Page 48 of Iron & Embers (The Ashes of Thezmarr #1)
CHAPTER 48
Wren
‘We are all connected by the web of cause and effect, and the actions of one alchemist can have repercussions that echo through the ages’
– Arcane Alchemy: Unveiling the Mysteries of Matter
E VERY DAY, THE Bear Slayer was waiting outside for her, like he always did when he wasn’t away on ‘Warsword business’. He escorted her to her lessons in silence. He escorted her to the dining hall in silence. And he escorted her to her rooms in silence.
Wren wanted to yell at him. Yell and scream at him, then tear his clothes off and finish what they’d started in her room. But she did no such thing. Instead, she shut him out of her chambers, and returned to her work.
She had successfully poisoned several rats in her warfare lessons, and successfully cured them of the various toxins she’d created. All the while, Master Crawford threatened to make them test their potions on one another. Their work for the medicine discipline had been contained to academy grounds after the attack on Wren’s life at the infirmary, while lifelore was just as dangerous as it had ever been as they graduated to capturing venomous snakes.
The days and weeks blurred together as Wren fell into the steady rhythm of the academy, and for a time, it was as though that fiery kiss she’d shared with the Warsword was a distant dream that called out to her in her weaker moments. But Drevenor’s added security brought with it a familiar sense of foreboding, the very same that had followed Wren in the lead-up to the shadow war. There was no ignoring its presence, no pretending that the rumours from the outside world hadn’t started to circulate in the academy itself.
‘What do you make of the so-called “People’s Vanguard”?’ Zavier asked her during another lifelore lesson, where they’d been directed to a nest of vipers and told to retrieve their venom.
‘No more than I’ve heard whispered in the corridors,’ she replied, carefully reaching into the vipers’ nest with a long stick.
Zavier frowned. ‘Seems like an oversight to me.’
‘What do you mean?’
A viper emerged from the nest, and Zavier trapped its head beneath a pole while Wren put a cloth-covered jar to its fangs, watching the venom drip down into the glass vessel.
‘It’s a group protesting the power of the rulers...Being an heir yourself, I thought it might be something they keep you informed about.’
Unease squirmed in Wren’s gut as she removed the jar from the creature’s fangs. ‘How do you know about them?’
‘I listen,’ Zavier said, releasing the viper. ‘There’s talk among the guards, among the staff. Perhaps it’s time you asked...If I were you, I’d want to know.’
Zavier’s words haunted Wren. No one – not Thea, not Torj, not even Kipp – had mentioned anything to her. But the attack outside the infirmary, Blythe Rookford’s death, and the increase in academy security caused a familiar pit of dread to yawn wide within her. It grew by the day, telling her that something was coming.
But Drevenor was relentless. Lessons that were not lessons, tests that were brimming with sabotage, and the constant loom of the Gauntlet ahead left little mental energy for anything other than work.
After several more self-defence lessons with the Bear Slayer, Wren and Dessa created a fitness regime of their own, having grown tired of always being the last to finish their laps in class. The crisp mornings running at Dessa’s side offered Wren a brief respite from the darkness that seemed to be latching its talons into the academy, and even with her surly bodyguard shadowing them every time, Wren began to truly enjoy Dessa’s company and her relentless optimism. It forced Wren to get out of her own head, and though Dessa could never replace Sam or Ida, she offered Wren that same balm of female companionship that she so sorely missed in the wake of her friends’ deaths.
Dessa soon had the skill of running and talking mastered. Unfortunately for Wren, the main topic of conversation was Kipp.
‘He’s honestly not like anyone else I’ve ever been with,’ Dessa was saying, as Wren tried not to cringe at the thought of Kipp in that context. ‘Honestly, Wren, he’s so attentive. Always makes sure I’m pleased before he...Well, you know. It’s so rare, isn’t it?’
Wren thought back to the moans of ecstasy she’d heard in the pleasure dens, to the noises she’d heard from her own sister’s tent in the war camps...and then she thought of him , of the sounds the Bear Slayer had dragged from her throat with no more than a kiss.
‘Must we talk about this?’ she muttered.
‘You’re right. We’re always talking about me,’ Dessa said with a note of apology. ‘Let’s talk about you. Things are still frosty between you and the—’
‘Dessa!’ Wren hissed, increasing her pace and trying to put more distance between them and the Warsword trailing them.
‘Sorry, sorry!’ Dessa replied with a sheepish grin. ‘Still...don’t hold out on me, Wren, I’ve told you all my secrets!’
‘They’re not secrets if you gush about them to the first person you see in the morning.’
Dessa laughed good-naturedly.
‘I’ve got nothing to tell you,’ Wren admitted.
