15. Cassiel
The weight of Wren’s confessions—all of them—follow me as we resume our journey.
She’s far too forgiving of the things I’ve done, and I don’t think she’s nearly as forgiving of herself.
I’m almost certain she’s one who left the jewel for Amma Riverspire to find.
I think she might be responsible for a few other of the ‘miracles’ that have spread through the land.
I’m not sure I forgive her, but I think I want her to forgive herself.
Would you hold the same opinion if she’d killed Evander? asks a voice.
I bite it down, because the answer is no. She may not have killed my brother, but she’s killed someone else’s. She’s made amends where she can, but she can’t bring back the dead.
You’ve killed someone’s brother, too, a voice reminds me. You’ve killed brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers. Friends and loved ones.
People’s worth shouldn’t be measured by the people they leave behind. It shouldn’t really matter, but it spreads the hurt. How many have I hurt with my actions?
The difference between Wren and me, I think, is that I don’t really want forgiveness, and I don’t know what I’d do to earn it if I did.
“What happened to that fey man?” I ask her, mainly to stop the other thoughts in my head.
“Injured by something,” she responds.
“Something?”
“He looked like he’d been gored by a monster. It happened a while ago, though; I wouldn’t be too worried.”
“Umm… yes, I’m afraid that’s not going to work. I need to know what it could have been.”
“I can shoot fire out of my fingertips, we’ll be fine.”
“I need to know, Wren!”
Wren sighs, relenting. “So,” she says, slicing cleanly through a curtain of something.
At least, I assume it’s a clean cut. It makes a smooth sound and it’s hard not to imagine her doing it decisively, given her proficiency with a blade.
“Assuming it was a monster—and let’s be honest, it was—it narrows things down to anything with horns, tusks, talons, or an enthusiastic relationship with violence. ”
“That is not narrowing,” I tell her.
“That depends on how many monsters you know.”
I grimace and adjust my grip on my cane. The forest floor is uneven beneath my boots, roots rising like coiled snakes, stones slick with damp moss. Every step has to be measured. Every sound feels amplified.
“So, what could it be?” I ask, resigned.
“Well,” she says brightly, “there’s the briarback. Massive boar-like thing, hide like ironwood. Likes to gore travelers and leave them pinned to trees as warnings.”
I stop walking. “As warnings to whom?”
“To other travellers,” she says, as if it’s obvious. “Then there’s the marrow-elk. Antlers sharp enough to shear bone. It hunts in silence, which is rude. Oh, and the wood-wight, but they don’t usually gore. They flay.”
“Wren.”
“Yes?”
“I am blind,” I remind her. “I don’t need help imagining this.”
“But you usually love me describing things to you!”
I did, comes a swift retort, but I don’t feel like wounding her right now.
Robin’s ears prick forward. He lets out a low sound, almost a whine, and I slow.
“What about something with claws?” I ask, mostly to give my mind somewhere else to go.
“Plenty of those,” she says. “Some burrow. Some climb. Some drop from the canopy when you least expect it.”
“Comforting.”
“I do my best.”
The conversation ends. After a while, Wren starts to hum. It’s a pleasant tune, and it makes it easier for me to know where she is. I’d not be adverse to hearing her sing again, but I’m not going to request it.
“I thought the Duskfen could make us a path?” I ask.
“It can,” Wren returns. “When it feels like it.”
“It doesn’t mind you hacking at it?”
“The Dusken is more animal than human or fey,” she explains. “It grasps necessity, but it doesn’t understand revenge.”
The forest thickens as we go. The air grows heavier, damp with rot and sap. Wren’s blade works constantly now, the rhythmic hack, tear, hack of metal sounding against vine and branch. Leaves brush my face. Something skitters away near my feet.
Robin growls again.
Wren stops humming. The silence is so sudden it’s like walking into a wall.
“What’s wrong?” I say.
“Back away,” she tells me, voice low. “Slowly.”
Every muscle in my body locks. “What is it?”
She doesn’t answer right away. She breathes in, sharp and controlled. The air tightens, shifting like the sea before a storm. Other sounds trickle away, leaving only a solid and immovable silence.
“It’s big,” she says finally. “I don’t think it’s spotted us.”
Something exhales ahead of us. Wet. Heavy. Close.
“What kind of big?” I ask.
“Big big.”
Fear holds back my groan. “Your descriptions are still terrible.”
“It’s a thornstag,” she says.
I’ve never seen one in the flesh. They’re so rare that we’d started to think they were extinct. I’ve seen pictures before—they’re giant, twisted deer, crowned with antlers like hooked blades, their hide tangled with bark and briar. They don’t hunt for food. They hunt for trespassers.
Robin lets out a growl, louder than the last.
“Run,” Wren says.
“I thought you said you could—”
“Never mind what I said, run!”
Her hand clamps around mine, hauling me forward. We hurtle back the way we came, moving at a reckless pace, my boots skidding, my shoulder slamming into bark, clothes snagging on thorns. Robin runs ahead of us, barking like mad.
The thornstag crashes through undergrowth with terrifying force, hooves pounding like thunder. Each impact is closer than the last. Its breath fills the air between us, a ragged, eager sound. The antlers whistle, slicing through the air where my head had been a moment before.
Wren twists, still holding my hand, and hurls something behind her, still running. The creature roars. The scent of singed fur reaches my nostrils.
It doesn’t stop it for long.
