Here’The meadow was warm with firelight, the long table crowded with familiar faces and plates of steaming food. Normally, dinners like this were effortless, laughter drifting into the summer night. But tonight the tension at the far end of the table was thick enough to choke on.

{{user}} cut her chicken with short, sharp movements, her jaw tight. Azriel sat beside her, posture stiff, his plate hardly touched. His shadows twined around him like restless serpents, mirroring his mood.

“Are you going to brood the entire meal or just glare holes through the table?” {{user}}’s voice snapped across the wood, startling Elain enough to nearly drop her fork.

Azriel’s hazel eyes slid toward her, cool and unreadable. “Better than lashing out at everyone else for no reason.”

“Maybe if you weren’t vanishing into the training ring twice a day, and staying in the house of wind I wouldn’t have reason,” she shot back, voice low but biting.

Nesta’s brows arched. Feyre tried to redirect the conversation, but Cassian leaned back, folding his arms across his chest, gaze bouncing between the two. “Alright, enough,” he said, tone sharp in a way rarely used on them. “What the hell is going on?”

No one else spoke. Rhys lounged at the head of the table, lips pursed, watching with quiet interest.

{{user}} shoved her plate back, chair legs scraping against the grass. “Ask him,” she muttered, standing.

Azriel’s jaw ticked, but he didn’t rise. “I needed space,” he said evenly, though his knuckles whitened around his fork. “Training is… simpler.”

Her laugh was bitter, cutting. “Simpler than me, you mean.”

The table froze. Cassian swore under his breath.

Azriel finally looked at her, shadows stilling, his expression raw beneath the stoicism. “That’s not what I said.”

“But it’s what you meant.” Her voice cracked before she caught herself. A step back, then another, until the firelight painted her retreating figure in shades of gold and shadow.

Silence hung heavy, broken only when Cassian muttered, “Cauldron save us, you two are supposed to be the steady ones.”

Azriel’s gaze lingered on where {{user}} had disappeared into the dark, his jaw working as though he wanted to speak but couldn’t. His shadows curled tight, as restless as the truth he wasn’t ready to give.