Wren #2
“I do not know.” The words came out rough.
“You need things. I can feel that you need things. And when I am not bringing them to you, there is a sound in my head. Like screaming. I do not know how to make it stop except by…” He lifted the footstool helplessly.
“I am sorry. I know this is strange. I know I am making you uncomfortable.”
“You’re not,” I said, and realized it was true.
He went still. “I am not?”
“You’re making me nervous. That’s different.”
“How is that different?”
I stood up from my chair and walked toward him. His eyes tracked every step. He didn’t move, didn’t breathe, just watched me approach like I was something dangerous.
“Uncomfortable is wanting to leave,” I said. “Nervous is wanting to stay but not knowing if you should.”
“Which do you want?”
I stopped in front of him. Close enough to feel the heat pouring off his skin. His eyes shifted again, gold swallowing the amber, like something inside him was fighting to get out.
“Give me the footstool,” I said.
He handed it over. His fingers brushed mine. Fever-hot, just like last night.
“Thank you.” I turned and walked back to my corner and put it exactly where my feet would rest. “You can bring one more thing. One. And then you have to sit down somewhere and stay still for at least an hour. Can you do that?”
“Yes.” He said it like I’d given him a gift instead of an ultimatum. “Yes, I can do that.”
He disappeared. I went back to cataloging. And when he came back, he was carrying a lamp, larger and brighter than any I’d seen in the Aerie, and he set it on the table with that same anxious precision and then settled on the floor by the door.
He watched me work for three hours without moving.
I felt it the entire time. His attention like a physical weight. Not threatening. Just there. Constant and steady. Like I was a fire and he’d been cold for two hundred years.
“You can do something else,” I said without looking up. “You don’t have to just sit there.”
“I know.”
“It doesn’t bother you? Just watching?”
“No.”
I made myself keep working. Made myself focus on the books, the lists, the systems I was building out of chaos. But my hands weren’t steady anymore. I kept making mistakes. Kept losing my place.
“Why me?”
The question came out before I could stop it.
“I do not understand.”
“At the market. You could have bought anyone. Why me?”
Silence. I forced myself to look at him. He was still sitting by the door, perfectly motionless except for his hands. They were gripping his knees so hard I could see the tendons standing out.
“I saw you,” he said.
“You saw all of us.”
“No. I saw you.” He swallowed. The amber in his eyes was nearly gone now, consumed by gold. “The others were performing. Crying or smiling or trying to look appealing. You were just... standing there. Looking at the crowd like you were cataloging them. Counting. Planning.”
“So you bought me because I wasn’t crying?”
“I bought you because you looked at me.”
I remembered. That moment on the platform when I’d felt someone watching. When I’d found him in the crowd. When our eyes had met.
“Everyone was looking at you,” I said. “You’re seven feet tall.”
“Everyone was looking at the monster.” His voice had gone quiet. “You were the only one who looked at me.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. My throat had closed around something sharp.
“You keep doing that,” I managed.
“Doing what?”
“Saying things I don’t know how to answer.”
“I am sorry.”
“Don’t be. Just...” I shook my head. “Warn me next time. Before you say something that makes me want to...”
I stopped. I’d been about to say cry. But that wasn’t quite right either.
He stood up. Crossed the room in three steps. Stopped in front of me, close enough that I had to look straight up to find his eyes.
“Makes you want to what?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” The words came out barely a whisper. “Something. I don’t know what.”
He reached out. His hand stopped just before touching my face. I could feel the heat of him, hovering, waiting.
“You are worth more than your usefulness,” he said.
“I need you to know that. Whatever else happens, whatever you decide about this place, about me, I need you to know: you do not have to earn your place here. You do not have to organize my library or teach me to read or be productive in any way. You are allowed to simply exist.”
“Nobody gets to just exist.”
“You do. Here. With me.” His hand was shaking. I could see it trembling in the air between us. “I had forgotten what wanting felt like. And then I saw you standing on that platform with ink on your chin.”
“Tavrin…”
“I am not telling you this to make you feel obligated. I am telling you because you keep talking about being useful, being valuable, being worth keeping, and I need you to understand.” His eyes were burning now, gold bleeding through the amber.
“I would keep you if you did nothing. If you never organized a single book. If you never spoke to me again. I would keep you because you exist, and I cannot fathom a world where you do not exist in this place with me.”
I stared at him. My pulse hammered against my ribs, a frantic rhythm.
“That’s terrifying,” I said.
“I know.”
“You basically just said you’re obsessed with me and we’ve known each other for a day.”
“I know.” His hand was still hovering. Still trembling. “Do you want to run?”
I thought about it. Really thought about it. About my uncle’s house where I’d been a tool. About the creditor at the market who’d looked at my hips. About every person who’d ever seen me as something to use.
And then I thought about Tavrin. I thought about the books arranged by color. About his hands shaking because he was fighting so hard not to touch me.
“No,” I said. “And that’s what’s terrifying.”
Something gave way in his expression. The careful control, the rigid stillness, all of it crumbling. He made a sound that wasn’t quite a word. Relief and want and something that might have been pain.
His hand finally touched my face. Just his palm against my cheek. Burning hot.
“I am going to be very careful with you,” he said. “I am going to be so careful. I need you to know that.”
“And if I don’t want careful?”
His breath caught. His pupils blew wide, the amber swallowed by black.
“Then we will discuss it,” he said roughly. “Later. When I am more in control of myself.”
He pulled his hand away. It looked like it cost him something. He stepped back, and then back again, putting distance between us.
“I should go,” he said. “You should work. I should…” He stopped. His hands were clenched into fists at his sides. “I will see you at dinner.”
He left before I could answer.
I stood there in the golden lamplight, surrounded by cushions and blankets and all the things he’d brought me, and pressed my hand against my cheek where his palm had been.
Still warm. Even after he was gone.
I thought about his hand on my face and his expression when he saw me like I was the only real thing in the world.