Reborn Luna Hears Every Lie novel · Chapter 17 of 40

Chapter 17: The Care He Cannot Claim

Sera stood at the inner door with her hand flat on the wood, listening. The healer's voice on the other side was calm and professional, the tone of a woman who had delivered hard news many times.

Beneath it ran a second voice, thin and frightened. *If the elder dies before the panel records her testimony, the pack will tear itself apart.*

Sera isolated that thought. The corridor went silent, the ambient hum of the keep dropping away until only the one sentence hung in the air, amber and clear.

She filed it.

The healer knocked again, quick and low.

Kael found her travel clasp before she did. He lifted it off the pallet and held it up. 'You're bleeding at the wrist,' he said. 'The clasp cut you.'

She looked down. A thin line of red sat across the inside of her wrist where the buckle had dragged while she pulled her blouse back on. She had not felt it. She took the clasp from him and fastened it herself, one-handed, and it took her three tries.

'Let me,' he said.

'No.' She got it closed and flexed her hand. 'You don't get to dress me like I'm yours.'

He did not argue. He pulled his own coat straight and stood with his back to the bed, giving her the room. She noticed the space he left and did not fill it.

*He's learning,* she thought. *Or he's pretending better.* Either way, she would need that at the door.

The healer knocked again. 'Respondent. She is not asking twice.'

Sera crossed the room and opened the door a hand's width. The healer was a small woman in grey with a lamp already lit. Behind her the corridor ran long and dark toward the chamber at the end, a strip of grey cloth hanging over the latch of that far door. Sera had seen the same cloth on the latch of the room she was standing in, and on the room beside it, all of them marked the same way.

'How long does she have,' Sera said.

'She has tonight,' the healer said. 'After that I would be guessing, and I do not guess out loud.'

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