Page 124 of Down Comes the Night

Isabel, however, remained impassive, as if she’d disassociated entirely from what she was witnessing. “I am the queen. Imustdo nothing at your behest.” Isabel lifted her chin. “You abandoned me, betrayed me. Just like the rest of this country.”

“I haven’t left you! I’m trying to help you. How can you not see that Lowry is using you?”

“Are we still on this old song and dance?” Lowry reached into his breast pocket. “I’m afraid my patience has run out.”

He unsheathed a small knife, serrated as a jawbone. Wren didn’t have time to scream before he grabbed a fistful of Una’s hair and drew the blade across her throat. Una’s eyes stretched wide. Blood gushed from her neck. It burbled over her lips and splattered on the ground with a steadydrip, drip, drip.Lowry let her go, and she collapsed in a heap.

“No!” Wren’s shriek was feral, half drowned by a sob. “Isabel! Please, do something!”

Isabel stood frozen. Her face was ghostly white as she stared down at the girl at her feet. Una looked so broken and small as the puddle of blood spread around her, staining the hem ofIsabel’s gown. Isabel’s lips soundlessly formed the shape of a word:no.

Lowry raked a hand through his hair and shrugged, the picture of nonchalance. His fingers broke his curls into a frizzy black halo. “I haven’t cut anything major, but do act quickly. It would be a shame to have her bleed out because of your indecision.”

“I can’t! It’s gone.Please. My magic is gone!”

“For your friend’s sake, I suggest you find it,” he hissed.

Una was drowning in her own blood. It was spilling so fast—too fast. It sank into the pores of the stone and slickened the floor with brilliant red. Wren had to do something. She couldn’t lose another friend.

She couldn’t lose Una.

Una’s eyes, matte and lightless, met hers in a warning. She couldn’t speak with that wound, but she’d never needed to when it came to giving orders. The meaning in her glare was clear:Don’t even think about it.

But Wrenhadto think about it.

I don’t want to decide who lives and who dies.Wasn’t that what she had told Una all those weeks ago? How could she tally up the value of lives like this? How could she weigh her love for Una against her love for Hal? Her heart against the lives Lowry would take once he had Hal’s magic?

Lowry dropped the knife into the spreading pool of blood. His eyes were wide and wild as he approached her. His boots stuck to the floor with every step. “Make. Your. Decision.”

Wren still didn’t want to decide who lived and who died, but she’d never forgive herself if she did nothing. Her overuse injury was severe, but if she performed the transplant manually, she could summon enough magic to rewire Lowry’sfolato Hal’s eyes.

Frantically, Wren called to her magic. It sputtered, an agonizing spark that tore a gasp of pain from her throat. It was enough. But could she do this to the man she loved?

Hal had done so much wrong in his life and still hoped to fix it, but this would destroy everything he’d worked toward. Withouthis magic, he had no hope of ruling Vesria. His people would never accept him. But without hislife,he had no hope of ruling Vesria, either. If it would save him—if it gave them a fighting chance—she would have to try.

“Alright. I’ll do it.”

Elation cracked Lowry’s face open.

Wren’s hands were shaking too hard to be able to do this quickly, much less cleanly. She picked up the speculum and carefully pried open Hal’s eyes. His irises were so beautiful, strands of obsidian pigment braided with indigo. She remembered looking into them last night, when they were bright and wanting and full of love.

Biting down on her lip to stifle her whimper, she slid the blade of the speculum beneath his eyelid with a wet squelch. Slowly, she tightened the instrument until the whole of his eyeball, round and glassy, was exposed on a bed of shiny pink tissue.

The procedure was, in theory, simple.

She’d take the scissors and perform a limbal conjunctival peritomy to remove a strip of the clear tissue that encased the outside of the eye. Then, she’d sever the thin capsule of fascia that sheathed the eye and separated it from the orbital fat and oblique quadrant muscles. She’d pin back the recti muscles with metal hooks and shear their fibers at their insertion to the eye. Clamp the optic nerve with a hemostat and snip it, like an umbilical cord. Only then could she lift the fluid-filled globe of the bulbus oculi from the hole of exposed tissue and nerves and muscle.

This was insanity. She’d save Una’s life, and for what? Hal would still be executed. A war would still break out. It wasn’t a life worth living when she’d doomed them all herself.

Wren picked up the second speculum, but her eyes lingered on the sharp point of a scalpel. When she licked her lips, she tasted salt and blood. “Before I go on, I’ll need both my hands.”

Lowry hesitated only a moment before reaching down and cutting her other hand free. He must have seen her gaze dart to the cart, for he immediately seized her hand in a crushing grip. The speculum clattered to the ground as she cried out.

“You’d let her die.” It was disbelief, teetering on astonishment. Then his lips peeled back in a snarl. “Youwilldo it.” He spat with every word. “Do you think there’s nothing left for me to take? Shall we pay a visit to the old woman in the abbey?”

Wren reached out with her free hand, fumbling over the instruments. The scalpel nicked her hand, drawing a hiss from her, but she seized it and drove it into the back of his arm. He tore himself away from her grasp with a guttural howl, clutching at his arm to staunch the blood spurting freely from the wound.

“Kill the girl, Isabel.” The veins on Lowry’s neck bulged. “Now!”