Book Review: Iron & Embers

Title: Iron & Embers
Author: Helen Scheuerer
Genre: Romantasy, Fantasy, Fiction

What It’s About: Wren Embervale waiting for Lord, one of the many men that she learned about as supporting the King during the War that culminated at Thezmarr five years prior. Lord Briar quickly recognizes her when he enters the room, as the Poisoner—a name that she has received for poisoning the former Guild Master of Thezmarr, who had also worked with the former king, using a teapot that she had created at Thezmarr. The guy claims that she had failed in executing him, after claiming that he hadn’t been involved in anything. Wren points out that he’s been awfully thirsty lately, and she had actually gotten to him days earlier through his mistress’s cosmetics. Shortly thereafter, the man dies, and she takes off his ring, before heading out into the night.

Torj Elderbock finds himself in a fist fight at the Laughing Fox, something to take his edge off in the place where four years and several months ago he had followed Elwren Embervale out from their group of friends to tell her his feelings about her. At the time, Wren had offered him one night and one night only in order to explore what was between them, but that is not what Torj wanted and so he shot down the offer, reminding himself that he is nothing but a Warsword while she is the heir to the Crown of Delmira. He manages to knock the guy unconscious, and then goes to get something to drink, another one of the drinks paid for him by one of the patrons. While he is watching and reminscing, Wilder shows up telling him the Audra had called back all the Warswords to Thezmarr because there was another attack on one of the remaining reigning monarchs. Torj doesn’t begrudge his friend the relationship that Wilder has with Thea, Wren’s sister, but still it is a reminder of what could have been. Wilder tells him that Thea is elsewhere, and Torj will find out later, when Torj asks about her as Wilder and she are generally inseparable. They go up to Torj’s room, and he finds Cal there butt naked with two women, who promptly explains that he had been kicked out of his room because Kipp was supposed to pay up and sort things out with the Laughing Fox owners. Both Wilder and Torj tell him that he should learn his lesson and not expect Kipp to do so, before they pack up and leave their way to Thezmarr. As much as Torj has tried to forget about Wren, he cannot help but feel as if her lighting was calling him home with the scars left behind by Wren’s magic prickling him.

Wren makes it to Delmira, finding lighting in the lands that is not of her own making. She goes to her little run down cottage, where it has been impossible for anything to grow in the area, and busies herself with putting away her trinkets from her victims. But then she finds herself face to face with Kipp, who has somehow found out where she lives despite her trying to keep it under wraps. Something he says triggers a memory for her of the battle of Thezmarr when she had shot her lighting into Torj’s Warhammer, and turned him from the sun-kissed golden-haired man, to the silver-haired man from the prophecy. Kipp eventually admits to Wren that she has to return to Thezmarr—either with him, or she will face Warswords particularly sent to bring her back.

There is some reminiscing on Torj’s part, in which he remembers his visit four years ago on the anniversary of the Battle at Thezmarr, where he glimpsed Wren standing with all of the other Royals while Audra gave her speech. At Talemir’s push, he went searching for Wren afterwards, only to find her in the garden crying. They share a moment, but his feelings regarding the two of them has not changed, to which Wren pushes him away and tells him to stay far away. Wren also reminisces about two years ago, when she had planned to kill Lord Riverton, only to be thwarted by Torj. Torj manages to keep the man safe, until they are in the carriage on their way to the Lord’s trial, when the man dies in front of Torj. This leads to Torj being berated by Audra and told that he will not be getting the overseas post that he had been wanting so desperately in an effort to put distance with Wren.

In present day, Wren arrives at Thezmarr with Kipp in tow, and Audra greets her at the door, telling her that there are many changes that are ongoing in the Fort which despite the five years since the battle still hasn’t been rebuilt in full. Wren’s older sister, Thea, throws herself at her and they hug, before Thea takes her to Farissa, at Audra’s behest. There, Thea leaves Wren, telling her that she wants to catch up but is being called to a meeting with all of the Warswords, and Wren enters Farissa’s room, where Farissa tells her that the reason they have brought Wren back is because the attack on the King included a type of poison that made Farissa think about Wren and how she had turned things into battle magic. Wren immediately senses her own magic recoil to the film of poison, and her curiosity gets the better of her, though she is still mad at Farissa for having denied her the recommendation for five years straight that would have resulted in her getting into Drevenor Academy. Farissa doesn’t apologize for it either, despite Wren not understanding why she wouldn’t recommend her.

After the meeting with the Warswords, during which Audra had made it clear that the Royals will need protection as an attack on one is an attack on all, Audra calls Torj aside and tells him that she has an assignment for him that might get him that post overseas after all. His assignment is to protect a royal, who happens to be none other than Wren. Torj tells Audra in indignation that Wren won’t like it, because they hate each other, to which Audra tells him that this is a good thing because then there’s no chance for them to sleep together, and adds that after all Torj is the only one who knows how dangerous Wren truly is because he’s the one that first rang the bells about it when others missed it. Torj agrees to the assignment since he wants to go overseas, but tells Audra that she will have to tell Wren.

Audra finds Wren wandering around in one of the locations around Thezmarr, and gives her the acceptance letter from Drevenor. She tells Wren that she has one condition to the Academy—that Torj will be the Warsword protecting her. When Wren tries to argue that she doesn’t need protection, Audra tells her that she either accepts it or she doesn’t go, and then leaves the two of them to sort things out, which leads to them arguing between them.

A few days later, Wren, Torj, Farissa, Kipp, and Cal head out to Drevenor via ship. Kipp is to be there as an ambassador from Thezmarr to help them strategize, while Cal will be eventually protecting a professor at Drevenor, named Professor Vulpine. Farissa has over the year taught there so she is going back to see Wren join the ranks and to also do her own work there. Ultimately, Farissa agrees to tell Wren a little bit about Drevenor though she had been sworn to secrecy. She reminds Wren that her focus had been healing, and that is a path that Wren could choose herself as well. One night, while Wren sleeps she has a nightmare, and Torj rushes in thinking that she’s under attack. They share a heated look/ moment, before she realizes that she’s ogling him and kicks him out of her cabin. During their travel, Torj keeps touching the scar from where Wren’s magic hit him, so Cal recommends that he goes to speak with Farissa. He tells her about it, describing how it feels, and Farissa tells him that it might be that his body is not made to handle the magic from the royal line, meaning that his body is decaying. She tells him that she will have to let Audra know, but agrees not to tell Wren, though she warns him that he should tell Wren himself. On another night, Wren wakes up from a nightmare again, with tears streaming down her cheeks. She finds Torj had broken down her door to get in and sat in a chair all night, after he explains that he couldn’t wake her up.

