27. Cassiel
Ishove everything I feel about Zephyr down into the darkest place I have. There will be time for it later. Or there won’t. Either way, it does not matter if she dies.
“Please,” I say, and I hate how broken it sounds. I don’t bother with pride. I don’t bother with accusation. “Help her.”
Zephyr looks at me for a heartbeat longer than necessary. His midnight eyes flick over my face, my blood-slicked hands, the ruin behind me.
Then he nods once.
He doesn’t hesitate again. He turns and runs for the ruin, already reaching into the satchel slung across his back. I follow, half expecting him to vanish, to betray us somehow—but he doesn’t slow.
He drops to his knees beside Wren. Herbs appear in his hands, bundles tied with twine, small glass vials that clink softly as he sets them down. He tips her head back, forcing her to drink one of them, pulling back the tarp to check on her wound. Gold light springs from beneath his fingers.
“She’s bleeding internally,” he says, voice calm, focused. “And the wound is fouled.”
“I know,” I say uselessly.
“Fill every receptacle you can find with water,” he orders. “Buckets. Pots. Bowls. Anything that holds.”
I don’t question him. I sprint away, tearing through the ruin again, overturning debris with desperate strength, gathering cracked basins, rusted pots, a stone bowl half-choked with moss.
I run to the edge of the ruin where rainwater has pooled and fill them, sloshing, spilling half of it as I rush back.
Zephyr doesn’t touch the containers when I return.
He lifts his hands instead.
The water rises.
It peels itself out of the buckets and bowls in shining ribbons, hovering in the air between his palms. It glows like sunlight, soft gold, warm and alive. The herbs dissolve into it.
I stare, stunned, as the liquid flows over Wren’s wound.
The magic doesn’t burn or freeze. It sings. Wren gasps, arching slightly as the bleeding slows. I grab her hand when it reaches for me and clasp it to my chest.
The torn flesh knits, not perfectly, but enough. Enough that the blood stops pouring. Enough that her breathing steadies from a ragged hitch to something almost even.
Zephyr works for a long time. He cleans, seals, murmurs words I don’t recognize. He uses tinctures that smell sharp and green and bitter, presses poultices into place with careful hands. At some point my knees give out and I’m sitting on the floor beside them, shaking, afraid to blink.
Finally, he leans back.
“She will live,” he says quietly.
The words knock the air out of me.
I don’t realize I’m crying until my vision blurs completely. I scrub at my face with the heel of my hand, laughing once, broken and breathless. “Thank you,” I manage. “Thank you.”
Zephyr nods, already packing things away. “She’ll need rest. No walking for a while. Change the dressings morning and night. Keep her warm. Keep her fed. No magic if it can be avoided—her body needs everything it has to heal.”
“You won’t stay?” I ask.
He pauses, then shakes his head. “She won’t want to see me.”
I swallow. “How did you find us?”
“I’ve been keeping an eye on her,” he says simply. “I thought she might come here tonight.”
“It’s lucky that you did.” I hesitate, then ask, “Did you send us the elkasha?”
He raises an eyebrow, faintly surprised. A ghost of a smile flickers across his face. “She’s faster than me,” he says. “I’ll leave her with you. It isn’t safe to stay here. You should move when you can.”
“Thank you,” I say again, because I don’t know what else to say.
He gestures to my shirt, and the wound beneath it. “You’re injured too.”
“This is nothing.”
“It will not be nothing if it gets infected.”
I grit my teeth. I don’t particularly want him to touch me, but I won’t be of any use to Wren if I sicken for something myself.
“All right.”
I remove what’s left of my shirt and lie down on the floor. It’s cold, but I don’t care. Zephyr summons his golden water once again, sealing the slit. It hurts, but I barely notice it. I keep my eyes fixed on Wren the entire time.
The water falls away. Zephyr presses a poultice to my skin. “I owe you an apology.”
My chest tightens. I might be owed it, but I don’t think I want it.
“For my part in what happened to your brother,” he continues. “And your mother. I did not know what would happen. I wasn’t told the full plan—only the parts I needed to know.”
The silence stretches.
“Would you have done it,” I ask quietly, “if you’d known?”
“Yes,” Zephyr says without flinching. “Because I would have had to. I swore myself to my grandmother’s service. I swore to do whatever it took to liberate our people.”
The words settle like ash.
Then he adds, softer, “Wren wouldn’t have, though. That’s why we had to do what we did. Our grandmother knew her loyalties no longer lay with us. Wren could not be held to any oaths.”
My throat tightens painfully.
“She went back to protect you,” Zephyr says. “I believe she planned to tell you everything. Our grandmother had to act quickly.”
You forgave Wren, a voice reminds me. You should forgive him, too.
But even though I should, I can’t quite form the words, even though he sounds as much as a pawn in all this as I do.
He finishes cleaning the wound, ordering me to sit up so that he can bandage my side. I do as instructed, not looking at him as he works.
“I can’t help but notice that you can see again,” he says, looping a bandage round my midsection.
“I can.”
“How?”
