17. Wren
Ihead out early next morning to hunt before Cassiel wakes up. Mist clings to the ferns and the low branches, beading on my sleeves as I wander deeper than I meant to.
I didn’t give much of a thought before as to what it would feel like to be with him, to have him speak to me.
I’d fixated on his initial anger and not thought beyond it.
I’d been unprepared for the realities of travelling with him, of being so close to him again, of us laughing together and not being together.
It’s a relief to be able to escape from it, if only for a moment.
Something snaps underfoot. Before I can even register what it is, the ground vanishes and the world flips upside down.
Rope bites into my ankles as I’m hauled into the air, a net snapping tight around my body.
I gasp, the breath knocked clean out of me, and my knife skitters from my hand, flashing once before disappearing into the undergrowth below.
“Damn it,” I hiss, already reaching inward, calling for the familiar heat, the answering pull of feathers and bone—
Nothing.
My magic is gone. Not gone, exactly, but smothered, like a flame trapped under glass.
I strain, panic rising sharp and fast, but there’s no shift, no fire, not even a spark of warmth under my skin.
The net hums faintly, wrong in a way I can feel in my teeth, and when I stare closely, I notice the rope is threaded with something gold and shimmering.
Spelled against magic. Of course it is. If you set traps in this place, you’re likely to catch a magical creature that can free itself. You don’t want every net going to waste.
I twist, fighting the ropes, but they only cinch tighter, pressing the air from my lungs. Blood rushes to my head, the forest swimming below me. I don’t know quite what my plan is. There’s no reaching my dagger.
My muscles start to burn. My thoughts circle darkly around traps and hunters and how stupid I was to come out here alone with my guard down.
Footsteps sound below. The hunter, maybe? Perhaps they’ll let me out.
Unless they’re a troll, or an ogre.
Or someone who likes money and knows my worth.
I freeze, every nerve screaming. “Hello?” I call, trying to keep my voice steady. “If you’re thinking of killing me, I’d prefer you do it quickly.”
The footsteps stop.
“Where are you?” comes a voice from below.
Relief hits me so hard it almost hurts. “Cassiel?” I twist, trying to see him through the branches. “Over here—above you. I’m stuck in a net.”
“Oh boy, do I wish I could see that…”
He steps into view beneath me, head tilted slightly. His eyes are still hidden beneath clean white cloth, but his face turns unerringly toward me.
“How did you find me?” I blurt.
A corner of his mouth lifts. “I know this may shock you, but I’m fairly adept at finding my way in the dark.”
Despite everything, a laugh escapes me, breathless and shaky. “It’s morning.”
“Oh, is it?” He turns around the glade. “Where’s the net connected?”
“To your left,” I instruct. “A little more—stop! Straight ahead.”
Cassiel moves forward, fingers outstretched until they connect with the rope. He produces a dagger from his belt. My dagger, I realise with a jolt—the one my grandmother gave me that belonged to my father. I wonder if he’s been keeping it to plunge it through my chest.
I wouldn’t blame him.
I still want it back. I don’t have much in the world that’s mine anymore.
There’s a sharp tug, a grunt of effort, and the knot gives way. I drop as the net loosens…
Straight into Cassiel’s arms.
The impact knocks a surprised sound out of both of us. His arms lock around me instinctively, solid and warm, and for one dizzy heartbeat I just cling there, forehead pressed against his shoulder, breathing him in like I’ve been holding my breath since the last time we were like this.
Don’t let go, I want to cry. Please just hold me like this for the rest of our lives.
But, of course, he doesn’t. He sets me on my feet a little too quickly and steps back.
At least he doesn’t look scalded this time. He looks almost puzzled.
“What is it?” I ask.
“I’m just basking in how strong I must have gotten,” he says lightly. “You felt feather-light to me.”
No, I think, that’s not why. He may have gotten strong, but that’s not—
I cut the thought off before it can finish.
Cassiel grows serious. “Are you hurt at all?”
I flex my ankles, my wrists. Everything aches, but nothing feels broken. “No. Just my pride.”
I collect my fallen knife and slide it back into its sheath.
“How are your eyes?” I ask, softer.
“Well,” he says, “they don’t hurt anymore, so there’s that.”
“That’s something,” I say, even though the bandages make my chest tighten. “We should change your bandages.”
“Good idea.”
We turn back towards camp together. I’ve not found anything to eat, but there’s some leftovers from last night that will have to do. Cassiel fiddles with his bandages as I restart the fire.
“Here,” I say, reaching across. “Let me.”
