Page 53 of Iron & Embers (The Ashes of Thezmarr #1)

CHAPTER 53

Torj

‘In the study of the alchemy of afflictions, one must be prepared to delve into the darkest corners of the arcane arts, and their own mind’

– Alchemy of Afflictions

W HEN DAYLIGHT HAD well and truly washed across the sky, Torj slipped from Wren’s room to find Cal waiting by the door with his head hung in shame.

‘You look like shit,’ Torj said, surveying his fellow Warsword’s messy hair and the dark circles beneath his eyes.

‘I know,’ Cal replied sombrely. ‘I fucked up.’

‘You did.’ Torj was furious with his former apprentice. He thought he’d taught the Flaming Arrow better than that. ‘You abandoned your orders, your duty to the midrealms last night.’

‘I know. I’m sorry.’

‘What good is sorry if she had been attacked, or taken?’ Torj snapped. ‘What good is sorry if she was—’

‘ I know ,’ Cal cut in. ‘Believe me. I know how bad this is.’

‘You don’t,’ Torj snapped. ‘I would have briefed you last night if you hadn’t been so inebriated. There’s a real threat to the rulers of the midrealms. Audra confirmed it. Multiple attempts on royals’ lives. A group called the People’s Vanguard is taking responsibility.’

‘Shit...’ Cal muttered.

Torj sighed. ‘Sometimes it’s easy to forget who she is. I know she’s your friend, but she’s also the future Queen of Delmira, Cal. She needs to be kept safe .’

‘She doesn’t want to be queen. Same as Thea.’

‘What she wants isn’t our business. Our business is the orders that come from Thezmarr. The Guild Master orders us to protect Delmira’s heir, that’s what we do. Do you hear me?’

Cal’s throat bobbed. ‘Are you going to report me to Audra?’

‘Do I look like a rat to you?’

‘No.’

‘Don’t let this happen again,’ Torj warned him. ‘You don’t want that guilt, that blood on your hands if something happens to her, believe me.’

Cal searched his face. ‘Did you let someone down?’ he asked. ‘In the past, I mean?’

Torj’s patience ran out then and there. ‘Go and clean yourself up, Whitlock. You’re no good to anyone in your current state. I’ll take her to morning classes.’

‘I—’

‘Know when to quit, Cal.’ Torj gave him a stern look. ‘We keep her safe. No matter what.’

Cal gave a reverent nod. ‘We keep her safe,’ he repeated, touching three fingers to his shoulder.

Torj watched his former apprentice walk off, hoping he’d learned his lesson.

A groan sounded from within Wren’s rooms. Torj was inside in an instant, just in time to see Wren bolt to the bathing chamber and slam the door behind her.

He waited precisely a second before striding in, finding her on the cool floor with her head in a bucket.

‘Go away,’ she moaned.

He couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Here,’ he said, filling a cup with water and offering it to her.

With an unsteady hand, she took it from him and brought it to her lips, drinking deeply. ‘I never used to feel this shit after drinking with Sam and Ida,’ she muttered.

‘It gets harder to bounce back when you’re older,’ Torj told her, wetting a towel and wringing it out, pressing the damp, cool fabric to the nape of her neck.

She sighed, closing her eyes as though she were enjoying the sensation. ‘You’d know.’

‘I’m an expert,’ he agreed.

Wren gave a tired laugh and lurched to her feet. ‘False alarm,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to hurl my guts up today.’

‘Charming.’

‘But I do need to get ready for class...’ She motioned to the wooden tub. ‘May I?’

‘I strongly advise it; you smell like a tavern floor.’

‘Now who’s being charming?’

‘Just telling it like it is, Embers.’

The nickname seemed to spark something in her memory, her brow furrowing. ‘Did we talk last night?’ she asked.

Torj froze on the way to his room. ‘About what?’

‘I don’t know...’ Wren sounded distant, like she was combing her mind for clues. ‘Something important?’

He met her gaze, seeing the panic flaring in those willow-green irises. ‘Nothing,’ he told her. ‘Nothing important at all.’

Torj knew he should be continuing his own investigations into magical wounds, but with Cal as hungover as a sailor after shore leave, he refused to leave Wren inadequately guarded. Which was how he found himself beside her workbench during her healing workshop as she finely sliced an ugly green plant.

In quiet awe, he watched her work. Regardless of her heritage, he had always known she was bound for greatness, that she would become someone the historians wrote about in their books. But now, he realized he was watching that unfold in real time, that history was here, in the making. For a moment, that fact weighed heavily on him, the responsibility for her safety all the more paramount.

As Wren added her cuttings to a small cauldron on her workbench, a potent smell snatched Torj from his thoughts. It wafted from the boiling liquid, catching him off guard: bitter and eye-watering, and very familiar.

