LADY KENNETH’S POV
Lady Kenneth shut the door behind her and stood for a moment in the quiet of her guest room, hands still in her gloves as if she had forgotten to remove them. The walk back from the infirmary had not cleared her head. If anything, it made the images sharper.
Atasha had placed her palm on a dying miner’s chest, and the man’s body had answered. Burns paled. Split flesh closed. Bone seated itself with a sound that made the surrounding healers flinch.
The second man had been worse. She could still recall the man’s blackened skin across the ribs, breath tearing in and out—yet the same thing happened. She didn’t see any powders or drawn symbols. Just a hand and that unsettling, bright hum that pressed at the edge of hearing and faded when the wound was gone.
“That is impossible,” Lady Kenneth said, voice tight. She pulled off her gloves and set them on the table, then said it again because the first time had not helped. “That is impossible.”
Behind her, Kirsten hovered, careful eyes tracking her mistress’s movements. “My lady,” the Omega said softly, “There was no smell. No sulfur, no brine, nothing burned except the men when they arrived. And she took no sacrifice. Not a drop. I was looking at her the entire time. That is not something that even the goddess can explain.”
“Do not talk about the goddess that way.” Lady Kenneth snapped, more out of reflex than conviction. She paced three steps, turned, and paced back. “Witches bargain. They pay. They take. They do not give freely. There are no exceptions. And Lady Atasha is a witch! She must be.”
Kirsten said nothing. She had learned when silence was safer.
Lady Kenneth pressed her palm to the cool stone of the window ledge and forced herself to replay what she had seen, hoping repetition would reveal a trick she had missed.
Atasha had not muttered an old word under her breath. She had not cut herself. She had not asked for the room to be cleared. She had simply moved to the cot as if she belonged there and done it. The men had lived. That was the part she could not get past, how simple it had looked.
“I expected a frightened girl,” Lady Kenneth said, keeping her eyes on the snow–blind courtyard so the admission would not sting as much. “Someone who would hide behind courtesies and refuse in the name of modesty. I did not expect that.” She flexed her fingers once, realizing they were shaking, and curled them into her skirt until the tremor stopped. “How long did you watch her hand?”
“The whole time,” Kirsten answered. “There was heat. There was light. But it was not witchwork. It felt… different.” She hesitated. “Cleaner.”
Lady Kenneth ground her teeth. The word “cleaner” rubbed the wrong way, like a rebuke. “Bring me paper and a quill.”
Kirsten moved at once, opening the writing case on the desk and laying out a stack of good sheets, the inkwell, the sand, the seal. Lady Kenneth sat, smoothed the top page, and steadied her hand. She chose her words with care, shaping them into something the capital would understand without reading panic into the lines.
Father,
I witnessed today what the North is sheltering. The consort’s ability is not rumor. It is immediate, visible, and, most concerning, appears to require no transaction. Two miners were carried in after an explosion. One presented with a compound fracture and deep burns, the other with extensive chest burns and respiratory distress. She placed a hand, and in moments both stabilized. There were no sigils, no offerings, no depletion visible afterward.
This contradicts everything the Council has recorded about witchcraft and all known hedge practices. If she is a witch, she is one unlike our texts. If she is something else, we need to name it before the court does.
The public sentiment here favors her. The crowd outside the infirmary defended her without prompting. If the testing proceeds and she passes, that loyalty will deepen. If the testing fails, the reaction may not be contained to the North.
Send guidance. I advise discretion and speed.
-K.
She sanded the ink, sealed it with her signet, and set it aside. Then she pulled a second sheet and began again, sharper this time because the audience would be less forgiving. This letter is addressed to Cassian’s brother, the Alpha King himself.
She sealed the second letter with her family crest, then held both out toward Kirsten. “Find a rider. I want these at the capital before the testing. Pay extra if you must.”
Kirsten bowed. “Yes, my lady.” She gathered the letters and slipped out.
The door clicked shut. The room felt very still.
Lady Kenneth let out a breath she had been holding since the infirmary and pressed her fingertips to her temples. She had prided herself on reading people, on sorting affectation from substance within minutes. The girl, no, the consort, did not fit the chart she had drawn on the ride north.
Atasha had looked the part of a figurehead at breakfast, all soft answers and polite smiles. Then the mines had happened, and the mask, if it was a mask, had not so much slipped as dissolved.
“There are many things in this world I do not understand,” she said to the empty room, surprised by the admission. She pictured the boy outside the infirmary shouting, our lady is no witch, and the way the crowd had closed ranks around a woman they could not possibly know well. “It seems Lady Atasha will be one of them.”
A thought pressed at the edge of her mind, one she had pushed away twice already. She let it through long enough to test its logic and then shook her head hard, rejecting it. “No,” she told the room. “That cannot be. It is not possible.”
She picked up her gloves again, more for something to do than because she needed them, and stared at the door. The testing would come. Answers would come with it, or more questions. Either way, she would be ready to put the right words in the right ears.
For now, she repeated it one more time, as if repetition could turn certainty into armor. “It is impossible.”
