Reborn, I Let My Sister Take the Poisoned Crown novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: A Bonfire, Not a Candle

In Hester's hut Neve admits she knows what the silver circlet does, heals the old woman's cuff-burned ankle and learns the circlet goes on at the Convocation in five weeks; a cheerful letter from Sorrel arrives with one line pressed hard: don't come.

Hester Quill's hut stood on the moor edge, three miles past the last farm, with a roof so low that I had to duck under the door.

She sat me on a stool by the stove and put a mug of nettle tea in my hands.

"Drink," she said. "You've been holding your breath since I mentioned the tower."

"I was there," I said.

She stopped with the kettle in her hand.

"What does that mean?"

I could not tell her I had died.

"I mean I know what the tower is. I know what the silver does."

"Do you?" Hester set the kettle down. "Say it, then."

"The Royal Healer wears a circlet at the Convocation," I said. "It's silver, and it's laced with wolfsbane. It's supposed to bind her wolf to the king's so she can heal him."

"And?"

"And it doesn't heal him. It takes the Healer's wolf, a little more every week, until there's none left."

The old woman looked at me for a long time.

"Two years," she said. "That's how long the last girl lasted."

"Twenty-six months," I said, before I could stop myself.

Hester's eyes narrowed.

"Where did you hear that number?"

"Everyone in Highmoor knows what happens to Healers."

"No, they don't." She leaned on her cane. "They know the Healer's a great honour. They know she lives in a tower and eats off silver plates. They don't know the number."

I stared into the tea.

"Fine," I said. "I heard it from a woman at the fair. Does it matter?"

"It matters that you said it like you'd counted the days."

I did not answer, and after a moment she let it go.

"I was Royal Healer for eleven years," she said. "In all that time nobody asked me to wear a thing on my head."

"What changed?"

"Three winters ago the old king died and his son took the throne. The Council gave the Healer's seat a silver band, and said it would honour her. I refused to wear it."

"What happened?"

"They said I was sick," Hester said dryly. "And I was, a little. I was sick of Mortimer Pell."

The name made my skin go cold.

I knew it well from my last life, in his soft, patient voice, always at the king's elbow.

"Lord Pell sits at the king's right hand," I said.

"He sits wherever the king can't see his hands."

She pulled her bad leg up onto a second stool.

Under the hem of her skirt, the skin of her ankle was puckered and silver-grey, burned by old cuffs.

"The Council cuffed me before they sent me here," she said. "Silver, for a month. It never healed right."

I knew what I was going to do before I decided to.

I knelt in front of the stool and put both hands around her ankle.

"Girl, what do you think you're doing?"

"Hold still."

I let the warmth come.

It rose through my palms in a slow, steady rush, and under my fingers the grey skin loosened and pinked.

Hester went rigid.

She did not make a sound until the last bit of puckering had smoothed over, and then she whispered a word I will not repeat.

"Weak wolf," she said. "A scrape, if you're lucky."

"I had to say something to him."

"You are the strongest healer I've touched in forty years." She flexed her ankle, and the colour came into her face. "Your sister's a candle, Neve. You're a bonfire."

"Sorrel is good."

"Sorrel is good for a village. You're good for a throne."

That was what I had been afraid of.

"The Council doesn't know that yet," I said. "They sent a man to measure me, and I told him I was nothing."

"Then keep telling him," Hester said. "And stay out of the capital."

"I can't go to the capital. There's a decree."

"Good. Obey it."

Her tone said she did not believe I would.

I had one more question.

"The circlet goes on at the Convocation," I said. "When's that?"

"Five weeks, at the first frost."

Five weeks.

I stood up and my knees ached.

Outside, someone was whistling, thin and cheerful, and for a second I could not breathe.

Then a boy in a farm smock walked around the corner of the hut with a folded letter in his fist.

"Messenger said it was for Neve Fenwick," he said. "He said it was in a hurry."

I knew the handwriting before I broke the seal.

Sorrel's round, loving hand curled across the page.

She wrote that the road was long but the carriage was lovely, that the palace physicians were kind, that she was already feeling stronger and the king's household had given her a room with a view of the gardens.

She wrote that she missed me every minute.

The last line was pressed so hard into the paper that the pen had nearly torn it.

Don't come, Nev. Whatever anyone tells you, stay where you're safe.

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