Her Throne

Chapter 6: The Decision

Chapter 6: The Decision

The Frustration

Three days after the fall.

The herb room smelled the same — dried lavender, mint, bitter root — but nothing worked the same.

Mirelle stood at her work table with her right hand heavily bandaged. Her left hand held the pestle, trying to crush dried dandelion leaves for Veronica's morning tea. The leaves needed to be fine powder. With her right hand, she could do it in seconds.

With her left, the pestle slipped. Again.

The leaves spilled over the table. Some fell to the floor.

"Ah —" She tried to pick them up, but her bandaged hand couldn't grip. She tried to use her wrist to sweep them, and knocked over a small jar of honey.

Honey spread across the table.

Mirelle stared at it. Her chest started to rise and fall fast. Not because of the mess. Because she couldn't fix it.

For five years in the lower city, people called her when a child had fever, when a goat couldn't birth, when a wound wouldn't close. Her hands always knew what to do.

Now her own hand was useless.

She pressed her forehead against the table, tears finally coming, but silently. She didn't blame Veronica. She never blamed Veronica. Veronica didn't ask her to jump after that horse.

She blamed her own body for failing when her friend needed her most.

"I can't even make tea," she whispered to the empty room.

The Guilt

Veronica found her like that.

The Queen had come quietly, without her ladies, because she had been feeling dizzy again — three days without Mirelle's tea — and because she felt something heavy in her chest that was not sickness.

Guilt.

She saw the spilled leaves. The honey on the table. Mirelle standing with her forehead on the wood, her left hand shaking, her bandaged right hand held close to her chest.

"Mirelle?"

Mirelle quickly wiped her face with her good hand. "Veronica! I — I was just making your —"

Veronica crossed the room and saw the jar. She saw the mess Mirelle could have cleaned in a heartbeat before.

Then she saw Mirelle's bandage, spotted again with a little blood from trying too hard.

And all the doubt Lady Varnholt had planted, all the little whispers about the drawing and the hallway, disappeared. What kind of betrayer saves your life and then cries because she can't make you tea?

"Oh, Mirelle," Veronica whispered, her own eyes filling. "This is my fault."

"No," Mirelle said quickly. "Don't say that. You didn't —"

"I chose that horse. You told me not to. You saved me and now you —" Veronica gently, very gently, took Mirelle's bandaged hand in both of hers. "You can't do your work because of me."

Mirelle shook her head, tears now falling freely. "I understand you, Veronica. More than anyone. I know you didn't mean it. I would do it again. Even if both my hands broke, I would do it again."

Veronica started crying too, holding Mirelle's good hand tight. For a long time, the Queen and the healer just stood there in the messy herb room, both crying for each other's pain.

The Bandage

Later that afternoon, Mirelle was trying to re-wrap her bandage alone. Thorne had wrapped it that morning, but the honey and the work had loosened it. She sat on the stool, using her teeth and her left hand, struggling.

The door to the herb room opened.

King Ulric stood there. He had not come to the infirmary for three days. He had told himself it was proper to stay away.

But Richmund had told him: "The girl can't change her own bandage, Your Majesty."

He saw her struggling, the white cloth half-unraveled, her teeth pulling at it.

He closed the door behind him.

"Let me," he said quietly.

Mirelle froze. "Your Majesty — you shouldn't — people —"

"I've wrapped a hundred wounds on the battlefield," he said, already kneeling beside her stool so they were at the same level. "Your knots are terrible."

It was not romantic. His hands were rough, efficient. He unwrapped the dirty bandage carefully, his eyes focused only on her hand, not her face. He could see the swollen, purple fingers, the deep cut from the stone.

Mirelle hissed in pain and looked away. He paused.

"Breathe," he said, low.

He took fresh white cloth from the table and began to wrap, firm and even, the way a soldier wraps. His fingers were warm. He didn't touch more than needed.

When he finished, he tied it with one hand, tight and secure.

"There," he said.

Their eyes met for just a second. His were worried, tired. Hers were grateful and sad.

"Thank you," she whispered.

He stood quickly, as if that one second was too long. "Don't... don't try to work too hard. Thorne said weeks."

He left before the guards outside could notice how long he had been in the herb room. Mirelle looked at her neatly wrapped hand, wrapped like a soldier's hand, and held it to her chest.

The Decision and The Triumph

That night, Mirelle made her decision.

She sat on her small bed in her small room next to the Queen's chamber, looking at her bag. Her patched wool dress was folded inside. Her mortar — the light one Ulric had sent anonymously — was on the table.

She could not make tea properly. She could not grind herbs. She could not heal.

And because she was here, Lady Vernon would keep attacking Veronica. The gossip about her and the King would never stop as long as she stayed. The Queen would always be caught between her friend and her court.

If she left, it would all stop.

Veronica could get a real academy physician. A proper one. One with two good hands. One who wouldn't cause scandal.

Mirelle took a piece of paper and wrote with her left hand, clumsy letters:

Dear Veronica,

Thank you for being my first real friend. I am going back to the lower city for a while, until my hand is better. Don't worry about me. Please take care of yourself.

Mirelle

She left the letter on the pillow. She picked up her bag with her good hand. Her bandaged hand throbbed.

At dawn, she slipped out through the back kitchen gate, the same gate she had entered as a village girl months ago.

From the upper balcony, wrapped in a shawl against the morning cold, Lady Seraphine Vernon watched.

She watched the small figure with the white-bandaged hand walk away down the stone path toward the lower city.

A slow, triumphant smile spread across her perfect face.

Finally.

She turned and went inside to tell her husband the throne was one step closer.