Chapter 16
Wren
Iexpect silence and stunned shock, but Torryn surprises me by moving not even a breath after the words finish leaving my lips.
He steps forward until he’s close enough that I can feel the heat emanating from his flushed skin.
His hands flex once at his sides, fingers curling like he’s fighting the urge to reach for me and drag me away from all of this.
“We knew you were different the moment we saw you in that field,” he says quietly, the deep rumble of his voice steady, as always. “We could feel it, even if we didn’t want to admit it then. The draw to you wasn’t…” His mouth twists, as if the word he wants frustrates him. “Normal.”
A bitter laugh threatens to climb up my throat at that, but I swallow it down.
Normal…what I wouldn’t give for that.
“We all feel a claim to your heart in our own ways,” Torryn continues, golden eyes never leaving my face, “but we do not own you, Wren. We never have.”
The simple honesty of that sinks into me, heavy and warm, and it hurts. I’d rather him yell or make me feel bad, not reaffirm my feelings. It would be so much easier to try to construct the wall I desperately need between myself and my feelings for them.
The wind gusts hard across the wall, flinging a burst of snow between us that melts against the heat rolling off his chest in a flurry of droplets.
“Are you sure,” he asks, each word sounding heavier than the last, “that this is the path you want to take?”
My lungs stutter around the question.
For a heartbeat, I feel everything at once.
The four kings standing in front of me, each a different variety of power and life that I could have with them.
One human colonel behind me, unarmed, trusting me in a way that might cost him his position—or his life.
The earth, silent and stubborn beneath us all.
The ghost of the threads I saw hanging in the air like golden nooses, each one ending in their ruin.
No matter what I say, I’m going to break something that can’t be easily mended.
I drag in a slow, shaking breath, the cold air burning against my throat on the way down.
“I know…” My first attempt crumbles, forcing me to stop and swallow around the tightness. My heart is beating so fast and hard that it feels like it’s in my throat, trying to stop me from saying this.
“I know I can’t go back with you. Not now.”
Reaffirming it feels like taking a blade to my own chest and twisting as their carefully guarded expressions shift one by one, my words landing deep within each of them with finality.
Torryn’s expression cracks as he takes a few steps back. The display of emotion is small—just a tightening around his eyes, the barest hitch to his breath followed by a tight press of his lips—but on a man that controlled, the look may as well be shouting his pain.
Riven’s jaw locks, a muscle twitching in one cheek as his gaze cuts away, red eyes tracking some unseen point on the horizon as if he can’t quite bear to watch me choose–what looks like from their side like I’m walking away again.
Azyric’s mouth curves, not quite a smile and nowhere close to kind.
“There it is,” he says softly, his voice almost lost under the wind. “The line in the sand I was waiting to see you draw.”
My head snaps toward him, anger flaring bright through the grief sitting in my chest.
“That’s not what this is,” I bite out, my patience with him thinning.
I may understand what drives his actions and sharp tongue, but it doesn’t mean I need to be okay with it.
“Oh?” His brows lift a fraction, silver eyes sharp. “Because from where I’m standing, it sounds very much like you just told us you’d rather plant your feet on a human wall than come back to us.”
Come back to us.
That subtle detail screams so loudly in my mind. I don’t think he even realizes what he said.
I shake my head, tears burning hot at the corners of my eyes. “I’m not choosing them over you. I’m choosing to find my own path and save us all.”
“Intent doesn’t matter. Actions do.” Azyric replies, quiet and merciless.
His shadows coil tightly to his boots, retreating from their space near my own shoes.
“When their weapons fire on us and our people are murdered, you’ll be standing on their lands, which tells me everything I need to know about your support. ”
The sentence lands hard and I jerk my head back as if he physically hit me.
Riven inhales sharply, as if Azyric’s words lodge under his ribs as firmly as they do mine. Those red orbs look back at me then, and whatever leash he’s had on his emotions frays a little more.
“I can’t give up on what’s been done to my people,” he says suddenly, his voice sharp and hoarse all at once, like it pains him to admit this. “I can’t remove myself from this war just because you exist in the human lands now, darling.”