“Thank you.” His breath ghosts my cheek as my arms go around his head, loosening the knot. The bandage falls away.
Cassiel blinks, and startles.
“Cass?” I ask, worried. Is he hurt? Has the light damaged his still-healing eyes—
He seizes my face, eyes widening. They look different than before.
“Wait,” I say, “can you—can you see me?”
Cassiel swallows, like he doesn’t want to speak in case it vanishes. His eyes—previously a soft, frosted colour—are greener than I’ve ever seen them. Not quite as they should be, still clouded, but green nonetheless.
“Cassiel?” I prompt.
He thumbs my face, grabbing my hair. “It’s… blurry,” he says. “Just… spots of colour… vague shapes… but… but yes.” He swallows. Tears tremble in the corner of his eyes. “Yes, I can see you.”
We both grin through our tears. I expect he’ll push me away at any moment, remembering that he still hates me, but a moment later he grabs me by the arms and pulls me against his chest, laughing with joy.
Robin interrupts, pushing his nose between us, and Cass laughs and hugs him too, ruffling his fur.
“I thought he’d be yellow,” he says, still smiling. “Not… red gold.”
“He’s beautiful.”
“He is,” Cass says, not taking his eyes off him. “He really is.”
I let Cassiel reveal in his newfound sight while I reheat breakfast, and then for a little while longer afterwards. His eyes quickly start to ache from the effort of trying to focus, and grudgingly I tell him we need to reapply the ointment and give them a chance to heal further.
I fetch the ointment from my pack and settle beside him, uncorking the little clay jar. I hesitate only a second before drawing my knife again and nicking my finger.
Cassiel’s head snaps toward the sound, or the smell—or maybe even the little bead of blood on my fingertip.
“Wren.” His voice sharpens. “What are you doing?”
“Relax,” I say lightly, tipping a few dark drops into the ointment and stirring with the flat of the blade. The salve darkens, turning faintly opalescent. “Fey blood has healing properties, remember.”
Cassiel shakes his head. “No. Absolutely not.”
Of course he’d be resistant to using fey blood. He hates us. He probably doesn’t want it anywhere near him—
“It won’t work without it,” I whisper, trying to be kind, to hide the hurt in my voice.
Cassiel’s is even softer. His brows pull together. “I don’t want you bleeding for me.”
“It’s just blood—”
“I don’t want you hurting yourself,” he clarifies. “Not for this. Not for me.”
Something in my chest shifts, soft and treacherous. I hadn’t expected that. I hadn’t realised how much I hadn’t expected it.
“It’s barely anything.” I turn my finger so he can see—or at least sense—the shallow cut. “I can handle it. I promise.”
He exhales, long and defeated, and nods once. “All right. But be careful.”
I smile despite myself and scoop a little of the mixture onto my fingers.
It’s warmer now, alive in that faint, humming way my blood always makes it.
I lean in, and this time I’m acutely aware of how close we are—of the way his breath hitches when my knuckles brush his cheek, of how still he goes beneath my touch.
“Tell me if it hurts,” I murmur.
“It doesn’t,” he says. “Just… strange.”
I spread the ointment carefully over his eyes, my thumbs gentle, reverent. He’s so warm. He fights the urge to blink, failing a couple of times. He looks like a startled cat.
“Sorry,” I say. “Just a little more.”
He catches my hand, staring at my palms. “Your skin,” he says. “It’s a beautiful colour.”
I pause. “Oh?”
“Yes,” he continues, searching for words. “Like red cedar. Or… bronze, I think. Something warm. Sunlit.”
I huff a small laugh. “High praise, considering you can barely see me.”
“Even blurred,” he says, earnest, “it’s unmistakable.”
“Careful,” I say lightly, resuming my work. “Keep talking like that and I’ll assume you’re trying to distract me.”
“Is it working?”
“Unfortunately,” I say, though my cheeks are warm now, “yes.”
Privately, a quieter thought unfurls—an uninvited, fragile thing. Will he still like what he sees when his sight fully returns? I hadn’t let myself wonder before. It feels dangerous to start now. I know I’m not as beautiful as I used to be when he first knew me. I didn’t really care until now.
I finish applying the salve and wrap fresh bandages around his eyes, tying them snug but not tight.
“There,” I say. “All set.”
Cassiel reaches out, careful, and takes my hand. His thumb brushes the finger I cut, still faintly sore. Before I can think to say anything, he lifts it and presses a kiss to the pad.
“Thank you,” he whispers.
