Page 67 of Healer to the Ash King
I clench my teeth.The next time you need my help, just wait…
The Ash King grabs Beaori by the chin, tilting her face up to his. “Anything else you’d like to complain about?” Heat shimmers along the lines of his body, and a sudden tension simmers in the air. Khloe grips Teagan’s arm.
Beaori murmurs something I can’t hear, but it must be sufficiently apologetic, because the King lets her go and commands, “Train for another hour, and then Teagan will lunch with me. Everyone else, meet us in the upper gallery of the West Wing after the meal. Oh, and someone free the Healer so she can mend herself.”
He stalks away, toward the palace, not toward the training square.
Sabre unties the ropes holding me, while Khloe and Teagan tug the arrows from my flesh. As each arrow leaves my body, I let healing magic flow through the wound. It will take a little time to mend everything.
I stumble along the archery lane and pick up my clothes. As I’m walking away, through the garden, I hear Teagan say, “This is a good reminder for all of us about who we’re dealing with.”
“Careful how you speak of His Majesty,” Axley interjects. “You’re perilously close to treason.”
“It’s not treason, it’s reality,” Khloe snaps. “He let all of us dothatto her. And he didn’t flinch once.”
“True,” says Axley. “Maybe she overstepped, and he finally realized she needed to be put in her place. She walks around like she’s high-born, when she’s nothing but a grimy village whore.”
I round the corner of the hedge and limp along the path, not caring to listen anymore. What they think of me doesn’t matter. Shouldn’t matter.
I pass the flowerbed where I once stood with my feet in the earth, where the Ash King called me “vagabond.” The medical examination room is close by, so I slip inside, toss my clothes on the floor, and hoist myself onto the edge of a cot. I don’t want to lie down—that feels too vulnerable a position for this East Wing full of poisonous noblewomen and their servants. But I can’t stand either, so I sit, and let the pain surface in my thigh wound. There’s something clarifying about the agony—it helps me perceive the wound more fully and seal the area faster. I don’t worry about conserving energy—I use as much as I want, intent on speeding up the healing.
The windows in the room are closed, shuttered, and draped, so my healing glow is the only light in the darkness. Lines of gold sew the lacerated tissues of my hand, my calf, my stomach, my shoulder, my thigh.
The door swings open slightly, admitting pale light and a dark figure.
“Cailin.” The Ash King steps into the room and closes the door behind him. He’s wearing a tunic now.
I turn my face away, inhaling a broken breath that sounds far too much like a sob.
“I didn’t think they would take it that far,” he says.
“You gave them a chance to hurt the woman they’ve mocked and despised for days.” My voice breaks. “Of course they took it too far.”
“I had a reason for doing this. A few reasons, in fact. You can hate me for it, but you need to hear why I did it.”
I take another hitching breath. I don’t dare speak again or I will sob outright. Pinching my lips together, I coalesce my energy, finishing the healing process for my leg wounds.
“The servants have told me the antagonism between the contestants is growing stronger,” says the Ash King. “The stakes of this contest are high, and the families of these women are willing to do anything it takes to place their daughters on the throne. There have been murders and suicides during the Calling of the Favored in the past, and we nearly had a murder in the combat ring today. I needed the girls to shift their animosity from each other to a new target, a common enemy.”
“Me.” I shake my head, running my fingers over the newly flawless skin of my thigh. “Heartsfire, this job just keeps getting worse.”
“Does it really?” He moves closer, stepping between my knees, pushing them farther apart. “I thought perhaps you enjoyed one of the recent perks of the role.”
“Not at all,” I shake my head vigorously.
“No?” He leans in, fingertips trailing along my jawline. “So that scream last night—that was—”
“Horror,” I say. “Pure horror and self-loathing.”
“Ah.” His voice deepens, quiet and molten as the silent flow of lava down a mountainside. “And the quiver of your body, the way you tightened around me when I was inside you—that wasn’t the best pleasure of your life?”
He’s all around me, over me, cradling me with his presence, filling my lungs with his scent—spicy smoke and charcoal, heat and sweat and darkness. His body calls to mine, pulls me inexorably closer.
But his servants tied me to a target. His women shot me full of holes. And now he’s fishing for compliments about the pleasure he gave me?
“You think very highly of yourself, Majesty,” I manage.
“I truly don’t,” he says, and I look up in time to see the agony of truth in his eyes. A mere flicker, and then gone.
