The wolf looks around. His ears prick when he sees me, and with a whip of his gray-white tail he flies around, but Wren grabs him.
“Wait!” she shouts. “It’s all right, Kenzo—”
“She shouldn’t be here!” he growls.
“She won’t tell—”
“How do you know?”
“I just know!”
“How is that—”
“Because I love her!”
Wren’s shout is almost swallowed by the wind, but her words reach me as clearly as if she’d bent to whisper them in my ears. Everything seems to still—the growl of the incoming storm, the sway of the trees in the wind. Our eyes catch across the clearing. Wren’s look, vividly fierce and beautifully soft at the same time, wrenches something inside me. I feel her heartbeat as if we were pressed together, chest to chest, cheek to cheek; I know its beat as surely as my own.
She expels a shaky breath, her face softening, “And,” she says quietly, turning to Kenzo, “I think she loves me, too. So yes, I trust her. We can trust her.”
Kenzo is still glaring at me. Wren tugs on his arm, half human, half furred, muscled wolf. His lips uncurl, hiding his fanged canines. But his ears are still pointed, the tendons in his neck corded.
“So that’s how it is,” he says, breath furling from his long, muzzlelike jaw.
“Yes.”
“Well, she still shouldn’t be out here.”
Wren nods. “Give us a minute?”
With a last terse look my way, the wolf turns on his heels and bounds into the forest.
Wren crosses the clearing. In an instant, my anger fades. Tears are wetting my face before she’s even reached me, and she frowns, thumbing them away.
“Lei?” she says, her gaze moving over my face. “What’s wrong? Is it what happened to Mariko?”
I curl into her arms. “Everything,” I say thickly.
She holds me close, waiting until my breaths finally calm. Then she draws back, palms cupping my face.
“What you said,” I mutter, my cheeks warm under the heat of her palms and the sweet softness of her look. “Just then. To Kenzo. Did you—do you—”
“I do,” she whispers.
My breath catches. “Me… me, too.”
Her lips part, a sigh escaping them. Gently, she presses her mouth to mine. Then she steps back. “I’m sorry, Lei, but you have to get back to the house. It’s not safe for you to be here.”
I scrub my tears away with the back of my hands. “I’m not going anywhere,” I tell her. “Not before you tell me what’s going on.” As she starts to protest, I shake my head and wind my fingers through hers, pulling her closer. “You’re risking everything. Your life, and mine. Because if anything happens to you, I don’t know how I’ll cope. You’re all I have, Wren. I need you.”
“You have me, Lei.”
“So tell me. No more lies.”
Our gazes are fixed together. And for a moment this is all my world is: the feel of Wren’s presence, closer than a heartbeat, and the brilliant, deep brown of her soft-centered eyes.
I squeeze her fingers. “It’s time.”
She regards me in silence. Then, finally, she nods.
“Everything I’ve told you so far is true,” she begins, gripping my hands. “I promise. But I’ve never told you why. Why Ketai rescued me and brought me up as a Hanno. Why I’m here in the palace.” She wets her lips. “Because when my father went to the mountains of Rain following the rumors of the Xia’s massacre, he wasn’t just searching for survivors. He knew there’d be survivors. Or rather, that there’d be one.” She loosens a long breath. “Me.
“The night of the massacre, the Hannos’ most trusted fortune-teller had a vision of a baby nestled in the snow. My father set out to find it with the intention of training it to continue the Xia bloodline. Not only would one of the Xia be skilled enough to assassinate the King, but, just as important, only this sole remaining Xia—who’d had their entire clan murdered before them—would have the hunger to do so.”
Assassinate.
The word hangs in the air, sharp as a sword edge.
“The fortune-teller hadn’t known the sex of the baby,” Wren continues. “My father had been expecting a boy, but when he found me, he realized it was better this way. There are countless male assassins. The problem is getting them close enough to the King in the first place. A young girl dressed up in robes and elegant manners might be able to gain access where others could not.”
“But what about Kenzo?” I interrupt. “Couldn’t he…？”
She shakes her head. “My father and his allies have spent years getting him to the position he’s in now. We need him there. Assassinating the King is one thing, but if the court remains loyal to him, what good would it do? Kenzo is our highest-ranking infiltrator. He’s integral to seeing this change through. Once the King is dead, he can help steer the court to where we need it. It won’t work if he’s under any suspicion.”
“So it’s all down to you.”
Wren nods, lips taut. “That’s how I knew about the trap door in the theater. How I get around at night without being caught. I’ve studied the palace since I was young, learned every corner of it. And as a Paper Girl, I’m able to get close to the King without any guards around.” Her eyes are fire. “I’m going to do it, Lei. I’m going to kill him.”
Thunder rolls overhead, the wind still ice-cold and lashing. But the world seems far away, a space of stillness opening up around Wren and me, filled with my fear and her words and our love and the meaning, the incredible consequence, of what she’s telling me.
“You’ve been alone with him so many times,” I say, the words sticking in my throat. “Couldn’t you have done it by now? The first time he called you?”
She shakes her head stiffly. “Other things have to align first. The timing is crucial. Trust me, Lei, if there were any way I could’ve avoided sleeping with the King, I would have found it.” She pauses. “My father would have found it.”
“So you don’t know when it will happen?”
“Not yet. But it won’t be long. Kenzo says things are almost ready.”
As if he’d heard his name, there’s the sound of leaves crunching underfoot. The wolf slinks back into the clearing. He keeps his distance but watches us, tail flicking, bronze eyes glinting in the moonlit clearing.
Wren circles her hands around my wrists. “You have to go, Lei. We’ve still got some training to do.”
Training. Understanding rolls over me again. I’d had suspicions that this was what she was up to, but it’s different knowing it. I get a flash of Wren in the tunnel under the theater, with her white eyes—but this time it is the King she is approaching, the King’s heart she is driving a knife into.
For the first time, I question whether he truly deserves it.
It’s only a passing thought. Because an instant later I remind myself of the Paper caste slaves at the koyo party. The way he coldly ordered the assassins’ executions. Mariko’s screams, just this morning, a few short hours ago. The King’s hot mouth on my skin, how easily he tore my clothes apart; the pain and hunger of the week that followed.