You didn’t come here for romance, I remind myself firmly.You’re here to do a job.
Everything else is just noise.
The one rumination I allow myself is about Mother. It’s been nearly two weeks since I left the Ironwoods, and she still hasn’t come for me or sent word. I check the ravenry daily for news,but there’s nothing. I wonder if she’s made it home and found my note yet. Perhaps she’s still trying to sort out the plague. Apprehension gnaws, but I temper it by leaning in to my work. I’m determined to complete the queen’s mandate as quickly as possible.
With a clean storehouse, focusing on the cure becomes easier as I progress through transcribing Ragglestaff’s chicken scratches. Like compiling a puzzle, I see his vision more clearly with each small piece I assemble. Slowly, it starts clicking together.
He called his cure the omnidraught. I assume that the name was chosen to reference the plague’s varied symptoms. In one book, I find page after page with observations on subjects in quarantine. Their symptoms ranged wildly, with no discernible pattern in age or gender. It seems that unlike me, he was afforded direct access to patients, and I wonder, with an ache in my chest, if that was the reason he died.
Gradually, I uncover his theory. I’m elated when I realize that what he was trying to create is not all that fundamentally different from all’s-cure—themostcommon potion in my arsenal. The ingredients areslightlydifferent, but the building blocks are the same. All easy in theory. I can’t wait to share the good news with the queen.
I’m in high spirits when I finish my work and head to meet Daisy for a late lunch. We’ve fallen into a pattern of sharing our meals, and I look forward to our conversations, which often contain colorful reports of the court gossip. Usually, the hospital is clear at this time of day. But I notice an atypical commotion as I pass through the staging area. Nurses and Healers are clustered around the front doors, where several soldiers are being dragged in on stretchers. I spot uniformed VIA, and other soldiers in black uniforms I’ve never seen…
And then a voice sounds that I’d recognize anywhere.
“Where is she?”it booms.
I spin around just in time to see him hurtling toward me.
Finn.
Gods help me, my knees almost buckle at the sight of him.
He’s sunburned and travel-worn and smells like a horse, but otherwise Finn is unchanged: tall, impossibly handsome, andreal.He wears a black uniform. All my careful determination to cut him out of my heart thaws in an instant. “Look at you!” Finn closes the distance and sweeps me into a crushing embrace that has every head in the hospital snapping our way.
“You’re—going—to—break—my—ribs,”I wheeze, and he chuckles as he lowers me.
Whispers skitter around us, and I’m half aware of how improper we look. But it’s hard to care when he’s finallyhere, in front of me. After the last several weeks, he feels like the first solid thing I can hold on to.
“I’m so sorry I wasn’t here to meet you,” he says, his hands slipping into mine. “Roburn said you got here all right.…Have you been settling in? I heard they put you up in the East Tower?”
I feel every eye in the room on us as he gazes down at me, beaming. “Yes. The room is great.”
The room is great? Really?
“And Cyg’s got you at it already?”
“Naturally.”
The cool voice sounds from behind him. Finn rounds to reveal Cygnus stalking toward us, looking predictably unamused.
“I hear you get the credit for finding her,” the Head Healer drawls. “I have to commend you; it’s hard to believe someone so beautiful could be a capable apothecary.” The words arealmosta compliment. But I glare back, hearing the insinuation.
Finn, however, seems unbothered. “She’s really something, isn’t she?” He beams, tossing an arm around the Head Healer. “Lyria, Cygy and I gowayback. Trust me, you are in capable hands.”
I have feelings about the nickname Cygy, but I hope they don’t show on my face. “Is that right?”
“You won’t find a better Healer in the Midlands,” Finn boasts. “He’s a genius—won every prize under the sun for it when we were in Belshire.”
Cygnus’s smile is tight. “It’s my pleasure to serve.”
He’s a decent liar. Finn might think him indulgent and long-suffering, but my Talent tells a different story. I perceive the slight change in his scent, the subtle flex of his muscles—telltale signals of stress. Cygnus doesnotlike Finn.
And I’m already certain he loathes me.
Still maintaining that placid mask, the Head Healer slides out of Finn’s grip. “If you’ll excuse me, I have surgery scheduled for this afternoon.” He straightens his coat. “We’re taking Jeredsen’s leg.”
All the light leaves Finn’s face.
