Chapter 5: The Healer's Visit

Sunniva was kind to me for an hour, and it was the most useful hour of my week.

She sat me on the lodge porch and tilted my head back.

She pinched the bridge of my nose until the bleeding stopped.

She wiped my face with a cloth from her basket.

She had done the same thing every time I was ill since I was seventeen.

"There," she said. "You're a mess, sweet girl. You walked forty miles on no sleep and no medicine."

"I didn't need medicine."

"I know you think so."

She reached into the basket and set a flat tin on my knee.

It was the size of a cookie box, and I knew the smell before she lifted the lid.

Salt and burnt sugar.

"Half a cup at night," Sunniva said. "Taper it down over a month, that's all."

"Don't stop all at once, or your head will do what it did on the hill."

"How did you know what happened on the hill?"

"Your grandfather's cook told me at the gate."

It was a reasonable answer.

I could not hear anything wrong in her heart.

"Have you raised your voice since you came?" she asked, and tucked the cloth back into the basket.

"All the time."

"Mm." She patted my knee.

"Keep it to the porch, then. Out of the hall, if you can."

"Your ears aren't ready for a crowd."

"I like the crowd."

"Of course you do."

She smiled at me.

"Your mother hasn't eaten since you left," she said, and her eyes filled.

"Your father stays in his study. He's not himself. He's ashamed, sweet girl. They both are."

I looked down at the tin.

I wanted very badly to hear that they were ashamed.

Torin came around the corner of the lodge with a letter in his fist.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Alpha's Birthday Wish Came True No More Noise and No More Daughter from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.