WREN
The cloak spread.
One moment it hung from his shoulders like fabric. The next, it unfurled. Wings. Twelve feet across at least, maybe more. Bronze feathers edged in black, layered and gleaming, and when they caught the air I felt the displacement of it against my face.
Not his wings. The cloak’s wings. But they moved like they were part of him, responding to his will, alive in a way that made my stomach drop.
He turned to look at me.
His face was still his face. The same amber eyes, the same strong jaw, the same careful stillness. But something in the way he held himself had changed. More certain. More dangerous.
“You are afraid,” he said. Not a question.
“That cloak just turned into wings. So yes.”
His expression shifted. Surprise, maybe. Like he’d expected me to deny it.
“That is reasonable.” He moved toward me, and my body remembered itself. I stumbled back two steps before I could stop. He froze. “I will not hurt you.”
“Forgive me if I need a moment.”
“Take as long as you need.”
“We’re on the brink of the drop. I don’t think time is on my side.”
His head tilted. Bird-like. Assessing. “You are making jokes.”
“I make jokes when I’m terrified. It’s a character flaw.”
“It is not a flaw.” He said it like a fact. Like he was correcting an error in my accounting. “It is brave.”
I didn’t know what to do with that, so I ignored it.
“How does this work? The flying. How do I not die?”
He reached into the cloak and produced leather straps. A harness of some kind, well-worn, the buckles tarnished with age.
“You will be secured to me. Here.” He touched his chest. “Your back against me. The straps will hold you if you lose consciousness.”
“Do people usually lose consciousness?”
“Some.” He paused. “The height is significant.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“It was not meant to be comforting. It was meant to be true.”
I looked at the harness. At his chest. At the wings spread behind him like a threat or a promise, I couldn’t tell which.
“What’s your name?” I asked. I don’t know why it mattered. Maybe I just wanted to know what to call the thing that was about to carry me into the sky. Maybe I wanted to stop thinking about those straps against my body.
“Tavrin.”
“I’m Wren.”
Something shifted in his face. That flicker again, the one I’d seen at the market. My name had weight he hadn’t expected.
“Wren,” he repeated. Slower. Like he was learning it. “A small bird.”
