20. Cassiel
Evening has settled in properly now, the burrow warm and dim and full of soft, new sounds, but neither of us suggests staying.
“There’s a good place not far from here,” Wren says, as we rinse the last of the linens and lay them out to dry. “Another cave. We can rest there for the night. Besides,” she adds, “it’s not as if either of us is particularly bothered by the dark.”
I smile, although I imagine the forest isn’t that safe to traverse after nightfall. I hope we get to the cave quickly, but I know Wren wouldn’t risk our safety if it wasn’t for the best.
We clean what we can before we leave and announce our intention at the bedroom door, careful not to intrude too much on the small, precious circle of them.
“We should be going,” I say. “Wren is confident she can get us to shelter by nightfall.”
Tob sounds stricken. “So soon?”
Marnie’s voice is soft and calm. “They’re all right, dear. Go and fetch them something to eat for the road, will you?”
He’s gone before I can protest, boots thudding away.
“Before you depart,” Marnie says, “you should hold her again.”
I hesitate, but of all the things to refuse, this one would be the biggest slight.
It’s an honour. I step closer as she carefully lifts the baby from her chest and places her into my arms. She’s impossibly small, sparrow light, warm and breathing against my skin.
Her hair is soft as thistledown beneath my fingers, and her pointed ears end in downy tufts.
Wren hovers, then laughs softly when Marnie presses the baby into her arms next. “You both look good with a baby,” Marnie says, satisfied. “It suits you.”
Tob returns, slightly out of breath, arms laden with wrapped food and a small flask. He presses them into our hands, then hesitates, glancing between us.
“There’s one more thing,” he says. “We were hoping… we’d like to give you the honour of naming her.”
I start to shake my head at once. “I really can’t—”
“If you don’t,” Marnie cuts in gently, “we shall name her after one of you anyway.”
I freeze.
“Cassia is quite pretty—” she begins.
Honour warms me, sharp and uncomfortable. I’ve killed fey. Not brownies, thankfully, but the truth doesn’t soften with exceptions. My name feels wrong in my mouth when I imagine it tied to her.
My fingers brush her hair again, and I remember how dark and rich it was. Not like mine at all. Like my mother’s—like my sibling’s.
“Eva,” I say quietly, before I can stop myself.
“That’s a pretty name,” Tob says. “It sounds like it means something.”
“My brother’s name was Evander,” I explain.
They are quiet for a moment, but it’s a soft, comfortable one.
“Eva,” Marnie repeats, with what I assume is a smile. It laces every syllable. “Welcome to the world.”
We say our goodbyes after that. Tob sees us to the door, pressing more supplies into our hands.
“Safe roads,” he says. “May the stars guide you, and the fates behave themselves.”
We reach the place a few hours later, breathless and footsore but intact.
The cave sits low against the earth, its mouth half-hidden by ferns and slick stone, opening out toward a humid lake that breathes softly in the dark.
The air smells green and wet, alive with insects and the low croak of unseen things.
Is perfectly adequate shelter for the night, even if I miss the burrow. The microclimates of the Duskfen never seek to surprise me.
We unroll our beds on the flattest patch of stone and eat what Tob and Marnie pressed into our hands: bread still faintly warm, cheese wrapped in cloth, something sweet I don’t ask about. Hunger catches up to me all at once. When we’re done, exhaustion takes me just as quickly.
“Lie down,” Wren insists. “Sleeping is healing.”
I’m sure she’s more exhausted than me, but I don’t argue. She steps away to spell the cave against intruders, and I fall asleep almost immediately.
When I wake, it’s to the fire’s quiet crackle. My blindfold has loosened in the night, slipped low against my cheek. I frown, fingers lifting automatically to fix it—and stop.
Light leaks in.
I still, breath caught, and pull the cloth away entirely.
The cave swims into view. Firelight paints the stone walls amber and gold. Everything beyond a few paces is blurred, softened into shape and shadow—but close by, impossibly close, the world sharpens.
