66. Cassiel #3
Light ripples across her wings, fading at the edges. I frown, unsure of what I’m seeing.
Someone lets out a gasp.
Because the light isn’t fading.
Her wings are decaying.
My stomach drops. “Wren—”
She stiffens. The glow around her flares brighter, like she’s trying to drown it out, like she thinks if she shines hard enough no one will notice.
“No,” she says quickly. “I thought—I hoped…”
Her voice falters, her gaze circling back to mine. She swallows.
“I thought we’d have more time.”
A crack fissures along her arm, but it isn’t blood she bleeds, but light. It leaks through her beautiful brown skin in thin, brilliant lines, like something inside her is breaking its way out.
I take a step toward her. “Wren.”
She steps back.
“Don’t. You can’t. You musn’t—”
The ground beneath her feet surges wildly, grass bursting upward too fast, flowers blooming and dying in the same breath.
Her wings catch. Not fire, but light. Too bright to look at directly. The feathers unravel into sparks, drifting away like dying stars.
She looks at me. Her eyes are her own again, brown and starry and filled with sheer terror.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
She turns and jumps into the air, ashes trailing behind her. Her wings beat uneven, failing, but they carry her upward.
“Wren!” I’m already moving before I know I am, hurtling after her as she glides unsteadily over the castle grounds, to a quiet corner I think we once visited with Ru.
She doesn’t make it far.
The light stutters, her wings collapse.
The sound of her hitting the ground punches the air out of my lungs. I’m there seconds later—maybe less—I don’t remember crossing the distance, only that suddenly I’m on my knees beside her.
“Wren—”
Her skin is splitting in fine, glowing fractures, light pouring through every crack like she’s being hollowed out from the inside.
I reach for her.
“Don’t—!” she gasps.
Pain explodes up my hand. I choke on it, jerking back as if I’ve touched a forge. My skin is already blistering, raw and red where I made contact.
But I don’t move away. How could I?
“Why, Wren?” My voice breaks around her name. “Why?”
She looks at me, and she smiles.
“You said it would take a miracle,” she says softly.
Another crack splits across her collarbone. The light pours through it, brighter now.
“So I gave you one.”
“No.” I shake my head, hard, like I can undo it, like I can force this to stop if I refuse it hard enough. “No, that’s not—this isn’t what I meant, this isn’t—”
Her hand shifts, just slightly, like she wants to reach for me, only she can’t. I reach out anyway, hovering at a distance when the heat grows too unbearable to endure.
“I can’t even…” My voice collapses. “I can’t even touch you.”
“I know.”
The light is consuming her faster now. She’s barely holding together, her form breaking into something fragile and temporary.
“Close your eyes,” she whispers.
My jaw tightens. I can’t. If I close my eyes, when I open them…
“No.”
“Please, Cass.”
“I’m not doing that,” I say, the words coming out raw and desperate. “I’m not—I’m not losing you like this. I’m not—”
“Cassiel.”
She’s never said my name like that before. I don’t know how to explain it. There’s something in it that makes the fight in me falter.
Slowly—like it might kill me—I close my eyes.
The world goes dark.
But she’s still there.
I can feel her. Not heat, not light—just her. Close and everywhere.
“It is as before,” she says, her voice soft, closer now. “You can’t see me, but I’m still here, Cass. I’m just in the next room.”
My throat tightens painfully.
“I’m waiting for you.”
“It’s not…” I can barely get the words out. “It won’t be… Wren, please—”
“I know,” she says, and her voice trembles now. “I know it isn’t fair. I know how much I’d hate it, if I was the one being left behind. I know what I’m asking you to do.”
Something inside me is breaking. My chest splinters under the weight of it.
“But you have to do it,” she continues. “You have to do the rest.”
“Don’t…” My hands curl into fists, shaking violently at my sides. “Don’t make me do this, Wren. Don’t make me live in a world without you in it.”
I’m going to choke on my own breath. My heart is going to stop with hers. I can’t survive this. I can’t.
“It won’t be forever,” she says at last, so quiet it almost feels like a thought instead of a voice. “And if there’s a way for me to come back, I’ll take it.”
Something brushes the edge of my awareness—like pieces of her slipping away.
“If not…”
My chest aches. “Wren?”
“I’ll lie between stars,” she tells me, “until I can lie with you again.”
There are so many things I want to say. Too many. They crowd my throat, choke me, leave me with nothing but the weight of them.
In the end, there’s only one that makes it through.
“Vastren,” I whisper.
For a moment, everything stills, and I’m terrified that she’s already gone.
One final word reaches me.
“Infinite.”
A hot burst of light floods the space in front of me, cracking against the sky, washing over the entire courtyard and shaking the very stones.
When I open my eyes, I’m alone in the dark.
And Wren is gone.