Hal stared determinedly out the foggy window. “I’m sorry to hear about your friend.”

Wren sucked in an audible breath. How could he give her compassion after everything she’d said to him tonight? “I’m sorry, too. I … don’t know what came over me.”

Hal glanced her way but said nothing. Forgiveness, she supposed, had to be earned. As Wren walked away from him, she replayed his words over and over again.

Not until I find them.

Were they really so different? Two weeks ago, Wren had thought she knew herself. A medic in the Queen’s Guard. Reckless, yes, but good-hearted at her core. But with the weight of Hal’s life and a war in her hands, she wasn’t so sure anymore. Nothing was as simple as she wanted it to be.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Something about the thirty-third hour awake brought the world into sharp relief: a light-headed, transcendent clarity. If Wren was to have any chance of curing him, she couldn’t waste time sleeping until she had a solid lead on the antidote.

As Heloise’s apprentice, she’d welcomed the quiet comfort of the witching hour. Bone-weary after a long day of work, she often felt euphoric crawling into bed. Like she was the only person left in the world to watch the dawn sprawl out over the gray miles of hoarfrosted fields. Tonight’s solitude, however, only made her feel small and unhinged. The wind rattled her windows, and with thick ice calcified on the glass, she could see nothing of the world outside. She existed now only within the wavering confines of a lantern’s light.

A rat in a gilded cage.

Chipped white moonlight slipped through the latticework of cracks in the ice and illuminated her makeshift workstation. Crinkled papers littered the floor. Spilled tinctures stained her books and the heels of her palms. There were dirty pipettes and stirring sticks, overflowing beakers, and loose herbs dusting every surface like snowfall. Everything hurt. Everything. But she couldn’t rest. Only five more days remained to develop an antidote for Hal, and all she could see in her own messy handwriting was

Failure

Failure

Failure

in a neat column down the page.

Not a single one of her experiments had worked.

Her anger had simmered itself dry hours ago. What remained was despair. She wanted to go home, far away from Hal and her guilt and fear. Home, where everything she loved waited for her. Una and her flat and the polluted River Muri and—

Her book’s text warped and glimmered, and Wren squeezed her eyes shut to hold in tears. Self-pity wasn’t productive right now, as much as she wanted to indulge it. She needed to prepare the next batch of antitoxin. She opened her pocket watch and set a timer. In five minutes, she could run another set of tests. And most likely collect another set of failures to add to her growing list.