Work Text:
"I understand you're to blame for all of this."
Gwyneth Berdara looks up from her work, nose wrinkling up in a scrunch that makes him first think of puppies, and second want to fling himself off a roof. "For what, exactly?"
"This." Az waves one hand about, encompassing in a single gesture the utter chaos of the living-room, the streets outside, the briliant light burning its way through the enormous floor-to-ceiling windows, the sights and sounds and smells surrounding them. "This entire week — no, this entire season."
She grins ear-to-ear, showing off the gap between her two front teeth and the ten thousand freckles that cover her face. "Guilty as charged."
"You sound so guilty about it."
"Blame the High Lord." she says with a shrug. "He's the one who named me First Researcher to the Night Court."
"Then he's the one I'll beat the crap out of."
She lifts both eyebrows, two ginger-red cinnamon slashes across her face above brilliant wide eyes. "Of the two of us, he's the only one you could beat the crap out of."
His shadows snicker at that, curling around his earlobes like children sharing secrets. He makes a conscious effort to relaxe the muscles in his neck, stiff from hours of flying, and the shadows zoom off at once, let off their leash to curl around her hands, playing with the strands of her hair while she giggles.
"So training is going well, then?" Az asks, though he barely needs to — he can see the added definition in her bare arms (and he's careful not to look any lower, to get a glimpse of her in an outfit ten times more revealing than either her robes or her training leathers). "I'm glad to hear it."
"I'm sure Cas would give you all the gory details the moment you ask." she says, holding up one hand with fingers splayed and smiling as a shadow twines up her wrists and around her knuckles.
"I'm told it's bad manners to ask for gory details at a party."
"True, but this is not a party, Shadowsinger." she reminds him, blue-green eyes sparkling. "This is a semi-religious, quasi-divine festival, and it definitely has roots in something gory."
"That's not a very specific answer from First Researcher to the Night Court."
"I've only been in the post for three months." she says flippantly. "Get back to me next year, and I'll have gotten through the other six-thousand years of history on Solstice festivals."
He manages to keep his face smooth and his smile hidden. He has no such luck keeping the shadows under control; they wind around and up her arms, chittering like excited animals, and curl affectionately around her bare neck and earlobes.
They'll give every one of his secrets away if they're not careful. Cauldron, they really shouldn't like her so much; they are intrinsically creatures of the night, as is he, and by rights they should flee from the priestess and her glowing inner light, the pure starlit radiance that shines out of every feature in her face.
They don't, any more than he does. Dark to her light he may be, but he's drawn in all the same, no matter how he tries not to be.
"I think this is less about historical research, and more about reviving culture." he says calmly. "Like an anthropolgist, not a historian."
"I can be both." she says, with a proud little lift to her chin. "Are you telling me you don't like it?"
He can't lie to her, not outright. "I'll tell you after I beat the crap out of Rhys," he says, and is rewarded by the silver-sleigh-bells tones of her laugh.
It would be impossible not to like it, this half-legend half-fairytale she's whisked into existence as if pulling illustrated pages from a children's storybook and carving them into reality — he left Night for all of one month, and came back to a glittering, sparkling, glowing, colourful dream of what reality can be, and it is entirely down to her.
In the Night Court, tradition holds that the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year, is the most important holiday in the calendar year; but the very oldest and most sacred traditions from the farthest-back stretches of written memory hold that the celebration of Solstice is not one night, but eight consecutive ones — the most basic, straightforward ritual of celebrating Solstice, even in the most rudimentary Illyrian shacks, is the lighting of eight candles, one for every sundown of the sacred week, displayed in a special candleholder on the window.
The first five candles are always orange, representing the five days that make up the Festival of Lights, the celebration of light and the triumph of reason, love, logic, light, and life over discord, disharmony, chaos, darkness, and death. The sixth candle is made of black wax, and is always the tallest, representing the night of Solstice itself. The seventh and eight candles are deep purple to represent the Festival of Colours, which celebrates the turning of the seasons, and which originated in making prayers and sacrifices to the ancient gods for a bountiful harvest come spring.
For almost a thousand years under Rhys' father, the old ways of celebrating the Festivals slowly died out; he himself only heard about them secondhand from Astra, Rhys' mother. By the time he was a youngling in the Illyrian camps and couldcelebrate the holy week, however cursorily, the Festivals were, for the most part, dying out. The High Fae still celebrated them perfunctorily, with feasts and special clothes, but not fully, and certainly not with the rest of the Court.
All that is now, it seems, about to change — Rhys has been talking for months about restoring the ancient glories of the Night Court, especially with their increased trade up and down the Sidra, and their borders opening to citizens of other courts.
But Rhys aside, one glance at the sheer dazzling brilliance of Velaris, laid out miles below his feet as he flew over the highest mountains into the riverside valley, and he knew immediately that there was only one person who could be responsible for the sensational sight.
