Chapter 21
Wren
“T…Ted…” Wren coughed against the cotton stuffed inside his mouth. He tried swallowing but ended up making it even worse. It felt like his throat was completely closed and dry, making him heave.
He sputtered, struggling to take a breath as his eyes fought the darkness he was swimming in.
He felt things slithering up and down his arms. Felt a cool sensation on his skin and something restricting his legs. There was beeping. Whirring.
And there was a familiar hum of magic in the air all around him. The kind that felt suffocating. The kind that made it impossible to focus on anything else because it could drown you.
He had only ever been in one place that felt like that. Like he wanted to scratch out of his skin and run away. Like he had to escape.
He felt along his arm and brushed against something plastic, cold and bendy, ending at the crease of his elbow and clearly pumping something into his system he was sure he didn’t want.
He clawed at it, yanking it out to a cacophony of voices suddenly snapping and shouting and making him dizzy.
He tried covering his ears with his hands, but there was something in his other arm that pulled and tugged until he could get rid of it too, unfamiliar fingers trying to hold his hands and keep them away from his own body.
The touch felt wrong.
He shrugged out of it only for it to return, stronger. He lashed out with his head to the side and opened his mouth, teeth connecting with warm flesh smelling faintly of sugar and smoke.
“Motherfucker,” he heard someone hiss, releasing his hand and stepping back heavily.
He still couldn’t see anything, his closed lids providing the perfect backdrop to the slew of images he couldn’t make heads or tails of. Snakes. Machines. People. Blu…
“Teddy…” he called out again and felt another hand on him.
Small, warm. Covering his cheek. Brushing over where his cursemark was still pulsing slightly and making it even harder to open his eyes.
“You all need to be quiet,” the owner of the hand said, and Wren knew he should know who that was. It felt familiar the way few other things did.
He could see colors and glitter in his mind. He could somehow hear the tone of that voice when it wasn’t quiet but booming through small spaces. He had a scent in mind too. And a warmth in the pit of his stomach. He just didn’t have a face, or a name.
“Rich coming from you,” someone else said. And the same thing happened. Wren knew and didn’t know at the same time.
“Shut up,” the first voice said again, and Wren squeezed his eyes shut tighter, trying to force himself out of whatever haze he was in that was making him forget.
“Blu…” he called, hoping to hear a tiny chirp. Nothing came other than the hushed voices he couldn’t place.
“Yes, Midas, I’m aware,” someone said, and that name slotted things into place for him.
Midas. His brother was there.
The small hands and glitter behind his lids were Black.
The scent of sugar and smoke was Ash.
The haughty voice was Hart, and the tender touch of strong hands was Fix. His family was there. Even if the most important part of it was missing.
He cracked his eyes open and was met with worried faces and tense postures.
“Teddy…” he croaked, and Black made a small cooing sound in the back of his throat, rubbing his shoulder.
“Babes…” Black said.
“Where is he?” Wren asked, desperate for any information he could get. His brothers exchanged looks that made him want to throw up. “Please tell me.”
“He’s in intensive care,” Fix said, his expression calm and placating like it usually was when he spoke to vulnerable people. “We don’t know anything else and they don’t want to say anything to anyone.”
“His team is his next of kin,” Wren said, anxiety spiking again. “Are they here?”
“They’re here and they’re raising hell,” Black said. “The doctors refuse to let them see him and I’m pretty sure one of them is very close to dismembering whoever gets in their way next.”
“Eerie,” Wren said, his mind spinning with the information and the haze that was eating away at the corners of it.
Had he seen Teddy be taken away? Had he seen him hurt or was it just his imagination? The venom in the machine had made him see all sorts of things he didn’t want to see. Which ones were real?
“Love him. Super cool,” Black said, trying to ease the tension, but it wasn’t working.
“I need to go look for him,” Wren said, pushing off the pillows and groaning as pain exploded all over his body. “Shit.”
“You are not going anywhere,” Hart said, walking closer until he was standing at the foot of Wren’s bed.
“I have to see if he’s here,” Wren said, pushing against the pain and exhaustion.
“IF he’s here?” Hart asked.
“Did you fill them in?” Wren asked Midas, who nodded shortly, standing the farthest from everyone, Avery sitting on a rickety wooden chair next to his hip.
