Chapter 5: The Ordinary Girl

"Let's have a look," Auden said, and pulled out a stool for her.

Lucinda sat down on it.

She was twenty-five and small and polished, with glossy auburn waves over one shoulder and a mouth painted soft pink.

She smelled of rosewater and something underneath it, sweet and dry.

The apothecary. Her mother's shop.

In my first life, that smell had come up the dungeon stairs with her the night she came to gloat.

"I slipped on the steps at the boathouse," she said. "Isn't that silly?"

"Very," Auden said. "Make a fist for me."

She made a fist and winced prettily.

Then her eyes slid past his shoulder and found me in the doorway.

Her smile didn't change.

But her nostrils widened, just a little, and I knew she was learning my scent.

"Oh," she said. "You're her."

"I'm who?"

"The Maiden. Piers told me about you last night."

"Did he."

"He was so upset."

She tilted her head.

"Piers says you chose the baby."

The ward went quiet.

There were six beds in it.

A pack runner with a bandaged knee. An old she-wolf with a cough.

Two nurses at the cupboard. A mother changing her son's dressing.

All of them were listening.

Auden's hands stopped on Lucinda's wrist.

I walked over and stood at the end of the bed beside her stool.

"The baby," I said, "is the only one of the five who can set a wrist."

I looked down at her.

"So you'd better sit still and let him."

One of the nurses made a noise and turned it into a cough.

Lucinda's pink mouth went tight for a second.

Then it was soft again.

"I only meant he's young," she said. "Piers and I were so worried for you."

"Piers and you."

"We've been together since the academy. Didn't you know?"

"Everyone knows."

"The Council wouldn't let him marry me. Because my family isn't anything."

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