Wren
Iwoke to sunlight and the steady thud of a heartbeat under my ear.
For a moment I didn’t move. Didn’t open my eyes. Just lay there, feeling the rise and fall of his chest, the warmth of his body wrapped around mine, the soft brush of feathers against my bare shoulder.
Alive. He was alive. We were both alive.
I opened my eyes.
The nest was a disaster. Furs tangled, silks askew, books knocked from their careful positions along the edges. Evidence of what we’d done scattered across every surface. I should probably be embarrassed.
I wasn’t.
His arm was draped across my waist, heavy and possessive even in sleep.
He looked younger when he slept. Less like a monster. More like a man who had finally stopped fighting.
I shifted slightly, trying to see him better, and his arm tightened.
“Don’t.” His voice was rough with sleep. Low and gravelly and completely him.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t move yet.” His eyes opened. Gold, pure gold, but calm now. Present. “I want to remember this. Waking up with you.”
My chest did something complicated. “You’ve woken up with me before.”
“Not like this.” His hand spread across my stomach, warm and large. “Not knowing you’re mine. That you chose to be mine.”
“I chose you the day I walked across that market.”
“You chose escape.” He kissed my forehead. “Now you’ve chosen me.”
I couldn’t argue with that. So I kissed him instead, soft and slow, tasting the morning on his lips.
When I pulled back, I noticed something strange.
I could hear his heartbeat.
Not feel it against my cheek. Hear it. A steady thump-thump from across the nest, as clear as if I had my ear pressed to his chest. And beyond that, other sounds: the scratch of claws on stone somewhere in the Aerie, the distant cry of birds outside, a soft shuffling that might have been footsteps in the library below.
“Tavrin.” I sat up, letting his wing fall away. “I can hear... everything.”
He pushed himself up on one elbow, watching me with something like satisfaction. “The bond.”
“What?”
“Your senses are sharpening.” He reached out, tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. His fingers lingered on the shell of my ear, tracing its edge. “It’s beginning.”
“What’s beginning?”
“You. Changing.” He said it simply, like it was the most natural thing in the world. “The bond connects us. Over time, it will change you. Make you more like me.”
I stared at him. “More like you how?”
“Longer life. Sharper senses. Eventually...” He paused. Looked away. “Wings.”
“Wings.”
“Small ones. In a few months. They’ll grow.”
I should have been panicking. Should have been demanding explanations, questioning what I’d gotten myself into, cataloging all the ways my life was about to change.
Instead, I thought about flying. About the wind in my face during that first journey to the Aerie, the way the world had spread out below us like a map. About what it might feel like to have that freedom for myself.
“Okay,” I said.
He blinked. “Okay?”
“I spent years trapped in my uncle’s house, counting coins and cataloging cruelties and waiting for something to change.” I leaned forward, pressed my forehead to his. “Wings sound like an improvement.”
His laugh was rough and wondering. His hands came up to cup my face, and he kissed me again, deeper this time, with an urgency that made my toes curl.
A knock at the door interrupted us.
“Wren?” Elspeth’s voice, muffled through the wood. “Are you... is it safe to come in?”
Tavrin made a low sound of frustration.
“Give us a minute,” I called back. Then, quieter: “We should get dressed.”
“Must we?”
“My sister is outside.”
“She could wait.”
“Tavrin.”
He sighed. But he released me, and I climbed out of the nest to find my scattered clothes.
Getting dressed took longer than it should have. My shirt had somehow ended up behind a stack of poetry volumes. My trousers were tangled in a silk throw. And every time I bent to retrieve something, I felt his eyes on me, warm and appreciative and entirely unhelpful.
“Stop looking at me like that.”
“No.”
I threw a pillow at him. He caught it without looking, a grin spreading across his face.
By the time we were both decent, I was flushed and breathless and entirely too aware of how thin the door was. I opened it to find Elspeth standing in the hallway, cheeks pink, studiously examining the ceiling.
“Morning,” she said to the stonework above her head.
“You can look at me, Elspeth.”
She lowered her gaze. Took in my rumpled clothes, my tangled hair, the obvious evidence of what had transpired. Her blush deepened, but she didn’t comment.
“I made breakfast,” she said instead. “Or I tried to. Your kitchen is very strange.”
“My kitchen is efficient,” Tavrin said from behind me. He’d pulled on trousers but nothing else, and my sister’s eyes went wide at the sight of him: a monster of bronze feathers and golden eyes and muscle that wasn’t even trying to look human anymore.
“You’re very large,” she said.
“Yes.”
“And you have wings.”
“Also yes.”
Elspeth considered this. Then she nodded, as if she’d reached some internal conclusion.
“You broke through a wall for us,” she said. “Last night. You broke through a wall.”
Tavrin’s expression didn’t change, but I felt something shift. Surprise. A flicker of vulnerability he’d never show on his face.
“Necessary,” he said.
“It was,” Elspeth agreed. “I just wanted you to know that I noticed. And that I’m grateful.” She paused. “Also, your library is a mess, but I’ve started organizing the eastern shelves by subject. I hope that’s all right.”
I laughed. The sound surprised me, bubbling up from somewhere deep in my chest, bright and startled and real.
“It’s a family trait,” I told Tavrin. “We organize things when we’re nervous.”
“I’m not nervous,” Elspeth said, clearly nervous. “I just think alphabetical by author is inefficient when you could cross-reference by topic and date of publication.”
Tavrin looked at my sister. Then at me. Then back at my sister.
“I like her,” he said.
“I like him too,” Elspeth told me. “Can we keep him?”
“I think we already have.”
We ate breakfast in the library, perched on cushions among the half-organized shelves.
Elspeth had found bread and cheese and some kind of dried fruit, and she’d arranged it all on a tray with the same precise attention she gave to everything.
Tavrin ate with his hands, tearing bread into chunks and chewing methodically, and I watched both of them and tried to make sense of the feeling expanding in my chest.
This was my family now. My fifteen-year-old sister who organized books when she was scared.
My monster husband who had broken through a wall to save us.
This strange, impossible collection of people who had somehow ended up together in a library on a mountain, eating breakfast like it was the most normal thing in the world.
“Can I ask you something?” Elspeth asked later, her voice carefully casual.
“You can ask. I might not answer.”
“The bond.” She didn’t look at me, very focused on the book in her hands. “What does it feel like?”
I considered the question. Tried to find words for something that existed mostly beyond language.
“Like there’s a thread,” I said slowly. “Running from my chest to his. I can feel him, even when he’s not in the room. Not his thoughts, exactly. More like... his presence. His mood. Right now he’s focused. Probably measuring wood for your door.”
“That’s strange.”
“Very.”
“Does it bother you? Having someone in your head like that?”
I thought about it. Really thought, the way I hadn’t let myself before.
“No,” I said finally. “It probably should. I spent eight years guarding every thought, every feeling, making sure Uncle never knew what I was really thinking. Having someone just... know me, without asking, without me having to explain...” I shrugged.
“It’s a relief, actually. I don’t have to pretend with him. ”
Elspeth was quiet for a moment. Then: “I’m glad you found him.”
“I’m glad I found you.” I reached over, squeezed her hand. “I’m sorry it took so long.”
“You came when it mattered.” She squeezed back. “That’s what counts.”
We went back to shelving. But something had shifted between us. Some wall I hadn’t known was there, crumbling into dust.