Chapter 5
Wren
The broth is just starting to settle in my stomach when the doors at the far end of the hall creak open again, drawing my attention.
Two soldiers step inside, talking quietly as they shake off the snow that’s gathered on their hair.
I barely pay them any attention as they head toward the trays of food that are laid out, seeing as there are already enough human eyes in here making my skin itch.
Then one of the newcomers goes rigid mid-step as they turn around and face directly toward my side.
I can’t help but swivel my head to the left to catalogue the situation, warning bells in my head ringing.
The tray tilts in his hands as his gaze lands on me.
I watch the color drain from his face, his mouth parting on a silent sound as his eyes widen, fixed and unblinking.
A prickle runs down my spine. Something feels entirely different about this guard’s attention.
It isn’t just the usually wary or curious looks that I’ve been getting, but one that feels deeply personal.
I study his face for any spark of recognition, waiting for my mind to supply something—anything—from the small stretch of my life I’ve experienced.
Nothing comes. To me, he’s just another human in uniform I don’t trust.
“It’s you,” he breathes out, the words loud enough that a few heads turn. “You’re… my god, you’re alive.”
The tray clatters as he drops it onto the nearest table without looking, and then he moves. He rushes toward me, cutting through the aisle between benches, eyes locked on mine like I might vanish if he blinks.
My muscles initially seize at his advance.
Another human rushing me that I don’t know, his intent entirely unclear.
My back presses into the bench as I lean away, fingers tightening around the edge of the table.
Every instinct screams that he’s coming too fast and too focused on me, that I have nowhere to go if he attacks me.
I press my boots into the floor and reach for the earth out of habit, wanting to feel some sense of power reaching back to me. To ground me and make me feel like I have some shred of a chance of defending myself.
Still, there’s nothing.
My heart kicks hard against my ribs as the distance between the guard and me shrinks. I don’t know who this man is, what he wants, or why his eyes are shining like that, and it doesn’t matter—because he’s still a stranger charging across a room full of his own people who would support him over me.
My mouth opens to warn him back, but Ryoden must have noticed my discomfort because he’s already moving.
His bench scrapes against the floor as he rises, the motion quick but controlled.
In two steps he stands in front of my side, broad body blocking the soldier’s line of sight completely as he plants himself between us.
“That’s close enough,” Ryoden snaps, one hand lifting.
Ryoden’s command cracks through the air, but the man doesn’t stop right away. His steps stutter, then falter, and he comes to a jerky halt a few feet away, chest heaving like he’s just sprinted across a battlefield.
I lean back slightly to be able to see around Ryoden and take in the guard’s face up close.
He looks younger than I expected, with dark blond hair flattened against his forehead and bright blue eyes still pinned to my face.
They're wide and glassy, and a second later it’s like something breaks within him that I can’t track.
Tears gather along his lower lashes, and before I can process that, one breaks free and tracks down his tanned cheek.
Then another. He doesn’t wipe them away.
He doesn’t seem to notice them at all, or he doesn’t care.
I don’t know what to make of his oscillating, big emotions, my mind still spinning to try to connect the missing pieces.
Ryoden shifts his weight slightly in front of me, solid and unmoving as the young guard tilts slightly to see me better.
“I’m sorry,” he chokes out. “I’m so…I’m so fucking sorry.”
The room has gone quiet around us once again, putting me directly back in the line of attention and suspicion. Exactly what I don’t want or need. I can feel dozens of eyes pressing in on us, but all my focus is pinned to this young man.
“I thought you were dead,” he says, and then his knees give out.
He drops in front of Ryoden with a thud that reverberates through the wooden floor, hands braced on his thighs, head bowed. Tears spill freely now, dripping from his chin onto the ground. His shoulders shake once, hard, before he drags in a ragged breath and looks up again.
A pit opens within my stomach at how upset he seems. Despite not knowing him, I can tell whatever plagues him is visceral and I begin to lower my guard. It’s clear he doesn’t mean me any harm, and something about his anguish makes me ache to soothe him.
I remind myself that I can’t be soft around people who have shown such violence and disregard for life. My hands curl into balls on top of my lap as I carefully school my expression to a neutral one.
“I left you there,” he rasps. “I’ve thought about it every day since. I didn’t know what to do and I made the wrong choice. And then they said you were gone, and I—” His voice breaks, fraying at the edges.
A coldness seeps through my body, having nothing to do with the plunging temperatures outside that drift in occasionally with every man that comes and goes through the doors. His words roll over me in a rush, crashing against the blank wall where any memory of him should be.
What human could have left me? It wouldn’t have been the recent battle just days ago…so what could he be speaking of?
The only other option is—No…
My thoughts immediately halt for a moment as I sit there, blinking and baffled.
Slowly I begin to replay the very first moments of my life when the earth pushed me from its core to the middle of an active battlefield. The humans who argued and trampled me…the ones who left me behind in their fear and selfishness.
It all begins to click into place as his voice begins to register, and I can’t stop the sharp intake of breath that fills the quiet space.
Yet I know with certainty that this city is nowhere near where that occurred. Is it possible I’m wrong?
