Page 147

Understanding rises between us.

Not certainty.

Enough.

“Balance,” she says aloud. “Support what the numiscu suppresses. Do not force what it has locked.”

I cannot tell whether that conclusion matches the record exactly. It matches the Arbiter’s principle and the fragment of knowledge I possess.

I blink once.

Fiona turns toward her healer’s case. “A cold fylvek preparation to sustain the lungs and muscles while the poison weakens. No steam. No heated tincture.”

Her voice has recovered its professional steadiness. Fear remains beneath it, but it no longer commands her hands.

She gathers clean cloths and an empty covered bowl. Her movements become swift. She will need the solarium. Fresh roots grow there, along with rirzed she raised herself and water stored away from the kitchen hearths.

She must leave this room.

The thought awakens a new resistance in me.

Varrus is beyond the inner gates, not gone. The King’s Guard surrounds the keep. Poison has entered my blood through a plan I recognized too late. If Fiona leaves my sight, I will have no voice, no blade, and no magic strong enough to summon anyone.

Control has shaped my survival since the curse first marked me. I survived pain by mastering it. I survived court by revealing nothing. I preserved Morwen’thir by keeping every danger within reach of my judgment.

Now survival requires the opposite.

Fiona must walk away.

She must choose the remedy without my oversight. She must command servants I cannot hear and handle plants I cannot examine. She must return before my breathing fails.

I have no means to compel her, correct her, or protect her.

Trust is no longer an emotion I may acknowledge in private while preserving command.

It is the only action left to me.

Fiona looks toward the door, then back at my body. “Briar should be outside. I will have her bring fresh herbs to the solarium.”

I want Fiona here.

The impulse is immediate and useless. Fiona alone can prepare what I need, and Briar can carry fresh herbs to her.

I force my attention back toward the bond for one final impression.

Not a flower. Not a law. Not an instruction.

I show her the solarium as it appears in morning light. Living green beneath glass once darkened by neglect. Her hands pressing roots into renewed soil. A place she claimed for healing when Morwen’thir offered her only isolation.

Then I place my life within that image.

No demand.

Trust.

The impression crosses between us so faintly that I cannot know how much survives.

Fiona’s eyes brighten with sudden feeling. She sets the bowl down long enough to take my immobile hand between both of hers.