“Good.” Hannah offered a tight smile before a strangled sob slipped out. She turned away abruptly, dabbing at her eyes with the sleeve of her nightgown. “Oh, heavens. I’m so sorry. I just…”

It hurt, watching her smother herself. How many times had Wren done the same thing? Apologized for her own sadness, for daring to burden someone else with her feelings? Wren placed her books on a settee cushion and crossed the room to Hannah. “Please don’t apologize. I can’t imagine how hard this is for you. They were your friends and family.”

“Thank you.” Hannah drew deep breaths, blinking until the tears receded. “I was thinking it must be nice being a healer. I’ve always wanted to be one—never more than recently, when I felt so powerless. It’s a noble profession.”

“I wish I could claim to be noble. In Danu, all people with magic like mine become healers whether they want to or not.” Wren let her magic collect on her palms, flickering between them. It illuminated the tears still beaded in Hannah’s eyelashes. “But I got lucky. Even though I couldn’t be anyone or anything I wanted, I don’t know that I’d have chosen anything else. It’s part of me. Maybe even all of me.”

“I should hope not,” Hannah said gently. “I don’t care to believe that the sum of us is what we do.”

Wren frowned, uncertain of what to say. If not healing, then what was the sum of her? And if she couldn’t crack this poison and bring Hal back to Danu, how could she ever prove her worth? She had only thirteen days left before she could leave, a veritable mountain of books to read, not to mention the tedious process of mixing her antidotes …

“Anyway,” Hannah said, “let me know if I can help you with anything else.”

Then—an idea came to Wren.

“You know, I think you can,” she said. “I’m working on developing a medication right now, and I could use some help taking measurements, recording failures, and the like. It’s not the most exciting work, but if you truly wanted to learn to be a healer, it would be a start.”

“So I’d be your assistant?”

“Exactly. What do you say?”

Her answering smile, as radiant as daybreak, shone brighter than anything Wren had seen in weeks. “I say yes. When do we start?”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Nine more days.

Wren had only nine more days to identify the poison and develop an antidote now that she’d wasted four of them researching. Skimming every botany book in Lowry’s library had armed her with a frighteningly thorough knowledge of the language of flowers but had brought her no closer to an answer. Nearly every one of them had proven useless.