On Rukbat, the first day of the Festival of Lights, households traditionally light up their homes with as many fragrant oil lamps as can be found; even the poorest housholds light theirs with candles and wax tapers. Over the five days, the lights are gradually extinguished, until the last lights go out at sunset on Albadah, plunging the world into the darkness of the longest night of the year. This day of the year is always particularly bright, but this year, Velaris is positively glowing. Flying lower and lower over the streets, he saw every building and every house lit up with candles and lamps in every window, even those of the warehouses down on the docks. Every streetlight on every street (one of Feyre's first peacetime projects as High Lady) is lit up, and moreover, every one is connected by strings and strings of glowing colourful paper lanterns, lit up and bobbing gently in the cold wind off the river. More lanterns hang in the air above the rooftops, tethered by the very thinest cords, in brilliant shades of blues, greens, purples, oranges, red, and yellows. Lanterns float in every fountain, hang on every bush and every bridge, bob on the railings and mastheads of ships and boats in the harbour, even bob gaily on the waves at the mouth of the river, tethered to buoys and lighting the water in patches of gold and silver. The scent of the richly perfumed oil burning in the lamps is thick, spicy, and heady in the air, making the eyes water until you get accustomed to it, and then making your stomach growl — a predicament only made worse by the mouthwatering scents of traditional roasted meats and vegetables and the gloriously sticky, honey-caked pastries only served at Solstice.
Every person he passed was dressed in colour, brilliant and dazzling and glowing colours in rich shades and luxurious fabrics. Even in the poorest neighborhoods, the streets are swept clean, the puddles mopped up, and children dressed in colourfully-printed cottons. Hands and faces are carefully painted with the rich ochre worn by all the legendary heroes and princesses in the legends and fairytale books; hair is styled in the old and most traditional ways. Costumes that were, for the length of his own memory, the sole purview of the wealthiest High Fae are now universal; the richness of the fabrics and the jewels changes from one neighborhood to the next, but the shapes are the same.
It's a universality; a common theme linking all members of the Night Court, rich and poor, male and female, adult and child, High Fae and Low and Illyrian alike, and it was not Rhys' doing. The High Lord, beloved as he is, might have paved the way — but he knows without having to be told that it was one person, equal parts priestess, Carynthian, and Valkyrie, who laid the groundwork to make this festival one for everyone to celebrate, not merely the wealthy in their palaces.
"The festival hasn't been this widely or this fully celebrated since before the First War." he says now, tilting his head as one shadow tickles whispering around his ear. "I hear they know your name even down in the worst districts by the riverside."
"I'm very popular." she says drily, but with a smile lighting up her face all the same.
"You are." he agrees directly. "They love you for this."
She shrugs one bare shoulder. "History and traditions, they're for everyone." she says simply. "They're what tie a people together, and Cauldron knows, there's more than enough to pull us apart. Something has to be the glue that makes a court a single entity; something we can all point to and say that it's what unites us."
"You've given them that." he says honestly. "I hear even in Illyria, little girls are wearing the lehnga this year."
"And the little boys?"
"Most of them are back in the adrasti." he says, listening to his shadows. "And Cas tells me that those whose parents won't buy or make the adras for them are making their own; some of them are even trying to buy cloth, and Emerie is giving away bales of it."
She grins wider, hot and proud. "I know; we went up there three weeks ago with a fresh shipment of fabric." she admits. "You should have seen the little ones, all excited to learn — most of the boys brought the needles from their battlefield med kits and were trying to learn how to sew."
"Most of them have never had an identity other than Illyrian." he says, shrugging one shoulder. "Even for those who aren't solely Illyrian, if you have one drop of Illyrian blood, that's the only identity you're ever allowed, and it's not one you're encouraged to be proud of."
"Yes, I know." She looks at him pointedly, jutting her chin out. "I was thinking about you, when we were there — well, I was thinking about you throughout all of this."
Something hot and electric swoops in his stomach, low-high and a sudden swell in his chest. He swallows it down and straightens his face.
"Me." It comes out as a statement, not a question; perfectly composed, so why on earth is he disappointed suddenly in the sound of his own voice?
"Yes, you." She pokes her tongue out, quick and playful. "Obviously. You're half-Illyrian and half-High Fae; you're the exact kind of person who would have benefitted most from some identity to be proud of, just like those children."
"Rhys is the same as me."
"He is not." she says firmly. "Rhys was born and raised as the future High Lord, that's all the identity he'll ever need to be comfortable — and Cas has always been an Illyrian bastard, as he calls himself, and used that to his advantage. But you?" She clicks her tongue with a little shake of the head. "You were out in the cold, you learned to rely on yourself. No offense intended — " She waves a long-fingered hand in apology. " — you did marvellously with what you had. But I'd prefer it if no child was left out in the cold, not if we can help it; even orphans need an identity to hold onto."
He's dimly aware that his heart is beating very hard and very fast under his breastbone. "What about you?" he asks. "What identity do you rely on?"
She cocks her head on one side, pointed chin off to her left, and lifts her brows in his direction. "I have many, and yet no one single one." she says calmly. "I've been orphan, I've been sister, I've been priestess. I've been a part of the library; I am a Carythian - " Her mouth twists a little in the corner. " - and I am a Valkyrie, and now? First Researcher of the Night Court? Part of at least the outer corners of the Inner Circle? Best friend to Nesta Archeron?" She shrugs. "I have many titles; I have no one singular identity." Another shrug. "That's why I understand you, Shadowsinger."
