Wren's POV
Pain doesn't begin to describe it. It's less like pain and more like something finally, violently remembering what it was built to hold back, five years of enforced sleep breaking apart all at once under the weight of a fear too large to be contained by any binding, however carefully made. Every nerve in my arm feels like it's being unwound from the inside, thread by thread, and somewhere underneath the agony of it there's something else too, a strange, terrible relief, like a held breath finally letting go after five years of not knowing it was even holding one.
"Wren." Rhydian's voice, weak but urgent, his hand finding my wrist even through the blood and the panic. "Wren, look at me."
I can't. My whole vision has narrowed to the white-hot ring around my wrist, to the smell
