[Author's Note: So I decided that from now on I'm going to put link to music that helps me into mood as I write every chapter. Feel free to listen to them as you read on. Let me know what you think! Happy Reading]

***

“Nan?”

Thamrin’s small, hushed voice was filled with confusion.

“Yes, ion nín?” Arwen responded as she put a blanket under his chin before slipping under the same blanket next to him. She watched him softly as his small fingers played with the trimmings of the soft blue blanket.

“Why do we sleep here?” he wondered, his big, icy green eyes stared up at the ceiling of her small apothecary.

“Because our house is in need of a heavy repair,” Arwen answered lightly, trying her best to gently explain their situation to the five year old.

“The ugly heads destroyed our home,” grumbled Thamrin. The little boy pouted, his eyes watered slightly as he remembered the house that they lived in for the past couple years. “I liked our home.”

Arwen’s expression fell.

“I liked it too,” she agreed wistfully, adjusting her head on top of her makeshift pillow made of several pieces of clothing that they had left in the shop. Arwen ran her fingers on top of Thamrin’s head, soothingly brushing his hair, “Do not fret, malthen lass nín. Our house might be destroyed, but no one can ever take our home from us.”

At his nana’s words, Thamrin frowned. “I don’t understand,” he mumbled while playing with a strand of his nana’s dark hair.

“A house is physical. Yes, we lost ours today, but our home remains. My home is wherever I am with you,” she explained, pulling Tham into her arms and hugged him. She planted a loving kiss on his temple. “A house can always be rebuilt. But you,” Arwen smiled playfully as she gently flicked Thamrin’s nose, making the Illyrian boy giggled, “There is only one you in all of the world, and you are irreplaceable. You are my most precious thing in the world.”

Tham’s green eyes lit up at the words that his nana uttered to him.

“Gi melin (I love you), nana. I promise I will be the best boy in the world for you.”

His innocent promise warmed her heart. Arwen chuckled in adoration at her son.

“You already are, my golden leaf.”

Thamrin grinned, showing off his white, toothy smile. Arwen lightly pinched his chubby cheek, smiling at her son despite her fatigue.

“We will stay here in the shop for the time being,” she replied. “I know it is not ideal, cramped on the floor with me between these humongous cabinets, as you put it,” Tham laughed at the way his word ‘humongous’ sound like in his nana’s tongue, “But as soon as I have the money, we will rebuild our house again. And this time, you get to choose the color to paint on your bedroom.”

Thamrin’s excited cheer broke the silence. Arwen laughed when he began bombarding her with breathy, excited questions about the possibilities of colors that he can paint on his walls.

“…Yellow! Oh no no no what about green! Yess yess I want green! Please nana can I have green walls?!”

Arwen gave him a playful cringe and closed her ears from Thamrin’s loud squeals.

“I can’t hear you,” she feigned, looking at him with only one eye opened.

“I want GREEN!” Tham declared in a high pitched voice, then with a battle cry he threw his arms around Arwen as if tackling her.

The female yelped softly, but not surprised by her son’s action. Usually, she would scold him for screaming in someone’s ear, but this time, she needed to hear his laughter. Needed to hear the happy sounds he made over small, good things in the world. She wrapped her arms around her son, laughing merrily with him.

It took Thamrin an hour more to finally fall into slumber. Only then Arwen let herself to fall to sleep with him in her arms.

A knock suddenly rouse her from her sleep. She blinked. The sun was already up. She felt as if she only closed her eyes for an hour, but in fact it had been five hours—more than enough for her, but her fatigue made her feel like sleeping for another day. She dozed off again.

The knocks grew slightly impatient. This woke Arwen completely. With a soft sigh she untangled herself from Thamrin’s hug, being careful not to wake him as she got up while avoid bumping into the cabinet next to her.

Arwen no longer had her cloak. Despite the wards around the Market Squares area where her shop was, she felt cold that Winter morning. She rubbed her hands together and floated tiredly towards her glass door. Cassian stood there, eyes calculating and grim as he studied her as she quickly unlatched the four locks on her shop’s door.

