by Claire Luana
“I’m so sorry, Wren,” Hale said. “That I wasn’t there for you.”
“I forgave you,” Wren said.
“That won’t stop me from being sorry.”
Wren and Hale managed to break themselves out of the courthouse with very little trouble and shuffled back into the Guildhall as dawn was breaking. Hale looked as dusty and disheveled as she did; it was one of the few times she had ever seen him look less than godlike in his perfection. The regular guards in brown and gold livery were joined by a dozen Cedar Guardsmen, some who patrolled the steps outside the building, others who were stationed in the lobby.
“Looks like Callidus couldn’t get rid of these buzzing flies,” Hale said under his breath.
They climbed the stairs, one leaden foot in front of the other, when they were confronted with a very unwelcome sight.
Marina, her hair pulled into a high bun and wrapped in an oversized sweater, blocked their way at the top of the landing. “So nice of you to grace us with your presence,” she said with a smile as warm as an icebox. “Never mind that there’s a curfew in effect and no one’s supposed to be out of the Guild after dark.”
“Marina, why by the Beekeeper’s pointy ass do you give a damn?” Hale said, crossing his arms before him.
“Because Grandmaster Beckett’s on a tear!” she said. “You two galivant off to gods-know-where and I have to suffer for it! He has half a mind to replace Callidus with how he’s been running things around here. Letting our newest member get kidnapped, letting the two of you run off at all hours of the night. Callidus better watch himself,” she hissed. “His place may not be as secure as he thinks it is. Now if you don’t mind, I want some breakfast before I start cooking today.”
Marina shouldered between them and stomped down the stairs. Hale raised an eyebrow at Wren. Beckett was campaigning against Callidus? That was not good news, but Wren felt far too weary to even begin to think about what to do about it.
Marina stopped before the door and turned. “Oh, and Wren, next time your boyfriend sleeps over, maybe you should be sure not to be out with your lover. I’m sure it gets hard to keep track, but have a little dignity.”
Wren opened and closed her mouth as the woman disappeared around the corner.
She turned to Hale. “What. Was. That?”
He sighed, rubbing his face with his hands. “I am too tired and too dirty to give a flaming fig. Let’s get some shut eye and have a bath and regroup at noon. Agreed?”
Noon? Less than six hours of sleep didn’t seem like nearly enough, but she nodded. “Agreed. We need to talk to Callidus.”
“And figure out where to search for the Gifted next.”
Wren groaned, summiting the rest of the stairs. The wild events of the past day had pushed her concern for Thom to the back burner. She couldn’t let that happen again. Thom’s situation could be getting worse with every minute that that passed. But where to look next? She had no idea now that Dash Island had turned out to be a dead end.
“Wren…” Hale hesitated at the top of the landing.
“What?” she asked. An uncertain Hale was a strange creature.
“What if we didn’t mention getting captured? To Sable and Callidus, I mean. I don’t want to worry them unnecessarily…” He trailed off.
“You mean you don’t want Sable to know how royally we screwed up?” Wren asked, putting a hand on her hip.
“Nothing escapes you, does it?” Hale forced a laugh, but when he looked at her, the pleading in his eyes twisted her heart. Gods, the man was well and truly wrecked over Sable.
“I don’t think Lucas would be too thrilled, either. But…don’t you think we should tell them? We learned what Daemastra and Evander want. It could be useful.”
“Fair.” Hale frowned. “But it doesn’t change our approach right now, right? Our top priority is finding Thom. Could we wait a day or two? At least until it becomes relevant?”
Wren softened. She didn’t relish the idea of Lucas chewing her out for taking unnecessary risks. “We’ll keep it between us,” Wren agreed. “Until it becomes relevant. Then we spill everything.”
Hale’s shoulders sagged in relief. He took her hand and kissed it. “Thank you.”
“Thanks for saving my life.” She gave him a pat on the shoulder.
They parted ways in the hallway as Wren shouldered into her room, slumping against the door once inside. She closed her eyes, letting weariness wash over her.
