Page 39 of Down Comes the Night

Wren stared at him. “You do realize how unsettling that is, don’t you?”

“Force of habit, I’m afraid,” he replied. “Observation has allowed me to survive this long.”

Definitely unsettling. In Vesria’s ruthless court, she supposed it was useful to maintain a mental dossier on every person he met. “I get it. You’re a perfect soldier and a perfect politician, even dying. Am I supposed to be impressed? Threatened?”

“I’m only making conversation. I’m… admittedly out of practice.”

Clearly. If this was his idea of friendly repartee, she doubted she would escape this place with her sanity intact.Goddess, grant me patience.As she affixed a vial to a syringe, she reminded herself how sweet it would be to deliver him to the queen.

“My face doesn’t change that much,” she muttered to herself. Then, to Hal, “Give me your arm.”

He reluctantly obliged. She took hold of his wrist—and a current like electricity tore through her hand. They both flinched away from each other, but a warm sensation still crackled like fire in the space between them.

Hal’s eyes locked on hers. “What was that?”

She heard the unspoken accusation in his question:What did you do?Wren threw up her hands. “Nothing.”

“It felt like something.”

Oh, it was something, alright. Healers rarely worked on the same patient for prolonged periods of time, lestthishappen. Buthis tone rankled her too much to answer him straight. “Another astounding observation, Cavendish. Is it really so awful?”

He cut her an exasperated look. “It’s uncomfortable, yes, to be so aware of you.”

Good,she wanted to say.Suffer with me.

Itwasuncomfortable. This constant awareness of his energy all around her, the faint pressure of his heartbeat thudding against her eardrums. And when she touched him, that horrible crawling sensation beneath her skin. She couldn’t wait to slice herself free of him. Only two weeks more.

Wren rested her hand on his forearm, shivering as her magic vibrated from within his body like a greeting. “The simplest way I can put it is that my magic is bound up in your cells, but it wants to come back to me. You’re part of me, and I’m part of you. Eventually, as you recover, your body will flush it out. It’s temporary—and completely unintentional, I might add. So if you would kindly stop glaring at me?”

His hostility gradually sagged into bitterness—then morphed into a stoic, pious sort of acceptance that annoyed her more than the alternatives. “I don’t like it.”

“I’m terribly sorry about that, but there’s nothing I can do.”

Wren swabbed the inside of Hal’s elbow with alcohol and tied the tourniquet around his forearm a fraction too tight. He stared straight out the window while she smacked his arm, encouraging the veins to swell and rise. A dark, admittedly bored part of her enjoyed torturing him. It was so difficult to get a rise out of him, so if the knowledge that an enemy’s magic lived inside him rattled him, she wouldn’t let him forget it.

“You have good veins.” She traced her finger along the thick median cubital vein in his elbow, relishing the way he stiffened with discomfort. “Very stabbable.”

Hal ignored her.

“Get faint with needles?”

“No.” His voice dripped with irritation. Hers, however, was as sickly sweet as an elderberry brew.

“No need to be tough. Just don’t look.” Without further warning, Wren slipped the needle into the crook of his arm. Taunting him would be a slow and petty vengeance.

She filled the vials with his blood, watching the clear tubes run a dark, living red. Tempting as it was to drain him, she took only enough to properly conduct her experiments. After she capped the last of the vials, she removed the needle from his arm and tapped the injection site with one finger. It sealed beneath her touch, leaving only a smear of blood behind. She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and gently wiped it away.

Black spotted her vision, catching her off-balance for a moment. She desperately needed to sleep if the effort of healing that small wound had nearly drained her entirely.

“That would have healed on its own.” Wren glanced up at him, surprised by the confusion that tinged his voice. “You’re wasting your energy.”

Wren primly folded the bloodied cloth over her arm. “I’m not. Your immune system is compromised enough as it is.”

In truth, it’d been force of habit, almost ritualistic, to leave no trace. Even now, a world away from Knockaine, she couldn’t dismiss that sneering voice in the back of her mind:If you’re not the best, if you make a mistake, what good are you?

“But you’re exhausted.”

“Hardly.”