Chapter 17 Cassiel
The days are less of a battle, now, the nights less of a release.
By all accounts, they shouldn’t be. Wren seems determined to make my life hell and I’m still fighting my own body.
Weak muscles, trembling hands, the burn in my lungs from pushing too hard too soon.
My limbs ache, my ribs protest, and my pride takes a bruising every time I hit the ground. And I hit the ground a lot.
But little by little, things shift.
I learn to roll with a fall instead of crashing like dead weight. I learn to listen in ways I wasn’t before—to the shift of Wren’s stance, the breath before a strike, the echoes in a room that tell me where the walls are.
I can walk further without needing to rest. I can run—actually run—my feet finding steady ground instead of stumbling. I climb stairs without clinging to the railing in a death grip. My balance holds when I turn too quickly. My body grows stronger, leaner.
I can fight. Clumsily, yes, but with control. I can block a blow without flinching. I can wield a dagger, strike forward with a sword—not well, not like before, but not uselessly either.
I can tell where Wren is in a room. Just by the shift in air. The weight of her presence.
The world is still dark. Still too loud. Still too much, most days.
But it’s less terrifying. More traversable. The world expands beyond my room. I can find my way easily to the training room and the dining room and the kitchens, even without Wren’s help.
I still keep her close by, still grip her hand to know she’s there. I don’t know why I find her presence so steadying when she’s so relentless and exasperating, but I like knowing where she is.
She keeps pushing me. Her determination is catching.
One afternoon, she ties a series of ropes all around the training hall, puts me in the centre, and tells me to work my way out. I’m already exhausted from the morning’s drills, and even though I know I can do it—feel and stumble and struggle my way through—I don’t want to.
So I take a knife from my boot and slash the barriers to ribbons.
I expect her to be angry—it must have taken her ages to rig the ropes—but instead, she laughs so hard she has to grip my shoulder to steady herself and for so long it starts to sound like she’s struggling to breathe.
I like her laugh.
I hate what it does to me. It’s like the painless stab of a blade, hitting something deep inside. I feel like I ought to be bleeding.
“That wasn’t what I had in mind,” she says, still breathless, “but still… it worked.”
She flings a practice sword at me. I catch it this time. I’ve learned how to listen to her movements, to recognise the shape of a weapon from the sound it makes as she handles it.
It helps that she’s a great shot.
I barely have time to close my fingers around the hilt before she’s on me. A sharp step forward, the scuff of her boot against the mat—a tell I’ve learned a second too late. I bring my sword up just in time to deflect her strike, the force of it humming down my arm.
I adjust my grip. Shift my stance. Block again.
She’s testing me, holding back just enough to see how far I’ve come, how much of her training has stuck.
So I don’t just react. I listen. I move.
Our weapons clash—wood against wood, breath catching and quickening. She presses me back and I let her, then feign a stumble—just enough to lure her in.
She takes the bait.
The moment she steps in for the finishing blow, I twist, duck low, and sweep her legs out from under her.
She hits the mat with a sharp breath, and I follow, pinning her before she can twist away. I straddle her waist, bracing my weight on my knees, my practice sword resting lightly at her throat.
Silence.
My breath is fast, uneven. So is hers. She’s warm beneath me, solid and strong, chest rising and falling in time with mine. I feel the faint hitch in her breath, the tension in her muscles—not alarm, but something else. Something sharper.
I tighten my grip on the sword.
Her lips part; she exhales against my throat.
“Well done,” she murmurs, her voice velvet—soft and coarse, all at once.
I swallow. My pulse pounds in my ears, drowning out everything but the closeness of her—the scent of sweat and something faintly sweet, like crushed summer leaves.
I don’t move. I should move.
But I don’t.
“I’m not sure it counts if you’re blindfolded,” I manage.
“I’m not.”
“You’re… not?”
“Nope.”
I take the hand not on the blade and lift it towards her face, not wanting to take her word for it. Or perhaps… perhaps just wanting to touch her. My fingers find her cheek, and drift up towards her eyes. There’s nothing shielding them. Her lashes fan briefly against my knuckles.
I want to touch the rest of her face. I want to paint her with my fingers, trace the rest of her. Her skin feels so soft here, I wonder if it’s luminous. She’s still a blur of colour to me. Sable. Gold. Dark. I crave her outline.
Wren punches me in the side, disarms me, and rolls away so quickly I swear she’s airborne.
“Don’t let your guard down, Prince.”
It takes me a while to steady my breathing.
“You enjoy beating me,” I say.
“I enjoy beating anyone. You aren’t special.”
The remark punches more deeply than her fist, but I don’t let it show. She may just be teasing, and even if she isn’t, I shouldn’t want to be special. Not to her.
I manage to sit up. Wren doesn’t offer me a hand, but she stays close—close enough that if I wobble, she could steady me. I hate that I notice. Hate how much I want to reach out.
Instead, I flex my sore fingers and mutter, “How are you so damn fast?”
She huffs a laugh. “Practice.”
“Practice,” I repeat dryly.
“Among other things.”
I frown. She hasn’t told me much about her past, and I haven’t asked. But I’m not a fool. She didn’t just grow up with a sword in her hand. She’s trained more like an assassin than a soldier.
I lean towards her, raising a hand until I find her hair.
“What are you—”
“Humour me.”
I find her ears. Rounded, of course. Round and warm.
“Just checking you’re not a fey assassin.”
She goes quiet for a moment. “I think your family might’ve noticed if I had pointed ears.”
“You could’ve glamoured them,” I tell her. “But they’d probably still feel pointy, right?”
“Right.”
Another pause. I let my hand drop. Have I insulted her somehow?
“You don’t really think I’m one of the fair folk, do you?”
I think I was just looking for an excuse to touch you. “Of course not.”
If she was an assassin, she’d have killed me by now. If she was a spy, she’d probably be nicer.
But there’s certainly something about her.
There has to be for her to make me feel this way.