Chapter 23: The Healer's POV

The healer's POV

The square emptied slowly, and the stones got colder.

By midnight the crowd was gone, and only the wardens remained at the edges with their lanterns.

Five of us knelt in a line in the dark.

I kept watch as the hours dragged on.

Ronan's shoulders began to shake near one in the morning.

He did not make a sound, but I could see it from the corner of my eye.

"Breathe," I said quietly. "Don't lock the knees. You'll black out."

"I'm fine," he said.

"You aren't. Shift your weight."

He shifted it.

Nolan went down at two.

He did not faint, exactly.

His legs simply folded and put him on his side on the stones, and he lay there looking embarrassed.

I was beside him before I thought about it, with two fingers on his throat.

"Sit up. Drink this."

"I'm supposed to kneel."

"You're supposed to kneel, not die of it. Althea never said no water."

Elias handed me his flask without turning his head.

I gave Nolan the water, and he sat back on his heels and pushed his wet hair out of his face.

"What are you counting?" Corin whispered.

He had seen my lips move.

"Mornings," I said.

"Which mornings?"

"The ones I walked past her door."

He waited.

"Seven hundred and thirty," I said. "Two years of them."

"Why count them?"

"I kept a tally in a ledger in my surgery, one stroke each night. I couldn't think why I was doing it."

"And now?"

"Now I know it was the only part of me the stone didn't reach."

Corin looked down at the stones.

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