11. Cassiel
Athousand times, I’ve imagined this moment. I’ve imagined her in chains, pleading with me for mercy. I’ve imagined her desperately explaining herself, begging for understanding. I’ve imagined her in other, softer ways—ways that I’m ashamed of, ways that I shouldn’t want her.
Never once have I imagined having her at the end of my blade, and myself not being able to speak at all.
I don’t think it’s the powder she used, either. My speech has vanished. My thoughts stutter.
I drop the blade.
Wren scrambles away from me, staying close. Robin trots to my side now that the fight is over, tail wagging against my leg.
Well, you were no help at all, were you? I want to say, only I can’t.
“Hi,” Wren says, and her voice is just as velvet-like as I remember. She fumbles with something, and a cool mist descends over both of us. “You’ve got your voice back,” she tells me. “If you need to use it. Just please—don’t shout out. Not just yet. I have a proposition for you.”
I can’t believe I’m hearing this. She had the audacity to lure me here, to use magic on my knights, to steal my voice, and she has a ‘proposition’ for me?
“I take it you’re the one who ensnared my knights?” I kick myself for the words as soon as I’ve spoken them. That’s what I’m saying to her after all this time?
“Yes,” she says. “I needed to get you alone.”
“You could have hurt them—”
“No, I couldn’t. It’s just an illusion. If they were frightened, that’s on them.”
I hate that she’s right. And, if I’m entirely honest, it’s a smart trap. Only I wouldn’t fall for it.
I open my mouth to argue, or to shout for reinforcements, but I still. I want to believe we can take her into custody and get her to explain herself then, but I’m not sure we can capture her, not here. It’s her domain. She could cast another illusion or just fade into the forest entirely.
“What are you doing here?” I say instead.
“Like I said,” she goes on, “I have a proposition for you.”
“I won’t agree to it.”
“I think I can give you your sight back.”
The air vanishes from my lungs. Silence fills the space between us. Did she just say what I think she said?
Did she mean it?
“You can’t,” I manage eventually, because she has to be lying. She has to. If she isn’t…
If she isn’t…
“My mother tried everything,” I add. “When I first lost my sight. Everything she could—”
“She didn’t try me,” Wren adds. “And she couldn’t have healed your sight before now, anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
Wren pauses. “The totem,” she says eventually. “The one you found in my room. My people had it in their possession. You can’t be healed until we deal with that.”
My stomach caves. The totem. The absolute horror I felt when it was discovered, when I heard what it was…
That Wren had it.
“I didn’t know about the totem,” she rattles on. “I promise. I had no idea of its existence until shortly before you did. I had no idea that it was my people who blinded you—”
“And sent you to me.”
Another pause, heavier than the last. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“It’s all very difficult to explain—”
“I don’t care!” I say, raising my voice. “I don’t care if it’s difficult! Find a way! Being king whilst my mother lies dying is difficult. Having no idea how to help my sister is difficult. Feeling Evander die in my arms was difficult. Find a way!”
“I will!” Wren rushes, voice taut. “I will explain everything to you, but not here, not now. Your knights will be here any minute—”
“What do you want?”
Wren pauses. “You,” she says, and then quickly: “You, to get your sight back.”
“All right, then do it.”
“It’s not an easy process, or a quick one—”
“You’re lying.”
“The man in Caldrin took weeks—”
I freeze. “That was you?”
“Yes. I had to be sure I could do it, before I offered it to you. I can’t promise anything, of course. Yours was taken by magic, after all, but… I have to try.”
“It’s really shitty of you to dangle this in front of me.”
“It won’t be shitty if you can see again.”
I suck in a breath. I hate the fact that she’s right. How many nights have I lost, wondering what I’d trade for my sight back, then here comes Wren offering it to me on a silver platter and I…
“What do you want for it?” I ask. “How do I know this isn’t a ruse to keep me from—”
“Killing my people? It isn’t. I really, really want you to stop doing that. But I won’t make it part of our bargain.”
“What bargain?”
“Stay with me for two weeks. I’ll need to heal you in doses. After that time, you’re free to go back to doing whatever you like, and you never have to hear from me again.”
I can’t make that bargain. I can’t stay with Wren for two weeks. I can’t leave Erelis, and I certainly can’t bring her into the castle. But at the same time…
“Where will you go?” I ask.
“Anywhere I like. Overseas, somewhere. Beyond the Duskfen. You can pick the country, if you want to.”
I might like that, knowing we’ll never run into each other again.
Perhaps, if she’s far enough away, I’ll stop thinking about her, stop feeling her presence everywhere I go.
That might be even better than her death, since she’s certain to haunt me.
And if I accept her offer, I might finally get some answers.
I might deserve that even more than my sight.
Still, leaving might not be so easy for her. “You’re a wanted fugitive, you know,” I tell her.
“Yes, I saw the wanted pictures. Terrible likeness.”
“Really?”
“No.”
Another time, I might have laughed at this, but not today.
“I can’t leave Caerthalen for so long,” I tell her. “There’s too much for me to do—”
“Delegate. Find a way. You’re good at that.”
I open my mouth to argue, but she isn’t wrong. I am good at solving problems.
“You need to decide by tomorrow at dusk,” she says.
“You’re only giving me a day to decide? You’re going to hold returning my sight to me over my head—”
“No,” she tells me. “I think, so long as I am still alive, you could ask me to help you at any time, and I’d do it.”
I’m not sure what to say to that. The silence stretches between us.
“But if you don’t come with me tomorrow, we might lose our chance to see something that might aid us both.”
“Be more specific.”
“There’s… a gate,” she starts.
“A gate.”
“A star gate,” she clarifies. I’ve heard of them before, but I can’t remember what they’re supposed to do, or even if the information we have on them is correct. “It’s a device fey use to see visions—things that were, things that are, and things that will be.”
“Right.”
“The stars have to align perfectly for you to use it in certain ways. In just over a week, I should be able to use it to see into the past.”
I don’t grasp her meaning. “What are you hoping to see?”
“I’m not sure, yet,” she carries on. “But whatever it is… if my cure works… you’ll be able to see it too.”
I take a moment to listen to her proposal. I ought to be furious at her offer—a part of me is—and I should definitely take some time to weigh it over. It could, of course, all be a trick.
And if it isn’t?
I sigh, pressing my fingers to the bridge of my nose.
“I need some time to think about it,” I say eventually. “To make… arrangements.”
“Of course.”
Wind whispers through the forest.
“Have I killed any of your family?” I ask. “The fey we’ve executed—have any of them been people you care about?”
“I don’t have many people that come under that description,” she tells me. “But I can tell you that some of them didn’t deserve it.”
I fix her with a cutting glare. “You all deserve it.”
That probably isn’t true, but I don’t care. I want the words to hurt her.
Wren withdraws for a moment. “Evander didn’t think so,” she whispers.
Her words cut like a knife. I want to ask her what she means—to scream that she’s wrong—but Dain is whistling for me. Robin barks in response, like he’s been trained to.
“Tomorrow, at dusk,” Wren says. “Meet me at the edge of the forest if you want to take me up on my offer.”
Her footsteps retreat as Dain gets closer.
“Cass?” she whispers, barely audible.
“What?” I snap.
“I’m sorry,” she says, very quickly. “For everything I didn’t get to apologise for before. You have no idea how sorry I am.”