The Prince Rides Blind

Chapter 4: The Prince Rides Blind

"Get them inside now, both of them, move!"

Callum was already moving toward the two Hollis boys as they stumbled into the ruined light spilling from Wren's doorway, the older one still dragging his bleeding brother by the collar of his shirt.

 Wren, a bit shifted, caught the younger boy before he collapsed entirely, his wolf shape flickering weakly at the edges like he no longer had the strength to hold it.

"Why are they screaming his name?" Mira demanded, already dropping to her knees beside them, hands moving fast and sure over the worst of the wounds. "Who's Theron to two Hollis boys?"

"They're not screaming for him," Wren said, understanding arriving a half second before the words did. 

"They're screaming because of him. Look at the road."

Beyond the treeline, torches were multiplying, not scattering the way a retreating raiding party would, but converging, and threaded through the chaos was a new sound, a rider breaking hard from the dark, blade already drawn, shouting orders in a voice Wren hadn't heard in eight years and had never once forgotten. 

"That's not possible," Callum breathed. "He wasn't due for another day at least"

"He rode ahead," Wren said. "Of course he rode ahead. He always did the reckless thing when it mattered."

"You say that like it's an insult."

"Tonight it might get him killed. Decide for yourself which one it is."

The rider, Theron, unmistakably, even through smoke and torchlight, cut down the nearest Vaelith man without slowing, a second guardsman close behind him struggling to match the pace. 

He hadn't seen the house yet. Hadn't seen her.

"He doesn't know we're here," Wren said, and something in her voice cracked open despite every year she'd spent sealing it shut. "He's riding into this blind."

"Are you certain?" Mira asked, not looking up from the wound she was pressing closed. "Certain enough to bet his life on it?"

"I know the sound of a man fighting like he's got nothing to lose because he thinks there's nothing left to find. That's not a man who knows his children are forty feet away."

"Then we even the odds before he finds out the hard way," Callum said, already moving toward the doorway, sword raised.

"Wait! Mira's hand shot out, catching his sleeve. "The boys need a healer now, not an escort. If you leave, I'm the only thing standing between them and bleeding out."

"I'm not leaving you undefended."

"You're not the only sword in this house, Captain."

"You're not going out there alone."

"I'm not planning to stay in here and 

watch," Wren said. "Every second we argue is a second he doesn't have a second blade at his back."

"He has a second blade. Serel's with him."

"Serel is one man against however many Vaelith sent after that horn sounded. That's not a fair trade, and you know it."

Callum's jaw worked, weighing something he clearly didn't like the shape of. "If you go out there, he sees you. Tonight, like this, mid fight, with no warning  "

"Then he sees me," Wren said. "It's eight years past the point where I get to control how that happens."

Wren was already shifting fully, fur rippling up her spine, the argument settling itself the only way it could. She didn't wait for Callum's approval before she was through the doorway and into the smoke, closing the distance toward the fight at a dead run.

Theron didn't see her at first. He was too deep in the press of it, two more Vaelith men breaking from the trees to meet him, his guardsman shouting something lost beneath the clash of steel.

 Wren hit the nearest attacker from the side before he registered a second combatant had joined the fight at all, driving him off Theron's flank hard enough to buy several seconds neither of them had a heartbeat to spend gratitude on.

"Who" Theron's blade came up on instinct, half turned toward the new threat at his side, before the wind shifted and carried something underneath the smoke that stopped him cold.

Wildflowers. Rain on stone.

The memory hit harder than the sword he nearly failed to block, a room he didn't recognize, candlelight, a woman's shoulders shaking as she turned away from him, his own voice saying words he couldn't quite hear even now, couldn't quite forgive himself for without hearing them.

"Your Highness!" his guardsman shouted. "Focus!"

Theron didn't focus. He turned instead, blade still raised, breath caught somewhere in his chest, and found her mid shift back to two legs, blood on her hands that wasn't hers, staring at him with an expression eight years hadn't taught either of them how to read anymore.

"Wren," he said, and the name came out of him like it had been waiting a very long time for permission to exist again.

She didn't answer. Behind her, the door of her own house stood shattered open, torchlight spilling across two bleeding children and a healer working frantically to keep them breathing, and behind him, three more Vaelith riders broke from the tree line at a dead gallop, closing the last of the distance before either of them could say another word.