Chapter 6 Wren
Wren
For a moment, all I can hear is my own pulse in my ears and the faint scrape of chairs as men shift uneasily around us. The hall feels too full and too far away at the same time as I kneel here, processing a betrayal for them all to see.
One thought rings clear through the mess of emotions in my head, feeling like a guiding light to my soul: He could have walked in here and said nothing.
He could have seen me, turned around, and kept this buried where no one would ever know. I never saw his face that day. I would never have connected this man to that moment. No one forced his hand in his admission, and that is balm to the wound in my heart.
“I remember that day,” I say quietly.
His lips part but no words come, letting me take over now.
“I remember the ground shaking,” I continue, keeping my gaze locked on his.
“I remember not knowing my own name, or where I was, or why everything was so loud. I remember boots hitting my ribs. I remember you saying you didn’t want to die.
” My throat tightens, but I push through it.
“And then I remember being alone to face whatever it was you were all running from.”
He flinches like each word lands exactly where it’s meant to. They are the facts, and if they hurt, that’s because it should.
I shake my head once in an attempt to clear the heaviness in my mind. “I’m not here to make you feel better about what you did,” I tell him. “You left me naked and alone on the battlefield when I couldn’t even stand up.”
His blinks, tears gathering anew in his eyes as his shoulders drop.
“But,” I add, the word heavy on my tongue, “you didn’t have to tell me any of this. You could have ignored me and pretended I was just some stranger who wandered into this city. I would’ve never known.”
His eyes widen at that, sharp and searching, clearly hanging on to my every word.
“You were a coward that morning,” I say, because I won’t lie for him—not for his sake and not for mine. “But you’re not being one right now.”
The truth of it settles between us, that it doesn’t erase what he did, but that it means something that he dragged his shame into a room full of his own people and set it down at my feet for me to see.
I don’t tell him he’s forgiven, but I also don’t tell him he’s damned. I just let him see that I understand both parts of him exist and I’m not looking away from either.
The duality of humans—on display and understood so deeply by me for the first time since waking in this world.
For a while we just kneel there, the cold wooden planks unyielding beneath my shins and the quiet of the hall pressing in around us. The clatter and whispers from earlier have faded into a kind of muffled hush, as if the whole room is holding its breath to see where we go from here.
“What’s your name?” I ask finally, my voice softer as I feel my body relax.
He blinks, like the question startles him more than anything else I’ve said. “Eli,” he answers after a beat, voice rough. “Eli Mercer.”
I nod once, slowly, letting the name settle in my mind. Giving him the dignity of being something more than just the man who ran away and left me to die.
I feel Ryoden shift at my back, close enough that his presence has been a surprisingly steady comfort, but he continues to surprise me by saying nothing and letting this moment belong to Eli and me.
“I’m not going to lie to you and tell you I’m fine with what happened, Eli,” I say, keeping my tone light. “That’s not something that just…disappears.”
He holds my gaze and nods as his lips thin.
“But I respect you for not running away again,” I add gently.
Eli swallows hard, his jaw working as he pulls in a shaky breath, lips turning up just slightly for the first time. “I’ve been running long enough,” he murmurs. “Turns out it doesn’t work anyways. You were there, haunting my memory like a ghost.”
If he had threads to pluck when he walked into this dining hall, I know there would be one with a version of this moment where he stayed that terrified human boy on the battlefield forever—always choosing himself, always stepping back, using fear as his excuse.
That’s what the kings warned me of, that humans at their core are selfish, brittle things that will always pick their own skin over someone else’s life.
It would have been the easier option for him.
But this Eli before me chose the strand I would have chosen for him. He threw himself back into the war after being petrified of dying that day and dropped to his knees in front of his colonel and an entire hall of soldiers to admit what he did.
A coward once upon a time, but not anymore.
“I see that you’re trying to be someone different than you were that day. That matters. At least to me.”
