Chapter 4 The Hidden Healer
Smoke curled under the door like it was alive.
It had a sweetness that didn’t belong in the night. It was floral and gentle, and nearly lovely. Almost.
Aria’s eyes flew open. Her body, still frail from the lingering poison, refused to move at first. The air was shifting, thicker. The scent was wrong. Too deliberate. Too careful.
Another attempt.
Her heart thundered as she rolled off the bed and pressed her sleeve to her nose. The wolf inside her stirred awake, growling low. Poison again.
Her mind sharpened with terrifying calm. She stumbled to the window, threw it open, and gasped as cold night air flooded in. The sweet smoke coiled toward the ceiling, swirling like a serpent caught mid-strike.
“Not tonight,” she said softly.
The moonlight made the jars of antidote on her desk shine a little bit. She took one, chewed off the cork, and drank half the bitter liquid in a single gulp. The taste burned down her throat like fire, but it cleared her head.
Outside, footsteps echoed, light, quick, retreating. Whoever had come to kill her was already gone.
Aria watched the fading trail of smoke, her jaw tightening. You should have made sure I was dead.
By dawn, there would be no trace of the attempt, no proof, no body. But Aria would remember the scent of that smoke until the end of this world.
---
The Alpha’s estate looked different in the morning light. It was brighter, but not safer. The sun had replaced all the torches, but Aria still felt the same weight pressing down on her chest.
She stood at her doorway for a while, pale but steady, the taste of last night’s antidote still bitter on her tongue.
Every sound in the hallway, the rustle of skirts, the click of boots, the hush of whispers, sharpened in her ears like music written in code. Each note carried meaning. Each murmur, a secret.
The poison hadn’t killed her. But it had changed her.
Her body was weaker.
Her mind was merciless.
And the family still saw her as they always had: the fragile daughter of the Alpha, pitied, protected, unimportant.
As she walked through the corridor, servants dipped their heads and whispered. Pity clouded their faces like fog. Let them think she was breakable. Let them think she was harmless.
Pity was a weapon, one sharper than any blade.
Two maids passed by, speaking too quickly to realize she was near.
“Captain Rowan was hurt,” one whispered. “The cut… it’s bad. The healer says it won’t close. Poison on the knife.”
Aria froze.
Rowan. Her father’s most loyal guard. A man built like a wall, unshakable, incorruptible.
In the book she’d read before falling into this world, Rowan’s death had been one of the dominoes that started the downfall of the Draemyr estate. Without him, the walls would crumble faster.
If he died now, the timeline would unravel before she was ready.
Aria pressed a trembling hand to the doorframe, every muscle screaming from last night’s poison. She could stay hidden. She could let the story play out.
But she was done letting fate decide who lived or died.
The poison had taught her one rule:
Hesitation kills.
She had already made her choice.
---
The smell of iron and herbs hit her before she entered the room.
Inside, Captain Rowan lay on a narrow bed, his body trembling with each breath. His wound, a deep gash along his side, oozed blood that was too dark, too thick. Black veins snaked outward beneath his skin.
The healer stood beside him, his face gray with panic. His hands shook as he mixed powders that clearly weren’t working.
“The venom spreads too quickly,” he muttered. “No salve will hold. We need stronger drugs, but…”
“Show me,” Aria said.
The healer flinched, startled by the quiet authority in her voice. “Princess, you shouldn’t be here. The smell alone...”
“Show me,” she repeated, sharper this time.
Something in her tone, something that didn’t belong to the fragile girl they all pitied, silenced him. He stepped aside.
Aria moved to the bed, studying the wound. She could feel her pulse hammering in her ears, but her hands were steady. She’d seen worse. In another life, she’d worked with blood and blades.
She scanned the healer’s table, marigold for cleansing, willow bark for pain, honey for infection. Not perfect. But enough.
She ground the herbs into a paste, her fingers moving quickly, her movements sure.
Rowan stirred, eyes glassy. “P–Princess?”
“Save your breath,” Aria murmured. “You’ll need it later.”
She packed the mixture into the wound, ignoring the hiss of the poison reacting against her poultice. The smell of burning flesh hit the air. Rowan arched, his breath catching.
“Breathe,” she ordered. “Pain means it’s working.”
The healer stared, frozen. The black veins began to retreat, slowly, painfully. The dark color faded. Rowan’s breathing eased. His pulse, once weak, steadied under Aria’s fingertips.
Minutes felt like hours. When the wound finally stopped bleeding, Aria sat back, her hands trembling with exhaustion and adrenaline.
The healer whispered, “Not possible…”
Aria’s eyes met his, cold and unwavering. “Not impossible,” she said. “You just never looked hard enough.”
He bowed his head, shamed and silent.
Rowan blinked up at her, his voice hoarse. “You saved me.”
Aria gave him the smallest, faintest smile. “Then rest. That’s all I need from you.”
But inside, she was shaking, not from fear, but from victory. For the first time since waking in this cursed world, she’d bent the story to her will.
---
As she left the healer’s room, the air felt lighter.
Her heart beat not with panic, but with purpose. The poison meant for Rowan had failed. She’d changed the story’s rhythm, and now the world would have to adjust to her, not the other way around.
But she could feel it, the eyes. The watchers. Someone would notice that the “sickly princess” had gone where she shouldn’t and done what she couldn’t.
By evening, the whispers reached even the Alpha and Luna.
Her mother came first, eyes bright with relief. “Did you hear?” she whispered, voice trembling. “Captain Rowan lived. The healer found a cure.”
Aria smiled faintly. “That’s good news.”
Her father entered soon after, massive and weary, yet gentle as his hand covered hers. “We will celebrate tonight,” he said. “A feast, to honor Rowan’s survival and the strength of this house. You will attend, Aria. It will lift your spirits.”
Her pulse quickened. The feast.
She remembered it from the novel, the night of whispers and betrayals, the night she met him.
The Lycan King. Kael.
And everything changed.
Aria lowered her eyes. “Yes, Father. I’ll be there.”
---
Later, when she was alone again, Aria stood by her window, moonlight wrapping her in silver. Her reflection looked fragile, almost spectral. But her eyes burned.
She touched the spot on her wrist where the poison had once pulsed, now steady. Her wolf stirred beneath her skin, no longer silent but breathing with her heartbeat.
The Draemyr estate slept. But she was wide awake.
She could feel the story bending, the pages trembling as if aware that the girl inside them was no longer playing her part.
They wanted a weak daughter who would fade away quietly.
Instead, they had given life to something new.
The wolf beneath the silk was stirring.
And when the feast came, Aria would not be the victim.
She would be the rewrite.
---
A figure stopped at the door outside her room. It was the same shadow that had sent forth the poison smoke the night before. This time, they brought something smaller. A single sealed letter slipped quietly under her door.
Aria's heart stopped when she picked it up a few moments later.
There was no name. No seal. There was only one line written in dark red ink:
"The King comes tonight. Don’t drink the wine."