“There you are!”
Wren yelped, jumping with surprise. A bleary-eyed Lucas was sitting up on her bed.
Her hands flew to her heart. “You scared the sugar out of me.”
“Where have you been?” Lucas asked crossly, standing and stalking towards her. He grimaced, pulling a cobweb from her hair. “Seriously, where have you been? I’ve been sick with worry.”
Wren heaved a sigh and crossed the room so she could sink into a chair. She unlaced her wet boots, pulling them off. “You promise you won’t be mad?”
“I…I’ll try,” Lucas said. His expression was closed, wary.
“That’s the best I’ll get, I suppose.” Wren untied her cloak and heaved the heavy fabric towards the tiled bathroom. It almost made it.
“Hale and I went to see if the Gifted were on Dent Island. At your family’s vacation house.”
“What?” Lucas exploded. “Are you insane? You went outside the city? The Aprican army is at the wall. We’re under siege. We’ve already had the first skirmish. You could have been killed! Captured!”
Wren squeezed her eyes shut, grateful she and Hale had decided to keep their capture secret. She took his hands in her own, pulling him nearer to her. His were so warm and dry while hers were chilled and icy. “I know it was a risk. But I couldn’t do nothing. Who knows what your father is doing to Thom?”
“You can’t just…go off with Hale without telling me where you’re going! It’s not right.”
Wren prickled at the words. “Oh, so you’re more concerned that I was with Hale than the fact that we were out of the city?”
“No! Yes. I don’t know.” Lucas grabbed his hands back, pacing away from her. “You seem to have forgotten, but he hurt you once. He turned on you. I don’t trust him.”
“But…I do. He’s like a brother to me.”
“A swaggering, obnoxious brother who acts first and thinks later. If he thinks at all.”
Wren stood and grabbed his arm, stopping him in his tracks. “You’re not wrong. But you can trust Hale. You’ll see. He…would protect me with his life.” He had, just hours before, defended her from two men who would have killed her.
“And why did you go with Hale instead of with me?” Lucas asked quietly. “Didn’t you think it might have been safer if you had been caught? To have me there?”
Wren opened and closed her mouth. “It was kind of an impromptu decision…”
“It always is with you lately. I don’t know if it’s Hale being back, or you being angry at my father, but something’s changed. You’re acting reckless. You’re keeping things from me. You freaked out at the wedding and then at the palace the other day. I know there’s something more going on with Thom’s disappearance, but you won’t tell me.” He turned back to her, running his hands through his hair. The gesture was so Lucas, her heart twisted painfully.
“I’m sorry,” she said lamely. “There’s just been…a lot going on.”
“I know that. And I thought I would be fine with you letting me in when you were ready. But maybe I was wrong.”
“I would tell you if I could…” She trailed off. She wanted to reach out to him, to reestablish the connection between them, but fear stilled her hands at her sides. The way he was talking, it was like she’d already lost him.
“You say that, yet I feel like everyone knows what’s going on but me. It makes me feel like a fool. I’m choosing you over my family and you won’t even do me the courtesy of telling me the truth.”
“The truth is that I can’t d
o this without you,” she whispered, tears welling in her eyes. She was so exhausted, drained from the fear and stress of the day. All she wanted was Lucas to wrap his arms around her.
“Yet you seem to be doing just fine,” he retorted.
She recoiled at the rebuke, anger heating her. She was doing the best she could in an impossible situation. “What are you saying then?” she challenged, her heart hammering within her.
Lucas shook his head. “I don’t know. I guess I need some time to think.”
“Why did you come here then?”
“I had another idea how we could discover where Thom is being kept, if Dent Island turned out to be a dead end. You know, doing my job.”
“How?” A lead? She could really use a piece of good news right now.
“Troop movements. If they’re holding ten people, they have to be guarding them. Diversion of that many guards leaves a trail.”
“What kind of trail?”