A tear slips down my cheek and I nod, understanding how deeply this is hurting him.
Anguish twists his face before he takes a deep breath and whispers, “I would kill millions to keep you safe, but I can’t hold back my people from getting the vengeance they seek and deserve against the human cities just because I’m scared of you being in the crossfire.
I wouldn’t be their king if I asked them to forget those we’ve lost.”
Images flash behind my eyes of the battlefield where I first woke and all of the human bodies littering the ground. How quickly the kings forget that both sides have lost people who were loved and cherished and fighting for what they believe is right.
There is no neat line, no clean division where one side is worthy and the other is not.
“I’m not asking you to forget,” I whisper, my words coming out shaky as I try to reclaim the confidence I need to continue with my plan.
“I’m asking you to give me time. To let me try to find a solution that isn’t just…
more of the same violence and senseless loss of life. I’m trying to save us all.”
Snow whips sideways between us, cutting tiny, stinging lines against my cheeks. Sylvin steps in then, his hand lifting and hesitating, fingers hovering at the edge of my space like he’s asking a question without words.
The simple offer only furthers the flow of my tears as I reach out and meet him halfway.
His fingers close around mine gently, cool and sure, anchoring me in a way the earth refuses to.
He brings my hand up between us, his gaze never leaving my face as he presses his lips to my knuckles.
The kiss is soft and cold, a whisper of winter that sends a faint spark of power skimming along my skin, as if his magic can’t help but reach for me too.
“One month,” he murmurs against my skin.
The words are so quiet I almost think I imagined them.
“What?” My voice scrapes out, thin and disbelieving, as if I imagined them.
He straightens, still holding my hand. For once, the mocking curve is gone from his mouth; in its place is pure sincerity.
“You have one month, Wren,” he says, each word intentional and loud for all to hear. “To do whatever it is you think you can do here. To convince yourself, the humans, the earth, or whomever, that another path exists.”
The storm raging around us is suddenly gone, with any remaining snow falling and settling on the ground quietly. The air itself seems to hold its breath as he speaks.
“After that,” he continues, blue eyes hardening to sharpened ice, “we move forward with our plans. We owe our people that much.”
A month.
My free hand lifts, pressing flat over my sternum as the pressure I feel builds. I have to take a beat to breathe deeply to attempt to stem the flow of tears so that I can speak clearly without the lump of emotion in my throat.
“And if I fail?” I ask, even though the threads the earth already showed me hum at the edge of my awareness, whispering what that failure would look like. What would happen to the world if the supernaturals were allowed to move forward with this war.
My feelings wouldn’t matter if that were to come to fruition. The only choice I would be left with is to wipe out all living souls from existence, to ensure the earth remains.
I still can’t bring myself to tell them that, too afraid they would truly see me as their enemy then. Faced with killing them either before or after the war, but always ending with their blood on my hands.
“Then the war continues as it always has,” Azyric answers before Sylvin can, his voice low and even. “Only this time, you’ll be our enemy.”
I see Riven and Torryn’s shoulders tighten at that as their gazes cut to the wraith king.
They haven’t agreed to this month-long term, but they haven’t denied it either.
My chest caves in as I think about the weight of what I’m asking from them all in giving me this time.
It seems no matter what side I speak with, I’m always asking for more and more, after they’ve given me so much.
It’s happened with the kings, and it’s beginning to happen with Ryoden.
I’m risking all of their positions and lives, while still not knowing if I’ll ever find a third thread of fate that wasn’t shown to me.
Sylvin’s grip tightens around my hand in a brief, firm squeeze, drawing my attention back to him. Then, slowly, he turns his head, his gaze spearing past my shoulder. I follow and see Ryoden straighten, meeting his look without flinching.
“If she is harmed,” Sylvin warns, and ice threads through every syllable, leaving frost crackling across the stone between them, “if a single mark blooms on her skin…”
Snowflakes resume their fall as the wind lashes wildly once more, obscuring my gaze with strands of my dark hair for a moment.
