12. Wren
WREN
Even though it is a Wednesday night, the Crooked Crown is buzzing.
Shoulders brush mine every time I turn. Glasses clink. Laughter climbs too loudly above the music. It’s Valehurst’s midweek version of hell, but the guys who come in for trivia night treat it like a Friday, and my legs ache from the constant motion.
I weave between tables, balancing a tray with three draft beers, ignoring the feeling of spilled vodka sticking to the soles of my sneakers. There’s a shout near the pool tables, another order barked across the bar, but I tune it out.
“One Wicked Harlot and two Wild Monarchs,” I announce, delivering the drinks with practiced ease, and only half-listening to the cheers that erupt from the group crowded around the score sheet.
“Careful,” I add dryly, “the Harlot goes straight to your head.”
That earns a round of laughter, and I flash a quick smile before wiping condensation from my fingers and stepping back from the table.
I turn, scanning the tables for any empty glasses I can clear—then pause.
My gaze lifts, past the trivia crowd, beyond the noise and flashing neon, to the darker stretch of the room near the back. That’s when I see him.
Silas.
Hoodie up. Shoulders hunched. Silent as a shadow.
His eyes are on the room, not on me, but I feel the jolt of recognition deep in my gut all the same. My stomach pulls tight. Without really knowing anything about him, I know this isn’t his scene, so why is he here?
Inadvertently, I take a step toward him, but Reid calls my name from behind the bar, and I stop. Glancing over my shoulder, he gestures to the trays of drinks needing to be distributed that are piling up along the bar top.
Shaking my head, I turn my back on Silas and maneuver my way over. Stella appears as I duck behind the bar.
“Hey,” I say, getting her attention. “That guy in the corner of the room.” I gesture with my head toward where Silas is sitting.
“Have you seen him here before?” At twenty-three, Stella has been working full-time at The Crooked Crown since she was eighteen, so she knows practically everyone in the place.
Her gaze tracks to where I’m indicating. “Once or twice. Always orders the same thing—pint of Crimson Reign. Doesn’t say much and keeps to himself.” She shrugs, casting a quick glance over my face. “Why?”
“No reason. He’s a student at Valehurst; was just wondering if he came in often.”
She shakes her head. “Hadn’t noticed him until this year.”
Over the next hour, I cast looks Silas’s way. Every time I do, he’s in the same position, tucked away at the back of the room, with a notepad and pen before him and something in his hand that he repeatedly plays with—a coin or token of some sort.
Until one time I look up and…he’s gone.
Panic flares low in my stomach. I scan the crowd, twisting, rising on my toes, trying to catch another glimpse of him. Nothing. I throw a glance in Stella’s direction before I blurt out, “Bathroom. Two minutes!” Then I duck under the service counter and hurry toward the exit.
The cold hits instantly. The night air is sharp and wet, rain misting across my cheeks as I step outside.
The glow from the overhead light is weak, barely penetrating the thick press of night.
I squint across the parking lot until I spot him, dressed in jeans and a hoodie, with the hood pulled up as he approaches his car.
“Hey!” I call.
He pauses but doesn’t turn to face me. Doesn’t appear to move a muscle at all as I jog a few steps forward, heart racing as I close the space between us.
“What are you doing here?”
My question is met with silence, my eyes roaming over his shadowed form. His shoulders rise and fall with each breath, but otherwise, he’s a statue in the drizzle.
“Are you the one who left the coffee on my desk in class?”
More silence.
“I told Ronan that I want you all to leave me alone. Lucian’s texts. Ronan’s emails. Your…attempt to be nice or whatever it is. It’s futile. I’m not interested in whatever sick game you’re playing.”
He turns then, his face cast half in shadow beneath his hood.
He’s not as broad as Lucian or Ronan, but his height is no less intimidating as it towers over me.
I peer up into the darkness beneath his hood until I spot two pools of ice-blue staring back at me.
My next breath sticks in my throat. He still doesn’t speak. Why?
Swallowing roughly, my next words come out low, almost unbidden, and yet, I’m curious to see his reaction. See if what I have to say evokes a verbal response.
“I saw you. That night.”
For a beat after my confession, there’s nothing.
Then, like the pull of a tide, he lifts his head just slightly.
Enough that his hood falls back. Hair so pale it borders on white peaks out from under it, the strands falling messily across his forehead.
His skin is sharp, appearing almost translucent under the yellow wash of the streetlamp, which makes his eyes stand out like twin shards of frost. I’ve seen them from across rooms. In flashes. In dreams.
But not like this.
Not this close, without the chaos of a crowded locker room or team members around us.
They pin me in place. His gaze flicks lower, trailing a slow path down my body and back up again. Measured and deliberate. It shouldn’t make my breath hitch. Not after everything. Not with him. But it does.
