“What’s that supposed to mean?” Wren asked, trying to keep up with Inara’s startling—though not without its barbs—praise.
“You’ve always been free. Honestly, when we were younger, I wanted to be you.” Her jaw clenched in embarrassment at the admission. “Not for the reasons you think—you are not, for the record, the most talented valkyr of our generation.” Wren barely registered Inara’s familiar dissent, still fixated on her initial statement. She had wanted to be Wren? “I was jealous of the way you always did what you wanted. Followed your own rules and fuck everyone else.” Her gaze landed on Ghostbane, returned to Wren’s belt. “But I guess even the great Wren Graven can be broken eventually.”
“I am not broken—”
“I mean, a cage is all the prince knows, and while you might have forced that ironsmith into his, you flew willingly into your own, little bird.”
Wren’s mouth fell open. She turned on her heel and strode from the room, but not before she caught Inara’s last words.
“I hope that knife was worth it to you.”
* * *
Out in the hall, Wren struggled to catch her breath. It was the aftermath of winding herself earlier, surely. It was late, she was tired, and… Inara’s words meant nothing.
Wren mentally sifted through all her cousin had said, focusing on the beginning of their conversation. Those guards had been posted outside Wren’s door not to keep her safe but to keep her in.
Which meant whatever her father was doing, he didn’t want her to know about it. Maybe she should forget Odile and see what he was up to instead?
She’d lost precious minutes talking to Inara, but she could catch up.
She knew this place better than Vance. Too bad she didn’t know where he was going…
Out into the main hall, Wren looked in both directions, but the corridor was deserted. She closed her eyes, trying to think of where he might go. To question Julian, maybe? To speak to Galen—or Leo?
She was on her way to check the dungeons when she caught sight of Vance disappearing down the stairs that led to the bonesmith temple.
He was going to see Odile.
To question her, maybe? To accuse? Wren had to know.
Desperate to hear their conversation but knowing that even her father’s recent goodwill toward her would not allow her to be present, Wren slipped out from her hiding place.
There were two entrances to Odile’s domain—one through the temple, which was where Vance was heading, and another that led to the storage rooms via the cellar.
Wren made her way to the cellar. She hadn’t seen Odile since she’d been back, and she wondered how the woman would react to this late-night visit. Would it be a pleasant surprise or an unwelcome intrusion?
As Wren drew near, the low rumble of voices reached her—coming from the back hall that connected to the storage room. Quickening her pace, she slipped from the cellar and into the storage room attached to Odile’s chambers. The voices grew louder, but she still couldn’t make them out. It wasn’t until she crouched behind the door itself and, with a held breath, turned the knob.
It opened barely a sliver, but it was enough to hear Odile’s words ring out, clear as day.
“… know what we have to do.”
“And what is that?” came her father’s reply. The door where Wren currently hid was behind Odile’s chair, in the shadows of the corner of the room. There was little light save for the lantern on her desk, but it was enough to see Vance’s face and Odile’s profile, her copper hair shining.
“Destroy it. Bad enough what happened to Locke, but these iron revenants, this queen… We must march on those ruins in force, bring the full might of the House of Bone to bear, and be rid of that well once and for all.”
Wren held her breath. So they did know about the well and the power within it.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said in that dismissive, slightly condescending way that Wren knew far too well. He was sitting very much at his ease, a cup of alka held loosely in his hand, but his gaze was sharp. “In order to do that, we’d have to reveal the fact that we’ve been lying about the Uprising for nearly two decades. We’d destroy our house, not to mention—”
“There is more at stake here than your bloody house, Vance.” Odile, on the other hand, gripped her cup tightly. For the first time since Wren had met her, the contents appeared untouched.
“It was our house, last I checked,” he said. “And I’m pretty sure we both agreed to tell the story we told.”
Odile looked away. “I was afraid. Now I think there are bigger things to fear than the truth.”
“We didn’t lie, Odile. We omitted. There is a difference, and what we did saved lives.”
“The only lives we saved were our own. You might be able to fool yourself, Vance, but you can’t fool me. I was there, the same as you. And I told Locke not to do it. But that woman… She had her claws in him from the start. She saw his hero complex, his need to do whatever it took to protect the Dominions, and she exploited it. He couldn’t resist it, the power she promised. So he took it without a second thought.”
There was a strange, bitter expression on Vance’s face. There was jealousy, too, the kind she always saw there when people talked about Locke.
“The way he glowed with it,” Odile continued, and Wren knew exactly what she meant. “I thought he truly was a hero, some figure from legend. But then, when he mowed down those people—our people—I knew he’d become something else. That power… it was too much for him. I’ll never forget the look in his eyes, the fear, as it took control of him. As he lost himself to it. We can call him a hero all we want, Vance, but it doesn’t change the fact that he was a mass murderer. We cannot allow the same thing to happen again. We cannot omit the true threat here, and it isn’t the regent, or the queen, or the iron revenants… It’s that well of power. Without it, the others are nothing.”
Vance stared into the contents of his cup. “Funny you should have such strong feelings about omission, given how in the dark you have kept me.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t you?” he asked, glancing up at her.
Odile leaned forward. “I tried to tell you the truth once, and you buried it, along with the body of my messenger and the package he delivered.”
“Part of the truth,” Vance corrected lightly. “And this package, do you mean?” he said, placing Wren’s ring on the table between them. “Wren found it.”
So that messenger Wren found in the Bonewood had not come from the Corpse Queen but from Odile?
“I guess you didn’t bury it as well as you’d thought,” Odile said, smirking.
“Apparently it’s part of a set,” Vance said idly, and the smile slipped off Odile’s face. “But you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?” When Odile didn’t respond, he slammed his hand on the table. “First you send some anonymous messenger across the entirety of the Dominions carrying information that could have ruined me, my house, and my daughter, and then you have the audacity to keep this from me?”