Wren
The garden wall was eight feet of crumbling stone, footholds worn into the mortar from years of climbing. My hands found the grooves by memory. Up and over in twelve seconds.
I dropped into the shadows and held still. Counted to ten. No alarm. No shouts. Just the house settling and a dog barking somewhere distant.
Tavrin was out there in the dark. Counting. Waiting. Every second I spent here was a second he was fighting not to follow.
I moved.
Uncle’s garden was dark. Overgrown even when I lived here. Uncle never paid for a groundskeeper. Good. More shadows.
The trellis under Elspeth’s window was still there. Old wood, questionable structure. It had held my weight at sixteen. It would hold me now.
I climbed. The wood groaned. I froze. Nothing.
The window stuck. I worked my blade into the gap, found the latch, lifted. The scrape of wood on wood, and then I was through, tumbling into my sister’s room.
The room smelled like her. Lavender and ink and old books. A shape in the bed, curled tight.
“Elspeth.”
She shot upright. Her eyes found me and for one terrible moment I thought she would scream.
Then her face crumpled.
“Wren.” A whisper. A prayer. “You came back.”
I crossed the room and pulled her into my arms. She was shaking. Thin. She’d always been thin, but I felt the sharp bones of her shoulders like I was noticing for the first time. Had she always been this fragile? Or had I just stopped seeing it?
“I came back.” My voice steady despite my racing heart. “I’m taking you with me.”
“He said you wouldn’t.” Muffled against my shoulder. “He said you’d chosen a monster over your family.”
“I didn’t forget you. Not for one second.” I pulled back, held her face, made her look at me. “I have a way out. But we have to move. Now.”
She nodded. Didn’t ask questions. That was Elspeth. Absolute trust, even after I’d left her.
“Pack a bag. One bag. Only what matters.”
She moved quickly. A dress. A comb. Our mother’s journal. She hesitated over a miniature portrait on the bedside table. Our parents.
“Take it.”
“The window. We go out the way I came in.”
I climbed through first. Tested the trellis. Looked down at the garden.
“Come on.”
Elspeth appeared in the window. Looked down. And froze.
“Elspeth. Now.”
“I can’t.” Her voice tiny. “It’s too high. I haven’t climbed since...”
She used to climb this trellis every summer. We’d race to the garden wall and back, laughing, fearless. Now she looked at the drop like it might swallow her whole.
Two weeks. Just two weeks without me, and she’d already forgotten she knew how to climb.
Or maybe she’d never felt safe enough to try. Not without someone to catch her.
I could force her. Drag her through. But if she panicked, if she fell, if she screamed...
“Okay.” I climbed back in. Took her hands. My palms were sweating. I wiped them on my trousers before she could feel it. “We go through the house. Servant stairs to the kitchen. Kitchen door to the alley. Two minutes.”
She nodded.
The house was dark. Uncle’s study on the far side, ground floor. If he was passed out like usual, we’d pass nowhere near him.
Third step from the top creaks. Skip it.
I guided Elspeth around. She moved well. Quiet. She’d always been good at being invisible.
Tavrin was out there. Holding on.
Left at the landing. Servant stairs behind the linen closet.
I counted doors. One. Two. Three. The closet door was stuck. I tugged. It scraped against the floor.
Loud.
We froze.
From uncle’s study: the creak of a chair.
Not passed out.
“Go,” I breathed.
Elspeth slipped through to the stairs. I followed. Pulled the door shut. Pressed my back against it.
Footsteps. Unsteady. Moving through the hallway.
A pause that lasted forever.
His bedroom door opened. Closed.
I let myself breathe.
The kitchen was empty. The back door was locked.
The key wasn’t there.
I searched. Drawer after drawer. My hands shaking now, couldn’t hide it. Elspeth stood by the door, clutching her bag.
“It’s not here.”
“He changed the locks.” Barely audible. “After you left.”
Of course. Of course he did.
Front door. Past the guard.
“Stay close.”
We moved through the kitchen. Into the hallway. The front entrance twenty feet away. I could see the door, the bolt, the dark street through the windows.
“Wren?”
Uncle’s voice. Behind us.
He stood at the foot of the staircase in his dressing gown. Candle in one hand. Face slack with drink, but eyes sharp.
“Thought I heard rats.” His words slurred at the edges. “Just my ungrateful niece.”
My heart slamming against my ribs.
“We’re leaving. Elspeth is coming with me.”
“Is she?” He shuffled closer. I stepped back, keeping myself between them. “She’s mine until eighteen. Legal property.”
“I was never your property.”
“You were my investment.” He laughed, wet and ugly. “Sixteen years of feeding you, and you threw it away for a creature that can’t even speak.”
Elspeth’s hand found mine. Squeezed.
