13. Wren
“Cassiel—” My voice breaks apart on his name. I drop to my knees in front of him, hands reaching, instinct screaming fix it fix it—
“Don’t touch me!”
The words slam into me harder than any spell. I freeze, palms hovering inches from his face.
Blood threads down from beneath his lashes, dark and shining in the firelight. It runs along the bridge of his nose, drips from his chin. I’ve seen him hurt before. I’ve hurt him myself, but this is different. This is something breaking that I can’t put back together with a word or a gesture.
“I can help,” I say, too fast. Too pleading. “Cass, let me—”
“Don’t.” He turns his head sharply away from me, as if even my voice is too much. “I said don’t touch me.”
The old instinct rises anyway. I used to cup his face when headaches took him, stroke his hair, hold his hand. He’d lean into my hands before he ever admitted he needed me.
I curl my fingers into fists to keep from reaching for him.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, though I don’t know which sin I’m apologising for. The betrayal. The bargain. This moment. All of it.
He doesn’t answer. His breathing is rough, uneven. He’s trying not to make a sound.
I swallow and force myself to think.
“All right,” I say softly, like I’m speaking to a skittish animal. “All right. I won’t touch you.”
I shift back, giving him space, even though every part of me is screaming to close the distance.
I reach for my supplies instead, hands shaking as I rummage through them.
Cloth first—clean linen, charmed to stay cool and dry.
I set it on the stone beside his knee, close enough that he can find it without moving much.
“There’s linens to your right for the blood,” I tell him. “Press it gently. Don’t wipe.”
He doesn’t move.
I pull out a small vial next, cork sealed with green wax. The potion inside glows faintly, a steady, soothing light. Pain-dulling, not healing—something to take the edge off.
“This is for the pain,” I say. “It won’t fix anything, but it’ll help you breathe through it.”
Still nothing. His shoulders are rigid, his jaw clenched so tight I can hear his teeth grind.
The fire crackles. Somewhere deeper in the cave, water drips steadily against stone, an unbearable metronome.
Cassiel finally moves. His hand shakes as he reaches for the cloth, fingers slicking red almost immediately. He hisses under his breath, a sound of pure, raw pain, and it takes everything in me not to crawl back to him.
“That’s it,” I murmur, uselessly encouraging. “Slow. You’ve got it.”
He presses the cloth to his eyes, breathing hard. Blood seeps through anyway, staining the linen dark.
“I told you not to—” His voice fractures. He swallows and tries again. “You should have stopped me.”
The words slice clean through me.
“I tried,” I say, because it’s true and because it’s not enough. “I swear I tried.”
A bitter laugh tears out of him. “You always swear.”
I flinch like I’ve been struck. The firelight blurs for a moment, my own vision swimming. I bite down hard on the inside of my cheek until the sting grounds me.
“I’ll be right outside if you need me,” I tell him.
He doesn’t answer. He tips the pain potion back with a shaking hand, grimacing as it goes down. Some of the tension bleeds out of his shoulders almost immediately, though the blood keeps coming.
I push myself to my feet slowly, deliberately, so he can hear me move away.
For a long moment, there’s nothing but the fire and the drip of water and the sound of him breathing. I focus on making something to eat. He’s probably eaten already, but I haven’t, and if I can tempt him into eating, I can give him something to help him sleep.
It takes me a while to boil the water and mix the ingredients for a simple stew—leftover meat, boiled bones, herbs and a handful of roots. Cassiel lies on the sleeping pallet, linen thrown over his eyes, still awake. At least he’s stopped shaking.
Finally, the meal is done. I ladle out a portion into a bowl and creep back into the cave, adding a generous measure of sleep potion to it. I place it at Cassiel’s side. Robin raises his nose and stiffs.
“Not for you, boy,” I tell him.
Cassiel doesn’t move.
“You should eat this,” I tell him. “I’ve put a sleeping potion in it.”
