Chapter Fifteen #2
“I’ve been researching. The Trinities…at the Athenaeum.
” His voice is quiet, but the words reverberate between us.
I furrow my brow, waiting for him to continue.
Chiron’s eyes snap open, and he leans closer.
The threads of our bond are drawn, like a bow before release.
Chiron opens his mouth to say something, but Wren continues, “I needed to know if there was anything in the histories about someone leaving the Trinity—If there was any record of the land exacting a toll for it.” I feel leaden.
Words refuse to form, so I remain quiet.
Chiron’s voice is low, and the words are clipped.
“You want to leave? That’s what this is about?” His jaw is a tense, pulsing thing now as he stares Wren down. His eyes are locked on Wren, brows furrowed in anger.
Wren’s shock and hurt are evident. His features are drawn, and his eyes are cold. “I didn’t say that,” his voice is strained, “I just needed to know.”
Chiron stands up, grasping Wren by his tunic and hauling him up with him.
They stand face to face. “Needed to know that you could leave? I told you as much! On the night of the sea trial. What part of the vows didn’t you understand?
No secrets? Fidelity?” Chiron’s voice carries across the space, loud and enraged.
My stomach is churning. The sweet taste of apple has died on my tongue, gone sour in the heat of their argument.
“I needed to know I had a CHOICE.” Wren’s yell lands like a blow on Chiron’s jaw, and he turns to me. His eyes are red and darker than I’d ever seen them, under the shadow of the tree. He looks at me with a plea in his eyes, to make sense of this, perhaps.
But I cannot. I don’t understand. I take in a deep breath, trying to steady my tumultuous stomach and the pounding in my chest. I thought Wren was embarrassed about the joining.
I thought he just needed time to wrap his mind around what we were becoming.
But he wanted to know if he could leave? If he had a choice?
“None of us had a choice,” I say quietly, looking between the both of them.
The air that once felt like a respite from the midday sun now chills me to the bone.
I pull my knees to my chest and wrap my arms around them.
Chiron’s eyes soften to me, but I cannot hold them.
My gaze is locked on Wren, waiting. He looks stricken; all of the energy of his outburst has fled him, and he returns to the grass in front of me, on his knees.
I’m reminded of the night of his choosing, my dream.
I think back to a desolate Wren kneeling in the Athenaeum on Caelestis, asking for this to fall to someone else.
We remain locked in silence, many breaths pass between us. I wait. For an apology, an explanation?
I do not know.
“Please? Can you not understand…either of you? I searched every tomb—hell, every scroll in Nerine trying to make sense of what Chiron told us. There is nothing there to confirm or disprove the language, ‘Withdraw the lands bounty’ in the text. But I had to try and find it.” His voice is pleading.
But I have no understanding. I have only hurt.
We could have looked together, like we had agreed to do once we made it to Ilyora.
Tears sting my eyes, and I lower them to hide the evidence of my response.
I work to keep my voice even, neither allowing anger nor heartbreak to guide it.
“You had a choice, Wren. To not hide this from us, to work with us. You chose, yourself,” My voice breaks at the last of it, cracking me in two.
“You did not choose us.”
I allow my tears to fall, quietly slipping down my cheeks and splashing onto the bodice of my blue gown. The hurt in me spreads from my heart in every direction.
We shared not just our vows, but our bodies. And Wren chose himself.
…
The walk back to the carriage is deadly quiet.
We do not touch. We do not speak. I use the sleeve of my gown to wipe at my face, hoping that my tears are not visible for all those we pass to see.
I keep my head low, allowing my hair to obscure as much of my face as it can.
I climb up into the cart first, and Chiron follows me in.
Wren hesitates outside the door, looking like a child ready to bolt. Chiron lets out a low growl, his patience tested beyond anything I've seen of him. He reaches out to yank Wren into the cart. I wrap my hand around his upper arm, and he stops, leaning forward still but looking back at me.
“Please don’t,” I whisper, “We cannot afford for these people to see us like this.” Chiron closes his eyes, taking in a strong breath and letting it out slowly. He nods his agreement and leans back into his seat.
Wren tells the driver that he is walking back to the inn, and so the door closes with him on the other side before the clacking of hooves moves us away from him.
I stare at the door of the carriage, confused and unmoored by Wren’s confession.
My mind races with the things we said, and the things we did not.
I knew something was wrong the morning after the trial of the sea, and I ignored my instincts.
I was raised to be in tune with them, and I let them fall away from me in this new life.
I cannot go back to the Isle, I cannot continue on as we are now.
Fractured. Broken. Our vows strained and our tentative trust damaged.
When we are safely back in the confines of our rooms at the Inn, I allow myself to slip into a state neither awake nor asleep. In between, allowing my emotions to lift off my chest and focus entirely on my breathing.
When the door to our room clicks open, everything I cannot be rid of slams back into my body with Wren’s return.
Chiron wastes no time with his questions, leaning back in the chair Wren normally occupies in the corner of the room, “Where did you go, Wren? Why do you think this is the time to walk away? You opened us up to this. Finish what you started.” Wren’s face is shellshocked at Chiron’s demeanor.
The charming and patient prince is nowhere to be found in this room. He is angry, and he will have answers.
He was truly born to lead, but his hot head about this worries me.
I sit up in the great bed and face them both.
Waiting for Wren to respond. He fidgets with the ties at his collar, one arm wrapped across his middle.
He holds Chiron’s gaze, but it does not reflect back the anger.
It is sad; it is hopeless. A deep place inside of myself wants to comfort him, but I cannot reach for him. Not right now.
“I am sorry. I did not mean to hurt either of you. I just needed—” Wren begins, stopping to take in a deep breath. Its exhale is shaky, struggling to leave him. Chiron is unmoved. At least, not to compassion.
“What did you need, Wren? I was honest with you both that night about my family. About how afraid I am to fail because of how they failed. You threw it in my fucking face.” Chiron’s voice is loud now, surely heard by the guards outside the door.
It cracks with grief and shame that is undeniable.
Wren flinches back, struck by his words.
I flinch as well. Because I understand him.
His hurt? I can feel it turning the food in my belly to ashes.
Chiron’s eyes are glassy with unshed tears, but he clears his throat and pitches down to a level that keeps his next words between us three.
“We were all chosen, Wren. Vonetta, you, me? We all chose to make these vows, to share that bed. I thought…I thought for a while we could have it all. Everything. The kingdom, friendship, love? You threw it all back in our faces.” The anguish in his words is a tangible thing, coiling around my throat and squeezing tightly.
I cannot go to him, either of them. But I wish I could.
The distance between us is impassable. The hurt has fissured us all.
Chiron wipes at his face, angry and ashamed tears finding their way out of him.
I steal a glance at Wren, who has tears falling down his cheeks as well.
I touch my own face, wet and cool. I didn’t know it, but I wept silently.
I cry for Wren, tortured by duty unbidden.
I cry for Chiron, who is so put together.
He is strong both mentally and physically, yet cannot overcome his family’s wounds.
But mostly, I cry for myself. Alone in this room and somehow also surrounded by the two people I have come to know and care for more than anyone else I have ever known. But still alone.
“I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to leave you. Either of you. I just needed to know if I could. I’m sorry.”
Wren’s words hang in the air between us all. I never imagined what it would be like to love someone this way. Two someones. They are so different, as the sun is from the moon—And to me now, as far away as either of those.
“Can you leave if you want to?” I say to him, not opening my eyes to see his reply.
“I do not know. I do not know.”