Una absently plucked a petal from a wilting flower and tore it in half. “If we’re really going to change things, we need someone like you over there to build the relationship. Someone kind.”

“I just got back,” Wren whispered. “How can I leave you again?”

Golden sunlight warmed Una’s eyes like honey. “You’re not leaving me. You’re doing your job.”

Una held out her hand, but Wren couldn’t take it. Una had been her first love. Her best friend. Her whole world. It was too much to walk away from. She hardly knew who she was without her. Wren shook her head. “So much has changed already. I’m afraid.”

“It doesn’t have to be forever,” she said firmly. “You can always come back. I love you, Wren. No matter how far you go, that, at least, won’t change.”

“I love you so much.” Wren threw her arms around her, breathing in the familiar woodfire scent of her hair. “And thank you for—for everything.”

“Don’t thank me yet. You only have about an hour and a half to catch him.”

“I can work with that,” Wren breathed. “Help me pack?”

“Of course.” Una bowed her head. Her hair curtained her face with shining darkness. When she looked up again, her amber eyes were glittering and her cheeks were wet with tears. With forced disgust, she said, “How do you manage this all the time? I feel ridiculous.”

“You’re not,” Wren whispered. “It’s not ridiculous.”

Una grinned at her, raw and unguarded and sad.

It was the most beautiful thing Wren had ever seen.

CHAPTER FORTY

Agreeing to take the royal carriage, in retrospect, might have been excessive.

It was a three-ton, silver-gilded monstrosity. Luminous gas lamps crowned each corner of the roof and shone on the elaborately painted phases of the moon on the solid black cabin. Between the front wheels, their spokes glittering silver in the sunlight, was a sterling statue of the Goddess, her three faces serene and imposing.

Eight white horses pulled it down the cobblestone streets. It lurched like the hulking beast it was, like a boat tempest-tossed. As if anxiety hadn’t soured Wren’s stomach already. She pressed her forehead to the window and watched her breath condense on the glass, the same color as the fog thickening the air outside. Four footmen in their finest livery and four Guardsmen leisurely walked in formation beside the coach, for it crawled along from its sheer weight and the heavy flow of traffic.

“Make way!” the coachman called ahead of them. “Make way!”

Another driver was barking expletives as a man shepherded a small family of goats across the street. Even the horse drawing the carriage beside them snuffled impatiently.