Barely a minute passed before her stomach began twisting itself into anxious, guilty knots. She was restless by nature, as Heloise too often reminded her, and if she stayed still long enough, her grief would catch up to her. Since she had a few hours to kill, she might as well double-check her supplies. She retrieved her medical bag, a slim leather satchel, and knelt on the carpeted floor.

While most healers depended on their magic, Wren knew a truly great physician could not rely on magic alone. She liked to prepare for anything and everything, and took more of a scientific route, studying toxic plants and developing medications that could aid in the healing process. Faithful healers, meanwhile, believed themselves to be practitioners of a divine art. Psalms and scripture told of the first queen who had bound herself to the Goddess; moved by her devotion, the Goddess had blessed her with a piece of her divinity: the gift of regeneration.

The prayers of the good and righteous are powerful things, the Book of Morgane proclaimed. Worship the Goddess, and she will take from you your sickness, your suffering.

But magic, at its core, was nothing but a recessive trait that allowed for the manipulation of the energy that flowed through the fola—an energy that bound to receptors in the body’s cells. Some theories posited that healing magic was the oldest kind, affording its practitioners the abilities to induce cellular regeneration and autolysis. Over time, it had evolved into more diverse, specialized branches of magic that varied from family to family. Magic like Byers’s, which thickened his bones. And magic like Hal Cavendish’s.

Vesrians’ magic worked the same as Danubians’, even though centuries of superstition had painted them as something otherworldly and wicked. Their magical bloodlines were old and powerful; in honor of their god, they arranged marriages to preserve them—as well as they could, anyway. The Cavendishes had nearly died out, and Hal was the first to manifest their magic in two generations. No one knew exactly how his abilities worked; autopsies of his victims showed little but ravaged brain chemistry, as if his gaze alone was neurotoxic. Wren shuddered at the memory of him, his eyes mirror black, the fola in his temples glowing silver like scars.

She put some vials back in her satchel and drank in the rest of the room. Her accommodations were plain but comfortable: solid wood floors, a downy mattress, a curtained window overlooking the jagged blue spine of the Dramlach Mountains. There was even a closet, stocked with a complete wardrobe for a young boy. Earlier, when her host had come by to bring her a pot of tea and a slice of spiced cake, Wren asked if he had a son.

At first, he’d looked utterly puzzled by the sound of Wren’s accent. Then, after she repeated herself, he looked startled. “No. It’s only me and my husband here.”