33. Cassiel
Imarch into the Rosey Duckling without much of a plan, but hoping no one recognises me apart from Dain. I’m dressed provincially enough not to draw attention, and the tavern is fairly busy.
“Cassiel!” calls a voice.
A second later, Dain barrels into me with such force that I almost lose my footing. At least, I think it’s Dain. I’d almost forgotten what he looked like, but he smells like him—steel and leather and the nameless scent underneath that’s distinctly him.
“Oh, hello,” I say. I’m so surprised by the gesture that it takes me a moment to hug him back. “Have you always had that scar on your face?”
“Very funny.” Dain draws back. His eyes widen. “Wait—you can see me?”
“I can. You’re far too handsome. I may have to request another knight now that I—”
Dain hugs me again, even more fiercely than before. I pat his back.
“It worked, then?” he asks, pulling away for the second time. He peers over my shoulder, as if waiting for someone else to materialise. “Is Wren—”
“Safe,” I tell him. “Nearby.”
Dain grins. “You look good,” he remarks. “The trip with Wren everything you hoped for?”
I’m fairly sure I’m blushing. “I need you to go back to Caerthalen and tell everyone I’m safe,” I instruct. “Runara must be beside herself. Tell them I’ll be with them tomorrow morning. Keep… keep the sight thing to yourself. I want to see Ru’s reaction.”
“Understandable. Where are you going to be?”
“Here,” I tell him. “I… I just need another night.”
He nods, his smile firm. He really is very attractive.
I didn’t know Dain all that well before I lost my sight, or at least, I didn’t call him a friend.
He’s a few years older than me, brown-haired, rugged.
He has a scar on his face for an accident as a boy that seems to accentuate his smile. He used to flirt with Wren.
I can see why she flirted back. That annoys me, to begin with, and then I have to remind myself that she chose me despite the much more charming, potentially better-looking option, and that cheers me up distinctly.
“Stop grinning at me, man!” I tell him. “Depart at once!”
“Of course, Your Highness,” he says, not dropping the grin.
He slips out of the door without another word.
I approach Magda, the innkeeper. Though no one else recognises me, her eyes widen as I approach… even more so when she realises I’m staring right back at her.
“Your—” she starts.
“Please,” I say, gesturing for quiet. “I’m trying to keep a low profile. I need a room for the night. I have no coin on me at present—”
It occurs to me that Madga has every right to refuse my custom, prince though I am. I should have asked Dain for a couple of crowns before he departed. If she refuses, if she doesn’t have room—
Well, then I’m spending the night with Wren out in a field somewhere, because I’m not saying goodbye to her yet.
But Magda, to her everlasting credit, waves it away. She presses a key into my hand. “Hut number three is vacant right now,” she tells me. “You have a nice night, young sir.”
I make a mental note to send Magda five times her usual fare, or possibly erect a statue in her honour. I ask her to send enough food for two—and a hungry dog—to hut three, and head back outside to the forest.
Wren is waiting for me.
“Is your business concluded?” she asks me as I approach.
I hold up the key. “I’ve secured us a room for the night and sent Dain back to the castle to call off any planned attacks.”
Wren smiles, stepping closer. She takes the key from my hand. “You spoil me.”
“I try.”
I take her hand, and the two of us, Robin in two, head round the back of the Rosey Duckling to where the huts lie. The back door of the tavern bangs open as we approach, and we both stop.
Standing at the threshold is a young, golden-haired man who is probably around my age but has a distinctively youthful look about him. He’s carrying a lute. His eyes widen when he sees us.
I’m certain he recognises me. I’m terrified that he recognises her.
“I don’t suppose you could pretend that neither of us are here, could you?” I ask, as flatly as I can manage.
“You… you’re the prince regent,” mutters the young man.
“Yes, but I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t go telling everyone that.”
His eyes fix on Wren. He’ll have no luck turning her in now that I’ll be removing the price on her head, but that doesn’t make me less nervous. This could still be a very awkward situation, and I’m not entirely sure how to handle it. Threats, bribery? If only I was as charming as Evander—
“You used to come here a lot, didn’t you?” the man says eventually.
I blink. Is it possible he hasn’t recognised her from the wanted posters? Or… or is he willingly pretending otherwise?
