Chapter eleven

Orla moved me before dawn she woke me with a hand on my shoulder and a bundle of blankets under her arm, and we left the cottage by the back door while the stars were still out. Biscuit pulled the cart, grumbling. I lay in the straw with my duffel on my chest and watched Ashford slide by in the dark, a crooked line of low stone houses with smoke curling out of their chimneys, a bakery, a smithy, a church with a leaning bell tower. At the far end of the lane, under a pair of bare oaks, stood a long, shuttered building with a sagging porch.

"Old Pell's clinic," Orla said, hauling the doors open. "Nobody's set foot in it since the autumn. It's cold and it's drafty and the roof leaks over the east bed, but it has a proper stove and four cots and a cellar that doesn't smell like turnips."

Inside, the air was cold and stale. Dust lay over everything. But beneath the dust, I saw a long steel counter, a glass-fronted medicine cabinet, a sink with real taps, a row of shelves lined with empty jars. The bones of something good.

"Blackthorn won't search a clinic," Orla said. "Nobody wants to be near the sick. They'll knock on every cottage door before they open this one." She set the blankets down. "And if they do, you're Ada Marsh, my new apprentice, and you've never heard of Moonlight."

"Orla." My voice wobbled. "You don't owe me this."

"No," she agreed. "I owe myself a quieter old age. But the nearest healer who isn't me is two days away, and I'm tired of watching people die of fevers I can break." She prodded a floorboard with her toe. "Sweep first then argue later."

I swept. For two hours, I swept and scrubbed and carried water, with Orla grumbling in the corner about modern girls and their delicate constitutions by midmorning, the windows were clean and the stove was lit, and the room smelled of woodsmoke and soap instead of dust. I was dripping with sweat, my back ached, and I could not remember the last time I had felt so wonderfully tired. *We are working,* my wolf said, surprised. *For ourselves.*

"For ourselves," I whispered.

The door banged open. Tam stood on the porch with snow in his hair and a bundle in his arms, and the bundle was a child. A little girl of four or five, flushed scarlet, her head lolling against his shoulder. Behind him, a thin woman in a patched shawl ran up the path, crying. "Please, she won't wake, she's burning, I don't know what to do"

"Orla, they said you had a new healer," Tam panted. "I thought, well, it can't hurt."

"Put her down," I said. "There on the cot by the stove."

I didn't think my hands moved. Fingers to the wrist, then the neck, then the small hot forehead. Pulse racing dry skin with shallow and quick breath I peeled back an eyelid, checked the throat, pressed gently behind the ears.

"How long has she been like this?"

"Since last night. She was fine at supper, and then she was crying, and then she was just..." The mother's voice broke.

"Has she been drinking?"

"A little She keeps spitting it up."

"Has she eaten anything unusual? Any bites, any scratches?" The mother shook her head. I looked over her shoulder at Orla, who stood with her arms folded, her face empty , watching me work. "It's a throat infection. She's severely dehydrated, and the fever's gotten out of hand Orla, I need willow bark, a cold compress, and honey and salt in warm water."

"Yes, Healer," Orla said, I took the girl's small hand in mine. For three years, I had treated Moonlight's warriors, but I had never held a child's hand like this. My wolf pressed forward, warm and still, lending me her calm.

"Look at me, sweetheart," I murmured. "What's your name?"

Her eyelids fluttered. "Wren."

"That's a lovely name. I'm Ada. I'm going to help you feel better sweetie, can you do something for me? Can you take small sips?"

She whimpered, then opened her mouth for the spoon It took an hour of small sips cool cloths and a spoonful of willow tea when she could keep it down. Her skin slowly cooled under my fingers, and the frantic racing of her pulse eased to a steady beat. By noon, she was asleep, breathing deep and easy, and her mother had cried herself into silence beside the cot.

"She'll be all right," I told her. "She'll sleep today but keep her warm and bring her back tomorrow, and I'll check her throat."

The woman seized my hand in both of hers. "I can't pay I've got nothing"

"You don't need to."

"But.”

"Eat something," I said gently. "That's the payment, you look as if you haven't in days.” She stared at me. Then she bowed her head, and her tears fell onto my hand, and I felt an unfamiliar feeling inside my chest for three years, I had been useful Today, for the first time, I felt needed by someone who didn't take it for granted. Behind me, Orla cleared her throat. "Well," she said, rather gruffly. "That's one. By tomorrow, you'll have forty."

---

In the cellars beneath the Moonlight estate, Corwin the wine steward ran a thumb along a row of dusty bottles. He was a narrow, gray man with careful hands and a face that people forgot while looking at it. He had worked in these cellars for twenty years, and in all that time, no one had ever asked him a question he could not answer with a bow. "The Alpha's evening bottle, Corwin."

He turned. Lyra stood at the foot of the cellar steps, her white fur collar gleaming in the lamplight. "My lady." He bowed. "Already decanted."

"The usual measure?"

"As always, my lady."

"Increase it." She said it lightly, the way she might ask for a second cup of tea. "He's been stirring. Last night he woke at three and said her name." Corwin's thumb stopped on the bottle. "A stronger dose carries risks, my lady. If the Alpha were ever to be examined by a healer"

"The only healer who might have noticed anything is in the wind." Lyra smiled. It didn't reach her eyes. "And by the time anyone thinks to look, it will be much too late. Do as I say, Corwin."

"Yes, my lady."

She turned and climbed the steps. At the top, she paused with her hand on the rail. "And Corwin. Thursday's transfer. Don't miss it."

"Never, my lady." The cellar door closed. Corwin stood alone among the bottles for a moment, listening to her heels fade. Then, carefully, he took down a small brown vial from behind the vintage reds and began to count drops into a crystal decanter, as he had done nearly every night for three years. Eleven was the usual measure. Tonight, he made it fourteen.

---

The parcel arrived on the fourth day. It came in a plain cardboard box tied with twine, left at the clinic door before sunrise with no name and no return mark. Inside, packed in clean white cloth, I found antiseptic, bandages, suture kits, a stethoscope, three sealed boxes of antibiotics, and a bundle of prenatal vitamins that I knew, down to the label, came from the Moonlight hospital's private shelf. Tucked into the lid was a folded slip of paper. I recognized the handwriting at once. Narrow, upright, and a little shaky. *Child, Everyone is searching. The Alpha knows nothing. Garrett is looking in all the wrong places, the moon bless him. Your books and papers are safe with me. Do not come home. Do not write. Be well, and eat properly. Helen.*

I read it three times. *Your books and papers.* The journals. I had left all three years of them with her on my last night, because I couldn't bear to burn them and couldn't bear to carry them. Helen had kept every page. Then I pressed it to my chest and sat down on the clinic steps in the cold, and I cried as if my heart would break and mend at the same time. *Safe,* my wolf whispered. *We are safe.* I wiped my face and looked out across the snow-covered lane. Smoke rose from a dozen chimneys. Down at the smithy, someone was hammering. A small figure in a patched shawl waved at me from the road, and behind her, an old man leaned on a stick, waiting his turn.

I looked at the sign over the door. Someone had scratched a name into the weathered wood, so long ago the letters had almost faded. *Pell's Clinic.* I would need to change that. I stood up, brushed the snow from my knees, and went inside to open the door.