Page 47 of Down Comes the Night

“I wish I could claim to be noble. In Danu, all people with magic like mine become healers whether they want to or not.” Wren let her magic collect on her palms, flickering between them. It illuminated the tears still beaded in Hannah’s eyelashes. “But I got lucky. Even though I couldn’t be anyone or anything I wanted, I don’t know that I’d have chosen anything else. It’s part of me. Maybe even all of me.”

“I should hope not,” Hannah said gently. “I don’t care to believe that the sum of us is what wedo.”

Wren frowned, uncertain of what to say. If not healing, then whatwasthe sum of her? And if she couldn’t crack this poison and bring Hal back to Danu, how could she ever prove her worth? She had only thirteen days left before she could leave, a veritable mountain of books to read, not to mention the tedious process of mixing her antidotes…

“Anyway,” Hannah said, “let me know if I can help you with anything else.”

Then—an idea came to Wren.

“You know, I think you can,” she said. “I’m working on developing a medication right now, and I could use some help taking measurements, recording failures, and the like. It’s not the most exciting work, but if you truly wanted to learn to be a healer, it would be a start.”

“So I’d be your assistant?”

“Exactly. What do you say?”

Her answering smile, as radiant as daybreak, shone brighter than anything Wren had seen in weeks. “I say yes. When do we start?”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Nine more days.

Wren had only nine more days to identify the poison and develop an antidote now that she’d wasted four of them researching. Skimming every botany book in Lowry’s library had armed her with a frighteningly thorough knowledge of the language of flowers but had brought her no closer to an answer. Nearly every one of them had proven useless.

All that remained was a single tome, as thick as her fist and coated in dust, calledThe Natural History of the Cernosian Highlands.It was an account of the local flora, written sometime in the last century by a tourist from the mainland. Detailed botanical illustrations adorned each gold-leafed page, accompanied by dry annotations on each plant’s properties.

She’d spent the morning browsing the table of contents, dismayed to find that the book contained a robust catalog of intoxicants and little else. But in the very back was a small section on poisons that looked promising. If she found nothing within…

No, she refused to entertain the possibility of failure. This book had to contain the answers she sought. But before she could begin reading in earnest, the grandfather clock tolled, announcing her evening session with Hal.

She crossed the hall and found the sickroom lit by warm candlelight. It lapped at the frost-rimed windows and pooled in the hollows of Hal’s face. He was drowsing lightly, creases from the wrinkled sheets stamped onto his cheeks. Wren approached his bedside on silent feet and laid the back of her palm against his forehead. No fever, mercifully. The healing from this afternoon must have held up over the past few hours.

A stack of books lay abandoned on his nightstand. A quick glance at their titles confirmed he’d sent Hannah for military histories—andphilosophy,of all things.

How pretentious.

It disturbed her, how familiarity birthed that insult. Almost as much as it disturbed her that her hand lingered on his forehead, her fingers itching to brush the hair back from his face. What was happening to her?

Every day stretched unbearably longer, and in the quiet moments, Hannah’s words haunted her:He reminds me a bit of you. Peppering me with questions.

Hal was searching for something here, but until she provided him with a diagnosis and a cure, he wouldn’t tell her what. What did he know about Lowry that she didn’t? What was shemissing?

Hal blinked open his eyes and startled, just barely.

Wren couldn’t help smiling. “How’re you feeling?”

“Well enough.”

“Then you should be up for some walking.” Hal cast her a baleful look, but by now, she had become adept at reading the meaning behind his silences. “I know. But you’ll feel worse if you get bedsores or die of a blood clot. A truly embarrassing end to your legacy.”

With great indignity, he accepted her outstretched hands. The warmth of her magic collected between their palms. A steady hum, a magnet’s pull. Neither of them said anything.

Hal rose unsteadily, and Wren, now eye level with his chin, registered for the first time how tall he was.This could end disastrously.Tipping her head back, she watched worry light his eyes as he arrived at the same conclusion.

“Don’t fall,” she said. “I think you’ll crush me.”

Still, Hal said nothing.

A bad mood,she noted. Or maybe she’d grown far too comfortable teasing the Reaper of Vesria.