His breath leaves him in a shaky exhale and his spine straightens just slightly, as if I’ve physically lifted the weight he’s been carrying around.
For a few heartbeats, it’s just the two of us there on the cold floor, the rest of the hall blurring at the edges. My shins ache against the hard, cold ground. My emotions feel scraped raw and my eyes still sting, but a quiet settles in my mind that wasn’t there before.
The pain of that first moment in my life is still there, but it’s shifted, no longer something I’m holding alone.
Ryoden’s boots vibrate through the floor as he moves to stand next to me.
“Up, Mercer,” he says.
It’s calm, but there’s no room in it for disobedience.
Eli’s gaze flicks to his colonel, then back to me, like he’s silently asking if this is where we leave it. I give a slight nod, granting him that small mercy, and he pushes himself to his feet. He wipes at his cheeks with the back of his wrist, trying to clear away the tear tracks.
I stay kneeling for a second longer, letting my hands rest on my thighs, focusing on the simple act of breathing. In. Out. The faint smell of broth and sweat in the air.
Through it all I have the steady awareness that a human as powerful as Ryoden just watched one of his men crumble in front of a stranger and didn’t stop it from happening. Not only that, he had the ability to know it wasn’t his place to step in during it.
With every moment around the colonel, I begin to slowly lower my reluctant wall. Between the woman who instantly rushed to help the old man, Ryoden seeming to stand for what’s just, and now Eli admitting to his wrongs, this morning has completely altered the trajectory of my judgment of humans.
I look up to find Ryoden’s attention sweeping across the room, taking in the soldiers who are very blatantly pretending not to stare. His expression goes flat and unreadable, his command settling over the hall like a weight.
“Anyone who feels the need to gawk instead of eat can report to the training grounds after breakfast. I’m sure we can find better uses for your time.”
Benches creak as men look down in unison, their spoons and bowls suddenly very interesting. The pressure in the air loosens by a fraction, the scrutiny pulling back just enough that I can drag in a steadier breath.
Ryoden turns back to Eli, the line of his jaw tight, eyes sharper than before. “We’ll discuss this further later,” he says. “For now, get something in your system and give her some space, understood?”
“Yes, sir,” Eli replies, his voice rough but more anchored. He gives me one last searching look, gratitude and grief tangled in his features, then steps back.
The emptiness he leaves behind in the space where he’d been kneeling feels strange—lighter and heavier at the same time. Eli peels away, wiping at his face as he retreats toward where he left his tray of food.
I push to my feet, smoothing my palms down my thighs as I turn back toward our table.
Ryoden still stands there, eyes on me, expression carefully composed in a way it wasn’t before I had the moment with Eli.
The distinction causes me to pause, but I slide back onto the bench.
He does the same, lowering himself into his seat across from me.
His spoon lies untouched beside his bowl and he doesn’t reach for it.
“Eli is from Pennsylvania,” he mutters, eyes on the table. “But that battle occurred on supernatural lands.”
I have to stop my body from instantly tensing up at the details he presents and the suspicion laced in his tone.
While it was occurring, I didn’t think of how many new details that conversation allowed Ryoden to obtain.
To someone else, they might not have thought twice of it, but I was right in thinking I’d caught the attention of a human that would make this more difficult than I thought.
It’s not really a question, but he seems to be waiting for my response, so I mutter conversationally, picking up my discarded spoon. “That’s what I’ve gathered.”
He lifts his gaze to mine as I spoon broth into my mouth. I can practically see the calculation happening behind his eyes. Pieces sliding into place. A soldier who transferred here a couple weeks ago. Me, walking into his city claiming to have been on foot for days.
“You’ve been busy since then it seems,” he says quietly. “Traveling such a great distance.”
The words are simple, but there’s an edge to them that wasn’t there before, and my spine stiffens.
I feel my walls come back up, brick by brick, around the parts of me that had started to unclench. My fingers curl around the warm curve of my bowl.
