Page 18 of A Whisper in the Walls

That caught Ren’s attention. “Informed how?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I was drunk. They knew I was from Kathor, and they kept asking me questions. About the different houses. Who owned which properties? What businesses were thriving? How had the seats of power shifted over the years? I honestly didn’t think anything of it at the time. I thought they were a pair of curious outsiders.…”

Ren took note of that detail.

“A pair? There were only two of them?”

He nodded. “Dahvid and his sister.”

One sister was alive. But not both sisters? It took all of Ren’s restraint to not smack Mat on the shoulder. “You mean you actually know them?”

“I really only talked to them one time. It’s not like we’re friends.…”

“Can you help me find them again?”

Mat hesitated. It was clear the first encounter had set him back, and he felt like he might be digging the hole even deeper. Ren followed her instincts. She went with the first lie that came to mind.

“There’s money in it for you,” she said. “And if the results are satisfactory, maybe there’s even a position with House Brood down the line. What’s the worst that could happen, Mat? It’s not as if the Winters family can end your contract twice.”

Mat was slowly nodding. “How much money?”

“I can’t guarantee it’s enough to get you home, but it would be a start.”

“Okay. I’ll help you.”

She gestured to the shadowed alleyway. “You already did.”

“Right. Wait. Don’t you need to get to your appointment?”

She waved that idea away. “You are suddenly much more interesting than the person I was intending to seek out.”

He smiled at that, and Ren smiled back, happily pretending to be his friend for now. It would take some careful navigating. If Mat led her back to any Kathorians who were properly connected, they’d be able to figure out rather quickly that she hadn’t actually been sent on behalf of the Brood family. For now, though, Mat Tully was a bridge, and she had every intention of walking straight over him and to the Tin’Vori siblings.

10 REN MONROE

After making arrangements for Mat to contact her, Ren headed back to the temporary quarters she and her mother had chosen that morning. She had not slept well on the voyage, and she’d risen early to search for Nevelyn. She could feel the exhaustion pressing in behind her eyes. A slight pressure at her temples. She needed sleep. Desperately. Ren knocked twice on the door of their room—already imagining herself vanishing under the covers.

Until her mother answered the door.

“What is that? Why are you bleeding?”

She had a folded towel pressed to her cheek. When she removed it, Ren’s heart nearly stopped in her chest. There was a gash stretching from her cheekbone and nearly to her ear.

“Who did this?”

Ren’s mother shooed the fury and the question both. The same way that Ren had waved away Mat Tully’s concerns. “Come in and calm down. I just took the wrong road home. I was… woozy. I should have said something before you went racing off, but I thought I could fight through it. Whatever happened this morning, it left my mind out of sorts. I got lost on the way home. One of the streets I took… there were men waiting there in the alleyway.”

All of Ren’s carefully maintained barriers broke. Like a chain spell leaping from one darkness to the next. Grief and guilt flooded through every part of her mind. Cora and Avy were dead. Timmons—her best friend in the world—was gone. Forever. They would never return home. Never enjoy a meal with their families. They’d never practice spells or raise children or take lovers or move to new cities or anything ever again. Ren had snuffed their lives out between her fingers, and in pursuit of what? A revenge that might never manifest? Fear began to weave itself through her guilt. What if she didn’t succeed? What if she wasted their sacrifices? Everything Ren had been choosing not to feel came pouring out.

Her mother swept her into an embrace. She held her tight, and Ren sobbed into her shoulder, the way she might have when she was little. Over a skinned knee or a lost toy. This was so much more than that, but her mother’s arms were the same answer they were then. A needed salve.

“There, there…,” her mother whispered. “I’m all right. We’re all right.”

Ren’s mind began to reestablish order. She carefully set those feelings back on their proper shelves, turned out the lights, and locked the doors. When it was done, she released a ragged breath that sounded more like a whimper. “You were attacked, Mother.”

“They struck first,” her mother agreed. “But they weren’t the only ones carrying knives.”

Knives. Her mother had been forced into hand-to-hand combat in the streets. It pained Ren to remember that her mother possessed no magic to defend or heal herself with. She’d left magic behind long ago.

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