Wren’s mouth forms a grim frown as he answers. “I’ve been closely watching your brother’s pack since the house fell. Everything seemed okay until the day he returned from the Ddraigs when they rejected him. Since then he keeps strange hours, and he disappears, sometimes for days at a time. He’s slipping into delusional madness, Condor—”
“Cyrus, my name is Cyrus.” Wren tenses as he waits for the naming rituals to connect their minds. When nothing happens, his eyebrows raise in surprise. “It has to do with my Ddraig. Our connection gives him to ability to stop the side effects that come from knowing another’s name. I don’t understand it all, if I’m being honest.” Cyrus pauses to give Wren a moment to process before continuing. “Don’t tell me your true name though, Wren. I don’t want to have any secret information that Wolf might attempt to pry out of me later.”
Wren eyes the surroundings for any signs of eavesdroppers, focusing on the place where Suryc was standing only moments beforehand. He squints as he inspects the shadows carefully, intuitively feeling the Ddraig’s presence. However, finding the area empty, Wren turns back to Cyrus. “You should know that something is wrong with your brother, Cyrus.” Wren stumbles over the name, struggling to adjust to the change. “He’s losing touch with reality.”
Cyrus nods as he agrees with Wren’s assessment, wondering once more how he can accomplish Iris’s impossible task. “Wolf has always been a little mental, but the lifestyle he’s been able to live in these masks helped hide it from the rest of the world. Now, with Mynah gone, his connection to her is stretched thin, and with this new threat of war, he’s proving how deranged he truly is.”
“It’s more than that, Cyrus. These odd hours he’s keeping…I can’t put my finger on it, but I just know he’s up to something,” A crack of a twig near the forest’s edge startles Wren. He backs away from Cyrus’s side, shrouding himself in his dark jacket’s hood. “Look, I’ve stayed out in the open too long. I will remain close by and assist you when I can.”
“Thank you, old friend,” Cyrus wheezes before his friend disappears into the darkness. “You’ve done so much for me over the years. I owe you a—”
“Stop,” Wren demands, waving off Cyrus’s gratitude out of embarrassment. Despite his wish to be under the cover of the forest, Wren hesitates, exclaiming, “Hiding as much as I have, I’ve seen a great many private details in the lives of our roommates. I’m a silent knower of many secrets that most of our friends don’t even realize exist. I’ll tell you all about them sometime if you wish. Yet in all my years with the House of Vultures, I think that the true master of disguises was you. You hid behind your leadership, your bravado, and your arrogance.” Facing Cyrus once more, Wren plunges ahead with the secret currently weighing down his heart. “I was on the roof the night Mynah killed Creeper. Before the wake, you poured out your tears to the moon, lamenting and calling up into the heavens as though you could find solace there. You were so distraught that you never even checked to see if you were alone.”
A sheepish flutter irritates Cyrus’s heart as he remembers that night. Embarrassment flushes his cheeks. “I feel so foolish to think of that time in my life. Now, facing the aftermath of the choices I made, I find I am lost. I do not know how to undo everything I did.”
“You can’t, Cyrus,” Wren hisses, scuffing the toe of his well-worn boot in the gravel. “It does no good to dwell on what is done. You played your part well, and had I not heard you that night, I would never have learned your secret. Oh, I made it sound like you couldn’t fool me earlier, but that was deception. It’s what I do, and I’m not sorry for it. But even I had no idea of your true feelings until then.”
“Why tell me this now?” Cyrus wonders, unsure of Wren’s motives as he stalks closer once more.
“You owe me nothing, Cyrus. I’m just a man, like you. Flawed, fallible, and good at misleading others. I just thought you needed to know that,” Wren replies, scuffing the dirt with his toe as embarrassment floods his cheeks. “However, I did see a great deal about Mynah in my spying. And I think that if you let your act slip, if you allow her to see the real you, she will never look twice at Wolf again.”
“I cannot dare to dream of such hope,” Cyrus whimpers brokenly, feeling heat build in his eyes where tears would normally fall. With everything that’s happened, Cyrus has no extra energy to divert to his grief. Wren nods once, then slips into the shadows silently, but his departing words haunt Cyrus’s mind long into the night.
The land around the House of Vultures comes alive as darkness sweeps between the trees. Insects chirp and flutter through the inky blackness as nighthawks and owls rejoice over their feasts. Small animals scurry through the underbrush, coyotes and wolves giving chase. The strangest noise of them all is the cacophony of frogs at the nearest creek. Each one croaks at a different time, producing one steady, drawn out monotony. It’s like a creaking door that never closes, and the sound sets Cyrus’s teeth on edge. Every moment, every noise is like an unseen threat that uses the darkness to draw closer to its prey. The muscles in Cyrus’s neck pulse with tension, straining his shoulders while he keeps a constant vigil. How long before they get curious? He wonders as he listens
