Chapter 4 Wren
WREN
Wren Loughty succumbed to the darkness and
fell
back
into
time…
The patter of rain. Tires against asphalt. Static as an old folk song drifted through the radio. The sweet scent of vanilla perfume and the remnants of liquor lingering on minty breath.
Wren opened her eyes.
She was sitting in the passenger seat of her mother’s old Jeep Wrangler, looking down at her hands. The world around her tilted momentarily, blurring and refocusing as she came back to her senses.
“Mom is gonna kill us.”
Wren blinked, dazed. She turned to her left and spotted her sister in the driver’s seat, fingers drumming against the steering wheel.
Maeve’s strawberry-blond hair fell over her shoulders in tousled waves, her recently cut bangs fluffed right above her brows.
Freckles dotted her sun-kissed skin, tan lines etched into the curve of her shoulders.
They’d spent the entire summer lying by the lake. Wishing. Dreaming.
“What did you say?” Wren heard herself ask.
She had the sense that she was missing something…
that there was something she was meant to do.
But no matter how hard she racked her brain, how carefully she tried to think back and recall what it was that was nagging at her subconscious, she couldn’t remember.
“Mom,” Maeve repeated over the sound of the rain hitting the roof. “She’s gonna have our heads for this. There’s no way she didn’t wake up.”
Right…the party. They had snuck out once their mom had fallen asleep, slipping out of Wren’s bedroom window, giggling under their breaths as they tiptoed across the lawn and scurried into the car.
Thunder rumbled in the distance now, streaks of lightning zigzagging across the black storm clouds dotting the sky. Humid air trickled in from the window closest to Wren, the smell of damp earth and brine filling her lungs.
“Maybe we should pull over.” Wren lowered the radio. A nagging worry was burrowing into her chest, an unmistakable sense of panic she couldn’t shake off. She was forgetting something…what was she forgetting?
Maeve chuckled, brushing Wren’s words off with a wave. “What for? I told you I didn’t drink. I’m fine. I promise.”
Something in Wren snapped like a blaring alarm.
There was something about the car. Something about the slate-black road stretching out before them…the headlights illuminating the yellow lines…the dense forest flanking them, whipping by in a blur.
“Maeve…” Wren’s voice trailed off as her heart pounded against her chest, her pulse racing, thrumming in her throat. Something about it was wrong. Unnatural. She lifted her trembling hand to her throat, her heartbeat thrashing against her fingertips. Her heartbeat…her heartbeat…
Her heart.
I shouldn’t have a heart.
The thought sliced through her mind, sharp and sudden.
“Stop the car,” Wren blurted out, panicked.
Time seemed to bend at the edges, warping and fragmenting.
Around her, the forest began to disintegrate.
Faces emerged in the darkness, staring at her, glowing sapphire eyes watching her between the crooked branches.
She tried to look through the swirling haze, to find who those eyes belonged to, but everything was moving too fast.
“What are you talking about?” Maeve asked, but her voice had grown distorted, twisted and wrong.
Wren wanted to scream.
They weren’t meant to be here. This night. This car. This moment.
It was all wrong, it was all wrong, it was all—
Maeve gasped as something materialized on the road in front of them. Beady dark eyes stared back at them—a deer. Wren didn’t even see it jump onto the road. One second it wasn’t there, and the next…
The car swerved left.
Maeve screamed.
Wren reached for her sister.
Metal screeched, bent, twisted, ruptured.
Wren’s neck snapped forward, head slamming against the dashboard, blood filling her mouth. Gravity shifted. The car tilted and flipped and—
…
…
Wren woke up screaming.
Her eyelids snapped open, throat raw and cheeks damp with tears. She was sitting on a wooden chair, her limbs frozen by some sort of enchantment. She couldn’t move a muscle. Her mind trapped within the prison of her own body.
And standing before her, an indecipherable expression on her face, was Edith Hughes.
Despite the shadows running through her veins and the feathered darkness swirling behind the whites of her eyes, the High General of the Demien Order looked painfully human. Just a girl. Perhaps only a year or two older than Wren.
But she was the farthest thing from human.
As Wren came to her senses, the reality of her situation dawned on her.
She remembered now. She remembered it all.
Her abduction during the final trial of the Decennial.
Edith’s confession that Wren was somehow the key to destroying Blackwood.
The look of glistening pride in Edith’s eyes when she’d shown Wren the Demien Order encampment.
But now…she was here. Wherever here was.
After bringing Wren to the encampment, Edith had promptly relocated her into a large tent hidden deep within the Demien Order’s winding caverns, torturing her with a magic Wren had never known possible.
Somehow, with the help of some dark and perverse magic, Edith was forcing Wren to relive her death.
Over and over and over.
The same night. The same car.
The same mistake.
For what purpose? Wren hadn’t the faintest clue.
Before she could even get a word out and beg Edith for more information, the High General would place her hands upon Wren’s temples and the process would begin again.
The only respite she got was a few hours at night when Edith would relocate her to another tent to sleep, though even then, Wren couldn’t shake off the memory.
It was as if it were burned into her retinas. Branded into her mind.
Now, Edith dropped her hands from Wren’s face, the shadows retreating with her, slithering over her arms and sinking back into her skin. Wren let out a strangled cough. The acrid taste of blood flooded her mouth.
“Please.” Wren’s voice was hoarse, almost unrecognizable. “Enough.”
But if the other girl felt any inkling of pity, she didn’t show it. Edith’s face remained expressionless, her dark eyes anchored on Wren’s face as though she were attempting to look inside her.
“How do you feel?”
