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  “Jenson,” he announced proudly, with a slight lisp.

  “Did you catch any rats, Jenson?”

  “Oh, yes miss, I caughted two. And I burned them just like you said.” His gap-toothed smile of pride was so precious.

  “Wonderful. I’ll mark in my log that you caught”—Natalie glanced at him making sure he caught her correction of his grammar—“two rats. Well done. Let me get you some more supplies, shall I?”

  A large crowd of children entered Siaraa’s workroom bragging about the number of rats they’d caught. Natalie carefully noted each child’s name and the number caught in her log. The older children, who already knew how to build traps, taught other children the technique with minimal supervision from Siaraa and Natalie.

  “We’re going to need a bigger space,” Natalie observed.

  “Mmm,” Siaraa agreed. “I’ll see if I can think of someplace.”

  The cacophony of children’s voices faded as they took their creations out into the city. Siaraa left to see about getting them more workspace while Natalie tidied the workroom, and Princess Charlotte descended the stairs to help.

  “Well,” Natalie began. “I need to get today’s numbers to the palace. We need to compare it with—”

  Natalie put her hand to her heart as a large, tall figure darkened the door.

  Chapter 24

  R

  S

  he breathed a sigh of relief; it was just Onlo. He strode toward her, her note crumpled in his palm, and pulled her to the side.

  “Natalie, is this true?” His deep voice was hoarse with disbelief. “You found the princess and the mage?”

  “I didn’t find her; she found me,” Natalie turned to Princess Charlotte and nodded for her to join them. “I trust him. He saved the life of my friend countless times.”

  Princess Charlotte stepped forward and whispered. “Yes. I am Princess Charlotte. I am Attuned to this Isle and I am a mage.”

  Onlo regarded the princess with skepticism, then bowed at the waist. “An honor to meet you, Your Highness. I am Onlo, from the Isle of Obfuselt. If I may ask, how do you know you’re a mage?”

  Princess Charlotte gave Onlo a very small version of the same demonstration she’d given Natalie the day before. Natalie thought Onlo might have gone a bit pale underneath his dark skin.

  “We must get you into hiding,” he said. “My partner is outside; we have a safe house we can take you to.” Onlo offered her his elbow. “Do you trust me to keep you from harm?”

  The princess nodded and accepted Onlo’s arm.

  “Onlo, where are you taking her? Where is your safe house?” Natalie demanded.

  Onlo paused. “Natalie, it is best you do not know. If Aldworth finds you, you can honestly say you have no idea of the princess’s whereabouts. Before we leave, I must warn you. During our search of the city, we did see agents of the New Mages’ Guild present. Be careful, my friend.”

  “Then wouldn’t it be best if we all stayed together? Strength in numbers? Besides, she needs training.” Natalie hissed.

  Onlo arched an eyebrow. “You can train a mage?”

  “No, but I can train Healers. She needs to get at least some of her power under control. She needs me.”

  “So does Jules. So does this city. Will you abandon them for her?”

  “I’m not abandoning anyone. She needs to stay here.”

  Onlo’s fist clenched. “Natalie. The city is crawling with people hunting you, Jules and the princess. Let’s not make it easy for them by keeping the three of you together. And you have a palace full of sick people and a massive project here that desperately needs your help. You can’t be everywhere and do everything. Let us keep her safe until you can train her. Do you trust us to do that?”

  Natalie swore and pinched the bridge of her nose. Finally, she nodded and swallowed past the lump in her throat. “Safe travels.”

  As she finished tidying Siaraa’s workshop, a morose cloud descended upon her. Onlo was right—it was best she didn’t know the princess’s location. Plus, her priority lay here in the city. But she wanted to learn more about the princess, her abilities, and how she’d managed to escape her parents and the host of people who must have been guarding her. Oh, hell in a kettle, she’d forgotten to ask Onlo how she’d be able to communicate with him. What if she needed him or Anli? Should she still use the rat trap in Siaraa’s shop? Or was Siaraa’s place being watched?

