized it before, until the battle, when you left, but I was…I was projecting you in her, that’s why I found it so easy to like her, to think that, perhaps, I could fall in love with her,” at her expression, he knew she was about to interrupt him even as his shadows were covering her mouth, and gritted his teeth in response, raising an eyebrow. “Do not. Interrupt me,” she rolled her eyes, and Azriel could read her response clearly in her eyes.

“Blimey, relax a bit,” he tried not to smile again, her pirate phrases, now those were catching up on him. He forced himself to continue, then, before she got the urge to interrupt him again.

“That’s the most fucked up part of it all, that I could have never have fallen in love with her. Because yes, she reminded me too much about the first version of you I fell in love with, but that’s the thing, you made me fall in love then, and you made me fall in love again now. You are the only damn person who could make me learn to love again, to make me fall in love again with you once and twice and thrice and Mother knows how many times could I fall in love with you, every version of you.”

Kallistrade was speechless, unable to think coherently or speak coherently. When Azriel noticed her stunned look, he removed the shadows from her mouth, which was open and completely dry.

Her heart gave an exalted leap and she had to blink several times to convince her brain, and her heart itself, that Azriel had said those words, and she wasn't imagining any of it.

“I don’t want perfect, Kallistrade, you were never perfect, and the Mother knows I’m far away from perfect. But I can’t imagine someone I would rather fall in love with a million more times other than you.”

There was silence for a long moment. A moment where Kallistrade considered all his words, all the weight of his words. She searched for hints of falsehood, but found only truth in his beautiful hazel eyes.

Azriel watched her expectantly, waiting for a response, and it took Kallistrade a couple of minutes longer than she was proud to admit to remember how to speak correctly.

“Oh, something tells me that you are really going to regret those words, because you’ll need more than a million times,” she raised an eyebrow, waiting for him to retract. But he didn’t, instead smirking and lifting a hand to her face, cupping it and brushing a thumb in the space between her jaw and her cheek.

“Then it’s good I have an immortal life to fall all the way back in love with you. As many times as needed.”

Finally, she smiled, a little wickedly, a litter softly, letting the tension slip away from her shoulders and leaning in his touch.

Oh Mother, how she had missed his touch.

“I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist my irresistible charms,” she joked in a low, playful tone, and Azriel’s deep, horse laugh reverberated in her, causing an electric tension to go up her body.

A dark, lust and hungry look settled on Azriel’s eyes that made her entire body shiver in need of more his touch.

“Oh, I’ll enjoy ripping every inch of confidence in your pretty twisted eyes until you can only but scream my name.”

Kallistrade huffed a moan when his mouth hit hers in desperate hunger. There was nothing tender in the way they started kissing, only pure, wild need that had been accumulating for five centuries led their mouths into a frenzy. Kallistrade’s back hit her desk, and Azriel groaned, still in her mouth, throwing everything on top of the desk to the ground with a swift movement of his shadows.

Kallistrade laughed, and parted momentarily to look at him with an amused raised eyebrow.

“You’ll definitely have to clean that up later, it cost me a shit ton of work to get through that paperwork,” as if she cared of paperwork right now, but it was fun to mess with him, especially when his eyes darkened in a hunger beyond reason.

“Shut up,” he laughed slightly, attacking her mouth with the hunger of a starving male again.

Azriel forced her legs open with one movement of his own, positioning himself between her legs and kissing her so eagerly that soon they were both panting.

Kallistrade quickly shed her boot, the pair of shoes causing a clatter as they fell to the ground, and with extremely skilled hands, Azriel untied the wine-red band tied around her waist, her belt, where the daggers and weapons strapped to it fell to the ground causing a greater clatter than that of her boots, metal on metal clanking as they fell to the ground. Her trousers soon disappeared as well, giving the male full access to her entrance. Only her laced underwear was in the way of her extremely wet cunt.

Kallistrade gasped as Azriel lowered his kisses from her mouth to her jaw, then to her neck, while his hands caressed her legs, fiddling with her senses before touching her wet underwear.

“Fuck, Lis, already? You’re dripping wet,” his voice was a huff of ragged breath, so dark, so deep, it made her insides curl with desire.

“Don’t act like you’re not all hard already, I can practically feel it pushing in your pants, you’re as desperate as I am, so shut up and fuck me now, would you?”

A deep laugh had her moaning while feeling his hands rub her cunt through the fabric of her underwear.

“Your wish is my command, Captain,” he smiled devilishly against her ear, kissing her love with such sweetness it made her melt into his touch.

Then a gasp, followed by a moan, erupted from her mouth as Azriel slipped his hand into her underwear and pressed his fingers against her clit.

"I remember how loud you used to be, Lis, now I'm going to make your throat hurt from screaming,” and not falling short of his promise, Azriel inserted a long finger into her entrance first.

Kallistrade clung tightly to his shoulders as he inserted the second, moaning in his ear as he began to pull them in and out at a painfully slow pace.

Desperately, she tried to move her hips closer to him, but the male laughed, and stopped his finger movements, making her protest in despair.

"How desperate. You're going to have to put up with it, because I've waited 500 years for this, and I'm going to enjoy every second you spend begging me for more.”

“Fuck you,” she breathed, unable to process thoughts coherently.

“I’m gonna let you do that, better.”

In response, Kallistrade ripped the top of his Illyrian leathers open, pulling it off with his help, and admiring the utterly god-like figure the male in front of her had.

Fucking Mother above, this male was gorgeous beyond logic.

His scars, his bronze skin, his muscular shape…Kallistrade could very well come by merely looking at it.

She smiled devilishly, and ran her hands all over his chest, stopping at his shoulders and looking into those hungry eyes, his fingers still inside her, before gently moving her hands to his wings, where she remembered, they were most sensitive.

Azriel's surprised moan was like music to her ears, her cunt dripped wet only at the sound.

“Two can play this game, and I’m all in for making you scream my name, too.”

At that, Azriel plunged his fingers even deeper into her, making her moan again, and while Kallistrade caressed his wings, he shamelessly thrust his fingers in and out, and when he strayed rubbing his thumb against her clit too, she could not stand it any longer, moan after moan after moan, putting her hands at her back in the desk so she could angle herself further into him, and let him finger-fuck her until the release inevitably came like a storm of mind-blowing pleasure. Her loud moan became a ragged breath when he took his fingers out of her, and kissed her mouth deeply, his tongue brushing against her lips and eating up her shaky breaths entirely.

“That was one, love.”

Fucking Mother above, one of…Kallistrade didn’t even wanted to think how many orgasms Azriel was aiming for.

He moved to try and take her top of, but the laced corset was making it difficult. He muttered a curse, and grabbed her ass to haul her off the desk. He carried her while kissing her deep into the nearest wall where she crashed her back. A moan escaping her at the hard contact. He left her on the floor again, and with a swift move of his hands, he had her back pressed against his front, her ass caressing his hard dick.

Kallistrade bit her lip at the contact, and could only imagine how it would feel back inside of her after all those centuries. Fucking magnificent, for sure.

He unfastened the corset so quickly and skillfully that the black piece of clothing fell to the floor in seconds. Without turning it over, Azriel unbuttoned her white long-sleeved shirt, which ended up next to her corset moments later. With her back still to him, he cupped her breasts in his two hands and squeezed until she groaned in pleasure. Her nipples were hard as fuck, and he took every advantage of them while he played them in his fingers. Kallistrade was a hot mess of groans, that only intensified whenever he would shift slightly and his cock will brush harder against her ass. Then a hand left one of her breasts, and returned to her cunt again. A low moan escaped her, and Azriel groaned against her air.

“Fuck, I love how you sound with my hands all over you.”

“I…” she breathed, but with his fingers making circles in her clit, it was almost impossible to think. “I want…” she tried again, but failed, instead moaning when he hit a sensitive spot.

“You want what? Say it,” his dark, husky voice against her ears made the pleasure travel farther in her body.

“I want…to feel you…inside of me…” she pleaded, her eyes closed with burning pleasure.

“Oh, you do? How badly?” She moaned in response, forgetting how to talk and answer back. But he took the hand that had been attending her nipple to her throat, and made her head fall back into his shoulder. “How. Bad. Kallistrade. Say it.”

“Fucking…bad…Fuck…” she moaned again. “I want you…very…fucking…b-bad.”

Azriel smiled darkly, and slowly bit and licked her neck while he worked his trousers off. Kallistrade heard them fall into the ground, then, with no anticipation, as she was still with her back pressed to him, he turned them both around, the desk now in front of her, and bent her over, making her have to grip the edge of the desk.

Then, with no warning, he was pushing deep into her. A loud, erupting moan came out of her, tears of pleasure streamed down her face ones. And they both waited a moment until she adjusted to the great length until he became thrusting in and out with a carnal rhythm.

Fuck, that wingspan thing was not wrong. He was fucking huge.

He gripped her waist hard, a bruise would definitely be there tomorrow, but the only thing Kallistrade could feel as he went in and out, in and out, was mind-blowing pleasure making her moan lauder and lauder.

She hadn’t realized how much she had missed his touch, his length inside of her, filling her with it, until that very moment. But fuck had she never felt this way with any past lover, no matter how many of them there had been.

No one could fuck her like Azriel, no one could make her feel like Azriel. The realization scared her, but filled her with deeper, more grateful pleasure as well.

“Fuck, Az,” she moaned, her second release so close she couldn’t contain her sounds anymore.

He knew it too, and used his fingers to rub her clit and drive her closer and closer to the edge. Until she finally erupted again, her whole body shuddered with the force of the orgasm and she bit back a scream of pleasure when it came. He followed through seconds later.

“Two, love,” he breathed shakily in her ear.

That was two, and her legs were already shaking.

He let her catch her breath, before pulling out and turning her around to face him. He ran a hand delicately over her face, brushing aside a lock of hair and admiring her for a moment, his eyes shining with feelings Kallistrade could not name, only feel in her own chest. He smiled tenderly, and lifted her by her legs with a gentleness he had not used until now, to carry her to the untidy bed on the other side, passing her office chamber, into her personal chamber, and placing her on the mattress with extreme gentleness, laying on top of her with his elbows supporting his weight.

Kallistrade marveled in his presence for a moment, running a hand on his cheek, admiring his mesmerizing eyes, the ruffle of his messy black hair, and simply absorbed the moment, carving it into her memory for eternity.

Everything that had happened until now, everything they had endured, together and apart, every heartbreak and goodbye, it all had been worth it for that very moment. They kissed, softly and lovingly and with no rush at all, savoring in each other with utmost detail.

Before, of course, Azriel went back to breaking her in every position he found. They went for two more orgasms, and once Kallistrade was done, there was no force on earth that could take this moment away from her, even if her legs shook with intensity and her heart hammered against her chest, promising a difficult time standing up tomorrow.

𓆉｡˚ ✧

Kallistrade had already missed her meeting, that was for sure, but with all the noise she made…well, she was sure they already knew why.

After all that, they laid down in her bed, tangled up in an embrace, while catching their breaths.

“Finally Cassian will not be drunkly crying on Starfall telling me he don’t want me to die without finding my mate, or a lover.”

Kallistrade’s eyes, formerly closed, snapped opened while she untangled herself from Azriel’s arms and pushed up in her elbow to look him in the eyes.

“Wait, you-“

“Of course I knew it, I’m a spymaster, love,” he laughed, glee flashing in his eyes, Kallistrade couldn’t help but roll hers and tighten a sly smile.

“Ok, now who’s the egocentric one?”

“Will you shut up now and let me kiss you?” He didn’t wait for a response, he prompted in one elbow as well and kissed her deeply again.

The kiss lasted as long as their lungs could hold out, but as they broke apart, when Azriel wanted to go for more, Kallistrade pulled away slightly, making him frown. They both sat down better, and Kallistrade fought the urge to swallow hard and show any nerves.

“So…does this mean that…do you…” She cleared her throat, annoyed at not finding the correct words.

“Do I what,” Azriel raised an amused eyebrow, and Kallistrade resisted the urge to hit that brow back down.

“You know,” she insisted, exasperated.

“Say it,” Azriel cupped her face in one hand and murmured in her lips.

“Do you accept the…” she licked her lips, and took a deep breath before putting her shit together. “The mating bond?”

“Oh, Mother,” he put his head in the space between her neck and her shoulder, an sighed, staying there.

“What?” She asked, a little nervous that he had maybe changed his mind.

“Nothing, I just waited so many centuries to hear that, I need a minute to convince myself you truly said it.”

Kallistrade let the tension in her shoulders loose, and laughed slightly, rubbing a hand through Azriel’s silky hair.

“Will it help if I say it again?” She asked with a smile still on her lips. He only nodded, not raising his head from her shoulder yet. “Do you accept the mating bong?”

“Say that again, please,” he murmured, his hot breath caressing her skin, as did his shadows with a tenderness it made her heart feel full.

So she smiled, and soften her fingers in his hair even more, whispering in a loving way against him, a sly smile still in her mouth.

“Would you, Azriel Shadowsinger, Spymaster of the Night Court, oh brave and mighty Illyrian warrior, accept the mating bond with me, Kallistrade Lanrcha, Mistress of the Sea, High Pirate Lady, oh mighty and dreaded Captain Devilsbane?” Azriel raised his head from her shoulder, and smiled while shaking his head and rolling his eyes.

“You are awfully dramatic.”

“Well do you or do you not!” She pressed, suppressing a laugh.

“Of course I do,” but she raised an eyebrow, and he sighed. “Of course I do, Kallistrade Lanrcha, oh mighty and dreaded Captain Devilsbane, High Pirate Lady and Mistress of the Sea,” Kallistrade smiled, please.

“Perfect! Now…I have nothing I could offer you to eat, I have barely eaten in two days myself, so…could I offer you some rum? Or bourbon, I reckon you like more fancy things, does liquor even count, tho?” She eyed her space, finding nothing useful for the moment, except the bottles at one little table at the corner of her room.1

“You haven’t eaten in two days?” He looked at her accusingly, raising an eyebrow in reprimand.

“Well, I’ve been terribly busy! If I hadn’t moaned so hard I’m pretty sure there would have been at least three people banging on that door right now,” Azriel looked extremely flustered, and to think he had been the one telling her he was going to make her scream, and staying true to his promise. “What? Is a small island,” she said nonchalantly, raising a shoulder.

“I-” he sighed, and shook his head with a smile. “Yes, bourbon would be just fine.”

“Fancy, then,” Kallistrade smiled and nodded.

She got up the bed and went over to the little table of liquors, pouring a glass of bourbon and drinking a bit right from the bottle, she heard Azriel’s laugh behind her, and she didn’t had to look to know he was shaking his head.

Before Kallistrade shut the bottle close again, she eyed the leftovers of a cookie she hadn’t finished eating. Cookies were the only thing she had eaten at all, since Zena was having way too much fun at the kitchen since they got back. Kallistrade didn’t complain, tho, she made delicious pastries, and the sugar and alcohol was the only things keeping her energy alive this days.

