58. Wren #3
Something in me snaps.
“You do,” I insist, stepping closer, my hands curling into fists at my sides. “Because if you’re wrong—if even a fraction of what you think you know isn’t true—then this doesn’t end with victory. It ends with annihilation. For both sides.”
Nubaia’s expression doesn’t shift, but it flickers. The ghost of a doubt.
It’s gone in an instant.
“I will not gamble our survival on hope,” she says.
“And I won’t let you burn the world to avoid it.”
The air tightens. “You’re the one who burns things, Wren,” she says.
For a second, I think she might strike me. Magic coils at her fingertips, subtle but lethal, the kind that doesn’t need spectacle to kill.
“I burn,” I tell her, “but I don’t destroy.”
“Is that right?” she says. “Because I hear a lot of people died the day we first stormed the castle. Reduced to ashes, they say. None of us did that. That was you, my little bird, wasn’t it?”
My breath stutters in my throat. “I didn’t mean to.”
“It’s what you were made for,” my grandmother insists. “My little phoenix, rising from the ashes. You have come to burn away the past. Join us, Wren. Help us rebuild it. I’ll even spare your little prince, if he truly means that much to you—”
He does. He does, and for one, awful moment, I almost consider it. This world has given me nothing but pain after all. It does need to change. It does need to be reborn. If it saves him, maybe it’s worth it.
Maybe we can be together…
But I expunge the thought almost immediately. Even if she spares Cassiel, would she spare Runara, Dain? Edwin, who helped us? Magda? Anne? The barmaid who helped me?
She certainly won’t spare Alessandra.
And it won’t spare my soul. My soul, which is already marred with all that she’s made me do. Marred, and not broken.
I won’t let her break me, and I won’t let her use me.
“I won’t help you,” I murmur, not nearly as strongly as I want to sound.
“Hmm. Pity.”
The force that hits me is invisible, but it’s like being slammed by a wall. My breath vanishes as I’m thrown backward, my shoulder cracking painfully against the far side of the room. The world tilts, blurs—
I try to rise, but I don’t make it far.
Magic presses down on me, heavy as iron, pinning me in place. Not enough to break bones. Just enough to make resistance pointless.
The room grows hotter, my chest heating. Fire flickers at my fingertips. I will it forwards, trembling, desperate. It hisses against the cold wall of my grandmother’s magic, sparks sizzling in the air, but it’s weak, pathetic.
Like I am.
My body trembles, muscles quivering, and I can’t hold it. Sleep, hunger, fear—they’ve hollowed me out. My fire is little more than smoke.
Nubaia smiles, almost fondly, as though watching a child learn to crawl. “Don’t struggle, my dear. I don’t want to hurt you.”
But you will. You are. You are hurting me, and I don’t think you really care.
The room bends under her command. Shadows coil, smoke and heat twisting unnaturally. My vision is spotting at the edges.
The room crowds with people—the other elders. Did Zephyr send for them? Have they come to help me?
I flail. My fire sputters, sparks dying on my palms. My grandmother raises a hand, and one elder brings forward a small leather pouch.
“Nubaia,” says Eryndor, one of my old tutors. “Are you sure—”
“If she cannot help us, then she cannot be allowed to help them,” she insists. “She has picked her side.”
“We were supposed to get rid of the sides,” Eryndor says, though his voice is low, without much resistance.
“And we will.”
He hesitates, eyes darting to the others, but ignoring me entirely. No one else speaks in my defence.
Zephyr. Where’s Zephyr?
I struggle against the invisible grip, the pressure pressing into my ribs, my lungs. My hands scrape against the floor, magic crackling weakly as I reach out, a desperate plea to someone who might hear me.
“Moira!” I scream, my throat raw. My hands tremble violently, reaching for her presence, for her guidance, for anything. “Please… help me—”
Her milky gaze does not even turn in my direction. Even if she could see me, I doubt she’d intervene. My heart thuds painfully in my chest, a panicked drumbeat of betrayal and exhaustion.
“It’s necessary,” she says. “I’m sorry, Wren.”
Necessary. Like blinding Cassiel. Like killing his brother.
Like murdering my mother.
How can so much violence ever be necessary?
One of the elders steps closer, pouch in hand. I twist my head, trying to escape, trying to make my fire hold, but my body refuses. Every muscle protests and fails. My vision swims, hot tears blurring the edges.
“Please,” I whisper, a broken thing now. “No—please—”
The powder spills into the air. It’s a soft, almost tender cloud, dusting my skin and curling into my lungs. My magic flares one last time, hot, wild, and completely useless. I scream.
Darkness rolls over me like water. My fire dies, my body slumps, and the last thing I hear before everything goes silent is the faint, cold echo of her voice, unyielding:
“It’s necessary.”
Everything fades.