58. Wren #2
“Our people—the forest—is strong. It will survive. The humans will suffer for this war, not us. Then they will know. They will know what it is like to lose a child. Like Alessandra does. Taking her husband was never enough—”
“This isn’t about ending the war,” I say, my voice shaking despite myself, “this is about revenge.”
Her gaze sharpens, something feral slipping through the cracks of her control. “And so what if it is?”
“My father wouldn’t have wanted this. I saw him… I know. I he wouldn’t have wanted this—”
A flicker of pain cuts across her face before it is smoothed away.
“No,” Nubaia agreed, “he would not. But what he would have wanted has no meaning. He is not here to hate me.”
The words land heavier than any shout.
“But I am,” I say, my eyes prickling. “I loved you too, you know. I thought, once upon a time… that you might have loved me back.”
For the first time, she exhales. It’s not quite a sigh—too controlled for that—but it’s closer than anything else she’s allowed herself.
“When you were born…” she begins, her voice quiet, “or when Prince Cassiel was born, perhaps I should say—so many of us rejoiced. Only your father and I did not. We did not want it to be you. I’d never tried to bring about the child myself for a reason.
I never thought that you would be my grandchild.
That was never part of the plan. I was never supposed to love you. ”
The words hollow something out in my chest. I don’t know what to say to that, what to think, what to feel. No wonder she never tried to sire the child herself. No wonder she wasn’t happy when I was born.
No wonder she was never happy with me.
“I’ve kept you at a distance all of your life,” my grandmother goes on. “That was a mistake. I see that now. Not only because, if I hadn’t, perhaps you wouldn’t have betrayed me, but because… because you deserved to be loved, child. It was never my intention to make you feel otherwise.”
Hot tears drip down my cheeks.
It’s another manipulation, I tell myself, because it’s easier than believing her words, but at the same time… she cannot lie.
And I understand at once exactly why she did what she did.
“I kept my distance from you to protect myself,” she continues, and Fates, if I don’t understand exactly what that’s like. “To protect my heart.” Nubaia’s gaze drifts, not quite meeting mine now. “What was left of it after your father died.”
Her voice lowers, threading with something brittle.
“I kept you at a distance because I needed you to be what you were meant to be. Not… what you became.”
A weapon. The unspoken word hangs thick in the air. Her weapon, her thing to be used—
And suddenly a dozen little things click into place.
I’d already surmised that the assassinations were a test. But now…
The tunnel. The totem. Sending me to Cass with no instruction at all. All of it.
“You knew,” I say, the realization turning cold and sharp. “About the tunnel beneath the castle. You knew.”
Her silence is answer enough.
“That was another test,” I breathe. “You were waiting to see if I’d tell you. And when I didn’t—when I took Cassiel’s totem from Moira—”
“When you chose him,” she finishes quietly, her eyes snapping back to mine, hard once more. “Yes. I knew then that your loyalties were… compromised. That you were never going to do what I told you to.”
“Because I couldn’t be ordered to, like you ordered Zephyr.”
She nods slowly, her gaze far away. “The prophecy stated that the war would end when a half-fey child went into the service of the second son,” she continues.
“It did not state how. I had no way of knowing if it ended peacefully, or because the half-fey child allied with the humans, and used their inside knowledge to wipe us all out.”
“I would never have—”
“I didn’t want to think about it,” Nubaia admits, and for a fleeting second, something like grief fractures her voice, “but I could not bet our lives on the words of someone capable of lying. It was us, or them.”
My mouth closes. A part of me snags on another future—one where I’d come to my grandmother before the attack, and told her that I loved Cassiel, and that I wouldn’t hurt him, but that I loved her too, and wanted to end the conflict. Would she have listened then?
It doesn’t matter, I tell myself. I do not bear the weight of her decisions. I am not to blame for hiding my heart when she denied me hers.
Something clangs outside. The sharp, metallic sound slices through the room, followed by a muttered curse from one of the fey below.
I move before my grandmother can stop me, crossing to the window in two quick strides. The night air rushes in, cool and carrying the scent of sap and smoke—and something else with a sharp tang.
Below, a cart sits half-covered, its tarp torn loose and flapping in the breeze. One of the workers is struggling with the ropes, swearing under his breath.
But it’s what’s inside that makes my stomach drop.
Iron.
Crates of it. Raw, jagged, unmistakable.
And beside it—
Barrels. Barrels with dark powder dusting the edges where the lids don’t quite meet.
Gunpowder.
My breath catches. Fey don’t use iron. It burns them, disrupts magic—renders them weaker. Which means…
“Oh, Saints…”
The realization hits. Iron resists magic. The barrier around Caerthalen is made of iron, and the fey have never been able to break it as a result.
My grandmother has found another way.
I turn slowly.
Nubaia hasn’t moved, but there’s something different in her posture now. A terrible, quiet certainty.
“You’re going to tear it down,” I say, my voice barely more than a whisper. “The barrier at Caerthalen.”
She doesn’t respond, because she cannot lie, and she doesn’t want to tell the truth.
“And then what?” I demand, heat flooding back into my veins. “You march an army straight into the heart of Erelis? You think that ends anything? That it doesn’t just prove every fear they’ve ever had about us?”
“It ends this,” she says simply.
“It starts something worse.”
“It ensures we are not the ones who fall.”
“You don’t know that!”
“I know enough.”
“No—you don’t,” I snap, stepping toward her again. “Because if you did, you’d know what’s waiting on the other side of that barrier. You’d know Alessandra will be there with an army—”
And Cassiel. Cassiel is there too. Cass, Cass, my Cass—
“Irrelevant.”
“They will fight back!”
“Of course they will.”
Her calm is infuriating.
“They will lose,” she adds. “Their weapons will be no match for our magic once the barrier is down.”
I think about the weapons mentioned in Cassiel’s letter. “You don’t know that.”
“I don’t need to,” she replies.