  She sat wearily in a chair and leaned her head against her palm. A few minutes later, she felt a hand on her shoulder.

  Siaraa sat next to her, her face filled with concern. “You have the weight of the world on your mind.”

  Natalie huffed softly in agreement. “Well, these past few weeks have been all about saving cities and towns—one of which I totally failed to save—”

  “Excuse me, Miss Healer,” Siaraa interrupted, “But from what I heard, Whitestrand was mostly dead by the time you got there. So unless your Abbey taught you the ability to raise the dead, then Whitestrand is not on you.”

  Natalie picked at her fingernails, trying not to conjure in her mind’s eye visions of bodies burning and long spires of smoke rising toward the sky.

  “Next was my hometown, Mistfell,” she said in a flat voice. “My da was the first to die. I couldn’t save him.” Natalie clasped her arms over her chest as if to cover the hole in her heart where her da used to be. Tears spilled down her face and she was grateful Siaraa’s hand stayed firmly on her shoulder. “And I don’t even know how Mistfell is doing because the Abbey called us back; they—or most likely Healer Aldworth—blame us for leaving Whitestrand. He thinks we should have stayed. To make it worse, we ignored his summons and came here to help with the epidemic instead. And now …” Natalie threw her hands up in the air, not wanting to reveal anything about the princess.

  “If you had to do it all again, would you do anything differently?” Siaraa asked.

  Natalie mulled over the events of the last few weeks for several minutes. If there were times when a different choice could have been made, it would only have been if she’d had the ability to predict the future with any sort of accuracy. She hung her head. “No.”

  Siaraa squeezed her shoulder. “So, these times when you think it’s all your fault, just remember you are human. You make only the best choices you can at the time. All of this? This fever, the princess and this horse’s ass Aldworth? It’s not your fault.”

  Sobbing now, Natalie turned to hug Siaraa, who awkwardly patted her back. “Eh, you have a lot of snot coming out of your nose.”

  Natalie laughed and blew her nose on a handkerchief from her pocket.

  “Listen. I’ve made arrangements with the milliner next door for us to use her space tomorrow as well. Let’s get things ready, all right?”

  Hiccupping, Natalie nodded and helped Siaraa prepare the trap-making materials for the next day. “Siaraa, why are you here instead of on Obfuselt? I’ve seen your drawings; they’re amazing.”

  “Pfft. I am talented enough without a big rock helping me. Besides, I would rather take my own jobs when and how I choose without being governed by some council.”

  “You’ve never even been to the Isle just to see?”

  “Never been. Do you think I could do this job for you for free if I were latched onto a rock on Obfuselt waiting for approval from a council to do it?”

  Natalie wished she could explain it wasn’t like that; that her connection to Ismereld’s ley lines made her feel warm, welcome, and like she was a stronger person. But she’d had it up to the back teeth with councils herself, so she shook her head at Siaraa and finished tidying.

  Natalie settled into a grueling routine the next few days. Mornings were spent with Siaraa building traps with the children of Roseharbor, whose number seemed to grow each day. Siaraa and Natalie spilt the children up; Siaraa in her own shop and Natalie in the milliner’s. The milliner, a hawk-like, standoffish woman, made Natalie
quite uncomfortable. The glares she often shot over her spectacles made it clear she resented the invasion of her space. She refused to help build traps and was soon making her own creations in a very small space indeed.

  One memorable day, the mother of Jenson, the small boy who’d been the first to report to Natalie his success catching a rat, entered the milliner’s shop with a red-faced Jenson in tow, screeching at Natalie. Apparently, Jenson had taken Anli’s advice to heart, captured a snake and set it loose in his family’s kitchen pantry to help catch rats. Natalie apologized profusely and made Jenson promise to keep the snakes outside.

  Later, she whispered in Jenson’s ear. “Great job. Just put the snakes in barns or grain warehouses next time, deal?”

  He turned to her with his adorable gap-toothed smile. “Deal.”

