The Dismissed Saint Became the Beast King's Healer novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Release Paper
The Prince replaces Shiori with the true saint and the High Priest brands her with a silver seal; she demands her release in writing, walks north, and heals a poisoned guard on the beast border, where the king catches her wrist.
The High Priest held a silver disc over a brazier until it glowed orange.
Shiori Hanazono stood on the white marble of the Hall of Dawn and watched it with her hands folded.
Two hundred courtiers watched her.
Seven months ago she had been a nursing student in Sendai, carrying a tray of blood samples into a hospital elevator.
The floor had opened into light, and a king had told her she was the saint who would heal Aurelmark.
Now Crown Prince Aldric sat on a gilded chair beside the throne and smiled at her.
"The Temple has examined the matter," he said. "You were an error of the summoning circle."
A tall girl in white and gold stood at his shoulder.
She was nineteen, with long dark hair and green eyes, and she held out her right hand.
A gold sun was printed on her palm, bright as a coin.
"Lady Sera Valtier carries the goddess's own mark," the High Priest said. "She is the true saint."
Sera looked at the floor.
She did not look like a woman who had won something.
Shiori thought of the barracks ward.
Four hundred and twelve soldiers with fever, broken bones and arrow poison, and her pale light going faint at the end of every night.
"Your light was borrowed from the circle," the High Priest said. "Not the goddess's."
"It closed a corporal's leg in the spring," Shiori said.
"Then the circle was generous."
"You are released from service," he said. "Leave the palace by sundown. A purse of ten silver marks will be sent to the gate."
"Turn around, please," the High Priest said.
"Why?"
"To close the door of the summoning, child. It is only a courtesy of the Temple. It does not hurt."
She turned.
The disc came down on her left shoulder blade and burned a coin-sized hole through the thin cloth, and it did hurt.
It was a hot, flat, bright pain.
She bit down on a sound and did not make it.
When the High Priest lifted the disc, her whole back was ringing.
"There," he said. "It is done."
Shiori turned back around.
"I'd like that in writing," she said.
The hall went quiet.
"I beg your pardon?" Aldric said.
"My release. In writing, with the crown's seal, and the words 'in good standing' and today's date."
"I was brought here by you. I've worked here seven months. When someone is let go in my country, they get a paper."
"Your country does not exist here," Aldric said.
"Then writing one costs you nothing."
A clerk by the pillar coughed into his fist.
Aldric flicked two fingers at the clerk, and the clerk wrote it standing up.
The crown's red seal came down at the bottom, and Shiori folded the paper and tucked it inside her robe.
"Thank you, Your Highness," she said.
Then she walked down the length of the Hall of Dawn alone.
Sera Valtier lifted one hand to stop her, and the High Priest touched her arm.
At the palace gate the purse was there, light as a sparrow.
A corporal in a clean bandage stood by the guardhouse, leaning on a crutch.
He was the corporal whose leg she had closed.
He looked around, and then he put a heel of bread into her hand.
"The Temple runs every ward in the south," he said low. "Every inn takes their coin. They'll find you work if you kneel to them."
"I'm not kneeling."
"No." He almost smiled. "Then go north, Healer. The Wolf Court pays in silver and doesn't ask whose god you pray to."
"The Beast King? People say he eats prisoners."
"People say a lot of things about the one man the Prince can't buy."
She walked nine days with a sore shoulder and a loaf of bread.
On the ninth, at the grey stone bridge over the Greywater, a spear stopped an inch from her throat.
Six wolf-eared soldiers held her in a ring.
They had yellow eyes and stiff tails.
Another man lay across the stones at their feet with a grey-fletched arrow in his ribs.
His veins had gone black to the collarbone.
"Human," the nearest soldier said. "Turn back."
"I'm a healer," Shiori said, and dropped to her knees beside the man.
She tore the arrow out in one pull and put both palms flat over the wound.
The light came up pale and pearl-white, thin as milk.
It was never much, and it was enough.
The black lines drew back down his neck, one by one, and he took a huge ragged breath.
The soldiers stared.
A horn sounded, the ring broke apart, and a man walked across the bridge.
He was taller than any of them, with long silver hair, grey wolf ears and a grey tail, and a coat the color of slate.
His eyes were dark brown.
She noticed that, because every other pair on that bridge was yellow.
He looked down at the healed man, and then at her, and he took hold of her wrist.
His hand was warm and entirely steady.
"You're the saint they threw away," he said.
"Yes."
"Who sealed you?"
Her mouth went dry.
The scorched hole in her robe sat right over the mark, and she had not said a word about a seal.
"A priest," she said. "How do you know that?"
"Come inside the walls." He let go of her wrist slowly, as if it cost him something.
"Be inside before dusk, healer. I can't promise what I am after that."
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