“This temporary ceasefire ends the moment we learn of any harm to her,” Sylvin finishes, voice dropping to the tone I vividly recall from that night he froze the entire human navy in the ocean’s depths. “And you, Colonel—and every human behind your walls—will know no ounce of mercy from any of us.”
The threat hangs there, glittering and lethal, as tangible as the cold seeping through my bones. Yet warmth kindles within my chest at the possessive edge. Despite everything I’ve said here and my running away, he is still protecting me.
Torryn’s chest rises and falls in slow, measured breaths, muscles taut beneath sun-kissed skin as he lets out a growl that seems like he’s channeled one of his spirits to do so as his eyes flare.
“She will not be treated as a prisoner anymore while here, human. I won’t agree to this temporary treaty, otherwise. ”
I can’t help the loud sniffle that comes from me at his added protection.
“If even a single drop of her blood falls,” Riven vows as his eyes flick between my face and Ryoden’s, calculation and grief wrestling in their depths. “I won’t be able to honor it.”
At this point I give up entirely on trying to hold back the tears, letting the depth of their loyalty sink as deeply as it should. I don’t take it lightly what they’re offering, when they don’t have to.
This is only for me.
Ryoden takes a single deep inhale as he seems to absorb every sharp edge of the ultimatum that’s just been laid at his feet.
“I hear you,” he says at last, voice quiet but carrying cleanly through the short lull in the wind. There’s no bravado in it, no bluster. Just acceptance of the knife they’ve just placed against his city’s throat. “If she stays here, she stays under my protection. That was always the case.”
One month to stand in this impossible space between them and somehow turn it into something other than a grave for them all.
Sylvin’s hand is still wrapped around mine and I squeeze it, trying to ground myself in the impossibility of it all.
One month to fix what entire generations have failed to solve. One month to prove that the earth doesn’t have to follow the brutal threads it showed me. One month to justify leaving these men to stay in the city that has caged me.
Sylvin exhales slowly, the breath misting in the freezing air between us.
His fingers tighten around mine for one brief pulse, his grip loosening.
He doesn’t step away, not yet; instead he shifts closer and the world’s focus narrows down to the pale sweep of his hair and the impossible blue of his eyes.
“Do not mistake our departure for surrender, little echo,” he says softly, the familiar teasing lilt threaded with a possessive edge. “We are honoring your request, not releasing you.”
My chest constricts as he releases my hand entirely and lifts it, fingers brushing a cold-knuckled path along my jaw. His touch is careful, as if he’s handling something breakable, thumb skimming just beneath my lower lip.
“If I had my way,” he continues, the smile fading as he studies my face, “I would already have you back in my court, warm and safe and very far from these walls.” His gaze flicks, just for a heartbeat, past my shoulder to Ryoden, then returns to me with renewed focus. “But you asked for time.”
The pad of his thumb drifts, resting now at the hollow just before my ear, and he leans in slowly enough that I could step back if I wanted to.
I don’t.
The cold of the wind moves around us, but between the pull of his magic and the intensity of his attention, it feels like we’re standing in the eye of a storm that belongs only to us.
“So we will give you time,” he murmurs.
His mouth meets mine in a kiss that is far less dramatic than I expected, and somehow that makes it worse.
There is no crushing force, no consuming hunger that would feel like a public claiming; instead, it’s slow and deliberate, his lips cold at first and then warming as he lingers.
Pain lances through my chest at the tenderness and the way his hand shifts to cradle the back of my head as though he could shelter me from everything with the span of his palm.
For a breath, I let myself lean into it despite being in full view of the human colonel.
This is not a subtle message, and there will be no way of talking myself out of my deep connections to Ryoden’s enemies.
It’s a selfish decision that could hurt my goal, but I can’t bring myself to care. I can’t bring myself to keep giving up everything I want, so instead, I take, for just this moment.
He breaks the kiss first, drawing back only far enough that our foreheads touch.
“One month,” he repeats quietly. “Don’t waste it.”