63. Wren
Iwatch Ru vanish along with Zephyr, knowing that he’ll do everything in his power to keep her safe, before turning back to Cassiel. My fingers find his, and squeeze.
“There’s blood on your face,” I whisper.
“It isn’t mine.”
“You’re all right, then?”
“Yes, you?”
“I could do with a nap.”
We both laugh.
“Do I get a hug?” Dain asks.
I leave Cassiel’s side to throw my arms around Dain, however briefly. We don’t really have time for this. I’m not sure we have time for anything.
“What do we do?” I ask, turning back to Cassiel. My own plan didn’t extend further than: get to the castle and find him.
Cassiel exhales slowly, not meeting my gaze. “I don’t know,” he admits. “Your grandmother and my mother seemed determined to kill each other and take half of the kingdom out with them, and I have no idea how to stop them.”
He scrubs his hands through his hair, making it stand up at all ends. It’s cute. I wish I had time to run my hands through it and bask in it and—
“It would take a miracle,” he says.
Something in me breaks, or maybe it’s been breaking all along, because we don’t get to have miracles, and for a moment, I don’t care about the war or the conflict of our elders or anything but the beautiful boy in front of me whose hair I want to play with until it’s grey with age.
Time is slipping through our fingers, and I need it to stop.
“Then don’t,” I say, the words coming out sharper than I mean them to. “Don’t try to fix it. Don’t wait for a miracle. Don’t try to save everyone—just—” My grip tightens on him. “Come with me.”
He stills. “Wren—”
“Run away with me,” I press, my voice shaking now, but I don’t stop. I can’t stop. “We can leave. We can go somewhere far away from all of this—somewhere it doesn’t matter what we are or where we came from or what they expect of us—”
His expression softens, but there’s something else there too. Something that already knows what he’s going to say.
“I don’t care about any of it,” I rush on. “Not the war, not the prophecy, not—any of it. I don’t care. I just—” My voice cracks. “I just care about you. And Ru. And you too, Dain.”
Dain, who has been hovering nearby pretending not to be able to hear, raises a hand, like he’s glad to be included, but doesn’t comment.
Cassiel’s hand comes up, brushing against my cheek. “Wren—”
“I’m not a hero,” I say, forcing the words out. “I’m just a girl who loves you more than anything else in the entire world, and would do anything to keep you in it.”
Cassiel presses his forehead to mine. We stand there for a moment, eyes closed, silhouetted against the setting sun.
“I know,” he says quietly, his breath against mine.
I clutch his hands over my cheeks. Don’t say whatever comes next, I want to beg him. Don’t say anything. Just run. Run away with me.
“But we can’t,” Cassiel continues, shattering my last thread of hope. “We can’t just walk away from this.”
“Yes, we can,” I insist, desperate now. “We can. We just have to choose it—”
“And what about everyone else caught in the middle of this?”
“I don’t care about them,” I whisper.
Cassiel smiles feebly. “Liar.”
“Maybe,” I tell him, “but I’m willing to live with it.”
“You think you wouldn’t regret it?” he asks softly. “Leaving them to face this alone?”
“I wouldn’t regret you being alive.”
“But you would regret everything that came after,” he says.
I shake my head. “No, I just want you to live—”
I want you to live in a world where you don’t have to fight.
I said those words to Ru months ago, on the worst day of her life, when that small, frightened girl wanted to fight back and I refused to let her.
I want that world for her still. I want that world for Cassiel, and myself.
And maybe, maybe I can get it, if I go far enough away, but…
how many more little girls will there be, soaked in their brother’s blood, hiding in closets?
How many more children will lose people they love, and won’t even get a chance to fight?
How many people hurt, or blinded, or lost or scared and alone?
I don’t know them, but Cassiel is right: I will regret running away. I will regret not helping them. I do want to save them. I want to save them all.
No matter the cost.
My breath catches. Perhaps I am a hero, after all. A big, dumb, stupid one.
“…Damn it,” I whisper.
Cassiel watches me carefully. “Wren?”
I close my eyes for a second. “I have an idea,” I admit.
His brow furrows. “That sounds ominous.”
“It might be.”
“Wren—”
“You need to trust me.”
“I do trust you,” he says immediately. “Emphatically.”
Despite everything, I huff out a quiet laugh.
“Good,” I say. “Then don’t stop now.”
I start to turn, but he catches my wrist.
“Wait.”
I glance back. He’s already reaching for my hair.
“What are you—”
“I’m not having to watch you ride off into battle and lose because you can’t see properly,” he mutters, fingers already working.
“Hmm,” I say lightly. “I wonder what that’s like.”
He scowls. I smile. It doesn’t quite reach my eyes and I think we both notice it.
He finishes the braid quickly, taking a lace from his own shirt and to bind the end. His hand lingers for just a second at the back of my neck.
There’s no more time.
The kiss is brief and fierce. His hands gather at my back and neck.
I clutch onto the front of his shirt just as tightly.
I don’t want this to end, I can’t let it end.
If I just hold onto him for a second longer, we’ll fold into some cosmic bubble where the two of us will be safe and nothing else will matter—
But that place doesn’t exist. The only reality we have is the one going up in flames around us.
When we part, Cassiel’s forehead rests against mine for half a second.
“Please don’t die,” he murmurs. There’s no joke in it, like when Dain spoke those same words to me not long ago. They’re desperate, pleading.
And this time, there’s no answer that I can give.