Chapter 4: The Healer’s Secret

Zephyrine Vesper POV

The mud in the paddock had frozen against my bare ankles, but I couldn't feel it. My whole world had narrowed to lantern light and the shape pinned against the cart wheel. Kaelen. His head hung low, blood matting his hair, his shoulders working with each ragged breath. Thaddeus stood over him with an iron shackle in one fist.

I was already moving to tear across the yard when a hand clamped over my mouth and dragged me back into the dark under the stable overhang.

I spun, teeth bared, ready to fight whoever had grabbed me and stopped.

Corisande Dupond stood there, hazel eyes wide, one hand still pressed to my lips. She hooked her other arm around my waist and pulled me behind a stack of feed sacks, where the smell of alfalfa covered our scent.

"Have you lost your mind?" Cora whispered, dropping her hand once she was sure I wouldn't bolt. Her chest heaved, and the calm she usually carried into every sickroom was gone. "If Thaddeus sees you out here half-dressed, running at a human captive, your mother won't just lock you up. She'll kill him in front of you to make a point."

"Let go of me," I hissed, panic clawing up my throat. "They're going to kill him, look at him, they've already broken his ribs."

"And if you run out there, you sign both your death warrants." Her grip on my arm didn't loosen. "Keep your voice down. The guard changes in three minutes. Get inside before someone looks over here."

Every instinct told me to fight her off. Then the ache in my chest flared again worse this time, the bond punishing me for standing this close to him without being allowed near him. I gasped and my knees gave out.

Cora caught me and hauled me through the low side door into the infirmary.

The heavy door shut out the wind and the sight of the paddock both. Inside smelled of valerian, antiseptic, and old copper the kind of room where things got fixed quietly and questions didn't follow. She steered me to a cushioned bench in the back dispensary and sat me down.

"Breathe," she said, already reaching for a dark glass vial on the shelf. "Fight your own blood any harder and your heart will give out before the enforcers even lay a hand on you."

"I can't just sit here while they hurt him." I pressed both hands to my chest, the ache tasting like copper at the back of my throat. "My mother knows, Cora. She showed me his axe. She's doing this on purpose."

"I know exactly what your mother wants." Cora poured an amber liquid into a small chalice, her hands not quite steady. "Drink. It won't touch the bond-ache, but it'll keep you upright through tomorrow's council review."

I looked at the liquid wolfsbane and moonflower, unmistakable even by smell. "This isn't infirmary stock. This is restricted."

"Your mother locks a lot of things away. I've had twenty years to learn how to get around her locks." Cora pulled a stool close, and something heavier than concern settled into her face. "You think you're the first wolf in this pack she's tried to break? You think the old laws came from the moon goddess? Every rule here was built by Vivienne Vesper to keep anyone from ever questioning her."

I drank. It burned going down, and the pain in my chest dulled into something colder and more distant not gone, just quieter.

"Why are you helping me?" I asked, setting the chalice down. "If she finds out you're hiding me, giving me restricted herbs she'll ruin you."

"Because I watched her do this exact thing to your sister. Twenty years ago."

The room went silent. My blood stopped moving. I didn't have a sister. Every record I'd ever seen named me Vivienne's only child.

"What are you talking about?" I leaned forward. "I don't have a sister."

"You don't," Cora said quietly, looking at the barred door instead of at me. "Because the night she fell for a human hunter from the southern valleys, your mother put her in these cells, let the rejection sickness run its full course, and handed her to the elders as a traitor when it was done."

Something in my chest dropped away entirely. Every rule I'd grown up under, every cold hand on my shoulder, every warning about stepping out of line it all rearranged itself into something much uglier.

"She engineered it," I said slowly. "Kaelen. She didn't stumble onto us. She led us there."

"She leaves the door open for the people she wants to catch." Cora took my hands, which had gone cold. "She needed something to make the elders look weak and the bloodline look fragile enough that the pack would beg for a stronger hand by the time you ascended. Kaelen wasn't a stray human who wandered too close, Zephyrine. He was placed there. Probably the year you turned sixteen."

The room tilted. The man who'd held me by the creek, the one hour of my life that had felt like mine all of it reshaped itself into a piece on someone else's board. I felt tears rise and refused to let them fall.

Boots hit the hallway stone outside, fast and synchronised, and stopped right at the infirmary door.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

"Open the door, Healer Dupond." Thaddeus's voice came through the wood like a hammer. "Order of the Matriarch. There's a breach in the lower wards, and the hounds say the human had help from inside."

Cora went white. She looked from the door to me, then shoved me toward the supply closet in the corner.

"Get in," she whispered. "If she finds you here, we're both dead by morning."

I backed into the cramped dark and pulled the louvred door shut, leaving it open just enough to see through the slats. The oak door groaned on its hinges behind me and swung open.