“Uh, look what I found! A cookie!” She turned around with the half cookie in one hand and the glass of bourbon in the other, Azriel raised an eyebrow, and eyed the pastry with uncertainty.

“Are you sure that’s edible?” She rolled her eyes, and approached the bed again to sit beside him, extending the cookie towards him.

“Yes, Azriel, don’t be such a-”

“Don’t. Finish that sentence,” he snatched the cookie off her hands and held an eyebrow high in defiance towards what he already knew she was about to call him.

Somewhere between the lines of “picky fancy ass”, for sure.

He sighed, surveying the cookie in his hands, unsure if he was going to end up dead or really intoxicated. But…one look at Kallistrade, and seeing her expectant, excited gaze, waiting for him to accept her “mating bond acceptance offering”, that he sighed again, and took a bite.

“So…how is it?” Kallistrade raised both her eyebrows.

It had tasted great when Zena brought them, but considering she had left it there for a couple of hours…she just hoped Azriel wouldn’t be sick after it.

“It’s horrible, I’ll stay with the bourbon, thank you,” he took the glass from her quickly, and drank the content in one shot, surely to wash away the previous taste.

He made such a face that made Kallistrade inevitably laughed, and his eyes shifted from a frown of disgust, to a lighten, soft gaze.

“I think we might have done it backwards, first food, then sex,” she raised a playful eyebrow at him, and Azriel drank the last of his bourbon before putting the glass in the nightstand besides the bed, without taking his eyes off hers, his eyes darkening with lust again.

“Well, we haven’t done much very organized ever, have we,” his low voice made a shiver ran down her spine, and, like a force of nature that pulled her towards him, she leaned in his hot touch.

“You have a fair point.”

“Does that mean I get a fifth round?” She laughed lowly, and he pushed a strand of her that was falling in her face out of it with his hand, before cupping one side of her face with it, circling hot, loving caresses on her skin.

Kallistrade eyed her mate’s beautiful, rough face and smiled. Her mate. Mate. Azriel was her mate, officially now so. She didn’t had to live with that knowledge buried in her heart anymore.

“I mean…isn’t that what we should do? I’m pretty sure the mating Gods demand a closure to the acceptance,” she nodded with the utmost seriousness, as if very committed to appease ‘the mating gods’.

Azriel laughed, and again, shook his head with amusement. “Just come here, you crazy pirate.”

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divinemare · 10 months

Text

✧*̥₊˚‧☆ﾐ 𝖉𝖆𝖗𝖐 𝖙𝖎𝖉𝖊𝖘!¡ •ଓ.°

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳ azrielxfem!oc

part ten

𓆝 𓆜 ––––———–––––———–┊⁀➷

Kallistrade saw monsters rip into Hybern’s soldiers, Seraphim’s and Illyrians, pirates and navy soldiers from the Summer Court; fight side by side. It was incredible, how so many people that had once been against each other fought together now.

How Kallistrade and Azriel, two people that hadn’t been able to so much as look in each other’s eyes, now fought back to back.

“You have to go,” Azriel told her in a ragged breath.

“What?” Kallistrade took her sword back from the body that had caught it when she threw it, and looked at him in confusion.

“You have to go, Kallistrade!” He pushed her aside to stab a soldier that was coming right at her.

“Why?”

“Because…” Azriel looked at one side, where a ship was…it was backing away, a Hybern’s ship. “You wanted him, didn’t you?” Kallistrade, with her enhanced Fae eyes, could see the male escaping from the battle.

The same male that had ripped her brother into tiny parts in front of her sister, who had braked her sister’s unbreakable spirit, and who had tortured her mother until she stoped breathing. The Commander of the King’s naval army, the son of a bitch that had broken her life apart, that had filled her heart with an infinite rage Kallistrade never thought could be healed.

But…

She looked at Azriel, at the wounded male that pretended not to be exhausted, at his wings. He was in pain, she felt it in her own bones, the battle was still raging, she knew Feyre and Amren were now working to shut the Cauldron down.

Her revenge was now trying to slip away, to run, his ships were almost all down now, there was no surviving unless he escaped.

She felt the rage accumulated for centuries burning in her chest. All that grief, all that anger, all that despair and desolation she had felt for over 500 years now screaming for vengeance, screaming to claim the blood she had spent 5 centuries seeking.

But…Azriel. He was wounded, exhausted. She couldn’t leave him on his own, she couldn’t…leave him.

“No,” she gulped the blood accumulating in her mouth, and shook her head with determination.

“He’s escaping.”

“I know.”

“You’ll lose your chance.”

“I…I know.”

“Then leave! Now!”

“No! I’m not leaving you, Azriel, I’m not…You’re wounded!”

He laughed, Kallistrade wasn’t sure if it was a bittersweet laugh or a bewildered one. So she just waited for him to speak. Her heart gave a leap when he approached and put his scarred hands on her arms, squeezing tightly. Not to hurt, but to…to touch her, to simply touch her.

“Go kill that motherfucker, Lis,” he smiled at her, truly smiled at her.

His shadows curled up to her, like in encouragement, his eyes…they were rooting for her, he was rooting for her.

“I can’t leave you alone, I…”

“I’ll stay with him,” Maddox spoke behind her, she hadn’t felt his arrival.

He did not like Azriel, at all, not one bit. Kallistrade was well aware of that, but in his gray eyes she only saw determination, duty, to her, to his Captain. Kallistrade smiled at him, her heart warming, and she did something they had never, in the 400 years they’ve been knowing each other, had ever done. She rushed towards him, and hugged him tightly.

At first, the male was just as shock as she felt, but then returned the hug tightly.

He was not only her first mate, he had never been just her first mate. He was her confident, her friend, her brother.

“Thank you,” she whispered before parting their hug, then turned to look at Azriel. “Please don’t die before I come back,” the male smiled sideways, then looked back at Kallistrade in a way he hadn’t looked at her in over 500 years.

“I’ll wait for you, Lis, just like I’ve always been waiting for you. Go beat the fuck out of that bastard.”

She smiled, half wickedly, half hopeful, then vanished into thin air, winnowing out the battlefield and into the Hybern ship that was trying to escape. Seconds later, Zena and Cassius landed beside her, their bloody swords in their blood-coated hands.

“Going anywhere?” She talked directly to the Captain of the ship with an evil smile, giving a sinister view of her blood-covered face.

“And, you are?” The male laughed condescendingly, raising an unbothered eyebrow while he signaled everyone in his ship —a fucking ton of coward people who wanted to escape the battle—, to take out their weapons and point them at the three pirates.

“You’ll find out.”

The first of the Hybern soldiers attacked, launching towards Cassius. But the male was one of the finest —and dirtiest— fighters she had ever met in her centuries of being a pirate. Kallistrade herself made sure of that, since she helped him train since he was an 60 year old boy.

Then attack after attack came her way as well, Zena and Cassius took the majority of the hits, making sure she had enough energy saved for the big fish still safe and sound in the quarterdeck. Not for long, tho.

Her whole body filled with stamina while she cut sailor to sailor, advancing towards the one she hadn’t taken her eyes away from.

“Go! We’ll hold them up,” Zena bared her teeth while fighting off a corpulent High Fae, and Kallistrade nodded her head, sweat and blood dripping from her forehead.

“I know you will,” she smiled, and let Cassius open a path of death towards the quarterdeck, towards were the Captain of the ship was waiting for her with one eyebrow raised.

“I must admit, I’m impressed,” they started circling each other with the elegance of two predators assessing their preys.

“Thank you, I’ll make sure to give you the final show personally.”

The male smiled, and if Kallistrade had been told she had a wicked smile, it was nothing compared to that of the male. That was a smile of someone bone chillingly evil, that had destroyed so many life’s they could never be count, then went to sleep like a baby afterwards. That was the smile of a male so deep into the blood he had stolen he showered with it every single day of his life. And enjoyed it.

It was a smile that took her back 500 years ago, when she had seen it sailing away after tossing her brother’s dismembered parts into the ocean, while he tortured her mother and got exhilarated while doing it. While her blood splashed into his face, then when he left her broken body in their town house and burn her home to the ground.

It took her back to when she was a terrified girl, who couldn’t hold herself up and stood quiet while her whole family got murdered, the girl who ran away from her home because she couldn’t stand the grief killing her every day.

But that same girl had risen from the ashes of her own misery, that same girl had turned into an unstoppable force of nature, that same girl had turned into a captain, that same girl had turned into the captain, Captain Devilsbane, Mistress of the Tides, High Pirate Lady, Lady of the Seven Oceans, Wielder of Seesnyer and Dark Wilder.

“It will sure be a show when I have you on your knees begging for my mercy, pirate.”

She bared her teeth, her family’s names echoing in her head while she stared at the smile that had taken almost everything away from her.

She was Kallistrade, daughter of Aider Lanrcha, sister of the great warrioros Maelle and Kaius Lanrcha. She was the darkness that lurked beneath salty waters, the dark, strong and powerful tides that hit against ships and rocks and bays. She was darkness and danger and death. She was the captain, she was the ocean. She was Kallistrade Lanrcha, and she would bent on her knees to no one.

The first blow was hard enough to knock her back a step. Just enough to keep her balance, then came another, and another, and another. Each one with the precision of a killer who had been brutally taking lives for millennia.

Kallistrade endured them all, still. She endured each blow like her mother, endured the pain like her sister, and held her head high like her brother.

She called in 500 years of battles, of hunting her enemies. 500 years of rage and grief, all in one moment.

Her mother. Her bother. Her sister. Her mother. Her brother. Her sister.

Azriel. Rhys. Cassian. Mor. Amren. Feyre. Nesta. Elain. Azriel. Rhys. Cassian. Mor. Amren. Feyre. Nesta. Elain.

Maddox. Zena. Elijah. Cassius. Her crew. Her people. Maddox. Zena. Elijah. Cassius. Her crew. Her people.

She repeated every single name over and over again in her head until it became a power source to reach for. She would keep fighting for them, she would stand every blow, every hit for them. She would not back up for them. She would survive for them.

But he was strong. So absurdly strong. And it was obvious he hadn’t been present in the battle that much, keeping safe in his ship, for the amount of energy he still had after all that time. Kallistrade, on the other hand, had not stopped swinging her sword and dagger from the moment her ships arrived in Prythian, had not stopped winnowing, sweating, the bloodshed. She hadn't stopped for a second, and now, it was showing her disadvantage towards the male who didn't have a drop of sweat on his face.

A searing pain pierced through her when the Commander’s sword cut her side, a muffled scream erupting from her, making her drop Dark Wielder to cup her bleeding side. Yet she did not bent over, as much as the pain was urging her too.

“You’re good, to be a pirate,” he spat the word with distaste. As if he was any better. “But you’ll die just as I told you. On your knees.”

He raised his sword, and Kallistrade forced herself to let go of her bleeding and burning wound to block the blow with her own sword. Just how deep had he cut?

The force he pressed into her making worst the ache in her body, but she grated her teeth, her legs and hands shaking with effort, and did not yield.

Mother. Brother. Sister. Mother. Brother. Sister.

Azriel. Azriel. Azriel. Azriel.

She felt him, then. Kallistrade didn’t know exactly where or how, but she felt him. His strength, his force, his shadows, his power. All of it pushing her to fight, pushing her to survive.

So she did. She pushed. And she ducked in the attack, slashing him with Seesnyer while she did.

The male gritted his teeth, an anger she hadn’t yet seen replacing the arrogance.

Oh, now he was pissed.

Kallistrade fought every blow of his sword that made her back away, until she hit the side of the ship, and before she could dart away, he trapped her body, pressing his to hers so close he forced her to bent over the railing. His hands went to her throat, his face twisted in a maniac blood lust.

“Lis!” She heard screaming down in the main deck, and she knew it was Zena right away.

“I’ll throw your pieces into the ocean and let the sharks eat whatever’s left of you, you pirate bitch,” his face was so close to hers she could feel his hot breath on it when he spoke.

Kallistrade did not advert her eyes from his, defiant. She would not go down easily, she’ll sure as hell make it difficult. She…

A blinding flash of light erupted in the distance. Then a majestic, other-worldly creature went up in the air.

That was… For the Mother and the fucking Cauldron.

Amren. Amren had been set free of her vessel. That had been the creature that lurked for so many centuries inside the female. It was like nothing Kallistrade had ever imagined, but everything she needed right now.

Amren’s appearance was distraction enough for everyone that Kallistrade had time to take a dagger out of her boot and slash the male’s face so hard she punctured his eye, and made him back away several steps.

She did not stoped there, with the cries of Amren’s victims, and knowing very well she had to get away from that ship before the unstoppable creature destroyed it, she used the dagger to stab the male in the shoulder. Then took it out, blood-soaked, to stab it in his dick. That last stab so hard and precise the male sank to his knees with a scream of pain.

Kallistrade waited a second, savoring his cries of pain, before kneeling beside his twisting body. While the pain in her own body was burning her into the point she started seeing stars, she did not let it show while smiling slightly and looking as unbothered as he had been the first half of their fight.

“You asked me who I was,” she said in a low, rasped whisper, the dagger in her hand felt hot, the promise it held awaiting its destiny. “I’m Captain Devilsbane,” at the name, the male looked more shocked than pained whit his cock bleeding, and Kallistrade gave him the same wicked smile she gave everyone who looked at her with the same disbelief moments after their death, after learning who she was. “Captain Kallistrade Lanrcha. Does the name make a sound to you?” She didn’t wait for him to reply, not with his ragged breaths of pain at holding his bleeding parts. “You killed my mother. You killed my sister. You killed my brother. Then you come here, and try to kill the rest of my family too. My mate, my brothers, my sisters. And I’ve come to make you pay for all of it.”

She raised the dagger —her brother’s dagger, the one she’d used to finish every responsable for her family’s death she had hunted down for all those centuries—, and plunged it into his throat fast and precise, the. taking it out and letting the blood pour from the wound until it slowly and painfully killed him, choking on his own blood.

When his heart stopped, her own felt a release she had never thought she would be able to feel again. It took her a moment, to finally come to terms with the weight she had been carrying on her shoulders and heart for five centuries.

“Lis!” The same voice that had screamed for her moments ago sounded near again.

Zena and Cassius were climbing up to the quarterdeck with hurried steps and preoccupied gazes. When they finally saw her, they both sighed with relief, just as she did when she saw both of them alive.

“Mother’s tits, you’re a rough bitch to kill aren’t you?” Zena laughed, and so did Kallistrade as they embraced each other tightly.

Kallistrade winced, remembering the wound at her side that was making her lose way too much blood. And Zena parted, her eyes alerting again.

“What? Is everything ok?”

“I’m kinda bleeding out, but yeah, we’re fine,” she breathed out and tried to smile, but could only manage a pained grimace.

“You’re what?!” Zena didn’t take that as good as Kallistrade was.

