Chapter 2

The carriage slammed into a boulder and burst apart. A nobleman, soaked in blood, tumbled from the wreck.

I went to him and checked. No heartbeat.

A pity. His belongings were excellent.

At his waist hung an engraved seal bearing a noble crest. It would fetch a price. The signet ring on his thumb was even better.

I worked it free, then searched his robes and found two coin pouches, a smaller pouch of gold staters, and a thick sheaf of merchant notes.

"I'll take these as payment for your funeral."

"My lady, I am not dead yet."

I nearly dropped the pouch.

I steadied myself and checked his pulse and body heat again.

Somehow, both had returned.

I pressed down on the wounds at his shoulder and below his ribs to slow the bleeding, then took out one of Thales's healing pellets.

"It is expensive. Consider yourself fortunate."

He swallowed it, though wariness flickered in his eyes. Below us, I heard voices—men already combing the forest.

No time.

I kicked the shattered frame of the carriage over the cliff to make it look like he had gone down with it, and hauled him over my shoulder.

"You—"

"Shut it," I said without looking back. "Say anything else and I'll leave you for the wolves."

At the ruined sanctuary, I kicked the door open and shouted for Thales.

He stumbled out from a back room stacked to the ceiling with wine jars, hair wild, and demanded to know why I wasn't treating the man myself.

"He's a man. The wound's in an awkward place."

That did it. Thales grabbed a pair of shears and took over, grumbling the whole time that a girl of virtue had no place handling a man's injuries.

That night, the stranger woke to find everything below the waist exposed to the open air. His face burned scarlet.

I came in with a bowl of barley porridge, straightened the blanket without a glance.

"Don't flatter yourself. There was nothing worth seeing."

He was so outraged he passed out again.

But I had noticed something.

Even while unconscious, his hand never loosened from the inside of his belt, pressed tight against one small hidden place.

Whatever he had concealed there mattered to him more than his own survival.