Love bloomed through Wren’s chest so strongly then she could have cried. Instead, all she’d said was, “Tell me.”
Lei. Whispering in the dark. “I didn’t think it suited you at first. Remember that morning at the bathing courtyard, when Blue insulted my mother? You stopped me attacking her, and after you left, Lill told me your name. I remember thinking how strange it was a girl like you”—she giggled—“I called you Cat-girl in my head before that, because you were—are—so fierce. And wrens… they’re these common birds. They fly across our skies every day, without ceremony. Hunted by bigger birds. But now I think it’s perfect. Just like your namesakes, you’ve done your work day in, day out, all your life, without complaint. Without ever knowing what a wondrous thing that is. How wondrous you are.”
Tears slipped from Wren’s eyes then, though the shadows hid them. Lei started to say more, and Wren silenced her with her mouth, hoping she could feel everything she felt and everything she wanted to say within the liquid dance of their lips, the roll and slip and tender glide of their bodies as they moved together in the dark.
Wren would be that bird for Lei. She would cross the skies a million times over to get back to her. That’s exactly what there was now: miles between them, and in those miles waited the King’s men, with teeth and fire and a hunger for revenge. Yet Wren knew she’d fight as hard as she could to find her way back to Lei. Because that is what birds do.
No matter how far they fly from home, they never forget their way back.
Fresh vitality roared through her. With a cry, Wren kicked her legs forward, then threw them back, swinging herself in a backward arc, so her boots smashed into the small of Qanna’s back.
Qanna dipped.
Before the girl could reassert herself, Wren swung herself up again, this time releasing her hands from Qanna’s talons so she was twisting, gliding through the air. Then she threw her arms out and grabbed Qanna’s robes, hooking her arms over the swan-girl’s shoulders.
Qanna screamed in fury as Wren clung to her back. Her wings flapped hard, batting Wren where she was nestled between them.
Ember-flecked air streamed past Wren’s cheeks. Qanna was soaring lower, back toward the Orchid Hall rooftop. She knew she couldn’t fight Wren while the girl was on her back—and Wren wasn’t sure she was strong enough to fight Qanna once they landed.
“Your mother and the rest of the White Wing fight with us!” Wren shouted over the wind, the burr of flames. “Join us, Qanna! I don’t know what he promised you, but the King will only betray you—”
“And you won’t? I know what you did, Wren Hanno! You’re a monster, you’re just as bad as him! You killed my sister!”
Wren’s blood ran cold.
“The King told me,” Qanna snarled. “Not that he had to. I already suspected. But once I got to the palace and met his other allies and heard their stories, everything fell into place. You and your traitorous clan have been killing and pinning the blame on the King to turn clans like ours in your favor! He might be abhorrent, but at least the King claims the blood he spills!”
Wren’s fight faded. There was only the ugly black truth of Qanna’s words. The truth she knew would catch up with her eventually, no matter how hard she tried to run.
Then something collided into them.
Wren was thrown from Qanna’s back.
A blur of speeding air, flying limbs, pain—
Wren slammed into the Orchid Hall’s slanted roof.
Tiles shattered beneath her. A yell tore from her throat as she tumbled across them.
She caught the lip of the roof with one hand as she dropped over its edge. The torn flesh of her shoulders screamed. Wren wasn’t strong enough to hold on, but she’d done enough to stop the momentum that would have carried her off the side of the building. Instead, she fell to the veranda.
Her right ankle cracked as she landed on it. Ringing pierced her ears.
Through blurred vision, Wren saw a rush of honey-colored fur and the sweep of black robes. A pleasant, sudden thrum of magic flowed toward her. And then the thing she had been outrunning the past hour—these past weeks, months, perhaps even years—finally arrived.
A slip.
A fall.
The surprisingly warm embrace of a very dark lake.
TWENTY-ONE
LEI
THINGS THAT HAPPEN IN THE WEEK before you marry a Demon King:
Your friends will love and hate you. They will pity you. They’ll not know what to say. Some of them will stay up with you during the long nights, holding you as you stare into space, unable to form words amid the turmoil of your raging, tearing heart. Some of them—one of them—will ignore you completely. It is not new, but it hurts more now all the same. Another will surprise you, swapping their usual sneer for something tentative and foreign—not quite a smile, not quite so friendly yet, but not unkind.
You’ll be examined by doctors and shamans and fortune-tellers. Demons who were once cruel will now pander to your every need—not that you have any. Nothing they can offer you, anyway. You will be fed well to fill out the gaunt lines of your face. You’ll be fitted for your wedding dress, a midnight cheongsam with gold threading, exquisitely woven, that clings to your body like a shroud. An impossible number of demons will fuss and argue over how your hair and face should be made up while you ignore them, retreated somewhere deep within yourself. Their faces will blur into one another as they shuttle you from bathhouses to tea salons to massage parlors, where hands shape and mold your exterior while tinctures and infusions gild your insides.
You must be beautiful beyond belief.
You must look like the queen you are to become.
You will be forced to pray for the gods to shower prosperity on your upcoming nuptials. Three nights before the wedding, you will partake in a sacred ritual. As you bathe in the River of Infinity while the gods look down from their starry citadel in the skies, you’ll look up at them and wonder when it is they decided to abandon you.
You will think often of your mother and father. The joyful wedding day they must have shared. The way they used to dance, and laugh, and hold each other close, aglow in that secret way of lovers. Sometimes, the memories will make you smile. Other times, they will make you want to scream.
News from gossiping maids and guards will reach you about how the announcement of the wedding is beginning to take effect across the kingdom: a drop in uprisings, even a clan or two switching their allegiance from the Hannos to the court, Papers quelled by the false idea they may gain some power now one of them is to become queen. You know this is what the King and his court hoped for by arranging the marriage. You’ll wonder how far the news has traveled, though to you only one distance is important.
The distance between here and her.