14. Cassiel
Idrift in and out of consciousness, stiff with pain. The few trips I’ve had to take to relieve myself have been torture, and I usually wait until she is elsewhere before I attempt it. I’m grateful for her absence, and her potions supply.
I’m still awake enough of the time to think.
I wonder what really happened that night.
I remember holding Ru in the wake of Evander’s death, too afraid to ask questions.
I knew without the servants telling me that Ru had been caught up in the chaos, but I didn’t know she’d been with Wren, that she’d seen Evander hurt.
I’d suspected the latter but.. I hadn’t asked.
I hadn’t wanted to. I’d been too busy processing my own grief and shouldering my new responsibilities.
Ru had Aunt Imogen and a whole team of servants who might as well have been family. She didn’t need me. She didn’t.
Did she not tell you?
Tell me what? What have I neglected to discover?
I lose all memory of time. I chart it mostly in the passage of meals. Around three days later, the pain has lessened. I’m able to sit up easily, and Wren insists she needs to check my eyes.
It’s what I came for, I suppose. I relent and let her inspect me, her cool fingers tilting my face towards the light. Her fingers seem smaller than I remember, but her breath…
Every bit as warm as it once was.
“The wounds are healing nicely,” she remarks. She settles into a different position and unstoppers something nearby. “I need to apply some more of the salve,” she says. “Keep… keep your eyes open.”
I fight the urge to blink as she applies the ointment directly onto my eyes, making a quiet squeaking sound as she does so. I imagine it’s quite disconcerting to touch someone’s eyes. I’m actually relieved I can’t see anything.
The ache behind my eyes eases at the application. I let out a shuddering sigh, unclenching my hands.
“Better?” she asks.
I let out an affirmative sound. I can’t manage much more. Robin inches closer, wriggling under my hand. Wren’s own hover around me, like they don’t know where to go.
I lie still, Robin warm against my wrist, Wren’s hands hovering uselessly in the space between us. There are things pressing at the back of my throat, questions I’ve been circling for months. Pain has stripped away my usual caution.
“Was any of it real?” I ask.
She hesitates, freezing in place. I don’t think it’s because she’s coming up with an answer. I think it’s just she’s shocked to be asked. “You know it was,” she replies quietly.
An ache thumps in my chest. I’d suspected it was, of course, but there’s a difference in hearing it—hearing it now, when she has no reason to lie.
“How much?” I press.
“All of it,” she continues, no hesitation this time. “Especially the bit at the start, when I didn’t like you… and the bit at the end, when I really did.”
I swallow, throat tight, heart stumbling over itself. I don’t know if I’m relieved, or if this makes it worse. Something real was lost, not imagined away.
She loved me, and she still did this.
“I lied to you about plenty, but never about that,” Wren goes on. “Not that it makes any difference, now. Not that that makes it all right. When… when I came back to you, I had every intention of staying with you, even if it meant betraying my own people. I just… I couldn’t let Zephyr die.”
I draw a careful breath, feeling it pull at bruises far beneath my skin.
“If you’d known—” I begin. “If you could go back now—would you—”
“I never, ever would have freed Zephyr if I’d known what was going to happen.”
I think I believe that, too, but I don’t know what to say about it.
Wren continues to clean up, putting things away, never drifting far from my side though the chasm remains between us.
“I’m a terrible spy,” she says, almost too quiet for anyone to hear.
“Come again?”
“I’m a good assassin. I’m very effective at killing people, when the occasion calls for it.
I don’t much enjoy it, but… I’m good at it.
” She pauses. “I’m not very good at spying.
The fey thought I would be, because they assumed I was good at lying just because I can.
But I’ve never been much of one for lies.
I’ve always found it very hard to be anything other than myself. ”
She stops again, breathing even more quietly.
“Even when I really wanted to.”
Her voice fades to little more than a whisper. I don’t think she plans to speak again. She shifts, adjusting her position. Looking away from me, I think.
“I think, deep down, you know that. You always were exceptionally good at reading me. You could always tell when I was holding back, when I was concealing something. You couldn’t see my face, but you could taste my lies in the air.
You know how frequently I told them. You know how much of it—how much of us—was real. ”
I close my eyes, fingers sinking into Robin’s fur. This is what you wanted, I tell myself. I wanted it to be real, to know that I wasn’t just a mission to her, that it meant something.
