Chapter 2 Wren
Ilet the door close behind me, slow and quiet, and run my eyes over the rest of the room.
It’s sparse. Devoid of anything but the necessary furniture. A bed, a desk, a small table and chairs by the window. No decoration. No colour. Just shadows and silence.
It smells off. Not foul—just… wrong. Like a sickroom. The kind of place where someone waits, not lives. It’s clean, yes, but the air is too still, too heavy. The curtains are drawn tight, muting the light until it feels more like dusk than day.
The furniture looks worn. Scraped and bent in places, like it’s been moved around too many times. Pushed aside. Pulled back. Rearranged out of frustration or necessity.
My gaze returns to the prince sprawled out on the bed. So this is where he lives.
Or hides.
“Well?” the Prince snaps. “No need to stand about. Sit down. You won’t be going anywhere.”
I don’t bother replying. It suits me not to speak to him. I know the instructions—befriend him if I can—but I’ve never killed anyone I knew, and if Grandmother ever does ask me to slit his throat, I’d rather not know him first.
If he wants to sit in the dark all day, that’s fine by me.
Still, there’s something distinctly strange about sharing a room with someone while they do absolutely nothing—especially a stranger. Prince Cassiel lies in bed for hours, just staring up at the ceiling.
No. Not staring.
He can’t stare.
What does he spend all that time thinking about? Maybe that’s what’s so unnerving about the silence—the way it makes the unsaid things throb louder than words.
The boredom sets in quickly. Or maybe it’s the awkwardness. “I take it I’m allowed to walk around?” I ask him.
“Be my guest,” Prince Cassiel says, like it doesn’t matter to him at all.
“May I practise some drills, too? I’m determined not to be idle.”
“Just don’t be noisy.”
I stretch first—slowly, deliberately—feeling the give of my muscles, the echo of tension in my shoulders and thighs.
There’s not much space, but I make do. Push-ups.
Lunges. Balance drills. I move through them in silence, barely making a sound, but I feel his attention like a thread pulled taut, even though I know he can’t see me.
He says nothing. Not a single word. No questions. No snide remarks. Just silence.
It’s unsettling.
I like to know my marks. To study them. To pull them apart in my mind until I understand exactly the best way to kill them and why they’re deserving of it.
He gives me nothing.
It reminds me—uncomfortably—of the first man I ever killed. A merchant named Ravel. Slippery as oil. Too careful to leave much of a trail, but not careful enough to keep me away once Grandmother pointed me at him.
I watched him for weeks. Learned that he took his tea cold, that he never read the same book twice, that he couldn’t bear the sight of blood—even when he cut himself shaving.
He went to market every fourth day, never wore the same shoes twice in a row, and kept a fey chained in the basement of his shop.
She had skin like lilacs and eyes like starlight, forced to enchant trinkets for him—silver rings, whispering brooches, charm-woven mirrors he sold for small fortunes.
I don’t often enjoy killing people.
But I enjoyed killing him.
And now I watch this prince—this blank-slate boy who lies on his back like he’s carved from stone and breathes like he wishes he wouldn’t.
I don’t like not knowing.
I shift into a series of tight, flowing motions. If I can’t read him by his words, maybe I’ll read him by the way he reacts to movement. But he doesn’t twitch. Doesn’t tilt his head. Doesn’t seem to care.
Maybe he really doesn’t.
Or maybe he’s better at playing this game than I am.
Either way, I’m not here to lose.
Someone knocks on the door.
“Enter,” Prince Cassiel barks.
A maid steps in with a tray balanced on one hand. She’s a small, pretty thing, as delicate as a sparrow. “Your lunch, Prince Cassiel. I’ll set it on the table by the window for you.”
“Well, where else would you put it?” he snaps.
The maid doesn’t respond. She slips back into the hall and returns with another tray. “This is for you, Ser. I hear you’re the new guard?”
“Oh—thank you,” I say, taking it from her. “But I’m not a knight—”
“All palace guards are styled as ‘Ser,’” the prince groans. “Don’t you know anything?”
I grit my teeth. “With respect, it’s my first day on the job.”
“Is it your first day on the planet?”
Stars help me. If only Grandmother had sent me in with clear orders to kill him...
I turn back to the maid with a smile that feels like a rebellion. “Hello. I’m Serawen Thornvale. My friends call me Wren. Nice to meet you.”
“I’m Anne,” she says. “I do most of the cleaning up here—”
“There’s no need to chat,” Prince Cassiel snaps. “You may leave.”
Anne dips her head and backs out with a quiet, “Of course, Your Highness.”
