Sweet Romance11 min read
The Healer at Table Ten
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I came back to myself as the engine screamed and the racecar hissed to a stop. My pupils sharpened into cold slits. I clicked the phone to my ear without looking down.
"August, the healer's in A City," I said, voice flat.
"Great," August Bauer breathed. "I'll come right after—"
"No." I cut him off. "Don't."
"......" I heard him swallow. "Do me a favor and let me do this one, Gev. Give me a chance, will you?"
"Not needed." My words were ice and I stepped out, the world around me blurring into speed and sunlight.
At A City's airport, bright and warm as a promise, Ellis Stewart found me in five minutes flat and then fussed like a worried bee. "Boss, you're finally here."
"Where should I stay?" I asked, voice distant.
"It's all set. We booked something—"
"Don't follow me. Take that case to the house." I handed him my key. I had other things to look for.
Ellis blinked. "But—"
"I said don't follow." I smiled—a small, sharp smile—and drove away in the car that had just arrived. He watched the taillights disappear and sent the address to my phone as if I might forget who I was.
The city slid past me. Inside the cab the VIP skyline seemed to pity me; outside, people living enormous, ordinary lives. I whispered, "The healer." The word tasted dangerous and hopeful at once.
I drove until the sign said "Lark", an exclusive restaurant for the rich and the careful. The hostess treated my VIP card as if it were a treasure; the elevator took me to a windowed room where the city was a glittering postcard. I ate slowly because the flavors were rare comforts.
Then I felt the look—a flame of attention from the other side of the room.
I turned. He sat with two men, like a chess king with his knights. The one who owned the room had a face honed sharp enough to cut air. He was handsome in a clean, terrifying way. For a moment I let myself be an ordinary girl under an ordinary gaze, and I was startled at how it clawed at something in me.
"He's looking at you," someone beside me whispered.
I let him look. When he finally did, I gave him two steps and left. His eyes tightened as if someone had closed on his chest.
Outside the restaurant, the world was the same. Ellis called, worried. "Boss, I left your things—are you coming back?"
"Depends," I said. "How's the search for the healer going?"
"Started," he said. "I've pinged everyone I can."
I hung up and logged into the old account I had kept from other life choices: Blackwing, the hacker alliance that sometimes whispered the city's secrets. My fingers moved while the room buzzed. "Pavel Chapman?" I typed into the alliance channel. "Any news on the healer in A City?"
Messages flared. "Pavel's legend," someone joked. "Is he back?"
"Probably fake," someone else wrote. "Too old."
I ignored the noise. A year had gone by and nothing about the healer had changed; Grandma's name had been a beacon and now it dimmed. I thought of her hands, of the way she taught me plants and gentle pressure points, of the way she used to say, "If the world is cruel, be cleaner and kinder." Without her, there was an empty space where a compass should have been.
I sent a DM to the restaurant manager: "Gather the dossiers on the three gentlemen on the top floor this afternoon."
He sent them fast as heartbeats. "The most handsome is Ford Bowen. Ford Bowen runs Bowen Enterprises," the message read. "The other two are Penn Moreau and Apollo Soares. I—maybe they noticed you."
I logged off. Bowen, A City, healer. The pieces rearranged themselves.
The next day, breakfast came on a silver tray, and Ellis suggested, "Boss, there's a major auction at Hofgard today. Want to check?"
"You think they'll be dealing with healers?"
He shrugged. "Healers don't sell at Hofgard. But people who buy heirlooms, they do."
"Perhaps," I said. "Let's go."
At Hofgard the air hummed with wealth. A heart-shaped pink gem on a platinum harp was the first lot and women screamed in the way of the blood-flushed and wealthy. The bidding climbed like a fever until the upstairs "Supreme" box raised an obscene hand.
"One hundred million," said Ford Bowen in that sound that made two people tilt forward like magnets.
The hall swallowed its breath. Everyone else folded as if to die and left.
I watched Ford watching me. He spent what seemed like a sliver of vanity on the gem, then clasped the lot and left. He was harmless and dangerous in ways I couldn't name.
Then Hofgard revealed the last lot. "A book." The auctioneer smiled like a priest. "The last lot is... a medicinal compendium, missing for a century—'The Herbalum of Lin.'"
Every eye became a calloused fist. "A textbook?" a man demanded. "Is this a joke?"
"It belonged to the royal physician," the auctioneer said. "It's the most detailed herb record. Start: ten million. Bids rise by no less than a million."
People who understood medicine began to gnash. This was sacred. The bidding turned ugly; a science hunger smelled of desperation. Then Ford rose to his feet.
"One billion."
The room went cold. He didn't blink. The price climbed like a story. Others tried to fight; they failed.
When a luxury voice shouted "Two and a half billion," I saw Ford accept the book and the burden it carried.
Later, when Ellis told me what he had found—"Ford Bowen took the Herbalum"—my lips formed an outline. "I will get that book," I said.
Ellis's face was a smudge of worry. "Boss, you can't just—"
"Watch." I held the hand Ellis always braided from the inside out. "He has it now. He will be the key."
