Page 71 of Down Comes the Night

“How do you know that?” he asked guardedly.

Wren tapped his forehead. “You’ve got a lot of pressure behind your eyes. Ever considered that’s why you’re so miserable and tired all the time?”

Hal flinched back as if she’d burned him. “I didn’t realize that was part of your assessment.”

“Forgive me for being holistic,” she grumbled. “You’ve allowed yourfolato degenerate, which could’ve been prevented if you’d had someone competent looking after you. If you don’t get it under control, it could blind you someday.”

“I appreciate your concern.”

“Must you refuse any and all kindness? Honestly. It seems exhausting.”

“I don’t know what to do with yours. It so often feels like anattack,” he said wearily. “Regardless, I allowed my magic to degenerate because I wanted to. It’s for the best.”

“That’s all well and good for your self-flagellation campaign, but as your doctor—” Wren cut herself off with a quiet sigh. It didn’t matter much now how he dealt with his magic, did it? “Shall we head to town before the storm picks up again?”

Hal shrugged on his coat, and when she foisted a scarf on him, he squirmed away from her like a child from an overbearing parent. Although he’d gotten better, he still accepted charity like an insult. Today, she wouldn’t compromise. He would need all the warmth he could get.

“If you catch a cold, I’ll be so cross with you.” She tugged a hat over his ears. “Cooperate.”

With that, they were ready.

They slipped out through the servants’ quarters and into the snow. Those first, tentative steps allowed her to walk on the thick, glittering crust before she sank to nearly her knees. She squinted through the drifts at the town some mile and a half in the distance. An ocean of snowfall and pine separated them from civilization, the surface rippled by wind. As it gusted past her, the trees shook loose showers of snow and ice from their fine green needles.

Hal matched her stride, but Wren slowed down when she realized that he was struggling to keep up. His breaths were long and deliberate, but she could hear the rattle in his lungs over the snow crunching beneath their boots. Even though he was faring well, he was still a way off from a complete recovery. And judging by his vital signs, sensed dimly through their tether, he didn’t have much more than an hour before the sedative took effect.

It took them nearly forty-five minutes to push through the worst of it, to where carriages and footprints had packed and worn a glassy road into the town square. Compared to the fog-thick gloom of Colwick Hall, it was quaint—even cheerful.

Incandescent lightbulbs burned in the streetlamps, and the smoke curling from the chimneys filled the air with scents of woodsmokeand baking pastries. Still-sleeping taverns leaned against inventors’ shops. Wren paused to gawk in a storefront window. A plaque beneath a prototype, apparently called a telephone, claimed you could use it to talk to someone miles away. Impossible, yet sorely needed in a place like this. Her fingers had gone numb in her gloves.

Hal’s reflection appeared beside hers in the glass. “I like this place.”

Wren turned to face him. “Oh?”

“It reminds me of where I grew up.”

“There are snowy hellscapes in Vesria as well, then?”

Hal shook his head at her. “It’s a feeling. The quiet and the cold. The smell of bread and storms.”

Wren lifted her eyebrows in surprise. “A small town then?”

“Yes.” The curve of his lips was wistful. “My father was a fisherman. My family moved out of the city when the bloodline ran dry two generations ago.”

It stung a little, imagining what kind of life he could’ve had. Sun-browned and rough-handed, briny winds tangling in his hair and a ship by the harbor. Still serious, still dedicated—but unhaunted.

Happy.

“I left home to enlist when I was eight.” At her horrified expression, he frowned. “They recruited us young—and my father was eager to see me go. I haven’t been back since and don’t expect I ever will be.”

They both looked up as the snow began to fall. It gathered in her eyelashes, the world going pale and sparkling. In spite of herself, she wanted more from him. More personal things to keep safe. “Do you miss it?”

“I do.” Hal tucked his hands into his pockets. “But I can’t make a difference from there.”

Too many follow-up questions arose. Too many thoughts, all unhelpful and masochistic, flooded her with unwelcome dread. If she did this, Hal would never see Vesria again.

“I don’t feel well,” he said.

Her heart twisted sharply. “Let’s get you inside then.”