Wren's gaze spiraled into the wall of the mage complex room they had given him. It was sparsely populated with a bed, a bookshelf, his medical equipment of course, and the cold bench he sat on. There was heat in the room, but Wren felt cold, and it washed over him in waves each time the panic attack renewed. The mages had decided to call Talamayas here to talk prior to the meeting for the alliance. They couldn't have all this blowing up in their faces on the day of, and it didn't matter if it was today, tomorrow, or the next to Wren.
It would be the same.
Vice hadn't said anything to him since he'd made the spell for Tala to go back home, just sat there on the bench next to him as invisible as always. The most he'd done was express his displeasure at what was happening by tugging on Wren's mage attire with frustration earlier. It also wasn't like Wren had tried to converse with him. Vice was loyal to Tala, body and soul, and Wren was just a play thing, a pet that Tala had allowed out of his cage for a year. Vice wouldn't console him, nor would he protect him or care when Tala turned on him.
A soft knocked echoed on the door, and Wren sat himself up with a groan of pain.
"Enter," Wren said.
The door creaked while Wren tried to figure out what the mages wanted now. They'd been over his relationship with Tala backwards and forwards. Some things Wren had omitted, like how they slept and bathed together, but others they had prodded him for so that they knew what their leverage was. With an alliance with the vampires at stake, the most important had been if Tala owned him by vampire law. After all of these years, Tala had never bitten him, and they certainly weren't that physical, so Wren was owned by no one.
Instead of the normal acolytes who'd been grilling him, the pleasant navy weave of Silvia Copse's short hair peaked past the old anti-magic door. It had been the longest year since he'd met her, and without her, he'd still be in the dungeons. Wren had a fondness for her, the fervor she threw at anyone with ears, the compassion she held for even vampires like Talamayas, and the sheer force of her will to stand next to her vampire mate and refuse to fall in line with the rest of the mage's beliefs about their kind.
"Silvia." Wren had expected another Levisca mage, but the woman was more than welcome. While the complex here was full of so many old souls, something young and willing to change and fight for peace was nice.
As soon as Silvia saw him trying to sit up for her, she sat on the bench in a flash of concerned movement. A chuckle escaped Wren as he knew Vice had to have darted away to not get squished, but it was so light that he himself couldn't audibly perceive it.
"Not expecting me?" Silvia asked seriously, almost as if she might walk out and make an appointment.
"No, but I'm happy to see you," Wren said genuinely, his gaze softening as his thoughts of the girl smothered his worries about Tala for just that long.
The silence then was so calculated that Wren knew what she was here to ask about. It was the same thing with everyone, though with different lenses on the scenario he was in. Silvia was uniquely knowledgeable of how close Tala and he were at any given time of day.
"By the looks of it, you don't want to talk about it, but I wondered if it were me, if you might open up?" Silvia worded the start with care but was straightforward with the rest. "What happened between you and Talamayas? I thought you two were getting along, even if you weren't best friends."
What indeed.
Facts were easiest, so Wren started with those. Silvia would understand. The woman knew what Tala was capable of more than anyone, having experienced his hands on her.
"Talamayas and I did get along, yes. With the blood writ, he couldn't harm me, so he never tried, but at the same time I knew that he only kept me close out of possessiveness. There is so much bad blood between us that without the blood writ, I know where I'm going to end up."
"Without it?" Silvia asked.
"There was an annulment clause in the blood contract Talamayas and I signed," Wren explained, but the more he thought about it, the deeper he fell into that pit of panic.
Stretching out his legs, he slipped off the bench and curled in on himself on the floor. With his knees pulled in, his arms wrapped around them, and his head tucked away in between, it reminded him of the decades he'd spent in those dungeons. This was just what he did when he was alone, huddled in fear, sometimes cried, and others screamed.
"If Tala were to ever save my life of his own free will, then it broke the nonaggression seal." Saying it made it more real, and Wren's voice trembled as he finished. "It meant the blood debt was paid, that the life he gave me for yours would have been returned."
