4. Chapter 4
“ Y ou have five seconds before I gut you,” the voice hissed. Ren twisted like a flame caught in a gale, seizing her attacker’s wrist and driving them to the forest floor in a single, fluid motion. Leaves scattered, the earth groaned, and Ren met wide, familiar emerald eyes beneath her.
The dark-haired woman from the carriage.
“You can sure as hell try, but I don’t owe you a damn thing,” Ren growled.
The woman shoved Ren back, both of them scrambling upright as the smoke curled around them.
“You turned this place into a damn inferno,” the woman coughed, voice cracking as she covered her mouth with her sleeve.
Ren cursed under her breath, grabbing the woman’s wrist and yanking her through the haze.
When Ren caught the small silhouette, she reached down for the young girl crouched nearby.
The girl latched onto Ren’s hand without a sound, eyes screwed shut, as though shutting out the world might somehow undo the horror around them.
“I saved your ass, that’s what I did,” Ren muttered. “And now I’m getting us the hell out of this smoke before it guts our lungs. ”
Ren’s chest burned as she pushed through the smoke-choked air, one arm around the woman’s waist, the other gripping the young girl’s trembling hand.
The ash was thicker here. Red embers floated like fluttering fireflies. The once-lush trees were blackened skeletons, the road barely visible through the carnage. She turned the corner of a half-collapsed pine, eyes scanning through the haze.
And froze.
Joss lay sprawled across the ground. His shirt was soaked through with blood, eyes open and glazed, a slash across his throat.
Corrin slumped against a boulder beside him. He wavered, blood threading between his fingers where they clutched his head. His face was pale, but he smiled when he saw Ren. “There you are,” he rasped.
Ren rushed and dropped to her knees beside him. “Corrin, don’t you dare. Don’t you fucking dare.”
“Don’t yell,” he protested, trying and failing to chuckle. He winced. “My ears are still ringing from the shit you pulled earlier. Stopped those bastards right in their tracks, though. I took one of ‘em down before he bashed in my skull.”
Ren’s eyes swept over him with the practiced assessment of someone who had seen too many wounds to count. Blood matted Corrin's hair where his head was struck, but the real danger lay lower.
His stomach bore a deep puncture wound that had torn him open. A stab of a blade, angled cruelly enough that the damage went beyond flesh. Blood spilled in steady streams. Ren didn’t need to feel for a pulse to know he had only moments left.
Still, Ren tore a strip from her cloak. She pressed it firmly against the gash, even as Corrin’s trembling hand pushed at hers.
“Hold still,” she hissed, leaning over him. “If I can stop the bleeding —”
But the look in his eyes silenced her, eyes that spoke of a hollow, knowing resignation. He knew as well as she did that no amount of pressure would keep his life from spilling through her fingers.
Still, she pressed harder, refusing to let go.
“It’s no use,” Corrin whispered. “You and I both know that.”
“We had a deal. The stew, the bed, the sea. Remember? ”
Corrin’s eyes were half-closed now. “You’ll still see it,” he murmured. “The sea. When you do, remember me, yeah? Don’t remember the chains. Just remember my dashing smile and good humor.”
Ren heaved a quiet sigh of resignation and lowered herself beside him, taking his trembling hands in hers. Her presence and a steady touch in the face of the inevitable was all she could offer now. “I will.”
His fingers twitched against hers. “And if you find a bed…” he rasped, breath hitching, “make sure it’s soft.
None of that scratchy straw.” Corrin’s expression changed, pain giving way to a fragile kind of peace.
“And if you find someone, a lover or whatever poor soul’s stupid enough to fall for you…
” He grinned faintly, voice fading. “Make sure they treat you right. Like you’re worth a whole damn kingdom . ”
And then, with that last flicker of humor in his eyes, Corrin With Two R’s, Puker of Enchanters and Defiler of Statues, exhaled.
And was gone.
For a beat, Ren just stared, her hands still gripping his, as if she could will him back with the sheer stubbornness of her grip. But the silence that followed was heavy and final.
For all his bluster, he’d been unashamedly loud, a thorn in everyone’s side. Yet somehow he’d carved himself into their strange little band, leaving a mark that would linger long after the echo of his voice faded. Ren hoped that beyond the veil, Corrin found peace.
Ren closed her eyes, drawing in a shuddering breath, before prying her bloody hands away. The world, cruel as ever, hadn’t paused to mourn him. But she did.
“The carriage,” the young girl rasped, bringing Ren swiftly back to the moment.
Ren followed her gaze. The horses were gone, either bolted or burned. The carriage sat like a wounded beast in the mud, wheels sunken deep, its iron bars scorched black.
And then, it moved.
Not the shifting of settling wood or the creak of a broken wheel. No, this was a deliberate, slow, groaning shudder that rattled the bars in their sockets.
Something had been locked in that cage. Something the fae themselves hadn’t trusted to ride with the rest of them .
Ren tensed, expecting a nightmare to step out from the blackened carriage.
From the doorway emerged a tall figure, brushing soot from his tunic.
His presence rippled through the air — cold, precise, ancient .
Midnight hair fell in soft, tousled waves around a sharply cut face.
His ears tapered into unmistakable points, and his nose, slightly hooked with the unmistakable edge of aristocracy, marked him as someone born into power.
Fae .
His eyes scanned them, lingering a beat too long on Ren, as if cataloging each sin they’d committed to survive.