“Even though I’m glad to see you’re alive, Lis, we need to leave the sweet moments for when we’re not in a motherfucking target for that…thing,” he eyed Amren, and Kallistrade noticed she was crashing into Hybern soldiers as if they were nothing but an obstacle in her way, destroying their lines with a brutality she had never seen.

“Yeah, great idea,” Kallistrade nodded, and held tight to Zena and Cassius while they helped her winnow back to safety, seconds before Amren destroyed the ship they had been on.

𓆉｡˚ ✧

Kallistrade had never felt the urge to sleep for a century until now. Everything had gone so fucked up so quickly that it pumped stamina in her system until she ran completely dry.

Her gushing wound. The commander she had slaughter. Amren. The Cauldron. Rhys…

Now that has been enough war and battle for what remained of this century, for sure.

She had been almost tied to her bed and checked and nearly bombed with attention from Jazemin and Oryn, until they were 100% sure she wasn’t going to die any time soon.

But she couldn’t just lay and rest, she had to asses the losses and the damage, look who was injured and alive and dead. She hadn’t even had time to go up to her friends, to hit Rhysand for what he had done, to… to see Azriel.

“Go,” Cassius whispered at her side, she hadn’t noticed she had been zooming away until he spoke to her.

“What?”

“Go, I’ll cover you up,” he winked at her with his mesmerizing eyes, and she smiled gratefully, clenching the tight bands in her waist and chest while she walked towards the Inner Circle.

They were all reunited, and fine. Kallistrade smiled at Nesta while she approached, the female was beside her sister Elain, the later had blood in her hands, but what surprised Kallistrade wasn’t the blood, but the blade she held covered in it. She recognized it immediately, and felt an unknown tug in her heart at the sight of Truth-Teller in the female’s hands. Her smile faltered, but she managed to hide it away with a hard swallow.

“I’m glad you’re both okey,” she said to the sisters, and winked at Nesta Archeron, ignoring the ache in her chest and the urge to look back at Truth-Teller.

Kallistrade then approached Rhysand, and focused solely on him instead of what she had seen behind.

“You are a motherfucking son of a bitch,” she said, but hugged him immediately anyway despite the pain at her side.

“Thank you,” he said in a laugh, and she knew he was thanking her for showing up.

She smiled again, tears accumulating in her eyes without her noticing.

“Are you about to cry?” He smirked, raising an eyebrow when they parted.

“Of course I’m not, dumbass, what are you talking about,” she blinked quickly, giving him a faked annoyed look that didn’t last her much.

“Oh, yeah she is,” Cassian said from behind her, he was, too, wrapped in bands, his face covered in mud and heavy bags under his eyes, but still, he smiled at her.

“Want me to put you a clip on those wings, big boy? Shut up,” she tried not to laugh, but failed when he did.

Then she fell quite for a moment, looking over for an specific someone she hadn’t yet seen.

“He’s getting checked up,” Cassian said, a sly grin on his lips.

Kallistrade nodded and smiled in thanks, then went up to look for Azriel where the healer’s of the Courts were taking care of the wounded.

She found him almost immediately. Again, as if it was an instinct.

Azriel lifted his face when his shadows murmured her arrival, and Kallistrade felt the biggest relief of the evening disentangling her contracted muscles and filling her lungs with air she hadn’t been able to breath.

She smiled slightly, uncomfortably so, none of them said a word for the first minutes, they simply stared at each other, looking for wounds or words to say.

“I-” they both said at the same time, and laughed nervously for it.

Kallistrade cursed herself internally, how had she become this nervous wreck? She never blushed or played with sweaty hands, yet there she was, blushing and playing with sweaty hands.

“You go first,” she said, in hopes to ease her erratic heart before speaking.

“I’m glad you’re okey,” he said a heartbeat later, making her swallow hard.

“I’m glad you’re ok too.”

“Maddox‘s fine, too, he’s fucking tough I must admit.”

“Yeah, he went straight to Jazemin, all our soldiers are being checked up on the ships.”

“Do you have many causalities?” He asked after a small uncomfortable silence.

“A couple. I don’t know exactly how many yet,” he nodded, as if assessing another possible question to fill the silence.

“Are you…are you going back to Skull Island?” He didn’t directly looked at her while asking, and Kallistrade took a deep breath.

“Not immediately, we’ll wait until things are a bit more stable, unless…unless you want me to stay?” Then he looked at her.

Her heart was beating so erratically and nervously it almost made her laugh. A fucking battle didn’t made her this nervous, but standing in front of Azriel did.

“Do you want to stay, Kallistrade?”

Kallistrade. Not Lis. He looked at her with an unreadable expression, and she hated the uncertainty she felt at it.

“I want a lot of things, Azriel, what do you want?”

Silence. Utter silence. She wondered if he could hear her beating heart, if he could smell her nerves and uncertainty, if he could see the shift in her eyes, the pleading for an answer that would make her stay, that would tell her he wanted her to stay. But nothing came. He just stared at her, and said nothing.

The blade in Elain’s hands cursed through her mind again.

“I saw Elain with…with Truth-Teller.”

Azriel didn’t mutter a word, simply nodded, his unreadable face changing to a dismayed one. At that, Kallistrade’s heart slowed its beats, they feel heavy now, making pressure a in her chest that again stole the air from her lungs. She had to take a deep gulp of air breath.

“You…you gave it to her.”

“Yes,” he answered after a moment, his voice sounded grim, she didn’t dare to look him in the eyes now.

“You never…you never let anyone touch that knife.”

“No,” another slow, painfully realizing heart beat.

“And yet…she…” Kallistrade knew, then, her eyes filled with a pained realization she hadn’t had idea she’d be capable of feeling until now. “You like her,” it wasn’t a question.

She wasn’t dumb, she wasn’t blind, she had seen the way he looked at her when she had been in Velaris, the subtle glances, she had joked about it, to try and take a reaction from him, but now… it didn’t feel too much like a joke.

He sighed, rubbing his hair with one dirty, scarred hand. Then looked up into her eyes, she read the answer in them perfectly before he nodded slowly, uncertain, taking away her breath with it.

“She’s…” Kallistrade sighed and closed her eyes for a second, she could not think of a single bad thing about the female even if she tried, Kallistrade had liked her the moment she met her. Nor could she find one single reason why Azriel wouldn’t fall for her, even tho it hurt to admit it. “She’s beautiful, very beautiful, and sweet and loving and…she’s perfect.”

Everything she wasn’t. At least not anymore.

“She is,” he nodded, his eyes moving with feelings as uncertain as his shadows. They kept an arms-length distance from her, as if they wanted to get closer, to touch her, but they were too uncertain, just like their master.

She heard it crashing, then, felt a force so big that crashed into her and turned her heart in little pieces. Huh, and she that had spent centuries hearing people say she had no heart whatsoever. How she wished in that moment those accusations were true. Because now she knew for a fact she had a heart, and it wasn’t a pleasant feeling at all.

“I…I’ll be in my ship,” she sighed, defeated.

I’ll be in my ship, in case you want to come talk when you’re able to look me in the eyes.

I’ll be in my ship, in case you sort out your feelings.

I’ll be in my ship, in case your heart starts calling my name as mine calls yours.

I’ll be in my ship, in case…in case you want me to stay.

What else could she say? If Azriel had found someone that made his heart beat as hers had the moment he saw him…well, she couldn’t compete with that, nor was she sure she wanted to submit to the pain that would cause her if she did.

She had arrived too late. She had left him, and though Kallistrade well knew she could not blatantly expect him to come back to her after everything, she had really, really hoped he would.

But she had come too late, the consequences of her past were quickly catching up with her, and this time, she didn't think it was possible to repair those pieces of her heart.

“Goodbye, Azriel.”

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divinemare · 1 year

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✧*̥₊˚‧☆ﾐ 𝖉𝖆𝖗𝖐 𝖙𝖎𝖉𝖊𝖘!¡ •ଓ.°

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳ azrielxfem!oc

part seven

part one, part two, part three, part four, part five, part six

𓆝 𓆜 ––––———–––––———–┊⁀➷

Kallistrade rested her temple on her hand, bored out of her mind at the 4 pirates fighting in front of her, it was hard being the only female in the room, with all that testosterone rising to its highest capacity of incredible futility.

"Gentlemen," she tried to shout, but they were so immersed in their fight that they paid no attention to her. "Gentlemen," she repeated again, her voice a little louder.

When Kallistrade realized there was no point in trying to get their attention with words, she pulled out one of her knives and threw it at the centre of the table, causing a thunderous sound to halt all conversation.

"As much fun as it is to watch four adult males bicker like babies, we have important business on our hands."

Ronald, the eldest of the five, a male so grotesque looking he fit perfectly into every pirate expectation, looked at her through one eye completely white and blind and another brown and glazed with age. Kallistrade would never understand why the male refused to wear a patch, it would certainly be the best for everyone else around him.

"And where were ye while yer city was under attack?" His thick accent was hoarse and almost too difficult to understand. He had three gold teeth, and Kallistrade suspected that if he didn't start taking care of of his deplorable teeth health, he would soon need more.

"I got a letter from some friends from Prythian, they're the ones fighting Hybern."

"See, that's what got us in trouble! You were plotting against one of the most powerful males in the world!"

"I wasn't plotting against anyone, when I arrived Hybern had already started a war."

"Why were you called, Kallistrade?" Cassius, the youngest after her, asked. Now he was very much more appealing than Ronald, as ugly as the other one was, Cassius was a very good looking male, with curly dark hair that reached his neck, beautiful green eyes and tanned skin from a life under the sun, broad shoulders and a muscled framed that indicated he had not always been the captain, but had to work very hard from the bottom to the top, that was in big part why they got along much better than she did whit the rest of them. He spoke much calmer than Ronald, his eyes deeply troubled but full of anger, after all, he is the one in charge of the south side of the island, and unfortunately the one who had suffered the most from the attack.

"They asked for aid in the war, they wanted the help of my crew."

Everyone fell silent, except Ronald, who spat out an unfunny laugh and looked at her as if she had been the one to shout out the order to attack Skull Island.

"See, ye put us all in danger by playing hero with those High Fae."

"And what did you say?" Asked Filius, a big male with a beer belly and fire red hair that was starting to fall off. The kindest of them all, and arguably her favorite member of the brethren, if she had to choose.

"I said yes. My crew will be of help against Hybern."

"And ye didn't think to consult us?" Cyrus' voice rang with utter disbelief. He was the one Kallistrade liked least of them all, even above Ronald. the sneakiest, most backstabbing, treacherous, false and filthiest bastard she had ever met, he had fought the day she became High Pirate Lady and had had several attempts on her life even before that happened.

He was positively the male Kallistrade hated the most, even more than that misogynistic old bastard of Ronald, at least he knew his boundaries, and the fact that he would be safer as long as he didn't cross her own boundaries. Cyrus didn't know, or simply didn't care about such things.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know I had to consult you for everything I do, did I miss it or when did you become High Pirate Lord? Because the last time I checked I was High Pirate Lady."

The room fell into a horrible silence as Kallistrade and Cyrus glared at each other, neither of them backing down at first, but then, when the male realized he was about to cross a very delicate line he had no advantage on, he averted his eyes from her.

"We should fight back! Those bastards came because they know we're a big threat! Let's show them how big we can be!" Spat Ronald, Kallistrade was thankful she wasn't near him, or else the saliva would constantly land on her face just as it was doing on poor Filius'.

"Well, Ronald, I think yer wish is ‘bout to come true ‘cause I have no doubt that our dear Captain Devilsbane is already sending us into a death trap," Cyrus' voice was once again coated with venom.

"No, not really, though I admire your desire for vengeance, Ronald, and your cowardice, Cyrus, I am giving you all a choice. Join the fight or stay here and empty your chests in booze and whores, I couldn't care less."

Ronald licked his filthy teeth with his tongue and gave her such a sadistic smile that she already knew what his response would be. The male would not waste a single opportunity to stain his sword red. Cyrus, on the other hand, gritted his teeth at being called a coward.

"I agree, those bastards destroyed ma favorite tavern," Ronald nodded, as expected.

"They cost me many of my men," Cassius' voice held the edge of vengeance and grief and anger she knew all too well, Kallistrade looked at the male, with her eyes alone telling him how sorry she was for his losses. He nodded, agreeing to participate and thanking her for the silent condolences.

"Do you believe in this cause, Captain Devilsbane?" Filius asked her, his chubby pink cheeks flushed from the humid heat of the island.

It was a question that got everyone's attention. She sighed and straightened her back a little more.

"I do. They won't stop here, even if we don't join their cause. Ronald said it: we are a threat to them, to all their allies, and if the King gets the immense power of the Cauldron, he would be unstoppable, he would displace us from our ocean and take away our freedoms. And if not him, then any other of his allies."

The male nodded, thinking it over for a second, then lifted his face again, looking at her with soft but determined eyes.

"Then I will join you as well."

Then they all looked at Cyrus, the male snorted, rolled his eyes and glared daggers at Kallistrade. She waited nonchalantly, arms folded across her chest, her back against the chair.

"I will enjoy watching ye all die while I take yer place, Kallistrade," the male said as he rose from his seat and headed out of the room.

The female laughed in amusement, her unbothered smile pulling one from Cassius' lips as well.

"Yes, I don't doubt that at all, Cyrus," the door slammed as the male left the room. "How many ships do we have?" She stared at Cassius, returning to what was important.

"Fully operational? About a fifteen," Kallistrade almost sighed.

Before the attack, they had twenty three ships operational, but a dozen seemed sufficient.

"Ok. You two," she pointed to Filius and Ronald. "Go choose which ones will stay to protect the island and which ones will come with us. And you," she now looked at Cassius. "See who wants to come and who wants to stay. Give them all a choice, but promise them all the booty* from all the ships we destroy.”

Without another word, they stood up with a nod and left the room. Maddox came in right away, as he had been outside waiting with the other first mates and her commanders.

"It went well. Cyrus seemed as eager and charming as ever," he sat down next to her, Kallistrade smiled, tiredly.

"Yeah, well, it went a lot better than I expected, Cyrus is a lost cause, someday he's going to get blown up by a canon, but for now I got to let him be."

The male laughed and shook his head, rising to offer her a hand.

"Alright then, come on Captain, I think we need to get ready for war."

"Oh Mother," the female sighed dramatically, taking her first mate's hand and standing up. "When will my soul take a break?"

"Fancy a drink to soothe your poor restless soul?"

"I'd need at least a dozen barrels for that," Maddox laughed again, and the two of them headed out of the Meeting Room and back into the chaos of the city.

𓆉｡˚ ✧

Night had settled in and her desk was already full of paperwork. Kallistrade had two days to get ten ships with 500 people ready for battle.

It was a lot of work.

She dropped into her chair with a sigh, she had been working all day and desperately needed a break. She opened a drawer in her desk, ready to pull out the bottle of bourbon and a glass she remained hidden there, but, next to the bottle, she found something she didn't remember having there at all.

