Chapter 44 Cass
Iwake to the familiar scent of my own room. The bed is soft, the blankets heavy. For a moment, I don’t remember how I got here.
Wren.
I bolt upright, my hand reaching for her.
But she isn’t here. I remember her fingers falling from my reach, the sound of my whistle going unanswered.
Wren isn’t here. I don’t know where she is.
A hand touches my shoulder, broad and calloused. Dain.
“You’re awake,” he says. Relief softens his voice. “How do you feel?”
The answer doesn’t matter. “Where is she?” My voice is rough, dry, as though I’ve been silent for too long.
Dain hesitates. “You came back without her. I… I don’t know where she is, Cass. No one does.”
My stomach twists. “What?”
Dain’s hand is on my shoulder before I can sit up. “Cass, stop.”
I shove his arm off. “I need to speak to the driver.”
Dain forces me back down. He’s strong—stronger than me, right now. “The driver doesn’t know anything,” he says firmly. “He saw Wren’s cousin take her away in another carriage. He doesn’t even remember the direction.”
“A description, then—” Of her cousin, of the carriage, of something. Something that helps me find her.
“It was dark.”
I try not to panic. My hands tremble against the sheets. Wren is gone. Gone.
It’s like waking up without my sight, all over again.
I think, somehow, it’s even worse. Losing a sense is terrifying, but you know you can live through it.
Losing Wren does not feel like something I can adapt to.
“You need to stay calm,” Dain tells me, his voice gentle but insistent. “You’re still recovering—”
I shake my head. “I don’t feel—” And I don’t. My chest doesn’t ache anymore. My hands, my arms—nothing burns like before. “I’m fine.”
Strange.
Dain doesn’t argue, but I feel his silence like a weight. He doesn’t believe me.
“What have you told everyone else?” I ask instead.
“I told them that Wren was taken ill in the night and asked to be taken home. I don’t know more than that.”
Ill. Taken home. The words feel wrong in my mouth. She wasn’t ill. Or, she was, but… but there was something very strange, very unnatural about whatever was wrong with her.
Just like there was something unnatural when we were trapped inside the fire. I know Evander thinks that the fey must have put the fire out, but why? Why not leave us to burn?
Unless, of course, it wasn’t them.
Unless…
“What—what did she look like?” I ask. “When I carried her outside. What did she look like?”
Dain is quiet for too long. “Drained of colour,” he says eventually. “Her skin looked ice-cold. But her nightgown was charred. Like it had been burned. She… she had these wounds on her. I couldn’t see clearly in the light, but… but it looked like they were markings.”
I take a deep breath. Who could have done that to her?
The answer, of course, is no one.
Wren hadn’t left the room. She hadn’t been attacked.
What have you done to yourself? her cousin had asked.
She’d wounded herself.
But why? For what purpose?
I press a hand against my chest and force myself to breathe. “I’m fine,” I say, when Dain remains hovering. “I just need to rest.”
Dain hesitates. Then, at last, he rises. “I’ll check in on you later.”
The door closes.
As soon as I’m alone, the silence hits me, stretching on farther than any eye could see. Wren’s gone. Yesterday, she was holding my hand and feeding me soup and telling me I was still pretty and now…
Now she’s hurt, and sick, and possibly dying, and I don’t know where she is or if she’ll be all right or even what’s wrong with her or when she’s coming back and if I’ll ever see her again.
I’d rather have lost another sense than be alone in the dark without her.
Time, once more a shapeless and slippery thing without Wren, passes indiscriminately.
It’s like I’ve fallen back in time, like Wren spun a world around me, and now that she’s gone, she’s torn the web from beneath my feet.
I’m falling, falling into the dark. I’m back in the days after I lost my sight. Adrift. Alone.
I should never have come to rely on her as much as I have. I should never have—
I stop that trail of thought. Wren is coming back. She will. Her cousin knows who I am. He’ll know how to find me, to send word.
Why couldn’t I come with them, though? And why don’t I have any memory of what happened after I handed her over? Had I collapsed?
Why don’t my lungs hurt anymore?
I recall her cousin’s hand on my chest, the pressure of his palm. There was a feeling afterwards, like something rolling away.
It doesn’t make sense. Why did Wren need to go to him? Why was she freezing? Why couldn’t someone here help her?
An answer dances in the back of my mind, but I don’t like it.
Anne comes in at some point with food. I’m not sure what meal of the day it is. She lays it out on the table. There’s no one to describe it. I do like knowing before I eat, but today it hardly matters. I have little appetite.
“Do you need help eating?” she asks, her voice painfully polite. “Your hands—”
My hands no longer hurt either, actually, though they’re still wrapped up. “I can manage.”
“Very good, Sire.”
“Anne,” I say, before she can scurry away, “did you clean my room this morning?”
Anne pauses. “Yes,” she replies, her voice quiet.
“Tell me what you saw.”
“I—I’m not sure—”
“Please, Anne,” I ask her, not wanting to order, but having to know. “Describe everything.”
Anne takes a deep breath. “There… there was water,” she says. “In the bathroom, and all the way to your window. Not… not a lot of it. Just… everywhere, like a thin film—the type you get after a long, hot bath.”
I pause, taking this in. “Continue.”
“There was blood, too. A thin trail of it. And… and the bathroom scissors were bloodied.”
I swallow, imagining Wren taking them to her flesh.
Oh, saints, Wren. What were you trying to do?
How desperate she must have been to hurt herself. Why couldn’t she ask for help? Instead, I slept while she suffered—
“Anything else?” I probe.
“There were scorch marks on the tub,” she continues. “And… little bits of fabric too. Like something had been burning.”
I remember Dain’s description of Wren’s burnt nightgown. Not once did he mention burns on her, though, only bloody markings.
“That’s… that’s about it,” Anne finishes.
I take a moment to process all of this. “Who else have you told?” I ask.
“No one,” Anne replies. “I… I didn’t want to get you or Ser Thornvale in trouble,” she adds. “But, if anyone asks me… I’m not a very good liar, Your Highness. I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep it a secret.”
Saints bless Anne. “Thank you,” I tell her. “For everything.”
She scurries away without another world.
I move into the bathroom and kneel down beside the tub. My hands smooth across the metal, seeking out traces of Wren, remnants of her warmth.
My fingers slip into a dent. It’s strangely shaped. Four—no five—grooves.
It’s the shape of a handprint.
Wren’s handprint. I’d know the feel of it anywhere.
I swallow.
I didn’t want to get you or Ser Thornvale in trouble.
I know what it looks like. I’m just begging for it not to be true. Wren can lie, after all. Her ears are curved. Not just to sight, but to touch, too. She has no reaction to iron, she can pass under the gate.
She might not be one of them, a voice reminds me. There are other things that she could be.
I straighten myself out again, and open the door. I can hear Dain before he speaks.
“You can keep a secret, can’t you Hollowbrook?”
“I’m a locked vault, Sire,” he replies.
I wish I had the energy to smile. “Good,” I tell him. “Now take me to the library.”