Chapter Fourteen
Vonetta
The city of Nerine hosts the third-largest library in Elemyr, behind the capital and the Atheneum on the Isle of Men.
That is where Wren spends the bulk of the next two days.
When he is in our rooms, he is cordial, but the divide he has placed between us all feels like the trial of the land, both invisible and impermeable.
Wren falls asleep all three nights on the settee, a leather-bound book on his chest, and the dark circles under his eyes are stark.
Chiron does his best to keep our days interesting and paced with meetings and shops we visit. But none of the activity alleviates the weight of our strained bonds at my shoulders and the ache in my chest at our distance.
It is late in the night, and I lie awake. Chiron’s arm is wrapped tightly around me as we have slept every night since the first. But sleep has abandoned me. I watch Wren. He tosses and turns on the settee. His face tightens and relaxes in the dim firelight, but still he does not come to bed.
So I lay here. Contemplating all of the days passed from the very first night. Wren has always been at the edge of things. Curious, but hesitant. He’s been quiet, polite, duty-bound —but never overtly committed to either Chiron or me. A thought comes unbidden and gnaws at me;
Maybe Wren truly does not want to be a part of the Trinity.
If that is true, there is nothing I can conceive of that will fix this.
Neither Chiron nor I can compel him. I turn away from Wren, into Chiron’s warm chest. His heartbeat is steady, and his breathing is slow.
If I were any other woman, not a sister of the Isle or a representative of Naedra, I could be content with this one man.
Happy even. I am neither of those things.
My mind drifts back to our last meeting with the Lord and Lady Nephrys.
How happy they were, the two of them. A love match, they had told us.
I have no reference for what that feels like.
To choose someone, unbound by the elements.
The only thing I have ever chosen was my home.
I had thought somewhere along the way that we had decided that we were choosing the three of us.
All bound by fate, but active participants in what came from that.
I slip out of Chiron’s arms and walk quietly to the washroom.
I wonder if Chiron’s mother ever lay awake at night, wondering if she would fracture under the weight of the lost Queens’ leaving.
Did she, too, feel the separation like a festering wound, slowly eating away at what was once alive and growing?
I do not know the answer to any of the night’s questions.
I only know that I cannot continue on this way for much longer.
I open the shuttered window in the back of the room.
The sky is twilight dark, and the city below it is as well, washed in deep purple hues.
Vaguely, the outline of the northern peaks is visible.
Soon, we will have to move on from here.
Toward the trial of Sky, towards Ilyora.
But I fear above all that we will not be moving together.
…