He gripped the edge of the bench to steady himself, his heart kicking into its fighting rate.

Wren looked up sharply, as though she had sensed the change coming over him. Her gaze dipped to where his knuckles were nearly splitting as part of the workbench splintered beneath his grasp. He had to get a hold on himself.

‘What is that?’ he asked, struggling to keep his voice even as he nodded to the potion she was brewing.

‘It’s the foundation for a balm we use for bruises,’ she replied. ‘Though there’s hours of work ahead before it remotely resembles that.’ Wren gave him a funny look before adding a thimble of fine pale-pink powder to the mix. ‘It’s for the infirmary. We’ll be sending it there next week.’

Torj simply nodded, the scent of the balm still sharp in his nose. ‘My mother used to use something similar,’ he said quietly.

Slowly, Wren turned to face him, sliding the jar she was holding onto the workbench. ‘Your mother?’

Torj came back to himself, scanning the busy laboratory. ‘Here probably isn’t the best place.’ He cursed himself for saying anything at all, for inviting questions.

Wren was watching him closely. ‘I’m done here anyway,’ she declared. ‘And this stuffy room is doing nothing for my pounding head.’ She wiped her hands on her apron and strode out the door, giving Torj no choice but to follow her.

Wren led them out into the academy grounds, where she and Dessa usually did their morning runs. The air was brisk, on the cusp of winter, but Wren breathed it in appreciatively before turning to him as they walked.

‘Tell me about her,’ she said simply.

Torj surveyed the woman beside him. She had the world believing she was all sharp edges and words like blades, but...he saw her. There was kindness beneath the hard exterior, the same kindness she offered him now.

His words came out quiet and slow, as though cautious to be spoken aloud for the first time. ‘My mother is the reason I knew what that section of the infirmary was for. She’s the reason I knew what that potion was you were brewing back there. She’s the reason I...’ He could feel every knot in his shoulders draw tight. ‘My father wasn’t a good man.’

Wren’s eyes flitted to his forearm, where his shirtsleeve hid his scar.

‘Not all monsters have scales and fangs, Embers,’ he’d told her.

Now, her eyes met his, full of understanding. They didn’t waver, didn’t falter under the ugly truth of his words.

‘I don’t know when it started, exactly, or if he’d always been like that and my mother was good at hiding it when I was younger. But he hit her – badly, constantly. The smallest thing would set him off, and he’d be throwing her across the room, slapping her across the face, punching her in the gut...’

The familiar swell of anger rose up in Torj as he spoke, flashes of the past coming back to him, along with the spike of panic he’d felt as a little boy, watching the violence unfold from his hiding spot beneath the bed.

‘When I was about six, I tried to stop him. Which earned me a place in the local infirmary for a week. My mother insisted that I live with my grandmother after that.’ He drew a trembling breath. ‘When I visited home, it was terrifying. Constantly walking on eggshells, waiting for one false move to trigger a tidal wave...But my mother wouldn’t leave him. For all the bruises and broken bones, for all the times she could barely walk, she stayed.’

They walked in silence for a moment, and he knew Wren was giving him the time to find the words that came next.

‘I was terrified he was going to kill her. I’d seen him at the height of his rages. He was a monster. Even at ten years old, I knew it would only take one strike at the wrong angle to end it all, one too many knocks to the head...’

‘Torj...’ Wren murmured, her hand reaching for his arm.

He didn’t pull away; instead, he let her touch ground him. ‘I was right, in the end,’ he said hoarsely. ‘He killed her. Hit her over the head with a lantern, and she bled out on the floor.’

Wren’s hand tightened on his arm. ‘Were you there?’

Torj shook his head. ‘I found her.’

‘Gods,’ Wren murmured. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘I couldn’t save her.’ The confession fell from his lips, raw and broken.

Wren turned to him, her hand gripping his jaw firmly and forcing his gaze down to hers. ‘You were only a child yourself – what could you have done?’

‘Nothing. Not then,’ he conceded. ‘But when I was fifteen, I found him.’

‘You killed him?’

‘Yes.’

Wren didn’t balk at the violence of his words, her grip still firm, not letting him balk from it either. ‘Good,’ she said.

‘I beat him with the same lantern he’d killed my mother with. When I went back to my grandmother’s house, she took one look at me and told me to pack my bags.’

‘She kicked you out?’

‘She said that she’d been waiting for the day I closed that chapter. That the next was waiting for me at Thezmarr. That all my anger, and all my strength, would be put to better use at the fortress.’

Wren’s fingers were moving now, tracing the line of his jaw in a featherlight touch, her stormy eyes bright. ‘You couldn’t save your mother, so now you try to save everyone else,’ she whispered. ‘But who’s saving you, Torj?’

You did , he wanted to say. You saved me . But he let the words fade on his tongue.