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.
Wren turned to her father. “We’re leaving. Do not follow us. I’m going to do what you should have done decades ago and destroy that well.” He took a step toward her, and she raised a hand. “Don’t make me.”
He froze. Glanced at the men huddled on the ground, then back at Wren. “You’re making a mistake. Let me help you.”
“Like how you helped me during the Bonewood Trial?” she asked, grabbing Leo and pulling him toward the hidden door beneath the stairs. Julian, seeing her movement, hurried to the locker to retrieve his armor and weapons and then followed them. Vance’s expression, which had still been colored with hope, slipped to resignation.
“I’m disappointed in you,” he said softly, delivering the words he thought would be a blow to her heart.
They might have been. Once.
She smiled bitterly at him. “Then maybe I’m finally doing something right.”
Turning her back on him, she withdrew Odile’s key and unlocked the hidden door. She grabbed one of the torches from its sconce and led the way over the threshold. Once Leo and Julian had joined her, she slammed the door behind them and descended the stairs.
Her breath misted in the air as she reached the bottom, taking a moment to collect herself. Vance wouldn’t be able to follow them through the passage, but she couldn’t trust that he wouldn’t hightail it up the stairs and send guards riding out the gate.
She strode into the cavernous space, halting when she realized the others weren’t following. She looked over her shoulder. “You two coming or not?”
“Where?” Julian asked.
“Into the Breachlands. Where else?”
“To destroy the well?” he pressed.
“Do you have a better idea?” It would be no simple task, she knew. And she would have to face her mother and brother again to do it. Her stomach tightened… Was that fear, or anticipation?
“It would stop the queen,” Leo said. “The iron revenants, and your uncle.”
Julian studied her for a long time—too long. Sweat beaded Wren’s brow and made her hands clammy. Did he see the hidden desire there? The curiosity? And worst of all, the pull to that dark magic that still swirled in her veins?
“Why?” Julian asked finally, and Wren knew he wasn’t just asking about their destination. He was asking about all of it.
“I…” Wren trailed off, looking at Leo, but he too appeared curious for her response. She’d yet to fully explain herself. “I was trying to protect you,” she tried again, hastening to finish when his expression shuttered at what he perceived as a blatant lie, “but I was trying to protect myself more. I was everything you accused me of. Selfish. Reckless. I thought…” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter what I thought. I was wrong. My father paid the informant. He’s working with your uncle, and he sent me to the fort on purpose, meaning for me to get kidnapped too. Except tonight he learned that the queen, who is a ghostsmith, is also my mother. And that boy? My twin brother.”
The scowl on Julian’s face shifted fractionally, surprise lifting his brows despite his determination to hate her. He glanced down at the ring, which she was wearing on her finger.
“My father knew about the well. Locke, his brother, used it to destroy all those soldiers. And now Vance wants to use it again. To use me. I won’t let him.”
Her chest heaved, not from a lack of air but from suppressed emotion. She would be damned if she let anyone use her ever again.
“So, are you in?”
Julian glanced at Leo, who scrubbed a hand through his hair. “My cousin set me up.” He turned to Wren. “Your father set you up—and your uncle tried to have you killed,” he finished, returning to Julian. “They sought to use us, to kill and capture and shuffle us around. I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of being a pawn. I want to be a player. I’m in.”
Wren smiled, then together, they looked at Julian. His expression shifted, skepticism turning into angry determination. It was better than disinterest. It was better than disgust. Anger she could use.
“I’m in.”
Relief swept through her. Smiling grimly, she led the way through the subterranean chamber to the travel supplies. This was more than just a passage under the Wall, after all. It was a dungeon and a hideout, a safe house, a black-market cache, and a storage room.
It was also an infirmary. Her attention shifted to the row of beds, and she thought of her mother.
Had Wren been born here in one of these narrow beds? Were those old bloodstains her mother’s blood? Ghostsmith blood?
Wren’s blood?
While facing her brother again filled her with dangerous hope, the idea of facing her mother felt far more precarious. Ravenna wanted to use that well, and Wren wanted to destroy it. They were in opposition, but they were also family.