Chapter 9: The River Road

My hand stopped an inch from my sister's forehead.

It shook there, hot and open, and everything in me wanted to lay it down.

Four hundred people watched.

I closed my fingers into a fist.

"Healer," I said. My voice cracked. "Somebody fetch the Healer."

"Yvaine!" my mother cried.

"She has a Healer. He's paid to keep her alive."

The old Healer was already shoving through the benches with his bag.

He knelt by the litter and put his ear to Melisande's chest.

In a moment he was pouring something from a vial between her lips.

Her breath rattled, caught, and ran on.

She was not dying.

She was frightened and very ill.

For the first time in my life I stood and watched somebody else do the work.

It hurt to watch.

Tobias had come down from the dais.

He knelt on the other side of the litter and took Melisande's hand.

He looked up at me with red, furious eyes.

"You could have helped her."

"I could have," I said. "She could have asked me before she took my place."

"You are cruel."

"Tobias," my sister whispered, and he bent to her.

I turned and walked up the aisle.

Nobody stopped me.

Behind me I heard the Alpha say to the hall, loudly, "Let her go. She'll crawl back by the next full moon."

I did not turn.

Hamish fell in beside me at the doors.

"That was not easy," he said quietly.

"No."

"If it helps, she's breathing."

"It doesn't help."

"No," he said. "I didn't think it would."

We went out into the cold white morning.

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