A beautiful silver chain with a whale pendant made her heart stop and her breath catch. Kallistrade took the chain gently in her hands, as if it were the most fragile thing she had to care for or else it would crumble in her hands.

When she held the chain closer to her face, it felt like a punch in the gut. That had been the last gift she had received from Azriel.

Cassian had made such a fuss about it, assuring her that it was Azriel's way of telling her he was going to propose soon. Kallistrade had felt so terribly bad at the time, that if Azriel had proposed she could never have left him, and probably would have died for it. So she gathered her things, left a note for everyone in the house, and set sail on the Bright Nightmare and its former captain.

The beautiful little whale now looked at her with mockery and shame. Oh, how ashamed she felt now.

There were so many things she had not told Azriel before she left, so many things she had not had the chance to tell him and now she did not know if she would ever have the chance to tell him.

But no, she could not allow those kinds of thoughts to invade her mind until breathing became difficult, for Azriel was not a weak male, he was the Shadowsinger, the Spymaster of the Night Court, and she was no longer a weak female, she was the High Pirate Lady, Captain Devilsbane of the Bright Nightmare, the Dark Dream and the Shadowed Star, and they would come out of this on their feet, they had already survived wars, and this time, Kallistrade had a greater motivation to do so.

The brief window of Azriel's pleading eyes the last time they met was tattooed in her mind until the day she would see him again.

She clenched the necklace in her hand and closed her eyes to imagine for a second if she could remember his touch, the smell of his hair, the texture of his lips. She could, surprisingly, remember each and every detail of the male in her mind so perfectly that it could have happened just yesterday and not three hundred years ago.

When she opened her palm and looked at the necklace again, it was not sorrow or shame or mockery that stared back, but hope. And she clung to that hope as she fastened the necklace around her neck and hid it among the others just as a knock at the door brought her attention back to the present.

"Come in."

The door opened, showing the medium-sized frame of Cyrus and two other tall, muscular males. She had never seen the two mysterious males before, surely new members of Cyrus' crew.

"Cyrus, what an unpleasant surprise, have you come to apologise for your tantrum this afternoon and join us?" She smiled without a trace of warmth, the male did too.

"Oh come on, Kallistrade, ye know me better than that," at his words, she shot a quick glance back to his companions, they were standing with the presence of assassins. Kallistrade didn't move from her seat.

"Then don't bother taking a seat, you can go now, I'm quite tired for tonight and really wouldn’t find enjoyable getting into conversation with you.”

What a perfect timing for him. She was all alone in her study, Maddox was in the Bright Nightmare counting their supplies, Elijah and Zena were doing the same on the other two ships. Her guards had been sent home or to help load weaponry and heavy cargo onto the ships.

Kallistrade took a close look at the men behind the other captain, they were tall and broad, their arms were bare, probably from the heat, and on their wrists was a tattoo of two crossed swords. The mark of the mercenaries.

"Oh, but I have so much I wanted to discuss!" The male took a seat anyway, and Kallistrade leaned back in hers keeping a close eye on the two mercenaries.

"Then speak your mind, but make it quick."

"I will, don't worry."

She reached for the dagger in her boot, then to Dark Wilder, both hands now holding the daggers, she summoned an unbothered and somewhat bored look to her face as Cyrus spoke.

"Ye see, I was remembering the day ye became High Pirate," she grinned devilishly, what a bloody day, quite literally. "The only reason the Brethren made ye High Pirate Lady was because of Seesnyer."

"And because I killed the previous High Pirate Lord," she corrected, earning the slightest reaction from Cyrus. The previous Lord had been his friend, predictably, two horrible males who deserved to have their heads rolled off their bodies. Luckily, she'd already cut one off, though she was still working on the other one.

"The point is, no one questioned it because ye had Seesnyer."

"I'm not getting your point, all I'm hearing is the claim that I have the best sword in our history."

"Really?"

Kallistrade drew her eyebrows together, confused.

"You're, what, suggesting it's false?"

"I don't know, what I do know is that there hasn't been a single person in over a millennium who has been able to go after the Sword of the God and come back alive, and yet here ye are. But I ‘spose I'll find out if it's real or not when I snatch it from yer rotting corpse."

Kallistrade laughed, and as she did so, one of the two males who had so far remained silent suddenly rushed to her side, grabbed her by the neck and slammed her head against the table, a searing pain shoot from her head to the side of her cheek. The male raised her head to look at Cyrus. He was fast, she’ll give him that.

"Oh, you poor dead souls," she laughed again, blood rolling from her nose to her mouth. The male in front of her merely smiled as if looking at a naïve child, and rose from his seat to walk to a corner of the room. What a fucking coward.

Kallistrade used the momentum of her body to push the chair up and then down again onto the male's feet. He hissed in pain and eased the pressure on her neck enough for her to grab his hand and twist to the side as she stood up. The other male was at her side within seconds, but she used one of the daggers she had been holding to slash him across the cheek.

They both turned away from her, not to flee, but to prepare to fight. She wiped the blood from her nose and looked at them.

"Gentlemen, contrary to what my reputation may imply, I actually like to solve problems with diplomacy before resorting to violence. Do you want to take the opportunity to get out of this alive, or shall we get to the bloody part?” The two didn't say a word, just drew their swords. Kallistrade smiled with the anticipation of blood on her hands, and put away her two daggers to draw her own blade. Seesnyer seemed viciously excited to slit the throat of the one who had declared her false, it gave her wielder a tug of excitement for the hunt. "Fine by me," Kallistrade grinned so mischievously that there was a visible shudder in Cyrus' bearing.

She was fighting both blades with the grace of a killer, each strike she deflected was a swift and graceful move on her part, while the males began to pant rapidly from the effort and brute force they were putting into their attacks.

She was thoroughly enjoying the show, but once she got bored, she finally started to make her own attacking moves. The first was to cut off the left male's sword hand. A scream of pain filled the room.

"You... bitch!" The other male attacked quickly and brutally, causing Kallistrade to slowly back away.

The male without a hand, as he cried, pulled out a knife and came at her as well, tears streaming down his furious red face.

Kallistrade allowed herself to be cornered, both males positioned themselves close to her as she stood with her back to the wall, and just as they smiled at her, thinking they had her, she moved her sword with such swift grace and precision that now they were the ones who had to back up a few steps.

"Gentlemen, this has been quite... amusing, entertaining, if I must say, but I'm bored enough as it is, are we done playing?"

The males looked at each other, then back at her when they heard the clatter of her sword on the ground, stared at her in disbelief, but then lunged towards her at the same time. Kallistrade struck one in the stomach with the force of her foot, the other in the nose.

So fast they couldn't register her movements as one cried out in pain and the other let out a moan without air, she drew her two daggers again and rushed towards them, they recoiled, but then she slid across the ground right between them, ending up at their back.

When she stood up, blood dripping from her daggers, she sighed, wiping them with her sleeves. The two males behind her screamed in extreme pain, covering their bloodied dicks with both hands in hopes of stopping the intense bleeding. Kallistrade had sliced their favourite parts in two so quickly that they hadn't noticed until they felt the searing pain.

Across the room, Cyrus stared at her with a clenched jaw and murderous eyes.

Kallistrade looked at him and simply smiled with her mouth closed as she finished cleaning her knives, once she was done, she pulled out her two black powder pistols and shot the males right in their heads, their screams and cries ceased immediately, not taking her eyes off the ugly pirate on the other side.

She put away her pistols again, and with easy, unbothered steps, stepped over the two corpses that now made pools of blood on the ground to where her sword rested. The blade was slightly covered in blood from the severed hand of one of the mercenaries, so she wiped it with her clothes until the metal was shiny and admired her handiwork.

"You know, since you're so keen to know if my sword is real or not, I thought of the perfect way to show you its powers. How about that, huh, shall we give it a try?"

The door burst open then, and a panting, worried-looking Maddox came rushing into the room.

"I heard gunshots," he said, looking relieved to see an alive Kallistrade, not even bothering to look at the corpses.

"Yes, mines," she nodded to the mercenaries.

Zena and Elijah were there too, she realised when the female pushed Maddox aside to see if her captain was alright. Once the three sailors noticed the dead mercenaries, and the now cornered and shaky-legged Pirate Lord, their jaws clenched and their knuckles turned white as they understood the situation.

"Elijah, could you go and notify the Brethren that we are going to make some... changes?”

“Aye, Captain,” the male nodded, then left the room with a smile of pride.

"Guys, will you wait for me outside?"

"Aye, I'll come when the screaming stops," Zena laughed, and with the ease with which they hadn't entered before, both she and Maddox exited and closed the door behind them.

"Well, it's just you and me again."

"Kallistrade..."

"Uh-" she interrupted his cowardly cries. "It's Captain Devilsbane to you."

She raised her sword high, the light dimmed from the moon and lantern-lit room. The dark power that lived in the blade devoured the light of Cyrus' life from his dull, frightened eyes.

𓆉｡˚ ✧

The shouting stopped just as the door opened and Maddox walked back in.

"Sorry to interrupt, Captain."

Kallistrade turned around, her face covered in blood and the still blood dripping sword didn't startle her first mate at all.

"Don't worry, I was just finishing up, is something wrong?"

"There's someone looking for you," the female knitted her eyebrows together, waiting for further explanation, but none came.

"Someone I know?" The male shook his head, holding out a handkerchief to her as she approached him.

"Then who?"

"He's a mortal, calls himself Prince of Merchants. He says he has business he wants to talk to the High Pirate Lord."

The female laughed, Zena was out as well, and whistled at the sight of Kallistrade covered in blood.

"Then let's go surprise this so called merchant prince, shall we?" Both companions laughed, and still covered in Cyrus' blood, she walked towards said mortal who would be surprised by the Lord he was about to meet.

*booty: ‘treasure’ in pirate slang

#dark tides #kallistrade x azriel #kallistrade acotar #captain devilsbane #acotar #a court of thorns and roses #acotar oc #acomaf #acosf #acowar #acotar fanfic #acotar fanfiction #night court #azriel fanfic #azriel #azriel acotar #azriel fic #azriel shadowsinger #azriel x oc

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divinemare · 9 months

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Kallistrade (OC): 'You'll never find the body' is such a boring threat. A better threat would be; 'You'll never stop finding the body.'

Azriel, bored: Or just say, 'They'll be finding parts of you for at least four months...and you'll still be alive for three of them.'

Kallistrade: Now that's a threat!

Rhys, covering Elain’s ears: *horrified silence*

#acotarocsincorrectquotes #kallistrade x azriel #dark tides #a court of thorns and roses #acomaf #acotar #acosf #acowar #acotar oc #acotar fanfic #acotar fanfiction #azriel fanfic #azriel shadowsinger #azriel fic #azriel #azris fanfiction #azriel x oc #azriel acotar #acotar incorrect quotes

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divinemare · 10 months

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✧*̥₊˚‧☆ﾐ 𝖉𝖆𝖗𝖐 𝖙𝖎𝖉𝖊𝖘!¡ •ଓ.°

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳ azrielxfem!oc

part nine

𓆝 𓆜 ––––———–––––———–┊⁀➷

More pirates she had imagined joined them after her speech. She would forever be infinitely grateful with her people, whoever said pirates didn’t had a code or loyalty, had been wrong. You don’t hit a pirate, because they will bounce off the depths of the oceans and hit you back. And Hybern was just about to learn that.

Just as she had told him, Kallistrade meet the Prince of Merchants and his ships in their way to Prythian. She was…impressed, she had to admit to herself. Especially when, after winnowing to the main ship —the Nesta, she noticed with a smile, looking back at the Elain, and the Feyre that trailed behind it—, she saw the presence of a female that had become a whisper of a living myth; queen Vassa accompanied the human man, alongside a red head High Fae male she recognize for the similarities he shared with his family.

Lucien Vanserra.

What a truly mysterious and strange combination of people.

“Captan Devilsbane, your fleet looks as mighty as the legends sing them to be,” the male bowed slightly his head.

There was something about him that didn’t suit entirely right with the picture she had in her memories about the Vanserra family, maybe it had been too long since she’d seen them, or maybe…maybe Lucien was…somewhat different, but Kallistrade couldn’t exactly place how.

“Hybern has a debt to pay, and we’re ready to not let them forget.”

“So, the rumors are true, you became quite the terrifying pirate,” she heard a voice behind her.

A voice she hadn’t heard in so, so long that for a moment she had forgotten who it belonged to. But just as she turned around, not even 500 years could erase Drakon and Miryam’s faces. Especially the female’s, who had held her tightly while she screamed and cried and grieved when Kallistrade had found out of her brother’s death.

A light in her chest she had almost forgotten it existen lighten up. That side of her she had felt come back to life when she first saw Azriel slipped for a split second in her face.

“You motherfuckers,” she laughed, delighted, a happiness she had missed in her chest beaming as she approached the couple and hugged them both tightly.

“Careful, you don’t look too terrifying now,” Drakon laughed, but Kallistrade only pushed him away playfully.

Definitely, going back to Prythian, going back to Velaris and back to her old family, had revived something dead inside of her, she now felt it within her with the joy of that new re encounter.

“Shut up, or I’ll throw you off the plank and into the sea,” he laughed again, his brown eyes squinting.

“Now that’s more like it.”

She hugged only Miryam this time, flipping off Drakon. The last time Kallistrade had been in those arms, her world was falling apart in front of her and her heart was being shredded to pieces. Now, five centuries later, everything couldn’t be any more different.

“You look so…” When they parted, and the half-breed female took complete look of her, she sighed. “So different,” she said it with a certain pride that made Kallistrade’s heart warm.

“Different good? Or different bad?” She raised a wicked eyebrow, and gave Miryam a lopsided grin.

“Good, very good,” the sweet female voice brought back memories, both good and bad, that this time, Kallistrade did not shot down in the back of her head.

She was done with that, with the whole shoving-down-things. Her past was past and her present was present, no need to be bitter with any of them, not when she was given a second opportunity to have the best of both.

“I don’t know, those red blood lips look like you sucked someone’s blood dry, which I’m not entirely sure you didn’t do,” Drakon said, twisting his head to one side with an apprehensive look, but at Kallistrade’s light punch, he laughed.

“Are all those yours?” Miryam asked, looking back at the exactly 13 ships filled with men.

“That they are,” she gave them a wolfish grin, and Drakon nodded, impressed.

“I don’t know wether to be impressed or scared, they look positively cruel and wicked.”

“Well thank you! I’ll take that as a compliment.”

Miryam smiled widely and lovingly, having been there and seen Kallistrade, 500 years ago, in such a horrible, heartbroken state, she was infinitely proud of the female she now encountered; brave, wicked, full of new life.

“Will you care to join us for strategy?” Miryam asked, and Kallistrade smiled with a nod.

“Let’s see how rusted you are after so many centuries off in that little hidden island of yours, little bird,” the pirate said directly to Drakon, and the male followed her with challenging eyes, Miryam behind them, shaking her head with a joyful smile.

