Chapter 8: The Tonic

Corinna hugged me before I could stop her.

She smelled of lilies and clean Bloodwood air, and she was crying into my shoulder.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered. "For all of it. I was eighteen, Rhea. I did what I was told."

"By Perrin?"

"By everyone." She pulled back and wiped her face with a bracelet-covered wrist. "Here. It's honey and thyme. It's what our mother used to give us."

She pushed the little blue bottle into my hand.

I did not say that I had been four when our mother died, and could not remember any of it.

I was looking at her wrist.

She had pushed her silver bracelets up toward her elbow.

Under them was a rust-colored stain on her skin.

It looked like a scrape that someone had wiped with a dirty cloth.

I thought: she scratched herself on the way here, in the brush.

I thought nothing else.

"Our mother had a locket," Corinna said. "Perrin kept it. I'll get it back for you, I promise. It belongs to you."

It was such a generous thing to say that I almost thanked her.

Lucan came up the bank behind me with his shirt half buttoned.

He held out his hand for the bottle, and I gave it to him.

He pulled the cork and smelled it, and his face changed.

"Where did you get this?" Lucan asked.

"From Perrin's housekeeper. She packed it for me." Corinna's eyes widened. "Why? What is it?"

"Wolfsbane."

"No." Corinna took a step back. "No, that can't be right. She must have given me the wrong bottle."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Rejected for Being Barren, Now the Alphas Kneel from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.