She’d find a way to appeal to the Goddess herself if she had to. She’d do anything if it meant he’d live.

“I’ll get you home. I swear it on my life,” she said. Maybe every promise she made him was naïve and reckless. But for once, even as tears stung her eyes, she was not ashamed of it. “Tell me you believe me.”

“I believe you.”

“Good.”

Wren couldn’t be sure which of them moved first. He crooked his finger under her chin, tipping her face toward his. She lifted onto her toes. His fingers were cold against her face, but the whisper of his breath against her lips set her ablaze. She had never wanted anything more than this last inch of space between them to disappear. She wanted to bottle that look in his eyes, so longing and desperate—for more time, for her.

“Check the east wing!” someone shouted.

They jumped apart, and Wren felt as if she’d plunged beneath the surface of an iced-over lake. The world flooded back, cold and dark. There was no more time.

The tapestry was rent from the stone archway with the shush of heavy fabric and clattered to the ground like a felled fortress wall. Light from the grand hall blinded her, and when the spots in her vision cleared, she saw Una, flanked by two Guardsmen, one hand on the pommel of her sword. Wren watched them absorb the scene piece by piece.

Lowry, unconscious on the ground.

Hal, his hands raised, Lowry’s bloodied knife dangling from his fingers.

Her, standing bare inches from him.

A hush fell like an executioner’s blade.

“Hal Cavendish,” someone hissed, drawing his sword with a high ringing sound.

“Stand down,” Una snapped. “Silence.”

Her subordinates shifted restlessly, awaiting their next orders. Una, however, regarded Wren coldly before her focus locked onto Hal. Her hand did not drift from her blade. “Talk. Now.”

“I wish to confess,” Hal said quietly, “to the attempted assassination of Alistair Lowry. I surrender myself into your custody.”

She jerked her chin at Wren. “And her?”

“I was about to dispose of her before you came,” he said in a voice that chilled Wren to the bone. “It is because of her that he still lives.”

“Don’t listen to him, Captain,” one of her men shouted. “Let me—”

“I said silence,” Una barked. Wren knew that tension in her shoulders. It was the stress of a leader deciding what to do for the safety of her squad, for the good of her home. “Drop your weapon, Reaper.”

Hal let it fall with a clatter onto the stones.

Una’s eyes slid from the knife to the blood still drying on Wren’s arm, as if trying to make sense of what had happened. “I’ve been waiting for this day for a long time. I’d only hoped you would put up more of a fight.”