Page 38 of Down Comes the Night

“I do.” This time, he closed his eyes. The light elongated the shadows, the outline of his eyelashes scoring his cheekbones like scars. When he spoke again, irony and a strange kind of gratitude tangled together in his voice. “Perhaps it’s divine providence.”

That notion drifted too close to heresy, even for her. Theirmeeting here seemed a coincidence far more sinister, but she held her tongue on the matter. “Indeed. How strange that you have a lead on the very case I’m trying to solve.”

Hal’s expression shuttered again.

“I haven’t stopped turning our predicament over,” Wren pressed on. “A decorated soldier and future politician, throwing it all away to become a valet for a man who has no ambition other than to throw the most extravagant party of the season? I think not. It couldn’t be your lead that brought you here, could it?”

Silence, as expected. It was wishful thinking to believe he’d feed her even crumbs of information. Wren crossed her arms. “Fine. Can you at least tell me more about this sickness? When it came on, how it felt?”

“Three weeks ago,” he said. That seemed about right, judging by the atrophy of his muscles and the soft hollows beneath his cheekbones. “It was gradual at first. After about two days of running a fever, the cough started.”

Wren frowned as she scratched a quick note to herself. “And was hemoptysis present initially, or is that a more recent development?”

Hal blinked at her.

“Coughing blood,” she supplied. “Sorry.”

“I see. That started immediately.”

She lifted her pen as she registered the almost wry lilt to his voice. For the life of her, she could not tell if he was making fun of her or not. Shaking her head, she ignored it and jotted down another note. “Alright. Fever. Coughing blood. What next?”

“A worsening fatigue. By the third day, I couldn’t get out of bed. It felt as if I were being torn apart from the inside.” He paused. “I thought I was going to die.”

“It’s a miracle you haven’t, frankly. And it’s continued to worsen since then?”

“No. It leveled off fairly quickly.”

“I see.” Wren chewed on the end of her pen and considered everything she knew about this disease. A gradual onset of symptoms,followed by a sudden spike and plateaued progression. No infected people at the time of his arrival—not that it mattered, considering no viral or bacterial cells were present in his bloodstream.

So where had it come from? Whatwasit?

If magic wouldn’t work, she had to try something else. Although she had researched diseases thoroughly, she wasn’t especially practiced in treating them. As a combat medic, she rarely dealt with things on a microscopic level, or things that systematically attacked the body. Soldiers’ injuries were often dramatic but always contained, deep gashes and simple poisons, strangely angled limbs and torn ligaments. Hal’s illness, meanwhile, was deep and invisible. It eluded her.

Wren opened her satchel—something Byers had always made fun of her for carrying around all the time.That thing is a bottomless well of torture implements,he’d told her when she’d once procured a scalpel to use as a makeshift letter opener. The memory panged like a knocked-against bruise, hitching her breath.

Not now,she thought.Please, not now.

Hal Cavendish would never see her wounded again. Shoving through the fresh wave of grief, she kept her eyes lowered until it settled around her as she rummaged through her bag for the supplies she needed. Out came a tourniquet, a bottle of alcohol, a syringe, and three glass vials.

“What’re you doing?” Hal asked.

“It’s clear that I’m missing something. Drawing blood will help me see what exactly it is.”

He seemed to consider her response carefully. “Danubian healers don’t usually practice medicine outside their magic.”

A statement, she noted, although he waited on her response as if seeking confirmation.

“Not usually.” Wren paused. “And?”

“You do.” Hal tilted his head, as if it were obvious. “That’s notable.”

His tone was observational, his face blank, but she still felt a small spark of pride at his recognition. “Thank you?”

He seemed vaguely amused by her response. “It’s only a statement of fact.”

Wren resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “I didn’t realize you were collecting information on me.”

“Only some.” He fixed her with an assessing stare, as if he hoped to glean more from her. “For example, you favor your left leg slightly, and you crack your knuckles after your magic fades. However, I don’t need to look hard to find your tells. Your face telegraphs your moods so plainly.”