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To Taste Wisteria in Her Lullaby

A contribution to @elriel-month 2024

3,2K | Angst-Pining | Azriel POV | Shameless Garden Metaphors

This one shot is decicated to @tealeaves-and-rosepetals, @wingedblooms and @deathsweetblossoms my verdant darlings. The other day we were discussing our admiration of Elain as a plant lover, and well, I decided that Azriel needs to do the same thing. Low and behold, who does he find also wondering her gardens in the moonlight?

Sleep is a word he no longer remembers.

It was always an elusive hope.

Now it evades him entirely.

A midsummer moon spilled upon the tranquil terrace of the river manor. How two seasons had come to pass in what felt like a handful of days, Azriel did not know. Solstice was long gone. Starfall came and went.

Both had faded like dreams in the ether.

And here he was, half the year gone by.

An evening breeze sifted through the garden’s verge. Warm, decadent, indigo-rich with the scent of night.

Elain was here, in these gardens.

Not physically. But in every blossom, every delicate unfurling- she was here. Her foresight and planning, her craft in the groundwork and choice of species. Her innate ability to nourish and grow beautiful things from a dark, empty void of soil.

From a dark, empty void of a male heart, too.

Nights like tonight were… difficult for him. Listening to pleasant banter around the dinner table for hours, contributing to it himself in a false effort to bury his own misery. He thought the need for her might ebb, after so many months had passed, or at the very least, the mourning. That cold loss of what almost was.

But the need lingered instead.

It lingered, and lingered, and lingered, always.

The eden she had cultivated in the river manor was nothing shy of extraordinary. An illustrious, dream-ridden world of wisteria, lavendula, lily and countless flowers Azriel couldn’t wholly identify. Elain tended these courtyards in honor of Rhys and Feyre, with the grandeur of the high court in mind. The blossoms chosen were a range of whisper-blue, lilac and starlight, every possible shade in between. Yet while undeniably lovely, the royal gardens were a far cry from what she chose to grow at the townhouse.

Elain did not know, but Azriel occasionally ambled through that garden, too, in the dead of night. The townhouse felt closer to her heart than this place, somehow. Closer to who she was intrinsically. A little less refined beneath the surface. Etched with softer, wilder blooms far more tangled and lovely.

He strolled silently through the furthest of the terraces, shrouded beneath high walls of ivy. A clock somewhere far off chimed three in the morning and Azriel made an effort not to acknowledge the implication.

Sleep is a word he no longer remembers, after all.

In the quietest hours of the night, not even his shadows could seem to muster the energy to stay awake anymore. They lulled at his shoulders, slumbering for the most part, tracing silent footfalls.

Which is why, as he rounded a corner lost in thought, the last thing he anticipated was colliding headlong into another person in the dead of night.

But there she was.

“Oh,” Elain murmured with soft surprise, halting her quiet steps.

She was only a half-breath away, just as taken aback as he was. The reflection of a night sky glittering in the sleepless chestnut of her eyes. So close that Azriel could count the stars within them.

They all looked as lost and lonely as those within his own.

She was clad in a soft champagne shift, a semi-transparent shawl wrapped around her slight shoulders. Her hair was-

unbound.

And the whisper of her soft curves could be seen through the moonlight.

Fuck, this was a cruel sort of dream.

His own descent into purgatory always began this way. With her, like this, in his arms. With his lips tracing a tender trail over every inch of her skin. With her being then stolen away from him by some cursed hand of fate he could never again reach.

Loose, natural waves of curl illuminated her silhouette in the dark hush of the garden. The need to run his hands through those curls would be his demise.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she explained by way of greeting.

Azriel swallowed, understanding all too well.

“I know the feeling,” he offered frankly in return.

Silence abounded.

Elain lowered her gaze momentarily, color blooming across her cheek. Azriel tried not to brand the memory of her this way- unbound, moonlit, and half-dressed- into his hindbrain for the next 700 years.

“I was just admiring your work,” he murmured, glancing to the nearby trellis.

A half-honest truth.

“I myself was doing the opposite,” she softly mused, leaning to study a stunning assortment of moonlily. “There’s much that could be improved, anyway. Though the rosaceae and mints have turned out nicely this year despite the late snow.”

Immediately, he knew Elain was exhausted. He could hear it in the drawn timbre of her voice.

