Leif scowls at her.
“You’re gonna do a great job,” Wren tells him with a small but genuine smile.
“So I guess that I’ll take you wherever you want to go and then come back for Leif and Cam. Unless you want to head back to the garden or want them to come with us to the new place?”
To say goodbye to the guys, I mean. If I’d known she wasn’t coming back with us, I wouldn’t have fought to come here alone. I can barely get my head around what’s happening.
“I don’t really do goodbyes,” she says. “Plus, Madame’s set me up with a heap of cash and some fresh clothes. A new phone, too. Who knew she cared.”
“Are you sure you’re up to this?” Leif asks. “It’ll be a whole new world, a new life where you probably won’t know anyone.”
“I’m up to it. Don’t worry about that,” Wren says.
I clear my throat softly. “Do you have any preference where you want to go?” I ask, hoping she doesn’t pick the one place that Madame has said is off limits. She can’t go home, back to the Elysian Fields.
But she doesn’t ask to go there, just shakes her head and shrugs. “I don’t care where I go.”
She doesn’t look stressed or anxious, but I see a flash ofsomethinggo over her face that tells me she’s not as unbothered by all this as she’s making out.
“Okay.” I squeeze her hand and she stiffens slightly at my touch. “I have an idea where we’ll go. Have you ever been to Oonos where Brogan’s from? The people there seem super friendly. Noisy but nice. And we’ll be coming through to visit his family, so I think it would be a good place. You won’t be totally alone there or isolated or anything.”
She nods and smiles tightly. “Sounds good.”
“And you’re sure you don’t need anything else, more clothes or—” Leif starts, but she puts a hand to his head and ruffles his hair like he’s a little boy.
“I’ll be fine. I’d rather just get going.”
I stand there and feel like a prize noodle as she gives fleeting hugs to Cam and Leif. They both look like they’re not happy about any of this and Cam glares at me over the top of Wren’s head, like ‘you’d better make sure she’s okay since I can’t’.
I nod. It’s all so fast and awkward and I feel like I’m totally on the back foot, reacting to stuff and scrambling to decide what to do and where to take her.
“Okay then, grab my hand and we’ll go,” I tell her.
Wren doesn’t hesitate, steeling her shoulders like she’s about to go into battle and I hop us out of the academy to Oonos, the shifter island.
I don’texactlyknow where Brogan’s town is, since we met everybody in the forest last time, but I get us on the outskirts ofatown… or village, on the very edge of a vast forest. The air is thick with the sound of birdsong and the scent of pine trees.
“You seem to be doing remarkably okay with all this. I could maybe stay a few days if it would be easier. I know we don’t know each other well or at all really, but—”
I’m babbling and she waves a hand in front of her face to cut me off.
“Thanks for bringing me here and for getting me out of that place. I don’t think I said that before. Like I said, I’ll be fine. That fuck has taken enough from me. He’s not going to take my future too.”
And then I see it, the emotion she’s been suppressing. Theragelying just beneath the surface.
“Anyway, what kind of fate weaver—” She chokes on the last word, swallows, and tries again. “—sorry, ex-weaver, would I be if I didn’t believe it was all going to work out?”
I eye her uneasily for a moment. Something tells me Wren’s not normally the ‘everything will work out as it should’ kind of gal. I think she’s trying to palm me off with platitudes she doesn’t believe.
“I’ll be fine. New world, new life, new me. All that shit. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to start off on this new life and you’d better get back to those mates of yours.” She shakes her head with a raspy little chuckle. “Three mates, I dunno how you cope.”
I can’t stop myself from giving her a likely unwanted hug. “We’ll visit. And I’m not just saying that. I hope things work out for you.”
I really do. Wren’s been through so much recently and to have her identity as a weaver stripped away when Andrew drained the last of her power, and now having to start a whole new life because of it, while he strolls off into the sunset.
It isn’t right.
I hope he gets his comeuppance and she can get a little peace and happiness in her life.
