This isn't a tale of how the Hero's Party thwarted a world-ending catastrophe. It isn't even his—this story follows his healer instead, long before she joined him in his quest to save the world.

Except she would rather wither in silence than tell you her story.

Alfia, Lady Rinnelise's lover and rival in healer school, is a bastard healer—a mage born with access to healing spells before even gaining full control of them. The problem? Casting a healing spell more powerful than intended kills with flesh overgrowths instead.

When a human cadaver from their dissection class triggers Alfia's persistent night terrors and absences, Rinnelise learns of Alfia's long-buried past. She didn't pledge to use her healing abilities to help the innocents of wars and calamities out of duty or selflessness; it is what she traded for lifelong incarceration. Her crime was discovering her immense potential for healing magic by killing someone dear, whom she also came to despise, with an uncontrolled healing spell.

Alfia will never forgive Rinnelise for prying further into that incident. She just wants Rinnelise to help her forget it until she can grit everything down under smiles as she has always done. But as Alfia's night terrors spur behaviors that threaten her scholarship and well-being, Rinnelise decides to unearth the events surrounding Alfia's crime instead, even if it earns her ire, to find out how to thwart her downward spiral before she loses the only place she carved for herself in the world beyond prison.

How the Healer Orphaned Herself is a slice-of-life sapphic fantasy with an established campus romance that slowly unveils a poignant coming-of-age tale for readers seeking character-driven, "outside the hero's journey" stories.

This novel contains explicit scenes and depiction of sensitive mental health topics.