He wanted to take her away.

Far away.

Somewhere he could be allowed to trace the skin of her entire body with the soft petals of her perfect primrose blooms. And whisper, all the while, that she didn’t know how to grow something that wasn’t breathtaking.

Azriel said nothing, ignoring the songs of impossible dreams.

His shadows were awake now, observing the source of those songs. Curiously peering at her from their swirling perch.

He could hear wisteria in the lullaby of her. He could hear tiredness, and soil-ridden hands, and an ache so deep it put the sea to shame.

The song of her was as siren-dark as it always had been. Deep, haunting, and killing him slowly.

“I can’t say there is anything I would change,” he offered, “about this sanctuary.”

Elain was always most comfortable this way, speaking of plants, when other words could not be found. Or simply remained unspoken. It was a language they both knew well after countless late evenings at the townhouse. Plants were always a reason, or an excuse, they had to stay awake all night together.

That, it seemed, hadn’t changed.

“Are there any that you admire most tonight?” Elain asked quietly, stepping down a long wisteria corridor. He followed, unable to resist the urge. They slowly strolled, side by side, beneath a rippling sea of violet reverie.

Azriel motioned to a cluster of delicate flowers on the corridor’s trellis with notched, pale petals. “This is one I admire often,” he murmured.

Night Phlox.

He knew as much from the library’s botanical volumes. Rich, detailed diagrams he was fond of combing through now again. He made a point to borrow those books every so often over the course of last winter. Just to know, just to understand the complexity of what exactly Elain was accomplishing that no one in the godsforsaken world seemed to notice.

Gardening was hellish work.

Elain finished her day bent, bleeding, and begrudgingly exhausted more often than not. No one seemed to recognize the toll it had on her. The least he could do was learn why she chose to undertake it all.

What he discovered, in the end, was that she liked the labor. She liked the marks the verdant battles left behind. She wanted to earn the beauty of a bloom, rather than being given it freely.

And Azriel began falling in love with her as a result.

“Phlox,” she offered, eyeing the flower and confirming his suspicion. “It has only just begun its course for summer, but soon you’ll see it everywhere I should think.”

“This, too, is rather taking,” Azriel strolled on, now admiring a pale blue primrose.

Elain nodded in agreement, tucking a curl behind her pointed ear. “Those are some of my favorites,” she admitted softly.

The pair crossed the end of the corridor, entering a secluded grove at the far end of the courtyard, lined with high walls of greenery. Azriel paused before a lush partition of fragrant, ivory flowers rustling in the wind.

“In regards to your question,” he murmured, “this is what captures me most,”

Elain’s gaze settled on the blooms and she swallowed, the moment hesitant.

“Jasmine,” she noted quietly. “Night blooming jasmine. Some call it poisonberry.”

“Lady of the night,” he added gently, looking at her now.

There was nothing in the world that carried a scent so lovely as that which lingered on her skin. This flower was making an honorable effort.

So there was no other choice, really.

He wondered if she knew, truly knew. And had a feeling she did.

Elain’s fingers brushed the soft petals. “What do you admire about it?” she asked carefully.

His throat bobbed.

“It is, of course, far more beautiful than the rest,” he said, brushing scarred knuckles over the jasmine stems. “But moreover it is prone to waking the moment the world stops paying attention. When all the world sleeps, this creature dreams,” he noted. “I find that rather…. alluring.”

“Alluring,” Elain repeated, a soft murmur.

He thought she might shy away, but she did not. He certainly would not. Not with her so near, and so decadent, and so sinfully lovely in the moonlight.

If that made him a self-serving bastard, so be it.

“You know more about plants than you let on, I think,” Elain muttered wryly.

Azriel’s mouth curled upwards. “You know more about most things than you let on.”

She shrugged, a grin now blossoming on her cheek, which might be the end of him. Elain was staring up at him now, openly. More pointedly, at the place just between his ear and his neck.

“You have them too,” she remarked.

Azriel swallowed, tracking her gaze. He realized she was speaking of the curls nipping against his skin, courtesy of the dew-kissed night.

“A gift from my mother,” he murmured back. “When it’s damp, anyway.”

His own eyes lingered on the ends of her long curls, pooled over her breasts, kissing against the small of her waist. Azriel craved every piece of her they could touch and he could not.

