Chapter 14: The Second Bottle

I smelled the bottle before she lifted the tray.

It was a thin cold smell of metal under sugar.

Six days ago I could not have told it from the rest of the corridor.

Now it rolled up my nose and sat at the back of my throat.

Behind Lavinia, three Council elders stood in a row with their hands folded.

They were the ones who had run the silver ring trial, and they had come to see the sick girl with their own eyes.

"Elowen, you look dreadful," Lavinia said, soft and full of worry.

"Please take it. Just two swallows, and the shaking stops."

"You made this?"

"I made it fresh this morning." She tilted the tray toward me. "Mama and I have been so frightened."

Down the corridor, Fenn had stopped with a laundry basket on his hip.

Dashiell had come up silently behind me.

I felt him there, warm against my back, and he did not say a word.

I took the bottle off the tray.

It was warm from her hands.

"Thank you for thinking of me," I said.

Lavinia's smile widened.

I pulled the cork and held the bottle out at arm's length.

All three elders could see the white label and the round hand that wrote it.

E. Vane.

Then I turned it over and poured it out onto the corridor carpet.

It ran dark and slow into the weave.

The smell of metal rose so strongly that the oldest elder put a handkerchief to his nose.

"Elowen," Lavinia said, and laughed, a small, light, puzzled laugh. "What are you doing?"

"Smell it," I said to the elders. "Please. One of you."

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