Wren Whitlock's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

Cornelius folded the page and slid it into his apron. Wren set her hand on the relic beside his. The grooves warmed under her palm. For one clean second, she believed they might actually solve it. Then the candle guttered sideways, though no window was open. The scrolls hanging from the rafters swung. Wren smelled wet iron and crushed leaves. She knew that smell. Her curse had come with it, three years ago, on a road outside town. "Fae," she whispered. The word hung true in the air, and her wrist ached. Cornelius went white. "Here? Now?" A knock came at the trapdoor. Not the friendly rattle he had used. Three slow taps, spaced like a heartbeat. A voice slid up through the boards, thin as a draft. "Scribe. Open. You've woken something that isn't yours." Wren crept to the trapdoor and looked through the seam. A boy stood on her stair, hooded, small, wrong. His eyes were too dark for the lantern light. A hunter, then — the kind the fae courts sent when a relic stirred. She had read about them in a burned book. She had hoped the book was lying. "He'll take it," she said. "And me with it." Cornelius pointed at the relic. "Then lock it now. Half-open is worse than closed." "We haven't decoded it." "We have the pattern. Every seventh mark. Push them in order and it seals." The taps came again, harder. A knife tip slid between the boards and lifted a splinter. Wren sat. She dipped her quill. Her hand shook so badly the ink jumped. She wrote, small, on a scrap: I will not give it to him. The relic pulsed teal on the seventh stroke. Cornelius pressed the mark. The next groove lit pink. She wrote another true line — I am afraid — and he pressed the seventh again. They worked down the slab like that, her truths feeding the lock, his fingers counting. The trapdoor buckled. The hunter's voice came through the wood, closer now, almost kind. "Little scribe. I only want the truth inside it. You of all people should understand." She wrote faster. Her wrist burned. Ink smeared her cuff. On the last seventh mark, the grooves flared white and went dark. The relic clicked shut. The smell of wet iron thinned. The taps stopped. Wren crawled to the seam and looked. The stair was empty. A single black feather lay on the top step. Cornelius sank against the desk. "He left." "He didn't leave." She lifted the feather through the crack. It was warm. "He's waiting. He knows the lock only opens with two truths at once. He knows what I am." She set the feather on the desk beside the sealed relic. The scrap of paper in her hand still read I am afraid. For the first time in three years, she did not burn it. She folded it into her sleeve and looked at Cornelius. "We can't open it here again," she said. "We have to move."