Chapter 5

He slid a remedy sheet under the screen and shut himself in with the patients.

The sanctuary keeper pressed his palms together and called it a healer's devotion. Everyone else was burning herbs and praying in the dark. Every night they knelt before the shrine to the Moon Goddess.

But I knew: everyone's chance of surviving was in my hands, in that remedy sheet.

I sorted the herbs, re-checked every measure twice, triple-checked the ones I wasn't sure about. Then I stopped at one ingredient.

"Keeper, where's the nearest open water from here?"

The remedy was sound. There was no question about Caius's work. The single problem: one ingredient was almost impossible to find in this region. Caius had once told me that pearl mussel extract — one liang boiled — could substitute in emergencies.

I stood at the edge of the water and looked out at the surface. It was just past the thaw. Harder than diving for Cain had ever been.

Caius. I found a way to repay you that isn't being a test subject.

By the fifth day of the plague, the sanctuary had carried out more than ten bodies. I finished the medicine batches and got them into everyone who was still conscious. The deaths kept coming.

On the fifteenth day, the first patient's fever broke.

I collapsed in front of everyone who was shouting my name.

When I next saw Caius, he was completely fine. I was the patient again.

"Elara. You are the dumbest person I've ever trained."

"You knew you still had unhealed burns. Diving in open water wasn't surviving — it was choosing to die slower."

I pulled my mouth into something like a smile. "You were there."

"I wasn't going to let your mentor's reputation get ruined. Right?"

He turned away, lifted one hand, turned back with his usual hard expression — but his eyes were red at the corners. "Drink your medicine. Don't wait for me to feed you."

"You're worth a fortune to me now. I need you to survive."

I didn't understand what he meant until a woman in expensive clothes walked into the room and held me while she wept — first quietly, then completely falling apart.

"Nora said she saw a girl who looked exactly like me when I was young. I didn't believe her. My poor child. I'm your mother."

"When you were born, I was in that very sanctuary — early labor, on the way to the Capital. Another pregnant woman was staying there. She said she was a pearl diver from Stillwater Territory, running from a husband who beat her for having girls. I let her share my room. After I delivered, she was gone. Now I understand — she took my baby and left hers behind."

"When the keeper told me the plague survivors owed their lives to a pearl diver, I had someone look into your birth date and birthplace. It matched everything."

Something hit me like a wave. My ears rang.

Do good. Don't ask why.

Caius had been right.

In three months I had lived more than most people do in years. By the time I ran into Cain Sterling again, I felt nothing.

I was in the Capital Territory with my mother by then. To thank Caius, I'd helped him set up a clinic on Ashford Street, prime location in the city. When I wasn't busy, I assisted him.

One afternoon, Cain Sterling limped in.

"Elara. I've been looking everywhere for you."

Same face. Same habit of pretending he felt things he didn't. I thought of the fire. "Are you checking whether I survived?"

"What? I've been searching for you. I couldn't acknowledge you that day because Clarissa would have come after you — she's vicious and she doesn't hold back. I told her it was Pack business or she would've hurt you right there. As for Clarissa — things have changed. Come home. Let me mate with you properly. Like it should've been."

"You were the only she-wolf who ever cared about me like that. I've known that since the day you dove for me."

I looked away. "I'm supposed to thank you for that? The problem between us was never Clarissa. It was that you lie and you only think about yourself — you wanted Sterling Pack's political future and a she-wolf who asked nothing of you. That's disgusting."

"That's not it. Elara, I was real with you. You can't just throw out what we had."

"We had no Mate Bond. No formal ceremony. Nothing that counted."

When I thought about it clearly, I'd spent years convincing myself something was real that never existed.

I didn't want to keep talking. I walked into the back room.

Caius glanced up from his remedy notes with the expression he usually saved for my worst mistakes. "Don't come in tomorrow."

"What? Did I mess up another formula?"

I checked everything on his desk. Twice. Nothing wrong. He just muttered, "Hopeless."

After that I stopped going to the clinic. Caius told me Cain was showing up there every day, barely paying attention to his own treatment.

"Apparently he's traveled to every settlement near Stillwater Territory looking for you. Overdid it. The old injury came back."

"He's probably faking again," I said.

"Would you feel bad if he wasn't?"

I glanced at Caius. He was very interested in his tea.

"You keep moving forward," I said, and poured him a fresh cup.

The wisteria outside the window moved in the breeze. It was late spring already.

My mother pushed hard for me to move into Davenport Pack officially. I told her I wasn't built for it — too many years living on my own terms. She cried anyway: "At least let me enter your name in the Pack records. You don't have to stay. Go wherever you want. But have something behind you."

I said yes.