One would think that they weren’t just about to enter war, by the smiles plastered on their faces. But for Kallistrade, smiling was easier than allowing her treacherous brain and heart to think about Azriel, to think about her family, and if they might be dead when she arrived, that she might not make it in time. She couldn’t allow herself to think that, because now, she had to be the Pirate, the Captain Devilsbane, and lead a fleet of pirates into a Mother damned, bloody war.

𓆉｡˚ ✧

They were losing, Hybern was crashing into them with no mercy, no matter how strong their forces were, no matter how strong their men were, Hybern’s seemed to be stronger.

A miracle…they needed a miracle…

And a miracle had just arrived.

Drakon’s Seraphim legion, alongside Miryam’s and Vaasa’s people and…and her father, had arrived. But it had been the dark, big ships that had stolen their attention after her father’s, the dark ships that seemed to absorbe life itself and take power from it. The ships that contained so many sailors of every species Feyre could imagine that they looked like a combination of death in all possible colors.

They couldn’t be mistaken, by anyone who dared to look at them. They were fatal, they were wicked, they were twisted in a way that inspired admiration and dread and exhilaration all at once. Those ships were unique, dreaded in every corner of the Continent, in every corner of the world, so many songs had been made of them, those were ships that had inspired fear and respect everywhere they went. Those were…

Pirate ships. More than a dozen pirate ships. Their skull flags waved with the heavy wind. They were so big, dark, imposing, with sculptures carved at their noses that pointed fingers, wings, horns and even fangs at the ships from Hybern.

At the very front, leading the other ships, was the most terrifying, imposing one, the sea itself seemed to open a path for it, seemed to hit its waves in its favor.

Feyre knew that ship, she had had the same reaction she was having now the first time she saw it. The Bright Nightmare stole her breath. She swallowed hard, and prayed the Mother to never face the terrors that ship had surely produced to so many others.

Then, as if the rush of her heart and the tears that streamed down her face weren’t already enough, a low, yet powerful and dark female voice began to sing. Everyone who had enhanced Fae ears could hear it, and she instantly felt Rhys shiver at the recognition of whatever song started playing. Like a death sentence, a death promise, a chant so old that few knew it, but a chant so dreaded that everyone who did, shivered at its machiavelli sound.

𓆉｡˚ ✧

The words started slipping out of her mouth like an old prayer. The battle ahead of her had stoped partially, many praying eyes now looking their way, the ships already in bay had stoped their shooting, hers and those accompanying, had stolen their attention away.

“The King and his men stole the queen from her bed”

Kallistrade sang low, but was sure that every Fae around her could hear her, the men from her ships waited eagerly as well. The sound of cracking wood accompanied her every word, giving a more sinister touch to the song that had been sang for centuries amongst pirates before battle.

“And bound her in her bones”

Every word, every note, felt tingling in her mouth. The feeling spread out to her entire body, pounding strongly and eagerly in her heart.

“The seas be ours and by the powers”

Her hands began to tingle with the anticipation, she could already feel the blood in them, taste it in her mouth, even. She took a hand towards her belt, towards her sword, just as the last words spilled from her tongue in a death-coated note.

“Where we will, we’ll roam”

Kallistrade took out Seesnyer, and pointed its sharp tip towards Hybern’s ships.

Then a wicked symphony erupted, every pirate around her, from every ship surrounding her, from the smallest to the biggest, Fae and Human, Captains and commanders and first mates and all crew members alike sang together their ancient battle song.

“Yo, ho, haul together

Hoist the colors high”

Canons began to be pointed, swords and weapons to be drawn, their symphony accompanying that of the death promising words being sang by so many they became a loud, terrifying sound.

“Heave-ho, thieves and beggars”

They heard orders being shout out at the other end, enemy ships frantically trying to shift their weaponry towards them.

“Never shall we die”

Then real hell broke loose, and Kallistrade let herself be carried by it.

𓆉｡˚ ✧

She had come, she had really come. Azriel stared at the sea in front with his heart leaping out of his chest. The exhaustion that had consumed his body seconds ago could not compare with the rush of exhilaration when he heard the infamous pirate song.

He couldn’t fly, he couldn’t go up into the sky to see in a better view, but he knew it was her voice the one who started the song, he knew it her ship leading the armada of pirates, he knew it was her, that it was Kallistrade who had come to their aid.

Azriel had avoided thinking of her in those days they had been apart, he had avoided her name, the picture of her face in his head, the thought of her never coming back, and the thought of her coming back as well. It all had been useless, tho, he hadn’t been able to do any of those things. He hadn’t been able to avoid his stupid heart beaming with hope every time he went to sleep, and every time he woke up, waiting to see her sail back to him.

And there she was, just as he had thought that today was his final battle, his final breath of air, his final day on this earth with only her filling his thoughts, when the song he had heard of, the song every sailor dreaded ever hearing, began to sound.

It was wicked, it was dark, it was a lot of things, evil and twisted, but beaming like a light of hope for those in desperate need of it. For him, especially, not because he felt his body protesting with each thrust of his sword, his wings snarling with pain and his energy giving in the exhaustion, but because once he heard her, once the ships were visible enough for him to see the female standing atop the biggest of them all, her twisted, wicked sword pointed at Hybern’s armada, he felt a rush of energy, the necessary to fight off the enemies that continued to approach him in hopes of finally killing him, instead killing them all.

Kallistrade had come, she had truly come back, and as his body regained energy, taking it from a source he couldn’t yet place, a knowing voice in his head told him in whispers what his heart had been too stubborn to listen and accept.

𓆉｡˚ ✧

From the moment the first canon shot, up until now, Kallistrade hadn’t stop slicing through enemies and wrecking ships.

First, she had fought alongside Zena in the nearest ship they had winnowed to, slashing through soldiers while giving time to Rafe and Tiam, a member of her Dark Dream crew, to blow up the damned thing.

Then she had winnowed to the next ship, and the next, and the next, either from the enemie’s side or her own to aid whoever needed it. Pirates were being absolutely ruthless, leaving no time for pleadings of mercy, she herself was giving no time as she cut sailor to sailor, the cold dread of their faces at the realization of who had come to aid Prythian, of the Bright Nightmares firing canon after canon with deadly precision, and who was its Captain, being the last thing she saw of them before killing then off.

Kallistrade didn’t bother entertaining with soldiers, she let Seesnyer and Dark Wilder cut through them like paper without great effort. She was waiting for the big fish to come out and play. Waiting for the face of the male that had tormented her nightmares for 500 years. Then she’ll start having fun.

She danced through each fight, her movements soft as silk but brutal as both weapons in her hands, the power they gave her made the effort of her muscles that ached feel like an inconvenience, not an impediment.

She heard screams at the other side, ships, part of her armada, where sinking in flames as their sailors jumped into the ocean in an attempt to avoid death. She cursed, locating the Hybern ship that had gone out of formation to fire brutal shots at her ranks. Winnowing too much could waste her energy more than needed, so she put her fingers in her lips and whistled a simple tune, then dropped the body that had been impaled with Seesnyer, and, nobody left in the ship to fight off, she momentarily put her sword and dagger back in her belt to take impulse, then go running to the edge of the ship and jumped into the air.

Gravity tucked at her for a couple of seconds, until strong hands grasped her arms and hurled her up and up and up. When she tilted her head, Kaena winked at her Captain, her great Illyrian wings carrying them towards the ship that was making theirs sink.

Once they arrived, Kaena dropped her in the main deck carefully, Kallistrade fell on her feet with a powerful thud, and Kaena used her sword to destroy the masts.

They both fought side by side, until only few remained, and those who did, jumped into the ocean with hopes of surviving the merciless females.

Kallistrade took an axe from one of the fallen soldiers, then turn the rudder as hard as she could, and stuck it with the axe. The ship quickly began to turn sideways, and just as Kaena hurled her up into the air, it hit the side of another burning ship and sank into the ocean.

They returned to one of their ships, the one that was being worst attacked to help.

“Captain!” She heard a scream just as she cut with deadly precision the neck of a Hybern sailor in his knees.

Kallistrade turned to look at Maddox, who had just winnowed in, and was extremely glad to see that, up until now, he was still alive.

“Is there any problem?” Apart from the obvious, raging war behind them.

“You might wanna…” Maddox didn’t finish his sentence, only turned to look at the battlefield in land.

Kallistrade’s heart gave a full turn. She had been fighting off the feeling of uncertainty in her stomach since the moment she arrived, focusing on destroying as much enemies as she could, and not in the fact that she was losing her mind at not knowing where Rhys and Feyre, Cassian, Mor, Nesta, Amren, Elain…where Azriel was. Instead turning that rage, turning that preoccupation, in power capable of destroying ships.

She approached the front of the ship with her heart in her mouth, and, having cleared the ship of enemies, allowed herself a moment to scan the battlefield.

The first thing her eyes immediately found, as if it was a reflex to find him in a crowd, as if it was an instinct, was Azriel.

Being outnumbered, by five, his siphons almost drained, his wings tucked in…why were they tucked in? Why wasn’t he flying, why did she felt her hands shaking, as if his were shaking too?

“I can-”

Before Maddox could finish his offer of winnowing her so she didn’t waste any power, she disappeared with a jaw clenched, and Seesnyer burning in her tighten hand.

“Mother have mercy on them,” Maddox laughed, knowing very well that Kallistrade; wouldn’t.

She landed at the back of one of the five males, the one that was about to plunge his sword into Azriel’s stomach while the Shadowsinger fought two other off, and cut his head off with a clean swing of Seesnyer.

The five males around stoped to turn and look at her; the four of Hybern furrowing their brows with a superiority that suggested they not only didn’t know who she was, but that they were stupid enough to think she would be an easy prey. Azriel, instead, his eyes flashed with a sea of emotions that Kallistrade had no time to point them all, but he let out a ragged breath, and blinked three times, as if testing out the vision in front of him, as if confirming she was, in fact, real.

She was. Very fucking real, and those bastards were just about to be proven that.

She gave them a cruel, evil smile that could make a grown male shit his pants, and not a second later she started cutting into them as if they were nothing.

Azriel was paralyzed by the sight of her for a moment, just a tiny moment, until he saw a male approaching her other side, too close, too ready for the kill, and with gritted teeth, lunched into him like a shadow of death.

They fought them all off, and in seconds, their mocking, confident smiles had turned into pain grimaces that would be forever carved in their dying faces.

“You came,” Azriel breathed, once they gave each other a moment to breath and look into their eyes.

“I promised you I would.”

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divinemare · 10 months

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✧*̥₊˚‧☆ﾐ 𝖉𝖆𝖗𝖐 𝖙𝖎𝖉𝖊𝖘!¡ •ଓ.°

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳ azrielxfem!oc

part eight

𓆝 𓆜 ––––———–––––———–┊⁀➷

When Kallistrade entered the room, it immediately fell into absolute silence. All souls turned their heads towards the blood-covered captain, their faces all showed different emotions, whether out of fear or dread, it was all the same to her.

Inside the room, looking like a sheep locked in a lion's den, was a man so human-looking that it all was like what she imagined to be a scene from a horror book. The prey, and the sea of predators ready to be the first to sink their teeth into him.

However, the man didn't seem to be bothered by the stares around him. He was not a pirate looking man, there were many human pirates present on the Island, she herself had humans in her crew; but he wore fine clothes, even a pair of gloves covered his well-placed hands. He was one of those men who either possessed a great fortune, or pretended to possess one, Kallistrade still wasn't sure which.

She had to give one thing in his favour tho, and that was the fact that he held himself perfectly well, considering he was in a room with some of the most despicable beings, pirates of every Fae type, ugly, beautiful, lethal, deadly creatures, and a female covered head to toe in blood, yet he showed no sign of fear or discomfort. That, she applauded.

"Well, is there any good reason why my…private meeting, was interrupted? Or are we just going to stand here staring at each other until one of us gets too old? May I warn you, it will certainly not be me."

The man rose from his chair, his face a mask covering his thoughts and emotions.

"Are you Captain Devilsbane's First Officer?" The man asked, and the whole room burst out laughing.

Only the important people were present, the ones who knew that she was Devilsbane, for not everyone on the Island knew, and Kallistrade loved to see the surprise and horror on the faces of others when they realized that the famous Captain Devilsbane was, in fact, a female.

"I believe the person you seek is me, ‘Prince of Merchants’, I am Captain Devilsbane," the twisted smile she gave him would have made any man collapse on his feet, this one almost did, almost, but for the cane that helped him stay upright, he took his eyes from hers for a second, and Kallistrade saw a shiver run through his façade of bravery.

"Then forgive me, Captain Devilsbane, I wasn't expecting..." He was speechless, as the man was obviously unsure how to react to the surprise of encountering a female.

"What, a female?" Kallistrade merely smiled sideways, greatly enjoying the man's discomfort. "Don't worry, I'm quite used to surprised reactions."

Undeterred, and appearing rather bored, she pushed past the man and made her way to the chair Maddox had set up for her. She dropped into it, let out a sigh and turned to face the human again.

"I would, however, like to know who I'm talking to, sir..."

"I'm sorry, Captain, but I'd prefer to keep my identity a secret, I'm sure you'll understand why."

"Clever man, I must admit," she chuckled under her breath, and waved her hand for the man to sit back down, he complied at once. "Tell me, then, why on the seven seas would a sick old human risk entering the pirate compound, to speak to the High Pirate Lady, for I must let you know that if there is one thing I hate, is people wasting my time, and I was rather enjoying myself before your interruption came,” he gave a quick look to her blood-drenched clothes, and Kallistrade saw him gulp hard and take a shaky breath before speaking again.

"I assure you, High Pirate, that what I come to say is of the utmost importance, I would not have travelled so far and wide and risked so much if I did not have my good reasons."

Kallistrade listened carefully to what the man had to say, and, as she had been expecting from the very beginning, it all had to do with the war, the one her family was now fighting against Hybern. Of course, Kallistrade had known that something was quite familiar about the man.

"So you've come here to... what, exactly? Ask for our help in this war?" She, aware of where this conversation was going, pretended not to know what the human was talking about, and no one else made a sound or movement to demonstrate the contrary.

"Yes, I am here to ask, and if I must, beg for your help, I know of no fleet more powerful than yours, many fear to even speak your name aloud, you have humans in your crew, I saw them upon my arrival, so maybe, just maybe, you can care for our kind. What the King of Hybern wants is to enslave us all again, so I ask you, in the name of the humans, to stop that from happening."

Kallistrade waited a moment, pretending to be analyzing the man's words in detail.

"And why do you care?"

"I beg your pardon, Captain?"

"Why do you care? Don't try to believe me so foolish, I know there's more to you than your solidarity with your own kind. You must forgive my sincerity, but you don’t look the type of brave warrior-driven man that would fight till death for the freedom of his people. Then why do you care so much, that you would come here at the risk of your life?”

She waited patiently for the now sweaty man to reveal what he held, leaning a little forward in her chair, her elbows resting on her knees. After all, she was too curious if he would tell the truth she already knew.

