Page 2 of Down Comes the Night

In her darker moments, Wren wished she had been with him on that patrol. Maybe it would’ve been her instead. Maybe if she’d seen something—a shred of his uniform or his knife forgotten in the snow—she could mourn him properly. But she refused to believe he was dead. Until she had answers, she couldn’t lay him to rest.

This prisoner—thisboy—did nothing to assuage her. With his coltish limbs and streaming nose, he hardly looked capable of petty theft, much less kidnapping.

“Areyoualright?” Una asked, jarring her from her thoughts.

No,she wanted to say. Instead, she said, “I am.”

“Really?” Una drawled. “Just a minute ago, you looked like you wanted to strangle me with those chains.”

“And why ever would I want to do that? You’re always perfectly agreeable.”

Una barked out a laugh. “Now I know you have an agenda. Out with it.”

Wren considered changing the subject; it was so rare to get a smile out of Una these days. But she had to secure the boy’s safety before she could let herself relax. “Let me heal his arm. At this rate, you’ll have to interrogate his corpse. His wound is going to go necrotic before we reach Knockaine.”

At first, Una did not react. She stood so still Wren almost believed she hadn’t listened to anything she’d said. Then, without a word, Una extended the notebook into the empty space between them.

Wren gingerly took the edge of it. “What’s this?”

“See for yourself.”

Wren began to leaf through the book. Names and physical descriptions, written in a child’s halting scrawl, filled page after water-stained page. With a sinking horror, she realized she knew all these people. Bold red marks slashed some of them out, but she couldn’t exactly make sense of the pattern. Captured targets, maybe? But no—there was Byers’s name, entirely unmarked. The letters shimmered through her tears.

“Whatisthis?” she repeated, unable to keep the mounting dread out of her voice.

“A catalog of every soldier who’s patrolled this section of the border for the past year. I found it in his bag. It looks like he’s been documenting potential victims.”

Every righteous protest crumbled to ash in her mouth. It chilled her to trace the shape of her own name. Then the decisive cut through Una’s. No, this couldn’t be right.

“Still think he’s just an innocent child?” Una asked.

Hissing through her teeth, Wren thrust the notebook back at Una. The skin-crawling sensation of those cursed pages still lingeredon her fingertips. “It doesn’t matter what I think. It matters that he’s wounded.”

“It seems to matter plenty what you think. Every time you get an idea like this in your head, it goes poorly.”

“That’s not true.”

“Then allow me to remind you of the time you insisted on stopping to heal a soldier during the march on Donn.”

Wren didn’t need a reminder. The thorough excoriation from her superiors, and later the queen, guaranteed she’d never forget that mistake.

“Or perhaps the time you wanted to save a stray dog caught in the cross fire?”

Now Una was being unfair. Heat climbed up Wren’s neck. “That was different.”

“It’s no different,” Una snapped. “If anything, you’re painfully consistent. You’re too easily distracted by your feelings and hell-bent on self-sabotage. I need you by my side, Wren, and the queen will discharge you for another offense. His suffering is a small price to pay, especially if he had a hand in capturing Byers. He’s a worm, beneath your pity. Let it go.”

But she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. “She wouldn’t dare. Who would replace me?”

Una looked like she wanted to say something but refrained.

“She doesn’t have another healer like me. How many lives did the antibiotic I developed save? How many surgeries did I help perform on the battlefield?”

“Talent isn’t hard to come by. All the medical advancements in the world won’t save you from the queen’s impatience forever.”

“But being the best healer in the Guard will.” It was something she told herself every day, but right now, Wren wasn’t sure if she believed it.

Isabel—or, as her illegitimate niece, should Wren sayHer Majesty?—had made it painfully clear that one more mistake would land Wren back in the Order of the Maiden. She had been raised inthe abbey, but it wasn’t home. There, Wren had been nothing but a castaway: forgotten, unwanted, purposeless.