Harem System novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Nine Days

They came out of the Trial Gate at dusk.

The queue had thinned to a handful of people.

Nils's arm still glowed faintly under his sleeve, and he kept his hand over it.

Ruenna walked beside him in a borrowed gray tabard with her torn shirt tied around her waist.

She was grinning the whole way.

"First floor, first try," she said. "Eleven men, and not one of them got me past the door."

"You killed the boss with one eye."

"You hit it with a flask."

"It worked."

The third mark on his arm flared.

It pulled so hard that Nils stopped walking.

At the foot of the steps a small crowd had gathered around something on the ground.

He knew before he reached it.

Veyra lay on her side on the cold stone with both arms wrapped around herself and her knees drawn up.

She was in the same nightgown with his coat over it.

Her lips were blue, and her eyes were half open and unfocused.

"She's been here since noon," the marshal said, coming down the steps behind them.

"She wouldn't leave and she wouldn't eat."

"She sat on the steps and waited for you to come out."

"Somebody call the Ward," a woman in the crowd said.

"The Ward's been called."

A cart was already rattling down the mercenary road, pulled by a gray mule.

A woman in a healer's smock jumped down before it stopped.

She had straight dark hair tied back with string and a small heart-shaped mark in the middle of her forehead.

She went to her knees beside Veyra without a word, put two fingers to her throat and swore under her breath.

"How long has she been like this?"

"Since noon," the marshal said.

"No. How long has she been starving?"

"Three months," Nils said.

The healer looked up at him.

She had warm brown eyes, and they took him in from his face to his bare forearm and back in one pass.

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