Chapter 2 Signs and Synonyms
Candlelight flickered in the reflection of Wren’s bedroom window. Wax pooled in the seashell candelabra. The manor was silent save for her fingertips brushing against the parchment in her brother’s journal.
Wren awoke a few hours ago in her bed. Her lady’s maid, Blossom, had brought her dinner and told her she had been brought in unconscious from the steps of the estate.
It took far too much of Wren’s energy to get the maid to leave her without sending for a healer.
She didn’t need a nasty concoction from the apothecary. She needed answers.
Now, she sat at her desk in the dark of night and pored over the journal her brother left behind.
The only thing she’d determined so far was that Heron had gone mad.
Every page read like a riddle. There were maps without labels, snippets akin to diary entries that used some kind of code language, half-finished sketches, and poetry.
Wren rubbed her dry eyes with ink-stained fingers.
The exhaustion of carrying the grief of the entire household weighed heavily on her shoulders, but she couldn’t rest. Heron’s unsent letter planted a seed in Wren’s mind.
With each page she turned in the book, that seed grew.
Her brother wasn’t killed in an accidental encounter with a cryptura. He was murdered. But by whom? And why?
Parchment scraped against her fingertips as she turned it over.
Blank. She’d reached the end of her brother’s ramblings.
Her chest ached with the loss. Was this all that was left of Heron Kalyxi?
Wren flipped through the empty pages, hoping she was wrong and perhaps his madness had bled into the latter portion of the journal.
She got to the last page and froze. There, at the very bottom, in tiny slanted letters, was a message.
I love you, Birdie. Page 237.
Her heart catapulted into her throat. Time slowed as she opened the journal at the beginning and began counting each page.
The book was only two hundred pages long.
She checked the number, counted again, cursed the Tides, and then counted once more.
She was on page one hundred and thirty-three when she remembered the book of poetry in his case.
Wren’s nightgown bunched around her knees as she bent to get the bag from under her bed.
She didn’t want her parents to see it and confiscate it for the burial rite, so when she had awakened earlier, she’d covered it with a quilt and slid it out of sight.
Her heartbeat thrummed. The clasps were loud in the stillness, and she flinched at the puncturing sound.
Parchment whispered as she pushed the old assignments aside and pulled out the heavy book.
Her fingertips traced the embossed leather.
Poetry for The Heartless. Wren spent her days surrounded by books, but her reading was limited to the history of the Seven Islands.
She rarely had time for poetry while studying beneath the Wild Holm’s historian, Lord Floriant.
Perhaps she’d better understand why her brother would send her to a page in such a book if she’d read more varied materials.
Heron was never a romantic. An idealist, to be sure, but he never expressed any interest in the arts beyond the stories Wren wrote as a child.
With a quickness belied in anticipation, she flipped to the page her brother had directed her to. Pressed between the pages was a sprig of lavender. Her eyes hungrily took in the poem beneath the dried flower.
Lost At Sea by Kylerian Downs
Though I slumber, don’t think me lost
My heart has bled upon the sea
And from this plane I have crossed
Yet forever my soul will sing to thee
On your heart will I be embossed
He knew. Heron knew his sister would find this journal, and that she’d be sifting through it with a fervor akin to that which he possessed when he wrote it.
Wren’s eyes burned with fresh tears. Foolish man.
He tried to shine light into the darkness and got swallowed up instead.
Wren’s skin grew cold. Her best friend was dead.
The only person in the Seven Havens who truly loved her. Who understood her.
Heavy footsteps neared her door. She shoved the case and books beneath her bed, then jumped up and blew out her candle.
Her heart stuttered in her chest as she flung herself atop her blankets.
The door creaked open. She shut her eyes and deepened her frantic breathing.
Whoever was at the door didn’t enter. Their guilt felt like a boulder rolling down Wren’s spine.
Her muscles twitched with the desire to reposition herself, but she didn’t dare.
Not until the mystery observer slowly left her chambers and shut the door behind them.
She counted to twenty before rising. Her steps were light as seafoam.
She cracked open the door and saw a broad-shouldered figure lumbering down the hall in the direction of the guest wing, carrying a candle.
Ivanhild. Her skin flushed with embarrassment at him seeing her in her nightgown.
Why had he come at such an inappropriate hour?
Wren recalled Heron’s warning about the academy the last time he was home. Perhaps even the best of men succumbed to darker desires. Her stomach twisted. She knew a great deal about that.