“Paperwork. The Steward’s office would handle it.” Lucas stalked across the room and retrieved his hat from the nightstand, shoving it onto his head. He paused at the door. “The Inspector’s office will continue to investigate all leads, though we’re a little busy, what with an invading army at the walls. I only tell you this as a courtesy. Consider it the last one. And try not to get yourself arrested or killed snooping about with Hale.”
Lucas slammed the door behind him, rattling the few frames on the wall.
Chapter 23
After Lucas stormed out, Wren had bathed and collapsed into bed. Despite her thoughts whirling at Lucas’s outburst, it seemed that she had hardly closed her eyes when a pounding on her door woke her. With a groan, Wren threw her robe around her and cracked the door. A Sable whirlwind barreled through the door, followed by a sleepy-eyed Hale and Callidus, who looked as tightly wound as his mandolin strings.
“Come in,” Wren said wryly, closing the door behind them.
Sable proceeded to launch into a rendition of the lecture she had received from Lucas just a few hours before, though granted, Sable’s version was much more colorfully worded. “Are you even listening to me?” Sable thundered as Wren blinked, trying to focus on the words. Sable let out a tremendously dramatic huff and whirled, her skirts and ebony hair swirling.
“How could you go outside the city walls?” Callidus took up the song where Sable left off. “It’s bad enough that Thom’s been kidnapped, but what would we tell the king when he asked where two of our Gifted confectioners ran off to? What if he had taken it out on Thom?”
Wren shrank at that. She hadn’t considered that Hale’s and her adventure could have had negative repercussions for Thom. She met Hale’s eyes and found him looking similarly contrite—a very unusual expression on him.
“This isn’t a detective novel where the two of you can just go clambering about, picking locks and breaking into buildings,” Sable said. “You represent our Guild. We want to get Thom back as badly as you do, but you need to do it our way. No more sneaking around.” Sable was glaring at Hale. Wren felt a pang of sympathy. No doubt Hale was wondering what their little escapade had done to his chances of wooing Sable. The trip to Dash Island hadn’t seemed like such a bad idea at the time, but in the end it had been an unnecessary risk.
Callidus was yelling again now. It wasn’t unlike a child’s parents taking turns scolding them, or at least how Wren would imagine such a thing to occur. But now Callidus was saying something about a quota…
“What?” Wren said, interrupting. “What did you say?”
“I said,” Callidus replied in a long-suffering tone, as if he were speaking to a small child, “the king has demanded a quota of infused confections. They’re due tomorrow. We need to get working if we have any chance of meeting it.”
“We’re going to comply?” Hale asked.
Callidus shot Hale a withering look. “I can’t fight battles on every front. Beckett’s breathing down my neck over how this Guild is being run and won’t stop butting into the Accord negotiations. We yield on the damn Cedar Guardsmen and the quota and live to find Thom. Understood?”
“Yes,” Wren and Hale said.
“Now get dressed. We cook.”
Wren threw on a clean dress and darted down to the kitchen to grab a thick biscuit slathered with jam. She ducked her head into one of the teaching kitchens and found Sable and Hale already measuring ingredients. “You’re helping Callidus,” Sable said without looking up from her work. Wren silently cursed. A whole afternoon with angry Callidus. Just what she needed.
Wren found Callidus in the kitchen next door. He had already pulled the ingredients out onto the counter, and the pile was daunting. Wren took a mental tally. Heavy cream, sugar, hazelnuts, glucose syrup, cocoa butter, lemons, ginger, mint, cinnamon, cornstarch, even a pumpkin. What were they making with this set of ingredients?
“What are we making?” Wren asked, donning an apron and rinsing her hands in soap and water.
“Mint meltaways, rose liquor truffles, toasted hazelnut marzipan, ginger delight, and pumpkin caramels.”
Wren’s mouth began to water as Callidus listed each confection, even as her eyes widened at the list. “That will take us days,” she said.
“You better start melting then,” Callidus shot back.
Wren groaned but pulled a knife from the block to start chopping ingredients.
