Chapter 24 Wren
Lady Lunarta is so beautiful that I feel a little stunned by it. She has olive skin, eyes like a doe’s, and hair so thick and glossy she could wear it as a gown. She’s elegant, and walks like there’s air beneath her sequined slippers. She’s adorned in bright silks and she smells amazing.
All but the latter is completely lost on Cassiel, and I can’t help but feel that that unnerves her slightly. She’s used to being seen, being adored. She’s quite unprepared for someone less than dazzled by her.
She’s very polite. She asks all the questions she ought to; how are you doing, what do you like to do, have you been anywhere interesting of late, are you enjoying the weather?
She doesn’t fuss or fumble.
She doesn’t laugh, either. Cass, I know, will need a partner who makes him laugh.
I hadn’t asked him about his preferences earlier. What would he have listed, if I’d had? A woman, apparently. Someone with a sense of humour, I’m sure. Someone who doesn’t fuss too much.
His displeasure at my poor reading comes back. Someone literary and well-educated, most likely. Smart. No-nonsense. Someone with soft hands and—
I stop. I have no idea what I’m doing, but I don’t like it.
“How were the roads on your way here?” Cassiel asks her.
“Plain and pleasant,” she returns. “I have nothing to report in that regard. Do you travel often, Your Highness?”
“Alas, not lately,” he replies, a lot more diplomatically than I’ve known him to be. “I am fairly well-travelled, however. My mother tells me that you are on your way to visit your sister? Tell me about your destination.”
Cassiel sits straight-backed in his chair, posture carefully schooled despite the tedium of the conversation. Lady Lunarta talks at length about Mistward, the town where her sister lives. I stand just behind his chair, eyes scanning the room, watchful, as if some unseen threat might emerge.
I almost wish it would.
Midway through the meeting, I register a subtle shift in Cassiel’s breathing. His fingers curl slightly inward on the armrest. His jaw tightens.
My stomach twists. Something is wrong.
“Your Highness?” Lady Lunarta prompts.
Cassiel remains still, his silence stretching just a second too long. That’s not boredom on his face—it’s pain.
“Forgive me, my lady,” I intercept smoothly, stepping forward with an apologetic bow.
“But I’ve just realised that His Highness is late for another appointment.
He has doubtless just realised the same thing himself and is trying to find a way to tell you without drawing attention to my blunder. He’s very considerate like that.”
Lady Lunarta’s eyes widen. “Oh! I’m sorry, I—”
“It’s entirely my fault,” I say quickly. “I am his timekeeper too, and I am clearly failing in my duties.”
I gesture to a waiting servant. “Please escort Lady Lunarta to the blue room for refreshments.”
Still flustered but gracious, Lady Lunarta dips into a curtsy. “Another time, then, Your Highness.”
Cassiel gives the barest nod, a movement so slight I doubt she even notices. The door shuts behind her, and I turn back to him—only to find him hunched forward, his head cradled in his hands.
A fresh wave of alarm surges through me. I’m at his side in an instant.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, voice urgent.
Cassiel barely lifts his head. “My eyes feel like they’re being stabbed…”
My hands hover near him, unsure where to touch. I scan his face, searching for any outward sign of injury, but his expression is tight with pain, his breathing shallow.
“Don’t scrub at your eyes!” I scold, catching his wrist before he can rub at them. “You’ll make them worse.”
“I can’t… I can’t make them worse,” he rasps, voice hoarse with pain.
My grip on his wrist tightens, a knot forming in my chest. “Does this… does this happen often?”
He exhales shakily. “Yes,” he admits. “Cruel, right?”
Yes. Cruel. Stupidly cruel. Unfair.
Who did this to him? Why?
“I’ll get a healer—”
“No.” His voice is strained, almost desperate. “Just… get me up to my room again, please.” He tenses, sucking in a sharp breath. “Quickly.”
I don’t hesitate. Sliding an arm around his waist, I steady him as he rises, his movements slow and stiff. His hand grips my sleeve, knuckles white. He’s heavier than he looks, and though he tries to move under his own strength, I bear more of his weight than he likely intends.
