8. Cassiel
Istand in place for what feels like an age, listening to the distant flap of wings. For a moment, I’d been absolutely sure that she was there, right in front of me. Her warmth grazed my skin. Her scent brushed my nose.
But it was just the open window, and a bird, and the scent of the rock cress climbing up the castle walls. Not her.
If it was, Robin would have done more than his friend bark. He has some understanding of who I’m happy to have around me, and who is a stranger.
He still growls at Captain Fellwood, which is a bit of a point of contention for the captain, but one that I rather approve of.
I close the window, then sit beside it. Robin nudges my hand.
“I’d tell you you’re a bad dog, but we both know that’s a lie,” I say, patting his head. “You might not be the best guard dog, however.”
Robin whines, as if to remind me that he’s a guide dog, not a guard dog, and I rub his ears in apology. He settles down underneath the table.
If Wren was here, what would I have done to her? What would I have said?
It doesn’t matter. She wasn’t, she isn’t. She doesn’t care enough to come back, and if she did… well, it would be more likely that she was there to finish me off. In her eyes, I probably deserve it after all I’ve done to the Duskfen.
Anne comes by with lunch, and shortly afterwards, Aunt Imogen announces herself with a sharp knock that is more courtesy than request.
“Cassiel,” she says, already inside. “You have cheese on your face.”
“Oh my, do I?”
She tuts underneath her breath, crossing the room and wiping it briskly from my chin, as if I were a child of six and she my impatient nurse. Job done, she takes the chair opposite mine, skirts rustling. There’s a pause, the sort she uses when she’s deciding how hard to push.
“I heard you had a visitor yesterday,” she says at last.
I manage not to groan. Sophia’s visit is hardly something I want to talk about, but it could be worse.
“You can say her name, Aunt.”
“Fine,” she continues. “I heard Sophia came to visit. What was the outcome of the conversation?”
Aunt Imogen liked Sophia. I can hardly blame her for being interested.
“She expressed a desire to renew our former acquaintance,” I tell her. “I did not take her up on her offer.”
Imogen is quiet for a moment. “You could do with some company,” she says eventually.
I gesture to the dog at my feet. “I have the best company there is!”
“The dog doesn’t count, Cassiel.”
Robin whines.
“It isn’t Robin’s fault that he isn’t a cat, Aunt, and we try not to judge him for it.”
Aunt Imogen groans. It’s most improper. She’ll probably chastise herself for it later. “You are being deliberately obtuse,” she says. “Stop acting like a school boy.”
“I don’t,” I remind her. “Most of the time, I’m too busy acting like the king I never wanted to be to be anything else.”
“Which is why you could do with some real companionship—”
“Mother thought the same, before,” I remind her. “And look how that turned out.”
Aunt Imogen stills. She inhales slowly. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about that,” she says, voice painfully quiet, like she’s delivering bad news to someone on their deathbed.
“About what, exactly?”
“Your former guard,” she starts. “Wr—”
“What castle gossip have you been listening to, Aunt?”
“It isn’t gossip,” Imogen says. “I heard about it from Ru. It seems it wasn’t only you she enchanted.”
“It wasn’t an enchantment,” I tell her. At least, not a magic one.
“Can you be so sure?”
A minor upside in being blind is an immunity to most glamours. Wren could have slipped something into my food, of course, but if she did, it would have worn off by now. I know of no other way she could have made me feel so much for her.
I wanted it to be a spell, something I could break, something I could blame. I wanted it to be anything other than my own foolishness. It should have been magic, because it felt transcendent, but whatever she did to me was painfully human, and the betrayal cuts twice as deep because of it.
“Yes,” I say tersely. “I’m sure.”
Aunt Imogen stays silent for a moment. “Cassiel—”
“Aunt.”
“You are carrying too much. I’m doing what I can—we all are—but I’m well aware that that may not be enough.”
I pause. Whatever I had expected her to stay, it wasn’t that. My anger flickers inside me.
“You need someone to talk to,” she says. “I don’t care who it is. Me, that guard of yours, a chambermaid, a healer, someone.”
I purse my lips. There’s only one person I want to speak to, and I’m well aware of how stupid and impossible that is, but I want to speak to the person I thought she was. Saints, how much easier this would all be to bear if she was here…
And not the cause of it.
“You’re right,” I concur. “I am actually in complete agreement with you, Aunt. I must consider who to turn to most carefully.”
Aunt Imogen pauses. She is, I’m almost certain, searching my words for insincerity, but she finds none.
“Good,” she says, getting to her feet. “I’m glad to hear it. If you wish me to interview anyone—”
It’s not a terrible suggestion. “I know who to come to. Thank you.”
She hesitates another moment—smiling, I hope—and then makes a gesture which is probably a bow, and makes her exit.
I sit there long after she’s gone, Robin warm and solid at my feet, the room filled only with the distant cry of wings—and the terrible, traitorous part of me that still knows exactly what Wren smells like.