Chapter 43 Wren
The world blurs around me, colours bleeding together in the dark. The cold air cuts like knives against my skin, sharper where it meets the open wounds. I try to lift my head, but there’s an arm around me, holding me close, steadying me against the sway of movement.
Zephyr.
His voice rumbles in the space above me, too distant to make out the words.
Beneath us, hooves strike the frozen ground, a rhythmic drumbeat that echoes through my skull.
We’re riding a great stag, its muscles coiling and releasing as it leaps through the undergrowth.
The forest rushes past in a haze of silvered bark and dark branches.
Home. Zephyr’s taking me home.
But home feels like it’s in the wrong direction.
Cassiel is behind me.
He whistled for me as Zephyr carried me from his arms. I hear it again, now. A thread of sound, weaving its way into my consciousness, calling me back. I try to reach for it, but my arms won’t move. My fingers curl into Zephyr’s coat instead.
Then light. Noise. The scent of damp earth and crushed herbs. Moonlight.
Magic.
The Moonhollow.
The transition is seamless and incomprehensible.
One moment, I am in the rushing dark, the next, surrounded by voices, hands pressing against me, lifting me down.
I think someone is asking questions, but I can’t focus on the words.
I blink against the swirl of colours—soft green, dark brown, silver—Moira? My grandmother?
Then I am somewhere else.
The healer’s hut.
Warm, close walls. The press of bodies, the murmur of voices, low and urgent. A hand on my wrist, a sharp breath drawn near my ear.
“She’s carved frost runes into herself—”
The words drift through the fog. My thoughts twist around them sluggishly, failing to make sense of the concern in their tone. Hands press against my skin, tracing the etched lines of ice magic buried into my flesh.
“Wren. Wren, what happened?”
I try to focus, try to pull myself up through the thick, suffocating weight of exhaustion. I find my voice, but it’s weak, hoarse.
“I was burning,” I explain. The words are simple, but they feel distant from me. “There was fire… a fire at Benedict Greenvale’s… I had to… I had to put it out. I took it… I took it in me.”
A ripple of murmurs follows. They mean nothing to me. I hope they understand what I’m trying to tell them. I did magic—I tapped into something, deeper than I’d ever gone before. I swallowed the fire. Now it’s pouring out of me.
It hurts. My body cracks with cold and my chest still burns with fire.
I think I start to whimper, but it’s possible I scream.
“Let’s get these runes off her first."
Hands again, gentle but firm. A cool wash of magic pours over my skin, seeking the carved frost sigils, healing the skin. Relief flutters at the edges of my consciousness—only to be torn away an instant later.
The burning begins in earnest.
A choked gasp tears from my throat as the cold magic vanishes, leaving nothing to hold the fire at bay.
My body arches off the cot, flames igniting under my skin, spreading like a sickness.
The runes had been keeping it in check—without them, I am alight.
It tears through every muscle, setting my nerves aflame.
So, this is what it’s like to burn.
Did my mother feel this, the night she died? I’ve always prayed that the smoke got to her first, but I’ll never know for sure.
Voices rise. More people enter, whispering, chanting, their magic pressing against me like hands against a fevered brow. But it isn’t enough. It can’t smother the inferno clawing its way through my veins.
Everything hurts.
I conjure the sound of a whistle. I imagine Cassiel calling for me. I imagine him waiting.
Home, home, home.
I hope I don’t call Cass’ name, even though it’s the only sound I can hold onto, the only word in all the universe.
The blackness is a relief.