"Do you have family, Captain?" The man asked, she leaned back again on the chair and took a deep breath.

"Right now you’re in their presence," true, but also not so much.

"I have one too, and I have failed them countless times, too many to count, my daughters they... they are in Prythian now, doing more for our lands than I had ever done for them."

Kallistrade straightened her back, lifting her chin to look the man up and down, her unperturbed gaze and mischievous grin were nowhere to be found now; the very face of a High Pirate Lady instead.

"Yes, you have," the man furrowed his eyebrows in confusion at her words. "You have failed them, I mean," Kallistrade rose from her seat, and the man's face paled as she walked towards him, he rose too, and the room was as silent as it had ever been. "You're a lot more idiotic than I thought if you think I'd let anyone into my city and live if I didn't know who they were. I have lived more years than you can count, and as you have well said, I am the High Pirate Lady, the oceans are mine, and as such, I know every soul that sails their tides. So, Mr. Archeron, if I were you, I would be very grateful that your daughters are better people than you could ever imagine to be, and that I have grown to like them, especially as one of them is my brother's mate. Because if not..." The smile she gave him made it very clear what that scenario would have been like, and from the look in the human’s eyes, he felt terrified just thinking about it. "I wasn't entirely honest with you before when I said that what I hated most was being left to waste my time, because what I hate most, are ambitious but useless men like you, who lament their lives and only look to save their necks when convenient. At least I'm glad that your cowardice has finally brought some good to your family. So rest assured, Mr. Archeron, because your daughters are part of my family now, and, unlike you, I take care of my family. We’ll sail before sundown, and we’ll meet you in our way with whatever fleet you’ve gathered. Now get out of my sight before I start to forget why I have to keep you alive.”

Not a second had passed since she dismissed him when two pirates moved to the man's side to lead him out of the room with none too much kindness.

Kallistrade stared at the door until everyone had cleared the room, everyone but Maddox, Zena and Elijah, she didn’t look at them when she spoke, still her gaze was fixed on the door where everyone had walked out.

“Is everything ready?”

“Yes, they’re all waiting for you, Captain,” Zena responded with a vehement voice.

Kallistrade took a big breath, the beating of her heart thundering in her ears as the sword and dagger at her sides burn with the anticipation of a reunion on a battlefield that awaited them.

“Then let’s get going, there’s a party to attend to.”

𓆉｡˚ ✧

A thousand pirates gathered around, Kallistrade stood in the center of the town square, staring down at every species of pirate that waited to hear what their High Pirate Lady had to say. Beside her, the other four Pirate Lords stood, Cyrus’ place had been quickly replaced by Kallistrade’s own choosing, another female, a half water nymph with dark blue hair who bared scars as if they were trophies, Captain of the Mermaid, and a trusted fried. Kallistrade had been waiting centuries to put Muriel in Cyrus’ place, and when the male gave her the perfect opportunity, she had wasted no time in making her Pirate Lady.

“All of you have been presented with a choice,” she began her speech with an easy voice. “The choice to stay, be safe, and protect our city. Or; the choice to come into battle, take vengeance for what Hybern did to us, and make crystal clear to everyone thinking of defying us again that we are pirates, and pirates do no wield their freedom and power.”

At her words, the crowd erupted in screams of approval, she smiled, wickedly and cruelly.

“Then grab your swords, my friends, and make them regret the day they thought they could kill a pirate, because us, pirates, never shall we die.”

Sailor after sailor began chanting their ancient motto in the ancient Fae langue in which they had been written. Making Kallistrade's skin crawl and her heart hammer with emotion to the rhythm of the ancient song that all their ancestors sang marching to legendary battles.

‘Never shall we die’

#dark tides #a court of thorns and roses #acotar #acomaf #acosf #acowar #acotar oc #acotar fanfic #acotar fanfiction #kallistrade acotar #kallistrade oc #kallistrade x azriel #azriel #azriel fic #azriel acotar #azriel fanfic #azriel x oc #azriel x you #azriel shadowsinger

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divinemare · 1 year

Text

✧*̥₊˚‧☆ﾐ 𝖉𝖆𝖗𝖐 𝖙𝖎𝖉𝖊𝖘!¡ •ଓ.°

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳ azrielxfem!oc

part six

part one, part two, part three, part four, part five

𓆝 𓆜 ––––———–––––———–┊⁀➷

Kallistrade spit the blood cooling news on everyone present, her face contorted into many different grimaces of pure anger, while everyone else's paled in shock.

"What? What happened?" Feyre was the first to snap out of her shock.

"I got a letter from the commander of my Dark Dream. She and the rest of my crew made it out in time, many escaped, but others..."

"Lis..." Rhys had the biggest troubled expression she had seen him in centuries.

"They didn't attack to kill us, they attacked to warn us, luckily, no one threatens the pirate citadel and gets out alive. They killed most of Hybern soldiers, few escaped, but there were still significant casualties on our side."

"What does that mean?" Nesta Archeron asked, one eyebrow raised as always.

"That I no longer have the ships I promised you, if it's as bad as I think it is."

The room fell dead silent, no one daring to lift a finger or breathe too loudly. They were a day away from meeting with the other High Lords, and they had just potentially lost a good portion of allies.

"What do you need?" Rhysand asked.

Kallistrade looked at him. Her friend looked full with anguish, yet his beautiful eyes showed honesty at his question.

"I have to go check the severity of the damage, all the Pirate Lords are heading to the Island now. Maybe...maybe I can do something to rescue your cause, but..."

"But you have to go to your people," Rhys finished for her, Kallistrade just nodded. "I understand. We understand," Feyre grabbed her mate's hand and nodded with the same honesty in Rhysand's eyes at her in confirmation at her mate's words. "If you have to go, do it, what you did for us in Adriata, all that you have already done for us...we got you involved in this, Lis, go and help your people."

Kallistrade couldn't put into words the gratitude she felt towards Rhys for all his understanding. So she simply let him in, opened her mental shields and let him see for himself, both he and Feyre, too. Both High Lord and Lady nodded towards her, and made way to clear her path to the door.

Before she left, she glanced back, looking for a single pair of eyes. Azriel was standing on the stairs, his scarred hands gripping the banister so tightly that Kallistrade could notice the way his knuckles turned white. There were so many things she wanted to tell him, but so little time to do so. The male's hazel eyes, like his heart felt, looked so confused that Kallistrade couldn't stand the tug of pain in her chest at the sight of them, and tore her gaze from him to return it to Feyre and Rhys.

"We may need some supplies."

"Consider it done, take what you need," Rhys assured her. Kallistrade nodded in thanks.

She turned to Mor and Cassian, the Illyrian holding the female by the shoulders as she held back tears. Kallistrade nodded to them both, and took one last look at the male on the stairs.

Please come see me if you still care.

And with that message, which she hoped she had conveyed well to the male, Kallistrade set off back to her frantic ship.

𓆉｡˚ ✧

She was in her chambers, finishing the letter she had been writing to Zena, the Commander of her Shadowed Star and her Third, telling her to wait two days, which was how long it would take them to reach Skull Island with the wind on their side and considering that the Bright Nightmare was the fastest ship in her fleet.

Once it was ready, she went out and immediately took notice that Sylvie was already waiting for her, just as she had asked Maddox.

"My captain," the white-haired female lowered her head.

"I need you to take this to the Shadowed Star and deliver it to Zena as fast as you can," Kallistrade handed her the rolled up parchment.

The female didn't waste a second, she simply dipped her head lower in respect and instantly transformed into a peregrine falcon, the small but incredibly fast bird took flight across the sky. It would take her a day and a half or maybe less to reach the Shadowed Star.

Sylvie was one of only two shapeshifters she had encountered and made part of her crew in her three hundred years as a pirate. She was also the faster of the two. Shapeshifters were so rare this days that it was a miracle she'd even run into one, let alone two.

Once Sylvie was out of sight, she returned to her chambers, already very tired and they hadn't even sailed to Skull Island yet.

Kallistrade kicked the door shut behind her, and as soon as the door clicked, she felt it then.

The new, dark presence in her chambers.

"You came," she said, addressing no one in particular, her voice a little more breathless than she had intended.

Azriel stepped out of the shadows, his face expressionless.

"How did you get in here? No one told me you'd arrived."

"Yes, well, I'm very good at my job," she smiled, he did not.

Kallistrade saw it then, the internal conflict in his eyes. He had fought against the idea of coming, of seeing her. Kallistrade tried not to think too much about it, or what it meant that he had decided to come.

"Whatever information you have better be good, or you'll be wasting my time here," he folded his arms, looking eager to jump into the sea if it meant getting away as fast as possible.

Kallistrade drew her eyebrows together in confusion and took off her hat as she approached him. Just two steps, close enough that she could throw her hat at her desk.

"What information?"

"You have no information?" He asked in exasperation, or perhaps hopeful that maybe she had asked him to come for other reasons, or both.

"No, I..." She took a deep breath, closing her eyes for a second before looking back up at him. "I'm leaving in an hour. I bet you don't care or, maybe you'd find it a reason to celebrate but... I just wanted to tell you that I'm leaving."

He laughed without any amusement, crossing his arms over his chest. Kallistrade's heart pounded in her own.

"It's a little late for that, don't you think?"

"Is it?" She took a step closer. Her voice inevitably hopeful. "I'm coming back, Azriel, I know you might not believe me, but-"

"Save it," he cut her off, eyes hard with shadows of swirling emotions.

Save it for when you come back, if you come back at all.

Kallistrade swallowed, licked her lips and nodded her head slightly; the silence that hung over them was like a thousand knives pinching her skin. The distance between them wasn't that much, considering her chambers weren't that big, but it still felt so damn far away, him so damn far out of reach.... Definitely a cruel joke from the Mother.

"Az-"

She lifted her head to look at him again, but he was gone, before she could say anything else, before she could say goodbye, he was gone.

𓆉｡˚ ✧

It took them indeed two days to reach Skull Island, and as she expected, Sylvie arrived in a matter of a day to the Shadowed Star, her other two ships were already awaiting her arrival.

The Island was in chaos, she could hear it from miles away.

Once the three ships came ashore, many sailors stopped their hurried duties to watch them. Kallistrade saw the other 4 ships already in the main bay. The other 4 ships of her fellow Pirate Lords. She sighed and prepared for the madness to begin.

When they disembarked, her two Commanders were already waiting for her. Elijah, a tall male, build like a bear, with dark skin, brown eyes, pointed ears and a bald head, her Second and Commander of the Dark Dream, and Zena, a blonde female, with green eyes and a long three lines scars on the right side of her face, her Third, and the Commander of the Shadowed Star.

She embraced the younger of the two first, the beautifully scarred female greeted her with open arms and a deep sigh.

"When I found out I was about to run to see if you were okay, but then Sylvie arrived just in time."

When they parted from their embrace, Kallistrade looked at said female and smiled in thanks, her sailor nodded.

She then turned to the older male, they grabbed each other's arms to the shoulders and shook lightly.

"I'm glad you were able to get out in time," she said very genuinely. Elijah, so far, had been the only father figure she had ever known in her life.

"Shall we take care of this whole mess, Captain?" The older male smiled at her, Kallistrade had long ago learned that she was the only person alive who had the privilege of receiving his sweet and genuinely affectionate smiles.

She nodded and took a deep breath before setting off with Maddox at her side and her two Second and Third flanking her along with a few crew members from her three ships. The rest stayed behind, looking for where to start to help in the mess.

The city had suffered heavy damage. Smoke was still rising from where the shots had been fired. She saw a couple of destroyed buildings on her way to the Pirate Lords Quarters. Rage rose in her throat.

Once she and her company reached the central building of the island, the guards stepped aside to let her pass without so much as a bow of their heads.

She reached the doors to the Meeting Room and pushed them open, creaking and banging on the walls, announcing her arrival to those already inside.

"My friends. I believe there is much for us to discuss, shall we begin?"

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divinemare · 1 year

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Kallistrade (OC): How much can I annoy you without getting a knife to my throat?

Azriel: I swear you're my own personal hell on Earth.

Rhys: Look at them being in love.

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divinemare · 1 year

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✧*̥₊˚‧☆ﾐ 𝖉𝖆𝖗𝖐 𝖙𝖎𝖉𝖊𝖘!¡ •ଓ.°

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳ azrielxfem!oc

part four

part one, part two, part three

𓆝 𓆜 ––––———–––––———–┊⁀➷

Kallistrade walked into the room with Maddox and Jazemin —a High Fae female, her personal healer— flanking her behind. The whole Inner Circle, plus the Archeron Sisters, were already waiting for them.

"Sorry for the delay, we were gathering something rather interesting, which I think will interest you as well," sighed the captain, dropping into the chair that awaited for her.

"Is that so?" questioned Rhys, though he tried to raise an eyebrow so as not to look so preoccupied, his eyes revealed a different feeling.

Kallistrade waved to Maddox, who pulled out the papers they had been working on and threw them on top of the table, where they splattered everywhere, and Rhysand and Feyre took them in hand.

"Hybern's navy numbers."

Everyone else started showing curiosity at the papers, craning their necks to catch a glimpse of what they read. But when they noticed their High Lord’s eyes going wide and his face pale, they stoped trying to look and sat straight, nervous faces all around.

"This is..."

"Too much," Feyre finished for him.

"Damn right it is," Kallistrade sighed again, crossing her arms and raising an eyebrow.

Rhys passed the papers to Cassian and Feyre to Azriel, both males had very similar reactions to those of the High Lord and Lady.

“And are we supposed to believe this information is true?” Azriel inquired, passing it along to Amren this time.

“It is,” was Kallistrade’s only disinterested response.

“Again, are we supposed to believe you?”

“Why would I lie about something like this, Azriel?”

"How did you even got this information?" A wicked little grin tugged at her mouth, leaving Azriel gritting his teeth.

“I like to be informed of every possible threat against my people. May I remind you, Shadowsinger, that I’m Captain Devilsbane, High Pirate Lady. And my duty as Pirate Lady is to assure we have all the information on what might present alliances or threats to us. My crew comes from all over the seven seas, I have eyes in every bay, so believe me when I say I know that what’s on those paper, is reliable information.”

“So you have people from Hybern,” he questioned, warily.

“I have people who were from Hybern,” she corrected, Azriel rolled his eyes.

“And how are you so sure those people won’t betray you?” She felt Maddox tense beside her, and she moved her leg a little to touch his and warn him not to let his feelings get in the way.

“I trust them.”

“Like we are supposed to trust you?”

“Az, enough,” Rhys interrupted, still pale at the sheer numbers of armies and weaponry he'd seen.

When Rhysand’s beautiful but haunted eyes met hers, she saw the question in them, and so she took a deep breath and waited for the question to hit.

“You know I have to ask…”

“It is reliable information, Rhys, I wouldn’t deliver something this important and let it be false if I wasn’t sure of it, may I remind you that it’s my people who will be fighting Hybern’s naval fleet. This threw me off as much as it did you,” Rhys nodded, still looking lost in thought.