"Oh," Silvia knelt in front of him, but didn't say much.
What could she? Words would do nothing here.
Yet, Wren started to ramble as his feelings poured out. "Talamayas, he..." Wren shook so hard that it choked off his words. "I was the first one he looked to when the fight was over. Before his generals, his men, his allies, and I... I panicked. I was weak and I couldn't defend myself."
Everything had gone wrong. At first, Wren had feared that Tala wanted to cage him, to take him back into his control, and he'd hidden. But the last look Talamayas had given him had not been anger or glee at his future suffering. Wren hadn't seen that expression on him in a while, and he knew what it meant for him when Tala got him back. Actually, he wasn't sure he'd seen that expression on the man ever. It had been somewhere between sadness, disbelief, and rage. The easiest word was betrayal.
That was what Wren had done.
The cat was out of the bag that Wren had never trusted Tala, even if the man had given him a place among his people. It was clear to Tala now that only one of them had been earnest in trying to bridge the gap that was between them. How was Wren to have known that? That the man had just wanted to be with him after the fight?
Why? Why, why, why?
It mattered so little now. Tala hated betrayal more than anything, lies, deceit. Every part of his life and house was organized to avoid it, prevent it, and create a safe life for his people. But Wren had played along with them, never trusting anyone, including Tala. It was that sole thing that now sealed his fate.
Talamayas didn't forgive betrayal.
Something dripped lightly on the tile, much like the sound of rain, and Wren realized he was crying. They had slipped out on their own, and Silvia pulled him into a gentle embrace in an attempt to sooth him. It felt so good to be held, and he trembled, but it changed nothing.
"I can't do it again, Silvia," Wren said to the floor between his knees. "Live in that dungeon awaiting the setting of the sun each day to be tortured until it rises once more. I'd rather die. I have to die."
"Wren, don't say things like that." Silvia shook him, and he could barely see her through his tears as he raised his head to face her.
"You don't understand, Silvia. I can't live. If I am with the mages, every vampire house will turn away from them, leave them for dead to their enemies. New northern and southern houses will rise in the power vacuum left by our fighting. They will be every bit as much of a threat as their predecessors if the vampire allies don't stand with the mages. I will be the death of everyone if I live. The vampires will demand my head, there is no doubt."
None of those things were negotiable.
"There has to be something else you can do," Silvia insisted in the way only a vibrant young mage could. Those as old as him who'd tried every avenue had given up long ago.
"There is not. I know I angered Talamayas by refusing to return with him, but I can't be tortured any longer. My freedom with them hasn't been for much more than a year, and I know the Sols were only biding their time until I was dragged back down into their hell. I will offer my life to Talamayas if he agrees to execute me here. I want to at least die with my freedom. That is all I can offer to ease this."
"There has to be some other way to solve this," Silvia croaked, rubbing her own tears away as Wren broke her hold to stand.
"We'll find out soon enough anyway. The mages called Tala here today so we could get this settled before it was an issue with the peace negotiations." Wren paused, warmth flooding through his chest in affection for the woman. "I would like it if you were by my side in my last moments, though I know you might not relish the thought."
Silvia grumbled and headed out of the room, leaving him there in the final ounce of silence he would have before he was forced to face Tala. It was not long after that Kopje showed up to fetch him for the mages who'd already met Tala. Through the man's hardened expression that every infiltrator class grand mage wore, Wren thought he saw a mix between pity and apology in the man's one working eye. Kopje knew better than anyone how vicious vampires could be, and both of them were familiar with Tala's flavor of it.
There was no time left for tears and regrets as he left his room behind, and Kopje followed. This meeting wasn't going to be a discussion so much as a demand for him to return, and if Wren refused, Tala would use force. Kopje had to help him walk down the hallways, and not because he was physically too weak to stand. The moment, he heard Tala's voice boom down the hallway from the main greeting chamber, Wren's knees gave out.
