Page 67 of The Lure of Wolves and Whispers

I have to believe that, or else why am I fighting so hard to get back to Finn? I have to believe there is a life after all this. A life of peace, and health. Of happiness, whatever that feels like.

Faint sunlight crests the crenellated dark stone over the courtyard outside, and a tentative knock sounds at the hall door.

Instantly, my throat catches—but the knock and small voice on the other side are familiar.

It’s one of the servants Talon has had bringing up my meals. I’m not sure how they manage it, but the small sliver of predictability makes opening the door slightly less nerve-racking.

I hold the door open for her, and the girl steps in, carrying a heavy silver tray laid out with a small pot of what smells deliciouslylike coffee, and a plate heaped high with eggs, fried mushrooms, and currant-studded farls of soda bread.

The aroma twines through the room, and my stomach grumbles.

Loudly.

The servant smiles and lays the tray on the table without a word. As she slips back through the door to the hall, Finn’s voice curls around my mind.

Want to get stronger? Don’t skip meals.

There’s a napkin laid out beside the plate heaping with eggs. I don’t bother with it, diving right in and stifling a groan at the flavors of thyme and cracked black pepper while standing up. The coffee sends a desperately needed jolt through my blood.

Only when a trickle of butter from the warm farl of soda bread drips down my chin do I concede and reach for the napkin—and something falls out.

The rattle makes me jump. A faint clatter, like bird bones on stone.

Or of wood—exactly the size and shape as the carved staves left at the old altars to the Martyr.

This one is no different. Barely as long as my littlest finger.

There’s just enough room for six runic figures carved in faint lines along the wooden stave. Each of the short, brutal lines branches out from a central vertical shaft.

Just holding this is treason.

Fear vibrates through my bones, but I run one finger gently over each runic marking.

My mind recognizes them, pairing the lines that symbolize different trees growing across the isle since the days of the ancientswith the sounds my mother taught us each one represents. People in the days of the Old Ones didn’t speak the same tongue we do now. Old Eireician was complex, full of cadences and words that don’t translate neatly to the simplified Eireician we speak today, or into the common alphabet most countries use now.

The Old Ones used an ancient alphabet that linked slashing symbols to specific sounds.

Ogham.

And in the years leading to the uprising, the mages realized that although those symbols were once used to convey the sounds to form Old Eireician words, they could also use the same symbols to convey the sounds that make Eireician words in a way the gardai can’t read.

A simple hidden language—easy enough to teach with a stick in the dirt or smear on a greasy window, then wipe away as soon as the gardai come too close.

A secret way to pass messages, even in modern Eireician—and to remember.

My finger shakes, tracing the edges of the markings.

The first has three horizontal lines in quick, tight succession on the left side of the central line—the symbol for holly and the sound we associate withT. Four longer lines slash straight across the central shaft in the next figure above it, the one signifying the poplar tree that represents the sound closest toE.

I sound out each one, and the word comes together easily.

Temple.

I shove back from the table. Hairs rise up all down my arms and along the length of my spine, and I wrench the door back to find Talon—waiting outside in the hall, one eyebrow arched.

Andnotin surprise.

In what looks suspiciously like expectation.