Chapter Twenty-Nine Wren
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Wren
I don’t believe the Fates are natural. They are no divine deities. Not the gods we should worship. They are the monsters in the dark.
—Pages found in the banned book Questioning Fate by Alexandra Collette, Andalay historian, location unknown
The thief abandoned us on the streets, running Fates knew where.
Memories of the night he’d crawled to my house, half alive, haunted me. I wrung my hands, imagining all of the horrible things that could happen. If that man attacked again. Or if Damien was being led into a trap with more assailants. Or—
The thought of him hurt, bleeding out on the streets, alone—it drove me insane. I should’ve run after him, but he’d been too quick. I regretted not at least trying.
Damien would follow me.
“Hey,” Ruby said, grabbing one of my hands. “Damien does that sometimes. I promise you, he’s fine. He won’t engage with the man unless he has a plan, which is why he’s one of the Void’s best thieves. Most people are reckless. He isn’t.”
She let go of my hand, gifting me with a reassuring smile. I returned the gesture, watching as she half skipped, half walked away. Not even the explosions had been capable of wiping away her exuberance. Dried blood covered one side of her face, but it made her look all the more fierce.
I rubbed my temples. Not worrying was easier said than done. I’d specifically told him to stay put.
My thoughts careened to a halt. I had gone with Grayson without him. Unfortunately, I couldn’t admonish Damien without being a damned hypocrite myself.
Grayson had just looked so broken, and he trusted me. I’d thought I was doing the right thing by keeping Damien out of our plans, if only to gain Grayson’s trust and information.
What we’d discovered…
Both our fathers were monsters.
The man who’d held me in his arms and read me fairy tales as a child had unloaded people ready for slaughter from a shipping container not a half hour ago. Apparently the inhabitants of the Void weren’t sufficient, and whoever they delivered those poor souls to would probably request more.
I’d suspected for some time who they were intended for, much as I’d protested. The very notion argued against everything I believed. But I couldn’t ignore the evidence, and that room at the Registry building had been damning.
But why? If the Fates were all-powerful, then why did they need souls?
I trailed after a defeated Grayson and Ruby, thinking of Dusk and her letter. She’d wanted me to find my gift and prevent something awful from transpiring. She’d known. Meaning…
My father and the other lords were working with one of the other Fates, if not both Day and Dawn.
I had a hard time believing the Fates worked alone—they never left their palace. And unless those souls were intended for some other deity I’d never heard about, the three women who ruled Andalay were murderers and liars.
My mind reeled, a headache forming. The civilians of Andalay had to know the truth: that the people they worshipped could be masquerading as deities when they were nothing but criminals.
I flinched when Grayson nudged my shoulder.
“So…” He grimaced. “Our parents are evil. I mean, I always assumed as much, but to see it in action. It changes everything.” He let out an audible exhale.
“I don’t know what to do with myself.” Grayson intertwined our fingers, and I could practically feel his exhaustion seeping into my bones.
“But I’m glad I know,” he said, his voice hardening.
“Together, we can do something about it. Right?”
He wanted me to have the answers. I wanted to have the answers.
“How? How are we going to do something?” I asked, my voice breaking at the end.
“We don’t have solid proof as to what the souls are used for.
We have nothing but speculation. Yes, there’s evidence of their deaths, but why?
Why them? What is the need?” I practically shouted, and a few heads turned my way. I didn’t care.
Grayson’s grip on my hand tightened. “Hey. Take a breath,” he soothed.
“We don’t have to solve this all right this second.
We have people we can trust now, and I know it’s not a lot, but we can bring in more.
Build a group who can expose the truth. I doubt every citizen would be fine living with blood on their hands. ”
I hoped he was right. There had to be some, even in the north, who’d rebel against killing innocents.
The building tears I’d been working to hold back almost spilled, regardless of Grayson’s support.
“I have no magic, and Ruby and Damien might not want to endanger themselves,” I whispered so she didn’t hear.
“Damien said he was in, but…” Damien wanted his dream.
What if this got too dangerous and he skipped town? What if—
“They’ll stay,” Grayson said assuredly, and I envied his easy confidence.
He should be shaken, and in some ways he was—his jaw clenched, shoulders stiffened—but he remained solid as marble.
“They came here tonight and they aren’t running.
Well, Damien did run, but I think that was to tail a suspect,” he amended.
He rubbed at his eyes with his free hand, exhausted.
Perhaps I’d been wrong, because the veneer of calm he wore slowly disintegrated before my eyes.
I felt the same.
We trudged toward the boundary separating the two sides of Andalay, Grayson holding my hand, Ruby gracefully weaving her way through the throngs of gawking onlookers.
Fear had breathed life upon the Void, the explosions an invisible arrow aimed at its heart.
You could tell by the way no one fully lifted their head or met your stare.
It was a tangible thing, this unknown trepidation, and it built like a crescendo.
A hand yanked me to the side and I let out a scream.
“Wren!” Damien enfolded me in his arms, and I flinched, shocked by the act. How he so openly held me. It was new.
It was also comforting. Enough for a few tears to slip down my cheeks.
He drew back an inch to study my face, his eyes colder than before.
