Page 100 of Down Comes the Night

She could have saved him. But she was too late.

A soft sob escaped her. Deep down, she’dknownnone of Lowry’s victims had survived. Until now, she’d still been clinging to hope. She’d still believed that maybe Byers would shuffle back into the office one day, reeking of tobacco and asking about what he’d missed. Just a few weeks ago, they’d been holed up together, filing Una’s paperwork and laughing at each other’s jokes. He slacked off and burnt the coffee. She needled him and did the work. That was her life. It wasroutine.

Her hands were trembling. Her throat burned from the sting of bile and the strain of holding back a scream. She wanted to push magic into him. To expand his lungs and contract his heart. To light up his nervous system. Anything to give his spent body life, movement. How many times had she seen a corpse on the battlefield and lamented the insufficiency of her magic? How many times had she yearned to undo death?

Fall apart later,she told herself with a new ferocity. This was bigger than her grief—bigger than even Byers.Allof them were dead, Vesrians and Danubians alike.

“Did you know him?” Hal asked quietly.

“Yes. I knew him.”

“Byers.”

“Yes.” She bowed her head and sucked in steadying breaths to keep the tears at bay. If it was the last thing she did, Lowry would pay.

“Wren,” he said hoarsely. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t. I need to finish my examination.”

Understanding lit his eyes, and she turned back to Byers. With the sheer force of her will, she summoned enough magic to perform an examination. The pain that radiated up her arms was sharp and immediate, the silver light of her magic sputtering.No, it couldn’t fail her now. Gritting her teeth, Wren pushed until herfolaburned with protest. A quick assessment showed her the same damage patterns as Hal: goddessblood poisoning. And a series of stubborn, unhealed wounds.

Wren drew back the sheet to reveal a series of thick puncture wounds on his forearm, some scabbed over, some fresh. As she plumbed them with her magic, she realized they drilled straight into his bone, into the very marrow. Likely biopsies—butwhy? On the other, a long, unhealed gash stretched from elbow to wrist.

Hal sucked in a sharp breath and turned away.

“You should wait in the other room,” she said gently. “I’ve got this.”

He nodded and withdrew, leaving Wren to her work. She retrieved a syringe from her bag and began to draw samples of blood and tissue from the corpse. As soon as she ran forensic tests, she could confirm that his cause of death was goddessblood poisoning. That, along with the shipping records from the Guiding Light Inn, would present a compelling case to the queen.

And now, with a body, she could finally let Byers go.

Wren wasn’t sure how to do this. How could she grieve somethingso unspeakable? How could she leave him alone in a place like this? He deserved a hero’s funeral. He deserved to be buried in Danubian soil. He deserved so much more thanthis,dying alone and afraid. One of her Sisters might have said a prayer over him. Wren, however, had seen too much suffering to believe that the Goddess, if she existed at all, cared for them. She had no prayers left.

“You were strong,” she told him, her voice thick with tears. “I’m so sorry.”

In the end, he would save her, even if she couldn’t save him.

Wren finally allowed herself to crumble.

When she finished storing the evidence and composing herself, Wren stepped out into Lowry’s macabre study. As soon as the door clicked shut behind her, Hal rose to his feet. A question burned in his eyes, and Wren drew in a deep breath before shaking her head.Not yet.

Not until they were out of this place. Not until they were safe.

Books lay scattered on the desk, some so old and worn their pages spilled out like entrails. They were all the same kinds of tomes as in the library: philosophy, anatomy, biology.

“I see you rearranged the place,” Wren said weakly.

“I was looking for something.”

“And did you find anything useful?”

“Perhaps you should take a look.”

Slowly, Wren approached him and took a seat behind the writing desk. A notebook lay open to a spread of pages filled by long columns of numbers. Her eyes, still burning with tears, ached as she read. Dates long before the first of the soldiers was taken. Ratios of kilograms and milliliters, all but one markedfatal.

Wren knew exactly what this was. Documentation of Lowry’s early experiments with goddessblood. It explained Hal’s survival—and why Lowry had targeted mages only after he’d finished killing off his servants. Before he started abducting soldiers and drilling holes in them, he’d needed to determine what a nonlethal dose ofpoison was. Just enough to keep someone subdued. And what better lab rats than the people living in his house? They’d been powerless against him.

Disgusted, Wren flipped through the notebook until she came across a detailed illustration of the humerus, shimmeringfolathreading through the spongy tissue within. On the next adjacent side, a simplified drawing marked incision points along the length of the bone, a cross-section of a cylindrical core of marrow labeled with the wordhemopoietic.Page after page was filled with frantically scrawled clinical notes, each one in Lowry’s familiar looping handwriting.