37. Chapter 37
T he next morning, Ren groaned into the pillows. Her limbs felt heavy, her lower back pulsed with a dull, persistent ache, and nausea curled low in her stomach like a coiled serpent. Her time of the month had arrived.
She counted silently in her head. Five seconds. Ten. Fifteen. On twenty, she forced herself upright. Getting dressed felt like a battle in itself, every tug of fabric a war.
“It’s times like these I’m thankful I’m not human,” Mirella chimed from the corner, her carved features animated with sympathy as Ren staggered to her feet.
Ren grunted in reply.
“The infirmary has tonics for pain. The princess used to drain the entire supply when she was younger. Poor thing had it worse than most.”
Ren paused mid-step. “The fae have cycles, too?”
“Why wouldn’t they?”
Ren thought for a moment. “Fair point.”
Ren pulled the door closed behind her with a soft click , her boots whispering against the stone floor as she made her way down the quiet corridor.
Morning light filtered through the stained glass windows, painting the walls in fractured gold and rose hues.
The sky outside was barely touched by sunrise, still kissed with lavender, Mount Solfira beyond a shadowed silhouette.
The infirmary sat tucked into a quiet corner of the keep and was almost holy in its stillness. Curtains stirred with the early breeze, sunlight dappled across linen-covered beds, and shelves of glass bottles glinted like gems.
Ren stepped inside, rubbing the tension from her temples.
And froze.
Lucan sat on the edge of a cot with his back exposed, muscles taut as he attempted to stitch up a wound that looked like it had been torn open viciously. His hand trembled slightly, the needle pausing mid-thread.
There was no healer in sight.
Ren stepped inside. Lucan turned at the sound, and their eyes met.
Ren took one look at the wound and knew it wasn’t from training.
She’d seen enough to know the difference.
It was too deliberate. Too angry. The wound wasn’t clean like a soldier’s cut, quick from a blade.
No, this was ragged, cruel, the kind of tearing left by something swung in anger rather than battle.
The skin was split in uneven gashes, as though he’d been struck with a belt buckle or the edge of a whip, the force brutal enough to break flesh instead of merely bruising it.
Dark, mottled bruises bloomed along the edges, older layers of pain marking him even as fresh blood welled beneath Lucan’s fingers. It was evidence carved into his skin of someone’s wrath.
This was personal .
The sight dragged Ren somewhere else, back to a night when Eve had hunched in the dim light of their cabin, a gash across her brow where their father’s bottle had broken.
Ren remembered the way Eve’s hands shook as she stitched her own skin closed, teeth clenched against the pain.
Ren had been only a child, voice trembling as she read aloud from one of their worn books, hoping the story would be enough to keep the pain at bay.
Ren shut the door behind her. “Do you want help, or are you planning to bleed all over the floor?”
Lucan didn’t respond. But he didn’t look away, either.
And he didn’t stop her when she approached.
Ren rinsed her hands at the basin and grabbed the needle and thread.
As she knelt behind him and threaded the needle, she murmured, “ Whatever story they fed you about why you deserved this, it’s a lie.
Pain shouldn’t be a test you have to pass to be worth something.
” She lowered her voice, “Especially not to family.”
When she tied off the final stitch, he whispered, “Don’t pity me.”
“I don’t. But I’ve worn bruises that weren’t from battle, too, Lucan.”
Lucan flinched instantly, like she’d struck him. “Don’t say my name.”
“Why? Because hearing it from someone like me makes it feel real?”
He looked away, shoulders still drawn with tension.
Ren sat back on her heels, letting her hands fall to her lap.
“You look at me and see every insult your people have whispered behind your back. That you were outmatched, outranked… by a human.” She shrugged nonchalantly.
“They’ll judge you for it. Even if they don’t say it to your face, they’ll think it.
You weren’t strong enough. You weren’t enough. ”
Through gritted teeth, Lucan seethed, ““Gods above, will you stop already?”
She pressed on. “But it shouldn’t be that way.
I know what it’s like to never be accepted, no matter what you do.
To always be the outsider. The other.” She held his gaze.
“You think you’re the only one people talk about behind their hands?
I bleed for this kingdom, and I still don’t belong. I won’t ever belong.”
“Leave me be.”
