Reborn, I Let My Sister Take the Poisoned Crown novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Sister Who Begged to Go
In the Highmoor square the king's envoy announces that only one Fenwick twin may go to the capital, and Neve, who died there in her last life, stands outside the door while Sorrel drinks a fake-illness potion and Edric chooses her; the envoy hands Neve the decree that bars her from Hollowcrest on pain of death.
The king's envoy unrolled the scroll in the middle of Highmoor square and read my brother's name to the whole village.
"Edric Fenwick, chosen by the Royal Council as Steward of the Royal Household."
People cheered and slapped Edric on the back.
I stood between him and my twin sister, Sorrel, with my braid tight on my neck, and I did not cheer.
I had heard this exact speech before.
Last time, I stood in this same square, in this same grey dress, and two years later I died in the capital with a silver crown on my head.
The envoy's voice went on, flat and loud.
"The Alpha King permits the new Steward to bring one family member to Hollowcrest."
He looked at Sorrel, then at me, then back at Sorrel.
"One. The Alpha King does not receive identical twins."
A murmur ran around the square.
Everyone in Highmoor knew why.
The king hated twins, and every healer girl born in pairs knew to keep her face out of his sight.
Edric turned to us with his new blue coat hanging a size too big on him.
"I'll think on it tonight," he said. "Whichever of you is stronger will come with me."
Sorrel's fingers found mine and squeezed.
She was smiling, and she looked exactly like me, only softer around the eyes.
"Don't worry, Nev," she whispered. "I'll sort it out. It's only for the road, and it won't touch my wolf."
She let go of my hand.
"I would never let anything touch you."
Then she slipped through the crowd toward the lanes behind the baker's.
I counted to twenty and went after her.
I knew where she was going.
The old mill stood empty at the end of the lane, and there was a man in a grey cloak waiting at its back door.
He did not look like a healer.
He looked like a man who was paid to be somewhere.
I crouched behind the water barrel and watched Sorrel hand him a coin purse.
He gave her a small green bottle in exchange.
"Drink it before noon," he said. "You'll cough blood and go white in the face. The envoy's healers will see it and carry you off to the best physicians in the kingdom."
"It won't suppress my wolf?" Sorrel asked.
"Not a hair of it."
They went inside, and the door swung half shut.
I crossed the yard and put my hand on the latch.
Last time, this was where I had burst in.
I had grabbed her wrist, knocked the bottle out of her hand and screamed that she was going to kill herself.
Edric had walked in on us, seen me holding his sick-looking sister by the arm, and decided I was the problem.
He had chosen me that same afternoon.
I could feel the cold iron of the latch under my palm.
Inside, Sorrel laughed softly at something the man said.
I took my hand off the latch.
So I stepped back and let her drink it.
By noon the square was full again.
Sorrel stood beside the well in her best yellow dress, with the green bottle already empty in her pocket.
She started to cough halfway through the envoy's second reading.
It was a small cough at first, and then a wet one, and then she folded over with one hand pressed to her mouth.
When she pulled it away, there was blood on her fingers.
"Sorrel!" Edric dropped the sack he was holding.
She sagged into his arms with her lips gone grey, and every woman in the square gasped.
"She's burning," Edric said. "Neve, get water."
I did not move.
"Neve!"
"She needs a healer," I said. "A real one."
The envoy's own physician knelt in the dust and pressed two fingers to her neck.
"Her wolf is failing," he announced. "She has days, not weeks."
Edric's face went white.
"The palace healers can still save her," the envoy said. "The Steward may bring her at once."
Edric lifted my sister into his arms.
She opened her eyes a crack as he carried her past me, and for half a breath she looked at me with no softness in her face at all.
Then it was gone, and she was only a sick girl being carried to a carriage.
"You'll keep the cottage," Edric told me over his shoulder. "You always manage, Neve. You're the strong one."
I nodded.
We had always caught each other's sicknesses.
When Sorrel got a fever at the autumn fair, I fell off a barn ladder two valleys away, shaking.
Our mother used to say it was one fever, shared out between us.
Today I felt nothing at all.
The carriage rolled out of the square, and the villagers drifted back to their stalls.
I stood in the dust, breathing the air of a morning I had never expected to see again.
A hand touched my arm.
The envoy held out a sealed paper with the king's wolf stamped in blue wax.
"For you, Miss Fenwick," he said. "The Alpha King's decree."
I broke the seal and read the single line.
The unchosen twin shall never set foot in Hollowcrest, on pain of death.
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