And when his eyes find mine again, it’s not indifference I see.
It’s intensity. A quiet kind of want. A question he won’t ask out loud.
The air between us tightens.
I should say something else. Reiterate again that I don’t want anything to do with them.
Perhaps if I tell them I won’t tell anyone, they’ll finally leave me in peace, and yet, I can’t bring myself to utter those words. To make that promise. Although it’s like I told Ronan. No one would believe me, even if I did talk.
Instead, when I finally do find my voice, I double down. “You were there that night.”
Of that I am certain.
I’m pinned in place by ice and storm. Silas’s eyes are the kind of blue that doesn’t belong in reality—pale and glassy like winter sunlight on a frozen lake. The kind of blue that sees too much and feels too little. Or maybe he just hides it better than most.
They’re the eyes from my nightmares.
From the pieces of memory I can’t unlive.
But also from something else—something I don’t understand.
Something colder… Quieter… Almost protective?
“Your eyes,” I admit, breath catching on the words. “I haven’t been able to forget them.”
He goes still, watching me with the astuteness of someone used to assessing danger, of someone who knows how to react in a split second.
“But now I don’t know what I know anymore,” I admit, almost reluctantly, the lull of his stare pulling words from deep in my soul that I wouldn’t otherwise voice aloud. My brows furrow, voice catching. “Ronan says there’s more to the story. That what I think happened…might not be the whole truth.”
Silas still doesn’t speak, but his gaze never wavers, telling me he’s listening to every word.
“I want answers. But I’m scared of them.” My voice cracks. “I’ve spent so long convincing myself that I was right. That you were the monsters in the dark. But what if I was wrong?”
He steps into me then, forcing me to crane my neck to look into his face.
We’re both wet from the rain. I can feel the water running down my face, although his remains dry beneath his hood.
His eyes are shadowed as he looks down at me.
Still, he says nothing. Normally, that would annoy me, but for some reason, it only makes me open up more.
I’m spilling secrets I haven’t even dared to admit to myself.
“I can’t keep doing this,” I tell him, voice barely audible above the rain hitting gravel. “Not knowing. Not trusting myself.”
As though moving in slow motion, he reaches out and gently—so gently—cups my cheek.
My breath stutters.
His hand is cold. His touch, careful. Delicate.
I meet his eyes, searching them for… What, I don’t know.
My breath is trapped in my chest, the pressure building with each passing second, because in those eyes, I don’t see guilt. I don’t see denial.
I see pain.
I see longing.
I see something that makes my knees go weak.
He shifts closer, his hand still on my face, the heat of his palm warming my cold cheek. What distance there was between us vanishes. I could trace the sharp lines of his jaw. Notice the faint scar tucked beneath his bottom lip, like a secret the rest of the world never gets close enough to see.
The rain falls harder now, soaking through our clothes, but neither of us moves.
Silas watches me with the kind of focus that makes it difficult to breathe. My heart thunders, and it’s not fear—at least not only fear. It’s something more complicated, more dangerous. Temptation.
His hand shifts, not away, but inward. He brushes a strand of wet hair from my cheek, tucking it behind my ear with slow, deliberate care. His fingertips skim my jaw, and I swear a trail of lightning follows the touch, heat warming my cool flesh.
Another breath, and he lifts his hand again, this time to brush away a raindrop trembling at the tip of my nose. He doesn’t smile. Doesn’t speak. Just moves with quiet intention, like I’m something breakable and he doesn’t want to be the one who shatters me.
I feel it then, deep in my chest. Not an answer or absolution, but…something.
A feeling.
A question.
A truth that terrifies me more than any memory.
Because in this moment, held steady beneath his touch, I don’t feel hunted.
I feel seen.
And I don’t know what to do with that.
Silas’s hand drops slowly from my face, but instead of stepping away, he reaches for me.
His fingers are cold, damp from the rain, but they wrap around mine gently.
He turns my palm up and stares at it for a long second, his fingers brushing lightly over the skin.
Then, with the pad of his index finger, he starts tracing something.
A small circle.
Then a straight line beneath it.
Finally, a crescent moon.
He keeps drawing it, over and over, like muscle memory. Like a ritual. I don’t understand what it is at first, not until I realize—it’s an anchor. A crude one. Childlike in shape, but unmistakable.
I blink.
He doesn’t look at me while he traces it again. Over and over.
A symbol of grounding. Of safety. Of not drifting away.
I want to ask what it means. Why he chose it. But I don’t think I’m ready for the answer. Not sure he’d even tell me even if I asked.
So I don’t speak.
I just stand there, rain soaking through my shirt, my chest cracking open one slow inch at a time. And when he finally lets go of my hand, the imprint of that anchor still burns across my skin.
Without a word, Silas steps back toward the darkness.
And this time…
I let him go.