Page 30 of The Blade in the Ashes
Eventually, she would learn not to give that away so easily.
I certainly had done nothing to earn her trust.
“I’ll make something for it.”
The girl nodded diligently, not seeming to recognize the dismissal in my voice as I turned away.
“You can go now,” I said over my shoulder, not bothering to hide the bite in my voice. “It’ll be ready in an hour.”
The girl said a word of thanks and turned on her heels, skipping away down the hall. Sheskipped.
That innocence would leave the girl soon enough, too.
Gods know I lost mine ages ago.
“Does that happen often?” Kent asked from the table, still rubbing at his pectoral muscles.
I hummed a vague affirmation and returned to my table. The stone mortar and pestle were warm to the touch from how hard I’d been gripping them, and I kept my eyes downward as I continued grinding the herbs and forming them into a forest green paste.
Kent stared at me, both of us now uncomfortable with that simple interaction. We had been working so hard to ignore each other before that girl stopped by.
“Why don’t they just see a healer?” He asked.
I heard the question hidden under his words: Why do they come toyou?
I scooped the paste into a small glass vial and held it out towards him. “Witchcraft isn’t too different from healing.”
Not to mention, we didn’t have enough healers.
Only a few with the power to heal wounds had fled the castle.
So, Elaina and I were determined to do what we could to help with the skill sets we had.
He stared at the glass in my hands, suspicion clear in his narrowed eyes. I tried to ignore the way my skin heated at his expression. He wasn’t the only person to look at me like that—to stare at me as if I were a monster. I certainly had done enough to deserve that kind of distrust. Still, it hurt to see it in the eyes of my friend.
Or at least in someone who had once been my friend.
Kent clearly wasn’t someone I could consider to be my friend now.
“You used your magic on it?”
I almost laughed.
I hadn’t dared to touch my magic since the second I was freed of Pasnia’s influence.
When I first broke away from black magic, the pull had been indescribable. Isufferedwithout the shadows. My body had ached, my head throbbed, even my thoughts had been slow and confused. I supposed it got a little bit easier to manage as the days went on, but I doubted that deep hunger would ever leave me.
Since the battle at the palace, I’ve felt my magic tugging at me, stirring inside of my gut stronger than ever before. I could only assume that all the stress of the past few days was reigniting my need for the shadows.
So, no. I was not using my magic.
I’d rather die than fall victim to that kind of darkness before.
“Elaina taught me how to make natural remedies,” I explained, avoiding his weighty stare. “I can help with pain tonics, fertility suppressants, simple things like that.”
His attention snapped to his right as if he had heard something, but he gave a dismissive shake of his head and shifted his weight in his seat, still refusing to take the vial.
“I can even make creams to ease muscle pain.” I extended it to him one last time. “They’re pretty good for a soldier who recently suffered a severe injury and now has to build up muscle strength again.”
