Rowan Greenbriar's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

The knight stopped at the broken salt ring. Rowan watched him through the window. The new wards held, but they only stopped the hunter. They did nothing for the smell of fae blood soaking the rags inside. When the hunter circled back, it would track the scent straight through her walls. The fire had masked nothing. It had only bought time, and the time was gone. "I have to kill the scent," Rowan whispered. "The blood. I have nothing to cover it." Her mother's shelves were bare of the strong herbs. She needed something green and living and sharp enough to drown the smell of a wound. Theron crouched beside her, bow across his knees. For years he had guarded her door. He knew the forest the way she knew her jars. "Wolfsbane grows by the stream," he said. "It burns the nose. But the knight is standing on the path." A fist struck the door. "Open up." The voice was flat and tired. "Sir Aldric Brightblade. I'm hunting a bandit, not a witch." He did not knock again. He waited. Rowan's heart slammed. A knight at her door, a hunter in the trees, and a dying prince between them. She made a choice. She opened the door. Aldric looked past her, straight at the rags. His jaw tightened. He did not reach for his sword. "Someone's bleeding in there." "My brother," Rowan lied. "Fever. I need herbs from the stream. Let me pass." Aldric studied her face. He had the look of a man who had been fooled before and hated it. "I don't help liars," he said. Then his eyes moved to the dark fur curled by the sick bed, to the small dragon warming the stranger. Something in him shifted. "But I won't stand between a healer and her stream. Go. I'll watch the path." Rowan ran. Theron ran beside her, naming the plants before she saw them. They tore wolfsbane from the wet bank by the fistful, roots and all. The sap stung her palms. The smell flooded her nose, bitter and clean. They raced back. Rowan crushed the leaves into a paste and packed it over the prince's wound, thick and raw. She smeared the bruised stems along the doorframe and the sill. The sharp reek swallowed every trace of blood. The little dragon sneezed and turned its head away. "That's good," Theron said. He breathed deep and found nothing but wolfsbane. "The hunter can't follow a scent that isn't there." Rowan sagged against the wall, hands raw and green. The scent was masked. The wound was dressed. For the first time, the prince might truly heal. Aldric stood in the open doorway. He had not left. "Your brother," he said, slow, "has pointed ears." He looked at her, then at the fae prince, then back. "I don't care who he is. But the thing in the woods does. And it's coming."