Page 85 of Down Comes the Night

“I am,” Hal said tersely. “By the grace of Wren Southerland.”

“And we shall drink and compose epics in her name tomorrow,” he said. “We’ve somehow fared this long without you, and I’ve so much extra help for the ball already. How about you take the night off tomorrow? Consider it a celebration of your health.”

“How generous of you, my lord.”

Lowry turned back to Wren and clasped her hands beseechingly. His rings, glinting clinical and cold as stainless steel, dug into her skin. He was unrecognizable from even a few moments ago. As if his outburst had exerted him, he wilted like an underfed plant. “My dear, I’ve frightened you. Please forgive me. I fear I’m not myself. There’s been a tragedy in your absence.”

“A tragedy?”

“Yes.” He held her tighter, bleeding the heat from her skin. “The Duke of Matthonwy—Fitzwilliam Barrett, my dearest and oldest friend—was kind enough to help me put together a search party. They went looking for you last night, but something terrible befell them. We’ve only recovered two of them. One man is dead, and the other is barely holding on. We found them only hours ago. Barrett is distraught.”

“What happened?”

“It’s far beyond me to know exactly.” His breath smelled of rich red wine: sharp with alcohol and warm with black pepper. And beneath it all, that cloying, repulsive stench of formaldehyde. “Although when I last checked on him, he seemed to be experiencing early symptoms of renal failure. It’s passing strange.”

Wren squeezed her eyes shut to fight back the hot prickle of tears. There was no way he’d know that. Not unless he’d done something to induce it himself. Once, Lowry had told her he was no scientist—that had no interest in his father’s arcane medical texts. Wren did not know if she would ever strike the bottom of his lies.

“I see.”

Lowry straightened to his full height, again the picture of flustered anguish. “I hate to demand more of you than I already have, but…”

“Take me to him at once.”

“As you wish.” Lowry ascended the stairs, trailed by his long tailcoats.

Wren tentatively placed one hand on the banister. Before she could take another step forward, Hal reached out to her, his face drawn with concern. “Don’t. This can bring no good.”

“I know.”

But she couldn’t let someone die on her watch. And until they had the evidence they needed, what other choice did she have but to play Lowry’s games? She rested a reassuring hand on Hal’s shoulder before following Lowry upstairs.

It was far, far worse than she expected.

The library looked like Lowry had disemboweled it. Wren saw both sides of him laid out in the arrangement of the room. His rage, in the overturned side table, the papers and books littering the room, the crystal decanter leaking brandy into the carpet. His cold calculation, in the way he’d already prepared the room with abucket of water and a few surgical basins. As soon as he’d showed her to the door, he’d left her alone with nothing but a sly murmur of “Good luck.”

One servant—his body, anyway—was sprawled across a velvet chaise lounge. At a glance, he seemed to be sleeping, curled on his side with his arm pillowing his cheek. His body was split like the horizon with bruises. The entire left side of his face was marbled grisly black and purple with stagnant blood. The living man, barely alive as he was, lay sedated and shallowly breathing on the makeshift operating table of Lowry’s desk.

Above it, the taxidermied stag’s twelve-point antlers impaled the milky light. Wren removed her coat and tossed it over the stag, where it hung from the antlers like a torso gored and gone limp. It was better than the alternative. She couldn’t have it judging her work with those empty sockets. Trepidation melted away as she unfastened her medical bag and began sterilizing her instruments. Once she snapped on her gloves and arranged her tools, she began examining her patient and the corpse, letting her magic flow through their bodies. Protocol and procedure mechanized her, shielded her from the full brunt of her horror. She was saving a life, nothing more or less. She could fall apart later.

Because based on their wounds, Wren was quite certain this was murder.

They were far too practiced, far too intentional. The first man had died quickly, likely from the blunt trauma at the base of his skull. Her living patient’s injuries, however, assured Wren that Lowry was either more foolish or far cockier than she gave him credit for. They were bombastic, almost mocking. As Lowry suggested, the man’s kidney was necrotic from a poison she vaguely recognized but had no time to treat. He would need a transplant in order to survive.

This wasn’t just a punishment. This was a test of her skill.

Wren dragged the dead man, cold to the touch, from his seat with a mumbled apology. As quickly as she could manage, she sliced his kidney free from its nest of tissue and placed it in a waitingbowl. Then, her magic white and sharp, she opened an incision in her patient’s abdominal cavity. Skin and muscle and fat peeled back like a zipper beneath the Touch.

The procedure demanded all of her focus, all of her magic. And in the haze of desperation and fear, her control over her magic slipped, grew looser. She couldn’t afford inefficiency or the way her energy bled out of her, but she couldn’t help it. Magic burned like cold flame, leaping higher and higher and casting the room in a pale light.

This man’s life was in her hands. She would not—couldnot—let Lowry kill again on her watch. Transplants were especially difficult. Partly because they were rarely required and thus rarely taught. Partly because organs were tangled in a net of blood vessels andfola,fine and gleaming and too easy to slice. A single mistake could be fatal. Few medics, especially combat medics, had the skill or practice to perform transplant surgery. But Heloise had ensured that she did.

If you cannot be loved,she’d said,you must be indispensable.

The months before Wren’s acceptance to the Guard were among the most grueling of her short life. She dared not to think of how many lab rats lay buried from her failed attempts at transplant surgery: leaking arteries, rejected tissue, complicated infections. Then, one day, as if by a miracle, both donors lived. Two mice, whiskers twitching, each with the other’s heart. Wren sometimes wondered how she’d ever thought herself kind.

It was a steady rhythm of cut and ablate, cut and ablate. She sliced and mended flesh like she was hemming fabric, and when it was done, she implanted the kidney and encouraged it to take root like a sapling. As she sealed the incision, a single thought tormented her.What is the point of all this?Wren could not imagine. Did notwantto imagine.

These men were no soldiers, no mages. Had they been wrong about how Lowry chose his victims? Was this all just some sick game, entirely meaningless? The very thought made her want to retch.