4. Wren
“End it, Wren. End it.”
It’s my grandmother’s voice, rising from an old nightmare—an old memory. A blade is brandished before me. I do not take it.
I did not need a blade to kill Riverspire, or the others. I killed them simply by being myself.
I open my eyes. I tucked myself into a hedgerow last night.
It’s easy to sleep there in bird form—easier to sleep, easier to travel, easier to eat.
I’ve heard of fey who shifted into their animal forms permanently, until they forgot they’d ever held another shape at all.
I never understood the temptation until now.
How easy it would be to fly away.
How long would it take me to forget? Weeks? Months? Years, before the nightmares loosened their hold? What would fade first? Runara’s giggle? My grandmother’s glare? My mother’s face?
Cassiel’s laugh?
I haven’t heard that laugh in a long, long time. Seeing him yesterday… it had been a while. I used to visit him often in the early days—watch him from the rafters, check if he was sleeping, eating. It was hard to tell much more than that. It was hard to watch him in pain.
I had my own to attend to.
I shuffle out of the hedgerow, return to human form, and stretch. Everything I wear or carry disappears when I shift. I can still feel a phantom weight, though, like an echo clinging to my shoulders. It’s hard to fly with a full pack. As a result, I travel as light as I can.
I unroll my map on the ground. It’s marked with the homes of my victims’ families.
Most of them are crossed out now. Finding the right jewel or trinket to steal for them is harder.
I have to be certain it won’t be missed—certain the person I’m taking from doesn’t deserve it more. The stealing is the easy part.
I prefer it to killing.
Before my first ever real assassination, I overheard Moira asking my grandmother if I was truly ready. I’d always shirked from causing pain before.
“She has a feather for a heart,” Moira said.
I’d hated it at the time, wanting to prove them wrong. I wasn’t soft-hearted. I could be as strong and as fearsome as the rest of them.
End it, end it, Wren!
I shake my grandmother’s voice away and commit today’s route to memory. There’s a town a few miles off, home to a wealthy baron I’ve heard unpleasant things about. I fix a few landmarks in my mind, then stand and shift back into bird form.
The sky is pale with morning as I take off.
Below me, the land rolls out in gentle greens and browns: fields half-harvested, thin lines of road, smoke curling lazily from chimneys.
A farmer pauses in his work to wipe his brow.
Sheep cluster beneath a hawthorn. A few children make their way to school, laughing and groaning as they go, while a father waves them off, bouncing a crying baby.
Ordinary things. Quiet things. The kind of life that continues regardless of who burns or bleeds or disappears.
It reminds me a lot of the town I grew up in actually, but I’ve long forgotten the layout.
A dark stain on the landscape interrupts my thoughts.
At first, I think it’s a burnt barn. Whatever it is, it’s old, half-swallowed by weeds and brambles, the ground around it scarred black. As I circle lower, unease prickles through me. It’s too large for a barn. The shape is wrong. Too many broken divisions, too many small rooms.
Cold seeps into my bones.
It’s a house.
I scan the surrounding land, heart hammering. An oak tree rises nearby, twisted and familiar. A collapsed stone wall. The remnants of outbuildings. And the town…
I drop from the sky.
It’s my house.
The house I burned to the ground. The house my mother died in.
I barely know why I move closer. My eyes trace the ruin as memory crowds in unbidden. I skimmed my knee there, running too fast. Baked bread here, flour dusting my nose. Sat by the fire while my mother braided my hair, her fingers warm and gentle. It was a place of love and laughter.
Until it wasn’t.
I walk through the remains. Here was the kitchen. An old rocking chair once stood there. My room. My mother’s. There’s broken pottery, scorched plans, even a set of blackened books crammed into a bookshelf so tightly they never fully burned.
Unlike my mother.
I fall to my knees in the space where her bed used to be. This room is the worst of it—scorched beyond recognition, the stones cracked and blackened.
Mama, mama, I’m so sorry…
I stopped talking to her long ago. I’ve railed against summoning any memory of this place.
It all comes rushing back now, all the bad, all the good.
I conjure every recollection I have, and more—I imagine my mother rocking me here as a baby, singing me songs, braiding my hair.
I imagine my father visiting her at night.
He could shift into a bird, too. Did he watch us from the rafters?
Did he sing and dance with me too?
There are so many questions I have, and no one to ask. Instead, I sit in the ruins of my childhood home for what feels like hours, waiting for my breathing to settle.
A sound outside snaps me back. Footsteps. Instinct screams at me to flee, to shift—but I’ve left it too late. The person steps inside.
They gasp when they see me.
It’s a young man, about my age. Dark hair, dust on his boots, a face tugging at something half-buried in my memory.
“Serawen?” he says.
I freeze. Not many people call me that—though it is the name Cassiel has put on the wanted posters.
There’s a price on my head, after all. A pretty one.
Perhaps that’s how this man knows it. I don’t particularly want it to be common knowledge that I can shift into a bird, but exits are easy to come by here. I could probably outrun him.
I don’t want a fight. I don’t want to hurt him.
And I’m not sure I could take him at the moment.
“Wait,” he says, as if sensing my intentions. “We called you something else. Wren, wasn’t it?”
I frown. We? “Do I know you?”
He gives a brief laugh. “You did, a long time ago,” he says, “but I don’t blame you if you can’t remember. My name’s Neil. We used to play together as children.”
I don’t have many memories of playing as a child, but there are a handful. And I do remember a Neil. “The baker’s son?”
He smiles. “You do remember.”
“Not much.”
I look around the ruined space, ash crunching beneath my boots.
“We thought you died,” he says. “We heard you got out, but then you fled to the woods and… no one ever saw you again. They said a monster took you away.” He hesitates. “Posey cried for a week.”
Posey. I barely remember her. I don’t think I can summon her face.
She cried over me?
“I don’t understand,” I say.
“What?”
“Why are you being nice to me? Haven’t you heard that—”
He raises an eyebrow. Ashwood—being tucked into a valley, far from any major trade route—might not have heard, come to think about it. He certainly seems surprised enough to see me here. Maybe he hasn’t heard of the price on my head—
Although Cassiel knows where I’m from. He’d be a fool not to send word here.
And he isn’t a fool.
Neil must be lulling me into a false sense of security while someone else fetches the watch.
I stand.
“Don’t—don’t go,” he says. “You look… worn. You need to eat something. Come back with me to the bakery, or stay here and I’ll bring something to you—”
“I’m not a fool.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
He looks earnest.
“You all hated me,” I explain. “You were frightened of me—”
“Frightened?” He wrinkles his nose. “We were fascinated by you. Some of the adults were wary, obviously, but no one was going to say anything. We won’t now, either. You’re safe here, Wren. Whatever you did or didn’t do, I’m sure there’s a reason.”
I want to believe him. I really do. But I don’t—and I can’t. I have no memories of kindness here, except at my mother’s hand.
I don’t deserve any more.
I vault over the remains of my mother’s bedroom wall.
“Wait, Wren—”
Neil chases after me, but I’m already gone.