This Time, I Accept Your Brother's Claim novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Not a Stud Horse

Elspeth walks into the palace dinner and spars with Auden until he gives her a week, if she spends it working beside him at the infirmary, where she finds the cobalt-blue bottles and the healer who used them on her.

"Come home, sweetheart," my father said. "We'll talk about it tomorrow."

"No," I said. "I'm coming over."

I hung up before he could argue.

He had the car, so I took the launch.

The little boat was tied at the end of our dock, the way it had been every summer of my childhood.

I pulled the cord three times before the engine caught.

The sun was going down behind the ridge, and the lake had turned the color of tin.

Halfway across, I could smell the palace.

Woodsmoke, roast venison, forty wolves in one hall.

My wolf lifted her nose and stopped being afraid.

I tied up at the palace dock.

I walked up the lawn in my plain black dress and my cardigan, with lake spray in my hair.

The footman at the side door opened his mouth.

I looked at him.

He closed it and held the door.

The great hall was exactly as I remembered it.

The long oak table. The antlers over the fireplace. The King at the head, broad and gray, cutting his meat in small neat pieces.

His five sons down one side.

The court down the other.

Every head turned when I came in.

My father half rose from his chair.

Piers sat at the King's right hand.

He set down his fork and watched me with no expression at all.

I walked the length of the table to the far end.

The last chair held a tall boy in a gray T-shirt, one elbow on the table, a bread roll in his hand.

There was dried mud on his boots, all the way up the laces.

Messy dark-blond hair. Green eyes.

A pale scar through his left eyebrow.

He was so young that it hurt to look at him.

The last time I'd seen that face, it had been seventy years older and bleeding against my cell door.

He looked up at me and stopped chewing.

"Oh no," he said.

One of the twins snorted into his wine.

"Prince Auden," I said.

He put the roll down and stood up, which took a while, because there was a lot of him.

He wiped his hand on his jeans and didn't offer it to me.

"Miss Fairlie. I'm sure you're a lovely person."

"I am, actually."

"Great. Then you'll understand."

He spread his hands to the table, to the court, to his father.

"With respect to the Holy Maiden and the Moon and everybody, I'm not a stud horse."

The hall went silent.

Somebody's knife scraped a plate.

"Good," I said. "I'm not shopping for one."

He blinked.

"Then what are you shopping for?"

"A man who knows where the infirmary is."

Both twins lost it at once.

The one on the left slapped the table so hard the candlesticks jumped.

The one on the right put his face down in his napkin and howled.

"Oh, she's mean," the left twin said. "Auden, she's mean. Marry her."

"Shut up," Auden said, without looking at him.

He was looking at me.

His nostrils flared once, and I knew he was taking my scent.

I let him.

"You don't even know me," he said.

"I know you got that mud on your boots dragging somebody off the hill road this afternoon."

His eyebrows went up.

"How?"

"It's on your knees too. And there's blood on your cuff that isn't yours."

He looked down at his cuff.

Then back at me, slower this time.

At the head of the table, the King made a low sound in his chest that might have been a laugh.

Piers didn't laugh.

His hand had gone flat on the tablecloth.

"Here's my offer," I said. "One week."

"One week of what?"

"Of knowing me. If you still say no after seven days, I'll go back to the folder in front of this table."

Piers's fingers moved on the cloth.

Auden saw it.

I watched him see it.

His eyes went from his brother's hand to my face and stayed there.

"One week," he said.

"One week."

"Fine. But I've got a price."

"Name it."

"I'm on the ward six days out of seven. I'm not taking a week off to go to tea parties."

He folded his arms.

"You want to know me? Work it. Beside me. Infirmary, six in the morning, starting tomorrow. You'll do whatever the matron tells you."

I could feel the whole court waiting for the Holy Maiden to be offended.

"Do I need to bring anything?" I asked.

He looked at my shoes.

"Boots," he said.

"Done."

He sat back down and picked up his roll.

"She said done," the right twin whispered. "Did you hear her? Done."

"I heard her," Auden said, and took a bite, and didn't look at me again.

But his ears had gone red.

The infirmary was a low stone wing behind the palace, with a herb garden along one side and a smell of iodine and crushed mint.

I was there at a quarter to six.

The matron looked me up and down, from my pinned hair to my borrowed rubber boots, and handed me an apron.

"You're the Maiden."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Can you count?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Storeroom at the end. Bring me six rolls of gauze and a box of splints. Don't touch anything with a red label."

Auden went past us in green scrubs, carrying a tray of instruments.

"Morning, Your Holiness," he said.

"Morning, stud horse."

The matron's mouth twitched.

I went down the corridor and found the storeroom.

Shelves to the ceiling. Gauze. Splints. Jars of dried herbs with handwritten labels.

I found the gauze on the third shelf.

I reached for it, and my hand stopped in the air.

On the shelf above it, in a neat row, stood a line of small bottles.

Cobalt blue.

Corks sealed in wax.

My mouth flooded with the taste I'd had three times in my first life.

Bitter. Metallic.

My knees went soft.

I put a hand on the shelf to hold myself up.

Behind me, the door opened.

"Ah," said a pleasant, papery voice I'd heard at my bedside three times. "You must be the new girl."

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