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and frustration, masking the intent of his words for one crucial heartbeat. Before she could comprehend his action, he gripped the veil and tugged it from her head.
    Shrieking, shameful tears stinging her eyes, she stepped back, covering her face with both hands. She heard the thud of fist against flesh, and raced to Wilhelm’s side to stay his arm before he could strike Philipe again. Despite what the spoiled prince had done to her, Johanna did not wish to see Wilhelm beat a wounded man. “Brother, no! What would father say?”
    Panting, Wilhelm stepped back. With trembling fingers, Johanna reached down to pluck her veil from Philipe’s chest. She saw his look of disgust. She did not meet his eyes. She knew what he had seen. A head with naught but a few, scraggly jet strands sprouting to lay against skin melted like the wax of a candle. Eyes that did not completely close, even when she slept, for the lids had burned away. The slits of nostrils where her nose had once been. The cheek and lips that had not been touched by the fire, in some cruel jest that reminded her daily of the beauty she’d once possessed.
    She no longer needed beauty, and she did not need pity from the man who’d so carelessly abandoned her. Let him see , she thought. Let him see the wife he could have had. If there is any conscience in him, let it be salved by being saved from a fate worse than death.
    Though her own burden was eased by her vicious thoughts, she replaced her veil. He did not deserve to see. He did not deserve to rest easy.
    “Brother, hold his arm.” She turned away from the bed, returning to Nurse’s chest of medicine. At the bottom, beneath the surgeon’s implements Nurse had learned to use so efficiently all those years ago, she found the thick braid of leather. She brought it to the bed and placed it against Philipe’s lips. “Bite down on this. It will give you some comfort.”
    “I doubt that, lady.” Blood trickled from where Wilhelm had burst Philipe’s lip with a single hard blow. She would not tend to that wound.
    “Do not doubt, for I can tell you that it does bring comfort.” She met his eyes through the sheer fabric of her veil. “For I did the same when my Nurse had to scrub my cooked flesh raw, to clean it and speed healing. I learned many tricks during those long, vile hours, to lessen pain.”
    “I bow to your superior experience,” he said, and the edge of the spoiled prince was there, not so far beneath the surface.
    She pushed the cord into his mouth, and he gagged and worked it forward with his tongue. She nodded to Wilhelm, who pinned the patient’s arm. With a knee on the mattress, Johanna gripped the arrow and pulled with all her might. It budged, but only barely, and Philipe screamed around the leather cord. Bracing herself more solidly, Johanna pulled, using Philipe’s long, muffled wail as strength she could draw upon. The arrow slid loose with a sucking sound. Blood welled at the wound, but it did not spray.
    Philipe’s cry had stopped, and she’d not noticed until she looked up to see him, sweat streaming down his unconscious face. Her stomach turned over, and she wiped her bloody hands on his ruined shirt. “Leave the tourniquet, stanch the bleeding. If it does not stop, come for me.”
    “Where are you going?” Wilhelm asked, panicked, as she pressed a square of linen into his hands and guided them to the wound.
    “I need a moment.” She rose and stepped over the arrow that now lay harmlessly on the ground. She was certain she would vomit, and the smell from the stewpot didn’t help to calm her stomach. She fled to the balcony and down the stairs, the winter air opening her lungs.
    At the bottom, she clung to the splintered railing and doubled over, willing herself to heave up and have done with it. But nothing came, and she instead sat down on the wet stair, a sense of disappointment assailing her. It would have been so cleansing and dramatic to run down from the tower and