Do you? He wrestles the question down, but it rises up like a bubble through water. "Do you?"
"I do." She says it calmly and with utter certainty, focusing back on her hands. "Which is why I also know that your shoes are very uncomfortable, and you're trying to hide from all that noise out there."
He bites down a smile, glancing over his shoulder. On the ground floor of the Moonstone Palace, the kitchen is separated from the rest of the open-plan living area not by a full wall, but by a half-size counter, where elaborately-carved barsool chairs are pulled up before an array of cut-glass decanters and glasses. Within the kitchen, where they now stand — she at the kitchen island before a large tray and a bowl full of something cream-coloured and sticky, he at the doorway half-in and half-out — the noise and chaos of the living-room is muted, and feels at least a little far-off, but still very much present.
The open plan is composed, usually, of pure white marble polished to a slick, near-tasteable sheen; now, every single surface is a dizzying array of brilliant paint splattered and smeared and streaked literally everywhere by pairs of hands (Mor, he is informed, started screeching at the top of her lungs at this visible evidence that Cas and Feyre were, once again, allowed to decorate unsupervised, and drunk on mulled wine to boot). Even the floor is covered in paint, in what started in dramatic, bold, sweeping strokes that remind him of stylized rays of sunshine and the glowing streaks left across the sky by the souls passing on the Feast of Starlight, is now smudged and blurred and blotted over with dozens of barefoot footprints scattered on every single panel of the floor. A trail of tiny baby-sized feetprints, with the smudges and scattered edges of top speed, cross the floor from the staircase to the windows, followed by adult-sized feet at full speed (he suspects Rhys', going purely on size), and the chase ends with a swipe as baby feet were scooped up off the floor — the little renegade in question is currently bundled in his father's arms, screeching with joy while the High Lord pulls silly faces and blows bubbles on a bare baby tummy.
Paint winds up the length of every column, in handprints and painted flowers on every windowframe, in great colourful panels on every wall in Feyre's precise, yet dramatic style. What must be a hundred thousand lamps hang from the ceiling and the columns, well overhead and filling the high arched ceilings with sweet and spicy cinnamon scents. The curtains are drawn back, allowing the room to be filled with the brilliant light from outside; sounds of music and laughter are faintly heard from the streets, while here inside, the music and the laughter and the chatter are at top volume.
Like everyone in the streets, everyone in the Moonstone Palace is dressed in brilliant colours and the striking styles of antiquity. The style for Solstice, as made immortal by the High Fae, is simple: for females, a skirt, a simple cropped top, and a sari, patterned and fringed and stamped with thin precious metals. For males, trousers, soft shoes, and a tunic. There is a lot of room for personal interpretation and style — the only constants are brilliant colours, precious metals, plenty of jewels and bangles and rings and scented body oils.
Mor, in her favourite hue of scarlet, sports the style of wearing her sari like a sarong, wrapped towel-like from just above her breasts down and around and around her waist and hips, hugging every curve right down to her ankles, where the fringe tangles with the heavy gold bangles around her ankles. Her thick golden hair is loose under a finely-woven net of gold thread set with rubies, with matching bangles and rings on her wrists and fingers.
Elain, on the other hand, sports a sleeveless, strapless bandeau around her breasts and the thickly-pleated, heavy skirt studded in rose-gold and pearls, both in rose-pink — he supposes, in the dim recesses of his mind, that the shape of the skirt is similar, more than anything else, to the full skirts still popular with the humans, with their cumbersome layers of petticoats and drawers. She's radiant, blushing almost the same pink as her costume, pearls dangling from her wrists and ears — and beaming shyly, beautifully up at the male respelendent in hues of deep orange and gold, his loose tunic left open over his chest, trousers riding low enough to show off the decorative gold chains looped stylishly around his chest and hips, long red hair bound back with more gold.
They look well together, he can admit, watching them; rosy and warm and heady as the sunrise. It no longer twinges to think of Elain; he can, at last, look at them and smile to see how deeply she blushes when Lucien's hand curls around her bare waist, how his smile broadens when she drops her eyes and bats her lashes furiously.
Across the room from them, Rhys and Feyre and baby Nyx are at the opposite end of the colour spectrum, cool and rich and silver to their brilliant hues. He has to smile at the sight of Rhys' tunic, the deep purple heavily embroidered with silver and studded with amethysts, the same style his mother had made for him centuries ago. His eyes look even deeper and richer with the same hue, his skin brilliantly deep and rich against his pearl-grey trousers and soft shoes, his jawline broader and stronger against the purple-and-silver drops in his ears. He's beaming down at the bundle in his arms; Nyx, forever his father's son, has kicked free of most of his own fine clothes and, like his mother, is waving paint-splattered little hands, giggling up at hs father's handsome face.
They're bickering, his shadows inform him, watching as Feyre gestures furiously towards the corner of the room, where the most human tradition for Winter Solstice is set up: the towering, twelve-foot-tall pine tree with heavy, soft, fragrant branches, all hung with colourful paper chains and miniature lit-up paper lanterns. All three sisters had such fond memories of the Solstice trees that they've been brought into Solstice traditions since Feyre's first Solstice last year.