Memories assaulted her like the whipping winds atop the Salt Hills.
She fought with a match to get a candle lit and dispel the darkness.
The wick sputtered to life. Once more, her desk was illuminated, and she breathed easier.
Looking at the poem again would bring about nothing but heartbreak, so she sat in the wood chair carved from the large oak she and Heron climbed as children, and opened the journal.
If Heron knew she would find his writings, then that meant there was something to be gleaned from the chaos.
She tugged a fresh piece of parchment from her desk drawer and dipped a quill in ebony ink.
There was a pattern. Wren simply had to find it.
She set out to do just that. As the rising sun painted the rolling hills of her estate in buttery yellow and pale pink, Wren wrote.
Her eyes burned, her hand ached, and her body grew stiff, but still she wrote.
She’d spent every day since she was ten years old writing, but never had words mattered more than this moment.
Every time a word appeared twice, she wrote it down.
Even if it was merely ‘and’ or ‘the’. There was no discrimination in her process.
It could all be a clue. She circled and drew lines between possible connections.
Crossed out words. Rewrote them when they came up again.
Studied his maps, though she had no knowledge of the academy’s grounds.
If they were even of the academy at all.
The sun crested the treetops. Her candle, long burnt out, resembled her soul. Melted down and used up. The pages blurred every time she blinked. If consciousness were a cliff, she was hanging off it by her fingernails.
“Sequence, arrangement, organization, series,” she read aloud, her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth. “Structure, system…” Her head lolled.
She laid her head in the crook of her arm. The paper never left her sight. There was a word missing. It was right on the tip of her tongue. If only she weren’t so very tired.
A knock at her door jerked her awake. She sucked in a ragged breath. The door opened, and Wren snapped the journal shut and whipped around in her chair.
Blossom stood in the entryway with a tea tray. Her green eyes were wide with concern.
“Lady Kalyxi, are you all right? I expected to find you in bed. I brought your morning tea.”
“Everleaf,” Wren croaked. “I need Everleaf tea today.”
Blossom bobbed a curtsy. “Yes, Miss, right away.” The young maid disappeared through the doorway.
Wren usually took peppermint tea with honey in the morning, but after a night of no sleep, she needed something much stronger.
Wren despised Everleaf. It was bitter no matter how much honey one added, and it made her jittery after a few sips.
She couldn’t afford not to drink it today, though. There was too much to be done.
She turned back to her notes. They were starting to resemble Heron’s. Her eyes scanned the list of synonyms, still at a loss for the missing word.
Blossom returned not long later and set the tray on Wren’s vanity.
“Chef sent honeycakes for you this morning,” Blossom said with a pitying smile.
Honeycakes were Wren’s favorite. Chef Hollis’s were the best, too, with extra honey poured over the soft, buttery sponge cake and lemon shavings sprinkled on top. The thought of eating anything–even a beloved treat–curdled Wren’s stomach.
“Give him my thanks,” Wren said, then stood and crossed the room to sit at her vanity.
It was customary that Blossom style Wren’s hair for the day while she had her tea.
The young maid usually chattered about various estate gossip or her latest infatuation with one of the guards.
Not today. The two women were silent. It was difficult to conceive of going about a normal day with Heron gone.
What did the state of Wren’s appearance matter when her brother was dead?
Wren took a sip of tea. Her lip curled. Dreadful.
“Blossom.” The maid’s gaze met Wren’s in the shell-rimmed mirror. “Do you know another word for ‘sequence’?”
Blossom’s brow pinched. “I-I’m not very good with words, Miss.” A zip of Blossom’s nervousness shot through Wren.
Wren waved her hand. “Nonsense. It’s a simple question.”
Blossom ran a pearl comb through Wren’s pale blonde hair.
“A synonym of sequence…order, perhaps?”
Wren sat up taller in her chair.
“Order!” she exclaimed. “Yes, yes, that’s it.”
Blossom smiled at Wren’s excitement. “What is it?”
Wren rushed over to her desk, her pearl comb stuck in her hair.
She grabbed her quill and wrote order beneath all the other words and underlined it.
Throughout the journal, Heron had often referenced this sequence, but he meant order.
Which is also synonymous with a group or society.
Wren’s hand shook as she pressed it to her lips.
A needle of dread pricked at the base of her skull.
Her brother had uncovered something dark indeed. And this Order killed him because of it.