Chapter 5

Wren's POV

That strange hum under my ribs wouldn't let go, even as I forced my body into a lopsided run toward the Court's healing house. My free hand kept drifting to my sternum, pressing there like I could rub the warmth out of my own skin.

I checked over my shoulder one last time, paranoid, but the stranger hadn't followed. Small mercy. I knew nearly every face that walked Court territory, and he wasn't one of them a ghost, unclaimed, unannounced. He looked about my age, and in a Court this obsessed with rank, a man built like that would've been the headline of every gala invitation for a decade. The fact that he was drifting near our borders instead meant something more complicated than luck.

Forget him. Forget the storm-colored eyes, forget the way his hands on mine had felt like something lit from the inside. Whatever this was, it would fade the second the rest of my life reasserted itself, which it always did.

The healing house sat at the edge of the estate grounds, three wings deep, built for a population that healed too fast for a normal hospital to keep up with. Wing Two handled my end of the district, and the second I limped through its doors, whatever hospitality the place pretended to offer evaporated on sight. Priscilla, working the front desk, glanced up from her screen and let her disgust show without bothering to hide it.

"We're full up today, Wren. Try again next week."

I wasn't in the mood for the usual routine.

"Is Odette in?"

"Do I look like her secretary?" Priscilla's voice sharpened into something with teeth. "I said we're full. Go home."

I breathed slowly, fighting the tunnel creeping in at the edges of my vision. My face throbbed in time with my pulse, my forearm burned like it had its own heartbeat, and the taste of blood sat thick on my tongue in a way that made the floor feel unsteady under me.

"You're not full, Priscilla." I nodded toward the waiting room behind her three chairs, one occupied. "I can count."

She stood, drawing herself up with an authority she hadn't earned.

"When I say we're full, we're full. We don't waste supplies on somebody who can't even Kindle."

"Somebody who can't Kindle," I repeated, a small, ugly spark of anger catching in my chest. "That's rich coming from you. You're not a healer, Priscilla. You're a desk with opinions. Go find Odette, or anyone back there who still remembers what this job is supposed to be."

That landed exactly where I meant it to. There's a specific kind of bitterness reserved in this Court for people born with the instinct to heal and none of the fire to back it Priscilla was one of them, stuck filing charts instead of holding them, watching people with a fraction of her patience get to do the work she wanted.

I didn't feel bad about it. She'd spent the better part of ten years sharpening herself on me. I'd stopped believing in taking the high road a long time before tonight.

"How dare you," she snapped, eyes bright with furious tears. "At least I have an Ember. I'm something. You're a charity case draining resources that belong to people who actually matter. Get out before I make you."

I didn't move.

"Get me a healer, or I go straight to the Court registrar and file for medical neglect."

The registrar's office was the one leash the Court kept on itself old custody law, the kind nobody remembered writing but everybody still had to obey, guaranteeing baseline care even to the lowest-ranked orphan on the books. It was the only reason the orphan house had ever fed me on schedule.

Priscilla's face went pale, but spite kept her upright.

"Go ahead. File it. They'd throw a party if you finally had the decency to stop showing up here."

Her cruelty didn't surprise me. We'd grown up two beds apart in the same orphan house until we were nine. She used to split her bread with me. Then the Court's hierarchy started pressing down on both of us, and she figured out fast that being kind to me cost more than she wanted to pay. She became the first one to turn hiding my shoes, cutting a chunk out of my hair while I slept anything to prove she wasn't one of the weak ones by association.

"If you won't call one back," I said, voice dropping low, "I'll go find one myself."

She stepped around the desk to block the hallway, sneering.

"Take one more step and see what happens. I'll say it was self-defense."

I managed to lift an eyebrow despite the ache it cost me. "You'll hurt me by trying to see a doctor? That'll read beautifully in the incident report."

"I'll say you attacked me first. That I had no choice."

She looked almost delighted at the idea of the lie.

"Try it," I said, baring my teeth despite everything. I didn't have an Ember, but I'd spent a lifetime learning exactly where to hit without one, and the thought of finally landing something on Priscilla's smug face was tempting enough to nearly outweigh my ribs.

"There will be none of that in my hallway."

The voice cracked through the room like a dropped tray. We both froze. Standing behind Priscilla was Odette Vane herself, silver hair scraped back so tight it looked like it hurt, eyes like two chips of flint despite her sixty-some years.

"Priscilla. Desk. Now. We'll discuss this properly later." Then her gaze slid to me, and the flint softened into something closer to tired affection. "And you. Can you truly not survive a single day without ending up on my doorstep looking like you lost a fight with a moving vehicle?"

Priscilla bristled. "She probably started it. She's always trying to"

"Finish that sentence and see what happens," Odette said, without raising her voice at all.

Priscilla's mouth snapped shut.

Odette took one slow step closer to her. "I gave you a position here because you begged for a place in the healing arts despite testing below threshold for it. I took a chance on your sincerity. What, precisely, gave you the impression you're qualified to decide who gets treated?"

Priscilla's face went a furious red. "She's not even Court-standing! She contributes nothing to"

"And what do you contribute," Odette cut in, ice in every word, "besides paperwork and an attitude problem?"

"II have an Ember! I can shift, I"

"You contribute filing and complaints. Turn away one more patient on your own authority and you'll be reassigned to the laundry house. Are we understood?"

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling outright.

Odette was the one fixed point in this whole building. Most of the staff handled me like something contagious; she'd always been brisk, fair, exact. She usually worked the trauma bay for the serious cases, but she'd carved out a soft spot for the ones nobody else wanted to touch or maybe she just despised watching her own profession get twisted into something ugly.

"Come on, then," Odette said, already turning down the hall. "I've got real work waiting and very little patience left for this."

I limped past the desk, and Priscilla's glare followed me the whole way, wet-eyed with humiliation. I let myself give her one small, satisfied look on the way by still here.

Odette didn't glance back. "Stop looking so pleased with yourself, child. You look absurd with a lip that size."

I wiped the look off my face and followed her into the exam room in silence. The skirmish at the desk was over. The larger fight hadn't even started yet.

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