Merrin cleared his throat. “She—she left to try and get back to the battle. She left, and with Nitta, I—I couldn’t follow her. She made me promise to stay…”
For one wild instant, relief staggered through Wren. Lei was still in the Janese deserts? Then she was alive! Lei was resourceful. She was a fighter. Wren could picture it now: she’d have made it to one of the desert villages or roaming clans, gathered supplies to make it to the Demon Ridge mountains, then on into Ang-Khen. Maybe she was close by even now, and any minute she’d run in through the fort’s entranceway with her perfect face and dazzling, hopeful eyes and a smile that would light Wren’s heart on fire, and everything would be all right because they would be together again—
Merrin’s voice crushed her daydreaming.
“News reached us while Nitta and I were in the Red Sand Valley. A royal carriage passed through the One Thousand Mile Road. Naja was spotted speaking to the road guards. Rumor has it she captured Lei in Jana and has since…” He seemed to deflate. “Has since brought her back to the Hidden Palace.”
The room was deathly still.
Wren’s body flooded with ice. It felt like when she was in a Xia trance, except this was not magic. This was not power.
This was the very opposite of it.
Drawing a blank mask over her features, Wren closed her eyes. Her right hand moved to the knife in her robes, a familiar song calling to something deep within her, a place first born from her warrior blood then honed by Ketai. An ugly, wrathful core she both loved and hated, because it was her strength yet was also what had caused Lei to look at her and see an enemy.
Wren pulled the knife free.
Khuen, sensing danger, said, “Lord Hanno will be back any day now. Perhaps we should wait until he speaks to Merrin? He may have more information that could be useful to us.”
Wren held her rage in with all she had. She finally had the answer to the question she’d been waiting over a month for, but it didn’t bring relief, or peace. And while she would give anything to be able to force Merrin to fly her right then and there to the palace, she had been left in charge of the fort. She had to wait for her father. She was, once again, useless to help Lei.
She turned on her heels before her self-control snapped. “I’m going to get things ready for Nitta,” she told Khuen. “Keep him here. I want to hear Nitta’s side of the story before we question him more.”
“Wren. I am so sorry for what I did.”
Her back stiffened. Merrin held her name so tentatively, so lovingly on his tongue, and it pierced her.
She drew herself tall, composing herself. Then, like Lova minutes before, she stalked off without a backward glance. Outside, she gave orders to the waiting guards and maids, and the rain-hushed fort filled with sounds of activity.
It wasn’t until five minutes later that Wren realized she’d broken the handle of the small knife beyond repair. It was crushed beneath her fingers. She opened her hand and tipped her palm, watching the shattered pieces fall to the floor with empty eyes and a darkly raging heart.
She didn’t recognize Nitta at first.
When the guards alerted Wren that Lova had returned, she went to stand by the foot of the stairs under the ruffling banners of her clan, waiting, ready, wanting, needing Nitta’s big smile and playful confidence, the echo of her brother’s cheek. She clung to the idea that it’d be almost like having a part of Lei back. A flicker of light in the darkness that had been these terrible past weeks.
At the sound of hooves, the foyer grew quiet. There’d been an air of anxiety ever since Ketai left for Nantanna, and Merrin’s return had done nothing to ease the tension among the remaining clan members.
Past the entranceway, the grounds were dark and rain-lashed. Hoof-beats drew closer. Wren expected them to stop when the horse’s bulky silhouette came into view, wet coat shining under the atrium’s lanterns. But the horse continued right up to the palace entrance—and then inside.
Lova, just as rain-sodden, jumped from the horse’s back and strode into the foyer with a look of pure, thunderous hatred. “I’ll kill him!” she snarled, drawing her cutlass with such force many of the watching clan members scurried back. She made a beeline for the room Merrin was being held in.
Wren blocked her. There was the clink of weapons as the guards outside his door readjusted their stances, readying this time not to keep their prisoner in but to keep Lova out.
The lion-girl laughed in their faces. “As if.”
“Lo,” Wren warned.
Lova growled and jerked her neck, raindrops flying from her fur. “Look at what he did to her!” she yelled, throwing an arm out. “Look!”
Even in the impressive foyer, the horse looked huge, a towering black-and-white stallion bred big enough to seat demons. A sodden lump of fabric was heaped on his back. Wren looked past the horse, confused. Where was Nitta? And what was Lova thinking, bringing a horse into the atrium?
Understanding struck her.
Ignoring her father’s aides, who were yet again bustling about, requesting instructions, Wren went to the sorry-looking mound of wet clothes on the horse’s back—which was not a pile of clothes at all but Nitta.
Nitta. Collapsed, bedraggled, broken.
The leopard demon was slumped over the horse’s neck, head resting on one arm. The other dangled limply at her side.
Wren took her drooping hand. “Nitta,” she whispered.
Nitta looked exhausted. Her fur lay soggy and matted against her. The coat she was wrapped in dwarfed her meager frame, the ridges of her spine sharp beneath it, her exposed collarbones delicate as wishbones. The leopard-girl had always been wiry, but this was a different kind of thin.
Slowly, Nitta lifted her head. She looked at Wren with her lovely green eyes, the faintest sparkle in them. “Wren,” she said in a low croak. One corner of her lips tucked. “You’re looking well, considering, you know…” Her lashes fluttered. “Last time we saw each other. Fight to the death, and all that…”
Then her head slumped.
Wren caught her as she slid from the stallion’s back, drawing her smoothly into her arms. “Take the horse to the stables,” she ordered the milling clan members. “And show me to Nitta’s room. Lo,” she added sharply over her shoulder.
Lova had been edging toward Merrin’s room while everyone’s attention was averted. Looking frustrated, she joined Wren. “You have to let me do it at some point,” she grumbled. “Unless you want the honors yourself?”
Wren didn’t answer. She wasn’t sure what she wanted. She wanted to tear Merrin apart. To storm into the Hidden Palace and cut down every demon until she found Lei. She wanted to hurt, to destroy… and she wanted to lie in a quiet room with a girl in her arms and know that no one would ever hurt either of them again. Oh, how much she wanted that.
Wren wanted it all, but she wasn’t sure if she could have any of it, and she especially wasn’t sure she deserved to.
There was a crunch as she stepped on the broken pieces of her knife.
No wonder she’d been so drawn to it, she thought dully. She was everything the knife was. Jagged. Cold. Bloodstained.
Broken.