Page 114 of Down Comes the Night

Una made a show of surveying his uniform and clucked her tongue at a single missing button on his tunic. “Just who is your commanding officer? Major Herman, you said? I ought to tell her she needs to run a tighter ship. You wouldn’t pass snuff under my command with that out-of-regulation uniform.”

Wilson clapped a hand over the offending empty space. “I was going to get it sewn tomorrow! I swear.”

“And what do you suppose Major Herman will do when she hears that her subordinate not only disobeyed his superior’s orders, but also did it as a slovenly embarrassment to her unit?”

A sheen of sweat broke out on Wilson’s upper lip, a wet twin to his patchy blond wisp of a mustache.

“I respect you, Wilson,” Una said with a calculated lilt. “You follow policy as religiously as the Goddess’s decrees. That’s rare these days. It would be a shame to see you disciplined for such a tiny mistake.”

His throat bobbed. His face sagged. Then, with great resignation, he said, “Thank you, Captain. I’m so sorry for the miscommunication.”

“Enjoy the rest of your evening.”

He saluted as if that were an order. “Yes, ma’am. We will.”

Sergeant Wilson and his unit vacated their post like frenzied ants. The heavy doors banged shut, swallowing the sound of their footsteps.

Una curled her lip. “Pathetic.”

“I think you scarred him for life,” Wren said.

Una tossed her hair over her shoulder. “Or maybe this will be a lesson in fortitude.”

“Maybe.”

Una pulled out a set of keys and began to unbolt the locks on Hal’s cell. With every clang and whine of loose metal, Wren’s anxiety climbed higher. Una ran her fingers uncertainly along the door’s handle. “You may not like what you see.”

“I don’t care.”

Una pushed open the door. What lay beyond was a windowless room that smelled of stagnant water and the dull tang of blood. The light of her lantern pushed back the darkness and illuminated a still figure in the corner.

Hal.

Wren’s heart leapt in sheer relief, and she all but ran to his side. He was hunched over in a chair, bound at the ankles and wrists. With his head hanging, his hair fell over his face and concealedmost of him from view. All she could see was the feathered, purpled edges of a bruise that crept like ivy from underneath the frayed blindfold.

“Wren.” She didn’t have to touch him, didn’t have to speak, for him to recognize her. His voice was thick with relief and rough with strain. “I thought maybe I’d imagined the feeling of you close by.”

“You didn’t.” She couldn’t help gently tracing his jaw with trembling fingers before she found the edge of the blindfold. “I’m here.”

Little by little, she peeled it away, as if readying to expose a festering wound to air. When she’d bared him, the sight turned her stomach. His left eye was swollen almost completely shut. Mottled bruises streaked his face, and thin lacerations notched his cheekbones, like the skin had split open from the force of the blows.

Her anger razed all her joy, all her relief. Hal was a war criminal, but this… How could they do this to him? This wasn’t justice. It was vengeance, stolen and enacted in the moments when no one was watching.

She swallowed her fury like a hot coal. She could feed this feeling later. For now, she needed to assess him for any critical damage—and then get him out. The pupil of his good eye was a pinprick. The other swallowed his irises entirely. He was concussed at the very least, but he wasalive.

He offered her an uncertain smile. Wren shook her head, fighting the urge to throw her arms around him. “You look ghastly.”

Hal’s gaze drifted downward and snagged on the gleaming medals adorning her uniform. She couldn’t tell if he looked impressed or mournful—or maybe a bit of both. “So do you.”

“Save the teary reunion for later,” Una cut in. “We only have an hour until the next shift arrives and finds the post deserted.”

At the sound of Una’s voice, Hal tensed.

She crossed the room and made quick work of the chains binding him, easing them onto the floor in rattling coils. Wren swore the room temperature dropped several degrees as Hal glared at the side of Una’s face.

“Do you have something to say to me, Cavendish?”

Una had agreed to rescue him, but Wren supposed she couldn’t expect her hostility to fade immediately. And although Hal was trying to improve his relationship with the Danubian people, Unadidorder his arrest.