Feyre is stunning and dazzling in purple: the same style of skirts as Elain, studded with silver and amethyst, but the same cropped short-sleeved top as Mor. While Elain wears her sari draped around her upper arms like a shawl, Feyre has hers slung over one shoulder and tied in a knot by the opposite hip, fringed borders dancing merrily while she waves about her own paint-covered, silver-bedecked hands and berates Rhys for being (yet again) a prick.
Traditionally, all lights must be extinguished on sundown for the solstice night: Feyre, who has a child's obsessive love for the glowing lit-up Solstice evergreen, is busily insisting that she will not see the tree extinguished on Solstice night, "and I don't care what you have to say about it, you prick, this is my holiday too!"
Rhys is moving his beaming, indulgent smile between Nyx and her, throwing in little comments to the babbling baby - "Isn't Mummy stubborn? Yes she is, little star, yes she is" - and endearing teasing to his mate - "Really, darling, there's no need to be quite so hardheaded."
Feyre whacks him on the arm. Lightning-fast, he releases one arm from around the baby, wraps it around her waist, and pulls her in for a kiss. Nyx, abruptly squashed between his parents' chests, sqwuaks and bats them both with his pudgy little baby hands until they break apart, laughing. Feyre scoops her baby boy up and props him on her shoulder, raining kisses on his cheeks while Rhys tucks her loose hair behind her ear and kisses her on the forehead.
Love. It's everywhere in this room, brighter and more exuberant than all the paint and the candles and the tree and the oil and the music and the laughter all at once. It's in Rhys and Feyre and their newborn son. It's in Mor and Emerie brainstorming ideas about girls' education while trying out a very exuberant (and frankly dangerous-looking) dance, neither acknowledging their matching blushes every time their hands meet. It's in Lucien wooing his mate in the middle of a crowded room, and Elain finally looking back at the mate she was always meant to have. It's tucked into the corner, where Cas is sprawled across an enormous divan, hands waving while he tells a story to an enraptured audience including four young males and three young priestesses, while Nesta stands by him in matching shades of deep red and onyx black, throwing sarcastic comments into the midst of his sentences, trading adoring and heated glances every other second.
A small family celebration, Rhys called it, and he's created a room so explosive with love and joy and the sheer pleasure of being around each other, that it feels as loud and bright and brilliant as the brightest moon in the sky.
And here in the kitchen, in a little patch of half-quiet, he leans one shoulder against the wall and watches as Gwyn wrestles with her dough and a wooden spoon, bottom lip tucked between her teeth and a line between her brows as she concentrates. Ah yes, love is here too. But here in the kitchen, it's the one place love doesn't matter; not really. Light and laughter, brilliance and Gwyn, connection and deep feeling and love…these are things that do not belong to a walking shadow. These are things he cannot have, no matter how his shadows play with her hands…no matter how his traitorous, weak heart fails to grasp that all-important truth.
"Blast." Gwyn mutters, swiping a lock of hair off her forehead. It leaves a streak of flour in the wake of her fingers, but he doesn't mention as much.
"Need some help?" he asks, shrugging off the door — what, she's still his friend, he's allowed to help her; should help her, actually, that's what friends do for one another.
She throws a grateful, sparklingly ocean-blue gaze his way and his knees actually weaken, because he is, ultimately, pathetic.
"Decided to be useful, have you?" she teases, never one to be lost for words for longer than ten seconds at a time. "Here — put those muscles to use for something other than preening, and mix this for me."
"I do not preen." he protests, taking the bowl and spoon nonetheless. "I'm not Rhys."
"You wear nothing but sleeveless tops." she says drily. "Don't even try to tell me there's a strategic advantage to showing off your biceps."
"Is there a strategic advantage to showing off your biceps?" he counters.
"You noticed!" She beams, spinning on her toes to show him her mostly-bare upper back, flexing her biceps dramatically for his view while he chews furiously on his tongue. "That's the strategic advantage right there!"
"Funny." he says flatly, already whipping the batter together. "What are we making?"
"You are not making anything, you're merely a tool for my use." she says airily, dropping her pose and waving a hand dramatically. "I am making cookies."
"Oh, sure, because there isn't an enormous table out there positively groaning with about a hundred different treats."
She pokes her tongue out at him. "Rhys wants us all to bring at least some of our own traditions to family Solstice." she says. "Like the Solstice evergreen, for the Archeron sisters — have you heard the story about Feyre cutting down a spindly little half-grown evergreen and taking three full days to haul it home when she was fifteen?"
"Only about five hundred times." He adjusts the bowl, tucking it more firmly into the crook of his left arm. "Rhys likes to brag."
"So he should - so should all males, about their mates." she says decidedly. "Anyway, we were all encouraged to bring some of our own traditions, and this is mine."
"What is it?"
"Snickerdoodle."
He blinks. "Is that some kind of curse?"
"Only the way I bake them." She unscrews the lid on a jar, sniffs the contents, and wrinkles her nose up. "Blegh."
"Please tell me now if this is some kind of convoluted attempt at poisoning the entire Inner Circle."
"What, can't your shadows tell you?"
His shadows fairly cackle with glee at the suggestion.