The next day, he tells her that they have arrived in Naarva, and that she can go ahead to get ready in his cabin. Wren does, wearing the outfit that Farissa had prepared for her welcoming gala. In the package, she finds a letter to Torj from Audra, which tells him of what is to come at the welcome gala, and that he is not to warn Wren, nor interfere with it, as his only job is to monitor for external threats. This is gut wrenching for him but he is taken by Wren’s silhouette in the porthole that he was looking at, which makes him hard. When they arrive, the group of five—Torj, Wren, Farissa, Cal, and Kipp, make their way to Drevenor Academy. The lady who awaits them is none other than Celeste, who is in charge of admissions. She checks Wren’s letter of acceptance against the list that they have, and lets her go through. That said, Celeste removes Wren’s hair bun, as well as all of the vials of potions that Wren normally has around her waist—which Torj had commented on it not going with the outfit. This leaves Wren feeling inadequate, but she doesn’t think much of it as she enters the Welcome Gala.

Once inside the great hall, she is given champagne, and at Kipp’s behest, she decides to drink it as sort of a liquad courage in order to start making new friends. She realizes too late that she had ingested Brown Laurel, which when mixed with alcohol has a hallucinogenic property. As a result, she goes on a trip, which culminates in her looking at Torj in “that way” and telling him that he smells good, which is also close to making him lose control as he really wants her. Thankfully, there is a mist that sprays across the whole ballroom, and it dissipates all of the hallucinogenic properties of the Brown Laurel. One of the professors comes out onto the balcony, telling them that they had failed to pick up on Brown Laurel, and revealing that they have cut down a 1 year timeline to 6 months for their cohort so that they can go from Novice to Adept within that time frame. He also reveals that there are 60 members of the cohort, and only 30 positions at the Adept level, from where they will go into mastering a particular subset of alchemy, and then onto becoming a Sage, before a Master Alchemist. Once he is done, everyone is free to pick up their keys to go to their rooms. Torj, Wren, Cal and Kipp head to Wren’s room, but everyone keeps staring at Wren because of Torj and because they know exactly who she is as word has gotten out that she is a war hero. At one point, a man tries to make a. move on Wren,so Torj chokes him with his war hammer before letting the guy go. Jasper, while wheezing from the assault, asks Wren to grab drinks with him at the Mortar and Pestle, to which Wren coldly says no.

When they arrive at Wren’s rooms, Torj goes to check the rooms to ensure that there is no harm to her, but then starts rifling through her stuff, which forces Wren to come into her room. They get into an argument, at which point Kipp and Cal leave them alone, about suitors, and Torj’s sex life. Wren’s storm magic comes to the surface, and Torj decides it might be a good time to leave, but he has to check the cupboard. He does, only to realize that it’s actually an adjoining room for him. So he leaves Wren alone, and she just unpacks before thinking that it would be a good idea to go grab a bath. When she opens the door, she finds herself face to face with Torj in a towel. They banter with each other, with Torj throwing more oil on the fire, with his words, while she is in a shift that leaves nothing to the imagination, and she notices the bulge at the front of the towel.

The next morning, Torj helps her get to the woods for her class, and once he makes sure that she is in safe hands, he leaves her alone. There is a man tied to a tree that Torj doesn’t even blink at, but Wren doesn’t understand what he is doing there. When the class starts, the professor, Hardim, tells them that they will be taking an Oath of Secrecy. Wren is the first one to do it. and once everyone has signed, he reveals that the man tied to the tree is a student of the Academy that has been there for three and a half years, and who has revealed some of the Academy’s secrets though he had taken the oath of secrecy. They watch as Hamid forces the student to drink a concoction despite the student’s protests and promises, and then as he uses a tapestry-like object to attach to the student’s head, which then promptly starts to take away the student’s memory of his time at Drevenor Academy. By the time the object is done, the student doesn’t know where they are.

Wren is forced to pair up with Odessa and Zavier in a team, which Hardim says will be the team that they will work towards the Gauntlet and hopefully pass together. They are tasked with figuring out which poison is now in their system after they touched the parchment when they took their oath. Zavier is a bit standoffish to Wren and antagonistic towards her, haughtily telling Odessa her poison, and taunting Wren as to why she couldn’t figure out what her poison is. He reveals that he has wolfsbane but has built up a tolerance to it over the years. Wren figures out her poison and takes some plants that are purgatives that help her get her poison out. As they head back to Hardim, they run across another individual who is suffering from their poison, and Wren takes it upon herself to help save them, so Zavier helps her speed it up. When they return, the professor looks them over and notices that they’ve sorted out their poison, though he comments that Wren could have caught her much faster, after noting the bit of blood on her apron. Nevertheless, he awards them 5 points each.

Torj in the meantime hates staying away from Wren and not protecting her from any harm to her, but his orders were to look for external threats only. While he is waiting for the lesson to be finished, Hardim talks to him and gives him the information of some people who either suffered magical scars or knew someone who suffered magical scars. During one of the subsequent lessons, Torj heads out to HighGround, where he meets with a baker, who tells him that his son had been part of King Leiko’s Guard, and during one of the battle five years ago, he sustained magical injuries from King Leiko’s fire, as he had used it to fight. The son was healed, but he constantly felt the fire scalding his skin, and ultimately as time went on, he became a shell of a person, before committing suicide. The baker comments that it makes sense why the People’s Vanguard is a thing right now, considering how many people have been harmed by the magic of the royal lines. When Torj asks him about it, the Baker tells him that there are advertisements everywhere about this group of people. Sure enough, Torj finds one and decides to take it with him to bring up with Audra, though he claims that he would not be surprised if she already knew about it.

Wren goes to the Greenhouse at Daarva with Torj in tow, and she wanders around it, taking down notes and getting ideas. Torj recognizes her thoughts about things and tells her to not even think about how she could use to harm others with the plants in the greenhouse. They return to her room, only for them to realize that someone had gotten in. Wren plays it off as if nothing is missing beyond telling Torj that the top of her box for the trinkets of her victims is off. Torj is a bit bothered by it, but he tells her to promise him not to hurt someone while she is under his guardianship. Wren doesn’t. What she does notice is that someone had left her a note, and she vows to review it later. Torj plans for them to get another guard for her, while Cal escorts her to class. In her next class, everyone is tasked with creating a poison that will kill a rat three days after the rat’s ingestion of the poison. To Wren’s surprise, everyone but Zavier and she rushes towards the ingredients first. The two of them write down and take notes, before heading over to the ingredients and picking what they want to make that will be unnoticeable to the rats and that will kill those rats at the end of three days. At the end of the lecture, the professor tells them that they will have to figure out a way to mitigate the poison in three days so the rat doesn’t die. This makes Wren think that it would have been nice to know this information so she could have prepared for it ahead of time.

