Chapter 54 Wren #3
I grab the sword off a fallen guard, the hilt slick with blood, and push forward through the melee.
Smoke coils around me, screams ring in the air—human, fey, some wordless middle ground.
I swing the blade, not to kill, just to knock aside, disarm, slow.
Fey and human both blur together in this madness.
I shove a knight to the ground, duck beneath a fey’s talons, slam the hilt of my sword into another’s temple.
I’m not trying to win.
I’m just trying to reach her.
Wherever Nubaia is, the walls bend in her direction—glass cracks, light dims, iron moans in the stone. I follow the chaos she leaves behind, pressing deeper into the castle. If I can just reach her, I can stop this before it becomes a massacre.
A blade whistles toward my shoulder. I parry it, twist, and meet another strike. I push forward again, chest heaving, vision swimming—
A sword flashes straight for my ribs. I twist to block, expecting pain—
But the strike never lands.
Instead, the blade goes through—clean and hard—impaling the fey warrior just behind me.
I spin around.
Evander stands there, sword dripping, eyes wide with effort and something close to fury. “I don’t fully understand what’s going on,” he pants, “but this… this is a misunderstanding of some sort, isn’t it? You would never hurt my brother. I know you wouldn’t.”
Relief makes my knees weak. I’d hug him if we weren’t in the middle of battle.
“It is,” I say. “I mean, I am what Fellwood says, but I’m trying to help. I don’t want this. I promise you. I would never—”
“I know,” he says, placing a hand on my shoulder. “I know you wouldn’t.”
I swallow the rising lump in my throat. “Evander, please—help me stop my grandmother.”
He doesn’t need any more convincing. He nods once, then turns to the next oncoming figure, and we move side by side, blade to blade. It’s like fighting with Cassiel. Evander seems to know exactly how I fight, and adjusts his style accordingly.
Or maybe I adjust to him. I’m not sure.
We fight through the corridor—slashing, blocking, ducking. He shouts warnings, I cover his blind spots. We knock weapons from hands and keep moving. Something flares hot inside me as we reach the great hall.
If Evander believes me, if he believes in me—then maybe, maybe Cassiel still could too.
Cassiel, Cassiel. Maybe I shouldn’t have left him. But I can still see the look in his eyes when I begged him to believe me.
He has to be safe. I need him to be—
A scream cuts across the hall.
It’s not him.
It’s Runara.
“Ru!” Evander shouts.
He turns toward the sound, eyes searching for his sister, focus all in the wrong place—
A fey warrior bursts through the fog behind him, blade already arcing through the air. I scream his name and lunge, too slow—
The blade sinks deep into his gut.
“No!” I scream.
The fey behind him smiles. He’s still smiling when my only blade slices across his throat. It’s only when he falls that I recognise him. Arvar. We were almost friends. I kissed him one revel night, long ago.
I’ve never killed anyone I knew before. Not like that.
I don’t watch him die. My attention turns back to Evander. His blood is everywhere. It pools hot and fast beneath us as I kneel beside him. His breaths come shallow. Too shallow.
No, no, no, please no. Not Evander…
This isn’t right. This isn’t what was supposed to happen.
He’s my Evander, I’d told Cassiel merely an hour ago, trying to justify why I had to save Zephyr. But I would never, ever have traded Evander’s life to free my cousin. I know what this will do to him.
I just didn’t expect what it would do to me.
The scream doesn’t come from my throat—it comes from the very core of me, a primal, magic-wrapped howl that never makes a sound. My vision ignites, gold and blinding.
Every torch in the chamber flares brighter, then wrenches free of its sconce, scuttling across the flagstones. Fire howls, racing toward me from every corridor, every hearth, every lit candle in the castle. The inferno comes willingly, gleefully, folding into my bones.
A surge of rage and magic tears through my chest like lightning. My body sings with fire.
Guards and fey alike freeze in place, mouths parted, eyes wide. Heat distorts the air around me. The flames dance in a widening ring, coiling through the air like serpents. The ground quakes beneath my feet as the flames circle around us.
Runara alone dares to move. She stumbles forward, shielding her brother’s body with her own, then stops just short of the fire.
“Wren?” she whispers.
I barely hear her. My voice is not mine when I speak.
“Stay down.”
With a sweep of my hand, a barrier crashes down around them, domed and blazing.
The flames roar out of me in a tidal wave—raw, unchecked, incandescent.
The chamber is obliterated. Screams vanish under the weight of it.
Steel warps. Stone liquefies. Flesh and shadow are burned away in the same breath.
The blast throws me backwards, and even inside the shield, the fire licks my skin.
For the first time, it comes close to taking me with it. For a second, I understand what it’s like to be devoured by the flames… but then they roll over me like smoke on water.
The silence afterward is complete.
I don’t know who I’ve just killed. Fey. Knights. Allies. Enemies. I don’t know.
There’s nothing left of them to check.
Runara is on her knees beside Evander, wailing into his chest. Her sobs rip through the smoke like arrows, raw and shattering.
I drop down beside them, hands slick with sweat and blood. There’s so much blood. Too much.
“I—I can try to cauterise the wound,” I say. It’s the only thing I can say. The only thing I can do. I’m no healer. I’m a flame. Made for destruction.
Evander’s face is pale, glistening with sweat. But his eyes meet mine, steady. “Do it,” he says, through gritted teeth.
I bite down on my own tongue to steady my shaking hands, then let the fire spark again—just a thread of it, sharp and narrow as a blade. I press my palm to the wound.
Evander screams. So does Runara.
The stench of burning flesh hits me. I flinch, but I don’t stop—not until the blood stops pulsing.
When it’s done, Evander lies trembling, breathing fast, jaw clenched. I don’t know if I’ve saved him. I doubt it.
Ru continues to wail; great choking sobs fill the space.
He grabs my wrist, weakly. “Wren… get her somewhere safe.”
I don’t want to leave him. I’m equally sure that I have to get Runara away from here. It isn’t safe.
She doesn’t need to watch what comes next.
I scrunch my fingers into Evander’s. There are no words I can offer. I will. I don’t want to go. I’ll keep her safe. I’ll fix this. I’m—
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
I’m leaving him to die. And he knows it.
Runara is hysterical, wailing, covered in her brother’s blood. Any fey who hears her will come running. She’s the perfect little hostage.
I nod, throat tight. “I’ll come back,” I whisper, though I don’t know if I can.
I gather the sobbing princess into my arms. She thrashes once, then curls in on herself, still weeping.
We run. Away from the fire, the blood, the ashes of the people I’ve killed—away from the boy who believed in me, dying on the floor.
Please, I think, as I race through the ruined halls, please stay alive.