31. Wren
We both wake a little after dawn, the sunlight streaming across us in fractured bars, and we lie there in each other’s arms. I watch Cassiel watching me.
He strokes my hair, fingers drawing spirals over my skin.
I smile at the sensation, but also at the thought that Cass can draw now.
I’m half tempted to leap out of bed and find him some paper and demand he creates something for me right now, but it’s far too nice and warm here. I want to stay here forever.
I want to forget that I can’t.
If I stay here in Cassiel’s arms, the rest of the world won’t touch me.
Inside of this room is all that exists. There are no prophecies, no responsibilities.
No betrayals, no grandmothers manipulating you, no cousins that might have been pawns too that you can’t afford to think about.
There is only me, and him. Nothing that can hurt us.
Eventually, though, hunger gets the better of us. We treat our wounds, dress ourselves, and head outside. A breakfast spread has been left out on the feast table from last night. People come and go as they please.
After breakfast, Cassiel and I drift down to the lake. We sit on the bank, his arm around me. For a moment, I convince myself that we are different people, just simple village folk who can live this way forever.
I live inside this lie until Cassiel asks, “How many days do we have left?”
I sigh. “A week, give or take,” I respond. “If the elkasha is happy to stay. If not…”
“Well,” he says, smiling, “let’s make the most of our time.”
So we do.
No one objects to us staying a few more days.
Indeed, they seem delighted by the prospect.
The brownies insist on feeding us at every opportunity—thick stews, honeyed roots, bread still warm from the ovens—and the hobgoblins clink their cups against ours and call us luck-bringers.
We are seated at the best places, pressed into games whose rules change halfway through, cheered for even when we lose.
Cassiel laughs more here. It startles me every time, how easy it comes.
Marnie presses baby Eva into my arms on the second afternoon with a look of such naked relief that I don’t even pretend to protest. Eva’s fist knots in my hair; she smells like milk and lakewater and something sweet that all babies, in my limited experience with them, seem to possess.
Cassiel sits across from me at the table, inventing a ridiculous little puppet out of twine and a spoon.
We pretend the baby is old enough to care while Marnie and Tob slip away like fugitives.
When Eva sleeps, Cassiel helps the brownies tally stores for winter—he sits cross-legged on the floor with a slate, reorganising their chaos into something elegant.
He finds the leak in their grain and patches it, locates the knot that keeps failing in the fishing lines.
He sketches fixes with charcoal on the table and hands them over like gifts.
They stare at him as if he’s done magic.
I mend roofs. It’s easy work with magic, coaxing warped shingles back into place, stitching thatch with light. Cassiel watches me from below, shading his eyes, and when I climb down he presses his forehead to mine like he’s checking that I’m real.
We swim in the lake at dusk, when the water is glass and the sky turns itself inside out.
Cassiel swims badly on purpose. I tow him back to shore, breathless and laughing, and we lie on the grass until our skin dries and the stars come out one by one.
Later, wrapped together beneath the open sky, we make love without urgency, as though time has finally agreed to wait for us.
I try not to think about how carefully we avoid the dark hours, how he keeps his hand on my back until I fall asleep, how he doesn’t ask what I dream.
The days stack themselves gently. Games, repairs, shared meals.
Cassiel learns the names of every child.
I learn who bakes the best pastries. We watch Eva again, and again.
Cassiel spins her tales of Cassiel the Clever and Wren the Wonderful.
He tries to call me ‘Wren the Reckless’ at first, and then very sensibly changes his mind.
At night, he holds me in his arms. We pretend there are no more nightmares, and that I sleep through until morning.
When I wake in the dark, breath caught, Cassiel is already there, murmuring my name like a spell that works every time.
By day, I don’t mention the bruises of memory.
By night, he doesn’t ask why my hands shake.
On the last afternoon, we return to the lake.
The water is quiet, the surface barely disturbed, as though it too is trying not to draw attention to itself. I skip stones badly. Cassiel corrects my grip; I ignore him and do it my way anyway. Eventually, he sits beside me, knees drawn up, arms looped loosely around them.
“Wren,” he says at last.
I hum in response, leaning into his shoulder.
“Could you—” He stops. Starts again. “Could come back with me to Caerthalen and heal my mother? Like you healed me?”
The words land softly and devastate all the same.
