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“Then let me show you…if you’re sure you want to share it.” She bit her lip, uncertainty flickering over her face. “Old memories, well, sometimes they’re harder to reach. And I might be—” She gestured vaguely toward his head. “It might take longer. I’ll be in your thoughts a little more than usual.”
He wanted to laugh at that. She’d barely left his thoughts since he’d met her. Of course, that wasn’t what she meant…not really. If he showed her his memories, she might see more than he planned to reveal. He should’ve been uneasy at that. Even a season ago, the idea of anyone being inside his head would’ve sent him running. But now…
“Having you in there can’t be worse than constantly replaying the memories,” he said, trying for humor. It only made her frown deepen.
“Come inside with me,” Wren murmured. “Jessa’s with Calen, so she won’t be back for a while. You’ll be more comfortable where it’s quiet.” She stood, lifting the basket, and crossed the shared porch toward her cottage. At the doorway, she paused and glanced back. “You can still change your mind,” she said softly.
“Not this time,” he answered. He rose and followed her in.
Chapter 42
A Memory Forged In Fire
Closing the door behind him was like springing a trap he’d built with his own hands. Wren had seen it coming before he did. She always did. She read him too easily—like there were cracks in him only she noticed. He saw it in her eyes—the opening she was quietly giving him—the offer not to face this if it hurt too much. She would’ve let him back out even now.
He couldn’t stop now. Something in him needed her to see it. He needed to see it, too. Maybe his father would stop haunting his thoughts if he did.
Wren’s hooves snapped across the wooden floor. She picked up a lantern from the table, coaxed it to life with a sparkstone, then settled onto the rug.
Their knees brushed when he sat across from her. Panic and heat tangled in his chest, confusing and inconvenient. He shoved it aside as she lifted her hand toward his temple. He’d asked her to do this. The least he could do was try to be calm about it.
“Try to focus,” she said, voice barely a whisper. “Sometimes old memories…they’re harder to reach. I’ll be with you the whole time. Are you ready?”
Words wouldn’t come, so he simply nodded and shut his eyes. Her Spirit weaving washed over him like water in a warm bath, rising slowly around him. The world tilted.
Darkness cracked open with a flash of color—images flying past, too quick to comprehend. Then the world settled, and Wren found herself standing inside a forest camp of makeshift tents.
Men and women stood in heavy armor streaked with dried crimson—not all of it from dye. They bandaged wounds, sparred, and passed dented mugs between hands stained with blood and filth. They stalked through the camp like wolves: a pack bound by harsh loyalty, shared pain, and the kind of infamy that rose like smoke from a house fire.
Raucous song swelled louder. A bear of a man in blood-stained plate strode into view. His beard was braided and graying. His expression was as blunt as a butcher’s cleaver, but his eyes were fierce and watchful.
Dravek. His name rasped through the connection like a dying breath. Beneath Wren’s fingers, the pulse in Orzen’s temple kicked hard. Fear, respect, dread, and a dark kind of love tangling together until they rattled through her spine.
Dravek shoved a man in front of him. It took a beat for her to recognize Orzen. Younger than he was now. Head shaved short at the sides—the rest gathered at the center back, tied with a looped piece of leather. Dried blood crusted his dark armor. A cold, hollow detachment was etched across his face.
This was not the man that sat across from her now. This was the man he’d left behind—the man who’d accepted the Crimson Brand as family.
Dravek clapped the younger Orzen on the shoulder, grin flashing faster than any blade. “Blood well spilled means gold well earned!” he bellowed.
The camp erupted into cheers.
Orzen didn’t flinch. He joined them, raising a tankard someone pressed into his hand and swallowing half of it in one long pull before tossing it aside.
When the cheering subsided, Dravek leaned closer to him. “You fought well, my son.”
Before she could catch her breath, the memory lurched backward—then sideways, slipping from one wound to another.
A cavern flickered into being—wide and bright, torchlight glinting off stone walls where crystal veins ran. At the cavern’s center, a rough ring had been staked out. Fighters circled inside it in pairs, all wrapped knuckles and bare skin.
The air was thick with sweat and breath and adrenaline. No weapons. Just bare hands and skill. Orzen crouched near the middle, stripped to the waist, sweat slicking the curve of his back and the flat line of muscles at his chest. Younger still—twenty maybe—but not yet a boy. Alive in a way Wren had never seen him. He rocked forward on the balls of his feet, grinning through the bruises blooming along his ribs and jaw.
Across from him, an elven woman—sharp-featured, hair cropped in fierce, golden-brown spikes—matched his stance with a feral, delighted smirk. Kael, the memory murmured. A coil of affection and guilt twisted through the connection so suddenly Wren felt him flinch.
When he tried to move them past it, the memory caught and looped, as if his mind would rather linger here than draw closer to the real wound. For a heartbeat, she thought he’d pull away entirely and give up, but he forced the thread to hold.
Kael struck first, fast as lightning—duck, jab, knuckles slamming into his chest. Orzen countered with a blow aimed at her ribs, but she slid aside with a laugh, caught his wrist, and spun behind him. A boot landed between his shoulder blades. A memory of pain sparked through the link, intense but fleeting.
He twisted free, but she was already moving, straddling him before he hit the ground. The flash of a silver blade curved at his throat as she pinned him with nothing but momentum and terrible confidence.