  With trap building done for the day, Natalie took the day’s rat total to the palace to enter into the log she and Gayla kept to compare the number of rats killed to the number of new patients. After three days of intense effort by the children, the number of new patients had stayed the same for two days in a row. Natalie held her breath. Was it too early to hope?

  She threw herself into helping the patients in the palace sickroom, administering and Activating the teas, making sure the balance of salt and honey was just right and doing whatever she could to ensure as many people survived as possible. She was scared to confirm with Gayla, but it did seem like fewer people were dying than at Whitestrand.

  Asleep on her feet by late evening, she collapsed next to Jules’s side, propped up her aching ankle on Jake’s back, and updated them both of the day’s events. Jules was still unconscious, feverish, coughing and sweating, but he had not progressed beyond that. If he was going to die, he wasn’t doing it as fast as her father had. On the other hand, if he was going to get well, he wasn’t recovering as fast as her mother.

  She longed to talk to him again, hear his voice, the deep timbre of his laugh. She longed to caress him lovingly again instead of treating him so clinically. She yearned to kiss him and taste all the promises yet unfulfilled between them.

  Lying next to him, she stroked his brow with cool cloths and made sure he drank his teas. After she told him the day’s stories, she talked about anything that came to mind. She told him once Roseharbor was safe, they’d escape late one night and head for a remote village on the coast of Ismereld. She’d dye her hair black and he could dye his hair red. They’d change their names, learn to fish and be small-town Healers. No one would ever bother them again. She whispered to him until she fell asleep, snuggled against his side, grateful for the Healers who tended him overnight in her stead.

  A week after the children of Roseharbor deployed the first rat traps throughout the city, Natalie took her midday dead rat total to Headmistress Gayla, who reported they had five fewer new patients than the day before. Natalie spun around and covered her mouth to stop the whoop of joy that nearly escaped her lips.

  She grabbed Gayla’s hand. “Do you think it’s working?”

  Gayla put her hand on the small of her back and sighed, but Natalie swore one side of her mouth curled up. “It’s possible.”

  Natalie twirled in a circle again and began treating the day’s patients with renewed vigor. For the first time, she allowed herself to hope she’d found the answer. Maybe this once, she had not failed.

  “But, we definitely need to wait,” she whispered to Jules later that night, her head resting on his chest. His fever was down and his cough had let up a bit; she enjoyed listening to his easier breathing under her ear. “We have to be absolutely certain before we send this big a message to the whole Isle.” She stroked her fingers along his collarbone, which stuck out prominently after a week of no solid food. She wished she could use her Healing abilities to put flesh back on his bones.

  “When you get better, I’m going to take you to my mother’s and make you the biggest meal of your life,” she promised. “Roast goose, mashed potatoes, and whatever vegetables are in our vegetable garden. And my mother is going to bake you the biggest, best apple pie you’ve ever eaten.”

  “You … promised … me … mud … pie.”

  Natalie jumped up on all fours. Hands shaking, she reached out with her fingers and smoothed Jules’s hair across his brow. His eyes were open and they drank her in greedily. While her eyes fell into in his endless green gaze, her hand on his forehead slid over and cupped the side of his face. “Am I dreaming? Did you just say something?”

  Trembling, his hand drifted up to stroke the side of her cheek. “So it seems. You saved me. And the city.”

  Tears overflowed Natalie’s eyes and she shook her head. “No. No, I had help. You told me to go the barn feed room and I found the rat, then Siaraa, the children and I built the traps and the children put all the traps out—cats and snakes, too—and all the other Healers have been Healing you, too, and—”

  “Shh.” Jules took two fingers and hooked her chin and pulled her face toward his.

  Once her lips touched his, Natalie felt their energies connect and swirl around one another, and she felt how alive he truly was. She whimpered with drunken euphoria, cupping his precious face as if it might disappear if she let go. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close so she was laying on top of him, the full lengths of their bodies pressed against one another.

