"Hey, Wren." Adagio gave him a wave as he dropped the omelet on a plate in front of Cadence. "My dad said you were uneasy around him, and I'm closer to Cadence's age, so we swapped for a bit. Hope you don't mind."

"No, of course not. Lieder is welcome here as well. I just do not know what to say to him." Wren paused as Talamayas stood up and grabbed a plate from the fridge. It was cut mango from the day prior, and Wren thanked him as he set it down for him to eat. "You seem... okay with being near Talamayas." Wren worded it as gently as possible with Cadence in hearing range. The last thing he needed was to frighten the innocent boy before he ate breakfast.

"Forgiveness is a big part of finding peace in the void," Adagio answered simply, sitting next to Cadence across from him and Tala with a light smile. "My death wasn't violent or traumatic, so it wasn't difficult to put it behind me. It's more challenging with the ones Talamayas..." Adagio glanced at Cadence and then back to Wren. "Spent time with." Adagio cringed as Wren did.

Cadence sputtered his food back on the plate as he got to the center of his omelet, and Adagio laughed as the younger boy wiped his tongue with a paper towel. "Why did you put red root spice on this?"

"The Songs put it on everything," Adagio said as if it would have been weird if he hadn't. Wren knew the root, and his tongue watered uncomfortably just thinking about it. It was spicy, beyond what normal people would be comfortable with, but it was a medicinal herb that stimulated magic flow and eased muscles. Good for maintaining an active body for assassins and killers.

"It's gross," Cadence growled but continued to eat his food anyway. "Riff pours it on everything too. And here I thought I'd get a break." The saddened groan had a smile easing on Wren's lips despite the situation they were in.

"Nope. I'm just as bad." Adagio formed a heart with his hands, and Cadence flicked egg at his face with a fork. With the same ease of wiping the egg off his face, Adagio shoved the spoon from cooking eggs right into Cadence mouth. Poor cadence fell into a coughing fit, and he drank water to get the spice out of his mouth.

Wren's mind wandered to the name Cadence had uttered. Riff Song. Wren ran his hand through his hair with a despairing sigh. Back before Wren had run into Tala and his mother, Riff and he had been thick as thieves, closer than brothers though not of direct lineage. They had hunted together, slaughtered vampire kind side by side, and drank to the future of the Songs with a merriment that was disturbing now that he thought back on it. They'd kept score of who'd killed the most, made bets on which of them would fell more each time they went out, and they'd laughed about which had gone down hardest or easiest.

They'd made sport of ending lives that he now cherished.

If Riff was still alive, then there was little chance of this ending peacefully. Among the infiltrator class Song's, Riff had been the strongest, second only to Wren who led their people. Somehow the Song next in line to lead after Wren's death or imprisonment had escaped Talamayas slaughter, along with whoever Cadence's father was and however many more. There was no way of telling how many Songs there were fifty years later.

"Cadence," Wren said the boy's name, and Cadence sank his head closer to his shoulders as he raised his eyes to Wren's. The boy was nervous around him, but he'd been okay with Talamayas around as long as Adagio was there. "Can I see your wrists?"

Cadence stood and had to move down two chairs to sit across from Wren on the long kitchen counter, but Cadence was obedient and patient as Wren rolled down waves of Song notes with his airy mage sleeves to reveal his thin wrists. Such a well behaved kid. As expected from Cadence's muted magic flow, his magic had been sealed, and Wren grazed Cadence forearms with both pity and great sadness

"These must hurt," Wren said. The glyphs were cast deeply to keep his magic from emerging even into adulthood, and such repression caused worse pain the stronger magic became over time. This was what his people had been reduced to, suppressing who their children were just for the narrow chance that a vampire wouldn't splatter them into a mess of flesh and bones the moment they saw red and grey.

Even Wren had thought of killing him before anything else.

Wren had never expected the Songs to choose magic suppression for protection over pruning their children to fight. The call of magic was so ingrained in the Song people that seeing a boy with his cut off wounded Wren. Magic was wondrous to the young, something they could manipulate when their imagination still ran wild, a force that both defined them and showed their true nature to the world in the earliest of years. Cadence had been robbed of this freedom, even forced to suffer pain each and every time his magic tried to bond with him.

"I got used to the pain a long time ago," Cadence said calmly, lifting his eager grey eyes to Wren's. The easy smile showed that he was not bothered by the loss of something he could not comprehend, but Wren was. "My father said the pain is protection."