Cassiel doesn’t respond, and I head back outside again. He picks it up once I’m away, pain overruling displeasure. He practically inhales it.
Good.
It takes a little while for him to fall asleep after that. I eat my own meal in silence, staring up at the sky. It’s late. I should sleep too.
I’m not sure I will.
When I’m certain Cass is unconscious, I head back inside the cave, kneeling at his side.
Up close, the damage is worse. Blood has dried in dark, rusted tracks down his cheeks and into his hair. His lashes are clotted together, the skin around his eyes swollen and angry.
Once more, I curse Moira, and my grandmother, and my people.
Once more, I curse myself.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, the words pressed into the space between us, into the hollow at the base of his throat where I used to kiss.
I lay out my things with care. Fresh cloth. Clean water. Salve infused with ground moonseed and star-ash, good for inflammation, gentle enough not to provoke what’s already been torn open.
And, of course, a few drops of my fey blood.
Fresh is always best. I prick my finger with a needle and add a couple of droplets to the ointment.
I hesitate before touching him. He told me not to, after all. Yelled it, even.
But he’s asleep now, his guard finally down, and if I don’t do this, no one will. He needs help. I’m doing this for him.
My hands tremble as I hover them over his face.
“Forgive me,” I whisper.
I start with the blood, soaking the cloth in warm water and dabbing, gently, painstakingly slow. I don’t wipe. I don’t rush. I clean away what I can, coaxing the dried blood free from his skin, from his lashes, until his face is visible again beneath the mess of it all.
It’s the first time I’ve touched him—truly touched him—in months. It’s awful.
He stirs once, a faint sound catching in his throat, and I freeze, heart hammering. But he doesn’t wake. He just turns his head slightly, like he’s seeking something even in sleep.
The urge to press my forehead to his, to breathe him in, is overwhelming. I swallow it down and keep working.
I mix the salve carefully, warming it between my fingers until it glows faintly. I apply it with the lightest touch, brushing it along the swollen skin, and onto the eyes themselves.
I murmur an old healer’s litany under my breath as I work. I’m not sure if it’ll help, but it dispels the quiet, so I suppose it does.
Cassiel’s breathing evens out further as I tend him.
He looks younger like this, stripped of tension and fury and pride.
This is the Cassiel I fell in love with.
Not the sharp edges, not the fury or the pride—this quiet, stubborn endurance.
The way he keeps going even when it costs him everything.
Especially when it costs him everything.
“I never meant to betray you,” I whisper, because the words need somewhere to go even if he can’t hear them. “I never wanted to be a weapon used against you.”
The fire has burned low. I add another log, careful not to wake him, and the flames catch softly, painting his face in gold and shadow.
Before I move away, I rest my hand over his heart, just for a moment. No magic. No healing. Just warmth, just presence.
“I’ll fix this,” I promise him, the vow settling deep and heavy in my chest. “Whatever it takes. Even if you never forgive me.”
I place a fresh linen over his eyes.
Cassiel’s hand reaches out, catching my wrist. I freeze in place. Hoping—praying—that he’s still asleep.
He isn’t.
“Did you kill Evander?” he asks, voice groggy.
My chest caves. How long has he been thinking that?
“What?” I manage. “No. No, of course not. I tried to—did Ru not tell you?”
Cassiel swallows. “Ru was there?”
“You’ve not spoken to her about it?”
Cassiel shakes his head.
Stars, poor Ru. The one thing worse than experiencing all she has is being unable to talk about it. She’s never been quiet before.
I didn’t think I had to worry about her too, but now I regret not visiting her more than a couple of times. Poor, sweet girl.
“I would never have hurt your brother,” I tell him. “I tried to…” I stop, because does it really matter what I tried? He’s still dead. I invited his killers into the castle.
I take a deep breath.
“I don’t expect you to forgive me,” I tell him, as much as it hurts to say, to admit. “But I would like it if you could understand.”
