But even so, when we gather for vespers and again for compline, I cannot help but look at my brothers with uncharitable suspicions in my mind.  Did one of them get up in the night? I heard nothing—not even the snoring of Frère Bruno—so any one of them might have done so. But why? And what did the cat have to do with anything? Even if one of the brothers were sneaking into the pantry, I cannot fathom why anyone would want to strip a cat of her flesh.

After the last snap fills the air, the Healers weave a spell to fuse the bones of her fingers back together. To fill her up with something new. When they let her go, she crawls to the corner of her cell, holds her ruined hands to her chest, and sobs into the filthy straw.