“Cassian,” she murmured in greetings. The Illyrian general blinked at his name coming out of the Hybern’s Heiress mouth. “What’s the matter? Is it Azriel?”

Cassian stared at her. He thought Arwen wouldn’t want to have anything to do with Az or any of them anymore. Heck, he still wasn’t sure why she helped Az. Or the people of Velaris for that matter. But hearing the genuine worry in her soft voice as she waited for his answer made him question everything about the unusual high fae before him.

“He’s alright. Still in and out of it, but he’s getting better,” he reassured her, sending a grateful look towards her. “But I’m here for that little plant that he supposed to chew.”

“Athelas,” she finished for him and nodded once. The high fae welcomed him in despite the “CLOSED” tag on her door. “Do come in, but please be quiet. My son is still sleeping,” she told him as she moved aside to give him space to enter her tiny apothecary.

“I’m sorry about your house,” concluded Cassian as he entered the apothecary.

“Well, it is what it is,” replied Arwen, “We’re not the only ones to lose our homes. Besides, I’m grateful enough that our shop is still intact.”

Cassian nodded silently and took in the shop as Arwen closed the door behind him. His eyes scanned the surroundings, firstly finding the Illyrian boy snoring softly, tangled in a soft blue blanket on the floor between the empty cabinets that usually were full of medicinal products.

“Seems like business is doing good. Considering,” he quipped, “Someone obviously did a shopping spree this morning,” he gestured to the empty cabinets.

A small smile of amusement slid to Arwen’s lips at Cassian’s remark. “I wish,” was her only reply.

“Then where are all your products?”

“In the Town House.”

“You gave it all away?” he concluded with a surprise in his tone. “Why?”

“The need for them is great,” answered Arwen. She noticed the slight frown on the Illyrian general’s face. “Do not worry. I will not be broke,” she explained with an amused tone, “I can always make more of them. Besides, I consider it a marketing strategy.”

She went to a cabinet at the corner of the shop and looked for her stash of dried Athelas, and her set of mortar and pestle. “By the time the city is up and running again, they will already know that medicines actually work, not just for the humans.”

Cassian snorted. “It’s not like we’re as vulnerable and fragile as humans are,” he mumbled to himself.

“No. I don’t believe so,” she closed the cabinet door and turned once she found what she was looking for. “But this is the harsh reality. We live in a tough world, full of peril. And it never hurt to be prepared. Mortals and immortals alike.”

Cassian mulled her words in his head as he watched her grind the plant with a mortar and a pestle.

“Given the recent situation, you’re not wrong,” he muttered, folding his arms in front of his broad chest as he let his eyes wander somewhere else, away from the fair high fae as the memory of the attack came haunting him again.

The deception. The deaths. The ruins. Azriel.

What would happen to the city if he and his family had failed to realize that they were lured out of the city a moment longer than they did?

He just couldn’t.

Cassian tapped his feet nonchalantly as he let his mind wander to his ‘what if’ territory.

“You did what you are able,” said Arwen, pausing briefly on her work to look at him, before continuing again, “Don’t carry the burden of the dead with you.”

Cassian was sure that his expression didn’t give him away. He shifted his weight to his other foot, now realizing that the Hybern’s Heiress, though mostly kept to herself, was actually observant too.

“You yourself saw quite a lot of deaths two days ago. Don’t tell me you don’t carry the burden of the dead with you either,” he countered.

“I mourn them,” she reassured him, “But I’ve let them go. I have to.”

“Why?”

“Because death is just another path that everyone will have to take. Eventually. It is the way of the flesh, Cassian.”

“You sound like you have seen a lot of it. Death. This was not your first time.”

Arwen gave him a nod. “As you have.”

“Your father’s victims?”

Cassian swore inwardly for his insensitive question the moment he saw Arwen’s shoulder stiffen. But it was brief, and soon she resumed to her work that had almost done.

“My father was fond of making such thing as torture a spectacle. But most deaths that I saw was a result of war.”

