He Rejected Me the Night I Birthed His Twins novel · Chapter 14 of 32

Chapter 14: Not a Childhood Friend

The Ironwood solstice market ran all day on the green below the infirmary.

By noon there were two hundred people at the stalls, and a good third of them had crossed the bridge from Black Fir.

Old truce law let anyone trade on market day.

I walked through it with my daughter on my chest and my son on the housekeeper's arm, and every head turned.

Nobody sneered.

They looked at my eyes, and they looked away, and some of them dipped their heads.

Cedric was by the cider stall with the eighty-one-year-old elder.

He had come for his weekly hour.

He was thin and grey, and he did not come near me until I nodded.

Then a hush spread out from the bridge end of the green.

Priscilla was walking up the middle of the market in a white fur coat.

She had one hand pressed to her side, and she had come alone.

"Cedric," she said, in her soft voice, and every person in earshot stopped talking to hear it. "There you are. I've been so frightened."

He stared at her.

"I forgive her," she said, turning to the crowd. "I want everyone to hear that. Morven is a woman out of her mind with grief. She poisoned a cup in your own great hall and accused a sick woman of it."

"I did not poison it," I said. "You didn't drink it."

"Because I was ill."

"You were ill for four months?"

"The wolfsbane. It took half my strength."

I took a long, slow breath.

"Ironwood's healer is standing right there," I said. "Will you let her look at your hands?"

Priscilla's smile did not move.

"Of course."

The healer came forward from the herb stall and took Priscilla's right hand in both of hers.

She turned it over and looked at the nails under the winter sun.

"Wolfsbane leaves a violet line under every nail," she said, loudly. "It takes years to grow out. This woman has never been near it."

A murmur went down the green.

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