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I went back to the Glasshouse and knelt among my mother's roses in the dark. I trimmed dead stems, cleared fallen leaves, checked the soil, and worked until there was nothing left for my hands to do.

I did not go to her.

I did not tell her what my father had threatened.

I did not tell her what I had agreed to.

For the moment, all I could do was keep quiet, keep searching for another way, and make sure she stayed alive long enough for me to find one.

15

Chapter 15

Wren

Silas came up to the tower late that night, just as I had known he would. I had spent the entire afternoon being stared at and most of the evening listening for his footsteps on the stairs.

When I finally heard him, he was climbing more slowly than usual. I opened the door before he could knock and found him carrying a tin of his salve, a roll of clean bandage, and a bowl of warm water that he had somehow managed to bring up all two hundred and twelve steps without spilling. He said nothing as he came inside. He set everything on the washstand beside the wren, then pointed to the edge of the bed.

I sat.

He knelt in front of me and studied the dressing the Pit medic had slapped over my collarbone. His expression barely changed, but I saw his jaw tighten.

"Can I?" he asked.

I nodded.

He slipped one careful finger under the collar of my T-shirt and drew it down over my shoulder until the injured side of me was bare in the lamplight. Then he began peeling away the dressing, slowly enough that it barely tugged at my skin. When the last of it came free, he looked at the long red cut the swan's beak had opened across my collarbone.

Something moved through his face.

I had only seen that look once before, in the Pit, a few seconds before his eyes had turned red.

This time he kept it under control. He drew in a breath, let it out, then took another. His hands rested on his knees, and I watched his fingers loosen one by one until he could trust them again.

Only then did he dip the cloth into the warm water and start cleaning the cut.

It stung badly enough to make me hiss through my teeth.

"Sorry," he murmured without looking up.

He kept going, careful and thorough, cleaning every trace of dried blood from my skin. His knuckles brushed my collarbone, then the bare curve of my shoulder, and once the side of my breast through the thin cotton of my shirt. Every accidental touch made my body sharpen around him. By the time his hand brushed my breast again, my nipples were hard beneath the fabric and a deep ache had already begun between my legs.

He opened the salve and smoothed it over the cut with two fingers. It was cool against the heat of the wound and smelled sharply green. After that he laid a fresh pad over the injury and wound the bandage around my shoulder and beneath my arm. He stayed close while he worked, close enough that I could feel his breath against my skin, and his face remained so deliberately controlled that I knew the restraint was costing him.

When he finished tying the bandage, he still didn't move away.

Instead, he leaned forward and rested his forehead against my uninjured shoulder. He stayed there for several seconds before speaking.

"I watched you go down," he said quietly. "I watched that swan standing over you, and I couldn't get to you."

"You did get to me."

"Late." His breath warmed the cotton over my shoulder. "The staff was cut. I saw the wax. I gave the broken half to Oda before dinner. She wrapped it, sealed it herself, and locked it in her office."

"Varga," I said.

Silas didn't answer, because there was nothing to add.