Page 33 of Down Comes the Night

Everything depended on his survival.

After an hour, Wren broke the connection between them, and Hal sighed heavily. There was no rattle in his lungs, no congestion damming his airways. Her hands tingled with exertion, thefolarun raw.

“That’s all for tonight,” she said.

He eased himself into a seated position. His shirt still hung open, revealing a pale triangle of skin. In his prime, he must have been impressive. There was hardly a scar on him—a terrifying testament to how untouchable he was. Sickness had eroded some of his physique, but he was still in lean military shape.

Enough of that,she decided. Disgusted with herself for cataloging anything outside medical significance, she turned away and began to pack up her things.

His searching gaze singed her face like a brand. She tried to ignore it, but two impulses,don’t lookandlook,warred for dominance. Fear drove the first, curiosity—and indignation—the second. He was staring at her so openly, so intently, she was certain he could see the exact center of her. Did he just go about gaping at everyone so brazenly? He was probably accustomed to getting away with such rudeness when no one dared to challenge him.

If only they knew how he’d deceived them.

I’ll show him,she thought bitterly.I’m not afraid.

She dared to raise her eyes to his, and it felt like jumping from a cliff. Everyone said his eyes were black, but beneath the surface, there was indigo and cobalt, as clear and dark as glacial water. Wren waited for her heart to stop.

It didn’t.

Her satisfaction melted when she took in his expression, lips parted, eyes wide. He looked like a man seeing sunlight for the first time. Starving. Almost… awed?

Before she could let the uneasiness of that settle, Hal spared her and glanced away. Just like that, whatever flicker of emotion Wren had seen was gone.

“What?” he said.

Such accusation condensed into one word. As if she held some power over him. “It’s eye contact. Is no one permitted to look His Highness in the eye?”

“Permission is beside the point.”

It was beside the point. Anyone else wouldn’t dare take the risk.

“Your magic is gone,” she said, quicker than she could think. “Isn’t it?”

He was silent, but the air around him crackled with tension.

“I thought so.” Wren leaned in closer. She wanted to see his fear. She wanted to see his shame. He gave her nothing, but his now bored, heavy-lidded gaze was a challenge. “Now I see why you’re missing, Reaper. You don’t stand a chance of winning your election like this. You ran away because you didn’t want them to realize you’re worthless. Didn’t you?”

At the title, Hal flinched. His voice, however, was as flat and cold as ever. “And what of you? It’s no secret what happened to you after your mother’s death. Although you managed to escape your exile, you were born into shame and can’t outrun that, no matter how desperately you try.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” she spat.

She trembled at the inadequacy of her retort, but fury had left her near speechless. No one besides Isabel had ever so plainly twisted the knife in her greatest insecurity. No one besides Isabel had ever been so intentionally cruel. Without another word, she got up and left.

Across the hall, in the safety of her room, every feeling she’d avoided waited for her in the shadows. Her silent accusers: fear, stress, shame. They crowded in on her until she could see nothing beyond the haze of her own failure. As much as she wanted to be better, to be stronger, Hal had gotten to her.

She slid to the floor in a heap and wept.

CHAPTER TEN

In the cold light of morning, nothing made any more sense than it did the night before.

She’d spent sleepless hours struggling with what had happened last night and what it meant for her. All she had to show for her perseveration now were her bloodshot, swollen eyes. Wren stood before the mirror in the washroom, sighing at her harried reflection. She had a meeting with Lowry in thirty minutes and couldn’t very well attend him looking like this.

It was a careful process, a work of illusion, to transform herself from the red-eyed girl in the mirror into a medical professional. She splashed her face with cold water, dusted her blotchy cheeks with talc, and neatly pinned up her hair. By the end of it, she was armored. Her smile, passably confident, would be enough to convince Lowry nothing was amiss.

She still looked desperate—a little wild in the eyes—but in light of how thoroughly her life had unraveled, Wren was beginning to suspect a little desperation had become a permanent fixture.

Wren turned on the faucet again and began to wash her hands. The hot water—another electrical marvel, apparently—soothed the ache in her joints, and steam coiled upward, silvering the mirror with condensation.