Delia Prance's Arc

Chapter 40 of 59

They rode home from the library in silence. Delia carried nothing new from the archive, only the weight of what she'd read. Three lines and a name. A rope, Nick had called it. She wanted to think about something else. When the flower-draped house came into view, warm light in its windows, she let her shoulders drop for the first time in days. Her workers had gone home. The forty beds sat empty and clean. Delia hung her satchel by the door and knelt at the hearth. She stacked dry logs and struck a flint until the fire caught. Nick pulled two chairs close to the flames. "Sit," he said. "You've done enough today." She sat. For a long moment neither of them spoke. The fire snapped and threw orange light across the floor. Delia realized she could not remember the last quiet evening they'd shared. There had always been a patient, a summons, a secret to hide. Now there was only the fire and Nick beside her. "I keep chasing it," she said. "My blood. Where the gift came from. I gave a whole day to dust and found nothing." "You found the answer," Nick said. "Stop looking. That's the answer." Delia laughed. It surprised her. "You make everything sound simple." "Some things are." He reached over and took her hand. His thumb moved across her knuckles. "You wanted to know why you can do what you do. Here's why. So people who'd die can live. That's the whole of it." She leaned into him. The heat of the fire touched her face. She thought of the empty beds upstairs, the ones she'd fill tomorrow, and the ones after that. Not for the crown. Not for any prince. For the traveler who limped up the path with nowhere else to go. "I want more than this house," she said. "I want a whole garden. Every wounded thing that comes, healed, and no coin asked." "Then build it," Nick said. "You have the land. You have the gift. Build it." Delia turned to look at him. The doubt she'd carried since the library loosened in her chest. She had spent weeks digging for a secret to explain herself. She did not need it. The gift was hers to use, not to understand. "I'm done looking back," she said. "I'll build forward." Nick nodded once. He pulled her close, and she rested her head against his shoulder. They watched the fire burn low together, and for once she asked nothing of the night. In the morning she rose before Nick woke. She dressed and went out to the field. The grass was wet and cold under her bare feet. She knelt and pressed both palms flat to the ground. The sanctuary garden would start here, today. She closed her eyes and reached for the soil, ready to grow the first bed of it.