TO LATE TO BEG, SISTER

CHAPTER 8: EASY TO CURE

In the grand living room of the Vance estate, that night had only two sounds: Tristan's stifled sobbing, and the soft clink of metal from the silver case Karen opened on the coffee table.

The case was her own, the one she carried to consultations at Royal London: rows of needles in silk slots, a pulse cushion, a small bottle of antiseptic that smelled like every hospital she had ever worked in. She laid the tools out in the same order she always did, and the order steadied her. Outside, the rain had thinned to a drizzle that tapped the tall windows, patient, like someone waiting to be let in.

"Lie down," Karen said softly. "This will be a little uncomfortable."

Tristan lay on the leather sofa and let his dead right arm hang where it wanted. He timed his moans. Too regular, and they would sound fake; too rare, and they would be forgotten. In the corner of his eye he counted how many sisters were watching him. All of them. Victoria by the window with her arms crossed. Siska by the stairs, still half in her uniform. Karen above him, calm as ever. Good. An audience was never a waste, if you knew how to use one.

Karen laid two fingers on his wrist, then moved to his neck, then his shoulder. She did it slowly, like someone reading a letter from a patient who had already died.

"Where does it hurt the most?" she asked.

"Everywhere," Tristan said, and it was true enough to be useful. "Like bones chewing on themselves."

She made no answer, only moved her fingers again, pressing a fraction deeper at three points along the arm. At the third, Tristan's body jerked, even though the pressure was gentle.

"The pain has spread through the whole body," she said at last. "But the source isn't the injury. Something is disturbing his pain receptors—like someone pressed certain points and locked them there. His body is being made to feel pain it isn't producing." She looked up. "Whoever did this understands anatomy very well."

Tristan's face tightened. "Then... can it be cured, Sister Karen?"

She smiled, and it was the smile that made patients' families trust her with their lives. "Easily."

The word went around the room like warm air. Tristan's face lit up. "Sister Karen is the best," he said, voice made hoarse. "I knew I wouldn't die as long as you were here."

Victoria nodded from her chair by the window. She had not sat down out of kindness; she sat because the matter was about to be resolved, and resolved matters allowed sitting. "You are the only one I can rely on, Karen."

By the stairs, Siska's jaw, which had been set hard since the orphanage, slowly loosened. Her anger changed into a thin smile. "Cure him first," she said. "The moment he is well, I'll take my unit and shut that orphanage down myself. I'll make sure Julian learns what a cell feels like from the inside."

Tristan reached for the edge of Siska's sleeve, weakly. "Sister Siska... don't blame Julian. I'm the one who made him angry. If I hadn't come, he wouldn't have—"

"You hear that?" Siska cut in, and this time her anger was real. "He ate at this house for years and never knew his place. Now he's still not satisfied. Does he truly think the Vance family will be inherited by a fake son like him? Delusion!"

Karen did not lift her head. "Quiet, Siska. I'm starting."

She swabbed the first point with antiseptic, and the clean hospital smell filled the small space between them. The first needle went into Tristan's wrist, then his shoulder, then the nape of his neck. Each one entered without a tug of pain; her hands were, as she had said, among the few in the world that could do it.

Warmth spread under the skin. The pain that had been gnawing his bones all night loosened, like knots untied one by one. Tristan let out a breath he felt he had been holding since the orphanage. The sweat on his forehead began to dry. His shoulders, which had been hunched around the agony, came down an inch.

"Will he be able to use the hand again?" Victoria asked, from the window.

"With rest, most of it," Karen said. "The strength that locked it is already fading."

Somewhere behind Tristan's relief, a thought slid through, quiet and quick: *once these women believe they have saved me, they will believe anything.*

"Thank you, Sister Karen," he said aloud, and this time it was half sincere.

"See?" Karen said softly, turning the last needle a fraction. "I studied under the Divine Healer. I am his only direct disciple. In this world there are few hands better than mine."

Victoria smiled thinly. Even Siska folded her arms with something like pride, as if the disciple in the room were her own.

But then Karen's brow creased.

She had never seen this pattern. The needles opened the locked points, yes—but behind them was something else. Something quiet and deep, like water under ice. It did not fight her needles. It waited for them. She pressed one point again, gently, and felt the water shift, patient, almost amused, as if it had been laid there by someone with all the time in the world. She asked Tristan to count backward from ten. He did, and at the number six, the water moved.

"I can only suppress the symptoms," she said at last. "Three days. I can't give a complete cure. Not alone."

The room went quiet. Siska gave a short, disbelieving laugh. "Three days? That's nothing. We've survived worse."

Tristan's brief joy cracked at the edges. His mind worked fast under the calm face: three days of acting broken, three days of their pity, and then what? "T-three days?"

Karen patted the back of his good hand. "Three days is enough. I'll ask my Master for help. He has never refused me."

Tristan nodded, forced his smile back into place, and thanked her again.

Then, without a sound, the first needle at his wrist jumped out.

Not fell. Jumped, as if pushed from inside the skin. Then the second, the third—one by one they flew out and rang against the marble floor like small bells. Karen's hand shot out to steady the rest and found them all vibrating, faintly, like strings someone else was tuning. Siska took a half step back without meaning to. Victoria stood up, and for the first time in ten years of boardrooms, she had stood up without meaning to.

And the pain came back tenfold.

Tristan's scream did not sound human. He curled on the sofa, both hands clawing at his own arms, like a man whose fingernails were being pulled out one by one. The pain did not come in waves anymore; it came in teeth. It pierced to the core of him, and the last thing he saw before the room went white was Karen's face—pale, for the first time all night.