21. Wren
WREN
It doesn’t matter when I go to bed. It doesn’t matter if Talon curls around me with his arm heavy over my waist and his breath warm against the back of my neck.
It doesn’t matter if I fall asleep in my own room, in his bed, on top of the blankets, under them, with the lamp on, with the lamp off, with the window cracked to let in cool night air or shut tight against the dark.
The dreams come anyway. Every single time.
Sometimes I don’t even have to be fully asleep. Sometimes all it takes is one long blink, one moment where my eyes close for half a second too long, and he’s there waiting for me.
Lord fucking Yelling.
His voice curls through my skull like smoke.
His hand wraps around my wrist as if he owns me.
His smile is the same one as always, strategically sweet.
In the dreams, I’m back in gilded rooms with locked doors and silk curtains and nowhere to run.
In the dreams, he always finds me. In the dreams, I can scream and scream and not a single sound comes out.
I haven’t slept properly in over a week. Maybe two.
Long enough that my bones ache with it. Long enough that my thoughts feel slow and sticky, like I’m wading through honey every time someone speaks to me.
I’m starting to lose pieces of time. I’ll be in the middle of boxing pastries and suddenly I’ll realize I’ve been staring at the same thing for thirty seconds without understanding what I’m looking at. I’m so tired my teeth hurt.
And still, every night, when the bakery closes and everyone heads home and the town goes quiet, dread starts creeping up my spine. I know what’s waiting for me the second I close my eyes.
I’ve had a boyfriend for two weeks. A sweet, gorgeous, impossible boyfriend who kisses me like I’m something precious and holds me like he’s afraid I’ll vanish if he loosens his grip.
I should be floating. I should be drunk on it.
I should be basking in every second of being adored by Talon, of waking up with his sleepy voice in my ear and flour still dusted across his forearms from the bakery.
Instead, I’m barely surviving the days and fearing the nights. I hate it. I hate that Lord Yelling is still taking things from me. Even now, here in Hex, where the streets are lined with flower boxes and crooked little shops and people know my name.
I hate that I can’t seem to stop him. Most of all, I hate that Talon has started noticing.
He hasn’t pushed. He’s too sweet for that.
Talon watches me with those beautiful blue eyes full of quiet concern and asks if I’m okay in that careful tone of his.
He already knows the answer, but he’s willing to let me lie if I need to.
He offers naps. Makes me tea. Rubs circles over the back of my neck when I go still for too long.
He’s started guiding me to sit whenever he catches me swaying on my feet.
I keep smiling and saying I’m fine. I keep kissing him and changing the subject and pretending the shadows under my eyes are because we’ve been staying up late doing much more interesting things than sleeping. I can’t let him know the truth. I can’t let him look at me and see a problem to solve.
This is mine. My mess. My nightmares. My damage. My fault.
By the time I drag myself into Wick’s, I’m so exhausted the bright painted menu board over the counter makes my eyes water.
The bakery smells like espresso and cinnamon and baked sugar. The world feels a little too bright, a little too loud. Cups clink behind the counter. Someone laughs near the window. The hiss of the steam wand cuts through my skull like a blade.
Beau is already at one of the little tables, sipping something pink and iced through a straw.
His dark hair curls around his ears. His headphones cover his ears and he’s sunglasses are hooked to the front of his oversized shirt.
I’m not sure why he’s alone. Usually the entire gang’s here all together.
He looks up the second he sees me, and his expression falls.
“Oof,” he says. “You look like death warmed over.”
“I feel worse than that,” I mutter.
I drop into the chair across from him instead of continuing behind the counter. My limbs don’t seem to belong to me anymore. Every joint aches. My eyes burn. My skin feels too tight over my body, too sensitive, like I’ve been rubbed raw from the inside out.
Beau’s teasing expression disappears entirely. “Wren.”
I put my elbows on the table and drop my face into my hands. The cool press of my palms against my eyes helps for about half a second.
“I’m fine,” I say into my fingers.
“You are many things, but ‘fine’ is not currently one of them.”
A laugh tries to claw its way out of me and dies somewhere in my throat.
Beau sets his drink down. The ice clinks softly in the cup. “Nightmares?” he whispers.
I go still. He doesn’t say anything else. He just waits, giving me room to lie if I want to. Talon’s mom really was right about Fae being able to lie in the human realm. I don’t mean to do it, but it makes life easier right now. Beau’s good at making silence feel safe instead of demanding.
