The Lycan King's Healer
The Lycan King’s Healer – Chapter 14

Emily gave me an artificial smile as I froze. “Cathy, I hope we can become friends after this misunderstanding,” she said pleasantly. “Two proper and pretty ladies like ourselves should not be quarreling.”

As she walked past me, she sneered in my ear, “You will never beat me, and Aldrich will never love you.”

I snickered as she exited, shrugging carelessly, “Who cares?” I couldn’t muster any other words, only able to feel pity for her. “Your poor thing, always living for men.”

With her so close, I sneaked a hand behind my back and did a deliberate motion with my fingers. No one noticed.

After claiming to leave to retrieve more tear leaves for Elias, I felt myself deflate like a ripped balloon. But I was not relaxed. Would the men believe her? Aldrich had mistrusted me before; maybe he would change his loyalties. And I did not know Elias enough for him to take my word over his wife’s.

I only allowed myself to look worried while she was gone, looking between the two men whose opinions my fate depended on.

Aldrich

Still reeling from the evening’s events, I had sat down on the couch beside Elias. Cathy followed suit, still playing the part of a beloved wife even though Emily was gone. She must have been concerned about what we thought of Emily’s swearing. We sat in near silence, only interrupted by the occasional catch up between Elias and I. I noticed the worry on his face, but I knew he was too impatient to worry for long.

When she returned an hour later, the princess had a red rash all over her face and body. An audible gasp chorused when she walked in. Her beauty was entirely warped by a scalding rash, swollen and dotted in bumps.

I walked Cathy back home in silence. She had an essence to her that was not only emmenating violence, but I smelled mischief.

“I don’t know why you hide so many things from me,” I muttered defeatedly as she opened her front door. The willow bent to the wind, drooping, and I felt a lot like that too. “Why don’t you tell me anything?”

“You did not believe any of the things I tried telling you once upon a time,” she said coldly, drifting inside, “therefore, you will not hear anything else.”

She slammed the front door in his face.

Since that day, Emily never got better. Doctors did not know what to do with her—they were all at their wit’s end regarding the mysterious skin rash.

In Elias’s defense, he did fret. But just as I suspected, he did not for long. His concern dwindled into curiosity for his mistress. Elias was a man influenced by beauty; when Emily’s was no more, he often left her to seek out other women. Word traveled from their village to ours that he soon started ignoring her existence all together.

Rumor also spread that Emily had been cursed. Perhaps she was being punished for swearing to the Moon Goddess and more, when she actually committed her crimes. The beautiful noble lycan princess was slowly morphing into a hideous cautionary tale.

At this same time, the Luna Queen was experiencing sickness; there was a silly rumor that she was often in the bathroom. There was even a joke that she was farting a lot, causing the King to neglect her and favor his mistresses.

The two events mirroring each other seemed to be coincidental, but they made mesuspicious of Cathy. Both women wronged her, and she was a powerful force nowadays; I feared for anyone who crossed her. I had not spoken to her for a couple days after the visit with Emily and Elias, yet she was all I thought about. She was so peculiar, my mind ravaged by questions about her every other minute of the day. How did she do it, where did she learn it?

She was full of mystery, and I found myself addicted to it.

***

A guard approached me with a servant while I was strolling to the military training grounds.

“My lord,” the guard called, “I have news for you.”

I sighed, still too entangled in my thoughts to care for political affairs. “Yes?”

“It has been reported that Cathy has been selling medicine to the outside world through a servant for the past four years,” he announced, pushing the servant man forward. “This one.”

That got my attention. I turned to the man, the one that had been appointed to give her food all those years. “You aided Cathy when she was a prisoner? “

The servant nervously swallowed. “I only sold the medicine for the price Cathy ordered.

She would give me a reward, but I know nothing about the rest—”

I did not hear the end of his sentence, too busy storming toward the mouth of the forest.

***

I found her outside the cottage in her garden, bent over a book. The cover read something about witchy pharmaceuticals.

She did not notice me as I approached. Sunlight glowed in her hair, and she looked genuinely peaceful. The most content I had ever seen her, the first time I saw her without steel in her eyes. The garden around her was flourishing, richly full of flowers, fruit, and vegetables, a colorful wonderland. She perched next to a pair of lovely orchids.

Theo wandered outside the front door as I approached. When he noticed me, his eyes brightened up before quickly running up to me.

“Mommy’s buried in stupid books and no one will play with me. I’ve had to play the hero and the villain! It’s exhausting. Would you like to play with me?” he asked hopefully.

I smiled, noticing that he did not ask me to play with him, instead asking if I wanted to play with him. He was a polite little boy.

“What do you want to play, little man?”

“War game!” he grinned. “When I grow up, I want to be a general.”

A piece of my heart melted. He was the age I was when I first desired to become a general, deeply intrigued with war and battle. Theo proved time after time that we were alike in numerous ways. There had to be a reason.

My mind flashed back to not the lavender field, but the sunflower fields near the palace. Since my brothers did not want to play with me, I created my own games. I jumped and skipped through the fields, slashing my wooden sword at sunflowers as if they were enemies. I taught myself self-defense against an army with those sunflowers, learning footwork weaving through the tall flowers in both human and wolf form.

Here Theo was, with no one to play with, making his own games up as well. Playing the hero and the villain, just like me.

If he was not my son, why were we so similar?