Later that night, Wren sneaks out of her room, but Torj follows her. He throws her into an alcove, where they exchange words and she uses her poison-tipped hairpin to knock him out. Wren then heads out to the Happy Harpy, which turns out to be a brothel, but she is not going to be deterred, so she orders drinks. At some point, Torj shows up and sits down with her. He then gets fawned over by other women who recognized the Silver-haired Bearslayer, and in that moment Wren finds Zavier. She goes up to him and asks him what does he want, but he just tells her that he didn’t think she would have the guts to show up. He reminds her that now he has all the cards in hand, knowing that the future heir of Delmira is the one going around poisoning high-ranking nobles across the lands and telling her that it won’t look well, especially when she doesn’t deny it. She returns to Torj who has watched at least part of the interaction, and tells him what goes on. He offers to get rid of the guy for her, but Wren tells him that she will take care of it if she needs to in a much more painful way. She reiterates that she will not let anyone get in the way of her dreams. After a fourth drink, Torj calls it a day and tells her that they’re leaving. She leaves with him, despite her protests, and as they are heading out, Torj quickly presses her up against a wall when a carriage goes careening past them. This leaves them both a bit out of breath, almost sharing a moment, before Torj pulls away and they head back to her dormitory. Afterwards, neither of them can stop thinking of the other, and so they both come to each other—though Torj can hear Wren through the door in the adjoining bathroom as she calls out his name while she comes, and he imagines what it would be like to be inside her.

The next day, they are supposed to be going for Farissa’s lessons, and Torj threatens the stablehand to get a nice and docile horse for Odessa, while he takes Wren onto his own Tverrian stallion. The closeness of their bodies to each other really chokes them up, and Torj at one point, when Wren is being particularly annoying, tells her that he heard her moaning his name in the bath last night. Wren stutters for a moment but then has a really good comeback, which puts him on the back foot. They arrive at the hospital where Farissa is having the class create poultices and things. Zavier is their leader, as chosen by Farissa, to show them how to do things for the hospital. Wren watches Torj speak to a bunch of women, but she can tell that he is deeply uncomfortable, though when she asks him for some details, he doesn’t share much with her about why these types of hospitals make him uncomfortable. Then while Wren is thinking about Farissa’s speciality in women’s health as a healer, Odessa burns her hair and herself. This triggers another bout of memories for Wren as the smell of burnt hair and skin reminds her of her friends Ida and Sam whose heads had been placed on top of pikes at Thezmarr before the battle. She is so deep in the memories, that she doesn’t know where she is until she hears Torj talking to her, his arms around her. She finds them in the prayer room off the lesson, and share a few moments, almost kissing. They are interrupted by Farissa coming in to check on her, and when Wren tells her that she is fine, Farissa tells them that it would be best for both of them to leave the hospital as neither one of them is ready for it, yet. This comment really surprises Wren because she wonders why Torj is included, but before she can ask about it, while they’re on their way to the horse, they get attacked by a mob of people. Torj tells her to hide, but she decides to fight by his side, refusing to leave him alone with them. She uses her vials of alchemy but then senses her lightening magic, and starts using it as well. Unfortunately, she is captured by one of the hooded figures, who puts her into manacles that subdue her magic, and then begins to drag her down the street away from Torj. She tries to put up a fight, but is not able to get loose, and worries about being taken by these people, when suddenly blood sprays. Torj shows up and pulls her up, then takes the manacles off. They try to make sense of the situation, hoping to find someone alive that they can question, but they realize that those that did not escape killed themselves so that they wouldn’t be questioned. Torj takes her onto the horse, but not before she takes the manacles with her, and they return to the dormitories. She also tells him that she agrees to learn how to fight.

At the dormitory, Wren patches herself up a bit, and tells Torj that the manacles that were used on her were an alteration of the manacles that she created when everyone thought Wilder had gone dark. She explains how she made it, and why she made it, as well as the fact that the design has been changed to include that substance that was found on the knife from King Leiko. Torj tells her that he will have to report all of this to Audra and take the manacles, to which Wren wearily agrees. He tells her to bathe, and when she asks him about the training, as he is about to exit her room, he tells her that they will start tomorrow.

The next morning, Wren is joined by Cal to head the breakfast meal, where she joins up with Dessa and Zavier. Zavier had been the one to tell Farissa that Wren had a situation at the hospital, and Dessa asks about what happened, to which Wren only states that she had a headache. The Headmaster of the school interrupts them to tell them of the attack that had happened, and to explain the new rules—there will be no reason for them to be taking classes off grounds, though they may still enter the city for things, but they must do it in the groups that they have been assigned to. He also tells them that they will find that they have a new class on their schedule that morning, and then when the announcements are done, he comes up to Wren to speak with her. At first Cal wants to go with her, but she tells him that it will be fine, so she goes to the room with the Headmaster, who promptly questions her about what happened and specifically the design of the manacles, implying that she might have shared secrets from Drevenor against her oath. Wren affirms that she did not, and states that Sam and Ida were the only others besides Farissa who knew about the development of these manacles. She tells him that she doesn’t know if they spilled anything, but she does know that their last days were under tremendous pain due to torture so she would not blame them if they had. The Headmaster appears to be accusing her of sharing secrets, but before he can go any further, Zavier interrupts them to tell them that they have class. Wren is shaken by the accusations and is surprised that Zavier came for her considering that he usually is so antagonistic against her. He tells her that she was gone for longer than she should have been and they were getting worried, but also that he did state a fact—they do have class in a few moments.

The class is none other than a self-defense class, and Wren realizes that even though Torj had told her that they will be starting that morning, he made it so that the whole school was attending these lessons. What she doesn’t know is that Torj blames himself for being distracted by her in the prayer room and that almost led to her being kidnapped. During the girls changing to more fighting-friendly outfits, Wren overhears the women fawning over the warsword, saying ridiculous things like the fact that he beds five women a night because of his appetite. Then she finds out that they’re talking about Cal, not Torj, and her jealousy simmers down into disbelief. Dessa tells her that the girls have to look at someone else since Torj is taken. In the classroom, Torj gives a speech to the class telling them that if they could learn how to defend or fight, and use their alchemy alongside it, they would be formidable opponents. He shows them some moves for self defense with Cal, and then has everyone pair off. Zavier and Dessa pair off together, and so do other members of the different groups within their cohort, leaving Wren alone. Torj pairs off with her, and has her go through the maneuvers, telling her that he would have to feel like she’s a serious threat to his unmentionables before he even gets worried about her hurting him. She is a quickly learner though, and Torj finds himself having to jump out of the way of a few of her moves, however. After the lesson, Torj is waiting for her with some food and drink, telling her to eat and hydrate, while thinking about how much this was a mistake. He tells her that he doesn’t mind cooking when the time allows, and his grandmother had taught him a few basic recipes. He also reminds her that when he’s in a unit, he’s the one that is usually cooking, which she remembers from her time with him during the war. When she asks about his Grandmother, he reveals that she disappeared one day and he doesn’t know what has happened of her since, though he also tells Wren that he is originally from Tver. Wren in turn confides in him that while living in Delmira was very quiet, it was also evident to her what it once was. They go to the conservatory and are both pleasantly surprised at how beautiful it is. Wren looks around, takes some notes and grabs the items that she needs. She also asks Torj to count some of the seeds for her, and he does start counting, but then he gets lost in watching her work, so he has to recount the seeds.

