WREN
Seven days.
Seven days of watching him unravel, and I’d said nothing.
Every morning, he brought breakfast. Every morning, the portions on his own plate grew smaller. By day four, he’d stopped pretending to eat entirely. Just sat across from me, watching me chew, and when I met his eyes, his pupils did that thing. Elongated. Snapped back. Elongated again.
I cataloged it like I cataloged everything. A new symptom to add to the list.
Day five: pupils unstable. Day six: stopped eating. Day six, evening: shoulder muscles twitching beneath his tunic, like something underneath was trying to get out.
He kept bringing things. The compulsion hadn’t faded. If anything, it had gotten worse. Yesterday I’d found a stack of silk scarves outside my door. The day before, a small wooden box filled with shells. This morning, a brass compass with my name scratched into the back.
Wren.
His handwriting was terrible. Shaky, oversized letters. Like a child learning to hold a pen.
I had no place for these gifts in my mental catalog. I wore the scarves because they made him go still in that hungry, satisfied way. I kept the shells on my desk because he checked. Every time he came to the library, his eyes went straight to wherever his last gift had landed. If it was visible, if I’d kept it, something in his shoulders eased.
If I’d moved it out of sight, he’d bring something else within the hour.
So I kept them visible. All of them. The nest of gifts growing around my workspace like a shrine.
I should have asked what was happening.
I should have demanded answers.
But every time I opened my mouth, I remembered his face in the lamplight. The way his hand had felt against my cheek. The rough edge in his voice when he’d said then we will discuss it like he was holding himself together with nothing but teeth and will.
I was afraid that if I pushed, he’d shatter.
On the seventh morning, he didn’t come to breakfast.
I waited. Counted the minutes. Reorganized the books on my desk. Counted again.
An hour. Two.
The food he’d left was cold by the time I gave up waiting.
I found him on the eastern balcony.
The sun was just cresting the peaks, painting everything gold and rose, and he was standing at the edge with his back to me. Shirtless. The mountain wind cutting across the stone like a blade.
I stopped breathing.
His shoulders.
Feathers. Not the suggestion of them anymore, not the texture-under-skin that I’d noticed in the dim light of the library. Actual feathers. Breaking through. Bronze and black, iridescentin the dawn light, running from the base of his neck to the curve of his shoulder blades.
They moved when he breathed. Ruffled in the wind.
He heard me. Of course he did. His head turned, just slightly. Tilted.
“You should not be here.”
“You didn’t come to breakfast.”
“I was not hungry.”
