WREN
The garden wall was eight feet of crumbling stone, footholds worn into the mortar from years of climbing. My hands found the grooves by memory. Up and over in twelve seconds.
I dropped into the shadows and held still. Counted to ten. No alarm. No shouts. Just the house settling and a dog barking somewhere distant.
Tavrin was out there in the dark. Counting. Waiting. Every second I spent here was a second he was fighting not to follow.
I moved.
Uncle’s garden was dark. Overgrown even when I lived here. Uncle never paid for a groundskeeper. Good. More shadows.
The trellis under Elspeth’s window was still there. Old wood, questionable structure. It had held my weight at sixteen. It would hold me now.
I climbed. The wood groaned. I froze. Nothing.
The window stuck. I worked my blade into the gap, found the latch, lifted. The scrape of wood on wood, and then I was through, tumbling into my sister’s room.
The room smelled like her. Lavender and ink and old books. A shape in the bed, curled tight.
“Elspeth.”
She shot upright. Her eyes found me and for one terrible moment I thought she would scream.
Then her face crumpled.
“Wren.” A whisper. A prayer. “You came back.”
I crossed the room and pulled her into my arms. She was shaking. Thin. She’d always been thin, but I felt the sharp bones of her shoulders like I was noticing for the first time. Had she always been this fragile? Or had I just stopped seeing it?
“I came back.” My voice steady despite my racing heart. “I’m taking you with me.”
“He said you wouldn’t.” Muffled against my shoulder. “He said you’d chosen a monster over your family.”
“I didn’t forget you. Not for one second.” I pulled back, held her face, made her look at me. “I have a way out. But we have to move. Now.”
She nodded. Didn’t ask questions. That was Elspeth. Absolute trust, even after I’d left her.
“Pack a bag. One bag. Only what matters.”
She moved quickly. A dress. A comb. Our mother’s journal. She hesitated over a miniature portrait on the bedside table. Our parents.
“Take it.”
“The window. We go out the way I came in.”
I climbed through first. Tested the trellis. Looked down at the garden.
“Come on.”
Elspeth appeared in the window. Looked down. And froze.
“Elspeth. Now.”
“I can’t.” Her voice tiny. “It’s too high. I haven’t climbed since...”
She used to climb this trellis every summer. We’d race to the garden wall and back, laughing, fearless. Now she looked at the drop like it might swallow her whole.
Two weeks. Just two weeks without me, and she’d already forgotten she knew how to climb.
