Chapter 28 Wren
My bed is warm when I wake. Warm, and soft.
I think for a moment that I’m still dreaming, floating on a cloud, wrapped in goose down pillows.
I don’t think I’ve ever been so comfortable in my life.
I don’t want to open my eyes. The dream will fade when I do, and then it will be back to reality.
Back to taking orders from Grandma and not knowing what I’m doing and lying to people that probably don’t deserve to be lied to.
The face Alessandra gave yesterday comes back to haunt me. The way she looked when I told her what those fey had done, the cold, blinding fury.
They might deserve what’s coming to them.
But my father didn’t.
I don’t think I do, either.
When she finds out, all that hatred she leaped on them will twist to me. I’m not sure that I can bear the weight of it.
I open my eyes.
Cassiel is lying beside me, eyes fanned shut, breathing quiet and even.
I must still be dreaming. I’m not sure why Cassiel would be in my dream, but I don’t mind.
I like him being here. I like how he looks, peaceful and dreamy.
I like how he feels, the warmth that radiates from his body.
Inching closer, I close my eyes and lift my fingers up to his face, tracing his cheekbones, his nose, his lips, like he did with me when I was awake.
How much of me could he see, truly? How much could he comprehend what I look like?
Did he like what he touched?
Cassiel shifts quietly in his sleep. “Wren,” he murmurs.
He wraps a hand around my waist and pulls me closer.
Strange that I should dream of him dreaming of me, but I don’t object.
I lean into his touch. I ignore the heat rising in my body as his fingers press into the small of my back.
I close my eyes and breathe in the scent of his neck.
Fey tend to smell of things. They have distinct scents—they might smell of petrichor or peach-blossom or of the clean, soft-sharp scent of moondust. I myself have been told that the scent of flowers clings to my skin, like whatever I’m around gravitates towards me.
Humans are different. I’ve had the occasional tumble with one in the past. There’s something different about them, earthy and not unpleasant.
I couldn’t tell you what Cass smells of—it’s not rainwater or paper, but something that makes me think of them.
It’s warm and clean. It makes me snuggle closer.
“Wren,” he murmurs again, before his breathing changes.
I open my eyes, and I realise that his are open too. He’s awake. I’m awake. This isn’t a dream.
Oh, fuck.
“Wren?” he says, a little more uncertainly.
I realise that he doesn’t know I’m awake now. I can spare us both some mortification.
I make a faint, sleepy sound, giving him enough time to pull away, before I yawn and stretch, acting like I have no knowledge of what has just transpired and don’t miss the feeling of his arms around me.
“Morning,” I say sleepily.
“Um, morning—”
The door clicks open, and Anne walks in with the breakfast. She stops shortly when she sees the two of us in bed.
I thank my lucky stars we’re now on opposite sides of the bed. “This isn’t what it looks like,” I tell her.
“Please note that we are clothed…” Cassiel adds. He leans towards me. “You are, aren’t you?”
“Of course I am!” My cheeks flame.
“Ser Thornvale, exhausted from yesterday’s ordeal, fell asleep in my bed,” Cassiel explains. “I didn’t have the heart to wake her, nor the desire to sleep in her narrow cot. Let’s not make this into something it isn’t.”
“Of course, Your Highness,” she says with a wry smile.
She unloads the trays onto the table and opens the curtains before backing towards the door.
She stops at the threshold, frowning at me.
“Sorry, ser,” she says finally. “Your eyes caught the light in a strange way, just then. For a moment, I thought they were gold.”
My glamour. Entirely natural for it to slip off in my sleep. “I’ve had that before,” I tell her.
Anne smiles and bows out of the room. I close my eyes, conjuring a picture of a single, block colour, and blink away the flecks of gold.
“Gold, hmm?” Cassiel whispers, stretching as he sits up. “I’ll add that to the picture I’m building of you. I wonder why no one else has mentioned that.”
“It’s just the light,” I tell him, clutching the bedpost as I rise to my feet, putting as little strain on my leg as possible. My side isn’t too bad, thank goodness, and my half-fey blood means I’ll heal fast. Hopefully, not fast enough to be considered abnormal.
“Are you all right?” Cassiel says, sensing my reluctance.
“I’ll be fine.”
He rushes around the other side of the bed and slides an arm around me. “You don’t have to rush. Where are we going?”
