Chapter 5

Chapter 5 ERIC The next morning I went to the healers' quarters with a story already built in my head. Trouble sleeping, I told them. Nothing more than that. I needed calming herbs, I said, the kind they gave restless warriors after a hard patrol. The older comforter I asked frowned at me, apologetic. "That's not something I make," she said. "Flora handles the calming blends. She's better at the mix than any of us." Of course it was her. I stood there a second too long, weighing whether my pride could survive walking up to Flora and asking her for anything at all, especially after yesterday. But my hands hadn't fully stopped shaking since the night before, and my chest still felt too tight, like something was sitting on it that refused to move. I found her outside the small house she shared with Daisy, sorting dried leaves into neat little piles. She looked up when my shadow fell over her, and I watched her face shift the second she recognized me. Her jaw tightened. Her shoulders squared like she was bracing for a fight she didn't want to have. "What do you want," she said. Not really a question. More like a wall going up. "Herbs," I said. "For sleeping." Something flickered across her face, quick, gone almost before I caught it. I saw her eyes drop briefly to my complexion, and I wondered what she saw there, whether the sleepless night had carved itself into my skin the way it felt like it had. "I'm out," she said flatly, and stood, gathering her things like she couldn't get away from me fast enough. I knew she was lying. I could smell the herbs from where I stood, rows of them drying along the wall behind her. But I also knew I had no right to call her on it, not after everything I'd said to her yesterday, not after every other day before that. I didn't say anything. I just watched her disappear into the house, the door shutting harder than it needed to. I stood there a moment, feeling something ugly and hollow settle in my chest. Not anger, exactly. Something closer to shame, though I wasn't ready to call it that yet. I turned to leave, empty-handed, my chest still too tight, my night stretching ahead of me looking just as long and brutal as the last one. "Eric." Daisy's voice stopped me. She came around the side of the house with a small cloth bundle in her hands, already tied and ready. She held it out to me without hesitation. "For your sleep," she said. "Flora mentioned you needed something." I stared at the bundle, then at her, confused. Flora had just told me she had nothing. But I took it anyway, my fingers closing around it like it was something fragile. "Thank you," I said, my voice rougher than I meant it to sound. Daisy studied me for a moment, something knowing in her eyes that made me want to look away. "Thank you," she said back, "for what you do out there. For protecting the pack." I didn't know what to say to that. Nobody thanked me. They feared me, respected me, maybe, but gratitude wasn't something I got handed often, and definitely not from a comforter. "Warriors and comforters," Daisy went on, her voice steady, gentle in a way that somehow cut deeper than anger would have. "We need each other. One doesn't work without the other. I hope you remember that, the next time you speak to Flora." She didn't wait for me to respond. She turned and walked back inside, leaving me standing there with a bundle of herbs in my hand and her words sitting heavy in my chest. I thought about Flora's face when she lied to me. I thought about the fear I'd caught underneath her anger yesterday, fear I'd told myself didn't matter because I outranked her, because my pride mattered more than whatever I made her feel. I thought about the way my own heart had nearly torn itself apart last night, alone, silent, too ashamed to ask anyone for help. Maybe I understood her a little better than I wanted to admit. I stood there a long time after Daisy went inside, turning the herbs over in my hand, turning something else over in my mind that I wasn't ready to look at straight on yet.