Three of the Queen’s Guard had vanished in the last four months while patrolling the border Danu shared with Cernos and Vesria, and Queen Isabel had tasked Una with finding out why. Times like these demanded draconian measures. As much as she wanted to throttle Una right now, she empathized with her. Her best friend had always carried far too much responsibility on her shoulders.
Wren sighed, her breath pluming in the winter air. Its light burned like embers in the darkness of her eyes and deepened every worried line on her face. Silhouetted at the cliff’s edge, she carved a gash in a sky reddened with sunset. Una snatched the boy’s rucksack and stole out of the clearing. Soon enough, the rest of their unit would arrive with the carriage, and from there they would drag their prisoner back to Knockaine for a proper interrogation. Only one more hour, she reminded herself. Una had been so ornery all morning, and Wren was almost exhausted enough to oblige her with the fight she clearly wanted. “No? Then perhaps I imagined that misty look in your eye.” “I haven’t the slightest idea what you mean.” Wren rested her chin on her fists, trying for nonchalance even as her stomach roiled with guilt. As always, she cut an imposing figure in her black military tunic, its stern rows of buttons shining like steel. “Don’t think I can’t see what’s on your mind.” Una dropped the chains, and they struck the earth with a decisive thud. It was an easy diagnosis of an injury she could heal in minutes. No doubt an accompanying break in the ulnar styloid process. It jutted from his wrist like a splinter waiting to be pulled loose. Shadows hung as heavy as fog in the copse, and what little sunlight leaked through the alders turned sallow, gleaming cold on the shard of bone. Wren perched on the knee of an upturned root, watching as Una bound the boy to the tree he’d fallen from. And then, worst of all-the flare of her magic, calling out to heal him as he screamed. The boy, desperate to escape, scrabbling up the side of a tree. She replayed the break over and over again, each moment frozen like hoarfrost on the backs of her eyes. Wren had never seen a worse radial fracture.
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