Delia Prance's Arc

Chapter 19 of 59

Two days after the wedding, a rider came up the field path. He was broad and blonde, green-eyed, in a red-lined coat. Delia had never met him, but she knew the face. Nick went stiff beside her. "That's my brother," he said. "Arden." The king's first son. The one the court whispered had been passed over. Delia set down her basket of berries and waited, the way she waited for anyone. Arden did not dismount right away. He looked at the flowers, the worktable, the sick lined on their side of the field. "You treat all these for free," he said. It was not a question. He climbed down and pulled a rolled paper from his saddlebag. "A wedding gift. I've drawn plans. A house. Big enough for your patients and your medicine. I'll build it." Delia unrolled the paper. A wide house, two floors, rooms for beds, a whole store for herbs. More than she could ever build alone. Her arc was a garden where every hurt traveler found care. This house would hold ten times what her cottage held. "Why?" she asked. Nick's jaw was tight. He knew his brother did nothing without a reason. Arden met her eyes. "I'm sick," he said. "Something in my chest. It's spreading. The palace healers found nothing." He said it flat, like reading a list. "You name plants no library holds. I need a cure. If one exists." He glanced back down the path. "And no one at court can know. Not my father. Not the nobles. A dying heir is a thing they'd use." Delia understood the trade at once. The house for the secret. Nick spoke first. "You come to my wife the week after our wedding and hand her a debt." Arden did not soften. "I hand her a house. And a patient. She helps people. I'm people." He looked at Delia. "Or I take the plans back." Delia thought of the nobles reading her ledger. If they learned the crown's own heir was dying, they'd tear her field apart looking for what saved or killed him. The risk was real. But a wounded man stood in front of her, and she had never once turned that away. "Sit," she said. "Let me listen to your chest." He sat on the bench by her worktable. She pressed her ear to his back and heard the wet catch in his breath. It was bad. She did not lie to him. "I don't know if I can cure this," she said. "But I'll try. Quietly." "Then we have a deal," Arden said. He stood and looked at the field like he already owned the ground the house would fill. The plans stayed in Delia's hands. She had her larger sanctuary now, and a secret that could burn it down. Somewhere in her field grew a plant that might save the king's first son, or one that might kill him. She did not yet know which was which.