Read Chapter 14: The Healer's Test

The healer’s chamber smelled of dried rosemary and something sharper—copper, old blood. Candles guttered along the walls, their flames bending toward the center of the room where a low stone table waited, stained dark at its edges. The healer, a woman named Elara with gray-streaked hair and eyes the color of river stones, gestured for Anya to sit.

“Remove your sleeve,” Elara said. It was not a request.

Anya hesitated. The black veins had crept past her wrist now, a web of midnight threading beneath her skin, pulsing faintly as if something alive swam through her blood. She had kept her arm turned from Kael since they left the historian’s study, but Elara had noticed. Of course she had.

“I need to see how far it has spread.” Elara’s voice softened, just slightly. “If the corruption reaches your heart, the ring will finish what the curse began.”

Kael stood by the door, arms crossed. His jaw was tight. “You said this test would reveal her mother’s death.”

“It will reveal many things.” Elara produced the bone needle from her sleeve—long, white, carved with symbols Anya did not recognize. In her other hand, the vial of dark liquid caught the candlelight. Thick as oil. “But first, we must ensure she survives long enough to learn them.”

Anya pulled back her sleeve. The black veins crawled from her fingers to her elbow, stark against her pale skin. She heard Kael exhale sharply.

Elara’s expression did not change. She set the vial on the table and took Anya’s wrist in her hand. Her touch was cool. “This will hurt.”

“It already hurts,” Anya said.

“Then you know what to expect.” Elara pressed the needle to the crook of Anya’s elbow—not piercing, not yet. She began to murmur, low and rhythmic, words that seemed to slide through the air like smoke. The symbols on the needle began to glow, a faint amber light that pulsed in time with the veins in Anya’s arm.

Kael stepped forward. “What are you chanting?”

“A focusing verse.” Elara did not look up. “The blood must be called before it can be tested. Unless you wish her to faint from the pain and learn nothing?”

Kael’s mouth tightened, but he stayed.

The needle broke skin. Anya gasped—not a sting, but a sudden pull, as though something beneath her flesh was being tugged toward the light. The black veins writhed. Heat raced up her arm, collided with the cold still lodged in her bones, and for a moment she thought her arm might split open.

Elara’s chanting deepened. The amber light strengthened. And then Anya felt it—a tearing, deep within her chest, as if the needle had reached not her blood but her memory itself. Images flashed behind her eyes. Her mother, laughing in a sunlit garden. A hand pressing a cool ring into her palm. A scream swallowed by stone walls.

“What do you see?” Elara demanded.

“My mother,” Anya whispered. “She’s running. Someone is chasing her.”

“Who?”

The image sharpened. A corridor. Torchlight. A figure in armor, face hidden by a helm. Her mother stumbled, fell, reached out—and the image shattered as pain lanced through Anya’s arm. The black veins flared, swallowing the amber glow for a moment before receding. Anya cried out.

“She’s losing too much blood,” Kael said, his voice sharp as a blade. “Stop this.”

Elara’s gaze flicked to him, then back to Anya. “Not yet. The corruption is fighting the test. I need more.”

She pressed the needle deeper. Fingers on Anya’s wrist, drawing the blood upward. The vial sat untouched on the table, but Elara’s free hand opened it now, and the smell of iron filled the room.

“Wait,” Anya gasped. “What is that?”

“The truth,” Elara said, and upended the vial over the needle’s point.

The liquid hit the wound and Anya screamed. It felt like fire and ice at once, a blade searing through her veins, carving paths through the black tendrils that had taken root. The candles guttered. The room seemed to tilt. But beneath the pain, something else surfaced—a voice, her mother’s voice, clear and desperate.

“Do not let them take the other one. Hide it where the dark cannot reach.”

The other ring. Anya clawed for the words, but they dissolved as the fire spread. She felt herself falling forward, but Kael was there, catching her shoulders, his voice rough.

“Enough. She’s bleeding too much. You said this would test her, not drain her.”

“The corruption must be exposed.” Elara’s voice had changed—harder, colder. “A few more drops.”

“If it’s already in her blood, the needle is just carving a path for it to reach her heart faster.” Kael’s hand closed around Elara’s wrist. “You’re feeding it.”

Elara’s eyes flashed. “You are not a healer. You do not understand the rite.”

“No,” Kael said slowly, his grip tightening. “But I know blood magic when I see it. The symbols on that needle—they aren’t for drawing memories out. They’re for binding something in.”

Anya’s vision blurred. She looked down at her arm. The black veins had receded slightly from her elbow, but they pulsed harder now, faster, as if they were drinking the light the needle had drawn. And beneath the wound, where the vial’s contents had mixed with her blood—there was a new mark. Small. Dark. A sigil she recognized.

The split crescent. Her mother’s mark.

The healer was not trying to uncover the truth. She was trying to complete the curse.

“Get her off me,” Anya managed.

Kael moved. He yanked the needle free and shoved Elara back. The bone needle clattered to the stone floor, still glowing faintly. Elara recovered quickly, snatching the vial from the table, her face twisting from composure to something rawer.

“You have no idea what you’ve done,” she hissed. “The corruption would have killed her by midnight anyway. I was giving her a chance.”

“With a binding sigil?” Kael drew his blade, not pointing it at her, but holding it ready. “That’s not a cure. That’s a leash.”

Elara’s gaze flicked between them. Then she smiled—thin, cold, utterly without warmth. She backed toward the door. “The commander serves the King, but not the truth. Remember that when you go looking for your answers.”

She was through the door before Kael could reach her. The sound of her footsteps faded into the corridor, swallowed by stone.

Anya sagged against the table. Her arm throbbed. The black veins had stopped spreading, at least, but they had not retreated. And the mark of the split crescent burned where it had carved itself beneath her skin.

Kael crouched beside her, his hand steady on her shoulder. “Can you stand?”

“I don’t know.” She looked at him, and for the first time, she saw something new in his eyes—fear. Not for his own skin, but for hers. “Kael. She wasn’t trying to learn what happened to my mother.”

“I know.” His voice was low. “She was trying to make sure the curse took you before you could.”

The candles guttered again, and outside the window, the last rays of the sun were dying. Midnight was still hours away, but suddenly it felt far closer.

Anya forced herself upright, gripping the table’s edge. The ring on her finger pulsed against her skin, warmer now, as if it had noticed the mark the healer had left behind. “We have to find her.”

“She’s gone. Palace is already locked down because of Voss.”

“Then we go to the one person Voss can’t get to without explaining himself.” Anya’s jaw tightened. “The King. My father. If the healer was sent by someone in the palace to keep me weak, then the truth is closer to the throne than we thought.”

Kael looked at her, then at the blackening veins on her arm. “We don’t have much time.”

“Then we don’t waste it.” She started toward the door, and paused. “Kael. Thank you.”

He rose, falling into step beside her. “Don’t thank me yet.”