‘What about from before? Was there someone in the war? Someone back at Thezmarr?’
The someone in the war was the same someone who ran behind them just now, all six-foot-five of him, clad in warrior’s armour and battering enemy forces with that iron hammer. And before?
‘There were boys, back at Thezmarr...’ Wren admitted at a whisper, mindful of being overheard by the great brute in their wake. ‘But they were nothing. Less than nothing.’
Dessa frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Truthfully? I have never understood the fuss. The boys I’ve been with have been underwhelming at best. I’ve never...’
‘Never what?’
Wren forced the words from her mouth. ‘Never been... pleased by one, as you said, before they...’
A horrified noise escaped Dessa. ‘Oh, Wren.’
‘It’s not that bad!’
‘No, it’s a disaster . Furies know that some men just need a bit more training than others, some guidance...But to have such bad luck? It’s a travesty, Wren.’
‘I was always told it was my fault,’ Wren admitted quietly.
‘Well, that’s just not true.’ Dessa stopped at the water fountain they favoured and took a long drink before wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘Can you get there yourself?’
Wren refused to be embarrassed. There was no shame in it. She would have spoken openly about this with Sam, and Ida. As she’d grown closer with Anya during the last few months of the war, they too, had talked freely about such things. ‘Yes,’ she replied.
‘Then you just haven’t been with the right man, my friend,’ Dessa said with a wink, followed by a pointed glance behind them.
‘Furies save me, will you stop that?’
But Dessa simply laughed, and after a time, Wren found herself smiling as well.
Wren had started studying with Dessa and Zavier in her rooms. The Gauntlet was fast approaching, and they remained in second place on the black garnet leaderboard. Zavier was still a smug prick, but Wren didn’t mind so much when he was using that to benefit the team. Together, the trio complemented one another’s skillsets, and for that, Wren was grateful.
A dark mood had settled over Drevenor, and it was Kipp, of course, who sought to alleviate it. He barged into Wren’s room one evening and surveyed the team’s scattered books and contraptions, then threw himself down on Wren’s bed dramatically.
‘You work too hard,’ he told them.
Wren scoffed. ‘And you don’t work enough.’
‘I work plenty, just not to the point of broken exhaustion.’
Bleary-eyed, Zavier looked up from his book. ‘And what is it that you do here again, Kristopher?’
‘Ahh, all in good time. You know that I’m most effective when I work behind the curtain, so to speak. For now, we’re going out.’
‘Out?’ Wren snorted. ‘Has this been approved by—’
‘No approval needed.’
‘Somehow I don’t think that’s how it works,’ Wren said, with a glance at the adjoining door. She hadn’t heard a peep from the Bear Slayer since he’d silently checked her rooms hours earlier. It would serve him right if she decided to go out and not inform him.
‘We’re not leaving the academy grounds,’ Kipp insisted. ‘Surely you’ve heard by now? There’s a tavern on campus.’
Wren shook her head in mock disbelief. ‘Of course there is...’
‘Come on, Your Most Royal Highness—’
‘Kipp, calling me anything to do with the Delmirian throne is a sure-fire way to convince me not to do what you want. You call yourself a strategist?’
He answered with a grin. ‘Come on. We’ll be escorted by Callahan the Flaming Arrow, the Warsword who beds three women a night—’
‘I heard it was five,’ Dessa chimed in.
That only encouraged Kipp. ‘Callahan, killer of monsters, the warrior with the strength of a hundred men! What could be safer? Or more thrilling?’
‘I can fucking hear you, you prick,’ came Cal’s voice from the other side of the door.
Wren’s interest was piqued. That could only mean that Torj was not in his rooms, nor was he guarding her, for a change.
‘We must strike while the iron’s hot!’ Kipp declared, throwing her door open.
‘What does that even mean?’ Cal said, rolling his eyes.
‘I think he means we should get going while the drinks are cold and the morals are loose,’ Wren suggested.
Kipp slung a long arm around her shoulders. ‘And that, oh royal one, is why we’re friends.’
Wren looked to Zavier and Dessa. ‘You in?’
Zavier got to his feet, stretching and cracking his back. ‘Now you mention it, I do have a thirst.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ Kipp declared. ‘Dessa?’
The pretty redhead was already gathering her things.
At last, Wren gave Kipp a gentle shove out the door as she took her cloak from its hook and checked her belt for full supplies of all her tinctures and powders.
‘There’ll be no cups of tea for anyone tonight, Elwren,’ Kipp warned with mock sternness. ‘You need to make some friends. Not scare them off.’
Wren smiled sweetly. ‘We’ll see about that, Kristopher.’