Wren had nearly forgotten how tired she was by the time the sun had begun to hang low in the sky. She blinked the sleepiness out of her eyes and stared at the bowl of food in her lap. Her dreams had chased her the last few nights. She hadn’t realized how much seeing Rannok again had shaken her until she’d put her head down and visions of the market stall collapsing had flooded her mind and woken her back up again.

"Wren, you aren't eating." Her mother's voice crooned like a hawk trying to soothe a mouse. Wren's fingers twitched and gripped more securely around the edge of the bowl. Her mother's stew smelled terrible, and it tasted like boiled shoe leather and grease. She longed for dried meat instead, but they'd run out of that a long time ago.

She supposed she could tell her parents. Spill to them that he’d returned and *that’s* why she didn’t want to eat or sleep and had been so listless. But that all but guaranteed that she’d be watched like a mouse under the gaze of a barncat until he left again, if he did at all.

"Leave the poor girl alone." Her father looked up from the leather glove he was stitching, then back down again. "You can't expect her to tell you everything, Meria. You know she gets this way."

Wren set the bowl on the tiny crate they pretended was a table, grating at the sound of her father’s voice, talking about her again as if she wasn’t in the room. The wagon's wheel caught on something outside and it lurched forward. Wren's mother grabbed the bowl before it had a chance to spill and shoved it back into her hands.

"Would you please stop wasting food? There are people out there that would be happy to have stew." Wren's mother paused to take a bite of her own meal, then washed it down with weak ale from a wooden tumbler.

Wren went back to pretending to eat without answering. Her mother gave her a placating look. She used a thin and work-worn hand to brush a strand of hair out of Wren's face. "Have you given any thought to what we talked about the other night? Dorah's son."

Wren looked up just long enough to fix her with a poisonous look. "No, I haven't, because he can't manage to speak without stuttering."

"Wren!"

Her mother covered her mouth with her hand, like it was somehow shocking that she'd said it. Wren didn't know why they were friends with Dorah's family in the first place, other than because of their money. Dorah had a way of looking at Wren like she was a fresh piece of meat up for sale while her idiot son stared at his own feet and stuffed his hands into his pockets like a child.

He'd already tried to kiss her, once, in the marketplace at their last stop, while they walked together and didn't speak. The thought had been revolting, for some reason she couldn’t put her finger on. It had taken all of Wren's self-restraint not to punch him in the jaw so hard he'd lose teeth.

"I don’t like him at all," she said.

"I think you should give it some more consideration." Her father looked back up from his gloves. "He's not a bad man. He'd take care of you. Some of the merchants have started to talk, you can't just keep hanging around with guardsmen forever. You're going to give them the wrong idea—"

"Oh? And what idea is that?"

"You know exactly what idea." Her father set his face and looked back down at his handiwork.

Wren slammed the bowl down on the table so hard that bits of stew flew out of it. "I know how people treat marked ones. Is that why?"

It was a small kindness, not to mention how her father had turned them away from his own shops. She had no interest in marrying Armand anyway, even if her parents would have allowed it, which they wouldn’t have. He wasn't well off. He didn't come from the right family or have the right connections. His brother was a marked one. The stares would probably get them chased out of town again. The wings didn't have to be his to make them both outcasts. And the thought of him touching her made her squirm a bit.

"No."

"We are just worried about you," her mother said. "If you don't get married soon people will—"

"Can we stop talking about this? I'm not marrying some merchant's son just so you two can be comfortable again. Leave me alone!"

Wren did not heed her parents' screaming after her as she leaped out the wagon's open back and into the fresh evening air. The sun slanted across the ground, casting long shadows for her to hide in. The caravan moved like an insect awakening from a nap, and it wasn't long until she was far ahead of them.

The sun had begun to streak purple and the first stars shone in the sky like gemstones. The shadow of one of the guards crossed over the moon. She wouldn't have to worry about stray animals, not as long as she didn't wander too far.

Stray men were another matter entirely. Wren fished a flimsy throwing knife from the folds of her robes. It wasn't much of a weapon. She hadn't taken lessons since she was a girl, and it was always perfectly clear that she was not to use them. She could only hope they'd granted her at least some skill.

The air snuck into her clothes, but Wren didn't mind. She pulled her cloak a little tighter around her shoulders and let the chill creep into her lungs. The peace was something, out here. It rivaled that of sleep, as long as no one bothered her. Cactus flowers bloomed from the cracks between dry earth, stretching for the remaining light. She breathed in their heady scent.

Wren tucked the hood of her cloak up over her head. The wagons trundled along around her, their occupants already asleep or eating their dinner. She rested her hand on one as she walked. They wouldn't notice her clearing her head, and if they did, they wouldn't care.

