CHAPTER 35 Wren
CHAPTER 35
Wren
‘The powdered florets of lavender can be made into a tea or oil for treating an array of anxieties’
– The Green Apothecary: A Guide to Medicinal Plants
A T LAST THEY entered the city, and Wren had never been gladder to see an infirmary in all her life. For all her bravado, she wasn’t sure she could stand another second trapped in the saddle with Torj, molten desire pulsing between her legs. With the scent of him wrapped around her and the hard wall of muscle – among other things – behind her, she couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe.
Which was fucking ridiculous. Not only had she spent the last two years cursing him for sabotaging her work and interfering with her ledger, but he was currently driving her to insanity at Drevenor , for Furies’ sake. Not to mention he was a Warsword of the midrealms. That was Thea’s thing. Not hers.
Wren took a deep breath and gathered herself. It was a minor physical attraction, that was all. It could be stamped out if she tried hard enough.
‘Wow.’ Dessa whistled, swaying in her own saddle on the horse beside them. ‘They’re really staring at you.’
Panic seizing her by the throat, Wren scanned their surroundings. It was instantly apparent that Dessa wasn’t addressing her, but rather the Bear Slayer, who had drawn their stallion to a halt and jumped down. Just like everywhere else they’d been, people gawked at him. He was the silver-haired warrior who’d closed a portal to a world of nightmares, who had saved them in the shadow war. Word about him had spread like wildfire.
And now, people were staring as Torj reached for her, offering his hand to help her down.
Wren batted him away. ‘I can get down on my own.’
Torj shrugged. ‘Suit yourself.’
Of course, she had vastly overestimated the height of the warhorse. The drop to the ground jarred her knees painfully. But she said nothing, not even as a glimmer of amusement sparked in the warrior’s deep-blue gaze.
At least he had the good sense not to comment.
Wren turned her attention to the building before them, the timeworn stones of the hospice bathed in the soft glow of the morning sun. Statues of strange, menacing creatures were perched at the bases of arched windows, as though surveying the world below and guarding the inhabitants of the infirmary against harm. The stone figures and the building itself bore the scars of countless years and seasons.
The wooden doors adorned with wrought iron fixtures flew open, and Farissa greeted them, wearing an apron smeared with blood.
‘Don’t just stand there,’ she ordered. ‘The other teams have already been assigned their wards. Zavier’s waiting for you.’
‘How is everyone already here?’ Wren said, climbing the stairs. ‘We’re not late.’
‘If you’re not early, you’re late.’
That was the military influence of Thezmarr coming through, a sentiment Wren had never bought into. Why set a time at all if one meant something else entirely?
‘You changed the schedule,’ Torj pointed out from behind Wren and Dessa, having handed their horses off to an attendant.
‘Still annoyed about that, Elderbrock? I’d have thought Warswords were more adaptable.’
Wren had to suppress a smile at that. The crease between Torj’s dark brows deepened, but Farissa was already leading them at a charge through the ground floor of the hospice.
‘You’ll be in the women’s wing today,’ she told them.
Wren glanced back at the giant of a man behind her. ‘Is that the best idea given the present company?’ she asked her former mentor. From some of the previous work they’d done together, she knew that often women didn’t like a male presence.
‘It has been cleared,’ Farissa threw over her shoulder. ‘In any case, for the most part, you’ll be mixing salves and following instructions in a workshop at the back, not administering medicines. Wren, tell me, how are your experiments faring?’
Taken aback by having this addressed in front of the others, Wren hesitated, brow furrowing. ‘It’s early.’
‘But you’re making progress?’ Farissa pressed.
‘A little. I need more samples of the substance to work with. I also haven’t exactly got an endless supply of royal blood to test on...’
Farissa pursed her lips. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
Wren shot her a dubious look.
‘Keep working,’ Farissa told her. ‘The resources of the academy are at your disposal.’
Wren could feel Torj and Dessa’s curious eyes on her, but she said no more, simply following Farissa through the labyrinth of the infirmary, trying to set her mind to whatever task lay ahead.
Farissa had been a Master Alchemist since long before Wren was born, and though it wasn’t common knowledge, at least not outside of Thezmarr, her specialty was women’s health and welfare. Which was why Wren wasn’t overly surprised when they were taken through a closed-off section of the hospice; she had visited places like it before.
They entered a large room with a few dozen beds lining the walls, curtains drawn around some of them. It was quiet here, despite the squalling of a handful of infants; a quiet that ran like a deep, dark river through the halls. She met the vacant gazes of the women, some shadowed with bruising, some cradling broken arms...
At the back of the room, Zavier was waiting. Wren expected some sort of barb from him about their supposed tardiness, but he was strangely silent. As was Torj, she noticed – the warrior appeared oddly reverent as she took her satchel from him and handed it to Farissa.
‘I thought you might need some additional supplies.’
Farissa nodded, taking the bag. ‘Always. Thank you.’ She motioned to Zavier. ‘He knows what to do. Follow his directions.’
Wren wanted to argue. Zavier was giving the instructions? Hadn’t she been Farissa’s apprentice in Thezmarr for years? Didn’t she have seniority in this setting? But even now, with their relationship still rocky, she respected the Master Alchemist too much to argue. Though she didn’t want to admit it, if Farissa had made the choice to put Zavier in the lead, she had done so for a reason.