Wren attends a class where she learns about the memory weave in one of them, during which she and her classmates are told to draw it and try to figure out its inner workings. It leaves with a bitter taste in her mouth because of what it does to people’s memories. Afterwards, Dessa invites Wren and Zavier to her room; Zavier declines while Wren goes. The two girls gossip about Kipp, as Dessa has been spending a bit of time with him, and then Dessa shows Wren the sketches of something similar to the memory weave. She tells Wren that her father has been losing his memories as a result of a disease and it has been slowly destroying memory and mental function, to the point where he doesn’t recognize his own daughter some days. They talk a bit about the different things that come with the memory weave and how Dessa would work around them using alchemy. At some point Dessa brings up the War, but Wren is not ready to talk about it. After they finish drinking their mug of wine, Wren asks Dessa if she has been to the archives, and since neither of them has, they go there with Cal in tow. Dessa gives Wren shit about the Bear Slayer, telling her that he looks at her in a certain way. This reminds Wren of her sister Anya, and when she tells Dessa that along with the fact that Anya died in the war, Dessa says she is sorry, but Wren tells her to keep doing it, knowing that Anya wouldn’t have let her live it down. They are stunned by how large the archives are and how many books there are. Wren suggests that they look up books on previous Gauntlets, but they are quickly overwhelmed, so they just wander around. Dessa and Wren go wandering in different sections, but Wren follows this tug within her that leads her to Torj. She observes him reading some books silently, while he is unaware. Cal makes comments that he is uncomfortable, but Wren tells him what she heard about a certain warsword, and at first Cal thinks she is talking about Torj or Wilder, but she tells him that it’s about him. They have a bit of a laugh, when suddenly Cal’s retort is cut off by a scream.

Torj has been researching magical injuries and has found that the master’s section of the archives, which is forbidden to be accessed by any novices, has been much more fruitful. He has received a missive from Audra, demanding to know what is going on with his magical injury, but he doesn’t have an answer. He suddenly notices that the library is eerily silent, and with his hammer on his back, he makes his way out of the library. He walks through the halls but has a really uncomfortable feeling about things, so he ends up running when he sees a crowd gathered. He sees a body with an apron and bronze hair, and thinks that it is Wren, only to look at the person and realize that it is not. He then runs all the way to Wren’s room and barrels into it, ignoring Cal, only to find that she is perfectly safe. They get into an argument because Wren says that she doesn’t need to be protected from everything, and he ends up kissing her. They both find the kiss to be consuming, and electrifying, but then Torj pushes her away, out of guilt because he knows that he should not be getting involved with someone who he has been tasked to protect. As a result, Wren tells him to get out, and after he leaves, Farissa comes by with royal blood for Wren to use and test on the strange substance. In class the next day, people are talking about the girl that died. Zavier reminds them that she had a name and asks them if they are even thinking about what this does to the family. Separately, he points out to Wren that the girl looked like her, and wonders if she wasn’t the true target of whoever killed her. Class starts, when two professors come out, and give them a brief—they want ideas on how someone would assassinate an individual who is extremely paranoid in the sense that the individual is guarded, and has people tasting his food and drink. They want something that will get past this person’s defenses. The class give ideas, but many of them have flaws and won’t work as well as they should or have unclear timelines. Dessa, Wren, and Zavier propose their plan—creating a new crossbow to market to the individual and people like him who use crossbows, but modifying it to give him a little pinprick on the finger, through which poison gets released. They suggest a poisonous mushroom, and the two professors look at each other, before awarding them the points for the class. They also ask them to prepare to actually make that happen for their next class.

Wren doesn’t talk to Torj, though she does want to scream at him. She is successful in all of her classes, including poisoning and saving rats several times. Slowly, weeks pass by blurring together for her, but during one lesson Zavier asks her what she thinks about the People’s Vanguard, which is the first time she hears of it. It sticks with her, though she realizes that no one has told her about it. Furthermore, after more lessons with Torj in self-defense, Dessa and Wren make a running regimen as they do not want to come last in those classes. During one such run, Wren admits to Dessa that she’s never had a man bring her to an orgasm, and so she has given up on men. Unbeknownst to her, even though she had tried to keep it down, Torj had still heard her, and was in shock. Wren, Dessa and Zavier began studying together the closer the Gauntlet came, and darkness settled over Drevenor. It was Kipp that attempted to alleviate the mood by taking them all to Mortar and and Pestle, with Cal in tow. Torj, still reeling from Wren’s admission, had attended a meeting with the High Chancellor and Audra, amongst others, to discuss what had happened for the girl to have been murdered, and they all agree that they believe that Wren was the target of the attack. Audra tells Torj that he must stay by Wren’s side and protect her, but once the meeting is over, she asks him about his research and his scar. Torj tells her that it’s not worse, just more intense in feeling ever since he was closer to Wren, and reveals that at least two of the individuals he spoke to told him that the persons who had been affected by magic were dead. He leaves the meeting with a need to see Wren, and when he arrives at her rooms, he finds them empty, with only a handkerchief left behind by Kipp.

At the Mortar and Pestle, they get good service as one of the barmaids had saved Kipp a table, and when they have drinks in hand, they play “never have I ever”. Kipp first has to explain the rules, and uses Cal’s tattoo as the first one. They go around, with some pretty outrageous statements, one in which they claim that they had never kissed a warsword and Wren is the only one who drinks. Everyone at the table focuses in on her, but she is not really forthcoming with the information, so Kipp kisses Cal on the lips and then takes a drink, telling Cal that he was thirsty. Then Torj shows up and demands to know how Cal is taking his duty seriously. Cal apologizes and asks him if they should leave so he can get his punishment, but Torj drops him and tells him that he won’t rat him out today. Wren and Torj get into an argument about how protective he is, until Kipp drops fire extract alcohol on the table, and asks to hear how Torj got the name “Bear Slayer.” Torj tells them the story of how he had gone to the mountains of Tver because villages have been ravaged by monsters there, and the village elder had told him that it were bears that had killed all those people. At first, Torj didn’t believe him, but he stayed around and saw them with his own eyes—two bears corrupted by Shadow Magic long before they knew what that was. So he took both of them on, both larger than normal bears, and managed to defeat them. Some time later, they found the culprit who made the monsters out of what once had been bears. After the story, Kipp suggests another round of the same game, but Torj shoots it down. At that point, a woman comes up to him, and sits in Torj’s lap, offering him to become better acquainted. He tries to be polite and get out of it, though he does say no a couple of times. The woman refuses to listen to him, so Torj asks to leave. They all get up but the woman doesn’t let go of him, and Wren gets fed up with her refusal to accept Torj’s no, so she points her poison tipped hair pin at the lady’s neck and tells her to leave him alone.