Arwen stole a glance at Cassian, then drifted her gaze away from him when he caught her eyes.

“You were aiding Hybern’s army.”

There was a gleam in Cassian’s eyes that otherwise would make his enemies run for their lives. He knew what Arwen was capable of. How many lives she could save. Heck, even Madja got nothing on her. Now the thought of someone with such abilities such as Arwen’s aiding the wicked army of his enemy—

She looked up to him. “I am on the side of life,” she insisted. “As a healer, I am bound by the oath to save lives. Even when you think they are not worth saving.”

Cassian looked at her glumly. He knew of this healer’s oath. Even Madja took the same oath as well. “Healers…” he grumbled, making Arwen crack an amused smile.

“How come we never heard of you before?” he wondered.

“My father hid me from the world, lock me up with my mother. Even as a child, only a handful of servants and sentries knew about my existence,” she recounted, “Growing up, my mother taught me the healing arts of her people. Then there was the time when my father waged war with the High Lords. He suffered losses too. But my mother persuaded him to let her help. So I came along. War was probably the only time we were allowed out of the palace to aid the wounded.”

Cassian looked like he was about to interrogate her some more. While she wouldn’t refuse to tell him about her past, she rather not to. Arwen quickly wrapped her work up and packed the Athelas powder that she made for him.

Cassian, despite her initial refusal of his money, managed to force her to let him pay for the medicine. By the time he arrived at the estate, he found Elain running out of the house, tears streaked her eyes.

“We need Arwen!” she cried, a blubbering mess of panic and fear. Cassian immediately knew what happened. “Az is—”

Rude he might be, but he could definitely apologize to Elain later for winnowing away in the middle of her rant. Cassian winnowed inside Arwen’s apothecary, almost knocking the female off as she turned and bumped into him. He needed only look at her and say Azriel’s name to let her know of the emergency. She wasted no time in taking Tham in her arms and let Cassian winnow them to the estate.

When she got into Azriel’s room, Madja was already at his side, panic painted her face pale as she hopelessly tried to pin the Shadowsinger to his bed while seizure rocked his body.

Arwen held Azriel steady while inspecting the injury on his wings and hissed at the sight of those black veins. The hex might be lifted off of his fëa, but the remains of the poison still managed to cling to his hröa.

“Get Thamrin out of here,” she told Elain who quickly grabbed the little boy who was busy gaping at the spymaster’s violent seizure.

The tourniquet along the base of his wings had failed to contain the unexpectedly spreading poison. With Madja’s assistance, she managed to add another tourniquet, tying it around his arm and shoulder firmly while she linked herself again to Azriel’s fëa, tethering him to the world of the living as she treated him.

***

“Come live with us.”

The words coming off of the High Lady next to her stopped Arwen briefly. Then as quickly as she paused, she resumed her work again. Her graceful, feminine hands were dripping as she squeezed water off of a small towel and gently placed it on Azriel’s slightly burning forehead.

“I am at your disposal at any time,” she answered with that lulling voice of hers, “If you need me, you can always send for me. But I can not be here all the time.”

“Your awfully tiny shop is not a proper living space, especially for a child.”

Arwen pulled her azure blue eyes away from Rhysand’s violet ones, choosing to observe the unconscious Shadowsinger instead. She felt dejected to the fact that these people had identified her weakness so fast: Thamrin.

And she resented that.

“It is not for you to decide. I can hold my own keep.” The finality in her voice was only mildly cold as she answered, but it was enough to made Rhys cringe inwardly.

“Name your price,” Rhysand bargained, his eyes bleak and grim. He looked like a powerful god of darkness; albeit a tired one. Arwen couldn’t blame him. The attack did leave many of them restless these couple of nights now. “I’ll take whatever bargain you want me to make in order to make you stay here until he is fully healed.”

“I want nothing from you.”

Mother knows that there was no way she was going to stay at that estate. She still very much resented the place. The memory of waking up in that beautifully sunlit estate after the three months of her dark imprisonment still haunted her.

