Indignation simmered deep in my chest, near my spine, and up into my throat as I sat on my assigned pallet in the healer’s tent. We were ordered to spend the night there, so the healers could keep an eye on us rather than distracting the whisper women or fire starters with our troublesome presence. They had enough to worry about without barely of age girls inviting themselves to be killed on a battlefield.

That wasn’t what we were told, of course, because no one wanted to deal with the outbursts they were sure such idiotic girls would have. The official story was that we needed to stay so that they could keep an eye on our wounds and recovery, but I knew from experience that only Breck would have normally been forced into the indignity of staying in a healer’s tent. Everyone else’s injuries were mostly mild cuts or bruises, with Idra’s concussion being the exception. Even the cut on the back of her head wasn’t as deep as the bleeding during the battle had led me to believe. Still, she would have been sent back to her tent with advised rest and a potion in her belly to help with the headaches rather than risk the rumors that she got tainted from spending too much time in the life-ridden healer’s tent.

Instead, we were crammed into a corner of the tent on pallets while I was forced to watch what my fingers habitually itched to do in painful proximity. Healers ground down plants, checked over patients, stitched wounds, and administered treatments. The whisper women and fire starters they treated weren’t rude and listened attentively to the healers which was more than I had ever thought could happen given the desperation and suspicion I had dealt with.

Sometimes the indignation flickered up onto my tongue and burned like a live coal there, fueled by something I didn’t want to call guilt when I glanced over at Breck’s still form and something I couldn’t deny was raw jealousy when I looked practically anywhere else in the tent. I might have my poisons and no longer need to deal with her but sometimes that held little solace. I knew I could never be a healer, but the craving was still there. The knowledge I couldn’t allow myself to forget and the need to take care of myself rather than allow some incompetent stranger to witness my weakness.

Our plan had failed spectacularly and we were even further from being able to find and kill the crawler than when we had started. Breck could have died and I had only been able watch her bleed out. The others were unlikely to want to help me continue the mission and between all my bruises, even with treatment, my body was denying any chance of putting up a proper fight. My torso and hip looked like a multicolored algae bloom had spread all over them.

Part of me wanted the cold distance to break over me again, so I didn’t have to care and could pretend that the life I wanted but couldn’t have wasn’t all around me. But the cold refused to come. There was cold comfort to be had among the plant-rich air, sweet and stringent, and the sounds of my childhood.

I had rarely truly failed when it came to healing. Made mistakes, of course, but never made such dire mistakes that she couldn’t fix them. That hadn’t been allowed, not with her reputation at stake. Nor did I ever make the same mistake twice, not unless I felt like provoking her. And I had been competent enough that she had tasked me enough with mixing the tinctures and salves for critical patients when there was too much work for one person. I had been trusted to address minor wounds or sicknesses all on my own.

It didn’t feel like I had been competent in much of anything since I cut off my beads. I kept making plans upon plans upon plans and all of them went wrong. Sure, the Lady Blue had probably planned on her monsters killing all of us and we were alive, but I attributed that more to Idra’s protective shield than my plan. Juniper probably could have made one just as good. Perhaps hers wouldn’t have gotten our group’s best fighter nearly killed.

My teeth ground together.

I was still sorely tempted to somehow slip out of the camp and take care of the crawler myself despite the sheer impracticalities incorporated into the idea. Only needing to worry about myself was far easier and more familiar than factoring in everyone else’s strengths and weaknesses.

“Made themselves a bit too promising of a target, didn’t they?”

My gaze snapped up from the spot on the ground I had been glaring at to a group of three healers who plainly thought they were speaking more quietly than they were. They were clustered around a small dung fire in the middle of the tent. The one who had spoken was an older woman with a braid of long silver hair stirring the pot over the fire.

“Maud!” the word of warning came from the tall, narrow lipped healer to the old woman’s left. She didn’t look pleased to be washing rags or be made part of the conversation.

Maud ignored her. “I’m only telling the truth. The younglings bit off more than they can chew though only the darkness knows why they were sent off on their own in the first place.”

The third member of the little group spoke up, a bit reluctant, as he paused sorting through the good and bad kindle seeds popping open by the fire with tiny hisses. “I heard they were given a mission.”

The old healer snorted. “Not sure being bait counts as a mission.”

“Maud! They’re seedlings.”

Maud waved a dismissive hand. “Younglings are younglings, and they shouldn’t be tromping up and down the beach waiting to be killed. The Lady Blue will take advantage of every opportunity she can.”

“What’s the plan?”

I startled and whipped my head to the side to focus on Juniper. She just looked back at me, chin slightly lifted in challenge, as she waited for me to answer her question.

Idra and Ento also sat facing me. Idra was practically melded into the other girl’s side with her head resting on Ento’s shoulder. Idra looked like she was prepared not to be impressed by whatever I had to say and Ento just looked protective.

A rustle on my other side marked Prevna settling down to sit on my pallet. With her back to the fire her face was in shadow, but it didn’t take a genius to tell she was also interested in my answer.

