Page 78 of Down Comes the Night

But it was sounfair.

Their countries forced them to dull their emotions, to fight before they knew any better. War demanded sacrifices they were not prepared to give, the cost of which they could not understand. People like Hal shouldn’t have existed. Both Danu and Vesria created monsters the moment they stooped to recruiting children.

She’d never forget those months of deployment, the countless hours she spent bent over bodies too small for their issued uniforms, in tents so crowded she gagged on the cloying stench of putrescine. She’d never forget how she helped dig graves until her hands blistered and her shovel dulled. She’d never forget the hot nights spent curled tight against Una’s side, so close it left no space for dreams.

“Why are you crying?” he rasped.

She was crying for Hal Cavendish. For herself. For the broken people they were and the children they should have been. For herlost comrades. For all the people who would end up like them—or dead—if their nations went to war over Lowry’s crimes. All she could manage to say was, “Goddess knows you won’t do it yourself.”

Hal didn’t speak. He looked as if he might break.

“Give me another chance to help you.” She smeared away the tears on her cheeks. “Please. I won’t rest until I see Lowry behind bars, and you as Vesria’s grand magistrate. We can stop this war together.”

Her words tugged something loose in both of them. He reached out to her, as if to swipe away a tear, but let his hand drop before he touched her. Wren had never felt such disappointment at something so small. She had never wanted anyone to touch her so badly.

“You can,” she said, lower and more breathily than she intended.

His eyes darkened, surprise melting into hunger. Wren tried not to panic. Tried to dismiss the churning heat within her as a natural, hormonal response: a flood of oxytocin from their conversation and nothing more. But it was far too late to theorize this attraction away.

Hal, tentatively, slowly, raised himself up onto one elbow. The springs of the mattress groaned under his weight, and his heat rolled over her like the flow of the tide. As he bent closer, the ends of his hair tickled her face. His lips nearly brushed against hers, his breath sweet as brandy and honeyed tea.

The space between them was a question.

It would be so easy to wrap her arms around him and pull him against her. But it would never be simple. He was Vesrian, and she was Danubian. Even if they forged peace between their nations, they would have to go their separate ways. It would hurt too much. She’d lost too many people she cared about lately.

She turned her face away from him. “It’s late.”

“So it is.” Hal settled back down beside her, disappointment and relief tangled in his voice.

The spell shattered. Her senses returned to her, and it felt like surfacing for air—painful but needed. Her vision shimmered, and when she dared to look at him again, he was sleeping lightly, the riseand fall of his chest reassuring her that he would survive the night. As she watched his peaceful expression, the knot of yearning in her stomach tightened again. This time, it was homesickness.

Hopelessness.

No matter what, things would never be the same. How could she slip back into her life as if nothing were different, when her perceptions of the world—when she—had changed? But she could worry about her feelings tomorrow. Her soul-deep exhaustion dragged her into the fold of sleep.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The world came to her gently, the sun still slumbering beneath the horizon. With her limbs heavy, Wren almost believed she’d dreamt the last month, that she’d open her eyes to her own flat. But as she eased into consciousness, she found herself entwined with Hal.

No such luck for dreaming.

Although her first impulse was to shove him away, she let herself remain still in the languorous warmth of his embrace. His arm was draped heavily across her waist, and his breathing flowed soft and even over her skin. With her forehead tucked against his neck, she listened to the steady beat of his heart.

He was alive, and it was almost a miracle.

Wren wanted to preserve him this way: peaceful and boyish, sleeping with his jaw slack and his forehead smooth. As carefully as she could, she slipped his arm from around her and pried her knee loose from where it was wedged between his. No sooner had sheextricated herself than he jerked awake, so surprised and bleary-eyed, she had to stifle a laugh.

“Good morning,” he mumbled.

Although Wren yearned to stay pressed against him a little longer, warm and safe, restlessness had already crept into her bones. Byers still might be in Colwick Hall, but they couldn’t return without a guarantee they could find the key to that hidden door—or evidence convincing enough to indict Lowry.

This inn, however… Hal had told her Lowry had purchased it. She’d taken the goddessblood sample from its garden herself. Maybe it held the answers she sought.

“Rest a little longer. I’m going to take a look around.”

Hal looked like he might protest, but when she pulled aside the blanket and let the cold air in, he retreated deeper under the covers like a snail into its shell. “Alright.”

Wren crawled out of bed, retrieved her coat from beside the banked fire, and pulled it on as she made her way downstairs. The floorboards in the lobby creaked under her weight, the only sound apart from the faint crackle of logs in the fireplace. It was early, but there should have been more activity. Perhaps the smell of rendering fat from the kitchen, or the tread of footsteps overhead as the other guests awoke. Just as she remembered it two weeks ago, the place was too silent, as if it were hardly meant to operate as an inn at all.