Wren
The goodbye at the curb took twenty minutes, and nineteen of them were Caius.
He hugged Darius. He hugged me twice. He gave a long speech to my boxes about behaving themselves in a strange land. Then he stood in front of Zephyr and the two of them did that thing again, that stiff, narrow-path stillness, before Caius stuck out his hand.
"Take care of her, Nightbane."
"I don't need instructions, Ashford."
"It wasn't an instruction." Caius's grin was easy. His grip, I noticed, was not. "It was a warning label."
Darius, oblivious to whatever was crackling between his two best friends, pulled me into a final hug that cracked three of my ribs, made me promise to call every day, threatened to visit every weekend, and then stood in the road waving like a mother sending her child to war
