Their Hidden Princess novel · Chapter 10 of 32

Chapter 10: The Draught

At dawn I sat on the end of Maudie's bed and woke her up.

"Is it a fire?" she mumbled.

"No."

"Then I'm asleep."

"Maudie, I'm the princess."

She opened one eye.

"Which princess?"

"The princess. The one the whole school is hunting. Elsbeth Aldermoor."

She sat up slowly.

She looked at me for a long time. At my eyebrow. At my hands.

"I knew you were posh," she said finally. "You hold a fork like it owes you money."

Then she burst into tears and hugged me so hard my ribs creaked.

"You absolute idiot," she said into my shoulder. "You told me half. You told me the boring half."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry." She let go and wiped her face with her sheet. "Tell me what you need."

I told her about the full moon. The sand. Varrick's call.

Maudie's freckles stood out on her white face.

"Silver," she said. "Silver slows a shift. My father shoes wolves' horses, and the wolves won't touch silver nails. It sits on the skin like a burr."

"Does it stop a shift?"

"No. But it'll make your wolf think twice." She was already pulling on her boots. "Give me the forge till noon."

Lysander had the stillroom to himself by six.

He'd been up all night.

There were three ruined batches cooling in a bucket by the door, and a brown smear of something on his cheek.

"Moonwort, valerian and a root I'm not naming in front of a princess," he said. "It'll damp the wolf down. For about a night."

"Will it hurt?"

He didn't lie to me.

"Yes."

At noon Maudie came down the stillroom stairs with something wrapped in a rag.

It was a cuff, wide as two fingers. Iron outside, so nobody would see it.

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