Chapter Eight: The Healer's House

Lyra’s POV

I barely remembered the walk from the gates.

Elowen's face stayed burned into my mind the entire way — that flicker of shock, that whispered impossible — while guards ushered our party through streets too grand and too loud for me to properly take in. Cassian had murmured something about letting me rest before answering questions, and I'd been too rattled to argue.

Now I stood in the doorway of a low stone building tucked behind the palace's eastern wing, herbs drying in bundles from the rafters, the whole space smelling of mint and clean linen.

"You're safe here," Darius said, gesturing me inside. "Healer's house. Someone will examine you, make sure the journey didn't do any lasting damage."

I stepped through the doorway, and the words died in my throat.

"Lyra?"

Mira stood at the far worktable, a mortar and pestle frozen mid-grind in her hands, staring at me like she'd seen a ghost climb through the door.

"Mira." My voice cracked on her name. "You're — how are you here?"

She dropped the pestle entirely, closing the distance between us in three quick strides before pulling me into a hug so fierce it nearly knocked the breath out of me.

"I could ask you the exact same question," she said, pulling back just enough to look at my face, her eyes bright with tears she didn't bother hiding. "I've spent weeks not knowing if you were even alive."

"Weeks. Right." I let out a breath, the three-week ride suddenly feeling shorter in hindsight than it had felt in the saddle. "But Mira, you're already here. Settled, working. How did you possibly beat us to the capital?"

"Barely," she admitted. "I only arrived a few days ago myself. I lost you in the mist that first morning — the wolves scattered us both, and by the time I found my footing again, you were gone, and I couldn't find a trail worth following."

"I thought you went home," I said quietly. "I told you to go home."

"I tried." She shook her head, guilt creeping into her voice. "I really did try, Lyra. But going back meant walking into Mooncrest and pretending I didn't know what happened to you, pretending I hadn't watched you disappear into wolves I couldn't identify. I couldn't do it. So I didn't."

"Then what did you do?"

"Wandered, mostly, for longer than I'd like to admit." A small, tired smile. "Followed rumors instead. There aren't many stories that spread faster than the Lycan King personally escorting a rejected exile out of Mooncrest territory himself. Once I heard the description — silver-black hair, golden eyes, a fresh rejection mark — I knew it had to be you. I just had to convince the border guards to actually let me in and prove I wasn't a threat."

"You came all this way. Alone."

"I wasn't about to let you face whatever this is without at least one person who actually knows you," Mira said simply, like it wasn't remotely as enormous a thing to have done as it clearly was. "Mira Solis, still terrible at taking no for an answer, apparently."

Something in my chest, tight and aching since the moment Kael had turned to the crowd and rejected me, loosened just slightly for the first time since that night.

"I'm so glad you're here," I whispered.

"Me too." She squeezed my hands once, then straightened, healer instincts visibly reasserting themselves over the emotion. "Now sit. Darius said you collapsed near the border, and I want to make sure that mist-crossing didn't leave anything behind besides exhaustion."

I sat on the edge of the narrow cot she gestured toward, and let her examine me with the same careful, practiced hands I remembered from a hundred smaller injuries back home — scraped knees, training bruises, the occasional fever.

"Any pain?" she asked, pressing gently along my ribs. "Dizziness? Anything feel wrong that shouldn't?"

"Just tired," I said. "And cold, mostly. Nothing serious."

Her hands paused just below my collarbone, fingers going suddenly still against my skin.

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing," she said, too quickly. "Probably nothing."

"Mira."

"There's something odd here." She frowned, pressing lightly again, like she was trying to feel through fabric to something underneath. "It's faint. Like warmth trapped under glass. I've never felt anything quite like it."

"Odd how?"

"I don't know how to explain it properly." She looked up at me, healer's calm slipping into something more uncertain. "It's like there's a whole layer of you I can sense but can't actually reach. Sealed away somehow."

"That doesn't make sense," I said, though a small, cold feeling had already started uncoiling low in my stomach.

"No," she agreed. "It doesn't. Has anything like this ever happened before? Any strange dreams, unexplained marks, anything at all?"

"No," I said, too fast.

Mira's eyes narrowed slightly, the way they always had whenever I lied badly as a girl. "Lyra."

"It's nothing worth talking about." I looked away from her toward the drying herbs overhead, throat suddenly tight. "I'd rather just move past everything that happened before I got here, if it's all the same to you."

"It's not all the same to me," she said gently. "You disappeared for three weeks, showed up on the arm of the most feared King in the werewolf world, and now I'm finding something under your skin I can't explain. That's not nothing, Lyra, whether you want to talk about it or not."

"Please." My voice came out smaller than I intended. "I just want one conversation that isn't about what Kael did, or what happened after, or any of it. Can we just — can this just be you and me for a moment, like it used to be?"

Something in Mira's expression softened, old friendship winning out, at least for now, over healer's instinct.

"Okay," she said quietly. "For now. But this conversation isn't over, understand? Whatever's happening to you, I intend to figure it out, with or without your help."

"Fair enough."

She turned back to her worktable to fetch a fresh cloth, murmuring something about checking for fever, and reached to loosen the collar of my borrowed dress to listen for my heartbeat properly.

The moment the fabric shifted aside, exposing the skin just below my collarbone, Mira went completely still.

"Lyra." Her voice had lost every trace of warmth, gone flat and careful in a way that frightened me more than any wolf's howl had. "How long have you had this mark?"

I looked down at the pale, crescent-shaped birthmark she was staring at, the one I'd had for as long as I could remember, small and unremarkable, hidden beneath clothes my entire life.

"Since I was born, I think," I said. "Why? What's wrong with it?"

Mira didn't answer right away. Her face had gone the color of old ash, her hand hovering just above the mark like she was afraid to touch it again.

"Mira, you're scaring me. What is it?"

"I need to get Elowen," she whispered, already backing away toward the door, eyes never leaving the crescent mark on my skin. "Right now. Don't move. Don't let anyone else see this mark until she gets here."

"Mira—"

But she was already gone, footsteps fading fast down the hallway, leaving me alone with nothing but drying herbs, cooling air, and a birthmark I'd carried my entire life suddenly feeling like the most dangerous thing about me.