21. Wren
By morning, the fire has burned down to a soft bed of embers and Cassiel is awake before I am.
I know this because I wake to the unmistakable feeling of being watched.
I smother my grin. Cassiel is watching me. Cassiel can watch me now! I made that happen!
An unsettling feeling stirs beneath my ribs, as I remember that yes, Cassiel can watch me.
He can see everything.
“All right,” I murmur at last, lips twitching. “You can stop staring. I’m still here.”
Cassiel startles, then laughs under his breath, unrepentant. “I wasn’t staring,” he says, badly. “I was… checking.”
“Checking what?”
“I… don’t know.”
I open my eyes. Grey light filters through the trees, the cave mouth washed pale with dawn. Cassiel sits far too upright on his bedroll, his eyes bright and focused and utterly, unmistakably seeing.
They’re so very, very green. The Duskfen itself couldn’t boast of their colour.
“Come here,” I say, pushing myself up and beckoning him closer.
He obeys instantly, and I doctor his eyes the way I did the night before, trying not to get lost in their vibrancy. I’m amazed at how quickly it’s worked.
“How much can you see?” I ask him.
Cassiel smiles. “Everything beyond you is a little vague,” he says, “but…”
“But?”
“I think I’m always going to struggle to see beyond you.”
I drop my hands away, averting my gaze. “I thought we agreed—”
Cassiel coughs. “Yes. Yes, quite right, we did. I just, um…”
“Forgot for a moment.”
“Yes.”
I have a tendency to forget around him, too. I think we both struggle to see beyond each other.
Why is this so hard?
“It’s fine,” I assure him. “Let’s just finish with today’s treatment. Looks like we’ve still got a little healing to do, but you could probably forego the blindfold, if you want.”
He doesn’t hesitate. He picks up the cloth he’s been using and throws it over his shoulder, his face bare to the morning. He looks absurdly young without it. Perhaps it’s just the sparkle in his eyes.
Stupid, pretty, sparkling eyes.
He thought my eyes were beautiful too…
Robin thumps his tail, delighted, and Cassiel laughs again, reaching across to fondle his ears. “I don’t think he knows what to do with himself,” Cassiel says. “I keep forgetting I don’t need him to lead anymore.”
“I still think he has his uses.”
“I do, too.”
We pack up quickly and keep moving. We’ve got enough time to reach the star gate before nightfall, as long as we don’t run into any more delays, but we’ll be in trouble if someone else is there before us.
We can agree to split the time, of course, like most usually do, but they may recognise either of us for what we are, and if a fight breaks out, we could be in trouble.
I’m not strong enough anymore to put up much of a resistance.
My magic can assist, but theirs could easily match it…
Unfortunately, our pace today is slow. Cassiel keeps stopping to look at everything.
At the way sunlight fractures through the leaves, at moss glowing an impossible green along the rocks, at a spiderweb strung with dew like a net of stars.
Each pause stretches the journey, but I don’t mind as much as I should.
I’ve always dreamed of this: of walking beside him and showing him the world properly.
My world.
I show off a little. I can’t help it. Ribbons of fire curl harmlessly around my fingers before dissolving into sparks.
Leaves lift and dance at my command, spinning like they’re drunk on joy.
I weave light between the trees until it scatters into motes, laughter bubbling out of me before I can stop it.
When we pass a stream, I draw the water up into the air, twisting it into a glittering ribbon—and then flick my wrist so it smacks him squarely in the face.
Cassiel yelps, spluttering. “Wren!”
I’m already laughing too hard to apologise. He wipes water from his eyes, then starts laughing too, full and bright, the sound of it echoing through the trees until even the forest seems amused.
Cassiel’s smile drops. “Does it drain you? Your magic?”
I shrug, suddenly aware of the weight of my own bones again. “The big stuff does. This is child’s play.”
He slows, frowning. “Healing me—”
“It’s a few droplets of blood, Cassiel,” I interrupt lightly. “I can spare a few.”
He doesn’t smile. “And how many people have you healed?”
I’m spared from answering by the sound of something like a tiny bell. A chirrimoth flutters into view, wings a riot of blues and golds, chirping softly as it bobs through the air. It settles on a nearby branch, head tilting as if it’s curious about us.
“Oh,” I breathe. “Hello, you.”
Cassiel watches it, transfixed. “What is it?”
“A chirrimoth,” I say. “They always make me think of Ru. They are very loud and colourful.”
The moth chirps again, as if in agreement, before lifting off and vanishing into the trees.
I watch it go, smiling faintly. “I miss her,” I say.
