Delia Prance's Arc

Chapter 51 of 59

The glowing flowers had followed Delia home. She found them the next morning, blooming along the porch of her healing house, their petals lit blue and pink in the gray light. She had grown nothing there. The magic had simply woken and stayed. She knelt and touched one. It did not fade. The whole court had seen this light in the palace courtyard. Half of them called it a wonder. Half of them called it a threat. And now the threat had grown at her own door, where her patients would see it. Nick found her there. He crouched beside her and looked at the blooms without flinching. "They spread," he said. "They spread," she agreed. "Nobles are already frightened. If patients fear me too, I lose them. Then I lose everything I built." "Then don't hide it," Nick said. "Show them what it is." He stayed close, closer than he needed to. Since the exposure he had barely left her side. He watched every road and every stranger who came near her. Delia understood. She could not lie the magic back into the dark. So she would put it in the light instead. She waited by the porch as her patients arrived. They came slow that morning. Word had run through the villages. An old woman leaned on her son's arm and stopped at the gate. A farmer with a wrapped foot stood behind her. They stared at the glowing flowers. Delia felt Nick tense beside her. She did not wait them into fear. She stepped down and cut a stem from the porch. She carried it to the old woman and held it out. "It's true," Delia said. "There's elf blood in me. It grows things. It grew these." She pressed the glowing bloom into the woman's hand. "It's the same blood that grew the medicine that eased your cough last winter. Nothing changed but the name for it." The old woman turned the flower in her fingers. Her son had gone stiff. But she only smiled, slow and toothless. "You never charged me a coin," the woman said. "A wolf would've charged." She tucked the bloom behind her ear and shuffled through the gate. The farmer laughed at that. He limped in after her. One by one they came, and none turned back. They had known her kindness for years. A word from a frightened noble could not undo it in a morning. By noon her beds were full. Nick stood at the door and watched them work, and some of the hardness left his face. "They stayed," he said. "They stayed," Delia said. But she knew the count was only half won. Her patients trusted her. The nobles did not. The frightened ones had gone home to the palace, and they would not throw a flower behind their ears and smile. They would look for a lever. Her people held one side. The court held the other. And the court held the swords.