Torryn lets out a heavy sigh. “She’s not yours to star in some twisted fantasy role.”
Riven smirks at him, raising an eyebrow as he retorts, “Says the wolf who wants to name her like a weapon to use.”
Sylvin’s voice cuts through next, cool and clipped. “Your options are inconsequential. I don’t know whyeither of you even bothered after my choice, it clearly fits her.”
I shrink back a little under the weight of it all–their voices, their judgments, their expectations.
They aren’t offering names.
They’re offering versions of me that they picture, and none of them feel likemine.
Azyric hasn’t spoken. He’s still half-turned from the circle, his gaze scanning our surroundings like none of this concerns him.
Then I hear it, just barely floating on the wind.
“Wren.”
I turn toward him, startled by his sudden contribution. His silver eyes flick toward mine, just for a second, but it’s long enough to see a softer expression hidden in their depths.
A beat passes. One breath, then another.
“I like that,” I mumble, nodding to myself.
Wren.
“It would be him,” Sylvin mutters, folding his arms as he casts a sideways glance at Azyric. “Of all of us, the one who won’t even look at you chooses the name that resonates.” His voice is light and teasing, but I sense a bitterness beneath the words. “How fitting. A shadow names a girl born from the depths of the earth.”
Riven’s jaw tenses, red eyes narrowing just slightly. He says nothing, but the silence feels sharp.
They don’t argue my decision, but they don’t celebrate it either. It’s clear that none of them expected it to be him who offered a fitting option.
I watch Azyric’s shadows climb higher, obscuring everything but his face.
Then the moment fractures as Torryn’s voice breaks through, gentler than before.
“Now that we have that settled, I’m sure you’d like to know what we know about you, Wren.”
Warmth floods my chest as I meet his gaze and whisper, “Thank you, I would.”
This is what I’ve waited for. To see if they would willingly share the knowledge they have, to help me piece together who I am and where I come from. From their actions and offerings of names, I was beginning to wonder if they didn’t have any interest inmytruth. If maybe they were getting caught up in these fantasies they constructed of me in their minds.
“My second was flying overhead when the battle began,” he says. “He said the ground shifted of its own accord. It didn’t split open from a barrage of magical attacks. It didn’t split open in cracks, like a natural disaster meant to swallow all in its path. It moved gently and slowly, like itchoseto open and offer you to the world.”
A breath sticks in my throat at these details, but his initial words slam back into me.
I blink, struggling to picture what he said. “Flying…?”
“We’re shapeshifters,” he explains. “Born to shift into the animal spirits we bond with. It’s our second form, and some of us have more than one.”
The wordshapeshifterlands with a thud in my mind. My brain doesn’t rebel against it. It folds in around it, like it accepts it as the truth I already knew deep down.
Something in meknowsshapeshifters, like a hazy memory of a dream I woke from too fast.
I look between them all, voice quiet as I speak. “You’re all shifters?”
Sylvin chuckles under his breath. “Hardly.”
Riven’s scoff slices through the space with an air of arrogance. “Do I look like a beast to you?”
