Choosing to say out of the Alliance, the Cinders are isolated in their own conflicts, and when Helia Cinder reaches to the void for answers, she inadvertently draws a creature out. Expecting to be eaten alive, she is instead left with a man with no...
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Wren woke in his room in the complex, dressed lightly in a tunic, groggy, nauseous, and pissed as hell. It took him a half of an hour to get on his feet, and he sat on the edge of the bed even after, his hazy memory floating by in clouds of lies or betrayal. What he remembered and what he knew happened differed greatly, and he leaned over the waste bin to throw up anything left in his stomach. As his knees hit the ground, he slumped with his head in his arms and cried. It made him feel weak. Shedding tears was not something for hardened warrior Songs, but Wren had never suffered as much as he had the night before.
Stripped of his ability to fight.
Unable to call for help.
Used by a stranger.
Riff was his best friend, his first general, his comrade who had been the difference between life and death dozens of times in his life. They'd grown up together, trained side by side to fight the monsters, yet the only monster he'd come upon yesterday had been Riff himself. That had not been the man he remembered. Losing his people and spending half a century alone had warped Riff into something ugly. Yet, Riff was his only ally in the fight against Talamayas to avenge their people.
His door opened and Wren jumped to his feet, rubbing the tears away, but there was no hiding how red his eyes were as Riff stepped in the room. Riff was dressed for war, with his mage wear tied tightly at his waist, sculpting his muscles with dark fabric. Red music notes bordered his collar and a hem that sank to near his knees. The white mage pants ran from his hips to his feet, closing at the ends to keep the sand of the dessert out, and gunmetal-grey bracers covered both of his wrists for physical clashes with vampires. With his red hair braided down to his waist and his dark eyes filled with the determination to kill, he looked like the villain more than anything.
"I'd expected you to be up and ready to fight by now," Riff said sternly, like this was just another fight and Wren had overslept. Like they were back in their training days, rising before the sun to wash and mentally prepare themselves under the falls, before donning the garb of their people to show all that would fall at their feet who destroyed them.
"Sorry if I'm not jumping into battle after you drugged me, stole my free will, and left me at a woman's mercy." Wren growled, heading over to the wardrobe to grab some new clothes.
What he found there had him pausing his anger as he ran his fingers over a garment too familiar to confuse for anything else. Airy white sleeves bordered by black music notes complimented the oriental style of the garment, and several hangers of protective layers hung next to it. The white clothes he wore to battle hugged him more tightly, as they did Riff, but Wren had always liked to leave the sleeves free and hanging at his wrists. After all, if a vampire was close enough to make them a hindrance, he was dead anyway.
Riff must have commissioned these made well before Wren's rescue, the garb of the Song general who'd led his people and fought alongside them to rid the world of the scourge of the night. Each and every mission, he's brought them home safe, into the arms of their families and children, all except the one time he'd gone it alone. That had been his downfall, his people's downfall, and something inside of Wren screamed for him to wear the familiar armor of a mage.