“Cassiel—” I start.
“I know that the two of you—” he continues, rushing now, “I know that the last time you spoke, she said some harsh things. But if you heal her—”
“Cass—”
“If you heal her,” he says, quieter now, “maybe everything else could be different.”
I close my eyes.
“I tried already,” I say. “Months ago.”
He stills.
“I snuck into the castle and tried healing her for days. It… it didn’t work. I’m not sure what’s wrong with her, but it’s beyond my means.”
The words sit between us. I brace myself for the familiar weight—for disappointment, for grief sharpened into something like blame. I wait for him to pull away.
Instead, his voice goes soft.
“You tried to heal her?”
“Of course—”
He doesn’t let me finish. He turns fully toward me and pulls me into his arms, tight and certain. His chin rests against my hair. I feel his breath hitch.
“Of course you did,” he murmurs.
I clutch at his shirt, fingers digging in.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I wanted it to work.”
“I know,” he says. He presses a kiss to my temple. “I know you did. Thank you. Thank you for trying.”
We sit there for a long time, the lake lapping gently at the shore, the sun sinking low and gold. There is no solution. No miracle waiting just out of sight. Only this: honesty, and arms around me, and the quiet understanding that loving someone doesn’t always mean you can save them.
We go back into the lie we are choosing to live for a little while longer, back into borrowed peace, knowing full well that time, patient and relentless, is still keeping count.
Morning comes gently. The light creeps across the well-worn floor in pale ribbons, catching on buckles and straps and the careless scatter of our things.
For a long while, neither of us moves. Cassiel’s arm is heavy around my waist, his breath warm against my shoulder.
If I stay still enough, maybe the day won’t realise it’s meant to happen.
Eventually, reality intrudes in small, cruel ways. A rumbling stomach. A bird calling insistently outside. Time, clearing its throat.
We pack slowly. Painfully. Every item folded feels like an admission.
Cassiel pauses over his satchel more than once, staring into it as though he might find an excuse at the bottom.
I roll my clothes with unnecessary care.
We don’t talk about leaving; we talk around it.
About whether the brownies will finally fix the north fence.
About Marnie’s laugh. About nothing at all.
It isn’t quite goodbye yet, not for us. That’s the lie we cling to. I’ll escort Cassiel through the forest. We still have time.
But with the elkasha, we’ll be out of the woods by nightfall.
Then it will be over.
Neither of us says the words I don’t know when I’ll see you again, but they hang in the air between us, heavy and unignorable.
Outside, Brindlewick has already woken. The brownies bustle with exaggerated cheer, pressing bundles into our hands—dried fruits, wrapped loaves, vials of something that smells sharply medicinal.
One of them shoves a charm into Cassiel’s palm and tells him not to lose it, like he ever could.
Another slips me a ribbon made of the same fabric as the beautiful dress I borrowed.
I tie it to the end of my braid and try not to cry.
Marnie cries openly. Tob tries not to and fails almost immediately.
Eva is passed between us one last time; she grips Cassiel’s finger with surprising strength, and something flickers across his face before he schools it away.
Marnie hugs me like she’s afraid I’ll dissolve.
Tob pulls Cassiel down to the floor and clasps Cassiel’s shoulder and murmurs thanks that feel far too big for words.
“Come back,” Marnie says, fierce and pleading all at once.
“We will,” I promise, because I can, and it’s easier than saying I hope so.
We walk away under a rain of blessings and shouted farewells, the village shrinking behind us until the sounds blur into the forest’s quiet hum. Cassiel keeps close to my side, close enough that our arms brush with every step. Robin trots alongside us. Neither of us lets go of the other’s hand.
The glade opens ahead—wide, silvered with dew, exactly as it should be.
And completely empty.
The place where the elkasha was just last night when we came to feed her is undisturbed. No churned earth. No lingering magic humming in the air. Just grass bending lazily in the breeze.
Cassiel looks at me. “Are my eyes deceiving me again?” he says. “Please say yes.”
I scan the treeline, my chest tightening. “She should be here,” I say, though I already know that she isn’t.
Cassiel’s breath starts to go wrong. His shoulders draw up, his fingers curling into fists. He turns in a slow circle, scanning the glade as though the elkasha might materialise if he looks hard enough.
“She has to be here,” he says. “She always is.”