24. Wren
The past continues to unfold around me like breath on glass—soft, luminous, impossible to touch. I watch a baby with my eyes. With my mouth. With my name.
I am so small. Hands reach for me constantly. I am wanted, loved, adored. My mother’s face hovers close, tired and radiant, her laugh breaking loose when I grab her nose. I remember her like this.
I do not remember my father. I do not remember how he arrived at night, long after my mother was asleep just to hold me for a few hours, but I see it all now.
I see the window open without a sound and the way my mother keeps it unlocked for him.
I see the way he scoops me up from my cradle and I quiet instantly.
I see him pace the floor with me in his arms. His voice is low, murmuring nonsense, gently scolding me for keeping my mother awake.
I watch his face when I smile for the first time, when I laugh.
His entire body melts, all sharp edges dissolving into awe. He presses his forehead to mine, eyes bright, breath catching like he has been struck. He laughs too, helplessly, like it’s been torn out of him.
When I take my first steps, he crouches with his arms open, terror and joy warring on his face. When I fall, he doesn’t rush me—he waits, hands twitching, letting me decide. When I reach him, he lifts me high, spinning, whispering something into my hair that the vision won’t let me hear.
When I say my first word—yes—he laughs again, startled, like he didn’t expect me to agree.
When I learn to call him Papa, he stops breathing entirely.
I’m begging time to stop, to slow down, to let me stay here forever, because I know that my father died before I turned two, and I’m getting older. Time is slipping away from us, and I don’t want to see what happens next—
But I can’t tear myself away. My small hands tug on his fingers. I play with his hair, winding it around my fist. I watch his mouth when he speaks, mesmerized by the shape of words. I press myself into his chest like I belong there.
Because I do.
I rarely see him in the daylight. Daytime is my mother, sunlight through windows, the rhythm of ordinary life.
But at night he takes me into the garden, wrapped tight against the chill, and shows me the stars.
He points them out one by one, whispering stories I am far too young to understand and somehow understand anyway.
He tells me things long after I’m asleep, as though my dreams might carry them somewhere safe.
When I wake, I ask for him.
“Papa lives somewhere else,” my mother tells me gently, smoothing my hair. “He comes when he can, and he loves you always.”
I believe her, but my father is dead now, and whatever he felt for me, I was too young to remember what it felt like to be loved by a father. I barely remember what it feels like to be loved by her.
Or anyone.
The scene shifts, and Moonhollow rises around me. My grandmother stands rigid, her hands folded tight. Lark stands opposite her, unmoving, his shadow long and sharp against the forest floor.
“She can talk now,” my grandmother says, her voice low and urgent. “And talk she will. If she starts telling people her father is magic—”
“Human children lie,” Lark says calmly. “They have no reason to believe her.”
“She lies, then?”
“Yes,” he replies easily. “Very obviously. I find it amuses me greatly.”
My grandmother’s mouth tightens. “And what if she starts to seem less than human? Her eyes—”
“Are perfect,” he cuts in, sharp now. “Like the rest of her. Wren can be anything she wants to be, but we have to let her choose.”
She studies him, something wary flickering behind her gaze. “You speak like a parent.”
“I am a parent.”
“She cannot afford you to be so blind,” my grandmother says. “We cannot afford it—”
“I’m not forcing Maeve to move to the forest, Mother,” Lark says, frustration breaking through at last. “She’s right. This place wouldn’t accept her, and they’ll expect too much from Wren. It’s not fair to move her away from her friends, her family—”
“She doesn’t have to come with the child.”
Something dark flashes across his face. “No,” he says quietly, as final as stone. “I will not take Wren from her. Do not speak to me of this again.”
*
I am almost two. Old enough to toddle, to babble, to know when my mother is leaving without me.
She crouches in front of me, hands warm on my arms, promising she’ll be back before I even notice she’s gone.
I am left with one of her friends—someone kind, someone safe—and then she is gone, her cloak vanishing down the road.
She goes to Lark.
“It’s been too long since we were out together,” Lark tells her, and there is a careful happiness in his voice, like he’s afraid the words might frighten the moment away.
He takes her into a nearby stretch of woodland, nothing as ancient or dangerous as Moonhollow. Just trees. Just earth and birdsong and light filtering through leaves.
They kiss, they laugh, they exchange small, easy pleasantries, the kind that come from knowing each other too well to bother with performance.
Then my mother grows serious.