“Yes,” Wren says quietly. “I did.”
“With Prince Evander,” the man continues. His gaze falls back to me. “Your brother.”
I nod. My throat seems to have closed up at the mention of his name.
Wren smiles at the young man. “He’d be so delighted to hear you were asking about him,” she says, beaming. “He had such a crush on you. Hyacinth, wasn’t it?”
The young man—Hyacinth—stares in confusion. We both do. “W-what?” he stammers.
“Wren…” I start, hardly knowing where I am going.
“I can’t embarrass a dead man, can I?”
Hyacinth makes a strangled noise. “I—I don’t—he never said—” He stops, flustered beyond recovery, and then, very deliberately, straightens. “I wish he would have said something.”
The words stir something inside of me, not entirely welcome. My gaze drifts to his lute. He’s a bard.
“I won’t tell anyone you were here,” he says, earnest now. “Either of you. You have my word.”
After a few more awkward assurances, we leave him standing in the doorway, red-eared and wide-eyed. Wren and I walk to the hut we’ve rented for the night. It’s cosy, but provincial: rough-hewn walls, a low ceiling, the faint smell of old smoke and pine resin.
I’m quiet as the door closes behind us.
“Evander’s final words were ‘I wish I asked the bard to dance’,” I manage.
Wren freezes.
“I didn’t know what he meant until tonight.”
I hadn’t given his last words too much thought. I’d assumed he was confused, that he was misremembering something. The human brain does strange things when it’s shutting down. Evander had never spoken to me about a bard before, let alone one he had a crush on.
I wonder why he didn’t tell me about this Hyacinth chap. There was a time we told each other everything.
Not that it really matters now. He’s gone, and I have to carry on without him.
I take Wren’s hand. “Lives are so painfully short, aren’t they?”
“Yours, maybe,” Wren says. “Ours are far too long.”
I look at her for a moment, unravelling her words. It takes me a second to realise what she means by ours, because I’d forgotten that we weren’t the same. Everything I have feels like ‘ours’ now. All that I am is hers.
“I didn’t think about that,” I say. “That you might live so much longer than me.”
“I don’t like to think about it either.” She exhales slowly and turns away, crossing the small room before resting her hands on the narrow table beneath the window. “I used to think the humans hated fey because they were jealous of them. Their magic, their longevity—”
“I’m sure that’s at least part of it.”
“I think, sometimes, the fey are jealous of humans, too.”
“Why?”
“Your short lives are lived so well,” she says. “You can have as many children as you like, and though you die sooner, you believe you’ll be reunited with them again.”
“Fey don’t believe in an afterlife?”
Wren shakes her head. “Death is final, for us, and forever. Because we expect to live so long, death haunts us more. My grandmother never, ever expected to lose her son, and certainly not so soon.”
I swallow, the weight of it settling heavily in my chest. I have very little sympathy for Wren’s grandmother, and I don’t think she does either, but that doesn’t change the fact that I know how it feels to lose someone you love, and I know it’s worse to lose a child.
There’s no word for it in our language, but the Xades have been known to brand themselves after the death of a child, marking their faces with a symbol so all will know their loss.
There’s a word for widow and orphan, but for them there is only a mark, and a grief that defies description.
I step closer to Wren, resting my forehead briefly against hers.
She takes a look around the room. Her eyes settle on the not insubstantial bed that sits in the centre of the room. “I take it you plan to ravish me tonight?”
“You are welcome to ravish me if you prefer.”
Wren smiles, but it’s a weak one. “I want to,” she says, “and I shall. But just… not right now, if that’s all right?”
“You know it is,” I tell her. “I’m not… quite in the mood, just yet, either.”
It’s just as well, because food arrives shortly afterwards.
It’s a simple, hearty meal: thick slices of bread still warm from the oven, a stew rich with root vegetables and slow-cooked meat, and a small crock of butter that melts the moment it touches anything.
The smell alone makes my stomach ache with hunger.
We eat side by side on the edge of the bed, knees knocking occasionally, the quiet companionable rather than strained.
I realise belatedly just how ravenous I am, scraping my bowl clean without meaning to.
Wren watches me with faint amusement. “I should have warned you you’d be hungry after transforming.”
“I’m starving.”
“You’ve only had a few nuts. Your real body hasn’t had enough energy.”
