Page 41 of Thorns & Fire (The Ashes of Thezmarr #2)

Wren

‘Above all else, alchemists are seekers of the truth’

– Alchemy Unbound

T HERE WAS NO sound from the adjacent room, but three words came to Wren, echoing in her chest. They remained as she readied herself for bed, and they were with her when she awoke the next morning.

I love you.

She couldn’t explain it, she didn’t understand it, but somehow, in her bones, she knew it to be true. In spite of the brutal way he’d ended things, and all his protests and mixed signals since, the Bear Slayer loved her. He may not have said the words aloud, but she had felt them in his kiss.

The knowledge only added to her turmoil.

It was yet another question she didn’t know the answer to.

Her gaze drifted to her windowsill, where her assassin’s teapot – the Ladies’ Luncheon – sat, a layer of dust coating it.

She had been proud of it, once. An invention she’d used to deliver justice on more than one occasion.

But now... now it was just another thing that could be used against her, against the people she cared about.

I should destroy it , she thought. Like I should have destroyed those manacles after the war .

.. But when she reached for the dainty work of ceramic, she found that she couldn’t cast it into the fire as she intended.

Sam and Ida had brainstormed its design with her.

Her friends had been by her side when she’d given Farissa the first successful demonstration.

A part of them lived within the invention, so instead, she boxed it up and hid it away beneath her bed.

She couldn’t bear the thought of it hurting someone she loved.

One day I’ll get rid of it, she vowed. But not today.

As the early sunlight filtered through her window, Wren cleaned her cuts and treated them with more salve, thinking of the Warsword on the other side of the wall.

Now, more than ever, she was drawn to him, and against her will, the love she’d drowned so thoroughly in anger was rising to the surface once more.

She pressed her fingertips to her lips, still swollen with the passion of his kiss. Whatever he was keeping from her, she would crack him, eventually.

As if she’d summoned it, there was a gentle knock at the adjoining door.

‘Come in,’ she called, throwing her apron over her head and tying it at the back.

The door creaked open and Torj entered tentatively. ‘Morning...’

The Bear Slayer, as handsome as he was, looked tired. There were dark shadows beneath his eyes, and his stubble was longer than usual.

‘Couldn’t sleep?’ Wren asked, surveying him.

‘Hard to sleep after a kiss like that,’ he replied gruffly.

Wren’s brows lifted. ‘So we’re not pretending it didn’t happen?’

Torj pushed a loose lock of silver from his forehead. ‘I can still feel the imprint of you like a brand, Embers, so no. No pretending.’

‘Thank the gods for that,’ she said.

‘How are you? How are your wounds?’ he asked, scanning her critically.

‘No lasting damage.’ She eyed her empty toolbelt on her workbench with a pang of regret. ‘I’ll have to go without that today, or I’ll aggravate the cuts.’

Torj frowned. ‘You never go anywhere without it...’

‘No, I don’t,’ she replied. ‘I suppose I’ll have to rely on your burly presence to protect me after all.’

Torj went to her workbench, picking up the belt. ‘Have you got more supplies for it?’

‘I do.’ Wren motioned to the spare vials held in a wooden frame. ‘There.’

‘Restock the belt,’ he told her.

‘Why? If I’m not wearing it—’

‘I’ll wear it.’

Wren blinked. ‘What?’

‘I’ll wear the belt,’ he repeated. ‘I assume you’ll be able to adjust it so it fits me?’

‘Well, yes, but...’

‘But what, Embers?’ he challenged. ‘Having your potions and poisons makes you feel safe. I realize it’s not the same as possessing them yourself, but if having them within arm’s reach helps alleviate any fear, then let me wear them.’

Wren’s words caught in her throat. Of course Torj had noticed that she felt vulnerable without her tinctures. Her hands trembled as she went about replacing her supplies and adjusting the belt for his larger frame.

‘Here.’ Her voice cracked as she held it out for him.

To her surprise, instead of taking the belt, Torj stepped into her space, lifting his arms so she could loop it around his middle.

‘Would you mind?’ he asked. ‘I’m paranoid that I’ll break something and poison myself... We’re not all immune.’

‘You are.’ The words were out before she could stop them, her fingers brushing his shirt as she fixed the belt around him, drawing it together at the buttons of his leathers. She could feel the heat of his gaze on her.

‘What?’ he asked.

Wren took a breath, wishing she hadn’t opened her stupid mouth. ‘You are immune,’ she explained slowly. ‘At least to the majority of things I use.’

Torj tensed beneath her touch. ‘How can that be?’

Wren focused on threading the end of the belt through the buckle and securing it just above the bulge in Torj’s leathers. ‘I’ve been exposing you to each one little by little, to create immunity.’

‘So what you’re telling me is that you’ve been poisoning me bit by bit, every day?’ There was a wry note to Torj’s voice.

‘Something like that.’ Wren dropped her hands from the belt and put some much-needed space between them. ‘I did the same for Thea growing up. And Cal and Kipp, to a lesser extent. I’m sorry, I should have—’

But Torj closed the gap between them once more and reached for her, tracing a featherlight line across her jaw. ‘All this time... you’ve been protecting me?’

‘Someone’s got to,’ she muttered.