Cassiel doesn’t answer right away. When he does, his voice is steady, but his hand ghosts mine as if he’s thinking about taking it.
“I know.”
He thinks the better of it, and we walk on beneath the trees, the forest closing in around us again. Cassiel is quieter now, his gaze drifting not just outward but inward, as if he’s trying to take his own measure against this new-old world.
After a while, he exhales slowly. “I feel… a little strange,” he admits.
I glance at him. “With your sight back?”
He nods. “Yes.”
“We can put the blindfold back on, if you like,” I offer, half-teasing, half-serious. “Ease you into it.”
He gives me a look.
I grin. “Be a bit extreme to offer you a poker, wouldn’t it?”
“Wren.”
I laugh, but the sound dies when he stops walking and catches my hands in his. It’s so sudden I nearly stumble into him.
“Wren,” he says again, softer this time.
“I like being able to see again. I really do. And I don’t want to stop seeing you.
” His thumbs brush over my knuckles. “But it feels strange having my sight back. I was without it for so long. My blindness became so much of who I was, that I’m not sure how I stand without it.
” He hesitates. “Am I allowed to feel strange, having it back?”
My chest aches. I lift one hand, brushing my thumb along his jaw. “You are allowed to feel however you feel.”
“I don’t want to sound ungrateful—”
“You don’t have to sound anything,” I interrupt. Stars, I want to kiss him again. I want to kiss all his doubts away, to reassure him with a press of my lips.
But I can’t. It’s hard enough to untangle myself from him as it is.
“And I don’t want your thanks. I want—” The words slip out before I can stop them. I want you. “To be happy,” I add. “I just want you to be happy.”
His fingers tighten around mine, warm and sure. “Thank you.”
“I just said—”
“Not for that,” he says quickly. “I meant thank you for listening. Thank you for… for being you, I suppose.”
“Any time,” I say, and smile at him.
The smile falters almost immediately. His hands let go of mine. Because there is no ‘any time’. Not for us. We have a tiny, narrow scrap of it before it disappears from us forever. Cassiel has to go back to Caerthalen and be king one day. And I…
I’ve promised to leave, and I’ll have to make good on that if he asks me. But even if he doesn’t, there exists no future where we’re together.
There never did.
We reach the star gate just before the light goes.
The forest thins, trees stepping back in quiet deference, and the ground rises into a shallow bowl of stone and moss. The air is sharp here, humming faintly against my skin. It twitches with magic.
“Here,” I say, slowing. “Here it is.”
The Star Gate waits at the centre of the clearing: a ring of standing stones scored with age-old channels, their surfaces carved with rune masks that stare blindly toward the sky.
Some are half-buried, others leaning, but all of them are aligned with obsessive care.
The grooves between them catch the dying light, turning it to silver.
Cassiel stops beside me, openly awed. “How does this work, exactly?”
“The stones project images, depending on where they’re positioned and the alignment of the stars. At certain times of the year, you can see different things—visions of the future, mysteries of the past, people you’ve loved—people you’ve yet to love.”
“Amazing,” Cassiel says reverently, his hands brushing against one of the stones. “And… tonight?”
“Visions of the past,” I tell him. “Things to enlighten. Things the Fates think we ought to see.”
I glance upward. The sky is deepening, the first stars already pricking through. “We timed it well. Any later and this place would be crawling. People travel from all over the Duskfen to stand here when the stars align.”
It isn’t the only star gate in the Duskfen, and for that I am grateful.
Hopefully we won’t have any visitors, but I’m not taking any chances.
I move around the perimeter, brushing my fingers over the glyphs etched into the surrounding stones.
One by one, I wake them. Light flares softly beneath my touch, sinking into the carvings until the whole clearing is ringed with a low, steady glow.
“For protection,” I explain as Cassiel watches. “Keeps out any visitors and shields what we might witness from prying eyes.”
I touch the final glyph at the entrance.
“Procta,” I whisper.
A blue sheet of light spreads from the glyph, coating the floor and the sky with a giant bubble. It shimmers iridescently between us and the stars.
I wonder if Cassiel can see the stars yet.
No time to wonder.
The wards now set, I step into the centre of the ring and begin to adjust the stones, nudging them by inches, aligning channels with constellations now sharpening into focus above us. The air thickens. The hum grows louder. The gate wakes, stretching itself across time.
Cassiel stands just outside the circle, eyes fixed on the stones, on me. I catch his gaze once, hold it, then turn back to my work.
“All right,” I murmur, as the last stone clicks into place. “Here we go.”
The stars blaze overhead—and the world tilts.