Chapter 9: The Healer's Basket

"Fit to be Queen," I said. "That's the hearing?"

Elias put the council's letter down on the study floor beside the coat.

"A petition. Alpha Prentiss says a wife who can't carry scent can't be sealed to the Crown, so the marriage is only paper."

"I carry yours."

"Faintly. For a week." He rubbed his eyes. "He'll say I scented a wall."

"Then we scent harder."

His mouth twitched.

"I'll consult the manual."

It was the first time in my life I'd woken up on a floor and not felt ashamed of it.

By noon I had a headache.

It sat behind my eyes and throbbed in time with my pulse, and I blamed the rug.

By two, Junie was standing in my sitting room with her hands on her hips.

"You're gray," she said.

"I slept on a floor."

"You skipped your tea for three days."

"It's tea, Junie."

"It's bitter tea you've had every morning since you were twelve, and now you're gray." She chewed her lip.

"I'm only the brewer. I use the packets the healer gives me. I've never read what's in them."

"Why not?"

"Because your dad asked me not to, when I started. I was fifteen." She looked embarrassed. "It seemed rude to ask."

A steward knocked on the door frame.

"Your Majesty. Alpha Garrow is at the gate."

I stood up so fast that the room tilted.

"Alone?"

"With the clinic's healer. They have a basket."

My father waited in the gravel courtyard in his heavy wool jacket, with his hands in his pockets.

Behind him stood the Garrow clinic's healer, a stooped woman with a wicker basket held in front of her.

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