“I’m sorry,” he whispers again as his head drops down, gaze fixed on my boots as water marks stain his gray pants with his continued tears.
I lower myself warily to the ground, kneeling in front of him and ignoring the spectacle I know this is for everyone else around us. Everything in me wants to ask the earth to create a dome around us with the stone beneath the building or the wood of the floor that presses against my shins.
The vulnerability of this man and how deeply personal this memory is feels wrong to display to people I’ve not yet decided if they’re friend or foe, but there’s nothing I can do about that.
As I settle my palms flat against my thighs, he looks up at me and shakes his head lightly.
“I can’t believe you’re alive,” he whispers as his eyes skate over me, like he’s checking for any lingering wounds I might have. “You’re really here.”
My pulse ticks faster in my neck as I think of what to say to him.
He swallows hard, breath shaking. “I’m so damn happy to see you breathing. You have no idea.”
A cold chill slides through me as the continued sound of his voice ties back to the memory of that day.
The battlefield rises in my mind without effort. The first thing I ever knew. The ground groaning under me. Light that was too bright for my brand new senses to open my eyes against.
Gods, what is she doing in the middle of a battlefield?
I remember his voice. The tremble in it and the fear before the others joined.
She’s alive!
Forget her, man, they’re coming! We can’t fight against magic with guns.
His head bows for a moment, shoulders curling inward as if trying to fold around the shame. “I’ve thought about it every day since,” he forces out. “Every time I close my eyes at night, you’re there. Reaching for us and pleading.”
My fingers curl inward, nails biting into my palms as I force myself to take a ragged breath.
The words layer over his voice like they’re happening now instead of then.
I can still feel the sting of someone’s foot slamming into my ribs when they ran past. The helpless drag of my body as I folded inward against the pain. The way my throat scraped raw when I whispered please and no one stayed.
I stare at him, my heart pounding so hard it feels like it might crack my ribs from the inside.
“I should have picked you up. I should have tried,” he says, lifting his gaze back to mine.
Tears keep coming, and he lets them. “But I was a coward. I told myself I didn’t want to die.
That I couldn’t carry you and outrun them.
So I left you there, and I’ve been seeing you in every quiet moment since. ”
My chest tightens, breath catching with his admission.
Despite the way the humans left me behind, my very first experience of those who occupy this planet, I’d remained open to learning more about them. To not judge them from one experience alone, but being faced with one of the very people who did it…it’s not a moment I anticipated I would ever have.
My own eyes prick with the sting of oncoming tears.
Nausea stirs my stomach as all of the feelings of betrayal and helplessness stir, reopening old wounds.
I thought I’d made peace with it in whatever way I could, to keep pushing onward to figure out who I am, and since then, to ensure I’m doing what’s best for the earth.
I’m sorry, but they’ll catch up to me if I have to carry you. I don’t want to die, that trembling voice had said back then, as the footsteps shifted away from me, choosing himself without even trying to find an alternative.
It turns out it’s painful to look into the eyes of the person who openly showed you with their words and actions that they didn’t care if you died at that moment, as long as they lived.
A silent tear tracks over my cheek as I hold his gaze.
“I’ve never felt shame like that in my life,” he whispers before sniffling loudly and wiping at his nose with the back of his hand.
His head shakes as he continues to fill the space with enough words for both of us.
“Not from war, not from anything. Nothing has ever come close to touching what it felt like to turn my back on you.”
I feel the earnestness and truth in his words, and the openness in his eyes. All I can do is nod my head and swallow the growing lump in my throat as my tears fall openly now.
He drags in a rough breath as his chest lifts.
“I left my post in Pennsylvania after that. Put in for transfer, took whatever they gave me to get closer to where the main battles were happening after that. I swore if anyone got caught in the crossfire again, I’d be the one helping them up. Not stepping over them.”
That explains the missing piece in my head as to how I’d ever run into one of the humans from that day. A knot in my chest loosens just slightly as I fully accept he is who I thought.
I don’t remember his face, but I remember his voice shaking as he chose himself over me. I remember the way my ribs burned after he was gone. The way the earth felt under my palm when I begged it to tell me how to survive.
It’s a heavy memory to carry, but it seems like this man is struggling with it as well.
The truth of that sets something free in me.
Maybe the other humans that trampled me and left me behind have never thought twice about me.
Maybe they truly are that selfish and heartless, but this one has remorse and has seemed to take active steps to rectify his actions.
He extends a shaking hand toward mine still curled in my lap.
Part of me wants to recoil, to let the anger rise and crash over him for leaving me there in the dirt.
Another part recognizes the way his hands shake, the way his eyes won’t leave mine, like he’s been waiting for this reckoning since the day he ran.
“I don’t expect forgiveness,” he says quietly, voice hoarse as he abandons the thought of reaching for me. “I just…needed you to know I didn’t forget. That I didn’t walk away and never thought of you again.”
I pull in a slow breath that scrapes down my throat, as that first moment of my life mixes with the sight of him now—on his knees, in front of me, in front of his colonel, in front of an entire hall of soldiers.
He left me once, but he didn’t pretend I never existed after, and that matters more than I ever thought it would.