Page 98 of Silver & Smoke
Wren
‘Even the most illustrious lineages throughout history bear the scars of lessons dearly purchased’
– The Midrealms Chronicles
‘SHIT!’THEA EXCLAIMEDas the dagger landed between her feet, just shy of one of her toes. She looked up at Wren in disbelief. ‘What are you playing at?’
‘I would have thought you’d recognize a game of Dancing Alchemists when you saw it,’ Wren said from her workbench. ‘That’s what you get for sneaking up on someone who’s already on edge.’
A smile broke across her sister’s face. ‘If you want to play, we’ll play.’
Wren huffed a tired laugh and motioned to the array of ingredients and tools strewn across the table’s surface. ‘Perhaps another time.’
‘So you got a shot in for free?’
‘You didn’t lose any digits,’ Wren offered as Thea yanked the dagger from the timber floor and offered it to her, grip first. She took it and re-sheathed the blade at her hip.
‘I still can’t believe he altered his own Naarvian steel for you.’Thea was still looking at the dagger in question. ‘Then again, he’d do just about anything for you, so...’ She swung herself up onto the bench so her legs were dangling over the side. From there, she surveyed the mess of potions and tinctures. ‘You don’t ever stop, do you?’
‘How can I?’ Wren replied. ‘We need as much of the counter-alchemy as possible, and there’s still Torj’s cure to solve. There aren’t enough hours in the day, particularly as we’re about to be on the move again. It’s hard setting this up every time we stop to make camp.’
‘As soon as we take the capital, we’ll set you up a proper workspace,’ Thea said.
‘You say that like it’s so simple.’
‘I know,’ Thea admitted. ‘But what else is there? I won’t talk in measures of defeat before the war has even begun.’
‘It began long ago, Thea. Perhaps it was never truly over.’
Thea sighed. ‘I sometimes think the same thing. What if we had done things differently back then...?’
‘We’ll never know,’ Wren told her. ‘All we can do is work with what we have now, and do our best to make sure that history doesn’t repeat itself.’
‘You say that like it’s so simple,’ Thea echoed back to her, a small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.
Wren laughed and stirred the bubbling liquid in the crucible, feeling her sister’s gaze still on her.
‘Did you ever think we’d end up here?’ Thea asked quietly. ‘Two orphaned girls from Thezmarr...’
‘That we’d be in some underground shelter in our own kingdom? That we’d be on the brink of another war?’
‘More so who we’ve become,’ Thea replied, pulling her own dagger from its sheath and starting to carve into the workbench, brows knitting together in concentration.
‘You, I could see. You were destined to be a warrior from the moment you were able to pick up a stick and pretend it was asword,’ Wren told her. ‘But me? The alchemist poisoner becoming queen? No... I didn’t see that coming. I still find it hard to believe.’
‘I don’t,’ Thea said firmly. ‘You were born to lead, Wren. I have always thought that.’
Wren snorted. ‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘Is it?’ Thea challenged, still carving into the timber of the bench with her dagger. ‘You know what I remember most about Thezmarr? Not the cold or the hunger when we were growing up. I remember you stealing extra blankets for me. Making medicines when I was sick. Treating my wounds when I was injured. You were taking care of people long before there was a crown in question. Sam and Ida would agree with me. And Anya knew all along. That’s the kind of ruler people need.’
Hearing their names aloud was like a punch to Wren’s gut, and for a second she could smell burnt hair in the air, and hear the echoes of screams.
Crucible. Harvesting knife. Lavender. Rose thorns.She clung to each object as she brought herself back to the present, looking up at her sister through the grief.
‘Don’t you wonder who we’ll lose this time?’ she asked quietly. ‘Every night I wonder who I’ve spoken to for the last time, and what those words might have been.’
‘I won’t promise that everyone we love will be safe,’ Thea ventured. ‘But I can promise that if we do nothing, the midrealms as we know it will be done for. So we have no choice. We have to fight.’