But the ache in my chest doesn’t abate. It stays there, anchored.
Wren seems to sense this. “I’m not sure if that hurts more or less,” she says, “but it is the truth, and I wanted you to have it.”
The next morning, the pain has vanished.
I still can’t see anything, which Wren says she expected, but I’ve healed well enough to move.
She’s keen to start our journey, knowing it will take some time to reach our destination.
I’m not particularly thrilled about the idea of travelling with her, but I don’t like the idea of staying put and doing nothing, either.
So, silently, Wren pacts up her supplies, reloads my own bag and hands it to me.
“We need to wrap up your eyes,” she tells me at the last minute. “To protect them.”
I nod. She comes forward with a length of bandage and wraps it around my head. I try not to fixate on the feeling of her arms around me.
Finally, she drops away, bandage secure.
Robin noses my knee as we set off. I curl my fingers in the thick fur at his ruff and let him guide me from the cave into the trees.
The sound of running water quickly vanishes.
The air changes first—cooler, damp, threaded with decay and green life all at once.
It smells like wet bark split open, like mushrooms crushed underfoot, like something sweet trying to rot and failing.
Every breath feels layered, as though the forest has stacked seasons on top of one another and refused to choose.
The ground under my boots is soft and treacherous.
Peat gives way with a quiet sigh, then firms again into roots that flex under my weight.
I keep my balance by sound and by Robin, counting the cadence of his steps, listening to the way Wren moves behind and beside me.
She walks lightly, like she knows where the ground will forgive her and where it won’t.
Sounds of water return. Not a river—something more insidious.
Drips. Seepage. The slow, patient sucking sound of mud reclaiming what it can.
Somewhere deeper, something croaks, low and rhythmic, answered by a flutter of wings that pass too close to my head.
I flinch, instinctive, and Robin pauses, steady as a stone.
At another time, in another life, I would have asked Wren a hundred questions by now.
What colour are the leaves here? Is the light green or gold? Are the trees straight, or do they lean like old men?
I say none of it. The words sit heavy in my mouth and rot there. Silence is easier. Silence hurts less than hearing her voice paint a world I’m not ready to share with her again.
The forest presses in as we go deeper. Sound dulls, swallowed by moss and hanging growth.
Even my breathing seems too sharp. My fingers brush the trunk of a tree as I pass—its bark slick, furred with lichen that comes away damp against my skin.
There’s a faint vibration to it, like a pulse, and I pull my hand back quickly.
“Sorry,” Wren murmurs, reflexive. Not to me. To the forest.
A few hours later, we pause for lunch. Wren refills our flasks and passes me a strip of dried beef and some nuts. I think longingly of food back at Caerthalen; thick pies with buttery crusts, dense breads, blue-veined cheeses and crisp apples.
I hope Ru’s eating well.
We don’t stop for long, resuming our journey as soon as we’re fed and rested. I don’t ask where we’re going or what our plans are for the night. I don’t ask anything. I haven’t been so silent in her presence since we first met.
I never thought I’d miss those early days.
We haven’t been walking long when Robin stops dead. His hackles lift, a low sound rumbling in his chest.
“What is it, boy?” I ask.
Wren’s steps slow. She inhales sharply. “Someone’s here.”
There’s a smell now that cuts through the damp and green—a copper tang, thin but unmistakable. Blood. Fresh, and a little… wrong. It’s like it’s humming.
I crouch before Wren tells me to, guided by Robin, and reach out. My hand meets fabric first, then skin, fever-hot. The person on the ground gasps, a wet, rattling sound that drags painfully in and out.
“It’s all right,” I say without thinking. “We’re here to help.”
The breathing stutters. A small, trembling hand clutches weakly at my sleeve. The fingers are too cold for how warm the skin felt a moment ago.
Wren kneels opposite me. I can hear her shifting through her kit, glass clinking softly. Her voice, when she speaks, is quiet and intent. “Cassiel… he’s dying.”
“I know.” I angle myself closer, careful not to jostle the body. “It’s all right. I’ve got you.” I don’t know who I’m talking to anymore—the dying stranger, or myself.
There’s a sharp scent now, bitter and floral. Whatever Wren uncorks makes the air prickle at the back of my throat. The breathing eases almost immediately, the rattle smoothing into something softer, slower.
The hand in my sleeve tightens once, then relaxes.
“It won’t hurt,” Wren says, not to me.