My shoulders sag. “Yeah,” I whisper.
“How bad?”
I lift my head enough to look at him. “Bad enough that I’m starting to think maybe I should just never sleep again.”
“Wren.”
“I’m serious. If I’m awake, he can’t get me.” Until I blink.
Beau’s face softens. He knows something about nightmares. About the kind that cling to you after you wake up and stain the whole day. He still lives with what happened to his family all those years ago.
I stare down at the table, tracing a knot in the wood with my fingertip because it’s easier than looking at him.
“It’s like no matter where I start, he’s there by the end.
Sometimes I’m back in Fae lands. Sometimes I’m here in Hex and everything looks normal until I turn around and he’s standing in Talon’s kitchen, or in the bakery, or outside the bedroom door.
” My voice wobbles and I hate it. I hate how weak it sounds.
“Sometimes I can feel him touch me and when I wake up I swear I can still feel it. Sometimes though, all I have are memories from my life in the Fae lands. It’s all confusing. Things he shouldn’t know.”
Beau’s inhale is sharp enough to hear over the noise of the café.
“It doesn’t matter if Talon’s there,” I continue before I can stop myself.
The words pour out now that I’ve started.
“It doesn’t matter if he holds me all night or if I sleep alone or if I don’t sleep at all until I physically pass out.
Lord Yelling is there every time I close my eyes.
He’s there behind my eyelids. I’m so tired, Beau. ”
The last words come out cracked and small.
Beau reaches across the table and covers my hand with his. “You should get some sleep powder from Renaud’s,” he says after a moment. “It helped me a lot when my dreams were bad. I don’t have nightmares anymore.”
I let out a humorless laugh. “I don’t know if sleep powder will help with this.”
“It might.”
“What if it just makes me sleep deeper so I can’t wake myself up?”
Beau’s fingers tighten around mine. “That’s not how it works.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No, I don’t.” He gives me a level look. “But I do know you look like you’re about five minutes away from face-planting into a muffin display, and if that happens, Talon will blame himself and Wick will probably lock you in a back room until you sleep for seventy-two hours.”
The image is almost funny enough to make me smile. Almost.
I scrub a hand over my face. “I can’t let Talon know how bad it is.”
“Why not?”
If Talon knows, then it becomes real in a way I can’t control. I’m already taking so much from him. His time, his attention, his tenderness, his patience. If I hand him my nightmares too, I’m terrified he’d hate me and how needy I am. “Because I don’t want him worrying,” I say instead.
Beau raises one eyebrow so high it nearly disappears into his curls. “He’s already worrying.”
I open my mouth. Close it. He has me there.
“He doesn’t need details,” I mutter.
“He’s your partner, Wren. You don’t have to tell him everything today. But you can’t keep doing this to yourself.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
I don’t answer. Because the truth is, I don’t know anything except that every time night falls, I feel like I’m trapped and powerless and waiting to be released.
“Wren,” Wick calls from behind the counter.
I flinch so hard my knee bangs against the table.
Beau winces.
“Sorry, gotta go.” I push to my feet too fast and the room tips sideways. Black dots swarm the edges of my vision. I grab the back of the chair before my legs can fold under me. “Oh. That’s… not ideal.”
Beau is out of his seat instantly, one hand on my elbow. “Sit back down.”
“I’m fine.”
“Liar.”
“I have to get back to work.”
Wick calls my name again, sharper this time, and I manage to untangle myself from Beau’s grip.
Every step toward the counter feels wrong.
The floor shifts under my feet as if I’m walking on a dock instead of solid wood.
My body is heavy and floaty at the same time.
My hands shake. The overhead lights seem brighter than they were a minute ago, glaring against the polished pastry case until I have to squint.
Wick’s mouth presses into a grim line as I approach. He takes one look at me and whatever he’d been about to say vanishes. Instead, he reaches under the counter and sets a small paper bag in front of me.
I blink at it. “What is it?”
“Sleep powder.”
I stare at him. “Did Beau send you psychic distress signals?”
“Beau didn’t have to.” Wick folds his arms over his chest. “You look awful.”
“That’s rude.”
“That was me being kind.”
I poke the bag with one finger like it might bite me. “What exactly does it do?”
“It helps you sleep.”
“I gathered that from the name.”
