Page 82 of The Prison Healer

“How?”

Heaving her bag of collection flasks higher up on her shoulder, Kiva wondered what her father might have done, but came up empty. “I’m not sure yet. Once I know the origin, that’ll hopefully give me an indication of what’s needed to treat it.”

“What if it doesn’t? What if you can’t figure it out?”

Kiva made herself adopt a light tone as she shrugged and said, “Then we all die, I guess.”

Naari arched an eyebrow, and Kiva caught the expression from her peripheral vision as they walked side by side toward the entrance block.

“Remind me never to come to you for encouragement,” Naari muttered under her breath.

Kiva hid her smile, but then said, “Almost every sickness can be treated. Whether it can becuredis something else entirely. But given the symptoms I’ve seen, I’m confident one can be found for this, whatever it is. I just need more information.”

And her father had just needed more time. She was sure of it. Faran Meridan was the best healer Kiva had ever known. He would have figured out how to cure the sickness, eventually. Perhaps hedid,and that was why it ended up vanishing soon after his own death. But he’d left no research, no instructions. So now it was up to Kiva to figure it out.

“And what about your next Trial?” Naari asked as they approached the gates. “Have you started thinking about it yet?”

It was hard for Kivanotto think about it. She’d barely survived the Trial by Fire, and that was with magical help. She had no idea what the water Ordeal would require of her, no idea how she might endure it.

“I have twelve days to worry about that,” Kiva answered. “My priority right now is making sure we’re all still alive then.”

Naari sent Kiva a sidelong glance before waving to the guards up in the watchtowers. “Then let’s get you what you need,” she said. “After you, healer.”

And so, for the second time in a week, Kiva stepped outside the prison, praying she’d find what she was searching for.

The rest of Kiva’s week was spent following a pattern that began to repeat itself, to her unending frustration.

After the farms and slaughterhouse, she’d spent the next day as she’d told Naari she would, testing the rats and watching for any signs of change.

When no symptoms presented themselves, Kiva asked Tipp to round up extra vermin, and the following day, she and Naari ventured out of the prison for more samples. This time, they headed north toward the Blackwood Forest, a trek that took them even longer than their journey to the quarry. Once there, Kiva collected samples from the lumberyard and even the forest itself, along with the rail carts that transported the timber back through the prison gates and out of Zalindov to Vaskin and beyond. From wood chippings to tree fungi to flower pollen to fluffy moss, plus the usual stagnant water puddles and mud, Kiva collected anything that might create an ideal viral or bacterial environment. But when she spent the next day testing the rats, they again showed no signs of illness.

Having completed her collections outside of Zalindov’s walls, Kiva’s attention switched to inside the prison.

On Friday, nearly a week after her fire Ordeal, Kiva headed to the luminium depository, a large rectangular building in the south of the grounds, just inside the gates. She didn’t need Naari escorting her anymore, since she was within the grounds, but the guard still accompanied her to the storage facility and the adjacent processing factory. Kiva wasn’t sure if Naari was curious about the research or if she simply wanted to keep spending time with her. Once or twice, Kiva had inwardly questioned the guard’s motives, even going so far as to wonder if she was somehow aligned with the rebels, watching over Kiva for the sake of Tilda. Another possibility Kiva entertained was whether Rooke had assigned Naari to protect her—or to spy on her. But neither option sat right with Kiva, and with little evidence for either, she decided she was better off not worrying about whether Naari was going to stab her in the back, metaphorically speaking. Perhaps literally speaking, too.

There was, however, one burning question Kiva still had about the guard, and that was regarding her relationship with Jaren. Even though Naari had firmly stated that she would never cross that line, Kiva still had doubts, especially when she discovered that Naari was tasked with monitoring the tunnelers anytime she wasn’t guarding the infirmary, and therefore she saw Jaren a lot more than either of them had let on. Try as she might, Kiva remained suspicious of the easy, relaxed way in which they interacted. While she wasn’t one to objectify the human body, Kiva had seen Jaren without his tunic on. She’d felt his arms around her, his lips touching her forehead, his hands entwined with hers. Hell, she’dsleptwrapped in him, his warmth and strength surrounding her all night, keeping her safe and protected in her own Jaren cocoon.

The memories brought warmth to Kiva’s cheeks, and she scolded herself for being so ridiculous. If Naari had lied about being intimate with Jaren, then that was between the two of them. Kiva didn’t care. Shedidn’t.

She did, however, become very good at lying to herself.

The samples from the luminium depository were cleared after testing the rats the next day, and Kiva’s concern grew as the list of places left to check continued to shrink.

“Don’t worry ’bout it, luv,” Mot told her on Saturday night when he and his morgue workers came to collect another load of the dead. “Yeh’ll figure it out. Yeh always do. Just like yer da.”

Mot had never met Kiva’s father, but he would have heard all about Faran Meridan from some of the older prisoners, much of which was supposition, Kiva assumed. But still, tears crept to her eyes at his words, because he was right about one thing: her father never would have given up until he’d solved the problem, even if it killed him. Which, in this case, it had. But Mot wasn’t wrong—Kiva was just like her father. And she wouldn’t give up, either.

“Forget about the sick for now,” Mot went on. “What about yer next Ordeal? Any ideas what yeh’ll face? Do yeh have a plan?”

Kiva had been thinking about it all week. After much consideration, she’d come to the conclusion that the third Trial would likely involve Zalindov’s aquifer, the huge underground reservoir that the tunnels fed water into. Nothing else could offer the same kind of drama as the first two Ordeals—or the same kind of danger. Most prisoners couldn’t swim, so Kiva would be expected to drown. However, no one knew where she had grown up, with the swift, deep Aldon River running adjacent to her family’s cottage just outside of Riverfell. Nor did they know how many hours she and her siblings had spent honing their swimming skills. Granted, it had been a long time since Kiva had used hers, but her confidence was enough that she felt marginally less worried about the coming Trial than any of the others.

That didn’t mean she wasn’t still terrified.

In the first two Ordeals, she’d had the support of the Vallentis royals, the prince’s elemental power saving her life—twice. Kiva still couldn’t reconcile how she felt about that, how she felt aboutthem,since their family was the reason she’d lost ten years of her life to Zalindov, the reason she’d been torn from her mother and older siblings, the reason her father and brother were dead.

And yet ... Kiva would have perished by now if not for Prince Deverick saving her life—twice.

No matter how much she wanted to hate them,allof them, Kiva couldn’t. But she also couldn’t forgive them, not for all the elemental magic in the world.

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