“I told you I’ve spent the time since trying to figure out who I am,” I answer. “I traveled wherever I felt pulled toward, in order to do just that.”
His jaw flexes at that, a small tic in the muscle. He leans back slightly, folding his arms over his chest.
“Eli arrived at this post a couple of weeks ago,” he says. “The attack on our border base was days ago. You told me you’ve been walking for two days to get here.”
My stomach sinks. I can see exactly where his mind is going, and I can’t even blame him for it.
“All of that,” Ryoden continues, “puts you near at least two major engagements between humans and supernaturals in a very short time frame.” His eyes narrow just slightly, studying my face. “I don’t believe in coincidences that neat, Wren.”
The use of my name doesn’t soften the blow.
I draw in a slow breath, feeling the familiar burn of defensiveness mixed with an ache, because I had started to let myself feel safer in his presence. Just a fraction. Just enough to sting now that I feel him pulling back.
“I’ve already told you what I can,” I say, keeping my voice steady. “I didn’t ask to be dragged into your wars.”
His eyes flick down to my hands, then back up. When he speaks again, it’s softer, but no less firm.
“If you can’t give me more than that,” he says, “I’m going to have to start treating you like a potential prisoner of war, and I really don’t want to do that, Wren.”
I force myself to inhale deeply as he draws the line between us.
The words shouldn’t hurt as much as they do. Rationally, I understand them. I can even respect the fact that he’s not sugarcoating it but also isn’t being openly hostile.
He doesn’t want to do this, but he will, if I don’t give him a reason not to.
I sit there with his words hanging between us.
A prisoner of war.
I swallow around the tightness in my throat and let the spoon settle inside the bowl before drawing my hands back into my lap. For a moment, I consider it—whether there’s anything I could say that would ease the suspicion lining his features.
There are—pieces of it, at least—but every part of me recoils at the idea of handing over more of myself without it being my choice.
“I can’t give you more than that,” I say finally, lifting my gaze to meet his. “Not yet.”
His brows pull in the slightest amount. “Won’t,” he corrects quietly as his green eyes narrow. “You won’t give me more.”
“I don’t trust you enough to,” I answer honestly. “You’re asking me to tell you things just so you can decide whether to put me in a cage. That doesn’t exactly inspire confidence if I say one wrong thing.”
My words cause him to pause and I watch his eyes crinkle at the edges as he seems to sift through unnamed emotions. The same push and pull I feel inside myself about him, reflected in the tight set of his mouth and his inability to just make his decision already.
Then, like a door closing, I watch the shift happen.
His shoulders square a fraction more and his spine straightens. The faint traces of warmth in his gaze ices over, not completely, but enough that it feels like he’s putting distance between us on purpose, instead of what he wants to do.
He reaches for that colonel mask he’s used on others, but there’s a stiffness to it, like it doesn’t fit as easily when he looks at me. He glances around us, taking in the room, the soldiers pretending not to watch. He leans forward slightly, forearms resting on the table.
“All right,” he says, the words carefully muttered, in a seeming attempt to keep this conversation private. “Then for now, I have to treat you as someone whose loyalties I can’t confirm.”
The room seems to grow smaller around me with his decision made.
“Finish your stew,” he continues. “When you’re done, I’ll have to put you in a room with guards at the door until I can sort this out.”
And just like that, the man who believed me without a single question when I told him of his own guards' transgressions is gone.
“Of course you will,” I murmur, more to myself than to him.
His jaw tightens at that, a tell he probably doesn’t realize he gives me.
For all the chill in his voice, for all the distance he tries to put between us, I can see it costs him something to say this.
That under the uniform and protocols, a part of him doesn’t want to be the man who escorts me to a guarded door.
He looks at me for a long, steady moment, green eyes searching, as if hoping I’ll change my mind and offer him something that lets him choose differently.
All semblance of my appetite is gone and I push the bowl away from myself.
“I’m done.”