“Bathroom,” I tell him. “But if you follow me in—”
“You’re aware that I can’t see anything, right?”
“Yes, but your hearing is very intact, and I don’t want you to hear me take a piss, either.”
Cassiel laughs. It’s a great sound. I hate the way it rumbles inside me.
“Do you think…” I begin, as we hobble towards our destination, “do you think Anne will tell anyone about us?”
“There’s nothing to tell. I’ve slept that close to numerous other people out in the wild.”
“I know, but… it looked like it was something.”
“Did it really?”
I elbow him in the side.
“No one’s going to dismiss you, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Cassiel tells me. “Whilst, yes, it wasn’t entirely appropriate, I’m willing to bet nowhere did my mother forbid you from sharing a bed with me in your job description.”
“She did not,” I confirm.
“If anyone does say anything, send them to me. I’ll explain everything. I’ll say that you asked to share my bed, practically begged me to—”
“I could go back to disliking you, you know.”
“Your choice,” he says, depositing me by the sink, “But I hope you won’t.”
His breath ghosts my temple, like he’s thinking about kissing there, but he vanishes before I can think too much about it.
I relieve myself, freshen up in the bathroom and take my seat at the table. Cassiel joins me after his own trip. He finds my injured leg underneath the table and lifts it up, positioning my foot in his lap.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“You should rest your leg.”
“It’s not that… there?”
He smirks. “Is my lap not comfortable, Thornvale?”
“It’s—if anyone sees—”
“Funnily enough, I find myself increasingly unconcerned with what things look like.”
I bite my lip. That isn’t what I mean, and we both know it.
I don’t like this. I know my grandmother told me to befriend him, but this is something more.
I don’t think he would have invited his comrades into his bed.
I certainly don’t think he would have held them and murmured their names.
He wouldn’t make them use his lap as a footrest.
You shouldn’t like me like that, I want to tell him. It’s dangerous. I’m only going to hurt you.
Cassiel’s been hurt enough. I don’t want to add to it. I don’t want to, and I know I’ll have to.
I turn to look out of the window. I watch the birds gathering on the windowsill and wish more than ever I had the power to shapeshift into one of them and disappear. I’d fly overseas, to a land where no one knew me, where I don’t have to do this, where I can’t hurt anyone and no one can hurt me.
“Are you all right, Wren?” Cassiel asks.
It occurs to me I’ve been silent for some time. He’s finished his food, and mine remains largely untouched. “Fine,” I murmur quickly. “Just watching the birds.”
“Describe them to me.”
I tell him about the birds that frequent our windowsill, and we sit together in companionable silence while I pick at my food.
My mind turns over the events of yesterday.
I don’t get nervous over battle any more.
What sticks with me more is Cassiel, after, bandaging my leg and begging me to let him know what’s going on.
My kinsfolk and I often use hand signals to communicate in battle—I’m sure humans do something similar.
That won’t work for Cassiel, of course. We could maybe communicate by touch, but not at a distance…
One of the birds tweets, and suddenly an idea strikes me.
“We should learn to communicate with each other via whistle,” I suggest.
Cassiel raises an eyebrow. “I’m not a horse.”
“No, you’re an extremely intelligent man with a keen mind who has a vested interest in staying alive.”
Cassiel grins.
“What?”
“You called me intelligent.”
“I call you what you are. Don’t make a big deal of it. Now, put that big brain of yours to good use and help me. What phrases should we have signals for?”
Cassiel’s smile settles. “Fetch some paper from the desk drawer,” he tells me.
I stagger upright and make my way towards the desk.
“If your leg still hurts—” he starts.
“I’m not sitting down all day. I can make it this far.”
I open the drawer. It’s meticulously organised, but I don’t find any plain paper at first. Instead, all of the parchment I find is covered with beautiful, ethereal shapes—sketches of birds in flight, paths through the woods, trees and mountains, beautiful women with wide eyes, pirouetting across the paper. Some are coloured. All are stunning.
“What are these?” I ask.
Cassiel is still facing the window. “You are going to have to be more specific.”
“There’s a whole bunch of paintings and sketches here…”
“Oh. Those. I thought those had been thrown out.”
“Why would you want to do that? These are beautiful…” Of course, paintings mean nothing a blind man, I suppose, but to throw them out— “Did you… did you do these?”