Torj could feel the anger radiating off of Wren at the whole situation, while the woman left them. When they exited out into the cool air, the alcohol hit Wren, and Torj tucked her into him while Dessa, Cal, Kipp and Zavier walked ahead drunk. Wren tells him that she can walk by herself, but then falls down, so Torj helps her up and she admits to him that she didn’t like the lady touching him. He tells her that she is drunk, so she retorts that he should blame Kipp. Torjs replies that he always does, and admits that he also didn’t like that lady touching him. When they finally make it to the foyer of the school, she reveals to him that her team won in design, that gave them the 30 points, and he congratulates her, adding that he’s not surprised as her designs and ideas have changed lives. Torj takes her back to her room, and thinks about what she had admitted to Dessa, knowing that if he was in any man’s position, he would find it a privilege to be with Wren. She tells him that he didn’t want her because she is broken, and he tells her that she is not broken, but she breaks his heart when the next words out of her mouth reveal that she believes what other people say about her—that there is something wrong with her. Torj tells her that only a fool would think that she’s less than perfection. He tucks her into bed, and begins to leave when Wren asks him to stay, so he does and watches over her.

The next morning, Torj lays into Cal for being reckless. He says he won’t report him to Audra so long as Cal doesn’t do it again, and protects the Queen. Cal retorts that Wren doesn’t want to be Queen, but Torj tells him that Cal will not want the guilt of her blood on his hands. Torj also tells him what was said in the Warsword meeting with Audra; that there is a threat to all of the Royal’s life from the People’s Vanguard. When Cal reiterates that he will keep Wren safe, and heads off, Torj returns to Wren’s room because he heard her groan. She is in the bathroom sitting next to the toilet, and he tells her that it gets harder to bounce back once you’re older. When he uses her nickname, Embers, there is a spark of recognition, and she asks him if they talked last night. Torj feigns ignorance, and since Wren doesn’t have any further information, he tells her that they didn’t speak about anything important. He escorts her to her healing workshop, and sits next to her on the bench, since Cal is out of comission. That is how he finds himself smelling something bitter, eyewatering and very familiar. Wren tells him that it’s the base foundation for a balm for bruises. He nods and tells her that his mother used to make something similar. She asks about his mother, but he only tells her when they leave the workbench—he doesn’t know when it all started but her father would hit her or throw her across the room over the smallest thing, which is how he knew the wing of the infirmary that they were in and the smell of the potion. Torj reveals that when he was six he tried to stop his father, which landed him in the infirmary for a week, and after that his mother insisted that he live with his grandmother, but whenever he would visit his home, he was always terrified because he was walking on eggshells and waiting for anything to trigger his father. Yet, his mother wouldn’t leave his father no matter how much the man abused her, and Torj understood at 10 years old that it would take one strike at the wrong angle to kill her, which was his biggest fear—that his father would kill his mother. And then it happened; he hit her over the head with a lantern, and she bled out on the floor where Torj found her the next day. At 15, he found his father, and killed him, using the same lantern to beat his father up. When he returned to his grandmother, she knew what he did, and told him that she was waiting for the day that he closed that chapter, as the next one was waiting for him at Thezmarr.

This made Wren understand Torj better and his protective streak, so she follows him without a word to their room, and once he did his checks, he went to his room. She stares at the door and realizes that what hurts him, hurts her, and goes into his room. He tells her not to pity him, though she tells him she doesn’t, and tells him only he can know what he sees in her face. She tells him that she sees the man behind the armor and legend, and that no one is infallible. They are close to each other, almost kissing, when he asks her if she has enough of his secrets for the night, to which she responds by asking him if there are more. He admits to her that he has a sweet tooth, and specifically for salted caramels. She promises to keep his secrets with her, and he tells her that he likes a lot of things he shouldn’t. The moment between them becomes intense, but then he steps away again, and Wren flees into her room, feeling all hot and bothered. She decides to take matters into own hands, and starts to touch herself against her workbench. Torj opens the adjoining door between them and tells her to not stop. He finds the whole scene to be erotic, and he cannot stop staring at her and what she is doing to pleasure herself. She tells him to take out his dick, and watches him touch himself as well. Both of them come while watching the other, and then Torj went to the restroom to clean himself up.

The next morning Dessa wakes Wren up by knocking on the door, and she tells her that they had planned on walking together to class, something that Wren doesn’t remember because they made these plans while drunk. They both leave with Torj in tow to the dungeons. There, they are given rats and are asked to figure out what poisoned the rats. Wren works on it with Dessa and Zavier, but someone keeps coughing in the classroom, a girl named Selene. Wren watches as Selene’s coughs turn violent and ragged, so she goes up to the girl and her team. She realizes that Selene is having an allergic reaction to the chrysanthemums, while her two teammates, Alarik and Gideon, were poisoned with Belladonna. She manages to heal them with alchemy, and the professor tells the whole class that she is the only one who recognized the misdirect and the poison. He asks the whole class to write four pages about belladonna, and realizing that no one has been able to figure out what the rats were poisoned with, he asks for another four pages of strychnos seeds. Wren hangs back after class, and finds herself with the professor, who questions her that she had used belladonna before. She tells him that it grew around Thezmarr, but he clarifies that she used it to poison someone. Wren admits that she did, to which the guy only tells her that very few poisoners die old in their beds. When she get out of the classroom, she is relieved to see Torj, and tells him that she doesn’t want to go back to her room. Instead, they head out to the gardens, and they spend some time there, collecting lavender, with Wren teaching Torj how to cut it properly so that it can grow back. At sunset, they head back to the school, with Torj holding the wicker basket full of lavender.

Time continues to pass by, and Wren pushes herself harder than ever, with Dessa on her running, and also in classes with her teammates. Torj also tells her that she has improved a lot as he trains her in more self defense and attack moves in the privacy of his room. He continues to teach her, though she is frustrated that she keeps letting her guard down on the left side. He points out that she’s not concentrating, and Wren tells him that it might be easier if he put on a shirt. He teases her about it but doesn’t put a shirt on. Wren makes a comment that she’s not as quick a learner as Thea, and Torj asks her if she compares herself a lot to her sister, and when Wren says “doesn’t everyone?”, he tells her that she was always her own woman to him. She gets close to him and touches his scars—the ones her lighting left on him—in an intimate moment. Torj steps back and tells her that they can’t. He knows that he’s screwed things up when Wren doesn’t speak to him for three days, and he has no one to blame but himself because he lets her gets close and then he’d pull back from her. He is in the back of a cart driven by Roderick with Wren, Dessa, Zavier, Cal and Kipp. They are all talking about how Zavier didn’t tell them about Roderick, despite the fact that Roderick has asked for him to share his information with his friends. Torj goes over what he would like to tell her if he could, getting caught between his duty and his feelings for her, and focusing on the rage coming off Wren.