We make it to his chamber, the door clicking shut behind us. Cassiel collapses onto the bed, one hand clenched in the sheets as another wave of pain hits him. I hover by his side, uncertain.
“I really think you should let me get a healer—”
“No,” he snaps, breath ragged. Then, more softly, “There’s a vial in my dresser.”
I find it easily—a small glass container filled with a white, pearlescent liquid.
It’s the twin of the one he gave me when I was suffering from cramps.
Pressing it into his shaking fingers, I watch as he uncorks it with difficulty, taking a measured sip before sinking back into the pillows.
Slowly, the tension unwinds from his body.
I remain beside him, watching as his breathing steadies. The sharp lines of pain soften, though exhaustion lingers in the shadows beneath his eyes.
“A healer would tell your mother, wouldn’t they?” I ask quietly.
He nods, eyes half-lidded. “Mother, Evander… even Runara might hear something.”
“You don’t want to worry them.”
“They worry enough,” he murmurs. “And there’s nothing they can do.”
I’m silent for a moment, watching the slow rise and fall of his chest. This is why he shuts himself up here, why he doesn’t join them for meals, why he isolates himself, why he—
Why he helped me, when I was in pain. Because he knew what it was like.
“Is there anything I can do?” I ask, voice softer now.
Cassiel’s lips twitch into something almost like a smile. “Stay,” he murmurs, as if I’m even allowed to leave. As if I even would if I could.
“I’ll stay until you ask me to go,” I whisper.
The ghost of a smile flickers across his face. “I’m not sure that will ever happen.”
My fingers creep slowly into his. My free hand finds its way to his temple, curling his hair behind his ear. He murmurs under my touch.
“Not a nursemaid, hmm?” he whispers.
“I occasionally make exceptions,” I tell him.
“I’m so honoured to be one of them.”
I remove his boots and loosen the cravat I helped tie earlier, trying to make him more comfortable.
“You were… you were good today,” he tells me. “With Lady Lunarta, I mean. The picture of professionalism. I almost thought you were someone else.”
“You really enjoy taunting me, don’t you?”
“You make it far too easy.”
He looks tired, despite the hour. “Would you like to rest?” I ask him.
“Yes,” he says. “It will… it will fade, soon. It doesn’t often last long. Hasn’t happened in a while, actually. I thought maybe it had stopped…”
My fingers find his again. I meant what I told him before, I’m no nursemaid. I’m not one for sitting idly by someone’s sickbed. But then, that isn’t the faerie way.
My mother’s hands on my head colour my skin. I can’t remember her face, but I remember the ghost of her touch.
You’re not just a faerie, a voice reminds me. You are just as human as you are fey.
Usually, I rebel against that notion. I don’t want to be human. Humans hate us. Human children used to follow me home and throw rocks at me and pinch my ears whilst their parents whispered that I was not to be trusted.
But my mother was human, and she was good.
So is Cassiel, and would it be so bad to be like him?
Yes, I think desperately, watching him twitch with pain, no.
Mostly, I think, I’m just afraid of liking it here—of liking him—any more than I already do.
Cassiel doesn’t leave his bed for the rest of the day. He stays piled under the covers, guzzling more of his vial whenever it gets too much. He doesn’t seem to want to talk, but he seems happy to listen. I read to him from the books on the desk. He doesn’t criticise, and I don’t tease.
He falls asleep early. A soft knock sounds at the door.
It’s too early for the relief guard, and I’m only half surprised when the Queen appears.
She takes in Cassiel on the bed, and the empty vial on his nightstand.
“What happened?” she says. “The truth, Thornvale.”
The truth? The truth is that I’m a spy sent by the fey, only I have no idea what I’m actually doing here or what I’m supposed to do, and I don’t want to disappoint my people but I also don’t want to hurt anyone here, either.
I take a breath, and tell her about the meeting.
