Chapter 22: Ragna Talks

Ragna lifted her head an inch when she heard my boots.

"Go away," she croaked.

"No."

The orange cord on her wrists had left raw red stripes, and the skin around them was blistered.

It smelled bitter and green.

"Wolfsbane," Vidar said behind me, his voice low with disgust. "He soaked the cord so she couldn't shift."

"So she couldn't heal," I said.

I cut the cord with the bolt cutters, and she dropped into my arms.

Her pulse was slow but steady.

I sat down on the sooty floor with her across my lap and pulled Vidar's spare flannel from my bag around her.

"Why?" she whispered.

"Because you're blue, and I'm a paramedic."

"I put poison in your cup."

"I know." I tucked the flannel under her chin. "You can thank me later. In front of everybody."

She made a sound that might have been a laugh.

Then she turned her face into my shoulder and cried.

The great hall was full by nine the next morning.

The council sat at the long table.

Vidar sat at the head.

I sat on his right in my uniform.

Arne sat beside me in a quilt with a mug of cocoa, because he'd refused to stay in bed.

Ragna stood in the middle of the floor in a borrowed sweater with her wrists bandaged.

The council had sent for Torvald at dawn, and he came.

He walked in at nine exactly with the sharp-faced lawyer at his elbow, as calm as a man coming to a dinner party.

"My men acted without me," he said to the table before anyone asked. "I'm horrified. I'll see them punished myself."

"Sit down," the white-bearded man said.

Torvald stayed standing.

"And the girl in the smokehouse?" the woman with the gray braid said.

Torvald looked at his stepdaughter for the first time.

"She ran to my men after the King threw her out," he said. "She must have made them angry. She has a gift for that."

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