Wren's POV
I don't cry. I want to note that clearly, if only for my own sake, because five years ago I would have. Some part of me is almost proud of the fact that I don't, even as another part wonders whether that's just a different kind of damage, learning to file grief away instead of feeling it properly.
I am, in fact, packing a bag, my hands moving through the motions with a strange, hollow efficiency, folding clothes I've barely had time to unpack in the first place, the small carved bird from my mother tucked carefully into the same spot at the bottom where Maren hid her note.
I don't know where I'm going. That's the part I haven't let myself think about too closely, because the honest answer is nowhere; there is no safe direction to walk in, not back to Ashgrove, not forward int