The next week I became a new kind of student: small in the crowded halls of A University, enrolled in the Traditional Medicine Department because I wanted to be close to the answer. I kept quiet. I watched.
On the first day of military training, the head instructor walked onto the high platform: Ford Bowen, in staff uniform that turned the sun into a halo around him. He surveyed us like a captain reading sea.
I tightened my shoulders because some part of me wanted to be unseen forever. He had seen me before, and then he began to watch me in a habit that quickly outgrew ordinary attention.
"Are you able to handle the heat?" he asked my line later, voice low.
"Yes," I said.
"Please, keep it that way," he said. Only later did I know how much he would mean it.
He was a man of paradox: a battlefield legend who would stand in the hottest sun and still think, "Will she need shade?" He moved as if he were managing storms.
A girl named Hadassah Bruno—call her a viper in silk—saw me as an opening. She baited me in the cafeteria and online; a post appeared on the university forum accusing me of using my looks to seduce the commanding officer. The photos were cropped, flattering to the shade they cast. People clicked and clicked and the world laughed at me.
My name became a joke and the joke was cruel. But I had allies—Ellis at my side, a silly cheerful kid who stayed brave, a roommate named Brynlee Flores who believed in me, and a small shadow network that still worked on old favors.
Rumors swirl, and then the world moves on. Hadassah's bite only hardened my cold reserve. I did not fight with words. I did other things.
One night Ford followed me after lights-out. I had stolen in with a night mask, to see the book. I had wanted to find it and—if needed—take it by force. He knew. He had known before I felt the first thrum of fear.
"Genevieve?" His voice near my ear was low enough to pull a confession. "Are you the one who tries midnight thefts?"
"No," I lied. "I'm looking for a book."
He exhaled through his nose. "You could have asked."
"If I'd asked," I said, "you might have said no."
We broke into the house together. His hands were faster than anyone's I have ever seen. He unmapped the dark and then turned the light on, and I realized he had recognized me by shape and scent and the way my fingers slid.
"You shouldn't be here," he said, voice gentle.
"I shouldn't care if you say that," I said. I had a plan: get the book, get the healer, make the swap. But the plan telescoped into something else the moment he said, "You're smaller than I thought."
Something in him cracked open like a hinge. He put his palm on my wrist, and the world slipped into a clearer orbit.
"I could smell your heart," he said quietly. "You don't belong to danger by choice."
"Don't make me softer by saying that." I pulled away from him, ready to leave.
He stopped me, and did the most honest thing: he unbuttoned a little of his uniform and made a ridiculous, mortal offer. "Come live where I can see you."
The idea was almost obscene: to live where someone could monitor my breaths and feed me heartily. I laughed and he said, "I can fix it."
That night he found my pulse and went still.
"You're sick," he said. He didn't make it a lie. He waited for me to scoff and for me to correct him because that is what I had always done. But the truth had mass now.
"What's wrong?" I asked, only then hearing the thrum in my chest. My body's noise was an accusation.
"It's not straightforward," Ford said. "It is something manufactured. It was made to be invisible until—until it isn't."
He told me he could help. He told me he had the Herbalum. He told me he had medical skills no one in the city expected. He said the words like sacrament: "I am the healer."
If you had asked me two weeks earlier if I believed that a man who could buy the whole auction house could be a true practitioner of hands and herbs, I would have laughed. But there he was, hands shaking as he promised on a midnight bed to try to buy me time, to extend a breath into years.
"Can you give me years?" I asked, trading my fear for clarity.
"Ten," he said. "Perhaps ten."
He asked me to stay. He said it plainly: "Move in."
I moved in.
It became, in short order, a small domestic life that looked absurd to everyone who saw us: me, pale and stony; him, a lord with a chef's apron who made simple soups and watched me like a man trying not to break. He cooked because he thought I would eat; he learned to mix Chinese broths with a technique that could make salt into a tender thing.
People took photos of us like we were a scandal, like we were furniture. The university forum continued to sing its small-town songs. Hadassah's voice kept arising like a stink. I let it. I had other plans.
One important plan: if the Herbalum could point me to herbs and methods and formulas, it also would show me the history of a family buried in their own ego. Ford was willing to share.
Then the wolves attacked.
Hadassah and her clique—three girls, a boy who liked the cheap thrill of cruelty—arranged to sabotage my reputation during the major evaluation. They spread lies, motioned for attention, and tried to trip me in front of the examiners. She wanted me reduced to a spectacle.
"You're lucky, Genevieve," Hadassah said once in the library, voice bright as a needle. "When you fall, we'll all laugh. We'll watch you fall."
I let her tiptoe closer. I let her think she had the right shape of control.
Ford saw the war in the look that passed between us. He made a decision quick and cold as glass.
"You want a lesson," he said, voice low. "You'll get a public one."
"Wait," I breathed. "Don't—"
It was too late. The stage was set at an anti-drug symposium a week later, where Hadassah had arranged a "charity" lecture and expected applause. Ford made sure it would be the perfect place. There would be the dean, donors, classmates, and cameras. She had insisted on making it a spectacle. She wanted the crowd. He gave her a crowd—then opened a wound.
