Page 66 of Bound
“You’re not far,” Wren reminded Firen, forcing herself to smile. She felt guilty at how few times she was the one to approach her. To come to her stall and chatter about little nothings that made up an entire life. “Perhaps you can show me that fabric.”
Firen brightened visibly. “You will have to tell me you like it, even if you do not. I shall be crushed otherwise.”
This time there was more warmth as she looked at her... her friend. The word settled. Fitted nicely, in ways that made her feel even more guilty that she hadn’t attributed it before. “You would look beautiful in anything,” Wren assured her honestly. Her hair was pale, as were her eyes. Her wings were a striking white. Marks of pale lavender curled about her neatly pointed ears, flattering and lovely.
She needed no comely attire to attract her bond-mate.
“You’re too kind, Wren. Really.” She brought her hand to Wren’s arm and squeezed lightly. “Now, do you need help setting up? Or should I make Mama happy and get back to the stall and pretend I’m helping today?”
Wren untied the straps of her pack and eased them from her shoulders. Despite their padding, they’d rubbed at her wings painfully, and she missed the salve her mother would rub on them once home again. “You know there isn’t much to sell,” Wren reminded her, feeling a little self-conscious as usual.
Firen’s family specialised in metal-ware, and their stall glittered in the suns and some dangled from delicate chains that tinkled in the winds. Ornaments, she’d said. To hang in trees and from eaves and to catch the breezes. Simply to be pretty.
Wren had wanted one desperately when first she’d seen them, but the price was high, even after one of Firen’s discounts that would surely make her father pale to hear of the amount.
“Much to the woe of every fledgling’s mother,” Firen reassured her with a smile. Bright as ever. Wren felt another curl of envy, and she hated it. Wished she could appreciate Firen’s way, her manner, without turning a critical eye upon herself in return.
Wren suppressed the urge to fidget. “I can only do so much on my own.” She shouldn’t feel self-conscious. Firen hadn’t meant anything but a compliment to how well favoured her medicines were, but still. She fretted over her use of time more than she cared to admit. If she took too long for leisure, if she spent too long working and ended up pushing her muscles past the point of fatigue into actual pain...
Something was always wrong. And she doubted anyone judged her quite as fiercely as she judged herself.
“Oh, Wren, I didn’t mean...”
Wren shook her head, pulling out some of the neatly wrapped bundles from her pack. Should she open the stall? Or perhaps it would be foolish since there would be no one to mind it once—if—Braum came to take her to the oil-vendor.
“You are exceptionally difficult to find.”
She chewed at her lip, feeling strangely relieved at the timbre that was becoming a little too familiar to her.
“There was a plaque,” she defended, hoping her actual customers did not complain in the same manner.
“First, you were not at home,” Braum observed, as if reciting a list. “Then your stall, which should have been fixed by now, was woefully absent. And the plaque was placed upside down.” He huffed out a breath, and she glanced at him worriedly, trying to see if he was truly angry by the situation.
Only to be distracted by the way Firen’s neck jerked back and forth between the two of them, her mouth slightly open.
“Wren,” she blurted out with all the accusation of one truly hurt. “Why did you not tell me?”
Wren’s brow furrowed, and Braum took a sudden step backward. “Tell you what?”
She gestured sharply between the two of them, her upset morphing into something akin to excitement. “He was at your home.”
Wren tugged at her braid. “Well, that was... that was because we had not been clear enough about the details for today. And I doubt he knows how long it takes me to walk here.” She glanced at Braum, saw the tight line of his mouth and the hard look in his eyes and wished...
She was not entirely sure what she wished. That Firen had left already? Although she felt horribly guilty for even entertaining the notion.
Wren huffed, trying to begin again with all the manners her mother had instilled in her. “Firen, this is Braum. He was the woodcutter that had the... they were his logs that...” She chewed at the inside of her cheek, hating the way she was stumbling over her words, how Firen was still looking at her as if she was keeping the most important part from her. “He’s been working on my fence. To make up for the incident with my stall. We were going to find oil today.”
Firen’s eyes narrowed. “For the fence.”
“Exactly.”
Firen looked to Braum instead, her eyes drifting over him from top to bottom. He did not falter, gave no indication that he was troubled by her perusal, although he took no pleasure in it either. “Wren,” she added gently. “As noble as that is, men do not do that for women that aren’t their mates. Not unless they’re paid handsomely for their time.”
Braum opened his mouth, but Wren answered first. “Firen! That’s not... That isn’t it at all.”
Firen looked back at her with something too near to pity. And friend or otherwise, Wren did not like feeling small and foolish, and her eyes burned and her heart beat too quickly as her hands curled into fists. “He’s my friend, that’s all. Just as you are. He’s helping me because he wanted to do something nice for me because I’d been hurt with his product, and I... I think that’s rather nice of him. You don’t need to twist it into something... something horrid when...” Words failed her. Her throat grew too tight and her breath too short, and this stall was smaller than her last and she wanted them both to leave. To huddle and hide and wait until she felt like herself again.
“That’s enough,” Braum cut in, taking a step nearer. “Firen. It has been an honour to meet you, but perhaps we might become better acquainted at another time. We’ve an errand to run, before Wren must attend her stall.”