Wick gives me a flat look. “It will knock you out for a few hours and keep you under long enough for your body to actually rest.”
That sounds like bliss. “I can’t.”
Wick crosses his arms across his chest. “You nearly dropped a tray of hot drinks on yourself an hour ago because you forgot your own hands existed.”
My cheeks heat. “I caught the tray.”
“Against your chest.”
“In fairness, it worked.” And hurt like a bitch, but it woke me up. For all of three seconds.
“Wren.”
There’s no bite in my name, just concern, and somehow that’s worse.
I glance away. The bakery around us keeps moving, customers chatting and cups clattering and the espresso machine steaming like the world hasn’t tilted off its axis. It feels bizarre that everyone else can just keep existing normally while I stand here held together by spite and sugar.
“I’m okay,” I say, and even to my own ears, it sounds thin.
“No, you aren’t.” Wick pushes the bag closer. “Go to bed.”
I laugh under my breath. “I’m at work.”
“You’re done for the day.”
My head snaps up. “What?”
“I’m not letting you stay here and pretend you can function. Go. To. Bed.”
“I can work.”
“You can barely stand.”
“That’s so dramatic,” I say as I sway.
Wick just stares at me.
From somewhere behind me, Beau says, “Wick’s right, you know.”
I turn enough to glare at him over my shoulder. Beau smiles brightly and waves his drink at me like he hasn’t betrayed me at all.
Wick shoves the bag into my hands. “Beau, will you help Wren to his bed, please?”
“I can walk myself to my bed,” I protest. The words come out slurred.
All three of us freeze.
I feel the moment it happens, the lag between my brain and my mouth, the way the syllables smear together like I’m drunk. Heat rushes to my face. My stomach drops.
“I’m fine,” I say quickly. It comes out just as bad.
Beau’s eyes widen. Wick goes pale.
And then the floor moves. Not literally, but it might as well. One second I’m standing there with the paper bag clutched in my hand, and the next the room lurches violently to the left. My vision tunnels. A roaring fills my ears. My knees buckle before I can catch myself.
“Wren!” Beau yelps.
I reach for the counter and miss.
My foot tangles with Beau’s as he lunges to grab me. Instead of catching me, I crash straight into him. He makes a startled squawk as we go down in a tangle of limbs, chairs scrap loudly across the floor around us. My shoulder hits first, then my hip. Pain flashes white hot through my side.
“Sorry,” I gasp.
Beau is pinned half under me, his curls in his face and one sleeve twisted around his elbow. “You are much heavier than you look.”
“Sorry,” I say again, because I don’t know what else to say. My heart pounds too fast. Everyone in the bakery has gone silent. The humiliation is a hot, choking thing in my throat. “Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.”
Hands grab at me. Someone says my name. Maybe Wick. Maybe Beau. Or Talon.
The paper bag crinkles in my fist. Then it bursts. A cloud of powder explodes right in my face. I inhale on reflex. The taste is sweet and bitter at once.
“Oh no,” Beau says faintly.
The world slows. Sound stretches as if I’ve been shoved underwater. The lights above me smear into pale gold streaks. Wick’s face appears over Beau’s shoulder. My limbs suddenly weigh a hundred pounds each. I try to push myself up and manage nothing more than a twitch of my fingers.
“No, no, no,” I mumble. Or maybe I only think it.
The powder hits all at once. My body goes boneless. Panic slices through the fog.
I can’t fall asleep here. I can’t. Not like this.
Not without warning. Not in the middle of the bakery with my heart hammering and Lord Yelling waiting for me on the other side of unconsciousness.
Fear claws up my throat so violently it hurts.
I try to fight it, to cling to wakefulness with sheer stubbornness, but the magic drags at me harder and harder, pulling me down, down, down.
“No,” I whisper.
Someone touches my face. A warm hand cups my cheek. It’s grounding.
“It’s okay,” Wick says, his voice sounds distorted and far away. “We’ve got you.”
We. Not just him. For one second, through the blur swallowing my vision, I think I see Talon barreling toward me panic carved across his handsome face.
But maybe that’s the dream starting already. Maybe I only want it to be him. I try to say Talon’s name. My tongue won’t work. Everything goes dark at the edges.
The last thing I feel is someone lifting me, strong arms bracing under my knees and back, and the frantic beat of my own heart slowly, helplessly giving in. Then consciousness leaves me.