"They're less reliable when it comes to desserts." he says as smoothly as possible. The dratted creatures are less reliable when it comes to her — evidently they see no reason to tell tales about her to him, happy though they are to report how soft is the skin behind her ear and whether she ate a suitable breakfast before training this morning.
Damned nosy busybodies.
He clears his throat and peers down into the bowl."So, snickerdoodle?"
"A nonsense name for a harmless taste." she assured him. "Sugar and vanilla extract, maybe some almond paste, plus cinnamon and nutmeg."
"Is it a cake?"
She snorts, measuring out a cup of sugar. "No, cookies — about the easiest thing to make, so there's only a fifty-fifty chance of me mucking it up." When she leans over his arm to add the sugar to the bowl, her scent rises up richly into his nose — citrus and fresh, lime and salt like margharitas by the seaside.
Maybe I'll throw myself into the Sidra, he thinks miserably, concentrating only on regulating his breathing until she steps away again.
Thank the Cauldron, she's still babbling when his brain resettles with a clunk. "—- and my sister used to make them every year." she's saying. "Our mother taught us, when we were very little, so every Solstice we'd go town to the kitchens at midnight and sneak whatever we needed to make them." A little smile curls up the corners of her mouth. "I remember, we burnt them more often than not, and the nuns, bless them, ate them all and never complained."
"Not really a baker, then?"
She snorts. "I can follow instructions — "
"That's news to me."
Another poke of her tongue out of the corner of her mouth. "Shut up — but I'm not a natural baker. Not like Elain."
He huffs, amused. "She is an amazing baker."
Blue eyes cut sharply to him. "She is, isn't she."
"Yeah." He glances over his shoulder, smiling at the sight of Lucien dipping her so low her long curls brush the ground behind her. "He'd better appreciate that about her."
When he looks back at her, her gaze has softens. "From the looks of it, I'd say he appreciates just about everything about her." she says archly, smirking hard enough to make a dimple pop somewhere between her wide mouth and those cliff-high cheekbones.
"If there is about to be semi-nudity on that dancefloor, please don't tell me." he says, almost begging. "I'm not nearly drunk enough."
"I've never once seen you get drunk enough to forget anything, up to and including nudity." she retorts, pivoting and resting her hips against the countertop. "As for the nudity, well." She gestures expansively down her own front. "It's a holiday for near-nudity."
He tells himself very, very firmly that he's not going to look at the sharply-whittled lines down her abs, the way they flex and deepen with she cocks one hip to the side like that.
He fails miserably. The Sidra itself is too good for him.
"You're not nude." he says firmly, eyes back on her face.
"I'm closer than I've ever been, in public." she retorts. "It took me four weeks to stop blushing."
And yet she's completely calm and, apparently, wholly unbothered by being so…exposed, in front of a male no less. She really has grown bolder and braver over the last ten months — though in fairness, being kidnapped and almost dying in the Blood Rite will do wonders for learning how not to care about cosmetics.
It is most definitely a change from her loose robes and laced-up leathers, though, a drastic enough change that, although she's no more and no less scandalously-dressed than the other females, it's a shock to the system to see her. Like Elain and Feyre, she sports the tight, strapless bandeau top in a brilliantly-bright blue, tight enough to highlight curves he will claw his eyeballs out before he ogles, baring her entire upper back and the full length of her arms. Most of her abdomen, from the hem of the bandeau just under her breasts right down to just below her bellybutton, is similarly bare, all long, right ridges of well-trained muscles. She wears her sari wrapped around her waist, tugged low in the front to just under her bellybutton, with the fringed end in front and tucked into the waistband, the long hem down to her ankles. The sari is a brilliant explosion of bright blues and greens like a peacock's feathers, stamped with silver foil and hemmed in silver thread, tiny emeralds and sapphires sewn into an ornate border. Her wrists and ankles are looped in silver bangles; even her finger- and toenails are painted a matching brilliant blue-green like the colours of the sea, which incidentally matches her eyes flawlessly.
Dazzling. Frankly, openly, brilliantly dazzling, from the long, sleek fall of her cinnamon-hued hair to the freckles splattered over every bare inch of skin to the silver ring around one toe on her left foot. Bright and brilliant and dazzling.
More than the sheer shock, like a physical sensation in the pit of his stomach, of her undeniable physical beauty, is the overawing sense of comfort in her every movement: the utter composure, the bone-deep comfort in her own skin. Half-naked or not, surrounded by unusual customs and people who are still not wholly familiar to her, she is completely at home in her own skin, and blithely disinterested to anyone who might have a negative opinion about her.
It's breathtaking. It's unusual to see in her; he's seen her confidence growing through training, especially in the five months since the Rite, but the dramatic change in the month since he's been gone is downright incredible.
It's also alarmingly attractive, another thing to feel like a physical blow in the pit of his stomach, and then again lower when she leans in to add vanilla extract to the bowl and her scent fills his nose once again.
Don't think about it, don't think about it, don't think about it — one of his shadows informs him that she doesn't wear perfume, just smells that appetizing naturally, and he waves it off with a physical twitch and shudder of his shoulders.
"They're like cats." she says musingly, gesturing for him to keep stirring (he'd paused without quite meaning to). "I've always loved cats."