Torj’s gaze dropped to her mouth, a strange expression flickering across his face. ‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome.’ Wren broke away, dusting her hands unnecessarily on her apron. ‘Shall we go?’

Torj hesitated. ‘How ridiculous do I look?’ He motioned to her belt of potions around his waist, in stark contrast to the hammer strapped across his shoulders and the curved knife sheathed at his side.

‘Only a little. You may pull it off yet.’ She couldn’t help the smile that tugged at her lips. ‘Apparently you’re a Warsword of many talents.’

Torj made for the door with a backwards glance full of heat. ‘You already knew that, Embers.’

Wren’s cheeks flamed, but she threw up a hand in protest. ‘Don’t start, Bear Slayer.’

His answering grin was wicked.

That night, back in her room, Wren was bleeding herself again, refusing to admit that she felt faint.

She didn’t know how many times in the past few weeks she’d taken samples from her own veins, only that she needed more.

Bruises had bloomed in the crook of each arm, the skin there tender, but she didn’t care.

With Zavier and Dessa’s help, she’d developed a cooling system to keep her vials at the right temperature so that the components of her blood weren’t compromised, but there was another issue...

She was running out of the enemy’s alchemy samples as well.

After the battle in Drevenor’s hall, she had collected as much of the strange shimmering substance from the weapons of the dead as possible.

At the time, it had seemed like more than she needed, given that in its presence her own magic shrank back.

But now, having heated countless blades and arrow tips to loosen the alchemy from the steel and captured it in an array of glass vessels, she realized there wasn’t enough.

Not when she was burning through her ingredients and blood so quickly.

White dots swam in her vision, and she startled back to herself, red streaming down to her wrist, spilling over the shallow dish on her workbench.

‘Shit,’ she muttered, pressing a fresh linen cloth to her vein—

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ growled a familiar voice from the adjoining door.

Wren didn’t turn around. Instead, she wrapped a bandage around her arm and hastily pulled her sleeve down. ‘Don’t you ever knock?’

‘Not when I feel—’ He cut himself off.

‘Feel what?’ Wren demanded.

‘Nothing,’ he bit out. ‘It smells like blood in here.’

Another wave of dizziness washed over Wren, and she tried to subtly brace herself against the workbench. ‘You don’t say,’ she replied dryly.

The Bear Slayer stalked towards her, taking in the crimson-filled vials. ‘Furies save me, tell me this isn’t all yours.’

‘It’s not all mine,’ she echoed back without hesitation.

‘Horseshit.’ Torj shook his head, his eyes alight with fury as he turned to her. ‘This must be, what – two pints?’

‘Hardly—’

‘Don’t do that,’ Torj snapped.

Wren blinked. They had argued countless times before, across the span of years , but there was a note in his voice now that was unfamiliar to her. ‘What?’

‘Be reckless with yourself,’ he replied, his tone dark with anger. ‘You are too valuable, too important to take risks like this—’

‘It’s part of my work,’ she retorted, her own rage bubbling to the surface. ‘What would you say if I told you not to fight monsters, not to wield that hammer of yours?’

‘That’s different.’

An exasperated noise escaped her, and had she not needed the support of her workstation, she’d have thrown her hands up in the air as she demanded, ‘How?’

‘It just is,’ he said stubbornly.

‘A stellar argument there, Warsword—’

‘Don’t push me,’ he warned.

‘Or what?’ she taunted, folding her arms over her chest, trying not to wince as she brushed the tender spots at the crooks of her elbows. ‘ How is it different? ’

‘Because I’m expendable!’ he blurted.

Wren’s mouth fell open and she stared at the man before her. ‘Is that what you think?’

Torj shrugged, but the movement was forced.

‘It’s true. If something happened to me while I was performing my duties, there would be no lasting consequences for the world.

There are more Warswords now, plenty of people to take my place.

But you? If something happens to you while you’re taking stupid risks with yourself.

..’ He shook his head, cursing under his breath.

Wren’s magic was restless beneath her skin like never before.

It tended to flood to the surface when her emotions were high, when her mental energy was depleted and, most often, when Torj was near.

She did her best to ignore it, to stamp it out.

She couldn’t afford to lose control; she couldn’t afford another split in her focus – but his words. .. They broke her.

‘You’re not expendable,’ she said quietly, her gaze meeting his. ‘Not to me.’

It didn’t matter how angry he made her. It didn’t matter that he’d broken her heart, or that he was hiding things from her. Not in this moment. For a world without the Bear Slayer was a world she wasn’t interested in.

She closed the gap between them, taking his hands in hers. ‘Don’t you ever think that,’ she told him fiercely.

Torj’s expression guttered. She recognized the grief as though it were her own. Something tugged inside her chest: an ache, a yearning that felt bone-deep, soul -deep. For a second, Wren thought she saw a flicker of gold in the air—

‘Do you know what it’s like to want someone so badly you can’t breathe?’

The words were raw and desperate, bleeding with pain.

‘And to know that no matter what, you can’t have them? They can never be yours?’

Wren stared at him, shaking her head. ‘And whose fault is that?’

It was only when Torj pulled his hands from her grasp as though burned, when he had walked away, that Wren realized...

He hadn’t spoken those words aloud.