“You’re safe, you’re all right.” It wasn’t a question.
Or rather, it felt like him telling himself I was fine.
The longer he analyzed my face, the softer his own became.
He lifted a finger to catch a falling tear, the tenderness in his touch causing me to shiver.
My hands automatically wrapped around his torso, the cold air failing to stave off the heat he emanated. I met his wild gaze with a thumping heart, relieved he wasn’t injured.
“What happened? Why did you run?” His lips parted, and he peered over my shoulder, perhaps at Ruby and Grayson. “Damien?” I pressed, my fingers digging into his jacket.
He maneuvered us beyond the masses, moving into a small corner in an empty vendor’s stall. He hadn’t let go once, and I found that troubling. He’d uncovered something.
“Spill,” Ruby said, coming up on my right, arms crossed as Grayson towered behind her.
But Damien’s eyes weren’t on her. His hand cupped my cheek, the reverence in his stare sending a spark rioting through my chest. “I saw him,” he said. “Everett.”
“Everett?” I shook my head, not understanding.
“He went to the Black Dahlia and spoke to some woman there. I don’t think it was one of the Fates, but…
it has to do with them. I just don’t understand it yet.
” The wall that had separated us for days had been too heavy to maintain.
Looking up at him, I realized that it had been shattered, and the fear creasing the corners of his eyes spoke his truth.
The worry, the anxiety, the alarm. There wasn’t a single cocky bone in his body as he held me, his chest against mine, our bodies exhaling in perfect rhythm.
“Everett was the one who ran from the docks,” he murmured. “But it’s odd. The woman spoke to him as if she wasn’t working with the lords. Or she was, but…” He trailed off, his face pinched. “She spoke of splitting shipments. But the next one wouldn’t go to them, she said.”
Them, as in the Fates.
“This woman wanted souls for herself.” I finished his thoughts, a thousand images of the highborn ladies I knew swirling through my head.
I pictured them all now; hiding in their lacy gowns, sipping tea, gossiping while living in luxury. My own mother was one of the most respected ladies in the city, and…
No. I was reaching. Thinking that if my father was evil, then Mother had to be as well. Yet the idea wouldn’t leave me.
“We need to get the hell out of here,” Ruby interjected, the women of the north and their secrets slipping to the back of my mind. “We could be next, and Aurilia is a large kingdom. Maybe we could leave it entirely,” she suggested. “I heard the Southern Isles of Marnett to be beautiful.”
“You want to leave?” Damien looked at her for the first time. “We’ve spent our whole lives here, Ruby.”
“Yeah, and when have you ever cared about anyone else?” she retorted. “It’s been us against the Void. The northerners. I’m tired of fighting.”
Damien shook his head. “They’re our people. We are them. I was hoping to leave this place, I’ll admit, but I can’t run now, knowing everything I do.” He ran a rough hand through his tangled hair. “It’ll haunt me. Nothing will make it all right, not even distance.”
I analyzed each flicker of emotion on his face, stunned by his fierce protectiveness. There was something he wasn’t saying. I glimpsed it in the twitch of his eye. How tightly he gripped me. The frustrated curl of his lips. How he dared a few peeks over his shoulder.
“Damien,” I whispered in his ear, on my tiptoes. “What aren’t you telling me?”
Grayson and Ruby spoke behind us, something about Grayson wishing to stay and fight and Ruby saying it was a lost cause. As they argued, Damien drew back, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
“I think I’ve gone mad, Wren,” he confessed. “I swear I have, but those last words the woman said…”
I found myself clutching his shoulders, pushing myself protectively against him. Damien wasn’t a soft man by any means, so to have riled him in such a way was unfathomable.
“ ‘I know he’s your brother, even if by half, but take care of the stony-eyed thief. We can’t afford any more problems,’ she told Everett,” Damien said, glancing down.
Stony-eyed thief. I’d only seen one thief with stony eyes, and they belonged to Damien.
The words hung in the air, suspended in time. I wished I had something better to say, something to take away his frantic look.
I was at a loss for the right words. I didn’t think there were any.
“We’ll find out, Damien. I promise,” I vowed, feeling helpless. It was the same thing we’d been saying for weeks. And with this new revelation? Everything had just gotten messier.
“Why are you so certain?” he shouted. “Everett was there, right before my eyes, kneeling. He could be one of who knows how many who are in on this.”
“So you think that you and Everett may be brothers—”
“I don’t know what I think!” he said, louder than before. His outburst put an end to Ruby and Grayson’s arguing. “But I don’t know where I came from. I don’t know anything!” He released his grip on me and spun around, his hand threading back in his hair as he drowned in his frustration.
Ruby placed her hand on his shoulder, and Damien faced her.
“And the object I have? I don’t even have an answer to that!
My whole life has been a mystery, and I’m exhausted.
When I was dropped off at the orphanage, no one knew of my origin.
What if I did come from the north?” He looked at Ruby and then at me.
My throat tightened as I watched him crumble.
I wanted to be the one holding him, but he appeared one blink away from bolting.
Ruby shut her eyes. “It’s a possibility,” she finally admitted. “With your gift, it explains a lot.”
Only members of high society and their kin were gifted.
And Damien’s mirror tied it all together.