“I still don’t—”
“Come now, Odile. Wren has just told me everything. There is a Corpse Queen, and there is a boy. You seemed quite certain about who the former was, according to your messenger. What about the latter?”
There was a long silence. “I was trying to protect you.”
Wren’s heart plummeted. Did that mean…？
“Excuse me?” Vance said, bristling at the suggestion that he needed such care. “I am not a child to be coddled. I want the truth.”
“Because you responded so well the last time,” Odile snapped, putting down her cup. “We have more important matters to—”
“The truth, Odile. All of it.”
They stared at each other for a long moment, then—
“Fine,” she said with exasperation. “Fine.” She took a heavy breath, then straightened in her chair. “If you’ll recall, after Ravenna came here, fit to burst, you wouldn’t see her.” Her tone made it perfectly clear what she thought of that. Wren, meanwhile, was hung up on the name. Ravenna. Her father had never given her one. “Lady-Smith Svetlana was here, the war was almost over, and with Locke gone, you were all your mother had. Her shining war hero. Her brand-new heir. You didn’t want to give that up, did you? Didn’t want to show her the ugly side of what happened during that campaign. No, instead you pushed that little problem onto me.”
Vance rolled his eyes, then waved his hand impatiently, telling her to get on with it.
“She gave birth in the dungeons, with only me and the old healer for company. Ravenna was different from when we’d met her in the Haunted Territory, when she was pretending to be the sole survivor from some attack, alone and afraid. I had always known her poor damsel routine was an act, but I couldn’t figure out what she really wanted. Well, besides attention from both of you.”
Both of you? Did she mean Locke? From the way Vance’s jaw clenched, Wren would say yes.
“Now I could ask her. Why had she led us to the well in the first place? How had she known of it? And where had she gone when things went… wrong… with Locke?”
Wren had suspected the well was the source of Locke’s power… and that things must have gone awry for him to do what he had done. The confirmation did not comfort her.
“She was delirious with pain—and the drugs the healer had given her—so much of what she’d said made little sense. But she made a few noteworthy confessions. She said she wasn’t just a fair-haired, green-eyed girl of Andolesian ancestry, trapped in the Breachlands after her family had died. She was Ravenna Nekros, a smith—and not just any smith, but according to her, the last ghostsmith. Her people had been living in secrecy for decades, and she had known of the well because it was her birthright, stories of its power and location passed down generation by generation. She said they were the ones who’d caused the Breach, taking their chance by diverting an ironsmith mining tunnel and seeking out their lost city. She intended to reclaim her house’s fallen glory and insisted that this was just the beginning. I didn’t get much more out of her… until the child was born. A girl, and she had bonesmith eyes, which was a relief… until the second set of contractions started.”
Wren looked at her father then. He was perched on the edge of his seat, appearing ravenous for every scrap of detail… but also slightly sick. Like each word was causing him pain, yet he wanted them all the same. Wren understood. This story was tearing her world apart the same as his.
“By then Ravenna was moving in and out of consciousness. At one point she’d bitten her lip so hard it bled. But she only smiled at me as I held her daughter, her teeth red. ‘I know you loved him,’ she said, smiling wider as she clenched her jaw through the pain. ‘So I want you to know they’re his.’ ”
His…？ Wren was confused. Odile had loved her father? But Vance’s expression had shuttered, and suddenly Wren understood. Odile had loved Locke… and Locke had loved Ravenna. Or had had sex with her anyway. And these children, this bonesmith daughter…
“Maybe she wanted to wound me,” Odile said with an unconvincing shrug. “Maybe she sensed she was fading and said whatever she needed to say to guarantee I took care of them.” She darted a look at Vance, but his gaze was distant. He had asked for the truth, the unvarnished facts, and here they were. Wren’s stomach twisted with the thought that maybe he wasn’t hers… that she wasn’t his…
In a flash, she saw a very different life. Daughter of the beloved Locke Graven, adored by her grandmother and favorite of her house.
“Then came the son,” Odile continued, her voice slightly hoarse.
The vision shifted. Wren and her brother, hand in hand. They would make mischief together, neither of them ever truly alone because they had each other, their loving parents looking on. She wanted it, she yearned for it, and yet… Locke wasn’t a hero; he was a murderer. And Vance… he was her father, no matter her true parentage, while her mother was something else entirely. Was she evil? Did she want Wren because Wren was her daughter or because she carried ghostsmith blood?
The images, equal parts tantalizing and taunting, were little more than soap bubbles—beautiful and fragile and not meant to last.
“Only… he was not well. Sickly, whereas the daughter was strong. She had come out screaming, lungs heaving, while he was mewling and weak. Silent as the grave, and he never opened his eyes. The healer shook her head. He would not be long for the world. And Ravenna herself was losing too much blood. Despite that, her instructions were clear. Give the daughter to the House of Bone. Call her Wren. Birds were sacred to the ghostsmiths, representative of the soul. Finally, give her the ring so that she might know her heritage. Then we strapped that dying baby to her chest while she continued to bleed out and got her on a horse. She rode for the Haunted Territory—for the well, I assumed—and never looked back.”
Wren sniffled softly. She couldn’t take her eyes off her father—off Vance—but he was staring down at the floor.
“Should I have told you all that? Every bloody, gruesome detail? Or should I have cleaned it up, made it shine… just as we had done with Locke? I…” Odile swallowed audibly. “I wanted the child to be raised with love, so I didn’t tell you about Locke or the ghostsmith heritage. Wren was a bonesmith, so no one ever needed to know. I suspected the son would not survive, so I didn’t tell you about him, either. Honestly, Vance? I thought to spare you the pain. Years passed, and it seemed I had made the right decisions… until rumors reached me of a Corpse Queen ruling in the Haunted Territory. So I sent a messenger with the news, the ring, and what Ravenna had told me of her bloodline. I’d heard nothing of the boy, so I left him out. I left Locke out too. His name hurts us both, you know. And maybe what she said was a lie. That’s what I kept telling myself, anyway. Maybe it was a lie.”
Vance’s fingers were speared through his hair. Wren had never seen him look so shaken. Regret. That was what she saw on his face. Seventeen years’ worth of regret.
“Would it have changed things?” Odile asked softly. She sounded sincere, like she was genuinely curious. “Even without knowing all this, look how you’ve allowed your mother to treat her. How you have treated her. What if you had suspected she wasn’t truly yours?”