“If it is so important for you to know,” Maddox began speaking in a low, lethally calm voice, staring unashamedly at Azriel with venom in his eyes. The Shadowsinger had that same dangerous look, and Kallistrade knew all too well that what was between them was a dominance fight, and she had to restrain herself from rolling her eyes. Stupid male ego. “My captain’s information is legitimate, I can swear it on my own life.”

“And why would you do that?” Azriel questioned.

Kallistrade was about to interrupt, to tell Maddox it wasn’t necessary, that he did not owed them an explanation, she was about to turn to Jazemin and see if the female needed any reassuring looks, when Maddox spoke with a deathly rage. She knew very well it wasn’t only because of the fight for dominance with Azriel.

“Because I provide it myself,” Kallistrade turned her head to look at the male beside her. His eyes were like the dark depths of a violent ocean. Hers soften just for a split second.

“So did I,” Jazemin's trembling voice made her look at the dark-skinned female with those same eyes, and take her hand for just a few seconds to squeeze it.

“You’re both from Hybern.”

“Were. We Were from Hybern,” Maddox corrected, his voice rough.

Kallistrade seized control of the situation before it could go any farther, before Azriel could ask any more stupid questions and cause that raging fire inside Maddox to finally erupt. She wouldn't blame him if it came to that, but that didn’t mean she was keen to let it happen just like that.

“Enough questions. They have nothing to answer you to, I came here as an ally, Azriel, we all did, so if you cannot put our past behind us at least just for some damn meetings, then I can’t promise our alliance will succeed.”

When she saw the surprise and anger in his eyes when he turned to look at her, she swallowed and hoped he couldn’t listen her uneven heart beat. The last thing she truly wanted was him to look at her with even more hatred, but she couldn’t also let anything hurt her people, much less those two who were her closest, and Maddox and Jazemin’s past was something that hurt them more deeply than any weapon could ever.

They didn't look away from each other, not even when Rhys and Feyre wanted to intervene. They only did so when Azriel's eyes fell into a numbness she knew all too well, the same blank stare she used when she needed to hide her feelings, when she needed to show no feeling at all. Kallistrade didn't know if that indifference hurt more than the look of hatred.

“As much as I hate to admit it, if this information is true, we do need your ships in this. So for my family’s sake, I can pretend you’re not a lying bitch for a few hours.”

At the insult, Maddox was ready to jump on his feet and attack the Shadowsinger, even Jazemin bared her teeth at him, but she stopped them both with the smile she gave the male and a little wave of her hand.

She was a lying bitch, after all.

The meeting went on without any other interruptions or hostile remark from either Azriel nor her or her companions, everyone, for once, behaved accordingly.

They discussed strategy, considering how many ships she had and how many people she could command. She would give all her people a choice, of course; wether to fight or not, but being the High Pirate Lady had its many advantages, and she would use them all in her favor if she needed to.

When it was finally over, they all got to their feet and Feyre and Rhys offered to escort them out, while Mor promised they would see each other tonight at Rita’s, Cassian invited himself, of course, but Kallistrade merely answered with a laugh and a promise to beat him —once again—, at drinking games.

“Thank you, Lis, really. For the information and the support,” Rhys said, his voice soft but tired.

“Thank me when this is over,” she sighed, but smiled before remembering what she hadn’t yet informed him of. “I’ve sent scouts to look out for Drakon and Miryam, but I don’t think I can promise you any success, they’re well hidden for a reason.”

“Is ok, Azriel is looking for them too,” she nodded, then turned to Feyre to give her one last good-bye smile.

Maddox and Jazemin exited the House first, and just as she was about to cross the threshold, she stopped suddenly and turned only her head, a wicked smile playing on her lips.

“Oh, and, if you ever find yourselfs wanting to corroborate my sources of information a little more, just ask Tarquin the next time you see him,” she winked at them after thinking of the exact number of the Summer Court’s armada, and the one ship she had personally faced and destroyed that was kept a secret from other courts, no one found any sort of pride, but rather shame, in being beaten by a pirate, and once she saw Rhysand stifle a chuckle as he read her thoughts, she existed the House of Wind to winnow away with her companions.

𓆉｡˚ ✧

The knocking on her quarter’s door was so loud that it woke her up in seconds. Visibly pissed off, she strided to the door and opened it with every intention of seriously hurting whoever was on the other side of the wooden door, before seeing Maddox's stern expression on the other side.

"Whatever got into your head and made you think waking me up like this was a good idea, it better be a damn good reason or I'm going to break your hand with this very door."

"Hybern is attacking the Summer Court," and Mother, had he had a damn good reason.

Kallistrade put her hands to her face and sighed loudly, then rubbed her eyes as she walked to her wardrobe and shook off the sleep.

Couldn't the damned king have picked another time to strike? Maybe not so Mother damn late?

Together with Maddox, and making sure to wake Jazemin to keep her in charge while she left for the House of Wind, they set off and winnowed where the entire Inner Circle was already assembled.

"What took you so long?" Rhys asked once she stepped through the open doors of the house.

"Picking out a nice outfit to go into battle. What do we know?"

"Nothing, just that Hybern is about to possibly wipe Adriata off the map if we don't hurry."

"How many Summer ships?" Rhysand sighed, not the best of answers.

"Twenty."

"And how many from Hybern?"

"If your information is true, I don't think they'd have had to skimp on how many to send. We don't know exactly, but I'd wager enough to plunge the city into absolute terror."

Kallistrade nodded, and Mother was she in no doubt about that. For a moment she let the others argue, thinking, analysing for herself, until she turned to Maddox, and with the impassive face of a captain, gave her own orders as Rhysand, Cassian and Azriel disappeared to begin leading the Night Court into action.

"Bring Jazemin and one more healer, as well as Rafe and Naja. The rest of you stay here, stand guard, for as many hours as it takes, until I can send word. Protect Velaris’ Bay," of course, Maddox clenched his jaw and went to have his say, but Kallistrade, the Captain Kallistrade taking over, raised an eyebrow and her head and stopped the words before they could be said. "The rest of you, Maddox, including you, you are left in charge of the Bright Nightmare."

Her First Mate did not look at all pleased, but he had no choice but to lower his head, nod, and leave the house to carry out his orders.

Kallistrade turned and sighed at the sight of the grim faces that still remained. Mor mouthed a 'thank you', and Feyre nodded in acknowledgement. Kallistrade just nodded back.

Let the bloodshed games begin.

𓆉｡˚ ✧

Kallistrade had witnessed many wars in her centuries of life. It had been one that had violently taken her family from her. And being a pirate, having travelled every corner of the Continent and then some, the battles she witnessed, and participated in herself, would forever be tattooed on her memories.

So when they landed on the hill that overlooked Adriata's battle, she made sure to tattoo every detail of the battlefield in her mind, along with the rest.

"For the Mother..." She heard Jazemin gasp behind her, Jazemin was too young, of course she hadn’t seen war yet.

"Get to work, everyone, report back whenever you can, and," she turned to her people. “Be safe,” they all nodded in agreement. Jazemin and Oryn —one of the other two healers on her crew in the Bright Nightmare— left on their side for the healers' tent, while Kallistrade, in the company of Rafe —a brutally sturdy, short Lesser Fae with fangs so long they protruded from his lips, and skin as grey as stone— and Naja —a female with skin made of scales that changed colour depending on the angle or lighting in which you saw her, taller than normal and slender, with black claws on her hands and feet—, towards where she had seen Mor and Feyre go once they got there.

“You were right, about Hybern’s armada, you were right,” Feyre said to her, horrified while looking ahead to the battle.

She wished she hadn’t been.

To see in person the might of the Hybern fleet fighting against the determined but outmatched Summer Court fleet was a positively terrible sight. The smell of death wafted in, and the cries of battle mingled with those of pain and grief to make a ghastly symphony.

"The odds?" She asked with a sigh, not daring to look towards her companions.

"Not in our favour," Rafe replied, his voice as deep as that of a monster's not what made Kallistrade hold her breath and swallow the bile in her throat, but the terrible realisation that no other court was there yet, and worse, that no other court would come at all.

"We must go to the palace," Mor told the other two females, and they both nodded.

Behind her back, her two companions visibly tensed, but Kallistrade gave no room for protest as she extended her hand towards Naja and gave a silent command. The female sighed, and pulled the siren claws from her bag. Feyre looked at her questioningly, as Mor stifled a gasp at the sight of the sharp silver weapons in her hands.

"Those are..."

"Siren claws," she replied with a mischievous grin.

"You have to tell me," she laughed incredulously, unsheathing her seraphine blades.

"When we get out of this alive, of course," she grinned.

Feyre, though she looked curious, seemed too busy still preparing for what was to come, and what was already happening below them, the concern for her mate evident, to ask what were those sharp things shimmering with danger.

Once the claws glowed in place and were held in, almost as if forming part of herself, she turned to her companions and planted her most serious and commanding expression.

"You two work on figuring out and looking for every single weakness on those damn ships. Is there a screw loose? I want you to break it and make it crumble in any way you can. If we can find a weakness not just in individual ships but in the navy as a whole, it will be an advantage we can't afford to waste. So open your eyes and kill whoever you have to kill to get there."

Naja and Rafe looked at each other. Their captain would go into the lion's den alone, of course they didn't agree to it, but they weren't going to protest either, their tongues were precious enough to them to convince them not to do so. So they simply slapped their chests with one hand and crossed an arm over their hearts, then bowed their heads in obedience.

Kallistrade took her leave with a "be careful," and followed Mor and Feyre as she drew from her sheaths the dagger and sword she had been holding. The dagger weighed heavy in her hand with the generations of captains who had held it. It had been Moira's last gift upon her death.

Dark Wilder was an eye-catching weapon, a weapon that many, many pirates had long yearned and killed to have, but which her former captain had taken into custody when she killed with her own hands the former High Pirate Lord who had preceded her. It was a weapon as visually appealing as it was deadly. Legends told that the symbols on its hilt told the story of Seesnyer and its whereabouts. The last relic in the world of pirate origins. It was an enchanted weapon, a powerful and a frightening weapon. Unlike Mor's seraphine blades, Dark Wilder did justice to its name, it was so dark it seemed to absorb the light around it, having been Seesnyer's sister, the power of the old gods still reverberated in it.

As it did in the sword she held in her right hand. Seesnyer was a legend, almost a myth over the millennia, and it was also the one who had made her the undisputed High Pirate Lady when she raised it to slit the throat with its blade of the one who had previously dared to take the position Moira had occupied.

Seesnyer had been forged by an ancient and very powerful God, the one who had proclaimed himself king of the oceans. The seafarers all worshipped him, but one day, when one of his brothers grew tired of seeing him with so much territory and power, he sent a terrible monster to destroy the seas and their inhabitants. So the god of the ocean forged Seesnyer by spilling his own blood on the water of the sea and gave it to a noble sailor, entrusting him with the mission to kill the monster and end the terror that his brother had brought to his kingdom. The noble sailor set off happy and honoured to think that he had been chosen for a noble mission, but when the time came, he learned that the God had used him as a sacrifice to the beast, thinking that he would never stand a chance of defeating it. So the sailor proved him wrong, and slew the beast with the power the God had given him, then betrayed him, using that same power. For him, being a God, had fallen into hubris and never thought that a mere sailor could deal with such power. With the blood that was shed that night, the sailor forged Dark Wilder, and in it he hid his great secret, before throwing the sword into the depths. That sailor became the first pirate in history.

And Kallistrade had found Seesnyer, almost 200 years ago, and along with it she had taken the pirate throne, now the sword whispered with vulgar power between her hands, and heightened her senses like a powerful drug.

The grip on her weapons was heavy with the anticipation of blood as the three females approached the battle with every step. Kallistrade could not say that the battlefield was her favorite place in the world, she hated it, she had been on it and lost her family on it, but there was something about holding that sword and dagger filled with dark power, a power that had been made to kill and win battles and wars, that made her blood run hotter and her heart beat faster. A roar in her ears of ancient Gods and brave sailors who took to the seas and became pirates.

That was what she concentrated on as they moved towards the palace, that, and not the uncertainty of not knowing for sure if her crew were safe, of not knowing for sure if Cassian and Rhysand were safe, of not knowing for sure if Azriel was safe. Would his hatred be the last thing she would remember of him? That what would be imprinted on her memory for as long eternity lasted her? She couldn’t allow herself to wonder that, not if she wanted to come out of it alive.

She was used to the blood, the gore, the screaming and the pain, being a pirate wasn't exactly the safest or cleanest of professions, but war was different, she knew that now, because this was war, this battle, it was only the first of the worst that was to come, a war in which her people, her family were once again involved, but now, not like before, she was no stranger, she was acutely aware of everything around her, of the odds, of what was at stake, of who was at stake. She found she hated it, more than before, because now she felt rage, desperation, the urge to spill blood, and no one should feel that kind of rage, and it shouldn't be so easy to spill so much blood, to eviscerate everything and everyone who crossed your path. Because now, it did, it felt so damn easy to kill as she made her way through the corridors of the palace.

But it was not just her, she noticed as they advanced together, not just her who felt that rage. Feyre did too, and Kallistrade wondered just how much terror had the female endured for that rage to build up inside her slender body. The power of the female was a mighty thing, something that made even Kallistrade pause and sweat, but she didn’t thought the female was fully aware of that, of just how much raw power she held. But Kallistrade just smiled, wickedly, hauntingly smiled and admired as she stood there while Feyre spread darkness all around them once they got to where the Summer Court soldiers where battling and losing. She couldn’t see in the dark as Feyre and Mor could, not naturally, at least, but that wasn’t a struggle with Dark Wilder and Seesnyer at her hold, one blade swallowed the darkness like it recharged its power, the other enhanced her abilities and made her feel like a God. So no, darkness wasn’t a problem as she slaughtered Hybern soldiers one by one, bathing in their blood and delighting with the terrified sounds they made as she killed them and saw the absolute terror in their face, while none of them could see her coming at all.

It shouldn’t be so easy, the killing. But it was, it really, really was.

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divinemare · 1 year

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✧*̥₊˚‧☆ﾐ 𝖉𝖆𝖗𝖐 𝖙𝖎𝖉𝖊𝖘!¡ •ଓ.°

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳ azrielxfem!oc

part five

part one, part two, part three, part four

𓆝 𓆜 ––––———–––––———–┊⁀➷

Kallistrade had told Mor and Feyre, once they reached Varian and Tarquin, that it would be best if she stayed out of Tarquin's sight, things between the courts of Night and Summer were already turbulent enough without adding the fact that they had allied themselves with the pirate who destroyed and stole three ships laden with many goods belonging to the Summer Court, and to Tarquin himself by extension.

In her defense, those sailors had made the mistake of not only crossing into pirate territory, her pirate territory, but also wanting to attack one of her ships out of fear. So Kallistrade attacked them back. A spectacular end for her; a gruesome one for them.