Arwen hastened her work, gathering whatever supplies she had lying on the table after treating Azriel, ready to leave.

“Make sure he takes the potion, check the bandages. If anything changes—“

She made a gesture to leave, but a hand caught hers, halting her.

“Please,” Rhysand insisted softly. His eyes—they weren’t just bleak and tired. No. Those violet eyes burned; and for the first time Arwen saw that the High Lord was scared. But not for himself. “He is my brother. I almost lost him again today. We were lucky Cassian could find you so quickly. Next time he might not be so.”

There was genuine worry in his eyes, in his entire expression. The High Lord of the Night Court looked at Arwen with a look that she could only describe as a look of someone who was being burned alive on the inside. “He’s my family. Please,” he insisted again, pleading. “Help him. I’ll do anything.”

That last bit made Feyre looked at Rhysand. Their eyes met briefly in what Arwen assumed a silent conversation through their mating bond. Then those violet eyes were on her again.

“Anything?” Arwen inquired.

Rhysand clenched his jaw briefly as he gave a stiff nod.

“Rhysand,” warned Amren who had listened to their exchange from the corner of Azriel’s room. Her silvery eyes darted to Arwen in a way that sent ice down her spine. Rhysand ignored his Second-In-Command, keeping a pair of expectant eyes on Arwen.

The sound of Thamrin’s muted laughter from the garden outside entered her ears. She cast a glance towards the glass door separating them from Thamrin and Elaine who were merrily playing hide and seek in that serene garden of flowers. Arwen’s feet moved on their own accord; the movement effortlessly graceful as she peered outside towards where Tham disappeared beneath the bushes of yellow flowers.

The light of her life. The things she would do for him.

Feyre watched the back of the Hybern’s Heiress with a growing anxiety. Half of Arwen’s inky black hair were up in an elegant, loose updo while the rest of them cascaded gently towards her back in gentle waves. Her hair reminded Feyre of a fine black silk being spread against the soft lavender colored dress that she wore. The material were like a caress of color against her fair, flawless skin. It hung loosely around her slender, lovely frame. Though plain and decent, Arwen’s dress still managed to highlight the female’s feminine curves.

Her frame was an artistic silhouette against the soft sunray coming off of the glass window. Suddenly Feyre felt like painting her. She would call the painting ‘The Eye of the Day’.

“There’s something that I need.”

Amren who had stood up from the small table, suddenly made her way next to Feyre and shot her a look.

This better not blow up in our faces, said Amren through her sharp gaze. Feyre didn’t disagree. Assuming that Arwen wasn’t a bad person was one thing. But making a bargain with her, a Hybern’s Heiress, was another thing.

“Name it,” responded Rhysand.

The exquisite female finally turned to look at the trio. The simple, mundane movement seemed so graceful that Feyre started to compare her to Ianthe—the evil, two faced priestess that used her beauty and grace to manipulate others, especially men. The lying bitch was the one that tried to manipulate her as she wasted away in Tamlin’s court. The one who tried to seduce Rhysand. And Lucien, and who knows how many others.

The thought of Ianthe sickened Feyre. But while Ianthe’s grace was forced, made up, Arwen’s was something rather innocent. It was a part of her. An unexplainable grace that the High Lady herself doubted that the Hybern’s Heiress even think or aware of. It was something natural like breathing.

Ianthe would die of jealously if she saw Arwen—if she hadn’t died already.

A pair of old, azure blue eyes wandered slightly, as if searching for something behind Rhysand. The Hybern’s Heiress’ gaze was adamant, trapping, yet mild and gentle at the same time. Feyre had never quite seen anything like it before.

“I require an item.”

***

[Author’s Note: When I said ‘slow build’ I didn’t quite mean it to be this long tbh XD But fret not! We will see more Az and Arwen in next chapter. Stay tuned, and thank you so much for reading. Please don’t be a silent reader! Your input and comments give me the motivation to keep writing. Looking forward for your thoughts! Cheers ❤️]