The Queen sighs. She lowers herself onto Cassiel’s bed and smooths back his hair. “I thought it was getting better,” she says. “I thought he was getting better.”
“He is,” I assure her.
“But not enough.” Silver lines her eyes. She takes his hand and rubs his arm. Once, a long time ago, my mother sat with me like this, but I doubt it was ever with such fear, with such pain.
I hope she never did. I want to crumble beneath the weight of this.
“Your Majesty,” I begin, unsure of how to phrase this—if I even want the answer. But it’s something I should know, even if I don’t want to. “Forgive me, but… has he ever tried to hurt himself?”
It’s a question that’s been niggling at the back of my mind since I first arrived here and she gave me my orders.
I’m sure that many people being faced with a significant life change have been swayed to a deeper kind of darkness.
The void is large and loud enough for some even when the sun is shining.
Alessandra stiffens. “No,” she says, “not to my knowledge. Nothing on purpose. But at the same time—”
“You’re worried that he will.”
“I was worried about that,” she clarifies. “I’ve worried less since you came.”
She crosses the room and pulls me into her arms. “Thank you, Thornvale. Truly.”
I don’t want her to thank me. I don’t want her to be grateful when I’m here to destroy her. She was married to my father’s murderer. She kills my kind.
Her hug feels like my mother’s. It makes me want to cry.
Do not cry, comes my grandmother’s voice. Wield your tears. They can be a mask, a weapon. If you cry, make sure they aren’t your tears.
But I’m not a weapon and my tears are mine and I feel like I’ll explode if I don’t.
“It’s all right,” Alessandra says, stroking my hair. I want to shake her off. She thinks I’m crying because I care about her son, but I don’t. I’m crying because I don’t want to kill him, or do whatever it is my grandmother has planned. It’s guilt, not affection. I don’t deserve hers. I don’t.
But I don’t move away. I let myself be held.
“It’s all right, my dear. It’ll be fine.”
She’s lying, of course, but I wrap myself up in her beautiful lies, until I almost believe they’re the truth.
Long after dark, I sit awake at the window, penning a letter to my grandmother. The note I’m sending doesn’t take long—it’s finding the courage to send it that’s the problem.
Do you know who stole Cassiel’s sight? Do you know why they did it?
I roll it and unroll it a dozen times before finally fastening it to a raven’s leg, and releasing it into the air. Only then am I able to let it loose.
My door stays open tonight, my ears listening to Cassiel’s breathing, for any sign that he might need me. He doesn’t.
I almost want him to wake. I don’t want him conscious and in pain, but tonight, mine is the darkness I need a reprieve from. My thoughts are loud. My body doesn’t feel my own.
How fey am I, I wonder? If humans bled blue blood, and fey red, and you cut me open, what colour would I bleed?
Would it be pure purple, or another of the dozen shades in between?
Would it be red in a certain light, blue in another?
Would it be easily confused as one colour?
What would an artist paint me as? Is there some sum to explain exactly what I am? Am I half, both, neither?
I can lie. Therefore I’m human.
I can do magic. Therefore I’m fey.
My magic isn’t strong. Therefore I’m not fey.
Flowers sometimes bloom around me. Therefore I’m not human.
So many things mark me as not one, not the other. So many questions keep me up at night. I bleed every two months, which is less than a human, more than a fey. Will I age like them? Will I live forever?
Do I want to?
I wonder if similar thoughts ever plague Cassiel’s mind. He has no doubt about his humanity, I know, but does he wonder who he is now, how much his accident defines him, how he wants to move forward?
It’s not like I can ask him. It’s not like I can share with him the thoughts that keep me up at night.
So why do I want to? Why do I feel this growing need to crawl beside him and spill my secrets at his feet, and hold his in return?
In the morning, I receive a reply.
Yes, and yes, my little bird. It wasn’t me, if you were worried about that. Why do you ask?
She would not like my reply, so, instead of lying, I do not send one. I know better than to demand an answer.
But one day, I will.
If I ever find out who did this to him, I swear to the Fates I’ll make them pay.