Page 19 of The Crown of Moonlight
Chapter 10
Veiled Truth
Chyr
I
wake beneath rough-hewn rafters in a chamber thick with peat smoke and the scent of herbs.Disoriented, I need a moment to recall that I’m at the empty steward’s house at Dunhaelic.The same steward who, as Flora explained with her eyes turned mist-soft, died with his two sons and Flora’s father and older brother in the first battle of this cursed war.Them and too many others.
I’m a Rider, the Master of the Anvar’thaine.I’ve taken lives when I must.Most oathbreakers and criminals choose to fight the Hunt when we come for them, hoping for a clean death instead of facing an eternity of torture in the Pit.But even for me, this war—the cost of these battles and the lives snuffed out—is impossible to comprehend.We Siorai have little experience with the death of someone close.I still cannot fathom the loss of Tuirse and Oran.
Death is different on this side of the Veil.The dead lie on the battlefields by the hundreds, leaving broken families behind them and holes that will never fill.Wrongs that can’t be righted.
Pain scrapes like a knife through my chest as I try to sit up.My body trembles like a cub’s, sweat beading on my skin.
“Easy.”Flora bends over me, strands of her flame-bright hair escaping from a braid as thick as her wrist that falls across her shoulder.“You need to conserve your strength.You looked half-dead when I left.”
“I was half-convinced you weren’t coming back,” I say without thinking.
It’s no more than the truth, but admitting that aloud makes me sound like one of the useless boot-lickers at court.The other Riders would pound me into pulp for letting myself sound so weak.
Flora pulls a chair close to the bed, alongside a table that she must have placed there while I slept.The table holds a mug, a lamp, a small but lethal-looking knife, and a variety of bandages, cloths, herbs, salves, needles, and threads—all scrubbed clean and laid out on a crisp white cloth.
With a hand beneath my bare shoulders, Flora steadies me.Her touch is cool against my fevered skin, and our eyes meet as I slowly swing my legs around to face her.
She ducks her head and gives me the steaming cup.“Drink this for me.It’s tea brewed with willow bark, yarrow, and meadowsweet.Nothing more, I promise, but it will bring down your fever and help with pain.”
My hands shake, and drops of pungent tea spill onto my breeches.Flora places her hands over mine, helping me raise the cup to my lips.
The tea is bitter and scalds my throat, but the warmth of her hands on mine makes me shiver.I’d already resolved myself to dying alone, and her kindness cuts that away, leaving me raw and exposed.
She pulls back quickly, and I drain the cup.Then she replaces that with a bottle of amber liquid.“Now this.Drink as much as you can manage.The cleaning and stitching I need to do to the wound will not be pleasant.”
It smells like spirits, so I push it aside and turn my head away.“I can’t drink that.”
“It’s only whisky.”
“Only, she says.Are you trying to finish me off?”I push the bottle back at her.
“You don’t drink?”
I shouldn’t be surprised that she doesn’t know.Siorai are careful not to share anything that can be used against us.
“Human spirits don’t agree with us,” I say, leaving out most of the truth.
She stares at me, and a blush seeps into her cheeks.“They don’t agree with you in the same way that your Ever wine makes us unable to control ourselves?”
I must be feverish, because seeing her blush like that makes me think of the way her body felt beneath mine, and the warmth and scent of her in my arms as she kept me from falling off the horse.
“If you’re asking if your spirits make us lose our inhibitions and long for sex, then no.That’s a human reaction to the magic contained in anything grown in Tirnaeve.Drinking your spirits merely makes us sick enough to wish that we were dead.But before you feel guilty for the whisky you poured down me earlier, I doubt the drink made much difference.I had all the same symptoms earlier.”
She turns and crosses the room, her back and shoulders betraying tension that accentuates the sway of her hips.I’d love to understand why she’s helping me.Apology or not, she can’t have forgiven the way I attacked her.Despite that, she brought me here, and I don’t know what to make of her kindness.
She ladles steaming water into a basin from the pot heating on the fire and carefully carries the basin back.Setting it down on the table beside her herbs and implements, she stands a moment, frowning at me.
“Where did you learn your healing skills?”I ask her.
Her lips tighten.“My grandmothers taught me.The art has been passed down in my family for generations.”
