Chapter 12 Wren
The next morning, shortly after breakfast, Dain arrives together with another guard I’ve not met before.
“You sent for us, Your Highness?” says the newcomer.
“Indeed!” Cassiel replies, throwing down his napkin.
“You sent for them? When?” I ask.
“When you were in the bath this morning stealing all of my soap,” Cassiel says briskly. “Don’t even bother lying—I can smell it on you.”
I swallow my objections. The one I slathered on my skin this morning smells of oranges. I’d think it was wasteful turning such an expensive fruit into bars of soap if it didn’t make me smell so good.
Dain chuckles to himself. “His Highness requested that I take you on a tour of the castle,” he explains. “Rivermire here is to watch him in your absence.”
“Actually, I requested that someone take her on a tour,” Cassiel clarifies. “Never mentioned who. Make of that what you will, Thornvale.”
“I—”
“You wanted a tour, didn’t you?”
I almost feel like I’m walking into a trap. “Yes, but—”
“Off you go, then. I’ll see you later.”
Dain offers me an encouraging smile. He gestures to the open door.
I give Cassiel a narrow-eyed look, but he only leans back in his chair like a man thoroughly pleased with himself. With no excuse to linger, I turn and follow Dain out into the corridor, the heavy oak door closing behind us with a muffled click.
“He seems happier,” Dain says, as we walk.
“He seems unbearable,” I mutter.
Dain chuckles.
The hallways are quieter than I expected, though not empty. A few servants pass us, arms full of linens or trays, bowing their heads as we move by. Guards, too, posted at intervals, their tabards bearing the House Aurelthane colours—green and gold, to match my own.
“This wing is mostly private apartments,” Dain explains. “Family, trusted retainers. You’re lucky—few people get rooms so close to the prince.”
“That cot is not what I’d call lucky,” I say, dodging around a polished marble pedestal topped with a vase bigger than my head.
Dain grins, unbothered by my sarcasm, and leads me towards a wide stairway. The banisters are carved with vines and tiny, delicate flowers, their edges worn smooth from years of use. Sunlight spills through a towering window, casting shifting green and gold light across the floor.
“South Wing’s mostly administrative rooms—council chambers, libraries, archives,” he says. “Nothing much to see unless you like sitting through hours of debates about taxes and trade routes.”
“Pass,” I say immediately, and Dain laughs.
He takes me through the inner courtyard next, a broad, open space lined with pale stone and flowering shrubs.
Green and gold banners flutter from the ramparts, each bearing the proud white stag.
There’s a fountain at the centre, water sparkling as it spills from the mouth of a sculpted deer into a wide basin below.
“You should see it at the beginning of spring,” Dain says. “The whole place blooms. They hold feasts out here sometimes.”
“I’d rather see the kitchens during a feast,” I say, eyeing a servant carrying a basket of fresh bread through a side door.
“You and me both,” he agrees.
From there, we move on to the Great Hall.
I catch my breath a little when we step inside.
The ceiling soars overhead, ribbed and vaulted, with beams of dark wood that gleam in the morning light.
The stone walls are softened by thick tapestries depicting hunts and battles, their colours rich and vivid despite their age.
“The main doors there lead out to the front steps,” Dain says, gesturing. “Guests usually come that way. And up there—” he points to a gallery lined with more tapestries and narrow windows “—that’s where the musicians sit during ceremonies.”
The place smells of polish and old wood, with a faint undertone of beeswax from the candles clustered in the great iron chandeliers. It feels… grand. Intimidating, yes, but also oddly warm, like a living thing instead of a fortress.
The home of my father’s murderers, I remind myself. They live like this whilst we’re banished to the forest.
We walk on, Dain pointing out smaller rooms as we pass—cloakrooms, retiring rooms, even a shrine to the saints tucked behind an ornate wooden screen.
Erelians have seven saints at any one time.
They retire one every so often when a new one emerges.
I think worshipping mortal paragons makes more sense than worshipping gods like a lot of other human countries do (if they’re real, they’re awfully quiet about it) and it makes for some fun holidays.
Saint Elandra the Wise—the patron of wisdom, scholars, scribes, judges—has a rather interesting one in the winter.
They dress people up as judges and play games to knock them into the water, and celebrate by eating a flakey, layered pastry meant to represent the pages of a book.