“Midas and Avery told us what they could, but none of it makes sense, Wren,” Ash said. “A machine filled with magic. What is it for?”
“I don’t know,” Wren said. “We only found it yesterday and I doubt Avery had any time to properly look into it.”
“Actually,” Avery said, turning in his chair so Midas could see his signing clearly. “There is one piece of information I did manage to figure out. The machine—”
“I came as soon as I heard,” a deep female voice said from the door, interrupting whatever Avery was about to say.
Wren snapped his head in the direction of the door, all of his pent-up rage and helplessness bubbling to the surface.
He had no answers, he had no idea where Teddy was, he had no way to reach him or even see if he was okay and this…
this bitch had the audacity to show up like it wasn’t all her fault.
“Gwen,” Fix said, keeping a hand on Wren’s chest to stop him from launching himself out of his bed and tackling the woman to the ground. He would have. He fucking would have if he had just been strong enough to even stand.
“GET THE FUCK OUT!” Wren screamed at her, pushing at Fix’s hands, limbs flailing everywhere.
Someone caught him around the waist and held him down, the grip too strong to be fought out of.
“Wujia,” she said, slightly taken aback but trying to cover it. Wren’s vision went black.
“Don’t you fucking dare call me that!” he snarled, Ash’s arms viselike around him still.
“It is your name,” she said, but before Wren could protest Hart stepped forward.
“It might be a good time to reexamine your fixation on that name, I believe,” he said.
“Reexamine your fixation on the whole fucking operation you’re leading because as soon as I’m out of here, I am coming for all of you,” Wren said. “I will not rest until everything is gone. Until every last child you have ripped from their family is safe.”
“Safe?” She walked closer, fake confusion written on her face. Condescending as always as she stared at him as if he were a nuisance she couldn’t wait to get rid of. “There is nowhere safer than Nexus.”
“Really?” he asked, sarcasm dripping from his lips like venom. “Everywhere and anywhere is safer than inside the headquarters of an institution that turns a blind eye to one of their own torturing and abusing the children they’re supposed to care for.”
“That is quite a tale, Wujia,” she said.
“Gwen.” Fix spoke up, voice heavy as he looked at her.
Wren knew she meant more to Fix than she did to any of them.
She was a mother to him. Or the closest thing any of them had.
But he couldn’t bring himself to care at that moment.
He couldn’t spare one thought for anyone else but Teddy and what was being done to him while Wren sat there confined and questioned as if he hadn’t seen it all with his own eyes.
“Fix…” Gwen said, but he just shook his head, pain written all over his face.
“You will have to hear what he has to say.”
“You believe him?”
“I do,” Fix said. “You know Nexus was home, and you know I respect you beyond most things, but I am not blind to the faults of Nexus. And you shouldn’t be either.”
“Not being blind is not the same as being aware,” Gwen said. “I have been running Nexus for decades now. All of our instructors are trustworthy and only have the cursebreakers’ well-being in mind.”
“Children,” Wren said. “Until they are placed, all of them are children. And you are not only blind but also deaf and apparently an idiot because the things that happened right under your nose are countless!”
Wren watched her look around the room, clearly looking for support, but he knew his brothers had his back. No matter what their alliances were, they stuck together. The rejects. The unwanted ones.
“And you are all on his side in this?” she asked.
“There are no sides here, Gwen,” Fix said. “Wren does have a chip on his shoulder that makes it hard for you to believe him. But I don’t. I see both the good and the bad in Nexus and want it to be a sanctuary for everyone the way it was for me. I think it can be that. If we weed out the bad.”
She stared at him for a long moment, Wren clutching the stiff sheets between his fingers, ready to explode if she denied them again.
“All right,” she said, haughty and detached. “I will entertain this for five minutes.”
She turned around and located a chair right next to Avery, who scooted as far away from her as he could as she sat down primly, crossing her legs at the ankles and folding her hands in her lap. “I’m listening.”
While it didn’t look like that to Wren, he was gonna take it. The sooner he got it over with, the sooner he could go look for Teddy.
“Your instructor has been harassing one of your trainees for over a decade,” Wren said. “I can’t say if he was the only one, but I honestly doubt it.”
She recoiled, but it was barely perceptible. Too small of a reaction to learning something so horrible.
“Accusations like that will have to come with proof, Wujia,” she said, and for the first time he heard that name not as an insult to him, but a shield. “And names.”