Page 43 of A House of Cloaks & Daggers

The Banshee on the lane didn’t want to eat me. It wanted todrainme.

I stiffened against a stomach-twisting shudder and wrapped my arms a little tighter around myself. Wren was oblivious, his eyes glazed over as if he were miles and miles away from me as we stood together in the corridor.

It was strange to see him like that; a statue, no different from the carvings of soldiers in the front yard, or an illustration in a book. I had already suspected that Wren was probably hundreds, if not thousands, of years old, but the way he told the story had confirmed it. He was there when it happened a long time ago, and he’d seen things that would probably give me nightmares.

“The Banshee on the road here wasn’t beautiful,” I murmured. I didn’t know what else to say.

It was not quite a question, but Wren nodded his understanding, simmering golden eyes still trapped somewhere in the past. “When the High King found out what they had done, he confiscated their stolen magic and banished them to the Ruins,” he explained. “And then tried to return it to the High Fae—even though many members of the inner circle were notconvinced they deserved it after their treachery—but couldn’t find a way to do it. And so, the race of Malum was born.”

“Born?” I repeated, a dull sense of nausea knotting in my stomach. “Or created?”

He grimaced again, opening his mouth as he twisted his head away. “Uh, they were born. Or as close to it as they could get after what they’d done.” His eyes darted back to mine apologetically. “The rebels mated with the Banshees—a sacrilegious abuse against our true mating rituals—and whatever was conceived during the process devoured them from the inside out within days, but it left enough of them behind that they…suffered. Conscious the whole time but without their autonomy or magic.”

It was my turn to grimace. A stomach-churning, spine-warping shudder came over me at the thought.

“The High Fae can’t interbreed,” he admitted in a low voice. His eyes flicked back to mine and then quickly darted away. “Not…us. We can, but not with any others.”

It took me far longer than it should have to realise that he wasn’t talking about him and me, but rather the High Fae and humans. I wanted to ask what made humans different from other faeries—however, I wanted to stop thinking about breeding and mating more.

“Out of shame,” he continued, promptly changing the subject, “the Malum went into hiding, and it seems like whatever anti-magic disease the Banshees passed onto them has worsened over time. They’ve adapted but decayed. No longer do they bear resemblance to their former selves, yet they still remember their homes—though I’m not convinced they remember anything else.”

I couldn’t put my finger on the feeling that swept between us in the moments of silence that followed his story.

Like a tendril of his magic had stretched out to greet me, I was overcome by a profound and hollow sense of loss, sadness, and…guilt. But for the life of me, I could not understand why Wren would feel so personally responsible for what had happened to the Malum. Even more perplexing than that, I could not understand why I related to what had happened to the Malum so well. Why I felt like…

“What is it?” he whispered, and his voice was hoarse.

My heart began to bob up and down in my chest, undecided between sinking and swimming. “I need to go home.”

It was Wren’s turn to give me an inquisitive look. “You—why?”

“Because of the Malum.” Glancing away from him nervously, I sucked on my lower lip and braced myself for the impact of his outrage that he had just spent two days trekking through the Court of Light at human speed for nothing.

It didn’t come.

“You’ll be safe here,” he told me quietly. “And your family will be safer with you here.”

“It’s not that.”

“Then what?”

The pinprick of welling tears tickled the backs of my eyes. I tried to take a calming breath, but it came out like a sniffle. Tension clutched the cave of my heart. “I don’t want…to become the Malum.”

“Unless you’re planning to mate with a Banshee, bookworm, that’s rather unlikely.”

“No.” I sniffled again, turning my head towards the row of windows. “Symbolically.”

There was a long pause, and then, “I’m sorry?”

My eyes were stinging, but the pain was dulled by irritation at having to explain myself—even though he wasn’t being rude, for once. I wiped my nose with the back of my handand whirled around. Wren was studying me intently, like he was annoyed that he couldn’t pluck the answer straight out of my mind.

“I’ve wanted to run away from home since I was eight years old,” I confessed, dropping my eyes to his boots because I couldn’t bear to meet his questioning gaze. “It was always my plan. As soon as I was old enough, I would leave and go somewhere else. Somewheresafe. And so, when my mother told me she was pregnant again, I was furious. I stormed out of the house and went and sat down by the docks for hours, trying to work up the courage to stow away on one of the boats. In the end, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

I took a deep, unsteady breath. “I was so mad at her for bringing another child into that life and for forcing me to remain in it for the sake of a younger sibling. I sulked throughout the entire pregnancy, told myself that I would wait and see the baby safely delivered, and then I would leave. But I saw Brynn that day, and I… I knew I couldn’t abandon her. I knew that I couldn’t leave her to witness and experience the horrible things that I had, all alone. Even then, though, I was desperate to run away and build a new life for myself somewhere else.”

Wren politely averted his gaze as a few stray tears leaked down my cheeks, and I scrubbed them away ferociously, snivelling like a child.

“That feeling never entirely went away,” I admitted, clearing my throat as I straightened my spine. I watched charcoal-coloured storm clouds rolling in from the ocean in a thick, angry swirl. “I mean, when you showed up blabbering nonsense about faerie fathers and demon hunters, I didn’t think twice before I agreed to go with you. I didn’t think about it at all. I just…left.I left Brynn like I thought you had left me on that lane, and I keep telling myself that it’s to keep her safe like italways has been, and part of itis—but part of it isn’t about her at all. It’s about me.”

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