The Saint Who Healed Everyone and the Knight She Couldn't novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The Anchor

Verrick received them in the chapel, which the fort used as a map room, with a fire burning in the small iron stove.

He stood with his hands folded in his sleeves, and his face was patient.

Greta stood at the door with her hand on her sword.

Brunhild had dressed in full steel, and her face was a locked gate.

Yui held out the notebook.

"You wrote this," she said.

"I did." He did not pretend. "I hoped you would have more time before you read it."

"Explain it."

Verrick sighed.

He crossed to the stove and held out his thin hands to the heat.

"Nine years ago at Ashford, you took a dying man's curse into your own body and did not die of it," he said. "My master saw what that meant."

"I know the story," Brunhild said.

"You know the half you were allowed." He did not look at her. "A person who could hold one curse could hold many. So he knelt you down that night, and he carved the Anchor into your back."

Yui felt the room tilt.

"The ward," Brunhild said.

"The Anchor. A fixed place for a curse to fall. Every curse any healer lifts from any soldier of the Shield falls onto you instead and is held there until your body burns it away. You have been the Royal Shield's anchor since you were seventeen."

Nobody breathed.

"That is why no healer can touch you," he said. "There is nowhere for the curse to go."

"You knew," Yui said. Her voice came out very thin. "You summoned me from another world. You knew exactly what my light would do to her."

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