“Understand what?”
“That all my life, all I’ve ever wanted is what was best for my people. I couldn’t say no to them. I didn’t even think about refusing anything they asked of me.” I swallow, my words growing thick. “Until I met you. Then you became mine, too. I would never, ever have hurt you.”
Cassiel says nothing to that. He turns his face away from me, and it hurts more than the words I know he wants to spit.
But you did, Wren. You did hurt me.
I have a better chance of healing his eyes than his heart.
There is one thing worse than watching the person you love in pain. It’s watching them be in pain, and not being able to help them. It’s watching them tremble and having them flinch from your touch.
I’ve watched Cassiel hurt before. I would touch him and hold his hand and speak to him. I would do something to slice away the fraction of the ache. But now he swats me away and turns his back to me, and there is nothing I can do but wait.
I cannot watch. I busy myself with hunting or fishing. I mend nets, I search for firewood. I stay within earshot in case he should call me back, but he never does.
Sometimes, I sing to myself, almost forgetting that he’s here. He remarks on it on the evening of the second night.
“I didn’t know you could sing.”
I can’t think of what to say to that.
“I supposed I shouldn’t be surprised at how little I know you.”
I cannot think of anything to say to that, so I stay silent.
Sleep takes me badly, dragging me under like a riptide, cold and sudden, and the moment I lose my footing I’m back there—
Evander is bleeding out in my arms. Runara is screaming nearby.
Fire tears out of me in a screaming wave, white-hot and wild, ripping through stone and flesh and breath alike. It isn’t shaped. It isn’t aimed. It’s grief given teeth, fury given a body, and it doesn’t care who it takes.
People are running. People are on fire.
Eight of them. I never stop counting. I never stop seeing their faces as they turn toward me, skin blistering, eyes bright with terror and betrayal.
Why didn’t you stop?
Why us?
Why him?
They reach for me with burning hands. They scream for vengeance, for release, for me to make it mean something. To say their deaths mattered.
Riverspire stands among them.
He isn’t burning. He’s whole, untouched by the flames, his dark eyes fixed on me with something worse than anger. Disappointment, maybe. Or understanding. He doesn’t shout. He doesn’t accuse.
He just watches.
I wake with a gasp so sharp it hurts, air tearing into my lungs like I’ve been drowning. My skin is slick with sweat, my heart hammering so hard I’m sure it will wake the cave itself. For a moment I don’t know where I am—only that my hands are empty and I am not on fire and Evander is still dead.
The fire crackles softly nearby. Real fire. Contained. Harmless.
I fold in on myself, dragging my knees up, pressing my palms into my eyes as if I can shove the images back where they belong. My hands are shaking.
“Are we being attacked?” The voice is low, rough with sleep.
I flinch anyway.
Cassiel shifts beside me, the bedroll rustling. He doesn’t sit up all the way—just turns slightly, one arm braced between us like a boundary.
“No, no, we’re safe,” I tell him. “I was just…” I can’t quite finish the sentence.
“You’re all right,” he says, not gently, but not unkind either. “You were dreaming.”
My throat closes. I nod because I can’t trust my voice.
“I’m going to assume you’re nodding,” Cassiel goes on.
“Uh-huh,” I whisper. It’s all I can manage.
“Your mother?” he asks quietly.
“Yes,” I say, because it’s easier than the truth. Because it’s a wound he understands. Because the real one is too sharp, too close to the fire licking at the edges of my control. “How do you feel?”
“Like I got stabbed in the eyes.”
“Shall I get you some more—”
“No,” he says.
There’s nothing to say after that. Robin gets up from Cassiel’s feet and places himself between the two of us. I run my fingers through his fur.
I stare into the dark, wide awake, replaying the moment Evander’s eyes met mine as the fire took him. Cassiel thinks my past haunts me.
I don’t correct him.
I lie there beside the man I once loved, the man I still love, and let him believe the ghost between us is my mother.