Chapter 19: The Healer's Oath

My fingers found the pulse under Tilly's jaw before I'd decided to look for it.

It was racing.

Fast, then nothing, then fast again.

I knew that rhythm.

I'd felt it under my fingers on the first night, in the lounge, in Wylie's throat.

"Get her out of the water," Mom cried. "Get her away from him!"

"Stay back," I said.

I didn't raise my voice.

Mom stopped on the top step anyway.

"Wylie," I said. "Gran's bowl. It's on the rim by the gouges."

He was already moving.

He waded across the pool and put the wooden bowl in my hand.

His own hands were shaking.

He'd just refused his fated mate before every pack in the mountains.

His first act after it was to fetch my sister a bowl.

I sat Tilly down on the bottom step, so the water came up to her chest.

She sat where I put her.

I filled the bowl and poured it slowly over her shoulders, the way Gran had shown me.

"Breathe," I told her. "Let it hold you."

Her eyes didn't move.

A thin line of blood ran out of her nose and over her lip.

I wiped it off with my thumb.

The cedar ring had gone dead quiet.

A hundred torches watched the malicious daughter kneel in the water and bathe her sister.

I kept pouring until her pulse slowed under my fingers.

Then I looked up at Mom.

"She's stilled," I said. "Her wolf's gone silent."

"She'll eat if you feed her and sit where you put her. And she'll hear everything you say."

Mom's mouth trembled.

"Fix her."

"I'll treat her. She's my patient now."

"That's not what I asked." Mom came down one step. "You can fix this. You fixed him."

"Tell the Council it was a misunderstanding. Tell them you forgive her, and they'll let it go."

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