The silence around Cassiel stiffens. “Yes.”
My heart drops. No wonder he was so obsessed with colour and me describing things. It’s not just so that he understands his surroundings, it’s because he’s an artist. He’s always seen the world in ways that I have never. “I see,” I whisper. “Not a poet then.”
“No, not a poet,” he says, voice low. “That would have been better, wouldn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“I could still be a poet without sight, couldn’t I? As good as you’ve been at teaching me how to fight again, I think even you would struggle to teach a blind man how to paint.”
“Oh, definitely. I’m a terrible painter.”
Cassiel laughs at this, but the smile doesn’t light up his whole face like it usually does. I’ve just reminded him that it was more than his sight that was stolen. He lost something else that he loved.
I look at the pictures in the drawer. The detail on them is exquisite—especially on the birds. It seems such a shame to hide them away.
“Could I…” I pause.
“What?”
“My room is incredibly bare. Would you mind if I pinned some of these up?”
“You… you want them?”
“If you don’t mind.”
I worry I’ve said something wrong. Perhaps I’ve offended him in some way. It’s foolish to want to decorate my room anyway, to make it more mine. It isn’t mine. This isn’t my home. I belong in the Moonhollow with—
“Sure,” says Cassiel, his cheeks a little red. “They aren’t doing anyone any good just sitting in a drawer.”
I hug the pictures to my chest. “Thank you.”
Cassiel brushes it off. I finally locate some plain paper and bring it back to the table, along with a fancy fountain pen. I hope it works. I can’t remember the last time I used a human pen. We enchant quills in the forest.
“Are you writing, or am I?” I jest.
Cassiel glares. “Very funny.”
“I thought so. Right, Prince Big Brain, what do we need?”
We’ve only written a few key phrases when the Queen arrives, bursting in with barely a second of warning.
“Good morning,” she says briskly. “I’m glad to see you’re both up.”
My cheeks heat. I am very, very glad that she wasn’t the one that discovered us in bed together.
“Mother,” Cassiel says curtly, looking a little annoyed to be interrupted.
“Your Majesty,” I follow.
She smiles at the two of us. “It goes without saying that you’re off duty today, Thornvale. I’ve stationed a guard outside, but—”
“It’s hardly necessary, Mother. No one’s going to attack us here, and neither Wren or I have any plans to leave this room at present.”
“I assure you, Your Majesty, on the off chance that anyone does attempt to assassinate the prince, one minor wound will not deter me from besting them.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” Her eyes fall over the stack of Cassiel’s drawings I’ve left on the desk, and then to the parchment I’m writing on. “What are you two doing?”
“Inventing another way to communicate with each other via sound,” Cassiel explains. “Wren’s idea.”
“An added precaution,” I tell her.
The Queen’s smile widens. “That sounds like an excellent idea.”
“Have you had any luck finding the fey who attacked us?” Cassiel asks.
My stomach drops.
“No,” she says. “The knights are still out looking. When we find them, I shall let you know.”
I’m not sure I want to witness what she’ll do to them, however much they may deserve it, but I can’t let anyone know that. “Thank you, Your Majesty,” I tell her.
She nods. “Take care,” she says, before sweeping away.
We work on our list for several hours, deciding what we’ll need.
Numbers are a must, of course. Rather than have dozens of sounds or risk having to make the same one multiple times and lose count, we develop a simple system—a sound for one, five, ten etc, which we can quickly add up.
It’s based on some ancient system I’ve never heard of before, but Cassiel promises to tell me all about it later.
The list of phrases that we need to cover takes some time to finalise.
Some are obvious. We’re surrounded, follow me, stay low, enemies ahead…
others take a little longer to develop, like Cassiel suggesting we have one for ‘cause a distraction’.
After the list is completed, we begin the task of actually assigning different whistles.
This is the hardest part of the process so far.
We settle on sounds for the numbers and a couple of other phrases, and practise them until they’re second nature.
“We can’t learn twenty sounds overnight,” I insist, when Cassiel presses me to learn more.
“We could give it our best shot, though…”
“Not everyone’s brain absorbs information like yours does.”
“Stop complimenting my brain, Thornvale. It does things to me.”
I smile in spite of myself. Anne arrives with dinner, and I distract Cass by finally giving him permission to tell me about the ancient culture he spoke of earlier.