Chapter 22 · What the Healer Drew

I knew what he'd done before I got my eyes open. Paper has a smell when it burns — sweet, and a little like scorched hair.

Grey curls in the grate. The poker back on its hook. Him in the chair with his boots on and his coat buttoned to the throat, like a man who'd sat up all night doing arithmetic and hated where it came out.

"Where's the healer's page."

"Ash."

"Say that again and you can go in the grate after it."

He didn't argue. That was the tell.

"Read it to me, then. You've got it by heart or you wouldn't look like that."

"It said the blood was loud." Flat, like a weather report. "It said girl. One vial to the fastness, one to the buyer. Blank line at the bottom."

"Blank."

"Where she was going to write my name." He turned his head and looked at me properly for the first time. "Hiding an Alpha's heir is a hanging in Iron-Crag. My law. I wrote half of it and I've read all of it."

"So you burned the only thing that could clear me."

"I burned the only thing that could hang you.