Much to her surprise, cooking with Callidus wasn’t nearly as bad as she expected. It seemed, that much like her, working soothed the guildmaster. They settled into a rhythm that was comfortable, if not quite familiar. The passing of the hours was marked only by the light in the hallway caramelizing and darkening into night. Wren finished pouring the mint meltaways (one of her favorites) into their molds and bent over to touch her toes, stretching her sore lower back. Callidus plopped himself on a stool. Stray strands of his normally perfectly coiffed hair had fallen into his eyes, and he shoved them back with his forearm, his fingers glistening with sugar.
“Well done,” he said gruffly.
“You too,” Wren said. She hesitated but forged ahead. “You’re a good teacher. I’m glad you’ve taken Thom on. It’d be a shame to waste that skill.”
“Who knows if I’ll ever get to teach him?” Callidus said glumly, tracing a grain of wood on the countertop.
“You will.” Wren put her hand on his shoulder and risked an awkward pat. “We’ll find him. Speaking of…” She pulled her apron off. She had been thinking for the last several hours that she needed to ask Callidus about the binding wine. His anger seemed to have faded—perhaps now was the time. She took a deep breath and plunged ahead. “I would like to bring Lucas in on the secret of the Gifting.”
Callidus looked up sharply, his blue eyes searching her, seeing too much. “Trouble in paradise?” Callidus asked dryly.
“Lucas helped us solve Kasper’s murder and he’s helping us find Thom.” Wren ignored Callidus’s comment. “But he can’t be effective if he doesn’t have all the information. He doesn’t understand the full picture of what’s going on. He would be a strong ally—”
Callidus cut her off. “He’s an Imbris. You may feel that he’s loyal to you now, but things are changing quickly. Can you be so sure that if the Apricans knocked down our walls that Lucas wouldn’t betray us? To save himself?”
“He wouldn’t—” Wren protested.
“Or his family? His brothers and sister? No, Wren, the answer is no. There are enough variables I can’t control without throwing a prince into the mix.”
Wren pressed her lips together in frustration. She wanted to argue more, but she heard the note of finality in his words. Perhaps she could convince him someday to free her from the binding wine, but not today.
“It’s too bad,” she said instead. “Lucas has another lead on finding Thom.”
“What kind of lead?” Callidus’s eyes narrowed, his serious eyebrow swooping down in suspicion.
“I suppose it doesn’t matter since Lucas is so untrustwort
hy.” Wren knew it was petty, but she couldn’t help it. She knew Lucas could be trusted, even if Callidus didn’t believe her. And if she couldn’t tell Lucas the truth soon, she might lose him all together.
“Wren—” Callidus said.
She interrupted him. “Are we done cooking, Guildmaster? I’d like to be excused.”
Callidus glared at her for a moment before giving a curt nod.
Wren turned and fled.
Cooking with an angry Sable felt like swimming with a shark. Whatever direction Hale turned, she was there, shouldering past him, slamming cabinet doors, chopping far too aggressively for comfort. Finally, he just pulled out one of the stools and sat down, watching her.
Sable turned to him, her black eyes flashing. “What are you doing? You aren’t going to help me?”
He crossed his arms before his chest. “There’s no way you’re going to infuse anything in the mood you’re in. I get that you’re angry at me. Why don’t you just finish saying your piece so we can move on?”
She mirrored his pose, leaning against the countertop. Gods, she was beautiful. Like a sculpture. It was all he could do not to go to her, to take her in his arms. But he suspected that move might get him stabbed.
“You were gone. You weren’t in your room, I couldn’t find you anywhere in the Guildhall…I didn’t know where you were.” She looked down at the floor angrily.
Hale stilled. She was angry because she was…worried? Guilt warred with elation within him. “I’m sorry I worried you. It was insensitive of me. But…you didn’t know I went to Dash Island until this morning. What did you think could have happened to me?”
Sable refused to look up.
Realization dawned on him, and he felt a smile creep across his face. Sable was jealous! “You thought… You thought I was with someone else?”
Sable scoffed, looking at her fingernails. A flush rose on the apples of her cheeks. “You’re a grown man. What do I care what you do with your free time?”
