Page 13 of Down Comes the Night

Wren could not forget the sight of her retreating back in the window.

As Heloise collected healing magic in her palm, Wren smothered her temper before it sparked. She hadn’t seen Heloise all week, yet here she was, assessing her work as if she were a newly minted apprentice. Apparently satisfied, Heloise let go and rested her hand atop the other on her cane. “Perfect, as always, Sister Wren.” To the woman, she said, “Go in peace.”

As soon as Wren’s patient scrambled out of bed and out of earshot, Wren rounded on the old woman. “Not perfect enough. I’m back here, after all.”

“So you are.” At first, it seemed she would leave it at that. She was as cryptic and frustrating as ever. Then Heloise reached into her robe’s deep pocket. “A letter arrived for you this morning.”

Although her swift pivot away from pleasantries stung, hope welled up inside Wren. Perhaps it was from Isabel, a message that she’d changed her mind. But shaking in Heloise’s swollen hands was an envelope as red as an autumn leaf. The spark of excitement fizzled into embarrassment. She didn’t need to look closely to know it did not bear the queen’s seal. Red was far too garish a color for Isabel’s preferred palette of white and only white.

Wren took the letter. Across the front, rendered in elaborate gold leaf, were stag’s antlers, the mark of Cernosian nobility. The strangeness ofthatstruck her like a freight train.

Cernos had the distinct misfortune of existing on the same peninsula as Danu and Vesria, but due to their hostile, mountainous terrain, they had successfully isolated themselves and remained neutral through three centuries of bloody conflict. As a rule, they did not engage with their larger neighbors at risk of provoking cries of favoritism. Rather, they looked beyond the sea for allies. Technology and trade afforded them riches enough to rise above the Danu-Vesrian wars. A necessity for a country that possessed no magic.

Danu had not had official contact with Cernos in… well, a long time. Yet here in Wren’s hungry, shaking hands was her name written in elegant script.

“If you will accept counsel,” Heloise said, “I would advise you to burn it.”

On reflex, Wren clutched the envelope to her chest. “What? Why?”

“Cernos has ignored any request for aid for years. They’ve sat comfortable on their mountains of gold and watched our people bleed. They would not break their silence without a reason—and for them to come to you, a mere girl, disgraced and with no protection? What good could this bring?”

Every word struck true. And yet, this was her decision to make, hers to weigh. “Is that all you’ve come here to say, or are you confirming I haven’t slipped during my time away?”

“I only came to deliver that.” She glared at the letter as if it were cursed. “As for what you do with it, you can make your own judgments. You’re not a child anymore.”

Anger burned behind her eyes, and Wren willed herself not to cry with frustration. Not here. Not when the others were leaning closer to overhear them. Wren lowered her voice to a thin, pressurized whisper. “Am I not, Mother? You haven’t met with me until today. I’ve had no say in what my duties are here. And now I have no say with whom I shall correspond?”

Heloise leveled her with an incredulous but patient frown, which made her feel childish for her outburst. “We all must pay the price for our mistakes.”

Yes, and she was paying the price dearly. If she couldn’t convince the queen to reverse her sentence, she would be trapped here forever while her friends died on the border. “I can’t stay here.”

“Perhaps it would be wise to consider this a new beginning. A blessing from the Maiden. Unless, of course, you would prefer the Severance.”

Due to its risks, healing magic was forbidden outside the clergy or the military. A healer who hoped to live among civilians would face the Severance, a procedure mandated by the Danubian government. Although all healers took a vow of nonviolence, Wren always felt attracted and repulsed by her magic’s gruesome edge. It could open an artery as easily as it could cauterize a wound. It could even impact thefola,veins that carried magical energy throughout the body. With a single snip to the centralfolawithin the heart, the Severance cut a person’s connection to their magic entirely. Wren had poured everything she had into mastering her magic. Without it, she’d be nothing.

“No, Mother,” she said quietly. “I wouldn’t.”

“Good. It’d be a shame to waste your talent. You will find your path here, even if it is not the one you imagined.” Heloise’s eyes fell to the letter in her hands again. “Remember what I advised, Sister. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

As Heloise shuffled out of the sickbay, whatever stifling power she held over the place lifted. Her Sisters returned to work as if they’d never been eavesdropping. The coughing resumed. Wren remembered to breathe again, all her muscles unwinding.

Heloise was right, of course. Now that word was out that Wren had no protection from the royal family, the opportunists, both within and outside Danu’s borders, would come prowling. An heirless queen unnerved the monarchists, and any ambitious noble could use a puppet with a drop of royal blood. The barest shiver oftemptation passed through her. Was it better to be locked away in an abbey or an aristocrat’s house?

These are desperate thoughts,she chided herself. If she kept her promise to Una, everything would be fine. The safest thing for her to do was to stay here and toe the line.

Burn the letter. Obey the queen’s orders. Rein in her feelings.

It was only a matter of time before she was reinstated, back on Byers’s case, if not ready to fight a war alongside Una. But with dissatisfaction and fear threatening to consume her, Wren couldn’t convince herself that any of that was true.

In her hands she held a bloodred letter and an ocean of doubt.

In the privacy of her room, Wren smoothed the letter out on her desk like a specimen ready for dissection. It was signedLord Alistair Lowry III,and all at once, her mood soured. Of all the Cernosian nobility to write her, of course it would be the man whose name once appeared in every gossip column. His people might have refused all contact with Danu, but the rest of the world was all too eager to leak news from Cernos. Their latest inventions, their most extravagant fashions—which spawned cheap knockoffs that flooded Danubian ballrooms each season—and of course, their courtiers’ latest scandals.

Alistair Lowry was widely, and perhaps rightly, considered to be something of a buffoon. The quintessential aristocrat, he wanted for nothing and had few ambitions beyond sleeping with beautiful people, writing middling poetry, and drinking fine spirits. In short, he was a useless dandy—or, at least, he had been. In the last year, speculations about his health and finances had replaced the accounts of his lavish parties. He’d simply vanished from the Cernosian social scene, as if he’d lost interest in it all overnight.

Strange, all of it. But nothing more so than this letter. Despite his waning stardom, he was still one of the biggest celebrities in Cernos, and Wren was nobody. What could someone like Alistair Lowry have to offer her? With curiosity overcoming her, she peeledopen the envelope as if preparing to trigger a trap. Meticulous looping handwriting shone in dark ink on the page.

Dear Ms. Southerland,