Page 22 of Down Comes the Night

Una did not drop her guard. Her eyes burned with barely contained hurt. Wren had toleave,but how could she part with Una like this? She should have known she could never walk out of Knockaine unscathed. She’d built her life around Una, had loved her, had sworn to serve her. It bound them together at a cellular level. What would it take to sever a bond like that?

“I’ll go back to the abbey.” Wren’s voice wavered. “I’ll even go to the Tower if that’s what you want.”

A cold wind whipped across the field, lifting Una’s hair. Snow swirled around them, glittering like crushed starlight. The distance between them was unnavigable.

Una let her arm drop to her side. “No. Just let me take you to the abbey.”

“Thank you.” Wren staggered forward a step, dropped her suitcase, and drew her into a tight hug. “I love you.”

“Wren,” Una said hoarsely. In the end, that was what did Wren in. The sound of her voice, so tender and strained. The tension in her muscles, somewhere between flinching back and pulling her close.

Wren cradled the back of Una’s head in both shaking hands. The spinal cord was a tender thing, an ovoid hotbed of nerves and magical channels. The smallest energetic disruption could overwhelm the entire nervous system. It was forbidden to use the Healing Touch to harm another person. But to protect her friends—to stop this war—she needed to break a few rules.

Wren eased her magic into Una’s cervical spine. Una jerked back, and Wren caught a glimpse of the terrifying spark in her eye. She’d seen it many times. In meetings with her superiors, ones who assumed their rank translated to competence. In basic training, when another healer once made Wren cry. In the war, when her comrades fell beside her in pools of their own blood.

Rage.

It was then Wren knew that Una would never forgive her for this. Someday, the Threefold Law would demand its recompense. As Una collapsed unconscious into Wren’s arms, it felt like something vital ripped itself out of her. Ithurt,but there was no wound. Nothing she could fix.

Wren secured Una’s arm around her shoulders. She took one staggering step and almost crumpled to the ground. Goddess above, Una was heavier than she remembered, dense with muscle and weighted down by her all her regalia. Had they started manufacturing those medals out of lead?

Wren turned over her shoulder, shivering with nerves and cold. She’d only made it about a quarter mile from the abbey before Una intercepted her. Even from here, she saw the Maiden’s disapproving stare from the rose window.

It took what felt like an eternity to drag Una to the gates, her breaths coming in ragged gasps. Someone would stumble upon her eventually, but she couldn’t leave Una out here in the cold for long. Worrying her lip, she lowered her friend to the ground and proppedher upright against the wall. Unconscious, with her lips parted and dark hair falling into her face, she looked young and frail. And so beautiful, her skin near lustrous in the silvery night.

“I’m sorry, Una.” Tears made the world hazy. She tucked the loose strands of hair behind Una’s ears. “I’m so sorry.”

Wren rang the gate’s bell. Then, she ran.

She nearly stumbled into the snowbanks as she paused to snatch up her suitcases, which lay abandoned beside Una’s imprint in the snow. With every stride, her luggage bruised the backs of her legs. Her shoulders ached in protest and icicles seemed to cut into her lungs with every panicked breath, but she did not slow until she saw the carriage, an open-fronted glass coach lit by the flicker of a lantern.

It stood beside the black bend of the River Muri, a churning mirror that shattered the moon’s pale light. The four white horses hitched to it snorted, their breath curling upward like smoke from a snuffed candle. A man in his fifties stood beside it, dressed in a worn brown coat and a tall hat.

“Ms. Southerland?” the driver asked, clearly flustered by her appearance. “I’d begun to worry you got lost.”

“Not lost,” she wheezed. “Just delayed. Sorry.”

“Can I help you with anything?” he asked, bewildered, as she loaded her belongings into the open trunk. “I’m Basil, by the way.”

“A pleasure.” Wren opened the passenger door. “We have to go. Now.”

He glanced over her shoulder, squinting at the abbey in the distance. “Right. I’ll move us along as quickly as I can. There’s a storm coming, and we won’t make it to the estate if we delay.”

Wren climbed into the carriage and slammed the door shut behind her. Basil took his place on the box seat, and with a snap of the reins, the horses galloped into the flurries and gloom. It would take a few hours for Una to awaken, and a few more still for the news of Wren’s disappearance to hit.

By then, the storm would have gained force, and Wren would be long gone.

Wren pressed her face to the window. She hardly recognized her reflection in the glass. Although she had the same thick eyebrows and the same broad forehead, the harried girl staring back at her was a deserter.

Wren felt dead with exhaustion, but the rough shape of her breaths let her know, despite it all, she was alive. Without Una, without her job, she was still Wren. A Wren composed of all the worst, unlovable parts of herself. But still Wren.

CHAPTER SEVEN

After a restless sleep, Wren found her heart scabbed over in the daylight. It wasn’t enough to feel entirely manageable, but it was enough to keep her from crumbling. To stave off the guilt, to keep herself from being torn apart, she’d have to keep herself busy. So she let her focus shift to her immediate needs. She let herself notice that she was cold and hungry and sore from hours of leaning against the door of the carriage. At least one of those she could fix. With a pulse of healing magic, she rubbed away the soreness in her muscles. It was a superfluous, careless use of magic, but the tingle of it on her fingertips filled her with relief. She still had it, all hers. She hadn’t been Severed. She wasn’t in a mine.

She was free.

The storm Basil promised hadn’t arrived yet, although it clotted the sky thick and gray overhead. They wouldn’t have another opportunity to rest, so they took a detour to a small Cernosian town just a few hours’ ride from Lowry’s estate. It was little more thana smattering of houses huddled together on the mountainside like shingles on a sloped roof.