I focused on Juniper. “What makes you care if I have one?”

“You came up with a clear plan to fight off those creatures quickly. I didn’t.” No shame or bitterness marred her tone. Only matter-of-fact practicality. “Haven’t you made a new one to kill the crawler already?”

It wasn’t that I hadn’t, but I didn’t appreciate her calling me out on it. Especially not when we had all just overheard the healer’s judgment and were recovering from our wounds from our last poor attempt. Not when she didn’t seem the least bit moved by the defeat.

“I didn’t expect you to be so weak willed that you handed over authority at the first sign of trouble. Not much of a leader are you?”

Juniper stiffened as Idra and Ento fixed me with twin glares. But then the younger girl drew in a short breath and fixed me an irritatingly level look. “I weighed my options. You might lack any sense of manners or tact, but both at the Palace and now you’ve displayed an ability for strategy.”

I crossed my arms. “So you do admit I’m better than you.”

That turned the level look into a flinty scowl but it was gone in an instant, other than the stone in her voice. “I admit that I’m not a fool who thinks I have to do everything myself. True leaders delegate.” Juniper rose her eyebrows. “So, the plan?”

The part of me that was rubbed raw and angry from our surroundings and her attitude was sorely tempted to spit out some unhelpful, terrible plan, but the rest of me that couldn’t stand failure won out.

“We heal and we work. We were too eager before and didn’t take into account that we could be targeted by something else other than the crawler we were hunting. This time we’ll use traps and do what we can to limit its hunting grounds.” I turned to Prevna. “Do you have any ideas for that?”

She licked her pale gray lips, suddenly nervous and trying not to show it. “Maybe.”

I brushed past her discomfort. I didn’t like being coerced into sharing my ideas either, but if I had to, she could too. “Good. Variety should help us catch the crawler and this way we won’t be presenting ourselves for every passing enemy to attack.”

Idra’s gaze sharpened on Prevna. “Once a thief always a thief.”

Nervousness was immediately replaced by condescension. “Better than being a pompous snake.”

Juniper shot Idra a look that told her to shut up just as the other girl opened her mouth to fire a comment back. Idra closed her mouth and looked away as Ento patted her hip.

Juniper flicked a glance between Prevna and me, checking to see if we would drag the argument on, before moving the conversation forward. “Traps might work though they’ll have to be well hidden.”

My lips twisted into a sardonic smile. “Most traps do.”

“What did you have in mind?”

We spent the remaining time before it was time to sleep hashing through a variety of traps and ideas on how we might limit where the crawler could strike, if that was possible. The conversation didn’t erase the burning in my chest, just as it couldn’t erase the looming specters of my recent failures or the fact that Breck lay on the other side of the tent, unable to join in, but it did quell the indignity and temptation for a while.

- -

An entire night spent inside the healer’s tent proved to be too much. Breck’s impaling kept playing through my mind even as I felt the throbbing ache of my own bruises. Then the litany of ingredients and recipes that could treat them began to accompany the images. It didn’t take too long after that for me to begin to recite what could be used to treat the others’ ailments, ordered from what ingredients were preferred to ones I could make do with.

The air was heady with the smell of herbs and I could make out the shapes of grinders and containers full of promising ingredients in the dark. From my time spent watching the healers I knew where they kept the common ingredients as well as the more specialized items and tools. I knew where they had laid down to sleep and the knowledge of how to keep silent to not wake a sleeping healer had been ingrained in me since I was young.

I knew the entire impulse was risky and idiotic and ultimately futile, but I couldn’t help but obey it. The seedlings’ breathing remained slow and steady as I carefully rose from my pallet. Rolling my feet as I stole across the tent to where the ingredients were kept I barely made a sound. One of the healers did stir as I carefully slipped some needle grass into a pouch, but she was merely shifting in her sleep. Needle grass to help clean out wounds, white leaf to slow bleeding, frostbite berries to numb wounds, seeping moss and Lady’s Tear to soothe bruises, a pinch of feverluck, and gut and a bone needle to close large cuts.

I told myself I wasn’t going to use any of it, that it was just for the comforting knowledge that I had the ingredients. Just in case. Having the plants didn’t count as healing. I didn’t have my beads or the tools to help prepare the ingredients into a proper salve or tincture or drink. Not that the tools were much more complicated than a mortar and pestle or fire. But that didn’t matter because I wasn’t going to use them.

I didn’t want to learn what the goddess would do to someone who healed without healer’s beads. Didn’t want to bring her wrath down on myself or anyone around me.

But I did struggle not to breathe out a sigh of relief to have ingredients on hand again. I kept waiting for someone in the tent to wake up and catch me, but no one did. Instead, I slipped out of the tent for a long while to avoid the temptation to slip even more into another pouch. If I took too much chances were one of the healers would notice and I didn’t want questions to be asked.

So I watched the stars and breathed in cold, clear air as my fingers continually slipped back to check the pouch holding my new contraband before returning to my pallet with no one the wiser.