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be—on her patient—chiding herself for allowing her attention to be drawn away so easily.
    “How are you feeling?” She asked him as she lifted a rag from the bowl of cool water on the table and wrung it out, then smoothed it against the man’s forehead and the side of his face unaffected by the blisters.
    “Thirsty.”
    “I have a brew for you. This one is stronger so it should help with the pain.”
    The chief merely grunted as he tried to shift in his bed. A grimace, combined with a moan he tried to swallow, told her the pain still rode him. Kieron came to the bedside and helped the chief as Fia held the light sheet of the finest linen away from him so it would not pull across his skin as he moved, for even that light weight was unbearable.
    “Annis, prepare another oatmeal poultice,” she said without looking at her assistant. She did not want to see the woman calculating how she could use the indiscretion she had walked in on to her best advantage. Fia put the rag down and reached for the cup. Habit had her lifting it to her nose to check the strength. She was about to help the chief drink it when she stopped and sniffed it again.
    Something wasn’t right. She sipped it, let it lie on her tongue for a moment, then swallowed.
    “Annis,” she turned to find the woman staring at her. “What did you put in this?”
    “Only what you told me,” she answered, her lip quivering and her eyes not quite meeting Fia’s.
    “Nay, you did not.” Fia poured a little of the contents of the cup into her hand, examining the color. “It looks right, but the scent is off, as if you did not use enough birch, and there is no willow in here, either, for it does not tighten the tongue.”
    “I made it just as you taught me, nothing more, nothing less,” Annis said, but Fia could tell the girl lied, though she could not fathom why she would endanger the chief’s health.
    “Do you wish the chief to remain ill, to be in pain?” Fia snapped quietly, not wanting the chief to hear, though even in his waking moments he seemed unaware of most of what went on around him. She stepped closer to her assistant. All her doubt, frustration, and fatigue gathered, making her words harsh and erasing any ease she had found in Kieron’s arms. “For that is what you consign him to with this!” She dumped the liquid from her hand onto the floor and the contents of the cup with it.
    A lone tear trickled down Annis’s cheek, as she turned beseeching eyes to Kieron who had joined them. “I did not—”
    “Surely she would not seek to hurt the chief on purpose, Fia,” he said his voice full of concern and for a moment Fia felt abandoned by her one ally here, until he gave her a quick wink. It was only then that Fia noticed he once more had the palm-sized, perfectly round milky stone in his hand, as he had the day he had come to take her away from Kilmartin. He closed the distance between himself and Annis.
    “I did not want to do this, for to do so will weaken the power of this magic stone, but it seems the time has come,” he said. He balanced the stone in his palm in front of her. “Take it,” he commanded, and Annis plucked it from his hand, holding it between her thumb and forefinger as if she did not like the touch of it.
    “If you place this in a bowl of water fresh from a fast-running burn just as the sun peeks over the horizon,” he continued, “and let it sit in the sun until sunset, watching over it every minute lest any animal or person drink from it, or any leaf or bug fall into it, the water will ease his pain.”
    Fia started to ask why he did not use this magical stone before now, but she remembered the wink. Kieron was not abandoning her, he was aiding her in discovering the truth, though not in the way most people would go about it.
    “But there is no sun today,” Annis whined, holding the stone out for Kieron to take, but he let her hold it there between them.
    “Then you must make the brew again and I will let