Suddenly, out of nowhere they are attacked, by men in masks. In the fight, Torj takes an arrow to his arm, and Wren fights her way towards him. Roderick throws glasses, while Dessa throws some of Wren’s Alchemy, and Cal, Kipp and Zavier fight off some of the other assailants. One of the masked men manages to put a manacle on Torj, sapping half his strength, but his left arm is his more dominant one and he is able to keep fighting, going as far as tearing men with his bare hands. Then he hears Wren, and sees a spears heading towards her. He dives in front of it, and it hits bone, then he passes out. When he comes to, he is in Wren’s room, and she explains to him what had happened, and also reveals that they had captured many of the attackers as there were multiple attacks on various royals, and all of them were thwarted. He tells her that she has always saved him, and this certainly isn’t the first time that she had patched him up. Wren spends the next few days skipping classes to help Torj heal, and takes care of him, though he realizes that he doesn’t like being bedbound. They talk about a variety of things—Wren asks him about the People’s Vanguard, telling him that Audra had briefed her, and Torj asks her if she was scared of him, before explaining that when he fights he goes to a dark place within him where he’s more animal than man, reminding him of his father. Wren tells him that he is not his father, and she knows this because she can feel it. On the other hand, Wren admits to herself that she had never known terror like the kind when she saw Torj being speared. She stays by his side, counting his breaths, learning that he talks in his sleep, and taking care of him, though Torj refused to let her give him a sponge bath telling her that he refuses to let the first time that she touches him be a sponge bath. Unfortunately, during one of those days, Kipp barges into the room, and Torj jumps up to protect her. The only reason Kipp had barged in was because he wanted to tell everyone that he’s in love with Dessa. They are all talking with Cal standing in the hallway, so Wren tells him to just come in and shut the door, and they keep talking, until Wren tells Kipp to piss off because Torj needs his rest. Kipp finally leaves with Cal, and Wren wonders how they even found Kipp, because he’s definitely different. But this whole ordeal has her asking Torj if he has ever been in love, to which he says that he has not—but what he doesn’t reveal is that it has been until her. He also admits to her that he’s bedded many women, but tells her that it all doesn’t matter, because what does is the person who is holding your hand at the end, and that it’s someone you can’t let go of, no matter how much you might have tried.

Torj has healed much faster than he would have without wren, so when they are all out and about, he tells her that he isn’t able to share much about his warsword tasks, and they comment about how security has lessened around Drevenor now that the perpetrators had been caught. Torj tells her that his next assignment will be beyond the veil as there are many places that they haven’t explored. She tells him that she is happy for him, and he adds that it is the life of a warsword. He returns to his duties, and helps Wren in whichever way he can for her giving up a lot of time to care for him—bringing up food for her, or leaving some of the restricted books open for her to read. He dreaded the missive from Audra telling him that he’s no longer needed, and as the Gauntlet came closer, he realized that something had shifted between them—between the quiet moments without judgement, to the fact that he’s never told anyone about his past except her. In one of those moments while they are together, Torj is cleaning his hammer while thinking about things, and Wren comes to him to give him a tonic that she made for him to help him clean this hammer better. She shows him how it works and tells him that she does think of him. As the Gauntlet draws closer, Wren is pushing herself, and Torj can smell the metallic tang of blood when he comes into her rooms, but is not seeing anything. His research is not fruitful either, with books being blander than the last. Throwing a book in frustration, he asks Wren if she has ever been in love, and she tells him that she hasn’t. He prods further and she tells him that she has been with men, but they have been disappointing her, and though Thea thinks that Wren became closed off after the war, she started to become closed off before. Now, she says that there is a certain warsword that has issues with boundaries, so it’s been harder to keep her walls up, but he tells her that she deserves more. She tells him that she would like to know what it’s like to be with him, and Torj tells her that they can’t because he is her body guard. Wren tells him that they aren’t bodyguard and principal inside her room, and demands him to tell her that he doesn’t want her at all, to which Torj tells her he cannot do that.

He then surges for her, and they share a very passionate kiss, and then he starts touching her. Wren tells him that she has dreamed of him and his hand on her. He continues to touch her until she comes, and when she tells him that she wants his cock in her, he tells her that she’s not going to get it yet, because when they will have sex, they will need all night. Wren suddenly understands all that Sam, Ida and Thea have been talking about all this time, and she starts touching him when they are interrupted by a knock. Torj sends her into the bathroom to give her space to clean up and sort herself out away from prying eyes, while he opens the door to speak to Cal. When he comes to see her in the bathroom, he tells her that he got orders from Thezmarr and Cal will be here to relieve him. He assures her that he will not be kept away and it won’t be long, telling her that there’s no going back now.

Torj leaves Wren, feeling like he’s leaving a piece of himself, and knows that he’s crossed the threshold with her. He visits a woman who tells him that she is the second cousin of the late King Artos, and she tells him the story of how she tried to use her magic to try to help someone she loved, to take away the pain. In the end, Maxus ended up trying to carve his own heart out, and she shows him the man laying in bed, where he is basically strapped down so he doesn’t harm himself.

In the meantime, Wren spends time with her experiments, and Farissa visits her to talk to her about the blood and the unknown substance. During their talk, Farissa tells Wren that she is onto something though there are others who are also working on trying to figure out what this substance is. The next day, Cal refuses to tell her where Torj had been summoned, but no one seems to be bothered by the fact that Torj is gone. They go to breakfast, where they are greeted by hushed whispers. The High Chancellor announces that there are two weeks left until the Gauntlet, and explains that people will be entering the Gauntlet in 90 second intervals based on their leaderboard, before warning them to be ready. Once he finished, a heated debate unfolded down the table from Wren, Dessa and Zavier, where another student is unhappy with the fact that they are doing one year’s worth of learning in 6 months, going against the standard set for the previous cohorts. The student blames the royals for it, and Zavier asks if it is due to the loyalists that had attacked the rulers. The student responds that everything bad that has happened is due to the Royals having magic and being in charge. He keeps going until two things happened at once—Lighting shoots from Wren’s fingertips towards the beams, and a pair of salt and peppers went flying. The student sneers at her that she can’t keep it under control, but Wren knows that she didn’t cause the salt and pepper shakers to go flying. She gets the feeling that there is another royal magic user, to the point that days later she is reeling from that incident. So she calls Farissa over, and tells her exactly what happened, to which Farissa responds that there are no other royals in the Academy, and after all, none of the remaining Royals have children. Farissa tells her to focus on working with her teammates, and put this out of her mind. Wren does this, by studying with her friends, and they get into an argument one night, because Zavier asks her why she won’t use her connections to help them get ahead. She tells him that she can’t use her connections because the rulers have no power to do anything, the warswords don’t know anything about alchemy, and she hasn’t been on good terms with Farissa since the end of the war. Afterwards, she peruses the shelves, and Torj shows up to pull down a book for her. She is happy to see him, and Torj kisses her in between the shelves, then they get frisky together, with him going down on her in the library and telling her to be quiet. After Wren comes back down from her orgasm, he tells her that he hopes people heard her because then they would know that she is his. They return to his room where she gives him a blow job, and they notice that there are tiny bolts of lightning dancing across his chest afterwards. They lay down in his bed with him naked and her fully dressed, where they talk and eventually fall asleep. She wakes up next to him in bed, watches him for a while, and then she tells him that she has to go because she promised to meet Cal to greet Professor Vulpine.