The door closes. The prince gets up from the bed, moving slowly towards the table, as if every step pains him in some way. He doesn’t hold out his hand until just before he reaches the chair, feeling around to lower himself into it. He pulls the plate towards him.
I glance around, trying to figure out where to put my tray. Putting it next to his feels like inviting ridicule, and there’s only so many times a day I can swallow my tongue.
I settle for the unused writing desk and dig in, careful not to make a sound—until the first spoonful hits my tongue and I almost moan. Breakfast feels like a century ago, and the food is delicious. A beef and turnip stew, still warm, and afterwards—peaches and cream.
Peaches.
I haven’t had peaches in years. I can’t help the noise that escapes me. It’s almost indecent.
“What are you doing to that food?” he snaps.
“Um… enjoying it?”
“You sound like you’re mating with it.”
“It’s good food,” I say tightly, holding back the retort that wants to claw its way out. I wouldn’t mind mating with a peach if it meant I got more of it.
I glance at his tray. His portions are bigger. His peaches are dusted with something glittery. My eyes widen.
“Is that gold dust?”
“How the fuck would I know?”
I have absolutely no idea what to say to that. I’ve never heard of anyone eating gold. Is it medicinal? Magical? Or is it just… decorative?
Is it mean to think it’s madness to waste that on a blind person?
“Mine doesn’t sparkle,” I mutter.
“Yours doesn’t have to.”
Right. Of course. I’m a servant. Silly humans and their silly constructs. The fey don’t have kings and servants and bowing and scraping. They have elders. Equals. At least, when the system works.
I press my lips together. I’m feeling less and less guilty about my role here.
He drops his cutlery with a clatter and shifts back toward the bed. “I’m bored of eating,” he declares, though the bowl’s barely been touched. “The smell irritates me. Call someone to remove it.”
The last time someone spoke to me like that was when I first arrived in the Moonhollow. A group of older fey children circled me, curious to see if I could be glamoured—half mortal, half mystery. They grabbed my arms, forced me to look in their eyes, and poured honeyed poison into my ears.
“Dance, mortal,” said one of them, a girl called Thalia with antlers and the speckled skin of a doe. “Dance until your feet bleed.”
I kicked mud in her eyes.
Stars, I wish I had mud now.
“Do I just open the door and yell for someone?” I ask flatly.
“There’s a bell. By the bed.”
“Is that the rope… right next to you?”
“Yes.”
I stride across the room, reach for the rope, and make a show of yanking it as dramatically as possible. I mime throttling him while I’m at it. That’s the one advantage of his blindness—I can make faces, gestures, fantasise about murder, and he’ll never know.
His head turns toward me. “What are you doing?”
“Venting my frustrations.”
“Well, vent them over there,” he says, flicking a hand in my direction like I’m smoke to be swatted.
Glaring, I move away from him. I hover by his tray, eyeing the untouched peaches. It’d be a shame to let them go to waste. Before I can second-guess myself, I grab the bowl and scarf them down—gold dust and all.
Somehow… they taste better.
I’m very careful not to moan.
Anne returns a few minutes later to clear the trays. She lights up when she sees two empty plates, but I hold a finger to my lips and nod toward myself. Her face softens. She smiles like we’re sharing a private joke, then whisks the trays away.
“Is there anything else I can get you, Your Highness?” she asks politely.
“No.”
Stars above. Would it kill him to say thank you?
The afternoon crawls by, slow and dull. We sit in mutual silence, punctuated only by the occasional visit to the adjoining bathroom and the quiet scrape of boredom.
I’ve never been good at sitting still, and there’s little else to do in the chamber.
The prince doesn’t speak, and after the sharpness of our earlier exchange, I don’t dare attempt conversation.
He sits on the edge of the bed for a while, his hands clasped loosely in his lap, staring at nothing.
Not that he has much choice in the matter.
I expect him to order me away, but he doesn’t. He simply exists in silence, motionless, save for the occasional twitch of his fingers, like he longs to do something—anything—but refuses to.
It’s unnerving.
I busy myself with inspecting the chamber, tracing the patterns on the rug with the tip of my boot, adjusting the wick of an oil lamp that doesn’t need adjusting. Anything to keep myself occupied.
At last, the evening meal arrives, breaking the monotony. Even the prince seems briefly interested, but his appetite doesn’t last. Once the dishes are cleared away, he retreats beneath the covers without another word.
I exhale, slumping back in my chair. “Are you… going to sleep?”
“Yes,” comes the muffled reply.
“It’s… still light out.”
“Oh, is it?”
“Am I supposed to stay here and watch you sleep?”
“Until the relief guard gets here, yes.”
I sense I won’t get much more from him than that.