“I know you promised never to lie with me unless I agreed to take the tonic,” she says quietly “and we have been careful since we made her. But it occurred to me that your vow only needs me to agree. And I am not held to any vows I make.”
Lark stills.
“So,” Maeve continues, breath steady despite the weight of her words, “how would you feel if I stopped taking the tonic?”
He stares at her like the world has tipped sideways. “You… you want another baby?” he asks, disbelief naked on his face. “With me?”
“Yes,” she says, half laughing. “With you.”
“But—” He laughs, a short, stunned sound. “Why?”
She smiles then, small and fierce and full of love. “Leaving aside the fact that you and Wren are both wonderful and I want to double you both—”
He blushes. So do I.
“—I also want there to be two of them,” she finishes. “Two prophecy children. Wren won’t ever have to be alone in her destiny, or alone in general.”
Tears tremble down my cheeks, hot and helpless. I want this future they are imagining for me. I want this past. I want a sibling, someone to share my parents with, my childhood. I want not to be alone.
And I know I will be.
My parents don’t know that yet.
Lark smiles instead, slow and luminous. “All right,” he says. “Yes. Let’s defy our stars, Maeve.”
They kiss again, deeper now, laughter caught between them.
He fills the glade with illusion magic—lights blooming like flowers in the air, constellations spinning just above the treetops, a private sky made just for her.
Maeve gasps, delighted, touching things that are not really there and loving them anyway.
It’s perfect.
And, like all beautiful, wonderful things, it doesn’t last.
Voices cut through the glade, steel-sharp. Knights burst from between the trees, armor gleaming, bows already half-raised. They see the magic. They see him. My father is wearing no glamour today: his pointed ears, his markings and his gold eyes are on full display.
Maeve’s face drains of color.
“Shift,” she whispers urgently.
Lark doesn’t hesitate. His form changes, but it’s too late. He has been seen. The knights shout. Arrows are drawn, aimed.
“Stop!” Maeve cries, stepping in front of him without thinking. “He’s—”
They loose anyway.
She throws her arms wide, trying to block them, screaming his name.
Several of the knights tackle her, holding her arms, pinning her to a nearby tree.
Lark shifts back instantly, magic flaring wild and bright as he tears the arrows from the air.
He hits the ground and a wave of air blasts everyone off their feet.
He grabs my mother’s hand and runs into the forest.
“Run,” he tells her.
“I’m human,” Maeve insists. “They won’t hurt me—”
“It’s not you,” he reminds her, voice breaking now. “It’s Wren.”
My mother almost trips, understanding landing between them like a blade.
If Maeve is caught, questioned, watched—attention will turn to me. To the child with the strange eyes and stories of a magic father.
“If they catch you—” Maeve begins, horror dawning.
“Don’t worry,” Lark says softly. “I cannot betray our child.”
“It’s not just her I’m worried about,” Maeve whispers.
Time is running out. The knights are catching up.
They stop running. Maeve cups his face, hands shaking, and kisses him like it might be the last thing she ever does.
“I love you,” she says.
“I love you,” he answers.
She turns and runs.
I watch her disappear between the trees, carrying my future—or the loss of it—with her, while he stays behind, standing alone in the glade, magic blazing, ready to burn the world to keep me safe.
Lark draws the knights away from Maeve, magic flaring just enough to keep their attention fixed on him. He circles back, doubling his tracks, pulling them farther and farther from the path she fled down. He lets himself be seen. Lets himself be chased.
As soon as he can, as soon as he knows they’re chasing him and not her, he transforms into a bird. He almost makes it.
An arrow catches his wing. He drops to the floor, transforming as he rolls, the tip of the arrow still embedding in his shoulder. He clutches at it, blood pouring. He can’t fly like that.
He still fights. He doesn’t use fire, either because it’s not his strength, or because he’s too afraid of setting the forest ablaze.
Instead, he lashes out with wind and wood, scraping at his enemies with branches and bark.
He fights without killing, without maiming.
But that mercy costs him. They drag him down.
Fists and boots rain into him until he can’t stay upright.
I feel every blow like an echo in my bones.
They only stop when a hush falls over the clearing.
King Leonitus has arrived on the back of a gleaming stallion.
He dismounts with ease. His gaze takes in the scene in a single sweep: the battered fey on his knees, the disordered knights, the trampled grass still glittering faintly with dying magic.
“What’s the man’s crime?” he asks mildly.