Page 101 of Down Comes the Night

Day 8: Today, the side effects worsen. Nausea, fatigue, sores. And despair, the worst of them all. I fear the marrow transplant has not taken, although briefly, as I lay half-dreaming this morning, I swore I felt something like magic burning cold within me.

Day 12: Nothing, nothing, nothing. Again, it is nothing but failure. I allowed myself to truly hope with this one—to believe this marrow could breathe new life within these inert cells of mine. There is still, however, one thing yet to try.

The log ended there.

“What was there left to try?” Hal asked, jolting her from his thoughts.

If she let herself look at Lowry straight on—all the things he’d said, all the things she’d witnessed and endured—didn’t she already know the answer to that question? When she closed her eyes, she saw blood beading on the tips of his fingers. How it flowed freely from the wound in his arm as he had emerged from behind that tapestry. Maybe he’d failed that night. What person, after all, had the skill and the bravery to perform a complex surgery on themselves?

Thatwas why he had summoned her here.Thatwas why he hadtested her with that brutal transplant last night. To serve as assistant in his sick experimentation on mages.

“A full organ transplant,” she said absently. “Jacob Byers had the ability to manipulate his bone density. That’s why Lowry was taking his marrow.”

Hal lifted his eyes to hers, and she did not miss the flicker of fear within them.

Wren drove her fist against the wall. Her knuckles popped, but she ignored the ache of it, the way her skin split. Her breaths came hard and ragged. “How could I have missed it? How did I notknow?”

Because she’d always assumed it was impossible. Even in skilled hands, an experimental surgery on people like Byers, whose abilities were diffuse and broad-reaching, would kill both the donor and the recipient. To have full use of magic like Byers’s, Lowry would need to replace every bone in his body. But a more localized magic—one that lived only, say, in the eyeball…

It was possible.

All she could see were those detailed drawings in the morning room desk’s drawer. Every line drawn in silver ink on the drawing of the bulbus oculi. Every insertion point marked with fervent certainty. All she could hear was Lowry’s hatred as he uttered the nameHal Cavendish.

Lowry wanted magic. He wanted revenge.

“That’s why we’re here,” Wren said slowly. “That’s why he’s kept us alive so long.”

“What’re you saying?”

“He wants your eyes.”

Hal swore, a sudden, sharp burst of a Vesrian word—one of the few she understood. He paced the room, all the color draining from his face. All his disgust, all his horror, came out in a single word. “Why?”

“Because he thinks he deserves it,” she said. “Because it’ll hurt Vesria.”

“Whatever he hopes to gain from them will bring him far more suffering,” he muttered. “A fitting curse.”

“Don’t.Don’t even joke like that.” The grief she’d tried so hard to stifle surged anew. It churned around her, rising higher and higher until she feared she’d choke on it. “I failed him. He’d only been dead a day. If I’d had the courage to stay… If I hadn’t run away when I was afraid, he’d still be alive. I know it.”

“You can’t know that.” Hal crossed the space between them and cradled her jaw in one hand. As he lifted her chin to meet his gaze, she saw only tenderness there. “What’s done is done. What-ifs will only tear you apart.”

“So what am I supposed to do?” she whispered. “How do you do it? How do you live with that kind of regret?”

Hal didn’t respond immediately. When he did, his voice was weary. “You keep walking forward. You’re strong enough to carry the weight of it.”

“No one is as strong as you, then.”

“That’s not true.” In the dim light, she could see tears glimmering in his eyes. He squeezed them shut, turning his face away from her. “Forgive me. I’m too weak to stay composed. I can’t even take my own advice.”

Wren took his hands. They were ice-cold in hers. “You arenotweak for grieving. For feeling anything.”

Hal looked startled by her sudden ferocity. Saying it wrenched something in her free. Could that be true? After everything she’d endured because of her emotions, after everything Isabel and Una had told her, could she really believe that?

Yes,some buried part of her said.Isn’t that what makes us strong?

Her sensitivity had always forced her to look straight at the darkness in the world—and allowed her to imagine how she might fix it. Empathy brought her and Hal together. It carried them here. If they could work together, if they could learn to care for each other, then there was still hope for their people.

She wasn’t weak for feeling, either. Hardened hearts werebreakable. But hers had endured again and again. As much as it terrified her, Wren wanted more than anything to believe herself. But right now, she only needed to convince Hal.