“How do I—” Wren couldn’t help but let out a shock of laughter. “How do I feel?”
Edith’s lip twitched.
“Answer the question.”
“I feel like ripping you apart limb from limb,” Wren snapped. She attempted to move her hands, to move anything, but her body remained frozen. She was nothing but a puppet. A plaything for Edith’s whims.
“Pity,” Edith huffed. “I suppose we’ll just have to keep going.”
Terror laced through Wren, sudden and violent.
“No,” she choked out. “Please. Just—just stop. Haven’t you had enough?”
“It’s not up to me,” Edith replied, voice cold.
“What does that mean?” Wren asked, hating the raw desperation in her voice. “I’m begging you. Just tell me what it is you want.”
Edith tilted her head, her eyes raking up and down Wren’s face.
“Funny. I never thought the catalyst of destruction would be one to beg.”
Wren groaned, fighting against the paralysis that had taken hold of her body.
“Has it perhaps occurred to you that you’re wrong, then? That I’m not the catalyst of destruction? That I’m not the one you’ve been looking for?”
Edith stepped closer and the whites of her eyes bled to black.
“Oh, but you are, Wren Loughty. You will sever the link. Cleanse the threads of corruption. Because the Soulless One demands it.” When she spoke next, her voice was not her own. It was dark, distorted…like rusted nails scraping against Wren’s skin. “Because it is written.”
Wren wanted to scream. The voice that slipped out of Edith’s mouth felt like poison dripping into her ears, a shooting pain blossoming at the base of her spine.
She was tired of hearing about the damn prophecy.
Of being told there was nothing she could do to stop what had been written.
Screw the prophecy. Wren was nobody’s pawn.
Her body might be under Edith’s curse, but her mind and her soul were entirely her own.
But before Wren could even open her mouth to retort, a jumble of noise echoed from beyond the tent, stealing their attention.
Edith blinked, the whites of her eyes returning. She whipped her head around, listening intently. It was a muffled commotion; the voices in the distance rose, a chorus of shouts and mumbled words of confusion.
“Come with me,” Edith commanded, her voice back to its normal rasp. “And don’t try anything—not that it would work, anyway.”
With a jolt, Wren rose from the chair, her limbs moving with rigid precision as she followed Edith out of the tent. She winced, frustration welling in her chest. Edith was right. Even if Wren wanted to attempt an escape, her efforts would be futile.
Wren glared down at the silver band fused around her wrist.
It had appeared the first morning, right when Wren had awoken after her initial round of torture. A security cuff, according to Edith. Forged by the metalworkers in the encampment, the metal cuff was imbued with magic that prevented Wren from crossing the perimeter of the Demien Order encampment.
As Wren walked out of the tent and exited the dark tunnel that led to the heart of the cavern, she stumbled upon a chaotic scene.
A crowd had formed, a congregation of Demiens staring at something emerging from the other side of the cavern.
Wren craned her neck, desperate to get a better look, but her vision was blocked by the dozens upon dozens of Demiens crammed into the space around her.
But then the crowd shifted…and a figure emerged.
Tall, broad shoulders cloaked in shadows. Dark, disheveled curls. Eyes forged from steel and ice.
The realization hit her like a shotgun straight to the heart.
It’s him.
August stepped forward, parting the crowd with nothing but his presence, his steps slow and methodical. And despite what had happened to her, despite the torture and pain and confusion, Wren couldn’t help but break out into a smile.
Ever since she’d been taken to the Demien Order, Wren had tried desperately to push August out of her mind. To pretend he had never even existed. But still…the memory of him had haunted her.
The past few weeks had been agonizing. Every time she was alone, every time she closed her eyes…
there she was—back in the Ether. The image of August crawling to her, writhing in pain, screaming, was seared into her memory.
She could still hear the truth he had struggled to tell her through bouts of pain: how he had been assigned to get close to her, how their entire relationship, from the very beginning, had been carefully orchestrated by the Demien Order.
And now he was here.
But he wasn’t alone.
Shadows.
As August stalked forward, a halo of shadows trailed after him, clinging to him like hungry parasites.
They traveled up and down his limbs, coating the very ground he walked on.
His white shirt was partially unbuttoned, torn and shredded, that same ravenous darkness running beneath his skin, a steady stream of shadows slinking up and down his veins.
No.
Wren’s smile fell.
Whatever brief joy she had felt at seeing him again was immediately squashed by the sight of him shrouded in shadows. Because if August could access shadow magic, that could only mean one thing.
Wren sucked in a breath.
He’s given up his humanity.
“Augustine,” Edith called out to her brother, her voice eerily steady given the circumstances.
“I had assumed you’d succumbed to your cowardice after our last encounter, but showing up here?
With no protection? No army?” She motioned to one of the shadows curled around August’s arm, a tight-lipped smile on her face. “And with some new friends, I see.”
“What can I say?” August lifted his hand, a shadow swirling against his palm. “I like to make an entrance.”
“That you do.” Edith stepped forward, angling herself in front of Wren. It wasn’t so much a stance of protection as that of a greedy child unwilling to share her toys. “Now…perhaps you don’t mind explaining what the hell you’re doing here?”
“Isn’t it obvious, sister?” August stretched out his hand and a shadow sprang from his fingertips without warning, instantly coiling itself around Edith’s crown.
He snapped his fingers and the shadow came flying back like a boomerang, tossing the crown straight into his hand.
He caught it with ease, twirling the crown between his fingers as his lips curled into a smirk.
His eyes trailed to Wren, a wickedness in his stare.
A darkness.
“I’ve come to take back what is rightfully mine.”