We set off again, the forest opening to us in painted corridors of green and shadow.
Cassiel keeps pace easily, Robin at his side.
It’s a mercy, after the last few days, that nothing finds us—no thornstags, no traps, no hunters.
By dusk, I almost feel relaxed, only I’m too exhausted to feel much at all.
We make camp beneath a wide break in the canopy, where the sky spills open like a dark lake. After we eat, Cassiel lies back on his hands, listening to the night. Then, after a moment’s thought, he reaches up and unties the blindfold.
“We should stargaze,” he says.
I glance at him. “Can you even see the stars?”
He smiles, sheepish and soft. “No,” he admits. “Pretty much everything is dark except the campfire and your face.”
Heat rushes to my cheeks, immediate and traitorous. I’m absurdly grateful he probably can’t see that. “Then why,” I ask, arching a brow, “are we stargazing if you can’t see them?”
“It’s not really the stars I’m interested in,” he says.
That… does not clarify things. I hesitate, then lie down beside him anyway, our shoulders almost touching, the earth cool and solid beneath my back.
“Can you see the Hunter’s Crown?” Cassiel asks after a moment. “Usually to the north this time of year, unless I’m mistaken.”
I squint. “I don’t think so. What does it look like?”
“Seven stars,” he says, gesturing vaguely upward. “Like a broken circlet.”
“You mean the River-Bearer?”
“You don’t have the Hunter’s Crown?”
I shake my head. “I’m shaking my head, Cassiel,” I inform him, remembering at the last minute that he won’t be able to tell.
He smiles. “I can see.”
We both take a moment to bask in this fact. It’s more glorious than the stars.
“I suppose it makes sense that we’d have different names for the constellations,” I murmur. “Do you have the Ash Queen? She’s five stars, not seven, and they form a hand. She’s said to appear brightest when people are far from home.”
Cassiel is quiet for a moment. “I like the sound of her.”
We trade stories. I point out different clusters, and he tells his stories. His people’s constellations are full of saints and trials and wars written into the sky; mine are older, stranger—beasts and bargains, queens who bargained with fire or frost.
Somewhere along the way, our shoulders move together.
Cassiel swallows, but he makes no motion to move. “What do your people make of the Wandering Stars?” he asks.
“Wandering stars?”
“Yes. Twelve of them. Well, some say thirteen, but we’ve only seen twelve at most together for a couple of decades. They appear and vanish, never quite where they should be. Astrologers have argued about them for centuries. They don’t follow the pattern. They don’t obey the map.”
I smile. Of course the humans would think that. “They’re not stars,” I say gently.
He turns his head toward me. “No?”
“No,” I repeat. “They’re the Fates. We sometimes call them stars, because that’s what they look like, but they aren’t giant balls of gas. They’re conscious.”
Cassiel absorbs this in silence, as he does most unsettling truths.
“They guide the cosmos,” I continue. “They offer predictions to those who know how to read them. And sometimes”—I hesitate—“they interfere. They can bend the flow of magic itself.”
“And where we’re going,” he says slowly, “the Star Gate… they can show us things there?”
“Yes, when the conditions are right.”
“Hence the time frame.”
I nod again. My gaze turns back to the sky, ink-blue, swirling with purple. I never imagined I would ever sit like this with Cassiel, his features lit up by the firelight. He may not be able to see the stars, but they shine in the glassy reflection on his eyes.
I draw my knees up, picking at a loose thread on my sleeve. “I couldn’t tell you this before—it wouldn’t have made sense—but my people have a yearly ceremony where we worship the dark.”
He doesn’t interrupt.
“It’s held on the lead up to the winter solstice.
We dampen all fires, cover all lights, turn off our everlights, and sit together in the dark.
We sing songs, hold hands, and recount stories until midnight.
We fixate on our other senses, and sit alone with the forest. When it’s time to make our way back to our beds, we’re forbidden from lighting more than a single candle.
Just one. So we don’t dispel the magic of the dark. ”
Cassiel is quiet for a long moment. “Darkness isn’t a blessing,” he says, his voice barely louder than a breath.
“No,” I agree. “And I can’t tell you how to feel about it. But darkness doesn’t have to be a curse.”
Cassiel’s hand twitches at his side. I want to take it, but I’m not sure if I should. My skin prickles in memory of the kiss he planted earlier on my fingers. I want it back. That moment—this one—I want to scoop them up like stardust and bottle them in a jar.
But I cannot. The stars shift, time moves forward.
And above us, the Fates slip in and out of sight.