My hands are real in front of me. I can see the lines etched into my palms, the pale scars crossing my knuckles. Tiny flecks of burn marks catch the light and my chest tightens so hard it hurts.
I can see.
Not perfectly. Not far. But enough. I can make out the rune marks etched into the cave walls.
I can read.
“Wren?” I whisper wondrously.
The bed beside mine is empty.
Panic surges. I scramble to my feet, heart hammering, vision smearing at the edges as I stagger toward the cave mouth.
The panic dissipates almost as soon as it comes.
She’s down by the lake, knee-deep in the water, rinsing sweat and dirt from her skin. The surface glows faintly, reflecting the slow drift of blue, luminous butterflies that hover around her like living embers. Their light brushes her hair, her shoulders, turning her into something unreal.
I stop and stare at Serawen Ashwood for the first time.
The world narrows to her breathing, the hush of water, the glow of blue against dark. I don’t know how long I stand there, afraid to move, afraid this will vanish if I blink.
She steps back onto the shore, water gliding off her slender form. I don’t have much time to look at her body—or to take in the magnificent details—before she pulls on her shirt, wringing out her damp hair and twisting it over a narrow shoulder.
She glances at me. Her breath catches.
“Cassiel,” she says softly.
The sound of my name breaks something open in my chest. Tears come without warning, hot and unstoppable. I cross the distance between us on shaking legs, hands reaching out as if I don’t quite believe she’s real.
“I can see you,” I choke. “I can see you.”
She doesn’t speak. She just lets me touch her, lets my hands find her face. I trace the curve of her cheek, the line of her jaw, the familiar shape made new by sight. Her eyes shine.
And those eyes. People told me they were brown, and rich, and deep. I’ve painted them a hundred times in the darkness. They are all those things, and more. They are earth and sunfire, threaded with gold.
“Your eyes,” I ask her, “have they always looked like that?”
“I usually glamour them,” she says, “hide the gold streaks. Because—”
Because they look too beautiful. Too otherworldly.
I stroke a lock of hair behind her ear. “Never glamour them again,” I tell her. “Never hide any of this…”
“All right,” she tells me. “If you say so.”
I laugh, broken and breathless, and cry harder. I press my forehead to hers, memorising every detail I can in case the world blurs again. Wren cries too. Her tears look like stars. She pulls back, hands on my face, staring at me like she’s the one who can finally see.
“What is it?” I ask.
“I’ve never seen you look at me before,” she whispers, her voice tripping on her tears. “I never thought… your eyes…” She swallows. “They’re beautiful, Cassiel. You’re beautiful.”
My heart explodes in my chest. Without thinking, I crash my mouth down on hers.
Wren lets out a little gasp, as if this is unexpected, as if our mouths weren’t made to touch each other.
She’s every bit as glorious as I remember.
Her soft lips move under mine, parting at my touch. She tastes of woodsmoke and pine.
Why hadn’t I done this before now? Why had I waited—
Then all too suddenly, I remember exactly why. I remember who and what we are.
What we’ve done to each other.
I pull away. Not fast, not as quickly as I should. My hands stay on her shoulder and cheek. “I… I shouldn’t have done that,” I whisper.
Wren doesn’t move. “That’s all right,” she says. “You’re just overcome with emotion, I understand.”
I hate her for her understanding far more than I hate myself for kissing her in the first place… and a little less than I hate myself for pulling away.
“Heat of the moment,” I agree. “Please don’t—” Think too much of it. Judge me. Hate me.
Please don’t think I didn’t love every second of that.
Wren laughs it off. “You aren’t the first boy I’ve kissed, Cassiel,” she says, emulating my words to her, once. “And you won’t be the last.”
And if I wanted you to be the last? Comes the thought, unbidden, which is foolish, because now more than ever I know that there’s no future here, that we can’t be together.