Wren turned to him. ‘Well?’
To her surprise, her teammate shared the details respectfully before returning to the task at hand, leaving a decent distance between himself and the two women alchemists.
Wren and Dessa set to work on a range of herbal remedies that Wren was already familiar with: concoctions to stave off infection, poultices to pack wounds with, and brews to subdue pain during childbirth. It was meticulous work, and Wren lost herself in it. The air grew heavy with the familiar fragrance of herbs – evening primrose for skin conditions, tea tree oil for cleansing cuts. Wren was sure to label the tea tree clearly, for if ingested, it could be poisonous.
She handed Dessa several stalks of dried lavender to tie. ‘These are good for a calming effect, particularly if a patient is distressed.’
‘In what way?’ Dessa asked.
‘Perhaps they’ve woken from a night terror, or experienced a traumatic event. Perhaps they’ve endured hallucinations...Essential oils, tea made from lavender – it can help.’
In a mortar and pestle, Wren ground down turmeric into a bright yellow powder.
‘What’s that for?’ her teammate asked, sniffing the highly fragrant spice.
‘Mainly treating inflammation. Rare and highly sought after, of course.’
Dessa nodded enthusiastically. ‘Of course.’
Wren got the sense that Dessa didn’t have a natural affinity for medicinal alchemy, which prompted her to ask, ‘What are you hoping to specialize in?’
‘Oh, that’s easy. Design,’ she replied. ‘I’ve always loved creating things.’
Wren found herself pleasantly surprised. ‘Are you working on anything at the moment?’
Dessa nodded eagerly. ‘I have several ongoing projects. I’ve always been fascinated by the history of the Stone of Knowledge and how it pertains to memory.’
Wren’s brows shot up. ‘Really?’
‘I’m working on something in my spare time...I can show you sometime, if you like.’
Wren’s instinct was to decline the offer. She wasn’t at Drevenor to make friends, but...the ache in her chest said otherwise. ‘That sounds fun.’
The red-headed beauty beamed. ‘What about you? What do you hope to specialize in?’
Wren opened her mouth, but faltered. In truth, she had assumed she’d delve deeper into warfare, into poisons, but now...There was so much to learn, so many different avenues one could take. ‘I’m not sure yet,’ she replied truthfully.
‘That’s alright,’ Dessa told her kindly. ‘Plenty of time for that.’
For a while, Wren almost forgot where she was. It could have been Sam and Ida chattering away at her side, telling her of their latest antics with one of the porters or cook’s assistants. She knew there was no hope of filling the void those women had left in her life, the ones she’d grown up with, who had known her better than anyone else. But perhaps...perhaps she was too young to cut herself off from the world entirely.
She turned away from Dessa, spotting Torj at the perimeter of the room, where a small group of women had approached him.
Every woman in the midrealms knows his name...
There was certainly no denying that now. But as Wren watched the scene unfold from afar, she knew it was different to the others she’d seen in their travels. Torj’s discomfort was clear as day in the muscle that twitched his jaw, in the subtle clenching and unclenching of his fists...and in the erratic heartbeat that she could somehow sense from across the way, the relentless pounding that had her lightning crackling beneath her skin. However unnerved the Bear Slayer might have been, he gave the women kind smiles and gently shook his head at their offerings of biscuits and tea.
As the group dispersed, Wren found herself at her bodyguard’s side. ‘Do you know someone who lives here?’ she asked quietly.
‘Not here,’ he said, voice hoarse. ‘A place like it. A lifetime ago.’
He moved away, his countenance hard as iron as he returned to his duties, watching the ward like a hawk.
In turn, Wren watched him, noting the strained set of his shoulders and the measured weight of his steps. As she went back to her place at the workbench and took up her mortar and pestle again, she wondered who he’d known who had stayed in a women’s infirmary, and why.
‘Shit,’ Dessa exclaimed, shaking her finger as she placed a lid over a small ramekin, smoke wafting from its sides over a thick candle. ‘Burnt myself,’ she told Wren sheepishly. ‘Damn, got the end of my hair too—’
But Wren had smelled it before the words had left Dessa’s lips.
She knew the acrid aroma all too well. Burnt hair. It was the smell that had permeated every battlefield during the war, the smell that clung to the shadow wraiths and reapers that had nearly torn the midrealms in two.
She drew a ragged breath, her hands growing clammy as the scent filled her nostrils and the claws of panic latched into her chest. All-too-familiar images started to flash before her. Wren clutched the sides of the table, but it did nothing to ground her, not as horror after horror invaded her vision.
Sam and Ida’s heads on spikes.
Shadows lashing at Anya, sending her flying across the battlefield to her death.
Torj leaping from that wall, hurtling towards that terrifying maw of darkness.
That talon of evil carving down her own throat, the metallic tang of blood tangling with the reapers’ stench, the air thick with it.
She was going to be sick. Everything was spinning and she was right back there in the shadow-drenched world of nightmares. The screaming, the gore, the terror – it was amplifying all around her, and she couldn’t stop the war raging.
Electricity took hold of her – a current, a song of lightning, calling out to her in the dark.