Rejected, Replaced and Forgotten novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Betony
Lenna, 23, wakes from the same dream of torches and a boy saying 'I reject you', numbs a pack enforcer who shoves her old teacher, and walks into Stonefall in her place, where her own father tells the guards he has never seen her.
For five years I had the same dream, and every morning I woke up without a face to put to it.
Torches stood in a ring on a wide meadow, and hundreds of people turned to look at me.
A boy's voice said, "I reject you."
A woman laughed softly, right behind my ear.
Then the dream went white.
I woke with my fists in the blanket and my heart going like a rabbit's.
I was twenty-three years old.
I had been Betony for five years, and before Betony there was nothing at all.
"You're doing the breathing thing again," Maud called from the kitchen. "Come eat, or come die. I need the bed for my herbs."
I laughed, because she says it every morning, and went down.
Maud Hargrove is seventy, with a pencil through her bun and a cough she swears is dust.
She found me in the snow outside Ferry's End five years ago, half frozen, in a torn white dress.
I had no name, so she called me after the sprig of betony in my satchel.
We sold dried herbs from a stall in the river market every Thursday.
That Thursday the enforcer came before we had the awning up.
He wore the grey jacket of the Stonefall pack, and he walked through the market.
He nailed a sheet of paper to our post and did not look at either of us.
"By order of the Lycan King," he read aloud, bored.
"Every healer within the Stonefall border stands before the throne tonight."
"The one who saved the King's life will be honored."
Maud wheezed with laughter, which turned into a cough.
"The King," she said. "He wants his nurse."
"Anyone who doesn't appear loses her license and her lease," said the enforcer. "Stonefall owns this ground, old woman."
"I'm seventy," said Maud. "I'll come in a barrow."
She tried to stand and her chest caught.
She went down on one knee in the dirt, wheezing, and the enforcer stepped over her.
Then he saw her stool in his way and kicked it into the river.
I did not decide anything.
My hand was in the pocket of my apron, and then it was holding a jar of wolfsbane paste.
"Sir," I said, very politely. "You've got a splinter."
"What?"
I took his wrist the way a nurse does, firm, and rubbed a thumb of paste across the back of his hand.
It is a numbing poultice, and a strong one.
"Wait," he said. "What did you..."
His arm went slack to the shoulder.
He stared at his hand.
"It wears off in an hour," I said. "Shove another old woman and I'll make it two."
I got Maud onto the one remaining stool and held a cup of honey water to her mouth.
"You," said Maud, in between wheezes, "are going to get us both killed."
"We're already on his list." I looked at the paper. "You can't go in a barrow, Maud. You can barely make it up the stairs."
"I can go."
"I'll go," I said.
She grabbed my sleeve.
"Betony. That hall is not a place for you."
"Why not?"
She opened her mouth and shut it again.
Maud is a terrible liar, and she had never tried it on me before.
"Because I said so," she said at last.
That was why I went.
A little before noon, a column of black horses came down the river road, and the whole market went silent.
They were big animals, bigger than any horse I'd ever seen, and every rider wore black.
The one in the middle was the largest man I had ever laid eyes on.
He had tawny hair to his shoulders, a fur collar, and a silver cuff on one wrist.
He reined in right in front of my stall.
He ignored the herbs and the enforcer, who was cradling his dead hand.
He looked at me.
His eyes were so dark a blue, and then, for half a breath, they flashed gold.
My skin went cold from my scalp to my heels.
Then somebody behind him said "Your Majesty," and he turned his horse away and rode on without a word.
I stood there with my hand still in my apron.
I climbed the Stonefall road that afternoon on foot, in my green apron and my wool socks, with Maud's license in my pocket.
The hall at the top was built of grey stone and black timber.
A man in the gatehouse lifted his lantern to read my paper.
Then he raised it to my face, and it slipped out of his hand.
"Miss Lenna?" he whispered. "Miss Lenna, is it you?"
It was a name I had never heard.
It went through me.
"I think you've mistaken me for someone," I said.
But he was already weeping, an old man with a white beard and shaking hands.
A door opened at the top of the steps and a grey-bearded man in a quartermaster's coat came out, with two guards behind him.
He was about fifty, and something in his stooped, careful walk made my throat close.
He looked at me for a moment.
Then he turned to the guards.
"I have never seen that woman in my life," he said.
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend