50. Wren
Islam back into myself like I’ve been falling for miles.
My eyes snap open. My hand jerks from Runara and Cassiel’s. I gasp, dragging air into my lungs as if I’ve forgotten how to breathe. The world is too solid, too sharp, and too real. The air feels like velvet brushed backwards and tastes too real and too wrong at the same time.
Cassiel jerks beside me at the same moment, a strangled breath tearing out of him. For a split second we just stare ahead, wild and unmoored, as though the dream might drag us back.
A sound breaks the stillness—a small, frightened sob.
Runara.
She’s already scrambling across the bed, fighting to free herself from the rope around our arms. Her face crumples as she throws herself at Alessandra. “Mama!”
Alessandra jolts awake just in time to catch her. For a heartbeat she looks disoriented, like she’s still inside a dream, but then her arms close around her daughter.
“Ru—” Her voice breaks.
Runara is crying properly now, burying her face against her mother’s shoulder. “I thought—you weren’t waking up—I thought—”
“I’m here,” Alessandra murmurs, over and over, pressing kisses into her hair. “I’m here, I’m here—”
Cassiel moves before I even register it, crossing the space in two strides. He drops to the bedside and wraps both of them into his arms, pressing his forehead against his mother’s temple, his hand cradling the back of Runara’s head.
Slowly, I unwrap the rope still holding us all together, and let it fall to the floor. I bask in this moment, the three of them together again.
Something twitches in my chest, a painful reminder that it should be four of them, not three. Evander should be here.
I push myself upright, slower, the weight of everything settling back into my bones. Gravity crushes down on me. Across the room, Aunt Imogen stands utterly still, one hand pressed to her mouth. Tears slip silently down her cheeks, her shoulders trembling with the effort not to sob.
Even Dain blinks hard, his jaw tight, his eyes suspiciously bright as he looks away towards the window.
Relief fills the room so thick it’s almost tangible.
And despite everything, I find myself smiling.
We made it.
They’re alive.
We brought her back.
Cassiel’s gaze finds mine. He mouths ‘thank you’ as the tears tremble down his cheeks.
Alessandra shifts, registering his movement, and her eyes meet mine at last.
The softness drains from her face like water spilling from a cracked vessel. Her grip tightens on Runara, and her eyes lock onto mine with something sharp and cold and utterly unforgiving.
The smile fades from my lips.
“You,” she says, her voice hoarse but cutting. “You dare stand in this room.”
Cassiel stiffens. “Mother—”
“You killed my son,” Alessandra goes on, louder now, her gaze never leaving mine. “You took me from him. Evander is dead because of you—”
Her words strike my chest like a blow.
Cassiel shakes his head. “That’s not—”
“She let her people into the castle!” Alessandra snaps. “She let them kill him!”
“She saved you!” Runara blurts, pulling back just enough to look up at her mother, tear-streaked and furious. “She saved me!”
“Aunt Imogen—tell her,” Cassiel adds, voice strained. “Wren—”
“Enough,” Alessandra hisses.
Usually, I would take it. I would lower my head, swallow the words, let the blame settle where it wants to. Because some part of it is true. Because I was there. Because Evander is dead and I am not.
But something in me—raw and burning from everything we just survived—refuses to bend today.
“I tried to save Evander!” My hands curl into fists at my sides. “I did save your daughter! I gave Cassiel his sight back and saved you from the dreamscape and you have the nerve to—”
Alessandra surges upward like she means to strike me, but she barely makes it a step. Her knees buckle, her body pitches forward—
“Mother!” Cassiel catches her before she hits the floor, arms wrapping around her as he steadies her weight.
She struggles anyway, breath ragged, fury undiminished. “Get—away from me—”
“You’re weak,” he says, voice tight with worry. “Please—just—sit down—”
“Guards!” she screams, the word cracking through the room. “Guards!”
“Really, Alessandra,” Imogen begins, coming forwards to help Cass with her, to steer her back towards the bed, “there’s no need. Wren has been most helpful—”
Alessandra continues screaming for the guards until footsteps sound down the hall. They bang against the door, but it doesn’t give way. It pulses with faint blue light.
“Your Majesty?” a voice calls, confused. “Is that you?”
“Yes, it’s me! Open the door! Arrest Serawen Thornvale—”
“That’s not her name,” Cassiel says, at the same time that I do. “And you can’t arrest her. I pardoned her—”
The guards continue pounding the door. “We can’t—open it—”
Alessandra freezes, then slowly turns her head toward me, suspicion sharpening her already lethal expression. “What did you do to my door?”
“I spelled the door,” Runara says, a small, stubborn pout tugging at her mouth despite the tears still clinging to her lashes. “I can use magic now. You can’t arrest Wren without arresting me—”
Her mother barely seems to hear her.
The pounding grows louder, more urgent.
Cassiel looks at me over his mother’s shoulder, his grip still steadying her. “Wren… how long will it hold?”