A clumsy flapping noise pierced her tranquility. Wren wheeled, just in time to see a figure slam arms-first into the ground. She winced, then darted behind a wagon before they could see her. She kept the throwing knife curled in her fist as a pair of voices drifted up over the wagon tops and into her ears.

The hair on her neck rose. She recognized Rannok's voice like it was the piercing shriek of something highly unpleasant. The other she couldn't quite place. It sounded familiar, like one of the guardsmen she'd seen, but not spoken too much. She thought for a moment about peeking around the wagon and trying to place his face, then thought better of it.

"That was pretty good, wasn't it?" Rannok's voice whined in her ears. She groaned to herself and ducked further around the wagon.

"Not really," replied the other voice.

Wren rolled her eyes. She didn't need to have flown before to know a performance like that was terrible, and nothing else. She slowed down her pace a little in order to hear their conversation better.

"So how did you get to the caravan," Rannok asked.

"I've been here since I was thirteen."

"Yeah, but how'd you get here?"

Wren winced again on the man's behalf. She knew well enough that it wasn't a question you asked anyone in the guard. Not if you wanted a straight answer that didn't involve your teeth getting kicked in.

"Parents died and Aegan took us in. Armand was two."

A chill went up Wren's spine. She recognized the voice now. Griffon, whom she never spoke to unless she absolutely couldn't help it. He would say something if he saw her here now, though he was powerless to do anything about it.

"What about Wren?" Rannok asked.

"Dunno. Ask Armand. And do another takeoff. We're not here to talk about where people came from."

A flush crept up her neck as the flapping noises returned. She pulled her cloak back up over her head and stared at the ground, heart racing. She willed them to go in the other direction, far away from her. Her shoulders relaxed as the voices retreated into the distance.

She'd never talk to Rannok again, that much she knew. Clearly he had to know why she left. He had to remember the day she’d been asked to leave. The fact that he had forgotten enough to have to ask felt like an insult.

She wrapped her arms around herself as her stomach tied itself into knots. They'd spent so much time together Wren could scarcely recall a time when he wasn't around. Running through salt flats. Poking each other with sticks and dumping bugs onto one another's doorstep.

Then Rannok had gotten older, and he started hanging out with the kids who set fire to market stalls and harassed peoples' livestock.

A lump caught in her throat. She swallowed it back down and forced herself to look ahead at the rounded tops of the wagons. This wasn't worth getting upset over anyway. He'd come back, but that didn't give him the right to talk to her. He'd know better.

She began the slow trek back to her parents' wagon, once she was sure they were gone and wouldn't bother her. She hoped against all odds that they would have fallen asleep by now. The last time she'd taken off in the middle of dinner, her mother had threatened to stop letting her go out at all. But it wasn't like she could prevent her from leaving if she wanted to.

The camels plodded forward at an almost desolate pace, like they weren't quite sure where they were going, and they probably weren't. It never seemed to bother them, though. Someone drove the one up front, the rest just followed and trusted where they were going. Once they were moving they stayed moving, long into the evening and sometimes overnight. She envied them and their sense of purpose.

As always, her mother sat on the edge of the wagon, waiting for her arrival. The lump of blankets on the other side of the wagon barely stirred, but a soft snoring noise emanated from underneath it. Wren crept aboard as quietly as possible so as not to wake him.

"So nice of you to grace us with your presence," her mother said, tone hushed. "What have I told you about taking off in the middle of the night?"

"It's not the middle of the night. Stop trying to make me marry for money and maybe it'll stop happening," Wren replied. She gathered her sleeping mat and threw it out onto the floor.

"I met your father two weeks before our wedding. It didn't turn out so bad, did it?"

Wren didn't dignify that question with a response. Her parents tolerated one another, at best. Sometimes barely, at that. They spoke as little as possible in public, and worked so separately it was sometimes hard to tell their shop was one entity. She collapsed onto her blanket pile in an angry heap.

"It will work if you let it," her mother said. She reached out to touch Wren's shoulder. She jerked it away like the hand might burn.

"Are you trying to convince me, or yourself?" Wren spat the words and yanked the blanket up over her head. "I'm sleeping. Leave me alone." Tears stung at her eyes. She wiped at them with the edge of the fabric where her mother couldn't see.

Wren's mother sighed. Cloth rustled from the other corner of the wagon. Her father had stopped snoring. Wren scooted away until she pressed against the far wall, still close enough to touch, but as far as possible from her mother.

"You'll come around," she said, in a voice Wren wasn't sure she was supposed to hear.