And in that worn, weary look, Ren saw the truth.
He didn’t hate her.
He hated what she proved. That someone like her could win and that someone like him could fall short.
Ren stood, setting the bloodied thread and needle aside on the tray.
“You keep bleeding in silence like it’s a penance for not being who they want you to be.
But you don’t owe anyone their version of you.
” She rummaged through a cupboard, and then another one until she found a bottle of pain tonic.
She paused to check the label before shutting the cupboard.
“You want strength? Start by owning the one thing they can’t take – who the hell you really are. ”
Ren uncorked the pain tonic and drank straight from the bottle, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand before grabbing the needle again.
She shot him a raised eyebrow. “So, do you want actual company, or should I leave you to wallow in your tragic woe is me routine? By the way you were holding this needle, I can tell you’ve never stitched a damn thing in your life. ”
Lucan shrugged in defeat.
“Thought so.” She sat beside him, rolling up her sleeves. “Brace yourself. This is about to hurt like fuck. Bite down on something if you need to. Preferably not me. And try not to scream too loud – someone will think I’m murdering you.”
Lucan mustered a smile. “You’re full of demands, you know that?”
“Damn right. Someone has to keep this disaster moving.”
Ren lay in bed. The walls felt too close, her thoughts too loud.
She’d spent years like this, nights where her mind wouldn’t stop whirling, no matter how exhausted her body was.
So she dressed quietly, pulling her tunic over her head and tugging on her boots. She hesitated when it came to the last piece. Ashrend . The blade rested where she’d left it near the windowpane. She strapped the sword to her hip.
Then she stepped out into the night.
She made her way silently to the forge, hoping Elira might still be awake. But the windows were dark, the fires cold.
Ren drifted toward the training grounds, then stopped short at the threshold. Her bruises throbbed in protest.
She wandered through the castle’s moonlit courtyard.
The hedges here were sculpted into elegant, sweeping shapes depicting fae warriors frozen in dance, roses the size of her head unfurling in green leaf.
Her boots carried her along the same winding path she had walked on her very first day in Pyraelia, when Kaelin had strolled beside her.
Back then, the air had been alive with autumn’s warmth, the gardens still humming with bees and color. Now frost rimmed the leaves, and her breath fogged in the cold night. Ren marveled at how two months had slipped away since her arrival. Winter had come into its full reign .
Tiny sprites fluttered past, their soft golden glow illuminating the path in flitting patterns. Ren caught fragments of their hushed conversation in a language she didn’t recognize, musical and ethereal.
The courtyard opened into a wide, circular clearing, where ancient statues loomed in the darkness. She paused beneath the gaze of one, its face fractured but still regal, a fae god with wings of stone stretched wide as if to shield the world.
And then she rounded the final hedge.
Ren stopped short.
There, standing like a monument himself beneath the largest statue in the circle, was Sylven Draeth.
The moonlight caught the silver edge of his pauldrons, casting his sharp features in a ghostly glow. He didn’t turn to look at her, but she could feel his awareness shift the moment she arrived, like a predator clocking a ripple in the underbrush.
“Well,” Ren said, folding her arms and eyeing him with wary curiosity. “Either you’re communing with the gods, or you’re brooding dramatically for attention. Which is it?”
“Must it be one or the other?” Sylven replied. “Perhaps I find divine inspiration in my own company.”
“Must be nice, having that much self-love. Do you pray to yourself before bed, too?”
He turned then, just enough for her to see the faint curl of amusement at the corner of his mouth. “Only when I’ve done something truly magnificent, which, unfortunately for my sleep cycle, is often.”
Ren rolled her eyes. “And here I thought the gods’ statues had the biggest heads in the courtyard.”
Sylven’s gaze slid to her. “What brings you out at this hour?”
“Thought I’d check on all the nobles who run like hell the moment something dangerous stirs in their view. Congratulations, you’re at the top of the list.”
His features darkened at her insult. And for a moment, even she was shocked she said such a thing to a renowned soldier of the fae court. But every time she looked upon his sharply chiseled face, snake-like eyes, and that conniving sneer, she saw Joss and Corrin in her mind.
And she remembered what Sylven and his soldiers did.
Or didn’t do .
Sylven returned his attention back to the statue. “How much do you know about our gods?”