  “By the Five … woman …” he said, his voice hoarse from disuse. “If I wasn’t … recovering from near death …”

  A heady thrum jolted from Natalie’s head through her heart. The desire to grasp him by the neck, kiss him passionately and touch him in ways that alleviated all the delicious aches in her body nearly overwhelmed her. But she refrained. She couldn’t risk him overexerting himself. She ran her thumb across his cheek and placed a kiss on his forehead. “It would be cruel of me to take advantage of a man in such a weakened state.” He rewarded her with a faint snort. She curled up next to his side and pulled a cozy blanket over the both of them. “Let’s get some sleep. It’s best for both of us.”

  Jules let out a frustrated sigh. “I’ve been sleeping for … a long time. I want to start … living now.”

  “Don’t worry,” she whispered, closing her eyes. “We have time.”

  Chapter 25

  R

  O

  rdinarily, feeding broth to a patient would be a mundane task, but helping Jules eat breakfast felt akin to working in a garden on a perfect spring day. In between taking bites of rations from her own pack, she told him all that had happened while he’d been unconscious. She especially loved telling him about the children in Siaraa’s workshop, how Siaraa had developed the design for the traps, and how she and Siaraa had helped the children build them.

  She paused for breath describing the tenaciousness of one girl who could build almost ten traps in a morning when Jules asked: “Why am I not with the other patients? Why am I back here?”

  “Aldworth was here the day before you fell ill, remember? The Headmistress suggested we move you back here in case he returned.”

  “Has he?”

  “No,” Natalie replied, hesitating to tell Jules more during the early stages of his recovery.

  “I sense a ‘but’ in there. Come on, Nat, out with it,” he smirked at her. Goddess, even recovering from near death the man could be insufferable.

  In a quiet voice, Natalie told him about the New Mages’ Guild, Aldworth’s possible role in it and the arrival of the princess right here next to his bed.

  Jules’s eyes widened. “I remember Princess Charlotte. She’s a Healer and the first mage the Isles have seen in two thousand years? Bloody hell. Where is she now?”

  Just in case, Natalie leaned close to his ear and whispered. “Onlo and Anli have taken her to a safe house. For my own protection, they didn’t tell me where.”

  Jules nodded. “Wise.”

  Natalie put her rations back in her pack, hiding her grimace. It still irritated her that the princess could
n’t stay at the palace to begin her Healer training. To cheer herself up, she dug out her diary and showed Jules the dog-eared page where she’d found evidence of a historical epidemic that had had a similar demographic impact as their own.

  Jules smiled reading her entry. “This sounds strange, but I don’t feel so crazy now. I was pretty sure no one would believe us when we got back to the Abbey and told them that the epidemic only rarely killed the young and the old.”

  Natalie nodded vigorously. “Same. Okay, I have to get going to Siaraa’s. The numbers are finally starting to look good. Every day, the dead rat tally grows, and yesterday, for the first time, the number of new patients went down.”

  Jules smiled. “I’m so proud of you.”

  Natalie ducked her head and hid her embarrassment by kissing him. “Keep getting better. Take care of yourself.”

  She donned her green cloak, called Jake, and left before she spent the day with Jules and ignored the whole city entirely.

  Natalie returned to the palace later that afternoon, Jake trotting behind her, with the day’s dead rat count. She thought of the colorful stories the children had told her of snakes with bulges in the middle sunning themselves in inconvenient places and the city’s burgeoning cat population. Headmistress Gayla, in return, reported they had fifteen fewer new patients that day. Natalie finally had the courage to ask the Headmistress about how many patients had died every day.

  Gayla sighed. “It was a lot in the beginning. It makes me ill to even venture a count. Since you and Juliers arrived with your knowledge, it’s been much less. I’d say now we only lose a maximum of five patients a day. Most people, if they were healthy to begin with, recover with the blend of teas, honey and salt you developed.”

  Natalie put a hand to her forehead and released a big breath of air. Gayla pulled her in for a hug; Natalie’s eyes opened wide with shock at the rare display of affection from her Headmistress. After a moment, Gayla released her, grasped her by the shoulders and said, “You’ve done an amazing job.”