"They're mouthy busybodies." he mutters, stirring hard enough to feel the slight burn in his bicep. She just snickers and adds another pinch of cinnamon.
"Are you sure you're following the recipe?" he asks as she upends several jars seemingly at random into the mixing-bowl.
She rolls her eyes at him. "Please, I've lived in this court long enough to know that if it's not spiced, you lot won't eat it."
"We would." he argues.
"No, you would, and you'd pull faces the entire time."
"I do not pull faces."
"Please." she says again. She reaches up and touches the corner of his mouth with the tip of her index finger. "You go all puckered right here when you're tasting something you don't like. It's quite obvious."
She drops her hand as if absolutely nothing unusual has happened. The corner of his mouth burns as if held to an open flame.
"I do not pucker." His voice cracks, because some deity absolutely has it in for him.
"Oh yes you do."
"I am the spymaster of the Night Court." he argues, aware that he sounds both petulant and ridiculous, but unable to care when his stomach is tied up in anxious too-hot knots. "I am completely inscrutable."
Gwyn snorts explosively. It is not an attractive sound, but all his mind does is fixate helplessly on the scrunch of her nose as she does so.
"You might be inscrutable to others, but to me, you're an open book." she says decisively, before ruining his life entirely by swiping a finger through the batter and popping it between her open lips with a hum of pleasure. "What about you?"
It takes several moments for his brain to catch up again and stop fixating on her lips. "What about me?"
"What's your favourite Solstice tradition?"
He snorts before he can restrain himself. "It's stupid."
"What?"
Her eyes are sparkling like the nighttime stars. Not answering her is an impossibility.
"It's stupid," he says again. "But when I was very young, my mother used to tell me that on Solstice, if you were very good, the gods would grant you a wish." He shrugs one shoulder. "When I was a boy, I'd wish for toys, and when I got them, I saw it as proof that she was right. Years later, I'd wish and wish for..." He swallows down the ancient sensation of rage, pain, fear, misery, longing. "I'd wish for impossible things," he said carefully. "When my wishes weren't granted, I took it to mean I hadn't been good enough that year."
Gwyn's face is an open mask of sympathy, looking at him. He looks down, idly rearranging one of the balls of dough on the board.
"Like I said." he says quietly. "Stupid. You'd think I would have realised, after the first year or two, that my wishes weren't going to come true, but I didn't. I kept wishing, for years."
"When did you stop?"
He shrugs. "Sometime during the first war, I suppose. I finally ran out of impossible wishes."
Her chin tilts on one side. "What about possible ones?"
He half-smiles. "I still make wishes for possible things." he admits. "Presents I want, or songs I want to hear - things I might actually get."
She brightens. "What did you wish for this year?"
Something I can't have.
"A nap." he says drily, and she wrinkles up her nose again.
"You're so old." she drones, snickering when he makes an offended noise. "Maybe I should make a wish this year."
"Is it sure to come true?"
"Oh yes." she says archly, sifting icing-sugar into another bowl half-full of blue and white food colouring. "I'm the type to make my wishes come true."
"I believe it."
With a hum, she passes him two spoons, and he covers up his existential crisis as best as possible by carefully, meticulously measuring balls of cookie dough out onto the sheet. Gwyn, throwing careful meticulousness gleefully to the wind, follows in his wake, smashing the tines of a fork atop each ball to press it down flat.
"Now," she says triumphantly, once three-dozen half-flattened balls adorn the sheet. "For the fun part!"
Which is how Azriel, completely helpless in her sway, finds himself armed with four different colours of icing, six types of sprinkles, and an apron which is two sizes too small to protect either his tunic or his trousers.
It's a disaster within ten minutes. Why are the cookies so small? No, worse, why are his hands so big and clumsy? He might as well be wearing oven mitts, for all the use he's being; long-accustomed as he is to delicate, fiddly work, he is woefully underprepared for arranging sprinkles smaller than an ant, onto cookies less than half the size of his palm.
"What are you doing?" Gwyn asks, sounding so intensely amused that his shadows, which have been drooping like wilting plants for the last few minutes, perk up noticeably.
"I'm decorating."
She hums, eyeing his movements. He tries to ignore her, and goes doggedly on, spooning sprinkles onto each cookie and mashing them into the dough with his fingertips, a blush rising clear up his neck into his ears.
"You are aware this is supposed to be fun, yes?" she asks at length. "You do understand that?"
"Yes." he grits out.
"So why do you look like you're having a tooth pulled?"
He wipes the grimace off his face immediately. "I'm not very good in the kitchen."
"Neither am I." she says with a shrug. "But this is child's play - literally, this is what children do for fun."
"This is not fun." Az protests, and wants to thump himself for his own petulant tone - one that would've earned him a couple of nights patrol duty and no dinner, back in the Illyrian camps. Illyrian warriors do not whine like petulant fledglings.
"No, I agree, it doesn't look like fun." Gwyn pokes him in the arm. "It's not a strategy board, Spymaster; relax."
He lets out a slow breath. She pokes him again. "I said relax."
"I am relaxed."
"You look like you're sitting bare-arsed on a pine-cone." A third poke, right in his sole plexus. "Put the sprinkles down and stop tormenting the dough."
