Healer Talia's chambers smelled the way they always had, dried herbs hanging in bundles from the ceiling beams, the faint mineral scent of the tonics she kept lined up on shelves that reached higher than I could remember them being when I was a girl brought here for scraped knees and childhood fevers. She was older now, silver threading through hair that had been dark the last time I sat on this same examination table, but her hands were just as steady when she took my wrist to check my pulse.
"Your father tells me you've been through quite an ordeal," she said, voice gentle in a way that made my throat tighten unexpectedly.
"That's one word for it," I said.
She didn't press. She simply continued her examination with the same quiet efficiency I remembered, checking my eyes, my color, th
