66. Cassiel #2
Wren stands in the doorway, glowing.
Gone are her tattered, borrowed clothes. Instead, a gown of fire and light wraps around her. Her eyes are pure gold, and from her back rise two magnificent wings, nebulous in colour. Blue, black, purple, pink, red, gold, and flecked with starlight.
“Firebird,” whispers someone in the crowd, but they’re wrong.
She’s not a firebird, but a creature of the heavens.
A starbird.
Wren steps forward. Her feet are bare, and everywhere she walks, life erupts. Grass spans out across the dirt, flowers bloom, bleeding wounds stitch back together. Stone rejoins, tiles fly back into place, gaping walls seal shut.
And behind her rise eight figures from the dark.
Knights, servants, fey. Faces I recognise. Faces I don’t. All of them were dead not a few moments ago. Wren would know.
She’s the one that killed them.
A collective, wondrous stillness falls over the battlefield. No one moves. No one even breathes.
Wren continues her path. The light follows, the destruction waning. Fires expunge. The eight branch out behind her, stumbling slightly, confused—but there’s no fury in them like the spectres in the dreamscape.
One of the knights looks down at his own hands, bewildered.
He drops his weapon, stepping forward to embrace Riverspire.
Another fey woman flies forward to embrace her friend, who lets out a soft, disbelieving laugh.
People cry out, calling names over and over, hugging and kissing until their bodies believe it.
One by one, weapons lower. Steel clatters against stone, magic gutters out. No one wants to fight this.
I look at Wren, and something breaks loose in my chest.
“How…” calls my mother, cradling Evander’s face. “How is this possible?”
“Wren,” Evander says. “She brought me back. I’m here, Mother. I’m alive. This is real.”
His words seems to echo through the courtyard, passing from one person to the next like wind.
Real.
Alive.
Here.
My mother lets out a broken sound and pulls Evander into her arms, clutching him as though she might lose him again if she loosens her grip even slightly.
Around them, the same scene unfolds in a hundred variations—soldiers dropping to their knees, lovers colliding in desperate embraces, friends laughing through tears that don’t quite make sense yet.
Even Fellwood stands amazed, his eyes drifting from his returned knights to Wren, gazing at her like a goddess of old.
No one raises a weapon.
No one wants to.
No one, of course, except Nubaia.
Her gaze slides, not to Evander, not to the people being restored, but to my mother.
Alessandra is still turned toward Evander, her hands framing his face, her attention utterly, completely elsewhere.
No—
Nubaia lunges, lightning fast. No spell, no grand gesture. Just a blade of intent sharpened by decades of grief, cutting straight toward my mother’s unguarded back.
But she doesn’t reach her.
I grab the hilt of Wren’s dagger from my waist and hurl it towards Nubaia. It strikes her in the stomach at the exact same time Wren burrows her fire into her chest.
It goes straight through her.
A clean, burning hole in through her heart.
For a second—just a second—we are all frozen together. Wren, breath caught. Me, arm still outstretched. Nubaia between us.
I watch the light flicker in Nubaia’s eyes only for a moment, looking down at the hilt protruding from her body, before my intention turns entirely to Wren.
She says nothing as her grandmother dies.
There’s no hint of regret, no anger, no last words. She does not taunt her. She does not hiss, ‘burn now, like you burned my mother.’
There’s no fury in this death. Her eyes shine with tears that look like starlight.
This isn’t revenge, or even justice. It’s just what had to happen, because Nubaia could not live with so much hatred in her.
Or so much sadness.
Nubaia’s body sways.
The sound of it hitting the stone is strangely small. Final, but not triumphant. There is no cheer, no cry of victory.
Only silence.
Wren steps forward at last.
The light around her softens as she approaches, though it does not fade. Life still blooms beneath her feet, but more gently now.
She kneels beside her grandmother.
For a moment, I think that this is where the grief comes, where the anger finally breaks through, where everything she’s held back shatters all at once.
But it doesn’t.
She reaches out, brushing her fingers lightly over Nubaia’s brow, closing her eyes. It’s a simple kindness, but one that feels far heavier than any act of vengeance could have been.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, so quietly I almost don’t hear it.
The light around Wren flickers. I step forward towards her. I’m shaking, too, but I’ll be better when she’s in my arms.
It’s over. It’s finally over.
Wren rises slowly. For the first time since she appeared, her gaze meets mine fully, but she doesn’t reach for me. There’s something strange in expression, as though she’s standing somewhere far beyond the rest of us, even now.
“It’s over,” she says softly.
No one contradicts her. For a moment—just a moment—it feels like we might be allowed to keep this. The dead are breathing again. The courtyard is quiet. No one is screaming. No one is dying.
And Wren—
Wren is here.
Light made flesh. Wings like the night sky torn open and remade into something reverent. She stands at the centre of it all, and I can’t stop looking at her, because if I do—
There’s nothing to be afraid of, a voice tells me. She’s here. Everything’s fine. You can breathe again.