So they both join Cal in the foyer of the school, and when Professor Vulpine hasn’t showed up, Wren, Torj, Cal and Kipp go to the auditorium where the presentation will start. They sit down, and soon enough the professors announce Kipp as the presenter. Cal is mad because it was an elaborate joke on his behalf, though Wren and Torj cannot stop laughing because of how obvious it was from the outset. After the presentation, which really inspired Wren because she has always had her experiences of the War, but hearing someone put things into an objective perspective helped her see how much they got done. Afterwards, Torj wants to take her to their rooms to continue doing what they were, but Wren has received a message that she and her teammates are to go into the City to get the things they need for their crossbolt design. Torj is not happy with this last minute change, and when he proceeds to leave with her from the room, he is stopped by the High Chancellor, who tells him that this has been cleared with Thezmarr and he cannot go with them. Wren has to step in and tells him that she will be all right, thought they do get into an argument where she asks him if he means to get in her way and stop her. Torj doesn’t want to, and lets her go. So the three classmates head out to the city of Highguard, where Wren goes to the apothecary while Zavier and Dessa head to the crossbow maker. En route, Wren is kidnapped and isn’t able to fight off her attackers because they use something to knock her out quickly.

Torj goes to practice fighting with Cal, and Cal gets in a punch, because Torj is not paying attention. Kipp shows up and Cal refuses to speak to him after the joke that he played on them. Torj gets mad and when Kipp says something about the joke, Torj tells Cal that it is not an apology. They spend hours fighting, and by the time they’re done, Torj realizes it along with the fact that Wren has not come back yet. Kipp does apologize to Cal, and gives him a brand new quiver along with new arrows for Cal to use, which Cal accepts but tells him that Kipp is on thin ice. Torj goes to find out what happened to Wren, but no one is willing to tell him anything at all—not even when he threatens them, and Farissa isn’t willing to break her oath either, so he has no idea what is going on with Wren except that he feels her fear and terror and other types of feelings in his chest where the scars are. Audra shows up with the High Chancellor of Drevenor and reveals that Wren is going through the Gauntlet, which pisses Torj off because they could have at least warned him. He returns to his room, where he finds Wilder, who admits that he and Thea are at Drevenor because they have escorted the Queen to Drevenor for the ceremony graduating the novices to adepts. Wilder gives him similar advice to what Torj had given him, and later when Torj is reunited with Thea and Wilder, he takes them to the study rooms in the Archives and admits that he feels Wren, along with all of her feelings. Thea asks him if at any point he has been in pain from the scar and when he admits that he hasn’t—even when Wren hit him with her magic—she asks him why he’s looking at Wounds. She disappears for a bit, returning with a book she saw in Kipp’s room, and gives it to him. Torj looks through it and quickly realizes that what they have is a Soul bond—he reads it alone, and later barrages into Audra’s room, accusing her of knowing that they have a Soul Bond. Audra tells him that she suspected but wasn’t certain, and that she has had him researching anything possible in case she was wrong. She asks him if he has seen a gold light between them, and Torj tells her that he didn’t, so she explains that maybe she is wrong and that it is not a soul bond. She explains to him that the light only becomes visible when the bond has solidified and accepted, and further elaborates that it would put them both at risk if people know that they are soul bonded—because any harm done to her or to him, will be felt by the other, and they can die if one of them dies. This enrages Torj because if it is true, then that means that when he took the spear for Wren, he could have killed her.

Wren in the meantime, wakes up in the dungeons, chained up to a chair, where she is tortured for six hours by two masked individuals asking her for secrets about Drevenor. When she doesn’t give up any information, they let her go, and she finds both Dessa and Zavier, both of whom said they didn’t share any of the secrets. The three of them leave the underground dungeons, and run through a forest while being chased by some rabid individuals who had been poisoned. Wren helps them both patch up as best as they can, and uses iruseed to keep them all awake though she uses up all of her reserves of it to get them through. When they arrive to a maze, they find themselves sprayed by a mist, and though Wren tells them to cover up their nose and mouths, they are too late. First, Dessa, then Zavier start hallucinating that they hear their father and brother respectively, and they run off. Then, Wren hears Sam, Ida, and Anya. She runs after them, and her heart breaks again at seeing them—the grief is overwhelming as she knows that they haven’t aged a day since they died. They ask her to follow them, but she tells them that they’re no longer alive, and knows that she is having a hallucination, so she takes some kind of herb to make the hallucinations go away. And she finds herself with Dessa and Zavier as Dessa has been holding lavender in front of her, since it has a calming effect. The two women help Zavier up and then they make their way through the maze to Drevenor, where Wren runs right into Torj’s arms, and they kiss.

When Torj pulls back and sees the shape that she is in, he is enraged, and wonders who did this to her. Wren doesn’t tell him anything beyond telling him to let it go and the High Chancellor announces that not only did they pass the Gauntlet, they were the first ones back, meaning they won. Torj grabs the High Chancellor by his throat and squeezes him almost to death for what he has done. Wren comes up to him to ask him to let the High Chancellor go, while a stricken Farissa comes in to check on her. Wren tells Farissa that she knew, but Farissa denies it, and then Wren turns to the High Chancellor to tell him that she will always remember being tortured during the gauntlet for the information, though this is not what she imagined of Drevenor. He defends his actions saying that they had done this to protect the school due to the attacks from the People’s Vanguard and also the fact that some students had given up information already. Farissa is incensed when she hears this and tells him off. Then, Wren and Torj leave the hall, and Thea comes up to give her a hug. Wren tells her that they will talk later, and starts heading up the stairs with Torj, before breaking down. She asks him to carry her, and so he picks her up, takes her to her room, where he settles her on the couch. She gives orders to Kipp and Cal on finding out who else made it through the Gauntlet, bringing her pails of hot water, and then checking on Zavier and Dessa. In the meantime, she walks Torj through finishing up the mending paste. When Cal and Kipp bring the required items, and they get dismissed, Torj helps put the paste on her face, then gets her out of her garments, and checks on her ribs. Wren tells him that at most two of them are fractured when he asks her opinion on it, and he helps bandage her. She spends many days in bed recovering, and when she is better, she bathes and tells Torj that she wants to have sex with him. When she is sure, he tells her to get dressed and takes her through a secret door in his room to a field full of wildflowers, where they have sex for the first time, and it is electrifying for them both.