"I am not -"
"You're tormenting it, yourself, and me." Gwyn says loudly, speaking over him. "Down, Spymaster."
One shadow, tickling around the curve of his ear, helpfully suggests a way to obey that command which would definitely get him banned from family dinner for at least a month. He swats it away and sets down the spoon of sprinkles. The pads of his fingers are dyed lurid blues and purples from the sprinkle dye.
"Ridiculous." Gwyn declares, hip-checking him to one side and taking his place. When he goes to slide further away, however, she snags his wrist and hauls him bodily back, until their hips knock almost painfully together. "Ludicrous overgrown bat."
"I will make you run laps for a week, don't tempt me." Az warns, keeping his voice stern only with significant effort.
”Like you could make me do a damned thing.” is her retort. His shadows snicker - traitors.
“So help me gods, you’ll be doing push-ups until you faint.” he threatens her, doing his level best to sound like Cas.
Gwyn only rolls her eyes heavenward. “No talking about training.” she orders, smacking the back of his wrist with a wooden spoon and cackling aliens when he hisses at the impact. “Now, rule number one, for the love of the gods learn how to colour-coordinate.”
“I know how to colour-coordinate.”
”My cookie dough looks like vomit.” she says, mock-glowering at him. "I'm tempted to fire you as my assistant."
"Fine, I'll go and mingle then." he says with a shrug, untying his apron and heading for the door.
"Coward." she drawls at his back. He pivots sharply on his heel and comes right back, snapped into her orbit like one magnet to another.
"Fine." he says loftily. "Teach me."
She grins - she rarely smirks, Gwyn, even when pulling pranks (the honey in Nesta's shampoo has become a legend in itself) or making filthy jokes in training (life has been very difficult since she figured out how to wolf-whistle. Now he and Cas can't bend over without being treated to an ear-piercing whistle and shouted compliments about their asses); but she's grins easily and often, owner of a broad, wide smile that lights up any room.
It could probably light up even the darkest cells beneath the Court of Nightmares, he thinks, and winces reflexively. He doesn't like thinking of her down there - though oddly enough, not because he can't picture her in a torture chamber (he absolutely can, and he should definitely be more concerned about how viscerally his entire body reacts to the mental image of her holding a blade to some sneering male's throat). Rather, the sheer incongruity of it makes him wince: bright and dazzling though she is, she shouldn't have to light up all the dark places in the world all on her own, any more than she should have to light up all the dark places in her soul on his own - he quietly doubts there's enough light in the world for that.
Not that it matters. Light calls to light, dark to dark; she'd never offer to brighten the days for him, and he'd never ask her to.
"Like this." she says bossily, separating out the sprinkles into piles, blues and purples and lilacs and lavenders and frosty ice-blues all separated out. As he watches, she carefully picks up individual ones and starts picking out a design of a comet, the tail of the shooting star wrapping around the circumference of the flattened cookie, shaded in pretty blues with purples for dimension. "See?"
"That's going to take forever."
"Got somewhere better to be?" she challenges. "Traditions deserve the appropriate time and energy, Shadow-Singer."
His shadows let out high-pitched whines in his ears. He sighs deeply, but scoops up a portion of sprinkles into his hand. "Fine." he grumbles, nudging her aside to reach one of the trays. "But don't critique my art."
"You know what art even is?"
"I'm making daggers on all of mine, just for that comment."
"Oh, that's festive."
"What on earth are you doing?" Gwyn asks some fifteen minutes later, the tip of her tongue poking through her teeth as she eyes his latest attempt at a design (exceedingly blobby and a mess of half-melted sprinkes).
"Losing my will to live."
"My gods, the drama."
"Stop ruining them!" Gwyn cries, beaming ear-to-ear and batting his hands away from yet another massacred cookie, another twenty minutes after that. "What is the matter with you?"
"They're not ruined!" Az argues back, flinging up one hand (fingertips searing from her touch, however light and easy).
"They are too!"
"Are not!"
"Are too!" Gwyn insists, with an actual stamp of her foot. She aims for his toes, but lets him see her doing it, and he's able to dodge before he can be semi-permanently incapacitated by the ball of her foot.
"I swear to the Cauldron, if you don't stop the violence - "
"Um." Cas says in the doorway.
Gwyn's eyes narrow. Her hand moves blindingly fast, and Cas ducks with a yelp as a handful of raw cookie dough flies past his ear and splatters all over the wall.
There's a sudden hush. Even Az's shadows pause, twitching in mid-air as if suddenly dreadfully uncertain.
"Oh, you're dead meat, Berdara."
Gwyn opens her mouth in the split-second before a handful of flour hits her smack in the face.
"Can I help?" Elain asks, round doe-eyes traveling, with a slightly scarred expression, from the explosion of flour all over the counter-tops to the half-melted balls of multi-coloured dough wilting on the tray. In less than five shrieking, scrambling, fighting, wrestling, food-throwing minutes, the entire kitchen is covered in flour, sugar, and half-melted butter, sprinkles and icing-sugar smeared everywhere, even on one wall. The elegant laughter and chatter from the living-room has died into half-horrified, half-bemused silence, every eye - even Nyx's, round in his tiny little face - fixed on the battle going on in the kitchen.