“I might also add that the scent of this particular flower is the only which bids me sleep at night,” he murmured, glancing to her beneath hooded eyes.

“Is that so?” she shifted marginally closer.

He nodded in return.

“Perhaps you might take some to bed,” she offered, eyes doe-wide. “I could cut a few stems for you.”

Azriel hesitated, but did not tear his gaze away. “Our High Lord may not approve.”

“Of taking a flower that soothes you to sleep?”

He swallowed.

“Of taking that which does not belong to me.”

Elain’s brow furrowed. She turned away, the rawness of those words having fracturing the fragile thing between them. He was desperate to have it back the moment it was gone.

She again regarded the wall of night-blooming jasmine.

“It’s true, jasmine has flowering patterns that are rather unusual. And if it is planted just days too early or too late in the season, it might wither before ever blooming. The plant is rather… delicate that way.”

“I’m not sure anything could quell the beauty of such a creature.”

Elain exhaled softly, bitterly. “I wish I had your confidence,” she uttered. “A great many enemies oppose the bloom. Disease, insects, unexpected shifts in weather- ” a pause. “I would have thought north of the wall they would be better adapted to the climate, but here, they face the same struggles they did in the human lands.”

Azriel measured the sadness in her eyes and hated himself for being the cause.

“Perhaps there are other foes aside from the usual elements contributing to their suffering,” he countered.

She looked at him keenly. “Such as?”

He swallowed, wondering how direct or indirect to be. And because he was exhausted and half in love with her, his brooding nature won out over reason.

“Invasive species taking root where they do not belong,” he muttered darkly. A terse pause. “Foxglove comes to mind.”

Elain seemed to bite back a laugh despite her own exhaustion.

“Yes invasives can indeed be problematic,” she tried and failed not to grin, “though only if the soil is willing to host them.”

Azriel swallowed, unwilling to muster a response that didn’t sound murderous.

Elain seemed to notice. And carried on gracefully, as she always did.

“I’ve found the soil of the night court rather unforgiving, anyway. When a plant roots here,” she met his eyes, “it is steadfast in its choice, no matter how ill-fated.”

His heart stopped beating for a moment.

Something aching reached for him from within her gaze, and it nearly split him in two. “What truly makes the bloom suffer most of all in the end is a lack of proper nourishment, Azriel,” she said quietly.

They weren’t speaking about jasmine anymore. They weren’t even speaking of jasmine to begin with.

He knew it. She knew it. And both seemed unable to look away.

“Why do you not find sleep?” he asked lowly.

Elain swallowed, lips parting with an answer that seemed stuck in her throat. She looked at him with soft eyes then.

“Why do you not?”

Silence followed. Heavy with sorrow and longing and all the rest.

“Elain,” his gaze shuttered, his voice barely audible.

“Was it-” she took a shaking breath, “-was it truly so wrong? So shameful to you?”

The words tore a true, gaping hole into his already-ruined heart. He stepped towards her instinctively, unable to keep from doing so.

“Nothing could be further from the truth.”

Hope bloomed eternal in her eyes and he needed to touch her again. The need was so arresting he couldn’t seem to move, on the brink of falling into an abyss.

Elain registered that need. And his inability to see it through.

So she took it upon herself to feed the need instead.

The bliss and agony of her touch was his undoing.

A gentle reach of her pale hands up to the base of his neck, resting her arms there as she twined his silk-black curls between her fingers. His hands snaked to her waist and relief coursed through him like nothing else at the warmth of her beneath his hands.

This is where she belonged.

Azriel lowered his head against hers, hazel eyes fluttering closed as that honey-rich, jasmine scent soothed every wrecked piece of him left jagged in her absence.

The silence between them fraught with a thousand lonely starlit nights.

“There it is,” Elain whispered.

Azriel murmured an inarticulate noise in question.

“The quiet,” she said, stroking the skin of his cheek. “How I’ve missed it, with you.”

She was incurably exquisite.

“I can’t,” he began, wondering if he was a fool for saying it aloud. “I can’t seem to share it with anyone else.”

“Nor can I,” she returned, without a moment’s pause.

A handful of words beneath the moonlight and he was already doing everything he swore to the forgotten gods he wouldn’t do again. Inhibition was a ghost on the wind.

Those gods had forsaken him long ago anyway.

