Reborn, I Let My Sister Take the Poisoned Crown novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Man in Grey

The Council's man in grey tests Neve's wolf with a cut thumb, she hides her healing and he leaves her a notice confining her to the valley; then an old woman named Hester Quill appears and says the same man sells twins their way into the Healer's Tower.

The man in the grey cloak knocked on our cottage door at sunrise, and he was smiling.

I knew him at once, because I had watched him hand my sister a green bottle behind the mill the day before.

He did not seem to know that.

"Miss Fenwick," he said. "I'm from the Royal Council. May I come in?"

He had a small gold wolf-head pin on his collar and a leather satchel on his shoulder.

I let him in, because a girl who has nothing to hide does.

He sat at our kitchen table and set the satchel on his knees.

"It's routine," he said. "When one twin goes to Hollowcrest, the Council keeps an eye on the other. Does your wolf heal?"

"A little," I said.

"How little?"

"A scraped knee, if I'm lucky. Sorrel got the strong one."

He nodded as if I had said something very reasonable.

Then he took my paring knife off the table, drew it across the pad of his own thumb and held the cut out to me.

Blood welled up bright red.

"Close it," he said.

My wolf stirred under my ribs.

She wanted to.

Healing is a reflex for us, and my palm was already warm.

I made it cold.

I pressed my fists into my apron and made myself look blank.

"I can't," I said. "I told you, only scrapes."

"Try."

"It's a real cut. I'd only make it worse."

He watched my face for a long moment.

I watched his thumb bleed onto my mother's tablecloth.

At last he laughed, put the knife down and wrapped the cut in a handkerchief.

"The Council will be relieved," he said. "A weak wolf is no trouble to anyone."

"Is that all?"

"Almost." He stood and slid a paper across the table.

It was a notice with the Council's stamp.

"You'll report to the Highmoor moot every seventh day and sign the book. You may not leave the valley. Your brother knows."

"Edric knows about this?"

"He signed it himself."

I read his name at the bottom, in my brother's careful steward's hand, dated the day before the envoy came.

He had signed it before the envoy even read the scroll.

Before any of us had chosen anything.

"Good day, Miss Fenwick," the man said at the door.

He stopped on the step and looked past me at the yard.

"Damp this time of year, the old mill," he said lightly. "Terrible for the lungs."

Then he walked down the path, whistling.

I shut the door and stood with my back against it until my hands stopped shaking.

He had seen me.

Or he had only guessed.

I did not know which was worse.

I scrubbed the blood off the tablecloth with cold water and sat down to think.

Last life, I had never been watched like this.

Last life, I had been in the capital by now, in a tower with a bad window, learning how to pin on the silver.

Nobody had asked me whether my wolf healed.

They had known.

That was the difference.

This time the Council had to ask, and that meant they did not yet know which twin held the stronger wolf.

It meant I had time.

A knock came at the back door.

I picked up the knife again, though I felt foolish.

An old woman stood in the yard with a wooden cane and a basket of herbs on her hip.

She was short and wiry, with white hair in a knot and a deep line cut between her eyebrows.

She looked at my face, and then looked harder.

"Well," she said. "There's two of you, and one of you's been left behind."

"Who are you?"

"Hester Quill. I live out on the moor edge, past the standing stones. I came to see which one of you stayed."

"How did you know there were two of us?"

"Because I have seen that face on a girl before," she said. "Three winters ago, in the Healer's Tower, with a silver band on her head."

My stomach turned over.

"What happened to her?"

"She died." Hester shifted her basket. "Where's your sister?"

"On her way to the capital. She was dying, they said."

Hester snorted.

"Dying. Of what, girl?"

"A fever. A bad cough."

"That cough was bought," Hester said. "I could smell it on the wind from my own doorstep. Was it a man in a grey cloak?"

I did not say yes.

I did not need to.

She pointed her cane at the notice on my table, at the gold stamp in its corner.

"That's the man who sells every twin her way into the tower," she said. "I know, because he tried to sell me."

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