"Go to hell." Gwyn says merrily, busily rubbing sprinkles into Az' hair.
"…alright then."
"Do you two need adult supervision?" Rhys asks, lounging against the wall, as battle continues to wage some seven minutes later. Az flings a container of flour in his direction and then pivots back to the bigger threat, i.e. Gwyn on the warpath with handfuls of whipped cream, ignoring Rhys' strangled screeches about flour all over his clothes.
"That's it." Az declares, seizing the icing-bag and holding it over his head. "I'm cutting you off. You're cut off now."
Gwyn, predictably, lunges and he holds his arm higher, stretched out over the head to the fullest extent of his reach. "Not fair!" she protests, laughing. His free arm wraps, completely without his permission, around her waist, steadying her, though she doesn't need it. She's leaning easily into his body, completely comfortable with pressing against him, apparently blithely unaware - or just completely uncaring - that his heart has picked up as if he's just flung himself off a mountain, stomach swooping and turning flips under his rib-cage completely without his permission.
"Completely fair." he says breathlessly, stretching his arm up higher. She pops up onto her tiptoes, forcing him to swallow a groan as her body rubs along his, stretching her arm out until her fingertips first brush, and then scrabble at the backs of his knuckles. She's so tall, long-limbed and willowy as the nymph in her blood; he's barely an inch taller than her, both a blessing and a curse with her so close to him like this.
They're a mess, both of them. The kitchen looks half-destroyed. There's a stick of butter clinging to the ceiling, for the love of every divinity in the world. His fine adras, the long-sleeved tunic worn down to the knees with slits up the thighs, is so coated with flour that the rich, deep blue colour is all but obscured, dyed a thoroughly-ridiculous shade of light blue. There's a clump of icing-sugar on the back of his head, and his eyes are gritty with the amount of cinnamon clinging to his eyelashes, as if he face-planted directly into a heap of the fine powder at one point. She's no better, absolutely caked in baking supplies, hair half-soaked and matted-down on one side of her scalp with half a bottle of vanilla extract, almond paste smeared all over her face, fingers sticky and clammy with dried cream and spices. She smells heavenly; half like her own salted-lime scent, half like the snickerdoodle batter now strewn everywhere. The balls on the baking-sheets are melted little puddles tie-dyed into lurid streaks of blues and silvers and purples.
"I need it." she protests, pouting at him, still groping for the icing-bag and all its felonious uses. "I'll make a wish for it."
"You cannot use your Solstice wish on icing." he objects. She tugs at his bicep, and he weakens, elbow bending until she snatches the icing-bag out of his hand with a triumphant ha!
"I'm not using my wish on icing." she says with a sniff. "I'm using the icing to get my wish."
His brows furrow. "What wish do you need icing for?"
"Watch and learn, bat boy." She squeezes some of the icing out, and licks it off her finger, letting out a pleased little hum. He knows (from her squirting half the contents of the bag directly into his face as if wielding a water-cannon) that it tastes like the snickerdoodle dough, only stronger: a brilliant, tastebud-exploding blend of cinnamon and nutmeg and sugar, heady and rich and spicy as Solstice itself.
She takes another sample, hums, and then smears a generous amount over her lips with two fingers, coating her mouth creamy-white. He's laughing when she goes up on tiptoes again and presses that white-smudged mouth directly against his own.
His breath comes out in a strangled gasp, the explosion of sugar-spice-Gwyn hitting his tongue with the force of a hurricane, and then he's groaning deep in his chest, chasing after her mouth desperately. He feels her tongue swipe against his lips, a teasing little lick, and he follows suit, hungrily licking the icing off her lips. She giggles, and he cups her face in his hands, licking at her lips and then deep into her mouth, groaning again when she fists her hands into his hair and kisses him back.
How long she kisses him, he has no idea. He's vaguely aware of the press of the counter against the small of his back, the mess he must be making of her outfit, but nothing is real - nothing but Gwyn, her silky hair tangled around his fingers, her sharp little canines in his lower lip, her hands around the back of his neck, her mouth open and hungry and spicy-sweet against his own, kissing him deep and true and honest like she means it.
When she finally, finally pulls back, he's gasping for breath, chest heaving raggedly. She looks the same way he feels, pink-cheeked and sparkling, grinning ear-to-ear, lips bitten red and slick and wet...he groans at the sight and has to squeeze his eyes shut for a second. His shadows are whirling and screeching, around not only his head, but hers too.
"There," she murmurs, breath a warm whisper against hips lips. Her smile brightens, a small, sweet thing, a glimmer of secret, lovely beauty. In the shadow cast between the overhead light and his own head, the blue of her eyes is deeper, purer, richer.
"What?" he whispers back, the word barely made sound. There's a high-pitched ringing in his ears. He can't think. His arms exist only for curling tighter about her waist.
She trails her fingertips down his cheek, brushing over his lips. "That's what I wanted." she says, very softly. "That's my Solstice wish."
Mine too he thinks, fireworks exploding behind his eyes as she kisses him again, all sugar and sweet spice. Oh, gods, mine too.