“We’re leaving,” I said again.
“Guards!” His voice cracked on the word. “GUARDS!”
Footsteps from outside. The door rattled.
“Did you think I wouldn’t post men?” Swaying slightly. Pleased with himself. “After your monster carried you off? I’m not stupid, girl.”
Two men. Armed. Blocking the exit.
“Take them to the cellar.” Uncle waved his candle. “Let them think about their choices.”
One guard grabbed my arm. Wrenched it behind my back. I bit down on the cry.
“Wren!” Elspeth.
Uncle grabbed her. She screamed. Small and high and terrified.
“Shut up.” He shook her. “Shut UP.”
How many minutes? I’d lost count. Tavrin out there in the dark. Hearing this. Fighting himself. Breaking.
“Let her go.” My voice shook. I hated it.
“Or what? Call your monster?” Uncle’s face was close now. Drunk breath. Petty rage. “He’s not coming. Why would he care about something like you?”
“Please.” The word scraped out of me. “Please, just let us go.”
“Please.” He mimicked it back. High and mocking. “Eight years you never once said please. Never once said thank you. And now you beg?” He spat at my feet. “Too late.”
A sound from outside.
Low.
Rumbling.
Uncle stopped.
The guard holding me went still.
The rumble grew. Deeper. Closer. The floor vibrated. The windows rattled in their frames. The candle flame flickered.
“What...” Uncle’s voice had gone thin.
I knew that sound. Knew it in my bones.
He hadn’t made it to fifteen.
The wall screamed.
Stone cracking. Plaster exploding. A roar that wasn’t a roar, something older, something that bypassed my ears and hit me straight in the chest.
The guard’s hands vanished from my arm. I lunged for Elspeth, tried to pull her free, to shield her, but uncle wrenched her back against him, grip white-knuckled on her wrist even as debris rained down around us. Dust choking. The world coming apart, and my sister just out of reach.
And then silence.
I looked up.
Tavrin filled the hole he’d made. He’d followed my voice through stone. Found me.
But this wasn’t the man I’d married. Not even the creature I’d left in the outside. This was something from before language. Before memory. Eight feet of fury and feathers, wings spread so wide they blocked the sky, eyes burning like the hearts of stars.
The guards were gone. I’d seen the moment they broke. One look at what came through that wall, talons and fury and eyes like dying stars, and they’d fled without a word. I heard them still running.
Uncle was on the floor. I didn’t remember him falling. He was making a sound, high and thin, an animal sound.
Tavrin didn’t look at him.
He looked at me.
I saw him take in the guard’s grip bruising my arm. The dust in my hair. The tears on my face I hadn’t known I was crying.
I saw him look at uncle’s hand still locked around Elspeth’s wrist.
I saw him understand.
The sound that came out of him made my bones vibrate.
“Tavrin.” I kept my voice steady. Calm. An anchor. “I’m okay. I’m okay.”
He was shaking. Barely holding on. One wrong word and he would tear uncle apart, and part of me wanted to let him, but Elspeth was watching and there were some things a fifteen-year-old shouldn’t see.
“Let go of my sister,” I said. Not to Tavrin. To uncle.
Uncle’s hand opened. He might have been crying. I didn’t care.
Elspeth stumbled toward me and I caught her. Pulled her close. She was shaking so hard her teeth chattered.
“Is that...” She couldn’t finish.
“My husband. Yes.”
“He broke...” A hiccup. A sob. “He broke the wall.”
“Apparently that’s an option.”
She laughed. Wet and hysterical and terrified. I held her tighter.
Tavrin took a step forward. Uncle scrambled backward through the rubble, glass cutting his palms.
“You can’t.” Gasping. “She’s mine. The law...”
Tavrin made another sound. This one made uncle curl into a ball on the floor.
I stepped past my husband. Stood over my uncle where he lay bleeding and broken in the ruins of his own home.
“We’re leaving. My sister is coming with me. You will not follow. You will not send anyone. You will not contact us. Ever.”
He looked up at me. Then past me, at Tavrin.
“Because if you do,” I said, “I won’t stop him next time.”
He believed me.
Good.
I straightened. Took Elspeth’s hand. Walked toward the hole in the wall where Tavrin stood waiting.
As I passed him, his wing brushed my shoulder. Gentle. A question.
Fourteen minutes. He’d made it to fourteen. He’d held on longer than I had any right to ask.
“I’m okay,” I said softly. “Let’s go home.”
We walked out through the rubble into the cold night air. Elspeth’s hand in my left. Tavrin’s wing settling around my right shoulder, then extending to cover Elspeth too.
The three of us walking out of hell.
The town was silent around us. No one came to see what had happened. No one wanted to know.
We left it behind and didn’t look back.