Wren's mother clung to her hand as if she thought if she let go, she would float away.

 Wren let out a feeble cry and tried to sit up again. Her mother pressed her back down by the shoulder. She struggled against the hold and picked at the bandages that crisscrossed her shoulders and held the bits of flesh into her back. There was something soft and bony behind her head. She reached up and ran her fingers over feathers that were still matted with dried blood.

"Be careful," Meria said. She put a hand behind Wren and helped her to sit up. Wren moaned. Each movement of her muscles pulled what felt like a giant scab on her back. She searched her brain for the commands that would move the newfound wings. They weren't like an arm, or a leg even. Instead they were an entirely new sort of appendage that Wren only succeeded in moving when she thought to having them twitch. She yelped as they pulled against their wounds.

"What happened?" Wren asked. The medic tent was deserted except for her and a woman far in the corner who held the hand of a man who was obviously very sick. She looked away and locked eyes with her mother. Meria's eyes pooled with trepidation.

"You fledged," Meria said. "You lost a lot of blood. It's been a few days."

"Where's Dad?" Wren asked. She looked around but the only one here was her mother. She pictured his worried face in her mind and winced. Why wasn't he here?

Meria closed her eyes and wiped at them with her hand. "I should have told you, Wren. I was so worried. I hoped this wouldn't happen but I knew somehow that it would. I was selfish. I shouldn't have--"

"Shouldn't have what?" she asked. Wren's head felt heavy and fuzzy. She closed her eyes, shook it, then looked back over at her mother, who couldn't seem to meet her eyes. The pieces started to fall into place. The wings didn't come from nowhere. Where had they come from?

Wren wracked her childhood memories for something that might put the puzzle back into place. Her father carrying her in his arms after a party and putting her to bed. Her grandfather handing her a sweet just before he died while her grandmother looked on with a smile. A birthday where she'd gotten a new doll. In every one of these memories, wings were conspicuously absent. No one had them. No one talked about them. 

Except for that one time. The time when Wren was very small and a teenage boy woke up half the village screaming in the dead of night. He'd rushed out of his house with two bloody appendages hanging from his back while his parents chased him with clubs. 

And then he'd gone. Everyone stood and stared until he made it over the horizon and disappeared like a leaf into the early morning sunrise. Then her mother ushered her back to bed and not a peep of the strange man with strange wings was ever mentioned again. Wren shuddered. Suddenly she was very glad to not be in the village.

Meria let out a long, shuddering sigh and squeezed Wren's hand a little tighter. There was a long moment of silence while Wren looked around the room, hoping that somehow her father might appear.

"You're not..." Meria began. She stopped and stroked Wren's cheek with a rough thumb. "I'm so sorry, Wren. I shouldn't have hidden it from you. When we first got married I was just so afraid, and I had a friend I was close to. I shouldn't have done it. I knew his father had wings. I just...I hoped you weren't his."

Wren's eyes widened as the pieces began to click into place, like pieces of smashed pottery. She ripped her hand out of her mother's and struggled against the urge to bolt and run so hard and so fast her mother would never find her again. She turned her eyes like ice to her mother and let the fury pour out of them.

"You lied to me," Wren said quietly.

"I know, I'm sorry. It's normal to stray, Wren. Everyone does it. I didn't mean for this to happen," Meria responded. She hugged her arms around her face and would not meet Wren's eyes.

"How could you?" Wren snarled, pain biting at her shoulders and her back as she bolted upright in bed. It made a sickening amount of sense now, why her mother was so adamant she stay away from the guard. Why she should find friends who didn't have brothers who were marked. Why she should just get married and forget. But none of that mattered now. Tears threatened the corners of her eyes but she would not let them come. She would not let her mother see her break.

"It wasn't on purpose! Do you think I meant for this to happen? You could have died! I did what I had to in order to keep you alive, because I love you. As does your father if he'll ever see sense in it," Meria responded.

Wren shrank and collapsed onto the cot, suddenly deprived of any energy she needed to stay angry or to care that it hurt when her wings contacted the canvas.

