The Healer They Deposed Holds Blackpine's Last Breath

"Stand up," I ordered, keeping the tip of my hunting knife angled at his throat.

The man didn't rise. He kept his knee planted in the frozen mud, his head bowed. The wind whipped his dark cloak around his broad shoulders, but he remained perfectly still. Slowly, he tilted his chin up, allowing the moonlight to cut across his features.

A silver crest gleamed on his dark leather collar. Two crossed staves over a blooming wolfsbane flower.

The Northern Royal Court.

"My name is Magister Oren," he said. His voice was rough, scraped raw by the biting cold. "I have tracked the Hartley lineage across the ice for three years."

I lowered my blade a fraction of an inch, my eyes scanning the dark tree line behind him. "The Royal Court has its own healers. You don't need a pack nursemaid."

"We have field medics," Oren corrected, his gaze dropping to the heavy leather box at my side. "We do not have a Chief Healer. The seat has remained empty since the capital's plague three winters ago. We require a Hartley."

Three years.

The timeline slammed into my chest, knocking the air from my lungs.

Three years ago, a rival spear tore through Cregan's left ribcage, missing his heart by a millimeter. I spent forty-eight hours pressed against his blood-soaked skin, using my own body heat and the last reserves of my energy to seal his shredded arteries.

That same night, an unmarked raven dropped a wax-sealed letter on the infirmary windowsill.

I never opened it. I slid it into the false bottom of my medicine box, choosing my mate's survival over my own ambition. I chose the Blackpine pack.

I stared at the Magister kneeling in the dirt.

"You came all this way for a rumor?" I asked, my grip tightening on the handle of my box.

"I came for the woman who eradicated swamp fever in the lower valleys," Oren said. He finally stood, brushing a layer of frost from his armored knee. He towered over me, yet his posture remained entirely deferential. "The High King commands the medical tents. We oversee the war casualties for the entire North. The border raids are escalating, and our men are dying from infections we cannot control. We need the Hartley bloodline."

"I am not a miracle worker," I told him, keeping my tone flat. "I use herbs. I use clean water. I use time."

"You use methods the rest of the North forgot centuries ago," Oren countered. He stepped closer, his eyes intense. "I visited the eastern packs. I saw men missing limbs who survived because a wandering healer taught them how to cauterize with yarrow smoke. They described a woman with silver eyes and a leather box."

I shifted my weight, my boots crunching on the frost. "That was a long time ago."

"The Royal Court does not care about time. We care about results." Oren gestured toward his massive black stallion, which stood stamping its hooves in the snow. "We ride for the royal encampment. It is a four-day journey. The King expects my return by the new moon."

I didn't move immediately. I looked down at the leather strap digging into my calloused palm.

"I bring my journal," I said, my voice cutting cleanly through the wind. "And my tools. Nothing else."

"That is all the capital requires." Oren nodded once, a sharp, military gesture. "But I must ask. The journal... does it contain the cure for the blood-rot?"

"It contains the methods to prevent it," I corrected him. "There is no cure once the rot reaches the heart. You have to stop it at the flesh."

"The Silverclaws believe amputation is the only prevention."

"The Silverclaws are butchers," I said coldly.

Oren's lips twitched into a faint, grim smile. "Then you will fit in perfectly at the capital."

Inside this box was the yellowed journal containing twenty generations of my family's healing rites. Also inside was the ghost of my son's childhood.

Nine nights.

Seven-year-old Rourke had thrashed on a sweat-soaked cot, his skin radiating unnatural heat. I didn't sleep. I didn't eat. I packed his tiny, fragile body in ice and forced bitterroot tea past his cracked lips. When the herbs failed, I pushed my own energy into his chest to drag him back from the edge of death. It took me a month to regain the strength to walk without my knees buckling.

Tonight, that same boy stood in the council hall, a full head taller than me, and sneered.

All you do is boil herbs and wrap bandages.

He pinned my Luna badge to Sable's silver armor with his own hands. He chose a sword over the hands that kept his heart beating.

My jaw clenched. The muscles in my neck pulled tight, aching with the effort of holding back a scream.

I adjusted the heavy strap over my shoulder and walked past Oren toward the waiting horse.

"We ride now," I told him.

I didn't turn around. I didn't cast a single glance back at the dark tree line hiding the Blackpine territory. My fingers curled around the edge of my leather box, feeling the hard outline of the journal pressing against the material.

Let Sable heal them with her silver armor. Let Cregan fight the winter raids without his nursemaid.

Oren fell into step beside me. He grabbed the stallion's reins, steadying the massive beast as I approached.

"The war tents span three miles," Oren said, his boots thudding heavily on the frozen earth. "Thousands of warriors. The Silverclaw alliance brought fifty fighters to the front lines last week, but the casualties are mounting faster than we can stitch them."

"Silverclaws," I repeated.

Sable's pack. The warriors Cregan traded me for.

"They rely on brute force," Oren muttered, shaking his head in disgust. "They leave their wounded to rot in the mud. The Royal Court refuses to let Northern blood spill so carelessly. That is why the King sent me to find you."

I stroked the stallion's thick neck. The animal huffed a cloud of white steam into the dark air, leaning into my touch.

Validation tasted strange, sharp and metallic on my tongue. For two decades, I was the background noise of the Blackpine pack. The woman who boiled weeds. The convenient safety net they never had to acknowledge. Now, the highest medical authority in the North stood in the mud, treating me like a missing queen.

"I will manage the triage tents," I said, looking over the horse's saddle to meet Oren's eyes. "But I do not answer to pack Alphas anymore. I answer only to the medical council."

"You will lead the medical council," Oren corrected. He tied his heavy wool cloak tighter around his neck. "No Alpha will have the authority to question your methods. You have the King's seal."

He reached into the thick leather satchel strapped to the side of the saddle. His fingers dug through a stack of maps and supply lists, finally pulling free a tightly rolled parchment.

The edges of the paper were stained with dark, smeared fingerprints.

"I intercepted the border riders on my way to find you," Oren said. His tone dropped to a grim whisper, the military formality slipping away to reveal raw exhaustion.

He unrolled the dispatch and thrust it toward me.

The paper smelled of fresh iron and sweat. The ink was still wet, hastily scrawled across the page in jagged, panicked strokes that tore through the parchment in several places.

I recognized the handwriting instantly. It belonged to Elder Thorne. The same man who had cheered the loudest when my pin was stripped from my chest.

I stared at the frantic, messy letters.

"My lady," Oren said, tapping the blood-stained seal at the bottom of the page. "Blackpine has sent seven urgent medical requests in the last three days—they say the wounds won't stop bleeding."