Both of them say that they love each other, and Torj promises her that he will not leave her—it will be them together, always. Torj sees a small glimmer of gold that goes away, so he thinks he imagined it. They clean up and return to the school, though Torj struggles with the guilt of Wren not knowing the truth about what they are. He makes up his mind to tell her the truth on the stairs up to their rooms, which gets Wren worried, but then they are interrupted by Dessa, who has come to fetch Wren as they are supposed to be getting ready for their graduation ceremony. Torj tells her that they will have time to talk later and promises to tell her the truth. He then turns to go into the great hall where everything has been set up in an amphitheater type setting. The Royals make a procession into the room, the High Chancellor begins his speeches, and then the novices —25 from a class of 50—are turned into adepts. While the High Chancellor begins delivering another speech, explosions are heard, and Cal tells them that there is a contingent of the People’s Vanguard that have started attacking the school. Audra tells him to lead his own group and make sure that they do not make it into the school at all costs. Suddenly another explosion has the school wall caving and pandemonium ensues.

Torj uses his hammer to fight, telling Wren to take the students and hide behind a closed off door, to which Wren tells him that she will not do this, and will fight alongside him. She starts off using her alchemy, but then when Torj is overrun due to too many of the masked assailants, she channels her lighting magic into Torj’s hammer. He slams it down, and sends all of the assailants flying, creating a respite from the incoming groups. Everyone is fighting, even down to the High Chancellor, to push back the assailants and Thea and Wren combine their storm magic when they see a masked man, who is clearly the leader by the different way he is dressed and the way he walks forward. They channel their magic at him, but he uses a shield that dispels the magic, shocking them both. They try two more times, while Torj watches the whole scene—he realizes that the leader is using alchemy to protect his shield from royal magic. As the battle rages between them, the leader bulks up using alchemy, and Wren tries to fight him using alchemy, but at some point, he manages to get a hit in that has her flying into a wall. Thea fights her way towards Wren, while Torj takes the leader on, finding him impossibly strong. During the fight, the leader sticks a blade into Torj, near his heart, and Torj goes down. He watches as Zavier jumps in and fights with the leader elegantly, though both of them talk to each other as if they know each other. Somehow, both of them use alchemy that shoves them apart, throwing them in different directions, but the leader makes his way towards Wren. Torj tries to drag himself towards her, the leader tells him it looks like he can get to Wren through him, and Thea starts screaming, which causes Torj to snap up his head and look at Wren, who is bleeding from an invisible wound in her chest. Torj makes it to her, horrified that she’s dying. He pulls out the blade from his chest, and he sees the glimmering, golden thread between them. There are flashbacks of what Audra had told him, and how he will put Wren at peril because of injuries. He knows that no one knows what happens if you break a soul bond as it hasn’t been done, but he cannot stand Wren being hurt because of him, and he will always love her, but would rather that she live. So he grabs the golden thread, and pulls on it, tearing it apart.

Wren falls through memories, including one from 12 years ago, when she was foraging in the forest outside of Thezmarr for supplies. She hears a noise, and finds a horse with an arrow in its flank. She normally isn’t good with horses, but she strokes its neck and tries to figure out what happened to it. Then the horse runs off, and when she turns around, she sees that there is a figure at the tree where she was just picking some of her herbs. Immediately she can tell that it’s a warrior, honed by at least a decade of experience over her 18 years. The guy is clearly struggling, and blood soaked, so she sharply tells him off before sitting him down and keeping him sat while she cleans his wound and sews it back together. Wren recognizes him as Torj, between the warsword insignia, and the hammer that had been dropped in the leaves a few feet away, though tells him that she should have known based off of his arrogance. Torj is surprised by how she bosses him around and tells her that he has never had anyone talk to him that way. When she finishes, she leaves him behind, wishes him luck and hopes she won’t see him again, to which Torj retorts that he will never give up.

She keeps falling through memories of Torj and every interaction, every word. When she finally comes to, the wound is gone, and the warsword himself is different—colder. She tries to reach for him, but he moves out of her way. Thea looks at her sadly, telling her she’ll understand someday, and Dessa calls out to Wren, telling her that she needs her help. Wren comes up to her and sees Zavier struggling—he had gotten a minor cut from the leader’s weapon, and Wren is confused as to why he is struggling since the weapon was meant to harm a royal’s magic. Quickly she puts it together that he is a royal and he later introduces himself as Zavier Terling, Prince of Naarva. She has a potion that she put together based off of her own research of the alchemical compound, and she decides to take a chance on him and use it. It saves Zavier’s life, but it was the only vial she had, which she had wanted to give to Farissa. Farissa comes to her, checks her out and realizes that she had made a miraculous recovery. She tells Wren that she’ll understand what happened later, and then checks Zavier over, surprised to see that he’s doing just fine. Wren tells her that she doesn’t have any more of it, but she does have all her notes that she can use to make more.

Wren excuses herself from them and goes searching for Torj. Thea tells her that he’s not here, and that he went outside to the gardens, so Wren heads there and finds him amongst the lavender. They have a talk during which Torj keeps slamming down any sort of emotion, becoming iron. He tells her that this is a mistake and that they will not be together, that he was wrong. Wren, on the other hand, tries to understand what happened between their time in the field and now that made him like this. He refuses to tell her and in the end she accepts that they are done, erasing all of the moments that they shared in the lavender fields and even earlier that day. Then she walks out of the garden, while Torj watches her. He knows that he had hurt her, and he almost wants to call out to her, but he decides that he would rather that she lives even if it is something that he has to carry at the expense of them being together. He thinks that maybe he will take the post overseas to get away from it all, after all. But while Wren feels like a piece of her is missing—to the point that her magic can tell—Torj feels that she will always be a part of him. He had also read in the book that breaking the Soul bond brings ancient magic that heals them to survive as a half-life, and if he has to live a half-life, so be it.

Wren is approached by Audra and the High Chancellor, who confirm that Queen Reyna has been kidnapped in the chaos. Audra asks her if she has any more of the potion, to which Wren tells her that she needs to make more. Audra orders her to make more, with the High Chancellor supporting it by telling Wren that all of the Academy’s resources are at her disposal. Wren agrees, but makes it contingent on getting a different warsword to protect her. Audra attempts to decline, but Wren puts her foot down as the only condition for her to make this potion. Audra agrees, seeing as there is no other option.

My Thoughts: I love Wren’s quieter but just as vicious side, and Torj’s silent strength—how he’s aware of her in every moment. I really enjoyed this book and this love story between Wren and Torj just as much as I loved Wilder and Thea. I do feel like Wren and Torj have just slightly better banter, filled with double meanings as they had me laughing so many times throughout this book. And the emotions, the backstory and the way that they connect before finally connecting was just amazingly written. I am sad at the ending, but I do have high hopes that they find their way back to each other in the next book in the series. Can’t wait to continue reading this series!