“Left!” Wren shouts, jerking me sideways.
I stumble, nearly going down, catching myself on her arm. Branches rake my face. Something tears fabric from my sleeve. Robin yelps but keeps moving.
The ground slopes sharply. Roots grab at my boots. I’ve no idea where I’m putting my feet, but there’s frantic urgency in Wren’s grip.
The thornstag makes another, awful sound, like trees splitting apart from the inside. My heart slams against my ribs. The earth vibrates.
Suddenly, Wren skids to a stop, boots scraping, and flings an arm across my chest so hard it knocks the air from my lungs.
Water roars in front of us. Not in front, exactly, but…
Down.
“Can you swim?” she demands.
“Well,” I gasp, “of course I can swim, if the occasion calls for it—”
The thornstag crashes closer, so near I can smell sap and blood.
“It calls for it,” Wren says, and shoves me forward.
The ground vanishes.
Cold, violent water takes me, and the forest disappears behind a wall of sound.
The current slams into my chest and drags me under, boots filling, cloak snapping around my legs like a net. I twist instinctively, fighting for the surface, but the weight on my back pulls me down again. My pack. I fumble for the straps, fingers numb, heart hammering as water roars in my ears.
It’s too tight.
I claw at the buckles, at the leather, at anything that might give.
The river bucks me against stone, spins me sideways, and panic claws its way up my throat.
I can swim. I know I can swim. But knowing and doing are very different things when you can’t see where the water breaks, can’t tell up from down.
Robin barks, sharp and frantic, somewhere close and then further away.
“Wren!” I gasp, breaking the surface for half a breath. I suck in air and whistle, the sharp two-note call I know she can hear even over the water. “Wren!”
“Cass!” Her voice cuts through the roar. “Hold on. Don’t fight it.”
Easy for her to say.
The current suddenly shifts, easing, and strong hands seize the back of my collar, hauling me sideways. I scrape against stone, skin tearing, and then the water loosens its grip. I cough violently as I’m dragged up and out, collapsing onto slick rock.
“You’re safe,” Wren says, breathless but steady. “I’ve got you.”
She helps me shrug out of the cursed pack, tugging it free at last, and together we stumble the last few steps to the bank. I drop to my knees, shaking, lungs burning—
The air vanishes from my lungs when she pulls me into a fierce, clumsy hug.
I don’t mean to return it. I don’t want to return it, but my body clings to her anyway, desperate for something—anything—solid.
I laugh, a little hysterical, my forehead pressed against her shoulder. “You know what’s terrifying?”
She huffs. “Falling into a rapid whilst blind?”
“Why yes, actually,” I say. “How did you know?”
I pull back, frowning. She smells like pine and smoke and river-air—but not wet. My fingers brush her sleeve. Dry. Entirely dry.
“Did you use magic to dry yourself?”
She hesitates. “Um, it’s more that I used it not to get wet in the first place.”
Water drips off my hair, my clothes clinging heavily to my skin. “I don’t suppose you can dry me using magic, can you?”
She takes another moment to reply. “Yes,” she decides. “If you’re sure you want me to?”
I’m sure it’ll take hours to dry otherwise, and my boots could be soggy for days. “I’m sure.”
Wren takes a step closer, the air between us heating. “Tell me if it feels strange.”
“When does it not?”
I brace myself for some awful sensation, like the numb, cold feeling that gripped me that one time she used magic to paralyze me, but that doesn’t come.
Wren’s hands brush over my body, not quite touching.
Instead of cold, warmth spreads through me, starting at my chest and rippling outward.
It’s nothing like fire—more like standing in sunlight after a long winter.
The weight of my clothes lessens, water evaporating in soft hisses, the chill retreating from my bones.
I shiver once, then let out a slow breath.
“…That’s incredible,” I say quietly.
Wren smiles, small and a little shy. “That’s barely anything.”
I sit back on my heels, awe settling in where fear had been. “What else can you do?”
She turns—towards the forest, I think, listening for pursuit—then back to me when she deems it safe enough to stay. “Before I unlocked my primal element?” she says. “I could levitate leaves, redirect small streams of water, cast runes. Small things. Not all that useful.”
“And now?”
There’s something of a smile in her voice. “Now,” she says, “the question is no longer what can I do… but what can I not?”
A thousand questions and possibilities open up ahead of me. I don’t know if I should be appalled or afraid.
“Can you resurrect the dead?” I ask, half seriously.
I don’t need to see her face to know that it’s fallen. “No,” she says. “That kind of magic is no longer possible.”
“I suspected as much.”
“It’s always been tricky,” she continues.
“If the body is perfectly preserved, it’s easier.
But it isn’t just the body that matters, it’s the soul.
Wherever they go after the body dies… it can be hard to drag them back, particularly if they died a violent death, or led a violent life. People can come back different.”
“That wouldn’t stop people from trying.”
“No, and it didn’t. But the spell is no longer possible. It requires something from a phoenix, and they no longer exist.”
Maelor told me as much. “I heard they destroyed themselves.”
“Yes,” she confirms. “The ultimate act of self-sacrifice. Let’s not pretend you wouldn’t do the same, if you thought it was for the greater good.”
“And you?”
“What of me?”
“Would you sacrifice yourself to save others?”
Wren goes quiet for a moment. “I don’t really care enough about other people,” she says.
I can’t help but feel, that of all the lies Wren’s ever told, that’s the biggest one of all.