He stayed like that for quite some time, with her beneath his hands. Listening to that blissful quiet. She stayed with him, hidden beneath the garden walls. Azriel had no idea how long they spent that way, but it would never be long enough. He opened his eyes again eventually.

And then, in those most endearing moment he had ever witnessed in five centuries of lonely brooding-

Elain yawned.

She haphazardly attempted to rub the sleep gathering in her eyes away before looking up to him softly.

He was ruined.

“I should bid you goodnight,” he murmured politely. His hands were still on her waist and they did not move.

“Should you?” she asked, taking her hand within his own.

This was by far the cruelest thing he had ever deigned to dream.

She pulled away, and every muscle in his body wailed in protest, though her hand was still wrapped in his own. Elain again studied the wall of jasmine with tired eyes.

“You say the scent helps you sleep,” she murmured. “You will not take it with you, so why not stay where it is strongest?”

Azriel knew he ought to contest, make some flimsy excuse, walk away.

“Elain-” he rasped, but the words went nowhere.

“Stay,” she whispered. “Just stay.”

Elain lowered herself to the garden floor, leaning against that wall of jasmine.

Two hours until dawn, and no fight left in him tonight.

Azriel succumbed to the pull of her small hand downwards. He sank to the ground, pressing his back against the wall of jasmine aside her.

Elain wasted no time. In a series of impossibly beautiful events, she curled into his lap- nestling her head against him and murmuring a sigh of relief as if she, too, needed this.

Her shawl was lumped haphazardly around her, so he carefully untangled it, wrapping it neatly before tucking her in close.

She stared up at him, and the stars in her eyes were no longer lost or lonely.

They were bright.

They were beautiful.

They were blooming.

The melody of her was immeasurably lovely, lulling his shadows back to slumber. A few of them began dancing over her skin, murmuring soft lullabies, enveloping them both from sight.

Elain loosened a soft, pleased noise at their sleepful sound.

“Do they always do this for you?” she asked carefully. “Sing you to sleep?”

“Often, yes.”

A quiet pause.

“Alluring,” she quipped.

His mouth quirked upwards and he ran a tender hand down the length of her back. As if this wasn’t a dream. As if she was his, and his alone, tonight.

Elain responded by gently reaching upwards to carefully tuck a single bloom of jasmine into the muss of his curls.

“I’d like to imagine feeling your shadows every night, like this,” she uttered, voice husky with sleep.

Azriel swallowed a low, strangled noise in his throat.

He took a long moment. Maybe two. She nestled closer to him, as if knowing why, finding his hand at her spine and encouraging it to stroke her all the way down once again.

“Do you know how often I’ve dreamt of you, this way?” Azriel’s words were quiet. His other hand now making its way to the base of her neck. He allowed his scent to wrap around her, truly, knowing he’d glamor it away by morning.

He wanted more, he wanted everything, but somehow, this was enough.

“I feel safe in my dreams with you,” is all she said in return. Sleep imminent in her voice. “I feel safer now than I ever have, I think.”

Fuck, that did something to him. Curled something low within him to life. Something male and possessive and needy and long since abandoned.

“You are safer with me than anyone else in this world.”

The words were a vow, carried on a dark wind. A promise that he would level the universe with cold fury to keep her from harm if need be.

His hand slipped to the root of her hair and her lips parted with a sigh as he tenderly rubbed the base of her neck.

“I know it’s impossible. I know the stars are set against it. But maybe we could just pretend,” she murmured softly.

“Pretend?” he echoed, his heart beating slowly now.

Elain looked up to him, eyes dazed with lost dreams.

“That we belong to one another.”

She was asleep in five minutes. Maybe less.

Azriel finally ran scarred fingers through her curls and savored every last moment as if they might be his last. There was nothing but the jasmine-sweet melody of her crooning in his ear. Pale and bright and spilling like moonlight over the darkest nights of his life.

In the last hour before dawn he lowered himself beside her, wrapping her fully into the warmth of his chest. He cradled Elain close, and she cradled him right back, hidden beneath a veil of greenery.

“Azriel,” Elain murmured, as the birds began their luting songs in the nearby trees. He hummed a quiet, deep noise in answer.

“I’m not pretending,” she whispered.

He pulled her close, closer than he knew was possible. And as the soft breath of dawn peeked over a far horizon, he did not let go.

“Neither am I,” Azriel whispered back.

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