23. Wren
Weeks pass in a breath. My parents’ courtship is slow—agonisingly so.
I can’t see into my father’s mind, but I know the shape of hesitation.
I recognise it. He likes her. Stars, he really likes her.
But he holds himself back, torn between honesty and duty, between desire and the weight of the prophecy.
I don’t fully understand it. He should surely want it to come true.
If he likes her as much as I think he does, surely that makes it easier?
Then again, perhaps it is for a more simple reason that he holds back. Love is terrifying, after all. Maybe he just doesn’t want to surrender to it.
A whole season turns before my mother finally loses patience.
It’s another evening spent in a field not far from the cottage where I was born. They’re sitting beneath a tree, watching the sunset. My father is talking about nothing much in particular, fiddling with his fingers, not meeting her gaze.
She sighs, sits up, and grabs Lark by the front of his tunic and kisses him.
Hard.
When she pulls back, he looks stunned. “Why did you do that?” he asks faintly.
“Because you seemed a little too frightened to,” she says.
“I am a little terrified of you, Maeve.”
“Of me?” she teases.
“Of what I feel for you,” he admits.
She studies him, something warm and sharp in her gaze. “That means a lot, coming from a faerie.”
He freezes. Cassiel makes a small squeaking sound beside me.
“You… you know?” Lark stammers.
She laughs. “I’m not an idiot, Lark. I’ve never met anyone so careful not to lie.”
“You… don’t mind?”
“Should I?”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” he blurts. “Do you have any idea how much I’ve been torturing myself over—”
Maeve silences him with another kiss, smiling against his mouth. “Love is meant to be a little torturous, so I hear.” She rests her forehead against his. “And you do love me, don’t you?”
“Yes,” he says, without hesitation now. “I do.”
They kiss again, slower this time, certain.
“No more lies between us,” she says softly. “No more concealing the truth.”
He nods. “All right.”
She studies his face. “Is this your real one?”
“Yes,” he says. “More or less.”
“More or less?”
Lark exhales—and lets the glamour fall.
His tattoos bloom along his exposed forearms and his collarbones. Gold floods his eyes. His beauty sharpens, deepens, becomes unmistakably fey, and Maeve stares at him like she’s seeing something sacred.
She doesn’t move back.
She inches closer, drawn to him like a moth to the flame.
The starlight flares, and the gate hums. The vision softens, light thinning to the pale grey of early morning. We’re inside my mother’s room. She and my father lie in bed together.
“Absolutely not,” Cassiel says at once, mortified. He lifts a hand as if he can shield me from a memory. “Avert your eyes, Wren. Your parents are in bed together.”
I do not avert my eyes. I can’t.
There’s nothing sexual about this moment—nothing I don’t want to see. My parents lie tangled in sheets and morning light, Maeve’s head tucked against Lark’s shoulder, his fingers absently tracing the line of her arm. It’s intimate in a way I have almost never seen.
Almost.
Once, maybe. When I was with Cassiel, in another life that feels impossibly far away.
Maeve shifts, blinking awake. “How old are you?” she asks suddenly.
Lark hums. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-six,” she says easily. Then lifts her head to look at him. “Now you.”
“Thirty-two.”
She pulls back, incredulous. “You’re serious?”
“I cannot lie,” he says, faintly amused. “Why? How old did you think I was?”
“Well—” she gestures vaguely. “The fey live for hundreds of years. How was I to know?”
He sits up, the humour draining from him. “There’s something I need to tell you. Since we promised to be honest with one another.”
Maeve goes still, attentive.
“There’s a prophecy,” Lark says. “One some of our kind have known about for almost a century. It predicts that a half-fey child will be the one to end the war between our peoples—if they enter into the service of the second son born to the royal family.”
Maeve frowns. “There hasn’t been a second son in a long time—”
“There hasn’t even been a first,” Lark says quietly. “Until now.”
She absorbs that, eyes unfocused for a moment. Then she looks back at him, sharp. “Were you sent here to seduce me?”
Lark doesn’t answer immediately. When he does, his voice is careful. “The elders are hoping one of our women will conceive the saviour.”
Maeve exhales slowly. “So we need to be more careful.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He looks at her like the answer hurts. “Because I don’t want that for you. Or for me. Or for them. I don’t want my child to be used in such a way.”
“Why would they be used?” Maeve asks. “The prophecy doesn’t say what they have to do. The end of the conflict could come about naturally—”
“The elders will use them,” Lark says fiercely. “They don’t know another way.” He reaches for her, earnest, afraid. “There are tonics. We could—just for now. Please.”
Maeve pulls back slightly. Not cold. Just resolute. “No.”
“Why?” asks my father, frowning.
“Because I want to be with you,” she says simply. “And you want to be with me.”
“Yes, but—”
“Not in secret,” she interrupts. “Not in the dark. I cannot give up my life here, and you are in danger here. There is no way for us to be together if the conflict doesn’t end.” She meets his gaze, unflinching. “If it takes a child to bring us together, then so be it.”
Lark’s jaw tightens. Anger flashes—fear dressed up as fury. “I won’t be with you again unless you agree to take the tonic.”
Maeve swallows. “That is for you to decide,” she says softly. “But I’ve made my decision.”
The words hang between them, heavy and irrevocable. My father is bound by his words—he cannot be with her unless she agrees.
And I already know my mother will never, ever change her mind.
