LOGINBron
“There you are,” Elara says again. “Don't hang up on me, Alpha. We've only just started talking.”
I stand frozen in the dark hallway. Dad is gone. Kellan took him back to bed ten minutes ago. The house breathes around me, hundreds of minds drifting through sleep at the back of my skull.
And a stranger's voice sits in the middle of all of it like a splinter.
“Get out of my head.” I let out.
WrenThe silver cord bites into my arm like a wire.It's hot, not cold. That surprises me. I'd expected ice. Instead it burns, a thin white line of pain that runs from my wrist to my elbow and tugs me toward the end of the dock like a hooked fish. I dig my heels into the planks. They slide."Wren!" Bron's voice, hoarse and furious.I can't look. The shore is a roar of bodies. Kellan hits the water first, half shifted, claws out, and Bron meets him in the shallows with a crack I feel in my own ribs. Ronan is a streak of russet behind him. Wolves pour across the gravel in a silent wave, eyes ringed in silver, mouths slack."Don't hurt them!" Bron shouts, to no one, to everyone. "They're ours, don’t…”Aida has Damon half behind a piling, one arm braced across his chest, her face set like stone. A guard lunges at them. She slaps him aside with a crack of Nightfall gold I didn't know she still had. Damon stares at her. She does
BronDad doesn't want to leave her.I don't blame him. I wouldn't either. He stands at the foot of the stair with one hand on the white stone of the well, and Rowan stands on the other side of it, small and singed and smiling, and neither of them says a word. It's the quietest goodbye I've ever watched."Dad," I say gently."I know.""The stair won't hold forever.""I know, Bron." He doesn't turn his head. "Give me a minute. I've waited twenty years. I can have a minute."I give it to him.Mom stands at his shoulder with her arm through his. She's stopped crying. She looks scraped clean, like a plate left in the sun. When Rowan finally lifts her hand and touches two fingers to his cheek, Mom's mouth trembles, and she presses her face into his sleeve."Go," Rowan says. "Both of you."“Ro…”"Go home, Damon. Take care of my sister.""I will.""Take care of my girl.""I w
WrenFaith.That's the word. I know it before I know my own mouth has said it. It sits on my tongue like a coin, warm and heavy and gold, and the second it leaves me the whole chamber goes black.No pillars. No light. No glass under my knees. Only Bron's arms locked around me and his heart slamming against my back, and somewhere in the dark a woman laughing softly."Wren?" he whispers."I'm here.""What did you say?""I don't know." My voice shakes. "I don't know what I said.""You do," Vesper says in my head. She sounds stunned. "Wren. You said your name.""My name's Wren.""No." A pause. "It never was."I press my hand to my mouth. My lips are tingling, the way they do after a long cold run. Faith. It's a plain word. A small one. It feels like a door I've walked past a thousand times and never once tried the handle."Thank you," says the thing in the dark.The voice
BronHer eyes go blank.Not gold. Not brown. Just empty, the way a window looks when the lights behind it are switched off. Wren's weight settles against my chest like a sleeping child's. Her lips are parted. Her pulse flutters under my fingers, light and quick."Wren." I tighten my arm around her. "Wren, look at me."She doesn't."She can't hear you," says the woman in white. She lowers her hand from Wren's forehead and steps back, smiling like a nurse at a bedside. "She's looking for it. It takes a moment. Memory is a slippery thing.""Get away from her.""I'm not touching her.""You just did!""Only to point the way."Mom makes a harsh sound. "Rowan wouldn't have done this. Rowan would never have hidden something like this inside a child.""Rowan was dying." The thing's voice is mild. "People do desperate things when they're dying.""Bron," Torn says, low and urgent in my skull. "She's right about
WrenI'm still in here.That's the first thing I know. My mouth is open. My throat is moving. A strange, dry, beautiful voice is pouring out of me and filling the chamber, and I can't stop it. But I'm still in here. I can feel my own fingers curled against my collarbone. I can feel the cold black glass under my knees.I just can't make any of it do what I tell it."Wren." Vesper's voice, tight and fast. "Don't panic. Panic is a door.""I'm not panicking," I say. "I'm having a very calm, very reasonable scream.""Good. Keep it inside.""It's not mine, Vesper. The voice. It's using me like a pipe.""I know. I can feel it. Whatever's singing is sitting on your tongue and pushing.""Can you shove it off?""Working on it."The verse swells. It isn't words, not really. It's a long rising shape of sound that curls around the pillars and loops through the ring of silver script, each note setting another line aflame
BronIt's warm where I am.That's what bothers me first. It's too warm. The kind of warm you get on a summer porch with the screen door open and something good on the stove. Sunlight on boards. Dust turning in the air. Somewhere a radio is playing low.I'm standing in the hallway of the old pack house. The one from before the renovations. The wallpaper is yellow and peeling. There's a crayon mark by the skirting board that I know for a fact I made when I was five."Torn?" I say.Nothing.I try again. "Torn."A faint, far-off sound answers. A growl, maybe. Or the wind. It's muffled, as if I'm hearing it through a wall of wet wool. I don't like it.I look down at myself. I'm wearing the gray T-shirt I had on at fifteen, the one with the hole at the collar. My hands are smaller. I flex them. They feel like they belong to someone who has never held a dying man."Bron?"







