Page 154 of The Lure of Wolves and Whispers

I bring my gaze to his, betrayal already brimming over in my heart.

“Did Finn find you?” My words crack. “Or did you findher?”

Devastation rips across Wolf’s expression. “I wasn’t in any condition to recruit after the uprising. The wounds…” He grimaces, and there’s a ripple through him like a sudden flare of pain. “They didn’t heal quickly.” He grits his teeth past it, grinding out the next words. “But Fang was… relentless.”

Old Ones, the fury in Finn’s eyes that first day she started teaching me to fight, barely a week after our mother’s execution. It was like someone had lit a bonfire inside her, like everything had changed for her.

And if the Whisperers had told her what they thought our father did… I know my sister. She’s always had a wild courage that would be so fucking easy for the Whisperers to twist to their cause. To our mother’s cause.

But why would she let me stay with our father… why wouldshestay?

I slide out from Wolf’s touch. Every place where the heat of him flared against me feels like scorched earth now as I realize.

The Whisperers targeted Finn. Old Ones, maybe they targetedeveryonewho was desperate and hurting after the uprising failed.

Talon, searching for their sister.

Wolf, with everything he had just lost, so badly hurt I don’t know how he survived.

A fresh lance of pain lashes through my heart—and I think I understand.

Finn’s been siphoning money from our father’s weapons business for years. She’s been smuggling it to bankers all over the city, hiding it in as many different places as she could.

I know my sister. If she knew what our father did, she wouldn’t have hesitated to hurt him by stealing money from the weapons stall to fund the very cause our mother died for.

All the while, telling me it was for our future.

I had just assumed she meant permits to leave the city.

“Finn was funneling you our father’s money?”

She would see it as justice for our mother. I know she would.

Wolf’s eyes rake me raw, and I hate the way the pain and the longing there still beckon to me, even after everything.

“Yes” is all he says.

My lungs tighten to the point of pain.

I step out of his reach, shaking my head.

“I have to find her.”

The words are all I have left. Panic is already rising in my veins, thundering in my blood until there’s only one instinct left.

Run.

I rip the door of Wolf’s room back. The hall is nothing but shadows and that strange, greenish glow from the flames.

“Maeve!” Wolf calls after me, pain ripping at his voice. “Wait, I’ll—”

A sob tears from my chest. I have to find my sister.

I have to know the truth.

Outside the safe house, rain pours down in ominous sheets.

The lanes surrounding the safe house twist around each other. I turn, searching for some anchor. But I’ve been here only once before, and shock blurs my memories.