Page 29 of Down Comes the Night

On the opposite wall, Wren caught a glimpse of herself in an old mirror, oxidized with dark spots like mold. With her tousled hair and hollow eyes, she looked haggard and desperate and afraid. She looked nothing like herself.

What was shedoing? She was a healer, and besides…

A faint memory from her and Una’s meeting with Isabel returned:His life is mine to dispose of.Wren’s anger slowly cooled into realization. She couldn’t kill him because Isabel wanted him alive.

She hated the sudden flood of relief. She hated that she wasn’t strong enough to do this. But the opportunity Hal presented her with was almost too perfect. The queen had never wanted anything more than to make an example of the man who had turned the tide of war and tarnished her reign.

What if Wren was the one to deliver him to her? She could picture it now. The delicious, enraged shock on her aunt’s face when she made her dramatic return. The shift into grudging respect. Everything she’d come here to gain—redemption, proof of her skill, the reauthorization of the investigation—she’d have it and more. She didn’t have to waste her time here, sucking up to some dithering nobleman until the storm cleared. All she had to do wascall a carriage to take her home and cure this disease so he didn’t die before then. With an eerie, resolved calm, Wren settled back into the bedside chair. Her wavering shadow fell over him.

His eyes searched for hers, and she sucked in a startled breath and looked away. From the edge of her vision, she could see Hal staring at her so imploringly, it unnerved her. He said something in Vesrian that she couldn’t understand, so quiet and raw, it sounded like he hadn’t spoken in weeks. It frustrated her, the limits of her own knowledge.

“What did you say?” She shaped each word carefully, deliberately.

The corner of his mouth pulled into the barest smile. As if he hadn’t registered the shift in language, he slurred in accented but perfect Danubian, “I know you.”

Surely he didn’t recognize her from the one time she’d seen him on the front line. Perhaps he’d seen her portrait before, but given she’d been excluded from the line of succession, she doubted he had reason to remember her name or face. Wren knew better than to humor people in the throes of delusion, but her curiosity won out. “Do you now?”

“You’re here to end this.” Wren was almost disappointed. Of course he didn’t recognize her. He was delirious—he looked at her and saw the Crone.

“No.” Carefully, she brushed his hair off his forehead, surprising herself with the tenderness of the gesture. It was strangely beautiful, even plastered to his face with sweat. Black and glossy as a raven’s feather. Beneath her fingertips, his skin burned dangerously hot. “You won’t get off so easy.”

His expression was a snuffed candle, utterly defeated. Was he really so eager to die?

His eyes grew unfocused, heavier, as she watched him struggle for lucidity. Wren waited until his breathing evened out into shallow slumber. What a relief, not to have to speak to him anymore. And deep down, she didn’t want to see the gleam of his eyes in the dark again.

Some said his power was unholy, unnatural—that he was no mortal but Vesria’s god made flesh. Wren believed none of it. Nomatter how terrifying he was, it was only magic. Complex but explainable magic. Rationalization, however, did little to calm her churning stomach. He looked human enough, but if she cut him open, what would she find nestled in his rib cage? A beating heart or something burning black as coal?

“Are you awake?”

Mercifully, he remained still and silent.

This would be fine. Routine, even. He was like any other patient. First, she would record his vitals. Then, she would proceed to diagnostic tests. Drawing in a steadying breath, Wren unfastened his nightshirt from clavicle to sternum, efficiently as opening a surgical incision. As soon as she drank in the sight of him half bared, she felt disembodied and almost hysterical.

Goddess above, I’m undressing Hal Cavendish.Her eyes watered at the absurdity her life had taken on in the past twenty-four hours.

She laid her hands on his chest, warmed by the feverish heat. As she poured magic into his system, she closed her eyes and read the faint images of her energy mapping out his body.Highly activated sodium channels, ventricular arrhythmias, hypotension. Her mouth formed the shape of the words as she lost herself in the whispering of her magic.

Then fingers as cold and brutal as steel bands dug into her wrists. She couldn’t choke back her gasp—equal parts startled and pained. What could have possibly set him off?

Then she realized. Her magic in his system, of course. Although “healers” existed in Vesria, they were more often assassins, trained to destroy their targets from within.

Wren jerked against his grasp. “Easy!”

Even like this, frail and faded, Hal was strong.Strong enough to kill me. But with skin-to-skin contact, her magic was a weapon as lethal as his eyes. The Healing Touch’s silver light flickered wildly between them, blanching him white as bone.

“If you don’t let go, I will sever every tendon in your hand before you even blink. Think careful—”

Before she finished her threat, he wrenched her forward.

He moved so fast, she couldn’t track him, couldn’t react. For one breathless moment, she was suspended and off-balance. The next, her face was shoved roughly against the mattress. Her teeth clacked together, the impact reverberating through her skull.

As he bore his weight into her, he twisted her arms behind her back and wedged his knee into the space between her scapulae. Over the sound of her short, panicked gasps, she could hear nothing. How could she be so stupid? She’d had the advantage, but Hal had been trained in combat since he was a child.

If he pulled, he’d dislocate both her shoulders.

“Wren Southerland.” The sound of her name, so flat and disinterested, settled like a winter chill beneath her skin. Gooseflesh spread along her ensnared arms. Although roughened by disuse and illness, his voice was dark and rich as a woodwind. “It seems I do know you.”

“Let go of me!”