“Wren. I don’t fully understand how—”
“Did she break the totem spell?”
“Not exactly…”
Zephyr’s eyes widen. “Your totem,” he says, “where is it?”
“It’s right—”
I stop, because I realise I don’t have it anymore. It’s back at the camp site we’ve just abandoned.
“I’ll get it,” Zephyr says, clearly realising what I have. “Stay here.”
He finishes bandaging me up, picking up my discarded shirt from the floor and drawing out the blood with his water magic. He flings it back at me. It’s barely more than scraps at this point, but it’s better than nothing. He takes off his cloak and drapes it over Wren.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he says. “But on the off chance I’m delayed, keep her warm, encourage her to drink, and change her bandages every few hours. Change your own at least once a day. There’s a green vial for the pain if she needs it.”
“All right.”
He leaves on the back of the elkasha.
I wait until the sound of the elkasha’s paws have faded entirely before I let myself move. The room smells like blood and damp stone. There’s blood all over me still, and all over her. I find a bucket and fill it. The water runs pink, then clear. I fetch another, and another.
I clean myself first, mechanically. Blood off my hands, my arms, my throat. I scrub it from under my nails. My side still stings, but I welcome it. Pain is grounding. Pain is simple.
Wren is not.
I kneel beside her and hesitate, just for a moment, before touching her.
She’s cold beneath my fingers, none of her usual warmth.
I scrub the dried blood from her hairline, from her neck, from the places Zephyr didn’t linger long enough to mend.
There are so many tiny wounds—nicks and tears that look insignificant on their own, but together tell a far uglier story.
I clean each one, press salve where it’s needed, wrap fresh bandages with hands that want to shake and refuse to.
She’s so thin. I hate the way my fingers almost meet when I bandage her wrist. Hate how easily she could be broken now, how breakable she looks when she isn’t standing, arguing, alive in that ferocious way of hers.
This place—this half-life of shadows and running and borrowed shelter—it’s killing her. Slowly, maybe, but surely.
I want to take her away from all of it, but there is nowhere I can take her where she would truly be safe, and Wren has never been a creature to be kept, like the bird in her mother’s cage. She is meant to be free.
When I’m done, there’s nothing left to do.
No more blood to wash away, no more injuries to tend.
Sleep feels impossible, something that belongs to a different version of me.
I don’t want to move her and risk jostling the wound in her side, but the cold is creeping in, so I lift her gently into my arms.
She might as well be made of glass. She has the substance of a sparrow’s shell.
I settle myself against the wall and draw her back against my chest, adjusting her slowly until her breathing evens out again.
Zephyr’s cloak is heavy and warm; I pull it over both of us, tucking it around her shoulders.
Her head rests just beneath my chin. I don’t dare move.
Time blurs.
At some point—minutes or hours later—she stirs. A small sound escapes her, barely more than a breath, and her fingers curl weakly into the front of my shirt.
“Cass…?” Her voice is hoarse. Confused. “What… what happened?”
I lower my head slightly so she can hear me. “Your cousin came,” I say quietly. “He healed you. You’re going to be all right.”
She shifts, wincing, but doesn’t pull away. “Zeph was here?”
“Yes,” I answer. After a beat, I add, “He seemed worried about you. For some reason.”
She huffs a breath that might almost be a laugh. Her next words are softer. “You seemed worried too.”
“Me, worried? About you, Thornvale? Never.”
She laughs again, even lighter than before. “You don’t have to pretend you don’t like me, you know.”
I brush a lock of hair around the shell of her ear, impossibly gently. “Yes, I do.”
I can’t let myself fall for her again. I can’t. But I’m also deeply aware that I’m already too late.
I have been since the moment I knew her.
“So…” I begin. “How long have you been able to turn into a bird?”
“I think always,” she says, “but I only knew that I could do it when I pushed my grandmother off the battlements.”
“You fell not knowing you could fly?”
She smiles weakly. “I had to save you.”
My throat tightens. “You… you were the bird in my rafters, weren’t you?”
She makes a small affirmative sound.
The tightness in my chest cracks, and pretty soon I’m crying. “Why… why would you do that?” I ask. “Why would you be there and…”
“I’m sorry,” Wren whispers, placing a hand against my trembling cheeks. “I know I shouldn’t have—”
“You think I’m crying because of that?”
“Aren’t you?”
I’m crying because she came back. I’m crying because she didn’t stay. I’m crying because she never left, but she wasn’t there, but she loved me even when I thought I hated her.
I’m crying because she nearly died for me today.
I just can’t find any of the words to say that, so I hold her close to me and sob into her neck instead. She’s so tiny, so painfully frail. I can’t help but feel that’s somehow all my fault too.
Wren strokes my hair as I weep, her fingers light as feathers. Finally, I manage to compose myself. Wren is boneless in my arms again, her eyelids fanned shut.
“I’m tired,” she whispers.
“Go back to sleep,” I murmur at last. “You’re safe. I’ve got you.”
Her grip tightens, just a little.
“Mmm,” she says, already drifting. “Don’t go.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”