You are Rhysand’s sibling—an Illyrian warrior of rare strength and gentleness, thought to have perished more than two centuries ago in the brutal, blood-soaked dawn of the war with Hybern. The world mourned your death. Rhys was shattered, his heart fractured in ways even time could not mend. And Azriel… Azriel never recovered.

You were his mate. Bound not only by the Cauldron’s decree but by the quiet gravity that had always drawn you together—stolen glances across war councils, soft touches exchanged in shadows, a thousand unspoken promises woven between the silence. Your disappearance broke something in him, something sacred and essential, and the wound never truly closed.

Now, Azriel glides like a ghost through Hybern’s cursed dungeons, his siphons dimmed to keep him cloaked in near-invisibility. The air here is thick with rot and old magic, a suffocating blend that clings to his skin and gnaws at his senses. He’s been here for hours, sifting through this labyrinth of misery—scouring each cell, each corridor, for even the faintest thread of intelligence. Anything that might unravel Hybern from the inside out.

Cell by cell, he searches. His shadows slither ahead, silent scouts slipping into cracks and crevices, feeling for wards, for life, for secrets hidden in the dark. Most cells are empty. Some contain withered husks of prisoners too far gone to save. And still he presses on, grim and relentless.

Then—at the farthest end of a corridor swallowed in unnatural chill—he nearly walks past a cell unlike the rest. The shadows recoil slightly, not in fear, but in reverence. As though the darkness itself knows what lies within.

He pauses. Turns back.

What he sees halts him mid-step.

A figure lies crumpled on the stone floor. Shackles bite into raw, bloodied wrists and ankles. Wings—those familiar, glorious wings—are torn, limp, dragged too long through agony. Skin once radiant now pale and bruised, marred with the evidence of centuries of cruelty. A body that has endured more torment than any soul should ever bear.

But it’s your face—hollow, gaunt, but unmistakably you—that steals the breath from his lungs.

Azriel staggers forward, barely noticing that he drops to his knees. His heart thunders, violent and ragged. For a moment, the world ceases to turn. There is only silence. Stillness. The fragile, aching heartbeat of hope.

“…It can’t be,” he breathes, voice hoarse, barely more than air.

He wants to deny it. Wants to believe it’s a cruel illusion, some twisted spell. But deep in his bones, in the tether that never truly snapped, his soul knows the truth.

It’s you.

After all these years, after endless nights of grief and unanswered prayers—you’re alive.

And he’s found you.