The Wolfless Girl

Chapter 2

The knock came again.

Elara's fingers tightened around the pendant beneath her dress.

"Who are you?"

"Someone who knew your father."

Her breath caught.

She reached for the latch.

"Wait," the man said sharply. "Not here."

Elara frowned. "Then why come?"

Silence.

"Because the Crown has started looking for something your father died protecting."

Before she could ask what, footsteps sounded from the corridor.

The man's voice dropped.

"Tomorrow. The healer's inspection. Watch what happens when Yssa examines you."

Elara's hand froze on the latch.

"Why?"

But the footsteps were already too close.

"You'll understand when she touches your chest."

Then he was gone.

"You're doing it again," Mira whispered, elbowing her.

"Doing what?"

"That thing where you look like you're about to bolt."

Elara forced her hands still at her sides. The inspection hall smelled like it always did this time of year beeswax candles and old stone and nerves and she hated every inch of it. Rows of nobles lined the gallery above, murmuring behind painted fans, waiting for the yearly parade of wolfless wards like it was a festival instead of a humiliation.

"I'm fine," Elara said.

"You're gripping my sleeve like a drowning woman."

She let go.

A steward's assistant called the next name from his list, voice bouncing off the high ceiling. "Elara Veyne."

Somewhere above, a noblewoman's fan paused mid-flutter.

"Go," Mira murmured, squeezing her hand once. "It's just Yssa. She's not cruel, at least."

"That's not exactly comforting."

Elara stepped forward anyway, because there wasn't another option, and crossed the marble floor toward the raised platform where the healer waited an older woman with steady hands and tired eyes, a young assistant hovering at her elbow with a ledger and quill.

"Sit," Yssa said, not unkindly.

Elara sat.

Above her, someone in the gallery laughed at something unrelated, and Elara felt her face heat anyway, certain the way she always was in this room that it was about her.

Yssa's fingers pressed cool and precise against Elara's throat, checking her pulse. Standard. Routine. Fifteen years of the same routine.

"Deep breath," Yssa said.

Elara obeyed.

The healer's hand moved to her sternum next, palm flat, fingers spread and stayed there.

One second.

Three.

Ten.

"Is something wrong?" Elara asked, because the pause had gone on long enough that even the assistant had stopped writing.

"No," Yssa said, too quickly. "Be still."

She pressed harder, head tilting slightly, the way someone listens for a sound just beneath hearing. Elara's heartbeat picked up under the healer's palm, and she wondered, absurdly, if that alone might be mistaken for a wolf finally stirring.

It wasn't. It never was.

"Nothing," Yssa said at last, straightening. Her voice had gone carefully flat. "As expected."

The assistant lifted her quill. "Shall I record 'absent,' as usual?"

"Yes," Yssa said then, so quietly Elara almost missed it, added, "No. Wait."

The assistant blinked. "Healer?"

Yssa's eyes flicked toward Elara, then away, like she'd caught herself doing something she shouldn't have.

"Sealed," Yssa murmured. "Write"

"Yssa."

The assistant's voice cracked out sharp and sudden, cutting her off entirely. Yssa's mouth shut like a door slamming.

Elara went very still.

"Sealed?" she repeated. "What does that mean?"

"Nothing." Yssa's hand withdrew from her chest so fast it was almost a flinch. "A slip of the tongue. Write absent, as always."

"You said"

"I said nothing of consequence." Yssa's eyes met hers, and for one unguarded second Elara saw something underneath the healer's composure not annoyance, not impatience, but fear. "Next," she called, louder, past Elara's shoulder, already reaching for the next name on the assistant's list.

Elara didn't move.

"Elara." Yssa's voice dropped, urgent now, pitched only for her. "You need to step down."

"You said sealed. Not absent. Sealed means something's there."

"It means nothing." The healer's composure had cracked into something almost pleading. "Please. Step down."

The gallery above had gone quiet, nobles leaning forward with the particular hunger of people who suspected a scene was about to unfold. Elara felt every eye on her back and, for once, didn't care.

"Everyone in this kingdom has called me wolfless since I was three years old," she said, low and even. "Absent. Empty. Broken. Not once has anyone used the word sealed."

"Elara"

"Why would you seal something that isn't there?"

The assistant grabbed Yssa's sleeve, hissing something Elara couldn't hear. Yssa's jaw tightened.

"Step down," she said again, and this time it wasn't a request.

Elara stood, because staying would only draw more attention, but she didn't look away from Yssa as she did it. The healer's hands, she noticed, were trembling just slightly, just enough.

"Next," the assistant called again, too brightly, and a boy from the western wing shuffled forward to take Elara's place on the platform, and just like that the machinery of the inspection swallowed the moment whole, as if it had never happened.

Elara walked off the platform in a fog, Mira's voice reaching her only in fragments you're pale, what happened, did she say something and she didn't have an answer yet, only a word lodged behind her ribs like a splinter she couldn't stop touching.

Sealed.

She waited by the side doors until the hall began to empty, nobles filing out in twos and threes, servants folding chairs, the whole ritual dismantling itself around her. Yssa emerged last, ledger tucked under one arm, moving fast toward the corridor that led to the healers' wing.

Elara followed.

She was three steps behind when Yssa stopped so abruptly Elara nearly collided with her.

"You shouldn't have heard that," Yssa said, without turning around.

"Heard what?"

Yssa turned then, slowly, and her face had gone the color of old parchment.

"Sealed."

Elara's pulse spiked. "Sealed what? My wolf? Is that even possible?"

Yssa glanced past her, down the corridor, toward the guards posted at its far end and something in that glance made Elara's stomach drop.

"If anyone asks what happened in there today," Yssa said, voice low and fast, "you have no wolf. You have never had a wolf. Do you understand me?"

"No. I don't understand you at all. That's rather the problem."

"Elara"

"You've examined me every year since I was three. Every year it's absent. Today it's sealed, and you look like you've seen a ghost, and you want me to just" she gestured helplessly, "forget it happened?"

Yssa stepped closer, and when she spoke again her voice had dropped so low Elara had to lean in to catch it.

"I suggest," the healer said, "that you stop asking questions before the Crown notices you're asking them."

Elara felt the words land somewhere cold and certain in her chest because that phrase, the Crown notices, was not something a healer said about a wolfless orphan nobody in this palace cared enough to watch.

That was something you said about a threat.

"The Crown," Elara repeated slowly, "cares whether I ask questions about my own body?"

Yssa didn't answer. She didn't need to. The answer was already written across her face in the way her eyes darted back toward the guards, in the way her hand tightened around the ledger like it might somehow protect her from what she'd already said.

"Forget the word," Yssa whispered, already backing away. "For your own sake. Forget you ever heard it."

Then she turned and walked fast down the corridor, robes snapping around her ankles, and didn't look back once leaving Elara standing alone beneath the flickering torchlight with a single word burning through everything she thought she knew about herself.

Sealed.

Not absent. Not broken. Not empty.

Sealed like something locked away on purpose.

Like something someone had wanted kept hidden.

And for the second time in as many days, Elara understood, with a chill settling deep into her bones, that the palace had been lying to her for a very long time and whatever truth they were protecting, it was buried far closer to her own skin than she had ever let herself imagine.