Elena ripped her wrist from his grip, tearing her skin against his blunt fingernails.
“You feel your own rot, Tyler.”
Tyler swayed against the damp stone wall, his dark hair dull and tangled across his forehead.
He pressed one palm flat against the stones to keep from tumbling onto the flags.
“It was your pain,” Tyler rasped, wiping blood from his cracked lower lip.
“Every breath you took in the snow, I felt it scrape my ribs. I thought I was losing my mind.”
“You chose Camilla,” she said.
“I chose an alliance,” he whispered, reaching toward her sleeve.
“I thought you were wolfless, Elena. The elders demanded an Alpha line.”
“You chose safety,” she replied, pulling back before his fingers brushed her coat.
“Your wards are failing. You come here with twenty swords and call it my pain. Tell that to the men waiting in the fever ward.”
Tyler recoiled.
Marcus caught his elbow before he lost his footing.
“Obsidian sentries are watching from the upper gallery, Alpha. We cannot press this here.”
Elena looked once toward the gallery, then left them beneath the arch.
Kenneth’s water clock was draining.
Three deaths would cost her sanctuary, and Cassian would try to attach chains to that judgment again.
Twenty men lay waiting while Tyler asked her to listen.
She ran down the courtyard stairs.
Commander Vane waited by the timber portal, her left arm resting over the fresh binding beneath her riding coat.
The bent side plate was gone.
Each breath lifted her shoulders before it reached her chest.
“The outriders are in the west cellar,” Vane said.
“How many?”
“Twenty. River patrol men, mostly omegas.” Vane glanced toward the high hall.
“Cassian chose a ward with few relatives on those benches.”
Elena pushed through the timber door.
Frost fever’s sour stench filled the cellar; she had smelled it in bedding that no amount of boiling could clean.
Twenty cots crowded the vault.
Men thrashed beneath thin blankets, teeth clicking, gray sweat slick on their skin.
Two apothecaries stood by a steaming copper kettle with their arms folded.
“Get out,” the older man said.
“We do not waste medicine on kennel sweepings.”
“The council placed this ward under my charge.” She dropped her pack on the table.
“Then watch them die. The rot has reached their lungs, and there is no dried lungwort in the racks.”
Elena went past him and pressed two fingers to the nearest scout’s neck.
His pulse fluttered too fast; each breath rattled.
She had tended this sickness at Silvercrest.
“Where is the root stored?”
“In the high vault,” the apprentice said, retreating toward the wall.
“Lord Cassian locked the latch before dawn. Nobody enters without his written token.”
Elena kept her fingers on the scout’s neck through another labored breath.
She could not tell whether Cassian had emptied the racks himself.
The root was upstairs, the men were choking here, and a request carried back to the council would spend the time they had left.
Valerian was speaking with two patrol captains beside the horse ring, his dark tunic unprotected by a cloak.
He turned as she crossed the flags.
“Tyler is still watching from the wall.”
“Let him watch.”
“You should be brewing before Kenneth calls the midday bell.”
“Cassian locked the lungwort in the high storehouse. His private seal is on the latch. Without that herb, the men will be dead by sundown.”
Valerian folded his arms.
“Break into a warlord’s store without a council decree and he can bring a charge against the crown.”
“Then put your name on the order.”
She stopped within reach of him.
His gaze went to her split knuckles before returning to her face; she left her hands at her sides.
“You owe me your breath,” she said.
“Those men are losing theirs. I need lungwort, eight guards and a door opened.”
His arms dropped.
“You call the debt for this?”
“They are under my care.”
Valerian unhooked the metal cylinder bearing the throne’s three wolves.
He held it out; Elena took it.
“Eight guards,” he ordered.
“Open the medicine vault. Take the root and leave the other stores. My seal answers for the broken lock; Cassian may bring his charge to me.”
Vane touched the hilt at her right hip.
“You heard him. Two at the stairs. The rest with her.”
Elena ran toward the vault with the guards.
Valerian followed through the yard.
Two of Cassian’s stewards blocked the portal, but moved when she presented the cylinder and the guards took hold of their arms.
The iron latch shattered with a violent crack.
Elena pulled two sacks of lungwort from the shelves.
Vane sent a guard ahead with one and took the second from Elena before its weight dragged against her shoulder.
At the stair, Valerian held his hand near her elbow.
“May I?”
“The elbow. Not my wrist.”
His palm closed where she had asked.
She used his strength for the first steep steps, then let go and followed the sacks down.
She dumped the bundle onto the cellar table.
“Boil four pots from the high-well buckets,” Elena ordered the apprentices.
“Pound the stalks and stoke the peat.”
The brittle roots broke under her hands, leaving sap beneath her nails.
She used a cleaver on the stubborn fibers and stirred the mash into the boiling pots.
Bitter steam dampened her sleeves.
At each cot she lifted the man’s head, waited for him to swallow and offered the next mouthful only when he could breathe again.
Her back ached from their weight.
She rinsed her cut palms between beds and returned to the pots. Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
Asteria kept her upright; even so, the ladle began to tremble in her hand.
When the last pot ran low, three men still fought each swallow.
Elena lifted the nineteenth scout’s head again and waited until he could take another spoonful.
The other seventeen needed no more.
By late afternoon, those seventeen breathed quietly.
Three still needed someone beside them: one struggled for air, another vomited the broth, and the man in the nineteenth bed lay rigid.
Elena assigned an apprentice to each and made Kenneth’s messenger count all twenty alive before he went upstairs.
She returned to the nineteenth cot.
The older scout’s belly was swollen, hard beneath her palm, and dark fluid leaked from his lips.
His muscles clenched under her touch.
Frost fever had never done that.
She walked swiftly to the stone basin where the apprentices drew their kettle water.
“Where did you draw this water?” she asked.
“From the lower cistern,” the apprentice whispered.
“The pipe feeds directly from the castle cellar.”
Elena caught the apprentice’s wrist before he dipped another cup.
“No more from this pipe. My pouch—the prepared slivers.” She laid one in clean high-well water and touched the second to a drop from the basin.
The clean one stayed pale.
A violet edge spread across the other.
Wolfsbane distillate.
The same assay had warned her off Theresa’s wine.
She set the stained bone beside the basin where the healer could see it.
Elena looked from the basin to the pots, then to the three men who had not steadied.
“Only the refill?” The apprentice pointed to the last pot.
“The fourth high-well bucket was empty. You were holding the scout. I used the basin. I didn’t call you.” He pointed to the three attended cots.
Those men had received the second dose; the first buckets had come from the high well.
Someone had contaminated the lower line.
Cassian’s lock upstairs did not identify that hand.
“Dump the cauldrons. Close that pipe,” she ordered.
“Draw fresh water from the high well. Stay with those three—none of them goes unattended.”
Her next breath stopped before it reached her lungs.
She looked at the cuts on her palms.
She had rinsed them in that basin each time she returned to the three failing beds.
Now she could scarcely feel her fingers.
Pain climbed her arms, and her knees struck the flags.
Hands caught her shoulders.
An apprentice pulled a litter alongside while the older healer pressed clean cloth to her wet fingers.
“Keep that pipe shut,” she managed.
They carried her up the steps.
Through the courtyard door came a scream: Tyler had fallen to his knees near the stables, clawing at his chest.
Blood spread under his fingers.
As Elena’s next spasm folded her on the litter, he bent forward too.
Beneath the arch he had asked her to believe he felt her pain.
Now his body answered where she could see it.