I’d destroy you, she said when we first kissed.
And now she has. I’m a fool if I invite her to do so again.
But Saints, in another life, when I didn’t have a kingdom to run, where she wasn’t my enemy, where we could just be ourselves and not have to be anyone or anything else, I’d be a fool for her.
My hands are still on her, like they can’t bear to move away.
Her shoulder digs into my palm. I frown.
I don’t remember her being so bony. Her shirt hangs loosely on her body, her collarbones sharp and prominent.
My eyes drift back to her face. I’d been so ludicrously distracted by simply being able to see her, that I barely comprehended what it was that I was seeing.
Dark, hollow shadows are etched into Wren’s face, beneath those wondrous eyes. I see now what’s been obvious to everyone else, what should have been obvious to me when she fell into my arms.
It’s not that I’m stronger, it’s that she’s smaller. Not slim or slender, but painfully thin. A wraith of a woman.
I know the shape of her body in my hands. This isn’t what she used to look like.
“Wren—” I start.
“Ah,” she says, dropping away from my touch, “yes. I was wondering when you’d notice that.”
“What…. What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Wren admits. “It was… it was a hard winter, and food was scarce, but even when it became plentiful again, I couldn’t eat as much as I used to.
It all tastes wrong in my mouth. I’m exhausted all of the time.
The nightmares barely let me rest…” She shudders.
“I don’t know. I feel like I’m being drained. ”
Her eyes look down, like she can’t meet my gaze, like she’s done something to be ashamed of.
“Wren—” I start.
“You don’t have to lie to me and tell me I’m still beautiful.”
My throat tightens. I raise my hand to her chin, tilting her face towards the light. Dark shadows slice across her hollow cheekbones.
“But you are, Wren,” I tell her. “You’re the first face I’ve seen in over a year, and you’re you. You’ll always be beautiful to me.”
“A dangerous thing to tell me when I’m not supposed to kiss you.”
“Yes,” I agree. “Almost as dangerous as you are.”
A tear slides down Wren’s cheek. I thumb it away, resisting the urge to kiss it. Instead, I draw her into my arms, holding her against my chest. She’s so painfully small there, as fragile as baby Eva. I feel like I could crush her.
“Come on,” I say. “Let’s get you warmed up.”
I lead her back to the cave slowly, as if the world might crack if we move too quickly. The fire is still alive, a low, patient glow, breathing warmth into the stone. I settle her on the bedroll and drape her cloak around her shoulders. It swallows her whole. I hate that.
She doesn’t protest when I kneel behind her and rub warmth back into her arms, my thumbs tracing small circles as if I can coax strength into her skin.
I keep looking up, greedily, stupidly—at the flicker of flame against the cave walls, at the soot-smudged stone, at the way shadows gather and scatter.
I want to hoard it all. I want to remember the exact colour of the firelight, the shape of the smoke as it curls upward, the way the cave seems to hold us like a cupped hand.
Wren sags against me. Her head tips back, then settles, light as a bird, into my lap. Her breathing evens out. She’s asleep before I realise she’s drifting.
I stay completely still.
I look at her face, softened now by rest, lashes dark against her cheeks.
I think, absurdly, of paint and canvas—of how easy it would be, with a few strokes, to give her back what’s been taken.
To round the sharpness of her cheekbones, to warm the hollows beneath her eyes, to banish the grey that clings to her like a second shadow. I want to paint away her darkness.
I can’t. No more than I can erase my own.
The thought settles heavy in my chest. I sigh, careful not to wake her, and slide an arm beneath her knees, the other behind her shoulders. She stirs but doesn’t wake as I lift her, as light as she feels fragile. I lay her back against the bedroll and tuck the covers around her.
I sit there for a long moment after, hands useless in my lap, sight burning in my eyes.
The Saints—or the Fates—have a cruel sense of humour. I’ve finally got my sight back, only to see exactly how much she’s been breaking.