The first line he couldn't make out but the depth of that gravelly rumble would shred anyone's ears, hardened mage or not. It was the line after that had Wren leaning against the wall just before the greeting room. They were too close now for it to be obscured, and it rang through Wren with damning clarity.
"You will honor our laws. Wren is mine. You can't take him," Talamayas said sternly, punctuating the words with dangerous dark magic that licked every inch of Wren's body as it rounded the corner.
There was no point in hiding, since Tala could already sense him, so he slipped far enough to see him standing toe to toe with Luna Aurion. Luna stood strong, wrapped in her pitch mage attire and with her near silver hair tied up in a tight ponytail. That was how she kept it for battle, and Wren was now imagining the ways this could go grievously wrong.
Talamayas wasn't even fully in the complex, hovering by the door as if he were prepared to grab Wren and flee at any second, a wholly terrifying thing to imagine. Flanking Tala on either side, two midnight skinned lycanthropes waited with eager golden eyes, like dogs waiting to tear at a good bone. They would do anything for Talamayas if ordered. Unlike most who were mercenaries for hire, the Sol lycans went back generations in service of their house. No one was more deadly if Tala took off their leash.
"To my knowledge, you don't own Wren Song by vampire law. The man has never been bitten, and I doubt you're going to come out of the closet and tell me that you had sex with him. Being in your dungeons for any duration does not constitute ownership." Luna had more balls than Wren and Kopje combined.
Those words drove such a violent anger out of Tala, that his crimson eyes darkened to near black, matching the angry sway on his black tail of hair as it rippled on the rising dark magic. It was like a snake behind him, waiting to strike, and the way Tala's muscles tensed and his teeth ground together in a near screech of bone on bone, it was no small wonder what he was entertaining in his thoughts. Then, just like that, it came to a crescendo and crashed back into a calm.
"The man owes me a blood debt by our laws," Talamayas tried a different angle, awkwardly level-headed enough to negotiate when it was not his forte. "Any man, vampire, or human who kills a mother is subject to forfeit their life to that house. That law will not be changing. We have few females and killing one is heinous. Tanya aside, most of them are not warriors."
Something was weaker about Tala's voice, Wren noticed, but perhaps it was just the exhaustion from the fights. While Tala was physically strong as ever, the lines near his eyes crinkled more, as if he hadn't slept well or like he'd been crying for hours in a room by himself. Like Wren had been. Wren doubted the latter was the case, but there was something withered about him as he argued for Wren's return.
In the lull, Wren slipped into the back of the room and all eyes darted to him, though most for a few seconds. Silvia was there, standing not far from Tala with her arms crossed to show her frustration, and her father, Forest, was further back on the opposite wall as Wren. The mage was dressed oddly in informal clothes in a loose haori and with his long brown hair flowing freely about his shoulders to his waist. It was the last set of eyes that terrified him, Tala's crimson moving and reaching, but Wren looked away in fear that had Tala focusing back to Luna.
"We are willing to pay that price," Luna said. "The mages will return Wren Song to you if you agree to execute him. Here. Among his people. That is all he asks in return for giving up his life without a fight."
At the start of Luna's words, Tala had looked as if she'd slapped him, but near the end his furious gaze was so focused on her that it looked as if he was staring through her to some secret horror. With no warning, Tala lunged for Luna Aurion, and Wren was too paralyzed to even pretend he couldn't helped.
Thankfully, Forest was more there, and he cut Tala off with one hand and pushed down Luna's mage staff with the other before she blew off someone's appendage. Talamayas snarled, a sound that would have made any other vampire house head skitter away, but not Forest. Parents on their own had a will of iron, and when combined with Forest's mage general status and need to protect this budding alliance, his was unbreakable.
"If you hurt her, you ruin peace for all of us, Neil included," Forest said calmly, playing on Tala's loyalty to his best friend because it would get him the furthest.
Tala reacted much as Wren expected, lifting Forest by his haori's shoulders and yanking him off the ground into his face where he bared his fangs.