So she winnowed back to the Illyrian camp, and the first thing she did, ignoring a healer's call when he saw her covered head to toe in blood, was to search for her people.

"Captain!" Jazemin gasped as she saw her enter the tent of the wounded.

"I'm fine, I'm fine, it's not mine, at least not all of it," though she tried to smile at the female, Jazemin was still pale looking for wounds on her captain's body.

"Jazemin, I'm fine. Where’s Oryn?"

"Taking care of as many as he can."

"Naja and Rafe?"

"They came back a little while ago, Naja took Rafe to get checked out; he was injured, nothing serious, 'just another scar for the females', as he would say," Kallistrade smiled, a part of her relieved to hear it. But there was still another uneasy one, a question she didn't feel brave enough to ask.

Still, Jazemin seemed to read the question from her mind. It didn't surprise her, certainly, Jazemin might well be the one person who could read her emotions better than most, perhaps it was because she had been, for a long time now, the one who had seen her at her worst when she couldn't sleep because of nightmares, or when her throat closed up and she couldn't breathe. She was the one who gave her what she needed to keep her from feeling that way, if only for a few brief moments, as her personal healer.

"They're fine too, I saw the big one pass by just a little while ago, and the other one...he-"

"I don't need to know," she interrupted her before the healer could continue, Kallistrade didn't want to torment herself with that information.

"Ok. Are you sure you're not hurt?"

"Quite sure, nothing water and a bottle of rum won't cure, at least," this time Jazemin did let out a small laugh, and pointed her finger to the left.

"Then you should go to the other tent, I think they have some water there, for the rum, I'm not quite sure."

Kallistrade thanked the female and left the tent to walk to the other one. Involuntarily her eyes searched for Rhys, Cassian and Azriel. Cassian they saw; the male was as exhausted as Kallistrade felt physically, but his eyes detonated a different weariness as he went from soldier to soldier offering words of praise and comfort. When their eyes met, they both smiled slightly, an intimate smile, as if to tell each other without words "I'm glad you're alive". And with that extra security and weight off her chest at the sight of him, she entered the tent pointed out by Jazemin in search of a much-needed glass of water.

But what she found was not water. Nothing even remotely close to it, but a male that dried her mouth even more.

Azriel had been equally perplexed as he watched her enter, his gaze, a second ago fixed on maps and plans on the table, now fixed on her. Hard, penetrating.

She cursed Jazemin in every language she knew in that moment.

"I-"

"Outside. Everyone," Azriel didn't even let her begin her sentence as he ordered those few soldiers —spies, surely— to leave the tent. The last thing Kallistrade wanted at that moment.

One by one they left, until the last one closed the curtain behind her and took Kallistrade's breath with him.

For an absurdly long moment neither said or did anything, they simply stood in place staring at each other. There were no visible wounds on him, only, like her, he was covered in dirt, blood and sweat.

"Are you all right?” Despite all her alerts and instincts screaming at her to get out of there immediately, she couldn't help but ask.

Azriel didn't answer right away, he just roamed her entire body with his gaze. Suddenly Kallistrade felt a surge of heat run through her body, she blamed it on the weather of course.

"Yes,” nothing else. Kallistrade didn’t press the matter further, even tho it did felt uncomfortably wrong the way he was trying so hard to not look at her, and his hard voice as well.

His body was so tense, as his shadows got closer to him, covering him, darkening his face even more.

"What are you doing here?" His question was as harsh as his hazel eyes, and with the shadows considerably hiding him, Kallistrade could not read anything in them.

"Jazemin told me I would find water here."

"Well, clearly you won’t," he wanted to get rid of her as soon as possible, Kallistrade heard it in his voice, and her throat closed for just a moment at that.

"Yes, I noticed."

"Then what are you standing there for, don't you have some poor male to torment and then abandon?"

Kallistrade sighed, she was too tired to keep playing that game of the bitch and the victim with Azriel. Perhaps it was all detonated by the fact she had just been back from slaughtering so much people she eventually had lost count, because she was covered in sticky, hot blood that it was not her own, because she, Captain Devilsbane, never thought the day when she would be risking not only her life but her crew’s lifes for the Summer Court and Prythian in general would come. Because she was so mentally tired of running she felt her feet sore, and maybe also because she had been so worried sick for him during the battle she was feeling physically sick, and she hadn’t even realized it until before she was face to face with the male, and seeing him unharmed brought a wave of relieve, yet intense desires to puke all the blood she had swallowed out. So she took a deep breath and closed her eyes before bursting out the words she could no longer keep to herself.

"I'm tired of this, Az, aren't you? Tell me what you want me to say and I'll say it, tell me what you want me to do and I'll do it. You want me to apologise? Tell me how many times. You want me to show you how many sleep potions Jazemin has had to make for me because I can't sleep because of all the nightmares and dreams I have about you? I can show you some when we get back to Velaris, or if you want, even better! Jazemin is in the tent beside, you can go and ask her yourself, I'm sure she keeps a rigorous account of all the ones she's made. But if you want me to tell you that I was wrong to leave...I can't do that, Az, because if I hadn't left, I would have died."

“I don't care, Kallistrade, nothing you have to say matters to me. You. Don’t. Matter. To. Me," ouch, her heart did feel that terrible blow, but she had been expecting it.

"Please, Azriel, just...let me say this, and if at the end you still hate me, well, I'll make it easier for you and go back to being the heartless bitch you so want me to be, that would certainly make it easier for me too.”

Kallistrade took the terrible and uncomfortably long silence as a window to continue, so she swallowed hard and licked her lips to get the weight off her chest.

"If I hadn't made the decision to leave, if I had stayed, I would have dragged us both to the deep, Azriel. For so long you were the only thing that kept me alive, the only thing I wanted to stay alive for, but for every day I spent surviving, I was forgetting to actually live, and it was killing me, so slowly that even I didn't realise it until it was almost too late. So I had to leave, for me, for what I owed myself, because I couldn't go on living wondering when I would finally stop living. But you...Azriel, you kept me alive long enough for me to have a chance to find out what it really meant to live. You never meant little to me, you...we never meant little, you meant everything to me. You saved my life, in more ways than you realize. And I…I think I will never have time enough to thank you for it…neither will I have enough time to say I’m sorry…I’m…I am so, very sorry.”

Nothing. Not a word for what seemed like eternal minutes. Kallistrade began to think that Azriel hadn't really been lying and just didn't care.

"Say something. Anything."

"You want me to say something, Kallistrade? You want me to say what I think? Well, what I think is that I have spent centuries asking myself why you left me. You didn’t go, Kallistrade, because going would have implied at least a damn goodbye, you left! And you left nothing behind you as to why! You could’ve said something, anything! I would’ve understand, but you…I was terrified, I was so fucking terrified because I thought something had happened to you, that I was never going to see you again, just to find out almost a century later that you were all too well, you just had decided we weren’t worth it, that I wasn’t worth a damn explanation. I am thinking, Kallistrade, that I hate you. I hate you so much I wish I'd never loved you, and I love you so much I wish I'd never hated you," Azriel didn't realize he'd been shouting until he finished speaking and realized he was short of breath. His face was red, and his chest rose and fell irregularly. His shadows were now so close to her too, she felt they would want to choke the life out of her by the look in their master’s face.

Kallistrade wished she had never spoken. Never to have asked him to speak his mind. Perhaps the words were too harsh for Azriel, perhaps he realized he spoke more than he meant to, but his hard face suddenly contracted and his eyebrows drew together in a grimace, just as his shadows also retrieved a little bit. It definitely would have been easier if she'd kept acting like a total bitch, and if he'd never allowed her to talk about her feelings. There was no turning back now, and that realization terrified her more than any sea monster ever could.

"Azriel..."

"No. Please don't say anything else."

She nodded, Azriel wanted her out, he didn't have to say it for her to know, so she simply turned around, but before she could leave the tent once and for all, the male stopped her unexpectedly.

"Kallistrade-" the female turned around, her heart gave the tiniest of leaps, stupidly.

Thought Azriel’s countenance had returned to the Spymaster she had been dealing with when she entered the tent, there was something slightly different. His shadows weren’t as violent as barely seconds ago, for instance. And his face…it was way more relaxed, less red. Something in his demeanor changed too. He was tired, just as she was, of that endless fight. It was draining him as much as it was draining her, so he stoped, if only for a second. That certainly gave her heart a reason to leap.

"Your people came in a while ago, that big guy was staining the floor with his blood and yet he refused to leave until he gave me the information, they told me that you had ordered them that no matter what, it was to get to me. It's...what they did, got us extremely essential information, I have to...," the words couldn't leave his lips, but still Kallistrade couldn't help a small smile, though she licked her lips trying to hide it.

"Thank me?" Azriel simply nodded, unable to look her in the eye. "Don't worry about it. You can't even look me in the eye now. I'd rather you thank me when you can look at me without wanting to kill me."

Surprisingly that brought a chuckle from the male, and Kallistrade's heart leapt again, despite her protests. Stupid little organ.

"That's a long way off."

"I know. Doesn't mean I'm not willing to wait for it, anyway," Azriel's laughter was soon erased, lifting his face to look directly at her.

Kallistrade smiled at him, not one of her malicious, twisted, malevolent smiles he had grown so accustomed to, but a genuine one. Azriel was more surprised than he wanted to admit to find a bit of the old Kallistrade in that smile.

Without another word, the female left the tent. And both hearts found themselves fighting with their owners as they could not silence what they both wanted to ignore.

As she left the tent, a few feet away, leaning against a tree trunk, Rhys watched her with pursed lips and a comprehensive look. Kallistrade approached him with a sigh, and the male bristled when he had her in front of him.

"Tell me you didn't hear."

"I could. But I'd also have to tell you that I didn’t see so many people avoiding a certain tent with looks of fear as at least a dozen spies approached there."

Kallistrade took the spot Rhys had been occupying on the tree trunk and dropped her head onto her hands resting on it.

"I screwed up, Rhys," she said without taking her head off and looking at him.

"Yes, yes you did," the male sighed, and Kallistrade felt him nod and move closer to her.

"I hurt him, badly."

"Yes, you definitely did."

"It's all my fault; that he hates me, his heartbreak, I left him, it's my fault."

"Yeah, it probably is," this time she did pushed off from the trunk and looked at him incredulously, raising her hands in the air to point at him.

"Are you just going to agree with every pity feeling the entire night?"

Rhysand folded his arms and lifted his shoulders slightly, no one in the vicinity came any closer to them, definitely because they were more afraid than curious to listen to the conversation of the High Lord of Night and Captain Devilsbane.

"You left him, you broke his heart, and he recents you, and himself too. I was there, Lis, I was his comfort shoulder while her cried himself to sleep thinking he would never see you again, I had to watch him put himself back piece by piece from all the broken parts you left of him. But I was also there to watch you bleed. I was there to hear you screaming every night from the nightmares only magic could turn off, I was there to watch you hurt yourself. When you "accidentally" burned your wrist?" A shiver suddenly straightened her back, and she had to avoid looking Rhysand in the eye for a moment, she had forgotten how well the male really knew her. Too well for her liking. "I was there the day of the Sidra, you didn't trick me, Lis, you're an excellent swimmer, you became a freaking pirate, for Mother's sake, you don't turn into a pirate if you don't know how to swim. You weren't drowning that day because you didn't know how to swim, but because you didn't want to swim. Not before you heard his voice screaming at you, at least. So believe me when I say I was the most relieved when I watched you sail away, because I had rather have you far away than knowing you took your life because we couldn't help you."

Kallistrade was at a loss for words to answer him at that moment. Rhysand, her friend, her brother. She never wanted her family to think they hadn't been enough for her, because that was never what she thought. She could never think that. She simply hadn't been able to live with herself, with everything she'd done, or rather with what she hadn't done. It was because of her, never because of them.

"Azriel cannot know that," she moved her head while still not looking him in the eye.

"Why not."

"You know why, Rhys, he's going to blame himself," she raised her head towards him and leaned just a little closer to whisper it, paranoid that someone would hear them even though she knew perfectly well that no one would.

"He deserves the truth."

"The truth is-"

"The truth is that you did what you had to, even if it meant getting away from your mate."

The captain's eyes widened as did her mouth. She leaned back a little, there was not a hint of surprise on Rhysand's face. She turned to look around, frantic and worried, but no one was paying attention to them, Rhysand must have been covering their conversation with magic.

"You...how do you...?"

"I told you, I was there."

"Does he...?" She swallowed dryly, the idea of Azriel knowing...

"No, I don't think he does, only Amren knows, but, well, she smelled it clearly before you even realized yourself."

"Of course she did," she rolled her eyes.

"He's going to find out, sooner or later."

Better later than sooner.

"I don't think he will, his hatred for me clouds his mind," he had said it himself, Azriel felt so reluctant to feel anything for Kallistrade other than hatred, just as she felt reluctant to accept all the feelings she had at this moment.

"I think he already knows, he's just too hurt to accept it."

"I... Rhys, I had to leave, otherwise he never would have let me go."

"I know," Rhysand moved closer to her, putting his hands on her shoulders to bring her some comfort.

"But now..."

"Now you don't want to let go," she couldn't even come to that realisation herself before he said it.

"No, no I don't," and that terrified her too much.

𓆉｡˚ ✧

When they were back in Velaris, Maddox was ready to receive them. Two of her crew took Rafe to put him to rest, Naja and Oryn followed them, as did Jazemin, the poor female was worn out from exhaustion, her magic drained from having helped so many.

"Are you alright?" Was all Maddox asked her upon arrival about the battle, and Kallistrade simply nodded, the male did not press with any more questions.

As she had already well said, it only took a few many continuous hours of sleep and an uninterrupted night of gambling and alcohol in the worst of Velaris' pubs for her to recover from it all.

Until two days later, when that momentary peace of mind came to an end when Maddox arrived with a letter in his hands and the grimmest face she had seen in him in decades.

Kallistrade took the piece of paper in her hands and did not take her gaze from her First Mate's tortured eyes until she had opened the envelope completely.

She read word by word with as much concentration as possible, but still, none of it seemed real. She had to read the letter three times to finally accept the veracity of the words.

"Prepare the crew, we're leaving now," Maddox simply nodded, and immediately turned to walk out of the captain's quarters onto the main deck.

His screams were muffled by the door until Kallistrade had enough stability to stand up and walk out of her quarters as well, where the screams of orders were heard at full blast as she opened the door, accompanied by the chaos that had become her Bright Nightmare.

Without a word, and with no one to stop the living fury that their captain had become, Kallistrade descended from the ship and made her way to the House of Wind.

It was Rhys who opened the door after Kallistrade had nearly knocked it down with her blows.

"Lis, what-" but the female didn't let him finish, she pushed past him and into the house.

All the inhabitants were suddenly there having heard the racket she made as she entered.

"Kallistrade, it's all-" just as she didn’t let Rhysand finish, she didn’t let Feyre finish her sentence.

"Hybern attacked Skull Island."

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