Chapter 56 Wren
Idon’t stop running until I find a storeroom tucked between the old servant halls—one of the abandoned ones, where the stone walls are crumbling and the air tastes like dust. It’s safer here. Safer than anywhere else I’ve seen tonight.
I set Runara down gently on a bench and drop to my knees in front of her.
She’s gone quiet now, shaking, eyes wide and rimmed with red.
Her brother’s blood is still smeared across her hands and face.
She looks so young like this. So small, though she’s bigger than I was the day I fled from my childhood home after I killed my mother.
The things I would have done to have spared her from this—the things I could have done.
All I had to do was let Zephyr die.
Runara blinks slowly. “You can do magic?” she asks, her voice a hoarse whisper.
“Yes.” I exhale shakily. “Yes, I can do magic, and I’m going to try and use it now to save your mother.”
There’s a beat of silence.
“And Evander?” she asks. Her eyes search mine. “You’re going to save him too, right?”
I can’t reply. I open my mouth. Nothing comes out.
Instead, I stand and search through the room. My fingers brush over crates, dust-covered tools, an old ceremonial chest. I find a kitchen knife. It’s small, but still sharp.
I press it into her hands.
“Stay here,” I tell her. My voice is as firm as I can make it. “Stay out of sight. The other people that came here tonight… they’re not like me. They’ll try to hurt you. If they try—you fight. Do you understand?”
“I want to fight,” she says, clutching the knife. “I want to help!”
“I want you to live in a world where you don’t have to.”
She stiffens a little at that, but her grip tightens on the handle.
I kneel again, rubbing some of the soot from my sleeves. Then, using the ash, I draw two quick runes across the backs of her hands.
“This one’s for strength,” I say softly, tracing the first mark. “So you’ll remember you can survive this.”
She watches, trembling.
“And this one…” I draw the second. “This one is for protection. To look after you when I can’t.”
My throat catches as I finish the strokes. I’m not entirely sure what effect they’ll have on a human, but it’s better than nothing. Stars, I want to promise her more. That she’ll see her brother again. That I’ll fix all of this. That the world will be kind to her.
But I can’t lie. Not to her.
“Do you know what these are?” I ask instead.
She nods, almost shyly. “Runes. Like my name.”
That makes me smile, just a little. “Exactly.”
We hug, and she squeezes me tightly, like she’s afraid to let go.
I’m afraid to let go. I’m afraid that, after tonight, no one is ever going to hold me like this again.
But I have to go. I have to find Alessandra and stop my grandmother.
I pull away, press a kiss to Ru’s soot-streaked forehead, and then I vanish into the halls—towards whatever awaits me.
There’s still time to stop this. There has to be.
The castle is a ruin of screams and smoke, and I am a ruin running through it.
My legs don’t stop, not even when I see bodies—human and fey—scattered across the ground.
Some of them could be people I know. People I’ve fought beside.
Staff who have helped me. People that I’ve laughed with.
There’s no time to check, no room to wonder. There’s no time for anything.
I did this. I did all of it, by opening the gate in the first place.
The gate. I didn’t close the fucking gate. Zephyr might have just opened it again, of course, but how could I be so utterly stupid?
It’s not my first mistake of the day, and there’s no point in dwelling on it now. Someone needs to close it. They might not even realise how the fey got in. How many know about it? The royal family, definitely, Fellwood, surely, and—
“Dain!” I spot him near a stairwell, blood on his shoulder, his sword dripping.
“Wren,” he says, relief lighting up his eyes. “Thank the Saints. Are you—”
“Have you seen the Queen?” I ask.
“Up on the battlements,” he races. “I was trying to—”
I cut him off. “You need to get to the tunnel,” I tell him. “The one you showed me. It’s open. If we can’t stop them, at least we can stop more getting through.”
He looks at me for a breath, and I wait for him to ask how I know this, but he clearly decides against it. He nods and sprints off without a word.
I don’t wait to see if he makes it.
The wind pulls at my hair as I scale the steps to the parapet, where I can already sense the pulse of my grandmother’s power. Magic crashes like a tide against the stone. The way up is littered with bodies. Dozens of them.
They are my victims as much as my grandmother’s.
I burst out onto the ledge, and the sight stops me in my tracks.
My grandmother stands tall, carved of moonlight and wrath, magic glowing at her fingertips. The queen is on the ground, blood painting her side. Still breathing. Barely.
“Grandma, stop!” I shout over the roar of the wind. “Please—she’s beaten!”
“She is not beaten,” Nubaia hisses, her braids trailing through the air like whips. “She’s still breathing.”
“She’s not a threat!” I run forward a few steps, careful not to draw her attention too fast.
“This is the only way,” she says, voice heavy. “You should have taken the other option, child. At least then, your prince wouldn’t be left with nothing.”
Her words sink in like cold iron. Tears tremble down my cheeks. Cassiel has already lost his brother, and possibly his mother too. How many others have died today because I wouldn’t do as I was told?
But I have this awful, sickening feeling that Nubaia is enjoying this. She wants to kill everyone. Alessandra. Her court. Maybe even Cassiel. Maybe he’s not already dead only because… she wanted me to see. This is what comes when I defy her.
“Did you ever want peace?” I ask her. “Or… or was it always about power?”
She wrinkles her nose. “I have power enough,” she tells me. “What I don’t have is vengeance.”
“You already killed the King—”
“How many children will I have to lose to them if I live forever?” she asks me. “How many more of our own will die at their hand? I will not have it. I will burn this kingdom down before I suffer another loss.”
Tears trickle down my face. But you could have lost me, I want to tell her. You already have.
I never knew my father, but I want to believe he wouldn’t want this. He loved a human, after all.
The queen groans, slumping sideways. Nubaia raises her hand.
“Don’t!” I lunge forward, standing between them. “Please, don’t—”
“Step aside, Wren.”
“I won’t do that.”
“Do not try me—”
“You said you’d burn the kingdom down before you suffered another loss,” I remind her. “But you still have me to lose. I won’t let you kill her. You will have to go through me.”
There exists no world in which I win a fight against my grandmother. She will have to kill me to make me move.
Her jaw tightens. She knows it too.
Someone stumbles up the steps, breathing hard. Panic flares in my chest. I know the sound of that breathing.
Cassiel.
He stumbles into view, covered in soot and streaks of blood, tears carving clean lines down his cheeks. His mouth opens like he wants to say something, but no sound comes out.
Nubaia sees him too. She raises her hand. I know exactly what she plans to do—she’ll aim a strike at him, force me to move from Alessandra’s side, and she’ll take her out whilst I’m distracted. I can see it all unfolding before me with awful, perfect clarity.
I will play right into her hands.
But just as I begin to move, I remember the gate in the tunnels. Dain must be almost there. A minute, maybe less.
If I can just—
Seconds. I have seconds to make this work.
I meet my grandmother’s gaze, but it’s not her I’m talking to.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
I whistle. It’s a slow, descending note. One we made up in secret, when we were something else to each other.
Keep going without me.
Cassiel’s eyes widen.
I hurl myself forward.
My shoulder hits Nubaia square in the chest. She shouts—not in pain, but in rage—as we crash into the parapet wall, and topple over it just as the iron ring snaps back into place. Her body falls away from me, shifting into something else as we hurtle towards the ground.
I close my eyes, and wish for release.