TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 388

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S CHAPTER 314ANYONE CAN READ

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CHAPTER 314: ANYONE CAN READ

EMBER’S POV

She reads it the way a judge reads a confession, fast and flat and giving nothing back, and the old man drifts to her shoulder and reads it alongside her, and neither of them makes a sound

I watch their faces for something and get nothing. They’re very good at nothing.

“Hm,” she says at last, which could mean anything.

“It’s a slowing draught,” I say, because the silence is unbearable and because I want them to know I’m not just a girl holding a paper she can’t read. “Not a cure. There’s nothing in it that could cure what she has. It binds the blackening so it spreads slower through the lungs, and it eases the drowning so she can rest. It buys time. That’s all it does. That’s all I’m asking it to do.”

Her eyes flick up to me, then back down.

“To bind it, yes,” she says, idle, testing, like she’s asking the weather. “So naturally, you drop that root

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straight into the boiling water right at the start. To let the extreme heat really pull the strength out before you add the rest.”

“No,” I say flatly. “That is entirely backwards.”

She pauses, tilts her head.

“Extreme heat destroys it,” I tell her, holding her gaze. “If you drop it into boiling water, it burns out completely. You’d have a bitter mess that does the opposite of what it’s for, and you’d speed the disease instead of slowing it. It goes in last. Off the flame, while it cools.” I meet her eyes. “You said it tricky on purpose, just now. To see if I’d nod along.”

Penelope is not phased.

“The bitter root. How much, for a grown woman? A full dose.”

“Three measures,” I say. “Two if she’s small or weak. You start low and build from there because too much at once stops the very heart you’re trying to save.”

She inclines her head, barely. “And you’d grind the bitter root together with bone-ash, naturally. For balance.

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“Bone-ash isn’t a herb.” I hold her gaze. “There’s no such thing as bone-ash, in fact. You made it up just now, to see whether I’d nod along and pretend I knew it rather than admit I didn’t. I won’t pretend. If you want to test me, test me with something real.”

The old man’s pestle goes quiet.

Penelope’s pale eyes sharpen, just a fraction, but she doesn’t slow.

“All right. Something real, then. Say your draught works. Say it buys this friend of yours a month. And in

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that month, another woman comes to your door, dying of the very same thing, and there is only enough. left in all the world to save one of you. Which of them do you choose?”

It isn’t a herb question. It’s a different kind of test, and I feel the shape of the trap waiting under the words.

“I don’t answer that,” I say.

Her brow lifts. “No?”

– win

“No. Because it isn’t a real choice. It’s a story you’re telling to see what’s underneath when I’m cornered.” I keep my voice steady. “And if it ever were real, I wouldn’t stand in a room weighing which woman was worth less. I’d go and find more. I’d tear the world apart looking before I let it come down to one cup and two dying people.” I meet her eyes. “I’m standing in your shop right now precisely because I refuse to

accept there’s only one dose of time left for the woman I love. So no. I don’t pick. I find more.”

For a moment, nobody says anything at all.

The old man makes a small sound. It might be approval. It might be a cough. With these two, I genuinely

can’t tell.

“She reads,” he says to his wife.

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