The vision trembles. Stars shift overhead, time draws breath. The stones groan before the gate begins, once more, to turn.
The vision shivers, shifting again, colder this time, the forest dim and quiet under a sky heavy with stars.
My father paces. Anger still burns beneath his calm exterior, but he does not speak of it.
Not to the elders, not to Maeve, not even to himself.
He watches her from a distance, watching, I think, for any sign she might be with child, but the folds of her clothing hide everything.
He waits. He hopes. He gives up. It is too painful to linger.
Many months later, the elders watch the stars in the Moonhollow with unblinking patience, murmuring to one another in low, urgent tones. “Something is happening,” Eryndor says, voice threaded with awe.
The others agree. All thirteen of the Fates—the wandering stars, as Cassiel called them—are out tonight. One of them blares with sudden light, then vanishes completely.
A good omen.
Or a bad one.
Lark stands suddenly. He raises his hands, fingers moving as though counting steps. Not steps, I realise. Months.
Nine of them.
Understanding strikes him like lightning.
Without hesitation, he transforms. Wings erupt from his back, feathers of deep, shifting hues. Golden eyes blaze as he hurls through the night sky, a streak of living light, racing toward Maeve.
Her cottage—ours—waits ahead, bathed in soft lamplight, a halo in the darkness.
He creeps toward it, landing silently on the windowsill and shifting back into his fey form.
The fire glows in the hearth, warm and lazy.
A figure sleeps near it, peaceful and untroubled.
A woman from the village I knew as a child, but whose name has faded from memory.
Blood-soaked sheets soak in buckets.
My father’s face pales. His jaw twitches. He moves silently towards my mother’s room, quick as he dares—
He reaches the bedroom and draws in a breath.
Maeve lies there, sleeping in a ball, her fingers outstretched towards the edge of the mattress where a crib sits beside her.
Lark tilts his head towards the infant wrapped up inside it.
Me.
The air seems to shiver around him. Every atom of his body bristles. The prophecy, the years, the waiting—all of it converges in this moment.
Lark flutters silently above the baby, golden eyes drinking her in, like he doesn’t quite believe she’s real.
He drops to his knees, hand to his mouth. She stares up at him with dark, golden eyes.
Eyes just like his.
He leans forward and lifts her out of the crib, as carefully as if she’s made of glass. He holds her up to the light and stares.
A raw, helpless sound breaks out of his chest. He cries over her, silent and shaking, pressing his forehead to her downy hair.
Maeve stirs behind him. He registers her presence, but for a moment, he seems incapable of speech. “Are you all right?” he asks finally, his voice hoarse. He turns just enough to see her sit up, like he can’t bear to tear his eyes from his baby’s.
She nods, eyes soft and tired and shining. “I’m fine,” she says. “We both are.”
He continues to stare at the child in his arms, wonder written into every line of his face. “What is her name?”
Maeve hesitates. “You can name her, if you wish—”
“No,” he says at once, fierce with certainty. “You. You made the child. Your blood was spent to bring her into this world. The name is yours. It is the faerie way.”
Maeve smiles, a little sadly, a little proudly. “Serawen,” she says. “Her name is Serawen.”
“Serawen,” Lark repeats, reverent. He reaches out with one finger, touching the tiny curl of my hand. Baby me grips him reflexively, and my own fists tremble at my sides. I want his touch to bleed through memory. I want to feel him now.
His breath catches as I hold his hand. “Might I offer a nickname?” he whispers.
“Of course.”
“Wren,” he says softly. “My little bird.”
Maeve leans forward, presses a kiss to his shoulder. The distance they have known for the past few months melts away at her touch. “Ours.”
He cries again, openly now, bowing his head over them both.
“The elders will—” he begins, fear threading through the joy.
“We’ll protect her,” Maeve says without hesitation. “If the prophecy comes to pass.”
Lark closes his eyes. “Queen Alessandra is expecting again.”
Maeve’s smile deepens. “I know. Looks like those Fates you told me about are watching over us.” She reaches out, brushing my cheek with one finger. “Let them watch over us, as we watch over her.”
Lark nods. He looks down at the child in his arms—at me—and his voice is steady when he speaks.
“I will keep you safe, my daughter,” he vows. “So long as I am living, I will do everything in my power to protect you.”
The vision begins to fade—leaving behind the echo of a promise, and the unbearable knowledge that he meant every word.
It’s hard to see much through my tears, but we’re in Caerthalen now. The city is alive with banners and sunlight. From the highest ramparts, a hush falls over the gathered people.
Alessandra steps forward with King Leonitus, holding a small bundle swaddled in white. The crowd leans closer, and the murmur of voices swells into awe as they see him: Cassiel, newborn, eyes already bright, tufts of golden hair that couldn’t be any different than my own.
Evander, barely three, clings to his mother’s skirts, small arms wrapped tight, his gaze fixed on the tiny life in his mother’s hands. His lips curl into a tentative smile.
My mother stands among the crowd, holding me against her chest as I sleep through it. She smiles down at me, soft and thoughtful. “What will the two of you do together, I wonder?” she whispers, so quietly that no one can hear.
No one except me, and Cassiel, watching this moment over twenty years later.
“I doubt it will be safe,” Maeve adds after a moment, her eyes flicking to the ramparts and then back to her baby. “But if it cannot be safe… make it magnificent.”