“What about you?”
“I had a proper lunch—”
“I meant all the other times. Why weren’t you hungry after transforming?”
Wren shrugs. “I don’t know.”
I’m still not entirely sure what’s happened to her, whether it’s natural or a result of something magical, and I’m not sure she is, either. I don’t like it. I hate it. I hate it, and I suspect that there is nothing I can do either way.
I hesitate, then say, “Do you want to go outside for a bit? The sky’s clear tonight.”
“You can see them again?” Wren asks, a note of wonder threading through her voice.
I nod. “In all their glory.”
But I’m looking at her, not the sky out of the window. I am going to be looking at her even when she isn’t there.
Wren smiles, taking my hand. We step outside, the night cool and clean against my skin. The grass is soft beneath us as we lie back side by side in the field behind the huts, shoulders touching. Above us, the stars spill across the dark.
“Did you know that I was named after one of the constellations?” I ask her, gesturing upwards. “That one there.” I trace its shape with my finger, slow and careful.
“What’s the story of Cassiel?”
“A knight,” I tell her. “Brave and true. He was a saint for a little while.”
“Not entirely unsuitable.”
“You would think that, but there’s an Evander, too, and he was a scholar and a poet.”
Wren laughs, and I point him out. “Are all the royals named after stars?”
“Many of us,” I admit. “There’s an Alessandra over there, and a Vivien—”
“The mad queen?”
I cringe. Vivien was known to be the most brutal of my ancestors when it came to the fey. They say she danced to their screams as she tortured them, that sometimes their bodies were so brutalised when she was done, that there was hardly anything left.
Even my mother doesn’t like to speak of her.
“Is there a Runara?” Wren asks, clearly changing the subject.
“Funnily enough, no. Mother just said she felt like that was Ru’s name, and I have to say, I agree.”
Wren smiles. “Me too.” She keeps her gaze fixed upwards.
“There isn’t a star called ‘Wren’ is there?”
I could make you a star, I want to tell her. I could rename all of them in her honour. I don’t say that, though. I laugh instead, and point out another cluster.
“No, but that’s the constellation of the firebird, over there, which I think rather suits you.”
“So far away,” she whispers.
She’s right. There’s a lot of space between our stars, and between them lies much.
“Do you remember that poem I asked you to read to me?” I ask her.
Wren’s voice is a ghost. “What Lies Between Stars,” she whispers. “I’ve not forgotten.”
I think I can recall every conversation I’ve ever had with Wren, every morning chat over breakfast, every time we stayed up late, under stars I couldn’t see. I can’t measure every word—how I wish I could—but if I think hard enough, I can remember every time we’ve talked.
Perhaps it’s easier to remember words when there’s been no sight to distract me, that every time she’s ever spoken, my focus has narrowed to her and her alone, the rest of the world vanishing.
No. It’s the other way round. Wren speaks, and the world comes alive.
I turn onto my side, propping myself up on one elbow so I can look at her properly, committing the curve of her mouth, the quiet thoughtfulness in her eyes to memory.
I don’t want to remember every word. I want to get the point where that’s impossible, where her words are snowflakes in a storm, impossible to count. I want to forget what we have spoken about because there’s not a word we haven’t uttered.
“Which constellation is that?” says Wren, pointing to a small cluster, like a little sunburst.
“Maia,” I tell her, glancing upwards. “Maiden of spring and new beginnings.”
Wren turns to stare at me.
“What?” I ask.
“We have that one, too.”
The wind picks up, catching her hair. It makes sense that some of our stories have traversed between cultures. There will be a story there, too, likely one we’ll never discover, but clearly fey and humans have come together in the past.
I reach for her without thinking, my thumb brushing her knuckles, and she turns fully towards me. The kiss is gentle, unhurried, as though we have all the time in the world and none at all. She tastes of bread and salt and something indefinably hers.
When we part, she rests her forehead against mine. Neither of us speaks.
Eventually, reluctantly, we go back inside the hut. The warmth closes around us, small and safe. We curl together on the bed, limbs fitting as though we were made to lie this way, and for a while we simply hold each other, memorising the shape of what we’ll soon have to let go.
Outside, the stars burn on, patient and eternal. Inside, our hours quietly run thin.