On the day, Ford rose in the middle of the hall before Hadassah spoke. He walked to the mic with a presence that made the air rearrange itself.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "I have some important news. I believe in truth in public, not whispers in shadows."
He let that hang, then turned and locked his eyes on Hadassah. "Miss Bruno, today's talk is on integrity. I know you've been... generous with your imagination about a fellow student's character."
She blinked like a rabbit. "Excuse me?"
"You posted defamatory content on the university forum," Ford continued. "You doctored images and used them to smear a girl who is a student here and who is terribly ill. For what? Sport? Attention?"
"That's not—" Hadassah's voice wobbled, like a tightrope.
Ford did not yell; he narrated evidence. He had footprints of IP addresses from the forum, and a timestamped chain of messages that led right back to Hadassah's phone. He showed the crowd the sequence on the big screen: the edits, the messages, the account creation on a campus public terminal.
Gasps rose like birds.
"You used university resources to harass another student," Ford said. "This isn't a prank. It's malice. Security recorded you uploading and editing. The dean, I'd ask you to remove this student's privileges as a student government member pending review."
"You're lying!" Hadassah shrieked. "No—no—"
She tried to cower. She tried to stammer out words, but the microphone took her voice, and the hall, full of witnesses, amplified her shame. Students fumbled for their phones and recorded; strangers filmed with appalling glee; a couple of professors whispered and nodded at Ford.
The dean rose with a pallid face and said, "We will investigate. For now, Miss Bruno, leave the stage."
She left like a wounded animal, dragging her dignity behind her. People in the hall murmured and scrolled. The footage went viral on campus within hours.
That public humiliation of Hadassah wasn't the only thing. Later, I revealed to an assembly the evidence of her family's shady shareholder pressure—how they'd attempted to leverage the auction and bully the Hofgard committee into a private deal. Ford had compiled numbers: donations, declarations, power plays. People found it strange and then unforgivable.
When the university issued a statement about the incident—"misuse of resources, defamation"—Hadassah found herself barred from campus events, her social accounts under scrutiny. She tried to apologize and then to deny, then to bargain; every failure was filmed and replayed. Her parents called and her friends drained away; the women she had used as a chorus fled, embarrassed and afraid of being next.
In public, she went from queen to pariah in 72 hours. She had relied on spectacle; Ford turned spectacle back on her.
The punishment satisfied a large, private thing in me I hadn't allowed myself to name. I stood back as crowds whispered: "She deserved that."
But the real punishment had layers. There was the academic investigation, with Hadassah's scholarship withheld pending review; there was the public removal of her student government seat; there was the soil of reputation turned sour so anyone who used her as leverage risked being associated with her. And there was Ford's quiet work, remotely and legally, to ensure that any donors who had been complicit got notices—gentle but damning letters that said, "We review such ties."
Hadassah's face when the dean read the notice in the hall—her mouth turned into a small O—was a panorama of every stage the bully had once ridden. People took photos. Some applauded. Many felt sick. Hadassah watched helpless in front of everyone, her defenses collapsing: at first a tight denial, then astonished rage, then the clumsy attempt to laugh. The laughter broke into tears and then the tears dried into the blankness of someone who had run out of allies.
The onlookers were cruel: they took pictures, whispered, and some clapped. Others—especially those who had been near her when she bullied others—crossed their arms and looked away. It was a public unmasking that had texture: not merely a fall but a sequence that showed her moves in the light. She tried to beg forgiveness in an interview; it looked like a rehearsed concession. She tried to rally, to plead that people should let her grow: people who had seen her actions did not forgive easily.
That punishment was necessary. I watched it not with triumph but with a strange relief. A long cruel game had ended.
After the storm, things quieted enough for healing. Ford taught me carefully, with hands that were sure and skilled. He threaded needles of herbs into formulas unknown to the bright academic tests, using the Herbalum in an old-paper smell and the memory of hands. His work stretched timetables; he remained confident: "You will get years, Gev."
Occasionally, August called with old sibling terrors; he paced his houses and his companies and begged me to stop being reckless. "Let me fix this," he urged one night.
"I will let you in when you are needed," I told him.
And Ford—Ford learned to be small in my rooms. He drove me to classes, he sat in the low light while I studied, he came to military practice and stood, helmet on, when the standards were high. He made soup for me after long nights. We invented a life between the pulse and the emergency code.
"Does it make you worry?" he asked once, his voice thin with the weight of the possible.
"Everything makes me worry," I admitted. Then I looked at him and added, "But now, at least, there is someone else who knows."
The city kept turning. The Herbalum remained on his shelf as if it were a tiny sun and books rebuked the night. The black threads of my past—experiments, small mercies—began to unravel because there were two of us tugging at ends.
Two nights later, after lectures, I found Ford with the book open. He had sketched lines in the margins; he had circled the plant names I had dreamed of. He looked at me with the patience of someone building a bridge slowly by hand.
"You've brought me something impossible," he said.
"And you've given me a place to be alive," I said.
He smiled, and the world made sense for a while.
The End
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