A servant appeared to direct a solemn Ivanhild to the parlor. Aurelian climbed into the carriage and tapped the side to prompt the driver to go. Wren sank to her knees on the stone steps. Ivory silk pooled around her. The emotions of others dissipated from the forefront of her mind. She was finally able to discern her feelings. They felt a lot like her mother’s wailing.
Her trembling fingers snapped the clasps of her brother’s case open. She focused on the belongings inside rather than his casket, a few steps away. There were stacks of parchment, some with assignments dictated on them, others blank. Heron’s familiar slanted handwriting brought tears to Wren’s eyes. She used to tease him that it looked as though he wrote while lying down. Beneath the papers was a book on poetry, a quill, and aleather-bound journal with the insignia of the Wild Holm–a tree with extensive roots–embossed on the outside.
She opened the journal, and a folded piece of paper fell out into her lap. Wren set the book aside and unfolded the letter.
Year 822, Week 30, Adira
My dearest sister,
I’m afraid that I won’t be making it home during Eventide. Please do not be cross with me. I hope the accompanying gift will soften your heart. You might be wondering why, after so many months away, I wouldn’t return home at the first chance. Well, my dear Birdie, you must know by now I never do anything without good reason.
I am on the verge of something great. This academy, as I have told you in the past, is not what I once thought. It’s no place for a beautiful soul like yours, that is certain. I have discovered something, though, that will improve these dark halls. Perhaps even make it to where we could walk them together.
So please forgive me for depriving you of the joy of my presence. I hope to return next Eventide. If you can, send back a letter to remind me of the good things out in the world. One of your stories would be a balm on my bruised soul.
With all my love,
Heron
The letter fluttered to the ground. Wren’s vision swam. All she felt was pain. Nothing but pure agonizing misery coated her skin, her muscles, her very bones down to the marrow. She could barely think, could scarcely breathe on account of the intensity. It felt as though she was at the bottom of the Tides with no air left in her lungs. There was nothing to remind her she was still anchored to this world except the searing agony of her loss. The desolation built within her until she was unable to bear it any longer. Darkness opened its maw and swallowed her up.
Candlelight flickered in the reflection of Wren’s bedroom window. Wax pooled in the seashell candelabra. The manor was silent save for her fingertips brushing against the parchment in her brother’s journal.
Wren awoke a few hours ago in her bed. Her lady’s maid, Blossom, had brought her dinner and told her she had been brought in unconscious from the steps of the estate. It took far too much of Wren’s energy to get the maid to leave her without sending for a healer. She didn’t need a nasty concoction from the apothecary. She needed answers.
Now, she sat at her desk in the dark of night and pored over the journal her brother left behind. The only thing she’d determined so far was that Heron had gone mad. Every page read like a riddle. There were maps without labels, snippets akin to diary entries that used some kind of code language, half-finished sketches, and poetry.
Wren rubbed her dry eyes with ink-stained fingers. The exhaustion of carrying the grief of the entire household weighed heavily on her shoulders, but she couldn’t rest. Heron’s unsentletter planted a seed in Wren’s mind. With each page she turned in the book, that seed grew. Her brother wasn’t killed in an accidental encounter with a cryptura. He was murdered. But by whom? And why?
Parchment scraped against her fingertips as she turned it over. Blank. She’d reached the end of her brother’s ramblings. Her chest ached with the loss. Was this all that was left of Heron Kalyxi? Wren flipped through the empty pages, hoping she was wrong and perhaps his madness had bled into the latter portion of the journal. She got to the last page and froze. There, at the very bottom, in tiny slanted letters, was a message.
I love you, Birdie. Page 237.
Her heart catapulted into her throat. Time slowed as she opened the journal at the beginning and began counting each page. The book was only two hundred pages long. She checked the number, counted again, cursed the Tides, and then counted once more. She was on page one hundred and thirty-three when she remembered the book of poetry in his case.
Wren’s nightgown bunched around her knees as she bent to get the bag from under her bed. She didn’t want her parents to see it and confiscate it for the burial rite, so when she had awakened earlier, she’d covered it with a quilt and slid it out of sight. Her heartbeat thrummed. The clasps were loud in the stillness, and she flinched at the puncturing sound. Parchment whispered as she pushed the old assignments aside and pulled out the heavy book.
Her fingertips traced the embossed leather.Poetry for The Heartless. Wren spent her days surrounded by books, but her reading was limited to the history of the Seven Islands. She rarely had time for poetry while studying beneath the Wild Holm’s historian, Lord Floriant. Perhaps she’d better understand why her brother would send her to a page in such a book if she’d read more varied materials. Heron was never aromantic. An idealist, to be sure, but he never expressed any interest in the arts beyond the stories Wren wrote as a child.
With a quickness belied in anticipation, she flipped to the page her brother had directed her to. Pressed between the pages was a sprig of lavender. Her eyes hungrily took in the poem beneath the dried flower.
Lost At Sea by Kylerian Downs
Though I slumber, don’t think me lost
My heart has bled upon the sea
And from this plane I have crossed
Yet forever my soul will sing to thee
On your heart will I be embossed
He knew. Heron knew his sister would find this journal, and that she’d be sifting through it with a fervor akin to that which he possessed when he wrote it. Wren’s eyes burned with fresh tears. Foolish man. He tried to shine light into the darkness and got swallowed up instead. Wren’s skin grew cold. Her best friend was dead. The only person in the Seven Havens who truly loved her. Whounderstoodher.
Heavy footsteps neared her door. She shoved the case and books beneath her bed, then jumped up and blew out her candle. Her heart stuttered in her chest as she flung herself atop her blankets. The door creaked open. She shut her eyes and deepened her frantic breathing. Whoever was at the door didn’t enter. Their guilt felt like a boulder rolling down Wren’s spine. Her muscles twitched with the desire to reposition herself, but she didn’t dare. Not until the mystery observer slowly left her chambers and shut the door behind them.
She counted to twenty before rising. Her steps were light as seafoam. She cracked open the door and saw a broad-shouldered figure lumbering down the hall in the direction of the guest wing, carrying a candle. Ivanhild. Her skin flushedwith embarrassment at him seeing her in her nightgown. Why had he come at such an inappropriate hour?