Zephyr and I always sneak out of the Moonhollow to go to celebrate that one.
I used to go with my mother as a girl. She told me she met my father there, years ago.
I told Zephyr about it one day, and he ferreted me out of the forest that year so I could mix amongst the mortals once more and imagine my parents meeting beneath the twinkling lights.
Unusual for faeries to mingle in mortal traditions, but I’m glad he liked them.
I only wish I could ask him what he was doing there, or what it was like to meet my mother. I wish he could tell me how he loved her.
Or anything. I wish he could tell me anything. A note or a word or a phrase. Something, anything that was mine from him, like the books on Cassiel’s desk from his father.
But I have nothing, because of the people whose castle I am living in.
“Are you all right?” Dain asks. “You seem lost in thought.”
“Remembering celebrating Elandra’s day with my cousin,” I tell him, though the truth is a lot more complicated.
“Ooh, is she your favourite?”
“People have a favourite saint?”
“Oh, absolutely. Mine is Saint Halvar the Just—patron of truth, justice, and righteous vengeance.”
“You sound a little too excited about that.”
Dain just grins. “I also like Saint Thane of the Silent Blade.”
The patron of spies, secret-keepers, and necessary sacrifices. One of Queen Alessandra’s ancestors, if memory serves correctly, and the reason for the ‘Thane’ part of their name. Only nobles have surnames tied to their houses.
He’s a worthy saint for me, at the moment, but I don’t like that fact.
We leave the Great Hall and pass through another wing, this one older—the stones rougher, the ceilings lower. Faded murals trail along the walls, half-worn away by time and damp.
“This was part of the original keep,” Dain explains. “Before the expansions. Cassiel’s great-great-grandfather had most of it rebuilt, but a few pieces remain.”
I touch one of the murals lightly as we pass. It’s a stag again, but wilder somehow—its antlers sprawling like twisted branches, its hooves raised mid-leap.
There’s something about it that makes my chest ache, though I can’t say why.
Finally, Dain brings me to a set of narrow stairs that spiral upwards.
“Where now?” I ask.
“The battlements,” he says, grinning. “Best view in the castle. Figured you’d want to see it.”
He’s right. I do.
I follow him upward, the stone steps smooth beneath my boots, and emerge into the bright, blustery air.
The city of Caerthalen sprawls out below us, a patchwork of rooftops and winding streets leading to the river beyond.
The forests stretch out in the distance, dark and endless. Banners whip and snap above our heads.
I stare out at the hills and forests, expecting to miss the Moonhollow, and instead just feeling strange about standing here beneath these banners. I’m a spy, an interloper. But just for a moment, when Dain first brought me up here, I forgot that I didn’t belong.
Dain lets me have a moment to breathe it in—the sky, the rooftops, the distant hills stitched with mist—before he claps his hands together and says, “Come on. There’s plenty more to see.”
I tear my gaze away and follow him back down the stairs, the spell of the view broken.
We descend into the cooler, quieter parts of the castle again, this time heading west, past rooms and corridors I don’t know the names of.
He points out the way to the Queen’s Quarters, the family dining hall, and the grand library.
“Do you read much?” he asks.
“For pleasure,” I tell him. “I’m not particularly academic.”
“Don’t tell Prince Cassiel that,” he advises. “He’ll be hiring you a tutor.”
He probably spent a lot of time in the library before he lost his sight, I realise. I wonder what that must be like, to hold something you loved in your hands, its meaning forever lost to you. To have an entire room reduced to merely space.
The thought lingers, although I don’t want it to.
We pass the kitchens again, and the armory, and a hall lined with suits of tarnished armour, each one marked with the white stag emblem.
The corridors grow darker as we move deeper into the bowels of the castle, the air damp and tinged with stone dust.
When we reach the dungeons, a pair of guards nod at us without much interest. Dain leads me a little farther, stopping before what looks like an ordinary section of wall.
“This way,” he says, lowering his voice slightly.
He presses his hand to a particular stone, and with a soft grind of shifting weight, a hidden door swings inward.
Beyond it, a narrow tunnel disappears into the gloom, lit only by a few torches set far apart along the walls.
I frown. The torches are bewitched with everlight.
It’s a faerie enchantment, not even really fire. What’s it doing here?
I glance at Dain, one brow raised, wondering if this is some kind of trap. “Planning to lock me up somewhere?”