Sjm I Beg You - Tumblr Posts
sjm listen to my prayers and put this in ACOTAR 5
Azriel getting his first good nights sleep in a looooong time because Gwyn is there
I have no idea how long this is, but here you go! Some Gwynriel cuteness! Please like and reblog if you enjoy it ☺️☺️
The sound of a slippered foot whispering against the stone steps of the House of Wind woke Azriel with a start. Shadows spooled back to him on ribbons of translucent black, like the tide being called back to the horizon. If the oncoming footsteps hadn’t woken him, his shadows certainly would have, their chatter an insistent, excited hiss as they detailed exactly what they had saw.
The arched wooden door to his bedroom creaked open. Light spilled through the door—a wedge of blessed opportunity as Gwyn stepped over the threshold. She was dressed in a white long-sleeved nightgown that reached her ankles. The colour of the fabric made her hair appear more vibrant than ever—a brilliant, stunning copper that tumbled down past her shoulders.
Azriel’s shadows swarmed like bees, a buzzing excited mist that threw his face in and out of shadow but Gwyn didn’t turn and run—not yet, anyway.
Gwyn took a tentative step forward before she halted in her tracks, her eyes finally sweeping over the room to find him in bed and looking directly at her.
“I thought we weren’t training tonight?” Azriel asked. It was such a normal thing to ask—the only thing he could think of saying to stop her from bolting. Knew that it was not him that had scared her, but the setting.
“We aren’t,” Gwyn replied. Her eyes darted from their fixed location on the wall where faelight still flickered low, to the bed, where Azriel had propped himself up on an elbow, before they looked away again.
Gwyn flushed. Bit her lip. Barely noticed the way Azriel’s shadows began to reach towards her like vines, twining around her limbs, checking for injury, completely disregarding his silent barked order to remain by his side.
“Can’t sleep?” Azriel asked softly.
That beautiful chin lifted, and Gwyn’s teal eyes affixed Azriel with a sudden, determined stare. “No.”
“And you thought to come and tell me?”
“I—“ Gwyn started, but then her blush faded to make way for a small, surprised smile as she caught the faint, crooked upturn at one side of his mouth. “Well, yes.”
Another pause. Gwyn began to fiddle with the left sleeve of her gown. “Can I sleep here?”
It was the blunt, direct sort of question that Azriel was used to hearing from Nesta and it made him want to turn his ghost of a smile into something fuller and true. His brother’s mate was a good influence on Gwyn, pulling out a side of her that had always existed but had been squashed by trauma.
And whilst Azriel was sure—no, he damned well knew Priestesses weren’t supposed to share a bed with a lowly and scarred bastard like him—he couldn’t find it in himself to deny her. Found himself saying, of course, without a moments pause to what it might all mean the next morning.
There’d be no funny business, Azriel knew that, as he lay back down on the mattress, retracted his wings and stared at the ceiling. But Gwyn was a female who took on the challenge others set her. And if there wasn’t one to take on? Well, she assigned one to herself. This was clearly her latest challenge and he the chosen mark, and whilst the old Azriel would have denied Mor or Elain his bed, Gwyn was different. She had always been different, it had just taken him a long time to notice, and even longer to accept it.
Fabric swept across the red stones and then the mattress dipped, sheets moved. The distinct scent of water lilies wafted over to him and in his mind’s eye he saw a freshwater pond.
Azriel blinked the image away. Asked, “Warm enough?”
“I’m fine.”
He nodded. “Night then,” he said, and then with all the self-control he could muster, he turned over so she’d feel more at ease. Curved a wing over his body, shutting it all down before she moved out of her comfort zone.
Azriel didn’t expect to sleep at all, but he woke to brilliant winter sunshine filtering through the bedroom curtains. He’d moved in his sleep, rolling onto his other side, towards her. Only Gwyn was long gone, an indentation in the pillow and the cracked bedroom door the only indication she’d been there at all.
Later that morning, when he ascended the stairs onto the sparring plateau with a wide yawn, she was already there. Nesta was wrapping Gwyn’s hands ready for some hand-to-hand sparring, but Gwyn turned as if she’d sensed him coming. Smiled at him as she asked with a secretive gleam in her eye, “Had a good nights sleep, Shadowsinger?”