67. Cassiel
Iwish I could say that I remember nothing about what happens following Wren’s death. I wish I could say that my body gives out, that my mind becomes shapeless, that I fall into a deep sleep and awake days later to a world that makes more sense.
But that would be a lie.
Time does not stop when someone you love dies. It did not cease when I lost my father, or when I lost Evander.
And it does not cease now.
The fey start to fix the rest of the damage to the castle. Healers both mortal and magic come to mend the wounds that Wren hadn’t. Mother wraps my hand and side herself.
I stare at the weapons lying abandoned in piles, and do not speak.
Some time later, Amma Riverspire arrives. She screams with joy when she sees her husband returned to her. Ru arrives shortly aftwards, sobbing in Evander’s arms when Zephyr brings her back.
Zephyr’s face crumbles when he sees mine, and he knows without anyone telling him what has happened to Wren.
Afterwards, I go up to my newly-restored chambers and take off my boots. I just sit there, waiting for the past few hours to unravel.
They remain fixed in place.
Evander is alive.
Wren is dead.
The damage to my room has already been fixed by either the fey, or Wren, and ivy spills across my window, alive with purple rock cress. I’ve inhaled the aroma dozens of times, sitting here by the window with her beside me. I can’t see her, but I know she is there.
A short while later, Ru comes to see me and sobs in my arms. Then Mother, who apologises over and over, while holding me and telling me she would have done anything to spare me this, how she wishes she’d listened sooner.
She strokes my hair and whispers that, when she loses my father, she might have thrown herself from the battlements had she not had Ru inside her, and us boys to think of.
Her intention is clear: you are not to do that yourself.
I want to drown in the dark, but I am not allowed to.
I have a promise to keep, after all, though I do not think of it much in the first few days, other than to resent its existence. It has no right to be, no right to pin me to a world without Wren in it.
Dain stays with me, that first night, when my mother has gone to be with my siblings again. I tell him to go, but he says he won’t.
“I’m not going to do anything,” I assure him.
“I’d still like to stay,” he tells me, and swallows hard. “In fact, I think… I think I rather need to. I’d… I’d like to cry too, if that’s all right.”
We cry together, then. I cry for days. I don’t leave my bed, let alone my room.
My wounds heal, and I almost hate that they do.
I want the pain. It is a good distraction.
Food is brought up. I force a little down me, but it goes back largely uneaten.
The world has lost its taste. My appetite turns blind.
I want the dark again. I want the dark again with her beside me. I’d trade any sense to have her back. I’d give any part of myself.
I pray to the Saints a lot for that, in the early days. Then the Fates.
Neither ever answers.
Time stops meaning anything after she is gone. Days pass. Or hours. Or weeks.
I don’t mark them. I don’t leave my rooms unless someone forces me to, and even then I don’t remember where I’ve been or what is said. People speak to me like I’m still part of the world, like I haven’t been left behind in that moment on the courtyard stone.
Like I haven’t closed my eyes and lost everything.
Evander comes to me, eventually. I almost don’t hear him enter. I only realise he is there when he says my name, quiet and careful—like he is afraid I might break if he says it too loudly.
“Cassiel.”
I don’t look up at first. There doesn’t seem to be much point, but then there is the soft chink of metal being placed on my bedside table, and I glance at it without thinking.
Wren’s dagger. The one I killed her grandmother with.
“Some people wanted to put this on display,” he explains.
“The dagger that ended a war, and all, but I think you and I both know that it wasn’t the dagger, and, in any case, Mother was concerned that glorifying the weapon could be perceived as an incendiary act by the remaining fey that still support Nubaia’s goals. ”
“Are there any?” I ask.
Evander shrugs. “There are always some, but not one of them is being open about it. I think they all wanted the fighting over too.”
I nod. I don’t really have the strength to do much else, nor the will to discuss politics. That has always been something far more suited to Evander.
I am so glad to have him back. So glad that I won’t have to be king.
And yet…
“Was there anything else?” I ask.
Evander nods, his expression even more sober than before, and he presents me with a small mahogany box, engraved with birds. For a second, I can’t breathe.
He sets it down in front of me like it might be fragile.
“I didn’t know how to—” he starts, then stops, swallowing. “This is all that remains of her.”
My hands don’t feel like mine when I reach for it. The lid opens easily. Inside is a single feather unlike any mortal creature’s. It catches the light in impossible ways, shifting colour—gold, violet, blue-black, like the night sky caught in something soft enough to break.
My throat tightens. I don’t touch it. I am too afraid it will vanish like she has, too afraid of what it means.
Gone, gone, gone. She is gone. This feather is all that is left of her.
And me, too.
Silence stretches between me and Evander, thick enough to fit a ghost. Then, after a moment, he shifts, awkward in a way I have never seen him before.
“There was… something else,” he says.
I don’t respond.
“I thought you should hear it from me. I know the timing isn’t perfect, but… well, I’ve just come back from the dead and that changes a man.”
I want to laugh, but I can’t. I drag my gaze from the feather to his face.
“I’m… seeing someone,” he says.
I blink at him.
“Hyacinth, to be clear.” He exhales sharply. “I think you’ve met? He’s the one I told you about when—”
When you were dying.
“I remember.”
“Right. Of course.” He tugs his cravat. I don’t think I’ve seen him look so guilty since he broke Mother’s ceremonial sword trying to use it as a stick in a childhood game.
“I know the timing is—” he starts, voice tight. “I know it’s… wrong, somehow. I shouldn’t be—when she—when Wren—”
“Stop.”
The word comes out sharper than I mean it to. He falls silent immediately.
I sit up a little, the movement feeling foreign in my own body.
“Don’t do that,” I say, quieter. “Don’t apologise for being alive.”
“Cass—”
“Don’t.” I shake my head. “She didn’t do all that so we could sit here and feel guilty about surviving it.”
My eyes flick, involuntarily, to the box.
“She gave us a miracle,” I say. “The least we could do is not waste it.”
Evander watches me for a long moment. “I just wish there could be a miracle for you, too.”
He hesitates, then reaches out and squeezes my shoulder before he turns to leave.
“Evander?” I say, interrupting his departure.
“Yes?”
“Why didn’t you tell me about Hyacinth before? When he was just a bard in a tavern you wanted to dance with?”
Evander pauses, his gaze on mine. “For the same reason I hesitate in telling you about him now,” he explains. “Because it seems wrong to talk of my joy, when you are alone in the dark.”