They Broke the Duke's Bastard, Now She Is His Only Heir novel · Chapter 19 of 24
Chapter 19: Forty Vials
"Lady Odette," the King said, looking at the vials. "These are yours?"
"They are the Saint's holy drops, Your Majesty." Her voice cracked. "They have been stolen from my chapel and put in a box to shame me."
"Behind a panel in the royal physician's rooms."
"Then he is the thief."
The physician sat with his bag clutched to his chest.
"Miss Ashdown," the King said. "You claim the Saint's gift is your blood. Show me."
I left the witness box on my crutch and crossed the floor.
Four hundred people watched every step.
At the clerk's table I laid my palm flat on the glass of the nearest vial.
It warmed.
The warmth ran up my arm and into my chest, the same pull I felt when I laid my hands on a wounded body.
"It is mine," I said.
I touched the second, and the third.
Every one of them warmed the same way.
"You can't know that," Odette said. "That is nothing. Any healer's glass would."
"Then bring a second healer," I said, "and I will wait."
Nobody answered.
Doran turned to the physician.
"Doctor. You have been the King's physician for nineteen years."
The old man nodded, once.
"You've held a royal cabinet in your hands that long. You know what's in those vials."
The physician looked at the King.
Then he looked at Odette.
She stared back at him, and her eyes were flat and bright, and she shook her head very slightly.
The physician began to shake.
"I was in debt," he said hoarsely. "My son. The Lady paid it. I did not know what she meant to do."
"Say it plainly," the King said.
"The vials are blood. Drawn from the prisoner at Greywater, kept in spirit and salt, sent here every month. The Lady came to my dispensary three years ago and asked what would work on a young girl's bones."
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