"I'm sure your father did what he thought was best for your happiness and safety," Wren said quietly, brushing his hand over the boy's long red hair. All of his people were both gifted and cursed with the odd coloring, deep red hair bordering on mahogany and ash eyes. "You don't need these though." Light magic flared under Wren's fingers as he ran them over the glyphs, and Cadence yanked his hands out of Wren's.

"You can't remove them," Cadence begged, panic in his eyes as he flicked the over to Talamayas next to him. The boy was afraid of what the vampires would do to him if he had magic, but even with it, Cadence was no threat and would not be for years. It took time, hard work, and patience to wield the Song chains.

"Cadence, magic is more than a danger or a curse. It's part of who you are, and the pain will only worsen as you age," Wren tried to reason with him. "If the glyphs break when your magic grows too powerful, you won't know how to control it."

"But they'll kill me," Cadence's barely whispered, his voice so high it was almost a squeak as he glued his eyes to the counter. The boy shrank, wrapping his arms around his knees where they were lifted from the stools foot bar. Adagio set a hand on his shoulder gently, but Cadence didn't take much comfort in the touch. "If I have magic, they'll lock me in the dungeons. I don't want to go down there." Tears flooded the boy's eyes, and Wren's shoulders sank.

"Cadence, this is my house, my people. If I say you are safe and that you can have your magic, no one is going to take that back." Wren's words didn't seem to penetrate, but he did not know why. It was public knowledge that he was Talamayas soul bound and an equal leader of the Sols in position, power, and reach. "You do not trust me to protect you?"

"Riff says..." Cadence paused to glance at Talamayas from the corner of his eye.

"Don't mind me. I'm not going to get upset at whatever a Song said about me. They've been cursing me for generations." Talamayas light laugh surprisingly eased the tension in Cadence's shoulders, something it would have not done for any Song who knew what the man was.

"Riff said that the desert vampires broke you, warped you into a dog who licked their feet just to see the light of day." Cadence spoke to the floor, mumbling the words as if they would still get him smacked. "That they tortured you until there was nothing left of the great general who used to lead out people. That Wren Song was a god of battle and would have never bent to the whims of a vampire, betrayed his people's memory by sleeping with the enemy, and allowing that tainted blood within his veins."

Talamayas laughed, in the obnoxious boisterous way he did anything, and poor Cadence almost fell out of his chair. "If only Riff knew how tightly Wren has me wound around his fingers. If anyone lost it down in those dungeons, Cadence, it wasn't Wren. Wren's tougher than old beaten leather. Whip, trample, or stab it, and it does nothing."

"Thanks for your helpful input," Wren said sarcastically as Cadence tried to make sense of Tala's words. "Cadence, it is complicated, but I am neither broken nor bending to Talamayas. Both of us suffered at each other's hands, but we have made peace with the past and work together for a future that we can both be proud of. The Songs suppressing a child's inner self because they fear what my people might do to them is not something I can be proud of."

Cadence rubbed his wrists, but doubt still clouded his eyes as he set his elbows back on the counter. Wren gave him his space, watching as Cadence ran a thumb across the glyph that had been there so long it must feel a part of him. After a minute or so, Cadence scooted closer, and a strange twinkle shined in his eyes.

"I could do magic?" Excitement slipped into Cadence voice, and a smile eased its way back onto Wren's lips. The boy practically bounced as he considered the prospect. "You're sure you won't be angry?" The last was a question to Talamayas, and just addressing the desert vampire leader would have most Songs eating their tongues. Cadence was too innocent to fear Tala as fully as he should, though it surfaced on occasion.

"Wren lost only a portion of his magic to become my mate, and that hurt both of us deeply," Tala answered carefully and with thought, which was as much a miracle as any Songs still living. "Seeing your magic sealed in such a way also brought me great sadness, so I would be as happy as my mate to return it to you."

"It was never the Song magic that was the issue anyway, Cadence, it was how we chose to wield it," Wren added as the boy pulled his chair in so that his arms could reach across. "If you use your magic only for the protection and betterment of others, instead of attacking those who have done you no wrong, then there can be no fault in it."

Wren held out his hand, and Cadence offered hiswrists, slowly but surely as he allowed himself to believe in him. It was good thatthe boy had not yet reached a point where he couldn't trust others, which meantthat his father was gentle and patient with him. Riff certainly did no one anyfavors with his presence, but after meeting Cadence, Wren knew there was hope left for his people. That was allhe needed to release Cadence from his chains, the knowledge that there was roomfor a future for all of them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Word Count: 1942