As she worked, Wren felt a familiar prickle on the back of her neck. Staring. Her Sisters’ eyes burned, not always unkindly, with the same question. Why are you here?

The weight of their judgment piled on her shoulders. Maybe she was imagining it, but she swore it felt like pity. It wasn’t exactly undeserved, when her failure would be circulating in every gossip column and tavern in the city by now. She could imagine the headlines now: Paper Queen Isabel finally wearies of keeping her sister’s bastard on the government payroll.

Wren pushed away the bitterness and tried to settle into the familiar process of healing. Tried to find it in herself to feel satisfied, but it was mindless, grueling work. She would go mad with it, the repetition of her days, how the scope of her world coiled around itself smaller and smaller. Yes, she was helping people. But what was treating one man’s gout, one woman’s broken wrist, against countless dying in a war?

This was just so far from what she wanted. So far from where she belonged, tracking down whoever took Byers from her. Whoever might still take Una from her. Even if Una survived and traced the disappearances back to Vesria, war would come. Una would see combat again—without Wren to keep her alive.

No matter what, she thought, I have to be reinstated.

Wren forced a smile for her patient as the glow of the Healing Touch faded from her hands. A weary numbness washed over her in its wake. “Alright. You’re healed.”

“Thank you.” The woman’s eyes were round with wonder. “I can’t ever repay you, Sister.”

Before Wren could reply, gnarled fingers wrapped around her elbow. Wren turned to find Mother Heloise looming over her, a string of wooden prayer beads clanking around her neck. Exactly as Wren remembered, Heloise looked like an angry rook, although time had stolen more of the color from her hair and wrinkled her golden-brown skin. To see her again brought on an emotion Wren couldn’t articulate. This was the woman who had raised her, who had trained her alongside the other apprentices. But there was no joy in this reunion. Only a cool recognition.

Wren could not forget the sight of her retreating back in the window.

As Heloise collected healing magic in her palm, Wren smothered her temper before it sparked. She hadn’t seen Heloise all week, yet here she was, assessing her work as if she were a newly minted apprentice. Apparently satisfied, Heloise let go and rested her hand atop the other on her cane. “Perfect, as always, Sister Wren.” To the woman, she said, “Go in peace.”

As soon as Wren’s patient scrambled out of bed and out of earshot, Wren rounded on the old woman. “Not perfect enough. I’m back here, after all.”