“Almost indefinitely,” I say quietly. “Unless the runes are destroyed.”
I look around the room. I’m in no mood to stay where I’m not wanted, or to face Alessandra’s anger. I doubt any of us will calm her down today.
But it’s Cassiel’s eyes I find hard to turn away from.
He wants me here.
I glance at Runara, softening just a fraction. “You can let them in after I’m gone.”
Cassiel twitches. “Gone?”
I take a step back.
He moves faster, stepping away from his mother completely. His hand closes around my wrist, impossible to ignore. “Wren.”
I meet his eyes.
It would be easier to stay. To argue. To fight for a place here, to justify all I’ve done. Everything is easier than leaving him.
I really, really don’t want to leave him.
But I already know how this ends.
“It’s fine,” I tell him, even though it absolutely isn’t. My voice comes out steadier than I feel. “I always knew there was a chance she wouldn’t forgive me.”
His grip tightens. “Don’t—”
I lean in before he can finish and kiss him. It’s too quick. Too brief. Not nearly enough because nothing ever is with him. I could live forever and never drink my fill.
But if I linger, I won’t leave at all.
I pull back before I can change my mind. My body shifts, bones reshaping, the world tilting as I shrink and twist into a bird.
Cassiel calls my name again, but I’m already gone.
My wings falter almost immediately, barely a few feet from Alessandra’s window.
I don’t really have the strength for shifting.
I’ve exhausted most of my magic in the dreamscape, I didn’t eat enough earlier, and I’m not even sure how much time passed while we were inside Alessandra’s dream.
I need food, and rest. My magic feels thin under my skin now, frayed and flickering like a dying flame.
I beat my wings harder, forcing myself higher, away from the window, away from the voices and the pounding on the door.
Don’t fall. Don’t fall. Don’t—
The castle sprawls beneath me. I won’t make it past the outer walls.
I can’t fly away just yet. If I try, I’m going to fall.
I could just find a bush to sleep in. I’ve been able to keep this form in my sleep before.
But though I might be safe from the guards, a passing cat or another predator could finish me off while I rest. It would be a terrible end to my story to be killed by a hungry feline.
Edwin’s tower rises on the eastern side, narrow and crooked, its windows dim and familiar. Close enough. Safe enough.
I aim for it, wings trembling.
The landing is anything but graceful. I clip the edge of the open window and tumble through, shifting mid-fall in a messy, half-controlled collapse that ends with me hitting the stone floor hard enough to knock the breath out of me.
For a long moment, I just lie there staring at the ceiling, listening to my own ragged breathing and letting the world stop spinning.
There’s a faint clink of glass somewhere to my left.
“It didn’t go well then, I take it?” Edwin says mildly.
I turn my head.
Edwin stands at his workbench, fiddling with a contraption. He doesn’t even bother to look up properly, just flicks his eyes in my direction before returning to his work.
A breath escapes me. “I mean,” I tell him, “the queen’s awake, so that’s something.”
“Not in a forgiving mood, I take it?”
“No.”
He hums, as if that confirms a hypothesis. “Unfortunate.”
I drag myself up onto my elbows, every muscle protesting. “Can I rest here for a bit? I am… quite tired.”
“Be my guest.”
There’s something almost comforting about how little he cares.
I push myself upright, slower this time, and immediately regret it when the room tilts. I steady myself with a hand against the floor, blinking until the dizziness fades.
A shard of glass glints faintly on the floor.
My stomach tightens as I crouch—carefully this time—and pick it up between my fingers. The edges are jagged, the surface still faintly stained with the potion at the smallest remnant of blood.
My blood.
“He doesn’t know, does he?” Edwin asks. “The prince, I mean.”
I swallow, the shard suddenly feeling heavier than it should. No, Cassiel, for all his smarts, doesn’t seem to have an inkling that I’m anything other than half-fey. It’s hardly surprising. That’s all I’ve ever been to anyone, including myself, until recently.
“I’m not entirely sure myself,” I confess.
“Is that true?”
“Sometimes.”
It’s the closest thing to honesty I can manage.
I stand, crossing the small space to the table, and set the glass down with deliberate care, as if placing it neatly might make it less significant.
Less dangerous.
“Whatever you suspect,” I say quietly, not turning around, “please don’t tell him. I don’t know what it means yet. I’m not coming to him with a half-baked theory.”
Behind me, I hear the soft clink of glass as Edwin sets aside his experiment.
“He might be able to give you a whole one,” he says.
I close my eyes for a moment.
Because he’s right. Cassiel has a way of seeing things through to their end, of pulling threads until the truth is laid bare whether you want it or not. And normally… I would go to him and tell him everything, let him help me carry it, but this time…
My fingers curl slightly against the edge of the table.
I don’t want to tell Cassiel, because I don’t think either of us will like the answer we’ll be given.