Chapter 5: Her Hands

I crossed the hall with two hundred wolves watching me.

Sabra's eyes burned a hole in my back, and I could hear her mother's chair scrape.

I stopped in front of the dais, and the King looked down at me from a great height.

"Betony," he said, "isn't it?"

"It's what I'm called."

"Will you touch it?"

"I'll touch it," I said. "If you answer one question first."

Garland made a small sound that might have been a cough.

The King's mouth twitched again.

"I'm usually the one asking the questions."

"Then you'll know how to answer them."

The hall was so quiet that I could hear a torch hiss.

"Ask," said Osian.

"Why did you pick me out of eleven healers and a goat?"

He took a long time to answer.

"Because you smell like the night I was supposed to die," he said at last, low, for me alone.

"I have been looking for you ever since."

My heart gave one hard knock against my ribs.

I did not believe him, and I did not disbelieve him.

I put the empty tray on the step and climbed the dais.

Up close the scar was warm, and the muscle beneath it quivered.

His skin smelled of pine smoke and leather.

I laid my left hand flat along the silver line, and the world fell away from the edges.

There was a white heat in my palm, and a light the colour of moonlight came up between my fingers.

I heard a gasp, and then the whole hall gasped together.

The scar was sealing itself under my hand.

Behind my eyes there was snow.

A man lay in it, grey-faced and bleeding, with his lips going blue.

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