"He left, didn't he?" Wren said.

"Yes," Meria replied quietly. "He did."

Wren thought back to all the times her father told her marked ones were bad people. They stole. Killed. Lied to your face and then turned and stabbed you in the back when they thought they had your trust. He'd chased off a guardsmen when he'd shown up on their doorstep, bleeding from a six inch gash in his chest. Wren had hidden her face in her mother's chest and said nothing. And that entire time, there was a marked one living in his house.

She sat up again and hung her feet over the edge of the cot. Her head swam. Meria grabbed her arm to steady her but Wren jerked away again. The warm earth felt solid under her bare feet.

"You can't stand up," Meria said as she tried to get Wren to lay back down.

"Get off  me, Mother!" Wren snapped. She ripped her arms from her mother's grip once more and stood. The earth moved farther away, then closer again as she stood, wings splaying for balance, a dull ache arching through her back. She got her bearings and turned and began walking toward the other end of the medical tent.

"Where are you going?" Meria demanded. "Get back here!"

"Away from you," Wren replied as she turned to face her mother once more. "I can't stand to look at you right now. You've been lying to me my entire life and you expect me not to be mad? What am I supposed to lose next? You only wanted me to get married so whoever I got would be stuck with me!"

Wren's resolve broke and the tears started coming hot and fast down her face. She crumpled her head into her hands and sat on the edge of a nearby crate. Her body curled in on itself as the hurt bubbled up fresh and hot from the wound. The crow's words echoed in her head. The friend she cared for far too much to disappoint. First she'd lost her village, and soon she'd lose her only friend. And now she had to lose her family too. Her mother sat beside her and put a gentle hand on her shoulder.

"What am I supposed to do now?" Wren demanded between choked sobs. The shame of the thought of going back to Ittra made her chest constrict and her stomach flip-flop. She couldn't expect Elyn to marry her now, not like this. She couldn't expect anyone to take care of her like this. She thought back to the only other marked women she'd seen. The ones who prowled the caravan at night with daggers in their eyes, who made prizes out of men and answered to no one.

"I don't know," Meria admitted. "You'll find something. There are always options, even if they're not the ones you want to take."

Wren swallowed hard. That left two things, then. Ittra, or the marked women. She'd have to decide which of those options seemed the least unappealing. She didn't fancy the thought of hiding herself for the next three weeks...but the women seemed worse. Dangerous and vengeful. Wren didn't even want to approach them to find out how she'd join their numbers.

"The healers said you should be able to be up and about in a day or two, if you rest, but you lost a lot of blood. Why don't you go lay down?" her mother said.

Wren nodded, shoulders slumped under the weight of what she'd just learned. The world around her constricted a little further, but at least now she had choices. Choices on where to go and how to behave. Choices on whom she associated with. Choice beyond any choice she'd ever had.

Wren settled back down into the cot and curled up onto her side. The wings stuck out and hung off the edge of the bed like an awkward appendage she didn't really need, but at the very least they didn't touch anything that way.

"What was his name?" Wren asked. There were so many questions she knew she would never have answers to, but her mother could at least give her that.

"Whose?" Meria asked absently as she smoothed Wren's prickly black hair.

"Your friend's," Wren responded. Meria's eyebrows rose, then settled back down on her face. Her eyes got a faraway look in them as she stared at the back wall of the medic tent, as if she were remembering something that pained her.

"Micah," Meria replied. A sheen of water reflected off her eyes. "They killed him, when he fledged. He couldn't get away fast enough. I found out I was pregnant a few days afterwards...I didn't want the same thing to happen to you."

 Wren couldn't find anything else to say. Her heart dropped into her stomach and she wished desperately she could cool the well of anger there, but it boiled so hot it was all she could do to keep it from consuming her. 

"I need some time," Wren said.

Meria nodded and walked out of the medic tent without another word. Wren felt more alone than she had before in her entire life.  

---

Wren is quite angry with her mother. Would you be angry, if you were Wren? Was it right that her mother lied? Quite an interesting turn of events!