"I will not kill Wren, less as a show for you twisted fucks. Wren is mine! You want to die, you talk to me yourself, you coward!" Tala yelled the last to him as he set Forest down, and Wren jumped into a standing position as those crimson eyes raked over him.
There was no running from them then, and Wren knew that this was not something he could have dictated for him. It was, though, something he felt strongly enough about that he dismissed Kopje to walk on his own. Sure, they were short, rickety, steps across the wall and over to Luna's side, every inch closer speeding his heart into what would be a violent crash. In his head, he repeated the words that would keep him going, give him strength to speak.
He couldn't go back to those dungeons, to the dark, to the torture. All he wanted was to live out his last days in peace, at least the way it had been so far. Death had been knocking since he touched Tala's mother, so Wren had no right to ask for much, but to die among his people was worth begging for. As Tala's magic grew stronger, all he could see was the way Lieder had died alone, hung from his cell, full of sorrow and regret, with no family to mourn his passing.
Wren couldn't end that way.
Now in front of Tala, Wren leaned on Forest for support that the mage gave willingly. Too much so. This whole ordeal was bothering Forest as much as Silvia, Wren realized. It didn't take too much guessing why since Wren knew Forest from before his incarceration, even if it had been in Forest's teen years.
"Please?" Wren found only the strength to whisper at the floor tiles, and tears poured out to fall upon the floor like a marching parade. "Don't make me go back there."
"You'd rather die, Wren? Really?" Talamayas asked with what sounded like disbelief coated with disgust.
What the hell was confusing about this to him?
"You don't understand what it's like being a prisoner, Tala!" Wren grew some strength from his sheer level of frustration with the man's lack of empathy.
Tala only tightened his jaw. "I'm not going to kill you, Wren, and if you stay here, I will kill them." Tala motioned his hand to the mages around. "Perhaps not Forest, but if he gets in the way, I have no opposition to knocking him out."
"You wouldn't!" Wren growled the word, but he knew what sort of man Tala was. Asking was moot.
Talamayas had the gall to laugh so hard that he had to hold himself to still his shaking, and Wren whitened from the sound. It was too close to the cackle that had echoed in the dungeons as Tala seared his flesh, and it terrified him to see the man reverting back to the torturer he was used to. Without the writ, Wren was his prisoner, nothing else, and he wanted to throw up.
"You know me, Wren. Mages mean nothing to me. None except you." The last was a hiss of anger, and steam rose from Tala's lips. "Rescind your request for protection or the blood is on your hands."
"Why do you have to be monster, Tala?" Wren's voice cracked as his despair took him over.
Tala scoffed, and Wren couldn't believe that this was how Tala wanted to end this. There was no other choice that would save these people. Wren could want and beg for his demise among people he cared about, but in the end he was as damned as the day he'd first met Tala. All that awaited him was to rot in a hole until he could take no more.
And he was already near the point of giving out under the pressure.
"Fine, take me back, but you'll be damned if you think I'm going to go willingly." Wren braced himself for Tala to move for him, but the man remained still as stone. Wren might almost call Tala's expression cautious if he didn't know the man better. Eventually, Tala's eyebrows lifted and he let out a breath of incredulity.
"Touch me and Vice will just knock you out. Then you have no control of what happens to you in my territory." Tala had the right of it, and Wren lost the little fight left in him as that hand came for him.
The same hand that had held him, slapped him on the shoulder like they were friends, and saved him from Hel Valk, grabbed him by the collar of his mage attire and dragged him stumbling back to the door. No one could help him this time, and Wren was all out of confident words as they neared the thin veil that kept Tala from making a transportation spell to his desert. The first words that came out of his mouth were curses, angry hateful words that went in Tala's ear and out the other. After, he pled, begged for Tala not to do this, to kill him here, to not force him to go back.
Then he cried.
Broke down and just wept as they fell into Tala's dark magic.
Word Count: 3547