Bonesmith (House of the Dead, #1)(123)

Wren did not appreciate his condescending tone. “Like between you and my mother?”

He sighed, but in an indulgent—though still slightly frustrated—way. “Wren, your mother and I—”

“Enough,” she cut in. “I don’t want any more lies from you.”

For the first time, her father’s confident facade faltered. “I’m not sure what—”

“No. More. Lies.”

He didn’t know that she’d been eavesdropping on his conversation with Odile, but he could tell she’d discovered something she wasn’t meant to.

“What did Odile say to you?” he asked, trying to figure out what she knew without exposing himself.

“She didn’t say anything to me, but she said a good deal to you. I won’t wind up like him. Like Locke. Odile was right. We have to destroy it.”

Wren felt everyone’s eyes on her, particularly Julian’s. He knew nothing of her plans or what else she had discovered that night, but he undoubtedly knew she was talking about the well.

Vance’s eyes fluttered closed, and he cast a surreptitious glance over his shoulder at his guards. “You don’t understand—”

“I understand better than you!” Wren burst out. “I saw, okay? I saw the result of what happened that day. Hundreds of bodies, crushed to dust. Their souls forever trapped. I felt it when I touched the magic. I felt the danger. We can’t—”

“Look around, Wren! The Dominions are safe and at peace, and that is also the result of what happened that day. Think of what else we could accomplish together! All this means”—he withdrew the ring as he slowly walked toward her—“is that you are more powerful than you thought. Capable of more than you can imagine. More than Locke. It means you are different. Special.”

“I don’t want to be,” Wren said, staring at the ring.

“I know. But it doesn’t change anything. You are still a bonesmith. And you are still my daughter, Wren, in all the ways that matter. I have loved you as a daughter, and so my daughter you will always be.” His voice was constricted, his expression sincere, and it caused tears to fill Wren’s eyes.

She reached for the ring, and he let her take it, thinking he had won. He tilted his head at his guards, directing them to apprehend Leo and Julian. The prince was unarmed, and Julian had yet to make it to the storage locker. Ironheart would not be enough.

But the instant Wren’s fingers touched the ring, she felt the well’s power within her stir. Apparently it was an amplifier, as Julian had guessed. She just hadn’t noticed before with the well’s power fresh and foreign and coursing through her. But now, with the passage of time and distance, she felt the way it reared up again, awakened by the ring.

She understood then what it might have been like to be Locke. To have what you needed right there at your fingertips.

And to use it.

“Don’t touch them,” she snapped—but these guards were living, not undead, and her commands had only the power her father gave her behind them. He frowned at her.

“Wren, darling, I thought we understood each other. We’re on the same side, but I can’t have you running around here disobeying me. They will not be harmed, okay? Apprehend them,” he finished, speaking to his guards, while putting a restraining hand on Wren’s shoulders.

One of them reached for Julian, arm outstretched.

Wren thought of the moment in the mill house when she seemed to have flung Julian against the pillar with more than just her muscles alone.

She stared at the guard’s forearm, willing it to stop moving.

A sickening crack echoed in the dungeon, and the man cried out in pain and confusion.

Wren felt the blood drain from her face. She hadn’t just stopped his arm.

She’d broken it.

The guards nearest to him drew their weapons, assuming Julian had somehow attacked him. Julian, meanwhile, was staring in shock at the man, hunched over his broken limb. Leo also looked stunned, the guards that had been edging his way halting in their tracks.

None of them knew what to make of it.

None of them except her father.

He had seen this kind of thing before.

Whirling around, he stared at Wren with equal parts fear and hunger. “Wren, did you—”

“Call them off,” she choked out.

“Come now, little bird, you can’t—”

“I said, call them off. Now.”

He lifted his chin, studying her. He saw the sheen of sweat, the wide eyes.

She hated this.

And he saw that too.

“No.” He turned to his guards. “I told you to apprehend them both. Do it. By any means necessary.”

They were well trained—Wren had to give him that. His guards hesitated only a second before stepping around their prone fellow toward Julian again.

Wren gritted her teeth, reaching with her magic. She could sense their bones, standing upright before her, just like she might sense a skeleton in the dirt. She could reach for them as she might her weapons. Or she could apply pressure, as she had when she’d broken that bone.

Instead, she pushed.

With a surge of magic, she sent all six of them slamming into the wall behind them. Two cracked their heads audibly, while a third fell through the open doorway, landing somewhere on the stairs. The others moaned and muttered, heaps on the ground. None got up.